Exams and GCSE revision are the bane of my life at the moment so I hope you'll understand why there has been a slump in my fanfiction recently. Tell me what you think and Google Warhammer 40'000 if you don't understand the lore of it.

Disclaimer: Doctor Who and Warhammer 40,000 are not mine but I'm working on it (the Doctor Who bit anyway)

Glossary: Xenos – the Imperial terminology for anything alien or inhuman in origin.

He played it over again in his head. The epic scale of the destruction and loss of life caused by the man-made cataclysm had brought back his buried memories of the Time War and he had come close to his breaking point, his shatterpoint. Again the flash of the firestorm and the blinding glare of Lance strikes splitting Verdana Secundus' crust open to bring forth the fire from within burned inside the Doctor's head.

Jack and Martha shuddered at memories of the Year That Never Was. Memories of Toclafane spheres descending upon the Islands of Japan and incinerating them one by one, giggling with homicidal glee as people burned into particulate ash or fell apart into wet chunks of meat as blades cut the air apart while their Master laughed maniacally overhead.

The trio had plenty of time to get used to their surroundings. The cell was little more than a metal box which measured eight paces across, ten long and just over six foot high which meant the Doctor and Jack had to stoop slightly when standing so the three of them opted to sit on the single bench in appalled silence. A single spluttering illumination strip cast a pale yellow light on the bare box. Rust and fungi stains surrounded the light, clinging to life. The Doctor had been in this type of cell before. It was designed to intimidate and weaken the prisoner's mental defences before questioning, interrogation or worse.

It would have been relatively easy for the Doctor to open the cell door had the human soldiers or "Imperial Guard" as they called themselves had no taken away his sonic screwdriver. Hours seemed to pass but none of them knew the time as the soldiers had taken their watches as well. They had even taken Jack's Vortex Manipulator and his revolver.

There was no way out.

After hours of dead silence save for the distant creak of machinery and their own ragged breathing, the huge bulkhead that was the cell door opened and a squad of the soldiers grabbed the time-travellers and dragged them away to separate rooms. Martha just had enough time to call for the Doctor before the doors closed and they were separated.

He didn't resist when they forced him to sit on a cold metal chair. He didn't speak a word when they handcuffed his arms behind his back but when he saw the man opposite him, the anger burned within him, leaving him heady with rage and hatred and pumping his hearts furiously like jackhammers.

Admiral Infractus was sitting opposite him, steam and vapours curling off of his gleaming machined artifice and beside him were more of the bulky blue-armoured "Ultramarines" including the scarred one from the bridge.

"THOSE PEOPLE WERE DEFENCELESS!" roared the Doctor at the mix of flesh, plastic and metal alloys which was once a man. "YOU ONLY WANTED TO DESTROY YOUR ENEMIES BUT THAT WASN'T ENOUGH FOR YOU WASN'T IT?! YOU HAD TO DESTROY THAT PLANET BECAUSE YOU COULD! BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THE HUMAN RACE DOES BEST!" he stopped his rant to catch his breath and to gauge Janus' reaction, infuriatingly, the man-machine smiled at him, revealing the toothless gums of an old man.

How dare he?! thought the Doctor angrily.

"Do you know who I work for?" he asked the Doctor as he sat before him. "You're so called "Emperor" spat the Doctor like the word was a bitter poison in his mouth.

"Choose your next words with considerable care Doctor" warned Janus coldly, all earlier signs of playfulness and ease gone "I am not one to suffer fools". Behind him, the glowering "Ultramarines" bristled and clenched their huge, gauntleted fists and their scarred captain drew his huge sidearm and pointed it straight at the Doctor's head. The barrel was so huge that one shot would liquidise much of the Doctor's upper body. His weapon was more akin to a hand-cannon than a pistol.

"Touch a nerve did I?" asked the Doctor, secretly delighted to have the odds in his favour again despite the twitching overdeveloped trigger finger a few millimetres away from converting his head into a red smear on the wall. "The God-Emperor of Mankind rules all Doctor and you will learn that soon enough!" said Janus coldly. "I was authorised to destroy Verdana Secundus by the highest levels of the Inquisition itself. All the way from Terra and the High Lords of the Imperium themselves! That planet was a grade Alpha threat to the Imperium of Man!"

"Let me tell you something Admiral Infractus!" said the Doctor, leaning close to the cross of man and machine, "I don't care about this "God-Emperor" of yours but I do care about His callous disregard for his citizens and planets. What sort of an Emperor would even allow such havoc to be wrought on his own people?! DOES HE CARE WHEN THE BLOOD OF INNOCENT CHILDREN IS SPILT?! OR WHEN A GENOCIDE IS COMMITTED IN HIS NAME?!" the Doctor's organic nose of flesh and cartilage was now an inch away from Infractus' olfactory sensors of steel and chrome. Both men were fuming with pent up rage. Even the bulky "Ultramarines" had backed off slightly upon seeing the Oncoming Storm flickering dangerously in the Doctor's eyes, gathering pace and fury.

"Your rampant disregard for the Saviour of Mankind means nothing to me heretic" said Admiral Infractus with a contemptuous wave of his one remaining organic hand. "However these on the other hand do interest me and my associates of the Adeptus Mechanicus". He reached a prosthetic hand into the voluminous folds of his Robes of the Admiralty and chucked four items on the table between them, letting them clatter loudly.

The sonic screwdriver, Jack's revolver and spare bullets, the wallet containing the psychic paper and Jack's Vortex Manipulator lay in an untidy heap. The sonic screwdriver had marks on it which blemished its once smooth chrome exterior shell. Someone had tried – and failed to get into it.

"We can tell that this" said Janus as he motioned to Jack's revolver. "It is some kind of primitive slug pistol which is far inferior in design to the machinations of our own blessed order."

Putting aside the revolver, a steel hand extended over the items and with a twist of magnetism, the sonic screwdriver snapped into magnetic fingers as if by telekinesis. "This blatant techno-heresy has so far eluded the efforts of the Adeptus Mechanicus' tech adepts and the ships Machine Spirit but-"

"Techno-what?!" spluttered the Doctor, utterly flabbergasted at what he was hearing. "You're treating your technology like it's alive! Like it's some form of deity! For heavens sakes you humans should be smarter that this!"

"So you are a Xenos then!" he exclaimed triumphantly. "That would explain why your scans showed a dual cardiovascular system. This makes little difference to your fate however except after Inquisitorial processing which I doubt you will survive, you will be handed over to the Ordos Xenos for analysis, categorisation and ultimately systematic dissection".

The Doctor shivered at the thought of being strapped to some cold metallic table, blades and horrific implements of bodily dismemberment closing in . . .

Stop, he told himself mentally, trying to bring back some degree of calm. Don't think about that.

"I ask again Doctor. What. Is. It?" asked Janus, impatiently waving the Sonic Screwdriver under his nose.

"Don't hold it like that. You really don't want to" said the Doctor gravely

"Why? Is it dangerous?"

"Of course not! It just looks stupid because you are holding it the wrong way round. The beautiful thing about a Sonic Screwdriver is that it can never be dangerous. It doesn't kill, wound or maim but it is very good at opening doors although wood is a bit of a problem but I am working on it though"

Looking disgusted at the innocent looking device in his steel fist, the cybernetic Admiral dropped the Sonic Screwdriver and then picked up the psychic paper and waved it in front of the Doctor's face. Text began to appear on the paper. It read:

Name: Lord Admiral Janus Umbra Infractus.

Assigned: Segmentum Solar Defence Fleet Alpha, Imperial Navy

Captain of the warship "Emperor's Mercy"

Home world: Krieg, Segmentum Tempestus

Year of the Emperor's Grace: .008 M41

So the Doctor had got the time right. But why was it so very wrong? This was meant to be the age of exploration and co-operation, not war and genocide.

"This paper has bypassed all sensor tests we have arrayed against it and even the finest telepaths on this ship aren't immune to its heretical effects. Tell us what it is and perhaps we will let your friends live long enough for the Inquisition to take them away in one piece.

"It's psychic paper" said the Doctor, not wanting Jack or especially Martha to be hurt. "It shows people whatever I want them to see. King of Belgium, Knight of TARDIS or John Smith. Whatever or whoever you want to be"

"You claim it to be psychic and yet the ships telepaths cannot sense its presence in the Warp?"

"The Warp?"

"What fool today doesn't know of the Warp? Surely not even ignorant heretics such as yourself?"

"Obviously not" said the Doctor coldly.

"I will tell you this my alien friend" said Janus as he rose to his full imposing height and stared down at the Doctor, the "Ultramarines" drawing close with rumbling footfalls as metal boots clanged on the steel deck. It was the classic interrogator's attempt to intimidate the prisoner with a show of force. It was so blatantly obvious that it was almost laughable.

Ignoring the incredulously amused look on the Time Lords face, Janus composed himself as if he was getting ready to deliver a great speech and said "There are two versions of the world around us, existing parallel to one another and inexplicably separate to each other. On one side, we have the Material realm where we ply the stars and purge them of the Alien, the Mutant and the Heretic and scratch a living off the worlds of the Imperium whilst on the other side we have the Immaterium where the normal laws of nature and physics do not apply".

"How so?"

"It is a nightmare realm where the raw emotions of the beings in the Materium are manifested in the twisted forms of Chaos, be they Daemon, rogue psyker or the fallen cleric"

"a . . . parallel universe where the collective raw emotions of beings in the Materium are manifested then?" finished the Doctor uncertainly.

"For one so ignorant, you show surprising intelligence" muttered Janus, staring down at the Doctor as if he was some interesting specimen in a laboratory.

Changing the subject abruptly, the Doctor turned his attention on the huge super-human soldiers who were still exhibiting an aura of menace. It was quite clear that they had spent dozens if not hundreds of years at war. "Your friends here, the Smurfs, would you mind divulging a little knowledge with the ignorant?" Janus' lip quivered with barely contained fury at the Time Lord's quip against the super-soldiers.

"Come on!" pleaded the Doctor "one last chance to give a man his last request?"

"I will make sure it shall be your last request!" spat Janus who was now apocalyptically furious with the light hearted Time Lord.

"These men whom you would degrade with your foul heretical tongue are the Chosen of the Emperor. They are the Adeptus Astartes or Space Marines. The finest specimens of Humanity are taken and implanted with the Emperor's own blessed gene-seed. They endure training which would kill a normal man and those who survive become superhuman, Angels of Death. Clad in adamantium power armour and armed with the mightiest weapons of the Imperium's arsenal, a single Imperial Space Marine surpasses the efforts of a hundred Guardsmen in battle. A single Chapter of a thousand Astartes can do more to win a war than one hundred thousand Guardsmen."

From the way they carried themselves, the benedictions they chanted, the rituals they followed and the sense of cold righteous purpose that resonated with every rumbling iron-shod footfall, these God's among men were more like fanatical Crusaders than professional soldiers like the Imperial Guard. There was too much zeal in them for the Doctor's liking.

"Captain Praetus, have our guest taken back to his cell so that he can rot. I have heard enough from him and his friends already". Infractus had evidently got bored of toying with his prey. As he rose with a resounding groan of internal cogs and pistons and the Space Marines closed in, the Doctor gathered his will together and focused it into a needle sharp point in his mind which bypassed a mental event horizon.

The Doctor was not a potent psychic by Time Lord statistics, only grade Theta on the Tandoka scale. What little psychic talent he did possess had been honed vigorously over his 903 years of life until it was like a mental rapier. With a subtle twist of his will, he traced the electrical currents flowing through the wires on his handcuffs back to the locking mechanism and by simply reversing the polarity, the handcuffs sprang open and his hands were freed.

"What heresy is this?" hissed Janus malevolently "A psyker! He is a psyker! KILL HIM!"

"FOUL ONE!" roared Captain Praetus as he drew his bolt pistol, his voice amplified by his power armours internal vox caster and his scarred features twisting into the well worn contortion of hatred. "THE STINK OF THE WARP IS UPON YOU, DAEMON SPAWN!"

It took a full half a second for the six Space Marines to raise their bolters and another second to train them on the Doctor but in that time he had grabbed the effects of the time travellers on the table and brandished the Sonic Screwdriver at the towering Astartes. To pit such a puny device against such might was laughable in the eyes of the wizened old human as his malicious cackle began to resonate inside the Doctor's skull.

"Like I said!" said the Doctor with a flourish as he turned the settings up to full effect.

"It won't maim you but it sure makes a hell of a noise!"

Sonic blue glowed brilliantly in the Doctor's fist as crippling sound waves assailed the humans. The Space Marines dropped their bolters with a metallic clatter as they fell to their knees and clutched their helmets in agony which even their superhuman training and endurance could not have prepared them for. Admiral Infractus merely grimaced and whimpered in pain in the corner of the room as various openings into his remaining flesh began to bleed and his machinery began to spill hydraulic fluid, coolant and raw plasma.

The Doctor ran for the bulkhead and locked it behind him and ran straight into Martha and Jack who was wielding one of the Imperial Guards lasguns. A pile of groaning bodies clad in green flak jackets at the end of the corridor and several rapidly healing deep tissue laser hits on the Captain's face did all the explanation that the Doctor needed. "I thought I would have had to search high and low to rescue you Doc!" exclaimed Jack as he took the manipulator and revolver from the Time Lord. "No time for handshakes and hellos!" cried Martha "We've got to get back to the TARDIS and" –

Clang

She was interrupted as the heavy steel bulkhead of the interrogation room made a deafening clanging sound as something heavy made contact with the other side of the door and struck with the force of a lorry.

Clang, a faint outline of a fist could be seen imprinted on the steel - an outline of an armoured fist wider than the Doctor's head. The Space Marines were trying to batter down the door with their raw godlike strength.

"Allons-y!" he yelled as they ran down the corridor, not looking for the TARDIS or safety but somewhere on this ship far away from the fanatical Ultramarines. Here comes the fun part thought Martha as she coaxed more speed out of her legs. Why is there always a hell of a lot of running to do?

White hot shrapnel showered the corridor with a rain of molten ore and high explosive bullets as bolter rounds ripped through the adamantium plating of the bulkhead, leaving gaping holes. A guttural roar of rage and righteous fury echoed throughout the ship and struck fear into the souls of all those on board the Emperor's Mercy as Captain Praetus charged headlong into the bulkhead and knocked it down with a mighty shoulder barge. Standing at over eight feet tall, the Space Marines had to stoop slightly and took up the entire width of the corridor in with their power armour.

"Get after them" croaked Janus weakly as he clutched his aged chest and wheezed heavily. "Send for Apothecary Garcion" barked Praetus as he and his Space Marines charged off after the three prisoners, leaving Brother Juno behind to look after the now crippled Janus.

With a glance of his helmets advanced optical lenses and onboard telemetry, Brother Juno could tell that something was seriously wrong with the Admiral's breathing as he hacked and coughed uncontrollably. As gently as he could, the Ultramarine cradled the old man in his arms like a child and set off. Infractus would require more . . . surgical reconstruction when all this was over.

"They're coming!" yelled Jack as the deep throaty roar of bolter rounds rent the air accompanied the curses and challenges of the pursing Space Marines. They were not as fast as the light footed time travellers but their huge frames and awesome firepower meant that they could not be challenged directly in the narrow corridors.

A stray bolter round slammed into Jack's back with the force of a tank shell, the shaped charge bored into his back and blew a hole out of the front of his chest with a jet of molten metal and a stream of scorched blood, seared gore and shattered bone fragments which splattered everything around him with a fine red mist of viscera.

The Captain was thrown about twenty feet in front of the Doctor and Martha and lay still before he hauled himself up with a groan of pain and took a pot shot at their pursuers with his lasgun. Predictably, the laser bolt did as much effect on the Space Marine as a bee sting which only served to enrage him further.

"THIS IS THE JUDGEMENT OF THE RIGHTEOUS, SCUM!" roared the Marine as he bore down upon them with the terrifying finality of a meteor strike.

"You blew a hole in my coat you prick!" yelled Jack in defiance as he sprayed his tormentors with more las fire before the Doctor and Martha had to drag him away – straight into the mob of Guardsmen who hemmed the three of them into a corner with a ring of lasguns and bayonets. The five Space Marines shoved through the massed soldiers and took aim at them.

No way out. Boxed. Checkmate.

"Prepare to meet your misbegotten maker, alien!" ordered Captain Praetus as he slammed a fresh magazine into his bolt pistol.

"Hold on a moment, well, before dying could you please tell me what this is?" said the Doctor at ninety miles an hour as he fished out a vial of golden liquid from inside his long brown overcoat. The Astartes looked perplexed and cocked his head quizzically.

"I am in no mood for games foul Xenos" muttered Praetus through gritted teeth with barely contained murder in his voice.

"Well that's a shame then" said the Doctor almost remorsefully "because I am!"

The golden liquid glowed suddenly and the Doctor waved farewell in triumph at the outraged Imperials as the TARDIS appeared around the trio and shielded them from harm as small arms fire bounced off of her blue hull.

Inside the Control room, the Doctor launched himself at the console and ramped the extrapolator shielding up to full power. "Were those what I just thought they were?" asked Jack as he wiped congealed blood off his shirt and trench coat. "Huon particles yeah" said the Doctor as he pocketed the vial. "I picked it up from Torchwood's Thames barrier laboratory last year actually. Got me out of a sticky situation with the Racnoss as a matter of fact"

"You found Torchwood 3!" exclaimed Jack

"Well I" -

"Back to the point then?!" said Martha, interrupting them. "So what do we do now?" she asked, imploring the Doctor with those huge brown eyes of hers.

"The TARDIS has found their ship's next known coordinates from the central AI, something they call a "Machine Spirit". What they did to Verdana Secundus must have had something to do with my seizure so whatever they were fighting against there must be at the next destination too. There is something wrong with Time and Space. Emotions are being actualised in a parallel dimension in a way which is corrupting planets and populations, including that of the late Verdana Secundus. We are going to fix this anomaly and then we are going to put history and humanity back on course."

"And where do the coordinates lead to?"

"They lead to . . . Elysium. A jungle world on the outer fringes of the known Milky Way Galaxy"

"Looks like you managed to keep me around longer than you wanted me to" murmured Jack as he went off to find a new shirt, and a shower.

The Time Rotor rumbled into life and began to turn, even as small arms fire continued to be absorbed by the invisible extrapolator shield. With a shuddering groan, the TARDIS dematerialised, leaving the metallic tang of ions in the air and the Space Marines shouting in futility at the trio's escape from their heavily armoured clutches.

Meanwhile. . .

Admiral Infractus was barely conscious when the mechanical appendages of a medical servitor closed in on him. He still had enough life left in him to scream in defiance as blades sliced flesh and carved away organic organs and claws inserted machinery and removed tissue.

All the time, the Apothecary Garcion and Brother Juno were looking down on him as the last of his flesh was cast aside and replaced. As what little of the humanity left in the unrecognisable machine on the operating table awoke within a steel shell and carved the unresisting servitor into wet slices of meat and steel, he swore revenge on the Doctor, the man who caused this damage. The creature which was once a living, breathing human called Janus Umbra Infractus would hunt him down until the end of all flesh if he had to. The Emperor's Navy was vast, His armies numbered more than the stars and the Galaxy was too small for him and his friends to hide forever in his little Blue Box.

Whew! Another huge chapter from me and just in time for the weekend too! Please leave a review on your way out because I would really like to know what people think of the Doctor Who/40k crossover idea. Any suggestions would be appreciated too!

The Spirit