Part 1 (1/2)

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 s.h.i.+elding 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 vanis.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+vering uncontrollably, although the temperature was hotter than comfortable. Blinking sweat out of her eyes, she looked out through the barely s.h.i.+elded 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.