Year 2376:
The Captain of the Intrepid Voyager, wielder of hundreds of powerful technologies, whizzed past him without so much as a glance. So did the Ancient Traveler of the TARDIS as he chased her down the room of illusionary landscapes. How fortunate was he to be in the presence of two travelers and their ships of wonders, and they couldn't even see him - or at least forgot they could see him. Yet they would do his bidding. He could have the two captains do whatever he wished, and they would forget why they did it. He almost chuckled at the thought of two of the most powerful individuals in the galaxy at his disposal.
So focused was he on his unknowing captives that he neglected to notice a figure standing next to him. It seemed out of place for a snow-capped mountain. A stony, winged creature against a blanket of white. Its eyes were hidden behind his hands, and it faced away from him, as if he wasn't even there. He turned toward the direction the figure was facing. It was looking directly at the red-haired female captain. He looked back at the object, but realized it was not in the same place as before. It was significantly closer to the woman, and its hands had dropped enough to reveal its blank eyes. It was not a figure, but a creature. He immediately called the others in a silent hum: Beware! Intruders are onboard, and they have come to take Voyager.
Her bare face was stinging as the freezing air rushed past her, but Kathryn Janeway couldn't help but laugh as she heard the Time Lord Doctor howl in childish delight as he finally started to speed down the mountain behind her. She hadn't skied in a very long time, and was finally glad to share one of her favorite hobbies with her new friend. Yes, she now called the Doctor a friend, despite his occasional desire for whimsical exploration - though she had to admit to the moment when her old friend, Tuvok, called her "reckless" for flying the ship through the magnetic field of two deadly pulsars. After spending three captive days under the watchful eyes of her holographic doctor, she and the Doctor were released for duty and immediately retreated to the holodeck for, as Janeway called it, some "R-and-R" and to share their torturous experience in Sickbay.
Kathryn skid to a stop at the bottom of the mountain, triumphant at her success. But it was short lived as the Doctor collided with her, full force. They tumbled and landed in a snowy heap, Kathryn still laughing at the Doctor. "So sorry, Kathryn," he huffed in exhaustion, "I've been getting the hang of running, I guess I can't get the hang of stopping."
"Oh, that's alright, Doctor," chuckled Kathryn as they helped each other up. "As long as we don't have to make another trip to Sickbay, I'm having fun." But her chronometer reluctantly told her it was time to start her next duty shift on the bridge. "Computer, end program."
At her command, the ship-wide computer system chirped, and the Doctor stared in awe as the snowy mountainside dissolved into a small, silver room with crisscrossing pipes on the wall that made the illusion possible. With a command, the room could change into anything possible: a house, a field, a creature. The Voyager crew called the room a "holodeck," but even with his ship that could transcend all of time and space, he had rarely seen anything like it. It still baffled him how the crew could simply walk through a dissolving room without even noticing its wonder; just like Kathryn was doing right now. "Where are you going?" he asked her, eager to try another program.
"I have to go to the bridge," she replied over her shoulder. "Duty calls."
"But we just got away from your dreaded doctor yesterday. I was hoping we'd have more time to spend together," he ducked his head rather shyly, smiling in embarrassment . "It's not everyday when I get to meet a leader of a ship even close to my level of technology and understanding - at least one who doesn't have a weapon pointed at my head."
Kathryn couldn't help but smile at the compliment, and the familiarity they shared. After almost five years alone in the Delta Quadrant, and nearly every alien encounter becoming a deadly battle, it was comforting to finally see a friendly face that could relate to her. After all, he was the last of his kind, and, therefore, just as alone as she. "What more did you have in mind, Doctor?" she asked.
"Well, you showed me the wonders of your ship," said the Doctor, "why don't you let me show you mine?"
"You mean travel with you in your TARDIS?" she replied, shocked. He nodded in excitement. "Well...I'm flattered...but, I'm needed on my ship. Right now in fact." She watched as the Time Lord's face began to frown. "But, I'll find the time to see your ship more closely, and soon." The Doctor grinned again at the thought, and a satisfied Kathryn exited the room. However, she stopped as soon as she went through the slide doors. She was almost sure she heard something flutter past her. She turned to look around the corridor, but no one was there. Still, as she headed toward the bridge, she had a nagging feeling that something was watching her.
After Kathryn left, the Doctor decided to spend some more time on the holodeck since he had nothing better to do. He was given the captain's permission to try whatever program he liked, so he went browsing through the database on a panel on the wall. Of course, the one that would catch his eye was one by Tom Paris: The Adventures of Captain Proton. He activated it, and the silver room morphed into the inside of a black and white castle, complete with terrible dramatic music. It was just like those old television shows his companions would often force him to see claiming they were "classics." There were hardly any decorations in the plain white hallway he found himself standing in, except for rows of statues. Not a very comforting thought for the Doctor, but he decided to walk through anyway. Each statue was very different from the other. One was a bear, another a dragon, another some alien he never dreamed of before. There were so many others: a fish, a gargoyle, an angel...
Wait! The Doctor quickly turned back to the angel statue. It looked familiar. Too familiar. It looked like an ordinary angel statue, but what scared the ancient Time Lord was how the angel was covering its eyes - with its hands. He had to be sure. "Computer, end program," he called, and the entire castle and the statues dissolved into air, all except the angel. Fear gripped him as he backed toward the holodeck exit, staring unblinking at the statue. But something was irritating his arm. He could feel his sleeve was rolled up, but he never remembered lifting it. He glanced down at his arm, and his two hearts skipped a beat. Carved into his arm was a freshly-made hash mark, the sign of a Silence. He looked back up at the angel just in time to see it's hand freeze inches away from him. What have I done? he thought.
"Kathryn!" the Doctor shouted as he sprinted out of the Holodeck.
Kathryn walked through the empty corridor toward the turbolift, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched. Every few feet she moved she thought she heard a flutter, almost like wings, looked behind her, saw nothing, and kept moving. Each glance made her more uneasy, until she turned to look back one more time. When she turned to keep moving, she almost ran into Amelia Pond. Both women yelped in surprise. "Amy," Kathryn shouted, "what are you doing?"
"I'm sorry, Captain" Amy responded with her Scottish accent. "I wanted to see what your bridge was like, but I'm afraid got a little lost."
Kathryn sighed. "Oh, you weren't the first one to get lost in this maze Amy." The Captain rolled her eyes at the designer of her ship. "Follow me. I'll take you to the bridge." But after they turned the corner to reach the turbolift, Kathryn had to fall backward to avoid running right into what looked like a slab of stone. When she looked back up, she realized it was what looked like a sad, almost weeping stone angel. Amy let out a terrible scream. Kathryn looked at Amy, who was sheet white, staring at the angel. Why was she so afraid of a piece of stone that somehow made it on the Voyager? Amy glanced at her, frantically pointing at the statue, telling her to stare at it and "whatever you do, don't blink!" Kathryn looked, and the angel no longer looked sad. It was now a monster. It's mouth carved wide open to reveal razor-sharp teeth. And it was staring right at her. How could she blink? For once, she was too afraid.
How long did she sit there staring into those villainous eyes? She did not know. Eventually, she was picked up by someone calling her name and pulling her toward the turbolift. It was only when the doors shut in front of them and they were moving upward did she finally blink her watery eyes and look around. Amy was next to her and the Doctor was gripping Kathryn's arm, asking her if she was alright. Kathryn nodded.
The doors opened to reveal the bridge of the Voyager. All three stepped onto the bridge, and the Doctor began to speak, "Captain, you need to warn your people that there are very dangerous intruders onboard. The Silence and the Weeping Angels." Instinctively, Tuvok raised the ship-wide alarm, and the bridge crew flinched at the sound of the name, Silence.
"The Silence are here?" said Kathryn. "How do you know? And why are they still here?"
The Doctor showed the growing hash marks on his arm, revealing the presence of more than the one he saw on the holodeck. "I think it's obvious why they're here: they want our technology, you and I, and what better way to have it than to use the very people that control it. We can't remember that they are here, but they can still enforce their will on us. It's what they've been doing to the people of Earth for centuries, and it's probably what they have done to us for a very long time. Weeks, months, even years."
"Alright," Kathryn accepted his simple answer as she thought through several different ship functions at once to prepare for what might be a severe combat situation. "What about that moving statue I saw? Is that the - Weeping Angel?"
"One of them," replied Amy with an almost visible shudder. "The Angels are only statues when one perceives them. As soon as you look away, they move extremely fast. If you are staring at them, and you blink, they can touch you. If they do, you'll be sent sometime in the past to live your life while they feed off of the potential energy you would have had in this existence."
"Well, why are they here? Why choose Voyager?"
"Because of your ship," said the now sombre Doctor. "You live in an advanced piece of metal floating in space. You have nowhere to run if they come after you. And when all of you are gone, when they send all of you into the past, the Angels can take your ship and travel to new worlds to feed on. New worlds that they never dreamed of reaching so soon. Both races want your ship and my TARDIS, and they are both willing to fight each other and you and I to get to them." The Time Lord bowed his head in agony. No matter how hard he tried, he could never seem to stop hurting the ones he cared about. "I'm sorry I led you to this, Kathryn. I'm so, so sorry."
Kathryn put a sympathetic hand on the Doctor's weighted shoulder. "This isn't your fault, Doctor. We'll get through this. We always have." She smiled at him, gave his shoulder a pat, and strolled on over to her chair to yank an emergency phaser out from under her control console. "Now, how do we kill a Silence?"
The Doctor balked at the idea of killing, but when it came to the Silence and the Weeping Angels, there was no other alternative. "Well, first you have to remember when you're staring right at one." This received a nervous chuckle from the senior staff. "Then, you just have to point your weapon and 'click.'"
Kathryn was shocked that it was that simple, but she had to remind herself that the danger was remembering the Silence were there, and to still be on the lookout for the Angels. "And the Angels? How do we kill them?"
"Well -," the Doctor paused. He actually never thought about how to kill an Angel. He always ran from them before he had the chance. "Technically, you can't kill them."
Kathryn just stared at him, shocked. "What do you mean, we can't kill them? How are we supposed to keep Voyager if we can't even defend it?"
"Let me think for a moment." The Doctor paced for a few seconds, but could feel the crew growing more restless with each step he took. "I have it! You can't kill the Angels because they are stone when you look at them, but if you aren't looking at them, and you fire, you could kill them the split second you look away!"
"So, you look at the Silence to shoot, but you look away from the Angels to shoot?" asked Amy.
"Exactly!" The Doctor exclaimed, straightening his bow tie.
"Good work, Doctor," replied Kathryn. With that, she made an announcement to her crew. They were to grab phaser rifles and fire at all intruders in the manner specified by the Doctor. All crew members were to work in groups of at least two so everyone could watch each other's backs. With the security codes of every senior officer on the bridge, the controls to every critical system were silently locked out to everyone until the last Silence and Angel were removed from the ship. As soon as the bridge was confirmed clear of all outside aliens, the entrances were blocked by high-level forcefields, and everyone on the bridge, including Captain Janeway, set out toward the rest of the ship. Voyager was their home, and no other alien would take it away from them.
Shots could be heard throughout the ship as crewmen continued to fight the aliens. Kathryn kept laying down fire with two other security officers guarding her every move. They managed to kill several Angels, but she was never sure how many Silence she had killed. Occasionally, she would seem to be tripping on her own feet as she advanced through the ship, but her security had to gently tell her that it wasn't her feet, but the bodies of Silence that she was tripping over, a fact that she preferred to be forgotten. At least her security had the luxury to forget that fact when they looked up from the floor to fire at more of the aliens.
It seemed, though, as the crew made their way through the ship, an Angel would always be partnered with a Silence in a rivalry that occasionally ended with one slaying the other at the time the Voyager crew would reach them. A Silence, focused on an Angel, would glance at the arriving crew and be sent to the past by the Angel. An angel with a Silence not perfectly in its view would lose his sight of the Silence and forget his existence. The Silence would use that advantage to exterminate the Angel. The crew would take care of the rest.
Kathryn was relieved to hear that the casualty reports being fed to her informed her of a few injuries, but no disappearances from her crew so far. It seemed that the aliens were tough, but her crew had too much to lose to let the aliens take over. She could hear the frequency of weapons fire begin to die down as her crew were running out of targets.
After wandering the corridor for more intruders, Kathryn heard a clink of metal behind her. As she turned she saw the rifle of one of her security officers, Lieutenant Jarvis, settle on the floor. "Jarvis!" she called with no response. She looked at her second security officer, Crewman Lehman, who shook his head, telling her he had no idea what happened to Jarvis. Kathryn heard a flutter of wings, and raised her rifle before she looked down the corridor to see the Angel now standing just a few feet away from them, arm outstretched and parallel to Jarvis's rifle. She heard another flutter from behind her, and saw another Angel on the opposite side of the corridor. She and Lehman were trapped between two Angels. "Crewman," Kathryn whispered, shakily, "watch each other's backs." He simply responded with an "Aye, Captain," and was hit with what sounded like an electrical discharge, which knocked Kathryn's rifle out of her arms. She turned briefly to see Lehman collapse from the sparks coming from a Silence directly behind the Angel, which had come significantly closer to her, stony teeth bared. She turned to the other Angel, now just as close, and with another Silence trying to make its way toward her. With each horrified glance at one Angel, the other came closer, until she was pinned to the ground staring up at the monstrous creatures, her heart beating frantically. Their arms were inches from her face.
"NO!" She could hear the Doctor scream from the far end of the corridor. Kathryn looked his way, and was touched by an Angel.
The Doctor could only watch in horror as his newest friend flashed out of sight. For several seconds, he did nothing except stare at the empty space that symbolized another failure from him, and another piece of guilt to add to his expanding collection. He looked back up at the statues; they were smiling. Something rose inside the ancient traveler that he hadn't felt in a very long time. He felt rage. Uncontrollable rage that can only be expelled by saving the ones he loved, and not letting anymore fall under his watch.
By the time the Doctor gained enough of his senses to march his way toward the Angels, a great deal of the senior officers had arrived at the captain's last known location before the computer told them she was no longer on board. He was as close to the aliens as he would dare, and suppressed as much of his anger as he could to slowly mutter, "Where is she?" They did not answer, but just continued to smile. Of course they couldn't say anything, they were stone. And they obviously would never give up someone as powerful and as energy-satisfying as the captain of Voyager. They certainly would never give him up if they had the chance to take him. "Fine," he grunted. "Don't tell me, but I will tell you something you and the Silence should know: You may manipulate us, and you may try to defeat us, but you will never, ever stop me from saving the ones I love! I will find Kathryn, with or without your help, and when I do, you'd better run. Because when I return with her, we'll be making you target practice for the updated torpedo launchers on this unique ship, which you will never get your hands on." He straightened his bow tie and turned around to accompany the senior officers. No spark grazed him, and no sliver of stone touched his jacket.
The senior officers reentered the bridge and began scanning in search of their missing captain, hoping that wherever the Angels sent her, it was too far away - in distance or time. When the Doctor arrived on the bridge he immediately headed for his TARDIS. "Doctor," called Amy, "where are you going?"
"To find Kathryn," he replied.
"How?"
"How do you think? By looking for her throughout time and space."
"But she can be anywhere at any time! We have to wait until we can find some sign of her -" she hesitated to say "remains" for fear of causing her oldest friend more pain.
"Amy, you don't understand," the Doctor's harsh tone had softened. "It's my fault that the most dangerous creatures in my universe found her and her crew, and it is my responsibility to make sure they are safe."
Amy knew this side of the Doctor too well. Every once in a while, he had allowed his guilt to weigh him down. He would eventually try to alleviate this pain by traveling alone for a long time, leaving him nothing but an angry, reckless man with only his pain to keep him company. "And, once again, you think you failed by letting the Captain be taken?" The Doctor just lowered his head. "You didn't fail her. Her crew is looking for her right now, and if you just wait for a moment, we can find her and get her out of there, together." She put her hand on the Doctor's shoulder, just as Kathryn did. "You don't have to be alone anymore."
The Time Lord finally smiled, grateful for the company. Together, the crew waited for a sign of Kathryn somewhere in the galaxy. Occasionally, a control would chirp and the crew would leap in anticipation, only to be discouraged by a casualty report from another battle with the intruders.
Finally, the control at Tuvok's station chirped. It had picked up a Federation signal from a planet over 10 light years away. It was Captain Janeway's comm badge, and crewman Jarvis's. They immediately took the ship to the planet and scanned for the two. However, they were very concerned when they found no humanoid lifesigns on the surface. Commander Chakotay cautiously sent an away team to the location of the Captain's badge while trying to avoid the small battles still waging on the ship. It wasn't long after the away team was beamed down when they heard a response. "Voyager, we are at the location of the Captain's and Jarvis's comm badges."
"How's the Captain?!" Chakotay responded, slightly more concerned about Kathryn than of the other crewman.
"Crewman Jarvis is still missing, but as for the Captain..." There was a long, aching pause. "I'm afraid there isn't much left of her, sir."
The Doctor felt a wave of nausea roll through him, and he began to hunch forward. Amy wheeled in front of him, ducking below him to make contact with his eyes. "Now, Doctor, get a hold of yourself," she spoke in her soothing Scottish voice. "You can still go and get her, in the past. You didn't see her, and she didn't influence anything by being on that planet, right? This isn't a fixed point in time, right?"
The Doctor sat there for a moment, thinking about it. Then, he smiled again. "No, it wouldn't be." Slowly, he began to emerge with the fast-paced, childlike energy he always had. "The away team may have seen the remains of the Captain, which would supposedly mean that Kathryn was doomed to be touched by the Angel again in a previous timeline, but we only saw her body after she was sent back, and she never saw her body, which would, under normal time circumstances, seal her fate. This could mean we can take the TARDIS back to the point when she first arrived on the planet, creating a paradox and starving the Angels that touched her in the first place!" There were many confused faces, who's minds refused to follow the complexities of time. "I don't expect you to understand all of this. I just need you to trust me not to punch a hole in space. After all, I am a Time Lord, and all of this is just wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff that only I can truly understand."
He snapped his fingers, and the doors of the deep-blue TARDIS swung open once again. At his request, the crew told him the estimated time of the Captain's death and how old she was at the time, which helped him estimate when the Captain first arrived on the planet. Amy and her husband, Rory, decided to join the Doctor to help retrieve Kathryn. They entered the TARDIS, fired up the engine of knick-knacks, and pulsated off of Voyager and onto the deserted planet.
As soon as they stepped into the dark, colorful jungle, they were greeted by a stone spear piercing the door of the TARDIS. After the groups' hearts finished fluttering, they realized the spear came from a shaggy-haired Kathryn Janeway, already armed with another weapon before she realized who she was aiming at. "Doctor?!" she exclaimed in surprise.
"Hello, Kathryn!" the Doctor happily replied. "It's so good to see you alive! We have come to take you back to Voyager, and to help remove the rest of the Silence and Angels that have almost taken over -"
"Angels?" The Captain seemed shocked at this thought. "After all this time, they're still on my ship?"
"Well, yes. You've only been gone for a few hours, but luckily we found out where and when they took you, so we could come get you right after you were sent here by the Angels..." He began to trail off as Kathryn's words sank in. After all this time. "What did you mean by that?"
Kathryn stared at him in shock with her wild eyes. "Doctor, I have been here for over six months!"
"What?!" The Doctor looked at Amy and Rory. They both gave him the annoyed "you-forgot-to-send-your-ship-to-the-right-time-ag ain-didn't-you" look.
"I have been out here alone fighting for my life for over half a year," Kathryn continued, swinging her weapon around, completely oblivious to the silent exchange, "thinking that you couldn't save me because of the messy complexities of time travel that give me a week-long headache, but at least those-those stony freaks were taken care of by you and my crew. And NOW you're telling me that not even a day has gone by and they haven't been handled yet? The least you could have done was come and pick me up sooner so I could help! What exactly have you been doing for so long that was more important than letting a starship captain rot on a miserable planet like this one?!"
"Captain, I'm so sorry," intervened Rory. "Ironically, the Doctor just has a little bit of trouble getting the timing right on his rescue missions." He glared at the Time Lord, obviously recounting the numerous times he was severely overdue to meet up with Amy in his TARDIS-by several years.
"Well at least we can get you back to Voyager now," boasted the Doctor, but by her sudden rage, he could tell that the Captain wanted to smack his cheery Gallifreyan face, so he quickly changed the subject. "By the way, you had a crewman with you. Where is he?"
Her anger dissolved into a mixture of sorrow and hope as she sighed, "He's dead. Killed by one of the creatures here. Would you be able to find him at an earlier time?"
The Doctor looked at his feet, shook his head, and sighed. "I'm afraid not. Since I found you here now, I can't go back to an earlier point in your life. I'm sorry. I wish I could -," he was cut off by a strange roar that he never heard of before, but it seemed to instill panic in the wide-eyed captain.
"What's that?" called Amy.
"I don't know, but that thing is what killed Jarvis! We'd better get in the TARDIS before it gets here!" The Captain dived wildly into the police box, followed by the companions and the Doctor, who barely caught a glimpse of a sharp-toothed mouth and a body with purple fur before shutting the door behind him. After their heavy breathing subsided, Kathryn spoke in a neutral voice that hid her grief for Jarvis, but seemed to intensify her anger toward another problem, "So, Doctor, did you say someone's trying to take over my ship?"
By the time Kathryn arrived back on the Voyager, a handful of her crew were being surrounded by waves of Silence and Weeping Angels that she didn't know were still on her shipuntil a few minutes earlier. Yet, as she approached a set of statues, they immediately transformed into a wisp of smoke at her sight. They were the Angels that had taken her to that dreaded planet, and once she returned back to her reality, they instantly starved to death. If only the other Angels could work that way, thought Kathryn, but she guessed a phaser rifle from the weapons locker would suffice. She, the Doctor, Amy, and Rory had the advantage to fight the flood of aliens from behind them as the aliens focused on the rest of the crew. As the group attacked from behind, they gave the crew the opportunity to fire once again from the front. Every corridor was illuminated with orange bursts as alien after alien were brought down. Soon, only a handful remained.
The remaining Angels and the Silence stood side-by-side, but didn't dare cross the invisible line between them that had existed for centuries. The Doctor and Kathryn stood in front of them, backed by every security officer on the ship, and armed to the "kill" setting on their rifles. "I told you I would find her," the Doctor started in his most menacing voice. "I told you what might happen when we returned. We are willing to destroy you once and for all, but we are giving you a chance to run. Leave now, and never come near this vessel or this race again, and your lives will be spared - for now."
The foremost Silence slowly turned to look at the Angel next to him, and looked back at the two humanoids who wielded such incredible power, but were now untouchable. He uttered a low, clicking hum. The lights in the corridor suddenly flashed off, and when they came back on, the two rivals had vanished.
"Those six months on that planet were almost like my life on Voyager." Kathryn and the Doctor were walking through the corridor after the crisis was finished and she was cleared for duty by her irritated holographic Doctor. While walking, they were discussing Kathryn's unexpected experience on the planet the Angels had sent her to. "I mean, life on that planet was a lot worse than life here, but, just like here, I was alone for my kind, facing the unknown daily. In a way, I almost never left Voyager."
"Well, of course you did," said the Doctor. "At least here you have friends and family who care about you. Hopefully, in the past few weeks, you made some new friends, despite one with a complete inability to keep track of time for his friends, even though he has a time machine at his disposal," he nervously chuckled at his guilt for leaving kathryn for such a long time, but she purposely ignored his apology.
"You know, Doctor," she smiled, "now that we've been through such an 'interesting' journey, your offer to travel with you is now more tempting than ever."
The Time Lord beamed at her. "Actually, Captan, why don't you come along right now? I can take you whenever and wherever you wish. After all, my ship is a time machine. I could take you through all of time and space and have you back here in time for your next duty shift."
She only had to think it through for a moment. By the time she made her choice, they were on her bridge, standing right in front of the doors of the blue police box, the lantern atop shining brightly. "Well," she said, "how can I argue with that offer?"
She told the crew to expect her in a few minutes with new stories to tell. And by what Amy and Rory had told her already before she even entered the TARDIS, they would be very unique stories, even for her crew. After a wave goodbye to her officers, the Time Lord guided her and his companions into his ship and closed the door behind him. Soon, the lantern began to pulse, and the police box slowly faded away to lead another companion through the many wonders of all of time and space.