by Stephen Cole
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 taller 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.
Suddenly he froze.
‘Shade.’
Shade stopped dead too. Shadow seemed a good nickname.
‘What?’
‘You hear that?’ A weird whispering sound had started up.
Shade frowned and listened. But suddenly the only sound was that of slapping footsteps on the rock. Something was coming for them, fast.
In the time it took Shade to swear, Tovel had drawn his gun. He aimed it down the gloomy tunnel. The footsteps were getting louder, closer.
‘That’s no droid,’ Shade said quietly. He drew his own gun.
‘You heard Haunt, no one’s seen these droids before,’ Tovel snapped, keeping eyes and gun trained down the passageway. The murky green light seemed a little brighter, a little bluer.
A willowy yellow shape burst into view. A woman. Pretty.
Her long blonde hair streamed out behind her like a comet tail.
‘Don’t shoot me,’ the girl yelled. ‘Please!’
Tovel turned now to Shade, who was staring at her - up and down and slowly - in amazement.
‘There’s a blue light,’ the girl said breathlessly. And a noise, sort of hypnotic. I followed it, to this incredible place, and...’
She trailed off, stayed staring at Shade’s face. They all did that.
‘And what?’ Tovel prompted her.
The girl looked at him now with wide, fearful eyes. ‘I’m sorry. Please, there’s something -’
‘Wait.’ Tovel could hear the low, flat whine of weapon generators building. In a second Shadow had fallen to one knee and was blasting round after round down the tunnel to where the droid must be coming from. Clouds of white fleas exploded under each impact. The girl threw herself to the ground and covered her head.
Tovel crouched beside her. ‘You hurt?’
‘No. But guns are so noisy!’
‘Keep your ears blocked a little longer,’ Tovel advised.
Shade kept on blasting, criss-crossing the tunnel entrance, until abruptly the yellow fire faded. ‘Power pack’s out!’
For a moment Tovel relived Shade’s helpless sense of panic back at the freighter simulation, as the Kill-Droid had targeted him head-on. Then he raised his own gun and took up the barrage. Through the bolts of yellow light Tovel glimpsed burning red, caught coruscations of reflected fire in the body of something big coming out of the darkness.
Shade had thrown down his rifle and released his grenade launcher from the clamp on his back. Now he aimed it down the tunnel and fired. The kickback nearly knocked him over.
The noise of the grenade impacting left Tovel half-deafened.
The tunnel mouth was incandescent for a second. Tovel blinked furiously to clear his sight. He had a blurred view of Shade gripping the launcher so tightly it seemed the skin would split over his knuckles. He fired again. Tovel heard the rumbling of rock.
‘That’s enough!’ Tovel yelled. ‘You’ll bring the roof down on us! We’ve got to get out of here!’ That would be a count against Shade when they got back to base. Poor little Earthborn.
He groped around for the girl, grabbed hold of her skinny arm and yanked her up by it. She squealed as he dragged her away. The ground felt like
it would shake itself apart.
A few metres down the tunnel he, Shade and the girl all collapsed together as the impact of several tonnes of rock hitting the ground behind them knocked them off their feet.
Tovel choked as he breathed in dust. ‘Nice work, Shade.
Were you tired of walking? Wanted to block off that tunnel on purpose?’
The girl glowered at him. ‘I’m glad this outfit’s quilted.’
‘Who the hell are you anyway?’ Shade suddenly aimed his gun at her head.
The girl looked up at him. She seemed frozen in fear. Tovel studied her properly: dark make-up around her eyes, a straight, pointed nose that had never seen close combat, the ludicrous yellow spacesuit... she was clearly no soldier.
Where the hell had she come from, and what the hell was she doing here?
Tovel gave Shade a look, warning him to ease off. Then he retreated down the tunnel and beckoned Shade to join him, out of the girl’s earshot.
‘Nice work,’ he said.
‘Wasted the droid, didn’t I?’
‘Did you?’ Tovel waved back at the blocked passageway.
‘And what about her? Now we can’t go check out her story.’
‘What story?’ Shade scoffed. ‘Blue lights? Incredible places?’
‘We’ll get more out of her,’ said Tovel, ‘if she thinks we trust her.’
Shade nodded slowly. ‘I guess so.’
‘Don’t leave me here,’ the girl called. She sounded pathetic.
‘No chance of that,’ Tovel called back as they marched back to rejoin her. ‘I think our Marshal’s going to be very interested to find you here. What’re you called?’
‘Polly. Now please, you don’t understand...’ The mysterious Polly got to her feet. ‘I was trying to tell you. There’s some sort of countdown going on, I’m sure of it.’ She regarded the blocked tunnel with a gloomy expression. ‘And now I can’t show you where it was!’
Tovel nodded ruefully, though he noticed Shade showed no signs of remorse. ‘What do you mean by a countdown?’
Polly gesticulated worriedly with her hands. ‘I... I got the feeling we haven’t very long.’
Shade looked like he was losing patience. ‘Long before what?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Polly, ‘but something’s about to happen!’
She was right; Haunt’s voice, low and concerned, broke in on their conversation. ‘Tovel, respond.’
‘Tovel here,’ he rapped into his wrist-comm. ‘Marshal, I was about to -’
‘Shade with you?’
‘Right here.’
‘Have either of you had contact with Joiks or Denni?’
Tovel swapped a quizzical glance with Shade. ‘No, Marshal.
But we’ve -’
Haunt cut him off. ‘Get yourselves back to the bullring.
We’ll meet you there. Out.’
‘Marshal, wait,’ Tovel said quickly. ‘We’ve had some action here. Clash with a droid.’
‘Hit status?’
‘Not confirmed. Rockfall came down on us. And something else. Seems we’ve got ourselves a civilian here.’
There was a pause before the voice came back as heavy as the long seconds that had passed. ‘A female civilian?’
Tovel looked at Polly. ‘Very.’
‘All right, watch her,’ Haunt instructed. ‘I’m coming to you, you can guide me through from the bullring. I’ll be in touch.’
She turned to Roba and Shel. ‘Come on,’ she said, with a lingering look round the cavernous control room, at the bodies on the dais and the corpse slumped in its chair. ‘We’re moving out.’
She led them out of the chamber, through the tunnel and into the echoing vaults beyond. In a few minutes they had reached the massive gold doors. Then Shel suddenly raised his hand, motioning them all to stop.
‘Vibration,’ he whispered. ‘In the ground, do you feel it?’
‘Don’t feel nothing,’ Roba reported, unimpressed.
‘He’s right; said Haunt. ‘And Tovel mentioned a rockfall.
This whole place could be unstable.’
The tremor increased. With it came a deep rumbling noise from somewhere far beneath them, before both died slowly away.
‘Makes sense,’ grunted Roba. ‘They’ve thrown everything else at us.’
Haunt looked daggers at the mass of tiny white dots on her scanner, and cursed. ‘If we could only pinpoint our location.’
Roba pointed to a set of doors in the rock. ‘Me and Frog came through there. Our tunnel led straight to it.’
‘Many of the passages must intersect,’ Shel remarked as they moved on. ‘If you knew where you were going I imagine you could navigate the tunnels quite swiftly.’
Haunt nodded. ‘The droids could have the whole place mapped out by now.’
They walked on in uneasy silence until they reached the bullring.
‘You two wait here as arranged,’ Haunt said, ‘let the others know what’s going on.’
‘Marshal; Shel acknowledged curtly.
‘I won’t be long.’ She activated her wrist-comm. ‘All right, Tovel. Tell me how I get to you.’
III
‘The ground gets steeper here,’ Denni warned Joiks. The rock sloped down and away into shadows. ‘Darker too.’
‘Want me to go first?’ Joiks mocked her.
‘No.’
‘Good. Don’t want you scoping my ass. Flake.’
‘Flake?’ Denni said softly.
‘Just thinking about what you said earlier.’ He chuckled.
‘Worried?’
He heard Denni scramble easily down the slope. The shadows got thicker, the darkness pressed in on him as he followed. He couldn’t keep his mind focused. What good would it do him to try it on with Denni now? If he’d reported her straight away, then fair enough, but...
Who cared?
He slipped his hand round her waist. ‘Don’t think about it,’
he whispered.
‘Shouldn’t that be my line?’
Denni was holding herself very still, acting casual. She didn’t pull away. She still needed his support.
He heard his voice, loud in the quiet tunnel. ‘It’s just bodies.’ In the blackness he sounded like a different person.
‘The sets don’t pick up bodies. Know how they work?’
Denni took a step forward, and he took it with her. ‘They’re powered by visual stimulus.’
‘So focus on the dark. Think of nothing.’ His breathing was getting shakier. ‘I done it loads of times. Sets don’t pick up a thing when you’ve nothing visual to focus on.’
Denni took a deep breath and released it in a single, stone-cold second. ‘Joiks,’ her voice slithered into his ears. ‘Let go of me.’
‘It’s a rush,’ Joiks urged her. ‘I’ll help you, you help me out, huh? We’re safe here in the dark. Nothing can creep up on us here.’
‘You reckon,’ said Denni. He felt her tense up.
IV
‘Don’t go so fast; Ben pleaded with the funny-looking frog-bird as she pushed them along the echoing tunnels that made up this place. ‘Can’t you see, the Doctor can’t keep up the pace!’
‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ the Doctor muttered, but he clearly had too little puff left to get really indignant.
‘All right,’ Frog said in her weird grating voice. ‘We rest for a minute, no more.’
Ben nodded. ‘Thanks.’
It wasn’t the nicest spot for a rest. Ben shivered, and only partly from the cold. This whole place was straight out of your worst nightmares. Dark, shadowy room followed dark, shadowy room, and God knew what could be lurking there.
Luckily for the moment it seemed to be just fleshy insects hopping about the walls, and swarming all over the slimy, glowing ceilings.
‘Fascinating,’ the Doctor observed, fingering some hanging strands of the slimy weed. ‘I wonder... has this been grown here by the architects of this place so that you can light your way... or so that
something else can see you approaching?’
He looked expectantly at Frog. She belched.
‘Tell me,’ the Doctor tried again more faintly, ‘Miss, er...
Frog...?’
‘Mel Narda. Sergeant.’ The boggle-eyes turned on Ben. ‘But yeah, call me Frog, honey,’ her voice buzzed and crackled.
‘Everyone else does.’
Asking why seemed as unnecessary as it was probably unwise. So Ben kept quiet while the Doctor got on with the big questions.
‘We’ve been travelling for some time,’ the Doctor said, ignoring her. ‘We’ve become a little out of touch. What can you tell us of the, ah, rebel Schirr, hmm?’
‘DeCaster and...’ the name eluded Ben.
‘The Ten-strong?’ Frog finished for him automatically, then smiled, apparently amused. ‘You never heard of the Empire’s most wanted?’
‘Indeed I’m afraid not. Remind me, from which planet do these ten terrorists hail?’
‘Idaho,’ Frog informed them, eyes trained on her watch.
‘Outer Empire.’
‘A planet called Idaho?’ Ben spluttered.
The Doctor ignored him, looked at Frog sharply. ‘The Earth annexed the Schirr planet?’
‘ Repatriated,’ she qualified with a chuckle that sounded like a rusty alarm clock going off. ‘Fifteen years ago. Standard procedure.’
‘Yes, of course it is, of course it is,’ the Doctor muttered.
‘And I suppose the Schirr didn’t wish to be so aggressively...
repatriated, hmm?’
Frog shrugged. ‘What we want and what we get, honey, we none of us got a say in.’
‘But DeCaster and his mates want a say, right?’ Ben chipped in. ‘Even so, ten blokes against an empire...?’
Frog shook her head. ‘Schirr got links with the Spooks.’
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘What links might these be?’
Frog shrugged. ‘Old, old links. Before the Spooks crept back to their cloud. Old, old magic. And ten’s all you need to make the big rituals work.’