Sword of Orion - Part 4

Part 4

The Orion war; to Ike it's current events, to the Doctor it's past history he needs reminding of, and to Charley it's an appalling glimpse of her race's future. Humanity has been building androids for some time, and they've finally made them advanced enough to think of themselves as real and start demanding rights. When the authorities refused, the androids withdrew to the Orion sector, where most of them had been made, and ordered the humans there either to accept them as equals or get out. War was declared on the "rebel" androids, and it's been going on for eight years now, with no end in sight. The Doctor still doesn't know how this connects to events here, and he's too concerned with the immediate problem to pay much attention to a brief movement he spots on the main viewport, off in the distance. Whatever it is has gone when he looks again, and as Ike doesn't have the power for a long-range scan, the Doctor dismisses it as unimportant and sets off to break into the secure computer module...

Deeva contacts Vol, who informs her that the Cybermen are attaching a control device to the inner door. Realising what they intend to do, Deeva orders him to get out of there and join her. He doesn't need telling twice, and as they shelter outside the reception area Deeva calls Ike and tells him to send the Doctor down. Ike is forced to tell her that the Doctor isn't there, and, realising what he must be doing, Deeva sets off to stop him, leaving Vol alone. As he waits, Chev arrives and tells him that she's found something for him to look at. He steps forward—to find the Cybermat waiting for him...

The Doctor and Charley break into the secure computer module, which recognises the Doctor from Deeva's earlier research. The Doctor programmes it to believe that since it knows who he is, he must have security clearance, and although hesitant at first it eventually starts to tell him all it knows about Orion classification D-7, the "Sword of Orion". The destroyer has been spotted by several ships in this area, and military intelligence has determined its nature; as the Doctor had suspected, "Deeva Jansen" is not a merchant corps captain at all, but an Earth security operative on a mission to locate the star destroyer and determine the military value of the Cybermen. Deeva arrives and switches off the system before the Doctor can learn more, but he's heard enough to utterly disgust him; if Deeva thinks he's going to help her recruit the Cybermen to help win the war in Orion, she's very much mistaken. However, it appears that she has something else in mind...

Ike contacts Deeva to warn her that Vol, Chev and Grash are letting the Cybermen into the ship through their secondary airlock. Furthermore, he too has spotted something in the distance of deep space. The Doctor, Deeva and Charley return to the flight deck, arriving just in time to save Ike from the first of the Cyber-scouts, but there are more coming and there's no other way out of the ship. Deeva orders the others to don their suits, and shoots out the main viewport, intending to spacewalk over to the destroyer and try to escape in the Doctor's TARDIS. For some reason, the Cybermen don't follow the fugitives; it's almost as if they can't find them. Which is exactly the case, as the Doctor realises when he finally gets a good look at what he and Ike spotted through the viewport earlier. There's an ion storm on its way, and even at this distance it's making a mess of the Cybermen's scanners.

The Cybermen also detect the approach of the ion storm, and realise that they must return to hibernation at once. In the meantime they will convert the humans they have already captured. Vol, Chev and Grash are taken to the conversion chambers and put in place, and the control over their minds is relinquished while the conversion process begins. It's terribly painful, and as they enter the secondary stage Vol and Chev give in to the process... but Grash simply keeps raving. He's the criminal kingpin of the Garazone system, and nobody does this to him and his people; nobody! The Cybermen, realising that Grash has gone insane and is no longer suitable for conversion, terminate him.

The survivors' oxygen supplies are limited, and they are forced to board the destroyer through the airlock despite the risk that the Cybermen may be waiting for them. As indeed they are. To the Doctor's great disappointment, Deeva identifies him to the Cybermen and claims to have a proposition from the Earth Alliance. Despite the Leader's conviction that logic will find a way out of any situation, they can't deny that it will be difficult to return to Telos and revive their race in a ship devastated by ion storm damage. Deeva claims to have the authority to repair this ship in exchange for the Cybermen's help in fighting the androids; the Cybermen would become the Sword of Orion. Deeva is surprised by Charley's disgusted reaction, but the Doctor and Charley insist that they don't simply support the androids over the humans; it's not that facile a question of morality. If humans made androids as intelligent beings, then it's humanity's responsibility to face up to the consequences.

The Leader dismisses both the moral discussion and Deeva's proposition, and orders that the Doctor be frozen for analysis on Telos while the humans are sent to the conversion chamber. But the Doctor offers a counter-proposal, and backs it up with logic. If the Cybermen's main drive was active they'd be moving now, to get out of the way of the ion storm; if their weapons were active they'd have taken a shot at the Vanguard earlier to prevent it from leaving; and if their revival systems were functioning properly they wouldn't have to revive their warriors one at a time. The previous storm did more damage than they're willing to admit, and the next will likely tear the ship apart... unless they agree to release their captives, in which case the Doctor offers to use his TARDIS to rig up a defensive shield. The ship is struck by the outer fringes of the ion storm, and the Leader reluctantly accepts the Doctor's proposal—but rather than wait for the Cybermen to betray them, Deeva immediately opens fire on her guards. The Doctor, Charley and Deeva escape, but Ike is recaptured and sent to the conversion chamber.

Deeva is hit by a glancing blast while fleeing, and as they near the TARDIS the Doctor insists upon seeing to her injury. She resists at first, and the Doctor realises why when he sees fibre-optic circuitry sticking out of the wound. Deeva is forced to reveal her final secrets; she's an android double-agent sent to infiltrate this mission. The Earth Alliance never intended to make a deal with the Cybermen at all; Deeva made that up to buy time. In fact, the Alliance intended to learn the secret of Cyber-conversion, and use it to transform their own men into cybernetic troops with which to win the war. Deeva's real mission was to bring that information to Orion, where the androids would convert prisoners of war into cybernetic troops for their own side. The main body of the storm is now starting to hit, and the TARDIS is their only way out—but the Doctor refuses to open the door until Deeva agrees to his terms. He will take her home, but only if she agrees to erase the information she has stored in her memory about the conversion process. He's aware that she can use force and threats against him and Charley—everything a real human is capable of—but he won't be moved. Perhaps it's the casual way in which he refers to Deeva's "people", or the fact that he admits he can only trust her to keep her word, which wins her over. She informs him that she has erased the data from her memory—but they've left it too late. The Cybermen catch up to them, and the Leader seizes Deeva's gun and destroys it before she can bring it to bear. One of his warriors grabs Charley, threatening to dismember her if the Doctor doesn't let them into the TARDIS—but then the ion storm strikes in earnest, breaching the hull. In the confusion, Charley finds that she can't breathe; her suit is secure but the Cyberman which was holding her has crushed her life support pack. As the ion disruption becomes too much for the Doctor to handle, he passes out, and the last thing he hears is Charley struggling with Deeva...

When the Doctor wakes, the destroyer has been torn to pieces, and the Cybermen are floating helplessly in space around him and Charley, slowly shutting down in the cold. There's no sign of Deeva, who removed her own life support pack and gave it to Charley; the last thing she said before they were separated was "trust". The Doctor and Charley use their jetpacks to cross space to the TARDIS, but they are unable to locate Deeva, who must have shut down from the cold without her life support pack. Perhaps one day someone will find and revive her. As Charley goes to check on Ramsay, she and the Doctor ponder Deeva's nature, as compared to the Cybermen. They started as humanoids, and turned themselves into monstrous machines—but Deeva started out as a machine, and took on the best parts of humanity...