by Dan Abnett
The Story
of Martha
DAN ABNETT
with
David Roden,
Steve Lockley & Paul Lewis,
Robert Shearman,
and Simon Jowett
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Epub ISBN 9781409072928
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Published in 2008 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing.
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© Dan Abnett, David Roden, Steve Lockley & Paul Lewis, Robert Shearman, Simon Jowett, 2008
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Doctor Who is a BBC Wales production for BBC One Executive Producers: Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner
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Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Recent titles in the Doctor Who series
The Story of Martha part 1 Dan Abnett
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
The Weeping David Roden
The Story of Martha part 2 Dan Abnett
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Breathing Space Steve Lockley & Paul Lewis
The Story of Martha part 3 Dan Abnett
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
The Frozen Wastes Robert Shearman
The Story of Martha part 4 Dan Abnett
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Star-Crossed Simon Jowett
The Story of Martha part 5 Dan Abnett
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Acknowledgements
Recent titles in the Doctor Who series:
MARTHA IN THE MIRROR
Justin Richards
SNOWGLOBE 7
Mike Tucker
THE MANY HANDS
Dale Smith
GHOSTS OF INDIA
Mark Morris
THE DOCTOR TRAP
Simon Messingham
SHINING DARKNESS
Mark Michalowski
BEAUTIFUL CHAOS
Gary Russell
THE EYELESS
Lance Parkin
The Story of Martha
Transmission begins:
Space Lane Traffic is advised to stay away from Sol: 3, also known as Earth. Pilots are warned Sol: 3 is now entering Terminal Extinction. Planet Earth is closed. Planet Earth is closed. Planet Earth is closed…
It felt as if the whole world was made out of night.
Their small boat was running the tide inshore towards an invisible coast. Above them hung ink-black air, starless and heavy. Below them, the sea was as dark as the sky. It broke around the bows like black glass.
The little outboard motor chugged to itself. They were barely leaving a wake.
‘The south coast grid can pick up a sonar echo at thirty miles,’ one of the men in the shiny black oil slickers had told her when they embarked at Dunkirk. ‘We’ll be going softly, taking it slow.’
The two men in the shiny black oil slickers were Underground, of course. They were the last cell team to take up the tortuous relay that had conducted her from the Cursus Hill meet near the Orleans forage camps, around the Paris Crater, and then north through the burned fields of Picardy and Artois to Flanders, and the fortified sea walls and razor wire of the Channel coast. Like the smugglers of old, they knew the ways in and the ways out, and could navigate the darkness by smell and by touch: an old art, relearned. Sometimes, they even made it back alive.
The enclosing night was cool, and smelled of brine and Channel breezes. They’d waited at Dunkirk for two days, hoping for fog, but it was unseasonably clear, as if something was screwing with the weather patterns. Something, she thought, far more insidious than global warming.
In the end, she’d been the one who’d decided to go. Time was running out. The year was almost up. The stalwart men in their shiny black oil slickers had nodded. They would do their best. It was her, after all. So much depended upon her. As the year had gone by, she had acquired an extraordinary degree of fame that had begun to bother her. They treated her with a respect that bordered on reverence, as if she was some kind of legend or saint. She knew they would willingly die for her. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
She sat on one of the wooden bracket seats, rocking with the motion of the little boat. Her leather jacket was buttoned up tight, and her nylon-weave rucksack hung heavily against her back. She tried to clear her head and prepare herself. She breathed deeply, smelled the sea salt in her nostrils, and stared straight ahead. The men in the shiny black oil slickers didn’t speak.
The significance of their embarkation point had not escaped her: Dunkirk. Her kid brother, Leo, had been an enthusiastic reader of Commando comics as a child. She knew all about Dunkirk, and here she was, in a small boat, heading home despite terrible misfortune, ready to take a defiant stand against an apparently invincible enemy that believed it had already won.
There was so much to do, such vast odds to face down. The Doctor had trusted her, but she wondered if she was worth the trust. In her mind, she saw his kind, brown eyes, youthful and unchanged despite the age that had withered and creased his beautiful face. There had been perfect belief in them, a belief in her.
A year had passed since then. It had been hard, and there were parts of it that made her memory ache. She had endured every second of those twelve months. She had persevered. She had walked the Earth, and witnessed things that she would never forget: the islands of Japan on fire, New York in ruins, the poisoned Caspian, the frozen Nile, Shipyard Number One that had once been Russia. She had been through it all, and she had no way of knowing if her struggle had
been anything like enough.
The year hung on her like a dead weight, and she dearly wished she could cast it off, erase it, dismiss it, wipe it out and start again, fresh. If only. If only it could be a year that never was.
That was a wish that couldn’t be granted. The past year was real, and it was unchangeable. Most of her choices had been made for her, and it was up to her to do the rest.
It was up to her to finish it. It was up to her to save the world.
But how do you save a world that’s already lost?
‘Two minutes,’ whispered one of the men in the shiny black oil slickers. She stiffened. The engine chugged.
‘I don’t see anything,’ the other man hissed. ‘There’s nothing there.’
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘They’ll come. They have to come.’
The boat rocked under the blanket of darkness. The engine gurgled, idling.
‘If they don’t show,’ said the first man, ‘we’ll have to turn back. You understand that? We will have to turn around. We can’t stay out here, not even for you.’
She nodded.
‘It won’t come to that, Mathieu,’ she replied. ‘You trusted me once. Trust me again.’
He nodded. Even in the dark, she could tell his expression was less than convinced.
She didn’t even believe herself.
A small, blue-white light appeared in the darkness ahead of them, tiny but stark. Once again, she was reminded of smugglers and the old days. It was a halogen lamp, flashing once, twice; a little cold star shining on an unseen beach.
‘There!’ she said.
The light began to swing, gently, from side to side.
Mathieu’s comrade rose in the bows, and flashed his lamp back: two solid clicks.
They came in through the breakers, the outboard throbbing. She felt the boat’s belly scrape and rumble across the shingle. Mathieu and his comrade jumped out into the water in their shiny black oil slickers, steadying the sides of the boat against the ebb. She got up and jumped out. Cold water sucked at her legs.
She looked back at the men wrangling the small boat. She couldn’t see their faces. She wished she could.
‘Make it right,’ Mathieu said, out of the darkness.
‘I will.’
‘God bless you,’ said the other man.
‘I’m hoping we can settle this before it becomes a matter for God,’ she said. ‘Thank you, both, I—’
They didn’t reply. They were already pulling the boat back off the shore, eager to turn around for France.
She ran up the beach towards the light. Her wet boots crunched over damp sand and pebbles. People had played here once. They had built sandcastles, licked ninety-nines, knotted handkerchiefs around their heads, and set up deck chairs and gaudy windbreaks.
She tried her hardest not to think about that. She turned and waved a last goodbye to the men in the shiny black oil slickers. They were too busy heaving the boat into the sea’s back-splash to do more than half-raise their hands in response.
A young man was waiting for her on the foreshore, just beyond the tide reach. He held a halogen lamp in his hand. He was good-looking, tall, dark-haired and bearded, and he was dressed in fatigues. He watched her approach with a solemn, unsmiling face.
She came up to face him, slightly out of breath.
‘What’s your name, then?’ she asked.
‘Tom,’ he said. ‘Milligan. No need to ask who you are. Famous Martha Jones. How long since you were last in Britain?’
‘Three hundred and sixty-five days,’ Martha replied. ‘It’s been a long year.’
One Year Earlier
Travelling by vortex manipulator hurt. It hurt a lot. Martha hit the grass, rolling, gasping. Her sinuses ached. There was blood in her throat. Her organs felt like they’d been used as a boxer’s speed bag. Captain Jack Harkness’s teleport was right up there in the Top Five Worst Ways To Travel.
The instant before, she had been standing on the polished deck of HMS Valiant, the Master’s airborne carrier base. She lay back on the damp grass for a moment, recovering her wits, remembering the scene. They had lost. They had lost everything. The Master had outplayed them at every step. The radio channels were frantic with transmissions of despair and astonishment. Jack had died at least once, Martha’s family were prisoners, and the Doctor…
The Doctor…
Martha swallowed. She was determined not to cry. It served no purpose. It was weak, and the Doctor was trusting her not to be weak.
The Doctor…
The Master had aged the Doctor using a process built into his laser screwdriver. The Doctor had become old, very old – a helpless wizened shell. That had been, perhaps, the worst thing of all, to see the youthful, vital being she adored reduced to geriatric frailty. His eyes, his kind eyes, had cruelly remained young. They had stared at her fiercely, lost and hopeless, dismayed to find themselves imprisoned in a failing, infirm body that could no longer bound between stars and joke in the face of the impossible.
As the Master clapped and capered, the ancient thing that had once been the Doctor had leaned towards her, and whispered in her ear, just a few words. They were words Martha would never forget.
‘We can’t stop him,’ Jack had gasped at her, coming back from the dead. ‘Get out of here.’
With one last, hopeless glance at her mum, dad, and sister, Martha had triggered the vortex manipulator Jack had given her. She never ran from a fight, but she knew when a fight was lost. It felt like she was abandoning them, but she knew it was the only choice, not just for her mum and dad, or Tish or Jack, or even the Doctor, but for the entire human race. It was the only choice. If there was even a chance she could do what the Doctor had asked her to do, then she had to try.
Bang! One press of the manipulator, and Martha was Earth-side, rolling on damp grass, groaning in pain. She rose to her feet, unsteadily.
London lay before her. Like a blizzard of angry meteors, the Toclafane were hailing down, sweeping towards the city. The Toclafane were the Master’s new allies. He had brought them here, by invitation. Metal spheres the size of soccer balls, the Toclafane sang as they swept in out of the clouds. Their voices were the voices of children, light, carefree, gleeful. Their wicked blades were out, their weapons flashing. Six billion cybernetic globes, singing childish songs of murder and malice, were descending on the Earth to exact decimation, as per the Master’s unequivocal instruction.
Decimation. One in ten. One in ten must die.
Martha watched the flocks of globes rushing overhead, cackling and chuckling, zigging and zagging, zipping out searing beams of destructive energy. People, screaming and running in panic, burned to ashes as they dashed for cover. The park around her was littered with fires, and thousands of explosions pinpricked the London skyline.
Martha stood for a moment, stunned by the enormity of the Master’s lethal tithe. Planet Earth was dying. The Toclafane were committing mass murder. She knew the same scene was being repeated all around the world. The human race was being culled, cowed and conquered. In a matter of minutes, Martha’s species was being transformed into a cowering slave race.
She was determined not to cry.
Breathing hard, she glared up at the shoals of Toclafane sweeping overhead.
‘I’m coming back,’ she said.
Aleesha ran. She was nine years old. A flying metal ball had reduced her Aunt Charley to ashes, and when Charley’s husband Grant had screamed at the ball, and tried to hit it with a rounders bat, it had incinerated him, too.
Aleesha had been staying with her aunt and uncle for the day. Her mum had gone up town to do some shopping. Her dad was out in Iraq, and sent letters when he could. Aleesha liked hanging out with Aunt Charley. Aunt Charley had a wicked sense of humour, and allowed Aleesha to play with the Wii even if there was still homework to do.
Aleesha didn’t properly understand what had happened that morning. The sight of a flying metal ball making her aunt vanish was too improbable. She
kept expecting Aunt Charley to appear from somewhere, laughing. ‘Gone? Me? Not me, baby ’Leesha. It’s like a magic trick.’
Aleesha knew that if her daddy didn’t come back from Iraq, it would be because of something tangible like a bullet or a bomb. No one had told her that people could vanish like a puff of cinders – just like that! – if a humming ball hovered into the room.
The metal ball had spun in place, tilting, as if it was looking at her. Blades had flicked in and out of its casing. Aleesha waited, braced, for it to zap at her, but it had just rotated again and zoomed off out of the kitchen window.
Then Aleesha had run.
She had been running for two weeks.
The streets were mostly empty. There was no traffic. The skies, empty of planes from Stanstead and Gatwick, had turned beautifully clear.
Aleesha raided corner shops for chocolate and out-of-date sandwiches. She slept in empty houses and flats where the front doors had been left open.
Once in a while, some of the metal balls would zip overhead, laughing to themselves. Army trucks loaded with armed men grumbled past from time to time, but Aleesha avoided them, even though they reminded her of her dad.
There was nothing on the telly. She tried every set she found. The radio was dead too, tuned out to static. Hungry dogs, missing their masters, barked and growled in the back gardens of estates.
On the fourteenth day, chomping on a tuna sandwich from a plastic carton, Aleesha noticed how weeds had begun to flourish in lawns and flowerbeds.
She wondered how much longer her mum would be. How long did it take to go shopping up town?
* * *
Catford was no-go. The Unified Containment Forces had strung razor-wire barricades across the South Circular. There were sand-bagged machine-gun posts guarding the way in through Peckham.
From a flat in Deptford, Martha observed the Containment Forces through a pair of binoculars she’d liberated from a sporting goods store in Fulham: army types, mostly men, a few women, all dressed in black combat drills, all humping MP5s and waist-harnessed Glocks. They were the business. The Master hadn’t been mucking about when it had come to recruiting. Martha wondered how much the Master was paying them. How was he paying them? What was he paying them with?