Fic: Dead Reckoning (3/3)
Title: Dead Reckoning (3/3)
Author: shinyopals
Rating: PG
Pairing: Rose/Ten II
Summary: Still reeling from the events in Alexandria and the subsequent strain on their relationship, the Doctor and Rose try to head back to Earth yet again. That quickly becomes far more difficult than they expect when the TARDIS unexpectedly breaks down.
Author's notes: Thanks to ginamak for betaing so so well and with the usual crazy efficiency!
Episode 11 of a virtual series at the_altverse, following No Place Like Houm last week.
Virtual Series Masterlist
Part 1 || Part 2
Rose's heart broke for the Doctor and she reached forward to pull him into another hug. “No you didn’t,” she insisted. Then she frowned as a thought occurred to her properly for the first time. “What did?”
“Sorry, what?” He pulled back and frowned.
“What did this? Why did this happen?” she asked. “The TARDIS is new, but she’s still safe or you’d never have let us travel. This isn’t just her getting tired. And she’s been breaking down a lot, recently. Flying wrong, I mean. Even when we’re careful.”
The Doctor looked back to the console and ran a hand through his hair, then tugged off his glasses.
“The thought had occurred to me,” he admitted. “I don’t know. You’re right, of course: some of what’s happened I’ve put down to age and inexperience but some of it can’t be. There’s just too much. This TARDIS has been grown from scratch around the two of us. I have my moments, but we should be the universe’s best pilots for her.”
“So let’s think this through,” said Rose, tugging the Doctor over to the console. “What did we do?” She prodded him around to his part and stood where she had been. “You put the coordinates in, yeah?”
“Yup,” he said, miming doing so.
“Did you check them?”
He thought for a second. “Not exactly,” he said. “I put them in and looked up at the screen-” he pulled the screen around to him, “-and the destination was displayed there.”
“What did it say?”
“Tyler mansion, four weeks since we last went there.”
She blinked. “It said that?”
He smiled and shrugged. “The four weeks bit was in Gallifreyan and was a lot more elegant. Like I said: you lot just don’t have the vocabulary.”
“OK, then what did you do?”
“Prepared the time track shift, while you-”
“Stabilised the deceleration,” she filled in, flipping a few dead switches to demonstrate.
“Then I set us going,” he said. “And she broke.”
“OK,” said Rose slowly, moving around to join him. “When you say that, what exactly does that mean?”
He went through the motions, before tapping the final lever that she remembered him flipping. That had been when everything had gone wrong.
“You’ve checked all of those switches and stuff.”
“As best I can,” he said with a nod. “Some of the components were a little damaged in the fire, but there didn’t seem to be anything wrong.”
Rose leaned back against the seat and studied the console.
“Well what about the TARDIS herself?” she said at last. “Pressing all those buttons is like talking to her, isn’t it? What did you tell her to do? And what should she have done?”
The Doctor tugged an earlobe. “Translating button pressing into English,” he murmured. “Now there’s a fun task.” She pulled a face at him and he smiled. “Quite simply, I basically just told her to head for Jackie’s,” he said. “Well... to follow the yellow brick road which I’d just laid out for her all nicely. Barring some minor work from us to stabilise things, of course. But we did all of the major stuff before she... broke down.”
“A pothole in the yellow brick road?” suggested Rose.
He shook his head. “One of the things we checked for before we sent her going. This lever after all the difficult work.”
“So either she ran into the Wicked Witch, or the gates to the Emerald City were locked,” said Rose.
“This metaphor...” The Doctor grinned briefly and shook his head, then leaned back next to her. “It’s oddly appropriate, actually. Although possibly something of a simplification.”
“You don’t say,” murmured Rose, which got her a poke in the ribs.
“Anyway, the idea of a... Wicked Witch doesn’t hold water. The TARDIS might be young, but even the sorts of beings that could seek to control her would need to physically be inside. Even if there does exist a being that could conceal itself from the various safeguards and get in here, why would it trap itself with us?”
“D’you mean the gates to the Emerald City are...?” She trailed off, realising the implication. “There’s something wrong with Earth?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t. It could just be something preventing the TARDIS from landing. It could just be an innocuous accident.”
“Or it could be someone on Earth after us, or some sort of invasion, or anything!”
The Doctor hesitated for a moment before ducking down and scrambling across the floor of the TARDIS. When he returned, he held the sonic in one hand and her mobile in the other. The sonic he pocketed and the phone he held out.
“Give her a ring.”
She stared at the phone for a second, vaguely remembering she’d thrown it away days before. “I can’t. What- How- What would I say?”
The Doctor considered this for a moment before flipping open her phone and writing a text. His tongue poked out of his mouth as he concentrated and she felt herself smile a little..
“‘Getting some funny readings from the TARDIS. Is everything OK back there? Text back. R and D’,” he read out.
She smiled and nodded. “Surprisingly tactful for you.”
He grinned. “You’re rubbing off on me.”
“Yeah, you’re texting my mother and everything.”
He pulled a face, closed the phone and handed the phone to her. She shoved it in the pocket of her sweatshirt, not sure if she wanted a reply or not.
Rose flicked one of the switches on the TARDIS absently. It felt very wrong being in here when she was so quiet and dark. She could remember the first time they’d landed in this universe and the Doctor’s panic that the TARDIS had died. There’d been one tiny little power cell then that was still lit, but now there didn’t seem to be even that.
This wasn’t death, though - the Doctor had assured her of that. He’d said it was something more akin to mechanical failure: something that he might have been able to fix easily with an older TARDIS. The older TARDIS would have been more able to fix herself and the Doctor would have had more equipment to do it. Now he couldn’t even properly diagnose the problem and because of that, couldn’t tell her whether their ship could even be fixed.
The Doctor had returned to fiddling, although this time with the console itself. He seemed to be rechecking all the connections in the materialisation process. There was still a hope that something had gone wrong there that could be easily fixed. Rose squeezed his arm and moved back over to her spot by the door.
She swung the telescope around to see the TARDIS constellation.
Then she stared.
Snatching up her notebook, she leaned around the telescope to minutely adjust the angle. She peered through it again, careful not to disturb anything.
The top left of the four that made up the body of the TARDIS was where it had been. Exactly the same spot, in fact. She checked and rechecked the angles and measurements, aware that her telescope was nothing more than a cardboard tube with a couple of lenses. Bottom left was also identically positioned. So were the two stars on the right hand side.
If those were all in the same place, then why had the star that had been brightly shining half way between the two top corners moved? The light on top of the TARDIS was not where it should be.
It had moved. Absolutely, definitely in a different place. And was it... brighter?
She leaned back and shook her head, screwing shut her eyes. Was she going mad? Was all this cold and dark becoming too much for her? Or was this all a dream?
Opening her eyes she leaned forward to check again.
It had moved again. Something was out there.
She reached behind her and grabbed the Doctor’s mobile, which seemed to be held together mostly by electrical tape and had a few wires sticking out. Each number combination was a different channel to listen in on, he’d told her, and it was cycling through the top ten most likely to be used once every minute.
Rose looked over at the Doctor, who seemed occupied. So she shrugged to herself and decided they didn’t really have anything to lose.
Channel eleven was silent. As was twelve. She kept pressing buttons, going up by one every time and listening to a few seconds of silence. Even as she did this, she kept one eye on the moving shape in the telescope. It was definitely brighter than it had been.
When she hit the button for channel twenty-eight, suddenly the phone burst into life.
“-read me? I repeat, this is Captain Gethro of the SES Durannis. Do you have oxygen? Please identify yourselves. Do you read me?” The voice was the most welcome thing she’d heard in days.
Rose burst out into shocked laugher in the silence that followed. The Doctor appeared by her side staring at the phone incredulously.
“This is Rose - Rose Tyler - of the TARDIS,” Rose half shouted into the phone. “Reading you loud and clear! Yes, we’ve got air, but the rest of our systems are down. What about you?”
“We’re heading straight at you, Rose Tyler.”
“I can see!” she said, laughing again. “I’ve got a telescope.”
“We’re a twelve crew ship and our air filters have been permanently damaged,” said Gethro. “Can you assist?”
The Doctor gestured with his hand and she handed over the phone.
“Hello, Captain Gethro,” he said cheerfully, grinning at Rose. “I’m the Doctor. Our air filters should be able to support the crew of your ship with no problem at all. We could probably use some tools to try and fix our engines, though. We’re free floating at the moment. Caution as you approach.”
“Yes, we got your mayday,” replied the Captain. “Twenty minutes to arrival. What kind of docking equipment do you have?”
The Doctor winked at Rose. “Don’t worry about that,” he said, leaning down to peer in the telescope. You’re an SES so you should have a shuttle docking bay, am I correct? We look a lot smaller than we are, so if you can just get us into that using any cranes or clamps.” He paused for a second. “How much air have you got?”
“It’s getting a bit thin,” rasped Gethro.
“Just pull us in and we’ll open our doors,” the Doctor said. “Everyone should be down in the docking bay.”
“Very good. Stand by for my instructions.”
“Aye, aye, captain!” he replied, lowering the phone and beaming at Rose.
She flung her arms around him. “We’re safe. Oh my god, we’re really safe!”
He laughed as he hugged her back. “That we are,” he agreed. “Never doubted it for a minute!” She giggled and held onto him and then pulled back to give him a proper kiss. They’d made it!
The phone buzzed into life again making them pull apart.
“Rose, Doctor,” came Gethro’s voice. “Our scanners are picking up some sort of... box?”
“Don’t worry, Captain,” called Rose, still smiling broadly. “It’s better than it looks. If the Doctor says we’ve got air for you, then we’ve got air!”
~*~
When the SES Durannis got closer, Rose began to realise how truly big it was. It towered above the TARDIS at maybe ten storeys high and as long as a cruise ship. No doubt it had once been sleek and silver, but it showed the wear and tear of space travel, with many areas dented and tarnished and a rather large burned area that seemed to have been hastily patched over.
“Twelve people?” she said doubtfully as she stared up at the immense size in wonder.
The Doctor leaned out over her shoulder and took in the ship. “Probably some robots, too. Depending on the era, maybe some... non-people,” he scratched his neck awkwardly.
“Slaves you mean?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. “The Ood?”
He looked apologetic. “Maybe, I don’t know,” he said. “Might just be really smart computers. SES means a Scientific Expeditionary Ship in your future, but it’s used over a long period of time so I can’t even guess what they’re doing or who their crew is.” He looked back up at the colossal metal structure. “It’s very... shiny.” He tapped his top lip with his tongue. “It’s certainly a striking design.”
“Do you know the era?” she asked.
“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “But I’ve got an idea or two...”
Before he could say anything further, Gethro was back on the line.
“You’ll soon be in front of the dock,” she said. “Ryling is suited up to cross to you and attach you so we can pull you in.” She paused. “She’s got two minutes of air.”
“Get her over here quickly, then,” ordered Rose. “We’ve got an atmospheric shell.”
Thirty seconds passed as they drifted alongside the ship before the metal gave way to a dock that seemed almost large enough for a jet plane. Inside, Rose could see a couple of small figures. She could just make out that they seemed to be dressed in overalls of some kind despite the apparent hole in their ship. The Durannis must have a shell like their own.
One figure was already out of the ship, tethered to it by a strong line. The spacesuit was slimmer and less bulky even than the suit the Doctor had worn the once on Krop Tor. The helmet made the head of the figure look proportionally large but as the gap closed, Rose could see that she was human.
She and the Doctor had pushed aside pillows and books and her telescope and now they stood by the door, arms outstretched. Ryling had a pack attached to her back for manoeuvrability and she drove herself forward to the TARDIS with a short burst of power. However the jetpack thing worked, there was no smoke or fire.
Rose gripped one of Ryling’s hands and the Doctor the other and they tugged her into the TARDIS’s gravity. She almost fell, but they steadied her.
Quick as a flash, Ryling pulled off her helmet and took a couple of deep gasping breaths.
“You’ve got air!” she said.
The Doctor took the helmet from her and unclipped the line from her belt. He had a contemplative look on his face, but he moved away to attach the line to the console itself.
“You OK?” Rose asked. Ryling had dark, close-cropped hair in a style Rose would have called boyish, and either no makeup at all or very little. She seemed to be sizing Rose up the same way Rose was her, but she looked away quickly, a little embarrassed.
She seemed to take in the TARDIS for the first time and Rose grinned as Ryling’s eyes widened. Even in the semi darkness (and the light from the Durannis made the console room brighter than Rose had seen in days), the ship was still impressive. Whenever it was, apparently things being bigger on the inside was not common technology.
The Doctor skipped back over to them and took Rose’s hand. “All done,” he said.
“Captain Gethro, please pull us in!” said Rose.
“Ryling?” asked Gethro, a note of hesitation in her voice for the first time.
Rose nudged the young woman, who seemed to jump out of it. She tapped a button on one wrist as she stared around her. “Captain, you should see this place, it’s...” She trailed off.
“More impressive than it looks,” filled in the Doctor.
“We’re bringing you in,” said Gethro.
The sudden jerk made Rose stumble. She’d grown so used to the complete stillness that it took her a moment to find her feet. The three of them moved over to the door to watch the almost painfully slow process.
Once they got within ten feet, the Durannis extended its ramps out underneath the TARDIS and pulled them down them, keeping them on the floor. It seemed to go a bit faster than Rose was expecting, with the slow speed they’d been reeled in.
“Gravity Gradient,” murmured the Doctor. “The TARDIS is too small on the outside to make it worthwhile, so once you cross the threshold you’re in full gravity. Ships this size need to gradually increase it so nothing crashes.”
She nodded as they bumped into place. Even from where she was standing she could feel the stuffiness of the air and shuddered. That could have been her and the Doctor.
The Doctor had stepped back inside the TARDIS and stuffed himself in the roundel again. She guessed he was keeping an eye on the air filters. She left him to it and stepped outside into the dock of the Durannis. The overhead lights couldn’t be on more than normal but they burned her eyes and she winced and looked down.
The ship was not new, that much she’d been able to tell from inspecting the outside. It was, however, very futuristic looking. She wondered how far forward they were. Was this where they were stuck? In one corner of the dock was a small shuttle, about the size of a bus with small wings neatly folded up to save space. The rest of it was empty of anything recognisable, but there were pipes and wires and computer banks around the walls. A large green door in the back was big enough for the shuttle itself to go through. At the sides there were smaller human sized doors.
The crew were standing around and staring at her. Far too used to this to be embarrassed for the fact that she was still bundled up in pyjamas and her tracksuit bottoms and sweatshirt, she instead stared back with impunity. Except one of the men, all of them - men and women alike - sported short hair. They all wore practical looking clothes: overalls and similar. Most of them wore jewellery and make up and several had brightly coloured patches on their clothes as well as the rank designation on upper arms. The bloke with the longer hair and three of the others had multiple facial tattoos. Most of them seemed to be breathing rather hard.
“Rose Tyler?” One of the women stepped out from the back. “Captain Gethro.”
“Just Rose is fine,” Rose replied, nodding to the captain. She hesitated for a second, trying to work out whether to extend a hand. Gethro seemed to also be holding back, so they both stared awkwardly.
“Hello there!” said the Doctor, inserting himself in between them, shaking Gethro’s hand vigorously and then bouncing off to the nearest side of the dock. “Nice to meet you all. I’m the Doctor, by the way. Oxygen filters are holding. I’ll just raise all the airtight barriers-”
He was at the computer screen with his glasses on and sonic out before anyone could move. Rose could just see a blur of images cross the screen before Gethro dashed over. She neatly stepped in the way to ever-so-politely stop him. He winked at Rose and she wondered what he’d seen.
“There’s no need,” Gethro said firmly. “You’ve been more than helpful. I hope we might be able to purchase one of your filters.”
“Oh, probably,” said the Doctor with a wave of his hand. He was now inspecting the wall. “This ship is an absolute beauty, by the way. Love the integrated computer system.” Rose saw the crew were hovering anxiously, eyes moving between Gethro and the Doctor. There was something here they were hiding. She sidled up to the Doctor on seeing that the others seemed too frozen in place to stop them.
“Just remember that we kind of need their help,” she muttered.
“And they need ours,” he replied cheerfully, apparently oblivious to the upset he was causing. Then he spun around to Gethro again. “What sort of engine is this, hmm?”
“It’s...” Gethro hesitated and glanced at the longer haired man. “It’s experimental technology, you won’t have heard of it.”
“Oh yes?” said the Doctor, not batting an eyelash. “That’s odd, because it looks to me like a Vortex Distillation Line-Bending Intelligence with Neuro-Link that’s powered by a Universal Lepton Converter.” He pulled off his glasses and smiled around at them. “Am I right or am I right?”
Gethro stuttered incoherently and the rest of the crew seemed to draw together.
“This causes a bit of a problem for us, you know,” continued the Doctor. He leaned against the wall.
“Doctor...” Rose muttered desperately, seeing the fear in Gethro’s eyes. They were outnumbered and the crew were between them and the TARDIS.
“Oh yes,” he said. “A real stinker of a problem. You see, I was really hoping, when we got rescued, someone would be able to tell me what year it was. But if you lot have landed here accidentally too, then you haven’t got a clue, have you?”
Gethro’s jaw dropped. “You’re time travellers?” she demanded.
“Yup!” he said.
“That’s a time machine?” Her scepticism was obvious.
“Hey now!” complained the Doctor. “That is providing enough oxygen for the entirety of the SES Durannis. Don’t knock her!”
Rose snorted. Trust the Doctor...
“How do you know they got here by accident?” she demanded.
“Hang on a sec,” said Gethro, before the Doctor could explain. “I think we need to have a talk. Frejan, with me. The rest of you can go about your duties.” She gestured for the Doctor and Rose to follow her. Rose spared a final glance for the TARDIS, but she was still dark. The long-haired man, Frejan, also looked at her with fascinated disbelief. He didn’t say anything, though, instead following Gethro out. The Doctor extended a hand to Rose and they brought up the rear of the small party.
They didn’t go far into the ship. There was a small meeting room with a table and six chairs just down the corridor from the dock. The walls were covered in sketches and blueprints pinned up in layers. The air was still stuffy in here and Rose left the door open as she entered. Gethro gestured for them to sit and moved to a machine in the wall.
“Water, glaphe juice or duronten?”
The Doctor leaned in. “Sort of like coconut juice and sort of like iced coffee,” he translated.
“Duronten,” said Rose straight away. “And water. Please.” She added the last a little guiltily, but Gethro smiled sympathetically.
“You were running low, you said?”
“God yes,” said Rose. “I haven’t had a shower in days.”
“I’m sure they can tell,” said the Doctor with a grin. She elbowed him. “Just water for me, ta,” he added.
The duronten was sweet and cold and Rose didn’t think she’d ever had anything quite so nice. She gulped it down eagerly and made short work of the water too. Gethro refilled both cups and then sat down herself.
“Tell us what you know,” she said.
“I think I’ve figured out most of it,” said the Doctor cheerfully. “Three days ago, or thereabouts, you made a time jump. Possibly a space one as well, but definitely time jump. I don’t know where you wanted to go, but your ship was either heading from the twenty-first century or to there. Where we were going, I mean, since I don’t know what date system you use. As best I can tell, our ships crashed.”
“Your ship caused a lot of damage if that’s the case,” said Frejan, speaking for the first time. He sounded more apprehensive than angry.
“So did yours,” said Rose.
The Doctor nodded. “We have our air, some limited water filtering capabilities and a very weak shield from attack. I think some of the- my- our ship’s self-repair systems are working, but I don’t have the equipment to diagnose the problem or work with her.”
“We lost our air filters,” said Gethro. “Fortunately the size of the ship and our emergency systems meant we could last some time. Initially we lost all our engines, too, and the past few days have been spent drifting and repairing and hoping.”
“Yeah, know the feeling,” said the Doctor.
“When did you pick up our signal?” asked Rose.
“Only yesterday,” said Gethro. “But it wasn’t until a few hours ago that the engines were operational.”
“I still don’t understand the crash,” said Frejan. “There are safeguards against us travelling the same route.”
“Safeguards fail,” said the Doctor. “But it’s your engine. Well, our engines. They work very similarly. Travelling through the time vortex is a popular method of doing things, but the method of travel and the artificial intelligence behind your ship - even with a neuro-link too - are so similar to mine. I suspect they ran through the same spacetime and things got rather mixed up.”
“But how can you have the same ship?” demanded Frejan. “This is a one-of-a-kind.”
“Frejan is the chief developer,” murmured Gethro.
“Time travel!” said the Doctor cheerfully. “Do Rose and I look like we’re a competing company or planet or something? We’re on our hols. Maybe the SES Durannis goes on to become the blueprint for every time ship. Maybe our ship was from someone who developed it in parallel. I don’t know. I don’t pay much attention to history, me. It’s hard enough being the only mechanic on a time machine.” He winked at Rose.
Frejan made to speak again, but stopped himself.
The Doctor took another slurp of his water.”Captain Gethro, Frejan, I believe I should be able to either fix your air filters or give you one of mine. In return, I think you should have the tools and parts on board for me to the fix the TARDIS. Then I would recommend we go our separate ways and pretend we’ve never seen each other or one of you might turn out to be one of Rose’s grandparents!”
Rose occupied herself with finishing her second cup of duronten. The effects of the caffeine - or whatever it was - were making her feel more alert than she had done in days. She was also relieved: the Doctor might be lying through his teeth about everything, but he seemed to be truthful about his ability to fix the TARDIS.
“I think,” said Gethro, “that that seems like the best idea.” She paused and rubbed one of her eyebrows. “I’ll work out something to tell- our bosses. Frejan, will you make sure they are provided for?”
The Doctor jumped to his feet and looked over to Rose. “You going to come and help?” he offered.
Rose considered for a second. She could probably learn all sorts about TARDIS maintenance that would be very useful.
Then she shook her head. “I’m not a mechanic and I would give anything for a shower of some sort.”
He grinned and waved as he followed Frejan out the door.
Gethro spoke into her comms. “Ryling, we’re in L ninety-four. Can you come and escort Rose to D deck and find her a cabin and some fresh clothes.”
“On my way, Captain,” came the instant response.
Ryling arrived very quickly. She’d changed out of the spacesuit and into some purple overalls, although they weren’t significantly easier to move in. She nodded for Rose to follow her.
“Is Ryling your first name?” asked Rose as they headed down the corridor.
The young woman blinked at her.
“Right,” said Rose. “Different naming conventions. But it’s not rude to call you it or anything? I’m not a captain or anything, you know.”
Ryling smiled. “It’s fine,” she said. “Rose, right?” Rose nodded. Ryling hesitated for a few moments before speaking again. “Everyone’s saying you’re from the future.”
“Are they?” said Rose, biting her lip. “We might be. I probably shouldn’t say.” Mostly because she wasn’t entirely sure what elaborate lies the Doctor was constructing. There was no way he’d compare the TARDIS to this ship quite so politely if he were being honest. “What you doing all the way out here, then? You I mean, not the ship.”
“I’m a trainee mechanic with... a research company,” she said. She looked almost apologetic and Rose laughed.
“They tell you what you’re supposed to say?”
“We had three days of time travel training,” said Ryling. “I thought it was all rubbish, you know. We were supposed to just travel through space and not land anywhere. I guess it was useful after all.”
They climbed into a lift, which Ryling sent on its way upwards, but adjusted the settings as she did so.
“We don’t want to go too quick,” she said. “The air’s probably still thin up here.”
Rose winced in anticipation as they emerged into the corridor on the higher deck, but it wasn’t as bad as she’d been expecting. The TARDIS was working fast, then.
“You should’ve seen me when I first started,” she told Ryling. “I’d’ve loved some training. I was just sort of thrown into it. And the Doctor knows everything, so he expected me to.”
Ryling laughed. “My partner’s the same,” she said. “She’s back on- back... where we came from. She just gets it. I’m always telling her there’s a reason I’m a mechanic and she’s a temporal engineer.”
Rose laughed as they reached a door, which Ryling pushed open. They both held back for a few moments, letting the air circulate properly.
“I’m learning,” said Rose. “The TARDIS is hard work, though.” She glanced into the room and decided she could probably breathe. “If you’re a mechanic, you’ve got things to rush off to, right?”
“A few,” admitted Ryling. “I’ll find you some new clothes and then I’d better be off. Can you find your way back to the dock?”
Rose glanced down the corridor they’d come from and shrugged. “Probably,” she said, and patted her pocket. “I’ve got my phone, so I’ll call the Doctor if I get lost.”
Ryling smiled. “The cabin numbers are on the doors.”
The shower was the best one Rose had ever had, even if it did take her a couple of minutes to figure out how to turn it on and the water was cold and strongly smelling of chlorine. When she emerged, there was a thick, dark green shirt and black trousers of a similar fabric waiting for her. She pulled them and her slippers on, then grabbed her own clothes into a bundle and hurried downstairs to the dock.
There were lights in the TARDIS. That was the first thing she noticed as she walked in. The doors were still wide open and most of the crew of the Durannis scrambled around. They seemed to be working on both the TARDIS and their own air system. Gethro wasn’t there, and neither were another couple, but Rose counted nine present including Ryling and Frejan.
The Doctor was jumping around like a lunatic, calling orders at people and seeming to be trying to fix everything with his sonic. He’d shed his jumper and scarf, so was now just in suit trousers and several shirts. It suited him, she thought with a smile, but he could definitely use a shave.
She stepped down towards him and he looked up to see her and beamed.
“We’re going to be OK!” he told her cheerfully. “The parts don’t perfectly match up, of course, but they’ll get us back to your mum’s and, given time, they’ll grow to fit right in.”
She smiled, then nodded for him to follow her into the TARDIS. One of the other crew members was in there but he didn’t seem to be doing anything. Fortunately, he looked a bit embarrassed to be caught staring and hurried out without Rose having to say anything.
Leaning over the console, she beckoned the Doctor in.
“What aren’t you telling them?”
His eyes widened in mock innocence.
She raised her eyebrows.
“Their ship really is similar to the TARDIS in some respects,” he replied quietly. “In the same way a toy car is similar to a Porsche. They’re mimicking but it’s not a living ship or anything like that. And we did cross timelines rather unfortunately, just like I said. The TARDIS has safeguards for that, though. Even this young, she’s too smart to be caught out.”
“So what happened?” He glanced away. “Doctor, tell me.”
“The doors to the Emerald City were locked,” he said.
She stared. “My family-“
“Nothing like that,” he interrupted. “There’s something there giving us trouble. I think it’s why we’ve been flying so far off course. Someone or something on twenty-first century Earth is trying to make our lives difficult. Whatever it is has been quiet and subtle enough that we hardly noticed anything was wrong. Not until a huge great whopper of a ship that was just similar enough to the TARDIS, mechanically speaking anyway, got in the way and caused things to spark.”
“We should talk to Dad,” said Rose, grabbing her phone, then she hesitated. “Shouldn’t we? Torchwood under him... it’s good. It’s not like in the other universe.”
The Doctor shrugged. “You worked there.”
“It’s just... Torchwood might be the sort of place that could do this sort of thing,” she said. “What if there’s someone there?”
She eyed the Doctor, who was keeping his face carefully blank, much to her annoyance. She never knew what he thought about Torchwood. When she’d first told him she was working there on that dreadful day on Bad Wolf Bay, he’d seemed so proud. Since he’d arrived in this universe, though, he’d seemed to swing between contempt for them, pride for her and completely ignoring the issue. Rose got the feeling at least some of his resentment was because they tried to pay him to save the world. Still, right now she could have used his opinion.
Sighing, she replaced the phone in her pocket.
“We should be able to get back, yeah?” she said.
“Soon as we’re done here,” he said, back to his usual cheerful self. “Shouldn’t take too long at all.”
“We’ll talk to Dad about it,” she said firmly. “But ask him not to rush and alert everyone. I’m sure he’ll have someone he can trust.”
The Doctor nodded. “We can look into it a bit from the TARDIS,” he said. “Probably, anyway. Problem is, anyone who’s smart enough to do this, and do it so subtly, is smart enough to hide it from us.”
“I expect we’ll run into ‘em sooner or later,” said Rose darkly.
“Ye-es,” murmured the Doctor. “Once we’re clear of here, maybe we should keep the doors shut.”
Both of them turned to glance out of the doors at the crew that they could see. Of course they had no choice: they needed the help and they couldn’t let any of this lot suffocate. They just weren’t usually so quick to leave the TARDIS’s doors hanging open when they left the room. Rose shivered. Not being able to trust her colleagues because someone on Earth was trying to harm the TARDIS bothered her.
“Don’t worry,” said the Doctor quietly, nudging her arm. “It’ll work out OK.”
He extended a hand to her with a smile and she took it. Then he tugged her over to the doors of the TARDIS to help out again.
She smiled, gave his hand one last squeeze and headed over to Ryling, deciding she might as well offer to help out.
~*~
Later - much later - after eating some rather sugary food and working until what must have been stupid hours in the morning while drinking duronten and actual coffee, and finally, saying goodbyes and thank yous and promising to forget they’d ever met, Rose and the Doctor retreated to the TARDIS.
She bundled him into the shower straight away. Then she cleared up the mess from the console room floor and headed back to their room. The Doctor was still in the shower, of course. She caught a glance of herself in the mirror and decided if she showed up at home looking like this, her mum would have a thing or two to say. Something very normal and twenty-first century was probably the way to go.
Her phone started to ring as she was pulling on her socks and she stared at it for a few seconds. The text message to her mother! She’d completely forgotten about that.
She dove across the bed and grabbed it, seeing that her father was calling before she answered.
“Dad? What is it? Is everything OK?”
“Rose, you need to get back here straight away.”
“Yeah, we’re coming anyway,” she said. “Are you OK? What about Mum and Tony?”
“There’s a bomb,” he answered. “Does the name Bob Charila mean anything to you?”
“Not a bit. Wh-?”
“He’s asking for you and the Doctor personally. Get back here now!”
“’Course, we’re on our way,” she said, hurrying around the bed to the bathroom door.
“Look, love, I’ve got to go. Straight to the tower, please.” With that, he hung up.
Rose barged into the bathroom and was hit by a cloud of steam. The Doctor poked his now clean-shaven head out from the screen.
“Come to join me?” he asked hopefully, before noticing her panicked expression. “What is it?”
“Dad just called,” she said, waving her phone. “We need to get to Canary Wharf right now.”
The Doctor shut off the shower and grabbed a couple of towels hurriedly. “What is it?”
“He said something about a bomb. I don’t know the details. But apparently some guy named Bob Charila’s been asking for us.”
The Doctor stopped in the doorway to the bathroom and stared at her. “Bob what?”
“Charila, I think,” she said. “I don’t know him. Do you?”
“Never heard of him,” said the Doctor.
Out in the bedroom he towelled himself mostly dry and began to pull on another suit. Rose grabbed her boots and put them on, pocketing her phone and stepping over to the dresser to swipe on a bit of mascara.
It didn’t take the Doctor much longer to get ready and together they hurried to the console room, him still doing his tie as they walked. He grabbed his own phone from the top of the console itself and yoinked out all the wires that had been connecting it to whatever strange components had made up his listening device.
“On we go?” he said to Rose.
“We’d better!” she said.
“After this visit, I bet I’m really going to need a holiday,” he said. “And not just because of Jackie. Makes a change, doesn’t it?”
Rose bit her lip and moved around the console, trying not to worry. This time, it had to work. They were needed at home now. And the TARDIS couldn’t break down again, could she?
She glanced over to the Doctor, whose hand was hesitating over the final lever. He caught her eye and smiled suddenly.
“Where’s the fun if you don’t take risks?”
He pulled the lever with gusto.
The centre column rose and fell with the familiar grating noise.
“Back we go, Rose! And who knows what’s there!”
Author: shinyopals
Rating: PG
Pairing: Rose/Ten II
Summary: Still reeling from the events in Alexandria and the subsequent strain on their relationship, the Doctor and Rose try to head back to Earth yet again. That quickly becomes far more difficult than they expect when the TARDIS unexpectedly breaks down.
Author's notes: Thanks to ginamak for betaing so so well and with the usual crazy efficiency!
Episode 11 of a virtual series at the_altverse, following No Place Like Houm last week.
Virtual Series Masterlist
Part 1 || Part 2
Rose's heart broke for the Doctor and she reached forward to pull him into another hug. “No you didn’t,” she insisted. Then she frowned as a thought occurred to her properly for the first time. “What did?”
“Sorry, what?” He pulled back and frowned.
“What did this? Why did this happen?” she asked. “The TARDIS is new, but she’s still safe or you’d never have let us travel. This isn’t just her getting tired. And she’s been breaking down a lot, recently. Flying wrong, I mean. Even when we’re careful.”
The Doctor looked back to the console and ran a hand through his hair, then tugged off his glasses.
“The thought had occurred to me,” he admitted. “I don’t know. You’re right, of course: some of what’s happened I’ve put down to age and inexperience but some of it can’t be. There’s just too much. This TARDIS has been grown from scratch around the two of us. I have my moments, but we should be the universe’s best pilots for her.”
“So let’s think this through,” said Rose, tugging the Doctor over to the console. “What did we do?” She prodded him around to his part and stood where she had been. “You put the coordinates in, yeah?”
“Yup,” he said, miming doing so.
“Did you check them?”
He thought for a second. “Not exactly,” he said. “I put them in and looked up at the screen-” he pulled the screen around to him, “-and the destination was displayed there.”
“What did it say?”
“Tyler mansion, four weeks since we last went there.”
She blinked. “It said that?”
He smiled and shrugged. “The four weeks bit was in Gallifreyan and was a lot more elegant. Like I said: you lot just don’t have the vocabulary.”
“OK, then what did you do?”
“Prepared the time track shift, while you-”
“Stabilised the deceleration,” she filled in, flipping a few dead switches to demonstrate.
“Then I set us going,” he said. “And she broke.”
“OK,” said Rose slowly, moving around to join him. “When you say that, what exactly does that mean?”
He went through the motions, before tapping the final lever that she remembered him flipping. That had been when everything had gone wrong.
“You’ve checked all of those switches and stuff.”
“As best I can,” he said with a nod. “Some of the components were a little damaged in the fire, but there didn’t seem to be anything wrong.”
Rose leaned back against the seat and studied the console.
“Well what about the TARDIS herself?” she said at last. “Pressing all those buttons is like talking to her, isn’t it? What did you tell her to do? And what should she have done?”
The Doctor tugged an earlobe. “Translating button pressing into English,” he murmured. “Now there’s a fun task.” She pulled a face at him and he smiled. “Quite simply, I basically just told her to head for Jackie’s,” he said. “Well... to follow the yellow brick road which I’d just laid out for her all nicely. Barring some minor work from us to stabilise things, of course. But we did all of the major stuff before she... broke down.”
“A pothole in the yellow brick road?” suggested Rose.
He shook his head. “One of the things we checked for before we sent her going. This lever after all the difficult work.”
“So either she ran into the Wicked Witch, or the gates to the Emerald City were locked,” said Rose.
“This metaphor...” The Doctor grinned briefly and shook his head, then leaned back next to her. “It’s oddly appropriate, actually. Although possibly something of a simplification.”
“You don’t say,” murmured Rose, which got her a poke in the ribs.
“Anyway, the idea of a... Wicked Witch doesn’t hold water. The TARDIS might be young, but even the sorts of beings that could seek to control her would need to physically be inside. Even if there does exist a being that could conceal itself from the various safeguards and get in here, why would it trap itself with us?”
“D’you mean the gates to the Emerald City are...?” She trailed off, realising the implication. “There’s something wrong with Earth?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t. It could just be something preventing the TARDIS from landing. It could just be an innocuous accident.”
“Or it could be someone on Earth after us, or some sort of invasion, or anything!”
The Doctor hesitated for a moment before ducking down and scrambling across the floor of the TARDIS. When he returned, he held the sonic in one hand and her mobile in the other. The sonic he pocketed and the phone he held out.
“Give her a ring.”
She stared at the phone for a second, vaguely remembering she’d thrown it away days before. “I can’t. What- How- What would I say?”
The Doctor considered this for a moment before flipping open her phone and writing a text. His tongue poked out of his mouth as he concentrated and she felt herself smile a little..
“‘Getting some funny readings from the TARDIS. Is everything OK back there? Text back. R and D’,” he read out.
She smiled and nodded. “Surprisingly tactful for you.”
He grinned. “You’re rubbing off on me.”
“Yeah, you’re texting my mother and everything.”
He pulled a face, closed the phone and handed the phone to her. She shoved it in the pocket of her sweatshirt, not sure if she wanted a reply or not.
Rose flicked one of the switches on the TARDIS absently. It felt very wrong being in here when she was so quiet and dark. She could remember the first time they’d landed in this universe and the Doctor’s panic that the TARDIS had died. There’d been one tiny little power cell then that was still lit, but now there didn’t seem to be even that.
This wasn’t death, though - the Doctor had assured her of that. He’d said it was something more akin to mechanical failure: something that he might have been able to fix easily with an older TARDIS. The older TARDIS would have been more able to fix herself and the Doctor would have had more equipment to do it. Now he couldn’t even properly diagnose the problem and because of that, couldn’t tell her whether their ship could even be fixed.
The Doctor had returned to fiddling, although this time with the console itself. He seemed to be rechecking all the connections in the materialisation process. There was still a hope that something had gone wrong there that could be easily fixed. Rose squeezed his arm and moved back over to her spot by the door.
She swung the telescope around to see the TARDIS constellation.
Then she stared.
Snatching up her notebook, she leaned around the telescope to minutely adjust the angle. She peered through it again, careful not to disturb anything.
The top left of the four that made up the body of the TARDIS was where it had been. Exactly the same spot, in fact. She checked and rechecked the angles and measurements, aware that her telescope was nothing more than a cardboard tube with a couple of lenses. Bottom left was also identically positioned. So were the two stars on the right hand side.
If those were all in the same place, then why had the star that had been brightly shining half way between the two top corners moved? The light on top of the TARDIS was not where it should be.
It had moved. Absolutely, definitely in a different place. And was it... brighter?
She leaned back and shook her head, screwing shut her eyes. Was she going mad? Was all this cold and dark becoming too much for her? Or was this all a dream?
Opening her eyes she leaned forward to check again.
It had moved again. Something was out there.
She reached behind her and grabbed the Doctor’s mobile, which seemed to be held together mostly by electrical tape and had a few wires sticking out. Each number combination was a different channel to listen in on, he’d told her, and it was cycling through the top ten most likely to be used once every minute.
Rose looked over at the Doctor, who seemed occupied. So she shrugged to herself and decided they didn’t really have anything to lose.
Channel eleven was silent. As was twelve. She kept pressing buttons, going up by one every time and listening to a few seconds of silence. Even as she did this, she kept one eye on the moving shape in the telescope. It was definitely brighter than it had been.
When she hit the button for channel twenty-eight, suddenly the phone burst into life.
“-read me? I repeat, this is Captain Gethro of the SES Durannis. Do you have oxygen? Please identify yourselves. Do you read me?” The voice was the most welcome thing she’d heard in days.
Rose burst out into shocked laugher in the silence that followed. The Doctor appeared by her side staring at the phone incredulously.
“This is Rose - Rose Tyler - of the TARDIS,” Rose half shouted into the phone. “Reading you loud and clear! Yes, we’ve got air, but the rest of our systems are down. What about you?”
“We’re heading straight at you, Rose Tyler.”
“I can see!” she said, laughing again. “I’ve got a telescope.”
“We’re a twelve crew ship and our air filters have been permanently damaged,” said Gethro. “Can you assist?”
The Doctor gestured with his hand and she handed over the phone.
“Hello, Captain Gethro,” he said cheerfully, grinning at Rose. “I’m the Doctor. Our air filters should be able to support the crew of your ship with no problem at all. We could probably use some tools to try and fix our engines, though. We’re free floating at the moment. Caution as you approach.”
“Yes, we got your mayday,” replied the Captain. “Twenty minutes to arrival. What kind of docking equipment do you have?”
The Doctor winked at Rose. “Don’t worry about that,” he said, leaning down to peer in the telescope. You’re an SES so you should have a shuttle docking bay, am I correct? We look a lot smaller than we are, so if you can just get us into that using any cranes or clamps.” He paused for a second. “How much air have you got?”
“It’s getting a bit thin,” rasped Gethro.
“Just pull us in and we’ll open our doors,” the Doctor said. “Everyone should be down in the docking bay.”
“Very good. Stand by for my instructions.”
“Aye, aye, captain!” he replied, lowering the phone and beaming at Rose.
She flung her arms around him. “We’re safe. Oh my god, we’re really safe!”
He laughed as he hugged her back. “That we are,” he agreed. “Never doubted it for a minute!” She giggled and held onto him and then pulled back to give him a proper kiss. They’d made it!
The phone buzzed into life again making them pull apart.
“Rose, Doctor,” came Gethro’s voice. “Our scanners are picking up some sort of... box?”
“Don’t worry, Captain,” called Rose, still smiling broadly. “It’s better than it looks. If the Doctor says we’ve got air for you, then we’ve got air!”
~*~
When the SES Durannis got closer, Rose began to realise how truly big it was. It towered above the TARDIS at maybe ten storeys high and as long as a cruise ship. No doubt it had once been sleek and silver, but it showed the wear and tear of space travel, with many areas dented and tarnished and a rather large burned area that seemed to have been hastily patched over.
“Twelve people?” she said doubtfully as she stared up at the immense size in wonder.
The Doctor leaned out over her shoulder and took in the ship. “Probably some robots, too. Depending on the era, maybe some... non-people,” he scratched his neck awkwardly.
“Slaves you mean?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. “The Ood?”
He looked apologetic. “Maybe, I don’t know,” he said. “Might just be really smart computers. SES means a Scientific Expeditionary Ship in your future, but it’s used over a long period of time so I can’t even guess what they’re doing or who their crew is.” He looked back up at the colossal metal structure. “It’s very... shiny.” He tapped his top lip with his tongue. “It’s certainly a striking design.”
“Do you know the era?” she asked.
“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “But I’ve got an idea or two...”
Before he could say anything further, Gethro was back on the line.
“You’ll soon be in front of the dock,” she said. “Ryling is suited up to cross to you and attach you so we can pull you in.” She paused. “She’s got two minutes of air.”
“Get her over here quickly, then,” ordered Rose. “We’ve got an atmospheric shell.”
Thirty seconds passed as they drifted alongside the ship before the metal gave way to a dock that seemed almost large enough for a jet plane. Inside, Rose could see a couple of small figures. She could just make out that they seemed to be dressed in overalls of some kind despite the apparent hole in their ship. The Durannis must have a shell like their own.
One figure was already out of the ship, tethered to it by a strong line. The spacesuit was slimmer and less bulky even than the suit the Doctor had worn the once on Krop Tor. The helmet made the head of the figure look proportionally large but as the gap closed, Rose could see that she was human.
She and the Doctor had pushed aside pillows and books and her telescope and now they stood by the door, arms outstretched. Ryling had a pack attached to her back for manoeuvrability and she drove herself forward to the TARDIS with a short burst of power. However the jetpack thing worked, there was no smoke or fire.
Rose gripped one of Ryling’s hands and the Doctor the other and they tugged her into the TARDIS’s gravity. She almost fell, but they steadied her.
Quick as a flash, Ryling pulled off her helmet and took a couple of deep gasping breaths.
“You’ve got air!” she said.
The Doctor took the helmet from her and unclipped the line from her belt. He had a contemplative look on his face, but he moved away to attach the line to the console itself.
“You OK?” Rose asked. Ryling had dark, close-cropped hair in a style Rose would have called boyish, and either no makeup at all or very little. She seemed to be sizing Rose up the same way Rose was her, but she looked away quickly, a little embarrassed.
She seemed to take in the TARDIS for the first time and Rose grinned as Ryling’s eyes widened. Even in the semi darkness (and the light from the Durannis made the console room brighter than Rose had seen in days), the ship was still impressive. Whenever it was, apparently things being bigger on the inside was not common technology.
The Doctor skipped back over to them and took Rose’s hand. “All done,” he said.
“Captain Gethro, please pull us in!” said Rose.
“Ryling?” asked Gethro, a note of hesitation in her voice for the first time.
Rose nudged the young woman, who seemed to jump out of it. She tapped a button on one wrist as she stared around her. “Captain, you should see this place, it’s...” She trailed off.
“More impressive than it looks,” filled in the Doctor.
“We’re bringing you in,” said Gethro.
The sudden jerk made Rose stumble. She’d grown so used to the complete stillness that it took her a moment to find her feet. The three of them moved over to the door to watch the almost painfully slow process.
Once they got within ten feet, the Durannis extended its ramps out underneath the TARDIS and pulled them down them, keeping them on the floor. It seemed to go a bit faster than Rose was expecting, with the slow speed they’d been reeled in.
“Gravity Gradient,” murmured the Doctor. “The TARDIS is too small on the outside to make it worthwhile, so once you cross the threshold you’re in full gravity. Ships this size need to gradually increase it so nothing crashes.”
She nodded as they bumped into place. Even from where she was standing she could feel the stuffiness of the air and shuddered. That could have been her and the Doctor.
The Doctor had stepped back inside the TARDIS and stuffed himself in the roundel again. She guessed he was keeping an eye on the air filters. She left him to it and stepped outside into the dock of the Durannis. The overhead lights couldn’t be on more than normal but they burned her eyes and she winced and looked down.
The ship was not new, that much she’d been able to tell from inspecting the outside. It was, however, very futuristic looking. She wondered how far forward they were. Was this where they were stuck? In one corner of the dock was a small shuttle, about the size of a bus with small wings neatly folded up to save space. The rest of it was empty of anything recognisable, but there were pipes and wires and computer banks around the walls. A large green door in the back was big enough for the shuttle itself to go through. At the sides there were smaller human sized doors.
The crew were standing around and staring at her. Far too used to this to be embarrassed for the fact that she was still bundled up in pyjamas and her tracksuit bottoms and sweatshirt, she instead stared back with impunity. Except one of the men, all of them - men and women alike - sported short hair. They all wore practical looking clothes: overalls and similar. Most of them wore jewellery and make up and several had brightly coloured patches on their clothes as well as the rank designation on upper arms. The bloke with the longer hair and three of the others had multiple facial tattoos. Most of them seemed to be breathing rather hard.
“Rose Tyler?” One of the women stepped out from the back. “Captain Gethro.”
“Just Rose is fine,” Rose replied, nodding to the captain. She hesitated for a second, trying to work out whether to extend a hand. Gethro seemed to also be holding back, so they both stared awkwardly.
“Hello there!” said the Doctor, inserting himself in between them, shaking Gethro’s hand vigorously and then bouncing off to the nearest side of the dock. “Nice to meet you all. I’m the Doctor, by the way. Oxygen filters are holding. I’ll just raise all the airtight barriers-”
He was at the computer screen with his glasses on and sonic out before anyone could move. Rose could just see a blur of images cross the screen before Gethro dashed over. She neatly stepped in the way to ever-so-politely stop him. He winked at Rose and she wondered what he’d seen.
“There’s no need,” Gethro said firmly. “You’ve been more than helpful. I hope we might be able to purchase one of your filters.”
“Oh, probably,” said the Doctor with a wave of his hand. He was now inspecting the wall. “This ship is an absolute beauty, by the way. Love the integrated computer system.” Rose saw the crew were hovering anxiously, eyes moving between Gethro and the Doctor. There was something here they were hiding. She sidled up to the Doctor on seeing that the others seemed too frozen in place to stop them.
“Just remember that we kind of need their help,” she muttered.
“And they need ours,” he replied cheerfully, apparently oblivious to the upset he was causing. Then he spun around to Gethro again. “What sort of engine is this, hmm?”
“It’s...” Gethro hesitated and glanced at the longer haired man. “It’s experimental technology, you won’t have heard of it.”
“Oh yes?” said the Doctor, not batting an eyelash. “That’s odd, because it looks to me like a Vortex Distillation Line-Bending Intelligence with Neuro-Link that’s powered by a Universal Lepton Converter.” He pulled off his glasses and smiled around at them. “Am I right or am I right?”
Gethro stuttered incoherently and the rest of the crew seemed to draw together.
“This causes a bit of a problem for us, you know,” continued the Doctor. He leaned against the wall.
“Doctor...” Rose muttered desperately, seeing the fear in Gethro’s eyes. They were outnumbered and the crew were between them and the TARDIS.
“Oh yes,” he said. “A real stinker of a problem. You see, I was really hoping, when we got rescued, someone would be able to tell me what year it was. But if you lot have landed here accidentally too, then you haven’t got a clue, have you?”
Gethro’s jaw dropped. “You’re time travellers?” she demanded.
“Yup!” he said.
“That’s a time machine?” Her scepticism was obvious.
“Hey now!” complained the Doctor. “That is providing enough oxygen for the entirety of the SES Durannis. Don’t knock her!”
Rose snorted. Trust the Doctor...
“How do you know they got here by accident?” she demanded.
“Hang on a sec,” said Gethro, before the Doctor could explain. “I think we need to have a talk. Frejan, with me. The rest of you can go about your duties.” She gestured for the Doctor and Rose to follow her. Rose spared a final glance for the TARDIS, but she was still dark. The long-haired man, Frejan, also looked at her with fascinated disbelief. He didn’t say anything, though, instead following Gethro out. The Doctor extended a hand to Rose and they brought up the rear of the small party.
They didn’t go far into the ship. There was a small meeting room with a table and six chairs just down the corridor from the dock. The walls were covered in sketches and blueprints pinned up in layers. The air was still stuffy in here and Rose left the door open as she entered. Gethro gestured for them to sit and moved to a machine in the wall.
“Water, glaphe juice or duronten?”
The Doctor leaned in. “Sort of like coconut juice and sort of like iced coffee,” he translated.
“Duronten,” said Rose straight away. “And water. Please.” She added the last a little guiltily, but Gethro smiled sympathetically.
“You were running low, you said?”
“God yes,” said Rose. “I haven’t had a shower in days.”
“I’m sure they can tell,” said the Doctor with a grin. She elbowed him. “Just water for me, ta,” he added.
The duronten was sweet and cold and Rose didn’t think she’d ever had anything quite so nice. She gulped it down eagerly and made short work of the water too. Gethro refilled both cups and then sat down herself.
“Tell us what you know,” she said.
“I think I’ve figured out most of it,” said the Doctor cheerfully. “Three days ago, or thereabouts, you made a time jump. Possibly a space one as well, but definitely time jump. I don’t know where you wanted to go, but your ship was either heading from the twenty-first century or to there. Where we were going, I mean, since I don’t know what date system you use. As best I can tell, our ships crashed.”
“Your ship caused a lot of damage if that’s the case,” said Frejan, speaking for the first time. He sounded more apprehensive than angry.
“So did yours,” said Rose.
The Doctor nodded. “We have our air, some limited water filtering capabilities and a very weak shield from attack. I think some of the- my- our ship’s self-repair systems are working, but I don’t have the equipment to diagnose the problem or work with her.”
“We lost our air filters,” said Gethro. “Fortunately the size of the ship and our emergency systems meant we could last some time. Initially we lost all our engines, too, and the past few days have been spent drifting and repairing and hoping.”
“Yeah, know the feeling,” said the Doctor.
“When did you pick up our signal?” asked Rose.
“Only yesterday,” said Gethro. “But it wasn’t until a few hours ago that the engines were operational.”
“I still don’t understand the crash,” said Frejan. “There are safeguards against us travelling the same route.”
“Safeguards fail,” said the Doctor. “But it’s your engine. Well, our engines. They work very similarly. Travelling through the time vortex is a popular method of doing things, but the method of travel and the artificial intelligence behind your ship - even with a neuro-link too - are so similar to mine. I suspect they ran through the same spacetime and things got rather mixed up.”
“But how can you have the same ship?” demanded Frejan. “This is a one-of-a-kind.”
“Frejan is the chief developer,” murmured Gethro.
“Time travel!” said the Doctor cheerfully. “Do Rose and I look like we’re a competing company or planet or something? We’re on our hols. Maybe the SES Durannis goes on to become the blueprint for every time ship. Maybe our ship was from someone who developed it in parallel. I don’t know. I don’t pay much attention to history, me. It’s hard enough being the only mechanic on a time machine.” He winked at Rose.
Frejan made to speak again, but stopped himself.
The Doctor took another slurp of his water.”Captain Gethro, Frejan, I believe I should be able to either fix your air filters or give you one of mine. In return, I think you should have the tools and parts on board for me to the fix the TARDIS. Then I would recommend we go our separate ways and pretend we’ve never seen each other or one of you might turn out to be one of Rose’s grandparents!”
Rose occupied herself with finishing her second cup of duronten. The effects of the caffeine - or whatever it was - were making her feel more alert than she had done in days. She was also relieved: the Doctor might be lying through his teeth about everything, but he seemed to be truthful about his ability to fix the TARDIS.
“I think,” said Gethro, “that that seems like the best idea.” She paused and rubbed one of her eyebrows. “I’ll work out something to tell- our bosses. Frejan, will you make sure they are provided for?”
The Doctor jumped to his feet and looked over to Rose. “You going to come and help?” he offered.
Rose considered for a second. She could probably learn all sorts about TARDIS maintenance that would be very useful.
Then she shook her head. “I’m not a mechanic and I would give anything for a shower of some sort.”
He grinned and waved as he followed Frejan out the door.
Gethro spoke into her comms. “Ryling, we’re in L ninety-four. Can you come and escort Rose to D deck and find her a cabin and some fresh clothes.”
“On my way, Captain,” came the instant response.
Ryling arrived very quickly. She’d changed out of the spacesuit and into some purple overalls, although they weren’t significantly easier to move in. She nodded for Rose to follow her.
“Is Ryling your first name?” asked Rose as they headed down the corridor.
The young woman blinked at her.
“Right,” said Rose. “Different naming conventions. But it’s not rude to call you it or anything? I’m not a captain or anything, you know.”
Ryling smiled. “It’s fine,” she said. “Rose, right?” Rose nodded. Ryling hesitated for a few moments before speaking again. “Everyone’s saying you’re from the future.”
“Are they?” said Rose, biting her lip. “We might be. I probably shouldn’t say.” Mostly because she wasn’t entirely sure what elaborate lies the Doctor was constructing. There was no way he’d compare the TARDIS to this ship quite so politely if he were being honest. “What you doing all the way out here, then? You I mean, not the ship.”
“I’m a trainee mechanic with... a research company,” she said. She looked almost apologetic and Rose laughed.
“They tell you what you’re supposed to say?”
“We had three days of time travel training,” said Ryling. “I thought it was all rubbish, you know. We were supposed to just travel through space and not land anywhere. I guess it was useful after all.”
They climbed into a lift, which Ryling sent on its way upwards, but adjusted the settings as she did so.
“We don’t want to go too quick,” she said. “The air’s probably still thin up here.”
Rose winced in anticipation as they emerged into the corridor on the higher deck, but it wasn’t as bad as she’d been expecting. The TARDIS was working fast, then.
“You should’ve seen me when I first started,” she told Ryling. “I’d’ve loved some training. I was just sort of thrown into it. And the Doctor knows everything, so he expected me to.”
Ryling laughed. “My partner’s the same,” she said. “She’s back on- back... where we came from. She just gets it. I’m always telling her there’s a reason I’m a mechanic and she’s a temporal engineer.”
Rose laughed as they reached a door, which Ryling pushed open. They both held back for a few moments, letting the air circulate properly.
“I’m learning,” said Rose. “The TARDIS is hard work, though.” She glanced into the room and decided she could probably breathe. “If you’re a mechanic, you’ve got things to rush off to, right?”
“A few,” admitted Ryling. “I’ll find you some new clothes and then I’d better be off. Can you find your way back to the dock?”
Rose glanced down the corridor they’d come from and shrugged. “Probably,” she said, and patted her pocket. “I’ve got my phone, so I’ll call the Doctor if I get lost.”
Ryling smiled. “The cabin numbers are on the doors.”
The shower was the best one Rose had ever had, even if it did take her a couple of minutes to figure out how to turn it on and the water was cold and strongly smelling of chlorine. When she emerged, there was a thick, dark green shirt and black trousers of a similar fabric waiting for her. She pulled them and her slippers on, then grabbed her own clothes into a bundle and hurried downstairs to the dock.
There were lights in the TARDIS. That was the first thing she noticed as she walked in. The doors were still wide open and most of the crew of the Durannis scrambled around. They seemed to be working on both the TARDIS and their own air system. Gethro wasn’t there, and neither were another couple, but Rose counted nine present including Ryling and Frejan.
The Doctor was jumping around like a lunatic, calling orders at people and seeming to be trying to fix everything with his sonic. He’d shed his jumper and scarf, so was now just in suit trousers and several shirts. It suited him, she thought with a smile, but he could definitely use a shave.
She stepped down towards him and he looked up to see her and beamed.
“We’re going to be OK!” he told her cheerfully. “The parts don’t perfectly match up, of course, but they’ll get us back to your mum’s and, given time, they’ll grow to fit right in.”
She smiled, then nodded for him to follow her into the TARDIS. One of the other crew members was in there but he didn’t seem to be doing anything. Fortunately, he looked a bit embarrassed to be caught staring and hurried out without Rose having to say anything.
Leaning over the console, she beckoned the Doctor in.
“What aren’t you telling them?”
His eyes widened in mock innocence.
She raised her eyebrows.
“Their ship really is similar to the TARDIS in some respects,” he replied quietly. “In the same way a toy car is similar to a Porsche. They’re mimicking but it’s not a living ship or anything like that. And we did cross timelines rather unfortunately, just like I said. The TARDIS has safeguards for that, though. Even this young, she’s too smart to be caught out.”
“So what happened?” He glanced away. “Doctor, tell me.”
“The doors to the Emerald City were locked,” he said.
She stared. “My family-“
“Nothing like that,” he interrupted. “There’s something there giving us trouble. I think it’s why we’ve been flying so far off course. Someone or something on twenty-first century Earth is trying to make our lives difficult. Whatever it is has been quiet and subtle enough that we hardly noticed anything was wrong. Not until a huge great whopper of a ship that was just similar enough to the TARDIS, mechanically speaking anyway, got in the way and caused things to spark.”
“We should talk to Dad,” said Rose, grabbing her phone, then she hesitated. “Shouldn’t we? Torchwood under him... it’s good. It’s not like in the other universe.”
The Doctor shrugged. “You worked there.”
“It’s just... Torchwood might be the sort of place that could do this sort of thing,” she said. “What if there’s someone there?”
She eyed the Doctor, who was keeping his face carefully blank, much to her annoyance. She never knew what he thought about Torchwood. When she’d first told him she was working there on that dreadful day on Bad Wolf Bay, he’d seemed so proud. Since he’d arrived in this universe, though, he’d seemed to swing between contempt for them, pride for her and completely ignoring the issue. Rose got the feeling at least some of his resentment was because they tried to pay him to save the world. Still, right now she could have used his opinion.
Sighing, she replaced the phone in her pocket.
“We should be able to get back, yeah?” she said.
“Soon as we’re done here,” he said, back to his usual cheerful self. “Shouldn’t take too long at all.”
“We’ll talk to Dad about it,” she said firmly. “But ask him not to rush and alert everyone. I’m sure he’ll have someone he can trust.”
The Doctor nodded. “We can look into it a bit from the TARDIS,” he said. “Probably, anyway. Problem is, anyone who’s smart enough to do this, and do it so subtly, is smart enough to hide it from us.”
“I expect we’ll run into ‘em sooner or later,” said Rose darkly.
“Ye-es,” murmured the Doctor. “Once we’re clear of here, maybe we should keep the doors shut.”
Both of them turned to glance out of the doors at the crew that they could see. Of course they had no choice: they needed the help and they couldn’t let any of this lot suffocate. They just weren’t usually so quick to leave the TARDIS’s doors hanging open when they left the room. Rose shivered. Not being able to trust her colleagues because someone on Earth was trying to harm the TARDIS bothered her.
“Don’t worry,” said the Doctor quietly, nudging her arm. “It’ll work out OK.”
He extended a hand to her with a smile and she took it. Then he tugged her over to the doors of the TARDIS to help out again.
She smiled, gave his hand one last squeeze and headed over to Ryling, deciding she might as well offer to help out.
~*~
Later - much later - after eating some rather sugary food and working until what must have been stupid hours in the morning while drinking duronten and actual coffee, and finally, saying goodbyes and thank yous and promising to forget they’d ever met, Rose and the Doctor retreated to the TARDIS.
She bundled him into the shower straight away. Then she cleared up the mess from the console room floor and headed back to their room. The Doctor was still in the shower, of course. She caught a glance of herself in the mirror and decided if she showed up at home looking like this, her mum would have a thing or two to say. Something very normal and twenty-first century was probably the way to go.
Her phone started to ring as she was pulling on her socks and she stared at it for a few seconds. The text message to her mother! She’d completely forgotten about that.
She dove across the bed and grabbed it, seeing that her father was calling before she answered.
“Dad? What is it? Is everything OK?”
“Rose, you need to get back here straight away.”
“Yeah, we’re coming anyway,” she said. “Are you OK? What about Mum and Tony?”
“There’s a bomb,” he answered. “Does the name Bob Charila mean anything to you?”
“Not a bit. Wh-?”
“He’s asking for you and the Doctor personally. Get back here now!”
“’Course, we’re on our way,” she said, hurrying around the bed to the bathroom door.
“Look, love, I’ve got to go. Straight to the tower, please.” With that, he hung up.
Rose barged into the bathroom and was hit by a cloud of steam. The Doctor poked his now clean-shaven head out from the screen.
“Come to join me?” he asked hopefully, before noticing her panicked expression. “What is it?”
“Dad just called,” she said, waving her phone. “We need to get to Canary Wharf right now.”
The Doctor shut off the shower and grabbed a couple of towels hurriedly. “What is it?”
“He said something about a bomb. I don’t know the details. But apparently some guy named Bob Charila’s been asking for us.”
The Doctor stopped in the doorway to the bathroom and stared at her. “Bob what?”
“Charila, I think,” she said. “I don’t know him. Do you?”
“Never heard of him,” said the Doctor.
Out in the bedroom he towelled himself mostly dry and began to pull on another suit. Rose grabbed her boots and put them on, pocketing her phone and stepping over to the dresser to swipe on a bit of mascara.
It didn’t take the Doctor much longer to get ready and together they hurried to the console room, him still doing his tie as they walked. He grabbed his own phone from the top of the console itself and yoinked out all the wires that had been connecting it to whatever strange components had made up his listening device.
“On we go?” he said to Rose.
“We’d better!” she said.
“After this visit, I bet I’m really going to need a holiday,” he said. “And not just because of Jackie. Makes a change, doesn’t it?”
Rose bit her lip and moved around the console, trying not to worry. This time, it had to work. They were needed at home now. And the TARDIS couldn’t break down again, could she?
She glanced over to the Doctor, whose hand was hesitating over the final lever. He caught her eye and smiled suddenly.
“Where’s the fun if you don’t take risks?”
He pulled the lever with gusto.
The centre column rose and fell with the familiar grating noise.
“Back we go, Rose! And who knows what’s there!”