Wil and Bevin stopped just short of reaching the summit of the ridge that overlooked the quarry where the Sumaran warship lay.
"Before we go any further I think we should have some idea of what we're going to do," Wil said, peering over the ridge.
"Well, just what do you propose we do then?" Bevin asked impatiently.
"Hmm...we could...no, they would've thought of that," Wil mused out loud, "or how about...nah, they're not that stupid. Erm, I don't suppose you have any ideas?"
Bevin sighed as if her patience were being deliberately tried. "Let's just get captured."
Wil thought about that and then said, "But how do we escape once we've been caught?"
"We'll just escape the way we escaped before," Bevin explained impatiently.
"But what if- " Wil began.
"Oh just come on!" Bevin yanked Wil's arm and ran down the slope towards the silver sentry outside the ship.
* * * * *
The Doctor looked up in alarm at the sound of the thump over his head. He became even more alarmed as the ceiling began to bulge and more thumps could be heard overhead. He began a quick inventory of his trouser pockets - he wished he'd had a chance to reclaim his coat from the Cybermen. Nope, nothing except the TARDIS key, a bus transfer ticket, and a couple of paper clips. The Doctor sighed. It looked like this could be it - again.
Above the Doctor's head, a silver fist ripped through the metal ceiling and began scrabbling around. The Doctor ducked and dived into the far corner, where he sat and watched the hand begin to widen the hole it had punched through the ceiling.
Suddenly a manic grin came across the Doctor's face and he pulled a paper clip out of his pocket. Which he then straightened and used to pry open the lift's control panel. The Doctor reached inside and yanked out a handful of wires. And just as he expected they would be, the wires were of the fiber optic kind that were so common in early Time Lord constructs.
The Doctor frantically began sorting the wires by way of color and brightness, sparing only a brief glance overhead where the Cybermen had just about ripped a hole large enough to accommodate it's bulk. Quickly the Doctor cast his mind back to a certain testing room from that visit to Telos during his second incarnation. Recalling precise memories from previous incarnations was always difficult, but this was doubly true under pressure. But the Doctor found that he often worked best under pressure, and this was no exception.
Holding six wires in his hand, the Doctor held his hand over the exposed ends and pointed them towards the Cyberman, whose head was now poking almost comically out of the hole in the ceiling. The Doctor then began to cover and uncover the wire ends, flashing an irregular pattern over the Cyberman's optical receivers.
The Cyberman finally dropped into the small lift and began to raise its gun. The Doctor continued to play the lights over the Cyberman's eyes, but it seemed to be of no use. The Cyberman aimed its Cyber-gun and fired.
At the floor.
The Doctor grinned and pulled off his waistcoat. Then he leapt into the hole in the floor of the lift at an angle that allowed him to grab hold of the emergency ladder bolted to the side of the shaft. Wrapping his hands in the waistcoat, the Doctor grabbed both sides of the ladder and swiftly slid down towards the console room.
Looking back up at the rapidly receding Cyberman stranded in the lift, the Doctor called, "You really should do something about that subconscious targeting system!"
* * * * *
Wil stumbled into the now almost empty cell again. Without Bevin. This time she had been taken for cybernisation right away. And it would appear that Jacob was being cybernised as well. Wil strode over to the painting hiding the hatch and pulled it aside. The hatch was still unblocked. *I guess bad guys never learn,* he thought.
Wil ducked inside the hatch and froze. Just five feet from him stood a Cyberman, facing away from him, blocking the tunnel to the outside. *Maybe they do learn. It's just as well that I want to go into the ship,* he thought as he crept away from the silver giant.
Every so often Wil came upon another hatch, most of which opened onto empty chambers, all as luxuriously appointed as the cell in which the victims scheduled for cybernisation were kept.
Finally, Wil came upon the chamber where the actual process for converting humans to Cybermen was being carried out. Keeping the hatch open only a fraction of an inch, Wil saw that Bevin was unharmed, but he couldn't see Jacob anywhere. As for the two souls on the operating tables... Wil looked away in horror. There was no way Wil could save anyone in that room from here, there were just too many Cybermen.
He forced himself to press on down the tunnel; perhaps he could find the engine room and short out the power supply, or somehow sabotage the Cybermen's equipment.
At last Wil came upon another room, one where he might inflict some damage. He was now peering out onto the ship's engineering section. There were just two Cybermen. One was standing guard at the door and the other had its attention focused on the readings of the power levels.
Wil crept into the chamber and looked around, his gaze locking on the massive structure before him. The center of the room was taken up by an enormous crystal mountain, flashing all the colors of the spectrum in unison with a deep-seated throbbing that resounded through the cathedral-like chamber. The crystal radiated from mountain like a web made of glass as it spread out, reaching upwards.
Moving closer to the crystal, Wil saw a panel set into the monolith. The panel was of crystal, as were the controls, which were mainly sticks of crystal that stuck out horizontally from the vertical panel. At the moment, all of the rods were red in color, and if Wil had learnt anything from his travels with the Doctor, it was that red was almost always a sign of danger. He reached out and tentatively pushed one of the rods back into the panel. The rod's color deepened to green and the throbbing of the engine lessened imperceptibly. Wil smiled and then proceeded to push in all the controls. All of them turned green, and the throb lessened to a background hum.
Satisfied, Wil turned away from the control panel and headed for the service hatch. Except for the fact that now the two Cybermen were walking straight towards him.
"Oh crud."
* * * * *
The Mara was enjoying itself. This prey had already been exposed to another of its kind and was easy pickings for another attack. It didn't know how it came to be so far from it's place of origin, and it really didn't care. Now was the only thing that mattered in the mind of the Mara.
It directed the host to reach out for the fool that stood within easy reach. But all of a sudden it felt a strange tugging. And then the same force that had allowed the Mara to stray so far from its hunting grounds yanked it back kicking and screaming to the dark places on the inside.
* * * * *
"Tegan? Are you all right?" Jack asked anxiously.
Suddenly she fell forward and he caught her in his arms. "Tegan! What happened?"
"I...I...don't know," Tegan whispered. "I felt something... something horrible, but so familiar! But I can't remember what..."
"Well you seem to be all right now, so let's forget about it," Jack said comfortingly as he led her back to their chairs on the beach. He didn't notice that her tattoo was gone.
* * * * *
The Doctor saw the ground rushing up to meet him and began to brake his descent. He calculated the pressure needed to stop just as he reached the bottom rung and applied just that much - and stopped short by ten feet.
"Ah well, what's ten feet between friends?" the Doctor said philosophically as he climbed down the rest of the way.
Reaching the bottom, he unwrapped his waistcoat from his hands and saw to his dismay that it was shredded from the friction of providing a buffer between his hands and the ladder. *At this rate I'm going to have to find a whole outfit by the time this adventure is over,* he thought.
Leaving the ruined waistcoat behind, the Doctor made his way through the gargantuan console chamber to the pillar-console in the center. The display was just as he had left it, still showing the course plotted to Earth. The rest of the controls were dormant.
The Doctor knelt down and pulled the bottom panel away from the pillar, revealing the tidy mess of wires and conduits that comprised the control circuits of the planet-TARDIS. He poked and prodded among them, looking for something that would allow him to safely render the ship permanently immobile.
Then, he had an inspiration. "Of course, why didn't I think of it before?! Just pull out the dematerialisation circuit. When it tries to take off there'll just be smoke and a flash!"
The Doctor grinned at the sheer simplicity as he reached in to pull out the little circuit. He got hold and tugged at the circuit, but it wouldn't move.
He pulled harder and got an electric shock for his troubles. "What the - ?!"
Suddenly the Doctor could hear the rest of the console powering up. He pulled his head and arm out of the access panel and looked up at the display screen. Instead of the expected standby mode, the display screen now had a new message:
"Warning: attempted sabotage. Now initiating Vampire Defense Protocol: Alpha 1. Commencing automatic dematerialisation. Destination: Uran Primary. Dateline: 785.5464."
The Doctor called up the star map again and centered it on Uran Primary. The map focused on a barren star system on the outermost rim of the Seran galaxy.
"Oh no," the Doctor breathed. "Uran Primary is a *sun*."
To be continued...