trans_9 | Archaeology, Natural Disasters and You [Closed]

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Archaeology, Natural Disasters and You [Closed]

The trip down revealed that Taleen was going to be of several things, none of which were pleasant. Arid, pale with a light dusting of red from the rocks, and yellow-white grass that extended in plains all the way towards far off mountains . There was a giant gash in the land near the orb landing area, which resolved itself into a massive canyon as the party drew closer. Spider webbing out across the top of the canyon were signs that a civilization had once flourished here. Traces of broken pillars and half submerged buildings, as well as what looked like a downed ship that had embedded itself in a massive building. There was no movement visible amongst the ruins now. As the dry wind blew through the stonework, it would became clear that they were walking into a mass graveyard.

Not somewhere you'd want to spend your vacation.

For some people, this was going to be a field day.

According to the scans and what little records they had, there hasn't been a sentient being around for hundreds of years. The majority of native wildlife had moved out of the area, seeking refuge. The land looked dead already. In the sky above, several specks of light twinkled in the sky, growing bigger with each passing hour. In a few days, it will be raining fire.

[Closed to Daniel, Eleventh Doctor, Sofia, Jamie, Hoshi, Howard, Billy, the Master, River Song, Cassie, Tom]

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The Doctor holds up his hands, jerking them back and showing Howard that he doesn't intend to hurt him. Ah, a skittery one, this human! He doesn't push it, keeping his hands to himself as he takesone cautious step back.

Maybe that helped. Howard doesn't quite, well, relax, but the air in the face and the panel might help distract him from funny little things like maintaining that human's possessiveness about personal space. At least that nervousness hasn't stopped the human from indulging in his species's natural curiosity, the Doctor watching as Howard investigates the panel and (quite wisely), asks him what his professional opinion about alien blinky parts means.

Like he said: smart human.

The Doctor moves in closer to inspect it, finally reaching out and giving the panel a good hard thump with his hand. The panel folds out, revealing a glowing crystal that dims at the exposure to the dry air and then brightens. He starts to reach for it. The crystal dims. Obviously it's not a fan of Time Lords. The Doctor nods for Howard to have a go.

"Try it," he tips his chin at the crystal.

Maybe the species that piloted this ship was more closely linked to humans?

Howard presses his lips together, tempted to refuse to do anything until he gets a little bit more of an explanation from the Doctor, but he decides he's seen enough to have a general idea of how this works. Somehow, the crystal responds to people's energy or something. Dim is bad, bright is good. Simple enough concept.

Not that it would have killed the Doctor to say any of that out loud, but whatever.

He reaches a hand out and ever so gently touches it. It glows, more brightly even than when it had just popped out. He pulls his hand away, then puts it back, making note of how close he has to get to it to reach maximum brightness.

"So this is what, a mental link to steer the ship? And whoever had it last decided it was an awesome idea to slam it into a wall?"

He isn't entirely surprised to see the ship reacting more...favorably to Howard here. Perhaps the species who once piloted it were closer genetically to humans than Time Lords or maybe the ship just doesn't like him or the bowtie. Or the hair.

"I suppose they weren't quite thinking of that when they crashed," the Doctor points out. "Now! It's either that or it's the door latch. But I'd say if this is working, so is most of the ship."

Well, whatever remains, but it's loads more interesting than digging at old pottery like Daniel seems to want to do. The Doctor maintains that careful distance from Howard, letting the human sniff around and have a look himself as he watches from his little perch on a rock. It never does get old watching humans discover things for themselves and being this close means that if anything starts powering up, he should be able to put a stop to it before Howard accidentally blows off some limbs he might need.

"What makes you say that? That's like saying if the car radio works the whole car probably does." Howard finally decides that touching the spaceship probably won't backfire in his face, so he walks his hands along the edge. It's not even that rusted. Must not be made of iron, especially since most of the other materials around here seem to all have some measure of water damage.

But the Doctor's right - after a few moments of prodding around with the crystal and sending it mental 'open sesame' beams, the door hatch opens. Howard takes a cautious step back and then cranes his head forward. "Aliens first?"

Human logic, bah! The Doctor doesn't care for it sometimes, what with how boring and straight-forward it can be and anyway, Howard, he'll have you know that sometimes the problem is exactly the car radio. It's been known to happen that there's a bit of a fuss between the radio and the car and sometimes what you need to do, aside from taking it to one of those mechanics, is have the sort it out between themselves. You ought to try it sometime.

He peers at the door hatch, which is actually rather small and it's one of those times he probably should've regenerated shorter. Bowties and recorders! That was a perfectly good size back then! "We're all aliens here," he points out, shrugging and taking point anyway.

It takes the Doctor some folding and re-folding of his arms and legs before he can crawl inside. Despite having a run-in with the wall, the ship itself is in remarkably good shape, a testament to its manufacturers. He wants to say it looks half-Gringle, half Something-or-Other, in all certainty and with his full, complete, 100% professional opinion of having been knocking about the universe for awhile. He crawls inside, tumbles to the floor and bounces to his feet, narrowly knocking his head against the low ceiling.

"Ah! I knew it. Power's still on, Howard!" The Doctor pokes at the console that's activated thanks to Howard's touch. The lights dim warningly. Think of it as anti-Doctor.

Howard rolls his eyes at that little twist of semantics. "We're all aliens to each other. To me humans aren't alien."

Howard gets inside easily, being small and good at twisting his body around. He doesn't have to do any of the contorting act that the Doctor does. And the ship's tetchiness doesn't escape his notice. He's still not sure about the idea of the little ship having a personality, although he supposes the presence of an AI on Stacy would suggest such a thing were possible.

"You bringing bad mojo into this place or something, man?" He pokes abut the console, not committing to anything. Bringing back a whole spaceship would be cool, but seems a bit unlikely, although Howard does entertain the idea of trying to fix it himself. He's salvaged plenty of pieces from various damaged ships in the Hangar after Lirath, after all. Given enough time or boredom, he might be able to figure it out.

Yeah right, he thinks, and cats can figure out how to make mousetraps.

Howard taps a button that he thinks leads to a slow reverse and the whole little ship lurches, sending him sprawling onto the ground.

"If I brought 'mojo'," the Doctor says the word like someone would holding up a pair of dirty socks, "I would be the first to tell you. Mojo! In my pockets!"

Grumbling and fussing, the Doctor is just about to putter about the ship and have a good snoop when Howard has to go be a human and touch something (in)convenient. The Doctor staggers as the fighter pitches without warning, crunches against the rock and luckily for them, doesn't dislodge a boulder on their heads. He catches himself on the edge of a pilot's scoop as the console gives another thrum of power. They haven't quite fallen out the other side and onto the ground (and possibly crushed one of Eneesh's crew). Instead they're in some sort of half hovering mode, the Doctor able to feel a slight hum in the soles of his feet and consulting the screen, he snaps his fingers.

"There you go. Shields are active," he says, as if he can read everything on the screen. It's just lines of gibberish without the TARDIS, but every now and then he catches a character or a symbol that looks familiar. "I'd say most of the ship is intact, despite the collision. I can't see if anything's armed just yet - hang on."

The Doctor stoops and pulls out his sonic screwdriver. He trusts Howard to get to his feet on his own, what with humans being all rather bouncey, and hopefully not push the right buttons to arm anything they don't want armed.

Well, at least the Doctor seems to finally have gotten the memo on Howard's personal space. Howard's completely fine with picking himself up off the ground. He brushes himself off - the inside of the ship is a bit dusty - but he's uninjured.

As soon as the Doctor mentions that it could be armed, Howard vows that he's not going to touch anything again. "Whoa. Are we hovering?"

It's a shame this silly thing only has a screen, instead of windows. Howard wonders if the species behind this contraption just didn't care about scenery, of if they came from a particularly unremarkable-looking world. He walks up next to the Doctor.

"Think we can take it back? Not sure what we'd use it for, but even as spare parts it looks pretty handy. Besides, who says spaceships need a use?" he asks, partially just thinking out loud to himself.

Yes, Howard, that is hovering or a second cousin twice removed to the hover -- for all intents and purposes, it's probably easier to just call it a regular hover.

The Doctor noses about next to the human, glancing over at him with a slight frown. "I'm sure loads of people prefer spaceships to be useful but!" He holds up a finger, "Those are the dull, boring ones. You don't want one of those. Advice for life, Howard, free of charge: don't think 'boring'!"

He scans the panel and takes a moment to consult his readings before dropping to his hands and knees, wiggling as much as he can under the pilot's scoop until the only thing Howard can see is his legs and a faint green glow off in the corner. The Doctor's voice is muffled as he performs a routine safety snoop. Another thing Howard might want to keep in mind: you can never, ever, hardly ever and by 'hardly never' he really means 'definitely over half', go wrong with a safety snoop. It's saved his life more times than he cares to count. The Doctor takes his time, leaving Howard space to do his own safety snoop if he cares to.

"I don't. I was saying they don't need a use. It's cool enough to just have a spaceship," Howard grumbles and shoots a glare at the ship around him as one of the sides tips a bit - the hover function's apparently a bit rusty after so long in the dust. "Or parts of one."

It's weird to just be able to see someone's legs. From Howard's vantage it looks like the ship's eating the Doctor headfirst. Howard's certainly not yet at the stage where he'd do anything to stop that if it were the case - rescues from man-eating spaceships are reserved for friends and father figures only, thank you very much.

"See anything interesting down there?" Howard casts his gaze around the little ship, but sees nothing. "You wanna try and park this thing?"

The Doctor's voice comes out muffled, his legs wiggling just enough so he can scoot back to shake a finger in Howard's general direction. "Me? Park it! I don't think so. Not very Time Lord friendly, this ship! You'll have to do it."

He trusts Howard to manage something as rudimentary as landing a small craft like this. Anyone could do it, look at how many pilots there are out in the universe who really have no business piloting anything. Why, look at him! The Doctor's had far more successful landings than crash landings! At least over half, maybe three quarters. Not too bad a ratio! If anything, he supposes he can peer over Howard's shoulder and give him some tips about how not to squish them or watch-out-for-that-wall. After a moment of booting up the drives and half of the shield (better than nothing), the Doctor inchworms backward until he can stand up.

He pops to his feet. "There you are! Ready for landing. I wouldn't suggest taking this ship out for a test drive, though. Big different between a ten foot drop and several thousand."

Howard doesn't look like the type to take more risks than is necessary. But he's at least right about the ship and you don't really need a reason to have one. "It's cool enough" was all the Doctor needs to hear. Fact is, it's the best reason in the world, the Doctor beaming as he waves for Howard to take a seat in the pilot's scoop.

Look, Howard. It's even warming itself for you so you're all comfy.

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Archaeology, Natural Disasters and You [Closed]

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