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Once More With Space Pirates

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There are space pirates trying to break down the door. Actual, real live, genuine space pirates are attempting to break down the door to the control room of the spaceship. Also: she's in space, she hasn't a clue where the TARDIS had disappeared off to and she's currently having her brains snogged out by a different space pirate. The buttons of the control pattern are digging into her back and she keeps getting unruly red curls in her mouth at unfortunate moments, but no matter how much she knows that really her new friend's skills would be better used in hacking into the ship's computer so they could finish hijacking it, she's damned if she's going to tell her to stop.

All in all, Sam thinks, this is going rather better than her previous encounters with the Doctor's former companions.

~

Prior to actually meeting Mel, Sam's only knowledge of her had been a casual comment the Doctor had made in passing one day about a computer engineer from Pease Pottage that he used to know. In the ensuing chaos that followed their meeting up with Melanie Bush again, Sam wished he'd bothered to elaborate that said computer engineer was female, had masses of red hair - that Sam was going to get very fond of playing with very quickly – oh, and that she'd left him to run away with a space pirate.

~

The advantage of being held captive by highly misogynistic megalomaniacs, Sam noted, was that they saw you were female and immediately dismissed you as unthreatening. Which meant that whilst the Doctor and Glitz were dragged off to be interrogated about something neither of them knew anything about – handy given Mel reckoned that under pressure Glitz would crack quicker than a dropped egg – Sam and Mel were left with minimal supervision and free access to the ship's computer system. Whenever any of their guards got too interested in their conversation they began talking loudly about the benefits to the bowels of a vegetarian diet and watched with amusement while their guards retreated swiftly, revolted expressions on their faces. Sam was really only worried once, when Mel was involved with a particularly complex bit of code, but fear leant wings to her decidedly rusty acting skills and she managed a convincing diva effort demanding carrot juice and claiming that Mel was taking too long to reconfigure the food replicator to cater to her whims. Sam had been baffled by the guards' willingness to allow free reign to someone with the ability to reconfigure the food replicator, but Mel had just muttered about missing her days with the Doctor, when the enemies that were an actual challenge. Sam decided at that point to save her sympathy for Mel and stole the (really badly hidden) keys off the guard the next time he came to half-heartedly check up on them.

Really, if they were going to leave a back door into their navigation and defence system that could be accessed via the food replication systems, Sam was inclined to agree with Mel that they deserved to be hacked.

~

In the end, it had been a somewhat daring escape attempt, even if it had turned out not to be either of their finest efforts. Mel hadn't been able to locate the TARDIS but the Doctor had assured them he knew exactly where his ship was and had nearly strode straight into two separate patrols of guards after declaring it was 'just around the corner'. Mel had just begun to mutter about him channelling one of his previous incarnations when they'd spotted a familiar blue shape down a side corridor and all was, almost, forgiven. Except that then Glitz had ended up getting recaptured and, willing though they all were to leave him to his fate at that point, Mel was rather fond of the Nosferatu II and Glitz had the keys. So the Doctor had attempted his patent sleight of hand/fast-talking trick to let Glitz escape, but Glitz had been a bit slow on the uptake and by the time he figured out what the Doctor was up to so had the guards. Unfortunately, with the Doctor back in captivity, the crew had belated concluded that Mel and Sam were clearly the brains of the operation. Happily, by the time this happened Mel was well on the way to convincing the ship's computer that she was actually its captain and Sam had nearly finished welding the door shut.

Forget subtle it was time to hijack the ship.

~

That had been the plan, anyway.

Eventually they should really get round to rescuing the Doctor and Glitz, but for now Sam is enjoying having Mel do complex navigation calculations across her chest far, far too much to worry about the boys.