Chapter Twelve
A wheezing and groaning sound could be heard next to a jagged outcropping of hills. The displaced air due to the Tardis' arrival kicked up a dust cloud that frightened a few of the scarred remains of what was still considered wildlife on Skaro away. Stepping out of the Tardis was the Doctor, who pulled his black leather jacket around him as he tried to shake off the cold Skaro night. Behind him John Koenig and Alan Carter, now wearing dark pants, dark shirts and dark grey jackets exited the Tardis. Each looked to the other in disbelief. They knew they were in a time ship and had witnessed many strange things while in space, but the Doctor's time ship had to be one of the strangest yet.
The Doctor looked around. Off in the distance he could see a large grouping of tall bulbous towers. This was the city of the Daleks. He walked to the edge of the hillside he was next to and carefully peered behind. In that direction he could see the partially destroyed Kaled city. Where to go? He knew Sarah and the Alphans were being held in the Dalek city but it was more likely that Sevrin would be nearer to the Kaled city in the wastelands. Looking back at the pair of Alphans, the Doctor said, "We need help and answers. I need to know what has happened since I left."
"But our people…" John started only to be interrupted by the Doctor.
"Your people are more than likely on their way to escaping if I know my Sarah."
"But she doesn't know who she is, you said so yourself." stated Alan.
"At this point I'm sure her real identity is bleeding through. If she's threatened, her life depends on knowing who she is or," at this next point the Doctor took a deep breath, "she's seriously injured, she will begin to remember. I've taught Sarah all I know about escaping and she's very good at it." He held up his sonic screwdriver and scanned the area ahead. "The sonic can't pick her up; she's still too far away."
If my people are with Elisa…Sarah," John stammered, "where will they be escaping to?"
"Hopefully the place she escaped to before, the wastelands. Unfortunately the wastelands have their own dangers, the Mutos. That's why we need to find Sevrin. He helped us before and knowing Sarah's involved, I'm sure he would again. So let's go."
With no further discussion allowed, the Alphans looked at each other and frowned. This was the Doctor's plan. He knew this planet and unfortunately they were at his mercy. He was their best hope of finding their people and if they all survived this, getting them back to Earth. The pair pulled their coats tighter around themselves and followed behind the Doctor.
After walking nearly forty minutes and dodging several groups of Mutos they suddenly found themselves surrounded. The trio stood back to back facing the group of eight Mutos that had silently surrounded them. Before they could begin their assault another group appeared and started grunting and fighting with the group of eight that had surrounded the Doctor and the Alphans. On a hunch the Doctor yelled out, "Sevrin!"
The skirmish ended abruptly and one man from the second group of Mutos looked to the Doctor and Alphans. "I am Sevrin. Who are you?" He pulled his dirty and worn makeshift hood of scraps back to reveal his balding head.
"It's me Sevrin, the Doctor." The Doctor flashed his smile and stepped forward with his hand extended.
Sevrin grasped his hand but not in friendship. He flipped him around before the Doctor had a chance to react and had a knife held to his throat.
The Doctor put his one free hand out to the advancing Alphans and yelled, "Stay! He doesn't understand." He tried to explain to Sevrin. "Sevrin, it is me. I don't have a lot of time to explain but I've regenerated…my body changed. I've come to save Sarah and I need your help."
At the mention of Sarah, Sevrin let him go. "Sarah Jane's here?"
"Yes, the Daleks have her." The Doctor could see the look of confusion on Sevrin's face. "Do you remember the last time I was here? I told you I was a Time Lord. When Time Lords die their body changes and that has happened, several times in fact since we last met."
"But you're here and Sarah Jane is there?" He pointed to the Dalek city confusion clouding his face.
"I'll answer all your questions when I can. But the short of it is that we were separated and Sarah was traveling with the Alphans." he pointed back to the Commander and Alan. "Their people and Sarah were taken to the Dalek city. You know Sarah; she'll be looking for a way to escape. Have they sealed up the ventilation shafts and the caves underneath the Dalek city?"
"No, they are still open. Do you believe she will come through there?" Sevrin asked, his mind already concerned with the information that Bettan had shared with him a while back.
"That's where the vents led before. Knowing Sarah, that's how she'd try to get out of the city again. Are you still in contact with Bettan?" The Doctor could see Sevrin's demeanor change.
"Yes. The news from Bettan is not good."
"Who is Bettan?" John asked.
"I'm sorry. Commander John Koenig, Captain Alan Carter this is Sevrin. He was a great help to Sarah and I before." John and Alan stepped forward and shook Sevrin's hand. "Bettan was a girl we met that was in the army from the Kaled city. With Sevrin's help and the help of several others she was able to blow up the entrance to the Dalek city, hopefully holding them back till the Kaleds could find a way to stop them." Granted the Doctor knew they wouldn't stop them but he'd hoped that she and her band of misfits could at least delay them before their disease spread across the galaxy and beyond. Ah, to be that young again and have that kind of optimism. "What did Bettan say?"
"Right after you left, a Dalek ship arrived." Sevrin said darkly.
"What Dalek ship? Daleks in this time period don't have ships." the Doctor asked as he exchanged a nervous glance at the Alphans.
"Bettan said the information she'd gathered from the city said a single Dalek traveled here from the future."
The Doctor's eyes were incredulous. "No, they couldn't have. Even they wouldn't be that stupid."
"Doctor, we need to get to our friends. Can't we discuss this on the way?" John asked with irritation obvious in his voice. He wasn't used to taking orders and whether the Doctor had intimate knowledge of this planet was beside the point. Time was passing and his people may be dying for all they knew. He'd chosen them for this mission and he felt responsible for their predicament.
"Commander!" the Doctor almost yelled. "Commander", this time in a calmer voice, "everything has just changed." He could see Alan beginning to ask a question and began to explain, "When I was here last, the Daleks were just beginning. They were new at the whole taking over the universe thing. They were lethal, even in their infancy. I can handle lethal, to an extent. But now a seasoned Dalek has been thrown into the mix. A Dalek full of years and years of bubbling hate and destruction, and if I'm right…" The Doctor threw his hands up in the air. "We better hope Sarah gets your people out of there fast before that Daleks figures out exactly who she is."
John looked up at Skaro's ominous looking sky, still with a touch of red weaving through the night clouds. He looked to Alan and quietly asked while the Doctor and Sevrin spoke, "You've worked with Elisabeth closer than anyone on Alpha. Is she going to be able to handle all of this?"
"You know all my pilots are put through a battery of physical and psychological tests by Helena. She wouldn't have let anything slide." Alan said quietly. "I'd trust her with my life."
John sighed and shook his head. These were his people, people he thought he knew. Their strengths and their weaknesses were common knowledge. Now he was finding out that one of his pilots wasn't who he thought she was. He understood what the Doctor did but still… Now he was finding out that Elisabeth or Sarah Jane or whoever she was, was responsible for saving his people.
"Sevrin, did Bettan say anything else? Anything at all about the lone Dalek, anything that could help me pinpoint where this Dalek came from?"
Sevrin rubbed his balding head, "She said it had travelled here from a great war."
"What war?" the Doctor asked hurriedly.
Sevrin glanced around the men, always on the alert in case they were mobbed by his less than helpful fellow Mutos. The group he'd arrived with had already wandered off not wanting to get involved with the strangers. "She said it was," Sevrin hesitated as he tried to remember the term Bettan had used, "a Time War. Yes that's what she said a Time War. But the look on the Doctor's face wasn't one of gratitude that Sevrin had remembered the war's name, it was a look of horror.
John and Alan stopped talking and looked at the Doctor's change in demeanor. "Doctor, what's wrong?" John asked as he involuntarily shivered at the change in the Time Lord's demeanor. He didn't strike John as someone who frightened easily and that was definitely the look he was projecting.
Instead of answering the Commander he turned back to Sevrin. "Was she able to get a name? Did it have a name?" He was hoping this Dalek was just one of the millions of Dalek scouts that had fought in the Time War and not one of the Cult of Skaro.
Sevrin looked at the trio of men thoughtfully before answering, "Bettan said it called itself Dalek Jast." After seeing the Doctor's face drop, he asked, "What? Do you know this Dalek?"
The Doctor reached out and leaned heavily against a rugged outcropping of what was once a massive rock, now a broken and bombed out shell of itself. He took a deep breath before continuing, "I don't know this particular Dalek personally, but I have heard of it." The Cult of Skaro was the stuff of nightmares. The Doctor knew how bad the Daleks could be, but to describe this particular part of the Dalek army to the Alphans… He was sure the Alphans had encountered their own form of hellish creatures after talking to them in the Tardis on the trip here. But they had never encountered anything as deadly as the Daleks and now they had to contend with a member of the Cult of Skaro. Still, they deserved to know what they were up against. The Doctor looked up into the night sky and asked Sevrin, "How much time do we have before daylight?"
"Quite a while yet."
"Good let's get moving, Sevrin can we count on your help?" The Doctor was hopeful that Sevrin would at least help them to the edge of the caves. It may have been a short time since he and Sarah had left Skaro from Sevrin's point of view, but it had been hundreds of years for him and a guide would move them along quicker than searching on their own. If he were right, time was running out for the Alphans as well as Sarah.
Sevrin was still unsure of this new man calling himself the Doctor. He did seem to be very familiar with everything and everyone that was here when the Doctor and Sarah Jane were here before. Maybe he was telling the truth and if Sarah Jane were being held prisoner...he didn't want to see anything happen to her. "I'll get you to the edge of the caves. Beyond there…I don't know."
"That's all I can ask." the Doctor replied with confidence he didn't feel. Sevrin started leading the way and the Doctor continued to question him. "Are the Daleks doing anything else, anything new since we left?"
"Bettan said the Daleks were doing experiments on some of the Thals they captured."
"What kind of experiments?" John asked as they climbed across the rocky ground.
Without looking back and easily moving himself across the ground he replied, "They are implanting something in their head, turning them into slaves for the Daleks."
"They shouldn't have the knowledge to do that." the Doctor protested.
"They didn't before Dalek Jast came." Sevrin replied matter of factly.
"Something I don't understand. When we left, the Daleks had turned on Davros. They had killed all the research scientists. Hell, they even killed Davros' right hand man, Nider and they were about to kill him when we left. So what happened?" the Doctor asked with anger as the group moved over the rocky ground, attempting to stay ever close to the edges of the hills and overhangs.
"That's when Dalek Jast arrived. According to Bettan who heard it from a spy in the Dalek city, just as they were about to kill Davros, the Daleks were given a command from Dalek Jast to stop. Shortly after that, his ship landed."
"Who is this Dalek Jast? John asked. He knew the Doctor was concerned about the Daleks and regardless of whether he said it or not, John Koenig prided himself on his ability to read people. The conversation in the Tardis was all about the Daleks, the Doctor's interactions with them and while everything he said was devastating, in the end he always won. At least every battle he told the Alphans about. He felt he was holding something back but he felt it was more of a private nature and until the circumstances required John to pry, he decided he'd let it go.
For his part, Alan Carter would rather have gone in guns blazing. But according to the Doctor, that would have just gotten them all killed. So like his Commanded in front of him, he would continue to follow the Doctor's instructions. "Why would it stop the Daleks from killing this Davros?"
The Doctor drew his head toward the ground as he walked. How much should he tell the Alphans? Not everything about the Time War and its end result, he decided. "Dalek Jast is…was a member of the Cult of Skaro. I mistakenly assumed they were destroyed in the Time War. They were or are an elite group of Daleks whose chief purpose was to think up new ways to further develop the Daleks and all their hate and spread it out into this universe and beyond. I'm not sure why they stopped Davros' destruction. When I was here before they had killed Davros."
"Doctor," John began to ask further about the Daleks when he could see a change come over the Doctor. Just ahead in the gloom it was obvious something had happened. The Doctor had stopped his determined trek across the desolate field. He had straightened up to his full height with his head held back. He was inhaling deeply and a smile was slowly encompassing his whole face. "Doctor, are you all right?"
"For the first time in a long time Commander, the answer is yes." Before he elaborated further he reached out and embraced the closest to him, Sevrin. "It's Sarah, I sense her!" The Doctor was euphoric. For the first time since the Time Lords had forced their separation, the Doctor felt absolutely giddy. "She's on the move."
"What about our people?" John asked, exchanging a quick look of concern with Alan.
"She's injured, though I don't think she knows it." After a few seconds with his eyes closed, he continued, "She's not alone. I think she's escaping." Then a smile drifted across his face. "Yes, she's definitely escaping."
"Can you contact her?" Alan asked, hopefully.
"I can only sense her and her emotions and that's mostly because of the amount of adrenalin that's pumping through her right now." The Doctor turned and began his journey with a renewed vigor. Granted Sarah wasn't exactly a Time Lord but with the amount of his blood flowing through her veins, she was very nearly Gallifreyan. It had been so long since he'd felt another Gallifreyan, it was almost like he was home, home without the judgement that is. Looking back he realized wherever Sarah was, always felt like home.
"How can you? You couldn't do that before, could you?" Sevrin asked.
"No, I couldn't. But much has changed. The long and short of it is this. Sarah's DNA has changed and that gives her certain Gallifreyan traits. That's how I can sense her." He could see the confusion on Sevrin's face and he didn't have the time to stop and explain DNA or his ability to sense other Gallifreyans to someone that would more than likely never understand anyway. The Doctor was growing weary of his current companions' questions but he tried to put himself in their shoes. "When we have more time I'll gladly answer all your questions but right now we need to keep moving." The Doctor turned away and led the group onward.
Behind him Sevrin looked to the two Alphans but they only shrugged their shoulders and followed the Doctor.
As they rounded the next hill the group could now see the Dalek city clearly. The group had covered more ground than any of them realized and now face to face with all that lay ahead of them, they recognized just how daunting their task would be.