THE CHOSEN CURSE

Chapter 9

"This ship is about to explode, taking our moon with it? And you're just sittin' there, drinking cat piss tea?" Donna said to Captain Blite, alarmed at the sudden turn of events.

"That about sums it up in a gratnut shell, Miss Donna. Yeah." The captain replied with a casual shrug. He gave a sloppy nautical salute. "Get to go up with my ship. The heroic Captain Blite! Some folk singer will probably write a song about me. Groovy."

"Listen to me!" The Doctor hissed, grabbing Blite by the shoulders and staring him in the face. "If the moon gets destroyed, all that debris will end up taking the Earth with it! You don't have to sit here and let that happen. I can stop the bomb from going off. But you have to tell me exactly where it is!"

"I'm—I'm..." Captain Blite mumbled, as he began to slump over, "...I'm tired. I wanna' go lay down now."

"This thing's got six engine rooms in it and that bomb's got special shielding to avoid detection. I can't use the TARDIS to find it. Where is it?" the frustrated Doctor said through gritted teeth, practically shaking the man.

Suddenly, Donna pushed him aside. She bent down, and gave the crumpled drunk a heavy slap across the face.

"Wake up!" She shouted. Then, bending near his face, she gave him a stern lecture. Sorry. Nothing personal. But we really haven't got time for your little trip to self-pity land. My whole planet is at stake. A million innocent people, just like those passengers you were so upset about. You couldn't save them. But you can save others. Now get with the programme and help us!" She said.

It worked. Captain Blite sat up, gasped and stared at Donna with shock in his eyes. "How dare you strike a ship's officer! I could have you shot for that!"

"According to you, I'm about to be blown up. Shooting me would be a bit of overkill, don't ya' think?." She countered. "Stop being so thick. You're the captain. Act like one. Tell us where that bomb is."

"Engine room six." The Captain mumbled, the harsh truth of Donna's words, suddenly making him ashamed of his behavior.

"Oh that's typical. Probably the farthest one from here. Of course." The Doctor muttered ironically, throwing up his hands in disgust. "How do I find it?"

"Four levels down. Through the lift doors, straight down to the end of the corridor, second door from the end. I'm guessing it'll probably be attached to the nuclear fission generator. That's where it'd do the most damage. It's too late, though. You'll never get there on time." The Captain said gloomily.

The Doctor didn't bother with a reply. He simply bolted from the room and headed for the lift, Donna behind him. Using his sonic, the Doctor made the lift go down at a far faster rate than it was ever meant to go. Donna's shriek of alarm pretty much proved that. To avoid her verbal abuse when the lift stopped, the Doctor promptly apologized to Donna for forgetting to warn her.

The lift doors had barely opened, when the Doctor squeaked through, still gripping the sonic screwdriver. His face determined, the Doctor barreled down the narrow corridor towards the engine rooms. This part of the ship was much darker than the one above, black shadows concealing what lay beyond the reach of the purple ceiling lights. It was dirty and utilitarian. The grimy counterpoint of a sleek, streamlined spaceship, which the passengers would never see.

Paved with concrete, the floor reverberated with the Doctor and Donna's passing. It sounded, in the empty and lifeless corridor, as loud as a herd of stampeding elephants. They passed five numbered gray steel doors, until they came to one marked 'Engine Room 6.' When the Doctor pressed the outside latch, the door slid open, revealing an oily, steamy cavernous room. It was filled with all sorts of heavy machinery, pipes and control panels. Only a few red and yellow emergency lights lit up the place, making it seem like the bowels of hell.

Pausing for barely a second, the Doctor held the the sonic screwdriver up in the air and pressed down on it. The tip glowed blue and a low hum emitted from it. As the Doctor, standing on one leg, pirouetted a swift circle, the hum grew suddenly stronger to his right. He and Donna ran in that direction. Stopping in front of a large, complex looking machine, the Doctor immediately spied a device attached to the side.

"There you are, you beauty!" The Doctor said to the bomb, relieved at finding it so quickly.

"Are you going to deactivate that thing or flirt with it?." Donna smirked.

"Not now, Donna." He muttered, prising open the black metal outer casing of the device with his sonic screwdriver.

The bomb had been wedged on top of two control panels on the machine. It was placed just up out of Donna's reach, but was not so high that the Doctor couldn't work on it.

"Ah, now. This could get interesting." The Doctor said, examining the insides. "The Toxil-Maacht weren't messing about when they devised this thing." He explained to Donna, as he fiddled with some wires with his sonic screwdriver. "I'm going to have to be really careful. They probably have kinds of booby traps installed in here..." There was an audible click. It was followed by a rapid bleeping sound and a red light began to flash. The Doctor's intense expression of concentration changed to chagrin. "Erm—like that one." He swallowed, looking very unhappy, "Apparently."

"Oh my God. Can you stop it?" Donna asked, trying to see what was going on.

"No, I thought we'd stand around and wait to be vaporized." The Doctor snapped, uncharacteristically sarcastic with her. Then he sighed with resignation. "Yeah, Donna. I can stop it." His fingers felt around through the protruding multi-coloured wires. His thumb touched what felt like a relay switch, and he pressed down on it. The noise and the flashing light stopped.

"Whew! That was close." Donna said. But, on closer inspection, she saw the look on the Doctor's face. Both grim and sad. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

"What is it?" She asked softly, dreading the answer.

"Donna, get back to the TARDIS, quick as you can. You'll be safe there. Go to the console and press the blue button to the right of the monitor screen. The one that says 'Recall.' The Doctor said, not looking at her, his tone somber. "It'll automatically take you to the nearest planet with a suitable environment."

She knew, then. The Doctor was facing his death. It chilled her to the bone, to think of losing him this way. He was so full of life and energy. The idea of the Doctor being gone, was almost unthinkable to her.

"If you stop holding down that switch, it's going to go off, isn't it?" Donna surmised, putting a hand on his shoulder, trying to comfort him.

"Yeah." The Doctor nodded. "Something like that."

"Can't you find some gaffer tape or something to hold it down?" Donna suggested hopefully.

"Good idea, but no." The Doctor shook his head sadly. "There would be too much risk that the tape would come undone. Or, that it wouldn't exert enough pressure. This switch requires several pounds per square inch behind it, to keep it pressed down. Sorry, Donna."

The Doctor's hearts broke with knowing that he'd not regenerate this time. Not if his body was instantly vaporized. Nine hundred years of facing death on a regular basis, and still he wasn't ready for it. Wasn't ready for what might or might not lie beyond the grave. At least Donna would be safe, in the TARDIS. He was very happy he'd gotten to travel with her, in the end. No regrets there. Yet, it also made him so very sad, that their friendship would end in this way. It saddened him even more, to think of all those people down below on earth at the mercy of the Toxil-Maact, and he couldn't stop them. There was nothing he could do.

"Did you find it?" Captain Blite's still less-than-sober voice came from behind them, startling Donna.

"Dude." He addressed the Doctor. "Like, what are ya' doin'? Aren't you supposed to be defusing a bomb or something?"

Donna now suspected he'd been imbibing something more than alcohol. He smelled as if he'd been smoking something that wasn't tobacco. The captain's silvery jumpsuit uniform stood out in the dark room, like a full moon in a dark winter sky. In the dim light, she could see that his hair was disheveled, and his face had a hangdog look about it.

"Listen, captain moonbeam." The Doctor said tersely, "I need you to go up to the flight deck and point this ship towards deep space. You ought to be sober enough to do that one simple thing. There should have just enough power to at least maneuver the ship and set it in motion away from any planets. Oh, and one more thing; don't ever call me 'dude'! John Wayne did that once. That's when he started walking like he'd had an accident in his pants."

"Wow man, I could, like, turn the ship around. But, you know it won't go very fast. Without power, this ship will only drift. It'll crawl along like a gob turtle. It'll probably take, oh, three or four days, just to get away from this moon." Captain Blite drawled.

"Doesn't matter, I can stay here till' the proverbial cows come home if I have to. Just do it! Then both of you, get to the TARDIS and stay there." The Doctor ordered them.

"Cows?" Captain Blite muttered to himself, clearly baffled. "I didn't book any cows as passengers on this trip. Did I?"

"No! Let me, Doctor." Donna said firmly. "I'll do it."

"Ta' Donna, but now is really not the best time to pick to become a martyr." The Doctor said to her.

"Martyr my...look, Doctor. I don't wanna' die any more than you do!" Donna snorted, "Bottom line is though, I can't save Wilf. I can't stop a million other people down there on Earth from dying. But, you can. So let me do this, yeah?"

"What's she sayin'? The Captain asked the Doctor.

"If I stop holding down this switch here, the whole ship goes ka-blooey. And takes Donna's planet with it." The Doctor told him.

"Oh. And that's not good, is it?" Blite asked unnecessarily.

"No!" The Doctor and Donna replied simultaneously.

"What if I hold it down?" Captain Blite said. "I've nothing left to lose. If I go home without my crew or my ship, I'll be sacked. No one will ever hire me to take out another ship again. Not even as a cook's mate. I'll end up living rough in some street. But, going up with my ship. Like the sound of that. Maybe they'll give me a medal posthumously. Oooh, or even better, make it into a holofilm. I can just see it now: 'Mutiny on the Abundance.' Great title, don't ya' think?."

"I'm disappointed. I thought you were an honourable man, Captain Blite." The Doctor shook his head."

"What do you mean?" The captain frowned. "Of course I am!"

"I concede that taking my place might somehow seem like a way out, when you think there's nowhere left for you to go. But trust me," The Doctor reflected, thinking of his own losses, "it won't end there. You'll leave behind people who cared about you, who will feel nothing grief and guilt. And then there's all that potential wonder and happiness and beauty you have yet to see, the friends you've yet to meet. I know things look pretty grim to you now. You have to fight, captain!" The Doctor told him. "Put one foot in front of the other and carry on. That's what life's about. Survival. Soldiering on when it's the last thing you want to do. I'm a Time Lord. I know that things can and do change, eventually. You'll get away from here, find your way home to Trixie and work things out from there. Together. You don't want to leave her alone, now do you?"

"No, Doctor. I don't want anyone to be alone." Captain Blite said quietly. "It's a terrible thing, being alone." His left arm reached towards the Doctor, as he wanted to hug him. "Thank you. I..."

Without warning, Blite's right hand whipped out a cosh from his jumpsuit pocket. He smashed it against the back of the Doctor's head. With surprisingly good reflexes for a drunk, in the same movement his hand shot out towards the bomb. Captain Blite pressed his finger against the switch as the Doctor's hand began to slip off of it. The Doctor slowly crumbled to the floor, out cold.

Back                         Home                              Doctor Who Main Page                          Next

Your Name or Alias:      Your E-mail (optional):

Please type your review below. Only positive reviews and constructive criticism will be posted.