The Lost Warrior
On a far away moon, in a distant galaxy, there was a house. It looked like an old house, maybe sometime from the 18th or 19th Centuries. It was made of red bricks and had battered windows and was alone on that moon. There's nothing else there. Just the house, surrounded by acres of dust, rocks and ancient debris.
But there was a spirit that haunted that lonely house. The spirit of a lost warrior who burned in battle. The spirit of someone who knew of alternate timelines, who'd seen things that never were and never could be. A ghost that couldn't exist.
A ghost that Maximus Finch and his two associates wanted to talk to.
They came to this world via a shuttle. It took them directly from Jaxobar Spaceport to this moon, without any delay. They didn't want any delay today. Today was their special day. If you were to say that Maximus Finch was looking forward to speak with the ghost of the lonely house, you would be making the understatement of the century. He was thrilled.
Mainly because it would provide him with ideas for his next novel and cure his writer's block, which had reached an irritating stage recently. He hadn't even managed to get a few words down of his latest idea for a novel - a sci-fi crime thriller called Echo Train about a train crash and the alternate timelines that spun out of that crash - when he thought the whole idea was rubbish and he deleted the draft from his computer. He needed ideas and wanted to do some research. What better research to do than to contact an actual ghost of an actual warrior and see if they could give him some inspiration?
His two associates were called Bella and Annion. Bella was a young girl from one of the outer colony worlds - Gelfraxia VI, a planet best known for manufacturing pink salt - and she wanted some adventure in her life. Her parents had disagreed but she had disagreed with her parents disagreeing. She, ultimately, had had the final say over whether to accept Maximus's offer or not. It was a no brainer.
Annion was quieter and calmer and more logical. He wanted to come to this planet to see if ghosts were actually real. He didn't believe that ghosts were real for a second but, because he was a secret fan of Maximus Finch, he wanted to prove him wrong. Imagine that, he thought. Proving Maximus Finch wrong about ghosts existing on an alien planet. That would be the achievement of the century.
But they were not the only people heading for the lonely house on the moon.
Because, also on that moon, also interested by the house, was a traveller in time and space called the Doctor. He did enjoy a good ghost story from time to time, relishing the chill up the spine and hearing tales of the inexplicable. The Doctor, however, was someone a little more accustomed to dealing with the inexplicable and explaining the inexplicable, making ghost stories have little effect on him. Nevertheless, he did enjoy a good mystery.
He, after emerging from his TARDIS, decided to wander round the house, curious as to why an odd, lonely house had ended up on a distant moon. He peered in through the large ground floor windows, observing the perfectly preserved lounge with a patterned carpet, portraits of noblemen on the walls and chairs belonging in a period drama. The Doctor, now in his third incarnation, felt drawn to the sophistication of this environment. He, in his red velvet jacket and white frilled shirt, felt as if he was at home.
"Hmm." he murmured, tapping at the window, "I wonder if anyone's at home."
Making his way round the house, he eventually found the large oak front door with a brass knocker that resembled a lion. He knocked three times.
No response. He tried again. No response.
This time, he tried to push the front door open.
Success. The door swung to the side, allowing him to see the entrance hall and the impressive staircase that twirled upwards towards the upper floors of the house.
He entered the hall and whistled. Once, then again for luck. No response.
"So just the ghost at home then." he said to himself, as he made for the staircase, "And a very quiet ghost at that."
Meanwhile, Maximus Finch was being delayed. He was being delayed because of Bella and Annion, who were gawping in astonishment at the tall blue police box that was parked a few metres away from the house. He knew, of course, about what the blue box meant. Blue boxes, in the universe, often meant that the Doctor was close by. And Maximus Finch had certainly heard of the Doctor, but he wasn't that much a fan of his to stand outside the Doctor's TARDIS and excitedly say things like-
"Oh my god, the Doctor's nearby!"
Bella took out her digicamera and took a selfie of her with the TARDIS. This would be a moment to remember. The day when she met her icon, her hero. The Doctor.
Annion, however, had his hand on the TARDIS. He felt the ship hum gently. He liked the humming. It calmed him down. A few moments more and he would have fallen asleep. But Maximus was getting annoyed.
"Look, you two, you can gawp all you want at the Doctor when he turns up, but we have a ghost to find." he reminded them, a sharp note of anger in his voice, "Now let's get in that house and get ghost hunting."
Bella and Annion reluctantly moved away from the TARDIS and back towards the house, ready to search for the lost warrior.
On the upper floor, the Doctor felt a hand on his shoulder. It was cold yet burning. He twitched, his enhanced Time Lord reflexes kicking in.
"Hello!" he cried out, "Who's there?" Nothing.
He entered what he guessed must have been the main bedroom. That was clear from the impressive bed at one end of the room and the vast window looking out onto the planet outside on a nearby wall just to the right of the bed. There was a painting on another wall of someone he thought he recognised yet couldn't quite place. The figure depicted in the painting was dressed in the clothes of a Tudor nobleman and had a thin face with a prominent chin, wise eyes and a quiff that made him very distinct. But why did the Doctor think he knew that man?
"Because you are him and will be him and have been him." whispered a voice in his ear.
He twitched again. There was nobody nearby. Just the empty space surrounding him. Yet he was certain he had heard a voice. He was sure that somebody-
"Where do you think the Doctor could be?" came the voice of a young girl from downstairs. So someone else was here as well.
He knew he should probably speak to them.
Bella, Maxwell and Annion had only been in the house a few seconds when the Doctor turned up. He had a confused look on his face, almost as if he'd been shocked. So, the three of them thought, he had gotten to the heart of the problem. Typical Doctor.
"What exactly are you three doing here?" the Doctor asked the novelist and his friends. "Looking for the ghost of the lost warrior. Isn't that what you're here for?" Maxwell said, a tad surprised.
"No, I'm here about a temporal disturbance, although I've been getting those a lot lately. Something has gone wrong with time and I suspect that the epicentre of the disruption is linked with this house."
Bella and Annion nodded and shared a look that said 'Ooh, he's good'.
"Although, if you think it's relevant, you'd better explain what this ghost of the lost warrior story is." the Doctor added, moving towards the staircase and indicating that Maxwell and his friends should follow him, "Because I suspect that this temporal disturbance is quite significant."
"I'll explain, if you don't mind." Annion insisted, "Because I know the story the best."
There was a Time War. Not the war between Daleks and Time Lords, that's irrelevant. They called that war the Last Great Time War not because they wanted it to be the last, but because it was the last. I'm talking about the Time War between the Earth Empire and the Paragonix.
The Paragonix were an ancient death cult who believed that there should be no time to exist since the most honourable and glorious state of life was death. So, they invented time machines to try and break history apart. They sabotaged Earth's history, burnt worlds at several different points in time and even moved planets from alternate universes into our universe. At one point, they smashed seventeen different iterations of Skaro, taken from various points in both time and the Multiverse, together, erasing the Daleks from existence. The Earth Empire decided to resist the Paragonix and so they created an ultimate warrior called Annika Orxis. She was to be Earth's greatest hope - no, make that the universe's greatest hope - against the Paragonix. And she did make some progress in untangling their schemes with the help of a particular time traveller who whizzed round the universe in a blue police box.
"You mean I travelled with Annika Orxis?" the Doctor wondered, baffled by this revelation, "But I can't remember her."
"That's where it gets complicated." Bella said, before continuing.
At the end of this Time War, all that was left of the universe was a moon called Kazran's Moon, named after some tyrant in an alternate timeline. Every other planet had either become so temporally unstable that it exploded or had been destroyed by the Paragonix. According to notes that have survived and that are kept in the Redgrove Archives, Annika and you, Doctor, managed to piece together the Key to Time. But the Paragonix were on your tail and had destabilised your timeline by changing the outcome of several key points in your life, for example making sure you never made it to Snowcap Base and ensuring your exile never happened.
Anyway, you crumbled into dust while Annika managed to set the Key to Time to erase the Paragonix from history. Her idea worked, but it went wrong.
She was stood in this house, you see. And because she was made in response to the Paragonix, without the Paragonix she would have no reason to exist.
The Doctor reckoned he could fill in the gaps from here.
"So she became a temporal ghost, flitting about in this old house?" Bella nodded.
"This house is all the evidence that's left that there ever was more than one Time War. Although, if you thought that Time War was bad, wait til you hear about the Time War between Time Lords and Temporal Banshees." she added, making the Doctor feel secretly horrified.
"We need to find her then, because if she's still here, that means it's still possible for this Time War to reassert itself in the timelines. And if that Time War is as bad as you say it is, then it may be the end for us all."
The Doctor, Maximus, Bella and Annion decided to split up. Upper floor: the Doctor and Bella.
Lower floor: Maximus and Annion.
On the upper floor, the Doctor took Bella back to the main bedroom, where he had heard the whisper before. He had told Bella about the mysterious whisper and the painting he had seen before. She had reacted with intrigue to this - he'd missed being with people like Bella. Bella reminded the Doctor of Jo Grant a little: she approached the world with curiosity and kindness and with a thirst for adventure. He missed Jo, very very much.
"So the ghost is in this room?" Bella wondered, feeling the cool air in the room.
"Yes." came the whispered reply, sounding mysterious and smooth, "I exist only within this house. I home in on who I choose."
"And did you home in on me, Annika, because we travelled together in another life?" the Doctor wondered, taking out his sonic screwdriver and scanning the local environment. He found traces of temporal energy and a faint hint of psychic energy. In fact, he could almost say that the sonic screwdriver had detected a memory. The TARDIS might be able to help him decode that memory later.
"You and I did travel and you and I did not travel. It was not this face. Your soul is the same as the man I knew, but you resemble a different man. Time has rewritten you, Doctor."
"I see." the Doctor said, glancing over at Bella quickly, "I want to know, Annika, whether the war you were a part of is coming back."
There was a brief pause before the whisper replied.
"There are glimmers. There was an incident in this reality that shattered all time. Through this shattering the war shall return, I shall return."
"This universe isn't ready for war." Bella commented, heading for the door, "We need to tell Maximus about the ghost. Call in the Earth Defence Squadron."
"I'm not sure that will be enough." the Doctor said, his brow furrowing with concern, "I know exactly what to do."
On the lower floor, Maximus and Annion had arrived in the kitchens. Pots, pans and other utensils were littered all over the place, as if the kitchen had been in full swing a few moments ago. There was no sign of the ghost, yet.
"Looks like some sort of tragedy made this happen." Annion said, fumbling through the various utensils left out, "Why would a house end up on a distant moon though, during a Time War?"
"Good idea for a story." Maximus said, "Very good idea for a story." "For your next novel?"
"For my next novel."
"The war is returning. You shall all be playthings in this war." came a sudden, sharp whisper from nearby.
That whisper made them start. They tried to look for the source of the whispering, yet no other people were in the kitchen.
Maximus tried calling out, as if to address some alien spirit that had wondered in.
"I wish to call the spirits of this house to me! I wish to speak with Annika Orxis! I wish to understand the truth!"
"You will know the truth soon, when the war bleeds back through." came the whisper, "This universe is blurring, cracking, blending with other timelines. The Time War between the Paragonix and the Earth Empire will reignite. You must stop it before it's too late."
The Doctor had led Bella to the TARDIS, where he had gone inside the blue box while Bella waited outside. Bella didn't like not being fully involved in the adventure, but she wasn't one for arguing. The Doctor clearly had a reason to be secretive - he was just secretive about why he was so secretive.
Maximus and Annion emerged from the house and told Bella about the ghost they had encountered and the warning the ghost had given them. Bella, in turn, told them about the ghost she and the Doctor had encountered. They concluded that both ghosts were of the same person and that it was clear that the Time War - one of the Time Wars - could be resurrected at any moment.
"And what's the Doctor doing now?" Maximus wondered, "I want to get a few more ideas for my next novel and he could help me."
"I'm calling on the help of the Time Lords, if you must know." the Doctor declared, emerging from his ship, "Because I suspect not even I alone can fix this."
"No." came a deep, ominous whisper, sounding much more evil than the ghost of Annika, "You cannot, Doctor. And your dead friend was correct. This war is returning and it shall burn time and space entirely."
"No!" the Doctor cried, gazing in horror as everything glowed white and-