by Steve Cole
The same dark, distorted DNA pattern spun slowly in the golden light.
‘It’s there in the crop?’ Ryan blew out a wondering whistle. ‘And I bet it’s in the dead men walking too, right?’
‘Has to be,’ the Doctor said. ‘The Tenctrama appropriate life – properly treated life, at least – and their essence binds with it somehow, destroys it and reanimates it with the Tenctrama will.’
‘Reprograms it,’ Yaz suggested. ‘So, we get dead birds that spy or attack on command, dead soldiers only fixated on killing their old enemies …’
‘And dead Strava who’ll go for humans but leave each other alone,’ said Ryan.
‘At least for as long as it suits the Tenctrama.’ The Doctor turned to Liss. ‘Relics! That’s what you said, when we came into the catacombs, that I could name the relics. Plural. So, it’s not just comms-links – what other weird stuff have you got?’
‘It’s kept in the Hidden Hall,’ Liss said.
‘That’s miles away,’ Ryan sighed.
‘I might know a short cut. Connections, remember? The Tenctrama are all about fluidity.’ The Doctor studied the special slate she’d called a door handle. ‘You know how they come and go on the air? It’s not magicks at work. I’ve already isolated the transport bandwidth …’
‘Didn’t get us far outside,’ Yaz reminded her. ‘You said we were locked out.’
‘Of the network between Earth and sky, yes. But now we’re under the earth—’
‘Different network,’ said Ryan.
‘And with luck and a fair wind …!’ The Doctor sonicked, and a layout plan, presumably of the catacombs, was picked out in trails of golden light. ‘Here are the spaces the Tenctrama colonised.’ The Doctor tapped the sonic against a large square to the left of the plan. ‘Hidden Hall?’
‘Looks like it!’ Liss clapped.
‘Come on, then.’ The Doctor walked into the wall almost absent-mindedly.
With a hum of power, she glowed and disappeared.
‘She opened a tunnel in the air!’ Liss pulled Ryan after her as she ran towards the wall. ‘Oh, my poor feet are so happy!’
Yaz watched them shine gold and vanish, leaving her alone. She felt suddenly sad and afraid, and thought of Bittenmane, alone on the plains outside. ‘Stay safe, boy,’ she said quietly.
‘I am safe, girl!’ said Ryan, glowing gold as he stuck out of the wall. ‘Bless.’
Yaz frowned. ‘I was actually talking to Attila’s horse!’
‘Bittenmane. Right. Course you were.’
‘I was!’
‘Look, I’m here chasing you, Yaz, cos you’re so worth it.’
‘Oh, shut up …’
Still grumbling, Yaz followed him through the invisible door in the wall.
Attila leaned forward in the saddle, gripping his new mount hard with his knees. His banner, silver-white, billowed in the wind overhead. Flanking him, left and right, in glittering armour, his bodyguards rode with huge leather shields, their only duty to watch their master and keep all spears and blows from reaching him. Two more men rode close behind him leading saddled horses beside their own, so that if his own mount was struck by axe or arrow he could switch to another. The pounding of hooves, the red dust clouds kicked up, the snorting of the frightened horses: Attila blanked them all out, focused only on the dense ranks of the enemy ahead, on Roman heads peeping over shields.
His horse was flying like the wind, and its breast struck into the front line with a grinding crunch. Bellowing his war cry, he brought his wooden mace down on Roman infantrymen, swinging wildly, his bodyguards deflecting blows and dealing out their own. A spear thrust up clean through the neck of his horse and jabbed against Attila’s stomach; in an instant he brought down his arm to snap the spear shaft, gripped the top section and hurled it down into the screaming mass of men. Convulsing, his horse trampled its attacker, but Attila rolled off nimbly and jumped into the saddle of the free horse to his right, pricking its sides with his heels. Behind him, he saw Chokona leading the next wave of attack on a fine grey stallion, letting fly his quiver of arrows; Attila led his men away from the infantry line so that Chokona’s unit could take their place and continue the onslaught. So it would go on, wave upon wave of horsemen crashing into the ranks until the infantry was broken.
As he left the front line of battle, Attila threw a look back over his shoulder: already the Romans slain were returning to their feet. They climbed over piles of fallen horses and threw themselves without fear into the paths of the Hun cavalry, ignoring the blows from sword and mace. Chokona’s shriek somehow rose above the mêlée, and before the sight was snatched away by fresh carnage, Attila saw the point of a spear push through his chieftain’s back.
A spear in the hands of a Hun.
That was when Attila realised that many of the dead rising back to attack his forces were Huns themselves. Stunned, he turned his horse in a tight circle and brought it to a standstill, unwilling to trust his senses. But it was true: brother now killed brother in a bloody free-for-all, ignoring all orders, all pleas, all screams. The Romans and their allies were clashing too, stabbing and spearing anyone who came close, no matter their allegiance.
Attila became aware that his bodyguards were staring at him, waiting for his orders. He turned away, raised his sword and stabbed twice at the air. The bugler was watching and sounded a long, falling note, the signal to retreat.
He rode away from the howling, the blood, the madness, his silver flag trailing like a ghost above the galloping cavalry. Attila knew now: this was no longer a fight for Gaul and the future of Rome’s empire.
The battle now was between the living and the dead.
Chapter 28
Imagining the terror and confusion down below, Inkri turned to Enkalo and laughed. ‘Our corpse warriors are now compelled to kill any in reach. The deaths, indiscriminate, will come faster.’
‘All the waiting. The long, long centuries.’ Enkalo caressed her sister’s face. ‘We will be beautiful again.’
‘But the Doctor has not yet been found.’ Inkri narrowed her eyes. ‘The search must be extended. She and her accomplices must be destroyed.’
‘That’s another poor fella those witches have offed.’ Graham stared sadly at the pile of ash in the merchant’s wagon; they’d paused there on their way to the secret cemetery where the gang was waiting.
‘Why burn up his body?’ Vitus wondered. ‘They did the same with the slave.’
‘They must really hate that healing gel,’ said Graham. ‘I used it on his face, his nose had been bashed in.’
Vitus looked at him. ‘Using alien technology on ordinary citizens is irresponsible.’
‘Oi! Who blasted those Huns to bits with his ray gun?’ Graham sighed, thinking now of Theodoric, and if this fate might have befallen him too. ‘Excuse me trying to help people. How was I to know I was marking them out for … this.’
‘Well, there’s nothing we can do for any of them now,’ Vitus said. ‘And we’d better get you to cover. If the Tenctrama are killing anyone who’s touched that stuff …’
Graham gulped. ‘I could be next!’
Ryan sat in the Hidden Hall with Yaz, watching as the Doctor managed to make even more of a mess of Liss’s files. Just now Liss was trying for the twentieth time to contact Aetius on the comms-link, hiding her eyes as yet another trunk full of electronic bric-a-brac was upended over the old stone floor.
‘Be careful, Doctor!’ Liss pleaded. ‘Some of those artefacts are hundreds of years old.’
‘And then some,’ the Doctor agreed.
‘If you could tell me what you’re looking for …?’
‘Anything useful,’ she declared. ‘I’m hoping I’ll know it when I find it.’
A grey, egg-shaped device rolled across the room. Ryan stooped to pick it up but knocked over a blue steel cylinder as he did so. ‘Oops. Sorry, Liss.’
‘Mind that Arcturan grenade, by the way,’ the Doctor went on. ‘Might still be l
ive.’
Yaz frowned. ‘The what might be what?’
Freezing, Ryan swallowed hard. ‘Which one is the grenade?’
‘Both. Blue bit goes into grey, makes a boom.’ The Doctor looked up, frowning. ‘How did I miss you lot getting invaded by Arcturans? Well, maybe it was just a scout. I can’t be here every time an alien scout-ship crash-lands on Earth. I expect the Tenctrama got rid of it. They’d want to protect their investment in Earth’s animal life.’
Liss put down the stubbornly silent comms-link. ‘How did they come to Earth, anyway?’
‘I imagine this Pit of theirs can project them over vast tracts of space to planets with life forms they can exploit.’ The Doctor was prowling like a caged cat, looking on shelves and in dusty corners for something that she clearly felt ought to be there. ‘Then they bed down below ground, working to replenish the Pit so the whole thing can start over again.’
‘An invisible Pit that hangs in the sky for a thousand years?’
‘More likely a part of their spaceship. Puts itself into geostationary orbit high above the lair, hides itself in a teleportation loop and waits in hibernation.’
‘Teleportation loop?’ Yaz tried to get her head round it. ‘D’you mean their ship hides out in the gap between leaving one place and arriving at another?’
‘Spot on!’ The Doctor smiled at her fondly. ‘I think the Tenctrama operate as energy projections in a fluid state of flux. Their physical form is a manifestation of the animating energy.’
Liss and Ryan looked at each other blankly.
‘Death liberates that energy, renews it,’ the Doctor went on. ‘If you “kill” the body, the energy unravels to be conducted back up to the Tenctrama lair. And as Yaz knows, it can take the living along for the ride.’
‘I’m just glad you got out OK,’ Ryan said. ‘What was it like up there, Yaz?’
‘A cross between a dead forest and a cathedral.’ She shuddered. ‘Stone altars, like the one we saw in that room. Dead trees that grew sort of scanner crystals like fruits …’
‘Think I’ll pass on one of those for my five a day,’ Ryan said.
‘Ryan, that’s it!’ The Doctor looked up suddenly and stared into space. ‘What do you call the stone inside a peach or a plum or an apricot? A pit! A Pit! And inside the Pit …’
‘Is the seed,’ Yaz realised. ‘All the potential for new life.’
‘Or new death. For our poor, mutated Tenctrama, it’s spaceship and racebank and nourisher all in one.’ The Doctor went back to searching through a crate. ‘Well done, you lot. You’re brilliant. You cracked it.’
Liss gave up on her comms-link for now and sighed, clearly dubious. ‘Seems a strange sort of life cycle for anything.’
‘Cicadas!’ the Doctor retorted. ‘There’s one species that spends seventeen years maturing underground, then, boom! Two months above ground as adults, just time to mate and lay eggs, and then they die.’
Liss looked at Ryan. ‘Well, that is strange too.’
‘Must make it hard for predators to find you,’ Ryan said. ‘Maybe that’s what the Tenctrama go in for.’
‘And why the Doctor being here has freaked them out,’ Yaz added.
‘Guess it’s like what you told us about that high-flying vulture back in the TARDIS. You know, creatures adapting weirdly to their environments.’
‘But sometimes they need a little help. Especially when their own genetic make-up has been so corrupted by the weapons used in their wars. Aha! Voila!’ She scooped up a handful of small metallic tubes from the bottom of a casket. ‘Translation units.’
‘For translating what?,’ said Ryan. ‘Languages?’
‘The language of DNA, transcribed in Tenctrama ink.’ The Doctor produced the manipulator from her pocket, and slotted one of the tubes inside. ‘They didn’t only use this stuff to create Strava and GM crops. By bonding with human DNA they could approximate your form, walk among you, put their plans in motion.’
‘Why are there so many of those … “units”?’ asked Liss.
‘The wars that destroyed the Tenctrama’s old civilisation made that “fifth humour” we talked about incredibly destructive. It must have taken a lot of tries to stabilise Tenctrama essence in living matter.’ She nodded to the mummified husk in the corner. ‘Spawned so many mutations.’
Ryan could hardly take it all in. ‘The stuff they’ve had to do to survive …’
‘Survival’s all that matters. Nature’s prerogative, even when it’s against all nature.’ The Doctor sighed. ‘You know, there’s a parasite that lives in certain ants, and it mutates their abdomens to resemble red berries. Birds like berries, so they’re tricked into eating the ants. Then they spread the parasite through their droppings. More ants gather the droppings to feed to their young, and they unwittingly pass on the infection.’
Liss looked sick. ‘You’re saying that human beings are the berry-ants?’
‘Oh, no. Not them alone.’ The Doctor looked grave. ‘I’m afraid that Inkri and her friends have made nice bright berries out of your entire animal kingdom.’
‘Question is,’ said Ryan, ‘how are we going to stop them?’
A two-edged voice sounded from the darkness behind them. ‘You cannot.’
Ryan spun round. A Tenctrama was levitating through the air towards the Doctor, hair and sackcloth rags trailing behind her, talons outstretched.
Chapter 29
Ryan tried to run forward, to pull the Doctor away, but he found he could barely move; Yaz was the same, while Liss was completely frozen, perhaps because she’d lived her whole life with the Tenctrama’s influence in the background.
The Doctor tried to run to one corner of the Hall but the crone overtook her in a heartbeat, fingers hooking towards her throat.
Then there was a sharp, spiteful zap of sound and a red light struck the Tenctrama. With a shriek of rage she exploded into glittering light.
Graham and Vitus were standing in the doorway. Graham was in Roman clothes, holding a ray gun. He looked as shocked as anyone that the Tenctrama had been blasted away. ‘I … I didn’t mean to kill her.’
‘You didn’t, Graham!’ The Doctor ran to him. ‘You only sent her packing. Good timing. Nice outfit!’
‘The gang’s back together!’ Ryan said, his grin as wide as Yaz’s.
‘And you must be Vitus,’ the Doctor went on, gripping his hand. ‘Like the dance! Or you would be if you were a saint, anyway. Are you a saint?’
‘Trust me, he’s not,’ Liss put in. ‘How did that Tenctrama find us? Was it my horse roped up outside – did Reduxa give us away?’
‘Inkri and her sisters must be monitoring events above ground,’ the Doctor said. ‘Perhaps they’ve been tracking Graham.’
Graham looked crestfallen. ‘You think I led them straight to you?’
‘They’d have found me in the end whatever you did. Anyway! Thanks for not assassinating me, Vitus, I appreciate it.’
Vitus stared. ‘You look nothing like your votive offering.’
‘So I gather. Did you get through to Aetius?’
‘He actually got through to me,’ Vitus said, ‘I think. My talk-box glowed, but I could hear nothing but the sounds of war.’
‘Probably butt-phoned you,’ Ryan said.
‘He what?’
‘Called you by mistake,’ Yaz said, replacing the Doctor’s hand with her own. ‘Hi there,’ she said to Vitus with the briefest of glances at Ryan. ‘My friends call me Yaz.’
Liss ran up to Vitus and embraced him, nudging Yaz aside. ‘About time you got here, cousin!’ She kissed Graham on the cheek. ‘And that, my friend, was a mighty entrance.’
‘Guess they weren’t expecting ray guns from Romans.’ Graham looked chuffed. ‘Or Roman impersonators.’
‘I don’t think they’ll be caught off guard again,’ said the Doctor. ‘And now they know where we are, and all of us together, they’ll be back. I need time to think of a way to stop them, and I don’t think th
ey’re going to let me have it.’ She sonicked the wall, and the glowing plan appeared again on the old stone; Vitus stepped back in surprise, bumping his head on the column behind him, while Graham just watched with interest, business as usual. ‘If this was a lair the Tenctrama used when they were at their weakest, chances are they’d have installed some sort of intruder early warning system …’
Vitus turned to Liss. ‘If this was what?’
‘Later,’ she told him, fascinated. ‘But basically this entire place belongs in the Legion of Smoke’s files.’
A sphere of light formed in front of the Doctor, showing a distorted view of the battlefield as if from a drone overhead.
‘Security cameras?’ Ryan ventured.
‘Bird’s eye view. Probably literally.’ The Doctor flicked through different views of the situation outside. ‘Think I’ve hacked into the Tenctrama surveillance feed.’ She clicked and dragged with the sonic to arrange the vistas around the Hall. ‘Pick a monitor, any monitor. Actually, maybe pick a few monitors each. Monitor the monitors. Choose someone to be monitor monitor and warn me if any monitor has monitored—’
‘On it, Doc,’ said Graham.
‘With these we can keep watch on the entrance and the exits,’ Vitus marvelled, ‘and trespassers won’t know they’ve been seen.’
Yaz smiled. ‘Just bear in mind that we’re kind of the trespassers.’
Ryan turned to Liss. ‘You got any more alien weapons down here? Might come in handy.’
‘There’s that Arcturan grenade for a start,’ Liss reminded him.
‘No, no, no!’ The Doctor shook her head. ‘That could blow this whole place wide open!’
‘Well, Vitus?’ Ryan tried the jock instead. ‘Besides that blaster, seen anything else that might go boom or zap?’