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Sherlock wrinkled his nose in disgust as he slid down the incline feet-first.
"Geronimooo!" cried the doctor, his voice gaily bouncing off the metal.
The dark interior wreaked havoc with Sherlock's senses, but he knew better than to waste time trying to see. He let his fingers trail along the cool siding as the three of them accelerated downward. The chute rattled and clanged sporadically, rumbling with the pulse of life on the ship. Warm air, sickly and pungent, rolled up the shaft.
"Light ahead!" called John. "Our exit?"
The detective opened his eyes. Flickers of orange below.
"No!" Sherlock slammed his feet against the sides and braced himself. First John, then the Doctor, collapsed on top of him, and he grunted with the effort of remaining wedged. "No. It's fire!"
John and the Doctor peered over each other past Sherlock to the light below. "Incendiary carbonite recycling system," sighed the Doctor. "I should have known."
"Well, it doesn't sound promising. Let's find another trash hatch and get out that way." John sounded winded.
Sherlock was about to reply when a brief dash of light heralded the entry of fresh refuse just above them. With a heavy grumble the mess sank towards the trio.
"Go, go!" the Doctor yelped. "Quickly! Find a hatch!"
Sherlock loosened his grip and resumed his slide. The bulky debris above was picking up speed. Bits of broken hardware rained down from above as it knocked against the chute walls.
Sherlock's fingers abruptly swept across an irregularity in the metal siding. "Stop!" he called, throwing his feet against the walls again. John thumped into him once more, the Doctor not far behind. The detective ground his teeth together and held on. "A hatch. Just above me, just there."
The Doctor fumbled along the siding. "Here –" he started, pushing the panel outward, but a chunk of technological flotsam slammed into his shoulder, turning the rest of his sentence into a cry of surprise.
Sherlock's feet slipped a few inches beneath the transferred impact. "Quickly!" he growled.
With a grunt of effort, the Doctor pulled himself back up to the hatch and tumbled out of the chute into the room beyond. His big hands rapidly reappeared. "Come on!"
John reached up and, grabbing his wrist, was dragged out of the shaft as well.
Sherlock struggled to work his way back up the chute to the opening. The Doctor's wristwatch glittered in the orange firelight from below. Chunks of plastic and metal pinged off the walls as the detective grabbed hold and hauled himself out of the chute. Sherlock's feet had hardly cleared the opening when the pile of electronic trash lumbered by, rattling the shaft and clunking noisily on its way down into the bowels of the ship.
The three men sat for a brief moment, sprawled on the floor, catching their breath. It was the Doctor who leapt up first, clapping his hands together and flicking his hair out of his eyes with a practiced toss of the head. "Right!"
Sherlock smoothly got to his feet, adjusting his coat as he lengthened into his full stature. His icy gaze swept about the room. The alarm continued in the distance, but this room was unoccupied. Rounded metal walls. Evenly spaced fluorescents. Spotless grated floor. Impressive bank of computer paneling. Rows of empty, peculiarly shaped little seats. A large glass surface, perfectly round, in the center. Two cups half empty. A gadget tossed across a keyboard.
"You mentioned two things you have lost," Sherlock observed, walking a slow circle around the glass table. "I suggest you fill us in."
"Really?" The Doctor waved his hands in exasperation. "We were threatened by an alien, materialized on its spaceship, and jumped down a trash chute, and you're asking personal questions?"
"Why not? The way this day is going, these could be the last personal questions you ever get. And unless you really think I'm fool enough to follow you around blindly, I'm not about to risk our lives without knowing more and drawing my own conclusions as opposed to following your whimsically shortsighted approach."
The Doctor looked affronted. "My goodness, someone needs to relax!" He turned to one of the computers, cutting off Sherlock's hot reply. "Two friends of mine, and some people I was helping, have all been captured by this Sontaran battle fleet. My own, er, spaceship is here on this craft too, which is how I got in, but my friend set her to be invisible, and…" He scratched his head. "Well, I've sort of lost it."
John suppressed a chuckle from his spot on the floor.
"Anyway, we'll rescue my friends, find my ship, and persuade the Sontarans to leave Earth alone. Easy."
"I hardly think the Sontarans will just allow us to walk around, give us your friends and then go home. Their…quaint demeanor notwithstanding."
"No," the Doctor mused. His fingers danced across the keyboard, which blipped and beeped happily in response. "Your Mr. McIlroy was apparently supposed to reveal the extent of Earth's defenses in exchange for help tracking down…well, eliminating you, it appears." The Doctor squinted at the screen. "This McIlroy was in way over his head."
"Almost everyone always is," Sherlock agreed dismissively.
John cleared his throat as he limped over to the pair of them. "Doctor, where are your friends stuck?"
"The prison section is on the opposite side of the ship. We can't get across right now without being noticed, but we can distract them well enough." With a flourish he hit one last key.
A loud whooshing noise and a heavy groaning from the very foundations of the ship had Sherlock and John staring about, and alarms anew followed hard on its heels. The Doctor squirmed in delight. "I jettisoned the entire set of escape pods from the starboard deck and released the stabilizing magnetization field on the fighter craft bay. Whammo!" He fist-pumped the air. "Sonta-ha ha ha!"
He looked proudly back and forth between the computer and the detective. The latter remained completely impassive.
"No?" The Doctor wilted beneath Sherlock's haughty gaze.
The computer dinged once more and projected an image into the air. A woman and a man were together in a cell; the woman appeared comatose, the man standing at the door, unperturbed. The adjacent cell was empty, but some kind of shimmer was distorting the image.
"Oh look, there are my friends! And the Gonsurvian herd as well, lovely. Mind you, I normally would be upset she's unconscious, but the idea of leaving those two in a room alone under normal circumstances is…" The Doctor's voice faded into a hoarse whisper. "…perhaps even worse."
"I'm sorry, who are they?" asked John.
"River Song and Captain Jack Harkness." The Doctor abruptly spun around and clapped a hand on each Londoner's shoulder. "Shall we go get them?"