Put Up or Shut Up
Jenny
Colonel Tabis was a portly, corpulent fellow who enjoyed his cushy position as a military officer who never left the sanctity of Nostraleo. Not for four years, ever since that tragic massacre in 4881; it was not a lie so much as an exaggeration that Tabis had been scarred by the great loss of life that day, a loss of life which occurred while he had been in the hospital suffering from some sort of acute bowel infection. He had left the two Majors in charge, and come back to only one Major and a million dead men. The worst military defeat in the history of the entire Homeworld Alliance.
But now Colonel Tabis was a pencil pusher, despite his high rank, and that was the kind of life he felt better suited to. Besides, ever since that incident with the bowel infection, he hadn't really been able to stay away from a toilet long enough to command an army. Most of what he did now was admin – signing off leaves of absences, sick days, authorising internal affairs investigations he never bothered to read the details of. He didn't expect for anything interesting to really happen to him, nor did he particularly desire it. So when his rather large office was filled with an unearthly, metallic, thrumming noise, when gusts of ghostly wind blew the papers from his desk and his opulent fountain pen onto the floor, and when a blue box made of some long-extinct material with a flashing light on top began to materialise in front of the door, he was nothing short of terrified. Teleporters, and any kind of teleportation device, were all outlawed, except for the Time Agency. This wasn't the Time Agency, though, and the object wasn't any sort of thing he recognised.
And then the noises died away, replaced by an ambient, quiet humming, and the thing just sat there until a door on the front of it creaked open. Letters above this door read Police Public Call Box. He didn't know what that meant. The police? The authorities? Nostraleo didn't have a police force, it was policed by the Alliance. But all of Colonel Tabis's fears were realised when a girl stepped out of this box. A sickening realisation washed over him when he recognised this short, harmless-looking girl, practically still a child. She wasn't nearly as innocuous as she looked, though. She smiled, half-saluted.
"Colonel Tabis, sir," she said respectfully. She paused. "I know you recognise me. It's been a long time." Two more peoples stepped out of this very small blue box that had appeared in his office, one of them an even younger looking girl, brandishing a gun at the back of a tall, dark-haired, pale chap. Tabis didn't recognise the second girl, but the man he did, the man who was gagged and handcuffed.
"That man is a war hero!" Tabis exclaimed, standing up on his feet, feeling his intestines tremble in their weak way, and having to sit back down again in horror. The second girl kicked the man, Major Austin Cargill, in the back of one of his legs, so that he buckled and fell to his knees. He couldn't talk, but she kept the gun pressed to the back of his head, an old-fashioned revolver. The type he had only seen in those documentaries on antique weapons he was sometimes interested in.
"That man is nothing but a murderer," Young said. Austin Cargill rolled his eyes. He didn't seem very scared. "This is Ashildr, she's a Lieutenant. I want to tell you a story, if you don't mind, Colonel." She went and pulled out the chair opposite his desk and sat down, then leant on her elbows with her fingers laced together. Tabis saw something was the matter with her right thumb, it was bruised and scarred like she had suffered a nasty injury, and it didn't sit properly. She also wore a very indulgent, tailored coat, and a funny-looking scarf with weird blots all over it. There was something cold in her eyes.
And then she began to speak in a way as though she had rehearsed, slowly but carefully, all of her words already chosen. "My story starts on the 10th of August, four years ago. That was the day General Lahar died. She ingested a lethal amount of fohyde. The poor woman always did love the drink a bit too much, we all knew it. Everyone respected her too much, was too scared of her, to say anything, though. It was because of this fear that General Lahar never thought someone in her own unit might lace her alcohol with poison.
"This assailant, whom everyone believes to be Corporal Agost, who was executed for this crime in 4882, used too much fohyde on her. They didn't have enough left to do the job properly on you, Colonel Tabis. On August 12th, Lieutenant Austin Cargill brought Agost to you after planting evidence that Agost was Lahar's killer, even though he always pleaded guilty. The evidence was just too damning – the empty bottle of fohyde found in his footlocker, those incriminating diary entries that weren't even in his own handwriting. But it was wartime, you were in charge suddenly, and you were ill, weren't you? Because you had some of that fohyde as well, because for a few days Cargill was putting it into your coffee. It didn't kill you, but it sent you to the hospital behind the lines, after you gave Cargill a hasty promotion to the rank of Major, leaving he and I in charge.
"And everybody knows I didn't like Cargill, not after the way he threatened Private Adilai in June that year. And he didn't like me, either, not after I demeaned him in front of the enlisted men. He was bitter, unpopular. I was the favourite. I was better at my job, I had the soldiers' trust, and everybody listened to him-"
"You never made your case, Young," Tabis interrupted her, "A million people wound up dead under your orders to charge at the Nomatee Base and nobody's seen you si-"
"I'm making my case now, sir," she said coldly. He was her superior, but he remembered Major Young. She waited to make sure he wasn't going to speak again before she resumed, the other girl, Ashildr, still holding a gun to Cargill's head. "As I was saying. I was the one with the soldiers on my side. But you gave him a snap promotion, left both of us in charge. And then what happened? Like you said. A million men died. And where was I? I'll tell you.
"The sanitation system was broken. Sabotaged. I thought nothing of it at the time, wondering who was responsible wasn't as important as fixing it. The waste that was leaking out of the toilet unit was practically toxic, a serious hazard, leaving the toilets for the whole squadron completely out of order. I was wading my way through the soldiers' mess to fix faulty plumbing when the emergency charge was called in the middle of the night. It took my hours to fix that. I got back and I found Cargill, who you promoted to a higher position of authority, the position needed to authorise the Death Charge.
"And do you want me to tell you what I did when I saw the entire base was empty? That all the soldiers had gone? All of them? I went and commandeered one of the transport shuttles meant for evacuations and I flew it down to the front lines – I'm a Commodore in the Star Fleet, you know – and I managed to save a hundred. I know a hundred isn't a lot, but it was all I could do. I'm sure they spoke on my behalf, and I'm sure Cargill made it so that you only heard his version events. That I ordered it. Everyone who could argue with him was silenced. I've come here to clear my name."
"And why should I believe this?"
"Because he'll vouch for me," Young said, then she turned to the other girl and gave her a nod, and the girl promptly removed Cargill's gag.
"Oh, alright, I admit it," he said in his Irish drawl, shrugging, "It was me. I did do all that. You know, killed General Lahar, framed Corporal Agost, tried and failed to poison you, sabotaged the unit's toilets so that Blondie over there would have to fix them. I ran away nearly as quickly as she did. You people in this century aren't half stupid. And yes, I ordered the Death Charge, boohoo – but the people of Deftan can manage their own affairs without your Alliance getting involved."
"But – why? Why would you kill all those people? Go to such great lengths?"
"Ah, it wasn't about the people, they're just cannon fodder in the wife and I's bigger feud against girly and her mummy. That's time travellers for you, you can never tell who might get caught in the crosshairs. I suppose a million of your finest soldiers were just collateral damage, but she destroyed my fountain of youth!"
"It was a Fiovis Ichor and they're dangerous."
"Bah, you mean the Time Lords say they're dangerous. You're just as high and mighty as these Alliance hacks, intervening because you think you're better. That fountain of youth could have saved billions of lives! Think of that, Colonel. Millions of lives lost because of me, billions of lives lost because of her."
"It's a mutagen and a natural resource you were exploiting, and you only would have sold it to rich upper-class people who refuse to die anyway."
"You're one to talk about people refusing to die." Young glared at him now. Tabis was shocked. Here was an admittance of a frame job, of using Young, who really had been an esteemed officer before the Death Charge, as a scapegoat. "Anyway, she's telling the truth, and I suppose I owe it to her to admit to this, since my tricking Lieutenant Teenager behind me into going vampire-slaying led to Blondie getting stabbed through the heart. One of them, anyway. The least I could do is admit to my murderous ways." He was cocky, and remorseless. This was not a man who had been forced to lie by Young. Young looked at him with reproach and disgust. Cargill just grinned.
"There you are, Tabis. The man responsible, wrapped up like a Christmas present for you. What's say you call the rest of the executive staff in here to get my name cleared and my rank reinstated, hmm?"
They didn't go right back home, instead Jenny moved the TARDIS to a different part of Nostraleo, the Alliance city that served as its main base in the Polaris System, because she wanted to get something to eat having skipped breakfast. She had dragged Ashildr and Cargill out of the ship the back way, avoiding Nerve Centre and whatever was going on with Princess Sparkle Tutu and her kittens, wanting to get all this over and done with as soon as possible, without anybody interfering.
"What plans do you have for me now, then?" Ashildr queried. They were in a restaurant in the food sector of Nostraleo. It was one of those cities that began as a space station, and then grew out to have different parts added, just like how cities expanded on solid ground.
"They used to call this the jewel of the Alliance," Jenny said, ignoring Ashildr's question, eating her food and looking out of the thick window at Polaris' green sun. Jenny had pick-pocketed a credit stick from somewhere and sonicked it to give her infinite funds. "No, sorry – the jade jewel, wasn't it? Because of the sun."
"I don't really know," Ashildr said, "But, really, Major, why did you pay the Shadow that Arcadian diamond to get me? Where did you even find an Arcadian diamond?"
"Bar fight on Zeniph Nega."
"I know Zeniph Nega."
"Of course you do. Stole it off a corpse – Aldo Koltn's corpse, he was Cargill's aid. I was there with Jack to get information about this whole… me being blamed for the Death Charge thing. Bumped into the Shadow – you were a two-for-one, sort of, I just needed to talk to you. Clara did. To find out how she died. But you told us, so it doesn't matter anymore," Jenny said, "Are you going to run off now immediately?"
"Nah. You're easy on the eyes. For a kid."
"A kid?" Jenny asked. Ashildr smiled.
"Mmm. You're a baby compared to me. Still in a crib."
"And what does that make Clara?" Jenny asked. Ashildr was just amused, and she didn't answer. "I think I'll get us dinner while I'm here."
"You and I? I'm flattered, but I think your girlfriend might complain."
"I meant my girlfriend," Jenny said, "Because she's going back home tonight, but we should have dinner... I'll do something romantic. But where do you take a girl who's been everywhere?"
"I can't tell if this is a serious question or if you're just talking to yourself," Ashildr said.
"Or maybe I'll get her a present… a new motorbike. I'll steal one, one with nitrous," Jenny said. Ashildr frowned at her. "What?"
"Why are you so insecure in your relationship that you rely on constantly making grand gestures?" Ashildr asked. Jenny dropped her fork in her bowl of alien stew.
"I am not insecure!" she exclaimed, "What would I possibly have to be insecure about?"
"Well, exactly, that's why I asked. If I thought you had a reason to be insecure I would have just left you to wallow," Ashildr said, "I'm being a good Samaritan."
"By pointing out my flaws?" Ashildr shrugged. Jenny crossed her arms.
"I told you, Clara belongs to you."
"Belongs to me? Clara doesn't belong to anybody. Anybody except Clara."
"And you."
"Not me!"
"Oh, please, she's putty in your hands, and you in hers. I only knew you for five minutes before you regenerated, but even I can tell the difference. You're an odd one, Major," Ashildr said, "You remind me of your father."
"I remind everyone of my father."
"The Doctor can make armies flee at the mention of his name, but if a girl bats her eyelashes at him he'll just melt. And there you were, in Tabis' office," Ashildr leant towards her on the plastic table, space shuttles whizzing by outside, "telling him that very convincing story."
"A true story."
"It wasn't just the words that convinced him, he was scared of you. The great Major Young, too valuable to by a foot soldier but too modest and righteous to be anything more," Ashildr said, "Decorated but not celebrated. You have a very grey life, I've been reading up on you."
"Reading what, exactly? Nobody's ever written anything about me."
"Oh, there's a biography. Unpublished. I snuck into a friend of mine's attic and found it buried in her stacks of paperbacks, this old manuscript with yellow pages," Ashildr said, "The entire history of you."
"A 'friend of yours' has a biography about me?" Jenny asked incredulously.
"She wrote the biography about you! She's very good, really, an exhilarating read. I like the bit where you wrestle the alligator after crash-landing on Earth. How does the whole thing start? Something like, 'A vibrant, blue sunset spread across the skyline and blurred brightly like electricity along the horizon, the white sun setting halfway below the edge of the frozen planet. It was a ball of ice*-'"
"Stop it," Jenny said, "Who is this 'friend'?"
"There's that coldness in your eyes you conjured up for Tabis – is it real? Do you just bury it when you're around her?"
"What are you talking about?" Jenny was growing uneasy with this conversation, with the ambiguity around Ashildr, her and her love of being cryptic and enigmatic. She probably knew all sorts of secrets. And what was this biography?
"I think she's called Clara."
"What?"
"My friend. Who wrote the biography. The one that she never tried to publish." Jenny narrowed her eyes.
"Clara?"
"That hasn't happened yet, though," Ashildr said, leaning back again, "Anyway – why join the Homeworld Alliance? Doesn't the Doctor hate the military?"
"Call it an act of rebellion," Jenny said coolly.
"Someone on Nostraleo owes me credits. An officer who paid me to break up a prostitution ring operating out of the illegal casinos in the Lows," Ashildr began telling her something completely different, the Lows being the lower, slum decks of Nostraleo, "I need to go collect."
"So you're leaving?"
"You told me I was free to go – and I've helped you, haven't I? You've had your rank reinstated, I've told you what you wanted about Clara," Ashildr stood up from the table, and Jenny stayed where she was, having not yet finished her stew. "Don't worry, Major, I'm sure you'll see me around. I know exactly where to find you, you're not as elusive as your father. Besides, maybe I'll wind up in Hollowmire anyway – it's a real hotspot for supernatural activity, you know. Probably something to do with that cult."
"Cult?"
"I'll be leaving."
"Uh-huh," Jenny said. She didn't have any reason to keep Ashildr there, and she still had a fair way to go on her to-do list.
"Thanks for buying lunch, though. Oh, and about Clara – get her something for dinner from here, and wear a dress. She'd love it if you wore a dress." And then Ashildr slipped out of the restaurant and away, and Jenny didn't bother pursuing her. There was no point. And she didn't want to have her thumb attacked again. But she was still left to wonder how much, exactly, Ashildr knew about the future, and about her.
*What Ashildr is reciting is, in fact, the opening sentence of Jenny Who? because, fun fact, Jenny Who? IS this biography. I'm explaining it for you all because I'm not sure it'll ever be made clear or written in, but Clara (obviously) wrote this book about Jenny and chronicled her whole life. Just a little meta factoid for you. And Ashildr IS giving a minor spoiler about the next full storyline on Day 146.