Beyond (audio story)

Beyond was the third audio story in the anthology Time War: Volume Four.

Publisher's summary
Romana met her fate on Unity, but Braxiatel isn't ready to give up on her. In a forbidden realm, he offers one last hope to escape the chaos of a universe at war.

First, they must enter the Beyond and confront the ghosts and monsters within...

Plot
Irving Braxiatel flies his TARDIS into a black hole to take himself and Romana into the Beyond. After a bumpy journey, they arrive and Braxiatel explains that the Beyond is an anomalous place which has come into being as a result of the damage to the timelines caused by the Time War. They have landed on a memory of Excium, a planet which was destroyed in a timeline which has been wiped out, and go to find a TARDIS to take them into the next "moment" of the Beyond, hurrying to avoid being killed by an exploding star.

Romana and Braxiatel avoid being hit by a crashing Battle TARDIS and meet its pilot, Captain Zarafortuna, who draws her weapon and tells them that she has been reliving the crash again and again but has never seen them before. The star explodes and time resets. Romana and Braxiatel get into Zara's TARDIS, which Braxiatel is able to get working and program to take them to Zara's ship, Dreadnought Servia. Zara becomes cocooned with energy and screams before disappearing, having been neutralised due to the TARDIS taking her to her own timeline, one in which she already exists.

Zara returns to the crash of her Battle TARDIS and emerges, calling out for Romana and Braxiatel. She encounters one of the Ravenous, who orders her to follow Romana and Braxiatel with its help.

Romana and Braxiatel arrive on the Dreadnought and find that the Time Lords aboard are abandoning ship due to the explosion of the star. Romana detects the TARDIS docks and leads the way to the hydrovators. Braxiatel tells her that they are looking for the Parallax, a powerful device which could end the war and was discovered by an engineer who travelled to the core of the Beyond through a black hole which appeared at the beginning of the war. He does not tell her what it is, however, claiming that she would not believe him. When they reach the TARDIS bay, they find that the TARDIS is deadlocked.

Lieutenant Dax is eaten by the Ravenous and Zara boards the Dreadnought.

Romana and Braxiatel track the owner of the TARDIS to the bridge, which Romana can enter thanks to being President in this timeline. They find the owner, this timeline's Narvin, and learn that his Romana ordered that the Apex Protocol be used to destroy the Cannovar system as it was to become the staging post for the final attack on Gallifrey. Narvin shows them millions of hidden Dalek ships which will be obliterated, as will the Dreadnought and the six inhabited planets in the system, and tells them that his TARDIS will not work. He gives them the codes, however, and asks them not to tell his other self what he did here. Once they have gone, Zara arrives on the bridge with the Ravenous, who transforms her into one of them. They devour Narvin.

Romana and Braxiatel find that everybody on board has disappeared and detect the draining of artron energy across the ship. They flee from the Ravenous to the hydrovator and surmise that the Ravenous have devoured everybody on board and increased in power with each kill. They reach Narvin's TARDIS before the hundreds of Ravenous on the ship can get them. Braxiatel has difficulty navigating the TARDIS to the next layer as the barriers become denser as they approach the core; on the journey, he tells Romana that the Parallax can use a quantum biological network to remove a species from existence. Romana finds this monstrous but Braxiatel, who says that he left the war so that he did not have to watch people sink to such depths, says that it is the only way.

The TARDIS materialises on Gallifrey, which is frozen as a result of the density of spacetime. Romana accuses Braxiatel of leaving Gallifrey out of cowardice and keeping information from her; he says that he knows how flawed and venal he is and wants to keep Romana from becoming the same as a result of the war.

The Ravenous emerge on Gallifrey and go in search of Romana and Braxiatel.

Romana and Braxiatel arrive at the Panopticon and identify a frozen Leela as the anomaly here, surmising that the artron energy from her time travel is reacting to their presence. Braxiatel realises that they are seeing the moment before Leela dies and that the Romana of this timeline attacked the Cannovar system as revenge. Their presence begins to cause a temporal shockwave allowing Leela to tell them to get away before it is too late; Leela dies and Romana and Braxiatel run away.

to be completed

Cast

 * Romana - Lalla Ward
 * Braxiatel - Miles Richardson
 * Leela - Louise Jameson
 * Narvin - Seán Carlsen
 * Zara - Susie Emmett
 * Ship Computer - Francois Pandolfo
 * The Ravenous - George Asprey

Continuity

 * Romana mentions the Anti-Genesis codes. (AUDIO: From the Flames)
 * The Ravenous mention the Watchmaker sparing Braxiatel. (AUDIO: Enemy Lines)