by Stephen Cole
Shel was frowning. ‘But Marshal –’
‘Oh, come on, Shel,’ she sneered. ‘This is a live ammo exercise, remember? DeCaster, dead? And here? It’s a trap. It has to be.’
The Doctor cleared his throat. ‘It may be a trap, yes, it may well be,’ he said airily. ‘But it is not one set by us.’
‘Is that a fact. Just who are you?’ the marshal demanded.
‘I am the Doctor.’
Ben stood to attention. ‘Able Seaman Ben Jackson, HMS Teazer. I mean… well, that’s my ship, see…’
He trailed off. The marshal’s face was darkening with every syllable.
‘As I mentioned earlier,’ the Doctor said quickly, ‘our party arrived here purely by chance, and one of our number –’
The woman glanced over at Shel, casually. ‘This is part of a trap. I’m going to kill them.’
‘You can’t!’ Ben protested. ‘What have we done to you?’
‘This is outrageous behaviour.’ The Doctor was clearly bristling.
The woman was unmoved by any of it.
Shel spoke gravely: ‘Marshal Haunt, that is in direct contravention of the Codes and Ethics of War.’
‘We’re on a training exercise,’ Haunt pointed out wearily.
‘That is an absurd distinction,’ the Doctor retorted. ‘Now if you’d only listen to us, Marshal… Haunt was it…?’
The name suited her, Ben decided. She was quite a big girl, around Polly’s height but stockier, and she could’ve been the jolly sort. Instead she had a troubled look about her, a pained expression in her eyes, like she’d taken some bad news in the past that had never got any better.
Shel spoke again, his voice dead calm, like they were discussing the price of tea or something. ‘Procedure is to take any civilians into safekeeping.’
‘Civilians? On this speck?’ Haunt looked unconvinced. Her space-age rifle still pointed their way.
‘We are travellers,’ the Doctor said. ‘You could call us refugees in an experimental craft.’ To Ben’s surprise he gestured to the TARDIS. ‘One that bends the dimensions, passing through solid matter.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Haunt simply.
But Shel was nodding. ‘In the Japanese Belt such technology is being developed. It is a possible explanation. But it’s also possible they’re part of the team that set this place up.’
Haunt looked uncertainly at Ben and the Doctor. ‘Well?’ she asked.
‘As you observe, we are helpless civilians trapped in this terrible place,’ said the Doctor mildly. ‘We cannot escape here, and we look to you for protection. So too does our friend Polly,’ he added hurriedly. ‘She can’t be far away but I am dreadfully worried about her. Dreadfully.’
Haunt’s face darkened. ‘There’s more of you wandering about here?’
‘Only her.’
Ben wondered what the Doctor was up to, telling these maniacs about Polly.
He spun round as a new voice rang out: ‘What the hell…?’
A black bloke strode through the five-sided doorway this time. A huge great geezer, he carried a slim rectangular pack on his back, a space-age kit bag.
‘Roba?’ Haunt rounded on him. ‘What’s going on, where’s Frog?’
‘Outside on guard.’ Roba was massive, but Ben could tell Haunt had the power to make him feel two inches tall. ‘Our tunnel led to some weird tomb-place. We went through the circles and found them silver doors.’
‘All right,’ Haunt snapped. ‘Shel, brief Roba on…’ She broke off. ‘On whatever the hell is happening.’
‘Yes, Marshal,’ said Shel, unfazed.
Ben held his breath as Haunt stalked closer.
Her eyes narrowed. Her finger was still curled round the trigger of her rifle. ‘So. Your ship was attacked? You strayed into the Spook Quadrant?’
‘I’m not familiar with your terminology for this area of space, though I’m sure you are right,’ said the Doctor with a tight smile.
‘You have a deathwish,’ she said.
‘If it is so dangerous, why are you training close by?’
‘It’s still Earth space.’ Haunt smiled tightly. ‘Our destiny is in the stars, the pioneers used to say.’
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, that’s a fine sentiment, yes. Ours too is in the stars, and really, Marshal, look at us.’ He tittered to himself. ‘An old man, a boy… and somewhere nearby, I hope, a young girl. Can we be much of a threat to you and your men, hmm? Can we?’
IV
Polly checked the rocky mouth to this latest passageway for one of her piles of stones, for some sign she’d been walking round in circles. She would’ve taken the news as a comfort, that this place wasn’t big enough to get truly lost in. But her hands met nothing except cold wet stone, and the tickle of the flea-things that jumped and skittered about in the gloom. They made Polly’s flesh crawl, as if they were swarming all over her, just as the glowing weed crowded over the rocky roof above, dimly lighting her way. She felt she could be under the sea.
But as she entered the new tunnel, she realised a new light was seeping into her view. Polly caught her breath. There was a window in the rock. She supposed it must be some kind of glass but it was smearless, free of all distortion. Through it she could see a night sky beautiful and brilliant with stars. They looked like diamonds, like she could stick out her hand and take one in her palm.
Not under the sea then. In space.
‘We’re definitely in a galaxy very distant from the Earth’s. Very distant indeed.’
Polly took a deep breath and turned away from the window, willed herself to stay calm. The TARDIS had brought her here. The TARDIS would take her away again. All she had to do was find it.
Instead, she found two people crossing her path stealthily along an adjoining tunnel: a black woman with the most amazing blonde dreadlocks, and a man following on behind her. Both were armed to the teeth.
Seeing the man in profile revealed a nose that had surely been broken a half-dozen times. As he shot a glance up ‘her’ tunnel, Polly thought she could see the faintest of cocky smiles on his face. She shivered, reminded of the type of bruiser that had hassled her so many times in bars and clubs all over London. So many close calls…
She pressed herself up against the wall, hoping the pair wouldn’t notice her in the shadowy mouth of the tunnel. Were they hunting for her? Polly wished now she hadn’t chosen to wear what was probably the only spacesuit in daffodil yellow in the universe.
The two figures walked past with only a cursory glance down the tunnel that hid Polly, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She was alone again. All alone. Except of course, for however many others there could be waiting for her down here.
Polly bit her lip. Once she was sure the couple were too far away to hear her, she crossed into their tunnel and crept down it in the opposite direction. Soon she came to a gaping hole in the rock to her right, a side-tunnel that twisted off into the darkness. She decided to take it. The roof was higher than in some of the others, and the abundance of weed made it lighter, less claustrophobic.
But as she moved cautiously through it, a slow, rhythmic sound ebbed into her ears. A hissing, throbbing, pulsating noise, weird and alien.
The walls seemed to shift and shimmer around her. A bright blue light seeped into the tunnel like water into a sewer, and with it a strange kind of noise, almost like a pressure in her ears. Polly felt giddy, nauseous. For a second she was acutely homesick, remembering late-night London spinning her its sights and sounds, reeling in drunkenness as she staggered with friends in search of a cab, night-life neon reflected in dark street puddles. Moving on to the next party, the logical next step of the night.
This was the sound of something starting.
Polly found herself staggering now, wobbling as if in towering heels towards the blue light.
V
Ben breathed a sigh of relief as Haunt stalked back over to join Roba and Shel by the body in the chair.
; ‘All right,’ she announced with bad grace. ‘Seems we’re landed with some refugees.’
‘Refugees…’ The black giant, Roba, considered, then nodded. ‘State of those ’suits they’re wearing, I’ll buy that.’
Ben glanced at the Doctor. Under any other circumstances, the look of outrage on his face would’ve been hilarious.
‘Seems the Spooks opened fire on them, here on the fringes,’ said Haunt.
Roba nodded. ‘Figures. “No human shall feel secure…” Just like they said. Stepping up the terror campaign.’
Shel looked over at the bodies hunched up on the dais. ‘While the ones they’re after are right here?’
‘They must be part of the simulation,’ Haunt said dismissively.
‘This one is branded too,’ said Shel quietly, crouching over the grisly alien corpse in the chair. He had raised the bloodstained robe from its shoulder and was indicating something in the flesh beneath. ‘Pentagon coding. It’s Pallemar all right, he’s been chipped. No one can forge these data codes.’
‘So this really is DeCaster’s Ten-strong? And all dead?’ Roba looked at Shel. ‘No way. You’re kidding me, right?’
Shel shook his head. As he showed Roba and Haunt whatever his handheld gadget was showing, Ben turned to the Doctor.
‘We have to find Polly and get out of here.’
‘Quite so, my boy,’ the Doctor said vaguely. He was looking intently at his surroundings as if taking them in properly for the first time.
‘Where do you think she went, Doctor? I mean, how can she just have disappeared?’
‘She didn’t,’ the Doctor informed him curtly. ‘There must be a concealed exit here somewhere. This chamber was sealed, airtight.’ He sighed. ‘In any case… as I said to Marshal Haunt, we require the assistance of our soldier friends if we are to find her. I very much doubt they will let us go looking by ourselves.’
Ben felt sick. ‘How come the TARDIS doors won’t open?’
‘I don’t know, my boy,’ the Doctor confessed. ‘That humming noise that started up when the doors opened… I believe it was some kind of generator, setting up the force field you see around these bodies.’
Ben felt foolish. ‘I thought that was glass or something.’
‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s a protective enclosure, triggered no doubt by the rush of air into the room. In the vacuum the bodies couldn’t decay. This mechanism was designed to react to anyone entering this room through that doorway.’
‘But why?’
The Doctor hushed him. He was listening again to the huddle of commandos.
Haunt was looking at the bodies again. ‘We’d better contact Cellmek at the Academy, tell him to let everyone go home early,’ she said dryly. ‘The Empire’s most wanted have saved us the bother of hunting them down. They’ve killed themselves and kindly put themselves on display for army inspection.’
‘What about them two.’ Roba scowled at the two strangers. Ben saw the Doctor nod politely as if greeting the vicar.
Haunt raised her comms bracelet to her mouth. ‘Frog.’
‘Marshal.’
‘Join us in here. Move.’ Haunt turned to Shel and Roba. ‘Frog can take them back to the ship. Meanwhile, we’ll warn the others to watch out for this girl, and anyone else out there.’
‘Seems this lump of rock is getting awful crowded,’ Roba rumbled. ‘Ain’t it meant to be just us and a couple of droids?’
‘And they’re still out there,’ Shel said quietly. ‘Programmed to kill. We can’t shut them off.’
Haunt swore. ‘Wrong… everything about this is wrong.’
VI
It didn’t take Polly long to find the source of the weird blue light. She came to a tottering halt before a lip of rock jutting out into a huge cavern, staring dreamily at an ethereal cyan sea rolling along both the floor and the ceiling far below.
‘Light waves,’ she murmured happily.
It was an incredible display. The intensity of the light was growing stronger as the ‘waves’ grew fiercer. Reaching and rebounding against the far walls of the cavern the light seemed to splash out into the air. The spray from the oceans above and below mingled in the middle and crackled with energy. They were forming shapes, numbers, weird mathematical equations. And although the amount of spray seemed to be growing greater, Polly saw that the value of the numbers was getting smaller.
‘Like counting down the hit parade,’ she said with a familiar thrill of excitement.
Suddenly she frowned. On the far side of the freaky projection, she saw movement. A figure, blurred and hazy, moved stealthily among the rocks.
Polly tried to focus on the figure but the radio static in her head was growing louder, a near-deafening pressure that continued to build. She leaned back against the tunnel wall. A part of her told her that it wasn’t safe to stay here, that she should go back, but while she tried to concentrate on the words they were lost over the raging of the unnatural sea.
Close by, over the noise, she heard a low, powerful whine, like a dozen flashbulbs charging up. She frowned. Was someone going to take her picture? She looked down at herself, saw a smear of dirt on the bright yellow leg of her spacesuit, crouched to brush it clean.
She shrieked as a blast of heat singed her hair and an explosion threw her forward along with half of the wall behind her. She gasped with pain, as the stinging wet slap of her palms against the gritty tunnel floor broke the spell she’d been under. Polly looked up to see a huge, hovering shadow wreathed in smoke from the explosion. Red laser eyes shone into her own, blinding her. With a squeak of terror Polly scrambled up and ran.
She heard the building charge of the flashbulbs again.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHILE THE LIGHT LASTS
I
BEN JOINED THE Doctor as he walked stiffly over to join the two troopers, raising his hands to show he meant them no harm. Addressing Roba, he nodded back at the monsters on the dais. ‘I take it, young man, that you recognise these poor, unfortunate creatures here?’
‘Unfortunate?’ Roba looked like the Doctor had just spat at his mother. ‘What’re you talking about, unfortunate?’
‘Well, of course, unfortunate only in that… Well, they are dead, after all,’ the Doctor blustered.
‘Wouldn’t have them any other way,’ Roba hissed. ‘Schirr scum.’
The Doctor looked at him sharply. ‘Ah, but the manner of their death. Held in stasis for all to see. What of that, hmm?’
‘Keep quiet,’ Haunt said warningly.
The Doctor turned to Shel, whose eyes met his own. ‘It’s bothering you, sir, is it not? These creatures are not fake, they are real flesh…’ He turned up his nose distastefully at the crimson mess at their feet. ‘And real blood, of course.’
Roba clenched his fists. ‘Look, man –’
The Doctor raised his voice, losing patience, acting as if the hulk of a man was just some upstart kid speaking out of turn in the old boy’s classroom. ‘Surely you don’t think all nine of these Schirr creatures stood here on their dais waiting patiently to be shot until the last man retaliated, hmm?’
A thought occurred to Ben. ‘And what about that stasis field thing you mentioned, Doctor,’ he said, pleased to have found something to contribute. He shrugged at Haunt. ‘Triggered by you lot coming in here, ain’t that right, Doctor?’
Haunt frowned. ‘What?’
‘Yes, it’s quite a mystery, quite a mystery,’ said the Doctor. He looked almost amused. ‘Not forgetting the concealed exit in this room that Polly must somehow have fallen through –’
Shel finally lost his cool. ‘That’s enough out of you,’ he barked.
The Doctor looked furious at the interruption, but then everyone’s attention was taken by something else. The echo of approaching footsteps began tripping over themselves as, this time, a small, wiry figure burst into the cavernous hall, dressed again in grey and with backpack and metal headband. Ben was pleasantly surprised to find he was talle
r than at least one of these space soldiers. But as the bald, scarred person approached…
‘Stone me,’ Ben muttered. ‘It’s another blinkin’ bird.’ Just about, anyway, he qualified to himself. She had a face like the smell of gas.
The woman glanced over at the bodies on the dais, but she seemed far more interested in Ben. He swallowed.
‘Frog,’ Haunt snapped. ‘You’re taking these two back to the ship.’
‘Yes, Marshal.’
Ben couldn’t help himself from smirking at the weird, warbling croak that came from her mouth. As a frog, she was pretty well-named.
Frog continued to stare at Ben. ‘Then shall I keep them under observation for a bit?’
Ben stopped smiling and cast an anxious look at the Doctor. He was staring into space, apparently oblivious to all.
‘Then you’ll join the rest of us at the bullring for an emergency debriefing. Now go. Hurry.’ Haunt turned to Shel darkly. ‘We need to regroup. Get everyone to retrace their steps, back to the bullring.’
Frog shrugged and indicated with her gun that the Doctor and Ben get moving. They trudged off towards the pentagonal doorway. Ben saw the Doctor cast a wistful look at the TARDIS, their ship and sanctuary, just out of reach.
‘Marshal.’ Ben heard Shel call over to Haunt, and there was an edge to his usually assured tones. ‘I can’t raise Joiks and Denni. No contact. Just static.’
‘This is how it begins,’ murmured the Doctor, just loud enough for Ben to hear him, as Frog nudged them through the exit.
II
Tovel found the wet crunch of his boots on the gritty floor almost comforting in the semi-darkness. Shade marched along beside him. He looked just as concerned as Tovel that Haunt had ordered a recall. They walked on in silence. Tovel tried not to dwell on his concern. It was lucky the websets weren’t so good at picking up underlying feelings, the murky background noise during playback; at least this generation of them. For the moment, soldiers controlled their websets and not vice versa; with practice anyone could keep their real thoughts and feelings suppressed. But the technology was getting better all the time. One day the Army examiners would be able to pick up every dissenting thought you ever had – and deal with you accordingly. Tovel imagined that websets of the future would turn their wearers into unthinking, unquestioning machines, designed solely to act and react. Perfect soldiers.