Doctor Who: Plague of the Cybermen

by Justin Richards

  She wasn’t even going to ask about that. The Cyberman was getting closer again, so she grabbed one of the waggling hands and dragged him on down the corridor.

  ‘At least it’s not shooting at us,’ he said happily.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not enough power for energy weapons.’

  The light was fading, and they charged on into darkness. The thump-thump-thump of the Cyberman’s pursuit was ever present. Somewhere ahead was a faint glow. Not the ubiquitous red of the emergency lighting but a warmer, yellowish light.

  ‘Can you tell where we are yet?’ the Doctor asked. His teeth caught the light as he grinned.

  The glow increased as they approached, running, hand in hand. The corridor seemed to open out ahead of them. The glow was coming from the far side, shining in through a hole torn in the wall.

  ‘Cargo bay,’ the Doctor said as they ran. ‘Explains where all that stuff came from.’

  ‘Stuff? What do you mean by “stuff”?’

  They raced towards the hole in the side of the ship.

  Too late, Olga realised that the glow was coming from below them. They were about to run through a hole in the side of the ship – high above the ground outside.

  As they reached the broken wall, she saw where they were. The rocky cavern spread out ahead of her, its edges lost in darkness. The glow came from an oil lamp precariously balanced on a sloping pile of debris and detritus.

  ‘Geronimo!’ the Doctor yelled as he leaped out of the ship and clattered down the steep pile.

  It was like running on a shingle beach. Olga’s feet sank into the shifting debris. Every step was an effort.

  A crash from behind them alerted her to the approaching Cyberman.

  Ahead of them, Drettle and Worm looked up in surprise. Their eyes widened as the Doctor staggered past, Olga close behind him.

  ‘Don’t just stand there, you two. Run!’ the Doctor yelled.

  The Cyberman was charging down the slope, wading through the debris. Components, circuit boards, broken metal, bent plastic, all shoved aside as it strode after its prey.

  The smaller man, Worm, let out a yelp and rushed after the Doctor and Olga.

  But Drettle seemed rooted to the spot. The Cyberman barely seemed to notice him. Its metal arm swung out in a savage chopping motion as it passed, and the big man was hurled backwards across the debris he had been sorting.

  Olga watched, horrified. She had never seen a man killed before – and the casual manner of it froze her, numbing her thoughts. The Doctor grabbed her by the shoulders, turned her round, and pushed her onwards.

  ‘It’s too late for him. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do now except save ourselves.’

  The Doctor and Olga’s lamps were still back by the Cyber tombs where they’d set them down after putting on the main lights. Worm and Drettle’s lamp toppled over, and went out. The only light now was a pale red glow from the side of the spaceship.

  Ahead of Olga, Worm was racing for the nearest tunnel – where the Doctor and Olga had watched from earlier. But there was something moving in the gloom. A guttural roar split the air.

  Worm skidded to a halt. He looked back at the Doctor and Olga – and the Cyberman behind them. Worm’s eyes were wide, his mouth open in a silent scream of horror.

  He turned back towards the sound. Out of the darkness came a mass of fur and teeth. It had metal jaws, a head braced with a metallic cage, legs augmented with hydraulics, and paws tipped with claws of sharpened steel.

  The Doctor and Olga pulled up as the creature bounded towards them. Behind it, came another one. And a third behind that.

  ‘The good news is – now we know what happened to the wolves,’ the Doctor said quietly.

  Chapter 8

  The Doctor swerved in mid step, pulling Olga with him. Worm was closer to the approaching cybernetic wolves. It was too late for him.

  The first wolf leaped with a hydraulic hiss and an animal roar. Metal teeth clamped round Worm’s throat. He screamed and fell. The second wolf joined the first, ripping into the man’s body with its teeth and claws.

  The last of the wolves kept running – bounding after the Doctor and Olga as they raced for another tunnel entrance. Olga imagined she could feel its hot breath on her back. She risked a look over her shoulder, and saw with relief that they were still well ahead of the wolf. But it was gaining on them, and the Cyberman too was coming after them. She caught a glimpse of Worm, lying in the middle of the cavern, the two cyber-wolves still at his body. Feeling suddenly sick, she turned away.

  The tunnel was a gaping dark hole in the side of the cavern. The Doctor fumbled in his pocket for the sonic screwdriver as he and Olga plunged into the blackness.

  ‘Can those creatures see in the dark?’ Olga gasped.

  ‘I’d be surprised if they can’t,’ the Doctor told her. ‘They live in the shadows and the darkness, like I said.’

  She didn’t know whether he was talking about the wolves or the Cybermen. Either … Both.

  The end of the sonic screwdriver glowed, bathing the tunnel ahead of them with a sickly pale light.

  ‘Are we faster than them? Are they following?’ Olga demanded. ‘Where are we going? Are we lost? Will we ever get out of these tunnels alive?’

  ‘No, probably, not sure, absolutely not, and I hope so.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well – you asked.’

  They turned down a side tunnel, clattered past a skeleton resting on a ledge, and on into another, wider tunnel.

  ‘And you are sure that this is the right way?’

  ‘Sure,’ the Doctor told her. ‘I’m taking a sort of objective-based approach to this.’

  ‘What objective is that?’

  ‘To get as far away as possible from anything that wants to kill us.’

  Olga couldn’t tell if the Cyberman was still after them. But she could hear the wolf’s cries echoing down the tunnel. Was it getting closer?

  ‘I think it has our scent,’ she said.

  ‘Scent, of course.’ The Doctor spun round, holding the wand out in front of him like a sword. It whirred and glowed even harder.

  ‘What are you doing? You hope to dazzle it with bright light?’

  ‘Not a bad idea, actually. But no. I’m agitating the air molecules. Might confuse the olfactory circuits. I’m guessing the wolf has enhanced senses now.’

  ‘You mean it can smell us.’

  ‘Cyber-sniffers,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘There, that should do it.’

  They set off down the tunnel again, but at a slightly more relaxed pace.

  ‘How will we know if your agitation had any effect?’ Olga wondered.

  ‘Ask me that again in ten minutes.’

  ‘How will that help?’

  ‘If I’m still alive to answer, then we’ll know it worked.’

  Maybe it was wishful thinking, but the sound of the wolf did seem to be fading into the distance. After what Olga thought must be more than ten minutes, she began to relax a little. The tunnel was sloping uphill now, and after a few minutes more, they stopped to rest. Olga sank down on the cold stone floor.

  ‘Is this a good time for you to explain to me what is happening?’ she asked. She wasn’t optimistic.

  But the Doctor nodded thoughtfully. ‘Cybership crashed ages back,’ he said. ‘We now know it was a colonisation ship or maybe a military transport. Whatever, it had a lot of Cybermen on board, mostly frozen to preserve them for the journey.’

  ‘Like salting meat so it keeps through the winter?’

  ‘Completely different, but yes – like salting meat. The point is they were going a long way. Think of the frozen Cybermen as the cargo. There was a crew as well, who obviously had to stay awake and with it to fly the ship.’

  ‘The two that came after us?’

  ‘More than two. There was another at the church, remember? Some of them were killed in the crash. If you can “kill” a Cyberman, given they’re pretty much dead alre
ady. Worm and Drettle have been scavenging for bits and pieces from the crashed ship, though I don’t think they ever went inside.’

  ‘And they found Lord Ernhardt’s hand? That is – the hand which the Watchman gave him.’

  ‘Exactly. The Cybermen are programmed to survive, whatever the cost. So the crew have been scavenging from the graves – even adding to their occupants – to get hold of replacement limbs as they need them.’

  Olga shuddered as she recalled the very human arm of one of the Cybermen. The woman’s hand that had grabbed her by the ankle …

  ‘Problem is,’ the Doctor was saying, ‘the organic material they scavenge isn’t cybernetic. They just connect up the nervous system, so the limbs decay and need replacing.’

  ‘What about the poisoning – the grey skin from the talisman jewellery?’ Olga asked, as much to change the subject as anything.

  ‘Unfortunate side effect. The reactor housing shattered, and fragments of the irradiated containment vessel got scattered across a field. People found them, thought they were interesting … Died.’

  ‘And the wolves? What happened to them?’

  ‘They’re down on numbers, so the Cybermen adapted some of the wolves to act as extra guard dogs. Almost literally.’

  ‘But if there are so many of these Cybermen, why didn’t they simply awaken others from their “cargo”?’

  ‘Not enough power. They’ve cannibalised what they can to set up a system that seeds the atmosphere and provokes lightning storms. Then they capture the energy from the lightning and store it. But without a power converter, and with just the one collection point at the church …’

  ‘If there is just the one,’ Olga pointed out. ‘There is so much hidden beneath the surface of our village that I was not aware of before. They could have many of these …’ She couldn’t remember the word, and waved her hand to cover it. ‘Things.’

  The Doctor ignored her. ‘It’ll take centuries before they have anything like enough power to revive more Cybermen. It’s probably taking most of what they collect just to keep the guards and the wolves going.’

  ‘If you say so, Doctor.’

  The Doctor jumped to his feet. ‘Time to be moving.’

  ‘Where are we going? Back to the church?’

  ‘Up to the castle. I hope.’ The Doctor turned to go, then turned quickly back to face Olga. He looked suddenly worried. ‘You could be right. Didn’t think of that.’

  ‘What did you not think of?’

  ‘That there might be multiple collection points for the lightning energy. They’d still need a converter, but it does potentially increase the efficiency of the system.’

  ‘Which I assume is a bad thing.’

  ‘Well, it’s not good. Come on.’

  They walked for what seemed like for ever. After the frenetic terror of escaping from Cybermen and Cyber Wolves, the slow steady journey through the dark tunnels seemed almost boring.

  After what seemed an age, the Doctor gave a cry of delight. He turned off the sonic screwdriver, and Olga saw that the tunnel ahead was illuminated by a pale flickering light.

  ‘We’re getting close,’ the Doctor told her as they reached a burning sconce fixed to the wall. Olga could see another further along.

  Along another tunnel, up a flight of crudely cut stone steps hewn from the rock floor, and down another tunnel … Olga was beginning to think of them more as passageways or corridors, probably just because of the fact they were lit. That they seemed ‘lived in’.

  Finally, they arrived at a heavy wooden door.

  ‘This is it,’ the Doctor announced. His eyes glittered with excitement in the guttering light. ‘Can you tell where we are yet?’

  ‘All the doors look alike to me, Doctor,’ Olga confessed.

  The Doctor pushed open the door and stood aside to let Olga go in first.

  ‘Welcome back,’ the Doctor said in a needlessly deep and doom-laden voice, ‘to the lair of the Watchman.’

  Chapter 9

  The room was exactly as Olga remembered – the uneven stone floor; the vaulted ceiling; the table strewn with all manner of strange things; the curtained alcoves. And at the back of the room, holding a magnifying glass and looking up in surprise was the elderly, diminutive figure of the Watchman himself.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ he demanded as Olga entered the room. When the Doctor stepped into the room behind her, his surprise turned first to recognition, then to indignation and anger. ‘You!’

  ‘Oh,’ the Doctor said, looking sheepish. ‘Er, hi. Again. How’s things?’

  ‘How’s things?’ the Watchman echoed in astonishment. ‘How’s things?’

  ‘Well, I was just asking.’

  ‘Perhaps we should return later,’ Olga said.

  ‘You ransack my workshop,’ the Watchman went on. ‘You rummage through my collection of extremely rare and valuable objects. You help yourself to vital components.’

  ‘We what?’ Now the Doctor was indignant. ‘What vital components?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what they are exactly, but they must be important if you took them.’

  ‘I didn’t take anything,’ the Doctor protested. ‘Rummaged – yes, OK. Got me there. But no ransacking and certainly no helping myself.’ He adjusted his bow tie and sniffed. ‘I have enough vital and valuable components of my own, thank you very much.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ the Watchman said. ‘You were hiding under my table.’

  ‘Might have been,’ the Doctor confessed. ‘But that’s not a crime.’

  ‘You hid under my table,’ the Watchman went on. ‘Then you ran off. And as soon as I was out of the way you came back and rummaged and ransacked and helped yourself. Look.’ He strode over to the Doctor and caught his sleeve, dragging him round the workbench. He pointed at what, to Olga, looked like just another junk-strewn area of the table. ‘Look!’

  The Doctor frowned, and Olga guessed it meant nothing to him either.

  ‘And not content with that, you even took parts of my latest experimentation subject.’

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘Here – look!’

  The Watchman guided the Doctor across the room, Olga following close behind, to one of the alcoves. He let go of the Doctor’s sleeve for long enough to pull back the curtain.

  Olga realised what was behind the curtain just as the Watchman pulled it aside. She looked away. But she wasn’t quick enough to avoid seeing Liza’s mutilated body lying on an operating table in the alcove. There were incisions across the front of her body. And one arm was missing.

  ‘I didn’t do this,’ the Doctor said.

  ‘I thought you were a doctor.’

  ‘I thought you mended watches.’

  ‘That is immaterial.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ the Doctor said. ‘Olga – look at this.’

  She still had her eyes shut. ‘I am not looking at anything.’

  ‘But we’ve seen an arm like that somewhere recently, remember?’

  ‘I do not want to remember, thank you.’

  But she did. She couldn’t help remembering the slender, rotting female arm of the Cyberman …

  ‘You didn’t take her arm off?’ the Doctor demanded.

  ‘Of course not,’ the Watchman said. ‘What would I do with an arm? Are you trying to tell me it wasn’t you?’

  There was the sound of the curtain being drawn back across the alcove. ‘I am telling you it wasn’t me. You can open your eyes again now, Olga.’

  The Doctor had moved on to another alcove now. He pulled back the curtain on this one, to reveal a stone plinth. A sheet was draped over the top. The Doctor grasped a corner of the sheet.

  ‘No!’ the Watchman warned.

  But the Doctor ignored him. ‘Time to find out what’s really going on round here, don’t you think?’

  ‘And what is going on round here, as you put it, Doctor?’

  The voice came from the doorway behind them. Olga and the Doctor b
oth turned to see Lord and Lady Ernhardt standing just inside the room.

  ‘That’s what I want to know,’ the Doctor said. ‘But for one thing, the Watchman isn’t quite as clever as he makes out.’

  ‘I protest,’ the Watchman said. ‘This man has forced his way in here …’

  ‘You want to see the source of the Watchman’s knowledge?’ the Doctor said loudly. ‘You want to know where he gets his expertise? Oh, apart from the flotsam and jetsam that Worm and Drettle used to bring him I mean.’

  The Watchman looked pale. ‘What do you mean, “used” to bring me?’

  ‘They’re dead,’ the Doctor said simply.

  ‘Dead?’ the Watchman said in disbelief. ‘But – they can’t be dead. They were just here.’

  ‘They were killed by your other friends.’

  ‘What friends?’ Lady Ernhardt asked.

  ‘Friends like these!’ the Doctor announced, and pulled the sheet away.

  ‘Don’t!’ the Watchman exclaimed, hurrying across to stop the Doctor.

  But he was too late.

  Beneath the sheet, on top of the plinth, was a head. Rusted, dented, tarnished, with one of the side struts cracked and out of alignment, it was the head of a Cyberman.

  And it was screaming. As soon as the sheet came off, the head let out an unearthly screech. If Cybermen ever felt pain, this was surely what it sounded like.

  ‘Put the sheet back – quickly!’ the Watchman urged. ‘It can’t bear the light. For pity’s sake!’

  ‘Doctor!’ Lord Ernhardt urged.

  But like Olga, the Doctor was staring in horror at the Cyberman’s eyes. Or rather, at the sockets where the eyes had been. There was a pinpoint of light in the centre of each, but the edges of each eye socket had been torn open. Rivets surrounded each eye, hammered clumsily into place. Oil stains surrounded the eyes, running down the face like tears.

  The Doctor flung the sheet back over the head, and immediately the screeching stopped.

  The Cyberhead’s words were forced out, disjointed, scrapings of sound: ‘My … eyes. No light … my eyes …’

  The Watchman hurried to adjust the sheet. ‘I have done what I can for him. I tried to repair the eyes. But still – the pain caused by light …’ He glared at the Doctor.