#and any other time I’ve gone to an primary doctor they’ve brushed it off as stomach pain /UTIS/ typical period pain

[chocolatequeennk]

Forever and Never Apart, 13/42

Summary: After taking a year to recover from the Master, the Doctor and Rose are ready to travel again. But Time keeps pushing them forward, and instead of going back to their old life, they slowly realise that they’re stepping into a new life. Friends new and old are meeting on the TARDIS, and when the stars start going out, the Doctor and Rose face the biggest change of all: the return of Bad Wolf.

Series 4 with Rose, part 7 of Being to Timelessness; sequel to Taking Time (AO3 | FF.NET | TSP)

Betaed by @lastbluetardis, @rudennotgingr, @jabber-who-key, and @pellaaearien. Thank you so much!

AO3 | FF.NET | TSP

Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5 | Ch 6 | Ch 7 | Ch 8 | Ch 9 | Ch 10 | Ch 11 | Ch 12

Chapter Thirteen: A New Strategy

When Wilf took a staggering step towards the house, Rose drew a breath of relief and immediately gagged. The sharp, acrid taste of the poison hit the back of her throat and she covered her mouth and coughed as the Doctor and Donna helped Wilf.

Hold your breath as much as possible and breathe shallowly when you have to, she told herself.

Sylvia charged down the walkway and shoved the Doctor away from Wilf. Shrugging, the Doctor stepped back next to Rose, then nodded to Donna. “Get inside the house,” he directed as they helped Wilf to the door. “Just try and close off the doors and windows.”

“Doctor, Miss Tyler.”

Rose turned and squinted at Ross in a big, black taxi.

The private nodded for them to come over. “This is all I could find that hasn’t got ATMOS.”

The Doctor ran to the car, but Rose looked back at Donna. “Donna, you coming?”

The other woman hesitated, pursed her lips for a moment, but finally nodded. “Yeah.”

“Donna!” Sylvia exclaimed. “Don’t go. Look what happens every time that Doctor appears.” She gestured expansively at the poison gas filling the sky. “Stay with us, please.”

Wilf put his hand on Donna’s shoulder and pushed her towards the car. “You go, my darling.”

The gas was making Rose’s eyes burn, so she ran for the relative protection of the car. “Is she coming?” the Doctor asked as she scooted close to him.

Rose coughed a few times and nodded. Yeah, she said, opting for telepathy since her throat hurt. But what is it about the mothers that makes them decide to blame you for all the stuff we try to stop? My mum did it, and so did Francine.

The Doctor snorted. You ask as if it makes any sense to me, he pointed out as Donna slid into the car.

Ross put the car in gear, and the Doctor leaned forward to look at Donna. “How are you holding up?”

Her eyes were red and watering, but she set her jaw and nodded. “I’ll be all right,” she said.

He eyed her dubiously, but let it go for now. “And you, Rose?” he asked, looking his bond mate over critically.

She smiled at him. “I’ve been practicing holding my breath. I figure the fewer breaths I take, the less the gas will affect me.”

After that, the drive back to the ATMOS factory was tense and silent. Ross dropped them off out front by the mobile HQ unit, and the Doctor bent down to look him in the eye. “Ross, look after yourself. Get inside the building.”

He nodded. “Will do.”

After he drove away, Donna looked up at them, gagging a little. “The air is disgusting.”

“It’s not so bad for us,” the Doctor told her sympathetically. “Go on, get inside the TARDIS.”

“She needs a key, Doctor,” Rose pointed out.  

“Quite right, Rose.” He reached into his breast pocket and pulled one out, handing it to Donna. “Keep that. Go on, that’s yours. Quite a big moment really,” he added with a grin.

“Yeah.” Donna coughed. “Maybe we can get sentimental after the world’s finished choking to death.”

“Good idea.” The Doctor and Rose jogged towards the entrance to the factory, ducking under the security gate over the driveway.

“Where are you going?” Donna asked.

They turned and jogged backwards a few steps. “To stop a war,” the Doctor called out.

Rose took the Doctor’s hand as they ran into the ATMOS factory. You didn’t suggest I go to the TARDIS with Donna, she observed.

He shot her a sidelong glance. Would you have gone, if I had?

She shook her head. Of course not. I’m staying with you. The air is awful, but UNIT will have gas masks.

Thought so. Figured it would just be a waste of time. But promise you’ll tell me if the gas gets to be too much for you.

Rose brushed her thumb over his knuckles. I promise. They pushed open the door to the mobile HQ, and she slowed down and raised her eyebrow when he looked down at her. Remember to be courteous to Colonel Mace.

He sighed, but she saw a smile on his face.

Colonel Mace turned to the door when they walked into the command room. The Doctor nodded briskly at the man, noting the hard set of his jaw.

“Colonel Mace, do you trust me?”

The military man blinked, and the severity of his expression softened. “I trust your record, Doctor, and Sir Alistair’s high opinion of you.”

“Thank you. Then do not engage the Sontarans in battle. There is nothing they like better than a war.” He looked at the map, which displayed a live map of all the ATMOS devices worldwide. “Just leave this to me.”

“And what are you going to do?” the colonel pressed.

The Doctor took a deep breath. Something was off in the room. Something smelled… smelled like a clone. He glanced at Martha—Martha who hadn’t answered her phone this afternoon for several long minutes.

“I’ve got the TARDIS,” he said nonchalantly, baiting a trap for the spy who might be in their midst. If he was wrong, nothing would happen. If he was right and they took the TARDIS, he’d soon have a spy of his own onboard the Sontaran vessel. “I’m going to get on board their ship.”

Rose smiled at him, but a moment later, her eyes widened and then hardened, a glint of gold present in her whiskey brown irises. The Doctor shook his head quickly, and she pressed her lips into a thin line.

He dashed to Martha’s side, barely able to withstand his gag reflex. She was definitely the clone. Beside the smell, he also noticed the distinctive hair pattern and the way her pupils didn’t react quite right to the light. “Come on,” he whispered, and she smiled and ran after him and Rose, just like old times.

But it wasn’t like old times. Rose, Martha is a clone, he told her. Don’t do anything to give away that we know. If she thinks she’s fooled us, we have a triple agent.

She helped the Sontarans steal our TARDIS, Rose deducted.

Yes, and she’s going to help get it back.

Outside, the gaseous emissions from the ATMOS devices were rapidly creating a repeat of the Big Smoke, the smog event of 1952 which had killed as many as twelve thousand people. The Doctor engaged his respiratory bypass as they ran through the haze to the alley where the TARDIS had been only a few minutes before.

As he’d suspected, it was empty. Not-Martha did an impressive job of standing at the entrance to the alley, looking confused.

“But… where’s the TARDIS?”

The Doctor circled his finger in the air. “Taste that, in the air.” He stuck his tongue out and made a face when the nasty taste hit his advanced tastebuds. “That sort of metal tang. Teleport exchange. It’s the Sontarans. They’ve taken it. I’m stuck on Earth like, like an ordinary person.” A large cloud of gas billowed around him as he rambled. “Like a human. How rubbish is that? Sorry, no offence, but come on.”

Rose stood by Not-Martha, watching the Doctor’s performance. It was hard not to lash out at the clone for impersonating her friend—especially when she knew that if the real Martha could see the Doctor now, she’d know something was wrong.

“So what do we do?” Not-Martha asked.

“Well…”

Not-Martha was looking at where the TARDIS had stood, so the Doctor shot her a calculating glance.

Rose looked at him, then put a hand on Not-Martha’s shoulder. “Have you phoned your family, Martha?”

Not-Martha shrugged her hand off and glared at Rose. “No,” she snapped, and that one word eliminated any doubt that this was not Martha. She looked from Rose to the Doctor. “What for?”

“The gas,” the Doctor pointed out evenly. “Tell them to stay inside.”

Not-Martha smiled suddenly and rolled her eyes, like she’d just misunderstood what they were saying. “Course I will, yeah but, what about Donna? I mean, where’s she?”

“Oh, she’s gone home,” the Doctor lied as fumes billowed around him. “She’s not like you. She’s not a soldier.”

Not-Martha straightened slightly with pride, and the Doctor and Rose both pressed their lips together to keep from snapping at her. The real Martha wouldn’t accept that title from them.

But they didn’t have time to stand around here. “Right. So. Avanti,” the Doctor said and led them back to HQ.

He pushed the doors open and tossed his coat off to the side. “Change of plan,” he announced. “No TARDIS, so I’ll have to work from here. You don’t mind, do you, Colonel Mace?”

The colonel straightened and clasped his hands behind his back. “Not if you have a plan to save the planet, Doctor.”

The Doctor grinned at him. “Oh, I always have a plan to save the Earth. That’s pretty much my primary job description.”

“Has anyone figured out what the gas is yet?” Rose asked. The live, interactive map onscreen was terrifying.

“We’re working on it,” Not-Martha told her.

A UNIT officer spoke up from her computer station. “It’s harmful, but not lethal until it reaches eighty percent density. We’re having the first reports of deaths from the centre of Tokyo City.”

“And who are you?” the Doctor asked.

She stood up quickly and snapped a salute. “Captain Marion Price, sir.”

The Doctor sighed. “Oh, put your hand down. Don’t salute.” He walked away from her to adjust the communications controls at the main ops desk.

Preparing to call the Sontarans, Rose realised as she watched him work.

Rose watched Colonel Mace anxiously. So far, he’d been friendlier than she’d expected of a military higher-up, but the more tense the situation became, the more pushback she expected from him.

“Jodrell Bank’s traced a signal, Doctor,” Colonel Mace said, referring to the observatory in Manchester, “coming from five thousand miles above the Earth. We’re guessing that’s what triggered the cars.”

The Doctor stopped and looked at the new display being projected onscreen. “The Sontaran ship.”

“NATO has gone to Defcon One,” Colonel Mace told them. “We’re preparing a strike.”

“You can’t do that,” the Doctor insisted, and for once, Rose wasn’t inclined to encourage him to speak more delicately. “Nuclear missiles won’t even scratch the surface. Let me talk to the Sontarans.”

Colonel Mace’s eyes widened when he realised what the Doctor had been doing for the last ninety seconds. “You’re not authorised to speak on behalf of the Earth.”

The muscle in the Doctor’s jaw twitched, and Rose put her hand on his shoulder. “Colonel Mace, the Doctor is the only person on this planet who has the knowledge and experience necessary to bring us through this safely.”

His gaze flicked from her to the Doctor, and he nodded once.

“Thank you,” the Doctor said and stuck his sonic screwdriver into the communications system. “Calling the Sontaran Command Ship under Jurisdiction Two of the Intergalactic Rules of Engagement. This is the Doctor.”

The satellite image of the Earth was replaced with a video relay of the Sontaran ship. “Doctor, breathing your last?” General Staal asked smugly.

“My God.” Colonel Mace recoiled. “They’re like trolls.”

The Doctor rolled his eyes and started pacing. “Yeah, loving the diplomacy, thanks,” he muttered to the colonel. Then he raised his voice again to speak to the Sontarans. “So, tell me, General Staal,” he drawled as he sat down at a computer station. “Since when did you lot become cowards?”

General Staal’s face scrunched up in anger and he strode towards them. “How dare you!”

“Oh, that’s diplomacy?” Colonel Mace asked sarcastically.

But Rose had seen the Doctor use this tactic earlier, and she leaned close to explain it to him. “It’s the one insult they can’t stand,” she whispered. “Call them cowards, and they’ll give away all their plans.”

Staal was glaring at the Doctor from five thousand miles away. “Doctor, you impugn my honour.”

The Doctor leaned back in his chair and swung his feet up onto the table. “Yeah, I’m really glad you didn’t say belittle, because then I’d have a field day. But poison gas? That’s the weapon of a coward and you know it. Staal, you could blast this planet out of the sky, and yet you’re sitting up above watching it die. Where’s the fight in that? Where’s the honour? Or,” he suggested, striking out with his best guess, “are you lot planning something else? This isn’t normal Sontaran warfare. What are you lot up to?”

Staal and his second-in-command both straightened to their full height. “A general would be unwise to reveal his strategy to the opposing forces.”

A grin spread across the Doctor’s face. “Ah, the war’s not going so well, then. Losing, are we?”

Staal scowled. “Such a suggestion is impossible.”

“What war?” Colonel Mace asked.

The Doctor turned slightly towards him and answered the question without taking his eyes off the Sontaran leader. It was vital to maintain eye contact when talking to a Sontaran—looking away was seen as a sign of weakness.

“The war between the Sontarans and the Rutans,” he explained. “It’s been raging, far out in the stars, for fifty thousand years. Fifty thousand years of bloodshed, and for what?”

“For victory,” Staal declared, going immediately into the Sontaran war cry. “Sontar-ha. Sontar-ha. Sontar-ha. Sontar-ha. Sontar-ha. Sontar-ha.”

The Doctor rolled his eyes and reached into his pocket for the sonic screwdriver. “Give me a break,” he muttered, and pointed the sonic at the screen to replace the image of the Sontarans with a cartoon.

Colonel Mace shifted his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “Doctor, are you quite sure this is the best way to handle this interaction? You seem to be doing nothing but antagonising them.”

“I’m sure,” the Doctor said, his voice curt. He changed the channel back to the open comms link with the Sontaran ship. “Finished?” he asked General Staal.

Staal started walking, and the Doctor leaned forward, wondering what he was doing. “You will not be so quick to ridicule when you’ll see our prize.” He pointed at the TARDIS. “Behold. We are the first Sontarans in history to capture a TARDIS.”

The Doctor’s hearts raced, but he kept his face as blank as possible to hide his excitement. If the TARDIS was in the same room as the comms link, then she should have patched into the conversation and been broadcasting it for Donna to watch. And that meant he could get a message to her.

His mind spun, trying to think of a secret code that she would understand. “Well,” he started quietly, “as prizes go, that’s noble. As they say in Latin, Donna nobis pacem.” He let the words linger in the air for a moment, hoping she knew he was talking to her. Then he got to the actual message. “But did you never wonder about its design? It’s a phone box. It contains a phone. A telephonic device for communication. Sort of symbolic. Like, if only we could communicate, you and I.” He pointed from himself to the camera, knowing that to Donna, it would look like he was pointing directly at her.

“All you have communicated is your distress, Doctor.”

The Doctor ignored Staal, pointing at the camera again, hoping Donna would understand his message. Since she and Rose had exchanged numbers, Donna could be their secret weapon, working from inside the Sontaran ship to take them down.

He took a deep breath and looked back at Staal. “Big mistake though, showing it to me.” He waggled the sonic screwdriver tauntingly. “Because I’ve got remote control.”

You know, we really should, Rose said, just as Staal ordered the transmission to be closed.

“Ah, well.” The Doctor jumped to his feet, feeling more hopeful than he had since he’d realised Sontarans were behind ATMOS.  

Colonel Mace looked at the blank screen and back at the Doctor. “Doctor, would you mind telling me exactly what that accomplished?”

The Doctor pressed his tongue to the back of his teeth and pretended to consider. He had no objection to letting the military man know what his plan was—at least in part—but he couldn’t let Not-Martha overhear.

“I would,” he said finally, “but it’s classified Omega Scarlett,” he said, giving the highest level of UNIT clearance. No matter how fast Martha had advanced through the ranks, there was no way her clearance was that high.

Colonel Mace’s eyes widened. “Very well, Doctor. There’s an office here where we can speak privately.” He nodded at Rose. “The files are clear, ma’am, that you are to receive every courtesy and security clearance the Doctor receives. You’re welcome to join us if you’d like.”

Rose looked up at the Doctor, and he nodded. The three of them hustled to the small office, where the Doctor immediately turned on the sonic screwdriver and waved it at the walls, soundproofing them.

Colonel Mace sat down behind the desk and pointed at the two chairs. “Sit down,” he invited. “And then perhaps you could tell me what exactly is going on.”

Rose sat, but the Doctor paced the length of the office. “You can’t beat the Sontarans by going against them head-to-head. They’re too advanced.”

The colonel sighed and shook his head. “You don’t give us enough credit, Doctor. We have more resources than you are aware of.”

“Come on, Colonel,” Rose exclaimed, finally losing a little bit of her patience. “You heard the Doctor. The Sontarans have been at war with the Rutans for fifty thousand years. Do you really think they haven’t perfected the art of warfare by now? The chances that you’ve salvaged something from Torchwood that could beat them are slim to none—because that’s what you meant when you referred to resources we don’t know Earth has, wasn’t it?”

The colonel’s jaw dropped a little, and the Doctor rested his hand on Rose’s shoulder. “Thank you, Rose.” He looked at the military man. “I understand you want to believe in your own military superiority,” he said, “but you have got to trust me. You cannot beat the Sontarans in head-to-head combat.”

Colonel Mace pursed his lips into a thin line and finally nodded. “Very well. What is your alternative suggestion, then?”

The Doctor grinned and bounced on his toes. “Infiltration! Because as it turns out, I already have a spy onboard their ship.”

“And just how did you manage that?”

He tugged on his ear. “Bit of an accident, really,” he admitted. “We sent our friend to the TARDIS so she wouldn’t choke on the gas, and then the Sontarans locked onto it and transported it to their ship.”

“So that’s why the Sontarans have the TARDIS,” Colonel Mace said. He straightened up a moment later. “And everything you said about connecting via phone…”

The Doctor nodded. “Donna has Rose’s mobile number. She’s our man on the inside, Colonel Mace. Well, woman on the inside.”

The colonel looked at the Doctor for another long moment and finally nodded. “Very well, Doctor. I will trust your strategy for now.”  

“Thank you, Colonel.” The Doctor turned to leave, but one more thought occurred to him. “Do you still have men inside the factory?”

Mace’s brow furrowed. “Of course we do. Why?”

The Doctor shook his head and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’m almost positive the Sontarans have a teleport pod somewhere in the factory. They can bring soldiers in without us even knowing.”

The Colonel’s face hardened. “Then we’ll be ready for them.”

His stubborn dependence on firepower elicited the first glimmer of real anger from the Doctor. “Get your men out of there,” he growled.

Colonel Mace paused and looked up at him. “Why would I do that, Doctor?”

The Doctor took a deep breath and raked his hand through his hair. “I told you: Sontarans are a warrior race,” he said, speaking rapidly. “Clone bred so that every one of them is a perfect soldier. They have superior armour and superior weaponry. There is no way your men can beat them.” He looked at the colonel, letting his gaze bore into the man. “Tell them to fall back.”

“But what if the Sontarans advance on us here?” Mace countered.

The Doctor pressed his tongue to the back of his teeth and stared at the ceiling. It was a fair question, and a likely possibility. How could they keep the Sontarans from attacking without sacrificing their men?

The saying might go, “The best defence is a good offence,” but the Doctor had always preferred defence. He grinned when he hit on the answer and bounced on his toes. “Use mines to create a perimeter around the factory.”

The Colonel blinked, and the Doctor rolled his eyes.

“You don’t need to confront them yourself,” he explained as he launched into his plan. “All you need to do is contain them—keep them from attacking you. So use the mines so they have no way out.” He shrugged. “They’ll probably teleport back to their ship, but at least they won’t kill all of your men.”

He stared at the colonel. “Please, Colonel Mace, I’m begging you. Don’t sacrifice those men because you can’t see past your military training to find another way. We will save the Earth. I promise. But we’ll have to outsmart them, because we can’t outgun them.”

Colonel Mace didn’t look at all certain, but he finally nodded and picked up his walkie talkie. “Trap One to all stations. Retreat. Order imperative. Immediate retreat.”

oOoOoOoOo

Donna Noble was having a hell of a day. After watching her grandfather nearly choke to death inside his death trap of a car, she’d been eager to go back to the ATMOS factory with the Doctor and Rose. She wanted to do something to help stop this. But instead, the gas had been too much for her lungs, and she’d been sent to the TARDIS, like she was back in school and it was the school nurse’s office.

She’d felt a light bump only a few minutes later, like the TARDIS had landed—but she knew the ship hadn’t actually flown anywhere. So she’d cautiously opened the door and peeked out, and caught a glimpse of several aliens from the back.

Not even she was brash enough to step out there and challenge them on her own, so she’d closed the door carefully.

She’d been pacing the console room ever since, trying to figure out what to do. When the Doctor had looked directly at her a moment ago, she’d known he had a message for her. Donna nobis pacem, he’d said—that had to be her.

“Like, if only we could communicate, you and I.”

The TARDIS rocked, and Donna grabbed onto the console. The Sontarans must be moving it, scared of the Doctor’s comments about having a remote.

Donna pulled her mobile out of her pocket again and stared at it. “But what do I do?” she wailed helplessly. She’d tried to dial Rose as soon as the Doctor’s transmission had cut off, but Rose had yet to pick up.

She bit her lip and looked at her contacts. She really wanted to talk to her granddad, but she knew that if she called the house, it was likely to be her mother who answered. Finally, not seeing any way around it, she sighed and called home. The phone rang twice, then her familiar voice said, “Donna. Where are you, sweetheart?”

Donna swallowed back tears. “Mum, you all right?”

In the background, she heard her granddad ask, “Is that her?”

“Oh, just finish the job,” Sylvia chided.

Donna rolled her eyes. Even at the end of the world, her mum had to have a go at someone.

“Your granddad’s sealing us in,” she explained a moment later. “He’s sealing the windows. Our own house, and we’re sealed in.”

She sounded scared, Donna realised. Even with everything that had happened in the last year—the disastrous wedding reception, her dad getting sick and dying—her mum had never been scared. Or maybe she was, and she just hid it by being angry.

Her mum was still talking though. “All those things they said about pollution and ozone and carbon, they’re really happening aren’t they?”

“There’s people working on it, Mum,” Donna assured her. For once, she was in the position to make her mum feel better. “They’re going to fix it, I promise.”

“Oh, like you’d know. You’re so clever.”

Donna flinched. The words were no different than what she’d heard from her mother her whole life, but after a month on the TARDIS with the Doctor and Rose, actually being praised when she thought of something, they stung more than they had in the past.

“Oh, don’t start. Please don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” her mum whispered, and Donna could tell she was almost crying. “I wish you were here.”

Donna was quiet for a moment, wondering what to say to that, then she heard her granddad’s voice as he took the phone.

“Now, come on, Sylvia,” he said. “Look, that doesn’t help. Donna, where are you?”

Donna’s heart started racing when she heard his voice, and she took a calming breath before she spoke. He didn’t need to know how scared she was.

She glanced around the TARDIS. In a way, that’s where she was, but she was also… She shrugged. “It’s sort of hard to say. You all right?”

“Yeah.” His voice was bracing, full of reassurance. “Fighting fit, yeah. Are they with you, the Doctor and Rose?”

“Oh, those two,” her mum grumbled in the background.

Donna shook her head. “No. I’m all on my own.”

“Look, you promised you were safe with them.”

“I am, Gramps.” Donna clenched her hand around her phone. “There’s something they need me to do. I just don’t know what.”

“Well, I mean, the whole place is covered. The whole of London, they’re saying. The whole, the whole world. It’s the scale of it, Donna. I mean, how can one couple stop all that?”

Donna thought of all the things she’d seen the Doctor and Rose do, and her fear receded. How many alien invasions had they already averted? “Trust me. They can do it.”

“Yeah, well, if they don’t, you tell them they’ll have to answer to me.”

Donna smiled. His protective attitude was comforting in its familiarity. “I will. Just as soon as I see them, I’ll tell them.”

On the other end of the line, her granddad huffed slightly, then hung the phone up. Donna realised he was more upset than she’d caught before. He didn’t want her to hear him cry, but that only made her more determined to get out of this and make it back home.

And as soon as she saw the Doctor and Rose, she’d let them know what she thought of them telling her to call and then not answering the bloody phone.

oOoOoOoOo

Rose looked at her phone, then dropped it back into her pocket before Not-Martha could see. Ten missed calls from Donna, she told the Doctor.

He tugged on his ear. I know. But I can’t talk to her until I figure out more of the Sontarans’ strategy. He grimaced. We’ll just have to make it up to her later.

They shared an amused look. Donna would not be pleased that they’d ignored all her calls.

They found Not-Martha in the main command centre, holding a clipboard. The Doctor snatched it out of her hands, and while Rose would normally chastise him for being rude, she didn’t really care if he was rude to the clone with her friend’s face. He smirked slightly as he read, having caught that thought.

Not-Martha scowled at him, but didn’t argue. Instead, she rattled off the contents of the report he’d taken from her. “There’s carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, but ten percent unidentified. Some sort of artificial heavy element we can’t trace. You ever seen anything like it?”

Behind her back, Rose rolled her eyes. That was a leading question if she’d ever heard one.

“It must be something the Sontarans invented,” the Doctor mused. “This isn’t just poison. They need this gas for something else. What could that be?”

“Launch grid online and active,” Captain Price said.

Rose spun around and looked at the huge monitors, now displaying the global nuclear launch grid. She looked from the monitors to the Doctor, who was staring at the computers in wide-eyed horror.

“Positions, ladies and gentlemen,” Colonel Mace ordered. “Defcon One initiatives in progress.”

The Doctor shook his head and stalked over to the colonel. “You said you trusted my strategy,” he protested.

“And I did, Doctor,” he said, a hint of apology in his voice. “But the gas is at sixty percent density. Eighty percent and people start dying, Doctor.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “We’ve got no choice.”

The Doctor raked his hands through his hair as the countdown began. None of Earth’s weapons would even scratch the surface of the Sontarans’ ship, but this would be seen as an act of war regardless of its success, and that gave the Sontarans the right to attack.

“Launching in sixty,” Captain Price announced. “Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven, fifty-six. Worldwide nuclear grid now coordinating. Fifty-four, fifty-three…”

“You’re making a mistake, Colonel,” the Doctor said quietly, unable to hide his disappointment entirely. “For once, I hope the Sontarans are ahead of you.”

Rose rested her hand on his back. Well, they do have a spy, she pointed out reasonably.

The Doctor blinked, and his gaze flicked over to Not-Martha, who was watching the countdown on the screen avidly. True. They obviously want this planet for something, so maybe they cloned someone with high enough clearance to halt the launch.

Captain Price rattled off country names as their nuclear launch codes came online. “North America, online. United Kingdom, online. France, online. India, online. Pakistan, online. China, online. North Korea, online. All systems locked and coordinated. Launching in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five—”

“God save us,” Colonel Mace whispered.

—“Four, three, two, one.”

Out of the corner of his eye, the Doctor saw Not-Martha tap at her phone. He held his breath and stared at the monitor, hoping with all he had that Rose’s guess was right.

“Zero.”

The screen stayed at zero for just a second, then it went completely dark.

“What is it?” Colonel Mace asked. “What happened? Did we launch? Well, did we?”

The Doctor stared at the screen, then looked over at Not-Martha. The smirk on her face confirmed Rose’s suggestion, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

“Negative, sir,” Captain Price said, working frantically at her computer. “The launch codes have been wiped, sir. It must be the Sontarans.”

The Doctor let out a long, slow breath, then he and Rose casually walked over to Not-Martha while the two military officers tried to sort out what had happened.

“Can we override it?” Colonel Mace asked.

Captain Price worked frantically with her computer station. “Trying it now, sir.”

As glad as the Doctor was that the launch kept getting cancelled, it was yet another mystery. “Missiles wouldn’t even dent that ship, so why are the Sontarans so keen to stop you?” He looked down at Not-Martha. “Any ideas?”

“How should I know?” she retorted.

A series of explosions rocked the trailer. The Doctor and Colonel Mace exchanged a glance; the Sontarans had attempted to cross the perimeter.

Not-Martha looked up, her eyes wide. “What was that?”

“That,” the Doctor said with some satisfaction, “was the safety measures we took against a possible Sontaran invasion of the factory.”

She stared at him, her eyes hard. “You mined the exits.”

“Yep.” He grinned at her. “Pretty clever, don’t you think? They can get in, but they can’t get out.”

Her hand clenched on her mobile, and he realised she was torn between a desire to warn her superiors about their surprise tactic, and the need to stay alert and ready to cancel yet another launch attempt.

“They’ve taken the factory,” Colonel Mace said, “but they can’t get out of the building. Your plan is working so far, Doctor.”

“No need to sound so surprised!” the Doctor complained. He scratched at his sideburn. “But why? They don’t need it. Why attack now? What are they up to?”

“Launch grid back online,” Captain Price announced as the screen flickered to life. A moment later, it went blank again, and the captain tried to track the interference. “They’re inside the system, sir. It’s coming from within UNIT itself.”

“Trace it,” Colonel Mace ordered. “Find out where it’s coming from, and quickly. Gas levels?”

“Sixty-six percent in major population areas, and rising.”