Doctor Who_ Ten Little Aliens Part 4

But after a few minutes, the tunnel was becoming lighter, she was sure of it.

She checked with Shel, who didn't answer until he'd taken an environment scan. Exactly by the book as usual.

He nodded at last. 'Luminescence has increased by over five per cent.'

'Source?'

'Not known, Marshal.'

Something ahead of them, high up above them, glistened silver in Haunt's torchbeam. She raised her gun.

'What is it, Shel?'

Shel marched over to the side of the tunnel. His own light showed a damp, glistening mora.s.s of flat, slab-like leaves edging down the walls from the stone ceilings.

'Some kind of climbing plant is growing here, Marshal,' he reported. 'The leaves have some slight luminous property.'

'Nice to know we're not being left entirely in the dark.'

She moved off down the dank corridor in the rock.

She only stopped when she and Shel came up against a set of ornately carved doors that appeared to have been made from gold.

They swung open soundlessly as if awaiting Haunt's touch.

The s.p.a.ce beyond was darker, but just as silent.

Shel was looking at her, uneasily. Questioningly.

Haunt nodded. 'We go in.'

Gripping their guns, Marshal Haunt and her adjutant moved cautiously through the doorway.

V.

'So where are we, Doctor?' asked Ben as the demented grinding and wailing of the TARDIS landing motors gradually died away.

'I know where we are,' the Doctor announced, 'but I'm afraid I cannot pinpoint our location within that district.' He was still playing with his switches, but vaguely, distractedly now. The way Ben's dad used to try his luck fixing the family motor; when all else failed, fiddling with bits of engine he didn't understand, just in case one of them magically started the car.

Polly sighed. 'Doctor, are you saying that you know we might be on Earth, say, but that you don't know if we're in Africa or Timbuktu?'

Very neatly put, Polly, yes.' The Doctor bestowed a warm smile on her. 'Except, I'm afraid, we're definitely in a galaxy very distant from the Earth's. Very distant indeed.'

'That narrows it down then,' Ben remarked.

The Doctor didn't find the comment facetious. 'Quite so, my boy, quite so. And we have landed inside a structure of some kind, of that I am sure. The temperature is very cold... and there's no air, either. A vacuum.' He looked up, deep in thought, tapping his chin. 'An asteroid perhaps, too small to retain an atmosphere?'

Polly turned up her long straight nose. 'Sounds like fun.'

'Well, it will be a good opportunity to field test the s.p.a.cesuits. I've had them in storage for some time.'

Ben frowned. 's.p.a.cesuits?' He couldn't imagine the Doctor in full Yuri Gagarin gear.

'Oh yes, the TARDIS is very well equipped, you know.' He chuckled and turned to Polly. 'And they come in a range of colours, my dear.'

Polly clapped her hands. 'Fab!'

'But we don't know if it's even safe out there,' Ben protested.

'Don't fuss, my boy,' said the Doctor. 'I must take some readings, some measurements for the log... it shouldn't take us very long...'

VI.

Haunt turned to Shel. 'Is all this part of the simulation?'

Shel stared blankly back at her.

'You programmed the tactical computers, fed through the droids' orders. You must know something about the testing ground.'

'The location was selected entirely by Pentagon Central,'

Shel stated. 'Were I to be given any advance knowledge of the simulation, it would be rendered less effective. I know as much as you do.' He paused. 'However, it seems to me that certain aspects of the architectural style would suggest a Schirr influence.'

Haunt nodded. 'Go on.'

Shel shrugged. 'Ruins found and reconstructed after the destruction of the northern continents share several of the features we have observed here.'

The golden doors led onto a corridor, and were flanked by a set of large bronze double doors; neither of which they had been able to open. The corridor came to a kind of hall hollowed from the slates and silts of the asteroid's mantle, palatial both in size and decoration, like some kind of ancient tomb for long-dead kings. The walls were jagged, gleaming damp and black in the glare of torchlight. Huge stone statues of abstract figures, vaguely humanoid, loomed out at them from the shadows. The fat, thick leaves of the faintly-glowing plant covered the ceilings. From out of the seaweed-like mora.s.s, tapestries of cut-gla.s.s hung down from the high-vaulted ceilings. They caught the torch beams and fooled with the bright light, pa.s.sing it from shard to shard.

'It would make sense to incorporate Schirr architecture in the testing ground's design,' Shel commented. 'DeCaster and Pallemar's dissenters are the only significant threat to Earth's empire besides the Morphiean Quadrant. It makes the battleground more relevant.' He paused. 'If we knew anything of Morphiean constructs, Pentagon Central would doubtless have drawn inspiration from them...'

Haunt was no longer listening to Shel. Instead she checked for team vitals on her scanner.

And swore.

The grid, instead of showing four neat pinp.r.i.c.k pairs glowing close to those of herself and Shel, was an insane constellation of lights.

She waved it in Shel's face. 'Must be a fault. Try your own.'

Shel scrolled through different screens until the same lunatic pattern of lights appeared. He met Haunt's gaze steadily. It would seem this entire place is alive.'

Even as Shel spoke, Haunt noticed a small swift movement by her feet, and froze. For a second she thought she'd imagined it, but then she saw the movement again, arcing past her eyes. A tiny bead of light hopped onto the back of Shel's hand. She slapped her own hand down on the back of his. Then she peered at a pale smear on her palm.

'Some kind of insect,' she remarked. Its body was a translucent sack, half emptied on her skin. 'It hopped like a flea.'

Shel peered at the insect. It's like nothing I've seen,' he whispered. 'Must live on the plants. Though how any life could survive here...'

'We're here, aren't we?' Haunt retorted. 'It's just a part of the place. Part of the simulation.' Another grain of light hopped past, fleeting in the corner of her vision. 'A distraction. Here to keep us on edge.'

Shel nodded uncertainly. 'It has to be. In any case, our instruments are picking up their life-signs.'

'And swamping our own team's stats. The scanners are useless down here. We can't track each other.'

Shel nodded. 'Hopefully, neither can anything else.'

Haunt raised the comms bracelet to her lips. 'Creben.'

'Unit One responding, Marshal.' The voice snapped back immediately, cutting tinnily through the dank air. 'Our scanners are all messed up. Thousands of life-signs.'

'Bugs,' Haunt whispered. 'This place is crawling with insects.'

'Marshal. The walls are thick with them.' Lindey's voice sounded shriller than normal. 'There's plant life of some kind on -'

'I know. Check up on everyone else, see if it's the same story. Report back.'

'Marshal.' It was Creben's voice that signed off.

Haunt lowered the bracelet, and she and Shel waited in silence. More and more of the insects hopped and jumped around their feet, on their combat suits, through the air around them. She felt her wrist-comm vibrate.

'Well, Creben?'

'Same story in each direction. Except for Unit Three.

They've got some weed, but no fleas.'

Shel frowned.

Haunt spoke back to the bracelet. 'Denni.'

'Unit Three responding.' Denni's voice sounded flat and calm.

'Tell me what you see.'

'It's completely dark here now,' Denni said. 'Marshal, our scanner's useless.'

Haunt looked up at Shel. 'The websets won't function in total darkness, will they?'

'Not well,' he replied. It's optic stimulation that triggers the record.'

Haunt nodded. 'All right, Denni. Report back if the situation changes.'

'Marshal.'

Haunt indicated to Shel they should move on. More of the dark slate had been piled up into craggy pillars at regular intervals; they looked as if they had grown from the stone.

Two of them, monstrously large and each topped with an angular crest, flanked a large circular doorway that seemed to lead from this vast chamber to another.

One of the insects hopped on to the back of Haunt's hand.

She brushed it off, crushed it as she did so.

She and Shel walked inside.

VII.

More than the fat white insects that flicked around them, the shadows were getting to Lindey. Cast by the gently glowing leaves, dull and s.h.i.+fting over the darker rock, they played tricks on your eyes. Years in the Zero-Gs had left her accustomed to most battlegrounds in s.p.a.ce, to fighting in the stark, unchanging light of stars and moons. This cramped gloom and her slow, careful steps made her feel heavy and uncomfortable, like she and Creben were trapped in an endless mire.

She checked her scanner for the hundredth time. She willed the flickering ma.s.s of lights on the scanner to vanish, to reveal ten healthy heartbeats huddled close together.

'What the h.e.l.l are we doing here?' she asked Creben softly.

'Making sure we don't end up as cannon fodder for the Empire,' he answered quietly, barely moving his lips.

Lindey raised an eyebrow, impressed by the honest answer.

'So you make Elite and stay away from the front line?'

'The war with Morphiea won't be like that,' he told her. 'We can't nuke their strongholds, kill their troops, batter them into submission like we did the Schirr. It'll be a cold war. The coldest the Empire's ever known.'

'You have a talent for melodrama,' Lindey told him lightly.

'So, what, it's going to be special operations only in the Elite for you? Counter-intelligence, espionage...'

While Lindey poked her torch beam into random nooks and corners in the rock, Creben's light cut through the darkness with surgical precision. 'I'm going to use my mind, if that's what you mean, yes.'