Engines of War

by George Mann

  His data screen bleeped. More reports were coming in by the second, and they all needed to be read and summarised for the Lord President. The trouble was, Karlax simply couldn’t keep up, not whilst he had other duties to consider. Still, he supposed, they weren’t going to read themselves. He pressed the icon for another report, but as he leaned back in his chair the shrill cry of an alarm sounded overhead. His shoulders sagged. What was it now?

  Karlax looked up at the sound of the door sliding open, only just audible over the din of the alarm. A soldier of the Chancellery Guard came running into his chambers. He stopped before Karlax’s desk, catching his breath.

  ‘Well? What is it?’ Karlax snapped at the guard. ‘What’s this infernal racket about?’

  ‘It’s a level nine emergency, sir,’ said the guard, still a little breathless. He sounded worried.

  ‘Level nine?’ queried Karlax. He could never quite remember what they all meant.

  ‘An unauthorised time capsule is attempting to materialise in the Panopticon,’ said the guard.

  ‘What?’ said Karlax. The timbre of his voice altered dramatically as the man’s words registered. The Panopticon. ‘How have they managed to bypass the sky trenches and the transduction barriers?’

  The guard looked at him, blank faced. ‘I’ve no idea, sir. It’s … it should be … well, it’s impossible.’

  ‘Clearly not,’ said Karlax, sarcastically. He stood, tossing aside his data screen. ‘Send for the Castellan. Tell him to gather his troops immediately. If this intruder manages to gain entry, only Omega himself knows what might happen.’

  ‘He’s already attending to it, sir,’ said the guard. ‘It was the Castellan who sent me to inform you.’

  ‘Good,’ muttered Karlax.

  The guard looked at him expectantly.

  ‘Yes?’ said Karlax, ‘is there more?’

  ‘The Castellan requested your presence, sir,’ said the guard, clearly uncomfortable to be the one delivering the message.

  Karlax sighed. ‘Very well.’

  He followed the guard from the room and along the passageway. The man seemed to want to walk at a hurried pace, even a jog, but Karlax was having none of that. He wasn’t very much interested in being summoned by the Castellan.

  They passed along a wide corridor, which terminated in a massive door. It opened automatically as they approached, sliding up into the roof. The view beyond was immense, breathtaking – the eye of the Capitol, the citadel that was the beating heart of Time Lord civilisation. Its flared base rose high above their heads, narrowing as it reached up to scrape the clouds, clustered with the spines of towers and communication arrays. The shimmering energy of the dome was just visible from below, curving across the sky and tinting the light a faint orange.

  Karlax and the guard marched across the large, rail-less gantry, which led from the Cardinals’ habitation complex, across a moat-like chasm, to the entrance of the citadel. Ahead of them, he could see other uniformed soldiers gathering. It seemed the Castellan was taking no chances.

  So, could this be it. Had war finally come to the Capitol? Had the Daleks at last managed to discover a way in, a means of breaching their security? It seemed unlikely, and yet – who else would make such a brazen attempt to barge their way in? Who would be insane enough to even try?

  He decided that perhaps the guard was right, after all, and picked up the pace, hurrying past the milling guardsmen while barking at them to get out of his way.

  Everyone was converging on the Panopticon – the vast chamber that served as the Time Lords’ parliament and seat of State. It was pandemonium.

  ‘Move!’ bellowed the guard who’d been escorting him. ‘Allow the Cardinal through.’ Karlax regarded the man with a little more respect. The crowd of onlookers – some guards, others simple underlings who were eager to discover what was going on – parted to allow him to pass.

  Smoothing his robes, he strode on down the central aisle and into the Panopticon proper. The Castellan was in the process of clearing a space in the centre of the room, surrounded by a score of guards all armed with energy weapons. He caught sight of Karlax walking toward him.

  ‘Have you sent word to the Lord President?’ he said, by way of greeting.

  ‘And a good morning to you, too,’ said Karlax.

  ‘Damn it, Karlax. This is serious. Has the Lord President been informed?’ The Castellan’s face was reddening.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Karlax. ‘Not until I actually have something to tell him. What’s going on here? The guard said something about a level nine emergency, about an unauthorised time capsule attempting to materialise here, in the Panopticon. I know that can’t be right. I know you’re too good at your job to allow something like that to happen.’

  Karlax smiled inwardly. Good to establish now whose fault it would be if the enemy did manage to breach the Citadel’s security. Karlax always found it useful to apportion blame early on in the process, particularly if doing so meant that he could prove that none of it rested upon his own shoulders.

  The Castellan looked exasperated. ‘We’ve tried to jam it, but it’s passed through all of our defences, one by one. Whoever, or whatever it is seems to know all of our protocols. The Lord President needs to know because he needs to evacuate. He needs to leave the Capitol now in case the enemy are deploying a weapon.’

  Karlax regarded the Castellan. This wasn’t just hyperbole. The man was seriously worried. ‘Very well,’ he said. He beckoned to one of the guards. ‘You. Do you know where the Lord President’s chambers are?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the guard, wide-eyed. Evidently the idea of visiting them terrified him more than the possibility of an unknown enemy appearing in the immediate vicinity.

  ‘Good. Then I need you to go th—’ Karlax stopped mid-sentence as a deep, grating whine filled the air around them. The hubbub of the chattering crowd immediately died to a whisper.

  ‘Too late,’ said the Castellan, redundantly. ‘They’re here.’

  Karlax turned to watch as the outline of the incoming vessel began to solidify in the air just to the left of where he was standing. The guards encircling the space raised their weapons, readying themselves to fire. A dreadful suspicion stirred in the back of Karlax’s mind. He recognised that sound …

  The noise grew to a bass, elephantine roar, and then, with a final wheeze, the vessel slid into existence, bypassing all the Time Lords’ security measures to shift out of the Time Vortex and into the Panopticon.

  For a moment, everyone in the room stood in silence, as if scared to so much as exhale. The ship was a tall, battered blue box with the words ‘POLICE BOX’ written on it in bold white letters.

  ‘Oh,’ said Karlax, with a disgusted shake of his head. ‘It’s him.’

  ‘We’re here,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘Here being Gallifrey?’ asked Cinder.

  The idea of visiting the Time Lords’ home world filled her with both inquisitive excitement and abject fear. She couldn’t imagine they were going to prove particularly welcoming to a human refugee. She wasn’t even sure they were going to welcome the Doctor with open arms, judging by the way he talked about them.

  Still, at least it wasn’t Moldox. In for a penny and all that …

  The Doctor grinned. ‘Yes, Gallifrey,’ he said. ‘Although I think I might have given them something of a shock.’ He stooped and picked up the Dalek cannon he’d left propped against a chair during their short flight. If, indeed, it could be called a flight. Cinder wasn’t entirely sure.

  ‘Come along,’ he said. ‘You’d better stick with me.’ He strode purposefully toward the door.

  Cinder glanced at her discarded Dalek weapon, propped against the metal railing, and considered for a moment whether she should take it or not. She decided against it. She didn’t know how trigger-happy the Time Lords might be, and she didn’t want to give them any opportunity to show her.

  With a shrug, she followed the Doctor as he hurried out of the TARDIS
.

  She stepped out into the light of the Panopticon, and immediately raised her hands. A sea of guards surrounded them, all dressed in matching red and white uniforms and brandishing weapons that didn’t look as if they were designed to incapacitate or stun.

  ‘Quite the welcoming committee,’ she said, edging closer to the Doctor. ‘I can see you’re very popular with your friends.’

  The Doctor didn’t seem to be paying any attention – to her, or to the guards. ‘Karlax,’ he growled, eyeing one of the crowd, a figure dressed in the flamboyant traditional garb of the Time Lords – a skull cap, robes and exuberant pink-purple collar. He looked utterly outlandish. ‘Where’s Rassilon?’

  ‘Doctor, you cannot keep on just turning up like this. There are protocols,’ replied the man, whom Cinder took to be Karlax.

  ‘Even now you worry about protocols,’ said the Doctor, with a dismissive tone. ‘No wonder we’re losing the damn war.’

  Karlax scowled, ignoring the barbed comment. ‘You could use the front door like everybody else,’ he said.

  ‘I was trying to get your attention,’ said the Doctor. ‘Even you have to admit, Karlax,’ he glanced around at the assembled mass of guards, who were still brandishing their weapons, ‘it worked.’

  Karlax smiled, a thin, calculating smile. ‘I’ll give you that, Doctor. You’ve certainly got our attention.’

  The man standing beside Karlax, dressed in similar robes and skull cap, only orange and red and without a collar, gestured to the guards to lower their guns. There was a palpable sense of relief in the room. Cinder dropped her arms, feeling a little ridiculous.

  ‘Now, tell me,’ said the Doctor, ‘where’s Rassilon?’

  ‘The Lord President is currently engaged in important matters of State,’ said Karlax, pompously.

  ‘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, be
ckoning 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.’