Ten Little Aliens: 50th Anniversary Edition

by Stephen Cole

  ‘It took half my face off and stopped my career dead. Without my connections – those same stupid connections I was running from – I’d have been court-martialled and either executed or else given ceremonial duties on some crummy world mid-Empire.’

  ‘And instead?’

  ‘Instead I was given an honourable discharge, and allowed to rejoin the following year with a doctored record.’ He started to cry, a soft mewling noise coming from somewhere deep inside. ‘Every day I look at myself. And I remember.’

  I never forget the scum that did this to me, Shade had told her back at the rockfall. Polly looked up from the palmscreen. It was hurting her eyes. ‘Lindey found out, didn’t she?’

  ‘Someone she knew died thanks to me. Thanks to me believing I could be something I’m not.’ He clicked his tongue. ‘You’ve got the files there. I think she was going to blackmail me once I’d made AT Elite.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Show me one person who’s happy where they are. I’ve always kidded myself I could rough it out in Empire. She wanted Earth contacts, I suppose.’

  ‘And now she’s dead?’

  Shade stared dreamily into space. ‘All I need do is hit the button, kill the files, and my secret is safe.’

  Polly pushed the palmscreen inside her spacesuit. ‘I know your secret.’ She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘What about me?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he whispered. ‘Thanks to me, we’re all going to die anyway.’

  ‘No. That’s silly, stop it.’

  Shade shook his head, shut his eyes. He seemed suddenly exhausted. ‘I can’t stop it. No one can. I’m a jinx, see. And the ambush, it’s happening all over again.’

  VII

  The patch of blue light had got everyone excited. Ben noticed that even Creben had abandoned his methodical knocking out of the key rocks in favour of scrabbling at the pile like the rest of them until the hole was big enough to scramble through.

  There was a pressure in Ben’s ears, like a sea was roaring and rolling in his head. A glittering indigo filled the wide passage, blissfully welcome after the murk of the tunnels or the sick green glow of the fleaweed. His feet felt like they were barely touching the ground, like he was floating through the night sky in summer. How many warm evenings had Ben looked out at that dark expanse and imagined he could splash out into it as easily as he could the warm, dark sea.

  ‘Ben.’ The Doctor’s voice was sharp in his ear, and a hand pressed down on his shoulder. ‘Ben, listen to me.’

  ‘What?’ Ben shrugged off the Doctor’s hand. He didn’t want to listen. He only wanted to look. They’d reached an outcrop of rock overlooking a dark chasm. Waves of Caribbean blue rolled across roof and floor, translucent sheets of sparkling light that splashed against the rocky walls and out into the air. It was beautiful.

  The Doctor raised his voice. Now it sounded like he was addressing a whole crowd.

  ‘Ben, all of you, listen to me.’

  Who else was here then?

  ‘We are near a source of great power. A power great enough to distort your perceptions.’

  ‘Quiet down,’ Ben complained.

  ‘It wants you to approach with your defences down,’ the old man insisted. ‘I am sure of it, this place is some kind of trap.’

  ‘Well, shut yours then, for starters.’ Ben couldn’t stay angry for long with a view as gorgeous as this. Just across the sea there was some kind of island, dark filtered through the moonlight. Grainy sand, spiky palms, the perfect desert island. He’d always kidded with the boys on the Teazer he’d go AWOL the moment it came along. Now all he had to do was float over and see it for himself. Decide if he wanted to stay. Ben imagined it was paradise there.

  ‘It is using your memories, your imagination, to reel you in close enough to strike!’ Ben felt himself spun round. A craggy old face leaned into his own. ‘Think of Lindey, and Denni. Pulled away into the darkness. Pulled apart by winged statues.’

  Ben pushed the old man away. ‘Leave me alone!’ His arms felt dead. The rest of him felt dead drunk. The sky was spinning above him, streaked with stars.

  ‘Think of Polly, alone, back in that room with the sick and the dying!’ The old man was back again, back in his face. ‘There is evil, here, Ben. Evil that we must defeat if we are to survive. Do you understand me now, hmm?’ Ben felt bony fingers digging into his shoulders. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes!’ screamed Ben.

  He stood shaking, trembling, at the edge of the precipice. The spell was broken, the rushing static noise in his head reduced to a whisper. As he turned, he saw that the shadowy island was some kind of machinery housed across the divide.

  And while Creben stood just a few feet away with his hands pressed against his ears, face twisted in pain as if he was trying to shut out some terrible sound, Joiks, Roba and Tovel had actually walked off the lip of rock into the chasm. Ben stared, woozily, half-expecting the lot of them to look down at any second and, actually realising they were walking in mid-air, plummet to the ground like the coyote did in the cartoons. But they didn’t.

  ‘Some kind of force bridge, I suppose. Now quickly, Ben, while I deal with Creben, go after them. They must be stopped! None of us know what’s waiting for them!’

  While the Doctor started shouting at Creben – an easier conversion it seemed, since he was already trying to fight off the influence in the first place – Ben sprinted to the edge of the precipice. With a deep breath, he stepped out into thin blue air. It gave slightly beneath him, but held. He took another cautious step, then broke into a run. Tovel, Roba and Joiks had almost reached the shadowy cylindrical mass Ben had seen as an island. It looked now more like a couple of giant glass cotton reels stacked on top of each other in a rocky alcove. A dark liquid seemed to swirl inside, carried he supposed by the confused junction of pipes coiled all around the structure, disappearing into floor and ceiling.

  ‘Oi, you lot!’ he yelled, wondering what each of them was seeing now. ‘It ain’t safe! It ain’t what you think it is!’ They ignored him. Soon they would’ve crossed to the other side.

  Then inspiration struck.

  ‘Blimey, here comes Haunt!’ Ben shouted. ‘She don’t look too happy at the state of you lot!’

  The three men paused on the slate grey shore of the weird machine’s peninsula. They turned, almost as one person. Tovel and Roba looked like someone had thrown a bucket of water over them, stared round in surprise.

  But Joiks’s face clouded over again. He turned back to the glass cylinder.

  ‘Terrific,’ Ben muttered. He sprinted past Roba and Tovel, and brought Joiks crashing down in a rugby tackle. The big man made no attempt to break his fall, and landed like a brick. The shock seemed to bring him round. He rolled on to his back, and looked about him in a daze.

  ‘Hope that didn’t hurt too much, Joiks,’ Ben said, hiding a smile. That one had been for Frog.

  He turned to find the others, the Doctor and Creben included, were standing round him in a semi-circle. Roba hoisted Joiks to his feet.

  The Doctor was puffing for breath. ‘Well done, Ben, my boy.’

  Ben nodded vaguely. He was looking back at the glass tank, and the inky liquid vortex inside. There were occasional flashes of energy from within. Even the air seemed to carry some sort of charge.

  ‘Well, Doctor?’ asked Tovel. ‘Is that thing part of the drive systems?’

  ‘Part of them? Yes, I believe so.’ He drew himself up to his full height. ‘We must be very careful.’

  Cautiously they advanced. The glass crackled and spat light at them, as if warning them away.

  ‘How is it powering this thing?’ Creben wondered. ‘The fuel required for a chunk of rock this size…’

  ‘Hey, what’s that?’ Roba gestured to a scrap of dirty fabric caught on the rough slate of the wall beside coils of piping.

  Ben skirted the glass cylinder to see. The material had been white once, but now it was filthy with grime and rusty stain
s. ‘Could be blood, I suppose.’

  Creben took the scrap from him. ‘It is blood.’ He turned to the others. ‘It’s from one of the Schirr.’

  ‘’Ere, wait a minute.’ In one of the glass cylinder’s more vivid sparks Ben caught sight of something gleaming, pressed into a crack in the rock. ‘There’s something else down here.’

  Creben drew a short-bladed knife and prised out a metal band. ‘Webset,’ he muttered. He worked more urgently with the blade, forcing the headband out. ‘I’ve found a webset!’ he yelled. ‘And another beneath it.’

  ‘Right little treasure trove, ain’t it?’ Ben commented.

  ‘Lindey’s and Denni’s, they must be!’ Creben shouted to the others.

  ‘Why would anyone hide their websets down here?’ asked Tovel.

  ‘I say dump them,’ Joiks said quickly.

  Creben frowned at him. ‘What?’

  ‘Come on, who needs them?’

  ‘They must’ve been hidden here for some reason,’ said Tovel.

  Then there was a hiss and a crackle like fat on a flame, and then the sound of something heavy slamming into the glass. Ben whirled round in time to see a huge hunk of flesh smeared against the inside of the cylinder, just for a few seconds, until the relentless swirl of inky fluid swept it back into the maelstrom.

  It looked to be someone’s back.

  Ben gagged, turned away.

  ‘Lindey,’ whispered Roba. ‘That’s got to be Lindey. That’s why her set’s here.’

  The Doctor stared at them gravely. ‘The secrets of the propulsion system?’

  Creben looked properly downcast for the first time Ben could recall. ‘It all comes back to the body, doesn’t it. Lindey’s and Denni’s they use for fuel. Frog’s is no good so they start turning her into something else.’

  ‘Meat.’ Joiks started giggling. ‘That’s all we are now. Meat.’

  Ben turned to the Doctor. ‘They’re really using human flesh and blood as fuel?’

  ‘For the rituals,’ Roba added. ‘They’re using it for the rituals.’

  The Doctor looked down at the floor. ‘As a basic material in the energy conversion process, yes, it’s possible.’

  ‘Not just human remains.’ Tovel pointed to the cylinder.

  Pressed up against the glass, along with a mess of dark-brown chunks that looked like dog food, was a bloody medallion of glistening pink flesh. It bore a brand, a rectangle crossed through with a diagonal line.

  ‘Schirr,’ he breathed. ‘There’s Schirr bodies in this thing as well.’

  ‘The Morphieans,’ said Creben. ‘They’re taking back what’s theirs.’

  ‘And dealing most conclusively with their enemies,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘I imagine this centrifuge is where the Schirr bodies on the platform were conjured to.’

  ‘There’s six of them left,’ Ben said with a frown. ‘So why turn Frog into a Schirr too?’

  ‘To maintain some secret balance?’ the Doctor wondered. ‘Or because Schirr flesh gives a higher yield? Perhaps we will all become Schirr before too long, the impurities driven from our flesh so that it may be changed…’

  ‘And we’ll all wind up in there,’ said Tovel quietly, transfixed by the cylinder.

  ‘Great,’ said Roba. His dark skin was covered in sweat, and he kept licking his lips every few seconds. ‘So, how do we stop this thing?’

  ‘Stop it?’ Joiks spluttered. ‘You want we should get in that thing and pull out the plug?’

  ‘These pipes and stuff. We could pull them out, we could –’

  ‘Young man,’ the Doctor said sternly, ‘you can see the powers at work there. We dare not disturb that balance without a fuller knowledge of how the processes work.’

  ‘So get learning, old man,’ Roba growled menacingly.

  The Doctor sighed. ‘I confess I was hoping to find a more conventional means of propulsion. If I only had more time to –’

  ‘All this time you been shooting off a mouth as big as one of these tunnels,’ Roba hissed. ‘And now you don’t know nothing?’

  ‘All right, quiet, all of you,’ snapped Tovel. ‘You talk about learning, Roba. We’re learning more all the time. We know where the Schirr went, we know where Lindey and Denni went.’ He grabbed the websets from Creben. ‘And we got these. Denni was still recording when she was killed. Maybe we’ll learn some more from watching that back.’

  ‘So, how about we get back, then?’ chimed Ben. ‘Check up on Polly and the others. This place gives me the creeps.’

  Joiks suddenly lunged for the websets.

  Tovel recoiled instinctively, kept them out of reach. ‘What the hell are you playing at, Joiks?’

  ‘What we gonna learn from watching them die? I say we should dump them.’

  Roba scowled at him. ‘That don’t make no sense, Joiks.’

  ‘Don’t make no sense to rake over the past, neither.’ Joiks laughed nervously. ‘What are you people, sick?’

  ‘Something happened down there, didn’t it, Joiks?’ Creben said. ‘When Denni got taken.’

  Joiks backed away. ‘You’re crazy, Creben.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Creben shook his head. ‘I think you know something you’re not telling us.’

  Tovel grabbed hold of Joiks’s shoulder. ‘We’re talking to you.’

  ‘It’s nothing!’ Joiks pulled himself free of Tovel’s grip. ‘Denni was saying stuff about Haunt. Didn’t think she was fit to lead us on a live ammo shoot when she gets so worked up by the Schirr and all that. She wanted me to log a complaint or something, I dunno.’

  ‘And did you agree?’ demanded the Doctor.

  ‘I told her she was crazy.’ Joiks paused. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its cockiness. ‘But then, you know… she wants something from me, I’m maybe thinking, how ’bout I get something in return?’

  Tovel snorted. ‘You’re filth, Joiks.’

  ‘Look, I didn’t do nothing! It was dark, when the sets don’t pick much stuff up. I put an arm round her waist, sounded her out a little… But she was grabbed right from out of my arms, and that’s the truth!’ Joiks’s voice grew whinier, less confident. ‘I tried to hold on to her –’

  ‘Yeah, well, it sounds a sweet little story, Joiks,’ said Tovel. ‘But maybe we’ll view the sets anyway. Just in case they picked up something, right?’

  ‘Reckon Denni was lucky she got offed when she did,’ muttered Roba.

  Joiks turned and stamped off the way they’d come without another word. He teetered on the edge of the indigo abyss for a moment, as if surprised to find it there. Then, with a last glare back at Tovel and the others, he set off across the divide. The rolling blue swell of light swept over and around him. Still it hissed and rustled like the sea.

  ‘We’d better get after him,’ sighed Tovel as he secured the two websets to his belt. But Roba was already slouching off, leaving the others behind.

  ‘If you’re going to lead us,’ said Creben, indicating the two bowed figures as they strode through the blue, ‘you’d better lead us.’

  ‘Yes, after you, Tovel,’ agreed the Doctor absently. He pottered off along the force bridge after Creben and Tovel. Ben followed on behind, trying not to look too hard through the eddying light and down into the depths of the ravine. If whatever was holding them up chose to let go…

  They were halfway over when Ben heard the noise of heavy wings flapping, like distant bellows drawing in air and hissing it back out.

  He swore. ‘Do any of you hear…?’

  Tovel and his merry men ignored him and grabbed for their weapons. They’d heard it all right.

  Moments later a flight of the fat stone cherubim breezed through the gaping mouth of the tunnel, some six or seven of them.

  ‘They found us,’ Joiks screamed.

  The apparitions fanned out into the room. Their chubby arms were wide open. The sharp hooks of their fingers flexed and wriggled.

  ‘For all our ignorance,’ said the Doctor, glaring haughtily at
the creatures as they spun through the blinding blue air, ‘I fear we may still have learned too much.’

  Joiks opened fire. The others quickly followed suit.

  The cherubim bobbed down unharmed through the opening volley of laser blasts. As Ben fired his crummy pistol, he saw the statues’ serene smiles growing broader at the sight of the humans huddled beneath them.

  ‘Just meat,’ Joiks muttered, as his gun spat bolt after useless bolt.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  MURDER IS EASY

  I

  TOVEL WAS RIGHT, Polly realised. Shade’s injuries were healing with incredible speed. The splits and gouges in his face, all puckered by endless lines of tiny plastic sutures, had now practically smoothed themselves out, and he seemed to be sleeping peacefully. It still looked like someone had cut a map of the London Underground into his face, but all things considered, his wounds should’ve been a good deal worse.

  She thought about what he’d said about being a jinx, tried to tell herself it was self-pitying, stupid talk. But what if it was true?

  Polly took out the palmscreen from her spacesuit, and studied it. ‘Oh no!’ she hissed. The screen was blank. She must’ve knocked the OK button when she hid the stupid thing away. That must mean all Shade’s incriminating files were deleted.

  Well, good, she told herself. It showed that Shade had some good luck after all, so he couldn’t be a jinx. They would all be fine.

  Frog’s scream nearly punctured Polly’s eardrums.

  She spun round, and her hand flew to her mouth in shock.

  Frog was propped up on one elbow, her combat suit unzipped. She was digging a knife into her shiny pink stomach. There seemed to be blood everywhere.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Polly squeaked.

  ‘When you got poison inside you,’ panted Frog, her pale staring eyes bulging out of her red face, ‘you gotta cut it out.’

  ‘But you can’t just… cut out…’ Polly wondered if she would faint. ‘Cut out all that flesh.’

  Frog flashed her a manic grin. ‘Wanna watch me try?’

  ‘Put down the knife, Frog,’ Polly pleaded. ‘You’ll kill yourself.’

  ‘Ha!’ Frog’s mad smile relaxed a little. ‘Now why didn’t I think of that.’ She gritted her teeth and slid the knife along. But another bloodcurdling scream escaped her.