Free Doctor Who: Engines of War by George Mann Page A

amount of prefabricated materials in their hold, and these had formed the basis of the very first buildings – those, and the skin of the ship that had brought them here. As the colony had developed and they’d learned to manufacture, to harvest the local wood and mine for minerals and metals, the buildings had grown more sophisticated, but still they had followed the plan from Earth. Month after month, year after year, the colony had grown, soon forgetting it was a colony at all and becoming a home.
    People had flourished here, and in time they had spread across the other planets of the Spiral. Moldox, however, had been the first, the origin of human life in this sector. Now, billions of those people were dead, possibly erased entirely from history, whilst billions more were enslaved to the Daleks.
    The Doctor was right. They would stop this happening to anyone else. They had to. It was time to stop doubting him. If brazenly walking up to the saucer and strolling in through the nearest entry point was going to be the best way into the Dalek base, then she would follow him. There was something about the Doctor – something that inspired her to trust him.
    They crossed the intersection and continued down the filthy street, until they were standing in the shadow of the nearest saucer. It was immense, towering over her, and she could see here, from ground level, that it sat upon three domes that sprouted from its base. Beneath it was the rubble of one of the old school buildings. The ablative armour that formed the outer skin of the ship was pitted and covered in verdigris. None of the lights appeared to be functional. Creeping vines had begun to make inroads, curling up from below like willowy green fingers, clutching at the alien interloper. It looked as abandoned as the human buildings that surrounded it.
    They edged forward, glancing from side to side. High above, on one of the gantries, a Dalek and two Degradations – the squat, egg-shaped variety with the spider legs – were crossing from one saucer to another. The Doctor didn’t appear to have spotted them. Cinder grabbed his arm and dragged him into the shadows beneath the belly of the ship. She jabbed her gun silently in the direction of the Daleks and he nodded his understanding. They waited for a moment until the Daleks had passed.
    ‘There should be a ramp on this side, if I’m not mistaken,’ said the Doctor, fiddling with the knot of his scarf. He moved on, following the rim of the saucer around until they were close to the edge of the central courtyard, but still largely hidden by the shadows.
    The Daleks appeared to have finished their weapon testing, and the remaining humans – six of them, she counted, relieved – were being herded back into the saucer on the other side.
    It seemed incomprehensible to Cinder that this site, this old children’s playground, could have become such a place of death. The faded markings of hopscotch squares and painted circles on the ground seemed incongruous, wrong. She was filled with a sharp feeling of disquiet. It was almost as if the Daleks had chosen this location in order to mock their human captives, to remind them of happier times, now lost to them for ever.
    ‘Move, or you will be ex-ter-min-ated,’ said one of the Daleks, shoving a prisoner in the back with its manipulator arm. The man staggered forward, but didn’t acknowledge the Dalek, didn’t even cry out. The fight had clearly gone out of him, and he shuffled onto the boarding ramp, his head bowed.
    This was a man waiting to die, Cinder realised. They all were. Every one of those prisoners, men and women – they knew it was only a matter of time, and in some ways, they’d probably begun to look forward to it. To crave it, even. At least death would be a release from the torment inflicted upon them by their captors. Anything else was just an extension of their agony.
    She watched the final stragglers of the small party mount the ramp and disappear