Doctor Who: Engines of War (26 page)

‘Yet you exterminate us with impunity. Allow me to assure you, Doc-tor, that Daleks also value life.’

The Doctor laughed, but it was tinged with regret. ‘You value only Dalek life. You exist only to destroy, to consume. You are parasites, living off the carcass of creation.’

‘Daleks are the superior life form in the universe,’ said the Dalek. ‘All other life is irrelevant.’

‘Ah,’ said the Doctor, with a sigh. ‘Now you’re beginning to sound more like the Daleks I know. Now you’re telling me what you
really
think.’

‘Yet you, Doc-tor. You are
admired
by the Daleks. You are revered. Your mere presence invokes terror amongst our kind. There is no greater honour. I would meet the creature that can terrify an entire species. We would learn from you.’

The Doctor grimaced at this most horrific and unwelcome of compliments.

Cinder swallowed. She wanted to tell the Doctor to switch it off. To silence the monster, power up the TARDIS engines and take her as far away from the Tantalus Spiral as possible. To use his time machine to take her somewhere where there
were
no Daleks, and no Time Lords, and no War.

But she knew that she could not. The Doctor was right. They had no choice. If there was even the slightest chance that his plan might work, that they might find a means of getting close enough to the Eye to deploy the possibility engine, to somehow defeat these monsters, then they had to take it.

‘I’m here to parlay,’ said the Doctor.

‘The Daleks do not parlay,’ said the Dalek. ‘We do not negotiate. We do not bargain.’

‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘I didn’t really think you would.’

Cinder tensed in concern. Had he misjudged? They were sitting ducks out here. The Daleks could easily destroy them before the Doctor could ever bring the power back up. It was a hell of a gamble he was taking.

‘Yet we would look upon you, Predator, before you are ex-ter-min-ated,’ said the Dalek. ‘You will be granted an audience with the Eternity Circle. You will speak with us before you die.’

‘How kind.’ The Doctor glanced at Cinder, and she couldn’t help but catch the impish ‘I told you so’ expression he was wearing. Childishly, she succumbed to the urge to stick her tongue out at him.

The TARDIS gave a sudden, unexpected shudder, and Cinder was forced to steady herself against the rail. She felt the ship move jerkily, rocking her onto the balls of her feet. The Doctor was steadying himself at the console, clinging on to a nearby lever.

‘What…?’ she started, but stopped when she saw the Doctor was staring intently up at the ceiling. She followed his gaze. Through the transparent roof she saw a large escort party of about ten Dalek saucers had gathered around the stationary TARDIS. Hoops of flickering blue light emanated from the base of the nearest saucer, encircling the TARDIS in what she assumed to be a tractor beam. They were slowly being dragged toward the Eye, and the beating heart of the Dalek operation.

‘Where do you think they’re taking us?’ she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

The Doctor reached over and pushed a button on the console before answering, presumably to ensure the Daleks would not overhear their conversation, although Cinder could see no actual microphone in the console room. ‘There’s a station orbiting the Eye,’ he said. ‘The seat of this so-called Eternity Circle. That’s where they’re taking us.’ He pointed up at the ceiling, to a tiny black speck, hovering close to the heart of the Eye.

‘The Eternity Circle?’ she said. ‘I thought the Daleks only took orders from their Emperor?’

‘The Dalek Emperor is experimenting,’ replied the Doctor. ‘Sanctioning the creation of new types of Daleks, hoping that they might provide them with an edge, a means to win the War. As far as I can tell, the Eternity Circle is a select group of Daleks charged with developing new weapons, and coordinating the Dalek war effort throughout time.’

Cinder shrugged. ‘Just like the Time Lord council,’ she said.

The Doctor pulled a face, as if he’d just swallowed something distasteful. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I rather suppose you’re right.’

She looked over at Borusa, still lashed up into the framework of the Time Lord machine. She could barely stand to look at the thing, or to even consider it a being. She felt disorientated just trying to focus on Borusa’s ever-changing face, stuck in that dreadful, regenerative loop. His eyes, electric blue and all seeing, seemed to burrow into her from across the console room. She wondered if he could see into
her
future, if he knew whether or not they were going to survive this.

A sudden thought occurred to her. ‘Hold on a minute,’ she said. ‘Did you
know
the Daleks were going to fall for your plan? That they were always going to be unable to resist the temptation to watch you die in person?’

The Doctor grinned. ‘I didn’t need Borusa to tell me that,’ he said.

The Dalek command station looked more like a vast, floating city than the sort of modular, habitable satellite that Cinder had imagined. Domed structures nestled amongst clusters of bristling spines and transmitters, and whatever substance it was constructed from – Dalekanium, she supposed – gleamed like burnished bronze in the reflected light of the Eye. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Dalek saucers and stealth ships buzzed around it like bees dutifully attending to a queen.

Behind it, though, dwarfing even the massive station into insignificance was the Tantalus Eye itself. This close, through the de-opaqued ceiling of the TARDIS, Cinder could clearly see the fissure at the heart of the anomaly: an immense, crackling nucleus of raw energy, a ragged wound in the fabric of time and space, fizzing with ruby-coloured light.

She could see now, more than ever, why the anomaly had come to be known as the Eye – this nucleus was its pupil, surrounded by the swirl of softly glowing gas that formed its kaleidoscopic iris. Within that expansive region, time ran amok, accelerating and decelerating, reversing itself and generally behaving so unpredictably that the laws of physics had no way of explaining its existence.

Cinder watched as stars burst to life with sudden, intense ferocity, only to evolve into bloated, dying giants within seconds. Meanwhile, others collapsed and reignited, resurrected from the verge of death, blooming once more into vibrant life. She wondered what had become of the many explorers who had flown into the Eye, and whether they explored it still, trapped in an intermediary space somewhere between life and death. Is that what would become of her and the Doctor if their plan was successful? Or might the TARDIS protect them somehow?

All such thoughts were forgotten, however, at the sight of an even bigger Dalek structure hanging above the Eye – the immense cylindrical barrel of their planet killer, the weapon she and the Doctor were supposedly there to prevent them from firing.

Cinder swallowed. She didn’t even know where to start. The cannon was the size of three moons – or rather, it was actually
comprised
of three moons – which had been lashed together in a massive latticework of struts and nodes, and segmented by vast, shimmering discs of metal. At the front, three spokes came together to form a massive tip, from which she assumed the energy blast would be fired.

Swarms of Daleks tended to it, thousands of them,
hundreds of thousands
of them, like worker ants, crawling all over its surface.

A stream of ruby-coloured light was being siphoned from the Eye itself, channelled into two crackling antenna towards the rear of the weapon. She could see at the business end of the gun – if it could even be called a gun – the ruby light was beginning to flicker, as if it were building up for a discharge, just like the smaller temporal weapons she’d seen the Daleks using on Moldox.

This, then, was the weapon they would use to obliterate Gallifrey, and any other planets that stood in the way of their terrible ambition. Cinder could see now, for the first time, the true scale of the threat. She could see what had terrified Rassilon and his council.

This was engineering on an epic scale. With it, she had no doubt the Daleks would be able to end the War and claim dominion over the entire universe. It was in equal parts one of the most terrifying and impressive things she had ever seen, and worse, it looked to her as if it were almost ready to fire.

She stepped back from the console, averting her gaze.

The Daleks had been silent since the Doctor had severed the connection, but now the communications system crackled to life again, picking up a transmission from the command station.

‘Report,’ demanded an abrupt Dalek voice. Cinder jumped at the sudden intrusion.

‘Target acquired,’ replied another, near-identical voice, presumably from onboard one of the escort vessels.

‘Proceed,’ came the economical response.

Cinder and the Doctor watched in silence as they were dragged toward the station. She couldn’t help but marvel at the sheer size of the structure, as they drew closer and the true scale of the Dalek operation dawned on her. There must have been
billions
of them there in the Spiral, when she considered how many of them had been on Moldox, and must have spread across all of the other inhabited worlds. And this was only
now
, in this particularly time period, in this one specific region of space.

The thought of a universe teeming with Daleks filled her with dread. Had she been wrong? Had the Doctor? Perhaps they should have allowed the Time Lords to proceed with their plan to deploy their Armageddon device. Perhaps the loss of human life would have been worth it.

As if understanding her mounting sense of terror and the darkness that was beginning to creep into her thoughts, the Doctor moved over to stand beside her, taking hold of the rail. ‘It’ll be all right,’ he said, quietly. ‘Just stay by my side and you’ll be fine.’

She wanted to ask how he could be so sure, so confident, but the moment had passed. He’d already returned to watching their approach. The station now filled their entire view, and the escort ships were starting to peel away, spinning off into the void. The Daleks were clearly under the impression that they’d managed to cage the Doctor; that he and his TARDIS were entirely at their mercy. Cinder couldn’t shake the feeling that, somehow, the reality of the situation was quite the opposite.

The TARDIS, anchored to the Dalek saucer like the swinging pendulum of a clock, slid through the cavernous mouth of the station’s docking bay, and deep into its maw.

She barely had time to gain an impression of what the interior of the station looked like before, with a sudden jolt, the TARDIS was released from the tractor beam and crashed to the floor of the loading bay. She was flung forward, and was only prevented from stumbling head-first into the console by the Doctor, who swung out an arm to catch her around the waist, maintaining his own grip on the railing all the while. Breathless, she thanked him, finding her footing again a moment later. She brushed her hair out of her eyes.

‘So,’ she said. ‘We’re just going to waltz out of here like we own the place, into the waiting arms of a billion Daleks?’

‘Something like that,’ said the Doctor, distracted. He’d returned to the console and was fiddling with the dials and switches again.

Cinder gaped at him. ‘I mean… I… I was only being sarcastic,’ she mumbled. ‘That’s not
really
the plan? Is it?’

The Doctor glanced at her over his shoulder, moving smoothly around the console to crank another lever. ‘Parking brake,’ he said, as if that answered everything. ‘Best not to leave that on if we think we might need to make a quick getaway.’

‘Oh, I don’t think there’ll be any need for that,’ said Cinder, incredulous. ‘I think we’ll be too busy getting unequivocally exterminated for that to make much of a difference.’

The Doctor shook his head. ‘You do have a way with melodrama,’ he said. ‘Now come along. Bring your coat.’

Cinder emitted an exasperated gurgle, but did as he said, fetching her old, scorched jacket from where she’d tossed it on the floor after fleeing Gallifrey. She shrugged it on. ‘I can’t quite believe we’re going to do this,’ she said. She turned to see the Doctor was no longer there. Twisting about, she spotted him, coming down the short flight of steps from the upper level. Cinder frowned. She hadn’t even seen him leave. He must have stepped out while she was collecting her coat.

‘A little late for regrets now,’ he said, striding confidently toward the door. He pushed it open and stepped out into the harsh, electric light of the Dalek command station.

‘Hello,’ she heard him say. ‘What is it that one’s supposed to say in such situations? Ah, yes, that’s right. Take me to your leader!’

With a heartfelt sigh, Cinder rushed out behind him.

Chapter Twenty-One

A clutch of Daleks led them at gunpoint through the quiet, cavernous passageways of the command station. The walls here were similar to those aboard the Dalek saucers on Moldox: a hexagonal crystal lattice, pulsing with the passage of coloured gases and fluids.

They passed branching corridors and rooms that formed hubs, like nexus points in a strange, otherworldly labyrinth. Sealed doors suggested rooms and cells, but none of them were open. Other Daleks glided silently along the hallways, like solemn monks in the corridors of an abbey, not even greeting one another as they passed by. All of the Daleks here appeared to be of the typical brass and gold variety. None of the mutants or Degradations appeared to be present.

Soon after, their Dalek guards came to a halt before a large, open archway.

‘Wait,’ said one of them in a deep, mechanical monotone, before sliding off into the chamber beyond.

Cinder couldn’t see much from where she was standing behind another of the Daleks, other than the fact the walls inside the room changed in appearance, becoming white and opaque. The floor, too, appeared to be made from panels of smooth, white metal.

The Dalek returned a few moments later, clearly having checked ahead. ‘Proceed.’

‘Glad to see you’re feeling conversational,’ muttered Cinder.