The silver saucers of the Dalek fleet engaged the teardrop shaped vessel's SSS fleet and within three seconds almost half the number of ships on either side were glowing chunks of debris. Bodies and bits of bodies were freeze-dried and boiled to cinders in the hard radiation and deathly cold vacuum of space.
Brent Tang, captain of The Beholder, ordered all weapons to target the enemy ship in front of them. Pinky red plasma bolts poured out of the weapons flying at the speed of light at their target.
"It's no good sir, their ship is impervious to our weapons."
"It must be their flagship soldier. All their other ships are vulnerable to our weapons."
"Ahem." The Doctor, standing at the back of the ship's command deck made his presence felt. "Change your weapon frequency to 00.8 milli-hertz may help."
"Who the hell are you? Security we have intruders."
"I am known as the Doctor and these are my friends Grant and Brizon."
"I don't care who the hell you are, mister."
"I'm the most hated enemy of the Daleks. Tell them the Doctor is on this ship and then see how many ships target you for extermination."
"You look more like an idiot than some kind of arch-enemy of the most evil force in the universe."
"I can assure you captain I'm no sort of idiot. Now are you going to change those weapon frequencies or let your crew die?"
Tang gave the order and the greeny blue plasma bolts immediately caused the Dalek ship damage.
"She's breached." Tang exclaimed. "Concentrate all weapons fire on that point."
"Er, Captain." Grant noticed something.
"Not now lad."
"It's quite urgent. On a scale of one to ten this is an eighty seven."
"What is it lad?"
"There's a Dalek ship on collision course with us."
Many things happened at once. The Dalek ship grew ever larger. Tang shouted evasive co-ordinates and the Doctor pulled his two friends off the command deck. The Dalek ship thudded into the SSS ship tearing metal, plastic and flesh into unrecognisable forms. The ship was knocked into the gravitational field of Niured and it began to burn up in the atmosphere. The Beholder was closely followed by the Dalek command ship, which was also badly damaged.
***
Brizon Helmsley groaned. Pain flooded his very core and it meant he was still alive. "Doctor? Grant? Where are you?"
The Doctor smiled at Helmsley. "Ah you're awake then." He was unharmed and helped Helmsley to his feet.
Grant had made a fire and was preparing food for the surviving crew. "Ah you're awake at last. You took a huge chunk of metal to the back but fortunately for modern medicine we were able to repair all the damage."
There was a crackle of static and then the report of one of the scouts came in. "They're moving, towards the camp. Hundreds of them and they're exterminating all life in their path."
***
The defence perimeter was secure and every trooper was ready to defeat the Daleks or make it a last stand.
The Doctor had other ideas. If he could find the TARDIS then they could all escape and that would really annoy the Daleks.
"Come on you two, it has to be under this pile of debris."
The bursts of weapons fire indicated there was less time than they thought.
Eventually the debris shifted and they saw the familiar shape of the TARDIS.
The Doctor found heavy casualties at the front line. "Come on, we can escape in my ship."
"We're not leaving Doc. To many good people have died here already. Can't let their deaths be in vain."
"I can't let your deaths be in vain either. I can get you back to the fleet and I'm sure they'll want to bomb the planet or something. Come on."
The troopers refused to budge and finally the Doctor left to rejoin Grant and Brizon.
"Where are they?" Grant asked.
"They're not leaving."
"They'll be killed." Brizon was shocked. It was happening again. Daleks killing everyone he knew. He rushed over the several of the troopers. "The Daleks destroyed my world. Butchered my family in front of me. Now all I want is revenge but this isn't close, this is suicide. So you will get inside our ship and you will live to tell this to your families because I can't let what happened to me happen to anyone else."
One by one the SSS troopers left the front line and boarded the TARDIS.
The Daleks swept into the human encampment weapons blasting everything. However it was empty and their glorious victory was turned into defeat.
"We have failed, self-destruct." The chant was unanimous and very soon only burning Daleks casing were all that remained of the conflict.
