PART TWO
 arry’s
desperate voice burst through the sounds made by the rest of the squad:
‘Help us! We’re being slaughtered! Our guns are no good! They’re too
strong!’
Jim saw
the stranger staring at the picture from the surviving camera as he
said in a voice filled with dread, ‘Cybermen,’ The stranger turned to
Jim and said, ‘Get them out of there immediately, they don’t stand a
chance!’
Jim looked towards Dwight who nodded and said, ‘Tell them.’
Jim
flipped on his transmitter and said, ‘Harry, Harry are you there? This
is control to all squad members, pull back, I said pull back!’
Harry’s
voice again cut through the agonised sounds coming from the rest of the
squad. ‘Jim, they’re all around us, there’s so many of them. We can’t
retreat, we’ve got to fight!’
Jim
looked into the eyes of the stranger which seemed to be full of deep
sadness. The stranger said in a chocked voice, ‘Then they’re all dead.’
Harry saw
one of the robots in front of him collapse and he rushed forward to
grab its weapon. All around him his squad were dropping like flies.
They’d barely been engaged with the enemy for a minute and as far as he
could tell the squad of ten had been reduced to himself, Bill Green and
Tom Bailey.
He raised
the alien weapon and pulled what he hoped to be the trigger device. One
of the robots in front of him exploded in a shower of sparks and
collapsed to the rocky ground. He spun around, picking off the robots
with deadly accuracy.
He had
managed to shoot down four quite quickly, when he saw Tom collapsing
from a disrupter blast while one of the aliens lifted George’s body up
into the air with a steely fist. He cried with range and fired shot
after shot after shot.
Harry now
stood out in the open, his thoughts being totally occupied with rage at
the death of his squad, no concern for his own safety entering his
mind. He took out three more of the robots before he felt a blast like
the end of the world smash into his side and the flames of hell wash
over him.
‘Can anyone hear me, is there anyone there?’ screamed Jim staring at the flat-lined
health monitors. George’s camera was still operating showing a picture
of the alien ship and the mechanical monsters walking back towards it.
The picture was partially covered with blood.
Jim felt a
hand on his shoulder and looked up into the sad eyes of Dwight who
slowly shook his head. Jim flipped the radio onto wide band |
and recalled all of the others out scouting the perimeter and only then did he begin to cry.
~~~
 lright
Doctor, what are they?’ Dwight asked, his voice betraying a mix of
panic and rage that his self control had managed to keep from showing on
his face. They stood in a conference room surrounded by the council
members of the colony.The
Doctor opened his mouth to reply as Ace barged into the room. ‘There you
are, Professor. What’s been going on?’ she asked, failing to note the
formality of the environment.
‘Cybermen.’ said the Doctor in a voice filled with hate answering both questions.
‘Cybermen? What are they?’ Dwight asked Ace who simultaneously replied:
‘What - here?’
The
Doctor nodded in reply to Ace’s stunned question whilst saying, ‘The
Cybermen are a race of evil beings. They used to be organic at one point
in their sorry existence but they’ve undergone a process of replacing
almost everything organic in their structure with mechanical parts so
little of the original remains. They are a cold race devoted to logic.
They are devoid of all emotion except for a dark ambition to assimilate
everything else into the Cyber-race or destroy it in the process.’
‘How do we stop them?’ the Commander asked, ‘Why are they here?’
‘In answer to your first
question,’ replied the Doctor, ‘with great difficulty. In answer to your
second, I’d have thought the answer would have been obvious. They
clearly want to mine the tribarium this planet is so rich in themselves
to make their own explosives.’
One of the councillors spoke
up, her dark skin, the Doctor noted, was pale with shock: ‘Dwight, we
need a plan of action. They could attack at any moment.’
‘I know,’ Dwight answered. ‘Doctor?’
The Doctor replied, ‘Now that
they know they’ve been discovered they’re likely to attack immediately.
What defence capabilities has this base?’
‘We’ve got a level two defence shield and then we’ve got the weapons in the armoury.’
‘Well, the defence shield
will only hold them off for a short time with the kind of weapons the
Cybermen possess.’ The Doctor seeming to be thinking out loud, ‘You’d
best show us the armoury.’ he said catching Ace’s arm as he walked
towards the door. |
