Authors: Lance Parkin,Lars Pearson
? 2502 - “Throwback: The Soul of a Cyberman”
[683]
The Cybermen invaded the planet Mondaran, and encountered heavy resistance. Cyberleader Tork requested reinforcements from Telos, which was six days away. These included Junior Cyberleader Kroton, who refused to kill a resistance cell. Kroton was developing emotions, and sided with the humans. Together, they stole a ship from the spaceport and retreated to the safety of the forest of Lorn. Kroton took the ship into orbit to prevent the humans from being detected, but it was a one-way trip. When his batteries drained, he was left drifting in space.
Earth initiated the Sword of Orion project: an effort to obtain Cyber-technology left over from the Cyber incursions on Earth for use in the Orion War.
[684]
2503 - Sword of Orion
[685]
A derelict spaceship was discovered near the Garazone Central habitat. It was a Cybermen factory ship, and Earth High Command dispatched Deeva Jansen to recover the Cyber-technology aboard. Jansen, however, was actually an android trying to obtain the technology for the Orion androids. The eighth Doctor and Charley were present when the Cybermen aboard the spaceship revived in great numbers, but the Doctor defeated them. Jansen was swept into space with some Cybermen and presumably frozen.
Telos was destroyed in a random asteroid strike. The Cyber-vault there had been designed to survive the planet’s break-up, and so floated in space amidst Telos’ ruins, the Cybermen inside the vault still in cryo-sleep.
[686]
c 2505 - To the Slaughter
[687]
Earth had been abandoned to the poorer countries. Mercury had fallen into the Sun and Venus was a toxic waste dump. The Oort Cloud had been sold off and dismantled.
Falsh Industries demolished most of Jupiter’s moons - using the designs of Aristotle Halcyon, a celebrity
decor-artiste
- as part of a redevelopment scheme to attract businesses to the solar system. The “Old Preservers”, speaking on behalf of the Empire Trust, were opposed to this. Falsh himself was engaged in illicit weapons research. The eighth Doctor, Fitz and Trix uncovered his schemes and defeated him. Halcyon decided to use his talents to improve Earth.
The people of Atwalla 3 prevented a takeover by alien races by genetically engineering their women to inter-breed with other species. As more and more hybrids were born, the Atwallans found their own race was in danger of extinction. The Atwallan males wiped out the hybrids, and stripped their women of all rights.
[688]
The human colony on Cantus was believed “lost”; in actuality, the Cybermen had cyber-converted all the adults there, and harvested the children’s organs for use in Cybermats.
[689]
The Draconians committed war crimes during the reign of the thirty-fourth Emperor, and were later made to pay reparations.
[690]
After IMC closed its hydrogen mine on Saturn, Unit 426 was purchased and redeveloped by Powe-Luna Developments into a facsimile of a twentieth-century English market town. It was renamed Chelsea 426.
[691]
Humanity built the Empire State: a single tower, named after the Empire State Building, that stretched from half a mile underground to the upper atmosphere on a desert moon that orbited six planets. It became a centre for trade and commerce, but around 2509, a misanthrope named Rand Goodwyn destabilised the State’s generators and destroyed it.
[692]
c 2509 (20th August) - The Taking of Chelsea 426
[693]
The Third Renaissance was about to commence. Some features of it, including the Theatre of Nomogan, the ceilings of the Chamber of Ra and the Simarine Orchestra, would be talked about for centuries. Neptune had mining platforms.
The Oxygen Gardens of Chelsea 426 had become home to the Chelsea Flower Show. The top exhibit was the Blue Flower of Saturn, recently discovered in that planet’s atmosphere. The tenth Doctor tried to attend the flower show, and found that the Blue Flower contained mind-controlling spores that the Rutans had seeded on Saturn five centuries previous. Compounding the situation, Colonel Sarg of the Fourth Sontaran Intelligence Division arrived with his shock troops, and demanded to search for enemies of Sontar. The Doctor contained the resulting battle and saved the humans on Chelsea 426. Sarg’s Sontarans - not realising that they had been infiltrated by the Rutan spores - returned to Sontar.
Field Marshal Sir Henry Whittington-Smythe died as part of this conflict, and was given a full military funeral on Earth. He was a veteran of the Martian Wars, the Battle of Olympus Mons, the Battle of Mercutio 14 and the Siege of the Hexion Gates.
The Bantu Independence Group lost a war in 2511, and its position was greatly diminished.
[694]
Dr. Oleg Mikelz located the Oracle of the Lost on planetoid KS-159. The Oracle had tired of its servile existence, and attempted to trick Mikelz into destroying it - but its ambiguous statements instead drove Mikelz to kill his wife, his personal assistant and finally himself. Edward Watkinson, the finest archaeologist of his age and Mikelz’s good friend, became infected with a mental parasite on the planet Paracletes. On September 11, 2515, Watkinson deduced the Oracle’s involvement in Mikelz’s murder-suicide and went to KS-159. Watkinson killed himself, causing the parasite to leap into the Oracle - which went inert to keep the creature contained.
[695]
c 2505 - Kingdom of Silver
[696]
On Tasak, the House of Argentia, under the command of Magus Riga, found a Cybermen tomb established some millennia ago. Argentia revolutionised medicine by reverse-engineering the Cyber-technology, including the development of a healing solution called Silver. In so doing, Argentia ended a devastating war with the rival House of Sarkota through benevolence, not force of arms.
As a conclave gathered to celebrate the war’s conclusion, the seventh Doctor presented himself as “Dr Johannes Smither of the House of Gallifrey”. The Doctor and Riga wiped out the revived Cybermen before they could send an activation signal that would awaken thousands of Cyber-tombs across the galaxy, but Riga was killed. Erin of the House of Sarkota gave up her birthright and pledged to work with the new Argentia Magus for peace. Afterward, the Doctor offered two androids that he’d met - Temeter and Sara - a lift back to the Orion Zone.
The Doctor claimed that Tasak had the best tea in its quadrant.
c 2514 - “Keepsake”
[697]
The androids Temeter and Sara were called before the Orion War Council to account for their failure to capture a Cybrid infiltrator and saboteur, Corvus, who arranged the deaths of hundreds of androids. The Council judged that Temeter and Sara’s feelings for one another had hampered their effectiveness. Temeter was returned to active duty after his emotional connection to Sara was deleted from his core consciousness. Sara was deemed less fit for service, so her consciousness was deleted and replaced by another operative. What remained of Sara’s persona was redeployed in a servo robot with Grade 3 intelligence.
Cyberman Series 1 and 2
On Earth, as the Orion War took a turn for the worse, the predecessor of President Levinson founded the Scorpius Project to make use of Cyber-technology developed from the failed Sword of Orion initiative. The Cybermen usurped Scorpius to their own ends, and manipulated Levinson into officially terminating it. Scorpius proceeded in secret; Paul Hunt, an advisor to the project, was converted into a Cybrid - a Cyber-operative who could pass as human
[698]
- and vanished from the public record. The Cybermen made plans to replace Levinson with a president more agreeable to using Scorpius as they desired.
[699]
At this time, Article 7 of the Earth spacefleet charter allowed three officers of senior rank to remove a captain from command decisions.
[700]
Article 92, sub-section 3, paragraph 4 - which hadn’t been used in years - allowed for those of command rank to conscript civilian vessels for military use. The Navy, now part of Earth’s Spacefleet, was equipped with proton rifles. Mark 4 fusion cores - part of a spaceship’s drive systems - were a bit out of date, and Mark 6 cores were available. Earth’s dominions included the Vega colony.
[701]
The industrial heartland of the British North was currently a bunch of ruined factories. The soil there was so laced with cadmium, even nanosheets couldn’t strip it out.
[702]
c 2515 - Cyberman: Scorpius / Fear / Conversion / Telos
[703]
The Orion War continued to go against humanity. Earth’s Planetary Assault Force Delta on Orius Beta VIII walked straight into an ambush, and although Admiral Karen Brett of the
Redoubtable
led a counter-assault that destroyed the Android Eighth Fleet - which was hiding just off Orius Beta V - human casualties still numbered fifty thousand. Orius Beta VIII was nuked. The victory, however technical, surged morale on Earth to its highest point in twenty years.
Brett was promoted to Commander-in-Chief of Earth’s forces. Paul Hunt secretly met with Brett on Reticek IV, and explained to her the potential that Scorpius offered. Soon after, the Cybermen arranged for a shuttle to crash into the White House - President Levinson was assassinated, and his killers teleported away. The Senate invoked emergency powers and made Brett president. She appointed her old friend, Captain Liam Barnaby, as Commander-in-Chief.
Several months passed, with humanity suffering further defeats. The androids destroyed the Dracian VIII colony’s reactor, causing massive casualties. They also killed millions, including Brett’s parents, in the undefended Vaslovian system.
Brett increasingly underwent Cyber-hypnosis and conversion, and Hunt became a presidential advisor. Earth was flooded with refugees from the Orion conflict; many of these wound up at a camp on the Isle of Wight, and were then transported off-world for conversion. The fresh Cyber-troops made incursions into Orion territory, and destroyed the android tracking station Beta-4.
Commander Barnaby became politically ostracised from Brett, and increasingly heard rumours concerning Scorpius. He allied himself with Samantha Thorn - an android secret agent who for years had been Paul Hunt’s lover. Assisted by androids aboard the Orion flagship
Antares
, they discovered a map of the galaxy identifying a thousand planets with Cyber-hibernation vaults. They realised that if an activation signal were sent from the master vault on Telos, billions of Cybermen would awaken, spelling the end for humanity and androids alike. The
Antares
immediately left for Telos to prevent this.
The Cyber-Planner running Scorpius advanced its master plan. Brett revealled the existence of Scorpius to Earth, claiming that “volunteers” augmented with cyber-tech had destroyed key android installations. Cybernetic commando units were stationed in all of Earth’s major population centres, purportedly to protect the public from retribution by the androids. Worldwide martial law was declared. Brett announced that she would personally lead the final assault against the androids - but in actuality, she underwent full Cyber-conversion, and left with a Cyber-task force aboard an advanced XP-900 warship to intercept the
Antares
. In her absence, Hunt became emergency executive-in-chief.
Barnaby’s group found that the Cyber-vault on Telos had survived the planet’s break-up, and a dogfight between the
Antares
and the XP-900 resulted in the
Antares
colliding with the vault. A thousand Cybermen space-walked from the XP-900 and wiped out the
Antares
crew save for Barnaby and Thorn. The two of them raised the fuel rods in the Cyber-vault’s reactor, saturating the area with radiation that killed the XP-900 Cybermen, the entombed Cybermen and Brett.
c 2516 - Cyberman 2: Outsiders / Terror / Machines / Extinction
Six months passed as Barnaby and Thorn laboured to keep the
Antares
’ damaged systems running, and the ship limped through space. Back on Earth, Brett was formally declared dead. Hunt became executive-in-chief in her place, extended his term indefinitely and continued martial law. To quell dissent, he engineered several “retirements” of senior officials. He also had Barnaby convicted in absentia of treason and given a death sentence.
The Cybermen continued efforts to turn Earth into a new Mondas, and staged a number of mass abductions - fodder for Cyber-conversion - in cities such as Lyons and Kiev. Hunt released a number of cover stories, declaring various cities as off-bounds. An eruption was said to have occurred in Hawaii. Bombings were cited across Greater Britannica. Bergen, Norway, was completely emptied, supposedly due to biotoxins that a resistance movement put into the city’s water supply. Eurozone News reported flooding in Birmingham, and that the Stafford metroplex had an emergency curfew. Meanwhile, a resistance movement to Hunt’s rule began striking back, staging demonstrations in a dozen cities that included Moscow, Tokyo, New York City, Mumbai and the Canberra Arcology. Cybermen based in Nevada and the Sudan were targeted.