Ten Little Aliens Page 7

  ‘Rituals, not warfare?’ the Doctor asked, eyes gleaming now with interest.

  ‘People die just the same.’ She raised her gun, suddenly cold and threatening. ‘Frog don’t talk too much to prisoners, honey. Break time’s over. Get moving.’

  They did; through a mighty set of doors set into the rock, along a winding, narrow tunnel, on to a large cave riddled with passages.

  Then they felt the first tremor.

  ‘Seismic activity on a planetoid as small as this?’ the Doctor wondered aloud. His expression suggested he didn’t find this likely.

  The second tremor sent them staggering into the wall.

  ‘Getting worse!’ Ben shouted.

  ‘Soon have you tucked up tight,’ Frog told him. ‘Here’s the dropzone.’ And she herded the two of them roughly into a circular chamber, lit with a wide blue spotlight shining down from high above. While the beam was bright and concentrated, it cast the rest of the chamber into pitch blackness. Two flexible metal ladders snaked down the ray of light.

  ‘I imagine those lead through the asteroid’s mantle and back up to the docked ship,’ the Doctor told Ben.

  ‘But we can’t just go and leave Polly and the TARDIS

  behind!’ Ben hissed back, panic rising. The ground trembled beneath him once again as if in sympathy.

  ‘Get climbing,’ Frog told them.

  The Doctor looked outraged. ‘Climb up there? At my age?

  Preposterous, madam!’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ben added, you can’t expect an old geezer to -’

  But Frog wasn’t mucking about. She leapt nimbly into the light and caught hold of the ladder. The strength of the light obliterated most of her form, turned her into a pin-man as she scaled a few rungs. She swung out on the ladder, winked at Ben, caught hold of the quilted neckline of the Doctor’s spacesuit with one hand, and hauled him off the ground.

  The Doctor squawked with indignation as he dangled precariously from Frog’s grip. Ben stared in disbelief.

  Incredibly, the woman was scaling the ladder and carrying the Doctor with her.

  ‘Ere, wait a minute!’ yelled Ben.

  ‘Climb the other ladder or I drop him,’ Frog called teasingly.

  A fresh tremor nearly knocked Ben to his knees, but he recovered and ran into the light without a second thought. A moment later he was clambering up after them. ‘Hang on, Doctor,’ he yelled, squinting into the blue radiance at the hazy figures above. He could hear grunts of exertion from Frog, the furious fussings of the old boy as he demanded to be released: ‘Madam, unhand me at once!’

  Then Ben cried out as something small and sharp smacked into his forehead. It was followed a few seconds later by some smaller stinging missiles and a shower of dust.

  ‘Wait!’ he shouted, blinking grit from his eyes, disorientated by the blinding light. ‘Frog, them tremors... they must be bringing down a rockfall or something!’

  V

  Polly sighed. Roaming the tunnels had been scary, but at least she might’ve found Ben and the Doctor. Now she was going nowhere: prisoner of space soldiers, stuck inside a big rock.

  Tovel, the bigger and dishier of the two men, mumbled directions into his sleeve to their marshal. The one called Shade pointed his gun at her. There was something wrong with his face. It was peppered with dark markings, like black seeds were trying to sprout from under his skin. The region around his eyes seemed the worst affected, though the eyes themselves glinted a brilliant green.

  ‘You want to know what’s wrong with my face,’ Shade remarked. His voice was hoarse.

  ‘No!’ Polly felt herself blushing. ‘I’m just trying to keep my eyes off your gun, that’s all.’

  Shade shrugged and smiled. ‘It’s OK. I don’t mind: His voice kept the same gravelly tone, and she realised he must always sound that way. Under different circumstances it might be quite sexy. I was clearing some kids out of a war zone. There was this mine...’ He shrugged. ‘I had to shield the children. My face caught a load of the shrapnel.’

  Polly winced. ‘Were you all right?’

  They had to stick me in a cryo-tank. Saved my life. But they froze the damage in with me.’ He raised his free hand, felt the little bumps and ridges. ‘The shrapnel’s a part of me now. They offered me a new face entirely but I decided to stick with the old one. Every day... I never forget the scum that did this to me.’

  ‘You were in a war, then?’ she asked.

  ‘This was the big Schirr raid, two years ago,’ Shade said casually. ‘DeCaster and his wannabe Morphieans, they tried to take out the Pentagon sub-router on New Jersey.’

  ‘New Jersey?’ Polly seized upon about the only words she’d understood. ‘New Jersey in the United States?’

  Shade stared at her now like she was mad. ‘No.’

  Polly jumped as a burly, hard-faced woman strode round the corner. Armed to the teeth, dressed in the same futuristic combat fatigues as Tovel and Shade, this could only be their Marshal Haunt. The woman fixed Polly in her sights and zeroed in without hesitation.

  ‘So.’ Haunt swung up her gun and nudged it against Polly’s temple. Polly looked beseechingly at Shade. He looked on, stoically; she supposed he was hardly likely to go up against his superior officer over her. ‘Here you are, just like your friends said. I suppose it’s been you leaving little markers at the tunnel mouths?’

  You’ve met the Doctor and Ben?’ Polly said, trying not to whimper. ‘Are they all right?’

  Haunt snorted. ‘I don’t know what they are.’ The gun barrel was digging into Polly’s head so hard she felt her skull would crack. ‘Perhaps you could tell me?’

  Polly wished the ground would swallow her up. She scrunched up her eyes tightly as she tried to think up an answer that might satisfy this maniac.

  ‘We’ve... we’ve been travelling,’ she said.

  ‘Through the Morphiean Quadrant?’ Tovel looked at her suspiciously.

  ‘She and her friends here claim they’re refugees,’ Haunt told her soldiers.

  ‘That’s what I meant!’ said Polly. ‘Please, could you take me to them?’

  Suddenly the ground beneath her started to shudder. Polly cancelled her earlier wish.

  ‘We should move,’ Tovel warned. He shot a look at Shade.

  ‘We must’ve weakened this whole area with all that firepower.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel like a tremor.’ Haunt looked around her, suspicious, as if the answer to the puzzle was somehow staring her in the face, mocking her.

  The tremors, meanwhile, seemed to be getting worse.

  Cracks and fissures were opening in the walls and the roof.

  Streams of black choking dust seeped from them. Polly wondered how far she’d get if she tried to make a run for it past Haunt, and decided she’d rather take her chances with falling boulders.

  Haunt’s gaze settled on Tovel. ‘What do you make of it?’

  ‘Vibration.’ His head was cocked slightly to one side, as if listening to something none of them could hear. ‘Like something powering-up.’

  ‘The countdown,’ breathed Polly. ‘Didn’t I tell you something was going to happen!’

  Haunt ignored her. ‘All right, let’s join the others.’ She looked Polly up and down. ‘I can see I’m not going to learn anything from you.’

  How about the importance of moisturiser and dieting for starters, you bullying bitch, thought Polly. If only she could be safe with Ben back in the TARDIS, listening to the engines grind and grate, leaving this horrible place far behind them...

  A thought struck her as she was shoved along the passage in the direction Haunt had come from. These tremors,’ she said, turning to face them. ‘I know what they remind me of.’

  ‘What?’ asked Haunt, looking as if she already regretted asking.

  ‘Our spaceship,’ Polly said, ‘when it’s getting ready for takeoff. Only a thousand times stronger.’

  A spaceship?’ Shade echoed in disbelief. Inside an asteroid?’

  �
��It’s not so strange, is it?’ Tovel muttered, a surprise ally.

  ‘That’s where ours is.’

  Haunt, for her part, said nothing. But before Polly was pushed onwards unsteadily through the rumbling tunnel, she at least had the satisfaction of seeing the marshal’s face darken into sudden concern.

  VI

  Ben hung on for dear life as his ladder bucked and almost threw him clear. There was a terrible splitting sound from somewhere above him, and then a shadow fell swiftly over him. Ben twisted and swung on his ladder as a jagged piece of slate the size of a dinner tray hurtled past.

  ‘Doctor!’ yelled Ben desperately as he peered up into the brilliant light, and as more and more rock fragments started raining down around him. He felt the ladder lurch sickeningly. A spindly figure was suddenly clinging to one of the rungs above him, the Doctor, it had to be, Frog had passed him over. But then a boot was pressing down hard on Ben’s fingers. He gasped and tried to pull them free. ‘Get off!’

  he yelled.

  ‘I’m sorry, my boy.’ The Doctor’s confused voice floated down with a cloud of rock dust. ‘I... I didn’t see you...’

  The Doctor’s boot lifted, and Ben felt his fingers throb, as if about to swell to cartoonish proportions. He ignored the pain, gripped the sides of the rope ladder and slid smoothly down.

  But when he hit the bottom he found it was like standing on deck in a stormy sea. The ground bucked beneath him. A large boulder tore down from above and pounded into the ground beside him, inches from his foot. He was choking on dust, it was everywhere. The shaft of blue light turned it into a dense luminous fog.

  ‘It’s an earthquake, Doctor!’ he yelled.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ The Doctor was crawling, painfully slowly, down the ladder, as showers of pebbles rained down around him. Afraid a more serious rockfall was likely, Ben staggered forward and tried to lift the Doctor clear.

  ‘Put me down, young man,’ the Doctor thundered. He disentangled himself from Ben’s grip. ‘I will not be carted about by all and sundry like a sack of potatoes!’

  Ben held up his hands in meek apology.

  ‘Where is our captor?’ the Doctor asked, his lined face damp with perspiration. ‘She manhandled me on to your ladder, our own was starting to give way.’

  Together, trying to keep their balance like surfers riding a wave, they peered about.

  ‘There!’ Ben shouted. Frog was on all fours, dazed, struggling for breath. She must’ve fallen, winded herself.

  ‘Look out, Ben!’ the Doctor called back. Grit and pebbles fell like hail from the rocky sky above them. It couldn’t be long now before the entire place came crashing down on top of them, and Haunt’s ship with it.

  Ben dashed forward and crouched beside Frog. ‘Come on!’

  he yelled at her over the sound of the splitting earth, and took her arm. Her muscles felt like steel. She struggled against him, dived forwards and butted him in the stomach.

  Caught by surprise, Ben folded up and lay gasping beside her.

  ‘You daft cow,’ he gasped in disbelief, ‘I was trying to help you!’

  Frog stared blankly at him. Blood was dripping freely from her nose over her mouth and chin, her teeth were stained gory red. ‘Help me?’

  ‘Give over.’ Recovering, Ben clambered up and took her arm again, helping her up. This time she didn’t argue, resting her weight on him as they staggered away to the edge of the drop zone where the Doctor was waiting anxiously for them. More and more rubble was crashing down from on high. The blinding beam of light had been pulverised to a feeble glow.

  Frog wiped the back of her hand across her bloody face and looked up at Ben. ‘ Why’d you help me?’

  Ben looked away, embarrassed. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

  ‘You could’ve escaped,’ Frog said. Then she showed her teeth in a gory smile. ‘Could’ve tried to, anyway.’

  ‘We couldn’t leave you to die,’ the Doctor muttered.

  ‘Well, you’re still my prisoners,’ Frog warned them, still dabbing at her nose with her palm. ‘When this quake dies down we go straight back up them ladders.’

  ‘You’re joking!’ Ben angrily gestured to the rumbling drop zone. ‘You want that little lot on top of you?’

  Frog shrugged. ‘The ship’ll be safe. It has to be.’

  ‘Even if that proves true, we have no way of getting to it,’

  the Doctor said tetchily. ‘I fear the control room will be the only place of safety. This is no natural earthquake, of that I am sure. It’s... that is to say...’ His face clouded, and Ben watched him struggle for words that were lost to him like an actor drying up on stage. ‘It’s something else,’ he concluded lamely.

  ‘We’ll join the others,’ Frog decided. ‘And I don’t think the marshal’s gonna to be too glad to see you...’

  As she walked off, Ben noticed she was limping slightly.

  There was a vivid gash in her calf where a rock or something had ripped through her suit, but it looked like the fabric was digging in hard around the wound.

  ‘You all right?’ he asked. ‘You’ve hurt your leg.’

  ‘Ain’t you a bleeding heart,’ Frog muttered. ‘The suit’s taking care of it.’

  The Doctor perked up automatically. ‘Intelligent armour,’

  he told Ben. ‘If the soldier is wounded, the fabric compresses to staunch any bleeding.’

  Frog only grunted as she herded them both along the tunnels. ‘Gotta get back to Haunt,’ she warbled. Gotta get back.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Ben complained over his shoulder as Frog’s rifle butt dug into his spine for the tenth time, forcing him along the tunnel. ‘We’re moving as fast as we can.’

  She didn’t meet his gaze, instead staring suspiciously all around them. The tremors had clearly shaken her in more ways than one. ‘Gotta get back,’ she said again.

  ‘As I’ve told you already, Miss Frog,’ said the Doctor, marching along beside Ben. ‘You will be showing your Marshal considerable initiative if you’ll just take us back to the control centre. I must examine the instruments there.’

  Frog didn’t answer, so Ben did. ‘Thought everything was dead in there.’

  ‘Dormant, perhaps,’ the Doctor muttered. He looked sweaty and pale-faced. ‘A sleeping giant.’

  ‘What,’ said Ben puzzled, ‘and we’ve gone and woken ‘im up-?’

  Even as he spoke something pushed out from an opening in the tunnel wall beside him, grabbing for his throat.

  Ben yelped in surprise. His attacker spun him round. It was a big bloke, with a broken nose and wild dark eyes, wearing a headband like Frog’s and yelling in his face.

  Over the din and the pressure in his ears he heard the Doctor ordering Frog to do something, and the harsh rattle of Frog shouting. But she wasn’t warning Ben’s attacker off.

  She sounded like she was trying to calm the bloke down, as best as she could with her cartoon accent.

  When that didn’t work, she kicked the man in the knackers. He collapsed backwards, falling on his kit bag.

  ‘Strewth,’ Ben gasped, whooping down lungfuls of the dank air. ‘Wish you’d kept your mouth shut about them giants, Doctor.’

  The Doctor didn’t respond, crouching arthritically over the groaning man on the floor. ‘Who is this fellow?’

  ‘Just Joiks,’ Frog replied. Ben got the impression that belting the man in the jewels hadn’t been much of a chore.

  Frog gestured the Doctor out of the way with her rifle. ‘What’s up, Joiks? This place made you crazy?’

  ‘Denni,’ Joiks muttered. ‘She was attacked, in the dark.

  Taken away.’

  Ben thought the bloke sounded a bit South African. He recalled now that Joiks and Denni were the two Haunt hadn’t been able to contact.

  ‘I reckon she’s dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ Frog’s bulging eyes narrowed.

  ‘Something came at us in the dark. I tried to hold on to her, but whoever it was just snatch
ed her away.’ Joiks glowered up at Ben. ‘Must’ve been this one. What did you do with her?’

  ‘I ain’t done nothing to no one since I got here!’ Ben protested.

  Frog pulled Joiks back to his feet. You sure she’s dead?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Joiks said, apparently without irony.

  ‘Try “maybe not”,’ Frog said flatly. ‘Whatever happened to Denni, it wasn’t either of these two. They were with me.’

  Joiks looked at her like she was mad. Then he scowled at Ben and the Doctor and clenched his big fists. ‘Who the hell are “these two”, anyway?’

  ‘These three, you mean.’

  Ben shut his eyes and groaned. ‘Terrific,’ he muttered.

  ‘Marshal Misery’s come back to haunt us.’

  Her words sank in. Three?

  ‘Ben! Doctor!’

  Now Ben spun round in disbelief. Stood bright and beaming next to Haunt was Polly. She was flanked by a right array of bruisers, and her daffodil-bright spacesuit was covered in dirt, but that aside she looked perfect as ever. He rushed to bundle her up into his arms, and Polly ran forward to meet him, managing to snag the Doctor into the clumsy embrace as well.

  Ben gently pulled away from Polly. ‘Good to see you.’

  ‘What happened, my child?’ the Doctor asked.

  But before Polly could speak, Haunt put a gun to her head, with a look that warned her to keep quiet. ‘Frog, why aren’t these two locked up in the ship?’ Ben wasn’t sure it was possible for anyone to look more peed off than she was.

  While Frog started to explain, Ben took in the figures lined up behind her. He was definitely feeling like the odd man out around here. Maybe he should start standing on tiptoes. The two soldiers who’d marched her along with Haunt looked the type you wouldn’t want to tangle with. One of them seemed to have weird tribal markings all over his face, which made his otherwise undistinguished features far more formidable.

  Behind them stood Roba and Shel and two more soldiers, a stocky, sly-looking man and a thin girl who would’ve been dead tasty if someone hadn’t tried to cut her red hair with a lawnmower. All of them carried backpacks and wore the weird headbands.