"Stargate-Crossed" - Part Two

 

Part Two

            Yvette Dwonch was in trouble!

            It had been a long time since Maureen saw her. In fact, she was in her ninth regeneration at the time – that tall African American gentleman in the hoodie and necktie. Now she was going to rescue her as this young, glamourous Englishwoman in the colorful coat.

            “What’re you doing?” She had entirely forgotten about Craig and his friends, who watched her prep the TARDIS to return to her home dimension. “How do you know how to operate Neas’s TARDIS?”

            Maureen momentarily considered dropping the charade, but she decided at the last minute to keep it going for Craig’s sake. “He taught me,” she fibbed to the nine-year-old.

            “Well, for one thing, you’re doing it all wrong,” Craig told her.

            Maureen bit her tongue, trying not to say something she’d regret. “Really now?”

            “Yeah, and we can’t leave without Neas,” Craig specified. “He hasn’t returned from wherever he is in our dimension.”

            His concern made up for that critical remark about her piloting skills. “Neas is more than capable of taking care of himself – believe me,” Maureen reassured Craig, but her reassurance did nothing to quell the boy’s defiance. As Maureen continued operating the controls, Craig leapt into action and sabotaged her inputs. “Oi! Stop!” She pulled him away from the controls, but by then the damage had already been done.

            The takeoff was rough, with the entire ship quaking and knocking everyone off their feet. Had Maureen not acted fast and stabilized her TARDIS, they would’ve certainly been split into atoms and scattered all across the infinite dimensional corridor.

            Despite Craig’s sabotage, they still arrived at their destination: UNIT’s Black Archive in the Tower of London.

            Maureen had barely much time to gather herself when she noticed Craig leading his friends out of the TARDIS. “No! Craig! Wait!” She followed them out through the doors and into a large room where the Stargate that Kate Stewart mentioned was housed. Kate herself was there with her research team.

            “Are you the people we called?” Stewart inquired.

            Maureen was just about to confirm, until Craig spoke up first and boldly stated, “Yes! I’m Neas, the Gladiator of Gallifrey, and these are my companions – J.P., Kelsey, and the third one…I didn’t really catch her name.”

            “It’s Maureen,” she uttered through gritted teeth. What was it with her companions and wanting to be “Neas” at times? She deliberated overstepping Craig’s introduction right there and then, telling Kate that she was the real Neas and that Craig was just an over-imaginative little boy she knew from a past regeneration. But the way he carried himself with such authoritativeness amused Maureen, and she didn’t have it in her hearts to take that from him.

            “You’re Neas?” Kate addressed Craig, almost disbelievingly. “Well, from your records, you are a Time Lord. Anything is possible with you lot, I suppose.”

            “You lot?” J.P. echoed the phrase. “Like a parking lot?”

            Maureen palmed her face in humiliation.

            Ignoring J.P.’s innocent naivety, Kate proceeded on with debriefing Craig. “Right. So, at oh-twelve-hundred, General Dwonch and her team from UNIT’s American division in New York arrived to inspect the Stargate. The research conducted years ago by my father helped us determine where in the galaxy they were sent, but there was no other account of the expedition from there. We’d hoped to reach the Doctor and get his input on what happened, but we had no luck in contacting him. Dwonch insisted that we contact you as a last resort in case anything happened, which – as you can see – something has.”

            Maureen followed on every word that Dwonch said, paying close attention to every detail of the situation. She glanced over to Craig and noticed how the poor dear was totally confused. He didn’t know who General Dwonch or any of the other related individuals involved in the crisis was. Pretending to be Neas proved to be much more difficult than expected.

            Rather than leave him fumbling in embarrassment, Maureen told Kate, “Neas had some previous experiences with Stargates. He also knows of how dangerous they are. Right, Neas?”

            Craig saw her wink at him, relieved to know that she had his back. “Uh…Right! That’s absolutely right! Stargates are dangerous…very dangerous!”

            “I’m fully aware of that, thank you,” Kate contemptuously remarked. “My father studied this thing and ended up also disappearing. Of course, he had the Doctor, but even he couldn’t save him.”

            Maureen frowned at this information. “That can’t be right. That doesn’t sound like the history of UNIT I’m aware of. Unless…this is a case of reality shifting around time, due to the very presence of the Stargate.”

            “Ahem! Assistant?!” Craig brusquely beckoned her. “I’m the one who’s supposed to come up with all the science-y stuff to say, since I am Neas!”

            Again, Maureen bit her tongue and stood firm. “Yes, sir.”

            Craig then looked on the Stargate itself and asked Kate, “How do you turn it on?”

            His inquiry baffled UNIT’s Chief Scientific Officer, considering Craig was “Neas” and had vast knowledge on Stargates. Regardless, she instructed the technician at the controls to activate the Stargate. The dial-up sequence was a bit lengthy for the short attention spans of Craig, J.P., and Kelsey, but their eyes lit with excitement as soon as the Stargate activated with a giant vortex streaming outwards front and back, leaving a vertical wall of water.

            “That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!” Kelsey exclaimed.

            “My mind’s blown right now,” J.P. said. “What’s even keepin’ all that water up?!”

            “How is something this cool ‘dangerous’?” Craig specifically asked Maureen. He then told J.P. and Kelsey, “C’mon, guys! Let’s jump in it!”

            “What?!” Maureen bellowed. She tried to stop the kids, but they were already through the portal before she even realized it.

            Needless to say, Kate went from befuddled to outright infuriated. “Alright, what’s going on?! Because clearly that child is not this ‘Neas’ Dwonch has bragged on about so much!”

            A flattered smirk crept over Maureen’s face. “Dwonch’s bragged about me?”

            By that remark, Maureen inadvertently confirmed Stewart’s suspicion. “So you are Neas.” In spite of this revelation, Kate was still baffled. “Dwonch described you much differently in her files.”

            “Tall African American male, right?” Maureen said with a sigh. “Yeah, those were the good ol’ days.” She quickly snapped out of her momentary reminiscing and told Kate, “Excuse me. I have a pain-in-my-butt nine-year-old and his friends to rescue.”

            “You’re jumping in after them?” Kate surmised from her declaration. “You do realize we still haven’t found a way for you to return. How do you plan on that with your friends, in addition to Dwonch and her team?”

            “I’ll just call on my TARDIS – plain and simple – with this.”

            Maureen pulled out her sonic screwdriver to show to Kate. Immediately thereafter, Maureen ran up the ramp to the Stargate and entered the vortex. She had forgotten how intense the journey through the wormhole was. It was like flying through the cosmos without a ship, holding in her breath at every nanosecond that passed before reaching the other end.

            The arrival was bumpier than she remembered, basically tossed right out of the vortex, landing right on her backside. Once she recovered, she got a fleeting glimpse in detail of the room she emerged in. The light of the wormhole from the Stargate provided some illumination before it dissipated and left her in the dark. She instinctively turned on her sonic, its tip emitting a light that worked as a flashlight for Maureen.

            As she wandered through the dark alien room, Maureen soon heard bickering British-accented voices – one of an old gentleman and another of a young mousy-voiced woman.

            “I directly told you not told follow me in, Jo,” the old gentleman said. “It was foolhardy thing for you to do!”

            “I know, Doctor,” Jo guiltily responded. “I just didn’t want to lose you, too!”

            Maureen’s ears perked beneath the locks of her long brown hair when she heard the mousy-voiced young woman address the old gentleman as “Doctor.” Rounding a corner, she walked into an area lit by the door leading out of the construct she arrived in. There, she found that the gentleman had voluminous and exuberantly bouffant white hair and wore clothes that included an inverness cape. There was no denying this man was the Doctor – though which incarnation of him it was, Maureen wasn’t able to determine yet.

            Being in the presence of this Doctor put Maureen on guard, forcing her to pocket away her sonic screwdriver.

            The Doctor and his assistant, Jo Grant, were soon alerted of Maureen, looking on her with quizzical expressions. “Where in the devil did you come from, young lady?” the Doctor asked.

            “I’m…” she hesitated to explain her identity to the one man who had yet to have known her best. Clear on the fact that she was dealing with another early version of the Doctor, Maureen deterred, “I’m looking for a young lad who’s yea high…” She held her hand down close to her waist. “Dark brown skin, black curly hair, holds a funny lil’ staff.”

            “Ah, yes, we did see a child with that description,” Jo told her. “We saw him and his little friends arrive just an hour ago.”

            “An hour?!” Maureen was taken aback by the discrepancy in time between jumps. To her, it was only a few minutes. “Can you tell me where he and his friends are now?”

            “They’re right outside the pyramid with the others,” the Doctor directed.

            Just after she got over the shock of the fact that she had been standing in an alien pyramid the entire time, Maureen followed the Doctor and Jo outside to the intense heat and daylight that awaited them. Sure enough, they were inside of a pyramid within an Egyptian desert location. Maureen would’ve figured they were still on Earth had she not noticed the three moons in the sky.

            Gathered in front of the pyramid were the two expedition teams from UNIT’s past and present, led by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and General Yvette Dwonch respectively. Maureen spotted both C.O.’s second-in-command, Captain Mike Yates (for the Brig) and Major Hillary Simmons (for General Dwonch). They were assembled along with Craig, J.P., and Kelsey.

            It was obvious how different the UNIT squads were not just by nations but also by eras. Whereas the Brigadier and his men were dressed in their standard green uniforms that looked rather stuffy in the hot climate, General Dwonch and her team were more appropriately dressed down, with Dwonch and Simmons in particular appearing as if they had just stepped out of the gym.

            Maureen went right to Dwonch just as she saw her. “Are you alright, General?”

            Dwonch questionably gazed on the young Englishwoman. “Do I know you?”

            “Not by this crazy face you do,” Maureen gestured. “It’s me – Neas!”

            “Funny, ‘cause that lil’ dude over there told us that he’s Neas,” Dwonch motioned to Craig, who stood from afar with J.P. and Kelsey, all of them overexcited at the thought of being on an alien planet.

            Maureen groaned over how far Craig was taking this act. “Yeah, ‘bout that. You see, he’s really just…”

            “Sir!” She was suddenly interrupted by Sergeant John Benton, another member of the Brigadier’s team, who had returned from reconnaissance. He appeared in a rush, heavily sweating and winded.

            “What did you find out there, Sergeant Benton?” the Brigadier queried.

            Taking a short moment to catch his breath, he told the Brig, “I found another team – they’re from Earth, just like us.”

            On the Brig’s orders, Benton took all of them over the ridge and to the team in question. They looked to be military men themselves, wearing uniforms and brandishing gear not so different than the two UNIT teams. “Wow, there’s a lot of soldier guys on this planet,” J.P. observed.

            Dwonch and the Brigadier approached the one man who seemed to be the team’s C.O. They saluted and shook hands before the C.O. finally introduced himself, “Colonel Jack O’Neil, U.S. Air Force.”

            “You’re American,” Dwonch beamed.

            “So it would seem,” the Brigadier flaccidly noted. “I’m Brigadier Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart and this – believe it or not – is General Yvette Dwonch.”

            Trying not to be offended of his introduction of her, Dwonch told O’Neil, “We’re representatives of the Unified Intelligence Taskforce, better known as U.N.I.T.”

            “Never heard of ya,” O’Neil said.

            This alarmed Dwonch and the Brig.

            “Tell us, Colonel,” the Brigadier began, “where and when do you and your men come from?”

            “I-I’m sorry, did you say ‘when’?” One man from O’Neil’s team stepped forward to address the General and the Brigadier. He stood out from the rest of the hardened, broad-shouldered men, appearing more like a scientist than a soldier. This was evident when he gave an impromptu introduction of himself: “I’m Dr. Daniel Jackson, by the way.”

            “Pleasure to meet you, Dr. Jackson,” Dwonch greeted. “And, to answer your question, we did say ‘when’.”

            “Well, as far as the ‘where’, we arrived here from a top-secret base in Colorado,” O’Neil verified. “As far as the ‘when’, our time of departure was oh-thirteen-hundred on October 28th, 1994.”

            It was just as Maureen, the Doctor, the Brig, and General Dwonch suspected.

            Three Stargates crossed between three time periods and two dimensions.