Free Doctor Who by Nicholas Briggs Page B

room.
    Here, all was quiet. All three police officers left him alone, the door sucking shut behind them, sealing out the noise of the police station.
    The Doctor waited, sitting on a padded bench, breathing in the sweet, varnished air. He was pretty certain this was some kind of courtroom. Ahead of him was a raised platform with an elaborately sculpted, grand wooden desk built into it. There were two other, smaller desks to the left and right of it.
    Moments passed. The Doctor’s mind was racing. He had the distinct suspicion that he was about to be swallowed up by the petty, legal complexities of this human colony planet. He knew he was going to have to extract himself from all this pretty soon if he was going to have any chance of finding out what the Daleks were up to and how to stop them.
    An almost invisibly fitted wooden door swung open behind the large desk and a man in a plain black suit with a high-collared black shirt and a thin silver metal strip on his lapel entered without looking at the Doctor and sat down at the desk. From the light suddenly illuminating the man’s face, the Doctor assumed there was some kind of computer screen built into the wooden surface. This must be the judge, he thought to himself.
    The judge glanced at each of the desks to his left and right, expectantly. A faint sense of disapproval passed over his small, flattish, pale face.
    The Doctor tutted out loud. The judge immediately fixed him with his surprisingly beady eyes. The Doctor attempted an affable smile.
    ‘Late, are they?’ he ventured, tutting again.
    The directness of the judge’s stare faded as he looked back down at his desk computer screen, apparently losing interest in the Doctor.
    Another hidden door swung open behind the right-hand desk, and another man in a black suit, this time with a green metallic strip on his lapel, came dashing in, holding a sheaf of waxy papers. His red hair was ruffled and he looked like he had cut himself shaving. There was a somewhat panicked air about him. He nodded respectfully to the judge and rushed over to the Doctor. Without looking at the Doctor’s face, he held out a hand. The Doctor shook it, watching this new arrival shuffle through the papers.
    ‘Dansard, Hellic Dansard,’ he said. ‘State-appointed defence council.’
    ‘Got you up in the middle of the night, did they?’ asked the Doctor, with a smile. Hellic stopped for a moment and looked at the Doctor properly for the first time.
    ‘Er … something like that,’ he said. ‘You seem pretty cheerful for a man in a lot of trouble.’
    ‘Oh, I’m always in a lot of trouble,’ said the Doctor, his smile getting bigger.
    ‘Riiight,’ said Hellic, clearly not sure what to make of the Doctor. ‘The evidence seems pretty irrefutable. Several of the press submitted footage of you saying the Daleks are evil. Can’t really see any way around that.’
    ‘Neither can I,’ said the Doctor. ‘The Daleks
are
evil.’
    ‘Ah … yeah,’ said Hellic, his voice becoming more hushed. ‘Probably not a good idea to keep saying things like that.’
    At that moment, another hidden door swung open, this time behind the left-hand desk. The Doctor was expecting to see another black-suited lawyer. But instead, he was confronted with …
    A Dalek.
    Bronze, squat, smoothly scraping the wooden surface of the door, manoeuvring expertly into the tiny space behind the desk, this Dalek was clearly the prosecuting council. The judge looked up, giving a brief but reverential nod to the Dalek. Hellic nodded too, then returned his gaze to the Doctor, clearly intending to continue their briefing.
    The Doctor was completely taken aback by the Dalek’s entrance. He knew that these people here on Carthedia had been fooled into thinking the Daleks were some kind of force for good, but he still had not expected to find Daleks acting as public servants in legal cases.
    ‘Dalek Litigator,’ said the judge in a spiky little voice, allowing himself a