I don't have anything to say here aside from I'd like to thank anyone who reviewed the first chapter! Don't worry, I'll have PLENTY to say in the closing author's notes! Lol
Here's the second chapter of Ultima: Pandora's Box: So Careless and Fragile
(3 days AGE, Realm 251, Jungle, Pandora, August 28th 2154, just after sunrise)
The radius of Pandora was slightly less than that of the Earth. If the word "Hate" were engraved on every nanoangstrom of those over 7112 miles, it would not equal one one-billionith of the hate the Daleks felt for every non-Dalek in sight for this nano-instant.
Hate.
Hate.
The minds of the Daleks were, as always, a thunderous din of anger. The insolence and inferiority of these towering blue pigmented feline-reminiscent humanoids had spurred the deepest instinct within their organic cores-the iron determination to carry out the racial will of the Daleks by exterminating all living things that weren't Daleks. It was a fire ignited that could only be quenched in the blood and bodies of these inferior creatures. These obviously inferior creatures who would displace the supremacy of the Daleks with their own obscene reign.
Everything that wasn't a Dalek was an enemy to be hated and exterminated.
They would do the same to the Daleks if they got the chance, so better to not give it to them.
The Daleks didn't have much in the way of a creed but there were two simple phrases that when combined succulently summarized what it meant to be a Dalek. The first of these was shouted in their electric staccato set at the highest possible volume by all four of the Daleks.
"EX-TER-MI-NATE!"
The war, the pest control...had begun.
A few seconds after the shock of their initial attack failing had worn off, a second attack was apparently ordered. The Na'vi kept firing their arrows and hurling their spears at the Daleks, even as they seemed to always vanish into thin air before even touching the metallic casings thanks to being intercepted by their protective force fields. Their deficiencies were so extreme that they failed to recognize the utter ineffectiveness of their obsolete weapons against them. Such lacking creatures being allowed to exist increased the ire of the Dalek's undying hatred.
As the fulite attacks against them continued to no consequence, the Daleks at last returned fire. With grating shouts of "EX-TER-MI-NATE" thundering, the invader's gunsticks unloaded salvos of faded cyan energy blasts. All four shots found their marks and struck a single Na'vi.
Like something out of a cheesy science fiction program, the stricken Na'vi had their skeletons start to glow through the skin, taking on a pale blue-green fluorescence that shined like an X-ray. The moment the light made contact, the blue-skinned humanoids suddenly tensed up and stood upright. There were a few painfully long moments of them standing unnaturally erect and screaming while the semi-transparent skulls robbed their tribesmen of seeing their agony. A few seconds later the blinding aura surrounding the stricken Na'vi had faded. A look of pain and bewilderment was transparently shown on their faces. Matching expressions were found in his tribesmen. Not even the filthy hybrid leader seemed to know what to make of this.
The Daleks gazed with seeming indifference. Regardless, two of the Daleks moved their eyestalks towards their gunsticks while the weapons were raised as close to their periscopic gaze as their bodily limitations would allow. Shining sapphire lenses stared down the barrels.
"ERR-OR HAS OC-CUR-RED! ERR-OR HAS OC-CUR-RED!" A Dalek declared, stating the obvious as its shrill expressive monotone conveyed its confusion. There was a moment of silence as it continued staring down the gunstick. "SELF DI-AGN-OS-TIC COM-PLE-TED! NO WEA-PON-RY MAL-FUN-CTION DE-TEC-TED IN ANY COM-PON-ENT OF THE WAR COM-PUT-ER OR THE ARM-A-MENT CIR-CU-ITS! NO MAL-FUN-CTION DE-TEC-TED!"
"NO DE-FI-CI-EN-CIES DE-TEC-TED IN MY UNIT'S SYS-TEMS!" Seconded a second Dalek. "COM-PRE-SSED POW-ER RES-ER-VOIR NOT SU-FFIC-IENT-LY DE-PLE-TED!"
"ERR-ORS AB-SENT!" The third Dalek interjected. "WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF THIS?"
There was half a second of silence. The Dalek remained impervious to the Na'vi weapons.
"THE BIO-LOG-Y OF THESE PRIM-I-TIVES IS MORE RE-SIL-IENT THAN EX-PEC-TED!" The lead Dalek grated. "CAL-I-BR-ATE GUN-ST-ICKS TO TWO HIGH-ER LE-VELS!"
"I O-BEY!" The three other Daleks said before firing another blast of Dalek fire a second later.
The same four Na'vi were hit again and went through the exact same horrific trauma a second time. But this time, when the beam faded and their faces had been returned, the rectus masks of horror were seen. That look didn't leave as they fell to the ground face-first. Their golden eyes were opened, and their mouths were forever locked into an unrestrained scream of pain.
"AD-E-QU-ATE POW-ER FOR EX-TER-MIN-A-TION OF PRIM-I-TIVES DIS-COV-ER-ED!" One of the Daleks screeched, its metallic voice rumbling with something akin to enjoyment.
"LOW-ER POW-ER OF GUN-STICKS BY ONE SET-TING!" The lead Dalek ordered.
On the heels of three shouts of "I O-BEY," a trio of Dalek lasers struck three more of the Na'vi. Now the number of corpses littering the ground was seven.
"KEEP GUN-STI-CK POW-ER AT CUR-RENT SET-TING!" the commander Dalek ordered.
His trio of drones obeyed and resumed the slaughter.
As the Daleks advanced and kept firing, they mused on how it was worse than what the Na'vi, the inferior primitives, could have imagined. There was no strategic value in making death painless, or the mere granting of the inevitably of extinction. It had to be more. So it was.
The Dalek's lasers didn't merely kill. Dalek scientists made sure of that. They exterminated.
Once their gun-sticks were set to the ideal setting for a particular lifeform, one level below what would exterminate it instantaneously, several things happened in the span of a few seconds that would seem stretched out into centuries for those hit by Dalek fire. Every bodily mass underneath the skin-the heart, lungs, bowels, blood cells, etc.-would experience massive internal disruption, exploding and liquefying from the inside out until it was all eventually reduced to a thick mulch. The energy output of these disruptions was what caused their skeletal system to be exposed before it too succumbed to the scrambling process. And as that was going on, the central nervous system itself would be burnt away from within. A lifetime's worth of pain and torment was experienced in the few seconds before their death.
A new flurry of arrows got the attention of the Daleks, but only for one reason. Their direction. They were being fired downward, from above. Their eyestalks roved upward. Several of the primitives had managed to reach their winged reptilian mounts in the initial seconds of the battle and were now attacking from the air. Other humanoids were attempting to do the same.
"PRI-OR-I-TI-ZE EX-TER-MIN-ATION OF THE UN-MOUN-TED SA-UR-I-ANS IN DA-LEK AT-TACK FOR-MA-TION THR-EE FROM THIS LO-CA-TION!" The lead Dalek ordered. Its eyestalk then roved in the direction of a particular Dalek. "HOV-ER UP-WA-RD AND EX-TER-MIN-ATE THE AIR-BOR-NE SA-UR-IANS! PRI-OR-I-TI-ZE THE SA-UR-I-ANS!"
"I O-BEY!" the singled out Dalek said before activating its thrusters and hovering into battle.
As it advanced upward, the other three Daleks remained as they were and entered a rough triangle formation. The lead Dalek gave another command to those beside it. "ON-LY DE-VI-ATE FROM PRE-VI-OUS OR-DERS IF A PRIM-I-TIVE IS AT-TEMPT-ING TO ATT-ACK THE DR-ONE AIR-BOR-NE FROM BE-LOW! EX-TER-MIN-ATE THEM AT ONCE!"
The pair of Daleks conveyed they understood and would obey. They did understand. The protective force field of a Dalek wasn't as effectively around their underside due to the gravity repellers. One good shot from below to an airborne Dalek could short-circuit the rest of their defensive systems. The tactical mind of the lead Dalek was vindicated as the next few minutes were a furious melee of murder as Na'vi were trying to shoot at the airborne Dalek from below. Not a single arrow was fired into the sky. The smell of energy-weapon discharges filled the air around the trio of pepperpot shaped invaders with a scent like burnt ozone as the Dalek gunfire screamed all around commingled with the shrill whine of the gunsticks. That shrill whine was only joined in this macabre chorus by the dying wails of slain banshees.
Even as their tribesmen fell right beside them, the Na'vi didn't stop attacking the Daleks.
A fresh wave of hatred broke against the Daleks as the Na'vi continued to resist them.
The Daleks were capable of surviving in the absolute vacuum of space, of easily withstanding all but the most powerful of projectile and energy weapons, of shrugging off things that would turn most lifeforms into piles of molecules, of firing over one thousands shots from their gun-sticks before needing to recharge, of passively absorbing even the most paltry solar energy automatically, and of calculating one hundred billion different points of data through a advanced tactical computer all at once. They were incapable of dying from old age or illness. They had enslaved or exterminated solar systems. They had waged a war across all of Time itself against a race of near immortal alien demigods who had unrivaled mastery over time travel...and had managed to get the upper hand until a desperate self-destructive final gambit.
And these primitives were coming at them with arrows and spears?
"PRIM-I-TIVE WEA-PONS IN-EF-FECT-IVE!" The lead Dalek declared, for no other reason than to strike at the foolish inferior creatures trying to destroy it in a different way. "IN-EF-FECT-IVE!"
While its comrades protected it from below from surprise attacks, the airborne Dalek followed its orders. Its gravity repelling thrusters allowed it to engage the mounted banshees in battle. The winged reptiles darted around with masterful speed as their riders fired arrows at the Dalek. Compared to the banshees, the Dalek was slow, merely treading gently over the air. This gave the Na'vi some hope that they would simply wear down the Dalek through speed and charging it. If arrows and spears didn't work, maybe blunt force impacts from their mighty beasts would? The first few Na'vi and banshee pairs being exterminated before they could get within effective ramming distance proved otherwise. After that, the Na'vi kept their distance.
It didn't matter.
The airborne Dalek did as ordered and focused on exterminating the beasts the Na'vi rode. The skeletal system of the suairans flashed for all to see in the morning sky before plummeting back to Pandora, bringing their doomed rider to a messy and violent death. The efforts were underwhelming for the Dalek, until it noted a beast being handled with more skill than the others. The Dalek recognized the primitive riding this beast as the primitive's master.
The one who called himself Jake Sully.
Neutronic energy beams from the gunstick were fired but only hit empty air. Unlike the others, this inferior lifeform had at least enough competency to dodge the death ray of the Daleks. Even though he was equally incapable of damaging the being who was his genetic superior. And like everything else, his resistance ultimately didn't amount to much of any importance.
The Dalek's beam finally hit Jake Sully's flying beast. It fell back to the surface of the moon rife with battle and slaughter. But before the primitive could hit the ground, he was saved by another. A beast of burden being commanded by the female who had spoken of goddesses earlier swooped in to save him before he could go splat. Its eyestalk saw them look at each other, smiling. A second later it fired another blast from above, killing the female's flying mount as well. Regretfully, they were close enough to the surface by this point that they most likely survived the fall. No matter. They would be exterminated soon enough.
The Dalek resumed its orders until it was the only thing left in the skies of Pandora. Once its dominance of all around it was confirmed, the lone Dalek made its way back to the ground. The moment its base made contact with the soil, it heard the voice of Jake Sully shout something in their native language. Right afterwards, it heard a pair of clashing Na'vi roars.
A primitive was charging directly at the Dalek from the front. The Dalek thought even its low opinion of the cat-like creatures hadn't been low enough as it marveled at the suicidal effort. The Na'vi was running directly at the gunstick. The Dalek prepared to fire another fatal blast.
But before it did so, the world became lumpy and brown and dark.
"MY VIS-ION IS IM-PAIR-ED! I CAN-NOT SEE!" The Dalek shouted out shrilly, pleadingly.
Taken by surprise, the Dalek didn't notice what it's fellow Daleks did. While the one primitive was charging it from the front, another was coming at it from behind, with a thick wad of mud in its oversized hand, which he had smeared all over the single means of sight a Dalek had. They had intended to blind the Dalek, and thus make it helpless before their mighty strength.
The primitives took a fraction of a second to grin at each other for successfully striking back against these vile beings. That delay would cost them everything.
Near instantaneously, almost right before the Dalek had spoken the last syllable of its plea, while its eyestalk still faced the primitive who had been at its front, its midsection swerved. The Dalek gunstick now pointed at the Na'vi behind it. With cruel ease, a blast was fired. A flash of light from within a destroyed body illuminated the Dalek's casing as the Na'vi fell.
The lumpy and brown abyss was burnt away in a series of bubbling pops as the Dalek removed the pitiful attempt to incapacitate it. The mud flaked and faded, falling to the ground. The first sight the Dalek had was the look of unrivaled confusion and terror on the blue-tinted face several feet about its eyestalk. The primitive's lacking mind was no doubt overwhelmed by how a Dalek's midsection could move independently of the rest of its body, making attacks from multiple assailants all but useless.
"MY VIS-ION IS NOT IM-PAIR-ED!" The Dalek declared with annoyed relish, revealing that its earlier terror was a deception. Truthfully, the Dalek was most offended that these primitives thought so little of it that they thought this basic trick would work against it. After their first encounter with the Doctor, clearing up their eyestalk was the first improvement they made, to ensure they couldn't be literally blindsided in such a matter ever again. It killed the primitive. Then, giving the matter no more thought, it skimmed over to the three other Daleks.
As it did so, the Dalek noted the piles of slain saurian corpses. All orders had been obeyed.
Even so, the returning Dalek noticed something. The comparative lack of primitive corpses.
"HAVE THE PRIM-I-TIVES BEEN COM-PLET-ELY EX-TER-MIN-ATED?" The Dalek asked, its voice almost sounding displeased.
"NEG-A-TIVE!" The Lead Dalek stated. "AS THE LAST OF THEIR SA-UR-I-ANS WERE EX-TER-MIN-ATED MOST OF THE PRIM-I-TIVES FLED INTO THE NEARBY JUN-GLE!"
"IT IS P-ROB-ABLE THEY HAVE BEGUN RE-TRE-ATING!" A Dalek that wasn't the one returning or the one in-charge exclaimed. "WE SHOULD PUR-SUE THEM FROM THE AIR!"
"IT IS A-GREED! WE SHALL-!" the lead Dalek started to say, before an arrow vanished near the dome of its casing. More weapons were unloaded upon the Daleks from the undergrowth.
Their eye-stalk turrets whirled around to observe the surroundings from which the attacks were being delivered. As much as everything about the sights before them made the newcomers want to explode into violent rage, doubly so now that they were being attacked from it, they at least noted with some miminial approval that this world wasn't a gravel quarry. A disturbingly high number of the planets in their universe were gravel quarries.
The Daleks ignored the spears and arrows hurled at them with superhuman strength and accuracy from the vines and trees of this seething cauldron of natural corruption and filith. They ignored the weapons intent on killing them. It was a matter of supreme irrelevance.
Even so, there was another aspect to this surprise attack that had to be dealt with. Showing the first bit of real cleverness these towering blue cat-like humanoids had displayed since encountering the Daleks, the primitives were mainly attacking from deep in the veil of the jungle. The Daleks would fire their neutronic energy beams into the thick foliage only to be denied the sight of bodies glowing like lanterns before falling down. This meant one thing.
The Daleks were missing.
Near instantaneous self-diagnostic scans confirmed that their equipment was still operational.
The Daleks possessed X-ray vision, infrared vision, and thermal imaging capabilities. It should have been impossible for any form of natural cover to obscure their efforts to this degree.
Several confused and shriling shouts from the trio of subservient Daleks conveying their confusion over this were heard until the lead Dalek ordered them to be silent as it thought. After a few seconds, the commander of this extermination squad realized the issue.
It was the plants of Pandora, which had a feature the Daleks had never encountered before. The majority of the flora of this moon possessed unique bioluminescent characteristics. The natural components that allowed these plants to glow in the dark weren't being activated due to the morning sun but even dormanit they housed biological traits typically not found in plants that were just enough of a variable to interfere with the scanning capabilities of the Daleks. The unique different types of pigmentation cells only found in the plants of Pandora made the technological efforts of the Dalek's scanners muddled and imprecise. They were mixing up the signals, offering effective cover. The continuation of the attack proved that. This risked giving the Na'vi hope, a misguided belief that they could overcome the Daleks. This would not do.
"DA-LEK AT-TACK FOR-MA-TION SEV-EN AT NINE-TY DE-GR-EES EAST!" The lead Dalek grated harshly over the sounds of battle. The other three Daleks stopped firing their gunsticks. They slid into a straight line formation facing the same direction.
The Na'vi had been giving a brief respite. Their faces were mirrors to their confusion. Why had the Daleks stopped killing them? And why were they facing a section of unremarkable jungle devoid of any enemies? The Dalek commander waited a moment to reveal the answer.
"EN-ACT MAX-I-MUM EX-TER-MIN-ATION ON THE FOL-I-AGE!"
"I O-BEY!" The trio of other Dalek shouted as bright blue beams of energy over four times as wide as their usual Dalek fire were rocketed out of their gunsticks at the jungles of Pandora.
Bushes and trees a few meters away exploded into flames as they were raked by Dalek fire. The vegetation was lush but the power of the gunstick's blast at its highest setting made the plant matter react as if it had been a grassland struck by lightning in a dry season's zenith.
The lead Dalek ordered a few more attack formations to do much of the same to other sections of the jungle. Three more salvos of "MAX-I-MUM EX-TER-MIN-ATION" were fired.
Within a space of time cruelly infinitesimal, everything for miles all around was set ablaze.
Amongst the cruel configuration that was swiftly shrouding everything in a writhing misima of crimson fire and ebony smoke, there were shapes that glided through the flames unmoved. They passed through blaze and vapor unaffected, not reacting to the pure carnage all around.
Everything burned but the fires couldn't contain them.
Animals darted to and fro in every direction while they smoothly glided, paying them no heed.
Pandora screamed, and it couldn't get the attention of the Daleks.
They were contemptuous of it, same as they were everything else that wasn't like them.
Though they were unworthy, the Dalek's returned their attention to the Na'vi. Some of them had foolishly fallen to their knees or wailed openly as their home burned. Hatred arose anew. Soldiers didn't stop fighting so long as they drew breath and could use a weapon unless ordered to do so. The Daleks had no patience for such cowardice. They began to blast at the primitives once more. Several of the kneeling Na'vi had glowed like X-rays before falling dead.
"CEA-SE EX-TER-MIN-ATION OF CAT-A-TON-IC PRIM-I-TIVES!" The lead Dalek grated. "FO-CUS EX-TER-MIN-ATION EFF-ORTS ON FIGHT-ING OR FLEE-ING PRIM-I-TIVES! LEAVE THOSE OVER-WHEL-MED MERE-LY IN-CA-PAC-I-TATED FOR EN-SLA-VE-MENT!"
After they confirmed they would obey its newest command, the lead Dalek left them to pursue a particular quarry. As it glided away, and exterminated a few rogue Na'vi as it advanced, the three subservient Daleks swivelled their eyestalks to take in a large mass of fleeing Na'vi.
New disgust animated the organic masses within their metallic casings. One did not flee from death. The end of their lives was never a deterrent. In most cases a death that was both well-timed and well-executed could be of great value to the welfare of the Dalek race. It was a duty, then, to die in service to the Daleks. Not something to be avoided, or run away from.
With colder resolve, surpassing mere hatred and evolving into some new terrible emotion without any equivalent for any other species, the Daleks acted to make the deaths of these cowards very well-timed and well-excused. Their midsections swung a few seconds after the top section had been locked onto the soon to be targets. The air was filled with that awful hum of the gun-sticks and the brief exposure of Na'vi skeletons that then fell to the burning ground. Their mid-sections rotated and fired without pause. No beam of death ever missed its target.
At this point the only sounds in the air were the crackling of the flames that devoured the jungle, the hum of the energy weapons that were their cause, the loud and shrill exclamations of the Dalkes, and the gasps of pain and death ripped out of the mouths of the Na'vi. The music of life on Pandora had been silenced, never to be heard again by the Omaticaya clan.
As the extermination continued, the lead Dalek found its mind wandering to other matters. Every now and then, on the smoldering jungle floor or within some burning up canopy, there was a glittering. Turning the eyestalk towards the source would reveal more of those peculiar crystals that had shown up three solar cycles ago. Very quickly, the Daleks had decided the capabilities of at least one of the four varieties that appeared to exist in every universe for an unknown reason. But the course of events had also shown that there was still much to learn about these gemstones. The purple crystals that had enabled travel to this new universe had somehow damaged the Dalek saucers. Not enough to render them powerless, but enough to affect the weapons systems. The usual Dalek greeting of raining down destruction from orbit had been impossible. After some debate among the commanders of the fleet, it was decided to have the Daleks themselves do the initial extermination. The primary scans of this inhabited moon had revealed that these primitives would be no great obstacle to conquer and destroy. Whatever had been the reason why the purple crystals had affected the Dalek ships would be a riddle to be solved after this moon was crushed beneath the Daleks' atractavon fenders.
After some searching through the carnage it had ordered, the lead Dalek found its quarry. The primitive's master and his mate. The duo, even more so than their kinsmen, resumed fighting. Though their attacks hadn't done even the smallest amount of damage, they hadn't ceased. They likely realized that there were no other options and they would rather go down fighting.
The lead Dalek would deny them this wish. Two of the other Daleks, after being called over, glided over the smoldering killing fields that used to be jungle towards their leader as the final member of their foursome kept up the relentless slaughter. "DO NOT EX-TER-MIN-ATE MAS-TER PRIM-I-TIVE AND HIS MATE!" The lead Dalek screeched. "DIS-ABLE THEM!"
"I O-BEY!" Two of the other Daleks said in unison as they each fired a weakened beam at the selected duo. As was often the case, the blasts found their marks and the targets fell.
Once male and female hit the ground, the Dalek trio began to approach them. It didn't talk long for them to trap the helpless duo in a triangle formation. They looked down at them.
"What did you do!?" the male snarled, feebly trying to lunge himself at his natural superiors. He hadn't moved even a quarter of an inch.
"YOU HAVE SUF-FER-ED TEM-POR-ARY NEU-RO-LOG-ICAL DAM-AGE PRI-MAR-ILY IN YOUR LOW-ER LIMBS! COM-PLE-TE MO-BIL-ITY WILL RE-TURN IN DUE COUR-SE! THE PRO-CESS OF RE-CLA-IM-ING LOST MO-BIL-ITY IS A LONG AND PAIN-FUL ONE!" The commander of this kill squad grated out, its voice thrumming with something like satisfaction.
The lead Dalek felt something boiled up anew within its mechanical casing. Rage. Pure rage.
The white-hot rage that blotted out all other possible reactions or emotions, a Dalek's bread-and-butter. Every living thing that wasn't a Dalek was inferior to the Daleks. That was the core truth of all reality. But at least they were all lesser in the same manner. They were inferior because they were born that way. They didn't choose to contaminate themselves.
The notion of willingly changing one's genetics, and betraying their progenitor race, was about as close to the concept of despicable as a Dalek was capable of grasping, It was the highest offense, the gravest sin, the most worthy justification for what the Daleks knew was their duty.
That was specific to Jake Sully. A reason for loathing and hating him and him alone. But there were other shades of resentment hard-wired into a Dalek's genetic code that enhanced it.
The parazlyed primitives had fallen close to each other. Close enough for their hands to briefly intertwine. The Daleks observed the small spidery limbs rub and grind against each other. The Daleks noted how, through obvious strain, the male and female shifted to slightly face each other. And that their pupils widened and their mouths changed shape into fast fading smiles.
They observed, their unfeeling cyclopic stares revealing nothing through the sapphire lenses.
The Daleks knew so much about the universe. They knew of cooling breezes and the warmth of sunlight. They knew of tactile sensations against the skin and deriving even minuscule pleasures from outside stimuli. But they only knew of them from second handed sources, from observed data and the final fantasies of slain enemies before their deaths at their weaponry. No Dalek had ever experienced these things. Yet all the inferior beings of the universe had. They were able to experience touch and taste and fulfillment.
They hated them for that. They wanted to exterminate them. They would exterminate them!
Pleasure and happiness were delusions, the byproducts of inferior minds indulging in futility. They were fickle falsehoods that the supermary of the Daleks had conquered eons ago. They had grasped that pain and hate were the true driving forces of existence, not the hope of love.
It was cold and lonely to be at the top of a mountain, looking down at all those who couldn't reach the same summit. They were so small, weak. They would never reach the peak but they tried anyway. They were wrong, delusional...sick. They needed to be corrected by force.
This was part of the reason that the male had been stunned rather than exterminated. But there was another, one which made the Dalek feel the closest thing it could to pleasure.
But before either reason could be acted on, the female had been talking. The Dalek had heard so many defiant speeches over the millennia that it had learned to tune them out. Rather than lessening the hatred these pitiful actions engendered, it only increased it. The superior being had to alter its course due to the choices of their inferiors. They were trying to assert a dominance over the Daleks that they had no right to claim! Nevertheless, the lead Dalek chose to listen as the female Na'vi seemed to reach the end of her monologue.
"The story of the Na'vi will not end here!" The female snarled, with the gusto of one who believed they were about to die, thus having nothing left to fear. She would be proven wrong.
"THE STOR-Y OF THE NA-VI IS NO LONG-ER YOURS TO WRITE! IT IS THE DA-LEKS!" The lead Dalek declared. "AND WE HAVE DE-TER-MINED THE NA-VI SHALL NOT END!"
The helpless couple blinked. "It...it won't?" The male asked, struggling to comprehend.
"A-FFIR-MA-TIVE! NOT ALL THE NA-VI SHALL BE EX-TER-MIN-ATED ON THIS DAY! SOME OF YOU WILL BE FED AND WA-TER-ED LONG EN-OUGH TO SEE WHAT BE-COMES OF YOUR BE-LOV-ED PAN-DOR-A! YOU AND THE REST OF YOUR KIND THAT WILL NOT DIE THIS DAY SHALL BE OUR SLAVES AND EN-SURE THAT THE DA-LEKS A-CHIEVE WHAT THEY FAILED TO A-CCOM-PL-ISH ON EARTH!" The Dalek's words were a mixture of threats and boasts, their only form of communicating with other species.
"What...what the hell does that mean?" The male demanded to know, trying to fight through the paralysis, and only succeeding by the loosest definition of the concept.
"WITH YOU NA-VI AS OUR SLA-VES, THE DA-LEKS WILL DRILL TO THE CEN-TER OF YOUR MOON AND REMOVE ITS MAG-NET-IC CORE! ONCE THE CORE IS REMOVED WE SHALL RE-PLA-CE IT WITH A POW-ER SYS-TEM! THIS WILL EN-ABLE US TO PILOT PAN-DORA ANY-WHERE IN THIS OR ANY OTHER U-NI-VERSE! YOUR WOR-LD SHALL OUR WAR-SHIP, OUR WAR-WOR-LD! IT SHALL BE THE F-EAR-ED AND HATED HAR-BIN-GER OF EX-TER-MIN-ATION! THAT SHALL BE THE LEG-A-CY OF THE NA-VI!"
The facial slits of the powerless primitives grew as they eventually grasped what this meant.
"You may be able to defeat the Na'vi," the female snapped, "but Eywa will destroy you! Your power is nothing compared to our goddess! She is beyond what you can understand!"
The Dalek's single blue lensed eyestalk glared down at the humbled princess of the Omaticaya clan. Even when she was laid ruined before this invader, its gaze wasn't any different. There was no tell of greater hatred or even contempt for her. She wasn't worthy of any change in this monstrosity's opinion. The unfeeling sapphire lens stared for seconds.
"WE UN-DER-STAND GODS WELL!"
"How could you!?"
"IN THE LONG DEAD LANG-UAGE OF DA-VR-OS' EX-TIN-CT FORE-RUN-NERS, WRIT-TEN IN 'THE FOR-BID-DEN BOOK OF PRE-DIC-TIONS', THERE WAS A PRO-PHE-CY THAT IN-SPI-RED HIM TO...GUIDE US! THE FIN-AL LINE READ '...AND ON THAT DAY, MEN WILL BE-COME AS GODS.' THE WORD FOR GODS...WAS DA-LEKS!"
There was a moment of pause.
"That doesn't mean squat!" The male designated Jake Sully snapped, uselessly defiant to the last. "Just because you were inspired by a fairytale doesn't make you Snow White!"
"COR-RECT AND IR-REL-E-VANT!" The lead Dalek grated. "DA-LEKS NEED NO SU-PER-STI-TION TO BE THE SU-PR-EME RACE! DA-LEKS DON'T NEED TO BE GODS! WE ARE BET-TER THAN ANY GODS! THE FACT WE ARE DA-LEKS MAKES IT SO! WE HAVE SUR-PAS-SED DA-VR-OS' ORI-GIN-AL VIS-ION OF WHAT THE DA-LEKS WERE!"
"You were made by some guy! What kind of master race is made in a goddamn laboratory!?"
"IN-COR-RECT!" The lead Dalek said. "THE DA-LEKS WERE CRE-ATE-D BY THE NEU-TRON WAR OF SKA-RO! DA-VROS MER-ELY AC-CEL-ER-ATED THE PRO-CESS OF OUR CRE-AT-ION! THE GEN-E-SIS OF THE DA-LEKS WOULD NOT SO OB-SCE-NE AS TO BE AN IR-RAT-ION-AL, IN-FER-I-OR HU-MAN-OID DER-IV-A-TIVE! THE DA-LEKS WOULD HAVE A-RIS-EN ANY-WAY IN THE FULL-NESS OF TI-ME! IT WAS IN-EVIT-ABLE!"
Despite the direness of the situation, the filthy hybrid couldn't help but laugh. "Man, I don't even know what the hell you are talking about but even I can tell you are so crap."
"WHAT YOU THINK IS IR-REL-E-VANT! ALL THE DA-LEKS NEED IS WHAT YOU KNOW!" The lead Dalek shouted, its anger reaching a new threshold at this disrespect, while its dome lights were flaring so rapidly the glass containing them might explode. Then it's eyestalk swerved to look at either of its underlings as it issued forth its next command. "PRE-PARE FOR EX-TRAP-O-LA-TION OF IN-FOR-MATION OF THIS UNI-VERSE'S EARTH!"
"I O-BEY!"
"I O-BEY!"
The three Daleks began to raise the longer of their two limbs, before extending them forward.
"W-what are you doing?" Jake asked, doing his best to not sound as worried as he felt.
This helpless inferior had called it a 'toilet plunger.' Such was the height of his vile ignorance! He was incapable of recognizing and appreciating the pure genius of a Dalek's suction arm!
While...admittedly, not being able to do everything that a fingered hand could, it had many vital functions. It could alter its form to better interact with objects like keypads or generate enough suction and traction to crush a human skull or rip through sheet metal. But the three Daleks gathered around the paralyzied pair weren't planning on using theirs for either of those functions as they telescoped their suction arms closer to the humbled head of Jake Sully. They had another use.
"WE NEED TO SC-AN YOUR BRAIN WAVES, JAKE SUL-LY!" the lead Dalek declared, spitting out the name like it was an insult.
Usually, this wasn't a laborious task for any of the parties involved. A quick swipe of the suckered limb's end near the brain-center of the chosen target would determine the species, general intelligence, and the physical usefulness to the Daleks of the lifeform in question. But they could also be used to extract specific pieces of information directly from the brain-center.
Futile pleas for mercy from the female and sounds of incomprehension from the former master of these primitives were ignored as the suction cups reached Jake's head. Surprise showed on his features, those disgusting features that split opened and revealed pieces of his interior anatomy whenever he wished to communicate, when he was touched.
This dumbwitted creature probably thought their suction cups were made of rubber!
The male was learning of his error. They were nothing remotely like rubber at all.
This was proven as they started to close hard over his face's flesh. The rims of the circular limbs began to stretch and consume their cornered quarry. They wriggled further with an unstoppable determination. For the few moments that his face could be seen over the overlapping suction cups, Jake Sully gasped loudly as flecks of saliva jumped from his lips. The blue flesh of his face was seen to be changing color, becoming a reddish-purple and covered in angry weals, as if exposed to a furnace's flame via a swarm of hornet stings. Tiny finger-like manipulators within the suction cups grabbed hold for purchase and pulled them along. A burning oil slick was poured up his nostrils, through his ears...in his tear ducts. Eventually the three cups were squeezing tightly, acting with the gusto of starving wolves. His head was enveloped. Once not an inch of non-Delak biology could offend them, they began.
As before, the master of the conquered primitives had been screaming. Though his face was completely covered by the overlapping suction cups, that only heavily muffled the screams. It didn't silence them. His cyan-tinted flesh was beginning to blacken and wither, drying up like a raisin. The energy produced from the extrapolation process was producing a reaction not too dissimilar to the gun-stick's blast, though on a less intense and more simmering scale. Meaning that it wouldn't be over as quickly, dragging out the torment the Daleks inflicted.
Besides his suffering form, his paralzyed female moaned and wailed unabashedly. Her body attempted to heave and roll in any direction with a desire to save her life-mate, and yet she hadn't moved. She couldn't move. No amount of love could overpower immobile limbs.
All of this was beneath the Daleks' notice, even more so than usual. They were focused on other matters, on things that actually mattered. The information they were siphoning away.
The information probes were doing their intended task and exposing what the primitive knew. These probes plucked the desired data from the still living Na'vi's ravnaged synapses like salmon from a rapidly moving stream, with violent side effects directly leading from each new retrieval, the efforts and pain overlapping into a united cacophony within his trapped cranium.
It was as if jumping into a lighted abyss after years of being fully submerged in darkness. So many new and complicated things were brazenly exposed as if they had always been there. The information probes processed the neural data and translated it into terms the Daleks could easily grasp. Both casings' recording units and the Daleks themselves saw flashes of sight and sound that imparted more than what those two senses alone world offer.
In broad strokes, this Earth vaguely reminded the Daleks of their homeworld of Skaro, at least before the last lingering remnants of the previous civilizations had been completely decimated by the Dalek enacted conclusion of a thousand years of relentless nuclear warfare. There was that similar impression of a world that had been destroyed by the native species. But whereas the Daleks' homeworld had been ravaged in the fires of righteous racial cleansing, the Earth of this universe had been undermined due to simple greed, deception, and shortsightedness. Those were very human traits, the Daleks had learned long ago.
Further proof of them being an inferior species and thus only deserving total extermination!
The larger causes of this were hinted at in flashes of memory that the Daleks absorbed eagerly. Electronic advertisements and effigies of the unclothed human form were presented proudly on many of the visible surfaces in the human population center that Jake Sully had lived. There were swarms of the filthy bipeds moving to and fro like legions of lobotomized drones. The chosen attire of the majority were as shabby and torn as those who had been conquered by the Daleks. Powerful, unnatural odors saturated every inhale of polluted atmosphere. Large swathes of the natural features of the planet had been either destroyed or severely altered. Much of the forested areas had been razed and much of the ocean was toxic to all. The previous nourishment of plants and flesh had been replaced by mass produced algae. Many of the humans had fled to the stars to find more worlds to spread to like a plague.
These and other largely irrelevant details to the Daleks were sieved through with patience, for the occasional grains of valuable information they revealed. They pieced together a picture of a weakened human race, of a species that had already begun the process of extermination on themselves. Humans even at their best were easy prey for the Daleks, so this universe's Earth would most assuredly fall as swiftly as Pandora would. And thanks to this inferior being's brain waves, they knew where it was located. The Daleks knew where to go next.
Neural strand after neural strand were seared and scorched after the information was pulled. Eventually, the Daleks ran out of gray matter to ravage and only then did they cease their scan. Without any ceremony or respect, they all removed their suction cups from Jake's head. The burnt up husk that had once been the leader of the Omaticaya clan fell to the ruined soil.
The impressive muscles that had helped him conquer this Garden of Eden with teeth had been mummified. Wisps of smoke reeking of Na'vi fat lingered lethargically over his splayed form. His big golden eyes had been replaced with soulless sockets like miniature ebony caverns. The unique personality of this man had been obliterated, reduced to smoking meat.
This was the final fate of the man who had betrayed his own kind to save Pandora. A ravaged corpse stripmined of anything of vaule while the rest was left to burn by indifferent overlords.
Even more so after the body fell, the helpless female beside it cried and moaned and wailed. There was a fine layer of gray ash that had spread out from the corpse of her lover when it hit the ground, which now covered parts of her face. She tasted the residue of her life-mate and was incapable of doing more than useless spitting gestures to dislodge it. The taste lingered.
"You didn't have to kill him." The female said quietly, her despair overpowering anything else.
"NEI-THER DID WE NEED HIM A-LIVE!" The lead Dalek retorted while raising its gunstick.
There was a moment of pause, during which the other two Daleks left to resume their efforts. Timed by coincidence more than anything else, at that moment, the female started to shout again. But she didn't do so in English. And sadly, for the lead Delak, it now understood the Na'vi language. A by-product of the information extracted from Jake Sully. The Dalek was sure the female didn't understand that, but she did it anyway, likely due to her obvious inadequacies as an inferior life form. The Dalek heard the female rant and rant and rant.
Harsh roars and clipped snaps of furious jaws overpowered even the sounds of slaughter. Spatterings of saliva sprayed over her chin and the ground below her head as she was whipped up into a demented froth. Her huge golden eyes were small savage suns spitting fire, trying to will the Dalek into dying. The words were a roaring river of insults and threats. The female would erratically jump from one declaration of her exterminating the Daleks to another. One moment she would be shouting how she would tear their metal shells apart with her bare hands and in the next she was quivering with primal excitement at the mere idea of grinding their casings underneath her bare heel. This continued for several uninterrupted minutes. The carnage all around didn't interfere and at no point did the target of her volcanic tangent order her into silence. It's never-changing cyclopean sapphire stare drilled into her impotent rage.
The lead Dalek heard the undying, seething hatred that erupted from each new utterance. None of the previously heard plaiditudes of kindness or concern or goddesses were present. Her tone was nothing but ire and loathing and a raw hatred that could shatter worlds. As she fumed on the female was less a complicated life form than a mouthpiece of limitless hatred.
Eventually, like all things, the rant ended. The female was glaring up at her conqueror with winded but unyielding defiance. Every new inhale of breath was a hissing declaration of war.
The lead Dalek lowered its gunstick and stared down at the exhausted and panting Na'vi.
There was no judgment in the Dalek's response. But there was a new hard certainty.
"YOU WOULD MAKE A GOOD DA-LEK!"
All at once, all the fire and fury was swept away from the female's face, like sand in a cyclone. Her large golden eyes grew in size and dimmed in luster.
The parazlyed inferior being said nothing else afterwards. She struggled against her immobility. It was futile. She wouldn't be able to move for quite awhile under her own power. Luckily, what the lead Dalek had in mind for her wouldn't require that. Quite the opposite.
A new shape cut a path through the ever gathering smoke and flame as it gradually descended from the sky. It was a small circular platform with a railing around the edge. It was a hoverbout, a method of travel used by Daleks for operation within a planetary atmosphere, not too far from a spacecraft. Though every Dalek had the power to travel at such distances under their own power, the vehicle still had its uses, such as transporting a prisoner.
The Dalek piloting the hoverbout landed the vehicle and glided its way towards its commander. "I HAVE A-RRI-VED AS OR-DER-ED!" The pilot Dalek screeched metallically. "WHAT ARE YOUR OR-DERS?"
"BRING THIS FE-MALE TO THE RO-BOT-IZ-ING MA-CHI-NE!" the lead Dalek began. "SHE SHALL BE THE ONE OF THE NA-VI TO EX-PER-I-ENCE THE TRAN-S-FER!"
Though the Daleks fully planned to exterminate everything that wasn't a Dalek, that didn't mean they would do so right away. Sometimes, they would get something out of the inferior first. And the primary method of doing so was to turn them into 'Robomen,' prisoners of the Daleks that were surgically-modified with large helmet-like headsets that were connected directly to the brain in order to create obedient slaves who were literally incapable of resisting any command given to them and only possessed enough brain power to perform the most basic of tasks. The enslaved were perfectly aware of what they were doing but we're pretty much powerless to resist it. The only hopes for freedom were either sucidie or extermination.
This was the closest thing that a Dalek was capable of offering when it came to mercy.
And though the process was primarily used on humans, it didn't take much to create a version applicable to other species. From the moment the Daleks had an idea of what the Na'vi were like when doing their initial scans from Pandora's orbit, they had altered both the Robotizing Machine and the Robomen helmets to accommodate the larger bodies of the Na'vi.
It was true that the Daleks were fully capable of using machines to do the needed work more effectively. But some things were more important than efficiency. Like subjugating the lower races. Lording the Dalek's obvious and inherent superiority over the debris of cosmic destiny. Being able to exterminate them at a moment's notice for the slightest deviation from an efficiency that didn't matter as much as the pain and terror it caused in those chained to it.
But the lead Dalek wasn't done with that. It still had more orders to impart to its underling.
"THEN BRING THE FE-MALE TO THE PRIM-I-TIVES' TREE DWELL-ING! HAVE HER PRO-VIDE ASS-IS-TAN-CE IN ROU-ND-ING UP THE FE-MALES AND DE-SCEN-DANTS HID-ING THERE WITH-OUT DAM-AGING THEM! THEIR ST-RUCT-URAL IN-TEG-RITY MUST BE MAIN-TAIN-ED FOR THEIR LA-BOR AS OUR SLA-VES! ANY PRIM-I-TIVES IN-CA-PA-BLE OF WORK SHALL BE USED FOR TAR-GET PR-ACT-ICE AT ONCE!"
In the response to its superior's words, the Dalek about to board the hoverbout spoke only two words. But in them was the other half of the Dalek creed. "I O-BEY!" It replied.
With nothing else needing to be said, the hoverbout left with its helpless cargo in tow.
Less than one hour after the princess had been taken away to be made into a slave, a message came through to all the Daleks on Pandora. They had just completed their task. All the different tribes of the Na'vi had been conquered. Pandora was now ruled by the Daleks.
Their scanners on ships in orbit showed over half of all the inferior lifeforms of this moon had been exterminated. Much of the filth that still drew breath were now subservient to the Daleks. They were being killed slowly, as they labored to convert their planet into a mobile warship.
It would take a long time for the process to be completed but the Daleks could afford to wait.
The lead Dalek stared off into the sky that was a churning misama from countless infernos.
It was an omen of things to come. This planet would be purified with all-consuming fire. It would become their temple, from which they would rise. It would become their paradise.
Pandora's Box was about to be opened.
Once Pandora was made into a Dalek War-World, they would pay this universe's Earth a visit.
And that would just be the beginning.
Like an insatiable virus, like an act of God, the Daleks would sweep across every Realm.
All of the species everywhere in the whole of honeycombed Existence would kneel before them, before shining like bony supernovas, falling over, and never getting back up again.
Vast and implacable, Pandora would loom over every world's skies as a blasphemous war-world. Blotting out every sun while bathing in the neverending fires of conquest. Commanded through the bottomless night of space, the corpse of Eywa would reduce everything-planet after planet, galaxy after galaxy, universe after universe-into smoking ruin.
The stars would run red and the screams of the inferior would be replaced with total silence.
Such ideas, which were the limits of the Dalek's capacity of imagination, were put on hold. Its single blue-lensed eyestalk surveyed the landscape once inhabited by the Omaticaya clan.
Pandora's once vibrant and living jungle was now nothing but a ravaged hellscape. It started to take on an appearance akin to that of the Dalek homeworld Skaro. The fires still raged on, lapping up any piece of the inhabitable moon that had so far survived. The last few resistant patches of living green life were being shown the error of their ways. Thick clouds of ash and smoke enveloped everything in a billowing sooty shroud of slaughter. The charred corpses of countless native creatures laid strewn about. The Dalek needed to hover several feet off the ground to avoid grazing against any of the dead. Their body postures and facial features frozen for all of eternity into gruesome mirrors of pain, fear, confusion, despair, and death.
The Dalek looked all it had made, and saw that it was good.
"So careless and fragile. So like the gods to damn us so easily."-Alex Ross, Project Superpowers, issue #1.
And that was the second chapter of this two-parter! As always, I hope you liked it!
The opening of this chapter is actually a slightly altered version of a similar moment from the classic sci-fi short story "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream." I love that short story and it's one of the best examples of depressing sci-fi I've ever encountered.
So, what are your thoughts on the effects of the Dalek's death rays on the poor Na'vi? I think it's a nice example of how what seems so goofy at first is actually quite sinister.
And that's a nice segue into how the Daleks are actually very powerful! They honestly might be one of the most powerful races in all of science-fiction! Yes, seriously, these toilet-plunger packing racists are cosmic-level powerhouses! Bold words, I know, but their feats back this up. As I briefly alluded to in this chapter, they battled the Time Lords in a Time War that spanned the totality of Time itself...and they were winning! If not for the efforts of the titular Doctor, the Daleks would have conquered their universe. So, among many other questions, Ultima asks...what if the Daleks got loose onto Realms that had no idea of what was about to befall them? You'll find out later! Lol
Despite how powerful the Daleks are, they aren't invincible. They have weaknesses. For example, their force fields don't protect their elevation units. So, the Daleks, despite being hate-driven, aren't incapable of strategy. They aren't just warmongers. Though not always displayed in their stories, the Daleks can display shockingly effective cold intelligence, even as they are shouting out what is painfully obvious.
I am especially fond of the "gravel quarry" line. It's a nice little jab at classic Doctor Who and how many of its fantastic alien worlds are ultimately just mundane gravel quarries. Though I obviously like Doctor Who more than Jame Cameron's Avatar, I wanted to make it at least a little fair from an authorial perspective. Lol
Let's take a moment to appreciate the double standards of the Daleks. They hate the Na'vi for resisting the Daleks and yet they also hate the Na'vi for trying to flee the Daleks. This contradiction was completely intentional. It shows how flimsy the worldview of the Daleks truly is. Nothing the Na'vi do would ever please the Daleks since the Daleks are incapable of feeling pleasure as most beings understand it.
The sticking mud on the Dalek's eyestalk bit is something from the very first Dalek story. As the later episodes sometimes show, they have learned how to withstand that.
In this chapter we get the first and only hint of the larger Ultima story outside of Pandora and the Daleks, the Shards of the Not. Primarily the purple ones, the ones that allow individuals and groups to travel between neighboring Realms. In case this chapter didn't make it clear, that is what the purple Shards do but it's not as simple as using them and going wherever you want to. If you use the Shards in a vehicle that hadn't been especially prepared for handling their unique power output, it will slightly damage the vehicle. This is the reason why the Dalek's weapons on their flying saucers don't work, and also why the Daleks don't just start opening fire right away. I actually hadn't considered why the Daleks don't open fire right away but this nicely fixed that. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, I suppose. Lol
A last minute attention that I'm very happy with is the Dalek's reaction to the crippled Na'vi touching each other. It's a key part of the Daleks that they are truly pathetic despite their feelings of them being the superior race, being unable to do things that every other race in the universe can do rather easily. But at the same time, it wouldn't feel right to flat out say that. The Daleks would never admit as much, so it wouldn't do to have this prose which is meant to reflect their point of view do so either.
To those of you thinking that the Daleks' plan for Pandora is crazy and out of left field...I have two things to say to that! Firstly, you are right! Lol. Secondly, there is precedent for this. This was essentially the Daleks' plan for Earth in their second story.
Doing my research into the Daleks, one of my favorite bits that I uncovered was the meaning behind the word "Dalek" from one of the Big Finish radio dramas about Davros, the man who created the Daleks. It's honestly a great reveal that works so well because before discovering it I wrote out the exchange about Eywa in the first chapter. This and the similar exchange about gods in this chapter easily flowed from that one. Honestly, the talk about gods and Daleks might be my favorite part of this whole story. What are your thoughts on this concept and how it was used?
Some of you reading this might be wondering about the Daleks reaction to Davros. In many stories, the Daleks are subservient to Davros...or at least willing to work with him. So what's the deal with these Daleks? Well...there is a reason for this and it's one that is connected to the history of Doctor Who! Please feel free to offer your guesses.
So...how brutal is the process of the Daleks scanning Jake Sully's brain waves to learn about this Realm's Earth? Because the correct answer is...very brutal! Lol. But in all seriousness, this sequence was very fun to write. Both for how ruthless the Daleks are but also how it reveals details about this Realm's Earth.
I honestly think the detail of Neytiri tasting the ashes of her burnt up lover might be one of the darkest things that I have ever written. Do you have any thoughts on that?
The "good Dalek" line is a direct reference to the episode "Dalek." It embodies what Youtube commentator Captain Firespitter said, "The worst thing you could ever receive from a Dalek: A compliment." I honestly couldn't have said it any better myself. Lol
The ending of this story is so beautifully bleak and I'm all here for it! I wanted to sum up the sheer horror of the Daleks gaining a foothold in the omni-verse and reflect the god-like perspective their belief in their own superiority naturally leads to. That's scary! And I hope I've installed the proper fear of the Dalkes into you all! Lol
So, that's it for this story! Please leave reviews to convey your thoughts on this story!
I'd like to say thank you to anyone who has read this story! Thanks for the support!