18th of February, 2024
Moonwyrm
2
"This is a helium mine, then?" said Clara, thoroughly underwhelmed. It was a building, barely bigger than their living room, with an airlock on one side. Behind were rows of long-haul lunar trucks and rovers and then fields upon fields – if 'field' was even the right word – of industrial tanks filled up with gas.
"It's underground," said the Doctor, "This is Whiterock; it's Aether Extraction's flagship installation, their proof of concept. It wouldn't do well to have all their miners contract radiation poisoning because of flimsy, pop-up habitats. Or for them to be living underneath another of those domes."
"This is the first I'm hearing of your vendetta against domes," said Clara, following her to the door, "Or is this one of those things you just decide to hate one day on a whim? Like pineapple?"
"I don't like pineapple, Clara, and I resent you holding this over my head because I had one smoothie one time that, by the way, had a substandard aftertaste."
"Like I said. Whims."
The Doctor scoffed and pulled the lever on the airlock control panel. It started flashing and bleeping, internal mechanisms turning but almost impossible to hear in the near-vacuum conditions. The door hissed and opened on its pneumatic hinges.
"Is there no way you could've landed the TARDIS inside the mine so that we didn't have to get changed into spacesuits?" Clara asked while they waited in the airlock for it to cycle fully.
"I don't like wearing them, either. I actually preferred the old, orange ones, if Oswin hadn't thrown them out years ago. These ones are very… tight. But if we have to go outside in a hurry, it's better we're in the suits already."
"I mostly don't like the colour," said Clara. Hers was light grey, the colour Oswin intended. The Doctor had spray-painted hers blue a long time ago, but it was fading.
The interior airlock door clanked and hissed open, letting them into a stairwell. To the left was a hole-in-the-wall security desk; she could see the chair, computer and knickknacks through the window, but nobody was there.
"Looks empty," said Clara, pressing the button on the spacesuit collar to retract the glass helmet. The blue cheese on her breath had stunk it up in there already. "You didn't get the dates mixed up and bring us down decades in the future, did you?"
"Have a little faith! Everything's in full working order, I'm sure somebody'll be around," said the Doctor, also taking off her helmet.
They came into a locker room with a dozen lockers and a dozen spacesuits hanging up next to each one, only a few empty hooks.
"Not a lot of people for such a huge mine," said Clara.
"It's robots," said the Doctor, "The humans are here to fix the robots that do the actual, dangerous work."
"And are you for or against that?"
The Doctor tutted, "You should know my opinion about this by now. If the automation works, keeps people safe, and employees are retrained if their jobs are made redundant, I don't have an issue. But at the LunaDome? It doesn't look like that automation was working or keeping anybody safe. It's easy to forget how dangerous it is up here."
"Do you hear voices?" asked Clara. They paused outside the next door; people were talking within.
"What did I tell you? Not empty at all."
The door opened into the outpost's common area, brightly lit like a hospital waiting room with vending machines lining one side and quite an impressive kitchen on the other. They walked in on a heated debate, but far from listening and learning what it was about, Clara was struck when she recognised one of the people: Esther Drummond, outfitted as the Lightning Girl sans the fancy helmet – her identity was exposed.
"Esther?" said Clara, surprised. Esther, who'd been just as involved in the conversation as everyone else, looked up. Just as she met Clara's eyes, a small boy – no older than six – flew in front of her. And really, he was flying, gliding through the air. There wasn't much gravity on the moon, true, but Clara knew a manifest when she saw one.
"Robbie, what did I tell you?" said a woman, clicking her fingers at him. "I know it's boring, but no powers in the common room. That's the rule." The boy floated down onto the ground and pouted, dragging his feet.
"Who the hell are you two? We don't have any visitors scheduled," said the man at the front of the room. Tall, blond, speaking English with a Nordic accent – though Clara couldn't place the exact country. He was wearing a spacesuit as well, but it was bulky and contemporary, emblazoned with the Aether Extraction logo.
"We're from head office, health and safety," said the Doctor.
"No, they're not – they're friends of mine," said Esther, "They have their own ship, that's how they got here. And they might be just what we need."
"Friends of yours? You know, you're not supposed to be here, either," the Norseman said.
"I'm the one who got your auxiliary generators running. Or, do you want me to leave and take all my free electricity with me?" she challenged him. He shook his head.
"Technically, any guests need to be recorded in the logbook, with full personnel information sent to Sacramento for retroactive approval," said a dark-haired American.
"Jamie, I don't care," said the Norseman, "You really think the people in Sacramento give a shit about who drops by unannounced?"
"I'm the foreman-"
"And nobody respects you."
"Because you're getting your testosterone on everything, as usual," Jamie grumbled, but he gave up.
"Who are you?" the leader asked Clara and the Doctor again. "Friends of our Lightning Girl here?"
"That's Clara, that's the Doctor," Esther introduced them, and then indicated the Norseman, "And this is Kristof, Whiterock's chief engineer." Back to Kristof, "Clara's a manifest, too; she can walk through walls. She can go into the basement and see what happened." Clara was stunned to be outed like that, especially by Esther, who normally loved her privacy.
"Basement? What do you mean?" said Clara. Kristof deliberated for a moment, studying Clara, and then relaxed. Everybody else in the room, the other Aether workers and little Robbie, looked at Clara hopefully.
"I wouldn't want to involve outsiders usually, because you don't have the proper clearance and I don't want to do the paperwork or listen to Jamie complain," said Kristof, "But, if you can really walk through walls, you might be the only person who can help us."
"What happened? Was it the moonquake?" asked the Doctor. "That's what we came to ask you about at the outpost – if you've noticed anything strange with the quakes."
Kristof laughed, "Strange with the quakes? Yeah. You could say that. They've definitely been getting worse, and when that big one rolled through, something breached our main storage room, with all our food. That, plus a computer glitch that means if we try to unlock the door, our life support will shut itself off. We don't have enough spacesuits for everybody."
"Huh," the Doctor thought, then turned to Esther. "Did you have a look?"
"That's what I was arguing with them about, they weren't letting me."
"Yeah, in case you accidentally short-circuit the airlock and kill us all," said Kristof.
"That won't happen, I keep-"
"It's not worth the risk," he said firmly.
"…I'm inclined to agree with him," said the Doctor. "Sorry, Sparky."
"I'm coming anyway," Esther insisted. "Clara can phase me, too."
"If I have to," said Clara. She'd prefer not to touch Esther and risk another electrocution, but if lives were on the line, she'd have to put short-term peril to one side. Then again, maybe intangibility was enough of a counter against lightning strikes; she'd never tested it.
"Fine," said Jamie. "I just need you to sign some forms and fill in a risk assessment."
"Trust me, the less HQ knows about this, the better," said Kristof. "Keep it off the books."
"Aether won't like you running black ops from their flagship mine," Jamie warned as Kristof headed off through the next door, beckoning for Clara, the Doctor, and the Lightning Girl to follow. "Especially not if you get everyone killed!"
"At least I won't have to listen to you anymore," said Kristof. Jamie typed furiously; Clara suspected he was going to have produced a dozen inane forms for them to pore over by the time they got back. "Sorry about him," said Kristof when the door slid closed. "Pencil pushers."
"And you're more of a cowboy, I bet?" said the Doctor, "Out here in Whiterock, with your mine and your saloon? Your townsfolk in need of protection?"
"I like to think of it that way," he smiled.
"What are you two doing on the moon, anyway? Investigating the moonquakes?" asked Esther. "You should've said – we could've met up here. I'm always around."
"It's the Easter holidays," said Clara. "Matilda wanted to go to the LunaDome; she's still there with Rose, staying away from the rides. That last quake made one of the roller coasters crash."
"That's not good," said Esther, "They're supposed to be able to withstand quakes."
"And moonquakes aren't supposed to be anywhere near this strong," said the Doctor, "Hence us coming out here to take a look. If anybody knows what's going on underground, it's miners."
"Maybe it is the mine," said Esther, "Before they built up here, weren't people worried about it damaging the moon?"
"Unfounded," said the Doctor, "Helium mines are a far cry from fracking. Nothing like this should be happening."
"It's this door," said Kristof, putting his helmet on. "I'll wait out here, in case you find a way to unseal the door from the other side. There should be an intercom just through there, though."
"…Are you sure you're not gonna shock me?" Clara asked.
"I can control it," said Esther defensively, "And the suit's very insulted, anyway." She put her fancy mask back on, and Clara and the Doctor equipped their helmets.
"Okay," said Clara after a moment, "I'm choosing to trust you. But if anything happens-"
"If she kills you, I promise I'll avenge you, alright?" said the Doctor, "Can we move this along, please?"
Much to Clara's relief, she did not get another lethal electric shock from the Lightning Girl, Earth's greatest superhero. Just a bit of static as she dragged them intangibly through the door. The Doctor visibly flinched when they were on the other side, but they managed to get through unscathed.
"See? It's fine. And when I electrocuted you last time, it was on purpose, remember?" said Esther, slightly distorted by the mask and their comms, which all seamlessly paired through Oswin's proprietary technology.
"Yeah, it's hard to forget," said Clara, who still had the scar.
"The lights are still working, but the life support isn't…" said the Doctor, looking around. It was a storeroom full of astronaut food, dehydrated powders and other long-life goods clad in aluminium to protect from space radiation and stacked on shelves. "You come here a lot, Sparky? Visiting family?"
"All the time; they all know who I am," she said, "My great-nephew, Eddie Drummond, runs the truck stop halfway between Whiterock and the LZ. D-Lites. Lucky I was visiting today to help them with the generators."
"Sure was. Do you know when this started happening?"
"I was here a week ago, and it was fine then," said Esther, "So, the last few days."
"You ever go to the theme park? Talk to the robots?"
"No, why?"
"They're acting funny. I don't like it."
"Is this all their food down here?" said Clara, "Should we take some of it back through with us, in case whatever's happened can't be fixed?"
"Oh, maybe," said Esther, "I'll ask Kristof on the way back."
"This way, this way…" said the Doctor, mostly to herself, hurrying.
It didn't take long for them to find the breach. There were rows of decimated shelves ahead, destroyed by something that couldn't possibly have been a quake. On each wall, a path of destruction between them, were two holes; two perfect circles cutting through the facility.
"Would you look at that!" said the Doctor, seeing where part of the ground had been carved into, showing the pale, lunar rock below. "Something's digging. Something huge." The holes were at least ten feet wide.
The Doctor navigated the debris to get to the hole on the left, taking out her sonic screwdriver again and examining the tunnel's mouth.
"It goes on for miles, miles and miles," she said, listening to the screwdriver reverberate through the passage, "But who'd want to dig tunnels on the moon?"
"Or what," said Clara, "Couldn't it be something organic?"
"On the moon?"
"Ravenwood has that story, about the moon being an egg," said Esther, "Something about giant antibodies. She didn't say anything about tunnels, though."
"That story's a whole lot of nonsense," said the Doctor, "Maybe in their universe it's not a big rock, but I've never found any evidence to the contrary here. Get me a light source, Sparky."
Esther and Clara joined her in the tunnel, Esther summoning blue sparks to her hand to send a soft glow into the room.
"See that?" the Doctor pointed out on the ceiling, "Patterns and glitter."
"Glitter?" said Clara.
"It's not actually glitter," said the Doctor, brushing her fingers over the tunnel wall and picking some of it up. She showed it to Clara. "Metal filings. It's some kind of a machine, boring holes through the moon."
"Then, who's controlling it?" asked Clara.
"I don't know. Maybe nobody is, the way it's going all over the place."
"That's comforting…"
"Do you want me to follow it?" said Esther, "I can chase it through the tunnel and see what it is."
"…Yes," the Doctor decided after a moment of thought, "But, be careful. We don't know how it might react to a power source like you."
"I'm always careful," said Esther, and then she disappeared. She moved so quickly now, transmuting into electrical energy, pure and blue, that she was gone before Clara could even blink. She saw stars in her eyes as if somebody had just taken a picture of her with the flash on.
"Very disorienting," she mumbled. But the Doctor was preoccupied, studying the metal flakes with her sonic screwdriver.
"I really need to upgrade the spectrometer capabilities of this thing," she said with a sigh, "K-9 could do it… Why didn't we bring K-9 to the moon with us, Goober?"
"Probably because he's a nightmare to take anywhere? He's on lobster guard duty while we're away, besides." In case Captain Nemo made another escape attempt, K-9 was keeping watch and would alert them so that somebody could go back to Brighton and return him to his tank.
"I'm worried she's getting too powerful, you know," the Doctor changed the subject.
"Really? All she can do is run around and zap people," said Clara. The Doctor said nothing, making a face and keeping an eye on the sonic. "It's Esther. She has more honour and integrity than anybody I've met."
"I know, but… oh, this isn't good…"
"What?"
"It's exactly what I was scared of. This metal, it's got traces of druitium."
"Which is what?"
"Nothing, on its own; just an alloy. But it's an alloy that's only found on one planet in the solar system. Mondas. The planet of the Cybermen."
"Cybermen? On the moon?"
"Gearing up for something," said the Doctor, "Five years from now, they'll try to take control of the Gravitron. Obviously, I stopped them – I wouldn't be surprised if they're here a little ahead of schedule, though… But," she changed tact, "Why build a giant drill? Why dig around on the moon at all?"
"Couldn't they be mining, too?" Clara suggested.
"If they are, they're not doing a very good job."
She brushed the metal flakes to the floor, done with her analysis, but they went floating around in the air in front of her. It was then that Esther returned, flashing into the room and radiating energy as she did.
"It's a worm," she said, "That's the only thing I can describe it as. A Dweller."
"A what?" asked Clara, looking at her blankly.
"From Transformers," said Esther. Clara stared at her blankly, and Esther sighed. "You have awful taste in cartoons."
"We're from different countries, we don't have all the same channels," said Clara, "I'm not gonna go back as an adult and watch kids' cartoons, am I?"
"Why not?" said Esther. Clara gave up.
"Don't worry," said the Doctor, "I know what you mean."
"Thank you!"
"Did you get a sense of its movements?"
"Erratic," she said, "But it's coming back this way."
"The people here were lucky to survive one direct attack, we can't let them go through another," the Doctor decided, "But if it's a cyber-worm, of Mondasian design, I might be able to interfere with whatever signal's being used to control it and lure it somewhere we can get rid of it safely. Come on." She leapt away in the microgravity, towards the exit.
"And when you say, 'get rid of it'-" Clara began.
"With a signal jammer to confuse it, I'm sure it's no match for the Phantom and the Lightning Girl."
"What about the food?" said Clara, "I really think we should help with that."
"Nobody's starving yet. If we need to, we can evacuate everybody back to Earth in the TARDIS, or at least back to the LZ – do they have shelters there?"
"For emergencies," said Esther.
"We'll come back and deal with it later – if that worm breaks through and shuts down life support to the entire facility, salvaging the food supply won't help anyone," the Doctor insisted, practically flying through the room. Clara gave in and followed suit, boosting herself with telekinesis. Esther was much, much faster though, and exploded into existence at the door after zipping between the shelves.
"Well? Did you fix it?" asked Kristof when they melted through the wall.
"Not yet – I'm going to need to get some specialist equipment," said the Doctor, "Long story short, you've got an alien, tunnelling robot on your hands; it's dug a hole right through the storeroom and it's on its way back. But I'm gonna stop it, don't you worry!"
"A – a what? A tunnelling robot?"
"Yes, and – actually!" she turned in the air, floating and spinning, "Do you have ground survey equipment here? For the mining?"
"Yeah, but-"
"Can you operate it from this facility?"
"Yes, but, again-"
"Perfect! You're going to activate the ground radar and try to find where that thing is, and I'll call you from my ship so we can coordinate."
"I'm in charge around here, and-"
"No, you're not," she almost laughed, "Not when I'm here. You'll do what I say, and I'll get that thing out of your way ASAP. Understood?"
"…Understood," said Kristof begrudgingly.
/
In no time at all, the Doctor produced a piece of equipment made of a military radio the size of a briefcase from the TARDIS, improvised antennae attached to it and a tube monitor on the top. While she did that, it was Clara's job to fly the TARDIS a quarter of a mile away from Whiterock to lure the worm and then to work out how to call Aether's facility from the ship.
"Testing, testing," she said into a walkie-talkie tied to the console with a raggedy piece of string, "This is the TARDIS, come in Whiterock." It crackled and fizzed. The Doctor hated anything digital.
"Receiving you loud and clear, er, TARDIS, did you say?" said Kristof.
"Gimme that!" the Doctor shouted to Clara through the open doors, making Clara wince because, between the speakers in her helmet and the walkie-talkie, the loud noise made a feedback loop.
"Please don't shout at me while we're all wired up," she said, giving the walkie-talkie to the Doctor, who'd by now dragged her ridiculous radio outside.
"How will the radio lure it out here?" said Esther, arms crossed, standing on the surface of the moon in her superhero suit. Sensing that this might be a memory with an interesting story, Clara took out her phone and snapped a picture: the Lightning Girl looked disdainfully at the Doctor as she fretted over an old wireless. "Did you just take a photo?"
"Well, if we destroy this worm-thing, we'll be able to look back on it, won't we?" she said. Esther's mask flickered again, which must have meant she was glaring. She put her phone away before it started to freeze over, back into one of her spacesuit pouches.
"The radio will lure it here because I can spoof a Mondasian signal just enough to get it to investigate," said the Doctor, "That's the thing about Cybermen, they're reliable. Similar goals, similar methods, similar equipment. If I can disrupt it, it's going to come over here and investigate the disturbance. Of course, to pull this off you'd need to be familiar enough with their technology to know what frequencies they broadcast on in the first place."
"Your entire plan is based on confusing it?" said Clara.
"No, my plan is based on confusing it and then getting my two souped-up goons here to destroy it before it can hurt anybody else."
"Any contingencies, maybe?" said Clara, not convinced she'd be able to do anything that useful against a cyber-worm.
"Well, we could create an EMP with an atmospheric nuclear detonation, but I left all my warheads in my other pants," said the Doctor dryly.
"I think I can take that thing," said Esther, optimistic as always.
"Alone, or do you want my help?" asked Clara.
"Could you hold it still?"
"I can try," said Clara.
"Come in, TARDIS. Whatever this thing is, it's headed right for us."
"That's great," said the Doctor, "Keep an eye on it for me."
"Considering it's about to wipe us off the map-"
"That isn't going to happen. I've dealt with them before, albeit not in this specific form factor. Just need to calibrate the antennae, modulate the transmitter, check the polarity isn't fluctuating, and… there you go!" She threw up her arms, the radio coming to life. It started to hum and spin, emitting a low, pulsing signal that just about came in over the comms.
"It's still heading our way…" said Kristof.
She took out the screwdriver and scanned her creation. "Not a strong enough range – are we a quarter mile out, like I asked?" said the Doctor.
"I think so," said Clara.
"You think so? Because, I don't have time to recalibrate it now, if you were even a little off-"
"What do you need? A boost?" said Esther.
"Maybe – just, try not to destroy it, okay? This thing's helped me out of more than a few binds."
"Doctor, you said we didn't have to worry," said Kristof, "Any minute now it's going to rip through here."
"Juice it, Sparky!" said the Doctor.
Esther crouched by the radio and placed her gloved hands on its surface, sending all the extra wattage it needed flowing from her and into the machine. It wobbled violently and released a huge pulse, fizzing through the comms and briefly disconnecting them.
"Did that work?" asked the Doctor. Silence. "Kristof? Are you there? Hello?" She tapped the walkie-talkie against her palm, twiddled a dial, and used the sonic again. "Whiterock, are you reading me? This is-"
"It's diverted!"
"That's a relief."
"It's coming straight for you."
"That's less of a relief… okay, positions. You're stopping the worm, you're zapping the worm, alright?" she looked between Clara and Esther.
"We already decided that without you, but, fine; if it makes you feel better, we'll pretend like it was your idea," said Clara.
"I can feel it," said Esther. They all could. Rumbling in the rock, much stronger than the ones in the theme park.
It was nearer to the surface this time, and the TARDIS didn't like that. The light flashed and the thrumming began.
"No, no, no!" said the Doctor, bolting towards it. She got inside just before it began to dematerialise fully, vworping away. "Can you two still hear me?"
"I didn't realise the TARDIS scared so easily," said Clara.
"She's not built to withstand complex seismological events on such a small scale – it's triggered the HADS."
"I thought you never enable the HADS?" said Clara.
"It's useful to turn them on if we need to evacuate Mattie!" the Doctor went on arguing, the TARDIS now gone, "You know, all you do is imply that I'm an absent figure in her life, but actually, I-"
"Can we have this conversation later? It's just that I think I'm about to be eaten by a giant worm for only the second time in my life!"
"You've been eaten by a worm before!?" said Esther, the ground splitting ahead of them as the worm got nearer and nearer.
"Yes, on Eslilia – I actually died in its digestive tract and was brought back to life after it shat me and Jack out, but-"
"Oh, I see," said the Doctor, "There's time for you to tell Esther your old worm-poop anecdote, but not to have a conversation about-"
"There it is!" Esther pointed, but she didn't need to.
A great, silver worm, ten feet wide, exploded out of the lunar soil. Covered in whirring blades with churning drill bits instead of a face, it reared up in front of the Lightning Girl and the Phantom. One touch, and they'd be pulverised, ground to pulp in the machinery.
"Maybe we can reason with it!?" said Clara, able to hear the industrial horror of the worm's maw even through the vacuum and the helmets, "It might have a brain!"
"I don't think so!" said Esther, "When I fought the Arachnoid, they put the brain of a spider in it!"
"What the hell is an 'Arachnoid'!?"
"It was at Rose's wedding, you weren't – look out!"
The worm dove, going not for them, but for the Doctor's radio bait, smashing it to pieces and tunnelling back into the ground. Clara had to throw herself with telekinesis to get out of the way quickly enough, while Esther melted into a blue, electric blur to dodge.
"Wrangle it!" said Esther, "Before it disappears!"
"Wrangling now!" said Clara, holding out her hands to grab the worm telekinetically. She stood her ground but the worm, half-burrowed and half-exposed, writhed, emitting a screeching sound that broke through their radios and almost knocked her over.
Esther was all the way on the other side, and she was about as practised with her superpowers as it was possible to be. She sent the biggest shot of lightning she could muster from her hands and into the worm, and it flailed even more violently from the shock.
"Are we sure that thing doesn't have any organic components!?" she asked.
"I don't know all the fauna on Mondas to tell you for sure," said the Doctor, "I'll search the TARDIS files for giant worms!"
"Probably would've been more helpful if you'd done that ten minutes ago, sweetheart!" said Clara, struggling to keep the worm still. With all her strength, she wrenched it out of the ground, but it was like a fish out of water. A giant, metal, angry fish covered in spinning blades.
Its tail flicked and came straight for Clara, who lost her grip in her hurry to turn intangible. She managed it, barely, but then the tail came back. She leapt into the air, propelling herself with kinesis and levitating twenty feet above the creature.
Esther readied herself to shock it again, sending another blast of white-hot energy into its body. The currents spread along the creature, lighting it up, but it was still moving.
"How about a lightning strike, maybe!?" said Clara, trying to keep the worm on the surface while also staying aloft – and she'd never been adept at flying.
"Not possible in these atmospheric conditions!" said Esther, "The charge is already dissipating in the-" She was struck by the tail Clara had been trying to dodge, flung into the air. For a moment, Clara feared the worst, but Esther was much sturdier than she was usually given credit for. "Well, now I've really had enough! Keep it there, I've got one more trick up my sleeve!" In mid-air, she morphed into electricity again and shot like a rocket back towards the worm while Clara strained every muscle in her body to keep the thing contained.
"You've run out of tricks already!?"
But Clara got no response.
Esther didn't stop and hit the worm, she went inside the worm, absorbed wholly into the cables and circuitry. Clara kept straining, keeping the worm hostage, but it got more and more violent. Esther was gone and Clara was struggling. She felt warmth on her face; a nosebleed, she could taste it. She'd pushed herself too far again, and any second, she was going to be forced to let go so that she didn't get a brain injury too complicated for the nanogenes to fix.
Electrical currents pulsed down the monster and then, faster than Clara could blink, it exploded.
The force was enough to throw her backwards, careening through the air and still spinning when she regained balance. The moon had a new crater.
"What happened!? Are you okay, Coo!?"
"I'm fine," said Clara, coughing on blood, "I don't know about Esther…"
There was a flicker in the heart of the blast zone and Esther reformed from energy, lying still.
Debris hurtling past her, with no atmosphere or gravity to slow it down, Clara guided herself to the ground. It was a rough landing and she stumbled, scrambling back to her feet, and then had to leap through the microgravity to reach Esther.
"Esther? Are you alright?" Clara shook her shoulder. There was no static discharge this time, and her mask, usually illuminated by the passive energy she emitted, was dead. "TARDIS, here, now, please!"
"Already on it!" said the Doctor. Clara kept trying to wake Esther as the TARDIS thrummed back into existence, fearing the worst.
"Wake up, Esther! The worm, you did it, it-"
Esther groaned. Clara breathed a sigh of relief.
"…I'm out of charge," she managed to say.
"I don't have any batteries," said Clara. She only had her phone, and her phone couldnot get the Lightning Girl back on her feet. "We'll have to use the TARDIS." Clara hauled her up. Again, the gravity was a boon. It was easy to pull her towards the ship just as the Doctor opened the doors to meet them.
"What happened?" asked the Doctor, helping Clara. Esther was so low on power that there was no risk of shock.
"She went inside the worm, as electricity, and blew it up," said Clara.
"Was that the best idea?" said the Doctor.
"How should I know?" said Clara.
The Doctor sighed, "I'm pretty sure I've got an old car battery around here somewhere." She lowered Esther into the only chair in Jenny's console room.
"Doesn't the suit have batteries?" said Clara, removing her helmet and rifling through her bag, on the floor, to find enough tissues to deal with her nosebleed.
"Used them," said Esther, barely able to talk.
"I suppose we all forget that you're a dead body walking around," said Clara. Without power, Esther would die; the moon, with its lack of infrastructure and infestation of robotic worms, made her vulnerable.
The Doctor vanished to go find any power source she could without resorting to letting Esther drain the TARDIS.
"You're not gonna start rotting away, are you?" said Clara. Esther didn't respond. Not knowing if Esther was even fully conscious, Clara removed her mask completely. She was breathing, barely but her eyes were shut. "Sally Sparrow really won't be happy with me if anything's happened to you… and nor will my sister, for that matter." But she still couldn't get a reaction from Esther.
Promptly, the Doctor returned, lugging a gigantic car battery in her arms.
"One of my spares, for the van, when I converted it," she explained through gritted teeth, struggling to carry it. Clara helped her and together they set it down at Esther's feet, where it crackled with energy. Esther drained it in seconds and then groaned again, but she was at least more lucid.
"I feel like I felt when I was alive…" she mumbled.
"That's good, right?" said Clara.
"Maybe if you've never been supercharged by lightning bolts."
"Are you gonna be alright? I'm not sure we have any more surplus car batteries to hand," said the Doctor. "I'm not keen on letting you drain the TARDIS."
"I'll be fine, just…" she paused, head swimming, "Don't expect me to do anything like that again…"
"We weren't expecting you to do it the first time, Sparky," said Clara.
"I'm going to look at the wreckage," said the Doctor, "Might need a hand sifting through it."
"Sure," said Clara, then she told Esther, "We're still on comms if you need us, alright?"
"Just gotta rest," Esther dismissed them.
"Okay… don't turn into a zombie."
"I'll try."
There were a few drops of blood on the glass of Clara's space helmet when she put it back on, dripped down from her nose – but it had stopped now, at least.
"You hurt yourself again," said the Doctor quietly when they were outside, closing the TARDIS's doors.
"I know," said Clara.
"Sometimes I think all these powers do more harm than good."
"I know that, too. But there were ten million manifests on Earth the last time anybody bothered to try and count them," said Clara, "I'm not unique."
"What did it look like, then? The worm."
"Horrible, covered in grinders and drills," said Clara.
"Interesting…"
"Is it? What else were you expecting?"
"It sounds purpose-built," the Doctor explained, stooping to look at a big piece of metal on the ground. "And I didn't find a record in the TARDIS of any giant worms or snakes on Mondas. The planet's atmosphere never had enough oxygen to support gigantism like this."
"So, the Cybermen have built a tunnelling robot."
"And let it loose on the moon," said the Doctor, "But, why? They're going to try and seize the Gravitron in five years, I don't see how digging burrows would help. I don't remember them having tunnels."
"You said there was a signal controlling it, didn't you?"
"Yes, that's what I'm looking for now. There might be something left of its receiver. She sure did a number on it, huh?"
"Yeah… Did you really turn the HADS back on because of Mattie?" asked Clara after the Doctor had taken her screwdriver back out, scanning the mess to see if any of it was still picking up a signal.
"What, you think I'd turn them back on willingly for myself? They're only ever inconvenient. But I don't want Martha's ghost coming to haunt me if I let anything happen to her little girl, so, yes, I turned the HADS back on, in case we had to send her away in the ship. Rose might not always be there. Why are you surprised?"
"Just… it feels like it's always me looking after her. And now Rose, but-"
"Coo-Bear," the Doctor began, but from her tone of voice, Clara suspected she was about to get told off, "It takes a lot of my energy to plan and cook meals for a household of four people. You just don't see it because you're asleep when I make the shopping lists."
"…That's fair enough," Clara admitted. Maybe she was overlooking the labour the Doctor did for the house – for the strange family they now had.
"I'm serious about living on Earth, too. I'm serious about you. Now, help me look for this thing so that we can go back to the TARDIS, would you?"
"Okay," Clara agreed.
She wasn't much use without a screwdriver of her own, but eventually, the Doctor picked something up and led them around the new crater to find a big piece of alien equipment; the transceiver they were looking for.
"Hopefully this is the right thing and it's not the black box," she said, picking it up. "I don't want to spend any more time looking over debris. Although, you can learn a lot from debris – the Titanic was found by looking for the debris field, you know."
"Didn't you point them in the right direction?"
"They found it eventually, no need," said the Doctor, "Even if it did take about seventy years. Come on. Esther can recharge, and in the meantime, I'll take this thing apart and work out exactly where it's getting its orders…"
AN: The titular "moon worm" was heavily inspired by the video game Atomic Heart that came out in February 2023, in which there's an enormous, drilling robot called a "Burav", which I've essentially stolen. This whole storyline doesn't have an original idea in it, as we're going back to the well of Cybermen on the moon ("The Moon Base" serial) and Cybermen in theme parks ("Nightmare in Silver"), but I think I've put my own spin on it.