Lords and Masters (short story)

Lords and Masters was the second short story published in The Missy Chronicles.

Summary
With her TARDIS hijacked, is forced to take on a dangerous mission for the High Council. But she's nobody's puppet...

Plot
Having had a near miss with the Zygon Queen Brillana and a pack of Skarasens, arrives back in her TARDIS, intending to try and steal the Sun-Stealer of Tavos. As she sets course for the Tavosian System, Missy realises that her TARDIS' connection to the Eye of Harmony has been severed.

Suddenly, a young woman, named Yayani, appears, holding a staser to her head. She opens a holo-link to the General, who informs Missy that he has a mission for her. He sends her, along with Yayani to the Kyme Institute, where dangerous time experiments threaten the fabric of space and time. Missy reluctantly agrees to go along, seeing it as her only way to regain control of the TARDIS.

Arriving at the Kyme Institute, the duo of Missy and Yayani stumble upon a terminal, protected by a biometric key, a handprint. Stating that simply using her sonic umbrella would be, "too easy", Missy instead sets off the alarms, much to Yayani's dismay. A group of guards, led by Chief Mitchell, arrives and orders the two to stand down. Yayani gives up her staser, but when Mitchell moves forward to arrest the two, Missy activates the blast doors, severing Mitchell's arm, and affording the two access to the terminal. The two discover the location of the time experiments and travel there with Missy's vortex manipulator.

When the two arrive, they startle a man in the lab, Doctor Kalub, but Missy quickly paralyses him. Exploring the lab, the two soon discover a creature, kept confined in a bubble of time energy, constantly shifting between life and death. Missy enquires about the circumstances behind Yayani's arrest and learns that she tried to kill Rassilon, but failed, and was drafted to become his personal assassin. She soon realizes that Yayani is the last surviving member of the House of Stillhaven.

Satisfied, Missy sets about trying to free the creature and discovers that the creature is pregnant. Yayani is horrified that Doctor Kalub would harm a pregnant creature and turns on him. Missy goads Yayani into killing him, offering her control of her umbrella's muscle-retention field, which Yayani uses to break every bone in Kalub's body, killing him. Missy then pulls out her TCE, seemingly intending to put the creature out of its misery, at Yayani's urging.

Back on Gallifrey, the General hears the sound that marks the return of Yayani. But he soon finds a doll-sized Yayani, killed by Missy's TCE, and a note that simply states, "Not your puppet." Meanwhile, in her TARDIS, Missy, having jettisoned the Eye of Harmony, replacing it with Kalub's creature, flies off into the open universe, no longer bound to Gallifrey or their whims.

Characters

 * The General
 * Yayani
 * Mitchell
 * Doctor Kalub
 * Doctor Kalub

Continuity

 * The Patriarch of the House of Stillhaven opposed Rassilon's Ultimate Sanction. He stood next to the Woman when Rassilon instigated his plan. (TV: The End of Time)