Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all other related material is the sole property of the BBC. No infringement of copyright was intended in the creation of this fan fiction and the story conventions are used here without permission. This story may also, at times, contain graphic depictions of sexual activity in its various forms and/or strong language that may be offensive to sensitive readers. All other story components are the sole property of the author.
Chapter 1: War Is Hell
Beverly Siobhan Michaels was a physician serving in her official capacity as the chief medical officer of the battle cruiser, the Hesperus. She was also one of the best damned field surgeons there was to have in the heat of battle. This was in fact because she was a woman. In her short time, she had seen more than her fair share of grisly battlefield and operating room scenes of bodies hacked and blown to bits and it was her guts of vanadium steel that earned her the respect of the people she served with. The latest joke around the fleet was that she had more balls than an African bull elephant and she had stared down more than one cocky male officer with her penetrating emerald green eyes. She was a physician in the same order as all the women in the Michaels family had been to one degree or another and she shared another aspect with all of her female ancestors. She had flame red hair that spilled luxuriously down her back. However, it was at times, such as this one, when on the field of battle, that she would have given anything for a brush cut or at the very least a hair net. In her irritation at trying to focus on the task at hand, she swatted at a stray wisp of hair that was blocking her view. Aristolis 3 was not the most hospitable of planets at the best of times and now was no exception given the current political climate with the war and all. She gritted brilliant white teeth that shown from between luscious full lips of deep red and tried to concentrate on the patient before her which was almost asking the impossible with the shelling and the sounds of war all around her. Gripping her transcomp harder in her hand, she hoped vainly that it might just serve to help her concentrate more on the fallen soldier before her.
Aristolis 3 was a planet which was in the middle of disputed space between the Galactic Federation and a new race which seemingly just emerged mysteriously from nowhere. The Aristolis system had seen battles and wars before..the Daleks and Cybermen and of course the Sontarans. But the new race seemed like nothing ever before encountered by the Federation. Aristolis was a young colony world and in fact had only been inhabited for about fifty earth years. The first colonists and terraformers had worked diligently to get the colony going and even now things were still very much in the early primitive stages of planning when the war erupted without warning. The enemy always attacked without warning and this did nothing to help the morale of the Federation troops fighting. This was also compounded by the fact the no sooner had the enemy raided Aristolis than they vanished as if they had never been. This little war had now been going on for about three and a half years and it didn't show any signs whatsoever of letting up any time soon. The ships of this new and alien race were the kind that struck abject terror into the hearts of all who saw them. It was as if the ships themselves radiated fear. They were huge and solid black, almost the color of midnight. They were so black that you could see them against the shadow of a night sky and they blotted out the stars for a good wide radius. The ships seemed to be made of a mineral that was as black as an onyx stone and from what all intelligence reports gathered about them said, they seemed to have a central body several miles long and built like a cathedral with the high vaulted ceiling which curved downward at each end like a hemisphere shape. To this was added a V-shaped platform with the point forming in the front and seeming to house the massive engines needed to power the monstrous vessel. Massive laser cannons powerful enough to blast half a continent into oblivion were mounted on the sides, belly and rear. To those who had seen the technical layouts of the massive ships, they resembled the helmets of the ancient Spanish conquistadors. No scanning equipment or device of any kind could detect them and by the time any victim realized they were there, it was too late to mount a defense.
It was as he pored over this information that Admiral Carrington Michaels glanced up grimly at the space battle being waged hundreds of miles above the planet's surface and how his little girl, Beverly was in the thick of it on the planet's surface below. She could be a strong-willed girl when it came to duty and this was no exception. She blatantly defied her father's wishes and threats to be thrown in the brig and went down with the emergency relief ship to aid as needed. She reminded her father that unlike him, she wasn't a military soldier and he couldn't treat her like one. Just one of the few faults they had in an otherwise flawless father/daughter relationship. The army had been searching for a name..any name for this new race of hell-bent destroyers and so they settled on one, albeit a bit of a ridiculous one at that, Shadow-Ghosts or SG's. The reason being that the ships were blacker than night and they came and went like ghosts often do making one wonder if they had really seen them or if it had been a trick of the light. Admiral Michaels sat in grim silence on the bridge of his carrier, the Hesperus, as the scene unfolded before him on the Hesperus's theater-sized view screen. God, he thought, There MUST be a way to defeat them.
Back on the planet's surface, Beverly fought to keep the young soldier's life from ebbing away. She herself was young, only 34, and that must have put this youth at about 23 years of age. In vain she tried pumping neuro-stimulants into his body in an attempt to keep him going, but she knew what her transcomp confirmed was true. It was sad, because despite the trauma that had been done to him, he was very attractive. He had close-cut sandy blond hair and blue eyes and his face had a chiseled look to it as though he had exercised regularly. However, the boy was beyond hope, she had been too late. The SG's had gotten to him with their damned psycho-trauma device. The transcomp showed his brain chemistry had elevated to the point that his circulatory system had collapsed under the strain as well as turn his brain to mush in his skull. Beverly cried out in frustration as much as the thin atmosphere would allow before she collapsed choking in the reddish dust of the war-torn planet. Forcing herself to get a grip and choke back a sob, Beverly put her hands over the soldier's face and closed his eyes. "Doctor Michaels! Doctor Michaels!" Beverly looked up to see one of her staff running towards her in a mad rush, almost stumbling over the roughly uneven terrain to reach her. "Doctor Michaels, come quickly! The globulin supply has been spilled from the last attack! We've lost over a hundred liters!" "Oh, Damn it!" Beverly cried, "As if that weren't just what we needed, more bad news. Ingrid, I want you to go back and salvage what you....." Beverly was cut off by a shout of "Incoming!!!" and a loud whistling which accompanied it. Oh shit, she thought, This is it! "Ingrid! RUN!!" Beverly broke and ran for cover. She hadn't gotten very far when the shell burst upon the field and flung her into the nearest trench, sending shower of mud, flesh and debris raining down on top of her. After a minute or two, she drug herself up and managed to glimpse over the edge of the trench. The smoke hadn't yet cleared and so she pulled herself over the edge and called out to her aide, "Ingrid! Ingrid! Talk to me, Ingrid!" Oh for Heaven's sake, please be alright, she thought. Beverly looked around and then her eyes caught sight of something charred. She wandered over to it only to have a ghastly sight meet her eyes. What was left of Ingrid's body was not pleasant. The shell's impact had blown off Ingrid's left arm and leg and had twisted her neck to an odd angle. The force of the blast had also lain open her insides to the harsh Aristolis climate. Beverly forced herself not to be sick as she slumped down in weariness. The distress over the death of one of her closest aides as well as the lack of decent rest recently combined to shatter the last remaining vestiges of her emotional strength. She collapsed into tears that she no longer had the will or the desire to hold back. How much longer was this hell supposed to go on? She noticed everyone around her running and screaming and fleeing and it didn't make sense to her. Her senses seemed to be dull and muddled and the world began to swim in her vision. There, on the war-torn battle plain of Aristolis 3, Beverly Siobhan Michaels gave in to the release of unconscious oblivion as she passed out from her exertions.
