inferno fiction

anging moodily over the main console, Turlough unconsciously fiddled with his tie and rubbed a hand through his close cropped auburn hair. Humming out of tune he seemed mesmerised by the winking lights and multi-function uni-stabilisers. He glanced to his left, unmoved by the quiet efficiency of the TARDIS and noticed the visi-screen holding a mute conversation with the rest of the circuitry littering the craft. Unrelenting figures toiled a mournful path across its blinking screen; looking out on the world as if begging for someone to watch it.

Turlough did.

Suddenly the abstract symbols were erased from the screen to be replaced by a chattering array of letters, racing backwards and forwards, each line trying to out run the other. Then it happened, the TARDIS lurched from side to side, the main time rotor juddered, screeching its protests unseen antagonists.

Turlough was flung in a highly undignified manner, across to the main doors where he scrambled desperately, like a spider on the side of a bath, for a handhold. Almost immediately the console room steadied out. The TARDIS had retained its balance.

A very concerned Time Lord launched himself at the console a few seconds later, and with a flurry of hands deactivated, activated various functions before fixing the alien youth with a steely stare. Face grim, the Doctor spoke: 'You didn't touch anything, did you?'

Numbly, Turlough shook his head and began to recite utter gibberish as a means of asserting his innocence. Babblings the Doctor chose to ignore, until the youth asked tactfully, 'What's wrong?'

'Something or someone has, or did, take control of the TARDIS for at least a minute. To use that amount of energy they must be desperate.'

Turlough sneered. 'And just how do you know they're desperate?'

The Doctor beamed and replied, 'Because they have just activated a system called co-ordinate override. We are now on a locked and fixed course to wherever they want us.' His brow creased; the Doctor thoughtfully studied other readouts, his face grew graver and graver. 'Oh dear...oh dear, dear, dear. Someone is making holes, very big holes at that, in the Temporal Vortex.'

'What? What does that mean?' asked Turlough, puzzled by the Doctor's cryptic exhortations.

'Doomsday!' summed up the Time Lord in one chilling word.

~~~

cross the Time Lines, at the very epicenter of time itself, sat the Lords of Time; Lords of Space and Lords of Eternity. Lords upon Lords were assembled within the confines of one singularly important and, dependant on which view point was taken, insignificant planet. They had come from all time and space, and all planets from within the infinite universe; together in a common bond to share and experience each other’s knowledge. With all the most brilliant creatures in the universe here, a solution could be found, or could it?

The planet was Gallifrey. The location was the Capitol. The time, immaterial. The function: to discuss a threat that touched all creation and dirtied it with its foulness. To isolate and eliminate that threat. Only one problem existed - the threat came from within and outside time itself. The threat could not be traced to anywhere; it kept moving, always covering its tracks but leaving behind it the most destructive force known to the entire universe - Time. Time was of the essence and time is not what the Lords had.

Time was running out everywhere and once it stopped flowing the dissolution would follow and that would be the end of everyone’s troubles, forever or never, for they had no time and could not say whether it had happened once or even twice...?

The Capitol, heart of the Time Lords was little more than a debating chamber at this moment. They had sworn never to interfere and they still held to this policy.

The Lord of Mortality took the stand in the centre of the Panopticon. The echoes of discontent were quickly stifled, because every Lord realised they had little time to argue.

'My Lords and Ladies. I, as representative of the race known as Mortals, am not one to speak of such concepts as Time because we have little time ourselves to live. Our life spans are short in most of your terms, sometimes we go past a century but...still, I will press on.' Abruptly he was cut short by a chuckle.

'About time too!' screeched a voice mockingly, nudging his companion, also a Lord of Eternity. They had very little respect for mortals.

ISSUE ELEVEN

ISSUE NINE

ISSUE EIGHT

ISSUE SEVEN

ISSUE SIX

ISSUE FIVE

ISSUE FOUR

ISSUE THREE

ISSUE TWO

ISSUE ONE