continuum_of_drs (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
continuum_of_drs) wrote2007-11-05 05:54 pm
continuum_of_drs) wrote2007-11-05 05:54 pm
Gallifrey Plot
They had gone by TARDIS--a different one than the Doctor's; Lady President Romana, Lord Castellan Andred, the Doctor, and all who had come with him; waiting quietly in a silent, bare console room.
The journey had been short. And when the TARDIS landed, no-one moved to activate the scanner. Instead, the Castellan solemnly touched the door release. The doors swung open with a quiet hum, revealing what lay outside.
There wasn't much left.
Beyond the remains of a city lay a desert. The remains themselves were not dead, but dying, the sand and wind unsuccessful yet in sweeping away the scents of fire, metal, blood, and viscera; the concentrated ozone smell of energy weapon discharge; the odor of unwashed beings, of decay and sepsis. Arterial red smells, black and dark bile green, rotted yellow and thick brown smells, under the grey-beige of sand and smoke and the crackling, flame-hot blue. The scents mingled and clung to the back of the nose, put a foul taste in the mouth, lanced through the sinuses and into the brain.
The wind howled. It skirled around the objects and the TARDIS; high, thin wailing over bass rumbling. An angry wind. An angry planet. No sun shone. Nothing was visible through the roiling clouds to tell one if it was night or day save for flashes of lightning within its depths. Below, the city's remains had scarcely any light to them, save for some sort of sickly, ambient orange glow that came from no discernible source.
"This is what is left of Dronid. The latest of the planets to fall," Andred stated softly, as though loathe to be heard.
There was movement, just there, as something or, rather, someone, slipped out of cover; a dark humanoid shape walking in a hunched and wary position, carrying a weapon. A few others followed it and they made a chain of four beings in total, sneaking their way toward a structure.
They never made it.
One was shot down by a white-blue beam of energy. His skeleton--humanoid--was visible for a brief moment as he writhed, spine arching, a strangled scream escaping him, before he collapsed. The others whirled and opened fire, staccato bursts of white and crackling noise and there was an explosion, but they, too, fell to the same weapons.
The noise of the wind filled the silence that they left with their deaths. And into view slid a cadre of completely alien metal things. Completely alien, yet instantly recognisable. Daleks. Hovering unstoppably over the rough landscape, barely visible save for the silhouette of their forms against the pervasive orange glow and the lights on their shells, they passed the TARDIS, not noticing it, and continued.
"Dronid is only two systems away from Gallifrey," the Doctor said in an equally hushed voice, a mix of emotions apparent on his face. And under their protection, is what he didn't need to add.
"The planetary defence was taken apart from the inside," Andred replied, "and our aid never reached them. The temporal interference misdirected them at every point. Dronid fell only recently in relative time and most of the population were taken as slaves." Outside, more beings were shot down by the patrolling Daleks. "Those who resist... you can see the fate they meet."
"What of Karn?" the Doctor asked, turning away from the sight to look at the other Time Lords.
"Still holding," Romana answered. "Though not even the Matrix can predict for how much longer."
"You see the urgency of the situation now?" Andred asked.
"I do! I've come too late!" The Doctor hit the door control, cutting off the view. "We're all too late."
He looked at the others, apology evident on his features.
The journey had been short. And when the TARDIS landed, no-one moved to activate the scanner. Instead, the Castellan solemnly touched the door release. The doors swung open with a quiet hum, revealing what lay outside.
There wasn't much left.
Beyond the remains of a city lay a desert. The remains themselves were not dead, but dying, the sand and wind unsuccessful yet in sweeping away the scents of fire, metal, blood, and viscera; the concentrated ozone smell of energy weapon discharge; the odor of unwashed beings, of decay and sepsis. Arterial red smells, black and dark bile green, rotted yellow and thick brown smells, under the grey-beige of sand and smoke and the crackling, flame-hot blue. The scents mingled and clung to the back of the nose, put a foul taste in the mouth, lanced through the sinuses and into the brain.
The wind howled. It skirled around the objects and the TARDIS; high, thin wailing over bass rumbling. An angry wind. An angry planet. No sun shone. Nothing was visible through the roiling clouds to tell one if it was night or day save for flashes of lightning within its depths. Below, the city's remains had scarcely any light to them, save for some sort of sickly, ambient orange glow that came from no discernible source.
"This is what is left of Dronid. The latest of the planets to fall," Andred stated softly, as though loathe to be heard.
There was movement, just there, as something or, rather, someone, slipped out of cover; a dark humanoid shape walking in a hunched and wary position, carrying a weapon. A few others followed it and they made a chain of four beings in total, sneaking their way toward a structure.
They never made it.
One was shot down by a white-blue beam of energy. His skeleton--humanoid--was visible for a brief moment as he writhed, spine arching, a strangled scream escaping him, before he collapsed. The others whirled and opened fire, staccato bursts of white and crackling noise and there was an explosion, but they, too, fell to the same weapons.
The noise of the wind filled the silence that they left with their deaths. And into view slid a cadre of completely alien metal things. Completely alien, yet instantly recognisable. Daleks. Hovering unstoppably over the rough landscape, barely visible save for the silhouette of their forms against the pervasive orange glow and the lights on their shells, they passed the TARDIS, not noticing it, and continued.
"Dronid is only two systems away from Gallifrey," the Doctor said in an equally hushed voice, a mix of emotions apparent on his face. And under their protection, is what he didn't need to add.
"The planetary defence was taken apart from the inside," Andred replied, "and our aid never reached them. The temporal interference misdirected them at every point. Dronid fell only recently in relative time and most of the population were taken as slaves." Outside, more beings were shot down by the patrolling Daleks. "Those who resist... you can see the fate they meet."
"What of Karn?" the Doctor asked, turning away from the sight to look at the other Time Lords.
"Still holding," Romana answered. "Though not even the Matrix can predict for how much longer."
"You see the urgency of the situation now?" Andred asked.
"I do! I've come too late!" The Doctor hit the door control, cutting off the view. "We're all too late."
He looked at the others, apology evident on his features.
no subject
Daleks. So that's what they're really like, not harmless like the one she met in the Sanctuary, which she was convinced was remote-controlled by someone behind a couch, playing a joke.
"That's...my God...but..." Her voice shakes. "There's no way at all to go back in time and warn them?"