Doctor Who: Engines of War by George Mann Read Free Book Online Page B

new and exotic people every day. The cities heaved with life. People were happy. Out on the plains they erected pleasure palaces that overlooked the Barian Sea, with its golden water and beaches formed from grains of ice. They built towers that seemed to reach almost all the way up to the Eye itself, and machines that looked and thought like men. It was an empire to behold. Now it lies in ruins.’
    She shuffled the dirt around with the edge of her shoe. ‘All those other places you mentioned, those wondrous worlds – you’re going to destroy them all, aren’t you? Every last corner of the universe. By the time you’ve finished there’s going to be nothing left.’
    ‘Not if I can help it,’ said the Doctor. ‘That’s why I’m here, Cinder. That’s what I’m trying to stop, why I need to see what the Daleks are doing here on Moldox.’
    She nodded. Could she really trust this man – this Time Lord ? There was something about him, something different. Spending time in his company, she felt herself starting to believe, for the first time in years, that there might be a way out of this mess they’d found themselves in; that there might be hope. It was an unfamiliar emotion, and she wasn’t yet ready to embrace it.
    ‘Did you get what you came for?’ he said, after a moment. The question pulled her right back to the here and now.
    ‘Yes,’ she said, indicating her backpack, which she’d dumped on her bunk a few metres away beneath a canvas awning. ‘Just a few mementoes. Things I didn’t want to leave behind.’ She held up her arm, showing him the bracelet encircling her wrist. It was nothing, really, just a hoop of twisted copper wires, burnished with age. It had been made for her by her brother, all those many years ago, and she’d held on to it ever since. She wouldn’t leave Moldox without it. It was all she had left of him, save for her memories.
    ‘I understand,’ said the Doctor. He frowned, catching sight of something. ‘Tell me, whose is that bunk over there, beside yours?’
    Cinder glanced at the other makeshift cot, only a metre or two from her own. It seemed oddly familiar. ‘I don’t…’ She hesitated. ‘I feel as if I should know, but I don’t,’ she said. ‘It’s the strangest feeling. Like something’s missing.’
    The Doctor nodded, his expression grave. ‘Well, it’s nothing to worry about now. It’s time to drink up and go and find out what the Daleks are up to at Andor.’
    Cinder placed her beaker down and swept up her backpack, slinging it over one shoulder. All she really wanted to do now was sleep, but she’d made a promise to the Doctor, and he in turn had made a promise to her. She was going to see this through, one way or another.

Chapter Six
    ‘Shhh!’
    ‘I didn’t say anything!’ said the Doctor.
    ‘No, your feet,’ hissed Cinder. ‘On the gravel. Walk on the mud instead.’
    The Doctor looked at her as if she were mad. ‘But then my boots would get filthy,’ he said. ‘It’ll get all over the TARDIS. Who’s going to clear it up? You?’
    Cinder rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, if I must. Just do it. It’s better to have muddy boots than to be lying in a ditch with a hole in your chest. We’re nearly there. The place will be swarming with Daleks.’
    The Doctor tutted dramatically, but did as she said and stepped up onto the verge, abandoning the gravel path.
    They were standing on the outskirts of Andor, just beyond the boundary of the city walls. The walls themselves had been largely torn down during the years of Dalek occupation, and now formed heaps of rubble and broken slabs. It looked disturbingly like a painting she’d seen as a child in one of her picture books, of a citadel from old Earth, sitting on a craggy outcrop above the ocean.
    The net result was that any approach to the city would prove hazardous and, more troubling, exposed.
    It was clear to see that Andor had once been spectacular, a jewel at the heart of the colony. What had begun