The door swished nosily aside as Stillman entered the regenerative chambers. He was in a long dark hall down the middle of which ran a double row of simple metal cots. On each of these cots lay a human being, connected by an intricate mesh of wires and tubes to a monitoring station at the head of the bed. Finely tuned instruments measured the sleeping humanoids’ heart rate and level of cerebral activity.
Oscar raced into the room behind him, bringing with him the roar of gunfire from the rest of the factory. “We’ve captured A and C Blocks,” he said breathlessly. He caught sight of where Stillman was gazing. “The robomen,” he said. “You know that we have no choice in this matter, Simon?”
“I know, I know,” muttered Stillman. “I just hate the idea of killing someone in their sleep.”
Oscar approached one of the reclining forms on the bench: “These creatures are no longer human,” he said, drawing a machete from a belt around his waist. “We will be doing them a favour, believe me.”
“B-but, the machete?” asked Stillman.
“We have to separate them from their central nervous system otherwise they can be reactivated by remote control.”
Stillman turned green: “Bloody hell!”
Oscar tested the weight of the blade in his hand. “You can always stay outside if you haven’t the stomach for it?”
Stillman shook his head: “No, no, I can’t leave this to you. What you going to do if one of them wakes up? No, lets just get on with it.”
“Very well,” said Oscar. He grabbed some of the life support tubes connected to the first roboman and raised the machete above his head. To Stillman’s horror he next brought it down in a great arc separating the head from the body at the second neck vertebra.
Luton crouched in the darkness on one of the lower levels of the reprocessing plant. Above him he could hear the grating tones of the Daleks and the piercing shrieks of the survivors as they were roasted alive by their death rays. He’d never seen Daleks like that before, but they seemed to act very much the same. They had simply swooped out of the sky exterminating everything in sight, whether hostage or rebel worker. All the same to them he thought.
“Level nine clear,” he heard a voice drone. “Now proceeding to level twelve.”
Sounds like it's time to move on again, he thought to himself grimly. He had given up any illusion of getting away, but he had one last act of defiance in store for the Daleks. Down in the lower levels he hoped to find what he was looking for, the trick would be staying alive long enough to get there.
The last of the vomit hit the toilet bowl as Stillman finished puking. That had been the biggest nightmare in his entire life. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this heroic revolutionary stuff after all.
He heard a polite cough behind him and Oscar appeared at the cubicle door. He looked with disgust at Stillman. “You done?” he asked.
Stillman nodded. “Yeah, I’m done.” He hauled himself from the rim of the bowl and stabbed the flush control with a shaky forefinger. He wobbled over to a nearby sink and began dowsing his face with water, washing the acrid taste of sick from his mouth.
“We’ve got Jenkins and the surviving guards locked in the recycling room on the lower levels,” murmured Oscar. “Should we kill them now? Save a lot of worry later on.”
“I’m not a butcher,” said Stillman. “Bad enough that we should have to kill the robomen, certainly not cognizant human beings!”
Oscar grunted: “We are at war Simon, we have no time for such sentimental gestures.”
“Sentimental gestures?” Stillman shook his head in dismay. “As long as they’re locked up securely they present no risk to us, so I’d appreciate it if you kept them alive for now,” he dried his hands and looked at as his comrade in arms grimly.
“Understood,” said Oscar.
“Have the charges been put in place?”
“Yes and your friend is waiting up on the roof for you.”
Stillman nodded and made for the door of the shower block. “Yes, I must see how Lemuel’s getting on with that laser. Let’s hope that it works. Otherwise we’re in for a very short revolution.”
The processing plant was eerily silent following the Dalek assault. Dead miners lay here and there amongst the smouldering wreckage. A group of Mark V reported to their commander.
“All resistance has been neutralised. Impairment of operating systems due to dark matter radiation was minimal.”
“Excellent!” barked the commander. “Have the smelting works been damaged in the attack?”
“Negative, dark matter processing can proceed once fresh labour supplies are found.”
“We will take slave workers from the mines to complete the back-log in ore processing,” said the commander. “All Daleks are to report here to disembark for the mines immediately!”
“I obey.”

As the order went round the camp for all the Daleks to assemble, deep in the smelting works two Mark V Daleks made a fateful discovery.
“Report to the commander immediately! Level 9 emergency! Repeat level 9 emergency!”
Luton lay on the ground near the smelting furnace, his thumb poised over the detonator. Several sticks of Dalekanium were strapped to his sides, several more on the furnace itself.
“Well guys, it’s been a gas!”
The force of the explosion was felt several kilometres away at the mines.
“Looks like Luton finally got his death wish,” sighed Olsen as a great fireball raised in the distance carrying with it a dark mushroom cloud of soot and dust. He focussed his binoculars on the stem of the mushroom.
“Tell everybody to run to cover!” he shouted. “They’re coming out of the fire!”
In the distance the insect murmur of the Daleks’ anti-gravity engines competed with the echoing rumble of the explosions that still tore through the processing plant. As the noise got louder the miners ran in panic down into the shafts, taking their chances with the rocks rather than the Daleks.
Olsen though had few illusions left about what would save them. He turned to his daughter and offered his apologies once more: “I’m sorry sweetheart, it looks like our reunion will be just fleeting.”
“That’s okay Dad, you did your best,” said Charley.
However, before the swarm of remaining Daleks were within a half-kilometre from the base, new orders arrived from New Skaro Central. The miners saw the machine creatures come to a complete stop and confer briefly, before shooting off in the direction of the Dalek city.
“They’ve called it off!” exclaimed Orpheus. “Do you think that is a retreat?”
“I don’t know,” said Olsen. “I doubt it somehow, they must have something more urgent to deal with. Either way, we don’t want to be here when they come back.”
“But where will we go?” asked the psychic.
“Your not much of a telepath are you Orpheus?” said Olsen. “There’s a ship waiting there,” he said pointing in the direction of the Dalek City. “Didn’t see it leave last night so presumably its still on the tarmac waiting to get off.”
“Tarmac?”
“Sorry, just an old turn of phrase,” said the Overseer. Turning to his people he addressed them through cupped hands. “Listen everyone; this is the last time I address you as your Overseer,” he saw a ripple of shock leap from one face to another. “From now on we are free people and we make our own choices. And the first choice is to live!” Olsen couldn’t get any further as his voice was drowned out in a tumultuous roar from the miners.
Olsen smiled with satisfaction and raised his voice over the noise: “Everybody report to the train platform immediately, we have an engagement in Dalek City!”
On the roof of the factory, power cables and wires snaked around a bizarre set-up involving a Psionic generator and two parabolic dishes. Lemuel looked at this lash up with great trepidation. So much was depending on him and the taciturn tech Arnolds. He hoped that against all odds this thing would work.
Stillman arrived to see how he was doing. “What are those dishes for?” he asked.
“Ah, they’re a result of our initial tests on the Mark V shielding,” Lemuel explained as he frantically moved from one display to another adjusting the power readings. “We discovered that a highly focussed beam of energy, such as a laser was always repelled by the shielding. However, we have now set up a wave broadcaster instead, which will bath the area in Psionic radiation.”
“And that will work as well as the laser?”
“Well, it worked in the laboratory, six times out of ten,” confessed Lemuel.
Stillman didn’t like the sound of this, but with the silhouettes of the Mark V on the horizon he didn’t see much choice: “Places everybody! Here they come!”
They rushed for cover as in the distance the Daleks cleared the cooling towers and hovered towards them. Stillman’s heart pounded in his chest as he crouched down next to Lemuel.
“What’s to stop them just blowing us to kingdom come?” he asked nervously. “Well,” said Lemuel, adjusting the angle of the parabolic dishes from a hand held console. “Thankfully Arnold has wired up a shield generator from some odds and ends we had lying about. It should protect the Psionic wave generator and its operator, but will leave the rest of the roof without cover.”
Stillman nodded, he could see that many of the workers had now armed themselves with an assortment of weaponry, including Dalek gun-sticks, which had their own portable power supplies. Good enough for ten shots at least. Stillman bit his lower lip anxiously as he watched the silhouettes grow larger. He was sure he could hear the droning of their anti-gravity motors now.
“Beginning power-up of Psionic generator,” said Lemuel.
“Are they in range yet?” queried Stillman, unable to take his eyes from the swarm of Daleks
“Just about,” said Lemuel, holding his hand on a huge red switch. “You might feel a little weird when this kicks in, so just think what it’s doing for the hybrids inside those shells. Right, initiating generator on my mark, uno, dos, and tres. Now!”
The air and the buildings seemed to shudder and wave as the power surged to maximum. All around them a thick smell of ozone emanated from the machinery. The drone of the Dalek engines was drowned out by the crashing crescendo of the generator. The parabolic dishes began to swerve from side to side wobbling the air with greater intensity.
Stillman looked towards the Daleks and found that they seemed to have grown in size enormously. Their grating voices scratched like nails down a blackboard as they promised everyone a swift death. Around him Stillman could see his fighters rooted to the spot like hares caught in the headlamps.
“It’s not working!” he shouted through the impossible din of the generator.
“It just needs a bit longer, trust me!” Lemuel hollered back.
The nearest of the Daleks opened fire on the lash-up, its shot was absorbed by the shields. “Adjusting power levels to compensate!” shouted Arnolds.
“Look at the Daleks!”
Stillman turned to see one of the Daleks spinning out of control in mid-air; moving chaotically it crashed into one of its comrades. Both Daleks ricocheted away from one another, their metallic shells distorted from some internal source. The other five Daleks in the swarm were also affected. “It’s starting to get to them!” yelled Stillman in triumph.
“And just wait until you see what happens next!” exclaimed Lemuel. One of the first Daleks to be affected split down the middle and unpeeled itself before expelling its confused hybrid from its shell. Another seemed to turn inside out and vanish into a dot. Two more just dropped from the sky like stones and a fifth started attacking the remaining two so they had to shot him out of the sky instead. With great difficulty the last two Daleks began to retreat; there was cheering in Stillman’s camp and a few of the less shaken of them tried putting in a few shots from conventional weapons. Only when the Daleks had retreated out of sight did Lemuel dare to power down the generator.
“It works!” he said with more amazement then he cared to make public.
“Well done!” shouted Stillman, still giddy from the Psionic energy. “Now we must get the Supreme Dalek on the phone. It’s time to set our demands!”

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