Please read and review my new short story. This story is dedicated to John Hurt, who played the first Chestburster scene in the Alien franchise, the Great Dragon in Merlin, and the War Doctor. Rest in peace.
"EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"
The Doctor - or the Time Lord who had taken that name during centuries of rebellious time travel from the Time Lords - shut all of the outer audio sensors of his helmet though he left the communication channel that linked him and the other Time Lords fighting on this planet open. There was little point keeping the channel open, the Daleks wouldn't have anything worth saying to listen to beyond the usual battle cry and their threats. He should know, he had fought the Daleks for centuries even before the Time War began, he had fought them in two different timelines before the Time Lords sent him to a point where Davros was finalising their creation and the Daleks branched off, becoming even more robotic rather than the more guileful Daleks he had fought before his 4th incarnation.
BANG! Something exploded dangerously close to where he and another Time Lord were standing. The Doctor winced inside his armoured suit before the gyroscopic stabilisers kicked in and kept him on his feet, before leveling his blaster carbine at the Dalek line. He picked out one of the Daleks - a spider model - and fired, using his ability to slow time down to keep the disgusting mutant from scuttling around too much to line the creature up before his fired. The alpha meson burst destroyed the top section of the creature, showering the ground and other members of its brethren in pieces of polycarbide armor and Kaled protoplasm.
Another Dalek was lined up, and he destroyed it. The Doctor felt nothing for the deaths he'd just caused, nor did he care since they were Daleks. A hand touched him. Through the viewplate of his helmet the Doctor saw another Time Lord face, and it was only over the audio link he was able to pick out what the other man was saying. "How many Daleks are there here?"
The Doctor blinked in surprise at the question. "Too many," he replied, turning around and he was just leveling another Dalek up in his sights when the Time Lord grabbed him again, startling him so much he fired prematurely, but he didn't know whether it had taken another Dalek out due to sheer dumb luck or if he'd just made a small hole in the ground.
"That's not an answer-"
"THEN COUNT THEM!" The Doctor shouted through the comm link. "We're fighting for our lives here, and you're too busy trying to figure out how many Daleks there are here. Now get lost and start firing at them before you get both of us killed!"
The Doctor dropped to the ground just in time to avoid a burst of Dalek firepower. The other Time Lord fell as well, but instead of trying to line up a target, he just glared at the Doctor. "How dare you speak to me like that-" he shut up quickly when the Doctor, finally having enough, jabbed the carbine into his face. Their armoured bodysuits were a closed environment designed to resist Dalek firepower, though if the Daleks concentrated their weapons then they could severely damage the suit and kill the Time Lord inside. But a Time Lord weapon was powerful enough to destroy the suit and kill the Time Lord with a single shot.
"Is this some sort of joke to you? We're fighting the Daleks, so it doesn't matter how many there are. I don't care about you, your house, your personal history. Now start fighting you fool!" The Doctor turned back to the battle and loaded a bastic grenade into the mechanism before firing, pushing the annoying Time Lord out of his mind to get his mind back on the battle. The grenade landed very close to a small contingent of Daleks - 3 Spiders, two special weapons, and 3 regulars. The Daleks noticed the grenade a second before it exploded with twice the force of a Dalekanium bomb.
The Doctor spent the next minute loading extra grenades of varying yields into his carbine, but his mind was on this mission. Separated from his TARDIS for front line duty, something he strongly disagreed with for this mission because the Time Lords had sent him on a mission to a world he had never visited before, because without his TARDIS he felt lost. But there were practical reasons as well as sentimental - with access to the TARDIS's records and charts he could work out why both the Daleks and the Time Lords were fighting over this world like vicious dogs over a piece of meat.
Pushing those thoughts to the side the Doctor began wondering why the Time Lords had bothered sending so many of their people to this primitive planet - the people who lived here already weren't dissimilar to the native American indians from Earth, and they had a ritualistic culture. He had asked himself why so many times since landing on this planet. When they'd arrived the Time Lords had ignored the natives besides setting up a small base and sending their number out on recon and patrol. Thinking of the Time Lord's base on this planet made him frown in concern. He had no idea if the Time Lords were simply here to set up a base where they could make this planet into one large listening station to decipher Dalek transmissions, but he had been forced to stay away from the base, so he couldn't be sure. Ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem since he knew ways of breaking into places without others knowing, but the Time Lords had warded him away using his imprimature print. The Time Lords didn't trust him, they were worried that he might interfere with whatever their operations were on this planet, and that worried him in turn. It meant they were doing something he would go out of his way to prevent, whether he was technically on their side or not. The Doctor and the Time Lord detachment sent here had been present for 8 days already, and had spent over 6 of those days fighting and killing as many Daleks as they could. But why were they here? There was nothing really special about this planet, unless its people were actually higher dimensional aliens who had deliberately decided to stick to 4 dimensions to live their lives simply, and the Time Lords were trying to force them into fighting against the Daleks. If not… the Doctor knew the long term fate of any primitive species unlucky enough to encounter the Daleks. Chances were the race that lived here would be wiped out, but he had asked around. None of the other Time Lords knew why they were here any more than he did, and more than one of them had expressed discomfort being away from Gallifrey.
Someone dropped beside him, startling him out of his thoughts. He relaxed when he saw it was Rodan. When he'd first met Rodan centuries ago in both their personal timelines, Rodan had been a simple traffic controller. Now she was a renegade who, like many others, had grown bored to death of the monotonous life on Gallifrey, and like him had been forced to join the Time Lords.
"How's it going over here?" she asked breathlessly.
"I'm not sure, my battle computer link was cut out when the Daleks fired that graviton burst. Why, what's it like elsewhere?"
"Not good. If you're expecting reinforcements, don't get your hopes up," Rodan's face was grim. "The others are fighting 15 Dalek platoons all over the continent."
15 platoons of Daleks! Before the Doctor could say anything Rodan had pushed him to the ground, using her own body as a shield to avoid the Dalek artillery shells which exploded all over the landscape. "Sorry," Rodan apologised once they'd picked themselves up, and they both began firing at the Daleks when the battle computer built into the Doctor's helmet kicked in, letting him know a Dalek was above them, too busy to notice them since it was firing at a Time Lord anti grav chariot. Knowing how vulnerable Daleks were underneath, the Doctor took careful aim and fired free bolts at the base. The impact exploded the Dalek, ripping its lower base to pieces in a flaming inferno before its upper section dropped to the ground like a stone, before that too went up in flames. The Doctor and Rodan had moved to a cannon by the time the order came. The cannon's crew had both been killed by a pair of lucky shots, but they'd been avenged by the Doctor and Rodan, who took control by sitting inside the thrones. Using their suits computers they took control and started firing at the Daleks. After turning the cannon to the sky to fire on the Dalek fighter pods in the sky, the Doctor pushed aside all of his thoughts as he fired one bolt and explosive shell after another at the Daleks. Rodan and the Doctor had just been joined by two other cannons which had been abandoned or their crews had been slaughtered during the battle and three chariots which swarmed above them to give them aerial superiority, and they had just wiped out a number of hoverbout crews when something came over the audio link. It was typically a Time Lord message; "RETURN TO TRANSMAT SITES. PREPARE FOR PICK UP."
The other Time Lords immediately filled the air, voicing their frustration over what was going on and the lack of real answers about what was going on.
"What in Rassilon's name is going on?"
"It's like that Ravalox thing all over again, they won't tell us a thing!"
"Surely if we were here to build a simple base you'd think we'd be allowed to know what was going on."
The Doctor ignored all of their chatter though he had his doubts about the last one he heard since the Time Lords suffered from the problems of defection like any other war, but he was surprised that the Time Lords were abandoning this planet so quickly. From what he'd seen the Time Lords hadn't really had time to do more than build the nuclear powerplant that powered the facility and built the antennae, that would make sense but it was just the rest of the secrecy which bothered him. The Time Lords were preparing to activate their short range transmats which would send them to the main transfer point when the Doctor caught sight a a few light purple humanoids. Time literally seemed to stand still as the Doctor studied them, noting their hewn wooden weapons and bows and arrows. The aliens were looking at them, blinking their massive black-white eyes in what seemed like fear and superstitious dread. The Doctor wondered what they were thinking about what they could see. He knew primitive races seeing this would think they were seeing their gods fighting a pitched battle. But he knew that barring a miracle these people wouldn't live to see another day.
"Airstrike! Harden armor, quick!"
The cry snapped the Doctor back into the real world, and he hardened his suit just in time when the world exploded in blinding white light.
Blinking from the harsh light even though his suit had automatically polarised his helmet's visor, but then no polarised material could ever truly deflect such a flash, the Doctor picked himself up. He'd been knocked off his feet by the force of the explosion which had made the ground rumble and even now had thrown up dust turning the formerly blue-turquoise sky of the planet into a reddish color with the sun coming out as orange. The Doctor checked the sensors of his suit and the battle computer picked up the biosigns of some of the other Time Lords, but he noted one or two of them hadn't been in time to harden their armored suits and had simply been blown to pieces. The sensor readings made him frown. The bomb was a solar-fusion bomb, a device that scooped up the fusion material of a star and combined it with an ordinary nuclear weapon. A bit primitive by the Time Lord's standards especially since Daleks had a long history of nuclear weapons, hell they'd been created in a nuclear holocaust and practically lived on it the way ordinary humanoids needed air. His blood went cold and he turned to face the direction he'd seen the inhabitants of the planet. They weren't there anymore, but then again neither was there much life anywhere else.
The bomb had scorched the surrounding landscape. Where a massive valley of long, thick, luxuriant grass had once stood surrounded by tall trees though since the battle had begun a massive forest fire had begun, caused by runaway energy bolts, explosions caused by grenades, destroyed Dalek casings of hoverbouts which had leaked the flammable chemical lubricants which of the equally flammable electro fluid the casing used in the place of blood, or wrecked and ruined war machines both species had brought with them, the solar-fusion bomb had put those fires out…..by incinerating the forests.
The Doctor didn't want to know how large the blast radius was, and truly he didn't have a single clue where the bomb even detonated, but he knew it had to be close by. The only thing he could hear outside was silence, but he could still hear the telepathic voices of his people but he couldn't hear them verbally speak. The Doctor spun around, panting inside his suit even though it wasn't running out of air, trying to see around him but the dust clouds around him made it hard to see anyone. Finally he saw a silhouette and he stiffened - until he saw it was a humanoid, but he wasn't sure if it was a Dalek trooper, and he hadn't heard of any humanoid contingent with the Daleks.
He smiled when he saw the figure was clad in the armor of a Gallifreyan soldier. "Doctor!" Rodan called, staggering up to him. She was exhausted he could see.
"Rodan, have you seen anyone else?" The Doctor grasped her wrist gauntlets to steady her.
"One or two, have you seen any Daleks?"
"I haven't seen any," the Doctor turned his head to look. By now the dust was clearing and he could now see the familiar humanoid forms of people wearing combat armor. "You?"
Rodan looked sheepish through the visor. "Yeah, tripped over a spider back there, but I haven't seen a live one. Have you heard anything, I think my audio receptors are a bit jammed from the explosion?"
Just then the voice came over the receptors in their helmets. "PREPARE SUITS FOR TRANSMAT! STAND BY FOR EVACUATION!"
The Doctor looked at Rodan, spearing the Time Lady with a look as they started heading towards their transmat site to transport to whatever ship would pick them up, "Do you have any idea what's going on? What's the point of travelling to a planet and then abandoning it after one single battle? Even for the Time Lord's lack of real commitment for this war you'd think they'd have a bit more concern for whatever they're building."
Out of the corner of his eye the Doctor could see the frown on his fellow renegade's face. "No. They gave me patrol duties and surveying the alien life on this planet," she let out a sigh that spoke volumes about her sorrow, "I saw them forage in the forest, hunt and gather fruits and other vegetables. I saw the way they lived their lives. Another race lost to the Time War."
The Doctor momentarily closed his eyes. He had seen genocide many times over the centuries, but for the last 10 years of his current life he had seen too many species die, and in such a short span of time. But this species….. He had found caves and caverns during moments when his curiosity which had gotten him into so much trouble over the years but was a fundamental facet of what made him who he was. It was strange, he was so prepared to push away his former life, forget the days before he had learnt of the Valeyard's existence and just travel around believing morality could save the day, but the caves on this world had been similar to the artistic displays primitive peoples left all over the universe.
There was a whole cave on this planet after he had left frustrated that the Time Lords just would not tell him what was going on, and he had decided to go exploring, hoping for a distraction. The cave he'd found was like an artist's gallery or showroom. It was decorated with atypical sketches of animals, but there were others as the aliens living here had grown more intelligent and their pictures had moved on from crude pictures scratched into the rock with other pieces of rock to basic paints. The thought all that had been destroyed saddened and sickened the Doctor - it was bad enough many of the higher species wept over the war, but it was the primitive species who hadn't had the chance to grow that suffered though many of them didn't even know or was aware of the war.
The Doctor nodded when he saw the look on Rodan's face as she peered at him clearly wondering if he had finally lost his marbles. "Let's go," he said.
The bomb had certainly done its work, the Doctor thought as he and Rodan walked in the direction of the transmat site. There were shattered Daleks everywhere, some of them had probably been wounded by the Time Lord weapons before the blast finished them off. But there were pieces of hoverbouts, transsolar discs littering the valley over dead or dying grass. The two Time Lords had joined up with three others when a sixth approached at a run, holding his carbine. The Doctor recognised him as the Time Lord who'd annoyed him earlier before all hell broke loose, and if the outraged look that the other sent him, he knew it too. The Doctor ignored him, they had other things to worry about. Once again the idiot asked fool questions.
"Are they any Daleks around?" he asked almost hysterically.
One of the soldier's that the Doctor and Rodan had found, a Time Lady snapped derogatorily at him, "Calm down you idiot."
It seemed the others had much the same view of him. "Of course there are Daleks present, if most of them are dead there will be survivors, it's what they do," the Doctor added.
The other Time Lord sniffed, the sound came out enhanced over the communication bands. "I am aware of that, but I wish to know how many are around-"
"Then go and find them," Rodan said, walking around the foolish Time Lord and carried on towards the transmat site, and without sparing the annoying man with a glance the others followed - why was he seemingly obsessed with numbers anyway? - and kept an eye out for any Daleks which may have survived. It didn't take long for them to find out some of them had survived. The Time Lord group had been halfway towards the site, coming across various humanoid native corpses in various states of scorching, or in one case melting, on the ground.
"I wonder what they were thinking when they died," one Time Lady whispered.
The Doctor turned his head, grateful that the war had made a small majority of his people aware of the life that existed beyond Gallifrey's star system. For too long the Time Lords had been content to ignore the universe and its beauties, and everyone on Gallifrey had grown up hearing that other races were inferior compared to the Time Lords. It wasn't their fault they didn't have an Eye of Harmony, it was not their fault they didn't have the knowledge of the Time Lords. It was good that the war had changed their perceptions, but not all of it was good or even what the Doctor wanted.
Just as the Doctor was thinking that the Time Lord who had done nothing but annoy people all day decided to speak. "Probably thinking they should leave their betters to it," he said, not even bothering to deign to glance down and see what the carnage had caused.
"Betters?" Rodan snapped, whipping her blaster out and leveling it between the bastards eyes. "These people, their way of life, it may not be as…..intellectually stimulating as it must be on Gallifrey for you, but they were better than many Time Lords. They're not self pretentious fools existing in the shadows of Omega and Rassilon."
"H-How dare you point that t-thing at me, I can have you-"
"Have me what? Demoted, executed? Our people are fighting for our lives, for the universe, but most of all those who can't fight back. Figure out whose side your on."
The Doctor had pulled out his own weapon to show the foolish man he was firmly on Rodan's side. He had to admire Rodan's courage, noting as well how uncaring she was; the man was acting like he was Rassilon reborn (hard to pull off because Rassilon had returned), and was now threatening a woman he didn't seem to realise simply didn't care about what the Time Lords said or did. If there was a member of his people who had a reason to be that way, it was Rodan. All those boring years doing tedious jobs on Gallifrey before she decided to tell the Time Lords to screw themselves had that effect.
The Time Lord didn't have a chance to say another word. A bolt of blue energy smashed into his chest armor, clearly unhardened. None of the Time Lords watched him actually hit the ground, they were too busy firing repeatedly all around as the Time Lord commander, safely smug and secure on the command ship told them to prepare for emergency transmat. The Time Lords ran towards the site, their armor hardened as they rushed towards the transmat site. When they got there they found the whole site under heavy fire, and the Doctor was grateful that the Time Lords, being a non warlike species initially, had never really understood the need to sacrifice soldiers for a cause by leaving them behind. A blast smashed into Rodan's shoulder, and she staggered, her gasps of pain rasping echoing through the link.
The Doctor fired in the direction of the bolt - he might not be able to see the Dalek, but it felt good to think one of his blaster bolts would turn a casing into a Roman candle - and held onto Rodan, careful not to touch the woman's arm. "What happened, I thought your armor was hardened?"
"So did I," Rodan panted, and with his help she was able to stand steady and wait until the last stragglers joined them. It seemed to take forever for them to arrive, time which was spent constantly hardening and re-hardening their armor to avoid being killed or force regenerated by Dalek gunfire. By the time the transmat activated the Time Lords had returned to the site.
"We need medical attention," the Doctor said to the officer overseeing the transmat operation, hauling up the protesting but still gasping Rodan to her feet. The officer didn't looked impressed. "So do others. She'll have to wait."
The Doctor and Rodan walked off, as far from the pompous Time Lord as they could. The Doctor took her to one of the empty rooms close to the corridor. It had a window. Rodan was forced to lean against the glass port window, groaning in agony. The Doctor stood up, "I'm going to get a med kit, I'll be back."
Rodan waved him off. He came back a few minutes later and helped soothe her wound. It seemed that an artillery shell had exploded close to Rodan, and a piece of shrapnel had wedged itself in a flexible part of her armor. When the Dalek had fired on her, that piece of metal had gone through the plates covering her shoulder. It wasn't a truly serious wound, but the flesh was bruised. It only took him a minute to clean it up and heal it. Rodan smiled at him, moving her arm and shoulder without wincing. "Thanks," she said.
"Your welcome."
Any further talk was halted by a general alarm call that reverberated throughout the Time Lord ship. Rodan looked out of the window and saw what had caused it. "Oh my god!"
The Doctor looked out as well, his eyes widening in surprise as millions of Dalek saucers poured out of hyperspace, all of them gleaming in the new bronze-golden color which now seemed predominate with Dalek technology nowadays like stars against the black space. The Time Lord ships nearby turned to defend themselves, opening fire as soon as they got close enough to get a lock. The Daleks fired back, ignoring their ships being destroyed by the Time Lords as they advanced relentlessly towards the planet.
"I've got to get to the bridge," the Doctor said, "find a way to move the battle away from the planet-"
"I think you'd be wasting your time," Rodan said, shaking her head though she didn't take her eyes off the fighting. "Look at them, they're too interested in killing each other."
She did not like this anymore than he did, but the pair of them had both regenerated to join in the conflict their people had gotten themselves into. Like the Doctor, many renegades like Rodan had simply refused to join in the fighting. Their reasons varied from person to person. In Rodan's case it was simply because she didn't like what her people had become. It was like seeing their people in a nightmarish dream only to wake up and see the dream was reality. But when she had regenerated Rodan had decided to join in, much like he had done when he'd failed to rescue Cass. The Doctor closed his eyes in remembrance of the woman who had been so eager and alive, only to become cold and hateful when she found out he was in fact a Time Lord. In hindsight his eighth self should have been prepared, but he had just wanted someone to keep him from joining the fighting and he'd hoped Cass would have done that. he had been wrong, and he would never forget the look of hatred she had for him when she found out who he was.
The Priestess of the Sisterhood on Karn had been right - he couldn't ignore the war forever, no matter how tempting.
"Wait a second," the Doctor whispered, "what's happening now?"
Both renegades frowned when the view outside the ship showing the planet, the Dalek ships and the Time Lord warships fighting each other disappeared, replaced by the swirling vista of the Time Vortex. "We're leaving," Rodan whispered, "but why?"
But she was wrong. The Time Lord ship the Doctor and Rodan were on left the vortex, and from the look outside they hadn't gone far; the Doctor estimated they'd crossed to outside the system. "Still think we shouldn't get to the bridge?" The Doctor asked.
They joined a few of the other Time Lords on the bridge of the ship, in the time it took to reach the bridge they had felt the ship traverse the vortes. A few other renegades were there already, and the Doctor headed over to one of them. "What's going on?"
"We don't know," the Time Lord sent a rather dark look over to the command dais where the commander was. The Doctor followed his gaze towards the garishly garbed figure. He hadn't really bothered to form an opinion of the commander, except that he knew the Time Lord was typical of the species. "But it's big, we've crossed over 15 light years."
The Doctor looked at the bridge's massive glasslike panels. Except they weren't glass. They just looked that way. No, the technology was similar to the scanner technology used in TARDISes, only they could be used like telescopes to peer into distant corners of space and time. They showed the solar system which they'd just left behind, and he was even more puzzled. Why the interest in a solar system where the fighting was still going on? His insides began to chill and he knew whatever was going on he wasn't going to like it one little bit.
"But why cross so far?"
"Everyone - cover your eyes!" The commander suddenly ordered, and it came just in time. The world exploded in bright, white blinding light, enhanced by the viewing panels. There were cries of surprise from members of the crew, and the Doctor ground his teeth together as he squeezed his eyes tightly and firmly shut. Suddenly it had darkened, and the Doctor opened his eyes and removed his hands to look at the panels.
"No," he whispered in horror. There was nothing left in the solar system, both suns had gone nova, killing and destroying everything. The Dalek and Time Lord ships were also gone which he found hard to believe since the Daleks were more than capable of building shields capable of withstanding a nova, and the Time Lords history with black holes and novas made them aware of ways to blink through them, but what was tragic to him was the loss of life- the shining planet with that race that hadn't even had a proper chance to grow - all that was left of it were burnt out embers. He looked around. The other renegades looked just as appalled as he felt, though the members of the squad of troopers who lived and breathed Time Lord propaganda didn't look interested.
The Time Lord commander's delight was palpable. "Success! Contact the High council, inform them the nova detonation went as planned-"
"What was that?!" The Doctor shouted, furious, storming up to the commander, furious. The two members of the Chancellory guard instantly drew out their stasers, but the Doctor ignored them. "What was that?" he demanded again.
The commander didn't look concerned about him and his anger. "Why, we used a supernova to destroy the Daleks of course. We have spent the last month letting word reach the Daleks to make them think we were using that primitive planet to house a listening station. The Daleks swallowed the bait and dispatched an entire fleet of ships. The operation was a success."
"At the cost of an innocent race," the Doctor whispered before storming off in disgust, but he could hear the commander say behind him, "They were primitives, nothing compared to what we're fighting for, Doctor-"
"You don't know what you're fighting for, and that's the tragic thing," the Doctor yelled behind him as he walked away, a glance over his shoulder letting him know the other renegades were following him. He was disgusted by what had just happened, but what disgusted him even more was the fact he could understand and even agree with some of the Time Lord's logic. Cass was right, but she had said something he was beginning to doubt, especially after seeing that.
How much of the Universe was left now?
The Doctor was standing inside the War Room on Gallifrey a few days later. For such an important place in a war as serious as the Time War the room was hardly larger than a basketball court on Earth. It was typical of the Time Lord's way of thinking, and if you went around the city you would find Time Lords serenely ignoring the state of things going on around them. So many of his people went out of their way to believe the Time War was someone else's business and nothing to worry about. There were moments the Doctor wanted to strangle some of those individuals dressed in their ornate robes and make them wake up, and he even nursed the private thought that the Daleks actually did invade the Capitol. It would mean the end of the war and leaving the universe wide open for the Daleks, but the Daleks would make those self important idiots wake up and smell the Arkelis flower sap.
The Doctor was casting a professional eye around the room, studying the numerous frontlines when a young member of the army came to him to tell him Rassilon himself wanted to speak with him in the Temporal control tower. The soldier was breathless, overexcited by the notion of being in the presence of Rassilon and the Doctor couldn't blame her, though he took the legends of both Omega and Rassilon with a grain of salt, his own personal histories with the two men shadowing what he had learnt about them both.
Ignoring the looks she sent him, the Doctor let himself be escorted to the Temporal Control Tower and to the transport lifts to reach the main hall where the Time Lords monitored the Web of Time. The Temporal Control Tower was one of the largest structures on Gallifrey next to the Panopticon, so large that many Time Lords considered it and the Panopticon building as the two hearts of Time Lord society. They were right - the Panopticon tower held the Panopticon hall itself, the council chamber, the President's living area and the those of the Chancellor and other High Council members. But the Doctor had always considered Temporal Control more important.
As the transport moved him and his escort to the control room, the Doctor did his best to ignore the city's new desktop theme with its darker hues which seemed devoid of the typical Time Lord extravagance, and just focused on what Rassilon could want. It was probably nothing good, but why not meet him at the war room? The door opened and the Doctor and his escort walked into the massive temporal control room. The Doctor had visited the room several times since returning to Gallifrey to take part in the fighting and it had changed and become even more larger. It was about twice the size of a football field with massive banks of computers and displays showing segments of the Web of Time beyond the massive dominating 3-d hologram in the middle of the room. The room was on multiple levels going up with the same consoles and display areas on them. Deceptively, this version of the TCR featured massive windows that showed the outside of the tower to give the impression that the Time Lord technicians and visitors that the place was just an ordinary building. Cheap trick. The Tower was created with the same technology as a TARDIS. It was dimensionally transcendental and made up of Block transfer computations to make it a complex space time event, and to allow the protyon core, the living computer mind, access to the Web of Time.
When he'd been in his first incarnation long before he'd left Gallifrey behind with Susan, the Doctor had worked here. He'd come as a kind of apprentice and he had learnt a great deal about the domain of the Time Lords, and he knew how the Time Lords here reacted whenever someone tried to change history, one of the many reasons he had initially worked hard to keep a low profile. The young TIme Lady led him over to Rassilon. The Time Lord founder had removed his outer robe of office, leaving him clad in his grey tunic. The president wasn't alone at his table. There was a bland looking Time Lord in grey and a Time Lord wearing the traditional garb of the Temporal control elite. The most incongruous member of the little group, who clearly didn't belong there, was a Time Lady wearing deep red and gold. She looked terribly young and it was clear she had never fought in the war, and judging from her expression she was both uncaring about the whole Time War thing and didn't like being here.
"Ah Doctor, good of you to join us," Rassilon said, "sit down. We have a mission for you."
The Doctor did as he was told, not in the mood for any trouble. Rassilon introduced the group. Milvo, the Time Lord in black, and the Associate who represented the Celestial Intervention Agency - that one intrigued the Doctor, who'd had dealings with them in the past - and lastly Lady Lorna.
Rassilon, not one to beat around the bush, stood up and gestured at the massive relativity map of the Web. "The Web of Time, Doctor. The Daleks are throwing everything they have at us, and more. Yet they are causing no damage to reality on a scale which can cause tremendous damage, yet they are not that stupid. But that doesn't stop them from trying." Rassilon turned to face the Doctor. "Tell me, Doctor, what do you know about Mondas?"
A chill of surprise and trepidation went down the Doctor's spine. He was right - this meeting couldn't be good, and a dawning suspicion of what was going to come out of Rassilon's mouth filled him with dread. "Mondas was the twin world of the planet Earth-"
"Your favorite planet, Doctor, please go on."
"Mondas broke away from Earth because of an accident, it was enough to catapult the planet and blast it out of the solar system. The disaster wrecked the surface and forced the survivors underground. The Mondasians were more advanced than their cousins on Earth. Over the centuries of travelling through space they found their race was getting weak. Their lifespans were shortening. They started undergoing experimental surgery transplants using bionic and cybernetic technologies. An organic limb became a metal limb, 10 times faster and more resilient than the original. It took time but eventually they discovered a way of purging the emotions and linking the brain to a computer network. The Mondasians act of desperation created the Cybermen. What's happened? Why are you bringing Mondas up?"
Rassilon sighed and went silent as he searched for the right words before he spoke again. "We have received an intelligence report from the CIA," he glanced at the grey faced Time Lord who hadn't moved in inch compared to the young, inexperienced Time Lady, who looked uncomfortable, "saying the Daleks plan to save Mondas. When they invaded the Matrix," he paused, the suppressed rage at what the Daleks did clear in his face before pushing it away to speak again, "they stole a lot of information."
The Doctor sighed and nodded, guessing where this was going. "They raided the CIA and Temporal Records on Mondas, and the Cybermen's plan to save Mondas."
Rassilon turned to the Time Lord who represented the CIA, whatever he was thinking unclear. Then he turned back to face the Doctor. "Correct, Doctor. I also know you personally watched the destruction of Mondas, and prevented the Cybermen from saving it. Tell us how, it might help us find the appropriate time to stop the Daleks."
"Well, the Cybermen had been fighting a long series of wars - don't ask me how long - with an alliance of powerful planets. It was a force they couldn't fight, they were dying in large numbers. I stopped an initial attack on Earth when they tried to destroy the planet to destroy the unity of that alliance, leaving the Cybermen to it. But a time vessel landed on Telos. The Cybermen captured it, studied it and learnt how it worked, and the Cyber-controller formed a plan. They sent back in time a small group of Cybermen to Earth a year before Mondas was due to return, divert a comet to impact the planet before Mondas broke up when the richer source of energy Earth possessed overwhelmed it. Crude but effective," the Doctor explained.
"Have the Cybermen tried this again since?"
"No. They've tried to turn Earth into New Mondas a few times, but its never worked. But they have never tried to finish the job they started when that time vessel landed on Telos. I have met other Cybermen with time travel technology, presumably gleaned from studies made to the vessel they originally captured."
Rassilon looked thoughtful. "You said the Cybermen travelled back a year before Mondas's destruction. Is it possible the Dalek taskforce has done the same thing?"
The Doctor thought about it a moment before he replied, "The Daleks have more experience with time travel than the Cybermen. Granted, they don't care much about history, but if I wanted to disrupt history on a massive scale then Mondas would be an ideal candidate."
"Why is that?" The Time Lady, Lady Lorna, spoke for the first time.
The Doctor turned to look at her. "Mondas's destruction has become a major part of the Web of Time. Its destruction gave humans better space travel technology with the leftover Cyberships left behind in the attack, technology which would eventually usher in the digital age and basic bionic technology. But for the wider universe civilisations rose and died, great empires were formed. It also had a massive effect and shaped the history and future of the Cybermen."
"That makes this mission even more important," Rassilon said, his mind obviously made up. "Doctor, you will take the Lady Lorna with you to Mondas, which is where we believe the Daleks will be, and you will stop them."
The Doctor looked at Rassilon suspiciously. "Why is Lady Lorna coming with me?"
Rassilon glared at him but he didn't seem too unsurprised by the Doctor's question, fortunately Lorna answered for herself. "I wanted to do my part for the war," she said before just stopping, clearly not prepared to say anymore. But the Doctor wasn't convinced. He made a mental note to keep an eye on her.
That was the only reason he decided to just accept the mission and leave.
The Doctor was basking in the TARDIS console room. It had been so long since he'd been in the mental embrace of his oldest and most constant friend, going from one battle to another. Well, not anymore. He was taking his TARDIS everywhere, whether the Time Lords liked it or not, though truthfully he had a feeling they were trying to stop him from running off like he had in the past.
They needn't have worried about that - he was done running from the war, but that didn't mean he wasn't prepared to launch his own private little war against the Daleks. He wasn't just basking in the TARDIS's embrace simply because he had missed her, he was also trying to ignore Lorna. The girl was as annoying as Romana had been when he'd first met her, but where the first Romana had been quietly disdainful of his TARDIS though she'd quickly warmed up to both, the Doctor doubted Lorna would anytime soon. The Time Lady was used to TARDISes being neat, like their default states and not like the TARDIS's current desktop showed, a right mess of a console room. The Time Lady had raised a fuss about her clothes when the Doctor told her to get something more practical on, even giving her a list of what she should wear. Lorna hadn't liked that, but he'd raised a major argument. But he had been firm. Leaving him in a huff, the Doctor had used the quiet to study the Mondas file in the databanks and what he had asked the Time Lords for before he'd left.
It wasn't easy for him to find the right place to figure out where the Daleks could be on Earth's drifting twin, but he worked out a few ideas. But he would need to do a passive scan when the TARDIS neared Mondas. The Doctor licked his lips nervously as the TARDIS entered temporal orbit of Mondas two years before the Cybermen's attempt to launch Halley's comet into Earth during those early days of his sixth incarnation, and waited. Finally the TARDIS picked up the temporal signature of a Dalek time machine and he picked up its location. As he did the TARDIS detected a small but growing amount of time energy. What were they doing, was this part of their plan? Lorna came in, wearing a jumper with a khaki jacket over it, black cargo pants and simple shoes. The Doctor nodded at her approvingly before he said, "Good timing, we're landing on Mondas."
The Time Lady swallowed nervously, all her bravado gone in the face of their mission. The Doctor took her silence as confirmation of her readiness and programmed the TARDIS to land. He used the scanner to look outside and saw there was no one there, neither Cyberman or Dalek.
"It's safe," he said before he powered the TARDIS down and left the console room, but he sent a signal out over the communications system to the Cybermen to stop them noticing any organic beings out in their city. Lorna followed him. The air smelt stale but it was still breathable. The TARDIS had landed them in a large storeroom. There were shelves upon shelves stuffed full of junk. The Doctor studied it, looking sadly at the cluster of dusty and long forgotten toys which would never be held by anyone, barring himself, again. This place was clearly where the Cybermen had simply discarded the possessions of the people they had once been.
Lorna meanwhile was staring at the TARDIS. "It hasn't changed."
"What?"
"Your TARDIS's chameleon circuit should have-"
"The circuit got stuck years ago, and any repairs I made were either interrupted or the forms taken weren't appropriate. Besides, it wouldn't make any difference," the Doctor said grimly, "the Daleks raided the matrix, remember. They stole large amounts of knowledge from it, knowing they would eventually have to be much better at time travel in order to take on the Time Lords. They used the information to design better time ships, learn how to create an Eye of Harmony, and how to detect and fight TARDISes regardless of what forms they take. Trust me, the Daleks would only need to take one look and see its a TARDIS, because of the amount of tachyons and artron particles floating around it. Now lets go, we've got a mission to do."
As they left the room without anymore arguments, the Doctor took out two things. A large blaster and a boxy device. Lorna looked at the box curiously, "What is that thing, Doctor?"
The Doctor showed it to her. It was a box with a circular dial, one half showing a bronze-gold semicircle, the other showing a silver semicircle. "It's a detector, it picks up both Daleks and Cybermen. We're both safe, for now. Come on. It also picks up time emissions."
The Time Lords walked silently through the corridors of the Mondasian city when the detector started to click. The Doctor paused and checked it, noticing the needle was approaching the silver half of the dial. "Oh no," he whispered before looking frantically for a place to hide.
"What is it, Daleks?"
"No, but just as bad," the Doctor found a door with a white window pane and took out the sonic screwdriver from its hoop in his bandolier. The door lock immediately clicked and the Doctor ushered Lorna inside, quickly taking in the details of the room, and he pulled the Time Lady to the comparative safety of the other side of the door.
"Stay very still and don't make a sound," he whispered. Second rolled by and then they heard the sound of heavy footprints as something large walked down the corridor they'd just left. The Doctor watched as the massive shape of the Cyberman walked past briskly. The Doctor lifted up his detector, and he and Lorna saw the needle gradually leave the silver half and back into neutral.
"We'll stay here until we're sure its gone. They must not find us," the Doctor said before looking properly at the room before adding grimly, "unless we want to be in here."
The room they were inside was filled with metal beds with surgical instruments neatly arranged on nearby tables. The walls were lined with alcoves the size of a telephone box, stuffed full of electronic wiring and webbing. Out of the corner of the Doctor's eye, he noticed Lorna shuddering when she caught sight of the primitive but effective medical saws. "It's alright. I sent a signal to keep the Cybermen from looking for us, and to confuse their instruments and traps, but if they find us, this is our fate."
"What is this place?"
"Cybermen don't reproduce naturally. They have to use living beings to keep their numbers up," the Doctor looked grimly around the room. He had seen many examples of this process around the years, seeing it gradually improve and become more sophisticated. By far this room was the most primitive he had seen. "They take their victims to rooms like this. Strap them down on these tables, and they begin to exchange their living parts for machinery. They begin by using drugs designed to numb the brain's emotional and pain centers. It's the only way the Cybermen are able to introduce their technologies into the living being," the Doctor said grimly, remembering how Toberman had had his arm amputated whilst his brain was conditioned to obey the Cyber-controller, the bodies of humanoids in a row in the main laboratory on Telos during their plan to use Halley's comet on Earth, that nightmarish timeline where a version of him betrayed everything he had believed in and surrendered the TARDIS to the Cybermen and allowing the cosmos to be overwhelmed by their disease.
But the one which would haunt him the most just by looking around this crude, but effective surgery was when his previous self and Destrii were on that Cybership from the future which had travelled back in time to change history forcibly and convert the whole human race. The Doctor would never forget those trays upon trays of half naked humans, their brains being slowly reconditioned to accept Cyber conversion.
Lorna shuddered. "It's disgusting."
"Desperate. For the Mondasians it was their only way to survive. They couldn't just launch themselves into space and find a decent planet to coionise. They had spent most of their lives underground, they'd have gone mad just looking out on the surface of their world."
"You sound like you approve of what they did-"
"No, I don't, and don't you dare claim I do," the Doctor snapped at her, seeing the Time Lady's face puff with indignation though he caught sight of a little fear in her eyes as well, "I've seen the Cybermen spread out like the Daleks, destroying countless civilisations, tearing individuality away from their victims all in the name of survival."
"So that's the Dalek timeship? I thought they'd use something a bit more unobtrusive," Lorna commented. She and the Doctor had spent another 5 minutes in the conversion room before they'd left to carry out their search. As they'd gone deeper and deeper into the Mondasian complex the Dalekanium side of the dial received more attention from the needle of the detector, but aside from that single Cyberman they hadn't seen any of the silver giants. The Doctor was worried about that, but considering how scarce the resources of the planet were in its current state he wouldn't be surprised if the Cybermen only had a limited number to maintain and monitor the city whilst the others were in suspended animation. It was an old practice of the Cybermen to conserve energy.
Then they'd found the Dalek timeship deep inside the complex in a fairly empty warehouse storage room. It wasn't a DARDIS capsule, it was a ship with the traditional flying saucer design only it was much smaller and compact. "Yes, it also means there could only be a small group on Mondas," the Doctor whispered from their hiding place.
"Can't we tell how many there are?"
The Doctor shook his head, "That thing is made from two different grades of Dalekanium. The detector wouldn't be able to tell which was the ship and which was an actual Dalek. You know, the more I see this the more I'm convinced this is a trap. I won't know for sure until we've gotten inside."
Lorna was instantly alarmed. "We can't-"
"How else are we supposed to find out what the Daleks plan to do? We only have a basic idea of their plan, but not the finer details. Come on, we can debate safety later."
The Doctor tried to walk confidently towards the saucer's airlock, but deep down he was as worried as Lorna. Much to their surprise the door opened without any trouble. No booby traps, no weapons threatening to burn them to molecules. Lorna blinked as she walked with him, past the gleaming metallic architecture. "Very metallic," she whispered.
The Doctor nodded in agreement, deciding not to say anything before they arrived in the control room. "This thing is more like a fighter than a starship, but look over there," the Doctor pointed a hand towards the computer bank. It was attuned to the Mondasian central computer network, giving the Daleks eyes and ears monitoring the city.
Just looking at the monitor and the camera footage shown on the screens gave Lorna a nasty thought, he could tell what it was but he had guessed it already. "The Daleks must know we're here," she said, trying and failing to hide her panic. But the Doctor ignored her fear, it was nothing new to him to find Daleks spying on their surroundings but he was more interested in the object on the other side of the small control room. It was a sphere surrounded by four diamond shaped plates.
"What is it?" Lorna asked quietly.
"A temporal phase shift generator. It can be used to shroud a body, like a ship or a planet in a bubble of time, pushing it into a small pocket universe. The Daleks used one to safeguard Skaro when I used the Hand of Omega to destroy that systems star."
Now Lorna knew what it was, she quickly grasped what the Daleks planned to do. "And they plan to use it for Mondas? But why?"
Another piece of the puzzle was falling into place. "Lorna, I think I'm beginning to understand-"
"Doctor - you understand our objective?"
The Doctor turned around slowly. A single Dalek stood in the room in the same doorway the Time Lords had walked through, but this was a different Dalek from the ones usually sent to fight, and to die, on the front. This Dalek was slightly larger, with an enlarged grille section which glowed a soft but metallic blue-silver light, with two large rings crossing it horizontally and vertically. The Dalek's color was blue, but aside from the enlarged grille section and the rings it was little different from the other Daleks except it was putting out a subtle temporal aura.
"The Dalek time controller," the Doctor whispered. He'd encountered Daleks like this one before. They were a result of the Dalek's earlier attack on Gallifrey, far more effective than the Vardan and Sontaran invasion many centuries before (the Doctor had learnt that the Daleks had subtly manipulated both races into conducting the invasion of Gallifrey in order for them to study the defences of the Time Lords), and they had raided the Matrix and stole many of the Time Lords secrets. One of them was knowledge very few Time Lords knew. When Rassilon and the early Gallifreyans became Lords of Time, they had been exposed to temporal energy from the Eye of Harmony. Centuries later Rassilon admitted after creating the Imprimature that lesser species could be elevated the same way. Daleks didn't like being considered lesser, but it had given them an idea to help them bridge the gulf between the Daleks and the Time Lords, and hopefully give the Daleks better knowledge and understanding of time. So they used a combination of genetic engineering, taking embryos and exposing them to energy from Taranium and vortex energy to create time sensitives. Each generation was improved, and with their time sensitive nature they helped guide the Daleks into making greater strides in bridging the gulf separating the Daleks and the Time Lords. They still had a long way to go, but with their Eye of Harmony and continuous experiments made with the use of stolen or acquired knowledge of temporal engineering, it was only a matter of time, but the Time Controllers were still a formidable force with their time sensitivity and their casings designed to tap the vortex into making them more temporal sensitive.
"Makes sense one of you will be here, alone," the Doctor said, placing emphasis on the last word.
"Alone?" This was news to Lorna.
"This ship's too small for a squad of Daleks, but even if the Controller had two assistants to help it, they might make a mistake which could jeopardise their mission. Besides Dalek Time Controllers are more than capable of performing commando missions of their own," the Doctor explained.
"Correct, Doctor, I am alone. The Dalek Emperor has assigned many of my kin to the frontlines to match the Time Lords, but many of us are sent on missions to affect history alone."
"Don't let me stop you gloating, but before you threaten to exterminate us, why Mondas? You know enough about the Web of Time to know that if Mondas is not destroyed, it risks causing massive damage."
The Dalek Time Controller glided into the room, making Lorna take a hasty step back. The door closed behind it, trapping them with the Dalek. "It is the only way, Doctor," the Controller said, "for some time the Daleks and the Time Lords have been fighting. Eventually it will result in a stalemate."
The Doctor agreed with the Dalek, he just wasn't going to admit it. "So you've decided to alter history? Bit risky, right? But when I think about it, Mondas makes a lot of sense; Mondas's journey allowed civilisations to rise and flourish, and when it was destroyed empires and federations rose and fell. But surely there are less tricky events you can meddle in?"
"You speak of meddling, Doctor, and yet it was you and the Time Lords who meddled at the moment of our creation. Your people began the Time War with your actions. We are merely ensuring our race survives. And you are correct, there are less problematic events which can cause enough temporal disruption. But that is not enough. For the Dalek war effort to continue we must destabilise the domain of the Time Lords."
"You'll never do it," Lorna interrupted, "the Time Lords will stop you-"
"What do you plan to do with Mondas anyway? The Daleks and the Cybermen have never gotten along, if several Cyber-Dalek wars were anything to go by, so why save Mondas?" The Doctor asked to try to get to the point of the Dalek plan - at first he'd thought the Daleks were just trying to alter history, but there must be more to it than that, after hearing the Controller speak.
The Dalek was silent for a long while, making both Time Lords nervous. "The destruction of Mondas had several effects, Doctor. It deprived the Cybermen of a power base. The Cyber Controller of the future was correct - destroying or disrupting Earth during Mondas's attack in the Earth year 1986 would have saved it - but while the execution was crude it was sound. It also allowed civilisations to rise and to fall. Earth itself forgot the invasion until many decades later, but its effects were visible on Earth's technology and would allow humans to travel into space."
"And you want to reverse all that?" the Doctor growled. "You want the Cyber race to still have its home, and destroy numerous species in turn?"
"Correct. The Cybermen will have their power base, and with some of the surviving population of Earth they will have means to expand further into space without the need to continuously fight their wars. The Cybermen have always been a race on the decline, Doctor. Too many times they have been driven off, destroyed, their armies and ships gone because they gambled their resources on one attack."
"You would be affected as well, didn't you think of that?" Words couldn't begin to describe how angry the Doctor was. "How many times have you things tried to conquer Earth? What kind of reception would you have during your first invasion of Earth, one cybernetic species meeting another? How would that affect your invasion plan?"
The Dalek didn't even seem to care but the Doctor wasn't surprised. The abomination of nature rewritten had another bombshell to drop. "The destruction of Mondas will have another affect, Doctor. On you."
The Doctor stepped back. No, it couldn't be saying….. Yes, it was. "My first regeneration," he whispered hoarsely. "So, you know?"
"Your timeline was mapped out, Doctor. We stole many records from the Time Lords during our raids on Gallifrey, but you were on the list of information we would need for the Time War."
Lorna looked at him, her eyes wide in fear. "Doctor-"
But the Doctor didn't want to hear what she had to say. "Get rid of that, and you'd rip my timeline to shreds," he said.
"And more," the Dalek added. "You would still regenerate, Doctor. Mondas's proximity affected your regenerative process, and the energy imbalance accelerated the process. Without that factor, you would have regenerated later."
The Doctor swallowed down his fear. He hated it when Daleks had well thought out schemes. But then he realised something the Time Controller wasn't saying. "You've got something else in mind for me, right? Admit it. You wouldn't have included that little tag on about my first regeneration like that."
"Your TARDIS will be redirected to Vulcan, as scheduled. But you will be shot by a Dalek agent, and you will be injected with nanogenes. Your body will be preoccupied with the regeneration, but the nanogenes will compel you to leave. I have already made the temporal probability calculation - your absence will allow Lesterson more time to learn more about the Dalek factory ship which had crash landed centuries before. The Dalek army will grow and exterminate all human life on the planet, opening another frontline."
"I see a flaw in your plan - there would be humans on that planet, and Mondas's survival would mean humanity will be destroyed or turned into Cybermen."
"We are isolating key events in Dalek history from the main timeline."
Lorna shook her head. "That would take a vast amount of power."
The Dalek did not elaborate, but the Doctor was still trying to work out what else it was that the Daleks wanted. Then it came to him. It was like Faction Paradox all over again. "You're going to try to make me one of your puppets, aren't you?" he whispered, making the Time Lady look at him in horror as though the transformation was already taking place. The Doctor's hands went into his pocket….
"You are our greatest enemy, Doctor. The Dalek race owes its strength to you. We have grown stronger and stronger in our fear of you. The Time Lords did the Daleks a service in a way when you were sent to Skaro at the point of our creation. Without that attempt on our existence we would never have truly understood the devastating potential of time travel. With you under our control, the Daleks will overrun the Time Lords to the point where the species will either be enslaved or exterminated-"
The Dalek Time Controller faded out of existence. Lorna jumped out of her skin, her time senses telling her that the Dalek had once existed but no longer did. She turned to face the Doctor, and saw him put away an oddly shaped gun. Lorna recognised it and gasped in horror. "A demat gun?"
"Yes. Smaller and not as efficient as the one first devised by Rassilon, but it works. Don't look at me like that - Rassilon ensured Demat guns were allowed for the frontlines, and he even fitted a computer program that prevents a Time Lord from going too mad with power." The Doctor put it back in his pocket. He hadn't used the weapon too many times, in fact he didn't want to use it but he would if he had no alternative. "The gun wiped that particular controller from existence, but the other controllers will know what's happened to their friend and will probably try again."
With the Dalek dead the Doctor checked the computers and nodded when he found what he was looking for. "The Daleks have a temporal reflector net prepared around Earth. They're just waiting for a signal from the controller. That's easy enough to deal with, and then there's their ship which will send Halley's comet into Earth. They're using a warp pulse generator to do the work. Again, they're waiting for the controller's orders."
"How are you taking this so calmly?"
The Doctor glared at her. "What, you mean the threat to Gallifrey, the threat to the universe, my timeline? What's to take calmly? I'm furious. I'm angry with the Time Lords and their amazing security, I'm angry with the Time Lords for not bothering to put our biodata DEs in a different matrix to prevent people stealing them. I've seen it before too many times to count. But what really makes me angry is that the Daleks have come up with a truly long and well thought out plan. The Daleks could have just targeted the Cybermen, but no. They had to include me in their plans, and who knows what kind of anomaly that might cause?" The Doctor sighed wearily. "The Time Lords will love this."
"….and so we travelled to the Dalek ships where the temporal reflector net was being generated and destroyed them using the Time Controller's codes, and then we proceeded to the assault ship where the warp pulse would send Halley's comet into Earth. After that we stayed in the local time zone and observed Mondas's approach to Earth whilst ensuring my original incarnation arrived as scheduled for any further Dalek interference. The Daleks seem to have sent just a small group back through time to the point Mondas was destroyed."
Pausing for a second to rally anymore of his thoughts the Doctor studied the stony expressions of the CIA operatives sitting across the table from him. They had just sat there, like statues, and simply listened as he spoke. Neither of them took notes, but then the Doctor knew in the CIA everything was recorded.
For a while the three Time Lords went silent, but then one of the CIA operatives spoke, "Was there any further interference from the Daleks?"
Knowing that they were going to take apart the timeline anyway and scrutinise it with a fine tooth comb the Doctor guessed the question was a mere formality. "I didn't see any such interference," he admitted, "but its possible the Daleks will try something. They went for Mondas because its a perfect target; fixed event, the homeworld and the focal point for Cyber history, its departure, journey and destruction shaped the rise and fall of countless civilisations. If it was saved then the Cybermen would never have needed to become nomadic and the human race would have needed a little longer to achieve spaceflight and eventually reach distant stars, but I think the Daleks planned to use Mondas's destruction to shatter the Web of Time, weaken our domain, but to open more fronts with the destruction of empires and cultures which would have resisted them. But I think, and I believe you should check, that the Daleks planned to use the Cybermen as foot soldiers against us."
The two CIA agents faced each other. The Doctor knew his recommendation would be followed up. It had to be; the Time Lords could ignore many things, but not the deliberate attacks on fixed events.
And then, the question he had been dreading came at last.
"Doctor, the Daleks planned to infect your first self with a nanogenic virus which they hoped would warp and alter your timeline," the operative asked, "do you believe they will try again, with you an other Time Lords?"
The Doctor had to hide his attempt to swallow. It wasn't a good move to show any kind of fear when it came to the Celestial Intervention Agency and they would capitalize on it. "It's possible," he admitted. "The Daleks have made contact with quite a few of our people - the Monk, the Master, Romana, my granddaughter, and a few others."
"We shall check the timelines and check for any interference. You may go."
The Doctor left the room, more than happy to go. But inwardly he was worried. The Time War had taken a different turn and it would likely get worse from this point.
The End.