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  The Coffin Ship was freezing and covered in tapestries and drapes. It was like sailing through space in a velvet fridge. Still, this was the plan.

  Technically, these weren’t vampires. Well, not Great Vampires. They were the undead underclass, conditioned to fetch and carry and bow and scrape. They deserved better and he was giving them better. Rose had taught him that. While she lay recovering on a distant world, he was finding them a home and, along the way, they were helping him sort out what had been unsettling him all the while he’d been here. There was something wrong with the Dark Times.

  He’d found himself drawn to Mordeela and the Kotturuh. He’d heard of them, of course, but in his time they’d drifted to the edges of legend. And yet, here they were, being wiped out billions of years early.

  By his next self.

  Right.

  And his past self turned up in a Dalek ship.

  Fine.

  Three Doctors, each one at the head of an army.

  Not a good look. A rubbish look.

  Still, it’d be OK. Because the next Doctor might be dressed up like an idiot, but he wasn’t stupid. He’d see reason. Wouldn’t he?

  The Ninth Doctor turned to the vampire. ‘He’ll see reason,’ he told her.

  Her look said it all. The Coffin Ship’s Chatelaine was grander and more aristocratic than the King Vampire. Didn’t matter. He kept staring at her. He’d stared out the Untempered Schism, he could win a blinking match with a snooty vampire.

  Mordeela exploded.

  The Ninth Doctor blinked.

  ‘That wasn’t supposed to happen!’

  The vampire sneered thinly. ‘So now what?’

  The Daleks started firing before the Eighth Doctor realised what was happening. The saucer shuddered as powerful beams tore into the Tenth Doctor’s fleet. Three ships blew up immediately. Two more fell burning into the embers of Mordeela.

  ‘Stop!’ the Eighth Doctor shouted.

  The Daleks ignored him. There was something new about them. An extra tang in the foetid dodgem air; an increased urgency in the way they moved.

  The Daleks were killing things and they were enjoying every second

  He was running at them, kicking at them, until a swipe from the Executioner sent him crashing into a wall. It was not anger, he was simply swatted away. An annoyance.

  Head spinning, he looked up to see the Strategist clank over to him. He couldn’t help begging. ‘Please – stop this!’

  The Strategist looked down at him pityingly. ‘You threatened the other Doctor with retaliation,’ it grated. ‘He ignored your orders. We are obeying your instructions.’

  Was that – gloating?

  The Doctor grabbed the Strategist by the sucker and hauled himself to his feet. The sucker had an unpleasant, slimy feel to it, which he did his best to ignore.

  ‘That is a meagrely equipped group of mercenaries,’ he said. ‘But the fool in charge of it has a weapon that can wipe a species out of existence. Ordinarily, I’d say he wouldn’t even use it on you lot, but right now I just don’t know.’

  The Strategist continued to regard him placidly. But, behind him, the Doctor could sense he’d attracted the Time Commander’s attention. He pressed home his advantage. ‘Give the Doctor a moment. After all, what’s the worst he can he do?’

  The Coffin Ship was also attacking the Tenth Doctor’s fleet. The weapons weren’t having much effect.

  The Ninth Doctor watched the vampire Chatelaine stride among her subjects, silently, coldly, issuing instructions.

  ‘Why are you even bothering fighting?’ the Ninth Doctor called. ‘The Daleks – they’ve got Dalek weapons. You’ve got pea shooters. No one’s going to be impressed. Why bother?’

  She didn’t even look at him.

  ‘Because we want them to think that it is all we can do,’ she said.

  The Tenth Doctor stood on his ship, watching his fleet get carved up by Dalek beams and popped at by vampire cannons. He’d not even thought they’d do that. He hadn’t for a moment even considered that either of his former selves would actually fire on him.

  It was so unfair. The thought came into his head before he could stop it. Don’t behave like a spoiled child. Behave like a leader. They are killing your people, they are smashing your ships, and you are at the head of their fleet. You have done the right thing, you’ve changed the universe, and if the only consequences are one angry Dalek ship and some unhappy vampires, then that’s fine. You’re the Time Lord Victorious and this is what it means. This is what you wanted, isn’t it?

  ‘Fire back!’ he ordered. The words suited the moment. Yes, this was what he wanted. He was the Doctor and he got stuff done. ‘Fire back!’

  Chapter Two

  As the spaceship started to explode, Brian considered his options. Brian was an Ood – bred in captivity for a life of domestic servitude. He was also an assassin. Someone had had the semi-serious idea of making an Ood into a trained killer, so Brian was taken from his Ood Pen and inducted into the Lesser Order of Oberon. It required a lot of conditioning (Ood are by nature gentle creatures with little sense of individuality) but Brian emerged from the traumatic experience ruthlessly efficient and only barely sane.

  By and large, Brian made his peace with the world, usually with knives, but recent events were proving vexing.

  Ignoring the cries for help, the exploding diodes, and the dizzying plunge the ship was taking, Brian took a moment to consult his better nature. He held up his translator globe. ‘Well, what do you think, Mr Ball?’

  Mr Ball was silent. Which meant he was either as puzzled as Brian, or a figment of Brian’s imagination.

  Brian had fallen through to the Dark Times after an altercation with a time traveller called the Doctor. He wasn’t entirely surprised to find someone else turning up claiming to be the Doctor. He assumed this one had simply killed the other, stealing his identity and his time machine. Indeed, when he asked the Doctor about it, he was told, ‘Well, I’ve never heard it put quite like that, but …’ which was a confession if ever Brian had extracted one.

  This ‘Doctor’ was turning out to have hidden depths. For all his speeches about good intentions and kindness, he’d laid waste to the Kotturuh, and blown up a planet.

  This Doctor was someone Brian could get behind. This Doctor was vengeance.

  But people were always so disappointing. Because there on the screen was the other Doctor. The one who bumbled around in a vaguely well-meaning way and was supposed to be dead. Yet here he was, alive and working with Daleks. Not the kind of thing well-meaning dead bumblers generally did.

  On the screen was another Doctor. A different one. With quite a lot of vampires.

  Mr Ball considered that, on the whole, they might have been deceived about the nature of the Doctor. Mr Ball did so hate being lied to, but he did enjoy doing something about it. Mr Ball had a taste for vengeance.

  He also thought that they might be about to die.

  The Tenth Doctor, Brian’s preferred Doctor, was right now looking rather helpless, which is a thing that warlords should never do. This was presumably because the very latest in Dalek weaponry was cutting through the fleet like it was made of tinfoil. They were several billion years behind the times.

  Brian watched as the Doctor grabbed a struggling crewman out of a burning chasm in the floor. He went to stand implacably at the Doctor’s side. ‘We do have a very efficient weapon that could win this battle …’

  The Doctor narrowed his eyes. They both knew he could adapt the technology he’d just used against the Kotturuh, creating something that could isolate the life forms attacking them and send out wave after wave of total annihilation. No more vampires, no more Daleks, no more Doctors.

  ‘That was a one-off,’ the Doctor mumbled.

  Brian pondered the Doctor. Here was a man on a precipice who needed only the slightest shove. The man was a born warrior, one of laudable invention and skill, but, like his collar, the role clearly didn’t fit. No matte
r, he’d grow into it.

  Brian decided the Doctor was ready for one last bit of help. He strode over to a bank of controls he’d wired neatly into the antiquated systems of the ship. There was so much about the Dark Times that reminded Brian of statuary in a junkyard. It was all so unnecessarily baroque. But these were very lovely.

  ‘What is this?’ The Doctor seemed torn between horror and admiration.

  ‘Little more than trinkets.’ Brian indicated the controls. ‘The technology of this time is not sophisticated but it is fascinating. A Racnoss web gun, a Jagaroth warp thruster, the Soul Orbs of Grelsh. Some last gifts from the dead.’ As the machinery powered up, he turned courteously to the Doctor. ‘Would you care to do the honours?’

  The Dalek Drones poured out of the ship, some of them in scout ships, some of them storming ahead on armoured platforms. They bore down on the battered fleet.

  ‘What are they doing?’ the Eighth Doctor asked, keeping the edge of nervousness out of his voice. ‘Look at his fleet – it’s almost destroyed! He’s going to surrender at any moment and then we can sort this out.’

  Ten Dalek eyestalks regarded him expressionlessly.

  ‘He’s going to surrender,’ the Eighth Doctor repeated.

  The Dalek Executioner turned back to its work-station, and more Drones shot out of the saucer.

  ‘What’s going on?’ the Eighth Doctor demanded.

  The Time Commander glided towards the Doctor. ‘We are preparing for that surrender,’ it announced and turned away.

  The Eighth Doctor frowned. He found the Strategist by following his nose. The stinking creature was in a corner, monitoring some inputs. The Doctor lowered his voice. ‘Why do I get the feeling they’re not going to let him surrender?’

  The Strategist did not look up from its computer. ‘We are dealing with the Doctor,’ it announced. ‘Daleks have learned not to trust him. Especially not when he is weak.’

  The Dalek Drones flew closer to the Doctor’s fleet, picking off the odd spacesuited survivor from their previous attacks. Daleks could never resist a slaughter.

  A Dalek Scientist reached the airlock of the command ship. Momentarily defeated by the Entry Coder, the Scientist started burning through the airlock.

  On the flight deck, everyone felt the boom go through the ship.

  ‘They’re blowing up the airlock,’ someone cried.

  The Tenth Doctor leaned over Brian. ‘Do you need any help?’

  Brian looked up from the weapons. ‘These are ancient systems. Calibration is delicate.’

  ‘And,’ the Tenth Doctor rolled his eyes, ‘we’re being boarded by Daleks.’

  For a moment it seemed as though the entire mercenary fleet had blown up. The Eighth Doctor flinched – had his future self really sacrificed himself, simply to wipe out some Daleks? Was this how his lives ended? Back in the Dark Times with his past selves looking on agog and wondering where it had all gone wrong?

  The explosion became a pulse of putrid green light that flattened down into a wave less than a micron thick. One that scythed through the Dalek troops, sending their bisected cases spinning away. One of the Daleks died firing its gun, blast after blast continuing as it drifted off.

  The Time Commander activated the shields around the ship, and the beam bit into it, draining the saucer’s systems. Alerts sounded.

  The beam sliced through two scout ships, spilling out their crews.

  ‘What is happening?’ demanded the Time Commander. ‘Explain!’

  ‘The Doctor is surrendering,’ announced the Strategist.

  The Eighth Doctor was not sure he appreciated dry wit in a Dalek. He dashed over to a control, ignoring the Dalek Scientist trying to fight him for it. ‘Not now – let me see what’s he’s done – oh – no wonder you’ve no defence against it. It’s so ancient, why would you – it’s a stream of Uxaerian doomsday particles. Vintage!’ He brightened, and then realised this was perhaps not the right moment for enthusiasm. ‘Don’t worry, I’m drawing some power from my TARDIS’s shields. We’re all in this together,’ he finished winningly.

  But he noticed that the Dalek Executioner was suddenly a lot closer to him than it had been before.

  Aboard the Coffin Ship, the Ninth Doctor watched with mixed feelings. On the one hand, seeing Daleks torn apart was always balm to the soul. On the other, he didn’t like where this was going. What was any Doctor doing firing that thing?

  He turned to the haughty vampire at his side. ‘Hey. Mrs Danvers.’

  ‘My name is Madam Ikalla.’ She gave him this information like she was tipping the under-gardener.

  ‘You hinted there was something we could do to pitch in and help out?’

  ‘Pitch in?’

  The Ninth Doctor wondered if she was going to repeat everything he said to her in that acidic tone. ‘Yeah. Bad Me over there needs benching before he kills more Daleks than is good for him. Seems there is such a thing.’

  ‘These Coffin Ships were designed primarily as transport for our Great Masters.’

  ‘Yeah, I get it. So it’s a no.’

  ‘You did not permit me to finish.’ Ikalla’s manner made it clear she drained people for less. ‘When our Great Masters are transported, they require bodyguards. They are … unsophisticated creatures, but will serve your purpose.’ She clapped her hands together. He had expected nothing less. ‘Awake the Bloodsmen!’

  As three Dalek scout ships shattered, Brian turned to regard his translation sphere. ‘Mr Ball worries we may have gone too far for your tastes.’

  The Tenth Doctor watched as a Dalek eyestalk spun past the viewscreen.

  ‘It’s certainly efficient,’ the Doctor conceded. ‘And, as of about now, I like efficiency. Kotturuh? Gone. Mordeela, planet of Death Energy? Smashed it. Daleks – no business in this time period – send them packing. We’re getting a lot done.’ A short pause. ‘Actually, we’re winning.’

  Brian nodded, coaxing a protective Dæmon heatshield around the remaining fleet.

  ‘Winning!’ The Tenth Doctor looped an arm around Brian’s shoulder and watched the Daleks explode. ‘I’d forgotten what winning feels like, you know. It feels like this. It feels … good.’

  Yes, thought Brian. Mr Ball concurs.

  The remains of the Victis Fleet moved closer together, hovering over the embers of Mordeela, with a look about the surviving ships of triumph.

  The Taratella was at the far-left flank of the Victis Fleet. Paurel, its chief (its only) engineer was busy optimising the engines while working on a complicated maths problem. She knew how much the mercenaries in the fleet were being paid. She’d done a quick estimation of the casualties and divided the sum. Minus a few insurance pay-outs for the lost ships, her payment had gone up substantially.

  She nudged an extra seven per cent out of her engines. If those tin robots attacked again, the Taratella wasn’t going to be on the victim list. But if someone else was, then so be it.

  Something moved at the edge of her vision. Paurel glanced in the direction of the bulkhead. Lounging against it was a pale figure in a jerkin who hadn’t been there before.

  ‘You’ve no business being here,’ she said with the instinctive irritation of an engineer caught in the middle of important calculations. Where had the man come from? Had the Doctor sent him?

  The pale man smiled toothily.

  Something else flickered, and Paurel turned again. Two more figures, both ethereally pale women, stood reclining against her engine console.

  Paurel felt uneasy. Especially at the way they smiled at her.

  The three figures each took a step towards her, like participants in an ancient ritual dance. Then they stopped, bowed a little, and smiled again, even more widely.

  Those teeth, it turned out, were very sharp.

  The Taratella fell away from the fleet, its engines firing intermittently before it plunged into the debris field. Two more ships peeled away from the fleet and fell into the glowing embers of the planet.

 
The Tenth Doctor turned to stare at Brian. ‘They’ve got through our shields … Nothing gets through a Dæmon shield … How are the Daleks doing that?’

  Brian checked a scanner. ‘There are no Daleks on board the craft. There are no extra life forms on board the Taratella.’ The Ood blinked. ‘Mr Ball would like me to make a correction. The number of life forms on that craft is decreasing. Down to fifty. Wait. Forty-nine. Interesting. Forty-eight.’

  ‘No, that’s not good enough!’ the Doctor shouted. ‘They’ll be torn apart in the ruins of Mordeela. Beam them off!’

  ‘Beam them off—?’

  ‘Transport, transmat, teleport, telemat, zap – get them out of there!’

  ‘We don’t have—’

  ‘I don’t care what you do – save them!’

  Brian paused. ‘Mr Ball has a further update. There are now no life signs aboard the Taratella.’

  All three craft hit the debris field and blew up.

  ‘What just happened?’ the Tenth Doctor cried.

  ‘What just happened?’ the Ninth Doctor cried.

  Madam Ikalla gave him a magnificently aloof shrug. ‘You ordered me to … pitch in. We have disabled three craft. We are in the process of disabling four more.’

  ‘OK …’ There was something else the Doctor wanted to say, but for now he was concentrating on the simple things. ‘How?’

  ‘The Bloodsmen are trained in stealth. They can apparate through any shields. They also do not show up as life signs—’

  ‘Obvious, I guess.’

  ‘So they cannot be traced. Does that answer your question?’

  ‘It answers my first question …’ Now the Doctor let the anger flood into his voice. ‘My second question is what is all that screaming?’

  ‘Ah.’ Madam Ikalla permitted herself a rare smile as she listened to the sounds coming from the hold. ‘Sometimes the Bloodsmen like to bring food home.’ The Eighth Doctor was receiving a similar report from the Dalek Strategist.

  ‘This has already been a long day full of surprises,’ the Doctor said. ‘And now it turns out one of my future selves has an army of ninja vampires?’ He looked around for a chair to sit down in. But no. Dalek ship. No chairs. Just Daleks.