A/N: I usually put my author's note at the bottom, but I wanted to give fair warning that I have used harsh language and graphic descriptions of injuries in this chapter. Thanks for reading, and as always I really appreciate the reviews. My gratitude to Ashleigh for being a most patient Beta.
12 Never Look A Gift Horse-Oh Hell
"Son of a whoring Macra!" exclaims Lt. John Hart upon exiting the Chelsea 426 space dome and seeing the fleet of Sontaran ships surrounding the city. Banking hard enough for the unlocked cryo-pod to go bouncing down the hallway smashing its way into an Infirmary cabinet, he narrowly avoids the ships, and slingshots himself across Saturn's atmosphere. Easing into a geosynchronous orbit, he has 45 minutes to determine his status before choices need to be made about destinations.
Breathing hard from that near miss, he shivers hard in his chair; like someone just walked over his grave. Shaking himself, he ignores it. He's been in tougher scrapes than this. Heading back to retrieve his prize, John sees that the pod did quite a bit of damage on its way to its current resting place. Not only did the pod smash the Infirmary cabinet, but also the door to the main loo, and scraped some buttons off the the food synthesiser. "Dammit! This day is just gettin' better and better."
Muttering to himself as he attempts to dislodge the pod from the cabinet, it comes loose throwing him backwards, landing on him with what is now a fluctuating 10-400 kilo weight across his right leg and hip. With an inarticulate cry of anguish, he waits the few seconds for the hover portion of the cycle and pulls himself from under it. Rolling to his side, he has to lay there a few minutes for some of the pain to recede before he can assess his own damage let alone that done to the ship, and he only had...craning his neck to look at the chronometer, 32 minutes before the Sontaran fleet hove into view. Relaxing back to his side, he takes a deep breath and rolls onto his back. Not too bad; there's a twinge of pain, but he would survive. If the pod had fallen on him higher up his body, he knows he'd be dead. Sitting up though, brings stars to his eyes, and an immediate falling back to the floor gasping in pain. His knee, something is terribly wrong with his right knee.
Reaching down he feels sticky wetness, and sharp bone. /Oh god! What the fuck else!?/ he thinks indignantly through a fog of pain and endorphins.
/Don't be a girl, pull your shit together! You're runnin' outta time./ With a colossal effort, he pulls himself up and presses his back against the nearest bulkhead. His upper body now pointed toward the near-destroyed medical cabinet, he pulls himself toward it leaving a trail of smeared blood behind. His harsh pants fill the interior of the small ship.
Reaching the scattered supplies, he digs first for a hypospray of painkiller, finding all but three smashed to bits, he uses one, and sets the other two aside. Continuing to catalogue his available medical assets he looks for an expanding cast while waiting for the pain to abate. Finally receiving some relief and locating an intact cast canister, he goes about encasing his leg from cafe to mid-thigh in an effort to immobilise his knee. Ready to activate the cast, he hooks his foot under a convenient bit of metal. Taking a few deep quick breaths he readies himself for what he's about to do next. On his fourth such breath he grits his teeth, and pulls back with all his remaining strength, straightening his leg and pulling the still connected bone shards back under the skin, at the same moment slamming the activator against the cast. As it builds itself around his now straightened leg, John Hart loses consciousness. The last thing he sees as the blackness roars up, is his Time Lord's serenely frozen features locked in the cryo-pod.
Snapping awake a few minutes later, he sees his leg is stable, and the painkillers are still working. It couldn't have been too long. Levering his other leg under him, and forcing himself to stand, he turns, and sees he has 18 minutes to decide what to do, and make it happen.
Talking to himself, "Okay, so the plan to just hide on a moon, build the vortex-booster, and go, won't work. Not with me injured. Great, just great!" Looking back at his frozen prize he turns the conversation to him. "Laying eyes on you and your missus, was the worst mistake I've made in years. I sure hope you're worth it!"
Sitting at the flight console he brings up their relative location and inputs the likely data to find windows out of this planetary system heading for another that will fill his new needs. A few seconds later, the computer spits out Mars. Thinking through his training, John is satisfied. Mars in the 26th Century is about to have another renaissance, long, peaceful and perfect for getting him fixed. He can probably garner some sympathy for escaping the City before the Sontarans were through with it. Perfect.
The sun-side of Saturn is rapidly approaching. Standing again and mag-locking the pod to the floor this time, he gets himself strapped in just as his screens polarise against the Solar radiation. Hitting the execute button on the console, the engines flare to life, pushing them toward Mars. Checking his view screens, John pulls up the rear camera to see how the City is faring. John watches grimly, jaw clenched as Chelsea 426 explodes into a million mirrored pieces sparkling in the sunlight. He hadn't intended any of that to happen. Hell, he was lucky he got out. He and that stupid partner of his would be space-meat right about now. That also meant the Time Lord in the rear had lost his mate. Hmmm...that wasn't going to be good. Well, he was currently on ice, and he could stay that way till they finally made it back to the blessed 51st Century, the Agency, and some real civilisation! He was just about over all this hillbilly back water crap.
Finally feeling better about himself and his place in the Universe, John Hart allows himself to nod off. It would be several hours before they reach Mars' airspace. He has plenty of time to perfect his sob story. With a smile on his lips, he falls asleep with visions of riches and promotions dancing in his naive little head. What he hadn't noticed, was the crack in the previously well-used cryo-pod, or the repair notice that had been taped to the window of his ship when he'd taken off, saying the inertial dampeners which were now at 50%, and the impulse stabilisers-were irreparably damaged-parts on order from Titan. He only thought his day was bad.
Not much more than an hour later John is thrust awake to screaming alarms and a weird odour in the air of the cabin. Crashing back to reality with the skills of a soldier and pilot, he immediately starts pressing buttons and toggling switches to kill the alarms and determine what the problem is.
"Shit! Inertial dampeners down to 40%, and the fucking impulse stabilisers didn't get fixed! They had 24 hours; what the hell were they doing?!" Looking over, he remembers he's alone. Then he remembers everything else as he swivels in his chair and the pain from his knee catches him up short. Eyeing the cryo-pod, he sees that it too has blinking lights, and none of them are green and normal.
Heaving himself up, he ratchets his way to the pod. Cursing when he remembers the anti-grav is busted, he lowers himself gingerly to the floor, wincing when he crashes down onto his backside, and starting to feel nauseous. Scooting around to look at the status screen, he sees the crack, and notices the low fog of cryo-gas hovering a centimetre deep over the floor. That would explain the nausea. Crap, crap, CRAP! Checking the levels he sees that he has about an hour before it reaches critical, and he will have to either wake the Time Lord, or show up at headquarters with a mouldering fairy tale corpse.
"Fuck! I should have listened to that asshole and left you alone! I hate it when that bastard is right. Even dead and he's still fucking right! ARRRGHH!" Usually swearing up a blue-streak makes him feel more in control, but not today.
Think, think, think! No impulse stabilisers, so he will have to fly them in bursts using nav-jets to correct their course. That means the normally 3-5 hour trip, will likely take at least 2 days. With such reduced inertial dampeners he will have to shut them off once their up to speed and only engage them when activating the bursts. Dammit! Damn good thing he is the better pilot. Turning the ship around to continue impulse bursting in the opposite direction will be his only method of deceleration. Otherwise the dampeners would have to be on continuously, and he doesn't have enough power for that. This day just keeps getting worse.
Wrenching himself up off the floor, he manoeuvres himself to his flight chair. Disengaging the inertial dampeners, he lets them coast toward Mars. He has two hours before his first course correction. Turning back to look over the cryo-pod and back toward the rear of the ship, he starts thinking of what might already be on board to restrain an angry Time Lord.
Pulling his comp around him, he keys in "Time Lord" to see what the computer might know about these fairy tales. It takes him only 5 minutes to read everything there is on them...3 times. What little he has is enough that he does not want him walking around free and capable.
Accessing the ships inventory, John starts digging through the manifests seeing what his anal-retentive ex-partner has catalogued. "Oh ho, what have we here?" he calls out to no one. "Huduct Mind-control Torcs". Right! We picked those up at that shady flea market on Tanus Minor, 4538."
He looks up the "Huduct" which led him to the "Anubians" and their history of using the torcs to control each other. Laughing at the irony of the slavers becoming the enslaved; John thinks these will work perfectly. He is mostly worried about the telepathy and any other psychic powers this alien might possess. He isn't certain the torc will completely suppress them, but he's willing to try.
Continuing to search the manifests trying to think of anything else that would restrain his Time Lord, John freezes, a blush creeping up his neck-the collars. That stupid bastard was dead, so he refused to think about the collars intended usage, but they were programmable to inhibit or encourage certain thoughts or behaviours. He would just program one to inhibit the Time Lord's ability to misbehave. Grinning to himself as he pulled, pushed, and stumbled his way to the rear of the ship, he digs through storage lockers looking for the intended articles. This might actually be fun, and extremely useful. He will essentially have a slave, and right now he needs one. The Time Lord can be his hands and feet, and if the computer is at all correct, he should be brilliant, so maybe he can fix the ship, too. About damn time his luck changed.
Pleased with himself, he heads back to the front of the ship with his newly acquired items. He'd made the most of his search back there to use the rear loo, and that took way more time than he'd intended. He's cutting it close to rescue the soon to be dying Time Lord. Making it to the casket with three minutes to spare and all the indicator lights turning an alarming mauve, he starts the opening sequence, but opts out of the stimulant injections, preferring to do those manually at this point. He'll need some time to get the torc and collar set, so unconscious will be the better choice at the moment.
Leaning back as the hatch lifts out of the way, he can see he's still almost too late. The Time Lord is death pale, and his temperature isn't coming back up as fast as a humans would. Choosing to assume everything is fine, John scoots up to lean against the pod. Picking up the collar first he uses its control to tune it for the behaviours that are acceptable and sets it to suppress those that aren't. Suppression consists of shocks that grow in intensity as the occupant struggles, to tightening if the shocks don't work. It is capable of inducing unconsciousness through asphyxiation, but has a hard-wired failsafe to prevent death. It's intended for sex after all. Getting it programmed, he sets the control aside, and turns to affix the collar around the Time Lord's throat. With a click, the collar becomes seamless and adjusts itself to be the perfect size, resting gently against his skin. As an added bonus, it will change colour with the occupants thoughts, warning the master of impending disobedience, so one could choose to be preemptive. John is going to enjoy being in control of that finally.
Blushing again, he sets aside the controller and turns to pick up torc. He isn't as familiar with this piece, but since it was originally designed to fit the heads of the Anubians he assumes that's the best location for the Time Lord. Telepathy comes from the head, right? First placing the control unit against his own temple, he feels a slight pinch as it attaches itself to his skin and injects a tiny filament into his bloodstream, allowing it to read the intended electrical impulses it will turn into commands for the torc. Receiving the minuscule chime that denotes the unit's readiness, John slips the torc over the Time Lord's head setting it even with his temples. It has a flashing purple light indicating its ready to pair with the control unit.
Thinking the control phrase, /You are mine. I do with you as I please for the benefit of all Huduct/The light turns a sold purple and the torc snaps snug against the Time Lord's head.
John has about a second and a half to feel smug when the Time Lord suddenly sits straight up in the open pod screaming his pent up fury. Eyes black with rage The Oncoming Storm turns to face his attacker. John has scrambled away from the infuriated Time Lord, and has pushed himself as far from him as possible with eyes wide and trembling. The collar flashes red, and John's terrified thoughts have the Time Lord clutching his skull and throat in another few seconds. With a bright flash one or the other of the slave devices has rendered the Time Lord comatose, again. Trying to regain his breath and slow his hammering heart, John is very glad he got the devices on in time.
Time Lords must be able to metabolise much faster than humans. A normal human should have been out for a few more hours after a cryo-sequence was aborted without the injections of the usual stimulants. Looking back at his prize slumped over the edge of the open pod, he's pleased at how ingenious his combination of technology is.
John levers himself up into his command chair. Command chair, yes it is. Getting comfortable, he prepares to wake his slave. /At least I know he's alive and healthy,/John thinks with an unpleasant smile growing on his once handsome face. "Master John Hart is ready to be obeyed," he says, as he lifts the collar's control, and releases the coma with a thought.