Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks (15 page)

Section two advance,
ordered the shuttle-commander,
for
the glory of the Emperor and the
Ven-Katri Davrett.

The girl was the battle computer; the battle computer was the girl. Locked into symbiosis they fed the tactical situation to the Dalek Supreme.

The Dalek Supreme felt the imperial Daleks start their attack. Strange, alien emotions were creating problems for its life support systems. The girl’s feelings were bleeding through the gestalt interface into the Dalek Supreme. She was playing. Each tactical problem thrown up by the battle computer was a game to her. Guided by the two thousand years of experience stored in the data banks she was solving them, each solution triggering a shot of energy to the pleasure centres in her brain.

The girl was having
fun
.

For one vertiginous moment the Dalek Supreme wanted to skip.

Section two advanced towards the shadows that hid the mouth of the tunnel. They moved slowly, their power plants generating a complex overlapping pattern of sensor waves.

The remains of scout seven marked the range of the renegade ECM pods. The imperial Dalcks switched to infra-red, eyesticks hunting for targets. As they passed scout seven the ECM attack began. This time the waves of static hit the sensor wave pattern put out by the imperial Daleks. The method of ECM attack had been studied and analysed during the costly attacks on the northern and southern routes. This time the imperial Daleks were ready.

The silent electronic battle continued as section two advanced. The harmonics created by the conflict of sensor wave against sensor wave caused the nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere to vibrate faster. The air around the imperial Daleks began to shimmer with heat. They continued to advance.

A blaster bolt flashed out from the renegade positions. It struck the lead imperial just below its gunstick. The superheated plasma punched a fist-sized hole through the armour, ripped into the Dalek’s innards and exploded. For a moment the top casing contained a fireball as hot as a hydrogen bomb. Then the top of the Dalek vanished in a burst of light.

The remaining imperial Daleks zeroed in on the place where the attack had originated.

On the shuttle commander’s situation map, one of the grey blobs sharpened to a hard point.
Exterminate
, ordered the shuttle commander,
now
!

Five gunsticks jerked into position. Computer-enhanced vision locked on to the shadows of an alcove near the end of the tunnel. Five tiny parcels of death, the air screaming in their wake, raced away from the imperial Daleks.

The renegade warrior saw the incoming bolts. With a convulsive burst of its motor it vainly tried to shift out of danger. The first bolt smashed away the wall that had sheltered the Dalek, the rest smacked into its body. The renegade went spinning backwards, breaking up into flaming pieces as it went.

The grey diamond on the situation map winked out. The shuttle commander noted that the grey blobs marking estimated renegade positions were beginning to move.

Each movement gave away a renegade’s exact position.

This was according to plan.

A renegade warrior shot across the far end of the tunnel.

The imperial Daleks immediately tracked it, again laying down the co-ordinated fire that had been so devastating before.

While their attention was occupied by the first renegade, however, two grey Daleks slipped sideways into position and fired. A glancing hit immobilized one imperial; another was hit just below its comm-light and exploded. The two renegades slipped out of sight before the imperial Daleks could respond.

The Dalek Supreme was fighting another bout of disorientation. Its normally sluggish heartbeat was speeding past safety parameters. Its life support computer was administering greater and greater doses of tranquillizers in an effort to compensate. The drugs made it hard for the Dalek Supreme to concentrate, and it was forced to leave the conduct of the battle to the girl and the battle computer.

The central front was weakening and the entire renegade reserve of six warriors had been ordered in to strengthen it. The girl, wrapped in her cocoon of data and warm electronic pleasure, smiled. Even if the imperials committed all their remaining Daleks they would never reach the warehouse in time to stop the renegades’ escape.

The Emperor watched as the last white diamond on the situation map blinked once and vanished.

Section two has been annihilated,
reported the systems co-ordinator.
The shuttle commander is planning to commit the
reserves.

Estimated time before renegade time corridor established?

asked the Emperor.

Twenty minutes,
reported scan-op.

The Emperor checked the situation map. Fools. Even with the reserves there was little chance of punching through the renegade defences before their time corridor was established. I made them cunning, it thought, but also too rigid. The shuttle commander has the perfect weapon but will not use it. That is why I am Emperor.

The Emperor opened a direct channel to the shuttle commander.
Move the special weapons Dalek into position,
it transmitted.

Mike stared at the Formica top of the table. Facing him across its cracked and stained surface sat Corporal Grant. A fifty watt bulb cast gigantic shadows off the boiler and the broken Dalek transmat. The cellar smelt of old iron and damp wood.

Mike wanted to understand the hatred in Ace’s eyes.

There was a bruise on his chest where she had struck him.

Mike was sure Ace would have tried to kill him if he had provoked her further. He had seen that look once before, in Singapore. Mike had been on the last dregs of a twenty-four hour pass in some nameless bar in the red light district. Fans churned the sluggish air around the room as he spent his money on the local beer and eyed up the talent. The pale faces of the soldiers were slick with sweat.

The fight started suddenly. A bottle shattered; a big sailor staggered back roaring, one hand clutching his shoulder. Blood welled from between his fingers. There was a struggle at the end of the bar – three Navy ratings were trying to restrain a fourth. He was a small sailor with a ferret-like face. Clutching a broken bottle, he fought to be free of the other men.

The big sailor looked stupidly at the blood on his hand, and then at the ferret-faced sailor. The big sailor swore and lurched forward, cocking his red-stained fist. The smaller man struggled in silence, lips pulled back to show his teeth. Then Mike saw his eyes. They were bright with violence; Mike knew that the big sailor was going to die.

He was saved by the Chinese barman who leaped over the bar and waved a meat cleaver at both men. The sailor with the ferret face was dragged from the bar by his friends; the big sailor backed away from the barman, hands raised in a placatory gesture. The barman lowered his meat cleaver and went back behind the bar. It was the barman’s eyes that reminded Mike of Ace’s — they had showed vehemence and contempt in equal measure.

Why did she look at me as if I were rubbish? Mike wanted some answers.

‘Tea?’ asked Corporal Grant.

‘Yeah,’ said Mike, ‘thanks.’

Grant pushed his chair away from the table. Mike watched him as he got up. The corporal, like all professional soldiers, had his tea-making gear stashed nearby. As Grant turned and walked to the corner of the cellar Mike stood up and stepped away from the table. His chair scraped against the floor, and alerted by the sound Grant turned and said: ‘Come on, Sarge.’

It was funny that Grant knew what Mike intended, before he knew himself.

Grant went for his pistol, but Mike got to him first.

Rachel was dizzy from sliding down the rope. She tried to look round as Gilmore hustled her through a hatchway, but it was all a dark blur. She touched the doorframe as she stepped through. The metal had a weird texture, almost like plastic. Rachel sniffed her fingers and gingerly tasted one with her tongue. It tasted tinny.

Inside the next chamber was a Dalek, set into a podium.

The Doctor was beside it, holding a long thin tube. Rachel recognized it as a Dalek manipulator arm. Ace was tapping the inert Dalek with her forefinger.

‘What did you do to it?’ she asked the Doctor.

‘I short-circuited it,’ said the Doctor. He turned to look at Rachel. ‘Daleks are such boring conversationalists.’

Rachel looked around. Bulkheads of the strange metal sloped inwards, the ceiling was bare and of the same metal.

Apart from the Dalek and what she assumed was a control podium, there were no other fittings.

‘I can’t see any controls,’ said Rachel.

‘What would a Dalek do with a switch?’ said the Doctor.

He slotted the plunger end of the manipulator arm into a shallow depression in the side of the control podium. ‘The Daleks plug in direct.’

The Doctor twisted the arm. There was a series of clicks and the plunger was locked in. The Doctor started to sort through the fine cables that hung out of the free end of the manipulator arm.

‘It’s very functional,’ said Allison.

‘Daleks are not known for their aesthetic sense,’ said the Doctor. He made an adjustment to the wires. There was a low hum. A wide rectangle of light formed in front of the inert Dalek, hanging in space two inches from the front bulkhead.

A television picture, thought Rachel, projected on to thin air. Rachel remembered the extruded glass fibre cables they found in the destroyed Daleks. She had a sudden vision of bursts of coherent light carrying digitized information at the speed of light. A picture built up of digital information, spat out of an electron gun. No, not an electron gun, she realized, a light-maser through a flat prism decoded into the thin air. Gods, a three-dimensional image.

Rachel snapped out of her thoughts to find the Doctor had turned his head towards her. His eyes were grey and intense. Rachel felt them peeling away her face, looking into her mind.

‘No,’ said the Doctor, ‘not for twenty years.’

Rachel blinked. The Doctor had his back to her, working on the manipulator arm. Rachel shook her head to clear it.

‘Now,’ said the Doctor, ‘let’s see if we can find out just what they are up to.’

The screen flickered, a grid of white lines formed.

Bright points of light scattered across the picture, tiny symbols in red and green labelled them.

A starmap, decided Rachel.

The Doctor made some more adjustments and different patterns formed – a blue and green planet symbol. It was the Earth. Now a complex pattern of’short, angular arrows wove its way through the starmap. ‘What are those?’ asked Rachel.

‘Four-dimensional vectors,’ said the Doctor. ‘They mark the path the imperial Dalek mothership will take.’ He pointed to a cluster of lines. ‘See, they’re shifting to compensate for the Earth’s orbital shift and the passing of time – I did mention that these Daleks can travel in time.’

‘Yeah,’ said Ace, ‘but it’s very crude and nasty.’

She’s doing it again, thought Rachel, I hate it when she does that.

‘That’s the Earth,’ said the Doctor, pointing. ‘That must be the time corridor that connects it to another system.’

The screen jumped, different stars again. This time the vectors pointed inwards, towards an orange star at the centre of the screen.

‘The planet Skaro,’ said the Doctor. His voice was suddenly soft. ‘So, the Daleks have returned to their ancestral seat.’

The Dalek was insane. Radiation had altered the structure of its mind and made it mad. The mark of its insanity was, that of all Daleks in the great race of Daleks, it had a name.

It was called the Abomination.

They had given it another name: in the imperial battle roster it was listed as the special weapons Dalek.

The Emperor had decreed its creation.

They had ripped it from its birthing cradle, aware like all Daleks. They had taken it and placed it in its shell and given it functions. But the shell they gave it was wrong, twisted, a single function monstrosity – a vast weapon and the power plant to drive it. They led it to the firing range and had it destroy to order. As it fired the first backwash of radiation sleeted through its fragile body.

It served in many campaigns:
Pa Jass-Gutrik
, the war of vengeance against the Movellans;
Pa Jaski-Thal
, the liquidation war against the Thals; and
PaJass-Vortan
, the time campaign – the war to end all wars.

Every time it fought, the radiation from its pulse gun saturated its life support chamber. Chromosomes altered shape, its vestigial pituitary gland became active and hormones chased unfettered through its bloodstream. It became changed, twisted and insane. It committed the blasphemy of knowing who it was.

The other Daleks feared it for its sense of self and for its name. They would have destroyed it. Only the will of the Emperor kept it alive.

The shuttle commander activated the special command circuit. The Abomination’s mind came alive with data.

The situation map flashed into its forebrain. Designated targets were staked out in yellow.

The power plant ran up to full operation. Slowly the two-tonne bulk of the special weapons Dalek rose off the road surface. Section four formed up behind it. The command net channelled their sensor readings directly into the situation map.

The special weapons Dalek turned the corner and moved on towards the tunnel mouth. Target renegade warriors showed up as pink blobs as sensors homed in on their heat emissions.

At forty metres range, two renegade Daleks broke cover and cut across the far end of the tunnel. The special weapons Dalek’s scopes pinned them in digital crosswires.

A fire was lit in the belly of the Abomination.

At thirty metres range the special weapons Dalek halted.

Its huge gun twisted in its mount. The fire in its belly erupted and was spat out the barrel at the renegade Daleks.

In a single instant the two Daleks boiled away into the atmosphere. The concussion rocked the special weapons Dalek backwards. Then it drove on, seeking new targets.