The Doctor feigned a confused stroll into the room and looked around brightly.
"Oh, this isn't the rec room. Where have I ended up?"
Rose heard his voice and a wave of relief washed over her. The princess drew back her lips and hissed through her teeth.
"What fool is this?"
"Awful lot of pipes and things for a gymnasium. Oh, and Draconians! Fancy that! I didn't know we had any Draconians on board. I had a roommate once who was Draconian. Was always making that Kartian Lungfish Fondue that's so popular in the Spiridon sector. Stank up the apartment something awful. Weeelll, I say apartment. It was more like a minimum security prison cell, but we were on Valera. Progressive sort, Valerans. A prison cell on Valera is nicer than an upscale loft in a major city on some planets. My roommate certainly thought so. Kept committing minor crimes just to get back in. I'm the Doctor, by the way."
While he rambled, seeming completely relaxed, the Doctor pretended to wander aimlessly into the room with his hands stuffed in his suit pockets, taking in the pipes and orange lighting with a smile. Meandering backwards, he casually approached the water filtration controls.
"How did you get back here?" the Princess demanded. "You're not with the crew!"
"Oh, I got my hand stamped!" the Doctor answered gaily. "They let you go anywhere with a hand stamp. Lots easier than sneaking around with a biodamper and a glamour circuit, wouldn't you say, Rose?"
"Oh, lots," Rose agreed, grinning. "Tried it both ways. Stamps are much more comfortable."
"Course," he continued, "the biodamper's got the advantage when your goal is to hijack a high-security cruise ship full of the rich and famous and drive it into a planet full of exotic radiation."
The Draconian henchmen had their stun-guns trained on the Doctor by now, and the Princess smiled unpleasantly, back on comfortable ground.
"And is your goal to stop me?" she inquired.
"I'd just like to know why you're doing it," the Doctor admitted. "Draconians used to be all about honour. Can't see how holding a group of wealthy civilians for ransom fits into that picture."
"That isn't our intention at all," the lizard princess retorted, offended. "We are merely borrowing the ship in an act of desperation. The Hindenburg has the best shields of any ship in this sector of the galaxy, far better than any group of ill-funded resistance fighters could afford. We need those shields to take us to the wreck of the Jogran's Courage, which we will tow out of the planet's outer rings and return to Draconia as proof of the usurper's treachery."
"Ohhhh, the shipwrecked royal envoy!" He beamed happily at the revelation. "So that's what you're after! But that doesn't make any sense. It's been fifty years since your people lost that ship. Surely you should've been able to do something about retrieving it before now."
"The Draconian council of elders will not fund any investigation!" she snarled, nostrils flaring in anger. "They are in bed with the usurping p'tok who murdered my mother and stole my rightful place on the throne! They claim unexplained planetary phenomena caused the crash of my mother's ship and use the radiation as an excuse to perpetuate their cover-up. When I gain access to my mother's ship, I will be able to prove that the accident was the direct result of sabotage, and expose the council as accessories to the assassination of the rightful matriarch of the Draconian people!"
"Oh, well, I can see how that makes sense," the Doctor said as he subtly positioned himself closer still to the water filtration controls and gently ran his thumb over the on-switch to the sonic screwdriver in his pocket. "Get an investigation going, all well and above board, sounds like a good idea. But you don't need to put all these passengers in danger to do it. Tell you what, call off this hijacking, let the crew take the ship back into the safe zone, and I'll see what I can do to help get your ship back and get your government to convene a proper court to look into the matter." He edged the sonic gently out of his pocket, but the Princess's sharp eyes caught the movement and she immediately pulled a squareness gun out of her robes and pointed it straight at the Doctor, who froze.
"I appreciate the offer, Doctor whoever you are, but I'm not stupid enough to risk trusting an outsider to take care of it. This is a Draconian problem, and it's a Draconian point of honor to settle it ourselves. I and the loyal few who remain to me will handle everything. You will move quietly over to that folding chair in the corner and allow Ch'pok to chain you there, or I will fire a hole through your torso that extends from your knees to your neck. I prefer to accomplish this mission without unnecessary loss of life, but make no mistake. I shall kill you if it helps to bring my mother's killers to justice. Ch'pok."
The Doctor slowly relaxed his hand and took a step back away from the filtration unit as the older of the two male Draconians stepped toward him.
The Princess, meanwhile, turned to the younger of the two without removing her eyes from the Doctor or lowering her gun.
"Aktuh, commence saturation of the crew and passengers."
Aktuh smiled cruelly and reached for the data-pad, which he had already connected to the ship's computer system. "The sprinkler system is now activated, Princess, in every section of the ship besides our own," he announced.
…
In the dining room, Donna made it under the table just as the fire sprinklers went off. Lee was only a second behind her, and barely got hit with a smattering of droplets. Shaun just sat there stupidly in his chair until Donna reached up, grabbed his puffy pirate sleeve, and yanked him down to the floor and under cover with her. The three of them then peered out from under the table at the chaos that had broken out around them.
There were shrieks as well-dressed cruise ship patrons found themselves suddenly drenched by showers of cold, high-pressure water coming out of the emergency sprinkler system. It was only seconds before the confusion and memory loss began to take hold among those who were the wettest.
"What the – where am I? Charles? Charles!"
"Who's Charles? Who're you?"
"Whoa, how did I get here?"
"Eek! Let go of me, you dirty old man!"
A fight broke out between a Gargantuan and a blue humanoid who had forgotten that the war between their races ended in a peace treaty three years earlier. People trying to get away from the fight stampeded to the back of the room, and several tables and chairs were overturned in the process.
Donna, wincing at each crash of expensive dinner china, waved and called for the attention of a steward standing nearby.
"Oi! You in the white! Yes, you!"
With difficulty, the steward pulled his eyes away from the chaos unfolding around him and turned to the woman and two men hiding under the table next to him.
"How do you turn the sprinklers off?" Donna demanded.
"What? How should I know?" he asked, incredulously.
"You work here, you plonker!"
"I-I do?" he stammered. He looked down at his uniform in some surprise.
"Oh, for goodness sake…" Donna huffed and retreated back under the table cloth again.
She noticed Shaun's leg was still sticking out from under the table on the other side, so she grabbed it and hauled it under cover.
"Shaun! You idiot, don't let yourself get wet. Do you feel funny? How's your memory?"
"Uh, fine," he said, shakily. "I didn't get any in my mouth. Is that—"
Another crash punctuated the exchange and Lee put a hand on Donna's shoulder, repositioning himself between her and the shards of porcelain that were flying around with every plate drop outside.
A stun-gun blast tore across the room and hit one of walls on the far side. Passengers and crew renewed their screams.
"Warriors!" shouted the Draconian who had followed Donna into the room. "Warriors, at arms! Rioters have broken into the palace! To me, men!" He leveled the gun at a group of shrieking, panicking former revelers and started shooting indiscriminately. Apparently, he was not immune to the chemical in the water either.
An old man, caught by a blast, fell to the ground next to Donna's knees.
"Oh my god," she cried, reaching into the water spray to grab him and drag him partially inside their makeshift shelter. "He's been hit!"
"No," said Lee, holding her back with a comforting hand on her shoulder. "S-s-s-stunned, only."
"We've got to get out of here!" Donna shouted over the din. She looked over her head at the underside of the table and made a split-second decision. "Grab that end!" She pointed to the table legs behind Lee, and moved over to the legs at the opposite end. Lee obediently moved over, catching her meaning, and took the legs.
"To the corridor, all right? One, two, three, LIFT!" Donna hoisted up the table at one end while Lee shouldered the other, and with Shaun taking the middle between them, the three ran awkwardly through the stunner fire and the pouring water to the corridor, the table acting as a sort of umbrella above them.
Out in the hall, the ceiling was low, and they were able to tilt the table down at Donna's end and up at Lee's to wedge it at about 70 degrees between the floor and ceiling, blocking the water from the sprinkler closest to the dining hall entrance and creating a temporary spray free gap zone about six feet by four feet, out of the immediate line of sight of the Draconian with the stun-gun.
"Now what?" shouted Shaun.
"We've got to shut the water off," Donna yelled back. Backsplash was ricocheting off the wall and onto her hair and clothes, and she tried to huddle closer to the shelter of the angled table.
The water line connecting ceiling sprinklers in the corridor was visibly affixed to the ceiling with metal brackets. Lee looked up and down the line as best he could without getting wet, but couldn't see any kind of closeable valve in the pipe.
The sound of stunner fire in the dining hall lulled for a moment, and Donna stepped away from the table, leaving the other two holding it in place, to peer around the doorframe at the Draconian and people still inside.
Passengers and crew were still climbing the walls, cowering behind overturned tables, or fleeing the room, except for those who had already been knocked out by the stunner. Their bodies were littered around the open floor. The Draconian had paused in his assault and was busy unscrewing something on the stunner. He finished his adjustment and fired at a buffet steward who had taken the opportunity to make a dash for the door. He missed the steward and hit the curtains by the passenger cabin area entrance. The curtains immediately burst into flames.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," Donna mumbled to herself. She turned back to the other two in the hall. "I don't think that's a stunner anymore."
…
Yes, the Draconians swore once in Klingon and have Klingon names. I'm not very creative, guys.
And also, yes, the 51st century has interstellar travel, squareness guns, and the Time Agency, but for some reason they're still using water sprinklers for fire control in space… I know. I know. Don't think about it too much. The episode with the Titanic had a spaceship with some kind of flippin' lava pit in it, so I'm just gonna let it go.