Doctor Who (11 page)

Meanwhile, the court judge who had presided over the Doctor’s hate-crime case had just finished speaking to Hellic Dansard on a comms-link. He smacked his hand down on his office desk in frustration and stared angrily out of the window at the jagged skyline of the city.

‘Idiot,’ he murmured with restrained rage, through his teeth.

‘It was to be expected,’ came the harsh, grating voice of the Dalek Litigator, who had been present throughout the communication with the unfortunate Hellic.

‘What do you mean?’ asked the judge, surprised.

‘The Doctor is known to the Daleks,’ said the Litigator, flatly.

‘Known? What do you
mean
?’ asked the judge.

‘He is a known saboteur of Dalek Foundation operations,’ said the Dalek.

‘Saboteur?’ The judge was a little taken aback. ‘If you have proof of other crimes he has committed, why didn’t you mention these during the—’

‘It is a matter to be dealt with by Dalek Foundation security forces,’ the Dalek said, whirring and moving towards the judge menacingly.

For a moment, the judge felt an icy tinge of threat from the Dalek. He lifted his chin defensively, his eyes blinking into the burning, cold blue light of the Dalek’s single eye.

‘On this planet, all security matters are dealt with by our own police—’ began the judge.

‘Dalek security forces have been deployed at the spaceport terminal,’ interrupted the Dalek. Its tone was relentless and to his surprise, the judge found that he dared not try to continue speaking. ‘The embarkation zone where the Doctor’s TARDIS is being held is now legally classified as Dalek sovereign territory.’

The judge felt almost as though the words of the Dalek were sucking his breath away, such was their sheer force. The electronic distortion was still ringing in his ears as he steeled himself to speak again. ‘How can you be sure that’s where this Doctor will—’

The Dalek’s voice cut straight through the judge’s words again. And what it said carried with it a deep hatred and knowledge that went far beyond the simplicity of this single, short, staccato sentence.

‘We know the Doctor.’

The police skimmer was swooping down towards the spaceport terminal, when Jenibeth squealed, pointing out of the window.

Sabel, Ollus and the Doctor looked over to see what she was pointing at. The Doctor could see the spaceport ahead. It was a view of it he had not seen before. Behind the building in which he had been questioned were a series of massive, rectangular landing pads. Some contained ships, others featured enormous landing struts like the ones they had made their touchdown on the previous day. In fact, the Doctor could clearly see the ship the Blakely family had chartered, still supported in
its landing position. But it wasn’t the ships Jenibeth was squealing about …

On one of the main walkways between the many landing pads, something was moving. From above, for a moment, it looked rather like a strange, metallic centipede, weaving its way along. But on closer examination, the Doctor could see that each circular segment of this ‘creature’ bristled with two flashing lights and a single, twitching stalk. This was a large squad of Daleks, moving with purpose.

‘Daleks,’ muttered the Doctor. ‘Like they’re expecting me. Hmm. They’re always expecting me. So they should.’

He turned to Ollus, who was playing with his spaceship toy again, ducking and diving it through the fizzing holograms it projected.

‘Get ready to take us in on manual control,’ said the Doctor.

Ollus immediately put his toy away into his pocket and returned his attention to the skimmer’s controls.

‘What if they see us?’ asked Sabel. ‘The Daleks, I mean.’

‘I don’t know,’ mused the Doctor. ‘I just don’t know. You see, they’re obviously trying to maintain the illusion of being …’ he screwed up his face as he had done before at the thought of it, “
nice
”. So they can’t just start shooting at us.’

‘Hey, there’s something else!’ called out Jenibeth. The Doctor and Sabel followed her gaze.

‘Isn’t that your crate thing that you said you arrived in?’ asked Sabel.

‘The TARDIS … yes,’ said the Doctor, crestfallen. ‘And it’s parked right next to a Dalek ship.’

Sure enough, the TARDIS was on one of the landing pads. Most of the pad was taken up by the large, circular shape of a Dalek saucer; but next to it, just squeezed into a corner of the pad was the TARDIS. And there was a Dalek on guard at its door.

‘Oh, this is just getting better and better,’ said the Doctor, with a flicker of delight growing inside him. ‘It’s a really obvious trap.’ It was one of those moments when he felt most alive. Pitted against an implacable enemy, he could almost
feel
his neurons firing.

‘Are we going to run away?’ asked Jenibeth.

‘I definitely think we should run away,’ said Sabel. ‘Ollus, turn this thing around and—’

‘No,’ said the Doctor, giving the Blakely children a broad smile and a wink. ‘I’ve got a plan.’

‘What plan?’ asked Sabel, looking terrified.

‘Ollus,’ the Doctor said. ‘Hand me your spaceship.’

Hellic Dansard had clambered aboard another police skimmer, which the police had summoned to the orphanage. It was his plan to be instrumental in recapturing the Doctor. Not exactly a traditional role for a defence lawyer, but frankly he was prepared to do anything to win back favour with the police court judge.

As the skimmer rose high above the city, Hellic bobbed up and down to see if there was any sign of the escaping Doctor.

‘Sit still, will ya?’ one of the policemen snapped. ‘You’re rockin’ the boat!’

‘Any sign of them?’ persisted Hellic. Then he looked over his shoulder as he heard several, deep whooshing sounds from behind. Out of the rear windows, he could see about ten other police skimmers approaching.

‘Now that’s what I call back-up,’ said the other policeman.

‘Squad Leader to all skimmers,’ squawked a throaty voice from the comms-link speaker. ‘Fugitive skimmer has been located approaching the main spaceport terminal. We are to proceed to intercept immediately. Let’s get moving!’

Hellic hung on to his seat as his stomach seemed to rise unpleasantly towards his throat. He looked around him. All the skimmers, including the one he was in, were peeling off and heading downwards, as if to attack. He didn’t know whether to feel excited or sick.

The Dalek guarding the TARDIS was scanning around the immediate vicinity. It had received command signals instructing it to prevent anyone from entering this craft at all costs. It knew that there was a whole squad of Daleks patrolling the area. If it came under attack, assistance would be close by.

Suddenly, for just a fraction of a second, its audio perceptors detected a noise from above. It recognised the sound as that of a Carthedian police skimmer. The Dalek scanned upwards. Nothing. Just the grey sky, rain falling and sporadic, distant skimmer traffic. This caused a disconnect in the Dalek’s reasoning. If it sounded as if a Carthedian police skimmer was there, then why was it not there?

As it was about to transmit a report to its command unit, its perceptors were bombarded with an excess of unexpected information. Fizzing across its entire visual spectrum, an energy field of some kind was opening up directly above it. The Dalek creature went into emergency mode; the fusion between its physical brain and the mass of technological assistance available to it was immediately being supplied with maximum adrenalin and processor speeds. Super-fast decisions had to be made. Data records instantly accessed from its memory bank showed the most likely match for the phenomenon unfolding above it was … a space-time warp.

Immediate conclusion: something was attacking Carthedia, arriving from another space-time location.

‘Emergency! Emergency!’ the Dalek instinctively squawked, beaming this message down all its internal comms network transmitters, informing every Dalek in the area. ‘Space-time warp materialisation—’

But suddenly it stopped speaking and transmitting. The space warp was mutating into a cascade of freezing, falling objects, hurling themselves through a darkened void towards the Dalek. Data records instantly accessed from its memory bank showed the most likely match: comets. Comets were on a collision course with Carthedia.

But then, before the Dalek could sound the alert about this, three gigantic planets heaved impossibly into view. One was orange, one blue and the other a dazzling rainbow mix – all were pulsing with light of such intensity that the Dalek felt itself thrown into utter confusion.

Abandoning all attempts at accurately identifying the threat, it simply squawked, ‘General alert! General alert! Under attack! Under attack!’

It immediately started firing its gun wildly; discharging full power beams, re-angling its gun, firing, re-angling, firing again and again and again in quick succession.

Hellic Dansard was feeling the charge of excitement from the sure and certain knowledge that his irritating ex-client was about to be apprehended. Hellic had never been on a police operation before, and he was starting to find this one pretty thrilling.

A whole squad of police skimmers were accompanying the skimmer in which he was flying. They were swooping down to the spaceport. The Doctor and the children would be hopelessly outnumbered. It would be a very easy arrest. And this time, he would make sure the Doctor was searched for offensive devices that had the capability to knock walls down!

His reputation would be saved and his career put back on track. No nasty surprises this time.

Then everything went wrong.

The skimmer shook violently as something impacted on it.

‘What the hell?’ screamed one of the policemen as the dashboard exploded in a shower of sparks. ‘We’ve been hit! By what?’

Panic-stricken, Hellic looked out of the windscreen and through the windows all around the skimmer. Screeching up towards them from ground level were
flashes of energy, seemingly fired at random. To the left, one of them caught a nearby police skimmer front and centre. The entire vehicle burst into a crackling mass of piercing blue light, with the officers inside horribly illuminated like X-ray images, their mouths wide open in silent screams of agony drowned out by the explosion.

Hellic could see that all the other skimmers were peeling off and flying away as fast as they could. He noticed, however, that his skimmer was rapidly losing height. The thrum of the engine had stopped. They were free falling.

The policemen were flicking switches and pressing buttons, but to no avail.

All at once, the thought struck Hellic that this might well be the end of his chances of promotion.

The Dalek guard by the TARDIS was still firing wildly into the air as the Doctor’s stolen skimmer came into land just a few feet away from the gigantic Dalek saucer, expertly piloted by young Ollus Blakely. The doors immediately opened.

‘Well done, Ollus!’ said the Doctor, leaping out and getting his bearings.

‘General alert! General alert!’ the Dalek was squawking, more and more agitatedly.

Jenibeth stood close to the Doctor, pulling at his trouser leg.

‘Why’s it gone bonkers?’ she asked.

‘I did something clever,’ said the Doctor.

‘With Ollus’s spaceship?’ asked Sabel.

‘Yes,’ said the Doctor, already trying to work out
how they were going to get into the TARDIS. It was directly behind the Dalek. The trouble was, the Dalek was, indeed, behaving as if it were ‘bonkers’. It seemed to be almost shadow-boxing with an invisible opponent, moving back and forth and side to side, swivelling its dome and waving its eyestalk around crazily, firing its gun upwards, spraying energy beams in all directions. Even though it was clearly thoroughly occupied and not at all likely to notice them, creeping round it to get into the TARDIS was going to be tricky. There was the danger, for instance, that it might suddenly reverse into them or accidentally blast them with its gun.

At that moment, another police skimmer came screaming out of the sky and thudded into the Dalek. Both exploded on impact, the Dalek screeching a high-pitched squawk as its casing burst open into thousands of white hot fragments.

‘Down!’ screamed the Doctor, dragging the children as fast as he could behind the huge curved hull of the parked Dalek saucer. He crashed to the landing-pad floor with them just in time, as debris from the explosion smashed into their skimmer. The shrapnel whistled past, superheating the air around it. The Doctor felt a couple of near misses just above his hair and grasped the children as tightly and as close as he could, shielding them with his body.

Fairly quickly, the cacophony subsided and the Doctor stood bolt upright, pulling the children up with him. Their own skimmer was distinctly shredded; but there was almost nothing left of the Dalek or indeed the skimmer that had crashed into it.

‘That was … lucky,’ said the Doctor, breathlessly. ‘About time we had some luck. Thought I’d run out of it for a moment there.’

Jenibeth screamed. The Doctor winced. ‘What’s the mat—’ he began.

‘That’s not!’ said Sabel, pointing to a walkway beyond the landing pad.

‘Not what?’ asked the Doctor as he followed her gaze. ‘Oh.’

‘Not lucky,’ said Ollus.

A whole squad of Daleks was heading towards them.

‘Halt! You are our prisoners!’ screamed the Squad Leader. ‘You have trespassed on Dalek sovereign territory! Halt!’

‘Dalek sovereign …?’ mumbled the Doctor, scoffing at such a term. ‘What a load of rubbish.’ He raised his voice to them. ‘You don’t fool me, you know!’

‘Are we going to get into your crate?’ asked Ollus, gently cradling his beloved toy spaceship.

‘Yes, come on,’ said the Doctor, leading them across the landing pad, past the smouldering debris and towards the inviting blue doors of his ship.

‘Hadn’t we better hurry?’ asked Sabel.

‘Nah,’ said the Doctor. ‘We’re standing right in front of a Dalek flying saucer. They won’t risk damaging that.’

Suddenly, several scorching beams of energy tore through the air and exploded into the saucer hull, just a few feet away from them.

‘Blimey, they
are
in a mood today!’ cried the Doctor as he suddenly started sprinting, dragging the children
with him. ‘Come ooooon!’