Stellar Collision

Chapter 1

"Stars cannot shine without darkness."

As usual, the TARDIS was being uncooperative. The engines wheezed stubbornly and the ship bucked violently enough to send the Doctor sprawling onto the console room floor.

"Oh, that's very nice. Thanks dear." he grumbled as he climbed to his feet, steadying himself on the console and absently straightening his bow tie.

He tapped a few keys on the spatial location input and stamped his foot when, once more, the coordinates he'd entered immediately zeroed out. His repeated attempts to dematerialize were being thwarted.

"I don't know what is troubling you" the Doctor shouted above the din, "but for the record, you are being unreasonable!"

He adjusted the inertial dampers while simultaneously switching to manual nav. The TARDIS protested with some ugly grinding sounds and spewed a shower of sparks from the rotor. Barely hanging onto the console at this point, he just managed to activate the Gyroscopic Stabilizers. He blew out a sigh of relief. The shuddering ceased and once he had his footing, he tried once more to aim the blue box toward the distress beacon of a stranded spacecraft.

They'd picked up on the beacon's signal while the Doctor was servicing his ship's Hostile Action Displacement System. The HADS was a vital part of a TARDIS defense system and it was crucial that he always keep it in working order. The feature had saved his neck on more than one occasion and he was angry with himself that he'd neglected it this long. Being without a traveling companion, he had plenty of time for such repair work these days. So there were no excuses.

The Doctor had been away from Amy and Rory for nearly fifty years in his time stream. While he missed them greatly, he took comfort in the fact that he could return for a visit, and to them, he'd only have been gone a couple weeks. He was working on laying low. River had said he'd gotten too big, too known to the universe. These days he stuck to space exploration, experiencing beautiful cosmic events, rarely visiting earth, rarely interacting with people. It had been a long time (ten years for him) since he'd even gone to see River. The guilt he felt over the impact he'd had on her life's direction left his feelings for her clouded and complicated. Sensing this, she let him off the hook by having adventures of her own. And plenty of other men. Theirs was certainly not the typical marriage.

He had just finished tinkering in the wiring panel and was having a particularly hard time positioning the doxometer pin when he was interrupted by the distress signal. Welcoming the distraction and hungry for a bit of adventure, he homed in on the beacon and was almost immediately met with resistance by his stubborn ship. The Doctor and the TARDIS had been engaged in a battle of wills ever since. The doxometer pin sat forgotten on his tool case.

"Come on old girl. Someone's in trouble." he encouraged gently now that he'd regained some semblance of control. The engines still whined and sputtered a bit but at least she'd stopped with the pyrotechnics and convulsions. He rotated the steering mechanism and increased the space-time throttle, bringing the TARDIS back on course. "Lovely." he smiled, clearly pleased with himself. "And River says I'm rubbish with the manual controls."

Just as the source of the beacon- a tiny space capsule- came into view on the scanner, the Cloister Bell bonged ominously. The Doctor's conviction waned slightly at the sound and he nervously patted the navigation panel, his eyes darting nervously around the console room.

"There there. What about this has you so skittish?" He gingerly decreased the space-time throttle as the TARDIS spun gracefully through the cosmic dust of the Malum Star System. "We've been here once before, eh?" the Doctor prattled, mostly in an attempt to allay his own doubts, "I believe it was that time I bet Romana..."