"All right!" she yelled in triumph. "It's the Professor!" She turned again to face the Devidians. "You'd better watch it now, toerags, because the Doctor's here, and he doesn't like those who shoot at his friends!"
Her exultation was met with a barrage of energy, which caused her to duck and laugh happily. Now that the Doctor was here, she was back to her old self, the old Ace that would laugh with delight at the face of danger, then think later to run like hell. That Ace had faced Kane, the fascist tyrants of the Happiness Patrol, the fearsome monsters that inhabitated 19th Century Gabriel Chase, and had gleefully dispatched them all with the help of the Doctor. It was as if Heaven, Jan, everything had never happened...
She turned to see the doors open, and an unfamiliar person come out of the TARDIS. She looked at his tall, boyish form, his long brown locks, his Edwardian waistcoat and trousers with the silken tie wrapped around his neck. She looked in shock and disbelief as she finally realized who the figure was. *Oh, no... it can't be.*
She saw the man turn and spot her. "Ace!", he yelled, and her heart broke. *He's changed... regenerated. He's a totally different Doctor. He's not the Time Lord I asked for help. What happened? Why didn't he come to me before this?*
The Doctor yelled out Ace's name, smiling with relief at finding her alive, albeit in a very discomforting situation. He yelled back to the TARDIS, "They're all here, alive and well! And it appears they're in trouble! I'm going on ahead!"
Despite Melissa's protestations, he ran over to the makeshift cover, his long legs churning up the distance. In seconds, he had lithely hopped over the outcropping that shielded the group from certain death and found himself facing Ace. He tried to smile at her, but she wouldn't respond. "Hello, Ace."
"Doctor." was all she would say, and turned her back on him. His hearts broke as he saw the one person who knew him best, in their pasts and futures, move away from him. *Oh, no. I knew it; she won't accept me because I'm not the last one. I'm sorry, Dorothee; I knew I should have come to you after I regenerated.* Then he realized that this wasn't Dorothee, not yet, anyway. *As she is now, she wouldn't understand. I've got to make her understand, to get her to trust me, or we'll all die here.*
"Ace, listen to me; I know you're upset, and hurt, that my other self, your Professor, isn't here. But, for some reason that I can't even begin to fathom, I'm here, now. Can't you put aside your pain and help me?"
She turned her head back to face him, and tears welled up in her eyes. "Why? You're here, so one of two things must have happened. Either he won't come because he hates me for leaving him, or he's gone finally and you're the only Doctor that could hear me. Well, which is it?"
The Doctor struggled to answer. "He-that is, I- don't hate you for leaving, Ace. You had every right to leave; what I did on Heaven was unspeakably evil and destructive, and I regret it utterly. As I regret a great many things that I did to you and to others during that life."
"See? You're even making it sound like he's dead, just another of your selves to reference, in little zones in your mind! Or have you forgotten that I've been there?"
"I haven't forgotten. You're the first and only one of my companions to ever see that deeply into my mind, to see my methods and my reasons for doing the things I've done. And since you have been there, you should know that even though we do change, we are still the same. We are the Doctor. Pieces of the puzzle, never quite gone. You see, the Doctor you know is still here" he tapped his head, "and you know that he wouldn't let anything happen to you. And that's why I'm here; I wouldn't let anything happen to you either."
He let out a breath after his long speech, and looked Ace in the eye. "Help me, Ace. We've got to find a way out of here."
She stood up and yelled at the Doctor. "How do I know that this isn't some trick? Some fourth-dimensional memo you sent yourself? 'Be here at such and such a time to save Ace and all will be forgiven.' Bullocks, Doctor; I won't believe that just because you've changed, that you're that much different."
Data stood and grabbed Ace's shoulder. "Ace, get down!" And then, a bolt of energy hit the android square in the back, and he tensed up. To the shock of all present, including Picard and Kirk, who had just arrived, Data fell forward in the dust, unmoving.
"DATA!!" Ace screamed, then knelt down and rolled him over. His amber eyes stared back at her, unblinking.
She looked fearfully at the Doctor and Picard who were looking at Data in shock. "Don't just stand there! Do something!"
Galvanized into action, the Doctor took Data and bodily moved him into a sitting position. He fumbled into his pockets, and pulled out a jeweler's lens and his sonic screwdriver. He looked at Picard.
"How do I get in, Jean-Luc?"
Picard peeled the back of Data's scalp away from his head, revealing his positronic neural network. The Doctor put the jeweler's lens to his eye and examined the network's pathways minutely. After a few seconds of searching, he hmmmed. "I think I've found it; the motor pathways in his anterior cortex are fried. Pretty nasty."
"Can you fix it, Doctor?" Ace spoke hopefully.
"I think so; I'll have to reroute the surrounding circuitry around the damaged pathways to other areas. But it'll take some time." Meeting Ace's gaze, he muttered, "And before you say anything about my past self being able to do this with his eyes closed, or some such nonsense, it's not true. My forte at Academy was thermodynamics, not cybernetics."
Ace began to smile, seeing some of her Doctor return to this new persona. She turned away from him, and fired a quick salvo toward the Devidians. The Doctor worked for several minutes on Data, and then groaned. "I can't do this with what I have! I can't take him back to the TARDIS; she's becoming surrounded." The others looked, and true to his word, a group of Devidians had began to circle the Police Box.
"How..." Kirk muttered, then realized the reason. *The TARDIS is communicating to him through some kind of telepathic link! Amazing!*
"I need tools!" Hearing the Doctor's protest, Ace moved over to where he and Data were and pressed the shoulder hatch that she had seen earlier. The Doctor smiled.
"Bloody naff, Ace."
"Thank you, Professor. Now, hurry up; we need you two to get us out of here."
The Doctor paused. "You called me 'Professor'."
"I just can't seem to stay mad at you, can I? Hell, I can't even stay mad at *him* sometimes." She smiled again at the Time Lord, and whispered, "I forgave you long ago; you were only trying to do what you were chosen to do. But for some reason, I found that I liked staying angry. And so I stayed angry, at you, at everything. It helped me survive in the future."
The Doctor nodded, remembering his first meeeting with Ace on Iceworld. She was angry then, and it had given her an edge he sorely needed. "I understand... Dorothy."
Ace made the required face, and then smiled again. "Get to work."
The Doctor fussed for a few more minutes, completely oblivious to the energy crackling around him, from both the Devidians and Ace, as well as Picard and Kirk, who, unbeknownst to him or the TARDIS, had brought phasers.
He closed the shoulder hatch and the scalp access panel, and announced, "I'm done, I hope. Now, how do I turn him on?"
Picard knelt down and reached around to the small of his back. He flipped the android's power switch, and suddenly Data came to life. He looked around, reasserting his vision to his surroundings. His vision rested on the Doctor. "You must be the Time Lord."
"That's right, Lieutenant Commander. I'm the Doctor, and this is..." The Doctor looked around then. He frowned, as Ace supplied helpfully, "And this is my companion..."
"She's not here! But I thought she left the TARDIS when we did. Jim, Jean-Luc; have you seen Melissa since we arrived?"
Kirk and Picard shook their heads, as Ace spoke. "This Melissa's your new companion?"
"Yes, Ace, and now she's gone missing. And so has Lyta. I was afraid of this!" The Doctor pounded the dusty ground in frustration, as the Devidians marched ever closer to their tenuous position.
As the Doctor yelled Ace's name and ran toward the figures in trouble, Lyta
felt a sharp pain at her temples. She tried to massage it away, hoping no one
had noticed anything untoward. Luckily, everyone that had been on the TARDIS
had been preoccupied with the Doctor's discovery.
Everyone, that is, except Melissa. She kept an eye on Lyta even as Kirk and Picard, galvanized into action by the sight of their friends in trouble, strapped on the hand phasers they had managed to conceal from the Doctor. Somehow, they didn't think that the Time Lord would be too happy about them carrying weapons into his time machine, but they felt the need, separately, to be ready for whatever awaited them.
Lyta continued massaging her temples, as the voice of her Mistress echoed through her brain.
*Lyta, my servant! You have finally arrived, with the Time Lord and company in tow! Very good.*
*We were almost killed by a subspace disturbance when the Doctor tried to force the Devidians' portal open...*
"That is of no concern to me! What is paramount is that the Doctor and his band are here, and here is where they shall all meet their doom!*
These words surprised the young time-traveller. *You mean that Kirk, Picard, their kidnapped friends, all of them are to be killed?*
The voice of her Mistress was hedged with uncertainty as she continued. *You know that they do not want to kill the Devidians, even though they killed your dear friend, Gary Seven! When the time comes for the Devidians to be eliminated from time for their crimes, they will try to defend them, spouting dribble about 'unnecessary death' and 'need to survive'. But it won't work, will it?*
The pounding in Lyta's head continued, and she made a muffled groan in response. This caused Melissa to come to her side, worriedly. "Are you all right, Lyta?", she asked.
Lyta turned to Melissa. "I am quite all right! Now, I must get out there, to see final justice meted out for Gary Seven's death."
As she raged toward the open doors to the TARDIS, Lyta noticed that as she grew more angry, the pain in her head diminished. *So, if I have to be angry for the pain to stop, then angry I shall be!* She directed her next thought even further inward, to where her Mistress waited. *What is your wish, Mistress?*
*You will first come to me. I am inside the large structure currently under besiegement by the allies of the Doctor. I am being held captive by the Devidians, given a harsh sentence for time-travelling without their knowledge. In time, they will most likely terminate me. You must free me from my imprisonment, and together, we will crush our enemies!*
"Crush our enemies..." Lyta murmured as she exited the TARDIS, and, as if on auto-pilot, moved toward the large, imposing structure set in stone a distance away. Melissa stood at the threshold of the time machine, debating her options.
*Should I go and help the Doctor, or go after Lyta? The Doctor thinks she has something to do with all of this, and her behavior makes it a likely prospect. But what if the Doctor needs me?* She thought about this for a few more seconds, then came to a decision.
*This is the first time since we've started travelling that I've voluntarily left your side. I just hope I don't pay for it later.* An image of the TARDIS taking off without her, as the Seventh Doctor had done with a young Ace years ago, flitted through her mind, but she dismissed it as she trudged along the same path Lyta had gone just seconds before.
Staying a few meters behind to avoid detection, she stopped behind a rock as she saw Lyta stop in front of the door of the structure. She appeared to be lost in thought for a moment, then she pulled out of her pocket a silver tube-like object, with a stone very much like a ruby inset into it. Melissa recognized it instantly.
*It's a sonic screwdriver! But I thought only Time Lords carried those...* The implications of this development began to move through Melissa's mind, but she again shoved away distraction as she saw Lyta activate the sonic screwdriver, and saw a shimmering of light, like a veil parting, in response to her ministrations.
Lyta stepped through, and Melissa realized that she had only seconds to act before the veil of light closed again. She broke off in a quiet but hurried trot, and dove through the hole created by Lyta just as she heard a humming sound that she instinctively knew was the reactivation of the force-field.
She picked herself up off the ground to see Lyta enter the inner doors of the structure. Undaunted, Melissa followed behind her, again keeping a short distance behind. As she reached the inner doors, she noticed that the doors seemed to radiate with energy. She pressed her hand against the door briefly, and was rewarded with a low vibration against her hand. Filing this information away for later reference, she continued along the same path as Lyta, into the mammoth building set in stone.
She was immediately encased in semi-darkness, as if the light from the outside simply stopped radiating past the doors of the structure. She continued along, keeping her eyes on both Lyta and the corridor ahead of her, lest she trip or make noise that would alert her quarry to her prescence. She suddenly realized that she should be worried about whatever had made the large building. *It doesn't look like the Devidians could have made this on their own, even if they do have time-travel technology. The Doctor's right; they must have had help!*
She noticed that Lyta was beginning to loom almost out of sight in the increasing gloom, so she moved a little faster, as quietly as she could. Presently, she came upon a T-intersection, with two corridors branching off from the one she was currently on. She looked as far as she could down one corridor and then the other, but Lyta was nowhere to be seen. Frustrated at losing her quarry, she stepped into the middle of the intersection to decide what to do. Suddenly, she heard a whispering noise behind her; she turned sharply around to see a wall, seemingly out of nowhere, blocking the way she had came.
She turned around again, facing the corridors, and shouted into the gloom, "Okay, you've found me, whatever you are! I'm not going to be intimidated by parlor-tricks, so come out and show yourself!"
For a long moment, nothing could be heard. Then, Melissa heard an echo of laughter. As she watched, out of one of the corridors came Lyta. She was still dressed in her black suit, which Melissa realized made it easier for her to conceal herself, and she was holding a rod-like instrument in front of her. Noticing the questioning look on Melissa's face, Lyta smiled evilly.
"To answer your question, it is a weapon. A nasty piece of machinery known as a Tissue Compression Eliminator, I believe. My Mistress tells me that it could kill you quite painfully." Before Melissa could say anything, Lyta continued. "But for now, the Mistress wants you alive, as bait for the Doctor and his friends."
Melissa began to speak. "Who is-" She was cut off as Lyta did not fire the TCE, but instead threw a silver disc-shaped object at her. Melissa reflexively turned to shield herself from this unexpected attack, and the disc caught her in the small of her back. Suddenly, Melissa found that she couldn't move. Like a puppet whose strings were cut, she dropped, lifeless to the floor.
Melissa's eyes were still open, however, and she saw Lyta loom over her, smiling. "Now, I think we should show you to the Mistress. I am quite interested in seeing her myself..."
The Doctor helped Data to a more dignified cross-legged sitting position,
apparently unmindful of the energy barrage raining over his head. He then
looked over at the group, now including Kirk and Picard, that was trying
valiantly to repel the Devidians.
"This isn't working!" he yelled. "We've got to knock them out of action, and fast!" With a sharp look at Ace, he continued. "No killing!"
"What?" Ace looked on, puzzled. "I voted for trying to get into their base!"
"Base? They have a base?"
"Yeah, you can see it from here." She pointed at the structure seemingly rooted into the ground not far from their position. The Doctor took a look at it, and hmmed thoughtfully.
"What is it, Professor? You've got a plan?"
"Not yet... Let me look for something." He began to rummage through the pockets of his waistcoat.
After a moment of searching, his fingers found something in his pocket, and he grinned. "That's it!" He held up a small circuit board. "A energy compression circuit; I must have taken it out of the TARDIS while shutting up the Master and put in my pocket. This is perfect!"
"The Master?" Ace began to ask, and was met with a familiar not-right-now look from the Doctor. "Okay, I've got to take a look at each of your weapons, to see if any of them are compatible with this circuit. Come on, everybody, give them up!"
Each of the group carrying energy weapons complied, and finally, he took Kirk's phaser. "The circuit will work best with this old, antiquated 23rd Century phaser. No offense, Jim."
"None taken, Doctor. Now, what are you going to do?'
"Well, in its simplest terms, this little circuit is going to boost and change your phaser's output into a single wide beam. Hopefully, we can stun more of the Devidians that way. That's the good news."
"And the bad news?"
"The bad news, Jean-Luc, is that either it'll only work once, or it won't work at all, and instead blow up, in all probability killing me."
"You? Why does it have to be you?"
"Because it may require some on-the-spot fine-tuning, and I'm not going to risk any of you, even the almost indestructible Mister Data. That reminds me; Data, another chance at your microtools, please?"
Data complied, once again opening the shoulder hatch for the perusal of the Time Lord. He picked tools, one after the other, using them with blinding speed fusing the circuit to the existing innards of the phaser.
After what seemed like an eternity, the Doctor was ready. He held the weapon far away from him; the action was mostly to protect himself from any probable explosion, but it was also due to the Time Lord's disdain of guns. He yelled back, "Duck and cover!", as he pressed the trigger of the phaser.
Almost immediately, a bright, wide beam of light came out of the weapon, and almost as quickly, the group of Devidians fell down in a heap. Ace looked up to see the Devidians down and the Doctor struggling madly with the phaser.
"What's wrong, Professor?"
"I can't turn it off!"
"Then throw it away, quick, before you fricassee us!"
The Doctor nodded, and threw away the phaser as if it was a hot potato. He watched with satisfaction as it made contact with a rock and disintegrated. He rubbed his hands together happily.
"That's quite enough of that, I should think. Now, let's check on the Devidians, and then try to find Melissa and Lyta."
The group came of their hiding place cautiously, looking for more signs of trouble; the Doctor, true to form, was totally unconcerned. He moved quickly from one covered Devidian to the next, checking quickly for any vital signs. By the time they had reached him, he was smiling grimly.
"None of them are dead, thank Rassilon, but they are going to be out for quite a while." The Doctor rubbed his hands together again for no apparent reason. "You know, I really didn't think that plan was going to work."
Ace smiled. "A version of the Doctor, not sure of himself? Didn't think it possible."
"Well, I haven't had this particular body for very long." Seeing Ace's questioning look, he gave her another not-right-now-we've-got-work-to-do look back at her as they came to the entrance to the structure. Kirk tried first to get to the doors, but he was blocked by a force-field. The Doctor hmmed softly to himself.
"Something familiar, Professor?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact, there is. There's been something familiar about this whole mess since the beginning, and I'm still no closer to knowing what it is." He suddenly sat down in a cross-legged lotus position, his hands resting on his knees. Picard started to ask him what he was doing, but Ace put a hand on his shoulder.
"I wouldn't disturb him, Picard. I've seen the Professor do this before; he's meditating... looking into his mind. He's got quite a lot of memories to sift through for a almost one-thousand year old guy."
"I am not a 'guy', Ace, I am a Time Lord. Furthermore, I am well over a thousand by now." The Doctor spoke softly, his eyes still closed, never moving from his sitting position. Ace smiled.
"I hate when you do that..."
Suddenly, he sprang up. "Lakertya!", he screamed.
"Huh? What is that, some kind of Time Lord version of 'I've got it!'" Harriman asked sarcastically.
Ace smiled. "No, I get it. Lakertya is where you and the old doughnut went right after your last regeneration, right? I remember her telling me about it briefly on Iceworld."
The Doctor nodded. "Mel and I were forced down out of the Time Vortex and landed there. In fact, we landed right in front of this exact structure."
"And who was responsible?"
The Doctor frowned with grim realization. "The Rani."
"The Rani? Isn't she another one of your lot? Like the Master? Geez, I want, just once, to meet a Time Lord that doesn't want to kill me."
The Doctor whispered, "You'll get your chance, I promise." Ace looked at him sharply, as Picard spoke.
"Wait... if this is the exact same structure that you encountered when you met the Rani on Lakertya, how is it here, now?"
"I don't know, Jean-Luc..." Then the Doctor snapped his fingers.
"This isn't just any old force-field; I can sense something from it, faintly."
"Sense something? From a force-field?" Harriman was highly skeptical.
"Yes, I can. But why, unless... "I've got it! Why didn't I think of it before?"
"What?"
"It's the HADS!"
"The what?"
"The Hostile Action Defense System! You remember, Ace; it's saved our lives more times than you can count."
Ace's eyes opened wider, as she digested the information. "You mean that..."
"Right. This structure is the Rani's TARDIS!"
If you like this Chapter of Cris's story and you'd like to tell him so, you can e-mail him by clicking here!
Cris Lawrence, alias Doc8 on Dalnet, is a 20-year-old sophomore Political Science student at Miami University of Ohio. In addition to this story, he is currently working on two other Eighth Doctor stories: "Picture of Guilt", featuring the first adventure of Melissa Chambers and the Doctor; and "The Play's the Thing", which, with some revision, will hopefully become his first published New Adventure sometime in 1998. Cris is also a fan of the DC Comics character The Flash, and you can see the culmination of his obsession on his Scarlet Speedster Web Page
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