An electrical arc flew from the Dalek conversion machine with a crackle and earthed itself into one of the walls. Sparks flew from every device in the room.

"WHAT IS HAPPENING? EXPLAIN!" the Dalek shrieked.

Another arc erupted from the machine, followed by a small explosion.

"Well, if you ask me," the Doctor said, grinning, "I think your puppets are sharing information that your network can't process."

"WHAT TYPE OF INFORMATION? EXPLAIN!"

"Just connect to the network and you will know. After all, it is your puppets' Pathweb, right?"

"DALEKS DO NOT NEED TO RECEIVE INFORMATION FROM THEIR SLAVES!"

"Pity, then," the Doctor said smugly, tucking his hand in his pockets as two other electrical arcs flew from the machine, one of them hitting a sarcophagus that exploded into a shower of sparks. "You won't know what is happening. I can assure you it is not something I did. But it seems to threaten your precious network, and with it all your puppets. And you still need them to defend your base until your big plan begins, don't you?"

The Dalek visibly hesitated, its head swivelling from the Doctor to the machine, which seemed to be erupting into more sparks by the second.

"ESTABLISHING LINK TO SLAVE PATHWEB," it intoned.

The Doctor turned to look at Kristoff, who had been trying to keep up with the situation and avoiding finding himself on the path of one of the lightning bolts coursing across the room. He was glad to have the Doctor's attention for a second, and thought he recognised the expression on the man's face.

"Is it when we run?" he whispered.

"You are getting good at this, Reindeer Man," the Doctor said with one of his mad grins.

They were halfway toward one exit when they heard the Dalek shrieking behind them. Kristoff tensed as he ran, expecting to make out an order to stay there, another extermination threat, or simply to be hit by the horrible beam of light, but he realised there was nothing intelligible in the scream. It was an unarticulated wail, possibly even a scream of pain. It was covered by another crackling sound, and the noise of something exploding. They crossed the threshold without looking back while more explosions thundered behind them, accompanied by the distorted wail of the Dalek, more crackles, and the sounds of debris hitting the ground.

They did not run very far before encountering a lone Ice Warrior puppet, staggering toward them through the corridor. To Kristoff's surprise the lumbering creature did not attempt to stop them, simply holding its head jerkily, the eyestalk in its forehead flickering like an eye blinking repeatedly. They had passed it by a dozen feet when the sound of an armoured body hitting the ground echoed behind them.

Kristoff was beginning to get his bearings through the alien ship, and thought that he could vaguely recognise the part they were running to. They passed by another twitching, collapsing Ice Warrior puppet, and two others lying on the ground, the eyestalk in their forehead dark. After a while Kristoff took the opportunity of the Doctor slowing down to speak.

"Doctor, what happened? What did you do?"

"Me? I already told you, Reindeer Man," the Doctor said, still grinning like a maniac, "I just enforced a perfect communication between all the puppets. I always said people would get so much better if they took the time to talk more."

"But how did that make everything explode? And what happened to these puppets we passed by?"

"They probably received a piece of information they could not process. And since they are all cut from the same cloth, so to speak, it caused their rewired brains to short circuit all at the same time, and send information about that too, which created a feedback loop."

They had now slowed to a normal walk, and the Doctor was back to checking his surroundings and occasionally his sonic screwdriver.

"But what kind of information is that, Doctor? And… what happened to Anna? She was also connected to this network thing, right?"

"If I had to bet, Reindeer Man, I'd say that it's Freckles who happened. With some help from Platinum."

"Wait, what? Anna… Anna did this… loop thing that caused everything to explode?"

"Well, it's only a theory, of course. I can't be sure until we've found Platinum and Freckles. You see, overloading a full Pathweb, even as crude as this one, along with all the connected puppets, plus a Dalek stupid enough to link to it, would require a lot of time and effort for someone attacking it from outside. So, either there is someone out there more clever than me, which is hard, or the attack came from inside the network. And since it occurred right after I expanded the bandwidth, it could be that someone connected to the Pathweb took advantage of this to disrupt it."

"Uh, OK, but if that was Anna, how would she have known how to do that?"

"She would not have needed to know, that's the beauty of it. Or even want to do it. All she would need to do would be to send something on the network that nobody else connected to it could process!"

"So she, er, said something on this, uh, network path thing, to make everybody explode?"

"Not said, Reindeer Man, felt! OK, I'm hypothesising here, but if Platinum did manage to reach her, she could have succeeded in bringing back her emotions to the fore."

"How could Anna's feelings make things explode?"

"Because she shared them on the Pathweb, thanks to my little trick. And if Platinum got through to her, then she shared the one type of information the Daleks can't process. The emotion the Daleks purged from their systems, and that they take care of purging first from all their puppets."

"You mean… love?"

"Yes, Reindeer Man, love! And she shared a lot of it too. I was not expecting the feedback to get so strong so quickly."

"But how do you know this is what happened?"

"I don't. Like I told you, I'm just hypothesising. Maybe I had misjudged how strong the cobbled Pathweb was, and my little trick was enough to overload it, or a particularly bright Ice Warrior managed to hack into it, or another puppet experienced something completely new and shared it on the network, and Freckles was destroyed like every other puppets. Or maybe she exterminated Platinum, and realised what she had done afterwards, and it's what caused the feedback."

"What? Anna would never…"

"No you're right. Grief and remorse would not cause such damage on Dalek minds. Even joy would not do the trick."

Kristoff had to stop for a second as the Doctor's words sank in. For once he was hoping he had not understood what the cryptic man had said.

"So, er, how can you be sure that everything exploded because Anna felt love again and not because… your other guesses?"

"I can't, Reindeer Man, except that it's the more likely option." He brandished the device he had retrieved from the conversion machine and briefly moved his sonic screwdriver over it. "That, and the fact that there now seems to be only one servant linked to what remains of the Pathweb."

"What is that thing?"

"A Pathweb relay. Think of it as… well, there's no easy way to put it so that you would understand. It's a small part of the Pathweb that can still connect in a limited way to those who were linked to it."

"So, Anna will be all right?" Kristoff asked, trying to cling to the one piece of news that was the most important to him and happened to be the only one he could fully understand. "If your guess about her sending love on the path thing is the right one?"

"Probably," the Doctor said airily. "She will need some neural therapy and there may be a few memories she won't be able to recover, but on the whole she should be mostly back to her old self after a while. But that's for later. Now we still have work to do."

"But… I thought you said the other puppets had been… destroyed. And if the Ice Warriors were on their way here they should be able to stop the Daleks from blowing up the volcano?"

"Don't forget that they still have to go through the Daleks now, Reindeer Man. Even if the Ice Warriors manage to defeat them, they will suffer terrible casualties. And casualties are something I like to avoid if I can help it."

"So… you will find a clever way to stop the Daleks from engaging the Ice Warriors?"

"Not quite, sadly. I can't avoid the fight in time, but hopefully I will be able to cut it short. Right now I'm going to take advantage of the fact that the Daleks will have to defend their ship by themselves, which means they will leave some parts unguarded. Hush," the Doctor went on as he moved cautiously toward the mouth of a corridor. He poked his head into the room behind and quickly leaned back. "There is still one Dalek guarding this geothermal converter."

"Ah, that was the device they are using to make the volcano erupt?" Kristoff whispered back after a few seconds. "You wanted to disable it?"

"Something like that. Thankfully all I need to do is access their power lines, and there are not enough Daleks to guard them now."

Kristoff refrained from asking what the Doctor meant, partly because he suspected he would not understand the explanation either, and partly as a way to get back at the Doctor, who seemed to enjoy talking in riddles so that Kristoff had to beg for explanation. The grey-haired man padded silently along the corridor, waving his whistling wand at the gashes in the wall, until he stopped in front of a large one.

"This will do," he said. "But first I need to send a message," he added with one of his mad grins. "I hope Freckles has remained with Platinum," he said, taking again out of his pocket the small device from the conversion machine.

"Why do you care?" Kristoff asked suspiciously. "Are you going to involve Anna again?"

"Don't fret, Reindeer Man. I just want to ask her to relay a message. She's still equipped with the implant for connecting to the puppet Pathweb. The network has collapsed, but with this relay I should still be able to send her messages."

"So… you can talk with her?"

"Not quite talk, this is a very basic emitter," the Doctor said, waving the sonic screwdriver over the device, "but I should be able to send simple words. The communication will be one way only. Hope I can build a sentence Freckles will understand."

"So you can also tell her to hide away from the Daleks who are going to fight the Ice Warriors? They are probably furious that she destroyed their puppets too."

"That's a good idea, Reindeer Man, I had not thought of that," the Doctor said in a tone that might have been sarcastic, but Kristoff was not entirely sure.


Anna tensed in Elsa's arms, and she mumbled a series of unintelligible words. Spasms shook her body, but Elsa did not loosen her embrace.

"Anna? What's wrong? Talk to me," she said softly.

"The others… I hear the others," Anna managed to utter. "I feel the others."

"There are no others like you, Anna," Elsa said, not quite sure of what to make of this, but determined to help Anna resist the spell the Daleks had put upon her.

"Yes… the slaves… the other slaves… they are… they don't understand…"

"You are not a slave, Anna."

"They don't understand… they don't understand…" Anna repeated, still twitching and jerking in her sister's arms. "It's… hurting them…"

"What is it they don't understand?"

"I… I love you Elsa. I'm sorry… I'm sorry… they can't understand… they are… they don't speak any more… I can't hear them… They did not understand… I love you, Elsa."

"I love you too, sis," Elsa said, maintaining her embrace. To her relief she felt Anna returning it again. "It's going to be all right, Anna."

"I had to hate… I had to hate everyone… It burned… They were all so mean… I shot at the enemy of the… I shot at the Doctor… I hit Kristoff…"

"It's not your fault, Anna. The Daleks did something to you. Now you're going to be all right."

Snow began to fall around them. Elsa looked up to see the stars slowly disappearing from the sky. She also became aware of a distant stomping that was coming closer. She also realised the tremors she had felt in the ground before were not the same.

"The Ice Warriors are going to be there soon, they're friends too, remember?" she said soothingly.

"Friends… yes, I remember. I don't want to hate, Elsa," Anna said, with a small sob. "I don't want to hate anyone."

"You won't have to, Anna. It's going to be OK. Everything is fine now. I'm going to protect you."

The stomping around them became closer. From the corner of her eye, Elsa could distinguish the hulking shapes of the Ice Warriors moving relentlessly on the snow that was now covering the ground.

"Are you cold, Anna?" she asked, as the idea struck her. Her sister was still wearing the garments she had retrieved from the TARDIS, minus her cape, but Elsa was still very cautious around Anna with her powers, even if the only risk was simply making her chilly.

"No I'm… I'm fine, Elsa. Are you… are you doing this?" Anna said, slowly breaking their embrace to look at the snow slowly covering the ground.

"Uh, yes, I wanted to help the Ice Warriors come here as quickly as possible," Elsa said with a vague gesture towards the green shapes advancing resolutely around them.

"So you… you have your powers again?" Anna said, smiling for the first time since Elsa had found her. "That's… that's awesome."

Elsa smiled back happily. Anna's face was still strained, but at least her eyes and her smile were definitely back to being her own.

"Thank you, Elsa," Anna said softly. "Thanks for helping me… I couldn't stop the hate… wouldn't have done it without you."

"I love you too, sis," Elsa said.

Anna suddenly tensed as her face twisted into a disgusted smirk.

"Anna? What's wrong?"

"I'm… getting… information…" Anna said, her voice stilted as if each word was a struggle to get out. "There… are… words… from… from… another…"

"Ignore it, Anna! Ignore them! You don't have to listen to them!" Elsa said frantically, trying to grab the metal object affixed to her sister's ear.

"Order: Associate… Must… Cold… Underground…" Anna said slowly, seeming puzzled at what she was saying. "Order: associate must cold underground…"

"That's all?" Elsa asked, dumbfounded. "Is that the kind of order the Daleks gave you?"

"Uh, no," Anna said, relaxing slowly. "There were more like 'exterminate this' or 'guard that'. That did not really sound like them at all."

"Associate must cold underground," Elsa mused, looking at the snow piling up around their feet. "I wonder…"

She heard Anna gasp and looked up to see her sister's face contorting once again.

"Information: Daleks… Fight… Outside," Anna said. "And… Order: Associate… Must… Cold… Underground… again."

"And that still does not look like what you heard before?" Elsa said.

"No… there were orders from the Daleks, but they were very clear, and then I could hear the others talking but… it was simple, like stating their position and saying there was nothing to report… except at the end, when they all began to report pain and that they could not understand..."

"Associate must cold underground," Elsa said, looking again at the ground. "What if this was not an order, but a message? A message from the Doctor?"

"From the enemy of… from the Doctor? But… why would he talk from the Daleks device?"

"You said the, uh, others, had gone silent… you were talking about the Ice Warriors who had been, uh, changed, right? Well, maybe the Doctor did it. Maybe he managed to do something to, well, silence the, uh, others, through this device, and now he's using it to talk to you?"

"But what does that mean? What should I do? I don't understand!"

"When you could still… hear the Daleks… how did they refer to another, er, another Ice Warrior who obeyed them?"

"Oh, uh, they did not really do that. They said things like 'order: two slaves go there', and we all knew where each slave was and whoever was the closest went. It was rather efficient, in fact. Why did you want to know?"

"Did the Daleks once talked about… me?"

"Err… it was… there was… I… uh, they they said cryokinetic human but that was not not not…"

"I'm sorry Anna," Elsa said, hugging her sister. "I just wanted to understand how this… communication works. You see, Father once told me that soldiers sometimes use simplified code words to very quickly exchange useful information, even if it is less precise. Maybe this, uh, communication device the Daleks use does the same thing. Maybe there are words they can't use."

"Like what?"

"Like maybe… sister?"

"I'm pretty sure they would not use that word, yes. There were Daleks, other Daleks, slaves, other slaves and… enemies."

"The Doctor said the Daleks wanted to awaken the volcano," Elsa said slowly. "And the message said... associate. Maybe that's the closest word to sister that the Doctor found in the words the Daleks use. So if it's from him, he wants me, your associate, to try cooling down the… But I don't know if I can do that!"

"I'm sure you can do anything, Elsa, whatever it is you're thinking about. You brought me back!"

"At least I can try," Elsa said, smiling softly. "OK, Doctor, let's see if I got this right."

She crouched down and placed her hand on the ground, concentrating. She knew her powers extended far beyond her awareness, but so far she had only focused them on the air, the sea or the ground. The underground was not something she had ever needed to freeze, and in any case she would have feared to harm some innocent burrowing creatures. But the wild fauna of Mars seemed almost non-existent.

"And Daleks fight outside?" Anna said out loud. "Is that a message too? What would it… oh."

As she still concentrated on the ground and what she supposed was below, Elsa saw her sister bend down to pick up her weapon.

"Anna, what are you doing?"

"The message said Daleks fight outside," Anna said grimly, hefting the weapon.

"Anna, you don't have to obey orders any more!" Elsa said, getting up and reaching for her sister. To her surprise, Anna smiled, although her expression was still hard.

"I'm not," she said. "You can go on doing whatever you think the enemy… the Doctor wants you to do." She pressed something on her weapon, which lit up and emitted a low hum. "But if there are Daleks fighting outside, I'll make sure they can't get to you." Anna's face softened as her smile widened. "I can protect you too, sis."


This time Kristoff managed to spot the Daleks in advance, if only because there were only two directions they could have come from, and he had been expecting them for a while.

"Doctor? They're coming," he said urgently to the grey-haired man, who had been working on the gash in the wall, his sonic screwdriver whistling. "Isn't it the time to run now?"

"INTRUDERS! EXTERMINATE!" one the Daleks shouted.

"Wait!" the Doctor said, moving quickly away from the gash in the wall and striding in front of the Daleks. "I have very important information for you!"

"THERE ARE NO RECORDS OF THE DOCTOR VOLUNTEERING INFORMATION TO THE DALEKS. THIS IS LIKELY A TRICK. EXTERMINATE THE DOCTOR!"

"Fine, don't believe me. But you should believe your sensors. I hope you have some set up."

"WHAT SENSORS? EXPLAIN!"

"Why, those you use to monitor the temperature of the lava below. How else would you be able to know when everything will explode."

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO OUR SENSOR ARRAY?"

"Me? Nothing! I'm just advising you to check them. A friendly piece of advice."

"THE LAVA FLOW IS CLOSE TO IGNITION POINT. SEISMIC TREMORS HAVE BEEN DETECTED. OUR PLAN IS NEARLY COMPLETE."

"And I'm telling you again to check again" the Doctor said with infuriating calm. "Pretty sure you will find the temperature is now decreasing."

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"

"Me? Nothing. Just running around your ship with Reindeer Man here, whom I can't seem to shake off."

The two Daleks looked at one another for a second, their heads swivelling while their weapon sticks remained trained on Kristoff and the Doctor. Then one of them moved to a wall and placed the cup at the end of its other stick on a small orb protruding from the panel. Part of it came alive with lights while various sounds filled the corridor.

"LAVA TEMPERATURE IS DROPPING," the Dalek intoned after a few seconds. "THE OUTPUT FROM THE CONVERTER IS NOT SUFFICIENT!"

"Told you so," the Doctor said smugly.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, DOCTOR? YOU WILL TELL US!" the other Dalek said.

"I told you, I've done nothing. Maybe your converter has developed a fault after a while, who knows."

"THE TEMPERATURE DROP IS TOO STEEP. THERE HAS BEEN EXTERNAL INFLUENCE."

"THIS COULD BE THE WORK OF THE CRYOKINETIC COMPANION OF THE DOCTOR."

"They're not really my companions, you know," the Doctor said conversationally. "Normally I choose who I travel with, and these ones were simply aboard when the TARDIS took off."

"THIS IS NOT ENOUGH TO DERAIL OUR PLAN."

"No, but it will delay it for, maybe a few hours? And you don't have a few hours any more. Not with the Ice Warriors attacking you en masse. Now, let me give you one other piece of advice," the Doctor said quickly. "Stop everything now while there is still time. I may be merciful enough to try finding a way for you all to get out of here."

"INCREASE THE POWER OUTPUT FROM THE CONVERTOR," the Dalek told the other one, ignoring him.

"I OBEY," the other Dalek said, gliding back toward the room where the converter was.

"THE DEFENCE UNITS WILL SEARCH THE CRYOKINETIC COMPANION AND EXTERMINATE HER," the remaining Dalek intoned. "THE DELAY WILL BE MINIMAL. YOU WILL NOT STOP US, DOCTOR!"


Anna wiped her brow and tried to focus. It was not very easy. Less than an hour ago, she had been burning with an intense hatred for any living thing, including herself, and yearning for orders to kill as many as she could. She was not quite sure right now if her frame of mind was the normal one, but the one immovable certainty in her life had resumed its place at the forefront of her thoughts: she loved her sister, and now that they were together nothing bad could happen to them. Now she just needed to concentrate on making sure nothing bad happened to Elsa, which was another thing she was sure was part of her normal mindset. What was far less normal were the circumstances they found themselves in.

Even though her memories were a bit muddled at the moment, Anna was pretty sure she had only heard or read stories about battles and had never found herself in the middle of one. But none of the stories she could remember described battles such as this one. Sure, the impression she had formed that confusion was reigning in a battlefield, along with death, cries and the sounds of various weapons, was definitely not proven wrong now. But these were probably the only points this battle had in common with the stories she knew. The battles she had been told or had read about were fought with swords, crossbows, the occasional rifle, and possibly cannons, and they usually involved humans, horses and dogs. They did not feature seven feet tall armoured reptiles, flying metal snowmen, flying metal carriages, and weapons that shot beams of light or destructive sound. Also, when one of the armies was in overwhelmingly superior numbers, it usually meant it was the one winning. But, even though the Ice Warriors outnumbered the Daleks by ten or possibly even hundred to one, they did not seem to be gaining any significant advantage at the moment. She remembered hearing the Daleks voices in her head, and was under the impression that there had not been a lot of them in the ship, and there were even less of them flying above them now – maybe not more than half a dozen. Yet so far she had only seen one of them explode under the conjugated fire of multiple Ice Warriors, while she could see many Ice Warriors in the distance falling to the ground and not getting up after being hit by the white light from the Daleks weapons.

The Daleks flew over the army, crossing the sky with almost the same speed as when they were gliding on the ground, even though she could not see any wings moving on them and they were certainly too heavy to float on their own. They fired their weapons in quick sequence, yelling their battle cry each time, and almost always hitting their target, or causing some sort of explosion when they did not. The Ice Warriors kept advancing and firing relentlessly, but they did not seem to be gaining much ground, and it seemed it took a lot of hits for a Dalek to even appear damaged.

Anna gripped the weapon in her hand. One thing she was sure of was that she had never seen something like it before landing on Mars – yet she also seemed to know everything about the strange object. The knowledge was fading slowly, especially when she looked at her sister or merely thought about her, but for the moment she was rather relieved to have something more powerful than her fists to defend her.

Elsa was crouched with her hands placed on the ground, apparently in intense concentration. The snow around her had turned into ice, but did not spread further. Anna had vaguely pieced out that her sister was trying to cool the underground, but she was not entirely sure why. She was mainly concerned now with trying to stop thinking of the Doctor as the enemy of the Daleks who needed to be exterminated or captured as soon as spotted.

Anna jumped at a shout of "Exterminate" above her. She looked up to see a Dalek flying a dozen feet above the ground advancing toward her. It did not stop to fire back at the Ice Warriors who were targeting it and flew in a beeline toward Elsa.

"Exterminate yourself!" Anna shouted, firing the strange weapon.

A beam of light flew from the muzzle and hit the Dalek, which seemed to be surrounded by splashes of colour for a second. But, to Anna's horror, it kept advancing, apparently unscathed.

"EXTERMINATE!" it shrieked again.


"POWER CONVERTER OUTPUT AT MAXIMAL LEVEL!" the Dalek shrieked, emerging from the room.

"THE CRYOKINETIC HUMAN HAS BEEN FOUND AND WILL BE EXTERMINATED. OUR EFFORTS WILL NOT BE IMPEDED FURTHER!" the other Dalek said.

"Are you really sure about that?" the Doctor asked with a grin.

Kristoff felt the vibration coursing through the ship under his feet. It was a skill he had developed throughout his life in the mountains, where perceiving a tremor from the ground in time could be all that stood between comfortably looking at the avalanche from a safe shelter and finding oneself buried under pounds and pounds of rushing snow. He had never expected however to feel this in such a place, even if it was called a ship. But the vibrations from the ships he knew were quite different in any case.

Kristoff shot an inquiring glance at the Doctor, but the grey-haired man kept his eye fixed on the Daleks. Then he noticed that the Doctor was holding behind his back the small device he had said allowed him to contact Anna and waving his sonic screwdriver over it.

"WHAT IS HAPPENING? EXPLAIN!" the Dalek shrieked, as Kristoff picked up another tremor coursing through the ship.

"What is happening is you insisting on increasing power even after I told you not to do it," the Doctor said sternly. "Definitely not a good idea to try outdoing Platinum."

"OUR ESTIMATIONS SHOW THAT THE POWER OF THE CRYOKINETIC HUMAN IS VASTLY INFERIOR TO THE OUTPUT OF THE CONVERTOR AT MAXIMUM CAPACITY. OUTDOING HER SHOULD NOT BE A PROBLEM UNLESS YOU INTERFERED."

"Well, I did interfere a little, yes. But I warned you."

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? EXPLAIN!"

The Doctor gave one of his insane grins.

"Very simple. I reversed the polarity," he said.


Anna watched powerless as the Dalek kept advancing toward Elsa, gliding in the air as if it had been resting on an invisible platform. She fired another shot from her weapon, with as little effect as the first time.

"Elsa!" she shouted, crossing the distance between her and her sister in a single bound and trying to put herself between the Dalek's weapon stick and Elsa.

"EXTERMINATE!" the Dalek shrieked from above.

The beam of light lanced through the air and destroyed an ice wall that had appeared in front of Anna. She glanced back at her sister who was looking up, one hand raised in the direction of the Dalek while the other was still pressed to the frozen ground.

Anna was opening her mouth to shout when the words came into her head again. It was not exactly like hearing them – more as if they resonated around her skull or possibly came from inside her thoughts. This time they were simpler, and in fact closer to the type of message she had received before from the Daleks.

Order: Aim Eyestalk.

Anna clenched her teeth and raised her weapon, summoning all the remaining knowledge she had about it as she aimed at the Dalek.

"Hey, Dalek!" she yelled. "Look at me!"

For a second the blue point of light from the eye stick faced her. Anna adjusted her aim and fired. The beam of light hit the Dalek squarely in the eyestalk. Anna did not wait for the light from the first shot to dissipate and fired a second and a third time.

"MY VISION IS IMPAIRED!" the Dalek shrieked, as its head began swivelling wildly.

Beams of light erupted from the Dalek's weapon, hitting the ground around them at random. The Dalek began wobbling in the air, moving erratically left and right. And then Anna heard the whistling of the Ice Warrior weapons as more of the green giants nearby focused their fire on the flying enemy. Anna was raising her weapon again to join in when the Dalek exploded, its debris flying and crashing on the ground.

Anna turned to her sister, who looked up to flash her a wan smile. Anna smiled back then quickly looked up, toward more shouts of "Exterminate" coming closer. She was about to yell at the Ice Warriors to aim for the eyestalk, just in case they were not aware of it, when another short message dropped into her head, causing her to grimace as the words echoed around her skull. She blinked as she processed the information, then slowly stepped back.

"Elsa?" she called to her sister, keeping her eyes fixed on the Daleks floating toward them above the battlefield. "I think… I think the en… the Doctor wants us to run. Fast."


Author's Notes: "War on Ice" was the working title I had for this fic during several drafts.

The eyestalk is listed once by the Doctor as a known weak point of the Daleks. Their vision was certainly impaired a lot in the old series.

My interpretation of the Pathweb may be closer to the Borg hive mind, and I don't think we ever saw Dalek slaves being linked that way, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to have Anna use the power of love to destroy the puppets.