Part Four: Alliance
Sarah couldn't decide who she should be worried about the most: the Doctor, who'd been missing for such a horribly long time now, Harry and Roba, who she'd seen marched away at gunpoint – or herself. Lying flat on the floor beneath a flimsy bunk in the slave barracks, as the door clicked locked behind the sky raider guards, she rested her forehead against the cool metal surface of the floor tiles and squeezed her eyes shut, focused on breathing to calm herself down. She needed to clear her mind, needed to think. How did she get out of this one? What would the Doctor do?
She opened her eyes again – and almost jumped out of her skin, because there was another pair of eyes looking back at her. They were wide, cat-like eyes set in an ash-grey face, with charcoal-grey markings around the forehead and cheekbones that reminded her of the pattern of spots around the face of a giraffe she'd seen in the zoo. Wild silver hair stood out from the head like the seeds in a dandelion clock, looking almost like a halo with the light shining through from behind it.
It was one of the Lindosian natives, a female, bending to peer beneath the bunk.
Well, if she'd been seen, there was no point hiding any longer. As she gingerly crawled out from her hiding place, Sarah offered the woman what she hoped would be taken as a friendly smile, casting an anxious glance back toward the door, half-expecting the guards to return at any moment. The slaves wouldn't give her away, would they?
"Hello, I'm sorry to barge in like this," she ventured. "Please don't tell them I'm here."
There must have been several dozen Lindosians in the room altogether, but all except the one were making sure to keep their distance, huddling together in small groups here and there, looking very lost and very afraid.
The woman facing Sarah looked frightened as well, but at least she hadn't backed away. "You are not a sky raider," she tentatively offered.
Sarah seized upon the opening. "No. No, I'm not. My name is Sarah, and I'm…well, I was trying to find a way of getting you all away from here." And the irony of that was something she hoped she'd have a chance to appreciate later. She cast another rueful glance at the locked door. "But as you can see, it isn't going very well for me, I'm afraid."
The woman tilted her head slightly to one side, looking wary still but also curious. "You are the Doctor's friend."
It was a statement, not a question. Sarah was flabbergasted. "How did you…?"
The woman gestured at her own face and then waved a hand toward Sarah's. "I see that you look like him. Not like us. Not like sky raiders. And he told me of his friends, left behind when he was taken. So I know that you are one of them."
"You've seen him? Do you know where he is?" The words came tumbling out so fast they almost fell over one another, frantic. She hadn't realised just how worried she was, or how desperate she was to find him, not until this moment, confirmation that he was alive at least – or had been. If this woman had seen him, talked to him, she might know more…but a second later that sudden burst of hope was dashed as the woman shook her head.
"No. They took him away. They brought us here and left us – oh, for many hours – and for what?" She shrugged eloquently, and Sarah could see the tinge of barely restrained panic in her eyes. "They do not say. They take us from our people, we don't want to go, still they take us, and for why? What do they want? Why do they take us?"
Well, Sarah knew the answer to that one. "I think they want you to work in their mines."
The alien woman's brow wrinkled in a very human-looking expression of perplexity. "Work in…what?"
"A mine." The word didn't seem to mean very much to the Lindosian, though, and Sarah cast around for how to explain. "I mean… oh look, what's your name?"
"Emera. I am Emera."
It was a pretty name. Sarah smiled as she sat down on the nearest bunk, gestured for the other woman to do likewise. "I don't really know very much more than you do," she admitted, glancing around as some of the others ventured a little closer, listening intently to what she had to say. "But I do know that this base is up on one of the moons…"
She could see that she'd lost her audience already.
"You know, the moons – you can see them in the sky."
Bewilderment was written all over the faces of the natives surrounding her.
"There are four moons." It was a teenage boy who spoke up, a little older than Roba, long-legged and skinny with sticky-out ears and anxious eyes. "The moons are in the sky. No man can reach them there."
"But your sky raiders can. You know they can, that's why you call them sky raiders, isn't it, because they come from the sky? They have spaceships…" Another word that meant nothing to the Lindosians; it was all so much harder to explain than Sarah had expected. Her head was aching, lack of sleep and lack of food with a surfeit of stress to boot, making it hard to find the right words to make them understand. "Like – like flying carts, very special flying carts. They can travel all the way up to the moons, high up in the sky. That's where we are right now."
But telling them that was a mistake. They were horrified, noisily so – worse than Roba's panic attack when they'd snuck aboard the spaceship. Sarah cast frantic glances toward the door as she pleaded for calm. If any guards were around, how could they help but hear such a disturbance?
"Why?" There were tears in Emera's eyes. "Why do they take us into the sky, trap us here away from soil and sun?"
"Because they want you to work in their mines – oh, but you don't know what mines are," Sarah remembered, tried again to think how to explain. "That means digging. They want you to work for them, digging into the ground for something. And soon – they have other slaves, in other rooms, but they want you to start work next. I heard them say so. They could come back at any moment."
"Digging? But why? For what?"
It was a good question. "I don't know."
dwdwdwdwdw
"Lupium, Harry, a lupium mine," said the Doctor, throwing a loose end of his scarf over his shoulder as he hurried furtively along.
"I've never heard of it."
"Well, you wouldn't have, no, since there's none to be found on Earth – or anywhere else in your galaxy, for that matter. It's a mineral, an energy source, and there's rather a rich vein of it running through this moon." He paused to peer through the handy viewing pane of another door – no, nothing in there.
"Oh, I see. So these sky raider creatures –"
"Tarsins, Harry."
"Tarsins, then – they're bringing the natives up here for slave labour in this mine?"
"Yes, exactly, it's outrageous. Do you know, Harry," the Doctor decided that he wasn't prepared to go on another step until he got this off his chest, "This really must be the most boring space station it's ever been my misfortune to set foot upon – and I've seen some spectacularly dull ones in my time." He shook his head sadly. "Just look at these corridors – how's a fugitive supposed to find his way around here? It really is most inconsiderate of our hosts, don't you think?"
"Well, at least there doesn't seem to be anyone about," Harry offered.
"Yes, so where are they all? That's another point." As they reached the end of the dimly-lit hallway, he paused again to peer into another room; it was in darkness, but his night vision was excellent enough to tell him that it was merely a store cupboard: nothing useful in there. "A place for everything and everything in its place," he loftily proclaimed, "Which is all well and good so long as you know where that place is, which I don't, unfortunately. All clear up ahead?"
Just ahead of him, Harry cautiously peered around the corner, his small Lindosian shadow clinging tightly to his sleeve, and then looked back with a nod. "Yes, all clear."
"On we go, then."
The Doctor was feeling better already. Oh, he had something of a splitting headache, to be sure, the inevitable consequence of two stun gun blasts combined with a minor head injury. Still, he was free once more with no alarms currently blaring, no guards anywhere in sight, and 50% of his human friends now back where he could see them, safe and well if not entirely undamaged, all of which he felt was a net improvement on his situation.
Sarah remained unaccounted for, of course, and one human prowling around this moon base alone was considerably more worrying than two humans wandering about the Lindosian hills together, but on the other hand they were at least all in the same place now, which improved their chances of finding one another tremendously. And it did make him feel so much better simply to have someone at his side once more to explain his thoughts to as he was thinking them. All in all he was inclined to feel well and truly heartened by this turn of events.
Harry was frowning, though, as they cautiously proceeded. "So that's what they meant."
"What's what who meant?"
"That officer fellow who seems to be in charge, what's-his-name…?"
"Silrin?" The Doctor hadn't been aware that Harry had met Proctor Silrin and wondered what else he'd missed during his recent spell of unconsciousness.
"That's the chap. Well, he went haring off while we were in the brig because there'd been some kind of cave-in, apparently. Shaft four, I think they said. I suppose they were talking about this, er, lupium mine of yours, then."
"Yes, I suppose they must have been," the Doctor indulgently agreed, amused as always by Harry's idiosyncratically roundabout way of puzzling through the obvious. So there'd been some kind of tunnel collapse in the mines, had there? That didn't say much for the standards of this company Silrin was so proud of – and was potentially quite concerning, if any slave workers had been caught up in it, so it was probably for the best that the boy Roba didn't seem to have grasped the implications. He filed the information away with everything else he'd learned so far and paused to peer through another door in passing.
"I say, Doctor, what exactly are we looking for?" Harry rather belatedly asked, as if the thought had only just occurred to him.
"A server room," the Doctor briskly explained, quickening his pace because this search was taking longer than he might have wished and their absence from that holding cell could be spotted at any moment. "I've an inkling of an idea, but I'll need access to the computer systems before we try talking to Silrin again – uninterrupted access, if at all possible."
"A what room?"
"Well, I suppose any console with access to the mainframe would do, really," he mused. "Just look out for machinery, Harry, or computers, anything like that."
"Like this, you mean?"
The Doctor spun around on his heel mid-stride and hurried over to look through the door Harry had indicated, just across the way. The darkness of the room was offset by the dull glow of luminescent fibres winding all through and around it, connected up to row upon row of computer banks, stacked high upon tall metal racks – the nerve centre of the moon base. A slow smile spread across his face. "Exactly like that. Well done, Harry – things are looking up."
dwdwdwdwdw
The slaves had been given water to drink and thin, wafer-like biscuits to eat. They didn't taste particularly nice, but they were very filling – Sarah felt enormously revived after no more than nibbling at the corner of one while she scoured the room for possible exits.
Most of the slaves had subsided back into their defeated huddles, watching her sullenly and silently, but Emera trailed after her as she examined every inch of floor and wall she could reach. "What is it that you seek?"
"A way out of here, of course." Sarah leaned back to peer up at what looked to be a ventilation shaft, set high up in the wall. It was small, but she'd squeezed through tight spaces before – how to reach it, though, that was the thing.
"But the way out is there." Emera pointed at the door. "It is sealed."
"Exactly – that's why we need to find a different way out." Sarah cast about for something she could stand on to reach up to the vent and caught hold of one of the bunks, tried dragging it across.
"But the sky raiders will catch us – they will be angry."
"Oh, they'll be angry, all right – if they find out," Sarah breathlessly conceded as she wrestled the bunk into position and then flashed a grin at the other woman. "But that doesn't mean they'll catch us!"
Emera caught at her arm, eyes wide and worried. "And if we find your different way out of this chamber, what then? We all cannot hide and we have no flying carts to return us to our home – we could not stop the sky raiders from coming after us if we did. Does escaping this place truly help us?"
"Of course it does." The list of obstacles the other woman had reeled off was daunting, but if there was one thing Sarah had learned on her travels with the Doctor, it was that anything was possible as long as you kept going and refused to accept defeat, and she did, she refused. "Look, Emera. I don't have a plan," she admitted, feeling for the Doctor's hat, still tucked into her belt. Her fingers closed around the soft felt and squeezed it tight, just for a moment. "I don't know how to get your people home and I don't know how to stop the sky raiders from attacking you again. But I do know that getting out of this room is the first step. And there'll be another step after that one, and then another – and if we keep taking those steps…well, we'll find a way. I know we will. But we won't stand any chance at all if we don't at least try. So will you help me?"
Emera looked as if she might just be convinced, even if no one else was – but before she had the chance to reply, there was a sound from outside in the vestibule. The sky raiders had returned.
And Sarah had nowhere to hide.
She was frozen to the spot, out of ideas, when, just as the door began to open, Emera suddenly snatched up a thin blanket from a nearby bunk and threw it around her head and shoulders like a shawl, then pushed her into the centre of the nearest group of slaves, huddled in a corner.
Sarah crouched low and kept her head bent, expecting to be spotted at any moment. She didn't dare look at the guards who had entered, but listened intently to their brusque announcement. "Attention, work party four. You will follow and obey. You will not argue. You will not resist. As this is your first work shift, you will receive instruction to which you will attend carefully or suffer the consequences. At the end of the work shift you will return to this room for rest and refreshment. Now line up and follow."
The slaves didn't seem to really understand what was happening, they were terrified, but they were also conditioned to obey sky raiders – too afraid not to obey, more like – and so obediently shuffled into something that might almost resemble a line, if you squinted, down the centre of the room. Sarah went with them – what else could she do – wondering how she had ever been afraid that they might give her away, for even as frightened and confused as they were, they made sure that she was always surrounded, always at the centre of the huddle, as hidden as it was possible to be, in the circumstances.
Even so, she wasn't sure how the sky raiders could possibly fail to notice that she wasn't Lindosian – a shawl covering her head was no disguise. All they had to do was look at her…but they didn't, not once. They weren't expecting an alien in a room full of native slaves, and they weren't expecting the slaves to give them any trouble, so they paid no attention at all. This was just another boring day's work to them.
It was a shattering realisation. All these slaves, their lives and families destroyed, robbed of their home and their freedom…and to the sky raider guards responsible for their misery, it was all just another boring day's work.
As they were marched out of the room, Emera caught at Sarah's hand. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "It is too late now."
Sarah squeezed her hand. "It's never too late. We'll find another way."
dwdwdwdwdw
"You keep watch, Harry – don't want any uninvited guests dropping in. This won't take long." By the time the sentence was complete, the Doctor had swept across the room to a bank of screens along one wall; he dropped onto a chair and activated a console all in one fluid purposeful movement, utterly engrossed within seconds.
Harry hung back by the door with a very silent Roba sticking tight to his side still, fidgeting worriedly as the minutes ticked past. The silence was broken only by the hum of the machines that filled the room and the rattle-click of the Doctor's fingers as they flew over the console, while images danced across the screens – representing what, Harry had no idea, the symbols and diagrams seemed meaningless to him, but presumably the Doctor understood.
He glanced back through the little window into the darkened corridor outside. Not a peep. Perhaps everyone was tied up with that tunnel collapse still and hadn't even noticed their absence yet.
The Doctor was still absorbed in whatever he was doing. Harry wondered how long this might take and where Sarah might have got to, wandering around out there all by herself. She'd be all right, though, surely – she couldn't have been found yet, at any rate. They'd have heard the ruckus from here if she had. If the Doctor would only hurry up, they could see about finding her, and –
"Aha!"
That sounded promising. "Found what you were looking for?"
"Better than that, Harry," the Doctor enthused, spinning around in his chair with an enormous grin plastered across his face. "I've found a floor-plan!"
Well, yes. Given how alike all these corridors were, that certainly did sound like a good thing. "Oh, well, well done, and all that," Harry congratulated him. "But that's not what you were looking for?"
"Oh no, certainly not," the Doctor airily dismissed, head bent over the console once more.
Harry always felt as if he were about five miles behind the Doctor, and never could quite manage to catch up, no matter what. A good night's sleep would probably help, but it had been a long while since one of those had been anywhere in the offing. He waited a moment to see if the other man would elaborate, but nothing appeared to be forthcoming, so he tried asking, "Er…so what exactly are you looking for then, Doctor?"
"Information," the Doctor distractedly replied, eyes glued to the screens still. "We'll head for the control room in a minute. I want to talk to Silrin again." He glanced over his shoulder with a mischievous grin. "We might even make it there without getting lost this time."
"The control room?" Harry wasn't sure he liked the sound of that. "Won't they just lock us up again?"
"Oh, well I'm sure they'll probably try," the Doctor conceded. "That's why we're stocking up on ammunition first."
Harry was thoroughly confused now. "Ammunition?"
"Information, Harry," the Doctor repeated. "Best weapon there is. Know thy enemy, as my old friend Sun Tzu used to say, or words to that effect – and he made rather an excellent point, don't you think? This operation is run by a very wealthy corporation a very long way away. Find their weak spot, and perhaps we can avoid –" He broke off mid-sentence. A light had come on out in the corridor. "Lights, Harry – quick!"
As the Doctor hastily turned the screens off, Harry fumbled with the unfamiliar control and got the light switched off only seconds before someone knocked on the door.
He looked to the Doctor, just about able to make him out in the dull glow of the cables that wound all around the darkened room. The other man gestured for him to move across, to the other side of the doorframe, so that he'd be behind the door as it opened, and motioned for Roba to come over to him. The boy seemed to be frozen to the spot with terror, though. Harry had to give him a gentle push to get him moving and then ducked beneath the window while Doctor grabbed Roba's hand and quickly pulled him back behind one of those high metal racks, out of sight, just as a voice called from outside. "Hello? I know you're in there."
Everything was very still, just for a moment. Then the door swung open – Harry had got behind it just in time. Pressed tight against the wall, he listened intently to the soft footfalls of someone stepping into the room. Through the window set into the open door he caught no more than a glimpse of a silhouette as the intruder stepped from the light of the hallway into the darkened room, the beaky silhouette of a sky raider guard – no, a Tarsin guard. As the door began to swing shut again, it half-turned to fumble for the light switch, and Harry moved, quickly, before it knew he was there. He dived forward, catching the creature from behind with a neat, effective rugger tackle of a kind he'd not attempted in many a year now, bringing back fond memories of Saturday afternoons spent charging up and down muddy playing fields, simpler days when he could never have imagined that the skill might someday come in handy in a situation like this.
The floor of this moon base was a lot dryer but also a lot harder to land on than a muddy playing field. As they fell, the guard's head cracked against the upright strut of one of those tall metal racks, stunning it, and professional instinct promptly kicked in, so Harry gave it a cursory once-over to check that the injury wasn't serious before pulling at the limp creature's arms to get them pinned behind its back. "Find something to tie it up with, Doctor," he called.
A moment later, the Doctor's scarf was dangled in front of his nose. "Will this do?"
Well, it wasn't ideal, no, but Harry glanced around and saw nothing better, aside from the many trailing cables around the room, all of which appeared to be doing something rather important, so the scarf would have to do. He set about securing the guard as firmly as the loose weave of the scarf allowed, while Roba reappeared at his side to gaze at the captive creature in awe and the Doctor bent to pull a gun out of its belt holster.
"You'd better hang on to this, Harry." He held the weapon out with a grimace of distaste and dropped it into Harry's hands.
Harry turned the weapon over in his hand. It was an even odder design than that ray gun thingummy he'd used against the Wirrrn on Nerva Space Station and had a number of settings that meant absolutely nothing to him, so he tucked it into the back of his waistband fervently hoping he'd never have to use the thing, and then bent to examine their prisoner again. "I think it's waking up, Doctor."
Roba promptly squeaked in panic and ducked behind Harry's back. Harry gave him what he hoped was a reassuring pat on the shoulder while the Doctor crouched to look the creature in the face as it peeled its eyes open.
"Hallo there," he greeted it with an affable grin. "I'm dreadfully sorry for giving you such a rude welcome, but we really can't have you raising the alarm just yet. Is there a loose end you can tie his mouth with, Harry? We've almost finished here –"
"No, wait. Wait!" the captive guard hastily shouted. "This is a mistake. I wasn't going to raise the alarm. I'm not your enemy. I'm a friend!"
"A friend?" The Doctor regarded the creature curiously. "We haven't seen much sign of friendship since we arrived here. Why should we believe you?"
"I am your contact, I wish to help, that's why I'm here," the Tarsin squeaked, turning frantic eyes upon Harry. "Please, don't you remember? I spoke to you earlier, tried to explain…"
Harry hadn't realised it was the same creature who'd spoken to him so cryptically earlier – they all looked so alike – and was rather taken aback when the Doctor cast a reproachful look in his direction.
"Spoke to you earlier? You might have mentioned that, Harry."
"Mentioned what?" he protested. "He babbled something about wanting to know our plans and then handed us over to be interrogated. That isn't an act of friendship where I come from!"
"No, you're right. You are right. I'm sorry," the guard agreed. "I panicked and was clumsy. The fault is mine. Please believe that I did not intend you any harm – I came back to offer assistance as soon as I was able, but you had already escaped. But I did not raise the alarm, as you can see. I came in search of you alone."
The Doctor cocked his head to one side, studying the creature thoughtfully. "What's your name?"
"I am Talib – guardsman, third division."
"Well, it's very nice to meet you, I'm sure, Guardsman Talib, third division," the Doctor said, and then added, in a breezy, nonchalant tone, "So tell me…are you a native rights campaigner, or are you working with the Free Trade Alliance?"
Harry hadn't the foggiest what he meant by that, but the misshapen alien face lit up like the Blackpool illuminations. "Then I was right! You are agents!"
"Oh, but we're really not, you know. My friend and I are travellers, in fact – we arrived quite by chance, but now that we've seen what's going on here, we can't possibly leave until the matter has been resolved." The Doctor's airy tone became stern. "Your people simply cannot be allowed to continue enslaving the Lindosians and despoiling the wealth of their solar system. Isn't that right, Harry?"
"Quite right, Doctor," Harry stoutly agreed. He wasn't sure how it was that the Doctor always managed to find a cause to fight for wherever he went, but they were here now and had made this their fight and that was that, no going back. Roba and his people deserved their freedom.
The Doctor nodded approvingly, evidently pleased to have confirmation they were on the same page, and continued, "I'm sure you understand, Talib, since you're working toward the same goal, aren't you: the freedom of Lindos –"
"The freedom of Tarse, also," Talib the guardsman interjected. "Freedom from this stranglehold Lu-Corps has over our industry, our government – our world."
The Doctor looked very interested. "Free Trade Alliance then, I take it," he lightly remarked, narrowing his eyes.
"We do sympathise with the cause of the natives, also."
"Well, I'm very glad to hear it. I'm the Doctor, by the way. This is my colleague, Harry Sullivan – untie Guardsman Talib's hands please, Harry, we're all on the same side here – and that young man trying to hide behind Harry's back is Roba. He's rather afraid of you, I'm sure you can understand why, so please don't make any loud sounds or sudden movements that might startle him." The Doctor flashed a dazzling grin at the guard as he helped him to his feet. "So Silrin really has had a spy under his nose all this time – I'm rather delighted to hear it, you know, it makes his paranoia seem so much more reasonable. Now then, why don't you tell us all about the exciting undercover work you've been doing here?"
The conversation that ensued was rather hard to follow – something to do with falsified reports and governmental corruption, corporate business strategy and monopolies, public opinion, cover-ups and the rumour mill, the Tarsin space programme, intergalactic trade alliances, embezzlement and communication lock-downs. Harry lost track of it early on and then stopped listening entirely when he turned to see how Roba was doing, in the same room as a dreaded sky raider and all that, and saw that the boy looked to be on the verge of another panic attack, the grey of his face drained away almost to white, wide eyes fixed unblinkingly on Talib the guardsman as he talked animatedly with the Doctor.
"Oh now, chin up, eh, old chap. Come on, sit down over here, that's it." Harry could have kicked himself for not noticing the boy's distress sooner. He sat Roba down against the wall and then squatted alongside him, wishing Sarah were here. She'd know what to say. "The Doctor'll soon have everything sorted out, you'll see."
"I don't understand," Roba whispered. "It's a sky raider. Why is the sky raider here?"
"Well…" Harry scrubbed a hand through his hair. "He seems to be trying to help us. He's on our side."
Roba shook his head fiercely. "Sky raiders are not on our side! They're not, you know, not ever."
"This one is."
It was Talib himself who had spoken. He'd approached so silently that Harry hadn't even realised he was there until he spoke, and Roba almost jumped out of his skin with terror at being directly addressed by a sky raider that was within touching distance. Harry slung a protective arm around the boy's shoulders as he hugged his knees to his chest and rocked with fear when Talib crouched to look him in the eye.
"Your name is Roba, yes?" The Tarsin's tone was surprisingly gentle. "I am sorry, Roba. I am sorry that I frighten you. I am sorry that your people have been harmed. Please believe that not all of my people are the same and allow me to help you in any way that I can."
"I want my mother," Roba whispered, tears in his eyes. "She was taken. Can you give her back?"
Talib looked a bit worried, insofar as it was possible to interpret any expression formed by those alien features. "I don't know, but I will try," he declared, solemnly extending a hand toward the boy. "Do you believe me?"
Roba turned wide, frightened eyes in Harry's direction again, looking for guidance of some kind, perhaps, but then hesitantly whispered, "I don't know. Maybe," and reached out a tentative hand, allowed a single fingertip to brush against the Tarsin's fingers.
Well, it was a start. Standing behind Talib, the Doctor beamed. "Splendid. We're all friends here, and we have a lot to be getting on with, so let's get on with it, shall we?"
dwdwdwdwdw
Aside from that one time on Exxilon, Sarah had never even set foot in a mine before, still less worked in one, but the instructions were basic enough that any five-year-old could have followed them. 'This is where you will dig. Here is your equipment. This is what you are looking for. These are the trucks you will load. Waste is deposited there.' After that, the guards retreated to a quiet corner to relax over a cup of whatever the sky raider equivalent of tea might be and more or less left them to it, and she was reminded of her earlier observation that this was just a boring day's work to them. The slaves never gave them any trouble so they never expected any trouble…and that might just give her the chance she needed.
She scratched half-heartedly at the rock with her pick while studying the surrounding area as closely as she felt she could get away with beneath the disinterested watch of those guards. They'd been marched to the very end of the tunnel to hack away at the rock face, but she'd seen other tunnels branching off, further back, as they'd been driven past like so many sheep. So, since the dead end here meant sneaking further along and away while the guards' backs were turned was impossible, she was just going to have to find a way past them and back along that tunnel, somehow, to try one of those other passages.
And that was going to be the difficult part.
"We really need some kind of diversion," she whispered to Emera, who was sticking close.
"Diversion?"
"You know, a distraction – something to hold the guards' attention, so we can slip back along that tunnel and get away."
"This is your plan: to break away now, from this place of work?"
"Well, there's no point hanging around here wearing ourselves out lugging rocks around all day, is there? No, the sooner we can get out there and away, the sooner we'll find the Doctor and find a way of freeing everyone else."
"And you are certain this can be done? You have seen all that they have, all that we do not have – yet you are certain we may drive them away for all time?"
Emera had a real knack for asking tricky questions. Sarah sighed. "I can't know for sure, of course I can't. But I want to at least try – for my sake, as well as yours. I don't want to spend the rest of my life breaking my back hauling rocks around down here!"
"No more do I." Emera was suddenly resolute. "And I wish that my children may never see this place, may never know what it is to be taken from their home, helpless, and made to serve others."
She had children…Sarah remembered the children she'd seen back at the encampment, small and frightened and parentless, and knew that she had to do whatever it took to get this woman back home and reunite her with her family – to reunite as many of those broken families as possible. "Then you'll come?"
Emera's eyes were wide and frightened, but she nodded. "If I may help, then I will, even if it means death."
"Well, I sincerely hope it won't come to that," Sarah fervently told her. "But we won't get anywhere at all if we can't work out how to distract those guards."
"I will do it," whispered a small voice at her side. Startled, she swung around to see that young lad who'd spoken up about the moons back in the barracks. "I hope you win," he said, wide-eyed and earnest. "I want to go home."
Before she could reply, he had slunk away to the other side of the tunnel and caught hold of one of the heavy sacks of special rock they were loading up. He dragged it across to the truck they were meant to be filling – and then made a big show of attempting to lift the sack into the truck, failing, and dropping the whole lot as he fell back. One or two of the others seemed to get into the spirit of the act as well, and between them the whole truck was toppled, spilling its contents everywhere.
The guards leapt to their feet with a shout and came running over to berate the slaves for carelessness, ordering them to right and re-load the truck, and in the general confusion the tunnel was left wide open.
Now or never.
Hanging back, Sarah waited until she was sure both guards were well and truly otherwise occupied. Then she caught at Emera's hand and they ran, as quickly and as quietly as they could, back along the tunnel and around the first bend they came to, out of sight of those guards if they should happen to turn around again.
"It worked!" Emera gasped in wonder. "We are away from them – free!"
"I just hope we can stay free," Sarah admitted. "And while we're at it, let's hope that boy's all right – some of those rocks fell on him, you know."
"Olos. His name is Olos."
"He was very brave – so were the others who helped distract the guards for us." She hadn't expected that; they'd seemed so broken and cowed, and she'd been so focused on Emera, she hadn't stopped to think that the others might be listening too, that her words might influence them as well. But maybe all they'd needed to restore their spirit was hope, however slight. She could only hope – there was that word again – that the hope she'd given them wasn't false.
"We will go back for them?" Emera looked anxious in the dim light given off by the lamps mounted at odd intervals along the tunnel walls.
Sarah nodded determinedly, because leaving them there like that was unthinkable. "We will, as soon as we can. But just now we'd better see if we can find our way out of here and back to the Doctor – wherever he is."
dwdwdwdwdw
"Look out, someone's coming!"
Harry hissed the warning the moment he heard voices and footsteps in the corridor outside, and the Doctor's rapid-fire discussion with Talib came to an abrupt halt.
Hidden at the back of the room, they waited silently as the voices of what sounded like two or three Tarsins grew progressively louder and clearer as they approached the door. Talib looked as if he were planning his excuses already while Roba pressed so close Harry could feel his little heart pounding. Only the Doctor appeared unconcerned, pulling a yo-yo out of his pocket and playing with it as the guards drew level with the door of their hideout…and carried on past, their voices and footsteps fading away into the distance. Then he put the yo-yo away again and turned to Harry.
"I've got a little job for you, Harry," he cheerfully announced as if nothing had happened, and Harry wondered what was coming now. "I want you to go with Talib to retrieve a data storage device he's got safely tucked away, and then bring it back to me here."
"Data storage device?"
"Very small and very important; it contains all the evidence Talib has been piecing together. It mustn't be allowed to fall into the wrong hands."
So that was another way of saying 'don't mess up, Sullivan', then. Harry nodded. "Right you are, Doctor. What are you going to do?"
"Well," said the Doctor in a conversational tone. "I rather thought I might stay here and see if I can rig up some kind of transceiver array that'll allow us to piggy-back the differential pulse of the Tarsins' subspace hyper-channel relay and adjust the amplitude modulation to override their communications lock-down – allow us to get a message out."
Harry blinked. It sounded like English… "Sorry, Doctor, I didn't quite follow that."
"I'm going to build a communications device, Harry."
"Oh, I see." Why he couldn't have just said that in the first place was beyond Harry. "And you'll be able to do that here, will you?"
The Doctor grinned. "Well, I daresay I'll have to scrounge around for some of the components, but I don't see why not. Let's find out."
"I thought you wanted to go to the control room, to talk to what's-his-name – Silrin?"
"All in good time, Harry, all in good time – let's get our all ducks lined up first, shall we?"
"This room is accessed very infrequently," Talib offered. "So long as you avoid tampering with any systems whose failure would be noticed, you shouldn't be disturbed."
"I'm delighted to hear it," said the Doctor, "Since I'm not really in the mood for another round of hide-and-seek with your colleagues. Now, you need to move fast, before our little disappearing act comes to light, so –"
"What about me?" Roba piped up, and the Doctor eyed him speculatively.
"How would you feel about staying here and giving me a hand, young man?"
Roba looked dubious in the extreme and caught hold of Harry's arm, tucking in close and gazing up with pleading eyes, and the Doctor laughed.
"Yes, I thought as much. You've got a friend for life there, Harry."
"So it seems." Harry wasn't sure taking Roba along on this trip was entirely wise, he'd be a lot safer here with the Doctor, but they'd come this far together and the boy clearly wasn't going to move from his side until they found and reunited him with his mother. He just hoped he'd be able to keep the promise he'd made…and keep Roba safe, while he was at it.
"Well that settles it," the Doctor brightly announced. "Hop along, then, the three of you – no time to lose."
dwdwdwdwdw
"I wonder how they manage the atmosphere down here," Sarah mused aloud as she picked her way along the murky tunnel, because thinking about minutiae helped kept her mind off her worries about the bigger picture. "I mean, it's musty, but breathable – but you wouldn't think there'd be any atmosphere at all, underground on a moon. I suppose they must pipe it in from the base."
That bit of speculation opened up a whole new raft of questions about how the artificial atmosphere was sealed in, given the permeability of rock – the Doctor would know – but she'd already lost Emera. "You talk of such strange things, Sarah. I am afraid I do not understand even half of what you say."
And this must be how the Doctor felt, whenever he started rattling on about technicalities that she and Harry didn't understand. Sarah offered the other woman a rueful smile. "It isn't important. I was just thinking out loud."
They'd reached a fork in the tunnel and she eyed it speculatively, trying to orient herself – the passage they'd been exploring ran roughly parallel to the one the sky raiders had driven them down earlier, so to get back to the main complex of the moon base they'd need to go…that way.
Emera followed her. "I don't even know where you come from."
"Well, that's a bit of a long story, really," Sarah told her. "Oh, I couldn't even begin to describe how far away my home is – so very far, across the stars. It isn't at all like your world."
A pang of homesickness at the thought of it took her by surprise. She didn't usually miss Earth all that much when she was away from it – always too much to see and too much to do, no time to stop and reflect. She missed it now, though, thinking about how far away it was and how long they'd been travelling…a bit too long, perhaps, this time. So much had happened since the last time she'd slept in her own bed, so much that was mad and exhilarating and terrifying and wonderful and horrifying, usually all at the same time, and there'd been no time to really process any of it.
"Then how do you come to be here?"
A wry chuckle escaped. "That's an even longer story, I'm afraid. It was an accident, really. We were supposed to be going to Scotland…but then again," the thought suddenly struck her, "I'm not so sure it really was such an accident. The Doctor does hate to be tied down. Oh, hello: which way now?"
They'd hit another fork in the road, and again Sarah eyed the tunnels thoughtfully. The right-hand fork seemed most likely to lead them back to the moon base, if she was remembering the direction right, while to the left…she wrinkled her nose.
"Can you smell that?"
Emera looked worried. "The smell is rotten – like death."
Rotten, like death. Something was churning in the pit of Sarah's stomach, a sense of foreboding that grew stronger as she slowly stepped into the left-hand passage, which took a sharp turn and then widened out to become a deep cavern, whose floor dropped away just a few feet beyond the entrance. The smell was stronger here, nauseating, and somehow she knew what she was going to see even before she'd taken the few paces forward that brought her to the edge of the ledge to glance over into the pit that lay beyond, calling out too late for Emera to stay back.
The wail the Lindosian woman let out was like the cry of a wounded animal, desolate and raw. As she collapsed to her knees, gasping out shuddering sobs and scrabbling at the edge of the ledge, Sarah felt her own knees go weak and dropped to the ground alongside her, unable to wrench her eyes away from the heaped corpses that filled the pit before them.
dwdwdwdwdw