Chapter 63
Well.
It hadn't worked.
Now we continue.
That was what he'd written in his new diary, a record of what had happened, something he'd found he'd been keeping since he'd read the diary he'd when he'd travelled with the Doctor. The one he didn't remember writing. When they'd started messing with time he thought, maybe it would be the only record. Maybe.
For the future. If they had one.
We have to have a future.
That was his thought when he'd stepped outside into the freezing corridor, the room, the space under Westminster.
Their grand plan hadn't worked.
"Now?" He'd recalled Sarah musing as she followed him out, her breath fogging inside the room.
"Now we continue. We grow stronger. We resist. Nothing has supreme power."
Harry recalled both he and Sarah had turned around to look at Judith at that point. "And we go ahead with Harry and the Profs mad plan." Judith then smiled slyly. "And if all else fails we can always blow some shit up."
-/
Operation Mars. Not its official title. They didn't have an official title for it in fact. Whatever it was had been progressing well. After they'd 'returned', even though they'd technically not been gone for any appreciable amount of time, work continued to progress.
It was something of a Christmas present that they had managed to transmat something via the radio equipment left from the British 1977 and 1997 Mars missions along with NASA's Phoenix space probe which had been due to report shortly after the invasion had begun. One of the many things that everyone had forgotten about while they'd been focusing on more important things like the astronauts and cosmonauts in orbit.
According to the last report from Liz they were hoping to successively scale up their transmats to get something big enough on Mars to be a transmat pad. Their final aim was to get one of their cabinets to Mars.
But as Liz continued to remind him and the Professors and the others they were working with literally hundreds of bits of alien technology. That they had gone from an idea, a bleak one at that to getting material onto Mars from no an inconsiderate distance away was amazing.
Explosives.
His diary was a bit of a stream of consciousness, he'd realised looking back on it. Disjointed thoughts.
Hermione and George had been working on a new batch of explosives, building on their work with the Channel Tunnel. "It's a bit like gelignite at the moment. One bad look and it'll take out half a building," George had said to Robert. Hopefully they'd be able to engineer it so if a Toclafane glanced at the not-gelignite it'd explode.
Harry tapped the pen on the paper, his concentration caught again, this time musing on the other timeline, on whether they had changed things, managed to change things for the better.
"Anything's better than this," he said aloud. To no one.
He exhaled again and put out the magical flame that was illuminating the room. He had a long day tomorrow.
-/ - \\-
30 weeks since the Toclafane invaded...
"Hey mate," the woman said and pulled him into a hug. She was wearing an old woolly jumper and warm smile. "Nice of you to finally make it down here to us." Tegan Jovanka let go of him.
Someone coughed behind him. Harry stepped aside to let her introduce herself. He nearly kicked the metal mutt in the process. At least it didn't need carrying. That mutt had even thanked him for updating his traction.
"I'm not sure if you remember me, I'm-" Sarah started.
"Sarah, the stuff in the Tower with that old glowy puppet and," Tegan paused. "Him."
Sarah laughed. "Him, him, all of them." She looked up.
Tegan chuckled and looked to Harry. "Do you know about that?"
"The Game of Rassilon?" Harry asked raising an eyebrow. "Probably more than you do. The Doctor told me all about it," Harry paused. "More than once."
"Then we can have a chat about it then Harry." Tegan took Sarah playfully by the arm and led the way.
Harry sighed. "Looks like we're taking up the rear K9."
"Affirmative Harry Potter."
The metal mutt had become somewhat more friendly towards him, now that he wasn't in danger of going flat or being incapable of going of dirt or grass.
The space they'd arrived in looked like an old shearing shed, though it was now full of supplies and other things that the Resistance down here must be using or transporting around.
He still felt the cold though, stuffing his hands into his pockets he looked ahead where Sarah and Tegan had reached the door, outside it was light.
In theory this should be summer in the southern hemisphere. It was nearly March, still time for it to be warm.
The Master's machinations, his big projects, the rush for empire was well on its way to destroying the climate.
Here it might be sunny but it wasn't warm.
"What's the exterior temperature K9?"
"Calculating Harry Potter," it paused. "Temperature approximately 12 degrees Celsius Harry Potter. That is greater than a two thirds below the average temperature for this location."
Harry nodded. "Add it to the database K9."
It made a noise.
"All data is useful somehow I suppose," Harry mused to himself with a sigh.
"Affirmative Harry Potter," K9 agreed.
-/
Outside it was vaguely treed with eucalypts and small scrub, there was a large house nearby and some other outbuildings. And nothing else as far as he could see.
This was another dead zone, not unlike Aidensfield. The Toclafane so far hadn't found the base here, but the Resistance here had several mini-bases dotted around rather than a few larger ones as they had in Europe. More space and less attention paid to them.
Unlike the United States which the Master and the Toclafane had very thoroughly destroyed. The 'Ruins of New York' had been mentioned more than once in a propaganda speech of his.
Most of the cities were in ruin there.
They were a threat, or what their 'Lord and Master' would do, were they to act up again. Just like Japan.
As he and K9 reached the entrance to the farm house he looked down at K9. "Want to stay outside in the sun or come in?" Harry waited briefly for an answer. "I'll pick you up then."
K9 wasn't that heavy. "Your assistance is noted Harry Potter," it said when Harry put it down.
That was as much thanks the metal mutt gave him. It was better than nothing Harry supposed.
"We're in here," Tegan called from within one of the rooms.
Harry went through various rooms, some which had people in them, others that didn't into what used to be a lounge room by the look of the worn out comfy chairs.
"She's here Harry, or she should be." Tegan pointed to the map.
It was one of two reasons he was here. One was the have a chat with her. The other was to look at what the Resistance had found, that's why K9 and Sarah were along as well. Ioan and Judith were a little busy with the Mars project. So instead it would be these two along for the fun, they both had experience, first hand. Like him.
"I'll go now and have my chat, where...?" Harry trailed off.
"Simon!" Tegan bellowed.
"Yes boss?" Said someone who was too young and too eager for Harry's liking.
"Show Harry where he can apparate from."
"Sure boss," he grinned.
-/-/-/-/-/-/ -/-/-/-/-/-/ -/-/-/-/-/-/ -/-/-/-/-/-/
"Hello Martha." He said as he opened the door to what used to be a petrol station eating area. It had been looted and bombed out some time ago.
"Harry," she said looking at him with an annoyed expression.
Harry'd heard that she was still pissed about the big plan and that the Resistance continued to resist. Much of that was supposedly directed at him.
He didn't care.
He didn't care that their resistance to the Master was getting in the way of her...
While Martha was wandering the Earth the Resistance had seen more atrocities than he had words for. Almost too many crimes than they had comprehension for.
Yet still Martha Jones was sanctimonious, the Doctor would save them. She just had to walk the Earth, carrying out his plan that he'd whispered and the Resistance had to help her. The Resistance had to help her.
Sometimes, sometimes, as the war wore on, the invasion of Earth continued, the rape of the planet and its people, the defilement of its air, the blood of the planet and the soul of its people, Harry wondered if it would be worth it. The time and resources, his time. The Resistance's time. His...his soul, his life, whether all this would be worth it.
Gambling. That was what Jane and Robert had called it, a roll of the dice. The Doctor had proved himself in the past to be the weighted die that threw the game. The one man in humanity's arsenal that let them grab a full house.
But winning this time involved burning the deck of cards while pissing on the house.
The Doctor he knew, all the Doctors he had known, known more than once, whom he had seen working with humanity. The man he'd known in the 1970s, time and again had said humanity had to work out its own way.
They were plotting an evacuation of Earth. A colony, away from the dangers, the destruction, the pollution and the threat of genocide on Earth. To ensure the survival of the human race. To reason, investigate and theorise a way out of their situation. Their invasion, as the invaded, but not the defeated.
Time travel hadn't solved their problems.
How would the Doctor?
How could he have faith when all of this had happened?
It was a pity that simply blowing it up, his TARDIS, the Valiant, the Master all of it wasn't an option. That risk was too great. They couldn't risk blowing up the solar system.
They had a responsibility. Something Martha didn't seem to understand. The responsibility to humanity, to its continuation.
He doubted the Doctor, the Doctors he had known would support their direction. But to continue to attempt to live on Earth was becoming untenable.
In some of the heaviest industries it was mostly death.
Anyone near the frozen bits of the Nile or the fusion mills in China was almost guaranteed a very short life and a quite painful death.
Harry had seen a few memories of Resistance members mercy killing some victims of the Master's slave camps. The memories were some of the many things that haunted him.
They were some of the many memories he packed into a crate in his mind and tried to focus on the larger things. The bigger things that they had to concern themselves with.
"It's the new year. 2009," he snorted a cynical snort of air.
"And the count down is still on track?" She said or maybe asked as she swallowed the mouthful of food. It was a counter to him. He'd been told she'd tried her 'Doctor will save us' speech on ta number of the Resistance here.
Bull-Fucking-Shit.
Was what they'd told her.
He liked that turn of phrase. Simple. To the point. They didn't mince words. They couldn't. Everyone had seen too much throughout the last year. Now it was a new one, a new year. A new one of death, destruction, the ruination of Earth.
"Would it be better for us just to help you around the world Martha?" Harry asked in a calm tone. "Yours and the Doctor's plan is the only thing that we should worry about because only the Doctor knows what's going on and only the Doctor will fix what's happened?"
Martha met his cynical gaze. "Yes Harry."
Still absolute faith.
Dangerous.
Richard had had many words to say. Harry agreed with most of them.
Brian and Richard were like excited school boys at the moment with the prospect of 'walking to Mars'.
Harry admitted it had lifted his mood somewhat.
Martha Jones had brought it right back down. Always. Speaking to her did so. But he still met her. Because...he still had some concern left, a tiny amount, for his friend. It was a concern that, as every day passed he could afford less and less.
He wondered if he should tell her about their attempt to change time. That he'd seen the Doctor and Harriet Jones before it all went to shit.
Before it all started. Theoretically he could have stayed there. The paradoxes be buggered.
They'd returned, in the hope that they'd managed to change things.
Maybe that's what he needed to have, call up more hope from somewhere, that Martha would succeed.
That all the people who had died would be brought back, their deaths undone.
As the year had worn on, as how long the Earth had been invaded for slowly just become a number. The amount of weeks since the Toclafane had invaded had slowly become just another way of counting.
He'd thought to maybe count by season instead. But the Master and the Toclafane had ruined those.
Maybe he should, like some count towards launch day. When the rockets set off. When the Master set Earth at war. 'A new empire for you all'. At war with the universe.
They, the Resistance, wanted to get anyone who was near the rockets, those slave camps near the launch sites away. Perhaps to Mars, at least away to safe zones what they believed to be the safe zones.
From what they understood of the rockets they were primarily designed for space and interstellar travel. The exhausts inside the atmosphere would not be friendly to anything living.
It had royally screwed the environment just building the things. Launching them...they weren't exactly sure. It wasn't as though the Master had allowed for any testing.
The rockets had been constructed from every bit of tat the Master and the Toclafane could force their slave workers to get their hands on.
It was very likely several of them would fail. Maybe, perhaps taking out other rockets in the process. They could only hope for small mercies.
More likely, they in their destruction would just screw the planet over more.
-/
Failure was an option and one they were planning for. One they had basically decided on.
These thoughts always cropped up when he was near Martha Jones.
Ever the optimist. Doctor Martha Jones.
"When May swings around find the Resistance Martha. We have a few people in mind that are secretly working for him who'll get you the last step up there without him realising it," he explained after a lengthy silence between them had elapsed. That was why he was here. The Resistance kept who they knew would and did turn on them close to their chests. Not everyone was immediately removed from the Resistance.
Some predictable people were useful in their predictability. No matter how much he wanted some dead, he had a greater responsibility.
Then he undid his bag and rummaged around in his somewhat dirty bag and put a glowy vial of fluid onto the table. "There you go, something to add to your collection."
"Thanks Harry." She reached for it.
"Be careful with it," he warned.
Martha looked alarmed.
"It's not lethal. But it is convicting," he continued thought didn't elaborate.
"Harry I..." She trailed off.
He always felt tired talking to or about Martha Jones.
He was often exhausted, mentally and physically. Apparating, magic, spells, tactical decisions, planning, the multitude of things that they needed to do, to keep the Resistance functioning.
But just talking to Martha Jones made him feel tired.
He wanted Martha and the Doctor's plan to work. But it was like praying to Father Christmas; unlikely to yield results.
Harry rose from the chair to leave.
"Harry...?" Martha started. Harry looked at her. "What's happened?" She suddenly asked, Harry presumed that was concern on her face.
Harry didn't know how to answer that. "People have died. A lot of people have died. They'll continue to die," Harry paused. "That's his cost." He wanted to add that it was her cost as well. But he didn't, he still had some compassion for her, for her and her mission.
Maybe he still had some hope.
Maybe.
-/-/-/-/-/-/ -/-/-/-/-/-/ -/-/-/-/-/-/ -/-/-/-/-/-/
There was a soft pop as they apparated. Tegan on one side of him Sarah holding K9 on the other. Harry looked around, they were in a small valley with hills on either side.
"Not much of a gorge, but enough to hide it," Tegan said.
"And there's been no Toclafane here?" Sarah put down K9 who seemed to sniff the ground and drive backwards and forwards to test his traction.
Harry looked around, the ground looked just about smooth enough for it to cope. It was probably a causeway, one that had dried out years ago, or maybe the rain hadn't come this season. Like many places in the world.
"You really need to be able to hover K9," Harry mused aloud.
"Affirmative Harry Potter." It agreed with him.
Sarah looked to him, amused. "Are you offering Harry?"
"Just musing aloud, I've been told I think to myself too much." Harry squinted looking around. "So, where is it?"
-/
It.
What they had come to see was buried half into the hillside.
It looked like it had crashed, though there didn't appear to be much warping of the hull. If it had crashed it looked like the hill had formed around it. Or maybe it had materialised there.
Harry exhaled. "You've got to appreciate the design."
"Do ya?" Tegan asked looking from him to it.
"Everything they do has a particular design language to it. It's what makes them, them." Harry looked up at it, marvelling at its design from the ground, in the light. It had an aesthetic of its own.
"Dalek," Tegan surmised frowning.
"Succinct," Harry commented.
"K9, are you sure there's no Daleks on board?" Sarah asked the metal idiot who had so far managed with the dusty dirt track.
K9's ear waggled back and forth. "Mountainside obscures sensors Mistress," it paused, Harry wondered if he had to kick it to get the sand out of his circuits, but it continued to talk. "No Dalek energy signatures detected on this side of the Dalek saucer."
"We've not found how to open it up." Tegan began and looked to Harry. "Suppose you and your magic bag have something that'll fix that Harry?"
Harry briefly smiled at her. "If not I've got my sonic screwdriver and Sarah's got her sonic lippy. We'll make something work."
-/
Tegan looked up at Harry who'd climbed up the hill holding what looked like a sink plunger, but what she knew to be the plunger end of a Dalek.
"Ya think he's alright?" She asked Sarah.
"Harry has said he's alright," she said after a moment's thought.
"This has all screwed us over Sarah. I thought..." Tegan shook her head, she was going continue when Harry shouted and K9 began to waggle his ears.
"What is it K9?" Sarah asked.
"Harry Potter has succeeded in initiating the opening sequence to the Dalek craft."
"And the bugger's also transfiguring some steps, thoughtful," Tegan said as the trio walked over to where Harry was waving his wand around.
"Not transfiguring, just moving around." Sarah added.
"Oh, yeah." Tegan said on second glance Harry was just moving the rocks around to create a rough ramp of rocks for them to walk up.
Harry stood atop the mound of rocks and dirt. "Shall we explore?" He asked.
"You've got that look about you Harry," Tegan almost glared at him. She'd seen that look before. On a bloke who liked celery and cricket far too much. She said as much to him. Sarah laughed.
"And I even have a sonic screwdriver." He waved it. It looked just like the one the Doctor had before the Terileptils destroyed it. "Still, it's nice to get away from things, explore a different sort of danger," he paused. "I'll lead the way."
"Shouldn't K9...?" Sarah started.
Harry shook his head. "Daleks shout first, exterminate next," he slipped the sonic screwdriver into a pocket and pulled out a torch.
"That's what I was worried about," Sarah said as she picked up K9 and carried him to the top of the ramp.
-/
"Musty," Harry mused as he waved the torch around. He could hear the noise of K9's motors and resisted the urge to ask him if there was any energy detectable. Instead he did it himself, extracting his slightly newer and moderately improved energy detector from his bag.
It read...nothing. Just the background of the Archangel Network and the other related signals. But nothing in here.
"Anything Harry?" Tegan asked looking over his shoulder.
"No. Completely dead," Harry paused.
"Waiting for a Dalek to come screaming out of the darkness?" Tegan had an amused tone to her voice, with an edge, one of experience.
"Indeed," Harry exhaled. It was also quite a bit more cooler in here than outside.
"K9, are we heading in the correct direction for the control room?" Harry pointed his torch in one direction.
"Affirmative Harry Potter."
"Good," Harry affirmed. "We should go and see what's what there."
"How do you know where that is?" Sarah called towards him.
"I've been on a saucer like this before," he said as K9 followed him.
-/
Sarah looked to Tegan as K9 followed Harry.
"It's almost like the old days." Sarah shook her head.
"We never had a robot dog," Tegan commented.
"Neither did I," Sarah said as they followed Harry. "This is familiar."
"Daleks?" Tegan asked.
"Corridors," Sarah said gesturing around the walls with her torch.
Tegan laughed. "Too right, and him." She nodded towards Harry. "He's just as bad."
Sarah looked ahead of them into the gloom. "He's known him longer than us I think."
"Rubs off, the danger," Tegan commented. "The drive for excitement. Maybe he's not had enough yet."
"Some of us never had enough Tegan," Sarah reflected.
-/
Harry was already at one of the consoles when they walked into the control room. He had his palm against one of the controls manipulating it.
"Anything K9?"
"Negative Harry Potter. Negative power on all systems."
Harry kicked the console. "Now?"
"Negative Harry Potter," it said again.
"Well, that's that then," Tegan said shrugging.
Harry snorted. "Hardly."
"Prepared Harry?" Sarah asked, not surprised.
-/
Tegan eyed the black thing that Harry had extracted from his bag and what looked distinctly like jumper cables that he'd attached inside the one of the consoles.
"Are you sure this is safe Harry."
"Define safe Tegan," Harry mused as he looked at K9. "Confirm minimal power flow K9."
"Power level of Dalek battery at 5 percent Harry Potter," K9 reported.
"We should get a bit out of it before it dies," Harry mused.
"Power draw from Dalek ship will drain Dalek battery in approximately 6.42 minutes Harry Potter," it reported.
"See, no danger." Harry looked at the two women.
"Harry I..." Sarah started as she watched Harry depress a button. One of the screens lit up with text.
"What..." Sarah began.
"It's Dalek," Harry supplied.
"Where? Oh. Text," Tegan asked surprised and then annoyed. "You can read it?"
"Everyone needs a distraction," he said looking at the text. "K9 do a systems check while there's power.
"Mistress?" K9 didn't turn but his tone was a query to Sarah.
"Yes, K9, do it." Sarah said with a wave of her hand as she leaned forward to look at the screen in the gloom of the control room.
"Well, Harry?" Tegan walked over and looked at the screen. It was all gibberish as far as she was concerned.
"The ship made and automated emergency landing here. Some years ago. Probably thousands of years. Or hundreds," Harry read off the screen.
"That's a wide range." Tegan looked at the screen trying to discern numbers from the mess of symbols that were probably text.
"I'm still not quite sure how the Daleks count," he paused. "Maybe one day I'll find one who'll teach me."
"Main drive systems damaged, unable to power up, main weapons systems, disabled, unable to power up-"
"K9, I assume everything won't power up. A summary please," Sarah butted into his commentary, if she didn't they'd be here all day.
"Affirmative Mistress." He paused. "Life support intact, sensors damaged but intact. Warp drive damaged..."
Harry tuned out K9 for a little as he read the log. It was mostly boring stuff. It looked like the ship had been aiming for the Northern Hemisphere and missed. He'd have to double check the coordinates, it was a lot to miss by.
"K9, you're recording all data output including this." He nodded to the screen.
"Confirmed Harry Potter." K9 paused seemingly to take a non-existent breath.
"What isn't intact?" Tegan stopped him.
"There are hull breaches where the craft failed to make a landing and corrosion along portions of the outer hull. Issues are multiple, they are registering but not reportable with power available here Mistrsss Tegan."
Then there was a whistling and the battery clicked off and proceeded to melt onto the floor.
K9 backed away from it and Harry sighed.
"Catastrophic cascade failure of Dalek battery power system Harry Potter."
"Yes. Thank you for stating the perfectly bloody obvious K9." Harry looked down at the metal idiot.
"Affirmative Harry Potter." It wagged its tail.
Tegan looked over at Sarah who was fighting a smile. Harry looked like he was ready to kick the robot.
"Maybe we should get outta here," Tegan suggested, wrinkling her nose at the smell of the melting battery.
"Agreed." Harry said to pick up his bag.
-/
Outside Harry looked at the saucer.
"I think we should take it with us."
"Where..." Tegan trailed off and looked at him. "To Mars?" She asked in a raised slightly surprised voice. Harry nodded.
"It makes sense Tegan. We'll need a spaceship," Sarah said reasonably.
"Affirmative Mistresses. There are several remains of spacecraft, this is the most intact available to the Resistance."
Ironically now that they had a spaceship that they could fly to Mars they were already there. Even if they could fly it there they couldn't. They'd need to pack it up into a bag and take it there, lest the Toclafane and the Master find out they had something as intact as this.
-/
A/N:
This chapter is one that I considered just deleting, as readers have been eager for this arc to end I have considered smashing together several of the previous chapters. I didn't delete it, because I wrote it and if I didn't post it it'd never see the light of day.
I admit it is an indulgence, a little bit of a fun adventure in amongst a lot of gloom.
It's an indulgence because it doesn't contribute much. But I wanted Sarah and Tegan together in a little adventure with Harry. They've met before (in The Five Doctors) and it just works so well with these two in this setting.
It'd be difficult to get those three together to have an adventure in the main timeline.
It does come rather late in the invasion, the meeting I had planned, but it just didn't fit very well anywhere.
Another meeting with Martha Jones. Probably the last time Harry will meet with her and have one of their not exactly friendly chats.
Next chapter is the last in the arc and will also feature the transition back into the main timeline. Thanks and sorry to everyone who found it a bit dragging.
A/N Update February 2019: I had said in the notes that if I did an edit I'd crash this chapter together with another, but that'd mess with all the reviews and chapter numberings. So it just remains as the odd chapter out in this arc.
