by Stephen Cole
‘You’ve met the Doctor and Ben?’ Polly said, trying not to whimper. ‘Are they all right?’
Haunt snorted. ‘I don’t know what they are.’ The gun barrel was digging into Polly’s head so hard she felt her skull would crack. ‘Perhaps you could tell me?’
Polly wished the ground would swallow her up. She scrunched up her eyes tightly as she tried to think up an answer that might satisfy this maniac.
‘We’ve… we’ve been travelling,’ she said.
‘Through the Morphiean Quadrant?’ Tovel looked at her suspiciously.
‘She and her friends here claim they’re refugees,’ Haunt told her soldiers.
‘That’s what I meant!’ said Polly. ‘Please, could you take me to them?’
Suddenly the ground beneath her started to shudder. Polly cancelled her earlier wish.
‘We should move,’ Tovel warned. He shot a look at Shade. ‘We must’ve weakened this whole area with all that firepower.’
‘It doesn’t feel like a tremor.’ Haunt looked around her, suspicious, as if the answer to the puzzle was somehow staring her in the face, mocking her.
The tremors, meanwhile, seemed to be getting worse. Cracks and fissures were opening in the walls and the roof. Streams of black choking dust seeped from them. Polly wondered how far she’d get if she tried to make a run for it past Haunt, and decided she’d rather take her chances with falling boulders.
Haunt’s gaze settled on Tovel. ‘What do you make of it?’
‘Vibration.’ His head was cocked slightly to one side, as if listening to something none of them could hear. ‘Like something powering up.’
‘The countdown,’ breathed Polly. ‘Didn’t I tell you something was going to happen!’
Haunt ignored her. ‘All right, let’s join the others.’ She looked Polly up and down. ‘I can see I’m not going to learn anything from you.’
How about the importance of moisturiser and dieting for starters, you bullying bitch, thought Polly. If only she could be safe with Ben back in the TARDIS, listening to the engines grind and grate, leaving this horrible place far behind them…
A thought struck her as she was shoved along the passage in the direction Haunt had come from. ‘These tremors,’ she said, turning to face them. ‘I know what they remind me of.’
‘What?’ asked Haunt, looking as if she already regretted asking.
‘Our spaceship,’ Polly said, ‘when it’s getting ready for take-off. Only a thousand times stronger.’
‘A spaceship?’ Shade echoed in disbelief. ‘Inside an asteroid?’
‘It’s not so strange, is it?’ Tovel muttered, a surprise ally. ‘That’s where ours is.’
Haunt, for her part, said nothing. But before Polly was pushed onwards unsteadily through the rumbling tunnel, she at least had the satisfaction of seeing the marshal’s face darken into sudden concern.
VI
Ben hung on for dear life as his ladder bucked and almost threw him clear. There was a terrible splitting sound from somewhere above him, and then a shadow fell swiftly over him. Ben twisted and swung on his ladder as a jagged piece of slate the size of a dinner tray hurtled past.
‘Doctor!’ yelled Ben desperately as he peered up into the brilliant light, and as more and more rock fragments started raining down around him. He felt the ladder lurch sickeningly. A spindly figure was suddenly clinging to one of the rungs above him, the Doctor, it had to be, Frog had passed him over. But then a boot was pressing down hard on Ben’s fingers. He gasped and tried to pull them free. ‘Get off!’ he yelled.
‘I’m sorry, my boy.’ The Doctor’s confused voice floated down with a cloud of rock dust. ‘I… I didn’t see you…’
The Doctor’s boot lifted, and Ben felt his fingers throb, as if about to swell to cartoonish proportions. He ignored the pain, gripped the sides of the rope ladder and slid smoothly down. But when he hit the bottom he found it was like standing on deck in a stormy sea. The ground bucked beneath him. A large boulder tore down from above and pounded into the ground beside him, inches from his foot. He was choking on dust, it was everywhere. The shaft of blue light turned it into a dense luminous fog.
‘It’s an earthquake, Doctor!’ he yelled.
‘I don’t think so.’ The Doctor was crawling, painfully slowly, down the ladder, as showers of pebbles rained down around him. Afraid a more serious rockfall was likely, Ben staggered forward and tried to lift the Doctor clear.
‘Put me down, young man,’ the Doctor thundered. He disentangled himself from Ben’s grip. ‘I will not be carted about by all and sundry like a sack of potatoes!’
Ben held up his hands in meek apology.
‘Where is our captor?’ the Doctor asked, his lined face damp with perspiration. ‘She manhandled me onto your ladder, our own was starting to give way.’
Together, trying to keep their balance like surfers riding a wave, they peered about.
‘There!’ Ben shouted. Frog was on all fours, dazed, struggling for breath. She must’ve fallen, winded herself.
‘Look out, Ben!’ the Doctor called back. Grit and pebbles fell like hail from the rocky sky above them. It couldn’t be long now before the entire place came crashing down on top of them, and Haunt’s ship with it.
Ben dashed forward and crouched beside Frog. ‘Come on!’ he yelled at her over the sound of the splitting earth, and took her arm. Her muscles felt like steel. She struggled against him, dived forwards and butted him in the stomach. Caught by surprise, Ben folded up and lay gasping beside her.
‘You daft cow,’ he gasped in disbelief, ‘I was trying to help you!’
Frog stared blankly at him. Blood was dripping freely from her nose over her mouth and chin, her teeth were stained gory red. ‘Help me?’
‘Give over.’ Recovering, Ben clambered up and took her arm again, helping her up. This time she didn’t argue, resting her weight on him as they staggered away to the edge of the drop zone where the Doctor was waiting anxiously for them. More and more rubble was crashing down from on high. The blinding beam of light had been pulverised to a feeble glow.
Frog wiped the back of her hand across her bloody face and looked up at Ben. ‘Why’d you help me?’
Ben looked away, embarrassed. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’
‘You could’ve escaped,’ Frog said. Then she showed her teeth in a gory smile. ‘Could’ve tried to, anyway.’
‘We couldn’t leave you to die,’ the Doctor muttered.
‘Well, you’re still my prisoners,’ Frog warned them, still dabbing at her nose with her palm. ‘When this quake dies down we go straight back up them ladders.’
‘You’re joking!’ Ben angrily gestured to the rumbling drop zone. ‘You want that little lot on top of you?’
Frog shrugged. ‘The ship’ll be safe. It has to be.’
‘Even if that proves true, we have no way of getting to it,’ the Doctor said tetchily. ‘I fear the control room will be the only place of safety. This is no natural earthquake, of that I am sure. It’s… that is to say…’ His face clouded, and Ben watched him struggle for words that were lost to him like an actor drying up on stage. ‘It’s something else,’ he concluded lamely.
‘We’ll join the others,’ Frog decided. ‘And I don’t think the marshal’s gonna to be too glad to see you…’
As she walked off, Ben noticed she was limping slightly. There was a vivid gash in her calf where a rock or something had ripped through her suit, but it looked like the fabric was digging in hard around the wound.
‘You all right?’ he asked. ‘You’ve hurt your leg.’
‘Ain’t you a bleeding heart,’ Frog muttered. ‘The suit’s taking care of it.’
The Doctor perked up automatically. ‘Intelligent armour,’ he told Ben. ‘If the soldier is wounded, the fabric compresses to staunch any bleeding.’
Frog only grunted as she herded them both along the tunnels. ‘Gotta get back to Haunt,’ she warbled. ‘Gotta get back.’
; ‘All right, all right,’ Ben complained over his shoulder as Frog’s rifle butt dug into his spine for the tenth time, forcing him along the tunnel. ‘We’re moving as fast as we can.’
She didn’t meet his gaze, instead staring suspiciously all around them. The tremors had clearly shaken her in more ways than one. ‘Gotta get back,’ she said again.
‘As I’ve told you already, Miss Frog,’ said the Doctor, marching along beside Ben. ‘You will be showing your Marshal considerable initiative if you’ll just take us back to the control centre. I must examine the instruments there.’
Frog didn’t answer, so Ben did. ‘Thought everything was dead in there.’
‘Dormant, perhaps,’ the Doctor muttered. He looked sweaty and pale-faced. ‘A sleeping giant.’
‘What,’ said Ben puzzled, ‘and we’ve gone and woken ’im up –?’
Even as he spoke something pushed out from an opening in the tunnel wall beside him, grabbing for his throat.
Ben yelped in surprise. His attacker spun him round. It was a big bloke, with a broken nose and wild dark eyes, wearing a headband like Frog’s and yelling in his face.
Over the din and the pressure in his ears he heard the Doctor ordering Frog to do something, and the harsh rattle of Frog shouting. But she wasn’t warning Ben’s attacker off. She sounded like she was trying to calm the bloke down, as best as she could with her cartoon accent.
When that didn’t work, she kicked the man in the groin. He collapsed backwards, falling on his kit bag.
‘Strewth,’ Ben gasped, whooping down lungfuls of the dank air. ‘Wish you’d kept your mouth shut about them giants, Doctor.’
The Doctor didn’t respond, crouching arthritically over the groaning man on the floor. ‘Who is this fellow?’
‘Just Joiks,’ Frog replied. Ben got the impression that belting the man in the jewels hadn’t been much of a chore. Frog gestured the Doctor out of the way with her rifle. ‘What’s up, Joiks? This place made you crazy?’
‘Denni,’ Joiks muttered. ‘She was attacked, in the dark. Taken away.’
Ben thought the bloke sounded a bit South African. He recalled now that Joiks and Denni were the two Haunt hadn’t been able to contact.
‘I reckon she’s dead.’
‘Dead?’ Frog’s bulging eyes narrowed.
‘Something came at us in the dark. I tried to hold on to her, but whoever it was just snatched her away.’ Joiks glowered up at Ben. ‘Must’ve been this one. What did you do with her?’
‘I ain’t done nothing to no one since I got here!’ Ben protested.
Frog pulled Joiks back to his feet. ‘You sure she’s dead?’
‘Maybe,’ Joiks said, apparently without irony.
‘Try “maybe not”,’ Frog said flatly. ‘Whatever happened to Denni, it wasn’t either of these two. They were with me.’
Joiks looked at her like she was mad. Then he scowled at Ben and the Doctor and clenched his big fists. ‘Who the hell are “these two”, anyway?’
‘These three, you mean.’
Ben shut his eyes and groaned. ‘Terrific,’ he muttered. ‘Marshal Misery’s come back to haunt us.’
Her words sank in. Three?
‘Ben! Doctor!’
Now Ben spun round in disbelief. Stood bright and beaming next to Haunt was Polly. She was flanked by a right array of bruisers, and her daffodil-bright spacesuit was covered in dirt, but that aside she looked perfect as ever. He rushed to bundle her up into his arms, and Polly ran forward to meet him, managing to snag the Doctor into the clumsy embrace as well.
Ben gently pulled away from Polly. ‘Good to see you.’
‘What happened, my child?’ the Doctor asked.
But before Polly could speak, Haunt put a gun to her head, with a look that warned her to keep quiet. ‘Frog, why aren’t these two locked up in the ship?’ Ben wasn’t sure it was possible for anyone to look more peed off than she was.
While Frog started to explain, Ben took in the figures lined up behind her. He was definitely feeling like the odd man out around here. Maybe he should start standing on tiptoes. The two soldiers who’d marched her along with Haunt looked the type you wouldn’t want to tangle with. One of them seemed to have weird tribal markings all over his face, which made his otherwise undistinguished features far more formidable. Behind them stood Roba and Shel and two more soldiers, a stocky, sly-looking man and a thin girl who would’ve been dead tasty if someone hadn’t tried to cut her red hair with a lawnmower. All of them carried backpacks and wore the weird headbands.
It was strange, Ben decided. The soldiers could only be around his age, but they seemed somehow so much older. He thought about making a run for it back to the TARDIS, but not for long. Outnumbered three to one, with no weapons and the Doctor’s stamina to contend with, how far could they get?
Suddenly it seemed that everyone started talking at once. The soldiers burst out into angry, frightened discussions, with several dark looks in Ben’s direction. Haunt began questioning Joiks, whose answers brought fresh mutterings in the ranks. The bloke with the tattooed face looked especially gutted.
And then Frog was pulling Ben roughly away from Polly’s arms. He yelled at her to let him go, a complete waste of breath. The Doctor was gripping Polly firmly by the shoulders as Roba and the nimble redhead closed in on them, guns raised. He was keeping her close to him but hushing her questions and protests, taking in each exchange around him with swift movements of his head, like some big worried owl.
Then the biggest tremor yet practically took them all off their feet.
When the rumbling and the vibration finally began to die down, Ben could hear a new noise beneath it. A weird, haunting two-tone melody, a ghost’s idea of an emergency siren. As one by one they heard the sound, so each person in the passage fell silent.
‘It’s coming from the control centre,’ the Doctor declared imperiously. ‘Marshal Haunt, might I suggest we go there at once?’
She pushed past the Doctor, breaking into a run, Shel at her side and most of the squad falling in behind her.
‘Looks like you’re getting what you want, old man,’ said Roba. He started hustling the Doctor along after them, while the silent redhead steered Polly, protesting noisily, by the arm. Frog motioned that Ben should follow them.
They trooped back through the vaulted cavernous chambers and the flea-ridden ceilings, past the statues and the slates, the ghostly alarm growing louder, more penetrating.
And with it, something else.
A resonant hum growing in power.
VII
‘Let go of me, would you?’ Polly snapped to the skinny woman who was clearly a lot stronger than she looked. ‘You’re breaking my arm.’
‘And you’re breaking my heart.’ The skinny woman’s cultured voice was like cut glass. She propelled Polly into the control centre.
‘Easy on her, Lindey,’ said Shade.
‘The delicate flower’s making you wilt is she, Shade?’ the blond-haired, neat-looking man inquired.
‘She’s a civilian, Creben, and there’s no need to mistreat her,’ Shade said coolly. But he couldn’t hide the faint blush beneath his blackened cheeks. Polly tried to catch his eye, to smile and thank him, but he avoided her gaze. Ben, on the other hand was actively seeking it out. He didn’t look happy, probably because the squat little witch with the gun was standing so close to him, her hand pressed down on his shoulder. Polly tried to give this ‘frog’ a look she hoped would show exactly how impressed she was, but the woman didn’t even glance up.
Looking away, Polly’s heart leapt as she saw the TARDIS, just where they had left it. But she caught sight of the crowd of corpses on the platform, and quickly averted her eyes.
Unlike everyone else. Shade and Tovel, and the man with the broken nose she’d glimpsed earlier, had all noticed the horrible display themselves, and were staring in disbelief. The alarms grew ever louder. Finally Lindey let go of Polly’s arm, but only so she could cover her
own ears. The noise was almost overpowering now.
Creben turned, pale-faced, dragged his gaze over to Tovel. ‘All this is Schirr design, isn’t it?’ he yelled.
Tovel simply nodded. Then he jogged over to one of the consoles built into the wall. Shade and Creben looked at each other uneasily. Frog and the man with the broken nose stood close together, apparently unmoved by the commotion.
Her whole head ringing with the sound, Polly looked round in panic for the Doctor. Only when the black man stepped aside could she see him standing, head cocked to one side, absolutely still.
‘I tried to tell them, Doctor,’ Polly shouted. ‘Before, there was a noise, a light, a vibration…’
‘Quiet,’ Haunt snapped. She shouted over to Tovel: ‘Can you make sense of the controls?’
‘The girl was right,’ Tovel yelled back. ‘I think some sort of take-off’s been initiated, that the engines are starting up.’
Polly noticed the Doctor steeple his fingers and smile almost smugly at the news. His eyes were like dark buttons, gleaming in the oily light.
‘Take-off?’ echoed the man with the broken nose. ‘That’s garbage. We’re in the middle of a rock, how can we be taking off?’
‘A section of this complex has been designed to break free of the main planetoid,’ explained the Doctor impatiently.
The oriental man nodded like he understood. ‘Those earlier tremors signalled the primary phase of the separation.’
The Doctor nodded vaguely and bustled over to Tovel. ‘Can you compute where we are going?’
Polly couldn’t hear the rest of his words over the scary whistling of the alarm. But she caught Lindey’s breathy voice close in her ear.
‘What is this place? Where the hell did nine dead Schirr spring up from?’
Polly frowned, and forced herself to look again at the corpse in the chair and the bodies on the dais, to count them properly.
She screamed.