by Stephen Cole
Someone was there, close by, just out of view. She had something important she had to ask, she knew. She had to remember what.
‘Frog… Did they kill her?’
No answer, or an answer so quiet it couldn’t be heard. Light began to bleed away from her vision, the way starry space always gave way to sunlit sky as planetfall commenced.
Colonel Nadina Haunt was watching it now from the viewscreen of her fighter, the first wisps of the planet Toronto’s daylight shining into her eyes. It was a gorgeous, wide-open sky, one fit for angels. A frigid landscape of cloud stretched off to the dense horizon, superimposed over a green sea. The twin landscapes blurred, one into the other, as Ashman took them down more steeply.
‘Switching to manual,’ he said, and she watched his hands grip the flight gears, the muscles in his forearms clenching as he adjusted their position, taking control himself.
She was twenty-nine, or thirty. Way too old to be feeling the way she did about Ashman.
The targeting grid came up on Nadina Haunt’s eyescreen as they cleared the clouds and the flat vista of the sea established its mastery. In the open waters around Labrador harbour, tiny specks of white blossomed into circular blooms. Haunt’s mind made sense of them as solar dishes harvesting the power of the twin suns, and it was only when they were much closer that she realised they were actually sails. Each effortlessly caught the stiff salt breeze, skipping the boats over the choppy water.
The sight fascinated Haunt, through the mesh of the targeting grid. She could discern the tiny figures of the ship-crews as they bustled about the wooden decks, netting their haul.
The natives had been allowed to maintain their simple economy, their semblance of culture – it had been a good cover. The Empire was unlikely to house its secret military capital on such a strategically precarious world.
The rich salt-broth seas on Toronto were always thrashing with fish. The natives had only to skim the nets of their fishing boats over the surface for a few minutes to come home with enough food to bloat an entire settlement. And it wasn’t only the natives (she couldn’t remember their race name) that benefited. The superabundance of marine life enabled the Empire to freeze and export billions of tonnes to its outlying colonies. It justified the considerable military presence on Toronto: a dozen worlds really did depend on this planet for food.
It couldn’t be helped, Haunt decided as she synched up with the weapons net. The Schirr had crept in and ruined everything. Now human security was at risk. Taken in by their own cleverness, Pent-Cent had got complacent. Ashman had said he was only surprised an incursion hadn’t happened sooner.
He banked hard right, the teeming sea and starched sails streaking past beneath them. The harbour compound loomed sheer and white over the still waters. It looked like a glittering block of ice.
Ashman turned to her. Narrowed his indigo eyes and nodded. It was as if the look alone had triggered the pulse in her head. She shuddered as she opened fire, launching her missiles into the midst of the little boats skimming the writhing water. The fighters flanking Ashman’s ship followed suit.
‘You like your fish well-done?’ she asked.
‘You’re funny,’ he told her.
Then she and Ashman were watching the sea and everything in it start to burn.
The Schirr stealth craft concealed in the harbour, pale and fleshy ovoids, sounded like they were screaming as the flames took them. Haunt tried not to gag on the stench of the dying sea, wafting across the compound grounds in a thick salty fog.
‘At least one Schirr unit was sighted overground,’ Ashman bellowed at his troops. ‘Security may have been compromised.’
They would find out together. They were running through the klaxons and emergency lighting of the compound, deeper and deeper underground. There were bodies here and there. Haunt skidded on the slick ground and fell. She’d splashed down in someone’s blood. Ashman turned, reached out his hand to her. She took it, felt his strength through the warm stickiness for a moment. Then they were running on. Her wet hair flapped about her forehead in gory braids.
More bodies. A secure zone had been breached. In one room marked restricted, they saw a woman twisted over a data input, staring at the screen. Her gun lay discarded on the floor along with most of the contents of a medical kit. Blood soaked the whole of one leg black through the fabric of her grey uniform. The woman looked up at them but her shocked expression didn’t change.
‘They got in,’ she kept saying, over and over. ‘They got in.’
Behind her was slumped the rubbery corpse of a Schirr, stomach and neck both shot open. Its fat lips bared back over its peg teeth, it looked like it had died smiling.
‘Look after her,’ Ashman told her. ‘I’ll screen the corridor.’
Haunt crossed to the woman, stepped gingerly over the detritus on the floor. Saw too late the timer grenade clamped in the Schirr’s fleshy grip.
Heat as it detonated. She dived to the floor. The injured woman shielded her a little. What about Ashman, framed in the doorway? He was screaming but she couldn’t see for the smoke. And she knew that if she woke up from the sick, heavy blackness coming for her, she wouldn’t know how much blood was her own and how much she had slipped in outside.
The heat of the blast wasn’t fading.
It was burning her on the inside. Her guts were squeezing out through a lump beneath her ribs.
They would get confused with the Schirr’s. Why couldn’t she smile in death like it could? Why was she so afraid?
She moaned and opened her eyes and saw a feminine face, framed by long straight blonde hair. The woman who shouldn’t be here, Polly. Soothing her. Haunt tried to struggle, hated to let anyone see her so weak. Something hot and molten was stirring sluggishly in her guts.
‘What’s happening?’ she mumbled, almost choking on her tongue.
‘Tovel told me to give you something when you woke up,’ Polly said. She got up and went away.
‘Did they kill Frog?’ Haunt said thickly.
‘No.’ The gurgling voice came to her like she was underwater. ‘No, the frog ain’t croaked yet.’
‘Stay with us,’ Haunt whispered, as sound and vision lost all definition again. She felt a hot pinprick in her arm, invasive, bruising the muscle. Shadows came for her again. ‘Stay with us, Frog…’
‘Wouldn’t miss this party for nothing,’ Frog muttered.
Marshal Nadina Haunt heard the voice die away.
The darkness swooped and caught her.
*
III
‘She should rest quietly now,’ Polly told Frog.
‘Great,’ Frog retorted. ‘What did Tovel say that was?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Polly confessed. ‘Something to break the fever, he said. Help her sleep.’
‘What’s he want Haunt to sleep for?’ muttered Frog. ‘Think he likes being in charge?’
‘He just wants to help, I suppose,’ Polly ventured.
‘Nah. He just likes being in charge.’ Frog gave a crooked smile. ‘Now Haunt’s popped that shot, she may never wake up.’
Polly shuddered. ‘Don’t.’
They listened to Haunt’s breathing, a sound just too ragged to be soothing.
‘Now give me something to fix me up, will ya?’ Frog said brightly.
Polly sighed. ‘I wish I could.’
‘Sure you do.’
‘Of course I do!’
‘’Cause you feel soooo sorry for me.’ Frog narrowed her eyes, spitefully. ‘You, with your doll’s hair, your long, young skinny body, your clear skin. Bet you grew up under a blue sky and a warm sun. Had yourself toys to play with.’ She laughed. ‘Where I grew up, I was the toy. People picked me up and did what they wanted. Whenever they wanted. Dad. His friends. Anyone.’
Polly stared at Frog dumbly. She couldn’t find a thing to say.
‘Feeling sorry for me, now?’ Frog sneered. ‘That always follows. The sorries.’
‘What do you want me to say
,’ Polly murmured, looking away. ‘That I’m glad you’re sick or something?’
‘I don’t need the sorries. Don’t need nothing. I fight, see? The army made me someone. Something.’ Tears rolled down her scarred cheeks. ‘Now I’m being made into something else.’
Faster than you know, thought Polly sadly. Frog’s jumpsuit was zipped right up, but a track of the raw and puckered new flesh had crept up to her neck, right up to the small black disc on her throat which must make her voice sound so strange. The normal skin blistered and burnt round the edges of the patch.
Polly couldn’t just sit and watch Frog cry. ‘I’m going to check on Shade,’ she said.
Frog didn’t answer. Haunt had begun to snore softly. The sounds were taken by the weird acoustics in the great chamber and twisted, distorted, flung back at her. Polly felt horribly vulnerable. She kept glancing up at the bodies on their platform, counting them over and over. Six. Six. Six.
IV
‘You sure you can find this place again?’ Roba asked in a loud whisper. He led the way up the passage, rubbing distractedly at his injured wrist.
‘There’s a bend coming up, then the tunnel should fork,’ Tovel hissed back. ‘It should get lighter too.’
‘Polly had placed a pile of stones outside the relevant path,’ the Doctor added. He paused for breath, and dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief.
Ben waited dutifully beside him, and Creben and Joiks both pushed past. Ben looked nervously around – a pointless exercise, since it was so dark you couldn’t see your hand before your face. He was sure it hadn’t been so dark before, and had become convinced that the fleaweed on the ceilings was able somehow to shift itself about. Was there nothing that didn’t move when it shouldn’t in this God-awful place?
In an attempt to avoid unwelcome attention, they’d decided to have just the one torch on, Roba’s, leading them on. It was like trailing after a lost little sunbeam in the cold, dark tunnels. Twice they had heard the soft, rhythmic flapping of stone wings in the blackness. Roba had flicked off the torch and they’d stood frozen like statues themselves until the noise had faded back into the shadows.
‘Wait a minute, then!’ Ben called quietly into the darkness, afraid the others would get too far ahead.
‘Don’t fuss, my boy,’ the Doctor told him stiffly, and they started off again.
They caught up with the others in time to see them crouched beside a little slate cairn that marked one of two tunnels. The fleaweed was back, casting its seasick glow.
‘Polly must’ve left that,’ said Ben.
‘This is the way,’ Tovel said.
The passage wound on, getting brighter the further they got. The fleas skipped and scuttled over their faces and hands. Ben brushed them away furiously. Then he realised Roba and the others had stopped – and, a moment later, saw why.
‘Stone me,’ Ben said, staring out into a star-filled night. ‘They put a window in here.’
‘Why would they do such a thing?’ Creben wondered.
‘I wonder, yes,’ said the Doctor, making a big show of contemplating the mystery. Ben supposed he was grateful for the extra rest. ‘Why one window, and why here?’
‘Well, it’s not a bad view, is it?’ Ben said. The stars were solid points of light, glaring out from the most absolute blackness Ben had ever seen.
‘Nothing out there,’ Roba remarked.
‘Not yet,’ Joiks added.
Roba led them onwards
‘Can’t get no further,’ said Roba. ‘Rockfall. Time to get busy.’
‘All right. Polly said she ran straight down this tunnel from the blue area.’ The heavy crack of boulders impacting against floor and wall punctuated Tovel’s speech as Roba got his hands dirty. ‘If we can clear that lot, we’ll be on the way to getting clear ourselves.’
Ben wished he could believe it.
As Tovel helped Roba dislodge the really big stones, Joiks and Creben both began work themselves. While Creben sized up different rocks, looking for those that might bring a number more tumbling down without further effort, Joiks tore at the landslide. He was probably imagining each one was Frog’s head. She’d given the berk a right bloody nose; if it hadn’t been flattened a dozen times before she’d probably have broken it. Still, it had knocked some of the cockiness out of him and no mistake. He was good as gold and keeping his lip buttoned. Ben almost liked him that way.
Poor old Frog. If there was even a chance they could stop what was happening to her…
‘Come on, Ben,’ Roba called, as he heaved at a huge boulder. ‘You can maybe shift the pebbles, OK?’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Ben was glad to see the big man back on side, but a little wary of him too since his acting up back in the control room. He grappled with a chunk of slate too big for him to tackle easily alone, just to show willing. But the thought of Frog had suggested something to him. ‘’Ere, Roba. That cut of yours. How come your suit’s not digging in, staunching the blood or whatever?’
‘It ain’t working,’ Roba grumbled, not looking up from the rockpile. ‘Cheap junk they give us.’
They worked on. Just as he was beginning to think that any second now the noise of crashing rock would bring the stone angels flapping back in sympathy, Ben saw a wisp of wraith-like blue light ahead.
‘Look!’ he called. ‘We’re almost through!’
V
Haunt stirred, her eyes opened almost involuntarily. The control room snapped back into sharp focus. The fever had broken, and her thoughts had suddenly an awful, fragile clarity. She felt not just the dreadful empty pain in her side and the warm throb of the shot in her arm, but the full weight of her responsibility for the safety and success of the mission. All those lives that depended on her.
She was so tired. Too tired. Didn’t they realise that?
Her eyes closed. Just for a moment Haunt thought of Ashman again and wished she could go back there, back then, to that time on Toronto.
VI
Shade had been sleeping silently for some time now; or so Polly had thought. She stopped as she approached him. He was lying facing away from her, curled up.
Lindey’s palm-sized computer was gone from his pocket.
Polly stealthily advanced. Now she was close enough to see he was actually using the computer, holding it up to his eyes, entirely caught up in whatever it was showing him.
Polly reached in and grabbed the computer from him. Shade spun round in surprise. Polly stifled a gasp, felt her stomach churn, and the flesh at the back of her thighs go tight at the sight of him.
His face was a mess of half-formed scabs, and streaked with bright red blood. Guilt was written gorily all over him.
‘Guess I’m always going to have the same effect on people, aren’t I,’ he said. ‘One look and they scream.’
‘This isn’t about your face,’ Polly snapped. ‘Except in as much as you seem to have two of them. Oh, yes, you were so sad to have lost poor old Lindey one minute… didn’t stop you stealing her computer thing and keeping whatever it might tell you to yourself!’
She wanted him to deny it. He didn’t. She looked at the screen, focused on the green capitals clustered there.
PRESS OK TO KILL FILES ++
‘What’s going on, Shade?’ she breathed.
‘Nothing,’ he said, his hoarse voice sounding more choked than usual. ‘Give me that palmscreen.’
‘I’ll get Haunt to show me how it works,’ she said defiantly.
Shade stared helplessly at her, his face twisted in pain. For an awful moment she thought he was going to start crying too.
‘But if you tell me, I won’t tell anyone else,’ she added.
Shade laid his head back down on the firm mattress. ‘I don’t suppose it matters much, since we’re going to die anyway.’
‘What do you mean, we’re going to die?’ Polly demanded.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Shade whispered. His brilliant green eyes seemed to look straight through her. ‘Don’t you
see? It’s me, Polly. The reason we’re going to die. It’s all me.’
‘What are you talking about, Shade?’ Polly croaked, backing away.
‘I’m from Earth. You know what that means?’
Polly sort of half-shook her head, not wanting to get sidetracked by unnecessary explanations.
‘Privilege. Power. Reward.’ He gazed up at her. ‘My family could buy the planet that Frog grew up on, and barely notice the expense.’
‘So?’
‘So I didn’t want to be like that. Just about money, and privilege. I wanted to give something back.’ He smiled at her, a strained sort of smile.
Give something back. Polly thought back to the New Year’s resolution she’d made in 1963, to work in the charity shop for cancer research. Giving something back. But she’d hated the squalor of the grey little store in Notting Hill, standing all day amid the remnants of drab little lives on shelves and hangers. She’d walked out after a week – making her mum ecstatic in the process – and donated a pricey pile of last year’s fashions instead to assuage her guilt.
‘Go on,’ she nodded.
‘I joined up. Thought I’d fight for the Empire. Coming from Earth, they made me a lieutenant straight off.’ The smile was still on his face, though now it looked like someone had carved it in with a pen knife. ‘On New Jersey…’
‘You hurt yourself there,’ Polly remembered. ‘The mine…’
His face crumpled. ‘I was squad leader. Schirr everywhere. Walked straight into an ambush.’ He contorted his lips over his clenched teeth, trying to keep the words coming.
‘That wasn’t your fault,’ Polly said gently. ‘You were helping the children…’
‘No. There were no kids. Except the kids in my squad.’ He swallowed. ‘Didn’t fight. Didn’t lead. Just left my men to it. They were screaming… I didn’t care. So scared I ran straight into a mine.’
Polly looked down at the screen again, at the word ‘OK’, as Shade kept on talking, so quietly she could barely hear him.