The Survivor
8888
"Activate the weapon!" shouted General Sontar: Grand Imperator of the Sontaran Empire, Prime Consul of the Grand Strategic Council, Warrior Supreme, Clone King of a Million Star Systems.
The potato-headed imperator said looking forward, onto the battlefield from his command tent. This was one of the exceptionally rare occasions that he was allowed to be on the field to witness his army's glorious victory. The Sontaran military intelligence service had determined that this pathetic world on the far edges of the Colcept Galaxy would be the absolutely most strategically important world in their unending conflict with the putrid Rutan Host and their nefarious hive queen. They had also recently discovered an ancient ruin on a world on the fringe of the Medusa Cascade that their scientists had realized had come from the Last Great Time War. Within the ruins they discovered a stockpile of weapons. They were testing these weapons on the population of the planet they were invading, in hopes of determining which best to utilize on the Host.
The imperator watched the battlefield below. Smoke, dirt, bursts of energy, flailing and falling chunks of limbs flew through the air. The smell of battle filled the imperator's nose. It excited him in ways that Sontarans had long forgotten about. However, there was no blast from the position of the newly stockpiled weapons. He turned and looked to the other Sontarans. There was an uncomfortable moment as the imperator stared expectantly to his sub-commanders, and the sub-commanders, unsure of what to tell him, looked to one another, shuffling in discomfort.
"Did it fire?" the imperator asked, legitimately wondering if the weapon had some strange side effect.
"I-I don't believe so." said one of the sub-commanders.
"Didn't I order it to be fired?" the imperator asked.
"Yes, sir, I clearly heard you-"
"Then why has it not fired?" The imperator asked in annoyance.
"It may be defective…?" Another sub-commander hypothesized.
"I want whoever is on that command post on the radio!" The imperator demanded as he walked to one of the Sontaran warriors sitting next to a radio console.
"I have been trying to contact them, sir, but they won't answer-" the Sontaran replied.
"They ignore a direct request from their Imperator!?" the imperator snarled, glaring at the Sontaran.
"I-I-I" the Sontaran soldier looked feverishly to the sub-commanders hoping maybe one of them would step forward.
"BAH!" snorted the imperator turning and walking out of the tent that had held the assemblage.
"My imperator, where are you going?" shouted one of the sub-commanders.
"I am getting to the bottom of this!" shouted the imperator loudly.
"But, but, most assuredly-" the sub-commander stammered.
The little imperator stopped, turned, glaring at the sub-commander. "I will not be like my predecessors. I will not stand to one side whilst a battle unfolds. I will not be like the last imperator, who allowed the whole of the Time War to burn with glorious battle, whilst we did nothing but shuttle the moth-eaten wastages of reality from one side of the devastation to another! I will attend to this - incongruity - personally!"
The little imperator walked to the small sphere that was resting at the edges of the encampment. A hatch opened on the sphere. He scrambled into it. The bottom of the sphere hissed loudly as it lifted off of the ground. The sphere flew across the landscape up to a hill outpost that had held the Sontaran's weapons' hold. The little imperator gently put the sphere down, the hatch opening as it landed. The imperator walked down the gangplank and stood at the base of the sphere. His eyes narrowed. There were two Sontaran bodies lying on the ground, unconscious, dents on the ports of their probic vents. The imperator reached down to the rheon carbine rod strapped to his hip. He pressed a finger to the broach on his chest, but only got static.
"Typical." snorted the imperator, narrowing his eyes.
There was a conflict in his head. His bloodthirsty warmongering part of him required that he go onwards, forward, in a glorious act of combat against whatever enemy this was. However, the imperator in him, the intelligent part of him, the bureaucratic nature that had been spliced into him by generations of cloning, had concerns. He was General Sontar: Grand Imperator of the Sontaran Empire, Prime Consul of the Grand Strategic Council, Warrior Supreme, Clone King of a Million Star Systems after all, he had responsibilities to his underlings, to his subjects, to stay alive. However, millions of years of biological instinct overwhelmed hundreds of thousands of years of civic cloning and the little imperator walked cautiously forward, opening the door of the weapons' stockpile. There were more soldiers lying on the floor, unconscious. He heard someone or something humming quietly further up ahead.
The imperator slowly sidled along the hallway. He quietly poked his head around the corner and saw the perpetrator. A tall man, but then everyone was tall to a Sontaran, in a black jacket of tanned animal skin. His hair was shorn short to his head. The imperator sneered slightly as he straightened up and pointed the rheon carbine rod forward. He wasn't going to sneak up on this foe, Sontarans never snuck, they stood tall, well as tall as they could, and demanded surrender.
"Halt what you are doing and surrender before the superior might of the Sontaran Empire!" shouted the imperator loudly as he walked forward. He glanced across the room. He recognized the explosives which were plastered to the weapons, they were the same as those that the primitives of this planet had used in their insurgency in the past. He glared at the intruder, hands raised, back to him. "You will face me, so I may take your life with some honor!"
"I rather doubt that." said the intruder. "Since when have Sontarans cared for honor? A victory is a victory, so sayeth Grand Imperator Sontar the -" The back of the man's head bobbed slightly as if counting, "- five thousand three hundred and forty-eighth."
"Five thousand three hundred and forty-nineth!" corrected the imperator loudly. The little imperator sneered. "What would a primitive like you know of the Sontaran Imperators?"
"Oh, please, the Sontaran Empire is so old and vast and so filled with war, every civilization knows about you." The intruder said dismissively. "Especially now that the great temporal powers are gone. The end of the Time War left you sitting kind of pretty, top of the pile so to speak. No Daleks or Time Lords, no Sunari or Nekkistani, no Monans left to make you mind your manners." The intruder turned quickly, the imperator flinched slightly as the intruder's arm came around, pointing a metal rod at him. "And you've been quick to capitalize, I see. Bullying all the other species weaker than you, more than happy to stride in onto others' worlds, overthrow the local powers, and for what? Let me guess, that war with the Rutans. Still going poorly I suppose."
The imperator growled as he looked up at the intruder. The intruder's piercing blue eyes glaring down at him. "A primitive like you can't possibly-"
"The Rutan Host's queen left you quite badly bloodied at Haran's Expanse." The intruder said. The intruder narrowed his eyes, and flicked them over the stockpile. "But then you're retreating fleets blundered onto this." The intruder smirked looking around. The smirk disappeared and he glared at the Sontaran. "This isn't your kit." He shook his head. "Way past you-" He whistled slightly, "N-forms, Black Hole launchers, Entropic Cascade Accelerators, Chrono Embolizers." Pointing each as he named them. He smirked slightly to one last batch. "Oh, and my personal favorite Time Torpedoes."
"It was well found, spoils of war!" the imperator growled. "By any law of salvage it is rightfully-"
"It rightfully was never meant to be found, it was supposed to have been rightfully destroyed." the intruder said. "I don't know how you got your hands on this stockpile, but I can tell you now, I'm not going to let you use it!"
"On whose authority?" growled the imperator.
"The sole victor of the Last Great Time War, the Survivor of Gallifrey, the Defender of Time, the Champion of Sanity and Peace, the fighter of the impossible fight!" the intruder growled. He narrowed his eyes and shook his head as the Sontaran stared at him in confusion. "You really have no idea who I am? I know who you are, Grand Imperator Sontar. You're not the one I spoke with last time, but you're all essentially the same. I'm sure you remember that the last Grand Imperator got a visitor at the beginning of the Time War."
"Impossible-" the imperator hissed, his eyes narrowed. "They're all dead! Even him! You can't be!"
"What can I say? I work miracles." the intruder said shrugging. "Now, get off this world!"
"I have an army! I have more than enough firepower to destroy this world!" the imperator growled. He lifted his rheon carbine rod. "Time Lord or not, Doctor or not, I can more than handle you!"
The metal rod in the intruder's hand whirred and the imperator's rheon carbine rod spark loudly, forcing the imperator to toss the rod aside. The imperator roared loudly. He was stout, wide shouldered, with a low center of mass and incredibly muscular legs. He charged, head lowered, ready to bring the intruder down to his size. The intruder swept to one side. The imperator didn't know what happened next, it all went black with a stinging stab to the back of his neck.
The imperator woke up, groggily. His arms and legs tethered by chains. The intruder was sitting on a rock, eating an apple with one hand, twirling a rubber mallet with the other. The smell of smoke, alerted the imperator, and he turned his head. The weapons' stockpile was ablaze. The imperator struggled roaring loudly.
"I told you, I wouldn't let you use those weapons." The intruder said, standing up, and tossing the apple away. He walked forward and kneeled down and with menace hissed in the imperator's ear. "Now, leave this world, never come back, ever!"
"Or what?" growled the imperator loudly. "You are but one Time Lord, in a universe of Sontarans. My armies will-"
"I kept one weapon back." the man said quietly. He turned walking away. "The worst one, the most dangerous one. The one that no one should have possession of. Least of all me." The man looked back to the Sontaran. "What do you know of the Sontaran invasion of Gallifrey?"
"Feh, the Sontarans never invaded Gallifrey!" the imperator snorted in derision.
"Exactly-" the man said as he walked to his rock. He stuck the mallet in his pocket and with both hands leaned down and pulled out a rifle-looking weapon and swung it around pointing it at the imperator. "I used this on the forces that had invaded Gallifrey. One blast, and the whole incident was erased from history. The whole invasion force, gone, more than that, never were. Now imagine what would happen if I erased the Grand Imperator of Sontar from history."
The imperator swallowed hard. It was an instinctive response. He squirmed against his bindings as the intruder walked forward, pointing the barrel of the gun in his face.
"Sontarans never surrender!" the imperator growled, trying his best to muster defiance. "We look into the face of death! DO IT, FACE CHANGER! IF YOU HAVE THE GUTS!"
"Death is one thing, but what about oblivion? With a little adjustment of the settings I can erase your entire genetic heritage from history. I could erase the entirety of the Sontarans from history, with just one shot." The man said, as he twiddled with the gun with one hand, holding it with another. He held a gun with one hand and reached out with a radio in the other. "Give the order, just like your predecessor, save the Sontarans from extinction. Leave here and never come back."
"The Sontarans know you, Doctor!" the imperator growled glaring up at the intruder. "You are gutless! You are a trickster! You use illusions and bluffs, you are not a warrior-"
The man smirked. "You know what happened during the war. You must have heard the stories of what exactly I was capable of during the war. You're not an idiot, you know perfectly well how the war ended, and now here I am standing here, in front of you, put it together, and tell me I won't pull the trigger. I actually liked some of the Time Lords, I've yet to meet a Sontaran that's more than the sum of your empire. Is this a gamble you want to take?"
The imperator swallowed again. He stared into the barrel of the weapon before him. He could feel the sweat building up in his armor, and he felt it trickle down his face. The man put the radio forward.
"This is General Sontar: Grand Imperator of the Sontaran Empire, Prime Consul of the Grand Strategic Council, Warrior Supreme, Clone King of a Million Star Systems, to all Sontaran commanders on the planet and in orbit around the planet!" the imperator started. He looked defiantly up at the man, the man looked sharply down at him, the man's finger itched on the trigger of the gun. "I have received new intelligence! This world is no longer a viable point of counterattack, we must not waste resources here. Immediately decamp and move onwards to-"
"Coordinates 9, 00, 8 mark 42." The man whispered quietly.
"Coordinates 9, 00, 8 mark 42, to regroup and reevaluate future strategies of conquest!" the imperator groused loudly.
The man nodded sharply and took several steps back. He pocketed the radio and pulled out the metal rod from before and pointed it at the imperator. The device whirred loudly and the imperator felt the bindings snap, loosing themselves.
"Now, turn on your beacon, transmat to your flagship, leave and never come back." the man said sternly.
"I should call for the immolation of this world!" snarled the imperator.
"Try me." the man said pointing the gun at the imperator. "Just one shot, is all I need and then pfft, no more Sontarans, ever."
The imperator snorted and touched a bit of décor on his armor. Seconds later he was standing on the bridge of his flag ship. He glared down at the world below.
"Sir, what happened? We lost contact with you for four hours!" one of the sub-commanders asked.
"And where were you then? Where was my backup?" growled the imperator.
"We-we-" the sub-commander waffled knowing he didn't try nearly hard enough to find the little Napoleon.
"I was in an intelligence meeting, need to know." the general snarled, finally. "Get us out of here!"
"Yes, sir!" shouted the entourage of Sontarans on the bridge as they clicked their heels and saluted.
888
The Doctor stared at the gun on the work desk in front of him. He had thought the whole stockpile had been destroyed when he sealed the cascade. He frowned at the memory. The war was meant to be sealed away, ended, yet this had snuck out, found a way to follow him. It and all of its threat had leaked into the waking universe. His hand gripped a massive metal sledge he had leaning against the desk. He gripped the handle with his other hand and heaved, lifting the dwarf star sledgehammer. He staggered backward from the momentum and then with a feral roar, brought the sledge down.
The D-Mat gun shattered into a billion pieces on the worktable. The table itself bowed under the force of the blow. The ancient dwarf-star planks that made the table's surface cracked with the blow. He brought the hammer up again and smashed, and kept smashing the table collapsing and cracking from the blows the D-Mat gun splintering into tinier and tinier pieces and then to dust. After the eleventh or twelfth blow he staggered forward, and leaned against the hammer, breathing hard. He felt them, the tears, tracing down his face. His cheeks burned bright red as he huffed and tried to sniff back tears, and the thought struck him. If this, if him, then what else had slipped through the cracks? what other things had survived the Last Great Time War? What other messes would he be responsible for cleaning up?