Chapter 2
Sullivan was outside of the Medical Elite building doing a 'home visit'. That's what he mentally called the birthing dorms that were around the dome.
These ones held somewhat of a...distaste amongst some of the Medical Elite.
The women in these birthing dorms were near the end of their lives as far as reproduction went on Skaro.
They were nearly 40 and had been pregnant practically over and over. A steady machine for the Kaled's war.
They still worked in nearby industries.
But by this point in their final pregnancies it was far more difficult to find men to impregnate themselves.
It was the women that received assistance from the Kaled government when they became pregnant, not the men.
Sullivan had heard from some soldiers that he treated they thought these women infected them.
From what Sullivan understood the successful pregnancies had been declining over the years.
Mutations were creeping in.
There was a disgusting attitude of disposing of these mutations, both the babies and those that appeared in the population further along in life into the Wastelands.
It was the chemical weapons that had been used earlier in the war.
Something that the Thals could no longer create, because the war had been going so long they had lost the ability.
Supposedly the Kaleds likewise, while innovating with great leaps and bounds no longer had the resources to create what they had once done.
Few Healers elected to come out here.
It was something he'd never specifically trained in, but something nonetheless he had knowledge of.
It helped to distract from the war and soldier's suffering that he was faced with everyday.
Removing the pads from the woman's stomach he tried to smile. "They look healthy."
"No mutations?" She asked bluntly. She was pregnant with her thirtieth pregnancy, however her body seemed to be doing well. Supplements and improvements from the Scientific Elite helped a lot of these women deliver successfully.
Sullivan shook his head. Although, the what he thought of as an advanced ultrasound let him see a lot it didn't show any obvious mutations.
It was easier just to lie than to explain this.
He suspected that this was all they wanted.
Packing up his equipment he made to leave. It was then he heard it, another one the bombs that was like a creeping barrage.
They hardly ever hit, and even less so this side of the dome which faced away from the Thal dome.
Then suddenly there was an explosion as it hit, unexpectedly and something threatened collapse.
Sullivan couldn't think for a moment, he just started shouting at the women to move as he held one of the supports of the dorms. At least that's all he could think as something burning dripped onto his back, burning until he passed out.
-/ - \\-
"What happened?" Sullivan croaked. He looked around, he was in his own Medical Elite building.
"Healer Elite Sullivan. You're awake." Said a voice.
Sullivan blinked. "Ravon?"
A man's face swam into view. Major Ravon was young, although all of Skaro's soldiers were. Sullivan had been sent to do inspections of the upper echelons of the Military Elite a year or two ago. Only a Healer Elite was trusted with Skaro's Military Elite, especially soldiers like Ravon who had risen through the ranks quickly and efficiently.
"You had some concerned." Ravon commented.
"Did the women get out?" Sullivan asked.
"All survived and safe thanks to you." Ravon commented. "A very selfless act."
Sullivan twisted and winced. "They hold our future within them."
"Healer Elite you should not be moving." Tarak's voice and face swam in to vision.
"I don't think so. Burns?" Sullivan asked.
Tarak nodded. "Yes Healer Elite."
"I've requested Scientific Elite stores to be released for treating you Sullivan." Ravon said.
"That should go to-" Sullivan started.
"There are few as capable as you Sullivan." Ravon began. "You should rest." Was all the man said before Sullivan passed out.
-/ - \\-
It had been over 3 months since the injury. Sullivan looked at his back in the mirror. He was restricted by the other Medical Elite to paper work for now. Whatever the gels and whatever else the Scientific Elite had provided mostly saved the nerves in his back, the chemical burns he had discovered was designed to weed its way into the nervous system. A sort of virus-like chemical attack.
"Healer Elite Sullivan." He heard a voice by his door. It was Nyder. He'd only met the man once before when he'd been asked to provide medical treatment to someone Nyder was interrogating.
"Nyder," Sullivan said by way of greeting.
"You are healing well?" Nyder asked, though it was hard to tell if he actually cared.
"Very. I should thank Ravon and whomever he found in the Scientific Elite who saved me from the Thals' disgusting attack." Sullivan paused. "On our women." He found it disgusting that it seemed the Thals had targeted the building, there'd been other attacks where the women in other parts of dome hadn't been as lucky.
"You are a proficient member of the Medical Elite Healer Sullivan. You are valuable." Nyder said. "Davros has hastened the implementation of the application of substance which will enhance the strength of the dome."
"Preventing something like this from happening again I hope?" Sullivan asked as he pulled down his shirt - straightening it and sat down gesturing at the opposite chair to Nyder who remained standing. "You didn't come all the way up here just to tell me that Nyder."
Nyder looked pleased. "No." He turned around and closed the door. "We have a prisoner."
Sullivan looked at him. "The Scientific Elite has a prisoner?"
Nyder indicated a yes.
"You have Elite with medical knowledge." Sullivan said simply.
"Davros has requested you. You have demonstrated your loyalty." Nyder said simply.
Sullivan leaned back into his chair, relieved for the first time in weeks this did not cause him pain. For weeks he'd only been able to lie on one side. As he'd found out the chemical weapon had burnt his back and part of his chest and arm.
There wasn't any permanent debilitating damage, only scarring. Also his hair would probably never regrow due to the scar tissue.
"You have someone who's a traitor," he watched Nyder. "Someone responsible for the attack on the pregnancy dorms?"
Nyder seemed pleased with the veracity of his question.
-/ - \\-
Sullivan had been down to the Scientific Elite bunker a few times. He very much preferred the Military Elite's spaces rather than down here. In the dome you had some idea of where the outside world was, even if the outside was not somewhere he wished to go.
"Nyder." Davros was waiting in a room.
"Davros. This is Healer Elite Sullivan," Nyder said after saluting.
Sullivan came to attention, though didn't snap a salute. Was carrying a bag in each hand.
"Sullivan. I have been informed of your actions in saving the women the Thals would so cruelly attack." Sullivan looked at Davros' sunken face and wondered how much he could sense of the outside world. He knew something of him. The central eye allowed him some sight.
"I wish to thank you Davros and the Scientific Elite. I have been informed Ravon pushed for me to have access to-" Sullivan began.
"Nonsense." Davros began. "The Elite must care for one other. Only we truly appreciate the intellect and capabilities of heightened intelligence."
Sullivan nodded. "Nyder implied you have a traitor responsible for the Thal attack?"
Davros turned around to look at Nyder. "He guessed Davros."
"Fascinating." Davros said turning back to Sullivan.
"Hardly much deduction." He paused. "When I found out they had attacked other dorms I wanted to kill them with my own two hands."
"That is interesting." Davros observed.
"That is not something we wish you to do to our prisoner Sullivan." Nyder warned.
"But you don't trust anyone in the dome?" Sullivan asked.
"Until we are sure, no." Nyder said as he walked over to a door. "This way."
"What do you wish me to do?" Sullivan asked Nyder and Davros as they walked towards a holding cell.
"Ready the prisoner for interrogation." Davros said simply.
Sullivan looked between the two and put down his bags. "How far do you wish me to prepare him?" Sullivan asked.
Years ago, before he'd arrived on Skaro he'd never think to have done anything like this. It was against the UN conventions, against the morals he held so dear.
But then he'd seen the execution camps that the Thals had.
He knew the Kaleds also had camps, yet, the Thals had targeted women, the medical facilities. He had been injured and bore the scars of war.
Sullivan didn't want to think it had changed him.
He didn't want to believe that his presence when Valyes regenerated...when he died, he didn't want to think, to believe it had changed him.
But it had.
Three years in a battlefield, in a war zone. It changed.
He'd seen people he'd brought back from the brink be wounded and gassed and...countless other things.
Nyder was looking from him to Davros.
"Nothing beyond your capabilities." Nyder said.
"We have devices which will extract information." Davros paused. "He merely needs to be prepared."
Sullivan nodded and crouched down to his bags and started to take things out. "I'll just take in one bag." He said by way of explanation.
"You came prepared." Nyder observed.
"I was not sure what you needed." Sullivan explained and looked to Nyder. "Does he know I was injured?"
"No." Nyder said.
Sullivan nodded. "Then push me into the cell, as though you're reluctant."
Nyder looked to Davros who nodded slightly.
-/
Nyder enjoyed being rough. It was one of his defining qualities, that and an ice cold, probably psychopathic exterior.
But that was what you needed to survive in a war zone. That's another of the many things Sullivan had learnt on Skaro.
Even the plants, those that survived, in the Wastelands tried to kill you. Varga plant poison was used by both sides to catastrophic affect.
The man was a member of the Military Elite.
Sullivan didn't recognise him.
"A Healer." He said looking up as the door slid shut with its signature tone.
Sullivan sat down with the bag close to him. There had been a few sharp materials within. He'd left those outside. Just in case.
Sullivan still wanted this man dead.
It was a concept, a drive that he considered he wouldn't have thought three years ago. He wasn't a violent chap. He was sporting, he had morals, he was a friendly doctor. That's what he'd thought. He was a member of the Royal Navy and upheld its principles and its codes.
But no one, no one on Earth had faced a society that had been at war for what was approaching a millennium..
Nothing could prepare him for that.
Nothing could prepare him for mercy killing his friend. A man he didn't even like, nor Valyes particularly liked him. A human. Mostly.
Now, after the attack, attack on the most vulnerable of Kaleds; the women, birthing the next generation. Sometimes, he felt as though he were Kaled, they were all he'd known for the past three years.
Sullivan pulled out a pouch. It contained a mostly water, some nutrients and a tiny amount of flavouring from the fruit, whatever it was that the Elite were given access to, he'd not been inclined to ask anyone, just in case it betrayed a lack of knowledge about cultural things.
It was produced by the Medical Elite at his insistence for soldiers in the field. It had enough nutrients in it for them to survive if shot. It had increased Kaled soldier survival rate by 15 percent in most cases. Even if his superiors had been sceptical at first.
"Drink." Sullivan said.
"What is it?" The man asked.
"Nothing that will harm you. Nutrients." Sullivan said as the man unscrewed the top of pouch sipping it slowly.
Sullivan noticed him grin. "Drammankin fruit."
Removing a sleeve from his bag he extracted two patches. As the man drank he readied the first and slapped it onto the man's neck.
"What...what was that?"
Sullivan remained calm, knowing what he had done was akin to torture as he peeled off the spent patch.
"You should know that I was in one of the birthing dorms when the Thals attacked." Sullivan said calmly.
The man looked at him a mixture of terror and anger as he tried to scoot away. "My legs. I can't feel my legs." He cried out.
"Your limbs will paralyse. It will pass." Sullivan began. "The pain will also begin."
"You...you poisoned me." He started.
"The drink is safe." Sullivan said calmly. The patches were used preparing Kaleds for surgery away from the Medical Elite buildings out in the dome residential towers, paralysis and then hyper-stimulation of the nervous system. Not something he had been familiar with, but something Kaled biology responded to.
Usually they were also knocked out so they could not experience the extreme pain.
Sullivan put the patch away in his bag and knocked on the door.
He stepped out as the man started to shout.
It was nothing like the way he had when the chemicals he eaten into his flesh as he'd held part of the structure up for the escaping pregnant women.
"What did you do?" Nyder asked.
Sullivan explained.
"Fascinating work Healer Elite Sullivan. Fascinating. I had known this was utilised by the Medical Elite but not for this." Davros praised.
Sullivan reached into his bag offering Nyder a smaller sleeve. "It contains a pain suppressor and a further dose of the nerve stimulation." He paused and looked between Davros and Nyder. "Use beyond that will be dangerous. The dose of nutrients in his stomach will have prepared him."
"I see. This should suffice." Nyder said.
"Begin work Nyder. I will escort Healer Elite Sullivan to the lifts." Davros said.
Sullivan began. "I don't wish to take you away from the interrogation Davros."
"Nyder is completely capable." Davros said.
They walked, or Davros glided in silence as they walked through the corridors of the Scientific Elite's underground bunker.
Valyes had explained Davros' role as the architect, the creator of the Daleks.
Sullivan had heard some things too, of Davros' projections of the Kaled race's final form. That of presumedly the Dalek.
He mentioned that to Davros who seemed surprised.
"That information should only be known to the Scientific Elite." He said accusingly.
"Medical supplies have been directed to the bunker Davros. Healers still converse. When we have the energy to." He admitted.
"Yes. Energy to war against the Thals." Davros mused.
"I just hope that the Kaled race has a future. In whatever form." Sullivan tried. He genuinely did hope the Kaleds lived on somehow. Even though he knew it unlikely. That, what Valyes had told him would come to pass in someway.
Perhaps the Doctor would succeed. Valyes and Sullivan himself had written in his fantastical diary for the Doctor to read, explaining his mission. Their mission.
Sullivan wasn't sure what he...he wasn't sure if the Doctor would be able to do it.
"We will live on Healer. And grow stronger against the Thals. When the time is right we shall take out rightful place." Davros said his voice growing in tone and veracity.
"I hope for an end of the suffering at the least. A rest, from war." Sullivan exhaled as they reached the lifts. Then asked Davros something he wasn't sure if he wanted to know the answer to. "Do you rest Davros?"
"Rest?" Davros asked, the word seemed unfamiliar to him. "No Healer Elite Sullivan. I do not." He said with some finality.
The lift door slid open.
Sullivan did not know what to say, so simply stepped into the lift and came to attention as the door slid closed.
Davros remained watching him as the door shut.
Those dead eyes might haunt Sullivan. That's what he thought as the lift rose away from the bunker.
But it was the sound of the women screaming as the Thals' weapons impacted. That was what still haunted him.
-/
