Ten Little Aliens: 50th Anniversary Edition Read online

  ‘You seem a little worked up, Shadow,’ she went on.

  Shade didn’t see the point of arguing the point. ‘What if we’ve got no way off this rock?’

  ‘Haunt will find one.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You doubt it?’

  Shade closed his eyes. He didn’t want to doubt it. ‘And what about Denni? Do you reckon she’s dead like Joiks thinks?’

  Lindey shrugged. ‘Maybe we’ll find her while we’re checking out what else is left behind here.’

  ‘You don’t sound bothered.’

  ‘She grew up on Paris II, didn’t she? Worst cess-pit in Little Europe. She can handle herself here.’

  Shade didn’t respond. He hated Lindey for being so cool. She was always this way, whatever the spot. She’d earned her place here.

  ‘Poor Shadow.’

  She may have picked up on his self-pitying mood, but her voice was cold.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Always seems to happen to you, doesn’t it? Things getting out of hand. Going wrong.’

  She knows. Shade cleared his throat, made a big pointless show of picking which tunnel they might take as an alternative. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lindey.’

  ‘I think that sappy little girl likes you, you know,’ Lindey went on, her eyes wide and smiling. ‘She must find it so reassuring having a big brave soldier like you around. Someone who keeps his head while all around are losing theirs.’ The smile faded. ‘Someone who makes damn sure of it.’

  Shade couldn’t keep up eye-contact, and studied his palmset instead. ‘Seems there’s nothing beyond this rockfall.’ He tried to sound brisk and emotionless about it. ‘No ship. This is the end of the road.’

  ‘Maybe they’ll airlift you out again,’ Lindey whispered, her face in shadow. ‘Earthman.’

  Shade bore down on her angrily. ‘What the hell is all this, Lindey?’

  But she put her finger to her lips, shushed him, and walked off back the way they had come. ‘You know, I wanted you to get through this mission so badly.’ Her voice wasn’t teasing now. It was strained. ‘I wanted you to get merits, to earn your Elite placing. To feel like you’d actually made it, like you’d finally pushed the past behind you.’ She paused, enjoying herself. ‘Before I buried you with it.’

  ‘Lindey?’ Heart sinking, he strode up behind her, grabbed hold of her shoulder.

  She spun round, gun pulled and ready, and jammed it into his neck. ‘Off. Now.’ She sneered. ‘You’re not in the Royal Escort now, and I’m not just some petty officer in Pauper Fleet – Earthman. We’re equal. Elite, right?’

  Shade let go of her. She chuckled softly.

  ‘I know what you are.’ Lindey said simply. ‘And I know what I could be. So you’d better think of a few strings you can pull for me back on Earth. Or a few other people here might have to find out about you too.’

  Shade felt his temples throbbing, felt the shrapnel in his face bite at the little good skin left. ‘What are you going to do?’

  Lindey lowered the gun and tapped the palmset tucked into her belt. ‘If we ever get out of this… You’ll see.’ She blew him a kiss and turned away. ‘And then you’ll have to be very, very nice to me, my little Earthborn Shadow…’

  Shade watched her go, clenched his fists. ‘Will I,’ he muttered.

  IV

  Polly sighed. The Doctor and Tovel were digging about in the gossamer cables within the navigational console. Haunt was watching them, sullenly. Creben and Joiks were still waving little pieces of machinery around the place, looking for her magic door (Polly hoped they would fall through it and vanish, just as she had). Shel lingered by the grisly display of corpses, staring at them as if he were somehow communicating with them telepathically.

  The idea frightened Polly. She edged closer to Ben.

  ‘He’s a funny one, isn’t he,’ she whispered. ‘Shel, I mean. He acts more like a machine than a person.’

  ‘Confucius say, he inscrutable,’ Ben said cheerily. ‘Bet if we looked hard enough we’d find “Made in Taiwan” stamped on him somewhere.’

  Polly didn’t smile back. ‘That’s racist, Ben.’

  ‘Come on Pol, I didn’t mean nothing by it.’

  ‘No one ever means anything by it, but they still make the jokes all the same. Would you like to be treated like that?’

  Ben looked away, hurt. ‘We ain’t been treated so well by any of them in case you hadn’t noticed.’

  Polly spoke without thinking. ‘Adam’s all right.’

  ‘Adam?’ Ben didn’t look happy. ‘Oh, got you. Shade. The bloke with the face. Yeah, you and him seem to be getting on pretty well.’

  Polly sighed. Jealousy was so childish. ‘I don’t know why you’re so bothered. You and that froggy woman seem to be hitting it off quite well yourselves,’ she said, folding her arms.

  Ben didn’t say anything to the contrary. The rat.

  ‘Look, Duchess,’ Ben said finally. ‘We’re all stuck here, whizzing through space on some dirty great rock with a load of murdered black-magic criminals, a bunch of trigger-happy space marines and God knows what else. Let’s not fall out in the middle of this lot.’

  ‘We haven’t fallen out,’ Polly told him, and was rewarded with a broad grin. She lowered her voice. ‘You know what we were saying earlier, about cat people and dog people?’

  Ben nodded. ‘What do you make of this lot?’

  ‘Well, I suppose they should all be cats. Independent. Tough.’ Polly considered. ‘Shel’s a cat. Creben and Lindey too.’

  ‘Frog’s not one or the other. Well, she’s a frog, ain’t she!’ He paused. ‘Got to feel sorry for her.’

  Polly nodded, forced a smile. ‘Adam – Shade – is definitely a dog.’

  ‘And you feel sorry for him, right?’

  Polly nodded. ‘So we’re equal.’

  ‘Creben, Joiks,’ called Haunt. ‘Found anything yet?’ Both men shook their heads.

  ‘As if she needed to ask,’ Polly snorted. ‘Doesn’t she trust them to tell her?’

  ‘She’s just trying to keep them motivated, giving them something to do,’ said Ben. ‘Just ’cause they’ve got big guns don’t mean they’re not bricking it like the rest of us. If they feel like she’s counting on them, they feel better about themselves.’

  The thought hadn’t occurred to Polly. ‘I suppose that’s your Navy background talking.’ Then she sighed. ‘I really am like a fish out of water round here.’

  ‘Then I’d better watch out for you with all these cats about,’ Ben said, patting her hand. ‘Especially the big, bad Marshal Haunt.’

  Polly shook her head. ‘I’m not sure about her. Something in her eyes… She acts really tough, but I’ll bet she’s been hurt before. Hurt badly. A love affair that went wrong, or something.’

  ‘Female intuition, is it?’ Ben smirked.

  ‘She’s probably been a soldier forever, but it’s like she’s not here because she really wants to be… She just doesn’t have anywhere else to go.’

  Ben raised his eyebrows. ‘Getting a bit deep for me, Pol.’

  He looked quite relieved when a distraction came along in mutters and grumbles from the Doctor, as he struggled out of his spacesuit. Ben gave him a hand, while Tovel got on with pulling web-like filaments from out of the console. Soon the navy blue spacesuit was a shucked skin on the cavern floor, and the Doctor was resplendent again in his black frock coat, starched wing collar and cravat, somehow none the worse for wear.

  ‘Any luck finding where we’re going, Doctor?’ Polly asked.

  ‘I’m afraid not yet, my child.’

  ‘Only a matter of time though, thanks to those reducing equations of yours,’ said Tovel, and Polly could see he was impressed.

  The Doctor smiled wanly, but his face hardened as Shade and Lindey came marching back into the control room with Roba and Frog at their heels. As usual Lindey looked assured and collected. Shade, she noticed, looked less comfortable.


  ‘Half the bullring has collapsed,’ Lindey reported. ‘There’d be no way through to the ship, even if it was still here.’

  The temperature in the room seemed to fall by a couple of degrees. Polly looked longingly at the TARDIS. With the invisible barrier in place it was as out of reach as the soldiers’ spaceship.

  Haunt took the news stoically. ‘Then we sweep this place for droids. We kill anything that can kill us. Then we’ll find a way to signal back home. We’ll figure something out.’

  ‘Are we sure this isn’t part of the training simulation?’ asked Shade hopefully.

  No one replied.

  ‘We could do with finding Denni,’ Creben observed. ‘She might’ve learned something that could help us.’

  ‘She’s dead,’ Joiks muttered bitterly.

  Haunt overheard him. ‘Thanks to you, we don’t know that for certain.’ Joiks looked up, stung, but said nothing. ‘We don’t know anything at all,’ Haunt went on. ‘It’s time we did.’

  Now, as if under orders to accentuate the positive, there were murmurs of assent from the troops.

  Haunt turned back to Joiks. ‘Can you guide us back to where you lost Denni? That’ll be our starting place.’

  He nodded, to Haunt’s evident satisfaction.

  ‘All right, everyone, we’re moving out.’

  ‘Everyone?’ Polly squawked.

  Haunt turned to her grimly. ‘Everyone.’

  ‘Madam,’ protested the Doctor, ‘surely in light of what has happened here with the missing crystals and the vanishing body, someone should remain here, on guard?’

  ‘I have no one to spare,’ Haunt said flatly. ‘Besides, what’s to guard? The crystals are not in this room, and the corpse fell apart in some kind of power surge when the drives started up.’

  The Doctor looked between Haunt and Shel. ‘You put a good deal of faith in your adjutant’s judgement.’

  ‘We’re a team. One unit. All of us,’ Haunt said simply. Her gaze swept round the room. ‘If we’re going to survive, we have to act like one. So congratulations, old man. You and yours just joined the squad.’

  ‘Why do we have to go too?’ Polly asked.

  Haunt smiled coldly. ‘I want you where I can see you.’

  V

  Ben tramped along behind Joiks as he led them all off to where he had last seen Denni. The Doctor and Polly were separated from him by the mass of marching bodies, straggling at the back of the procession. Now and then he heard Frog buzz some kind of prompt to keep them moving, but whether threat or request, he wasn’t sure.

  The cold seaweedy cave smell of the asteroid now had the added niff of sweaty trooper. It seemed to be driving the white fleas crazy. They were swarming over the troopers, jumping like ticks in their hair, over their skin, everywhere. The light seemed to shift as they walked along; Ben worked out this was because the weed on the ceilings – fleaweed, he would call it – grew in uneven clumps in these tunnels, rather than the even covering of those closer to the complex.

  Why would that be, Ben wondered. What had the Doctor said? ‘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?’

  Maybe now that something else didn’t want them to see it coming.

  ‘It was here,’ Joiks said, pausing at the twisted mouth of yet another dank tunnel. ‘It slopes down and gets pitch black.’

  ‘All right,’ Haunt said, pushing to the front of the group. ‘We go inside in groups of three. Joiks, take Creben and Frog in there. Tovel, Roba, take the boy here.’

  Ben felt his heart beat a little faster. ‘I should go with Polly,’ he said.

  Haunt didn’t even bother to look at him. ‘The girl can go with Lindey and Shade. Shel and me will take the old man.’

  Ben turned to Roba and Tovel. Their lack of enthusiasm suggested that if they’d been picking teams, he might have wound up somewhere else.

  ‘Come on then, fellas,’ he said briskly, marching up to Roba with a confidence he didn’t feel. ‘You’ve got a spare gun there, ain’t ya? Lend us it, will you?’

  Roba looked down at him, sneering. ‘You’re seriously asking me to lend you my weapon?’

  Ben pulled himself up to his full height, and even then he was barely level with Roba’s shoulder. ‘All right, give us it, then.’

  Roba slowly pulled the chunky pistol from its holster and levelled it at Ben’s chest. ‘To mess with me,’ he said quietly, ‘you’re either stupid, or else you’ve got some guts.’

  ‘Don’t reckon I’m the brightest in the class,’ Ben said, trying to keep his voice steady. ‘But I reckon I got plenty of guts.’ He put his hand round the gun barrel and gently pushed it aside a fraction. ‘And if it’s the same to you, I’d like them to stay inside my skin. All right?’

  Roba’s eyes narrowed, but soon his teeth bared in a wolf-like grin. He opened his palm and allowed Ben to take the gun with sweaty fingers.

  ‘Maybe we could use a man your size around,’ Roba told him, slapping down the slab of his hand on Ben’s shoulder. ‘You can watch my ankles. Let me know if anything’s coming to chew ’em. OK?’

  ‘You got a deal, mate.’

  Creben and Frog followed Joiks into the tunnel, weapons trained dead ahead of them.

  ‘Count to ten,’ Haunt instructed them. ‘Then move in after them.’

  ‘I’ll go in first,’ Tovel volunteered. ‘Ben, you follow me. Then Roba.’

  Ben nodded, and looked over his shoulder at Polly down the dim passage. She was watching him forlornly, peeping over Shade’s shoulder. He winked at her, but wasn’t sure if she’d see. The Doctor standing by Shel about ten feet away, inclined his head. His chest was puffed up, as if with pride.

  His fingers flexing around the unfamiliar contours of the gun handle, Ben strode after Tovel into the dark, dripping mouth of the tunnel.

  *

  VI

  Polly found the darkness almost overpowering. The troopers’ torchlight seemed swallowed by it. Occasionally she glimpsed movement in it, a faint flare on a rifle butt, a moving leg or swinging arm. Her imagination filled in the gaps, conjured monsters out of the dark for her to thread her way through. The ground was wet and slippery with scree. She clung on to Shade’s arm for support.

  ‘The path splits into three.’ Creben sounded as casual as always, even here.

  ‘Me and Denni never got this far,’ said Joiks.

  ‘Test your wrist-comms,’ Haunt snapped. ‘I couldn’t reach you and Denni before.’

  The squad did as she asked, and everyone seemed satisfied.

  ‘Evidently some sort of energy-source was interfering with your transmissions,’ said the Doctor. ‘The drives, powering up, perhaps.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Haunt didn’t sound interested. ‘Joiks, Creben, Frog, push on to the left. ‘Tovel, your group follow them. We’ll take the middle. Shade the right.’

  Polly was impressed by her swift decision making, until it dawned on her that since no one knew where they were going, it hardly mattered who went where.

  Except that anything could be waiting, silently, down one of these dark passages.

  Footsteps crunched off into the darkness.

  ‘Here we go then,’ said Shade. He didn’t sound much happier about it than Polly did, and she wasn’t sure whether to feel consoled or more frightened still.

  Polly stifled a cry as something pushed past her into the tunnel. It was Lindey.

  ‘I’ll go in first, Shadow. I don’t like the thought of you watching out for me.’ She paused, squinted back into the spotlight of Shade’s torch beam. ‘Not after what you did.’

  Still holding on to Shade’s sleeve, Polly felt the man start to tremble. From the shaky hiss of his breathing, it wasn’t with anger, but with fear.

  He pulled his arm away from her, brusquely. Then he followed Lindey into the tunnel.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Polly muttered to herself. As she went to follow the
m, the toe of her boot knocked against something. She cried out.

  Shade spun round, gun raised. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Shine your light here,’ she whispered, tapping the protruding object with her toe.

  It was a little pile of rocks.

  ‘That’s mine!’ Polly breathed. ‘My marker. I must’ve come this way.’ She frowned. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t so dark before.’ She peered at the little heap of rocks. Beside it was one much larger. ‘Here. There’s been some sort of subsidence, the tunnel I went through has been sealed off.’ She paused. ‘I think that weird place with the blue light and the countdown is on the other side of this rockfall.’

  ‘Come on,’ Shade said. He sounded preoccupied. ‘I mustn’t let Lindey get too far ahead.’

  Polly shrugged but gave no argument. Their crunching footsteps set a mournful tempo as they set off after her.

  ‘Have you known her long?’ Polly asked tentatively.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Shade said with a sideways glance.

  ‘Nothing. I just wondered. With you being a team and all.’

  ‘Well, then, no. I haven’t known her long. I haven’t known a lot of this crowd long. We’re soldiers. What’s to know? We fight till one day we die.’

  When Lindey’s scream tore through the blackness Polly thought her heart would give out.

  There was movement in the dark. Now Shade gripped her arm, as if not wanting her to run away and leave him.

  There was a heavy rushing noise, a pressure in her ears, and Polly’s perceptions seemed to skew. She glimpsed something in Shade’s torch beam: some grotesque, squat little figure, then a pale face falling away into the darkness like a stone down a well as Lindey, still screaming, was snatched away at unnatural, frightening speed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS

  I

  ‘WE’VE GOT TO help her!’ Polly shouted, Lindey’s screams still ringing in her ears.

  Shade raised his wrist to his lips. For a few moments he just breathed, deeply and shakily, before speaking. ‘Marshal Haunt. Have lost Lindey.’

  There was nothing but static.

  ‘Oh no,’ murmured Polly.

  ‘Marshal Haunt,’ Shade repeated. ‘Respond.’