Doctor Who_ Remembrance of the Daleks - Ben Aaronovitch [46]
Inform the shuttle commander of the deadline. The Emperor’s thoughts tasted of suppressed anger. Failure will not be tolerated, it added.
The imperial shuttle commander felt the shuttle pilot link go dead. It considered sending a warrior back to the shuttle to investigate but the Emperor’s orders overrode it. The shuttle commander was drawing data from scout eight. A synthesis of data from orbital cameras, and the scout’s own sensors resolved into a three-dimensional situation map.
The tunnel was a tracery of green; estimated positions of the renegade warriors were fuzzy grey blobs. ECM pods were silver dots sprinkling the killing zone at the tunnel’s mouth. Section two showed up as a phalanx of hard-edged white diamonds. Three hundred metres behind section two, more diamonds marked section four’s position – the Abomination was a single red star at their centre.
Section two advance, ordered the shuttle-commander, for the glory of the Emperor and the Ven-Katri Davrett.
The girl was the battle computer; the battle computer was the girl. Locked into symbiosis they fed the tactical situation to the Dalek Supreme.
The Dalek Supreme felt the imperial Daleks start their attack. Strange, alien emotions were creating problems for its life support systems. The girl’s feelings were bleeding through the gestalt interface into the Dalek Supreme. She was playing. Each tactical problem thrown up by the battle computer was a game to her. Guided by the two thousand years of experience stored in the data banks she was solving them, each solution triggering a shot of energy to the pleasure centres in her brain.
The girl was having fun.
For one vertiginous moment the Dalek Supreme wanted to skip.
Section two advanced towards the shadows that hid the mouth of the tunnel. They moved slowly, their power plants generating a complex overlapping pattern of sensor waves.
The remains of scout seven marked the range of the renegade ECM pods. The imperial Dalcks switched to infra-red, eyesticks hunting for targets. As they passed scout seven the ECM attack began. This time the waves of static hit the sensor wave pattern put out by the imperial Daleks. The method of ECM attack had been studied and analysed during the costly attacks on the northern and southern routes. This time the imperial Daleks were ready.
The silent electronic battle continued as section two advanced. The harmonics created by the conflict of sensor wave against sensor wave caused the nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere to vibrate faster. The air around the imperial Daleks began to shimmer with heat. They continued to advance.
A blaster bolt flashed out from the renegade positions. It struck the lead imperial just below its gunstick. The superheated plasma punched a fist-sized hole through the armour, ripped into the Dalek’s innards and exploded. For a moment the top casing contained a fireball as hot as a hydrogen bomb. Then the top of the Dalek vanished in a burst of light.
The remaining imperial Daleks zeroed in on the place where the attack had originated.
On the shuttle commander’s situation map, one of the grey blobs sharpened to a hard point. Exterminate, ordered the shuttle commander, now!
Five gunsticks jerked into position. Computer-enhanced vision locked on to the shadows of an alcove near the end of the tunnel. Five tiny parcels of death, the air screaming in their wake, raced away from the imperial Daleks.
The renegade warrior saw the incoming bolts. With a convulsive burst of its motor it vainly tried to shift out of danger. The first bolt smashed away the wall that had sheltered the Dalek, the rest smacked into its body. The renegade went spinning backwards, breaking up into flaming pieces