Thirteen
"Doctor," he hissed and nodded at their surroundings. "The gas is getting closer and a lot thicker."
The Doctor looked across. "So it is," the Doctor added. "I will tell you what I remember of Rexanna and RDK Hellonis III, if I have your promise you will cause no harm to come to us. Do I have your promise?"
"Unknown," the entity replied. "Define a promise?"
"Oh," the Doctor said, baffled. "Err, okay. Can we have your guarantee that no harm will come to us?"
"No," the entity said with finality. "We can only guarantee you will not come to any harm due to our actions or inactions. Is that satisfactory?"
"Very," the Doctor answered. "Just so I know, why is there now more of you within the chamber? It is quite threatening."
"There is no threat there now that was not there the moment you entered the vessel. We would all like to hear what you have to say first-hand, rather than have it relayed. Please, Doctor, begin."
The Doctor faced him and the others. "You may as well sit down and get as comfortable as you can. This may take awhile."
He nodded approval toward Schloss, who sat down with his back resting against the side of the machine. He sat on the floor, like Schloss, leaning his back against the console with Evelyn next to him, her body leaning against his.
The Doctor clapped his hands together.
"Right," the Doctor announced. "Let's begin with a little history lesson shall we."
And then the Time Lord paced up and down in front of the console and the humans as he began his history lesson.
The Daleks were another race of time-travellers, however, they had visions of conquest, of empire. They did not believe that war should be fought according to any rules of agreed behaviour. They did not believe that some acts should not be allowed in war. For them, war was total. The aim of war was simple. To destroy the enemy quickly and comprehensively.
Stood against them were the Time Lords of Gallifrey. Full of rules and protocols about what is and is not allowed in time travel, in the interaction with other species, in… well in everything. An ordered and structured society that had learnt to control, or tame, the time vortex. With this power they thought they were enough to hold off the Daleks, even to defeat them.
But what chance did the naive Time Lords have against the merciless Daleks? Technological superiority only accounts for so much. Soon the Daleks caught up with the technology of the Time Lords, and in some cases, even surpassed them. The Time Lords did not have enough Sky Trenches to defend every possible target system from the Daleks. Within a short space of time, the pattern of the war became firmly established.
The Dalek fleet would engage a system, seemingly at random. Their saucers bombarded any system defences until they reduced its effectiveness below a given threshold. And then they would make an all-out assault on the planet surface.
The Time Lords rules of engagement limited the actions they, and the system inhabitants, could take to fight the Daleks. For the Daleks, everything on the planet surface was an enemy and so could be destroyed. For the defenders, destroying a Dalek formation often meant destroying large swathes of cities and the populations.
The march of the Daleks became relentless, unstoppable. The Time Lords would lose the war, and when that happened the universe would be plunged into chaos and the reign of the Daleks.
Back on Gallifrey, scientists had been hard at work for centuries preparing for this day. They had designed weapons to fight the Dalek menace. They decided that some of these weapons were too insidious to use. Their effects too awful to contemplate. So they locked them away in a very secure place in the heart of the capital on Gallifrey. That place was the Omega Arsenal.
As the war raged through time and space, the Time Lords and the Daleks fought over the same systems time and time again. With no end in sight. A living nightmare for anyone involved in the war.
The Doctor paused in his telling for a moment, his eyes glazing over in memory of that time. Looking around at the gas that now filled the room, the Doctor blinked and glanced at the humans on the floor nearby.
"We're okay Doctor," he said, noticing a look of worry cross the Doctor's worn, grey, face. "Carry on."
The Doctor nodded once and turned again to face the heaviest concentration of the gas.
"You must realise," the Doctor said, "that although I'm a Time Lord and fought in the war, I wasn't everywhere. I couldn't be everywhere. I couldn't save everyone. It was just too impossible. What I know about Rexanna I heard from others and read in some of the intelligence reports. I use this as the basis for what I'm about to tell you now. It's just a hypothesis, but I think it has a sound basis of fact in there to make it sustainable."
"We understand, Doctor," the entity replied. "Please continue, tell us of Rexanna."
And so the Doctor told the gas about Rexanna, which was a place and not a person as he had first thought. As the Doctor's calm voice once again wove its tale through the imagination, he looked down to find that Nurse McDonald's hand remained in his own. She was too intent on following the Doctor's story and hadn't seemed to notice. He thought of mentioning it to her, or removing his hand from hers in case she felt it inappropriate. But then thought better of it. If she wanted to remove her hand, she could do it whenever she wished. For his part, he liked the feel of her small hand in his. He turned his attention back to the Doctor's tale.
One weapon locked within the vaults of the Omega Arsenal was a poison that operated on the sub-molecular level. The scientists developed it in the hope of infecting the Daleks and killing them, or at least incapacitating them enough that they could be killed by regular means. The last problem the scientists faced had been how to penetrate the Dalek exterior to gain access to the biological being within. The Dalek shell generates a force field around it that reflects, absorbs, melts, or bends anything that comes into contact with it. Daleks could be killed with regular Time Lord weapons, but the Time Lords didn't have enough of them to equip all the defender's forces. The power requirements were too high for something like a poison. The poison needed a reliable delivery mechanism. Nobody knows how the Time Lord scientists overcame the problem as no records survived. However, they now had the means for the weapon to penetrate the Dalek exterior. Given the purpose of the weapon, it was relatively easy to direct it to the Dalek emotion banks. There it would activate itself and become an amplifier for the emotions of the Dalek, and Daleks only have the one emotion strong enough to be picked up on. Hate.
The Dalek would then overdose on its own hatred. It would hate everything, itself and other Daleks included. The theory was that the Daleks would fight amongst themselves. Using their hatred against them, forcing them to hate their fellow Daleks which would allow them to be killed.
An administrator with a lack of imagination gave the weapon its name, DHS-1. All it needed was a field test to determine how effective it was, what adjustments needed to be made. However, Gallifrey High Command decided that it should be a weapon of last resort since its effects on the Daleks were unproven and its impact on other life-forms unknown. So they placed it in the Omega Arsenal with the other weapons of last resort.
As the war's progress worsened, the Time Lords resorted to more and more extreme and desperate measures to combat the Daleks. Over time, they released more and more weapons from the Omega Arsenal to see use in battle. DHS-1 soon had its day in the sun. The Daleks had taken a vital system called Carvin. The inhabitants had either fled or were part of the 27 billion dead. Gallifrey High Command decided that Carvin was an ideal place to field test DHS-1. They loaded a sample of it onto a unique ship which would deliver the cargo to Carvin. An escort of four Time Lord fighting ships accompanied it. The trip to Carvin would take three weeks as they had to avoid the most heavily contested areas of the conflict.
Rexanna was a twin world system with the larger of the two planets being the system capital. A total population of over 32 billion lived in peace and seclusion. The Time War had yet to touch that corner of the galaxy so the defences were primitive and incomplete. The natives were peaceful and not in the least warlike, tending towards the arts and the philosophical sciences. A small Dalek raiding fleet of perhaps one hundred or one hundred and fifty vessels came across Rexanna and did what Daleks do. They attacked and launched assaults on the two planets.
A small unit of Gallifrey Guardians happened to be present on Rexanna. They wanted to take advantage of the climate and peaceful surroundings to get away from the horrors of the war and recuperate. These men were the ones who got the message out that the Daleks were attacking Rexanna and provided the first stages of resistance to those Daleks that landed.
The Guardians held out against the Dalek forces to the bitter end. They fought a guerilla war for over two weeks against a foe that never sleeps, never slows down, and never gives up.
On the thirteenth day of their voyage to Carvin, the little convoy of escorts and deadly cargo passed close to the Rexanna system. Since they were in covert mode, they had maintained a healthy communication blackout for the entire journey. The hundred plus Dalek ships in the system came as a rude shock. Dalek fleet sentries destroyed all four escorts as they protected the cargo vessel in its attempt to escape out of the system. The cargo ship, the RDK Hellonis III, crashed onto the surface of the world below.
On the sixteenth day of the occupation, the surviving Guardians made their final broadcasts. A confused jumble of words, images and surreal readings that made no sense at the time. The Dalek occupation forces were killing each other, but then, so too were the local defenders. The survivors suspected a gas cloud to be responsible. Probes sent into the cloud returned detailed readings of its composition. They collected the information and sent it by vortex communication back to the High Command on Gallifrey.
A scout vessel made the dangerous trip to Rexanna to investigate what had occurred. Arriving a week or so after the crash of the RDK Hellonis III, it found the remains of the Dalek fleet floating in the system. They detected no signs of life, yet the Dalek automated systems remained on full alert. The scout vessel's on-board systems detected not even the smallest sign of life on the planet. DHS-1 had affected not only the Daleks but every living thing on the planet regardless of its size. The other world of the system was less severely affected. The scout vessel located several pockets of survivors, but no Daleks. All avoided contact with the scout vessel, and each other, no matter how much the scouts pleaded that they could help them.
"Now all that," the Doctor finished, "took place over one thousand and three hundred years ago. Gallifrey High Command considered it a success. The use of the remaining stocks of DHS-1 was then authorised, and used in several attacks against Dalek locations where little, or no other life was to be found. Whether the Daleks ever realised what the cause of these mysterious fights was I've no idea. And quite frankly, I don't care.
"Like every single weapon in the Omega Arsenal, it killed millions and changed nothing. The Daleks still formed a single, massive fleet and attacked Gallifrey. And I am the only survivor."
The entire room was deathly quiet once the Doctor had finished speaking. He gazed up at the Doctor to see the Time Lord rub his eyes and run a hand through his grey hair. He looked at Evelyn, sat beside him on the floor, and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. She returned it and gave a gentle smile back at him.
"Doctor," Schloss called out suddenly.
Everybody looked to Schloss, who pointed towards the thick gas cloud which was now only a matter of a couple of yards away from them.
"Why are you getting closer to us?" demanded the Doctor. "You gave a guarantee we would not have any harm come to us while we were here."
"No harm will come to you," the entry replied. "All of our constituent parts are coming to this central place to hear what you have to say. This area will need to be bigger to accommodate all of us."
"What more do you wish to know?" the Doctor asked. "I've told you all I know of Rexanna and the RDK Hellonis III."
"We would know how we achieved awareness," the entity said. "What you have already told us was unknown to us. We only knew of the Daleks on this vessel. Eventually, they too succumbed to their own hatred. All other living beings we have attempted to communicate with have suffered from the effects of their own nature. You are the first we have communicated with since we achieved full awareness."
"What can I say," the Doctor added, "I'm the Doctor and I have an excellent bedside manner."
"You are also a Time Lord," the entity replied.
If a whispered voice could ever be said to contain menace, then this was that voice. He suspected that the Doctor would be too oblivious to the subtleties to notice.
"Doctor," he said in a hushed voice. "I can't help feeling that the gas thing, entity, whatever you want to call it, is not very happy."
"Rubbish," the Doctor countered. "What reason would it have for being angry? It is alive, aware, a collective living organism. It is absolutely marvellous."
"Well," he continued. "Maybe since the Time Lords created it, and you are the only Time Lord around, it may hold you responsible for its condition."
"What? No, that is just ridiculous," the Doctor protested. "I was not part of the team that developed DHS-1 as a weapon. In fact, I was one of the most vociferous opponents of the whole Omega Arsenal approach and the conduct of the war."
"Doctor," he replied. "If what you say is correct, then this gas will infect any living organism and intensify its hatred. Correct?"
"Well done, Captain Jack," the Doctor answered. "You were paying attention. I'm surprised."
"It seems it is quite easy for a mere soldier to surprise you, Doctor," he said. "But how about this for a surprise, what effect would this ability to heighten hatred have on the gas itself, especially once it became self-aware? How were all the organisms on that planet Rexanna affected—"
"Rexanna is a system, not a planet," the Doctor interrupted.
"Whatever," he replied. "Does a worm, or a rat, or a bird actually hate anything? How much hate does an animal have?"
"None, of course," the Doctor replied. "Hate is an emotion and so it is the product of a higher level of awareness that is not found in those so called lower life-forms. Although you never find them going to war or inflicting pain and suffering on others of their kind just for pleasure or because they can."
"Right, enough now, Doctor and listen. If the likes of birds, rabbits, rats, worms, etcetera don't hate, how did they all die? What killed them? This DHS-1 thing worked on the inherent hate of a Dalek, to amplify it so that the Dalek hated everything, even itself."
"Ah, yes," the Doctor whispered. "I see. If the amplification of hatred, specifically Dalek hatred, was the only weapon that DHS-1 had available, how did it kill all life on the planet? Or was it responsible for the death of all life on the planet? That is an interesting idea. However, captain, I believe that the hate-infected Daleks, and there's a strange term, destroyed all life on the planet. A Dalek certainly has the capability to do such a thing. Driven mad by excessive hate… I'm sure that's what it would have done. Yet, there's also the reports from the Guardians, the DHS-1 should not have affected them."
"So this isn't the same weapon that was DHS-1, or there was more to it than the Time Lords knew about. Or it is the same, but it changed, adapted while it was in the Omega Arsenal. Which is it, Doctor?"
"It is similar to the readings of the DHS-1 submitted to the overseers of the Omega Arsenal, also to the readings the Guardians took before they succumbed. Very similar, but with enough differences that it threw me off when I first came across the readings tonight."
"So what do we do, Doctor?"
The Doctor looked at him and smiled. "We find out," the Doctor said.