I Came, I Saw, I Consumed

Jenny

"You do seem to get called out to an awful lot of desolate spaceships and spacestations," Eleven remarked to her quietly. She had almost missed his half-hour time window to meet in the console room because she had been quite busy, trying to work out which gun she should bring with her to best deal with whatever threat Ashildr was struggling to contain. In the end, she had only brought her small plasma gun as her main weapon, because it was the only thing she had which fit the time period, but kept her revolver stashed in her other holster as well. She held the plasma gun in her hand, ready to use it at a moment's notice, though her father very typically wasn't being half as careful.

"I'm in high demand," she said.

"Have you been here before?"

"Nope. Have you?"

"Never wanted to have much to do with the Homeworld Alliance. Always struck me as a little… colonial. Imperialism but shiny. Messing around where they don't belong."

"Wow, I never had you pegged for a hypocrite before…"

"I've never messed around somewhere I don't belong in my entire life, thank you very much. Anyway, I was asking a question."

"I didn't hear you ask anything," Jenny said, stepping very carefully around the corners and checking the shadows for any movement. But their surroundings were unusual. It was icy cold. True enough, they were wearing spacesuits which were insulated against extreme temperatures – they had to be so that they wouldn't freeze to death in the vacuum of space, which would make them completely redundant as objects – but inside Lunis Terminal it felt just as cold as it might do outside.

"I've heard a lot of mixed things about the Alliance," he said, "About people being very grateful for the work they do stabilising inhospitable human colonies, but they also seem to have quite a bloody history of wartime atrocities. You were in the Polaris Wars."

"I defected during the Polaris Wars, I've told you about that," she said. She stopped, only half listening, and lifted up her arm to use the holographic interface on her left bracer, using the suit's environmental monitors to work out the air temperature around them. "Wow, would you look at that? It's almost minus thirty degrees. Almost makes me want to put the helmet on." Neither of them were wearing the helmets. They were both warmer than humans, and only her face was getting chilly in the exposure. She didn't think she was quite at risk of frostbite yet, but she could see her breath in front of her.

"Minus thirty? Celsius? That doesn't make any sense, this is a space station. Humans can't live in those temperatures in a place like this."

"Minus thirty and decreasing. Looks like there's an issue with the life support system," she said, "Can't pinpoint it. The air content still looks about right, but the artificial gravity is only at six Newtons per kilogram."

"I thought I was feeling a little light-headed…"

"She said that there are lives in danger, but I don't see anybody here at all, do you?" Jenny looked around.

"No, you're right." It was completely deserted, and more than that, there weren't any signs of fighting or a struggle. She spied something that had been dropped on the floor in a container that looked like it came from a fast food restaurant, and she crouched down next to it and carefully lifted the box to see what it was.

"Barely any mould on this stuff," she said, "It's like everyone packed up and left all at once."

"I wonder if your mysterious contact is one of them," the Doctor commented wryly. He kept fumbling like he wanted to put his hands in his pockets, before realising he didn't have any pockets on the spacesuit, so he just went back to wringing his hands together in that way he often did.

"Yeah, well," Jenny said, about to go around another corner and holding her gun in her right hand, with the bad thumb. She glanced back at the Doctor for a second, "Hopefully we run into someone s-" Something slammed into the side of her face so hard she was knocked sideways and actually rendered quite dazed, seeing bright lights and sparkles in front of her eyes from the force. She only regained herself enough to swing, rather blindly, with her gun-hand at shadowy figure when someone grabbed her wrist to stop her and then kicked sharply at her ankle to knock her down onto the floor. It had all happened in less than five seconds, and the Doctor had been completely helpless.

"I expected better than that! That's two points to me." Instead of trying to get back at Jenny's assailant, the Doctor, alarmed and angry, stepped forward to help Jenny back to her feet. Imagine Jenny's surprise when she found herself looking into the deceptively young face of the newly-promoted Commander Skallagrim, the faux-child with the Viking name. Jenny tried to glare, but the muscles weren't working properly.

"Why did you hit me?"

"To teach you a lesson! About paying attention to your surroundings. I saw you were caught off guard and I took the opportunity."

"To slug me!?"

"It's this game we have."

"Since when?" Jenny saw Ashildr shrug.

"Right now, I guess. It's two-nil to me." Annoyed, Jenny very obviously drew back her good hand to punch Ashildr in her face right back, with her own left eye still twitching and burning. She swung for Ashildr and when Ashildr very easily went to block, Jenny kicked her in the side of her knee in a flash and Ashildr slipped and fell to the floor herself.

"Don't be a brat," Jenny sighed. On the floor, Ashildr tried to grab Jenny's foot and drag her down again, but Jenny held out her gun and cocked it. The lights along the barrel lit up vibrant green to show it was armed and primed. Ashildr paused in the middle of what she was doing. "Seriously."

"Spoilsport," Ashildr muttered, getting to her feet again.

"I'm your superior officer and I'm ordering you not to hit me again."

"Can I hit him?" she nodded at Eleven.

"Who are you?" the Doctor snapped, "And why are you attacking my daughter?" Ashildr glanced between them, then her jaw dropped, and she got a look on her face like a child seeing it had been gifted a puppy on Christmas morning.

"Is this-? Oh, wow. This is very exciting, the two of you. Here I thought you only had eyes for the American one."

"Whatever," Jenny muttered, rubbing the side of her face. It was smarting quite severely without a sign of it letting up.

"Jenny, what's going on."

"This is Ashildr," she said, "You've met her. Very briefly. You'll remember her as the girl who killed me the last time I regenerated, and also Ravenwood's ex-girlfriend."

"How old are you?" the Doctor asked her abruptly.

"You should never ask a woman her age," Ashildr quipped.

"You don't look old enough to be a woman to me."

"Old enough to be a woman to Clara," she said, winking.

"I swear, if you called me out here just to make fun of me-" Jenny began warningly.

"Not at all. Came out to meet you, actually. Heard the TARDIS. Sound carries well on a spacestation where none of the systems are online. Anyway, I've got to make fun of you now, because I wouldn't demean you like this in front of any of your actual underlings, General."

"Excuse me?" the Doctor asked.

"She's a general," said Ashildr, "Worked for a black ops sector ordering covert assassinations of high profile enemies of the Alliance."

"I've never done that."

"Ah, that's exactly what you would say."

"She's lying," she told the Doctor, holding a hand over her eye and squinting, "I promise, I'm just a major. Or commodore if this is Star Fleet jurisdiction."

"No, no, no, don't downplay your role so-"

"I'm leaving," she decided, "Handle whatever's going on without me. I didn't even want to come, I have much more important things to do, I have to find a spark plug-"

"Jenny, darling," the Doctor said, "Don't-"

"God, I'm sorry, alright? I didn't realise you were in a mood."

"You punched me in the face!" Jenny argued with Ashildr, "If you want me to stick around at all you'd better give me a very good explanation of what's happening. Otherwise I'll leave you here to freeze to death. You've lived for thousands of years, maybe this is your last one." The Doctor looked at her in shock that she would really say something like that to somebody. Until Ashildr made her next remark.

"You sound just like him when you're callous. You and your father do seem pretty similar, now that I think about it, has anyone ever mentioned?"

"They mention it all the time," Jenny said coolly. "Now. Speak, or I'm gone."

"We're going this way, I need to introduce you to my team. Don't lag behind." Ashildr began to lead them off the same way she had come from. "You can put your gun away too, the entire place is empty."

"Funny, because here I thought your message said lives were in danger, but there don't seem to be any lives here," said Jenny.

"There are. There's five of us and then you two, that's seven lives in danger. Twenty-thousand lives already lost, and that's just here. It's almost definitely reached the millions, potentially billions. Tricky to quantify."

"Excuse me?" Jenny was shocked, "Billions of people dead and the Alliance aren't even here?"

"We're the Alliance, technically."

"I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of key backstory here," the Doctor interrupted, looking mainly at Jenny.

"Oh. Right. You remember how I said Austin Cargill framed me for the Polaris Death Charge? Ashildr was there, on Deftan, fighting for the Alliance as a private. She also believed the stories that I was responsible for it and when she was tricked into showing up at Clara's house to try and slay her she found me and stabbed me – haven't I told you all this?"

"Bits and pieces…"

"Anyway. Then she vanished and I had to pay the Shadow an Arcadian Diamond to find her and bring her to me so I could talk to her and she came with me to the Alliance with Cargill and testified against him so that he got sentenced to death and I got my rank reinstated. Of course he didn't die because his wife broke him out, obviously, but I'm still in the clean. They offered me a job heading up a black ops squad, which I declined because I have better things to do, but I recommended Ashildr for the position-"

"And that's the five lives who are in danger, my squad and I. Everyone else is dead."

"But dead where?" the Doctor asked.

"Couldn't tell you, it'd spoil Ensa's fun."

"Who?"

"Now's not the time for introductions, but this isn't really my gig. I might be in charge – or, I was until Jenny arrived – but it's… complicated. Here we are." Ashildr walked up to a wall panel that looked a bit bashed up and had a dozen warnings printed on it saying it was dangerously hot and for maintenance only.

"This goes to the heating pipes, we can't go in there, we'll boil alive," Jenny said.

"That's why it's a perfect place to set up shop," said Ashildr, hitting the large metal panel in a very choice place so that it fell right off the wall and clattered to the floor, "The last place that we can get slightly warm. Plus, originally, we were hiding; until we worked out everybody else here was dead and gone. Come on, you won't get burned, and tell tall and gangly he'll have to duck, and to fix the panel back to the wall to keep the heat in."

"I'm not gangly…" the Doctor muttered.

"You make yourself look more gangly when you walk with your back hunched," Jenny told him, sliding into the narrow gap between the large, metal heating pipes after Ashildr.

"I don't do that," he argued, having an awkward time trying to fit into the gap and balance the panel back where it had been hanging. It took him a while, with Ashildr complaining that he hurry up.

"You do, it makes you look like an old man whose arms are too long for him," Jenny said.

"Too much stooping to fondle his wife," Ashildr joked, and in a second she was forced against the wall in the incredibly narrow passageway with the metal of Jenny's right braced rammed across her throat and a loaded plasma gun pointing at her abdomen.

"If you ever talk about her like that – or if you even mention her at all – I'll shoot you. I won't kill you, but I'll give you a nice gut-shot, the kind of thing that'll take out half of your intestines and mean you can't ever digest meat again, or something. Or maybe I'll vaporise your wrists so that you can't slug me again." She held Ashildr to the wall and glared at her in the darkness. Ashildr managed to turn enough to look at the Doctor.

"You let her behave like this?" she croaked.

"She's a force of nature. And I'd rather you didn't mention Clara, too."

"That's a direct order," Jenny said, letting Ashildr go. She finally found the strength not to make a stupid comment, and continued down the passage. Jenny gave the Doctor an apologetic look, but felt less sorry when she felt her eye twinge again. She could already feel it swelling up. Maybe finally she had managed to command respect from Ashildr. It didn't matter, because they were soon in whatever base the little squad had cobbled together.

It was a very small and very cramped room with two sleeping bags on the floor, both occupied, and two more people, both looking sullen and twisting the handles on two kinetic generators which had been hijacked and jury-rigged from some escape pods. They appeared to be the only heat source on the whole base. Ashildr only had to nod at the two using the heaters for them to stop what they were doing, salute meekly to Jenny while still sat on the floor, and then go to shake awake the other two members. It was two boys and two girls.

"The boys are Kraz and Jinkso, the girls are Ensa and Li," said Ashildr, "All specialists. Ensa's an expert in alien biology, Li is an engineer, Kraz is a pilot and navigator, and Jinkso's a combat heavy. I'm the leader and tactician," Ashildr introduced.

"Brilliant. Nice line-up. And you're all stranded here, I suppose?" Jenny asked.

"You're Major Young, aren't you?" Jinkso, one of the two who had been awake originally along with Ensa, asked her, "Wasn't this supposed to be your job?"

"I turned it down."

"And you're here anyway."

"I don't say no to people who need help. None of this 'Major Young', though, just… Jenny. I'm Jenny. And this is the Doctor." However impressed they has been with her was blown clean out of the water when her father was introduced. Admittedly she enjoyed this because it often got tiring having so many expectations riding on her. Now he could share some of the responsibility.

"And you've come to rescue us?"

"Yes, almost certainly," the Doctor smiled, "Doesn't strike me as particularly hard, if I'm honest, there's only five of you and I have quite a large spaceship. Forgive me for thinking this isn't just a simple SOS, though. I still want to know what happened to everybody else on here."

"They're dead," said Ensa, "There's a creature. I call it the All-Consumer."

"Sounds very Biblical," said Eleven.

"It's wiped out nearly a dozen settlements in the last six months," she said.

"And the Alliance have only just sent you to deal with it? The five of you?" Jenny asked incredulously.

"Not exactly," said Ashildr.

"It's more of a pet project," said Ensa, "Reports of whole settlements and colonies just up and vanishing – it was Kraz who first came across the reports. But the Texoid System is right on the edge of Alliance territory; this is their first base that's been hit."

"But why not send out a full fleet?" Jenny persisted.

"We're not even sanctioned to be here," Ashildr said, "The generals wouldn't listen to us when we suggested all these mass vanishings are connected. Plus, they don't care about anything that isn't in their jurisdiction. Like every other colony that's gone up til now."

"Lunis is spotty at the best of times," Li explained with a yawn, being woken from her nap and immediately thrown right back into active duty, "It's all solar powered but the star is small and the station was built too far away. It has losses of power and communication all the time."

"But this time there were distress messages," added Ashildr, "Talking about a creature. Which the Alliance dismissed as a joke." Jenny sighed, saddened by the inaction and lack of care on behalf of the Alliance. She was beginning to remember why she hadn't had too many reservations about leaving it behind a century and a half ago.

"We came out unofficially to have a look," said Kraz, "And… now we're stuck."

"What happened to your ship?" the Doctor asked.

"Sabotaged," Li explained, "Pumped industrial glue into the fuel tanks so we can't fly away. There were some people here when we arrived, two days ago."

"I think it hypnotises people, somehow," Ensa said, "Hypnotises them to just walk right into its giant mouth or its lair. The people who sabotaged it seemed… off."

"They tried to kill us," said Jinkso bluntly, "So we killed them. And the their heads exploded."

"But you're not hypnotised?" Jenny asked carefully.

"We weren't here when it arrived," said Ashildr, "Whatever it is, it's huge enough to block out the sun and stop Lunis from receiving any power at all. Life support is down, the artificial gravity is failing, the backups are almost completely drained – there's no oxygen supply. We're just lucky it's only us here and nobody else is breathing it, it's let us last long enough for you to show up. But you see now, you can't leave. This thing is responsible for millions of deaths and it's just going to go deeper into Alliance territory until it's wiped out humanity, then onto the next species." Jenny was at a loss, so she turned to her father, who looked like he was thinking and wore a very serious expression.

"Well?" she said, "What do you think?"

"I think the Time Lords used to have old stories about creatures like this, ones that show up in the dead of night and take entire towns and cities and planets without any sign of destruction," he said.

"If there is a 'creature' out there," Jenny said, "What does it look like?"

"We don't know," said Ensa, "It's outer space and there was no light, since the sun's blocked out."

"We could only see a shadow," added Krax, "A massive shadow, though."

"Hmm," mused the Doctor, "An invisible enemy. So big you can't even see it. I think we'd better switch ships, don't you?" He went to take something out of his pocket; a keyring.

"What's that?" asked Ashildr.

"Teleporter back the TARDIS," Jenny explained.

"I think we should go pick up your flying saucer and have a look around outside for ourselves, don't you?"