A Child Evermore
Episode Two: Rescue
Featuring Ace
Captain Ian Travatti had his laser shotgun aimed and ready to fire at the enemy that would inevitably emerge from round the corner. The SS Travethius had been the centre of a war for at least six months and humanity was no closer to defeating their enemy. It had started when a strange silvery liquid had arrived onboard the ship and had converted one of the crew into a Cyberman. Ever since, the Cybermen had grown in strength and there were only ten humans left alive.
Ian needed a miracle.
Elsewhere on the Travethius, a TARDIS had arrived. It still retained the appearance of a tall grey cylinder with a silver section that was a door. Inside the TARDIS, a middle-aged woman wearing a smart business suit stood at the central console. The walls around her were white and the console was on a slightly raised platform. The console itself was covered in buttons, levers and dials, along with two screens embedded in the console which were placed back to back. On top of the screens was an object that resembled a glass jar which contained an orange crystal.
"Just like old times." Ace said, rushing outside.
She emerged from the TARDIS and found that she was in some sort of spaceship. She reasoned that it had to be a relatively large spaceship and, after a quick glance out of a nearby window, the spaceship was orbiting a planet. She didn't know which planet the spaceship was orbiting, but that would probably be revealed soon.
"Oi, lady!" came a voice from behind her: a tall man dressed in a blue shirt with green braces was aiming a laser pistol at her.
"What's your problem?" she called back.
"I have questions."
The stranger strolled forward and dragged her away, behind what appeared to be sandbags.
"Where did you come from? Who are you? Can you help us fight?" the stranger demanded, not allowing Ace time to answer any of the questions.
"I'm Ace and I'm just a traveller. I can blow things up, if that helps." Ace explained, "Who are you fighting anyway?"
The answer came in a matter of moments. An army of Cybermen emerged, gun arms raised. These Cybermen looked different to the ones Ace had faced before: these Cybermen were in metal armour, similar to Iron Man in the comics Ace had glanced at during a wet day in Perivale long ago, and had emotionless masks for a face.
"THE HUMANS WILL BE UPGRADED." the leader, at the centre of the armada, declared, "ALL RESISTANCE SHALL BE DELETED. WE WILL HAVE CONTROL OF THIS SHIP."
"Who are you and do you have any explosives?" Ace asked the stranger who had taken her away.
"Captain Ian Travatti and I have a rocket launcher here." Ian replied, handing Ace a long case which was filled with a rocket launcher and seven rockets.
Ace grinned, as she was about to do what she did best.
She fired one of the rockets at the central Cyberman and it exploded into flame and debris, scattering the remnants of the Cyberman everywhere.
"I've missed this." she said with a happy grin, firing another rocket at another cyberman. This time, however, she added the explosives from the other five rockets into the rocket she was about to fire, making the explosion take out seven of the Cybermen. But more were emerging from round the corner.
"What do we do now?" Ian asked her.
"We retreat and you tell me what's going on here." Ace replied, determined to find the truth.
Ace, Ian and the rest of the humans were hurrying down one of the nearby corridors and decided to stop in a small maintenance cupboard which, luckily, had the ability of being deadlocked. So, they entered the cupboard and deadlocked it.
"Tell me more about what's going on here then." Ace demanded, "Because normal wars don't take place on spaceships."
"We are refugees running away from the Last Great Cyber War in the far future but somehow the Cybermen caught up. First there was the silver fluid that started to appear but then the conversions started. We are all that is left of the original crew." Ian explained, indicating the eight humans that were with them in the room, "Can you help us Ace? Can you help us win this fight?"
Ace thought for a moment and then grinned as an idea formed in her head.
"I've had an idea but just one question: which end of the ship are we?" she asked Ian.
"The rear end, near the engines."
"Perfect."
The Cybermen had retreated to their base at the front of the ship. They still needed one human wired into the ship's computer, piloting the craft towards Hevulix. Hevulix was a planet bustling with humans: perfect conversion material.
"We... are... fifty... thousand... kilometres... above... Hevulix." came the slow emotionless voice of the pilot, who was a young man with wires connecting into his skull and fingers.
"IS THERE CYBER CATALYST WITHIN THE SPACESHIP?" the Cyberleader asked the pilot.
"Yes... leader."
"THEN THERE WILL BE A CHANGE OF PLAN. WE SHALL CREATE AS MUCH OF THE CYBER CATALYST AND THEN DETONATE THE SHIP ABOVE THE SURFACE OF HEVULIX."
Ace, Ian and the rest of the crew were in the engine room and Ace had set to work trying to blow up the engines. She naturally had to give a countdown in order to allow everyone to get inside her TARDIS and get away.
"Do you know what you're doing?" Ian asked her.
"It's just mashing buttons." she replied, muttering to herself, "It's what he would have done."
Soon, an alarm began to blare and Ace, Ian and the other eight crewmembers were hurrying down the corridors towards Ace's TARDIS. Suddenly, there was a thud and everyone was thrown down the corridor, flames engulfing two of the crewmembers and burning them to death.
"We need to move!" Ace cried, getting up and grabbing Ian's hand and helping him up. Quickly, the other crewmembers got up and followed her away.
The Cybermen were surrounding Ace's TARDIS and the Cyberleader was advancing towards the remaining humans, holding a vial of bubbling silver liquid.
"YOU WILL BE CONVERTED. THE CYBER CATALYST SHALL BE RELEASED. THIS SHIP WILL BE DETONATED." the Cyberleader declared, in its electronic slurr.
"Oh no," Ace said, realising that she had helped the Cybermen, "if this ship blows up, that Cyberman convertion liquid will get released on the planet below."
"What planet?" Ian asked.
"THIS SHIP IS ORBITING HEVULIX. THERE ARE SEVEN MILLION HUMANS ON THE PLANET BELOW."
Ace tried to think of a way to save the people below. It was an argument between saving seven humans or saving seven million humans. But then an idea came to her: she grabbed a large laser cannon off the floor and fired it at the Cyberleader and the Cybermen which were guarding the TARDIS. Making sure the Cybermen were dead, she opened the TARDIS door and escorted the remaining human crew inside.
Inside the TARDIS, Ace's memories were returning and she decided to travel to the first colony ship. Ian worked out why she was heading to the original colony ship quickly and stood next to her at the console, smiling happily as the time-space machine flew through the vortex.
"So you're going to stop a human colony being set up there?" Ian deduced, "How?"
"I'm going to take the colonists onboard the TARDIS, meaning that the Cyber Catalyst would simply fall on a lifeless planet. Hopefully it won't create too many ripples in history." Ace replied, checking the TARDIS's history of Hevulix and smiling happily as no major events were in Hevulix's future, "Good."
The TARDIS materialised on the Transbothia, the original colony ship that brought humans to Hevulix. Captain Jay McHansell was stood outside the TARDIS, aiming a gun at Ace's head as she emerged.
"You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you, but it's true." Ace explained, "You need to get inside this ship and you can't ask why. Please. It's for the sake of humanity."
"And we just let this ship explode on Hevulix?" Jay said, angrily.
"Yes. The nuclear storm drive engines will explode and cover the planet in a cloud of radioactive ash. But one day a deadly species will try and make you into horrifying robot zombies. If you want to have your emotions and your free will, get inside my TARDIS now."
Having dropped off the crew of the Trevithius and the Transbothia at Jaxobar Spaceport, Ace was alone in her TARDIS again. She wondered where to go next and then remembered that A Charitable Earth had nobody running it. Earth, evidently, was where she was needed. She set course for London, 2020 and activated the materialisation control.
THE END