by Dave Rudden
‘Sir, we have something. Transmitting co-ordinates now.’
We are not the only race to have discovered time travel. Our battle to keep it so failed; a fact which is now even more painfully clear. But Time Lords were the first, and understanding time will always be as easy to us as breathing.
My screens showed me two star systems – the mundane, physical movement of planets, and the swirling overlay of the timestream beneath. Physical and chronological movement, like a flower blooming in four dimensions at once.
I could see the slow roll of asteroids from one moment to another, and the bacteria-like scurry of life still clinging to a couple of distant worlds.
The other TARDISes were like stars, each one a flare of time energy skating towards us like stones across the top of a lake. They looked omnipotent, perfect, navigating the fabric of our universe so deftly that it was impossible to imagine anything laying them low.
We followed the shining scouts as they led us into the shadow of a broken planet on the system’s far edge. Something had dug into the world’s crust, scoring a hole the size of a continent – huge by planetary standards, big enough to hide a fleet of Daleks in, but minuscule on a stellar scale. That was where they were hiding.
Clever. They were getting cleverer all the time.
‘There, sir,’ Orlock said.
For all our vaunted foresight, I had not anticipated this.
I do not relish the death of my enemies, and it chilled me at the time to hear some lower crew members whoop across our shared communications. It is unbecoming – and seductive – when dealing with such a terrible enemy to take pleasure in destroying them. My reaction upon seeing the debris was more akin to my TARDIS’s. They do not hate the Daleks. I believe, if such a thing is possible, that they weep for the marriage of flesh and metal the Daleks have created, and the potential of such a symbiosis.
No such symbiosis was possible now.
Something had come upon these Daleks like a storm, tearing through them so completely that not a single fragment of their casings was left. Something had eviscerated them, cracked them open like crustaceans, the soft creatures within mercilessly flung to the void. Each rubbery cycloptic tangle floated alone, stiff with interstellar frost.
And floating serenely within that nebula of shredded Dalek was a small blue box.
THE BEGINNING
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First published 2020
Written by Dave Rudden
Copyright © BBC, 2020
BBC, DOCTOR WHO, TARDIS, DALEKS and CYBERMAN (word marks and logos) are trade marks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence. BBC logo © BBC 1996. Doctor Who logo © BBC 2018. Dalek image © BBC/Terry Nation 1963. Cyberman image © BBC/Kit Pedler/Gerry Davis 1966. Licensed by BBC Studios.
The moral right of the author, illustrator and copyright holders has been asserted
Illustrated by Alexis Snell
ISBN: 978-1-405-94611-7
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.