Fans Fiction The New Adventures of Lady C: The Stolen Wellington, part 1 by Samantha Stanley & Harriet Chamberlain

 

The new adventures of Lady C. – A contribution to the stories created by S. Florence

The Stolen Wellington. Part 1 

Written by Samantha Stanley & Harriet Chamberlain

 

Lady Christina de Souza, 98th in line to the throne of England (Thankyou Megan Markle ), not the Queen's favourite relative, owner of the de Souza manor, a fleeting companion of the time travelling alien known as "The Doctor" and notorious jewel thief "The Lucky Cat" had just about recovered from losing her entire family at the battle of canary wharf in 2007, and had just about recovered from not only meeting an alien on a bus, travelling to another planet with him on the bus, but saving the lives of those on the bus with her and the entire planet of Earth whilst losing her prized stolen possession to date, king Athlestan's golden chalice and had just about recovered her father's lost fortune ( thanks to his gambling habit) by stealing whatever she could get her hands on, selling it on the black market and restoring the manor, ( well one room, her bedroom. The rest of the manor was falling apart as all her money and her loot went into the secret vault hidden in the depths of the manors wine cellar and the very expensive and slightly alien tech security measures) it's butler John Cook, his strange cousin and stable hand Hugo Halliwell and his knackered pony Clip-Clop, back to all its former glory thus throwing herself, the aristocratic side of her at least, back into the limelight, back into the public eye and back into the Queen's bad books. No one knew her alter ego and what she had done and sacrificed to bring her family home back from the dead and no one ever would, except John Cook, his cousin Hugo and quite possibly the Queen who eyed her suspiciously whenever she saw her and made constant references to the Maneki Neko, Lady C's calling card, to see if she flinched and revealed her true identity.

Recovering from all that whilst maintaining a Lady like stature took a lot of effort, a few glasses of gin and the odd wild fling with an unsuspecting married member of her social circle, just so she could experience the thrill of excitement that stealing gave her, without having to steal anything as other people's husbands didn't count as she technically wasn't stealing, she was borrowing and she always gave them back!

   It was fair to say that life had settled down considerably since that awful day during the battle when she had lost her parents and younger sister Lady Monica. She had tried to look for them of course but where do you start when there is only an end to a war, and no beginning? It had been 13 years now and she was older, none the wiser but a lot richer and still not in favour by the Queen. She did have a happy life though, or that's what she at least told herself every morning, so imagine her surprise when she had come home one evening after stealing a painting supposedly painted by Van Gogh yet looked alarmingly like an exploding TARDIS, for a client who went by the name of Professor Song, ( Quite obviously made up but as long as she paid up, Lady C didn't care what her clients called themselves, yet she was intrigued to meet the Professor as she was sure the painting must be something to do with the Doctor.) and found her dead sister, Lady Monica Georgia de Souza (named after her father's grandmother) sitting in her dining room, eating her pizza and drinking her beer that had been laid out for her by her butler like he did after every heist, sitting on her chaise lounge as though she hadn't of been dead all this time. In fact, she was very much alive!

   There had been shouting, tears and tantrums, mainly from Hugo who had insisted that Monica was a ghost back from the dead to reclaim her shoe collection he had hoarded the day she had "died" and when he had been sedated by John Cook and taken back to the stable, he shared with Clip Clop (his choice) Monica and Christina had started shouting at each other. "Where have you been? I thought you were dead! Why didn't you come looking for me? Stop drinking all my beer!" This went on until the early hours of the next morning until both women had fallen asleep on the chaise lounge out of pure exhaustion. Cook had woken them at 5am and sent them to bed. It was now 10am, Lady C had been awake for hours, had her breakfast in bed and was reading the newspaper as the headline was screaming at her about an art heist from the London museum. She would stay exactly where she was until Monica came in and apologised for being alive and in the meantime, she googled her, trying as she had so often done before to find some traces of her family but the searches had turned up nothing. This time though she had a different name. Bella Roseau, a secret identity Monica had been using these past 12 years to keep herself hidden. It would seem she had learned something from Christina after all.

   It took Monica a long, long time to get back to sleep once Cook had woken them in the early hours. Obviously being back so late last night, and being dead for so long that 90% of her stuff was in storage and her old room is full of dust, her furniture covered in a cloth hiding Monica expensive style underneath. Being back home was just what she needed at this time, all the stuff that she had been through since changing her name and living off whatever she could get was difficult to her. She had tried her best to be independent for the first time in her life, and since what happened in Canary Wharf, she couldn’t have gone home for a long time even if she wanted to.

   Staying in one of the guest room for the night, Monica lay on her back staring up at the ceiling above her; she had a lot of work to do to make it up to her sister. She knew it wouldn’t be easy, and if it was the other way around, she didn’t think that she would ever forgive Christina. But lucky for Monica, Christina was probably a tiny bit more forgiving…. And I really mean a tiny bit. Monica checked her phone and saw it wasn’t a ridiculous time to get up and go see Christina. Throwing on a silk dressing gown from the suitcase she brought back with her she slipped out the room and walked towards her sister’s room. It’s strange how everything is exactly the same as how they left it but just run down. All the fancy art the family used to collect still filled the walls of the hallway, the massive chandelier above her head still bright, just full of cobwebs. There was only a certain amount of cleaning that Cook could have done and it wasn’t fair to leave him behind to look after it all, but Monica didn’t think that her sister would ever walk away from this place, especially after her family had died, but she did.

   Knocking lightly and pushing open Christina’s bedroom door, she walked in ready to grovel. Monica was so close to walking in jumping onto the bed next to her sister and getting under the duvet like she used to but she stopped herself knowing it wouldn’t be welcome. Not just yet anyway.

   “So…. What would make this a bit better?” Mon went to awkwardly sit on the edge of the bed but instead chose to walk away and sit on the chair on the other side of the room. “I mean, you know I can’t cook. And that hasn’t got any better since I’ve been away. But I could try? Would that help?” Mon took quick notice of Christina scrolling on her phone.    “Anything interesting about me?” Mon questioned, that used to be what she would ask her sister back in the day before everything went wrong, and that was because Mon was used to going out getting completely drunk, making a fool of herself and probably ending up on the front page of some tabloid doing something she probably shouldn’t. Since she had died Mon did spend some time looking online about herself wishing she would relive the life she used to have, but how could she come back from the dead? Christina would probably be able to know, she knew everything. “Anyway, so I was thinking, how much of my stuff you still have? I mean you must have kept some right?” Mon shrugged; Christina did not look impressed. “Are you ok?”

   Trying to ignore her sister wouldn't be an easy task. Monica was far too "In your face" to be placed on a back burner somewhere or ghosted just to prove a point, but it had to be said that although Christina was over the moon that her sister wasn't dead after all, she was furious with her for lying to her and leaving her with the mess of planning her entire family’s funerals.... not something anyone should have to do. Cook helped of course, Hugo didn't but that was Hugo and that was another thing, how she was going to convince him to give Monica back her shoe collection, she did not know, especially as he had grown rather worryingly attached to a bright red pair of Jimmy Choo's in her absence.

   As she sat cautiously on her bed, Christina carried on searching the news feed on her phone in the pretence she was far too busy to be listening to her sister's pitiful attempts at an apology for not being dead, but something caught her eye and very quickly, a devious if not hilarious plan began to form in her mind that would indeed allow Monica to make it up to her on a grand scale.

   Placing her phone on her bed, she sighed heavily, acting wounded and heartbroken as she mentally put the finishing touches to her master plan. Reaching over the night stand, she grabbed a small bell and rang it a few times in an attempt to get Cook to bring her a morning cup of tea. She waited a few seconds, rang it again, huffed impatiently and then bellowed..."COOK......TEA!" at the top of her lungs just as the butler came hurrying through the door carrying a tea tray with a startled looking Hugo behind him carry a breakfast tray and a piece of her toast in his mouth.

   "Sorry mi' Lady, 'ad to stop Hugo nicking yer sausages, yer know what he's like round pork. Morning Miss Monica, brought yer usual, bloody Mary with a twist and a Ryvita"

Placing the trays down and cuffing Hugo round the head so the toast shot from his mouth, Cook left the room dragging his slightly backward cousin with him.

   Christina finally spoke to Monica, trying to sound authoritative yet sounding more like an excited child at Christmas.

   "All your belongings are in storage, by storage I mean in the stable with Clip-Clop. I did try and save some things but Hugo insists you left them to him in your will which we never found and I was too upset to contest it or argue with him, besides, he's been wearing most of your dresses on a daily basis so I doubt you'll want any of it back"

   Taking a sip of tea, she let her plan unravel like a soft coiled ribbon that had gently fallen to the floor.

   "I am going on a job later this evening" She passed her phone to her sister and pointed to the illuminated screen. "As you can see, Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington has resurfaced and its due to go on display for 1 week from tomorrow morning at the London art gallery, meaning it will be taken to the gallery overnight in preparation. I have quite a few contacts interested in this particular piece who are willing to pay a very large sum of money and you my dear undead sister, are going to help me get it.... tonight! I will go over the plans properly with you after breakfast and when we pull this off, you'll be able to restock your wardrobe and more, because you are going to be the one, who steals it for me!"

   There was a distinct smirk on Lady C's face as she unveiled her plans, mostly because of what she had planned for her sister and mostly because the thrill of a pending heist always made her extremely happy. Taking another sip of tea and plucking a sausage off her plate, she relaxed back into her pillows and waited for her sister to come to terms with the fate that awaited her.

 

To be continued…

Fans Fiction The Eternal Diamond: Part Two The Key to Everything by S. Florence

 

6pm came just as Cook finished setting the dinner table in the dining room for 3 people. Lady Christina, The Doctor and himself seeing as he was an integral part of everything that occurred within the manor walls. The sound of wheezing engines broke the silence and a warm gust of wind blew the swan like origami napkins from the place settings and into the pea soup warming on the serving sideboard. Cook huffed with resignation as the dining room door flew open and Lady C came bustling in in her dressing gown and pyjamas, not wanting to give the new lady Doctor anything to fancy about her seeing as she had snogged her once when she was a man! Waiting with baited breath for the Tardis doors to open and slightly unnerved that all she was thinking about was that kiss! She gave a sideways glance at the sideboard and pulled a confused face. 

“Cook, why are their napkins in the pea soup?”

“Erm, no idea MI ‘Lady, must ‘ave been Hugo. I’ll flog the silly old git later”

“Well, I’m not eating it. Go fetch the steak whilst I greet the Doctor” 

Cook nodded and left the room mumbling under his breath. “If by steak yer mean fish ‘n’ chips from the chippy down south street then yeh alright”

Cook left and the Tardis doors opened and an old man stepped out looking very frail and slightly confused, not only at his surroundings but at the woman in front of him who seemed to be dressed for bed. 

“Hello, did you call? I’m the Doctor! Well, what is it girl?”

Christina stared slightly open mouthed for a bit and frowned, trying to respond to the dodgy looking pensioner in front of her feeling slightly nauseous as she tried to push the image of that snog out of her mind before she spoke.
 “You’re the Doctor? Really? Oh dear, what happened? I know it’s been a few years since we last met but has it really been long enough for you to have aged so much and you’re a man again I see. Did you get my message, the one about the key?”

Unknown to Christina, phoning the time vortex to reach the Doctor was a very fractured experience in that there were so many versions of him zooming about in space and time that it was impossible to know which version of him you would get! And, unbeknown to her, she had reached the very first version of him, a man so old and yet so young by comparison that he had never met nor heard of Lady Christina de Souza before and in fact in his time she hadn’t even been born yet!

“Oh, that was you was it? Yes, I got the message. It’s the year 2021 isn’t it? Very futuristic I must say although not as advanced as I imagined. Still using a basic cellular device for contact when its very easy to establish mind to mind connections, you just need to concentrate more. If you’re looking for the Omnia Clavis then you’re out of luck, it was stolen from me some time ago. It is strange though because as soon as I received your message the Tardis locked onto the Omnia and brought me here, to this house and in this time. It is said that the key will only present itself when an acceptable trade is offered for it, so what do you have my dear?

   Christina stared somewhat confused as the old man rattled on in what seemed to be a very old-fashioned dialect and offered him one her of best educated responses…. “huh?”

“My dear, what have I stumbled into? It seems the human race has travelled backwards and not progressed forwards. I am the Doctor, the original you might say and by the look of confusion spreading across that pretty face of yours I would say you were not expecting me but possibly a newer version of me, is that Correct?”

Christina nodded

“Your primitive communications devices found me in the time vortex, it is how we travel through time and space and on a day when I myself was looking for something valuable to me so the two connections have been made and here I am. You called me and I arrived. That is how it works but not in the order one wishes it would. Are you in possession of an eternal diamond by chance? One you wish to trade for the Omnia Clavis? The key to everything?”

   Understanding slightly more than she originally did, Christina nodded, still open mouthed and possibly dribbling but she managed to regain her composure as the mention of the key.

“Yes! Yes, I have the diamond but I am confused, the key has been in my family for years, at least 100 or so and it has been passed down to me by my family lastly my father who left it to me in his will. I had no idea what it was until you, or a future you turned up here 2 years ago and took it from me claiming it was some kind of key to the universe and would only be returned once I returned to you the diamond which I had stolen from you, namely the eternal diamond. The thing is, I hadn’t actually stolen it from anyone at that time and I had to go looking for it and literally only came across it last week and stole it from a jeweller last night so none of this is making any sense”

   The Doctor listened with great interest and great boredom and wondered why he bothered to save the human race anymore when all they did was babble on and dribble down the front of their bed clothes.

“I have no idea what you are talking about, I would just like to know if you have the diamond? If you do then bring it to me, if it is indeed the eternal diamond then the key shall be returned to you”

“But you said the key was stolen from you, so you don’t have it do you?”

“That is true but as I said before if you had cared to listen, the key will present itself when there is a compatible trade for it. I do not know who stole it from me, only that it was and it ended up within your family meaning you had it all along”

   No one ever said time travel was easy and the inconsistencies of jumping time were starting to show. Nothing ever ran in a smooth straight line so nothing ever would make sense, a situation the Doctor had come to terms with long ago and now never questioned but one the humans would never get their tiny brains around.  Before he could insist she bring him the diamond, the dining room door opened and Cook walked in with 3 bags of fish ‘n’ chips and large box containing the diamond which he placed on the table and opened.

“The eternal diamond. Thought to be alien in origin but no beggar knows. Whats’it do then?”

   The Doctor stepped forward and took a closer look and smiled before reaching out for it and placing it inside his coat.

 “It is the heart of a storm on my home planet of Gallifrey. Without the storm our crops cannot grow and we cannot feed ourselves. It was lost during the Autumn Rains of Never, and we feared it had gone forever and how it turned up on earth I do not know but with our last stocks diminishing from the 5 years without the storm, we can now farm our lands again”

“It was Cooks turn to look confused” You’d be better off getting’ yerselves a Tesco I reckon”

Once he had the diamond safely in his possession the strangest thing happened. The sound of wheezing engines followed by a warm familiar wind brought another Tardis into the dining room making Cook step back with fear and panic so he was using Lady C as a human shield just in case the Time Lords had come to invade Earth. Instead, the door opened and a woman with a blonde bob stepped out sinking Christina’s heart completely as she was still hoping her Doctor, the man she had met on the bus, would one day come back for her and take her travelling among the stars whilst they did some more snogging.

“Brilliant!” The second Doctor explained as she looked round the room. “No 13, or is it 14? I never know but hello number 1, got the diamond I see? That’s so cool! I knew we wouldn’t all starve to death cos well, future stuff and all that but I had forgotten a lot of it which is why I made a mental note to myself, bit like an alarm clock, to come here at various points in time to set this all up. The eternal diamond originally fell through a crack in time landing in the jewellery shop just 2 days ago. Obviously, no one reported it stolen cos no one knew it was there but I needed a thief to get it for me and I needed me to come at the right time to get it back, the right time being just a few days after it was lost. With me so far? In order to do that, I had to convince Christina here to get it for me and not try and sell it on herself so I went back in time to another me, number 10, the handsome one with the hair? Took a valuable family heirloom which was the key then travelled back in time again to me being number 1, left it in his Tardis with a note telling him what it was and that he was to keep it safe and then a few regenerations later when I remembered cos, I do sometimes forget stuff, I went and stole it back off him leaving him with the memory of a fabled key to everything that would present itself at the right time to its rightful owner. Then, I gave it to a young woman called Angela de’ Castiel as a wedding present to the 5^th earl of Norway and told her to keep it safe as it was a magic key that could open anything which then became a family fairy story and something of a mystery that would reveal itself at the right time to the right person, then I stole it back off Lady Christina here 2 years ago and when I knew it was time for her to steal the diamond, I did a bit of jiggery pokery on the internet so she would find what she was looking for, and here I am to give the key back now I have the diamond back! Bit of time stuff in-between but it got the job done otherwise Gallifrey would have died long before the time war and nothing I’d done since then would have made any difference to the universe and the earth would have died too”!

   Finished rambling she took a very deep breath and looked very proud of herself, grinning happily as everyone including the other Doctor looked on in complete fascination.

“What time war? What do you mean?” He bellowed at her with etched concern that furrowed his brow in shock.

“OH bugger, erm yeah nothing for you to worry about gramps, you’ll be long gone by then especially if you don’t get the diamond back to the heart of the storm”

   The first Doctor assuming his beloved home world was under attack, left as quickly as he arrived without so much as a thankyou or a nod of appreciation to lady C and her butler leaving lady C and her butler to turn to the new lady Doctor for questioning with one of the questions from Cook wanting to know if she was single which was met with a hard look of menace from her ladyship causing him to lower his head in shame and mumble… “Well, you snogged her so why can’t I?”

“SO, the key? Do you have it? What does it do exactly? I was never left any instructions as to what it opened by my father only that he said it would open something one day when the time was right and I would never want for anything every again, so do you have it?”

The Doctor took the key from her coat pocket and handed it to Christina with a genuine look of remorse on her face.

“I’m sorry Lady C, it’s just a key and one I planted in your family history as a decoy so that I could convince you to get my diamond back. It really doesn’t do anything, it’s just an heirloom now with a bizarre history attached to it. It is alien though, cos I got it from a market stall on the planet Diarumous, but I’ve scanned it and it really is just a key, probably to an old relic of a castle somewhere judging by its size but I really couldn’t tell you where.”

Shrugging, she spied the bag of fish and chips on the table and grabbed one for herself. “Cheer’s mate, love a bit of fish, anyway gotta be going now, planets to save and all that. Laters!”

   Before anyone could say anything more, she left and the Tardis disappeared into the night leaving Cook rather red faced at his indecent proposal and Christina rather red faced from her burning anger at being taken for a fool, used and cheated out of something magical and wonderful that had filled her head with wonder for all of her life, The Key to everything!

She slammed it into Cook’s hand with disgust and took her own fish ‘n’ chips to bed with her to sulk away the night as she attempted to plan a way to get the Doctor back. Cook took his own meal into the kitchen and dumped the key in the bin knowing the bin men would be arriving in the morning and as he sat outside the kitchen door on an old wooden chair eating his fish supper, in the bin unknown to him, the key had stared to glow!

 

The End

Fans Fiction Stories of the Nightmare Child Chapter 5 - The Master Plan by Lady Mayhurst

 

Through time she fell, backwards, forwards, bouncing along her own timeline, reaching far beyond the beginning and the end of the known universe, thrown from era to era as she struggled to find a space in which to grow. Her heart exploding with the pain of losing a child, her mind splintered into a million fractions as she planned the arrival of the next whilst her soul was pulled apart and roughly stitched back together a thousand times over.

   She had only agreed to the breeding program when the War King approached her initially because although she was barely the human she was once born to be, she still harboured the visions of womankind and felt the need to reproduce offspring in her own image. All that she had seen, all that she had been witness to and been involved in, if she had known before Antipathy who the War King would become, maybe she could have warned the Doctor and maybe she could have saved herself and her son but instead she was torn apart by the time vortex and stitched back together as she fell through a crack in time and landed back on earth, back in her human form, back as the woman who had once been called Laura Tobin.

   How long she would stay like this was unknown as she had broken the laws of the physical and biological and rewound her DNA back to a time when it was remembered as human but because in this version of her former self, she was never human, how long she could sustain the illusion was unknown and the only thing that was known, was that she had very little time to get the job done.

   The job, the crude rudimental aggression of sexual activity that would plant a seed inside her womb and allow for a human child to grow led her to an alley way, to a seedy, filthy corner of London where night workers stalked lonely men for money enough to allow them to eat or feed their habits. The stranger in amongst the debris of life, giving herself freely to any man who wished to take her until one finally did.

   Over in moments, the hybrid side of her incubating the sperm quickly and swiftly so that the process of implantation and pregnancy began only minutes after the man had left. In those moments after, the illusion shattered and compassion once more took to time as she hid herself in the forgotten dimension inside a TARDIS, she stole from a Time Lord in a future that had not yet happened.

   Nine days was all it took to reach full term. Now fully restored as compassion but with holes in her memory banks and glitches in her system, she fed from the heart of the TARDIS and together they accelerated the pregnancy so that she became the first ever hybrid of her type to carry a human child.

   She hoped to repent the mistakes of Antipathy, she hoped to show the War King that his macabre ways of spawning an army of soldiers in her image would never come to pass and she hoped to leave the Doctor with the one thing he had lost as the Time War waged its fury on the universe, a child of his own, a child of his TARDIS, and 9 days later she fled again, hoping that she had given this child a chance and took them both to the shores of Gallifrey wanting to give her to the Doctor before her impending death that she had foreseen and laid down in the sand to die as the child was expelled from her womb, arriving years after the renegade Time Lord had already fled his home world.

 So, the Nightmare Child came to be. 

A creation of humankind, grown as a hybrid, to become her mother with the one thing she lacked, her humanity. A vision of motherhood warped by too many reincarnations that altered the DNA of the human child so that as she grew, she changed and reinvented herself with every milestone, connected to the Doctor’s TARDIS, connected to the Doctor himself, connected to time and able to control the universe.

   The Doctor knew this about Domina as he told her the story, he knew what she was and he knew that she had no idea of the power she held at her fingertips. One thing he did not know was that she was part of the master plan, or, part of the Master’s plan.

   When the War King told Compassion of his plans to dominate every race in the universe and wanted to use her as a breeding machine for a new army, he knew she would run and hide herself from him, he knew she would seek the Doctor’s help and he knew what she would do in order to breed a child she thought he could not have, yet it was he who planted the thoughts inside her head, warped her imagination and twisted her sense of belief and appeared to her back in time when she offered herself freely to the strange man in the alley way, because whilst he held Antipathy in his coma, waiting for the right time in which to unleash him back into the world, on his instruction, Compassion was breeding a machine to fight with him with, a nightmare of a child of his creation to fight alongside her brother and wage war on humanity and as time ticked on and the War King eventually became the Master, he stepped out of the shadows along the canal ready to claim his daughter, ready to tell the Doctor of what he had created of how she held every secret the Doctor had ever made and every detail of the universe that swam in and out of his head for they were both connected to the TARDIS, the very time machine he stood in but no longer recognised as his own as it warped as Domina warped through their connection for she had not hidden inside a broken TARDIS when she was a girl on the run from the Time Lords, the TARDIS had come for her and had stolen her away and the Master smiled as he waited for the nightmare to begin.

Fans Fiction The New Adventures of Lady C - The Eternal Diamond, Part One by S. Florence

 

Breaking News!

Thieves steal £500,000 of gems from London jeweller in 'audacious heist'

 

*A Burglary at George Attenborough & Son bears similarities to 2015 Hatton Garden robbery. Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad are hunting the mysterious thief behind the heist on the shop, which specialises in diamond rings, necklaces, pearls and other expensive jewellery. Last Friday evening a lone thief caught on CCTV wearing head to toe black clothing broke into an upmarket central London jeweller’s and stole an estimated £500,000 of gems and valuables in an audacious heist, police said on Wednesday. The burglary at George Attenborough and Son jewellers happened just before 10pm, just a few hours after it the shop had closed for the weekend, and has led to claims the thief must have tunnelled in, sparking comparisons to the 2015 heist in Hatton Garden. Police will only say that the thief broke in through a wall to gain access to the jewels inside, and that the burglary lacked the sophistication of the Hatton Garden heist. *

The following story is based on true events, but some of the details have been changed.

Christina huffed with annoyance as she read the line… lacked the sophistication of the Hatton Garden heist.  The reporter working on the newspaper article obviously had no idea that it was the Hatton Garden lot that copied the idea from her one boozy weekend at the manor where guests were invited and secrets were divulged. She shook her head, rolled her eyes, took a gulp of gin and carried on reading. 

*Det Supt Alan Moring, leading the investigation, said: “This was an audacious burglary, and there are elements that appear to have been planned with some precision by the suspect. They broke through a wall in order to gain access to the store. At this stage we are not releasing any further details about the methods used” * 

Christina scoffed this time and snorted a short burst of laughter. “You don’t have any further details that’s why!” 

*Moring added: “The estimated loss is £500,000. This is a theft of high value which warrants thorough and determined investigation. We know that the raid took place just before 10pm on Friday evening. I would urge people who were in the area to think back. It may be that you saw something and now realise it may have been out of place. If this is the case, please make contact with us, even if that is anonymously.”  Detectives were securing and studying footage from CCTV systems in the area for clues. A breakthrough via CCTV ultimately snared the Hatton Garden gang. Unlike the 2015 heist, establishing the estimated value of the items stolen in the weekend raid was relatively simple. In Hatton Garden, safety deposit boxes kept by private clients were broken into and their contents stolen. Establishing their value was a long and complex process, as well as working out what exactly was stolen, with some owners declining to come forward. George Attenborough and Son Jewellers would have had a better idea of what they had in stock, what was missing and an estimate of its worth. As well as breaking into the shop, which was established in 1843 and describes itself as “one of the United Kingdom’s most iconic, traditional jewellers”, the thieves would have had to bypass alarms and security once inside. Moring also laid speculation to the fact that the notorious and so far, unidentified jewel thief, The Lucky Cat, may be a suspect as, and I quote: “This sort of thing is right up her alley” But because the thief remains at large, investigations are still ongoing and we can’t speculate anything at this early stage”*

Article written by B.M.Lunn  

Lady C closed the newspaper and laid it on the side table next to her lounge chair with a loud disappointed sigh. Upon hearing her rattling disgust through the manor corridors, Cook appeared as if by magic with another large gin on a silver serving tray which he handed to her before picking up the paper and reading the front-page news for himself.

He was a great butler; an even better friend and he knew exactly what to say in times like this when all Lady C’s efforts seemed to go unnoticed by the worlds press.  
“Lacked the sophistication my arse! Bet the bleedin’ ‘Atton Garden mob didn’t get away with the priceless Eternal diamond did they say? Basil’s been after that for donkey’s years. He’ll be havin’ a right fit once he knows it was being kept safe in that back-street jewellers all this time and not where he thought it was!” 

Cook let out a large laugh which made Lady C smile. He was right, of course. The jewellery had been taken just to cover up the real reason she was robbing the joint and she smiled smugly to herself knowing exactly what was now sitting rather pretty in her secret underground vault.

“Exactly!” She proclaimed after draining the first glass of gin and taking a sip from the other. “As expected, there’s no reports of the diamond being stolen anywhere which just goes to show that we may have been right about its origin after all. No wonder they were keeping it a secret.”

She got to her feet and smiled as she tossed back her long brown hair from her eyes and handed Cook her phone.  “Call The Doctor Cook, tell him what I have and tell him I expect him to be here by 6pm this evening for dinner. If we are right about this, he will want to know we have it and if he wants it back, he will have to return the item he stole from me last year. I’d call that a fair trade, wouldn’t you?”

Cook nodded and took the phone, mumbling to himself as he wondered which version of the Doctor would turn up this time and if he’d know anything that was going on or if he’d know too much. It was always the way with him, and a her once, that totally threw both of them that day.

Lady C left the room and headed to the vault. The jewellery she had stolen would be sold off in dribs and drabs to those she knew within her dark circles and they would make her a fair amount of money, but as she typed in the code to the safety box buried deep within the vault which was made of a type of wood that couldn’t be opened by a wandering Time Lord’s sonic screwdriver, she laid eyes on her most valuable prize to date, knowing that within a few hours, she’d once more have the key to everything!

 To be continued….

Fans Fiction Stories of the Nightmare Child - Chapter 4 - Antipathy by Lady Mayhurst

 

Chapter 4: Antipathy 

The Doctor could not ignore Domina’s question about her brother. Antipathy, as he had been called had waged a war across the stars and his story was not one to be told gently, for he would have to warn Domina that her fate may very well end up like his and whilst he wasn’t there to stop her brother, to help him, he could help her, he would need to help her as it was his duty to do so. He sat down and gestured an irritable Fritz to sit as well and he cast his mind back hundreds and hundreds of years to recall the memories of Domina’s mother.

   “When I first met your mother, she was on her 5th cycle, that’s to say that she had been remembered five times by then. It was a way of preserving someone by using a biomass inside a remembrance tank, so that not everything about them died. Laura kept her memories for a long time but she became warped and unstable after a while. I guess the human mind can only cope with so much. She travelled with myself and Fritz in my TARDIS, which I am sorry to say corrupted the ear piece she wore to protect her from harmful signals as all humans wore back in those times but my TARDIS was nearly destroyed in a dimensional rift and as I had interfaced her ear piece with the TARDIS, I inadvertently rewrote her biodata to make her the first and only Type 102 time ship.

   It didn’t take long for the Time Lords to find out what I had done and they came for her, wanting to breed her for their own gain, so we took her, Fritz and I, and we went on the run to hide her. She was a mistake; she was lucky to survive and I couldn’t have guaranteed the survival of every being put through that process so we did what we could to keep her safe. The problem was, she was uncontrollable, she would disappear at a moment’s notice and without my TARDIS fully intact it was impossible to track her down. She only really felt safe when Gallifrey and the Time Lords were destroyed. She came back then, helped me rebuild my TARDIS and created the ancestor cell, a memory format that contained the whole of the time vortex and she installed it into my brain. It worked for a fashion, it suppressed a lot of my memories and jumbled them around a bit which is why I tend to get things muddled up. I kind of think this is why my TARDIS has trouble locking on to exact timelines, she interfaces with me you see and goes where I tell her to, unfortunately it’s not always where we end up.” 

The Doctor laughed a little and was met by two blank faces and a slight shake of the head by Fritz who had spent many an adventure trying to help the Doctor unscramble his brain enough so he could come up with a plan to save them. His laughter was false as it hid a truth he was only just coming to realise. Clearing his throat by way of a distraction he continued his story, trying desperately how to figure out a way that would make sense.

   “Sorry, I go off on a tangent sometimes. Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, memory cell. I and I alone contain the knowledge needed to resurrect the Time Lords so that makes me very exclusively important, and very dangerous. It’s why I continue to run and why those I chase continue to run from me. Kind of a suit of armour in a way although there are some that would hunt me down and try to drain that knowledge out of me. Imagine having the whole of time and space in your head, I can’t imagine how to even start telling you what that feels like, but you already know don’t you Domina? You have the same memories as I do for some reason, that’s why you grew up knowing all about me, oh not from stories or whispers that you might have heard, but from memories, my memories and the ones of your mother. The dimensional rift caused more than an interface with my TARDIS, it caused one with me too because I am imprinted to it, so your mother took everything I had, every memory, every regeneration, every event in the past present and future and every detail contained in the memory cell and it corrupted her further, to the point where she wanted to recreate herself, to become the mothership of all type 102 TARDIS’, a god like idea to make herself immortal and she succeeded.

   I left her on Earth in 2012, so as I said, not long ago. I was hoping she would reintegrate herself back into the human race and become more like them again, maybe even help them with her vast knowledge of technology to advance them beyond their own imaginations to become energy sufficient so that when the time came in the very distant future to fight galactic wars and expand across the universe, they would know how and for a time, I was convinced she would do so, but she had played a trick on me, fooled me with my own tactics because she knew how I worked and what I would believe. By the time your brother, Antipathy was born, it was too late, she had fled earth and hidden herself from me on the home world, backwards in time in violation of the Protocols of Linearity, so that he would be born before she even existed. It was her intention to trap him there, to keep him hidden and safe because even she knew what he would become” 

“The first type 101-form, as unique as his mother, but so deadly that his cries of as a baby could set heavens on fire. I don’t know what happened to him. I heard rumours he escaped the Homeworld and went on a rampage throughout the Spiral Politic, before disappearing to another continuum. Or that he had been destroyed immediately after his birth, some even say he is comatose in the City of the Saved and is preserved for the sake of all humanity and creation.” 

The doctor stood up and scanned Domina and her TARDIS console once more and looked at the readings with a furrowed brow of resignation before continuing his story. 

“Time travel is fickle. It’s so fragile and uncertain that you never really know how any one journey or step in time will affect the rest of the universe. This was one reason the Time Lords existed, to prevent disasters and control time itself but they became far too engrossed in their own importance and the rest is history, for you as well as me but if these readings are right and I’m sure they are, it means that when your mother left the home world, she was forced back into a mainstream timeline and then it would seem, she was sent backwards further to the very moment she was last human, all human without the influence of the faction paradox and my TARDIS, and then somehow, she became pregnant with you and was flung further through time to land on the shores of Gallifrey to give birth to you before finally collapsing on the shores to die. 

Somehow Domina, she died before she was born and you came before your brother which explains why you’re both so messed up. Time has fractured you both and I was right before, you’re not Gallifreyan nor a Time Lord, not in the conventional sense anyway and I did honestly think that what brought you here was your connection to Earth, but that was before I saw your TARDIS, before I really saw you and I’m sorry Domina, I really am but I think somehow, something to do with how you and your mother can interface with your ships and with me, that you might be my daughter, or to be exact, a child of my TARDIS!" 

 

 

(Author notes) 

Before his birth, Antipathy lived within the internal architecture of his mother — an infinite womb. He was Compassion's first child, an imperfect prototype never meant to live. He was psychologically damaged and defiantly hated being forced to leave her. The Great Houses tried to get rid of him by sending him on a suicide mission, but he escaped. He screamed across the universe, consumed with hate for his mother for giving birth to him.

(ref: https://factionparadox.fandom.com/wiki/Antipathy )

 

Fans Fiction The Eternity Machine by Matt Rabjohns

She had only one option left open to her. Her fingers pressed down on the blue button of the device in her pocket. It would give her at the most less than half a minute. She had to use it wisely. The army around her set immediately in amber. The pain and anguish in her heart was enough to make her waste a second by spitting full in the face of the leading robot in the deadly horde. Then she ran for the planetary alignment console. She had to set the self-destruct. That was the only road left op..

   No. She paused for a painful few seconds as thoughts of her old friend filled her mind. The friend who she would give the world for to have be here right now to offer another way out. But they weren't here.

But...

   She pressed the emergency distress beacon on the console, then instantly regretted it to the core of her soul. Not even her friend could stop what was going on here on this benighted planet. Why had she pressed that button? Pure panic spiked her chest, she was finding it difficult to breathe. The slender white arrow in her left lung didn't help matters much of course. She looked down at the lever she was looking for. Then she cursed as she noticed the lever was broken. She let out a guttural sob of total defeat and sadness. So, she had come this far to be defeated by a broken lever.

   Tears stroked fast like rivers down her sore muddied cheeks. She had been a fool. She had gained nothing for her family and friends and world. She smashed a fist on the console in humiliation. Pain shot up her arm and she cursed. And now the device in her pocket fizzed and went dead. The time pause had just given its last wheeze. The robots were free to move again.

   Of course, she didn't even have the slightest hope of hiding now. Another arrow shot through the air and thudded into her shoulder. She wailed in agony and slid to the ground. Blood trickled down from her lip. Then another arrow found her chest, penetrating her heart. Her sad eyes glistened for a moment longer, and then her lifeless body fell to the hard metal ground. 

The TARDIS span on through the infinite vortex of space and time. Within the impossible confines of this miracle of space/time travel, the Doctor was staring at the scanner screen in growing concern. A frown marred her usually bright and expressive face.

   "You got a fix on it now Doc?" Graham asked from the opposite side of the console. The Doctor offered him an unconvincing half smile.

   "Yes. But I don't like the readings I'm getting here." she flicked a switch and studied a screen in front of her. “I recognise...” she began, but trailed off with some obvious worry etched on her face.

   "Something serious?" Graham guessed, and naturally she nodded soberly in reply.

   "The distress signals on a worldwide force broadcast. That never bodes well." the Doctor sighed. Graham nodded in understanding.

   The Doctor had been unusually broody ever since they had left Decendron. Mind you he couldn't blame her. Losing friends was always so hard, and it always took a profound effect on the Doctor. Graham and the rest of her crew had learnt that by now.

    "Can't I just have a little rest?" the Doctor whispered, but not quietly enough. Graham was moving round the console till he was right next to the usually so bright and optimistic time lady.

   "One of those intuitions?" he offered her a wan glance.

   "Yup" she tried to perk herself up. "Oh, stop bleating Doctor. Someone needs our help."

   "And we never refuse!" Graham joined in with her.

 The Doctor threw her arm around his shoulder.

    "Graham, do I ever thank you for always being here for me?" she asked.

    "Plenty of times Doc, and it's my pleasure. You know that!"

    "Yeah, but it's still so good to hear you say it sometimes!" the Doctor looked towards the stairs that led to the inner endless dimensions of the ship.

    "They still asleep? Lazy bones! We'll be arriving on the planet in less than a minute!"

Now the old Doctor was re-asserting herself. She had a broad grin on her face and Graham always like to see that grin. It was as if the suns of Andromeda lit up her whole face when she smiled like that.

   "Oi you! Don't call us lazy bones!" Yaz's energetic voice came from the bottom of the stairs. Ryan followed a few feet behind Yaz as she rose to the console room level. "We're not Time Lords. We need sleep once in a billenia."

   "I know. I know!" the Doctor acknowledged. A whining warble began to erupt from the console again.

   "Now that does not look good. Not good at all..." her voice trailed off.

   The trumpeting echoing engines of the TARDIS then laboured like an elephant as the ship began to materialise.

   "For the life of me I swear I know that power signature..." she pulled at switches and levers.

    "Gonna be one of those days again I think" Ryan piped up, rubbing sleepy dirt from his eye.

    The Doctor threw him a wide-eyed glance.  "Just let me carry out the checks properly..."  

She glanced up again at the scanner. The TARDIS had landed in an open patch of ruined and mud drenched quagmire. Yaz gasped as she took in the scene which looked to be all too much like no man's land from her own history on Earth. A fetid desolate scene, and the bodies were everywhere. It might have been a view of the mutated pit of hell itself. Ugly, desolate and decaying.

   "Oh no" the Doctor breathed and shook her head in shock. "Oh no, I think we are.." she exhaled. “Vreem...”

   "Look, someone's alive out there!" Graham jabbed a finger at the form of a woman in the mud, her arm was jerking. That was all the provocation any of them needed.

  "You lot let me go first, after all I'm the rookie cop" Yaz said.

  "And I have two hearts" the Doctor warned his friend as she bounded for the door.

  "Just open the doors, we need to get out there and help that poor woman!" Yaz spoke harsher than she had intended too. But she knew they all shared her passion for wanting to do all she could anywhere and anywhen. This was her new vocation and she wasn't going to give up on it here. No way.

   "Just be extra careful" the Doctor was still glancing at the power read out. "And I do know that power signature!" she was scratching her head and getting annoyed as Yaz opened the door and stepped outside.

   The air stank of death. Yaz almost gagged as she stepped from the TARDIS. Her feet sank into a few inches of sloppy quagmire and she groaned as the swill filled her shoes. But then she took in all the bodies around her and she instantly forgot her discomfort.

   "This is horrible" it was a lame thing to say, but it was really all she could think of.

   "What happened here?" Ryan lip was quivering. He had seen some rough times aboard the TARDIS, but this scene was like he'd just stepped into Saving Private Ryan's opening scenes.

   "Let's not linger. There she is!" the Doctor said with conviction.

   Yaz stepped forward gingerly. The fetid air was already churning her stomach and making her feel sick. But she kept her eyes on the fallen woman, who was now trying to lift her head.

   "Alright, love. Alright, Take it easy.." Yaz dropped down to her side. "You're with friends now"

   The woman somehow found the strength to nod at Yaz.

   "We're gonna take you back to our space ship, OK?" Ryan was already moving his arm to lift the woman from the quagmire.

   "They...they killed....killed everyone...." the woman's voice was cracked and wracked with pain.

   "Don't speak" the Doctor said as she took her share of the woman's broken body weight on her. She and Ryan stumbled back towards the TARDIS. Graham pushed the door open and the Doctor and Ryan and the wounded woman staggered into the TARDIS.

   Yaz remained where she was for just a second. This was the worst and most disturbing place she had ever seen in her life. The police photographs she'd seen in her training and induction had nothing on this torturous and sterile scene. There were bodies right to the very horizon. Corpses strewn like so much rubbish in all directions. She scanned to see if anyone else was somehow alive. But there seemed to be no other movement.

   "You coming in Yaz, I wouldn't hang about if I were you..." Graham warned from the doorway.

    "OK Graham, I was just-" Suddenly a slender white arrow shot past her ear and she jolted in surprise. Graham saw it too and reacted with a cry of alarm.

   "Get down Yaz!" But it was too late. Another white arrow found Yaz's back and her eyes bulged in raw panic and shocked surprise.

   "Doc!" Graham roared. "Doc, Yaz has been hit!" Graham hadn't even seen where the arrow had come from. He didn't exactly care. He dove towards Yaz as she collapsed like a sack of potatoes. He caught her just as the Doctor bolted from the TARDIS like a woman possessed. They quickly stumbled back, supporting Yaz who moaned and started to cough. Another thin arrow shot past Graham's neck, missing him by no more than an inch.

   "Hurry up!...I knew I knew that signature!" the Doctor screamed.

    They literally fell into the TARDIS, just as another arrow hit the time lady in the leg. She yelped in sudden pain but somehow stumbled through the doors.

    "Ryan...close the doors now!" Ryan didn't need to be told twice. The doors closed. The Doctor grimaced and stumbled up the stairs. She moved towards where their newfound guest lay insensate on the floor.

   "Doc you've been hit!" 

   "I think this woman needs help more than I do. I knew I knew that signature!" she repeated balefully as she gazed up at the scanner. Now the source of where the arrows had sprung from was standing erect in the middle of the battlefield.

It wasn't actually that much to look at. It was sleek. Completely silver and featureless. Humanoid, and female in shape. Only the face was a smooth blank sphere.

   "What the hell is that thing, Doc?" Graham asked, fear etched on his face.

   "That is the most deadly killing machine the universe has ever known. It's a Raston Warrior Robot" the Doctor spat the words like they were mud on the tongue.

Senteela awoke to find herself in a room with softly glowing pink walls. A place she didn't recognise. Three faces looked down at her. She didn't recognise any of them. They were strangers. 

   "How do you feel?" asked the Doctor.

   "Who the hell are you?" Senteela asked, her voice shaking and weak.

   "Hey, we're friends. Take it easy Love" Graham said, trying to be as placatory as he could muster.

   "You're safe now" Ryan added, offering Senteela a smile.

   "Where...where am I?!"

   "Welcome aboard the TARDIS. Im the Doctor, and these are my good pals Ryan and Graham."

    Ryan was bent over the still unconscious form of Yaz, who was somehow floating in mid air. Graham offered Senteela a hand and she took it and climbed to her feet.

   "I have to get back to the barracks..." She made to push the Doctor out of the way, but the Doctor didn't yield.

   "Everyone is dead out there" she spoke sadly. Senteela was too confused to put up much of a protest.

   "I was hurt...I had.."

   "Ah, that's OK, you'll be fine now. Just a few minutes in the brand new zero room will see you fine" the Doctor explained.

   "How's your leg Doc?" Graham asked. The Doctor seemed to not even hear her friend at all.

Senteela swayed. Her head was swimming. Ryan saw her stumble and darted forward to stop her falling.

   "Don’t try to move too much." Senteela obeyed without protest.

   "So, what's your name, sweetheart?" the Doctor asked.

   "Senteela. I'm Senteela Vya. Leader of Vreem Squadron 15...." her eyes filled with tears and she choked back a sob. Ryan tightened his grip on her.

   "They butchered everyone!" she cried, anger and anguish dripping from her voice like so much blood. "None of us stood a chance! They've been system...syst.." tears were freely falling down her cheeks and all colour seemed to leave her face.

   "You don’t have to tell us anymore. I think we can guess..."

   "And it was all our own damned fault..." Senteela sobbed.  Graham had never seen a more broken person in all of his life. 

Tykos raised the D-mat gun and fired.

The fierce wave of time destruction hit the first Raston in the chest and after a few seconds it faded from existence, enveloped in a harsh white strobe. But the second robot was still behind it, and an arrow shot through the air like lightning and found his right leg. Tykos screamed and gripped the wounded limb.

   Then he caught hold of himself and despite the agony he went as rigid as he could manage. He had to keep still as a statue. He couldn't let his stupidity keep on clouding his judgement like this. The Robot hovered four feet away from him. But now it stopped and its head rotated 360 degrees. He must keep still. Maybe it would go soon if he could just keep rock solid. He waited. The Robot finally jumped into the air ten seconds later. Tykos let out a ragged breath of relief. Then he gritted his teeth as he beheld the arrow embedded deep in his leg. What a sad state of hell his race had fallen into now. There was no hope left. It had shrivelled and died long ago. He cursed and searched his medical pouch. He grunted in relief at the sight of the cauterising blaster nestled in the corner. At least that was one small mercy. Now for the hard bit. He gripped the end of the arrow, gritting his teeth again as he bodily yanked the offending article out of his leg. As it withdrew, he shrieked with agony. But finally, the arrow came free and he jabbed the blaster to the open wound and pressed the trigger. Then he thought he was beginning to finally succumb to illusion as the Police Box shell of the TARDIS began to take form in front of him.

   He blacked out. 

   "I'm glad I'm not the only one left " Senteela had long since recovered her composure now. Now that she had cleaned herself up Ryan saw that she was a very attractive woman. But her eyes were pools of defeated black and her whole demeanour exuded long suffering and loss of hope.

    "I'll sweep all quadrants. One at a time. Let’s try to find as many survivors as we can" the Doctor busied herself at the console.

    "Not that any of us deserve to survive"

    "Why on earth would you say that?" Graham asked.

    "Because the Vreem themselves brought this hell down on themselves that’s why!" she started crying again. "If we'd only known..."

Ryan and Graham sat round the little coffee table they had brought into the console room. But Senteela refused to sit down.

   "You should have something to eat" Ryan offered a tray with white cubes on.

   "You should mind your own business" Senteela spat viciously.

   "Hey, we've just saved your life, you know!" Graham retorted knowingly. Senteela fixed him with a glare that would have frozen hell over, but then her hand flew to her mouth to stifle another cry.

   "I’m sorry...I’m just so...so tired" she apologised with genuine feeling. She sagged into the seat they had brought for her. She reached for one of the cubes.

   "That's it, take it easy!" Ryan spoke softly. She raised an eyebrow at him. He wasn't actually at all that bad looking actually. She immediately cursed herself inwardly for thinking of something like that in her present circumstances. 

   "They're really good!"

The Doctor was now also at the table, reaching for a cube.

   Senteela bit, and then somehow despite her raging soul of fire, loss, rage and despair, she gasped just slightly. She had not tasted anything so good in a long long time.

   "Do you feel like telling us how it happened Senteela?" the Doctor laid a gentle caring hand on her shoulder.

   As Graham listened to Senteela's story he felt his sympathy for the poor woman rise and rise like an ocean.

   "The Raston were supposed to respond to our verbal command. But the southern Vreem attacked the barracks. The machinery was damaged. And ever since then the machines have done nothing but systematically wipe us out. Everyone...that is until he came along...."

The Doctor had listened in attentive silence. Ryan knew when she was quiet for long periods like this that the situation was deadly serious.

   "What about these mutations you talked about?" she asked softly.

   "Ah, yes. As if our own robots turning on us wasn’t enough. Then we had to deal with Sikarta. Sikarta the Devil incarnate!" spittle sprayed all over Ryan but he wiped it away without a single complaint. "He tampered with our genetics. Left half of us ruined and in fear of constant unholy metamorphosis. Tried to create a fighting force of unstoppable warriors. Only succeeded in seeding our degradation. Luckily, I somehow.... escaped his vile touch"

   "Why did he do this? What made him?" the Doctor's voice was cracked with emotion.

   "Oh, he thought he could build us stronger to face the Daleks!" Senteela took another bite of the cube in her hand. "What a delusion. The Daleks laid waste to our homes. But then the Rastons did at least seem to leave us alone for a while as soon as they first noted the Daleks presence" Senteela was almost managing to smirk now at the memories.

   "I can imagine it was quite a blood bath. Or a goo bath.." the Doctor said wistfully.

   "Those Daleks never knew what hit them! They were torn apart! Can you believe it? They finally met an enemy who dealt back to them what they liberally dish out! They were utterly annihilated!" Senteela was almost laughing now. Ryan managed a half smile too.

   "But then, when the greater enemy was packed and gone. They turned back to us again of course. So, then we had mutants running about and homicidal death dealing metal men everywhere" her voice trailed off to an embittered croak. Ryan reached out to take her hand. To her own surprise she didn't find herself shaking it off. Instead she found herself squeezing it back.

   "I know what you must have gone through. I too have fought the Daleks, more times than I dare to remember" the Doctor admitted with heavy hearts.

   "Oh, they are nothing compared to those sleek little stick men of Vreem!" Senteela screamed. And at last she finally permitted herself the luxury of letting all her grief surge out like a tidal wave. “And now, somehow, that demon Sikarta has learnt to control them....I just know he has...” 

Yaz stirred. Her back ached. She tried to focus on anything. She only knew she was in the TARDIS. What had happened? Her whole mind felt like it was sliced into a million pieces. It was all a blur. She was hanging in the air.

   "Okay, that's weird!" she stammered feebly. 

   There was someone next to her. The man was snoring loudly. She didn't recognize him.  

Already her back felt better. The pain was lessening all the time. She knew she had had some kind of very very lucky escape.

   "Right, how do I get down from here?" she spoke to the air. The air seemed to hear because her body then slowly floated gently to the ground. She was able to push herself up.

She turned to look at the man, still suspended in the air.  He looked as if he had been through the wars. He was mumbling incoherently, too softly for her to make out any words.

   "Alright mate" she spoke calmly.

   Tykos's eyes then snapped open. And it was not human eyes that stared back up at Yaz.

 No, the eyes of an animal fixed on her.

    "Doctor!" Yaz screamed as she burst into the console room.  Graham jumped out of his seat as the creature bounded into the room, missing Yaz by but a whisker. The Doctor was also on her feet as quick as a flash. The creature bellowed in rage. Its hide was matted with thick reptilian scales and long sharp teeth burst from a black lipped mouth.

   "Get back!" the Doctor shouted at the others.

Ryan and Senteela were now backing away towards the entrance door of the ship. The creature that had been Tykos seemed then to focus on the Doctor as she stepped bravely forward.

   "Hello big guy, what's up?" she asked unassumingly.

   The creature hissed, hot spit flying in the Doctor's face.

   "Now now.." and a lithe hand shot out and a finger jabbed in Tykos neck. He stopped.  

"Graham get the medical kit, double quick!"

   "Right you are Doc" Graham ran to the underside of the console and lifted up a flap. He pulled out the red box housed within and gave it carefully to the Doctor.

   "Thanks Graham. Just a bit of sleep. That's it." she brought a small medical patch up to Tykos's neck.

   Yaz breathed in hoarsely, finally able to catch her breath.

   "Will he be OK now?" she whispered as the Doctor laid the unconscious man to the ground.

   "He will be if I have anything to do with it" the Doctor said with certainty. "But first I need to analyse his system"

   "Let me, let me!" Senteela broke away from Ryan and ran to join the Doctor. She was grabbing something from her pocket and she produced a small circlet of metal. "He'll be fine if you attach this to his cranium. It's a cell mutation suppressor"

   The Doctor managed a big grin and took the device from her. "Wow, I’m impressed! Seriously!"

She placed the disk on Tykos's head and Senteela pulled her back gently.

   "Give him some room, it’s not a pleasant thing to witness" she said stiffly. Tykos began to convulse as the circlet started to gleam. Then his back arched. A fierce red glow ran over him like blood.  Suddenly the Doctor shot Senteela a filthy look of disdain.

   "Hang on a minute.....!!" she dove forward and gripped the disc, heaving with all her might. She yelped as her fingers connected with it, but she managed to yank it free and throw it bodily across the room. "What the hell were you thinking?"

   "It’s the only freedom he could ever have, you dumb blonde!" Senteela seethed. Ryan's face became a mask of confusion.

   "No. I'm a scientist and I can make him better. You don't need to kill him Senteela, or how are you better than a Dalek?"

   "Would anyone like to tell me what's going on please?" Yaz asked loudly.

   The Doctor glowered at Senteela, who shrank back from the withering gaze.

   "Senteela just tried to murder a helpless victim of a disgusting experiment" the Doctor spat.

   "Even your zero room couldn't heal his affliction!" Senteela replied vehemently. "Zero....oh boy, you're not a Time Lord, are you?" she asked, her eyes narrowing suddenly.

   "So, what if I am?" the Doctor answered openly.

   "Yes she is, and she's the best person I know. And she has saved your life. And I think we can save slanging matches for later when we've seen if anyone else needs saving on this planet!" Ryan piped up, staring straight into Senteela's eyes. "And that means without killing"

   Senteela made to speak, but then she decided against it. Then her eyes fell to the floor in shame.

   "Then you'd better be damn quick" she muttered thickly through a renewed flow of anguished tears.

   "Well, Doc?" Graham asked.

    The Doctor was fussing at the console. She was cursing in what he took to be her own tongue and he had seldom seen her so angry.

   "No combination will work! It's so stupid...."

   "Don’t say I didn't warn you" Senteela jibed.

   "You can shut up woman!" Yaz warned coolly.  Senteela shot her a venomous look.  The Doctor thumped the TARDIS console hard. 

   "It won’t work. No combination works!"  She looked with growing consternation at the body of Tykos on the floor. Graham and Ryan and Yaz all knew it was bad. The outlook for the man was not good. That much was blatantly obvious.

   "No, no, no, no, no!" the Doctor was even herself on the verge of tears of frustration. She stabbed at controls with ever increasing verve and intensity.

   "If he can’t be healed, what can we do Doc?" Graham asked the question on everyone's lips.

   "I’m sure I don’t have a clue" the Doctor breathed out raggedly. She sighed for what seemed like an eternity. "Whatever has been done to him...I can’t undo it"

   Tykos began to grunt on the floor.  Graham looked at him in consternation and fear.

   "Doc, he's waking up!"

   "No, I didn’t know that Graham, thanks for being so obvious!" the Doctor's voice was cracking with unrestrained fury and impotence now. Graham was stung by the fervour of her retort.

   "We have to get him back outside" she breathed sombrely.

   "Huh?" Ryan looked blank.

   "We can’t keep him in here. He could kill us all if we let him. I wish there was something I could-"

   "Put the dis-integrator back on him then. Give him that mercy, please time lord!" Senteela begged with angry eyes. The Doctor didn't reply or take her bait. She moved to pull Tykos to his feet.

   "I’m so very sorry....I don’t even know your name and I can’t help you..."

   She glanced up at the scanner screen. There was no sign of the Raston Warrior any longer for at least the moment.

   "Is there really nothing we can do?" Yaz prodded further. The Doctor pulled on the door control.

   "Everyone stay right back by the console. Let me carry him outside" she spoke sombrely. All her youthful airiness seemed to have evacuated her vicinity.

The Doctor laid Tykos down in the mud just outside the TARDIS door. A white arrow sliced through Tykos's skull the instant his head struck the ground. The Doctor hissed in anger and dove backwards into the TARDIS. Then she sprinted for the console and her hands danced over the console. Then she threw the materialisation lever.

Senteela gripped the stair rail as the ship started to shake.

   "Where are we going?"

   "Oh, I’m going to fly the TARDIS straight at that thing out there!" the Doctor cried. Yaz laid a hand on her arm, but the Doctor shook it off.

The TARDIS smashed into the Robot at a rate of some impressive speed. The silver figure was sent backwards, shards of liquid metal flying from its surface. Then the ship re materialised right on top of it.

   "Planetary scan running..." the Doctor's voice sounded bereft and strained. The agony of her helplessness was livid and horrendous for her three friends to witness. "I should have saved him."

   "You couldn't Doctor, why do you always blame yourself?!" Yaz countered boldly.

   "I should have done something for the poor man!"

   "He would thank you that he's dead now" Senteela spoke very quietly. 

The Raston beneath the TARDIS had reverted to its quicksilver form. It squeezed itself from under the base of the machine, and then began to trace a line up towards the key hole. A sudden sound like a gong penetrated through the walls of the ship. Graham let out a sigh.

   "What now?"

    The Doctor rolled her eyes and rubbed her temple.  Then she gazed at the computer alert system.

   "Oh no you don’t!" she cried. She fussed over the controls and the TARDIS began to lurch. Ryan stepped forward.

   "It's trying to get in!"

The liquid had reached the lock. It began to seep through.

Then it was left to fall to the ground as the TARDIS faded from underneath it. The liquid seemed to seethe in disgust, then flowed back to the other broken pieces of the Raston Warrior Body. They quickly merged and came back together. Then the Raston was whole again.

   "Tell me Senteela, is Sikarta still alive?"  The Doctor had her hands forcefully on her shoulders and her eyes were burning into her own.

   "I don’t know..." she stammered. The lie came out so pathetically it was embarrassing.

   "Pull the other one. What little re-enforced bunker is he hiding in?!"

   "Sector 17" she admitted. She shook herself free of the Doctor's tight grip. The Doctor turned her attention back to the console. A buzzer in front of her fluted into life.  The TARDIS crew all stood round her as her gaze clouded over and she shuddered.

    "There are several million life signs worldwide, but every one of them is a contaminated being..." a tear streaked down her right cheek.

Silence hung around the console room for a long moment until another bleep resounded.

   "No wait...one clean trace..." The Doctor's voice trailed off.

   "That's the creep" Senteela stated with no shadow of a doubt in her voice.

   "Well, Mr Sikarta. You'd better prepare yourself for me" the Doctor spoke softly, but the resolution in her voice was palpable. 

Sikarta gazed at his instruments with a look of mild surprise. But he wasn't greatly perturbed by the small blip on the screen. Judging by the look of the flight pattern it was a TARDIS. He hadn't seen a TARDIS in a long time. So those silly old lazy slug beds had finally sent an errand boy to bring him back home to heel, had they?

    He chuckled. They would never take him prisoner. Just let them try. He was proud of his new army. The whole Time War had been a shamble for the whole of Time Lord society. They had never seen the obvious answer to all their troubles. Even that dumb idiot the Doctor had used the Moment and that hadn't erased the universe of the Daleks! No! What arrant stupidity. No one saw the clear answer to their problem.

   The Raston Warrior Robot. The most perfect Killing Machine ever devised. And he had been lucky enough to land on the very planet of their origin. He had routinely murdered the creators of the death machines and then easily tampered with the control system. And now the robots obeyed only him. The Raston's had always held the secret to Time Lord victory. And yet the stupid bureaucratic oafs had never thought to use them. Not once.

   And he knew their secret now. The special quality of the metal used in their construction. Almost indestructible. Self-repairing. All conventional weaponry had no lasting effect on them.

   He had delighted in the foolishness of his own people. He had watched from a safe distance, concealed and forgotten.

Until now.

Who would they send to bring him back? Not that it mattered. Vreem was his.  The TARDIS took form in the corner of the bunker strong room. Sikarta whooped in delight as he recognised the Police Box outer plasmic shell of the ship.

He moved a finger to the recall button on the console in front of him as the door of the TARDIS opened.

    "Oh, my dear Doctor!" he announced as she emerged from within, her eyes were grey and her whole face was a mask of crimson.

   "How do you know my name?"

   "Come now Doctor, surely you have heard of me, or remember me from Gallifrey?" Sikarta snapped viciously.

   "Oh, good grief, no....” she glowered icily. “I think you know why I'm here"

   "Doctor, don’t be so sharp with me. Why don’t you ask your friends to come out? I swear to Rassilon I won’t hurt them!" Sikarta chortled derisively.

   "You won’t get the chance. You will shut down the robots now. Or I will" she warned him, standing up to her full height and straightening an imaginary bowtie.

   "Oh Doc, are you forever such a boring old little trout? Don't you want to hear about my Eternity Instrument first?"

    Senteela burst from the TARDIS, shoving the Doctor out of the way. She dove for SIkarta. He made no move to stop her as she launched herself at him.

   "Senteela, don't!" the Doctor cried. Too late. Sikarta merely pressed the button. He sent a neat fist towards Senteela's face and she rebounded, flailing and sinking to the floor. Her nostrils dripping mini lakes of blood.

   "Leave her alone, you disgusting apostate!" the Doctor moved to help Senteela back to her feet. Sikarta's hand now returned to hover above the recall switch.

   "Why have you done this?" Senteela spat.

   "Oh, just for plain good fun my dear. It’s so gorgeous watching robots run amok and so delicious seeing bodies blow apart and what’s even better, it's awesome that I get to control the most lethal weapons in existence!" he snarled viciously. "My Eternity instrument has made my future electric!"

   "And what in Tinky Winky's name is an eternity instrument?" the Doctor asked. “And how did you learn to control the Raston Warriors?”

   "My Raston army? With a super hypno-wave form, calibrated to the exact basic anatomical form of the Warriors of course!! A simple pulse and now they only follow me. I am the Master of the greatest weapon ever forged! What else?” his eyes gleamed with childlike malice and unrestrained glee. “They could have won us the Time War from day one. But no, for some reason they were never thought of"

    "I know, took me a hell of a long time to perfect that memory suppression matrix around Gallifrey"

    "Oh, so it was you who did that?!” Sikarta growled with a laugh that sounded more like a dog throwing up. “Only you forgot about all us time lords that may have been offworld. Oh, what a silly half-witted idiot you are Doctor!"

   "I do have my moments" the Doctor admitted honestly.

   "The Eternity Instruments shall first begin by reigning down vengeance on the Daleks. I shall see those mutated pepperpots crushed like the mucky pools of green snotty flesh they are! Then on my fellow Time Lords. They deserve to die, being so unbelievably gullible as to let you affect most of their minds!" Sikarta cooed. "And then I'll have some fun with you too!"

   "Sikarta, you are pathetic. You sad, immoral,…"

   "Oh, do shut your beautiful mouth Doc. I say my dear, it really is rather wonderful you're a woman now. I could have some amazing fun with you, couldn't I?" his eyes were pools of malice and the purest evil the Doctor had ever seen in her life.

The Doctor's hands balled into tight fists, her lips tightening.

    "Wherever or whenever you go in the universe. There's always some trigger-happy little creep safe in a sardine tin whilst creating Armageddon! How many have died because of you Sikarta, who I've never heard of because he is such a failure of a Time Lord?"

She shoved her hands into her pockets and gave him a nerdy pout.

   "I love you Doc. All I read up on you is true! You always speak your mind. It’s almost a shame that I’m going to have to rip apart your friends and then kill you. But I promise I'll make your last few hours fulfilling for you. I'm really, really quite something between the bedsheets you know..."

His other hand snaked into his tunic, and came back with a stazer which he pointed at the Doctor. She didn't even blink.

   "You won't get to lay a finger on me, microbe!" she stated with assurance.

   "I can do whatever I want with you and your Vreem slime here" he sneered. "And you can do nothing to me"

   "I can always try my best" the Doctor sniffed.

   "And I will dismember you if you come anywhere near me!" Senteela shouted.

    Sikarta rewarded her with a pitying look.

   "No, alright... you're right. OK, Doc. I guess..." he swung the stazer and opened fire. Senteela shuddered as the bolt tore through her body. She sagged forward like a sack of potatoes onto the ground. The Doctor gasped.

   "Tell your friends to come out here now. She's only stunned at the moment. I’d hate to have to reduce her to atoms..."

   "Guys." the Doctor called back into the TARDIS. "Come on out here"

Graham, Ryan and Yaz all stepped from the Tardis, all wore the same pitying looks on their faces. Sikarta guffawed, snorting like a pig. 

   "Oh Doc. Dark meat and old meat? Good grief, you're getting old" he laughed maniacally.

   "Who are you calling old?" Graham asked defensively.

   "And throw down the gun" Yaz stepped forward.

   "Oh look, always the women who have the most guts. You pick your friends so well Doctor. What's this gorgeous creature's name?"

   "None of your business, mate" Yaz answered, she produced a set of hand cuffs from her jacket.

   "Ooh! Are you going to arrest me?" Sikarta whispered. "Shouldn't bother, got a force field all around me deary! Still, I wouldn't mind being arrested by you. Such a beautiful piece of venison...yum yum!"

   "Guess what Sikarta, mate? You talk way too much."

Sikarta now noticed that the Doctor's stance had changed. She was smiling at him broadly. She wasn't even the slightest bit afraid.

    "So what if I do?"

    "Tell him, Ryan" the Doctor spoke chirpily.

    "The Doctor's been busy mate. She spent some little time preparing a planet busting bomb which is now less than ten feet below where you are sitting now…made from Manfrium"

Sikarta finally at last seemed just a little perturbed by that last sentence.

   “How did you know about Manfrium?!” his finger stroked the recall button, almost as if it were a cat in need of some attention.

   “I have met the Rastons several times before, idiot. I know what they're made of! And I also know it's the only thing that can put paid to them too.”

Sikarta gazed at the four people in front of him, saw the looks of passive victory in their faces.

    "There are still over twenty million people on the planet's surface outside" he said with a prideful smirk. "You would not kill them. I have read you up too well namby pamby do gooder Doctor. You do not slaughter thus. It would tear your guts out"

   "Oh, Sikarta believe me this is gonna haunt me till my dying day. But I am going to explode the bomb anyway. You've made sure your mutative disruption can’t be fixed. Those people still alive out there don’t have a life at all. You took that from them. But now I am going to take all your pathetic power away from you as well, you dirty little nothing..."

With a dramatic flourish her hand jolted out of her pocket, and she threw the primed detonator towards him. He caught it. His animation fled him in an instant.

    "Then you will die with me, at the hands of my ser-" his finger rose to jab down on the recall button.

Senteela cannoned into him. Sikarta let out a cry of alarm as his head connected with a wall. His fist flailed, but connected with only air.

    "And that’s not just an activator, that’s a force field disruptor. Oh, my dear Sikarta you have been naive!"

    Senteela laid into him with her fists and her feet. The Doctor turned away to face her friends.

   "Get him into the TARDIS quickly, Senteela" she ordered severely.

 Senteela nodded, heaving the Time Lord's unconscious body over her shoulder and heading back into the TARDIS.

   "Same with all renegade Time Lords. They always blab out their plans and waste time!" she said as they all strode back into the TARDIS.

   "I hate to point it out Doc, but you're a renegade time lord too" Graham reminded her with a wry smile.

   "Yeah, but I'm a really cuddly lovely and nice one!"

A moment later and the TARDIS faded away.

She set the TARDIS in hover mode over the planet. All five of them watched as the planet blossomed into a thick vein a fierce red and yellow fire. Tongues of debris spun out into the universe. The Doctor swallowed in anguish. Fresh tears made new sudden and unbidden trails down her cheeks.

   All of them could feel her agony. She had felt so useless when confronted with the knowledge that there was no way she could save the poor residents of Vreem from the effects of Sikarta's disgusting experiments. She could hear both her hearts beating out accusing songs in her ears.

   "You've given them peace, Doctor, believe me when I say that." Senteela said, but it was scant consolation to the Doctor.

   Yaz had a few burning tears of her own too. A mercy killing. That was how they should view it. But kind hearts never viewed such actions as so. She raised a hand to the Doctor's cheek to brush away her tears. There was such naked compassion there in all their eyes then. The Doctor broke at the gesture, she scooped Yaz into a tight embrace.

   "Thank you Yaz. Thank you all"

   "And don't you dare go blaming yourself for any of this Doctor. Sikarta owns the entirety of the blame in this matter" Graham spoke audibly.

   “I cannot even begin to think what the suffering must have been like for the people of Vreem.” Ryan added sincerely.

   "There was absolutely nothing else you could have done. You've eased a planet of immense suffering and useless war" Yaz spoke into her ear.

The Doctor was still clinging so tightly to Yaz, who could actually barely breathe now but she didn't care at the strength of the grip. She held her friend for all she worth. She knew the Doctor needed this. Graham patted the Doctor on the back. Ryan did likewise.

The Doctor finally broke away from Yaz. All three of her friends had never seen her eyes so red and raw. Yaz tutted.

   "Please do me a favour Doctor and stop crying."  Then Yaz kissed her softly on the cheek. The Doctor's lip quivered slightly, and she turned away and walked to where the containment vortex held Sikarta tight, and completely powerless. The Doctor swiped at her eyes with her coat sleeve.

   "You callous vicious ego maniacs never ever learn, do you? You think you have the right to cause unimaginable suffering for fun. And you never realise such infantile lusts always, always rebound on themselves. I hope you enjoy your life sentence. I hope you enjoy doing nothing for the rest of your pathetic sad existence."

    Sikarta's eyes were livid with unadulterated hatred.

    "All your schemes crushed and blown away. How does it feel to be such an idiot? You should never have let me land the TARDIS in your bunker mate! Now you get to reflect on how your life could have been so much better. I feel so very sorry for you indeed. How about we drop you off at Shada? I'm sure I can still find my way there even now. Yeah, Shada's the perfect place for you!"

She stuck out her tongue and then waved at him.

    Senteela began to laugh. “I suppose that's a secure prison?”

    "And you can be quiet!" The Doctor shouted back at her. "I've still not quite forgiven you yet for trying to kill that man...whoever he was..."

Senteela knew when to take a hint. She fell silent and sank back onto the chair next to the coffee table. She then felt Ryan's hand on her shoulder. He gave her his best winning smile. She managed to force one back.

   "Just give her a moment, she'll get over it. She always does." Ryan whispered in her ear.

   "I think.." she whispered back. "That you are a rather nice chap."

She planted a little kiss on his ear. Even underneath his dark skin she could tell he was blushing. It was so unbelievably cute.

   "Senteela. Now what are we going to do with you, eh?" Yaz threw an arm around her shoulder, Senteela shrugged. She had no real answer for that question.

   "Eh Doc, why don't you ask her if she wants to stay with us for a bit?"

Senteela felt the corners of her mouth twitching upwards.

   "You think so, fam?" the Doctor beamed.

    "Yeah, she'd be a great asset!" Ryan said rather too obviously. Graham winked at him. He knew his Grandson would be more than happy with this arrangement. "What do you say Senteela? Fancy a bit of a bash around the countless wonders of eternity?"

   Senteela gave a glance up to Ryan. His eyes were begging her to make the choice she had already made.

   "I would love to travel with you" she grinned.

 Ryan punched the air.

    “You'll see whole star systems, whole planets, whole universes out there. And countless civilisations. Some of them ancient, some of them born in five minutes time. And no matter how long we may travel for we'll never even scratch the beginning of the whole canvas of infinity! You will have laughter, joy, love and....pain. Yes. There’s always pain...” the Doctor paused for breath. “...But if you're absolutely sure then the door to the cosmos is standing wide open. You ready to make a genuine difference, Senteela?”

The Doctor's hands hovered over the co-ordinate programmer.

    “Yes, I think I am. And I am sorry about what happened. I won't ever act like that again...I promise...” Senteela said with absolute conviction.

    “See, she's already one of us.” Ryan ended the discussion with finality.

The four of them looked to the Doctor. She flicked in the journey co-ordinates.

    “Well Fam... on to Shada!”

And the TARDIS flew on to new adventures.