Doctor Who: Riptide

Chapter 1 - the Entire Machine

Boom! The steel door locked. It had locked them all inside. Inside the enclosed room with no way out. The six of them were huddled tightly in this small, compact room. Hunched up next to each other, shoulders being nudged in faces, knees being shoved in each others hips.

"Alright, so now we're trapped in here with no way out. Great" whinged the tenth Doctor, rubbing back his spikey brown hair.

"Yes. Thank you for pointing that out" angrily retaliated the twelfth Doctor as this comment, and the current atmosphere, riled him up. He gave ten a stern stare of dissatisfaction, "It wasn't like I had a plan. It just happened" the eleventh Doctor piped up, twiddling with his sonic and disappearing momentarily as he scanned around the lower side of the cupboard-like room

The heavy thumping on the otherside of the steel door became clearer and everyone's hearts pounded inside their chest.

"Can we have a bitta' hush?" The ninth Doctor gently insisted to everyone that he was huddled together with, in his northern accent. Nine even had his sonic screwdriver out and was scanning the infostructure of the room with eleven. The room was lain with boxes and mining equipment which made moving around quite hard. Harder than it already was.

"Where are we?" Wondered Amy,
who was trying to stop the ninth Doctor from falling on her as he kept scanning the infostructure, grabbing his shoulder for support, which unwilling pulled them onto one another. The Captain gave a short monotoned retort "It's a storage cupboard. Its certainly not made for six people"

"Great. We're trapped in a broom closet" whined the tenth Doctor again, who was leaning his back on the wall behind him, at least until nine tried to lift himself yo his feet using the skinny frame of ten for support, which instead pulled him onto them, making the pile three.

The creatures on the other side of the door continued to bang harshly against the steel door as everyone clustered closer together and the Doctor's thought up a new plan.

Time ticked away and no one was sure what was going to happen..

At the beginning of that day, on mining station Calous one, the crew got ready for their duties. Those that retired from night duty returned to their bed chambers on the upper levels and those that did the day time duties went on shift to the lower levels.

Captain Astra, the leader, was usually always seen on duty around the Command Deck at the very top. She was a fiery, but firm, woman who was passionate about her staff and her space station. Her word is law.

From the outside, Calous mining stations always looked super high-tech. The station was an enormous steel structure that floated through space. It was usually well lit, especially where the crew would do long shifts to make enough money to survive in this new industrial century. But that was the Calous corporation for you. Caring more for their ores and fine metals than their staff.

What didn't help was how often equipment needed repairing. This was a prime example of the corrupt corporation. Just last week, Captain Astra had signed for the Ninth drill core in a week. The station would go through 15 Acronus power drills almost every day. It costed thousands of credits to replace them, and how did the corporation do that? They'd  deduct the cost from the staff wages.

Astra sighed with a short shrug as she checked the terminal screen in front of her "Uh, we've got another one, Nigel. Check the central engine, would you? It's on the blink again. And get Peterson to sort out the lights in the habitation section, yeah? I asked him to sort it a few days ago and they're still not fixed. Soon we won't be able to sleep there.."

Captain Evelin Jane Astra, was the owner of the space mining station. She was a small woman of 5ft 8inches. She was a jet black haired woman with a thin frame. She wore a thin black tank top, a bulky leather belt with pouches and moss green cargo pants, completed with her clunky leather black boots and leather shoulder pads.