(2) Red Caps and Kapos

[the_cosmic_hobo]

Continued from here. Ten points to anyone who gets the subject reference!The Doctor had been blown halfway to nowhere without a hat. Of course he'd picked up the first hat he saw. Wouldn't anybody? Especially with that fancy feather in the rim? And of course it turned out to be a soldier's hat -- didn't it always -- instantly recognizable to the

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[gordonstewart]

He heard a vaguely familiar voice calling, "Brigadier!" and looked up. His head hurt like--well, he was not sure how badly it hurt, but the headache was the worst he could ever remember having, and he could barely focus on anything else.

A face he recognized as the Doctor was staring with deep concern and a little astonishment at him.

"Glad I found you," the Brigadier said. "That boy Jamie and Miss Waterfield! These-these whatever they are attacked us all by the TARDIS--Jamie was helping me fight them off, to give her a chance to get to the TARDIS--but where the devil are we? There was some sort of electrical storm, and one minute I was walking down Downing Street, and the next minute--"

But the effort of speaking was too much. He staggered forward and did not fall only because the Doctor caught him in his arms.

[the_cosmic_hobo]

"Oh my. Brigadier?" The Doctor stumbled, trying to hold his friend up; Lethbridge-Stewart was a tall man, even unconscious. "Narvon, give me a hand here

[the_cosmic_hobo]

Narvon's yell, a moment later, called the Doctor away from his patient. "I'll be right back, old chap," he muttered, patting the Brigadier on the shoulder, and hurried off to lend his back to the setting of a warbird's broken leg. It took three medics to hold the beast down, and its anguished cries chilled the Doctor's marrow as the bone was wrenched into place.

Predictably, the Doctor talked to it, telling it everything would be all right and what they were doing was for its own good. The aliens stared at him as though he was insane. But the giant bird quieted slightly, and he thought he glimpsed some scraps of intelligence under the pain in its hawklike eyes.

Released, he hurried back into the tent to see whether the Brigadier was awake.

The cot was empty, the blanket twisted off onto the floor.

The Doctor's mouth dropped open. "Oh crumbs."

He whirled around, frantically scanning the tent. The man did have a concussion, after all. How far could he have gone?

[victorias_voice]

The sky hung heavy with clouds (though still appallingly purple) as Victoria and Polly moved carefully out of the TARDIS. The red-clad soldiers had vanished over the horizon, but the ground was all torn up where the bird-footed creatures had raced away.

"Oh," cried Victoria -- "here's the Brigadier's hat!" She dusted it off, and tears welled up in her eyes. "It's all bloody... they must've hit him over the head. I hope he isn't badly injured."

The soldiers' trail led back over the hill. It was clearly a well-used route; years of travel had pounded the stony ground into fine rubble. Where it led, though, was anybody's guess.

Victoria folded the hat carefully and put it in her pocket. "They were going pretty fast," she said, trying not to seem too frightened. "Do you think we'll be able to catch up with them?"