Chapter Text
Ruby Sunday had worked as a bartender before, but never on a luxury starliner. Granted, that was at her bandmate’s house party and didn’t have the large number of alien ingredients that she had never heard of. Luckily, most people on the starliner seemed too drunk to notice that she was just mixing whichever colored liquids looked good together. A large pane of some transparent material comprised the entire wall across from Ruby, and a brilliant expanse of planets and stars looked back at her. This is why she traveled with the Doctor. Even the most mundane jobs were magical with him.
As her back was turned, she heard a booming voice say, “Hello, I seem to be a bit lost. Can you tell me where I am? Or when I am?”
Ruby turned to see a giant of a man. He looked human, with curly brown hair and a smile that could light up a room. The six-foot-tall man wore a grey blazer, a brown fedora, and a rather ridiculous rainbow-colored scarf that sank well below the bar despite being generously wrapped around his neck.
Ruby pursed her lips in confusion. “Sorry, did you say when?”
“Oh yes.” The odd man’s eyebrows looked like a pair of caterpillars, just as drunk as the rest of the passengers. “It’s rather an important question, don’t you think?”
Ruby recited what the Doctor had told her when they had left the TARDIS. “It’s the thirty-third century, and we’re on the starliner Epsilon IV, star of the fleet.”
The man’s eyes grew wide with excitement. “Oh my! The Epsilon IV! I’ve always wanted to come see what happened to it!”
“Hold on. Happened? Past tense?” Ruby felt a strangely familiar energy coming from the strange man in front of her.
“Well, yes,” the man replied simply. “Where’s this starliner headed from?”
“Aren’t you a passenger?”
“I arrived a little late. Explain it to me.”
Ruby blinked. She realized she didn’t really know where the starliner was from. There were many species here that made up a menagerie that could be from anywhere in the galaxy. She decided the best thing to do was to ignore the question. “Sorry, did you give your name? For the tab, I mean.”
“The Doctor, though I don’t drink. There was that nasty business with Rome and the fires and –” His face dropped at the bartender’s expression. “My, my, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. I’m not translucent, am I?” He held up the ends of his scarf and inspected them.
“Just ‘The Doctor’?”
“There are many doctors, but I am The Doctor, the def–”
Ruby cut him off. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. The Doctor doesn’t look like you.”
The Doctor’s face contorted into a kind of pout. “Well, there are a few of me, the dandy, the clown, the grumpy one, but I don’t remember you. You must be in my…” The Doctor’s eyes flashed in realization. “Oh, dear. Is he tall? Short?”
Ruby laughed despite herself. “What do you mean more of you?”
“Oh, he hasn’t told you, then. We Time Lords can change our faces, you see. Cheat death. It’s a tricky business, but if we’re prepared for it, it can be less jarring. Anyway, what’s your name?”
“Ruby Sunday, but I guess you’ll learn that.”
“Ruby Sunday! Now there’s a name! Sounds like a wonderful dessert from somewhere warm.” The Doctor’s winning smile had returned to his face, the thought of his own demise seemingly pushed away.
“Thank you, I think. You said you always wondered what happened to this place. That’s why my Doctor was here to do. He said that he wanted to look into the ship’s mysterious disappearance.” She waggled her fingers to indicate the mysterious fate of the ship.
“This isn’t good,” the Doctor said with a shake of his head. “If there are two of us here, this isn’t a coincidence. Something must be happening. Where’s the – your Doctor?”
“He said he was going to make his way to the bridge. He was going to try to talk to the captain.” Ruby’s face was an expression of concern.
“With me, Ruby. We have some work to–”
The Doctor was cut off by a blaring alarm, followed by a kind, relaxed voice that said, “Please remain calm. An ion storm is headed towards us. Please be advised, make your way to the nearest sheltered location. The ion storm will hit us in the next two minutes. Thank you for your cooperation, and thank you for sailing with Max Capricorn Cruiseliners.”
“Two minutes?” The Doctor cried. He grabbed Ruby’s hand from across the bar and dragged her to the end of it, sending a flurry of liquid and glass that went unnoticed in the panic that surrounded them. The Doctor led her in the opposite direction of the crowds that were all charging towards the large doors on the far side of the large room.
“Erm, Doctor? Shouldn’t we follow the people who know where to go?” Ruby asked, raising her voice over the screams.
“What? No!” The Doctor yelled back. “I know these starliners, or at least I think I do. That could be a different century.” The Doctor screwed up his face in thought while running to the opposite side of the room, where, to his credit, he found a small door that was subtly labeled ‘Escape Pods for Your Convenience’. He pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and pulled down on the handle, which opened the door with a woosh.
As the doors closed behind them, the roar of the crowd disappeared. “There, that’s better,” the Doctor said with a smile.
“Doctor! We’re still about to sail through an ion storm, whatever that is!” Ruby cried. “Why in the world are we at the escape pods?”
“What better shielding than in something designed to survive the ship blowing up?” The Doctor asked, as if it were elementary. He bent over and used the sonic screwdriver again, and the escape pod next to him sprang open. “After you,” he said. “Mind the scarf.”
Ruby huffed and stepped into the escape pod. Inside was a set of screens, buttons, dials, levers, and a small window that looked out into space. Outside the window, she saw a swarm of energy flowing incredibly fast towards the ship. She felt the starliner start to rumble and shift just as the door closed behind the Doctor.
The Doctor sat down on one of the four small seats, put his hands behind his head, and put his hat over his eyes. “Good, now we just sit here until–”
He was cut off as the wave hit the ship by another automated voice, just as kind and relaxed. “Total systems failure. Please exit the ship as soon as you…” The voice cut out, as did the lights.
“Ah. Well. This is not ideal,” the Doctor said.
Ruby’s stomach dropped as she felt the escape pod jolt downward toward the blue planet below. “Doctor! Do something!” She cried.
The Doctor finally started to do what Ruby was used to. He began to twist levers, push buttons, and sonicing everything he could. With a burst of flame from the starliner, the escape pod began to fall. As it did, the lights flickered on, and a small voice spoke from a speaker. “Hello, welcome to your escape pod experience. Please sit back, strap in, and listen to some relaxing music.”
The muzak began playing as the pod careened to the planet below. As it entered the atmosphere, the pod’s outer shell began to glow red-hot.
“Hold on!” The Doctor cried as he slammed a large hand on a button that made the pod jerk upwards. A stream of parachutes jetted out of the top of the ship, slowing its descent until a piece of the starliner shot through one of them.
With a slam, the pod hit the water, and both the Doctor and Ruby fell into unconsciousness.
* * *
Ruby came back to consciousness to see the Doctor standing awkwardly around her, pushing and tweaking buttons. The speaker sputtered and clicked as it tried to say something. The lights clicked off with a draining wheeze. Ruby sat up, holding her head.
“Whoa!” The Doctor said, “Don’t sit up too fast. You took a pretty bad bump.”
“Doctor, where are we?” Ruby moaned. She looked out the window to see an inky dark blue.
“Ah, well, you see, we’re underwater.” The Doctor smiled, but Ruby could tell he was trying to make her feel better.
Ruby stood up, freeing up the Doctor’s path to move about the cockpit. “And how do we get out of the water?”
“Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? The thrusters are waterlogged, and this ship is designed to float… but, obviously…” The Doctor trailed off while he sat down and thought. If it hadn’t been such a terrifying situation, it would have been a hilarious image; the large, gangly man hunched over in such a tiny space.
“Well, what are we going to do?” Ruby asked.
“I don’t know, I don’t have all the answers all the time.”
“I didn’t think you did. I wanted to work together to figure it out.” Ruby crossed her arms.
The Doctor locked eyes with her for a moment, and the huge grin returned. “I see why he, well, I travel with you. Let’s see… what’s our problem?”
“We’re stuck at the bottom of the ocean,” Ruby replied.
“No, we’re stuck around twenty meters down,” the Doctor said, wagging a finger in the air. “That’s better than the bottom, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yeah, I would,” Ruby said. “We can’t swim that without drowning.”
“True,” the Doctor replied, “but what if we could have a burst of something to shoot us upwards?”
“Like what?”
“Well,” the Doctor put on a thinking face. “This capsule has an oxygen reclamation system. That may be enough gas to propel us upward.”
“But the capsule is metal, would some gas be enough to push us through all that water?”
The Doctor screwed up his face in thought. “Carry the three, account for pressure… why, yes, I think it would!” His hands flew to the microphone activation. “Computer, I know that your voice is out of sorts, but can you display the amount of carbon dioxide being stored in the reclamation system?”
A notification appeared on one of the screens, and the Doctor’s face fell.
“It’s not enough?” Ruby asked nervously.
“Well, it’s zero,” the Doctor replied.
“How is it zero?” Ruby asked incredulously.
The Doctor made a face. “Well, how to put this lightly, the oxygen reclamation system is offline.”
“You mean—“
“Yes. We have a matter of minutes until we run out of air,” the Doctor said, eyes wild as he stared out into the inky blue water. He frantically removed a panel from one of the consoles around the room, began pulling wires out, and sonicing them with his screwdriver.
Ruby bit her lip, understandably nervous. She decided that if there were nothing she could do to help the Doctor, she would keep watch. Well, as much as she could with the dark blue sea outside the window. Luckily, no water leaked through the pod door, but she was still apprehensively inspecting the window for structural integrity. As her eyes made their third lap around the perimeter of the small window, she saw what she assumed to be a biluminous creature of some kind.
Outside the pod, a collection of perfectly circular blue dots appeared. Ruby squinted and tried to make them out in greater detail, but whatever they were scattered as quickly as they arrived.
“Er, Doctor?” Ruby asked.
“Not now, give me a moment,” the Doctor chastised. He was a much less personable man than her Doctor.
Just then, a series of blue dots flashed by the window, and Ruby was able to make out the body of some sort of sea creature. It was no less than five meters long and was the same dark blue color as the dark blue sea that surrounded it. Six dark-orange eyes gazed at Ruby as it passed. Sharp teeth that were nearly as big as Ruby’s hand jutted out at perfect angles that mimicked the precision of a military legion. Curiously, however, there were metal lines with circles of blue light dotting the length that ran the entirety of the predator’s body. It reminded her of…
“Circuits!” Ruby breathed in wonder.
“That is the general idea,” the Doctor condescended. He had fully removed quite a few components from the craft, and with a final burst from the sonic screwdriver, the oxygen reclamation system hummed to life.
Ruby felt her breath ease as the renewed oxygen filled her lungs. “I didn’t realize it was hard to breathe. It felt so… normal.”
The Doctor nodded grimly. “That’s the trouble with increased carbon dioxide. If there’s still air, you can still make the motions of breathing. Very nasty indeed.”
Ruby snapped to her senses. “Doctor, there’s something outside, a shark thing with circuits or something all along its body!”
The Doctor’s eyebrows waggled at her again. “Are you sure about that? Absolutely sure? Was it just bioluminescent?” The Doctor cleared the short distance between them and pressed his face against the window.
“No, it was… technological,” Ruby answered.
“This planetoid doesn’t seem to have any signs of a civilization capable of electricity, much less grafting technology onto living beings.” The Doctor continued to stare, unblinking, out of the window.
Just as he was about to turn away, the blue lights appeared again. “You’re right,” the Doctor said in wonder. “This isn’t any bioluminescence I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen nearly everything.”
The shark-like creature approached again, and the Doctor studied the markings in detail. His eyes widened, darted to Ruby, and relaxed. He sat down in one of the chairs with a huff. “Well, nothing to do about it here.”
Ruby sputtered again. “What? What are we supposed to do now, Doctor?”
The Doctor leaned back and sighed. “Well, now we wait. I’ve rigged the system to store the carbon dioxide that’s extracted from the air and release it when the system is at maximum capacity out of the lower vent. In theory, it should push us to the top, where the solar-powered floatation device should keep us.” He scowled for a moment. “Far away from those creatures, hopefully.”
“What are they?” Ruby asked. She took a seat across from the Doctor.
The odd man was digging in his pocket for something and very nearly ignored her question, until he found the small paper bag he was looking for. He popped a candy in his mouth and said, “I have a theory, a rather worrisome one. Would you like a Jelly Baby?”
“No, Doctor, I want to know what’s out there,” Ruby replied, exasperated.
The Doctor’s face looked offended. “No Jelly Babies in whatever year you’re from? They’re really quite nice.”
“Doctor!”
The Doctor took a deep breath, and his face grew grim. “Those markings are very similar to creatures I’ve seen many times in my years. Cybermen.” He said the last word with venom, like he was talking about the most vile things in the universe.
“Cybermen?” Ruby asked hesitantly. The reverence with which the Doctor spoke sent a chill down her spine.
“You haven’t seen them yet? Good. They’re creatures that convert living people into half-man, half-machine, emotionless abominations.” The Doctor scowled at the window. “The sooner you’re away from this ocean, the sooner I can fix this.”
“Fix it?”
“An ion storm right above a planet filled with cyber-sharks? Not likely a coincidence.” All pretenses of the Doctor’s bravado and carefree attitude were dropped. He wasn’t like her Doctor. There were no tears, no emotional outbursts. This Doctor was calmer, more collected, and hidden.
Ruby shifted from foot to foot. “Why would they cause an ion storm? I didn’t see any other pods fall from the ship, so it can’t be to just kill it.” Her blood ran cold. “Unless… an ion storm couldn’t knock out life support, could it?”
The Doctor nodded once. “Yes, it very well could. In fact, that’s exactly what they do.”
“All those people…” Ruby trailed off.
The Doctor shook his head. “No, they made it to the shielded sections.”
“How do we know?”
“We don’t, but assuming the worst does nothing but make us feel worse and keep us from staying alive. We’ve survived, that’s the important thing right now. We can look into the fate of those people when we get back up there,” the Doctor roared. He closed his eyes, took a folded hat out of his coat pocket, shook it out, and put it over his face.
Ruby sat down in silence. She was trying to think of anything other than killer robots from outer space, but the growing number of blue orbs in the deep didn’t help. She swallowed and looked down at her folded hands, and tried to turn her thoughts to other matters. Despite what the scarved Doctor said, she couldn’t help but think of the ship above, and her Doctor. Ruby knew that the Doctor wouldn’t have gotten into a shelter until he saved everyone, and this was a cruise ship full of passengers. She thought of him, his body lying on a pile of metal and broken electronics. How would he survive?