B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (227 page)

c 2550 - “Star Tigers”
 [766]

“The Frontier War with Earth had been fought and settled”, and Draconia was now at peace. However, Dalek expansion towards Girodun threatened Draconian trade routes. Factions within the Draconian court wanted to strengthen their defences, but the prevailing wisdom was that the Daleks wouldn’t fight a war on two fronts, and they should be negotiated with.

Three Dalek ships entered Draconian space while pursuing Abslom Daak, but he destroyed them before landing on Draconia. Daak was looked after by Prince Salander, and revealled that he had put Taiyin in cryogenic suspension. Salander’s political rivals took the opportunity to have him arrested, and Daak shared his house arrest. Salander’s family built warships, and he showed Daak a prototype frontier defence cruiser built to fight Daleks. Daak christened this the
Kill-Wagon
. Salander was told that a Dalek patrol had killed his son, and he decided to leave Draconia in the
Kill-Wagon
with Daak. They resolved to assemble a crew.

They went to the planet Paradise - a cosmopolitan planet where every pleasure was available for a price - and recruited the Ice Warrior Harma. They then headed to the war-torn planet of Dispater, where Vol Mercurius was playing a parachess tactics game with a robot companion that mirrored the real-life conflict. Mercurius owned the planet, but the Kill-Mechs of a self-proclaimed Emperor of the Jarith Cluster had invaded it. Mercurius agreed to join the
Kill-Wagon
crew. As they left Dispater, they discovered an army of Dalek Space Commando Units, ready to invade the Jarith Cluster while the inhabitants were divided. The
Kill-Wagon
let the Daleks invade, then wiped them out by dropping nuclear bombs into a nearby volcano.

At this time, Draconia was home to an animal somehow like a tiger, called a Thorion. The currency of Draconia was the “crystal”, while bribes were in diamonds. Vorkelites enjoyed being executed. Rigellians had four tentacles, three mouths and a reputation for being untrustworthy.

c 2550 - “Nemesis of the Daleks”
 [767]

The
Kill-Wagon
launched an attack on the Dalek base on the planet Hell, but was shot down. The Emperor was there to supervise construction of the Daleks’ vast battlestation, the Death Wheel. The seventh Doctor discovered the bodies of Salander, Vol Mercurius and Harma. He was cornered by the Daleks, but rescued by Daak.

The Doctor learned that Hell was the source of Helkogen, a poison gas. He and Daak boarded the Death Wheel, where the Doctor confronted the Emperor and Daak learned the Daleks were building a Genocide Device - a gas weapon that threatened every known planet. Daak prevented the Doctor from sacrificing himself to destroy the Death Wheel’s central reactor, and the Doctor escaped as Daak died to destroy the Death Wheel.

c 2550 - “Emperor of the Daleks”
 [768]

Abslom Daak was transmatted away from certain death and returned to what he thought was Earth. There he was told to kill the Doctor - and in return, Taiyin would be resurrected.

The seventh Doctor and Benny arrived on Hell and met up with the remaining Star Tigers, who weren’t dead after all, as the Helkans had revived them. Within moments, though, Daak grabbed the Doctor and they were all transmatted to Daak’s masters... but the Doctor realised they were Dalek robots, and that this was a trap. They were on Skaro, in the future, at the mercy of the Emperor.

Returning from the future, the Star Tigers drank at a bar on Paradise. Daak’s fixation with Taiyin had ended... he was now obsessed with Benny instead. The seventh Doctor met his previous self, and thanked him for his help setting a trap for the Daleks.

History recorded that Abslom Daak died destroying the Dalek Death Wheel.
 [769]
On Kastropheria, a group of priests used the drug skar to boost their psionic abilities and mentally restrain the people’s self-destructive impulses. Humans established a colony on the planet, but the natives became aggressive when supplies of skar began to run out.
 [770]
The Class G maintenance robot entered service.
 [771]

c 2550 - Catastrophea
 [772]

The third Doctor and Jo discovered the human colonists on Kastopheria had enslaved the natives, and the Doctor was mistaken for El Llama, a prophesied revolutionary. The priests asked the Doctor to destroy the Anima, a giant skar crystal, with great care to free the people from their mind-lock. The Anima was destroyed too suddenly, and the people’s destructive rage returned. War loomed between the natives and the colonists, but the Doctor helped to forge a non-interference treaty. The Draconians aided the colonists in evacuating, and the natives were left in peace.

The war criminal Karina Tellassar was now in hiding as “Elizabeth Trinity”, an academic. In 2555, Trinity published
A History of Mars
, which argued that humanity had been noble in freeing the Martians from their backward ways. The generation to come would consider both sides of the argument.
 [773]

Benny, age 16, went AWOL from her military academy and hid out in the woods nearby, giving advice to other girls living there.
 [774]
A military recruit named Simon Kyle, age 18, had established a shelter in the woods - he became Benny’s best friend and first lover. When the military captured them, Benny refused to testify against Kyle, but he traded his journal of their activities for a reduced punishment. The military took Benny off frontline service and made her a private; en route to Capella, she jumped ship and arrived on a colony world. She started working with the archaeological unit there, faking her qualifications. Kyle went on to become Spacefleet officer.
 [775]
Kyle later claimed that his bargain had prevented the officers involved from killing Benny, and that he’d never actually surrendered the journal.
 [776]

c 2560 - Prisoner of the Daleks
 [777]

The tenth Doctor became trapped within the disused refinery Lodestar Station 479 on Hurala, on the edge of Earth space. He was rescued by Dalek hunters led by ex-military man Jon Bowman, who were crewing the
Wayfarer
and received a fee from Earth Command for every Dalek eyestalk they netted. The Doctor was startled to realise that he had gone back to a point in Dalek history before their race’s involvement in the Last Great Time War.

Thousands of human colonists on Auros evacuated their world, and destroyed it using the Osterhagen Principle - a series of nuclear devices buried within the planet. The Doctor and his allies learned that the Daleks were based on Arkheon, a planet believed destroyed forty years before, because they hoped to use the Arkheon Threshold - a schism in time and space - to become the masters of time, perhaps even wiping humanity from history. The Doctor and Bowman were interrogated by the Daleks’ Inquisitor General, the feared Dalek X, who arrived with a Dalek fleet led by an
Exterminator
-class warship. This was the first of its kind, with ten antigravity impeller engines and a crew of five hundred Daleks. The
Wayfarer
was destroyed, but the Doctor escaped, setting off an astrionic explosion that obliterated the Dalek base and fleet. Hurala became a radioactive world, with a communications seal that would last for five thousand years. Dalek X survived in the ruins, vowing revenge.

A Supreme Dalek led the Daleks on Skaro. Koral - one of the
Wayfarer
crew - believed herself to be sole survivor of Red Sky Lost, a planet the Daleks had destroyed. Her crewmate, Cuttin’ Edge, had grown up on Gauda Prime.

The Draconian vessel
Hunter
and five destroyers were lost fighting Daleks. Female officers had recently been introduced to the Draconian military.
 [778]

The People of the Worldsphere fought a war against the Great Hive Mind, using new weapons and powerful sentient Very Aggressive Ships. The war saw twenty-six billion killed, destroyed fifteen planets and devastated dozens of others. The Great Hive Mind became part of the People.
 [779]

Corporations such as Ellerycorp, Peggcorp, Spinward, and IMC maintained battlefleets of their own. During the Battle of Alpha Centauri, a small squadron of Silurian vessels beat back the main Dalek force, which fled into hyperspace. Daleks also infiltrated human Puterspace.
 [780]

TAM Corporation’s ships fought in the Galactic Wars. The corporation pulled out of remote colonies like Mendeb, taking as much high technology as it could.
 [781]

As often happened in wartime, the Dalek War saw a leap in human technological progress. A variety of intelligent weapons systems were developed: dart guns, data corrupting missiles, spikes, clusters and forceshells, random field devices, self-locating mines and drones.

Earth’s Spacefleet included 1000-man troopships armed with torpedoes that could destroy a Dalek Battlesaucer. A fleet of warp vessels - X-Ships - were used to ferry communications, personnel and supplies. Most troopers were placed in Deep Sleep while travelling to the warzones. This was done to conserve supplies, not because the ships were particularly slow, as it now only took a matter of weeks to cross human space. Ships still used warp engines, but they also used ion drive to travel in real space.

Computer technology was now extremely advanced. The Spacefleet Datanet was a vast information resource, and data was stored on logic crystals. Nanotechnology was beginning to have medical applications: a nanosurgical virus was given to most troopers to protect against various alien infections, and cosmetic nanosurgery beautified the richest civilians. Holograms were now in widespread use for communications, display, entertainment, combat and public relations. Holosynths - simulations of people - acted as receptionists and could answer simple enquiries. HKI Industries, based on Phobos, specialised in the manufacture of transmats. These had a range of only a couple of thousand kilometres, but they were installed on all large ships and linked major cities on most colony worlds. Hoverspeeders were still in use.

By the late 2560s, it became clear that Earth was going to win the wars with the Daleks. By then, the fastline - a state of the art, almost real-time, interstellar communication system - had been developed.
 [782]

c 2560 - Enemy of the Daleks
 [783]

During the Dalek Wars, the planet Bliss was a sanctuary for rare flora and fauna. Professor Toshio Shimura, a scientist at a biological research facility there, took DNA from “piranha locusts” native to Bliss and gestated it in human beings without their consent. The subjects formed cocoons and emerged as the Kisibyaa: ferocious, metal-eating creatures that Shimura hoped would literally consume the Daleks. Shimura gave his own life to host Kisibyaa larvae. The seventh Doctor, Ace and Hex witnessed these events, and the Doctor - fearing the Kisibyaa would threaten all species, not just the Daleks - killed the Kisibyaa by destroying the facility.

At this time, Valkyrie units - composed of one commissioned officer and twenty troopers - were all-female fighting forces commissioned to engage the Daleks.

The Early Career of Bernice Summerfield

2561 to 2562 (1st January) - Benny: Genius Loci
 [784]

Benny’s faked resume netted her the position of assistant field director at a dig on Jaiwan. Professor Mariela Ankola served as Benny’s mentor, but died in her sleep after encountering lethal industrial toxins on the planet Cray. Benny adopted Ankola’s habit of keeping journals. A non-sapient Jaiwan spider bit off Benny’s foot, and she had a grown one attached on her birthday.

Owing to Benny’s excavations, some Omega spiders were awakened from hibernation. This threatened to activate the Hibernation Clause of the Protocols of Colonisation, but the Omega spiders struck a clandestine deal with the Jaiwan authorities - the Omegas would share the planet in exchange for help in wiping out any remaining caches of Alpha spiders.

Benny and her allies - including members of Spacefleet’s First Regiment of Combat Archaeologists, and the revived Pinky and Perky AIs - awakened some Alpha spiders to present their case. In doing so, Benny killed someone for the first time - she shot a local reporter and patriot, Lola, when she threatened to kill Benny’s protégé, Shawnee.

No later than 1st January, 2562, Benny left Jaiwan aboard the
Goodnight Dolly
. A grateful archaeologist provided her with a certificate naming her as a Master of Science, Archaeology, accredited to the Department of History, University of Jaiwan at Kondeeo. On 2nd February, 2562, Benny travelled toward humanity’s core worlds aboard the
Chin Shen Mo
. Papers provided by General Elsa Lafayette, a friend of Benny’s parents, helped Benny avoid being incarcerated for desertion.