The Doctor was reluctantly struggling on behind her.
“Alice,” he said.
“No, Doctor. I’m not letting destiny control me.”
The Doctor laughed. “What did you expect when you travelled in space and time with me?”
She turned to look at him. “Not the death of an innocent alien race.”
“Something similar happened to me a long time ago. I was faced with changing the course of the future and it backfired. I’m not willing to let it happen again. You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”
“Guess I’ll have to find out then, eh?”
Onboard the Centaur, Atherton was sipping on a celebratory cup of tea. He was on his data pad, messaging his wife, Kelly Atherton, who was the science officer on the Enterprise, when a high-pitched alert sign began blaring out.
“What is it?” asked Atherton.
“Proximity alert,” said Amaya.
“What? Outside?”
“Of course outside,” said Amaya with a little laugh.
Atherton frowned. “This place is supposed to be uninhabited.”
“There,” said Reed, pointing towards the two figures walking through the snow.
“Scan them,” said Atherton.
A few minutes later their details flashed up on a small screen attached to Atherton’s chair. “One Human. One…well, the other one isn’t Human.”
“Did the other ships send anyone out?” asked Reed.
“No,” said Amaya. “Nobody’s disembarked.”
“Then where did they come from?” said Atherton, getting up and crossing to the view screen.
Outside Alice and the Doctor had reached the underbelly of the Centaur. Alice stood, looking up at the huge craft above her. She narrowed her eyes and then cupped her hands to her mouth.
“Oi!!” she shouted up to the ship. “Let us in!”
As if to answer her question, a few seconds later there was a clanging and creaking of what could only be described as huge machinery up above. Slowly a piece of the underbelly of the Centaur began to descend, attached to hydraulics poles.
“Step back,” said the Doctor, guiding Alice out of the way. “It looks like you’ve got your wish.”
They two of them watched as the large platform reached the ground with a thud.
“Come aboard,” came Reed’s voice over a speaker.
Alice stepped on and the Doctor grabbed her arm. “Just don’t do anything rash.”
A few minutes later, the Doctor and Alice were standing on the bridge of the Centaur. James Atherton was on the commanders chair, his cold tea in his hand and his legs crossed as he looked at the two strangers intently.
“Hmmm,” was all he could say.
“What are you gonna do then?” said Alice.
“It’s an interesting story,” said Atherton. “Time travellers. Aliens under mountains.”
“It’s all true,” said Alice.
“Is it really?” he said.
“I’m afraid it is, commander,” said the Doctor grimly.
“And you?” said Atherton, nodding towards the Doctor. “You don’t register on our scanners as Human.”
“No.”
“Then what are you?”
“I’m a Time Lord.”
Atherton frowned. “Never heard of them, my friend.”
“Well, no,” said the Doctor, looking a little despondent, “you won’t have. My people are a little more out there than your average alien.”
Alice frowned. She suddenly realised that she hadn’t even asked the Doctor about his own people or his own place. She made a mental note to ask when this was all over.
“All this is beside the point,” said Alice. “You just can’t do your world-changing thing here.”
Atherton let out a long, heavy sigh. “It’s taken Colony Fleet Jericho 13 months to get here. The next uninhabited world is Peppervox IV, and that’s another 18 months away.”
“Then go there,” said Alice.
“We simply don’t have enough supplies, rations or…well, anything to make it there.”
“But, commander, can’t you see…?” said Alice desperately.
“I’m willing to help these aliens as much as I can,” said Atherton, “but there is no way we can leave this planet. And we can‘t hold back on the terraforming.”
Alice glared angrily at the Doctor, who simply lowered his eyes to look at the ground, knowing full well that she was fighting a losing battle.
“Amaya, take them down to the bar on C-Deck whilst I have a think about all of this.”
“Yes, sir,” said Amaya, stepping in front of the Doctor and Alice and indicating for them to follow.
The Doctor and Alice followed Amaya in silence. They were taken through a set of double-doors and into a long corridor that seemed to go on forever. At various intervals there were doors leading off to crew quarters, and then finally they came to a metal spiral staircase.
They followed it down into the darker depths, passing countless eager crew members, all of them itching to get started on Issenttii, and all of them curious as to where Alice and the Doctor had come from.
Eventually they reached a large area which reminded Alice of a school canteen. Set at the far end was a makeshift bar with all kinds of, what she assumed, where alcoholic beverages.
“Carly, guests!” said Amaya, as she guided them to the bar.
Amaya smiled as an older woman with long, blonde hair appeared from the back room. She was dressed like a civilian, looked to be in her early 40’s and still looking pretty glamorous.
“What can I get you?” she said, smiling.
“Water for me,” said the Doctor.
“Orange juice,” said Alice glumly.
“Good job you didn’t ask for anything stronger,” said Carly, grabbing a couple of glasses. “We have’t got anything!” She laughed.
Alice and the Doctor weren’t in the mood to laugh.
They took their drinks and made their way over to a table in the corner.
They sat there for a long time in silence.
Finally Alice broke the ice. “I’m sorry, Doctor.”
“What for?”
“For all of this.”
“You have your beliefs,” said the Doctor. “I admire you for that.”
“But I didn’t want to fall out with you,” she said.
“We haven’t fallen out,” smiled the Doctor. “Differing opinions doesn’t mean that we have to fall out.”
She sighed. “But what do we do?”
The Doctor leaned back in his chair and interlocked his fingers. “I agree that we need to find someway to save the Issenttiians, but we can’t disrupt what’s happening here. Not at all.”
Alice nodded sadly. “I guess that’s the burden you have to bare when you travel to the future. And the past. You have to be careful what you can and can‘t interfere with.”
He nodded grimly.
“When I was a little girl,” she said, looking into the distance, remembering, “we lived in a house near to a stream. One morning I went out on my bike and I saw this old, scruffy man with a few bags. He was dunking the bags into the water. I crept closer and I could see that something was moving in the bag.”
The Doctor looked sad.
“Well,” she continued, “I shouted and the man got scared and ran away. I ran to the stream and grabbed at the bags. I could only save one of them and inside were two ginger kittens.” She gulped, her eyes filling with tears. “So I watched on as the other two bags floated away down stream. I couldn’t get to them, but…”
“But you at least saved two of them.”
“Yeah,” she said, looking away and dabbing the corners of her eyes with her fingers. “Yeah, I could at least save two of them.”
The Doctor nodded. “I understand.”
Atherton sat in front of the view screen, his face stern and solemn. He knew it was going to be impossible, but he had to ask anyway. He watched the flickering image of the Earth President - Farrah Benz - as he shook his head slowly.
“Is there no way?” said Atherton, his arms outstretched, pleaing to him.
“If there was, commander, then I would not hesitate to give the order.”
“But these creatures will die.”
Benz shook his head again. “I’m sorry, James, but we knew when we set out on this colonisation mission that there would have to be sacrifices and choices we wouldn’t like. There’s nothing more I can do.”
“Can we at least delay the terraforming? Give this Doctor a chance to locate all the tribes and -”
“No!” said Benz in a tone that Atherton felt he couldn’t mess with. “You have your orders, Commander Atherton. Follow them to the letter.”
Atherton walked grimly into the canteen and sat between the Doctor and Alice. He put his head in his hands and ran his hands through his wavy, brown hair.
“Not good news?” said the Doctor.
He shook his head.
“Then appeal to someone higher!” said Alice.
“I can’t go any higher than the President of the Earth Empire,” said Atherton. “I can’t change his mind. Even if he wanted to help.”
“Then I’ll do something,” said Alice, getting up from her seat and running across the canteen.
“Alice, wait!” said the Doctor.
“No,” she shouted back as she exited the room.
She ran down the corridor towards the room where her and the Doctor had been brought aboard. It was a huge, hanger-like chamber with the platform that had brought them up from the planet’s surface.
She ran into the room, stood on the platform and then turned to face the bewildered officer at the control panel.
“Lower me down,” she said.
He looked startled, not knowing what to say.
“NOW!” she shrieked.
The officer jumped to attention and lowered the platform.
Alice felt her tears begin to well up again as she descended down into the cold, snowy blizzard down below.
The platform hit the ground with a thud. She pulled her scarf tight around her and then made her way back towards the mountain. She took one last look up at the ship as she left and was sure she could see the Doctor looking down from way up in the interior, but she couldn’t stop now.
She had to help them.
Alice had been running through the twigs and the bushes that covered Oakley Wood. She had had a fight with her parents and had gone running out of their house, through the incredibly large back garden, over the broken fence and then into the woods.
But now she was regretting it. In the distance she could hear her younger sister, Rosie, and her Mum calling her name. But she was torn. If she went back, she’d surely be in trouble, but if she continued, maybe she’d finally find some kind of adventure away from them all. Something a lot more exciting than the life she was having right now.
So she pressed on. Deeper and deeper than she had ever gone before, all the time hearing the familiar voices fade into the distance.
She looked up to the tree tops. It was autumn now and all the leaves had fallen from them, exposing the twisted, gnarled branches and twigs reaching into the grey sky like hands of some kind of demon she had read in her story books.
A flock of birds flew above, and for a moment she wanted to be a bird and fly away from all of her troubles. Fly away from her sisters…
“Alice…”
She jumped at the sound of her fathers voice in the very, very far distance again and it made her run faster.
Eventually she could hear the sound of running water. She was sure she couldn’t have come this far, but - no - it was definitely Oakley stream. She had remembered her parents driving her over the bridge somewhere over to the east and trying to capture a glimpse at the stream.
And then she saw movement. At first she thought it was her Dad, but then she realised that he couldn’t have gotten past and ahead of her.
It was a man, though. An old man with a scruffy white beard and scruffy brown clothes. She ducked behind a pathetic little bush and kept as quiet as possible.
He was looking around himself nervously and he was carrying something. A grey, fabric-like bag. No, there were a few of them. And something seemed to be moving inside. She thought she could hear some kind of sound coming from them, but she wasn’t so sure.
The old man looking nervously around himself again, and then knelt beside the stream. He put one of the moving bags into the stream and held it down. But his foot slipped on the muddy bank and he let go of the bag. Alice watched as it floated down the stream.
He cursed himself and then he pulled out the other bag. He put it into the stream, but suddenly his hand started shaking and he let go of the bag. He let out a cry of sadness and then quickly got up and dashed away.
Alice looked on in confusion as the still-moving bag slowly moved down stream.
And then she heard the sound.
Meow!
Alice knew what that sound was instantly. She jumped to her feet, slipped down the muddy bank of the river and fell face first into the stream. It was only shallow, though, and she trudged on through the water and the muck as the bag drifted away.
The further she got, the deeper the water became. Finally…finally…she reached out her hand and grabbed at the bag….just as her Dad appeared at the side of the bank.
“Alice!” he yelled, half furious, half terrified for his daughters safety.
“They’re cats,” said Alice, sobbing. “I couldn’t save the others one. I couldn’t save the others.”
Atherton paced up and down the bridge of his ship, scratching his chin thoughtfully.
The Doctor simply looked on, his hands behind his back, eyeing up the commander cautiously.
“It’s a tricky situation,” said Atherton.
“But will you give me the time?” said the Doctor.
“I can’t delay any longer.”
“How long do I have?”
“About 45 minutes. It takes 45 minutes to get the terraforming device set up. After that…well, anything outside of these ships will be torn apart.”
“So…45 minutes to save my friend, save the tribe under that mountain, and anything else that I might be able to save…interesting.”
“Let me send Reed with you.”
Reed looked up from his console, a little frustrated at being nominated for the fool-hardy trip.
“It isn’t necessary, commander,” said the Doctor.
“Of course it is,” said Atherton. “Look, I may be the one being made to execute these poor creatures, but I don’t have to like it. We can’t even argue against the Empire. We have to do this. But I at least want to help somehow.”
The Doctor looked at Atherton. He could tell that he was genuine. He really did want to help. “Okay,” said the Doctor, “send Mr Reed with me.”
Reed let out a long, very audible sigh.
“Get going, Harry,” said Atherton, crossing over to his console and slapping him on his back. “You’ve always said you wanted to rescue a damsel in distress.”
“More like a damsel who ran straight into the distress,” said Reed, his Scottish tones sounding almost like a long, drawn-out groan.
Atherton smiled. “Remember, 45 minutes.” He checked his computer read out. “43 now, actually. Go!”
By the time Alice had reached the base of the mountain and the tunnel again, it had become extremely dark outside. The only thing illuminating her way was the pure white ice. She leant against the cold stone of the mountain side to catch her breath.
“Hello,” came the voice, making Alice jump.
She looked down. It was Rotox. “Oh,” she smiled, relieved, “it’s you.”
“Welcome back Alice,” he said.
“You lot need to come with me,” said Alice quickly.
“We will not go anywhere with you,” said Rotox. “You are speaking with the monsters.”
“They’re not monsters,” said Alice, “but they are going to kill you.” She frowned, realising how stupid that sounded.
“We kill them first,” said Rotox, brandishing a dagger.
“No,” said Alice. “They are being made to do this. They are going to completely change your planet. You have to come with me.”
“You come with me,” said Rotox. “I shall show you something.” He scurried off into the tunnel. “Come on.”
Alice followed Rotox into the darkness until they reached the large cavern. Rotox pointed down towards the centre. Huddled around the fire were the aliens, once again, but now, standing next to one of the old stone pillars was a huge, rocket-like device. It was mounted on some kind of makeshift, wooden trailer.
“What is that?” said Alice, a little worried.
Rotox grinned. “Many sleeps ago it fell from the stars. A sign from the Gods.”
Alice frowned. She may have been new to all of this, but something about the rocket told her that it wasn’t something to be messed with.
“And?”
“We opened it up, but many people died looking at it. Wasted away.” Rotox guided her down the steps, across the cavern, past the intrigued Issenttiians and towards the rocket. He reached up and slid open a panel. Inside, behind a glass covering, was a glowing, red-hot crystal.
“Rotox. I don’t know if you should be tampering with this.”
“They won’t kill us,” said Rotox. “There were lights in the sky and this fell. Others like it fell and exploded. They destroyed many of our habitats.”
“Yes,” said Alice slowly. “It may be a futuristic kind, but that is definitely some kind of nuclear missile.”
Next Time: Is all hope lost as Alice tries to convince Rotox to leave the planet? Coming Saturday 22nd February 2014.
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