by Nick Walters
If she ever got that chance...
‘Heresies?’ Kikker’s eyes widened and his voice rose.
‘She denounces the Great Mission! She wishes to flee from the Gods, back to Valeth Skettra!’ cried Flayoun.
The three Vale Guards drew their guns and aimed them at Veek.
Veek realised that she should have challenged Kikker back on the barren moon, before the feast. Now it was too late.
Kikker’s voice was smooth and calm, his eyes coolly appraising. Is this true, Hunt Marshal Veek?’
Veek couldn’t think of a way out of this except bluff.
‘Flayoun is delirious, Hunt Marshal - the explosion addled his mind – he misunderstood my words.’
Kikker looked from Veek to Flayoun, eyes narrowing. He sniffed the air. The iron taint of Flayoun’s spilled blood was clear to Veek and would be to all the others.
‘You have fought. Yet one has survived. How can this be?’
‘I spared him, Vale Commander,’ said Veek quickly. ‘It was, all, a misunderstanding - and he is a fine hunter.’
‘No misunderstanding, Hunt Marshal!’ hissed Flayoun. He made to lunge at her but Kikker stepped forward, restraining the hunter.
‘Enough, enough!’ he growled. ‘Whatever your difference forget them - for now. You can settle them later. I need both of you. The ship is under attack.’
Veek gaped. ‘Attack?’ This was a planet full of inert, passive plants! ‘From whom?’
Suddenly a voice rang out across the excavation pit. ‘Hello there! Is this a private party or can anyone join in?’
Veek whirled round to see the human called the Doctor descending the staircase leading down from one of the walkway that crossed the excavation pit. Two sheepish-looking Vale Guards shuffled before him. For some reason Veek couldn’t fathom, the human was holding a blaster to his own head.
‘I told you to put him into the long sleep!’ growled Kikker as two Vale Guards came up to him and saluted.
‘He threatens to kill himself!’ said the taller of the guards.
The strange human walked right up to Kikker. And with me the secret of time travel dies. Where are Peri, Athon and Taiana?’
Veek wondered briefly which name fitted which. To her relief all the Vale Guards were now targeting the human. His pink, fleshy face didn’t look at all concerned - but then Veek had always found prey to be inscrutable, except when in the extremes pain and terror. She licked her lips, edging nearer the Doctor. This human, though seemingly deranged, was her ticket back home.
Kikker turned away, pretending unconcern, but Veek could see his lips curl in a wince of anger. ‘I have more pressing problems than the fate of mere prey.’
All the Doctor’s attention was fixed on the Vale Commander. Silently, swiftly, Veek lunged at him, shoving him to the floor and snatching the blaster away from him in one swift movement.
The human sprawled on the mud floor of the excavation pit, glaring up at Veek. For a second, Veek saw power in his eyes.
Power, knowledge and deep wisdom.
Kikker nodded at Veek. ‘Well done, Hunt Marshal’ He waved a hand and the two Vale Guards the Doctor had outwitted dragged him back to his feet, handling him roughly, snarling threats into his ears.
The Doctor repeated his question. ‘Where are my friends?
There was an explosion, wasn’t there? Something’s gone wrong with your little treasure-hunt!’
Veek pointed at the bulk of the now-silent excavator. ‘They tried to escape, into the planet’s interior.’
‘And the explosion?’
‘Suicide,’ said Ruvis, nodding his grizzled head, with a level glare Kikker. ‘Quite common among prey.’
‘Oh, I don’t think Peri would take her own life. She’s far too spirited!’ Despite the lightness of his voice, his eyes looked haunted. He tried to crane round in the grip of his captors to examine the machine. ‘Is there any chance they could have survived?’
‘No!’ roared Kikker. He glared at Veek and Flayoun. ‘They are dead.’ He had been pacing up and down before the Doctor, clearly occupied. Veek remembered his words about an attack.
‘Then the bargain’s off,’ said the Doctor. ‘You couldn’t keep your side of it, so I’m not going to keep mine. You will never learn the secrets of time travel, not from me anyway.’
Kikker stopped pacing and went up to the Doctor, gripping his face in a gloved hand, sending spittle flying into his fair hair. ‘I care nothing for any bargain! When the time comes I will tear the information from you!’ He turned away. Veek could see that he was shaking with rage. ‘Take him away - put him in the long sleep!’ Veek saw her chance. ‘I will take him. He has no chance of outwitting witting me.’
Kikker didn’t seem to hear, but at her command the Vale Guards shoved the Doctor over to her. She caught him and held on to him tightly.
The Vale Commander had already started walking away.
Come, Hunter Flayoun, Vale Guards - we have much to do.’
‘He seems rather worked up about something,’ muttered the Doctor.
Veek realised he was addressing her. ‘He says we’re under attack.’ She raised her voice. ‘Who attacks us, Vale Commander?’
Kikker stopped walking and turned round. ‘The plants of this cursed world! They have mutated and swarmed against us. They are threatening to overrun the ship!’ His voice rose to an indignant bark. ‘It would be the ultimate humiliation if the Great Mission were to be thwarted by -’ he spat the word plants! ’ The Doctor shuddered - Veek looked at his face and realised he was laughing. She squeezed his arm, not quite hard enough to break it. He struggled to break free from Veek’s grip but she held him too tightly.
‘It’s the Garden,’ he said. ‘It sees you as a threat - it’s defending itself against you the only way it can!’
Kikker snorted. ‘Ridiculous. These creatures have been sent by the Gods as a final test of our strength. Only when we have defeated them will we at last confront the Gods.’
The Doctor sighed in exasperation. No! Listen to me - your only chance is to leave this planet, now. If my theory’s correct the attacks won’t stop until you’re completely eradicated!’
Kikker came up to the Doctor, blue-white teeth bared in a sneer
‘That will never happen. Valethske technology is superior. We will prevail.’
His words reassured Veek, but the mad gleam in his eyes did not.
The Doctor smiled. ‘We will see,’ he said in a fair imitation Kikker’s sibilant growl.
Kikker drew back his hand and flicked the Doctor in the with the fingers of his gloved fist. The Doctor flinched and cried out, writhing in Veek’s grip.
Then Kikker strode away, flanked by Flayoun, Ruvis and the Vale Guards.
The Doctor’s nose was bleeding, but his eyes were burning with anger. Veek let him go so he could clean up his wound and regain his composure.
‘Who elected him leader?’ he muttered.
‘No one,’ said Veek. ‘He is Vale Commander by right of combat.’
‘It was a rhetorical question,’ The Doctor sighed and looked Veek up and down. ‘Well, come on then, aren’t you meant to be hiking me to the freezer?’
‘Yes.’ Veek grabbed the Doctor’s arm again, more gently this time, and grinned, letting him see her blue-white teeth, giving an outward show of ferocity.
But inside she was wondering if the threat of death would be enough to make this strange human help her escape the Great Mission.
Peri woke up coughing, her eyes streaming and her lungs on fire. She opened her eyes: blackness. She stood up, gasping as pain threatened to drag her back down. She felt like one huge bruise. She did a quick check, feeling along her arms, along her legs, her ribs, her head - nothing seemed broken. A miracle she was alive.
No. It would be a miracle if Athon was alive.
She peered into the gloom, but couldn’t see much. She stretched out her arms, fingers touching wet mud. The explosion seemed to have brought down the
roof of the cavern, smothering Athon , the pursuing Valethske and the massive drill-head in untold tons of mud. Peri, by sheer luck, had been blasted back into an alcove in the cavern wall, thus escaping being crushed by scarcely a few feet.
Great. A whole planet had fallen on her. At least things couldn’t get any worse.
Peri felt her way around her prison, trying not to panic, trying not to notice how hard it was getting to breathe. She soon found that the wall of mud met a wall of rock in both directions. There was no way out. She was entombed. She wished she had never read that Poe story about the premature burial. It had been at a pyjama party back when she was thirteen. She’d read it aloud with glee, scared all her friends.
Not giggly, huddle-together scared, but sleepless-night scared. God, she could remember whole chunks of it now She began to panic, sweat pouring into her eyes.
‘Can anyone hear me?’ she yelled. Her voice vanished into the mud. Smothered.
Peri sank to her knees and buried her head in her hands, letting the sobs come, for once not really caring. There was no one here to see her anyway. After a while she stopped crying and sat blinking in the darkness, feeling sort of empty and not scared. It was as if the tears had released something in her, wiped away all her panic and terror. For a while, anyway. She could already feel it starting to build again.
She stared at the boots the Valethske had given her -
clunky, heavy things like diver’s boots.
Hang on, she thought - how could she see them, in total darkness?
Then she saw that they were reflecting a greenish glow.
Peri looked off to her left - there, near the floor, was a tiny gap, not much bigger than an upturned open book, through which the now-familiar green phosphorescence sent its faint green glow. Peri scrambled over to the gap on all fours and peered through. The green light illuminated a gap that was way too small for her to squirm through. She could reach all the way to the other side with an outstretched arm, but that was all.
For what seemed like hours she widened out the gap, hauling out great hunks of slippery clay-like mud and slapping it in the small space around her. The effort made her giddy and she had to rest her aching arms every now and then. Her veins seemed to pulse with pain, as if even her blood was tired.
But eventually she managed to widen the gap enough to be able to force her way through. She felt like toothpaste being squeezed from a tube. For one terrifying moment she thought that more mud was going to plop down on her, but she broke free and scrambled away, stretching herself out on the rock floor, panting with the exertion, staring at the moss-covered ceiling some ten feet above her.
She was just getting interested in the glowing moss when an ominous creaking and groaning sound broke out from nearby. Fearing that the roof was going to come crashing down, Peri got to her feet and looked around. She was in a tunnel, refreshingly wide and high-ceilinged. It had a smooth floor and rough walls of chunky black rock covered in the green moss.
Behind her, the tunnel entrance was blocked by a wall of mud.
She could see the gap through which she’d squeezed; it was at the junction of rock wall and mudslide. Any further to the right and she really would have been entombed for ever.
Thankful to be alive, Peri tried not to dwell on the fact that she was lost in the bowels of an alien planet with no food and water. She walked along the tunnel, which led in a smooth curve so that she was continually on edge waiting for something to run round the corner at her.
Presently, she came out into a large cavern bordered with tapering pillars of rock. There were many other tunnels leading off, and her heart sank. How the hell was she ever going to get back to the surface?
Then she noticed that she wasn’t alone. Sitting in the middle of the cavern was a figure. A woman with white hair, head slumped on her chest.
She was wearing an old leather jacket and khaki combat trousers.
‘Hello? A - Aline?’
The woman looked up.
Peri gasped. It was Aline! Where her skin was pale before, now it was positively luminescent, glowing with an inner, ghostly light. Her once-black hair was now pure white, glowing like fibre-optics. Where the leather jacket and combat trousers hadn’t suited her before, now they looked positively grotesque.
Aline looked up at Peri, then slumped down again. Peri ran to her.
‘Are you OK? What the hell happened to you?’
Aline stared off into the distance. Her voice was barely a whisper. ‘I’ve made contact.’
Peri frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
Aline looked at her. Her eyes were discs of silver swimming in pools of milk. She grimaced, as if remembering a nightmare.
‘It showed me - showed me what this is all about!’
Peri remembered what the Doctor had said - that the Garden had ‘harvested’ her... She became aware of a rustling and chittering. Beyond Aline, giant insects moved, their black carapaces gleaming in the green phosphorescence.
Peri stood up, taking Aline’s hand, noticing with a feeling of nausea that the skin was flaking and white, the veins standing out like freeways on a roadmap. ‘Come on - we’ve got to get out of here!’
Aline shook her off. ‘No point.’
The insects were getting nearer, their claws scratching against the rock, deformed antennae probing the air. They seemed to be converging on Aline.
Peri hesitated. She couldn’t leave Aline here. Could she?
She looked sick, dying.
Peri tried one more time. She grabbed Aline by the shoulders. ‘Come on!’
Aline stood up, seemingly compliant - then twisted out of Peri’s grip. Her face was a white mask - she didn’t look human any more. Peri shuddered.
Aline’s voice was a strangled whisper. ‘You don’t understand -they’re dead! They’re all dead!’
Peri turned and fled from the cavern.
Chapter Twenty
Alliance
Veek hurried along the main access passage of the Valethske ship, taking long, loping strides. Her ears twitched continually and she was alert for any sign of movement.
In the distance, she could hear sounds of battle, and she grinned. With Kikker and all the hunters concentrating on the defence of the ship, she’d be able to escape unnoticed.
In front of her the strange human walked at gunpoint, pale clawless hands raised on a level with his head.
They came to a point where the passage branched into three.
The Doctor made a dodge for the leftmost branching, but Veek lunged forwards, bringing her hand down heavily on his shoulder.
‘No - the central way,’ she whispered.
The Doctor half-turned as if to question her, but Veek gave him a shove and he stumbled on.
‘Where are you taking me? This isn’t the way to your cryogenic facility.’
‘I know this ship better than you, prey,’ she bluffed.
He was right - they weren’t going to the sleep cells. Veek grimaced, glad that the Doctor couldn’t see the tension in her face. She knew that her escape depended entirely on this human. When he had been strapped in the torture-chair she’d heard him say that he was the only one who could operate the time-machine. Kill me and you’ll be forever denied its powers.
Suddenly the Doctor stopped walking, and Veek bumped into him, making him stumble. He ignored the impact and turned to address Veek. Again she saw the power in his eyes. Naked in his pink face, they seemed to resemble orbs of glass encased in wrinkles and folds of flesh, hard and challenging amidst all that vulnerable meat. Veek sensed the inner strength and intellect behind those eyes, a mental prowess qualitatively different from the natural instinct and cunning of a hunter like herself. Something to respect. Something to fear? Veek flexed the muscles in her arms, taking comfort from her superior strength.
‘I said, where are you taking me?’
His voice echoed up and down the passageway like a clarion call to all hunters in the vicinity.
‘Silence,
prey!’ hissed Veek, deciding to play the loyal Valethske for a while longer in case anyone should pass by. She shoved the human into the service alcove behind the nearest bulkhead, a cramped space of shadows and dust.
‘Well, this is all very cosy,’ said the Doctor, his face upturned to hers. He was smiling, blunt ineffectual teeth shining in the pale light seeping down from above.
‘We are not going to the sleep cells,’ she told the human.
‘Well that’s a relief,’ he said, shoulders slumping slightly.
Then he backed away from her, raising his hands. ‘Now wait a minute - not thinking of having me as a quick snack, are you?
Because if you’re hungry I know a nice little place -’
His voice was loud in the confined space. Veek reached out and clamped a hand over his jaw. ‘Be quiet!’ she hissed. She let him go and he slumped against the side of the chamber.
‘So where are we going?’
‘You will take me to your time machine,’ she said, aiming her blaster at his face. ‘Or you will die.’
The Doctor groaned. ‘Not again.’ Then. ‘No. I cannot let creatures like you have access to time travel.’
‘Then...’ Veek brought the blaster up to his face.
The Doctor smiled. ‘Then...?’
She brought her hand down, appalled. It was as she’d feared -
violent coercion, even the threat of death, had no effect! She would have to - have to co-operate with this human. Gain his trust. A new and abhorrent concept.
‘Then I... I want...’ Veek couldn’t frame the words. No Valethske had ever appealed to a human before, for anything. It was beyond heresy, a mockery of her hunter’s heritage. But she had to do it, in order to preserve that very legacy. She let out a hot sigh that made the human take out a cloth from a pocket and clamp it over the lower half of his face.
At last Veek found the words her mind was groping for, her voice a tight growl through gritted teeth. ‘I want your help.’
