EPISODE ONE: NO MORE TEARS

"Gordon Bleedin' Bennet!"

McShane's startled exclamation went unheard even by herself as she hurled herself over a rock, and tried to bury herself underneath it. Only those lightning fast reactions saved her from being claymore'd – by the blast front of rock fragments and organic shrapnel hurtling towards her.

Huddling deep into the sheltering bulwark of a rock that she suddenly felt a deep affection for, McShane cursed violently at her own stupidity – even as the tsunami of destruction blew past and around her shelter.

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

What had she been thinking?

But, of course, she hadn't been thinking. There hadn't been any time to think. When the Roboman had appeared before her so suddenly, all she saw was the BFG he was bringing to bear on her, and she had reacted instantly. Even though everything had happened in seconds, with the perfect recall of sudden terror, McShane could now picture it all in slow motion. The instant she had squeezed the trigger of her Space Fleet issue 'Davros' Strategic Assault Weapon, the high velocity slug had covered the distance to the target. Unfortunately, McShane was still loaded for bear, and the Armour Piercing High Explosive round had punched through the Roboman's chest without slowing perceptibly – to impact and detonate against the cliff face behind him. The subsequent explosion of rock had practically vapourised the Roboman, but she hadn't stuck around to enjoy the show.

Problem was, McShane couldn't blame anyone else for this particular near death experience. She knew it was her own fault. She should have swapped out her load before entering this obstacle course of a canyon, but was so focused on keeping an eye out for the enemy, it hadn't even occurred to her.

They had been briefed to expect a hot LZ which, as far as McShane was concerned, meant Dalek's. So she'd got bombed up with Dalek Busters as her primary load, storing the less powerful munitions in pouches, and her backpack. When they had hit dirt there was no indication of an actual Dalek presence, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to believe it. That there wouldn't be any heavy metal, waiting out there somewhere.

They had been taking fire from the get go, no questions. The DeeKay right in front of her in the stick had landed in two pieces, neither of which got up afterwards. But it wasn't a dalek energy weapon that had inflicted the damage. That much was evident from the fact that there was a body left, no matter how many pieces it was in.

Fortunately for McShane, the Hearse pilot had pulled up instantly, and didn't venture near the ground again until his gunner's had hosed down the suspect area thoroughly. McShane was able to jump out on the next pass, very grateful that she hadn't had to land on the remains of her less than lucky squad mate. Still, even though she knew there was no possibility that he could have survived, she crouch-ran over to the corpse anyway, just because she felt that she had to. She could hear the Dee-Kay's behind her laying down covering fire as she went, and trusted them to keep the bad guys off her back.

She hadn't known Eberly very well. They had only had sex a couple of times in the three months since she had rotated to the Endurance. Even that hadn't been due to any particular mutual affection, simply the attraction of two superbly fit individuals indulging in the most enjoyable form of physical exercise ever invented. But the least she could do was close his eyes – a final salute to a fallen comrade.

Skirting the lower half of Eberly's body, careful not to slip in the spag bol gore, McShane knelt by his face-down upper torso – he was still there from the ribcage up. Taking a quick 360, she noted that the rest of the squad had now fully debarked and were aggressively moving into preliminary defensive positions. The chaotic terrain of this dirtball called…

She couldn't remember what it was called, but after a certain number of missions, that didn't really matter anymore – the dirtball looked distinctly Dalek proof. But since the bastards could fly anyway, what did that prove? For the moment however, it looked as if she still had time to pay her last respects. Setting her Davros to one side, she hauled Eberly's pitiful remains over until he was face-up. As she settled him gently on his back, McShane was surprised to see that his eyes were already closed, then a frisson of shock jolted through her as they opened and he looked directly at her.

"Jesus Wept, Eberly! What does it take to kill you?" She had cried involuntarily, and he had grinned at her, his pearly whites sheathed in blood. (As was much of his lower face.) McShane wasn't sure if he tried to talk to her then, despite the heaving labour of what was left of his chest. All he managed to produce were bubbles of blood, which popped against his lips, but she did feel a faint nudging against her thigh. Eberly shifted his intent gaze in that direction, and she saw that he was weakly brushing a hand against her. After a quick look to double check the mute entreaty in his eyes, McShane clasped his hand in both of hers and squeezed firmly, before bringing it up to her chest so that – even if he couldn't feel it – he could see that she was holding his hand. His pained grin relaxed into a satisfied and contented smile.

While the air around her became filled with the thwip thwip thwip of angry insects, and the rest of the squad continued calling out targets and returning fire, she held his hand. She held his hand, and she held his gaze – until his eyes went out.

Then she gently lowered his eyelids and kissed him on the lips, mindless of the gore coating his face. It was the least she could do. Honour satisfied, McShane retrieved her own Davros, and then cast about until she located Eberly's, checking to see that it wasn't fouled. Even as, satisfied with the state of his SAW, she had slung the strap over her shoulder… she registered someone calling her name over the net. It was Sergeant Wokwa, calling out target locations that he wanted her to take out. Calmly, quietly, McShane began placing rounds as instructed. She hadn't even realised that she was crying until she tasted tears mixed with Eberly's blood on her lips.

The terrain was chaotic alright, with lots of cover. (For the enemy, mainly.) In fact, this LZ had been selected because it was the only large enough area of flat available, anywhere near were they wanted to be. (Probably why there was an armed presence watching it…) Judging from random reports she heard over the net, nobody in the squad had actually seen what they were fighting yet. McShane certainly hadn't. After the initial flurry of lobbing ordnance into the various rock clusters specified by Sergeant Wokwa, she found herself in a quiet place… and suddenly realised just how exposed she was. It was miracle that she hadn't taken any rounds yet. She decided to find an elsewhere to be, and scoped around for a likely spot before announcing. "McShane. Advancing to large orange formation, fifty metres South East of Point Zero."

"Wokwa. Acknowledged. All Dee-Kay's. If you're not already in amongst the rocks, get there ASAP. Second Hearse incoming."

There were only a couple of acknowledgements to that. It appeared that most of the troops had thought of it long before McShane did. She shook her head ruefully as she ran to the peculiarly shaped rock she had chosen. Strangely, she couldn't hear weapon fire anymore, not from the enemy, or her own people. Surely they hadn't taken out all the opposition so soon? It couldn't have been that easy! Even as she was thinking this, a puzzled voice said, "Jontru. Purple pillar, hundred metres due South of Point Zero. Anyone have eyes on bad guys?"

It turned out that nobody did.

After a brief round robin, Wokwa called a halt when they heard the approach of the second half of the squad. Before the Hearse got any closer, he made his decision. "Jontru, RV McShane's location. I want the two of you to scout around, see if you can find any intact bodies. The rest of you, eyes peeled. I want perimeter cover for the LT, and I'm sure McShane and Jontru would appreciate an overwatch if they are in sight of your position. I'm going secure, so you won't hear from me for a while, got to brief the LT. Out."

While she was waiting for Trooper Jontru – a squat, muscular human colonist from Andromeda – to join her, McShane examined the area more carefully. At first glance, the LZ itself resembled the silted up caldera of an extinct volcano, as the terrain surrounding it sloped upwards. Not in any clear pattern that could explain its origin, but then McShane was no geologist, so didn't concern herself overmuch with that. She was more interested in the topography from the point of view of someone who expected to be spending a lot of time running up and down it. From that perspective, it was pretty daunting…

First there were the strange rock formations jutting up everywhere, severely compromising line of sight. Clogging up much of the ground between them was tons of loose rock, ranging from rubble and scree, to huge boulders and fallen pillars. To make things even more entertaining, as far as McShane could tell from her position, cracks and crevices ran through the bedrock, some tiny, others extremely not tiny. It looked like the decision to include climbing gear in the loadout would prove to be prescient. (McShane usually loved a bit of climbing, but not when there was the slightest possibility that something would be taking potshots at her.)

The only sounds now were the eerie notes caused when the wind gusted through some of the stranger crystalline structures, or dislodged scree and scrabble from a sloping surface. McShane heard Jontru's approach long before she saw him. Not only were his boot steps easy to pick out – he was also swearing enthusiastically at every stone or pebble that dared to impede his progress. He grinned at her ruefully when he eventually located her. "I just decided to rename this planet when we get back to the Endurance… I'm gonna call it Total Bastard!" She grinned at him, appreciating the comment, and unslung Eberly's SAW to stash it by her rock.

Once they had set out on their search, McShane found herself agreeing with the stocky little man much more than a little. Not only was it practically impossible to move stealthily, they had to constantly check their footing, whilst trying to scan for possible opposition. There were just so many places that offered concealment, and so many others that offered a short trip to a long drop. (The heat didn't help.) They traded banter, just to keep each other on their toes, but this didn't distract them from the task. It wasn't until they were deep into the bad stuff that they found the first (more or less) complete body. The two previous locations they had checked had provided only bleak destruction coated in spatters of organic residue. (Kind of inevitable when you lob Dalek Busters onto a soft target!)

As they stood looking down at the corpse, McShane felt a deep sinking sensation in her stomach, and Jontru snarled "Robomen!" in weary disgust.

As it happened, this particular Roboman had been a Sontaran in a previous life, but the glint of metal showing through the gaping hole in its head left little doubt as to its current status. There was something immediately recognisable about Dalek technology, even though she had never seen one of their insidious neural webs before. Jontru nudged the body with his foot, just enough to show McShane the weapon it had been armed with, then raised an eyebrow at her enquiringly. She nodded in agreement and said, "Go call it in. The others need to know about this. I'll police the body and make sure there aren't any nasty Dalek surprises on it."

Jontru stepped back from the Roboman, looking around at the mineral formations all around them before saying. "You know what, McShane? I'd feel a lot happier if there was some way of telling which of these rocks were going to interfere with the comms net – before we got in amongst them!" Then he turned and moved out, hoping to locate an area free of the natural jamming.

"Copy that…" McShane sighed to herself as she approached the corpse, listening to Jontru's crunching footstep's recede. She knelt by the Roboman, pulled its weapon free and hurled it away, then began a careful search of its clothing.

The first time that McShane had ever heard of Robomen was when she had travelled with the Doctor, long before she joined (or had even heard of,) Space Fleet. But the Robomen that the Doctor had talked about had just sounded like… 'Lobotomized bikers with guns' to Ace, as she used to call herself back then. According to the Doctor, the Dalek thralls that he had encountered all wore the same uniforms, the same sunglasses – even the same crash helmets with transistor radios stuck to the side. Looking back on that description now, McShane found it more telling that the Doctor's Robomen were all human males. Perhaps he had met the very first generation of thralls to have been enslaved, 'robotised' with experimental Dalek technology. They certainly sounded primitive enough for that to be the case, and the term 'Roboman' was still used to describe any victim of robotisation, regardless of species or sex.

They definitely would have been easier to identify in a fight! These days the Daleks didn't care what their Robomen looked like, as long as they could function to Dalek requirements. They were left wearing whatever they were dressed in upon capture, until they died, even if those garments were rotting on their frames. However, freshly robotised thralls were practically impossible to tell apart from the people they had once been. McShane had seen Dee-Kay's in tears when they had been forced to open fire on members of their own species – only able to console themselves with the thought that death was the better alternative. Unlike Robomen of the past, these new victims weren't turned into 'robots' – machines that can only carry out pre-programmed functions within a predefined set of parameters – because the Dalek Scientific Elite were so hideously clever.

Somehow, they had found a way to subvert the cerebral processes and cognitive functioning of a victim: to integrate their 'neural web' device so efficiently that the Roboman's thoughts became the Daleks thoughts.

This was the most sickening thing that anyone dealing with this new breed of 'Robomen' had to face. The knowledge that these people, whatever their species, had not had their minds wiped – or their brains removed – to be totally replaced with new orders. These people still knew who 'they' were, but were held prisoner inside their own bodies. Once in thrall to the Dalek Overmind, they could only bear mute witness to the atrocities that their bodies were forced to perpetrate.

Fortunately, this monstrous form of slavery still appeared to be rather new, and wasn't yet the widespread horror that Space Fleet Intelligence so obviously feared. They were terrified that the Daleks might somehow develop the program to a level that would allow them to infiltrate any anti-Dalek faction, any resistance force, even – Saint's Preserve Us! – Space Fleet Intelligence…

The Dee-Kay's – and all of the regular troops, whatever their species or affiliations – had smaller, more personal fears. They didn't want to one day find themselves facing a friend or a loved one on a battlefield. They didn't want to survive a battle, only to wake up to the knowledge that they had been robotised, and would shortly be doing their best to slaughter former brothers and sisters-in-arms.

Take this Sontaran for instance. Had it been desperately trying not to open fire on the Space Fleet troopers? Had it raged in fury and impotent rage as it cut Eberly in half with the ruthless skill and efficiency of a creature created for warfare? McShane didn't know, of course, but she suspected that it had. Sontaran's were uneasy allies, but they knew that the Daleks presented a clear and present threat to all non-Daleks, and took pride in their ability to kill.

But they preferred to choose their own targets…

This ones Sontaran combat gear was relatively fresh – it must have been a 'new recruit' – and McShane puzzled over why it was wearing a sort of padded one piece black jumpsuit, rather than the body armour that she associated with these cloned troopers. Shrugging, she dismissed the question as irrelevant. After thoroughly checking its back for any signs of booby traps, McShane heaved it over and repeated the process on the front of its uniform. There were very few places to check on the outside – it was obviously not gear designed with prolonged frontline combat operations in mind, (a dress suit, maybe?) So McShane was faced with the unpleasant prospect of opening it up. She had never seen a Sontaran naked – had never really wanted to – but it seemed likely that if there was anything to find, it would have been implanted into the Roboman's body.

It took her a while to figure out how to peel this particular potato, but when she had finally exposed the ugly grey chest, McShane stared at it in horror. She had assumed that the damage to the Roboman's neural web would have cut off any links to the suspected Dalek presence on this shitty little world… But the distinctive blue light pulsing beneath the skin of its dead grey chest looked sphincter clenchingly ominous. Her heart rose into her throat.

Hearing the crunch, crunch, crunch of approaching boots on the rock littered surface behind her, McShane started to swing around, hoping that it was Jontru returning from a successful attempt at contacting the others. She had only made it halfway through the turn when she was transfixed by a vision from her worst nightmares. Hovering silently in the air – no more than three metres from her – was a Dalek!

It studied her impassively as she cast about for her Davros, but the SAW was nowhere in sight – even though she had only just put it down! She tried to stand up and run, but the bedrock suddenly liquefied beneath her. It was like trying to run through body temp molten lava – the more frantically she struggled, the less progress she made. The most frightening aspect was the way that the Dalek simply observed her silently, apparently in no particular hurry to kill her, until its dome lights flashed as it said…

"GAME OVEEEER!

"YOOUU! LOOOO-OOOOS!"

McShane felt herself lifted into the air and saturated with inconceivable agony as the Dalek's ray struck her lower stomach. Her outer suit might – might – have protected her from a glancing strike from a Dalek energy weapon, but there was no way it could take a direct hit.

She was going to die!

Then, from the depths of her agony, she heard a voice scream "McShane!" and she fell to the ground as Jontru hurled himself into the path of the beam. Even as she landed heavily on her back, still burning all over: she found herself unable to take her eyes off his twitching body. His screams were like needles through her skull, and he jerked and flailed as the obscene weapon broke him down molecule by molecule…

He began to glow, and she knew that she would be next…