Disclaimer - Sadly I don't have the pleasure of owning Doctor Who - if I did, then a lot would change.
A Time Lady regenerates.
Susan smiled at the sight of all the child running around the streets as she just took everything in after separating from her grandfather's original incarnation and returning to where the Time scoop had originally picked her up. London and the rest of Earth were rapidly recovering from the damage caused by the Daleks after their invasion, and hopefully the children who were the newer generation of the human race would not repeat the mistakes of their forebears who had withheld the scientific and technological knowledge of the Ancients and the Asgard from humanity. Susan could understand their worries at the time, but there was a difference between withholding knowledge out of concern for the safety of the people and just doing it out of greed for more, so they could point their fingers at the other countries of Earth and go "we've got more technology than you!" and just forget about the potential damage that could result from such an action.
The Dalek invasion of Earth had pointed out to the humans the need to really get their heads out and get on with studying things like the Ancient city ship of Atlantis and the Asgard knowledge base Susan had learnt had been gifted to the humans on the eve of their death. Susan felt sorry for the Asgard, but their use of cloning had sealed their fates.
Her warm smile turned into a grimace as she moved her foot wrong, and a bolt of pain shot from her twisted ankle to her chest, and she let out a breath as the rest of her body felt like it had been squeezed in pain.
Someone noticed her, a boy of 11, and he hurried up to her. "Are you okay?" he asked.
Susan smiled at him, grateful for his concern. "Yeah, I'll be fine. Just a twinge in the chest. Don't worry." The boy looked at her worriedly as though she were going to drop to the ground any minute now, but he rushed off when he heard his friends who were playing football call out to him impatiently. "You'd better go," Susan whispered to him, and he ran off. Grimacing at the pain, Susan pushed it aside with her Time Lord training and walked away down the street, amazed by how many things could change in just 20 years - for the humans, but for her a few centuries had passed since that terrible night where the Daleks had been resurrected by the Master, and David had died.
Susan had avoided this past of the 22nd century for a long time since it brought back too many memories for her, but now she was nearing the end of her first incarnation and would soon regenerate into her second. Despite the memories she had locked in her mind, Susan had decided to visit a time 20 years after David's death and just look around before returning to her TARDIS and then moving on. Leaning on her cane Susan hobbled down the street. Ever since that mess on Gallifrey where Lord President Borusa had tried to acquire immortality from Rassilon's tomb in the Death Zone, and her body's failing health, Susan had taken to using a cane to move around when the pain had gotten too much for her to handle. Susan wasn't going to bother using the advanced healing technology in the TARDIS to repair the ankle. What would be the point since she would soon regenerate and her old body would be restructured into a new one? When most Time Ladies nearing the end of their first incarnation (any incarnation come to that) suffered a relatively minor and inconsequential injury to their bodies, or picked up an illness because their immune systems weren't the same and were trying to get ready for the renewal and the physical stress of the transformation, they didn't see the point of healing themselves and were content to wait for the regeneration to occur.
The fifth Doctor's companion, Tegan Jovanka, had bandaged the injury when Susan had tried to run with her when the Cybermen had appeared but her body's failing strength had been too much, and she'd collapsed under her own weight. As she walked back to the TARDIS she remembered the terrifying adventure that had just happened. Susan, obeying the laws of time, hadn't told her grandfather - in any incarnation - about what had happened to her since he'd left. The incarnation that she had seen with David was a long way before the time of those four other Doctors, and it was likely he knew the truth of the relationship with her husband. They thought she was still happy with David, and she hadn't had the hearts to tell them the truth.
Susan wasn't surprised the Time scoop had found her anymore than she was surprised that such a piece of technology still existed, she just found it disgusting that a dark piece of her race's history had returned out of nowhere. She counted it as lucky the Time Lords hadn't simply trapped her and punished her for becoming a renegade when all she'd done was run away with her grandfather.
Other races, when they lost a member of their species who turned to crime or as Susan and the Doctor were, people who merely wished to live their lives away from Gallifrey, would expend a lot of time and man-hours looking for those people. They'd issue countless warrants and if there was any sign of that person then they were caught unless they moved on quickly enough.
The Time Lords were different. Yes, they issued warrants, but they didn't search for their criminals and renegades actively. That wasn't her people's way, and since the Time Lords had two ways of catching their criminals they didn't need to worry too much. It was only when the renegade was dangerous that they paid more attention and would actually look for them. If they didn't cross certain lines, the Time Lords would leave them alone.
When TARDISes travelled they left behind a thumb print of their controllers artron signature, and it wouldn't take long for the Time Lords to figure out where the TT capsule would materialise next, and would allow them to capture that Time Lord who had thought they had managed to escape and evade Time Lord justice.
Some times the Time Lords would simply peer into the biodata extract of the Time Lord pilot and do the same thing, predict a place in time and space and capture the Time Lord from there. Every Time Lord had a data extract and with that knowledge if they ever left the planet in an unauthorised TARDIS then they would be simple enough to capture.
Patience was one of the Time Lords greatest weapons, but sometimes the High Council just couldn't be bothered to spend time and energy purging the universe and the vortex of renegades. Susan had been terrified to find herself back home, but she would prefer the Citadel and Arcadia and the Mountains of Solace and Solitude to the Death zone, but she knew it was close call. She only hoped her grandfather hadn't been caught by them.
Susan pushed that out of her mind, and decided to just simply enjoy her day, though her regeneration was fast approaching.
After spending hours in London, a city she had visited and even lived in so many times, Susan returned to her TARDIS panting and out of breath. She spent spent the entire day out of her time ship and after that adventure in the Death zone, facing an insane Dalek and a group of Cybermen, and Borusa she was feeling very tired.
Susan closed the doors and performed a scan of the planet. When the Master had taken her into the TARDIS without knowing about her true origins, she had left Earth with a very active Dalek facility behind; she knew her grandfather had destroyed it, but it was amazing how humans were so stupid to play games with Dalek technology. There were laboratories and workshops all over the planet and even on the moon and Martian colonies that studied what the disgusting creatures had left behind when their main ship had been destroyed, but those studies were tightly controlled. But there were still Dalek bases around the planet, including the former one with the matter transmuter the Master wanted before she dealt with him.
Pushing that unpleasant memory aside, Susan focused on the scan results, hoping that the humans had left them alone.
When she saw the results, she felt her hearts plummet. Not again. There was a Dalek power signature and it was coming from Derbyshire, on Wenley Moor. Susan groaned and started setting the controls for Derbyshire.
The Dalek base in Derbyshire was not unlike dozens of other bases dotted around the country and all around Earth. It was just a small blockhouse that hid the underground facility. No surprises there - the Daleks didn't need daylight or fresh air, and the underground world was their natural habitat. The entire area was vast and sparsely populated - most of the Earth's populations were centred on cities and towns of considerable size to ensure the gene pool remained stable, so more than 200 people living outside those places was rare. No one really wanted to live out here, not when you considered the Slythers that were probably still roaming the lands anyway. The humans had done their best to eradicate the vile mutated predators that had been bred and crossbred and absorbed the chemical, genetic and radioactive changes in Skaro's atmosphere for centuries until the original creature was nothing more than a forgotten memory but there were survivors that escaped the humans' attempts to purge them.
Susan had never really bothered to get any ideas of what the Daleks had been doing in Derbyshire during the invasion, and truthfully she had had other facilities to worry about when she was a Peace Officer. Susan winced as she walked along in her bulky uniform. It had been a long time since she'd worn the uniform of a Peace Officer, and she was carrying her pin and her ID card hoping not to use it. But she would if she had no choice. She was busy staring at the base that had been ringed off for a long time. No one had even known about the base until the invasion had ended, and since communications with this part of the country topped with the number of people who'd died here, probably when the Daleks initially attacked or enslaved to build their complex, had ended no one had known until an extensive survey had been made. Dalek facilities always ended in death, and it hadn't taken long for the automatic booby traps the paranoid mutants had left behind to warrant a full survey.
The caves of Derbyshire had a mysterious warning on them, apparently something terrible had happened in the 1970s but no one knew the specifics, either because the records had been lost or simply ignored during the invasion's aftermath. But Susan didn't care, she wanted to know what was happening in the base. She had worn her old uniform and carried her ID in case there was anybody around. There wasn't any, which was a relief because her ID had expired years ago.
Susan slipped out her laser screwdriver to scan the base - she had chosen a laser screwdriver instead of a sonic one because a laser screwdriver had dozens of features a sonic version lacked. Plus, against threats like Daleks and Cybermen she needed a weapon. Granted Susan disliked using them, but when she had left Earth she had encountered the Daleks, Cybermen, robots of various types who wanted to kill her because their programming made them crazy had made her realise the logic in carrying something to protect herself as a precaution. Laser screwdrivers were better than blasters any time. Back in the Death Zone she had been tempted to use it many times to simply kill the Daleks and the Cybermen, but she had held back because she would have needed to tell her grandfathers various incarnations why she happened to carry it.
The block house wouldn't show any kind of energy on a human scan, but on the Laser screwdriver it did, and that worried Susan. It was a low level amount of energy, but it was present. The Time Lady paused because she knew she'd have to enter the Dalek base to find out what was going on. She only prayed some idiots had stumbled across the place and turned something on before running off. She was hoping it wasn't going to be another repeat of the mess at DA-17 and she'd have to encounter a new batch of Daleks. But hopefully she wouldn't have to deal with another power mad renegade Time Lord this time.
Susan returned to the TARDIS and checked the readings taken with the screwdriver and compared to them to the scans the TARDIS had taken when she'd programmed it. Odd, she mused to herself when she saw the results. The Dalek base had been constructed inside the local cave network, which was more efficient than simply boring it out and then building it from scratch. But according to the records the TARDIS had dredged up the base had once been human, a research centre built into the network of caves. The Daleks had merely taken it over and enlarged it with their superior knowledge of underground engineering. But Susan didn't know why.
But what interested and worried her was the obvious sign of induction between the Dalek base and another underground structure. What? Susan did a quick check of the place and found that it was a colony for a tribe of Earth's original inhabitants, reptile creatures called Silurians by the humans. She had heard of them but didn't know anything else about them despite the news they didn't hold a lot of love towards humans. And now a group of them were making the mistake of interfering with a Dalek base.
But as Susan studied the scans of the Silurian (or whatever their name was) base she realised it had suffered severe damage long ago, but she didn't know why - if it was the movement of the Earth's tectonic plates, then the place would've been crushed, but this wasn't. No, this shelter had been damaged by something smaller but no less devastating.
Susan shrugged her shoulders, and started resuming her scans of the Dalek base and learning what she could about it before she made her plans. It seemed that the Silurians had leeched off on the power of the base, and Susan wondered if they had a death wish. Susan started setting the controls of the TARDIS, studying the layout of the Dalek base and finding the control room before dematerialising. Setting the ship to materialise quietly and to set up a small spatial displacement to knock their sensors out of sync, while programming the chameleon sensors to pick a really good disguise for the ship; TARDISes were indestructible, but the less the Daleks knew about her presence the better.
The moment the TARDIS materialised in the Dalek base, she felt her hearts sink when she saw the Daleks mill about the control room which was the spitting image of the one on Skaro. Where had these Daleks come from? Had there been a factory here that the Silurians had tampered with? The stupid creatures, but since their knowledge of aliens was nonexistent it wasn't their fault they didn't and wouldn't know about the Daleks until it was too late. But she didn't know where this lot had come from, whether there was a computer programmed to begin producing them at a specific time, or if they'd been alive the whole time, plotting to retake Earth.
The Daleks she was seeing had that dish and enlarged base she had seen in DA-17 and earlier during their invasion, so they weren't like the ones who powered their casings using solar energy or atomic radiation.
Susan tuned the TARDIS communication system into the outside of the Real world interface so she could listen to what they were saying. The black Dalek who was in command glided towards one of its subordinates who left a bank of consoles. Susan gripped the edge of the TARDIS console when the deathly sound of the Dalek voices echoed throughout the room.
"Do you have anything to report the point of origin for the power failures?" the Dalek leader asked.
"Yes. We have pinpointed the origin. We have also learnt it is not of human science."
Another alien would have demanded answers about the clearly alien technology, but the Dalek merely absorbed the information quietly. "What is the status of the power grid?"
"We have isolated sections of the power grid to prevent Daleks from losing static power, but the drains are making it more difficult. The science section is preparing a fusion energy cell to supplement our power supply," the Dalek scientist said.
Another Dalek approached. The scientist and the black Dalek regarded it. "Prepare Dalek warriors and engineers to tunnel through to the alien location, we shall teach these aliens the law of the Daleks!" The black Dalek's metallic voice rose to a hysterical shout. "They shall be exterminated!"
The other Daleks took up the chant, and Susan shut off the communication system before she dematerialised the TARDIS and reset the coordinates to take her to the Silurian base. They might kill her for looking like a human, but if she could help them from being killed….. But what she really needed was a plan to deal with the Daleks. She knew it was probably too late for the Silurians - the Daleks knew where they were, and they would be preparing to wipe them out, but she had to try.
Susan landed the TARDIS in the Silurian shelter and walked out into the middle of the shelter's control room. The sudden darkness of the control room stunned her slightly, and then she caught a flash of red coming from the top of one of the Silurian's crested heads…..
Susan groaned as she woke up, letting her mind use her training to push aside the paid caused by the Silurian's telekinetic attack. She took a deep breath and looked around, sighing when she saw the horizontal bars of the cage she was in. All around her was the strange, ethereal, almost musical sound of the shelter's power system. She climbed to her feet, her hands going to her pockets where she found her laser screwdriver, her TARDIS key and a few other things she carried with her on her travels. She was surprised her captors hadn't bothered taking them away, but she thanked any deity she could think of. Putting her hands on one of the bars, Susan took the time to look around. The shelter was really badly damaged, but the structural damage didn't look too critical. Clearly Silurian engineering was made to last forever. She saw four of the reptilian beings wandering around inspecting the damage anyway, with oddly shaped tools that looked more grown than artificial.
"You're all in danger!" she shouted at them, standing up with difficulty on her injured foot . "Let me out! I need to speak with whoever is in charge! Let me out!"
After 3 and a half minutes of putting up an enormous fuss which had made one of the Silurians run away, Susan finally got her wish. She knew from experience that when you were locked away the more noise that you made, the more protests and the more threats you said, the quicker it would take for someone to come and tell you to shut up.
Two Silurians approached her cage. One of them was taller, but he looked like he had been badly crippled and hadn't had the chance to truly recover properly, he walked with a cane made with the same disturbing look all Silurian technology was made with - grown rather than built. His companion was shorter than he was, but he was in better health.
"You will be silent, ape," the leader spat in his warbling voice, the threat clear in his tone and in the way his body moved.
But Susan had gotten her wish to have someone come to her. "I won't be silent," she snapped. "You are in danger, because you have drawn off energy-"
"Yes, we have. The research centre possessed a nuclear reactor and it's energy was drained off to revive our people who were in Deep sleep," the leader interrupted her. "It is strange. We would have imagined you apes would've learnt your lesson after last time, but perhaps your records are not extensive-"
"I know. I know that there was a research centre near your shelter separated by the caves, and I know you drew off energy from it, to revive your people," Susan said, making it up as she went on - the more she hinted that she knew everything about what had happened, or had some idea, the easier it would be in the long run rather than have it all explained to her. "But the humans aren't in the research centre. It was abandoned centuries ago. The reason there is energy coming from it now, two hundred years after, is because aliens have taken it over."
There was a glimmer of what looked like amusement in the reptilian eyes. "Aliens?"
"Yes. Aliens. Beings from beyond this solar system," Susan ground out impatiently. "Or do you think your little speck in space is the only one with intelligent life? Listen, forget about that. You're in danger. The Daleks know about your shelter, they have pinpointed where the power losses are coming from. They're not going to care if you're reviving your people out of hibernation, they don't care if you're the oldest race on this planet; they are a warrior race, and they enjoy slaughtering other races because they genuinely think they have no right to live. They're the ultimate racial cleansers, mutated and genetically engineered to feel no emotion except hatred for anything different. They will kill you, they won't negotiate with you. It's too late, you are dead."
"I do not believe you," the leader replied after a minute. "You will tell me what the humans are planning."
The Silurian's third eye glowed for a moment, and Susan seized up as her mind fought the creature's telepathic assault-
"You're wasting your time and signing your own death warrants," Susan managed to get out even as she fought the pressure of the Silurian's mental assault. While she was fighting him she could feel his hatred and bigotry of humans pour into her mind, and some of his memories came to mind. She was shocked but not surprised to when an image of her grandfather's third incarnation fighting against him, how her grandfather had cured humans of a plague the Silurians had unleashed against the humans before going onto trying to destroy the human species by dispersing the Van Allen Belts. Susan decided to fight fire with fire. She snatched the Silurian's mind with her own, feeling the anger of a Time Lady surge through her being. "You think I'm lying do you? Well, how about now!"
With that she poured the memories of the Daleks into the Silurian's mind, she showed him the memory of her and her grandfather forced to sit in the centre of the Dalek control room in their city on Skaro when they announced their intentions to wipe the Thals out with the radiation from their reactors, their ruthlessness, their callous evil.
The Silurian tried to get free, but Susan wasn't having it. "You drove yourself into my head, now you're going to pay for it."
Now she showed the Silurian memories of the Dalek invasion. Explosions, threats of extermination with the resistance's unsuccessful night attack on the Dalek spacecraft before the Daleks decided to simply destroy London to wipe out the resistance once and for all. She also showed them the terror she had gone through when she and David had taken her grandfather to the Dalek mine. She had no problem showing the Silurian leader the carnage and destruction the Daleks caused, and if she were honest with herself she was delighted to show the Silurian the memories of how the Daleks and humans both had space travel technology, just to make it clear even if the leader managed to somehow slaughter millions of humans the others in the galaxy would make him pay the price in blood. She showed the Silurian the events of the post invasion world, of the humans struggling to rebuild with help from their colony worlds, fighting a never ending battle. Pictures of the radioactive wastelands flashed between their minds, images of the Dalek bases and how they exploded or were booby trapped, images of Slythers and other mutated nasties flashing between them. She didn't want to push her knowledge of other planets into the leader's mind, especially since it would reveal the existence of the TARDIS, and she skilfully pushed the piece de resistance into the Silurian's mind; when she had overheard the Daleks in the former research centre talk about exterminating whoever was stealing their energy, and to prepare for an attack.
Susan let the Silurian go. He staggered away, his movements clumsy as he got away from her, and she glared at him. "Don't go through my mind again, you could have just asked me about the Daleks," she snapped. "Now do you believe me?"
She hadn't intended to be rude, but she was tired of the arrogance of so many people whom she'd come across in the universe, except when the Silurian had touched her mind, she was sickened by his bigotry against the humans simply because he couldn't get past the fact the human race had evolved from the animals they had once been. If he couldn't move beyond that image, then he didn't deserve to be called intelligent.
The Silurian looked at her with all three eyes, then he turned to his friend who had been looking between the pair in concern. "Get the others ready for an attack," he ordered before turning to Susan. "Where will this attack originate from in our shelter?"
The other Silurian was the one who replied. "The tunnel we bored when we went to abduct the Doctor, and then later when we attacked the centre in force," he said.
"Evacuate that section of the shelter," Susan told him, not really caring if she wasn't in any position to demand the Silurians anything; if they were intelligent enough they should follow through with the instructions to do as they were told. Otherwise they were dead.
The two Silurians looked at one another, and Susan groaned in annoyance. "The Daleks are coming, and they're not going to show any restraint-"
The Time Lady was interrupted by the sound of a colossal explosion.
"Too late," Susan said grimly, "the Daleks are here."
The Daleks glided arrogantly through the wall they'd just blown up to reach the underground shelter, though they had no idea about the Silurian colony, and they didn't particularly care about that either. The Daleks eyestalks swung to and fro around the darkened passageway they had emerged into, and waited until their forces came through the tunnel.
The squad leader issued orders. "Attack forces prepare. Firepower maximum. The aliens must be exterminated!"
None of the Daleks had any problem obeying that order. Total use of force and the destruction of the enemy was their primary philosophy anyway, and it didn't take long for the Silurians to realise that they had made a fatal mistake. A group of the Silurians approached, prepared for humans so they were surprised when they saw the squat metallic shapes of the Daleks.
It took a second for the Daleks to see them - the corridor was well lit in their minds since they could see in various aspects of the spectrum - but since their bodies were based on a cold blooded metabolism, it took time for them to realise they were there.
The Silurians were the ones to announce their presence, and without any knowledge of what they were up against, they stepped into the open and used their third eyes against the Daleks. The force of telekinetic energy caught one of the Daleks in a blast of red energy.
"Alert! Under attack, full alert!" The Dalek screamed as it spun under the influence of the psychic blast.
Two of the Daleks opened fire, the Silurians' bodies falling to the ground glowing white and black before the light in the corridor returned to normal.
"Status report."
The Dalek that had been attacked swivelled its eyestalk. "Non conductive shielding burnt out. Sensors register energy to be psychic in origin. Transmitting energy signature to other Dalek units now for circuit adaptation."
Another Dalek glided up to the dead bodies. "The aliens appear to be reptilian," it announced. "Adjust optical and sensory systems."
"We obey."
Once the modifications were carried out, the Daleks moved throughout the shelter, and blasted everyone to the ground. The Daleks battle tactics were superior compared to the tactics used by the Silurians, so the ancient aliens had a hard time trying to adapt as the Daleks blasted them down. The Daleks also managed to get into one of the massive chambers containing members of their group community still in hibernation.
The group of six Daleks glided in, killing three of the Silurians who tried to defend their brothers and sisters from certain death. After the futile attack was quashed, the Daleks studied the room they had just killed to get into.
One of the Daleks extended its manipulator stalk. "These are suspended animation units, many of them contain the aliens."
The Daleks were a curious scientific race by nature when they weren't destroying races. "They must have been draining our power to revive their people," another Dalek stated, but since Daleks thought the same it was less of a deduction and more of a logical reasoning behind the alien's actions.
"Destroy it."
The Daleks took up positions in the hibernation chamber and began to fire, the energy of their blasts destroying the hibernation units and killing the Silurians who still resided in them.
Susan listened as the Silurian leader spoke with his aides. "The aliens have destroyed one of our hibernation chambers, killed our people within them," one of them described the devastation caused by the Daleks.
Susan sighed as she listened to the continuous and increasing amount of destruction caused
"Release the Myrka."
"EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! Unknown life form attacking!"
The Daleks had been enjoying some success in the fight against the Silurians. Their opponents third eyes were powerful, but the Daleks had quickly learnt to not allow them to concentrate themselves in large groups to pose a threat. The Daleks simply blasted them down, their bodies smoking with the discharges.
And then the Myrka attacked. The Daleks didn't know anything about the monstrous creatures, and because of that lack of knowledge they were completely taken by surprise by the creature's appearance. In typical Dalek fashion, the Kaled mutants had just shot at it, but they had quickly discovered the electrical field that covered the body and lashed out to electrocute any Dalek unlucky enough to get too close to touch.
It didn't take long for the Daleks to realise the creature's electrical properties were only dangerous when it was close by within touching distance, and it didn't take long for them to see their weapons, far from injuring the creature, were in fact being blocked by the forcefield.
Several Daleks had already been destroyed by the Myrkas' touch. In Dalek central control, the Dalek's in the control room were monitoring the creature's progress as it successfully helped the reptilians beat the Dalek assault. Already several units had been exterminated, and the Black Dalek in command found it unacceptable.
Turning to face its aides, the Black Dalek issued general orders. "Despatch more squads to the attack," it ordered. "Advise them to take heavier weapons."
"I obey," One of the aides replied.
As the aide glided away to relay the order, the Black Dalek turned back to the set to observe the Myrka, the image and data collected by the destroyed Dalek's battle computers. "This is control," the Dalek sent to the units still alive in the Silurian colony. "Use self destruct. More attack squads are approaching, but you must exterminate the creature by any means necessary. Prepare the Slythers."
None of the Daleks in the Silurian colony questioned the order. The Dalek race was a single unit, with individual Daleks prepared to lay down their lives for the cause if it meant the advancement of the supremacy of the Daleks.
In the colony control room, Susan had been watching silently. She wasn't that surprised to see the Daleks fall back under the force of the Myrka as the creature lumbered about unsteadily. She was a little bit worried, knowing the Daleks were not going to take any of this lightly. And she was right. Six Dalek survivors appeared and rammed into the Myrka at the same time, triggering the self destruct mechanisms inside their casings.
Susan had to grab hold of the centre seat in the chamber to maintain her balance when the force of the explosion rocked throughout the colony. The Silurian leader turned to face her.
"Did you know that would happen?" he demanded.
"No," she replied truthfully. "But I knew they'd call up heavier arms. This is what the Daleks do, they're keen to sacrifice any of their kind just to ensure their victory. That's why I told you to not be too sure about using your Myrka on them."
And she had. The moment she had seen the Myrka, she had told the Silurians not to be too complacent that the creature would be able to fight off the Daleks. She had expected them to bring a few Slyther's down and ensure a fight between two savage beasts. She had learnt the Silurians had taken the Myrka's ancestors and genetically engineered them into armoured cyborgs of incredible power.
Against the Slyther, they would be more than a match.
But the Silurians had arrogantly discounted the warning.
Now the Myrka was dead.
Susan knew that the Daleks had probably already relayed the attack from the monster, and were already probably sending more Daleks to fight. "Do you have anymore Myrka?" she asked, hoping the answer was yes.
The leader just shook his head grimly. "No."
Susan sighed and headed over to the monitors. The colony was full of sensor equipment, so it was easy for the Silurians to keep track of what was going on. Quickly she found an image of the Daleks already coming from the tunnel entrance, but her hearts almost stopped when she saw what they had brought with her.
"Oh no," she whispered, catching sight of the purplish creatures with massive mouths and eyes on two stalks. "Slythers."
If the Daleks had been taken by surprise by the Myrka, then the Silurians were positively terrified of the Slythers. The creature's terrible screams were bad enough, but the way they launched themselves at the unlucky Silurians, and then torn to shreds as the blood splashed all over the ground was even more gruesome.
The Slythers were mutants like the Daleks. They had once been simple animals back on Skaro, but forced genetic changes caused by the planet's increasingly toxic environment and genetic experimentation by the Kaleds during their research into the survival of the species before the Dalek travel machine was even devised. The Slyther's ancestors were a thing of the past, in fact their original un mutated form was something of a mystery, but the Daleks didn't care about that.
To them the Slythers made the perfect biological weapon next to Varga plants which were so deadly that a single sting from one of the thorns, just one cut, was enough to transform a fully grown human into a Varga plant, and the aggression factor which was now so common on Skaro, would begin purging the original victim and leaving the plant behind.
The Daleks regularly used Slythers as their version of a guard dog, but it was more than that; the Daleks had furthered the genetic enhancements and pushed the Slyther's genetic matrix as far as it would go, and they had converted them into cyborgs much like the Myrka. Only instead of carrying a mighty electrical charge, the Slyther's were so strong they could shred a human tank to pieces.
A few of the Silurians discovered the Slyther's enhanced strength, but they would never live to tell the tale. One or two of the Silurians tried to use their third eyes to psionically attack the Slythers, but the Daleks weren't pulling out any more punches now. Too many of their number had been killed by the Myrka, and now they were storming through the colony, their guns blazing even if the Silurians were not even there.
The Slythers were ushered along by their Dalek masters thanks to the cybernetic implant that controlled their brains, but they didn't need much prompting to attack their new prey. The Silurian warriors tried to meet the Slythers and the Daleks with their heat and sonic weapons in addition to their third eyes, but the heavy and constant fire coming from the invaders into their shelter and the Slyther's savage attacks made it virtually impossible for them to get close enough to use their weapons.
It didn't take long for the Daleks to reach the control room either. Susan threw herself to the ground to avoid the Daleks blasts, but she was more than aware of the high warbling screams coming from the Silurians and the stench of burnt flesh coming from their bodies as the electrical energy of the blasters seared through their bodies.
Susan had been standing behind two of the Silurians when the Daleks attacked the control room, and since she was smaller in stature than they were, the Time Lady hoped the Daleks would go away before one of them realised she was there and still alive. She knew they weren't in the mood to talk, not in the mood to offer terms though it wasn't even in their nature to be merciful.
"Resistance in this area is suppressed," one of the Daleks announced.
"Continue the search for survivors," another said, and Susan could see the three Daleks leaving the control room.
Now was her chance.
Getting up slowly, Susan rushed to her TARDIS, hand slipping into the pocket her key was in, and unlocked the door. She set the controls to take her to the Dalek's base. It was time to end this. If she didn't destroy the Daleks then they would eventually leave their underground base and reconquer the planet. The humans would be unprepared and despite the closer ties with the colony worlds, the Daleks wouldn't hesitate to cut the planet off again. They might even try to reactivate their plan to turn the planet into a vast spaceship, though how they'd manage that when their original location was destroyed, she didn't know.
Bedfordshire was carefully chosen out of hundreds of other sites, but the Daleks could do it again and she knew it, that was why she wa so desperate to end their threat. Susan didn't have time to save the Silurians, most of them were dead already, and what was left were just a few survivors, but she could save the planet.
Programming her TARDIS to home in on the nearest form of energy source surrounded by Dalekanium armour, nuclear reactor shield grade of course, which they used to shield their reactor plants. She then headed out of the console room and headed to the laboratory. She didn't come back until ten minutes later, in her hands were two metallic cylinders. Susan had met a young woman in the 1980s, a troubled teenager called Ace who had a truly brilliant knack for making weapons, especially a type of explosive called nitro-nine.
Susan had helped her with the formula in exchange for gaining access to it. She had been facing the Daleks and the Cybermen more than once, and she was tired because sometimes she didn't have the appropriate weapons to deal with them. The best way to deal with Daleks and Cybermen were to simply blow them to bits.
Susan had improved the formula until now it had near the power of the atom in some variants, and that was what she was carrying now; two nitro-nine bombs which came pretty close to containing the power of the atom. She didn't want to go too over the top with bombs, but she had the formula in a safe in the workshop just in case.
The TARDIS materialised silently inside the Dalek's power plant. Susan took a look at the outside readings coming in and she wasn't surprised to see the radiation meter click upwards past the danger point. The Daleks depended on nuclear radiation to simply stay alive, similar to how humans and Time Lords needed water. She sighed grimly, deciding she didn't have much choice.
She would have to go outside. Susan considered using radiation protection like anti-radiation drugs like the ones Alydon and the other Thals used on Skaro, but she decided against it. What would be the point of saving herself from radiation sickness when she was already nearing the end of her first incarnation? True, her regeneration might make her behaviour in the aftermath erratic, but at least she wouldn't have died without good reason.
Susan closed her eyes and braced herself before triggering the door control. The TARDIS reluctantly obeyed her command and opened the doors, but not without a mournful hum.
Susan shared her TARDIS's concern and attitude. The moment she stepped outside the micro universe she instantly felt the radiation, and she pushed the effects aside just to reach the reactor. She planted the bombs close to the fuel rods, and set the timers for about 2 minutes. After setting the bombs she entered the TARDIS and dematerialised, taking deep breaths as she did so. There was little chance of the Daleks finding out what she'd done, and besides she'd tucked the bombs away so then their arm stalks couldn't reach them quickly. But then Susan had to face facts. She had absorbed a vast amount of nuclear radiation from the reactor, and she now felt a sensation she had only been told about but never felt before.
She was regenerating.
Susan sighed and set the controls to take the TARDIS to a quiet place where she could rest in pace from the aftermath. Susan continued checking the TARDIS over, all the while feeling the tingling, burning sensation of regeneration energy boil and burn its way through her body, long before she saw her hands beginning to glow. Susan looked almost tearfully down at her hands. Her life, her first life, was over and she couldn't do anything to stop it. Her body had already reached and passed the point of no return already, now she would simply move on into her second incarnation.
"I'll miss this body," Susan said wistfully as she watched the energy build up and up to the point where it would become critical. "David, Barbara, Ian, Grandfather…..I love you all!" she finished with a shout when her body exploded with energy and she screamed in pain. She knew the first regeneration was always the worst one, theoretically, but this was unbearable. She felt as though every single cell in her body was being burnt, boiled, and then ripped to pieces.
The force of the regeneration knocked Susan to the ground. She was dimly aware the TARDIS was trying to help her regenerate, but she felt herself fall unconscious.
Author's note - I hope this story satisfies people's hopes for a sequel to my previous story, A Time Lady in Atlantis. Please tell me what you think.