by Stephen Cole
We’re not Elite, thought Shade. We’re not the best.
We’ve just survived.
‘How did I ever get here,’ he whispered to himself, shutting his eyes as he tried to shake the lingering hold of the drug. He wanted to enjoy the dark for a couple of seconds.
But Shel had overheard him. He was consulting his top-secret little pad. ‘After turning your back on escort assignment, Adam Shade, you fast-tracked through the ranks in just three years. As an Earthborn, the fact that you were willing to serve at all, let alone out here on the frontier, guaranteed you favourable treatment.’ Shel smiled, got up and started showing the pad to every trooper in turn. Interested eyes scanned the text, lips were pursed, heads were shaken. ‘You accepted this without question at first – until the looks your squad were giving you finally began hurting more than the hits you were taking off the Kay-Dees.’
Shade listened in horror. He wanted to yell at Shel to stop but his throat was too dry, too tight, the words piled up there.
Denni read some more of his file. Her face filled with disgust.
‘So you went all-out to prove you had what it took. You risked everything to make good.’
Creben threw his head back and laughed when the pad was waved under his nose.
Shade stared at the rest of the squad in panic.
‘The Schirr assault on New Jersey seemed the perfect opportunity –’
‘That’s enough,’ Shade shouted.
Everyone turned and stared at him. Except Shel, who was focused entirely on inputting some data to his palmscreen, still strapped into his couch like the rest.
‘What’s enough, Shadow?’ asked Denni, a trace of annoyance in her dark eyes.
Shade shook his head, screwed up his eyes, willed himself not to fall asleep and start dreaming again. ‘Nothing. Sorry.’
‘Shadow’s losing it.’ Joiks wore a sly smile beneath his crooked nose. ‘Hey, stay with us, buddy. We need you.’
‘Yeah, any holes in the road, Denni’ll let you jump and see how deep they get,’ laughed Lindey.
Shade forced a smile, turned away, tried to focus on what was real. He put his hand to his face, felt the hard lumps under the skin that still didn’t seem right or normal, even two years on. He listened to the mocking banter of the rest of the unit. Wondered what thoughts went through their minds at the words ‘active service’.
III
Shel fed the two Kill-Droids their sealed orders and activated their release program from the bridge. The only way Haunt knew that the creatures had vanished into the depths of the asteroid was when the squad viewed the pulverised packaging left behind.
An hour later, Haunt sent her personnel off ship with a blast of orders and threats. Not even she was entirely sure which were which.
They scrambled down the flexible ladders that stretched down from the bright ship into the dark, wet pit of the planetoid’s entry zone, their websets recording motion and emotion alike. Haunt led the commandos through the darkness until they came to a large circular chamber. Joiks immediately christened it the bullring. Five further tunnels had been drilled into the rock, stretching away into the dark.
At Haunt’s command, the ten quickly split into groups of two. Haunt chose Shel to partner her, and directed each pair to take a different tunnel. The groups sprinted into the pitch-blackness, weighed down with torches and guns.
Haunt checked her scanner. Multiple lights edged through its grids; the peak-level stats of her unit glowing brightly on a secret wavelength as they fanned out through the tunnels.
Somewhere in the dark, things were hiding that wanted them dead.
Haunt beckoned Shel to follow her and set off down the last remaining passageway.
‘Do you reckon Haunt’s OK?’ Denni asked Joiks as they picked their way through the rubble-strewn tunnel.
Joiks came to a sudden halt. ‘You’re worried about her?’ he asked in disbelief, and tapped the metal band round his head. ‘You telling me this for her benefit, back at base debrief? Getting yourself some love from above…?’
Denni pulled off her webset.
Joiks stared at her in amazement. ‘What’s with you? Removing your webset –’
‘Brain scramble,’ Denni replied. She studied the workings in the band. ‘My stats sometimes throw out the frequency, give me migraine.’
Joiks remembered hearing that had happened to Denni once before on an exercise. A freak occurrence Haunt had said. What were the chances of it happening again, and on a live ammo shoot? The webset was off now. Denni could tell a dozen barefaced lies, and who’d know?
She turned to him, cold and beautiful by torchlight. ‘Give me yours. I need to fix the frequency.’
‘Intermission,’ Joiks announced, and flicked the band over to her. ‘School’s out.’ He rubbed his hands through his close-cropped hair. He looked at her slyly. ‘So – what’s this really about? You don’t want the world to know you’ve always loved me? Everyone knows that, Den!’
Denni grimaced. ‘Like I say, it’s Haunt. Something’s not right. What she did to Shade –’
‘Feelin’ sorry for your Earthborn ex? Awww.’
‘It was a little extreme, wouldn’t you say? And the way she blew up at you just for mentioning Morphiea.’
‘It’s a real-ammo exercise,’ Joiks said. ‘Aren’t you a little on edge?’
‘Of course I am. But should our CO be?’ Denni shook her head, answering her own dumb question. ‘We’re so close to Morphiean space… Too close. I think it’s too much for her.’
‘So she hates Morphieans. Hates their Spook guts. Seems a pretty good qualification for fighting them to me.’
‘Duh? They stopped her fighting them! After what she did on New Jersey –’
Joiks scoffed. ‘They had it coming.’
‘And the human casualties.’
‘We’re at war. There gotta be casualties.’
‘Most of the ones she fried were repatriated. On our side.’
‘Still Schirr, still scum. Back in the Incendiaries we –’
‘Enlightened, Joiks.’ She kept her cool as usual. ‘All I’m saying is, we have to follow her orders here. But what if they turn out to be bad orders, Joiks? After what she’s been through –’
‘What is this, psychology?’ Joiks wasn’t sure if he was amused or disgusted. ‘She’s too involved in all this, is that what you’re saying?’ He spat on the floor. ‘She’s a good soldier, Denni.’
‘She was a great soldier.’ Denni bunched her slim fists. ‘All I’m saying is that her judgement may be shot because of her personal involvement with all this stuff.’
‘But you’re saying it just in private to me, not on the record? Trying to turn us against her one by one, is that it? Gee, that’s brave.’
‘Jeez, Joiks, she’s our CO.’ Denni sighed. ‘I’m not here just for the ride, I’m going career with the military. I want to live long enough to go career –’
He took a step closer. Took a chance and put his hands on her shoulders. She gave him a small smile. There was a tiny nervous flicker in her eyes.
‘Hey, Den. You got the jitters? Is that what we’re really talking about here?’
‘No,’ she said softly.
‘Thought Stellar Infantry were tough bitches?’ Joiks went on quietly, caressing her upper arms. ‘You know, you got a problem with Haunt, you should’ve said before we got here.’
‘How was I to know we’d wind up training here?’ Denni took a step towards Joiks. ‘Listen. I’m going to talk to the others. If enough of us lodge a complaint against her… right now… Cellmek would listen to us, I know it.’
So. She wanted something from him. Figured.
‘You want out of this mission,’ Joiks whispered softly. ‘Don’t you.’
‘I want it led by someone detached. For all our sakes.’ She moved closer to him.
He laughed uneasily.
She made eye contact again. Lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘See… you don�
�t know what we’re going up against here.’
‘And you do?’
Denni nodded. ‘I reckon so. Bad, bad stuff, soldier.’
Joiks looked at her just a few moments more. Something in her voice sent a chill through him. He let go of her arms and took his webset, held it just over his head.
‘If you’re done checking your frequency, let’s forget about this, OK? Concentrate on staying alive down here.’ He paused, chanced a smile. ‘And don’t worry. I can keep a secret.’
Denni nodded. ‘I’m glad. Because so can I.’
He watched her place the webset back over her dreadlocks and followed her into the darkness.
IV
Marshal Nadina Haunt moved quickly and freely, feeling a part of herself coming alive as she angled her gun into every corner of the thick shadows thrown up by her torch beam. But after a few minutes, the tunnel was becoming lighter, she was sure of it.
She checked with Shel, who didn’t answer until he’d taken an environment scan. Exactly by the book as usual.
He nodded at last. ‘Luminescence has increased by over five per cent.’
‘Source?’
‘Not known, Marshal.’
Something ahead of them, high up above them, glistened silver in Haunt’s torchbeam. She raised her gun.
‘What is it, Shel?’
Shel marched over to the side of the tunnel. His own light showed a damp, glistening morass of flat, slab-like leaves edging down the walls from the stone ceilings.
‘Some kind of climbing plant is growing here, Marshal,’ he reported. ‘The leaves have some slight luminous property.’
‘Nice to know we’re not being left entirely in the dark.’
She moved off down the dank corridor in the rock.
She only stopped when she and Shel came up against a set of ornately carved doors that appeared to have been made from gold.
They swung open soundlessly as if awaiting Haunt’s touch. The space beyond was darker, but just as silent.
Shel was looking at her, uneasily. Questioningly.
Haunt nodded. ‘We go in.’
Gripping their guns, Marshal Haunt and her adjutant moved cautiously through the doorway.
V
‘So where are we, Doctor?’ asked Ben as the demented grinding and wailing of the TARDIS landing motors gradually died away.
‘I know where we are,’ the Doctor announced, ‘but I’m afraid I cannot pinpoint our location within that district.’ He was still playing with his switches, but vaguely, distractedly now. The way Ben’s dad used to try his luck fixing the family motor; when all else failed, fiddling with bits of engine he didn’t understand, just in case one of them magically started the car.
Polly sighed. ‘Doctor, do you mean we might be on Earth, say, but you wouldn’t know if we were in London or Timbuktu?’
‘Very neatly put, Polly, yes.’ The Doctor bestowed a warm smile on her. ‘Except, I’m afraid, we’re definitely in a galaxy very distant from the Earth’s. Very distant indeed.’
‘That narrows it down then,’ Ben remarked.
The Doctor didn’t find the comment facetious. ‘Quite so, my boy, quite so. And we have landed inside a structure of some kind, of that I am sure. The temperature is very cold… and there’s no air, either. A vacuum.’ He looked up, deep in thought, tapping his chin. ‘An asteroid perhaps, too small to retain an atmosphere?’
Polly turned up her long straight nose. ‘Sounds like fun.’
‘Well, it will be a good opportunity to field test the spacesuits. I’ve had them in storage for some time.’
Ben frowned. ‘Spacesuits?’ He couldn’t imagine the Doctor in full Yuri Gagarin gear.
‘Oh yes, the TARDIS is very well equipped, you know.’ He chuckled and turned to Polly. ‘And they come in a range of colours, my dear.’
Polly clapped her hands. ‘Fab!’
‘But we don’t know if it’s even safe out there,’ Ben protested.
‘Don’t fuss, my boy,’ said the Doctor. ‘I must take some readings, some measurements for the log… it shouldn’t take us very long…’
*
VI
Haunt turned to Shel. ‘Is all this part of the simulation?’
Shel stared blankly back at her.
‘You programmed the tactical computers, fed through the droids’ orders. You must know something about the testing ground.’
‘The location was selected entirely by Pentagon Central,’ Shel stated. ‘Were I to be given any advance knowledge of the simulation, it would be rendered less effective. I know as much as you do.’ He paused. ‘However, it seems to me that certain aspects of the architectural style would suggest a Schirr influence.’
Haunt nodded. ‘Go on.’
Shel shrugged. ‘Ruins found and reconstructed after the destruction of the northern continents share several of the features we have observed here.’
The golden doors led onto a corridor, and were flanked by a set of large bronze double doors; neither of which they had been able to open. The corridor came to a kind of hall hollowed from the slates and silts of the asteroid’s mantle, palatial both in size and decoration, like some kind of ancient tomb for long-dead kings. The walls were jagged, gleaming damp and black in the glare of torchlight. Huge stone statues of abstract figures, vaguely humanoid, loomed out at them from the shadows. The fat, thick leaves of the faintly glowing plant covered the ceilings. From out of the seaweed-like morass, tapestries of cut glass hung down from the high-vaulted ceilings. They caught the torch beams and fooled with the bright light, passing it from shard to shard.
‘It would make sense to incorporate Schirr architecture in the testing ground’s design,’ Shel commented. ‘DeCaster and Pallemar’s dissenters are the only significant threat to Earth’s Empire besides the Morphiean Quadrant. It makes the battleground more relevant.’ He paused. ‘If we knew anything of Morphiean constructs, Pentagon Central would doubtless have drawn inspiration from them…’
Haunt was no longer listening to Shel. Instead she checked for team vitals on her scanner.
And swore.
The grid, instead of showing four neat pinprick pairs glowing close to those of herself and Shel, was an insane constellation of lights.
She waved it in Shel’s face. ‘Must be a fault. Try your own.’
Shel scrolled through different screens until the same lunatic pattern of lights appeared. He met Haunt’s gaze steadily. ‘It would seem this entire place is alive.’
Even as Shel spoke, Haunt noticed a small swift movement by her feet, and froze. For a second she thought she’d imagined it, but then she saw the movement again, arcing past her eyes. A tiny bead of light hopped onto the back of Shel’s hand. She slapped her own hand down on the back of his. Then she peered at a pale smear on her palm.
‘Some kind of insect,’ she remarked. Its body was a translucent sack, half emptied on her skin. ‘It hopped like a flea.’
Shel peered at the insect. ‘It’s like nothing I’ve seen,’ he whispered. ‘Must live on the plants. Though how any life could survive here…’
‘We’re here, aren’t we?’ Haunt retorted. ‘It’s just a part of the place. Part of the simulation.’ Another grain of light hopped past, fleeting in the corner of her vision. ‘A distraction. Here to keep us on edge.’
Shel nodded uncertainly. ‘It has to be. In any case, our instruments are picking up their life-signs.’
‘And swamping our own team’s stats. The scanners are useless down here. We can’t track each other.’
Shel nodded. ‘Hopefully, neither can anything else.’
Haunt raised the comms bracelet to her lips. ‘Creben.’
‘Unit One responding, Marshal.’ The voice snapped back immediately, cutting tinnily through the dank air. ‘Our scanners are all messed up. Thousands of life-signs.’
‘Bugs,’ Haunt whispered. ‘This place is crawling with insects.’
‘Marshal. The walls are thick with them.’ Li
ndey’s voice sounded shriller than normal. ‘There’s plant life of some kind on –’
‘I know. Check up on everyone else, see if it’s the same story. Report back.’
‘Marshal.’ It was Creben’s voice that signed off.
Haunt lowered the bracelet, and she and Shel waited in silence. More and more of the insects hopped and jumped around their feet, on their combat suits, through the air around them. She felt her wrist-comm vibrate.
‘Well, Creben?’
‘Same story in each direction. Except for Unit Three. They’ve got some weed, but no fleas.’
Shel frowned.
Haunt spoke back to the bracelet. ‘Denni.’
‘Unit Three responding.’ Denni’s voice sounded flat and calm.
‘Tell me what you see.’
‘It’s completely dark here now,’ Denni said. ‘Marshal, our scanner’s useless.’
Haunt looked up at Shel. ‘The websets won’t function in total darkness, will they?’
‘Not well,’ he replied. ‘It’s optic stimulation that triggers the record.’
Haunt nodded. ‘All right, Denni. Report back if the situation changes.’
‘Marshal.’
Haunt indicated to Shel they should move on. More of the dark slate had been piled up into craggy pillars at regular intervals; they looked as if they had grown from the stone. Two of them, monstrously large and each topped with an angular crest, flanked a large circular doorway that seemed to lead from this vast chamber to another.
One of the insects hopped onto the back of Haunt’s hand. She brushed it off, crushed it as she did so.
She and Shel walked inside.
VII
More than the fat white insects that flicked around them, the shadows were getting to Lindey. Cast by the gently glowing leaves, dull and shifting over the darker rock, they played tricks on your eyes. Years in the Zero-Gs had left her accustomed to most battlegrounds in space, to fighting in the stark, unchanging light of stars and moons. This cramped gloom and her slow, careful steps made her feel heavy and uncomfortable, like she and Creben were trapped in an endless mire.
She checked her scanner for the hundredth time. She willed the flickering mass of lights on the scanner to vanish, to reveal ten healthy heartbeats huddled close together.