I do not own Doctor Who
Chapter Seven:
"I AM DA-LEK AU-TO-MAAATE!"
The machines voice exploded by the Doctor, causing him to leap backwards. On the dome of the Dalek automate was a digital blue oval- like an eye, Camilla snuck around behind it, freezing as another blue oval appeared, focused on her.
"It's seen me!" She exclaimed.
"But it's looking at me…" The Doctor argued, and Camilla walked around to where the Doctor was stood, the blue oval following her and merging with the Doctors at the front. The Doctor then walked around the Dalek himself, the eye following him as well.
"You've got eyes in the back of your head! What are you? A sentry? A guard? An experiment? You're no Dalek."
"I AM DALEK AUTOMATE."
"The shell of a Dalek?" The Doctor guessed. "But you've got no weapons, what's to stop us from walking out of here right now?" The Doctor turned towards the door, Camilla joining him, passing Phelk. "Come on Phelk." Phelk stood where he was and as soon as the Doctor was within reach of the closed door there was a few clunks, and it was locked, the screwdriver having no effect.
"THE INTRUDERS WILL BE ESCORTED TO THE CONTROL AREA." The Dalek voice ran out from all around them, the walls themselves vibrating like speakers, the sound reverberating around the room.
"I OBEY. YOU WILL STAND BESIDE ME!" The Dalek Automate spoke, its eye pulsing as it did.
"Why? You're not armed!" Camilla challenged. "Doctor, let's get out of here." The Doctor set to work on the door, but the room started to vibrate again, but this time it wasn't a Dalek but the gate grinding noise of ancient engines, overlapped by itself again and again, merging, building into a crescendo.
"It's the Tardis! Many Tardis?" The Doctor looked at the sonic in surprise at what it was telling him. "What!"
"I said, what is happening?" Camilla shouted into the Doctors ear, the noise of the Tardis getting almost unbearably loud.
"It's my ship- it's materializing again and again, each materialization barely milliseconds apart, but perfectly timed so there's one ever one version of the Tardis materialized in this area at any time.
"But why?" Camilla asked as the sounds reached a crescendo.
"The materialisation sites form a shape, a message, for me." The Tardis started to finally dematerialise the noise fading away, the Doctor stood gazing at the ceiling longingly.
"What message?" Camilla asked, a little bit too loud for the silence that had fallen. The Doctor pointed a finger straight upwards, towards the ceiling, for the Tardis had made a shape, the base of which was the ceiling above their heads and from there it stretched up through the many layers of the Dalek ship, two parallel lines guiding the Doctor like a plane coming into land, towards the control room at the top, where it truncated the arrowhead.
"We go with the Dalek." The Doctor sounded resigned, and reluctantly went over to stand near the Dalek, Phelk already by its side. Camilla just stood there stubbornly. "Camilla," The Doctor said levelly. "My ship is a time machine: it can travel anywhere in space or time. That being so it can get very dangerous being in the same place twice. Accidents can happen; you meet the wrong person then BAM! It can unravel time, change it, and destroy it. Getting the same ship to appear that many times in such a small area could've risked tangling the fabric of time and space potentially destroying the entire universe and its timeline. At some point I will have decided that it was worth that sort of risk just to give the now us that one important message. Would you ignore that?"
Camilla held the Doctors piercing gaze for a minute, before also coming and standing beside the Dalek. The floor they were on began to rise, the ceilings of the consecutive floors parting in turn to let them through.
"You've got this place set out very regimented, very square rooms. Cubic." The blue oval focused on the Doctor, whilst behind it, crouched down unnoticed, Camilla gave the cube four twists and disappeared. "Predictable too." The Doctor continued. "Every level will lead in the same direction, same route to the exit."
"YOU WILL NOT ESCAPE." The Dalek stated.
"Course I won't." The Doctor looked behind the Dalek, apparently at the floors flashing past them. "Wouldn't dream of it."
They arrived, slap bang in the middle of the enormous central doomed area of the ship, a centre usually full and full of bustle, but every single Dalek had stopped, every single gun and eyestalk focused on the arrivals in the centre, silent and motionless as the Doctor leapt off the piece of floor where the lift had been.
"Hello! Glad to see you at last, maybe it's again, who knows? I bumped into a few of your friends earlier and I found your Dalek Automate, you're factory lab and you're swimming pool." There was still no response from any of the Daleks. "That's really weird." The Doctor said almost to himself, and then continued. "But never mind all that because this," The Doctor pointed into the corner of the room strewn with control banks and filled with a large square container made of thick metal. "Is your psychic capacitor and to me," The Doctor continued heading over towards it.
"Doctor." Phelk called out a warning.
"Not now Phelk, to me it looks like…"
"Doctor!"
The Doctor paused to turn and call back to Phelk.
"What is it?"
Phelk indicated with a nod of the head towards the psychic capacitor. The Doctor looked between the capacitor and Phelk a couple of times.
"I was getting there anyway, stop interrupting me!" The Doctor turned back to face the capacitor. "Their psychic capacitor, which as I was saying appears to be active." The Doctor took a step towards it, walking straight into a force field which he quickly realised was part of a containment field that had been set up whilst Phelk had been distracting him. He buzzed it a few times with the sonic, which had little effect. Around him the Daleks had suddenly started moving again.
"THE DOCTOR IS SECURE. WE SHALL PROCEED." A bright red Dalek with dark grey metal protrusions glided into sight, the way other Daleks kept a close eye on it and got out of its way indicating that it was in charge.
"Great so this whole charade is organised by a giant killer post box. Tell me, why am I here?" The Doctor demanded.
"TO BE WITNESS. TONIGHT WE WILL BROADCAST TO SKARO, CONFIRMING OUR CONQUEST AND THE DOCTOR DEFEATED: THE DALEKS WILL BECOME GREATER THAN EVER!" The Dalek finished its piece and turned away, heading towards the Dalek Automate.
"We'll see about that." The Doctor said, causing the red Dalek to swing its eyestalk to look at the Doctor for a moment before it continued on its way. "Tell me Dalek, how did you know where we were?"
Hidden under her shield, Camilla looked at the Doctor in confusion. What?
"How else could the Daleks have avoided us?" The Doctor continued, and the red Dalek stopped and looked at the Doctor.
"SOURCES INDICATE YOU KNOW THE ANSWER."
"That's a no then. Ah well, up to me to explain then." The Doctor paused for effect, looking around for an audience. "They're psychic. First worked out how to store it, then they collected some and played around with it down in their lab of theirs until they got it working for themselves. Another reason for the construction of the tower, and keeping the planet full of people: To block out the noise from their experiments. Must have perfected it a couple of years ago, but it was probably still being tweaked when the lot at the top went, so they never got the product, but you've been busy since, upgrading. Ooooh, don't think that'll go down too well with the home planet. Upgrade the master race? Ha!"
"THE UPGRADE IMPROVES COMMUNICATION."
"Still the same voice though." The Doctor joked.
"COMMUNICATION IS ESSENTIAL FOR VICTORY. WITH THE UPGRADE WE HAVE CAPTURED THE DOCTOR WITH EASE. THE UPGRADE WILL BE WELCOME."
"Oh, so I'm a trophy! We started using glasses and look what we caught!" The Doctor laughed. "Your little psychic trick; it won't always work for you. Although talking about psychic tricks, it's how you've been controlling us, directing us, controlling Phelk."
"What?" Phelk asked, surprised.
"Not for the whole of the last ten years though: you didn't have the technology, and anyway Phelk was power hungry enough to want to run what he thought was just a tough business. But you gained control- Phelk may be the one who's naturally psychic, but he's just a receiver: all it took was for you to give suggestions, commands. Would work strongly enough if it was delivered connected with an emotion, I wonder which one? But it worked. Enslave a world, delay us going into the ventilation, then it got a bit too strong, started influencing the others who were around: Made me lead us into the ventilation, and convinced Camilla to lead us to the labs." The Doctors face fell, and he leant his head against the edge of the force field, realising his mistake. "Psychic commands that can get you to enslave a world, control where you go and betray your friends." The Doctor turned to look at Phelk.
"What?" Phelk asked, confused. The red Dalek watched the Doctor, and replied to his explanation.
"CORRECT." The Dalek swung its eyestalk round to bear on Phelk. "YOU WILL TELL US WHERE THE GIRL IS."