III

The Zagrite Admiral stared at the Doctor. The Doctor grinned back at him.

"You," the Admiral said, disbelievingly, "should be very, very dead right now."

"Should I?" the Doctor replied, still grinning. "Terribly sorry, I'm not very reliable when it comes to that sort of thing."

"But..." the Admiral insisted, "I ordered half the troops in this room to fire at you, and none of the guns worked."

The Doctor's grin widened more than the Admiral would have thought possible.

"Did you have something to do with this?!" the Admiral asked furiously.

"Well," the Doctor replied, his grin sliding off, replaced by an expression of mild inquisitiveness, "I suppose I could, feasibly, have done something before I came in this room, anticipating that you would want to kill me. And I suppose – feasibly – I could have used this," and here he took out a small silver pen like device, with a blue tip, "to disable all weapons on the interior of this ship. And perhaps with this device – which we shall call, for clarities sake, a sonic screwdriver, I could also perhaps have sent a signal to the entire Zagrite fleet, ordering immediate withdrawal behind the moon, until further notice."

He idly looked over the sonic screwdriver.

"Then again, I might be lying about all of that, and you're weapons are just faulty," he considered. "I could have lied about some things, and told the truth about others. I could even have just hypnotised your entire bridge crew. Take your pick."

The Admiral stared at him.

"What the hell are you on about?!" he screeched, causing the Doctor to rub his ears.

"Watch the old earlobe, mate," he said, annoyed. "Anyway, the point is, with all your weapons apparently not working, there's nothing to stop me from leaving here in one peace!"

The Admiral stared at him, and then smiled coldly.

"You know too little of Zagrites, Doctor," he said. "We are famed hand to hand combatants."

The Zagrite troopers discarded their weapons, and got into fighting stances around the Doctor, completely cutting off all escape routes. To the Admiral's surprise, the Doctor smiled, and clapped.

"Oh, very impressive," he said, turning to look at the troops. "Very, very impressive. Really, though. There is one problem, though, that you haven't considered."

"What's that?" asked the Admiral.

"I," the Doctor said proudly, "am the only two armed being in the universe to master Venusian Aikido."

He struck a fighting stance, and grinned.

"Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough," he sing-songed.

At a gesture from the Admiral, the troopers did. They moved in on him, from all side, intending to beat him into submission. The first trooper sent a punch flying the Doctor's way –

The Doctor grabbed his hand, and threw him across the room, before leaping feet first into another trooper, knocking him clean over, and sending two more flying with complicated looking arm movements.

He made a break for the door, the troops he hadn't knocked down close on his heels. He slipped into a closing lift door, and waved goodbye to the troops as the door slid shut.

"Dammit!" yelled the Admiral. "Find him, and kill him! We can't have him running around!"

Jack shot up, gasping for breath.

"Oh, look who's decided to join the land of the living," came a sarcastic, very familiar voice.

He turned to look at Eilidh, staring at him from an alleyway corner.

"Where are the Zagrites?" he asked.

"One of them must've dropped a laser gun," Eilidh replied airily. "And I used it."

"Ok," he replied. "Space armour with pockets, now that's intelligent."

"So," Eilidh sighed, pocketing the little laser, "what do we do now? We've done practically everything we can do, so...?"

Jack was about to reply with a cutting remark, he really was, but it's hard to do that when you're being teleported.

Then he was staring at the Doctor, who was grinning triumphantly.

"What kept you?" he asked. "You've missed all the bloomin' action!"

Jack didn't know whether to kiss him or punch him, but Eilidh got there first with her trademark sarcastic, but affectionate, remark.

"So, while we were busy saving lives," she said, "fighting invaders and nearly getting killed, what were you doing, Time Nerd?"

The Doctor ignored her sarcasm, and the insulting (albeit funny) joke, and moved himself into 'casual explanation pose.' Jack smiled at that – he found it rather sexy.

"Well, I've worked out their plan," he said. "It's pretty thick, actually."

He ran over to a computer terminal, and flicked a switch. A hologram came up, showing little Zagrite ships.

"The Zagrites plan on destroying the major cities, one at a time, using the extra soft quilt stratagem, or whatever," he explained to his friends. "Now, I've seen this tactic before, used quite successfully, but then beaten back."

"Where?" asked Eilidh.

"Independence Day," the Doctor replied airily. "Remake, 2043, starring Daniel Radcliffe, John Carnelli, and Donald Williams. Awful reviews, but it was an awful film."

"I saw that," Jack remarked. "I thought it was ok."

"Well, there's no accounting for taste," the Doctor commented. Jack pouted.

"Anyway," the Doctor continued, "I think I have a way to stop them, from right here inside their ship."

"How?" Jack asked.

"It's simple really," the Doctor explained. "One of us takes out the engines; one of us disables the command bridge."

"There are three of us," Eilidh pointed out. The Doctor often forgot details of this.

"Ah, well, I suppose I'll have to take you with me when I disable the bridge then, won't I?" the Doctor smiled at her. Eilidh smiled back; glad she wouldn't have to blow up an alien engine room all by herself. She turned to Jack.

"Good luck," she said in a faux sultry voice. He nodded back, sarcastically.

The Doctor walked off, and turned back to Jack before he walked out.

"When you've blown it up, head for the weapons room, stock up," he said. "And then head back for the teleport room, and go down and help the troopers out on the planet below."

"What'll you do?" the Captain asked.

"I," the Doctor said, "will be engaging in some very witty wordplay with the Supreme Admiral of the whole Zagrite Fleet."

Jack looked at him for a moment, then grinned.

"I always get the fun stuff. Guns, squaddies and explosions."

He winked at the Doctor, then ran off. The Doctor sighed, then walked out, to a waiting Eilidh.

--