Prisoner of the Daleks

by Trevor Baxendale

  'AND THAT IS WHY WE WILL SUCCEED,' said the Dalek. 'WE UNDERSTAND PAIN. HUMANS DO NOT.'

  The Doctor wondered if the Dalek was speaking from experience. And when he considered the metal and plastic wires connecting the creature to its cramped life-support machine where, up until today, it had spent its entire waking life, he realised that it probably was.

  The Dalek had not yet finished its rant. 'BUT THE HUMAN RACE WILL BE DEFEATED. ALL HUMANS WILL CEASE TO EXIST. THE DALEKS WILL ERADICATE THEM FROM THE UNIVERSE!'

  'Never.'

  'THE DALEKS WILL TRIUMPH! THERE IS NOTHING THAT CAN STOP US FROM CHANGING THE PATH OF HISTORY – NOT EVEN YOU, DOC–TOR!'

  'You're delirious,' said the Doctor scornfully.

  'THE DALEKS WILL CONQUER AND DESTROY,' grated the creature, seeming to regain some of its energy in its dying moments. 'We will eliminate all human life from its very beginnings! WE WILL CONQUER TIME AND SPACE! THE FUTURE WILL BELONG TO THE DALEKS!'

  The Doctor leant closer, suddenly angry. 'Oh yeah? Well, get this: I've seen the future. You lot are going to end up so hungry and mad for power that you bite off more than you can chew. And the whole conquest of time and space thing is going to blow up in your faces.' The Doctor moved even closer, until he could smell the toxic slime that covered the Dalek. 'You're all going to burn and no matter how much you try to come back, or which of you remain, I'm always gonna be there to stop you. So just remember: there's a storm coming!'

  The Dalek shrank back a little. But there was still defiance, even in its last seconds of life. 'YOU THREATEN ME WHEN I CANNOT FIGHT BACK. YOU HAVE ONLY COME TO WATCH ME DIE. BUT THE DALEKS WILL TRIUMPH! THE DALEKS WILL ALWAYS SURVIVE. WE WILL BE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE!'

  The Dalek's final words died in a hysterical groan; the creature convulsed and then seemed to deflate as the eye closed for a final time. The Doctor was under no illusion that it was now truly dead. And for that he was profoundly grateful.

  But then something seemed to click in his brain – a sudden connection, something the Dalek had said that flicked a switch of realisation in his head. He jumped up, wide-eyed and alert. His hair was practically standing up in spikes with agitation. 'Of course!' he exploded, smacking his forehead with the heel of one hand. 'That's what they were doing on Hurala!'

  And then he turned and left the cargo hold at a run.

  For a few seconds all was quiet in the room. And then a shadow detached itself from the corner of the hold and Koral followed the Doctor out.

  There was silence in the galley. Bowman sat with his chin resting on one giant fist, locked in his own thoughts. Scrum sat at the mess table. Cuttin' Edge was sprawled on another seat, glumly nursing his assault rifle. None of them would look at the others.

  'Total waste of time,' muttered Cuttin' Edge after a while. 'But I'm glad we did it.'

  Scrum looked at him, hollow-eyed. 'Why?' he asked bitterly.

  'Cos it felt good.'

  'Did it?'

  Cuttin' Edge looked away. 'OK, so maybe it didn't feel so good. It's like... it's like that thing was laughin' at us. Inside. Like it could just soak up anything we did to it. It was makin' monkeys outta all of us!'

  'Don't be stupid.'

  'It was never gonna tell us anything.'

  'That wasn't the point,' said Bowman abruptly. He straightened up, looking at both crewmen. His grey eyes were tired and deep-set. 'We did it for Stella.'

  'It didn't bring her back, though, did it?' said Scrum miserably.

  'Wasn't meant to. But that Dalek had some pain coming to it.'

  Scrum still looked unconvinced. 'I don't think Stella would have wanted that.'

  'I don't think Stella wanted to be shot in the back by that scum either,' said Cuttin' Edge. 'Skip's right. Dalek had it comin'. End of.'

  They lapsed into silence again, each man brooding on the argument.

  And then the Doctor suddenly whirled into the room, fizzing with energy. 'What do you know about the Arkheon Threshold?' he demanded.

  All three looked up at him. 'What?'

  'I've just been having a little chat with your Dalek,' explained the Doctor. 'What was left of it, anyway.'

  'You what?' growled Bowman.

  'It's dead,' said Cuttin' Edge. 'We killed it.'

  'Yes, it's dead now,' agreed the Doctor. 'And yes, you did kill it. But there was one last spark of life left in those old mutant genes and it suddenly felt quite chatty. Starting telling me all about the Daleks' big plan to wipe mankind from history.'

  'You're lying,' Bowman stated, getting to his feet. He practically filled the small galley on his own.

  'No,' said Koral, appearing in the doorway. 'He's not.'

  The Doctor looked at her, puzzled.

  'I was in the cargo hold with you,' she told him. 'I heard every word.'

  'Really?' said the Doctor. He waited for her to say more, but she just returned his stare.

  'Hang on,' interrupted Cuttin' Edge. 'How come it talked for you?'

  'Dunno,' confessed the Doctor brightly. 'Maybe it was my winning personality. Maybe it was because I wasn't poking it with a sharp stick and discharging 50,000 volts through it at the time. Who knows?'

  'Maybe it was a deathbed confession,' said Koral.

  'Well, either way, we did exchange a few words in its final moments – although there was a lot of the usual kind of thing: Daleks are the supreme beings, Daleks will conquer and destroy, exterminate exterminate, et cetera. But it did let slip one tiny thing that could be important. Very, very important.'

  Bowman folded his arms. 'Such as?'

  'The Daleks must know about the Arkheon Threshold.'

  The Doctor was met with four blank stares.

  'The what?' said Bowman.

  'That's what they were doing on Hurala,' the Doctor explained. 'They were sniffing around for information. The Lodestar station was a staging post for interstellar travel, remember – forgotten and dusty, but in its heyday quite an important little place. They used to call it "the gateway to the stars". Stella hit the nail on the head when she spotted the planet Arkheon in the station's list of nearby worlds. It didn't mean much to me at the time, but now I realise exactly why the Daleks were so interested in whoever turned up there! They want the Arkheon Threshold.'

  'Which is...?'

  'Don't tell me you've never heard of the Arkheon Threshold?'

  Cautiously, Scrum raised a hand. 'Well, I have heard of the planet Arkheon...'

  The Doctor spun around and pointed a finger straight at him. 'Give that man a star! The planet Arkheon – somewhere near the Crab Nebula, I seem to recall, just past the Pleiades and left at the Blue Star Worlds. You can't miss it.'

  'Well you can now,' Scrum said. 'It was completely destroyed over forty years ago.'

  The Doctor's face froze. 'What?'

  'Arkheon was one of the planets that fell victim to the First Dalek Incursion,' Scrum explained. 'I think it was hit by one of those old planet-splitters. I was only a kid at the time.'

  'Completely destroyed?'

  'Yes.'

  'What, completely completely?'

  'Yes.'

  'Doesn't matter!' The Doctor was instantly re-energised. 'Or rather, the actual planet itself doesn't matter. But the Threshold does.'

  'The Arkheon Threshold,' Bowman repeatedly carefully.

  'I think we ought to listen to the Doctor,' advised Koral. She was speaking directly to Bowman.

  Bowman raised an eyebrow, considering. 'All right, Doctor. You'd better tell us what you know.'

  ELEVEN

  'The planet Arkheon was famous for its ghosts,' began the Doctor, lowering his voice in a suitably sinister manner. He was sitting in the middle of the galley, with the crew of the Wayfarer arranged around him like children ready to hear a ghoulish campfire story. 'In fact, it was often called the Planet of Ghosts.'

  A shiver seemed to pass through the little group.

  'Well, I say ghosts,' the Doctor went on, 'but they were more like quas
i-temporal personality echoes. But the Planet of Quasi-Temporal Personality Echoes just doesn't sound quite the same, does it? I won't bore you with the science – unless you really want me to – but the ghosts and spectral visions that haunted Arkheon were actually the usual sort of stuff you get with a planet that contains some sort of time rift.'

  'Time rift?' echoed Scrum, frowning.

  The Doctor pulled a face. 'Well, not actually a time rift. Not in your honest-to-goodness Cardiff kind of way...'

  'Cardiff?'

  'Never been to Cardiff? You haven't lived. Never mind. What I'm trying to say is that Arkheon was special. Located deep inside the planet was a small chronic schism – a little tear in time and space, if you like. It wasn't important. In fact it was largely ignored, except by the kind of scientists who liked to research that sort of thing. And the Arkheon Threshold – which is what the scientists called the temporal anomaly – was never actually found. After a while it was dismissed as nothing more than a theory.'

  'What about the ghosts?' asked Scrum.

  The Doctor grinned. 'Aw, what about 'em! Greatest ghost stories anywhere! Doesn't matter that they were nothing more than harmless echoes in time, they were still brilliant. I used to like the one about the sailor who had lost his head in a terrible battle. He could sometimes be seen just off the coast, rowing his way slowly around the bay in a small raft. They used to call him the Headless Oarsman.'

  'Keep to the point,' said Bowman bluntly. He was sitting on the far side of the galley, massive arms folded across his chest and a sullen, distrustful look on his face. Koral sat nearby, cross-legged, her eyes half-closed like a dozing cat.

  'OK,' said the Doctor with a sigh. 'Tough crowd. Never mind. The point is this – if Arkheon was destroyed by the Daleks like you say, then any little fracture in time and space at its centre will have remained. It wouldn't be a part of the actual rock and soil of the planet, you see, it'd be part of the fabric of time and space itself. You can't destroy a time fissure.'

  'And this is really important because...?' prompted Cuttin' Edge.

  'Because if the Daleks manage to locate the Arkheon Threshold then we're all in big trouble. I don't just mean the five of us in this ship. I'm thinking a little bigger than that – like the whole universe.'

  'Why?' asked Bowman. 'How could the Daleks use this theoretical time thing – if it even exists?'

  The Doctor looked grim. 'The Daleks are brilliant scientists and engineers. Combine their indomitable hunger for power and conquest with the hitherto untapped potential of a time-space anomaly and... well, do I have to draw a diagram?'

  'Yeah,' said Cuttin' Edge.

  'He means they could use it to control time,' said Scrum.

  The Doctor nodded gravely. 'Any foothold the Daleks can get in time they will exploit to the maximum. The Dalek you captured said that they intended to wipe mankind from history. It's easy to think that's just the usual Dalek rhetoric – but in this case it could be close to the truth.'

  There was a short silence while the Doctor looked expectantly at them.

  'So what are we supposed to do about it?' asked Bowman eventually.

  'We have to stop them,' replied the Doctor simply. 'They must be looking for the Arkheon Threshold. We have to prevent them finding it. I suggest you contact Earth Command immediately and—'

  'Hold it,' said Bowman, raising a hand. 'Forget that, Doctor. We can't contact Earth Command. For one thing, we don't have any official status with the authorities.'

  'And no one on Earth will believe us anyway,' added Cuttin' Edge. 'We're bounty hunters, man. That's one step up from criminals as far as they're concerned. We tell them about this, they'll just laugh in our faces. We caught ourselves a live Dalek and interrogated it for the information? Yeah, right.'

  Scrum nodded in agreement. 'You did say this time fissure was only a theory, Doctor. We haven't exactly got any hard evidence, have we? And we're light years from anywhere out here. By the time we reach Earth space and make contact, the Daleks will have found what they're looking for.'

  The Doctor was looking worried. 'Even so—'

  'We don't contact Earth Command,' said Bowman firmly. 'And that's final.'

  He stared hard at the Doctor, absently rubbing the white scar on his forearm.

  'All right.' The Doctor took a deep breath. 'So it's up to us to stop them.'

  'Us?' Scrum looked around the galley, making a headcount. He didn't look very encouraged by the result.

  'We've stumbled on something incredibly important here,' said the Doctor forcefully. 'We can't afford to ignore it.'

  'It's only you who says it's important,' Bowman pointed out.

  'You're the one who wanted to question the Dalek,' returned the Doctor acidly. 'Don't waste the answers.'

  'It didn't give any answers – except a hint about some kind of legend. It's stupid.'

  'For what it's worth,' said Koral, 'I think you should listen to what the Doctor says.'

  Bowman frowned. 'I'm not promising anything. This whole thing sounds lame to me. Some old planet blown up way back when that can help the Daleks change history? It's a crazy idea, even for them.'

  'But the Daleks are crazy,' said Scrum. 'They're arrogant and clever enough to take something like the Arkheon Threshold and use it against us. Against the whole human race. If there's even a chance of stopping them, then I think we should go for it. We owe Stella that much at least.'

  After a short silence, Bowman said, 'OK. We'll check it out. For Stella.'

  'There's one problem we're overlookin',' said Cuttin' Edge. 'If the Daleks don't even know where this Arkheon thing is, how can we hope to find it?'

  'That's where you have an advantage,' smiled the Doctor. 'Me.'

  The Doctor was soon sitting at the flight controls of the Wayfarer while Scrum showed him the navigation computer.

  'It's programmed with all galactic coordinates for this sector of space,' Scrum explained, 'including star lanes and trade routes of every major solar system. It uses a hyperlink tachyon echo to the Earth satellite network.'

  'Never did trust satnav,' sniffed the Doctor.

  'You can't navigate your way through deep space without a proper guidance system.'

  'I've got a proper guidance system,' the Doctor retorted. He tapped his forehead. 'Up here. Trust me, I never get lost. Well, hardly ever. Well, not often. All right, sometimes, perhaps... but more often than not I...' He started to tap his pockets. 'Where did I put my glasses? I've left them somewhere...'

  'Well if you can't even find your glasses...!'

  'No, here we are.' The Doctor found his glasses and slipped them on. He examined the navigation computer and then blew out a big raspberry. 'This is a bit primitive, isn't it?'

  Scrum sounded hurt. 'This is state-of-the-art! It may not look like much but—'

  'Yeah, yeah,' the Doctor waved him to silence. 'I don't mean to be rude, but... I was hoping for something a tiny bit more sophisticated. We need to get to the Arkheon system before the Daleks. We won't get there before Christmas using this stuff.' He rapped a knuckle on the navigation computer.

  'The Wayfarer's an old military vessel,' explained Scrum. 'She saw action in the First Dalek Incursion – there are still dents in her secondary hull where she was hit by a neutronic missile that failed to detonate.'

  The Doctor whistled. 'She's a tough old bird, I'll give you that.'

  'She was decommissioned and turned into a merchant ship,' Scrum continued as the Doctor began to work on the controls. 'Bowman had her reconditioned when he took her over. Her engines and flight controls have been completely replaced, much of it with stuff that isn't available on the commercial market. The Wayfarer may not be perfect, and she may be in need of repairs, but to us she's more than a ship, Doctor. She's home.'

  'Reminds me of the TARDIS,' said the Doctor sadly.

  'TARDIS?'

  'My own ship. I left it on the planet Hurala.' The Doctor stared into space for a few seconds, lost in thou
ght. Then he sniffed and gave Scrum a smile. 'Look, I couldn't help but notice that the Wayfarer's engines were a bit rattley. It's probably just a loose regulator valve in the coolant pumps. I can fix it if you like.'

  'Will you have time?'

  'Course. It'll take a couple of hours for this old thing to get to Arkheon.'

  'But what about the navigation? The coordinates?'

  'All done.' The Doctor waved a hand at the flight controls. 'And I've set the autopilot. Straight past the Pleiades, left at the Blue Star Worlds. Like I said, can't miss it.'

  'And the Daleks?'

  'Oh, don't worry about them. They'll be using satnav. Probably going the wrong way round the Crab Nebula already.'

  Scrum grinned. 'You remind me of Stella. No matter how bad things got, she was always able to cheer you up. She had a knack of saying just the right thing, you know?'

  'I think I do.'

  'And, for what it's worth...' Scrum added quietly, 'she would never have let Bowman do what he did to that Dalek. Stella was... better than that. She was someone you could rely on to do the right thing. And she could stand up for herself. I didn't like what was happening in that cargo hold, Doctor, but I was too weak to stop it. I was more scared of Bowman than the Dalek. But Stella would have stood up to him.'

  'And Bowman would have listened to her?'

  Scrum thought for a moment. 'Yes, I think he would.'

  'I didn't know her for long, but she certainly seemed very special,' the Doctor agreed. 'You must really miss her.'

  Scrum heaved a sigh. 'More than you can imagine.'

  'Perhaps.'

  In the cargo hold, Bowman and Cuttin' Edge were clearing out the remains of the Dalek. Bowman, wearing a pair of heavy, padded gauntlets from an old spacesuit, was scooping the remains of the Dalek mutant into a waste sack. His mouth was downturned, his nostrils pinched. The creature stank to high heaven.

  Cuttin' Edge was detaching the empty casing and mechanisms from the cargo lifter, flinging bits of armour plate and lumps of wiring across the hold into a pile in the corner. Every so often he would throw a piece of the Dalek with more force than was necessary, accompanied by some very earthy language.