Jammy, or is that Jamming, Dodgers?
“But what-?” Merlin cut himself off as Hannah broke into a run, heading for the stairs. Exchanging a puzzled and worried look, he, Harry, James and Loki sprinted after her.
“We need to evacuate this place now!” Hannah exclaimed, breathlessly as she reached the top of the stairs and looked around. Surprisingly, the Underground wasn’t that full, but then again it was a working day. She supposed at least that was one small mercy right now. “Doctor!”
“Hold on, nearly got it,” the Doctor muttered from his position crouched by the ticket booth. Sherlock and John looked up quickly as the others raced towards them. “Ah! Now-”
“We need to evacuate!” Hannah repeated.
“Why, what happened?” John asked, automatically reaching for his pistol.
“Well, we saw some weird black creature-” Harry began. Sherlock had already gone to inform the ticket officer to put out an order to evacuate all tube stations in the area, having cottoned onto the situation before Hannah had even explained it.
“Weird black creature?” the Doctor interrupted, jumping to his feet and hurrying back down the stairs.
Hannah groaned and ran after him. “Doctor, it was a Slyther!”
The Doctor spun around abruptly with wide eyes. “Hannah...are you sure?”
She nodded. “That’s the trap we’re meant to fall into!” Turning to John and Sherlock, she added “Do you remember what came through the Void after the Cybermen last time?”
“Of course...” the Doctor whispered, before pulling himself together “We’re in real trouble!”
“What do we do?”
“I don’t know, Hannah, we’ve been planning for Cybermen but-”
“Something’s coming through the Void,” Sherlock interrupted, he and John being quick to whip out their pistols and hold them aloft as the others spun to look. Only, it wasn’t just “something,” though. It was three somethings, and they manifested themselves very quickly into the sleek, smooth outlines of-
“Daleks!” the Doctor snapped.
“Stay where you are!” the three voices grated out as one. “Do not move!”
“Here we go again,” Hannah groaned as she and the Doctor threw up their hands in surrender, as they so often did when surrounded by Daleks. It was, after all, the easiest way to not get exterminated.
“What are you lot doing here?” the Doctor snapped as the others, except for Hannah, stared at the Daleks as if half-expecting them to suddenly manifest themselves into Cybermen again right before their very eyes. “Because let me tell you, if this is another of your cunning plans to destroy the Earth, then I am on the brink of getting very, very angry!”
“I’m sure they’re shaking in their casings, Doctor,” Hannah sighed.
The leading Dalek glided forwards, its eyestalk bobbing up and down as if inspecting the humans. Those who had never seen Daleks before tensed up, feeling that clumsy looking as they were, these creatures were extremely deadly. Then, it turned its head towards its companions. “Order our ships into position!”
“I obey!” one of the Daleks grated back, and Hannah noticed the small, compass like device on its arm that replaced a sucker stick. Some kind of homing or signalling beacon, she figured; after all Dalek technology was only surpassed by Time Lord tech. “Ships now in position!”
“Good!” The leading Dalek turned back to face the Doctor and co. “Exterminate the humans!”
"Wait, you can't!" the Doctor yelped.
“Exterminate!”
“Exterminate!”
“Exterminate!”
Nothing happened.
The Doctor and Hannah exchanged a look as the Daleks, seemingly confused, attempted to fire their guns again, but still nothing happened. Their weaponry was completely disabled. Then, the Doctor laughed.
“Look at that, Hannah, Daleks without the power to kill!”
“Isn’t that an oxymoron, Doctor?” Hannah giggled as the Doctor stepped up to the leading Dalek.
“Tell me,” he said, still grinning, “I’ve always wondered, how does it feel?”
“Keep back!” the leading Dalek intoned.
“What can you do if we don’t?” the Doctor challenged, hands on hips, still grinning. “You see I did wonder if this might happen, last time I tried to fit a sort of lock on the Void, to stop some stuff coming through, a bit like applying virus protection to a computer. Of course, it didn’t quite work the way I wanted it to, but this is good enough for now.” He tapped the leading Dalek’s sucker stick and it yanked away from him in what seemed to be annoyance. “Not that it’s made you any less dangerous, of course, but it’s slowed you down a bit at least.”
“Army reports total loss of firepower!” the Dalek with the beacon on its arm reported, swivelling its eyestalk to face the leader.
“It must be repaired!” the spare Dalek squawked. “The invasion of Earth must begin today!”
“Not possible! It is beyond our technology!”
The leading Dalek swivelled towards the Doctor, who was still grinning. Behind him, James muttered to John “Any idea what’s going on?”
“No, but I think the Doctor’s got it well in hand,” John muttered back, adding worriedly “For now.”
“If it’s beyond your technology, what are you going to do?” Hannah couldn’t help taunting. “Perhaps, you’d better turn around and go home.”
The leading Dalek swivelled to her, brandishing its sucker stick in a menacing manner. The Doctor, seeing its intention to frighten Hannah into shutting up by stretching her brain, an act that would ultimately kill her, quickly stepped in the way. “No! These people are innocent, you can let them go!”
The Dalek turned its attention to the Doctor. “Then YOU will repair our weapons! Or the humans will be exterminated!”
John frowned. “You’re just going to kill us anyway, though. What sort of leverage is that?”
The Doctor was also frowning. “What are you planning?” he asked, quietly. His companions tensed, feeling something must be wrong if the Doctor no longer sounded as confident as he did before.
The lead Dalek turned back to the Dalek holding the beacon. “Order all forces to launch their bacteria bombs!”
“NO!” the Doctor yelped, and all three Daleks spun back to him. Panting slightly in anger, the Doctor scowled. “So, gone back to the old days, have we? Created a virus to...what? Kill a few people and then offer humanity the cure in exchange for complete surrender?”
“Correct!” the Dalek agreed.
Hannah frowned but before she could say anything, it was Sherlock and Loki who both jumped the gun.
“Hang on, if you need a whole planet to offer their surrender-” Loki began.
“-Then how many of you are waiting on that ship? It can’t be a lot,” Sherlock finished.
“That’s a good question,” the Doctor nodded. “Got a good answer?”
(It should be noted here that Daleks, whilst incapable of human emotions are prone to bouts of extreme stubbornness, if their determination to conquer the universe is anything to go by.)
“You will repair our weapons!” the lead Dalek demanded again, gliding closer to the Doctor. “Or we will launch the batercia now! All humanoid creatures,” and here it turned its gunstick pointedly towards Loki, “will be exterminated immediately!”
“Alright!” the Doctor cut in before it could go into a rant about Daleks conquering the Earth. “But only if you call off your other ground forces. I’m guessing they’ve already done enough damage around London!”
There was a pause as the lead Dalek turned to its fellows and then, with obvious reluctance, turned back to the Doctor. “Agreed!”
“You can’t, Doctor!” Merlin yelped, rushing to his side.
“Listen.” The Doctor swivelled to the others. “You lot stand a better chance of getting out of this alive if I help them. Hannah.” He pulled something out of his pocket and tossed it to her. Hannah frowned as she caught it in both hands. “You know what to do. Don’t let me down.”
“Temporal shift is ready!” the Dalek with the beacon informed the leader.
The leader swivelled to the Doctor. “Move!”
“You know, you could say please,” the Doctor grumbled, moving over to them. “At least the Cybermen are polite occasionally.”
“But, Doctor,” Harry began.
The Doctor just winked at them before disappearing along with the Daleks. The tunnel fell silent as his friends stood for a second, blinking and praying he was about to suddenly appear in front of them again, preferably without the Daleks. Eventually, Sherlock broke the silence.
“We won’t be needing this, then,” he stated, going forward to retrieve the equipment from the floor.
Spurred into action by his movements, Hannah glanced upwards. “We’ve got to do something.”
“What?” James asked.
“I don’t know.” Hannah sprinted off in the direction of the steps and the others followed her; Sherlock, John and Merlin juggling the Doctor’s equipment between them as they did so. They reached the station exit and were met instantly with the sight of a crowd gathered around the entrance to the Tube station opposite, being held back by policemen and barriers.
“Move back, please,” the nearest policeman was calling over the panicked rabble as seven Time Travellers rushed forwards to see what was going on. “Move back, Miss!”
“UNIT!” Hannah snapped, wriggling under his arm, and the man was so surprised that he didn’t try to stop the others. Merlin grimaced as they looked down at the corpses at their feet, two men...or what was left of them at any rate. The bodies were desiccated shells of what they had once been, the skin turned an awful grey-brown colour.
“That’s what they can do with those...stick things?” he asked.
Hannah nodded. “They extracted their brainwaves, killed them almost instantly.”
“If that’s what they can do without firepower, what can they do with it?” James asked.
“Well, we’re not going to stop them just by standing here,” John pointed out. “Let’s get back to the Tardis and use that thing the Doctor gave you, Hannah.”
“Why, are you hungry?” Hannah showed them what the Doctor had thrown them. “It’s a Jammy Dodger.”
“Oh, he’s finally gone mad,” John groaned.
“No, he’s trying to tell us something,” Sherlock replied, jumping to his feet from where he had formerly been crouched to examine the bodies. Hannah had to credit him for thinking of that, it made their claim of being with UNIT more plausible. “He’s telling us he hasn’t got a plan so it’s down to us.”
Hannah looked up in surprise. “You lot seriously want to stand and fight?”
“I thought that’s what we were here for,” Harry frowned.
“But none of you have ever fought that Daleks before,” Hannah protested. “You don’t know what you’re up against.”
“I thought you said once that they were just like Cybers?” John put in.
“Yeah, with one exception; when the two get into a fight, the Daleks win!” Hannah exclaimed.
“But you can’t fight them on your own,” Loki pointed out.
“For once, I agree,” Sherlock nodded.
Hannah looked at them all, realised she was outnumbered by a group of stubborn men and sighed. “Alright, well, we’ve wasted enough time, does anyone have a plan? And by the way, the Daleks are extremely hard to kill so we have to think of something extremely clever.”
The others frowned and thought.
“What about that jamming device?” Sherlock asked. “The one he used once to stop a group of Daleks at Cole Hill School?”
“How’d you-?” Hannah shook her head. “Right, the head-butt, forgot about that.”
“What does this “jamming device” do, then?” James asked.
“It jams the high frequency radio waves that work their guidance systems,” Hannah explained as best as she could remember from the Doctor’s description. “It’s like giving someone such a bad headache they can’t function. It doesn’t kill them but it does stop them long enough for you to plant an explosive in their midst or something.”
James looked thoughtful. “Can I see it?”
Hannah nodded and lead the way back to the Tardis, leaving a very confused crowd of people behind them. Inside, she opened the floor part of the Tardis that stored the archives and searched under “D” for “Dalek Jammer.” John recognised the junk-constructed device that the Doctor had once pulled out by accident whilst travelling together and could now briefly remember him saying something along the lines of “Very useful this, John, very powerful.” James took it from her and turned it over, still looking thoughtful.
“How many Daleks can this take down in one go?” he asked.
Hannah thought for a second. “Ah, about four or five at last count. Why?”
“If we could amplify the amount of feedback enough, we could take down that entire spaceship,” James replied, frowning.
“Can’t we do that?” Merlin asked.
“Not without a huge source of power,” James replied, looking up.
Hannah grinned and sprang to her feet. “We have a huge source of power; we’re standing in it!” She spread her arms. “In fact, I bet if we hooked that thing up to the heart of the Tardis, we’d get more than enough energy.”
“Hannah, looking into the heart of the Tardis could kill us,” Sherlock pointed out.
“Only when the energy’s raw,” Hannah argued back. “If we could find a way to contain it-”
“I bet I could.” Loki stepped forward and held out his sceptre. “This has absorbed energy from the Tesseract; the Doctor told me that kind of power can contain anything.”
“We’d still need a few more wires,” James said, looking over the device again. “And something to charge it with.”
“Will this do?” Merlin produced a ball of lightning with magic. Glancing at Hannah, he added sheepishly “There’s a book in the library about a creature created with lightning.”
“Oh, Frankenstein,” Hannah smiled.
“And the Doctor has wires and tools,” John added, bringing the conversation back to the matter of hand.
“Then let’s do this,” James said, nodding.
Hold on, Doctor, Hannah thought, as the scrabble for tools that could open the heart of the Tardis began, we’re coming!