Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks (8 page)

Rachel was studying the Doctor when the group captain came in. The little man was staring at the maps laid out on the billiard table – staring at, but not seeing them. It was as if he were studying another landscape that only he could see, planning moves on some unimaginable gaming board.

‘Well, Doctor?’ asked Gilmore.

‘Group Captain,’ said the Doctor, ‘about the evacuation.’

‘I have been in direct contact with High Command and they have agreed to a staged quiet withdrawal under the Peacetime Nuclear Accident Provisions. They felt that given the state of the current government...’

‘Thanks to Miss Keeler,’ said Allison.

‘They felt, Miss Williams,’ Gilmore looked sharply at the young woman, ‘that the initial stages could be carried out under the aegis of the Intrusion Counter Measures Team. The D-notice committee has been informed and a cover story prepared.’

‘What is it?’ asked Rachel.

‘I have no idea.’ said Gilmore with surprise, ‘not my department.’

Ask a stupid question, she thought.

‘Now, Doctor,’ Gilmore said briskly, ‘since you hold my career in your hands, I hope you can justify my faith.’

‘With respect, Group Captain,’ said the Doctor, ‘your career is magnificently irrelevant.’

Rachel saw Gilmore flinch as if he had been slapped.

Emotions rippled across his face – anger and wounded pride. For a moment it was a face of a young lieutenant, lost on a moonlit beach. Then twenty-three years of memory clamped down and it became a warrior’s mask again.

‘Any more transmission sites?’ the Doctor asked Rachel.

Rachel checked the map. ‘Just the one at the school.’

‘Good,’ said the Doctor, ‘I need a direct line to Jodrell Bank and, let me see,’ his brow creased, ‘1963 – the Fylingdales installation.’

He seized a notepad and scribbled figures. ‘Order them to search these localities for high orbital activity.’ He gave Rachel the note: he had written six groups of three digits, meridian and polar co-ordinates.

‘The detector vans should be moved so they can cover this area here and here.’ He marked the maps with red crayon. ‘All air and ground forces must be ordered to avoid engaging the enemy at all costs. We must act with extreme caution.’

‘And if we don’t?’ asked Allison.

‘Goodbye civilization as you know it.’

Ace was bored – really bored. The steam radio on the table was playing music that was all windy strings. Some jazz would be nice, a bit of go-go better, or even house or something by that trio of blonde bimbos whose name escaped her. Anything would be better than Dennis Boredom and his terminally tuneful string quartet. She had already tried the television, but all that showed was some woman with a posh accent thick enough to insulate cavity walls who played a piano while a wooden donkey jerked up and down.

And people get nostalgic about this decade, she thought.

In seven years I’ll be born; in twenty-four years I’ll be sweating gelignite and something will happen – what did the Doctor call it? – an ‘adjustment’. An adjustment will happen and take me out of time. Ace decided she liked that. It could be worse: it could be Perivale.

Ace went to the window and pulled back the chintz curtain. A couple of boys were kicking a football around the street. She watched them, and then she noticed square of cardboard in the window. It was hanging face outward; Ace took it off the hook and flipped it over. It was a hand-lettered sign which read:

NO COLOUREDS.

Ghost smell of disinfectant and charred wood.

Ace snatched up her jacket and rucksack, almost choking on the memories.

‘I’m just going out for some
fresh
air,’ she called out angrily. Not knowing or caring whether Mrs Smith heard, Ace ran out of the house, slamming the front door behind her.

‘What’s next on the list?’ asked Mike.

Allison ran her finger down the sheet of paper attached to the clipboard. ‘Parabolic reflector, twenty to thirty centimetres.’

‘What’s that in English?’

‘Twelve inches or thereabouts.’

The Doctor had dashed off the list in the map room and handed it to Gilmore. He had handed it to Rachel, who, of course, had handed it to her. Allison and Mike had then scoured Maybury Hall for the varied array of items.

Cannibalizing the messroom TV had not enhanced their popularity with the enlisted men.

‘Where are we going to get a parabolic reflector?’

‘Radio aerial,’ suggested Mike.

‘No, it says silvered, as in mirror. It’s the last item.’

‘I know, it’s...’ He stopped and waved his free hand around.

‘On the tip of your tongue,’ said Allison.

‘Hot.’

‘Cooker,’

‘Warm.’

‘What?’

‘Like a cooker... electric...’ he was getting quite frantic,

‘ring... electric ring.

‘An electric heater?’

‘Yes,’ said Mike with relief.

‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place.’

Rachel watched the figures clatter on to the teleprinter: orbital co-ordinates, occlusion and estimated mass.

That can’t be right, she thought.

The mass was given as four hundred thousand tonnes.

Oh my god! That was incredible!

A hand reached down and ripped the completed message off the machine.

‘Here we are,’ said the Doctor.

He sounds almost cheerful, thought Rachel. What does he know?

‘It’s a big mothership of some kind – could have as many as four hundred Daleks on board,’ continued the Doctor. ‘At least we know where it is.’

‘Much good that does us,’ said Rachel.

‘It would be foolish of me, I suppose,’ said Gilmore, ‘to hope that this mothership is not nuclear capable.’

Doesn’t he realize yet what we are dealing with, thought Rachel – engineering on that scale, technology beyond anything dreamed of.

‘That ship has weapons capable of cracking this planet open like an egg.’

Allison and Mike banged through the doors with armfuls of junk. ‘We got the parts you wanted, Doctor,’

said Allison.

‘Put them on the table.’

Rachel winced as delicate circuit boards tumbled on to the billiard table amid strips of metal, wires and unidentifiable components.

The Doctor pulled up a chair and sat facing the pile.

Delicately he unrolled a wide suede strip on the table to reveal interesting looking tools that were held in place by loops and pouches. The Doctor picked up a circuit board and selected one of the tools.

‘Is the mothership the Daleks’ main base?’ asked Gilmore.

‘For one group at least,’ said the Doctor, prising a transistor out of its socket. ‘I suspect we are dealing with two possibly antagonistic Dalek factions.’

‘Two?’ queried Allison.

‘But both come from outer space?’ asked Gilmore.

‘From another planet,’ said the Doctor, ‘and the distant future. We must try to contain both factions and let them destroy each other.’

Gilmore looked at the maps again and the big red circle that defined the evacuation zone. ‘Shouldn’t we bring in reinforcements?’ he asked. ‘Armoured units...’

The Doctor cut him off. ‘Haven’t you listened to me, Group Captain? The ship up there has surveillance equipment that can spot a sparrow fall fifteen thousand kilometres away. Any sign of a military build up and they may decide to sterilize the area.’

Rachel suppressed a shudder at the word sterilize. It brought sudden pictures of Hiroshima to her mind: fabric patterns etched into flesh, people burnt away to nothing with only their shadows left to mark their existence.

‘And we have no defence,’ said Gilmore. It was a statement, not a question.

‘Frightening, isn’t it,’ said the Doctor, ‘to find that there are others better versed in death then human beings.’

The Doctor was making final adjustments to his contraption. It was an ungainly mixture of parts: there was a parabolic reflector of an electric fire at the front, from which wires led back into a maze of tubing.

‘What does it do?’ asked Rachel.

‘At best it will interfere with a Dalek’s internal controls,’ said the Doctor. ‘I rigged up something similar once on Spiridon.’

‘And at worst?’

‘It will do absolutely nothing.’

Spiridon, thought Rachel, fine.

Allison called over from the radio. ‘Red Nine reports an increase in modulated signalling.’

The Doctor asked where. As Allison talked back to Red Nine the Doctor beckoned Mike over. ‘Call Ace and tell her that someone will pick her up.’

‘The signal emanates from Coal Hill School,’ called Allison. ‘Multiple signals in close proximity.’

‘Multiple?’ said the Doctor. ‘The transmat must be operational again.’

‘Transmat?’ asked Rachel. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Daleks,’ said the Doctor.

Gilmore strode into the room, ‘There’s no reply from my men at the school.’

The Doctor stood up suddenly and started stuffing toolsinto his pockets, ‘Get a vehicle ready and load it up with plastic explosives with integral detonators.’

Gilmore nodded and left.

‘Why explosives?’ asked Rachel.

The Doctor held up his contraption. ‘This just disables them. What do you expect us to do then? Talk to them sternly?’

‘Doctor,’ said Mike, hanging up the phone, ‘my mum says that Ace left ages ago.’

The Doctor was suddenly running for the door. Rachel and Mike looked at each other for a moment and ran after him. They caught up at the stairwell; the Doctor was taking the steps three at a time. He turned at the bottom and yelled up that Ace must be at the school.

‘What makes you think she’s got herself in danger?’

gasped Rachel as she reached him.

The Doctor looked at her with such ferocious intensity that she recoiled. ‘Of course she’s got herself in danger,’ he snapped, ‘they always do.’

Saturday, 14:15

The dreamers awoke. Crab-shaped servo-robots scuttled over polycarbide armour, testing for defects. Power cables disengaged and retreated into the floor, clamps retracted and the warriors began gliding to the staging post.

Command data-net came on line; instructions in microsecond pulses flashed from relays. The last of the servo-robots dismounted, leaping from the warriors into their wall niches with cybernetic precision.

Doors opened.

The Daleks entered their designated transmat broadcast zones. Power shifted from the mothership’s immense fusion reactor and energized the travelling field.

The first Dalek prepared to enter the combat zone.

Ace might have died.

Might have.

She had slipped into the quarantine zone, easily evading the squaddies who manned the checkpoints, and made her way to the school.

Outside a big Bedford truck sat untended; it was very quiet. Ace checked the cab: it was empty and the engine hood was cool and smelled of petrol. She assumed the soldiers were out patrolling or whatever it was that soldiers did when they were not saluting or shooting. She looked in the back just to be certain that they hadn’t left any goodies behind, but was disappointed to find it empty. There wasn’t even a whiff of explosives.

Ace found the tape deck where she had left it, on a bench in the chemistry lab. just on the off-chance she flicked the selector to FM and switched on.

There was nothing but static at first. Then she heard a ghost of a metallic sound on the fringes of reception. Ace adjusted the frequency.

‘Attack squad in position,’ grated the unmistakable voice of a Dalek.

Ace froze. If the reception was that clear then the Daleks were close, possibly within the school itself.

Leaving the tape deck on, Ace ran for the stairs.

‘Lower area clear,’ the tapedeck broadcasted.

Ace collided with a wall and stopped, staring stupidly down the staircase. There was a movement on the landing below — a shadow.

A cream-coloured Dalek came round the corner.

Ace threw herself backwards just in time. An energy bolt carved a track through the space she had occupied and drilled a hole in the wall.

As she banged back into the lab, Ace heard the whine of the Dalek’s motor unit as the creature prepared to ascend the stairs. She needed a plan and she needed it yesterday.

A distraction, she quickly thought.

Ace slammed a cassette into the tape deck, hit the play button, and twisted the volume to maximum.

A weapon.

Ace heard the Dalek’s engine go into overdrive as it started up the stairs. She reached over her shoulder and felt the cool handle of the baseball hat. Ace slowly drew it out and backed behind the door.

The whine of the Dalek’s engine was abruptly blotted out by two hundred watts of percussion.

Ace remained poised, bat upraised. A single trickle of sweat ran down her cheek; she could feel her heartbeat battering at her ribs. There was fear, but mixed in with that was anger, exhilaration and the absolute conviction of the young that they will live forever.

A Dalek forced its way through the doors. It was close enough for Ace to see her distorted reflection in the burnished gold of’ the creature’s sensor pods. Even this close the Dalek made no noise as it zeroed in on the tape deck. Energy sprouted from its gunstick.

The tape deck exploded; a bench tap ruptured and water spewed out in a long arc.

The Dalek’s eyestalk swivelled to scan the room.

‘Small human female on level three.’

‘Who are you calling small?’ Ace brought the baseball bat clown on the smooth dome. Neon blue tendrils of energy crackled as the bat hit, eating into the laminated surface. Slivers of armour exploded off the surface.

Ace struck the Dalek again before it could react – a glancing blow off the side.

The Dalek began to turn, describing a circle that would bring its weapon to bear.

Ace desperately swung the bat at the vulnerable eyestalk: there was a shower of sparks and the whole assembly parted from the dome and bounced away across the floor.

The Dalek screamed but kept turning. Ace threw herself under a bench; a stool bounced off her shoulder. Glass flasks exploded as the Dalek shot at Ace, tracking her by sound. A plume of flame shot upwards as a gas-tap was blown away.