The Story of Martha

by Dan Abnett

  She’d moved through Europe and the ex-Soviet states to the gateway of the East with the help of the Underground and their whisper channels. She had done her job and told her stories every step of the way.

  The Underground wasn’t one entity. In the grim weeks following Day Zero, separate resistance efforts had sprung up independently in many countries. Some worked alone, unaware of any similar causes. Others had tentatively linked, sharing intelligence, supplies, weapons, moving refugees and fugitives across borders under the nose of the UCF. Each cell, each group, was made up of the most devoted and determined men and women Martha had ever met. They had put their lives on the line for Martha several times. Five members of the Slovenian cell had died getting Martha out of Ljubljana, and the headquarters of the Munich cell had been raided two days after she’d passed through. All the resistance members who hadn’t got out in time had been shipped off to UCF punishment camps in Hungary. Rumours said the Munich raid had been led by a big, scar-faced UCF agent. A cell in Belgrade had been wiped out by the Toclafane the night before Martha had been scheduled to link with them at Kladanj. She’d spent three days on the run in the Trebevic forests, trying to regain contact with the movement.

  Her first point of contact with the Underground had been in the rain-drenched night woods above Bassionaire in Eastern France. The Banville group had set the contact up, sending word ahead through their network of agents. Martha and Mathieu had thought that the UCF had cornered them, but it had been the Underground.

  The Bassionaire cell had been ready with questions. They’d interviewed them both, carefully. It took them a long while to accept that Martha wasn’t a UCF plant sent to undermine them. That entire zone of France had been choked by UCF raids and searches after the Tournai ruse.

  Once she’d proved her credentials – her selfless triage efforts following a UCF ambush had helped with that – the Bassionaire cell had taken her seriously. They had links to the East. Messages had been sent back and forth through the whisper channels, city to city, agent to agent. Word was, someone called the Brigadier wanted to meet her. He would be waiting for her at a contact point called Cursus Hill in Turkey.

  Mathieu had stayed with the Bassionaire Underground. The last Martha had heard, he’d been heading back to Dijon to help mobilise a cell there.

  From the racing helicopter, Martha could see the huge resource plants and mineheads crusting the Aegean coast of Turkey. She could see long, threading caravans of slave labourers, moving to work under UCF escort in the dusty landscape below.

  On the outskirts of vanquished Izmir, another monolithic statue of the beaming Master dominated the view. There were effigies of him all over the world. She’d been told he’d even got himself carved into Mount Rushmore. She decided she’d confirm that when she took her trek to the USA.

  It was four months since Day Zero. Her year was a third gone.

  The Chinook’s engine tone altered.

  ‘Coming in now, Miss Jones,’ the pilot radioed, in polite Turkish. ‘I won’t be able to stay on the LZ long, so I’ll say goodbye now. It’s been an honour, and I won’t forget the things you’ve told me.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Martha replied, adjusting her headset. ‘Get home safe.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ the pilot laughed.

  ‘Will they be there waiting for me?’ she asked.

  ‘If the whisper channels have done their job. Stay near the LZ. Contact word is Benton.’

  ‘Benton? Benton?’

  ‘I don’t make the pass codes up.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Good luck, Miss Jones.’

  The Chinook dropped sharply. Below them, the dry landscape loomed up, hard rocks and wind-blown crags.

  Its blades beating hard, the helicopter settled on a patch of rough ground. The rotors swirled up a huge vortex of white dust.

  Martha un-snapped her harness release, grabbed her rucksack, and slid the door open. The outdoor heat hit her, gritty and fierce. She jumped out, and ran through the sand-blast of the rotor-wash, head down.

  The silhouetted pilot gave her a thumbs-up from the Chinook’s cockpit, and then the noisy bird rose into the air, turning and tilting, nose down, climbing to head for a safe field outside Istanbul.

  Martha watched it go, sweat already beading her face.

  It flew out of sight. The sound of its rotors dopplered around the crags for a while after it had disappeared.

  She was on her own. The sun blazed down. Crickets buzzed in the dry scrub. There was no shade to speak of. Martha pulled out her water bottle and took a swig. She waited. No one came. The dry bowl of crags around her baked in the searing sun.

  ‘You get it?’ asked Griffin.

  Bremner nodded. Bremner was the intel expert.

  ‘Sweet intercept. Got their chatter word for word, chief,’ he said, adjusting his PC. Rafferty looked on, mopping sweat from his forehead.

  ‘Want a playback?’ Bremner asked.

  ‘Just the main points,’ said Griffin.

  ‘She’s set down, right where we thought she would. Her bird is in return passage,’ Bremner said. ‘Apparently, the contact word is Benton.’

  ‘Right where we thought she would,’ Griffin mused.

  ‘The Chinook’s going to buzz right back over us in a few minutes, chief,’ said Jenks. He’d got a shoulder-mounted GTAM out of the truck. ‘Want me to spoil its day?’

  ‘No,’ said Griffin. ‘She might hear the boom. Put that away. Contact UCF Istanbul on the Over Watch and tell them to crump the Chinook when it arrives at their end.’

  ‘Will do,’ said Jenks, a note of disappointment in his voice.

  They’d spent the best part of three months slowly closing in. It had become a personal quest for Griffin. Rafferty had begun to refer to him as Ahab. The ADC was backing Griffin all the way, but it had become clear from her communications that their Master was increasingly aggravated by Martha Jones’s continued liberty.

  ‘Saddle up,’ Griffin said. ‘Let’s go and collect her.’

  They got into the waiting jeeps parked on the roasting hill road.

  ‘He’s got to love us for this,’ Griffin said. ‘Martha Jones and the Eastern Underground? We’re going to blow their net wide open. We’re going to give him Martha Jones and the infamous Brigadier.’

  ‘Go!’ he ordered. The jeeps kicked up plumes of dust as they sped away.

  Martha crunched her way up the dry valley. The sky overhead was an impossible, cloudless blue. The sunlight was so intense, it seemed to anchor down or cancel out any possibility of a breeze. The crickets throbbed.

  She entered a village near the LZ. It was a ruin. Trash and debris littered the roads and broken-down houses. She halted as she heard something cough and snort.

  The dogs were hungry. No one had fed them in months. Blank-eyed, they moved as a pack, pawing through the wreckage of the world, sniffing for blood.

  They’d scented her.

  Martha froze, hearing them approach: the skitter of unclipped claws on stone, the rattle and growl of famished gullets.

  The pack rounded the corner of the ruined block ahead of her. It was led by an ugly mastiff that, even in extremity, weighed as much as she did. The dogs began to growl. Foam and spittle dripped from their loose, black gums.

  Martha froze, and slid her left hand down the front of her top. As the dogs began to charge her, she pulled out the whistle and blew three hard blasts.

  She couldn’t hear the sounds, but the dogs could. They scattered, yelping.

  It wasn’t the first time that trick had saved her life.

  ‘Martha Jones?’

  She turned.

  A man in black combat fatigues was standing behind her, aiming a pistol at her.

  ‘Martha Jones?’ he asked again.

  ‘Are you UCF?’ she asked, gripped with fear.

  ‘It depends,’ the man replied. ‘What’s the word?’

  ‘Benton?’ she offered.

  The man lowered his pistol. He
smiled.

  ‘Good reply,’ he said. ‘Welcome to Cursus Hill, Martha Jones. I’m the Brigadier.’

  There was nobody there. Griffin got out of his jeep and gazed into the heat.

  ‘No one,’ Handley reported, running back to him.

  ‘But this is Cursus Hill?’ asked Griffin.

  ‘That’s what intel said, chief,’ said Handley.

  ‘But there’s no one here?’

  ‘No one, boss.’

  ‘There is no Cursus Hill, actually,’ the Brigadier told her as their truck bounced along the unpaved road. ‘It’s disinformation. Cursus Hill isn’t a geographical location, it’s just the code name we give to a meet point. We decide where Cursus Hill is going to be depending on the nature of the operation.’

  ‘I see,’ she said.

  ‘You are a high-value target, Miss Jones,’ the Brigadier said. ‘To our certain knowledge, quite apart from their general security echelons, they have at least three dedicated kill-squads hunting for you. One in particular was closing on your heels in Istanbul, so we had to play things close to our chest. We’ve changed the location of Cursus Hill four times in the last twenty hours. I imagine the UCF will be cursing your name just about now.’

  Martha nodded and said, ‘And your name is?’

  The Brigadier blinked apologetically. ‘I do beg your pardon, Miss Jones,’ he said, showing her his credentials. ‘I’m Brigadier Erik Calvin, ex-Royal Marines, ex-UNIT.’

  ‘Creds can be faked,’ said Martha.

  ‘Indeed they can, Miss Jones. It will be hard for me to convince you of my proper provenance. I merely hoped the fact that we hadn’t shot you might have done the trick. My father was a member of UNIT in the seventies. Told me all sorts of stories about the Doctor. He was a bit of a dandy, I hear. They were the days of Lethbridge-Stewart and all that. I thought the Benton clue would have been a tip off.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Martha said. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Before my time, maybe?’

  ‘Is it? Is it?’ Calvin looked crestfallen. ‘Oh well, never mind, we’ve got you now.’

  ‘I’d like to know who’s got me,’ said Martha.

  ‘Oh, the Eastern Underground, of course,’ Calvin declared. ‘We’re the fulcrum, here in Turkey. We link the East and the West: Germany and the Soviet states, India and the sub-continent, China, Norway, all the cells. I was in Ankara on a UNIT posting when it all fell apart. I’ve been building it up ever since.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Miss Jones, I have to ask,’ said Calvin. ‘You must know. How do we do it?’

  ‘How do we do what?’ Martha replied.

  ‘How do we kill a Time Lord?’ he asked.

  The Underground base was literally underground. Calvin’s group was occupying a cave system in the hills, near to the overgrown ruins of an ancient amphitheatre. Camouflage netting disguised clusters of army tents and parked vehicles, but the bulk of the camp was out of the hard sunlight in the cool gloom of the caves.

  Walk-boards had been laid down inside the caves, and caverns and side chambers filled with packaged equipment and resources. Lights, strung up along the rough cave walls, ran from small, quiet generators, and power plants deeper in the caves provided electricity for radio sets, a small computer suite, and other technical assets. Martha counted over two dozen operatives in the camp, men and women in dusty military-surplus gear. There were no children.

  ‘Tea?’ Calvin asked, offering her a seat at his desk. ‘And can you believe…?’ He gestured to a plate of digestive biscuits with such an expression of pride, it made Martha smile.

  ‘So you really don’t know how it can be done, Miss Jones?’ Calvin asked.

  ‘I really don’t. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Damn shame,’ said Calvin, with an ‘oh well’ shrug.

  ‘I’ve never had the opportunity to study Time Lord physiology,’ said Martha. ‘I have no idea what their weaknesses are. They certainly don’t function the way we do and, as I understand it, they can regenerate from even mortal wounds.’

  ‘Yes, frightfully hard to dispose of, that’s what I’d heard,’ Calvin sighed.

  ‘But you thought I’d know how?’ Martha asked.

  He nodded. ‘I thought that’s what you were doing, Miss Jones. I honestly did. From the legend of Martha Jones, traversing the world – and, let me tell you, it is becoming quite a legend – I just assumed that you were searching for something that would do away with the Master. I supposed that the Doctor had told you some secret, told you where to look and what to look for. I thought he’d sent you out to find a weapon.’

  ‘He has, but not in the way you think,’ said Martha.

  ‘The Doctor wants the Master stopped, doesn’t he?’

  ‘More than anything, but not by killing him. That’s not the Doctor’s way.’

  Calvin raised his hands in puzzlement and said, ‘May I say then, I am baffled. With respect, Miss Jones, if you’re not a clear and present threat to the Master, why is the UCF so anxious to stop you?’

  ‘I am a threat,’ Martha insisted. ‘I’ve got a year to get this right. One year. And if I do, I will end the Master’s reign. But I’m not an assassin, and I’m not hunting for some mythical anti-regeneration super-weapon.’

  She paused.

  ‘But I suppose,’ she added, ‘it couldn’t hurt if that’s what he thought I was doing.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Calvin.

  ‘Because that would fit with his notions of what the human race is,’ said Martha. ‘He treats us with violence and oppression because he expects us to resist with violence. The Master has a low opinion of our species, Brigadier.’

  ‘That much, Miss Jones, is obvious,’ remarked Calvin bitterly.

  ‘So, if that’s what he thinks I’m doing, fine. Let him think that. I won’t contradict him, and it would help me if the Underground kept that rumour in circulation. Anything to distract him from my real purpose.’

  ‘Oh, absolutely,’ Calvin agreed. He hesitated. ‘And what exactly is that, Miss Jones?’ he asked.

  They talked until nightfall. As the shadows lengthened in the weed-choked amphitheatre, they walked outside to watch the sun set.

  ‘Will it work?’ asked Calvin. ‘I mean, will that really work?’

  ‘It has to work,’ Martha said. ‘If I didn’t believe it would, I’d have given up in despair weeks ago. The Archangel communication system is the centrepiece of the Master’s control of Earth. It’s how he conquered us, how he really conquered us, long before the Toclafane came. It’s how he made us trust him: rhythmic code, almost hypnotic, and too subtle to hear.’

  ‘I always did wonder how we ever came to elect that blasted Saxon fellow,’ muttered the Brigadier, unconsciously rapping his knuckles, Tap-tap-tap-tap!

  ‘The Doctor’s plan is to use it against him, but that requires vast preparation.’

  ‘Don’t you worry, Miss Jones,’ said Calvin. ‘The Underground will start recruiting as many Martha Joneses as we can find. We’ll get people on the ground, and use the whisper channels too. We’ll help spread the word, and get the world ready for the moment of truth.’

  ‘And tell the stories,’ Martha said. ‘Let me brief some of your people about the sort of stories to circulate. In fact, why don’t you share some of your father’s tales about the Doctor from the Seventies too?’

  The Brigadier nodded.

  ‘We’ll tell the stories, all right. And what about you, Miss Jones?’

  ‘Me? I keep walking,’ said Martha.

  The bulk container ship Xin Excel docked at Yokohama Marine Terminal at eight in the morning, six months after Day Zero.

  The climbing sun had turned the uprights of the Yokohama Bay Bridge ice white, and the waters of the bay glowed gold, but a haze of smog generated by ceaseless industrial manufacture hung across the city sprawl, and stained the sky all the way to Tokyo in the north, Chiba in the east, and Kamakura in the south.

  Like the rest of the world, the
islands of Japan had been enslaved and put to work.

  The piers and wharfs of Yokohama’s dry cargo docks teamed with activity. Klaxons sounded, ship engines grumbled and snorted like flatulent whales, and shrill loading alarms rang out. Cranes and derricks swung their giant necks around like primordial beasts in the tobacco-coloured haze, and gantry portainers lumbered into delivery positions like catcher crabs. The port was running at a capacity undreamed of in Pre-Day Zero days. Hooting pilot boats and tugs slipped and threaded their way between the moving mass of bulk shipping. Proper safety procedures and docking regulations had long since been abandoned. Schedules and delivery rates were all that mattered now.

  The Xin Excel was one of dozens of ships bringing in specialist component products and part-assembled materials from what had once been the Russian Federation. Much of this cargo would pass through the specialist factories that had sprouted up like ugly blisters around the edges of Yokohama and Tokyo and then, completed, would be routed back to Russia and China, back to Shipyard Number One and Shipyard Number Four, the largest in the world, where fleets of universe-conquering rockets were being constructed to aim like missiles at the vulnerable heavens.

  The Xin Excel was also bringing one other valuable cargo to Japan. Her name was Martha Jones.

  The only person on the Xin Excel who was aware that Martha was aboard was an electrical engineer called Dmitri Korbov. Korbov was an Underground operative from Nakhodka who’d been crewing the run to Yokohama and back since the shipments started, and he used his position to filter whisper channel communiqués in and out of the islands.

  ‘It’s different here,’ Korbov told her as the Xin Excel chugged its way into the crowded port.

  ‘Different how?’ Martha asked.

  ‘A different level of security,’ he replied, ‘a different feel to things. The Underground is far less well established in Japan than in other parts of the world.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked.