by Stephen Cole
‘It doesn’t hurt,’ Shel informed them.
Looking a little awkward now Shel had rejected his help, Creben discarded the first aid box and turned instead to the droid. ‘Is it dead?’
‘Looks like it,’ Frog gurgled. She prodded the thing with her foot. ‘I ain’t seen one that size before.’ She gave a filthy chuckle. Polly shuddered.
‘That was the second droid,’ Shel muttered. ‘T… Tovel destroyed the first in the tunnels back there.’
Frog slapped her palm against Joiks’s in a victorious gesture, her bulging eyes shining with delight. ‘Two down, Game Over,’ she said with a gappy smile. She scooped up Creben’s first aid tin and rummaged inside. ‘Celebration time. Got anything recreational in here, Creben?’
‘Frog, stop.’ Shel shook his head slowly. ‘The droid had already k… killed Lindey.’
‘Lindey too?’ Her voice buzzed out just as loudly, but everything else about her seemed fragile and quiet for a second.
Joiks stared at Shel. ‘You saw this?’
‘No.’
‘Got a body?’
‘Her body has not been found.’
‘She was grabbed, wasn’t she?’ Joiks started pacing up and down. ‘It just took her, whatever it was. Took her away, just like Denni. No body.’ He kicked the droid savagely. ‘No damned body.’
Creben pointed to one of the robot’s barbed flexible arms, lying uncoiled now like a steel snake. ‘If it snagged Lindey and Denni with one of these at full stretch, it could simply have retracted the limb. They’d have been dragged away at quite a speed.’
‘But where would it have hidden the bodies?’ asked Polly. ‘And why?’
Creben tapped a nozzle protruding from the cracked glass façade covering the droid’s metal midriff. ‘Disintegrator. Nice and clean.’
‘You seen something like this thing before, Creben?’ Joiks asked suspiciously. ‘Thought this droid was meant to be some kind of new secret design.’
Creben shrugged. ‘I’ve come up against disintegrators before. Just never on a droid.’
‘Let me see.’ The Doctor stooped and delved into a split in the glass to remove a tiny circuit. Once he had finished scrutinising it, he straightened and faced Creben. ‘A neat explanation, young man, yes, very neat,’ he said, still a little breathlessly. ‘But I’m afraid you are incorrect.’
Creben raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh yes?’
The Doctor held up his circuit. ‘This tells us that the disintegrator hasn’t been fired.’
‘Then the other droid did it,’ Creben countered smoothly. ‘It probably obliterated the Schirr body in the control room too.’
‘Nah,’ Frog buzzed. ‘Marshal Haunt said that was resonance or something. Vibrations from the take-off.’
‘No. Shel said that,’ Polly ventured before she could stop herself. She found herself feeling a little guilty to be kicking a man when he was down and bleeding, but she felt things should be set straight. ‘Your marshal just agreed with him.’
‘You got a problem with Haunt’s decisions?’ Joiks screwed up his flattened nose. ‘Jeez, what is it with you women?’
‘I don’t got a problem with Haunt,’ Frog announced.
Joiks laughed unkindly. ‘You ain’t a woman, Frog, you don’t count.’
‘Please,’ the Doctor said, cutting across their bickering. ‘I am sure you wish to report this, er, victory to your Marshal, and I suggest you enquire as to whether the other Kill-Droid’s disintegrator has been used. In the meantime, I must return to the control room, quickly.’ He looked beseechingly at Shel. ‘Will you not tell them, sir, that Marshal Haunt gave us such instructions?’
Shel looked at the Doctor dumbly for a few moments before recovering himself and nodding slowly. ‘There’s m… much to be done,’ he agreed.
‘You need a medic,’ Frog said, rattling Creben’s tin with one hand and placing the other gently on Shel’s injured arm. He pulled away from her, gripped his wound more tightly. ‘I’ll go with them, Creben,’ Frog continued, undaunted, ‘and patch up Shel. You and Joiks get back to Haunt and the others with the good news.’
‘Two of us for two of them,’ said Creben, staring at the fallen robot.
Joiks snorted. ‘That’s profound, man.’
Creben shrugged. ‘Simply an observation.’
‘What you saying, that we drew here today? The squad’s down by two but we didn’t lose more than they did so that’s OK?’
‘We’re alive. So that’s OK. Now do you want to tell Marshal Haunt we took out the droid or should I?’
Joiks glared at Creben for a few moments. Then he raised his wrist to his mouth and spoke into it. ‘Marshal. Met a droid in the bullring. Hit status terminal, confirmed. No one down…’
Polly turned and helped the Doctor along the rough stone of the passageway. Shel and Frog followed on behind. The Doctor’s brow was furrowed in fierce concentration as he walked. Not for the first time, Polly wished she knew what he was thinking.
II
‘Pretty strange request, ain’t it?’ Ben watched Roba and Tovel struggle to lift the panel of thick frosted glass from the droid’s heavily-armed torso. ‘This is that trophy you mentioned, is it?’
‘Gonna look pretty cool stuck up on the wall back at the dorm,’ Roba remarked with a huge grin, his teeth white and shiny.
They’d gone wandering on through the tunnel – Ben with a slight limp – until Haunt had come through once again on the communicator, telling them that the other droid was just scrap metal too. She’d ordered them to remove the Kill-Droid’s gun panel, then retrace their steps back to where they’d split up from the others. Tovel and Roba had become so damned jolly they didn’t even question what G.I. Jane might want the thing for.
‘Weighs a bit,’ Ben gasped as he helped Tovel and Roba shift the scorched unit.
‘It sure is heavy.’ Roba looked at Tovel gravely. ‘Guess the civilian can’t cope. We’re gonna have to carry it without him.’
‘Reckon we can handle that, Roba?’ Tovel asked with mock nervousness.
Roba shrugged. ‘All we can do is try.’
Together the two of them easily hefted the gun panel and guffawed as Ben reached up for it, still trying to do his bit.
‘Oh, very funny,’ said Ben sourly.
‘Y’know, Roba, this is just like lifting stretchers again,’ said Tovel.
‘You still got the knack,’ Roba told him with a throaty chuckle.
Feeling himself flush, Ben spoke without thinking. ‘Aren’t you a bit jolly considering what’s just happened to your mate?’
The atmosphere dipped suddenly below freezing. Ben shut his eyes, wishing he could keep his big trap shut sometimes.
‘If she’s dead,’ Tovel said slowly, ‘then we got the thing that got her.’
We hope, Ben thought to himself.
‘S’right. We did what we came here to do.’ Roba shot Ben a glance. ‘You don’t think that’s something to celebrate?’
‘’Course I do,’ Ben said, looking at the floor. Who was he to tell these blokes how to deal with their grief?
‘Didn’t know Lindey too well,’ Tovel admitted.
‘Me neither,’ Roba said. ‘Some other place, some other time, I’d have liked to.’ He smiled. ‘Used to see a girl who fought in the Zero-Gs. Fit is not the word. The moves she could pull…’
‘What about you two,’ asked Ben. ‘You know each other, right?’
‘Both in the Peace Keeper Volunteers,’ said Roba. ‘When Beijing Minor went down we were putting out the fires for weeks.’
Ben didn’t have a clue if this was a great victory or a crushing defeat. ‘I remember Beijing Minor going down. In the third round, weren’t it?’
It was the wrong thing to say. Roba dropped his side of the panel and turned on Ben. One shovel-like hand swatted him back against the wall.
‘All right, leave off!’ Ben protested.
‘There were thirty in our unit when we hit Beijing,’ Roba h
issed. ‘Three of us made it back off-world. When Morphiea claimed responsibility for torching the planet, me and Tovel signed up to go AT Elite. Anti-Terror, man. To fight back. To take them.’ He let Ben go and turned away.
Tovel had watched all this coolly. ‘Pretty sweet story, isn’t it?’
‘Ain’t it though?’ Roba took a step back from Ben, still frowning, then looked over at Tovel. ‘All it needs is an ending.’
‘Not just yet, eh?’ Tovel grinned.
It seemed that Roba didn’t hold grudges except against the Morphieans. Soon he and Tovel were joking around again as they manhandled the droid’s weapons case along the tunnel, and Ben felt able to join in again.
‘What about the rest of your gang, then?’
‘Only really mixed with them at the greet before take-off,’ said Tovel.
‘A greet? Oh, what, like a party?’ Ben smirked. ‘Can’t imagine Haunt and Shel were the life and soul.’
Roba nodded. ‘Haunt stayed five minutes. Shel managed maybe ten.’
‘He don’t seem too friendly,’ Ben observed.
‘Friendlier than Creben,’ Tovel assured him, gritting his teeth as he shifted the weight of the robot’s carcass onto his shoulder. ‘Another new boy. Breezed through the ranks. He’s got brains, I’ll give him that.’
‘What about Shade?’ Ben enquired lightly. Know Your Enemy.
‘He got most of his blown out on New Jersey,’ said Roba, and he and Tovel laughed uproariously. Ben laughed too, though he wasn’t sure quite why.
‘Damn fool threw himself on a Schirr mine, evacuating some kids under fire,’ Tovel explained. ‘But hey, you can’t keep an Earth-birther down.’
‘Hey, Tovel. Shade’s an Earthman?’
‘I believe he may have mentioned that he was, yes, Roba.’ Again the two men started laughing.
Ben decided that, if pressed, he’d say he was Martian and hope for the best.
‘Earth,’ sighed Roba, manhandling the heavy glass plating round to better support it. He sounded half-wistful, half-angry. ‘They ship out their poor over half the galaxy, give them a few hand-me-downs and call us pioneers.’
‘“There is HEART in EARTH”,’ Tovel chanted, slack-jawed like a school kid saying the Lord’s Prayer in assembly.
Roba suddenly stopped. ‘Ben – would you itch my back, man? Yeah, just there.’
‘Glad I’m of some use,’ Ben sighed. ‘What about Frog, what’s her story, then?’
‘Dunno,’ said Roba. ‘And with that voice, who wants to hear it.’
‘Heard at the greet she was in a shuttle crash as a kid,’ Tovel said. He signalled to Roba and they dumped the robot on the ground. ‘Joiks told me. Her throat got torn out.’
Roba tapped a spot below his collar bone. ‘So they gave her that gadget to buzz her up some voice.’
Now it was Ben’s turn to wince. ‘And the crash did for her face?’
Tovel shook his head. ‘Nope. Her old man did that. She was fourteen, she’d stayed out late, done something she shouldn’t. So he took a razor to her. She got it off him and used it right back.’
‘You’re joking me,’ Ben said, wishing he’d never asked.
‘Terrible shame, ain’t it.’ Roba seemed in reflective mood as he and Tovel took the weight of the robot’s bulk again. ‘Still, can’t really blame her old man for trying. Wayward girl like that needs some discipline.’
He and Tovel started creasing up. Ben forced a few laughs himself just to fit in, but he was glad when a few seconds later the endless crunching through the flat darkness suddenly became a climb. They were nearly back where they’d started.
‘Welcome back. Finally.’ Haunt’s caustic voice called to them from the dimly lit passageway ahead. The rest of the welcoming committee comprised Joiks, Creben and a very miserable-looking Shade. He had his fingertips pressed to his face like he was trying to give himself a massage.
Roba and Tovel greeted their squad, gratefully dropped the droid’s gun carriage, and spent a few moments scratching themselves all over. It had to be the fleas, Ben decided. He wondered vaguely if his naval malaria jab would cover him for alien insect bites.
‘Where’s Polly?’ Ben asked, darting a quick look at Earthman Shade. ‘And the Doctor?’
‘Back in the control room with Shel and Frog,’ said Creben, already crouching over the discarded panel and digging a knife of some kind into the cracked glass. It split open noisily, and Creben retrieved a tiny circuit. ‘The Kill-Droid we came across hadn’t fired its disintegrator, but this one…’ He tailed off as he scrutinised the circuit.
‘Let me guess.’ Joiks sounded even surlier than usual. ‘This one didn’t either.’
Creben only nodded.
Like him, no one said a word.
*
III
Frog and Shel led the way back to the control room. With the Doctor too absorbed in his own thoughts to make conversation, Polly set her mind to memorising their path from key parts of the architecture. The golden doors they passed through now she knew led on to the big, tomb-like hallway. The amazing tapestry of glass-fragments hanging down from the cavern roof tinkled softly as it caught some tiny breeze. The weed began to encroach on the ceilings here. Without its fleshy, glowing leaves, the huge abstract stone figures that guarded the final, narrow corridor would remain unseen, looking blindly on the likes of Polly as she passed.
Sure enough, the giant statues soon came into view.
Polly frowned. She hadn’t noticed the winged cherubs here, clinging to the great rough heads. Each cherub was the size of a man, but the proportions of the body were those of a pudgy child, with smooth fat arms and swollen stomach. The faces were hard to discern, high up as they were. Polly decided she didn’t like the figures; but since little else in this place seemed to be remotely attractive, she wondered if that perhaps was the point.
Everything in the control room was just as they had left it.
Except another Schirr body had vanished from the dais.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CAT AMONG THE PIGEONS
I
‘NO,’ WHISPERED POLLY hoarsely. The hairs on the back of her neck rose. She’d known it even without taking in all the detail; a sense that the place was not as they’d left it.
It was the one at the end, this time, on the left-hand side. The one so soaked in gore it might’ve drowned in its own blood.
There was a sickly, decaying smell in the room. The corpse in the chair, Polly realised. The air must be getting to it now. But what was getting to the bodies behind the barrier?
Frog swore, dropped the medicine tin and drew her gun. She looked around, uncertain where she should be pointing it.
‘No vibration could have caused this,’ the Doctor announced, nodding to himself as if he had expected this latest development all along. ‘It’s interesting, very interesting. Two of them for two of you.’
‘Well, if the droids had anything to do with this, then we’re OK,’ Frog said. ‘They’re screwed. They can’t do nothing else now.’
‘Tell me.’ The Doctor turned to Shel. ‘These killing machines of yours you brought here to fight. How were they transported?’
‘In the hold,’ Shel answered softly. He staggered over towards the remaining bodies, transfixed. ‘The droids were a new design, crated up so we wouldn’t see. When Haunt gave the signal, they released themselves into the drop zone to take up pre-programmed positions.’
‘So.’ The Doctor paused impressively. ‘You have no way of knowing if something else came aboard your ship with them.’
‘And left when they did,’ Polly murmured, ‘when no one was allowed to see…’
No one said anything for a while as the implications sank in.
‘Even say that’s true,’ Frog said suddenly. ‘Sure, they might wanna kill us. But the Schirr are dead already. Why take them?’
Polly shuddered. ‘They must be dead, mustn’t they? Shel, you said they were,’ she added petulantly.
/> Shel nodded. ‘My instruments informed me that was the case.’ He reached for a gadget in his belt with his good hand and waved it in front of the Schirr bodies. Polly was afraid to watch too closely in case they suddenly pounced on him.
He handed the device to the Doctor. ‘See for yourself.’
The Doctor took the gadget gingerly, and took a few seconds to familiarise himself with its functions. ‘You put a good deal of trust in machines,’ he observed, before handing it back with a smile. ‘But I prefer to draw my own conclusions.’ With that he started to peer at each Schirr in turn, muttering under his breath and occasionally holding a crooked thumb up at arm’s length, like an artist gauging a measurement.
Frog looked glum. She scratched the patches of stubble that were all that remained of her hair and stared about, her boggle-eyes wider than ever. ‘Who wants to tell Haunt about all this?’ she warbled.
‘First,’ the Doctor suggested without looking up, ‘let us be sure of what we are telling her.’
‘I should do it,’ announced Shel distantly. But he didn’t, he just stood there, staring at the bodies, swaying. He tottered forwards and leaned heavily on the nearest control panel, not far from the corpse in the chair, as if about to have a conversation with it.
‘Uh-oh,’ said Frog. ‘I told you, Shel honey, you need a medic.’ She pulled something from her pocket, the size and shape of a boiled sweet, and then threw it down on the ground behind Shel. There was a crack like a starter’s pistol, and Frog leapt back. A translucent rectangular bubble the size of a couch had appeared out of nowhere.
‘Force mattress,’ Frog explained with a wink at the Doctor. ‘We all carry them, honey. Never know where you might need to bed down for the night.’
Polly watched in fascination as Frog helped Shel, unprotesting, to lie back on the bubble. The force mattress moulded itself to his body like it was made from putty. Her patient in place, Frog retrieved the first aid tin and pulled out what looked like an aerosol. Shel plucked it from her hand and applied the spray to his wound himself.
