by Stephen Cole
III
‘Good work, Roba. Out.’ Haunt smiled in triumph as she swung round to address Polly, the Doctor and Shade. ‘Roba reports a Kay-Dee down.’
‘No static blocking communications this time,’ the Doctor observed quietly.
‘Is Ben all right?’ Polly asked.
Haunt nodded. ‘The droid attacked them in the tunnel.’ She paused, ‘It must’ve killed Lindey first.’
Polly saw the Doctor shake his head at this. ‘We don’t know that for sure,’ he said.
‘You said yourself, these tunnels are connected.’ Haunt stared him down. ‘Can you give me an alternative explanation?’
‘Very well, if the droids did indeed kill Denni and Lindey,’
the Doctor said quickly, ‘then that mystery is solved. Will you now accept it is essential we learn our destination with all possible speed, and attempt to find a way of signalling for help from outside?’
Haunt seemed to consider his plea. ‘Shel, take the old man and the girl back to the control room,’ she said at last. ‘I’ll contact the others. We’ll search on for the bodies of Lindey and Denni and meet you back there.’
Shel looked pale, his face covered in a sheen of sweat.
‘Marshal.’
They left Haunt in the vast chamber, alone with Shade, both as silent and still as one of the statues balanced on top of the pillars.
‘If it wasn’t the droid that murdered Denni and Lindey,’
Polly said nervously, ‘then what did?’
‘Or who?’ the Doctor muttered darkly.
Polly decided not to pursue her line of questioning. She was scared enough as it was. She shivered as Shel led them down the same tunnel that she had taken with Shade.
‘I do wish you could’ve seen the blue place, Doctor,’ she sighed. ‘I’m sure you would’ve understood it.’
‘Maybe so,’ the Doctor agreed loftily. ‘Young man,’ he added turning to Shel. ‘Would you be so kind as to attempt to contact someone on your communicator, hmm?’
Shel looked at him curiously but contacted Haunt. Her voice crackled through in response, partially obscured by the rhythmic shushing of the static.
‘A test only,’ Shel reported. ‘Out.’
‘The power source you mentioned, Doctor,’ said Polly. ‘Does that mean it’s growing fainter?’
‘Perhaps. But without a good deal of excavation, there is no way of retracing your footsteps to discover the truth. We should continue to the main control room.’ He sighed heavily, impatiently shrugged off his frock coat. His long white hair was clinging to his damp forehead. ‘We must see what is happening back there.’
Polly nodded, and followed after the silent Shel.
Her arms itched. The fleas, she thought. They must bite.
She ruminated gloomily on the red lumps that would soon cover her as they trekked back to the control room.
They’d got as far as the bullring when the itching was replaced by a prickling sensation at the sound of flashbulbs charging.
‘Doctor!’ she yelled. ‘That sound...’
‘Down!’ yelled the Doctor, flinging himself to the rocky floor.
Polly copied him, her cushioned suit protecting her from the gravelly floor. She felt a heat like sunlamps on the back of her neck.
All she could see was a crimson wash filtering into her vision, and the rising whirr of something huge and heavy approaching.
‘D-Droid.’ Shel reached for his gun.
Polly stared in horror as this ‘droid’, a chugging red colossus as big as a department store lift, stole into the rocky ring on angle-poised legs and swivelled its heavy glassy head from side to side in search of what it could crush first.
Chapter Seven
The Burden
I
Shel levelled his rifle and fired blast after white-hot blast at the robot. The droid hunched on its many legs like a spider that knows itself discovered, then lashed out a steel tentacle that swiped the gun from Shel’s grip. A splatter of blood from his arm slopped onto the floor, but Polly heard no sound of a cry.
The Doctor was back on his feet. He flapped his heavy frock coat at the creature like a matador waving his cloak before an enraged bull.
‘Run, Polly,’ the Doctor insisted. He looked at her pointedly, sheltering behind his coat. Did he think that if he couldn’t see the robot it couldn’t see him? ‘As fast as you can.’
Polly rose to her feet and prepared to run for the jagged hole in the ring that led to the passageway stretching back to the control room. As she did so, a metal fist punched the Doctor through his coat. Silently he doubled up and collapsed.
The robot sidled up to his prone body. Two flexible probes that ended in gleaming surgical blades emerged from its silvery trunk and hovered over the Doctor, as if about to carve a roast.
Then a grating noise somewhere between an alarm clock and an egg timer burst out into the shadowy bullring. Polly saw the woman called Frog come charging into the rocky arena, screaming. She fired blast after blast from a rifle she clutched in just one hand.
The robot spun round to face her, leaving the Doctor unguarded. Polly swiftly ran over to him, as he lay winded on the floor. She gripped his hand; it was cold, clammy, heavily veined. And as he rose she saw his face. Lined, parchment-thin skin. Eyes like dark beads rolling in his head as he recovered his wits. For a moment she wanted to recoil from him as something almost alien, but he held his hand out to her, a pathetic gesture for help, and she took it. His grip on her arm was feeble as he held on to her, gasping for breath, an ordinary old man again.
Frog had been joined by Creben and Joiks, each firing their guns at the droid, trapping it in a circle of fire, blasting at it again and again until its devil-red haze faded, its movements became weak and clumsy. Unable to resist the hail of fire, its legs splayed and it crashed heavily to the ground.
The Doctor seemed to draw strength from the mechanical creature as it flailed helplessly on the floor. His breathing became more regular, and he smiled at Polly with something approaching pride, as if every breath he drew demonstrated superiority over his fallen foe. He scratched at the back of his neck, reminding Polly she was still itching all over too. Just her luck if the fleas were poisonous.
Shel stared down dispassionately at both the silent machine and at the puncture wound in his arm.
Joiks shot a pointed glance at the Doctor. ‘I think he could use you.’
‘I am not a doctor of medicine.’ The Doctor shook his head wearily. ‘However, his combat suit will compress the flesh around the wound, will it not? To stem the blood flow?’
Creben nodded. ‘And this should help. Medikit.’ He pulled a slim metal box from a pouch on his harness and stepped forward to examine the wound. Shel recoiled, began nursing the injury as if he’d only just become aware of it.
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 gr
abbed, 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 takeoff.’
‘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. ‘Jesus, 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 bleedin’ 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 Peacekeeper 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 hissed. ‘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 takeoff,’
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.
