Engines of War Page 17

  She had no idea what to do. She didn’t even know if Time Lords had the same physiology as humans.

  Cinder sensed the Doctor over her shoulder. ‘The Daleks?’ she said, without looking round.

  ‘They won’t find us here,’ replied the Doctor. He crouched down beside her, putting a hand to Karlax’s throat, feeling for a pulse. ‘We’re too late,’ he said. ‘He’s already started to regenerate.’

  Karlax coughed, and a gout of thick, dark blood spilled from his mouth, dribbling onto his robes.

  ‘Help me with him,’ said the Doctor. He slid his hands beneath Karlax’s arms and hauled him into a sitting position, instigating an explosive round of coughing. ‘Take his feet.’

  Cinder did as the Doctor asked, and they hauled him up, shuffling awkwardly towards the steps. Karlax was limp and heavier than he looked. ‘Where are we taking him? A medical room?’

  ‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘The Zero Room.’

  ‘The Zero Room?’ asked Cinder, breathless, as she struggled to keep Karlax’s hindquarters from banging against the floor. The Doctor mounted the steps backwards, lifting Karlax’s head and shoulders higher.

  ‘A place where he can regenerate in peace,’ said the Doctor, ‘and perhaps more importantly, where he’ll be out of the way. It has a lockable door.’

  ‘Why are you helping him?’ said Cinder. ‘After everything? He was trying to kill us. He doesn’t deserve our help. We should have left him to die.’

  ‘When we first met, back on Moldox,’ said the Doctor, ‘do you remember what you were doing?’ Cinder frowned. ‘Fighting Daleks,’ she said.

  ‘No, after that, when I arrived.’

  ‘I didn’t know whether to trust you,’ she said. ‘I threatened you with my gun.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said the Doctor. ‘And I didn’t leave you to die.’

  Cinder sighed. ‘You’re not seriously telling me he’s misunderstood? Doctor, he actually tried to kill us.’

  ‘Be that as it may, Cinder – everyone deserves a second chance. And Karlax here is about to get an entirely new perspective.’ They’d reached the top of the steps, and the Doctor led them along a passageway to a door. He kicked it open, and they carried Karlax inside.

  The room was empty, devoid of any furniture. The walls were covered in the same glowing roundels that decorated the console room. ‘Just set him down here,’ said the Doctor. They laid him out on the floor. Disconcertingly, his pale skin was now glowing even more intensely than before, his hands and his face.

  ‘Is that the regeneration?’ said Cinder.

  ‘Yes, it’s coming,’ said the Doctor. ‘We’d better leave him to it.’ He ushered her out of the door, producing a key unexpectedly from his trouser pocket and locking the door behind them. ‘There,’ he said. ‘That’ll keep him busy for a while. Now, where were we?’

  ‘About to prevent a Time Lord flotilla from committing genocide,’ said Cinder.

  ‘Ah, yes!’ said the Doctor, as if she’d just reminded him where he’d left his reading glasses. ‘Better get back to it!’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Cinder whistled as she stood beside the Doctor, peering at the display on the monitor. ‘That’s a lot of TARDISes,’ she said.

  They’d emerged from the Vortex on the outer limits of the Tantalus Spiral, and the image on the screen was magnified to provide them with a view of the massive Time Lord flotilla that was crawling steadily towards the Eye.

  The scale of it was simply too much for Cinder to comprehend. How many ships were there? Five hundred, a thousand – it was impossible to tell, but they filled space on the monitor like a flock of gulls, determinedly following their leader.

  On the edges of the vast formation flitted Dalek saucers in squadrons of five or ten, darting in and out, picking off the occasional TARDIS but failing to make any significant dent in the armada. She watched as a handful of TARDISes broke free of their formation, darting away to engage the enemy vessels.

  ‘It looks as though they’ve decided brute force is the answer,’ she said. ‘They’re just going to wade on in there, aren’t they? Right up to the Eye, with a complete disregard for how many of them will fail to make it back.’

  ‘They’re soldiers,’ said the Doctor, as if that in itself was enough of an explanation.

  ‘I hesitate to ask this,’ she said, ‘but how the hell are we going to stop them? I mean – we don’t even have any weapons, except an old Dalek neutraliser and a single temporal cannon.’

  The Doctor was leaning forward, peering closely at the monitor, his nose almost touching the screen. ‘That one there,’ he said. He tapped the screen with his fingernail, and in doing so, utterly obscuring the object from view. ‘That’s Partheus’s TARDIS. I’d wager that’s where we’ll find the Tear. He wouldn’t trust it to anyone else.’

  He leaned back. The TARDIS he’d been pointing to was surrounded by a cluster of at least twenty other Battle TARDISes, each of them heavily armed. ‘We’re not going to get anywhere near it!’ said Cinder.

  The Doctor tapped at the controls and the image on the screen switched to a series of scrolling icons. He studied them intently for a moment. ‘We’re not going to get near it,’ said the Doctor. ‘We’re going to get in it.’

  Commander Partheus stood on the bridge of his TARDIS, surveying his route to the Eye. He’d de-opaqued the walls and the ceiling, so that he had the impression he was standing on a large grey platform, drifting through the void.

  Around him the other TARDISes flocked, holding their battle formation, while further afield the halo of a raging firefight showed where the ships on his left flank were holding the enemy at bay. Ahead, the Tantalus Eye itself seemed to glare angrily at him, warning him not to proceed.

  This far into the Spiral, the radiation from the Eye was affecting the flight systems of their TARDISes, meaning they were unable to simply dip in and out of the Time Vortex, and had to make their final approach in real space. It left Partheus feeling exposed and uneasy, and vulnerable to attack.

  He glanced at each of the three men stationed at the consoles. ‘How is it looking?’ he said.

  ‘We have a clear path, Commander,’ replied one of the men, his lieutenant. ‘Another few light years and we’ll be within range to deploy.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Partheus. ‘Hold the line.’

  More and more Daleks were streaming out of the Vortex, stealth ships and saucers both, and around them, the battle raged.

  Partheus’s TARDIS, however, nestled at the heart of a defensive huddle, and remained unmolested. He stroked his beard, willing the ship on.

  He was just about to put a call out to for a report from the other ships, when the sound of a shrill klaxon drowned out his thoughts. ‘What the devil?’ he bellowed. ‘Report, now!’

  His lieutenant turned, his expression panicked. ‘I don’t know, Commander. It says we have an incoming.’

  ‘An incoming what?’ boomed Partheus. ‘A missile?’

  ‘No,’ replied the lieutenant. ‘A time ship.’

  To Partheus’s right the air seemed to shimmer, as the interloper attempted to materialise, its appearance accompanied by a deep, wheezing groan. Partheus fumbled for his pistol.

  ‘It’s a TARDIS, Commander,’ said one of the other men. Partheus couldn’t remember his name. He had trouble remembering any of their names. They never survived for long enough to make it worthwhile.

  ‘A TARDIS? But that’s insane! He’ll tear us both apart. Annihilate us.’ The other ship was clearly struggling to get a lock, stuttering as it tried to emerge from the Time Vortex. ‘Can’t you stop it?’ he barked.

  ‘I’m trying, Commander,’ called the lieutenant. ‘The shields are set to maximum power.’

  There was a sudden, clanging chime, and a tall blue cabinet marked ‘POLICE BOX’ was standing in Partheus’s console room.

  ‘Too late,’ he said, his voice full of ire. ‘They’re here.’

  ‘This is it, then,’ said
Cinder.

  ‘This is it,’ replied the Doctor, heading for the door. He stopped and looked back. His expression was stern. ‘Bring your gun,’ he said, ‘but under no circumstances are you to actually use it.’

  Cinder swept it up from the floor as she trotted after him.

  Her first thought, when she emerged from the TARDIS, was that something had gone horribly, inexplicably wrong, and that instead of landing inside the other TARDIS as the Doctor had intended, they were drifting in the open vacuum of space.

  Panicked, she glanced from left to right, searching for a way to take cover, but all she could see was the open vista of space and the raging inferno of the battle between the Time Lords and the Daleks.

  She gasped, and then realised she was still breathing, and that gravity of some description was still holding her to the floor. They were inside a TARDIS.

  After the initial shock, her mind began to process the rest of what was going on. They were standing in the console room of the other vessel, but it was so fundamentally different to the Doctor’s that at first it hadn’t registered. There were three squat, hexagonal consoles, dark grey in colour and seemingly identical in appearance. Unlike the Doctor’s they were not covered in all manner of makeshift levers and contraptions, and looked smooth and manufactured, rather than organic. Boring, was the word for it, thought Cinder.

  The room itself was cavernous, bigger than the Doctor’s by a magnitude of three or four times. The walls and ceiling had been rendered transparent so that Commander Partheus might better see how his fleet was faring against the Daleks.

  There were three male Time Lords, one in attendance at each of the consoles. They were dressed in the same red and white uniform as the Castellan’s guards at the Capitol.

  Commander Partheus himself stood on a raised platform, glowering at them. He was clutching a pistol in his left hand. He was a tall, portly fellow, with a bushy black beard. He was wearing black robes with a red skullcap. ‘You!’ he said. His voice was thunderous. ‘What do you think you’re doing? That little trick of yours might have resulted in a Time Ram, annihilating us both.’

  The Doctor shrugged. ‘Come now, Partheus. Do you really think I’d be that reckless?’ He beamed.

  Partheus offered the Doctor a look of sheer disbelief. ‘I think you’re the only one who might,’ he said. ‘I thought you were in a cell on Gallifrey?’

  ‘So did Rassilon,’ said the Doctor, ‘but even the Lord President can’t get his way all the time.’

  Partheus raised his pistol. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor. I don’t want to do this, but you’re putting me in a terrible position.’

  ‘Not as terrible a position as those you’re about to murder,’ replied the Doctor.

  ‘If you try anything …’ continued Partheus.

  Cinder coughed. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said, waving her gun from her hip.

  The three other men were looking decidedly uncomfortable, but remained where they were standing by their consoles. The Doctor walked to the first of these, glanced at the controls, and then shook his head. He walked around the man and over to the next console, repeating the procedure. Evidently he saw what he wanted there, as he reached over and began pressing buttons.

  The other man, whom Cinder guessed was a pilot, looked outraged. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Setting a new course,’ said the Doctor. ‘This is, after all, a hijack.’

  ‘But you can’t!’ The man turned, trying to intercept the Doctor.

  ‘Step away,’ said the Doctor. ‘This doesn’t concern you.’

  The man continued to try to push the Doctor out of the way.

  ‘Believe me when I say that I’m truly sorry for this,’ said the Doctor resignedly.

  ‘Wha—’

  He turned and delivered a smart right hook, which connected with the man’s jaw and dropped him to the floor in an unconscious heap. The Doctor shook his hand and wiggled his fingers, pulling a pained expression. ‘Oh, I really don’t like that bit,’ he said. ‘I wish people would just listen.’

  He ducked suddenly, dodging to the right, as a bolt of energy fizzed past his left hand, burning a dark, smouldering depression into the console. Cinder turned to see Partheus holding his weapon outstretched. ‘A warning shot, Doctor,’ he said. ‘To let you know that I’m serious.’

  The Doctor crossed to Partheus and snatched the pistol from his grip, tossing it away so that it clattered to the floor near the foot of his own TARDIS.

  ‘I’m trying to help you, Partheus. Believe me – this is a burden you don’t want to live with.’

  ‘In the corner,’ Cinder said to the other two, waving her gun, but keeping Partheus covered.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said the Doctor. ‘This isn’t going to take very long. Just a short glimpse into the future.’ He began turning dials and manipulating the controls, his fingers dancing over the keys. Cinder heard the distant groan of the engines responding to his ministrations. It was a different sound entirely to that made by the Doctor’s TARDIS – more of a subtle burr than an elephantine roar.

  ‘Well, I can’t say I think much of your TARDIS, Partheus,’ said the Doctor. ‘It lacks … character.’

  ‘You’ll pay for this with your life, Doctor,’ said Partheus. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

  The Doctor shrugged. He didn’t even turn to look at the man. ‘My life in exchange for billions of others,’ he said. ‘Not bad odds, I suppose. I’ve lived long enough.’ He glanced over his shoulder at the Commander. ‘Have you even considered what it is you’re about to do?’

  ‘Don’t patronise me,’ snapped Partheus. ‘Of course I’m aware of the gravity of the situation. As I see it, though, we have little choice. The Daleks must be stopped.’

  ‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat,’ said the Doctor. He pulled a face, looking at Cinder. ‘I’ve never liked that expression. Why would anyone want to do that?’

  He was in his element again, Cinder realised. She could see it in the child-like gleam in his eyes. He was enjoying himself. She wondered if this was what he would be like all of the time, if it weren’t for the weight of the War bearing down on him. Being around him when he was like this – she couldn’t help but smile.

  The view all around them had altered. No longer were they anywhere in the vicinity of the Tantalus Eye, or the fleet of Battle TARDISes, locked in combat with enemy saucers.

  Here, they hung alone in the void. Around them the darkness was all-consuming, with only a handful of stars still twinkling in the still night of space. All except for the massive, swollen carcass of a red giant, a dying sun, which filled the forward view screen. The core of the star burned gently; a dying flame in the last embers of a fire that had burned for millennia. The outer envelope was pale and thin, near transparent.

  ‘Where have you brought us?’ asked Cinder.

  ‘To the end of the universe,’ said Partheus, ‘to the last, lingering moments before the final stars wink out and the universe contracts.’

  ‘I see you have at least some poetry in your soul,’ said the Doctor. ‘Perhaps you’re not irredeemable, after all.’

  ‘I can’t let you do this, Doctor,’ said Partheus. ‘The Tear is our last hope.’

  ‘We’ll find a way,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s not over. It cannot come down to this.’ He moved to one of the other consoles and tapped in a sequence. ‘There. The Tear is primed.’

  ‘You’re going to shoot it into the heart of that star?’ said Cinder.

  The Doctor nodded.

  With a sudden roar, Partheus launched himself from the platform toward the Doctor. Cinder fought the urge to squeeze the trigger of her gun. The Doctor had, after all, told her not to fire it under any circumstances, and if she did, she risked hitting the Doctor. All the same, she kept it trained on Partheus as he collided with the Doctor at the console.

  Both men fell forward across the controls and the TARDIS listed to the right in response.

  ‘Get away from the
controls!’ Partheus bellowed. He grabbed the Doctor around the waist and hauled him bodily away from the console. With immense strength, he tossed the Doctor onto the floor, where he landed on his backside, wearing an outraged expression.

  He scrambled to his feet and without missing a beat, charged at Partheus, his head down and to one side, taking the other Time Lord in the chest with his shoulder and sending them both barrelling over in the other direction. Partheus pounded at the Doctor’s back with his fists, and the Doctor rolled off him, struggling free.

  Cinder glanced up at the two other Time Lords, who were still cowering in the corner. She showed them her gun, just to remind them to keep out of it.

  The Doctor sprung to his feet while Partheus was still struggling to shift his considerable bulk from the floor.

  ‘Look, Partheus. This is all terribly unseemly. Why don’t we ju—’ The Doctor stopped short as Partheus kicked out at his ankles, taking his feet out from under him. He went down again, barely avoiding smashing his head on the edge of the console. He groaned as he rolled into a sitting position.

  Cinder had had enough. She stormed forward. ‘Which button is it?’

  ‘The red one,’ gasped the Doctor.

  Cinder shrugged. She supposed that should have been obvious, really. She slammed her fist against the button.

  ‘You stupid girl!’ roared Partheus. Both men were getting to their feet, dusting themselves down.

  There was a mechanical clunk from beneath their feet, followed by a series of sounds like clamps being released. Partheus lurched to the console, jabbing at the buttons. ‘It’s too late. The sequence has been initiated. The Tear is being deployed.’

  There was a rumble of ignition and then, as they watched, a rocket blazed silently, seemingly from beneath their feet, towards the heart of the Red Giant.

  The rocket was small and Cinder couldn’t help thinking that what had been described to her as such a devastating weapon, was, in fact, somewhat anticlimactic. Perhaps, like a TARDIS, the Time Lord weapon was bigger on the inside.

  All of them stood in stunned silence, waiting to see what would happen when the Tear fell into the star and began to unpack itself.