Deceit

by Peter Darvill-Evans

  The automatic systems cut in. The floor moved, and the four evacuees found themselves sliding through a second doorway, which closed behind them.’

  They were in a cylindrical space with eight couches.

  There were no windows.

  ‘Lie down and fasten the safety straps,’ said a mechanical voice. ‘Emergency lift-off with maximum thrust in ten seconds.’

  Johannsen was the first to move. He climbed on to one of the couches. ‘Thanks, Daak,’ he said. ‘Come on, get strapped in. This is just the same as drill, but it’s for real.’

  ‘Five seconds,’ the voice said. Ace, Daak and Defries threw themselves into position.

  There was a loud explosion, and Ace felt herself being thrown upwards while her stomach plummeted downwards. This was the part of emergency evacuation that wasn’t in the drill.

  Later, she felt able to speak again.

  ‘Everyone OK?’

  There were three sets of grunts and groans.

  ‘Looks like we made it,’ Johannsen said.

  ‘What about the others?’ Ace said. She hadn’t had enough time with this division of auxiliaries to make any strong friendships, but some of them had been good fun. And she’d like Toka.

  ‘Not a chance,’ Daak growled. ‘The ship was coming apart as the escape hatch closed.’

  ‘The transmats?’ Ace said, but she knew that there would have been no time for even an emergency transmission.

  Defries was still white-faced, and seemed to be making an effort to control her words. ‘Does anyone have any idea what that thing was?’

  Ace could almost have smiled. ‘Not a lot of shape-changing giant squids in space,’ she said. ‘You’re not going to believe it, but that thing was an illusion. Induced, across the entire ship, and from a distance. Plus a complex, pattern of energy fields. That’s what ripped the ship apart.’

  Defries laughed, harshly and too loudly. ‘Telepathy and force fields!’ she said. ‘Ace, you’ve been vidding too much science fiction.’

  Ace started to protest, but Johannsen cut in. ‘It’s not so far-fetched,’ he said. ‘I’ve done a few weather station postings. Used to be a troublemaker, see. Weather control – that’s some kind of force field technology, I guess. And who made every single one of those intelligent systems? Spinward Corporation, that’s who.’

  ‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’ Defries blazed. Ace guessed she was back to normal ‘I’ve failed, dammit. The mission’s over.’

  ‘You’re alive,’ Ace pointed out.

  ‘And we’re not finished yet,’ Johannsen said. ‘These I things are programmed to put down on the nearest planet. That’s Arcadia.’

  Daak howled a wordless cheer. ‘We get a chance to die fighting after all!’

  Part Four

  LANDFALL

  Lacuna danced. She skipped in circles round the silent chamber, her great head bobbing like a bird’s. Britta felt too drained to move, but she shared Lacuna’s joy: she could hardly do otherwise, as fountains of jubilation were spilling into her mind, the overflowing bursts of mental energy broadcast by Pool.

  She sensed other emotions, too: satisfaction, relief, anticlimax, and sorrow at the waste of so many healthy brains.

  But above all triumph, and a revelling in the exercise of might.

  Britta was still at her post, standing in the semicircle of two-D screens. Lacuna came to a stop behind her, and pulled her gently into an embrace that for once was nothing but tender. Lacuna’s eyes were shining.

  ‘Our enemies are crushed, pretty one,’ she said. ‘You’re safe now. Pool, is safe. The project will be accomplished as planned.’

  ‘What happened?’ Britta asked; she already knew, but the sudden calm after battle, the jumbled thoughts filling her head, and the sensation of Lacuna’s strong arms around her combined to create a magical atmosphere that she wanted to prolong.

  ‘They were doomed from the moment they entered the Net,’ Lacuna said. ‘I distracted them by launching our fighters. Pool generated a structure behind their ship. The calculations had been completed and stored many months ago. Fingers of energy, disguised – a felicitous whim – as strands of your golden hair. Pool closed the fingers into a fist. The ship was crushed.’

  ‘What a horrible way to die.’

  ‘The ones we want still live.’ Lacuna closed her eyes, and Britta felt her sudden absence. The eyes opened, and Lacuna had returned. ‘The two indecipherable intelligences are on the planet, and, in our grasp. There are two other minds that contain echoes of the unknown intelligences. Both are women. Pool wants them too. One of them is in the only escape pod that ejected from the starship. The pod will be allowed to land. The other is on the planet. Androids have been sent to locate her. We should be able to see her on one of your screens, my pretty.’

  It was like drowning in candyfloss. Bernice could see, as if through a shimmering mist, the arcade of the terrace. She could see the three robed figures, watching impassively as she tried to force her hands through the gold-flecked cloud that surrounded her. She fought the futile urge to draw breath. Her lungs were empty; hoops of steel seemed to be contracting around her chest. Her hands encountered no resistance, but found no way through the fog.

  She felt Elaine fall. She looked down. The girl’s eyes were wide with fear. Her face was turning blue. A film of golden strands covered her mouth and nostrils.

  Bernice sobbed, gasped for non-existent air, and felt the golden stuff invade her mouth. She panicked, clawed the mist. Her chest was about to burst; dark shadows closed in around her. She felt her legs give way, her body collapsing to the floor. She thought: this is my last thought.

  The golden mist disappeared.

  Bernice sucked in air with a rasping gasp that hurt her throat. She could see the timbers under the terrace roof. She could feel her heart banging like an old engine. She was alive.

  She rolled over and grabbed Elaine. She tore the glittering strands from the girl’s face, slapped her cheeks, tilted her head, pinched her nose, exhaled into her mouth, pummelled her chest.

  Elaine jerked and coughed, inhaled with a ragged sigh, and began to breathe.

  Bernice rolled on to her back and closed her eyes. She felt herself being picked up and carried, but she hadn’t the strength to struggle.

  In her short experience of travelling with the Doctor, she had found that being saved from certain death entailed the likelihood of suffering a fate that was even worse. But this time she didn’t struggle. She didn’t care where she was being taken. She concentrated on enjoying the sensation of air entering and leaving her lungs.

  The pod started shuddering. Ace felt that her eyes were going to vibrate out of their sockets. And it was getting hot. The combat suit evaporated the perspiration that she felt springing out of her pores, but her face was blazing, as if she was staring into a furnace. In fact, she was staring at the ceiling of the escape pod.

  I’d feel about one hundred per cent less claustrophobic without these safety straps, she thought. On the other hand, I’d be vibrated off the couch and all over the cabin.

  She heard Johannsen’s voice: ‘Atmosphere. Good.’

  ‘If the heat shields can take it,’ Defries said.

  Daak was pounding his couch with his fists. ‘Trussed up tight as a smack-smuggler’s arse!’ he muttered. ‘This is no way to land a ship. I’m going to find me some controls to fly this thing.’ Ace heard clicks as buckles were unfastened.

  ‘Daak! Stay where you are!’ The pod was now shuddering so violently that Defries’s voice was distorted. ‘That’s an order, Daak!’

  The Dalek Killer winked at Ace as he staggered past her couch and towards the front of the little craft.

  ‘I’m a DK, lady,’ he said to Defries, grunting the words as he struggled to keep his footing on the juddering floor. ‘I’m as good as dead already. But I don’t want to die like an ice cube in a cocktail shaker.’

  Ace unfastened her safety harness and clutched the sides o
f her shaking couch as she pulled herself into a sitting position. She saw that Defries and Johannsen were attempting the same manoeuvre. Daak was at the narrow front of the cabin. The muscles of his legs and arms bulged alarmingly and shone with sweat as he braced himself against the bulkheads to study the small control panel.

  ‘Programmed,’ Johannsen said. ‘Better leave it.’

  ‘You heard, Daak,’ Defries said. Daak’s hand swerved unsteadily towards the console. ‘Don’t touch it. You may not value your own life –’ she paused, then said: ‘But do you want to kill Ace?’

  ‘What?’ Ace was outraged, but the worsening vibration made it almost impossible to speak coherently. ‘Don’t trouble yourself on my account, mate.’

  But Daak had hesitated, and then pulled back his hand. He started to turn, with difficulty, to look back at Ace. The vibration stopped.

  ‘Thank the stars,’ Defries breathed. But even as she was speaking, Daak, in mid-turn and braced against the constant shuddering of the ship, lost his balance in the sudden calm and started to topple backwards.

  Ace, Defries and Johannsen could only watch as, almost in slow motion; Daak thrust out a fist to support his weight – and pushed down half the switches on the control panel.

  Nothing happened. The vibration didn’t resume. The pod continued to fly straight and true. Daak shrugged, grinned, and started back towards the couches. Imperceptibly at first, the floor of the cabin began to tilt away from the horizontal. The right side dipped; the left side rose. By the time Daak managed to haul himself on to his couch, the floor was angled at forty-five degrees, and tilting faster.

  ‘Strap yourselves in,’ Defries said, ‘and hold on tight. We’re in for a crash-landing.’

  As it sped groundwards through the Arcadian skies, the escape pod began to roll.

  A large covered wagon was waiting in the forecourt of the Delahaye villa. Rainwater steamed off the backs of the two enormous horses in the shafts and glistened on the cobblestones. The only sounds were the whistling of the rising wind and the viscous breathing of the Counsellors.

  Bernice was pushed between the canvas flaps at the back of the wagon. The interior was dark and gloomy. She didn’t try to stand. The flaps parted again and Elaine was pushed inside. Bernice murmured, and the girl crawled to nestle alongside her.

  The floor was cold: metal, not wood. There was still no sound. No clopping of hooves, and no sensation of movement. Bernice continued absently to stroke Elaine’s forehead, but her eyes were becoming accustomed to the gloom, and she was puzzled.

  I don’t know much about horse-drawn transport, she thought, but I never read anywhere that horses were difficult to start. And this doesn’t look like the inside of a covered wagon: this looks like the inside of a metal box.

  It was a cube, less than three metres on each side. The floor and ceiling were flat, and the walls were corrugated, except on the side that consisted of the canvas covering of the back of the wagon. Bernice became aware of a humming, rising in pitch and volume, that seemed to come from all around. She stood up.

  Elaine made a wordless cry of distress.

  ‘It’s all right, angel,’ Bernice said, offering her hand and pulling the girl to her feet, ‘I just want to take a look at this thing we’re in. Not the workmanship of the Beaufort stonemason or metalsmith, I’d say.’

  She squinted at the emblems imprinted on a panel in the ceiling.

  ‘In fact, it says here that this was made in the Phobos factories of the HKI Industries Corporation. And see this sign? That’s the logo of the Spinward Corporation. It’s a strange thing to say in an empty tin box, but I suddenly feel almost at home.’

  ‘Home?’ Elaine said.

  Bernice hugged her. ‘You’re still talking! I thought perhaps... But you’re a brave girl, Elaine. I’ve been travelling in – no, I can’t explain this. But I didn’t know where or when I was. And now I’ve got some idea. Spinward and HKI were big corporations where and when I come from. So, give or take a couple of centuries and a few hundred light years, I’m home. Don’t worry: it confuses me too.’

  Elaine smiled. ‘That’s good, Benny. But what’s going to happen?’

  The humming had reached a painful level of audibility. A chequerboard of ceiling panels was beginning to glow with a greenish light.

  ‘The bad news,’ Bernice said, ‘is that HKI specialize in the manufacture of instant transit systems. We’re in a transmat booth, and we’re about to go on an instant journey.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘I never heard of a transmat with a range of more than a few thousand kilometres so I’d say we’re probably going somewhere else on this planet.’

  ‘We’re going to Landfall,’ Elaine said gloomily. ‘Gerald said so.’ She looked at the canvas flaps. ‘We could jump out.’

  The green iridescence flooded the cubicle. ‘It’s too late,’ Bernice said. ‘We’re on our way. Keep still and concentrate on holding your molecules together.’

  ‘Will that help?’

  ‘No, but it’ll take your mind off the nausea and dizziness.’

  The light began to pulse, faster and faster, and the metal walls shimmered out of existence.

  The escape pod was rotating so rapidly that its four occupants were pinned against their couches.

  People do this kind of thing for fun at fairgrounds, Ace thought. It’s getting difficult to breathe. My face feels like it’s flat. If we’re lucky, the pressure’ll kill us before we crash. Or would it be better the other way round?

  She gulped air. It felt so good she laughed. And she realized she could move again, slightly. The craft’s spin was slowing.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ Daak grunted.

  ‘Automatic system correction?’ Defries suggested.

  ‘Not possible,’ Johannsen said. ‘Daak overrode the automatics.’

  The pod was stable again. Ace sensed that its forward speed had slowed too, and that its course was veering rightwards.

  ‘Someone’s bringing us down gently,’ she said. ‘Maybe we’ll have a soft landing after all.’

  The bottom of the escape pod hit something. The noise and the shock were like an explosion.

  Half conscious, Ace felt a series of lesser shocks and bangs, and the anguished sound of tearing metal. The cabin filled with dust, smoke, and the smell of burning circuitry. Daak was shouting curses.

  With a drawn-out screech, the pod vibrated to a standstill, rocked gently from side to side, and then rolled over.

  Hanging helplessly in the safety straps, Ace looked down to see the cabin ceiling buckling and tearing. She was about to be impaled on jagged strips of metal.

  Then the pod rolled again, and came to rest.

  Ace found herself looking up at the sky. Billowing black clouds were racing above her. Raindrops stung her face.

  There were long moments of silence.

  ‘Everyone OK?’ Defries said at last, shakily.

  There were three grunts in reply.

  ‘Then let’s get out before this thing blows. We’ve got an emergency exit where we used to have a roof. Johannsen, Daak, you’re tallest. Try to rig up a line through there and down the side of the pod. Ace, find the emergency rations and the patch-up kit. I’ll get the weaponry.’

  The pod didn’t explode. Ace thought that was another suspiciously lucky break, but she had no complaints. Getting on to the remains of the top of the pod had been relatively straightforward, although Daak had tried to insist on being the last one out and she’d had to threaten him with troopers’ oaths and a blaster to convince him that gallantry was inappropriate.

  Getting down was another matter.

  The pod had come to rest half-way down the side of a splintered ridge of rock. It was tilted to one side and nose down. The rear part of the hull, an impassable tangle of twisted metal, was embedded among outcropping boulders; the front of the craft was largely undamaged but was suspended over the steep slope of the ridge.

  Defries, Johannsen,
Ace and Daak had managed to climb on to the top of the pod’s nose.

  Ace stared morosely down at the rocks. ‘Another unlikely stroke of luck,’ she said. ‘We’re stuck in the only crevice along this whole mountainside. Another metre either way, and we’d have carried on rolling all the way down.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Defries said. ‘If the wind keeps rising the pod’ll be blown down there. And don’t stand so close to the edge.’

  Ace stepped back, and almost fell over as the pod shuddered. Daak had jumped back into the cabin.

  ‘Slughead!’ she yelled. ‘You trying to get me killed? Fairy footsteps from now on, OK?’

  ‘Whatever you say, girlie. You want to give me a hand with this?’ Daak was using his chainsword to slice safety straps from their moorings. ‘Going to make us a rope.’

  ‘Looks like you’re handling it,’ Ace called down to him. ‘And being in a confined space with you and a chainsword isn’t my idea of how to relieve stress.’

  She joined Defries and Johannsen, who were vainly scanning, the horizon for signs of life. Low clouds and squalls of driving rain concealed all but the local terrain, which consisted of rocky crags and gulleys. The only vegetation was scrubby trees and patches of coarse grass. Ace recognized some of the plants as similar to Earth species; the others, the weird-looking ones she decided were native to the planet.

  Johannsen spoke at last. ‘Arcadia!’ he said, and barked a laugh.

  ‘Bit of a misnomer, isn’t it?’ Defries said.

  ‘It won’t all be like this,’ Ace said confidently. ‘I always manage to land in the least desirable areas. If the whole planet was one enormous Regent’s Park, I’d come down in the zoo car park.’

  Daak pulled himself through the crater in the top of the hull. A knotted skein of nylon straps was looped round his chest. He tied one end to the stub of a broken aerial housing.

  ‘Well done, DK,’ Defries said. ‘I thought you were only interested in certain-death scenarios and fighting Daleks – which come to the same thing.’