Tarys raises her voice, even as she turns away from the door, to better watch for the approach of enemies.

"We should move," she says.  "The Daleks may be confused or inconvenienced for a time, but they will soon react.  They know the signs of a threat.  They will bring overwhelming force to bear if we linger here long, and they will also move to defend their weapon.  Our only advantage," and here she feels the ghost of a smile, "is the time it will take them to do so."

Unfazed by spark showers and exploding consoles, Bluetooth goes over to the Dalek and ponders it for a second. Axander's words were somewhat disappointing.

"Oh, farg!" he says to no one, and shoots the Dalek again... for good measure!

Then he hurries after the others out into the main base. Just to be on the safe side, he rushes/pushes his way to the front in case another Dalek shows up.

Hurrying out of the laboratory section, Axander and Bluetooth led a stream of escaped scientists and engineers through the open doors and into the main base. All around them, the lights were dimming, systems flaring up in sparks or abruptly shutting down as the erratic power failed or overloaded at random.

Stealing past the monitoring chamber, they found the Daleks in disarray, screeching reports and orders. There was something about how the Defence Grid had failed momentarily, how the Time Lord weapon had penetrated the base. There was no time to stop and listen, and the Daleks were too distracted to see the escapees sneaking past. Finally an emergency door crashed down, locked and bolted, blotting out further information.

Seeing a Dalek speed around the corner, Bluetooth bravely stunned it and the group rushed past as it spun.

Soon, they were reunited with Farren, Tarys, and Trace. They gave directions back to the TARDIS to some of the scientists, those not qualified to sabotage the Temporal Exterminator. Six others who'd actually worked on it and found the courage to confront the Daleks and destroy what they'd been forced to help create, including Ramst the familiar Ice Warrior, followed the time travellers. Following Ramst's directions, the group frantically made their way to the adjoining building where the Temporal Exterminator was located.

The whole base was groaning now, as its structural integrity field failed and the force of vacuum pressure loosened its bolts, not helped by the escalating system failures. Panels fell from the ceiling, systems exploded and sparks flew about them. The four time travellers and five scientists had a perilous journey crossing the collapsing, Dalek base.

Suddenly, a Dalek came flying around the corner, emitting a terrible electronic scream. It seemed to be fleeing something. Wielding his Decimator, Bluetooth stunned it, ending its panic. Turning that corner, seeing a Dalek, he almost fired again – but the Dalek was already destroyed. Only the skirt remained, the entire top section exploded outwards and the mutant obliterated. Briefly examining the damage, Tarys recognised the impact of a Gallifreyan staser rifle, standard issue to soldiers. Had a Time War–era Gallifreyan commando squad infiltrated the base to aid them? They weren't here now, and they couldn't wait.

Finally, with the four scientists behind them, they were at the great doors to the Temporal Exterminator. Farren determined they were unlocked. Ramst and the others had described a massive chamber like a repurposed spaceship hangar, with monitoring and power regulation systems around the walls. He said there was a kind of control room at the very centre, where the Temporal Exterminator was operated and targeted. The place would be full of Daleks, either operating the weapon and the systems or standing guard. Through the doors, they could Dalek reports and warnings of damage in other parts of the base.

'Pro-tect the Temp-oral Ex-term-inator! Con-tin-ue e-radi-ca-ting the Doc-tor from the time-lines! It is our only chance! How long until he is ex-term-inated?'

'One hun-dred fif-ty three rels.'

So, three minutes to save the Doctor. Three minutes to stop Daleks. Three minutes to end the Time War. Three minutes to save the universe. Three minutes to save everything.
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:43, Tue 16 June 2015.

Battle!  The reflexes drilled into Tarys by her long training and dedication urge her to move, move, move, but they are tempered by the knowledge that her injuries are dragging at her steps and sapping the force she can bring to bear.

Timelines are in flux here.  The operation of the Time Exterminator is kicking up, if not proper time winds, then perhaps a swarm of causal dust devils skittering all around Tarys and her allies.  She tastes those eddies and swirls as they pass her, trying to read disasters and triumphs that may lie beyond the door, trying to find a course toward the latter and not the former.

OOC: Dropping a story point for Precognition, down to 4.

PM

Trace moved up behind Tarys. He looked curiously, and not a little apprehensively at the door. The boy had learnt his lesson (for now) and decided to let the others go first. Trace was about to raise his scanner gauntlet to see if there was any way he could get some readings on the other side when he realised there was a chance that the Daleks might detect the scans so he hesitated.

Tarys draws a breath.  "Give me covering fire, if you have a weapon," she says.  "Our new friends should take advantage of that to move to their tasks, and if you do not have a weapon, do what you can to keep them safe.  I think I will do something that the Daleks will not be able to ignore.  The price for that, of course, is already written, but a universe where I pay it is quite literally better than no universe at all."

She blinks.  Is that a tear?  No.  Quite impossible.

She looks at Axander and Farren, Bluetooth and Trace.  "And if I do, please just do one thing.  Try to remember that I lived."

She places a hand on the door.

Axander takes a series of deep breaths, clearly not as calm as he's hoping to appear for the others' sake. There's just so much between them and where they need to be. If only he could think of a proper distraction...

His eyes shoot wide as Tarys speaks up. She often knows the proper course of action. The safest. Her ability to see the motion of time itself regularly keeps them from getting hurt. Axander has never heard her talk like that before. He opens his mouth to protest, but nothing comes out. She's already heard what he would have said, anyway. Anything he would have said. And yet she's still going.

"...Bluetooth, you've got the hang of that thing, right? You're her cover. I'll go with the scientists. Trace, Farren? Can either of you...?" He's having a hard time finishing that sentence, but he gestures to Tarys, voice steady but terror in his eyes.

Farren shrugged as he drew his standard issue SSS service laser pistol and said with a hint of uncertainty, "Certainly I can do my best to cover Tarys with my sidearm, though my training is not strictly speaking "military" in nature.

For what it is worth, my laser pistol is fairly reliable against most targets... but then again, Daleks are not really like "most targets".  Still, it should at least serve as a distraction is nothing else."

Under her breath, Tarys murmurs, "Gallifrey stands."

She  slides the door aside, and then she is moving forward, with what grace and speed she can still manage after her injuries.  She draws the Possible Knife and assesses the scene ahead of her as she advances.

She does not, precisely, make herself a sacrificial target for the Dalek guns, but neither is she going far out of her way to make use of available cover.  Her goal, after all, is to declare by her actions that one daughter of Gallifrey still stands and dares to oppose the Dalek Empire.  Her goal is to fix the attention and the hatred of the Daleks upon herself, to divert their attention from the other members of the little alliance that has come to them.  Her hope, even as she tries to identify what machinery or device houses the Time Exterminator itself, is that she can tempt the Daleks' bloated pride in their creation.  What better statement could they make of their contempt, than to strike at one of the last Time Lords with a weapon meant to eradicate their enemies' past, present and future existence?

(Her grasp tightens on the Possible Knife as she moves ahead, alert for their reaction.  If she has guessed right -- and if her wounded body can respond quickly enough -- then all of the faith that Marsillanon and his cabal placed in their creation will be paid back in full....)

OOC: I figured that was probably long enough to see if another player wanted to toss in a contribution.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:05, Tue 16 June 2015.

OOC: Looks like it is, thanks.


As Tarys drew open the door and slipped inside, her fellow time travellers and the escaped slaves had little choice but to follow her in, whether to do battle with the Daleks or to try to sabotage the terrible machine. Against death or defeat or utter erasure, they had this once chance to save all that was, all that is, all that will, and that could have been.

They burst in, weapons and tools raised – and stopped, for one critical moment, shocked.

They didn't see the Temporal Exterminator.

The chamber was as vast as told, a converted saucer hangar, with a compacted asteroid rock floor, polished smooth. The walls were lined with monitoring and control equipment. A hundred huge screens showed scenes of the Doctor's life and adventures, all fading away and being forgotten. The War Doctor, as Tarys knew him, sabotaging a Dalek saucer and sending it crashing – fading away. His prior incarnation, the eighth, leading refugees away from a shining city falling under energy beams – unseen. Then a much earlier Doctor, the second, in a Victorian manor, incredibly riding around on Daleks like they were bumper cars – the colours washed out to black and white and the image blurred, before being lost forever.



Even the very first Doctor, an old man, happening on Daleks investigating his TARDIS in an alien jungle before sneaking away. The image grew dark and burned up, and was gone.



They didn't see the Temporal Exterminator, not at first

The roof was open to space, covered only with force-fields to retain atmosphere. The massive accretion disk of the Tantalus Eye anomaly burned out there, like a single baleful red eye of a hungry god, looking right down on the impudent Daleks that stolen its power to fuel their infernal machine.

They still didn't see the Temporal Exterminator.

There were Daleks everywhere, some plugged into the control equipment. Others stood on guard, close to the walls, far from the centre, now reacting to the invading time travellers. Others were criss-crossing the vast open floor, some speeding away from the centre, other moving slowly inward, like they were afraid to venture to close.

And, at the very centre of the chamber, was...

Now they saw the Temporal Exterminator.


Suddenly a Dalek screeched, snapping them all back to the present. It was a Dalek Commander, rolling out from behind the strange edifice. 'Alert! Intru-ders! Acti-vate the Temp-oral Ex-term-inator!' All free Daleks turned in their direction.


OOC: The Temporal Exterminator itself is inside what you're seeing, accessed via the apparent entrance, which you'll have seen Daleks going in and out of. Obviously, getting inside and destroying it seems like a good idea...

Please post your reactions and your intended actions, but leave it there. ;) I'll sort matters out in my next post, then you can act properly.

His jaw dropped.

He remembered. That had been when he was still on the path to being a soldier, like his father, and his father before him. His line, filled with Grand Marshalls.

He couldn't remember the day he'd first decided to turn his back on that. Maybe it had been too much death and destruction. All he knew was that the day he'd turned his back on that, led to where he was; here and now. But it had also led to his race, his people becoming as nothing.

And his mind transported him back to a small child.

"Sir! Why must we always conquer and destroy?"


OOC: I'll get the sheet fixed this weekend for sure. Being slammed at work. Looking at around a 45 hour week this week.

"Oh holy hell," Trace muttered upon seeing the army of death that filled the room.

His gaze was drawn to the tower that dominated the centre of the room. The recollection struck him right between the eyes. "The salvage mission on Coronis 7 ... That's not possible." Trace remembered being sent on down to the surface of that world with the other junior crew members to salvage what they could. The silent cities and creeped him out far more than a planet of ruins and corpses would. There had been something ominous about the pristine and empty world.

Trace shook his head to clear his thoughts. "I guess we make a run for the tower and hope they 'exterminate' each other in the crossfire?" He asked with a shaky voice and preparing to run.

Tarys barely misses a beat: the appearance of the Tomb of the Vanquished is something that she welcomes almost as an old friend, as she welcomes the unlooked-for appearance of its name, and she begins moving unerringly toward it.

She hopes that her friends, at least, will show some more caution; she supposes that this gesture is as much for them as it is for the great sweep of the imperiled universe -- even Tarys finds it hard to apprehend more that an iota of that.  But even as she thinks that, she realizes that it is only through the courage of all of them together that the day could be won.

Bluetooth was busy looking at around at all the 'shiny'... the gizmos, devices, machinery... he wanted to know how it all worked. He only half heard Tarys's request and Axander's suggestion that he follow her.

Even half, though, eventually precolated into his consciousness, and he hurried after Tarys.

Yikes! Dalek's everywhere! That was what he'd been told was a 'target-rich' field!

Oh! Dalek Commander! Shoot him first!

Bluetooth aims at the commander and fires his Dalek Decimator!

He doesn't wait to see the result, but dives forward into a defensive roll, coming up on one knee facing another Dalek and shoots at that one.

Then he caught a glimpse of the Furnace. Well, it was a desert, but it looked like the Furnace. The reddish sands, the wind-sculpted rocks... and the cave. There couldn't be another cave like that in all the universe.

They had to go in there. Why did the Daleks put the Temporal Exterminator in there?

Wait! Maybe that's why the TARDIS found him in the first place! Because he had some connection with the cave. No, that's ridiculous. It's more likely the cave is some sort of illusion to distract or confuse him. He tried to convince himself of that while distractedly trying to protect Tarys.

The inside of the massive room chilled him to the bone instantly, freezing Axander in his tracks. So many Daleks. He could barely take his eyes away from the monsters that would certainly end his life any second, but the whole of time was at stake. There in the center of the room, the most incongruous sight he could have imagined. His glasses slipped partway down his nose as he stared in awe. From ages away, he could hear his companion. Trace's words jarred him back to the control room.

"Coronis 7? You don't see...? The thought seemed to concern him as he glanced between the young engineer and the whatever-it-was they were all looking at. He pushed the glasses back up the bridge of his nose and tapped them nervously as he thought.

"Okay, probably a-a temporal ripple connected to the observer, or a psychic illusion to hide the Exterminator's presence, or...or maybe it's just showing us our own timeline somehow. Either we'll end up in the same place together or we'll end up where we're looking, but we need to get in there. That's where the Exterminator is. If we get separated...well, continue the mission, alright?" Seeing Tarys and Bluetooth charge the entrance, Axander gave a few shaky pats on Trace's shoulder.

"Please don't die." He gave a sharp motion to the gathered scientists and then charged forward, toward the heart of this evil place.

Farren wasn't entirely sure what he had been expecting but he was fairly sure he had not been expecting this!  For a moment he was lost in thought despite a "room full of death" surrounding him in the form of swarming hostile Daleks.  The nagging "familiarity" of the sight before him and his inability to actually put his finger upon the correct memory that went with it was both frustrating as well as fascinating.  But he did not have long to struggle with connecting the scene before him with a corresponding scene from his past before the Dalek alert was raised in response to their presence.

Farren heard Axander's theory about how what was being seen was specific for each person and he thought that was an interesting form of camouflage (or an odd effect of the machine's workings).  But again, with the alarm raised, there was no spare time for thinking or theorizing.  Farren saw Bluetooth raise some sort of unusual device (he assumed it was a weapon of some sort) and he wondered what it could be that the Rakshasa could feel so confident it would make a "dent" in the notoriously tough "hides" of the Daleks.  But again, that was a question to be asked at a later time when they weren't being chased by murderous Daleks.

Knowing his own firearm to be woefully inadequate for actually taking down Daleks (at best it might "sting" them), Farren decided that the best move was to rush towards the device they were here to destroy and hope the Daleks' aim was subpar.

Some simply stopped and stared at this bleak monument to a forgotten past, wondering how in all the universe what they saw had come to be here. 'My old high-school laboratory...' Ramst whispered. Then they moved, leaping to action, time seeming to stand still...

Skirting the edge of the hangar, leading the scientists, Trace hurried for the power regulators—

Making a bee-line across the floor, Tarys raced for the Temporal Exterminator—

Following Tarys, covering her, Bluetooth raised his Decimator at the nearest Dalek—

Close behind the two warriors, Farren and Axander rushed for the Temporal Exterminator—

Beams crossing the chamber, the Daleks fired—

discontinuity

—Trace, Stirix, and the scientists were at the power regulation controls, hands on the panels and levers, frantically working at their sabotage. They paused, bewildered, forgetting their tasks, wondering how they'd gotten all the way here in an instant.

—Tarys, Bluetooth, Axander, and Farren stood outside the entrance to the Temporal Exterminator,  yawning darkly open before them. They paused, realising they'd somehow, against all hope, crossed the hangar floor in an instant without being shot by Daleks.

In an instant, everything was different. The screens showed different images. The Daleks were in different places, all much closer. Bluetooth was struck by a sudden pain, finding a charred burn on his back, the mark of a Dalek weapon.


OOC: Well, you run into a hail of Dalek gunfire...
16:06, Today: Secret Roll: GM BadCatMan rolled 10,17,10,11,12 using 2d6+5,2d6+5,2d6+5,2d6+5,2d6+5 with rolls of 3,2,6,6,2,3,1,5,3,4.
16:06, Today: Secret Roll: GM BadCatMan rolled 15,13,10,12,7 using 2d6+5,2d6+5,2d6+5,2d6+5,2d6+5 with rolls of 5,5,6,2,1,4,1,6,1,1.
I'm discounting everything 12 and below as a miss.

Attack 17 @ Bluetooth. I rolled 14 for Bluetooth to dodge. He takes 4 damage, reduced to 2 with Tough. Distribute among Coordination, Resolve, and Strength as you wish.
16:08, Today: GM BadCatMan, on behalf of Bluetooth, rolled 14 using 2d6+7 with rolls of 6,1. dodge Dalek gun.

Attack 15 @ Trace. I rolled 16 for Trace to dodge, success.
16:14, Today: GM BadCatMan, on behalf of Trace, rolled 16 using 2d6+7 with rolls of 3,6. dodge Dalek gun.

'Cease fire.' a Dalek ordered. The black-shelled Dalek Commander rolled unhurriedly up to the four. Somehow, it seemed be gloating, its harsh voice somehow mocking as it announced with flashing lights 'They have al-ready been ex-term-in-at-ed!'

They'd been struck by the Temporal Exterminator.

Ramst gasped. There were only three scientists left with Trace. Then there were only two. Then Ramst himself disappeared. Then he'd never even been there. Only the odd, silent Ice Warrior who'd agreed to help them back in the laboratory remained.

Confused as hell...


So here's the 'mental' plan... Bluetooth was firing at the Dalek Commander... so suppose he missed the Commander and hit the Temporal Exterminator instead? Willing to burn as many Story Points as it may take to accomplish that.

Otherwise, I haven't got a clue!

As Tarys stands before the darkened portal, she looks at those of her friends standing around her, and at the Daleks and the others elsewhere in the huge chamber.  Everyone is split into multiple images of themselves, some of them burning or visible as the skeletal silhouettes of a Dalek disruptor victim.  Tarys feels the echoes of the broken timelines that she'd stuttered across from the entrance of the chamber to the here and now.  She and the others begin to move into the opening--

No.

"STOP."  Very rarely does Tarys speak with anything but a measured tone.  When she speaks now, it is with the impact of her whole psyche behind it.  "Just because there is no door you can see does not mean that it does not need to be opened."  It's the last, most devious defense of the Time Exterminator: a dissemination loop that will fracture an intruder between every point in space and time that has been, is, or will be.  "Fortunately, I have a key for anything."

Tarys plunges the Possible Knife into the air at head-height.  It snags in the broken probability of the loop, and as she draws it down, there's a glimmering blue scar left behind in the shadows hanging in front of them.  Down to the floor, across the width of a body, then up again, sawing through the veil of shadow until she's standing again and can bring the cut back across, to join again with its beginning....

Axander comes up short behind Tarys and Bluetooth when he feels everything around him shift and change. The elder Time Lord can sense something wrong. The Daleks have stopped shooting. Something's missing. Someone? Axander gets that nagging feeling again. What did the commander mean by that? The team's already been hit? So why isn't anything...

Axander's eyes go wide as he realizes what it all means. They're already gone. Beyond dead. It's just erasing them back to front.

"B-Bluetooth...? You're...ah... you're going in right behind Tarys. Ready?" The burn on his friend's back isn't generally known to accompany the living. Axander takes his terror and turns it into something else. Hope.

Shaking hands lift the little psychic book from his bag, and he starts scanning the opening in front of him. Hopefully it can pull information from his psyche and perhaps guide him towards what is and away from what isn't. At the very least it can tell him how long he and his friends have by showing their history.

But Bluetooth had disappeared.

Pulling out his Psychic Encyclopaedia, Axander watched in mounting dismay as the text began to fade away, line by line, forgotten and erased by the Temporal Exterminator. A dozen adventures across several worlds, all gone, never happened. Only his Time Lord senses could tell him what he was losing, and even then not for long. He couldn't remember the last place they'd been before coming here. Only these moments in the Eternity Citadel would survive, outside time.

Here they were, at the start. And they had only seconds left...

discontinuity

Stirix had vanished.

The scan of the entry way completed, and some startlingly familiar results appeared. Axander saw something horrifying...

Then the book faded away.

Now Trace was gone.

discontinuity

All that remained were Tarys and Axander and Farren, standing before the dark entrance of the Temporal Exterminator, before oblivion. All around, the Daleks were laughing, a hideous and cruel cackle of electronic synthesisers and twisted throats.

discontinuity

As Tarys sliced the Possible Knife through the dissemination loop, a weird and ancient screaming echoed through the dark passage, as if of a living thing in pain. She completed the electric-blue cut – and opened the event horizon of the Temporal Exterminator, revealing what should never be revealed.

There was a flash of darkness—

The time travellers ceased to be—

discontinuity


Title page:

The End
This message was last edited by the GM at 07:38, Fri 26 June 2015.