Pandora's Comet.
Epilogue
'Now for you.' the Doctor turned to Q. Your people refused to have anything to do with the order of the universe. They have the intelligence not to anger the Time Lords, unlike you. I've had enough off your meddling Q. If I find you have had anything more to do with these people or this universe I will not be pleased.'
'I understand.' Q grumbled, 'I'll leave right now...'
'No you won't. I imprison you for a thousand years Q. Trapped in this.' He pulled out a small marble from his coat pocket, it was perfectly clear 'you won't be able to escape.'
Panicking Q backed away from the now advancing Time Lord, while his face was twisted in fear the Doctor's was set in a grim mask. 'No, no! You can't!' The infinitely powerful being cringed from the bead of glass. With an angry shout Q clicked his fingers and vanished in a familiar flash of light.
'Sorry Q.' the Doctor turned the marble in his fingers. The once clear glass bauble was now frosted, a bright white scar ran through the centre like a cat's eye. 'The ultimate prison. Trapped for a thousand years always looking out but unable to effect anything.' He looked to Picard. 'Don't worry, I'll drop him off on some planet. Maybe in the Situ system, it will brake eventually and he'll be free again. Eventually.'
'Q can travel in time.' Data reminded everyone.
The Time Lord smiled. 'Yes but not until after he's finished his sentence. Paradox. Taking any action in your own time line can cause the catastrophic destruction of the universe. Q will kill himself and everyone else if he interferes.' He threw the prison to his young assistant. 'So everything's sorted around here. Time we were off Rose.' He jumped to his blue box. This alien changed gears on people faster than warp six.
Picard opened his mouth, he wanted to say "Thank you," and "Please stay, we can learn so much from each other" but what came out was; 'What the hell happened to the comet?'
The Doctor rubbed his chin, trying to hide a smile. Once again this strange man was the comedian and his eyes sparkled with child like amusement; 'The TARDIS ate it. You see like you can convert energy into matter so can my TARDIS, we needed a refuel anyway.' he shrugged.
Riker's eyes widened to the point where he looked like just a beard with eyes. 'You can convert that much matter?' Picard thought his Number One had a point. It would be possible to teleport chunks of the comet into deep space but the power requirements were enormous and it would take almost a year. The Doctor had done it in a few seconds.
'And engineering? I thought the magnetic containment bottles were about to collapse?' Picard asked.
'They were. I just modulated the defector pulse I used to destroy the Cybermen to the inverse of the bottle's frequency. It folded the containment field on itself quadrupling it's remaining strength. Simple. Any old idiot could have realised that.'
Miss Tyler poked him in the arm to get his attention, then shook her head slightly.
'If the idiot had almost a thousand years of practice that is... Sorry.' the Doctor shrugged before he and his assistant went inside his craft. just after the door closed it opened again and he said to Guinean; 'Well I won't see you again old friend. This is a redundant time line and the barriers are closing.'
'Then goodbye Doctor, good luck.' She smiled sadly to him, stepping back into the centre of the bridge. The alien looked around the bridge one last time before going back inside and the box vanished with its now familiar discordant grinding gears.
Deep inside a hollowed out asteroid in the sol belt a middle aged man taped on his PADD. A hundred years ago the rock had been mined out and abandoned, it's life support and outdated power generator left behind. Section 31 had moved in a week later. Never more than a dozen men knew that the section existed. That included those that were part of it. This little rock, lost in the asteroid belt was so secret that only two of those people knew about it. One, Commander Sloan, rubbed at his three day old stubble. Of course he had intercepted Captain Picard's log on what had happened.
Looking up the second person who knew about his place walked in. He never announced his visits and the station's sensors were useless. Long ago Section 31, then known as the Torchwood institute, had cracked long range teleport technology and used it instead of ships to travel within solar systems. 'See you got the log' the other man said as he sat down.
'I did. You said he could never come here.'
Jack Harkness threw his feet on the table; 'I said he shouldn't, but the rules never meant much to the Doctor.'
'What did you mean by you couldn't return?' Rose asked after they dropped off the marble prison thing.
The Doctor rubbed the back of his head. Well this isn't really our universe, it was part of it once but around the 1960's it suffered a great leap in technology. It was something to do with time travel; they called it a temporal war. It cracked their timeline off like an ice-shelf braking away from the Arctic. An alternate dimension floating in the void. It was during our time war and we were sworn never to interfere in others so the Time Lords let it happen. Your future is what it should have been.'
Rose let that roll around in her mind. During her travels with the Doctor she had learnt more than she ever did at school and could now almost understand what he was saying. 'And now travel between dimensions is impossible.'
'Exactly, the distress beacon slipped through a crack in reality. Now that we're done here we have to go back and close it. This "universe" is out of bounds.'
Rose knew he was leaving his friend behind, Guinean had told her how she was from a cousin race to the Doctors people and she knew how alone he was. 'I'm sorry...'
'Well onwards and upwards; like I always say.' the Doctor beamed a lunatics smile as he hit the little bell on the main control column.
That confused Rose; 'What? When do you say that?'
'Just then.'
End Pandora's comet