Chapter 2: A Renegade In the Making
Light years across the cosmic void where animalistic war waged unabated between the Galactic Federation and their newest and deadliest enemy, a lone, largely ignored planet, spun in a dream-like fashion through the eternal wastes of interstellar space. The coral-colored planet was unremarkable, save for its unique color, when seen with the naked eye from a passing starship. There was nothing that distinguished it from the billions of other inhabited balls of rock to be found in the heavens. No scanner ever detected any hint of civilization, no flicker of life was ever seen. That was, in fact, because the denizens of the planet wanted it that way. Surrounded by its twins moons of Menti Celesti and Pazithi Gallifreya, the planet Gallifrey spun quietly to itself, content to be separate from the rest of the goings-on of the universe. In the hallowed halls of the Citadel, the center of government and learning for the planet, the High Council of the Time Lords was convened into session. As with all High Council meetings, there was the usual bluster, banter, and long-winded speeches accompanied by an irresistible urge to target the Gold Usher of Ceremonies with a molecular dissemination of his robes and thus creating a Gallifreyan remake of the fable, The Emperor's New Clothes. The older and more veteran lords showed incredible austerity and conservatism brought about by age and wisdom, and most of the younger lords merely out of respect for their elders and duty to protocol. However, it was the younger and most junior lords, such as Armindjesteranimavoth, or the Jester as he liked to be known due to his penchant for practical jokes, who couldn't resist any stunt that could disrupt a meeting. He was not a troublemaker, nor was he given to extravagance, he just suffered from the occasional need to pull a really good prank. This side of his personality belied the fact that he was in fact a highly respected member of the Council and could rise to the demands when protocol demanded. Now, however was not one of those times. With the last of the political posturing over and done with, the Audience Chamber cleared and Jester made his way out, yearning to be free of the confines of his restrictive ceremonial robes of the Prydonian Academy. To him, they represented the stuffiness and stagnation that Gallifrey and the Time Lords had come to stand for and he could stand to be a part of it for only so long. He stopped in his living quarters and discarded the offending garments in heap on the floor of his dormitory room, exchanging them for his trademark white frilled shirt, waistcoat in a harlequin design with matching ascot tie and garishly colored, pleated trousers with the aforesaid harlequin pattern on the spats covering his shoes. Giving himself the once over in the mirror, he flashed a grin of smooth white teeth and brushed a strand of dark hair back out of his eyes. Giving a flip of his head, he flung his shoulder length tresses out of his face and whispered to himself, "Lookin' good." He turned and headed out of the dorm room making his destination the TARDIS docking compound.
* * * * *
Admiral Michaels glanced down grimly at his orders from the Fleet command in regards to the Aristolis situation. He wasn't one to condone to outright slaying of hundreds of innocents and abhorred excessive violence but firmly believed in the old adage 'orders is orders.' Stuffing away his own personal distaste in a psychological strong box and storing it away mentally, he made preparations necessary to carry out operation Planet Killer. As he had familiarized himself with the essentials of the operation, he found that the path he had taken while walking had led him to his intended destination, the Hesperus sickbay. Inside, there was a fluster of activity occurring in the spacious and opulently furnished room. Various medical staff were treating members of the crew for injuries that ranged from mild skin abrasions to broken bones to those who were beyond all hope. A lingering feeling of death seemed to permeate the place. The scrambling morass of bodies parted like the waters of the Red Sea as the admiral made his way to his daughter's office.
She sat in a lounge chair behind and ancient and ornate desk with her back to him, eyes scanning the data on the transputer pad for the mass of medical information contained in its database. She hadn't notice his entrance and when he called out to her, it startled her.
"Beverly, we need to talk." Swinging her chair around, she gasped in surprise before she could respond, "Holy shit, dad!" she expostulated, "Give me a damned coronary, why don't you?" Her momentary lapse in decorum brought a frown to his face and a sharp retort to his lips, "Remember whom it is you are addressing, doctor."
"I'm sorry father. I meant no breach of protocol. It's only that after five years of hard core medical experience I still find that death, any kind of death, is a kind of blow; both personally and professionally."
"Beverly, I realize this. I've seen more men die than there are stars in the heavens and I've ordered more men to their deaths in the line of service for the Federation than I could begin to count. I've seen the corpses and I've smelled the stink it leaves behind. I've had my fill but I'll keep on fighting for those causes, whatever they may be, so that those deaths won't be meaningless."
"I had managed to deduce that no matter how painful it may be, you can't allow yourself not to care. If you stop caring, then death gains a victory and all those who died become nameless, faceless entities. I won't allow myself to become like that," she replied. Inside, the woman felt a torrent of emotions surging through her and resolved not to break down in front of her father. She buried her anguish behind a blank mask.
"You're still distraught over Ingrid, aren't you?"
"Wouldn't you be?" she snapped. "She was not only my top aide, she was also my friend," she felt her temper beginning to take over and her voice rose, "And the worst part of it is, to me, her death was meaningless. She died, and for what? To satisfy some mystical notion of life after death? What wrong had she ever done to anyone? On who's list of worthy and unworthy was she judged as not fit to live?"
"Beverly..." Her father's voice took on a warning tone. She was not going to be put off by her father, regardless of what rank he held.
"Here we are, fighting to protect the sovereign dominion of the Galactic Federation against an enemy we can only begin to guess at, and as one of the most qualified physicians in the fleet, I am expected to maintain the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of the men and women under my care and I can't even damn well do that!" She was shouting now, "How in the hell do I fight an enemy I can't even fucking see!?"
The admiral reached out and closed the door to her office making it soundproof. He had also noticed a few raised eyebrows in the main sickbay lounge as he did so. He turned back to face his daughter and said nothing. However, in his eyes, she could see the fire of his anger, one of the many traits she had inherited from his side of the family. They faced each other in a silent contest of wills. When he did speak again, his voice was low and hoarse, "You didn't have to go down to Aristolis. In fact, I begged you not to go. You disobeyed me and put yourself at risk."
"I'm not a little girl! As chief medical officer aboard this ship, I had a duty to those people who were dying down there! What in God's name would you have me do? Ignore the oath I took as a doctor? My duty is to those men and women!"
"You're first duty, doctor, is to this ship! I gave you a direct order and you disobeyed that order. For the remainder of this mission you are confined to the Hesperus and the needs of its crew. Is that understood!?" They were in each other's faces now and the steel blue eyes of the admiral locked in a gaze with the emerald green of the doctor. In a quiet tone she asked, "Is that all you have to say, admiral?" She was met with silence as he turned on his heel and strode out of the room.
* * * * *
Jester had reached the TARDIS compound and let himself in with a siphon-ended key with a trimonic lock on it. Before him stood a vast hall with an odd assortment of objects in cubicles of roughly ten feet by ten feet. Here stood the various TARDISes, the machines that were the jewels in the Time Lord's crown in temporal engineering. Millennia ago when the Time Lords had first discovered the reality of time travel, they realized they needed a phenomenal source of power to make the first experiments in time travel a reality. Their greatest solar engineer, Omega, used to the remote stellar manipulator, the Hand of Omega to detonate a star which collapsed into a black hole. Rassilon, the leader of Time Lord society then captured the heart of black hole and imprisoned it beneath the surface of the planet Gallifrey as a limitless, inexhaustible source of energy, which came to be known as the Eye of Harmony. The TARDISes came about from those first experiments. They were fully self-contained mobile vehicles capable of traveling through time and space to any planet in the universe and to any date in that planet's existence. They were also dimensionally transcendental, being infinitely larger within than without and were equipped with a chameleon circuit. This circuit could disguise a TARDIS so that when it materialized on a planet, it would naturally blend into its surroundings without drawing undue attention to itself. Through the millennia, as more advances were made in warp-matrix engineering, older model TARDISes were retired from service. It was the subject of old TARDIS models that brought Jester to the compound. He was an accomplished TARDIS engineer as well as temporal engineer and he had a knack for solving seemingly impossible problems and that had brought him to the attention of those in the Inner Council and even the Lord President himself. As he made his way to his work station, he sorted through the various work orders and other odds and ends when he noticed the official document with the Seal of the High Council on and underneath the Seal, the official stamp of the Lord President. Jester was understandably intrigued as the prospect of a message from the leader of the High Council. He tore the envelope open with impatient fingers and read the spidery scrawl in haste. Moments later he was headed towards the suites of the Lord President of the High Council of Time Lords.
"Come in, come in, Armindjesteranimavoth," said the elderly Lord President. "I see you received my summons."
"Well, they sounded rather urgent, your Excellency and I didn't see the need to keep you waiting. I am, however, rather puzzled at what could be so urgent as that you would need me." The puzzled looked that crossed Jester's features were not lost on the President. The wizened Time Lord beheld his young charge with a slight mischievousness in his facial expression that belied the twinkle of deadly earnestness in his eyes. He spoke next, his voice barely above a whisper, and Jester had to strain to hear, "Armind, dear boy," the President said, using the diminutive of Jester's proper name, "You may well be aware that opposition to my tenure as President is growing and I fear it may not be long before I am ousted from the position granted me by our people."
"But sir, you have done great service for Gallifrey. You have broadened our horizons and encouraged us to use our vast panoply of powers for the protection and betterment of those within our sphere of influence and even those who are not, namely that planet in Mutter's Spiral. What is it called? It's the little blue-green one."
"Earth," the President whispered silently, "Yes, the Earth has always held a special place for us, and especially to one renegade who happened to graduate from your own Academy. Maybe you've heard of him? He calls himself the Doctor. He continues to roam around in an obsolete Type Forty TARDIS." Jester took just a moment to see if he could recall any stories of a notable renegade from his own Academy. However, at the mention of the name Doctor and Type Forty TARDIS, Jester knew full well who the President had meant. He had never met the Doctor personally, but his early years in the Academy had been littered with scattered tales here and there with the exploits of possibly Gallifrey's most loved native son. Jester picked up the conversation, "Sir, I am familiar with the Doctor's exploits, of course, but what relevance has this to the reason you summoned me?" The President's grin at his remembrances of the Doctor faded instantaneously at Jester's question. His face a grave mask once more and he said in a cold, hard voice intended to convey urgency, "I have for some time, had the temporal engineers working on a very secret plan for me. They have constructed a very special TT capsule at my bidding that only they and I myself know about. It was decided that the best way to hide it was to hide it in plain view, so it now sits in the TT capsule compound disguised as a broken down TT capsule to await decommissioning. The work on the capsule is nearly complete and I want you to take it out and field test it to make sure it's suitable for travel. You will find that it has many amenities never before thought of in any previous TARDIS model. I just feel that with the rumors that I've heard stirring around the Capitol, it's best to have the TARDIS away from Gallifrey for roughly a period of three to six earth months, relative time."
"But sir," Jester began to interject, "Won't my absence on the Council be noticed? I mean, I.." The President interrupted him, "It's all taken care of my dear boy, you leave everything thing to me." Turning, he retrieved an artifact from his desk and handed it to Jester. The object in question was a small object that seemed as if was made of validium, the living metal created eons ago by Omega and Rassilon, the secret of which was still known to but a handful of engineers on Gallifrey. The President continued, "This is the key. It is partly validium, plus a mixture of the new organic-based technology that we have been experimenting with. It will signal to you in form or another when you approach the TARDIS in its disguise." Jester was speechless. After a moment, he looked at the strangely glittering object that pulsated and writhed in his hand like a serpent, and asked with wonder in his voice, "Sir, when do you want me to leave?"
"Well, there's no time like the present, is there, hmmm?" came the reply.
