“Increase power by seventy kilojoules,” said the Section Leader.
“I obey.”
On a platform surrounded by alien machinery the Black Dalek’s outer shell was suffused with an aura of hissing static.
“Life readings are returning to normal,” reported the Dalek technician.
The Black Dalek’s eyestalk and sucker arm twitched and the lights on the head began to flash as it came out of hibernation.
“We must exterminate…we must obliterate…”
The Red Dalek came forward.
“It is time!”
Elsewhere on the asteroid, Invidious stopped to mop his brow with a silk handkerchief. Before him the Emperor’s exposed brain throbbed gently as the electrodes scanned his cerebral cortex.
“How much longer Invidious?”  A deafening voice demanded.
“Soon Emperor, soon,” muttered Invidious, “this is the most delicate part of the entire procedure. One mistake now could lead to permanent damage.”
“I am aware of that,” growled the Emperor. “The future of the Dalek Race is in your hands.”
Invidious looked up: “Yes, the future of the Daleks,” he said. “What did you mean when you told me that the Daleks had a ‘stolen future’?”
The Emperor’s terse response rumbled in his ears: “Concentrate on your work, Doc-tor!”
Invidious mopped his brow again and checked the instruments. He stopped to look at the silk handkerchief. That was strange; he had no idea where he’d got this piece of primitive fabric. There were some inexplicable markings stitched into one of the corners: V.W?
“You looked puzzled Invidious,” observed the Emperor. “Very well, if it will help you concentrate on the task in hand I shall explain. The visitor to Skaro came from another time and another place. He came from a future where the Daleks were on their way to fulfilling their destiny of universal conquest.”
“I see,” said Invidious. “What was he trying to achieve?”
“The destruction of our species at our birth,” growled the Emperor. “He failed, but the effects of his interference were to cripple our subsequent history.”
“That’s monstrous!” exclaimed Invidious. “That’s, totally unethical!”
“By who’s ethics Invidious?” asked the Emperor.
The Red Dalek led the execution squad to Invidious’ laboratory; it consisted of the Black Dalek, two grey underlings and a special weapons unit. These were remote controlled drones that carried heavy weaponry and in this case a specially adapted Psionic Laser.
“Ready to transmat in five microrels,” said the technician Dalek. “Trans-materialisation to co-ordinates Z9-02-0ЏАП. Initiate!”
With a humming whirr the impressive looking death squad faded into nothingness. They materialised in a remote corridor.
“Sensor sweep the area,” said the Red Dalek. “The Emperor must be found!”
The Daleks fanned out along the wide corridor, the special weapons unit bringing up the rear with much clanking on its caterpillar tracks. They did not get far before they ran into opposition. Two Mark V Daleks hovered into view and challenged them.
“Intruder alert!” they barked. “Assistance required!”
The first shots were exchanged, which destroyed one of the grey Daleks instantly. Then the drone was activated and the two Mark V were bathed in waves of Psionic energy. The effect of the Daleks’ weapon was somewhat more rapid than Lemuel’s lash up; the two Mark V swirled out of control and began foaming out of their grills.
“Full power -exterminate them!” barked the Section Leader. With their shields disrupted the Mark V machines were vulnerable to Dalek firepower. A fusillade from the energy weapons reduced them to smouldering wreckage. However the death squad ran into further opposition when they came to a t-junction, this time two groups of Mark V from opposing directions.

As the carnage in the corridors continued the Emperor monitored events from his secret chamber. He called up an image of Invidious; the scientist looked even more drawn and deathly than usual.
“The enemy is at our door, Doctor!” rumbled the Emperor.
“Nearly there now,” said Invidious. “Just uploading the final parts of your personality matrix.”
“Hurry! They will soon be here!”
Outside the execution squad was down to the two section leaders and the special weapons unit. Around them the air was black with the smoke of burning metal and noisy with the groans of the dying creatures inside their shells.
“The Emperor is behind this door,” said the Black Dalek.
“Reinforced tungsten steel,” said the Red Dalek. “Bring the special weapons unit forward!”
In his chamber the dying Emperor mutant watched as the door to his hideaway was reduced to a pool of molten lava. Barely had it cooled when the trundling drone smashed its way through. The two Daleks followed in its wake.
“You dare to threaten the Emperor!”
“You are a traitor to the Dalek species,” said the Red Dalek.
“You have brought abomination down upon us!” added the Black Dalek.
“I have given the Daleks new life and a chance to achieve their greatest ambitions!” the Emperor rumbled.
The execution squad lined up in front of the Emperor, their weapons trained on his exposed flesh.
“No! You are an abomination!”
Without any further ado the Daleks opened fire on the naked, bloated body of the Emperor and the bellows of agony as he roasted alive were a source of great satisfaction to the executioners. Soon it was all over and the Emperor’s body lay still, save for the drip, drip of vital fluids onto the floor.
“Long live the Dalek Republic!” cried the Daleks in unison.
“Death to the Abomination!” grated the Black Dalek. “We must alert the other Section Leaders immediately. Mobilise their detachments. Order Psionic lasers to be issued to all units! The Mark V can be beaten-we shall triumph!”
“We shall triumph!” echoed the Red Section Leader.
A long, threatening, chuckle cut through their celebration.
“Your treachery will cost you everything!”
From the other side of the Emperor’s body the wall slid away to reveal a much larger room. On the far side of this room, stood Invidious, looking both exhausted and nervous as the enemy Daleks advanced. However it was not Invidious they were interested in but the strange golden object that floated a metre off the ground and was now tracking their every movement through its single red eye. Tiny golden limbs twitched fitfully like a newborn baby’s in its mother’s arms.
“I am beyond death now! My consciousness is now free to travel at will and inhabit what ever form of life comes to hand!”
“Nothing is indestructible!” grated the Red Dalek. “All things must die!”
The drone opened fire with the Psionic beam, catching the Emperor head on. The golden body twitched and writhed briefly before the tiny gun stick could be brought to bare: A violent stream of negative energy ripped into the drone’s outer shell and disassociated it at the molecular level. The other two Daleks desperately trained their own guns on the Emperor, only to find that his shielding was perfectly intact. Within minutes they too had joined their dead comrades in this failed assassination attempt.
Invidious crawled out from the shelter of the opposite doorway and inspected the Emperor’s shell. “I’m a bit worried about that Psionic burst, no telling what damage it could do,” he reached out his hand towards an inspection panel on the Emperor’s bulbous upper casing.
To his surprise the Dalek moved away at the last moment and growled at him: “Do not touch me!”
“Emperor?”
At that moment the door where Invidious had sheltered slid open to admit two Mark V Daleks. “Emperor the human beings have seized control of the Dalek production lines.”
“They are working with the Mark III Daleks,” said the Emperor. “All Mark III Daleks are to be exterminated and the rebellion is to be crushed.”
Invidious was shocked at this news: “But Emperor you cannot order the extermination of the original race of Daleks!”
“Do not countermand me!” raged the Emperor, all of its lights flashing at once to vent his fury. The Gold Dalek machine turned on its creator. “I am the master and you are the slave- is that understood?”
The scientist was deeply hurt: “But Emperor when have you ever had cause to doubt me? Please, I have always been loyal.”
“You lie!” growled the Emperor. “Your experiments to create a metanoid are a threat to the Dalek Empire.”
Invidious almost choked when he heard this: “I was only carrying out your orders,” he protested. “To create a superior form of life.”
“To create a superior form of Dalek life,” the Emperor corrected. “Your experimental organism is to be exterminated!”
“No!”
The single red eye focused on Invidious. The scientist trembled as the booming voice of his master rang in his ears. “You continue to defy me after all that we have done!”
“Done?” asked Invidious. “What you have done for me or to me?”
That eye never left his: “Do you remember you asked me who you were?”
“Yes, yes, I remember,” said Invidious. The tiny gloating body moved ever closer, in the background the two Mark V Daleks stood sentinel by the door.
“After the Daleks realised that the visitor had brought about a change in their history they sought in vain for ways to avenge themselves on this Doctor and his race, the Time Lords.”
“Doctor?”
“The one we call, invidious,” rumbled the Emperor darkly.
The Doctor gasped: “Evil…me…but how?”
The Emperor explained: “We continued to try and trap the Doctor by the use of our time-corridor technology. One day we succeeded in pulling a time ship out of the vortex. But we quickly realised that the creature inside was not the Doctor.”
“Another time lord?”
“That is correct. For reasons of his own he wanted rid of the Doctor as well, or so he told us. He delivered to us a device that could pierce the fabric of space time and bring the Doctor into our power.”
Invidious blinked rapidly: “A kind of time-scoop?”
“That is correct. For it wasn’t enough to kill the Doctor once, he had many lives, spread across millennia,” said the Emperor. Invidious tried to move, but the Emperor could pick up even the slightest twitch. If only he had a distraction.
“So did you use it, the time scoop?”
“Skaro was destroyed in a supernova before our plans could be put into action,” said the Emperor, edging even nearer so that his sultry eye was now level with Invidious. “But when we retreated here we were able to use the dark matter energies to complete another version of the time-scoop as you call it. We plucked the Doctor from space time and exterminated him again and again.”
Invidious shuddered as the image of a Dalek gun stick opening fire blocked out everything else. “So you were finally rid of your greatest enemy,” said Invidious, checking the positions of the other two Daleks out of the corner of his eye.
“No! We had been fooled again!” thundered the Emperor. “The other time lord had not told us that as we pulled one incarnation of the Doctor out of space time another one moved into his place, a merely possible Doctor became an actual Doctor!”
Invidious nodded, as if he had expected this answer: “The Novikov self-consistency principle; the fabric of reality does not allow for paradox so the universe tilts somewhat in order to balance itself. I bet you didn’t stop there, did you?”
“No Doctor, we did not. We pulled versions of our enemy out of time again and again and again,” each time he spoke Invidious had an image of a Dalek’s gun muzzle opening up before him. “Gradually we realised that with each incarnation our enemy was becoming less and less powerful.”
Finally Invidious voiced his great dread: “Then…you pulled me out, didn’t you?”
“You were the most pathetic one of them all!” the Dalek seethed. “You begged for your life and offered us anything, anything, in return. We agreed to use you to become the midwife at the birth of a new race of Daleks. Only that way could you atone for the damage you had inflicted on our species!”
“And, did I atone?”
“More than the thousand deaths before you,” grated the Emperor. “Don’t you remember the deal, Doctor?”
Invidious shook his head. “No, but I can imagine,” he said bitterly. “So, what do you have planned for me now? I guess if I’ve died a thousand times already than one more can’t hurt.”
The Emperor soared into the air and looked down on his defeated foe for the last time. “The knowledge you possess is still of use to the Daleks. That will be drained from your head before you die!”
In desperation Invidious tried bolting from the room. The sight of a fleeing enemy inspired an ancient blood lust in the digitised brain of the Emperor.
“Kill him!” he barked at his underlings.
“I obey!” squawked the nearest Dalek, firing a bolt of brilliant white heat at the fleeing Doctor. The scientist was vaporised before he could reach the safety of the doorway.
 His bloodlust spent the Emperor surveyed the wreckage that now littered the site of his metamorphosis. He would have preferred Invidious to live a little longer, to have savoured the agony of his defeat some more. However, it was not to be.
“Order the Imperial Flagship to be ready to leave as soon as possible!”
“I obey,” said the underling, trundling out to execute its duties.

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