An Unknown Soldier

fracture_childFri 18/01/08 19:37

This was a short story I entered in a Big Finish competition a few years back. It didn't win, but I still quite like it.

It features the 8th Doctor and Charley and I imagined happening sometime after Embrace The Darkness, as part of the anti-time arc.

An Unknown Soldier
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The cold is beautiful. It was all that we ever wanted.Others did not understand this. They wanted warmth, to exist in a world in which everything was illuminated by the light of a fat, healthy sun. Some of them were so enraptured by heat that they built temples to it and wrote songs in its praise.
The people of the planet we were to have taken were like that. They called themselves ‘colonists' which meant that they had travelled billions of miles from their home only to re-create it elsewhere. Their ship - a heavy, gaudy, graceless thing - had carried seeds and now their crops spread across whole continents. They had christened both their colony and their world New Harvest.
We would have taught them about the cold.
We would have buried their temples beneath cathedrals of ice. We would have spread the rawness of night across the land like a beautiful shroud. If the colonists survived, they would have come to understand as we did. They would never have sought the sun again.
But it was not to be.
The man's face is surprisingly gentle. It is hard for me to read much expression in the soft, podgy features of aliens, but he looks happy. Not the triumphant joy of a victor in battle, as I might have expected, but a simple pleasure in the moment.
This puzzles me. My memories are still confused. I remember who I am and where I am from and yet…I do not. This reality seems to jar with my own mind. As though my consciousness were the only illusion here and if it were to vanish everything would be back in its proper place.
The man smiles. It is a good smile, I think, full of safety. Like the protection of the cold.
‘Don't be afraid' he says, as though my not being afraid were the most important thing in his life.
He has long hair, I notice. Earthen brown, curling down to his shoulders. His eyes are the pleasing blue of a winter morning. By the standards of the colonists he would have been tall though compared to one of us he is virtually a dwarf. Why then do I feel that I am looking up to him?
‘You're probably a bit disorientated, yes?' he asks.
I find myself replying in high, fluting tones that I have never heard before even if logically they must be mine.
‘Where am I?'
The man reaches into the long, green coat he is wearing and produces a small, metal cylinder. He waves it in my direction and either he or the device makes a clicking noise.
‘The connection to the Eye seems to be stable. That's good. Oh sorry…you're on board my TARDIS'
What a strange word. TARDIS. More than just a name, it is an answer and a question at the same time. I repeat it to myself quietly.
The man hears me.
‘That's right. TARDIS. I'm the Doctor'
He looks at me, waiting for some reaction. I'm not sure what he's expecting me to say so I decide that it is better to stay silent. The Doctor does not seem perturbed by this. He returns the cylinder to his coat.
‘Look around' he suggests.
The room is long and narrow. There is no sign of a ceiling. Rows of wooden shelves line each wall, receding far away into the distance. They are full of books - some of them enormous, leather-bound volumes, others little more than a few pages glued together. At intervals there are low, round tables, each one laden with burning candles. The small flames make me suddenly afraid. Have I been brought here to be punished? Because this the man that fought against us. Defeated us. Or so I seem to think.
‘What is this?' I ask.
The Doctor answers my question with one of his own.
‘What do you remember?'
The reply comes without me having even to think about it.
‘The cold'
‘What else?'
‘There is nothing else' I say, knowing that he knows it is a lie.
The Doctor smiles and shakes his head.
‘There is. Try'
For some reason, I obey without question. I force myself to reach further into my mind. It hurts. There are barriers that I myself seem to have created. I hear the Doctor's voice offering encouragement. The thought comes to me that he must be very powerful for me to endure this on his say so.
And then the memories come.

There were thousands of us. In life, we preferred solitude. Centuries might pass before we spoke to another of our own kind. The cold was company enough. But while we waited to be born, we were happy to be clustered together. There was no order to where our eggs where placed. They covered every available space of our Incubator Ship. After hatching, such proximity would have been all but unbearable.
My egg hung from the ceiling of the Guidance Unit vault. I was dimly aware that I was upside down, but I was too fascinated by the growth of my body to care. Each cycle my limbs lengthened and my exoskeleton hardened. The information coded into my sustenance sac became clearer and more detailed.
We were waiting. A fresh world had been found and we were to lay claim to it. Already the Bridgehead Probe had been launched. The warriors on board would begin the subjugation of the planet . Only when their task was done would the Incubator Ship bring us to life and carry us into the battle.
I knew that on arrival we would find a world fast cooling, the inhabitants forced to adapt or die. We would crush whatever resistance remained and begin the remaking of the planet. In a matter of months it would be all but unrecognisable. It would be beautiful.
Sometimes I felt the leaden thoughts of the Guidance Unit, leaking into the sustenance sac. Its existence was an unsatisfying one, programmed to complete only one journey and then die. For the time being, all it was required to do was keep the ship in hiding a safe distance from New Harvest. There was no crew to maintain. Occasionally it received instructions from the similar system on the Bridgehead Probe. There was nothing in its unimaginative mind to help it deal with the unexpected. If it heard anything from its counterpart it did not understand, it would most likely simply ignore it.
For a while, everything was as intended. Even through the thick shell of my egg, I could hear the gradually rising hum of the drives as they prepared for the final approach. My body was nearly complete now. Hatching was close.
The cold was waiting for me. When I was born, it would hold me in its close embrace and never let me go. The first touch of it would strip the infantile skin from my body, leaving it raw and indomitable. In that moment I would become everything that I was intended to be.
So how did I become something different?
How?

‘Oh my goodness!'
It is a new voice. The pitch and tone are unlike the Doctor's, with an entirely different pattern of emphasis.
Part of the wall has swung open and standing in the gap is a female. She has blonde hair and large eyes. He full lips are forming a perfect ‘O' of astonishment that, under other circumstances, I would have found quite amusing. Behind her I can see another stone walled corridor, hung with paintings.
‘Charley, I told you to stay in the console room' the Doctor says angrily.
‘And now I can see why!'
‘This is a very delicate business Charley. It'll be much better if you just leave me to it'
The girl - Charley - sounds less scared now. If anything, she seems angry.
‘I'm not leaving you alone

fracture_childFri 18/01/08 19:40

with one of those horrible things! God knows what it might do to you!'
The Doctor turns to me with a forced smile.
‘You'll have to excuse her...she's had a difficult day and to be honest I don't think Edwardian manners are all they were cracked up to be'
I'm not listening to him. I'm thinking about what the girl said. One of those horrible things. Am I horrible?
I look down at myself. At the gleaming white bones of my exoskeleton. At the scarlet flesh. At long arms ending in delicate, elegant fingers that can kill with a single blow. No, I am not horrible. I am magnificent!
The Doctor and Charley are still talking.
‘I told you we would have a visitor' he is saying.
‘I know you did. But I was expecting it to be one of those poor colonists. After all they went through, I hoped one of them was going to get a second chance'
‘We saved most of them, Charley. New Harvest will be a great success now. I'm sure it will. Well, they will have the odd bit of bother with their neighbours in about fifty years time, but other than that they they'll be fine. If I remember my history right…'
‘Which you invariably do!' completes Charley and they both laugh.
I wonder how they can go from argument to laughter so quickly.
‘We did the best we could' says the Doctor, serious again.
‘I know'
‘And now I have to tie up the last loose end'
The girl looks in my direction with a shudder that is so small I barley notice it.
‘Our guest' she mutters.
What are they planning for me? Execution? Imprisonment? Will they sacrifice me to the heat? No, I will not allow it. They will not decide my fate. A warrior creates his own future.
I am stronger then either the Doctor or Charley. I will kill one and force the other to release me from this inexplicable place. On a whim, I decide that it is the Doctor's friend who will die.
She is talking again.
‘So where are you going to take him?'
‘The Eye of Harmony'
‘On Gallifrey?'
‘No, no, the one on board the TARDIS'
‘Oh. You mean that huge, great monolith you like to be so mysterious about. Why do they have the same name anyway?'
‘They're the same thing'
I lunge forward, hands reaching out to crush the girls pulpy frame. The movement is so fast that neither of them has time to react.
My fingers close around Charley's throat and I can see the animal terror in her huge eyes, a horrified disbelief that her life is about to end.
My hands vanish.
There is no pain. They are simply gone, leaving my arms still outstretched but now ending in useless stumps.
I stagger away from Charley, looking round desperately
‘I wouldn't do that again' the Doctor says to me. ‘It's only the TARDIS that's holding you in that shape and she doesn't take kindly to anyone threatening me or my friends'
The girl is taking deep, shuddering breaths.
‘I wish she hadn't left it so late' she mutters. ‘I'm sure she does it on purpose'
‘Now, now Charley. He couldn't have hurt you anyway. The body is just an illusion'
What does he mean? Am I not real? Have they created me for sport?
I force myself to speak. I can hear the terror in my voice and probably they can too. Not that it matters now
‘What are you going to do to me?'
The last sound I can remember is the Guidance Unit screaming. Something had gone wrong, something so serious even its simple mind could not ignore it. The ship was burning. I could feel the lick of the flames against the outside of my egg. My nerve endings were just developed enough to know pain. The shell would soon crack but I knew there would be no hatching. The cold was gone and there was only agony to take its place.
I thought I heard a voice, shouting over the babble of the Guidance Unit.
‘I'm sorry, but it was the only way!'
The fire was forcing its way in to my egg now. My exoskeleton blackened as my flesh began to boil.
‘Charley, it's time we were out of here!'
I tried to cry out, but I had no voice. My egg burst open and the world went from black to red as I fell. Even as the heat reached out for me, I could see another figure in motion. A man with long hair, running into a blue box. And then there was nothing.

Like so much of the rest of the TARDIS, the chamber is made of stone. There are high wooden doors and behind us, a flight of steps. We are standing in front of the huge monolith they spoke of. The Doctor is beside me,
‘Go on' he says. ‘You'll be quite safe'
‘I still don‘t understand' I say quietly.
‘I thought I'd explained'
Charley has joined us. She is still nervous of me, but forces a smile.
‘You probably did Doctor, but that normally confuses people' she says.
The Doctor gives her a sideways look before continuing.
‘You're an echo. The ghost of a possibility. A trace of a life that would have happened if I hadn't intervened. One of the eggs on the Incubator Ship. If you'd been born, you would have been a warrior. It's very rare that this sort of thing happens. Normally Time irons everything out. But the odd wrinkle is bound to get through'
‘Isn‘t that dangerous?' asks Charley
‘No, not really. Usually the echoes are drawn to the TARDIS that has caused them not to exist. The…echo follows the TARDIS through the vortex without understanding why. Like all echoes they finally fade away. Alone'
I understand now what has happened. What all this means. The Doctor must have such mercy. He fought and defeated my kind. But he still saved me.
‘Thank you' I manage to say.
His cheeks suddenly turn slightly red.
‘You'll be able to live in the Eye. In fact, you're one of the few creatures that could survive in there'
A new life, I think. Unlike any I could have imagined had I lived.
‘Go on' he says. ‘It's ready now'
I clamber up on to the edge. The Eye of Harmony, the heart of this strange world, is fully open . I gaze into the raging storm of energies Somewhere within I can see a tiny blue light. It seems to welcome me.
The Doctor is talking to Charley, his gentle voice that is so strong.
‘I do seem to be learning a lot about time in this life'
‘Maybe you should take it up professionally!'
‘Oh very funny'
I let myself fall. The blue light is still calling me to it, the tiny part of the TARDIS that the Doctor said would be mine forever.
It is not the cold but it is enough.