Doctor Who: Engines of War (8 page)

Cinder staggered back from the window feeling nauseous. She put her hand to her brow. She could tell that something was badly wrong, put she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. She stared at the Doctor, put her hand on his arm as if to steady herself. ‘What just happened?’ she said. ‘I know something awful has just happened, but what was it?’

She glanced back at the courtyard, where the Daleks were surveying the six prisoners they had brought out into the courtyard a few minutes earlier.

The Doctor stepped away from the window and, taking hold of Cinder’s forearm, led her away too. ‘It’s a temporal weapon,’ he said. ‘A dematerialisation gun. The Daleks have developed a new template, a new paradigm, which has the power to eradicate a person from history.’

‘How can you tell?’ said Cinder. ‘How do you know just by looking at it?’

The Doctor narrowed his eyes. ‘Didn’t you see it? Didn’t you see what it just did to those four people?’

Cinder shook herself free from his grip. She went back to the window. No, there were six people there, just as there had been before. ‘Four people?’ she said. ‘There are six of them down there.’ Even as she said it, though, she knew something was awry. She could feel it, nagging away at her. She was missing something. Couldn’t she even trust her own mind any more?

‘It’s the weapon, Cinder. That’s what’s doing it,’ said the Doctor. ‘That cannon – it can erase a person’s timeline from history, removing every trace of them, as if they never even existed. It’s what happened to your friend, out there in the ruins, the person whose bunk was next to your own at the camp, the one you can’t quite remember. Your mind is struggling to comprehend it. You know there’s something wrong, something missing. The memories are still there, buried inside your head, but they no longer add up, they no longer relate to a person you’ve known or seen, because reality has warped around you.’

Cinder shook her head, as if trying to clear it. She didn’t understand. A weapon that not only killed someone, but rewrote history as if they’d never even been born? It was the most awful thing she’d ever heard. The sheer violence of it – to not only take a life, but to undo every action, every thought, every emotion ever enacted or experienced by that person… it had to be the most evil device ever conceived. She wiped tears from her eyes, remembering the grief, if not the people.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the Doctor. ‘I truly am. But that trip in the TARDIS is going to have to wait a little longer. If the Daleks are able to disseminate this weapon, then the War is all but lost.’ He stepped towards her, put his arms around her and pulled her close, hugging her to his chest. ‘I’m going to stop them doing this to anyone else.’

Sniffing back her tears, Cinder pushed the Doctor away. She fixed him with a defiant stare. Her resolve hardened. ‘I’m in,’ she said. ‘Whatever it takes, I’ll help you stop them.’

The Doctor gave a grim smile. ‘That’s my girl,’ he said.

Chapter Seven

‘How are we going to get in?’ said Cinder.

They’d left the house, emerging onto the still, empty street outside. The Dalek domes loomed large and foreboding at the next intersection. Cinder was trying to work out the best plan for getting inside.

‘I always find at times like these,’ said the Doctor, ‘that the best recourse is to use the front door.’

‘The front door? You can’t seriously mean that you’re just going to walk on up there and try the handle?’ said Cinder. She couldn’t tell if he was naive, confident, or just dangerously reckless. Nor did she know if the doors on Dalek space vessels even
had
handles.

‘Precisely,’ replied the Doctor. ‘It usually does the trick.’ He strode off in the direction of the dome.

Exasperated, Cinder rushed after him. ‘You find yourself in these sorts of situations often, do you?’ she asked.

‘More than you’d care to know,’ said the Doctor, with a heavy sigh. His eyes looked rheumy and tired.

She wondered how old he really was. He certainly
looked
old, but she had no idea how long a Time Lord could actually survive. She’d heard tell that they were immortal, that they couldn’t be killed, but also that they could change their faces at will, become someone different and new. She didn’t know if any of that were true. For all she knew, the Doctor was as mortal as she was, and just as susceptible to the blast of a Dalek energy weapon.

‘But what about the Daleks?’ she said. ‘You’ve seen what they can do. That new weapon, the dematerialisation gun – what if they come at you with one of those?’

‘The Daleks are as arrogant as the Time Lords,’ said the Doctor. ‘Perhaps worse. That’s the beauty of a plan like this. They won’t be expecting anyone to simply roll up and invite themselves in.’

‘I’d hardly call it a plan,’ muttered Cinder. She clutched her gun a little tighter. When she’d said she was in on this escapade, she’d expected him have a bit more of an idea about exactly how they were going to go about it.

At the end of the street she glanced left, ready to make a run for it, but the Dalek they’d seen earlier had moved on. She checked in the other direction, looking along the street.

The city was arranged in a basic grid pattern, designed to a plan the colonists had brought with them from Earth. They’d arrived with a certain amount of prefabricated materials in their hold, and these had formed the basis of the very first buildings – those, and the skin of the ship that had brought them here. As the colony had developed and they’d learned to manufacture, to harvest the local wood and mine for minerals and metals, the buildings had grown more sophisticated, but still they had followed the plan from Earth. Month after month, year after year, the colony had grown, soon forgetting it was a colony at all and becoming a home.

People had flourished here, and in time they had spread across the other planets of the Spiral. Moldox, however, had been the first, the origin of human life in this sector. Now, billions of those people were dead, possibly erased entirely from history, whilst billions more were enslaved to the Daleks.

The Doctor was right. They would stop this happening to anyone else. They had to. It was time to stop doubting him. If brazenly walking up to the saucer and strolling in through the nearest entry point was going to be the best way into the Dalek base, then she would follow him. There was something about the Doctor – something that inspired her to trust him.

They crossed the intersection and continued down the filthy street, until they were standing in the shadow of the nearest saucer. It was immense, towering over her, and she could see here, from ground level, that it sat upon three domes that sprouted from its base. Beneath it was the rubble of one of the old school buildings. The ablative armour that formed the outer skin of the ship was pitted and covered in verdigris. None of the lights appeared to be functional. Creeping vines had begun to make inroads, curling up from below like willowy green fingers, clutching at the alien interloper. It looked as abandoned as the human buildings that surrounded it.

They edged forward, glancing from side to side. High above, on one of the gantries, a Dalek and two Degradations – the squat, egg-shaped variety with the spider legs – were crossing from one saucer to another. The Doctor didn’t appear to have spotted them. Cinder grabbed his arm and dragged him into the shadows beneath the belly of the ship. She jabbed her gun silently in the direction of the Daleks and he nodded his understanding. They waited for a moment until the Daleks had passed.

‘There should be a ramp on this side, if I’m not mistaken,’ said the Doctor, fiddling with the knot of his scarf. He moved on, following the rim of the saucer around until they were close to the edge of the central courtyard, but still largely hidden by the shadows.

The Daleks appeared to have finished their weapon testing, and the remaining humans – six of them, she counted, relieved – were being herded back into the saucer on the other side.

It seemed incomprehensible to Cinder that this site, this old children’s playground, could have become such a place of death. The faded markings of hopscotch squares and painted circles on the ground seemed incongruous, wrong. She was filled with a sharp feeling of disquiet. It was almost as if the Daleks had chosen this location in order to mock their human captives, to remind them of happier times, now lost to them for ever.

‘Move, or you will be ex-ter-min-ated,’ said one of the Daleks, shoving a prisoner in the back with its manipulator arm. The man staggered forward, but didn’t acknowledge the Dalek, didn’t even cry out. The fight had clearly gone out of him, and he shuffled onto the boarding ramp, his head bowed.

This was a man waiting to die, Cinder realised. They all were. Every one of those prisoners, men and women – they knew it was only a matter of time, and in some ways, they’d probably begun to look forward to it. To crave it, even. At least death would be a release from the torment inflicted upon them by their captors. Anything else was just an extension of their agony.

She watched the final stragglers of the small party mount the ramp and disappear into the other ship.

‘Right,’ whispered the Doctor, touching the top of her arm to get her attention. ‘This is our chance. There’s a ramp just around here.’ He indicated by waving his thumb. ‘Slowly and quietly, and stay by my side.’

Cautiously, they crossed the courtyard and ascended the ramp. Cinder kept her weapon slung at her hip, her finger close to the trigger. She could hardly believe what she was doing. If Coyne could see her now…

Side by side, the two of them stepped into the yawning maw of the Dalek ship.

Inside, the walls were comprised of a series of crystalline archways patterned with small roundels, and through which lurid colours – yellows, greens, ochres and purples – pulsed like blood pounding through a network of arteries and veins.

A wide passageway appeared to run around the circumference of the ship, offering them the choice of going left or right. Cinder’s heart was hammering in her chest, expecting a Dalek to round one of the bends at any moment. For now, though, they seemed to be alone.

‘Well, that was easier than I thought,’ she whispered.

‘Getting in is the easy bit,’ replied the Doctor. ‘It’s getting out that’s usually the problem.’

‘Oh, thanks for that,’ she muttered. She realised her hands were trembling as she tried to hold her gun level. ‘So, what now?’

The Doctor shrugged. ‘We take a look around. Each of these domes will be given over to a specific purpose. Let’s find out which of them we’re in.’

Staying close to the wall, they followed the passage as it snaked around to the left, peering ahead for any sign of oncoming Daleks. Sheer luck had got this far, Cinder was sure, and she was convinced they would find themselves surrounded at any moment. Surely the Daleks must have monitoring systems aboard their ships?

After a while the passage branched to the right, splitting into a number of narrow tunnels that appeared to lead deeper into the ship. The Doctor – who seemed to be arbitrarily deciding which way to go – led her down one of these smaller, tributary corridors with a wave of his hand.

Here, there was a row of panels in the wall resembling doors; large metal sheets inset into archways. They didn’t appear to have any controls. Or, Cinder considered, any handles. Well, that answered
that
question, at least.

‘Are these cells?’ asked Cinder. ‘Might there be prisoners inside?’

‘Possibly,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s hard to tell from out here, although I imagine they’re keeping them all together on the other saucer, or in some of the buildings nearby.’

‘We should check,’ she said. ‘How do I open the door?’

‘Walk towards it. They’re motion activated,’ he replied.

Cinder crept towards the door, but nothing happened.

‘No, not like that,’ said the Doctor. ‘Walk at it with purpose, like a Dalek.’ He strode forward confidently, puffing out his chest. There was a click and a mechanical whirr, and a second later the door
whooshed
open, sliding up into the roof.

The room revealed beyond was a relatively large chamber, filled with all manner of bizarre equipment and technological ephemera. The stench that wafted out, however, was almost enough to cause her to keel over and vomit. Immediately, she wished she’d kept on walking.

The Doctor stepped inside, and she followed, wrinkling her nose at the smell. It was foul, like rancid, rotting meat. Something inside the room was very wrong indeed.

Five glass structures stood against the rear wall. They were transparent, but shaped in the archetypal form of a Dalek, complete with a glass manipulator arm and weapon.

Cinder hefted her gun, expecting them to swing into action at any moment. She backed up, glancing from side to side.

The Doctor held out his hand, reassuring her. ‘They’re not living Daleks,’ he said. ‘At least not yet. Take another look.’

Still a little unsure, she crept closer. Through the glass walls of the casing she could see the organic matter inside, a heaving, glutinous mass of flesh and tubing, steadily inflating and deflating like a sticky, diseased lung.

The room was some sort of incubation chamber.

This in itself was enough to cause another involuntary gag, but it was when she looked at the second of the incubation chambers that she realised the true extent of the horror. In this one, the organic component still had a human face.

It had once been a woman, but now, if there was anything left behind the darting, yellow eyes, it was only madness. The head had mutated, becoming hairless, misshapen. The flesh had blistered and bubbled, caked in gnarled tumours. The woman’s limbs had been removed, and cables extruded from her chest, wiring her into the incubation housing.

Cinder staggered back, looking away, unable to process exactly what she was seeing. It was simultaneously the most disgusting and most pitiful thing she’d ever seen.

‘This is what they’re doing here?’ she said. ‘Experimenting on the prisoners?’

‘Turning them into Daleks,’ said the Doctor, his voice grim.