Chapter Text
Jenny walked over to the centre console to watch the Doctor at work. Her head still ached, but she pushed through it. He flicked a few toggles and pressed a switch, adjusting their atmospheric direction and rematerialization coordinates. Her fingers itched as if acknowledging the same actions.
Wait, how do I know what he’s doing? It had seemed obvious, but then when she actually looked, all she saw was a swathe of obscure buttons and switches. That was confusing. But a lot of things were confusing around her Dad, that was part of the fun.
The Doctor stepped back and clapped his hands. “Right, we should be landing soon. Scotland! Been ages since I’ve been to Scotland. Or, maybe it hasn’t, you never can tell.” He furrowed his brow, peering up at the brim of his hat. “This won’t do. Be right back.” He wheeled on his heel and strode off through the door out of the control room.
“He’s nearly always like that,” Sarah Jane said apologetically.
“I know, it’s brilliant,” Jenny said, smiling. She rested the fingertips of her left hand on the console, and she fancied the TARDIS hummed silently against them, confusion – resignation – curiosity – glee, all at once.
“You know the Doctor, don’t you,” Sarah mused. “How?” Harry listened intently.
Jenny shrugged, leaning back against the console, feeling a different hum, danger – caution. “Er, classified? Shouldn’t tell you.” Approval – comfort – pride.
“Well, what about you, then?” Harry asked. “Is Jenny short for anything, or is it just Jenny?”
“Suppose technically it’s short for ‘Generated Anomaly’,” she said. “But I prefer Jenny.”
“Your Mum and Dad must have had an odd sense of humour,” he said, smiling.
“Haven’t got a Mum,” Jenny said, shaking her head. “Just my Dad. And an aunt, sort of, I think? What is an aunt?”
Sarah and Harry shared a perplexed look, just as the Doctor returned. He’d changed hats, now wearing a brimless cap that reminded Jenny of a military beret, and the long strip of fabric around his neck had been exchanged for one in a different pattern.
“Here,” he said, tossing the one he’d been wearing to Jenny, another length of fabric to Harry, and Sarah his hat. Jenny caught the first, fumbling until she had it in her arms.
“What’s this?”
“Scarf?” Harry said, as if she should know it already. “Keeps your neck warm?”
She wrestled with the length of fabric and draped it around her neck.
“Does it have to be this long?” she asked, nearly stepping on it despite her reflexes.
“No – but isn’t it fun?” the Doctor asked, eyebrows raised, flinging his arms out with the scarf flapping behind them.
She wrapped it around her neck a couple of times until it was (slightly) more manageable, then flicked one side out with a hand and watched it flutter back. She laughed and nodded.
The TARDIS hummed, something clunked, and the Doctor grinned.
“Ah! We’re here. Come on, then!” He strode to the door and threw it open, and Jenny and the others followed him out.
She paused for a moment – dizzy, probably to be expected, but she could swear she felt the planet itself, turning beneath her, hurtling through space. It subsided, but didn’t quite go away; she suspected it was an aftereffect of her jump, but it was exhilarating. She grinned and stepped forward.
And wait, how about that? She really was on another planet! It wasn’t Messaline, it wasn’t a ship or a space station; another planet, where the air felt and tasted and smelt different. It wasn’t mechanical and metallic and recycled, but it was sweeter and lighter than that of the complex on Messaline had been. Granted, hundreds or thousands dying in an enclosed complex in the span of a week, probably not great for the air quality, she mused absently, then dismissed the thought. Messaline was the past. This was her future. Well, relatively.
She bounced on her toes, full of excitement and energy.
The scenery around them was different now – tall needled plants stood far higher than the top of the TARDIS, and the ground was mostly hard-packed soil with occasional small thin-bladed plants. The Doctor walked forward purposefully and stopped, glancing at some device he’d pulled from his coat.
“Well, he’s still signalling on the psionic scale. All we have to do is keep the needle in the green sector and it’ll lead us to him,” he explained. “This way.”
As they walked, the small plants grew thicker and covered the ground, and the trees(?) smaller and more densely packed. She leaned in to examine the outside, resting a palm on the cracked grey trunk; she liked the texture of it under her hand, and the ridges and furrows.
“These are trees, right?” Jenny asked.
Sarah Jane looked at her, confused. “Have you never seen a tree before?”
“Of course I’ve seen trees before!” she protested. “Just, those were more… leafy, and these have the prickles, so I wasn’t certain.”
“They’re conifers,” the Doctor said. “Pinus sylvestris, Scotch pine. The needles are the leaves, they’re adapted for cold.”
She cocked her head, looking around. “It’s not that cold, is it?” The temperature wasn’t much different from the complex on Messaline.
“You aren’t cold?” Harry asked, pulling his coat tighter around himself at a gust of wind. Sarah turned up her collar.
“No, should I be?”
“Gallifreyans don’t get cold as easily as humans,” the Doctor explained to Harry distractedly, “and seasonal variation here can be fairly severe,” he added in answer to her earlier question. “Halt!”
Everyone pulled up short as the Doctor checked his direction finder. He turned slightly and pointed into open flat land.
“Forward!”
They kept walking until the Doctor looked up and pointed. A strip of hard-packed ground passed through the field a short distance away.
“There we are! Follow me!”
At that, he took off running with long strides, and Jenny grinned and followed suit.
“Hold on!” Sarah called behind them, holding her hat as she and Harry caught up.
A few moments after they began following the path, a rumbling heralded some sort of vehicle, which the two humans (well, she assumed) managed to stop by waving at it. Jenny wrinkled her nose; something smelled of burning. The driver, a severe-looking man, lowered the window.
“Hi!” Sarah said.
“Good morning,” the Doctor added.
“Are you wanting a lift?” the driver asked.
“Well, you do seem to be going our way,” the Doctor said after a brief glance at the compass. “It’s extremely kind of you.”
“Whom do I have the pleasure of speaking to?”
“Ah, forgive me. This is Sarah Jane Smith, Jenny Smith, Harry Sullivan, and I’m the Doctor.”
The man nodded stiffly. “I am the Duke of Forgill. Would you like to get in?”
The Doctor got in next to the driver after the rest of them had squeezed in to the rear seat with Sarah in the middle.
“I wonder if you could tell me where we are?” the Doctor inquired.
“You’re just outside the village of Tulloch.”
“And Tulloch is…?”
The Duke gave him a confused look. Jenny giggled, thinking of a similar expression her father had induced in General Cobb. The man who shot her- ooh, no, bad memory!
“In the highlands of Scotland, of course,” the Duke said. “As a matter of fact, we’re quite close to Loch Ness.”
The Doctor continued to attempt to engage the man in conversation, not seeming to be put off by the fact that he returned it only in facial expressions, while Jenny and the others watched the scenery go by, Jenny asking for identification for the things she wasn’t certain of.
Soon, a collection of some sort of structures rose before them.
“What are those?”
“Houses,” Sarah said. She was smiling, but she didn’t seem to be laughing at Jenny, perhaps rather enjoying being able to help. “People live in them, and together they make up the town.”
There was a sound, she could hear over the rumbling of the vehicle, and she cocked her head to listen more closely.
“What’s that noise?”
“Sounds like someone’s playing the bagpipes,” Harry said.
So that’s bagpipes…
It sounded… happy.
Jenny listened to the conversation while at the same time she scanned the obviously-military presence in the town. She tensed a little. Something was definitely going on, though none of the soldiers seemed especially on edge, a number of them laughing and leaning casually against a wall.
“What’s a ‘haggis’, then?”
“Ah, it’s a sort of pudding,” he said. “Sheep heart, liver, and lungs, I believe, minced with spices and cooked. I’m told it tastes savoury, though I’ve never tried it myself.”
“So… it’s a food?”
“Generally, yes,” the Doctor said put in. “Make a terrible football.”
“What’s a football?”
Sarah snickered at Harry’s flabbergasted expression. “It’s for a game, it’s a ball about this big-” she gestured a ball around the size of her head “-that you kick and attempt to get it into the opposing team’s goal.”
“That is dreadfully simplistic!” Harry said, once he could get words out. “Now, I prefer cricket, but,” he began, and launched into a highly detailed explanation of both games that lasted until after the vehicle had stopped and the three of them had followed the Doctor into a building. The room was mostly tan walls and dark wood, with a few tables. A few men stood around the room, two of them in different clothes than the soldiers. One of them, a balding man in slightly rumpled clothes, she assessed as threat level low but somewhat stressed; the other, a dark-haired, moustached man in a well-kept outfit, had a military bearing that she decided meant he was probably the soldiers’ superior. It was the second man who greeted them as they entered.
“Oh, welcome back, Doctor.”
“Sorry we’re late, Brigadier, only we were in Wales when you called and you know what the traffic is like on the M6.” He gave a toothy smile.
“Wales?” the man said, confused.
“Cardiff.”
“Whatever for?”
“Well, it would be rude to make her walk here, don’t you think?” he said, looking to Jenny, who smiled back at him. The man followed the Doctor’s gaze.
“I’m sorry, young lady, I don’t believe we’ve been introduced. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, at your service.”
Jenny drew herself up automatically and saluted. “I’m Jenny! I’m new,” she added, grinning at her own joke.
“Ah, I see you’ve found someone with a sense of discipline,” the Brigadier said.
“We’ll soon solve it, don’t worry,” the Doctor told him. “Now, I want to know one thing, Brigadier,” he said. He pointed to the man’s lower half, wrapped in a garment of similar pattern to the Doctor’s scarf. “What’s that?”
“‘That’, Doctor, is a kilt,” the Brigadier said stiffly.
“Suits you very well.”
“Oh, do you think so?”
“Yes.”
Jenny glanced to Sarah and Harry, who looked like they were trying not to laugh, though she wasn’t certain what was funny.
“Oh, this is his Grace the Duke of Forgill,” Sarah introduced. “He very kindly gave us a lift.”
“Yes,” the Duke said. “I had to pass here on my way to see you, Mister Hickle,” he said to the non-military man.
“Huckle,” the man corrected.
“I’m afraid I have to complain once more about the behaviour of the roughnecks who work for you, trespassing and poaching on my property,” the Duke went on, seeming not to notice. Sarah took a seat, Jenny and the others following suit as the discussion continued.
At least the chairs here are similar. Not that she wasn’t excited about all the differences, but she’d feel silly if she confused basic furniture.
“My men have been warned, your Grace,” Huckle said, frowning. “If any of them are caught, they’ll be dismissed immediately.”
“Let me give you a warning of my own, then,” said the Duke. “If my game-keeper catches them on my land again, they won’t be prosecuted – they’ll be shot. And that’s no idle threat, Mister Heckle.” At that he turned away from the other man and ended the conversation.
Huckle huffed. “I’ll be expecting you at the base, then, Brigadier,” he said, before storming out of the room, slamming the door on his way out.
“Yes, Mister Huckle,” the Brigadier said as the door slammed. Jenny thought he looked a bit tired, and she was starting to see why.
“I trust the army isn’t going to help these oil people,” the Duke said, giving the Brigadier a stern look. “Is that why you were sent here?”
“No, sir. We’re a special investigation team,” the Brigadier explained.
“Investigating what?” the Duke asked. Again, his arrogant bearing reminded Jenny of General Cobb, and she shuddered, lifting a hand to her shirt, beneath it the unblemished skin where a bullet had once been. Sarah looked at her, concerned, and Jenny breathed out and shook her head. It’s okay! I came back! And I’ve been shot at plenty of times since then so really I shouldn’t let it bother me.
“I’m afraid I can’t disclose that, sir,” the Brigadier said. “Our mission is a… sensitive matter.”
“My family,” said the Duke coldly, “has served Scotland for well over seven centuries. That doesn’t seem to count for much these days, does it. I’ll leave you to your official secrets. Good day to you.” He gave the Brigadier a stiff nod and left the building.
“What an odd chap,” the Brigadier said as the door closed, now turning toward Jenny and the others. “Bit medieval in his ideas.”
“Well, at least he’s a man of conviction,” said the Doctor, standing up. Jenny was somewhat surprised he’d stayed still so long.
“All the same, he did save us a long walk,” Harry pointed out.
“Anyway, it’s nice to see you again, Brigadier,” Sarah said, standing to greet the man more properly. “Though I didn’t expect to see you in a kilt.”
“My dear Miss Smith, as you may remember, my name is Lethbridge-Stewart. The clan Stewart.”
“Oh, sorry. I thought you were doing a Doctor,” Sarah said, flicking the Doctor’s scarf.
“What an absurd idea,” the Brigadier said, though he didn’t quite sound affronted, more… fond? They were definitely friends, she could tell that much.
“Now then, Brigadier, why did you call?” the Doctor asked. “I hope you’ve got a very good reason.”
Everyone sat down again, the Doctor reclining across two seats, as the Brigadier explained, though Harry struck up a conversation with one of the soldiers. Apparently, off the ‘coast’, a large number of ‘off-shore oil rigs’ had been set up; but in the past few weeks, three of them had been destroyed, smashed into the ‘sea’, and all of them in the area. Jenny nudged Sarah and asked for clarification on the words she didn’t recognize, but it didn’t help much. The idea of that much water was hard to wrap her head around, and as for ‘oil’, it seemed an incredibly crude means of power generation. The Doctor seemed to share her opinion.
“Oil, an emergency?” the Doctor said in disdain, drawing the others’ attention, and Jenny nodded along as he kept speaking. “It’s about time the people who run this planet of yours realized that to be dependent upon a mineral slime just doesn’t make sense. Now, the energizing of hydrogen-”
“Doctor!” the Brigadier interrupted. “It isn’t only about the oil, though I won’t deny it’s important. These are large rigs, and so far three have been destroyed, with no survivors. Their destruction is a complete mystery. Do you want more men to die?”
The Doctor covered his face with his hat and groaned, then jerked it away.
“Very well! Where do we start?”
“The oil company,” the Brigadier said. “We’re paying them a visit this afternoon.”