* * *
The skirmish was over. The old man looked about at the desolation around him, hell it had barely begun before it was over and if the rumours that everyone had been hearing were true the whole war wasn’t far behind.
The Daleks were heading for Arcadia that was the whisper heard in every dugout, on every front line. It explained the lack of soldiers here, trying to defend this small outpost. Everyone who was able was falling back to that great city and those who couldn’t; well they could only hunker down and hope the Daleks would miss them on the way through. Not that it would matter if they were missed the first time round. If Arcadia, the old man shook his head, no when Arcadia fell it would be the beginning of the end of the Time Lords. There would be nowhere left to hide and the Daleks would be able to wipe the last of them out at their leisure.
It was only a matter of time. They had tried everything against the Daleks, unleashed incredible horrors in an attempt to stop them. The old Warrior shuddered at the things he had witnessed. He still had nightmares about the Skaro Degradations, the Could’ve Been King, the Horde of Travesties. But the one that haunted him the most was one that very few people even remembered. It was the one that deep down he felt he should have prevented, if only Rassilon and the Council had listened.
The Rani had found it in a parallel universe while she was looking for corridors to attack the Daleks from behind their lines, not to mention possible escape routes for the Time Lord elite. She had opened up a corridor to a lifeless, desolated universe, lifeless except for one bloated creature drifting in space. The Rani surmised that the creature had devoured everything else in the universe. So, of course, she had brought it to the attention of the High Council as a possible weapon.
Turned out it wasn’t just one creature but a vast colony. Think driver ants or piranha fish, whose one purpose in life was to devour everything in its path. The High Council was intrigued at the possibilities, the old Warrior was horrified. He had tried reasoning with the ruling council. ‘Look at what it had done to its own universe,’ he had said. ‘If you let it loose here, nothing can stop it!’
But they had disagreed; all they could see was an end to the war. Unleash this colony on the Daleks, they reasoned, and then just sit back and watch the results. At great risk a small section of the creature was captured and returned to this universe. A testing ground was chosen, a small moon that the Daleks had subjugated as a staging point for the war. Its native inhabitants had been deemed collaborators to the Dalek cause, despite the fact they had never chosen to side with the Daleks, and therefore were deemed by the Time Lords to be expendable.
There was a civilisation in the local system that had felt threatened by the presence of the Daleks and had sent forces to the moon to liberate the locals and hopefully drive the Daleks back. To ensure that the Daleks wouldn’t learn of the attack beforehand the War Council decided not to notify these fighters of what was about to happen and give them a chance to withdraw. Instead the War Council had just unleashed the creature on the unsuspecting moon and immediately it began devouring everything in its path.
Nothing was spared, not Daleks, not the natives, not the Time Lords’ allies, not even the moon itself. The Warrior still remembered the screams and pleas for help that the War Council picked up from the communication channels. He had rushed to his TARDIS to try and give assistance but he was too late. By the time he had arrived everything was dead. The creature had liquefied all organic life and was slowly absorbing the remains. Nothing had survived. The High Council had deemed the experiment a success and was in the middle of planning how to move the creature to the centre of the Dalek fleet when they were informed that the moon had been completely destroyed. The creature had dissolved the entire moon and was now moving towards the next planet in the system. This planet contained billions of sentient beings and they were defenceless in the face of what was coming. A star system of ten planets was under attack from a creature outside of this universe and the Time Lords had let it in.
In the end the Time Lords resorted to imploding the system’s sun and creating a small black hole. It was the only way to ensure that the entirety of the creature was sucked out of this universe before it could destroy anything else. The Mindless Maw they called it, mindless because of its incessant appetite. No one ever knew if the creature itself was aware or not and in the end no one really cared. The High Council was only disappointed that they had thought too small in their experiment. If they had struck the Daleks on a larger scale they might have decimated their fleet before having to purge the Maw from this universe. The Warrior thought it was a tragedy that the billions of lives that had been lost were overlooked in the so called greater good of the war.
There was nothing like imminent defeat to bring out the maudlin thoughts and regrets, the Warrior decided. Sighing at the memories the old man looked around for a place to rest. He stood in the middle of a village, all the houses were destroyed, just piles of rubble now with their inhabitants dead or dying round them. The few survivors moved from body to body tending the wounded or giving peace to the dying. There were even a few Dalek remains scattered about the place; the Warrior knew he had personally taken out two of them in the brief skirmish.
Bending over he brushed some dust off a pile of rocks and with a groan sat down to rest. Some poor soul wandered past the Warrior without giving him a second glance. From the looks of him he had probably lived here before the war and had either been idealistic enough to enlist or, more likely, been forcefully volunteered when things started to really go bad. Either way this man was looting the nearby bodies for ammunition and armour, anything that might give him even the smallest chance of survival.
The Warrior wriggled the toes in his left boot, where the sole was beginning to wear a bit thin and contemplated his surroundings. Maybe he should look for some new footwear. It wasn’t exactly honourable to loot the dead but the Warrior had forsaken honour a long time ago. Honour was for another name, another face, one that would not have stooped to the things he had done in this war. The Warrior scratched his scruffy beard and snorted. His boots weren’t the only thing wearing a bit thin, in fact it was amazing that he still retained this body. There had been many a time he would talk to a fellow soldier one day only to have a complete stranger meet him the next to continue the conversation. The younger Time Lords looked upon him as some sort of talisman; he had been out in the universe and seen many things. He had fought the Daleks before the war and had survived and in all this time the Warrior still retained the body he had arrived in. They called him lucky, but he could never decide if that luck was of the good or bad variety.
The Warrior pulled a flask from out of his leather jacket and unscrewed the lid. He pulled a face at the first mouthful, it was warm and metallic and bitter but it was water nonetheless and at least he was alive to appreciate it. He screwed the lid back on and tucked the flask away in his pocket. His right hand unconsciously drifted up to touch the old bandolier that hung diagonally across his body. His fingers brushed up against his sonic screwdriver that was tucked in one of the leather loops. Here was the only weapon the Warrior truly needed. Sure he would walk onto a battlefield and pick up a gun from a fallen soldier and put it to good use, much like he had done today. But after the fight he would drop that gun at his feet and walk away. It seemed the old habits died hard and he never carried a conventional weapon if he didn’t have to.
At the beginning of the war the call had gone out to all the Time Lord renegades, like himself. Come home, it said, all is forgiven, you are needed. The Warrior had gone by another name back then and had chosen to ignore the call. He had felt he would serve better helping the unfortunates on the fringes of the war. Help them however he could to survive and if he was too late for that maybe avenge them a little in whatever way possible. And perhaps he would have stayed like that if it wasn’t for a woman called Cass. The Warrior found himself smiling sadly as he closed his eyes.
Her death had been his call to arms. He could still remember that day. The look in her eyes as the trust and hope faded to hate and fear as she discovered he was a Time Lord. That she was willing to sacrifice her own life to ensure the end of his was unbelievable to his former self. She compared him to a Dalek, he who had saved billions over the centuries. That she couldn’t, no wouldn’t, believe he was one of the good ones bewildered the Doc –.
The Warrior shook his head and touched the bandolier again. He had taken this from her body. Cass, so brave, so full of life, she would have made such a wonderful friend and companion but now she was the ghost on his shoulder reminding him why he was here.
When he returned to Gallifrey he had mouthed the words the High Council wanted to hear. ‘I have come to my senses; I have come to defend my home. I have finally answered your call.’ But the real reason was resting on his shoulder, an old leather bandolier from a dead child who only wanted to see the universe in all its glory. ‘I have come home,’ he had thought to himself, ‘to save the universe from you. To stop this war before it destroys everything I have grown to love.’
* * *
A small clatter of falling rocks made the Warrior’s eyes snap open. He looked about, half expecting to see a Dalek gliding towards him. But there was no one there, even the looter had moved on.
‘Now I know you’re getting old,’ he told himself. ‘Jumping at shadows and hearing things.’
The sound of tumbling rocks started up again. ‘He-hello?’ A voice hesitantly called out.
The Warrior stood up, his hand hovering near his sonic screwdriver. The voice seemed to be coming from behind him, in what was left of a farmhouse. The Warrior dropped his hand to his side and clenched his fists. He should leave it alone; this wasn’t his form of fighting anymore. Battlefields were where he made his stands now, not the aftermath. Not cleaning up the mess that the likes of him created.
‘Please,’ the voice seemed to sense his presence and grew in strength. ‘Can anyone hear me?’
Sighing the Warrior shook his head. This is what happened when you let your mind wander back to more idealistic times. It made you do stupid, idealistic things. He glanced towards the horizon, towards Arcadia, then turned and entered the remains of the building. ‘Where are you?’ he called into the gloom.
More rocks tumbling to his left led the Warrior into a small room near the front of the building. A narrow shaft of light drifted in between the broken shutters to reveal a half hidden form under a pile of rocks.
‘Hang on,’ the Warrior instructed, as he began pulling what looked like the remains of a wall off the injured person.
‘Please,’ the man began to speak. ‘I need help, are you a healer?’
The Warrior paused in the middle of lifting a rock away from the man; a grimace washed over his face at the man’s words. ‘No, I’m not a doctor.’
‘I can’t, I can’t feel my legs.’ The man said.
The Warrior was not surprised as he looked down at the ever growing pool of blood that was slowly seeping towards his boots. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked the man, trying to distract him.
‘A – Arden.’
The Warrior looked down at the young man, not a Time Lord then, he concluded, not with such a simple name like that. Which meant Arden’s injuries were fatal. It looked like the wall had collapsed on him, crushing the lower half of his body. Kneeling down the Warrior looked closely at where the blood was coming from. There, looked like a jagged piece of rock had pierced his side. ‘Just relax, Arden, help is on its way.’ The Warrior lied.
‘Oh,’ Arden panted a little in his effort to speak, ‘good.’
The Warrior settled himself down by Arden’s side. ‘Nice day.’ He said, conversationally.
Arden frowned. ‘What?’
Shaking his head at his own foolishness the Warrior pulled out his flask.
Arden caught sight of his movements and licked dry, parched lips. ‘Please,’ he asked.
The Warrior paused with the flask halfway to his mouth and looked at Arden. This young man was dying, even if he didn’t know it yet. It would only be insanity to waste good water on the dead. Must be a day for foolishness, then, the Warrior decided. He pulled his scarf from around his neck and carefully poured some water onto one end. The Warrior leant forward and pressed the damp wool against Arden’s lips.
Arden sucked on the cloth. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
The Warrior grunted in reply then poured some more precious drops onto the scarf. He then began wiping dust and grime off Arden’s face. Arden sighed in relief. After finishing his task the Warrior took a drink and put the flask away.
The two sat in silence for a few minutes then Arden spoke up. ‘Are they here yet?’ His voice seemed a little stronger for the water.
The Warrior frowned. ‘Who?’
‘You said help was coming,’ Arden replied. ‘Are they here yet?’
The Warrior sighed. He’d planted the idea in the boy’s head. Standing up the Warrior walked over to the window and looked out through the broken slats. ‘No,’ he said, ‘Not yet.’ He tied the scarf back around his neck, making sure to keep the damp part away from his waistcoat.
‘Oh,’ Arden closed his eyes. They snapped open again almost immediately. ‘My family!’ he tried to sit up.
The Warrior rushed over to the man’s side and knelt down next to him, pressing a hand on Arden’s chest to stop him from doing anymore damage. ‘Don’t move.’
Arden reached out and grabbed at the Warrior’s arm. ‘My family, they’re out there somewhere.’
The Warrior turned to look towards the front of the house. If Arden’s family were outside then they were surely dead.
‘Can you see them?’ Arden asked. ‘Sir, can you see them?’
‘I’m no sir.’ The Warrior said. ‘Just an old soldier.’
‘Please, I need to know,’ Arden begged. ‘Are they okay?’
The Warrior looked from Arden to the door and back again. ‘If you promise not to move.’
Arden nodded, tears in his eyes.
The Warrior stood up and walked out of the room. He left the building and stood under the midday heat of the larger of Gallifrey’s two suns. There was no one living out here, even the few survivors had left for Arcadia.
‘Can you see them?’ Arden called from inside the building. ‘My wife and two little girls.’
The Warrior looked at the bodies scattered across the village. He had his choice of women and little children. ‘Yes,’ he finally called back. ‘They’re here.’
‘Are they safe?’
No more harm would come to any of these people now. ‘The Daleks are gone,’ he told Arden. ‘They are in no more danger.’
‘Can I see them?’
The Warrior was once a man of science; he had no time for gods or the afterlife. Dead was dead, but he found he didn’t have the courage to disillusion Arden in his last day of life. Why cause any more suffering than this poor man had already received? He walked back inside the building and knelt down next to Arden. ‘They are waiting for you,’ he said. ‘You’ll see them soon enough.’
‘Why won’t they come inside?’ Arden asked.
A muscle in the Warrior’s jaw jumped as he clenched his teeth. That’s the problem with lies, he decided, they just kept growing. ‘We didn’t want to scare the children, so they are waiting outside for help to arrive.’
Arden nodded. ‘But won’t they be cold?’
The Warrior frowned. ‘Cold?’
‘It is getting so dark and cold,’ Arden explained. ‘It must be night.’
The Warrior looked back at the shaft of intense sunlight that was slowing working its way across the far wall. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. He shrugged off his old leather coat and draped it gently over Arden.
The young man sighed as the weight of the coat settled over him. His eyes drifted shut. ‘Strange.’
The Warrior sat down next to the dying man. ‘What is?’
‘Your clothes.’
The Warrior picked up a piece of rock and began turning it in his callused hands. ‘I’ve worn worse.’
Arden’s hands fluttered across the leather coat. ‘Is this what everyone wears in Arcadia?’ He asked, his voice barely a whisper now.
‘I doubt it.’ The Warrior looked over again towards the shaft of sunlight and watched the dust notes glitter and float in the still, hot air. ‘But I’m sure you’ll see for yourself when –’ he looked back at Arden, but the man wasn’t listening. In that quiet moment between breathes he had died.
The Warrior sighed deeply and briefly closed his eyes. One more, yet one more name to add to the ever growing list of those he had failed to save. The weight of all his years hung heavy on his shoulders. When would it end? When would Cass forgive him? When would he finally forgive himself?
Standing abruptly the Warrior threw the rock through the broken window, widening the small shaft of sunlight so it now fell across Arden’s feet. ‘No more!’
Reaching down he picked up his coat and put it back on. ‘Time to end this foolishness,’ he addressed Arden’s body as he straightened the collar and tugged at the lapels, settling the coat across his shoulders. ‘I’m sorry I was too late to save you and your family, Arden, I will not fail the next ones.’
* * *
The walk back to his TARDIS was long but it gave the Warrior enough time to work out his plan. Both the War and High Councils had stopped listening to him long ago but during the short window when they did the Warrior had learned a thing or two that now might come in handy.
Such as the location of the Omega Arsenal, buried deep in the Time Vaults. He had been present when they had first discussed using the weapons inside. Weapons so strange and horrifying that Presidents past had decreed them heresy and never to see the light of day.
Of course they had used those weapons, used them all. Or so it was believed. The Warrior knew better, he was probably only one of about five people who did. There was still one weapon left, one so dangerous and unpredictable that even Rassilon, himself, had recoiled at its use. But the Warrior knew of its existence and he knew exactly where to find it. And more importantly he was mad enough and desperate enough to use it to save them all. So what if this weapon, called the Moment, was supposed to be sentient, that it was rumoured to judge its users and find them wanting. It’s not like he hadn’t been judging himself all these years.
‘It can get in line.’ He muttered as he came upon the TARDIS sitting in the middle of the wasteland.
Walking up to his most faithful of companions the Warrior rested his grey head against his beloved blue box. ‘Two more trips,’ he told the TARDIS, placing his hand against the warm wooden exterior. ‘There and back again, eh? And then we’ll be done. Time enough to finally rest.’
He reached a hand into his pocket and pulled out a key. He looked at it in the palm of his hand. Once he started this last mission there was no going back. A long time ago when he was a different, better man he had asked himself did he have to right to change the course of history. To do something so immense that it would ripple across space and time. He had hesitated then and look where it had led them. The Warrior closed his fist; no he would not hesitate now.
Opening the door the Warrior paused on the threshold and looked back towards the devastated village. From a distance it looked quiet, peaceful even, nothing like the reality that it was. A flash of light off to his right caught his eye. It was just the glare from the two suns flashing off a distant window. It was an old abandoned farmhouse that the Warrior had noted on his return trip. Because it was far from the rest of the village and long abandoned it had remained relatively intact during the skirmish.
The Warrior tilted his head to one side as he thought. Yes, he had planned on activating the Moment in some corner of the city. Had even briefly flirted with the idea of making a showy demonstration in front of the Council denouncing them and all their ways, but surely it would be more fitting to end his world in this quiet corner. In a small village that no one but its dead inhabitants had ever cared for. Such momentous occasions deserved respect. He could take his time, even perhaps try to reconnect with the man he once was. All those men who had taken on the mantle of the Doctor, and tried to live by that title’s promise.
Of course he first had to get inside the Time Vaults and steal the Moment. But when had he ever let the impossible stop him before?
The one who called himself the Warrior stepped inside his TARDIS and closed the doors. The light atop the machine began to flash and a low, groaning noise filled the silence. Slowly the blue box began to fade from view, leaving behind an empty wasteland.
And so began the last days of the Great Time War.
