A TIME TO DIE

Professor Halla paced up and down in his lab, sneaking glances at the Doctor's headless body as it lay on a mortuary slab. A small bleeping object was protruding from the wound where the head had been severed.

Halla did a final check to make sure the small object was operational and then he picked up the silver box and headed to his office. As an afterthought, he elected to have the Doctor's body delivered there too. Best to keep them both together, he decided.

He carried the box through the long winding corridors of the research station making sure he did not disturb the contents. Once inside his office he placed the box down on his desk.

He moved over to the large armour like device. Alistair Jnr's heart had been inserted and was now beating regularly. He ran his fingers over the device and made sure everything was in order. He then moved over to a small control console, which bleeped and whined as small lights flickered across its surface. A glass column in the centre of the console contained the rotted head that the Queen had brought with Alistair Jnr's heart.

Halla than moved back to the silver box, opened the lid and looked inside. He looked down at the Doctor's head as it sat in the box, a silver collar attached at the neck where it had been severed. Halla let out a sigh of regret and reached down to pick up the head.

Suddenly the Doctor's eyes opened. "Oh my Giddy Aunt, where am I?" he asked. He looked up. "Professor Halla, isn't it? You don't keep your appointments, do you?"

Halla recovered from his momentary surprise. "Ah, Doctor. I'm glad to see the collar is working perfectly."

"Collar?" He looked down as far as was possible. "Oh, I see." Then he realised. "What the . . . What have you done to me? Where's the rest of me?"

"Don't worry, Doctor," Halla assured him. "Your body is still in perfect health. Just over there."

The Doctor's eyes peered over the rim of the box. "Preserved by another collar?"

"Something similar, yes."

"Then put me back together at once," the Doctor protested. "I refuse to be treated in this way."

Halla sighed. "I regret that you have little choice in the matter, Doctor. My Queen has decreed that you will serve an altogether different purpose." He indicated the seven-foot figure before him.

"Oh, I see," the Doctor gently taunted. "She snaps her fingers and you follow like a lap dog."

"It's nothing of the sort," Halla declared. "We share a common goal. And once that goal is achieved, we are to be married."

"Yes, they all say that," the Doctor observed. "Never works out, of course."

Halla could hardly believe what was happening. Despite his obvious predicament, it felt as though the Doctor was in charge of things, rather than himself. "Doctor, you're not making this easy for yourself."

"Oh, was I supposed to? Sorry about that, Halla old chap. You just go ahead and make the biggest mistake of your life." The Doctor sniffed. "I certainly can't stop you."

*****

The Brigadier and Jamie sat disconsolately in their cell. "I canna believe it," Jamie moaned. "The Doctor – dead."

"I can hardly believe it myself," Lethbridge Stewart agreed. "And yet that Professor Halla told us he needed the Doctor alive. Did you see that collar he put around his neck after . . . well, immediately afterwards?"

"Aye," Jamie replied. "But how can a collar keep someone alive?"

"I don't know, Jamie. But for now, we have to assume that he is. And we've got to get out of here."

They stood up as the door to the cell suddenly opened. Framed in the doorway was Queen Perpugilliam. "Oh, the Doctor is alive," she announced. "But I doubt he will remain so for very much longer."

The Brigadier glared at her. "You!" he spat. "You're responsible for all those deaths."

She smiled. "How true. But I needed to feed, so their deaths served a purpose."

"And you also killed my son!"

The smile faltered. "That was . . . necessary. He was a traitor to our cause." She took in their looks of horror, from the Brigadier to Jamie.

Jamie – for some reason she could not tear herself away from his gaze. And it was not for the desire to feed. It was . . . something else. Something she could not identify. With an effort she turned back to the Brigadier. "However, as there were blood ties, it seems only fair that you should join your son in death. And I must feed."

Lethbridge Stewart stepped back. "Jamie, when I say run . . ."

"No, not this time, Brigadier." Jamie leaped forward, barring the Queen's path. "Why don't you take a bite out of me instead?" he suggested.

The Brigadier couldn't believe it. "McCrimmon, don't be a fool!"

The Queen laughed. "It matters not. I shall still feed." She reached out for him, and then unexpectedly shrank back. "What is this? What prevents me from feeding?"

"I'm sure I don't know," Jamie replied innocently. "Why not try again?"

"If you insist." Again the Queen bared her fangs, ready to pounce. But again something held her back. She stared at Jamie, angry and confused.

The Brigadier shared her confusion. "I don't understand this at all." Then he realised. Somewhere inside the Queen had to be remnants of her previous life as Peri Brown. As such she recognised Jamie and felt unable to attack him. No doubt the Doctor would have some scientific name for it. However . . .

Jamie had noted the Queen's wariness when she had faced him before. Now he kept his eye on her, veering this way and that, blocking her path to the Brigadier. It was a risk, but he had to try. For her part, Perpugilliam began to experience an uncertainty within her. "I cannot . . . I can't think straight. I mustn't . . . I must not weaken."

"Peri?" Jamie called, recalling the name Lethbridge Stewart had mentioned. "Is that Peri in there?"

The Queen shot him a venomous look. "Peri Brown no longer exists. She . . . I . . . I'm here, Jamie. I can't . . . cannot focus."

"Peri, concentrate." Jamie had to play this carefully. One false move . . . "Peri, we need you."

The Queen wavered, uncertain what to do next. Jamie and the Brigadier took advantage of the situation and charged past her into the corridors of the research station.

******

Professor Halla looked up at his handiwork. The Doctor's head had been attached to the large 7-foot tall device. Exasperated by the Doctor's continuous chatter Halla had taped over his mouth. Now all the Time Lord could do was glare at his captor.

Halla was becoming concerned. Try as he might he could not get the head in the glass column to respond as expected. Not only was it a Time Lord head but it was also the head of the Doctor's own future corpse. What was strange was that there was no sign on the readings of a temporal paradox that would arise in this situation. What was even stranger was that the head was not responding like a Time Lord head at all. In fact it seemed in every way to be human.

*****

Jamie and the Brigadier continued to run up and down the corridors of the station. After a moment the Brigadier called to Jamie and said that being an old man he needed a rest. The two of them took a breather and looked around them.

The Brigadier then caught sight of something very familiar in a small room off the corridor they were in. He tapped Jamie on the shoulder and pointed for him to look that way. The two men entered the room.

"The TARDIS. Two of them," said Jamie.

"Yes. One is obviously the one the future Doctor brought here centuries ago and the other is yours, which they must have had delivered from Paris," the Brigadier noted.

"Well, know we know where the TARDIS is. We still need to find the Doctor." The young Scot turned to leave the room, but the Brigadier was standing still, pondering the TARDIS. As though he were drawn to it.

"C'mon Brigadier. We've got to save the Doctor."

Lethbridge Stewart turned to look at the younger man. "Jamie, I am going to have to ask you to do something for me. It may seem like I'm abandoning you both, but you trust me don't you?" Jamie nodded. "I'm going to have to leave it to you to save the Doctor. I know you can do it," he added encouragingly.

"What are ye gonna do?" asked Jamie.

"You could say I have an appointment to keep on the Doctor's behalf. Can you give me your key to the TARDIS?"

Jamie fumbled about in his sporran and took out the key and passed it to the Brigadier. The key was duly inserted in the lock. "Goodbye, Jamie. Give the Doctor my respects," He turned the key and entered the TARDIS.

Jamie waited and watched the ship dematerialise before he resumed his search for the Doctor.

******

Halla could not work it out. Why would the head not respond as expected? He hunched forward and looked more closely at the head and noticed something he had not seen before.

******

The Brigadier stood and watched the time rotor rise and fall in the centre of the TARDIS console. He had never really understood how the thing worked, but by being observant on the couple of occasions he had travelled in the old girl he had picked up enough to move the ship a few miles and back a couple of hundred years. Which in the end was all he needed to do.

There was then the unmistakable thud of the TARDIS landing. The Brigadier opened the doors and stepped out. He was in a clearing at the centre of a lizard village. He looked around him at the simple brick buildings. It looked exactly like the old drawings he had seen of Paris before it had been developed. A couple of inquisitive lizards moved towards him.

The Brigadier's plan was about to be set in motion but there was one more thing he had to do to get it going. He began to speak.

"Good morning. I am the Doctor and I have come here to die."

******

Halla could have kicked himself. When he had looked closely at the head for the first time he had noticed the faint traces of a grey beard. Then he had begun to notice something familiar in the remnants of the decayed head's features. To resolve the matter he had pulled some DNA files for Paris's records and compared them with the head.

This had proved the matter once and for all. The head that the lizards had for centuries worshiped as that of the Doctor was in fact the head of the Brigadier.

The Queen's plans were in tatters and she would not be happy.

"Halla!" He spun round. Queen Perpugilliam hobbled into the room, Zzorrann close behind. For all his concerns, the Professor noted that the Queen was not as self-assured as he had known her. "Halla, what is happening? The transference should have been completed by now."

He would do himself no favours by lying. "I regret, my Queen, that we have all been deceived." He indicated the decayed head. "This is not the head of the Doctor."

"What!" She moved closer, examining the head as Halla had done a few moments before. She stared, recognising the face. "And I thought the Doctor was the one to be wary of. It seems I did the Brigadier an injustice."

Zzorrann realised what his mother was saying. "It must be a trick."

She shook her head. "No trick, my son. By his sacrifice, the Brigadier has dealt our cause a mortal blow." Then she looked up at the Doctor, his mouth still taped. "But I shall still have a victory of sorts." Fangs bared, she prepared to spring at him.

"No, Peri!"

The Queen turned at the sound of Jamie's voice. The highlander had rescued a sword from a recently felled guard, and now held the blade across Zzorrann's throat. "Peri, if our friendship means anything, then you must not harm the Doctor."

She stared at him, her expression unreadable. Finally she backed down. "I never realised how strong a bond friendship could be," she whispered. "Very well, Jamie. You have my word the Doctor will not be harmed."

Zzorrann struggled against Jamie's grip, but could not move. "You dare speak to my mother so?"

"Aye, I dare," Jamie replied. "And I'll thank ye to keep your opinions to yourself, unless you prefer to have your throat cut." Zzorrann ceased his struggling. "That's better." He turned to Halla. "You there."

Halla was stunned. "Me?"

"Aye. Close the door here, and lock it."

Halla looked to the Queen for advice. She nodded. "Do as he asks." The Professor pressed a nearby switch, and a steel shutter operated, sealing the room.

The Queen looked at Jamie. "So, here we are, in a locked room. What can you hope to achieve?"

"I'll worry about that later," he replied. "Right now, I want the Doctor put back together."

Halla protested. "Reverse the procedure? But it's never been done before."

"Mebbe so," the Scot agreed. "But you took him apart. So I think that makes you the one to set things right."

"Mother!" Zzorrann pleaded, risking his neck. "You surely cannot agree to this?"

"Oh, shut the heck up!" She yelled. "I mean . . ." Perpugilliam composed herself, embarrassed at her faux pas. "Halla, do as Jamie asks. We will deal with the consequences at a later time."

******

Although he had been a silent observer, the Doctor had been watching events unfold. He had gathered that the two heads, of which he had been one, had been designed to work together as some form of relay to control the huge body his head had been grafted on to. The only reason for using two Time Lord heads would be to make the device able to independently negotiate the time vortex. With this time travelling super soldier, two TARDISes and an army of lizards it was clear that the Queen had been planning some form of temporal military operation.

Since the Doctor had been attached to the body, he had explored the connections between it and himself. He had learnt that it was a very unique mechanism that would be able to punch through the transduction barriers at the Galifreyan Capitol and would have been able to resist any attempt by the Time Lords to blip it out of existence. It was now clear to the Doctor what the Queen's plans had been.

The Doctor had also been pondering Peri. The Brigadier had said that she was one of his own future companions and she certainly knew Jamie and himself in his current incarnation. There were two possibilities - either he and Jamie would meet his future self and Peri sometime in their own future, or they already have met them and somehow the Laws of Time were preventing them from remembering it. In the end, the time line was in this instance irrelevant. His priority was to get himself put back together.

The Doctor had watched Halla's realisation about the other head with some amusement. He had known immediately that it was not his own head. A Time Lord could tell that sort of thing straight away. He had kept quiet because he knew it would throw a spanner in the works. He had however, with some sadness, also realised at the same time as Halla, the real identity of the other head.

But the Doctor kept his mind focused and was now sure he had fully explored the links with the robotic body. There was something that was bothering him and now he could act.

******

The standoff in Halla's office continued as the professor tried to persuade Jamie that, although he had specifically tried to maintain the viability of the Doctor's discarded body, reconnecting the head to it was not possible.

There was a moment of angry silence between all the parties when they all heard a strange creaking from the corner of the room. They all looked in the direction of the sound.

The robot body to which the Doctor's head was attached was moving. It was in fact scratching the end of the Doctor's nose and then it tore the tape from his mouth. "Oh, thank goodness for that. That itch has been bothering me for ages," he said, relieved.

"Doctor, are you alright?" exclaimed Jamie.

"Well, I am feeling a bit light in the head, but other than that I can't complain." The Doctor was now at one with the robot body and could move it as if it was his own. He took a few steps towards Jamie.

"I say, Jamie. You seem a lot shorter than I remember," he said with a smile. "Now Professor, I would be grateful if you could please put me back together. If you are not sure how to do it, I would be delighted to offer a helping hand."

*****

Guilliam and Herzz stood beside each other, not entirely sure if what they had proposed would work or lead them both to their deaths.

"So, let me get this right," said the Duke Zarkahn 's interpreter. "You both propose that the Council of Paris promise their allegiance to my Master in return for him ridding the city of the influence of the Queen and her son?"

Guilliam and Herzz nodded.

The interpreter briefly consulted with the Duke who sat on a large guilt throne and fiddled with the skull that hung around his neck. Zarkahn nodded.

"His Grace has agreed," the interpreter confirmed. "Now you must return to Paris and put things in place. The Duke's soldiers will deal with the Queen and everyone else on this base. Everyone will be dead within the hour."

Guilliam and Herzz smiled and bowed before leaving. Outside Zarkahn 's quarters they took a moment to catch their breath, assured that with the Duke's help the Council would be free, under his protection, to run their city's affairs themselves.

******

The interpreter watched Guilliam and Herzz leave the room and then turned back to his master.

"My Lord, I will order the guards to eliminate the Queen and everyone else immediately. Oh, and may I say what a masterstroke it was to come to that agreement with the Paris Council. Although they might not have been so accommodating if you had told them about your plans to cull the human and half-breed population of the city."

The Duke smiled his lizardy smile.

To be continued . . .