My Heart Goes Boom Bang-a-Bang

Jenny

It was a grotesque form of digestion, like the thing had a nest of acidic resin growing around the walls of its stomach cavity. Truthfully, Jenny wasn't sure if it actual was significantly more disgusting than her own way of digesting things, by dissolving them in acid and sucking out the nutrients, but she had never seen her insides close-up. It was wall-to-wall corpses down there, quite literally. Very dark yellow gunk coated the walls and inside it were bodies, thousands upon thousands of bodies. A lot of the most visible were human, but she saw some partially digested ones of species she didn't recognise with bits and pieces floating around in the zero gravity. The substance itself was akin to earwax, and was damp and sometimes large pieces of it broke away, enormous clumps of gunk with body parts sticking out of them. Jenny had a theory that the different yellow blobs of liquid they had been flying past were actually drops of blood, because they certainly weren't stomach acid.

"This is ghastly," she said.

"I think everybody's innards probably look ghastly, my dear," the Doctor told her. She was doing very little steering, and leant forwards to see better. They were going very slowly, nearly crawling, in order to be careful of what they flew into. Strictly speaking, there was no rush. It was best to be as cautious as possible. "Maybe we should film this. It's quite fascinating. And at least we aren't being directly attacked."

"Maybe," she said quietly. She thought she might prefer being directly attacked.

"Do you want these jelly babies back?"

"I've lost my appetite." Eleven wrapped the remaining jelly babies back up in the paper bag and put them on the floor again.

"Me too." She couldn't take her eyes off the sights outside. It was like when she remembered seeing her first burning, orange sunset in Louisiana after her entire life before that was spent underground an arctic wasteland. Only it wasn't beautiful, it was horrifying. All those dying people and there wasn't a single sound to be heard.

"It's so quiet," she said, then backtracked, "I mean, I – I know space is a vacuum, but… it just tricked all these people into walking to their deaths. None of them even screamed. None of them even had any last words, they didn't get to say goodbye. Some of them just vanished." The Doctor didn't say anything. Just watched her. She found her screwdriver and sonicked the comm hub her phone was connected to so as to amplify the signal significantly enough to reach outside of the creature. "Ashildr, do you read me?" There was a long pause until Jenny repeated herself, "Commander Skallagrim, come in."

"You're a bit crackly," the voice finally answered, "But I read you. Is there a situation?"

"No. Everything's still going according to plan. I've got a direct order for you. I need you and your team to go around to every colony who was hit by this thing – Alliance or not – and find out everyone who's died and compile a list of the dead and make sure their families know what happened and that it's over. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Major Young. I'll make sure it gets done."

"Good. Thank you. Resuming radio silence. I don't want this thing to find out we're here, in case it has defence mechanisms."

"Understood. Over and out." The line died.

"That's good of you," said the Doctor.

"No it isn't. It's just… procedure. Nobody else would have the nerve to authorise it. Anyone else in the Alliance would cover it up. They wouldn't want to show outright how blind and unsympathetic they are to other species, even their own. If this was a military base, they'd have been out in force, but it's a science installation. They're just studying Texoid's anomalous solar flares to see if there's a way to convert them into a power source, and…" She was speaking very quickly, and she stopped and leant back in her chair.

"It's a good thing you're here to guide their hand where they fail," the Doctor told her, "You're better than I am to do it. I'd just get angry and leave. But you like to change things, like to stay, and help." She smiled sadly.

"No, I'm not. The reason I left Earth in 1945 was because I was angry at humanity for the atrocities of the Second World War."

"Well, there were an awful lot of atrocities to be angry about," he said. "How are you, anyway?"

"At this exact moment?"

"No. Just generally."

"Oh. Why?"

"Am I not allowed to be concerned about my own daughter?"

"Why concerned?"

"You look sad sometimes. Like you're bearing the burden of the universe on your shoulders."

"You look like that, too."

"And that's what concerns me. I know from experience that it isn't fun to feel that much responsibility. A problem shared is a problem halved, you know," he advised her. She smiled a little.

"It's nothing. Just my face. How much do you think is left of this stomach? It's horrible."

"I don't know. Really, though, we should keep talking. Take our minds off the task at hand."

"If you like, but I'm not inclined to talk about myself at the moment," Jenny said. She thought he was angling after getting personal anecdotes out of her, but she wasn't in the mood to give any out.

"I think the Tenth Doctor might be jealous of me, you know." She actually laughed.

"What? Why would he be jealous of you?"

Eleven looked offended, "Why wouldn't he be!? It's my rakish charm and dashing good-looks."

"Oh, I'm sure it is."

"And because of you, certainly."

"Mmm."

"Because you like me and not him."

"And you keep rubbing it in his face – I've been trying to ignore it. It's a bit immature."

"I'm just proud that you're not ashamed to say I'm your father. Not anymore."

"I was never ashamed… and I'm still going to go to his wedding. Even though we were supposed to have dinner, months ago, and he completely just blanked me and forgot about it. It's a lucky thing mum showed up when she did," Jenny sighed.

"Why's that?"

"Because I wouldn't have tried to make the effort with you if it wasn't for her telling me to."

"Yes. Well." He cleared his throat. "He's jealous of me for reasons other than that, though." Jenny didn't think she cared. "Jealous of my wife."

"I'm not sure that he is."

"Not of her as a person – but of the fact I've got one. And I'm doing all the same wedding stuff without any of the stress."

"You're not trying to get married in the space of two weeks. Are you?"

"Oh, no. Certainly not. Wouldn't want to take the attention away from Rose. She'll want all eyes on her, I'm sure. But he was being very weird, keeps asking me questions about my wedding ring," Eleven explained, "He asked me if it feels like a prison, having to wear it."

"What did you tell him?"

"I said if it feels like a prison he's almost certainly with the wrong woman. Though, I don't think that he is with the wrong woman so I don't know what he's whinging about," Eleven said, complaining about his other self. Maybe he thought Jenny would be an ally in this unusual crusade against Ten, but she was quite indifferent to the whole matter, in truth.

"Uh-oh. Look," Jenny diverted his attention to their exterior again, "This entire alien is just one gaping hole after another."

"I expect most organisms are if you're small enough." There was another ginormous abyss staring them right in the fact, with big chunks of waxy viscera drifting deeper into it, just like they were.

"Helix, is this the way we have to go?" Jenny asked in a whisper. It was like being on a submarine trying to remain undetected. It was a bit like that, really.

"Affirmative, Major. Be aware, scanners are detecting larger and more compacted lumps of organic debris within the intestinal passage," Helix said, "I am predicting some difficulties with navigation."

"Brilliant…" Jenny mumbled. As they approached the cavity grew more illuminated by the lights around the ship.

"This ship must look very unusual from the outside when it's lit up like this. Did she made it look like a flying saucer for a joke?"

"Maybe. But it's state of the art, and has excellent manoeuvrability. Though, it does look weird. I had a date, actually, two nights ago, and we took it out to Nevada and flew around a bit across Extraterrestrial Highway and Area 51. Until the air force started trying to shoot us down, but they're way too slow. It was actually really funny, and then I got hungry so we parked it with the cloaking on outside of this diner with all these 'aliens welcome' signs and pictures of little green men and everyone in there was talking about it. It was great, we pretended we were backpackers. And the woman who owned the place – oh my god, she made the best fried egg sandwiches I've ever tasted, I swear, it was like being in love with two people at once having that sandwich and my girlfriend." Jenny realised she was just as bad as he was, rambling about nothing in particular just to take her mind of their glum and grotesque surroundings.

The waxy substance was, as they entered the small intestine, beginning to look a lot more like waste. But it still had a long journey ahead of it yet until it reached the other end, an end Jenny hoped they wouldn't have to see. The Doctor was being quiet. Helix had been right about navigation being difficult; the monster had been gorging itself so much on entire populations of planetoids and bases that it was in danger of getting all clogged up down there. And them along with it.

"Sorry, I shouldn't have talked about her," Jenny said.

"You can talk about her all you like," he assured her. "I think your relationship makes sense, in a way. Besides, it's good. I know she won't break your hearts, or mistreat you. Only the best for my generated anomaly. But you'd better take me to this diner and show me these egg sandwiches. As a way for me to apologise for my past incarnation standing you up." She smiled and stopped the ship in the alien's guts.

"Do you mean that?"

"Which bit?"

"About Clara."

"Certainly. I'm over it now. Besides, she does have thousands of duplicates. If I get angry at you I should realistically be just as angry at Adam Mitchell. Why have we stopped moving?"

"I'm going to get out," she said.

"You're what!? No! I forbid it."

"Since when has forbidding me from doing anything ever worked?"

"Well, it… this is different! Your safety is at risk – why would you want to go out there? Don't stand up!" She ignored him and switched the spacesuit's helmet on.

"I've got to clear us a path," she said, "And one of us was going to have to go out eventually to cut a hole in the wall to get into the bloodstream."

"We are not yet deep enough into the intestinal tract to break through easily," Helix interjected.

"It'll be fine, I've just got to amplify the power on this thing," she took her plasma gun out of its holster and also the revolver, only the revolver she left behind on her chair; gunpowder wouldn't ignite in a vacuum. When it came to the plasma gun she also took out her screwdriver and amplified the power on it until it was vastly overcharged. "I won't be a minute, I just have to get something…"

"Where are you going?" he called after her. She didn't answer and headed into one of the ship's empty rooms. There were a handful of those because she hadn't quite worked out what she was going to put in them yet, but one had a sparse collection of weaponry. Weaponry which included a heat cutlass taken from the wreckage of the Comet in the Fowl Pocket weeks earlier. This she also sonicked to overcharge.

"Plasma blaster, heat cutlass – I'm all set for a bit of impromptu micro-surgery," she declared when she returned, showing him the sword.

"Maybe I should go out there. You can fly the ship."

"Flying the ship is easy, but navigating in zero gravity in a vacuum isn't. Only one of us is a professional acrobat."

"Yes, it's me, so I think-"

"Dad, I'm going outside," she said firmly, "The ship's got a magno-tether and it's exactly like doing a spacewalk. You'll be able to see me through the window the entire time."

"I just don't want to see you get digested." She sighed, then walked back over and stunned him to silence by hugging him tightly for a few moments, standing on her tiptoes. She let go, aware that time was off the essence. And because she didn't want to get digested, either.

"I'll be fine. I've got you looking out for me. And Helix, so… make sure you listen to Helix," Jenny said, still remembering that the Doctor's presence had never really stopped her from dying or receiving nasty injuries before. Her thumb still ached.

But really, she wasn't too worried about going outside of the ship. She was still wearing a very high-tech spacesuit, after all. So Jenny opened the floor hatch to descend into the intestines of this monster, the forcefield keeping the ship pressurised and its atmosphere intact within. She dropped down and began to float immediately, losing her bearings. It took her a moment to switch the suit into zero gravity mode, which switched on a system of what Oswin nicknamed 'joint jets.' They were tiny nozzles on the base of the boots and the back of her elbows which worked more or less like a series of air hoses and enabled one to fly in 0G.

"Are the suit comms working?" she asked.

"Yes. Are you still alive?"

"No, I just died, right there," she said, "I'm a ghost." She pulled herself up over the rim of the spaceship until she was floating in front of the window, "Boo! Turn the lights back on so I can see inside." He took a moment, but then the interior lights switched on.

"What's it like out there?" he asked.

"It's gross," she answered, "I'm glad I can't smell anything." She looked around until she spotted the giant blob of almost-poo which was blocking their path, then turned on her sword. It began to glow vivid orange.

"You're going to bring the smell back in here."

"Probably. You're helping me clean it because you made me come here, alright?"

"Mmm… fine…" he agreed begrudgingly as Jenny floated towards the blob with her sword. The sword sliced through the substance like it was butter, and released all kinds of things she didn't want to see. Mainly parts of organs she vaguely recognised and even a human eyeball still clinging onto its optic nerve. Again, she was so glad she couldn't smell anything. "What's cutting it up going to do?"

"I'm going to cut it into small pieces and then shoot it and disintegrate it. Like cheese fondue."

"I don't think it's anything like cheese fondue."

"It's the same basic principal."

"Should I be worried about the things you're teaching Nios how to cook?"

"I'm going to teach her to flambé coq au vin this week," she talked as she sliced the lump into smaller lumps, the jets helping her to move around a great deal.

"Oh, excellent, I'll be sure to keep some fire extinguishers handy." Jenny laughed.

"I will have you know I'm a professional chef. I've been cooking my whole life, ever since I was abandoned at birth. I used to make these meat stews when I lived in Arooh, have them brewing for weeks because I made all my money hunting game on the surface. Which was not a lot of money," she said, "And it was cold."

"Did you like it there?"

"Not really."

"What's your favourite place you've lived?"

"That's a big question," she said, turning off the sword and taking out the gun. She let herself float until she was right in front of the ship and then aimed and shot at the head-sized lumps of semi-digested matter until they vaporised in front of her. "Has that cleared the way enough?"

"For now," said the Doctor, "Better come back inside."

"No, I'll just… sit on the ship. I'll let you know if I fall off."

"Let the records show that I think that's a terrible idea. But fine, only the best for you." She did sit on the front of the ship, and she hoped she wasn't obstructing his view too much. Though, it wasn't like she wouldn't tell him if he was about to crash into a massive chunk of slime. He started the ship moving again at a crawl, and it wasn't much more strenuous than cruising in a convertible. In fact, it was a lot less strenuous.

"What were you asking me? My favourite place I've lived?"

"Oh, yes."

"I don't know. I kind of liked Berlin, though sometimes it could be a bit secret police-y. Or maybe just regular police-y. Since we were breaking the law by smuggling. But I had a girlfriend in Berlin too, so that made it better."

"You left her behind?"

"Astrid? Oh, no, she dumped me."

"SHE dumped YOU?"

"She got pregnant and didn't want to raise a baby in Berlin in the 1960s, so she went out to… I don't know where, actually, but she went somewhere safer with her little brother."

"…Hold on… how did she get pregnant if she was going out with you?"

"Contraception was quite hard to come by sometimes," Jenny explained, "And it wasn't always reliable."

"But… what am I not understanding? She cheated on you?"

"She… may have been a prostitute."

"She 'MAY' have been!?"

"She was definitely, one-hundred percent, a prostitute, for as long as I knew her. Anyway, I did like being a sous chef in Italy as well, that was fun. A lot less life-or-death. Living in the circus was okay too, everyone liked me."

"Right."

"But I like when Clara lets me stay with her. Even though we're not… living together, not yet, it's still relaxing."

"Excuse me? What do you mean not 'yet'?"

"Blockage detected ahead, Major," Helix said.

"Yeah, I can see it. Take us a bit closer," Jenny told her father, still sitting on the front of her ship. Lucky it was so small on the outside. "Doesn't look as bad as the last one. Stop now." The ship halted underneath her, and she kicked off the helm like she was swimming, getting her cutlass out again as she approached another big lump of dark gunk.

"What were you saying about not living together 'yet', Jenny?"

"Don't get me wrong, we haven't got any plans or anything," she sliced all the way through the middle of the gunk, this time revealing an entire missing head of an alien species she didn't recognise with half a dozen dead, bloated eyes. "But, um… one day, you know? It's not like I'm thinking of moving out of the TARDIS, I don't want to do that anytime soon."

"You don't want to live on the TARDIS forever?"

"Well, no. Not really. You move around too quickly, I like to stay for a while. And I like Clara. She told me when I got back from Rospaonus that she wants to marry me one day, actually."

"What? You're engaged to her now?"

"No, but some people like to talk about these things beforehand, they don't all just get drunk and do things spontaneously," Jenny explained, "We're not engaged and we're not moving in together – and I haven't told anybody else this, by the way. Not even Oswin or Nios. I'm only telling you, because… it would be nice if you were happy for me, I guess." She reached a particularly tricky to cut part of the mass and had to try and awkwardly cut around it, finding out when she broke the stuff apart that it she had been trying to melt through what looked like some very advanced armour. While this one piece survived her sword, the rest of it clearly hadn't survived the digestion process of this monster.

"I am happy for you! I hope you do get married – although… would one of you have to wear a suit?"

"I'm sure we'll both be wearing dresses. I'd want to wear a dress, and it's pretty rare to see Clara in anything that isn't a dress."

"Who would walk down the aisle?"

"I don't know – I told you, we're not engaged."

"But mutually agreeing to get married one day is the same thing."

"Until I have a ring on my finger, I'm a free agent. Well, not free, but you know what I mean," she said, kicking the big armour piece away from her because she wasn't going to be able to damage it with her gun.

"It would be nice if you let me give you away, that's all," he said.

"Oh," Jenny was stunned, "Well, that's… I'll be sure to mention it… if we ever do get engaged, you know. One day. Years from now." He didn't say anything more as she aimed her gun and shot the cubes to dust again, and she wondered if the alien they were within could feel all this. Probably not. They hadn't damaged the creature itself yet. Maybe it just had indigestion, which would not surprise her given all the stuff it was trying to eat. Like impenetrable suits of space armour. "Has that cleared the way enough?"

"Affirmative, Major," said Helix. Jenny drifted back over to the ship again right as Eleven started it moving. "In approximately fifteen metres the villi density will be thin enough to be cut through to enter the cardiovascular system."

"You know, Oswin's done a really good job on these spacesuits," Jenny said, "This thing is completely state of the art."

"I don't know if you've heard, but she's actually very clever. She doesn't often mention it, so I can see how you might be in the dark," the Doctor said.

"I had no idea," said Jenny, "Go a bit faster, I can't wait to come back inside." He sped up, and only needed to for the smallest amount of time because they surpassed the short fifteen-metre distance so quickly. "Helix, which side am I cutting through? My left or my right?"

"The ground below you will offer the best link to an artery, Major."

"Copy that. Below me."

"Be careful of the blood, Jenny, if we're severing an artery it's all going to start leaking out," the Doctor warned as she dove and wielded her space sword.

"Just get the door open ready for me to come back in, this won't take long."

And it didn't take long, because the alien tissue was even easier to cut through than the sticky digestive substances, and she managed to find a rare sliver of intestine not quite coated in the dense stuff. She slashed a large wound in the guts of the creature right-to-left, like a sickening smile, scraping out a crevice big enough for the ship to slide through. In the end it wasn't just a slit she created, but she had to extract an oval-shaped piece of tissue which began to let in quite a lot of blood once she kicked the slab of skin-stuff away deeper into its bowels. She used the jets to navigate easily back to the base of the ship, which wasn't really the base but sort of the side because she had become disorientated with the lack of gravity, and the Doctor helped to pull her up.

"Go fly, what are you doing?"

"I care more about making sure that you're alright," he answered her.

"I'll shut the door, you fly the ship," she ordered him, and he actually listened, leaving her to seal the door underneath. She didn't bother taking off her helmet because she didn't want to know how bad she smelt. It was a miracle she wasn't that dirty. The same couldn't be said for the ship, because the ship was in the process of diving down into the hole she had carved, and accordingly became drenched in incredibly dark alien blood.

Instantly, they were swept away by the current, and maybe they had a thousand kilometres to travel but they were travelling that distance very quickly, and even quicker once Jenny started the engines after stealing the controls back from her father, whom she told to go and get the bomb out of the fridge to arm it. Once they got close enough to the pulmonary valve, they were just going to drop the thing out of the ship, detonate it remotely and warp away. Or perhaps they should warp away first. They hadn't quite thought that part through, nor did she have the time now, while she desperately tried to stop them from ripping through the walls of the blood vessel with their sheer momentum.

The Doctor busy with the bomb, Jenny hastened to get Ashildr back on the comms.

"Ashildr, do you read?" she asked after sonicking with one hand, which was very ill-advised behaviour. Distracted driving took lives.

"Loud and clear," Ashildr answered, "Been on stand-by this whole time."

"Great, we've just cut our way into an artery, going to be warping in, uh… some point in the next five minutes. I'll keep the line active. Dad's just getting the bomb out of the fridge."

"Are you sure you should let him do that?"

"Yeah, he'll be-" she heard a bang behind her. "What was that!?"

"Sorry! I dropped it!"

"You dropped it!?"

"I'll be sure to inform both the Claras after the two of you blow yourselves up," said Ashildr, "I think it's very sweet how you're getting along, though. Even if he isn't as hot as your mother." Jenny made a mental note to break a bone of Ashildr's the next time she saw her, but right then she was too preoccupied to do any berating. Jenny heard a beep.

"Oops," said the Doctor.

"OOPS!? What's 'oops'!? What did you do?"

"You've got thirty seconds."

"I've got what?"

"Twenty-seven seconds! Fly faster!"

"We're totally gonna die! Why did you drop it!"

"Just go!" he shouted, and she put the ship as fast as she could get it while still being able to maintain the tight control she needed to stop them from crashing. She heard him dragging it along the floor behind her, then opening the floor hatch, but she couldn't leave. "Nineteen seconds!"

"We're not there yet!"

"We need time to warp away as well!"

"I know what I'm doing!"

Helix spoke: "Major, this would be an adequate position to-" she didn't listen to the rest of the sentence, and instead chose to scream at her father to shove the bomb as she wheeled the ship around and set them off going the opposite direction. He pushed the bomb through the floor hatch, but Jenny was suddenly wrestling between an overpowered ship and the opposing blood flow now heading straight towards them. Beneath, the bomb got sucked with ten seconds left down towards the pulmonary valve, but they were not yet going fast enough to warp. The Doctor was closing the hatch.

"Jenny, why are we still here?"

"Just give me a minute."

"You've got about five seconds!"

"I reckon you'd better get out of there," Ashildr said.

"I'M WORKING ON IT."

With two seconds to spare they warped. The blue flash slid across the exterior of the spaceship and Lunis Terminal came into view in front of Jenny, through the blood smears covering the window. Almost instantly the view of Lunis was eclipsed by a vivid explosion and Jenny turned the ship to see it better. The jury-rigged FTL drive at certainly done its job at destroying the creature, and then some, because as she watched she saw the silhouette begin to shrink and the light to unusually distort.

"Whoops," said the Doctor.

"First 'oops' now 'whoops' – what is it this time?"

"I think that explosion might have made a black hole."

"It's what!?" Ashildr shouted over the comms.

"I did say this might happen," said the Doctor.

"Well how do we stop that?"

"Shh, just watch," he said, and watch they did, as the creature eventually got sucked within itself and into nothingness. The distortion, which looked like a pinprick in the middle of time and space, bent back into shape like stretched elastic and left the star Texoid visible and able to power Lunis Terminal once more.

"So… danger averted…" Ashildr began, "What time can I expect my evac off this wasteoid?"