'Yonder in the north, cloud beings rise,' Miles intoned. 'They ascend unto cloud blossoms. There we take our being.'

The Angel that was Paula Engado appeared to turn, without turning. 'I have to go, Dad.'

'Yes, but you don't know why I've come here.'

'It doesn't matter.'

'What do you mean?'

Paula began to drift slowly away, drawn by the new configuration of Angels. In desperation, Miles reached out for her. The starpod's external manipulators swung through a short arc, intersected with Paula's body, pa.s.sed through it with no resistance.

Paula's voice held a smile, if her eyes did not. 'Careful, Dad. You might hurt me.'

'Paula, wait! There's something important I have to tell you. All of you.'

'It doesn't matter, Dad. Nothing matters any more. It's nearly time.'

Paula began to move faster. Her eyes began to lose their shape. Gradually, the colour bled away into the amorphous glowing ma.s.s of Paula's body.

'Oh, G.o.d... Oh, G.o.d...' Miles said.

'Miles...'

There was a long silence. The Angels rose to meet Paula and she merged with them a final time. The conglomerate creature formed a spinning ring from which tentacular shapes erupted and whirled in orbits of their own. Within the ma.s.s, Paula began to undergo her final change. There was a burst of glittering fragments.

Paula appeared to shrink.

She fell clear of the ring of Angels.

And kept falling.

'NO!'

Miles's voice was a roar. His hands blurred across the navigation console and the starpod lurched into motion.

Piper screamed, 'What are you doing?'

'I can't let her go again, Piper. Not again. I can't!'

Frantically, Piper fastened her safety harness, and tried to take control of the pod from Miles. 'Miles! Unlock my board! You'll kill us both!'

Miles did not reply. The starpod gathered speed. Far below, Paula hit the ocean with a soundless splash. Dull silver liquid cascaded upwards, and shockwaves rippled outwards for kilometres.

'I'm going to get her, Piper. The Whale won't have her this time!'

'Whale? What are you '

There was a tremendous crash as the starpod drove through the ring of Angels and impacted with the ocean of zelanite. The cabin lights blinked and went out, then came on again at reduced power. The console flickered with a rash of warning lights. Miles clamped his jaw and sent the pod spinning into silver*tinged darkness.

Alex Bannen watched as Adjudicator Bryn led two troopers, Bishop and the Doctor from the Mushroom Farm. Ace brought up the rear with her gun trained on the Doctor's back.

He waited until the party was out of sight, then sidled towards the doors.

'You're back early, Dad. You told me you'd be gone for hours.'

He turned swiftly. 'Mark. You made me jump. There's something I have to do in here.'

'Can I come with you?'

'No.' He reached out for his son, smiling sadly when his fingers pa.s.sed through the boy's. 'It's something I have to do on my own, I'm afraid.'

Bernice strapped herself into the executive transporter pilot's couch and began the warm*up procedure, as she remembered seeing Ace do only a couple of hours before. Behind her, Christine spared a glance for the executive transporter pilot, out cold on the floor.

She dropped the short, heavy tool she was holding beside the body. 'Speaking purely as a psychologist, I am beginning to understand the attraction of physical violence.'

Bernice laughed aloud as Christine strapped herself into the copilot's couch.

The executive transporter began to move.

Legion corkscrewed out of nothing on to the bridge of the Insider Trading Insider Trading as the proximity warning klaxon sounded. as the proximity warning klaxon sounded.

In chorus, it whispered, 'Executive transporter three is no longer important. Its destruction is already a.s.sured. Begin Phase Two.'

A technician, used to Legion's habit of answering questions before they were asked, said, 'Executive transporter three is leaving the docking bay without authorization. What are your orders?' and then began to operate controls.

Surrounding Lucifer at the points of a cube, eight IMC heavy*duty tugs began to position their cargoes for release.

The technician spoke again. 'Orbital trajectories are firm. All systems are reading positive.'

'Release.'

Three million kilometres away, the first tug switched off its containment field. The tug vanished, squeezed out of existence in a microsecond by the most powerful force in the universe. Moments later, the planetary envelope began to whirl in patterns that were not determined by purely meteorological phenomena.

On the bridge of the Insider Trading Insider Trading, Legion whispered a quiet prayer of exultation to its own private G.o.d.

'Profit margins are in the black...'

The rape of Lucifer had begun.

PART FIVE.

LUCIFER RISING.

Let justice be done, though the world perish.Emperor Ferdinand I

Chapter Eighteen.

Lucifer was a vision of h.e.l.l filling the upper quadrant of the executive transporter's viewscreen. The atmospheric ring was beginning to distort in three places, bulging towards the centre of the planet. Light from the sun, seen for so long in eclipse, was wrapping around the planet like a shawl, twisting into impossible lines and curves, refracting into rainbows which vanished into the minuscule black holes.

From the executive transporter's viewpoint beneath Lucifer, protective globes of energy encircled the ships of the IMC fleet, their immense size reduced to insignificance by the bulk of the planet they orbited.

Bernice shivered. It had taken only eight such ships to unleash enough power to utterly destroy the magnificent planet and there were over a hundred in the fleet. Terraformers, factories, mining structures, laboratories, crew ships... the list was endless. They hovered patiently beneath the planet, having released their death blow; all they had to do now was wait for their mighty opponent to weaken, as inevitably it must, before moving in for the kill. Stripped of its atmosphere, Lucifer would give up all its secrets to its vanquishers.

Bernice found to her surprise that she was beginning to feel sick, and shut off the viewer.

Christine glanced sideways at her. 'Stop anthropomorphizing. You'll be crying in a minute.'

'It's not right.' Bernice's voice was a lot harder than she had intended. 'You want to find out about a planet, you take a trowel and ten years of your life and you ask it politely. What they're doing is impatient, irreverent, destructive '

'And, unfortunately, very, very lucrative.'

'That should have been my line,' Bernice said dryly.

'You're right, it should have. Call it a psychologist's prerogative.'

'It's a psychologist's prerogative.'

The transporter shuddered violently.

'What the h.e.l.l was that?' Bernice asked.

Before Christine could say or do anything, the transporter kicked again. This time a scattering of indicators on the flight controls turned red and a siren began to buzz insistently.

'I think that was the reason Legion didn't worry about our escape.' Christine switched the monitor back on. Dead ahead, close by the planetary horizon, the stars appeared to bend in a ring enclosing an area of darkness.

Bernice peered closer, and was able to discern shreds of vapour spiralling from Lucifer and vanishing into the darkness. 'Oh s.h.i.t,' she whispered.

The Belial Base Operations Room was bathed in angry red light. You didn't need the direct view of Lucifer afforded by the refectory observation windows to know there was something terribly wrong with the planet: the Operations Room simularity was quite sufficient. Cheryl rubbed her hands against the sides of her tunic, aware that her palms were wet and her skin crawling. There was something obscene about the remorseless ease with which the invisible pinpoints were... eating away eating away at the planet's atmosphere. Small circles of utter blackness were creeping slowly across the darkened face of the giant, and Cheryl knew that less than a million kilometres away the great cloudscapes were rolling into immensely thin, immensely hot discs and spiralling into the gravity wells of the black holes, dropping past the event horizons and being crushed out of this universe altogether. Cheryl was sure this was happening to the Angels as well. She tried to imagine the sensation of being stretched and squeezed until the very molecules of her body ripped apart, but her mind could not encompa.s.s the thought. She wondered what the Doctor was thinking as he stood gazing up at the simularity. His face was a blank mask, but, she noticed, his hands were clenched into fists at his side. Ranged around the Operations Room, Ace, Bishop, Ardamal and Kreig were similarly transfixed. Even the other Adjudicator, Bronwen ap Bryn, was silent, her polished scalp shining with reflected light as if on fire. at the planet's atmosphere. Small circles of utter blackness were creeping slowly across the darkened face of the giant, and Cheryl knew that less than a million kilometres away the great cloudscapes were rolling into immensely thin, immensely hot discs and spiralling into the gravity wells of the black holes, dropping past the event horizons and being crushed out of this universe altogether. Cheryl was sure this was happening to the Angels as well. She tried to imagine the sensation of being stretched and squeezed until the very molecules of her body ripped apart, but her mind could not encompa.s.s the thought. She wondered what the Doctor was thinking as he stood gazing up at the simularity. His face was a blank mask, but, she noticed, his hands were clenched into fists at his side. Ranged around the Operations Room, Ace, Bishop, Ardamal and Kreig were similarly transfixed. Even the other Adjudicator, Bronwen ap Bryn, was silent, her polished scalp shining with reflected light as if on fire.

There was a subtle and complex movement to her left. Something pink and rope*like twisted into being about two metres above the floor. The rope coiled and merged with itself before hovering in the air, pulsing gently.

When it spoke, Legion's voice whispered around the room like a moth. 'An impressive display of technology, wouldn't you say, Doctor?'

The Doctor turned to face Legion, his face a black thundercloud of rage and contempt. 'I would say that your action today is an atrocity unparalleled in my long and bitter experience.' Though his voice was quiet as a whisper, the force in it drove through the room like a forest fire. Cheryl felt her face redden, and suddenly realized what it meant to have this funny little man angry with you.

Legion shivered slightly, its body rippling unsteadily. Was it laughing? Actually laughing at the Doctor? Cheryl shuddered.

Legion spoke again. 'I wonder if you truly understand the relative values of matters of importance,' it mused. 'My action today may be an atrocity in your eyes, but it will mean a new lease of life for the planet Earth and, hopefully, the saving of my own planet.'

'What do you mean by that?' the Doctor asked.

Legion's voice or, Cheryl corrected herself, voices voices were hushed and sad as it said: 'Over a recent span of time, there have been a number of unprovoked attacks on various of the planets close to Earth colonies and independent worlds. Vast black fleets appear out of hypers.p.a.ce, there is a brief but t.i.tanic conflict, and then the fleets disappear, leaving a razed world in their wake. There are reports of such a fleet near Epsilon Eridani my home. I am... concerned.' were hushed and sad as it said: 'Over a recent span of time, there have been a number of unprovoked attacks on various of the planets close to Earth colonies and independent worlds. Vast black fleets appear out of hypers.p.a.ce, there is a brief but t.i.tanic conflict, and then the fleets disappear, leaving a razed world in their wake. There are reports of such a fleet near Epsilon Eridani my home. I am... concerned.'

'And that,' the Doctor's voice dripped with sarcasm, 'is enough justification for the appalling slaughter of humans and Angels in which you are engaged?'

Legion pulled a cl.u.s.ter of eye*a.n.a.logues into the moment to study the Doctor. 'Of course,' it chorused. 'My consultancy contract with IMC ends when this job is complete. It is thus in the best interests of myself and my planet to finish the job as rapidly as possible. And my virus detected no signs in the Eden neural net that the Angels were of a high order of intelligence.'

'Then who built the Mushroom Farm and the Bridge?'

'Irrelevant. The Angels are animals. Unimportant to me, unimportant to Earth.'

The Doctor scowled. 'I suspect that you are wrong, Legion. Very wrong. On both counts.'

The starpod slammed into a cloudbank only slightly less dense than the zelanite ocean they'd just fallen through. Only moments before, Paula what was left of Paula had fallen this self*same route, but she had been falling freely, whereas the pod was under power. If the atmospheric pressure didn't crush them first, Piper thought they now stood a good chance of catching up with her. Though what Miles would do when that happened was anybody's guess.

The pod shook as Miles drove it closer to the thing that had been his daughter. Piper gripped the arms of her pilot's couch tightly and clamped her jaw shut. She was beyond trying to remonstrate with Miles now, unable to compete with the sound of Lucifer which filled her ears. The atmosphere cheeped and buzzed with electrical activity. A great thunderclap like a slowed*down bell rolled through the clouds and parted them. The sound began to affect her mood as well as her conscious thoughts. She felt bitterness and rage, then a sudden overwhelming joy, before the sound receded, leaving her trembling and sick. She closed her eyes, but the darkness only called to mind an image of Miles, his face a bleak mask, hunched over the controls with fervent intensity as the pod drove deeper into the atmosphere.

New sounds interjected themselves into the wall of white noise building up around her. Metal stress. Sirens. An odd whining noise.

The pod began to shake wildly. Piper felt her muscles protest even though every safety strap was tightened to its limit. The whining noise increased. She wondered how long it would be before atmospheric pressure caused the pod to implode. She wondered if she'd even notice the moment of her own death, or care.

Then her thoughts faltered as the whining noise grew to piercing levels. She became aware of a new light*source strengthening in the cabin. She gazed in amazement at Miles's tribal medicine wheel.

It was glowing with power.

'Doctor? Hey, Doctor. It's Dad!'

The simulated child had entered the Operations Room, unnoticed by anyone except Cheryl, during the Doctor's conversation with Legion. Now he stood beside the Time Lord and gazed up hopefully, stopping short of actually tugging on the Doctor's coat*tails. First Ardamal and then Kreig whirled, their guns levelled at the sudden noise. The Doctor glared at them for a moment. They lowered their weapons. Bishop and Bronwen ap Bryn watched this interplay with silent interest. Ace was looking increasingly uneasy.

The Doctor looked down at the child. 'What about Trau Bannen, Mark?'

'Well... I didn't really want to say, because he told me it was secret, but I'm scared.'

Cheryl began to get a cold feeling in her stomach.

'What was secret, Mark?' the Doctor asked with sudden urgency. 'Was it something to do with the Mushroom Farm?'