The Story of Martha

by Dan Abnett

  The old man’s tongue poked between his lips, now blackened and swollen. It flickered in and out, like a snake scenting the air.

  The Doctor took a deep breath, and ran the palms of his hands over his strained face.

  ‘Doctor?’ Martha said urgently.

  ‘OK!’ he snapped, and knelt down in front of Waechter. ‘Listen to me. If I destroy that chip, you will turn into one of these creatures. But if I repair it to keep you human, then I can’t take you away from here. I’m sorry. One way or the other, you’re going to have to stay. There’s nothing else I can do. I really am so sorry. You have to tell me what you want me to do. Waechter?’

  The old man brandished his claw-like protuberance, staring in utter horror at it.

  ‘Is this all that my life has been about?’ he cried. ‘Just waiting for this?’

  The Doctor continued urgently: ‘Please! What do you want me to do?’

  And as Waechter struggled to make his decision, and the Doctor and Martha waited with bated breath, the sound of weeping could be heard… from outside on the snow-blasted wastes. The creatures – his people – were waiting, too.

  Waechter reached out a twisted claw and rested it gently on the Doctor’s shoulder. ‘Your identification paper…’

  ‘The psychic paper?’

  ‘Yes. May I see it again? Please?’

  The Doctor reached into his jacket, and pulled out the wallet. He slowly opened it, showing it to Waechter. The old man stared deep into its intuitive heart and his reaction this time was sedate, almost serene.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said softly.

  The Doctor closed the wallet and tucked it away. ‘What did you see?’

  Waechter leant back in the chair, and closed his eyes. ‘An end. And a beginning. Running free. Never lonely again.’ He opened his eyes, and smiled. ‘I owe you my thanks.’

  The Doctor waved his hand in front of his face. ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘It’s our custom here, Doctor. I owe you a gift. And the only gift I have of value is my knowledge of the future.’

  The Doctor stood up, frowning, and backed away slightly. ‘I’m not sure it’s wise to know what’s coming. More fun that way.’

  Ignoring him, Waechter turned to Martha. ‘Look to your family. Protect them. They will need you to be strong, so very strong, Martha Jones.’

  Martha’s face clouded with confusion. ‘What do you mean?’

  Waechter looked up at the Doctor. ‘And for you, Time Lord, there are endings coming. There will be loss and death—’

  ‘Please,’ the Doctor broke in. ‘Don’t.’

  Waechter looked down at his hooked, clawed hands. His breathing shallow and rasping. When he looked up again, his eyes were shot green, pulsing with inner light. ‘Please destroy this thing in my neck,’ he said, his voice barely a whisper. ‘Let me go. I want to be with my people.’

  The Doctor leant forward, activating the sonic screwdriver, disabling the circuit. An incandescent shower of sparks erupted from the old man’s neck, and his back suddenly arched, his face contorted in a rictus of pain.

  New bolts of agonising pain wracked his body.

  He gasped for air.

  He fell to his knees and then forward on his hands. As his bone and muscle bent and reformed themselves, his face began to distort, bulging, puckering and swelling into some new creature.

  Martha turned away, and the Doctor watched her cross to the console.

  ‘Martha?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t want to see,’ she told him.

  Behind her, the Doctor gently helped the creature to its feet. It swung its head round to look at the Doctor, its bulbous, arachnid eyes peering quizzically at him. And then, the creature bowed its head, respectfully.

  ‘I’ll help you outside,’ the Doctor murmured. He pushed the doors open, and freezing air billowed into the console room.

  Martha stood utterly still at the console, listening to the click-clack of Waechter’s new feet on the metal TARDIS floor, her face streaked with tears.

  Martha could hear that Waechter had paused by the door, but still she couldn’t bring herself to turn around. Was he waiting for some sign, some gesture from her? Feeling guilty and selfish, she sighed, and turned slowly to face him, dreading what she might see.

  But he had already gone, stepped out into the snow.

  The Doctor solemnly closed the door, and sauntered back up towards Martha. He put his arm around her shoulders, and pulled her close for a moment.

  ‘I love a happy ending,’ he said.

  Martha looked up at him. ‘What now?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, you know. A bit more jiggery pokery,’ he beamed. ‘You know, Martha Jones, I think that Beacon should start transmitting a very different message.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Something more appropriate. What do you say, eh? How about… a protected planet of special scientific interest,’ he ventured.

  As the Doctor began to set the coordinates on the console for the Beacon, and the central column began to rise and fall, Martha asked, ‘He will be all right, won’t he?’

  The Doctor stared at the console’s pulsing lights, and for a moment he looked surprisingly optimistic.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ he said. ‘But, there’s one thing he will be, Martha.’

  ‘Oh yeah? What’s that?’ she asked.

  The Doctor twisted a button on the console. ‘Brilliant!’

  Martha’s story seemed to raise the little girl’s spirits. Just telling it had done Martha the power of good. It had forcibly reminded her of the things that really mattered. Here was a little girl, nine years old, who’d survived for two weeks on the simple hope that someone was going to make everything better. It made Martha ashamed for feeling put upon and sorry for herself.

  Martha took a shower in the flat’s dank cubicle. The water was cold, and intermittent, but she hardly cared. She washed the traces of perfume off her and vowed not to wear any again, and no jewellery, either.

  It was nearly dawn. Aleesha was asleep. They had eaten a meal – beans and sausages out of a tin, cooked on a camp stove Martha carried in her rucksack. Martha tied her hair back. She found a pair of trainers in the bedroom that were a reasonable fit.

  When Aleesha woke up, Martha would take her to somewhere safer. She’d find a survivor collective or a refugee group, and make sure they took care of the little girl. Martha felt a renewed determination. She’d wasted too much time hiding and skulking around, questioning her own abilities. She had a job to do, an enormous job, and she just had to get on with it. No more hiding, no more living in the shadows. She had to be positive and confident. She had to move with a purpose and make her own luck.

  That’s what he’d do, after all.

  Daybreak. Griffin stood beside the Humvee, sipping hot coffee from a tin mug. Rafferty and the other team members had groused about the fruitless night’s search, but Griffin wasn’t convinced it had been fruitless.

  He was sure they’d been very close. Though she was clever and disguised, the elusive Martha Jones had been almost in their grasp. It was a gut feeling, and Griffin knew to trust his gut feelings. Just blind luck, or the mischance of a famished dog breaking a window pane, had allowed her to slip away this time. But if he could get this close once, he could do it again.

  Griffin tipped the dregs of the coffee out onto the ground and called to his men. He wasn’t going to give up and let her get away. The ADC had been smart to pick him for the job. Griffin was like a cruise missile. Once you set him going, he didn’t stop until he found the target.

  ‘Come on!’ he shouted. ‘Let’s go!’

  Martha said goodbye to Aleesha two days later at a survivor outpost in Battersea. Martha spent a few hours with the group, talking to them, listening to their stories and telling some of her own. She made them listen, she made them understand, and she made them promise to carry the word on to any other groups they ran across.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ one of the survivo
rs asked her.

  ‘Because someone has to,’ Martha replied. ‘Just tell them. Just tell them what Martha Jones told you.’

  ‘He’ll come looking for you,’ said one of the others. ‘You go around telling people this stuff, telling people your name, the Master will come looking for you.’

  ‘I know,’ said Martha. ‘He already is. But look at it this way. If the Master himself wants to stop me, what I’m saying must be pretty important.’

  When she went to find Aleesha to say goodbye, Martha found her earnestly telling the story Martha had told her to a group of refugee children. Not wanting to interrupt, Martha watched quietly and waited until Aleesha had finished.

  The process was beginning.

  She gave Aleesha a hug. ‘These people will look after you,’ she said.

  ‘Do you want your earrings back?’ Aleesha asked.

  ‘You keep them for me. I’m coming back.’

  Aleesha nodded. ‘OK, but you had better have something in return,’ Aleesha said. ‘Here.’

  She held something out to Martha. It was a plastic badge that read, ‘Hooray! I am Nine!’

  ‘I’ll treasure it,’ said Martha.

  She picked up her backpack.

  ‘Aleesha?’

  ‘Yes, Martha?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘What for?’

  Martha smiled. ‘It doesn’t matter. Just thank you.’

  She turned, and headed towards the gate. It was starting to rain.

  ‘Martha?’ Aleesha called after her. ‘Martha, where are you going?’

  ‘Everywhere,’ said Martha.

  At night, the ruins of Lille glowed like a pale ghost. There were deep fires in the rubble of the sundered town, fires that had been burning for seven weeks, since the descent of the Toclafane on Day Zero.

  Directed by Over Watch, UCFA Brunol led his reaction force through the enclaves of the labour camps, and onto a broken highway that ran into the industrial wasteland of Surcourt. They gave the radiation pits a wide berth and kept clear of the razor-wire barricades.

  To the north, beyond Surcourt, the spectre of Lille underlit the night sky.

  The trucks and APCs in his small convoy rolled to a halt. Over Watch, the command-and-control data network that fed through the Archangel satellite grid and coordinated UCF operations, had been routing them into Surcourt, where a suspected flash market was under way.

  Now the command was to stop and wait.

  Brunol, eager to get on, requested clarification. As he waited, he drummed his fingers impatiently on the dashboard. Tap-tap-tap-tap! Tap-tap-tap-tap!

  The network pinged.

  the message window from Over Watch read.

  After five minutes, a small truck approached from the south and pulled up beside the convoy. The men who got out were armed, but they weren’t wearing UCF uniforms. They were a scrappy lot dressed in dirty fatigues and worn-out army surplus kit.

  Brunol didn’t like the look of them. He checked his sidearm and got out of his APC to meet them.

  ‘What’s this about?’ he asked.

  The leader of the newcomers was a big fellow with a scarred face.

  ‘You had your instructions to wait?’ the man asked Brunol in French, but his accent sounded British.

  ‘Yes. Identify yourself.’

  The man flashed an ID wallet. ‘UCFA Griffin. Special operations.’

  ‘Why aren’t you in uniform?’ Brunol asked.

  ‘Special operations,’ Griffin repeated.

  ‘This is a waste of time,’ said Brunol. He gestured down the road towards Surcourt. ‘There’s a flash market in progress. They picked off a supply convoy yesterday, and they’re dispersing the goods. We should be in there, breaking it up and making arrests, not—’

  ‘Have you seen this woman?’ Griffin asked, holding up a photo.

  ‘No. Should I have?’

  ‘You’ve heard of her, though,’ said Griffin. ‘Her name’s Martha Jones.’

  Brunol raised his eyebrows. ‘Martha Jones? I’ve heard stories. She’s some kind of figurehead, isn’t she?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve been tracking her across the UK. She slipped into France eight days ago, on a container ship, and went through two internment camps on the coast. I have positive sightings. She looped down through Cambrai, but I think she’s turned back to cross the border into Belgium.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do about it?’ asked Brunol.

  ‘Hold your forces back until I signal you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because a flash market is exactly the sort of place she’d go. She’s contacting survivor groups. I need that market to stay open a while longer. You close it down, you close down my lead.’

  Brunol shrugged. ‘Is this authorised?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Griffin. He held up a phone. ‘But if you don’t believe me, there’s someone you can talk to.’

  They’d chosen an old warehouse to hold the market in. It was near the container yard in the south of Surcourt with good access, in and out, and hard to contain or close off.

  Speed was the essence of a flash market. You put the word out, and then moved in and set up fast, distributing goods from the backs of lorries. First come, first served. Get the goods into circulation, and then everybody fades into the night, as fast as they’d come, and no one knew the market had ever been there.

  It worked in principle. Mathieu Vivier knew plenty of flash markets that had been hit by the UCF. In Saint-Omer, just the week before, twenty people had been gunned down at a flash market in a sports centre.

  The risk was worth it, though. It was the only way to get food and medicines and other vital supplies moving into the survivor networks. Nowhere was secure enough to store the quantities of goods taken from a convoy hijack. You had to get it broken down and into circulation. In the post-Day Zero world, survival depended on speed, mobility and minimising your exposure.

  The market was busy. There were people in from all over the countryside. By the light of oil-drum fires, they sorted through the loads – tonight, mostly clothing and tinned goods – in the trucks and barrows.

  Mathieu was watching the doors. He had a sports air horn in his coat pocket. They had men posted outside, and lookouts on the rooftops and approach roads. The first sign of a UCF raid or descending Toclafane, they would shut up shop and scatter.

  Mathieu moved through the crowd, greeting faces he knew, nodding to others. A lot of newcomers had turned up, and that made him edgy.

  ‘Looking for something in particular?’ he asked one of the strangers.

  ‘The usual,’ the man replied. ‘Food.’

  ‘English, right?’ asked Mathieu.

  The man laughed. ‘My accent that bad, eh?’

  ‘Little way from home, aren’t you?’ Mathieu asked him.

  ‘I was over here on holiday when it went down,’ the man said. ‘Guess I’m stuck here. Come to that, I don’t think anywhere is home any more, do you?’

  Mathieu shook his head.

  ‘Actually,’ said the man, ‘I’m looking for someone too.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  The man took a scuffed photo out of his coat. ‘My girlfriend. She was on holiday with me. We got separated. I really want to find her.’

  ‘What’s her name?’ Mathieu asked, looking at the photo.

  ‘Martha,’ the man said. ‘I just want to find her. I’m so worried about her.’

  ‘I wish I could help you,’ said Mathieu, ‘but I don’t recognise her. And I’d remember a face like that.’

  ‘Thanks, anyway.’

  ‘I’ll ask around,’ Mathieu said. ‘Maybe someone will know.’

  The man moved away. Mathieu watched him for a moment, then moved on. He stopped to warm his hands at one of the oil-drum fires.

  ‘Funny bloke,’ said a voice beside him quietly.

  Mathieu looked around, but there didn’t seem to be anyone there.

  Exce
pt there was. A girl was standing beside him, just at the edge of his peripheral vision.

  ‘Don’t look at me, look at him,’ she said. ‘Pretty well fed, don’t you think? Pretty well fed, for one of us.’

  Mathieu stared through the bustling crowd. He could still see the English stranger. He’d stopped to show the crumpled photo to someone else. He was a big guy. He didn’t look hungry.

  ‘What are you telling me?’ Mathieu said.

  ‘I’m telling you that the UCF have all the rations they need. I’m telling you this market has to close now because we’re in real danger.’

  Mathieu turned to look at her. Even facing her, he couldn’t quite see her, but he could see enough to know that it was the girl from the photograph.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

  ‘Mathieu.’

  ‘You have to trust me, Mathieu,’ she said. ‘You have to trust me, or people are going to die.’

  Mathieu looked back at the English stranger. He had turned, and was staring directly at Mathieu. A slight grin crossed his mouth and curled the big scar on his cheek.

  ‘My name’s Martha,’ the girl said. ‘You have to trust me.’

  Griffin turned. The guy he’d quizzed was standing beside an oil drum, staring straight at him. The flickering oil-drum fire was casting the man’s shadow out behind him in the gloom. But the shadow wasn’t flickering.

  It wasn’t a shadow. He could see her. Right there in the amber dark. He could see her.

  He began to move, pushing through the crowd, shoving people aside. He reached under his coat for his Glock.

  But the man beside the oil drum had pulled out an air horn and was letting it blast.

  Pandemonium swept through the marketplace. Other air horns started to blare, taking up the alarm. People were shouting, scrambling, and surging towards the exits. Engines were starting up, trucks thundering into life. Exhaust fumes belched. Panic took hold.

  ‘Out of my way!’ Griffin yelled, fighting his way through the stampeding crowd. He couldn’t get through. He got a glimpse of her. She was running with the guy with the air horn.

  Griffin raised his Glock and fired two shots at the roof. The spent cases pinged as they hit the ground. The crowd around him scattered in terror, spilling away to get as far from him as possible. He started to run again, but a flatbed truck reversed right out in front of him and nearly knocked him down.