Fearing for his life, one of the Police officers fired his phasor weapon repeatedly into the Cyberleader's chest. The shots were ineffective. In retaliation, it fired a single, deadly shot at the Policeman. Everyone stood against the heavy door in horror at the Cybermen at the limp body of the man slumped onto the ground. It repeated its command:
"Drop your weapons. Do not resist!"
Rhea reached for the explosives in her bag, but was stopped immediately by Nicola.
"Don't be stupid. They'll kill us" Nicola whispered to her.
"They'll kill us anyway" Rhea replied. "I don't want to become one of them" she added with a sharp glance at the Cyber-leader.
The Cyberleader appeared to have overheard their conversation. Immediately it ordered its fellow Cybermen to disable the Human beings huddled against the door. Before Rhea had time to set off her explosives she was stunned and dropped to the floor unconscious. One by one the Cybermen dragged their captives towards the second door to the hanger. After all had left the hanger, the door slid shut.
"Mission accomplished" smiled a very pleased Lohan, who had been observing the events through a nearby monitor on the ship's bridge. Now that his plans were fully in place, he felt unceremoniously alone in his moment of victory. Contracting a case of Blofeld syndrome, he asked for the prisoners being held in the storage room to be bought to him on the bridge. With a salute, a Cyberman enacted his request.
The prisoners were sat close together pressed against the wall adjacent to the door. Martha was feeling nervous and Jack wasn't too comfortable either.
"Don't worry. They'll come" said the Doctor, smiling. "Sooner or later, our President Lohan will have the urge to spill the beans to us; show us how clever he is"
Martha tensed as she heard the sound of heavy footsteps marching down the corridor outside.
"That'll be them now" beamed the Doctor expectantly.
The door opened and in walked a group of three Cybermen. They stood still as they looked blankly at the wall opposite. The Doctor jumped up and greeted them from the corridor, alongside Martha and Jack. The Cybermen turned cumbersomely around.
"Hi there. You'll be looking for us then. Sorry to disappoint you, but we're a bit busy now. Bye!" the Doctor said jubilantly, just before he pressed the button to lock the Cybermen in.
"Thing about Cybermen" he announced to his companion, as though giving a school lesson, "they're not very fast. They make terrible dancers"
They ran down the corridor, which took them deeper into the ship. Jack was on the lookout for their belongings and, more importantly, the TARDIS. He spotted neither before reaching the elevator. As they bolted inside it, an alarm sounded.
"That'll be for us then" said Martha, annoyed.
"Who else?" replied the Doctor cheekily.
The Doctor pressed the button marked "bridge" and the lift began to ascend. Martha and Jack both looked at each other puzzled, why was the Doctor taking them to the very place they were going to be dragged to anyway? With a satisfying ping, the lift stopped and the doors opened. Laid out gloriously in front of them was the ship's bridge.
President Lohan turned around in his chair and met the gaze of the Doctor, who began to walk around the bridge, ignorant of the Cybermen working with a ruthless efficiency at the control panels.
"Nice ship you've got here" he announced "Though, I don't think much of the crew" he added, looking intently at a Cyberman working at a nearby control panel.
Lohan was bemused and a little unhinged at the prisoners' entrance.
"How did you break out? I told them to disarm you!" he demanded.
"Oh, you know, nimble feet and all that" replied the Doctor casually whilst doing a little tap dance to prove his point "Your upgrades are seelooow"
Still in manic mode, the Doctor tapped on the side of the nearest Cyberman and asked it for its purpose. The Cyberman swiftly grabbed his arm and gave no reply.
"Don't talk much, do they?" he commented
"Why do they need to, when you do all the talking?!" replied Lohan angrily.
"But what are these things?" asked Martha. "They're not like the others in the colony."
Lohan thought for a moment. He had been thinking of how he would tell them his plan to defeat the Earth, but being a scientist proud of what he had achieved, the question the strange woman put a menacing, dictatorial smile back on his face.
"My elite Cybermen" he announced. "Forged from blueprints, artefacts and matter bought back from a scientific expedition to Telos thirty years ago. Using my knowledge of genetics I managed to grow a basic Cyber-brain from stem cells the archaeologists brought back. Of course, that was only the beginning. I had to teach these creatures how to behave and act: their primitive minds too unpredictable for my needs. Some of them are given the power of speech, of course, but the rest are trained simply to obey."
As a student of medicine, Martha was quietly impressed at the achievement. The rest of her felt quite different though.
"I'm impressed!" she said a little sarcastically. "But surely they eventually have major health problems and die?"
"The Human-based simpletons do. Those primitive Cyborgs last only six months before expiring. These Cybermen have an exceptionally well-formed DNA structure that allows them to live for hundreds of years!"
Martha's eyes opened. It was a fascinating if troubling insight, which meant that escape from a large spaceship being piloted towards Earth was not going to be as easy as the escape from the Police cells back on Golgafrincham.
Slowly, both Rhea and Nicola recovered from the paralysing ray of the Cybermens' weapons. Both had splitting headaches but were able, with some effort, to glance around the room. The room was a stark plain white room made from thick concrete walls. From the damp smell they assumed they were underground somewhere. There were five other women in the cell with them, three of them Policewomen and the other two were from Sherwood. Stood menacingly by the door was a pair of Cybermen.
"What do you want us for?!" Rhea shouted at the Cybermen. Neither answered her. Neither could answer her.
"Come on. Explain!" she continued, getting increasingly hysterical. Again, there was no response from either Cyberman.
"I don't think they can speak" said Nicola carefully. "Maybe they've been turned off"
Rhea looked at Nicola conspiratorially. As the other women were slowly coming round, Rhea walked towards the Cybermen. As she got closer and closer she felt increasingly confident that they had been de-activated. She squeezed round the back of one in order to reach the door control, but as she did so, the nearest Cyberman sprung to life.
"Rhea, watch out!" screamed Nicola. Rhea ducked her head just as the Cyberman swung its arm at her head. Instead of hitting her head, it smashed its fist through the door controls. It writhed as the electricity flowed through its metallic body, sparks flying from its outer casing. Seconds later it was on the floor in a smoking heap, some kind of gunge excreting from its chest unit. The other Cyberman just stood there lifeless.
Sensing a chance to escape, Rhea shouted to Nicola and the other women to help her open the door. One of the Sherwood pair, a technician by trade, carefully pulled two wires from the Cyberman and pressed them together. With a satisfying click, the door slid open. The seven women rushed out of the room, leaving the Cyberman behind.
The Cybermen on the Spaceship suddenly froze without warning. The Doctor freed his arm from the Cyberman and walked over to join Martha, Jack and Lohan. Lohan was in shock.
"What's happened to them?" he said, looking at the Cybermen desperately.
Seconds later, he received his reply. The Cybermen sprang back to life, but not as Lohan expected. Two of the Cybermen marched towards the lift and stood directly against the door whilst the others advanced on the Human beings in front of them.
End of Chapter Seven