Commandant Fletcher wrung his hands as he recorded it.

As he pressed the keys to stop recording and to start relaying the beacon, the door to his office double-chimed. It opened before he could invite anyone in.

The young lieutenant in the jacket-uniform stood outside.

“Sir, they’re right outside the door,” he said.

Fletcher sighed inwardly. He looked through the windows, out to space. It was horizon-less. He could theoretically see a billion miles in every direction, even if his eyes were only strong enough to pick up anything in the first few hundred. When space was as empty as this, a hundred miles was as good as a million anyway.

As he got up from his desk, he truly hoped the SS Reliant wasn’t the nearest ship in range. It had left seventeen hours ago. It would take just as long to get back.

Fletcher followed the lieutenant down to the Operations Centre.

The space-platform’s command centre was full of people; perhaps thirty or forty security officers were crammed into the station’s oval control room. The crew had abandoned the myriad of consoles, which had been set to relay any important data to the large monitors around the walls, and the bulky computer decks were now being used as shields by the armed officers. Perhaps two thirds of the men were hiding on the near side of the machines, their guns resting over the top, pointing at the door. The rest of the men were lined up against the walls on either side of the door.

Fletcher froze at the bottom of the steps. Something was pounding on the other side of the door. It was pounding so hard he could see the vibration of the impact disseminate across the steel blast-plate. That door was designed to withstand a direct grenade attack, Fletcher thought. Yet he could see it beginning to buckle.

“Are they going to get through?” Fletcher murmured.

There were forty guns trained on the door, forty security officers concentrating too hard to respond to his question. He supposed that was answer enough.

Suddenly, the banging stopped. There was an uneasy moment of silence, and the security officers shuffled and muttered anxiously.

Fletcher jumped as a sudden bead of white light appeared in the bottom right hand corner of the blast-door. It was accompanied by a sound like escaping gas.

“They’re cutting through!” someone shouted.

Fletcher gripped the handrail. He still hadn’t left the bottom step.

As he watched, the bead expanded into a straight line that zipped up the height of the door, cut effortlessly along the top, then started down the other side.

“This is it!” a commanding voice hollered over the din.

All the security officers pulled their machine guns further into their shoulders and ducked as far out of sight of the door as possible.

“Sir, get down!” the lieutenant hissed.

Fletcher looked between the steps, where he found the four members of the previous command crew and their four replacements were hiding.

“I’m not going to cower,” Fletcher said, as much to himself as anyone else, but there wasn’t much room left under the stairs anyway.

The hissing sound suddenly stopped.

Fletcher turned. For a few moments, the outline of a door within the door continued to glow, as if a bright white light was shining from the other side. Then the whiteness began to fade. Soon the white lines were black ones.

When that happened, the pounding began anew. This time when the door vibrated it didn’t start to buckle, the black-edged door-within-a-door started to shift.

“That’s four inches of steel alloy!” Fletcher said under his breath.

“Sir, get down!” the lieutenant shouted.

Fletcher finally ducked when the door burst apart.

The firing started immediately. All around the room, security officers behind consoles blasted the doorway. The noise was so deafening that Fletcher grabbed his ears. The muzzle flashes lit up the room with a strobe-like effect.

But Fletcher couldn’t see anything. It was dark beyond the door and searing through four-inch steel had created a lot of smoke, which wafted into the room.

“Hold your fire!” a voice called.

“Hold your fire!” the order was repeated.

Gradually, the guns died down.

There was a moment of silence. Fletcher’s ears rang.

“There!” someone cried.

Fletcher thought it was a shadow at first, but then the dark figure emerged from the smoke. It stood on the other side of the door and fired once.

The single round went over the heads of the security officers behind the consoles. For a second, Fletcher thought it was a grenade.

Then it landed, just ten yards away.

The fantastic white light made Fletcher bury his face in the crook of his elbow. When he opened his eyes again, he saw eight men had keeled over and were lying on their backs, screaming and convulsing. He knew that was very nearly him.

Then the metal giant came through the doorway.

For a brief moment, nobody fired back. They were awe-struck, dumb-founded by the behemoth. It was a horrific construction, a vile metallic mockery of the human form, with an evil look on its face and an evil gun in its hands.

Then three identical giants appeared out of the swirling smoke.

“Fire at will! Fire at will!” the order went up.

Forty guns opened fire simultaneously. The giants returned fire.

Fletcher scurried backwards on his wrists and heels. The air was suddenly full of carbine rounds flying one way, and blue energy pulses flying the other. Fletcher saw the security officers drop like flies. The metal giants fired wide precise arcs that caught four, five then six men in the few inches of forehead peering above the parapet of the consoles. The metal giants, on the other hand, seemed impervious to being shot.

Fletcher squeezed in under the steps with his lieutenant.

“Where’s the radio?” he bellowed.

“The what?” The lieutenant gestured his ears.

“The radio!” Fletcher held his outstretched little finger up to his mouth.

The lieutenant grabbed the knee of one of the crew behind him. The woman was bent over, arms wrapped around her head like she was bracing for a crash.

She flinched and looked up. She was sobbing, terrified.

“The radio!” Fletcher shouted at her.

“The radio!” The lieutenant repeated the finger gesture.

The woman reached out. Her hand was shaking, but in it she held a headset.

Fletcher snatched it and pulled it over his head.

“Sergeant Cameron!” he screamed into the microphone.

“Sir, look!” the lieutenant cried, clawing at Fletcher’s chest.

Fletcher turned his head. Through the gaps between the steps he saw six more of the metal giants pour into the room. The security officers lined up against the wall were now trapped against it. The metal titans slew them all in seconds.

“Oh, god,” Fletcher cried to himself. He pushed the headphones further into his ears. “Sergeant Cameron, I hope you can hear me.”

Another white pulse landed just beyond the steps and sent another half dozen men falling out of position. They squirmed in agony on the floor.

“Hurry, Sergeant! You must hurry!”

Sergeant Cameron stopped running.

“Commander, listen to me,” he shouted into the helmet’s microphone. “Tell your men to engage them in close quarters; shoot them in the eyes!”

Private Wells and Private Ellison realised he’d stopped and came back.

“You think he heard, Sarge?” Ellison asked.

Cameron shook his head. “Come on.”

He started running again.

The Doctor and Rose were also running.

“Which way?” Rose cried.

They were coming up on another intersection.

“Go left this time!” the Doctor shouted.

He didn’t know where they were, or where they were heading, but they had to take every corner they came to. The Cybermen were only seconds behind, shooting at the Doctor and Rose whenever they got a clear line of sight.

“You won’t make it,” the War Brain said.

The Doctor laughed. “In other words, you’ve already seen that we do.”

The Doctor was carrying the War Brain in his bare hands again. It kept on giving him electric shocks, but he knew he couldn’t drop it.

He and Rose reached the next corner and took it at full pelt.

At the same time, the Cybermen came round the last corner.

“We want the Timelord identified as the Doctor,” they chorused.

Sergeant Cameron discovered how close they were to the Operations Centre when he realised he wasn’t just hearing the sounds of battle across the radio. He heard machine gun fire and Cybermen pulse-guns and they were right overhead.

“It’s the next one up,” he shouted to Wells and Ellison.

The next level plan confirmed it. There was an express elevator next to it, and Private Wells pressed the circular button to call it.

“We don’t have time for that,” Cameron barked.

He ran past it to the emergency stairwell, the doors to which weren’t automatic so Cameron slammed the butt of his Cyberman pulse-gun onto the switch.

The thick pressure door chugged open.

Wells and Ellison chased him up the stairs behind it.

There was another pressure door at the top, and when Cameron opened it, the cacophony of the battle blared in, accompanied by a thick black smoke.

He could see the blown-apart door to the Operations Centre from the top of the stairs; it was about twenty yards away. He couldn’t see what was happening beyond, but if the battle was still being fought, then they weren’t too late.

Wells and Ellison started into the corridor.

“Wait a second,” Cameron said.

They stopped and looked at him eagerly.

“We have one chance at this, guys. We’re gonna catch those bastards from behind, but we’re only gonna have a few seconds to do it. As soon as they realise, that’s our window gone. We have to take out as many as we can before that.”

Wells and Ellison nodded.

Cameron took a deep breath. “Okay; let’s do this.”

Of the forty security officers that had started the fight, Commandant Fletcher could only count about fifteen still firing. About as many again were lying paralytic on the floor, twitching, no longer able to scream, dying. He could tell the dead from the injured: the dead were the ones without the looks of terror on their faces.

Not a single metal giant had been felled. As a group, they were almost up to the consoles now. When they reached those, the battle would be over, Fletcher knew; they were the only things that had kept the fifteen security officers alive this long.

There were machine guns lying unused everywhere. Fletcher glanced back at the command crew hiding with him under the steps. There were nine of them. That would almost double their forces, he thought. It would buy them time.

He spied the nearest gun. He had to expose himself to reach it, but he stretched his arm out beneath the bottom step and grabbed the strap.

Fletcher had never fired a gun in his life. How hard can it be? he told himself; point, shoot, repeat. He remembered something about recoil, and pulled the machine gun into his shoulder as he slid the barrel between the metal steps.

Unlike the security officers, who were targets every time they tried to take a shot, Fletcher’s hiding place afforded him time to take careful aim at a giant.

Sergeant Cameron had told him to aim for the eyes.

The metal giant was moving its head back and forth, sizing up a new target as it blew another one of the security officers away.

Fletcher took two of his best shots.

He was surprised when the metal giant’s head seemed to dance on its neck and then the creature toppled forward and smashed into a console.

“You got one, sir!” the lieutenant cried.

Sure enough, the robotic titan did not get up again.

“Grab yourself guns!” Fletcher ordered.

The command crew abandoned their hiding place.

Before Fletcher could get off another shot, a second giant went down, then a third. The commandant frowned. The metal giants did a complete turn.

For a second he thought they had been scared off, that they were beating a retreat, and fired a brief volley at a couple of them.

But then he saw another one flop backwards, then another. Then he saw that they were being hit by blue pulses, identical to their own, coming from the doorway; Fletcher suddenly realised he hadn’t downed one of them after all.

The remaining metal giants took the first defensive steps Fletcher had seen them take. Then they began firing on the doorway.

Through the smoke, Fletcher could see three figures in the corridor: one kneeling and two standing behind, all firing continuously.

“Excellent timing, Sergeant!”

Sergeant Cameron and his men downed six of the Cybermen before they had turned round and started returning fire. They killed Ellison instantly.

Cameron and Wells ducked to either side of the door, but Ellison, kneeling, couldn’t move fast enough. A hail of pulses struck him in the chest. The force tossed him down the hallway, out of Cameron’s peripheral vision.

The sergeant felt the vibrations of the Cybermen’s heavy feet heading toward the door, even though the sound of them was drowned out by machine guns.

He took a step back, aimed his pulse-gun at head height.

The first Cyberman that came through the door he blasted in the head. The metal giant crumpled in the doorway, blocking the way.

Suddenly a long metal arm shot around the edge of the doorway and a groping hand of metal talons smashed into the wall where Cameron would have been, had he not swayed backwards just in time to avoid it.

With a primal shout, Wells darted out into the doorway and gunned down another Cyberman. It fell in the doorway, on top of the first.

Then the one behind it shot Wells in the head.

“NO!” Cameron cried.

Wells fell back and landed, rigid, gone.

Breathing hard, Cameron looked for a way out, but there was none. If he tried to head back down the corridor, the Cybermen would shoot him. He didn’t know how many were left, didn’t know how many there were to begin with, but there had been over twenty on the ship, so there must have been at least a dozen left in the room.

Suddenly the two Cybermen in the doorway were picked up and thrown out of the way with about as much effort as it took to toss a rag-doll.

Cameron readied his gun again.

Commandant Fletcher crept out from under the stairs. He shuffled across the floor, pushing bodies out of the way instead of climbing over them. When he reached a console he stopped and looked round for the command crew.

The eight of them had all found machine guns, but had returned to hiding under the stairs, holding the weapons gingerly, poking the muzzles out.

Fletcher gestured violently for them to join him.

“Get the hell out of there!” he shouted.

He didn’t know if they heard over the other guns, but one by one, led by the young lieutenant, they crawled through the bodies to reach him.

Fletcher peered over the top of the consoles.

There were two metal giants left. Both were heading for the door. Bullets were hitting their silver backs, sparking off without doing any damage.

Fletcher heard a feedback whine screech in his ear. Sergeant Cameron was so close that the noise of the battle was doubled over.

“I need a diversion!” he shouted.

Fletcher put his palms over the headphones. “What?”

“I need a diversion! Now!”

Fletcher looked up. The metal giants had reached the door. He remembered what Cameron had told him: aim for the eyes.

“Hold your fire!” he yelled.

Nobody heard him.

“Hold your fire!” he shouted, louder this time.

Still nobody heard him.

“You, with me!” he hissed and grabbed the nearest person.

It was the young lieutenant.

“Shoot them in the head!” Fletcher shouted.

The lieutenant’s eyes widened.

“Come on!” Fletcher growled.

Then he staggered erect and pulled the lieutenant after him.

When the security officers saw the pair of them weave between the consoles they stopped firing immediately. There was a moment of stunned silence.

The metal giants noticed this change instantly.

As Fletcher and his lieutenant scrambled over the dead, human and alien, the heads of the metal giants swivelled round, angrily; the rest of them didn’t. They had stopped in the doorway, one halfway out, the other standing behind.

“Aim for the eyes!” Fletcher hollered.

Before the metal giants could turn and target them, Fletcher and his lieutenant charged at the nearest. They began firing from a distance.

Fletcher couldn’t tell whose shot hit home. They both reached the metal alien at the same time; rammed their guns forward as the giant began to turn.

Then the creature faltered and began to topple.

Suddenly the one behind, the one with the black trim that distinguished it from all the others, spun the rest of its body to face the same direction as its head. In one swift move it caught its comrade as it fell and shoved it out of the way, throwing it into Fletcher. He fell to the ground, winded.

In the same move, it caught the lieutenant by the neck.

Fletcher looked up. “No!”

The giant crushed the lieutenant’s throat, then dropped him, dead.

“No!” Fletcher cried again.

But now the metal giant was coming for him.

Fletcher searched for his gun: it was trapped beneath the other alien. He began to scurry backwards across the floor. The giant loomed over him.

Suddenly the security officers opened fire.

Fletcher flattened himself against the floor but the security officers were all firing from too far away. He saw the dark glimmer of bullets ricocheting off.

The metal giant swung its gun level with Fletcher’s head.

“NO!” shouted a loud voice.

Fletcher jerked his head sideways; the first shot caught his ear. The pain was indescribably intense, but he didn’t have the breath to scream.

Then Fletcher saw Sergeant Cameron.

Sergeant Cameron reached the Cyberman just as it was aiming its pulse-gun at a man’s head. Cameron did the same to the Cyberman with his own pulse-gun.

“I said NO!” he roared.

Then he fired.

At point blank range, the Cyberman’s head burst open. Metal flayed like the rubber of a popped balloon. Something black and congealed spurted from the neck cavity, then the power drained from the machine, limb by limb.

Cameron gave it a helpful push so that it wouldn’t fall on top of the man it had been about to kill. It crashed to the ground, and after a second was still.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” the man said, breathless.

“You Fletcher?” Cameron asked.

The commandant nodded. Cameron offered him a hand.

As he pulled Fletcher to his feet, the twenty odd people hiding around the room stood up and broke into a spontaneous round of applause and cheering.

“I thought you said there were three of you.”

“There were,” Cameron muttered.

“Oh.” Fletcher was unsteady on his feet and nearly collapsed, but Cameron caught him. The commandant put an arm round his shoulders.

Cameron looked around, frowning.

“Hang on a minute,” he murmured. “Where are the rest?”

He could only see about ten fallen Cybermen.

“The rest of what? Us?” said Fletcher.

“No, the Cybermen.”

Fletcher frowned. “Who?”

“Them!” Cameron pointed impatiently.

“That... isn’t that all of them?”

“No, that’s only half of...” He looked at the doorway, looked for who should have caught up five minutes ago. But hadn’t.

“Oh, god; the Doctor!”

“Rose, in here!” the Doctor called.

Somehow they had managed to put some distance between them and the dozen pursuing Cybermen; long enough for the Doctor to open a locked door with a flourish of the sonic screwdriver. He threw the War Brain into the darkened room.

Rose caught up and stumbled in, coughing.

“Ssh! Be quiet!” he hissed, sealing the door shut again.

“I can’t...keep running,” she panted.

“With any luck we won’t have to,” he said. “Their thermal vision won’t be able to see us through this door; it’s made of solid steel.”

“I can hear them coming!” she cried.

Sure enough, the Doctor also heard the dull thuds of their feet, getting louder, getting closer. He held a finger to his lips.

“All we’ve got to do is keep quiet,” he whispered.

Rose grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight.

The Cybermen were right on the other side of the door.

“Attention, Cybermen!” the War Brain announced, so loud it made both Rose and the Doctor jump. “The Timelord identified as the Doctor... is in here!”

NOTES:
Again, I've split this chapter into two. It was going to cover both Sergeant Cameron's and the Doctor's separate final encounters with their respective group of Cybermen, but as so often happens when writing big action scenes, by the time I got to the end of Cameron's section, I was already over 3000 words. I think it'll work better with a chapter devoted to each battle. This chapter, then, is the action climax, and the Doctor's solution is more of the cerebral kind, seeing as he has to outwit both armed Cybermen whilst being unarmed himself, and also the War Brain, who presumably can already see by now what the Doctor is planning. This chapter was actually going to be a bit longer: I was going to have a mini-scene where the young lieutenant dies after Cameron defeats the Cyberleader, and tells a grateful, laudatory Fletcher, in whose arms he's dying, that he knows the commandant doesn't even know his name. As it is, he still dies unnamed. I thought it best if Wells and Ellison got similarly unceremonious deaths.

By way of explaining away a possible plothole, it might appear that the Cybermen suddenly know who the Doctor is when they see him at the start of this chapter. However, the Peter Davison story "Earthshock" established that the Cybermen have been tracking him through his regenerations, and if that's still too ropey for the more discerning Whovian, well, then you can always just assume the Cybermen are smart, and realised it was the Doctor when they saw Rose again.