You're all queuing up to exterminate me for not updating sooner, aren't you? There's a couple of good reasons for that, though.
One - I had writer's block for this fic. It's just that I sometimes get the feeling that my skills at writing something original aren't all that great. You know what that's like, right?
Two - I've been a bit busy with 'Forever Running' AND 'The Raggedy Man & the Regal Girl', even though I sometimes (*read often*) get writer's block for the former.
To boil it all down; I'M SORRY! PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!
Anyway, here's chapter 4. Hope you enjoy reading it! :/
Death Trap
The stretch of Time that passed at UNIT HQ from the meeting between the Children of Time (at least, those who had been able to gather there) and the arrival of the TARDIS was almost agonising. They didn't have the Time to be waiting around – they had to stop Sutekh now! No doubt he was already plotting his return...and if and when he did, there would be no chance of stopping him.
However, no sooner had they begun thinking this...than the TARDIS began materialising in the room.
"About time, too," Jack remarked, a bit irritated.
"It does make you wonder how they can call themselves Time Lords, doesn't it?" Jonathan replied dryly. "And I really shouldn't be disrespecting my elders, should I?"
"No," Sarah Jane told him. "No, you shouldn't. That's our job." Almost everyone began chuckling...just as the Doctor and Romana stepped out of the TARDIS.
"Allons-y!" the older Time Lord called out as he stepped out. He soon began to notice their giggles and chuckles. "What?" No answer. "Stop it!"
"What are you giggling about?!" Romana snapped at them as they continued. "There's an Osiran out there, planning to kill us all, and you're just giggling your faces off!" These were the words that stopped them in their tracks. "Thank you," she told them. "Now...let's get to work."
"That remark is not logical, Mistress Romana," chirped a voice she recognised – when she looked at the floor, she saw a Robotic Dog she'd never imagined she'd meet again after leaving E-Space. "Master Jonathan and his associates have been summarising all available information pertaining to Sutekh."
"K-9!" she cried happily. "A newer model?" she turned to the Doctor, who nodded.
"How did you think Mr Smith generated the Block Transfer Warp Field, Mum?" Jonathan asked his mother, smiling.
"Block Transfer?!" the Doctor cried. His son nodded. "But that can only be done by-"
"Species with highly-developed computational powers?" the de facto Time Lord finished for him. "Good thing Mr Smith is a Xylok, isn't it?"
"In some ways," Maria muttered under her breath, her mind going back to her second encounter with the Slitheen Family – Mr Smith had proven to be capable of great deviousness on that occasion. Clyde couldn't help but nod in agreement with her muttered statement.
The Doctor then began taking stock of his son's dress sense. Gone was the multicoloured scarf, baggy trousers and rust red corduroy jacket he'd been wearing when he first arrived in N-Space...and in their place could be seen a cream-coloured jacket with red piping, an ivory red-collared polo shirt, cream-coloured chinos plus braces, white plimsolls, and a CELERY stick on the left lapel of the jacket.
"My son wears a vegetable!" he exclaimed to Romana, overjoyed, almost completely forgetting about the fatally serious problem on their hands. She smiled, but made sure to train her peripheral vision on two UNIT Soldiers in the room with them. Something didn't look quite right with them. One was standing almost robotically...the other looked like he was trying to conceal a smirk.
"Is something wrong with that, Dad?" Jonathan asked him, not failing to take notice of the fact that his mother was partly focused on the two nearby UNIT Soldiers were being conspicuously quiet about the whole thing.
"Wrong?! Kiddo, you rule! You rule!" Despite the urgent nature of the situation, the others present couldn't help but snigger at the Doctor. "You wear a CELERY STICK!"
"Dad!" the boy stopped him. "There is something very nasty coming for us and we've got to do something about it very, very, quickly. Right now, it really would help if my skinny idiot of a father wasn't ranting in my face about my sartorial grace." With that, the Doctor sobered up.
"Quite," Jack agreed, cutting in. "Sartorial debate later – Sutekh now."
"Just what I was about to say – especially since I thought we'd seen the last of him in 1911," Sarah Jane added her own two pence, fixing a stare at the Doctor for the second part of her sentence.
"So did I, Sarah," the Time Lord sighed, the full gravity of the situation beginning to weight down on his mind. "But it looks like I forgot my own advice to you. 'Never underestimate Sutekh...'"
"'...he thinks of everything,'" the Journalist finished, repeating the words used by the 4th Doctor when he, Sarah Jane and Laurence Scarman had been hiding from the animated cadaver of Laurence's brother, Marcus, in the Scarman Priory. "But how could he have found a way out of the Time-Space Tunnel?"
"We haven't the faintest idea, Sarah Jane," Romana told the woman the Doctor had oft-called his best friend (aside from Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, that is), who she had decided to name honorary aunt to her son.
"This is a sentence I never thought I'd say...but right now, I hate not knowing," the Doctor got out through gritted teeth. He had hoped never to stumble across Sutekh again after 1911...but even leaving the monster trapped in the Time-Space Tunnel had been the result of wishful thinking on his part. Battling an Osiran permitted no margin for error. He'd been 'shooting from the hip', so to speak, defeating Sutekh last time – he couldn't rely on the chance of the Time Factor in this battle of cunning. "This is maddening!" he all but growled in vexation, unaware that he and the Children of Time were being watched...
*DW* elsewhere... *DW*
One of the Family Slitheen was watching the live stream from the Servicer's visual feed. It was a good thing that the Slitheen made a habit of using Slipstream Compression Technology – they may not have been able to get this information otherwise. Even more fortuitous had been the fact that they'd fitted it to the new Servicers the Great One had ordered them to develop, should they ever need to use the technology for the Robots. It really sped up the flow of information in this job.
"Makes you wish Horus and the other Osirans had destroyed him, doesn't it?" Sarah Jane Smith, a woman in his family's bad books, asked the spiky-haired man in a brown pinstriped suit. The Operator couldn't help but wonder if this was the Time Lord known as the Doctor – though the physical appearance of the man didn't correlate to the description the Great One had provided, Miss Smith appeared to interact with him well enough. The Great One had told them of a Time Lord ability to cheat death by changing every aspect of their bodies...
There was one way to be certain, however – and that was to show the visual feed to the Destroyer himself. He therefore decided to forward it to the Liaison...
*DW* UNIT Base... *DW*
"How did you stop Sutekh last time, if he's as powerful as they say?" Clyde asked the Time Lord. Maybe they'd have a chance if they knew how the Doctor had pulled it off?
"To put it very simply, Clyde...he modified a Time-Space Tunnel to age Sutekh to death," Romana was the one who provided the answer. "The only trouble with taking that course of action was that it only destroyed his body..."
"So only his mind still survives," Jonathan surmised. However, he soon noticed a problem with this summary...and it was a big one. As a matter of fact, he could see two...possibly three. "But that only raises three more questions, as far as I can see."
"Three?!" all Humans present, save for Sarah Jane, exclaimed in shock.
"Yes," the de facto Time Lord told them. "One – how did he survive the destruction of his corporeal body? Two – how did he leave the Ancient Osiran graffiti message we found near Park Vale? Three – why did he resort to something as base as graffiti?"
"Suggest that Ancient Osiran graffiti was not written by Sutekh, Master Jonathan," K-9 offered a possible answer.
"What makes you say that, K-9?" Maria Jackson beat the others to the question.
"Analysis of errors in the inscription indicates lack of considerable experience with the dialect," the Robot Dog supplied the answer.
"Of course!" Romana cried in an epiphany. "Whoever left that message knew which hieroglyphics to use, but lacked expertise on how to write them! They were just copying from a book, following an instruction!"
"Which can only mean Sutekh's managed to secure the services of a helper," Jack surmised. "That answers Question Two."
"But who'd want to help someone this monstrous?" Gwen asked the question that was probably on all of their minds. "Looking at Sutekh's track record, no-one in their right mind would!"
"Which only means that they're not in their right mind," Sarah Jane surmised that issue rather succinctly. "They either think they'll get something from it if they help him, or they're afraid he'll destroy them if they don't."
"Or both," the Doctor finally added. "But as to why he'd use graffiti? I'm guessing Sutekh just told them to leave a message that wouldn't mean much to most but would grab the attention of someone as clever as me." He didn't fail to notice Romana rolling her eyes at this, but he let it slide – they had to remain focused. "That means two different things. Thing One – he told them what to say, but not how to say it, which gives us the answer for Question Three."
"So what's Thing Two?" Jonathan asked his father, though he had a strange inkling.
"Thing Two...is that this is a trap," the Time Lord answered him. "One great, enormous trap...and the message was the bait..."
"The bait that was impossible for a Time Lord to refuse," one of the two UNIT Soldiers in the Meeting Room joined in the conversation for the first time, taking everybody aback. What alarmed the Children of Time most of all was that though his voice bore the faintest slimmer of a mechanical edge...it was a thoroughly sneering tone.
"Yeah, he took the bait...hook, line and sinker!" the other UNIT Soldier jeered, his voice sounding perfectly natural by comparison. But the first Soldier merely scowled.
"Be silent," the first snapped at the second. "I do not care for your primitive idiosyncrasies." The second seemed to obey the first's command at once, leaving the first UNIT Soldier to resume conversation with the infiltrated party. "Considering that the Time Lords are extinct, I do not pretend to understand how you encountered others of your race after the outcome of the Last Great Time War. However, this will not hinder my plan in any conceivable area – rather fortuitously, you have provided the perfect means for me to exact my vengeance, Oncoming Storm."
The Doctor's eyes widened, pupils dilating in horror. Though the voice was different, no doubt due to having to speak through whatever had been spying on them...the malevolence was all too familiar to the Time Lord. And if the next words spoken were any indication, it was all too familiar to Sarah Jane as well...
"Sutekh," she whispered in horror. The other Children of Time couldn't fail to notice one thing about the horror in her voice – it surpassed that of the occasion she'd encountered Davros for the second time in her life. Though it had been whispered, it was noticed by the UNIT Soldier whom Sutekh had been using as his medium.
"And of course, one could hardly forget the girl who assisted the Time Lord who deprived me of my powers in his effort to destroy me," the creature that was not a UNIT Soldier sneered. "We meet again, Sarah Jane Smith. I have a host of acquaintances who have found you to be quite a thorn in their side." Gauging her look of confusion, he dropped the bombshell. "Perhaps you'd prefer to have these matters clarified for you...by the Family Slitheen."
As the looks of confusion turned into shock, both UNIT Soldiers moved their hands to their foreheads...and made an unzipping motion, confirming the suspicions of the Doctor, Jack, Sarah Jane and her friends. Sutekh was being helped...by the Slitheen. He must have promised them a great deal for them to cooperate with him...with that in mind, the Doctor couldn't help but be reminded of the Time he'd spent being tortured in Sutekh's Tomb in Saqqara. But where the second UNIT Soldier's skin fell away to reveal a Slitheen, the first's revealed something else entirely...
"A Service Robot!" the Doctor exclaimed in surprise, taking in the obvious explanation for the mechanical-yet-sneering tone that had been spoken by the first UNIT Soldier as he ushered Romana behind him as though to keep her safe (though he would have done the same for Jonathan had he been near enough). However, this one appeared quite different from the Mummy-esque Servicers he'd encountered in 1911. This one, while still bulky and thickset, had a more Humanoid frame than the earlier versions. Gone too was the wiry web of metal, protected by bindings and bandages, that gave the last ones shape...and in its place was a more armoured figure. It also had a pair of Humanoid hands, no doubt to better fit into the skin suit.
"You have been a fool, Doctor, to believe you had seen the end of me," Sutekh laughed ominously through the Service Robot. "I have not been idle in the years since we last met. Now, you shall pay for your arrogance and that of your wretched kind, Time Lords...as will every last one of those precious Human insects you care so much about!"
*DW* elsewhere... *DW*
As all of this had been happening, the Slitheen Family had been anxiously awaiting the Lord of Death's instruction. And once he'd finished announcing the doom of their common foes, the instruction finally arrived.
"Secure the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith! I have long desired to make them suffer personally! Kill the rest of their rabble!" the Last Osiran commanded, his voice betraying his hatred and lust for vengeance.
"It will be done, Mighty Great One," the Liaison acknowledged, before turning to the Service Robot Operator. "You heard the Great One – it's high time we eradicate their troublesome little gang and deliver Miss Smith and the Doctor to him!"
"At once, Brother," the Operator replied, before using the Cytronic Controls to use the Servicer to begin their attack on the opposing party in the UNIT Base...