Ten Little Aliens

by Stephen Cole

  ‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘No one is killing anybody. We are a team. One unit.’

  ‘One unit?’ Joiks spluttered. ‘Denni and Lindey, dead. Shel off his head, Shade with his face cracked open, Frog not even human no more... We’re in pieces! Don’t you see that?’

  ‘I know what I see.’ Haunt’s eyes locked on to his own.

  ‘Someone so scared he can’t even think. Can’t even start to think this all out. You know, you’re funny, Joiks. You want to quit, is that it? Go back to the ship and go home? Well guess what...’ She gasped suddenly, doubled up in pain. Everyone waited for the pain to subside, watched expectantly, in an uncomfortable, funereal silence. It was like waiting for the last words of someone about to die.

  ‘You’re all each other’s got,’ Haunt ground out at last.

  ‘Tovel, you’re a good pilot. Turn this thing around. Before...

  Before…’

  Haunt’s eyes closed and she slumped forwards across the mattress.

  When no one else moved, Polly scrambled over to help her back into a lying position. Haunt’s forehead was scorching hot. She seemed short of breath, panting like she was going to be sick. The lump below her rib cage was distended so far the skin was white now under the pressure, seeping a clear fluid.

  Polly felt all eyes on her. ‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘I think she’s going to die.’

  Frog picked her moment well. When she stamped down hard on Joiks’s foot she caught him completely by surprise.

  His shriek of pain died when she jabbed an elbow back into his stomach, turned, and punched him so hard he almost flew backwards, crashing into one of the consoles. He lay still at its base, his eyes closed. Roba lunged for her but Frog ducked past him, sprinting for the doorway.

  She never made it. Tovel raised his gun and fired. With a high-pitched electronic squawk, Frog went down hard on the floor.

  ‘You killed her!’ Polly yelled. Haunt started and stirred, her bloodshot eyes flickered open for a second. Then she sank back.

  ‘I only stunned her,’ Tovel retorted. ‘Now if everyone will just calm down so we can think... Roba, bring Frog over here.

  Creben, see to Joiks.’

  Polly watched a murderous expression flit across Creben’s face at the instruction before he turned to obey.

  Roba scooped up Frog from the floor, but he held her away from his body, like he didn’t want to catch whatever it was she had. Tovel pulled out one of the magic sweets from his pocket and threw it down beside Polly. She jumped as it instantly snapped into another full size mattress.

  Roba dumped Frog down on it. ‘Getting like a regular sick bay in here,’ he grumbled.

  Tovel eyed the unconscious Joiks as Creben dragged him past by his feet. ‘More like a crèche,’ he muttered.

  ‘Doctor,’ Polly gasped. ‘Come quickly.’

  Ben came too. He wrinkled his nose. ‘Cor, dear, what’s all that!’

  A brown milky fluid was oozing from the lump in Haunt’s side.

  ‘Is...’Polly tried not to be squeamish. ‘Is that the tumour?’

  ‘Yes,’ breathed the Doctor, as he arrived beside them and looked down at Haunt. ‘The malignancy has been broken down, rejected through the pores in the skin...’ He gave a dry chuckle. ‘It’s quite ironic of course, but this process may well have saved her life in the long term.’

  ‘How long is long,’ Ben reflected moodily.

  ‘That countdown I saw,’ Polly recalled. ‘It ticked down to us taking off... I wonder if it’s ticking down now to wherever we’re due to arrive?’

  Tovel had rejoined them. ‘That blue light, yes... That and machinery of some kind, you said.’

  The Doctor considered. ‘It sounds like some kind of engine room, wouldn’t you say?’

  Tovel nodded and looked at Polly. ‘And you saw someone there?’

  ‘I think so,’ she said self-consciously, hoping people weren’t about to depend on the information.

  ‘We need to check it out,’ Tovel decided. ‘Short of searching this entire asteroid for some sign of Shel, it’s about the only positive thing we can do.’

  Creben rejoined them, having laid Joiks down beside Shade. ‘I agree. Having an achievable goal is better than just searching aimlessly.’

  Roba didn’t look convinced. ‘And what if we run into more of them stone things out there .’

  The Doctor looked thoughtful. ‘We must attempt to communicate with them.’

  ‘You ain’t seen them, Doctor,’ Ben said quietly. ‘Don’t reckon talking’s on their mind.’

  ‘If they meant to harm us now, why have they not followed us here? To attack us in our quite considerable disarray, hmm?’

  ‘Well, even if they don’t,’ said Polly, ‘what about Shel? He’s still out there, and he nearly killed you.’

  ‘We will take all the precautions we can, I promise you, Polly,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘Hang on,’ said Ben. He didn’t sound too happy. ‘We? You mean you’re coming with us?’

  ‘Of course I am, my boy.’

  ‘Hey, wait,’ Roba scowled. ‘Thought you were gonna fix up Frog?’

  ‘By instigating this plan, I hope to,’ the Doctor said tetchily.

  ‘And I suggest we attempt to wake Mr Joiks, also. The area is blocked off by a rockfall, and we shall need his strength.’

  There was a groan from the other side of the room, right on cue.

  ‘Let’s hope Frog knocked some sense into him,’ said Ben.

  ‘Indeed, yes. In any case, the rockfall... Once manual labour has cleared that, and the propulsion systems, as we hope them to be, revealed...’ The Doctor tapped his head and chortled to himself. ‘Then the mind must be put to good use in sabotaging them, hmm?’

  Tovel saw what he was getting at. ‘We can’t steer without the crystals, but we can stop ourselves before we arrive!’

  ‘Precisely,’ said the Doctor.

  Creben shrugged. ‘We might buy some time.’

  ‘And halt the malign influence affecting your friend here,’

  the Doctor said to Roba, patting Frog on the arm. ‘Before it strikes any more of us. Driving out impurities... and yet...’ He trailed away, lost in his thoughts.

  ‘What about Pol?’ Ben demanded.

  Polly had been asking herself the selfsame question. ‘I suppose I should stay here,’ she volunteered, with a sick feeling in her stomach. ‘Look after the wounded.’

  ‘I believe that will be safest,’ the Doctor said, smiling at her.

  Polly looked down at Frog’s unconscious body, and didn’t answer.

  ‘What if one of them bodies goes walkabout again?’ asked Ben.

  The Doctor considered. ‘Well, we came to no harm the last time the phenomenon occurred.’

  ‘That was then!’ Ben retorted. ‘And in case you’d forgotten, there’s still a secret doorway into this place that we don’t know about.’

  ‘We searched everywhere,’ Creben told him. ‘Found nothing.’

  ‘Well how come Polly vanished then, eh? Went flying through the wall I suppose, did she?’

  Look, I can’t come with you,’ Polly said flatly. I can’t just leave Shade and Haunt here alone, can I? Or Frog.’

  ‘Maybe I should stay,’ said Ben.

  Yes please, Polly thought to herself, but kept her face carefully neutral.

  ‘The sooner we clear a path, the sooner we can return,’ said Creben.

  There were nods of assent from the others. Polly forced a smile. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Shade’s injuries are healing fast,’ Creben added. Polly frowned; she found that hard to imagine.

  ‘When he wakes up, he’ll be protection for you. Plus you’ll be barricaded in, Polly,’ Tovel assured her.

  Ben didn’t look happy. ‘You couldn’t stop a determined ferret with that!’

  ‘I’ll be fine’, she told him again, more firmly. ‘Go. Go, and hurry back.’

  Ben sighed, then forced a smile himself. ‘Have t
he kettle on for us when we get back, eh?’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘And the best china, right?’

  ‘Then it is settled.’ The Doctor looked benignly around.

  ‘Shall I lead the way?’

  ‘Don’t push it, Doctor,’ Tovel told him. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

  II

  Haunt forced her eyes open. She stared straight up at the mirrors pressed into the ceiling, high, high above. No. She didn’t want to see herself, to see what was happening to her.

  She heard the swift clatter of troops marching out of the room. Right now she couldn’t imagine what it would be like, to feel so healthy, so strong again. The mirrors reflected gleams of light from the high golden trellises into her watery eyes. She looked to her side instead, but she couldn’t focus.

  Maybe she was falling to fever, maybe to drugs, but everything was starting to distort.

  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 Umpire 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 bad 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. ‘No
w 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,’