Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks (3 page)

Sergeant Smith was hovering waiting to do something.

Gilmore ordered him to call up further reinforcements and an ambulance. The Doctor frowned at this and told him that reinforcements weren’t going to make any difference.

‘My men have just put three fragmentation grenades into a confined space; nothing even remotely human could have survived that.’

The Doctor’s eyes fixed on Gilmore’s. ‘That’s the point, Group Captain,’ the Doctor said softly. ‘It isn’t even remotely human.’

The warrior’s sensors were still flaring from the aftermath of the explosions. A blizzard of metal had engulfed it; there was damage, but it was minor – only chips off its armour. It quickly sought to regain its perception of the outside world.

The first data came from modulated signals in the low frequency electromagnetic spectrum. The battle computer identified them as communications: the enemy was seeking to communicate, perhaps with its gestalt, probably ordering up more forces. Target-seeking routines locked on to the source; infra-red detectors once more probed through the wall of smoke.

A primitive vehicle was the source. The warrior could make out the shifting blur of an enemy partly masked by the cold metal. A data search lasting nanoseconds brought priorities: neutralize communications, destroy the force opposing it, crush all resistance, obliterate the enemy for the glory of the race. Fulfilment of its function brought a strange excitement within the warrior’s twisted body.

A very real and terrible emotion.

Mike was out of the van and in the air before any details of the attack registered: a bang, glass in the side window shattering, the radio handset slapped out of his hands, the smell of ozone, and the ground slowly rising to meet him as he dived out of the open door. He tucked in his head and felt the world roll over his shoulders; he could smell the dust of the yard. Mike snapped to his feet still holding his submachine-gun.

Private John Lewis Abbot counted himself an old soldier at twenty-six years of age and definitely planned to live long enough to fade away. The rest of the squad shared this ambition. To them hostile fire was hostile fire, whether it was a machine-gun round or a funny looking bolt of lightning, and everyone dived for cover and then blazed away in the direction of the enemy until Gilmore yelled at them to wait for a target. Abbot crouched down, snapped a new clip of ammunition into his rifle and carefully sighted down the barrel, waiting for a target.

Then it came.

It was grey and metallic, a stunted thing that glided with ugly grace out of the smoke. A tube protruding from the smooth top dome swung deliberately from side to side.

Energy belched from a gunstick midway down the thing’s body.

It was a target and Abbot fired.

The FN-FAL automatic rifle is a Belgian design which weighs 4.98 kilograms loaded and fires a full-sized cartridge. The 7.62 millimetre bullet leaves the muzzle at 2756 feet per second and has an effective range of 650

metres; at close range the bullet can pass through a concrete wall. In accordance with British military doctrine that an aimed round is worth twenty fired rapidly, the FN-FAL used by the RAF Regiment fires single shots only —

one squeeze on the trigger, one carefully aimed round fired.

In the first second of the firefight the target was struck at close range by seventy-three carefully aimed rounds.

The bullets bounced off the target’s armour to ricochet uselessly into the junkyard.

‘Give me some of that nitro-nine you’re not carrying,’

said the Doctor. Ace unpacked what looked like a grey can of deodorant from her rucksack and passed it over. The Doctor looked anxiously over his shoulder. ‘Another,’ he demanded.

‘It’s my last can.’

‘I should hope so too. The fuse, how long?’

‘Ten seconds.’

‘Long enough!’

Rachel ducked as a bolt of energy blew a hole in a bit of nearby machinery and shrapnel whined over her head.

Cautiously she looked over the bonnet of the Bedford. It has to be a machine, she reasoned, perhaps a sort of remote-controlled tank. The stalk at the top had to be a camera, but the weapon... a light-maser, but how many megawatts would it take to generate a beam?

The thing fired again, and this time Rachel traced the path of the bolt. I can see it moving, it can’t be coherent light. Perhaps it’s superheated plasma? She continued to search for an explanation.

Gilmore yelled over the noise at her: ‘When I tell you, take the girl and make for the gate.’

A man shrieked somewhere off to the right.

Gilmore frowned as he pushed shells into his revolver, then, bracing his arms on the bonnet, he looked over his shoulder. ‘Now, Rachel, go!’

It wasn’t until later that Rachel realized that Gilmore had called her by her first name.

Gilmore was about to fire when he saw the Doctor running forward. Ducking round a metal pillar the Doctor whistled at the squat metal machine. ‘Oi, Dalek,’ he shouted, ‘over here. It’s me, the Doctor!’

Gilmore watched in horror as the eyestalk swivelled to focus on the Doctor, who seemed to be pulling the tops off a pair of aerosol cans. The machine had paused as if it were uncertain.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ the Doctor shouted irritably. ‘Don’t you recognize your sworn enemy?’

Ducking, the Doctor placed the cans by a large stack of bricks. As the machine moved towards him, the Doctor crept away towards Gilmore’s position.

Three.

A quiver of anticipation ran through the warrior as its battle computer verified the data. Desire ran hot through sluggish veins, its internal life support compensating for the sudden demand on blood sugar. There was a high probability that this was the Doctor, the
Ka Faraq Gatri
—

the enemy of the Daleks.

Four.

The Doctor desperately zigzagged as bolts of energy flared around him...

Five.

... reproaching himself for being in this ridiculous situation, he decided to blame the human race for it...

Six.

... rather then worry about the homicidal Dalek behind him...

Seven.

... or the vagaries of Ace’s chemistry or how many red bricks it takes to crack a Dalek or...

A kilogram of nitro-nine exploded eight metres behind him.

Luckily the ground broke his fall.

He stayed where he was, his eyes focused on the dirt in front of his face: there he noticed two ants fighting for possession of a tiny fragment of leaf.

Ace was shouting somewhere. Feet thundered towards the Doctor, and then hands tugged at his arm. Sighing quietly he rose to his feet. Ace was bounding agitatedly at his elbow. ‘You said ten seconds,’ he said slowly.

‘No one’s perfect, Professor.’ She moved back as the Doctor violently brushed dust off his coat. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Of course.’ He sounded surprised. ‘Can you drive a truck?’

‘Why?’

‘Good, I thought so. Come on.’

The machine lay cracked open. Something green oozed between shattered metal and bits of brick. Rachel started towards it.

‘I want a full emergency team here on the double,’

Gilmore was telling Mike behind her. ‘And put a guard on this site. I want a weapons team at Coal Hill School and I want them armed with ATRs.’

Mike answered and left.

Rachel carefully removed a chunk of brick from the upper casing; a fetid odour of zinc and vinegar invaded her nose. Allison passed her a metal probe which she used to poke out a sample of tissue.

‘It has an organic component.’

‘Or an occupant,’ said Allison.

‘What the devil is it?’ asked Gilmore.

‘A Dalek,’ said the Doctor.

Ace gave the ignition key another savage twist, cursing stone-age technology under her breath.

‘Trouble is, it’s the wrong Dalek.’

Aced looked over the primitive dashboard, hunting for something to start the van. ‘What would the right Dalek be like? Better or worse?’

‘Guess.’

The engine turned over and juddered to a stop.

‘Choke,’ said the Doctor.

‘No thanks.’

The Doctor reached over and pulled out a knob on the dashboard. Ace turned the key and the engine revved up. Ace made a stab at the gears and the van lurched forward. The driver’s door slammed backwards and Mike angrily stuck in his head.

‘Oi!’ he shouted over the engine noise. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Borrowing your van,’ the Doctor said cheerily as Ace put her foot down and the van roared away. Ace caught a glimpse of Mike’s astonished face as she veered the van out of the junkyard and left into Totters Lane.

‘These Dahliks?’

‘Daleks,’ the Doctor corrected.

‘Daleks, whatever. Where are they from?’

‘Skaro. Left here.’

‘When were they left here?’

‘No, no,’ cried the Doctor, ‘turn left here.’

‘Right,’ Ace heaved on the steering wheel and sent the van careering down a narrow street. That’s funny, thought Ace, I didn’t know they had one-way systems in 1963.

Oncoming traffic started to behave in a peculiar manner.

‘Concentrate on where you’re going,’ shouted the Doctor.

‘I’m doing the best I can,’ Ace yelled. A narrow railway bridge loomed in front of them. ‘If you don’t like it, you drive.’

The van plunged into darkness.

They emerged into the light and the Doctor was driving. Ace stared at his umbrella which she was now holding. The seats, dashboard and steering wheel were all in the right positions – it was just that the Doctor was sitting behind the wheel and Ace was in the passenger seat.

I think I’ll just decide that never happened, she decided.

‘The Daleks,’ resumed the Doctor, ‘are the mutated remains of a race called the Kaleds.’

The Doctor remembered that time when he stepped out of a petrified forest and saw a city of metal spread out under an alien sky. He thought of Temmosus, the Thal leader, screaming for peace and friendship even as a Dalek gunned him down. Images of people, the last desperate rush to thwart the Dalek’s plan to mine the Earth’s core.

Crawling among the thousands of dormant warriors in the ice caves of Spiridon, and then later, the Time Lords’

intervention and Davros.

‘The Kaleds were at war with the Thals. They had a dirty nuclear war in which evolution of the resulting mutations was accelerated by the Kaleds’ chief scientist Davros. What he created he placed in metal war machines and that is how the Daleks came about.’

His mind again went back to Skaro, a planet wasted and broken by a centuries-long conflict – all rubble, death and mutations. From the debris rose the stench of corruption: Davros, rotting and grotesque, gloating over the death of his own people. ‘The Daleks will be all powerful! They will bring peace throughout the galaxy, they are the superior beings.’

‘So that metal thing had a creature inside controlling it?’ asked Ace.

‘Exactly. Ever since their creation the Daleks have been attempting to conquer and enslave as much of the universe as they could get their grubby little protruberances on.’

‘And they want to conquer the Earth?’

‘Nothing so mundane. They conquer the Earth in the 22nd century. No, they want the Hand of Omega.’

‘The what?’

But the Doctor had said enough for the moment. ‘One thing at a time, Ace. First we have to discover what’s going on at the school.’

UNIT had its roots in the Intrusion Counter Measures Group established in 1961, under the command of Group Captain Ian Gilmore of the newly formed Royal Air Force Regiment. Staffed with Royal Air Force personnel it was charged with the task of protecting the UK from covert actions by hostile powers and mounting intelligence operations against such a threat. In 1963 it was involved in what later came to be known as the Shoreditch Incident, details of which have never emerged, even to this day.

The Zen Military – A History of UNIT

by Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart (2006)

Maybury Hall was a sprawling red brick building near the Hendon base. It was usually used for recreation, but Group Captain Gilmore had requisitioned it as his headquarters.

Now in the billiard room the portrait of the Queen looked down on teleprinters, radios and field telephones; in the officer’s club the lower ranks sat with feet up on oak tables and stubbed out Woodbines in crystal ashtrays.

Gilmore decided that he needed a field base closer to the area of operations. Sergeant Smith might be able to help on that: Smith had connections in the Shoreditch area, like that man Ratcliffe. Smith had brought him in, a short, broad-shouldered man with the unmistakeable bearing of a soldier. Smith said that Ratcliffe ran the Shoreditch Association and that the manpower it could mobilize would be useful to them for ancillary tasks. Gilmore had agreed to notify him if they were needed. Something, however, nagged at Gilmore’s memory: Ratcliffe – I’ve heard that name before. But he had far more important things to occupy him.

George Ratcliffe walked out of Maybury Hall into the weak sunshine. Mike escorted him past the guards on the gate.

‘Where are you parked?’

‘Just round the corner.’

Once they were out of the gates Ratcliffe turned to him.

‘Your group captain,’ he said to Mike, ‘is he a patriot?’

‘Yes,’ said Mike, ‘a good one.’

Allison was sketching the machine’s innards from memory. Rachel looked over her shoulder and made the occasional suggestion.

‘The weapon stick,’ said Rachel as Allison’s pencil started marking out the curve of the complicated gimble joint, ‘what do you think?’

‘If it’s not a light-maser I don’t have any viable ideas.

One thing, though,’ she flipped pages to show another sketch, ‘this seemed to be the control line, but...’

‘It wasn’t electrical wiring,’ finished Rachel. ‘No, it was something like extruded glass, a very pure glass fibre.’

Concepts formed in Rachel’s mind: she envisaged bursts of coherent light modulated to carry digital signals down a net of pure glass fibre... The image broke up. ‘I must be getting tired,’ she said. ‘I had an idea and then it just went out of my mind.’ She shrugged and looked at the sketch again. ‘We need to get it to a decent biology lab.’