B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (228 page)

2562 - Benny: Old Friends: “The Ship of Painted Shadows”
 [785]

Benny departed for Earth aboard the
Prince of Mercury
liner, and joined the New Gondwana Ladies’ Choir to pay for her passage. The group was otherwise composed of the wives of Hanekawa Goro, a.k.a. Michio Dankizo XXVIII - a Kabuki performer who was being influenced by shadow beings that were entertained by tragedy. The shadow beings slaughtered many innocents, prompting Goro to commit suicide. Benny escaped as the
Prince of Mercury
disappeared into a spatial rift.

A demi-lemur, Ivo FitzIndri, had committed murder to save Benny’s life - he asked that she go to a temple of the Order of Lost Lemuroidea and tell her story. Benny planned on doing so, but was diverted upon receiving a clue as to her father’s whereabouts. FitzIndri was consequently excommunicated and spent the next fifty years looking for her.

2562 - Benny: The Sword of Forever
 [786]

By now, retroviruses released during the Dalek Wars had spread across 40% of Earth, and infested 68% of terrestrial DNA. Most of the retroviruses were harmless, producing physical changes in a small amount of those infected. The Rhone Valley, however, saw evolution run wild, and produced a thousand species of hybrid terrestrial-alien strains of planet, animal and human life.

Benny attempted to find the finger of John the Baptist as a means of securing herself an easy fellowship and to qualify for a doctorate. She located the Castle of Arginy, but her lover, Daniel Beaujeu, seemingly drowned while trying to overcome the traps within. He actually survived, was mutated by retrovirus, forgave Benny her mistakes and enjoyed a relatively happy life in Paris.

At some point, Benny went to Stuttgart.
 [787]
She visited Mars when she was 24. She was now in love with a man named Tim.
 [788]
She made her reputation as an archaeologist during excavations of the Fields of Death, the tombs of the rulers of Mars in 2565.
 [789]
She went on to investigate the Dyson Sphere of the Varteq Veil.
 [790]
In Benny’s time, humans had eradicated most of the previously common illnesses.
 [791]

2565 - Benny: The Vampire Curse: “The Badblood Diaries”
 [792]

The vampire-stricken Badblood had orbiting human settlements that moved to remain in continual daylight, and occasionally intersected for major celebrations. The Kikan corporation, run by psi-powered yakuza who went straight, coveted Badblood’s fish exports as a means of strengthening its sushi monopoly. Benny was granted dispensation to study Hunanzun, the first human settlement on Badblood, and wound up preventing a vampire outbreak on Station CT1107.

2565 - Benny: The Vampire Curse: “Possum Kingdom”
 [793]

Benny joined an expedition to explore the cave system found underneath Possum Kingdom Lake in Texas. She found a naked, amnesiac man who was taken away to a military hospital at Fort Worth.

In 2568, the Spinward Corporation’s computer, the Net, predicted that once the Dalek Wars ended, Earth’s authorities would show an interest in their activities on Arcadia.
 [794]

2570 (late June) - Love and War
 [795]

Bernice Summerfield and her group arrived on Heaven to survey the artifacts of the extinct Heavenite civilisation on behalf of Ellerycorp. The seventh Doctor and Ace arrived as the fungoid Hoothi brought to fruition a plan centuries in the making - Hoothi spores infected everyone on Heaven, meaning that the Hoothi could instantly turn the living into fungoid creatures and animate corpses. They sought to create an army of billions to attack Gallifrey with. Ace became engaged to one of the Travellers, Jan, who was in an open relationship with a woman named Roisa and her lover Marie. Jan was pyrokinetic, and so the Doctor manipulated him into becoming transformed into a Hoothi fungoid and joining the Hoothi group mind. The Doctor encouraged Jan to bring his pyrokinesis to bear - the Hoothi, their fungoid creatures, their army of the undead and Jan were all incinerated, saving the galaxy. Heaven was evacuated shortly afterwards, and Ace departed the TARDIS, unable to forgive the Doctor for sacrificing her fiancé. Bernice better accepted the Doctor’s actions and became his travelling companion.

Following this time, Ace spent three years in the twenty-sixth century during the time of the Dalek War. After a series of adventures, including a spell working for IMC, she ended up with the Special Weapons Division of Spacefleet. She fought alongside the Irregular Auxiliaries, reputed to be the most dangerous arm of the military.
 [796]
Ace served aboard the
Saberhagen
, the
Corporate Raider
and the IMC-funded ship
Corporate Strategy
. The planet Lucifer became of strategic importance in the Dalek Wars, and IMC asked Ace - should the opportunity present itself - to go back in time with the Doctor and discover why the planet was walled off behind a force field.
 [797]
She used a D22 photon rifle when she was a Marine.
 [798]
She fought Daleks in the Ceti sector and Hai Dow. She killed a Black Dalek. She fought Marsh Daleks in the Flova trenches. She was issued a tool for removing the tops of Daleks.
 [799]

Hamilton’s father died during the last Dalek War.
 [800]

Venedel joined the Earthlink Federation, an allied group of worlds with ties to Earth.
 [801]
By 2571, the Repopulation Bureau on Sarah-361 established guidelines for what constituted good breeding stock.
 [802]
Circa 2573, a Chelonian slave camp on Apollox 4 was discovered.
 [803]

& 2573 - Deceit
 [804]

The Dalek Wars were all but over, and although Dalek nests survived on a number of worlds, the army and Spacefleet were gradually demobilised.

During the Dalek Wars, Earth Central had superseded the Colonial Office, while Spacefleet had been expanded and modernised. The Office of External Operations, “the Earth’s surveyors, official couriers, intelligence gatherers, customs officers and diplomats”, now had a staff of five thousand. While the corporations remained powerful, the Earth government reigned in some of their power and broke some of their monopolies.

Agent Defries investigated the Arcadia system, the base of the Spinward Corporation. The nearest troopers were on Hurgal, although some were taking part in a pirate hunt in the Hai Dow system. Instead, Defries was assigned the troopship
Admiral Raistruck
and a squad of Irregular Auxiliaries. She was also given a “secret weapon”: a clone of the Dalek Killer Abslom Daak, kept in cryosleep.

The ship’s crew were told that they were going on a Dalek hunt. The
Admiral Raistruck
arrived in the Arcadia system and encountered an asteroid field carved to resemble terrified human faces. It was clear that Arcadia was subject to SYSDID (System Defence in Strength). Fighters attacked the
Admiral Raistruck
, but this was only a feint. The real attack came from behind: an energy being that was unaffected by the ship’s torpedoes. The ship was destroyed.

Out of more than a thousand people, there were only four survivors: Defries, Daak and Troopers Ace and Johannsen. They discovered that Arcadia had been kept at a medieval level of technology. The population had been kept in ignorance, and the android Humble Counsellors enforced company law. All offworlders were killed as plague-carriers. The power behind Spinward was the Pool: vats of brain matter culled from generations of colonists, and housed in a space station in orbit around Arcadia. Pool intended to manufacture a universe of pure thought, making itself omnipotent. The clone Daak was killed, but Pool was ejected into the Vortex with the TARDIS’ tertiary control room.

Ace rejoined the TARDIS, and travelled alongside the seventh Doctor and Bernice.

c 2573 - The Dark Flame
 [805]

The skull of Vilus Krull was unearthed on the toxic planet Marran Alpha, and agents of the Cult of the Dark Flame facilitated his resurrection in a dead body. The seventh Doctor and Ace collected Benny from a two-week stay on the deep-space research centre Orbos, and they stopped the Cult from creating a dark-light explosion that would enable the Dark Flame to spread its influence to every corner of space-time. Krull was thrown into the space-time vortex.

& 2574 - Shakedown
 [806]

The Sontarans secured information about the Rutan Host: Long ago, a wormhole had been established between Ruta III and Sentarion. In the event of a Sontaran victory, the Rutan Great Mother would use the tunnel to escape her fate. The Sontarans prepared to send a battlefleet down the wormhole to kill the Great Mother, but the Rutan spy Karne discovered the plan. The seventh Doctor, Roz, Chris and Benny tracked Karne down to the human colony of Megacity, and thwarted the Sontaran and Rutan plots.

The Galactic War had passed over the planet Dellah, and so the grateful three-eyed Sultan of the Tashwari built St. Oscar’s University - partly to affirm peace and learning, and partly to further keep Dellah from ranking as a target. The Sultan gave the university and its nine colleges names appealing to humans.
 [807]
To protect its neutrality, Dellah banned all military research. Unofficially, St. Oscar’s continued weapons work in secret, and developed a prototype method of transferring mental engrams into synthetic forms - a means of producing the ultimate soldier. The process went awry, and the crew aboard the
Medusa
, a modified luxury liner, killed each other. Its navigation system damaged, the
Medusa
remained adrift.
 [808]

The Dalek Wars formally ended in 2575. At the end of the Galactic Wars, arms treaties were signed to limit the size and capability of combat robots.
 [809]
A race of master weaponsmiths, the Xlanthi, had aided Earth during the Dalek Wars. Out of gratitude, Earth let the Xlanthi hunt fugitives in Earthspace without interference.
 [810]

2575 - Benny: The Sword of Forever
 [811]

Kenya and Somalia had been afflicted by Dalek retroviruses, and become home to many of the resultant mutations. The mutants were spreading south toward Tanzania and, more slowly, across the Ethiopian Plateau. Nairobi was nothing more than mutant jungle. Addis Ababa, formerly home to half a million, was now inhabited by hybrid humans. A Mason named Marillian tracked the Ark of the Covenant to Axum, a home to many human hybrids in Ethiopia. Marillian’s translator, Ondemwu, escaped with the Ark as the Russian Conglomerate Military Red Cross purified the area.

& 2575 - Arrangements for War
 [812]

The sixth Doctor and Evelyn visited the planet Vilag after witnessing the Killoran invasion to come, and observed the love developing between Princess Krisztina and Marcus Reid, a lowly gardener’s son.

? 2575 - Human Nature (NA)
 [813]

The seventh Doctor and Benny visited a bodysmith and bought a Pod that would allow the Doctor to become human. They travelled to Earth, 1914, so the Doctor could experiment with living as a human being.

? 2576 - Rain of Terror
 [814]

On Earth, holiday excursions were available to an alien zoo on the far side of the moon, and the National Museum of Mars. The Off-Planet Railroad Company had a solid reputation for building train lines. An engineer working for one of the big colony builders could spend weeks or months on faraway planets, returning to Earth in the interim. Colony ships could erect temporary buildings on target worlds prior to engineering firms moving in to do the job properly. Galactic Safari offered use of hyper-sleep chambers that even an upper middle-class family in Brighton could afford. The chambers enabled travel to such worlds as the tourist planet of Xirrinda, which featured such exotic animals as the Trinto, Beslons and the predatory Sharkwolf.

The eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory visited Xirrinda after dealing with a revolution that involved super-evolved Mire Beasts, and were present as the swarm of ravenous machine-creatures ejected from Xirrinda - numbering in the tens of billions - returned to their homeworld. The Doctor deciphered the key to an ancient “fail-safe” device left by the creatures’ creators, and switched them off.

2577 - Benny: The Sword of Forever
 [815]

Marillian inherited many businesses after his father died in a transport accident. He tracked the stolen Ark of the Covenant to the Palace of the Arch-Regent Gebmoses III - the self-proclaimed (and virtually unacknowledged) Emperor of the Third World - in Kampuchea. Gebmoses had Marillian killed, then resurrected using the Ark’s power. Henceforth, Marillian acknowledged Gebmoses as his master.