Post by Fitz Kreiner on Feb 27, 2010 12:56:21 GMT
21
Hit the Lights.
Hit the Lights.
Time slowed down to a crawl as Anneke stared down the barrel of the Cyber gun. She saw the exact second the large claw-like digit depressed the trigger button on the stubby tube shaped gun. Nothing else mattered at that precise moment. All that existed was the Cyberman’s hand, the gun and herself. Part of her wanted to close her eyes, so very badly, to not see her impending end; however they were fixed wide open in panicked fear.
Anneke could almost see the button as it slowly disappeared the short distance into the gun, the silence and stillness that followed were as is death had taken her quietly, left that last image in her mind. It was when she saw a movement that it hit her, the gun hadn’t gone off, she hadn’t died; she was still alive.
Stopping in its tracks, the Cyberman depressed the firing button again, looking down at the gun. It clearly expected it to go off. The sight could have been comical and Anneke half expected the Cyberman to reach up with its other hand and scratch its head. Suddenly she realised that she was holding her breath and let it out. It was then the flood gates opened and she started to laugh, to herself at first before her giggles became full blown laughter.
She was vaguely aware of getting a puzzled look from Tom, who had stopped dead at the sight, his fear taken away and replaced with confusion. The astonished and confused look on his face only made her laugh more. Before long she found she was having to grip the strut she was stood beside for support, her laughter almost echoing around the console room.
“Stop that noise,” the Cyberman said, regaining its composure quicker than Anneke or Tom.
Glancing over from Anneke to the Cyberman, Tom’s face broke into a grin before he started to sblack person. His sblack person soon turned into a chuckle and then he broke into laughter too.
“What you gonna do if we don’t?” He said through bursts of chuckles. “Shoot us?”
Upon hearing that, Anneke doubled over with laughter, tears now running down her face which was reddening with the exertion of the laughter. She was only now vaguely aware of the Cyberman still pointing its gun at her. The same soft click sounded as she knew it tried to fire again. Turning, the Cyberman then tried to fire at Tom, the same effect occurring.
“Silence,” the Cyberman ordered.
Dropping the apparently useless gun on the floor, the Cyberman took several steps towards Anneke. Raising its hands, it prepared to fire its static electrical charge. With an electric crackle, blue sparks just jumped uselessly from the partly spherical sensors on the top of the wrists. Not to be put off, the Cyberman tried again, and again but to no avail.
“Explain this anomaly,” it said, turning back on Tom.
“I can’t,” he replied, his laughter subsiding. “But you aren’t in charge any more, you jug eared bastard.”
“Dampening fields will not deter the Cyber race,” the Cyberman said.
With deliberate movements, the silver creature crossed the console room, heading towards Anneke. Still trying to catch her breath from laughing so hard, Anneke tried to back away, tripping and falling down the small step from the dais on which the console sat. Reaching down, the Cyberman picked her up by the scruff of the neck.
“You will obey, or she will be destroyed,” it said.
“So, destroy her,” Tom said, his face blank. “Then what will you do? You’ll have destroyed your bargaining tool, then if you kill me, who will pilot the TARDIS for you?”
“We shall learn.”
“I don’t think so,” Tom smiled. “You see, I’m now stood directly in front of the self destruction controls, and I’ve just set them. If you don’t release my friend this instant, we’ll all go up in smoke, and most probably your ship and force here and the moon base.”
“Deactivate that control,” the Cyberman ordered pointing at Tom with its free hand.
“Let her go first,” Tom said pointing back. “I’m serious. Kill or harm her, and we all die.”
Opening its hand, the Cyberman let Anneke fall to the floor, where she scrambled away from the creature. Getting to her feet, she backed as far away as she could, not taking her eyes off the Cyberman.
“That’s better,” Tom said, taking a step back from the console.
“Deactivate that control,” the Cyberman said, still pointing.
“Do it yourself,” Tom said, turning and running from the console to the door, pausing briefly to scoop up the dropped Cyber gun and reach out to Anneke. “Come on, run!” he yelled.
Scrambling round, Anneke followed Tom to the open external doors and out of the smaller door of the police box exterior of the TARDIS. She doubted she could ever get used to the feeling of passing from the inside of the TARDIS to the outside world, and the fact that that vast cavernous space was held within such a small object.
“Wait,” she called, reaching out and grabbing Tom’s arm, forcing him to stop. “What about that bomb or whatever it was you said.”
“There isn’t,” Tom replied with a wink.
“Then what-?” Anneke started only to be pushed aside by Tom.
Looking up as she stumbled backwards, she saw a crackle of blue electric energy spark at where she had just been standing. Tom, she could see, had side stepped the opposite direction and was aiming the Cyber gun he had picked up at something outside of her field of vision. As she watched, she saw him fire and heard the deathly rattle sound out just before she hit the floor. The sound of a Cyberman screeching closely followed the sound of the Cyber gun.
Rolling as she hit the deck of the Cyber ship, Anneke looked back towards the TARDIS. The Cyberman had emerged from the doors and was now slowly collapsing to the floor, smoke billowing from its mouth and eyes, its chest unit a smouldering and charred mass.
“Sorry about that,” Tom said, crossing the control chamber and helping Anneke to her feet.
“What do you mean there isn’t a bomb?” she asked, brushing herself down. “You said that the ship, or whatever the hell that thing is, was going to self destruct.”
“I lied,” Tom replied. “Something the Cyberman probably didn’t count on. You see, the reason this gun didn’t work in there, and I was rather surprised about it too, was because there’s something called a ‘State of Temporal Grace’ in the TARDIS. The Doctor told me about it; it apparently stops all weapons working inside. He said he was going to repair it, I didn’t realise he had. I’m bloody glad he had though.”
“Me too,” Anneke said, not too sure what Tom was on about.
“I had to lure him outside somehow, so I could deal with him,” Tom continued. “I think I may have an idea, but it’s very risky and I’m not too sure whether it will work or not.” Pausing, Tom looked intently at Anneke, “I have to ask you, in all seriousness,” he said, “how far are you willing to go to stop the Cybermen?”
“That’s my planet down there,” Anneke said, pointing up. “I joined this program so I could help it. I don’t want these Cybermen using the Gravitron to destroy it. Why?”
“Because if I get this wrong,” Tom said, his voice low and serious, before pausing slightly, “we’ll die. I’m relying completely on things I’ve picked up over the last few months and half buried memories.”
“Oh,” was all Anneke could reply with, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable.
“It’s up to you,” Tom said, “I can take you back to the base tunnel and do it myself, or you can stay.”
Anneke suddenly felt a huge sense of elation that this stranger was thinking of her safety over their own plan, a plan they would put off to get her out of danger. It didn’t matter, she wanted to protect her planet from these Cybermen, having seen what they had done to her friends, she was adamant. She would help stop them; she would fight them with her all and to her death. That thought should have scared her, but for some reason she felt strangely calm. Something about this stranger, Tom, set her at ease. There were times when the flashes of emotion that showed through his eyes unnerved her, but on the whole he seemed collected and trustworthy. It was a similar vibe she had picked up from her limited dealings with his friend, the Doctor.
“No,” she said finally, “I’ll stay. I want to stop these bastards as much as you.”
A huge grin spread across Tom’s face and he reached out and clapped her on the arm. “Great, thanks,” he said with a wink.
Tossing the Cyber gun into the air, he stepped past Anneke, making her reach out and grab it before it hit her. Bemused, she looked down at it, sitting awkwardly in her hands before turning round to see where Tom had gone. The young Time Lord was now stood before what used to be the communication screens, before he had shot them earlier. Wisps of smoke still curled out of the shattered frames.
The control panel was still intact before him, and he was stood before it, one arm wrapped around himself, the other gently stroking at his beard thoughtfully. Looking again at the Cyber gun in her hands, she took a step towards him.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Thinking of a way to throw a very large spanner in the Cybermen’s machinery,” Tom replied turning to look at her. “The chances are that when I start fiddling with all this gumph here, they’ll realise someone is arsing around with their equipment and send someone to have a look. This is where I need you.”
“Does it have something to do with this?” Anneke asked, holding up the gun.
Tom nodded. “I need you to keep watch. You know how to use it I’m sure.”
“Erm,” Anneke said before nodding. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Tom said, flexing his fingers as though he were a pianist about to start a difficult concerto. “But we’ll find out any minute.”
With a last grin to Anneke, Tom turned back to the control panel and started to hit controls and throw switches. Anneke looked round as the lighting levels in the control chamber started to change levels, lightening and darkening. The klaxons followed soon after, a low and vibrating bass tone that sounded about once every two seconds. The noise seemed to reverberate through her whole body as though she was stood next to an amplifier for the sound.
The movement at the doorway suddenly had her full attention. It was a part converted Cyberman, its weapon poised and ready to fire. In the brief second she stared at it, she was able to picture everything about it, the nightmarish vision burning into her mind. It was so different to how she had seen Phil Johnson when they had first arrived on the Cyber ship. It felt like hours ago now.
The chest cavity was hollow, mechanical organs pumping a sickly green fluid through pipes and into tubes that disappeared into the flesh. Metal components were grafted into the flesh and bone, raw muscle and bone visible in places. Parts of the body were wrapped in thick bandages, lending an almost mummy-like quality to parts of it, hitting Anneke hard about the gruesome surgical procedures that had been conducted. She somehow doubted that the bandages were there to cover and protect the wounds.
It was impossible now to tell what gender the poor unfortunate had been prior to the conversion technique, the chest being hollow and Perspex fronted and the groin being partially peeled away flesh, metal and bandages. The legs and arms were bare metal, still awaiting the protective flexible metal-like armour. The neck was a series of mechanical tendons, with flesh still visible within the workings and the underside of the jaw still visible as being flesh. The face was covered with a white cloth covering, disappearing under a metal skull cap, and being partly rolled up at the bottom of the face.
Anneke felt a shudder of revulsion pass through her at what horrors may lie under the blank mask. The eyes were sunken into the skull, metal on the outside of the cloth mask fixing it over the face and electronic sensors were embedded within and without. At the mouth, a metal plate was in place with the small slit-like mouth. Wires ran from under the mask to a mechanical device in the neck, which must be the voice box.
Her finger quivering over the trigger, Anneke stared at the Cyberman. It was still partly recognisable as human and she suddenly found that she was unable to press the trigger button. Had she sat down and ate lunch with whoever used to be under the mask? Had she shared quarters with them? Had she been speaking or working with them mere hours earlier? She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t shoot dead someone in cold blood. She wasn’t a murderer. She had seen Tom shoot Cybermen, she had felt relieved when he had done it, but now the gun was in her hands, the life would end when she pressed the button. Her hands were trembling.
The rattle of the gun sounded, making her jump. She hadn’t fired; her finger was still hovering near the trigger. The rattle sounded again, this time the small explosion erupted behind her, next to Tom, causing him to cry out and stagger back. Looking round he ran the few steps over to her and grabbed her from behind.
“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted at her over the cacophony of noise. “Shoot it!”
“I,” Anneke said, before pausing. Her finger tightened and she felt the gun fire.
The deathly rattle sounded and the Cyberman collapsed before her, the chest exploding open, sparks and green fluid spurting everywhere. Tears were streaming down Anneke’s face as she looked at the body lying on the ground. She noticed that the left hand and arm were still partly human, they having previously been concealed by the way the creature had been standing and pointing the weapon.
“It wasn’t human anymore,” Tom said obstinately in her ear. “Believe me, you did them a favour.”
“They were,” Anneke started, not sure where her sentence was going.
“They were beyond help in all but one way,” Tom replied. “Believe me, I know.”
Anneke turned back to watch as Tom stepped back to the controls. There was one section she noticed that he was deliberately avoiding. She was going to ask him about this, when she noticed another Cyberman arrive out of the corner of her eye. Immediately she turned back to see it was a complete Cyberman. This time, she found it was a lot easier to press the trigger. The silver creature collapsed in smoke with electronic screams.
Anneke looked around when the lighting in the control chamber dropped to be replaces with a dull red hue. Looking round she could see Tom, a silhouette against the control panel. She looked around herself again as the lighting dimmed and then returned to the red hue, before dimming again. It was pulsing, and Anneke knew that red lights often meant danger.
“Come on,” Tom shouted, running past her and grabbing her hand as he went.
“What is it?” She shouted back, letting herself be dragged towards the TARDIS. She was starting to feel totally drained and her legs didn’t seem to want to work of their own accord. She was so grateful for Tom pulling her along she didn’t mind the ache it caused in her shoulder.
She didn’t notice the change around her as she entered the TARDIS this time, she was just grateful to be somewhere other than that Cyber ship. She watched, almost in a trance as she saw Tom slam his down on the hand control. There seemed to be a different atmosphere inside the console room from when she was last in it. The console had suddenly become active, lights were flashing and the background hum had changed in pitch.
“Yes, got you!” Tom cried out from the other side of the console.
Anneke looked round in amazement as the room seemed to tremble and the lights dimmed very slightly before returning to normal. Then there was the noise, a vast cacophony almost worse than the noise in the Cyber ship. It sounded like a heard of asthmatic elephants all trumpeting at once. She looked back at Tom, who seemed to be totally oblivious to the sound, or if he wasn’t, it didn’t bother him. It was then she noticed that the crystal rods inside the large class column were moving up and down, interlocking before retreating, and the column was pulsing with a strong blue light.
“What?” she asked, feeling light headed and dizzy.
“The HADS,” Tom grinned. “Another of the oft neglected systems the Doctor was able to restore. This is what I was on about, if he hadn’t restored it, we could have been for the chop, or a bumpy ride. The TARDIS is meant to be indestructible, but I don’t know what effect being at the epicentre of an exploding Cyber ship would have done to her.”
“What?” Anneke asked again.
Her head was spinning now, and this time she found she had to retreat to one of the battered, but comfortable looking sofas on the side of the console room. Nothing that Tom had said made sense and on top of that, she felt rather disorientated. It felt as though the TARDIS was moving, it wasn’t an obvious feeling, but something deep down and it unsettled her rather.
“Are you ok?”
She looked up; Tom was stood before her, his hands on his knees as he leant close to her. She blinked several times to make sure that he was in focus before she replied to him.
“I don’t know,” she said eventually. “What the hell just happened?”
“Well,” Tom started before Anneke reached up and grabbed his arm.
“Tell me simply,” she said.
“I blew up the Cyber ship,” Tom said bluntly. “And to throw something else into the mix, there was something on that ship sending out a signal, so I put a stop to that. I don’t know what it was but I can imagine it would put a stop to one or two things.”
“So, what happened to us?” Anneke asked, her head feeling more settled now. “We’ve not been blown up?”
“The HADS activated,” Tom explained, “that’s Hostile Action Displacement System. It’s a security system that moves the TARDIS when it detects trouble in the vicinity which could threaten her.”
“Why do you keep referring to the TARDIS as her?” Anneke asked. “You talk about it as though it’s alive.”
Tom shrugged. “I dunno, it feels right, the Doctor does as well.”
“So where are we?”
Turning, Tom crossed back to the console and checked the readings. “Currently in transit,” he replied. “Not quite real space, not quite the time vortex. I just hope we don’t end up floating somewhere between the Earth and Moon.”
“You don’t know where we’re going to end up?” Anneke asked, jumping onto her feet. “Can’t you fly this thing?”
“I told you, I’m not sure,” Tom replied. “That was one thing I did tell the truth about to the Cyberman.
Anneke’s face fell. Quietly cursing under her breath, she crossed the console room and approached Tom. The information on the small screens on the console meant nothing to her; flickers of numbers and letters and other symbols she couldn’t decipher that she could only assume were coordinates.
“We won’t go far I’d hope,” Tom said without looking at Anneke. “I doubt the TARDIS would land too far away from where it started off. I mean, if the pilot wasn’t aboard, which let’s be honest, he isn’t, then it wouldn’t make sense to land thousands of miles away.”
“Yeah, I suppose so,” Anneke replied, finding herself nodding along.
She had to be honest with herself, she had absolutely no idea what the young man was on about and she had the very strong feeling that he himself didn’t know totally what he was on about. A lot of it sounded like repeated words that he was trying to weave into his own style, no doubt words taken from the Doctor. She had to give him credit though, for trying at the very least, and so far, he’d not been proved wrong, even if some of what he’d been planning were on a wing and a prayer.
“I still don’t quite know what’s happened,” she admitted.
“To be honest, I’m not one hundred percent on the matter myself.”
That was a relief, he finally admitted that he was playing it by ear, Anneke found herself thinking. She just hoped that his luck held out. After all, he was owed it after the last few hours on the base and coming down with the Space Madness. She had to admit to herself that it was a remarkable turnaround in his character. He was much different from when she remembered him arriving. She assumed it was his old self. Well, whichever self it was, she was glad it was there.
“What about the base?” Anneke asked finally after what felt like hours of silence, with just the background throb of the TARDIS engines. “Would the Cyber ship exploding have destroyed it?”
The look on Tom’s face crashed to his ankles. “Oh,” he said simply, as though the thought hadn’t occurred to him.
Turning back to the console, he hit out at the switch that controlled the scanner before grabbing the chain under the wooden scanner box and dragging it round. The image changed from the swirling of colours into that of a star-scape, a large silver disc in the lower right corner. Anneke instantly recognised it as the Moon.
Keeping an eye on the scanner, Tom hit a few more switches on the console and the image changed. It now showed the base from above, a large crater with a dispersing gas cloud sat nearby, debris scattered on the surface. It was an impressive sight, but it was quickly replaced in Anneke’s attention by the above image of the base; one edge had a jagged hole stretching along it, and clouds of gas, that she could only assume was the base’s atmosphere were pouring from it.