Doctor Who: Engines of War (12 page)

‘He’ll want to hear about this, Karlax,’ said the Doctor. He hefted the Dalek cannon and Cinder saw the man beside Karlax lower his hand to his belt, as if preparing to draw a pistol.

‘Doctor,’ she interrupted, stepping forward and putting her hand on the barrel of the Dalek weapon. ‘With so many guns in the room, I think it might be a good idea to keep that one out of the mix.’

Karlax laughed. ‘I see you’ve found yourself a new… companion,’ he said. He spoke the word as if it left a particularly bad taste in his mouth. ‘Another stray?’

Cinder bristled. This was exactly what she’d imagined the Time Lords to be like – snide, presumptuous and dripping with self-importance.

‘You’ll have to leave her here,’ continued Karlax. ‘You can’t bring her into the council chamber.’

‘I can do what I like,’ said the Doctor. ‘She’s with me. She’s under my protection. And she’s seen what the Daleks are up to on Moldox. Her perspective will be useful.’

‘She’s also here, in the room,’ said Cinder pointedly. Both of them looked at her for a moment before resuming their argument.

‘Lord Rassilon won’t like it,’ warned Karlax.

‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘But then I don’t much like you, and
I
have to put up with it,’ he added.

Karlax’s cheeks flushed scarlet, and Cinder had to stifle a laugh. ‘Be it on your own head, then, Doctor,’ he said. ‘You’d better come with me.’

The Doctor glanced at Cinder, and there was a glimmer of something she hadn’t seen there before, a twinkle in his eye. He was having fun. ‘Lead on, Macduff,’ he said, with a smile.

Chapter Ten

The War Room wasn’t at all what Cinder had expected when she’d overhead Karlax telling the Doctor where they were headed. If this was the nerve centre of the Time Lord’s entire operation against the Daleks, then perhaps they really were in more trouble than she’d thought. It was rather… well, she supposed the word for it was
understated
.

The room didn’t even look that impressive, and nor was it particularly well equipped, at least as far as she could tell – most of the Gallifreyan technology was beyond her understanding, more akin to magic than anything wrought by a person.

Nevertheless, the War Room amounted to little more than a large, oval chamber, flanked by crumbling stone pillars and dominated by an enormous ebony table. The table’s surface gleamed with the hazy blue light of holographic pictograms and runes. They seemed to glide just below the lacquer, like fish in a pond, blooming into new, elaborate shapes every time they touched or interacted with one another. It was a strange and hypnotic dance, and she could not decipher any meaning from it.

This, she supposed, was the language of the Time Lords. It certainly looked complex and logical enough to be a language, and precise enough to belong to the only race in the universe who seemed to make pedantry into an art.

There was little else in the room worthy of note, besides a number of screens hung like picture frames upon the walls, streaming relayed footage from what she assumed to be Time Lord warships or TARDISes. The silent images slid by in a confusion of explosions and flashing lights; windows onto the Time Lords’ encounters with the Daleks. As she watched, she saw ships on both sides of the engagement blossom into flame and then extinguish almost instantly, their dead hulks left to drift in the cold, airless void.

She couldn’t tell whether it was a live feed, or whether the man sitting in the chair was reviewing the footage of battles that had already passed. She supposed in a war of time, the point was probably moot.

The strangest thing about the whole setup, however, was the fact the War Room was hidden in a quiet corner of the citadel, well away from the staterooms and Panopticon. It felt to Cinder as if the Time Lords were attempting to hide it away, to sweep all evidence of the war into a dusty, disused corner of the building so that they might simply ignore it. Did they think that if they chose not to acknowledge it, it somehow wouldn’t be real, and life could go on in the Capitol as it always had? She got the distinct impression that for many of the Time Lords the War was someone else’s business, a perturbation that would all be resolved in due course. Nothing to get their feathers ruffled about.

She wondered about the other people of Gallifrey, the men drafted in to be soldiers, and whether they felt the same about protecting a way of life that had probably become stale and archaic before the surface of Moldox had even cooled from its fiery creation.

Cinder knew the Doctor felt differently, of course, judging by his reaction to what he’d seen on Moldox. That was the reason for their visit. He’d come to warn them. These were his people, and he planned to protect them.

The man in the chair didn’t rise or turn to look at them as they filed into the room. A show of power, perhaps – a reminder of who was in charge.

This, then, was the Lord President of Gallifrey, the man the Doctor had referred to as Rassilon. Despite herself, Cinder felt her stomach knot. Only yesterday she’d been fighting for her life against a Dalek patrol on Moldox. Now she was here, in the presence of one of the most powerful beings in the universe.

She could only see him in profile. He was an older man, lean and rugged. His hair was close cropped and dark, turning to grey. The light from the monitors cast his features in stark relief: the sharp, shallow brow, the aquiline nose, the square, set jaw. Here was a man who didn’t see much humour in the universe, who’d been blunted by the burden of duty. The weight of that burden was almost palpable in the room.

‘Ah, Doctor,’ said Rassilon, still refusing to drag his eyes from the monitor above him. ‘I understand your arrival caused quite a stir. You’re to be applauded for your inventiveness.’ He was well spoken, and his voice was deep and smooth. He laughed. ‘I’m only glad you’re working for us, rather than against us.’ He turned his head and offered the Doctor a crooked smile. His eyes, however, were hard and cold. ‘Don’t you agree, Karlax?’

‘Indeed, sir,’ said Karlax, with a sickening obsequiousness.

‘News travels fast,’ said the Doctor, glancing at Karlax. ‘I’ve only just arrived.’

Rassilon laughed. ‘Come, join me,’ he said, beckoning the Doctor forward. His fingers gleamed in the reflected light, and Cinder realised he was wearing a metal gauntlet on his left hand.

The Doctor did as he was bid. Cinder remained just inside the doorway, attempting to remain invisible, while Karlax took a seat at the table, from where he could observe proceedings.

‘Gallifrey’s wayward son. See here,’ he indicated the monitors with a sweep of his hand. ‘Our bowships burn, our TARDISes bloom, our children die at the hands of the Daleks. We fight for our very existence.’ He sighed. ‘But you know this, of course. You’ve been out there, in the thick of it. Tell me, Doctor – what brings you home from the front?’

‘I bring a warning,’ said the Doctor drily.

‘A
warning
,’ said Rassilon, evidently amused. ‘We are privileged indeed, Doctor.’ He laughed. ‘First, though, I would hear news of your search. Have you found him yet? Have you located the Master?’

The Doctor shook his head. Cinder had no idea who or what they were talking about. ‘He’s abandoned you, Rassilon. He’s abandoned all of us. He’s run for cover, and I doubt we’ll see him again. Not until the War is over, at least.’

‘He looked into the eye of the storm, and what he saw there was too much for him to bear,’ said Rassilon. ‘He is weak, and thinks only of his own survival. Still, I cannot blame him. We are all of us standing on a precipice, looking down.’ He studied the Doctor for a moment. ‘And now you, Doctor, bring news of further unpleasantness.’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’ve come directly from the Tantalus Spiral, where I saw Preda’s fleet destroyed by an ambush of Dalek stealth ships.’

Rassilon indicated the screens with an expansive wave. ‘I watched the dying moments of her TARDIS with a heavy heart.’ Cinder thought that he didn’t sound in the least bit bothered.

The Doctor nodded. ‘My TARDIS was damaged in the attack. I survived a crash-landing on the planet Moldox, where I discovered a Dalek testing facility. They’ve developed a new weapon, housed in a new paradigm. It harnesses the temporal radiation leaking from the Tantalus Eye.’

‘The anomaly?’ said Rassilon.

‘Precisely,’ replied the Doctor. ‘They’ve created a demat weapon. I saw them testing it on their human prisoners. It’s ready to be disseminated to their frontline forces.’

‘This is… troubling,’ said Rassilon.

‘It gets worse,’ continued the Doctor. ‘I managed to get inside one of their saucers and interrogate their databanks. They’re using the technology to build a planet killer. They intend to fire it at Gallifrey.’

‘To dematerialise an entire world,’ said Rassilon. ‘I admit it, Doctor – I’m impressed by their ingenuity.’

‘We need to act,’ urged the Doctor, ‘and soon. That precipice you mentioned – we’ve just moved uncomfortably close to the edge.’

Rassilon seemed amused. ‘Karlax?’

‘Yes, my Lord?’

‘Arrange for an emergency session of the High Council. We shall meet in one hour. The Doctor and his assistant will present their findings.’ Rassilon glanced at the Doctor, and smiled.

‘Very good, sir,’ replied Karlax.

Cinder couldn’t shake the feeling that the Doctor had just made himself the subject of a different sort of ambush.

Karlax ushered them into the council chamber. The Doctor went first, hauling the Dalek cannon he’d retrieved from his TARDIS, and as Cinder followed after him, she stopped at the touch of a hand on her shoulder, pressing just a little too hard to be comfortable. She turned to see Karlax looming over her.

‘You wait with me, over here,’ he said, as he pushed her forcibly towards the corner of the room, just on the left inside the door. Reluctantly she relented, allowing him to guide her out of the way.

‘Oh, I
see
,’ she said, smartly, crossing her arms over her chest and putting as much distance between herself and the odious little man as possible. ‘Only
important
Time Lords are allowed a seat at the table.’

Karlax scowled at her, but otherwise didn’t respond. She watched as proceedings began to unfold, mindful of what Karlax was up to beside her.

Given that this was the meeting hall of the High Council of Gallifrey, it was far less ostentatious than she’d come to expect from her brief time in the Capitol: the walls were plain white, the floor laid in a smooth, cream marble, and the furnishings sparse.

A large oval table filled most of the space. It was similar in size and shape to the one in the War Room, but with a gleaming surface of lacquered wood, inlaid with fine traceries of gold. It didn’t appear to have any embedded technology, but it was difficult to tell.

Aside from this, the only other objects in the room were a large golden harp, a painting of a decrepit-looking Time Lord playing the harp, and a platform containing two spurs and a computer interface.

Around the table, a number of Time Lords had already taken to their seats. Rassilon sat at the head, dressed in the full regalia of his office, and clutching a golden staff in his left hand. It was a thin metal pole, crested with an elaborately wrought finial. Cinder had no idea of its purpose, but she assumed it was ceremonial in origin.

One of the chairs was empty, and Cinder noted the Time Lord sigil that had been carved into its high back in exceptional detail. She wondered if this denoted the rank of the person who should have been seated there.

To Rassilon’s left sat a female Time Lord. She looked young, with a bob of dark hair framing a pretty, delicate face. She too was dressed in elaborate robes, this time in deep purple with platinum trim, with a wide, golden collar resting upon her shoulders.

Opposite the woman was the Castellan – the head of the security service, whom Cinder had encountered briefly upon arrival in the Panopticon – and two other men, one of them older, with dark, puckered skin and close-cropped hair, the other younger but still turning to grey, with a neatly trimmed beard and darting blue-eyes. Both were wearing elbow-length gloves, their knuckles dusted with rings.

It was all pomp and ceremony, Cinder realised. They seemed more concerned with their rituals than with hearing what the Doctor had to say. If the fate of the universe truly rested in the hands of these people, then she had grave doubts over whether there’d be anything left worth fighting over once the Daleks had made their move.

It seemed that everyone who was supposed to be in attendance was there. Karlax pulled the door to and then returned to his place in the corner beside her. She watched him for a moment. His eyes were fixed on the President, taking in the man’s every move.

Karlax must have sensed her looking, because he turned and offered her a sneer. ‘You are privileged,’ he whispered. ‘I know of no human who has ever been permitted to attend a session of the High Council.’

Cinder shrugged. ‘Desperate circumstances call for desperate measures,’ she said.

‘Quite,’ said Karlax bitterly.

Rassilon rose from his seat, striking his staff firmly upon the ground.

Metal rang out against marble, and all eyes turned toward the President. ‘This session is hereby convened,’ he said. ‘The Doctor will address us now.’

The Castellan smiled and leaned back in his chair. He watched the Doctor with an amused look in his eye. ‘I understand there’s a small matter you wish to bring to our attention, Doctor?’ he said. His tone was patronising, and Cinder felt indignant on behalf of the Doctor.

The Doctor, of course, could look after himself. ‘Small, you say?
Small
?’ He glared at the Castellan. ‘The only small thing this room, Castellan, is your mind.’

The Doctor slung the Dalek cannon upon the table, where it clattered loudly, causing the Time Lords to flinch as if it the Doctor had been uncouth enough to toss a dead animal onto the dinner table.

The Doctor began pacing on the spot, his hands folded behind his back. Cinder could see that he was brimming with simmering rage. ‘It’s time to wake up!’ he said. ‘We’re at war, and by all accounts we’re losing on every front. We’re outnumbered and outclassed, and we’re burying our heads in the sand, refusing to acknowledge what’s clearly evident to the rest of the universe. While we’re gazing at our navels, the Daleks have established a presence in the Tantalus Spiral and are building their forces there.’