Doctor Who: The Dalek Generation

by Nicholas Briggs

  The darkness of the night sky on Gethria was just showing the first tinges of lightening up for morning as the Doctor, Hogoosta, Sabel, Jenibeth and Ollus made their dash across the desert towards the Cradle of the Gods. Hogoosta was leading, all seven legs powering as fast as they could go.

  It was difficult for the Doctor to keep up. He was impressed by Hogoosta’s strength, especially since Sabel and Jenibeth were holding on tight to the Klektid’s bony torso. Ollus had insisted on sitting upon the Doctor’s shoulders, which was largely why the Doctor was finding it difficult to keep up.

  Right next to his ear, the Doctor could hear the irritating buzzing and bleeping of Ollus’s toy spaceship.

  ‘Don’t you ever stop playing with that thing?’ asked the Doctor sharply, twisting his neck momentarily to squint back at Ollus.

  ‘It was my Daddy’s,’ said Ollus, concentrating on the spaceship.

  The Doctor said no more. This was all the poor boy had left of his father. Let him play with it whenever he liked.

  The Doctor glanced back over his other shoulder and was somewhat dismayed by what he saw.

  ‘We’ve got trouble!’ he called across to Hogoosta.

  Hogoosta’s head spun round 360 degrees. ‘They were bound to miss us soon enough,’ he said. ‘I told you.’

  Behind them, the Doctor could see the rising dust of what must have been the Klektid Enforcers pursuing them.

  ‘We’ll never make it there before they catch us up,’ said Hogoosta.

  ‘Then we’d better make a diversion,’ replied the Doctor.

  As they carried on running, the Doctor checked his sonic screwdriver. He felt Ollus’s legs clamp more firmly around his neck, trying to stop himself from falling off.

  The screwdriver bleeped as the Doctor set it into homing mode. He immediately detected which way they had to head to get to the TARDIS. Luckily, it wasn’t much of a deviation in their route, and it was fairly close by.

  ‘Come on! This way!’ called the Doctor, bearing left a little and pulling ahead.

  Hogoosta and his cargo of Sabel and Jenibeth followed. As they pounded on across the sand and the morning light crept further into the sky, the Doctor could hear his hearts thudding with exhaustion and feel perspiration trickling down his face. Slowing down was not an option, though. Every time he glanced back over his shoulder, the dust trail of the approaching Klektid Enforcers was larger and closer.

  Suddenly, something bright and hot shot through the air to their right. It hit the ground and sent up a burst of fire and a shower of burning hot sand.

  ‘They’re shooting at us!’ shouted Ollus, right into the Doctor’s ear.

  ‘I know!’ the Doctor shouted back. He squinted through the clearing clouds of the explosion and to his relief, he could see the TARDIS up ahead.

  ‘They’ve got our range,’ cried out Hogoosta. ‘They won’t hesitate to kill us.’

  ‘Then they’re lousy shots,’ the Doctor cried.

  Another flash. Another explosion hit the ground just ahead of them again.

  ‘Nah!’ shouted the Doctor. ‘I don’t think they’re trying to kill us. Just trying to frighten us.’

  More flashes and three more explosions ripped into the desert floor around them.

  ‘I’m frightened!’ shouted Sabel.

  The Doctor still did not slacken his pace and Hogoosta was easily matching his speed, starting to overtake him. They were getting ever closer to the TARDIS, but when the Doctor turned again, he could actually see the detail of the Klektid Enforcers themselves. They were clearly much fitter specimens than Hogoosta; trained for combat and not carrying small children.

  ‘What is that thing?’ called Hogoosta, pointing to the TARDIS.

  ‘It’s mine,’ replied the Doctor. ‘And it’s a safe place for us to hide.’

  ‘Hide?’ queried Hogoosta.

  ‘It’s huge inside,’ cried out Jenibeth. ‘And it flies!’

  Another four flashes, and the Doctor could feel the explosive heat much closer now. He could also hear the sound of sand showering against the surface of the TARDIS’s outer shell. They were nearly there.

  ‘Look out!’ screamed Sabel. The Doctor could see her pointing off to the right, ahead of them.

  There was a blur of movement. But as the Doctor squinted at it, he could clearly see several Klektid Enforcers moving off ahead of them, circling around to approach the TARDIS from the rear. Were they being surrounded? Sure enough, more Klektids raced round from the left, heading towards their flank.

  At last they arrived, colliding with the locked TARDIS doors. Hogoosta came to a halt at almost exactly the same instant.

  ‘This thing doesn’t look like enough protection to—’

  The Klektid’s words were cut off by another explosion followed by a shower of more burning sand. The smell was peculiarly unpleasant and the hot granules danced off the Doctor’s exposed skin like vicious bee stings.

  ‘Argh!’ he gasped, and dropped the TARDIS key, just as he was about to insert it into the lock.

  Another explosion, and the shower of sand quickly buried the key. As the Doctor bent down to find it, Ollus leapt off his back and started to dig in the sand. Sabel and Jenibeth climbed down from Hogoosta and joined in the search.

  ‘The Doctor must not be allowed to escape in his TARDIS!’

  The Doctor twitched round at this shrill Klektid command. A squad of about forty of them was moving in towards them now. But how did they know his name? And how did they know about the TARDIS?

  ‘Here!’ shouted Ollus, over the painful din of another salvo of explosions.

  The little boy was holding the key up to him, hand outstretched. Ollus’s face had a questioning look on it. A reaction to the Doctor’s own face, which must have been a picture of suspicion and dread, he realised.

  ‘Key! Yes!’ the Doctor shouted, coming back to his senses. Now, he could hear the footsteps of the Klektids as they approached. He looked around. They were surrounded by an ever-tightening circle of Enforcers.

  Without another thought, the Doctor grabbed the key, opened the TARDIS’s doors and shoved everyone inside.

  He slammed the doors shut behind them all and headed straight up the steps to the TARDIS control console.

  ‘You explain it to him,’ the Doctor called back to the children, gesturing to the TARDIS’s vast interior, as he busied himself with some adjustments.

  ‘We don’t understand it either,’ the Doctor heard Sabel saying. ‘But isn’t it marvellous?’

  ‘It’s like magic,’ squeaked Jenibeth.

  ‘No, just clever science,’ argued Ollus.

  The Doctor glanced over and saw Hogoosta’s head revolving in confusion. The Klektid was shuddering again.

  Ollus ran up the steps towards the Doctor.

  ‘Are we leaving? Are we flying off to another planet in another time?’ the little boy asked, miming the trajectory of escaping with his little spaceship and impersonating the TARDIS’s engines by making a rhythmic, grating, gurgling sound in his mouth.

  ‘Another time?’ asked Hogoosta, mounting the stairs and heading, clattering, towards the Doctor too. His head came to a rest.

  ‘Daren’t risk it,’ explained the Doctor. ‘There’s something out there in the Vortex which keeps interfering. So …’

  He busied himself with the controls, then grabbed at them, shunting several levers into place with a resolute clunk. The TARDIS made a slight, truncated groaning sound and the entire control room shuddered somewhat, then fell still.

  ‘What did you do?’ asked Ollus.

  Hogoosta’s head started rocking from side to side.

  ‘I cheated a bit,’ said the Doctor.

  Hogoosta’s head stopped rocking. ‘Cheated?’ he asked.

  ‘Couldn’t risk fully entering the Vortex,’ explained the Doctor.

  ‘The … Vortex?’ asked Hogoosta, his arms flicking around agitatedly.

  ‘So I just did a bit of instantaneous travel,’ bea
med the Doctor. ‘Should give us a slight advantage over your Klektid friends.’

  ‘They are not my friends,’ said Hogoosta, somewhat indignantly.

  ‘No, no they’re not, are they?’ agreed the Doctor as he descended the steps. ‘But whose friends are they? Eh? That’s the question. Anyway …’

  And with that, he flung the TARDIS doors open.

  The Doctor led them out into what he was sure must be an underground chamber. It had a cold clamminess about it and no natural light, just half a dozen electric lamps on stands. His sincerest hope was that it was in fact a chamber beneath the so-called Cradle of the Gods. He immediately turned to Hogoosta and asked for confirmation.

  ‘Yes … yes … We are here. The inner chamber,’ the Klektid confirmed. ‘Amazing. So your … TARDIS? Your TARDIS is a teleportation device.’

  The Doctor looked a little indignant and was about to take issue with this slight on his precious ship, but then he remembered how little time they had before the Enforcers would guess this was where they were. He focused his attention on the hieroglyphics, clearly engraved on the walls of this chamber many centuries ago.

  ‘Bit more complicated than that, Hogoosta, old fella,’ he muttered absently as he moved his face ever closer to the wall. His nose made contact. He sniffed hard. ‘Hmmm … this is ancient. Far too ancient for me to be able to translate.’

  He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and whizzed it around, getting a reading.

  ‘Yup. Definitely more ancient than ancient.’

  He turned to look at the children and Hogoosta, who were standing with the TARDIS at their back. They were all starting to look around in dumbstruck wonder. Instinctively, he followed their gaze. On first sight, this chamber had looked rather dull to him as he had exited the TARDIS. What was having such an effect on them? And why was Hogoosta looking so incredibly awestruck, considering he had been looking at this chamber for many years?

  Then the Doctor noticed.

  Light had started to play all around them, growing in intensity. A kind of whirling, surging light that brought with it a tangible vibration in the air.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ breathed the Doctor, looking up at the ceiling. Every single indentation between the impossibly old building blocks of this chamber was tingling with a multicoloured fizz of energy. A fizz that was slowing transmuting into a glow. Then a rumbling started.

  ‘Power …’ said the Doctor. He spun round, opening his arms wide. He could feel some sort of energy growing in this space. It felt like it was vibrating his very veins. It was sizzling, burrowing into his mind. Every molecule of matter and air seemed to be alive with it.

  ‘Can’t you feel it?’ he asked the others. He turned back to look at them all again. He knew they were feeling something, but it looked very much like whatever it was had robbed them of their ability to speak.

  Ollus managed to break the spell first. ‘Wow …’ he murmured in a tiny, breathy voice, still clutching his little spaceship.

  Jenibeth rubbed her head. ‘Feels funny,’ she said in a way that suggested she couldn’t decide whether it was funny ‘good’ or funny ‘bad’.

  ‘And this has never happened before, Hogoosta?’ the Doctor asked.

  ‘No … never,’ said Hogoosta, his mouths starting to click a little out of sync, rendering his speech a touch imprecise. All this was clearly having a deeply felt effect on him. ‘I have … have no idea what’s … what’s going on.’

  All of a sudden, the Doctor had an idea.

  ‘Then it’s to do with one of us,’ he said. ‘Not you, Hogoosta. One of us. All of us? Some of us? I’m not sure. Let’s take a look upstairs. Hogoosta?’

  The Doctor gestured quickly in several possible directions at several possible exits. He hoped Hogoosta would get the hint. Luckily, he did.

  ‘Ah, this way,’ said Hogoosta, scuttling through a triangular archway.

  The Doctor ushered Ollus, Sabel and Jenibeth after him, all the while his mind racing.

  Hogoosta led them all up a wide, spiralling staircase. Spurred on by the Doctor, they ran as fast as they could go, the children once again holding on to adults for support. Ollus clambered up the Doctor again and Sabel and Jenibeth returned to their seated positions on Hogoosta, although it looked like a far more bumpy ride going upstairs.

  When they surfaced, the morning had encroached upon the night a little more. But the weak glow from the emerging Gethrian sun was made even more pale and insignificant by the light show that was apparently just beginning on the outer monument structure of the Cradle of the Gods.

  It was immediately obvious what had caused the rumble of power. Aside from the shafts of light that were lancing out from the gigantic tower, large slabs of granite-like rock making up the base of it were in the process of moving, apparently of their own volition. A complex series of what the Doctor guessed were predetermined patterns was unfolding before their very eyes. The Cradle of Life was re-sculpting itself into … something.

  Something alive with power.

  ‘What are you? What are you? What are you?’ murmured the Doctor to himself in awe. ‘A power for destruction or creation?’

  He started to wonder if they should really be here. If the Cradle’s real purpose was destruction, then it would be their presence that would trigger the deployment of some appalling, ancient weapon. And yet, the Doctor’s curiosity left him fixed to the spot. Whatever was going on, it was somehow harnessing the elemental forces of the universe. This was truly a spectacle undeniably worthy of inclusion in the pantheon of ancient wonders of the cosmos.

  Hogoosta moved to the Doctor’s side.

  ‘It’s finally happened,’ the Klektid’s mouths clattered in an almost uncontrollable jumble of sounds, making it necessary for the Doctor to take a few moments to work out what Hogoosta had actually said. ‘After all these years … Today is the day.’

  They were both distracted by a new, deep thundering, coming from a different direction altogether. Was this it? Was this the weapon activating?

  ‘Doctor!’ squealed Sabel over all the noise. ‘Look!’

  She was pointing up into the sky, away from the monument. The Doctor and Hogoosta looked to where she was pointing.

  ‘It’s a ship. Like that Dalek one!’ Ollus shouted.

  Almost exactly like that Dalek one, thought the Doctor. A Dalek flying saucer was landing close by.

  ‘No chance of that being a coincidence,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘Daleks?’ asked Hogoosta, confused. ‘Why would the Daleks come here?’

  ‘Why indeed?’ said the Doctor bluntly. ‘Why did they try to get the secret of the Cradle from the Blakelys? How did your Klektid Enforcers know about me and the TARDIS? Eh?’

  Hogoosta’s head swayed uncertainly.

  ‘Because the Daleks must be paying the Enforcers!’ shouted Sabel.

  ‘Yes!’ said the Doctor, pointing at her, smiling grimly.

  ‘But …’ began Hogoosta, a note of dread in his strange clicking voice. ‘The Enforcers are employed by the consortium who fund this project.’

  ‘The Daleks! It’s the Daleks who are funding your project, Hogoosta!’ said the Doctor.

  With an enormous crunching sound and a vast cloud of fast-moving dust, the Dalek ship touched down. The minor sand storm hit hard, showering the transforming monument, dulling the shafts of light emanating from it for a few moments.

  The Doctor, spitting dust from his mouth and shielding his eyes with his arm, grabbed the children and held them close to him as best he could. Hogoosta, finally snapping out of his daze, gave the best assistance he could muster too.

  As the dust settled, leaving them all spluttering and smarting from the sting in their eyes, ears and noses, they saw that a hatchway had already opened in the saucer. A ramp had extended downwards and had crashed down upon the baked surface of the desert.

  The sun was almost fully risen now, and its rays caught the bronze glint of the Daleks that filed swiftly down the ramp o
nto the sand. The Doctor squinted hard at them. For a moment, something seemed odd about the leading Dalek. It seemed to blur at its centre for an instant … Then the Doctor remembered when this had happened before. In the courtroom on Carthedia.

  ‘The Dalek Litigator …’ he murmured to himself. ‘What brings you here?’

  But he dismissed the question almost immediately. The Cradle of the Gods was somehow activating and he and the children had something to do with it. The Enforcers had clearly called up the Daleks, very probably having transmitted the image of the Doctor and the children to them. He couldn’t let the Daleks get access to this Cradle, whatever it was in the middle of doing. There was only one possible course of action.

  ‘We have to get out of here!’ shouted the Doctor, grabbing the children. ‘You too, Hogoosta. Trust me, the Daleks can turn pretty nasty when it comes to me. And they’ve seen you with me.’

  The Doctor and the children were already at the entrance to the spiral staircase, about to descend.

  ‘But this is my work,’ Hogoosta said, his voice full of pride. ‘I cannot just leave.’

  ‘We can come back,’ called the Doctor. ‘Come on! Trust me, the Daleks won’t—’

  Before he could finish his words, there was a burning beam of light and a soaring sound, harsh enough to cut through the cacophony of the awakening Cradle. The beam sliced through the air and lanced straight into Hogoosta. For a moment, the Klektid was consumed in a cruel, burning blue light so bright that it momentarily imprinted a negative image across the Doctor’s retina.

  Hogoosta had been murdered by fire from a Dalek gun.

  The children froze in terror. The Doctor, hearing the approaching whine of Dalek motive power, bundled Ollus, Sabel and Jenibeth together, pushing them down the stairs.

  ‘Come on!’ he yelled.

  As they descended the ancient, worn steps, faltering and tripping over each other, the familiar, repugnant sounds of Dalek speech rang out across the monument.

  ‘Fugitives are to be captured immediately!’

  The Doctor was pretty sure that this was the voice of the so-called Dalek Litigator. What kind of Dalek was this? A creature that purported to be in charge of Dalek prosecutions and yet had travelled across half the galaxy to bring the Doctor to book. What exactly was going on here?