3. Marooned and Besieged
Author's Note: As you may have guessed from the two weeks this one took, the time I take between my updates is highly variable. (If you want to know, my time was occupied reading the entirety of Homestuck, which I can't recommend more highly.) I will generally update as soon as I finish a chapter. This fic is slated to be sixteen chapters long, though the chapters will get longer as the story gets going. Even if there's not much in the way of sexuality in these first few chapters, don't worry, the things I have planned are very exciting. To me, at least. Maybe to you too. I don't know what you think unless you review, though!
Amy's head shot up. "What was that?"
She glared at the Doctor.
The strange behavior from the TARDIS had lasted only seconds, but the Doctor was at a loss as to its origin. Cocking her head to the right, the Time Lady hoisted Amy onto her feet, listening intently.
"Can you hear anything?" Amy asked nervously.
"No, nothing," the Doctor replied slowly, edging toward the outside doors. Abruptly, she collapsed against the stairs to the console and gasped. "There's something…" She trailed off.
"What?" said Amy anxiously.
But the Doctor grinned and straightened up. "It's something big, very big if it's able to disrupt the TARDIS' internal power matrices." She began sauntering toward the doors.
"Doctor!"
"Something's not right, Pond," came the response as the Time Lady fumbled with the door handle. "I'm just going to give it a look."
Amy crossed her arms and sat on one of the small chairs near the console, eying the discarded cricket bat. She would probably need to investigate the Doctor's disappearance and save him—her—once again.
x x x
As soon as the Doctor's boots were squarely off the TARDIS, her face fell. There was nothing in sight. She started to turn back toward the doors.
"My, my, you've changed, Theta!"
The taunt was immediately followed by a targeted whack to the back of the neck, leaving her out cold as the Master entered the TARDIS. He quickly closed the doors behind him.
"Who are you?" came an accusatory voice. The Master looked around to see a red-haired Scottish woman coming toward him, brandishing a wooden club of some kind.
He sighed. "You must be one of the Doctor's little friends."
"I warn you, I'm—I'm armed! And…" Amy's threat was shaky. "You're naked."
Seizing on her fear and uncertainty, the Master compressed his mind and shot a knockout psychic pulse from his hand. Striding up to the console, he barely so much as noticed as she collapsed unceremoniously onto the glass floor. Pity I didn't kill her with that, he thought idly.
He pressed a few buttons and levers, letting his new hands get used to the new TARDIS. The Doctor had never given up his outdated Type 40—not that he could have upgraded, having failed the TARDIS flight examination multiple times.
The Master glanced dismissively toward the doors. "I'm not back five minutes and I've already beat you, Doctor," he muttered, punching in coordinates. "Pity I can't take you as my prisoner again right now, but have fun living it up with your disgusting immortal chum!"
x x x
The Doctor came to just as her TARDIS was disappearing. She frantically pulled out her sonic screwdriver and jabbed at the controls. Though she was unable to stop the TARDIS from taking off, she was able to confine it to using the Cardiff rift as a spacio-temporal reference—meaning that wherever the TARDIS ended up, it would be in contact with the rift. Even with this small victory, she cursed under her breath.
She gazed distantly at the spot where her ship had just been. It wasn't often that the TARDIS took off without her Doctor; she must be under the control of a very powerful being. She crossed her arms.
"Are you okay, miss?" inquired a yellow-jacketed policeman, walking toward her. "Looked like you might have fainted."
"Oh, no, everything is fine," lied the Doctor, not looking at the man.
"You're sure?" he replied, moving closer. "Perhaps we should get you to hospital, I—"
"I'm really quite all right, thanks." The Doctor gave him a fleeting, withering glance. At that, he held up his hands in mock surrender, and turned to walk away.
Without missing a beat, the Time Lady scowled and began stalking toward the entrance to Torchwood. Her psychic senses could point her toward its perception filter.
My ship is gone. Again, she thought angrily, bringing up thoughts of the little lab end of the universe, and how the Master had stolen her TARDIS the first time. She shuddered to think of what he did to her vessel then, and couldn't bring herself to imagine what Sexy might be enduring that very instant.
Her senses led her to what appeared to be an ordinary paving stone, causing her to temporarily doubt her psychic abilities. As soon as she stepped onto it, however, her senses were vindicated—it began to descend, like a wall-less elevator.
She looked up, seeing the clear blue sky disappearing. So, this is Torchwood now. Bit of an improvement over the—er, werewolf-y one.
"How do you like it, Doctor?" Jack's voice drifted up from a hidden corner of the hub. "Wasn't expecting you for hours. I didn't have time for the incense and mood lighting."
When the lift reached the bottom, Jack was waiting. The Doctor flashed a brief smile, but had no time for small talk.
"Jack, someone stole the TARDIS," she said quickly.
"What?"
"Something with enormous power sapped autron energy from the TARDIS core matrices. Soon as I opened the door, it knocked me out and stole my ship." The Doctor seemed resentful. Little did Jack know that that particular emotion masked the childlike breakdown and petulance that accompanied situations when the Doctor lost his or her precious soul mate.
Jack put his hand on her shoulder in concern. "And… can we do anything about it?"
She rushed past him. "I guess we can," he said under his breath.
x x x
Captain Jack followed the Doctor, who was frantically waving her sonic screwdriver at Torchwood's various computers. As she peered at the small display, her face fell.
"Is there nothing I can use here?"
"Doctor," Jack said calmly. "What are you trying to do?"
She turned and began pacing up and down the platform, muttering in a language with which Jack was unfamiliar.
"We've got loads of alien tech, you know," he said. She stopped and faced him for a moment, before turning away.
"Useless!" she shrieked, uncharacteristically loudly. She took a deep breath. "Sorry," she continued, putting on an air of calmness. Jack scratched his chin.
"I can't help unless you clue me in," he replied.
"Fat lot of good you'll be able to do," she said, starting to lose her cool again.
"Why's that?"
"Well, what have you got here? A lot of primitive computers and a collection of intergalactic driftwood. Driftwood! Why don't you rename yourselves that?"
Jack gritted his teeth. Because then the anagram wouldn't work out, damn it. "Anything that comes out of the rift—"
"What?"
"The rift, the rift in spacetime that runs through this—"
"Yes, I know about the damn rift."
"What about it?"
The Doctor's anger suddenly gave way to flushed hopefulness. She had just come out of a few seconds' hard thinking.
"The rift, Jack!" she said excitedly, a complete emotional swing around from a few moments previously. "Your systems monitor it, right?"
"That's right," the captain said slowly.
"Yes, yes, yes." She turned on her heel and approached a computer console. Grinning widely, she pulled out her screwdriver again and began to sonic the array.
"I take it that might do something?" Jack said, coming up next to her. She didn't reply—instead, she started banging her fingers on the keyboards and looking feverishly up and down. "Glad I could help, then," he muttered.
The array of screens burst into life, revealing a complex cluster of data that even Jack couldn't decipher. At a wave of the Doctor's screwdriver, the display changed to something even more complicated. Jack noticed she was squinting.
"Do you need glasses, Doctor?" he asked. She didn't look at him.
"What? Oh, no… more of an old habit, I suppose." Then:
"There!"
The computer screens were glowing with innumerable bright dots. When Jack looked closely at them, he saw that they flickered, and had varying intensities.
"I'm looking at the timestream corruptions caused by rift crossings. Within this immediate cross-section, of course."
"That would be millions of data points," Jack said incredulously.
"Oh, I can keep track of them," said the Doctor, still not taking her eyes off the iridescent array of dots. "I confined the TARDIS to the rift before she took off. With any luck, whatever stole her could only made one trip."
"And you can… trace it?" The captain was still slightly skeptical that the Doctor could read so much data and make sense of it so quickly.
"Well, I should be able to do just that. We'll see if the right signature is here."
A few moments of silence passed as the Doctor scanned the display. Jack had thought of going to get her some tea or coffee, but the situation seemed too tense. That, and the coffee machine still held some sad memories for him. The whole Torchwood hub was like that, really… he knew the only reason he stuck around there was because he still felt a semblance of responsibility for the city's well being. At least, he liked to pretend that was the only reason. He still felt responsible for the untimely deaths of his compatriots, and even though the place was so melancholy, he didn't want to callously forget such troubles as he had in the past. Even if it was spooky at times, especially after Gwen had left.
His left hand drifted toward the Doctor's shoulder, but he drew it sharply back. He knew, though, that next to him was the only compatriot he'd ever known to come back, never dying, never leaving for good. Wistfully, put his hands in his pockets. He had never had a chance with the Doctor, male or female.
Well, he thought, smiling mischievously. What the hell? Maybe I will soon.
x x x
It was a few seconds after he had landed the TARDIS that the Master realized the drums were gone.
He reacted quite oddly to the cessation of his lifelong torment. He simply licked his lips and grinned.
Anyone would have told him he grinned like a maniac. Because even without the sound of drums constantly beckoning him to war, he had resurrected himself out of all the hate and violence that had caused his death. That kind of fundamental impulse doesn't easily leave—though, he considered for a fraction of a second, it theoretically could. It might take a regeneration and some very special circumstances, but it was possible.
Not that he would ever find himself in such a situation, of course. He was sure he never intended to lose this particular impulse, especially since it came without the infernal drumbeats.
The Doctor's big ginger companion was starting to stir again. My, she was psychically strong. The Master decided to deal with her later, gathering up the thought power to send another mental knockout blow. He touched her head with disdain as he let the pulse go.
But the Master kept the link active this time around. He kept pushing the pulse, subduing her, before pushing forward to probe her mind.
He was immediately entranced. Not by her petty, insignificant life or her mindless adventures with the Doctor, no, but by something hidden deep in the recesses of her subconscious. As he drew closer, he made out a door-like thing, very large—impossibly large—and very, very forbidden. It was like nothing the Master had ever experienced. The door in Amy Pond's mind was a portal, an impossible hole in temporal reality rooted in a living subconsciousness. He moved closer, close enough to psychically "sniff" it.
He was repulsed, but not enough to lose concentration and drop the link. He was sweating with the effort of maintaining it, but pressed on.
Daleks.
Whatever was beyond that gate, it was swathed in war. He could make out the essences of Daleks, Davros, Axons, innumerable enemies of Gallifrey… but as he wafted those odors away, he could make out scents that were easier to stomach. The Time Lords, a lot of them, anyway, were arrayed beyond the door. His anger surged as he smelled Rassilon, but he moved past his former tormentor to more scattered signals. Rogue Time Lords like himself—warriors and tricksters—were still mostly present.
He was aware that he was looking indirectly into the Last Great Time War, before the Doctor had used the Moment to end it and lock it forever in a sealed beta timestream. Well, Miss Amelia Jessica Pond, you certainly have got something in your head, the Master thought. Let's see how deep the rabbit hole goes…
He knew better than to attempt to open the door. That would unlock the floodgates of everything terrible the Time War ever unleashed, and he had no intention of destroying all of reality. There would be nothing left to rule. So instead, he tried a little experiment.
Probing the portal for familiar scents, he found the odor trail of the Hunter, a rogue Time Lord whom the Master had used as a bounty hunter when the two had dealings before the Time War. The Hunter was weak compared to the Master (and the Doctor, for that matter), and could be easily subdued.
Even so, anyone could correctly be called mad for trying to retrieve things from beyond a Time Lock through a tenuous psychic link with a big ginger human. The Master was cunning, ambitious and ruthless—and very much mad. So he turned his psychic nose into a vacuum, sucking the Hunter's scent towards him. As the smell grew more intense, he could tell the Hunter was moving closer. After a few seconds, the Master's senses were momentarily blinded and he fell back, breaking the link with Amy. But after he came to, a few moments later, there were three people in the TARDIS control room. Two were Time Lords. One was an arsenal of virtually unlimited depth.
Leaving the Hunter collapsed on the floor, still recovering from temporal resuscitation, the Master walked over to the outside doors and stepped out. They had landed on a planet that was similar to Earth, but with a decidedly greener feel—even the sky was tinged green.
It was an Start-Over World, populated by millions of humans who had come there on starships millennia previously, wanting to start anew from the Stone Age with better aspirations for humanity. The Human Empire in the late fortieth century began shipping them off to backwater worlds to avoid the widespread riots and paranoia the movement brought with it. Unfortunately for the original inhabitants, this world's development had closely mirrored that of Earth, even if there was less mass slaughter and fewer plagues. The TARDIS had landed on this planet, identified as Ractias, during a period of global medieval time. They were currently on a high hill, a few miles away from a gigantic city complete with a magnificent royal-looking castle, several towering walls, and a bustling seaport.
He needed more than his old Time Lord associates to witness his ascent to power (not just on Ractias, but on the galaxy and galaxies beyond). As soon as he had the planet in thrall, he would see that the Doctor would be captured and brought to his side—just as it had been the last time he ascended to supremacy over a world. And it would be just as sweet, because this world was home to the Doctor's favorite race like Earth was.
The Master laughed at the sea wind rushing at his face. The thrill of overwhelming and subjugating this planet was going to be exquisite, but incomparable to the joy of turning its people to conquer the stars.
x x x
Minutes had passed, and the Doctor had not found the needle-in-a-haystack data point she was looking for. What was more troubling, and slightly more pressing, was the loud knocking coming from the old vault-like entrance to the Torchwood hub.
"Jack, that's—"
"Mmhmm. We shouldn't be hearing any sound come through."
The knocking increased in volume. It sounded less like banging, the Doctor thought. More like some kind of discharge. It couldn't be—
The door was blasted clean off, leaving the back entrance to the hub smoldering.
—antigravity weapons!
Even the Doctor was baffled when a platoon of eight men dressed in medieval armor and brown cloaks marched into Torchwood, each wielding a compressed-antigravity firearm.
"Are those what I think they are?" Jack whispered.
The Doctor gave a curt nod in response, and cleared her throat to address the men. But one of them spoke first:
"You are the Doctor," he intoned in a severely accented English. It was impossible to tell which of the identically dressed, hooded men was talking.
"Yes, that's me," the Doctor replied. "But—"
"You are Jack Harkness," the man continued.
"I am," Jack said defensively. "And who are you? Where are you from?"
"We are Knights-Errant of the Army of Parlinar. The Doctor and Jack Harkness will come."
The man closest to the pair procured a small dart gun from the folds of his cloak, and in a split second shot Jack and the Doctor in the neck. As they collapsed, sedated, the men efficiently grasped them by the arms and legs and carried them out of the hub.
Though the Knights-Errant did not understand how, they had traveled through the rift from Ractias to Earth. When they traveled back, they were confined to the rift's real-time position on their homeworld, which had shifted due to the planet's rotation. The squadron ended up across the ocean from their Lord and Master. Ever resourceful, the Knights sent their captives by royal tradeship to their Lord's capital. The good ship Sattalsis doubled as a brutally efficient slaveship, and the Knights could feel sure that the human cargo of such a Parlinari vessel would be effectively subdued. But in that they committed the act that one must never commit when one thinks one has beaten the Doctor:
Left her unattended.