The road less travelled...

Title: Donna and the Waters of Mars 2/8
Author: katherine_b
Rating: PG
Summary: How would having Donna on Mars have changed things?

Part II

“I’m on Mars,” Donna says slowly.

“Mm hmm.” The Doctor nods, almost visibly puffed up with pride. “What do you think?”

“I’m. On. Mars,” she repeats, even slower than before, as she turns around to peer through the visor of her helmet at the rocky ground around them.

“Donna, you’ve been on alien planets before,” he reminds her.

“Yeah, but… this is something else,” she says, turning in circles to look around her properly.

“Oodsphere,” he reminds her. “Messaline. The Library. Midnight. All of the others.”

“Didn’t have to wear this on any of those places though, did I?” she demands rhetorically, tapping her gloved hand against her helmet. “Somehow being dressed up like this makes it all seem that much more, oh, I don’t know…”

“Alien,” he suggests.

“Well, I was going for ‘dangerous,’ but yeah, alien works, too,” she agrees. “Maybe it’s because I’ve grown up with mankind wondering whether we’ll ever get there. ‘Here,’ I mean. You know, whether we can live there once we wreck the planet back home. If there’s water or life on Mars.”

“Both,” he tells her obligingly, “although I’m not sure how much of either we’ll see. It depends exactly when we’re here. I was aiming for the period of the Ice Warriors, but,” she watches him peer at the world around them, “we seem to have overshot that era. Still, I’m sure we’ll eventually stumble across someone who can tell us when we are. Come on! Allons-y!”

They cross some fairly flat ground before the Doctor turns to Donna with a grin as a thought clearly strikes him. “The next time you see Sarah Jane,” he says, “you can tell her you’ve been here, too. Unfortunately I can’t introduce you to Jamie and Zoe. I brought them here when I was only in my second body. But you’ve done one thing none of them have – you’ve walked on the surface!”

“Do you think Sarah Jane and I sit around comparing our experiences with you or something?” Donna demands sarcastically, arms akimbo.

He stares at her in obvious surprise. “Don’t you?”

“No!” She turns to glare at him before rolling his eyes. “Doctor, just because Rose and Sarah Jane had a little ‘I’m better than you’ competition before they sensibly decided to be friends doesn’t mean that everyone else is going to behave the same way. I’d happily listen to Sarah Jane’s stories of her time with you, but I’m not about to try and one-up her. Well,” she adds honestly, “not unless she asks where I’ve been and what I’ve done with you anyway.”

“Oh.” She can see what an effort it is for him not to be able to rub his ear or run a hand through his hair, but he manages to avoid looking silly by touching the outside of his helmet and merely shrugs instead. “I suppose that’s a good thing. I mean, it was pretty tense there for a while.”

“Well, you won’t have any problem like that with me,” she says honestly. “In fact, I’d love it if you filled the TARDIS with every single companion who ever travelled with you. It’d be brilliant to hear what everyone did. Not to mention,” she adds, shooting a teasing glance at him, “how much fun we’d have comparing ‘our’ versions of you.”

“All of a sudden I’m not too keen on that idea,” he says firmly, although his lips twitch as he clearly tries to suppress a grin.

“Well, it would be a logistical nightmare, so I’m not going to worry about it now,” she tells him, waving at the ground ahead of them, as they’ve stopped walking. “Shall we keep going? I’d like to see what is out here if I’m not going to meet any Ice Warriors.”

They continue in silence for a while, and it’s this silence that Donna notices most. Particularly since the Doctor enhanced her perception of the world around her, she’s become used to the sound of air moving past her, wind rushing through distant trees, even the undercurrent of voices of those nearby.

But here there’s nothing. The helmet muffles the sound of her breathing by some mysterious method, so other than the sound of her footsteps and those of the Doctor, the silence is almost absolute.

She can’t quite help the way she shudders a little.

“The emptiness can get to you after a while,” the Doctor’s voice says suddenly, echoing slightly in her helmet from the intercom. “I think there might be some life over that way, though,” he adds, gesturing off to their right, “so why don’t we head that way and see who we meet?”

“Or what,” she agrees with a smile. “Sounds good.”

She can’t help being relieved when she picks up the same mental sounds that he must have heard shortly before, and which only strengthen as they continue.

“Over that hill,” he says, and she nods, following him up the somewhat steep slope and down into a shallow valley.

The mental voices get clearer as they move further along, until finally Donna spots something unnaturally smooth on the horizon that clearly isn’t rock.

“Just in time,” the Doctor tells her, pointing at what she realises is the setting sun, before they move past a jutting outpost of rock and a base spreads out in front of their eyes.

“Oh, beautiful!” the Doctor declares with a smile.

Donna can’t quite share his enthusiasm about the five domes, joined up by long passages to a central hub and to the rocket she had seen a moment earlier. Still, she’s pleased to see something that denotes intelligent life and somewhere for them to spend the next few hours. She can’t help but feel that Mars would be a rather less friendly place at night.

However she realises the next instant that Mars doesn’t have to be shrouded in darkness for threats to appear.

“Rotate,” a mechanical voice says suddenly, making her start, and Donna looks over at the Doctor to realize that something black with tiny blue lights is poking into his back.

She glances over her shoulder to find a white robot behind them.

“Slowly,” the robot goes on as both Donna and the Doctor turn to face it, raising their arms. “You are under arrest. For trespassing. Gadget-gadget.”

Now Donna can look properly at the small robot, eyeing the huge head with the camera piece that reminds her unavoidably of the Daleks. She can’t help wondering about the sparks that fly from the robot’s joints every time it moves. However there’s no mistaking the threat of the weapon aimed at them.

“You couldn’t check this place for dangers first, too?” she murmurs as they are marched down towards the buildings below them.

“Where’s the fun in that?” he replies, and she glances at him in time to see him give a wry grin that makes her roll her eyes, even if she can’t really be surprised because she knows he actually quite likes the thrill of these sorts of situations.

The robot keeps its gun trained on them as they approach the main building.

“Enter airlock. Gadget-gadget.”

“It’s going to get bloody annoying if every robot around the place makes that stupid noise,” Donna complains as the air-pressure around them is stabilised.

“You’re telling me,” the Doctor agrees, casting a baleful glare at the machine behind them.

Once a voice assures them that the process is complete, the Doctor pulls off his gloves and then removes his helmet, nodding at her to do the same.

“Might as well be comfortable,” he tells her, his voice sounding odd without the echo as the door in front of them is opened.

“Suits off,” a voice orders as they step out of the doorway, and Donna looks up to find a woman pointing a gun at them, similar to the one being used by the robot.

“Why’s that?” the Doctor demands, nevertheless beginning to undo the fastenings on his suit, even as he gradually nudges Donna behind him to a place of relative safety. Of course, she realises a moment later that that puts her into the direct line of fire from the robot, but she appreciates the gesture nonetheless as she begins to remove her suit.

“Questions will be left to me,” the woman holding the gun snaps. “Steffi, see what you can find out from them.”

For a moment, Donna wonders if they’re being taken away to be tortured, but then she realises that a young woman with long hair is simply taking the suit that the Doctor has just removed and is holding out her hand for Donna’s.

“State your name, rank and intention,” the older woman orders at the point.

Donna glances at the Doctor, unsurprised to see his eyes, filled with both anxiety and annoyance, fixed on the gun. “The Doctor,” he says slowly and deliberately, “Doctor. Fun.”

Donna almost grins at his responses, particularly the last one, but before she can speak, she realises that the gun is now pointed at her.

However before she can answer – and she has no idea what she can say in answer to the second question – pounding footsteps interrupt the otherwise near-silent room and a man appears, ducking down to look beneath a partition from the ceiling as he runs into the room.

“What the hell?” he demands, before arriving at an opening in the way that leads to some shallow steps. “It’s a man! And a woman! A man and a woman on Mars! How?”

The woman identified as Steffi holds up their suits in demonstration. “They were wearing these things. I have never seen anything like this.”

“What did mission control say?” the newcomer demands.

“They’re out of range for ten hours with the solar flares,” Steffi replies.

“You could cut the chat, everyone,” the woman with the gun says authoritatively.

“Actually, chat’s second on my list.” Donna can’t be surprised when the Doctor speaks, but clearly the others are from the surprised expressions she sees on the faces of the people scattered around the room. However he continues regardless, his eyes fixed on the weapon. “The first being gun, pointed at our heads.”

“So head's first on your list,” Donna can’t help correcting.

“Actually, it puts my head second and chat third, I think,” he corrects, glancing at her. “Gun – head – chat. Yeah.” He shakes his head. “I hate lists.”

“Not as much as guns.”

“Very true.” He turns back to the other woman. “But you could hurt someone with that thing! Just put it down.”

“Oh, you’d like that,” she snaps.

“Can you find me someone who wouldn’t?” the Doctor asks.

“Why should I trust you?” the woman with the gun asks, reasonably enough, Donna supposes.

The Doctor’s voice is soft in response with the tone he always adopts when trying to persuade people of his good intentions. “Because I give you my word,” he promises. “And, forty million miles away from home, my word is all you’ve got.”

Donna can’t help holding her breath a little until the woman gives in and lowers the gun.

“Keep Gadget covering him,” she orders the young dark-haired man who, Donna now notices, is wearing silver gloves and something that looks rather like a white apron. That man gives a brief nod in acknowledgement.

“Gadget-gadget,” the robot announces.

“Oh, right,” the Doctor remarks, turning his head towards the robot. “So you control that thing. Auto-glove response.”

“You got it,” the other man says in an American accent that startles Donna a little, although she shouldn’t have been surprised since Steffi is clearly German and she suspects the man who appeared most recently in the room is also not British.

“To the right,” the man wearing the gloves says, moving his hands and they watch as the robot moves the same way.

“Gadget-gadget.”

“And to the left.”

A series of sparks comes from the robot.

“It’s a bit flimsy,” the Doctor says rather deprecatingly.

“Gadget-gadget,” the robot says as if in response.

“Does it have to keep saying that?” the Doctor demands, and Donna can hear the frustration in his voice.

“I think it’s funny,” the operator says in obvious unhappiness at the criticism.

The Doctor sighs. “I hate funny robots.”

Before the young man can reply – and it’s clear he’s starting to fume – a voice over the intercom interrupts the conversation.

“Excuse me boss,” a female voice says. “Computer log shows we’ve got an extra two people on site. How’s that possible?”

“Keep the bio-dome closed,” the woman who had been holding the gun snaps into a small grey object that glows with a blue light. “And when using open comms, you call me Captain.”

She switches off the communications device with an almost angry gesture and then turns back to the new arrivals.

“Who are you?” she demands, nodding at Donna.

“This is Donna,” the Doctor says quickly, although she can see his eyes watching each member of the crew in front of them for a response. “She’s my – assistant.”

Donna nearly chokes, but decides this isn’t the moment to assert her rights. However she sends the Doctor the mental equivalent of a slap that at least earns her an apologetic glance.

“So who sent you here?” another of the men in the room demands. “It can’t be a wild state flight because we’d know about it. Therefore it’s got to be one of the independents, yeah?”

The Doctor folds his arms across his chest and gives deep sigh, but the other man continues before he can speak.

“Was it the Branson Inheritance fund? They’ve been talking about a Mars shot for years.”

“Right, yeah, okay, you got me,” he lies. “So, I’m the Doctor. And you are?”

“Oh, come on!” The first woman’s tone is incredulous. “We’re the first off-world colonists in history! Everyone on planet Earth knows who we are.”

Donna can’t help feeling her hear skip a beat. So it’s begun – the progression of humans across the universe. She’s seen evidence of it in her travels: on the Oodspherere and Messaline, at the Library and on Midnight. So many places. But she knows what they become, and, as she thinks of Halpen and General Cobb among others, she doesn’t know whether to be delighted or devastated.

The Doctor, however, has clearly made connections that are beyond Donna’s scope of knowledge. “The first?” he demands almost weakly. “The very first humans on Mars? Then this is Bowie Base One?”

The woman opposite him echoes the name and nods.

“Number one?” the Doctor continues in what Donna can now recognise are horrified tones. “Founded July 1st 2058. Bowie Base One in the Gusev Crater.”

She knows he’s upset, but she isn’t quite sure why. The next instant, however, she can feel his mind pressing against hers, as he does when he needs to share something with her, and opens her thoughts to let him in.

She’s left almost breathless as she hears his mental voice reading at top speed an article about their current location.

Human Race Celebrates Mars Colony: The Red Planet – Home Sweet Home.

Donna can feel the worry emanating from him and she waits for more, for the bad news she knows must be coming.

“You’ve been here how long?” he demands out loud.

“Seventeen months,” comes the ready reply.

“2059?” he asks sharply, and she can see him struggling to control his emotions. “It’s 2059 right now?”

He shares more information with Donna so that she comes to the same realisation that he does as he all but leaps into the air in a moment of understanding.

Captain Adelaide Brooke: Mars Mission Launched

“Oh!” he exclaims as he clutches as his hair. “My head is so stupid! You’re Captain Adelaide Brooke!”

There’s a somewhat puzzled frown on the face of the woman Donna can now recognise from the picture that flashes into her mind from the Doctor’s thoughts.

Donna is left stunned, shaken and appalled at the realisation that the photo is attached to an article that is the obituary of the woman standing in front of her.

The Doctor suddenly spins on his heel to face the man who was asking about the Branson Inheritance Fund. “And Ed! You’re deputy Edward Gold!”

He turns to face another of the crew as Donna begins to see flashes of obituary after obituary – one for each of the people in this room with them. “Tarak Ital, M.D. Nurse Yuri Kerenski. Senior Technician Steffi Ehrlich.” He turns to the young man operating the robot. “Junior technician Roman Groom. Geologist Mia Bennett.”

He stops while facing this young woman with Asian features, his expression softening into sadness.

“You’re only 27 years old.”

Adelaide interrupts at this point. “As I said, Doctor, everyone knows our names.”

“Oh,” the Doctor’s voice is full of pain and longing, “they’ll never forget them.”

It takes all of the strength Donna has not to break down in tears as she finally understands the reason for the articles and their matching dates of death. The Doctor glances at her as he shares the information.

Mars Disaster: Bowie Base One destroyed. World in mourning. Nuclear blast crater. November 21 2059.

“What’s the date, today?” he demands impatiently, almost angrily. “Somebody say it? The exact date.”

Adelaide provides the answer. “November 21st. 2059.”

“Right!” The word comes out as a gasp from the Doctor’s mouth, and Donna, even as she is filled with the same horror he is experiencing, can’t help wondering if he even knows he’s spoken. “Fine.”

“Is there something wrong?” Steffi asks briskly.

“What’s so important about my age?” Mia wants to know, her voice anxious.

The Doctor, however, has moved back beside Donna and now takes her hand in an almost painful grip. “We should… go. We really should go.”

He almost drags her away from the others, but this time she understands, both because she knows what this moment in time is and because she can feel and shares the pain he’s in.

“I’m sorry,” he tells them softly. “I’m… I’m sorry with all of my hearts. But it’s one of those very rare times when I’ve got no choice.”

Donna squeezes his fingers, trying to reassure him, or perhaps herself – she’s not quite sure which – that she won’t say anything.

Because, this time, she knows.

Next Part