But he was far, far too late.
Susan had known for a long time that she had greater latent telepathic powers even than most of her people. It was raw talent and normally unfocused. But working telepathic circuits could do what her own mind could not. The TARDIS caught up her will, and shaped it, like a weapon – aimed directly at the mind of the TARDIS’s controller.
The Master screamed and collapsed as the mental wave slammed into him. Susan had harnessed all of her rage, all of her grief, all of her loss, into one, rock‐hard emotion of hatred. She sent this seething mass of fury deeply into the Master’s mind, burning at his exposed thoughts, slicing through his own desires, devastating every last thought in his mind. She fed her fury over David’s murder, her anguish about her grandfather, her sense of loss, promises broken, the horror of Daleks resurrected – every last agonising emotion was fed from her mind, amplified by the telepathic circuits and directed like a laser into his brain.
He rolled on the floor, howling in agony as his mind slowly fried. Susan glowered down at him, refusing to feel the slightest twinge of pity or remorse for what she was doing. She wouldn’t even allow herself the luxury of satisfaction, in case that weakened her rage. But she did feel some of the feedback from the Master’s mind, and she stared into the pit of his inhumanity. She saw a creature who never doubted that it was his right to do precisely what he wished, who spared no concern for any other living creature. His own will was all that mattered to him in the entire universe. He was self‐consumed to the exclusion of any kind of gentleness or kindness.
Whispers of his knowledge, his thoughts and his deeds crossed Susan’s awareness. They sickened her, and fed her despair and fury. The Master writhed under the bombardment his mind being ravaged and consumed.
Until, finally, she could keep going no longer. Weakened and shaking, she jerked her trembling hands from the contacts and stared down at the trembling creature at her feet. She knew what she had done to him, and didn’t have a single regret or doubt. And yet, even after all he had been through, such was his own strength of will that he managed to open his eyes and focus on her.
‘You’re… the Doctor’s whelp,’ he gasped. It was a terrible strain on him, but he was focusing solely on this one fact. ‘I shall… destroy you… have my revenge on him.’
‘You’ll destroy nobody ever again,’ Susan vowed. She showed him the TCE. ‘This time, I’m the one with the weapon, Master of nothing. Get to your feet, or I swear I’ll kill you where you grovel.’ She knew he could read the grim assurance that she meant what she said. She wasn’t even sure he could move after what he’d been through, but he amazed her again.
He staggered to his knees, and then to his feet. The transmuter was still locked in his arms, like a precious child in the embrace of a doting mother. His eyes showed madness, but his will was surmounting even that. He was incredible – and demonic.
‘Outside,’ Susan ordered, triggering the door control. She also shut down the defence systems totally. It wasn’t beyond his imagining to have sabotaged them in the event of necessity. She had no desire for the TARDIS to incapacitate her now because of some cunning scheme of his. ‘Outside,’ she repeated.
Trembling from his inner struggle, the Master obeyed.
Tersurus was a nothing planet – bare rock, a few struggling lichens Little greenery, and nothing animal at all in sight. Maybe she wasn’t seeing it at its best, but Susan hardly cared about that. She hadn’t been a tourist since she’d left Grandfather.
‘That’s far enough,’ she decided. The Master staggered to a halt. ‘Now, put that thing down and step away from it.’
‘What are you going to do?’ the Master demanded. He seemed to be recovering slowly but incrementally from the mental assault.
‘I’m going to destroy it so that neither you nor any other maniac can use it,’ she replied grimly.
‘No!’ he yelped. ‘It’s my tool to power! You can’t have it! You can’t!’ His mind was starting to crumble again from the stress.
Susan glared at him coldly ‘I’m destroying it in five seconds,’ she stated. ‘If you’re still holding it then – so be it.’
‘It’s mine!’ he screamed, and he tried to run. But he’d overestimated his own strength, and instead crashed to the ground. Whimpering and snarling, he clutched the transmuter to his chest.
‘Five,’ Susan said, and aimed the TCE. There was neither pity nor mercy left in her. She triggered the device, knowing she was killing the Master, too – and discovered that she was glad of it. If any being deserved death, it was him.
The energies of the TCE ravaged through the transmuter, and on into the Master’s body. There was no respite for him now, no way to regenerate from such a death. The transmuter exploded, energies flaring forth. Susan staggered back, shielding her eyes, and reentered the Master’s TARDIS. She closed the doors swiftly and hurried to the console. There she switched on the screen. She could see the energy wave licking futilely at the shell of the TARDIS.
It was over. The transmuter was destroyed, the Master dead.
Now what? What did she have left to her? She stared down at the console, lost and confused. She was free again, in all senses of the word. David’s death had severed her ties to Earth, and, now she had a TARDIS, everywhere was open to her.
She gradually realised that a warning light was flashing. Susan dredged through her memories – her own, as well as some she’d taken from the Master – and recognised it as a signal lock.
That brought her crashing back to the here and now with a shock. When she’d switched off the TARDIS’s defence systems, she’d left it vulnerable to a search from Gallifrey! The Time Lords were tracking her down… And she knew what would happen to her if they found her. She’d fled her homeworld with her grandfather for very good reasons, which were unlikely to have changed. She moved quickly, drawing on the Master’s knowledge of his ship to reset the defence grid to shield her signal. Then she set the controls to a random destination and engaged the drive units.
With a whisper, the ship left the ruins of Tersurus behind. Since she didn’t have any idea where she was going, neither would the Time Lords. She was still free of them. And she now had a TARDIS once again… One that was controllable… She stared at the console in wonder. She was no longer confined to Earth. She could go anywhere, do anything.
But David… Grandfather…
She was free, but her two great loves were no longer with her.
15
Happy Endings?
Donna sat glumly by the bed that held the Doctor, hating everything. Especially, she hated hospitals. They always stank of things she knew she didn’t want to identify. She hated doctors, because, when it came down to it, they didn’t know what they were doing. In the case of the Doctor, it was triply so. All they’d done was stitch up what they could and left him to live or die. Their excuse was that, given his alien metabolism, anything humans considered medicine might well be lethal to him. She hated them for that, but what Donna hated most was the fact that they were right.
The Doctor had been unconscious for two days. The ECG had held pretty steady, though the readings indicated a human being should be dead. The Doctor wasn’t dead but it was hard to tell whether he was becoming more alive. Things were happening all around her, but Donna had no will to find out what they were. All she could do was to stand vigil over the Doctor. Well, sit vigil, really – she didn’t have the strength to stand.
The door to the room opened, and Barlow ambled in, carrying a tray. On it were two mugs of tea and a plate of biscuits. ‘Thought you’d need this,’ he said, setting the tray down and handing her a mug. ‘That’s the way you like it, right?’