Vanished Point

I should have seen it coming.

Seriously.

It's not like I didn't know the Chronarchs had incorporated Cyberiad technology into their own.

I was held prisoner on that station for over a century. Once freed, and having taken possession of it for New Gallifrey, I restored the systems myself, patching in Time Lord technology where I could.

I SHOULD have seen it coming.

Okay, let's start where I left off...

I locked Vanishing Point down because of this virus. I couldn't trust it to not cause harm, or worse, somehow infiltrate a TT Capsule. It was bad enough that it had taken over so much of Vanishing Point, a time-space station siting at the nexus of two distinct universes. Giving it domain over time, as well would be cataclysmic.

And so, I gathered a team of those specializing in robotics, artificial intelligence, as well as telepaths, an agent from the Celestial Intervention Agency, and, through sheer happenstance, a Constable with the Chancellery Guard, who had been tasked with bringing a shuttle craft in for me to examine and, if necessary, repair.

I'll note, at this time, that both Dracony and Henry were aboard Studera and en route. I received communication that Studera seemed to be refusing to approach the station. 

We gathered at Vanishing Point after I reopened the dimensional transduction gate and began a sensor sweep of various systems, starting with Temporal Control to see if it had managed to infiltrate any of the Time Lord systems. It hadn't, but we still found some odd and unexpected things.

The Collector managed to find traces of some kind of silver dust that seemed to exude trace energy, the likes of which none of us were familiar. It was... no help.

Our next stop was ops. An area which was largely still built with Chronarch systems, hence, far more vulnerable. It was here that things began going wrong.

Our sensors and scanners indicated we were surrounded by this code. REDACTED theorized this silver dust we found may have been the actual code and that we weren't dealing with a mere program, but possibly a physical presence. Even at this point, I don't know if that theory was right, wrong, or somewhere in between.

Regardless, though, some members of the team displayed signs of  agitation and wanted to get out of ops. I'll admit, if this behaviour had been displayed by anyone else, I'd have suspected the virus had somehow made the jump to biological entities, but, given who was displaying these behaviours, I knew, instead, we were definitely dealing with a sentient bit of technology.

During our investigation in ops, our Constable triggered some kind of feedback in one of the control terminals which caused the virus to flee the chamber and my wrist thingy traced it to the medical level. Rather intense worry began to swell in me upon finding this out. We hurried to that level.

It was here that my worst fears were realized.

It was clear the code had made its way to the nano-gene lab. I am cursing myself for not upgrading the lab to match the one in Bifrost. There just... seemed to be more priorities, and the lab was always something of a back up in my mind. But I should be BETTER than that.

When we arrived in the nano-gene lab, the main chamber was already active, the nano cloud roiling about a vaguely humanoid form.

When it was scanned, it became clear what we had been dealing with...

A Cyberiad base code.

The beginnings of a new Cyberiad.

And it had found a way to start its army.

In the chamber was... well... I'm not sure how to describe it.

It was almost a proto-Cyberman, but not solid. It was almost gaseous.

And it was composed of millions of individual nano-genes, each with a full copy of the code. Each one capable of fully converting a life form into a full Cyberman, infused with nano-genes with the same, self-replicating code.

A nearly unstoppable army the size of a single man.

While I don't know for sure, I theorize the only reason we survived was due to it not having a full understanding yet of its true nature.

REDACTED and I tried to hold this... thing off as it approached, while the Collector led the rest of the team to Asteria and the shuttle the Constable had brought in for study and Nataleigh's own ship, Tinkerbell.

Some people may question why TTCs weren't brought in.

Those people are, frankly, idiots.

We couldn't risk that thing or its code gaining control of a time travel device.

So the shuttle and Tinkerbell launched. Asteria couldn't be powered up in time, but she was undocked and her shields raised.

REDACTED and I then transmatted to Helios.

There was... no choice.

I had to trigger Vanishing Point's self destruct.

It was at this point, we lost all contact with Studera. I can only surmise the blast blew the TT Capsule, and my Ordinals off course. For now, they are lost.

The three ships were flown through the debris field to a temporal gate, leading us to SL space...

And Vanishing Point was gone.

I will reiterate here what I told the gathered (and shaken) members of my team once we landed by the Eye of Orion.

New Gallifrey needs a time-space station.

Vanishing Point fell into our laps, but we made it work for us.

Now, it's gone.

But I will rebuild.

A new Vanishing Point, constructed of proper Time Lord technology.