Negotiations

'One step forward, two steps back. Progress was ever thus, throughout history – and we were no different.'

^..^

Gill slits wide in hissing surprise, SesTok turned to gaze at the female, DonNah. "They are transmitting in SenSaru'i? But you don't understand me now..." No spark of comprehension appeared on her face. He shrugged. "I'm on my way," he told JanDel and shut off the comm.

He picked his jacket up off the bunk and slid it back on as he walked towards the door. On reaching it, though, he turned back and looked at DonNah again where she remained near the viewscreen, then decided. "You come, too." He motioned her to his side, repeating both words and gesture when she hesitated. Once she'd come up to him, he pointed emphatically at the deck at his side and slightly behind him. "Stay right there next to me."

Donna didn't understand the words, of course, but the meaning was clear. "Yeah, I get it. Heel."

He looked sharply at her a moment longer, seeing if she seemed to understand, and suddenly went back into echo mode: "Hhhh-eel."

Startled, she couldn't help it; she snorted, then giggled through the hand that flew to her mouth. He stared again, then began a peculiar huffing through his gill slits, a grin trying to claim his lipless mouth. When she realized that must be his equivalent of her giggles, she laughed even harder, and they walked out the door feeling almost friendly.

Much, much later, each of them realized separately that this was the moment they had begun thinking of the other as a person.

^..^

SesTok carefully wiped all amusement from his face before he stalked into the command pod. The main overhead comm screen was blank, while the smaller ones around the perimeter showed only the usual readouts. "Report!" he hissed at JanDel, who scuttled off the Commander's dais out of his way.

"There were several attempts since our arrival to speak with us on our frequency, but we ignored them all, of course – none of them were in SenSaru'i. Suddenly another broke through, with one of them speaking our language, demanding to speak with you – the animal even knew your name. I cannot explain this, Commander." JanDel was standing as far as he could out of his superior's reach without being insubordinate, just in case.

Donna had stopped just inside the door as it swished closed behind her; she wasn't brave enough to cross the open space to the center. She peered cautiously around, trying to look without being obvious, trying to memorize it as well as she could; any information might be useful to her parents. (She ruthlessly quashed the automatic if I ever see them again.) The pod was round, about twenty-five feet across, with four small entrances spaced equidistantly, and very dark; every surface was black. A reflected light source circling the center of the domed ceiling did little to augment the lights coming from the buttons, switches and screens on every panel. As far as she could tell, about a dozen sharks were manning the stations around the perimeter, sitting on fixed cube seats in the donut-shaped well. An open platform one step up ran behind them, while the center was raised yet another step – obviously the commander's place. It had its own array of small panels in a semi-circular, waist-high railing. No chair for this captain; a SenSaru ship's commander evidently stood his duty. Large screens lined the walls above the workstations, possibly (she peered closely at the nearest one) repeating the small individual displays below them, and a single transparent sheet was hanging in "front" of the commander's dais.

SesTok waved at the overhead screen. "Why is it blank? Are they no longer transmitting?"

JanDel swallowed hard. "I... turned it off. It was making – the men nervous, Commander. It's still on the small screen, though," bobbing his head at the center of the Commander's railing.

SesTok turned and started to step up to the dais, just as the door behind Donna swished open again, admitting another crew member who shoved her to one side, knocking her down. SesTok whirled back and growled at the interloper, freezing him in his tracks. "Help her up," he spit the words out, furious – why, he wasn't sure. But he wasn't going to back down now, in front of his crew.

Stunned, the crew member looked around, seeming to only then see the animal his commander had brought into the pod. He looked back at SesTok, confused – but received another growl for his troubles. Evidently deciding that playing along with his commander's game was the better part of discretion, he reached out and grabbed the animal's arm, hauling it back up to its feet. Then, glancing at SesTok for permission, he continued over to his workstation.

Donna wasn't sure which had startled her more, being knocked down or getting unceremoniously pulled back up. Neither one was helping her equilibrium. She stared at SesTok, who peered back, seeming to be asking wordlessly if she was OK. She nodded, briefly brushing down her clothes (and her nerves). After another second, he accepted the "yesss" and turned away again.

Shaking the encounter off his shoulders, SesTok stepped up onto the dais, peering at the comm screen in the railing. Framed within it was the head and upper half of one of DonNah's species, this one with pale yellowish head fur (hhair, he corrected himself). It appeared to be waiting, half-turned away as if listening to another beside it; but it swiveled back to face him squarely as he stepped into view of the camera.

"Here stands Commander SesTok, of the SenSaru Galactic Armada. Who sounds my name?" He wasn't sure why he'd slipped into formal language, but it seemed oddly appropriate.

"Commander." The yellow-haired one dipped its head. (I wish I could tell their genders apart, he thought fleetingly.) "I am Rose Gallifrey. I've been appointed - "

That was as far as she got. "Mum?" Donna gasped as the familiar voice came over the speakers, then froze as everyone in the command pod turned to stare at her.

"Donna?" Rose cried, while SesTok whirled around. "Are you all right?" She couldn't see anything past the alien on the screen; the camera was tight-focused on him.

SesTok motioned for Donna to come forward, and she forced her legs to carry her up to stand beside him. She took a shuddering breath, why am I shaking NOW?, and replied, "Yeah. I'm OK."

SesTok was almost beside himself with outraged bewilderment. "You DO speak SenSaru'i? How is this?"

Donna turned to him, confused, "But you're speaking English now!"

"No, Commander," Rose broke in, pulling her eyes from her daughter with effort. "We have an automatic translator here, which is making it seem to you as if we are speaking your language, while to us it appears that you are speaking ours."

SesTok looked from DonNah to the screen and back. "Interesting." He let DonNah stay where she was, and turned to face the screen full, getting back to business. "Why do you sound my name?"

Rose picked up on the change in his tone, and matched it, keeping her eyes on him. "To call upon you to release your hostages, and return my daughters to me." Matriarchal society. He needs to see me as a mother figure.

"This I cannot do. We have need of them."

"And your need supersedes their rights? I think not."

"They will have honored positions in our world."

"How can unwilling captives be honored, when their rights to make their own decisions have been removed?" I saw that sidestep, buster.

"I care not for the rights of any individual, when our entire world is at risk. My people are dying."

"Your world is dying, Commander. Yes, I know of your situation. Your planet is poisoned, and it is killing your people. Soon there will be no SenSaru left. This hostage-taking is pointless. You condemn my daughters to die on your poisoned world, as you condemned the daughters from four other worlds to die before them. Yes, I know that, too. Why do you persist in this folly, when you know it is doomed to fail?"

SesTok was stunned. Here were his own traitorous thoughts, which might yet earn him a painful death, spoken aloud. Without even looking, he could sense the ripple of insulted anger charging through the crew at the pod's perimeter. He took a deep breath, trying to steady himself, keeping a tight rein on his face lest his thoughts showed. "It will not fail this time. They have the marker. They will be immune to the poison."

"Then you admit the poison exists, and that your own people are dying of it. Can you really wait until the children of your sons and my daughters grow up before seeing the fruits of your plan? If it is even possible for them to breed together? Do you really think you have that much time before the poison kills the rest of the SenSaru now living?" I sure hope I've got that right. I think I do. Look at his eyes!

SesTok's eyes were as wide as his gill slits now; he was hardly daring to breathe. How does this female know so much? (How do I know she's female? Ah, because DonNah called her "Mother".) His next words were torn from somewhere deep inside. "What choice do we have? What else can we do? We must survive!"

"There are always choices. There is always another way. Come, Commander. Return my daughters, and let us sit down together, your wisest ones and ours, and we will come up with a solution to save your people. I know we can."

He hesitated just long enough. Donna knew he was wavering. She whispered, so quietly that no one else could hear, nor the microphone pick it up, "I don't want to die on a poisoned world. And I don't think you want to condemn me to die." She breathed a sigh of relief when apparently the translator still worked between them - not knowing it was TARDIS-powered.

He turned and gave her an unreadable look. "And you know this how?" he whispered back.

"Because you didn't kill my father."

They stared at each other for a long moment, then SesTok suddenly reached out and waved his hand over the mute sensor, killing the mike. He turned to face DonNah fully, whispering fiercely – but still too low to be overheard even by JanDel a few feet away - "Act beaten!"

She gasped and made herself flinch, lowering her gaze and hunching over slightly as though waiting for a blow.

"How fast can you run, little she-thing?"

Whatever she'd been expecting, it wasn't that. "Why?"

"Because if I free your sisters, both of us may have to run very, very fast. Listen!"

Confused, she raised her eyes back to his, and he quickly twitched his own sideways. She focused her ears on the others in the pod, hearing for the first time their muttering, which even to her sounded ominous and restless. She gave him a microscopic nod. "Just point me in a direction."

He looked at her another second, trying frantically to find a way out. "Go stand by the door again," he whispered, then barked at a normal pitch, "Back!"

She flinched again and began backing up, glancing again at her mother's face – and sending her a quick, ghostly wink, not allowing her fearful expression to drop.

Joshua – along with several others in the Control Room – caught the wink, and whispered, "She's acting!" Rose heard him and forced herself to relax slightly, keeping her expression neutral. Just then, Brennan flashed an update on the overhead screen next to the Commander's image: "Beijing ship repulsed. Zero released, zero taken. Returning aloft."

Rose did a quick mental tally. That's three empty landers, one other with girls, two possibly with boys, and all the girls they took in the first raid. Still close to three hundred hostages. And Donna.

SesTok had been thinking furiously, studying the alien face on his screen, trying to determine how quick-witted she was and failing. All he could do was hope. He waved the mike on again, and began carefully. "Elder Mother, would you meet with me face-to-face to discuss this? I would smell the truth of your words, and that cannot come through space and circuits."

Rose stiffened in surprise at the "Elder Mother", but Josh whispered again, quickly, "It's a term of respect!" and she gave a quick, tiny, rueful smile and waved to him behind her back. She raised her chin, considering, then nodded solemnly. "I will meet with you, Commander, after you release my sons and daughters."

He looked to another screen on his railing, tapping quickly through several displays till he found what he wanted and studying it. Then he tapped Send and turned back to the comm screen. "Do you see this?"

A sudden small scramble by two of her techs caught Rose's attention, then they both waved up at the main screen. Next to the Commander's face was now a sensor map, which was immediately overlaid with a grid showing it to be the area immediately surrounding Torchwood itself. "I see it."

"This," and a large dot suddenly appeared on top of the Torchwood building, "is where your signal originates, yes?"

"It is." Should I be getting nervous?

"And this appears to be an open area nearby, large enough for our landers. Yes?" Another dot, this one on Jubilee Park.

She shook her head, then. "No. Too many trees – no open space. Go further south – within the bend in the river." The dot moved down to Mudchute Park, and she nodded. "Yes, there."

He turned back to the screen and, taking a deep breath, committed himself. "I will bring your sons and daughters there, and you will meet with me, yes?"

"I will meet with you there, Commander."

He nodded, and closed the connection.