One thing about the Professor, thought Ace, is that he always has a getaway route handy.
There was a growl behind them.
Most of the time, she appended.
The Alsation growled again as they turned. Its lips were pulled back from its teeth, and a tiny strand of saliva trailed from its muzzle. Brown eyes stared at the Doctor. It snarled again. Ace could see its back legs tensing, hindquarters dipping in readiness to spring.
‘Shush,’ said the Doctor.
The Alsation’s eyes grew puzzled. The tension left its body and its head drooped guiltily while its tail wagged in low, hopeful arcs.
Don’t worry about it, dog, thought Ace, he has the same effect on me.
The Alsation trotted over to the Doctor’s feet and rolled over on its back. ‘Good dog,’ said the Doctor, and bent over to rub its stomach.
The Dalek Supreme overrode the battle computer and instigated the equipment destruct program. The link with the girl was down, so the Dalek Supreme was able to think clearly for the moment. Energy reserves were dangerously depleted; combat would be unrealistic. As the last remaining Dalek of the renegade task-force it was imperative that it return home to report.
The Dalek Supreme triggered the destruct sequence and left the office. Behind it the battle computer burst into flames.
Mike stood completely still. The second floor of the warehouse was dark – he could just make out rows of shelves. He knew the creepy girl was in there with him because he had heard her light footsteps come through the doorway behind him. Now he listened in the darkness, waiting for her to make her move. His palm was slick on the handle of the pistol.
Mike smelled smoke. Now what? he thought.
He heard them – a patter footsteps over by the internal stairwell. If he could make it to the fire escape, if no Daleks were left in the yard and if the girl didn’t catch him, he might get away.
And after that?
Mike figured he would worry about that later.
‘The imperial Daleks have got the Hand of Omega,’ said the Doctor. ‘Good.’
Ace idly scratched the Alsatian’s head. ‘Why are you so keen that the Daleks should get it anyway?’
‘Quiet, Ace,’ said the Doctor. He opened the gate.
Ace left the dog and joined the Doctor.
A figure slipped out of the yard and started to trot up the road.
‘It’s Mike,’ said Ace.
‘He’s got the time controller,’ said the Doctor. ‘Typical human, you can always count on them to mess things up.’
Thanks a lot, thought Ace.
‘Ace, get after him, see where he’s going and stay with him.’
‘Right,’ said Ace. She took off, but was momentarily restrained by the Doctor.
‘And no heroics,’ he said. ‘I have enough problems already.’
‘Trust me,’ said Ace.
The Doctor watched Ace run up the street. Then he turned to look across at Ratcliffe’s yard. The smoke had cleared now and the Doctor could see a body lying sprawled on the fire escape. It was George Ratcliffe – another death in a chain of blood that stretched from the future to the past.
I shall be well rid of the Daleks, thought the Doctor.
Something warm was butting him in the back of the knee. It was the Alsatian, snuffling for the Doctor’s affection. He stroked the dog’s head. ‘I wonder who you remind me of.’ The Doctor straightened, sighed and started back towards the van.
He had work to do.
19
SATURDAY, 16:45
THE SPECIAL WEAPONS Dalek returned to the shuttle in triumph. Behind it floated the Hand of Omega. After the death of the shuttle commander the Abomination had assumed command. Pride filled the mutant as it boarded, the Emperor’s benediction was a clear undercurrent within the encrypted command-net.
The Omega device was placed in the prepared storage module at the rear of the shuttle. The dead pilot was replaced by a warrior from section four. Even now the chosen Dalek’s mind was filled with the relevant database, downloaded from the shuttle’s computer.
The shuttle started to vibrate as the engines warmed up. The last of the Daleks filed aboard and started lockdown procedures. There were many empty spaces.
‘What are you going to do when all this is over?’ asked Allison.
Rachel thought for a moment. ‘Retire to Cambridge and write my memoirs.’
‘Professor?’ Gilmore appeared at the top of the cellar stairs.
‘Subject to security vetting of course,’ said Rachel.
Gilmore came half-way down the stairs and called down to the two women. ‘The shuttle appears to be leaving.’
Allison leapt to her feet. ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish.’
She’s as bad as Ace, thought Rachel. Was I like that when I was young? Did I just walk away from horror like that?
Suddenly she remembered a beach in August 1940 where the sun was going down in smoke. She could clearly see the stark angular shape of the radar towers against the sky. The sea was like a sheet of silver. She held him close, just to prove that they were both still alive. Yes we did – we spat death in the eye when we fought our war, she decided.
The four thrusters at the base of the shuttle roared. The concrete of the playground became white hot and burst into flame. The shuttle lifted on four pillars of smoke and fire, fighting to be free of the world. It rose slowly at first, then gathering speed it leaped for the sky.
The Doctor stood by the TARDIS and watched the shuttle accelerate into the upper atmosphere. He raised his hat as it departed.
Enjoy this moment, monsters, thought the Doctor. Enjoy the brief moment of flight as you soar high above this pathetic little world. Except, of course, you can’t. You eradicated such worthless little pleasures centuries ago. The Doctor held on to that thought. It would make what he had to do easier.
Ace heard the rumble and looked up. A shadow passed over her face. The shuttle shot away high over the houses, the noise of its engines dopplered into the distance. Ace stopped and watched it vanish.
‘Wicked,’ she breathed.
Ace looked around to get her bearings. She was pretty certain that Mike was heading east, out of the evacuation zone, but where?
She jammed her hands into her coat pockets. Inside her left pocket she felt something small and metallic. Her thumb ran down a serrated edge. It was a door key. She took it out and looked at it. Then, putting her hands back in her pockets, Ace set off deeper into Shoreditch.
The girl was skipping. The road slipped away under her feet. The houses drifted past like smoke. The girl tracked the female target as she turned a corner. Probability assessment indicated that the female target would lead the girl to the male target. They were both marked for extermination.
A star burned deep in the heart of the Eret-mensaiki Ska, contained in a bottle of gravito-magnetic force. The interface stripped raw power from the plasma core and transformed it into electricity: one hundred and twenty-three million watts, usable, clean and versatile. Power to control; power to command.
Cables spread from the reactor to the thrusters and stardrive that gave the ship motion; to the life support plants that gave it life; to the sensors that gave it eyes; and to the batteries of weapons that gave the Eret-mensaiki Ska its teeth. Beside the cables ran a network of extruded glass. Through this network flashed digital instructions carried on the back of laser beams. The glass fibre nerves ran from every extremity, bunching at ganglia, thickening as they wound through the ship towards the hub. There they terminated at the centre of all commands – the bridge. And at the centre of the bridge was the Emperor – a white spider hanging in a silver web.
The Emperor oversaw the flight of the shuttle. Inside the bloated, round casing, data flickered through neural implants. If the Emperor had wished it, control of that flight could have been his if he willed it so.
Shuttle switching to docking mode, reported Tac-op.
On board the shuttle was the prize, the seminal device of t
he ancient Time Lords – the Hand of Omega. What do you think of that, Doctor? thought the Emperor. I know that you are down there, on that pathetic little world. What desperate plan can your devious mind devise now?
Vast doors in the belly of the mothership opened. With precise spurts of power the shuttle rose into the docking bay. The engines began to wind down. Multi-armed robots converged on its skin. A disembarkation corridor mated with the forward airlock.
Silent in the vacuum, the vast doors closed behind it.
20
SATURDAY, 17:15
‘WELL, DOCTOR,’ SAID Gilmore, ‘are we out of the woods yet?’
Rachel stepped aside to allow the Doctor past. He checked the connections that ran from the transmat to the television.
‘Providing everything goes according to my plan,’ said the Doctor.
Allison shuffled closer to watch the Doctor work. He ran his fingers over the camera on top of the television, then down the cable to the transmat. ‘I don’t suppose you could let us know what your plan is?’ she asked.
‘It’s a surprise,’ said the Doctor.
‘Oh good,’ said Rachel. ‘I love surprises.’
The Doctor pulled a pair of tweezers from his coat and picked out a cable from the cabinet. He checked the end of the cable and frowned. He kicked the cabinet and looked at the cable, then at the cabinet. The Doctor lashed out with his foot: the transmat shook and a point of light appeared at the end of the cabinet. The Doctor straightened up, removed his hat and with a nervous little movement ran his fingers through his hair.
Rachel suddenly felt herself grow tense.
The Doctor replaced his hat and turned to face them. ‘How do I look?’ he asked. ‘No, don’t answer that.’
He turned back to the television and switched it on. As the set warmed up static filled the screen. The Doctor coughed once and brought the cable in the tweezers to his mouth.
‘Calling Dalek mothership,’ he said, ‘come in, please.’
Rachel felt a hand touch her forearm.
The Doctor banged the top of the television. ‘Dalek mothership, come in please.’ The static slowly cleared.
The hand slipped into Rachel’s – the skin was rough and warm. It was a man’s hand. Group Captain Gilmore was standing close behind her; his uniform brushed her shoulder.
An image began to form on the screen. The cellar seemed to grow darker.
The image was blurred, showing ghosted objects. In the centre was a Dalek with a bloated dome. There was an impression of space around it and of purposeful activity. Gilmore’s hand tightened on Rachel’s.
‘Ah,’ said the Doctor, ‘there you are.’
Rachel looked away from the screen and at the Doctor. Flickering light played across his face. His eyes were hard and bright. He seemed suddenly larger.
‘This is the Doctor,’ he said. ‘President of the High Council of Time Lords, keeper of the legacy of Rassilon, defender of the Laws of Time and Protector of Gallifrey. I call upon you to surrender the Hand of Omega and return to your customary time and place.’
The misshaped Dalek on the screen shifted slightly. ‘Ah Doctor,’ it said. ‘You have changed again, your appearance is as inconstant as your intelligence. You have confounded me for the last time.’
The bloated dome cracked open and slid back. Inside the Dalek shell was a creature whose head was cradled by metal braces from which wires trailed down into the hidden body of the Dalek shell. A face that had once been humanoid, but no longer. Its eyes were hollow scars, the skin of its cheeks was withered and cracked. Only its mouth moved, the lips twisting obscenely.
‘Davros,’ said the Doctor, ‘I should have known.’
The Doctor’s hated face filled the main viewing screen. Davros had always known that in the end it would come to this – a final confrontation between the Doctor and himself. Davros remembered all the times he had faced this meddling Time Lord, each defeat squirrelled away – every humiliation – to be brought out to make his victory sweeter.
Davros could feel the preparations falling into place.
Omega device locked in and running, reported the systems co-ordinator.
‘I warn you, Davros,’ said the Doctor, ‘the Hand of Omega is not to be trifled with.’
Omega device prepared and standing by. All control systems are optimal. Time-space co-ordinates set in.
‘I think I am quite capable of handling the technology, Doctor,’ said Davros.
‘I sincerely doubt that,’ said the Doctor.
‘Does it worry you, Doctor,’ said Davros, ‘that with it I can transform Skaro’s sun into a source of unimaginable power?’
It worries me, thought Rachel, and I don’t even know what he is talking about. She looked at the Doctor, but his face showed nothing.
‘With that power at our disposal the Daleks will sweep away Gallifrey and its impotent quorum of Time Lords.’ Davros’s voice rose, a tinny shrieking from the television’s speaker. ‘The Daleks shall seize control of time itself, we shall become…’
‘All powerful,’ screamed the Doctor. Rachel flinched back, clinging on to Gilmore’s hand to keep herself upright.
‘Crush the lesser races, conquer the galaxy,’ shouted the Doctor. ‘Unimaginable power, unlimited rice-pudding and so on and so on.’
‘Do not anger me, Doctor,’ hissed Davros. ‘I can destroy you and this miserable insignificant planet.’
‘Wonderful,’ said the Doctor. ‘What power, what brilliance. You could wipe out the odd civilization, enslave the occasional culture.’
Rachel watched Davros thrashing with anger in his casing. She remembered the vast spaceship that hung above their heads – ‘That ship, Group Captain, has weapons that could crack this planet like an egg.’
‘But it won’t detract from the fundamental truth of your own impotence,’ said the Doctor. Davros’s mouth hung open, uttering nothing but a gurgling sound. Rachel was suddenly very scared.
‘Careful, Doctor,’ she said.
The Doctor covered the microphone and turned to her. ‘Trust me,’ he said, ‘I know what I’m doing.’
*
Davros rocked within his shell. He could feel his anger being smothered by the tranquillizers that were pumped in by his life support system. He knew he had defeated the Doctor, but it wasn’t enough. The Doctor must be shown.
‘I will teach you the folly of your words,’ said Davros. ‘I shall demonstrate the power of the Daleks.’
‘Davros,’ said the Doctor, ‘I beg of you, do not use the Hand of Omega.’
‘Now you begin to fear.’
‘You’re making a grave mistake,’ said the Doctor.
Activate the Omega device.
‘Now the Daleks will be the Lords of Time,’ said Davros.
The Omega device felt the go-signal.
With a burst of power it howled out of the mothership and soared into space. Around it the space-time continuum blazed with shifting planes of force. Within moments the Hand of Omega had accelerated to near light speed – within minutes it had passed the orbit of Jupiter. There in transjovian space it found a nexus, a place where the fabric of space and time was malleable.
Gathering its strength the Hand of Omega lunged down and punched a hole in reality.
21
SKARO
IT WAS DAWN on the Vekis Nar-Kangji, the Plain of Swords – a wasteland of dust and bones bisected by a range of mountains. Here, twenty millennia ago, the final conflict between the Thals and Kaleds had ended.
Here in the ash-brown foothills of the mountains was the Dalek city, Mensvat Esc-Dalek. Light from the rising sun glanced off metal spires two thousand metres above the plain. Robot cargo-carriers took off and landed from hundreds of platforms, carving cybernetic flight patterns in the air and filling it with their ceaseless buzzing. The city’s roots burrowed into the feet of the mountains.
The sun climbed off the horizon. Red light spilled across the plain. Yellow and black beetles scutt
led into their nests. High in the stratosphere, streamers of cloud formed.
For a fragment of non-time, time was irrelevant and distance was a delusion. On the fringes of the Skarosian system the Hand of Omega became part of the normal universe.
In the mind of the device, only the star was significant. A great globe of hydrogen atoms moving at vast speeds – a dream where gravitational force fought with the star’s impulse to expand into vacuum.
The device gloried in the mass of the star, its intensity and the frenzy of its interior. Like a dolphin, the device swam towards the core – the old cold core of iron and nickel that spun forever.
The device spread wings of force around the core and stopped for a heartbeat. In that heartbeat it doubled the gravitational flux. The Hand of Omega clenched the heart of the star in a fist of pure energy. The star began to collapse inwards, the fusion of hydrogen accelerated, and the pressure increased. The core began to degenerate: atoms were stripped of their electrons and forced together. The star became smaller, hotter and brighter.
Then the Hand of Omega let go.
The star died.
Under the Plain of Swords the beetles stirred in their nests. In the sky above, the sun changed. One thousand million Daleks stopped. The rock leopards in the mountains howled in terror. The sky turned white hot. One thousand million Daleks cried out in defiance.
Then the seas boiled, the metal cities of the Daleks ran like wax, and the atmosphere was blown away into space.
Skaro died.
The star convulsed and wrenched itself apart. Its outer crust blasted into an expanding globe of fire. The planets it had given life were vapourized one by one as the star bloated and ate its children.
Through it all passed the Hand of Omega, screaming its mirth. Then it shot back into the place that is no place on its way back to the past.
No, this cannot be correct, thought Davros, but the data was impossible to deny – the supernova and the cessation of signals from Skaro. And all the time the Doctor looked down from the main screen.
Omega device returning, impact minus twelve.
‘You tricked me,’ said Davros.
Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks Page 14
