Glory Days (audio story)
Glory Days was the forty-fifth Bernice Summerfield audio story released by Big Finish Productions. It was the first story of the tenth season.
Publisher's summary
Academic and adventurer Bernice Summerfield has always taken a dim view on grave robbers and thieves.
It's the kind of thing that makes life difficult when you're friends with one of the galaxy's most wanted criminals. A situation that gets even more complicated when that criminal's other half is the father of your son.
A mess of twisted relationships like that needs sorting.
The ideal method would be group therapy and a nice long cup of tea. Unfortunately, a raid on an impregnable location governed by a sociopathic mastermind where one false move means death is all they've got time for.
Plot
Leaving Peter on their ship, Benny meets with Bev in a bar and is surprised to find that she is with Adrian, whom Doggles has mutilated on Braxiatel's orders in an attempt to force Benny to return to the Braxiatel Collection. Although she does not approve, she agrees to help Bev and Adrian rob the most secure vault in Vingus Bank, which they presume belongs to Braxiatel as one of the bank's biggest clients. They gain entry by Bev pretending to be rich pornographic actress Connie Mounds and they are greeted by Mr Graham, one of many identically-named clones of Braxiatel created by the Glory, an AI.
Whilst Bev gets through security as a customer with a stuttering Mr Graham, Adrian a gizmo to neutralise surveillance and uses sex toy technology to create a clone of Benny which Benny reluctantly gives her Time Ring, which is in the process of what Braxiatel told her years ago was chronal venting. Benny, keeping in contact with Bev and Adrian through a telepathic widget, climbs the maintenance shafts to search the manager's office for the code to enter the vault, assisted by Bev frying the bionics. Lasers automatically lock onto her when she enters the office, which she realises is a fake designed as a trap for thieves.
The Glory, modelled on Braxiatel, replays Benny, Bev and Adrian's conversations inside and outside of the bank, including over the supposedly secure widgets, and contacts the police before locking the bank down, having a Graham destroy the clone as it nears the end of its life cycle. Benny, Bev and Adrian are brought together and real that this is part of their plan. They have manipulated the Glory into putting them above the vault as an electrics company infiltrated by Bev under the alias of the Matted Stoat switches off the bank's electricity for non-payment and the back-up generators, serviced by a company funded by the Stoat, fail.
The uplink of the bank's records to an orbiting hard drive has been prevented thanks to Benny, Bev and Adrian having purchased the company, which also allowed them to prevent the Glory from contacting the police and to instead reach another AI. When the water pipes burst, the records are destroyed and the systems reset, opening the vault. Adrian watches the Grahams as Benny and Bev enter the vault, the process of which shuts down the Glory, and find that it contains a portrait of Braxiatel which Benny painted on the Collection some years ago. Benny has a flashback from Braxiatel's point of view thanks to the Time Ring and deduces that the painting is actually a hard drive designed to allow Braxiatel to download himself into a clone if he dies.
Benny removes the painting so that she can learn Braxiatel's plans from it and starts to experience pain because of her Time Ring, so Bev uses her DNA snatcher to convince the painting that she is Benny. Bev disappears as she is uploaded as the new Glory, which has been becoming more and more like Benny in its speech patterns and choice of words as they got close to it and has been a trap all along. Refusing to leave Bev to fade away into the Glory, Benny exploits the fact that history remains in flux to drain temporal energy from the painting with her ring to save her. Without the hard drive, the bank is shut down and the Grahams disappear.
Benny, Bev and Adrian spend some time with Peter, after which Bev and Adrian intend on robbing a bank on Proxima IX. Having learnt from Connie Mounds that Jason's books have been incredibly successful since his death, Benny, as the chief beneficiary of Jason's will, plans on going to Venus to collect the money. The four of them will meet up afterwards to visit Earth and, Adrian says, they will one day come up against Braxiatel once again. Benny looks forward to it.
Cast
- Bernice Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman
- Peter Summerfield - Thomas Grant
- Irving Braxiatel - Miles Richardson
- Bev Tarrant - Louise Faulkner
- Adrian Wall - Harry Myers
Worldbuilding
- Doggles has tortured Adrian.
- There is a galactic recession.
- The Matted Stoat has robbed Kerren Electrical, Kerren Water and Baddeley Maintenance.
- Bev pretends that she and Benny are from Planetary Disease and Pest Control.
- Bev impersonates Connie Mounds. She was a colleague of Jason Kane's.
- Benny mentions Close Encounters of Every Kind, XXX-Men (both of which are fictional) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
- Benny wears a stealth bodysuit.
- Benny is good at tennis.
- Braxiatel drinks brandy.
- Benny likens almost being killed by a laser to a scene from Goldfinger.
- All the access panels out of the maintenance shaft are deadlocked.
- The Benny clone recounts scenes from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- Bev uses a DNA snatcher.
- Braxiatel offers Benny chardonnay.
- The Japanese traditionally give an omiyage to friends after returning from a journey.
- Bev wants to rob a bank on Proxima IX.
Notes
- This story was recorded on 9 January 2009.
- A download version of this story was released on 23 May 2022.[1]
Continuity
- Benny tells Braxiatel that she thinks that there must be a Menlove Stokes painting around the Collection. (PROSE: The Romance of Crime)
- The clone of Benny mentions that her favourite band is the Isley Brothers. (PROSE: Love and War)
- Benny mentions that her other clone is the President of Earth. (AUDIO: The Final Amendment, Venus Mantrap)
Footnotes
External links
- Official Glory Days page at bigfinish.com
- Glory Days at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
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