Chapter Text
Dalek Bob glided along the corridor, humming to himself a merry tune that his pet Adipose, hidden deep down within his casing, joined in with to perform a perfect duet as they sailed along. Just as they hit the final chorus on a crescendo, Dalek Hilda slid into view.
It could not be! Dalek Bob was unprepared for such an encounter. His brushless motors with rare earth magnets almost lost the grease from their bearings. It was her! The current to his power pack above his Adipose fluctuated. Would this finally be his chance to communicate with her? Perhaps share an order or two, he considered, or at least a directive.
As Dalek Bob stuttered to a halt unfortunately his pet Adipose, Adi for short, trilled out the high note that ended the song they had been singing.
Immediately Dalek Hilda went into defensive mode, the lights on her helmet flashing with alarm. “Explain! Explain!” she demanded, disabling the safety on her laser gun to engage assault function.
“Malfunction identified,” Dalek Bob reported in reply. “Linear motor fault.” In a panic, he had said the first thing to load in his random browser.
Dalek Hilda lowered her weapon.
Her eye stalk moved up and down, observing him. “Elevated oil temperature detected.”
Dalek Bob didn’t need her to point that out. He was very well aware of hot oil flushing through his systems. Venting his casing, steam poured out and his core temperature stabilised. Adi gave him a whimper of understanding.
“Maintenance schedule rearranged,” he stated, hoping that would appease her curiosity. “Optimum equilibrium status re-established.”
“Affirmative,” Dalek Hilda acknowledged, and then she turned to drift away.
How could he keep her attention for a little bit longer?
“Simultaneous refuelling requested,” he blurted out, so quickly that his stabilisers felt as though they would fail and he’d land, stalk down, on the Crucible deck in a most unbecoming way.
She swivelled her turret and took so long to reply that his C Drive had time to defrag.
“Negative. Access denied,” she reported. Having made her report, her eye stalk spotted Dalek Jak further down the corridor. “Exporting hardware. Session ended.”
With that, she left Dalek Bob standing there all on his own, while she aimed for her quarry.
Silence immediately followed. Dalek Bob momentarily lost all system feedback as his power pack attempted to reboot his input sensors.
Disturbed by the change in his environment, Adi sent Dalek Bob a message of comfort.
It was soon acknowledged with three beeps.
It was time to abort this mission, Dalek Bob decided, and he deleted the relevant data. Dalek Hilda was an inferior member of Dalek kind. Her casing was far too shiny, and her protocols ambiguous. Remote desktop would never have been possible; she just didn’t have the correct software updates.
Having purged the specific user files, he glided towards his next class in Extermination 101.