As they entered the Andromeda Morrison and the Dalek stopped outside the bridge. The Dalek turned to Morrison: “Remain here while I see the Emperor,” it said.
“Wait!” exclaimed Morrison. He reverted to his normal form.
“Intruder! Emergency!” the Dalek cried. However it was too late, Morrison was already merging with it on a subatomic level. Within a few minutes its mind belonged to him. “Cancel emergency!” he said.
Now the combined Morrison/Dalek symbiotic life form reported to the bridge for duty.
Hecotle came down to see for himself what all the commotion was about. He found his guards strangely rooted to the spot, a peculiar human child and a crowd of several hundred human beings approaching the ship.
“Your weapons will not work here,” said the child. Hecotle quickly checked his blaster. The girl was right; the power levels were at zero.
“What do you want?” he asked with a grimace.
Olsen stepped from behind his daughter: “We want safe passage out of here. You Brigands have profited from this place for long enough, now you can pay back some of that blood money by helping some slaves to escape!”
“The Brigands do not respond to threats!”
“You do not understand,” said Charley. “You do not understand the true nature of this place because your mind is crowded with hatred of the race who destroyed your home world.”
The Vanid glowed redder than ever at this: “Get out of my mind you little freak!”
Undaunted Charley put out a hand to touch the alien: “You will understand! You must understand, otherwise the cycle will continue!”
The Vanid was about to swipe here away with his fist when something very strange happened. He seemed to be hauled out of his body and found that his life-energy was being taken by the girl to another place altogether. A place of suffering and pain, a world in the last stages of destruction by a vicious alien power: "Vanitos."
“This was your home world five centuries ago, a world you never knew, and the one you blame the humans for the destruction of.”
“Human filth!”
The scene changed rapidly to that of another desolated planet, this time the humans were the victims: Hecotle smiled.
“This was Earth in the mid 22nd Century,” she explained, “just after the Dalek Invasion.”
“Good,” said Hecotle, “you don’t know how much pleasure it gives me to see humans suffering!”
“But these humans aren’t the ones who destroyed your home world,” said Charley, “they ain’t due to be born for another three hundred years.”
“So? What is your point?”
Charley sighed: “The point is, can’t you see a pattern here? The Daleks destroy the humans; the humans destroy the Vanids. The Vanids enslave the humans to sell to the Daleks. Can’t you see a pattern?”
“Conquest and subjugation, the laws of survival,” suggested the Vanid.
“Survival? Is that what you’d call it?” asked Charlotte. The scene changed to that of yet another scarred battlefield in yet another war.
“Where are we now?” asked Hecotle.
“Skaro, the planet of the Daleks,” said Charlotte. “Where it all began.”
“Keep running its catching up with us!” shouted Oscar.
“I don’t think I can take much more of this!” screamed Jane.
“We haven’t any choice!” spluttered Stillman; his words echoing down the tunnel. When the Mark V Daleks broke into their factory through the lower levels no one had been prepared. This was the point that Forrester had chosen to tell them that the time-tunnel they used for their secret meetings with the Daleks was actually known to the other side. Thousands of the factory workers had died when they broke in, Torpes and Lemuel amongst them…
“I think we’ve lost it,” said Oscar. They all stopped, Jane was panting from exhaustion and clutching her stomach. “Sh! Listen!”
Jane tried hard to control her panting. Then they heard it again, the sound of an angry hornet trapped in a bottle. “It’s coming back!”
This time they heard the Dalek’s voice added to the cacophony: “Stay where you are! Do not move!”
(Stillman often wondered why the Daleks used so many redundant words, obviously staying where you were involved not moving; maybe the Daleks were so superior they felt lower creatures needed things spelling out to them?)
“All right Dalek, you win!” shouted Oscar.
“What? Are you mad?” said Stillman.
“Trust me!”
Stillman and Horowitz hid as Oscar approached the flying Dalek: “Where are your companions?” asked the machine-creature.
“I don’t know,” said Oscar. “They ran off and left me.”
The creature moved closer to inspect its quarry. Oscar clutched the tiny nugget of Dalekanium in his hand: “That’s it, just a little closer!”
“You are lying!” barked the Dalek. “Exterminate!”
Before the Dalek could fire Oscar had ducked down and charged; he wrestled with the Dalek furiously as it tried to aim its gun stick. Slapping the Dalekanium on the creature’s head casing the force of the impact was enough to set off the volatile substance. A fantastic flash engulfed both man and machine as the explosive detonated.
Stillman looked up from his hiding place; there was nothing to see of Oscar, but the Dalek was lying on the ground, its casing burnt to a cinder. Heat still radiated from the blasted metal. “He sacrificed himself for us!” he exclaimed. “The stupid, mad bastard killed himself.”
“I thought Forrester controlled the Dalekanium?” asked Jane, coughing as she breathed in the smoke.
“No, he didn’t really, we had a bit spare,” said Stillman. “Not that it did him much good anyway, since the Daleks were blocking the ignition signal!”
“Do you think he knew that all along?”
Stillman shook his head, trying to block out the sound of the screams that still reverberated in his head.
“I don’t know. Lets see if there is anything left of Oscar,” he moved toward the machine, not sure if he was ready for what could be there. The sour whiff of burning flesh came from the wreckage. The wall was coated with blood and torn pieces of rag; Stillman felt he was going to be sick. Then he looked at the wreck again. Something was moving in there.
“Simon, look!” called Horowitz. He turned to see a bloody head emerge from the Dalek casing, propelling itself upwards with muscular tentacles.
“Run!” shouted Stillman.
The Supreme Dalek called the Emperor on his flagship from the asteroid’s surface: “The human rebellion has been crushed and all Mark III Daleks have been exterminated!”
“Excellent!” crowed the Emperor. “Have all Mark V Daleks report to disembarkation points immediately!”
“I obey!”
Since he had hijacked the Dalek to serve as a disguise Morrison had been able to glean a lot more of the Emperor’s plans. The entire Mark V project was just one part of a grand scheme involving the mining of dark matter on the galactic rim. The Daleks had been busy using the exotic energy released from the dark matter to construct a network of hyperspace channels that encircled the Galaxy and came back to New Skaro. Along the path of this interstellar expressway they had place a series of gates at various strategic points in the Milky Way.
“Prepare fleet for wormhole insertion!”
However the real genius of the scheme lay in the fact that all the exit points of the hyperspace network were temporally in sync; this meant that whereever the fleet decided to strike it would always be at the same time. Thus it was perfectly possible for the Daleks to establish multiple bridgeheads at the same time. The Milky Way would not know what had hit it!
“Transfer in two thirty rels and counting!”
In order to stop anybody from using this expressway there were a complex series of codes and safeguards around the temporal gates. Morrison’s duties involved him in initiating the correct sequences into the computer to access these gates, which as the fleet needed to enter the network as one unit were centralised on the flagship. The nanites that constituted much of what was left of Morrison were thrilled with the prospect of so much new information to digest.

They paused to catch their breath after five minutes legging it down the tunnel. “Is it still behind us?” asked Stillman.
“I don’t know,” said Jane, “I wasn’t watching I just kept going as fast as possible!”
Stillman looked back down the tunnel, but could see nothing in the pitch-blackness; the air whooshed through the empty expanse with a melancholy lament.
“We can’t stay here long…” he began, but Jane interrupted him.
“Sh!”
“What?” he hated it when people told him to shush.
“Listen,” she said. They could hear the drip-drip of accumulated moisture dropping from the ceiling further down, but just over that was another pitter-patter sound more intermittent and irregular. As if someone was drumming his or her fingers on a great hollow chest. Jane shuddered in the darkness.
“I think it’s tracking us!” she whispered urgently to Stillman.
“Right,” he said, his eyes bulging with terror. “When I say, quietly start moving that way,” he nodded further into the blackness. She reluctantly agreed. “Now,” he said at last. They began to creep off, but they had barely got more than five yards when they heard the drumming sound recommence, louder now and bearing down on them from above. “Run!” he shouted. They both bolted further into the darkness, a stitch at Stillman’s side forgotten in the urgency of getting as far away as possible. Suddenly the drumming stopped.
“Simon look out!”
He just had enough time to see something detach itself from the ceiling when he was thrown to the ground with incredible force. Something heavy and cold had wrapped itself around his neck; there was a salty, acrid smell that stung his nostrils and above it all an insane squealing that echoed from the tunnel walls.
Jane was beating and clawing at the basketball-sized object that clung to his shoulders, the tentacle around his neck tightened its grip.
“Get off him you bastard!” screamed Jane hitting the creature with all her strength. This only made things worse as the hybrid decided to sink its teeth into Stillman’s shoulder.
“Ah! Christ it’s eating me! AH!”
“Oh Stillman you really are such a whinge!”
Jane turned to see Forrester approaching from the other end of the tunnel, guiding a Dalek hoverbout down to rest near where Stillman continued to struggle with the hybrid. He hauled what looked like a large medical bag out of the hoverbout and produced a phial of grey metallic liquid.
“Nanobots from the factory,” said Forrester.
“AH! Hurry for Gods sake!” screamed Stillman as the creature took another chunk out of his neck.
“You’ve been back to the factory, but what of the Daleks?” asked Jane.
“They’ve all gone I’m afraid,” said Forrester grimly, he loaded up a syringe with the ampoule of nanobots.
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Not for me, for me it means I’ve failed,” he said. “Now try and hold still Mr. Hybrid, if you please.” He squeezed a syringe full of nanobots into the mottled skin. “Should be nice and dead soon.”
“Who? Me or the hybrid?” muttered Stillman. The creature was screaming louder now as the nanobots ate it from the inside. Stillman felt the creature shrivelling around him, the weight eased on his shoulders and the dried husk of the hybrid fell away with a dull thud. Shaking uncontrollably Stillman tried to get up, only to collapse straight away.
“We need to get those wounds seen to,” said Forrester, running back to the hoverbout. As he rummaged around for bandages and dressing, which he’d also pilfered from the factory, Stillman decided to quiz him about his last remarks.
“So the Daleks are really all gone?”
“Yep.”
“Including the Mark III’s?”
“They’re all dead, it’s the Mark V’s who’ve left.”
“And why is that a bad thing again?”
“Because they are more than likely on their way to conquer our galaxy, that’s why, now hold still, this might sting a little…”
The strange tableau that occurred on the ramps of the Brigand ship had led to a major change in fortunes for the miners and for the Vanid Captain. Hecotle maintained afterwards that the only thing the human girl Charlotte Olsen had opened his mind to be how foolish he had been to trust the Daleks in the first place. Those who were also there at the time gave a different account and explain how the former Brigand Captain went out of his way to accommodate the five hundred human survivors aboard his deep space freighter. He let them stay in his stasis pods, the same ones that had brought numerous cargoes of human beings to New Skaro in the past.
Marie found Charlotte staring up at the sky. “The Daleks are all gone,” she announced cheerfully.
“No their not,” said Charley pointing upwards. “They’re out there.”
“In space?”
“Yes, a whole fleet of them.”
“Oh, right,” said Marie, not sure she wanted to know. “How do you know all this Charley?”
“Because he speaks to me in my mind.”
“He?”
“Oh, do I have to explain everything!” snapped Charley. “Morrison, the one who nearly killed us earlier on.”
“Him?”
“Yes, it’s ok, he doesn’t want to hurt us anymore,” explained Charley. “He says he is sorry that he did what he did.”
“Well, er, that’s nice to know,” said Marie. “And he is with the Daleks now.”
“Yes, but he is hiding from them,” said Charlotte. “He just wanted to say goodbye to everybody, for he is off on a long journey, so he tells me.”
The conversation was cut off by a familiar haunting sound reverberating from above. Marie looked up into the darkening sky.
“That’s a hoverbout!” called Olsen. “Everyone take cover!”
Those who could darted for the safety of the Brigand ship; only Olsen and Hecotle stood out the open to meet whatever was coming down in the hover bout. “That doesn’t look like a Dalek,” said the Vanid.
“No, hey I recognise that one!” said Olsen excitably. He ran towards the now grounded hover bout and saw that it was crewed by a woman and two men. “Stillman! I thought you were dead!”
“Nearly but not quite,” said Stillman. “Who’s your tall friend?”
Hecotle grunted disapprovingly: “You know these people?”
“Well I know Stillman, and if he can vouch for the others than that is good enough for me.”
The Vanid looked to the latest three additions to his cargo and did a quick bit of mental arithmetic: “Extra two hundred kilos at least, I’d say,” he muttered darkly.
Jane and Marie were reunited as well, more joyful at the sight of each other now that they were free than they ever were in Dalek captivity.
“But where are the Daleks?” asked Hecotle impatiently.
“Sh!” hissed Charlotte. “Morrison is speaking to me again!”
Out in the depths of space the greatest Dalek Fleet ever assembled prepared to enter the hyperspace conduit. A hundred and one ships, the hundred being basically flying warehouses carrying a thousand Daleks each. The one hundred and first was the Andromeda, now converted to run on Dalek technology and flagship home of the supreme commander. The Golden Emperor addressed his host before they set off:
“Daleks of New Skaro, today witnessed the end of one chapter and the beginning of another in Dalek History!” He paused impressively. “Today we set out on a new mission in which we will capture bridge heads in the Milky Way Galaxy. We shall triumph and secure a noose around the Galaxy’s neck. Before long all shall come under Dalek Rule!”
There were loud spontaneous cheers from all the ships and then the final countdown began for transfer to hyperspace:
“Wormhole insertion in ten microrels and counting,” said the Supreme Dalek.
Outside a glowing shield engulfed all of the fleet, and before the prow of the Andromeda a whirling vortex began to spin and enlarge. “Three, two, one…now!”
The stars went out as the ships entered the hyperspace expressway.
“Closing first gate,” said the Supreme Dalek. “Now on route to second gate!”
Without warning all the instrument panels and the view screen went dead, the Emperor fumed as emergency lighting went on.
“Report!”
“Major systems failure, not possible to calculate repercussions, all control functions are locked out!”
The view screen lit up to reveal an image of Morrison, but this time it was of Morrison how he was before the Daleks had started their experiments on him.
“Who are you?” demanded the Emperor.
Morrison chuckled: “First Mate Jack Morrison, lately of this ship as it happens,” he said breezily. “I’m the one you wanted dead remember?”
“The Metanoid!”
“That’s right. You know I think I finally understood what old Invidious was up to. You see I’m a bit like you dear emperor, I too am no longer confined to one body, to one state of being,” he smiled wryly. “Oh and by the way, before you start trying to project your evil little mind anywhere, just forget it. That was one of the first things I shut down!”
The Emperor barked urgently to the Supreme Dalek: “Find this creature! It must be destroyed!”
“Oh, you really haven’t grasped the bit about embodiment yet, have you old thing?”
Morrison’s mocking tone grated with the Emperor: “Explain!”
“I’m everywhere and nowhere Golden One,” said Morrison. “I’m in your computers, in your electrical systems, in you sometimes. I’ve shut off your main computer and scrambled all the codes.”
“The codes! But the conduit gates!”
“Will be closed to you, I know,” said Morrison. “And me as well, I made extra sure of that by completely erasing the knowledge of what the codes were before I decided to speak to you. Now we will all drift happily along together in hyperspace, alone together, forever and ever and ever…”
“Forever and ever and ever,” said Charley. “He’s gone now, though he sends his regards to someone called Ben.”
“Right!” sneered Forrester. “Well for those of you who wish to believe in fairy tales that’s all very well and good. But I need hard evidence, not some dreamy drivel!” This last incensed Olsen.
“Oi! Don’t say that about my daughter!”
Stillman was sweating profusely at this point; the Vanid surgeon on the Brigand ship had given him a shot of antibiotics. He wasn’t sure the alien medicine was quite compatible with his metabolism. “How can you say that? You know what this, this Invicious…”
“Invidious!”
“Right, Invidious is capable of, good god you said you were something to do with his work yourself!”
Forrester grimaced: “Don’t remind me, please!”
Hecotle was confused: “So, are the Daleks destroyed or what?”
No one cared to venture an opinion either way. Eventually most agreed that the only way they would know for sure was if the Daleks were to invade. Otherwise, it was just a matter of wait and see.
Several days were to pass before the Brigand ship was ready to disembark; partly this was because Hecotle’s crew insisted on stripping the place bare of Dalek technology in order to recuperate costs. There was precious little of that to be found in the dead empty asteroid. Fires burned for days where the Daleks had fought the last terrifying battle against each other. They also made a grim discovery on the third day when they found the Dalek charnel pits, still full from the massacre in the central plaza.
Eventually when it came time to leave Forrester had an announcement to make.
“You can’t be serious,” said Stillman.
The Captain scratched his nose as he answered: “I’ve never been more serious in my life sir.”
“But you can’t honestly want to stay here? In this desolate empty coffin of a place!”
Forrester sighed: “Simon, this is probably the last time we will speak together you and I. Next time we meet, if that ever happens I will have no memory of this event.”
“But…”
“I will have no memory of this event because shortly after my handlers catch up with me, and after they have judged I have been sufficiently debriefed they will wipe my memory clean and give me new ones,” he smiled. “I don’t even know if I am or was Benjamin Forrester late of the Deep Space Mining Corps, etc, etc. All I know is that if they are willing to do that to one of their own, what I might ask are they going to do with a civilian in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
Stillman felt a chill go through him: “I see what you mean!”
“Do you?” asked Forrester. “Well, maybe there’s hope for you yet.”
Stillman caught up with Orpheus just before they left. “I still can’t believe that I’m actually leaving this place,” said the Psyman as they stood on the landing bay for the last time. “All those years of my life spent toiling away for the Daleks. It’s going to be scary facing normality after all that.”
“Scary? After this place?” said Stillman. “So are you going into stasis with the others?”
“As long as someone keeps an eye on the brigands!” laughed Orpheus. “Yes, very happy to, not keen on space flight really. What about yourself?”
“I think I might stay awake for a bit longer,” muttered Stillman. “I have some things to sort out.”
“With Jane?”
“Yes, with Jane.”
“Not good then?”
“I don’t know,” said Stillman. “You’re the psychic, perhaps you can tell me?”
When they were under way Simon found Jane on one of the upper levels in an observation dome. Once more they found themselves looking out on a vast field of rocks in all directions. Stillman now felt very differently about these same rocks he’d happily derided barely a few months before. Jane was certainly changed by the event, drawn and ashen faced. Her hair had turned very grey, as had his to a certain degree, but it was in the eyes that one could see it the most. The echo of fear that stayed long after all danger was over
 “How are you?”
She laughed: “Subtle as ever eh, Stillman?”
“Using last names is my prerogative,” he said.
“Says who?”
“Says me!” his grin faded rapidly when he saw his efforts to jolly her up weren’t working. “We’ve a lot to talk about…”
“Yes.”
“About us, about Rupert, about the baby…”
“Yes, yes, yes!” snapped Horowitz. “It can’t be all worked out now.”
“I know.”
“We need time… things are different…I don’t even know how to begin processing the last month,” she stuttered. “I’d go into Stasis only I’m afraid I’ll have dreams!”
“That’s very rare,” said Stillman. “Besides, dreaming might not be a bad thing.”
“Not if you end up dreaming about someone’s dead body draped over yours for three months without hope of waking up!”
Stillman flushed: “I’m sorry, maybe I should just go,” he went to leave the room.
“No, please stay, I wasn’t trying to drive you out,” she was tugging at him now, making him sit down beside her. He awkwardly tried to meet her gaze, but found it hard to concentrate.
Horowitz took his hand in hers and smiled: “At least we’re still alive, eh?”
“Yes,” he said, holding her hand tightly in hers, the skin felt dry and warm to the touch. It had been so long, too long.
Hecotle calling them on the com link interrupted their conversation: “We’re getting a transmission,” he said.
“From who?” asked Stillman.
“Your friend, I’ll patch it through.”
Forrester’s face appeared on the screen, this seemed to be a pre-recorded message as there was no indication he could see them. His demeanour was of someone delivering their last will and testimony:
“…Finally to all those who have lost their loved ones on this mission I send my sincerest regrets and the hope that you find it in your hearts to forgive me. That applies to Stillman and Horowitz too, I hope you understand that I was as much a pawn in this great game as yourselves.”
Stillman looked at Horowitz to find his anxiety mirrored in her face.
“Lastly, to my employers I say this. The mission was accomplished at great cost both in terms of lives and resources. I hope that the results are of satisfaction to you and that you understand how much we tried, we poor little pawns in your great game. If however it doesn’t come up to scratch than I only have three words to say- go-to-hell!”
The screen went blank at about the same time that the rear observation port lit up. Stillman and Horowitz turned to see the asteroid going nova; shortly afterwards the ship was buffeted by shock waves as the fabric of space wobbled with the force of the explosion.
“He must have set off the Dalek’s artificial sun,” said Stillman. “I guess I should have known when he insisted on staying.”
“But why? Was he consumed by guilt or something?”
Stillman shrugged; the nova was condensing out into a multicoloured cloud as he watched. “That or maybe he was just fed up of being a ‘biological weapon’ as he once told me.”
“I guess we’ll never know,” said Horowitz.

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