Red ⋆ Doctor Who

Chapter Six

"German bombers sighted over the Channel, sir. ETA ten minutes, sir."

"Here they come. Get a message to Mister Attlee. War Cabinet meeting at oh three hundred hours. If we're all still here," Churchill demands. Amy watches in amazement and then steps forward.

"We can't just sit here. We've got to take the fight to the Daleks," she urges, looking to Cherry for help. Cherry looks down at the floor, trying to think of a way they could possibly overpower the alien robots.

"How? None of our weapons is a match for theirs," Churchill points out how hopeless they truly are and Amy huffs, raising her hands to her head.

"Oh God, we must have something," she wracks her brain, trying to come up with an idea, and then she laughs as a plan finally dawns on her. "Oh, it's staring us in the face. A gift, from the Daleks."

"Bracewell!" Cherry exclaims, grinning as she understands Amy's thought process. The cousins share an excited laugh before rushing out of the room and down to the laboratory where they last saw Professor Edwin Bracewell after it was revealed to them that he was, in fact, a robot built by the Daleks to deceive everyone. Churchill is close behind them, and they march into the room, where they find Bracewell sitting with a gun in his working hand and a sombre look on his face.

"Bracewell put the gun down!" Churchill tells the robot firmly.

"My life is a lie," Bracewell admits sadly, not lowering the gun. "And I choose to end it."

"In your own time, Paisley boy," Amy bends down in front of him. "Because right now, we need your help."

"But those creatures, my Ironsides, they made me?" Bracewell says. "I can remember things. So many things. The last war. The squalor and the mud and the awful, awful misery of it all. What am I? What am I?"

"What you are, sir, is either on our side or theirs. Now, I don't give a damn if you're a machine, Bracewell. Are you a man?" Churchill asks him harshly, and Cherry frowns. She walks over to Bracewell and gently takes the gun from his hand. She swiftly places it on the table, uncomfortable holding the weapon and places her hand on his shoulder.

"Bracewell, listen to me," Cherry says softly. "It doesn't matter who made you or why they did. What matters is how you choose to act and who you choose to be. It doesn't matter that you're a... a robot... you have thoughts and feelings and memories. Use them to do good."

"But the Ironsides are-"

"Listen to me, I understand. I really do," Amy adds softly. "Look, there is a spaceship up there lighting up London like a Christmas tree. Thousands of people will die tonight if we don't stop it, and you are the only one who can help take it down."

"I am?"

"You're alien technology. You're as clever as the Daleks are, so start thinking. What about rockets? You got rockets? Because you said gravity whatsits, hypersonic flight, some kind of missile..."

"It isn't a fireworks party, Miss Pond. We need proper tactical..." Churchill loses his train of thought, and then his eyes light up, and he gasps. "Oh. A missile. Or..."

"Or what?" Amy presses, eyebrows raised.

"We could send something up there, you say?" Churchill asks Bracewell.

"Yes, well, with a gravity bubble, yes, but. Theoretically, it's possible that we could actually send something into space," Bracewell nods, fumbling around with the same plans for gravity bubbles that he had shown the Doctor earlier.

"Bracewell, it's time to think big!" Churchill says. "We need to send our Spitfires up there to the Dalek ship."

"Could you do that?" Cherry asks Bracewell, excited about their new plan of action as it could potentially help the Doctor. "Send up RAF Spitfires? To the moon?"