Hostiles (audio story)

Hostiles was the first audio story in Time War: Volume Three, the eleventh series of Gallifrey.

Publisher's summary
Exiled from Gallifrey, Romana and Narvin are fleeing from their own people and the Time War. Seeking refuge on a derelict wreck they find they are not alone. And that Time Lords have enemies everywhere...

Plot
Romana and Narvin fly through space in a TARDIS, pursued by attack ships and unable to dematerialise. Romana pilots them into the Time Lord debris left behind from a battle in the Cabristan system and Narvin picks up a distress call from one of the battleships, Dreadnought Septima. Although he is keen to ignore it, Romana reminds him that they are still Time Lords and pilots the TARDIS to the ship to answer it.

On the Dreadnought, which is overrun with vegetation, Romana finds that there is no single trace of biodata but detects artron energy in the bays, indicating that there are a number of TARDISes aboard but no survivors. Narvin wants to leave, but Romana says that they can use the TARDISes to get a new dematerialisation circuit.

Qatal watches the two Time Lords on a screen and says that they cannot be here.

Romana and Narvin find a breach in the hull caused by a time grenade, sealed with an energy field, which suggests that the damage was done by the Time Lords. Narvin believes that he can see himself and Romana coming towards them, but reasons that they must be reflections or a trick of the light. They go to the gravity generator and find that the collapsing core has somehow been in suspension for centuries. They are then taken captive by Trellick, who tells them to be quiet so that they are not heard by "him".

Trellick, the ship's First Science Officer, initially does not believe that Romana and Narvin are who they claim to be. She tells them that she is the only surviving Time Lord aboard and that the other person aboard calls himself Qatal. She agrees to show them to the TARDISes in return for a trip far away from this system. Trellick is denied access through a door as Qatal has cancelled her clearance, but Romana is granted access as the ship is unaware that she is no longer Coordinator of the CIA.

Narvin asks Trellick how long she has been here and what her mission was, but Trellick does not answer. Qatal attacks, saying that Trellick cannot leave, and Trellick stuns him before fleeing with Romana and Narvin into the TARDIS bay. Whilst Romana looks for a new dematerialisation circuit, Trellick tells Narvin that Qatar is one of a kind and that she cannot leave because the TARDISes do not work. Romana calls Narvin into one of the TARDISes, which is full of stasers, time grenades and a Chameleon Arch, and finds that the Time Lords' mission, Operation Fury, was to capture and study a number of Sicari, using Qatal as a control.

Romana asks Trellick about Operation Fury and learns that the Sicari seemed to feed off of the Time Lords' intelligence whilst in the Time Vortex and that attack ships came from Cabristan IV. In the attack, the Sicari, who had mutated like Qatal due to morphic resonance, escaped. Trellick takes them to a vent leading to the engine room where they can take a lift to the medical bay and get from there to their TARDIS on the bow. They are followed by Qatal, who somehow makes Trellick disappear from the vent.

In the engine room, Romana finds that the engine is still running despite the ship being in a stationary orbit. She determines that Trellick has been here for a long time as a result of time breaking, explaining why the ship is overgrown, and they are forced to climb through the lift's ceiling when Qatal stops its ascent. Narvin shoots him with a staser, but he believes that he will have survived the fall and drops a time grenade.

Romana and Narvin reach the medical bay, which is full of specimen jars containing dead mutated Sicari. Trellick appears and reveals that Qatal somehow controls time on the ship and that he has "reset" her, removing most of her memories about Romana and Narvin, something he does whenever she comes close to escaping. She shows them that there is another her, on a different plane of reality, talking to an imprisoned Qatal, who says that he is remaining her prisoner to gain knowledge and that she should hide. That was just before the attack from Cabristan IV. The planes shift apart and they disappear.

The core was damaged by a Cabristan torpedo and, just before the ship was going to implode, Qatal stopped it from happening by freezing enough time. He saved Trellick and keeps asking her why he exists. Trellick tells Romana and Narvin that Qatal cannot be killed by a time grenade as he is able to reshape reality. Narvin's attempt to kill him has instead split his timelines and there are multiple versions of him across the ship, converging at the engine. Trellick says that they will have to return to where it began.

As the Time Lords scattered and died, the Qatals realise that they will be stronger together and decide to return to where everything began.

Trellick plans to use vines to descend towards the gravity core and Romana realises that she has done all of this before with a number of other Time Lords who answered her distress call. Trellick finally answers Qatal's question, telling him that she did not know what she was doing when she brought him here and that the universe is an evil place which will try to use him. He tells her that the ship will fall apart if she leaves the ship due to her having died before he used his powers to save her. Despite this, she swings outside of the ship and dies, causing the ship to start falling apart.

Romana and Narvin get inside the TARDIS and fly away, with no time to replace the dematerialisation circuit. They watch the Dreadnought's destruction and Narvin regrets not having trusted Trellick. He also believes that he is now over his fear of heights. They replace the circuit together, ready to go in search of Leela.

Cast

 * Romana - Lalla Ward
 * Narvin - Seán Carlsen
 * Trellick - Leah Harvey
 * Qatal - Mark Elstob

Continuity

 * Romana and Narvin are escaping from Gallifrey. (AUDIO: Assassins)
 * Dreadnought Septima was commissioned early in the Last Great Time War and built in the Quantum Yards for the "assault on Seriphia". (AUDIO: The Apocalypse Element, et al.)
 * Narvin is scared of heights after his incident in the data bank where he nearly nearly fell several stories while pursuing a murderer, who turned out to be Trave. (AUDIO: Havoc)
 * Project Fury was concerned with Sicari. (AUDIO: Assassins)
 * Narvin grabs a staser (TV: The Deadly Assassin, et al.) a Chameleon Arch, (TV: Human Nature, Fugitive of the Judoon, et al.) and an impulse laser. (TV: Arc of Infinity, et al.)