Doctor Who: The Also People by Ben Aaronovitch

wrong with walking on your stomach, some of her best friends had been gastropods. Nice people on the whole.
    Providing the buggers didn't step on your head.
    The headland she was climbing was narrower than it looked and the coast curved inwards quite sharply. As a result Bernice didn't see the town until she was almost on top of it. It was built up around a 'natural' harbour, complete with harbour wall, a pebble beach and waterfront esplanade. There were even a variety of boats drawn up on the beach, mostly compact-looking trimarine yachts but with one large wooden-sided tug. That one was single hulled and listed alarmingly as if it were about to topple over at any moment. There was a man on the beach painting a mural along the entire length of the harbour wall, a pretty moody piece judging from the subdued ochre tones and lurid oranges. As Bernice climbed onto the flat top of the breakwater and walked closer she realized that the man might instead be repairing an earlier work. Parts of the mural seemed to have been damaged, as if a giant hand had used a wire brush to clean the paint off the wall.
    ISanti Jeni shone under the clear blue sky. The buildings seemed to be constructed out of crudely dressed stone and painted white with blue or magenta trimming. From the headland they had seemed to sprawl up the sides of the uneven semi-circle of hills that formed an amphitheatre shape behind the harbour. There was little differentiation between buildings, one flat-roofed structure merging into the next one along, and at first Bernice thought that any streets the town might have must be roofed. When she reached the esplanade she realized that the numerous narrow alleyways ran off it at seemingly random intervals. The buildings that fronted the esplanade had sun-faded awnings over openings the size of shop windows. Bernice peered inside the first opening she came to. As her eyes adjusted to the dim interior she saw tables and chairs laid out restaurant fashion but no people. After a moment a tray, very similar to the one that had served them at the beach-bar, floated up from one of the tables at the back and hovered a couple of metres in front of her. It managed to give a passable impression of polite anticipation, which was a neat trick for what was essentially a flat piece of metal.
    Bernice retreated back into the hard sunlight on the esplanade, uncomfortable with the idea of spending more time in the company of machines. She looked around for some other sign of life.
    All the windows she could see were closed up with slated wooden shutters. Along the esplanade the wind from the sea caught the awnings making them snap and rustle like horizontal flags.
    A noise made her look up: the unmistakable rifle-crack sound of something small breaking the sound barrier. Sunlight flashed off something shooting out over the sea at a height of two hundred metres. There were two more cracks overhead. This time Bernice got a better look. Size was difficult to judge but she thought they might be a metre to two metres long, too small to be piloted that was for sure, ovoid in shape, flying on parallel courses to the first flying thing. They reminded her of the space-to-ground torpedoes used by orbiting ships during planetary assaults.
    She shuddered, watching as both objects began zigzagging over the sea. Bernice recognized the movement as a search pattern. Within moments they were out of sight, lost in the hazy distance over the ocean.
    She was halfway up one of the narrow little streets when she smelt the aroma of baking bread.
    Perhaps she had been following it all along, unconsciously picking this particular street from all the others under the smell's subliminal influence. The street jinked unevenly between the whitewashed buildings and was paved with irregular slabs of some smooth white stone. Shuttered doorways were randomly placed along both sides, some of them below the level of the street, while others could only be reached via stone