Doctor Who: Engines of War (29 page)

Around them, the storm seemed to abate momentarily, and then a wave of light crashed out of the Eye – a temporal pulse; a single, massive burst of energy that swept out to encompass the entire Spiral. In its wake the threads of possibility were rewritten.

Entire fleets of Dalek saucers and stealth ships dissolved as the ruby-coloured light crashed over them, burning them up into nothingness.

Aboard the Dalek command station, the Eternity Circle, still resting on their pedestals, whispered out of existence, shimmering into non-life like fragments of a fading dream, only half-remembered.

On Moldox and a dozen other worlds, the last of the Dalek patrols and their hoards of Degradations were overcome, washed away into fragments of light before the eyes of their human prisoners.

Within seconds, it was over.

The TARDIS, ravaged by the storm, limped from the Eye under its own volition, drifting into a loose orbit around Moldox. Inside, the remains of the possibility engine fizzed and popped, where once Borusa had been lashed, but now there was nothing.

The Doctor lay unconscious on the floor beneath the console, within an arm’s reach of the body of his dead companion.

Chapter Twenty-Four

It had taken the Doctor three days to find the homestead. Three days of asking questions in the tumbledown human camps, travelling between them like a nomad. It wasn’t easy uncovering a trail that had gone cold a decade and a half earlier, but persistence had put him on the right track.

He’d found mouldering records in an abandoned municipal building, and Coyne had helped as much as he could, filling in some of the blanks. For the rest he’d had to rely on the word of strangers, but in their dazed and jubilant state, they didn’t seem to mind lending a hand to an unfamiliar face. He supposed they took him for what he was – another lost soul, drifting from place to place, searching for answers, for a home. Only, it wasn’t his own home he was looking for.

He was encouraged to see that the humans on Moldox were slowly beginning to find each other. The scrappy groups of resistance fighters and travellers who had eked out an existence during the occupation had begun to merge, finding strength in numbers, and were tentatively taking steps to move back into the towns and cities. Their resilience was uplifting.

All evidence of the Daleks themselves was gone – the saucers, the patrols, the shells of defeated mutants – everything, save for the damage they had caused and the wreckage they had left behind.

The humans he spoke with seemed confused. They understood there had been a war, that terrible hardship had been forced upon them, but the enemy seemed distant and forgotten – a symptom of the temporal excision performed by Borusa and the possibility engine.

Time would serve as a reminder, the Doctor supposed. Time, and the ongoing threat of the war still raging in the heavens. No matter what Borusa had done, the horrors faced by the people here were simply too wretched to be forgotten for long. Those memories would eventually surface, and they would share in their grief. In the meantime, however, people would get on with rebuilding their lives.

The homestead, when he eventually found it, was nothing but a burnt-out husk. The walls had been reduced to rubble, blackened like the stumps of rotten, uneven teeth. Decaying remnants of furniture were strewn about the place, and it was clear the site had long ago been looted for anything valuable or useful. Weeds poked inquisitively through the fractured earth, ropey tendrils encircling fragments of shattered lintel, broken chair or rusted bed head.

It was a solemn job, unearthing the remains of the other three humans – Cinder’s mother, father and brother – which had long been covered by the dust and detritus of the Dalek occupation. Now, they were just bones and rags, scattered by scavenging animals. Yet it felt
right
to reunite this lost soul with the family who had once loved her, who had been taken from her by a war for which she held no responsibility.

In the records he had found evidence of her true name. It was a beautiful, human name, and in death he had restored it to her, carving it into the wooden post he’d found to serve as a marker for her grave. He wondered if, when the time came, there might be someone to do the same for him.

The Doctor stood in the ruins beside the grave of his friend and looked up. Night was closing in, and the auroras danced hypnotically across the heavens, their exotic colours mingling like oil separating in water. Behind them, the Tantalus Eye cast its all-seeing gaze upon him. He felt as if he were being somehow singled out, as if he alone stood at the eye of a storm, the only one able to clearly see the chaos that was engulfing the universe around him. He’d come to Moldox feeling maudlin, but now he felt nothing but burning rage.

He stared back at the Eye, defiant. The War had gone on too long. There were too many victims, too many casualties. He couldn’t stomach what his people had become. The war had changed them. Their desperation to survive at any cost, their arrogance and sense of entitlement had combined to lead them down the bleakest of paths. Somewhere down the line they had ceased to value the things they should have held sacred, the lives of those fledgling races that the Time Lords should be shepherding into the future, rather than casually consigning to the past.

Their conflict with the Daleks was going to destroy everything. All of creation cowered in their wake, and the only thing that either side could see was the war itself, and their unending crusade for victory. They had to be stopped before anyone else was caught in the crossfire.

The Doctor turned up the collar of his jacket. He would make a vow, to Cinder, and to what was left of the universe. He would bring an end to the War. Whatever it took. He would put a stop to it now. This was it. This was the day he drew the line.

A blackbird was picking at the freshly turned earth in search of worms, and he watched it flutter away into the darkening sky, finally admitting defeat.

Then, alone at last, he quietly uttered his promise. Just two simple words, but leaden with the weight of his resolve:

‘No more.’

Acknowledgements

My thanks go out to Justin Richards, Albert DePetrillo and the
Doctor Who
production team for bringing me back into the
Doctor Who
fold, and for giving me the opportunity to send the War Doctor on a brand new adventure.

Also to Cavan Scott, for his constant support and encouragement. His messages helped me to keep going when it looked like I still had a mountain to climb.

Finally, I couldn’t have done this without the patience and support of my family, who made time in our busy lives to accommodate the writing of this book. I love you all.

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For over fifty years,
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