Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks

by Ben Aaronovitch

  Rachel stared at the girl in disbelief. What does it take to shake this child? What kind of future is it that produces children like that?

  ‘Doctor,’ she said, ‘we’ve had a report of a radar contact.’

  ‘On a re-entry curve from low orbit?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’ll be an imperial Dalek shuttlecraft,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘They’re not landing a spaceship here?’ asked Gilmore.

  There was a rumble like thunder overhead.

  ‘Here?’ said the Doctor. ‘No. We’re much too far from the main action.’

  The rumble was getting louder. Fragments of glass began to vibrate on the workbenches.

  ‘You’re sure?’ asked Rachel.

  Ace was staring up at the sky. ‘Whoa,’ she said.

  ‘Ace,’ yelled the Doctor, ‘get away from the window.’

  Ace came scrambling over the benches to them. The rumble grew until it filled the room. Something blotted out the light. Instinctively they all ducked under the nearest bench. The window blew in, splinters of wood and glass burying themselves in the walls. Superheated gas screamed into the classroom. The noise was unbearable.

  Something huge and technological travelled past the window.

  Rachel found herself face to face with the Doctor.

  The noise cut out suddenly.

  ‘Well?’ she cried.

  ‘I think I may have miscalculated,’ said the Doctor.

  13

  SATURDAY, 15:50

  THERE WAS THE crunch of powdering concrete. The shuttle rocked once on its suspension before settling. The imperial shuttle commander ordered the main doors unsealed.

  Two scouts raced out to take point position. Their onboard sensors swept the playground. There was battle damage. Preliminary data indicated conflict between renegade Dalek forces and native military personnel.

  Warrior section one unshipped from the port-bow module and filed swiftly away from the shuttle. The shuttle commander cautiously deployed them in defensive positions. Once the immediate area was secure, sections two and three deployed as a phalanx.

  Orbital intelligence indicated that the main renegade staging area was 3500 metres to the east; native resistance was expected to be minimal. The shuttle commander’s tactical computer showed orbital images of the local conurbation. Three optimum routes were picked out in neon green.

  The shuttle commander decided to use all three routes. Section one would travel north, section two would go by the direct central route and section three via the south. Section four would unship and with the Abomination maintain perimeter defence. Its orders were rapidly downloaded into the warriors and scouts.

  With only the faint whine from the scouts’ overpowered motivators the imperial Dalek assault squad moved off.

  Gilmore got to his feet and ran to the window. Glass crunched under his feet; tendrils of acrid smoke wound round his legs. Most of the window frame had been blasted inwards by…

  Gilmore wanted to turn away from the window, turn around and walk away from what he suspected he would see. It took so much of himself to stare down into the playground.

  It was dirty white, constructed from a series of polygons, it was ugly and it was large. Daleks in cream and gold livery moved around down there. Gilmore stepped back from the window.

  ‘Right,’ he said to the others, ‘out of here, downstairs.’

  Rachel, Ace and Allison went scrambling for the door. The Doctor remained where he was.

  ‘Is that the mothership?’ asked Gilmore.

  ‘No,’ said the Doctor, ‘that’s a shuttle. The mothership is much larger. Are you willing to co-operate with me?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘Well,’ said the Doctor, ‘you could go out there and make a gloriously futile gesture.’

  ‘What do we do?’

  ‘A little bit of piracy.’

  Ace’s shoulder hurt – a knot of tension in her back that refused to go away. She tried rotating the joint as she followed Rachel and Allison into the foyer.

  ‘Ace,’ said Mike from behind her.

  ‘Go away,’ she said, without turning round.

  She felt him come closer. ‘I didn’t know about the Daleks,’ he said. ‘I was just doing Mr Ratcliffe a favour.’

  ‘Do me a favour,’ said Ace, ‘and drown yourself.’

  She wanted him gone before he saw the wetness in her eyes, but he wouldn’t shut up. ‘I just thought it was the right thing. Mr Ratcliffe had plans, such great plans.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘I never really hated anyone. It’s just that you have to look after your own…’

  A smell invaded her nostrils, acrid, like…

  ‘Keep the outsiders out…’

  Hospital smell and…

  ‘… just so your own people can get a fair crack.’

  Disinfectant and charred wood.

  Ace was facing him before she knew she had turned. Her hands were striking out at his chest, pushing him away.

  ‘I said shut up!’ she screamed. ‘You betrayed the Doctor, you betrayed me. I trusted you – I even liked you – and all the time…’

  Ace turned her back on him, she couldn’t look at him any more. Her shoulder hurt. On the table in front of her was a stack of metal boxes. ‘Danger, High Explosives’ was stencilled along their sides, in yellow letters. She reached out for the top box.

  ‘Sergeant Smith.’ It was Gilmore.

  Mike mumbled something in reply.

  ‘Attention!’ Gilmore shouted at parade ground volume.

  Ace’s hand faltered on its way to the box. She turned to look back.

  Mike stood rigidly to attention. Group Captain Gilmore was beside him, face impassive. Behind the group captain stood an armed corporal.

  ‘Sergeant Smith,’ said Gilmore, ‘I am placing you under close arrest under suspicion of offences contrary to the Official Secrets Act.’ The corporal moved forward. ‘You will surrender your weapon.’

  Mike handed over his submachine-gun.

  ‘Dismissed.’

  Mike’s salute was crisp and formal, but Gilmore ignored it. Mike turned and followed the corporal out. Ace could see pain on the group captain’s face and then she too looked away.

  Imperial scout Dalek seven shot down the street at thirty kilometres an hour. Its overpowered motor lifted its fairing two centimetres above the primitive road surface. Sensor signals fanned out from the bulb housings on its torso. The creature inside rushed headlong through a world of enhanced sensory impression.

  Three metres behind and left, scout eight ran back-up position.

  They were eight minutes out from the landing zone, clearing the central route for the warriors of section two. The street terminated in a T-junction. Blue light flashed at the Dalek’s base as scout seven increased power to the motor and skipped the curb, crabbing sideways as the engine strained to compensate for the ninety degree turn to the right. There was a noisy electronic protest as the engineering controls red-lined.

  Scout eight took the corner more sedately, pirouetting to cover the left-hand street with its gunstick. Scout seven wound down the power and scanned the area ahead. The street was clear of life or power emissions. Ahead it ran under a bridge, creating a long lightless tunnel.

  Scout seven raised the shuttle commander on the VHF link. Scout seven reporting – area 25 – 09 clear.

  Shifting its vision to infra-red, scout seven moved forward.

  In the darkness the renegade warriors were waiting. They were veteran campaigners, their battle computers old with experience. Every stratagem, every tactic learned on a thousand worlds was captured in prisms of crystal.

  Now they waited, powered down, with baffles deployed to mask their emission signature. Remote sensors deployed in the street beyond the tunnel pinpointed the position of the approaching imperial scouts and fed data to the warriors’ fire control units.

  Their orders were to hold off the imperial Daleks, ev
en at the cost of their own destruction. They would do this thing and sacrifice themselves without question.

  They were Daleks.

  The attack came as a blizzard of electromagnetic static. Electronic countermeasures pods twinned with the remote sensors attacked scout seven through its sensor pods. The wave of static crashed over the sensitive instruments causing feedback to lash up the data bus and into the Dalek proper. Scout seven went blind in a microsecond. At the same time, machine code instructions hidden inside the random noise laid siege to the processors that regulated the Dalek’s life support. The internal systems fought back, defence subroutines attempted to locate the intruder program and eliminate it. They failed. The program was in. From that moment on scout seven began to die. Rogue commands from the intruder program voided food and waste tanks into the life chamber. The creature inside drowned.

  The blaster bolt that blew away its top half was little more than a coup de grâce.

  The imperial Dalek shuttle commander checked the updates on the fighting. Advance scouts had encountered renegade warriors in prepared positions. Battle projections indicated that both the northern and southern routes would be costly to force. The central route was equally well defended, but was the shortest to the renegade base.

  The shuttle commander reached a decision. Sections one and three would attack along the north and south flanks as planned. Section two was to clear the preliminary positions on the centre, while section four moved into position for a final assault. The Abomination would be held in reserve.

  The shuttle commander issued its orders over the command net. Section four formed into an attack phalanx behind it and moved out.

  *

  The Doctor watched from the chemistry lab as the remaining Daleks in the playground filed out. As opponents, the Daleks were nothing if not predictable.

  He heard Gilmore come through the door behind him.

  ‘The imperial Daleks appear to have committed their entire force,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘Meaning?’ asked Gilmore.

  ‘There’s only a skeleton crew left on board.’

  ‘They’re very confident.’

  ‘Too confident,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s a Dalek weakness.’

  Gilmore turned to go.

  ‘Group Captain?’ called the Doctor.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thank you for co-operating.’

  Gilmore looked at the Doctor, his eyes were bleak.

  ‘Only a fool argues with his Doctor,’ he said.

  14

  SATURDAY, 16:05

  SECTION ONE ON the northern route engaged the enemy first. The renegade warriors were dug in at the end of a broad road flanked by residential housing.

  Scouts one and two had reported that the terrain on either side was impassable. The only possible tactic open to the imperial Daleks of section one was a frontal assault. They went in Cach-ya Beng, the six finger formation – three pairs, forward Dalek and back-up. The forward Daleks maintained a steady fire on the renegade warriors while each back-up Dalek strove to locate and eliminate the ECM pods hidden along the road.

  The exchange of fire was swift and vicious. In the first attack section one lost three Daleks, and the renegades suffered only superficial damage. The imperial Daleks retreated quickly laying down a covering pattern of blaster fire.

  Three columns of greasy black smoke boiled into the sky.

  But all the ECM pods had been destroyed.

  Both Dalek factions settled into inconclusive sniping fire along the length of the road. Battle updates flashed through the command-net to the shuttle commander.

  *

  The Doctor watched Ace. The young woman stood unmoving in the school foyer. Around her soldiers continued to clear up the mess left from the battle.

  A body was pulled from the rubble by the stairwell. A medic knelt by him and put his hand on the man’s throat. The medic looked up and shook his head. Stretcher bearers moved in to take the corpse. The Doctor wondered who the dead man had been, whether he was married, had children.

  The Doctor looked at Ace again. Her eyes were glazed, her lips parted slightly. He could see her chest fall and rise in rapid shallow breathing.

  She’s no good to me like this, decided the Doctor and started towards her.

  ‘Ace?’ he said. Her head turned slowly, a lost look in her eyes. ‘I don’t suppose you’re interested in a misguided attack on a Dalek shuttle.’ Ace merely stared at his face. ‘Suicidal, of course.’ There, a flicker of interest. ‘No, I’ll just have to do it myself.’

  The Doctor walked away, just slowly enough.

  ‘Oi!’ Ace was suddenly at his side. ‘Wait a minute.’

  The Doctor smiled, inside, where it wouldn’t show.

  Allison had never seen Rachel this angry.

  ‘Out of my way, Group Captain,’ she shouted, jabbing a finger at Gilmore’s chin. ‘Or I may do something unscientific to your face.’

  Gilmore retreated a step and banged into the foyer doors. ‘Professor Jensen, 1 cannot allow you to…’

  ‘Allow me to what?’ yelled Rachel, forcing Gilmore back through the double doors. ‘I’m sick of your regulations, rules and restrictions. If I want to put myself in danger, that’s my concern.’

  Allison could see Ace and the Doctor standing in the foyer, watching them. Ace was grinning. Allison caught her eye and gave an embarrassed shrug.

  Rachel saw the Doctor. She pushed past Gilmore and marched up to the Doctor. ‘We’re coming with you,’ she told him, ‘whatever this martinet says. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life wondering what was going on. I’m going to find out, even if it means following you into the jaws of hell itself.’

  ‘It’s very dangerous,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘So is ignorance,’ said Rachel.

  15

  SATURDAY, 16:11

  THE SOUTHERN ROUTE.

  Section three was pulling back in disarray. It had hit the renegade Daleks in one glorious charge. The renegades met them with a solid line of blaster fire. The first wave dissolved under its intensity, expanding globes of shattered polycarbide and soft Dalek flesh. The second wave of imperial Daleks had pressed on, blasters probing for the elusive enemy. Two renegades had been destroyed before the section had been forced to withdraw.

  Tactical updates flashed through the command-net. The imperial shuttle commander relayed the communiques through its uplink to the main computer on the mothership. The main computer chewed up the data in moments and tactical options flashed down to the shuttle commander.

  The shuttle commander ordered section four to form up behind the Abomination. In three minutes they would reach reserve positions behind section two.

  The attacks on the northern and southern routes had served their purpose. Renegade defence tactics had been challenged and the responses analysed. The attack on their central positions could start as soon as the reserves were in position.

  Sections one and two would continue to pin down the flanks.

  Section two, ordered the shuttle commander, prepare to attack.

  Rachel stared at the rope in her hands, forcing her mind back to the 1930s and Hawthorne’s voice. The mouse goes through the hole. Rachel tied the rope around the leg of the bench.

  The Doctor stood on the window sill with the other end of the rope. Allison and Ace stood watching as he tied an expert lasso.

  The mouse runs round the tree and nips back through the hole, Rachel could hear Hawthorne’s voice, almost smell the grass and the coal fires. ‘What happens next?’ asked the eight-year-old Rachel. Hawthorne laughed. Then the mouse comes out, and a bird gets it. Rachel pulled the rope tight and snapped back to the present day. The shattered chemistry lab, an alien spacecraft and the presence of evil.

  She checked the knot, it was secure. Thank God for the Girl Guides, thought Rachel and stood up. Gilmore was looking at her.

  ‘Why are we doing this?’ asked Allison.

  ‘Elementary piracy,’ said t
he Doctor. ‘Dalek shuttles have massive ground defences, sophisticated antiaircraft weapons, and an unguarded service hatch on the top.’ He looked at them and smiled. ‘Once I’m down, I’ll attempt to open the hatch. Ace, you come down after me, then Gilmore, followed by Rachel and Allison, any questions?’

  Yes, thought Rachel. Why am I doing this?

  ‘No,’ said the Doctor and threw the lasso.

  The lasso whistled out and slipped around one of the shuttle’s antennas.

  So what if I was aiming at the other antenna? thought the Doctor as he pulled the rope tight. This will do just as well. He hooked the handle of his umbrella over the rope and pushed off.

  The rope sang as he left the window and sped down towards the shuttle. The sky was blue; in the distance he could hear the sound of Daleks killing each other. He landed on the shuttle’s roof as silently as a cat.

  He found the service hatch. The locking mechanism was an eight digit code based on a prime number in the sigma series. It took him a couple of seconds to crack. There was a muffled thump as the interlocking electromagnetic fields disengaged. The hatch dropped inwards by three centimetres and slid open.

  The Doctor swung over and dropped into the dim interior.

  He landed on the deck and paused. He was in a short access corridor. Glow-plates mounted on the bulkhead cast a ruddy light over pipes and cables. There was the smell of carbon lubricant.

  Something scuttled away from his feet.

  The Doctor’s head jerked round to the direction of the noise. A little servo-robot climbed halfway up the sloping bulkhead and stoped, watching him with tiny red LED eyes. The Doctor scowled and the servo-robot vanished into a vent.

  The Doctor crept to the forward bulkhead door and stamped on the pressure pad on the deck. The door whispered open and the Doctor rushed onto the bridge.

  The shuttle pilot was instantly aware of him.

  ‘Hallo,’ said the Doctor.

  The shuttle pilot was locked into its control position. Its eyepiece twisted impotently to follow the Doctor as he advanced.

  ‘Emergency, emergency,’ screamed the Dalek. The Doctor jammed the point of his umbrella into the control console. A panel opened and flux circuits spilled out. The Doctor jabbed again and crystal shattered. The shuttle pilot was suddenly isolated from the command-net.