Engines of War

by George Mann

  ‘I’d suggest we make a strategic withdrawal,’ said the Doctor.

  Partheus, still standing by the controls, tapped out a series of commands and the TARDIS began to slowly back away from the star.

  The rocket was now a tiny speck, barely visible against the bloated aurora of the celestial giant.

  ‘Nothing’s happening,’ said Partheus.

  ‘Keep watching,’ said the Doctor, and a second later Cinder noticed the slight hint of a shadow at the centre of the star. As she watched, it began to grow steadily in size, swelling like an oil spill. The black stain continued to spread, gaining momentum, drawing in and consuming the faint red light from the outer rim of the star.

  ‘It’s collapsing the star,’ said the Doctor, ‘dragging it all towards a gravitational singularity.’

  ‘You’re a fool, Doctor,’ said Partheus. ‘You’ve thrown away the best chance we had of defeating the Dalek threat.’ He’d stopped, and was helping his lieutenant up from the floor as the man had blearily started to come round. ‘They’ll make you pay for this.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ said the Doctor levelly. ‘But that doesn’t make me wrong.’

  The last of the red light had now faded to black, and the collapsing star was now beginning to drag at the surrounding matter. The floor of the TARDIS began to vibrate as the engines fought against the pull.

  ‘Time to go,’ said the Doctor.

  Partheus had retrieved his pistol and was pointing it at the Doctor. ‘I should kill you now,’ he said, ‘for all the lives you’ve just condemned.’

  The Doctor met his gaze, his eyes challenging. ‘Well, then,’ he said. ‘Do it if you’re going to. I’ve just prevented you from becoming a murderer, but if you’re that set on the idea …’

  Partheus’s resolved seemed to falter. The end of the weapon dipped. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘Get off my ship.’

  Wordlessly, the Doctor turned his back and walked toward his own TARDIS. Cinder followed, keeping her weapon trained on Partheus, but she could tell the fight had gone out of him.

  The Doctor unlocked the TARDIS door and they both stepped over the threshold.

  Cinder breathed a sigh of relief, dropping her gun, as the door closed behind them. ‘We did it,’ she said. ‘We really did it.’

  The Doctor smiled. ‘Yes, I suppose we did. But I’m afraid our problems aren’t over yet. There’s still the Daleks to deal with, not to mention a bunch of furious Time Lords, baying for my blood.’

  ‘What are you going to do about it?’ said Cinder.

  ‘There’s only one thing to do,’ said the Doctor. ‘We’re going back to Gallifrey.’

  ‘What!’ said Cinder. ‘You really are insane.’

  The Doctor laughed. ‘I like to think so.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  The TARDIS materialised on a bluff above a desolate, wild landscape.

  After a moment, the door opened and Cinder emerged, bracing herself against the sharp bite of the wind. Her hair whipped up into her face, her eyes streamed, and she found herself wrapping her arms around her body, trying to retain the warmth.

  She heard the Doctor close the TARDIS door behind her and looked round to see him standing there, surveying the moorland below them. As far as the eye could see, fields of straw-like grass and heather, punctuated by the occasional clump of trees, dominated the view. The sky was a crisp, pale blue, shot through with wisps of cloud.

  ‘I thought you said we were going back to Gallifrey?’ she said.

  ‘Ah,’ replied the Doctor. ‘Yes, I should explain.’

  Cinder raised an expectant eyebrow, putting her hands on her hips. ‘Well?’

  ‘This is Gallifrey,’ he said. ‘At least, in a sense. It’s a small pocket of Gallifreyan wilderness, cordoned off in a temporal bubble. The Time Lords know it affectionately as the Death Zone.’ He grinned. ‘Pretty inhospitable place, really,’ he said.

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Cinder. ‘The Death Zone.’ She stamped her feet, feeling exposed up there in the hillside. ‘Remind me why we’re here again?’

  ‘The Death Zone used to be the place where unlucky participants were co-opted to play the Game of Rassilon, pitted in a life or death battle against a variety of alien species, forcibly scooped from their natural habitats,’ said the Doctor, ignoring her question.

  ‘And here’s me thinking the Time Lords were the good guys,’ said Cinder sarcastically.

  ‘It was a long time ago, back in the first Age of Rassilon. He built his tomb here.’ The Doctor turned on the spot, pointing to a black spire in the distance, jutting from the earth at the foot of a mountain. ‘There,’ he said. ‘The Dark Tower.’

  ‘His tomb?’ said Cinder. ‘But he’s not dead. I met him. As much as I wish I hadn’t.’

  ‘It’s complicated,’ said the Doctor. ‘Rassilon is essentially immortal. In ancient times he gave up corporeal form, and for millennia resided here in his tomb, worshipped as a once-and-future king. He was resurrected back in the early days of the War, however, when the Time Lords realised they needed a different sort of leader.’

  ‘I can see it’s done them the world of good,’ said Cinder.

  ‘Quite,’ replied the Doctor. He looked downcast.

  ‘You still haven’t answered my question?’ she said.

  ‘What question?’

  ‘Why we’re here?’

  ‘We’re here to commit a jailbreak,’ said the Doctor. ‘Rassilon has … someone trapped in the Tower. Someone whose help we need. His name is Borusa. We’re going to help him to escape.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have parked us a bit closer?’ said Cinder, blowing into her cupped hands.

  The Doctor shook his head. ‘That’s the problem with the Death Zone. Unless you have access to the transmat device in the chambers of the High Council, you have to make the trek through the wilderness to get anywhere close to the Tower. It’s a hangover from the games, but it also serves as excellent protection for Rassilon and whatever he wants to get up to in his old tomb.’

  Cinder nodded. ‘Well, let’s see if we can climb down over there,’ she said, walking to the other edge of the bluff and looking down. When she saw what was at the foot of the bluff, she emitted a sound that was somewhere between a scream and a terrified squeal.

  ‘What is it?’ called the Doctor, running to her side.

  ‘That,’ she said, pointing the thing at the base of the hill. A massive, lizard-like creature was lounging in the heather, merrily chewing on the local flora. It was at least twenty metres long, with four stumpy, elephantine legs and a long snaking neck. Its hide was green and its back was adorned in scales of thick, chitinous armour. The head was small, with black, beady eyes and a jaw full of sharp, serrated teeth. Its tail swished nonchalantly from side to side, tearing up the undergrowth. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A primitive beast,’ said the Doctor, ‘from Gallifrey’s dim and distant past. The Time Lords stopped scooping up unwary aliens many years ago, but it clearly hasn’t prevented them from interfering with their own past. This is a creature out of time, a long-extinct species from before the Time Lords ever walked the planet.’

  Cinder looked at the giant lizard, which was still chomping sedately on the bushy leaves of a fallen tree. ‘As long as he doesn’t have any bigger, carnivorous siblings,’ she said.

  ‘Ah …’ said the Doctor again.

  Cinder rounded on him. ‘Seriously?’ she said.

  ‘You shouldn’t trouble yourself unduly,’ he replied. ‘They’re big enough that we’d see them coming in plenty of time. It’s the carnivorous ants that you need to watch out for. Now they really can give you a nasty bite.’

  Cinder glanced at her boots, nestling amongst the heather, and immediately began to scratch at her legs. The Doctor laughed, and she turned and hit him crossly on the arm. ‘You’re incorrigible,’ she said, allowing a smile to creep onto her face. After everything, a little levity was precisely what she needed.

  *

  ‘S
o, what’s so special about this Borusa character? How is he going to be able to help us against the Daleks?’

  The Doctor looked sheepish. ‘Borusa can see the future,’ he said, ‘and the past. The web of all-time. Each and every possibility, how they interrelate, how every decision causes a fracture in the universe, opening up new pathways through time. The Time Vortex flows through his mind. Rassilon uses Borusa to navigate the timelines, to discern the most effective course of action for their offensives against the Daleks.’

  ‘Was he born that way?’ said Cinder.

  They were trudging across an empty field, her boots catching in the long grass with every step. The occasional gust threatened to tip them over, but so far there had been no signs of any carnivorous beast and, thankfully, no ants.

  ‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘He was made that way. His timeline was retro-engineered. He was forged by Rassilon in an attempt to find a solution to ending the War.’

  Cinder didn’t quite understand the implications of this, so kept her own counsel. How do you retro-engineer a person? Time, she supposed, would tell. ‘So, this friend of yours, he’s going to tell us how to defeat the Daleks?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ said the Doctor. ‘We’re going to take him into the Tantalus Eye. He’s going to help us change the future.’

  ‘Right,’ said Cinder, ‘of course. Into the Eye. That makes loads of sense.’ She glanced up at the Tower, looming in the distance.

  From somewhere close by there was a sound like a foghorn – the trumpet of a massive, forlorn beast. Cinder’s eyes widened in panic.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s just another of the friendly ones, a herbivore like the one we saw before, calling to its kin.’

  Cinder breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Why would it be doing that?’ said Cinder. ‘A mating call?’

  The Doctor shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, with a shrug. ‘Probably more of a warni—’ He stopped short, glancing at Cinder, realisation in his eyes. ‘Ah. I suppose it was rather close, wasn’t it?’

  There was a thunderous roar that seemed to shake the earth beneath their feet. Cinder felt her legs tremble. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled.

  From behind them came the clomp of a tremendous footstep, followed by another, then another, increasing in pace. Cinder swallowed, rooted to the spot. The expression on the Doctor’s face was one of startled surprise.

  Slowly, she turned her head.

  The creature was like something born out of a child’s nightmare. It was titanic, twice the size of a hab-bloc back on Moldox, and even more ugly to look at. It stood upright on two stocky hind legs, with a short, fat tail dragging along the ground for balance. Where she might have expected two front legs to protrude from either side of its chest the beast had wings – short, flightless wings, covered in downy feathers of purple and white. Its massive head was mostly teeth, contained in a yawning chasm of a mouth. Above this, a row of four beady eyes blinked in rapid succession. Presently, all four of them were fixed on Cinder and the Doctor as it came charging across the field towards them.

  ‘I thought you said we’d see it coming in plenty of time,’ said Cinder.

  The Doctor shrugged. ‘I was trying to make you feel better,’ he said. He grabbed her by the arm. ‘See those rocky cliffs over there?’

  Cinder nodded.

  ‘Run!’

  Cinder ran for all she was worth. Her thigh muscles burned as she plunged across the uneven earth towards the cliff face. She was strides ahead of the Doctor, who, despite his surprising agility, was simply unable to keep up.

  The lolloping beast charged after them, its bizarre, flightless wings flapping excitedly as it ran. Strands of drool dripped from its terrifying jaws.

  Cinder’s foot caught in a root or an uneven clump of grass and she went over, throwing her hands out and slamming into the hard, dry loam and jarring her wrist. She immediately broke into a roll, refusing to allow it to halt her momentum, and in one lithe movement sprang back up onto her feet and continued her frantic dash for cover.

  Behind her the beast roared, a primal, rumbling cry that hit her like a punch in the belly. Any number of times in the past she’d heard the sound of a gunshot or an exploding mine described as ‘deafening’, and she’d never really given much thought to what a deafening sound might actually be. The noise that came out of the beast, however, was – quite literally – that. It left her ears ringing, as if someone had just stuffed balls of cotton wool in them, and drowned out the world.

  Everything felt hyper-real, dream-like. Was she really running across a field on a distant planet, pursued by a carnivorous creature analogous to a dinosaur?

  The cliff face was coming up at her, black and slab-like, a wall across the world. She realised with horror that she had no idea what she was supposed to do when she got there. She was effectively running toward a dead end. The creature would have them pinned against the wall with nowhere to go.

  ‘Doctor!’ she wailed, knowing full well that she’d be unable to hear his response.

  The creature’s footsteps were getting closer, physically bouncing her into the air with every thunderous step. Her hearing was beginning to return in a series of stuttering, disorienting episodes. She began to slow.

  She reached the very foot of the craggy mountainside, glancing from left to right. All she could see was a lone boulder, sitting amongst a heap of loose rocks. Had the Doctor intended for them to take cover behind that?

  She felt him suddenly grab at her wrist and, surprised, allowed him to pull her away, running parallel to the wall. The creature tried to slow its pace and, unable to halt its momentum, skidded sideways into the rock face.

  Cinder glanced over her shoulder as she ran and saw that it had not been dissuaded, however, as it continued to stagger after them, swaying its head from side to side.

  ‘In here!’ called the Doctor, pointing to a narrow fissure in the rock. ‘Get inside!’

  ‘In there?’ cried Cinder.

  ‘Just do it!’ bellowed the Doctor, releasing his grip on her arm and shoving her in the direction of the large crack. She ran towards it, turning sideways so that she could wriggle through, hoping that it would widen out once she was inside to create a space in which they could shelter until the monster had gone.

  The rocks were jagged and scratched painfully at her back and hands as she forced her way in. Through the narrow opening she could see the Doctor, backing up towards her, waving his sonic screwdriver at the creature. It didn’t appear to be having any effect. ‘Doctor!’ she shouted.

  ‘I’ll be right there,’ he called over his shoulder.

  He disappeared from view for a moment, and then he was at the entrance, forcing his way in after her.

  The creature roared again, butting its head against the cliff face, as if trying to smash its way through to get at them. Snorting, it lowered its head to the crevice, peering in with its multiple, winking eyes. It could see them squirming into the crack in the rock, and it wasn’t happy. It snorted again, sending gobbets of spittle deep into the crevice, spattering Cinder’s face and hair. She made a disgusted sound as she tried to wipe it away, and succeeded only in smearing it across her cheek. It growled at them, and the backwash of its breath was hot and rank with the stench of rotten meat.

  ‘We’ll be safe here,’ said the Doctor. ‘We can wait here until it’s gone.’ He put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She glanced at him. He was standing at least a metre away, still trying to negotiate his way into the cave, his shoulders heaving with every breath. So whose was the hand …?

  Cinder twisted frantically, catching her other shoulder on a sharp outcrop of rock and screaming in frightened surprise at the man standing behind her. A man whom she was not entirely sure was a man at all.

  He appeared to be dressed in roughly woven linen robes, and was thin and pale-skinned. His face, however, was almost impossible to focus upon. The features flickered and altered as she watched, as if one
face was morphing into another, and then another, and then another, locked in a constant cycle of change. More, it seemed to glow with a soft amber light, as if impregnated with weird, flickering energy, similar to the manner in which Karlax’s face had begun to glow, just before the Doctor had explained the Time Lord was about to regenerate.

  This was different, however. It was like the man wasn’t really there, like his features were ghostly and incorporeal, despite the face she could feel the weight of his hand on her shoulder. She couldn’t read any expression on his faces. Everything was too fluid. She had no idea whether he meant her harm or not.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said the Doctor from behind her. ‘He won’t hurt you.’

  The newcomer withdrew his hand and inched back the way he had come, deeper into the cave. Now he had their attention, he soundlessly waved for them to follow.

  ‘What is he?’ whispered Cinder.

  ‘He’s a Time Lord,’ said the Doctor, his voice heavy with sadness.

  ‘A Time Lord?’

  ‘Yes. Remember I told you about Borusa?’

  Cinder nodded. ‘Is that him?’

  ‘No, that’s not him, but that is what he’s like now. This poor soul must have been one of Rassilon’s earlier experiments, cast out into the Death Zone when the experiment failed.’

  ‘What experiment? You’re not making sense,’ said Cinder.

  ‘Rassilon, just like the Daleks, has been toying with Time Lord evolution, picking subjects and retro-evolving their personal timeline, tampering with their genetic make-up so that they evolve into something else. Into that.’ The Doctor waved her on down the tunnel, urging her to follow the strange half-man.

  ‘What’s the matter with his face?’ she said.

  ‘Those are all of his past and future incarnations,’ said the Doctor. ‘The different faces he would have worn. They’re trapped in a cycle of constant flux. He’s neither one nor another of the people he could have been. He’s locked in a state of constant metacrisis between faces, his mind exposed to the raw energy of the Time Vortex.’