The Via Malcassairo

[The Master]

He was dreaming again.

They were always a torment, the dreams. His own imagination mingled with his studies of the ancient past, producing vistas and scenes impossible in the ancient and decaying universe he wandered in waking hours.

In this dream, he was a child. There were others with him, a boy and a girl, and they were playing on crimson grass under an orange sky. It was a game they played often, in the dream. They pretended to be great heroes hunting terrible monsters, reliving stories of the past.

Winds blew in the dream, and the sky darkened. They were still together, but they were adults now. Toy weapons and imagined armor had become all too real, and the monsters lurked just on the edge of vision. The crimson grass was burnt and brittle, now, and the orange sky was filled with smoke and screams.

He tossed in his bunk, desperate to wake up.

The boy (the man), his best friend (how he hated him), called to him. There was still hope, he seemed to be saying (the fool).

"No!" he screamed, whether in the dream or aloud he didn't know, "No! It's too late! We've lost!"

The boy (the man) turned, headed for the screams and the flames. We still have a chance, he seemed to say (idiot! what chance? we're lost!).

He hesitated, torn between the desire to follow (to kill him, to once and for all be rid of him) and the certain knowledge that there was no hope. As he did, the boy (the man) and the girl (the woman) vanished into the smoke.

And then the creatures emerged. Squat, shambling, cyclopian tentacled things plated with armor and bearing terrible weapons. They advanced, shrieking for his blood.

He woke up screaming, heart pounding, head throbbing.

[The Master]

"Are you all right, Professor?" a voice called from the other side of the door.

He stood up, leaned against the bulkhead wall for a moment, then opened the door. "Yes, yes," he answered, "Just a nightmare."

The speaker, a hard-faced woman with greying hair and a single bloodshot eye, nodded understanding. "You aren't the only one, I'm afraid. This close to Mons Dementia, everyone suffers from them."

He closed the door behind him, and fell into step next to her. "What progress are we making?"

"Not enough, I'm afraid." Her one eye blinked rapidly as she fought the urge to sleep. "The magnetic fields are growing erratic, and we're racing the night but the terminator is catching up with us. We'll be in twilight within two hours."

He frowned. "So we really begin to lose power at that point." It was a statement, not a question.

"Yes. We'll have some reserve, but..."

He sighed. "And how far is Port Defiance?"

"Four hours, at our current speed. But we won't make it."

They had emerged onto the deck of the landship. He inhaled deeply, trying to suck in enough of the thin air to fill his lungs. To port loomed the vast bulk of Mons Dementia, and all around stretched the grey dust of the Desolate Quarter.

His hands gripped the railing. "There are three thousand refugees on this vessel, Captain." He half turned, and looked at her over his shoulder. "We promised them - I promised them - that we would get them to Malcassairo, and then to Utopia."

"Assuming Utopia isn't just a myth."

He smiled, thin and hard. "It isn't, Captain. Utopia is real. If I have to build it myself, it is real."

She looked him in the eye for a moment, then nodded her head. "I believe you, you know. That's why I follow you on this fool's quest. Because I believe you." She looked aft, over the expanse of the landship and the people huddled on the deck. "But there's no way we can make it. We can't fight physics."

He looked aft as well, taking stock of the refugees. Then he turned, and began to walk along the deck.

"Where are you going?"

"To fight physics," he replied without turning.

[The Master]

Physics, Professor Yana decided, was a difficult opponent.

He was elbow deep in the guts of the landship's number two port impeller, sleeves rolled up, arms and face smeared with grease and metal grit. He wiped sweat from his forehead, absently smearing more metal grit as he did, and kicked the casing of the impeller with disgust.

There was nothing wrong with them. That was the problem. They were ancient and temperamental, true, but they weren't the problem. The problem was one of sheer mass. If only there were some way to reduce it...

He looked towards the bow of the ship, across a sea of makeshift shelters and an ocean of faces that watched him with the first hope they had felt in months. His face twisted with emotion, and he hated himself for the brief flicker of the idea.

They were trusting him. He'd promised to get them to safety, to get them away from this decaying, haunted world, to get them to Malcassairo. He'd promised them the safety of Utopia.

All of them. If he left even one behind, even if that one volunteered, then he would have betrayed them all.

No. There had to be another way.

"And have you defeated physics yet?"

He looked back, saw the humor glinting in the Captain's one eye, and smiled. "No. Not yet. Its putting up quite a struggle."

She laughed, just a little, then turned serious. "The terminator is closing with us rapidly."

"I know."

"We've lost three per cent of our speed in the last hour."

"I know."

"If the terminator catches us..."

"I know."

"If the terminator catches us, they'll come. They'll come, Yana, and we'll lose three-quarters of the-"

"I know!" Yana snarled, cutting her off. He took a deep, shuddering breath and fought for control. "I know. The Angels will come, in the darkness, where they can't be seen. And they'll kill until they're sated, until they're glutted with the possibilities of their victims. And we won't even remember who they were, when the dawn comes."

He looked to port and she looked to starboard, neither able to meet the other's gaze.

"I can't abandon them," he whispered. "I promised them..."

"If we could just lose five per cent of our load," she whispered, "There would be volunteers." She wrapped her arms around herself. "People would be willing to stay and die, if it meant life for their families..."

Silence reigned for a moment. Two. Three.

"No." Yana said, flatly.

She looked at him, a mix of relief and horror in her eye. "But-"

"No," he repeated. "There has to be a..."

A slow, sly smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "No," he said again, grinning. "Physics is a tough opponent."

He cracked open the housing of the number two impeller. "But I fight dirty."

[The Master]

The terminator crawled closer and closer, and the landship grew slower and slower. The shadows deepened, and the refugees crowded aboard the decks of the ship began to light candles in a desperate attempt to fend off the darkness.

Everyone knew the darkness would be deep.

Everyone knew the darkness would bring oblivion.

Everyone knew the darkness would bring the Angels.

And at the bow of the ship, Professor Yana worked like a man possessed. He drove his assistants - those few refugees with enough technical knowledge to keep up with his orders - without mercy, and he drove himself harder.

One by one the impeller casings were cracked open, causing the refugees and the crew to make warding gestures. One in three impellers were left operational, overclocked and overloaded to force their output to almost make up for the ones that went offline.

Almost.

The terminator crawled closer.

Another one in three were torn apart, pieces and components stacked and scattered around the deck, and then forcibly reintegrated with the final impellers.

The terminator crawled closer.

Finally, the Captain approached him. "Yana. What in the name of the Great Devourer are you doing?"

"Fighting physics," he responded, his arms deep in the guts of an impeller.

"Right," she said, doubtfully. "But what are you doing? It'll be full dark in..."

"I know," Yana muttered, lips clamped around a buscable.

"It'll be full dark in less than half an hour."

"I know," he muttered.

"So whatever it is you're doing, it needs to..."

"It's done."

"...What?"

He straightened, stretching his back. "It's done."

"What's done?"

"This," he answered, gesturing to the juryrigged impellers.

The Captain's single eye glared at him.

"If you keep looking at me like that, you'll soon need an imp with an iron hook."

"What?"

"Nothing," he said, waiving his hand. "Nothing. It's not important. What is important is that this is finished."

"Right. So what is finished?"

Yana grinned, broadly. "The impellers draw power from angular momentum, right, translating it into motive force?"

The Captain nodded. "Of course. But what did..."

He held up a grease-smeared finger. "I'm getting to that. I've modified two of the impellers to neutralize our inertia."

"That's impossible."

"Bah," Yana said, dismissively. "History tells us it was the primary means of transluminal drive in the 40th gigannum of human history."

"Myths, you mean."

Yana gave the captain an irritated look. "Are you going to bicker with me, or are you going to look suitably impressed as I explain to you exactly how I am going to save us all from the Angels?"

She smiled, bleakly. "Go on. By all means, go on."

"Thank you. Anyway," he checked his wrist chron, "in the interests of time, suffice it to say that the modified impellers will neutralize our inertia relative to the rotation of the planet."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that without any extra motive power, we will remain 8 minutes ahead of the terminator all the way to Port Defiance. And that, with the remaining impellers continuing to operate, we will make Port Defiance - assuming my unquestionably accurate calculations are accurate - "

"And how could we doubt that?" the Captain muttered.

Yana continued without acknowledging the comment. "Assuming my unquestionably accurate calculations are accurate, we will arrive at Port Defiance some 37 minutes ahead of the terminator. All I have to do is throw this switch."

He threw the switch.

Nothing happened.

The terminator crawled closer.

The Captain lifted her eyebrow.

Yana threw the switch again.

Nothing happened.

[The Master]

"NO!" Yana shouted, tearing the cover off of a modified impeller diving into the machinery.

The Captain's eyebrow fell, and a look of horror crawled across her face. "You've doomed us all," she whispered.

He glared up from where he crouched. "No. I have not."

"We have no hope of making it in time. Not with only three functional impellers."

He ignored her, focusing on tracing the power leads on the ancient machinery. "This should have worked," he muttered to himself. "The theory is sound. It has been done before. Why isn't it working now?"

Precious seconds passed as he searched. And then he found it. Near the base of the machine, one of the conduits had been severed. He lost nearly three seconds staring at it, shocked. It was deliberate.

It was sabotage.

Why?

"Captain?"

She didn't respond. He looked up, to see her giving orders to some of the crew. "Captain!" he called again.

She turned, a look of fury in her one eye. "What?"

"Round up the people that helped me," he said, holding up the severed cable. Her fury drained away as she stared at it as well. "Round them up, and get me some more cable."

[The First Doctor]

Professor Yana didn't get angry, often. Even the Captain, who had known - and, occasionally, loved - hime for decades, could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she'd seen him even raise his voice.

He was furious now - his voice clipped and far too controlled, his eyes narrowed, his fist clenched. The fingers of his left hand drummed out an unconscious beat on his thigh: tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-tap.

There were four men standing before him. One could have served as the model for a marble sculpture of Greek Apollo (How do I know that? he wondered, And what's 'Greece'?), one was small and stunted and bore the marks of life under heavy gravity, one was thin and hatchet-faced, and one was sallow-skinned and resentful.

"One or more of you," he said, holding up the severed cable, "has attempted to murder every man, woman, and child aboard this ship. I have no time for riddles." He glanced at the stone-faced Captain. "Throw them to the Angels. All of them."

The Captain's face went nearly as pale as the face of the Greek god made flesh. "Professor..." she began.

"All of them," he repeated. "We have no time to..."

"IA!" screamed the stunted, heavy-gravity man as he brought his hands to his face. "IA! IA MALAKIM! IA MALAKIM!" his screaming reached a shrieking crescendo as his fingers dug into his eyesockets. Blood and other fluids spurted as he tore at his face.

Everyone, Yana included, took a step back in shock and horror. The man laughed, the ruined pits of his eyesockets streaming blood as he turned in Yana's direction.

"The Angels come!" he gibbered, "Stones. Perfect stone, bearing us to paradise!"

"You're mad," Yana hissed. It sounded trite, but he felt something had to be said.

"Paradise!" he bloody-faced man shrieked! "But not for you!" He lunged blindly, heavy-gravity muscles driving him faster than Yana expected, allowing a flailing arm time to grab him even as he sidestepped. With an oof, he was jerked towards the side of the ship as the madman crashed into the guard rail.

Fighting a madman hand to hand is, at best, difficult. Fighting a madman raised on a heavy-gravity planet, when he has already grappled you, is almost impossible. The heavy muscles and dense bones transforms most strikes that would ordinarily cripple or kill into painful nuisances, and shield vulnerable nerve clusters. The next obvious target, the eyes, were simply not an option.

And so, with the life getting choked out of him and the madman's gibbering laughter roaring around him, Professor Yana did the only thing he could do. He sank his teeth into the man's nose, drawing blood and tugging.

The madman screamed in agony and his grip tightened. Yana's vision turned red and black.

And suddenly, he could breathe again. He sagged limp to the deck, gasping and choking. Distantly, unable to hear against the roaring in his ears, he could hear someone talking to him.

"Unh?" he managed.

The Captain offered him her free hand. The other one still held a bloody knife. "I asked, are you dead?"

He reached out and took her calloused hand. "Yes," he gasped out.

"No time for that," she admonished. "We've got less than fifteen minutes until full dark." With a grunt and a jerk, she heaved him to his feet. "You can be dead later," she said with a gentle smile that transformed her severe features.

"Right, yes," he managed. "The rest of you can stay." He pointed at the Greek god and the resentful man. "You two, heave this idiot overboard." His finger moved to point at the hatchet-faced man. "You. Grab that cable. We have a ship to save."