Mercury Valley Refuelling Station

The **Mercury Valley Refuelling Station** was a space station assembled by the Milky Way Alliance to assist its forces in their war against the Cybermen.

## History

Mercury Valley was one of hundreds of refuelling stations built by the Milky Way Alliance at the turn of the Cyber-War that dominated the latter end of the 40th century, designed to restock the numerous battleships, constructed by the Alliance for use against the Cybermen, with fuel, weaponry, ammo and soldiers. Indeed, Mercury Valley's position on the edge of the Alpha Portland Sector was one of strategic importance; a space corridor located near the station allowed for rapid exit and entry into the heart of the Sector where the majority of the fighting took place - this was because the Cybermen wanted to take over the sector, due to it being one of the Alliance's major resource centres. They believed that seizing this sector would win them the war.

However, with the war emerging so rapidly, Mercury Valley fell victim to the same issues as many other refuelling stations within the same area suffered from; they were quickly and thus, poorly built. Their shielding and defences were shoddily put together, meaning any strong enemy attack would utterly decimate the station. This wasn't seen as a problem, because the Alliance kept all its space corridors and stations' locations a heavily guarded secret from the Cybermen and so, no one believed that any of the stations would ever fall under fire. Nevertheless, that is exactly what happened - as a Cyberman scout ship followed an attack cruiser, which believed it wasn't being followed, through the space corridor and arrived at Mercury Valley.

The attack cruiser finally noticed the scout ship upon arrival and shot it down, but the two Cybermen onboard used the opportunity to turn their mission into a kamikaze bombardment, smashing into both the cruiser - ripping the spaceship into two - and Mercury Valley. One Cyberman was outright killed, but the other Cyberman managed to survive, albeit damaged. It escaped its ship; which had miraculously stayed mostly within shape and massacred everyone onboard. Nevertheless, the Cyberman was now stranded as all power had drained from both its ship and the station. The station fell silent to the rest of the universe and after hearing nothing from anyone onboard for 24 hours, Earth Control thought it completely destroyed and closed the space corridor's entry points. It simply wasn't important enough to send someone to investigate when there were more pressing matters to deal with.

Decades later, in 4001, young Anti-Cyber Squadron Leader Kane Solace arrived on the station after spending many weeks searching for its location. Earth Control had removed it from their databanks, and thus, all knowledge of where it had been was lost - however, Kane had finally located it by triangulating known radio signals and coordinate estimates provided by war veterans. Kane was chasing rumours that a possible Cyberman attack on Mercury Valley had resulted in cyber-weaponry being left abandoned, which he believed could greatly benefit the SSS and Alliance. What he didn't expect to find was a newly-regenerated Twenty-First Doctor, who had piloted her TARDIS to Mercury Valley in a daze and later woken up there without realising what she had done.

Although not necessarily approving of Kane's military mind, the Doctor understood where he was coming from and helped him in his search for this cyber-weaponry, but it wasn't long until they discovered that it didn't actually exist and after Kane's ship mysteriously blew up, along with the rest of the station's hanger, they found that they were now trapped onboard with a Cyberman. The two attempted to get back to the TARDIS so that they could flee, but after a lengthy cat and mouse chase sequence with the Cyberman, they found that the TARDIS was now covered with Cybermats, who drained the ship of power. It was determined that the Cybermats had overcharged Kane's ship in order to detonate it and trap him on the station.

After following the Cybermats to the crashed scout ship, who were now alerting the Cyberman that it would soon be ready to leave due to them powering up the ship with energy stolen from the TARDIS, the Doctor had an idea. After Kane explained to her all the details about the war against the Cybermen and they had moved the TARDIS onboard the scout ship - she had Kane distract the Cyberman in order to lure it away from the ship, correctly assuming that its primary directive would still be to kill all humans before anything else. She devoted a small amount of power from the ship to both zap the Cybermats so they ceased to function and create a connection to the station's core engine.

Rigging it to explode on a timer, the Doctor flew the scout ship out of Mercury Valley after reopening the space corridor using a precise radio signal and Kane had jumped inside following a near-death experience with the Cyberman - using the shockwave caused by the explosion to propel the scout ship through the space corridor and right into the heart of the Alpha Portland Sector. (TV: *Isolated*)