Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks (9 page)

Instinct told her to keep moving, but she was running out of classroom. She vaulted on to a bench, hoping to run past the Dalek and through the door. The Dalek fired again; the cabinet behind Ace exploded.

The Dalek blocked the doorway.

Ace pounded along the bench, the partition window rushing towards her. At the last moment she flung her arms in front of her face, screamed and jumped.

There was an agonizing moment of stillness.

Her forearms and then her shoulders silently bore the impact, and then she felt herself falling. The sharp crackle of breaking glass somewhere behind her shattered the silence, and then she bounced off the corridor wall.

The Dalek continued to scream and glass rained onto the floor as Ace scrambled to her feet. Bat still in hand she ran for the stairway, ignoring a sharp pain from her left ankle.

There was another Dalek at the top of the stairs.

Woman and Dalek saw each other at the same time.

Ace screamed as she charged forward.

The Dalek hesitated.

Ace gave it a vicious backhanded swing as she went past, and fragments of polycarbide exploded off the Dalek’s casing. She took the staircase in two leaps, screaming again as she came down on her injured ankle.

She saw the dead soldier as she skidded into the entrance hall. Beside his sprawled body lay his gun and a rifle grenade. Ace grabbed the weapons and limped for the exit.

The commander of the Dalek attack squad had no name, yet it knew what it was. That was enough – it would always he enough. It puzzled over the reports from scouts one and two.

Scout one had sighted a small human female on level three. The commander had expected extermination details to follow, but scout one had instead registered severe damage. The female was using a weapon of advanced design and had disabled the scout. This was outside the parameters established for the operation.

Eight seconds after the attack on scout one, scout two sighted the female. It reported behaviour inconsistent with human response predictions.

The commander immediately tagged the female as an intruder human – one either not from this planet or from this temporal zone – or both. It recalled two undamaged warriors and assigned them intercept positions. Only one intruder was allowed for in the operational parameters –

the Time Lord known as the Doctor. The commander issued a capture directive specified under the human section of Dalek battle tactics. The female was to be intimidated into surrender.

The commander entered the school entrance hall; it immediately sighted the female. The female now exhibited the expected reactions of fear and flight, accelerating away in the inefficient controlled fall of bipedal locomotion. The commander notified the two warriors to close in while it pursued the female.

As Ace entered the playground, the commander sprang its trap: it and the other warriors closed in on her. Again, the commander considered, the human deviated from normal human behavioural patterns, even as the intimidation took place.

‘Exterminate!’

The voices rebounded off the walls and crowded Ace’s mind; they made it difficult to think, harder to act.

‘Exterminate!’

Three Daleks. There was a sickness in her stomach as she realized that blind aggression was not going to save her now. But why had they not killed her?

‘Exterminate!’

The rifle was clumsy in her fingers; the grenade kept slipping off. She was determined to take one of them with her.

‘Exterminate!’

They were on every side – an alien wall of white and gold. She knew she was going to die.

The Doctor is going to be really angry this time, she thought.

The commander monitored the female carefully, wary of more unpredictable behaviour. It contacted the mothership through the communications relay in the transmat below and demanded reinforcements.

It had just finished when communications were drowned in static. Co-ordination systems suddenly malfunctioned; motor circuits failed to respond. With dimming vision the commander saw the female scuttle away. It tried to fire but its weapon failed. Wild power fluctuations disrupted the incubator, and it felt a sudden intense physical pain. There was a fleeting sensation of enemies, humans near itself. Spiridon, it screamed silently, the Doctor.

Sudden heat and oblivion.

Ace fell down a few metres away from the Daleks. They were thrashing about, their gunsticks waving erratically. A weird moaning issued from somewhere deep within their shells.

Over the sound, Ace heard sontone – was it Mike? –

shouting orders. Then the Doctor cried: ‘It worked!’

Figures in uniform darted among the Daleks, sticking grey plastic blobs on to the casings. Then they were gone.

‘Get down,’ shouted Mike.

Ace understood what the grey blobs were and threw her arms over her head.

There was a deafening noise and it started raining bits of Dalek.

Saturday, 14:55

Perhaps the most notable of the Cambridge Group in the 1950s was Professor Rachel Jensen. Hardly recognized outside the scientific community despite her pivotal work with Turing during the war, she retired suddenly in 1964.

Her autobiography
The Electrical Dreamer
is curiously vague as to why. She married a year later.

The Women That Science Forgot

by Rowan Sesay (1983)

Three explosions occurred in quick succession: smoke belched out of the entrance to the covered playground.

Three white and gold Daleks had brewed up in the confined space. Rachel clutched a carbon dioxide extinguisher and dashed into the smoke. There was an unidentifiable stench that reminded her of burning fat.

The Doctor stared at the shattered Daleks, his face unreadable.

‘There were living beings in there,’ he said.

Mike looked at the smoking remains. ‘Not anymore.’

Gilmore holstered his gun and turned to Mike. ‘Search the area upstairs.’

Mike took from the Doctor the device that had confused the Daleks and led a squad into the school buildings.

Rachel beckoned to Allison and they cautiously approached the trio of Daleks. The top dome of one had been blown off by the plastic explosive. Smears of carbon ran down the shoulder flanges, and vapour rose from the shattered bowl at the top. Rachel thought she saw something move amid the tangle of wiring.

‘Doctor,’ called Rachel, backing away and pulling Allison with her. ‘I think this one is still active.’

The Doctor hurried over. Something clattered under Allison’s foot – Ace’s baseball bat. The Doctor peered into the steaming interior of the Dalek.

Rachel heard something – a sharp scuttling movement in the interior.

‘Interesting,’ breathed the Doctor.

Rachel backed further away from the Dalek, picking her way through the metal and organic scraps scattered over the rough concrete.

The sound inside the Dalek ceased, and the Doctor leaned closer for a better look. Rachel suppressed the urge to scream.

A grey-green thing reared out of the Dalek and lashed out at the Doctor – it was a twisted claw. Rachel screamed.

Grey ropy strands erupted around the claw as it fastened on the Doctor’s throat.

Allison fell backwards, fumbling for something on the ground. Tubes – or were they veins? – pulsed on the spindly wrist, the bony fingers clutching at the Doctor’s neck. His hands were pulling at the gripping claw, his face was beginning to mottle.

Then Allison was beside him, her arm swinging down, the baseball bat an arc of silver. Energy exploded from the shrivelled arm. The Dalek screamed. Allison hit it again and again. She kept on bringing down the bat, and each time liquid spattered her face and the walls.

‘Allison,’ said the Doctor.

Allison upended the bat and savagely ground it into the Dalek. There was a grisly crunching sound.

‘Allison,’ said the Doctor, restraining her. ‘It’s dead.’

Allison flinched. There was a clatter as the bat fell to the ground.

‘Thank you,’ the Doctor said softly, leading her away from the Dalek.

‘What was that?’ said Rachel. It seemed an inadequate thing to say.

‘They’ve mutated again.’ The Doctor calmly inspected the stinking cavity. ‘Here, have a look.’ He made space for her. ‘It’s all right, it’s dead now. Compare this with the destroyed Dalek at Totter’s Lane. Look at the differences.’

Ace checked herself for injuries. Her leg was painful and on her upper arm there was a nasty bruise which she had got when she smashed through the window. Her ribs hurt

– she took a deep breath but there was no sharp pain. No ribs broken then, she thought. Carefully, Ace picked a sliver of glass from her jacket sleeve and considered getting up.

Just give it a few seconds, she decided, to get my breath back. She wasn’t yet ready to face the Doctor. She watched as Rachel stooped over the Dalek.

‘The other Dalek was underdeveloped,’ said Rachel,

‘with vestigial limbs and sensory organs, almost amoeboid.

This is altogether different, it has functional appendages with some kind of mechanical prosthesis grafted on to its body.’

Functional appendages, thought Ace, remembering the claw, that’s one way of putting it.

Rachel’s face had collapsed in disgust. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

Ace decided to draw attention to herself. She tried to get up. ‘Don’t anyone give me a hand.’

Allison rushed over. ‘You’re hurt?’

‘I had an argument with a window.’

The Doctor was suddenly there kneeling beside her. He motioned Allison away. ‘You two had better check the cellar, but don’t touch anything.’

He stared at them, watching until they went. Then he turned to Ace.

Now I’m going to get it, she thought.

‘When I say stay put, I mean stay put,’ said the Doctor,

‘not take on an entire Dalek assault squad single-handed.’

He ran practised fingers along Ace’s leg, checking the damage. Before Ace could stop him he hooked one palm under her knee and brought it sharply upwards. The leg twinged.

Ace gasped.

‘Why did you come here?’ asked the Doctor.

‘I left my tape deck here.’

‘Where is it now?’

Good question! she thought. ‘In little bits,’ she said ruefully.

‘Good,’ said the Doctor.

‘What do you mean "good"?’ Ace was astonished. ‘Where am I going to get another one?’

‘Your tape deck was a dangerous anachronism. If somebody had found it and discovered the principles of its function the whole microchip revolution would take place twenty years too early, with uncalculable damage to the timeline.’

‘So?’ said Ace sullenly.

‘Ace,’ said the Doctor, ‘the Daleks have a starship up there with the capability of erasing this planet from space.

But even they, ruthless though they are, would think twice before making such a radical alteration to the timeline.’

There’s more to this time travel lark then meets the eye, decided Ace.

The Doctor reached out and pinched the lobe of her ear, once.

‘You should be able to get around on that leg now.’

Ace carefully got to her feet and tested her weight on the leg. It was still a bit shaky but the pain had gone.

‘Cheers, Professor.’

The Doctor smiled and picked up the baseball bat.

Rachel and Allison stood in the cellar and stared at the alien machine. Rachel’s fingers were itching. Inside the machine were secrets that could reshape the world. She wanted to get in there and have a good look at its guts.

‘The subject obviously is placed on the dais,’ said Allison. ‘Then what?’

‘The Doctor called it a transmat,’ said Rachel. ‘What does that imply to you?’

‘Matter transmission, but that’s...’

‘Impossible,’ said Rachel glumly. ‘You know, after this is over I’m going to retire and grow begonias.’

‘Lovely flowers, begonias,’ said the Doctor from the stairs.

‘Doctor,’ said Allison, ‘how exactly does this thing work?’

‘Don’t bother,’ said Rachel.

The Doctor stepped over to the transmat and casually ran his hand over it. ‘It’s a link for the Daleks, allowing them to beam attack squads on to Earth without anyone knowing it.’

He shook his head and raised the baseball bat as if feeling the weight of it. He smiled and then smashed the baseball bat down on the control panel: metal crumpled, energy flared off the bat, and coloured panels shattered.

There was a stink of ozone. ‘And I don’t want them here just yet.’ He punctuated every word with the baseball bat.

There was a splintering sound and the end of the bat flew off. It ricocheted off a wall and fell at Rachel’s feet. ‘Hah –

weapons,’ the Doctor looked at the remains of the handle,

‘always useless in the end.’

He looked at Rachel. She stared at him. Those remarkable eyes of his were full of energy.

‘Come on,’ he said, ‘there are things to be done.’

Mike came down the stairs smiling. When he saw Ace, the smile became wider.

‘I found this upstairs,’ he said, producing a Dalek eyepiece from behind his back, ‘in the chemistry lab. One of the Daleks seems to have lost it.’

Ace took the eyepiece from him, tossed it end over end and caught it. ‘I wonder how that happened?’

‘Somebody must have knocked it off,’ said Mike, ‘with a blunt instrument.’

Ace tossed the eyepiece up again. A hand snapped out and caught it in mid-air.

‘Where’s Gilmore?’ said the Doctor.

‘He’s coming,’ said Mike, gesturing at the stairs.

The Doctor waved the eyepiece at Ace. ‘It’s dangerous to play with Daleks, even bits of Daleks,’ he said and threw the eyepiece over his shoulder.

Gilmore emerged from the stairwell. ‘The area is clear of Daleks. How should we proceed from here?’

‘I think,’ said the Doctor, ‘before we proceed anywhere, I should consult my assistant.’

He pulled Ace out of earshot. ‘We’re facing a very serious crisis. Destroying the transmat won’t hold the white Daleks very long.’

‘I could brew up some nitro-nine,’ said Ace.