Ties Between Time and Space

✦42✦

Chapter Forty-Two
The Best Out Of A Bad Situation

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"Doctor, the cable! Doctor, are you okay? Doctor!" Emma cried into the comm.

"Comms are down," Zach said.

Emma didn't listen. She kept pressing the button on both the comm and the monitor in front of her. "Doctor? Doctor, can you hear me?"

"Doctor, say something. Please," Emma begged.

"I've still got life signs, but we've lost the capsule," Zach said. "There's no way out. They're stuck down there."

Emma looked at Jefferson, her heart pounding and her pulse racing. "But we have to bring them back. We have to. Their oxygen won't last much longer."

Jefferson shook his head solemnly. "They're ten miles down. We haven't got another ten miles of cable," he stated. A banging sound hit the door across the room. Someone was trying to break inside. Jefferson tapped his wristwatch. "Captain? Situation report."

" It's the Ood. They're cutting through the door bolts. They're breaking in," Zach reported back.

"Yeah, it's the same on door 25," Jefferson said.

"How long will it take before they're in?" Emma asked, her head still spinning with wild thoughts and uncontrollable emotions.

"Well, it's only a basic frame, it should take ten minutes," Jefferson stated. Another bolt snapped from the door and he glanced back at it. "Eight."

"I've got a security frame. It might last a bit longer, but that doesn't help you," Zach told them.

"Okay, uh... So we need to stop them or get out, or both," Emma said.

Emma trusted the Doctor, she knew him. They'd been through so much already. Worse situations than this and that included the Daleks and the Cybermen. Zach said their life signs were still out there. So the only logical thing to do was make sure the people up here were safe and stayed alive. Then Emma could try and figure out a way to get down there or get the Doctor and Ida back up here.

" I'll take both, yeah?" Danny agreed. "But how?"

"You heard the Doctor," Emma told them. "Why do you think the beast or whatever it is cut him off? Because he was making sense. Perfect sense. He was telling us to think our way out of this. Come on!" Emma clapped her hands at them when all they did was stare at her. "First of all, we need light. There has to be some sort of power somewhere around here."

"There's nothing I can do," Zach said in frustration. "Some Captain, stuck in here, pressing buttons."

"Then make sure you press the right buttons," Emma said.

"They've gutted the generators," Zach said hopelessly before he remembered something. "But the rocket's got an independent supply. If I could reroute that. Mister Jefferson? Open the bypass conduits. Override the safety."

"Opening bypass conduits, sir," Jefferson replied, pushing a button on the device against the wall.

"Channelling rocket feed in three, two, one," Zach counted down."Power."

The lights switched back on and Emma glanced around before smiling. She clapped her hands at Zach, this time not because she was encouraging him but because she was praising him. "There we are. Well done, Captain."

"Let there be light!" Danny cheered.

"What about that strategy you were all talking about? Strategy nine?" Emma asked.