To Boldly…WHAT?

It was not his universe, the Doctor was certain. He could tell that without having to check the TARDIS' instruments. In his own universe, there was no species like the one that had challenged him; personal experience had proved that. Still, there was a nagging familiarity, but that might have come from nine centuries of sightseeing. The TARDIS bore out his conclusion but did offer the information that this universe was nearly identical to his own, with a certainty out to ten to the power of ten trillion decimal places.

"Still, that only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and transdimensional rifts." The Doctor fiddled with his controls to get a better look at the ship or ships that occupied the space nearest him.

There were two hundred sixty-eight, according to the TARDIS, all arranged with their bows pointed in the same direction. At him. "Once more unto the breach. As if the last seven thousand times weren't enough. But it wasn't one little Doctor and his TARDIS that got you all so worked up, was it?" Well, to be fair, the Daleks often got similar feelings whenever the Doctor showed up, but what in the universe could be playing Doctor with these heavily armed, highly agitated aliens?

Even as the Doctor tried to open a channel to the fleet arrayed against him, the TARDIS sounded alarms at the approach of a single vessel. Single? Just one? Who could raise such an alarm by sending just one ship? The incoming ship slowed to sublight speeds and the Doctor could but gape.

The ship was massive. It was a simple cube, measuring a thousand meters on each edge and encompassing over a thousand million cubic meters of space. There were no visible engines to propel it, nor were there even things as simple as exhaust vents. The thing simply moved through space as if it wished to. It was a strictly utilitarian design, displaying none of the menace of the ships poised to defy it, none of the elegance of Zel-Anurian ships grown of supernova-tempered crystals, nor any of the ungainliness of any one of a thousand other races.

It was illuminated from within by a sickly green light that flickered as the ship moved, the light briefly obstructed by the cube's external latticework. Evidently, this was the vessel that had issued the ultimatum to surrender, but who could have built it?

"Fascinating topics, but certainly not fascinating enough to warrant my standing around and looking silly while I'm standing in the center of a battlefield." The Doctor spun and no sooner had he laid his hands on the controls than the TARDIS rocked from a salvo of weapons fire from the flotilla he had first encountered. Most of the fire was directed toward the cube, but the TARDIS received its fair share as well. "Oh, come on, now!"

The TARDIS' shields held, but for how long? The Doctor pleaded with a universe—just one of many—that seemed dead set on toying with him. "All I need is a few more seconds…"

"…because discretion is the better part of sticking around to see what the fuss is about!" A satisfied grin crept across his face as the TARDIS rematerialized inside one of the attacking vessels. He had chosen one farthest from the action with the intention of scouting about a bit, but he had no idea if this particular ship would be joining the fray, so it seemed wise to quit dallying and get moving.

After a quick change of shoes—lavender being a much better match for his navy blue suit than orange—the Doctor left the safety of the TARDIS and stepped into the alien vessel. The first thing that hit him was the smell, and the Doctor was very nearly knocked off his feet.

"Even with the law of averages working, I rarely seem to chance across a race that has invented potpourri." The smell was familiar, which was not to say welcome. It was the stink of unwashed bodies and not-quite-reclaimed wastes mingling with industrial scents of lubricants and that indescribable odor of dust and disuse, the type of olfactory experience that simply screams "storage area."

The lights were flashing in colors not quite red that still managed to convey a sense of "red alertness," only to be expected on a ship in battle. The muted wailing of klaxons helped, too. Patting his pocket to make sure his necessary survival gear was in place (his sonic screwdriver and perhaps a stray jelly baby) he began to look for a way out.

He could feel the vibrations of the ship's engines through his feet, and his ears also told him of the discharge of shipboard weapons. As yet, his host vessel had not been struck by hostile fire, which the Doctor took as a good sign. Something that appeared to be a door waited for him at the far end of the cargo bay and the Doctor marched toward it with a resolutely jaunty step. As if buoyed by his effervescent mien, the door promptly opened and the alarms grew louder.

The lights in the corridor beyond were brightening and dimming in colors that were not quite red but still managed to convey a sense of red-alertness. They were flashing in a little over one second intervals, almost like watching a Charlie Chaplin movie in slow motion.

"Wonder how old Charlie did on his voyage?" the Doctor mused. "I was always dead set against his steamer trunk idea. Have to pop back in for a visit when I get the chance."

The Doctor poked his head into the corridor to look about. Satisfied that there was no danger, his body followed and aimed itself toward the right, which was as good a direction as any. More accurately, it was as good as left, which was the only other "any" available. Six to one, fifty percent to the other, he shrugged.

Running footsteps were becoming audible over the raucous alarms and naturally, they were coming his way. He resolutely jammed his hands in his pockets and stopped walking. In the few seconds he had left, he practiced his disarming techniques: smiles, winks, and opening lines.

One of the shaggy-haired aliens came barreling around the corner and stopped dead in his—no, her—tracks, surprise unmistakably etched on her face. It was there barely long enough for the Doctor to say, "Hello."

As soon as the alien recovered from her shock, a very dangerous-looking weapon appeared in her hand, drawn with lightning speed from her belt. "Don't move!"

The Doctor obediently froze, smile and all. He knew he looked quite silly with his mouth still open in greeting, but he had been given an order by his captor and all he could do until given leave to move was pray he didn't dribble on himself until then.

The alien tapped a small device on her uniform and spoke into it without taking her eyes from the Doctor. "Captain, I have found an intruder on deck six."

"Borg?"

"Negative," the woman replied. "He is human, possibly Federation. Shall I take him to a cell?"

"Quickly, then," the captain's voice affirmed. "I will send other technicians to take over your duties while you watch him."

"Understood." She pointed with her off hand. "Down the corridor, human."

"Oid," the Doctor corrected.

She frowned. "What?"

"That's my line," the Doctor offered with a smile. "But it's not 'human,' it's 'humanoid'."

With a snarl and a shake of her maned head, the woman pointed again. "Either way, walk down the corridor to your cell. You are my prisoner. Or prisoneroid, if it makes you happier. Withdraw your hands from your pockets."

As the Doctor turned in the indicated direction, his hands held in plain sight, he asked, "If the topic is making me happier, holstering that gun would make me ecstatic."

"It was not."

Settles that, then. The Doctor marched up to a T intersection and stood pondering the wall before him. "Not much of a cell, is it?"

"To your left," came the harsh order.

Not much of a sense of humor, either, he noted. He made his way to the indicated cell but didn't quite make it before one of Zeus' own thunderbolts hammered the ship, sending the Doctor and his captor to the deckplates. The lights dimmed even more than usual, but this time they stayed darkened for several seconds. Emergency lights flickered to some semblance of life. The Doctor had difficulty seeing, but he could tell that the alien woman was already on her feet, her weapon ready. Evidently, she was quite at home in the dark.

"All hands prepare for warp speed," a different voice called over the intercom. "The Borg have damaged our warp drive, but we must withdraw and regroup to renew our attack. If we succeed, we will join our captain in Sto-Vo-Kor and send our enemies to Gre'thor! Q'apla!"

The Doctor didn't need a word-for-word translation to realize that the situation had, as it usually did, gone bad. For all that the previous situation was already bad, but relatively speaking, he was as deep in it as he could get. So far.

An unnatural-sounding shrieking whine wrenched at his ears as the starship's FTL engines engaged and the darkness became almost tangible. This didn't seem to deter his captor, however. "In your cell," she ordered.

"Um, I can't see it. Perhaps a map? Braille is nice. Don't suppose you'd be willing to take my hand…?"

There was a brief silence before a flash of light temporarily blinded the Doctor. When he blinked himself back into visual acuity, he saw that the woman had pulled a small light from her belt. "Your cell is there."

The harsh light revealed a washbasin, a receptacle that could only loosely be termed a toilet, and a metal slab welded to the wall, evidently a bed. "Ah." The Doctor strode in, hands again in his pockets. "All the comforts of home, had I been raised in a hardware store."

The noise of the engines ceased and the lights came up, but dimly. The second voice came again. "All hands make repairs! Damage control teams to your stations! We must make haste to return to the site of battle. Admiral Yin'Vogh crashed his battleship into the Borg cube and breached his own warp core. The cube is heavily damaged and if we are to capitalize on this, we must re-enter the fray with all speed."

The woman stepped back and touched a control on the wall, frowned when it wouldn't respond. She activated her communicator. "Sir, this is Ka'alia. No power is available to the detention cell. I must remain here with the prisoner."

"Very well," the voice responded, sounding peeved and surly. "You may as well serve some function aboard this ship. Perhaps you could go to the galley and prepare him some ice cream."

"Well, that would be spl—…oh." The Doctor had been about to use the comment to lighten the mood, as was his wont, but something in Ka'alia's face stopped him. "Have I intruded on something?"

Ka'alia shook her head sharply. "Only upon our battle with the Borg."

"The who?"

Ka'alia's brow seemed to furrow, but with her ridged forehead, it was hard to tell. "How can you not know of the Borg?"

The Doctor shrugged, pursing his lips and looking innocently about. "Been away a while. In galaxies far away and times long past, to borrow and mangle an overused catch phrase."

"You babble as if addled," Ka'alia grumbled.

The Doctor's smile nearly lit up the cell. "You know, I do! Charming, isn't it?"

This almost caused Ka'alia's frown to lessen. "Diverting, at the least. But answer the question. How can you not know of the Borg?"

"Well, I'm pretty much a lone traveler, itinerant adventurer, sojourner in solitude—ooh, I like that—nomadic wanderer of the plains."

"Perhaps I should have you detained in sick bay."

"Oh, that's all right," the Doctor said. "We can talk just as well right here. And I don't really feel like ice cream anyway, so why not pull up a slab and sit a while?"

Ka'alia slowly entered the cell and leaned against a wall. The weapon was still aimed in the Doctor's general direction although not specifically at any vital organs. "So you travel alone? And how far? It must be quite a distance to have never heard of the Borg."

"Quite a distance, indeed. I've never met a Borg. What are they, and why do you hate them so?"

"They are an abomination, a bastard race of machine and meat that devours everything it touches," Ka'alia spat. "They cannibalize flesh and co-opt machinery and combine the two to make more of their vile kind."

"Vivid."

"Wait until you have seen one. They are part organic and part cybernetic, and when the collective absorbs you, they devour your mind, as well. They subvert your will and consciousness and make it part of their group mind."

"They do what?" the Doctor exploded.

Ka'alia repeated herself. "Robotic parts are grafted to the living bodies and the brain is made part of an immense network of similarly controlled brains, making a massive, living supercomputer linked by a subspace communication net. What one knows, all know."

"They only take up part of the body with cybernetics?" At Ka'alia's nod, the Doctor "hmmed" to himself. "Like Cybermen with a fear of commitment."

Ka'alia straightened. "You know of similar creatures?"

"Similar, yes, but they're gone and done for now. Extinct. Or discontinued. No longer supported by their IT department, I suppose."

"How did you get here?" Ka'alia asked.

"Now that's not fair," the Doctor pouted. "You asked me a question. Now it's my turn."

There was the briefest of pauses. "Very well."

"Where exactly am I? Not necessarily spatial coordinates, but a general sense of where I landed," the Doctor clarified.

"You are aboard the Klingon vessel Gorok. We are a fleet tender. The fleet was assigned to defeat the Borg cube attacking our home world of Qo'noS."

The Doctor frowned in puzzlement. "One single ship against an entire planet?"

Now Ka'alia lowered her weapon. "There is much to tell of the Borg and not much time. Listen quickly and I will try to explain."

As she spoke, the Doctor listened raptly. He learned of the Borg's ability to adapt to and repel different weapons within moments of their first use. He learned of the failed attempt of the Borg to travel back in time to preempt the humans of Earth making first contact with the Vulcans. In short, he learned just how dire the situation was.

"And you believe this cube is traveling to your world to try to return to your people's past like they tried with Earth?"

"We think so."

"Wonder why they don't just travel through time first at some discreet, out-of-the-way location first and then sneak up on an unsuspecting world. Better chance of success."

Ka'alia's weapon came up. "You would side with them?"

"No, no, no, no! Far from it! I was just observing that twice now they've made a tactical error that may well work to our advantage," the Doctor said quickly. "By electing to charge straight through your fleet, they've drawn attention to themselves and brought the wrath of all Klingon-dom down on their collective heads. And they've also gotten me somewhat worked up, as well. It'll be their downfall, mark my words."

"Now you sound as if you are mocking us."

"Never."

"Wise." She turned her head as if she had heard something but her attention never left the Doctor.

A man dressed as Ka'alia was appeared at the door of the cell. "This is your prisoner?" It was the man who had spoken to Ka'alia over her communications link.

"Yes, Commander."

"Captain," the man corrected sharply. "Our old captain died in the Borg's attack. I am captain now."

Ka'alia said nothing, but even in the dimness, the Doctor thought he saw something twisting her lips. "What do you want me to do with the prisoner?"

"Interrogate him, obviously."

"I doubt he has anything useful to contribute," Ka'alia said. "He is either exceptionally strong-willed or a buffoon."

"So you are now a ship's counselor?" the captain sneered.

"No. I have spoken with him. Speak to him yourself and see what you may."

The captain eyeballed Ka'alia for a long moment, then turned his angry gaze on the Doctor. "Who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor. And you're the captain. And she's the woman with a gun." The Doctor grinned widely. "Now that we're all acquainted, perhaps tea! If you have some of those nice little sandwiches, that would be perfect."

The captain strode forward and grabbed the Doctor's lapels. "What did you say?"

"Introductions, tea, sandwiches. I left out the part about calming down because you weren't so cranky yet. Now that you are, would you let me go, please? Save us both a lot of trouble."

Ka'alia spoke up quickly. "As I told you, Captain, he is either strong of will or completely scatterbrained. I have been unable to discern which as yet."

Now the captain released the Doctor with a shake of his head, almost as if he feared catching whatever the Doctor had. "Federation jesters. Why do you choose now to interfere?"

"Actually, it was by mistake. You see, my ship appeared in space between you and these Borg fellows…"

"That was you?" the captain interrupted.

"Unless you know of other blue boxes that appeared between you and the Borg, then that was me. I didn't intentionally arrive here but now that I'm aboard your ship, I'd like to help if I can."

With a snort, the captain began to laugh, a grim, humorless sound. "Perhaps you may serve as bait. While the Borg assimilate you, we can attack."

"Well, any little bit helps, I suppose. But what are we working with, here? Your ship is damaged, and so is theirs?"

The captain whirled on Ka'alia. "You claim to be the chief engineer. Take him to engineering and begin working. If he has any technical knowledge to share, use it. At the first suspicion of trouble, vaporize him."

As the captain stomped away with a rather impressively petulant stride, the Doctor followed Ka'alia to the engineering section. He had to trot to keep up with her equally energetic steps. "Um, excuse me, but I didn't get your name, rank, or telephone number. It might help to know to whom I'm speaking," he offered helpfully.

"Ka'alia. Commander. What is a 'telephone'?"

"Oh. Never mind. So as the chief engineer, what can you tell me about your ship?"

Tersely, Ka'alia explained the concepts of dilithium crystals, warp drive, impulse power, and anti-matter. "Let me know if you can't keep up with this," she said in a soft snarl.

"I was waiting for you to speed up a bit, actually. So these crystals dampen the matter-antimatter reaction and you power your ship with that. Dangerous, but efficient, I suppose. Unless you lose magnetic containment."

"Always a risk, but we have triple-redundant safeties—including one powered by the warp core reaction itself, so an overload sends the safety into overdrive as well—coupled with a new development: subspace resonance generators that diffuse any runaway reaction long enough for us to jettison the warp core."

"Oh, brilliant!" The Doctor was genuinely surprised and pleased at the same time. There were precious few kindred intellects in the universe with whom he could converse and although this Ka'alia was most likely limited to engineering in her subject matter, she was still close. Quite close.

The two of them stepped into the brighter lights of engineering and the Doctor drew up short at the sight of Ka'alia's mane of hair. It was red. "Oh, now that is so monumentally and fundamentally unfair! Klingons get to be ginger. Aliens everywhere get to be ginger. I never get to be ginger, oh no. Not once in ten lifetimes do I even come close. Not so much as a freckle, even."

"Now what are you babbling about?" Ka'alia asked peevishly, yanking a data pad from a technician.

"Just the basic and immutable bias of the universe against my personal preferences," the Doctor replied.

"Then I have a kindred spirit," Ka'alia retorted. "Come this way."

"Did you just say 'kindred spirit'? That is so wonderfully spot-on. I was thinking almost exactly the same thing not a few seconds before!"

Ka'alia rolled her eyes. "You said you were a doctor, not a sycophant."

"A jack of all trades and a master of nearly as many," the Doctor grinned. "The rest I'm just very good at. Well, when I say 'very good,' you can substitute 'phenomenal,' if you like. Nearly the same thing. Well…"

"Over here," Ka'alia sighed. If I let him speak without interrupting him, it is much like dealing with a warp core breach of the mouth. "As you can see, our damage is minimal but it affects crucial areas of the ship. I don't know what Command—…Captain Khratok intends to do with our pitiful weapons and meager supplies, but I'm sure he has some kind of plan other than throwing ourselves into a meat grinder."

"I would hope so. That might be a good idea if your Borg friends were vegetarians, though."

"They are not my friends, and do not presume to call them that!" Ka'alia's eyes almost flared into incandescence as they bored into the Doctor's skull.

Taken aback, the Doctor quietly raised his hands. "Forgive me." Thoughtfully, he cocked his head to the side. "They took someone from you, didn't they?"

"They have taken many people from many others. It is what they do," Ka'alia said brusquely. "Notice the fluctuations of the impulse drive coils. We must replace the plasma control valves in the second portside bank."

As his guide yanked a selection of tools from a bin, the Doctor had time to notice that many of these Klingons were looking at him—and at Ka'alia—and not doing a good job of stifling their mocking comments and snickers. Many of the comments were a great deal off-color and had to do with Ka'alia's choice in bed partners, but the Doctor merely buried his distaste beneath a champion-class poker face.

Ka'alia apparently didn't hear the remarks. She turned to face the Doctor and held out a tool bag so she could fill it. As she dumped tools into the container, she whipped her weapon out of its holster and sent a blistering red bolt of energy blazing into a console between two of the mocking Klingons. "If you cannot find work, I will find an airlock for you to occupy and the Borg can feast on your corpses!" she roared.

The crewmen scattered under a shower of electrical sparks and molten metal. Ka'alia, satisfied, holstered her disruptor and stalked out of the room. "I'm sure there was no reason for that," the Doctor offered, trying to walk a greased tightrope between chastisement and not getting himself killed.

"I'm sure there was," Ka'alia returned. "It is all they understand. Force and fury. Reason and logic may work on Vulcan, but Klingons generally only understand brute muscle and aggression."

"I take it you have a different point of view?"

Ka'alia spared him a quick frown. "Yes." She said nothing more until they reached their destination. She began working at a furious pace, leaving the Doctor to wonder if she was hurrying because of the Borg threat or out of sheer anger.

Well, the Klingons do seem to be genetically inclined toward irritability, he thought. That was obvious from the instant I first met them.

"They assimilated my husband and sons," Ka'alia whispered, faintly audible over the hissing and sparking of her welder.

"They what? They made your family into more of them?"

Ka'alia kept working, staring blankly into the heartless void of yesterdays long since dead. "I was assigned to a science vessel, searching for worlds to colonize. The Borg came to our planet out on the edges of the Alpha Quadrant. The whole Empire heard the distress calls, relayed word-for-word over our subspace communications net, but all we could do was head for the colony at maximum warp and listen to the screams and cries die out one by one as the Borg took our families."

"I'm sorry," the Doctor whispered. "I can't imagine…well, I can, a little. A friend's…mother was taken by the Cybermen I mentioned. I couldn't do a thing to stop it. But I could at least avenge her."

"As we will do here," Ka'alia said flatly. "Even if it means dying ourselves, we will stop the Borg from killing every Klingon they touch."

"Those words don't sound much like the real you," the Doctor offered, picking up a small module and drawing his sonic screwdriver. "At least, not the you that I believe hides behind those expressive eyes."

Those expressive eyes flickered in annoyance. "You know nothing of me, humanoid."

As the Doctor began to work on the surprisingly intuitive controls and circuits, he corrected Ka'alia. "A bit more than you think. For instance, you seem less of a mind to inflict harm or death than your shipmates."

"Not all of us share a lust for blood and battle. Do all of your race talk so much?"

"Well, yes. But to different degrees."

Ka'alia snorted. "As do we. I simply have a lesser degree than others of my kind. I have felt that it is my calling to bring life, to create."

The Doctor smiled. "A noble calling, indeed."

She shoved a tool back into the bag and drew another. "Do not mistake me, Doctor. I still feel it is the destiny of Klingons to conquer and to rule, and to that end I raised my three sons as best I could to fulfill that destiny. However, I have always known that there are better ways to raise sons than by bathing them in blood from their birth."

"Alliteratively descriptive and gruesome at the same time," the Doctor said appreciatively.

Ka'alia gave a noncommittal "hm" and drew a scanner—a "tricorder," she called it—and examined the work she'd done so far. "I have even tried to guide my staff without using the heavy hand of violence, but you saw how well that works. Eventually, I have to explode in anger to get anything done."

"Billions of parents who have teenage children can sympathize," the Doctor consoled her. "For what it's worth, I find your intentions admirable."

"For what it is worth," she echoed, withdrawing a damaged circuit board and looking for a replacement. "And I find myself questioning whether anything truly is 'worth it' any longer."

The Doctor paused in his work and leaned against a console, looking into Ka'alia's eyes. "Why?"

"I have the same passion and fire as any other Klingon," Ka'alia said, "but with the deaths of my husband and sons, I feel as if the fire has been snuffed out and can not be rekindled no matter how hard I try. You see how my subordinates mock me. Klingons throughout the Empire share their views. Ours is a culture based on predation and conquest, and anyone who feels otherwise…" She shrugged.

"I've seen that before," the Doctor said softly.

"Perhaps, but until you have felt it, you will not understand. The loneliness, the isolation…"

"Those I understand, and all too well. But you aren't alone. Not in feeling as you do about finding a peaceful path nor in this room." The Doctor's dark eyes made contact with hers. "I'm not saying you have to like me or anything of the sort, but I am saying you can share your burden with me for as long as we have. It'll make the work easier and the time less stressful."

Ka'alia's eyes clouded and she tried to blink, but something in his gaze held hers. She shook her head quickly. "I must concentrate. Finish that bank of circuit chips and join me over by that status board. Please."

With a slight smile, the Doctor moved to do as Ka'alia had said. "I see by the way you said 'please' that you're making a conscious effort to overcome something on my behalf. It's greatly appreciated."

This time, Ka'alia finally replied with a faint laugh. "I am overcoming a linguistic deficiency. Klingons do not have a word for 'please.' I had to borrow it from Federation Standard."

Applying the sonic screwdriver to the mechanisms and circuits before him, the Doctor laughed in his turn. "You're dedicating your life to the science of physics and applying it to overcoming social inertia. Brilliant."

"As the great Klingon physicist Ko'Taqaat said long ago, if you have a lever great enough and a solid place on which to stand, you can move worlds."

"Did he ever sit down to tea with Archimedes?"

"Who?"

"Never mind." The Doctor busied himself with his task, making no effort to hide his smile.

Ka'alia, for her part, wondered what was wrong with her. Why was she talking so much to this scrawny human? Oid. She did not know him nor did he know her, so why did he merit the impartation of such intimate knowledge? He certainly could do nothing about the past.

A will-o'-wisp of memory flashed across her mind. An early physics instructor had taught that particles with opposite charges will attract each other and certain unique particles with proper charges and under distinct circumstances will merge to form new compounds. Just because you have no control over the conditions does not mean they do not exist, and who can say what type of particle this man is?

And where did that come from? Ka'alia asked herself, frowning in puzzlement. He is not even Klingon. But perhaps that…concentrate. Waste no more thought on that one, no matter how distracting or entertaining he might be. Stop thinking like an addled child.

But that particular particle continued to orbit, and for the life of her, Ka'alia couldn't say if she wanted him to leave or not. Or why she felt as she did.

She was spared the distraction of thinking of the Doctor when her train of thought was derailed by Captain Khratok storming into the room where they were working. "You. Report."

"You. Obnoxious!" the Doctor replied cheerily.

"I was not speaking to you," Khratok snarled.

"No, but I thought we were doing a word association game. Let's try another one. Potato!"

"One more word out of you and I'll kill you where you stand."

"Perhaps I should sit, then?" The Doctor sat.

Khratok glowered at him, then turned his bilious gaze upon Ka'alia. "Progress."

"Our impulse drive should be fully operational within a half hour, warp drive and weapons within forty-five minutes after that."

"That is not good enough," Khratok snapped. "The Borg may well be mobile long before then."

Ka'alia threw one of her tools at Khratok's feet. "Then feel free to lend a hand. I have given you my estimate and nothing can change it. We are working as fast as we can, and you may bluster as much as you wish, but only one of those two conditions will make a difference. That would not be your ranting," Ka'alia offered as helpfully as her spiteful tone allowed.

Khratok drew a vicious-looking knife and two auxiliary blades snapped into position, either as guards or as a means of making a merely nasty wound a mortal one. "If you were not my chief engineer, you would already be choking on your own blood."

"And if our true captain had not died, you would be cleaning dishes in a freighter's galley!" Ka'alia snarled, her hands curling into claws as she began to move into a fighting stance.

"And if I don't offer to help, this situation may cost you everything you have left," the Doctor interjected, rising to his feet. "Perhaps I can find a way to slow the Borg down a bit. What do you say?"

The two Klingons never took their eyes from each other and the Doctor found himself glad that he stood to the side of them, for the venom passing between them would surely have cost him another regeneration. "How do you plan to do this?" Khratok grumbled. "You have nothing to offer."

"Remember that blue box that appeared in space and is now inside your ship? Hello? Me." The Doctor raised his hand to help the captain find him. "I go to the Borg ship, find out how to stop them, stop them, go home. Simple. And if I can't stop them, then I've at least slowed them down enough for you to do whatever you're going to do."

"Your box is on my ship?"

"Clever and dashing. Can't imagine why you're single," the Doctor muttered without moving his lips. It was one of those things where you just had to say something, but saying it might get you killed.

"Show me." Khratok gestured at the open door with his knife.

"Do all Klingons use weapons to provide directions, instructions, and emphasis? Do you know I could conceivably be killed by a wayward exclamation point?" The Doctor shoved his hands in his pockets and pseudo-indignantly strode into the corridor, the skin on his back crawling in anticipation of a knife strike.

With a little aid from Ka'alia, the Doctor found the cargo bay in which his TARDIS had materialized. Khratok squinted at it. "You travel in this? I have seen more space inside storage closets."

The Doctor let it pass without a witty comment. It would have been wasted on Khratok, anyway. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to see the Borg, see if there's a spanner I can throw in their works or something."

"Take her with you," Khratok ordered. "Her crew can work as fast with her as without, and maybe I can be rid of both of you at once."

Ka'alia glared at him. "The two of us cannot fit in such a vehicle."

"Actually…"

"Hah!" Khratok burst out in laughter. "I've seen what you take to your bed. You should have no problem here until it comes time to get out, and then we may need a tractor beam to remove you!"

The Doctor wordlessly opened the door to the TARDIS and ushered Ka'alia inside. He spared Khratok the barest of glances before shutting and locking the door behind him. "I'm sorry you have to tolerate such abuse," he said, walking past Ka'alia to the central console. "Nobody should have to put up with that, no matter what their views."

When he noticed that Ka'alia still had not answered him, he looked up at her. She was standing aghast at the size of the TARDIS' control room, her mouth working feebly as she tried in vain to form words. She managed to point, though.

Now the Doctor smiled. He always enjoyed introducing new friends to wondrous sights. "Forgive my manners," he said. "Welcome to the TARDIS. Let me know if there is anything I can get you."

"Wha…wh…what?" Ka'alia focused her bewildered gaze on the Doctor's warmly beaming visage. "How is this…is this a transdimensional anomaly that you have somehow harnessed and…and manipulated?"

"Essentially, yes. Do you like it? I was thinking of a little remodeling. A plant here or there, maybe an aquarium. Throw pillows. Maybe a vending machine?"

"How do you do this?" Her voice was a gentle whisper, but the Doctor could tell it was not one of fear. She was awestruck, on the verge of scientific ecstasy at the wonders before her.

"I can explain if you have a few years to kill."

"Gladly." This time, Ka'alia was barely audible. She gently touched a railing along the entryway as if it were made of smoke and might blow away at her caress.

"Perhaps after we've put the Borg in a bit of a bad way, then," the Doctor said, fiddling with dials and switches. "Just let me find them, first. Do you like tea?"

"Tea?"

"Oh, there they are. Just let me compensate for the radiation their engines are putting out—oh, nasty wavelength, that—and allons y!" A flourish, a flip of a switch, and the column in the center of the console began to rise and fall with a noise that Ka'alia was certain foretold a dire malfunction or universal collapse.

She had obviously overcome her fear of the railing's intangibility: her hand fastened about it with a death grip as she began looking wildly about. "Is that natural? That cannot be the normal sound of your ship's engines!"

"Oh, it is, don't worry." The Doctor cocked his head and pursed his lips. "Well, that 'ka-ticka, ka-ticka, fwhee, zipt' noise? That's not supposed to be there. Don't worry. It'll all revert to its normal symphony—"

"Cacophony," Ka'alia corrected, still glancing about nervously.

"—as soon as I get back home. Et voila, we have arrived! If that's a good thing."

It was fortunate that Klingons were so solidly built, otherwise Ka'alia's head might literally have been spinning. "Arrived? But we have not even moved. There was no surge of acceleration, nothing. There was only noise."

"A chap named Thomas was of equally weak faith," the Doctor said, wagging a finger at Ka'alia's uncomprehending frown. He opened the door and stood aside. "I doubt the look on your face will be as memorable as his—oh, you should have seen it!—but take a peek outside."

Suspiciously and with many a sidelong glance at the Doctor, Ka'alia made her way to the door and cautiously stuck her head outside. With a gasp, she withdrew from the door. She had been expecting the captain's mocking laughter or burning insults.

She had not been expecting to see the heart of a Borg cube.

The Doctor could almost feel the waves of violent emotions pouring off her. There was fear, certainly, but rage was the dominant feeling. She wanted nothing more than to kill every single Borg on the ship and to do it in as painful and as violent a way as possible.

"We are here," she whispered. "I do not know how you did this, but now we have a chance to destroy them."

"No, now we have a chance to examine them and find out where their weaknesses are," the Doctor corrected. "And if possible, let's try not to kill anyone right off. Bad form."

Ka'alia slowly made her way into the cube, her disruptor drawn. She began fiddling with some of its controls. "Remember what I told you, Doctor. The Borg can quickly adapt to whatever weapons you use against them, from knives to disruptors to fission cannons. You get maybe two or three shots before they can counter you. Unless, of course, they have encountered your weapon before. In such an instance, you are most likely doomed."

The Doctor was only paying partial attention to her. He was absorbed by the horror of what he saw, heard, and smelled. Individual Borg were moving deliberately about the cube, evidently engaged in repairs. There was the near-silent, almost subliminal sound of thousands of voices murmuring in unison, carrying on thousands of unrelated conversations simultaneously. He wasn't certain if he was actually hearing them or if they were in his head, and even then he wasn't sure if they were imagined or actually transmitting on a wavelength his brain was picking up directly. And that smell…

It was even more foul than the reek that had assailed him on the Klingon ship. Here, there wasn't even the attempt at hiding offensive odors. Wastes were still evidently recycled but the process was obviously not undertaken with an eye to courtesy, and the stench mingled with the stink of unwashed and festering flesh, organic bodies that did not take well to the invasion of artificial substitutes.

Ka'alia was apparently unaffected, although she was inhaling as little as possible. "From what the Federation has told us, the Borg will ignore us until we become a threat. That can be either when we take overt action against them or when they have reached their own decision based on an analysis of new stimuli."

"No such thing as 'advance warning,' then? No progress bars, timers, none of that?"

"Your first warning will be an attack," Ka'alia said. "And you will probably be assimilated soon afterward." Unlike before, she did not speak to the Doctor directly. Her eyes were busy seeking targets or threats.

The Doctor drew his sonic screwdriver and set its scan functions to look for power sources or computer terminals. "I think it's safe to assume that they've encountered your type of weapon before, so why not put it away?" he offered gently, panning the screwdriver in a slow arc.

"I do not draw my disruptor for them," she stated flatly, tapping the muzzle against her head to make her point.

"You fear them that much?"

"Not so much them as what they represent. Try living your life as one of their drones, aware and conscious but trapped within your own body. No pleasure, no pain but what their implants and prostheses allow, no control over even your own voice or thoughts."

The screwdriver was indicating something off to their right, and the duo made their way gingerly through the milling Borg to a computer console. "Go ahead and put your disruptor away," the Doctor said softly. "I give you my word you will not be needing it. You and I will be leaving here together and in the same condition in which we arrived."

"Let us hope the Borg respect your word."

The Doctor stepped up to a terminal and adjusted some controls on his sonic screwdriver. "My word has been good for a bit over nine hundred years. It should hold a bit longer, I think."

That got Ka'alia to look at the Doctor for the first time since arriving in the cube. "What did you say?"

"It started when I said 'humanoid,' remember? I'm not a human. I just look like them. I'm actually a Time Lord, from Gallifrey. Ever hear of it?"

Ka'alia shook her head and started to answer, but a Borg walking past her forced her to swallow her words and press herself against a wall.

"Well, we're a bit longer-lived than humans, and in my time I've picked up a few tricks that might help us out against these Borg. Like this one." The terminal displayed a few lines of text in Federation Standard, then in High Klingon. The TARDIS helped the Doctor translate the alien languages, although Standard was very close to the language of Earth he had come to speak so well.

"Make your moves swiftly, Doctor, for I feel I am about to engage in a display of cowardice," Ka'alia hissed through clenched teeth. "I am afraid our time here must be drawing to a close."

"Almost done," the Doctor replied absently. "I'm synchronizing the Borg computer with the TARDIS, see what they're up to, how their ship runs, that sort of thing. That way we can take their plans apart with a minimum of…"

"Doctor! They come!"

The Doctor spun in alarm. As Ka'alia had said, the Borg had decided that the intruders were now a threat and several of the cybernetic monstrosities were marching their way. It was one of those moments where everything was frozen in crystal clarity, from sight to sound to touch. He saw that each Borg had one biological arm and one mechanical, the mechanical one rigged for tasks from computer interfacing to welding or simple manipulation; one eye—or more if the species were so endowed—had been replaced with an optic scanner suite complete with laser sights; wires and micro-electronic modules bored through skulls to bury themselves in brains; and robotic apparatuses either augmented or replaced natural organs, taking over circulatory, respiratory, or neurological functions either in part or in whole. They were nearly as horrific in mien as the Cybermen, but more so in that where their remaining organic eye would once have reflected life and intelligence, there now shone only the cold gleam of reflected artificial light. There was no soul left in their gaze, and the Doctor understood why Ka'alia feared them.

"Should have seen that coming," the Doctor said, pocketing his sonic screwdriver and taking Ka'alia by the arm. "I tried to mask my signal so I looked like a Borg trying to access their terminal, but in hindsight, each individual Borg must be relaying its activities to the central controller, and when the controller saw that no Borg was accessing a terminal…"

"Stop talking and move!" Ka'alia ordered, taking the Doctor's arm and hustling him through the massing cyborgs. "Do not let them touch you. Their first stage in assimilation is to inject you with nanotechnological devices called nanites. They co-opt your body at the cellular level, starting with your brain, and make the following stages of assimilation easier. Back to your ship, quickly! Let your feet run as swiftly as your mouth!"

The Doctor ran behind her, his mind racing. He doubted that these Borg had encountered a sonic screwdriver before, but given that it had been invented in one dimension, there was nothing to preclude its invention in another. Parallel development and all that, you see, he thought, twiddling some controls. With a jolt, he realized that he did indeed let his mind run on too much sometimes. Whether the Borg had developed an immunity to his sonic screwdriver by exposure to its analogues was irrelevant. What mattered was making the attempt now, not dithering about it until it was too late.

He twisted a few dials, tapped a few buttons, and thrust it at the nearest Borg. As the Doctor had hoped—he wasn't really religious, else he might have admitted to "praying" just this once—some of the Borg's implants began sparking and the Borg fell to its knees. With luck, they had been only motive controls or interfaces to the central computer and not anything fatal, but there had been so little time to explore, to learn…

They were not far from the TARDIS and there were not many Borg between it and them, but the duo still found themselves facing a wall of cybernetic nightmares. Ka'alia was not using her disruptor, knowing full well it was useless. Rather, she had unsheathed her knife and deployed its secondary blades and was reaping Borg as a plasma storm would thresh daisies.

Despite the Borg's resistance to handheld weapons like clubs and knives, they had to lower their shields to attempt to download their nanites into Ka'alia and the Doctor, and such was their weakness. With no shields to hinder her, Ka'alia was free to rage as she wished.

The Borg were strong, there was no argument there, but they were clumsy. They relied on sheer numbers and brute force even more than the Klingons did. There was no concept of combat here. The Borg simply attempted to overwhelm their opponents with a wall of flesh and mechanisms.

Her teeth bared, Ka'alia used her empty hand to deflect grasping manipulators and sought exposed flesh or weak junctures in cybernetics with her knife. Blood, or some form of it, sprayed from injured flesh as sparks and chemicals flew from ruptured machinery. The Doctor nearly fell prey to a Borg as he felt himself mesmerized by the speed and savage grace of his newest acquaintance.

Ka'alia used elbows and knees to unbalance her attackers, strikes that caused little damage of their own but left them open to the glittering, ichor-smeared steel of her knife. Alternately dropping to one knee to spin and sweep the legs of an enemy or leaping into the air to smash a heel into a Borg's face, Ka'alia never slowed or stopped until a path to the TARDIS had been cleared. Shocked and a little shaken, the Doctor followed in quick order.

Breathing slightly harder than normal, Ka'alia drew her disruptor as the Doctor unlocked the TARDIS' door. "Perhaps I need this after all," she said, pressing a series of buttons in a complicated sequence. The disruptor began to whine, but in a different manner than when it fired. A tense two seconds later, Ka'alia tossed the weapon toward a collection of pipes and slammed the TARDIS' door shut. "Now, Doctor! Get us back to the ship! Alonso!"

The TARDIS shifted into the space between realities just as the disruptor exploded, rattling the TARDIS' shields and jangling the Doctor's nerves. As the TARDIS calmed into dormancy, the Doctor threw Ka'alia a puzzled look from his side of the control console. "Alonso?"

"Whatever your battle cry or activation code," Ka'alia said dismissively, "so long as it set us free of the Borg and back to the Gorok." She wiped the blade of her knife, which she called a d'k tahg, clean on her leggings.

"Um, hm. Well. We're back where we started—one of us is, anyway—and it's time we made use of our newly-gained knowledge, yes?"

He stepped into the cargo bay of Ka'alia's ship and saw her visibly relax, or at least revert to the normal level of tension that came with the daily browbeating and insults that came with being part of the crew. The captain, Khratok, was nowhere to be seen, so perhaps they would be spared—

"You!"

"Dashed that hope to pieces, didn't you?" the Doctor mumbled.

Khratok stormed up to the Doctor and stared up at the lanky Time Lord. "You call to mind tales my grandfather told of a meddlesome human in a similar machine. He was a dwarf or something, wore a shaggy black coat and had a mangy mop of black hair on his head. You are obviously aligned with him, aren't you?"

The Doctor hesitated, his lips pursed. "Not a clue whom you're talking about."

"Aligned or not, you are of the same troublesome stock," Khratok snarled. "And I cannot wait to have you off my ship. What did you discover?" This last he snapped toward Ka'alia.

"Nothing. He made all the discoveries," Ka'alia said, nodding at the Doctor. "But perhaps he should just leave your ship and leave you to face the Borg yourself. I doubt they'd assimilate you. They have some standards, after all."

"Obviously," Khratok spat. "They let you leave."

"Now that we've all been mutually skewered upon each others' rapier wits, on to business," the Doctor said. "Now, from what I was able to glean from their computers, they're nearly repaired and they do intend to invade your homeworld, but not just to travel back in time. Their ship is equipped with what they called 'chronodynamic tunneling engines' but they plan to not only travel back in time but open some kind of subspace conduit to another world in this galaxy. They're going to invade in force, hundreds of ships and millions of Borg."

"They mean to take not just Qo'noS, but the whole quadrant?" Ka'alia exclaimed.

The Doctor nodded. "Evidently so. With no regard to the temporal anomalies they would bring about, but that's apparently the nature of mindless omnivores everywhere. Consume and damn the consequences."

"Then we must hurry," Khratok said. "Our warp drive is nearly repaired. We can maneuver and our weapons capacity has been restored…"

"Alert! Alert! All hands man your combat posts! Captain Khratok to the bridge! The cube has entered our sector and is headed our way!"

A thrill of fear ran down the Klingons' spines, although they would never have admitted so aloud. "What time to intercept?" Khratok bellowed.

"Ten minutes, maximum," the officer reported.

Khratok paused to glower at Ka'alia and the Doctor. "You claim to have knowledge of them," he snarled. "Use it quickly or we and our people are all lost." With that, he spun and headed to the bridge.

"He has less than a snowball's chance in a bonfire," the Doctor said resignedly. "This isn't a combat vessel, but he's going to try anyway."

"He is Klingon, his sole redeeming feature," Ka'alia replied. "He will try unto death, as will I. As will we all."

"I'm not so keen on trying until I die, not unless I've exhausted every other option first," the Doctor said, leading the way back into the TARDIS. "I have some ideas to try."

"What do you wish to do first?" Ka'alia asked, this time following the Doctor all the way to the console.

"I believe I can access the Borg's communication network," the Doctor said, fiddling with keys, switches, dials, levers, and something colored sort of cerulean. "They all communicate by subspace, but only through a central node, a hub that connects the individual branches of their network."

"Their collective," Ka'alia corrected.

"Tomato, tomahto," the Doctor said absently. "Now, according to what I've got in the TARDIS' computers, not every individual ship is in contact with every other ship at the same time, only with their central node. If I can just persuade the TARDIS to act like another Borg cube, or better yet, their central node, I just might be able to get inside their system and cause a little mischief."

"Your trick seemed to work not so well in the cube, Doctor," Ka'alia pointed out.

"Because all the Borg were in communication with the coordinating computer," the Doctor replied. "I'm going to try to make believe I'm another cube, one that this cube isn't talking to, and initiate an oh-so-friendly exchange of ideas."

"You presuppose that the Borg cube will not attempt to upload itself into your TARDIS," Ka'alia offered. "They share all information equally and with no reservations. When your ship refuses to divulge information, will that not sound alarms aboard the cube?"

The Doctor stopped, frowning. "Anything is possible," he declared, resuming his fiddling. "I'm going to rely on the TARDIS to handle some of these details."

"It has artificial intelligence?"

"No more artificial than your captain."

"Then you are consigning us to our doom," Ka'alia said flatly.

"No, I'm not," the Doctor protested, then stopped. "Oh. That was Klingon humor."

"Such as has been bestowed upon us, at any rate."

The Doctor smiled slowly. "Clever."

Now Ka'alia managed a faint smile. "I try."

"Now, as you mentioned, I'm going to have to masquerade as another cube, even going so far as to send Borg-ish information. I think we've enough data recorded to fake it for a little while. We won't need a great deal of time, though. Just give me a few seconds to work some voodoo first."

"Who first?"

"What?"

"What, seconds?"

The Doctor shook his head. "I will never forgive those two and their insidious baseball references," he sighed.

Outside the TARDIS, the Gorok was rocking under the impact of Borg weapons. Conduits burst as currents overloaded the circuitry within them and alarms wailed their cries of death and destruction. Khratok's voice came over Ka'alia's communicator. "Get to engineering! There is a chance of a warp core breach and none of the incompetents in engineering can control the safeties."

"But the safety mechanisms are on automatic. Are the computers down again?"

"They are," Khratok reported. "I need you in engineering now, Commander."

"Doctor, I must go now, but I will keep in contact. Can your TARDIS monitor our communicators?"

He nodded, adding the final twists to the program he was devising. "Go, but be safe!"

"I give you my word, Doctor, that you will survive this, unassimilated," Ka'alia said solemnly. Dropping her knife on the deck, she was gone.

The Doctor opened the communications channels and heard the frantic babble of Klingons trying to hold their ship together long enough to deal a mortal blow to the Borg. The infernally-modulated voice he had heard on his first arrival repeated itself.

"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ship. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."

The Doctor gritted his teeth in a grin that was anything but mirthful. "You only say that because you haven't met me yet!"

Khratok's voice cut through the chatter with an authoritative bark. "All hands! The warp core breach has worsened and our safety mechanisms can not hold it back much longer. We are going to ram the cube as General Yin'Vogh did. Adaptable the Borg may be, but even they cannot subvert the laws of physics. They will not survive another warp core explosion within the hull of their very ship! Begin modulating shields! Do not let their tractor beams touch us!"

"No," the Doctor gasped. "You don't need to do that! Just give me a few more seconds!"

"Doctor," Ka'alia called out. "It is as he said. I can do nothing but delay the inevitable. Antimatter containment is failing at a geometric rate. I calculate less than three minutes."

The Doctor sprang into action. "Just hold it off a bit longer. I'm in communication with the cube. The TARDIS has hacked its way into their computers and I've set their time displacement mechanisms for four separate destinations. If you can just hold off a moment longer, I can scatter the Borg's atoms into infinity."

"Doctor, collision is in less than one minute," Ka'alia reported grimly. "At that point, the core will breach whether I wish it or not."

"My program will start in just a few seconds," the Doctor shouted. "Get back into the TARDIS and bring as many of your crewmen as you can. We're going to disperse the Borg and return myself and the TARDIS into my dimension, but I'm sure I can save the lot of you in the process. Come with me, quickly!"

She was silent for a heartbeat, perhaps two. "I could not make it back to your TARDIS in the time allotted, Doctor. Use the Borg ship to make your own escape and further your own ends."

In the engineering bay, surrounded by the bodies of most of her staff, Ka'alia worked to hold the warp core intact. Flames and noxious smoke tore the oxygen from the air around her, filling her lungs with the same searing agony that she had felt when an explosion had claimed her eye. For all she knew, it was both eyes: blood filled the uninjured one and her vision refused to clear. She heard the alien's voice over her communicator yet again.

"Ka'alia, I mean this. You don't have to die there. I can save you."

"Doctor, I am already dead. My body needed but the time and an excuse to catch up with my soul. If you would not waste my death, then use my sacrifice to prevent your own," she said harshly. "You and I are kindred spirits, Doctor, and spirits are meant to fly free, as yours must ever do. I wish you success, my friend. Qapla!"

The Gorok shuddered as its bow drove deeply into the Borg cube and the TARDIS seized the unleashed energy of the Borg chronodynamic mechanisms to power its own engines. As the infinite fury of an antimatter explosion ripped space asunder, the TARDIS punched a hole in time and dimensional walls and faded from sight.

On her own monitor, in the instants before subatomic fire tore her from her universe, Ka'alia saw the TARDIS fade, and for the first time in years—and the last time in her life—smiled.

The Doctor was frozen in disbelief, in numbed horror and sorrow. And the TARDIS shut down. It had landed.

The instruments read that the Doctor was finally home in his native universe. There had been some shift in time due to the Borg influence, but this was at long last his own reality. No Klingons, no Vader, nothing but his own familiar friends and fiends.

He picked Ka'alia's knife, her d'k tahg, off the deck and looked at it. As repugnant as he found weapons of war, he doubted he would be discarding this one. For all that his memories were nearly flawless and would follow him forever, there was still a very real need, a very mortal need, to keep at least this memory of her close to hand.

With great care, almost reverence, he put the knife in a drawer. He would find a proper place to store it later, but for now he needed to get out of the TARDIS. So much had happened recently—too much—that he felt the need to just…get out.

The TARDIS showed that he had once more materialized inside a ship, one of human manufacture, but stellar drift indicated nearly three million years had passed since his first exit from his home dimension. Well, somehow I can always modify the TARDIS to get me back where I need to be, he thought dully, walking into the massive bay.

It was odd, but it seemed that the ship had been built into a rock and that gouges had been slashed in the walls. Well, not so odd, he thought on reflection, because humans and other races had built space stations and the like into asteroids. Perhaps this was one of them.

But the scorch marks, the puddles of slag on the floor, those were most certainly not natural. The Doctor's inquisitive nature took over and he began inspecting these sinister pieces of an unseen puzzle.

Footsteps, hurried ones, were coming his way and he heard fear in their voices. And they were human voices! Blessedly brilliant, wonderful human voices! Even with accents from England. There were two sets of footsteps racing his way and…three voices? "What?"

Around the corner in front of him came three figures, one Caucasian, two of African descent…no, one of African heritage and one was not human at all. And the Caucasian had a silvery "H" on his head. The dark human was armed, dressed in a rather slipshod fashion; the non-human was nattily dressed if somewhat rumpled; the H-man was in some type of khaki uniform.

All three saw the Doctor at the same time. The slovenly man aimed his weapon at the Doctor as the white man and the non-human started in fear.

"Whoa! Another monkey!" the non-human shouted. "Quick! Puff yourselves up, make yourselves look big!" He stood on tip-toes, bared his fangs, and held his arms above his head, hissing.

"What?" The Doctor was rapidly losing control of the situation, if had truly had it to begin with.

'"Oy," the slovenly one said, gesturing with his gun. "Who are you, and what are you doing on this ship?"

"What? What ship? I just got here."

"Well, whatever you're doing, you'd best hope you're not with the tinheads," the H-man said. "Them, we can't do much about, but if you're on their side, you'll be dealt with. And in a manner not found in any manual of regulations, I assure you."

"What? What tinheads?"

"What the smeg are you talking about?" asked the sloppy man. "Rimmer, go talk to Holly, see if he's still online."

"Hey, puff up, monkeys! Why am I doing all the work?" the dark-skinned non-human demanded, lowering his arms. "If you two would carry your weight around here, I wouldn't be so wrinkled. Look at me! How many times do I have to remind you? One crease per sleeve, preferably put there by ironing, not a thousand creases brought on by doing monkey work!"

"Trust me, I don't know what's going on here. My, uh, ship just docked with yours. I was looking for a place to resupply, gather my wits, that sort of thing. What tinheads are you talking about?"

"What, you don't know?" the sloppy one asked, sounding like a native of Liverpool or some nearby vicinity.

"I give you my honest word, I don't even know where I am."

A monitor flickered to feeble life beside the Doctor and a balding man's head appeared in it. "What's happening, dude?"

"What?"

"You'll have to be more specific, mate," the head in the screen said. "IQ of six thousand, I can answer a lot of 'whats' and it'll take some time to get to the one you want."

"Okay, if this is up to me, what tinheads are you all talking about? Show me?"

The head seemed to nod and the H-man came back around the corner. The Doctor noticed that his feet made no sound. The head disappeared and a flickering view of what looked like knights in armor filled the screen.

No, no, no, no! Rassilon's Eye, NO! They're gone, dead! All of them!

Audio sputtered through the speakers as these armored creatures spoke to one another, marching through the corridors of the ship. "Hostile elements have temporarily eluded our sensor capacities. All squads divide into two-unit teams and begin a level-by-level search of the ship. All hostile elements must be upgraded or deleted."

"Y'see? Those are the smeggin' tinheads."

Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with "Doctor Who," "Star Trek," or "Red Dwarf." But I must admit to owning the twisted imagination that came up with this mess!