The Last Great Time War: part III

Appropriation

The TARDIS console rumbled with another explosion outside. A roundel on the wall burst into sparks and flame as a powerful enemy death ray scored a glancing blow. Any closer and it would have been the end.
The Renegade pulled out a stop and the TARDIS leapt back five seconds into the past. As soon as the brief trip through the vortex was over, he cranked a lever forward. A deadly mass of radiant energy surged up the column, flooding the console room with light and highlighting the lines on the Renegade's face. The energy erupted out the top of the TARDIS and seared a massive hole in the side of the Time Dreadnaught that was about fire the shot that nearly wiped out the TARDIS. The colossal ship went reeling and burning through space, the roundel on the wall reappeared, and the Renegade shuddered slightly as he felt the timeline shift yet again.

Time Dreadnaughts were the newest Gallifreyan warship, recently developed for this very War. They were like War TARDISes, but much larger. Each one had a crew of thousands, and carried enough weaponry to destroy dozens of star systems, or to single-handedly take on hundreds of Dalek saucers. They were certainly a tough foe to defeat.

The fleet of the New Temporal Alliance was up to the challenge, having grown to over ten thousand ships. Scores of TARDISes with their pilots and any Gallifreyans who wanted to come along had fled the tyranny of Rassilon to fight for a better future, present, and past. The Cybermen had grown in number during the battles, and augmented themselves with Dalek, Time Lord, and any other superior technology they could find. The members of the old Temporal Alliance were rebuilding and growing their fleets, setting up bases and mines on ruined worlds and expanding their influence.

Now, it was time to take it up a notch. The next mission was to conquer Ulyssia, a Time Lord colony world. It was mostly blue ocean, with scattered islands and a couple small continents. It was just the right distance from Gallifrey. Close enough to make an effective beachhead for further attacks into the Time Lord Empire, but isolated enough that it would be defensible and difficult for the Time Lords to take back.

It was also protected by a quantum barrier known as a sky trench, and a fleet of twelve Time Dreadnoughts and one hundred Black Hole Carriers.
The NTA brought five hundred ships to deal with the defenses. They would have sent more, but they did not want this battle to grow any larger than necessary. They had to be careful, because even small skirmishes were sometimes known to escalate into conflagrations that involved tens of thousands of ships, many intertangled timelines, and laid waste to or destroyed galactic scale swaths of space and time.

This battle was not galaxy rending, but the stakes were still significant. If the vortex blockade and spatial loop holding back the Time Lord reinforcements were breached, it could still end in disaster. The Renegade had seen enough disasters to last many lifetimes.

"Concentrate fire on the wound," he ordered. The damaged Time Dreadnaught was recovering from its spin, looping around, and rearranging its weapons for another attack. All around the TARDIS, the Nekkistani cruisers fired bolts of antimatter into the damaged point until the Dreadnought rent open, spewing out a mass of machinery, rooms, weapons, support structure, indistinguishable molten material, and energy the size of a city. The battleships veered away in space and time to avoid the shockwave of devastation that was spreading though both.

"One down," the Renegade said. "Move to cut off temporal reinforcements!"

The Nekkistani vanished into the time vortex to stop the Time Lords from preventing the loss of their powerful ship.

Meanwhile, the Unvoss and the Monan Host were fighting a group of Black Hole Carriers and two Time Dreadnaughts at the same time. One of them was badly damaged, while the other wasn't even scratched.

"Cyber-controller," the Renegade said, "board the damaged Time Dreadnought and upgrade the crew. Your current objective is to seize control of the enemy fleet. Attempt to open a path to the planet's surface if possible, but do not land."

The Cyber fleet formed a four dimensional sphere around the ship and boarded it. Once it was under their control, the NTA hurled three planet splitter missiles at the sky trench. It wavered for a split second, but did not give.
When the blast faded, the Renegade opened a communications channel to the Ulyssian command.

"That was a warning. Please surrender the planet now or we will have to take it by force. If you surrender now, there will be much less loss of life."

"Why should I trust anything you say," said the colony leader. "You are one of our greatest enemies! You caused many of our greatest defeats!"

"No. Rassilon is your greatest enemy. I am only trying to liberate you from him. You must be new. There was a time, not so long ago, when I fought for Rassilon. I led you to many of your greatest victories. I quit when I saw that Rassilon was going to tear down everything good if I didn't stop him."

"You can't fool me. I know who you are and what you've done. Everything we have we have because of Rassilon!"

"Rassilon is the most corrupt man I've ever met, and that's saying a lot. You can't trust a word he says."

"Rassilon isn't the one destroying my ships and attacking my planet. In the current situation, I'd say he's much less of a problem than you are."

The Renegade cursed as TARDIS was hit by another glancing blow. Trying to talk and avoid enemy fire at the same time was no easy task.

"If you don't want to discuss actual surrender terms," he said, "then I suggest we cut this conversation short right now. But be warned. Things will be much more difficult for both of us if you continue to hold out."

"I'm not going to give up and let a terrorist take control of my world," the colony leader said before cutting the connection.

The Renegade sighed. "He chose the hard way," he said. "Why do they always choose the hard way?"

Down on the planet, the colony leader collapsed in a chair, his face in his hands. The most feared Time Lord in the cosmos was descending upon his world to steal away everything he worked so hard to build. What was he going to do?

Simple. He was going to fight to the bitter end, use every resource at his disposal. He ordered all civilians to go into the bunkers, not that it would do much good. All ground based weapons were pointed at the sky to blast away as many enemy ships as possible.

A few minutes later, the colony leader collapsed back into the chair as a huge earthquake hit. An alarm blared as dust fell from the ceiling. The sky trench was gone! Reports came that ground based weaponry was being reduced to craters and mushroom clouds. Just as he was about to signal Gallifrey for aid, the colony leader heard the loud grinding and wheezing of an old museum piece, the last of the type-40's.

The Renegade stepped into the command center, staser drawn. The room was small, and only the colony leader was there. In the middle of the room was a table with controls and several empty chairs.

"Back away from the controls," the Renegade said.

The colony leader pulled out a staser of his own, but the Renegade shot it out of his hands before he could fully draw it. The colony leader kicked his ruined weapon to the far end of the room, where it burst into flaming pieces.

"Where is everyone," the Renegade asked.

"Some are up there fighting or else they've gone to the other command centers. I won't tell you where."

"Meaning they've deserted. If the primary command center is this size, there aren't any others."

The colony leader cursed.

"I commend you for not being a coward," the Renegade said, "but you can't possibly win now. Please get in my TARDIS. Don't try anything or you'll upset her, and that would not be very pleasant."

The colony leader did as he was told. The controls were shouting reports of enemy troops in the streets.

"People and troops of Ulyssia," the Renegade announced over the controls, "you have lost. Surrender now and the fighting will end. All of your lives will be spared. You may not feel it yet, but you are free from Rassilon's tyranny. You'll thank me later."

One Gallifreyan colony world down, over a thousand more left. Once enough of those were taken, then the Cruciform, then on to Gallifrey itself. All while fighting the Daleks at the same time. There were a lot of fun times ahead.