Doctor Who_ Lucifer Rising Part 20

The Doctor grinned. 'That'd be a clever trick for someone who's just been blown up.' Calmly, he took a sip of tea. 'Nice. But it would taste so much better from a Wedgwood pot.'

Bishop sighed impatiently.

The Doctor set down his beaker. 'Well, Adjudicator. Are you ready for the moment of truth?'

Bishop nodded. 'Neural net,' he said quietly. 'Access simularity file one. Location: Conference Room exterior. Let's see who the murderer really is.'

The lights went out; all power to the neural net was severed.

Teal Green was coughing up a lungful of smoke when the Base was plunged into darkness. Immediately, a string of curses echoed down the corridor and there was the sound of someone falling over. Teal felt his way carefully forward. His foot thumped against something soft in the darkness.

'Be careful! That's me you're kicking!'

'Bernice?'

'You were expecting the Isley Brothers?'

'Who?'

'Grief, help me up will you? And what's going on?'

'Power failure.'

'How can that happen?'

'It can't. All systems are independently monitored by the neural net.'

'Well, I hate to disagree with you, but '

'Yeah, right. Point taken. Come on.'

'Where to?'

'The backup systems should have kicked in by now. We must be looking at a general systems failure. If we don't get life support up and running soon, we'll all suffocate.'

'Wonderful,' Bernice said dryly. 'What do we do first?'

'Finding a torch would be a good trick.' Teal groped around the corridor wall. 'There ought to be a ah! Here we go.'

A door opened. From within the room came the sound of a man sobbing.

'Miles?'

'Paula? I'll be with you soon. I promise.'

Before they could move, someone pushed past them and shambled off down the corridor.

The Doctor pulled a small torch from his pocket and clicked it on. The beam was more than adequate to illuminate the non*operational neural net systems. He tapped a key experimentally, but there was no response. 'Someone has a positively dramatic sense of timing.'

Bishop drained his beaker of tea. 'Power failure.'

'Yes, but what caused it?'

'More sabotage?'

'Not unless the saboteur planned to take his own life as well.'

'Or unless '

'The saboteur had already worked out an escape route.'

'There is another possibility.'

The Doctor nodded. 'Whoever, or whatever, invaded Moloch Base is now attempting a similar takeover here.' He led the way to the office door. 'Come along, Adjudicator. I rather think your services will shortly be needed in the main airlock. And your gun.'

Alex Bannen swung the beam of his torch wildly around the Operations Room. 'Piper? Are you here? What the h.e.l.l is going on? The power's out all over the base, the temperature is dropping, the air's running out and Mark's gone. He's just switched off.'

Piper rose from the MultiCray inputting terminal. 'I'm doing my best to restore emergency power. Until the backup generators come on line, I can't get enough ergs to run a full check on the main systems.'

Bannen sighed. 'For G.o.d's sake. Ask a scientist to do a scientist's job not an overblown plumber's mate.'

He pushed Piper aside and unclipped a service hatch in the main neural net cabinet. Piper glared angrily at his bulky silhouette. If she didn't do something now, he was going to screw everything up.

The Doctor rushed down the corridor, his small feet making virtually no sound on the metal grillework. Puffing hard, Bishop followed close behind. Either the corridors were empty of people, or the Doctor had managed to follow a less well*travelled route from Miles's office to the main airlock, several levels below. With no power to drive the klaxons or the air recyclers, the Base was eerily silent. Only distant clangs and echo*distorted s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation drifting along the cross*corridors testified to the tremendous effort being put into restarting the systems.

The Doctor slid to a halt at the inner door to the main airlock. He tapped quickly at the opening mechanism.

The door remained shut.

'Odd. The door's been locked with a command level override.'

Bishop frowned in the darkness. 'Only Miles Engado has that clearance.'

The Doctor cleared his throat. 'Ahem. Well, actually...' He tapped out another rapid series of digits and the lock disengaged. The Doctor grabbed the manual locking wheel and began to spin it rapidly. Hydraulic pressure built up slowly until the door wheezed open.

Umbrella held high, the Doctor led the way into the chamber. There were clanking noises coming from further within. He shone his torch around the chamber. 'Miles? Miles Engado? We know you're in here...'

There was a hollow clunk, and the rising whine of power. Ten metres away, lights bloomed in the darkness.

Bishop drew his gun. 'Miles Engado, I am arresting you for the '

'Miles, no!' The Doctor rushed forward, but was too late to prevent Miles latching down his helmet and powering up the starsuit. Warning lights flashed on the suit's shoulders as it lumbered slowly to the airlock outer door. One servo*driven arm reached out to grip the door's locking wheel.

'Get out!' the Doctor called, running back towards the inner door. After a moment's hesitation, Bishop followed. The locking wheel turned. The door began to open. 'All the failsafes are power driven if we don't get out the whole section will depressurize!'

Air began to whistle out of the airlock. Together, the Doctor and Bishop scrambled through the inner door against the mounting pressure of air. The Doctor swung himself round the door and gripped the locking wheel. The door slid shut as the wheel spun. The air*scream ceased.

Bishop holstered his gun.

A light bobbed up and down further along the corridor, accompanied by the sound of running footsteps. Bernice and Teal halted breathlessly beside the Doctor and Bishop.

'Doctor! My G.o.d, you are alive!' Bernice said, stunned.

The Doctor found a second to doff his hat.

'It's Miles, we have to stop him,' she said.

'He is responsible for the sabotage on the Base and he has implicated himself by trying to escape,' Bishop said harshly.

'No, you don't understand.' Teal waved a piece of paper under Bishop's nose. 'We found this in his quarters. It's a suicide note. He's not trying to escape; he's trying to kill himself.'

'Then who's responsible for all this?'

There was a groan from the darkness, and Alex Bannen stumbled into the splash of light made by the torches. He raised one hand to the back of his head; his fingers came away stained with blood. 'Piper. It's b.l.o.o.d.y Piper. She brained me when I tried to reboot the neural net.'

He fell to the floor with a groan, blood pooling around his head.

Chapter Twelve.

Kreig was counting her ears again.

'Thirty*eight,' Ardamal prompted from the far side of the squalid, duralinium*lined bunkroom. You had thirty*eight yesterday morning, and thirty*eight last night. 'Less there's someone woke up today hard of hearing, there's thirty*eight there now.'

Kreig looked up, an ear held delicately in her hand like some alien flower.

'You trying to make a point?' she snarled.

'Just wondering.'

'Wondering what?'

'Why you keep counting.'

'Case some dumb*a.s.s tries to steal one.'

'Yeah, stupid of me,' Ardamal muttered, as Kreig wrapped the ear in soft plastic, placed it gently back in its box, and picked another out.

Dommer had been following the exchange from his bunk, where he was obsessively stripping and rea.s.sembling his flamer. 'How many d'you get in that last action?' he asked. His throat had been badly scarred by praxis gas during a bankruptcy action three years ago, and his words came out sounding like fingernails scratching gla.s.s.

'Come on, Dommer,' Ardamal said. 'You know her rules. One every time. Like a keepsake. For luck.'

Dommer laughed. 'Yeah,' he said. 'Beats h.e.l.l out'a c.r.a.ppy tourist gifts.' His fingers idly stroked the oiled metal of his exposed weapon.

Kreig wasn't listening. Her deeply lined face was creased into a smile as she gazed at the tiny ear in her hand.

'a.s.set*stripping Inters.p.a.ce Incorporated, back in Tokyo in fifty*six,' she whispered. Her face was radiant. 'Tiny kid, daughter of the Chairman. We Zed*bombed the barriers and went in with shielded skimmers. Corporate lawyers went in under our covering fire to deliver the paperwork.'

She turned the ear until Ardamal could see the crust of blood beneath it.

'They wanted the Chairman's retinal print for the waiver forms,' she continued. 'Didn't say nothing about wanting the rest of him, though. And I got his kid.'

'I remember Tokyo,' said Dommer, and laughed. 'Had a good time, and Jeez, the bonuses! Those shares're still paying off better'n the regular paycheck.'

'I thought you was on the Inters.p.a.ce payroll back then?' Ardamal growled.

'Yeah, but I got head*hunted. IMC bought out my contract. I've spent thirty years as a Company Shock Trooper, and IMC's the best thing that ever happened to me. I mean, take this last action. n.o.body firing back, and we still get a percentage of the profits. Just a turkey shoot, that's all it was.'

His voice was beginning to grate on Ardamal.

'Had myself a nice piece of Scottish a.s.s, though,' Dommer reminisced with a gap*toothed smile. 'Wildcat, that one.' He ran a hand over the parallel scratches down his cheek. 'Had to give her a good talking to.' He fondled the scorched barrel of the flamer. 'A good good talking to.' talking to.'

'No cover,' Ardamal said, just to shut Dommer up. 'Be thankful n.o.body was firing back. The way the ground just curled up at the edges until you lost sight of it, we couldn't have crept up on a hunk of soya.'

'Yeah.' Dommer had rea.s.sembled his flamer now, and was checking the calibration on the sights by centring the laser marker on Kreig's temple. 'That was kinda '

The alert sirens screamed. Three sets of boots. .h.i.t the floor.

'All crew to stations,' the tannoy rasped. 'Escaped prisoner. Repeat; escaped prisoner. Amber alert. Repeat; amber alert. Troops one to seventeen adopt search pattern spiral delta. This is not an exercise. Repeat; this is not an exercise.'

Ardamal just beat Kreig out of the door, while Dommer was still fumbling with his flamer. The last thing Ardamal heard as he raced down the corridor was the tinkle of metal parts. .h.i.tting the floor.

As he leaped for the null*gray shaft, he caught sight of the prisoner thrashing through the air two storeys above. Her pony*tail was weaving like a snake, and she was still dressed in blood*stained black armour and shiny leggings; the same kit that she had been wearing when Ardamal and his section had dragged her, kicking and screaming, into the IMC executive transporter. This time she had a gun.

Ardamal twisted lithely, presenting the smallest possible surface area to the woman whilst simultaneously lining up his needier on her left breast. 'Body shots are best,' he heard the long*ago voice of Sergeant Cribb saying, back at the IMC training camp, as he demonstrated various weapons and aiming techniques on a row of terrified ElleryCorp prisoners. 'If you miss the heart, you might still put a hole through something vital. If you miss the head, you've missed them completely.'

Kreig swam to one side, hugging the walls, boosting her speed with handholds and seams, trying to overtake the woman and pin her between exits. Textbook stuff.

The woman was drifting upwards now; trying to read exit signs whilst still watching for pursuit. Klaxons echoed up and down the shaft. The peculiar properties of air under null*gray conditions added an extra resonance to the noise.

Kreig pa.s.sed the woman without a sound, without a breeze, climbing like a rocket to Exit 347, where she hung, waiting for the woman and Ardamal to catch up.

Ardamal manoeuvred himself to a position below and slightly behind the woman, hidden by her legs. As his needler's laser marker pa.s.sed across her back, he pressed the compensation stud. Micro*gyros kicked in, stabilizing the bright dot on the base of her spine. Somewhere in the back of his mind was the knowledge that Legion wanted the woman kept alive, but the sight of Kreig's ears had given Ardamal a thirst, and he needed to slake it. The needler felt like it was locked in s.p.a.ce. He took up the trigger pressure.

Body shots are best.