by Cour M.
“I’m saying that we were getting stronger. Let us harvest just enough to get strong enough to defeat the Daleks. You’ve seen it. We move fast enough and are strong enough to rip a Dalek apart. Then when we destroy them all, we will return back to Crellia and we won’t bother you again.”
Eleven moved forward.
“For that, you would need more energy than what you had before,” Eleven noted.
“Yes.”
“Expecting us to just let you take more souls back to Larissa. And what word can you give us that you would not come back when we bring them back into their time period once you return to Crellia?”
“You are not actually suggesting that they fight the Daleks?” Twelve stated.
“Of course I am,” Eleven argued, “what else would I do?”
“I forgot, when I was you, just how much I supported war.”
“I supported nothing!” Eleven argued, “except for the right of a people to defend themselves. At Trenzalore, what else could I have done? Could WE have done?”
Twelve looked away, stoic.
Eleven leaned forward and looked at Dasha.
“If we agree to help you, which we might consider, I demand a compromise.”
“What sort?”
“If we give you the number of humans you need to get the energy supply to defeat the Daleks, then we choose who you take.”
“Are you going to tell them to take zygons, because if you do, then I would love you for it,” Kate suggested.[6]
“A beautiful suggestion,” Eleven commented, “but that would lead to another war after this one. What I mean is what if we offered the Angels volunteers to be taken into the future.”
“You’re thinking of the military,” Clara deduced.
“Precisely. At this point every military in the world is aware of alien incursion. Kate, how much international cooperation can you buy when you return all the victims back to their countries?”
“Much,” Kate smiled, then she turned to Dasha, “how many people do you all need?”
Dasha blinked, seeing the chance.
“Around five thousand people would be perfect.”
“So if we gave you that many, and the war is won for you, then you return to Crellia fully, and the Doctor returns the people back to Earth.”
“I can give you my word that we will return and never come back.”
“But therein lies the problem, isn’t it? You see, the Daleks may have taken your home, but outside of them, you are one of the most powerful species that we have ever seen. How do we know that you want our assistance rather than you want us to help you get rid of the only more powerful thing than you so that nothing can stand in your way—from overcoming the entire universe.”
“Before this ever happened,” Dasha inquired, “did you ever see us? Ever? Have the Doctor check our history, and he will find out that the only creatures that attacked your planet were never us. We don’t want to dominate this planet at all.”
“That’s what many nations said,” Harriet Jones added, “and I have heard it all. I have lost much because of it all.”
“Yes, you lost much, but by who? The Daleks. If we defeat them, they will be broken once more. We will have saved the universe actually by helping them not turn more of your species into you.”
“Then let’s make something clear,” Eleven said, “if we do help, and five thousand soldiers get pushed through time for you, we will bring them back, and if you try and get them again, we will always thwart you at every turn and then we shall find a way to pick apart your society little by little until we achieve the means to overthrow you in full.”
Clara touched his arm to steady him.
“No,” Dasha allowed, “let him speak. After all, if he was any less apprehensive, then he would be an idiot. Take me back to our space armada, it is laying in the Florentine system. We can negotiate and I can assure you that we shall be very willing to agree to your demands. As long as you make good on those five thousand soldiers.”
“Believe me, we will, just like we will rein fire on you if any harm comes to them,” Kate vowed.
“I understand.”
Kate stood up and looked down at the broken table.
“And work on your temper.”
“Where will you get the soldiers from?” Clara asked.
“Yes,” Harriet stressed, “Britain will not supply them all.”
“No, it would not,” Kate confirmed, “due to the numbers always to be stationed here, only a quarter could be supplied from our army at most. But while you all were off-planet, UNIT has developed stronger connections. Some stronger than others. So we can ask for assistance from two continents with the military who has the interest in this sort of thing. After all, they both established a whole working society from either our banished criminals or our rejected outcasts that we sent there once. Basically we’re getting them from Australia and North America.”
Chapter 14
Man or Machine?
Angered by Martha’s defeat of his unit, forcing them to retreat, and then to be ridiculed, Croesus wanted to unleash his rage, but she was lightyears away. Therefore, he had no other person to torture, but one.
He informed his gelem soldiers to activate the locator beam into the heart of Mondas.
In the midst of the Doctor still being suspended amongst all the other captives, he felt the tingling sensation of being transported as his body dissolved and he materialized in the headquarters of Croesus’s lair. When he appeared, his weakened state made him fall to the ground. When he looked up, he beheld Croesus staring down at him.
“So, you got married?” He asked pleasantly.
“I had the impulse to settle down,” Eleven reported at the idea. “It wasn’t as peaceful as I expected.”
“Family life never does.”
“Actually I spent more time with her mother than I did with her.”
Croesus looked at the Doctor curiously.
“It made sense at the moment,” Eleven sighed, trying to be light but physically weakened.
Croesus stood up and as he did so, laser cell bars erupted around Eleven, entrapping him. Croesus moved forward and began to pace around the bars, talking all the while.
“Your companion called. In the midst of it, she shot one of my soldiers in the head, to prove a point.”
“Don’t act like I’ll believe she killed him pointblank,” Eleven said, “at least think I’m smart enough to do that. If Martha shot him in such a way, she stunned him, and no more.”
“You are that sure that you have not turned her into a bloodthirsty killer.”
“Whatever she is, she is not to blame.”
“No, she is not.”
Croesus pressed a button and then a recording of Martha flying the TARDIS into the command room in the settlement and crashing into cybermen, destroying them, came up. He had Eleven watch as Martha overtook the room and then blew it up.
“Behold, your creation,” Croesus chuckled, “You named yourself Doctor. The name that means healer, medicine man, and look what you create. You turn average people into weapons so that they fight the ways in which you don’t. In which you can’t, because if you did, then you wouldn’t be able to keep your name. Am I right? So you do the worst thing of all. Take a person, turn them into a machine, so that they can do your work for you. And yet, what you showed me earlier, that rage, that resentment—can you even call yourself the Doctor anymore?”
Eleven did not respond, but stood there.
“From what I recall, you had many words to say. And now you are silent.”
Croesus turned away from him for a bit.
“I remember it as if it were yesterday,” Croesus came, “the desolation of the Daleks on my kind. All the devastation, the losses, and how I had to struggle to raise the mechanoids back to the power that we were. Back to the greatness that we contained before we came in contact with the Doctor. And so I refashioned us.”
“Isn’t that your sin?”
Eleven grinned angrily.
“Tell me something, Croesus, self-made designer of the new mechonoids, do you remember the name Steven Taylor?”
Croesus turned back to Eleven.
“Yes, you remember him quite well, don’t you? He’s the astronaut from Earth who crash landed on your planet and you kept him a prisoner for two years. Two years you imprisoned an innocent man, and what did I do? I escaped with him, and he was able to have his life back.”
“The needs of one over the lives of many, is that your theory?”
“No, never. I have spent many years trying to sacrifice my own desires just for the good of all. But with what Steven became, all that he accomplished when traveling with me in my TARDIS, never will I regret it, because everyone deserves to be free. I am sorry for what happened to the mechanoids, Croesus, so very sorry.”
“Tough!”
Croesus moved forward and leaned his head close to the bars.
“You see us and think of metal. But we have memories, Doctor, feelings. We have childhoods as well now. A beginning, a middle and an end. Do you know what I hoped for, once upon a time? I thought to be an explorer, to travel around the galaxy, but I was shackled down to this fate. Now add that to all the deaths, all the destruction that I have had to cause in the name of what I will accomplish, and tell me that it wasn’t worth it?”
Eleven leaned his face close enough.
“It’s not worth it. It never is worth it. I have messed with time, Croesus, in hopes of always mending it. And I can tell you, if you continue on this path, then the Daleks will rise even greater than they were before, and they will find Mechanus eventually, and you will lose more. If not then, fate can eventually unwind. You go back and you change everything, you won’t be allies to the cybermen, no. You’ll be arch enemies even. You’ll get overrun by the thing called the Great Intelligence, and Mechanus turned into a world of ice. The Sontarans’ love for war will inspire them to notice you and then you’ll spend decades in an ongoing war with a race taught never to retreat. You’ll witness your planet getting stolen and having no home, and I will not be there to ride it back to its proper place. Space is an infinite hydra, Croesus, where when you cut off one head, then many more grow in its place. That is the price for staring into the infinity that is time itself. That is the horror of seeing the universe at once and then still trying to see the importance of one moment within it. That is the responsibility of the Timelord, Croesus. And you will make these decisions, they will be written in the stars, and all will know that who was to blame for their problems, for their stars fading, for the sun dying, for their planets being stolen, was you. You are the bottom of a situation, and therefore you can still be regarded as a hero if you surrender now. Yet believe me, Croesus, when you rise to the top, that is when you become a villain, and you will always have that tied to your name. You think I don’t know what I am. I know what I always was and wasn’t. When I was a hero, and when I was the very villain! That is the fate of a Timelord who tries to help. He saves and he destroys. But why do I have the name, the Doctor, even when I fail? It’s because I had the strength to try!”
“And that is what I am doing now!”
“No, you are trying to change the past. And you will change it, but not for the better. You mourn, and then you live. I have mourned and now I live.”
“No, you gave up. I will never do so.”
Croesus moved away from the Doctor and walked down the hall.
“May it always be known, Doctor, that this mechanoid before you, was greater than you ever were.”
Croesus pressed the teleportation beam and the Doctor was transported from the room on Mondas, and back to the center of it. He reappeared in the spot that he was, and at that point, Riley was awake.
“Where did you go?” Riley asked.
“To see an old friend,” Eleven joked.
Chapter 15
The Chronicles of C.S. Lewis
There the group stood before Mr. Tumnus, with his fawn look, his red scarf and umbrella.
“Sorry to detain you,” C.S. Lewis said in reply, “but the truth is that we were wondering if you would help us. We have lost friends from a different world. They have been here from our lands and we were hoping that you could lead us in the direction of the Beavers. I have this instinct that they can help us.”
“Yes, they could,” Mr. Tumnus said knowingly, which did not surprise anyone who had read the stories, but since C.S.’s fellow soldiers naturally would not know of his stories yet, because they had not been written, they were confused.
“The Beavers?” John said, “sorry, but is that their last name, or are they actually…”
“Yes, they will be real beavers,” Ten clapped his hands happily, “Please Mr. Tumnus, we really are here to help.”
“We can’t talk out here any longer, so come,” Mr. Tumnus said, leading them onward, “come on. The Beavers lodge is only half a mile away from here.”
“Brilliant,” C.S. said eagerly, then he turned to the group, “come on. Trust him. He really will not harm us.”
“He won’t,” Rory stressed, “believe me, he really won’t.”
“He was your favorite character from the books, wasn’t he?” Jack whispered to him.
“Oh, you bet.”
“What book?” Mr. Tumnus asked, his fawn ears helping him hear better than the others.
“Oh, nothing,” Jack assured him, “just a joke.”
They all followed Mr. Tumnus through the woods.
“Keep as quiet as you can,” Mr. Tumnus said, shakily.
“Because of the Queen?” C.S. asked him.
“Yes, and don’t even say her name that much. If you do, it is almost as if you can summon her to find you.”
“Then that explains why she found us earlier.”
“Yes, it would.”
As they walked, C.S. understandably remained close to the fawn, talking to him all the while.
“You are very brave to help us,” C.S. complimented.
Mr. Tumnus chuckled sadly.
“Thank you, but I’m not as brave as my father was.”
“You were thinking of betraying us to her, weren’t you?” C.S. said suddenly, “you know that she is after humans and therefore she would want us.”
Mr. Tumnus looked alarmed at C.S. noticing this.
“Don’t worry,” C.S. said, “it’s not your fault that I know that. Don’t hate yourself, Mr. Tumnus. You may have thought about betraying us, but you didn’t. And we will do our best not to have anything happen to you.”
Mr. Tumnus smiled, feeling more assured.
“So, where do you all come from anyway?”
“We come from a place called Earth. From a continent called Europe. I was born and raised for a time in Belfast, in a place called Ireland. I was always proud of our people. We are everything, you know. We are loud, boisterous, passionate, and everything else that is also imperfect. We have made mistakes, but we are beautiful for them. And we fight! That’s the thing about us. We are fighters!”
“My father was a fighter too. I’m not that much like him at all, you know.”
“I’m not sure about that.”
“Are you like your father?”
“I cannot tell you, but probably not. I was close to my mother a lot, her name was Flora, and my dad’s name was Albert. But I was really closest to my older brother, Warren. We spent a lot of our childhood together, enraptured by fantastic animals and tales of gallantry, and hence we created the imaginary land of Boxen, complete with an intricate history that served us for years.”
“Boxen?”
“When I got older, I realized that it wasn’t the best name,” C.S. Lewis acknowledged, “but the rest of the world, the ideas we came up with, I kept saved stored in here,” C.S. pointed to his head.
“You were fortunate, to have a brother.”
> “I was. Then I lost my mother at a young age, got my education here and there, and before we came here, our continent got swept up in a war. It’s a pointless war in every way, but when does that stop a war from going on, and us young men getting caught up in it.”
“You fought in a war?”
“Still fighting.”
“My father went away to war as well.”
“Devastating, isn’t it?”
“Agonizing,” Mr. Tumnus replied simply.
They continued to walk on and eventually they reached a lodge that was on land rather than in the water and was of a nice size that was large for a set of beavers.
“Beavers!” Tumnus cried, “I come with company.”
The door opened and a Beaver emerged.
“Whoa!” The Beaver said, “Now look at that! Did they escape from the Fortress?”
“No, they came for people they lost, and I think it’s them.”
“Beaver, what is it?” Came a female voice from the lodge. Out emerged a female Beaver, and she was quite adorable. “Oh my goodness, well this is amazing!”
“Two talking beavers!” Jason said, “there are two talking beavers now!”
“What, do you expect us to sing?” Mr. Beaver said.
“Can you?” Ten asked. “Sorry, I was getting excited for a moment. Really I apologize. It is lovely to meet you both.”
“Really, it is!” Amy cried.
“Nice to meet you all as well,” Mrs. Beaver said. “Did you invite them in yet?”
“I was waiting for you to do it,” Mr. Beaver replied, then he pointed to his wife while looking at the rest, “She hates it when I take her role from her.”
“Brilliant!” C.S. laughed.
“Oh, well then, come inside,” Mrs. Beaver said, “and we can get you some civilized company,” she jabbed at her husband and then they all followed them into the lodge.
Of course as they entered, they had to crouch down, but it was lovely within and they all expressed how beautiful they found it. This swelled the Beavers as they took pride in their home.
“So,” Mr. Beaver said as his wife served them some food, “you came for the taken soldiers?”