Doctor Who_ Lucifer Rising Part 23

As silently as she could, Piper backed away from the airlock, into the darkness.

And a light silhouetted her against the wall.

Her body suddenly became numb. An icy sensation rushed through her limbs. Her heart faltered, then resumed its steady rhythm. She gasped, clutched her chest and sank to the metal grillework which served as the floor of the corridor. Her head spun and her left arm tingled painfully with pins and needles. She blinked. The light was shining in her eyes, swooping towards her.

Something simultaneously velvet and diamond insinuated itself into her body, slipping easily between the molecules of her skin and coalescing within her. Piper screamed. The sensation moved around inside her, filling her up, shuffling, searching, pa.s.sing through to leave her sick and trembling and curiously empty.

The light faded, driven aside by the darkness of the Base. She heard footsteps: people running towards her, attracted by her scream. She struggled to her feet, her only thought to avoid discovery, and staggered off into the darkness.

Bernice ran forward into the darkness, her torch beam bobbing in front of her. A babble of conversation filled her ears.

'What was it? Did you see it?'

'See what? I heard a noise, like a whisper '

'There was something a light, shadows '

'How can you see shadows? It's dark!'

'What the h.e.l.l there's someone there!'

'Hey! Hey you!'

Teal's hand found her arm. 'Don't. Bernice, don't go any further.'

'But I have to see '

'No.' The Doctor's voice rang out like a ship's bell in the darkness. 'You don't have to see anything. Come back here, now. All of you.'

The running footsteps faltered, slowed, began to return along the corridor.

The Doctor shone his torch on to Bernice as she returned from the darkness. Her face was flushed with excitement. 'Did you see it? What was it?'

Beside her, Teal's voice trembled in the darkness. 'There was nothing to see. I only heard...' He faltered. 'I only heard...'

The Doctor spoke firmly. 'Get everyone together. a.n.u.shkia, Julie, Craig... Get them all and meet me in the Operations Room. Bernice, Bishop: carry Alex will you. And mind you go carefully with his head. We'll need him to get the neural network back on line.' Without another word, the Doctor strode into the darkness.

Bernice stared distastefully at the physicist, rec.u.mbent on the floor. 'Come on then, Sleeping Beauty.'

Christine LaFayette blinked a layer of viscous blue gel from her eyes and sat up, coughing. 'Ciel!'

She coughed again, and spat a wad of blue gel to one side. Her throat stung with the effort. She tried to ma.s.sage her neck but her left arm would not move. She peered down at it, noting that a white smock, like a hospital gown, clothed her from throat to ankles. Projecting beyond the sleeve, the flesh of her hand was pallid and sweaty. It hung uselessly at her side. She rolled up the sleeve to her elbow, the fingers of her right hand brushing her left forearm as she did so. She felt nothing. She pinched herself, but might as well have been pinching the padded plastic of the bed on which she sat for all the sensation she felt. She rolled her sleeve up further. Above her elbow, the flesh displayed a normal skin tone. A razor*sharp line divided the quick from the newly grown. She pinched herself on her left biceps and yelped with pain.

As the pain subsided, she looked around. She was sitting on a diagnostic bed in what was obviously a medlab of some kind. But where? There was no equipment this sophisticated anywhere on Eden. Straining, she tried to gather her thoughts. The last thing she remembered was...

Yukio's face erupting before her, stumbling backwards, a pressure on her elbow. My arm! Is that my arm? Why is it floating in front of And then the pain, and the darkness.

And then here. Wherever here was.

Feeling her stomach churn with the painful memories, she leaned sideways and was violently sick. Something metallic slithered from beneath her bed and vacuumed the debris away, before slipping back under the bed and deactivating with a click. Medical droid.

Not on the Base, then. Not anywhere on the Base.

Painfully, Christine swung her legs to one side until she was in a sitting position. Her muscles were a little stiff, but, although she flinched in antic.i.p.ation, there was no pain.

She glanced down again at her left arm. Prosthetic? Cloned? Easier to believe that it was hers, and there was something wrong with it. d.a.m.n the memories of seeing it floating away in front of her. Nerve damage, say, or muscle wastage. Something. Anything.

She ran her right hand lightly over the rest of her body. Everything seemed fine. She took a deep breath. Time to leave then, and find some answers.

Peering around for a locker where she might find some clothes, she stood.

A medical alarm sounded.

Bernice helped Bishop lay Alex Bannen on the floor beside one of the main Operations Room workstations. There was a loud clattering and muted conversation as a.n.u.shkia Smyslov, Shmuel Zehavi and a morose Cheryl Russell followed them into the room and placed their torches so that the beams played over the domed ceiling, throwing a dim reflected light, like candlelight, back into the room. Bernice stood. 'Anyone here got med training?'

a.n.u.shkia pushed forward into the circle of torchlight. 'Yes. I'll take charge here. You and Teal go and find Craig Richards and Tiw Heimdall.'

'I'll find the Doctor,' Cheryl said dully, as she picked up a torch. 'Craig's probably checking the power linkages. G.o.d alone knows where we'll find Tiw.'

Bernice nodded. 'Let's do it.'

Bishop stepped forward as the women left the room.

a.n.u.shkia looked up from beside Alex Bannen's p.r.o.ne body. 'And where are you going?'

'Orders to the contrary notwithstanding, Krau Smyslov,' Bishop produced his ubiquitous thin smile, 'to apprehend the villain of the piece.'

The Doctor ran soundlessly through the darkness. He had no torch, but darkness did not impede his progress. In the back of his mind he knew the air in the Base was getting staler as the crisis progressed, but he couldn't afford to worry about that now. More urgent was the need to find out why Piper had felt it necessary to shut down the neural net like this. Only then could he decide if it was safe to reboot the system.

His foot touched a black rubberized cylinder, and he stopped his headlong dash instantly. He bent to examine the device. A torch. Piper's?

Pocketing it, he moved on.

Behind him, unnoticed, faint beams of light shimmered softly, and without apparent source, across the corridor walls.

'Atten*shun.'

Six pairs of polycarbide*armoured boots slapped the IMC executive transporter bay deckplates at the Staff Sergeant's command. Six high*power weapons chunked as they were slung across six heavily muscled male and female shoulders.

Silence hung in the air.

'Squad Number One: prepare for executive transporter embarkation. You know the drill, now let's move! Point!'

Sharon Kreig and Jay Ardamal double*timed it up the footramp and into the waiting executive transporter. By twos the rest of their squad followed, stowing their gear as the Staff Sergeant followed them in.

A coiling black ribbon writhed into being and floated in mid*air next to the Sergeant's head. 'You have the paperwork?'

'Affirmative, Legion.'

'Good.' The black ribbon gathered itself into a knot, turned inside out and was gone.

The osmotic field opened and the executive transporter lifted gracefully into s.p.a.ce.

Craig Richards finished his torchlit check of the power control systems and slammed the access hatch shut with an angry growl. Ergs were there aplenty: they just weren't being channelled anywhere. That meant the control circuits were down, and that meant a whole new set of checks was going to have to be made. What really cheesed him off, though, was the fact that the food reconst.i.tuters were down as well. He could really have done with a steaming hot beaker of He paused, his thought uncompleted. From deeper within the Power Bay came a sound. He frowned. The sub*standard systems Earth Central had seen fit to install in the Base made some weird noises at the best of times, but this... This was unlike anything he'd ever heard before. Craig scratched his head. 'h.e.l.lo? a.n.u.shkia? Who's there? Zehavi, are you sleepwalking again? Come on, stop playing silly b.u.g.g.e.rs, you're putting the wind right up me.'

The sound came nearer, resolving into a kind of low whispering. Flickering beams of dim light came with it, caressing the machinery which shielded their source from direct view. The light moved like smoke, or heavy gas not in straight lines, but floating ribbons... Or tentacles.

Craig reached into his pocket and caressed his lucky deck of cards, then felt around with his other hand and picked up a flat toolcase made of heavy*duty plastic. It wasn't much of a weapon but 'Craig! Craig Richards! Are you in here?' The voice came from outside.

Slipping the toolcase into his overalls, Craig backed away from the strange phenomenon.

'd.a.m.n right I am. And I'm coming out now.'

Without taking his eyes off the stacks of machinery which shielded the glimmer from direct sight, Craig walked quickly backwards until he felt the entrance hatch to the Power Bay thump into his shoulder. He jumped as a voice beside him said, 'Leave this lot, will you? The Doctor wants everyone back in Operations, p.r.o.nto.'

Craig turned to face Bernice and Teal. 'I can handle that,' he whispered fervently as he pushed past them and rushed off up the corridor.

Bernice glanced at Teal. 'What do you suppose is biting his his a.r.s.e?' a.r.s.e?'

The engineer shrugged. 'Your guess is as good as mine.' He gazed into the Power Bay. Apart from the light from Craig's torch, still propped where he had left it against the main power conduits, the chamber was dark and empty.

Christine stared in fascination at the being that had appeared in the medlab before her.

'You have the paperwork?'

'Paperwork?'

'My name is Legion.'

'What paperwork? Who what are you?'

There was a pause.

'I am the captain of Interstellar Mining Corporation vessel Insider Trading Insider Trading.'

'IMC!'

'Good.' There was another pause. The black construct before her split, spun into a thin loop, fleshed into a globe, flipped inside out to reveal a hovering pink ma.s.s, which detached itself from the main bulk and drifted some distance away. The black elements pa.s.sed through one another and recombined.

Christine stood. She said firmly, 'Well, thank you, Captain, for being so informative. May I have my clothes back now?'

'Of course. I would not want to return you to your female progenitor in what, from my briefings on human culture, I perceive to be an indecorous condition.'

Christine's face hardened. 'My mother!'

'Is responsible for IMC's presence here. Yes.'

It wasn't Piper O'Rourke but Tiw Heimdall that Bishop found on his excursion through the Base. The little man was standing in the middle of the Bridge terminus, head c.o.c.ked to one side as if he could hear something, fists clenched at his sides.

Bishop stopped a few steps into the chamber. Tiw didn't move.

'Trau Heimdall.'

Tiw's head turned slowly. He smiled thinly at Bishop. Something glittered with a golden sheen between his lips. 'Something comes, Adjudicator. My teeth they tingle.'

Despite himself, Bishop shivered when he heard the flat intonation of Tiw Heimdall's voice. He moved carefully into the chamber, glancing around at the curved walls, and the curtains of rock beyond. He drew his gun, letting it guide his eyes around the rest of the chamber.

'I can smell it.'

'What, Trau Heimdall?'

'Something... Something...'

Satisfied the chamber was empty apart from himself and Tiw, Bishop holstered his gun. 'Trau Heimdall, we must leave here immed...' His voice died away. 'Who said that?'

'I said nothing.'

Bishop drew his gun. 'Can you hear anything?'

'Smell something, I can. Like gra.s.s growing in the meadows, like thunderclouds gathering in the sky in the days before the weather control '

'Come on. We're leaving.'

'I think I will stay.'

'No!'

Bishop turned to face Tiw Heimdall. There was a dim light behind him, writhing slowly in the air. Bishop levelled his gun, but Tiw prevented him from getting a clear view of the target.

'Trau Heimdall. Move aside!'

Tiw slowly turned to face the phenomenon. 'Be not scared.'