Chapter 14

Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart sat at his office desk and looked over at his drinks cabinet. It was most certainly too early in the afternoon for a drink.

He'd told Corporal Bell that he wasn't to be disturbed. Captain Yates was sorting out the new recruits from the various British armed forces; having them sign the required Official Secrets Act and other things associated, while Sergeant Benton was overseeing the day to day at UNIT HQ. It left him slightly short staffed regarding more senior officers, but Corporal Carol Bell was the most capable person under his command.

Especially as the person not under his command, and his assistant had disappeared off in that damned blue box just as he was discovering something disturbing.

Leaning back into his chair he opened the drawer again and took out the 6 white pieces of...what? He wasn't sure. They didn't feel like paper, plastic, wood or anything else. They certainly had a presence without weighing much. They wouldn't be that notable, except for who had given them to him and the promise of what they could do.

After the Doctor had cooled down, it had taken a few days, but he had. Alistair had found himself in the Doctor's 'parlour' for want of a better term. A small room off to the side of his laboratory that the Doctor had commandeered no doubt, and filled with antique furniture and a drinks trolley.

Not even Miss Grant had been invited into this little sanctum of the Doctor's but he had found the Doctor liked to have some company, occasionally. At first it mostly just seemed so he could rant about the politicians he met at his 'club' that he visited in London.

Alistair had met his fair share of politicians; making sure that the British government and UNIT in Geneva played nicely with one another and to ensure that the requisite funding came to UNIT in the United Kingdom was a job in itself. Thankfully it was one that for now, at least he did not have to concern himself with. There were now several politicians who recognised the work that UNIT performed. Whatever the cost as many under his command liked to say.

"So this cube thing Doctor that your brother left me, can you really not use it?" He asked the Doctor, at the time the Doctor had said he couldn't, but the Doctor seemed to be the one who understood these sorts of gubbins better than him, and might actually need to use it.

The Doctor looked at him with a sad smile. "Yes Brigadier, although kind your offer is" he paused. "Harry encoded the hypercube so that only your biodata can activate it."

"Biodata?" He asked, the Doctor had mentioned it once before during the Axos business.

"Like DNA but more complicated," the Doctor said off handedly but seemingly saw his puzzlement. "The essence beyond the blood Brigadier," the Doctor sighed and sipped his drink, exasperation present in his body language.

"I'm a soldier Doctor, not a scientist, that's why I have you around," Alistair commented with an amused tone.

The Doctor shook his head. "Well...it means Brigadier that no one, other than you could use the hypercube. You can't be compelled to use it either."

Alistair frowned. "But if it's in the blood or whatever Doctor how could it know?"

The Doctor looked at him mysteriously. "Time Lord technology Brigadier, especially something Harry is passing on to you."

Alistair watched the Doctor. "Your brother Doctor he's..." he left the sentence hanging.

The Doctor looked over at him raising an eyebrow. "Indeed Brigadier, he is, very capable, and far too much of a stickler for the rules than I ever was."

Alistair laughed. "Respect for authority Doctor, something that it seems did not rub off on you."

Later on in that evening the Doctor had explained, as Harry Potter had, that he just needed to lay out the cards and speak, even think to them and the message would be passed onto Harry Potter.

Thinking was probably the most unreliable state for the current business he mused to himself as he leaned back in his chair; considering.

Exhaling Alistair picked up the cards again, he had picked up them a few times over the past few weeks, as the unexplained continued to pile up without noticing.

Rubbing his fingers over them they seemed to both have a texture of not quite anything and be as smooth as glass, it was both disconcerting and reassuring at the same time. That despite their thin appearance there was a solidity to them, a tangibility that meant they really could hold everything he wanted to say, or think, or whatever it was.

Holding in his hands for another moment he methodically took one and laid it out in front of him, then another and repeated until they were all laid out in front of him in a rough circle on his desk.

"I'm not sure how this should be working, I know both of you..." Alistair shook his head. "the Doctor said I should just talk, if I'm not certain of my thoughts, and, damn it, I'm not," Alistair snapped to himself and leant back in his chair, forcing his irritation with the events so far down and instead thinking, calming himself. "Started a few weeks ago, a report of strange men in cloaks. Captain Yates thought it might just be something to do with the music festivals that have been doing the rounds recently, all that new age of Aquarius guff. Initially that's all we put it down to, but then there was some destruction that the local police couldn't explain, bright lights and random destruction," Alistair paused. "I went with Yates and Benton with a squad out there to investigate. We didn't find anything, at least not at first. We returned to UNIT HQ several hours later. Longer than it should have been to go out there, have a look and return. I made radio contact with HQ," Alistair paused and turned around, sliding a panel behind him along and spinning the dial of the hidden safe. There were in fact three safes in the room, and this was the most secret of them. Inside was only a journal, it was something they'd all learnt after the Master's mental manipulation came to light. One of the things the expert from Geneva had said that they needed to do, to make sure they weren't being manipulated. To keep notes of their actions. But what they hadn't accounted for was a mass manipulation.

With the Master they knew that he could disguise his appearance, but he was still only one man, one Time Lord. One alien.

"It happened again, a week or so ago, a report from one of our operatives who'd witnessed what appeared to be alien weapons, energy weapons so the Doctor calls them. Shooting people and livestock. We kept the locals away from the site, even though they wanted to go in and look for bodies, the local police that is, wait for UNIT. Corporal Bell is good with that," Alistair said to himself, forgetting for the moment that he was trying to use the pieces of cube before him as a dictaphone-type arrangement. It wasn't as though he could edit what was going in, if anything was going into the cube. It was still just several pieces of whatever it was before him, not indicating whether he'd run out of tape or anything like that. It was typical of the Doctor, or the Doctor's people. Something brilliant like this and no indication of whether the tape was going to run out.

Alistair opened up his journal, reading, from his own hand from it. "It was bedlam out there, dead and mutilated livestock, and the people..." he trailed off, reading his own, slightly jarred handwriting of the description of what had happened to the farmer, his wife and their 8 children and three farm hands. He chose just to think these things he wrote, rather than say them out loud. "We cleared them up, and brought the bodies and remains back to UNIT HQ, we left a squad there to secure the site and keep any locals away," Alistair paused again looking to his notes. "The locals though, when Corporal Bell had spoke with them, they'd been worried, eager to go out there. A small community, everyone knew everyone, the vicar especially was worried for the family...he'd heard the screams, last time he'd heard that had been in the trenches, Bell had spent a long time calming him down, her notes are meticulous about it all," Alistair paused as he turned the page. "When we arrived they seemed dazed, distant, the vicar, was subdued, preparing, like barely anything had happened..." he trailed off. "I first thought they had just been dazed by what had happened in their community. We've seen enough of that, after the Autons, Silurians and Axos, not everyone's equipped for it, Captain Yates is making sure this next round of recruits and transfers will handle it better than the last lot." Alistair shook his head, looking back at his journal. "Bodies were stored for autopsy and analysis and then..." he trailed off again. "And then Harry Potter, I don't remember. I don't remember anything, damn it," he didn't get angry, he had been angry, angry at the manipulation thus far. He was angry his scientific advisor and Miss Grant had disappeared off in that damned box of the Doctor's just when UNIT needed its scientific advisor, just as he'd discovered something amiss. "The mileometer on the jeeps didn't make sense. They were hundreds of miles off their last reading. The UNIT stores said we'd used body bags, bullets, hazardous materials outfits and equipment. Cameras and film had been taken out, the former returned, the latter gone. There were no bodies, no evidence there had been any bodies. Our CCTV had suffered a localised power disruption and the 'uninterruptible power supply' the Doctor built, failed."

Alistair breathed in a calming breath as he closed his eyes, trying to calm himself. "Only know half of this because I had the sense to write it down. The same with Yates, Benton and everyone else who attended that anti-hypnotism class," he looked to the cards. "Harry Potter, your brother has gone off...somewhere with Miss Grant, I need advice on this...whatever gubbins this is..." he paused and then shook his head. "I know it happened, even if there's no evidence of it, there's the lack of evidence, but there's no proof of it, except here..." he trailed off again in frustration. "That's it, I think."

Alistair leaned back and then in quiet astonishment watched as the cards moved of their own accord; assembling themselves into a cube. And then, with a sound like the Doctor's TARDIS it faded from his desk.

Alistair reached out to touch the desk where the cards had been, and opened his drawer to check that he had in fact sent them and they hadn't somehow transferred themselves back into the drawer by their own accord.

Then he took a pen from his desk and turned a few pages of his journal and made a note of what he'd said and done. Just in case something else happened that made him question his mind and what real events might have taken place.

-/

A/N:

A great many apologies for the delay in this chapter, it's actually the next and following chapters which have been causing me problems (they're still not really finished), I hope posting this one will inspire me to continue to write the following chapters.

A very short chapter, simply because I wanted to have this as a sort of introduction / prequel to Harry's involvement.

The next few chapters I've decided to set in a gap that doesn't really exist. It's between the start of Colony in Space and the end of that story. It doesn't exist because the TARDIS pops off at the start of that story and then pops back, without any time actually passed on Earth, in fact it's part of the joke at the end of the story. I wanted to set it here because it's before The Dæmons. Which I don't want Harry involved in, but I also want Harry to be able to visit the Master while he's in jail, but there will need to be a bit of a gap. So I'm inserting a gap where instead of the Doctor and Jo popping to Uxarieus and back to Earth with no time passed, a week or two will have passed instead.

I'm also wary of not repeating myself regarding this UNIT era and what I did in my other story Visited by a Doctor so Harry's going to come and go from Earth. But he will be involved in some of the magical goings on during this period on Earth. In a different way to how I've done previously.

Thanks for reading.