Doctor Who: The Time of the Companions: Book 3 (Doctor Who: The Companions' Adventure)

by Cour M.

  “Martha Jones,” the main cyberman replied in their traditional monotone voice, “Companion to the Doctor, from Earth. Mother and Father from London, England. Sister name, Tish Jones, brother Leo Jones. Husband Mickey Smith. In alliance with the Shadow Proclamation and Galactic Alliance.”

  As they continued to list facts about her family, herself and their address as well as locations, Martha could not help but feel apprehensive, as they hoped. They knew all about her.

  “Spent over a year walking the Earth for a man who would let you die rather than fight his own battles,” it continued to speak.

  “There is no way that you can know that.”

  “Such knowledge was harvested from the records of the Master,” it reported. “And here you are again, prepared to die for a man who would never die for you. Croesus knew it well.”

  The Cyberman pressed a button and from the computer emerged a hologram where it showed all the history and background of Martha, even footage harvested from a recording of her when she was a child. How much had the Master discovered about her? In the end, there was not one secret that remained her own, as she saw her whole life unveiled to her.

  “Croesus knew that I would be coming,” Martha gasped.

  “Affirmative.”

  In the next moment, all the doors opened and cybermen entered from all around in lines. Martha only stood there, frozen, as every inch of the room around her eventually became filled with them. As a unit, they raised their arms, pointing their lasers at her.

  “Surrender,” the main cyberman ordered her, “and you will be simply added to the core alongside the Doctor, or continue to resist and then you will be taken to Croesus, tortured, and then finally, you will be upgraded.”

  In her moment of defeat, Martha raised up her gun and then let it drop to the ground.

  “Wise decision. Take her away and prepare her for teleportation.”

  “Very well,” Martha said, “take me to the Doctor.”

  

  Martha was removed from the room, beamed down into the core of Mondas, where she joined a line of victims linked together, amongst the masses of thousands. Yet the energy that was spent almost zapped her completely, so as she was placed in the link, she was on the point of collapse when she heard her name shouted out by two voices.

  “Martha!”

  “Martha!”

  She opened her eyes and further down the line was the Doctor and even further down was Riley.

  

  In his command room, Croesus was just being informed of Martha being captured by the cybermen when reports came in that there was an army of ships that were in Mondas’s atmosphere.

  “Enemy vessels?” Croesus asked.

  “Our scanners detect that it is the Papal Mainframe,” a mechanoid reported.

  “The intergalactic church attached to the Academy of the Question,” Croesus summed up.

  “Affirmative.”

  “Then they come for the Doctor. Hail the cybermen while organizing our air forces. I want our entire armada and theirs collected in the sky against this enemy in less than half an hour.”

  “Commander, we cannot achieve such in that time.”

  Croesus looked at his sergeant venomously and the sergeant cowered.

  “Affirmative.” The sergeants and lieutenants in the room set orders to have their entire air force and the cybermen to take to the skies as the Papal Mainframe hailed the base.

  Croesus ordered for his sergeants to raise the screen and Tasha Lem appeared in front of them all.

  “Croesus, leader of the mechanoids,” she said pleasantly.

  “Mother Superious,” Croesus said, “I do not recognize your authority, therefore your words will fall on deaf ears.”

  “Will they? Collect your armies, assemble them in the skies and it will do no good. The church has survived much worse than your armies, and they will again. Stand down, give us your captives, or the church will not be to blame for the massacre that will occur.”

  “The church is always to blame for the massacres across the universe. Always have and always will. Tell me Mother Superious, how many deaths can lay at your feet? How many massacres of innocent lives go to your causes? You’re no better than the Doctor himself, aren’t you? Your pet, who follows the example where he lets many die all because of his whims and fancies. You live in darker hues day by day, year by year. And you expect me to buckle under the weight of intergalactic religious hypocrisy?”

  “No,” she replied, “I expect you just to shut up. One last time, will you or will you not surrender?”

  “Death first!”

  “Give us the captives and the Doctor! And his companion. Now!”

  “Never! And I will never cower to you, something so much weaker than myself.”

  “Oh, I am so much more than that.”

  Tasha let her eye stalk grow out of her forehead and Croesus’s resentment turned to intense loathing. At that point, the joined forces of the cybermen and mechanoids combined were filling up the sky, in defense against the Papal Mainframe’s legion.

  “You’re a Dalek!”

  “Worse, dear. I’m the woman who controls the Dalek inside of her.”

  “We will shatter your armada into the depths of space itself,” Croesus swore. “You will have no captives, you have no terms, and you will never have the Doctor!”

  “Oh but we will!” Came another voice that wrung all through the base.

  

  “Commander,” Croesus’s sergeant said to him, “we’ve picked up on the TARDIS, it’s in the air.”

  “But we have the Doctor!” Another mechanoid said.

  “Yes, you do have me,” wrung the voice again, “but that’s the thing about us Timelords. For us, bodies are boring. For us, bodies are numerous.”

  Within space, a TARDIS appeared in front of the Papal armada, its door opened and the Eighth Doctor emerged, holding a microphone that was attached to the consul unit so that his voice resounded through space.

  “For us, we defy that which cannot be defied!” Eight cried, “We define the undefinable. So, you’ve captured me, good for you! Yet therein is the problem right there, because look! Here I am!” Eight raised out his arms mockingly at the cybermen/ mechonoid armada. “And I’ve got my wheels. And I know what you are thinking. Whoever can take Marinus, taking all those TARDISes, takes the universe. But bad news, Croesus.”

  “Commander!” The Sergeant rushed out, “there are three more TARDISes that have appeared.”

  There on the middle, north and west sides of the Papal armada, appeared three more TARDISes. From the second, emerged the Seventh Doctor, from the third emerged the Sixth, and from the fourth emerged Five.

  “Hello Mondas!” Seven cried, “Guess who? Now you are all assembling still and I do understand, therefore moving around and whizzing about, but can your armada just stay still for a moment, because we are talking!”

  “Thank you for lending your ear,” Six cried into his microphone as well, “Now first question, who has more Doctors on their side? We do! Second question: who is going to take us from them?”

  Six waited for a response but expected none.

  “Come on!” Five added, “we’re right here. Just a TARDIS, we carry no guns, no weapons, just overconfidence and great fashion preferences.”

  “Oh, and you know what we also don’t have?” Eight asked, “Anything to lose!”

  “So, if you're sitting up there in your silly little space ships with all your silly little guns,” Seven added, “and you've got any plans on keeping many innocent lives stuck in your planet, just remember who's standing in your way!”

  “Remember every black day I ever stopped you,” Six demanded, “and then, and then, do the smart thing!”

  “And just surrender from the very beginning!” Five concluded.

  “Well, Croesus,” Eight continued, “We couldn’t call ourselves the Doctor if we let our arguments become one-sided, so give us a bit back. What do you
have to say?”

  Croesus let his face appear on their monitors.

  “What I always say,” he answered simply, “what always needs to be said to the Doctor. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll tell you the truth. You, Doctor, like to think you are a god. But you’re not a god. You’re just a parasite, eaten out in loneliness and heartless wandering, where you cling to people every now and again, draining them. You stand by and have others fight your battles for you, causing havoc as you tear a hole in the threads of the universe. And your companion here now, I know what happened, how like the rest of them, letting them sacrifice themselves to you. You are eaten up with curiosity, jealousy, envy, and longing for the lives of others. You feed on them. On your companions’ ability to love, their fear of loss, and love of birth, and woes of death, and joy, and sorrow… so…SO… take me. Come on then, try and take us. Try and destroy us again with your thirst for destruction.”

  “It’s not thirst, Croesus,” Five determined, “never was. It was just a desire to help. In a mad universe that is constantly trying to tear itself apart, trying to kill all, we fight on.”

  “And most importantly,” Six intoned, “we fight ourselves, always attempting to save the universe from the men we can sometimes be.”

  “We attempted to make amends for everything,” Seven retorted, “from our mistakes and the mistakes of others. From the villains of old and from creating villains of new. We try and save those that are lost, those that got destroyed in the crossfire, and those like you, who we never wished for harm to be brought to them. So for you, take ours. Take our intentions.”

  “Yet I hope that you’ve got a big appetite for tragedy, failed hopes and good intentions,” Five continued, “Because I have lived a long life, and we have seen a few things.”

  “We have lived enough to see ourselves become the villain,” Six admitted.

  “And we fought to return to being a hero,” Seven countered.

  “We have walked in the universe where the laws of physics were devised by the mind of a mad man!” Eight listed, “we have watched universes freeze and creation burn. We have seen things you would not believe. We have lost things that you will never understand. Because you will never understand the strength to mourn, then move on, and continue to fight to be a hero. All that you know is the pain of calling yourself heroic to justify that you have become a villain. So come on then! Face us! And take all of our might!”

  “We are here!” Six confirmed, “And we shall not look away. And we are done making apologies.”

  “Take it! Take it all!” Seven cried.

  “Have it!” Five concluded, “You have it all!”

  “I can take four TARDISes,” Croesus said, “for soon I shall have many!”

  “Six TARDISes,” Came the voice of River Song as she flew Eleven’s TARDIS, yet behind hers was another TARDIS… bearing another Timelord. “Hello Croesus, I’ve brought five of my husbands with me. And now I’ve come for the sixth one.”

  “Fire everything!” Croesus demanded, and the battle between the Papal Mainframe and the cybermen/mechonoids began.

  

  Within the core of the planet Mondas, Martha smiled when she saw the Doctor and Riley.

  “Doctor and Riley!” She cried.

  “Oh Martha!” They gasped.

  “You’re alive,” Riley cried.

  “Did you miss me?” She laughed sadly.

  “A little.”

  “Hello Doctor,” she added, exhausted. “Rough teleport.”

  “It’s not just the teleport, Martha,” he said, his voice heavy, “it’s also this place. Look at yourself.”

  Martha looked down and saw that she glowed a bit.

  “That’s your life force, being sucked out of you to fuel the planet.”

  “Doctor, how is this possible? I know we humans are balls of energy, yes, but how can it be harvested to serve as a planet’s core?”

  “Mechanoid technology. It’s further than you can imagine. Martha, I am so sorry. I really did try and protect you from this.”

  “I know, and you did.”

  “No, I didn’t. Forgive me, I failed you again.”

  “No,” Martha assured him, “you didn’t.”

  Martha turned directly to the person to her left.

  “You,” she began, “I need you to begin to pull.”

  “It’s no use,” he replied, “you think we haven’t tried that?”

  “Every time we did try it, even if it got successful and broke it apart,” a woman said who was next to him, “the link of light just reattaches.”

  “How long before it reattaches?” Martha inquired.

  “No more than ten seconds.”

  “Ten seconds is enough. Look at me, look at me!” All five people between she and the Doctor stared at her pointedly. “I need you all to pull at the same time and break your links.”

  “What good would it do?” the man asked.

  “Do you want to end this?” She declared, “do you all want to go home? Because doing nothing leads to nothing. But that man there, he can guarantee that you all return or we will die trying. Yet if you stay here and do nothing, you will die. Would you rather be useless about it? You’re space travelers, so find your spirit. And pull!”

  “Do as she says,” Riley requested. “Go on then! And pull!”

  Everyone between Martha and the Doctor pulled, the link broke, Martha removed the TARDIS key from her pocket and tossed it to the Doctor.

  “It needs you to do it this time!” She cried, “you have to summon many.”

  Yet as she spoke, the links between them began to forge again as the TARDIS key grew closer and closer to Eleven. Just as the link forged between him and his neighbor, Eleven caught the key and summoned the TARDIS—actually, he summoned all of them without knowing it.

  Thousands of people in the core of the planet, and the six TARDISes materialized around sections of them all at once. When it became clear that all six TARDISes had all the captives stored safely onboard, in its many different compartments, each disappeared from out of the planet’s core and appeared again in the settlement, allowing the captives to take refuge while Riley and the other soldiers went to their airbase and began to saddle up, preparing their ships to reinforce the Papal armada.

  Very shortly after they joined the fray, the planet’s core collapsed altogether and Mondas began to shatter and break apart in space. Due to the rate of its collapse, there was no time to negotiate, to do a plea bargain, or surrender. All of the TARDISes and ships had to get away from the planet’s collapse or they would be sucked into the gravitational hold of it. Scattered across space, the cybermen and mechanoids air force retreated. On their side, there would have been many casualties, but also there would have been many who survived and escaped.

  

  While in the TARDIS, Martha tended to many of the captives. All who were not doing well were taken to the Papal Mainframe from the settlement, where she was rejoined by Riley. Five TARDISes landed in the Mainframe and they were being filed out so that they could be collected and catalogued by the church so that all captives could be returned to their planet.

  In the meantime, Eleven and River saw each other.

  “Well, you came for me again,” Eleven smiled at her.

  “You looked as if you needed a wife’s touch,” River smiled.

  “Which husband though?” He teased, “you’ve got five of them here.”

  “Six.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Check the monitor, there’s a sixth TARDIS in the air.”

  Eleven checked.

  “I only saw Five, Six, Seven and Eight. Did you bring four as well?”

  “No, not Four. Or Three, or Two. Or even One. Well, definitely not One. The last time I spoke with him, we got into a never-ending argument that I am not ready to go through again.”

  “River, River, River, did you miss me?”

  “You know that I shall never answer that.”

  “
Why not?”

  “Because I prefer to tease you, more than anything else.”

  Happy to see each other, River and Eleven kissed while a child nearby gagged at the sight of it.

  When they finally released each other, Eleven looked deeply into her eyes.

  “Thank you.”

  “Any time.”

  “Travel with Martha and I a bit. We still have much to do.”

  “I would love to, but you see, Martha found me when I was being called away for something.”

  “And who’s more important than me?”

  “Yourself apparently.”

  “Oh,” Eleven smirked, understanding, “well, must we always meet in the wrong order?”

  “Yes, we will. But to do things linear, well, where would be the fun in that?” She laughed. “I’ll see you again, Mister.”

  “River, who is in that sixth TARDIS?”

  “Spoilers,” she clicked a button on her vortex manipulator and disappeared.[8]

  “Thirteen,” Riley said near Martha as they had been listening in.

  “What?” Martha asked.

  “When River had got the people in here, one was asking if she had seen his daughter, and she told the man that it was fine, because Thirteen had her.”

  Martha looked at the other TARDIS that stored another Doctor, and wondered… could it really be?

  She then looked at Eleven, who stood there and looked at where River had just disappeared. He would die one day! Of course she knew he would, but to know of it as being a certain thing.