The Traveler

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He watched as Aiza tossed the two of them on the floor in front of him, between two chairs the two chairs he used when he had 'business meetings'. The woman and the boy were huddled in front of his desk. Netz smirked as he looked down at both of them.

"Did you really think, I wouldn't get mine?" Netz asked. He narrowed his eyes as he looked at the scrawny bedraggled boy. "Did you really think you could steal from Big Boss Netz of the Ninth Sector? I control men across fifteen star systems, there isn't a place on this starbase that I don't hear from, I don't see into…"

"The boy is just a young fool, he didn't know what he was doing…please; have mercy." The woman said as she looked up. Her eyes were hard though, defiant even.

"Mercy, my dear, is not a gift I can afford to give in my business." Netz looked back to Aiza and to the group of other hired mercenaries. "Do you think these men would respect an old, retired bounty hunter who constantly lets thieves go for free?" Netz's eyes fell on Aiza. He saw Aiza's crooked smile as it gleamed in the florescent lights of the station. Aiza's dark, weasel eyes glinted as his hand played happily at the hilt of a photonic blade. Netz hired him for his gleeful sadism and his abilities with that photonic blade. Netz's attention turned back to the woman. "You're Ms. Koora; you own that little self-defense dojo on the promenade don't you?"

"What of it?" Ms. Koora asked her eyes narrowing.

"Well, I see it like this; the lad is under your care. He stole something from me that I can't retrieve; now you and I may be able to make a deal of some sort." Netz said quietly. "A payment of debts, say five hundred grotzits a month…"

"That would clean me out!" The woman said with a shock. "My dojo is small, I have almost no students."

"Then maybe, we could make another arrangement." Netz said quietly, a mischievous grin started to form on his lips.

"Absolutely not!" The woman growled.

"Then tell me about your boarder, maybe he could-"

"He's not a boarder, just a traveler that I'm allowing to stay with us until he can get underway again, he has no money." Koora explained. "Nor would I ask him for any."

Netz tsked quietly shaking his head. "Pity, I was under the impression you would wish no blood to be shed today." He looked to Aiza. "The kid, take his thieving hands."

"No, please don't!" The woman said as she leapt up and stood between Aiza and the boy. She took a defensive pose. "I won't let you!"

"Aiza, if the woman gets in your way - dispatch of her as well, we can always replace her with a more profitable business owner…" Netz said quietly.

"My pleasure!" Aiza said as he drew his photonic blade, his white teeth glowing an electric blue as the burning light sliced free from the hilt, humming dangerously.

Netz's floppy, full cheeks, having grown soft in his age, tightened as his lips curled into a smile. "I'd stand aside if I were you; Aiza is the best blade-wielder in the sector; they call him the Monster of Maldinor; there's no one alive that's been cut by his blade."

"If you want to hurt the boy, you'll have to go through me." Ms. Koora stated firmly.

"Fine by me!" Aiza said as he brought up his blade and smiled an excited smile.

Aiza's weight shifted, but as it did a sharp snapping came from the door of Netz's office. Aiza, Netz and the accumulated mercenaries all looked up as the door, fell clanking loudly on the floor the pins of its hinges undone. A man walked forward. He was tall, but hard looking. His hair cut short against his skull, his frame covered in an old, black leatherjacket, under which was a plain red jumper. His face punctuated by an impressive nose and more impressive ears, and sharply ridged eyebrows that overarched a pair of cold blue eyes. His hands were in the pockets of his jacket. The man walked calmly forward putting himself between the mildly shocked Aiza and the startled Ms. Koora, all the while only granting Netz the attention of his eyes.

"Well, that's good; I was worried I wouldn't get here in time…" The man said, as he gave a sidelong glance to Koora and maybe briefly a smile, before returning his gaze to Netz.

"How the hell did you get in here!?" One of his men shouted in surprise.

Netz pressed a button on his desk. "I have an intruder, all security, get in here!"

"I'm afraid that no one will be coming." The man said quietly. He gave a sidelong glance to Aiza before returning his eyes to Netz. "There were a number of people on this level that were quite keen to see that I not come to this office, and I was of the opinion they needed to be elsewhere. I was unfortunately unable to change their minds and was forced, alternatively, to persuade them…to go to sleep."

Netz grunted in surprise. There a hundred security men on this deck. He looked at the man's eyes and knew that the truth was they probably were not so much asleep as they were unconscious. The idea that this single man took out a hundred trained hitmen by himself was preposterous yet, looking into his eyes could see the flashing of storm clouds on the horizon and knew it was true.

"Who are you?" Netz growled looking at the man.

"I am just a traveler, that is all I am, but I'm much obliged to Ms. Koora, and I've come here to ask you to release her, and the kid. If this is done, I will leave peacefully and we won't have any further prob-" The man said quietly.

"It's just another wannabe hero!" Aiza snorted as he brought his photonic blade up. "We get these every week, like rats underfoot! What a goddamned annoyance, how about I just kill all three of you!"

Aiza lunged forward. Without looking to Aiza, the man swung a hand out of his pocket. There was a soft whirr as a small metallic rod glowed in the man's hand. The hilt of Aiza's blade sparked, and before the blade-wielder could take a second step a stream of electricity rushed from the sword hilt through his body into the grounded floor. Aiza seized as steam rolled off his jacket and hair and he stood stunned in position.

The man glared at Aiza and said. "I wasn't done talking. How 'bout you sit down and let me finish." The man reached over and tapped Aiza with the tip of the metallic rod. Aiza slumped, unconscious, into a chair that was positioned in front of the desk. The other mercenaries gasped in shock, Aiza was the toughest they had and the man had stopped him with what looked like a utility screwdriver. The man looked back to Netz. "So, Big Boss, whatdya say? Let me, the woman and the kid leave, and don't think about harassing them or any of their friends in the future. I mean, that is if you don't want to undergo the shame of having your little syndicate beaten by one man wielding a screwdriver that is." The man smiled pleasantly but it was the kind of pleasantry that masked a knife in the back, and those eyes, whatever the lips were conveying the eyes were still steel cold and darting blades, and furthermore, not lost on Netz, was the fact that the screwdriver was still firmly clasped in the man's outstretched hand. The man continued, the smile melting away. "Be a shame if the boys in Sector Ten had heard your lad's had gone that soft…"

"Go on, take 'em…you can have whatever you want…just go!" Netz gulped as he looked into the man's eyes; those blue eyes, wherein flashed a streak of lightning that portended a calamity should the wrong choice be made.

The man snapped his fingers, an 'oh gosh' grin on his lips. "Oh, yes, and a mercury fluid link, if you have any to spare…"

"Yes, yes, anything, anything!" Netz said not entirely sure to trust the man's smile.

"Thank you." The man tilted his head slightly. He turned his head towards the door. "Apologies for the door…I was in a bit of a hurry all things considered." The man then twirled the screwdriver in his hand and slipped it back into his jacket pocket. He turned his head to Ms. Koora and a genuine smile flowed across his lips as he walked to her and the kid. "Hiya, I'm a bit late, sorry 'bout that!"

"Where were you, Doctor!" yelped the woman as she looked to him with an angry glint in her eyes.

Netz's eyes widened slightly, he'd heard that name before; he knew it intimately. The young lad his men had dragged into his office was now fussing about having been able to protect himself but the man simply grabbed the boy by the back of his shirt and started carrying him like a rucksack as Ms. Koora followed him. The man's back was to them. Netz saw one of the mercenaries move forward, a gun was being unholstered from the mercenary's hip.

"Hold it right there!" shouted the mercenary. "You can't make a fool of-"

"Just forget it…don't mess with him…" Netz said sharply, standing up. The mercenary seemed to shrink as Netz stood. Netz looked at his men who all were looking at him surprised. The intruder and the woman continued forward without stopping, without looking back, the kid struggling in futility caught in the grasp of the intruder's hand. Netz thought back, to his youth, to a war beyond anything any of his men could imagine. "I've seen eyes like his before…I didn't think anyone like him was still alive…" Netz suppressed a shudder, remembering. "If he decided to get serious we'd have more problems than some knocked out muscle and a lightly electrocuted hitman. That man's a real monster, not some paid for hitman or glorified bouncer…" Netz shook his head. "There wouldn't be enough disposal pods on the starbase to get rid of the bodies. We got off easy if all he's here for is a woman, a boy and a two bit fluid link."

The man disappeared out of the office and Netz sat back down, and he sighed a sigh of relief as he remembered Tersurus and those eyes….

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AN: A little pre-Rose Ninth Doctor. This is of course an homage to something else (and a sequel…to a prior chapter long ago). And by homage I mean a whole scale lifting. But then again Rusty has always said, steal from the best.