Doctor Who: Engines of War (21 page)

‘What was that?’ she said.

The Doctor banged his fist against the console. ‘Time torpedo. We’re temporarily frozen in a stasis bubble. We can’t move.’

‘Perfect,’ said Cinder. ‘I wish I’d stayed in bed.’

As they watched, one of the Battle TARDISes slid into view, drawing closer with the clear intent to board them. ‘This’ll be Karlax,’ said the Doctor. ‘Wanting to crow.’

‘Can’t we stop him coming aboard,’ she asked.

‘We can try,’ said the Doctor.

Cinder sensed movement out of the corner of her eye, and a split second later the Battle TARDIS bloomed, detonating suddenly, as if struck by a shot from behind. The console room shook with the aftershock of the blast. She couldn’t see anything, any sign of what had caused the explosion, as she hurriedly searched the view.

The ruined TARDIS seemed to unpack in space before her eyes, its interior unfolding like the ones she had seen at the graveyard, swelling until it filled their entire view. Objects drifted away into the vacuum: broken monitors, spacesuits, chairs.

The Doctor wiggled the knob on the console and the view shifted. A formation of sleek, black vessels had engaged the four remaining TARDISes, and the two sides were pitched in battle, trading shots as they circled each another in a fast and violent dance.

The black ships seemed to have come out of nowhere. ‘What are they?’ asked Cinder.

‘Dalek stealth ships,’ said the Doctor. ‘They don’t show up on any Time Lord monitoring systems. They lie in wait in the Time Vortex like hunters stalking prey, then strike at the most opportune moment.’

One of the TARDISes appeared to land a missile on the flank of one of the stealth ships, and it detonated in a shimmering burst, rolling over the black carapace of the vessel. The TARDIS tried to capitalise on its strike, swinging around for a second shot, but another of the Dalek vessels swept past, unleashing a volley of super-charged energy, which shredded the TARDIS, annihilating it in a matter of seconds.

‘We’re sitting ducks, here,’ said Cinder, with rising panic. ‘Can’t you do something?’

The Doctor shook his head. ‘We have to hope that they’re happy to deal with the moving targets first,’ he said, although she noticed his hands had not strayed far from the controls.

One of the stealth ships erupted in a ball of flame, caught in a volley between two of the remaining Battle TARDISes, but it was never going to be enough. There were simply too many of the Dalek ships. Cinder hadn’t been able to count them, but the number was in double figures, more than twice those of the Time Lords. They were outclassed in every respect.

Almost simultaneously, she watched the remaining TARDISes die, their interior dimensions suddenly, dramatically exposed.

Cinder’s palms were sweating. She knew what was coming next. The stealth ships would converge on the Doctor’s TARDIS, and in a moment, it too would be reduced to nothing but a bloated carcass, drifting in the void.

She watched one of the Dalek ships glide overhead. The Doctor flicked a switch on the console and the engine hissed to life.

‘I thought you said we were frozen in a temporal bubble,’ she cried.

The Doctor shrugged. ‘I’m not falling for that old chestnut again,’ he said. ‘I upgraded the shielding.’

‘Then… you were just stalling for time?’

‘Precisely,’ said the Doctor, slamming his fist into the controls. The TARDIS corkscrewed up at an incredible velocity, slamming into the underside of the stealth ship.

The Doctor’s aim hadn’t been quite true, and they caught the side of it, rending a massive hole as they burst through. On the monitor she saw the other ship spin out of control, a twisted mass of tortured metal. Jets of gas billowed into the void, freezing instantly to form drifting clouds of ice.

‘Quickly! Get us out of here,’ bellowed Cinder. ‘Dematerialise. There are too many of them.’

The Doctor tapped the monitor with his index finger. ‘There’s someone still alive down there.’

She moved round, still holding the railing. On the monitor she could see the carcass of one of the devastated TARDISes. A tiny figure writhed in agony in the ruins of a console room.

‘Surely you can’t be thinking…’

‘Oh, but I am,’ replied the Doctor. He yanked a lever and the TARDIS dematerialised for the briefest of seconds, forming again amongst the wreckage of the downed Battle TARDIS. Stealth ships were closing in from all directions.

Cinder tried to make sense of what was happening. Suddenly, there was wreckage all over the floor: bits of broken coral pillar, fragments of a dark grey wall, half a shattered console, still fizzing and popping as the electrics discharged. Amongst them all, nestled in a pit of cables, lay a Time Lord.

He was dressed in scarlet robes and skullcap, and was clutching at his throat with both hands, struggling to breathe. Bright blood bubbled from his eyes, nose, and lips, dribbling down his chin. His flesh was burnt and blistered, but his features were unmistakable. ‘It’s Karlax,’ she said.

‘Make him comfortable,’ said the Doctor.

‘But I—’ she started.

‘Just do it!’ he bellowed, cutting her off.

The TARDIS trembled as they pirouetted out of the way of another Dalek volley. ‘Damn it!’ said the Doctor. He mashed the controls and the engines whined, phasing them into the Vortex. ‘Damn it!’ he said again.

Cinder was on her knees, cradling Karlax’s head in her hands. He was in a bad way. His breath was coming in short, wheezing gulps. Exposure to the vacuum had almost killed him, and even now, she wasn’t sure he was going to make it. His skin had taken on a strange glow, which seemed to fade in and out, as if the light was somehow shifting about beneath the surface of his flesh.

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.