Doctor Who: The Story of Martha by Dan Abnett

Author:Dan Abnett [Abnett, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409072928
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2010-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

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.

Korbov shrugged.

‘Beats me,’ he said. ‘There are groups, up in Hokkaido and down south in Kyushu, but Central Honshu, forget it. There are contacts, a few individual operatives, but nothing organised.’

‘Because of security?’

He shrugged again.

They were standing at the ship’s port rail, looking out across the bustling pier. Two members of the crew strolled past, and greeted Korbov amiably.

‘Talking to yourself again, Dimi?’ one of them laughed.

‘That’s right,’ said Korbov.

The crewmen looked right through Martha and carried on along the deck.

‘All this time you’ve been on board,’ murmured Korbov, ‘it still gets me when they do that.

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