The Time War: Rebellion

Two

It took me by surprise, the depth of it. It was like looking off a cliff, or being alone with nobody for miles around. Which, technically, was true; there was not a planet, or constellation, or ship, in sight.
I don't know how long I stood there. It felt like days. I was mesmerised by the beauty of it. When the deafening silence became too much to bear and the feeling of infinite isolation had washed over me numerous times, I shut the doors of the ship. Sighing, I rested my forehead against the cold metal doors. How was I supposed to find something that many believed was just a legend, a myth, a fairytale even? In the whole universe, where was I supposed to start?
A loud bleeping disturbed my thoughts. I hurried back to the console and stared at a dust-covered screen. I wondered how old this TARDIS was, or when it was last used, but quickly pushed the thoughts out of my mind as Rassilon's stern face appeared in front of me.
"I have only one message. If you return to Gallifrey without the Other, and we will know, then your TARDIS will be treated with the same extreme prejudice as a Dalek ship."
I blinked, and the President's face faded from the screen.
The silence of the control room, interrupted only by that distant groaning sound, returned.
Out of the blue, a thought came to my head. My TARDIS' exterior was simply a grey cylinder, but other TARDISes I had seen had not looked like that. Did they have some sort of camouflage control?
As if it had read my mind, the time rotor began slowly spinning, and the control panel, which was attached to it, started slowly turning clockwise. It abruptly stopped, and a green lever started gently vibrating. Walking towards it and putting my hand on it, the vibrating stopped. After cautiously pulling the lever, an image of the exterior appeared on the screen. Options beside the image read "19th Century England", "New New York" and "Raxacoricofallapatorius". I pressed 19th Century England, and the room shuddered. The image now showed a shiny black carriage, complete with two live jet black horses attached by leather straps, gently bobbing up and down in the zero gravity of outside.
The screen also had a search option. Searching "Library" made the exterior look like a bookshelf, "Dalek" produced a glinting Skaro Attack Ship, and "Gallifrey" turned the exterior back to default.
Out of sheer curiosity, I searched "The Other".
There was a loud grinding noise, and the exterior was suddenly a blue box, slowly spinning. I couldn't look away from the box, until the grinding noise returned and the TARDIS was a cylinder again.
Utterly confused, I tested a button entitled "Blend". Nothing happened. The ship remained a cylinder.
Now even more confused, I tested more levers and buttons on the contol panel itself. One opened the doors and shut them again, another played loud classical music. One lever, by what the scanner showed, even turned the TARDIS invisible.
Now more relaxed, I pulled a lever, and it was too late when I realised with horror that this lever was the one that made us take off.
I was thrown again to the floor, but this time managed to pull myself up to the console. I frantically pulled levers and pushed buttons to no avail, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
Take us where we're safe, I thought. Just, take us somewhere safe.
Everything stopped. We had landed.
I stumbled towards the doors and struggled to pull them open. I squinted into the bright light of outside.
My eyes adjusted to the brightness. It appeared we were in a large field of some kind. The sky was bright blue, meaning we were not on Gallifrey, and the ground was soft, green grass. All I could hear was wind. Stepping out of the TARDIS, I realised we had landed on the top of a large hill, from which I could see for miles around. Unfortunately, there was not much to see. Miles and miles of fields, some containing lonely trees, others nothing but grass.
Turning to look at the TARDIS, I suddenly realised the exterior had taken the shape of a colossal tree, much like the ones I could see in the surrounding fields, complete with a wooden hatch for an entrance. I began to why we had landed here, and why the TARDIS had taken this shape, when there was a distant boom. It came from the sky.
Looking up, I noticed a small speck flying across the blueness. As it came closer, I realised what was happening.
A large freighter ship was hurtling towards the ground, fire from its entry into the atmosphere streaming behind it. The noise I had heard was the doomed ship breaking the sound barrier. Debris was already breaking off the side, and was dropping dangerously close to where we had landed. I quickly backed away, intending to get in the TARDIS, but somehow the wooden doors would not open. I pounded them, willing them to unlock, but it was hopeless, and small specks of bark gracefully fell from the entrance each time I threw my fists against it, I was a sitting duck, about to be crushed by falling cargo.
As a large, burning crate dropped towards us, there was a faint green flash, and the crate, not just a few metres from us, disintegrated in mid-air, as if it had collided with a force field.
I heard that groan again, and the TARDIS seemed to shimmer and sparkle. Had it created a force field to protect us?
I had no time to think about this, however, as with a deafening boom that reached us a few seconds after the collision, the massive ship smashed into one of the otherwise peaceful fields. The shock wave that came with the crash pushed me over, and a mushroom cloud of flame began to rise into the air above what was left of the wreckage.
I didn't know what to do. There could not have been survivors of that crash, it was devastating. Any crew would have died instantly. But why had my TARDIS brought us here?
Then there was a light. A blinding red light, engulfing as far as the eye could see.
The mushroom cloud stopped. It stopped rising into the air. It was if time had paused.
And then it started falling back to earth.
It covered the whole wreckage, and there was another ear-splitting explosion. The ship, now somehow intact, began to levitate. The hull rose, the thrusters ignited, but were not affecting the freighter's movement. They should have been doing the opposite, as they were in the same position as they were when the ship was falling.
At the same speed at which it had been falling, the ship rose back up into the atmosphere. Fallen cargo were pulled back towards it, as if the ship was magnetic. With increasing speed, and another sonic boom, the freighter rose above the clouds and out of sight.
It was as if nothing had happened. The blinding red light had disappeared, the peacefulness had returned and the wind was almost eerie.
I fell onto the ground and shut my eyes. I prayed that all of this was a dream, that everything: Rassilon's orders, the ship crashing and then not crashing, even getting my own TARDIS, was just a really bad dream.
I began to silently cry.
The closest cousin from my loom was Jessa. We did everything together: we ate, we hunted, we slept in the same room. We were the closest of all our loom cousins.
She had been grown before me. She looked after me after I came out of our House's loom. But she was gone now. Like my whole loom family. The War had taken all of them.
Something she always told me was not to cry for myself. Crying was okay, but only for others. Being scared was okay too, as long as we didn't cry, because fear was good, and made us stronger.
But right now, I was hopeless. All I could do was cry, even if it was for myself, because what else could I do? It felt like I had regenerated nine times over.
I ignored the strangely calming wheezing noise that came from behind me, and ignored the out-of-place creak of a wooden door opening.
"Are you okay there? You seem a bit distressed..."