Chapter Nine

"Just a little more," the Doctor said softly, as the wires dragged free of the post holding the camera with him in it for the twelfth time, flopping just short of the foot of Yahlas' suit, "just a little bit more and I've…got her… got it!"

Zzbt!

"…they're coming! We can't… how did they get on the ship?" a Zja woman said, her larger mandibles clicking slightly over each other in a nervous swish.

Lines of grey static flooded the cam's visuals; was it airing the flight history? Was that what was playing on the screen now?

The Doctor listened and watched, the bundle of his electrical impulses increasing their speed in excitement as he hummed around and around in the camera, trying to watch the show while making sure that Yahlas' suit, now wrapped tightly about the right foot with the loose wires from his camera, wouldn't be floating off somewhere.

"Yeesh, it's hard work playing cowboys up here," he muttered, shivering in his quarks as a surge of electricity sent another wave of feedback through the receptors, jumping ahead in the record.

"Transferring command room visual backup sequence to cams 7, 14, and 16."

The captain, a large male Xja with bits of grey coloring his carapace, turned to the taller female and said,

"Who did this? She had no part in…"

A younger Xja turned away from the captain, staring down the corridor from the command area.

"Her body… what shall we do? We can't survive this without her…"

"… take her body to the children below. In the hour of her death, they will honor her life."

"But sir, they won't survive! The pirates, they're… they're already… bluh!"

A white Xja claw dripping pale blood stuffs itself through the younger Xja's chest as the older woman watches in horror, her mandibles quivering with rage.

"Captain! They're here! I…"

Words flowed over the cam screen; manual override engaged from cockpit- switching view position to cameras 14 and 15 and 16.

Something long and grey and curved, the Captain's claw perhaps, covered the screen suddenly, scrabbling madly over the screen.

The Doctor flinched, sending the cam into a spiral of useless dragging wires that tugged hard on the foot of Yahlas' suit, wedging her body even more tightly between the two spires of hull she'd been lodged in.

So the captain had… let the pirates on board. Why?

Suddenly a snapping sound caught his attention, and a shower of sparks form below the cam made him squeak in horror.

A single wire was all that held his camera to the hull. It was no longer live, but it held him to the hull; thank Rassilon the other end was tangled securely around Yahlas' foot.

Muttering a curse, he watched two of the bolts bolting down the camera's posting twist out from their holes and fly under the weight of Yahlas' body in the suit.

Soon, the camera would be dangling in space. It wouldn't take long for the damn thing to break off from that wire, and then he'd really be sorry.

Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn.

Stupid Time Lord.