No Control

Chapter Seven: Under Seige

The Doctor was shuffling his way across the flight deck towards the controls, keeping as far away from the CyberLeader as he could manage. "You're remarkably confident considering this planet contains the last of your kind. I mean, you are a dying race after all?"

The CyberLeader's helmet was glowing with power now. "WE ARE NOT DYING. WE HAVE BEEN WAITING."

"Waiting, huh?" the Doctor scoffed, getting closer towards the front of the cockpit. "And if this gaggle of stupid adolescents hadn't decided to try and wake you up, you'd still be 'waiting', wouldn't you? You've been sleeping for 253 years. How long were you expecting to wait? Millennia? Aeons?"

"WE WAIT FOR HUMANITY TO STUMBLE."

The Doctor was now as close as he dared. "Waiting in the dark? Like a bogeyman?" he asked lightly. "Well, the bogeyman's never wins. And neither will you!"

"YOU CANNOT RESIST US..." the CyberLeader was saying as the Doctor dived past the silver giant and to the control panel. His sonic screwdriver was at the ready, the miniature dish aimed at the panel. The air throbbed with a buzzing shriek and parts of the navigational computers began to crackle and pop, shorting out with a terminal chain of loud explosions.

The lights immediately flickered and the CyberLeader's voice – once so powerful it seemed to blast the listener against the wall – rapidly dried to a thin, slurring croak. "ULTIMATELY WE... MUST... win..." The voice trailed off into silence as the Doctor continued firing ultrasonic vibrations at the console. Already smoke was belching from the keyboard, the displays imploding with shards of broken glass and rivulets of melting paneling. There was a final string of firecracker-like detonations and the lights dimmed slightly.

The Doctor switched off the screwdriver and let out a deep sigh of relief.

The four teenagers stared at him in disbelief through the suddenly murky internal lighting. It was Antola who found her voice first. "What have you done?" she gasped, running over to the console. For a moment the Doctor thought he was to be punished for harming her new toy, but Antola didn't so much as glance at her "friend" Cy, who she shoved out of the way with some effort.

"What have you done?" she screamed, regarding the ruins of the flight controls. "You've destroyed all the computer linkages! The navigation systems are fried!" She rounded on the Doctor. "You've ruined my ship!" she shouted, grabbing him by the lapels.

Tharby was still in shock at learning Hols' fate. "Oh, who cares about your ship?" he spat.

"You should," Antola roared back at him. "It's the only way off this hellhole and this decrepit imbecile has crippled it forever! Even the manual controls are wrecked!"

The other teenagers looked accusingly at the Doctor. Even Julreth, who had had her mouth open in preparation to defend the Time Lord, now looked at him in horror. "Why?" she moaned.

"The CyberLeader believed that its underlings were reviving," the Doctor explained grimly. "If that's true, it'd be the work of moments for them to break into this ship and hot wire it. They'd be able to get it into orbit long before the theocracy forces arrive here!"

Phen looked disbelievingly around the cramped confines. "So? They couldn't fit more than six in here!" he protested, anger building up inside him.

"Don't you understand?" the Doctor shouted them down, completely losing his temper. "The Cybermen can destroy all humanity and every other civilization they come across! You thought the theocracy went to war with them just to pass the time? Just one Cyberman could convert a whole planetary population! A planet full of Cybermen to make attacks on other planets, other peoples! The Cybermen will take any chance they get to swarm across the galaxy like locusts – and you, Antola, have given them that chance!"

"That doesn't change the fact," she said icily, "we could have taken off right now and leave the Cyberons stranded here, does it? All you've done is endanger all our lives!"

The Doctor didn't even bother looking at her. "You seem to think that you still had any control over this ship. And you, remember, were the one who wired the CyberLeader's brain directly into the circuits."

Julreth looked at the lifeless body of the CyberLeader in rising horror. "You mean... he was controlling the ship?"

"Every last component," the Doctor confirmed grimly. "This little planet hopper was already lost."

"So how are we going to get out of here?" Phen demanded.

"I have my own transport, and the Cybermen can't break into it," the Doctor announced, straightening his cloak and heading for the open airlock and the darkness beyond. "We've got to collect the poor Guardian from her room and then we'll leave."

"Forget her!" said Tharby brutally. "If she's not dead already, she's probably one of them now!"

The Doctor knew that Tharby was right. However, Hols had been malingering in the main chamber when she'd been overwhelmed – assuming, of course the CyberLeader was telling the truth. Cybermen didn't need to boast or lie, but they were perfectly capable of doing so if they believed it would aide their cause. He could think of many intelligent people who'd believed they could bargain with the Cybermen, and found out of their duplicity too late. In any case, there was a chance that the Cybermen hadn't reached the living areas yet, or that she might be heading for the TARDIS...

Lost in thought, he tramped down the ramp into the grassy moors outside.

"Um... what are those lights?" he heard Julreth ask meekly.

The Doctor peered into the darkness, his keen eyes adjusting enough to differentiate the landscape from the sky. But bobbing between them were three bright spotlights, high above the ground. They reminded him of lanterns on miner's helmets for some reason, and even as watched another light appeared, and another and another. The lights grew larger and brighter, illuminating a shambling figure sprinting through the grass straight towards them.

Immediately Tharby and Julreth retreated back inside the ship, leaving the Doctor alone as the runner covered the remaining metres, slowing to a halt before him. Now in the patch of light thrown out from the interior of Antola's ship, he could see it was the Guardian. Her face was flushed, her once trance-like expression now frozen in terror. "The..." she gasped for breath, "they're coming!"

The Doctor didn't need to ask who she meant, for he now knew what the lights were – the searchlights of the Cybermen's helmets, allowing them to see in the dark until they recovered from hibernation enough to use their infra red scanners. He reached forward toward the Guardian to lead her inside.

At that second, the whole land was lit by a series of blinding, intensely blue flashes that turned the Guardian's body positive and negative. Her blistering uniform smoldered and her exposed skin crinkled and fused in the vortex of strobing energy. The discharge from the chest-unit of the nearest Cyberman ended and darkness fell once more.

There was nothing he could do for her now, he thought, but that simple truth didn't provide any comfort. But already the Cybermen were drawing closer and if he didn't want to be blasted with the deadly rays himself he had to flee before they got in range.

With a last, tortured look at the Guardian's twisted body, the Doctor ran back into the ship.

The Doctor was lucky to get inside the craft. Had anyone but Julreth been operating the airlock seal, he would have been left outside to face the Cybermen alone. The fact the silver giants seemed to have no idea who he was (presumably he was so far into the future the Cyber Race had long forgotten who he was, the way humanity now thought the Cybermen Cyberons) was simultaneously reassuring and worrying. It meant none of them had given a spare glance to the TARDIS or suspected that they had within their grasp a method of pillaging all time and space. It also meant he would get no special treatment, a situation that he'd been able to turn to his advantage on more than one occasion. But here and now he was nothing more or less than raw material conversion, just like everyone else.

"Dead-lock the door seals," the Doctor ordered, crossing to the hatch on the opposite side of the ship and using his sonic screwdriver on the circuits. "We need to be air tight!"

Antola hovered uselessly beside the CyberLeader's body. "But we only have oxygen reserves for four hours! After that we'll choke to death trapped in here?"

The Doctor fought down his temper. He needed to stay calm and more importantly stop these idiots panicking. Once again he regretted leaving Lucie behind. She could have pacified the humans and given him space to think. "That's four hours for me to think of a plan, especially if you stop talking and don't waste any oxygen."

Antola was tempted to give him the sharp end of her tongue at his attitude. It was only the reminder she couldn't afford to waste any air that stopped her. She settled for glaring and wished that Julreth had waited until after she'd killed the Doctor before having that temper tantrum. This whole expedition was turning out to be no fun at all!

She turned around and let out an involuntary scream as she saw a sea of blank Cyber mask staring at her through the forward viewscreens. It drove home just how tall the creatures were they could stand on the ground and still be eye level with the ship. Their bright search-lights flooded the cockpit with painfully bright light and in moments everyone's eyes were watering.

"Can those energy weapons of theirs be used on the ship?" asked Phen grimly.

"Easily," the Doctor replied as he crossed to the flight console and began to tinker with it.

"So they could just blow up the ship?"

"They won't do that," the Doctor said confidently.

"How can you be sure?" demanded Tharby, hysteria tightening his voice.

"Because they want this ship. They also want us. And the want their Leader," the Doctor added, nodding at the fallen metal giant. "Blowing the ship up is about the last thing they want to do."

"But you've wrecked the systems!" Tharby protested.

"They might not know that," the Doctor shrugged, still working. "Or they might think they can fix the damage. Either way, they won't take the chance when there's everything to lose, will they?"

"So what will they do?" asked Antola.

"Not sure. Probably wait for the oxygen to run out, us to pass out and then they'll cut their way through the hull with no resistance."

"Just let us die?" gasped Julreth, on the verge of hyperventilating.

"They want our bodies," the Doctor reminded her calmly. "Being alive helps, but they can transform the dead as easily as the living. But don't let it worry you. We've got hours yet and I think I might have a truly spectacular plan... assuming I can get this to work..."

The Doctor made another adjustment with the sonic screwdriver, there was a small explosion of sparks and suddenly a strumming guitar could be heard throughout the whole ship. His face broke into a toothy grin. "Oh, well, not what I wanted, but it's a start..."

A wistful male voice began to boom over the hidden speakers, accompanied by the guitar.

"It's not a bad remix, actually," the Doctor mused, returning to work.

"Oh switch it off," Antola snapped, gnawing a thumbnail.

"I'd listen to it if I were to," the Doctor suggested. "It's a reminder of everything you've got to lose if the Cybermen get hold of you – imagination, beauty, music... there will never be another note recorded if the Cybermen leave this planet. It also helps me think. Besides," he added with a cheeky grin to Julreth, who automatically smiled back, "it's also great to dance to!"

The Cybermen surrounded the entire craft in a ring. They numbered over one hundred, and more were coming – not just the continued trickle of fresh warriors from the shaft, but from other access points across the whole planet. With no oceans, level terrain and tireless pace, there were millions of Cybermen marching across the small artificial world straight towards this spot.

Four Cybermen, however, were marching away from the shaft. They all helped carry the blackened and still-smoking corpse of the Guardian, just as the aristocrat teenagers had carried the CyberLeader – albeit with no visible effort from their hydraulic muscles. They made their way into the shaft and disappeared into the darkness with the body.

The other Cybermen continued to wait outside the ship, shining their lanterns straight at the hull as the muffled music could be heard from within thanks to the duo-quadrophonic sound system. It may have been music to those who sang and recorded it to, but to the assembled hoards of Cybermen it was nothing but incoherent, pointless noise to be ended and erased at the earliest opportunity.

Like some ghastly parody of a rock concert, the silver beings stood in the meadow as the music played.

The faint strains of the music could be heard outside the Guardian's living quarters where two Cybermen placed the microwaved corpse of the Guardian into a waiting conversion chamber. Strapping the body into position, the figures stepped back as a metal skullcap sprouting wires and components descended to the shriveled head of the Guardian, letting out a menacing hum as it did so. Servos whirred into life, connections were made, saws and laser drills glinted dully.

The skullcap sank into the lifeless cranium, piercing the brain and integrating it with the machine. Soon all four limbs were removed at the torso and replaced with prostheses, the internal organs either stripped out or adapted, heart, digestive tract, reproductive systems, all were scooped away as the skeleton reinforced with arnickleton alloy, wires and hydraulics. The humming of the conversion machinery faded as, with a soft crunch, the handlebars of the Cyberman helmet closed home into the sides of the helmet and lodged in the last organic vestiges. With the last components snapped into place, the bulb in the centre of the helmet began to glow with light.

A new Cyberman hauled itself out of the tomb and surveyed the area where once a human woman had quietly gone mad with isolation. The newborn Cyberman did not know this, and if it had, it wouldn't care. All that mattered was the survival of the Cyber Race.

The three Cybermen turned and return to join their brothers on the surface, leaving the conversion unit's automatic systems to tidy away the amputated meat and spilt blood in their wake.