Doctor Who (Game B) Session Write-up - Das Metallreich Part 2

N.B. What follows is a prose narration of the events that took place in a roleplaying game session. It can be regarded as a kind of Doctor Who fan-fiction, except that all the events are driven by occurrences in-game and is presented in first-draft quality. It is not intended to fully recreate any events or characters from any previous Doctor Who episode, book, radio series or comic, with the exception of some iconic villains. Even The Doctor is a reinvention, starting out as a first-regeneration Timelord with little history; Perhaps how the Doctor may appear in a different reality. It cannot, therefore, be wrong on any canonical continuity. It exists within itself and is presented purely for reading pleasure and to inform role-playing experiences. Thank you :)

You can read Part One of Doctor Who - Das Metallreich here.

Chapter Four – The Metallensturmtruppen

    Georgie's mouth was frozen in an open gape of horror. None of the group moved.
    The robotic soldier stopped still for a moment, craning its head this way and that, taking in the surroundings. The Doctor wasn't sure if it could see them, or if its sensors were based on sound on some other kind of sense. The machine didn't appear to have any kind of sensors in the front of its black, featureless dome of a face.
    The Doctor edged around one of the worktops. The robot seemed to crane its head around, following the Doctor's motion.
    It seemed to be reacting to sound, The Doctor thought, but no theory was worthwhile without testing the hypothesis. As the robot began to lurch forward, The Doctor raised an arm in the direction of one of the metal decorative shield bosses that hung at regular intervals around the workshop. He focused his metal energy and the shield rocked back and forth on its mounting.
    It came free and clattered to the ground with a loud ringing.
    The robot stopped in its tracks and arched around, staring at the source of the disturbance.
    Georgie and Captain Seager backed away, heading for the cover of a stack of wooden crates in the corner of the room. Captain Seager was fairly light on his feet, but as Georgie's shoes clipped off the hard workshop floor, the robot swung its attention back in their direction.
    They both froze, but the robot began to advance decisively towards Georgie's position.
    Quickly, The Doctor stared about the room for options. He noted the low-hanging bulb lights, suspended across the ceiling amid looping electricity cables. His eyes narrowed and he focused his metal strength upon breaking the cable and bringing it down upon the robot soldier's metal frame.
    The Doctor raised his hands and pointed at the light fittings, for focus. Georgie and Captain Seager watched in wonder as a section of the lighting array pulled away from the ceiling in a shower of sparks and arcing electricity, seemingly yanked free by the The Doctor's will alone.
    The exposed wiring dropped onto the metal figure below, resulting in a smacking, burning noise. The robot dropped to one knee with an electrically modulated cry of agony, pulling at the live cables which had welded themselves onto the surface of its body and were overloading its electrical systems. With an effort of strength, the robot looped the slack cable around an armour-plated arm began to pull hard.
    Georgie took the distraction as an opportunity to duck behind the stacked boxes in the corner of the workshop. Captain Seager steadied the German machine-gun against a worktop and tried to fire a burst shot against the robot's head. The shot went wide and Seager cursed.
    Cables snapped tight across the ceiling as the robot exerted itself against the wiring. The Metallensturmtruppen pulled hard on the cable and the distribution box on the far wall finally succumbed to the incredible force and tore free from of its housing, plunging the workshop into a terrible blackness.
    Georgie breathed heavily in the dark, the silence broken only by the distant alarm and the writhing of the injured robot. She could hear grinding metal as the artificial man dragged itself up onto its feet in the black gloom.
    Low-powered emergency lights along the wall glowed into life, spilling murky red light over the workshop. The Doctor's eyes adjusted in time to see the hulking machine drawing itself back up to its full height. Under the red lighting the white portions of the Swastika painted on the black robot's chest seemed to glow eerily.
    “Aufhalten!” Captain Seager shouted, in an attempt to talk the machine into stopping. When he had been given his German language training before the mission, he had never imagined that he would be using it to communicate with a metal man! The robot turned its blank face in the direction of Captain Seager.
    The Doctor felt a heavy shape against his ankle. Looking down he could see a welding kit and cylinder resting against one of the work counters. Seeing an opportunity while the robot was distracted by Captain Seager, he grabbed it up quickly and fired the flame into action. The Robot looked around at the last minute as The Doctor strode forward and pressed the hot jet into a gap between the robot's armour plates.
    The robot gave an electronic howl of pain and turned in the direction of the Doctor, murderously.
    Georgie could see that the robot was about to harm the Doctor and grabbed at a heavy wrench on the worktop. She hurled it at the machine, but it bounced uselessly off the armour.
    The Robot strode toward the retreating Doctor, its steps quickly turning into a charge which exhibited incredible speed and force.
    The Doctor felt as though he'd been hit by a steam train. The Robot's tough shoulder smashed into his arm and chest, knocking the wind out of him and sending him stumbling into a worktop. The welding equipment was knocked from the Doctor's hand, smashing onto the ground in multiple pieces. The robot's momentum was completely unchecked as it crashed forward and clattered into the stone wall.
    Moonlight flooded into the chamber as the stone wall collapsed outward under the weight of the charge. Cold air and stray snow-flakes blew in around the hulking figure and the room seemed much lighter. Beyond, the steep snow-drenched slope was visible, leading down to the trees and the village beyond at the bottom of the valley.
    The Doctor looked at the welding equipment on the floor. It looked a little beyond repair, but the fuel cylinder looked intact.
    As the robot turned and looked set to charge back toward him, The Doctor shouted to Seager, “Captain, the cylinder!” With a flash of mental strength, the Doctor caused the cylinder to slide across the floor, near to the robot's feet.
    Seager cursed again, seeing that the cylinder was slightly out of his line of sight. He raced out from behind his cover and lined up his shot. The robot turned toward him as he moved and began to charge. Seager squeezed the trigger gently and a cluster of hot metal slugs tore through the air. The bullet smacked into the cylinder, cracking the metal and igniting the pressurised gas inside.
    Georgie could feel a wave of heat on her skin as a fireball erupted in the wall breach. The robot was engulfed in flame and the pressure blasted cracks into its black armour. Wiring and complex parts were now visible through considerable gaps in the metal plating. The Doctor and companions watched as the flames licked around the damaged-looking robot's body.
    A recording of a voice crackled out from a box in the far wall of the workshop. Captain Seager's German wasn't good enough to understand it and Georgie didn't understand all of the words, despite hearing it in her native English thanks to the translation circuits in the Tardis. Only The Doctor understood the words clearly: “Experimental Laser Weapon charged and ready for use.”
    The robot charged wildly out of the fireball, racing into the room towards the source of the voice. The Doctor was knocked aside once more as the robot charged by. He could see the robot stumbling towards a cabinet on the wall. Presumably the experimental weapon would be inside. He knew instinctively that he didn't want to see what it did.
    He got to his feet, looking for options to slow or destroy the robot. What he saw froze both of his hearts. From the storage chamber whence the metal killer had emerged there were glimmers of more motion.
    Georgie stared as two more black-clad metal soldiers strode into the room. Now they had to face three of them.
    “We have to get out of here!” Seager shouted to The Doctor, who nodded, vigorously.
    All eyes turned to the breach in the stone wall and the snow-clad tree-line leading down to a nearby settlement.
    The Doctor's eyes darted around the room, looking for options. Suddenly he smiled an incredibly broad grin.
    “Grab a shield each!” The Doctor yelled, indicated the various decorative bosses around the walls, “and follow me!”
  
    The Doctor grabbed at a nearby shield and ran out through the opening, cackling happily. This was what he travelled the universe to do: crazy stunts and adrenalin-fuelled chases. He could feel an itch deep within his soul waiting to be scratched and he realised it had been too long since he had attempted anything this reckless.
    As his feet took up a familiar stance on the primitive shape of the metal shield, his mind wandered, unbidden, into an unwelcome memory: the memory of a boarding adventure on another world in another time. He remembered the heat of the lava on his skin, even through the suit. He remembered the low hum of the plasma board beneath his feet and the laughing of his companions. Then he remembered sudden, unexpected catastrophe followed inevitably by screams and death. He remembered angry eyes, blaming him for surviving when others had not returned. He remembered losing... her.
    He shook his head, physically, to expel the memory. This was a completely different place and time and the icy surface that picked up speed and began to race by beneath him was an extreme opposite of the burning magma of that faraway volcano.
    The Doctor looked around to check on Georgie and Captain Seager's progress. Both had cleared the breach in the wall and were picking up speed down the hillside, the soft snow forming a perfect slope. He laughed and waved at them both.
    Captain Seager's returned The Doctor's cheerful wave with a salute. His military training had covered a number of scenarios, but sliding down a snowy hill on a concave disc of metal had not featured. Nevertheless, his extensive training and growing practise with the Rocket-Pack had given him a greater instinct for balance and travelling unprotected at high speed. There was a exposed spur of granite protruding through the hillside and the snow, but Seager found it was little difficulty to lean his weight on the shield and skirt around it gracefully.
    Georgie was less comfortable and in no position to respond to The Doctor's cheerful calls. She had watched how he and Captain Seager had mounted their shields and tried their best to emulate them. She cried out as the board picked up pace and raced down the steep slope.
    The Doctor grinned, seeing that his companions had safely escaped and grasped the basics of this new snowboarding/tobogganing hybrid they had inadvertently created. He laughed out loud, suddenly. He wondered if he had created a new sport on this planet – assuming they lived to tell the tale.
    As he regained his concentration and looked ahead of him once more, he saw that his lack of attention had diminished his chances somewhat. As he approached the tree-line very, very fast, he saw a fallen tree lying directly across his path. Sizing it up, he couldn't see any way that he could swerve around it at either end; he was heading almost exactly for the centre point.
    He realised he would have to perform a tricky manoeuvre – something that future adrenalin-junkies on this world would one day refer to as an “Ollie” – in order to try to get over the log. As the wall of fallen wood grew terrifyingly close, The Doctor kicked down with his back foot, taking advantage of the natural curve of the metal shield, and launched his makeshift snowboard up into the air. He pressed down with his leading foot to level out.
    With a sudden shock he calculated that he would not clear the obstruction. The Doctor's shield clipped the edge of the fallen log, the impact resonating up through his legs. As the shield landed at an awkward angle he almost lost his balance and only just managed to swerve to avoid a tree of the upright variety that sped towards him out of the gloom. All things considered he wasn't demonstrating as natural a mastery of this invented sport as he had hoped.
    Georgie was also terrified and in danger of a serious injury. The glances she had dared to take filled her with frustration as she watched Captain Seager weave and bob expertly and gracefully between the trees and around obstacles. She was determined that she could master this skill as well as any man, no matter how well trained he was. She saw it as her duty to perform to the best of her abilities. She kept that in mind as an overhanging branch whipped her painfully in the face and her shield ricocheted hard off an exposed boulder.
    The Doctor was veering and swerving dangerously left and right; clearly this was much harder to do than he had remembered. He winced and lost his balance totally as his attempt to skirt around a large rock failed and he smacked the edge of his shield viciously. His knees buckled and he dropped down into the centre of the shield, holding the edges with his hands and getting his centre of gravity as low as possible. He knew he didn't look as cool as he felt he ought – but at least he might make it to the bottom in one piece.
    The last of the trees swished past the three travellers and they found themselves clear of the tree-line. They each slowed naturally as the steepness of the slope began to bottom out into a flat plain. Georgie gasped for breath and tried to regain her composure as she came to rest.
    The Doctor rolled off his board onto his back, cackling loudly. “Woo!” he explained, “that was what I needed to clear the dust out!”
    Captain Seager stepped off his board and kicked down on the rim. The metal shield obediently sat up and jumped into his grasp. He stuck it down in the snow firmly and reverted almost immediately to his training, glancing around him to determine their new situation. He looked back up at the castle. He could just about see the breach in the wall, with some light smoke drifting up into the dawn sky. They would be followed eventually, but he could see no sign of pursuers.
    He turned his attention to their immediate surroundings. A row of low buildings was a little way off from them. They had almost slid naturally into the main road of an apparently deserted village.  
    As the companions nodded to one another in silent agreement, they trudged carefully towards the buildings, silhouetted by early morning light. The Doctor was convinced he could hear the sound of shutters snapping shut.

Chapter Five – The Village

    It was Georgie who first broke the silence. “I don't recognise any of the buildings, Doctor,” she said, “We could probably do with a spot to lay low in for a few minutes.”
    The Doctor extended a long finger in the direction of a squat barn-like building, “I'd say that's probably a farriers. We can recover ourselves in there.”
    The door to the farrier's workshop was unlocked and the companions slipped inside. The Doctor sat on a bench and began tending to his injuries as his arm felt quite painful.
    Georgie assisted The Doctor, while Conrad sat down to inspect the damage to his helmet. It was buckled in a few places, but not beyond his ability to repair. It was essential that he kept the helmet in good working order as from bitter experience he'd discovered that the slightest dint in the surface or bend in the rudder caused his rocket pack to be much harder to control.
    Conrad pulled a pocket wrench out of a pouch in his trouser leg and started to beat out the metal shape, trying to balance between keeping quiet, but exerting enough force to make a difference.
    “Here,” The Doctor said, reaching into his inside jacket pocket and pulling out a metal stick with a glowing tip, “try mine. I think it has a setting for helping alloys to remember previous shapes.”
    Conrad took the gadget from The Doctor and inspected it. Unconvinced, he pointed the glowing end at the side of his helmet and pressed the switch. It made a noise loud enough to make Conrad jump – a sort of buzzing, squealing noise – but he had to admit it was quieter than the wrench. Conrad's eyes widened as the buckle in his helmet folded back into shape to form a perfectly smooth surface, as though it has never even been scratched.
    “Nice gadget, Doc!” Seager enthused, “where can I get one?”
    The Doctor smiled, flexing his arm against the binding which Georgie had helped him wrap around his elbow. “Not for a few hundred years,” The Doctor replied.
    Georgie interrupted, “If we are going to be traipsing around the countryside, Doctor, can I get a change of clothes? My dress is ruined!”
    The Doctor considered for a moment and said, “We'll probably have to raid a washing-line, if you're up for the mischief?”
    She looked at him, curiously. She couldn't understand what kind of man he was. In the lab, facing up to the robot, he had seemed like the most fierce and resourceful soldier she had ever met, while out in the snow – and now talking about thieving from clothes lines – he had the honest joy of a playful child.
    “What manner of man are you, Doctor? I am quite sure I have never met your like.”
    He met her gaze, dazzling her with his brilliant eyes. How could he explain to her that she was staring into eyes of more years' experience than she could fathom? In the end, he settled with a simple explanation: “I'm … an adventurer.”
    She tutted, “I see. I imagine that our American friend here is just the same?” Conrad gave a thumbs up and went back to inspecting his helmet, while Georgie continued, “but what were those metal men?”
    The Doctor frowned, “I've seen similar machines, although not of that exact design. They are automata of a kind. I would have like to disassemble one to see how it ticks, but I suppose we were outnumbered and outclassed and sadly I didn't get the opportunity.”
    “I got a good look at those blueprints, Doc,” said Conrad, “I can probably redraw them for you if you'd like.”
    “You only saw them for a minute!” Georgie spluttered.
    “I have a pretty good memory,” Conrad explained, “that's how I ended up on these kind of missions. If I see something, I can always remember it, down to the finest detail.”
    “Remarkable!” enthused The Doctor, “it's an ability I always admire!”
    Georgie picked up her bag and, sifting through its contents, said, “I'm certain I have some paper and pencils in my satchel.”
    Conrad set about scribbling on the paper, talking as he worked. “Y'know, I'm real surprised to find you two English folks here. You're the last people I would have expected to see. What are you doing here?”
    “We are on our holidays, what do you think?” Georgie replied, curtly.
    “This wasn't really our intended destination,” The Doctor explained, “we just sort of arrived here by accident.”
    Georgie pointed at The Doctor, “He kidnapped me!”
    The Doctor held his hands up in a placatory fashion and said, “I think that is perhaps an exaggeration.”
    “Hmph,” replied Georgie.
    “But where have you come from?” Georgie asked, “All the Brits I know of are in refugee camps. Or so I thought.”
    “Ahh, right,” muttered The Doctor, more to himself than anybody else, “we might be in a different time-line...”
    “Timeline?”replied Conrad, “What do you mean?”
    “Sorry, umm,” the Doctor began, hesitantly. “It's a little difficult to explain. Just imagine many infinite universes in parallel, each following a different courses of events. If you have the suitable technology, you can travel between them and through time.”
    “Yesterday I would have said you were mad!” George stated, “but from what I've seen today there must be some truth in what you say. You're certain less of a worry to me than those monsters back at the castle and all these strangely-dressed soldiers.”
    The Doctor gave a wry grin. “Thank you,” he said, his voiced dripping with irony, “I shall take comfort from that.”
    “Well, it's the first time I've seen those machines,” Conrad said, to Georgie, “but the soldiers are pretty commonplace. We've been fighting them for 30 years and we fight them all the time. How have you not seen them before?”
    “Why?” asked Georgie, “What has happened here? Why are we at war with Germany?”
    The Doctor and Georgie sat and listened and Conrad explained the shocking history of Earth. He told them of the bombs that feel from the sky in 1905, creating huge firestorms that destroyed cities and villages alike across Britain, France and Spain. He told them of the radioactive mists that still swept through the British wastelands, killing or sickening all it their path. They listened, dumbstruck, as the Nazi fanaticism swept across Europe, becoming a mobilised military force overnight. Their core motto was that only by uniting with a strong military could they defend against these kinds of attacks in future. Conrad then told them of the refugees, desperately packed onto boats and shipped across the Atlantic to get away from the poison and the soldiers and of the seemingly unending war between the Americas and Europe.
    “But, most of the time,” Conrad explained, “our biggest war is against the technology. The Nazis seem to make so many advances. We're struggling to keep up! If it weren't for the invention of our Radium-powered weapons and these Rocket Packs, we'd never be able to get spies in and out of Europe.”
    “Hmm,” considered The Doctor, “In this time-line, it would seems that the Germans have a technological advantage which would not seem inconsistent with them receiving assistance from elsewhere.” He scratched his chin and continued, “Yes, they've definitely been getting help which is giving them an unfair advantage. But quite why people would want to assist them and to what ends... we'll need to find that out!”
    Georgie nodded, “we need to stop them. What happened to the King? What about the Prime Minister?”
    “England has a temporary Government for its own people within the refugee camps,” Conrad explained, “I think some of your leaders survived and made it away. The rest were elected once they were Stateside. Not many Royals survived, through. The heir to the throne is an 8-year old girl, born in the refugee camps if you can believe that! President Hughes has promised them ongoing sovereignty of the refugee lands until the Brits can be resettled.”
    The Doctor frowned, “President Hughes?”
    Conrad nodded, “President Howard Hughes. He invented this!” Conrad slapped the side of the rocked pack on his back. “It was this invention of his and many others that finally gave us a block against Nazi invasion.”
    “Well I am disappointed were weren't able to get one of those automata,” The Doctor mused. “I wonder if I makes sense to double-back to the castle to try to capture one for investigation?”
    “We should probably try to find out what intel this town offers,” Conrad suggested.
    Georgie chipped in, “I agree. Plus, those machines are very powerful. We will need dynamite or something to defeat them. They seemed unstoppable, like Mary Shelley's monster!”
    “They certainly took a lot of damage and kept going,” replied the Doctor, although his attention was only half with them. In his head, he had become aware of a group of minds searching for them. They were agitated thoughts, frightened and aggrieved. Their thoughts were beginning to form the coherent shape of the Farrier's workshop. They were about to be discovered!
  
    The Doctor decided they should step out to meet them rather than being huddled suspiciously in the dark. That seemed, he thought, to create a more honest-looking first impression.
    They were met in the street, almost immediately, by a group of burly locals. The pitchforks and solitary shotgun they carried between them indicated that they were not at all pleased to see the newcomers.
    “They look like locals, rather than soldiers,” observed Conrad.
    A stocky, middle-aged farmer pointed an antique – but still very likely deadly – hunting rifle at them and accosted them. “Get out of our village!” he shouted at them, “You're not taking anyone else! We'd die sooner than let you take our people.”
    The Doctor was about to speak when Georgie stepped forward, drawing herself to her full height and walking gracefully, despite the dishevelled state of her dress. “I am a lady, sir,” she informed him. “and mean you no harm. These two gentlemen, as extraordinary as they are, also mean you no harm, I assure you. We have no desire to hurt you or to take anybody away. Please, we are just looking for shelter.”
    Conrad had been given a certain amount of training in German during his time in the US Rocket Corps, but he struggled to follow this exchange, whereas Georgie seemed to be completely fluent.
    The farmer with the rifle stepped past Georgie, as though not having the strength to confront someone with such a sympathetic and ladylike manner, while seeking an outlet for his rage. He approached Seager, whose black, bug-eyed helmet seemed a more fitting subject of his ire. He waved the rifle and yelled, hysterically, “you're not having any more of our children!”
    “Please, sir, “ Georgie fluttered her eyelashes and tried to calm the man down with a gentle hand placed on his arm. “In my time I have been a Nanny. I understand that you love your children. None of us would ever harm them.”
    The man seemed to sag, broken. He dropped the point of the rifle down to the floor. “We just want our children back,” he murmured in lost, broken tones.
    Georgie clasped his arm, reassuringly, “we'll help you find them, I promise!”
    The Doctor stepped in, saying “who do you think is taking your children? Is it anything to do with that castle.? We've only just escaped, ourselves!”
    “We don't see where else it could be coming from,” said another man at the back of the posse. “We go to sleep and night and when we wake, more of our people are gone. We don't know where they are being taken or what they are using them for!”
    The Doctor considered. He had seen evidence at the castle of odd new technology and experiments. The disappearances from the village added to his feeling of unease. He said, “I wouldn't put anything past the people at the castle.”
    “If they take any more people, there won't be a village left!” another villager cried out in anguish.
    “Agreed!” Georgie said, beaming at this new fragile concord, “they must be stopped!”
    “We will need to get back into the castle,” The Doctor explained, “are any of you aware of any patterns relating to guard changes or anything that could help us get back in, unobserved?”
    The villagers talked between themselves for a moment. The stocky farmer turned back to The Doctor and said, “We tried demanding entrance before, to see our people and those devils turned us away, denying all knowledge of them. But we know they've taken them because one of the villagers escaped and told us.”
    “What was happening to them?” The Doctor asked.
    “Said they were being used as slaves,” the man explained eventually introducing himself as Mikkel. “They were being made to build... something. But he was weak and he died of an odd illness we've never seen before.”
    The Doctor looked troubled, “what were his symptoms?”
    Mikkel explained to the Doctor the ordeal which the escapee had been through. The Doctor recognised the symptoms at once, saying “it sounds to me like Advanced Radiation Poisoning. Harmful amounts of radiation over a significant period of time. He'd must have been working with some advanced technology.”
    Mikkel listened to him, intently. Despite this bleak prognosis he seemed to brighten, saying, “are you a Doctor? If we can get our people out of the Castle, can you help them?”
    “I'm not exactly a medical doctor,” The Doctor told them, “but I can assist in getting the villagers back.”
    The villagers relented a little at his words and began talking amongst themselves over what this could mean.
    Conrad pulled The Doctor aside, “we're massively under-supplied for returning to raid that castle, Doctor. Those robots are unstoppable!”
    The Doctor shook his head, as if waving away considerations of an open assault. “There was talk of a supply convoy,” he explained, “we could stow aboard that somehow and get in with the deliveries?”
    “We'll need weapons, though,” Conrad reiterated, “do the villagers have any explosives?”
    The Doctor tapped the villagers' ringleader on the shoulder and restated Conrad's question through the Tardis' translation matrix. Mikkel shook his head.
    “We have little enough to protect ourselves as it is,” he explained, “the soldiers have left us with barely enough supplies to survive, let alone weapons and explosives. But, if you can come up with a plan we have agreed to lend out strength!”
    The Doctor nodded in acknowledgement. “Do you have any chemical stores?” he asked, aware that his advanced knowledge may well allow him to create an explosive compound out of as-yet undiscovered chemical properties.
    The villager considered, effort furrowing his careworn brow even further. “You want the Apothecary?” he asked.
    “Certainly,” The Doctor replied, “although that's a rather old-fashioned term.”
    “He's an old fashioned feller,” the man replied, with the slightest hint of a laugh. “He's the closest thing we have to a medic, if you want him to look at that arm of yours?”
    “Yes, please,” The Doctor replied, keeping his true interest to himself; although, he realised, he would be grateful for a more practised medic to look over his injured arm.
    They were led over to a house in the centre of the small town. After knocking, they were greeted indifferently by a world-weary gentlemen with a flash of white hair. Mikkel introduced them while the man inside the house eyed the The Doctor up and down. His eyes widened as he heard the story.
    “I hate to do this,” he said, gruffly, “ but things are desperate. I would normally help strangers with no question, but I'm afraid it's going to cost you. You must give your word that you will help us to get our people back from the castle. I'm sorry to be poor with my comforts, but we are where we are.”
    The Doctor was unused to be being held to ransom for medical care, but he could appreciate the painful situation the villagers found themselves in. With a nod he led his companions silently inside and the Apothecary set to work on the The Doctor's arm, neither offering nor expecting conversation.
    Eventually, The Doctor managed to coax him into some chit-chat and asked him about the chemicals he had within the house. The Apothecary wrinkled his brow as he tried to call to mind the various bottles in his stores, “you can always take a look and see if there is something appropriate.”
    “Something like this?”
    The Doctor and the Apothecary looked up in surprise to see Georgie in the doorway. She was holding a bottle of medicinal alcohol with the stopper removed and a piece of torn skirt rammed into the neck.
    Seeing The Doctor's surprised look, Georgie told him, “we suffragists are aware that sometimes we need a big gesture to be noticed! I learned to make these over the summer.”
    The Doctor felt a sudden cold against the skin of his chest, followed by a startled noise from the Apothecary. The Doctor looked at him, to see him staring at his stethoscope in alarm. Presumably, The Doctor thought, he'd just spotted the double heartbeat. It was time for a distraction.
    He stood up, flexing and inspecting his arm with approval. “I think,” The Doctor informed Georgie, “that I might be able to make something a little bit more impressive than that.”

Chapter Six – The Raid

    The Doctor had been gone a while and Georgie was getting restless, while Conrad seemed to be quite happy dozing on a nearby chaise.
    Georgie approached the Apothecary carefully. “Excuse me, sir,” she began, “I don't suppose you know where I could get a change of clothes?”
    The Apothecary's eyes flicked over her shape, quickly and he gestured for her to follow him. He led her into a dusty side room and grabbed some clothes from a wardrobe, placing them almost reverently on the bed.
    “These were my daughter's climbing clothes,” he informed her, “they are tough, warm and practical. She used to go walking in the hills all the time, until she...” He faltered.
    Georgie didn't know what to say, but found that Captain Seager was suddenly standing in the doorway of the room.
    “She has been taken?” Conrad asked.
    The Apothecary nodded, silently.
    “Describe her to me,” Conrad instructed him.
    The Apothecary walked past him to a fireplace in the main living-room. He picked up a picture frame and handed it carefully to Conrad.
    Conrad studied the picture, memorising every line and curve on her face. She was a beautiful young woman, with curls of raven-dark hair falling across a face which laughed without care. She looked a little like his own Jenny, so far away now back home in the States. He could almost feel her picture in his jacket burning against his ribs.  It was hard to imagine such a beautiful and carefree girl being taken by the Nazis for slave labour.
    “Try to bring her back to me,” the Apothecary said, catching Conrad's eyes. Conrad nodded, purposefully.
    They were broken from their thoughts by a jubilant cry from The Doctor. He burst in with a bottle of clear, slightly sparkling liquid. He explained to them that the black metal armour of the robots seemed to be a familiar substance. He thought that this liquid could be used to melt the armour from a robot, if the need arose.
    “So,” The Doctor asked, enthusiastically, “how do we get into the castle? Captain Seager could fly in and find a door through which the rest of us could gain access?”
    Conrad shook his head, “last night's storm has passed. It's unlikely my rocket pack's trail would go unnoticed. We could climb up the hill and see if it's possible and safe to get back in through the hole we created?”
    “They'll be watching that area,” The Doctor told him.
    Conrad replied, “You think?”
    “It's what I'd do,” The Doctor said, giving an embarrassed cough, as if ashamed to be revealing such a cold and calculating side to his nature.
    Conrad turned to the Apothecary, “when is the next supply convoy?”
    “There ought to be one first thing tomorrow morning, I imagine,” he replied.
    “They come through the village?”
    The Apothecary shook his head, “no, they bypass the village and follow the main track through the forest up to the castle.”
    “So,” began The Doctor, the wheels of a plan turning in his head, “if we put a tree down in the road, the truck will have to stop and we can hijack it and drive it up to the castle?”
    “It will not be that easy,” the Apothecary told him, “they travel in convoy.”
    “Will the villagers help us?” Conrad asked, hopefully.
    There was a slow and considered nod from the Apothecary. “I think,” he said, after a few moments, “there are a few that will lend their strength if there is a chance of getting their people back.”
    The Doctor slapped his hands against his coat, decisively. “That sounds like the best plan we have!” he announced.
    Good,” exclaimed the Apothecary, suddenly animated. “I will speak to Mikkel and Gunther. They will be in the gasthaus soon, drinking the day away. Will you come?”
    The Apothecary led them out of his house and over to the village inn. The main bar was almost empty, only occupied by a few depressed-looking men, staring into their beers.
    Mikkel was perched on a corner of the bar, his shotgun propped up beside his leg. Conrad walked over to him and explained the plan, quietly. He asked whether or not Mikkel could round people up to help.
    The embittered villager scratched at his chin, smiling at the prospect of payback. “I can pull together five men, including myself,” he told Conrad. “Between us we have three hunting rifles plus my shotgun. The convoy should be a lead open car – what you Americans call a Jeep -  with a driver and two soldiers. The cargo truck will just have a driver.”
    “Is there anybody else who can help?” Conrad asked.
    Mikkel sighed, “the rest of the village is old women or crippled men. All the strong and healthy people have been taken to the castle.”
    Conrad smiled in acknowledgement and turned back to The Doctor and Georgie, “that's eight of us all together. Should be enough.”
    Georgie was impressed that Conrad had naturally included her. In her life she was so used to being excluded from important or dangerous or difficult work that she had naturally assumed she would have to argue to be involved in their plan. Were things so different in America, she wondered, or was it that The Doctor had brought her to a future where woman were finally considered equals?
    Conrad turned to The Doctor, “when we take the convoy, what do we do with the soldiers?”
    Georgie's voice cut through, “We shoot them.”
    The Doctor and Conrad turned in shock to face her.
    She continued, “they are the enemy, are they not?”
    “We're not taking any hostages?” Conrad asked her, surprised.
    “I say,” Georgie explained, “we are too few and it is too risky.” She was resolute.
    “I must say I'm a little shocked,” The Doctor explained, “I would have expected a more genteel attitude from a lady of your era.”
    Fire flashed in Georgie's eyes as she rounded on The Doctor. “Genteel?” she exclaimed, “I saw the Boer war, Doctor! This is a time of war.”
    “The Boer war?” The Doctor asked, confused, “Aren't you a bit young to have been a nurse?”
    “No,” she explained, “I lived there with my grandfather and I saw enough. He raised me because my own parents had been killed. War is war and we simply have to get on with it.”
    “But I thought you hated weapons?” The Doctor asked, confused.
    Georgie signed, “I do. But when our enemy has such terrifying weapons, what choice to we have but to use them?”
    The Doctor's face darkened. He had seen that argument throughout his studies of history. It always ended the same way. “Well, I think we should try to avoid killing them if we can,” The Doctor attempted, in a conciliatory tone.
    “I suppose they might be useful to us alive, in any case,” Georgie conceded.
    Mikkel got up off his bar stool and hefted his shotgun onto his shoulder, slightly drunkenly. “So,” he said, slurring ever so slightly, “what exactly is the plan?”
  
    The Doctor, Georgie and Seager had all been found lodging in adjoining houses around the village. There were plenty of unoccupied houses, given the amount of villagers who seemed to have been snatched away to the castle. Conrad found these homes eerie, frozen in a moment of time when their owners had been suddenly stolen from them.
    While the others struggled to sleep, Conrad was trained to put the mission out of his mind and take rest when he could find it. He couldn't afford to face the morning raid tired.
    He was woken by the sound of gunfire and shouting from the street. There was yelling and calling in German. He looked around and saw that there were no lights on in his house. Good, he thought, it would look deserted.
    He slid noiselessly out of bed, and padded over to the front window. In the central avenue of the village, a German staff car had pulled up and three occupants were standing around it, calling – almost mockingly – to the houses around.
    Conrad tried to switch his brain into German; they were saying something about more workers. It sounded like: “We need more volunteers to support the Glorious Reich. There is work for you to do. Submit yourselves to us willingly and we will not search the town for you.”
    He grabbed up his flight jacket and pulled it on, before placing his shiny, bug-eyed rudder helmet on his head. Expertly and silently he hoisted the rocket pack onto his shoulder and strapped it across his chest. He grabbed the Radium pistol from the dressing table and shoved it firmly into the holster.
    Conrad quickly moved back to the front of the house. He could see the soldiers getting impatient, trying to decide which house they would search first. Conrad had to bite back the urge to burst through the door and take them all on by himself.
    Instead, he searched around the house and found a door out to the back yard. He managed to open it quietly and stepped out into the bracing night air.
    There was a small fenced garden area with bushes and a large central tree. Conrad skirted around, using the foliage for cover until he had a view across the street.
    Movement in the shadows opposite caught his eye. He could see The Doctor emerging from a house opposite, slipping into a side alley. Conrad managed to catch The Doctor’s eye and pointed down the street towards the soldiers. The Doctor nodded, understanding.
    There was a burst of gunfire from up the street. Conrad was grateful that it was away from their position. But, where was Georgie!?
  
    Georgie had been sleeping only fitfully and had heard the car drive into town. At the sound of the gunfire she had leapt out of bed and stared about her, survival instinct kicking in.
    In that moment, surprised from her bed by the sounds of war she was carried back in her thoughts to the dark days of the Boer conflict and the night her father had rescued her from almost certain death.
    Tonight was a different time and a different war, but Georgie found herself automatically scanning the room for exits. That there was a back door to the house was excellent news, but what of the others?
    She crept over to the front windows and carefully peered through the netted curtains. She could see more of the soldiers they had seen at the castle, striding around their vehicle, calling for the villagers to come out.
    Georgie watched for a long while, refusing to move until the situation changed. After a while she could hear the soldiers debating loudly which house to begin searching.
    There was movement in the house opposite and Georgie saw Mikkel, the villager who had agreed to help them, crouching down by his window. He was holding his shotgun tightly and not being quiet. The soldiers had heard a sound and were turning in his direction to investigate.
    Once the soldiers had turned their backs to her, Georgie waved frantically to Mikkel. He looked up over his window-sill, waving to her in return. She tried to make a gesture to him that she was going to escape out the back. He waved a gesture of understanding, but did not move.
    Georgie held her breath.
    The soldiers stepped up onto the porch of the house and one of the men, who seemed to be an officer in charge, peered into the window on the opposite side of the house from where Mikkel was crouching.
    Mikkel had seen the movement, though, and Georgie watched in horror as the village raised his shotgun and blasted both barrels at the Nazi leader.
    The soldiers yelped and the officer ducked away as broken pieces of glass washed over him, cutting his face, neck and his hands where he raised them to protect himself.
    Another soldier spotted where Mikkel was crouched and smashed the pane in with the butt of his rifle. Without hesitating he aimed the weapon and put a shot into Mikkel. Georgie saw Mikkel slump to the floor, but could not see if he was alive or dead.
    The soldiers were shouting, barking orders at each other. The officer was enraged now, chastising his subordinates for their carelessness and instructing them to break in the door.
    Georgie bit her lip as the third soldier strode up to the door and began kicking on the fragile wood with his heavy boots. She looked at where the soldier with the rifle was pointing his deadly weapon at Mikkels helpless form. She couldn’t bear to watch. They had promised to help him, but now he lay dying in his own home.
    The soldier had, by now, managed to kick the door in. Georgie breathed a sigh of relief as she saw Mikkel moving, dragging himself back across his floor, away from the soldier, struggling to reload his own weapon. The soldier strode over confidently and punched Mikkel hard. Mikkel fell unconscious.
    Unable to bear any more, Georgie determined to end the bloodshed. In desperation and unable to think of any better way to intervene, she flung open the front door and ran out into the street, yelling “stop!” at the top of her voice.
  
    Conrad cursed under his breath as he watched Georgie run out into the street. She stopped dead as one of the soldiers spun around and levelled his rifle at her.
    “Stop right there!” came the call from the soldier,
    Georgie was looking all about her, searching for evidence of The Doctor and Conrad. Conrad managed to make eye contact with her.
    “Run,” he mouthed, lifting up his Radium Pistol so that she could see he was ready. To his amazement, Georgie simply shook her head and held her hands up as the soldier strode over to her.
    “Don't shoot,” Conrad heard Georgie say, in perfect German, “take me to your commanding officer.”
    Conrad punched the ground in front of him in frustration. He balled his fist again and felt the reassuring grip of the Rocket Pack’s throttle under his fingers.
    Looking over to the soldiers with determination, Conrad fired up the Rocket, illuminating the bushes all around him with orange fire.
    The soldier looked around to see the source of this noise, but could react in time. Conrad skirted low over the ground, the heat of his rocket flame leaving a trail of steam in the snow. He tackled the solder at waist height and hoisted him up into the air.
    The captive soldier stared at Conrad in horror, only seeing his own reflection in the opaque black lens of the metal helmet.
    The German Captain was shouting orders again now, striding out into the street to try to line up a shot at this flying man.
    Conrad twisted back around and flung his cargo towards the Captain. The helpless soldier flailed his arms and legs uselessly in the air before crashing to the ground in a silent heap. The Captain managed to step deftly aside and called to his other trooper for assistant.
    Quickly, Conrad pointed his Radium Pistol at the enemy Captain, still zooming towards him almost vertically down. He fired of a shot of blinding green radiation and looped back upward into the sky.
    The German Captain was illuminated by the glow of the shot for a moment and then slumped to the floor.
    Conrad jumped as he heard a bullet wizz by him and looked down to see the other soldier, firing wildly into the air with his MP40.
    There was another loud report and Conrad looked down to see that Georgie had picked up the rifle from the dead soldier and was trying to get a shot off at the remaining soldier.
    Her shot had gone wide, but it surprised the soldier enough that Conrad was able to loop around and get off another expert shot with his Radium Pistol. The soldier croaked painfully as the energy from the weapon burned every cell in his body and he, too, dropped to the ground.
    The fighting over, the Doctor rushed over to where the German Captain lay. “He’s not quite dead,” the Doctor reported, grimly, “but the amount of radiation he’s absorbed from that weapon will kill him in minutes.”
    Georgie threw the rifle away from herself, partly disgusted by the events of the battle and partly and her own failure to shoot straight.
    The Doctor said to Georgie, “it’s a good job you missed. A uniform full of holes won’t be much use to us!” She looked up at his open, honest face and couldn’t help but return his gaze with a slight smile.
    They rushed into the house to check on Mikkel as Conrad dropped back down to the ground, his descent as graceful as a falling leaf.
    Mikkel had regained conscious, but The Doctor could see clearly that he was too wounded to play any further part in their plans, despite Mikkel’s protestations.
    They carried him to the Apothecary’s house and placed him on a bed, while the Apothecary immediately set about bandaging the man’s gunshot wound.
    “Will you carry on with the raid,” the Apothecary asked the Doctor, earnestly, “I will take Mikkel’s place if I have to!”
    The Doctor smiled, “and waste the car that those soldiers have dropped into our laps? Certainly not! In any case, that patrol will be missed if they do not return. I suggest we wear their uniforms and return to the castle. We can pretend that Georgie is a captive.”
    Georgie huffed, “why should I have to be the prisoner?”
    “Because,” explained Conrad, “there are no women among the castle’s soldiers. So it’s either that or we have to find a way to strap down your bazookas.” He gave her a roguish grin and her cheeks burned.
    “Well,” said the Apothecary, “I’m still coming with you!”

Chapter Seven – The Lion’s Den

    The German staff car bounced quickly up the rocky road to the castle and it was not long before they saw the gate appear.
    As the soldier appeared in front of them and commanded them to halt, Conrad suddenly felt very naked without the Rocket Pack and helmet he had hidden beneath the seat, in favour of this enemy uniform.
    He brought the car to a stop. The guard looked them over, noting the prisoner in the back seat next to the Apothecary, who was keeping his helmet brim low so that his advanced years did not give him away.
    The Doctor leaned across Conrad to address the guard. “We've only captured one,” The Doctor said, cheerfully, failing to sound disappointed. “Shall we, umm, take her for interrogation?”
    The guard rolled his eyes, “Who would want to interrogate her? What could the villagers possibly know that is of any value? Put her in the workshop with the others!” With that he walked away and raised the barrier.
    Conrad drove through the castle gate, frustrated that the guards instructions hadn’t hinted at a direction to the slave’s workshop. In a flash of inspiration, Conrad realised he should follow the most worn path as that is where the majority of heavy traffic would have been going.
    The signs of wear went around to the right, in front of the main house which dominated the centre of the castle site. As they approached an interior bailey wall, they could see the huge section that had been cut out of it to allow access to a massive workshop. What had once been a courtyard had been roofed over with corrugated iron and turned into an open plan factory. Gaunt-looking slaves barely looked up as they approached in their car and parked in a marked space between the right side of main house and the workshop.
    Getting out of the car, Conrad made a show of roughly pushing Georgie ahead of them, sending her into the workshop.
    Inside, they could see guards strolling between the large workbenches. There were four work surfaces, one in each corner of the workshop. Every one had a bustling group of workers around it. Above these, about halfway up the wall, a metal gantry ran around the sides of the room to an upper office.
    In horror, they realised that the stiff, threatening guards which patrolled the upper gantry where three of the robotic horrors they had faced in the laboratory. Each was armed with a heavy and dangerous-looking rifle.
    The Doctor muttered under his breath to the group, “don't get too close to any guards. Somebody is bound to realise that they don't recognise us.”
    He looked around to see if his companions were heeding his words. Conrad simply nodded and Georgie gave him a flicker of subtle recognition.
    The Apothecary was clearly away in his own world. Ever since they came into the workshop his eyes had been desperately scanning the faces of the slaves to see if his daughter was in here.
    Conrad gave him a dig in the ribs. “Try not to be so obvious,” he warned him.
    “You don't understand,” the Apothecary replied, quietly, “she feels so close now!”
    “We'll find her,” Conrad assured him, hissing under his breath, “but we need to avoid blowing our cover!”
    The  Apothecary acquiesced, trying to be less deliberate in his searching, but told Conrad, “The most important thing for me is to find my daughter. I know we have to get everybody out, but I have to know what has become of her!”
    Conrad nodded, gently. “I understand,” he said.
    They jumped slightly as an officer strode up to the edge of the gantry and shouted, “You, men! Drop off your captives and make your way to the Commandant's office!”
    Conrad waved back uncertainly and croaked, “Ja!”
    “We need to come up with a plan,” said the Doctor, urgently, “Georgie, try to find out what you can from the prisoners. We’ll come back for you!”
    Georgie nodded, “I'll try to find out what work they are doing.”
    The Doctor looked around, cautiously. “We should go,” he muttered to Conrad, conspiratorially, “I have no intention of getting caught out in the commandant's office and sooner or later somebody is going to realise we're not keeping our appointment.”
    He spied an electric speaker system around the walls of the workshop and said to Georgie, “I'll try to broadcast a message over those speakers, if we need to signal you. I don't know what the plan is yet, but you may need to get everybody out, quickly.”
    “You!” barked a soldier nearby, suddenly approaching the Apothecary, “Take the new prisoner over to Work Group B!”
    The Apothecary nodded and gripped Georgie by the elbow.
    As he made to move away, Conrad gripped his arm and said, insistently, “Meet us outside in five minutes!”
    Defiantly, the Apothecary retorted, “when I've found my daughter!”
    “We won't wait!” Conrad warned him.
    A peaceful look came over the villager’s face. He smiled at Conrad kindly, almost resignedly. “You do what you must,” he said, “I thank you for bringing me this far.”
    Conrad and The Doctor watched with concern as their new friend strode away into he workshop with Georgie, amongst the guards, slaves and deadly metal robots.
  
    Work Group B, where Georgie had been assigned, seemed to be working on cutting the black metal they had seen on the Robot Soldiers. The tools seemed very advanced. Georgie recognised very few of them but she was handed an object shaped like a child’s catapult, which had an arcing beam of electricity across the “arms”. It seemed to cut through the metal very effectively.
    The lady working next to her was much older than Georgie. Almost too old to be working, Georgie thought. Eventually the older lady leaned across to speak to her.
    “You new?” the lady asked Georgie.
    “Yes, I am.”
    “When did they take you?”
    “This morning,” Georgie sighed, thinking back to the events of the raid. That’s how it must have been for all of these people.
    The lady made a sympathetic click with her tongue, “I'm sorry to hear that, dearie.”
    “What is this place?” Georgie asked her.
    The lady shrugged, “we don't know, it's just The Factory. They dragged us here to work.” After a pause, she leaned closer and asked, even more quietly, “Are you from the town. Is there anybody left?”
    “There's a few,” Georgie replied, honestly.
    The lady sighed, sadly. “It feels like everybody I've ever known is either here, or gone...”
    Concerned, Georgie asked her, “is everybody here still alive?”
    “There've been deaths,” the lady told her, “Malnutrition is rife. And where we have to sleep is disgusting. Many get sick. Then there are those taken off…”  She trailed off.
    “What about them?” Georgie pressed.
    The woman’s face grew dark. “We don't know,” she said, “They are taken away for what the soldiers call ‘tests’. They are never seen again.”
    Georgie looked around carefully, before asking, “How may guards are there watching us?”
    The woman instantly shot her a warning stare. “Don't you go thinking that way!” she snapped, “The best you can hope for is to knuckle under and hope this will all blow over.”
    “Yes,” Georgie replied, gently, “But sometimes action is called for, surely?”
    “Well,” the woman snorted, “You'll be here long enough. You can count the guards for yourself. There's been a few that think your way. All they've done is gotten themselves and others killed!”
    “But isn't that better than to work for the enemy?” Georgie asked.
    The woman screwed up her nose in disdain. “What enemy?” she demanded, “these soldiers are our people. It's our own government forcing us to do this work.”
    “Well!” Georgie said, looking for an argument that may get through, “would you be doing this otherwise?”
    “Certainly not!” replied the lady, disgusted, “I'd be on my farm.”
    “Well, then!” Georgie pressed, sensing a victory in the debate, “If they are holding you against your will, then they are your enemy, King and Country or not!”
    The lady shrugged, “They're the ones with the guns and the robots. There's little we can do.”
    “Robots?” Georgie asked, innocently.
    “Oh yeah,” the lady replied, “Those big metal soldiers we're making for them.”
    “How long have you been doing this?”
    The lady squinted and looked at the ceiling, as if this would aid her memory. “Oh I don't know,” she said, eventually, “three months, maybe?”
    “And how many robots have you worked on?” Georgie continued.
    “Here, I don't know!” the lady protested at Georgie’s barrage of questions. “We just work on the parts that come through our hands. I don't know how many go into a single robot. All the work groups are working on different things.”
    “You must know how many times you've made the same component!” Georgie insisted.
    “I tell you I can't keep track,” the lady snapped at her. “All I know is we were being guarded just by soldiers for weeks. Suddenly, two weeks ago, the robots started appearing, so they must have enough parts now.”
    “You pair!” came a stern voice from behind them. Georgie looked around to see a soldier. “Stop talking and get on with your work!” he commanded.
    Georgie opened her mouth to protest, but thought better of it and returned to the workbench, her head low.
  
    The Doctor and Conrad had moved outside, trying to figure out a next move. They were painfully aware that they were loitering and some soldiers back in the direction of the front of the house had noticed them. They began to walk around to the back of the castle.
    “Explosives will be in that main house,” Conrad suggested, “We should try to find a back entrance.”
    They almost walked into a pair of guards by a back door to the main house.
    The soldiers straightened as they approach and asked, “anything we can help you guys with?”
    The Doctor thought quickly, “Oh, we've come to relieve you from duty. The commandant wants to see you.”
    One of the soldiers rolled his eyes, “Really? Oh well. While we're gone, try not to spill anything.”
    The pair of them headed through a small door set into the back of the massive house.
    “Try not to spill anything?” Conrad repeated, confused, as he and The Doctor took in the enormity of where they were standing.
    Piled up against the back bailey wall were barrels upon barrels market “Fuel.” A green camouflage net was stretched over them to disguise them from the sky, causing the light to fall across them in dappled shapes. Parked in front of the fuel dump was a large tanker.
    “I think I have a plan,” said The Doctor, grinning.  “Our primary goal is surely to destroy their manufacturing capabilities?” Conrad nodded in agreement. “We could drive the fuel tanker into the workshop and try to detonate it,” The Doctor continued, “That would do a great deal of damage. Obviously we'd like to get the villagers out first.” He thought for a moment, “But, we probably haven't got long before those soldiers realise we've sent them on a wild goose chase.”
    Conrad climbed up through the driver’s door and looked in. “The keys aren't inside,” he reported, “There must be a fleet office nearby where they store the keys.”
    “Let me try mine,” announced The Doctor and pulled his faithful Sonic Screwdriver out of his pocket. He pointed it at the ignition. Nothing happened.
    “Oh,” expressed The Doctor, disappointed.
    “Hang on,” Conrad said pointed to a small shed at the far end of the fuel dump, “that's probably it.”
    Conrad left the Doctor staring dolefully at his impotent Sonic Screwdriver and walked over to the shed.
    Inside was an old soldier, reading a book. He looked up as Conrad entered. “Yes?”
    Conrad struggled to gather his best German. “Good day…” he attempted.
    “Good day,” the old soldier repeated back, politely.
    “I've been told to get the keys,” Conrad told him.
    The old man gave him an impatient look and indicated a row of 20 hooks, each bearing keys. “I have lots of keys, see for yourself,” he said, “What are you looking for?”
    “We've been … asked to move the fuel truck,” Conrad attempted, struggling to think of the right word for tanker.
    The old soldier looked at him curiously. “That's a strange accent you have there, boy,” he commented, “where are you from?”
    Conrad faltered.  “Munich...” he offered, hoping that was sufficiently far enough away to be considered exotic.
    The old soldier rolled his eyes. “Figures,” he said and grabbed a key off the rack and tossed it to Conrad.
    Meanwhile, The Doctor had decided to buy them a little time. He headed over to the back door that the other soldiers had disappeared through and pointed the Sonic Screwdriver at the lock. There was a hiss and a puff of smoke as the metal in the locked melted and reformed into a solid mass.
    It wasn’t before time. As The Doctor stepped back there came an impatient banging and rattling from behind the door.
    As Conrad came running back over, The Doctor told him, “we'd better hurry, that won't hold them. I’ve checked the tank and its full of fuel. You drive the truck and I'll use the Sonic to signal an evacuation in the workshop!”
    As he stepped down from the cab, a group of four German soldiers came running around the corner of the house, shouting, “stop!”
    Instinctively, Conrad hit the accelerator and drove straight towards the soldiers. They raised their machine guns to fire at him, while Conrad threw his own MP40 out of the window to The Doctor.
    The Doctor picked it up for effect, albeit with no intention of pointing it at anybody. Instead, he focused his gaze on a nearby tower of fuel barrels and concentrated his thoughts.
    The top barrel swayed left and right and eventually the power of The Doctor’s telekinesis caused it to break free and roll fast towards the soldiers. Two of the soldier were forced to stop aiming at Conrad and dive to one side.
    The remaining two soldiers opened fire. The windscreen crashed inwards and The Doctor gasped with concern as a pair of bullets shredded into Conrad’s shoulder and splattered blood across the seats.
    The other soldier aimed downwards and fired at the wheels. The nearside tire blew out, violently and Conrad fought to keep the tanker under control, while struggling at the same time with the pain and weakness in his shoulder.
    The tanker smashed into the stone wall of the bailey. Metal grinded against the wall and the tanker gradually choked before coming to a halt, the engine stalled.
    The Doctor look around the corner of the main house to see even more soldiers running their way.
  
    Georgie could hear the commotion from outside and guessed it was The Doctor and Conrad, but felt powerless to do anything. Focusing on her own task, she managed to count the guards: four on the workshop floor, one by each work group. There was another guard that periodically returned, up on the gantry, with an irritated look on his face. She smiled to herself in realisation that he was still waiting for The Doctor to report in. As well as those men there were the three robot soldiers, looming over the slaves, ominously.
    Of the slaves themselves, there numbered about 60, of both sexes and a wide range of ages.
    Avoiding upsetting the older lady again, Georgie asked the woman on the other side of her, “these tools are strange! How long have you been using them? Where does this technology come from?”
    “I don't know,” the woman replied, noncommittally, “They were shipped in from outside.”
    “What metal is this?” Georgie asked.
    “Oh we don't know that either,” the woman continued, “It's all shipped in from outside. I just cut it to the pattern.”
    Sensing that she wasn’t making progress, Georgie changed tack. She nodded towards the human soldier on the gantry. “Who's the frustrated-looking man up there?” she asked.
    The woman raised an eyebrow, “That is Uberleiutenent Strauss. He manages the workshop.”
    “Is he from the town?”
    She shook her head, “He's not a local. He took over the castle when the army moved in.”
    “There were people living here before?”
    “Oh yes,” the woman nodded, “Years back – before the war – there was a noble family, but the army have been here since the war started. Strauss is alright, but don't get on his wrong side. If you get on his wrong side he'll send you to Commandant Jurgens and then you're in trouble!”
    “I presume,” Georgie pressed, “that people who go to see him never come back?”
    The woman shrugged, “Several haven't.”
    Georgie leaned in a little closer and said, “Suppose I wanted to talk to somebody about getting out of here, who would you recommend?”
    “Ha,” the woman scoffed, “I'd recommend you keep your mouth shut!”
    “There must be somebody here that wants to change things?” Georgie insisted.
    “Where would we go? If we left the castle they'd just come and find us again and it would be the worse for us.”
    “Not if we did things differently,” Georgie suggested, “With their weapons and guns we could create our own army and be free.”
    “Even if we could,” the woman argued, “that's just here. What about the rest of the country, or even Europe?”
    “Europe's a big place,” Georgie offered, hopefully, “There must be some resistance?”
    “Look,” the woman said, kindly, “I know it seems terrible here at first, but we're not that badly off. You look at what's happened in other countries. Look at what happened to England!”
    Georgie tried not to think about the story Conrad had told them about England's dreadful fate.
    “Well, all I can say is,” the woman continued, “nobody wanted to see happen here what happened in England. So, to be honest, building these robots may be for the best. Maybe they will be our protection against the fire that falls from the sky.” She stopped, as she could see Georgie's troubled face. She said, kindly, “Look, I used to think like you. Even up to a couple of weeks ago I thought about it. But since I've seen these robots – seen what they do to those who run – I wouldn't try anything now. These robots are inhuman. They seem to know exactly where you are moving and to fight one is certain death. They are lethal.”
    “Whatever you say, you are still a slave,” Georgie told her, suddenly defiant, “These things you are building will never be good for you. You're just an accessory to your own end!”
    “I suppose you're right,” the woman conceded, sadly, “But what can we do? How can I help?”
    “You can point me in the direction of someone else who thinks like me!”
  
    The soldiers commanded The Doctor to drop the machine gun. He did so.
    At the same time, soldiers were shouting at Conrad to get out of the truck.
    Conrad was fighting against the pain, desperate to find some way out of this trap. He tried to fire the engine again, hoping that he could mow through the soldiers and get out. The truck failed to move and his actions were met only by the sound of warning gunfire in the air.
    Seeing The Doctor’s own look of surrender, Conrad moved to climb out of the truck. Realising he would be searched, Conrad stowed the Radium Pistol under the seat as he climbed down. At least it should still be there if they could get away.
    The soldiers began to pat them down, searching them for weapons.
    As the soldier searched The Doctor, the Timelord tried, psychically, to divert the soldier’s attention – a little mental manipulation he knew might cause the soldier to overlook his inside pocket. The Doctor realised he must be tired: his attempt to trick the soldier’s mind fell flat and the man’s hand knocked against the weighty shape of the Sonic Screwdriver. He reached in and took it out, looking at it curiously.
    “That isn’t a weapon…” The Doctor attempted, but the soldier gave him a hard stare and pocketed the device.
    “What did you do to this door?” the soldier demanded, pointing at the useless lock of the back door.
    “I, umm, jammed it,” The Doctor explained, apologetically.
    “Well, unjam it!” the soldier demanded.
    “I can't,” The Doctor told him.
    “Sheiser!” exclaimed the soldier and fired his machine gun into the lock before kicking the door in.
    The Doctor and Conrad were manhandled through the door and into the main house. The small door led into what must once have been a kitchen. They were led through into a large, ornate hall bedecked with Swastika flags and dominated by a sweeping staircase.
    Conrad was now staggering with the pain in his bleeding shoulder as he and The Doctor were pressed up the stairs at gunpoint. They were led to an official-looking door, padded with lush red leather.
    They stopped and the soldiers knocked on the wooden outer panel of the door.
    “Yes, what is it?” came a gruff reply from inside.
    “We have prisoners for you, sir!” the soldier replied.
    “Very well.”
    The soldier opened the door and they were led inside to a large room. At the far end was a big mahogany desk, across which sat a sharp-faced, powerful looking man.
    “You will be respectful before Commandant Jurgens!” the soldier barked at The Doctor and Conrad, before stepping back to take up a sentinel position by the door.
    Commandant Jurgens got up from his desk and approached them. He walked up and down in front of them a couple of times, seemingly trying to make his mind up about something.
    Eventually he stopped in front of The Doctor and waggled a decisive finger in his face. When he spoke, the Timelord’s blood ran cold.
    “Doctor…” said Commandant Jurgens.

The Importance of Writing Up Game Sessions

I've been catching up with the write-ups of my Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space game sessions from the end of 2012. Suffice it to say I'm quite behind. Furthermore, the more sessions I have got behind, the less likely I am to tackle the problem as the job gets bigger.

The problem is, I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I could just write up basic account of what happened and who did what, but I don't. My instinct for story telling drives me to provide narrative, meaning and context for the imaginative solutions my players come up with in the stories. Plus, the Adventures in Time and Space game is so strong for creating great Doctor Who stories, I want to do those stories justice by giving them a decent write up.

Listening back to the recordings I make of the sessions, two thoughts have struck me. The first is how easy it is to forget something which was set up earlier in the story. In group B's first adventure, Das Metallreich (the first part of which you can read here) I have been reminded that the group spent a good deal of the session preparing weapons for their return to the creepy German castle. We remember the molotov cocktail, fashioned from a bottle of the apothecary's finest medicinal alcohol, but we entirely forgot a very special gadget which The Doctor had crafted: a vial of advanced acid, capable of stripping the armour from the outside of one of the deadly, black, Nazi Robot Stormtroopers and which could be remotely detonated with the Sonic Screwdriver.

It's a pity, because it would have been an excellent opportunity for a key reveal in the story, as well as an item which could have been very rewarding for the players to make use of their own ingenuity.

As usual I didn't do any actual research, but in the back of my mind this is probably the castle I was thinking of in Das Metallreich. PHOTO CREDIT

The second point I've realised is that listened back helps me to identify mistakes I have made as GM. I describe myself in this blog as a "newbie" GM, because I've never run any kind of roleplaying game before and at times it feels like a bit of a steep curve.

Perhaps mistakes is the wrong term. Judge for yourself: game B had taken the bait to hijack a supply transport in the morning. They had a solid plan and support from local NPCs. Perhaps influenced by D&D mechanics, I decided that their overnight rest should not be without incident and I faced them with a grab squad, raiding the village in the night for new slaves. As a result of this battle, they decided that the castle would be alerted if the squad didn't return, so having defeated them, they took the uniforms and returned to the castle in the guise of the soldiers.

This was fine and moved the adventure on and allowed them access, but it negated the work they had done formulating an exciting heist with the supply truck and forced their hand to do something slightly different - but largely the same. They had a fight with similarly stat'd soldiers and ended up with a vehicle they could use to enter the castle discretely. Maybe it doesn't matter, but I feel that in replacing a fight which the players had created for a similar one which they hadn't invested any time in, I cheated them out of a more rewarding encounter, albeit inadvertently.

The first of these faults is perhaps down to poor note-taking. I am already working on technical means to overcome some of the administrative problems I face when running Doctor Who game sessions. The second of these lessons is more tricky. It requires a kind of forecasting what kinds of outcomes may occur by introducing a new threat when then players already have a plan. With them facing a fight already, setting up a quick encounter probably wasn't worthwhile.

Lesson learned for the future.

Very Special 50th Anniversary Doctor Who

Firstly, apologies to the RPG lovers who have come this way. This is not (unlike my own very special Doctor Who Christmas Special Alternative) a game I am running to coincide with this year's 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who.

Neither is it a reference to the current TV production, which I'm sure will be lovely and all that.

Big Finish have announced their own Doctor Who 50th Anniversary special. The story reputedly affects all 8 Doctors, although obviously only the surviving 5 actors from the "classic" TV series will reprise their roles. Yes, Big Finish are doing an epic special starring Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann.

This isn't the sort of thing I usually post on this blog, but I thought the bringing together of all Doctors from Baker number one through to Paul McGann was very significant and a testament to Big Finish's successes.

The Doctors are joined by Louise Jameson as the 4th Doctor's assistant Leela, Sarah Sutton as the 5th Doctor's assistant Nyssa, Nicola Bryant as the 6th Doctor's assistant Peri, Sophie Aldred as the 7th Doctor's assistant Ace and India Fisher as the 8th Doctor's assistant (in audio format) Charley Pollard.

For those who don't know, Big Finish produce new full-cast Doctor Who episodes featuring the previous generations of the Doctor, entirely in audio. For those that really wanted to see more of Paul McGann as The Doctor, you may be pleasantly surprised to hear that he's been continuing the part with Big Finish very successfully for over ten years now, so there's plenty to catch up on.

I personally love radio drama and if I'm totally honest I often enjoy the Big Finish Audios more than the current TV series.

You can see the details on the Big Finish website here.

Doctor Who Christmas Special: Telling a Story in Roleplaying

I've noted before that Doctor Who: Adventures In Time and Space is, in comparison to other role-playing systems, very plot-heavy. The exciting finale of a Doctor Who story is usually a character crisis, rather than a "boss" to be defeated in classic roleplaying rounds of physical combat.

This leads to a rather unusual dilemma. As a GM, how much can you script plot and outcomes, when what you really want is to allow the players to feel that they are roleplaying towards an ending that they have created themselves? This question became even more pertinent during our own Alternative Doctor Who Christmas Special game.

That is, after all the beauty of pen-and-paper roleplaying. At the beginning of October, I wrote this letter to Edge Magazine:

What I think pen-and-paper gaming offers over videogaming - as technology currently stands - is that the direction the game takes, the places journeyed to, the characters met and the adventures had, is entirely the result of an organic agreement between the players and the Gamemaster ... There is no detailed plot design up-front, because there is no guarantee that the players will act in the "right" way to follow the plot. Furthermore if a GM really needs to steer wandering players back on track, this can be achieved with natural narrative methods, rather than an invisible wall

I tend not to prepare too much detail in my plots. I have a basic structure and a few ways I can imagine the story resolving. At one point, my comparatively inexperienced players were looking to me for helpful hints to resolve the situation, but I told them, "oh I haven't actually written a way out of this problem! I'm just waiting to see what solutions you come up with."

But, the few dramatic moments that I do prepare are generally essential for the ongoing story or campaign and it's hard to know how much is "too much" when providing GM-controlled narrative. In the penultimate game before the Alternative Doctor Who Christmas Special, I really wanted the players to meet the villain face-to-face, because it would reveal that The Doctor is already known by the enemy and that his arrival was expected. In an alternative-history Nazi occupation, that should set some alarm bells ringing for players and characters alike.

However, I had real trouble getting the players to this scenario. Firstly, a senior NPC summons the players to report (since they were in disguise as soldiers at this point). Assuming (correctly) that they would get rumbled, they opted to abscond and decided that driving the nearby fuel tanker into the castle and detonating it would be a good ploy. They proceeded to hijack the truck and began driving it. I brought four armed troopers out to arrest them. They decided not to submit.

The Doctor (who, in this game, has Telekinesis) rolled a nearby petrol barrel at the guards and succeeded in knocking them down. The other player hit the gas and tried to run over the remaining soldier. A couple of soldiers managed to recover their wits and a: fired on the player in the drivers' seat, taking off about 50% health and b: shot out the front tyre on the truck, forcing a crash. Even after that, the players were still up for a scrap.

 

Players generally cannot resist barrels

In the end, I narrated the approach of even more soldiers, alerted by the sounds of shouting and gunfire. I try hard to avoid narrating any action or event that takes control away from the players. This approach involves introducing seemingly unstoppable odds that leave the players with little choice.

In the Alternative Doctor Who Christmas Special, I had a situation in which the two Doctors ended up strapped into chairs in twin machines, as part of a Dalek plan to eradicate all versions of the Doctor. The players had, thankfully, split into two parties so I had them where I wanted them, so to speak. In the end, once each Doctor was near the chair, I narrated that the Doctor was pulled, suddenly and irresistibly into the seat. Within the Doctor Who: Adventures in Time & Space system I could have easily made this action a forced mental attack, resisted by the player characters Resolve and Ingenuity or Presence.

But had the resistance been successful it would have robbed the players of the dramatic ending and the revelation of the Dalek's master plan. In this case, I felt it was better to present the Doctor's entrapment as a situation for the players to work out how to resolve, rather than an attack in itself which the player would try to resist.

It's always a tricky balance. Usually I don't worry too much if the stories don't resolve the way I had expected. Where I do come unstuck is that I like to drop little foreshadowing hints for each player about bits of plot that will affect them in later adventures, but sometimes you just need the players to walk into things.

The Christmas Special, however, required some extra handling: I needed a plot that explained why I had two (very different) first-generation Doctors at the same time and why Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart didn't recognise either of them. Therefore the ending was largely fixed, I just needed to find a subtly way to guide the players to it in a satisfactory way.

In the end, the biggest problem was the need to wrap the story up in a single session. Usually I can just wait for a suitable cliffhanger and then cue the music (which I do actually play!) but because the group of players and the scenario were unique for the Christmas Special, I had to get the stories resolved and both Doctors back to their own dimensions.

All the players seemed to have a good time though, which was the most important thing. I worry sometimes that guiding the story too much might make it feel less like a game and more like storytime, but I think so far the balance seems to be working.

Alternative Doctor Who Christmas Special, RPG-style

Not had the chance to blog for a while, due to holidays and other awesome things, but rest assured that work is progressing on the continuation of the Nazi-robot epic, Das Metallreich, and the new episodes of the ongoing game campaign with The Doctor, Esther, Lim, Stephen and Knute, which I'm calling "War and Peacehaven".

There's been some discussion in the games about an RPG Christmas special for our respective game-Doctors. The idea is to try and get a date where we can play and one-off, one-day adventure special, crossing over the timelines of both Doctors and producing an epic and seasonal adventure! This is a great opportunity to invite some other friends who might not want to play the game every couple of weeks, but are up for a "taste" of tabletop roleplaying.

 

May or may not be representative of included plot

Plans are in process, but in the meantime, here is the plot setup I've distributed to the invitees...

North Pole, 1977

'Twas the night before Christmas and all through Plaisted Station
not a creature was stirring...

Apart from Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart and a team of U.N.I.T. troops. Lethbridge-Stewart has been dragged out of retirement after only a year and he isn't happy about it.

He's unhappy that Dr. Giddings, who has requested him personally, keeps ranting about Alien interference in his experiments. He's unhappy that they appear to be investigating the wrong Pole. He's unhappy that he's had to fly out to the Polar Scientific Research Station "Plaisted" on Christmas Eve.

Finally, he's particularly unhappy that a freak snowstorm is likely to leave them cut-off until New Year...

Andromeda Sector, Far Future

War has raged throughout the sector between the Independent Colonies and the Great Empire.

When an Independent Dreadnought is left drifting after a major conflict, the surviving crew release an S.O.S., while Imperial Intelligence receive a tip off that the ship may contain information vital to the war effort.

Ransacking a ship with survivors is against the articles of war, but the Empire have no wish to lose face or the war. Luckily there are plenty of mercenaries for hire who can murder the survivors and retrieve the information without ever implicating the Great Empire...

ROME: ?BC

The dominance of the Roman war machine is felt throughout known civilisation. Rome is expanding, by conquest and by influence. It is a time of great superstition but also promising great progress and technological advancement.

Into this world comes a fearsome creature of terrifying proportions, laying waste to whole settlements and slaughtering the inhabitants.

The people wait for a saviour: born of a virgin on December 25th. They wait for a god to free them from their terror. They wait for a warrior to protect them from The Beast. They wait for Mithras...


Meanwhile, The Doctors have been plucked out of their existing travels and pulled into a twisted and macabre plan of the most terrifying and deadly scope...

Doctor Who (Game A) Session Write-Up - On Thin Ice, Part 2

N.B. What follows is a prose narration of the events that took place in the game session. If you like, it can be regarded as a kind of Doctor Who fan-fiction, except that all the events are driven by occurrences in-game and is presented in first-draft quality. It is not intended to fully recreate any events or characters from any previous Doctor Who episode, book, radio series or comic, with the exception of some iconic villains. Even The Doctor is a reinvention. Perhaps how the Doctor may appear in a different reality. It cannot, therefore, be wrong on any canonical continuity. It exists within itself and is presented purely for reading pleasure and to inform role-playing experiences. Thank you :)



Please note that this continues on from a previous episode. Please click here to read the previous chapters.

Carter Alsop worked alone in his office, his desk illuminated by a single lamp leaning over his neatly ordered papers. He pored over scans and deep resonance images of the shapes in the ice block.

He discounted the animal shape entirely. It was far too modern to be of any use to the museum. However, the human figure was intriguing. Alsop was concerned that there was no way to tell what era the body was from, but in any case, a perfectly preserved body rescued from ice that had lain undisturbed for the best part of a century was bound to be a popular exhibit.

He turned his attention back to the sarcophagus shadow with a sigh. That was the real prize, he thought. He felt a moment's distress at the thought of having to give it up and not be able to display it. But, he reasoned, there was so much more where that came from!

His thoughts returned to his studies and he leaned in close to the desk, studying the images for any more clues he might have missed.

The curator's concentration was so intense – and the office around him so dark – that he had no awareness whatsoever of the figure moving behind him in the darkness, stealthily and carefully closing in on his position.

The first Carter Alsop knew of the intruder was the feel of a deathly-cold hand over his mouth, stifling his scream.

He realised, with a mix of excitement and terror, that the hand felt distinctly scaly: They'd come back!

 

Chapter Four – Cold Blooded

The lizard's eyes flicked open. It spat at The Doctor, Knute and Lim, “Get your hands off me you damn dirty apes!”

Without warning, Knute delivered another powerful punch to the creature's face. There was a sickening crack and the creature slumped back on the floor, completely still.

“Why did you do that to her?” The Doctor demanded, outraged.

“It was hissing at me like some kind of snake!” Knute replied, confused.

Of course, thought The Doctor, he couldn't understand her.

The Doctor looked down upon the broken Lizard face. It was a Reptilia Sapiens. Commonly referred to by historians as Silurians. Sometimes incorrectly referred to as Homo Reptilia, which was a tasteless mistake to make – certainly in front of a Silurian. The lizards on this planet evolved into an intelligent and industrial people long before the monkeys started hitting each other with jawbones and many of them disliked any confusion of their kind with the apes.

Two intelligent species sharing a common cradle, the Doctor thought, remembering her history lessons. Whenever both species became aware of that fact it invariably led to trouble.

She was about to speak to Knute more when several figures appeared in the gallery archways on either side of them. In each archway stood a Silurian warrior, staring at them with deadly intent and aiming a nasty-looking rifle in their direction.

Next to one of the Silurian warriors stood to a tall, graceful Silurian female. Her armour was tinted a different shade to set her apart from the footsoldiers and she wore no combat visor.

She stepped forward and stopped short as she saw the dead warrior lying on the ground. She hissed at the group, “what have you done!?”

Knute's fists tightened again. The Doctor could see he was preparing to strike at these newcomers and spoke quickly and diplomatically before Knute could turn the situation into a bloodbath. “We're very sorry, brave warrior, it was a mistake!”

The Silurian leader raised a hand and the other warriors slightly lowered their weapons.

Knute saw this action and relented. His charge dissipated into merely a short threatening stagger toward the leader. The Silurian leader looked like they were waiting for a further reason to not resume the attack.

“You are Silurians, are you not?” The Doctor said, “what are you doing here?”

“You have killed one of our s-s-sisters-s-s!” The Silurian leader hissed back, “we are asking the questions! You will pay for your crimes.”

“We're really very sorry for that!” The Doctor insisted, “she came out of nowhere and took us by surprise.” She pleaded for peace, “is there any chance we can start over?”

“Liar!” the Silurian yelled, “we saw you chas-s-sing her as if she was prey.” The Silurian spat the word prey as if it was distasteful.

“She had killed a guard downstairs. We had no choice but to investigate,” The Doctor told her.

The Silurian's lip curled in distaste. She hissed, “That s-s-stinking ape had no business-s-s being on the surface of this planet at all! He deserved to die, as do all apes-s-s!”

“I think you are wrong, there,” said The Doctor, taking a risk to stand up to this warrior, “it is their planet now, their civilisation. You are the intruder, here, so let's talk it through. Where have you been, what are you doing here now?”

“Enough of this!” the Silurian retorted, “what have you done with the war hero? Where is Commander Valta?”

The Doctor hesitated for a moment, thinking. These soldiers were looking for another Silurianm then? But why would they have any better idea where this Silurian was any more than they did? A flash of inspiration occurred to The Doctor and she announced, “I can take you to him.”

“What are you doing, Doctor?” Lim implored, “Who is Commander Valta?”

The Doctor placed a reassuring hand on Lim's arm. “I think,” The Doctor told her, “I may have just figured out what the other shape in the ice might be.”

“Don't play games-s-s with us, puny ones-s-s,” the leader threatened. “You will return our glorious war leader to us, unharmed. If you are lying to us-s-s, be sure that we will kill you! ”

<   >

Esther and Stephen were idling in the lab, waiting for the others to return. Esther leant against the wall, studying her fingernails, while Stephen made various efforts to study the Sarcophagus further. Occasionally he used the Geiger Counter to take further readings, but didn't come to any further conclusions.

Esther smiled slightly as she saw the Doctor's face reappear at the window in the door leading to the lab. She waved, secretly pleased at their return, even it all it promised was a relief from the monotony.

Her smile faded as she realised that The Doctor, Lim and Knute were stepping into the room with their hands raised in the air. They were pushed into the room at gun-point.

Following them in with an air of authority was a tall, slender woman in metal armour. Her face was … Esther thought she must be seeing things. Her face was green and scaly, like she had the complexion of a Komodo Dragon.

They all stood and stared at each other for a moment, an impasse.

Esther pointed at the lizard-woman. “Is she any relation to her?” she asked, indicating Lim, “she's weird as well.”

“No,” said The Doctor, firmly, “well done on freeing the sarcophagus from the ice though.”

Esther shrugged, “we don't know what we're doing with it though, we couldn't get it open.”

The Silurian leader gasped as she set her eyes upon the precious casket. She moved quickly over to it and caressed it, feeling its warmth. “Ah,” she exclaimed, “the res-s-sting-place of our glorious hero. This! This is the leader that will surely lead us to victory over the FILTHY apes.”

The Doctor muttered under her breath, “perhaps this wasn't such a good idea.”

The Leader clicked her fingers and a warrior pushed The Doctor forward, over to the sarcophagus. The warrior removed a triangular device from a pouch around its waist and handed it to the Leader.

The Leader's forked tongue darted out and licked at her lips as she took hold of the device and placed it into an etched triangular shape on the top of the Sarcophagus. The three corners of the device extended and spun, as if retracting bolts from the deep recesses of the casket, whirring and clicking.

“Well that's just cheating,” Esther said, frustrated at the amount of time they had spent trying to open the Sarcophagus. She folded her arms, crossly, “how were we supposed to know it needed a key?”

As the lock finished opening, The Leader impatiently tossed the lid of the casket aside and gazed in wonder upon the contents.

Steam billowed out of the casket, revealing the figure of a large Silurian male, dressed finely and laid in state in the Sarcophagus, military decorations upon his chest.

Everybody in the room held a deep breath, humans, lizards and aliens alike.

The eyes of the figure in the casket fluttered open and he smiled to be greeted by the familiar face of one of his own kind.

“You have found me and awoken me,” the Silurian's deep voice intoned, as he stepped out of the casket, “I thank you greatly, my friend.”

The Silurian Leader knelt down before him, “welcome, Supreme Commander Valta. I am Commander Kylen and I am your humble servant. We have awoken you so that you may lead our people to their rightful place and reclaim our planet from the apes.”

Supreme Commander Valta listened to this, then looked around at the room full of Silurians and their captives. A shadow fell across his face, “no, no, no, NO!” He shouted at Commander Kylen, “do none of you remember what I was trying to do? I wished to broker peace with the new civilisation that was growing on this planet. You can't undo all my work now!”

Suddenly The Doctor approached Supreme Commander Valta. “Hello,” she said, cheerily, offering a hand, “it's so nice to meet someone on the same page as us!”

“Silence!” yelled Commander Kylen and struck the Doctor across the face, knocking her to the floor, “you do not speak to our Supreme Hero!”

“Peace, Kylen!” Valta ordered, stepping between her and The Doctor. Valta offered The Doctor a hand to stand up. It was curious that Lim and The Doctor seemed to understand their language.

“How long have you been asleep?” Lim asked.

“I have no frame of reference,” Valta replied, “When I was put into this chamber of healing, we were trying to find a way to live peacefully alongside the new ape … sorry … hu-man settlements which were springing up all over, growing out from their cave-dwellings. I'm afraid I have no way of measuring how long I was asleep, but I feel as though it has been for a long time.”

“Well it seems that there has been a huge misunderstanding,” The Doctor announced. “And we can all be happy and get along?” she added, hopefully. Commander Kylen snarled.

“You don't understand, Kylen,” Valta said, seeing that the other soldiers were grumbling and not at all convinced by his words of peace, “we have to find a way to live peacefully with this new species!”

Esther, Stephen and Knute, of course, didn't following any of this, given their inability to speak the language of the lizards. Lim saw their bewildered faces amid this cacophony of hissing and took pity on them by calling out a running translation of what was being said. Lim didn't actually translate anything, of course, but the universal language adapter she had bought at the spaceport (patent pending; works on all spiral arm worlds and Northern and Southern Phirralax) allowed her to simply relay what she was hearing and the humans heard her speech as normal.

It wasn't enough to mollify Knute, whose head was racing with all of these events, the strange creatures and now being held prisoner. Impulsively, he spun around, swinging his fist wide in order to floor his captor with a single devastating Haymaker.

With her quick reflexes, Lim spotted Knute becoming tense and building power for a punch. Lim thought the negotiations seem to be moving in a positive direction and didn't want to see Knute exacerbate the situation. Mindless of the rifle pointed at her own back, Lim shot out her hand, stretching her arm out over several feet to try to snatch Knute's balled fist from out of the air.

She wasn't quick enough, however, and Knute's knuckles crashed against the Silurian's metal mask. The mask fractured into three pieces and clattered to the floor as the soldier staggered backward.

The Silurian who was guarding Lim raised her rifle and made to shoot Knute before he could attack any further.

The Doctor shouted out, “Stop! Don't shoot, please! He doesn't understand your language!”

Commander Kylen grudgingly echoed The Doctor with some roughly barked orders and the Silurian lowered its rifle. The other Silurian wiped away the remaining broken pieces of mask from her face and smashed the butt of her rifle between Knute's shoulder blades. He staggered forward.

While this distraction was going on, Esther was attempting to put her plan into action; she would take the leader hostage. She crept around the side of the sarcophagus, trying to sneak up on Commander Kylen. She was no match for the lizard's fine senses, however, and Commander Kylen's head snapped around to stare at Esther as she approached. Esther realised her plan had only been considered up to this point and she stumbled, staggered into Kylen and sending both of them toppling over.

It was clear the situation was descending into chaos. Valta appealed for peace, saying, “Stop this, all of you, please!”

Esther, too, decided to change tack and appeal for calm. Her cries fell upon deaf ears as, even if the Silurian warriors were in the mood to be talked out of their rage by an ape, they could not understand a word she was saying.

Lim's arm whipped out again. The Silurian guard watching her reacted with a start, seeing Lim's fist waver overhead. The guard braced for a thump. Instead, Lim's hand flew over to the cooling system control panel. She flicked all the switches she had remembered seeing the others use earlier.

A jet of freezing cold air blasted against Commander Kylen's shoulder. Kylen gave a howl of pain and fear, so extreme that Lim instantly realised: these creatures cannot survive in the cold!

Kylen's scream was the catalyst that prompted all the soldiers back into action. Knute's second punch fell short as the soldier took a balletic step backward and responded by lashing out its long, venomous tongue. Knute was lucky that the tongue strike did no harm other than a minor scratch which caused Knute to slap his hand to his neck. Had the prongs of the Silurian's tongue penetrated deep below the skin he would have been poisoned dreadfully and – most likely – fatally. Even with the unfamiliar facial structure of the Silurian, Knute could recognise the look of rage upon the guard's face.

The other soldiers began firing at will. A beam of deadly energy headed directly for Lim, who warped her body out of shape. The beam passed directly through the point where her torso had been and blasted into the wall behind her.

Another shot fizzed toward Esther, who dived out of the way and scrambled for cover next to Stephen behind the Sarcophagus. Sparks showered down around her shoulders as the beam crashed into the metal shutters behind her. She exchanged a look of terror with Stephen.

Kylen staggered around in pain while The Doctor called once again for calm. Commander Valta joined in, saying, “Listen everybody, we don't have to fight! We can work together to live in peace.”

At this combined effort, Kylen seem subdued, almost ready to be reasoned with, while one of the soldiers – the one keeping their gun trained on Lim – heard the appeal of the legendary Silurian hero and saw the subdued look on the face of her own Commander and allowed her gun barrel to waver away from Lim.

The other two soldiers, however, had become fixated with their prey. More laser beams flashed around Stephen's and Esther's heads as the Silurian tried to find an angle from which to hit them. Knute, meanwhile, ducked and weaved while the unmasked soldier tried again and again to strike him with her tongue-venom.

Lim saw what was going on and how Kylen had stepped out of her carefully aimed beam. Her elongated hand was still hovering over the controls and in desperation she tried again. “If you lower your weapons,” she yelled out, “I will switch off the cold!”

The Doctor screamed, “No!” as Kylen and Valta were both blanketed in a potentially fatal blast of freezing air. The Doctor could only imagine how many other Silurians were lurking in or beneath the Museum and if they learned of the death of their leader and their hero at the hands of those they assumed to be humans, then this night could be the start of a large-scale and bloody confrontation.

Lim's eyes widened and she managed to reset the blowers to aim only at Kylen. She was pushed aside as the Silurian soldier thundered past her and headed over to the control panel.

The Doctor almost lurched over to the controls to try and desperately regain control of the situation. The Silurian, assuming that the Doctor intended to increase her masters' suffering, thumped The Doctor aside and set upon the controls herself. The Earth technology was completely unfamiliar to her but she just about managed to turn the intensity of the machine down.

The Silurian felt a hand placed upon her trembling arm. She looked up and met the deep, calm eyes of the Doctor. “Please,” The Doctor appealed, calmly and quietly. “let me help.”

The Silurian stepped aside, stunned, as The Doctor stepped quickly in and deactivated the machine. Kylen and Valta lay on the floor, desperately choking for warm breath.

<   >

Throughout all of the fighting, Stephen had simply been taking cover by the casket. His only part in the battle so far had been as cautious observer, merely taking enough of a risk to peer over the top.

Fighting was not really Stephen's oeuvre and he silently wondered at the events that had brought him into the middle of this pitched battle between man and … these incredible creatures.

The Doctor was still standing in the middle of the carnage, apparently avoiding being the target of any direct attack and shouting at the top of her voice for peace and sanity.

Stephen felt – he was not sure how misguidedly – that the resolution to this fracas could come from him and, perhaps, him alone.

He gripped the handle of his suitcase tightly. He closed his eyes and stood up, holding the suitcase out in front of him, hands shaking. He half expected, at any moment, to feel the burning pain of a laser bolt hitting him in the chest.

Eyes still held tightly shut, he yelled out, “Stop it everybody! I've got a bomb!”

Chapter Five – Humanity in the Balance

“I'm going to kill everybody if you don't STOP RIGHT NOW!” Stephen shouted. His voice unavoidably faltered and cracked as he spoke, making his threat sound more comedic than he had intended. He felt as though any moment everybody in the room was bound to see through his ruse, realising that the briefcase was simply a container for his Geiger counter. Still, it had convinced Esther enough to cause her to take a few steps back away from, just in case.

Lim duly translated the threat for the assembled Silurians. Kylen looked at the heavy object in Stephen's hand and barked an order for the other soldiers to halt.

Kylen dragged herself up onto her feet, refusing any offers of assistance. She stared at The Doctor, her murderous expression slightly diluted by surprise. “You were the one who deactivated the machine,” Kylen said in astonishment, “why would you behave like this toward your enemy?”

“Please,” Lim appealed, “we must find a way to work together in peace.”

“They started it,” Knute muttered and The Doctor shot him a warning look.

Valta stepped towards Kylen, “I am your Supreme Commander. If you will not listen to my arguments then perhaps you will respect my authority! Call your soldiers off.”

Kylen shrank, slightly. She gave a hand signal and the other Silurians lowered their weapons and made to step away. Stephen stepped back, trembling and lowered the briefcase. Knute managed to give the soldier a cheeky elbow in the stomach while standing up. He gave the solider an innocent smile.

“Kylen,” The Doctor began, “what exactly is it you want to achieve?”

Kylen hissed, “my people had a great and glorious-s-s empire on this-s-s planet, long before the apes sprawled out over it. We predicted the climactic changes which we knew we could not survive and we dug deep into the ground. When the ice age came, we became under-dwellers, until we developed the technology to sleep for centuries at a time. Every now and again we would wake to check on progress. To our horror we discovered that, while we slept, a new and greedy species was robbing this planet of its resources and poisoning the air and the seas. The apes dig deep into the ground for oil, damaging our technology and harming our people. Even now you see before you the Sarcophagus of one of our war heroes, stolen from the earth by you humans. I will not rest until I have seen every last ape eradicated from the surface of this planet!”

The Doctor sighed. “It's going to be a long day,” she said to herself. “Look,” she continued, beginning to lecture Kylen, “you need to calm down. You got your sarcophagus back. It's really not that bad. Wouldn't it be better just to leave these people alone? If their behaviour continues as you predict, maybe they won't last that long?” There was a mixed look in the Doctor's eyes – a recognition of the self-destructive nature of humanity, twinned with her hope that they could achieve so much more.

At this, Kylen shook her her, confused, “I don't even understand what you people are doing here. We had promises from the other bald ape that we could use this place as a base of operations!”

At this the companions all looked between each other, mouthing silent questions.

Lim broke away from translating for the others for a moment and said, “Who was that?”

Kylen shrugged, “the short, fat, red-faced ape.”

At that moment the secure door opened and Carter Alsop barrelled in, pushed into the room by yet another Silurian. “Bring him forward!” Kylen commanded.

Carter Alsop seemed terrified, but all of his concern drained away when he saw the state of the lab and the condition of the Sarcophagus. “What have you done!?” he shouted, furious, “You have opened the sarcophagus!”

“S-s-silence, foolish ape!” Commander Kylen hissed at him, “What has-s-s happened to your promise that we could use this museum as a base if we showed you ways to gain access to more and more artefacts-s-s?”

Alsop looked shame-faced under The Doctor's stare. “What exactly did you promise these Silurians?” she demanded.

“They … have a fascinating network of tunnels and digging machines,” Alsop explained, “While we spend most of our time simply trying to break through the surface, their people are able to extract Finds from underneath the ground and from much deeper than we could currently attempt. They have recovered all kinds of human artefacts that have simply fallen down into their tunnels over time! They have promised that I can exhibit them, here, if I can just provide them with some space at the museum for their – ummm – whatever it is they want to do.” The Doctor was still pinning him down with an intense stare. Alsop threw his hands in the air, “Well how important can their plans be in the face of the chance to see all that hidden history!?”

The Doctor turned to Kylen, as if to demonstrate a point for Carter Alsop's benefit. “And what is it that you want to do, Commander?” The Doctor asked the Silurian war leader.

“We require a base of operations on the surface to establish a beach-head,” she explained, rebelliously, “We will rally our troops and equipment and advance upon the stinking apes!”

The Doctor wheeled on her heels back to Alsop, “This doesn't seem like a very good plan, now, does it, Mr Curator?”

Alsop was defiant, “All I care about is that I could fill this museum with millions of previously unseen historical items. Whole eras of human development we never even knew existed!”

From out of the shadows, Esther stepped up to him. “But who would see them if we were all dead?” her quiet authority and conclusive argument stopped everybody in their tracks and a deadly silence fell upon the room.

The curator's face became ashen. He imagined a world in which he sat in the centre of the British Museum, surrounded by artefacts from a thousand lost ages – and not a single soul came to look upon them. As obsessive as Alsop was about hoarding artefacts, that obsession was tempered by his desire to show them off to the world at large.

“What have I done?” he whimpered, looking to The Doctor for an absolution that he did not find in her eyes. “Please,” he begged, “you must get these creatures out of here. I don't want them to drive people away from my beautiful museum!”

She offered him no comfort, “Pity you didn't think of that sooner.” He crumbled before her righteous fury.

“Where did they come from?” Stephen asked, after hearing Lim's translation.

“They will have underground entrances throughout the museum,” Valta explained.

Knute asked, “and why were they killing the guards?”

Kylen shot him a zealous look, “Tonight was the night for recovering our war hero from his tomb. We vowed to kill anyone who stood in our way!”

“Well now you have your Supreme Commander, what do you want from him?” The Doctor asked.

“He is to lead us to a glorious victory over the apes!” the look in Kylen's eyes was almost rapturous.

“And what do you think of that, Supreme Commander Valta?” The Doctor turned to the war hero.

Valta shook his head, sadly, “they don't understand. I was waiting for the day when we could find a way to live side by side with the humans and share the space.”

Kylen laughed at this “show me their capacity to s-s-share!” She pointed at Knute, “That big one with the broad shoulders keeps punching my people while the stretchy one with the long arm burns us-s-s with the cold. These apes don't seem to me as though they wish to share their planet!”

Lim protestest, “But that was just to get you to stop and lower your weapons! I am not a threatening person normally.”

Kylen smiled, wickedly, “And so what would we have to do to stop you from attacking our people? War is the only way!”

The argument went back and forth. It seemed as though neither side was prepared to give way or offer a compelling argument. As Valta watched, he saw the precious peace, that he once dreamed of, slipping further and further away, until he felt that this night could only end in all-out war between the humans and Silurians. And, whichever side won, they would be left to cobble together a new existence from fragments and survivors. Valta despaired for the future he could see developing.

<   >

“I can't deny that the apes – sorry, humans – are poisoning the planet,” The Doctor continued, trying to find a way to break the impasse. “I agree with you on that, but there must be some way you can work on it together?”

“That is exactly what I've been trying to say!” Valta cried out, “This is a huge planet and the humans occupy a comparatively small part of it. The last time I travelled this planet I came across an area where very few humans lived, covered in sand. Each time I visited it I was sure it was growing dryer and larger. I'm sure there is a part of this planet which must surely be suitable for us to live.”

“Wait a minute!” Stephen spoke up, “are you saying you'd happily live in a desert?”

Valta nodded, “the conditions would be excellent for us.”

“Well there are number of deserts on this planet. Any one of them would be ideal for you. The Sahara desert would be perfect,” Stephen explained.

Kylen visibly salivated as Lim relayed Stephen's description of the Sahara desert, laying out the miles and miles of untempered desert with the hot sun baking its surface.

“Very well,” Kylen said, the look on her face suggesting that this row was far from over, “we will recover our dead and return to the depths. We will find our own way to this desert of which you speak. But as far as I am concerned this planet is still ours!”

“You don't want to hug it out then?” Esther suggested, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

Possibly Lim's translation didn't adequately relate the sarcasm back to the Silurian commander. Either way, she fixed Esther with a hard stare. “One day, apes-s-s,” she hissed, “we will be back and you had better be ready for our return!”

At this, Kylen and the other Silurians ran to the edges of the room and climbed deftly up the walls. One of the Soldiers pulled free a ventilation grille and the others skittered through, followed by the soldier herself who dexterously returned the panel behind her. The humans stared in amazement.

The Doctor turned to Supreme Commander Valta, “what will you do?”

Valta considered, sagely, “I will go with them. Hopefully I can convince them to settle the surface in peace, rather than as an invasion.”

“Good luck,” The Doctor said, smiling.

“And thank you,” Valta told her, “I doubt I'd have been able to talk them down on my own without your assistance.”

“That's what I'm here for,” The Doctor assured him. Valta disappeared up the wall and slipped into the ventilation.

The gathered companions still looked a bit stunned.

“So,” Esther asked, “what exactly just happened?”

The Doctor turned to smile at her, “we saved the world from a blood-thirsty invasion.” She added, as if by explanation, “because it's Saturday.”

Esther was about to open her mouth to speak when the secure door burst open again. The security guard – the one whom Knute had punched into unconsciousness earlier – burst into the room.

“Right!” he shouted, “hold it there, all of you!”

Carter Alsop turned to face him. The security guard seemed surprised to see him here with these intruders and stopped in his tracks. “Mr Alsop?” he asked, confused.

“It's okay, Doug,” Alsop reassured him, “the … umm … situation is under control.”

“What has happened sir?” The guard's eyes rested on Knute, “that man! He broke in and punched me!”

Alsop tried to calm him down. “Really, Doug, it's all fine now. There has been a terrible incident here tonight. Perhaps you and I should go and fetch the police?”

Doug the Security Guard held the door open for Carter Alsop. When the curator had stepped through, Doug turned back to The Doctor and the companions, eye-balling Knute. “And you lot,” he said, jabbing a finger in their collective direction, “had better wait here. We're not done with you.” He backed through the door and there was a double-clicking noise, as though the door was being firmly sealed.

“What do we do now?” Esther asked.

The Doctor exhaled and puffed out her cheeks in a universally recognised sign of “time to be off!”

“I think it's probably time we got going,” The Doctor said, “I'd rather not talk to the police. They take such a long time to get the point and they really aren't going to believe anything we tell them.”

Esther frowned, “yeah but where are we going to go, exactly?”

The Doctor walked gracefully over to the loading shutters and began to pull them upward. “Well, you could all come with me. I can take you anywhere in the universe,” The Doctor said as she walked out into the access road and started strolling away from the museum building.

Esther stared after her. “I'm sorry,” she said calling after The Doctor, “what did you just say...?”

Epilogue: Did I Mention That It Also Travels In Time?

“What have you got there?” Lim asked Knute as they walked along the chilly pre-dawn streets of London.

Knute smiled and hefted his tatty and damp hold-all up into view, “I found my bag in the ice. It contains all my clothes, Football pads and even a ball! Maybe I can change out of these … interesting clothes.”

“Probably a good idea,” agreed Stephen, noting that Knute's tiny “sexy genie outfit” had taken considerable wear and tear in their adventure, unable to bear the strain of supporting the Norwegian powerful frame.

There was a troubled look on Esther's face. The Doctor studied her expression for a moment.

“Is something wrong?” The Doctor asked her.

“Did you mean what you said to the Silurian?” Esther asked, “about us not having that long left?”

The Doctor tried to muster up a kind smile for her. “Humanity's future is rarely fixed,” she explained, “beyond nearly all other races in the universe, your people have a capacity to achieve anything you put your minds to.” She gave a sad little shrug, “But, at the moment you have set your hearts upon gobbling up every available resource before anybody else can use it or create an alternative; that behaviour pattern can only lead to complete destruction.”

Esther took all this in and considered it. Then, the young goth's faced filled with frowns of confusion. “You talk like you aren't one of us.”

The Doctor laughed and stopped. She had led the group to an antiquated Police Box, sitting under the drooping branches of a tree. Esther almost bumped into it, surprised. How could she not have noticed it sooner?

The Doctor opened a door in the front and gestured for them to enter. “If you take a look inside, you might understand me better.”

“You said we could go anywhere in the universe,” Stephen asked, “what did you mean?”

“Just that,” said The Doctor.

“But I only have two weeks' holiday,” Lim protested, “how will I get back to Elastica Fantastica before my visa runs out?”

“If you like,” The Doctor explained, “Once you're tired of travelling I can bring you right back to this very spot at this very moment.”

She took in all of their confused faces. “Oh, right!” The Doctor exclaimed, suddenly remembering, “did I mention that it also travels in time?”

“I'd want to see the future!” Esther blurted out, before being able to stop herself. She felt herself being under The Doctor's gaze. “Y'know,” she murmured, “to see how things work out for … people.”

Stephen chipped in, “well if we can go anywhere, I'd like to see another planet!”

“Hmm,” The Doctor considered, “humanity's future but on a different planet? I think I can arrange that.”

Esther suddenly gave the police box a suspicious stare; she wore a bitter frown, as if she was suddenly cross for being duped in some way. “Anyway, I hardly think we're all going to fit inside,” she argued, “Is this your idea of a student prank: How many strangers can you fit in an antique Police Box?”

The tall, elegantly-attired, alien stranger flashed her a knowing smile and said, “I think you'll find it surprisingly roomy.”

<   >

Just as the sun was breaking over the London skyline, there was a soft white glow from beneath a tree as an alien lantern flickered into life.

The tree's branches swayed back and forth as though being gusted around by winds, yet the air was still and none of the other trees moved an inch.

The air was filled, momentarily, with a heaving, groaning sound; a sound made up from a mix of half-forgotten dreams and ice grinding against metal.

The old police box dimmed and faded into nothingness and soon the spot on the street where it had stood was empty.

<   >

Thank you for reading. I hope you have enjoyed this adventure, based on the actions of a roleplaying group playing Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space by Cubicle 7.

The Doctor, Esther, Lim, Stephen and Knute will return in War and Peace(Haven).

Christopher J Jarvis, 15th October 2012