Chapter Six: Business as Usual

TARDIS
10 light minutes away from bow of the Talween

Jack stared at the ship in open awe. For a ship as old as he thought the Talween was, she was in excellent condition. The old design for Daan Imperial Cruisers placed the command center towards the middle of the thick ship, and from the display on the TARDIS console, he could see flickering lights shining through the viewports. The Talween was all engine, which she needed to be given the distances she needed to travel and how much time it would take to traverse it.

"So this would be the Talween," the Doctor muttered to himself, impressed besides himself.

"And it looks like they don't have any company," Jack commented after checking the sensor readouts.

"No alien vessel, huh? Why am I not surprised..." the Doctor said softly, his initial impression of the Talween fading to unease.

Jack had confirmed that this ship was the origin of the message, however, from the scans that he was able to perform, there was no discernable sources of power that were active on the ship. It was dead in the water, yet somehow someone had sent out a message.
Tapping the console thoughtfully, the Doctor sighed, "I'm going to open a channel to our friends on the Talween."

Rose watched the Doctor with interest as he flipped a switch, unconsciously admiring his familiar features. However, she was filled with unease. She wanted to help the Talween's crew as much as the Doctor did, but she felt something pulling her back, telling her to flee this area of space as fast as the TARDIS could take them.

"Talween, this is the Doctor. We received your distress signal. Is there anything that we can do to help?"

The comm unit roared to life with a response, "Doctor...need...assistance. Trouble on board. Can supply with anything you need if you could help with refugees. Alien vessel...destroyed..." The transmission faded into static.

"Now that's interesting," Jack muttered, "There's a signal hidden under that transmission." He flipped several switches and pressed the playback.

The piggybacked signal was grainy and barely understandable, but under the hiss of static what they heard would cause chills to run down all of their backs.

"Oh God...what...please, get out of here! Don't stay here! Go! Oh GOD!" The voice rose into a bone-chilling scream before the transmission was suddenly cut off.

Rose, Jack, and the Doctor shared a nervous look before staring at the display at the now uncomfortable expanse of space. The questions raised by the piggybacked transmission ran rampant through the TARDIS crew's minds. What could it mean?

The Doctor suddenly grinned, "Fantastic! I've always loved a good ghost story."

Rose was torn between wanting to hit him and grinning back. The familiar feeling of impending excitement coursed through her veins and she decided upon sharing an echoing grin with the Doctor.

That was, of course, when the TARDIS' console decided to spark dangerously. The display on the console changed to a string of what could only be Gallifreyan characters before they faded to be replaced with the English words of 'SYSTEM FAILURE.' The temporal rotor on top of the console began to move indicating that the TARDIS was landing, despite the fact that the Doctor had yet to command the time ship to do so.

"No, no, no, no!" the Doctor shouted as he attempted to coax the system into responding, "Jack, hit the rotor switch, maybe we can stop the materialization process."

Jack nodded and tried his best to comply but the TARDIS sparked each time he tried to reach the rotor, "Doctor, this isn't working!"

"The dimensional stabilizer can't be broken! We just fixed that," the Doctor exclaimed, kicking the bottom half of the console.

"Doctor!" Rose called for his attention as she pointed at the dimming lights in the center console. A second later, all of the lights in the TARDIS went out.

"Well, that can't be good," Jack said.