Stolen Goods (audio story)

 was the first story in the audio anthology Jenny: The Doctor's Daughter, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Matt Fitton and featured Georgia Tennant as Jenny and Sean Biggerstaff as Noah.

Publisher's summary
Jenny is new to the universe and keen to explore – but in unfamiliar spaceships, accidents happen. She's lucky to have someone on-hand to help. A slippery, fast-talking someone, called Garundel.

Soon, Jenny is mixed up in cons and explosions. But she also finds something strange, inexplicable, and as new to universe as she is. She'll call him Noah.

Plot
Jenny is remembering her origins when her newest stolen ship suddenly detects a moon in its trajectory. With less than a minute, Jenny reprograms the ship’s navicom to avoid the moon, sending it through a hyperspace portal but crashing into another spaceship. The owner of the other ship, Garundel hails her and makes her admit it being her fault. He docks her ship and claims she has hairline lattice fractures to her ship.

He makes a deal with her and takes her to Vesh Taralesh’s emporium to fix both of their ships. Taralesh inspects the ship and claims it to be ‘kaputt’. She asks her employee Lukaku to fetch parts for Garundel’s ship. Jenny enters her ship to fetch her things. Meeting the other two in Taralesh’s office, where Jenny is made aware of her running bill. The two of them make Jenny an offer of a fifty thousand credit fine and an offer to a spaceport, unless there is valuable cargo in her ship.

Spotting her cargo full of valuables, the rate is then reduced to twenty thousand credits. Jenny refuses their offers to their anger. After the third time calling Jenny ‘blondie’, Jenny chokes Garundel, explaining to him that she’s about to leave in her ship. She had already noted that Taralesh was incorrectly hammering on the hull with a torque rotator, which does nothing. However it does give away that the front of Garundel’s ship is reinforced for regular crashes. She also notes their overfamiliarity, as if they knew each other well. Finally, she reveals that before entering the hyperspace portal, she had run her proximity shield, which had shown nothing, meaning that Garundel had used a subsonic pulsewave to purposely scramble her navicom. The same device, she notes, is sitting on Taralesh’s office shelf. Furthermore, Taralesh has a whole pile of the same ‘claim form’ and several transactions for fifty thousand credits.

Jenny tells them she’s aware of their scam and discharges her power pack, which causes enough of a distraction for her to leave. As she attempts to enter her ship, Lukaku is ordered to restrain her and force her to pay the bill. Jenny is taken to the crusher, which Garundel claims to be ‘nice and evidence-free’. As Jenny is given minutes to live, Garundel admits his part in the scam. Jenny tries to make Lukaku see that what they’re doing is wrong. Lukaku must do as she says due to Taralesh having previously saved her own people. Garundel makes her aware that others have been placed into the crusher before.

Jenny uses Lukaku’s weight and centre of gravity against her to escape. Garundel picks up his weapon and the two of them chase after her. Jenny finally manages to find a white pod that isn’t deadlocked, named ‘ghost ship’ by Taralesh. Meanwhile, Taralesh begins planning the next scam. Lukaku manages to locate Jenny heading to the ghost ship.

Jenny enters the ship. Garundel follows her biotrace and finds it familiar to him. Inside the ship, Jenny works out that the ship has psychic controls and uses a thought to lock the main door. As Garundel approaches the ship, Vesh leaves to run the next scam. Finding the door locked, he orders Lukaku to fetch the laser torch. Jenny threatens to fly the ship out of the side of the emporium leaving the other two next to a gaping hole leading into space.

Jenny asks the ship for help, which causes a cryopod to defrost, from which steps a young man. Jenny introduces herself to the man who has no idea who he is. The man somehow manages to understand the ship and he successfully commands the ship to launch and leave the emporium. The man reveals that he’s been frozen for so long that he’s forgotten his past. They both realise that their lives are similar. Jenny decides to create a name for the man. Since he came from ‘nowhere’, she decides upon the name Noah.

The ship receives a scrambled location and stops. Garundel and Lukaku catch up in Garundel’s ship. His new plan is to haul in the spaceship and render Jenny unconscious, as he knows now that she is a Time Lord and therefore expensive. Meanwhile, Vesh fails to impact on her target. Instead her ship powers down. Over the coms, a woman warns her that she will be detained for interrogation.

Jenny forces Noah to hide in the lockers. Garundel forces his way in and Jenny attempts for a second time to get through to Lukaku. A fight begins between them. Noah attempts to burst out of the locker, being released by Garundel. Upon scanning by Garundel’s datapad, his species is revealed as unknown. Garundel reveals that Jenny is a Time Lord, causing Lukaku to recall a Time Lord descending from the skies of her world and saving her people.

Meanwhile, Vesh is being interrogated in her ship as to the whereabouts of ‘the Time Lord’, which confuses her. The interrogator reveals she is COLT-5000, a sentient cyborg, who is hunting for Jenny. She then murders Vesh. In her own ship, COLT-5000 sets destination for the Vesh Taralesh Emporium and atomises Vesh’s ship.

Garundel forces Noah to set the ghost ship’s path back to the emporium. Garundel reveals that now that he has Jenny and Noah, he is ditching his scams with Vesh and moving on. Lukaku agrees with Jenny when she says that Garundel is a scumbag. Suddenly the ship comes under attack from COLT-5000’s ship, who wishes them to surrender.

Jenny notes that this ship has been following her for a while. COLT-5000 once more asks for ‘the Time Lord’. Upon learning of Vesh’s death, Garundel thinks that the best option is to find the best price for Jenny and sell her to the cyborg. Lukaku fiercely disagrees, knowing that COLT-5000 will kill them all once the deal is done. Noah finds an escape capsule and Jenny comes up with an idea.

Garundel hails COLT-5000’s ship and stalls her in a conversation. The ghost ship then explodes violently. The four of them, inside the capsule, riding the explosion to the emporium. At the emporium, Lukaku offers her services to Jenny, who refuses to have servants, and states that she owes nothing to Garundel.

COLT-5000 advances in the emporium, secretly lead by Garundel. He injects Noah with something and together they go to find the others. Jenny’s instincts lead her to invent a time hopper, which Garundel names a ‘DIY vortex manipulator’. Garundel leads the three others to face the COLT-5000. Garundel enquires about his payment, to which the COLT-5000 states that his death was payment enough.

Lukaku uses Garundel’s gun to shoot the cyborg and fails. The time hopper activates and while Lukaku gives her and Garundel’s lives to fight the COLT-5000, Jenny and Noah use the time hopper to escape. They both fall out of the time vortex somewhere. Garundel saves his skin by offering to gain both Jenny and Noah for the cyborg.

Cast

 * Jenny - Georgia Tennant
 * Noah - Sean Biggerstaff
 * Garundel - Stuart Milligan
 * Vesh Taralesh - Sarah Woodward
 * Lukaku - Clare Corbett
 * COLT-5000 - Siân Phillips

Worldbuilding

 * Noah's ship was found as white hole flotsam.
 * Garundel wonders why Jenny doesn't travel in a TARDIS.
 * Jenny creates a time hopper, which she makes "from instinct".
 * Noah's 'ghost ship' is control by telepathy.

Continuity

 * Jenny says that she was born a soldier. (TV: The Doctor's Daughter)
 * Upon seeing Garundel, she exclaims that she's met 'fish people' but never 'toad people', to which he takes offence. (TV: The Doctor's Daughter)
 * Garundel says he has had dealings with Time Lords before. (AUDIO: Black and White, Starlight Robbery)
 * Much like the TARDIS, Noah's 'ghost ship' is controlled by telepathy. Jenny uses thought to connect with the ship and instruct it on what to do, although Noah is better at this. (TV: Listen et al)
 * Garundel knows that the Time Lords were wiped out. (TV: The End of the World)
 * Garundel requires time travel, and when asked how this is obtainable, he states that he knows a guy who knows a blue guy who owns a bar. (TV: The Pandorica Opens et al)