The Story of Martha

by Dan Abnett

  ‘If you’re going to mention him, just call him the Master,’ Martha interrupted. ‘This “Our” business makes my skin crawl.’

  Griffin nodded, and dredged the soup with his spoon. ‘Whatever’s going on here, the Master doesn’t know about it. He’s not aware of it. To the outside world, Japan is just another part of the global empire. It’s covered by the Over Watch net, and administered by the UCF, just like everywhere else.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I tracked you through the Russian Federation. Our last brush was at Shipyard One, remember that?’

  She nodded sourly.

  ‘You gave me the slip, as usual. Slippery Martha Jones. But I had a number of good leads. That’s the thing, Martha, you go around the world telling people who you are and asking them to remember you, you leave a trail.’

  ‘I said go on.’

  Griffin smiled. ‘I was pretty sure you were heading to Japan by ship, and I wanted to jump ahead and be waiting for you. Now, to move from zone to zone, you need authorisation, even if you’re UCF. So I contacted UCF Coordination Japan, and requested permission to bring my team into Honshu by air. They turned me down. According to them, this is a no-fly zone, because of the sensitivity of the work being done in the plants. You see any Toclafane here?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted.

  ‘UCF Japan informed me that even Toclafane are banned from their airspace, something about their energetic profiles adversely affecting the guidance systems under manufacture. The only way in or out is by sea. Doesn’t that sound a little suspect to you?’

  Martha frowned. ‘It seems excessive. But then, there’s something odd here. When I got close to the Kuro and Shiro plants, my perception filter failed. That’s how I was caught.’

  Griffin nodded, interested. ‘I got in touch with my ADC,’ he said. ‘She’s one of Ou- the Master’s sector chiefs. I asked her to pull some strings, maybe even get the Master to order UCF Japan to allow a plane in, and even she ran into a brick wall. UCF Japan told her that my intel was wrong. Martha Jones was not coming to Japan. They said they had positive data placing Martha Jones on a supertanker heading into Ch’ongjin in North Korea. I was advised to route my team that way.’

  ‘But you thought better?’ said Martha.

  ‘I knew better, Jones. I may have spent six months failing to catch you, but I know how you work, and I’ve learned to read the traces. Japan was wrong. I told my ADC so and firmly but politely suggested she sorted it out. More dragging of heels. I was losing time. You were getting away. So I took a leaf out of your book, Jones.’

  ‘You became a nice person all of a sudden?’ she asked snidely.

  ‘Ha ha. Funny girl. I stowed away. I jumped on a supply ship heading for Yokohama, following your trail. I took my oppo, Bob Rafferty, with me. I left the rest of my team in Vladivostok, waiting for the go command from my ADC to fly in and join me. Far as I know, they’re still there, kicking their heels.’

  ‘As far as you know?’

  Griffin put his food pail down on the cage floor. ‘When I got here, my direct phone link to UCF High Command stopped working,’ he said. ‘It’s Archangel, but it stopped working. I lost contact with my team, the Valiant and my ADC. My special little phone broke down, Jones, just like your filter.’

  Martha dropped her spoon into her pail and waited for him to continue.

  ‘The five minutes are almost up, Griffin,’ she said.

  ‘Me and Rafferty had been on the ground here six hours when the patrol rounded us up. We showed them our credentials. They weren’t interested. Rafferty tried to impress upon them that we were legitimate UCF. They shot him in the head, execution style. No warning, no caution, just a double tap. That’s when I realised that things weren’t right in Japan. Not right at all.’

  ‘And you surrendered?’

  Griffin frowned. ‘I’m a soldier. I know about killing, and I’m not ashamed to admit it,’ he said. ‘The men in the raid patrol had a look in their eyes. Sometimes you fight, sometimes you know when to fold your hands behind your head.’

  He looked up at the cages stacked above them. They could both hear sobbing and moaning. Somewhere, someone was shrieking with pain or frustration. Guards were shouting. The stench of Aka, though they had grown used to it, was dispiriting.

  ‘This may not be the best situation in the world,’ Griffin said, ‘but I’m still alive. And so are you. You believe in hope, Jones?’

  ‘Do you have to ask?’ she said.

  He smiled. ‘This is what hope feels like, when hope is all you’ve got.’

  Her belly empty, her hands shaking, Martha dragged herself through the next shift on deck nineteen of Shiro dome. She burned the ball of her thumb badly with her solder gun, and a guard hit her twice in the ribs for delaying the belt rate.

  As she settled back to the demanding, monotonous toil, her ribs throbbing, Martha realised that her Aka slave existence wasn’t just another trial she was being forced to endure. It wasn’t an experience she could drive herself to live through and afterwards look back on. This was it. They were going to work her until she died. Unless she did something about it, Aka labour camp and Shiro work plant were going to be her life until it ended.

  If her life ended here, then the world ended with it. Her task was only half done. The world was waiting for her. The Doctor was counting on her. So were her mother and her father…

  She refused to cry. If she cried, she’d miss a circuit board on the belt, and that would mean another beating, or worse.

  She thought about Griffin. She thought about hope.

  She thought about a little girl who was looking after her earrings.

  Martha had begun to set up a pattern for her storytelling. The guards noticed if too many people shifted around in the cage decks between shifts, so she scheduled things carefully: a three-night pattern. Hito, and another boy called Ono, would bring a group of slaves to her on the first night, and other slaves, ones who had already heard her speak, would filter out and take their places in the cages. On the second night, Martha would rest, and the slaves who had heard the stories would spread out through the cage decks and communicate them to groups of their own. On every third night, Martha would furtively leave her cage and go and talk to a new group on a different deck.

  ‘I’d like to hear one of your stories,’ Griffin said to her in the food line.

  ‘Don’t. Just stay in your cage,’ she told him.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Griffin, if you want to earn my cooperation, you’ll start doing what I tell you.’

  Griffin nodded, but he was beginning to hear the stories anyway. Jones was good, he had to give her credit. She fired people up. Once they’d heard her speak, they couldn’t help sending her stories on. One by one, second hand, he was hearing most of them.

  Martha flopped down on her cot. It was shift end, and she felt brain-dead with fatigue. Her hands were wrapped in dirty bandages, most of them strips torn from her bedding. The Aka guards didn’t care how much the work damaged her. There was no first aid or medical functionary.

  Hito appeared in the doorway of her cage. It was story night. She was due to perform.

  ‘Hito, please, give me ten minutes,’ she sighed.

  Hito shook his head. ‘Tonight’s listeners aren’t here yet, Martha Jones,’ he said. ‘You have time to rest.’

  He came into her cage, and made a quick, respectful bow. He’d reserved a portion of his ration for her again. Hito kept doing that, no matter how many times she gratefully made him take it back for himself.

  ‘Hito, I thank you, but please…’

  ‘I’ve heard something, Martha Jones,’ he said. He bowed again.

  ‘What sort of something?’ she asked.

  ‘I have heard that there is a third plant, Martha Jones. Yuki heard, and told Basu, and he told Ono, who told me.’

  She sat up. ‘A third plant? What does that mean?’

  Hito shrugged. ‘There is Kuro and there is Shiro, and t
here is a third plant. It is called Koban.’

  ‘Koban?’

  Hito nodded, eagerly.

  ‘Aka and Kiiro slave camps service Shiro, Ao and Midori camps service Kuro. But there is also Koban. Yuki heard, and told Basu, who told—’

  ‘Get to the point, Hito, please,’ she begged.

  ‘Every month,’ said Hito, ‘the guards come and extract workers from Aka to serve at Koban. Thirty workers every month. They pick them at random, if no one volunteers.’

  ‘But you can volunteer?’ she asked.

  Hito nodded. ‘This is what Yuki told Basu.’

  ‘What is this Koban?’

  Hito made a face. ‘That, I cannot say. But they claim it’s a way out of the camps.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because none of the workers ever come back.’

  ‘None of the workers ever come back,’ Martha said.

  Griffin thought about that.

  Martha felt extremely uneasy standing in the doorway of Griffin’s cage. It felt like she was appeasing the enemy.

  ‘They claim it’s a way out of the camps,’ Martha added.

  Griffin nodded. ‘None of the workers ever come back. What does that say to you, Jones?’

  ‘It suggests that none of the workers ever come back because they’re dead.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But what if none of the workers ever come back because they’re moved to a facility with better conditions? You know, as a perk of taking on extra responsibility?’

  Griffin shrugged.

  ‘Still sounds like a bad idea to me, Jones,’ he said.

  Martha sagged a little. ‘Me too, I suppose.’

  Griffin looked up at her. ‘You were thinking of going for it?’ he asked.

  She sighed and said, ‘I don’t know. Possible death is preferable to certain death, isn’t it? Isn’t that how a soldier like you would calculate it?’

  Griffin sniggered. ‘Sounds too rich for my blood,’ he returned.

  ‘So what? We stay here until they work us into our graves?’

  He rose to face her.

  ‘I’ve been looking around,’ he said. ‘Looking for weak links in the security. I think I’ve found a few places that are compromised. Early days, Jones, but frankly I’d rather try to break out of here, a place I know, than risk getting into a worse situation.’

  She nodded. ‘I just thought I’d tell you,’ she said.

  ‘You’re going to do it, aren’t you, Jones?’ Griffin asked.

  ‘I haven’t made my mind up,’ she replied. ‘Probably not. You’re right. You’re right. Aka is bad, but the grass may not be greener.’

  ***

  Hooters sounded. Sirens wailed.

  ‘Koban! Koban! Any takers for work duties in Koban plant!’ the guards shouted. ‘Volunteers? Better conditions! Privileges! Complete a two-week tour in Koban, and you earn your freedom!’

  None of the slaves made a move. They stared down out of their cages.

  ‘All right then,’ announced the chief guard to his underlings. ‘Pick them by numbers and generate a work crew. Thirty workers!’

  The camp guards consulted their manifests, and started yelling out numbers.

  ‘I volunteer,’ Martha called out.

  The chief guard nodded, and gestured to Martha.

  ‘Good. Down here, please.’

  ‘I volunteer too!’ shouted Hito.

  ‘Join the line, slave,’ the chief replied.

  As Hito ran up behind her, Martha turned to glare at him.

  ‘No, you don’t!’ she hissed. ‘Don’t do this!’

  ‘I go where you go, Martha Jones,’ Hito said, grinning.

  ‘Oh, please, don’t do this to me,’ she groaned.

  ‘I volunteer!’ Ono called out.

  ‘So do I!’ cried Tokami.

  ‘No! No, no!’ Martha growled.

  ‘So do I,’ said a voice. Griffin clumped down the grilled stairs from his cage to join them. ‘Anywhere’s got to be better than here,’ he told the guards.

  They forced him into line. He nodded to Martha. She didn’t know whether to feel pleased or angry.

  Once the guards had filled their quota of thirty bodies, they opened the gates of Aka camp.

  A school bus, repainted in UCF drab black, was waiting for them in the dank concrete bay. They filed aboard. Hito seemed almost jubilant. Griffin avoided Martha and sat at the back alone. Tokami took the seat beside Martha.

  ‘Where are they taking us, Martha, do you think?’ Tokami asked.

  Martha didn’t reply. She had a terrible feeling of foreboding. Taking herself over the precipice was one thing. Taking innocents with her was quite another.

  The bus started up and drove out of the bay. The gates of Aka camp opened to let them out.

  They drove for an hour. For a fraction of a second in that hour, Martha glimpsed the mountains, peeping through the sickly smog.

  Koban plant was a grey concrete block twenty storeys tall, surrounded by rings of pain-wire and auto-gun emplacements. Five cage gates opened and closed to let them in. They drove down a long ramp into a basement garage, where the guards ordered them out.

  ‘It smells funny in here,’ Hito said.

  ‘Quiet!’ one of the guards ordered.

  ‘Kid’s right,’ Griffin whispered, coming in close behind Martha. ‘The air’s wrong. Something’s off.’

  ‘Prepare for sanitisation!’ the chief guard yelled.

  All notions of dignity were abandoned at that point. Faced with aimed guns, they were required to strip and walk through a series of harsh, pungent chemical showers. At the far end of the shower block, they were blown dry by air systems, and handed overalls by hazmat-suited personnel.

  ‘This isn’t promising,’ Griffin whispered to Martha as he pulled his overalls on.

  ‘Just look somewhere else until I’m dressed,’ Martha replied.

  A hatch opened.

  ‘In here,’ ordered one of the hazmat guards.

  A large antechamber awaited them on the other side of the hatch. It was bathed in cold, silvery light. The guards withdrew and closed the hatch.

  ‘Welcome to Koban, volunteers,’ voices said in unison. The words sounded clipped, as if the voices weren’t used to speaking the language.

  ‘Who are you?’ Martha called out.

  ‘We are in control here,’ said the voices, mingled as one, ‘and you are the famous Martha Jones.’

  The Relativistic Segue occupied a vast chamber in the heart of the Koban plant. The chamber stank of electromagnetics and ozone. The Segue was contained within a framework of polished chrome obelisks rooted on a stone plinth. The design of the obelisks, even their proportions, revealed that though they had been constructed from terrestrial materials, they had not been designed by a terrestrial mind.

  The Segue was like a bright bolt of lightning moving in very slow motion. It was an artificially induced tear in the fabric of space-time. The Drast were very proud of it.

  They were also fascinated by Martha Jones.

  ‘You are the famous companion of the Doctor,’ said one.

  ‘Tell us about the Doctor,’ requested another.

  ‘Tell us about the Master,’ added a third.

  ‘Tell us about the Time Lords. Tell us the secrets they have told you.’

  They had removed her from the volunteer group, and taken her to an observation platform overlooking the Segue. There were six of them, and they gathered around her inquisitively. They were tall, slender and vaguely humanoid, though their anatomical proportions seemed wrong. Each one wore a suit of complex, tight-fitting armour made out of a gleaming blue metal, and they covered their faces behind extravagantly ornate metal masks that reminded Martha of squawking birds. A bright tungsten light shone through the eye and mouth slits of the masks, and from gaps between the closely wrought segments of their armour, suggesting that their bodies were bioluminescent, like creatures of the deepest, darkest limits of the ocean.
/>   ‘Who are you?’ Martha asked.

  ‘We are the Drast,’ said one.

  ‘We are Drast Speculation Initiative Fourteen,’ said another.

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Martha. ‘How long have you been on Earth?’

  ‘One Earth decade,’ said another.

  ‘And what is your purpose?’ she asked.

  ‘We are Drast Speculation Initiative Fourteen,’ they repeated.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Martha asked.

  ‘We were sent by the Great Drast to conduct a clandestine assessment of this world,’ one of them replied.

  ‘We were further charged to initiate economic takeover,’ another added.

  ‘You’re… invaders?’ Martha asked.

  ‘We are speculators. We despise warfare. We engage with the economic infrastructures of chosen worlds, and manipulate them until effective cultural and economic control of the chosen worlds are ours.’

  ‘You mean you take over the running of entire worlds without anyone knowing?’ Martha’s eyes were wide.

  ‘It is a long and complex operation,’ said a Drast.

  ‘A successful speculation may take generations to complete. Subtle micro-adjustments are made over a period of years to engineer crucial measures of control,’ said another.

  Martha shook her head in disbelief. ‘Are you telling me that when the Master took control of the planet, it was already being invaded?’ she asked.

  ‘The arrival of the Master was an unforeseen variable,’ said one of the Drast.

  ‘We cannot compete with him. He would obliterate us. This Speculation Initiative has been abandoned,’ said another.

  ‘We have used disguise fields to conceal ourselves from the Master while we arrange and execute our withdrawal from Earth,’ said a third.

  ‘You mean get in your spaceship and fly away?’ asked Martha.

  ‘Use of conventional inter-system craft is not an option,’ one of the Drast answered. ‘The Master would obliterate our craft before we had cleared the atmosphere.’

  ‘Our withdrawal from Earth,’ added another, ‘must therefore be accomplished using the Segue.’

  * * *

  The Drast, Martha learned, had been well established in Japan’s technology sectors when the Master had revealed himself. They had used their position to clandestinely take control of the guidance manufacture operation that the Master had set up in Honshu. This allowed them access to some of the most advanced technology that the Master was developing for his fleet, including the potent Black Hole Converters.