by Stephen Cole
‘Medics,’ he heard one of the other instructors say softly.
There were running footsteps. A shot of warmth. The pain lessened.
Haunt pulled him up by his good arm. He saluted her. Don’t you know who I am? She saluted him in turn.
He made it to a seat in the front row unaided. Every eye was on him. The Earthborn getting his ass whupped. He sat up straight on that ass. Hoped Haunt would think he looked like a man who had just learned a lesson, and who was the wiser for it. Much wiser.
‘All right,’ said Principal Cellmek quietly, once Haunt had climbed back on to the podium and taken her seat among the long line of grim-faced instructors. ‘Playtime’s over.’
He nodded to an aide standing impassively beside him. She hit a button on the lectern console, and a picture of the freighter they’d boarded in the simulation swam into view.
‘By now you’ve all of you had your chance to storm the
Harbinger and get the crew out alive...’ Cellmek started his usual waffle about how their performance profiles would be affected by the various tasks they’d encountered during the simulation. All Shade could think about was Haunt. He watched her through narrowed eyes. She looked dead calm now. Just carrying on like her flip-out had never happened.
Don’t you know what I could do to you? With just a couple of calls it can all be arranged.
Cellmek finally got back to real life again. ‘The Harbinger was on a peaceful mission, with minimal armaments, mapping new trade lines around the Indochina system. The Schirr disciples first infiltrated the lower levels, then secured and held the bridge. Not with weapons. With Morphiean ritual. The AT Elite unit deployed failed to stop them. The real freighter was destroyed.’
‘Did the unit escape?’
Shade looked across the hall to see who was speaking. It was some guy he’d not seen around. Denni sat beside him.
‘Only two men got clear before the Schirr detonated the ship, Creben,’ Cellmek announced.
Shade gritted his teeth as the throbbing in his chest grew worse. So this was Creben, known by name to the principal.
Only about twenty-five. Short fair hair. Neatly chiselled handsome features. Already he made Shade sick.
‘Eight hundred unarmed human civilians on board were lost,’ Cellmek elaborated. ‘But the explosion took out the
Ardent too, with the loss of a further thousand. The two survivors drifted for weeks, into the fringes of the Spook Quadrant. We don’t know what happened there. But somehow their pod travelled back within the Earth frontier and was reclaimed. By then, both were dead.’
‘Then we did better than they did,’ Creben murmured quietly.
But not quietly enough.
‘You were up against training droids with beta weapons only, Creben,’ Cellmek said calmly. ‘Those men had DeCaster’s fanatics to contend with. Schirr suicide squad.’
Creben nodded deferentially, his head bobbing about like he was looking for a suitable ass he could climb up.
But Cellmek wasn’t so easily appeased. ‘Perhaps this is a good time to remind all of you that we are not putting you through the most intensive training in the military to make you better people,’ he said sternly. ‘If the Spooks make good on their threats... If DeCaster and his disciples aren’t located and dispatched quickly...’
It felt to Shade like the unspoken threat hung solely over those recruits packed in the hall, not over all Earth’s overstretched empire. He checked out Haunt again. The mere mention of DeCaster – to quote Haunt herself from one of her spiels, the ‘most wanted pig-faced murdering Schirr bastard in all space’ - always got her riled up. He noted spots of colour in both cheeks. Twin targets.
Cellmek finally broke the interminable silence with more cheerfulness. ‘You’re here because you want to make Anti-Terror Elite. Because you want to hit back at the cowards who commit atrocities like on Toronto, or on New Jersey, or the Argentines. And the final stage of your combat training will be for real. Real ammo, not the peashooters you’ve been firing off. You’ve been grouped into tens, each group including one instructor. Your strengths and weaknesses, as extrapolated from the experiential web, have been inputted to Pentagon Central’s tactical computers. From this data the most appropriate training program and location will be selected from those in the systems. The e-rag will post your final training groups at twenty-one hundred. But for now -
put on your websets.’ He paused for two hundred pairs of hands to fumble with the delicate metal headbands. ‘The experiences you’re about to endure were taken from the two dead men found in the pod. Now we can show you what the unit on that freighter was really up against.’
Shade picked up his own webset and eagerly fitted it in place over his ears. Becoming someone else for a few hours, letting his own feelings, his own pain be swamped by a stranger’s impressions would be a blessing right now. The lights in Theatre One dimmed into darkness. He focused on his breathing, in and out, as his senses started to fall away.
And suddenly we’re someone else, indestructible. Buoyed up with adrenaline and the camaraderie of our unit, barely waiting for the docking tube to clang home before we rush to board the freighter, to save the ship and everyone on it.
An hour later the tiny detached part of him that still knew it was Colonel Adam Shade was screaming for his own pain, for the lights to be switched back on.
III
‘Shade? You get your grouping?’
Shade was woken from painful sleep by the sound of something yelling and kicking down his door.
‘Coming along for the greet?’ yelled the muffled voice.
He checked the clock; it was gone twenty-two hundred.
Rising stiffly, he peeled off the heal-pads from his arm and chest and padded across the cool floor. Hit the green button and watched the door swish open.
Denni was leaning in the doorway. She was smiling, but it was hard to read the expression in her black eyes. ‘Sorry, Shade. Looks like we’re going to war together.’
Shade half-smiled at her. ‘Lindey, Frog and Joiks too, right?’
She nodded. ‘Best in squad.’
‘Uh-uh. We just need the most work.’
‘We must be good. You see who else is with us?’
‘I haven’t checked the rag,’ Shade admitted.
Denni’s face softened a little. ‘You still hurting?’
‘Guess I had it coming.’
‘Guess Haunt is an uptight bitch.’ She paused. ‘She’s grouped with us.’
Shade’s eyes widened. ‘She is?’
Denni nodded slowly. She looked just a little concerned.
‘Her and Shel.’
‘Haunt’s mystery man,’ mused Shade. ‘Who else we got?’
‘Come to the greet, you’ll see.’ Denni grimaced. ‘Sorry.
You’ve not seen the rag. The groups are meeting up. Just so we can see who’s going to be watching our backs.’
‘Joiks’ll be too busy ogling their fronts.’ Shade wondered about asking Denni into his room. But there was nothing in her Look to encourage him.
Probably; she said. ‘You know, that big guy, Roba’s with us, remember him?’
‘Seen him around.’
‘And his best buddy, Tovel.’
‘The square-jawed hero. Sweet.’
She paused. ‘And Joseph Creben, shining star of AT Elite.’
Shade smiled tightly. ‘Think I’ll give the gathering a miss.’
‘You really hurting?’
He looked into Denni’s eyes, hopeful she might actually care. No. Nothing there but polite interest.
‘I got things to do,’ he said. ‘Things to arrange, before the off tomorrow.’
‘Pulling a few strings on Earth to get the best cabin?’
Shade closed his eyes. He wished there were something warm in the way she mocked him. ‘You know that’s bull.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Every time...’ He looked at her. ‘Why does my coming from Earth have
to make a difference?’
She became mock-pensive. ‘Because our glorious seat of empire is outmoded and obsolete? Because Earthers stay rich by taxing to death the populations they chucked out into space in the first place? Because...’
Shade felt tired. It was an old argument. ‘I’m running from Earth, Denni. I hate it as much as you do.’
‘Maybe you’ll prove that to me, one day,’ she said as she straightened up and stretched, a cat ready to slink off somewhere new. No loyalties to anyone dumb enough to stroke it.
‘Oh, I’ll prove it,’ Shade promised her as she walked away.
‘To all of you.’
Big words.
He hit red, let the door swish shut. Looked down at the vidphone. I got things to do, he’d said. A single call and he could turn all this around.
Shade sighed, and called up the e-rag. The text played over his wall but he barely took it in, hardly heard the cheesy voiceover making a joke out of everything. He stood unmoving, kept staring at the phone as the minutes slid by.
Chapter Two
Appointment with Death
I
Ben looked at Polly and narrowed his eyes. ‘You saying I’ve got a cold wet nose and floppy ears?’
Polly rolled her eyes but she was smiling, her straight white teeth framed by crimson lips. ‘You know what I mean,’ Polly went on in her oh-so-frightfully tones. ‘People are either dog people or cat people. And you’re a dog.’
‘Yeah, well, reckon I know how you’d take it if I called you one,’ Ben retorted.
‘I’m a cat person,’ Polly declaimed, running slender fingers through her long blonde hair.
‘Thought you reckoned you were just the whiskers on the thing, not the whole moggy.’
‘I just mean I make my own way, that’s all. Independent.’
Ain’t that the truth, Ben thought wryly to himself. They’d shared a few adventures now since leaving London, thanks to the TARDIS’s dodgy compass, and throughout it all Polly was always making out she could look after herself all right. No need for Ben to look out for her, oh no. But he knew better.
Well, it stood to reason. With the navy he’d seen so much, been so many places, learned how to handle himself. All she’d known were Beaujolais Nouveau parties, poncy nightclubs and finishing school in South Ken until they’d fallen in with the Doctor on his batty travels through time and space.
‘You’d be a bulldog.’ Polly laughed. ‘Or a terrier. Tenacious little Ben, always pulling life’s trouser leg!’
‘All right, all right,’ Ben said a little touchily. He was very aware he was hardly a giant among men, especially since Polly was taller than him by a good inch. ‘What about the Doctor, then?’
‘Cat person or dog person?’ Polly enquired with a wicked smile, ‘He’s more of an old buzzard, don’t you think?’
Her smile dropped suddenly as a door shut loudly behind her.
‘This “old buzzard” has excellent hearing my girl, quite excellent, yes,’ the Doctor fussed as he walked back in to the console room. The old boy was a real mystery, but it seemed his life was just one long adventure that he was willing to share with his mates. For Ben, that was all you needed to know.
This gleaming monochrome complex was his home. And it suited him. Quite a black-and-white character, the Doctor, Ben decided. Not just his appearance - swept-back silver hair, black frock coat, white wing-collared shirt and grey trousers - but in the way he saw things. A sort of suffer-no-fools and take-no-prisoners outlook that put Ben in mind of an old granddad of his, one who’d maybe lost a few marbles in the trenches.
The Doctor began flicking switches on the pentagonal console. His hands waved uncertainly over various sections before his bony fingers stabbed and twisted at the controls with sudden precision.
The column in the middle of the console’s set-up started to slow. The Doctor steepled his fingers and smiled benignly at his two companions, his blue eyes twinkling. ‘We should soon be landing.’
‘Where?’ asked Ben.
The old man’s faced clouded in confusion. He turned back to his controls.
Ben turned to Polly. ‘Never mind the buzzard, Duchess,’ he whispered. ‘Reckon he’s got the memory of a goldfish.’
II
Shade felt the bridge shudder as the retros kicked in. The vibration made him feel sick, and he put this down to the sleep drug. The ‘trip trip’ Joiks had called it. Funny.
He couldn’t believe they still used needles to inject the serum, or that they laid them on these slabs afterwards like corpses in a morgue. Then again, he couldn’t believe an ancient pile of scrap like this lousy space frigate was still being flown by anyone, let alone the military. No quarters -
just a bridge and a cargo hold. A ship small enough to blip past any radar, and to drive anyone trapped on board mad in under a week. Especially with Joiks and his one-liners there for the ride.
However they got the drug, Shade thanked God for it. The month had passed in the time it took to close his eyes. That made the worst hangover he’d had in his life a little more bearable.
Now ten of them were strapped into the couches in a punchy silence, staring at the central viewscreen.
Marshal Haunt was in the middle. She craned her head like the rest of them at the dull grey rock that filled the viewscreen. Her skin shared its drab pallor. Both her hands were twitching, like they were still trying to wake up.
‘It’s been a while,’ she muttered dryly as she faced the group. ‘Everyone still remember who they are?’
Shade’s head lolled back, he closed his eyes.
‘Everyone still remember who I am?’ Haunt’s voice hardened a little.
‘Think so, Marshal Haunt,’ Joiks said. ‘Didn’t you kick Shade’s ass back in Theatre One?’
Shade smiled through gritted teeth at the ensuing round of applause and cheers. All the shock, the violence of the event had been sublimated already into humour. It had meant nothing. Like killing meant nothing to soldiers, provided you killed the right people. But Shade hadn’t forgotten. Shade could never forget anything.
I’ll show you.
Only Denni didn’t laugh. Perhaps she felt as bad as she looked right now.
Haunt didn’t seem too amused either. ‘I was simply sending a message to everyone in that room,’ she said calmly.
‘Perhaps you didn’t grasp that message. Perhaps I need to demonstrate again.’
Joiks shook his head and did his best to look pious.
‘All right. Round the room. Who are you? Why are you here?’ She lay back, muttered the words like she’d said them a hundred times before on missions like this, leading her lambs off to slaughter or be slaughtered. ‘I don’t want your ranks, your full names and life history. And forget I know some of you already. Today you’re all school kids and I’m your teacher. Just give me enough so I can yell abuse at your sorry asses with confidence.’
Haunt’s latest adjutant began the introductions. ‘Shel,’ he said. ‘Fifth Division Heavy Infantry, Japanese Belt.’ He might look oriental but he spoke perfect American. ‘Here on interpersonnel exchange program.’
Exchanging what? Shade wondered. What was so classified about his past? He’d barely given away more than the e-rag had in his b-ground profile.
‘Next,’ rapped Haunt.
‘Joiks.’
‘We were trying to forget you, Joiks,’ Shade interrupted. He got fewer laughs. Figured.
‘Yeah, yeah. Joiks. Space Marine Corps. Here so I can kill Schirr scum better.’
‘Good,’ Haunt said automatically. ‘Next.’
‘Tovel. Pilot-Engineer with the Peace Keeper Volunteers, Commonwealth Belt.’ Shade had forgotten how surprisingly soft the stocky man’s voice was since they’d fought droids together in Term One, but not his tufty blond hair and his chin - so square you could fit a palmscreen in it with room to spare.
‘For two weeks after the Schirr hit New Jersey I ferried out the dead and dying.’ Tovel shrugged
. ‘Joined the regulars and that’s why I’m here.’
A massive black guy lay beside him, his feet dangling off the edge of the couch, a big, taut sack of muscle and attitude. Shade had seen him around - you could hardly miss him. His head was broad and bald, his features bunched up in the middle of his face.
‘Roba. Peace Keeper, like Tovel.’
‘You two come as a pair, honey?’ Frog asked, her jangling voice exploding into the fuggy atmosphere.
‘We’re close,’ Roba said, ‘but we never tried that before.’
Frog cackled, leading the fresh wave of laughter. But Shade couldn’t relax, couldn’t let his gaze shift for long from the lumpy planetoid in the viewscreen.
‘You a “pilot-engineer” too?’ Lindey asked Roba.
‘No. Marksman.’ He pointed his finger like it was a gun and fired at her.
‘Next,’ Haunt said dully.
‘My name is Creben.’ He smiled and paused like he wanted applause. ‘Graduated from Academy Intelligence last year.
Need combat experience to rise higher so I’ve gone Elite.
Naturally.’
Shade’s initial dislike of the man deepened to loathing.
‘Hey Shadow, come on,’ Lindey called. ‘Your turn to bore us.’
‘Name’s Shade. Joined up with Earth Ceremonials -’
‘Hey, Shadow, you an Earther?’ Frog asked, as if this was news to her. Everyone roared with laughter.
‘Normally we don’t stand on ceremonial,’ Joiks added confidentially to Tovel. ‘But for him we make an exception.’
‘You’re funny.’ Haunt’s voice steamrollered over the laughter. ‘Can we finish this before landing please?’
Shade indicated Denni should take her turn. He didn’t want to elaborate on his history anyway. It was better this way, even if the new guys thought he was the butt of the squad. Still, Haunt had spoken up for him. That was interesting. Guilty conscience?
Denni, Lindey and Frog all said their snappy little bits.