VIII
The Doctor and Jack walked along the blasted ground, explosions sounding in the distance. Jack had no idea what the Doctor was planning, but he had a bad feeling that the Doctor was just winging it…
Which of course he was. He always winged it, really. This time however, he was winging it with a new plan forming as he went. He had found something out before they'd brainwashed him, and now he remembered.
"So, er," Jack began, "what's the plan?"
"Simple," the Doctor said. "We get ourselves captured."
"What?" Jack said, stopping where he stood.
"We get ourselves captured," the Doctor repeated, speaking slowly. "OK?"
"You don't need anybody to capture us though, Doctor," Jack said. "I'm an officer, remember?"
"Oh," the Doctor said. Then he grinned. "Yeah!"
--
"Make way, coming through; get out of my way…"
Jack was really making something of this whole 'officer with prisoner' routine. He pushed the Doctor along, and kept the laser trained on his back.
Once they were out of the crowded areas, Jack spun around to make sure they weren't being followed, and the Doctor, using his old sonic screwdriver (which he'd found after a quick rummage) scanned for the records room.
"This way!" he said, breaking into a run.
They ran along, until they got to a door marked "sealed." The Doctor broke it open, and thy entered.
It was just a room with a few computer banks in it. The Doctor walked up to the nearest one, and began typing. Jack watched the door.
--
In a very big office in a secure part of a very secure corporation on a very secure and invisible-to-satellites space station, a man watched the Doctor and Jack on a monitor.
"Well, I guess it had to happen some day," he muttered to himself. He flicked a switch on his desk. "Doris, get my personal shuttle ready, would you? There's a good girl."
--
"So what exactly are you looking for?" Jack asked.
"Records of the first settlers to this world," the Doctor replied. "They're human Jack. As human as you or Eilidh. Both factions are. So why would they be fighting?"
"I don't know," Jack said, "but I'm sure you'll tell me…"
"I intend to," the Doctor smiled, "as soon as I'm sure."
Suddenly, there was a knocking sound at the door.
"Whose in there?" a muffled voice shouted.
"No idea," the Doctor called. "Why don't you go away so you can find out?"
The knocking stopped for a moment, then came back with renewed vigour. The Doctor ignored it, and read the file that popped up on his screen. His eyes widened and he yelled in triumph…
Then he and Jack were transmatted out of the room, just as thirty guards came in with stun blasters aimed and ready.
--
The Doctor spun around, and found himself facing a man in a business suit, sitting on a comfortable chair.
"Hello," the man smiled. "I'm Tom Adams, Executive Manager of LASER-COMBAT. Nice to meet you."
The Doctor shook his hand. Jack looked from one to another, but decided to keep his mouth shut for now.
"So…" Adams said. "What do you know about Planet LC – 623?"
"That's its name?" the Doctor asked.
"That's what the company calls it," Adams replied. "We figure it's a pretty accurate description of what the planet is – well, what it used to be."
"Which is?" Jack asked.
"A game world," the Doctor replied, before Adams could. "Am I right?"
"Yes," Adams said. "Ho did you know?"
"It was in the records room," the Doctor said. "A planet designed for the playing of what is essentially laser tag. Hundreds of people at a time would go down, play the game, and come back up to be sent home."
The Doctors voice was cold, he was angry.
"But then one day an ion storm hit," he continued. "And you lost contact with the planet. For three hundred years, those people were trapped there. So they kept playing the game. They taught their children to play the game. They modified the weapons so they'd be better at playing the game. They built cities to live in. They built a world. And they kept playing the game, until it wasn't a game anymore. It was a real war. Every so often, when ships crashed, or landed to explore, the crew would be captured and drafted – and the scientists developed brainwashing machinery to make them more loyal. And when the ion storm cleared, and your ships finally were able to come back, they found a world at war. A war you'd started. But instead of helping these people, instead of trying to fix your mistakes, all you did was watch. And unless I'm very much mistaken, your waiting for one side to wipe out the other - am I correct?"
Adams said nothing; he merely stood there gaping like a fish.
"And if I was to guess why you were waiting," the Doctor said, continuing his train of thought, "I'd have to guess that it was because you wanted to recruit the surviving faction into an army for Earths Empire, making millions of credits in the process – hiring them out like mercenaries! Only you got it totally wrong didn't you? Because the two forces are so evenly matched as to never totally defeat each other and they've settled into an equilibrium, where they live with each other…"
"The perfect self sustaining war," Adams nodded. "Yes, we'd noticed. And you're half right; the company was originally going to do everything you said. But when the shareholders realised that the war would never end, they kicked out the previous chairman, and got me in instead."
"So what are you going to do?" the Doctor asked.
"Nothing," Adams said. "I'm going to watch them. Set beacons up to warn people off. And film them, obviously."
"What?!" the Doctor yelled.
"Well, we've got to make some money off of them," Adams smiled smugly. "Don't be so shocked. We just hide automated camera's down there that are constantly downloading their payload to us, then we edit the footage and send it to the TV stations back on Earth Prime. They broadcast it, pay money to us, we then keep half that money and put the rest into cleaning LC – 623's atmosphere, so they don't kill their world. Help them and make money, it's perfect."
The Doctor stared at him in abject disgust.
"You're sick," he said.
"No, I'm just practical," Adams replied smiling. "And you can have this."
He handed the Doctor and Jack pieces of cellophane with symbols on them.
"What's this?" Jack asked.
"Compensation," Adams smiled.
They were transmatted out before they could even reply.
--