.
“The terran empire are aware of the Daleks?” asked the Red Dalek.
“That is correct,” said Forrester. “The Terran High Command is at any rate, they just don’t like anybody else to be know about you.”
Forrester leant on the remains of the mind-probe chair as he relayed this to the Dalek. He was glad this device was out of action for now, as the Section Leader would have surely put him it by now if it were. He still had very clear memories of the last time he was in that position.
The Section Leader was puzzled: “Then why are they willing to tolerate our raids on human colonies and shipping? Do they not want to let their own people know of the dangers?”
Forrester laughed: “Well you should understand that for human leaders there are always good reasons as far as they are concerned to keep certain things to themselves. They happen to believe that letting people know you are co-ordinating piracy and terrorism across the galaxy is probably going to be more damaging then not knowing, at least in the short term. Preserving confidence and continuing interstellar trade are their priorities, not protecting the odd ship or border world settlement.”
“Understood,” said the Section Leader. “So you were aware of this alone amongst your crew. Why was that the case?”
Forrester sighed: “It is still not clear to me,” he said. “Some of the original Forrester’s memories are still occluded from my consciousness. What does seem fairly certain is that at some time, he or I rather, was recruited by their security services, for a mission other than the one which the rest of the crew were aware of.”
The Section Leader was disturbed by this news; it was very close to the ranting explanation that Invidious’ cyborg had given when confronted over the death of the original Forrester. This creature was also one of Invidious' experiments- in the normal course of events; such misgivings would trigger the Dalek default solution of shoot first. However these were not normal times.
A grey Dalek entered the interrogation chamber: “The human beings from the factory are here Section Leader.”
“Have them brought here,” said the Red Dalek. “And take this replicant to the holding bays beneath the building.”
Forrester jumped when he heard this news: “But Section Leader I must protest!” he exclaimed. “I have given you my full co-operation…”
“Do not question the Daleks!” thundered the Section Leader. “You are to be held in stasis until we have further use of you,” it turned to the other Dalek. “If he resists you have orders to exterminate him!”
“I obey!”
Stillman and Torpes caught a glimpse of Forrester being led away as they were being ushered into see the Section Leader. He and Stillman exchanged glaring looks as they passed, Stillman’s of hatred, Forrester’s of dismay.
The Section Leader was as abrupt as ever: “Report!”
“We have laid the bombs as you ordered,” said Stillman, “though I have another idea, one which doesn’t involve quite as much destruction.”
Stillman went on to say that they thought they had discovered a major weakness with the Mark V Daleks. Using a holographic display he punched up a wire diagram of the new design with the dark matter core highlighted in red.
“The power supply also serves as a form of super-computer,” he began.
“Explain.”
“I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of how it all works,” Stillman went on. “But I think that it has something to do with the psychomorphic properties of dark matter. I believe that by observing the effects of thought patterns on the dark matter they are able to glean an opponent’s innermost thoughts and feelings.”
“But what relevance does this have?” asked Torpes. “We already knew the Mark V had a form of telepathy.”
“Not so much telepathy,” said Stillman. “More an insight into emotions and motivations, but allied with the positronic brain this would give the Dalek a tremendous advantage in terms of anticipating actions and plotting potential strategies.”
“Where is the weakness here?” demanded the Dalek.
“Not so much in what it does but in how it does it,” said Stillman. “You see the hybrid’s mind is directly linked to the dark matter unit by this connection here,” a yellow line appeared connecting the red spherical mass to another point on the diagram where an overlay of the hybrid had appeared. “Now I once saw a woman in a seizure induced by exposure to dark matter. Not only that but the results of her seizure nearly brought down a rock face.”
“You intend to set off a chain reaction,” said the Dalek.
“Exactly,” said Stillman with some satisfaction. “If we could find a way of destabilising the link between these two you could set off a destructive feed back mechanism that would cause the Mark V to explode. Now all we need is the means to do that.”
“Well nice theory, but how do you propose we make this happen?” asked Torpes. “And we haven’t even considered the issue of the lateral shielding…”
“But that is where your wrong,” said Stillman. “You see the shielding is designed to primarily disperse high energy blasts from weapons fire. Now if we were to aim something at it, which wasn’t a weapon but could be used to induce an amplification in brain activity.” He turned to the Red Dalek. “Something like the quantum lasers you use in your Psionic probes.”
The Section Leader was unconvinced: “Your ideas will be taken into, consideration. But the risks of delay are too great. You will proceed with the original plan and set the Dalekanium explosives.”
“Too risky!” spluttered Stillman. “Too risky for you and sod the poor workers if they get killed in the blast!”
“Only Dalek life matters!” said the Section Leader. “And the longer we delay the greater the risk to the Dalek species!”
Stillman was livid: “Well it looks like we are at cross purposes then!”
Before the Section Leader could answer an alarm sounded. A grey Dalek entered the room again: “Section Leader, there has been a disturbance in the holding bays!”
“Holding bays?” repeated Stillman. He thought of Jane down amongst all those prisoners.
The Section Leader was furious: “You will not concern yourself with Dalek business!”
“That’s a bit rich coming from you!” snapped Stillman.
“Silence!”
“Blow up the factory he says,” said Stillman to the puzzled underling. “One thing one minute another the next.”
“Silence!” bellowed the Dalek. “You will return to the factory now!”
Stillman saluted him with his arms stuck out like a Dalek’s: “I obey!”
As he and Torpes were ushered back to the time tunnel they could see that the Dalek Intelligence building was in uproar with squads of Daleks swishing down the corridors in all directions as the klaxon continued to sound.
“That went well,” said Torpes mordantly.
“Wonder what all the noise is about?” asked Stillman as they entered the wormhole.
Some time earlier, deep in the bowels of Dalek Intelligence, Forrester was being escorted to his cell amongst the thousands of time-warped occupants of those levels.
“I really can’t see why this is necessary,” he remonstrated with his guard. “After all, have I not given you all my undivided loyalty?”
“You will be silent,” his guard said in grating tones. He emphasised the point by giving Forrester a gentle shove with its sucker arm.
“No need to get physical!” said Forrester.
“Move!” insisted the Dalek.
“Very well,” muttered Forrester. “This reminds me of the time they court-martialled me on Oxy Minor, some years back now. Forrester, they said, you can either work for us, or face a dishonourable discharge and loss of pension rights. So I agreed of course…”
“Halt! We have reached your holding bay,” said the Dalek, stopping outside a bare empty room. It deactivated the time shield from the outside before gesturing to Forrester. “Move into the cell, now!”
Muttering to himself Forrester entered the small room: “This is a big mistake I tell you,” he said finally turning to face the Dalek. The machine creature wasn’t listening; instead it operated the machinery with its sucker arm.
Then all the lights went dead.
Pandemonium erupted and the Dalek was screaming about a power failure as thousands of human statues came back to life and added their own wails of surprise and fear to the chaos. “Emergency! Emergency! Break out in progress! Request immediate assistance! Emergency!”
Straining to see in the gloom Forrester thought he caught a gleam of metal. The Dalek on the other hand was equipped with night vision and so was perfectly able to see the human prisoners cautiously leaving their cells and advancing down the landing. “Get back!” it called. “Get back into your cells!” The gun stick flared into life, instantly killing a pair of hostages.
The light enabled Forrester to get his target, with lightening reflexes he grabbed hold of the gun stick and squeezed with every ounce of pressure he could bring to bare.
“Stop! Let go of me!” squealed the Dalek, desperately trying to wrest his gun arm from the iron-grip. But Forrester was himself a machine creature and possessed strength to match twenty men. With a great heave he wrenched the gun stick from the Dalek’s casing. “Under attack! Under attack!”
Turning to face the shadows in the corridor Forrester slung the Dalek’s gun stick in the direction of the prisoners: “It can’t hurt you now! You can kill it and get out of here!”
With these words there was a roar of triumph and a score of the braver prisoners who’d seen the gun stick for themselves surged forward. Within minutes they had overwhelmed the Dalek guard who continued to scream out pitifully as they kick and jabbed at it’s casing, venting years of pent up rage and frustration on this solitary tyrant. As this was happening the other prisoners were running past in their hundreds, eager to escape this hellish temporal gulag. Then one of the prisoners found a large rock, which they used to smash the Dalek’s eyestalk, and eventually succeeded in forcing open it’s casing. As they wrenched the mutant from its life support systems it continued to scream at them defiantly.
“You will all die!” were its last words as the increasing frantic mob stamped it into oblivion. By now Forrester was long gone, his priorities were of far greater importance than the destruction of a token solitary Dalek.
The Section Leader automatically suspected Forrester has being behind the break out down below. Coincidence did not exist for Daleks in the same way as it does for human beings. To this end he decided to have another look at the genetic make up of the Forrester replicant. An obliging computer displayed the molecular structure in three dimensions. The Dalek was no geneticist but it recognized that this was no ordinary replicant.
“Bring up a scan of Forrester’s DNA before he was replicated.”
Another image of a very similar looking DNA molecule appeared.
“Now merge the images,” said the Section Leader. The two images moved together until they overlay each other perfectly. “There are no discrepancies, the replicant is a perfect copy!” This was a shocking discovery, for normally there would be some modifications in a replicant that would enable its thoughts and behaviour to be limited to a degree by the imperative urge to obey. This duplication was perfect. “Get me Invidious!” the Red Dalek called to its underlings.
“I obey!”
“And find me a Dalek bio technician,” said the Section Leader. “This human’s DNA cannot be normal!”
A general alert was issued regarding Forrester. He was to be caught and brought in for examination and quite possibly dissection.
The Dalek bio technician arrived: “Examine this sequence and report any abnormalities to me!” commanded the Section Leader.
“I obey!”
Another Dalek entered the room: “Section Leader we have been unable to contact Dr. Invidious.”
“Then dispatch a squad to his laboratory,” thundered the Section Leader, “he is to be brought here immediately. If he resists he is to be exterminated!”
“I obey!”
The Dalek Bio technician had finished a preliminary scan of Forrester’s DNA.
“Report!”
“The human being called Forrester and his replicant share a completely identical genetic structure,” the Dalek began. “The structure of the DNA includes three extra nucleotides indicating that the original human was synthetic or at least partly synthetic in origin.”
Although Daleks are not given to feelings of remorse or self-pity, they do have the capacity to understand failure. Now the Red Dalek felt that pang of failure. The human beings, from the very moment Forrester had arrived for interrogation, had outwitted him.
“This is the Head of Dalek Intelligence speaking, a rogue replicant is at large within the vicinity of this building. Both audiovisual and biometric scans are being transmitted on all frequencies. All Dalek Patrols are to locate and destroy this individual. Repeat this is a priority transmission from the Head of Dalek Intelligence…”