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  ‘2157,’ Roz repeated. And then she realized. ‘2157! But that means...’ She trailed off and stared at the horizon, where a brilliant star was just rising. Earth. And in 2157, it was crushed under the tyranny of a cold and calculating alien intelligence.

  ‘Exactly,’ muttered the Doctor sepulchrally. ‘Two hundred million miles away, the Daleks are in residence. And if that hasn’t got anything to do with the TARDIS’s demise, then I’m Rassilon’s uncle.’ A thin thread of hatred seamed his voice.

  Roz narrowed her eyes at the unseen foe. History books referred to it as the Dalek Invasion of Earth, but it had been far, far worse than that. Earth was conquered early in 2157, but the other planets had fallen over the following five years. Mars fell later in 2157; it would be just their luck to escape the destruction of the TARDIS, only to find themselves on the front line of the Dalek invasion of Mars. The invasion had failed – a genetically engineered virus which feasted exclusively on Dalek wiring had seen to that – but a lot of good people, both humans and Martians, had died defending their planet. Her attention returned to Chris; the Goddess knew where he had landed, but if he was on Earth... The Doctor tapped her on the shoulder with his umbrella.

  ‘I suggest we head towards Jacksonville. It might not be the metropolis that you know, but the colony is thriving just about now. Short of supplies, but thriving, none the less.’

  Roz considered their distance from the far cone of the highest mountain in the solar system. ‘But Jackson Cit- Jacksonville is over nine thousand kilometres away!’ She looked at the small white box the Doctor had thrust into her hands just before she had plunged through the orange globe he had summoned in the console room. She doubted that the survival pack contained enough supplies to last them even a fraction of the time that it would take them to reach Jacksonville, perched halfway up Olympus Mons. Then again, food was the least of their worries: there was no free water on the surface – apart from al the poles – and the night-time temperature would soon plunge them into hypothermia, even with their survival jackets. What the Doctor was proposing was lunacy.

  ‘Surely we should look for somewhere a little closer.’ She racked her brain. ‘Shelbyville is about a hundred kilometres due east, and Springfield is just next to Ascraeus Lacus –’

  The Doctor shook his head. ‘Fifty and seventy years too early respectively. The only other human colony currently or. Mars is Arcadia Planitia, and that’s even further than Jacksonville. So we should get moving.’

  ‘You honestly believe that we’re equipped to hike over ten thousand klicks?’ she snorted.

  He gave her a look of mournful sympathy. ‘I know it’s quite a trek, Roz, but we really have no choice, do we? But we don’t have to travel overland; Mars is blessed with as extensive tunnel system about a kilometre under the surface. All we have to do is find the way in.’

  ‘Natural tunnels?’

  ‘Some of them,’ he said quietly.

  Of course, she realized. Mars was the former home of the Ice Warriors. Having spent rather too many hours at the bar with a particularly boisterous group at Benny and Jason’s wedding, she was beginning to consider them one of the more decent races of ETs. ‘Why don’t we try to contact the Ice Warriors?’

  ‘What Ice Warriors?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This is 2157, Roz. The entire race vanished nearly a century ago, at the conclusion of the Thousand Day War.’

  Roz sighed. ‘Of all the times to end up on Mars, we have to do it without Benny.’

  The history and culture of the Ice Warriors was archaeologist Professor Bernice Summerfield’s speciality. Roz remembered what Benny had told her about the giant green lizards.

  ‘They vanished. At the end of the War, the clean-up troop from Earth moved in, but they couldn’t find a single Martian. The whole planet appeared to have been abandoned; the few cities that Earth knew about were empty, deserted. Now we know that they’d decided to start a new life on Nova Martia, but at the time... well, it was quite a mystery. Some people claimed that the Martians were simply hiding, waiting to attack; others reckoned that the human military had used some secret bacteriological weapon to exterminate them. Created a bit of a stir‘

  ‘They’ve gone, haven’t they?’

  The Doctor nodded. ‘Gone but not forgotten. Not by me, anyway. But their tunnels and their cities are mainly intact; they’re warm – at least comparatively – and there will be water. It will take some time, but we will reach Jacksonville.’ He did a 360-degree turn before pointing out a direction. ‘That’s our best bet.’ Then he paused.

  ‘And remember -’ He reeled a mysteriously found yo-yo in front of him, and Roz watched it creep up and down the string at a very odd rate. ‘We’re a hundred years before the gravitic web was laid; gravity is a third of Earth’s.’

  Roslyn Forrester, whose adjudication duties had taken her to planets where the gravity ranged from zero to what felt like infinity, began to prepare a jagged reply, before catching sight of the comet that was trailing through the sky. ‘Look!’ she yelled. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

  ‘If you think it’s an atmospheric shuttle crash-landing, then yes, it is.’ The Doctor set off at a run. ‘Time to help,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Swallow one of the little orange pills in the first-aid kit. Anti-radiation capsule; Mars is quite hot at the moment.’ Then he was away.

  Roz opened the box and marvelled at the collection of pills, vials and mysterious supplies within, before locating an orange capsule and placing it in her mouth. As it dissolved, she leapt to her feet, and immediately found herself half a metre above the ground. Indecorously landing amidst a plume of crimson dust, she watched the Doctor sprinting into the distance with a blatant disregard for the lower gravity. Then again, she decided, since when had the Doctor shown the slightest regard for the laws of physics? Taking careful steps, she bounced after him.

  ‘Rachel; slave your station to mine and tell me what you think.’

  Dr Felice Delacroix looked up from the board of readouts and frowned. Ten minutes ago, their latest attempt to punch a hole through subspace had gone rather spectacularly pear-shaped, blowing half the failsafes before dissipating into the void. Unfortunately, the readouts and twinkling alarms across her work-station suggested that the attempt hadn’t dissipated quite as much as she and her co-workers had thought. Not for the first time, Felice wondered how much of what she had learnt at Cambridge belonged in the bin. ‘It looks like we’re getting feedback along the carrier wave.’ A rather solid bit of feedback, come to that.

  ‘Crap,’ replied Rachel Anders, a dumpy, middle-aged woman with greying hair and a permanently sour expression. A grouch who just happened to be in charge of the research laboratory. A research laboratory which just happened to be the only thing left on Charon. And it was Professor Rachel Anders, of course. Never forget that. ‘That can’t happen.’ She walked over to Felice’s station and examined the monitors, elbowing her out of the way in the process. Immediately, her face screwed up in disbelief and she hissed one word. ‘Shit.’

  ‘Satisfied?’ snapped Felice. Okay, so they were all under pressure on Charon, but Rachel’s constant attitude problems didn’t help matters. Anyone would think that Felice had deliberately broken the laws of physics just to piss her off. She tapped one of the displays. ‘Something’s definitely coming up the carrier wave.’

  ‘But the Transit beam never focused at the secondary node,’ Rachel muttered. ‘There wasn’t any way for matter to penetrate subspace and enter the stunnel stream.’ In simple terms, the subspace transit tunnel they had attempted to create – a stunnel – had only had an entrance. Creating an exit was the purpose of their research. A desperate purpose.

  ‘Something did,’ Felice pointed out, mainly to be provocative. ‘And it’s going to resolve at this end in a little over two minutes.’ She looked across the room to the huge oval of their stunnel terminus. Although it possessed none of the pizzazz of the old commercial termini su
ch as Paris or King’s Cross, it had one thing in its favour: it was the only terminus in the solar system that still functioned, a fact indicated by the infinite cylinder which stretched from the mouth of the oval into infinity..., or so it seemed. Actually, it was an optical illusion caused by the universe’s interaction with the primary subspace meniscus. And reaching beyond that meniscus into the abstract dimension of subspace – with the blockade in place – might be their only hope of reaching beyond the solar system. Then again, since none of their attempts to achieve a stable, two-ended stunnel had worked up till now, its continued functioning was rather a moot point.

  Transit technology had been all but abandoned years ago: human beings had never really trusted the idea of being scrambled into elementary particles and shoved through subspace, and the fiasco of the first commercial stunnel run to Arcturus hadn’t helped its popularity. But some people – such as Rachel and Felice – still felt that the science could have useful applications, and the Earth government had grudgingly funded a small research complex about five years ago. That it had been placed on Charon – almost as far away from Earth as it was possible to be and still share the same solar system – had actually proved quite exciting at first; Felice had felt like a pioneer, pushing back the frontiers of science. It hadn’t taken long for her to feel cut off and isolated, working away at problems that no one outside the base was particularly interested in.

  However, events that had followed the invasion of Earth had given them a new purpose. The invaders had set up a subspace blockade across the solar system, making it impossible for any ships or supplies to drop out of subspace within the orbit of Cassius. And conventional travel was just as impossible; the Black Fleet simply blasted anything that moved.

  Rachel, Felice and the others were possibly the only people in the solar system with the faintest chance of breaking that blockade – not that they had much to show for it at the moment apart from a succession of failed, one-ended stunnels.

  But if something had managed to enter the one-ended stunnel that Rachel and her team had accomplished, perhaps it wasn’t quite as one-ended as they had thought. Then again – and perhaps more importantly – what the hell was hurtling through subspace towards Charon?

  Rachel mouthed Felice’s fears. ‘Get a security team to the terminus room. Stat!’ she growled into the work-station’s comm grille. ‘If it’s one of them ...’

  Felice stared along the seven-metre tall oval tunnel, her scientist side noting the swirling, phosphorescent wisps that were beginning to form as the automatic systems registered an incoming signal. Even if their visitor was one of the bastards who had claimed ownership of the solar system, there was no way of shutting down the stunnel from their end, not with the damage that the last attempt had caused. And if it was one of them, she hoped that a security team of frightened colonists would be able to stop it.

  Because all the defences of Earth hadn’t been able to.

  The main doors of the stunnel chamber suddenly flew open and four black-suited figures in ill-fitting uniforms strode in. The uniforms had been culled from the corpses of the Charon Militia that had been found in the escape tunnels leading from the surface: as the continued bombardments had driven the few survivors of the colony underground, the Militia, holding the rear, had been annihilated by the final radiation burst that had managed to penetrate twenty metres of solid rock. Their successors were teenagers, terrified children holding their salvaged plasma rifles as if they were going to be the targets, rather than the enigma that was only a minute away from materializing in the meniscus.

  Rachel began barking orders at them, terrifying them even further. ‘You and you to the mouth of the stunnel, you two at the sides.’ Felice suppressed a smile; forget scientific research – Dr Rachel Anders was definitely in the wrong profession. She glanced at the tunnel and shuddered; the wisps had become a roiling vortex of lime greens and golds with a rapidly enlarging heart of darkness.

  Vincente Esteban scratched his thick black moustache and snorted through his nose. ‘There has been another ten per cent increase in the last two hours,’ he stated in his thick accent, peering out through the window of the buggy as if the increase in electromagnetic activity he had just reported would be visible against the darkening Martian sky.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Vince, stop giving us minute by minute status reports,’ snapped Antony McGuire, glancing over his shoulder at his Spanish colleague. ‘I know you mean well, but you’re not helping.’ He had been looking at Esteban’s overweight reflection in the windscreen for the last three hours, waiting for his Chinese water-torture pronouncements about the state of the Martian magnetic field with increasing irritation. Then again, they had provided a welcome respite from the red monotony of the Martian landscape. After five days, any distraction was welcome.

  ‘It could be important,’ muttered Piotr Kolchak, looking up from his careworn leather Bible. ‘Vince is our token scientist, remember.’ The cynicism was clear.

  ‘I apologize if I am boring you, Piotr,’ said Esteban. ‘I am just curious about these magnetic storms. But I am glad that you appreciate me.’ For a second, his expression reminded McGuire of a small child whose sweets had just been snatched from him: hurt and puzzled.

  Kolchak sneered. ‘You’ve had your nose in that tablette since we left Jacksonville.’

  ‘And yours has been in that Bible, Piotr. You have your God and I have mine.’

  McGuire sighed. The last thing he wanted on this expedition was a major falling out. They still had another day before they reached the North Pole, and he would have preferred that they got there without mutually inflicted knife wounds and plasma burns. The expedition had started so well, full of optimism that the strange energy readings Vince had detected at the North Pole indicated the possibility of supplies. But the sheer boredom of the journey had soon put paid to that. ‘Go on then, Vince; how much worse?’ Better to indulge him.

  Esteban glanced down at the slim black tablette which nestled in the shadow of his stomach. ‘The levels of electromagnetic activity have increased by eight hundred per cent over the last four days. If it carries on at this rate, well, either we’re going to have the biggest electrical storm Mars has ever seen, or it will reach a point where it starts to interfere with our own nervous systems.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that we return to Jacksonville?’ asked Kolchak.

  Esteban shook his head. ‘No point, Piotr. The field covers the entire northern hemisphere. Jacksonville won’t offer any protection at all.’ He returned his attention to the tablette. But this is interesting -’

  ‘To you, maybe. Perhaps we can stop and take a look at the lichen while we’re at it.’

  Madrigal’s interjection was the first thing she’d said that day, and it made McGuire shudder. Christina Madrigal was a decorated veteran of countless campaigns, from the civil wars on the Outer Planets to the colonial struggles in the Arcturus system. Apparently she had been on Mars visiting friends when the blockade had started, and the mayor of Jacksonville had suggested – although ordered might have been a better word – that she accompany McGuire’s expedition to the Martian North Pole. As far as McGuire was concerned, they were a group of volunteers looking for much needed supplies at the North Pole – with the blockade and the invasion, their regular trade routes had been cut off, and so had the colony. Madrigal’s presence made the whole thing feel like a military campaign, and that made him very uneasy. All things military made him uneasy.

  ‘Hang on, Madrigal, let Vince continue.’

  ‘Thank you, Antony.’ Esteban grinned annoyingly. ‘I was going to say that the epicentre of the phenomenon appears to be the North Pole.’

  ‘Stands to reason,’ said Madrigal offhandedly. ‘Poles and magnetism. Don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that, Esteban.’

  ‘Hang on!’ warned McGuire. He had been so preoccupied with preventing an argument that he had neglected to pay enough attention to what was ahead. A large hillock was
coming up fast; although the ATET was designed for rough terrain, this was going to be more than rough. He turned the wheel, trying to avoid the obstacle, but knew immediately that there wasn’t the time or the distance. They were going to have to go over it.

  The generator strained as the caterpillar tracks tried to keep a purchase on the dusty slope of the hillock, and McGuire swallowed as he felt the vehicle shudder with the effort. He accelerated, hoping that extra speed would do the trick, and was extremely relieved when the ATET responded, painfully pulling itself up the slope. They finally reached the top of the hillock and he braked. He hoped that going down would prove a bit less dramatic.

  Panic over, Esteban continued. ‘Wrong, Ms Madrigal. Mars has no magnetic field. Whatever is causing the build-up is definitely not natural.’

  ‘Someone’s deliberately doing this?’ asked McGuire. That changed things. ‘Who? Greenies?’ This was even more disturbing than Madrigal’s presence, and made McGuire regret indulging Esteban’s research.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Esteban countered. ‘If the Native Martians had ever possessed the technology to do something like this, they wouldn’t have lost the war.’

  McGuire gritted his teeth. Native Martians? The bastards were Greenies, and that was that. And Esteban’s bleeding-heart liberalism wouldn’t bring back the thousands who had died at their hands. But stating his views would only make the situation more tense – the last thing he wanted was Kolchak preaching his belief systems at them – so he gritted his teeth even more. ‘We’ll deal with that when it happens. If there are Greenies at the Pole... well, we’ll deal with them as well.’ Then he saw it through the windscreen, a blazing comet that seared across the crimson sky.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ he whispered, but he already knew the answer: the slightly purple tint to the tail of the comet marked it as the discharge from a failing deuterium generator. They were watching an atmospheric shuttle plummeting down from orbit to its inevitable and fiery end. Who was stupid enough to fly a shuttle with the blockade in place? Every attempt to achieve even the lowest flight path had been met by the same hostile reaction: the orbiting invaders just shot them out of the sky.