Doctor Who_ Lucifer Rising Part 1

Lucifer Rising.

by Jim Mortimore & Andy Lane.

To My Family and Other Animals: Jon and Alison, Andrew D, Mark, Shauni, Miles, Steve and June (encouragement, support and psychoa.n.a.lysis) Martin and Tanya (ta for the tent, rave on) Dave, Rodders and the BSFR mob (insanity) Andy and Helen (niceness and free records) Andrew (solipsism and biscuits) Mum and Dad (cash when it really mattered) Kathy (vintage '63 snuggles) Tricia (she's mad, she's bad, she's on the cover twice) and Ben JM.

dedicated to the dumblecon crew justin, craig, andrew, gary, david, the two peters, green gilbert, billibub and willie the wine box.

AJL.

PROLOGUE.

FALLING FROM GRACE.

Though fallen thyself, never to rise again, Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind Powers that will work for thee;Wordsworth Toussaint, the most unhappy man Toussaint, the most unhappy man

Yonder in the north there is singing on the lake. Cloud maidens dance on the sh.o.r.e. There we take our being.Yonder in the north cloud beings rise. They ascend unto cloud blossoms. There we take our being.Yonder in the north rain stands over the land... Yonder in the north stands forth at twilight the arc of a rainbow. There we have our being.Tewa Pueblo Chant

Someone had once told Paula Engado that it wasn't the fall that killed you, it was the sudden stop when you hit the ground. At the time she'd found it funny.

She wasn't laughing now.

Tumbling uncontrollably through an atmosphere that was growing hotter and denser by the minute, her sense of humour seemed to have evaporated along with her starsuit's external sensors.

Tiny globules of sweat hung in front of Paula's eyes. She batted them aside with a twitch of her head. The stench of her own body was almost overwhelming, and she had to concentrate hard in order to read the suit's instruments. It was no use. Every single readout, every single diagnostic, had crashed. Using the chin switches, she tried to pull some kind of exterior view from the infected software, but she might just as well have tried to walk back up to Belial. More angry than scared, she operated a manual control to peel back the first few layers of filters from the helmet visor, and finally, managed to get a dim view of the storm through which she was falling: an atmospheric disturbance bigger than the distant Earth. The deep rumble of colliding pressure fronts filled her ears; flickering discharges of lightning illuminated the dead faces of the digital readouts inside her helmet further evidence, if it were needed, of the giant planet Lucifer's vast and complex meteorology.

Lucifer the fallen Angel.

How apt.

Ignoring the safety regulations governing s.p.a.cewalk protocol, Paula peeled back another layer of gold shielding from her visor. More shapes and colours leaped into focus. Through her reflection, she saw coils of gas rush past her helmet, churning sickeningly around each other before vanishing into the towering atmosphere above.

The starsuit suddenly seemed to be closing in on her. The miracle of modern science, which until now had surrounded and nurtured her, was becoming a claustrophobic prison in which the smell of plastic, sweat and burnt insulation was almost overwhelming.

Paula felt panic rise within her. She didn't want to die alone, thousands of kilometres from the nearest human being, beyond the reach of even her father's emotionless touch. She was facing her fear, but, unlike the Tewa American Indians of her grandfather's stories, it it was defeating was defeating her her. Desperately, she chinned the switch that should have dispensed a dose of tranquillizing drugs, but the autodoc software had crashed along with the main systems.

She closed her eyes and clutched at the solace of a remembered embrace, a stolen kiss. Then with a mighty effort she thrust the memory away. It was all behind her now.

The thought acted like a sudden blast of cold air: everything seemed to pull back into focus from the grainy world of terror. She was still shivering uncontrollably, although the temperature was hotter than comfortable. Blinking sweat out of her eyes, she looked out through the barely shielded helmet visor. Something was happening. If she peered hard she could still make out the multicoloured clouds and the thousand kilometre wide flashes of sheet lightning, but her visor seemed to be misting over. Everything outside was becoming blurred and confused. The colours were running together like a child's painting.

It was only when she felt the sudden warmth on her cheek that Paula knew she was crying, and with that realization all selfcontrol fled. She beat senselessly upon the inside of her suit until her clenched fists were raw and bleeding, only to feel the joints in the sleeves begin to give way. The helmet visor cracked as the temperature rose sharply. Alien gases burst into the suit, blistering her skin and scorching her lungs. She clenched her eyes shut with pain, cutting off her last clear view of the dead internal systems displays.

As she died, Paula's mind fixed upon an odd trinket of philosophy that her longdead grandfather had once quoted to her, the last thing she would ever consciously remember a final, useless bead of comfort to ward off the inevitable.

Only in death do we find peace.

Only from death do we learn of life.

She choked the words aloud as a final goodbye; hurled them defiantly into the void; screamed them above the screech of rending metal, until Lucifer tore the breath from her lungs, the blood from the veins and the life from her body.

She died.

And the Angels came.

PART ONE.

ASTARTE.

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning?Isaiah, chapter 14, verse 12

Silence.The Adjudicator dimmed the worklight over Miles Engado's desk and studied the stacks of small crystalline blocks before him, piled up in towers like the cities back on Earth, ripe with false promise.He sighed. So many questions; so few answers. Paula Engado's death. The antagonism of the staff. The unexplained arrival of this mysterious scientist with his uncoordinated wardrobe and his uncoordinated friends. The Angels. Where to start?The Adjudicator let his fingers hover delicately over the opaque crystal blocks. He lifted one and fed it into the reader.Although his movements appeared leisurely and unstudied, there was nothing random about them. The Adjudicator never did anything at random. Everything had a reason.To find it, it was only necessary to look in the right place.

Chapter One.

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'Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,' said Miles Engado, turning away from the group a.s.sembled amongst the cleared chairs and tables of the Belial Base refectory. 'Section Leaders to meet me in Conference Room One in ten minutes,' he added, and walked away.

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'Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,' said Miles Engado, his voice catching slightly as he turned away from the simularity projector in the centre of the room. The rest of the small group a.s.sembled amongst the cleared chairs and tables of the Belial Base refectory stood transfixed by the replayed sight of Paula Engado's last moments, recorded by a remote drone which had followed her down into Lucifer's poisonous atmosphere. The drone had been too light and too slow to do anything but observe, transmit and finally be destroyed itself. As the tumbling figure grew a glowing tail of debris, then broke up into a shower of sparks, only Piper O'Rourke thought to put her hand on Miles Engado's shoulder. He patted it absently. In the glare of his daughter's death, the tears which silently explored the creases and folds of his face glistened like comets.

'Section Leaders to meet me in the Conference Room in ten minutes,' he murmured, and walked away. Piper let her hand fall as her eyes lingered on Miles's back. The door to the refectory clunked into place behind him. Glances were exchanged all around the room.

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(A) LIST ALL EMOTIONAL RESPONSES.

(B) PRIORITIZE EMOTIONAL RESPONSES>.

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'Section Leaders to meet me in the Conference Room in ten minutes,' Miles added sharply, before shrugging off the woman's comforting touch and leaving the refectory. Piper let her hand fall as her eyes lingered on the tall, balding figure in the severely tailored turquoise tunic. He was a proud man, one who perhaps over valued dignity and restraint, but essentially a good man. Too good for her, perhaps.

Piper glanced around at the other members of the team who had turned out to mourn Paula and show support for her father. Practically the whole research staff was crammed into the circular refectory, one of the few humanbuilt rooms on the Base capable of holding that many people. The only absentees were those on duty down on Moloch, together with Federique MosheRabaan and the three newcomers.

Of the remaining twentyfive people, none were speaking, but then words were unnecessary. Everyone had their own way of coping with this, the Project's first death since its inception five years ago.

After watching one or two of her own support technicians begin to move the chairs and tables halfheartedly back into position for the evening meal, Piper wandered listlessly over to one of the windows which encircled the refectory. The windows had been a concession won by Christine LaFayette from Earth Government. Piper had sometimes wondered whether it had been the financial investment of Christine's mother in the Project which had spoken louder than her words. Whatever the reason, the site for the social centre of the Base was as near perfect as it was possible to get. Positioned atop the Base's central dome, the refectory commanded a perfect view both of the airless dark side of the moon and of the edge of Lucifer, the huge planet it orbited around. Lucifer's lurid atmospheric glow circled the horizon in a ring broken only by the irregular towers of the mountain ranges, the rock shaped by an abrasive atmosphere long since torn away. The Ring of Lucifer, as it had become known, cast a flat scarlet glare across the outlying regions of the base, and threw everyone's shadow towards the centre of the room. One or two of the staff considered the sight somewhat morbid, but Christine had insisted that the Base personnel needed to be able to look out on a real landscape once in a while, not a simularity of one generated by a neural net.

That was fine in theory but, gazing over the fantastic and disturbing landscape of Belial, Piper came close to admitting she would have preferred the simularity.

Ah, but you couldn't see reflections in a simularity, could you? You couldn't watch everyone in the room without being watched yourself.

Over on the far side of the refectory, Sam Russell, a middleaged engineer in a padded foil suit, reached out to hold his wife Cheryl's hand as she sobbed inconsolably. Alex Bannen sneered as he walked past them, his ornate robes giving him the look of some sweaty Buddha. Only the diminutive, darkhaired Christine LaFayette was actively studying everyone else in the room. But, Piper thought, as the Chief Psychologist responsible for the mental health of the team, that was her job.

Piper turned away. She felt distanced from their grief: cold and unreachable. She'd left Earth to escape a world disintegrating into a crazy mess of restrictions, paranoia and selfdestruction. For a while, she had really thought she'd made it.

The simularity of Lucifer's turbulent cloud patterns flickered off just as Paula's last burning fragments, having used up the scant supply of oxygen from her suit, sputtered and died.

Piper jerked herself out of her reverie with an effort.

The nightmare view of Lucifer was replaced by a standard picture a translucent view of Belial Base itself, with the main corridors and chambers shining pinkly inside it like the organs of some gelatinous alien life form. People began to move, drifting almost aimlessly around the refectory as if unsure what to do now the service was over.

Piper sighed. Her gaze travelled from the reflection of the room to her own image. Critically, she began to tug at the puffy sleeves and complicated thongs of her tunic, but her practised grooming motions died away as her gaze caught first upon the sapphire that had been surgically implanted on her left ring finger, and then on the blue veins which snaked across the backs of both hands. She straightened and did something which she usually avoided looked at her face. Getting old was a funny thing. Paula never made it past her eighteenth birthday, but Piper would probably hit a hundred and ten before senility started to creep in. More, if she was careful. She certainly didn't intend to waste her life. She had plans. For after Eden.

Piper caught a cold glint in her reflection's eye. Age is making you hard, she thought. You've got too many years behind you, too many memories and regrets clogging up your mind. They're young. Death doesn't touch them the way it touches you. It's not breathing down their necks yet.

She pulled her gaze away from the familiar stranger that was her reflection and looked over to where Alex Bannen and Christine LaFayette were continuing an argument which had already flourished for years and seemed likely to go on forever.

'Look, it's obvious, right? All you've got to do is ask your mother for more financial support that way the Eden Project gets a new lease of life and maybe we all end up winners.'

'I've told you before, Alex. Mother and I don't talk. Ever.' The faintest of French accents gently smoothed her vowels into soft shapes.

'Even though she bought you a place on the staff?'

Christine's voice became icy cold. 'Are you questioning my professional ability? Some people might think that merits a psychological checkup, and that could get you sent back to Earth.'

Bannen turned away in sudden embarra.s.sment. Normally the Technical Services Supervisor was too fat, too loud, and just too much altogether. Piper had no time for him or his affectation of importance, so much larger in his own mind than in anyone else's when the mission began, and running dangerously out of control now. But then, sometimes, almost for no reason, the scientist would become like this: embarra.s.sed, lonely, lacking in any of the social graces. At times like these Piper was tempted to feel sorry for him, but Bannen himself stifled any overtures of friendship. Piper had learned a long time ago that he couldn't handle them, and had stopped worrying about him. Now she simply found him irritating.

'You heard what Miles said,' she snapped, her harshness a deliberate attempt to shock them out of their argument. 'Alex, Christine. Let's go. The man's going to want answers and he's going to want them soon.'

Standing petulantly by the food dispenser, which of late had developed a tendency to drift around the refectory in search of customers, Bannen spoke. 'And how the h.e.l.l are we supposed to do that without properly financed '

Piper sighed. 'Alex, life's too short to listen to your whining.'

Christine rubbed her eyes tiredly. 'I'll go along with that.'

Bannen's face fell. 'Hey, look. We've all got our own ways of dealing with the situation, right?'

'Yeah, well, just show a little common sense in what you say, Alex, or we might suddenly find Earth pulling the rug out from underneath us,' Piper pointed out. 'If that happens, we're all all on a long fall to nowhere.' on a long fall to nowhere.'

'And Paula thought we were so close,' Christine murmured. 'So close.'

Bannen spread his hands placatingly. 'Look. We're all fighting over the same pot of gold.' He turned to Piper and smiled in unconvincing friendship. 'Perhaps you can make her see reason. If we can't get more funding from somewhere, then the obvious thing to do is switch resources from LaFayette's area to mine. It's the only sensible thing to do. I mean, it's been five years and we're still not sure the Angels even know we exist!'

Christine sighed. 'I just don't want to argue with you any more, Alex.'

'This is neither the time nor place for this discussion,' Piper said. 'For G.o.d's sake, can't you both show a little respect?'

Bannen could not resist trying to get the last word. 'I'll bring it up at the meeting,' he said, 'and if Engado can't see the way ahead, I'm sure MosheRabaan and the Energy Police can make him see the error of his ways. Earth Central can't afford to keep pumping money into the project for no return.' His face darkened. 'n.o.body said we had jobs for life.'

'Great.' Piper breathed a sigh of relief. 'Now that we've all got that off our chests, let's stop behaving like juvenile simularities and give Miles the support he needs.'