Weapon

888

He hummed quietly to himself as he gently dug into the soil, the smell of fresh compost welling up as his trowel cut the surface. He gently slid a small tuber into the ground, and then curling his hand, carefully folded the soil back over the hole he had created. He brushed his hands against each other and smiled and then shifted a foot or so down a row and repeated the action.

In the background music filtered out of a large blue box, through the open door. A small patio set had been positioned just outside the box, with a pitcher of lemonade and a plate of biscuits on the table. A green velveteen jacket hung on the patio chair.

He looked up at the sky. The asteroid was large enough to bare an atmosphere. He watched as the star in the day-lit sky waivered a soft bluish-white, it was small, in the sky, very far away, but the heat from it made the whole of the asteroid warm, like England in June. The asteroid's soil was sterile but a local trader was willing to bring compost to him for a small share of what crops could be grown. He brushed his hand across his brow, and a sooty streak appeared across his forehead. He groaned softly to himself before chuckling and reaching down to a tan apron and withdrew a handkerchief with which to wipe the smudge away.

He had been here for years now, long since Molly, long since that insanity had past. It was quiet here. It was silent. The universe paid no attention to him, and he increasingly paid no attention to it. This was what it was like to be free. He often thought to himself. He had long thought it was meant to be like he had lived before, rushing across the universe, across time itself, saving planets, fighting monsters and power mad conspirators, protecting history and the web of time. However, when he came here, and started his small garden, he realized the truth was that that was as much a prison as what he had run away from in the beginning. He had simply changed the prison from one of stagnant indolence to discordant adventure. This was true freedom, free to come and go, free to sit and relax, free to be free. No one was constantly shouting for help, no constant shouts of ethical indignation, no constant blasts of lasers buzzing past your head, just calm and meditation.

In the distance he heard the cans he'd set up on the edge of his garden jangle. He pressed his eyebrows together. Turin wasn't meant to be in system for another month. He slowly stood up and pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his hands, and decided to walk towards the cans.

He came around a bend and saw a woman standing at the edge of the small crazy paving he'd put in a year ago. The woman was looking at the trees, she was wearing a faded red dress. Her hair was long and a dingy blonde. Her face was pale, with a tiny nose, and sparkling blue eyes. She turned to him.

"I knew I'd find you here." She said quietly, as she walked forward.

"How did you find me?" he asked in a harsh whisper.

"This entire star cluster is sterile. A gamma ray burst twelve thousand years ago wiped out every biosphere in this cluster." The woman said, stopping in front of him, she was slightly shorter than he was. "Yet this one planetoid has a little enclave of life, and when I arrive, I find that not only is it impossibly active with advanced phytoform life, but it bares quite miraculously several species that have been extinct on their native worlds for centuries." The woman looked demurely at him. "Now, either this is the most improbable example of panspermia in the history of the universe or…a nostalgic, over-ethical time traveler is hiding out here."

"Go away." He said sharply, turning from the woman and walking back towards the blue box.

"Or what? You'll hide in your TARDIS from me, Doctor?" the woman said.

He stopped, and turned around. "I know why you're here."

"Oh really?" The woman said, looking at the man in faux-surprise. She placed her hand on her chest to further sell it.

"You're in trouble, I suppose…" he said, untying his apron. He wadded it up and threw it onto the patio chair. "They've enlisted you, I'm sure. Stripped you of your little empire and dragged you back home, and made all these promises, a full pardon no doubt. They need a mind like yours tasked towards fighting their dirty little war, but you're in over your head. This isn't just a lab experiment gone wrong…no something bigger is going on. They've got you doing something not even you would dare do…"

"Doctor, your moral indignation is, as ever, a pleasure to listen to." The woman said, striding towards the patio set, and sitting down at one of the chairs. "However, you know as well as I do, the nature of the conflict," she pointed up into the sky, "up there."

"I have seen glimpses of it." He said quietly, looking down at her, his face not quite loosening from his initial anger. "They've already done the classic games, tried twisting time, tried erasing each other from the field, and tried out playing each other on a chess board. Now it's time to get down and dirty in the sky trenches and orbits. The real battles are beginning, I'm sure."

"The Daleks have launched an attack across all of Gallifrey's timeframe." The woman said apathetically. She poured herself a glass of lemonade. "I believe you're acquainted with the little flesh balls in armor?"

"We've had…encounters." He said watching her closely.

"They want you, Doctor." She took a sip and frowned, and looked up at him. "This is you…far too sweet." She put the glass down. "They want the man who's fought those things. They want his mind. They want him to lead the military."

"No." He said, and turned and strode to his TARDIS. "I will not fight in this war. I will not be a part of this…"

He slammed the door of the TARDIS, and leaned against it, looking forward towards the massive cathedral within.

"You know." The woman's voice said from the outside. "You are already a part of this. You've been fighting this war since the very beginning – except you never knew it."

"I had no choice…they dragged me to Skaro…and I've been forced to engage the fallout of that since, but no more, I'm done." He shouted, casting his eyes to the side, as if he could see outwards to the woman.

"Yes, done, off to plant…potatoes on a dead asteroid, floating around a sterile blue giant that'll explode in a few million years." The woman's voice was closer now. He heard the gently thud on the door as she leaned against it. "That's very you, I suspect. Potatoes and carrots and corn…you know I could probably do some tinkering and get you all three on one plant…definitely increase the efficiency of…"

"I've seen the results of your genetic tinkering!" He spun around and opened the door poking his head outside, she was leaning against the adjacent door, her shoulder just above the phone. "The last thing I need is giant, bloodthirsty potatoes eating Turin's cat…"

"I remember you having an aversion to carnivorous plants." The woman smiled and pushed away from the TARDIS. "Still with this old thing…well of course…she's part of it too."

"What are you talking about?" he asked sharply stepping out of the TARDIS and closing it behind him.

"You being part of this, goes beyond just your little field trip to Skaro at the Daleks' beginning." The woman said as she walked over the small soil trenches and inspected the field. "It goes further back than you kidnapping those humans. It goes all the way back to your beginning, Doctor."

"As if you…"

"You're right, I was 'enlisted' by them." The woman said quietly. "I built weapons for them, biological weapons." She glared at the ground. "I know you would never believe me but, they make me sick."

"You're right, I don't believe you." He said, stuffing his hands into his pants pockets. "The Rani, sick of building biological weapons, your entire career is built on one poisoned civilization after another to satisfy your twisted curiosity."

"That's the thing…it was my curiosity!" the woman spun around and glared at him. "My responsibility, my doing for myself. It was selfish but it was true to task. I did selfish horrific things to gain power so that I could learn more. This…this is just destruction for the purpose of destroying, there's no plan up there; they don't have an idea of what they're doing. They hop from solar system to solar system and if a single one of their nose hairs thinks it smells a Dalek they purge the entire system! You may disagree with the morality, with the ethics, but at least what I was doing on my own was productive!"

"Yes, I do disagree with the morality and the ethics." He said quietly. "If you've come for sympathy from me…"

"Oh, the hubris!" The woman sneered at him. "You always did see yourself as some kind of saint, think you could absolve us of our sins, make us better. THE DOCTOR! Yes, how is it going with the Master, by the by? Have you bothered to scrape the bits of him left on the edges of the Eye of Harmony together to make him better? Knowing you, you'd reconstruct his mind and put it in some kind of robot that you'd trap in the TARDIS…." She stopped and stared at him. He looked away from her. "Oh sweet Pythia, you haven't have you?"

"No…" He said, looking up at her. "There's nothing left…I'm sure. He died as he lived."

"I rather doubt that." The woman said. "He is like a cockroach, nothing short of the end of the universe itself will destroy him…and even then…"

"Yes, you were saying…" He breathed testily. "You were regaling me on all the genocides you've been engineering for the Time Lords."

"Not just me." She said, calming down reaching into a small purse she was holding. She pulled out a small egg-shaped object. "This war is bigger than we ever imagined."

The egg glowed and a small orb of light flicked above it. It shifted and wobbled. On closer inspection one could make out the threads that wove the whole of it together as one massive ball of yarn. He narrowed his eyes.

"You stole a universal quantum configuration unit," He said, as he looked to her, "and then came here…for what purpose."

"Look you idiot!" she pointed. A single yarn flickered red. It looped and looped and looped around the sphere hundreds and thousands and millions of times. "Do you know what that is!?"

He looked to the woman and then to the red thread. "It's me…from here to…" His eyes averted after the red line disappeared around the horizon of the sphere. "My travels."

"Look closer." The woman instructed and she flicked her finger at the thread.

He squinted as the thread's resolution shifted. His eyes widened slightly as the image coalesced. "That's impossible…"

The woman let out a single 'ha'. "You don't know what games they are playing. Like I said this war has been going on for a long time now. They've replayed the same scenarios over and over and over again. Recasting, re-jigging, re-configuring it multitudinous ways. They haven't even been coy about it…"

"What do you mean?" He asked, looking up at her.

"Do you really think they'd just allow someone to steal a TARDIS?" She asked softly.

"You did."

"And look at what happened."

"The Monk did."

"And he is now running a sabotage agency for Rassilon."

"The Master…."

"Dead, for now."

"There are so many rogue Time Lords out there…now…"

"No, there aren't." The woman shook her head. "Are you that naïve? They let you get away with your granddaughter! They allowed you to wander the galaxy, they allowed you to find the Daleks, they allowed you to fight them…and then they dragged you back and got information from you. This has all been a ploy, Doctor, from your very beginning…you were made to be a weapon! You are their Anti-Dalek solution! Haven't you ever wondered why, in a universe so huge you seem to always run into the Daleks?"

"I figured it was just a mutual hatred, plus they seemed quite intent on Earth for a bit…"

"Doctor, Doctor, Doctor….they set you against them." The woman shut off the projection and slid the egg into her purse. "That mission you had on Skaro was a test. This isn't the first time you've done this. You've been fighting this war for a long time, and they keep resetting it, hoping for a best case scenario to play out."

He grimaced and shook his head. He walked over to the chair with the apron in it and sat down. He put his head in his hands. "No, it's a lie…you're lying."

"The last rendition ended like all the rest, you blew up the enemy; you blew up Gallifrey." The woman said walking over to him. "Every time they've unleashed you, you've blown everyone on the field up, except for yourself. And every time they just manage to hit the restart button just in time."

"Why? Why are you telling me this!?" He ground the words between his teeth.

"They want you back." She said quietly, putting her hand on his shoulder. "They're ready to put you on the field of battle once more."

"NO!" He barked, pushing her away from him. "I WILL NOT FIGHT! I will not be part of the senseless, evil KILLING!"

"You're just like that other weapon they created." She said smirking to herself. "They locked her in the Omega Arsenal at the very bottom of the time vaults. Just like her, they were too gutless to use her for fear of her moral judgment. You're just like her, morally indignant to the point of uselessness."

"Is that why they brought you here?" He looked up at her. "You're the only one heartless enough to stare me in the eyes and ask me to go to war for them…"

"If I can bring you back to Gallifrey, and you are willing to fight for Rassilon, then they will let me go. I will be free to do research and ignore this whole nonsense." The woman said, looking down at him.

"You can go back to Rassilon and tell him that I will not fight." He said standing up and staring down at her. "I will not be a part of this war, anymore. I will not play their games, anymore. I AM NOT THEIR PAWN!"

"I see…" The woman said, she took a deep breath. "I have nothing to bargain with you with. I had hoped maybe if you'd seen the truth about you, you'd realize that this moral umbrage, this little organic garden protest you're conducting in the gamma ray sticks would be pointless. However, I have forgotten how stubborn and blinded by pathos you are. I guess then I have no choice but to return." The woman turned and started to walk away. He watched her as walked, when she had gotten halfway along the path she stopped and turned. "Of course I will have to congratulate you…"

He looked at her quizzically. "For what?"

"You're first casualty of war." The woman said with a sterile voice. "You see, if I go home empty handed, Rassilon will most certainly disperse me on sight. I can't avoid it, they've slaved my TARDIS to their control matrix. I can't run away. I can't hide." She lifted her dress; around her ankle was a ring. "I don't really have a choice, they have this on me, if I don't return in a specified amount of time; it releases a virus that will kill me dead, no regeneration…" She leaned over and stroked it gently. "The irony being it's a virus of my own design…so I can't even free myself from it, it's too perfect." She lowered her dress she continued in her sterile, calm voice. "You've doomed me to death, Doctor."

The woman looked at him, waited for a response.

"No." The Doctor said quietly. "You doomed yourself. All that time on Gallifrey…and you didn't bother to think about what you were doing. You were so busy watching your own neck, that you watched them put a noose around it. You can blame me if you like, if that makes you feel better, but you had your chances, you could've escaped, but you chose not to and that is all on you, in the end."

He turned to the patio set and snatched his jacket from the back of the chair and walked into his TARDIS and shut the door, locking it behind him. The Rani watched as the TARDIS disappeared, and she knew. She knew that she'd just looked into the eyes of the galaxy eater, and she had blinked.