Notes: The Doctor visits the Yautja home world to try to reason with them. (Bad idea)
Chapter Five
The Doctor landed the TARDIS in a pedestrian area of the capital city of Yautja Prime. The perception filter meant that none of the passing inhabitants took any notice of the strange blue box.
He knew that when he stepped outside the TARDIS he would be a very noticeable alien in a xenophobic, xenopathic society. He would have to ad-lib like he had never ad-libbed before.
Hr stood at the door and took a deep breath. It wasn't like he hadn't done this sort of thing before. He had faced down a whole Dalek invasion fleet on more than one occasion. How hard could it be?
He was about to find out.
The pedestrian square was quiet with a few passing citizens. In the centre of the square was a large metal statue of a Yautja warrior in his full hunting regalia. Probably some legendary, heroic figure.
The Doctor walked away from the TARDIS with his hands in his pockets, admiring the statue and the architecture. People started to point and stare at him. Voices were becoming raised as they realised that an alien was on their Home world.
Shouts for law enforcers went out as more people entered the square to see what the commotion was about. The Doctor took his hands out of his pockets and spread them wide in the universal gesture of non-aggression.
He heard a loud ringing in his ears and saw flashing lights as he felt a sharp pain on the back of his head. His vision went black as he heard Yautja voices that sounded like marbles rattling in a stone jar.
"Marbles," he thought cheerfully. "I haven't had a game of marbles in centuries. Old Emperor Theodus on Risa loved a game of marbles."
He drifted off into unconsciousness thinking of Risa.
He was in the penthouse suite of the hotel on Risa. Rose was standing by the bed looking at him seductively with those gorgeous, brown, come-to-bed eyes.
She held out her hand to him and beckoned him to her. He reached out to her but couldn't move forward. He looked down and saw his arm linked through a Mag-clamp on the wall.
The room was filling with a gale force wind. He looked back to Rose and saw that she was now horizontal and the wind was blowing her away from him towards a breach in the universe.
"ROSE!" he shouted as she slowly drifted away.
"Rose?" he mumbled as he drifted back to consciousness. He briefly felt a vice-like pressure in his head which thankfully subsided. He risked opening his eyes and was totally confused by the result.
'Light fittings on the floor?' he thought to himself. "Who puts light fittings on the floor? That's just plain daft!" When he looked up, he chuckled to himself. 'And a chair on the ceiling, how the hell are you going to sit on that?'
He was concussed and confused. He screwed his eyes shut and shook his head. 'Aarghh,' that was a bad idea as the vice-like pain came back.
When he opened his eyes again, his brain had worked it out and he realised he was hanging upside down in a stone room that you could only consider was a dungeon.
He heard the sound of marbles rattling in an earthenware jar. Dread suddenly gripped him. He'd heard that sound before and it had apparently killed him.
In his concussed state it took his brain a moment to translate the sound. "It is conscious," the voice said. A familiar, ugly, dreadlocked head appeared in front of the Doctor.
"How did you find us?" the head asked.
"I'm the….. What?" That threw him. The first question was usually 'who are you.'
"How did you find our world? It is hidden from prying eyes," it said.
"I didn't find it. I have star charts. I knew where it was," the Doctor babbled on. "To find something implies that you didn't know where it was to start with."
"AARRGHNNMMM!" A wave of pain shot through his body. The Yautja had touched him with a two-pronged stick that sent an electric shock through him.
"Have a care, your answers will decide how long you live," the Yautja said in a flat tone.
The Doctor gasped. "I'll certainly keep that in mind," he gasped. He knew that if they didn't want to know who he was, they already knew or, more worryingly, they didn't care.
"Who sent you?" his interrogator asked. The Doctor lifted his arms which had dangled towards the floor and ran a hand through his hair, wincing when he found the lump at the back of his head.
"How much is the answer worth to that one?" he asked.
The Yautja tilted his head to one side. "What?"
"Well, you said my answers determined how long I would live," he quoted. "Have you got any guidance about how much each answer is worth? I'd like to try to stay alive as long as possible."
"AARRGHNNMMM!" There it was again! Owww, that made his teeth hurt.
"Who sent you?" his interrogator asked again.
The Doctor sighed. "Nobody sent me. I came of my own free will to try to help you," he told him in his calm, reassuring voice. This always seemed to keep adversaries off-balance. Sun Tzu had told him once that all warfare was based on deception.
'When able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near,' he had told him.
The Doctor said he should write that down.
The Yautja, Kazan-Chazak, had a lot of experience torturing prisoners. Let them fear for their life, but have hope of survival, this gets the best results. This one however wasn't showing any fear or concern for its survival. It seemed to think it was just a misunderstanding and a minor inconvenience.
Kazan-Chazak took the bait. "What makes you think we need your help?" he asked, his external mandibles flexing.
The Doctor replied with scorn in his voice. "The mighty, unbeatable Yautja," he started. Kazan-Chazak opened his mandibles wide, an expression of surprise for a Yautja. "Yes, I know your species. I know the legends. I know your reputation, and I know what's coming to get you. And right now I think that information is keeping me alive."
"AARRGHNNMMM!" That felt like a kick in the groin.
"WILL YOU KNOCK THAT OFF!" he shouted. "I'm here to try to correct a mistake and save you all from annihilation!"
Kazan-Chazak was about to zap him again when a klaxon started wailing in the room and in the corridor outside. He looked at the other two Yautja in the room and then turned around to storm over to the comms panel on the wall.
"What is going on?" he barked at the panel.
A voice spoke back. "Hundreds of ships are dropping out of warp and heading straight towards us."
The Doctor could translate verbal language instantaneously but had to observe body language and facial expressions before he could interpret their meaning. He was getting the hang of the Yautja expressions, and he reckoned the one he was getting now from Kazan-Chazak was rage.
"So no one sent you!" Kazan-Chazak said with venom in his voice. "You are a spy, an advanced scout, leading an invasion fleet to our door," he spat.
The Doctor spluttered and protested his innocence. "NO! I have nothing to do with this. I have come on my own to hel…."
"Kill him," Kazan-Chazak said simply as he walked out of the door.
The two Yautja looked at each other and then at the Doctor. He reckoned those expressions were grins.
The two Yautja approached the Doctor, one in front and one behind. He heard the 'shing' of the double blades extend from the wrist bracer behind him.
He looked pleadingly in to the eyes of the grinning Yautja in front of him. "Don't do this, I have come to help you," he told him.
The Yautja nodded to his accomplice behind the Doctor. The Doctor swallowed hard and closed his eyes. He heard the swish of the blades slicing the air and a 'twang' sound.
He felt himself spinning. Had they cut his head off? He felt a pressure under his armpits and his feet had pins and needles as blood rushed back to them.
'Wait a minute,' he thought. 'Your head doesn't go 'twang' when it's cut off!'
He opened one eye experimentally and saw the grinning face of the Yautja, who was holding him above the floor, chuckling. "What?!" he asked, completely baffled.
"You don't remember us, do you Doctor?" the Yautja said putting him down.
The Doctor winced as his feet burned with pain from being suspended upside down. "I'm sorry, I'm only just getting used to your faces. You know who I am so I can only surmise that you were the Yautja that I met on the Enterprise," he told them.
"Yes. Very good Doctor. I am Jamal-Nanak and that is my Triad brother Garak-Salak," he said. The Doctor turned and nodded a greeting.
"Where's the other guy, Taka-tak wasn't it?" the Doctor asked.
Jamal-Nanak's mandibles flexed, the Doctor interpreted that as sorrow or pain, probably both. "Takal-Atak was 'encouraged' to commit ritual suicide by the clan leaders for the good name of his family, and so as not to dishonour the clan," he told him.
"Encouraged? I take it Takal-Atak didn't agree," the Doctor asked.
"Neither of us agreed," Jamal-Nanak said nodding at his comrade. "Takal-Atak was changed by his time with the Borg. On the journey home he talked of nothing else, the voices, the thoughts of all those species. For weeks he tried to describe how he felt and how other species felt."
Garak-Salak spoke next. "When we arrived home we started to question our own beliefs, our way of life. We are blood brothers, sworn to watch out for each other. If Takal-Atak was right, we had to support him," he said.
Jamal-Nanak finished the story. "He went before the adjudicators and explained all that he had experienced and all that he now knew, but they are so set in their ways that they would not listen. They threatened to dishonour his family if he refused to choose an honourable death."
The Doctor shook his head slowly. "Aren't you risking the same fate for the ramblings of a possible madman?" the Doctor asked sympathetically.
Jamal-Nanak sprung to Takal-Atak's defence. "He was not a madman! He had seen things that changed him. Things that we will never see or know," he said.
"Do you want to?" the Doctor asked quietly.
Jamal-Nanak was taken by surprise. "What?"
The Doctor looked seriously at Jamal-Nanak. "Do you want to see what Takal-Atak saw? But be warned, there is no going back."
Jamal-Nanak looked to Garak-Salak. "I… I don't know," he said uncertainly.
Garak-Salak flexed his shoulders. "He was our blood-brother, if it is at all possible, in his honour I will see what he saw," he said defiantly.
Jamal-Nanak nodded. "I also would see what he saw if it were possible."
"Trust me," the Doctor said. "It's possible." He reached up and put his thumbs under each of their chins, index fingers on their cheeks, middle fingers on their temples, ring fingers in front of their ears, and his little fingers under their ear lobes.
For a brief moment, the Doctor showed them the whole of time and space, and their facial expressions were definitely 'stunned'.
"Hey guys? I need you back in the room," the Doctor called out to them. They visibly shuddered and looked at each other and then at the Doctor.
"Is that what Takal-Atak saw?" Garak-Salak asked.
"Pretty much," the Doctor told them. "You probably got a bit more timey-wimey stuff than he did."
"You have honoured his memory. How may we aid you?" Jamal-Nanak asked.
The Doctor grinned. "First, can you get me to my ship? And second, I can't believe I get to say this, can you take me to your leader?"