Engines of War

by George Mann

  ‘The anomaly?’ said Rassilon.

  ‘Precisely,’ replied the Doctor. ‘They’ve created a demat weapon. I saw them testing it on their human prisoners. It’s ready to be disseminated to their frontline forces.’

  ‘This is … troubling,’ said Rassilon.

  ‘It gets worse,’ continued the Doctor. ‘I managed to get inside one of their saucers and interrogate their databanks. They’re using the technology to build a planet killer. They intend to fire it at Gallifrey.’

  ‘To dematerialise an entire world,’ said Rassilon. ‘I admit it, Doctor – I’m impressed by their ingenuity.’

  ‘We need to act,’ urged the Doctor, ‘and soon. That precipice you mentioned – we’ve just moved uncomfortably close to the edge.’

  Rassilon seemed amused. ‘Karlax?’

  ‘Yes, my Lord?’

  ‘Arrange for an emergency session of the High Council. We shall meet in one hour. The Doctor and his assistant will present their findings.’ Rassilon glanced at the Doctor, and smiled.

  ‘Very good, sir,’ replied Karlax.

  Cinder couldn’t shake the feeling that the Doctor had just made himself the subject of a different sort of ambush.

  Karlax ushered them into the council chamber. The Doctor went first, hauling the Dalek cannon he’d retrieved from his TARDIS, and as Cinder followed after him, she stopped at the touch of a hand on her shoulder, pressing just a little too hard to be comfortable. She turned to see Karlax looming over her.

  ‘You wait with me, over here,’ he said, as he pushed her forcibly towards the corner of the room, just on the left inside the door. Reluctantly she relented, allowing him to guide her out of the way.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ she said, smartly, crossing her arms over her chest and putting as much distance between herself and the odious little man as possible. ‘Only important Time Lords are allowed a seat at the table.’

  Karlax scowled at her, but otherwise didn’t respond. She watched as proceedings began to unfold, mindful of what Karlax was up to beside her.

  Given that this was the meeting hall of the High Council of Gallifrey, it was far less ostentatious than she’d come to expect from her brief time in the Capitol: the walls were plain white, the floor laid in a smooth, cream marble, and the furnishings sparse.

  A large oval table filled most of the space. It was similar in size and shape to the one in the War Room, but with a gleaming surface of lacquered wood, inlaid with fine traceries of gold. It didn’t appear to have any embedded technology, but it was difficult to tell.

  Aside from this, the only other objects in the room were a large golden harp, a painting of a decrepit-looking Time Lord playing the harp, and a platform containing two spurs and a computer interface.

  Around the table, a number of Time Lords had already taken to their seats. Rassilon sat at the head, dressed in the full regalia of his office, and clutching a golden staff in his left hand. It was a thin metal pole, crested with an elaborately wrought finial. Cinder had no idea of its purpose, but she assumed it was ceremonial in origin.

  One of the chairs was empty, and Cinder noted the Time Lord sigil that had been carved into its high back in exceptional detail. She wondered if this denoted the rank of the person who should have been seated there.

  To Rassilon’s left sat a female Time Lord. She looked young, with a bob of dark hair framing a pretty, delicate face. She too was dressed in elaborate robes, this time in deep purple with platinum trim, with a wide, golden collar resting upon her shoulders.

  Opposite the woman was the Castellan – the head of the security service, whom Cinder had encountered briefly upon arrival in the Panopticon – and two other men, one of them older, with dark, puckered skin and close-cropped hair, the other younger but still turning to grey, with a neatly trimmed beard and darting blue-eyes. Both were wearing elbow-length gloves, their knuckles dusted with rings.

  It was all pomp and ceremony, Cinder realised. They seemed more concerned with their rituals than with hearing what the Doctor had to say. If the fate of the universe truly rested in the hands of these people, then she had grave doubts over whether there’d be anything left worth fighting over once the Daleks had made their move.

  It seemed that everyone who was supposed to be in attendance was there. Karlax pulled the door to and then returned to his place in the corner beside her. She watched him for a moment. His eyes were fixed on the President, taking in the man’s every move.

  Karlax must have sensed her looking, because he turned and offered her a sneer. ‘You are privileged,’ he whispered. ‘I know of no human who has ever been permitted to attend a session of the High Council.’

  Cinder shrugged. ‘Desperate circumstances call for desperate measures,’ she said.

  ‘Quite,’ said Karlax bitterly.

  Rassilon rose from his seat, striking his staff firmly upon the ground.

  Metal rang out against marble, and all eyes turned toward the President. ‘This session is hereby convened,’ he said. ‘The Doctor will address us now.’

  The Castellan smiled and leaned back in his chair. He watched the Doctor with an amused look in his eye. ‘I understand there’s a small matter you wish to bring to our attention, Doctor?’ he said. His tone was patronising, and Cinder felt indignant on behalf of the Doctor.

  The Doctor, of course, could look after himself. ‘Small, you say? Small?’ He glared at the Castellan. ‘The only small thing this room, Castellan, is your mind.’

  The Doctor slung the Dalek cannon upon the table, where it clattered loudly, causing the Time Lords to flinch as if it the Doctor had been uncouth enough to toss a dead animal onto the dinner table.

  The Doctor began pacing on the spot, his hands folded behind his back. Cinder could see that he was brimming with simmering rage. ‘It’s time to wake up!’ he said. ‘We’re at war, and by all accounts we’re losing on every front. We’re outnumbered and outclassed, and we’re burying our heads in the sand, refusing to acknowledge what’s clearly evident to the rest of the universe. While we’re gazing at our navels, the Daleks have established a presence in the Tantalus Spiral and are building their forces there.’

  The Cardinal with the beard gave an exasperated shrug. ‘We should send out a flotilla to deal with it, then.’

  The Doctor slammed his fists upon the table, leaning forward to tower over the man. He stuck out his chin, pushing his face close to that of the other man. ‘We’ve tried that already, Grayvas,’ he said. ‘We’ve left it too late. There are too many of them and we’re spread thinly enough as it is. I watched as Preda’s entire fleet burned up, the Battle TARDISes blooming under the fire of a hundred or more Dalek stealth ships. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. They’ve been incumbent on a dozen planets for years now, shaping their plans, building their fleets.’

  ‘We’ve seen this before,’ said the Castellan, his tone dismissive. ‘The Daleks are building armies everywhere we look. It’s just the same. They seed their infernal progenitors throughout history and harvest biological matter from the local populace to create new mutants. This is nothing new, Doctor. The War grinds on.’

  ‘Oh, but it is, Castellan.’ The Doctor used the honorific like a curse. ‘They are mining the temporal radiation that seeps from the Tantalus Eye, using it to create dematerialisation guns such as this.’ He pointed to the weapon on the table. ‘This is taken from one of their new paradigms. I’ve seen what it does, watched as it rewrote time and totally eradicated four human beings from history.’

  Rassilon leaned forward, peering at the weapon. The Castellan reached out his gloved hand as if to touch it, and then withdrew, changing his mind. His expression was gaunt.

  ‘That’s right,’ said the Doctor. ‘You remember what a demat gun can do to a Time Lord. No chance of regeneration – just simple oblivion. We locked ours away, burying them in a vault because of the horrors they were capable of inflicting upon others.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Now the Daleks have them, and t
hey’re putting their new paradigms into production as we speak.’

  Grayvas cleared his throat. ‘This Temporal Weapon Dalek, Doctor – you’ve seen it more than once?’ he said.

  The Doctor nodded. ‘It’s viable. I destroyed one of their hatcheries on Moldox, but there’ll be hundreds more, thousands even. The Tantalus Spiral has become a breeding ground. If we don’t stop them soon they’ll begin seeding them through time, to all of the different epochs in which we’re fighting, and others in which we are not. The genie will be out of the bottle, and we’ll never be able to put it back in.’

  Rassilon sat back, looking thoughtful. He rapped his gauntleted fingers upon the table, rat-ta-tat-tat, rat-ta-tat-tat. ‘Tell them the rest of it, Doctor. Tell them of the real threat.’

  ‘This is only the beginning,’ said the Doctor. ‘I gained access to their computer systems while I was onboard one of their saucers. They’re building a planet killer. They’re using the same technology to turn the Tantalus Eye into a massive energy weapon. A temporal weapon.’ He paused for breath. ‘They’re planning to erase Gallifrey from history, from every single permutation of reality. The Time Lords will cease to exist, history will be rewritten as if they never existed, and the universe will fall to the Daleks.’ The Doctor stood back from the table, glowering at Rassilon. ‘We have to act now.’

  Rassilon frowned. ‘If you’re wrong, Doctor, and we show our hand, we might leave ourselves utterly exposed to the Daleks. As you so ably put it, our forces are already spread too thin. If we commit to an offensive in the Tantalus Spiral we risk allowing the Daleks an opportunity to establish a beachhead elsewhere.’

  ‘I’m not wrong,’ said the Doctor. His tone was forceful. ‘Here’s the evidence, right before your eyes.’ He gave the Dalek cannon a shove, so that it slid across the table toward Rassilon. ‘Have the technicians examine it if you doubt me.’

  Rassilon smirked. ‘Then what is to be done? Tell us, Doctor. What do you suggest?’

  The Doctor sighed, his shoulders slumping. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘They appear to have a command station at the heart of the Spiral, just above the Eye. I’d guess that would also be the location of the weapon. The problem is getting to it. There’s an armada of saucers stationed there, let alone countless stealth ships, hiding in the void. It would take everything we’ve got.’

  ‘Impossible,’ said the female Time Lord. ‘We simply don’t have the resources.’

  ‘There is a way,’ said the Castellan, his tone grave. ‘There’s a weapon in the Omega Arsenal.’

  The other cardinal, who until this point had remained silent, turned to the Castellan. ‘You can’t seriously be referring to the Moment? Surely it’s not yet come to that?’

  ‘No,’ said the Castellan, firmly. ‘Not that. The Tear of Isha.’

  The Doctor frowned. ‘But the Tear’s designed to collapse black holes,’ he said. ‘It’s a tool for stellar engineering. How would you … Oh.’ He stopped, his mind catching up with his mouth. ‘Yes, I see …’

  ‘I see you understand, Doctor,’ said the Castellan. ‘If we were to deploy the Tear into the heart of the anomaly, we could close the Eye. It would allow us to re-engineer the fold in space-time and neutralise the source of the Daleks’ temporal power for ever.’

  ‘You can’t do it,’ said the Doctor. ‘Billions of lives would be forfeit. There’re a dozen inhabited worlds in the Spiral, colonies that have been established there for centuries. The Tear would cause the Eye to implode, and the ensuing storm would ravage the planets, ageing them to dust. I can’t allow it.’

  ‘You can’t allow it?’ said Rassilon. ‘Really, Doctor, I think you have an inflated sense of your importance. Who are you to say what we can and cannot do?’

  ‘Rassilon, you’d be condoning genocide on a massive scale,’ countered the Doctor. ‘The stakes are far too high. There must be another way.’

  ‘Then tell us, Doctor. Enlighten us. What other way do you see?’ Rassilon rose to his feet, closing his gauntleted fist. ‘You come to us with word of impending doom, and yet you expect us to sit back and refuse to act because of your petty fondness for a handful of human beings?’

  Cinder couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘A handful?’ she said, strutting forward. She’d had enough of listening to all this casual talk of genocide. ‘That’s my home you’re talking about. Billions of lives. There are more people on those worlds than the sum total on Gallifrey. They are not pawns in your game, to be sacrificed at will.’

  Rassilon glared at the Doctor. ‘Kindly silence your assistant, Doctor. She has no voice in this room.’

  Cinder felt Karlax’s grip on her shoulder once again, and this time he squeezed until it was painful.

  The Doctor glanced at her, and she could see the frustration in the set of his jaw. Clearly he wanted to grab Rassilon by the shoulders and shake him until he listened.

  ‘Please, Lord President,’ he said, with an effort that must have been clear to everyone in the room. He was holding back a tirade. ‘If you give it time, give it proper consideration, there will be other ways. We just cannot see them yet.’

  Rassilon waved his arm at the assembled Time Lords. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘All of you. This session is at an end. I will make my decision and you shall be informed.’ He looked up, fixing the Doctor with a menacing stare. ‘Doctor, you may wait in the observation lounge. I will speak with you shortly.’

  ‘Very well,’ said the Doctor. The other councillors stood and filed out of the room, each of them refusing to meet Cinder’s gaze. Whether this was down to their sheer arrogance, or their inability to face a human being after their complicity in what would amount to the genocide of her people, she did not know. Neither did she particularly care. She wanted them to squirm.

  Karlax left her side to go and speak with the President, and she rushed over to the Doctor, who was leaning heavily on the table, his brow creased. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Come and show me this observation lounge.’

  The Doctor looked round and she smiled at him hopefully. She knew she needed to get him out of the room. There was still time. He would find a way. The look on his face now, however, suggested that if she left him here with Rassilon and Karlax, things were not going to end well. Besides, she didn’t think she could bear to look at them any longer, either.

  The Doctor straightened up, collecting the Dalek cannon from the table. ‘This way,’ he said, storming abruptly from the room.

  Chapter Eleven

  From the observation panel in the antechamber they had a view right across the Capitol. Cinder stood before it, shoulder-to-shoulder with the Doctor, both of them lapsing into awed silence. She couldn’t help but marvel at the sea of bristling spires, the orb-like crystal domes, the oddly angular complexes of buildings and transport platforms. This was the urban sprawl of an ancient, god-like race; this was the pinnacle of Time Lord civilisation. It was beautiful and terrifying in equal measure, a far cry from the blighted wilderness of Moldox.

  ‘I haven’t looked out upon Gallifrey like this for too long,’ said the Doctor, after a while. ‘It reminds me what I love about the place, and what I hate about it, too.’

  ‘It reminds you what you’re fighting for?’ said Cinder.

  The Doctor laughed. ‘Yes, I rather suppose it does.’

  With the Time Lords, Cinder shared a common enemy in the Daleks, and peering out across the expanse of this, their premier city, she felt a sort of bitter empathy with them. This was what they were trying to protect: their home. It was only natural that, backed into a corner, they would lash out and do anything in their power to defend it.

  Many of her people claimed the Time Lords were nothing but self-deluding fools, an ancient people who had taken it upon themselves to attempt to police the universe, to meddle in the evolution and development of other races. They argued that the Time Lords’ power had gone to their heads and corrupted them, and that they had started the war with the Daleks in the first instance, all those man
y centuries ago. Perhaps worse was the thought that it was their interference, or even the sheer fact of their very existence, that had driven the Daleks to evolve into the heartless killing machines they were today.

  Cinder didn’t know if any of this was true. It didn’t alter the fact, however, that when faced with the same problem as the Time Lords – a marauding army of Daleks threatening to obliterate her people from history – she had behaved in exactly the same way. She had fought with every ounce of her being, deploying every available weapon in her arsenal. That, she could understand.

  Nevertheless, she couldn’t forget the things she had seen during this long and dreadful conflict: the sheer arrogance of the Time Lords, their disregard for human life, and the horrifying inventiveness of their weapons. Empathy was one thing; trust was quite another.

  Nor could she simply ignore the fact that, if the Time Lords had their way, her people might still face extinction, only this time at the hands on an entirely different enemy.

  It was approaching dusk and, as Cinder watched, tiny lights began to wink in the sky around the habitation domes. At first there were only a handful, but as she watched they seemed to multiply, until there were scores of them, hundreds even, drifting slowly into the sky from the city below. They looked like fireflies, buzzing about chaotically on the breeze.

  ‘What are they?’ said Cinder. ‘Paper lanterns?’

  The Doctor shook his head. ‘No, although the principle is the same. Those are memory lanterns.’

  ‘Memory lanterns?’ echoed Cinder.

  The Doctor glanced at her. ‘They all think they’re going to die,’ he said. ‘All of those people down there think the Daleks are coming for them, and that they’re going to be exterminated.’ He sighed, and the weariness in his expression spoke volumes. Perhaps he thought they were right. ‘So they’re recording all of their thoughts and memories into those lanterns, and scattering them through time and space. It’s the last act of a desperate people. They’re terrified that they’re going to be forgotten, so they’re seeding themselves into all the distant corners of the universe to be remembered.’