Part Six: Meltdown
"Keep moving," Sarah gasped to Emera as they sprinted aimlessly through the tunnels. She'd lost all sense of direction, had no idea where they were going or where they'd been, if they were heading toward relative safety or greater danger, if they'd lost anyone along the way in these tunnels that never ended, or if they were going around in circles, even. She only knew that they were being pursued – and shot at – and had to keep moving.
And that she'd been right: it was impossible to move stealthily with a group this size, especially through narrow and dimly-lit, winding little tunnels like these with armed guards in hot pursuit.
Another flash and crack from behind; it didn't sound as if anyone had been hit this time. At least two of the escaping slaves had fallen already, maybe more, she couldn't tell.
There was nowhere to hide.
And then there was something else, a subtle change that she only slowly became aware of, preoccupied as she was by the pounding of her feet and her heart and the blood through her veins. There'd been a humming sound, very faint, the whole time she'd been in the mines – a kind of vibration, droning through the walls and the floor of the place, a constant background hum that she'd barely even been aware of until now, and even now it wasn't the hum itself that she'd become aware of, but its absence.
It had stopped.
Hurling herself around a corner, Sarah thought that something else had changed, too. The atmosphere was thinning, the air becoming stuffy, and she half-believed she was imagining it because she was out of puff anyway from running too hard for too long, so of course it was hard to breathe, she hadn't run like this since being dragooned into cross-country races during her school days, and that was years ago now, she must be more out of shape than she'd realised…
It wasn't her imagination. There was something wrong with the air, with the life support system – she'd been aboard a space station with the life support switched off before, she recognised the feeling only too well, wondered desperately how long the air could possibly last if she was already aware of the lack of it.
But why would the sky raiders turn the atmosphere off when they had guards down here? Was putting down a slave rebellion so important that they were prepared to kill their own people to achieve it? Or was there something else going on up in the moon base – something to do with the Doctor, perhaps?
Perhaps there was an explanation, but she couldn't wonder about it any longer, not when it was taking all the strength she had to keep moving. The Lindosians were slowing, worn out from the chase and the thinning air. Were the guards still in pursuit? She could no longer tell.
Gulping in whatever air she could, Sarah caught hold of Emera's arm and plunged onward.
dwdwdwdwdw
Sarah was in the mines.
Harry didn't know that for sure, but he was certain enough. Sarah was in the mines with the slaves and their alleged insurrection, and the life support system had been switched off down there.
And the Doctor had vanished from the view-screen.
Confusion reigned in the command centre. It had to be evident by now to every Tarsin present that Proctor Silrin was a sandwich or two short of a picnic, but they didn't seem to have any clear idea what to do about it.
The guardsman at Harry's side had lowered his guard. And the console controlling the life support system was nearby, unattended now.
Harry didn't stop to think beyond that point. He simply acted: shoulder-charging the guard aside and then throwing himself at the console. It was pointless and he knew it, deep down. He had no idea how to operate the controls and his hands were still tightly cuffed behind his back, so that he couldn't even see what he was doing. But he had to try, for Sarah's sake.
Something hard and heavy impacted at the base of his skull within seconds and he fell to the ground, seeing stars, dimly aware of shouting and kerfuffle…
It might have been seconds, minutes or even hours later that his blurry vision and foggy brain began to clear and he gradually became aware that Talib was standing over him, brandishing a gun and railing furiously at his colleagues…several of whom also had guns trained on him – still on Silrin's side, then.
"Don't be fools!" Talib's voice was hoarse, desperate. "Didn't you hear? The company is gone, the government is gone – this base is collapsing. You don't have to follow the Proctor's orders any longer. Choose for yourselves – choose to live! Choose not to kill your own people. We have men down there, good men. Would you let them die?"
It was quite a speech, but as he slowly struggled to an awkward sitting position – easier said than done with his hands bound – Harry looked up and saw panic in Talib's eyes, and no wonder. It had to be taking every ounce of courage he had to finally break cover and nail his colours to the mast like this for all to see, standing up in opposition to his peoples' entire objective here, after maintaining the secrecy of his position for so very long.
Silrin bellowed abuse at Talib for being a traitor, demanded of his staff that they not return home as failures, and no one seemed to know what to do. How long could the people in the mine last without life support? The air already circulating should keep them going for a time, at least, if Harry's experience at Nerva Space Station was anything to judge by, but it wouldn't last forever. He glanced up at the view-screen. There was still no sign of the Doctor. Where could he have got to?
"Come on, use your brains," Talib shouted, the fear in his voice giving way to exasperation. "Would you rather die than think for yourselves? Would you let your workmates die – your friends?"
For a too-long moment it seemed the impasse would hold, but at last, one by one, the Tarsins scattered around the room began to lower their weapons, swayed by Talib's impassioned pleas – and possibly also by their innate sense of self-preservation. Silrin shouted a few more furious threats and then ran from the room and there was a sudden flurry of movement, technicians descending upon the console that controlled life support.
Harry wriggled out of the way, quick-smart, before he could be trampled, and then Talib was pulling him to his feet and fumbling at his wrists to unlock the cuffs, muttering anxious apologies for allowing his capture in the first place.
"Well, I hardly see what you could have done about it." Freed, Harry tried rubbing some life back into his numb wrists and gingerly prodded at the lump on the back of his head. "I'm just glad you showed up when you did. Shouldn't we –"
"Sir, there's a problem," one of the technicians interrupted, and it took everyone a moment to realise she was talking to Talib.
"Don't call me sir. I'm not in charge," he protested, and then asked, "What's wrong?"
"The controls are not responding – we can't restore life support to our guardsmen in the mine."
There were more people in the mines than just the guardsmen, Harry wanted to point out, but Talib was already responding, his tone brisk and efficient.
"Get on the radio, then – find out where they are, if they can evacuate – send someone down there with breathing units to help them, if you must!"
"Excellent suggestion – you'd make a splendid sergeant, Talib – but all that really won't be necessary," a hearty voice boomed out, and Harry span around to see the Doctor standing in the doorway, grinning.
"Doctor." Relief brought a smile to his face, which broadened as Roba pushed past the Doctor and ran across the room – a room full of dreaded sky raiders, moreover – to fling his arms around his waist. "Oh, I say – steady on, old chap," he muttered, ruffling the boy's hair and patting his shoulder, rather more pleased than he might have expected to be greeted so fondly.
"You're looking well, Harry," the Doctor lightly remarked as an aside as he strolled casually into the room, nodding at the confused Tarsins, and that was likely as close as he'd ever get to mentioning the tense standoff they'd just been through. "You see," he continued, addressing Talib and his colleagues once more. "I took the liberty of accessing the life support controls from the secondary server room to re-engage the atmospheric system in the mine, and remotely disabled that console in case anyone else felt inclined to meddle. It won't last indefinitely, though, any of it, so you might want to order an immediate evacuation of the base – it's time you people went home, don't you think?"
"Then the virus is real?" one of the technicians anxiously asked.
"Very real."
The Tarsins exchanged worried looks.
"Don't just stand there," Talib shouted. "Someone give the order! Oh, where's the intercom – I'll do it myself."
While Talib started bustling around, organising his colleagues, Harry turned to the Doctor. "Doctor, about Sarah –"
"Now, there's no time to lose, Harry," the Doctor declared, cutting across what he was trying to say. "I think we can trust our friend Talib to see to the Tarsin evacuation, but Silrin's still on the loose, I can't imagine he'll give up so easily, and we'll need to see about the Lindosian prisoners as well – and of course there's Sarah to think of –"
"Yes, about Sarah, Doctor –"
"I can't think where she might have got to – you humans, always wandering off –"
"Sarah's in the mine, Doctor," Harry loudly interrupted, since simply coming out and saying it was clearly the only way he was going to get the Doctor's attention.
The Doctor's eyes went wide – well, wider. "In the mine?"
"Well, I think so, anyway." A new alarm was sounding, a computer voice proclaiming the evacuation order, and Harry hurriedly moved out of the way of the Tarsin technicians as they rushed out of the room. "That Silrin chap mentioned some kind of insurrection – a slave uprising…"
"That sounds like Sarah."
"Well, that's what I thought."
"Then why didn't you say so in the first place?"
Since he'd been trying to do just that all along, Harry was rendered almost speechless with indignation by this question, and then was distracted by a strange wheezing sound nearby. It was Talib – the Tarsin equivalent of laughter, it seemed. "So there was another of you after all," he chuckled. "Oh, well played, my friend. You fooled us."
"Yes, he does have his moments, doesn't he," the Doctor agreed with a beaming smile, and Harry wasn't entirely sure what he was implying but chose to take it as a compliment. Then the Doctor said, "We'll need to round up the Lindosians, Harry, and get them back down to Lindos – if Sarah's with them, that'll save us –"
Yet another alarm interrupted, a different one again, one of the computer terminals lighting up like a Christmas tree, and there were no technicians left in the room to attend to it. The Doctor and Talib rushed over and started gabbling at one another in furious, technical gobbledygook.
"What is it?" Harry followed them, Roba clinging tightly to his arm, wide-eyed and silent.
"It's the reactor." That glint of panic had returned to Talib's eye. "There's something wrong with the reactor – is it the virus you planted, has it caused this?"
The Doctor looked deeply troubled, which was worrying. He hadn't anticipated this, either. "No. No, this isn't the virus. It wouldn't have anything like this effect and we should have hours yet, plenty of time – besides, I built in a fail-safe, it can be shut down at any time if need be." So it had been a bluff…of sorts; Harry wondered why he was surprised. "But this…this is something different. No, this is Silrin's handiwork. It seems he's not about to let anyone go without a fight."
dwdwdwdwdw
The hum was back, Sarah noted with great relief, and the air felt lighter and more breathable already. It was the first good thing that had happened since the Doctor disappeared.
The sky raiders seemed to have lost track of them, as well. That was another good thing.
Just up ahead, the tunnel she was hurrying down opened out into a much wider space, which was worrying, because open ground did not feel safe just at present – who could tell what the sky raiders might do next? Every instinct she possessed was telling her to find somewhere to hide. Hide and re-group; breathing room to think, to plan the next move.
There were other passages opening off that cavern, so she kept moving, dashing across the worrisome open ground into the slightly more reassuring confines of another tunnel, urging the escaped Lindosian prisoners along.
Was everyone present and correct? She had no idea. They were fretful and angry, frightened and unsure, and she had no idea how to reassure them or what they should do for the best. She no longer even knew which direction might lead up to the moon base and which led only deeper into the mines. They were hopelessly lost.
And this tunnel was a dead end.
dwdwdwdwdw
"But why?" wondered Harry, watching helplessly as the Doctor worked feverishly at the console. "Why would Silrin sabotage the base? What does he hope to gain?"
"I don't believe gain is what he has in mind, Harry," said the Doctor, frowning worriedly, "Quite the opposite, in fact. No, it's no good – I can't undo the damage from here. I'll have to head for the reactor core itself." He made a thoughtful moue. "Probably too late to prevent total meltdown, but I can buy us some time – enough to get everyone away."
"You'll need help," Talib immediately offered, but the Doctor shook his head.
"No, I need you two – I'm sorry, Roba, you three – to oversee the evacuation, make sure everyone gets away safely."
"You can't go alone, Doctor," Harry argued, an automatic, instinctive protest, but the Doctor shook his head and clamped a heavy hand on his shoulder, looked him straight in the eye, sombre and sincere.
"I need you to find Sarah, Harry – and this young man's mother, and all the other Lindosian prisoners. Get them into a transport vessel and take them down to Lindos – don't wait for me. I'll find my own way. Get them to safety. I can rely on you, can't I?"
"Of course, Doctor," Harry promised, struck by the solemnity of this mission…and then his brain registered the words his ears had just heard, and panic set in. "Oh, I say – me? Fly a transport vessel?" The very idea was ludicrous.
"Well, Talib can't do it – his ride is going in the other direction entirely," the Doctor mildly pointed out.
"Yes, but –"
"And you can drive a car, can't you?"
"Well, yes, but –"
"Well, there you are, then. The principle is much the same – simpler, in fact, because this system is fully automated, so really the computer does all the work for you. Don't look so worried, man. Now, this is what you'll need to do…"
dwdwdwdwdw
"What can we do?"
"You said there would be a way – that we might drive the sky raiders away, and be free once more."
"There is no way to escape, we are trapped here."
"What will we do? Where can we go?"
"I don't know, let me think!" Sarah pulled away from the fretful accusations of the escaped Lindosian prisoners, rested her forehead against the cool stone of the tunnel wall and tried to think. What could they do?
This tunnel was a dead end. Somewhere behind them, armed sky raider guards were still lurking in the mine, probably not very far away. They were lost, with no idea which way might take them out of the mine – and even if they could find the way, there would be even more sky raiders waiting there for them, blocking their path to freedom. All they had were their bare hands and that single gun, still tucked into Sarah's belt in case it proved useful, somehow.
She'd given these people hope and then they'd acted on it and watched it turn to dust, and she wanted to blame them for that because she hadn't intended them to do it, but she couldn't blame them because fighting for freedom was something she believed in, always had, even when it seemed hopeless. So they were her responsibility now. Where could she take them where they'd be safe?
"We can't stay here," she said, because that much she did know, they couldn't defend themselves in a bottleneck of a dead-end like this. "But if we go back, back to that larger cave, there was another passage we can try. Come on, quick, before the guards catch up with us."
They followed her lead without question, even now, somehow trusting that she knew what she was doing. She wished she could be so certain that she did.
It wasn't far back to the point where the tunnel opened out into that cavern that had worried her earlier, which had two more tunnels forking off it – the one they'd come along a few minutes earlier and the second that they were going to have to try now.
"Over there." She pointed, keeping her voice low. "Hurry."
The Lindosians began to scurry across the cave into that other passage.
Sarah hung back to make sure everyone made it across safely and bring up the rear, and they'd nearly all made it when suddenly there were shouts and running footsteps to warn that sky raiders were approaching from the other tunnel, and they needed more time – just a bit more time to get across and get away, get out of sight, if not to safety.
She pulled out the gun and fired in the direction of the approaching guards, a warning shot, because it was all she could think to do that might slow the pursuit even just a bit, and the gun bucked and jerked in her hand, surprisingly powerful for such a small sidearm.
The energy bolt crashed into the cave wall, just inside the tunnel entrance opposite, sending chips of friable rock flying through the air like shrapnel, and the Lindosians reacted with fear and consternation.
"Keep going, faster," she shouted, but it was no good, they were out of time.
They weren't going to make it.
Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion now. Emera was running across the cave to follow the other Lindosians down the escape tunnel, with Olos at her side, and Sarah saw a sky raider guard come into view, leaning around the corner of the other tunnel, bringing his weapon to bear on them.
She still had the stolen gun in her own hand, whipped it around and fired almost without thinking, aiming for the rock wall alongside his head, another warning shot intended to force him back, to buy the others just a few more seconds to escape.
But she'd forgotten – already, just moments after firing that first shot – how unpredictably the gun pulled, how hard it was to control. The shot missed its mark, caught the guard head on and he crumpled, even as he fired his own weapon. The energy bolt hit the boy Olos and he collapsed like a puppet with its string cut, just a child who'd wanted nothing more than to go home. Emera cried out in anguish, and the gun dropped from Sarah's hand.
She felt cold, cold and numb, frozen to the spot as if her feet had taken root.
There was more noise and more confusion, a bustle of movement and scuffling, someone who wasn't her was shouting orders, and there were things she should be doing. She had people relying on her, she had to get them to safety, but she couldn't seem to move, couldn't seem to think, as if her brain had shorted out, just when she needed it most. Everything around her seemed far, far away and out of focus, the sound muted and indistinct. There were more guards in that tunnel who'd be upon them at any moment, but she couldn't take her eyes off the one she'd just shot, lying sprawled across the dirty rock floor.
It's just a monster, she tried to tell herself, but in her mind she was hearing the conversation she'd overheard earlier, sky raider guards chatting about shift patterns and their families back home and how much they hated working here, and she knew that they weren't monsters, any more than the humans who'd once kept slaves had been monsters. They were just people – ignorant and thoughtless and cruel, perhaps, but still just people.
And she'd killed one of them, and she wasn't sure that lump of ice in the pit of her stomach would ever go away.
"Sarah?" A familiar voice penetrated the fog, a familiar voice that shouldn't be here.
"Sarah, are you all right, old thing?"
Sarah blinked, and suddenly Harry was there, gripping her arms and peering worriedly into her face. Where had he come from?
"Harry. I shot the guard," she told him, stupidly, and he glanced over his shoulder.
"Yes, so I see. Are you all right? You look awfully pale."
"I killed him." She could hear a note of near hysteria in her own voice. "I didn't mean to. He shot Olos and I killed him."
She'd never killed anyone before. Was this how it felt? How did serial killers stand it?
"He isn't dead, Sarah," said Harry, and that made no sense. "Neither of them – look, take a seat before you fall over, just there, that's it. Easy does it. Try to breathe. Sit tight and I'll be back in two ticks."
There it was: that soothing bedside manner that he usually knew better than to try on her these days; she must look even worse than she felt. She wanted to protest, the way she normally would, but nothing was cooperating at the moment – not her voice and not her brain, it was like trying to think through treacle – so she followed Harry's advice and sat down on the ground and watched him bustling around, calm and professional the way he had been when they first met, back at UNIT when the Doctor was comatose following his regeneration and no one knew what to do about it. Harry knew where he was when there were medical emergencies and people in need of care for him to focus on, she rather distantly reflected; it was just everything outside of his professional comfort zone that he struggled with.
Olos lay limp and still nearby, but he'd been moved into a recovery position. Harry bent over him, checking vitals, and then spoke to Emera, who was still at the boy's side. Roba was there too, clinging to Emera, who was holding him tight, and that was significant, it mattered, but Sarah couldn't seem to focus on why; it was as if she was looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope, white noise ringing in her ears.
The other Lindosians were trickling back from the tunnel they'd escaped down, looking tense and uncomfortable, and Harry spoke rapidly to them, hands waving to illustrate his point. Across the cave, the downed guard had also been made comfortable, several other guards clustered around him, talking furiously. The Lindosians were keeping their distance, wary and frightened, but they weren't running and the sky raiders weren't chasing or shooting at them, not any more, and she wondered what she'd missed – and how she could have been in such a fugue that she'd managed to miss it.
"Feeling any better now, then?"
Between blinks, Harry was back, squatting to peer into her face again, in full-blown doctor mode now. In the dim light of the mine, the sharp planes of his lean, angular face were accentuated, giving him a stern, patrician look that was completely at odds with his good-hearted nature, and he was wearing a frown that only added to that impression…but then she realised that the reason he was frowning was because he'd asked her a question and she hadn't replied, had just sat and stared at him instead. What was wrong with her?
"Touch of shock, I'd say," Harry said, answering her unspoken question. "Come on, buck up, old bean. You know, if we were back in my sick bay I'd give you a tranquiliser and send you to bed, but we aren't, so…"
Old bean.
"Old bean? Honestly, Harry, of all the –" The protest came automatically, indignation loosening her tongue at last…but then she saw the look on his face and knew he'd done it on purpose this time, to provoke exactly that reaction. It had worked, as well, and she was annoyed with herself for being so predictable.
Like a rubber band snapping back into shape, the world was suddenly in focus again. That sense of horror was still there, a lingering sourness at the back of her throat and the pit of her stomach, but the fog was lifting, she could think again now, so she took a deep breath and then calmly insisted that she did not need a tranquiliser, thanks all the same.
"Jolly glad to hear it," said Harry.
"Although I wouldn't say no to a good night's sleep," she had to admit. Now that the immediate danger appeared to be over somehow – the Doctor had done something, of course he had, it was just a question of what and where was he – now that someone else was there to share the load, she was beginning to realise just how exhausted she was, a weariness that ran bone-deep.
"I know the feeling." Harry flashed a rueful smile at her, and she wondered just how long ago the last good night's sleep had been for either of them. Not since they'd left UNIT, probably, and how long ago had that been, subjectively speaking? She tried to work it out and couldn't. Nerva Space Station, the future Earth, Skaro, then Nerva again, running from one desperate battle to another, catching whatever sleep they could in brief snatches here and there…no wonder she was so tired – and no wonder Harry looked as tired as she felt.
"Are they really still alive?" she quietly asked, looking again at the guard she'd shot, lying still and unmoving at the centre of a sky raider huddle, the other guards busily fashioning some kind of impromptu stretcher for him, as far as she could tell. Would they do that for a corpse?
"Very," Harry confirmed with a nod. "Both guns were set to stun, apparently – just as well the fellows down here didn't get the message about lethal measures, really. Of course, they didn't hear the evacuation order, either, or they'd have given up the chase a lot sooner…"
"That was my fault," a new voice interjected, and Sarah gasped as one of the sky raiders appeared at Harry's side, clapping a hand to his shoulder as if they were old friends. "I'd forgotten that the mine is on a separate intercom system – communications are not my field. Harry, we cannot linger any longer, we must hurry."
"Of course," Harry nodded. "Are you ready to go, Sarah? We'll need to move fast. I'll round everyone up."
"Go where, Harry? Where's the –?" she began to ask, frustrated at being so out of the loop, but he was gone again already, leaving her alone with the sky raider, who bared his teeth at her in a peculiar grimace that took several seconds to identify as the sky raider equivalent of a smile.
"I am sorry for your distress," he said, and offered a hand to help her up. Still confused as to where this turnaround had come from, she refused the hand and scrambled back to her feet under her own power, deciding that it was high time she pulled herself together and got a handle on the situation.
"Can you tell me what's going on?" she demanded, keeping one very wary eye on the sky raider and the other on Harry as he gently lifted young Olos into his arms and called the frightened and confused Lindosians to gather around him.
"We are evacuating." Well, as answers went, it was concise, at least.
"We?"
"Everyone – my people, the native people, all – but there is no time to lose, so be quick." He whirled around and darted back to his men as they lifted their improvised stretcher bearing the unconscious guard. "Come along – move quickly, this way!"
"Follow the guards," Harry called to the Lindosians in a surprisingly authoritative voice as the sky raiders moved on out of the cave, back along that tunnel they'd first come through. "Don't be afraid, you won't be harmed. We're taking you home." Resembling nothing so much as a harassed mother-hen, he began to chivvy them along as best he could with his arms full of unconscious teenager.
Emera was still in the thick of it, encouraging her people along, with Roba at her side still, and… "Of course," Sarah softly breathed, wondering why she hadn't realised sooner. The resemblance was obvious, once you knew to look for it, and she was only sorry she'd missed the moment of reunion, hastened to talk to them now that she knew.
"My son is here. He's here!" Emera called as she approached, sounding unsure whether to be delighted or furious.
"I found her, Sarah, I found her!" Roba's eyes were wide and disbelieving, and Emera gave him a shake and scolded that he shouldn't have come and then hugged him again, and Sarah caught the other woman's eyes and saw in them her continued grief over the charnel pit they'd found and the despair she'd felt at being separated from her children, her joy at being reunited with one of them, and fear at finding him here, of all places.
She gave them both a hug, delighted that they had their happy ending – but also concerned, because was it a happy ending, really? That was the question.
She hurried to catch up with Harry, suddenly worried, because it felt as if this was all over bar the shouting, somehow, and yet she knew it wasn't, couldn't be, not least because there was such an air of urgency about both Harry and that sky raider, however cool, calm and confident they were trying to appear.
They weren't out of the woods yet – not even out of the mine yet – and there was still no sign of the Doctor…no, there was definitely still something going on, some other shoe just waiting to drop.
"So what's the plan, Stan?" Keeping her tone light, she fell into stride alongside Harry as he half-jogged along at a pace that only served to reinforce her suspicions. "Are you going to tell me what's going on? Where's the Doctor?"
"He told me to take them down to the planet." Harry carefully adjusted his grip on Olos, and now that she was looking for it she could read acute anxiety in his eyes, in the taut set of his face, and the tension in his shoulders. "The natives, all of them – are there any more? We have to get them down to Lindos. The Tarsins are evacuating back to their world, and –"
"The who-sins?" She had to trot to keep up with him.
"The sky raiders, that's what they're called."
An evacuation was a good thing, surely. Getting the Lindosians home and the sky raiders – or Tarsins, or whatever – to leave…it was what they wanted. So why did she have such a nasty sinking feeling?
"Harry, where's the Doctor?"
Worried side-eyes flicked in her direction. "Some kind of problem with the reactor, apparently – deliberate sabotage, or some such. He's gone to see what he can do, and he told me to get everyone away."
"In case he can't fix it?" The other shoe hit the ground, and there was that cold feeling again, deep in the pit of her stomach. "Harry, where is it? Tell me where to go."
Harry shook his head. "The Doctor said you were to evacuate with everyone else, Sarah, he wants everyone out of harm's way."
"Well, the Doctor can whistle for that, then, because I'm not leaving him alone," she retorted. "He'll need help. You can manage without me, can't you?"
"Well…"
"Please, Harry. Just tell me where I can find him."
dwdwdwdwdw
"He was heading for the reactor chamber – Talib can show you the way," Harry repeated as their untidy convoy of confused guardsmen and frightened former slaves exited the mine back into the moon base proper, where the evacuation alarm was still loudly sounding to add to the general air of chaos, a strident, insistent reminder of how little time they may have left, if the Doctor couldn't work whatever miracle he was attempting. "But are you sure you don't want to –"
He didn't even get to finish the sentence. Sarah cut him off with an impatient, "Of course I'm sure, Harry," and that was that. He could no more stop her doing what she wanted than he could nail fog to a wall, could only admire her spirit and resilience – and the trouble was, of course, that although he was reluctant to let her out of sight, having only just found her again, he didn't actually feel that she was wrong. Someone should be there to help the Doctor, and it couldn't be him, not with this mission he'd been given.
"Well, goodbye then, my friend." While Sarah said hasty farewells to her Lindosian friend and young Roba, Talib turned to Harry with a curious contortion of his beak that appeared to approximate a smile. "And thank you."
"The pleasure was all mine," Harry assured him, with a nod and a smile since he couldn't shake hands, his arms full of a young Lindosian boy who'd been stunned, and then Talib was off, ushering the guards from the mine away in the direction of the deep space trawler that was to take them home. Sarah hurried after them.
"Be careful, Harry," she called over her shoulder. "And good luck!"
"You be careful yourself, old thing," he shouted after her, and she was gone.
Harry turned back to the rag-tag band of former slaves they'd collected from the mine, including two more as unconscious as this boy – shot during their escape attempt, apparently, and now being carried with some difficulty by their fellows. There were still more locked away in a barrack block not far from here, he'd been told, and then it was only a short journey from there to the hangar where he'd find the transport vessel to take them all home.
He hoped, with every fibre of his being, that he would remember the careful directions he'd been given, and was trying hard not to think about the next step after that. He was a doctor, not a pilot – what did he know about flying anything, still less a spacecraft, of all things?
One step at a time – and the clock was ticking.
"We're going home now?" asked Roba, eyes bright with hope and trust. He'd swapped Harry's arm for that of his mother and was clinging tight, their joyful reunion the one bright spot in all this chaos and confusion. Harry owed it to them to get this right.
"We are," he agreed. "Come on, let's go."
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'This is Talib, he's on our side,' Harry had said about his sky raider friend, and Sarah still didn't know how any of that had happened, so she just had to trust that the creature would be as good as his word and take her to the Doctor.
Jogging along after a group of guards – what had Harry called them? Tarsins – felt deeply uncomfortable, after spending so much time avoiding them as the enemy. They seemed very intent on their evacuation now, though, urged along by the strident clang of the alarm bell that formed a constant soundtrack to their journey.
They reached a junction in the corridor and Talib turned to her. "This is as far as we can take you – the reactor chamber is that way. Turn left and then right and you will see it."
"And that's definitely where the Doctor was going?"
"To repair the damage enough to delay meltdown, if not prevent it – he hopes to at least buy enough time for us to complete the evacuation, but don't let him delay too long." There was an urgent sincerity about the alien now. "Good luck."
He sped away. Sarah drew a deep breath as she headed in the opposite direction, along the corridor he'd indicated. Left, and then right, and then there it was – a large room containing a set of hefty-looking double doors marked with a very obvious warning sign. Alongside the doors was a complicated computer console…with which the Doctor was wrestling.
"Doctor!" The alarm was louder than ever in here, a shrill, insistent warning of the critical danger about to engulf the base, and the Doctor looked about as agitated as she'd seen him, which was never a good sign, and yet the wave of relief that crashed over her just at the sight of him was overwhelming.
He glanced up, surprised. "Sarah! I told Harry to take you down to Lindos."
"Well, Harry isn't the boss of me," she retorted. "And neither are you. Are you all right? What's going on?"
"The reactor core's going into overload." Straight down to business; he never had been one for small talk when there was an emergency at hand. "I've tried increasing the dampeners to buy us some time, but from here I can only delay the inevitable, and it may not be enough. If I could get my hands on the central servo control there might be a chance, but Silrin's locked himself in there with it," he nodded at those heavy-looking doors. "And the mechanism is jammed." He jabbed furiously at the console again.
"Who's Silrin?"
"Harry didn't tell you?"
"Harry didn't explain anything." She rolled her eyes but tried not to sound too annoyed, since Harry had clearly had bigger things on his mind.
"Silrin is the Tarsins' leader – here, hold this a minute." He shoved a piece of console casing at her and poked around at the now-exposed circuits.
"The leader – you mean he's deliberately trying to blow up his own people, as well as the slaves? But why?"
"It's a long story. I suppose you might say he's having something of a meltdown of his own. Aha!" He jumped back as a shower of sparks exploded from the console and those heavy double doors began to slide open.
Throwing the loose end of his scarf back over his shoulder, the Doctor strode confidently toward the now open reactor chamber. Sarah scurried after him.
He stopped at the threshold of the reactor chamber, turned to raise a finger to his lips as a warning to be quiet, as if she couldn't have worked that much out for herself, and then flashed a dazzling smile at her. "It's nice to see you, Sarah." His voice was low. "You really shouldn't have come."
"Well, I'm here now, aren't I?" She pulled his hat out of her belt and held it out to him, and his face lit up.
"Thank you." Cramming the hat down over his riot of unruly curls, he jerked his head toward the reactor chamber. "Come on, then – let's get on with it."
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"All aboard," Harry muttered to himself as he pressed the button that would seal the door to the transport vessel's cargo hold.
As he hurried around to the cockpit, he passed the TARDIS, which had been removed from the transport vessel at some point and then left standing alone in the middle of the hangar bay floor, a prize whose capture had been overtaken by developing events. It was a shame, really. The natives were packed into that cargo hold like sardines in a can, but in the TARDIS there'd be room to spare. If the Doctor and Sarah had been with them, they could have all jumped in and away and there'd be no need to mess around with transport vessels at all.
But there were still the Tarsins to think of. The reactor hadn't melted down yet – Harry wasn't entirely sure what a meltdown would look like, but was fairly certain he'd know one if he saw it – but that didn't mean it wouldn't, and they may not all be away yet. No, the Doctor was right to try to stop it. He was probably the reason it hadn't gone up already, in fact.
Probably best not to dwell too heavily on that, though. Harry had enough problems of his own to worry about here.
He swung himself up into the cockpit and stared in dismay at the dizzying array of controls and display screens that lay before him. There was a reason astronauts required years of training, yet he was expected to fly this thing based on five minutes of hurried instruction?
He closed his eyes and drew a few deep breaths, tried to relax.
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart had personally requested Harry's secondment to UNIT, he remembered. That was back when he'd been stationed at Faslane, and he hadn't been entirely clear at the time just what UNIT was, still less what working there might entail, but he'd jumped at the chance anyway, lured by the mystery and excitement it seemed to promise – and it had certainly delivered on that promise, if not in any way he might have expected!
It was much the same spirit of adventure that had kept him at the Doctor's side throughout that business with the giant robot, long after the need for his medical attention was at an end. But then he'd stepped across the threshold of the Doctor's TARDIS, and since then his sense of adventure seemed to have been swamped by the struggle to simply put one foot in front of the other in the face of everything he didn't understand – the struggle to stay alive.
Being absent from duty without permission didn't help, either.
That day at Faslane when the transfer request came through, he could never in his wildest dreams have imagined he would end up here: at the helm of an alien spaceship, on an alien moon, with a cargo of alien refugees who were relying on him, of all people, to fly them home.
He thought about Nerva Space Station, where he'd operated cryogenic technology thousands of years more advanced than anything he'd ever seen before, having only seen the procedure carried out once or twice. He never would have thought himself capable of that either, at one time, yet he'd managed it. He'd managed to sabotage the Sontaran's spaceship on the future Earth, as well, after only a verbal description of what to do.
If he could do that, surely he could do this.
It was every boy's dream to fly a spaceship, wasn't it?
The Doctor believed he could do it.
He looked again at the console and tried to recall the exact sequence Talib had so carefully described, to activate the auto-pilot and set the correct programme. Then he said a prayer, for the first time in almost 20 years.
Harry had attended church regularly, as a boy. His mother had taken him, every Sunday without fail for as long as she was alive…but then she'd died and he'd never set foot inside that church again; no one had taken him, and he'd never asked. He offered a prayer now, though, to the God his mother had believed in – or maybe to the gods of Lindos that Roba had mentioned. It was a prayer of supplication, let me get this right, for the sake of all those people crammed into the hold, relying on him to save their lives and give them their freedom.
He reached out and began the ignition sequence Talib had described to him.
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"So what kind of reactor is this, anyway? Nuclear?" Sarah whispered as she followed the Doctor into a massive chamber full of engines, pipes and valves, consoles and display panels, mechanised equipment of all shapes and sizes; a room that was humming the powerful, discordant hum of machinery gone wrong.
A nuclear reactor meant radiation, which meant that walking in here like this might just be the most stupid thing she'd ever done, except that on the other hand there'd been no sign of protective suits, or any of the other precautions she might have expected to find in a radioactive environment, but she wasn't sure if that was good or bad until the Doctor shook his head.
"Lupium," he said, looking around intently, his keen eyes searching for something, only he knew what. "It's what they've been mining – an energy rich mineral. The bulk of the mine's output is processed for export back to the homeworld, of course, but a percentage is channelled into powering the base itself." He kept moving as he spoke, now here, now there, examining this valve, that console, then moving on – not what he was looking for. "It's normally an extremely safe power source, that's partly what makes it so very valuable, but it can be highly combustible under the right circumstances."
"And the right circumstances are what this Silrin of yours is trying to create," Sarah guessed, following as he darted from one piece of machinery to another.
"He's not my Silrin, Sarah," the Doctor mildly objected, examining a complicated-looking system of pipes and spigots. "But yes. Exactly. You see, with the inherent instability of the…no, no, no, I'll explain later." He raised his voice to address the room at large, his tone becoming harsh and angry. "What really matters is that he's attempting mass murder purely because he's too ashamed to show his face back home after the downfall of the company. Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous, so cowardly?"
"You will not rile me, alien," another voice shouted back from across the room, the speaker hidden behind all the machinery.
The Doctor glanced in that direction with a shrug. "You know, I rather think I already have – don't you agree, Sarah? Ah, here we are." He was off again.
"He doesn't sound happy, no," Sarah agreed, peering around on tiptoes trying to catch a glimpse of the mysteriously murderous Silrin before hurrying to catch up with the Doctor. "What are you up to now?"
"Central servo controls. Trying to re-balance the load – if I can just –" He broke off and ducked as a blaster bolt whizzed past his ear, span around looking angry. "Do you mind, I'm trying to work here, Silrin. There isn't much time."
"You will cease," came the stentorian command.
Far from ceasing, the Doctor was already working away at the equipment again, delving deep into the guts of the machinery, but Silrin had emerged from his hiding place now and was heading for them, gun in hand – they were out of time.
"Doctor!" Sarah hastily elbowed him in the ribs.
He turned with a sigh. "So we're back to that, are we? Silrin, you've simply got to stop waving guns at my friends, it really doesn't improve anyone's day."
"I don't think he cares what kind of day we're having, Doctor," Sarah hissed, eyeing the gun warily.
"Of course he doesn't," the Doctor cheerfully agreed. "That's because however bad a day you think you're having, his has been even worse – isn't that right, Silrin? After all, he was the man in the hot seat when the almighty Lu-Corps came crashing down in ruins and lawsuits, taking an entire planetary regime down with it."
Sarah frowned. She'd definitely missed something while she was running around trying to find a way out of that mine. "Is that what's happened?"
"More or less," the Doctor shrugged. "Well, sooner or later, certainly."
"You have destroyed everything – my life's work," Silrin all but howled, his gun arm shaking.
"Of course I did. You conquered a populated world and enslaved its indigenous inhabitants, all in the name of profit." The Doctor sounded disgusted. "But it wouldn't have lasted much longer anyway, surely you can see that – the whole thing was a house of cards; all it needed was a nudge. It doesn't have to end like this, Silrin – do you really want to wipe your own people from the face of this moon, cold-blooded murder, simply because you don't want to go home with egg on your face? Think about it, man. It isn't too late."
"But what about you," Silrin snarled. "The base will be destroyed anyway, you saw to that, with the virus you implanted. All I've done is speed the process."
Sarah glanced up at the Doctor in surprise and saw him shrug. "Well, I was hardly going to leave the base in operation, now, was I?" he calmly replied. "But there's rather a big difference between shutting the place down after it's been evacuated and blowing it up while everyone's still here, don't you agree?"
Something clanged and whirred across the room and that discordant whine was growing steadily louder. "Doctor," Sarah urged. "I think we're running out of time."
"That's right, we are running out of time," the Doctor agreed. "And yet there's absolutely no reason for anyone to die here today. Silrin, the ship hasn't gone yet. If you hurry you can still catch it. Go home, enjoy a quiet retirement – develop an interest in fine wines or art or whatever else catches your fancy. Be brave enough to live and big enough to let everyone else live, as well. Let me re-balance the load. There's still time – just."
Something bleeped on the console behind the Doctor and he glanced over his shoulder at the display.
"Transport vessel away – the Lindosians are clear, at least."
"And Harry," Sarah added, relieved that at least one of them was out of the firing line. And I could have gone with him, a tiny, traitorous voice whispered, somewhere at the back of her mind. She could have gone with him and been out of the firing line as well, instead of stood here at gunpoint alongside a reactor that was about to go sky-high…except that she could never have left the Doctor to face this alone. She'd make the same choice again, every time, she knew that without question. So she had no one to blame but herself, really, if she got blown to bits.
But it wouldn't come to that, surely. The Doctor was always in trouble and he always found a way out of it.
"We've got minutes, Silrin." The Doctor raised his voice to be heard above the whining drone of the out-of-control reactor. "Minutes before that trawler heads home without you – minutes before the reactor overloads and takes out the entire base. Which will be first, do you think? How many people are going to die: the three of us – or a whole ship full?"
"No one leaves," Silrin insisted, brandishing his gun wildly.
"I could cobble a patch together, even now. It might not last long, but it wouldn't need to last long, would it – just long enough, long enough for everyone to get clear."
"You aren't listening – no one leaves! Step away from there!"
"They're so nearly away, Silrin, and whatever they've done here, they don't deserve death – let them have their second chance. Let them go."
This was the Doctor at his most wheedling, but it wasn't going to work, Silrin wasn't going to be talked down, and Sarah wanted to believe that the Doctor would come up with something else to try, because that was what he did, he was brilliant…but he was also fallible, relied heavily on luck more often than not, and was as mortal as the next man if he happened to get shot – or blown up.
Sometimes, in point of fact, he needed a little help to pull a miracle out of the bag.
Silrin's trigger finger looked very twitchy, and somehow she doubted very much that his gun would be set to stun only, but he wasn't looking at her. He'd barely even registered her existence, come to that, and while normally she might feel a bit slighted, here and now she was glad because it meant she might just have a chance.
While the Doctor continued to cajole, pouring all his charm and sincerity into that last-ditch, desperate effort, Sarah tried taking a tiny half-step to one side. Silrin didn't react – all his attention was focused on not allowing the Doctor to repair whatever damage he'd done to the reactor, and he had the upper hand here, between the reactor and the gun. All he had to do was wait it out for a few more minutes and he'd have won…unless something could be done to redress that balance.
Sarah took another tiny step, and then another, edging sideways, never for a moment taking her eyes off the gun in Silrin's hand. The Doctor's debate with the Tarsin faded into background noise. The alarm continued to clang, shrill and insistent, and the reactor continued to whine alarmingly, but it was all just so much background noise, drowned out by the pounding of blood in her ears. Another step, and then another, away and around, and she was fairly certain the Doctor had seen what she was doing, but Silrin was so blind in his focus on the Time Lord that she might as well not be there at all. Surely that couldn't last, though, he'd notice her at any moment – she had to be fast.
She threw herself forward before she could talk herself out of it, grabbed at Silrin's gun arm to push it up and away. The gun discharged, its energy bolt blasting harmlessly into the ceiling, and then she was struggling desperately, clinging to Silrin's arm as he registered her presence at last and fought back.
He was a lot bigger than she was, and a lot stronger, too, and he had the gun. It was all she could do to keep it turned away from her, dimly aware that the Doctor was taking advantage of the distraction to wrestle furiously with the machinery around that console again, doing whatever he could to save them all from being blown to kingdom come. He needed more time. She had to buy him more time…
There was no more time. One fleeting moment of frantic grappling and then she was off her feet and, almost before she'd registered her flight through the air, her back and head were impacting painfully with something large and hard and then she was on the ground seeing double.
She lost valuable seconds blinking dazedly at nothing in particular until her vision cleared, then looked up just in time to see the Doctor throwing himself sideways as Silrin opened fire. The Tarsin charged forward with a furious roar as he unloaded energy bolt after energy bolt into the console, moving too fast to stop even if he'd wanted to, then a moment later the console was exploding in a fireball of sparks and arcing electricity and shrapnel and Silrin's angry roar became a scream of agony.
Sarah threw an arm across her face, choking on pungent smoke as the sickening odour of burning flesh made her cough and gag. The alarm abruptly cut out, its cessation startling after such shrill constancy, but the reactor's whine was now approaching fever pitch, which meant the danger wasn't over, and where was the Doctor?
He was already scrabbling back to his feet, using his hat to beat out flames smouldering in the hem of his coat as he stared in dismay at the ruined console.
Silrin's charred corpse was slumped before that ruined console. Sarah could hardly bring herself to look at it as she scrambled to her feet as fast as her bruised back and aching limbs would allow.
"The alarm stopped." It was probably the most stupid thing she could have said.
"The connection was severed." The Doctor was already moving again, flapping his hat uselessly at the burning console and trying to reach past the flames into the guts of the machine. Sarah caught at his arm in alarm.
"What are you doing?" she yelled over the drone of the reactor.
"It won't hold," he yelled back. "The patch isn't complete, it won't hold and they aren't clear. There might still be a chance if I can just…no. No, it's no good." His eyes were almost bulging out of his face, the visual demonstration of his deep dismay as he pulled his arm back and flapped at the sleeve as a spark threatened to set it alight. "No, the damage is too great – there's nothing I can do."
Standing alongside the burning wreckage of the machinery, Sarah felt cold. "How long do we have?"
Before he could answer, another sound made itself known: a rumbling so low it registered more as vibration through the soles of Sarah's feet than a sound heard by her ears. The Doctor's head snapped around at once, his eyes lighting up. "At last! That's the trawler – the Tarsins are away, and about time, too."
"Then it's over?" Sarah stared at him. "Everyone's safe?"
"Everyone except us." He grabbed her hand and started running, almost pulling her off her feet, and she broke into a sprint trying to keep up.
"Where are we going?" Harry had taken the transport vessel, somehow, hadn't he? And the Tarsins had used another spacecraft for their evacuation. Sarah tried to remember if she'd seen or heard of any other way off the base, but between the running and the exhaustion and the panic and what was threatening to develop into a splitting headache, her mind was in far too much of a whirl to think straight.
"Transport hangar," the Doctor yelled. "Silrin's executive jet – we've got about two minutes, run!"
She ran, on legs that felt as if they'd been stuffed with cotton wool, head pounding, lungs heaving, the Doctor just about pulling her arm out of its socket as he loped ahead with those easy, long-legged strides of his, gripping her hand tight and hauling her along as she stumbled behind.
What she wouldn't give for longer, stronger legs right about now.
How the Doctor knew the way, she had no idea; she could only trust that he did, counting down the passing seconds with the pounding of her feet.
Curiously, the penetrating whine of the overloading reactor seemed to grow steadily louder the further they ran from it, driving them onward. At last they were in a corridor that was familiar, the entrance to the transport hanger just up ahead, they were almost there, and that was when the reactor exploded.
The roar was deafening. The whole base shook, almost throwing them both off their feet, and the air filled with a strange whooshing, sucking, crackling sound, growing louder by the second.
"Keep moving!" bellowed the Doctor, and he almost lifted her off her feet he hauled her back into motion so fast.
She couldn't help but glance back over her shoulder as they raced through the door, saw the wall of flame rushing down the corridor toward them and knew that they were going to die…but then amazingly, miraculously, there was the TARDIS, sitting there waiting for them, exactly where it shouldn't have been.
The Doctor couldn't have even known the Tarsins had it, but he wasted no time on surprise, simply charged for the door, fumbling for his key.
They made it inside seconds ahead of the rushing flames as the base was engulfed.
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