Doctor Who: Engines of War (11 page)

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘You don’t get off the hook that easily. I said I was in, and that means you don’t get to leave me behind.’

Their eyes met. They stared at each other in silence for a moment, neither of them willing to give ground.

Finally, the Doctor relented. ‘All right,’ he said, throwing his hands up in a gesture of resignation. ‘All right. You can come. But this is a temporary arrangement. I haven’t got time to be worrying about anyone else.’

Cinder grinned. ‘I think more to the point, Doctor, is whether I’ve got any time to worry about you.’

‘I’ve told you – I don’t go by that name any more,’ he said, with a frown.

‘Oh, I think you’ve earned it today,’ said Cinder. She ambled over to stand beside him at the console, examining the odd assortment of levers, dials and flashing buttons. ‘Right then,’ she said. ‘Are you going to show me how this thing works?’

‘Don’t push your luck,’ said the Doctor, as he hit the dematerialisation switch.

Chapter Eight

‘Report!’

The Dalek slid effortlessly into the hexagonal chamber of the Eternity Circle, its head rotating as its eyestalk peered at each of its five masters in turn. ‘Dalek operations on Moldox have been compromised,’ it said. ‘The temporary base in the city of Andor has been destroyed.’

‘Explain,’ barked the blue and silver Dalek on the central plinth.

‘A human rebellion,’ said the Dalek. ‘The prisoners escaped and destroyed the hatcheries.’

‘What of the progenitor?’

‘Rendered inoperable. The clones are unviable,’ said the Dalek.

‘Unimportant,’ purred another of the blue and gold Daleks on the plinths. ‘Testing is complete. The template for the new paradigm can be disseminated. Transmit instructions to the other progenitors in the Tantalus Spiral. Order them to begin production immediately.’

‘I obey.’

‘Did the humans have Time Lord assistance?’ asked the Dalek on the central plinth.

‘Yes,’ replied the bronze and gold Dalek. ‘Transmissions from the base indicate the presence of the Predator on Moldox. We have confirmed the energy signature of his TARDIS.’

‘Excellent. The plan nears completion.’ The blue and silver Dalek made a sound that might almost have been a chuckle. ‘Soon, the Predator will lead the Daleks to their ultimate victory. Soon, he will be ours.’

Part Two

Gallifrey

Chapter Nine

Karlax hunched over his desk, wearily stabbing at a data screen with his index finger. Scrolling glyphs indicated countless reports coming in from the front – or rather, from the numerous fronts on which the Time Lords were currently engaged against the Daleks.

He selected one at random and pulled it up on the screen, then scanned the opening lines, not even bothering to check which epoch it referred to. They were all blurring into one, anyway – every period of Gallifrey’s history was now under assault from the vile Kaled mutants.

The story was the same. In each and every report, it was always the same. No matter how well they fought, how many Dalek saucers or stealth ships the Time Lords managed to destroy, more took their place. The things were relentless, and worse, somehow capable of replicating themselves at a rate of knots. They were wily, too – they’d taken to seeding their progenitors into uncontested eras, cloning themselves and manufacturing entire legions, which would then lay dormant, sometimes waiting for years for the right moment to strike. Inevitably, they would deploy to strengthen an existing Dalek attack force or else lay siege to an unsuspecting Time Lord stronghold during some chaotic period in Gallifrey’s history. They’d even attempted to purge prehistoric Gallifrey of its primitive life forms in an effort to stop the Time Lords from evolving.

To the Daleks, life was cheap and easily replaced. That gave them an edge. A Time Lord might have thirteen lives, but, reflected Karlax, regeneration was no good whatsoever if you’d been atomised in a detonating Battle TARDIS or eradicated before you’d ever been conceived.

Karlax sighed. His collar and robe felt heavy, today. He had the foreboding sense that they were only moments away from the apocalypse, that all of their efforts, all of their so-called victories against the Daleks would, ultimately, be for nothing. They were locked in a stalemate, and it would only be a matter of time before the Daleks found a way to break it and the countdown continued. They were trying to hold the inevitable at bay.

His data screen bleeped. More reports were coming in by the second, and they all needed to be read and summarised for the Lord President. The trouble was, Karlax simply couldn’t keep up, not whilst he had other duties to consider. Still, he supposed, they weren’t going to read themselves. He pressed the icon for another report, but as he leaned back in his chair the shrill cry of an alarm sounded overhead. His shoulders sagged. What was it now?

Karlax looked up at the sound of the door sliding open, only just audible over the din of the alarm. A soldier of the Chancellery Guard came running into his chambers. He stopped before Karlax’s desk, catching his breath.

‘Well? What is it?’ Karlax snapped at the guard. ‘What’s this infernal racket about?’

‘It’s a level nine emergency, sir,’ said the guard, still a little breathless. He sounded worried.

‘Level nine?’ queried Karlax. He could never quite remember what they all meant.

‘An unauthorised time capsule is attempting to materialise in the Panopticon,’ said the guard.

‘What?’ said Karlax. The timbre of his voice altered dramatically as the man’s words registered. The Panopticon. ‘How have they managed to bypass the sky trenches and the transduction barriers?’

The guard looked at him, blank faced. ‘I’ve no idea, sir. It’s… it should be… well, it’s impossible.’

‘Clearly not,’ said Karlax, sarcastically. He stood, tossing aside his data screen. ‘Send for the Castellan. Tell him to gather his troops immediately. If this intruder manages to gain entry, only Omega himself knows what might happen.’

‘He’s already attending to it, sir,’ said the guard. ‘It was the Castellan who sent me to inform you.’

‘Good,’ muttered Karlax.

The guard looked at him expectantly.

‘Yes?’ said Karlax, ‘is there more?’

‘The Castellan requested your presence, sir,’ said the guard, clearly uncomfortable to be the one delivering the message.

Karlax sighed. ‘Very well.’

He followed the guard from the room and along the passageway. The man seemed to want to walk at a hurried pace, even a jog, but Karlax was having none of that. He wasn’t very much interested in being summoned by the Castellan.

They passed along a wide corridor, which terminated in a massive door. It opened automatically as they approached, sliding up into the roof. The view beyond was immense, breathtaking – the eye of the Capitol, the citadel that was the beating heart of Time Lord civilisation. Its flared base rose high above their heads, narrowing as it reached up to scrape the clouds, clustered with the spines of towers and communication arrays. The shimmering energy of the dome was just visible from below, curving across the sky and tinting the light a faint orange.

Karlax and the guard marched across the large, rail-less gantry, which led from the Cardinals’ habitation complex, across a moat-like chasm, to the entrance of the citadel. Ahead of them, he could see other uniformed soldiers gathering. It seemed the Castellan was taking no chances.

So, could this be it. Had war finally come to the Capitol? Had the Daleks at last managed to discover a way in, a means of breaching their security? It seemed unlikely, and yet – who else would make such a brazen attempt to barge their way in? Who would be insane enough to even try?

He decided that perhaps the guard was right, after all, and picked up the pace, hurrying past the milling guardsmen while barking at them to get out of his way.

Everyone was converging on the Panopticon – the vast chamber that served as the Time Lords’ parliament and seat of State. It was pandemonium.

‘Move!’ bellowed the guard who’d been escorting him. ‘Allow the Cardinal through.’ Karlax regarded the man with a little more respect. The crowd of onlookers – some guards, others simple underlings who were eager to discover what was going on – parted to allow him to pass.

Smoothing his robes, he strode on down the central aisle and into the Panopticon proper. The Castellan was in the process of clearing a space in the centre of the room, surrounded by a score of guards all armed with energy weapons. He caught sight of Karlax walking toward him.

‘Have you sent word to the Lord President?’ he said, by way of greeting.

‘And a good morning to you, too,’ said Karlax.

‘Damn it, Karlax. This is serious. Has the Lord President been informed?’ The Castellan’s face was reddening.

‘Not yet,’ said Karlax. ‘Not until I actually have something to tell him. What’s going on here? The guard said something about a level nine emergency, about an unauthorised time capsule attempting to materialise here, in the Panopticon. I know that can’t be right. I know you’re too good at your job to allow something like that to happen.’

Karlax smiled inwardly. Good to establish now whose fault it would be if the enemy did manage to breach the Citadel’s security. Karlax always found it useful to apportion blame early on in the process, particularly if doing so meant that he could prove that none of it rested upon his own shoulders.

The Castellan looked exasperated. ‘We’ve tried to jam it, but it’s passed through all of our defences, one by one. Whoever, or whatever it is seems to know all of our protocols. The Lord President needs to know because he needs to evacuate. He needs to leave the Capitol now in case the enemy are deploying a weapon.’

Karlax regarded the Castellan. This wasn’t just hyperbole. The man was seriously worried. ‘Very well,’ he said. He beckoned to one of the guards. ‘You. Do you know where the Lord President’s chambers are?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the guard, wide-eyed. Evidently the idea of visiting them terrified him more than the possibility of an unknown enemy appearing in the immediate vicinity.

‘Good. Then I need you to go th—’ Karlax stopped mid-sentence as a deep, grating whine filled the air around them. The hubbub of the chattering crowd immediately died to a whisper.

‘Too late,’ said the Castellan, redundantly. ‘They’re here.’

Karlax turned to watch as the outline of the incoming vessel began to solidify in the air just to the left of where he was standing. The guards encircling the space raised their weapons, readying themselves to fire. A dreadful suspicion stirred in the back of Karlax’s mind. He recognised that sound…

The noise grew to a bass, elephantine roar, and then, with a final wheeze, the vessel slid into existence, bypassing all the Time Lords’ security measures to shift out of the Time Vortex and into the Panopticon.

For a moment, everyone in the room stood in silence, as if scared to so much as exhale. The ship was a tall, battered blue box with the words ‘POLICE BOX’ written on it in bold white letters.

‘Oh,’ said Karlax, with a disgusted shake of his head. ‘It’s him.’

‘We’re here,’ said the Doctor.

‘Here being Gallifrey?’ asked Cinder.

The idea of visiting the Time Lords’ home world filled her with both inquisitive excitement and abject fear. She couldn’t imagine they were going to prove particularly welcoming to a human refugee. She wasn’t even sure they were going to welcome the Doctor with open arms, judging by the way he talked about them.

Still, at least it wasn’t Moldox. In for a penny and all that…

The Doctor grinned. ‘Yes, Gallifrey,’ he said. ‘Although I think I might have given them something of a shock.’ He stooped and picked up the Dalek cannon he’d left propped against a chair during their short flight. If, indeed, it could be called a flight. Cinder wasn’t entirely sure.

‘Come along,’ he said. ‘You’d better stick with me.’ He strode purposefully toward the door.

Cinder glanced at her discarded Dalek weapon, propped against the metal railing, and considered for a moment whether she should take it or not. She decided against it. She didn’t know how trigger-happy the Time Lords might be, and she didn’t want to give them any opportunity to show her.

With a shrug, she followed the Doctor as he hurried out of the TARDIS.

She stepped out into the light of the Panopticon, and immediately raised her hands. A sea of guards surrounded them, all dressed in matching red and white uniforms and brandishing weapons that didn’t look as if they were designed to incapacitate or stun.

‘Quite the welcoming committee,’ she said, edging closer to the Doctor. ‘I can see you’re very popular with your friends.’

The Doctor didn’t seem to be paying any attention – to her, or to the guards. ‘Karlax,’ he growled, eyeing one of the crowd, a figure dressed in the flamboyant traditional garb of the Time Lords – a skull cap, robes and exuberant pink-purple collar. He looked utterly outlandish. ‘Where’s Rassilon?’

‘Doctor, you cannot keep on just turning up like this. There are protocols,’ replied the man, whom Cinder took to be Karlax.

‘Even now you worry about protocols,’ said the Doctor, with a dismissive tone. ‘No wonder we’re losing the damn war.’

Karlax scowled, ignoring the barbed comment. ‘You could use the front door like everybody else,’ he said.

‘I was trying to get your attention,’ said the Doctor. ‘Even you have to admit, Karlax,’ he glanced around at the assembled mass of guards, who were still brandishing their weapons, ‘it worked.’

Karlax smiled, a thin, calculating smile. ‘I’ll give you that, Doctor. You’ve certainly got our attention.’

The man standing beside Karlax, dressed in similar robes and skull cap, only orange and red and without a collar, gestured to the guards to lower their guns. There was a palpable sense of relief in the room. Cinder dropped her arms, feeling a little ridiculous.

‘Now, tell me,’ said the Doctor, ‘where’s Rassilon?’

‘The Lord President is currently engaged in important matters of State,’ said Karlax, pompously.