73 - Fear Itself

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The 22nd century: a few short years of interstellar contact have taught

humanity a hard lesson – there are creatures abroad that are nightmare

manifest. Powerful, unstoppable, alien forces. It’s a realization that deals a

body blow to Man’s belief in his own superiority, and leaves him with the

only option he has ever had: to ﬁght.

When the Doctor and his friends are caught in the crossﬁre, they ﬁnd

humanity licking its wounds and preparing for war. But the ﬁght against

alien forces is no job for an amateur, and for a Doctor only just ﬁnding his

way in the universe again, one misstep could be fatal.

This adventure features the Eighth Doctor, Fitz and Anji

Fear Itself

Nick Wallace

DOCTOR WHO:

FEAR ITSELF

Published by BBC Books, BBC Worldwide Ltd,

Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane, London W12 OTT

First published 2005

Nick Wallace 2005

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Original series broadcast on BBC television

Format c

BBC 1963

‘Doctor Who’ and ‘TARDIS’ are trademarks

of the British Broadcasting Corporation

means without prior written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer

who may quote brief passages in a review.

ISBN 0 563 48634 1

Commissioning editors: Shirley Patron and Stuart Cooper

Editor and creative consultant: Justin Richards

Project editor: Christopher Tinker

This book is a work of ﬁction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a

product of the author’s imagination or are used ﬁctitiously. Any resemblance to

actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover imaging by Black Sheep c

BBC 2005

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

For more informarion about this and other BBC books,

please visit our website at www. bbcshop. com

For my wife, for my daughter, for always

It was the ﬁrst lesson we learnt when we reached for the stars: for everything,

there is a limit.

No matter how far we had come, how hard we had struggled, there would

always be things out there beyond the comprehension of man.

This is inherited knowledge, the lessons of history. It was decades ago that

humanity broke free of its chains, leaving Earth behind to venture out into

the dark and the cold. And in that time, before I was born, those ﬁrst hostile

encounters took place.

We had left behind our old playground, but didn’t yet understand the rules

of this new one. A misunderstanding could lead to war in a moment. And with

war, that simple lesson to be applied to all our achievements: for everything,

there is a limit.

Beings beyond understanding, weapons that could not be matched, forces

that were all but unstoppable. The terror must have swept across our race

like an ever breaking storm. One minute we stood among the stars, tall and

proud; the next, we were beaten back by nightmares manifest. You can see

those moments even now, replayed in miniature every time we step into battle.

Fear on the faces of the young and the innocent.

Decades since those ﬁrst moments of terror and so little has changed.

Beings beyond understanding, weapons that cannot be matched, forces

that are all but unstoppable. Presented with such obstacles, we ﬁnd ourselves

with the only option we have ever had. To ﬁght. Such a ﬁght is, of course, no

job for an amateur.

MARS

It wasn’t that long ago that Anji had sat in her brother’s bedroom on a

cold winter’s night. A cardigan wrapped around her shoulders to ward off

the chill, leaning out of the window to smoke a cigarette, a brief ﬁrst-term

habit. Her parents were downstairs, oblivious, watching Stars in Their Eyes.

Rezaul was next to her at the window, complaining about light pollution as

he focused his telescope.

Home for the holiday, astronomy with her brother made a change from

long days in the library and long nights in the union.

There’d been a burst of triumph from Rezaul, who’d blindly waved a

hand at her, eye ﬁxed on the lens. Anji had stubbed the cigarette out on the

underside of the sill, blown the last smoke into the night and pulled back

into the room. When Rezaul stepped away, she bent over the telescope

herself. Blackness ﬁlled her vision. Then, with a blink, she found the orange

disc.

Rezaul ﬂicked through an astronomy book, calling out the major fea-

tures. The Valles Marineris. The polar ice caps. And the biggest mountain

in the solar system: an extinct volcano, he’d explained, so tall it pressed

the roof of the planet’s atmosphere.

Olympus Mons on Mars.

Two hundred years later and they’d built a town there.

It was set on the lip of the caldera, and the view was stunning. On one

side of the town, the mountain sloped away to red soil miles below; on the

other, a hard drop to the dead heart of the volcano, its far side lost over the

horizon.

Looking out through the bubble shell that protected the town, Anji

Kapoor watched the sun set over Mars.

‘Spectacular, isn’t it?’ The man was tall, with chestnut hair and an easy

smile. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘Didn’t mean to disturb.’

‘That’s all right,’ Anji replied. ‘And, yes, it is spectacular.’ She shrugged.

‘You’re probably used to it.’

‘A little,’ he answered, leaning up against the rail next to her. ‘Some-

times you forget where you are. And then you see something like that and

remember.’

‘You’re not in Docklands any more.’ Anji looked past him to where the

TV crew were ﬁnishing their set-up. ‘You’re the cameraman, right?’

He nodded. ‘Michael.’

‘Anji Kapoor.’

They moved away from the blister wall, back towards the crew. ‘Why

did they pick here for the shoot?’ Anji asked, making conversation.

‘As good a place as any,’ Michael shrugged. ‘The foundation work was

done by Wal-Mart, supposed to be Mars’ ﬁrst commercial trading post. They

sold it on to the government when Shefﬁeld got established here ﬁrst.’

‘No point being second to the market.’

He nodded at her head. ‘What happened there?’

Anji ﬁngered the spray-on bandage covering one corner of her forehead.

‘A ﬁght of all things.’

He laughed. ‘A ﬁght? How does a historian get into a ﬁght?’

‘Economist,’ Anji corrected. ‘Couple of squaddies turned nasty in a caf´

In Shefﬁeld, as it happens. I didn’t do a lot of the ﬁghting.’

‘Sounds nasty.’

‘I had. . . ’ Anji paused. ‘I had friends who helped out.’

The director waved. Anji gave Michael a pat on the shoulder. ‘Duty

calls.’

While Michael returned to his camera, Anji talked the presenter through

the on-screen graphics. The woman was bright, but her grasp of old-

fashioned capitalist models was slim. Which, Anji supposed, was fair

enough. If anyone ever asked her about the trading routes of the eigh-

teenth century she’d be able to murmur some half-remembered history and

comment on their economic legacy, but no more than that. She worked

in futures, not histories. And that was what her knowledge was to these

people: history.

It was weird. Dislocating. But the Doctor had promised to get her home

and, bit by bit, he seemed to be getting there.

That was Fitz’s spin, anyway: Mars was closer to Earth than Earthworld,

even if it was the twenty-second century. Anji wasn’t sure who he’d been

trying to reassure most: her or the Doctor.

It was as they were preparing the day’s ﬁnal shots that Anji heard it.

The broadcast unit had a small TV showing the network feed. It was

just background noise to Anji; there was nothing in the headlines she knew

or could easily reference. It was probably why the name leapt out at her. A

quiet voice talking of news just in and unconﬁrmed reports.

‘Turn it up,’ Anji whispered, but nobody heard. She started pushing

through the crew. ‘Turn it up!’

And ﬁnally somebody did.

– corporation ship reported the signal at ten to four this morning. Military

spokesmen are currently refusing to conﬁrm or deny the reports, but long-

range scans from civilian arrays can ﬁnd no trace of the Station –

‘Oh, God,’ Anji said.

– while little information is publicly available about the research under-

taken at Farside Station, the general understanding is that this is one of the

key components in Earth Forces’ science programme. If as reports suggest, the

Station has been lost with all hands, it’s a major blow to –

The world started to spin, her breath roaring in her ears.

‘Oh, God,’ Anji repeated.

She grabbed at a table for support, sending a jug of water crashing down

on to the ﬂoor. Someone was at her side then, holding her arm, keeping

her upright, but it didn’t matter.

It was too late. Two hundred years and millions of miles from home.

‘Not this,’ Anji whispered. ‘This isn’t my life.’ She fell then, knees hitting

hard on the red concrete surface of a Martian town. Someone was calling

for an ambulance. Anji wanted to tell them not to bother. There was

nothing an ambulance could do.

She wasn’t supposed to be here. This wasn’t her life.

JUPITER SPACE

Now

It’s the eyes that worry O’Connell.

He’s been studying the Professional for days now; it’s a long ﬂight from

Mars’ orbit and O’Connell’s had little else to occupy his time. He’s watched

the Professional hustle and tweak the parameters of his suit’s AI; ﬁll and

seal every scar on his body armour; strip his plasma riﬂe time and again,

cleaning every interface and greasing every moving part.

But for all this, O’Connell can almost believe the Professional might be

passed in the street as an unexceptional man.

Medium height and medium build; hair cropped so close to the scalp

its colour is all but lost; the long midline of his nose distorted by a break

to make a boxer proud. Deep creases around the mouth mean he looks

older than he might otherwise seem, while the fat-free jawline just adds

to the impression of a face honed by long years in space. In itself it’s not

exceptional. O’Connell could walk down any street in any one of a hundred

towns on the system colonies and see two dozen faces like that.

Except none would have eyes like the Professional’s. Cold eyes that

have seen too much and speak of things a mouth would never tell.

More than once O’Connell has wondered what a man has to do to get

eyes as cold as that. And now, despite himself, staring at the Professional

through a ﬂickering viewscreen, he has another thought: if he had seen

those eyes beforehand, orders or not, would he ever have agreed to this

job?

The shuttle rocks and O’Connell is thrown back in his seat and out of

his reverie.

O’Connell’s an old-fashioned pilot; a man who, a hundred years back,

would have been said to ﬂy by the seat of his pants. He’s good at his job

– so good his superiors keep throwing him into situations like this one –

and likes to think he’s sharp enough to ride any storm, just trusting to skill.

But part of that skill is knowing enough’s enough. And if a sudden wave of

atmospheric pressure throws him from his chair and he breaks an arm or a

rib, it’s all over.

So O’Connell pulls at the harness he never uses. Magnetic catches snap

shut and he hauls the straps one notch tighter, just to be sure. He toggles a

switch, opening the intercom, and says: ‘Buckle up. It’s going to be a rough

ﬁve minutes.’

He’s not expecting his passenger to take the advice but feels honour

bound to give it anyway. Jupiter’s trying to kill them and if a man’s going

to die, he deserves to know the cause.

‘What’s happening?’ The Professional’s crisp tones distort over the

speaker.

‘Turbulence,’ O’Connell says, activating another previously redundant

system. The cockpit is normally a tight, dark space; just the bare minimum

of ﬂight systems online. For the past half-hour it’s been lit up like the Mars

Orbital. ‘I’m trying to compensate.’

The Professional checks the AI screen on his wrist, then says, ‘The cor-

rect atmospheric current is 1500 metres below, Lieutenant.’

‘I’m aware of that.’ A warning ﬂashes red over O’Connell’s shoulder.

He punches an override and makes another course correction. ‘You handle

your end of the business, I’ll handle mine.’

This time the Professional nods, then turns his back to the camera,

checking the seals on his suit one more time.

O’Connell’s worked with plenty of soldiers over the years, ﬂown some

generals, even carried a government minister one time. He’s also worked

with other Professionals. Most never take off their armour, never reveal the

faces beneath the helmets. But none has been as focused as this man. Not

deviating from his own course by a single word or action.

O’Connell checks the intercom is off, mutters that two can play at that

game. Then he tilts the shuttle’s nose forward and they push on down into

hell.

Until now, the orange and red of Jupiter’s atmosphere has ﬂared only

brieﬂy above the cockpit. It’s been comforting to O’Connell to look up and

see the stars appear in those gaps, tiny glimpses of what he best calls home.

Now there’s one last ﬂash of dark and then it’s gone.

They’re enveloped by gas and tiny particles and God alone knows what

else. Just like space, it’s as if there’s no horizon, no up and down, just some

featureless void. Unlike in space, in Jupiter’s anonymous atmosphere there

is an up and down and it’s pretty damn important to get that distinction

right. As a crosswind catches the shuttle and throws it at forty-ﬁve degrees

to the invisible horizon, O’Connell decides – orders or not – it’s the last time

he’s ever doing a job like this. Atmosphere is now, ofﬁcially, a bigger bitch

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摘要：

The22ndcentury:afewshortyearsofinterstellarcontacthavetaughthumanityahardlessontherearecreaturesabroadthatarenightmaremanifest.Powerful,unstoppable,alienforces.It'sarealizationthatdealsabodyblowtoMan'sbeliefinhisownsuperiority,andleaveshimwiththeonlyoptionhehaseverhad:toght.WhentheDoctorandhisfrie...

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73 - Fear Itself

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