by Craig Hinton
Rachel did the same, and examined the readings. And swallowed. The sensors were indicating something that she would never have expected on Mars; in fact, she would never have expected it anywhere in the solar system. ‘According to this, there’s a subspace attractor near by that goes off the dial. Of course it would interfere with our stunnel, draw it off course. That’s exactly what we were seeing when the stunnel bent back from the Ultima relay. But why would the Martians build a subspace attractor?’ She looked down at her microtablette. ‘Is it some sort of a weapon?’
‘There’s a problem there, Professor,’ forwarded Lebrun. ‘The Greenies never developed subspace technology; that’s why we won the war. After those bastards dropped that asteroid on Paris, they thought that they had a couple of days until we retaliated because they were expecting the counterattack to come in a fleet of spaceships. Instead, we arrived via Transit beam within hours and...’ His face crumpled as the memories surged back, and Rachel felt another part of her soul shrivel and die as she thought about the personal repercussions of the Earth-Mars conflict. Michael’s death tried to revisit her mind, but she repelled it. She was getting good at doing that.
Chris sidled up to them. ‘So there’s technology here that the Martians couldn’t possibly have developed?’ A brief but noticeable expression of fear crossed his face. ‘It might be the invaders.’
Rachel weighed up the options. They definitely couldn’t stay where they were; despite the acceptable temperature and the thin but breathable air – Rachel remembered reading a paper on the terraforming programme which had followed Man’s conquest of the planet in the middle of the twenty-first century – they would very soon die of thirst, or eventually starvation, when the meagre supplies which they had brought with them from Charon ran out. But the presence of unexpected subspace technology suggested that there might be others near by, and that could mean food and water.
Or something.
As she saw it, there were four alternatives: the subspace attractor was a natural phenomenon; such things were known – Rachel had read of such a thing on the sixth moon of Clavidence, the result of a high concentration of rare and peculiar minerals. Or the attractor was the responsibility of the Martians, humans, or the invaders. The fifth possibility – that another race was involved – was instantly dismissed. Things were complicated enough without involving another set of aliens. For a second, she thought about their options. And then she decided.
‘We do a recce,’ she announced.
‘All of us?’ asked Lebrun.
She shook her head. ‘I’m going, and I’d appreciate Chris and Felice tagging along.’ She looked at them both, and smiled inside; both were nodding, and she felt strangely proud of them. They were her team; it was that simple.
Addressing the crowd of colonists and scientists, she assumed her most authoritative tone.
‘It looks like there might be some sort of complex not too far away, and I’m going to take a look. Adjudicator Cwej and Dr Delacroix will accompany me. If we can verify that it’s safe, we’ll come back and get you.’ She began to turn towards the direction which Felice’s micro-tablette had indicated, before remembering one last thing.
‘Give us twenty-four hours.’ She stabbed a finger at Mitchell, a young, auburn-haired Welsh woman sitting cross-legged against the wall. ‘Ceri-Anne – you’re in charge now. If we’re not back by then, use the emergency transceiver and try to contact the Bureau on Oberon.’ She caught Chris’s look of surprise – did he really think that the head of the Charon colony wouldn’t know about the support which the Adjudicators were providing from that godforsaken moon of Uranus? – and smiled. ‘Any questions?’
The group of survivors nodded and grunted, but nobody seemed to have any objections. ‘Right then. Chris: grab a survival pack and four plasma rifles. Felice: bring that microtablette. We’re going hunting.’
Rachel just hoped that they were armed for bear; something told her that humans were the last race that they were going to find guarding the mysterious Martian subspace attractor.
Vincente Esteban carefully eased himself out of his sleeping bag, stood up, and looked around the Martian dwelling. Antony McGuire was fast asleep on the low hard bed, twitching with bad dreams in the dim twilight of Ikk-ett-Saleth, and Esteban stared at him with pity. Esteban knew of the death of McGuire’s family, and felt for him. But he didn’t share his hatred of Martians; he couldn’t. There was no proof that the Martians had been behind the terrorist attacks, only ideograms carved into the wall of the Montreal monorail terminus. The assumption that they were responsible was nothing more than a leap of false reasoning by a planet still living in fear. The Martians simply didn’t behave like that – terrorism was an insult to their racial honour, he thought, as he put on his environment jacket.
Sleep had completely eluded the scientist; the knowledge that he was in the fabled City of the Sad Ones was too overwhelming for him to relax, despite his exhaustion. He smiled; Juanita had always said that he lived, ate and breathed research.
He reached into his rucksack and extracted a torch and his tablette, automatically checking the power levels on the small palmtop and tutting when he saw how low they were. The spare battery pack had been in the storage area of the ATET, vaporized along with the majority of his equipment, and the solar recharging facility hadn’t been very useful given the feeble sunlight on Mars; the illumination from the roof of Ikk-ett-Saleth wouldn’t be much use either.
Still, he reassured himself, he had survived, and was participating in the greatest adventure of his life; compared with this, his expedition to the methane falls on Sinope, that fascinating moon of Jupiter, had been as interesting as a walk in the countryside. Pocketing his tablette and switching on the torch, he tiptoed out of the dwelling and into the dawn.
Shining the torch around him, he tried to decide what to look at next. From the fragmentary information he possessed about the city, he knew of at least twenty places that were vying for his attention, and that was just his first port of call. Esteban doubted that he would get any sleep at all; there was just too much to look at. For a brief second, he thought of his friends and family on Earth, suffering under the invasion – if only he could tell them of what he had seen. He hadn’t spoken to them for over eight months, and the longing within him was a constant, nagging pain. And then his wife’s face appeared in his mind for a second, gutting him with pain: Juanita was on Earth, millions of kilometres away, and there was absolutely nothing that Esteban could do about it.
Heading off in the direction of the central plaza, he still couldn’t help remembering the last time that he and Juanita had seen one another. Esteban had been off to Mars, hoping to mount an expedition; Juanita was committed to a lecture tour, and was planning to join him on Mars as soon as it was over.
And then the Black Fleet had arrived.
Esteban shuddered with a chill of horror: he didn’t even know whether Juanita was dead or alive – he knew about the plague decimating whole cities, but had no idea whether Madrid was affected or not. Part of his soul was displaced, lost, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. Apart from focusing on the job in hand.
Pocketing the torch – the overhead illumination was increasing as dawn broke over Ikk-ett-Saleth – he checked the rough map of the city stored in his tablette and set off in the direction indicated, towards the central plaza. As he walked, he brought up his files on the city, hoping to spot some new line of research that he had missed, something which would give him a better insight into the mysteries of Ikk-ett-Saleth and the complexities of the Martian psyche. Anything to take his mind off Juanita.
He was so preoccupied by his researches that he never noticed the figure which approached purposefully through the shadows. He never saw it come up behind him. And he never felt the blow to the back of his head which shattered his spinal column.
As Esteban fell, he twisted around and saw his murderer. Shock and confusion mingled with the pain and surprise as
he recognized them.
‘You?’ he hissed, unable to understand why they had done it.
Then the emptiness hit him, and his assassin meant nothing. For a final moment, his wife’s face floated in front of him, centimetres away and yet too far to hold, too far to rescue him. Too far away to say goodbye.
Chapter 5
‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ muttered Rachel as she and the others attempted to squeeze past the left-hand side of the Sphinx towards the back of the antechamber; there was a gap of less than half a metre between the sand-blasted yellow surface of the ancient statue and the satin-smooth polished walls, and she was finding it a bit of a tight fit. Even the half-rations that had been imposed on Charon had done little to reduce her fearsome backside, she thought ruefully.
‘Why the hell did they build a Sphinx?’ she wondered out loud. ‘Jealous of the one on Earth?’
Felice, leading the way with the heavy-duty torch and her tablette, shrugged. ‘No idea,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘History’s never been my strong point.’ She stopped, and touched the sensor probe of the tablette against the statue’s side.
‘Now that is odd,’ she muttered. ‘Look at this.’
Rachel forced herself further along the narrow passageway until she was wedged next to her deputy. Felice proffered the tablette’s screen to her.
Frowning, Rachel looked from the screen to the Sphinx and back again in surprise. ‘There has to be some mistake,’ she protested.
‘No mistake, Rachel; this tablette’s loaded with the latest surveying software – the dating program has an accuracy of ten years either way.’
‘What is it?’ said Chris, craning his neck to look over Rachel’s shoulder.
‘According to these readings, the Martian Sphinx is over a thousand years older than the one in Egypt.’ She shook her head. ‘Didn’t anyone date it when it was on the surface?’
‘I doubt they had the chance,’ said Felice. ‘It was heavily guarded during the Thousand Day War, and when we finally had the chance to have a look at it, it was gone. Brought here, presumably.’
‘You’re saying that the Martians had an Egyptian-like culture before Egypt itself? That’s unbelievable,’ said Chris.
‘A mystery for another time,’ Rachel stated. ‘I want to find that subspace attractor.’
The party continued their uncomfortable journey past the Sphinx.
Quiet and cross-legged in the small clearing, Abbot Aklaar contemplated their current position. Their pilgrimage to the North Pole was almost over; Sstaal estimated that they would reach their destination in a little over three days. But the presence of the humans was worrying. He knew that they would only have attempted such a journey if they were desperate, but the invasion of their homeworld and the blockade of the solar system meant that their struggling colony at Jacksonville was slowly being starved of supplies. And hunger and fear were common causes of desperation.
Aklaar needed to meet the humans; he needed to ascertain the reason for their expedition. If they came in peace, then he could offer them protection against the perils that could still confront them as they approached the Pole. If, however, their intentions were hostile, he would have to find some way of dissuading them. The importance of his own mission could not be greater, offering a chance for his people to cleanse their collective souls of guilt and blood and step forward into the dawn of a new age of understanding. As an Abbot of Oras, he was loath to tarnish his pilgrimage with bloodshed, but he knew the weight of the greater good was on his shoulders. If only force would stop the humans from interfering, then force would be necessary. He made a brief, silent prayer to Oras that such measures would not be necessary.
But to talk to the humans, he and his pilgrims would have to make themselves known, and Aklaar was uncertain of the reaction they would encounter. As far as the humans knew, there were no Martians left on Mars. How would they behave when they were confronted with their old enemies?
He stood, and beckoned the others over.
‘The time has come to reveal ourselves to the humans, my children.’ He looked at Cleece, whose reckless nature could very well be their undoing. ‘I urge you all to practise the greatest of restraint; their reactions may be unpleasant, but they will be understandable. Violence is the last resort, and proof that we have failed to behave as Oras taught us.’
They all nodded, and Aklaar could see that Sstaal and Esstar saw the truth of his words.
Sadly, Cleece’s expression was indecipherable.
Working from the centre of the rear wall, Felice and Rachel had scanned every square centimetre for some sign of a door. Felice moved to the left, Rachel to the right, their tablettes humming in unison. Until Rachel’s tablette began to whine loudly.
‘Got something!’ she called out, but it was unnecessary; Felice and Chris had come running over as soon as the noise had started.
‘What have you found?’ asked Felice.
Rachel pointed at the smooth, unbroken amber rock. ‘There’s a discontinuity in the crystal matrix of the wall; there’s a door, but it’s absolutely seamless.’ She whistled. ‘Absolutely amazing.’
Chris frowned. There was something about this chamber – specifically the eight-pointed table on the far side of the Sphinx – that reminded him of something. He racked his brain to remember, but nothing came.
Felice stepped forward and placed her palm on the centre of the invisible door and pushed, but, unsurprisingly, nothing happened. ‘What about a plasma burst?’ she asked.
Not with this molecular structure,’ said Rachel. ‘A plasma burst wouldn’t have the slightest effect. The mineral is laced with an alloy that the tablette doesn’t recognize, but its composition is such that it absorbs directed energy and virtually superconducts it across the entire wall.’
‘Of course!’ shouted Chris. He knew why he’d forgotten; there had been an almighty hangover in between then and now. He had been with Roz and a group of Martians at the bar during Benny’s wedding reception, downing Martian ale like it was about to be rationed. As the wonderful – but eventually costly – effects of the ale had started to set in, the conversation had moved on to the subject of battle anthems. He and Roz had regaled the group with ballads and stirring songs enshrined by the Guild of Adjudicators, while the Ice Warriors had sung some wonderful military tunes from their less-friendly past. One of the songs had been about the glories of the Eight-Point Table – and Chris could only assume that that was the item of furniture they had seen earlier. They had also sung of the secret entrances that protected the chamber from attack, entrances that could only be opened by those that knew the correct procedure, such as the Grand Marshals and their adjutants.
Walking over to the wall, Chris tried to visualize the movements that the Ice Warriors had made, bold sweeping gestures that apparently dated back millennia. The left arm was held horizontally at forehead level, the right at neck level, and then they were slowly moved up and down to symbolize the opening of some great eye – at least that was how one of the Ice Warriors had slurringly explained it afterwards.
As Felice and Rachel watched him with looks of puzzlement – and amusement – on their faces, Chris felt himself redden. But the thin sliding noise from in front of him made up for his embarrassment; as they waited, a three-metre square of wall retracted inwards before swinging upwards.
‘How on Earth did you know how to do that?’ asked Rachel suspiciously.
‘An Ice Warrior – I mean a Martian – told me,’ he said without thinking. Then he cursed himself; in this era, the Ice Warriors were still feared and hated – and they weren’t even called Ice Warriors. By revealing that he had actually talked to one, he was immediately coming under suspicion.
But the odd smile on Rachel’s face made him uneasy; far from suspicion, it was almost as if he had just gone up in her estimation. A shout from Felice made him look round.
‘Whatever that wall was laced with, it also blocks subspace readings. I’m going to have to recalibr
ate the tablette to find the exact source of the emissions. If we thought that attractor was powerful, we’d better think again.’
She paused, then added, ‘It’s unimaginable.’
Running into the dwelling, Roz was surprised to see that the Doctor was still asleep. Surprised, because she had never known him sleep for more than an hour or so; if he had nodded off when she had, he had been asleep for over five hours. He was twitching slightly and giving plaintive low moans, as if being visited by bad dreams; she was very glad that she wasn’t sharing them. She knew that he had been telepathically linked to the TARDIS; the severing of that connection must have cost him dearly. She wondered whether nightmares were the only side-effect of the TARDIS’s destruction.
Because of that, she was loath to wake him, but she had no other choice. He had to know what had happened.
Laying a gentle hand on his shoulder, she shook him slightly. The shout that resulted made Roz jump. For a second, his face was a mask of desperate fear, but his flexible features soon assumed a look of irritated enquiry. ‘I’m sorry – I must have overslept,’ he said hesitantly, as if it was the first time he had ever uttered those particular words.
‘We’ve got a problem,’ Roz stated. ‘Esteban’s dead.’
‘What?’ The Doctor jumped to his feet. ‘How did it happen?’
‘Well, it wasn’t suicide, unless you know of a way to shatter your own spine. Madrigal found him about five hundred metres away, hidden in some bushes.’
The Doctor sighed. ‘I was worried something like this might happen.’
Roz didn’t understand. ‘You knew Esteban was going to be murdered?’
No, not the specifics. But I suspected that there might be an incident of some kind.’
‘Why?’ she called after him as he set off for the door.
‘Because we’re not alone,’ he muttered.
‘Great,’ mumbled Roz as she followed after him. ‘This is all we need.’
