The Traveler

'Communication, communication, communication. The word itself doesn't translate easily into SenSaru'i, as you can see. One has to start small, and build slowly.

Or, rather, one cannot build at all. It takes two, at least, as does everything worthwhile.

Much easier to do when you don't have a warship looming overhead, of course.'

^..^

Corin walked swiftly into the Control Room at Torchwood, and Rose immediately ran into his arms. They held each other tightly for a long, long moment, taking comfort in the physical connection, even though they'd been in constant telepathic contact since he'd woken from the stun blast. He'd pulled away from the medics as soon as an Army helicopter had landed, jumping in past startled soldiers just as the orders to convey him to London had come in over the radio – Rose had a long reach when she needed it.

He glanced around the large room, seeing the military and government liaisons scattered about – easily marked by their uniforms or suits, as opposed to the casual jeans and lab coats worn by the Torchwood staff. Downing Street had wasted no time implementing the Protocols, then. He grinned briefly down at his bondmate, arguably the most important person on the planet at that moment.

She grinned back, catching his thought, then dropped her arms and swung back to the action. "Stuart? Any luck with that translator yet?" A fifty-ish lab-becoated man with greying dreadlocks hunched over a console at one side of the room simply shook his head, continuing to frantically type commands into his computer.

Corin looked up at the huge viewscreen covering the entire wall at the front of the room. Much of it was devoted to several maps and diagrams, tracking the mother ship's orbit as well as the landers' trajectories. In the center, however, was a large image of one of the aliens, barking out commands in their language, apparently communicating with the landing craft. Corin concentrated on the speech issuing from the speakers for a moment, frustrated at the continuing silence from his vast memory. Fat lot of good all those thousands of languages I used to know are doing me now.

Movement on the trajectory diagrams caught his eye. "What's going on?" he asked Rose.

"They're coming back down, but not back to Cambridge. They're scattering and heading for different places around the globe, apparently. We haven't pinpointed them yet."

Corin swore. More humans were about to be kidnapped, and he was helpless to stop it, just as he'd been helpless to keep Donna safe. Rose caught his hand and squeezed it, then turned away to assist General Myers, who was busy trying to contact and coordinate operations with the military leaders of the countries which were the apparent next targets.

Over the next hour, they frantically worked together to mount some kind of defense, as reports from the six landing sites came in. Three were successfully defended; the ships took off again from sites in Germany, Canada, and the US without any new hostages after, astonishingly, releasing some of the captives taken from Cambridge. It wasn't until the third time that happened that somebody happened to notice that all the returnees were males. A fourth, unfortunately, wasn't prepared, and more girls disappeared into the skies from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma in Mexico City. The aliens had apparently learned to be more selective, and sorted out the sexes before driving the coeds into the ship.

They were waiting for the next site to report in – the lander was heading towards Lahore, Pakistan – when someone near the front let out a cheer. "Thank you, Stuart!"

Dreads looked up, confused. "What? The translator's not working yet!"

"But the sharks are speaking English now!"

Everyone fell silent and listened, astonished, as they registered that the words now emanating from the speakers were, indeed, the king's English.

Rose and Corin turned to stare at each other, the same thought in both their minds. *No, they're not.* And if Stuart's not-yet-operational translator program wasn't the reason, then...

Then there must be a TARDIS nearby, broadcasting translations telepathically into everyone's mind.

They whirled in unison, scanning the perimeter of the room. And there, leaning casually against the back wall, grinning, was a stranger. Slightly shorter than Corin, he looked to be in his late thirties, with expressive brown eyes and mid-length curly brown hair.

He wasn't Corin's mirror image. It wasn't the Doctor - at least, not the face they knew. Which meant...

Rose took a deep, shuddering breath and stepped hesitantly forward. "Joshua?" she breathed through prickling tears.

The stranger's grin faltered, as his own eyes grew damp. He took his own deep breath, then said, "Got any hot cocoa on, Mum?"

And that was all it took. All three of them were suddenly in each other's arms, weeping, as Rose and Corin's prodigal son came home.

^..^

Surprisingly, Rose was the first to be coherent again. "How long have you been gone?" she asked, tenderly holding his face between her hands, trying to gauge how old he looked.

"A very long time. I've been in the other universe for over six decades, personal time."

"And you don't look a day over two hundred," Corin quipped, covering the jolt he'd felt at the realization that his son truly was, now, a full Time Lord. Josh grinned at him, but Corin turned serious. "Your being here right now isn't a coincidence, is it?"

Josh matched his change of tone. "No. I actually broke through a very, very long way into the future, and stopped off partway back to read your biographies to find a good time for a visit. The very first sentence was about this incident, in which you," and his voice took on a mock-news announcer timbre, "almost single-handedly staved off an alien invasion, with the help of a mysterious stranger known only as The Traveler." He grinned. "That's me. I'm the Traveler; have been for a very long time."

Rose gasped, slowly, her eyes misting again at this further proof: a Time Lord-style public name, like the Doctor had worn for centuries. He smiled down at her (When did he get so tall? she wondered), saying, "But of course you can still call me Joshua. It's my family name," referring to the names Time Lord parents had given their children at birth, that were thereafter only used by close family members, rather than their later-discovered, forever-kept-secret True Names.

Corin managed to keep his mind on business. "And did it say how we manage to accomplish this miracle?"

Josh gave him a level look. "Not you." He turned to Rose. "You." He paused and grinned again. "Sixty seconds?"

Rose nodded. That had always been their family's not-so-secret code for 'talk fast, buster'.

"These are the SenSaru."

Corin broke in. "I don't recognize them at all."

"Think Selani."

Corin gasped at the new name, dredging it out of deep memory with an almost physical effort. "Selani... I never knew them. They went extinct!"

Josh nodded. "And the SenSaru are about to. Their planet, SenSaru'a, is dying, poisoned by their own industry. They're down to only a few thousand individuals left. And the first to die were their women. Every last one. This," he waved his hand at the viewscreen, "is their attempt at repopulation."

Rose gasped. "That's why they're taking only females!"

He nodded. "And the truly, ridiculously tragic thing is that this is their fifth attempt. Four times before now, they've raided other planets, other species, taking shiploads of females back to their planet, only to watch them die within a few weeks from the same poison."

Rose gasped, clutching her son's shirt in horror. "Josh! They've got Donna!"

He took both her hands in his. "I know, Mum. I know. It's OK. I promise you, she's all right. She'll be OK."

She closed her eyes tight for a moment, forcing herself to breathe. She got herself back in control in a moment, accepting his reassurances; she had no choice. "OK. But why me?"

"That's the ironic part of the story. Before this tragedy came on, their society was very heavily matriarchal. The men had the brawn, the women had the brains – quite literally; they were said to be easily twice as intelligent as the men. These..." he waved again at the screen, dismissively this time, "these are boys out of school, trying desperately to solve a problem they don't even begin to understand."

He turned back to her. "Your job, then, is this. First you have to get them to see you, and by extension their captives, as people, individuals with rights and dignity, and as women worthy of the respect they used to pay their own, rather than breeding stock." He smiled again, surprising her. "That's where Donna comes in. She's up there already, laying the ground work. You just need to get their attention and ram the message home. Once you've done that, you can suggest the true, ultimate solution, that will benefit both species."

"And what's that?"

He shook his head. "First things first."

^..^

A few minutes later, Rose was ready. Captain Bartok, an Army communications specialist, had been concentrating fiercely on wringing every drop of intelligence he could from the now-understandable SenSaru broadcasts, and now gave her a quick, efficient briefing. "The one on screen is named JanDel, rank Sub-Commander. They've referenced a Commander SesTok several times; I believe that would be the captain of the ship. JanDel has the landers that were repulsed in low orbit, waiting new targets, while the last two ships land."

Brennan, Rose's long-time Assistant Director, took over with the current situation on the ground. "The fifth ship just landed in Lahore, as we suspected, but the Pakistani's are pushing them back. No hostages were unloaded there, we think the defenders may have hit them too fast. The last ship is headed to Beijing, expected landing in about forty minutes. The Chinese have been alerted and have military units headed to their universities."

Doctor Greene broke in. "We've analyzed the pattern. They're landing at universities closest to nuclear fusion power plants; evidently their sensors can tell them which buildings contain large concentrations of humans, and the uni's are the best for that, day or night. The Beijing University of Technology has their own fusion reactor; that's their next target if the pattern holds. We've sent that info to the Chinese, so they should be ready for them."

General Myers had the anchor position. "I've just finished a conference call with the G8 leaders and their military heads, giving them the latest intel," he nodded towards the Traveler, indicating the inclusion of what he'd told them. "They have unanimously agreed to give you provisional charter for the next phase of operations, contacting the aliens and negotiating for the release of the hostages. Military responses are temporarily on hold, pending the outcome."

Corin, standing with Joshua at the back of the room, was almost physically struck by the magnitude of the situation, and the irony of his current backbencher position after centuries of taking the lead. He was in awe, once again, of his magnificent, brilliant life's partner. Catching her eye, he grinned. *Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth.* he thought at her.

She fought down a smile, and dredged up her best mental cockney: *Shut it.*

Then she waved everyone back, turned to the screen and the camera, and took a deep breath. "Patch me through."