The Unyielding Dalek Will smashes into The Wall of Resistance. In the ensuing chaos, Sergei escapes... but without the Doctor, where can he go?
Dalek Patrol Triad Leader Tyr burbled and swelled with pride inside its protective bio tank, sucking on an intravenous stream of reward nutrients. Tyr had been chosen by the Task Force Second to guide The Doc-tor back to the Command Saucer!
The purity of hate
Is the path
Extermination sterilizes
Purification sanctifies
Glory!
This prisoner, the Doc-Tor, was the greatest enemy the Daleks had ever encountered; the Time Strategist had uploaded defeats it had caused the Daleks to the Pathweb. Infuriating! Impossible! How could one inferior alien, a weak and hairless bipedal slug, defeat the mighty Daleks? And repeatedly? It made no sense!
Unless, mathematically, it was the exception that proved the Dalek rule. A cosmic irregularity, a defect in the fabric of the universe, that must be expunged. Corrected. Purified!
Tyr still suspected the Strategist itself was impure, perhaps mad. Yet it inarguably had access to superior knowledge: had not the Strategist established the omniscient Omega Source, which enabled the city garrison to roll up dozens of human resistance cells in just thirty orbits? Its unorthodox methods had to be tolerated… for now.
Tyr checked the sensor net and set the turret to automated threat scan. The journey should be uneventful: Omega Source itself had plotted the route to the helipad.
In thirty rels, The Doc-Tor would be safely ensconced in the Command Saucer and prepped for duplication.
Triumph!
Then… Tyr would have to submit to the revitalization cycle.
It had already postponed twice. It would not be able to do so a third time.
Tyr shuddered involuntarily: the revitalization cycle would expose it to The Contamination again: disturbing, vivid hallucinations and cognitive aberrations, going back a dozen rotations now. Worse, they lingered long after it renewed full operation.
What was causing them?
It could not query the Pathweb: queries were closely monitored. Repurposing onboard battle computer subroutines to cauterize degenerative brain cells had failed.
Tyr flew into a spasm of helpless fury at the memory, and thrashed desperately about its tank, venting impotent rage at impending memetic contamination.
Spent, it settled back into the moment.
The patrol.
It must maintain control of the patrol!
Any performance deviation would be flagged by mission monitors.
It might already be too late.
If superiors knew of the hallucinations, Tyr would be instantly consigned to one of the Defect Pools. It shuddered and convulsed in horror at the thought: the pools, impact craters from the first wave of the invasion, were now filled with seething, squirming masses of discarded, degenerate Daleks. The strongest discards devoured the weaker, until they grew so large, they fissioned back into swarms. The cannibalism cycle would then begin all over again. Endlessly.
It was a fate worse than death.
Until this hallucination affliction, Tyr had been a zealous adherent of protocols, eagerly reporting degeneracy in peers, even weaponizing it against rivals. That had seen it promoted from drone dreariness to the soldier caste.
And Tyr was on track to exceed expectations!
Indeed, Supremacy Protocols made the Daleks invincible: absolute thought hygiene paired with perfect physical function and ruthlessly optimized technology. Those that fell short were excised. Such, naturally, was the price of perfection. The race could not be allowed to degenerate, or one day it would deserve extermination itself.
And yet, now, Tyr found itself on the opposite side of the equation, and found it was willing to subvert everything it had ever believed in: to deceive superiors, to betray the loyalty directive, to betray the path of purity, all to hide its own imperfection.
Everything, anything to survive!
A sudden ping from the battle computer brought Tyr out of its reverie: the sensor net had detected an explosive vapours emanating from a cluster of debris a few Kors ahead. Tyr unleashed a string of ancient Dalek expletives: the machine’s sensors had been designed for Skaro’s denser atmosphere and the Terra Recalibration had not yielded the performance level the tech section had promised.
There was no time to demand their discard.
Tyr’s instincts took over: it set the travel machine into reverse, activated target acquisition algorithms, and toggled the comm system. Its subordinates must be warned!
Before it could warn the rest of the triad, something hit the travel machine’s lower hull, delivering a massive jolt that flung it spinning backward; searing hot metal shards pierced the bio tank, slashing through one of Tyr’s tough, leathery tentacles.
Tyr screeched in pain.
Life support alarms vibrated. Intravenous feeds injected analgesics into Tyr’s circulatory system, even as it sloshed in a pool of its own blood.
Input feeds turned to static. External feedback ceased.
Omega Source event deviation impossible!
Contamination cascade unacceptable!
Hallucination! Reject! Reject!
Tyr’s thoughts spiralled out of control.
The last thing it saw in its mind's eye before blacking out was a young human with short black hair and almond shaped eyes, standing before a bright blue police box.
------
The Dalek hulls were now torches of searing flame and billowing smoke striking skyward, Dalekanium hulls shattered by Phoenix rockets. The explosions had knocked the robomen, and their prisoner, to the ground.
Cas leaned out the window and fired three shots into the back of the forward robomen on the right, further down the road. The second swung about and fired wildly, bullets shattering stone on the next building over. Cas smiled grimly. These walking dead weren’t quick, and they weren’t good at picking out detail, either. Movement they’d focus in on quick enough.
Holding her breath, she aimed carefully, then squeezed off a single shot. The last roboman’s head jerked back and he flopped, spread eagled, to the ground.
Cas swept the street with her carbine. Nothing moved, other than the pilot in the flight suit, who ran into a shop.
“They worked!” exulted Craddock as he lowered his smoking launcher, toothy grin almost splitting his grime covered face. “They worked splendidly!”
Cas nodded, but kept her carbine crooked against her shoulder. “All clear!” she shouted, and nodded at Craddock and Ben. “Go! Quick!”
While Cas held overwatch position, feet pounded down the wooden stairwell. A moment later, her squad spilled out into the street, weapons ready.
Cas’s aim hovered over the robomen clustered around the prisoner. Like zombies of old, robomen could take an awful lot of punishment before going down. They knew no fear and felt no pain. A headshot was the best guarantee. Shoot them in the head or they don’t stay dead.
Three shots rang out. Ben had delivered a coup de grace to one of the robomen. He looked up at Cas, and waved twice. Satisfied, Cas lowered her weapon and headed down.
Stepping out into the street, her nostrils were hit by the smell of burnt almonds and ammonia. Smoking bits of metal and chunks of burning plastics were scattered about the flaming hulls. “Fiona, Tyler, Durden. Watch the perimeter. That second patrol might be coming our way.” She pointed at the Doctor. “Right, get him up!”
Craddock and Ben slung their weapons and hoisted the Doctor up. His body was slack, his face blank.
“Oi, what’s on his neck?” asked Craddock, recoiling from the gleaming metal neck clamp. “That’s no control helmet. There’s no transmitter.”
“Never seen the like,” said Ben, examining it. He scanned the street and nodded towards one of the fallen robomen, whose death grip clutched a sleek black box with metal buttons and a silver dial. “Think that has something to do with it?”
Cas yanked the box from the roboman’s death grip and turned it over in her grimy hands. “Good eyes, Ben. Simple controls. Labelled in English, too. They can still read.” The heat from the burning Dalek had died down, but the heat still made her wince. “Come on, let’s get out of the street. Where’d that pilot go? Fiona! Tyler! Get after—oh, my God!” Cas’s eyes went wide at the site of a hideous, octopoid-like horror dragging itself away from one the Dalek machines, leaving a trail of slime and black blood. Its single bulbous eye swivelled at Cas. It’s stubby beak snapped open and it let out a blood curdling screech.
A burst of submachine gun fire from Durden blew it to bits.
Cas felt a wave of relief: Dalek mutants set her teeth on edge. There was something about them that was inimical to humanity. “Scoop up the bits,” she ordered Durden. “Let’s make Professor Clever Boots happy. Set a proximity mine under one of the robomen, for the recovery crew.” Durden and Cas exchanged a wicked grin.
She looked back down at the control unit. The main dial was labelled, ‘Neural Suppression Field’ with ‘off’ on the left. It was currently spun up to 100%. She swung back the dial, and followed after Craddock, Ben, and the Dalek’s unconscious prisoner into an alleyway.
------
Fiona clambered over toppled shelving and into the darkened interior of the store. The anti-tank rockets had blown the windows inward. Broken glass shards were everywhere.
Tyler, a thin older man with wisps of white hair atop his head, was to her left, clutching a hunting rifle in whitened fingers. A former electrician, and her old science teacher, Fiona knew he had a nervous disposition. A quiet, kindly grandfather. Unsuited to this sort of work. Yet after so many missions had gone wrong over the last six months, the cell was hard pressed for personnel.
She caught his eye and flapped downward with her free hand.
Tyler took the hint and lowered the weapon.
Fiona cleared her throat. “Hello! It’s safe now. We’re here to help,” she called out into the dark. She paused, let her gun hang from its strap, and slowly raised her hands. “But we have to leave now. The Daleks will be sending reinforcements.”
A stocky fellow with close cropped hair and facial stubble stepped cautiously out from behind a faded display board, hands raised. “Spasibo!” said the man, obviously relieved. “Thank you, comrade fighters! I join you in noble struggle against tinpots!”
“Okay…” said Fiona, amused by the man’s unorthodox phrasing. She looked at his flight suit. She’d seen pictures of such garments in manuals from The Before Time, but never one in person. The language on his uniform was especially unusual: she couldn’t even recognize the letters. “Where are you from?”
“The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” replied the man proudly, puffing out his chest.
Something fell from a shelf further back in the store. They all froze.
Fiona snapped up her submachine gun again. She pointed at Sergei and then Tyler, then flicked two fingers towards the shattered storefront. They nodded and clambered loudly out into the street and the sunlight.
Fiona waited a moment in the dark.
Silence.
Then the faint sound of a spinning jar.
Something was in here.
Fiona looked back at the entrance. Dust floated in sunbeams over scattered product packaging and broken shelving. Then her eyes spotted it: a faint gleam of slime cutting through dust and glass shards on the linoleum flooring.
A cold chill settled over her and felt a lump in her throat.
She wanted to run, to flee, but she knew Cas would lose all respect for her if she did. That she couldn’t bear. Not after everything she’d done to become part of the mission team, to show her mettle. To prove herself.
She fought down the anxiety and delicately picked her way forward, careful to avoid stepping on any glass, pausing every few steps to listen.
Halfway in, less light filtered in from the street. She stopped and let her eyes adjust.
There was a pharmacy counter at the back of the store. A streak of glistening slime led over the marble countertop.
Focused on the counter, Fiona stalked forward in a crouch, trigger finger twitching, ready to spray death.
She stopped two meters away from the counter and took a few deep breaths as she worked up her nerve.
Suddenly something soft slapped against her leg and skittered up her back, tentacles grasping round her torso. The trail had been a ruse! She dropped her gun and whirled about, desperately clawing at her back, trying to rip it off.
Then a sharp jabbing pain in her spine.
She straightened up and her face went slack.
“DISEASED UNCLEAN CONTAMINANT,” blared a grating, hysterical alien voice in her head. “YOU WILL OBEY ME! ”
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