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Lucifer Rising (novel)

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Revision as of 20:35, 21 March 2024 by Doug86 (talk | contribs)
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Lucifer Rising was the fourteenth novel in the Virgin New Adventures series. It was written by Jim Mortimore and Andy Lane. It was the first full novel to feature the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Bernice back together after Ace's reintroduction in the previous novel.

Publisher's summary

"If I'd wanted to spend the rest of my life hoofing it around grimy spaceships for no good reason I'd have stayed in Spacefleet."

Ace is back. And she is not in a good mood.

Bernice has asked the Doctor to bring the TARDIS to the planet Lucifer, site of a scientific expedition. It's history to her: the exploration of alien artefacts on Lucifer came to an abrupt halt three centuries before she was born, and she's always wondered why.

Uncovering the answer involves the Doctor, Bernice and Ace in sabotage, murder, and the resurrection of eons-old alien powers.

Are there Angels on Lucifer? And what does it all have to do with Ace?

Plot

Prologue: Falling from Grace

Paula Engado is falling through the atmosphere of Lucifer in a starsuit, all its systems crashed. The suit fails and she dies thousands of kilometres from the nearest human.

Part one: Astarte

The Adjudicator is reviewing security records to investigate Paula's death.

The crew of Project Eden gather in the refectory to mourn Paula. Piper O'Rourke watches Alex and Christine get into another argument about funding. The three of them head to the conference room to meet Miles. They discuss their little progress on the project so far. After five years of work, there is still much they don't understand about the Lucifer system and the Angels on the planet below. Miles informs them he is bringing in an adjudicator to investigate Paula's death. The Doctor interrupts and suggests the possibility that Paula was murdered.

The Adjudicator tries to look up a personnel record of the Doctor, but there is none to be found. He instead views the first appearance of the Doctor on Project Eden.

The TARDIS materialises in a corridor lined with machinery and the Doctor exits, followed by Ace and Bernice. They set off down it, briefly stopping to examine an oxygen generator. They come to a door, and Ace kicks it open. When they enter the room on the other side, they notice a drone hovering in the corner. It had been following and recording them. The Doctor pulls a can of blue spray paint from his pocket and...

Playback stops because the file is corrupted. The Adjudicator reviews the case. He considers possible motives, and finds he has more questions than answers.

Part two: Belial

Bernice sits in the refectory on Belial Base. She sees Cheryl Russell and her husband Sam walking outside the base in their starsuits. The Adjudicator joins Bernice and introduces himself as Bishop. He wants to know who she is and what she and her friends are doing on the base. The Doctor and Ace enter the refectory as well and Bishop begins questioning the Doctor. He suggests that the Doctor might be responsible for Paula's death, but the Doctor argues otherwise. Bishop decides the evidence against the Doctor is inconclusive, and leaves the refectory. Bernice enquires about the future of the Guild of Adjudicators and he tells her, but she isn't listening. He observes that she is upset about Paula's death.

Cheryl and Sam enter through the airlock and take off their starsuits, but Sam's initially doesn't respond to his command and informs him there has been a change to its programming. Cheryl runs a diagnostic, but it reports there has been no update. They begin to suspect there might be a larger problem in the neural net. Cheryl leaves and Sam tries to remove the malfunctioning starsuit from storage, but the software again doesn't respond to his commands. A figure approaches him, and Sam screams, but he is cut short.

In the refectory, a news report shows the aftermath of an attack on Sifranos. Piper turns it off and sits down with the Doctor, Ace, and Bernice. She realises they were not originally part of the crew, but quickly forgets again. Ace and Bernice get up and go their separate ways. Piper tells the Doctor about her late husband Ben until Bannen interrupts to tell the Doctor about a control room of sorts that has been found in Belial. They leave to go see it.

Ace approaches the Pit that goes straight through the centre of the moon and slides down the walkway circling its interior until she reaches a corridor. She breaks into Paula's room, then tries to think of the password for her computer. She tries "CHERYL" and is granted access. She types for some minutes until she is hit in the the head and knocked out.

Bernice enters Christine's office. Christine has been crying after seeing her mother on the news. She explains how her mother had discouraged her interests as "bad for business" and never let her know her father.

The Doctor and Bannen arrive at the new discovery, what Bannen calls the Mushroom Farm. It is an enormous chamber covered on every surface by metal protrusions resembling mushrooms, with the Pit running through its centre. They investigate the workings of the mushrooms. Krau Moshe-Rabaan enters the room to scold Bannen about his energy use and they begin to argue. The Doctor suggests a different method of capturing energy which will increase their power yield tenfold, then leaves.

Cheryl tells Piper about the starsuit malfunction. She thinks Sam is working on Moloch.

Ace wakes up to find she is bleeding and the Doctor is leaning over her.

Miles is thinking about Paula and the Tewa traditions when his interrupted by the Doctor. He tells Miles to break Paula's bowl and free her spirit, but she hid it from him after a fight. The Doctor wants to view the security records, but Bishop has control of them. Bishop refuses to give the Doctor access. He is, however, willing to bend the rules in exchange for information.

Bernice comes in to Ace's room and offers her a drink. They talk about Ace's time in Spacefleet.

In the Mushroom Farm Alex Bannen takes a file out of a locked drawer in a file cabinet. Ace enters and he slips it under the desk. He tells her to leave, but she refuses and asks about the mushroom farm. He doesn't answer and leaves. She follows Bannen to his quarters to make sure he is asleep before heading back, but he leaves his room again shortly after arriving.

Cheryl enters her quarters to find Sam absent despite the fact that his shift should have ended hours ago. She tells herself he must be working an extra shift. She starts thinking about Paula and cries. Bernice comes in and tries to comfort her. Cheryl sends her off and wonders how long it will be before she manages to close her eyes without wishing she'd never wake up again.

Piper enters Miles's room where he is asleep at his desk. She puts a file on it and he wakes up. She tells him to go to bed and they agree to meet tomorrow.

In the corridor, Bernice decides to go back and apologise to Cheryl, but her room is empty.

The Doctor is walking down a corridor reviewing events. He was unable to interpret anything from Bishop's corrupted files. He hears a sound and rushes into Moshe-Rabaan's room. He finds her dead, apparently having slit her wrists.

Shmuel Zehavi awakes from his sleepwalk and discovers Moshe-Rabaan's body.

Ace has followed Bannen back to the Mushroom Farm and hears him talking to someone. People all over Belial are restless: Bernice, Miles, Piper, Julie and Craig, Christine, Bishop, the Doctor, and Zehavi.

Christine is taking Ace down the Pit to the Bridge terminal. They step out on the other side of Belial, with Moloch hanging over head connected by the Bridge. Tiw Heimdall approaches them and explains the workings of the Bridge.

Bernice and the Doctor are in the refectory for breakfast when the Doctor is summoned to Miles's office. They both head there to find Bishop and Miles inside. Miles informs them of Moshe-Rabaan's apparent suicide. However, the Doctor says that in Islam, the left hand is seen as unclean, so she would not have ended her life with that hand holding the knife. Bishop concludes he will have to stay on Belial and investigate further.

The Doctor is running off down the corridor when Bernice trips him and demands to know what is going on. He tells her Bannen is meddling with the alien machinery and without Moshe-Rabaan to restrain him, he is moving too fast. They head off towards the Mushroom Farm, feeling increasingly strong tremors as they go. When they get there, it is blazing with light and arcs of electricity. Bannen doesn't know what to do because someone has stolen his notes. Piper yells that the moons are moving out of alignment and the Bridge is going to snap. Bannen's son steps out from behind a mushroom.

Part three: Moloch

Ace, Christine, Jesus, Lars, Kosi, and Yukio are in the Lift when it starts spinning. Ace takes charge and hands out emergency spacesuits. Yukio can't close his helmet because of his beard. The wall tears open and Yukio dies to the vacuum. Christine trips and her arm is cut clean off by the jagged edge. Jesus is pulled out into space. As he flies back, he can see the Bridge vibrating and tearing in some places. He nearly misses the hole he came through, but he is reeled in with bedsheets. Christine is unconscious and her suit is leaking. Jesus has an idea: go the rest of the way to Moloch inside the Bridge. They force a frayed section apart, clamp it open, and one by one begin their descent. Jesus is last but the Lift collapses, the Bridge walls close in on him, and he is crushed.

There is chaos in the Mushroom Farm, but the Doctor explains that the feedback system will kick in and correct what Bannen has done. The tremors stop and the fog in the room clears.

Bishop gets a call in his ship from Adjudicator in Extremis Bronwen ap Bryn. Because of the ongoing crisis, she wants him to wrap up the case.

Down on Moloch, Kosi takes Ace to the Operations Room where they meet Rachel McBride. She asks about Sam, because he never turned up for his shift. As she leaves to take Ace on a tour, Kosi tells Lars she found Bannen's notes in Ace's suit. Rachel shows Ace the ship Paula was working on in the AVR Lab for going down to Lucifer. Ace looks at the most recent entry in Paula's diary. In the Operations Room, Chas Varley has found an odd reading, but Ace interrupts to contact the Doctor on Belial.

Bernice and Cheryl take Alex and his "son" to their room then head to the Operations Room, where Ace is yelling at the Doctor that he lied to her. She is interrupted by a loud noise off-screen. Blood sprays on her face and the transmission is cut off. Bishop calls in. He saw the transmission and is going down in his ship to investigate. The Doctor, Miles, Bernice, and Cheryl join him. They touch down and pass through the airlock and down Moloch's Pit into the interior.

They split up to search the Base for the personnel. Miles heads up the Pit. The Doctor brings the neural net back online and is reading a file from a simularity crystal when Bishop walks in on him. The Doctor tells him the file is corrupt. Benny is on the interior surface of Moloch searching for Ace and the missing crew. Cheryl enters the medlab to find the Doctor inside. He wants her to tell him about Paula, but she says she isn't ready. She leaves and the Doctor follows.

At the Bridge terminus, Miles sees that the hole in the Bridge is repairing itself, and a new Lift is forming. He heads to the AVR Lab then gets into the starpod and opens the lab roof.

Bishop takes the crystal the Doctor was reading and examines it on his personal reader. It is suppressed evidence that could explain everything. Benny heads into the jungle, where she finds a pile of dead bodies, topped with Ace's bloody jacket. Alex enters the Belial Operations Room with his "son" and tells Piper his name is Mark. He is a simularity of his dead son.

An alarm goes off on Moloch and the source is the AVR Lab. Bishop and Cheryl run there. Benny reenters the Base and the Doctor takes her to the Operations Room, but the crystal is nowhere to be found. She shows him Ace's jacket. Cheryl shuts the dome and the alarm turns off. In the lab, she opens the starpod and Miles's body falls out. Bishop finds the systems offline and all records of the last fifteen minutes wiped.

They all fly back to Belial to a waiting medical team for Miles. Bishop announces that he has concluded Paula was murdered, and points his gun at the Doctor.

Benny visits the Doctor being held prisoner in the Conference Room. She tells him Kosi and Chas are among the dead, but Ace has yet to be found. Piper sees Miles in the refectory, and he has something to show her. Bernice passes them on their way out and sits down with Cheryl. Cheryl was seeing Paula, and Bernice had walked in on them. The only other person Bernice told was the Doctor, but Sam had found out. In Piper's office, Miles shows her Paula's diary simularity he found. On it, she says she will be going down to Lucifer in a starsuit, and asks Miles not to marry Piper. Piper leaves in anger.

While Bishop is gone, Bernice plays the simularity he used as evidence against the Doctor. On it, the Doctor has told Paula that Cheryl loves her, but won't leave Sam. She is angry, and says she is going down in the starsuit and might not be coming back. The Doctor nods. Bishop comes in to the office, and Benny has the idea to play it again from a different perspective. This time, the scene shows, with the same words, Paula deciding not to go in the starsuit. Bishop and Bernice are interrupted by the sound of an explosion from the Conference Room.

Miles has a dream about hunting a whale. Bernice runs into the Conference Room and Teal insists that the Doctor is dead. Meanwhile, the Doctor makes Bishop tea and as they're about to check the security footage for who caused the explosion, the power goes out. They head to the main airlock, where Miles is about to step outside in a starsuit, forcing them to leave before the air leaves the base. In the corridor, they run into Teal and Bernice, who tell them Miles left a suicide note. Bannen joins them and says Piper knocked him out when he tried to reboot the neural net.

Krieg, Ardamal, and Dommer are in their room when an alert sounds: Ace is escaping. They race into the hallway then into the zero gravity shaft that connects the floors. Dommer tries to shoot at Ace but his gun explodes. Aradamal fires at her and misses.

Miles has been falling towards Lucifer for hours, drifting in and out of consciousness. He is prepared to die when he see's Paula's face in the clouds. She has joined with an Angel and tells her father to get everyone out of the system.

Ace finds herself in an ornate room talking to a multidimensional being. It explains the people that were on Moloch aren't dead, just anaesthetised, and identifies itself as Legion. Ace says she's been trying to find it. It tells her it is working for IMC, which have come to claim the mining rights of Eden. It takes her to the medlab, where she sees Christine in stasis.

An orderly tells Bronwyn ap Bryn that Ace had sent a message to Legion from Belial's neural net, but Legion's agent had knocked her out and deleted it.

Piper is heading towards the airlock when she hears the Doctor, Benny, Teal, and Bishop. She is overcome by a strange sensation and runs off down the corridor. The Doctor tells the others to gather everyone in the Operations Room, and confronts Piper in the airlock. Piper explains that she had infected the starsuits with a virus to transmit information to IMC, but it caused malfunctions, like the one that killed Paula. Cheryl comes around the corner and punches Piper in the face. One of the spacesuit lockers opens and Sam's body falls out. Miles materialises in the Operations Room. Ace leads IMC troopers in through the airlock.

Christine comes too in the medlab and realises she has an artificial left arm. Legion appears before her and tells her she will be seeing her mother. In the executive transporter bay, she throws coffee into the face of her guard Atrimonides and runs away. They both fall off the observation deck. The artificial gravity fails, fire fighting systems fill the room with foam and Christine finds herself between one of the ships and the wall as the ship begins to move. It is too big for her to get out of the way before it crushes her. She enters the ship through an access hatch, but Atrimonides is not so lucky.

Part four: Demogorgon

Bernice enters the refectory to see it full of IMC troopers. She asks the Doctor to make a distraction. He walks to the centre of the room and begins juggling, while she climbs inside a food dispenser. Legion appears behind the Doctor and stops his act. It tells the crew members that IMC now owns this colony, and they will have to pay to get back to Earth. Bishop tries to take control of the situation, but he is interrupted by Bronwen ap Bryn, who tells him the Guild is no more. Legion orders Ace to shoot Piper.

Legion puts Bannen to the task of making plans for a new starpod, and brings his simularity son back online. It then tells Ace that it just need Bannen to think he is helping so he'll stay out of the way. Bernice gets out of the food dispenser and tries to talk to Ace, but she just points a gun at her. Ace leads Benny out through the airlock onto an executive transporter to take her to the Insider Trading.

In Miles' office, the Doctor tells Julie and Teal that Miles's Tewa medicine wheel is the key to the situation. Cheryl arrives and tells Julie she's needed. Miles tells them the Tewa origin story. Bishop knocks out the guards and helps them all to escape.

Christine gets in a starsuit on the executive transporter and looks for files concerning Project Eden. She finds a video of her mother telling Legion her plans to shut down the project and leave all the crew except Christine for dead.

As they rush down the corridor, Bishop asks the Doctor about Moshe-Rabaan's body. The Doctor explains that he wanted to draw suspicion to himself so the real killer would come out into the open. They run right into Krieg and Ardamal, who are about to shoot them when Bronwen ap Bryn stops them.

In the "methodology" section of the file, Christine finds out that IMC's plan is to use eight controlled black holes to strip away Lucifer's atmosphere with no regard for the Angels. In her stolen spacesuit, she tries to leave the executive transporter bay but Ace spots her. She takes Christine and Bernice to a room and locks the door as she leaves. She investigates the medlab, and finds no trace of the crew from Moloch. Meanwhile, Bernice and Christine use the antigravity units holding the chandeliers up to ram the table into the door.

On the Lift, Miles Engado holds the medicine wheel. Piper joins him and explains how she betrayed the Project and worked as a spy for IMC. Ace had deliberately not killed her. Miles says he needs her to debug the starpod software because the virus is still in it.

Alex Bannen is dropped off on Moloch by Ace. He descends the Pit and finds IMC troopers lighting Moloch's vegetation on fire. Legion doesn't listen to his requests for materials.

The Doctor and Bishop investigate the Mushroom Farm. Ace comes in and hands over Bannen's files to the Doctor. Elsewhere, Cheryl and Teal are ducking through corridors, evading IMC troopers, when they are spotted by Ardamal. Teal knocks him in the side of the head with a piece of plastic. They run into the Mushroom Farm and shut the doors behind them, but a pulse from Ardamal's gun makes it through and kills Teal. He comes in and threatens to shoot Cheryl, too, but Ace stops him. Bronwen ap Bryn leads them out.

Piper and Miles sit in the starpod, falling through Lucifer's atmosphere. Piper is overwhelmed by regret, and they cry in each other's arms. Further down, seas of zelanite meet islands of cloud. Piper sees Paula, now an Angel, who tells them this is her funeral. Miles tries to tell her something, but she says there is no time. The Angels gather around her and she begins falling. Miles flies the pod after her.

Christine and Bernice have changed into IMC uniforms. They enter one of the transporters, knock out the pilot, and take off. Legion ignores them and orders the black holes to be released.

Part five: Lucifer Rising

Bernice and Christine are watching the atmosphere of Lucifer be ripped away into the black holes, when they realise they are heading towards one. The fuel quickly runs out trying to evade it and they are being crushed. All of a sudden, they stop.

The starpod chases after Paula, undergoing extreme atmospheric pressure. The medicine wheel begins to glow. Without explanation, the pod slows, and in its external arms is the body of Paula. Miles releases her, and the wheel fades. The pod begins shuddering again as the black holes eat the atmosphere. Then, they stop as the Angels dance around them.

In the Operations Room, Cheryl, the Doctor, Ace, Bishop, Bronwen ap Bryn, Krieg, and Ardamal are all watching Lucifer on a simularity. Legion appears and tries to justify his actions. Bannen's son enters and tells the Doctor his dad has locked himself in the Mushroom Farm. Ace, Krieg, and Ardamal go to investigate. Ace returns, saying they couldn't get in. Legion orders Bryn to take everyone out of the base. Bishop takes her gun, but she pulls out another and points it at him. Ace shoots first, killing Bryn. She explains that in the twenty-sixth century, the Lucifer system is at a strategic point, but there is an exclusion zone around it. IMC sent her to figure out a way around it. Suddenly, Legion bursts through Bishop's chest, killing him. The Doctor decides he has manipulated others into acting too often in the past, and shoots Legion. Out of thin air, four people and an Angel materialise in the room, and the Angel quickly vanishes.

Miles, Piper, Bernice, and Christine are now in the Operations Room. They give a quick recap of what has happened to them. Piper says Paula has changed the medicine wheel to be mad of the high-mass elements the Project has been searching for. The Doctor tells everyone to leave in Bishop's shuttle while they still have the chance.

Krieg and Ardamal finally break into the Mushroom Farm. Energy arcs between the mushroom. Krieg begins to say something, but her voice literally becomes liquid. As they run out the door, Krieg's skin becomes purple and spiny, Ardamal's legs are jointed differently, and their bodies fuse. Reality-altering energy is emanating form the Mushroom Farm, and all across the base, people's biology fundamentally alter and they die horrible deaths. The Doctor, Ace, and Bernice arrive in the Farm and confront Bannen, who has become handsome. The Doctor explains that the Mushroom Farm controls morphic fields, a force that shapes the biology of all organisms. Bannen wants to improve humanity, but he needs the Doctors help because he isn't emotionally stable enough to completely control it. The Doctor tells him it's impossible now that the interior of Moloch has been burned.

Piper, Miles, Cheryl, and the surviving crew are trying to outrun the wave of energy to get to Bishop's ship. They get to the airlock, but the energy begins to seep through the doors. In the end, only nine people make it into the shuttle. As they leave the system, it vanishes completely.

The Doctor explains that although the feedback mechanism is destroyed, that the four of them together can stop this. The Doctor and his companions join hands and begin to fuse, up to the wrists at first and then completely. Ace has a dream of her dying father and Jan. The Doctor dreams of the Hermit on Mount Cadon. Bernice dreams of visiting the Vartaq Veil Dyson sphere and searching for her father. The three of them awake to find everything back to normal. The Doctor explains that the strength of the emotion in their memories put the machinery to rights. Bannen became the feedback mechanism in Moloch. The three time travellers depart, still carrying traces of each other.

Epilogue: On the Third Day

Miles and Piper stand on a beach back on Earth. She hands him Paula's bowl, and he throws it into the sea, freeing her spirit. Piper releases the powder given to her by the Doctor, calling it "hope".

Characters

Project Eden Crew

IMC personnel

Other

Worldbuilding

  • "Krau" is a title used for women.

Archaeology

  • Bernice made her reputation excavating Ice Warrior citadels on Mars, which formed part of her first visit back to Earth. During the excavation, she made love to a man named Tim in the egg chamber.
  • She also excavated a Dyson sphere on the fringes of the Vartaq Veil.

Corporations

Culture

Daleks

The Doctor

  • The Doctor's umbrella is sliced in half. He gets a new one.
  • His favourite colour is a particular shade of blue.
  • He collects pins.
  • He gives his age to be 943.

Foods and beverages

Individuals

  • Ace dreams of being naked and stabbing someone.
  • Federique Moshe-Rabaan is a seyyed, a descendant of the Prophet in Islam.
  • Dommer's throat was scarred by praxis gas, making his voice scratchy and grating.

Locations

Organisations

Planets

Spaceships

Species

  • The Rills have a political system in which the uglier one is, the more power one attains.
  • The Delphon find the surgical removal of limbs to be highly sexually alluring.
  • A Rutan is mentioned in a alternative version of the rhyme "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe".
  • The Martians invaded Earth in 2090.
  • Sheep, cats, whales, and dodos are all extinct.

Sectors of space

  • In the Axorc Sector it is considered to be the height of good manners to serve oneself up for dinner on special occasions.

Science

Technology

Notes

  • The exact year this book is set in is conflicting:
    • The simularities date events to 2154. "Twenty-one fifty-four or so" is revealed to be the time period Ace wanted to go to.
    • Contradicting this is Sharon Kreig remembering an event "back in ... fifty-six", presumably 2156.
    • Dalek attacks have begun on colony worlds, but their identity is currently unknown. Bernice knows a Dalek invasion is coming in the next few years and Doctor dates it to 2158.
  • Lucifer Rising was Jim Mortimore and Andy Lane's first proposal for the New Adventures. It was originally rejected by series editor Peter Darvill-Evans for being too similar to televised Doctor Who, leading Mortimore and Lane to submit another proposal, Bodyshock. However, Darvill-Evans kept thinking about the Lucifer Rising idea and ultimately commissioned it.[1]
  • In an article in DWM 252, Lane recalled:

The original plot for Lucifer Rising had the Cybermen as the primary villains. A group of them had found religion and were travelling the universe in a space-going cathedral. Until a fairly late stage (in fact, after contracts had been signed) Legion in was, in fact an Alpha Centauran.[2]

  • A prelude to this novel was published in DWM 199.
  • At the time of this book's writing, Virgin Books were considering the idea of permanently regenerating the Seventh Doctor into an eighth incarnation played by David Troughton, so the end of this novel was written to foreshadow the Seventh Doctor's regeneration. However, the BBC didn't approve of the idea, and it never happened.[3]
  • Lane later judged that the book was too wordy and padded.

Continuity

Illustrations

  • Textless cover

  • Frontispiece

  • Prologue: Falling from Grace

  • Part One: Astarte

  • Part Two: Belial

  • Part Three: Moloch

  • Part Four: Demogorgon

  • Part Five: Lucifer Rising

  • Epilogue: On the Third Day. . .

External links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ David J. Richardson interview of Andy Lane for Sonic Screwdriver #86 (September 1994)
  2. ↑ DWM 252 (Licence to Kill p.28)
  3. ↑ The Shadows of Avalon
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