Jumping For The Stars

Chapter 4 - Onto Adventure

Their happiness did not last long, as Mickey showed them something that no one wanted to hear.

It could be heard in the background of the phone call, quietly at first, "The experts are dead, murdered right in front of me by alien hands. Peoples of the Earth, heed my words. These visitors do not come in peace."

The Mickey must have moved the phone closer to the television set, "Listen to this." Because it suddenly had perfect clarity.

"Our inspectors have searched the sky above our heads," a nasally voice could be heard saying. "And they have found massive weapons of destruction capable of being deployed within forty five seconds."

"What?" the Doctor couldn't believe what he was hearing. 

The nasally voice continued in it's speech, "Our technicians can baffle the alien probes, but not for long. We are facing extinction, unless we strike first. The United Kingdom stands directly beneath the belly of the mother ship. I beg of the United Nations, pass an emergency resolution. Give us the access codes. A nuclear strike at the heart of the beast is our only chance of survival, because from this moment on it is my solemn duty to inform you planet Earth is at war."

Teanna leaned back in her chair, eyes straight ahead, the only thing that she could gather, with a few calculations that is, was that they wanted to reduce the Earth to a wasteland. Oh, no.

"He's making it up. There's no weapons up there, there's no threat. He just invented it," the Doctor said.

"Do you think they'll believe him?" Harriet asked.

"They did last time," Rose pointed out.

"That's why the Slitheen went for spectacle. They want the whole world panicking, because you lot, you get scared, you lash out," the Doctor sounded a bit disgusted by this fact.

"They release the defence code," Rose began, not noticing his tone of voice.

"And the Slitheen go nuclear," the Doctor finished.

"But why?" Harriet asked.

The Doctor seemed determined to solve just that, walking over and opening the shutters to the deadly Slitheen.

"You get the codes, release the missiles, but not into space because there's nothing there. You attack every other country on Earth. They retaliate, fight back. World War Three. Whole planet gets nuked," the Doctor says stating what we've got so far.

"And we can sit through it safe in our spaceship waiting in the Thames. Not crashed, just parked. Only two minutes away," the female Slitheen that almost tried to kill Tea added onto what the Doctor said, sounding proud of their plan.

"But you'll destroy the planet, this beautiful place. What for?" Harriet asked, trying to reason or actually wanting to know, Tea couldn't tell the difference.

"Profit," the Doctor stated the obvious, "That's what the signal is beaming into space. An advert."

"The sale of the century. We reduce the Earth to molten slag, then sell it piece by piece. Radioactive chucks, capable of powering every cut-price star liner and budget cargo ship. There's a recession out there, Doctor. People are buying cheap. This rock becomes raw fuel," she explained.

"At the cost of five billion lives," the Doctor said darkly.

The monster shrugged, "Bargain."

"I give you a choice. Leave this planet or I'll stop you," the Doctor had fury determination in his eyes. He wanted to help, but wasn't afraid of the Slitheen. No, Tea couldn't see him as afraid of aliens. Not unless he had a really good reason.