Inheritance of War--Chapter Six

DOCTOR WHO INTERNET ADVENTURES #15:
INHERITANCE OF WAR
Chapter Six: "What the H**l Am I Going to Call This Chapter?"
or: "The Light at the End of the Tunnel"
by JJF

 with apologies to pro-wrestling fans everywhere.

 Ben: "And now he picks him up...holds him there...and just lets him fall! Wow, what a move by Stone Cold Hogan!"

 Bill: "Yup, he absolutely destroyed 'The Naturist' Randy Flair there."

 Ben: "He drops the leg! The referee is down and counting... ONE! TWO! THR -- he kicked out!"

 

"You know Wil, there's something familiar about those ships," said the Doctor, squinting at a pull-down monitor. "It -- it's just on the tip of my mind." He shook his head, as though trying the jerk the thought loose. "No, it's gone. I expect it wasn't important anyway."

 "Great ugly things, whatever they are," said Jadi as he peered over the Time Lord's shoulder. "No style." The ships were flat-nosed and boxlike, devoid of ornamentation apart from a big red 'M' across the side. "No style at all."

 "Ah, Jadi, to you the design may lack finesse and glamour, but to the culture that created the ship it could well be the height of elegance." The Doctor sighed as he admired the ship through misty eyes. "Look at that corner, it's so sharp, it's so daring, it's so...meaningful."

 Wil, Jadi and Angela looked at the Doctor as though he had sprouted five ears and started gurgling about a masterplan for galactic domination.

 "You have to start appreciating these things," the Doctor cajoled them. "Travelling the length and breadth of the universe will be awfully bland if you can't appreciate artistic styles different from your own."

 Six eyes and two visual sensors looked at the ships on the monitor with assorted degrees of wonder.

 

Wonder was also on the mind of Corporal laCache. The Temple of TARDIS. To think, the Temple of TARDIS. He was not worthy, a part of his mind screamed. He was defiling this floor with his feet. His breath was blaspheming against the holy air of the sacred chamber. He stood in a place seers, wise men and saints had dreamed of but never seen.

 It was all just too much.

 "Get up," said Professor Henderson, tapping the kneeling soldier on the shoulder with his umbrella. "Your commandant told you to help me with the heavy lifting, not clean the dust from the floor with your knees."

 As the Professor watched laCache scramble to his feet and move to help his colleagues clear rubble from the altars, his colleague walked up beside him. "Another one?" asked Von Wer, her hands on her hips in a show of exasperation.

 "Yes, they're kneeling like Kera-xalians! And there's another one."

 And as Henderson strolled off to turn another overcome soldier back to the task at hand, Von Wer saw something, a movement in the corner of her eye. Thought she saw something. Maybe saw something. The burglar hiding in the dark room you've just walked past, the beast that peers from a pile of rumpled clothes.

 Because when she turned to look, there was nothing there.

 

"Well, it's very pretty, I'm sure, but don't you think we should deal with this box now, just in case it zaps us all again?" said Angela.

 The three men turned to her as one, disturbed from their reverie. She almost giggled at the look of little-boy disappointment on the Doctor's face; torn away from something fascinating by the humdrum concerns of everyday life. Or as everyday as life on an infinitely large timeship gets, anyway.

 "Oh, the box," the Doctor said. "We're going to throw into the star aren't we?" The Time Lord seemed to consider for a moment, his face screwing up in an expression of concentration almost childlike in its intensity. "But why were we going to do that?"

 [Hmmmmm...]

 His companions exchanged confused glances. "You decided we'd do it, Doctor," said Wil.

 "I did? Of course of course of course, I did. I remember now," breathed the Doctor. And again he seemed to lapse into deep thought. "But after the effect it had on us, can we really be sure it's safe to fire it into the star?"

 Jadi Morok shrugged. "You're the one who knows what's in it, Doctor."

 "I do? Of course I do. Yes. I do. But even so... what if it sends the star nova? We can't take that risk, not now we know there's life in this solar system." He indicated the monitor. "No, we'd better find another star. An uninhabited one. Or maybe even a black hole."

 [Oh dear. That won't do, that won't do at all.]

 But as the Doctor started fiddling with the navigational controls, Wil's attention was drawn to the monitor. The flat-nosed ships were doing something, certainly. A strange sparkle coruscating about those flat noses, running along the lines, then launching as brilliant bursts into the foreground.

 "Doctor..." murmured Wil.

 The TARDIS shook.

 The Doctor pulled three levers at once and speed-read from a pop out screen that popped out of the console. "What was that?!" he called.

 "Doctor, those ships are firing at us!"

 "But that's impossible!" the Doctor shouted, pushing the jester out of the way and staring goggle-eyed at the monitor.

 Another shot. A bigger impact this time, the force throwing Wil, Jadi and Angela to the floor as the Doctor clung for dear verticality to the TARDIS console. His hands flew over the controls as Angela dragged herself upright. "Doctor, get us out of here!"

 Yet another impact and Angela was sent sprawling on top of Jadi. The console fizzed and started to shoot columns of sparks into the air as the time rotor's usual cold blue light was suffused with blood red. In the distance, the cloister bell tolled.

 The Doctor was manipulating the controls faster than Wil's eyes could follow.

 Then the console exploded with a large bang.

 And then there was silence.

 

It sat in its chair, waiting. It was used to waiting. In its head cogs turned, its eyes glowed red. It picked at its metallic teeth with sharp metallic fingers, although it had not eaten for many many years.

 Perhaps it had once been human. Perhaps not.

 Mechanical muscles pushed it out of the chair, made it walk, metal feet chinking on the cold stone floor.

 It reached through the bars of the cage and stroked the fur of its pet rabbit with surprising tenderness.

 "Soon, Josiv," it said, voice synthesizer croaking through disuse. "Soon will come my revenge."

 

Ben: Omigod! Stone Cold Hogan just suplexed the Naturist through three flaming barbed wire-wrapped tables!

 {ARRRHH YEAH! THIS RULES!}

 

Jadi Morok dreamed that he had been fired from the Guild of Personnel Retrieval and conned out of all his money. Destitute, hungry, he was been reduced to eating old shoes and drinking orange juice.

 Then he woke up and found that it was all true.

 Well, his mouth was filled with old boot anyway. "Mmph!" he exclaimed. "MMmmm mmmph mmmph mmmmmm!"

 [Oh my God, they killed Kenny. The bastards. Hahaha!]

 Jadi flailed about, caught hold of Angela's leg, and pulled her foot out of his mouth. "Puh!" he spat. "Puh pah puuah! Angela, your shoe-polish tastes vile."

 Angela raised her head to blink at him. "It's not meant to be eaten." She let her head hit the deck and groaned. "Ooooh my head...are you okay?"

 Jadi tried to move his legs. They moved. "Yes, I think so...what about the boy?"

 A shape pulled itself into a sitting position atop a pile of broken clocks. "Don't call me 'the boy,'" it whined. "What happened?"

 The bounty hunter scratched his head. "We were all looking at the pretty ships, then we decided that we were going to go somewhere else, then the ships started shooting at us and the floor started quaking then we all fell over and the console blew up."

 "The console blew up?!?"

 The thought popped into three minds at once: "The Doctor!"

 They rushed over to the console; it was blackened and sooted, several panels of switches blown out, and the screens were all blank. Most disturbing of all, the time rotor was dark, its familiar blue glow gone west.

 "Doctor?" called Wil, his voice wavering.

 "Doctor?" called Jadi, straining his bounty hunter's senses for any sign of his friend.

 "Doctor?" called Angela, trying to find the Time Lord's heat signature amongst countless small electrical fires.

 "Time flies -- then it lands on top of you." called a muffled voice. From beneath a pile of grandmother clocks a hand raised, followed by an arm clad in the arm of a green velvet coat. "Alas, the weight of the hours is too much for me to lift...could you help me?"

 

A little while later, the Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS door. He was still dressed in a frock-coat charred from the explosion, although he had at least been persuaded to clean the worst of the soot from his face.

 "I can smell something...What can I smell?" he murmured.

 Wil barrelled into the back of the Time Lord. "Oomph! Did you really have to stand in front of the door?"

 "Sorry." frowned the Doctor, stepping aside to allow his other companions out of the TARDIS. "I was preoccupied...do you know, I didn't even know I owned those grandmother clocks until I was thrown into them."

 [Oops.]

 "Hey, what's that?" exclaimed Wil as he a jarring warbling sound began to echo down the corridor.

 "I don't know. Let's find out," smiled the Time Lord, suddenly cheerful again with something to investigate. "Control room."

 "Control room?" Jadi queried with one eyebrow raised.

 "Well, this is obviously a space-ship, so it's bound to have a control room. They always do. And that will be the best place to find out what the siren means." said the Doctor as he strolled off down the corridor.

 Wil had to jog to catch him up. "How do you know this is a space ship?" he asked. "A strange paranormal Time Lord sense of altitude? A premonition? You recognise the design?"

 "No." said the Doctor. "But I can see the stars through that window."

 "But that doesn't explain how you know this is a ship," pressed Wil in good humour. "It could be a space-station, or an observatory, or just night outside."

 "I've got a better question, kid," said Jadi. "Just where the mulch are we?"

 "Oh, somewhere nearby," the Doctor said. "The TARDIS will have sought out the nearest place with a breathable atmosphere to crash-land."

 Jadi stopped walking. "You mean we're on one of those ships that attacked us?!?"

 The Doctor turned around and sighed exasperatedly. "No no no, the old girl's smarter than that. She'll have found us somewhere safe."

 [Heh heh heh. We'll have to see about that.]

 "So is the TARDIS dead?" asked Angela. "Are we going to have to eke out the rest of our lives on this ship?"

 "Oh no, not at all," smiled the Doctor. "She's just resting a little. Getting her strength back."

 "It all looked pretty dead to me, Doc," said Jadi.

 "Jadi, trust me," said the Doctor. "If the TARDIS died, I would feel it."

 Wil looked into the Doctor's eyes and was shocked by what he saw. Not deceit, but maybe...doubt?

 "Is it my imagination, or is getting warm?" said the Doctor.

 

The doors of the control room whooshed open before the four time travellers.

 "Arrhhh! Somebody turn down the lights!" screamed Jadi, throwing up his hands to protect his eyes.

 "I hate to tell you this, Jadi, but the brightness isn't caused by lights," said Angela.

 "I can't see..." mewled Wil.

 "The light is too much for even my eye," said the Doctor. "Angela, can you see where we are?"

 "We're in the control room all right," said Angela, thankful that she wasn't handicapped by purely biological eyes. "But it's deserted, and there's no one here. There are consoles with flashing buttons, and chairs, and they're all pointing towards a large view-window which I presume shows what's in front of the ship."

 "So what's with all this light?" Jadi squealed; he had turned his back to the brightness and covered his face with his hands but still he couldn't open his eyes without being blinded.

 "That's coming from the view-window," said Angela. "We seem to be heading directly into the sun."

 

[Well, I like this. It looks a lot more promising than the last one.]

 {WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! THAT RULED!}

 [Oh no, oh *NO*; you're back. I thought you were playing your silly boy's boxing in sector B?]

 {IT'S CALLED WRESTLING YOU LOSER! IT RULES!}

 [Well, go back and play some more, hey? I'm doing something here.]

 {WHAT YOU DOING?}

 [Mind your own business.]

 {OOOO, PEOPLE! WHO'RE THEY?}

 [Like I said, mind your own business.]

 {TELL ME OR I'LL POWERBOMB YOU THROUGH FIFTEEN TABLES INTO A VAT OF BATTERY ACID!}

 [That's... that's not possible.]

 {IS TOO!}

 [Is not... oh no, I'm not descending to this level. If you must know, their names are the Doctor, Gwilym Young, Josiv Adirun Morok and Angela Q. Ferris.]

 {SHE'S PRETTY. I'D DO HER.}

 [I don't believe you sometimes; you are just so crude.]

 {WATCH IT YOU DORK!}

 [And you really are a master of witty repartee, aren't you?]

 {I'M THE DOODIEST DOOD AROUND! I RULE!}

 [Look, this isn't one of your little games. Just go away and play, and let me get on with it - okay?]

 {NO WAY SAD GUY, I'M STAYIN. BREAK OUT THE W0M3N, THE DOOD IS IN TOWN!}

 [You know, I must have annoyed somebody really really badly to be stuck here for eternity with you.]

 -------> TO BE CONTINUED <-------

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