Chapter 3: Seek, Locate, Extermiante.
Two techs were in Rusty's cell with him, monitoring the readouts on the various scanners they'd installed. As the first saw the gun swinging her way, her only thought was frustration. She was sure she'd been close to a breakthrough.
Her friend saw her light up negative. For a few split seconds, he thought up some choice words to say about her insistence on not removing the gun. She'd believed it would help Rusty to trust them, and they might learn something about their fire power. Look where it had got her. But it was only for a brief moment before the Dalek shot him too.
Behind them, Morgan leapt out the lab door, slamming it behind him and locking it. But that wouldn't hold it for long. Around him, he heard the sound of footsteps as nearby soldiers heard the commotion and came running.
The Dalek's internal systems contained inertia dampers to prevent and sudden accelerations killing the creature inside. Unfortunately, this took a few moments longer to activate than it took Rusty to begin his advance. The team felt the floor shift as though they were standing on a rocket car that had just set off. Fortunately, each of them was able to skid along the floor without hitting anything.
Journey got on the radio. "Colonel. What's happening out there?"
As Rusty burst out of the lab, the soldiers stood startled for a few moments, before sporadically opening fire. "EXTERMINATE!" Shouted Rusty, as it shot the nearest one. "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" And two more fell.
"Get out of here!" Shouted Morgan. "Fall back to a better position!"
Rusty watched them leave, but decided against following. Instead, he located a comunications panel nearby and interfaced with it. "CALLING DALEK FLEET. COMUNICATIONS OPEN."
On the nearest Dalek ship, Rusty's voice came through. "THE REBEL SHIP HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED." Said the Dalek leader.
"PREPARE 14 DALEKS!" Said a subordinate.
Journey wasn't getting much response from her radio. Just a lot of shouting and zapping.
"Doctor, what happened?" Said Clara.
"Do you see?" He said.
"See what?"
"Daleks don't turn good." He said matter-of-factly. "There was no miracle. Just radiation altering its brain chemistry."
"So let me get this straight." Said Journey. "We had a good Dalek and we made it bad again!"
"There never was a good Dalek. We had a broken Dalek."
"You were supposed to be helping us!" Journey screamed at him.
"I gave it a shot." He shrugged, with all the care of a repairman explaining why he couldn't fix a phone that the owner had snapped in half. "I was a Dalek. What did you expect?"
Journey groaned in frustration. "Ok. New objective! We are taking this Dalek down!"
The Doctor looked at Clara, who was giving him the strangest of looks back. "What's that for?"
"It's the look I get when I'm about to slap you!" And she did. Hard. "Are we going to die in here? I mean, there's a little bit of you that's pleased. The Daleks are evil after all. Everything makes sense. The Doctor is right." Had he forgotten who he was talking to? Though she'd never been fully Dalek, she'd seen more of their minds than any of them.
"Daleks are irredeemably evil. That's what we learned today!" The Doctor shouted.
"No. That is not what we learned today."
Clara looked at Journey and Gretchen, who were sticking charges to anything that looked important. "I'm going to scan the structure for other weaknesses." Journey was saying.
"You two. One question." Said Clara.
"No time!"
"Why did we come here today? What was the point? You. You thought there was a good Dalek. What difference would one good Dalek make?"
"All the difference in the world. But that's impossible." Said the Doctor.
"Is that it? Is that what we've learned today? Is that all we've learned?"
Rusty renewed his advance. The Daleks had recently upgraded their armour and the troops carried were relatively useless. They stood little chance of taking out Rusty unless they could get organised. Instead, they sealed a blast door between them and it, which would at least buy them some time.
Seeing that more Daleks were on their way, Morgan hit a button on the communicator. "Wasp fighters to action stations. Wasp fighters to action stations."
"The security systems have been hacked!" Responded a voice. "We don't have access to the wasps."
"God help us." He got on the radio. "Journey. You still there? That thing's gone berserk. It set the Daleks on us. And it's locked out our defenses. You're our only hope. I need you to destroy that thing... Whatever it takes."
Journey took a breath. "Understood uncle."
"I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry too."
Clara watched as the gears turned beneath the Doctor's face. Finally, that look of excitement crept into his eyes that always let her know he knew he was going to win. "Clara Oswald, do I really not pay you? I should."
"You couldn't afford me." She grinned.
The Doctor spotted Journey priming the detonator. "Whoa, whoa! Whatever you're about to do, don't! We can do better."
"Are you out of your mind!" She screamed.
"No. I'm inside a Dalek. The one place I've never been before. We'll never have this chance again."
"I have my orders."
"A soldier takes orders. A Dalek is a better soldier than you'll ever be. You can't win this way."
Journey put her finger on the button. Rusty had been their best hope of turning a tide in this war. Not just living one day to the next. Now she had the job of bringing that hope to an end, and herself with it. She reminded herself that there was nothing to hope for. That it was optimism that had got her into the situation in the first place. That all signs pointed to the face that people were going to die as long as they didn't do this. She put down the detonator and thumped a wall in frustration. "So what do we do?"
"Something better."
The assault force was in formation in the hanger bay as they closed in on the rebel ship. Their leader glided onto the raised platform to a address them. "PREPARE TO BOARD THE REBEL SHIP. WE WILL FIND OUR COMRADE DALEK. SPARE NO HUMANS. EXTERMINATE THEM ALL."
"EXTERMINATE!" Roared the crowd. "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"
As the area around the power cell heated up rapidly, the group had been forced to abandon the central section and head out into the main chamber again. Clara tried not to think about the three foot drop stretched out below her, like a yawning chasm.
The Doctor was busy explaining. "The Dalek isn't just some angry blob in a Dalekanium case. If it was, the radiation would have turned it into a raving lunatic."
"It is a raving lunatic. It's a Dalek!" Snapped Journey, as they clambered onto a ledge.
"But for a moment, it wasn't. The radiation allowed it to expand its consciousness, to consider things beyond its natural terms of reference. It became good. That means a good Dalek is possible. That's what we learned today. Am I right, teach?"
"Top of the class!" She grinned.
"And now it's back the way it was." Said Journey.
"Yes. But what it saw. What it felt. It's still there."
Journey heard a low growl echo through the casing, which she could still recognise as a scream. "Yeah, I'm not really seeing that."
"Not here. There." He pointed up to the cortex vault.
"The evil engineering?" Said Clara.
"Every memory recorded. Some suppressed, but all still intact. We need to show the Dalek that star being born again. Recreate that moment. You need to get up there, find that moment and reawaken it."
"Me?" Clara said, startled.
"Yes you. Good idea."
"How?"
"Haven't the foggiest. Do a clever thing. And then once you've done it, the Dalek will be suggestible to new ideas. It will be open again. And I will show it something that will change its mind forever."
Journey was about to ask him what. But given the way this conversation was going, she knew what the answer would be. Part of her was regretting leaving her explosives behind.
Morgan had hurried as many people as he could down to the main hanger, where they took up positions behind crates. All of them were trembling as they heard a series of clunks from the far side of the main door. But they were all willing to fight to the death. Being surrounded by ruthless killing machines simplified that problem.
Finally, a blast came, which knocked the main doors off their hinges and set fire to a couple of the Dalek's manipulator arms. Not that they cared.
"PRESSURE EQUALISED. BOARDING CORPS BEGIN ATTACK.
"SEEK LOCATE DESTROY! SURRENDER IS NOT ACCEPTED."
"Open fire!" Roared Morgan. His troops unleashed everything they had on the Daleks. But everything they had was easily absorbed by their casings and they advanced onwards, undaunted.
Journey looked up at the casing, towering over her. "This is crazy. There's no way we can make it in time."
"Yes there is." Gretchen pulled out her grappling gun.
"No!" Cried Journey. "You'll bring the antibodies down on you."
Gretchen shrugged to show she'd assumed so. She turned to Clara. "Tell me the truth. Is he mad, or is he right? I've come this far. Probably going to die anyway. Wouldn't mind something to do for the rest of my life. Is he mad, or is he right?"
"Truth be told? Most days he's both."
Not feeling much better, she turned to the Doctor. "One question: Is it worth it?"
"If I can turn one Dalek, I can turn them all. I can save the future." He said.
She smiled. "Gretchen Allison Carlisle. Do something good and name it after me."
"I'll do something amazing."
"You'd better." She took aim, even as Journey made one last desperate attempt to stop her. But she fired two bolts up anyway, before preping her gun. "You'd all better go."
The Doctor hurried down a passageway between two metal ribs. Journey attached a pulley to the rop and took hold of it, before guiding Clara where to hold. "Just don't look down." As they heard the low whistle of the antibodies, she pressed a button and the two of them shot upwards.
Left alone, Gretchen's only real thought was that she someone could be there to hold her hand. Preferably someone parental. But no time to worry about that. She may as well go down fighting so she opened fire, taking out about a dossen of those things before they closed in on her.
She felt an intense heat as the nearest on vaporised her and screamed madly, screwing up her eyes. But then suddenly the pain vanished, although it was several seconds before she could stop screaming. She opened her eyes and found herself sitting at a garden table, on a patio overlooking an idilic garden.
A curly haired woman in Edwardian dress was sat opposite her. "Hello. I'm Missy. Welcome to heaven. Would you like some tea? Little splosh? Lovely."
Morgan and his troops were well on the way to joining her. They jumped up to fire for only brief seconds, as it only took a Dalek 1.5 rels to take aim accurately. They also moved position between shots so the Daleks couldn't mark them, but it all came to nought when their weapons ere useless against Dalek armour. The Daleks were bearing down on them hard. Once they reached the far wall, there'd be no cover to hide behind.
"Concentrate your fire!" Morgan shouted. "Aim for the one on the left with the burning plunger!"
The troops did so. Unable to cope with the sudden weight of fire, the Dalek was blasted apart. Sadly, in the time it had taken them to do that, the remaining Daleks had shot three of the rebels.
The following Dalek casually shoved it's way through the wreckage. "ADVANCE. SEEK. LOCATE. EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"