Part 9 (2/2)

'DeCaster and...' the name eluded Ben.

'The Ten-strong?' Frog finished for him automatically, then smiled, apparently amused. 'You never heard of the Empire's most wanted?'

'Indeed I'm afraid not. Remind me, from which planet do these ten terrorists hail?'

'Idaho,' Frog informed them, eyes trained on her watch.

'Outer Empire.'

'A planet called Idaho?' Ben spluttered.

The Doctor ignored him, looked at Frog sharply. 'The Earth annexed the Schirr planet?'

' Repatriated Repatriated,' she qualified with a chuckle that sounded like a rusty alarm clock going off. 'Fifteen years ago. Standard procedure.'

'Yes, of course it is, of course it is,' the Doctor muttered.

'And I suppose the Schirr didn't wish to be so aggressively...

repatriated, hmm?' hmm?'

Frog shrugged. 'What we want and what we get, honey, we none of us got a say in.'

'But DeCaster and his mates want want a say, right?' Ben chipped in. 'Even so, ten blokes against an empire...?' a say, right?' Ben chipped in. 'Even so, ten blokes against an empire...?'

Frog shook her head. 'Schirr got links with the Spooks.'

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. 'What links might these be?'

Frog shrugged. 'Old, old links. Before the Spooks crept back to their cloud. Old, old magic. And ten's all you need to make the big rituals work.'

'Rituals, not warfare?' the Doctor asked, eyes gleaming now with interest.

'People die just the same.' She raised her gun, suddenly cold and threatening. 'Frog don't talk too much to prisoners, honey. Break time's over. Get moving.'

They did; through a mighty set of doors set into the rock, along a winding, narrow tunnel, on to a large cave riddled with pa.s.sages.

Then they felt the first tremor.

'Seismic activity on a planetoid as small as this?' the Doctor wondered aloud. His expression suggested he didn't find this likely.

The second tremor sent them staggering into the wall.

'Getting worse!' Ben shouted.

'Soon have you tucked up tight,' Frog told him. 'Here's the dropzone.' And she herded the two of them roughly into a circular chamber, lit with a wide blue spotlight s.h.i.+ning down from high above. While the beam was bright and concentrated, it cast the rest of the chamber into pitch blackness. Two flexible metal ladders snaked down the ray of light.

'I imagine those lead through the asteroid's mantle and back up to the docked s.h.i.+p,' the Doctor told Ben.

'But we can't just go and leave Polly and the TARDIS behind!' Ben hissed back, panic rising. The ground trembled beneath him once again as if in sympathy.

'Get climbing,' Frog told them.

The Doctor looked outraged. 'Climb up there? At my age?

Preposterous, madam!'

'Yeah,' Ben added, you can't expect an old geezer to -'

But Frog wasn't mucking about. She leapt nimbly into the light and caught hold of the ladder. The strength of the light obliterated most of her form, turned her into a pin-man as she scaled a few rungs. She swung out on the ladder, winked at Ben, caught hold of the quilted neckline of the Doctor's s.p.a.cesuit with one hand, and hauled him off the ground.

The Doctor squawked with indignation as he dangled precariously from Frog's grip. Ben stared in disbelief.

Incredibly, the woman was scaling the ladder and carrying the Doctor with her.

'Ere, wait a minute!' yelled Ben.

'Climb the other ladder or I drop him,' Frog called teasingly.

A fresh tremor nearly knocked Ben to his knees, but he recovered and ran into the light without a second thought. A moment later he was clambering up after them. 'Hang on, Doctor,' he yelled, squinting into the blue radiance at the hazy figures above. He could hear grunts of exertion from Frog, the furious fussings of the old boy as he demanded to be released: 'Madam, unhand me at once!'

Then Ben cried out as something small and sharp smacked into his forehead. It was followed a few seconds later by some smaller stinging missiles and a shower of dust.

'Wait!' he shouted, blinking grit from his eyes, disorientated by the blinding light. 'Frog, them tremors... they must be bringing down a rockfall or something!'

V.

Polly sighed. Roaming the tunnels had been scary, but at least she might've found Ben and the Doctor. Now she was going nowhere: prisoner of s.p.a.ce soldiers, stuck inside a big rock.

Tovel, the bigger and dis.h.i.+er of the two men, mumbled directions into his sleeve to their marshal. The one called Shade pointed his gun at her. There was something wrong with his face. It was peppered with dark markings, like black seeds were trying to sprout from under his skin. The region around his eyes seemed the worst affected, though the eyes themselves glinted a brilliant green.

'You want to know what's wrong with my face,' Shade remarked. His voice was hoa.r.s.e.

'No!' Polly felt herself blus.h.i.+ng. 'I'm just trying to keep my eyes off your gun, that's all.'

Shade shrugged and smiled. 'It's OK. I don't mind: His voice kept the same gravelly tone, and she realised he must always sound that way. Under different circ.u.mstances it might be quite s.e.xy. I was clearing some kids out of a war zone. There was this mine...' He shrugged. 'I had to s.h.i.+eld the children. My face caught a load of the shrapnel.'

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