Doctor Who Fan Fiction ❯ Dr Who - What If ❯ The Last of the Time Lords ( Chapter 16 )

A serious sense of alarm had begun to spread on the Operations deck of HMS Valiant. `Yokohama/Tokyo Zone is not responding,' one operator reported.

 

`Power reads as down. I've got reports of rioting,' called another.

 

`This is bad,' said the deck officer, reviewing the reports as fast as they came in. `This is a disaster. The guidance plants have closed down.'

 

`Someone will have to tell him,' suggested an aide.

 

`Not yet! God help us, not yet!' the deck officer exclaimed. `He'll go ballistic! You know what he gets like when he hears bad news!'

 

`Shoot the messenger?' the aide said.

 

`He'd shoot us all,' replied the deck officer. `Or worse. Why did this have to happen on my watch?' The aide declined to answer.

 

The deck officer turned to the staff manning the operation stations. `Get me a complete picture. Full spectrum sweep, all the data you can get. Route Toclafane shoals from North Korea and Russia. Wake up UCF Taiwan and find out if they know what the hell's going on. If I've got to report bad news to him, I want it to be the full picture.'

 

The operations staff got to work. The air became busy with chatter and demands for info. At her desk, disturbed by the patchy, disparate data coming out of Japan, ADC Dexter jumped when her phone rang. She answered it.

 

`Griffin, this will have to wait,' she said. Griffin was an ex-SAS soldier who worked for the Master's Unified Containment Forces, and had been leading a team in the hunt for Rose Tyler.

 

`We've . . .' she tried to continue. `What? Where are you? Say again? You're where? Slow down! Slow down, Griffin . . . Start at the beginning . . .'

 

When she finished the call, she saw a look on the deck officer's face as he read the reports. `Sir?' she said.

 

`It's a disaster, ADC,' the deck officer said. `The guidance plants were a vital resource, and they've gone dark. It's mayhem down there.'

 

`Do you want me to take this to him?' the ADC asked. The deck officer looked at the ADC as if she'd just saved his life. She probably had.

 

`Would you?' he asked.

 

The Master was standing on the bridge, in his tailored suit, gazing pensively at the world he had brought to its knees. As tyrants went, and they all went one day, he looked remarkably chipper. He looked around as the door chimed open. The ADC walked in.

 

`See?' he smiled. `My day just got even better. A gorgeous young lady in uniform. Ah, the perks of power.'

 

`Sir,' the ADC saluted.

 

He hand-slid down the stair-rails to greet her, a lascivious grin on his face. `Keep “sir”-ing me like that, and I'll promote you to queen,' he said. `There must be somewhere that needs a queen. I'll look into it. What have you got for me? Not all bad news, I hope?'

 

`Some bad news, I'm afraid, sir.'

 

His face darkened. `Oh dear,' he said, deflating. `Not another food riot in Brazil. I hate it when that happens.'

 

`No, sir,' said the ADC cautiously. `There's been an incident in Honshu.'

 

`Honshu? Japanese Honshu? I don't like the sound of that. I've got a lot of interests in Honshu. Show me.'

 

The ADC handed him the report. He read it over rapidly.

 

`The whole zone?' he asked. `The whole zone? All of the guidance plants?'

 

`Yes, sir. Power has been down for sixty-four minutes, sir.'

 

He took a deep breath and scratched his forehead. `I'm really going to be obliged to kill someone about this,' he said.

 

`I'm certain you are, sir,' the ADC said. `There is another factor for your consideration.' She handed him another sheet of paper. `Transcript of a phone conversation I took thirty minutes ago. I thought you'd want to see it.'

 

He read the sheet.

 

`The Drast? The Drast? Here?' he said. `Those fortune hunting, glowy-glowy, entrepreneuring nobodies? The Drast? Did you know anything about this?'

 

His last remark was aimed at the wizened old man sitting in a wheelchair by the window. The wizened old man didn't reply.

 

`Still, the Drast?' he said, leaning back and cocking his head to one side. `I'll teach the Drast to mess with me. Bioluminescent idiots. And I was starting to like Japan so much.' He looked at the ADC. `Calm your pretty head,' he said. `I'm not angry with you. Who could ever be angry with such a gorgeous thing? Summon the Toclafane swarms. I want the Drast to know, without any qualification, who's Master.'

 

`Yes, sir.'

 

He pursed his lips and chewed his jaw to and fro for a moment. `Burn the islands,' he decided. `Yes, burn them. We can build guidance somewhere else.'

 

`Yes, sir.'

 

He looked at the wizened old man in the wheelchair. The old man's eyes were glaring, hooded by extreme time, painfully disapproving.

 

`Oh come on,' he cried, enthusiastically. `Vengeance can be so much fun!'

 

Rose Lungbarrowmas watched, from a container ship leaving the port of Yokohama, as Japan died. Swarms of Toclafane screamed in, unleashing laser death. The cities began to burn. Knowing that the Master's attention had turned on Japan, knowing that he would be furious about the Drast, Rose had skipped onto the first boat out, unseen, thanks to her perception filter.

 

She knew she couldn't be anywhere near the Master's focus. The container ship was heading for San Diego. She would make landfall in the USA in a few weeks. In her hurry to escape, Rose had left Hito, Tokami and the other volunteers to cope in the hinterlands behind Koban plant.

 

She had known the Master would be angry. She had known he would be vindictive. She had hoped he would send forces into seize and dismantle the Drast plant at Koban. She had underestimated his venom. She had underestimated it too much. He wasn't going to be vindictive. He was going to be genocidal.

 

The islands of Japan burned.

 

The islands were on fire. Gigantic plumes of flame gushed up out of Tokyo and Chiba. Though the ship was far out at sea, flakes of soot fluttered down onto them. For the first and only time in her year of walking, Rose allowed herself to cry. She cried for a long time.

 

It felt as if the whole world was made out of night. Their small boat was racing the swell against an invisible coast. The sky was starless and dark, and the sea was like black glass. The little outboard motor chugged. The enclosing night was cool, and smelled of brine and Channel breezes. The year was almost up.

 

She had walked the Earth, and witnessed things that she would never forget. A small, blue-white light appeared in the darkness ahead of them, tiny but stark. It was a halogen lamp, flashing once, twice; a little cold star shining on an unseen beach.

 

`There!' she said. Her hair was in a ponytail, but some of the sea spray damp, bedraggled strands were dangling in front of her face. In her old, habitual style, she brushed them back behind her ears.

 

The light began to swing, gently, from side to side. They came in through the breakers, the outboard throbbing. She felt the boat's belly scrape and rumble across the shingle. She got up and jumped out. Cold water sucked at her legs.

 

She looked back at the men wrangling the small boat. She couldn't see their faces. She wished she could. She ran up the beach towards the light. Her wet boots crunched over damp sand and pebbles. As she ran up the beach, she could just make out a dark skinned woman wearing black coveralls. When the woman flashed her smile, Rose knew immediately who had been sent to meet her.

 

`MARTHA!' They ran into an embrace, and Rose burst into tears. After a year of loneliness, the sight of an old friend was too much for her, and sobs racked her body.

 

`Rose! Oh Rose. You made it, you're back.' Martha Jones rubbed and patted Rose's back trying to comfort her and rub away her woes. `I asked the resistance if I could come here to meet you. I thought a familiar face might be reassuring.' Rose continued to sob, the floodgate on 12 months of pent up emotions had been opened. `Hey, hey, it's all right. How long since you were last in Britain?'

 

Rose released herself from the hug and tried to regain her composure. She wasn't going to lose it this close to her goal. She took a couple of ragged breaths. `Three hundred and sixty five days,' she said, wiping her cheeks and sniffing. `Sorry, it's been a long year.'

 

`Hey, it's okay. So what's the plan?'

 

Rose took a breath, composed herself, and became the cool, experienced survivor again. `This Professor Docherty. I need to see her. Can you get me there?'

 

`She works in a repair shed, Nuclear Plant Seven. I can get you inside. What's all this for? What's so important about her?'

 

`Sorry Martha, the more you know, the more you're at risk.'

 

`There's a lot of people depending on you. You're a bit of a legend.'

 

She didn't feel like a legend. Only when she was back in the TARDIS with the Doctor would she be her half of the their legend. `What does the legend say?'

 

`That you sailed the Atlantic, walked across America. That you were the only person to get out of Japan alive. Rose Tyler, they say, she's going to save the world. Bit late for that.'

 

They walked up the beach to a flat bed van. `How come you can drive? Don't you get stopped?'

 

`Medical staff. There's no way I can take my finals now, so I started working as a doctor anyway. But that gives me a licence to travel so I can help out other the labour camps.'

 

Rose smiled at the irony of it. `Great. I'm travellin' with a doctor.'

 

Martha saw the irony as well and laughed, before climbing in the cab, and driving away.

 

`Story goes that you're the only person on Earth who can kill him. That you, and you alone, can kill the Master stone dead.'

 

`Let's just drive.' She really didn't want to go into that.

 

They arrived at a Quarry, and they saw a giant statue of the Master standing above the rocks. They climbed up the scree covered slope to the top, and looked over a plain covered with rows of rockets for as far as the eye could see.

 

`All over the Earth, those things. He's even carved himself into Mount Rushmore,' Rose told her.

 

`Best to keep down,' Martha said. `Here we go. The entire south coast of England, converted into shipyards. They bring in slave labour every morning. Break up cars, houses, anything, just for the metal. Building a fleet out of scrap.'

 

`You should see Russia. That's Shipyard Number One. All the way from the Black Sea to the Bering Strait, there's a hundred thousand rockets getting ready for war.'

 

`War? With who?'

 

`The rest of the universe. There's a thousand different civilisations all around us with no idea of what's happenin' here. The Master can build weapons big enough to devastate them all.'

 

Two spheres flew in from behind the statue. `Identify, little woman.'

 

`I've got a licence. Martha Jones, Peripatetic Medical Squad. I'm allowed to travel. I was just checking for . . .'

 

`Soon the rockets will fly, and everyone will need medicine. You'll be so busy,' one of the spheres said before they both flew off to the shipyard, laughing as they went.

 

`But they didn't see you,' Martha said in amazement.

 

`How do you think I travelled the world?' Rose said, taking out her TARDIS key with the amplifier connected to it.

 

They climbed back down the slope, back towards the van. `Because the Master set up Archangel, that mobile network, fifteen satellites around the planet, but really it's transmittin' this low level psychic field. That's how everyone got hypnotised into thinkin' he was Harold Saxon.'

 

`Saxon. Feels like years ago.'

 

`But the key's tuned in to the same frequency. Makes me sort of not invisible, just unnoticeable.'

 

`Well, I can see you.'

 

`That's because you know me and you wanted to see me.'

 

`Yeah, I suppose I did.'

 

`Is there a Mr Jones yet?' Rose asked, trying to rebuild their friendship with idle gossip.

 

`No. No. What about you, have you and the Doctor yet . . ?' she asked, remembering that Elizabeth the first had called her the Doctor's wife.

 

Rose had a sad, longing expression as she thought about her husband. She wanted to tell Martha, but she remembered the Doctor's warning. “At the moment he thinks you are just a travelling companion, a friend, but if he knows you are my wife . . . Well, he'll want to search your mind, and he won't be polite or gentle.”

 

`No. I love him to bits, but he's still a bit of a bloke . . . an alien bloke at that.' That made them laugh, and it felt good to be able to laugh again. `Come on, I've got to find this Docherty woman.'

 

`We'll have to wait until the next work shift. What time is it now?'

 

`It's nearly three o'clock.'

 

Martha cut a gap in the shipyard's chain link fence, and they ran to a building where an older woman was thumping a cathode ray tube in frustration.

 

'Professor Docherty?' Martha asked.

 

'Busy,' Docherty said tersely.

 

'They, er, they sent word ahead. I'm Martha Jones. This is Rose Tyler.'

 

'She can be the Queen of Sheba for all I care. I'm still busy.'

 

'Televisions don't work anymore,' Rose told her.

 

'Oh God, I miss Countdown. Never been the same since Des took over. Both Deses. What's the plural for Des? Desi? Deseen? But we've been told there's going to be a transmission from the man himself.' As she spoke, a static-ridden black and white image appeared on the screen. 'There!'

 

'My people,' the Master said on the screen. 'Salutations on this, the eve of war. Lovely woman. But I know there's all sorts of whispers down there. Stories of a child, walking the Earth, giving you hope. But I ask you, how much hope has this man got?' The camera focussed on the ancient Doctor sitting in a wheelchair. `Say hello, Gandalf. Except he's not that old, but he's an alien with a much greater lifespan than you stunted little apes. But what if it showed? What if I suspend your capacity to regenerate? All nine hundred years of your life, Doctor. What if we could see them?'

 

The Master retuned his screwdriver and zapped the Doctor again. He started to convulse, as he had done when the Master did it the first time. 'Older and older and older. Down you go, Doctor. Down, down, down the years.'

 

Rose watched with tears rolling down her cheeks. She was reminded of the time he used the Chameleon Arch. Finally the convulsions ended, and the Doctor was no longer sitting in the wheelchair.

 

'Doctor?' the Master said, looking at his empty suit. A tiny creature with big eyes, rather Gollum-like, peered out from the otherwise empty clothes.

 

Close up, the Master looked into the camera. 'Received and understood, Miss Tyler?' The broadcast ended abruptly.

 

Rose was in tears. Martha put an arm around her shoulders to try and comfort her. 'I'm sorry.'

 

Rose wiped her eyes and smiled. 'The Doctor's still alive.'

 

'Obviously the Archangel Network would seem to be the Master's greatest weakness. Fifteen satellites all around the Earth, still transmitting. That's why there's so little resistance. It's broadcasting a telepathic signal that keeps people scared,' Docherty reasoned.

 

'We could just take them out,' suggested Martha.

 

'We could,' Docherty agreed, 'Fifteen ground to air missiles. You got any on you? Besides, any military action, the Toclafane descend.'

 

'They're not called Toclafane,' Rose told them. `That's a name the Master made up.'

 

'Then what are they, then?' asked Docherty.

 

Rose gave the professor a deliberate stare. 'That's why I came to find you. Know your enemy,' she said with a hint of mystery in her voice. `I've got this.' She took a CD out of her pocket. 'No one's been able to look at a sphere close up. They can't even be damaged, except once. The lightnin' strike in South Africa brought one of them down, just by chance. I've got the readin's on this.'

 

Docherty put the disc into her computer, and thumped it as it struggled to read the data. 'Oh, whoever thought we'd miss Bill Gates.'

 

'So is that why you travelled the world? To find a disc?' Martha asked her.

 

'Nah, just got lucky.'

 

'I heard stories that you walked the Earth to find a way to build a weapon,' Docherty said, perpetuating the rumour that was started by Brigadier Erik Calvin, a UNIT commander in Turkey. 'There! A current of fifty eight point five kiloamperes transferred charge of five hundred and ten megajoules precisely.'

 

'Can you recreate that?' Martha asked, seeing a glimmer of hope at long last.

 

'I think so. Easily. Yes.'

 

'Right then, Doctor Jones, we're gonna get us a sphere,' Rose said.

 

Outside between the buildings of the shipyard, Martha fired a gun three times, and a sphere started to chase her. Rose was looking around the corner, waiting for Martha. When she saw her, she started to run.

 

'She's comin'. You ready?' she asked Docherty.

 

'You do your job, I'll do mine!'

 

Martha ran between two electrified posts rigged between two buildings. 'Now!'

 

The sphere got caught in an electrical field set up across the narrow passageway, and after a few moments, it dropped to the ground.

 

`That's only half the job,' Docherty said. `Let's find out what's inside.

 

They took the sphere back to Docherty's workshop, and the professor started to try and open it with a narrow ended tool. `There's some sort of magnetic clamp,' Docherty told them. `Hold on, I'll just trip the . . .'

 

There was a click and a hiss. The professor put down the tool, and started to peel back the four quarters of the top of the sphere like petals on a flower.

 

`Oh my God!' she exclaimed.

 

Rose and Martha moved around to get a better look. Inside the sphere, they saw a tiny wizened head with an electronic device clamped over its nose and mouth, and various tubes, wires and implants fitted to its face.

 

It suddenly opened its eyes, making them jump back. `It's alive,' Docherty gasped.

 

`Rose. Rose Tyler?' the tiny head's electronic voice said.

 

`It knows you,' said Martha.

 

`Sweet, kind Rose Tyler. You helped us to fly.'

 

Rose looked puzzled. `What do you mean?'

 

`You led us to salvation.'

 

What the hell? `Who are you?' Rose asked it.

 

`The skies are made of diamonds,' it said cryptically.

 

Rose gasped and looked at it in horror. `No. You can't be him.' She remembered a young boy on Malcassairo telling her that exact same thing.

 

`We share each other's memories. You sent him to Utopia.'

 

`Oh, my God.'

 

`What's it talking about? What's it mean?' Martha asked.

 

`What are they?' asked Docherty.

 

Martha looked at Rose imploringly. `Rose . . . Rose, tell us. What are they?'

 

Rose looked at them, her eyes full of sadness and regret. `They're us . . . They're humans. The human race from the future.  I'd sort of worked it out with the paradox machine, because the Doctor said, on the day before the Master came to power, he said the Master had the Tardis, this time machine, but the only other place he could go was the end of the universe, so he found Utopia.  The Utopia Project was the last hope. Tryin' to find a way to escape the end of everythin'.'

 

`There was no solution, no diamonds. Just the dark and the cold,' the sphere said. `But then the Master came with his wonderful time machine to bring us back home.'

 

`But that's a paradox,' the professor said. `If you're the future of the human race, and you've come back to murder your ancestors, you should cancel yourselves out. You shouldn't exist.'

 

`And that's the paradox machine,' Rose explained.

 

But what about us? We're the same species. Why do you kill so many of us?' Martha asked.

 

`Because it's fun!' the sphere said with a laugh.

 

That was too much for Martha. She took out her pistol and put a bullet in the head. Let it laugh at that.

 

'MARTHA!' Rose exclaimed in surprise. What was a doctor doing, killing people?

 

Martha looked at her with cold eyes. 'Just getting rid of vermin,' she spat. 'They slaughtered six million people in Britain alone . . . including my family.'

 

Tears stung Rose's eyes. 'I'm sorry.'

 

`I need a cup of tea,' Docherty said, and went through to her room where she put some water to boil on the stove.

 

Rose looked at her in amazement. `Oh, I haven't had a cup of tea for nearly a year. Where did you get it?'

 

`One of the perks of being a medic,' Martha told her.

 

Docherty sat in a comfy chair with her mug. `I think it's time we had the truth, Miss Tyler. The legend says you've travelled the world to find a way of killing the Master. Tell us, is it true?'

 

Rose sat on the professor's cot and took a case out of her backpack. `Just before I escaped, the Doctor told me. The Doctor and the Master, they've been comin' to Earth for years. And they've been watched. There's UNIT and Torchwood, all studyin' Time Lords in secret. And they made this, the ultimate defence.'

 

Rose opened the case and revealed a gun-like device that had been made for her by Brigadier Erik Calvin in Turkey. it had a squeeze trigger and four small cylinders along the top. She also had three vials of coloured liquid.

 

Martha took out her pistol. `All you need to do is get close. I can shoot the Master dead with this.'

 

Docherty put a hand on Martha's wrist and lowered the gun. `Actually, you can put that down now, thank you very much.'

 

Rose had to agree. Like her husband, she didn't like guns. She had seen horrors beyond her wildest imagination on her travels. 600,000,000 people around the world had been slaughtered by the spheres, and those who were unfortunate enough to survive were slowly worked to death in the labour camps.

 

But still she believed that killing the perpetrator was not the answer, the Doctor had taught her that much. She wondered what horrors Martha had seen that had made her so keen to kill.

 

`Point is,' Rose continued. `It's not so easy to kill a Time Lord. They can regenerate. Literally bring themselves back to life.'

 

`Ah, the Master's immortal. Wonderful,' Docherty said sarcastically.

 

`Except for this. Four chemicals, slotted into the gun. Inject him. Kills a Time Lord permanently.'

 

`Four chemicals? You've only got three,' Martha observed.

 

`Still need the last one, because the components of this gun were kept safe, scattered across the world, and I found them. San Diego, Beijing, Budapest and London.'

 

`Then where is it?' asked Martha.

 

`There's an old UNIT base, north London. I've found the access codes. Martha, you've got to get me there.'

 

They stood up and started to prepare to move out. `We can't get across London in the dark. It's full of wild dogs. We'll get eaten alive. We can wait till the morning, then go with the medical convoy,' Martha said.

 

`You can spend the night here, if you like,' Docherty offered.

 

`No, we can get halfway, stay at the slave quarters in Bexley.' Martha kissed Docherty's cheek. `Professor, thank you.'

 

`And you. Good luck.'

 

`Thanks,' Rose replied, kissing her cheek, and heading for the door.

 

`Rose,' Docherty called to her. Rose turned. `Could you do it? Could you actually kill him?'

 

`I've got no choice.'

 

`You might be many things, but you don't look like a killer to me.'

 

`Looks can be deceivin',' Rose said in a level tone, giving her the same deliberate stare. `I've killed a whole species before now.'

She turned around and left the workshop with Martha.