Under the deep orange glow of the Oculus, a column of m'n'ch'k led the k'thellid Protector and a cavalcade of mounted riders passed out of the direct sunlight and into the shade of the forest. Their pace quickened as the soft bog gave way to harder ground, slowing again as the number of tall grey trees and the thickening mist started to obstruct their path. At the head of the column, his master's scarf trailing backwards over the jewelled carapace of the landmount that carried him, K9 guided the part off the beaten mountain track towards the clearing where he and the Doctor had first encountered the Honour Guard.
Although he was again secured to his steed by thick, fibrous strands of hardened mucus, K9's torso was not completely covered, allowing him a greater degree of mobility than had previously been available. By contrast, the k'thellid that accompanies them were firmly fixed into place with a thicker, darker and more opaque coating than had previously been seen. This, the Protector had explained, was necessary to screen them from the twilight sun.
Floating to the side of the group, the Protector had seemed unconcerned by the strong light. This, K9 concluded, was most likely due to its incredible age and the thickness of its skin.
"So where's this array then?" Erkal asked, curiosity and the opportunity to interrogate K9 ensuring that he kept pace with the front of the group.
"Sixty seven metres and closing," reported K9 as his mount sidled between the trees. "The tychomnemonic array will be visible momentarily."
As predicted, the mist and tree shafts parted to reveal the obelisk, towering over the group as they enveloped it.
"So," said Gesar, riding up to the object for a closer look, "this is your marker stone."
It must be destroyed, said the Protector as his palanquin drew level with the abbot, his tentacles reaching forwards to make contact with the device.
"Warning. Do not touch the device," said K9. "I have previously attempted to destroy the array, but without success."
The Protector's tentacle stopped an inch from the grooved surface of the rectangular stone. As if sensing his presence, the air around it started to vibrate.
I sense…resistance.
For a fourth time, K9 watched as the Protector blanched, his body sagging as he shifting his bulk into his splayed tentacles. Slowly the air around the stone became charged. The vevers on its surface flashed red, as the experience of K9's earlier attack was undone. Fr several moments there seemed to be no other change until the array began to rise from the ground, sliding upwards to double its height before it hovered above the ground. With a near-familiar sound – the wheezing and groaning of displaced matter, but in reverse – the marker stone from existence.
It is done. The Protector resumed his natural shape, the colour returning to his body. The Doctor is now the only carnifex programmed to cause us harm.
"Then we should make haste," urged Gesar, looking at the darkening sky and to the reddening light of the Oculus as it flickered through the high canopy of the forest. "That sun is shifting faster with each passing phase."
The repetitive nature of TARDIS corridors had barely registered with old Teyamat, used as she was to leisurely meanders through the equally similar passageways of the monastery. As she and the dvora followed Romana through the different levels of the ship, what started to register was the number of similarly painted doors they seemed to be passing, all hand painted with a coat of deep green paint.
"Doctor," she asked as they drew parallel with the fourth such doorway, "are there many of these green doors inside your TARDIS? You haven't been taking us round in circles, I hope."
The Doctor stopped short, the faint trace of a smile on his lips. "Of course not. Those green doors are an important navigational aid."
"Really, Doctor?" Romana asked, arching a skeptical eyebrow. "So how much further do we need to be navigated?
"Well, it shouldn't be too far. Let me see…" the Doctor paused, stroking his chin. "What have we covered so far? Tardisnapping, reincarnation, dark visions, broken looms, ancient ceremonies, and bold escapes. Is there's anything else you have to tell me?"
"No," she said, shaking her head. "Not that I can…"
"And you, Teyamat. Is there anything that you haven't told us?"
"Lots," The old woman grinned, "but nothing that won't keep."
"I'm not so sure about that. Earlier, you said that Romana and Pengallia had the same biodata."
"Yes," she nodded.
"Well, I'm afraid that's just not possible. Not unless your investiture ceremony involves a rewrite."
"Doctor," Romana protested, "I haven't been invested yet."
"Haven't you? When I was invested as President it involved wearing the Coronet of Rassilon. The rest of the ceremony was traditional tosh. Forget the pomp, you wore the crown. Pengallia was a President, Romana. The most powerful President since Rassilon himself. Even if you're her direct descendant, a loom won't grant you those privileges. A Presidential TARDIS needs Presidential codes…isn't that right, Teyamat?"
"Yes." The old woman looked down at her feet awkwardly as Romana's angry stare burned its way under her skin. "A copy of the imprimatur was stored in the crown. The longer she wore it…"
"…the more her biodata was rewritten." The Doctor finished. "I'm beginning to detect a theme here."
"You're saying… I'm carrying a Presidential imprimatur?"
The Doctor patted Romana's shoulder reassuringly. "I shouldn't worry about your graduation any more, you're an altogether more senior citizen now. Welcome to the club."
Romana flushed with shock. "I…I'd picked out my robes and everything," she said as her mood started to lift. Despite her anger at yet another of Teyamat's betrayals, she found that she was grinning uncontrollably.
"There is a downside," warned the Doctor. "You don't know what other junk they'll have packed into your head. False memories, other identities, secret powers, doomsday codes, quantum mnemonics… it could turn out to be quite a curse."
"Don't listen to him," said Teyamat, trying to reassert her former influence, "it's not…"
"Don't listen?" Romana snapped. "You haven't told me half of what I need to know about Pengallia. I haven't even decided if I like the woman."
"It's not like that," the old woman pressed. "Yes, there's a lot you need to know, but I was hoping you were going to be sticking around to learn all about it."
"I was," said Romana.
The Doctor's jaw fell open. "You were?"
"Yes," she confirmed. "This is my history, my destiny. I always had a feeling that I might be meant for higher office, and now I know that I've already been there and done that. I was going to tell you, Doctor, but… well, you went and lost your eyes."
"Ah yes," he grumbled. "Good old me. Note to self: next time a companion wants to leave, sacrifice an organ or two. Guaranteed guilt trip."
"Doctor!"
"I'm sorry, Romana. I'm glad you want to embrace your history, because I ran away from mine. Scared of skeletons in the closet. Petrified of predeterminism. Obviously, yours will be a much simpler affair – it's all in here…"
The Doctor reached for the handle to the green-painted door, and pushed it open.
"…nothing much to look at, is it?"
Beyond the door, the room opened out into a large domed chamber. The walls resembled white marble shot through with flecks of green and blue. In the centre of the chamber was a large, translucent egg-shaped object, completely smooth and featureless on the outside, but breaking up the light passing through it with shadows that defined its inner workings. On the other side of the egg was a large patch of creeping vines, which spread outwards and upwards, clinging to the arches, which defined the shape of the observatory's ceiling. Between the arches, like an old renaissance mural, was a holographic image of the universe beyond. More precisely, it was a largely empty image of the pocket universe in which they currently found themselves.
"Actually," said Romana looking up at the diorama overhead, "it reminds me of the Infinity Chamber in the Temple of Eternity, back on Demos. But without all the stars."
Stepping into the room, the Doctor took his place at a small console set along the left-hand wall. Feeling his way around the controls, he magnified the image of the invisible sun they had originally encountered, zooming in on the world within.
"Normally it's full of stars and constellations that chart the length and breadth of time and space," he said, "but we're cut off from the rest of the universe. Just a sun and it's satellite. K'thellid, Rendulix, call it what you will. Cut out of history like cancer."
He zoomed in again, until the molten and pitted outer surface of K'thellid hung over the chamber like a great moon less than an arm's length away. "Here's your history, Romana. No need to look for skeletons, because you're already inside the closet. It's just a pity that the Time Lords considered it so dangerous they had to throw away the key."
"Well, said Romana, "as my friend, do you think you could help me to find the key?"
The Doctor smiled, touched by the request. Romana hadn't, so far as he could recall, described him as her friend before.
"I rather think you are the key, Romana. But the lock is on the outside. Back in the real universe."
"I disagree," said Teyamat, who was running her hands across the surface of the large egg-shaped object in the centre of the chamber. "I think the Oculus is the lock, Doctor. In the periphery."
"Do you mind?" The Doctor said in mock hurt. "I was prosthelytising."
"When aren't you?" Romana joked, stepping aside as the three dvora started nosing their way around the room. So why haven't you told me about this place?"
"Because I don't like to come down here," he muttered dismissively.
"Why not?"
"Well, in the old days I used to sneak down and take a look at the universe while my companions slept; until stars started disappearing, and the dimensions of the universe began to change. It puts things into perspective when you know there are forces out there, which might be altering the state of the universe before your very eyes."
"What forces?"
"Nature, apparently. Or the Time Lords. Sometimes it's hard to work out which is which. Have you ever wondered just how much they've interfered over the years? A star moved here, a civilisation removed from time and space there, a whole history zipped up and folded in on itself when nobody was looking. My problem is I think too much, and this place just made things worse. So I painted the door green as a reminder not to venture inside."
"Hah," said Teyamat. "So, we were walking round in circles."
"No," said the Doctor. "I paint lots of doors green."
"So," she continued to search the room, running her hands across its exposed surfaces, "where's this interstat?"
The Doctor smiled, crossing over to the creeping vines. Lifting his new cane, he swept the vegetation aside like a thick green curtain. "Here." Hacking and tugging the vines away from the wall, the Doctor exposed a large circular door, made from the same white-flecked stone as the rest of the observatory.
"Is that it?" Bending under the Doctor's arm, the old crone peered closely around the door's edges.
"What were you expecting? These things were old kit when Rassilon was young."
"How do you open it?" She ran her fingers around the edge, looking for a catch or switch.
"There's a crank handle somewhere…"
"Doctor…." Romana interjected. "He's teasing."
"Oh, alright," he conceded, waving his hand in from of the egg-shaped object. "It's operated from in here."
With a light hiss, the translucent egg cracked along a curved seam, the front half of its shell rising upwards to expose the inside of a compact transport capsule.
"Shall we?" The Doctor gestured for them to step inside.
"Doctor," Romana protested, "it's a two man unit."
"I'm sure we can cosy up. Will Teyamat be alright on your knee?"
In their day, forced-matter observation capsules were the favoured tool of Gallifrey's dimensional pioneers. Despite their lack of sentience and normalized dimensions, they were compact, agile, and intuitively easy for even the most cloister-bound academy intern to operate. With a self-reinforcing outer shell capable of absorbing vast levels of cosmic energy, converting it into a baryonic skin able to withstand the intense heat of an exploding sun, or into high-entropy shields able to resist the gravitational force of a collapsing star or the reality-bending pressures of a white hole.
The robust nature of the capsules meant that normally unstable time technologies could be fitted to their exterior. Small, unshielded temporal accelerators and reverse tachyon drives could be used to push the capsules forwards and backwards through time with the most rudimentary of control systems. This combination of size, versatility and strength ultimately led to the bastardization of their design, adding their features to both offensive and defensive devices, including emergency escape pods and time torpedoes.
"So," asked the Doctor, spitting a few of Teyamat's white hairs out of his mouth as Romana familiarised herself with the gears and levers laid out before the pilot's chair, "are you sure you're going to be alright with this."
Romana smiled. "I'm an alpha-rated scaphe pilot, Doctor. If I remember correctly, you only scraped through with a beta. And that was with a working pair of eyes."
"Yes, but I also managed a lap at Silverstone in under one and a half minutes."
Without pausing to work out what the Doctor was rambling about, Romana activated the interstat remote. A dozen feet ahead the faux-marble faded away, exposing the brilliant golden light radiated by the periphery's sole inhabitant.
"So," asked Teyamat, who was now starting to get quite excited, "how do we get past K'thannid?"
"We don't," explained Romana, "the interstat works like a time scoop, but in reverse. We use this…" she toggled the joystick in front of her "…to zoom in on our chosen destination, like so…"
As she shifted the joystick, a pair of crosshairs projected onto the capsule's inner surface centred upon a two dimensional image. Changing coordinates scrolled alongside the display at Romana moved the interstat's point of focus deeper and deeper into the vortex.
Steering away from K'thannid's golden aura, the display focused upon the small silver sphere. Zooming further in, they could make out the shimmering surface of the Oculus.
"Is that a shield?" The Doctor asked.
"How do we get through?" Teyamat asked as Romana confirmed the Doctor's diagnosis.
"We just shift the point of focus onto the other side," explained Romana, "and then we…
"Look out!" Teyamat shouted, causing Romana to tug on the joystick, avoid the solid object that appeared on the screen.
"For goodness' sake!" Unable to see through the old crone's bobbing head, the Doctor rebuked her. "We haven't even left the TARDIS yet!"
As the projected image shifted, similar objects hove into view. The energy shield that surrounded the Oculus was filled with battleships. Hundreds upon hundreds of battleships, floating in orderly ranks. Struggling to budge Teyamat's head to one side, the Doctor finally shared the view, and whistled.
"Pengallia's Revenge," he muttered to himself. "The Time Lords betrayed her, so she started building up her forces."
There were more types of battleship than he could identify. Boomships and Bowships, Black Hole Carriers, Dredgers and Drogue Layers, N-Forms and Stellar Manipulators. Ironically, the Doctor spied several Cremasters, the kind of ship whose Quantum Isolators would have been used to separate K'thellid from the rest of the universe.
"It looks like she hasn't stopped, to me," for the first time since she had arrived on K'thellid, Romana was appalled. "This must be the biggest war fleet in history."
"Outside of history," corrected the Doctor, "but you have a point. But if the fleet's here, then…" his voice drifted as he considered the consequences.
"What? What is it, Doctor?"
"Well," he paused, shuffling his facts, "according to established history, Pengallia turned up on Gallifrey's doorstep with a fleet that filled the skies. History required her to take the fleet with her when she left. Which leaves us with three possibilites."
"Which are?"
"Pengallia left, but left behind a fleet as large as the one she used to invade Gallifrey; or, she never left, and the fleet is still here, ready to go."
"And the third possibility?"
The Doctor nudged Teyamat, prompting her to answer.
"What?" She started. "I'm supposed to know?"
The Doctor nodded, but she shook her head.
"We came here with a fleet of ships when we invaded K'thellid. As far as I knew the fleet was lost when the Time Lords betrayed us. I suppose it makes sense that it would still be here in the vortex, but I can assure you, Pengallia left. I was there."
"Are these the ships you arrived in?"
Teyamat examined one of the nearer ships, looking for a clue of some kind. After a few moments, she nodded. "Yes. But there weren't this many. That's the Margrave's Kiss, it was the Kaydengarde flagship; but so is the ship next to it, and the one next to that."
"Cloneships. Take the remnants of the original invasion fleet, add matter, and bathe in solar energy until cooked. When large quantities of matter rich in heavy elements were displaced to create the inner atmosphere of K'thellid, it must have been transported here, into the vortex. Over the years the energy vented by the Oculus has been used to fuel the transformation of raw matter into these ships."
"Obviously, Pengallia was a high achiever." Said Romana. "But she'd have to have crews for all of these ships. You'd need a growing population to crew this many ships, but we know the numbers of the fallen are dwindling, and their planet-based technology is breaking down."
"The Queen would have had a plan," muttered Teyamat to herself. "She always had a plan."
"Which," the Doctor said, "still leaves us with the third possibility. What if Pengallia left, but the fleet didn't?"
"Then the history we remember still has to be resolved," said Romana. Except, she realized, it couldn't be Pengallia who led the fleet to war. "Oh, no."
"Exactly," said the Doctor. "It was the briefest, bloodiest civil war in our people's history, Romana. But it happened."
"According to the history books," she stressed. "Neither of us saw it. This fleet should be destroyed."
The Doctor, sorrowfully, shook his head. "We felt the consequences, Romana. Pengallia's War changed the way the Time Lords looked at the universe. No more preemptive strikes on unsuspecting cultures, no more interference in the lives of trillions. We're talking about more than two million years of galactic peace."
Still in shock, Romana nudged the display forwards, moving inside the fleet's perimeter where the inside of most palatial TARDIS ever built rested at its heart.
At first, it looked like a great glittering space wheel, dotted with high towers and corkscrew spires; but as the image drew closer, the sheer scale of the construction started to emerge.
"Temperlost," whispered Teyamat, as if reunited with an old friend. "That's the name she gave it. It was her base of operations – her home from home during the wars. When we conquered the k'thellid, she planned to set it down in the shadow of Mount Madronal."
"It's the Capitol," said Romana, overcome with awe, "recreated in every detail." She looked over the city, picking out the details: The Presidential Wheel, the twin towers, the Panopticon, the Citadel, the dreaming spires, "look, over there, the Nemesis Monument."
"You've been there before, Teyamat. We need to arrive as close to the control room as we can. Where is it?"
"There," she pointed, picking out a building on the outskirts of the city, "The Palace of the Winter Star."
"Right," said Romana, locking on to their target location and activating the interstat remote, "let's pay it a visit shall we?"
The egg seemed to lurch forwards. Smoothly, but not of its own volition. Rainbow colours wrapped themselves around the capsule as its occupants felt themselves tugged… sucked… deep into the interstat. Plunging through a dimensional corridor, the gold and silver light of the vortex periphery washed over the capsule as it tumbled through interstitial space with a great whoosh. Rainbow colours played across the view screen, an unfettered Teyamat began to whoop with delight at the experience.
Moments later the transport capsule winked into existence exactly where Romana had planned, parked before the entrance to the Palace of the Winter Star. With a telltale hiss, the front of it's egg-shaped exterior cracked open, exposing the three tightly packed figures inside. Teyamat was the first to step from the capsule, to the Doctor's audible relief. His groan of relief was followed by a muttered thank you to his old friend, Harry Houdini.
Romana followed, stepping down onto the dust-covered pathway that led to the palace door. Poking her toe into the fine grains of dust, she kicked up a small sparkling cloud that drifted away to her left. They were, quite literally, the sands of time.
Despite the lack of a natural light source, and the great shadows cast by the fleet moored overhead, everything surrounding them glowed with its own luminescence. Back in the academy they explained that such fine chronon-bombarded particles could trap light itself within their subatomic structure.
Back on Gallifrey, the original Palace of the Winter Star had been carved from a single block of cometary ice as a memorial to the last wars waged by the old pythic regime. Romana found it ironic that Pengallia, in whom the bloodlines of Rassilon and the ancient pythias were allegedly united, should use a facsimile war memorial to mastermind the last war ever fought by the Time Lords.
Catching up with Teyamat and the Doctor, Romana found that the great glassy doors leading into the palace swung open as she approached. Guided through vaulted corridors and up great gothic stairways, she followed her companions to the central chamber which, while larger in scale and more crystalline in structure, was little more than a standard TARDIS console room.
At the centre of the room, the great time rotor projected upwards to join with the apex of its domed ceiling. The hexagonal console, like the walls and floors, resembled frozen ice, tinged with a hint of luminous blue. Joining the Doctor there, Romana found that most of the controls had been smashed into a thousand tiny shards. The Doctor pointed to the crystals in the time rotor. The outer casing had blistered, while the crystals themselves had frosted and cracked.
"It looks like whatever operation this ship was performing was damaged quite recently. I'd hazard a guess that the damage coincided with my recent outburst."
Romana flicked on one of the few intact switches, and a holographic view screen flickered into life a few inches from her face. Reflected data streams played across her face as she scanned the information.
"Everything we though seems to be correct, Doctor," she announced. "The TARDIS was set up as an automated production facility, the fleet is unmanned, and the ship has been
acting as a heat sink, absorbing most of the energy generated by the invisible sun and allowing K'thellid's interior to remain habitable."
"No body banks filled of zombie warriors? No robot antibodies patrolling the ship to attack visiting Time Lords? This is all getting a bit anticlimactic," said the Doctor. "What about the Oculus, will it stabilize?"
Romana shook her head. "The rate of repair is slower than the rate of decay, so unless we do something, K'thellid is doomed."
"None of these controls are useable," commented the Doctor, running his fingers through the burned and broken shards. "It could take days to repair if we can't salvage any of them."
"What about the telepathic link," asked Teyamat. "Temperlost was designed to be controlled by mental commands. Pengallia loathed manual controls."
"Really?" The Doctor asked, sarcastically, "that's a bit of luck, wouldn't you say, Romana?"
"Presumably I have to establish a link with the TARDIS before it will accept my commands?"
"The telepathic circuits are here," said Teyamat.
Romana and the Doctor exchanged glances. Without speaking, she knew he disapproved of what she was thinking. He also agreed that there was no other choice given the short time available before the Oculus collapsed. In return, he knew from her expression that her action was a foregone conclusion. Nothing he could say or do would change Romana's mind. Anything could happen when she made that telepathic connection, and a trap could easily be triggered.
She placed her hands squarely before her, lowering them down onto the contact platen, which in turn activated neural receptors and facilitated the two-way flow of raw telepathic data.
The TARDIS intuitively started to implement Romana's mental commands. It diverted power from fleet construction back into the ship's power core; it shut down subroutines not vital to the Oculus function; it diverted power from the fleet itself back into its dynomorphic generators.
Romana.
The voice was inside her mind.
Romana.
It was Pengallia's voice. Her voice. And it had something for her. More memories. Her mind's eye began to open as more memories flooded into her head. Memories of conflict, of victory, and of betrayal.