Turlough's Story
8 Months, 2 Days
Free. He was free.
"Ascending forty-six degrees, velocity 456."
Turlough's hands wouldn't stop shaking
He piloted the skiff into a low orbital escape trajectory, looping gracefully outwards from Torus' surface. The gravity anomalies that randomly spouted up from the surface were digitally rendered on the viewer into towering unpredictable red whorls that would occasionally intercepted their path- Turlough kept a constant eye on the display for last minute course corrections. Tanya, his co-pilot, was running through last minute checks before they entered the Ripwell. It had taken him months to get this close, but soon he would be light years from this wretched planetoid and the Doctor, and more importantly, away from…
Best not to think about it… it only made the gnawing in his skull worse.
Ten days. Turlough had been free for ten days. Ten days since he 'accidentally' left the Crystal in his EVS suit. Two days since he saw the Angelus destroyed by an energy burst from within Torus' center. He actually yelled with joy when he saw it falling into the atmosphere, glowing and sparking as it entered the gravity well, taking the Crystal with it.
"You alright?"
The skiff juddered as Turlough jolted awake and stared across at Tanya. "Fine," he answered too quickly. He cast a sidelong glance at her to see if she noticed the sweat on his hands but she seemed too deeply involved in her calculations. Thrummings of Mozart drifted in the air between them. He rubbed his hands on his shirt sleeves. He was thrilled this era had deodorant- the past few days he could have stunk up a Turellian ore freighter.
As soon as he and the others found themselves on the research station, Turlough had tried buying his way off on one of the dozens of mining ships that hovered around Torus, scooping up the valuable materials from the surface and clipping away into the artificial Ripwell, the portal that slowly sucked the ships back into the nearest star system- which was exactly where Turlough wanted to go.
Unfortunately, one drawback (Turlough actually listed every single possible drawback once during an excruciatingly long night at the halls of residence) of being stuck in an English boys school for years on end was that the only cash he had were a few pound notes. After finally ditching the Doctor and Nyssa, he managed to sneak a few meals and some drinks on one of the outer mining stations before he landed in prison. That was where he first met Tanya- his ticket out of this system and far, far, away from the Doctor. And, with any luck, his way back home.
Tanya, like Turlough, was only incarcerated for a night for a minor offence: she was a drug addict, not that Turlough cared. But she also ran her own strip mining operation, about which Turlough cared a great deal. As soon as they were released, Turlough entered her employ as pilot (dirt cheap)- which Tanya liked, no questions asked. Turlough spent the last few months running ore to the relay stations at the Ripwell and the occasional coring samples to the Angelus. There was no sign of the Doctor or Nyssa. Apparently, the Doctor was practically imprisoned with the other scientists sanctioned to the Torus Project. As Turlough kept explaining to his Dark-Over the Top-Lord, Turlough could not visit or talk to the Time Lord (let alone kill) without overpowering several hundred armed guards.
Which was fine with Turlough. Not so the Dark Lord. Turlough became so frustrated and irritated with his former employer's whining that he ditched the Crystal in the suit on the Angelus at the first opportunity. It was only thirty-six hours later that the he began to have the nightmares. Seventy-two hours until the shakes started. Classic signs of addiction- and he had a disturbing idea what he was craving. Turlough hadn't slept in seven days. He was sweating almost constantly, couldn't keep down food and was a pale, sticky and pasty mess. Not that anyone noticed.
But today was the day- Turlough request for a transfer to an off-system world had been granted. One more skiff load and he would be at the Ripwell Passenger Relay, Tanya would purchase him a ticket out of here. Light years between him and his fix. He would survive. Bargain or no bargain, he would survive without the Crystal. He wouldn't have a choice.
Turlough altered the skiff's path again as another gravity plume spiraled up from Torus. Ahead of them was the sucking void of the Ripwell, a ravenous red mouth sucking energy from Torus like a ravenous leech. The first explorers to this system were startled to discover that the star collapsed millennia ago, compressing all the matter in the solar system into a circular donut circling the dimensional rift that the star had strangely collapsed into. The researchers were even more surprised to find indigenous life on Torus. It wasn't until the first mining operations began that they realized that beneath the surface of this tubular ring twelve times the mass of Jupiter was a core composed of arcantic plasma- a pure and unbelievably rich source of fluid energy. The plasma flow was diverted into the upper atmosphere and a Ripwell was promptly set up to transmit the energy to systems in desperate need. Smaller surface mining efforts were able, for a small fee, to hitch their ships to a secondary, smaller Ripwell that ran parallel to the main gravity tunnel.
Chopin twittered in the air as Turlough fought to control his breathing. His head was throbbing already and he was finding it very difficult to pilot the skiff. The throbbing was almost as distracting as the music.
"Do you have to do that?" He snapped.
Chopin faded away to be replaced by a low, stretching oboe. "It's never bothered you before," Tanya remarked as she re-checked the systems manifest.
Turlough grinned as he dodged another plume. They were getting closer to the plasma fountain that shot into the upper atmosphere from the surface mines. "It always bothers me- I just usually have so many other things to complain about."
A chuckling flute filled the air. "You are in a good mood today."
"Not if you keep that up," he muttered. "I thought you were going to get that fixed."
"I like my soundtrack…" Tanya protested, sipping from her tubular drink. "Not everyone can appreciate impeccable taste I suppose."
"Not everyone with a Track-chip in their head is a low grade psi." Turlough protested. "I thought you were going to upgrade so you wouldn't bleed all over the place.. It's giving me a headache…. and I am in a good mood. This is me, Turlough, in a good mood. Just because I'm not blasting the Yellow Submarine out of my head, it doesn't mean I'm not in a good mood."
"Mmm…." Tanya put her feet up on the console. "Bitchy, moaning, sneaking, devious… so many moods of Turlough to chose from. Hard to pick a favorite."
Turlough gripped the controls tightly, arcing around the fountain's neck, watching for any random flares. "Sorry we can't all be as lovely and outgoing as you…"
"Ah… Snide." Tanya took another sip. "Bitchy, moaning, sneaky, devious and snide. Sounds like a load of dwarves-"
A trumpet sounded the alarm, high and pure. "Turlough! Watch it!"
The flare, leaping sideways out of the column of energy, broadsided them. Turlough flinched steering the skiff upwards. Mechanical alarms sounded, shrieking in alarm as the energy plume licked the base of the ship. Turlough slammed on the accelerator, hoping to race clear.
Adrenaline flooded through his system as the skiff slipped free, out of the plume. The alarms stopped and he started breathing again. Tanya slumped back in her chair sighing in relief.
And then it happened. Turlough saw it on the scanner: a snaking tendril of blue that arced out from the dimensional rift in the center of Torus. If he hadn't dodged the plume, he never would have even been near it. But the skiff was directly in the path of this strange energy signature.
With a quick motion of his hand, the skiff turned clear of the energy stream- and then his hand spasmed back with a twitch. The skiff veered directly into it. The energy sliced through the ship, passing through the metal hull and infrastructure, sucking the life out of the engines and every monitors it touched until it pass through the forward cabin.
Turlough saw the blue wave enter Tanyas body. Saw it gliding through from her toes to her head.
And then the energy tendril was gone.
The cabin was silent.
Tanya was untouched.
But the cabin was never silent: Tanya never stopped broadcasting her internal muzak. It was her trademark.
Tanya's body untouched, but Turlough could see from her eyes that she was gone, the life energy sucked out of her. She was dead.
As the ship plummeted to the surface of Torus, and Turlough fought to get the systems back on line, he kept swearing and swearing, his hands shaking and shaking, cursing and crying.
He was so close. So close.
The screaming of the burning atmosphere raging against the hull eventually covered the sounds of his sobs.
After the crash, it took Turlough an hour to get the comms operational and send out a distress signal using what was left in the battery cells.
While he waited for help, he curled up, still shaking, into a fetal position in the pilot chair and stared outside at the flashing purple clouds and gray rock.
It was then that he saw the figures floating in the distance on the rocks.
In the airlock, as gravity re-asserted itself, Nyssa's unconscious body grew heavy in his arms and, as painful and familiar as a bully's knuckle, he felt a familiar miniature crown press into his thigh. His stomach twisted as he groaned, realizing that finding Nyssa wasn't an accident, that landing here, sending the skiff into the flare, everything was contrived by… by Him… There was no escape. No way out. The bargain could not be broken.
Despite his need for it, despite the clawing hunger, he lowered Nyssa's body carefully to the floor. But even as the inner door cycled open and the air from the ship breathed over him, he was ripping the object out of her pocket and, trembling with relief, cupping the Crystal tightly in his hands, tears pouring down his face. As the white glow filled him, his body felt the electric rush of the high flow through his system, shushing the persistent, painful gnawing at the back of his head. Even as he shuddered with pleasure, his heart was filled with dread at what his Lord would soon say.
He slumped against the metal wall and waited for the inevitable echoing voice to fill his mind. There was no way out- he could never handle the withdrawal again. He would rather die.
He knew then that the only way out was to kill the Doctor.