The TARDIS floated through an empty expanse of space, shielded from detection by its ancient age, and the fact that the Daleks were distracted. Their main fleet was engaged by the Time Lords main group of Battle TARDIS's, and it was a fierce fight, but the point wasn't for them to destroy the fleet. The point was to draw the battle out. That was his job.
He watched the battle with a resigned expression. It had been hard getting hold of Lady President Romana to organise this, but he was one of about 3 people who knew how to contact her, and one of two that could convince her to do something like this. He really hoped her trust was well founded- they hadn't really talked since that Anti-Time incident. Of course, he hadn't had to do it. He could have gone back. He could've changed his mind. But Ace was there. And he owed it to her to be strong. She was right, of course. It wasn't like him to let a war rage on- to let people die- like this. He set his TARDIS into the first phase of its flight and went into action.
"Ace, how's it going?" Ace was sat on the floor, a mess of wires linking the console of the Gallifreyan Space-Time machine to her primitive space bike. "What's your plan here, professor?" She asked, cautiously, as if she didn't trust him. She probably didn't, he thought. He did look and act completely different. She probably still expected him to use her as a pawn, but he was past that. He hoped.
"Simple. This machine of yours is a simple construct, but, if we wire it up correctly, the TARDIS can use it as a shield. We're safe here, but where we're going, we'll need something much more protective." He moved Ace out of the way and checked the wires himself. They were all connected perfectly. He moved to his feet and set the controls to guide the TARDIS to where it needed to go. This was not going to go well, and he knew it.
"Wait, where are we going?" Ace scrambled to her feet and angrily looked at him. He pretended to ignore her, but he knew it wouldn't work. "Tell me!" He looked at her calmly, but he knew this wasn't going to go well.
"We're flying to the Dalek ship."
"But they'll kill us! Shoot us out of space!"
"No, Ace, you misunderstand. I don't mean flying into battle. I mean we're going to materialise on the Dalek ship."
"So we're landing on a fully armed Dalek ship. As much as I trust you, that's still a death wish. And what about the fleet? If they blow up the ship we're on, won't we die anyway?"
"Simple. The fleet exists as a distraction. They aren't to seriously engage the Dalek ships- they're much too defended for that. Instead, they have to distract the Dalek's energy so we can sneak into their engine rooms. No Daleks ever go there- it would cost valuable corridor space to let them down there. We sit there, then we…" He gulped. He was going to regret saying this. Once he said it, there was definitely, finally, no going back. "We do something. Something that will take them out for good."
"We kill them." Ace inquired, an eyebrow raised. Of course- she always put it bluntly.
"Yes. Now, if you want to be there to kill them, I suggest you hold on. The shields will be weakened, but this is still going to be rough."
Ace grabbed the central console as the Doctor started phase 2 of his plan. He pulled hard on a lever, and the TARDIS shuddered. The living ship pushed hard against to land on the remote area of the Dalek ship, but it was difficult, near impossible, like a person pushing through custard. She started burning rooms to give her more energy, so she could push through the shield. It wasn't enough though. She started burning more and more, more than she ever should. She was in pain, and she felt like she was literally burning. This wasn't going well.
It turned out the TARDIS could feel what was happening inside her. The console room's walls were burning up, with parts exploding, revealing a blank white wall behind it. The grand ceiling was starting to crack, and one of the surrounding pillars exploded in a spray of metallic shards. The Doctor and Ace ducked, but neither of them were hit. Their skin was starting to blister from the heat. The Doctor looked at his screen- 70% of the TARDIS had been burned up for energy. He knew the shields were too powerful for a fully equipped battle TARDIS to try and materialise, but he had hoped his small, ancient, rusty TARDIS would be subtle enough to sneak through. He had failed though. He and Ace would burn here. He had failed his companion, his friends that would fall to the Daleks when they beat the Time Lords he failed…
The TARDIS was struggling as hard as she could. She wouldn't make it. 'Oh well. At least I saw some of the universe'. She was remarkably calm about dying, she noted. Or had she already died? Tenses were confus- Whoa!
She slipped through the edge of the custard shield and landed on her feet. She was alive. Tired, empty and still on fire, but alive!
In the console room, or rather, what was left of it, the Doctor and Ace fell to their feet as the TARDIS landed with a huge jolt. They looked at the screen in shock. It said 95% of the TARDIS had been burned up as fuel. "I didn't think it would use that much," The Doctor mumbled in shock.
"Professor, can we please go outside. It's too hot in here." Ace was panting from the heat.
The Doctor nodded, flicking a switch on the blackened console. Water started raining from the ceiling, and the fires slowly flickered out. The whole room was covered in soot.
"Let's go." The duo walked to the front door and it swung open. The stepped out of the doors into a blank metal room. It wasn't very large, and it had no doors leading to it. What it did have, however, was a window that looked onto ta large revolving mass of red energy.
"Those are the main engines." The Doctor hugged Ace, attempting to comfort her. She pushed him off, scowling. She turned to scold him, but her face melted when she saw his miserable expression. "It's alright Professor. We can deal with this. You can fix the TARDIS. But right now, you have to do this. You owe it to your friend you made a deal with."
"Ace, I told you not to listen." He smiled sadly at her. "But, since when do you ever listen?" He stood up and went back into the TARDIS, leaving Ace alone to listen to the Dalek ship's whirring. When he exited, he had a large portion of her bike, a toolkit, a piece of Dalek armour and a small, complicated-looking device. He sat against the TARDIS and started working to rewire his items into one machine.
After a few hours, which Ace had spent exploring the burnt remains of the TARDIS, she re-exited the TARDIS to see the Doctor still working on his machine. It mostly made of her bike, with the Dalek armour set onto a holder. There were joined by the unique device that connected two leads onto a wristband around the Doctor's arm. "Professor, what will it do?" He tuned her out, focusing on what he was about to do, and what it would mean. "Doctor?"
He turned to her, responding to the sound of his voice. He spoke slowly and calmly, with determined precision. "It will lock onto all the traces of Dalekanium in the nearby space. It will atomise it. That will take out the majority of the Dalek fleet here. It has the most temporally active ships, the strongest war machines, all the experimental designs… It will effectively cripple the Daleks. And, since it's linked to the TARDIS, it fixes the event in time- basically meaning the Daleks can't ever go back and change it."
"Where does it get all the power for that?" Ace looked at him for a while, curious, but then worried. He hadn't answered for about 5 seconds, and that meant, since he usually couldn't help sharing his genius, that he didn't want to tell her.
"Simple, Ace. It comes from me."
He flicked a switch on his wrist band and screamed in pain. The band was burning his lifespan, taking his remaining years and turning them into destructive energy. The bike started to charge itself, but it was interrupted when the Doctor was wracked with a larger bout of pain than usual. He flinched massively, and the leads were pulled out of his wristband. He collapsed to the ground, unable to move.
Ace noticed what had happened, and knew that, even if they weren't supposed to be able to reach here, the Daleks would find out about a large amount of energy being gathered near their own engines. She didn't know what it would accomplish, but she grabbed the two cables in her right hand.
"Ace, no!"
She jolted in huge amounts of pain, the muscles that controlled her hand locking into position, making sure she wouldn't let go. She screamed as the bike began to gather more energy, destroying her remaining lifespan to get it.
"Ace! You have to let go!" The Doctor slowly, shakily, stood up and stumbled toward his companion. He fell over, but picked himself back up again. But it was too late.
Ace collapsed to the floor, shattered both in body and mind as the Doctor's device fed the energy through the bike's engine, which had been reconfigured as an atomic shredder by the Doctor. A pulse of energy blossomed from it, but it quickly grew and left the room they were in, leaving it untouched. The engines they could see out of the window, however, were not so lucky. The split apart into their base elements, as the pulse spread onwards, eating the armour that made up the skin of the Dalek saucer.
The Doctor didn't focus on any of that, though. He focused on his companion, lying in front of him, her life forfeit. He knew reached for her hand, and she took it, slowly focusing on his face with bleary eyes. "Professor, what happened?"
The Doctor tried to stifle a tear, but failed. "Ace… you burned up your life. You're dying. But, you're not. Look at yourself." Ace raised her head, supported by the Doctor's other hand, to look at her body. It was slowly turning transparent. "Professor…"
"Ace, it didn't just burn up your future time to blow up the Daleks. It destroyed your past as well. You erased yourself from time. I shouldn't have let you come! I shouldn't have let you do that…"
The Doctor started shouting to the room in general, but Ace just hit him with a fading hand. "Professor, shut up! It was my choice to come here, and it was my fault in the first place. I suggested you do this. Now tell me- how many people have I saved?" He couldn't meet her eyes… "How many?" she shouted, at the top of her lungs, which almost made her pass out.
"All of them, Ace. Everyone, ever." He hugged her, and this time, she did not object.
"Professor, just one last request, before I…" She didn't want to finish her sentence.
"Yes, Dorothy McShane, of Earth?" The Doctor said this quietly.
"Can I see the stars? One last time?" She looked into his eyes as she asked this, and smiled as softly as she could at him.
The Doctor didn't say anything else. He just helped her to her feet, so she could look out the window and see the vast expand of space in front of her, with the decaying remains of Dalek battleships floating in between them.
"Profess… Doctor, tell my mum what happened to me. Let her know." The Doctor remained silent as he held Ace there to watch the stars as she faded from existence.
He let out a final tear as he considered her last words. "Ace… she won't remember you. No-one will."
He slumped to the floor, and it was then he took notice of his glowing hands. While he hadn't burned up enough of his life span to save Ace, he had used enough to wear out this body. He got to his feet, as he felt his whole body fill with a familiar feeling. This had happened to him seven times before, and it was about to happen again.
He stumbled into his ruined TARDIS, where already the walls were slowly repairing themselves with the original white walls, where the ceiling was slowly being taken over too. He didn't mind. He was sick of this console room. He had let too many companions die, but not again. He wouldn't be close to anyone again. He wouldn't let anyone else he cared for die…
"This time, it will be different."
He set the TARDIS into motion, the column moving easier now that the shield had gone and it has significantly less mass. It slowly moved through the Time Vortex, not heading anywhere but somewhere else. Inside it, its sole occupant lied on the floor, glowing softly golden. His features changed, his face becoming different, every cell in his body being healed, rejuvenated, regenerated…
The new man stood up. He was still wearing the old man's clothes, still standing in the remains of his ship. But he was new. The Ninth. That was what mattered. He looked down at his singed clothes, at the console around him, and he smiled. It wasn't a smile of joy, or of sorrow, but simply a smile that, at last, he was here.
"Well, well, well. This should be interesting."
Well, that was a long one. I hope you enjoy, and feedback really would be welcome. There will be a final chapter, but it'll be a surprise what happen! Untill next time, buy!
