V
"What's all this then?" the Doctor asked, looking over the officer with a keen eye. "Helping the enemy? That's tantamount to –"
"Mutiny," the Zagrite finished. "I am well aware of it. But this time, it is necessary."
"Why?" the Doctor asked. "The Admiral seems like a good Zagrite to me. Eats his greens, leads his men, invades worlds..."
"Takes strategies off of aliens," another Zagrite said. "Which in itself s against our law."
"So," the officer finished, "we are within our rights to do this."
"So what's the plan?" the Doctor asked.
"Your friend attempted to disable our engines. This is impractical, as we need to get home after seizing control of this ship," the officer said.
"So you're not going to keep invading?" Eilidh asked.
"No point," the other Zagrite said. "This world is hardly a prize."
"Other aliens think it is," the Doctor pointed out.
"We don't," the officer said.
"Anyway," the other Zagrite said. "We figure, the best way to seize control is a coup – eliminate Admiral Salasarankovasher, and then stop the assault forces."
"Sounds simple enough," the Doctor said. "Though his name doesn't."
"It's get's complicated," Jack said, "when you realise that the entire bridge crew was handpicked for loyalty to the Admiral."
"So to eliminate him," Eilidh began...
"We would have to take out the entire bridge crew, yes," the Zagrite officer completed.
"I have an idea," the Doctor said. "Where's your air conditioning control system?"
"Three decks down," the Zagrite replied. "Why?"
"If we get down there, we can flood the bridge – specifically the bridge – with nerve gas, and knock the entire bridge crew out," the Doctor explained, quite quickly.
The Zagrite officer considered this for a moment, and nodded.
"That would work," he said. "Follow us."
"Just out of interest," Eilidh asked, "what's your name?"
"Cardeloniasderate," the officer replied, off-handily.
"Mind if we call you Carde?" the Doctor asked. "Only saying Cardeloniasderate all the time can get a bit time consuming..."
"Of course, for the sake of efficiency," Carde replied. "We don't refer to ourselves by our names anyway."
"Oh, thanks," the Doctor replied. "Last bloke with a long name I met wouldn't shorten it for anything, even a shipwreck..."
--
"Oh you are kidding," Eilidh said. "This is the biggest bloody cliché in sci fi history made flesh."
"Wouldn't be the first time," the Doctor commented dryly.
The air conditioning room was a massive pipe, with control panels on a thin gantry. The gantry was old, rusted and wind battered.
"This is not good," Jack said. "We've got to get over there."
"It shouldn't be so difficult," Carde said. "I figure that one of us can get over there, alter the settings for the air on the bridge, and get back in... five minutes, max?"
"I suppose that'd be me, what with being immortal, right?" Jack said.
"No," the Doctor replied. "I'll do it. I'm the only one with the technical knowhow."
"Are you sure?" Eilidh asked. "I mean, if Jack's immortal, he can..."
"I'll do it," Jack said. "Don't risk it Doctor."
"I'm doing it, and there's no debating to be done," the Doctor said. "I'll do it."
Jack looked about to protest some more, but Carte nodded sharply.
"If you insist, then I shall cover you from here."
The Doctor nodded back, and turned to run up the steps. Carte gestured to two of his men, and they headed for other gantries, weapons raised.
"Will he be alright?" asked Eilidh.
"Yes," Jack replied. "He's the Doctor."
--
On the gantry, the Doctor was less confident than his friend.
He had reached the consle wuickly, and was implementing the final few commands, when a laser bolt impacted behind him, showering sparks over his back.
"Whoa!" he yelled, crouching down. He turned to look, and saw a few Zagrite engineers with pistols firing at him from a high gantry.
He ducked as another salvo headed past him, and desperately grabbed his sonic screwdriver, meaning to disable their laser weapons, but then the engineers were pinned down by fire from another gantry.
Carte's men, probably, the Doctor thought. The engineers continued to fire, but only half of their shots were directed at him now. He got up to continue his work on the console.
This was then hit by a laser bolt, blowing it to pieces, and knocking the Doctor to the gantry floor, which creaked ominously. The Doctor scrambled to get up, as parts of the gantry started to fall away.
He ran, as more laser fire came down where he had just been. He saw Carte and Jack firing their respective weapons, as security forces (in Imperial Purple armour) appeared on the opposite gantry, shooting Carte's men down.
"We've lost the element of surprise now!" the Zagrite moaned. "The Admiral will know there's a mutiny!"
"Then marshal your men," the Doctor replied. "Take the ship now, while you have a chance."
The Zagrite nodded, then contacted his leaders. The battle for this ship would be fought – and he was damned if he was going to lose.
The Doctor turned to Eilidh and Jack.
"Now what do we do?" Eilidh asked.
"Jack," the Doctor said, "help Carte and his men out. Eilidh, you're with me, we're going to confront the Admiral in his own den."
"Again?" she asked, exasperated.
"Hm," he said. "Well, what can you say, he's an important player."
"Yeah," she said, "and this is a crappy seventies s-f."
The Doctor tutted and ran off, leaving Eilidh to follow.
The Admiral grimaced. Mutiny. He'd never live it down at the officers club, they'd laugh at him – then kill him for dereliction of duty, naturally.
He turned away from the monitor on his bridge, and towards a control panel, which he then activated.
He entered the code, which bypassed the main computer systems entirely. The Doctor's meddling was irrelevant to what he was doing. All of it was irrelevant.
He keyed in the final command.
Self destruct system activated.
He sighed. There were many good men, loyal to him and their cause, who would die here. He silently commended their bravery, and hoped that they would be remembered as brave, true Zagrites. He was a pureblood officer, though, and he was damned if he was going to let a Mutiny of all things disgrace him for all time in the history books.
This ship would die. With it, is would the mutineers, the Doctor and himself.
But the Doctor would die first.
--