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B00DPX9ST8 EBOK

Page 133

by Parkin, Lance


  On 12th March, Earth cargo ship C-982 was attacked only minutes from Earth at co-ordinates 8972-6483. The News Services monitored and broadcast their distress calls. Anti-Draconian riots flared up in Peking, Belgrade and Tokio. The Draconian consulate in Helsinki was burnt down, and in Los Angeles the President was burnt in effigy. When the C-982 docked at Spaceport Ten, Security discovered the third Doctor and Jo were onboard. He resisted the mind probe, even on level 12, and was sent to the Lunar Penal Colony. He was convinced that a third party was trying to provoke war, a possibility that no one else had considered. A small ship under the command of General Williams was sent to the Ogron home planet at co-ordinates 3349-6784, where the true masterminds, the Daleks, were revealled.

  & 2540 - Planet of the Daleks [730]

  The third Doctor and Jo tracked the Daleks to the planet Spiridon in the ninth system, many systems from Skaro. Here, a group of six Thals - selected from the six-hundred strong division that hunted Daleks - were already investigating. They had discovered a research station where twelve Daleks were developing germ weapons, and also experimenting with an anti-reflective lightwave that rendered them invisible. The Doctor discovered an army of ten thousand Daleks in neutron-powered suspended animation beneath the research base. Supreme Command sent the Dalek Supreme to oversee the invasion of the Solar Planets, but the Doctor defeated them and froze the Dalek army with a mass of icy liquid from an “ice volcano”.

  The Doctor was remembered as a mediator between Earth and Draconia. [731] The Draconian Ambassador Ishkavaarr and the Earth President agreed that the planet Heaven should become an open world where both races would bury their dead. Years later, several interplanetary agreements were signed there by the President and the Draconian Emperor. [732] Irving Braxiatel was one of the signatories to the Treaty of Heaven. [733] The so-called “golden age” of the autolit pulps reached a conclusion in the early 2540s, when the end of the cold war between Earth and its neighbours signalled the demise of humanity’s pent-up sexual tensions, as funnelled through characters such as Mr. Misnomer, Rex Havoc and Captain Carnivore. [734]

  The Daleks were one of the greatest powers in the universe at this time. [735] At the end of the First Great Space War, Draconia entrusted Earth with documents detailing its history. [736] When word got out that the Ogrons had been defeated by an old man with white hair, the demand for their mercenary services collapsed. The Judoon picked up a lot of their contracts. [737]

  The natives of Spiridon sought to conceal their world from further Dalek oppression. In the generations to follow, Spiridon was renamed Zaleria, and the natives made themselves visible by spreading cell-altering chemicals throughout their food supply. [738]

  Bernice Surprise Summerfield was born on 21st June, 2540, on the human colony of Beta Caprisis. She was the daughter of Isaac Summerfield, a starship commander in Spacefleet, and his wife Claire. [739]

  A war between the Battrul and the lupine Canvine chiefly resulted in a draw, and a buffer zone was created between their territories. Vega Station was built as a casino and hotel, but the Battrulian government secretly used it to monitor the neutral zone. [740] The artist Menlove Stokes was born in 2542, according to official records. [741] Bernadette McAllerson discovered McAllerson’s Radiation in 2542. [742] The Bantu Independence Group emerged as a purely commercial body, the Bantu Cooperative, in 2543. [743]

  c 2545 - “Fugitive” [744]

  The Last Great Time War had left a power vacuum in the Stellian galaxy, and it now been at war longer than living memory. A ceasefire was being negotiated in secret on Luna IV, and while the Sontarans favoured peace in the region so they could concentrate on their conflict with the Rutans, the Krillitane Empire wanted conflict so it could absorb the strengths of other races.

  The Shadow Proclamation brought trumped-up charges of temporal interference against the tenth Doctor (owing to his having saved Emily Winter’s life in 1926), as the Shadow Architect hoped that the trail would let the Doctor expose underground elements at work within the Proclamation. A mysterious woman named Advocate served as the Doctor’s counsel, and was thought killed by the prosecutor: the Krillitane named Mr. Finch. In truth, her older self had given “Finch” - actually a shapeshifting Gizou in her employ - a device that sent her younger self hurtling through time and space to the Last Great Time War, fulfilling on her own history. The Doctor was sentenced to life imprisonment on the prison planet Volag Noc, but uncovered the Krillitanes’ plot and was allowed to return to 1926. The Advocate returned from the Time War to pursue a secret agenda against the Doctor.

  The People of the Worldsphere were covertly involved in wars in their galaxy. [745] In an old curiosity shop on Aminion 2, the Doctor happened upon a catalogue advertising the people of Valhalla City for sale as slaves. The catalogue was located next to a bust of Joanna the Mad, although it wasn’t a good likeness, and he initially mistook her for Pliny the Elder. [746]

  The Alps were damaged in a local war in 2547. [747] Mind probes were made illegal. [748] The fourth Doctor visited the farming world Unicepter IV. [749]

  The Dalek Wars

  The Daleks began their third wave of expansion, leading to the Galactic War, a.k.a. the Dalek Wars. [750] Life on the front was harsh, with tens of thousands killed by Dalek Plague on Yalmur alone. Other planets on the front line included Capella, Antonius, Procyon and Garaman (home to a Spacefleet station).

  On the other hand, the Core Worlds - the heavily populated and fashionable heart of the Earth Empire - were safe and prosperous. The planet Ellanon was a popular holiday planet; Bacchanalia Two was the home of the Club Outrageous. There were shipyards on Harato, and thriving colonies on Thrapos 3 and Zantir. The Spinward Corporation’s financial and administrative centre on Belmos was a space station the size of a planet. Humanity had also discovered Lubellin - “the Mud Planet” - and the spotless Tarian Asteroids.

  The best whiskey from this time was made in South America, but some people preferred Eridanian Brandy. [751]

  In 2545, monitoring systems in the Oort Cloud detected three hundred Dalek battlecruisers headed for Earth’s solar system. Mars was equipped with nine hundred photon missiles, but the only person authorised to fire them - Karina Tellassar, Mars’ Minister of Defence - failed to do so because the missile-command codes were implanted in the heart of her lover, Isaac Deniken. The Daleks destroyed Mars’ seabases with firestorm bombs, then used the planet’s three billion inhabitants - mostly pensioners - as a human shield and pelted Earth with bioweapons. The Earth Senate narrowly voted not to retaliate with a nuclear strike, and General Keele launched a successful counter-offensive. A pair of offworlders aided Keele in downing a Dalek saucer at Argyre Dam, and in coordinating the final assault that drove the Daleks from Mars. [752]

  Dalek missiles fell on Europe for nearly a month. The retroviruses they contained wouldn’t be discovered for almost a decade. During the war, Nike supplied footwear to Earth soldiers, and Coca-Cola returned to using cocaine in its products. The British Parliament was destroyed and replaced by the Republic Museum of Social and Political History. The whole of London became a museum. The Thames was detoxed and stocked with genetically pure species from the Pacific Ocean. Inverness was replaced by a deep-water trench connecting Loch Ness to the Moray Firth. Paris became populated with human-alien hybrids. [753]

  The Earth military captured a borogove of budding Mim children, and initiated Project Narcissus to condition the shapeshifting offspring to infiltrate the enemy’s ranks. Thousands of Mim offspring died, but their actions altered the course of the war in humanity’s favour. [754]

  The works of romance novelist Jilly Cooper were lost in the Dalek Wars. [755]

  c 2545 - Benny: Buried Treasures: “Closure” [756]

  On the planet Panyos, an Ashcarzi soldier murdered a woman named Isabella. Her son - Ulrich Hescarti - would grow up to avenge his mother’s death by instigating an ethnic cleansing programme against the Ashcarzi. Benny used her time ring to travel back an
d kill Isabella’s would-be murderer, then made Isabella promise that she would either raise Ulrich properly or, failing that, kill him.

  c 2547 - Return of the Living Dad [757]

  The Daleks’ tactics were repetitive and predictable. Earth’s Spacefleet used vast Dalekbuster ships, highly-automated and heavily-armed six-man fighters. Isaac Summerfield captained one such ship. Albinex the Navarino contacted the Daleks and offered to change history in return for military assistance. The seventh Doctor and Benny arrived on Isaac Summerfield’s ship, the Tisiphone, which was fighting the Daleks over Bellatrix. The Tisiphone interrupted Albinex’s negotiations with the Daleks, and both the Tisiphone and Albinex ended up falling down a wormhole to the twentieth century.

  The Dalekbuster commanded by Isaac Summerfield was reported to have broken formation and fled during a space battle, and its captain was branded a coward. In late 2547, at the height of the Dalek War, the Daleks attacked the human colony on Vandor Prime in the Gamma Delphinus system, where Claire Summerfield was killed. Bernice Summerfield was sent to military boarding school. [758] Benny’s doll Rebecca was with Benny’s mother when she was exterminated. [759]

  c 2550 - “Pureblood” [760]

  The Dalek War continued to rage, but elsewhere in the galaxy, the conflict between the Rutans and Sontarans reached a critical point. The Rutans had already razed the community structures between the Warburg and the Prok Fral Edifice. Now, they destroyed Sontara, the Sontaran homeworld, with photonic bombs. The Sontarans got their Racepool away in time, and headed towards Pandora.

  The seventh Doctor and Benny arrived on the Pandora Spindle in the Terran Federation. This was a distant space station run by the Lauren Corporation - the biggest industrial giant in the galaxy - and the home of a genetics facility. The Sontarans occupied the station, and a Rutan agent informed their enemies that the Racepool was there. The Sontarans’ genetic expert was killed in an accident and the Doctor agreed to help save the Sontarans from extinction. He also exposed the spy, Modine.

  The Sontarans had been betrayed to the Rutans on Sontara... by pureblood Sontarans who were untouched by cloning and genetic engineering, and hailed from a distant colony that the Rutans discovered. The pureblood Sontarans attacked Pandora, but the Doctor and Benny showed how the Rutans had tricked them into destroying their own kind. The two factions of Sontarans united and settled on Pandora to rebuild their race. In return, the Sontarans agreed to erase all knowledge of the human race from their databanks.

  The Sontarans’ survival would prevent the Rutans from overrunning the galaxy, and Sontaran advances in space drive, vaccines and genetic solutions to disease would be of great benefit to the future.

  c 2550 - “Dreamers of Death” [761]

  For three years, the colonists of Unicepter IV enjoyed sharing adventure dreams. These were courtesy of the company Dreams Deluxe, who made the dream possible by harnessing the telepathic powers of a native creature: the small furry Slinth. The fourth Doctor, Sharon and K9 arrived just as one team of dreamers died in an accident. The Doctor and Sharon took part in a dream led by a man called Vernor, where they were attacked by the dead dreamers and an army of monsters. K9 severed the connection before they were killed, but the Slinths had become aggressive, fed off all the colonists’ negative emotions, and fused into a single devil-like creature. The Slinths were absorbing electricity, so the Doctor doused them in water, collapsing the devil creature into a pile of harmless Slinths. Sharon elected to stay behind with Vernor.

  The Doctor was later invited to Sharon’s wedding. [762]

  Abslom Daak... Dalek Killer!

  Hardened criminals on Earth were given the choice of facing the death penalty or becoming Dalek Killers (DKs). The most notorious of the DKs was Abslom Daak. [763]

  Daak’s beloved, Selene, had run off with his business partner Vol Mercurius after defrauding four billion from a shipping company. Consequently, Daak cut off Mercurius’ hand with his chainsword. Mercurius bought the planet Dispater, but Selene left him. [764]

  c 2550 - “Abslom Daak... Dalek-Killer” [765]

  Rather than be vaporised, a serious criminal could choose “Exile D-K”. He would be teleported to a world in the Dalek Empire, and made to kill as many of Daleks as possible before he was exterminated. The life expectancy of such DKs was two hours, thirty-two minutes and twenty-three seconds. Only one man in four survived the matter transmitter, and the overall odds of survival were six hundred million to one.

  At this time, Curtis Fooble was accused of eating the Vegan ambassador. Humans had advanced humanoid robots, which operated machines and even sat as judges. Mazam was a human colony, with a monarchy as well as skysleds and space yachts. Dalek base ships were operated by a Command Dalek, wired into the ship’s systems. The Daleks used Omega Units - advanced fighter/bombers - as well as hoverbouts.

  The sociopath Abslom Daak was convicted of twenty-three charges of murder, pillage, piracy and massacre. He had been driven to such crimes by the loss of his beloved Selene, and chose Exile D-K. He was beamed to the feudal planet Mazam, located a thousand light years from Earth, where Princess Taiyin had just surrendered to the Daleks. Daak rescued her, and together they took on the Daleks’ base ship. They destroyed it, but Taiyin was killed. Grieving for Taiyin’s death, Daak vowed “I’m gonna kill every damned stinking Dalek in the galaxy!”

  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 destr
oy 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.

 

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