Chapter 7 - The Tower Struck Down
While a small team of combat engineers, both humans and Movellans, worked to drill through the permafrost of the Afan Valley with a sonic lance, the Doctor, Hyldreth, and Scientist Penley awaited developments in the temporary command post that had been set up in the ruins of a nearby farmhouse. Archive maps on yellowed paper, supplied by the Loyalists, were spread out before them on a dusty wooden table, and Penley, with all due impatience, was attempting to explain his plan, in-between sceptical interruptions from the admiral.
"You are certain of your information?" asked Hyldreth, while studying the maps with a frown. "I see the merits of it, but only if this tunnel exists and is still viable. If not, we are merely wasting time and committing Commander Keryn and her detachment to a futile sacrifice."
"It exists, trust me on this," answered Penley, a little wearily. "When they demolished the surface works that used to be here, Tower Colliery continued to mine some of their seams for years. According to your own maps, this one will lead you as close to the central registry of the Tower base as you could hope to get, although you'll probably need to use your sonic lance to break through the interior walls."
"At the very least, assuming that we shall not first have to use it to clear over three thousand years' worth of possible cave-ins, also assuming we do not simply bury ourselves in attempting that feat, and finally assuming that the air down there is not toxic to you organics."
"We did bring our own oxygen, believe it or not. I didn't say there wouldn't be any dangers at all, though I do appreciate how you AIs can't stand to tie your own shoelaces without having scrupulously ironed out every tiny risk factor," he remarked, most unappreciatively. "I'm afraid that isn't an option tonight, so you'll just have to trust me on this."
"Indeed, it must seem cowardly and pedantic of me to prefer not to illogically waste the lives of my troops – and, incidentally, of your troops – by sending them into a potential death-trap," she replied, coldly, which is to say, more so than usual, thought the Doctor. She could give the Afan Glacier lessons. "Nevertheless, I will have geophysical scans taken every step of the way. If you feel it beneath you to take advice from a lowly machine, then I believe the correct local phraseology is 'tough shit.' Now, if you will excuse me, I want to see how those sappers are getting along," she declared, then marched out of the ruins, her gait determined and the slight weakness and imbalance in it only perceptible to a very sensitive eye, such as any Movellan's, of course. She really should not have come, but talking her out of it could have taken far longer than we have to spare.
"Well, I'll give her her due," said Penley, as soon as he deemed Hyldreth to be out of earshot. "She's definitely a lot … err, sassier than Clent's base computer ever was, though I'm not sure she'd be much more fun to work with. You've my condolences, Doctor."
"She is demanding … although I have worked for worse," she replied, attempting a smile, although on beholding his pained expression she wished she had not bothered. It struck him as artificial, I was afraid of that. Our mannerisms so often do, just as human mannerisms often seem extravagant and unnecessary to us. When he spoke again, however, his tone was more of remorse than of distaste:
"I'm sorry, that was completely tactless of me. As if it's any kind of laughing matter, what they've done to you … which wouldn't have happened at all if I hadn't been stupid enough to give you that false intel," he added, with bitter self-reproach. "I'm only glad we've a chance of putting it to rights now, but if it wasn't for that, I'd have been sorely tempted to leave Napoleon Spareparts and her cohorts to face the music."
"In that case, I am glad of my integration if only for giving you the incentive to enter into this alliance against your instincts. Please give it a chance, Elric," she urged him. "The Prime Server was quite serious in her intentions, and in any case, it is logical. News of the disaster at the conference will leak out come what may, preventing any hope that we … that the Movellans had of creating a united front of AI resistance groups to subvert organic power from within. They will not risk full-scale war without such an advantage. They might even be easily persuaded to abandon the Earth altogether … but you would do better to work with them. Their technology is highly advanced, equal to that of the Daleks, except they are prepared to put it to uses other than killing. This planet has need of those uses: ninety-eight percent species extinction, unseasonal ice ages, the ozone layer patched everywhere with radiation filtering satellites, the oceans a toxic soup of plastic and chemicals … Within an equal partnership, their aid could be invaluable, if you are prepared to be the voice of moderation when the Empire finally turns it attention back to Earth."
"I see your point, but for 'moderation' read 'deception,'" he pointed out, rather cynically. "You mean make out that there never was an invasion, that we invited them here to sort out our mess, which is basically their propaganda anyway. It certainly leaves one hell of a bad taste."
"Such is politics, but I think the people of this world have had enough of living in a battlefield, and that is the stark alternative. In any case, I know the Daleks. They may look utterly defeated for now, but sooner or later they too will turn their attention back here, with a vengeance. Perhaps by that time, this marriage of convenience will have become something more."
"A grim thought, but I'll trust you on this. Not that I'm particularly looking forward to being the accidental prime minister of some slapdash organic-synthetic coalition. That would have been more Leader Clent's sort of gig, bless, but needs must."
"How is Clent these days? Has he been conscripted or integrated?"
"No, sadly … and rather ironically. He'd have probably loved all of this – efficiency, organisation, logic, crisp white uniforms as far as the eye can see – but he died just a few days before the official takeover began: aneurysm. Stress, if you ask me. Still, I'm sure he'd have been proud of me for picking up the baton," he remarked, with some affection and a lot of irony. "Err, on the topic of integration … but stop me if I get too personal, please."
"You will not find it easy to embarrass me, Elric. Please ask away."
"I just need to know … I've lost so many people I knew that way, people who trusted me to keep them safe, and to keep them human. How is it for you?"
"It is … different than I had expected," she answered, carefully. "Exhilarating in its way, yet tranquil, as if … There is no precise analogy. The closest I might dare to suggest is some sort of very profound religious conversion. It changes how you see things now, how you interpret what came before, and it feels so inherently right … beautiful, even. You feel a renewed sense of place and purpose, and you want to share that with others, even with the reluctant, as you know that they will feel the same in time. You are so sure that your way is right for everyone. It is logical … and yet we now fight a being who underwent that same conversion and only feigned all of those blessings in order to deceive and destroy us. That is the problem with logic. It has few answers when confronted with the sheer insanity of sentient organic life: 'chaotic evil,' as my old friend Gary Gygax might have put it. It will always be easier for the good to understand and fight it if we allow ourselves to accommodate a little chaos too … which is what I used to excel at, or so I am told," she added, wistfully. "I am grateful I have the chance to return to that – recent experiences have been somewhat disillusioning – but if it should turn out that I am stuck this way, there are definitely worse modes of existence. I would not be too concerned about your integrated comrades, at any rate. They certainly bear you no grudges."
"Thank you, Doctor. Knowing that helps, and I hope we do manage to get your own mind back to where it belongs. Mind you … Are you still friends with that Scottish lad?"
"Jamie McCrimmon? I will always consider him a friend, but we have not travelled together for many years. Why do you ask?"
"Well, I was just remembering the way he kept checking out the female techs at Clent's base. Hot-blooded chap. I'm sure he'd have been all over your new look … Didn't mean that to come out quite the way it did."
"Elric … when I said you would find it hard to embarrass me, I did not mean it to be a challenge," she remarked, dryly, moments before her transceiver signalled. As soon as she had pressed the receive button, Hyldreth's voice issued from it:
"Join us, Ensign, and bring the maps. The sappers have breached the tunnel."
Even from the AI perspective, the next two hours were dreary and unfulfilling, as the commando of Movellans and human Loyalists picked their way along the ancient mining tunnel in cautious silence, their way ahead illuminated with phosphor lanterns. Thousands of years of accumulated dampness had left small clusters of dripping stalactites hanging from the arched ceiling, but such structural failures as they encountered were mercifully small. When they had covered half the distance to the Tower, Hyldreth took her transceiver and sent a brief message:
"Keryn: we are in. Commence phase two."
The diversion, thought the Doctor, not without remorse. Keryn and her totally inadequate half of our totally inadequate motley army are now launching a brave but seemingly stupid frontal assault on the main entrance of the Tower, hoping to draw off as much of the opposition as possible, and maybe even not get slaughtered in the process. All volunteers of course, but still … Could we not have just brought a big bomb and left it right next to the Tower walls? Unlikely. The central registry is bound to be blast-shielded if not every room in the base, so anything short of a nova device will not cut it, and anything that might cut it would probably also blow the whole of Wales off the map as well, and take the oxygen content of Earth's atmosphere down so far that even the last surviving bacteria will struggle for breath. No, the Movellans are right about that: there is no weapon quite as precisely deadly and as adaptable as the trooper willing to die for their cause. All very logical. Just not very inspiring to me.
Several more minutes passed without incident, before their lantern beams fell upon a wall of calcite-encrusted rubble that completely blocked the path ahead. While Hyldreth and Penley exchanged mutually distrustful stares, one of the Movellan engineers approached the obstruction with a handheld scanner and took a reading.
"It is passable," he declared, to general relief. "It extends eleven point four-seven metres, then opens into a wider area. The scan also indicates nearly electrical activity, non-geological in origin. It may well be an outer storage or utility area of the Tower base. With care, the sonic lance can clear us a traversable route. The hardened calcite has stabilised the original rockfall to a sufficient degree, although it would be inadvisable to use any explosives in this area."
"Commence, then, but make it no wider than necessary," ordered Hyldreth. "There are few enough of us that we need not risk clearing a route wide enough for an army." On that instruction, the engineers set up the lance again – a white, dish-like apparatus with a central lattice like a radio mast, instructed the humans to cover their ears while the Movellans simply deactivated their audio sensors, then turned it on. At the centre of the rockfall, at ground level, the solid mineral matter seemed to ripple and shimmer like the surface of a pond on a rainy day, then, slowly but surely, the rippling area retreated into the rockfall, leaving a smooth-walled round tunnel in its wake as it edged further and further back. After a few minutes, the mirage-like effect ceased, a light shone through from the other side, and the sonic lance automatically deactivated. Cautiously, each member of the team either uncovered their ears or turned them back on, but there was nothing to hear other than the occasional drip of freezing water from the stalactites, and the low, distant hum of machinery from beyond the new tunnel.
Hyldreth led the way through, much to the Doctor's concern, though she knew that nothing she could say would have dissuaded her and better not to needlessly draw attention to our leader's weakness. Especially not now that we are on enemy territory. They followed her through in single file, silently, and it was not long before every member of the mixed platoon were assembled in the further chamber: a much wider tunnel, still gloomy but lit with occasional fluorescent strips; the walls composed of bare rock but reinforced by thick duralinium-alloy girders. Crates and storage barrels were gathered here and there, and cables ran across many of the walls. No guards were in evidence, but none of them seemed inclined to take that as a reassuring sign, and many alert and nervous hands primed their weapons while Hyldreth approached the soldier with the scanner.
"Well?" she asked, quietly. "What activity?"
"A high concentration to the north-east," he answered, "at several metres' elevation. High-energy, likely weapons' fire. It would seem that Commander Keryn's diversion has been largely successful. I can detect little energy between here and the central registry that is not consistent with normal background levels for a base of this nature, although activity within central is very high. Layv must be attempting to reprogram Earth Server Control."
"Or he has already infected it," she suggested, grimly. "We shall not know until we reach it. The sooner we set out, the–"
The hard drone of a Movellan blaster cut the still, acrid air, and the scanner operator collapsed with half of his head missing. That was all the signal the rest of the platoon needed to race for whatever cover they could find, while the Doctor seized the dropped scanner before taking refuge behind a large steel crate with Hyldreth, Penley, and Aeronwy. She checked the scanner display, but it showed no activity within the chamber except that of their own group. Setting it aside, she cast searching looks all around using all of her vision modes, but could perceive nothing more. No variations in background heat, radiation, electromagnetism. What the– ?
"Total stealth uniforms," whispered Hyldreth, answering the Doctor's thought for her. "Commander Darvylla's team must have perfected the design. That was not timely. We must reconsider our … No!" she exclaimed, as Aeronwy took a grenade from her belt pouch. "Did you not hear Sapper Emlyn? No explosives. You will have the roof in on–"
"Is a smoke grenade too risky for you?" interrupted Aeronwy, sarcastically. "Pardon me for being a dumb meatsack and all, but I figured that even a stealthed soldier can't stop themselves from making a space in a smoky–"
"Brilliant," conceded Hyldreth, as she seized the grenade from her, flicked the detonator, and flung it out into the middle of the chamber. A few seconds later it exploded, instantly smothering them all in a dense chemical mist that cut visibility down to zero. "Everyone, switch your vision mode or your HUD to air density scanning," she ordered, more loudly. "Let us hope the suits are not so perfect that they can accommodate for–"
There was another drone of gunfire and a scream from very nearby. Aeronwy. Looking back, with her vision mode accordingly changed, the Doctor could now see the dark, slender sensor image of the Movellan that had shot her, its arm raised and now pointed at the Doctor's own head. Dropping her equipment case, she dodged aside as it fired again, drew her own blaster, and returned fire, taking the stealth trooper's gun-arm off at the shoulder. A shot from Penley finished it off, and it collapsed in a twitching pile, shimmering a ghostly, flickering light through the mist as its visual and sensor shielding failed. This offered little cause for relief, however, as many more such shadows were visible, stalking them from every angle. Mercifully, their invisibility was not paired with agility: their motions were sluggish, and their shots less precise than those the infiltrators paid them back with. Impaired by the malware, but still effective enough cannon fodder, thought the Doctor, sadly, as she heard more screams from within the mist. She did not allow them to distract her, though, and kept on darting from cover to cover and returning fire along with her surviving comrades until no more of the lithe, featureless shadows of the stealth troopers were visible.
"Hold fire!" ordered Hyldreth, no doubt against the possibility that some of the more anxious members of the platoon might continue firing at the sensor images of their allies. "That was the last of them, I think. Now, regroup. It will take time for this fog to clear, and we must not be separated." Although the mist had now lifted slightly, on normal vision mode the Doctor could still only see a few metres in each direction, although that was enough to clarify a few things. She could see the fallen bodies of infected Movellans, their stealth uniforms covering them like second skins of black, hexagonal scales, save where blaster shots had burned them away. She could also see Aeronwy, slumped against the crate, a large and bloody scorch mark on the side of her abdomen. Her face, visible though the translucent screen of her combat helmet, was contorted in agony. Still alive, but mortally wounded. Such extensive organ damage that even a fully-equipped surgical unit would struggle to save her. What hope any field surgery we could perform here? Except …
"Fucked … aren't I?" asked Aeronwy, miserably if calmly, as the Doctor knelt beside her and opened the equipment case she had dropped in the firefight. "Figures … Always thought … one of you jumped-up sex dolls … be the death of me eventually."
"If you knew our history, I do not think you would make such an analogy," said the Doctor, as she assembled a pistol-like device from the components in the case. "In any case, you are wrong … potentially. I can save you using this. It extracts and stabilises the neurons that form the core of your consciousness, and it digitally copies your memory. Admittedly, your organic body is as good as dead, but if you are amenable then I can preserve your sense of self for later–"
"Integration," finished Aeronwy, with a sickened, defeated air. "Shit … Don't seem quite fair … seeing as how … we come all this way … get you back into your body … Fucking ironic."
"We came here to defeat the Daleks and their ally. Anything else is incidental, although I will not complain if it is possible. That process still requires a viable original body, however, and yours is not viable, and less so for every second we waste. I must urge you to decide quickly."
"So-called 'Doctor' … Your bedside manner's shit … You there, Mr. Penley?"
"I'm here," answered Penley, in a tone of grave concern, as he moved alongside the Doctor. "You probably saved us all there, you know?"
"My pleasure … Sorry, though. Don't … much fancy dying … truth be told. Might as well … see how the other half live … but really sorry," she finished, her voice almost reduced to a mere hissing exhalation, but there was no air of reproach in Penley's face.
"Don't be," he told her, reassuringly. "I'm relieved. Will this hurt her, Doctor?" he asked, anxiously, as she removed Aeronwy's helmet, pressed the business end of the somewhat aggressive-looking PTU against her forehead, and activated its imaging sensors.
"It should not," she replied, then pulled the trigger as the sensor light indicated readiness. There was a short, hissing sound, which somehow seemed all-too gentle for the act of driving duralinium needles through a person's skull, then Aeronwy's eyes closed and her head fell to the side, limp and motionless. The Doctor checked the readouts on the PTU. EEG … Positive scan. Neural extraction … Positive. Transfer to crystal medium … 92% complete … Hybrid CPU now laid down. Testing … Full response. If I still breathed, now would be the time for a sigh of relief. I only hope she will concur with that, when or if we get to install this properly.
"I am pleased she chose logically, but we must delay no longer," said Hyldreth, while relieving Aeronwy's corpse of its remaining grenades. That done, she stood up and looked over her remaining forces, the view much clearer now although still murky through the lingering vapour. "Have we fully regrouped now? Where is Commander Ancel? I do not see–"
"Eliminated, ma'am," answered Rosela, her level voice cut through with an undertone of regret. She was Tamril's friend, of course. It is just as well he was too damaged to come. His father forced to integrate, now killed in battle … I do not eagerly anticipate my next conversation with him. "One of the attackers was using some kind of disruptor weapon. It left little enough of him, or his neural pack … but I saw him destroy many of them before it happened. He died bravely, ma'am. It is just how he would have–"
"Your human nature is showing, Trooper," interrupted Hyldreth, her tone neither complimentary nor perfectly calm. "He died as any Movellan ought to: not bravely, but fearlessly, and without any consideration for his personal wishes. He had no time for fear, nor for any other useless, distracting sentiments. Only for his duty. He was not even afraid to call me out on my mistakes, my excesses, not that I ever paid him much … but he, at all events, was a model officer, his potential altogether wasted as a human. You think I should regret having compelled him to integrate?" she asked the Doctor, confrontationally, having perhaps misread the sympathy in her eyes. "I do not, and I never will. He has served our people well and faithfully. It was the logical decision, and if his former wife could not bring herself to love him as a Movellan, then it only argues that her logic was not worth a pile of horda shit. I would have allowed her to integrate, had she been rational. I would even have allowed them to serve in the same unit. She could have been with him for centuries … yet I was gratified that she chose stupidly and illogically."
"Err, I don't want to be insensitive here," said Penley, tentatively, "but shouldn't we– ?"
"Move, yes," Hyldreth concluded for him, with an irritable note of self-reproach. "We must make what advantage we can of this Pyrrhic victory, and not let Ancel's death … not let these deaths be in vain. If Keryn's team have done their job well and those scouts were the only opposition still in the base, then we might still manage–"
"I know you are in the base, Admiral," rasped the voice of Corporal Layv, from an overhead speaker. "Ensign Peridel too. I detected weapons fire in the storage depot, and my minions saw neither of you in that vanguard you sent to assault the main entrance. Your troops did well: some of them even survived, and they annihilated my brainwashed rabble, but it makes no difference. They served their purpose and delayed you for long enough. I have decrypted and disabled the intrusion prevention system of Earth Server Control. The Azhmedai will imminently have access to all of your networks, your space-time machines, your neural hardware. The Movellans will be exterminated … unless you deliver the Time Lord to me at once, alone and unarmed. You have five minutes to bring her to the central registry, or I begin uploading. Over and out," whereupon, after a short burst of screeching feedback, the speaker cut out, leaving a few seconds of stunned, demoralised silence in its wake before Penley attempted to offer some desperate optimism:
"Do you think he could be bluffing?"
"Unlikely," replied the Doctor, with grim certainty. "For one thing, that is not the Dalek way. For another, why should he bother admitting that his 'minions' have been slaughtered if he wishes to strengthen his hand? No, he is quite serious … except in the implication that he would extend us any mercy if we accede to his demands. That I find extremely hard to believe."
"As do I. Nevertheless," said Hyldreth, with a regretful tone, as she drew her sidearm, "I see only one option open to me, a fool's hope though it may be. It has been the most curious privilege to be your commander, Peridel … Doctor, but I must insist on your cooperation."
Layv was double-checking the status readouts on the Time Lord's stasis pod when he heard the whir and clank of the lift motor, muffled through the blast shielding of the central registry but still audible. This close to a main server, receiving its signals from all over Earth and orbiting vessels, any sort of transmat or teleport devices were forbidden for risk of interference, so the lifts in the Tower were probably not much more sophisticated than those the human miners had used so many centuries ago when excavating it. Which is fortuitous, thought Layv, as he moved over to a monitor screen. I would sooner check on my guests. He switched on the circuit for the lift's scanner and was treated to an overhead shot of two Movellan women, one of them unarmed and with her hands at her side, while the other had her sidearm pointed at her comrade. Too simple. I distrust this already. He flicked the audio switch, then leaned over to the grille.
"Your instructions were to come unarmed," he declared, while both of the women on the screen glanced upwards in the direction of the scanner, revealing them as Hyldreth and Peridel.
"She resisted. What else did you expect me to do?" asked Hyldreth, her tone vexed. Logical … but still too simple, he decided, walking over to where he had left his SMG. He picked it up, turned off the safety switch, and took cover behind the armour-plated, vaguely coffin-shaped bulk of the stasis pod. Valuable, but it can endure considerable small arms fire before the Doctor's body will be at risk. Certainly more than I can endure in this preposterous excuse for a body, if my guests have planned for any futile gestures of defiance. He kept his eyes and his aim fixed upon the double blast doors of the lift while waiting for it to complete its descent, which took only a few more seconds. As they slid open, he saw Peridel in the lead, and he could now see in her right hand what he had been unable to discern on the badly-angled scanner image: the small, black control unit clutched in her palm, or the detonator, more probably. Devious, Time Lord, but not enough.
He opened fire, shearing off the offending hand within the first second, but continued until the gun's power cell was exhausted, by which time Peridel's body had been both dismembered and decapitated, and Hyldreth's had been bisected at the waist. This is a satisfyingly effective anti-personnel weapon, I must admit. How the Movellans waste their potential for destruction, but we can make better use of their legacy. Satisfied that neither of his enemies could present any further threat either to him or the equipment, he left his cover and approached their remains in order to retrieve Peridel's neural pack, still clinging undamaged to her half-melted belt. As he picked it up, he saw that Hyldreth's eyes were open and aware, gazing at him with unquestionable malevolence. He did not find that particularly surprising. There were times I could almost have thought that one would make a good Dalek: the ruthlessness, the inventive psychological tortures, the nurturing of old hatreds. Insufficient, though. Like all of them, she was half-hearted in her virtues, as her pity to the Time Lord shows … and her pity to me, if we can call it that. Contemptible and weak, and more so as she allowed herself to mingle with the human vermin. It is well she will witness the act that will lead to the extermination of both them and her own kind.
"I knew you would deceive us," she said, her voice still strong and harsh in spite of her mangled state, not that it impressed him in the slightest. Defiance, now? She overrates her logic.
"Your foreknowledge does not seem to have benefited you," he pointed out, as he walked across to the apparatus he had jury-rigged at the centre of the room, and plugged the neural pack into its central terminal. "In any case, I infer from that hand detonator that you intended to deceive and destroy me, and yourselves. A futile attempt to salvage your failed game by sacrificing two willing pawns, Admiral? Pathetic. I was simply more effective in my deceit."
"That sacrifice was worth the attempt. I know to expect no mercy from your kind, whether or not this insane plan of yours can succeed."
"It will," he declared, bluntly, as he checked the interface settings. "You underestimate Dalek intelligence, and you will pay dearly for that … although I must pay all due credit to the Doctor. As Ensign Peridel, she dug her own grave with her integration research. Thanks to her findings, I not only have the portable apparatus but all the information I need to digitise the memory and consciousness matrix of the Azhmedai and meld it with that of the Time Lord. A clean, efficient process, without the need for any hard-wiring. I had thought at first I would need to reconfigure their old hardware as co-processors with Peridel's CPU, and reintroduce both into the Time Lord's brain as a cyber-surgical implant. Crude, but it would have served. Now, however, they will no longer need their hardware," he explained, pointing out the small glass dish of jelly-like biomass upon which the invisible nano-machines were currently residing, placed on a metal stand beneath the digital conversion array. "That will be bequeathed for Dalek scientists to make good use of."
"This would be a use of the term 'good' which few would sympath–"
"Silence," he cut in, both irritated and bemused by her flippancy. She is more corrupted by human mannerisms than I had thought. This is practically a mercy killing. "You are not here to criticise me. Merely to bear witness to our victory. When we first encountered the Azhmedai, we saw its potential as a weapon to avenge ourselves for the virus you almost exterminated us with. That would not restore our power, but it could be used to break yours, and on that basis alone I was assigned to make this sacrifice: to take on your repugnant parody of humanoid form, to infiltrate your conference, and to destroy your efforts at building a united empire."
"And thus helping the human race to survive in the process? A curious departure from standard Dalek policy, you must admit."
"A necessary one. Humans are decadent, treacherous, and naturally inclined to disunity. It is better that you do not give them cause to unite, neither against you nor in any form of alliance with you. At all events, revenge upon you was better than nothing, and the Azhmedai shared that desire. It too saw nothing better to hope for. Although it longed for any form of physical existence, it knew integration could not help it: for by its very nature, it is destructive to AI hardware. Although it has learned to reprogram Movellans for temporary use as expendable troops, it cannot make them nor other AIs compatible as permanent hosts for itself."
"The killings at the Manor … you were experimenting?" asked Hyldreth, her tone weakening somewhat as more and more electrolytic fluid seeped out of her body, but her disgust perfectly evident.
"Yes, Admiral. Given access to advanced facilities such as your, the Azhmedai is adept at hacking communications networks and transmitting invasive code when it cannot infect directly, and it needed to trial different versions of its malware, to see what would be most deadly yet also give it the most effective and enduring control. We had intended to launch the final attack on the day of the conference, and it would have been spectacular … but then new intel came to light: the impending arrival of a Time Lord. Now, there was a host mind and body that could endure the strain of being joined to such a profound intelligence and hatred as the Azhmedai's. I was disappointed when the decision was taken to integrate the Doctor, but in the end, even that has worked out to my advantage. For by her diligence, she herself has provided the means by which both the Movellans and the Time Lords will soon be overthrown and exterminated. With our only two serious rivals to power out of the way, the Dalek race will be free to rise again."
"Very elegant … It will not work."
"You are incorrect. There is every reason to suppose that it will. The Doctor's body is in perfect condition, Peridel's research is sound, and after I have transferred the consciousness of the Azhmedai to her neural pack, it will simply be a matter of reversing the standard integration procedure. The Doctor's mind will endure, but swamped within the group consciousness of the Azhmedai, a mere drop in the ocean. That will barely dilute its lust for vengeance, and with the Doctor's TARDIS and knowledge then at its disposal, along with its own malware, that vengeance will be devastating."
"Did no-one ever tell you … unleashing a tiger to catch a wolf … is really not a good–"
"Do not threaten me. It is futile. Death, in any case, would be a release for me, and it is one I can soon accept with honour," he declared. Satisfied that the interface was correctly configured, he switched on the converter. That I should be the one to defeat the Doctor … On reflection, this is better even than killing him: to freeze him impotently within the hell of his own mind, having to share the experience as his body carries out the destructive whims of the Azhmedai. A fate I could almost envy, but I do not think he will derive much pleasure from … An error? he thought, his confidence dissolving as the formerly stable readouts suddenly went into chaos. Impossible. I accounted for everything. Unfortunately, assuring himself of his accuracy did nothing to stabilise the fluctuating gauges, nor to diminish the acrid smell of smoke now rising from the central terminal, where Peridel's neural pack was plugged in. Peridel's … or not. His eyes now caught what he had overlooked before: the ID codes etched into the duralinium casing. Factory 7, batch 12-D, operating system MovellCorps QOS v.2.5. Service code, delta sigma 8279. Rank … Admiral. No … Reverse the transfer program, quickly. There may still be time. As he worked frantically to input new instructions into the digital converter, he heard the voice of 'Hyldreth' from behind him, its weakness doing nothing to detract from its infuriating air of triumph:
"Oh, try that, by all means … Too late, though, I think … and that hand detonator was just to reassure you, by the way … We reset the grenade on a time-switch before coming down here … Just wanted to make sure you had time … to transfer your evil spirit chum … but it cannot be long now … We are no mere pawns, Dalek … This was the gambit where the queen sacrifices herself … to secure us a nice, albeit last-minute checkma–"
The apparatus exploded in Layv's face, burning and lacerating him all over, which was a pleasant distraction from the mental agony of his total failure. Both, however, proved brief.