Centuries ago, the galaxy was devastated by a great catastrophe. A woman named Saloran Hardew has found records of the events which led up to the disaster, and a man named Siy Tarkov listens, spellbound, as Saloran shows him recorded images which tell the story of the Dalek invasion and the man named Kalendorf. It seems that Kalendorf betrayed the people of the galaxy to the Daleks along with a woman named Susan Mendes, but when Suz was killed he turned on the Daleks and led a rebellion against them. The rebellion almost succeeded, but then the Daleks opened up a gateway into an alternate timeline in which the Daleks were the supreme masters of the cosmos. Rather than forming an alliance with the Daleks of this Universe, however, the alternate Daleks declared war on them. For years the war raged, and Kalendorf fought alongside the Daleks of the other dimension with his lieutenants Alby Brook and Miranda. But despite their apparent alliance with the alternate Daleks, Kalendorf and his associates came to develop another agenda...

Fleet Commander Kalendorf and the Alliance Daleks have fought the Enemy Daleks all the way back to Earth’s solar system, where they believe the last battle of the war will take place. But as Kalendorf leads his troops into battle aboard the flagship Courageous, Captain Mirana is leading the scout ship Defiant away from the battle, much to the confusion of her first officer, Marber. And elsewhere, Alby Brook tracks down Alliance cargo freighter Omega N-7 -- but his subsequent actions confuse his robot Drudger, who doesn’t understand why Alby would open fire on a ship piloted by Alliance Dalek drones...

A second wave of Dalek ships is approaching the Alliance fleet and will soon outnumber them, but Kalendorf has decided to continue battling the first wave, inflicting as much damage as possible before he is forced to retreat. His extremely risky strategy intrigues the Mentor, the female creator of the Alliance Daleks, and she summons him to the communications centre to explain himself. She praises his efforts in the war, and notes, as if in passing, that cargo freighter Omega N-7 has just been destroyed in a sector of space which has not seen enemy Dalek activity for some time. Kalendorf dismisses this as a random attack by an isolated raiding ship, and the Mentor accepts this as an explanation... for now. Though she and Kalendorf are ostensibly allies, it’s clear neither trusts the other an inch...

Alby’s Drudger notes that he has been staring at a picture of Susan Mendes for some time, but he reacts angrily when it suggests that he choose to switch to a more soothing image -- and reminds him that, because Suz has been in the hands of the enemy Daleks for so long, the Mentor has ordered her termination. Alby orders the Drudger to find out how the battle for Earth’s solar system is progressing, but as he listens to the reports, the monitors pick up another brief transmission which Alby recognises at once. The Drudger traces the source of the signal to the Pkowik system, and Alby orders it to investigate immediately.

The Defiant reaches the co-ordinates specified by Mirana, and on her further orders, Marber scans the area and detects the wreckage of a cargo freighter. There are no survivors, and the scattered cargo pods seem to be shielded from the scanners. Nevertheless, she orders Marber to bring the pods on board. Suspicious, he follows her to the cargo bays and finds her scanning each pod individually, as though searching for something specific. Mirana admits that she’s been given sealed orders which she’s forbidden from discussing, but assures Marber that she trusts him completely. Mollified, he returns to the bridge to await a rendezvous with another ship which Mirana is expecting to arrive shortly. Mirana continues the search, finds the pod she’s looking for, and summons the medical officer, Dr Johnstone.

Elsewhere, the enemy Daleks are working on their own strategy. The raiding party in the Pkowik system has completed Phase One of its mission, and is ready to move on to Phase Two. Susan Mendes must be located, the Alliance fleet must be kept out of Earth’s solar system until the Daleks’ work is complete, and above all else, the Emperor must be recovered. Meanwhile, Alby Brook arrives in the Pkowik system, but the Drudger’s scans are blocked by a “particle cloud” -- a generic term for any unidentifiable spatial phenomenon. A visual scan of the cloud shows what appears to be a space station, and although he’s aware Mirana will be waiting for him to arrive, Alby orders the Drudger to set course for the station to investigate. The signal they picked up earlier was a distress call from the Emperor of the Daleks...

Mirana has found the pod she’s looking for, which was tagged before the freighter ever set off. Inside is a standard cryogenic chamber, which she and Johnstone take to the infirmary. There, Johnstone arranges for the patient inside the chamber to be revived, and Mirana draws a gun in case the patient becomes violent. There’s still no sign of Alby, but as any delay in treatment could prove fatal, Mirana orders Johnstone to revive the patient. Once awake, Susan Mendes begins to scream...

Siy is still trying to understand the motivations of the characters in this story. Why was Kalendorf prepared to risk everything for Suz, and why was he always willing to switch sides? Was he an opportunist or pragmatist looking out for his own survival... or a warrior who always knew what he’d have to do to win his war?

The battle for Earth’s solar system continues. The battleship Repulse has to withdraw for repairs, and without any human leaders to provide initiative and take risks, the remaining Alliance drone ships on that front begun to play it safe. Herrick remains impressed by their fighting spirit, but notes that Kalendorf seems testier and more troubled than usual... and the Mentor, who has secretly been keeping him under observation, shares this opinion.

The space station in the Pkowik system is of Alliance Dalek design, but it’s been damaged by enemy Dalek fire. The particle cloud is still hampering the Drudger’s scans, but despite the risk, Alby decides he’s come too far to turn back without learning more, and decides to board the station to investigate further. He dons an atmospheric suit and enters the station, and eventually locates a pressurised section -- littered with the remains of Alliance Daleks, enemy Daleks, and humans. But as he makes his way through the corpses, he hears movement elsewhere in the station. Something else is alive in here with him...

Suz is fully awake now, healthy but traumatised and understandably hostile. Mirana explains to Suz that she’s been in cryogenic suspension for almost six years, and assures her that she and Johnstone don’t work for the Daleks and are in fact friends of Alby Brook. Suz remembers Alby telling her that her parents were dead, and then abandoning her at the spaceport on Vega 6. She remembers how much she hated him for that... and remembers that all the time she hated him, she still loved him, and she still does even now.

Kalendorf’s attack proves more effective than even he seemed to expect, and the leader of the Dalek solar defence fleet is forced to report defeat to the Dalek Supreme. Reinforcements will not arrive in time, but the Alliance fleet cannot be permitted to get through to Earth, and the Dalek Supreme thus orders the fleet leader to have all surviving ships link their energy fields and instigate a special emergency procedure. On board the Courageous, Kalendorf reports to the Mentor, who once again notes his caution even in the face of victory. But it seems even he hasn’t been cautious enough, for even as he warns the Mentor that the Daleks are bound to have a backup plan, the Courageous is rocked by a terrific explosion...

Suz accompanies Mirana to her cabin, still struggling to understand what kind of galaxy she’s woken up in -- and how she’s woken up at all when she distinctly recalls being shot at point-black range by a Dalek. Mirana explains that the Daleks stunned Suz and transmatted her body to a ship orbiting Yaldos, preserving her so they could transform her into a Dalek. Mirana also explains that although rebellion Suz and Kalendorf started, though successful, was all a part of the Dalek Emperor’s plan to distract attention from its real aim -- to seize control of the Earth Alliance’s Project Infinity and contact superior Daleks from an alternate Universe. During the battle for Project Infinity, Kalendorf, Alby and Mirana were captured and put into cryo-stasis, also to be transformed into Daleks -- but when they were woken they found that this had not been done. Furthermore, Mirana, who still had Dalek control technology implanted in her head, discovered that she couldn’t pick up any transmissions on the Dalek command net.

As the three allies tried to work out what had happened, they were confronted by a Dalek which spoke with almost human inflections, and which claimed that the “enemy Daleks” had committed the gravest crimes known to their Universe. Identified as leaders of the human rebellion, Kalendorf, Alby and Mirana were brought before the Mentor, the leader of the alternate Daleks -- a being like an angel encased in a glowing golden throne, embedded with gem-like technology. The Mentor explained that the Daleks of her Universe were created to preserve peace and order, and as such, they had declared war upon the evil Daleks of this timeline. But to pursue the war, the Mentor required help, and after a moment’s thought, Kalendorf agreed to the alliance.

With the aid of the Alliance Daleks, Kalendorf cut off the enemy Daleks’ retreat to Seriphia, and thus began years of battle. The Dalek Emperor had been captured alive in the first battle on Lopra Minor, but had entered a state of complete catatonia before he could be interrogated. Even Mirana could detect no signs of life, though she managed to switch off the distress signal his casing had been transmitting. Oddly, the Mentor then insisted that she be reassigned -- and it was at this point that Kalendorf privately confided in Mirana that he didn’t fully trust the Mentor. A number of planets in supposedly friendly territory had been found devastated, all of them worlds which had refused to join the war effort, and Kalendorf had come to suspect that the Alliance Daleks were as ruthless in their pursuit of “peace and order” as the enemy Daleks were about conquest. Mirana admitted that she’d found out one other thing about the Emperor which she’d kept from the Mentor... but it’s difficult for her to admit the next part to Suz. The implants in Mirana’s head enabled her to pick up some residue of his final orders, and it seems the last thing he’d done before he was captured was transmit his own mind out of his body, somewhere else. Suz puts the pieces together, and realises that the Dalek Emperor’s mind could be hidden within her own...

After reassigning Mirana, the Mentor had the Emperor’s inert body removed to a secret location. By this point, Alby, Kalendorf and Mirana were all secretly working against the Mentor. They recently met on the ruins of Emmeron, one of the “Punished Planets,” to discuss the Mentor’s new decree that all humanoids held captive by the Daleks for longer than a specified period of time must be classified as irredeemable and fired into the heart of a collapsing star. Suz was on the list for destruction, but with the help of some of Alby’s friends, they tagged her pod with a radioactive isotope for identification. Alby then shadowed and destroyed the freighter taking her for extermination, and Mirana subsequently collected her from the debris. This brings Suz up to date, but she remains suspicious of Mirana’s motives -- and Kalendorf’s, for if she does have the Dalek Emperor’s mind hidden within her own, she’s sure Kalendorf has a plan to take advantage of that.