Exit Strategy (short story)

 was the fourth of five Time Lord Victorious short stories released by Eaglemoss Collections. It was printed in DWFC TLV 3, which came with the Dalek Executioner and Dalek Strategist Figurine Set. It was written by James Goss.

Summary
Falling through the Time Vortex following "a spectacular defeat", and surrounded by his dying comrades including the Executioner, the Dalek Prime Strategist reflects on the events that brought him here and the Emperor’s failures in particular. He predicts the Emperor will begin a war between the Daleks and the Time Lords. Deciding the Emperor is likely to fail without him, and may even need replacing, the Strategist uses Kotturuh crystals he’d collected in his casing to initiate an emergency temporal shift and escapes the Vortex.

Plot
With the Dalek Emperor's plan having failed, the Dalek Time Strategist considers taking his throne, as he and his comrades fall through the Time Vortex. The Strategist's plan had been simple enough: if the Doctor was the cause of all their problems, then they could use him to solve their problems. The Strategist had advised the Emperor to use the Doctor to go back to the Dark Times and locate the source of the temporal divergence.

The Strategist concludes that it all went wrong when the Emperor had become too ambitious, which over-complicated matters. The Strategist's plan had been simple enough: manipulate three Doctors into warring amongst themselves, locating and correcting the source of the temporal anomoly, and harvest numerous life-forms that could be weaponised by the Dalek Empire.

It was at that point that the Emperor had ordered the 'Ultimate End' - a plan to travel further back and destroy Gallifrey before the Time Lords could evolve, a plan that was ambitious, but a plan that had also attracted the attention of all three Doctors, which in turn had led to its ultimate failure.

The remains of the Dalek Time Saucer burnt at the edge of the temporal horizon all of their hard work is now lost. However, the Strategist doesn't care about that. He watches with glee as the Dalek Executioner glides past him, his case exposed and the mutant inside of him being torn apart by the time winds.

Watching another casing being ripped apart, this time of a Dalek drone, the Strategist allows itself to consider the future of the Dalek Empire, and the future of the Emperor. The Strategist realises that the ultimate weapon was evidently time itself, something which no doubt the Daleks and Time Lords both had procured. However, it's clear to the Strategist that neither races had waged war with the battleground itself being all of time, and this fascinates him.

The Stragetist concludes that if he allows himself to die within the Vortex, the Emperor would wage a Time War on the Time Lords himself, and would no doubt fail. He then hypothesised that, even with the Strategist's help, if the Emperor still wages war and lost, then that would show every Dalek that he was not the right Emperor for the job... and that would leave a vacancy.

This thought process allows the Strategist the luxury of his own ambition. Using the Kotturuh crystals that it had procured in the Dark Times, embedded in its casing, he would risk an emergency temporal shift, not wanting to miss out on whatever the future held.

Characters

 * Dalek Prime Strategist
 * Dalek Executioner
 * Dalek Drone

Time Vortex

 * The Dalek Prime Strategist notes that the other Daleks are being ripped apart by the time winds as their shells are deteriorating and their raw flesh can be seen leaking out.

Daleks

 * The Strategist reckons that he would have warned the Emperor against the Ultimate End had he been made aware of.
 * After the extraordinary failures of the current Dalek Emperor, and considering that the Emperor could fail again, the Strategist has eyes on becoming the new Emperor that would lead the Daleks in the upcoming war.

Continuity

 * The remaining Daleks of the Time Squad are falling through the Time Vortex after being defeated by the Eighth Doctor. (AUDIO: Mutually Assured Destruction)
 * The Strategist recalls using the Doctor first to dispose of an “impossible enemy” (COMIC: Defender of the Daleks) and then to find the source of the changes to time. (AUDIO: The Enemy of My Enemy)


 * The Strategist recalls manipulating the conflict between three incarnations of the Doctor and harvesting life forms in the Dark Times. (PROSE: All Flesh is Grass)
 * The Strategist predicts the Emperor will go on to wage a war against the Time Lords and gives serious thought to replacing him as the Emperor for that conflict. (TV: Dalek, The Parting of the Ways)
 * Having foreseen the Time War, the Strategist deems it a shame to miss out on the action and performs an emergency temporal shift in an attempt to witness it. (TV: Doomsday, Evolution of the Daleks)