Doctor Who: The Dalek Generation

by Nicholas Briggs

  Also available from Broadway:

  Plague of the Cybermen by Justin Richards

  Shroud of Sorrow by Tommy Donbavand

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Nicholas Briggs

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Broadway Paperbacks, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  Broadway Paperbacks and its logo, a letter B bisected on the diagonal, are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  This edition published by arrangement with BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing, a division of the Random House Group Limited, London.

  Doctor Who is a BBC Wales production for BBC One.

  Executive producers: Steven Moffat and Caroline Skinner.

  BBC, DOCTOR WHO, and TARDIS (word marks, logos, and devices) are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under license.

  Cybermen originally created by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  eISBN: 978-0-385-34675-7

  Editorial director: Albert DePetrillo

  Series consultant: Justin Richards

  Project editor: Steve Tribe

  Cover design: Lee Binding © Woodlands Books Ltd. 2013

  Production: Alex Goddard

  v3.1

  For Steph and Ben,

  my two favourite human beings

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books Available from Broadway

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue: Crash on Sunlight 349

  Chapter One: Death on Gethria

  Chapter Two: Distress Call

  Chapter Three: Return to Carthedia

  Chapter Four: Prisoners of the State

  Chapter Five: The Orphanage

  Chapter Six: On the Run

  Chapter Seven: Dangerous Decision

  Chapter Eight: Hogoosta

  Chapter Nine: The Cradle Awakens

  Chapter Ten: Sunlight Secrets

  Chapter Eleven: The Resistance

  Chapter Twelve: Start the Revolution

  Chapter Thirteen: Dalek Litigator

  Chapter Fourteen: Call the Doctor

  Chapter Fifteen: Return to Gethria

  Chapter Sixteen: A Billion Skaros

  Prologue

  Crash on Sunlight 349

  It was another beautiful, sunny day on the planet Sunlight 349, as Lillian Belle set off on her latest assignment.

  If she was honest with herself, the fact that every day on Sunlight 349 was ‘another beautiful, sunny day’ was perhaps a little tedious. Mind you, whenever she had such thoughts, she would force herself to remember what life had been like for her parents. They had lived on the edge of starvation for the first thirty years of their lives. In squalor. On a freezing cold, polluted planet whose name no one even wanted to remember.

  When Maizie and Alfred Belle had been given the chance to move to Sunlight 349, for them, it had truly felt like dying and going to heaven. Lillian knew this because, although she had been only seven months old at the time, her parents had, over the years, often told her how they had felt … And there had been tears in their eyes as they remembered.

  Maizie and Alfred had died just about four years ago now, within months of each other. They had been a devoted couple, proud to see their only daughter become a journalist. Moving to Sunlight 349 had brought them such incredible happiness. Every morning, they would stand on their tiny balcony and look out over the calm, ordered, pastel-shaded symmetry of the vast city in which they lived, and give thanks for the Dalek Foundation and the Sunlight Worlds.

  The Dalek Foundation had given them another chance, another life. And although the ill effects of the squalid conditions their bodies had previously been forced to endure had ultimately meant that their lifespans were relatively short, they had both died contentedly in their early 60s.

  So Lillian felt guilty when she found the pastel shades … dull. Cross with herself, when she longed for the temperature to vary by a few degrees now and again.

  Sometimes she almost prayed for rain. She had never experienced it. She had seen it on screens, read about it in books. She had even stood in her shower, dialled down from hot to cold, closed her eyes and tried to imagine what it might be like if this were the weather outside – all day!

  The skimmer-bus, touching down gently, jolted Lillian out of her daydream. The railroad official sitting opposite gave her a strange look. Lillian could not resist a smirk to herself. She realised she had been sitting with her face up, eyes closed and twitching at the imaginary impacts of those longed-for raindrops.

  ‘Something the matter?’ asked the official.

  ‘No,’ she said, still smirking a bit.

  Then she felt guilty again. She glanced around at the grim faces of other officials on the bus and remembered there was a serious business in hand. She tried to suppress the fact that because it was serious, and perhaps even a little dangerous, she wanted to jump for joy. Everything was so smooth-running and happy on Sunlight 349; and that made a journalist’s job pretty uninteresting.

  At last, there was the potential for bad news …

  As she stepped out of the bus, she was only dimly aware of the door whirring shut and the soft hiss of the vehicle lifting off and flying away behind her. The concerned mutters of the crowd were also fading for Lillian.

  She was transfixed by the disaster site before her.

  Two trains had collided. At speed. The impact had torn into both vehicles, ripping them apart in the front sections, then scattering the rear carriages into each other; hammering, crushing, tearing them out of shape. Only the very last compartment of the left-hand train still retained any semblance of its original outline. The rest was just wreckage. A horrible snapshot of metal, plastic and fibres, twisted, bent and pulverised by unrelenting kinetic force.

  People had died in this crash, Lillian knew there was no doubt about that. Then she realised, with some shame, that a number of the supposed ‘officials’ she had travelled with were in fact relatives of the survivors or victims. And she had allowed herself a warm grin of satisfaction at the exciting professional prospects such a disaster offered her. For a moment, her own selfishness made her feel sick. But the exhilaration was still there, and she pressed on, seeking out security guards to get permission to inspect the wreckage.

  She already had her tiny palm-holo-camera running. She panned across the entangled trains and pulled back for a wide shot of those looking on, many of them featureless with shock, some starting to cry, gulping in painful air in great heaving sobs. The sound of their grief flooded into her ear implants – perfect, stereo human suffering. She zoomed in on one old lady, for an instant thinking it was her mother. It could so easily have been, a few years back. It made her feel lucky … and guilty yet again. That old guilt about not feeling grateful enough for the Sunlight Worlds.

  A security guard touched her on her elbow. It made her jump a little.

  ‘This way,’ he nodded, and led her down the slope to the track.

  As she followed him, she saw emergency crews arriving and going about the morbid business of removing bodies. There was the smell of fire, scorched metal and worse. Electronic cutting gear was starting up; slicing into metal so that any survivors could be rescued. She heard cries of pai
n, of alarm, of relief. More emergency crews arrived, skimmer lights flashing, sirens wailing and then cutting off suddenly, as if in shock, as the vehicles descended gently beside the broken, twisted tracks.

  She was still filming, drifting sideways, not sure if it was the gentle incline leading to the crash site or her own insatiable curiosity that was pushing her on. She almost collided with a man in emergency service uniform. He was of some kind of supervisory rank, it seemed, from the insignia on his black, plastic-sheened uniform.

  ‘That’s far enough,’ he said, his voice muffled behind his helmet visor.

  ‘Lillian Belle, Sunlight 349 Holo-News,’ she said, still filming.

  ‘I know,’ he replied, somewhat emotionlessly. ‘Daniel Ash, site supervisor. You don’t want to go any further. Trust me.’

  ‘Will you talk on camera?’ she asked, focusing on him, the auto-systems of her camera struggling to fix on his visor or his obscured face behind it.

  ‘Sure. There’s been a train crash. Not much more to say. We don’t know how many are dead. We’re finding survivors. A lot of injured. All local hospitals are on full alert. Emergency protocols are working well. How am I doing?’

  ‘Any word on the cause of the crash?’ she asked, panning right onto the closest piece of wreckage. A survivor, in terrible pain, was being helped out through a half-collapsed window. She quickly defocused and returned to Daniel Ash’s troublesome visor. He was looking at her blankly.

  ‘What do you want me to say?’ he asked. ‘Two trains crashed. One of them shouldn’t have been on this track, I guess. We’re just worrying about who’s left alive so far.’

  At that moment, Lillian felt the heat and vibration of something powerful whooshing overhead. She instinctively tilted her camera view upwards into the sky, and caught the shimmering blue of the underside of an airborne Dalek as it flew over the crashed trains.

  She and Daniel Ash simply paused for a moment, watching the Dalek come to a halt, as it suspended itself in mid-air. Then it descended; its bronze, metallic, conical armour glimmering in the constant sun as its mid-section and head-dome rotated. Scanning, watching, assessing …

  Everyone on the Sunlight planets was familiar with the Daleks. They were not seen very often, but everyone knew them as the representatives of the great and good Dalek Foundation. The saviours of a generation that had been scarred and displaced by galactic economic and political collapse. There was always admiration for the idea of the Daleks, Lillian had grown up with that, but actually seeing them, encountering them, was always an oddly unsettling experience. No one was in any doubt that they were a force for good. No one.

  But …

  Squat, undeniably brutal in their outward appearance, these ambassadors of charity and philanthropy always seemed to tease at a sense of dichotomy in human minds. That these creatures who looked so ready for conflict should be the purveyors of such kindness and optimism seemed such a self-evident mismatch. And yet, it was true. The Daleks had saved and enhanced countless billions of lives.

  ‘Report!’

  Lillian and Daniel heard the signature sound of the Dalek’s voice echo across the wreckage; its staccato, electronic tone seeming peculiarly at home amongst the torn and shredded train remnants.

  ‘I thought we might see them here,’ said Daniel, nodding.

  ‘Because this never happens?’ asked Lillian, pointedly.

  ‘Yes.’ And Daniel started to draw away, signalling to a subordinate nearby to take over supervising Lillian.

  ‘Any news on the drivers?’ Lillian pressed further, halting Daniel’s retreat. He paused for a moment, perhaps considering if it was wise to divulge something, she thought. And then she was sure. Yes, he was deciding whether or not to tell her something important. He clocked the look on her face and she fancied that he looked a little caught out.

  ‘They …’ he hesitated for an instant. ‘They both ejected. They’re safe. In shock, but …’ He trailed off as he hurried away, calling out to some medics tending to an injured passenger. Lillian filmed him as he was engulfed by the milling masses of emergency workers, wounded, dead and dying. She carried on, unflinching, even as Daniel’s subordinate put a firm, gloved hand on her shoulder.

  ‘OK, that’s it,’ she heard his muffled voice say, through another visor. She instantly turned to speak to him, but he clearly knew what was coming. ‘No,’ he said, firmly. ‘You go back up to the top.’

  ‘Will the Dalek be coming over here?’ Lillian asked. They both glanced round. It had now disappeared, over the other side of the wreckage.

  Daniel’s subordinate gave her a ‘you must be joking’ look. ‘When was the last time you saw a Dalek give an interview?’ he asked, evidently not expecting an answer, as he pushed her up the incline, towards the rest of the onlookers.

  It was a fair point, she thought. She had never seen a Dalek interviewed for holo-television.

  As she reached the top of the incline, constantly recording the blank, drained faces of the onlookers, she heard, just for a moment, incoherent, muffled, grating echoes from the other side of the crash site. The Dalek was talking, but Lillian doubted she would ever find out what it was saying or to whom it was speaking.

  On the other side of the wreckage, well shielded from the sights and sounds of the rescue operations, the Dalek waited, motionless. A security guard walked up to it, obediently, presenting it with a small, black sphere.

  ‘The journey recorder,’ said the guard, a little nervously.

  Before the guard could hand the sphere over, some force from within the suction cup at the end of the longest of the Dalek’s metallic protuberances came into play. It sucked the sphere into contact with the cup. There was a faint, electronic, tingling vibration. Not so much a sound as a tangible needling of the air. The guard winced a little. The vibration stopped.

  The bronze dome at the top of the Dalek swivelled slightly, its mechanisms purring with cool precision. The eyestalk twitched. The blue iris on the outward-facing edge of the black ball of the lens attachment seemed to squint with a narrowing disdain.

  ‘Where is the driver of this train?’ demanded the Dalek. ‘You said you would bring him to me.’

  ‘He’s on his way. He’s … he’s in … in shock,’ the guard found himself stammering to explain. There was something about the Dalek that made him feel he was under suspicion. ‘He’s had a terrible … Er, the medics are …’

  ‘Where is he?’ the Dalek demanded again, a fierce note of anger invading its electronic articulation.

  The guard couldn’t think of anything else to say. He merely stared at the Dalek, ideas for words choking in his throat; veins beginning to stand out around his increasingly watering eyes.

  The silence was broken by the sphere suddenly detaching from the Dalek’s sucker cup. It thudded onto the hard, baked soil, discarded. The guard started to kneel to pick it up.

  ‘Leave it there!’ commanded the Dalek, now swivelling its dome violently; tilting its eyestalk up and down impatiently.

  Two medics arrived, gently ushering a shocked-looking young man forward.

  ‘I’m afraid Mr Sezman is suffering from shock,’ explained one of the medics.

  The Dalek repositioned its eyestalk, focusing on the medic. It edged forwards a little, emitting a truncated metallic whine as it did so. The medic nearly stumbled backwards at this, but stood his ground.

  ‘He has to go to hospital immediately,’ he explained further.

  The Dalek paused for a few moments, surveying the small group of four humans. Mr Sezman, the driver, swayed a little. One of his knees appeared to buckle under his own weight. The medics quickly strengthened their grip on his arms to support him.

  But before they could fully straighten Mr Sezman up, a harsh burst of energy emitted from the shortest of the Dalek’s metal attachments. Funnelling towards them in a focused beam, the discharge burst around them all, burning bright, crackling and spitting like a shower of ice on white hot metal. All four of them con
torted in terrible, silent agony for an instant, their jagged forms flickering painfully, caught in a photo-negative image, blue-tinged and merciless; so bright their skeletons bleached through it. Then the harsh light and sound faded fast as their lifeless bodies fell to the ground.

  Unconcerned, the Dalek immediately took off; a directly vertical course at high speed, leaving its victims to be found amongst the wreckage. Unexplained deaths, to be referred to the Dalek authorities for investigation …

  An investigation that would never happen.

  Chapter One

  Death on Gethria

  Whirling through the Vortex, dwarfed by the infinities of eternity and a limitless universe, a small, blue, cuboid object, with a glowing light atop and windows like white, squarish eyes squinting out into a dizzying, kaleidoscopic tunnel, propelled itself ever onwards.

  It was the TARDIS, space-time craft of that most mysterious citizen of the universe, the Doctor. Inside that sturdy, blue exterior, exactly engineered to resemble a twentieth-century London police box’s modest dimensions, there was an Aladdin’s Cave of impossibly advanced technology and seemingly endless accommodation.

  At its heart was the control room. Here, on top of a glass-floored platform sat the TARDIS’s multi-sided console. Dancing around it with a fevered intensity, punctuated by spectacularly carefree flourishes and pirouettes, was the Doctor himself. Making adjustments, tweaking an intricate imbalance here, absently flicking a switch or two there, he always took great pride in operating his beloved time and space machine. They had been together for many lifetimes. Many Earthly companions had come and gone, but the Doctor and the TARDIS … they were constants in each other’s lives.

  His life’s work had been the accidental but well-meaning interference in the lives of others. He had illegally set off into the universe, defying the laws of his now extinct people, the Time Lords, because he wanted to explore … to seek out … anything and everything.

  He had experienced the extremes of existence. There had been so much terror, so much delight … and everything in between.