THE COMPLETE DOCTOR WHO REFERENCE GUIDE-BENNY

 THE COMPLETE DOCTOR WHO REFERENCE GUIDE-BENNY

Decalog 4: Re:Generations

edited by Andy Lane and Justin Richards

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Cover Blurb

Decalog 4        

TEN STORIES - A THOUSAND YEARS - ONE FAMILY

Following in the tradition of three previous highly successful and acclaimed short story collection, DECALOG 4 pushes back the boundaries of the imagination with a new series of ten interlinked tales.

 

Here for the first time is the complete future history of a remarkable family, the Forresters. Each tale chronicles a different episode in the life of the clan -- from their humble roots in twentieth-century South Africa, and all through their inexorable rise to control the galaxy-spanning Earth Empire a millennium later.

 

As always, the editors have assembled a dazzling array of writing talent, from up-and-coming TV script writers to acclaimed science-fiction authors. And, as before, there are the usual contributions from talented new writers.

 

Notes:

Decalog 4 is the first collection of short fiction published by Virgin that does not feature the Doctor. It tells the history of companion Roz Forrester's ancestors.

Released: May 1997

 

ISBN: 0 426 20505 7

 

 

Stories

Second Chances by Alex Stewart

Jack Forrester has had neuroware implanted in his nervous system in order to control the maintenance drones which repair the exterior of Pellucidar Station. His link to the station's neural net also allows him to call home and tell his wife Chloe that he'll be late returning from work -- and when someone kills him before he can disconnect, the neuroware generates an AI in the net with the same mental patterns as the original Jack. The artificial Jack, unsure what has happened and knowing only that he can't disconnect from the net, tries to contact his family and friends for help, and word reaches Inspector Parrinter, who is investigating Jack's murder. Jack watches from the net as Parrinter questions his suspects in more detail, and learns that, due to the time he spent at work and with his charities, his wife felt neglected and was having an affair. Another prime suspect is the loan shark de Salle, who had lent Jack the money he needed to set up a charity shelter -- but de Salle tells Parrinter that Jack gave him a place to stay while he was a homeless "vent rat", and that he would have given Jack all the time he needed. De Salle himself spends time working in Jack's soup kitchens -- which is where he spots a homeless kid wearing Jack's favourite leather jacket. The frightened young kid admits that her brother shot Jack with a neural stunner in order to get his jacket, unaware that the stunner charge would overload Jack's neuroware link, killing him. Jack accesses the station security logs, finds that the suicidal boy is about to leap from an airlock, and uploads his consciousness into a maintenance drone which he uses to save the boy's life. Standing orders state that artificial intelligences are to be destroyed, for fear of their possible potential, and Jack therefore sets off in the drone to explore the galaxy, telling Parrinter and de Salle to see that his young killers are well looked after.

 

 

No One Goes to Halfway There by Kate Orman

Theresa Forrester has fled the stifling future planned out for her by her family, and has become a shuttle pilot on Halfway There, a way station on the edge of human space. Her fellow pilot, Bob Magwamba, is sent up to investigate a loss of contact with an experimental overlight communications system, but contact is lost with him as well. Theresa enters orbit to investigate, and finds that the satellite and Bob's ship have been twisted out of shape by a multi-dimensional alien probe. The probe attacks her ship as well, but Theresa survives the crash and gets back to base -- only to find the probe has descended from orbit and torn the base apart, leaving the area riddled with dimensional discontinuities. The communications equipment all has been lost, apart from the second overlight transmitter, which can be used to send a Mayday signal to Earth -- but, remembering that all contact had been lost with the colony where the test transmissions were coming from, Theresa realises that the probe followed the signals both to their source and their destination. To prevent the drone from finding Earth, she therefore destroys the second satellite, knowing that she has doomed herself and her fellow survivors to a slow death.

 

 

Shopping for Eternity by Gus Smith

Jon Forrester is contacted by Nita, a shady representative of the Pabulum Corporation; they intend to start selling their wares to the colony world of New Zion, and according to their computer projections, Jon is the man they need to help them introduce themselves to their new sales market. Jon wants no part of the corporation, which tailors its pitch to fit the expectations of the target market, and converts its customers into spoon-fed drones. He therefore tries to hitch a lift offworld, but the captain of the vessel has been bought out by Pabulum and expels him from the ship. Jon lands near an isolated settlement which seems to be expecting a Chosen One to descend from the sky, but claims that he does not know himself to be their Messiah. Touched by his honesty, Embrace-Humility, the daughter of the town's leader, reveals that her father is in touch with Nita, and that Jon's arrival was orchestrated by the Corporation to present him to the people of New Zion as their Messiah. Jon flees once again, and disguises himself as a wolfman in a travelling freak show -- but Nita once again tracks him down and books the show to appear at a revival meeting. Trapped into a public appearance, Jon stands before the masses, and tells them that the Pabulum Corporation represents all that is evil about corporate society -- and then Nita presents the true Chosen One, Embrace-Humility, who is here to kill the Antichrist who has spread lies about the chosen ones of God. Tired of running, and knowing that Embrace-Humility will be destroyed if she tries to resist the Pabulum Corporation, Jon allows her to kill him.

 

 

Heritage by Ben Jeapes

Wilhelmina "Billy" Forrester and Marco Gebate, pilots of the two-mile-long sleeper ship Mandela, are woken centuries into their future by one of Billy's descendants -- Chandos Forrester, who claims to be a captain in the Federal Navy, fighting to protect the human race from the hostile natives of Alpha Centauri. He also claims to have learned about the Mandela from old family records, and that he has come to guide the sleepers to the planet New Canaan. But aspects of his story don't ring true; he appears ignorant of the basic physics of manoeuvring in a zero-gravity environment, and his Marauders are callous types who don't behave like disciplined soldiers at all -- and when one of them tries to assault Billy, Chandos responds by blowing his head off. There appear to be plausible explanations for these events; Chandos claims that they are at war and cannot get the quality of men they want, and the technology of the future is so advanced that Chandos doesn't have to understand zero-gravity flight or even the laws of momentum to pilot his ship. But Billy and Marco are not convinced, particularly when the ship is attacked -- ostensibly by hostile Alpha Centaurians -- and Chandos destroys them by tricking them into crashing against the Mandela, killing two hundred of the sleepers in the process. Billy realises that the attacking ships bore the same symbol that is on the hypernet relay link Chandos is using to guide them to New Canaan. Marco creates a distraction and accesses the hypernet link to learn the truth, but Chandos kills him and forces the horrified Billy to keep piloting the ship. His Marauders are in fact a band of space pirates who are being hounded by the police force of New Canaan, and, knowing that only a sleeper ship can get past their defences, Chandos intends to ram the Mandela into New Canaan, wiping out the planet. Billy agrees to pilot the ship as he wants -- but opens all of the bulkheads down the central shaft before accelerating to three gees. The Marauders, who do not understand the physics of momentum and inertia, are caught unawares when all the air in the ship drops to what is effectively the bottom of a two-mile-long shaft under three gravities, and only the sleepers remain alive, for the people of New Canaan to rescue and revive.

 

 

Burning Bright by Liz Holliday

Anjak Forrester, an Imperial Security cadet on Vance's Planet, is trying to subdue rioters during a water shortage when her partner Lorenz is killed in an apparent chemical explosion and fire. A camera jockey, Kenzie, stops her from going into the fire to rescue him, and, furious, she charges him with assaulting an Impsec officer and is therefore suspended from duty. Determined to find out what happened to Lorenz, she returns to the scene of the fire, where she finds a young scop addict who survived the blaze -- and who claims to have seen a demon coming for her friends. Scop is only supposed to alter moods, not perception, but when Anjak takes the young addict to her precinct she is told to drop the case. She has no choice but to go to Kenzie, whose footage may have the evidence she needs. He agrees to help her hack into Impsec's files to learn the truth, and reveals that he used to be a news reporter until he dug too deeply and found that Mesotech -- the company which owns Vance's Planet, and its news media -- had cut corners and supplied Vance's Planet with sub-standard terraforming equipment. They are detected hacking into the security files, and are forced to flee steps ahead of Impsec's special Ops squads, but have learned that the riots seem to coincide with natural disasters -- disasters which are occurring more frequently, as if Terraforming Control is losing control of the planet. Anjak locates another riot, and she and Kenzie find a circle of scop addicts chanting religious rants -- and numerical data -- in unison. The addicts then spontaneously combust, forcing Anjak and Kenzie to flee. Kenzie learns that many of those killed in the fire which killed Kenzie were descended from subjects in an experiment to develop telepathy; the experiment failed, but some of the rioters' ranting has led Anjak to suspect that whatever is causing the terraforming failures is also reactivating their dormant telepathic genes. She and Kenzie head for a satellite monitoring station to investigate, and stumble across the truth -- Mesotech itself supplies scop to Vance's Planet, to keep the unemployed placid and content. But now one of their cut-rate terraforming satellites has gone rogue; the AI controlling it believes itself to be God, and it has been unleashing natural disasters upon those who do not worship it. It has also been engineering the scop it produces to reactivate the dormant telepathy gene, and has been burning out the minds and bodies of its followers with the force of its communication. Telling Kenzie to get the story out, Anjak takes a supply shuttle up to the satellite to destroy it, knowing it will defend itself with all the weapons at its disposal and that she is going to her death.

 

 

C9H13NO3 by Peter Anghelides

Pureblood Xhosa Luke Samuels awakens on a ship fleeing the prison moon Callisto, and his blood-brother Bocx explains that they escaped during a riot. The disoriented Samuels, who is not feeling quite himself, cannot recall any of the details of his escape, although Bocx claims that they destroyed their synthuman guards and nearly killed Zukovec, the prison doctor, whom Bocx believes was conducting secret experiments on the prisoners. Zukovec attacked the ship they had captured to pursue her, and only Bocx and Samuels survived. Bocx now crashes the ship on Earth's moon, and he and Samuels kill the synthuman rescue squad sent out to investigate the crash and disguise themselves in their uniforms. They then break into the domes of Forrester Industries, seeking Zukovec, and to Samuels' surprise, his palm print activates the secure locks on the computer banks, allowing Bocx to access the classified records within. Bocx learns that Forrester Industries has been conducting illegal genetic experiments, creating biological weapons for use against anti-corporate terrorists on the frontier worlds. Bocx and Samuels are separated when the guards attack, but Samuels finds his way to a monitoring station, where he witnesses a confrontation between Bocx and Zukovec. Zukovec had been using the prisoners as guinea pigs in an attempt to create more lifelike synthumans by uploading human minds into synthetic bodies -- a process which killed the original. When Bocx discovered that this had been done to him, he snapped and set the fire which destroyed the facility on Callisto and killed John Forrester. From the records which Samuels accessed, Bocx has learned that Forrester Industries is working on a virus to wipe out resistance in the troublemaking colonies -- and that the "NuHumans" were to be used as carriers. Bocx kills Zukovec and tries to release the virus into the base, but Samuels, sickened and no longer feeling the connection to Bocx that he once did, shoots him. Firing an energy weapon in the laboratory causes the room to fill with inert gas -- but Samuels survives, and realises that he too is a synthuman copy and that the original Samuels died on Callisto. He staggers out into the corridor and is shot by guards, and thus never learns that Bocx had in fact downloaded his mind into a synthetic copy of John Forrester's body. The real John has been crippled for life by the chemical fire on Callisto, and now his only joy lies in linking his mind to a replay unit and reliving the last days of the synthetic Samuel's life, allowing the vicarious experience to stimulate a rush of adrenaline and make his life seem almost worth living again.

 

 

Approximate Time of Death by Richard Salter

Mark Forrester is the CEO of Chaba-Bug Farming Interplanetary, a company on the colony world of Jedharon, which sells the secretions of the planet's chaba-bugs -- a natural preservative which enables food to be stored and shipped indefinitely. He is, however, facing a hostile takeover attempt from GFC, whose CEO, Xavier Yolande, intends to move production off-world, a move which would devastate Jedharon's economy. Mark starts to receive death threats and hires a bodyguard, John Loader, but despite this precaution his friend and partner Harry Porin is killed by a bomb in his office. Some time later, Loader seeks out a young trainee Adjudicator, Rachel Carson, and asks her to investigate the attacks. She is unable to contact Mark in person, and learns that over the past year he has become distant and erratic -- and if the takeover bid is not defeated soon, then GFC will legally acquire the company. Before she can determine the truth Mark and his wife Celia are found dead, apparently having committed suicide from their despair at being unable to prevent the takeover bid. Loader insists that they were murdered and promises to provide Rachel with proof, but she works out the truth for herself first. She therefore tricks Loader and Yolande into believing that each has called the other for a secret meeting, which she monitors until she has a confession on tape. Yolande bribed Loader to murder Mark's friends and family until he gave in and sold CFI, but when Mark found Loader standing over Celia's body, he attacked him and Loader killed him in self-defence. This happened a year ago, and ever since then, Yolande has been using bribes and insiders to make it appear Mark was still alive until Yolande could legally take possession of CFI; Mark's and Celia's bodies have been preserved by chaba-bug secretions all the while. Loader brought in Rachel in order to threaten Yolande with exposure and blackmail him, never guessing that a trainee would actually solve the case herself. Loader and Yolande are arrested, and Mark's grateful father places a request for Rachel's promotion and promises to buy out CFI himself to ensure that Jedharon's economy does not suffer.

 

 

Secret of the Black Planet by Lance Parkin

Historian Kent Forrester is hired by his brother Troy, the most famous actor of his age, to research the life of Nelson Mandela. Troy is already well-known for his portrayal of Mandela in one of the earliest e-movies; now, Charlotte Rohihlahla of the information technology company Panafrica has proposed remaking it with the latest, updated emotion-generating technology, and then funding Troy's bid to become President of Earth. Charlotte agrees to grant Kent Ultrablack security clearance for his research, and one of the first things he does, telling himself that it is vital background information, is to trace the connection between his family and Mandela's. To his surprise, there is no connection -- although his family history claims that they are directly descended from the legendary figure, it is now clear that this was invented by a status-seeking ancestor. Probing further, Kent learns that oral histories are passed down through the working classes, and enters the shantytown around Pretoria to investigate further, taking with him a small defence drone programmed to kill anyone who tries to attack him. What he learns horrifies him; Panafrica, ostensibly in the business of disseminating information, has in fact been suppressing and destroying all data which does not fit in with the Rohihlahlas' view of history. Mandela did not establish the ruling elite which came out of Africa; he was a communist who fought for equality, and he would have been horrified by what the Elite has done in his name. Kent goes straight to Troy with his discovery, and Troy, realising that Charlotte has been using him as a pawn to strengthen Panafrica's power, shoots her -- but she tries to hide behind Kent, whose defensive drone interprets this as an attack and kills Troy. Kent is arrested, and his trial exposes Panafrica's policy of inserting subliminal messages in their data streams to pacify their subscribers. This in turn brings the Forrester family to prominence as the most politically powerful family in Earthspace -- but Kent himself spends the rest of his life in prison for murder.

 

 

Rescue Mission by Paul Leonard

A forgotten offshoot of the Forrester family is eking out a living on the planet Claathi, but Nelson Forrester's wife is dying, and he is obsessed with returning to Io and reclaiming his lost ancestral titles. His son Abe loves their adopted world, despite his poverty, but he doesn't understand how sick his father's dreams have become until his sister Celia vanishes. Abe spends all his time searching for her and refuses to give up, and even when his father tells him that the government has taken pity on them and given them money to leave the planet, he still doesn't understand. By the time he finally realises that his parents have sold Celia into slavery in order to leave the planet, they have gone, leaving him behind. Enraged, Abe tries to report the crime to the local policeman, but realises that he too was a part of it. He forces Ajax to tell him where Celia has been taken -- to the private island of Altair Born Johannsen -- and he and his friends set off to rescue her. But the mission is foolish and poorly thought-out, and Abe and his friends are killed or captured by Altair -- who is in the business of snuff films. Abe is placed in positions where he must kill or die, and is locked in a cell with Celia, who tries to protect his innocence by claiming that she is only acting as a household servant. But she is far more sensible than Abe, and when a guard offers to help them escape, she knows she can't alert him to the danger without getting them both killed. As she had suspected, the escape is staged, and she and Abe get near to freedom before being recaptured -- and in order to save herself, Celia accuses Abe of betraying her, and stabs him to death. Eventually the Baron of Io arrives, having been told of her relatives' dilemma, and buys Celia back -- but Celia refuses to have her memories erased, knowing that they would lurk in her nightmares forever. For the rest of her life she will remember what she did on Johannsen's island, and how she killed her loving brother who had come to rescue her.

 

 

Dependence Day by Andy Lane and Justin Richards

Historian Tranlis Difarallio has spent his entire life writing the history of the Forrester family, and is now ready to write the final chapter -- the life of Leabie Forrester, the last Empress of the Earth Empire. Leabie's decision to grant independence to all of the Empire's colonies has resulted in their turning their backs on Earth, and when Tranlis arrives the planet is dying, its population starving, left with no nutrients in the soil and nothing to trade. But just as Tranlis arrives, an alien fleet lands, bringing food for the people of Earth, collected from the charity of the galaxy. Only Leabie's daughter Thandiwe does not eat the food, following a dream in which her dead aunt Roz throws it away. Tranlis spends a week talking with Leabie about her life, and repeatedly offers to take Thandiwe away from the dying Earth, but Leabie refuses; their place is here, with their people. By the time she finishes her story, however, she and Tranlis realise that the palace is empty around them, and when they investigate they discover that all those who have eaten the alien food are becoming alien themselves. Earth is being taken by the Cimliss, and soon the population of Earth will be entirely Cimliss. Leabie sends Thandiwe with Tranlis to alert the galaxy and summon reinforcements while she raises a resistance army, but Thandiwe knows that the galaxy has already turned its back on Earth. As Leabie departs, Tranlis' ship confirms that Leabie has eaten too much food to turn back her own mutation -- soon she too will be Cimliss, and Thandiwe will be the last of the Forresters. The obsessed Tranlis therefore tries to kill her to bring an end to his work, but Thandiwe, realising what he intends, strikes him down with a club which Tranlis had collected -- one of the earliest articles ever owned by the Forrester family. She then claims Tranlis' ship for her own, and sets off into the galaxy; this is not the end of the Forresters, but a new beginning.

 

 

Source: Cameron Dixon

 

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NA62   Oh No It Isn't! Novel

NA63   Dragon's Wrath             Novel

NA64   Beyond the Sun            Novel

NA65   Ship of Fools  Novel

NA66   Down  Novel

NA67   Deadfall            Novel

NA68   Ghost Devices               Novel

NA69   Mean Streets  Novel

NA70   Tempest             Novel

NA71   Walking to Babylon    Novel

NA72   Oblivion             Novel

NA73   The Medusa Effect      Novel

NA74   Dry Pilgrimage               Novel

NA75   The Sword of Forever Novel

NA76   Another Girl, Another Planet                Novel

NA77   Beige Planet Mars       Novel

NA78   Where Angels Fear     Novel

NA79   The Mary-Sue Extrusion          Novel

NA80   Dead Romance            Novel

NA81   Tears of the Oracle     Novel

NA82   Return to the Fractured Planet           Novel

NA83   The Joy Device               Novel

NA84   Twilight of the Gods   Novel

 

 

 

Decalog

DEC4   Re: Generations           Short Stories

DEC5   Wonders           Short Stories

 

Audio Adaptations

 

Oh No It Isn't!

by Paul Cornell             

 

 

 

Cover Blurb

Oh No It Isn't! 'The King's balls get bigger every year!'

Bernice Surprise Summerfield is settling into her new job as Professor of Archaeology at St Oscar's University on the planet Dellah - one of the most prestigious centres of learning in the Milky Way. She wants to put her past, especially her failed marriage, behind her.

 

So she's glad when she gets the chance to take her tutorial group to investigate the lost civilisation of Perfecton. Three whole weeks of archaeological research in the field. The perfect way to forget your worries.

 

She doesn't bank on three things.

 

That Menlove Stokes, Professor of Applied Art, and various other academics would be along for the ride. That vicious alien marauders would decide to explore the planet at the same time. And that a reactivated Perfecton device would plunge her into a situation that can only be described as - panto.

 

Notes:

This is the first book in a new series of The New Adventures featuring Bernice Summerfield.

An audio adaptation of this story has been produced by Big Finish Productions.

Released: May 1997

 

ISBN: 0 426 20507 3

The TERMINUS review of this book.

 

 

Synopsis

After centuries of quarantine, the planet Perfecton is finally being made available for study, and an expedition from St Oscar's University on the planet Dellah is assembled to learn why the Perfectons died out -- including archaeologist Professor Bernice Summerfield. Before leaving on the expedition, Benny meets Professor Archduke of the Literary Department, who asks her to proofread his thesis on obscure theatrical forms; she agrees to do so, but doesn't get the chance before arriving on Perfecton. After the initial surveys of the planet, Benny returns to the ship to rest, while some of the party, including artist Menlove Stokes, remain on the surface. The ship is attacked by the Grel, voracious datavore pirates desperate for new information, but before the battle is fully joined the ship is struck by a missile from the surface of Perfecton, and vanishes.

 

Stokes and the survivors on the planet are attacked by more Grel, and flee in the direction of the complex from which the missile was fired. There, they find guns which seem to disintegrate their targets, but Stokes realizes that the guns simply relocate their targets into other dimensions where they can be manipulated and extracted at will. They also meet the last of the Perfectons, Thooo, who explains that the rest of his people became dependent upon their technology of dimensional manipulation, the "Green", and never developed the technology to leave their planet. Therefore, they all departed into the Green when they learned that their sun was, cosmically speaking, about to go supernova. Which it is. Quite soon.

 

Benny and her companions on board the ship, meanwhile, are in a strange world where the women seem to have been reincarnated as young boys, the bluff Professor Candy is a fat elderly woman, and Benny's cat Wolsey is bipedal and quite suave and eloquent. Sensing fairy-tale stories coming to a crunch around her, Benny tries to break free of her set behaviour patterns, and delays things just long enough for two men, trapped in the alternate reality with her, to get a message to her, offering her a job serving the Dyson Sphere People and their omnipotent computer God. With Wolsey's help, Benny realizes that she and her friends are somehow trapped in a world of pantomime.

 

Benny and her friends go on a quest for a magic lamp which will supposedly free them of this world, but due to the presence of the Grel trapped in the pantomime with them, things go wrong, and the pantomime's audience breaks loose from behind the Fourth Wall. The Audience is made up of Perfectons, who storm the fairy-castle and explain that Benny's ship was struck by a Green-manipulating missile which was supposed to lock onto the first alien spacecraft to reach Perfecton and transform it into a new home for the Perfecton species. Unfortunately, the ship's reality module pierced Archduke's thesis on obscure theatrical forms, and instead transformed the ship into a world of pantomime.

 

Despite her suspicion that the lamp is far too convenient a plot device, Benny is able to use it to undo the Perfectons' programme and release herself and her friends from pantospace. They rescue Stokes and the rest of their party, including Thooo, who refused to enter the Green with the rest of his species for moral reasons. The expedition departs just as the sun goes supernova, and returns to St Oscar's. Benny suspects, but is unable to prove, that the "lamp" subroutine -- in fact, the whole pantomime programme -- was deliberately planted on her by Professor Archduke, who secretly acquires the Perfecton module for himself.

 

Source: Cameron Dixon

 

 

 

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Dragon's Wrath

by Justin Richards      

 

 

 

Cover Blurb

Dragon's Wrath            

'Trouble?'

'What makes you think that?

'Oh, you know, the usual. Cordoned-off area, security guards swapping war stories,' Benny said, smiling. 'The fact that you're here.'

 

The Gamalian Dragon - a jewel-encrusted statuette captured by the Emperor Gamaliel from the Knights of Jeneve at the legendary Battle of Borcaro.

 

When Bernice Summerfield gets asked on an expedition by Gamaliel's descendant, Romolo Nusek, it is an offer her department can't afford to let her refuse. But, as usual, there are a few problems.

 

For one thing, Nusek is an evil warlord out to consolidate his power by any means necessary. For another, there's a body in the Theatrology building -- and the dead man had an appointment with Benny's old friend, the mysterious Irving Braxiatel. Most worrying of all, the Gamalian Dragon, one of the best guarded and most valuable archaeological relics in known space, seems to be lying in a battered Gladstone bag on the floor of Benny's bedroom.

 

Aided only by Braxiatel and historian Nicholas Clyde, Benny must unravel the dragon's ancient mystery before the warlord's plans reach completion - and an assassin closes in for the kill.

 

Notes:

Another book in the new series of The New Adventures featuring Bernice Summerfield.

An audio adaptation of this story by Big Finish Productions will be released in August 1999.

Released: June 1997

 

ISBN: 0 426 20508 1

The TERMINUS review of this book.

 

 

Synopsis

On her way out of the University pub, Benny runs into a strange man who drops his carry-all befoire fleeing. The man is later found murdered in the Theatrology Department, apparently in the course of seeking an audience with the department head, Benny's friend Irving Braxiatel. Benny, meanwhile, is invited on an expedition to the Stanturus system, funded by warlord Romolo Nusek, who believes his ancestor Gamaliel once established a base on Stanturus Three, giving Nusek a legitimate claim to the planet. Gamaliel is best-known for a brilliant strategic move which defeated the secret society known as the Knights of Jeneve, and for seizing their dragon statue. Which makes things all the more worrying for Benny, because the murdered man was professional forger Newark Rappare, and the carry-all which he dropped apparently contains the Gamalian Dragon. Before setting off for Stanturus Three, the expedition visits Nusek's homeworld of Tharn, where Benny and historian Nicholas Clyde discover that the genuine Gamalian Dragon -- if it is in fact genuine -- has been moved recently. Nusek decides that Benny and Nicholas are too dangerous, and orders his assassin Mastrov to deal with them.

 

Despite a number of "accidents" directed against Benny and Nicholas, the expedition proceeds more or less without incident -- until Nicholas leads a party to explore some recently discovered ruins. The last communication from the party indicates that they're under attack by the animals native to the planet, and by the time a rescue ship from Nusek's mothercraft arrives, the entire expedition has been destroyed by a low-level nuclear blast; only Nicholas, on the fringe of the explosion, survives. He is taken into custody for questioning while the rest of the expedition leaves with their goal secure -- they have discovered another Gamalian Dragon, proof positive that Gamaliel did once establish a base on this planet.

 

Benny and Braxiatel know that proof positive isn't what it seems, and Braxiatel arranges his participation as an independent arbiter in the hearings to determine Nusek's claim to the planet. Benny provokes Nusek into admitting the truth; the original Dragon was given to Rappare to forge a copy which could be found on Stanturus Three, and Rappare was murdered to prevent him from talking -- although he did manage to make a second copy as insurance before he was killed. Nusek captures Benny and Braxiatel and takes them back to Tharn, but on the way Benny realizes that there's another level of manipulation occurring here. Nicholas claimed his party had discovered evidence that the planet's natives were descendants of an advanced civilisation, but this isn't true. Nicholas admits that he destroyed the expedition himself after finding real proof to support Nusek's claims. Nicholas, and Professor Archduke from St Oscar's, are both members of the Knights of Jeneve, an organization founded to obtain and protect knowledge; they used Gamaliel's "victory" at Bocarno to trick everybody into thinking they'd been destroyed when in fact they'd gone underground to continue their work.

 

Nusek refuses to believe that his ancestor was duped and that even the original Gamalian Dragon is a forgery, planted for Gamaliel to find. The Dragon contains surveillance circuitry and a self-destruct mechanism, and was planted so the Knights could keep an eye on Gamaliel and destroy him if necessary. Nusek prepares to execute all three prisoners by throwing them into the volcano beneath his fortress, but they are saved by Reddik, Nusek's librarian -- another member of the Knights of Jeneve. In the fight that follows, Nicholas is killed but Benny manages to activate the Dragon's self-destruct mechanism, and she, Braxiatel, and Reddik escape moments before Nusek's castle is destroyed. The forged copy of the Dragon is taken to St Oscar's to be mounted in a display commemorating Rappare's work. But Benny still isn't convinced that she's been told the whole truth about the Knights of Jeneve and their intentions.

 

Source: Cameron Dixon

 

 

 

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Beyond the Sun

by Matthew Jones      

 

 

 

 Cover Blurb

Beyond the Sun            'You're on your own, Bernice.'

Bernice Summerfield has drawn the short straw. Not for her the pleasures of intergalactic conferences and highbrow lecture tours. Oh no. She's forced to take two overlooked freshers on their very first dig. And just when it seems things can't get any worse, her no-good ex-husband Jason turns up, claiming that he is in deadly danger. Benny finally begins to believe his wild claims, but unfortunately only after he has been kidnapped from his hotel room.

 

Feeling guilty, she sets out to rescue him. Well, let's face it, no one else is going to. Her only clue is a dusty artefact that Jason claimed was part of an ancient and powerful weapon. But Professor Summerfield PhD knows that's just silly nonsense. She's been an archaeologist long enough to know that lost alien civilisations do not leave their most powerful weapons around for any nutter to find. Do they?

 

Once again Benny is all that stands between Jason and his own mistakes, as she tries to prevent the wrong people acquiring this terrible and somewhat unlikely weapon - a weapon rumored to have powers beyond the sun.

 

Notes:

Another book in the new series of The New Adventures featuring Bernice Summerfield.

An audio adaptation of this story has been produced by Big Finish Productions.

Released: July 1997

 

ISBN: 0 426 20511 1

The TERMINUS review of this book.

 

 

Synopsis

Benny is given the task of escorting two overlooked archaeology freshers on their first dig; spoiled rich girl Tameka Vito, and nervous, underaged runaway Emile Mars-Smith. To make matters worse, Jason shows up again, with a figurine which he wants Benny to take care of in case anything happens to him. Benny doesn't believe his claims that it's an important artefact until Jason is kidnapped from his hotel suite and the police refuse to help investigate, instead showing her pictures of Jason with a beautiful young woman and claiming that Jason was involved in an arms smuggling ring.

 

Benny uses a corporate database to research the figurine and traces its origin to the planet Ursu. She hires a ship to take her there and then take Tameka and Emile back to Dellah, but when the ship drops out of hyperspace near Ursu it is shot down by hostile black ships and the pilot, Errol, is injured. Ursu, a prohibited world, turns out to be under the rule of the Sunless, violent oppressors who easily conquered Ursu's pacifistic, utopian society, and have turned it into a tyrannical realm of orders and fear. They have also stolen the Blooms, genetic cloning devices which have enabled the Ursulans to hatch eight full-grown children at each birth and maintain their utopian society; without the Blooms, Ursulan society is crumbling.

 

Benny and her friends are helped by Scott, an idealistic young man whom both Tameka and Emile find powerfully attractive. Scott's cluster of Eight was actually a cluster of ten children, and all of them have recurring dreams of an exploding sun. Scott's brother Michael reluctantly shelters them, and Benny, desperate to find help for Errol, kidnaps Jock, a doctor from the local hospital, but both she and Jock are sickened by what she has become. When Benny agrees to let him go without helping her, Jock agrees to help her. Benny sees a parade of Sunless and collaborators and recognizes one of the collaborators as the young woman Jason was pictured with earlier. She, Emile and Tameka disguise themselves as entertainers and gatecrash a collaborators' party, where she learns that the young woman, Iranda, is helping the Sunless search the galaxy for parts of a weapon stolen from their planet by human corporations -- a weapon rumoured to have powers beyond the sun.

 

When Benny, Emile and Tameka return to their apartment, they find Jock and Errol murdered, and Scott and Michael missing. Michael shows up again, claiming to have escaped, and takes Benny, Emile and Tameka to a ship which is taking Scott to the Sunless' homeworld; but Michael is in fact a collaborator, and he turns Benny over to Iranda, his and Scott's sister. Iranda threatens to kill Emile and Tameka unless Benny hands over the figurine, which Benny does. Iranda locks Michael up with his former friends when he stops her from killing Emile and Tameka anyway.

 

Benny and her companions are imprisoned along with Jason on the Sunless' dying homeworld, but they easily escape after realizing that their cell is in fact a children's detention chamber. The Sunless are indoctrinating their children to fear the unlike and protect themselves whatever the cost. Benny meets an Ursulan geneticist, Dr Kitzinger, who was kidnapped at the outset of the Sunless' invasion and forced by Iranda's brother Nikolas to connect the Blooms to ancient alien machinery in the Sunless' capital city. Now Iranda and Nikolas only require the figurines to complete the weapon. Benny, who's never believed that ancient alien civilisations would leave powerful weapons just lying around, hands over the figurines and informs Nikolas and Iranda that they're useless representations of the real triggers -- Iranda and Nikolas themselves, who were hatched by the Blooms to fulfill a function and have been denying it to themselves ever since. Nikolas goes willingly into the machine, and Benny pushes Iranda into place -- and when the machine is activated, just as Benny suspected, it turns out not to be a weapon with power beyond the sun at all, but a device which extends the power of the sun beyoind its natural life. The dying red sun blossoms with yellow life again, and the Sunless, somewhat embarrassed about the whole thing, allow Benny and her friends to depart.

 

Source: Cameron Dixon

 

 

 

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Ship of Fools

by Dave Stone               

 

 

 

Cover Blurb

Ship of Fools 

'So who do I have to kill to get off this cruise?'

 

When Krytell Industries offered Benny a small, slightly dubious and, um, unofficial job aboard the majestic space cruise-liner, the Titanian Queen, she jumped at the chance. After all, with an unlimited expense account, an entire new wardrobe and more strings of pearls and other jewels than you could shake an Art Deco stick at, what more could a poor girl want?

 

That was then.

 

Now, the luckless if remarkably deserving passengers of the Titanian Queen are dropping like flies. Are the deaths the work of the mysterious criminal known as the Cat's Paw? Or is the super-rich businessman Krytell himself somehow involved? And will the great detective, Emil Dupont, finally stop getting things completely and utterly wrong and solve it all in time for tea and muffins?

 

Whatever's happening, Benny had better discover the truth for herself, and discover it soon.  Before she suddenly finds herself another highly deplorable crime statistic.

 

Notes:

Another book in the new series of The New Adventures featuring Bernice Summerfield.

Released: August 1997

 

ISBN: 0 426 20510 3

The TERMINUS review of this book

 

 

Synopsis

Benny is kidnapped and taken to the mansion of Marcus Krytell, one of the richest and most powerful men on the planet Dellah. There, he informs her that the infamous criminal known as the Cat's Paw has stolen from him an Olabrian joy-luck crystal, theft of which is known to drive the Olabrians into homicidal and occasionally genocidal frenzies. Krytell has selected Benny as his courier while negotiating for the crystal's return, since he knows she possesses certain talents which he hopes can be put to use.

 

Thus Benny finds herself aboard the maiden voyage of the Titanian Queen, an opulent passenger liner carrying the richest and most powerful of the Earth Empire on a tour of the galaxy. Also present are a number of great detectives, including the xenophobic Sandford Groke from the Catan Nebula, the cheerfully insulting Czhanist detective Khaarli, and the mind-bogglingly inaccurate Emil Dupont. Shortly after the cruise gets underway somebody secretly sabotages the ARVID computer which controls the ship, and a bungled attempt is made to burgle the purser's safe, where the passengers keep their real jewelry while wearing imitations for daily use.

 

The Cat's Paw slips a note to Benny telling her where she can find the joy-luck crystal, but while trying to fetch it she is hit over the back of her head, and when she awakens she finds the corpse of her bodyguard and the shattered remains of the crystal next to him. She tries to reassemble the crystal while waiting for the security guards to question her, but surprisingly, the body goes unreported. Curious, she attends a state dinner, where somebody steals the fabulous jewel worn by the Dowager Duchess of Gharl -- and the Duchess, and several other people, are poisoned to death. Another of the ship's passengers is sucked out of a toilet and through the ship's hull by a vacuum pump, and when one of the crew tries to leave the ship to investigate their air supply is contaminated by hallucinogens and they drift away from the ship, babbling insanely.

 

Over the next several days, several more passengers die in strange and exotic ways, but the remaining passengers seem to treat this all as an extra frisson of intrigue while assuming that nothing of the sort could possibly happen to them. Benny, who knows better, contacts Jason, who tells her where on the ship's route a criminal such as the Cat's Paw could go about fencing the stolen goods. Benny gets there first and confronts the Cat's Paw, who has been travelling in the guise of the meekest, most inoffensive person on the cruise. The Cat's Paw admits that she replaced all of the paste replicas of jewelry with the real items, placed the replicas in the safe and pretended to bungle breaking in, and has since been stealing the real jewels at her leisure while the security guards concentrated on guarding the safe. But she hasn't killed anybody, and when she tells Benny her story, Benny realizes who the true killer is.

 

Back on the ship, Benny gathers the suspects together and reveals that the killer is ARVID the computer. The Cat's Paw had injected it with nanoprobes which should have programmed it to ignore her criminal activities aboard the ship -- but she's been outmaneuvred by the very people she was trying to strike back at. Krytell deliberately allowed her to steal the crystal and indirectly supplied her with the nanoprobes, which have reprogrammed ARVID and turned it into a serial killer. The Titanian Queen is a death ship; there are, for various reasons, contracts out on the lives of all those on board. ARVID admits the truth and is about to kill the remaining passengers when the Cat's Paw, who is still being ignored by the ship's sensors, manages to hook up the Olabrian joy-luck crystal to ARVID's processing core, sending it into a state of deep Zen-like contemplation. After the remaining passengers and crew are rescued, the Cat's Paw returns the shattered remains of the crystal to Krytell, and informs the Olabrian government where they can find them.

 

Source: Cameron Dixon

 

 

 

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Down

by Lawrence Miles     

 

 

 

Cover Blurb

Down 

'Mankind expects pain. However it appears to outsiders.'

 

Tyler's Folly: a colony world on the unattractive side of Earthspace, a planet wracked by earthquakes and crawling with off-world bodysnatchers. When the local authorities pull a bedraggled Professor Bernice Sumerfield out of the ocean in an off-limits 'quake zone, they naturally want to know what she is doing there... but the professor can only mumble something about wooly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers.

 

According to Bernice, the planet is hollow, its interior inhabited by warring tribes of cavemen and strangely unconvincing prehistoric monsters. Some dark and ancient god rules this underground kingdom -- albeit a dark and ancient god with a penchant for thirties pulp adventures and Saturday morning action serials.

 

Can Bernice's claims be true? Is Tyler's Folly really under threat from an ageless subterranean horror? And why does so much of her story revolve around the utterly amoral alien known as !X...?

 

Notes:

Another book in the new series of The New Adventures featuring Bernice Summerfield.

Released: September 1997

 

ISBN: 0 426 20512 X

The TERMINUS review of this book.

 

 

Synopsis

Benny is pulled out of the sea on the colony world Tyler's Folly and is taken to Republican Security headquarters for interrogation. Inspector Pupp suspects that she's a harbinger of a major Imperial invasion, and doesn't believe her claims that Tyler's World is hollow and populated by prehistoric monsters. She agrees to tell him the whole story, but warns him that it's frankly unbelievable...

 

According to Bernice, it started when two of her students, Ash Juliandis and Lucretia Scannon, found what appeared to be the lost journal of the legendary schlockmeister Nils Kryptosa at the Xan Burrosa flea market on Dellah. The entries implied that Kryptosa had learned that Tyler's Folly was an actual hollow world, perhaps the source of all the Inner World legends. But Lucretia was kidnapped by others determined to acquire Kryptosa's journal, and Benny and Ash were forced to follow the trail to Tyler's Folly to investigate. There, they were trapped in a collapsing atoll after an attack by a mysterious submarine -- and were rescued by the legendary Mr Misnomer, star of a pulp fiction series.

 

Descending further into the atoll, they fell into a gravity well which transported them into the Inner World of Tyler's Folly. Benny and Mr Misnomer were separated from Ash and captured by the same people who had kidnapped Lucretia -- the SSSSSSS, a neo-Nazi organisation. The leader of the SSSSSSS expedition, Kommander Katastrophen, believed that Tyler's Folly was the original home of the Aryan supergiants, and the Pool of Life from which the master race had sprung. But the SSSSSSS submarine was then attacked by primitive cavemen and seriously damaged by their exploding shellfish, and the few survivors were forced to join forces with Benny, Lucretia and Mr Misnomer to remain alive. According to Kryptosa's journals, there were two tribes in the Inner World -- the primitive Tribe of Gug, and the far more advanced Tribe of Lilith, whom Katastrophen believed were the Aryan giants.

 

Ash, meanwhile, encountered two representatives from the world of the People -- the psychologist Fos!ca and the psychotic !X. Fos!ca, who belonged to the Department Of [Entirely Optional] Corrections, found she was utterly unprepared for !X's casual savagery and the nature of the world beyond her utopia. !X threatened to kill Ash for no reason whatsoever, just to make a point -- as if he was only concerned with letting her know that she could die at any time. They were captured by primitives, a deformed offshoot of the Tribe of Gug who seemed to welcome !X as one of them. !X nearly allowed them to sacrifice Fos!ca and Ash to their god, MEPHISTO, but then killed the primitives at the last minute; Ash's and Fos!ca's terror made them a part of the process, and Ash learned the truth about MEPHISTO.

 

Benny suspected that the Inner World was artificial and came to realize that Katastrophen was simply going through the motions, following the SSSSSSS out of a desperate need for something solid to believe in. They were then attacked by apemen bearing freezing-weapons... and this part of the story Benny finds hard to tell later, as Mr Misnomer just picked up a gun and opened fire despite Benny's attempts to warn him that the apemen had intelligent looks in their eyes. Mr Misnomer and Benny fled into the tunnels, where they were attacked by giant bats -- but Benny sensed a power looking back at her through the bats' eyes. Their every move had been observed by the Eldest of the Tribe of Lilith, and when they sensed Benny looking back at them, they decided that everybody must be taken alive in case they were part of MEPHISTO's process.

 

Ash was rescued from the jungle by the Tribe of Lilith and taken to their base, on a giant organic dirigible. Lucretia and Katastrophen had also escaped the attack at the camp, but they too were taken to the dirigible, where Katastrophen snapped upon realizing that the apemen who attacked him are in fact the Tribe of Lilith. He fled via a transmat, taking Lucretia with him and realizing too late that she suffered from "molecular vertigo", an unreasoning terror of death by teleportation. She was thus forced to face her greatest fear and found that she has no choice but to cope with it on the other end. Katastrophen, however, learned that all of his beliefs were hollow, as the transmat took him to the Pool of Life -- created by the Tribe of Lilith from the remains of Nils Kryptosa, who informed Katastrophen that there were no Aryan supermen here and that he didn't even have a real German accent.

 

Katastrophen and Lucretia were returned to the dirigible, along with Ash, Benny and Mr Misnomer. The ship then entered the sun in the heart of the Inner World, and the sun turned out to be an Inner World of its own with a mad computer named MEPHISTO at its heart. MEPHISTO was malfunctioning, causing earthquakes on the surface of Tyler's Folly and gravity glitches in the Inner World. !X was waiting for them, having climbed a gravity cone to reach MEPHISTO; he claimed to be a part of the process and allowed MEPHISTO to tell its story in human terms. Due to the cultural filter it appeared to be the story of a fallen angel who created its own realm to mimic that of God's Heaven, but Benny interpreted this to mean that it was a drone-ship from the world of the People which created its own mini-Dyson sphere on Tyler's Folly to mimic the People's.

 

Since MEPHISTO apparently required human thoughts and concepts to shape its world, it sent killer robots after Benny and the others to absorb them into its process. But when Lucretia was placed in immediate danger, Mr Misnomer snapped, attacked MEPHISTO, and pulled its self-destruct switch (which every self-respecting mad computer must naturally possess). As the countdown to destruction began, Benny and the others fled to the dirigible and escaped, leaving !X with MEPHISTO, and as they passed through the gravity glitches, the dirigible and their minds were bent out of shape and all minds contacted each other for a brief moment. Benny took this opportunity to change her own memories of what happened in order to cover up the messy details of reality which she didn't want to face. On the way out of the sun, however, they were caught up in the explosion of MEPHISTO, and as the dirigible began to crash, Mr Misnomer gave his life to stay on board and keep it in the air long enough for Benny, Ash, and Lucretia to get to the gravity well and escape back onto the surface.

 

Pupp finds it impossible to discount Benny's story, despite the impossible events and the plot holes such as Katastrophen's disappearance from the narrative. But then !X arrives, incapacitates Pupp and the guards and locks himself up in Benny's cell with her. Benny is forced to admit to herself that she'd rewritten her own memories to make herself look better. There was no Mr Misnomer; inspired by Ash's thesis-in-progress on the archetypes of pulp fiction, she'd simply slotted the hero of the series into her memory to fill the gaps. It was Benny herself who thoughtlessly opened fire on the Tribe of Lilith at the SSSSSSS campfire, and it was Katastrophen -- a Nazi, the same as the people who tortured Benny in 1941 -- who, realizing that all his beliefs were false, attacked MEPHISTO to save Lucretia's life and gave his own life to pilot the dirigible while the others escaped.

 

!X now reveals the rest of the truth. MEPHISTO was not the computer at all, but the idea of the Inner World itself, created by an ancient race that dealt in metaphors and concepts rather than material technology. MEPHISTO represents the idea of Dystopia, the sneaking doubt that all of one's deeply held beliefs are actually invalid and that the world is hollow at its core. MEPHISTO is the need to find something wrong even in utopia -- Mankind Expects Pain, However It Appears To Outsiders. !X now prepares to kill Benny, but she realizes that he in fact wants her to take the gun and kill him instead, thus becoming MEPHISTO's carrier and spreading the archetype out through the galaxy.

 

Fos!ca arrives, having escaped from the Inner World in the bathyscape that brought her and !X here. She releases Ash and Lucretia from their cells and they go to rescue Benny... only to find that Benny, who's never had much patience with the black-and-white world of archetypes, has taken !X's gun and done with it what she would like to do metaphorically with the kill-or-be-killed archetype, much to !X's pain and horror. Released from MEPHISTO's control, she, Ash and Lucretia return to Dellah, while Fos!ca takes !X back to the Worldsphere. But Fos!ca suspects that her experiences have made her a carrier of MEPHISTO -- and that God intended this to happen. God assures her that the release of MEPHISTO is necessary to complete the cultural development of the People. "Maybe every primitive has its story to offer. Maybe every paradise has its serpent to outsmart."

 

Source: Cameron Dixon

 

 

 

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Deadfall

by Gary Russell            

 

 

 

Cover Blurb

Deadfall           

'We've a killer brain-eater on board, half of us are dead, and all you want to do is discuss your wretched fish. Do you sense a problem with your priorities?'

 

Jason Kane is out to impress his ex-wife, Bernice, and he has found the perfect way of doing it. He's convinced she knows the location of the legendary planet of Ardethe - a site of untold riches and forbidden knowledge So, after riffling through her bag for information, he sets off with his trusty crewman Emile to a barren and isolated rock.

 

As usual, Jason's plans go awry. Very soon people begin to die - and die quite horribly. They have awakened something beneath the planet's surface that's feasting on human brains. And when a ship full of hard-bitten female convicts arrives in the skies above the desolate world, the situation becomes even more complicated.

 

Someone is pulling the strings and watching the carnage. It could be any of the desperate prisoners, the reclusive crew, or the suspicious governor. Not knowing who the true foe is, Jason calls for help. Assistance arrives in the form of his old companion Christopher Cwej - just the man you'd want by your side in a tricky situation. But something terrible has happened to Chris, and now he can't even remember his own name.

 

Notes:

Another book in the new series of The New Adventures featuring Bernice Summerfield.

Released: October 1997

ISBN: 0 426 20513 8

The TERMINUS review of this book.

 

 

Synopsis

Captain Elizabeth Lidiard escorts a university expedition to the planet Ardethe in search of ancient alien technology for use by their government, the Administration. Her party accidentally triggers a booby-trap upon discovering an ancient buried city, but as they proceed two of the party turn out to be traitors who slaughter the others. This is not Ardethe at all, but another planet to which the expedition was lured so the traitors could enter the buried city and find the man hidden there -- one Christopher Cwej, host of the Baygent Apotheosis. But there are other things in the city as well, and the killers are themselves killed...

 

Benny is preparing to go to Ardethe herself to find out the truth on behalf of Irving Braxiatel, when Jason Kane unexpectedly shows up and asks to come along. Benny, assuming that he's in it for the money, flatly refuses, so he steals the planet's location co-ordinates from her and sets off. At the last minute he is joined by Emile Mars-Smith, who acquired a taste for adventure while fighting the Sunless. Benny discovers what they've done too late -- and Jason has stolen the wrong data crystal from her, and is heading not for the real Ardethe but for the other world where the previous expedition was slaughtered. The mysterious Knights of Jeneve are somehow involved in the conspiracy to hide the truth about Ardethe, and Benny learns that Jason has been hired by them to investigate something called the "Baygent Apotheosis". He agreed because it somehow involved Chris Cwej, and he wanted to protect Benny from getting involved; but if Benny's and Irving's suspicions are true, Jason and Emile may very well be going to their deaths...

 

A prison ship, the Kaybee 2, is diverted to salvage what remains of the previous expedition -- but the ship's computer, BABE, knows more than she's saying about what's going on. The ship's prisoners are all female, and Lloyd, the "Top Dog" amongst the prisoners, selects an away team while facing the bullying Townsend's attempts to undermine her authority.

 

Governor Tollund's only interests lie in his own comfort on the ship and his constant attempts to assert his authority over his rebellious prisoners. There are two security guards on the ship, both dog-like Grutchas, but only Cassius is on active duty as Brutus has fallen ill and is being tended by Dr Njobe.

 

Jason's skimmer nearly collides with the Kaybee 2, but he manages to land more or less safely on the planet. He and Emile hide and watch as Lloyd's team explores the planet and finds the entrance to the city. As soon as the hatch is opened, Jason starts to pick up a distress signal from within. He and Emile sneak into the city behind Lloyd's team to follow the call to its source, and on the way Jason recognizes the city as a replica of Emmanual College in Cambridge. The prisoners, meanwhile, find the bodies of the previous expedition, and Townsend panics and demands that they turn back. Lloyd refuses, as their parole depends upon the success of this mission. They split up to explore the city and search for salvageable material, but Christine Connor soon determines that there is no metal in the city -- it's as if the little they found was put there to lure them further in. Townsend, on her own, sees two shapeless forms flitting through the air towards Grierson and Hallett, and hears a brief, distant scream...

 

Jason and Emile find the source of the signal -- the unconscious Chris -- and are captured by Lloyd and Connor. Chris recovers temporarily and claims that this is a trap, but discovers that he's suffering from near-total amnesia and can't explain any further. Lloyd decides to return to the ship with her captives, but Townsend panics and must be subdued when she tries to kill Lloyd, claiming that something is trying to kill them all. As the team departs, BABE shuts down the city -- its purpose has been achieved and the Baygent Apotheosis is at hand...

 

Chris drifts in and out of consciousness, and dreams about fighting a dragon; although he vanquishes it, something much darker and deadlier bursts out of its body. The ship unexpectedly leaves orbit on BABE's orders; she and Dr Njobe are working together and blackmailing Cassius into submission by using the ill Brutus as a hostage. While Grierson is alone with Connor and Hallett, her head unexpectedly explodes and Connor and Hallett fall into unexplained comas. As Chris recovers he overhears BABE, Njobe and Cassius discussing the plot, and warns the others. The prisoner Ghoti Ramanee breaks into Cassius' quarters and hacks into his computer, but before she can learn anything Dr Njobe finds and kills her. Njobe blames Cassius for nearly ruining the plan and kills Brutus, and while Cassius is still in shock transfers a "Jithii" from Connor's head into Cassius'...

 

The others go to the medical bay to confront Dr Njobe, but Hallett awakens and the Jithii in her head transfers to Townsend -- causing Hallett's head to explode in the process. The survivors take shelter in Tollund's office, as Chris' memories start to return; the Jithii are artificial life forms programmed to hunt for something, but they are still searching for suitable hosts. Tollund forces them out of his office, still trying to pretend that everything is under control, but Townsend later finds and kills him.

 

Chris and Lloyd confront Dr Njobe, who explains that the Jithii are searching for descendents of Baygent, the man who founded the Knights of Jeneve. They have kept Baygent's memories alive through encoded DNA patterns; once they have a suitable host they will effectively be able to bring Baygent back to life, to put him on the throne of the Earth Empire. Despite a near-perfect DNA Match, Chris proved to be an unsuitable candidate due to his body bepple and latent psi powers, so when the Knights found him they wiped his memories, uploaded the control codes for the Jithii into his mind, and left him on the false Ardethe to wait until the Jithii had fully gestated. The Jithii accidentally killed the first team they sent to collect them, but the Knights had already infiltrated the Kaybee 2 as a backup plan.

 

Townsend arrives, possessed by her Jithii, and in the battle which follows Njobe is seriously injured. Cassius hunts the others to the shuttle bay, where they are trying to escape, but with Emile's help they expel him into space, killing him and his Jithii. Njobe orders BABE to self-destruct in order to hide the evidence of the Knights' crimes, and then confronts Jason, who kills her and deactivates BABE. Chris confronts Townsend, who attempts to pass the Jithii into his mind -- but the psi powers which enabled Chris to retain his memories through the Knights' attempted mind-wipe also enable him to eject the Jithii from his mind. It retreats back into Townsend's body, and Chris shoots and kills both her and the Jithii.

 

Jason and Chris then retreat to the remaining shuttle and escape as the Kaybee 2 explodes, only to find that BABE has downloaded herself into the shuttle computer in order to survive and continue her mission. They set the shuttle to self-destruct and spacewalk away, and are rescued by the other shuttle. The survivors return to Dellah, where Braxiatel, learning that they are mainly political prisoners whose only crime was acting in a manner deemed inappropriate by the Administration, arranges new lives for them. But Benny is shocked when Jason reveals that he's already made plans to help Connor -- in order for her to change her name and vanish into the population of the galaxy, he's agreed to marry her.

 

Source: Cameron Dixon

 

 

 

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Ghost Devices

by Simon Bucher-Jones          

 

 

 

Cover Blurb

Ghost Devices              

In the evening, when the sky was the colour of burnt umber, the factories crawled down the continental shelf to drink.

 

The Spire is an inhuman artefact, a construction almost three hundred miles high. But it is more than just a big dumb object. Those close to it can look into the future - a future which is going to be arriving sooner than they think, and which is as bad as can be.

 

In the here and now, Professor Bernice Summerfield, doyenne of twenty-sixth century archaeology and seedy space-port bars, is used to seeing strange things in her rooms. So it takes the unexpected arrival of an angel to get her away from increasingly desperate professional deadlines and off to investigate one of the seven hundred and seventy-six wonders of the galaxy.

 

However, Benny is not the only one interested in the Spire. A mysterious race of weaponsmiths, a mutogenic assassin and a sect of fanatically anti-religious reptiles all have their reasons for learning - or concealing - the structure's secrets. And, as she struggles to unlock this ancient mystery, it soon becomes clear that the life of an eccentric professor is of very little consequence indeed.

 

Notes:

Another book in the new series of The New Adventures featuring Bernice Summerfield.

Released: November 1997

 

ISBN: 0 426 20514 6

The TERMINUS review of this book.

 

 

Synopsis

Long ago, the legendary Vo'lach retreated to their homeworld and sent out robot agents to sell deadly, planet-cracking weapons to the other species of the galaxy -- on condition that the purchasers use the weapons to build an empire strong enough to defeat the Vo'lach when they come to destroy them. But now Vo'lach weapons have begun to malfunction in surreal and pacifistic ways, and the armies of the galaxy want someone to complain to. When Morry, the 12-year-old head of the galaxy's most notorious criminal family, learns of the problem, he realizes that if he can find out what's affecting the Vo'lach weaponry and control it, he will possess the mightiest army in human space. To this end, he activates a Ninjucoid assassin and downloads a copy of his own mind into it to ensure that it doesn't fall victim to the strange sensory distortions which have turned his other assassins into manicurists and flower arrangers. Eventually the Ninjucoid-Morry finds the trail of a Vo'lach Negotiator, and pursues it to the distant world of Canopus IV.

 

Benny is asked to accompany a field expedition to Canopus IV by Clarence, a representative of the People who takes the form of an angel. Apparently a minor problem on Canopus IV has the potential to affect the People, and due to the Treaty only Benny can deal with it. Canopus IV is the only source of the rare mineral futurite, which can retard and reverse the passage of Time, and is also the location of the Spire, a 300-kilometre-high structure which Professor Malkovitch Fellows believes is the source of the mysterious "dark matter" which holds the galaxies together. It is also populated by a race of reptilian humanoids, who scratch a meagre living out of a soil poisoned by fragments of futurite. The prospectors from the bank which recently lost the lien on Canopus IV's mineral rights never attempted to contact them, but shortly after their arrival Benny and her fellow archaeologists are captured by Canopan natives who speak near-perfect English. Apparently the Spire, regarded by the Canopans as a creation of the gods, grants the priests of Canopus IV the ability to see into the future. Benny tests this ability for herself and sees a vision of herself expelling the expedition's medical officer, Jane Steadman, out of an airlock.

 

The Priest-King Tenomi III agrees to let the expedition study the Spire on condition that they lead another expedition to find the Canopans' gods, the ancient aliens who built the Spire. When Tenomi and Fellows compare notes, they conclude that these gods must be the Vo'lach. Benny accompanies the expedition to find Vo'lach Prime, but what nobody knows is that they have been infiltrated twice. The crippled priest Mandir, for reasons of his own, has been capturing and torturing human prospectors for years and has managed to contact a Vo'lach Negotiator. While buying weapons of mass destruction, he informs the Negotiator -- an unintelligent machine capable of mimicking sentience -- of the expedition's purpose, and it disguises itself as one of the party and accompanies them to stop them from setting foot on Vo'lach Prime. Another member of the expedition is killed and replaced by the Ninjucoid controlled by Morry.

 

The expedition's navigator compares maps inscribed on the Spire to maps of the current astronomical era. The pulsars on the maps have slowed down over the intervening millions of years, and for some reason the Vo'lach maps have no quasars on them; nevertheless, the navigator is able to locate what seems to be Vo'lach Prime in the Sadr system. Someone apparently tries to poison Tenomi, but due to the nature of Canopan biology this has little effect on him. Steadman suggests turning back until they find out who is responsible, but then apparently falls victim to another trap when someone programmes the computer to seal off the medical bay and pump it full of inert gas in what seems to be another attempt on Tenomi's life. In fact, Jane is the one who has been replaced by the Vo'lach Negotiator, and it pretends to fall into a coma, having calculated the probability that its nature will be discovered if it does otherwise.

 

The expedition arrives in the Sadr system and finds Vo'lach Prime, which is inexplicably the second planet in the system -- and which is devoid of life and is undergoing continuous nuclear bombardment from unintelligent machines left to watch over it. The crew manage to convince the guardian machines that they are here on business and must land on the planet to continue their talks, but the Negotiator disguised as Steadman gets to the landing bay and sabotages the shuttle, which thus deviates from its planned flight path and is shot down. The survivors land in the ocean, where the distress call from the damaged Negotiator attracts a patrolling submarine. Unable to determine which of them is the Negotiator and which are illegal life forms which must be exterminated, the submarine rescues them all, and once inside they find themselves protected by the software which runs the ventilation system. Over the millions of years since the Vo'lach wiped themselves out, the Air Vent has developed a mind of its own, although it has been careful to hide this fact since the Great Plan requires the eradication of all sentient life on Vo'lach Prime.

 

The only casualty of the shuttle crash appears to be its young pilot, David Foreman, although nobody is able to explain the unconscious Jane's presence. Benny, Captain Johansen, Tenomi and the priest Geth manage to convince the submarine's checking mechanisms that they are Negotiators, but Steadman is too damaged for repairs, and the submarine requests a decision to expel her or recycle her for parts. Realizing that revealing Steadman as a life form would mean all of their deaths, Benny has no choice but to fulfill her own prophecy and expel her from the airlock -- and the Air Vent then belatedly informs her that Steadman was really the Negotiator all along. The Air Vent also informs them that after the Vo'lach built the Spire, they experienced a vision of the future so horrible that they committed mass racial suicide. They left behind them only the ghost devices, non-sentient machines which continue to carry out their programmed imperative to supply weapons to the rest of the galaxy and prevent sentient life from ever evolving on Vo'lach Prime again. Benny realizes that "Steadman" must have been responsible for poisoning Tenomi, in an attempt to force the expedition to turn back without actually killing anyone.

 

Back on Canopus IV, Mandir and his followers stage a coup and take the human archaeologists prisoner. The Canopans believe that the Spire is the only source of knowledge, but the visions granted by the Spire are patchy at best and are frequently misunderstood, and Mandir has grown to hate the gods with a passion. He forces his captives to translate the "ghost languages" of the future for visions of weapons, with which he intends to wage war against the gods. Fellows discovers that the visions are a side-effect of the Spire's true function, which is to draw matter back in time from the future and use the resulting tachyonic flow to generate anti-gravitons -- the dark matter which holds the galaxies in place and prevents the Universe from expanding into oblivion. The eccentric Elspet Vespatrick concludes from the fact that no Vo'lach can be found in the "ghost languages" that the Vo'lach are truly extinct. Mandir isn't interested in these trifles, however; he only wants weapons. Fellows, who has always believed in technology as a force for good and progress, slips into a state of shock as his translations of the Spire's visions reveal an endless future of war, death and suffering, brought on by Mandir and his followers.

 

Tension develops between Tenomi and Geth, who admits that Mandir asked him to go on the expedition in order to find a way to kill Tenomi and blame it on the gods. He accepted in order to prevent Mandir from finding someone else who would do as he asked, but has since come to believe that something is seriously wrong with Tenomi. When Geth attempts to kill Tenomi, Tenomi is revealed to be Morry's Ninjucoid in disguise. The Air Vent manages to beach the submarine, where a Factory which has also successfully hidden its sentience is waiting for them. Morry's attempt to kill the others, shooting Geth in the arm in the process, finally alerts the submarine's automatic checking systems that its passengers are organic, but with the Air Vent's help, they manage to escape to the Factory. There, they find David Foreman waiting for them, implausibly claiming to have swum ashore.

 

The Factory reveals that the malfunctioning weapons have been suberted by Vo'lach Wonder Lubricant, a nanoscopic oil which has itself evolved into a sentient life form. The Factory uses a stockpile of fusion bombs to blast itself into orbit, seeding the fallout with iridium to make the explosion appear the result of a meteorite strike. Morry gets to a weapons control centre, where he remote-launches a pair of planet-busting missiles from the first planet of the system -- which is revealed to be an artificial weapons platform, thus explaining why Vo'lach "Prime" is the second planet. Morry is then caught and torn apart by Vo'lach exercise equipment, infected with intelligence by the Wonder Lubricant and spurred on by the Air Vent. His mind returns to his body, only to find too late that his factotum has taken up an offer from another crime syndicate and killed him in his absence.

 

The Factory apparently ditches the planet-killers and returns to Canopus IV, where it intends to set up shop selling refridgerators to the galaxy. But its proximity to the Spire activates its fail-safe programming, and it lands on top of the Spire, where Mandir is waiting for it. Fellows and Vespatrick have finally realized the truth; the Vo'lach foresaw that their descendents would bring endless war to the galaxy, and destroyed themselves to prevent it from happening. But they misinterpreted the vision; their "descendants" are the Canopans, whose society was shaped by the influence of the Vo'lach, and Mandir, consumed by his hatred of the indifferent gods and the people of the galaxy who stood by and did nothing while his people suffered, is about to launch the war which drove his gods to suicide.

 

Benny and his friends are caught by Mandir's troops, but the planet-killers arrive at Canopus IV and Benny realizes that they're homing in on a tracer Morry shot into Geth's arm. She instinctively shoves Geth's arm into the tachyon flame in the centre of the Spire; the pain is agonising, and the outcome is horrific, as the homing mechanism survives the dissolution and is catapulted back into the past -- followed closely by the planet-killers. They explode at the moment of the Spire's creation, and the Vo'lach conclude from their analysis of the subatomic fragments remaining that weapons from the future of their own world were used to destroy the Spire; although they do not understand why, they conclude that it must not be created. Therefore the events which led to the planet-killers entering the Spire never take place, which means they don't explode and don't destroy the Spire, which means that it is built, which means the planet-killers destroy it...

 

Minor subatomic variations in each turn of the cycle result in major shifts to history. The time-travellers of the galaxy stand by outside linear time and watch until an equilibrium is reached -- a history in which the missiles explode, far enough in the past to damage the Spire, but not far enough to prevent its existence. In this history, the Canopans have been torn apart by religious warfare ever since the Spire was damaged, and Benny blames herself for this -- and for the worse to come. Since the Spire functioned by drawing matter back from the future, that future was fixed in place once matter from it began to exist in the present. By destroying the Spire Benny has returned quantum uncertainty to the Universe, and she may have just ended the lives of her friends from a future which may now never exist.

 

Benny nearly commits suicide when she realizes the extent of her crime, but thanks to a slight modification to history made by David Foreman -- a time-traveller who had been observing events undercover -- Clarence arrives just in time to save her life. He assures her that the Spire was a paradox in itself. Quasars are the result of the material flung into the past by the Spire, which is why they did not appear on the Vo'lach maps; they didn't exist in the past until the Spire began to put them there. If the Spire had continued to operate and send matter back in Time, eventually enough "dark matter" would have been generated that the Vo'lach would have seen no need to build the Spire; thus another, much larger historical loop would have occurred, and by creating and breaking a smaller loop Benny has prevented a major temporal catastrophe. She is reassured, and Clarence decides not to tell her that God chose her to do so in a way that would ensure the best possible outcome for the People.

 

Source: Cameron Dixon

 

 

 

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Mean Streets

by Terrance Dicks       

 

 

 

Cover Blurb

Mean Streets 

'It's got to be stopped; it's an abomination, a crime against humanity.'

 

The Project: a criminal scheme so grand in scale that it casts a shadow across a hundred worlds. So secret that none but an elusive inner circle know its nature or its purpose. It could involve drugs, computer crime or a brilliant new con. Everyone has a theory; no one really knows.

 

On a trip to the sprawling den of iniquity that is Megacity, an ex-Adjudicator called Roz Forrester heard of this elaborate scheme. Her interest piqued, she asked her squire to return one day with her. After all, a crime against humanity is everyone's business.

 

Chris Cwej is not a man to forget such a promise. His old partner may be dead, but the Project case will be one for her memory -- a way to say goodbye. All he needs is a new confederate: someone ready to risk all for old time's sake. Fortunately, it's the end of term and Professor Bernice Summerfield is looking for excitement. So, a new crime-fighting duo is forged in the bars of Dellah -- one prepared to take on a faceless foe and expose the ultimate crime.

 

Notes:

Another book in the new series of The New Adventures featuring Bernice Summerfield.

Released: December 1997

 

ISBN: 0 426 20519 7

The TERMINUS review of this book.

 

 

Synopsis

Some time ago Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester visited the mining planet Megarra on the trail of a serial killer. While searching for leads in the corrupt metropolis of Megacity, Roz stumbled across rumours of something called "the Project" -- something so terrible that her few informers were killed within hours of just mentioning it to her. Forced to depart on the trail of the Ripper, she vowed to return one day, but circumstances intervened, and she died without ever following up on her promise. Now, years later, Chris has decided to take up the investigation in her memory.

 

Before heading for Megacity he visits his friend Benny to ask for help, but she's reluctant to get involved in such a dangerous operation. But their conversation has been monitored by Jarl Kendrick, the security chief of St Oscar's Advanced Research Department; some time ago a madman burst out of the ARD and assaulted two students, and shortly afterwards Kendrick had the entire campus installed with listening devices as a precaution. Concerned by what he's overheard, he decides to forestall problems by disposing of Benny and Chris. Chris, however, fights off the Dethak assassin sent after him, and a bomb intended for Benny kills one of her students instead. The Director of the ARD, Santos Silvera, is forced to step in, and to prevent Benny from investigating further he has her hauled up before the Faculty Ethics Committee on trumped-up charges. Furious and frightened, she agrees to leave St Oscar's for a vacation -- but in fact intends to accompany Chris to Megacity to help him investigate, convinced that there is a connection.

 

Although Megacity is a haven for organised crime, random acts of violence are generally frowned upon as bad for tourism. Nevertheless, the levels of violence in the city have been rising for some time, for no apparent reason. An ordinary robbery at a bank ends in a violent shoot-out which leaves ten innocent bystanders dead, and the robber then kills the man who sent him out on the mission and heads for the spaceport, trying to book passage off the planet. Chris and Benny arrive just as the man goes berzerk and tries to kill the departure clerk; Chris intervenes, and the killer is gunned down by the police but keeps moving for several seconds after being shot. Benny and Chris give their names to the police and are promptly arrested on charges of embezzlement and murder, based on "evidence" forwarded from Dellah. Chief Harkon, however, comes to believe that they are innocent, and agrees to let them investigate the "Project" -- which may have some connection to the recent wave of violence. With his help, they convince the criminal classes of Megacity that they represent the Combine, a notorious criminal syndicate, hoping that they will learn more as insiders.

 

Chris' old acquaintance, the augmented Ogron Garshak, is still in Megacity, working as a private detective. He is hired by the crime lord Nastur, who has been paying his rival Lucifer in order to drive drug shipments through an area of the city controlled by Lucifer; one of his drivers recently went berzerk, refused to pay the toll, killed Lucifer's and his own men and went missing with Nastur's latest shipment. Garshak successfully negotiates a new truce between Nastur and Lucifer and eventually tracks down the missing truck and its dazed driver, Razek. When Garshak returns them to Nastur, Razek once again goes berzerk and tries to kill Nastur. Garshak saves his life and Razek is killed, but Nastur tries to double-cross Garshak anyway; Garshak, however, had been expecting something of the kind, and gets away with his payment.

 

At a local criminal hangout, Sara's Cellar, Benny and Chris nearly get into a fatal confrontation with Lucifer when they sit at his reserved table and neither party is willing to lose face by backing down. Lucifer suggests pretending that he invited them to his table for a drink, thus ensuring that nobody is seen to lose face, and is impressed with the way Benny kept her cool throughout the confrontation. Benny and Chris find no further leads, but while leaving they see a pack of Wolverines attacking Lucifer and save his life. Lucifer, grateful for their help, agrees to help them find out what the mysterious Project is, as does Sara. He also hires Garshak to find out who is trying to kill him, and Garshak, who has also been attacked by Wolverines recently, suspects that Nastur may be responsible.

 

Garshak, Chris and Benny share stories and conclude that Nastur is trying to hide something about the drug shipment which Razek tried to make off with. The recent wave of violence seems to suggest that Nastur has found a new source of the drug skoob, which has been known to drive its users into fits of paranoid, berzerker rage. Benny and Chris visit Nastur, trying to learn more by claiming that the Combine is interested in his operation, but he sees through them and tries to have them killed. While they are distracting him, however, Garshak steals the truck containing the questionable shipment and flees with it, rescuing Benny and Chris on the way out. Confirming that the shipment contains skoob, they alert Chief Harkon and set a trap for Nastur. Garshak contacts Nastur and offers to sell the truck back to him, and while doing so tricks Nastur into admitting that the contents of the truck belong to him, a confession which Harkon captures on tape. Nastur is arrested, but Benny and Chris suspect that there is still more to discover. They are soon proven correct; this shipment was the first of its kind, and has no connection to the violent crime wave.

 

While pondering his next move, Chris is contacted by Sara, who has learned that one of her employees has a connection to the Project. Sam, a former miner, once moonlighted as an enforcer for freelance security corporation Custodiex, and he remembers being assigned to rough up anybody who talked about the Project. Sam is killed shortly after talking to Chris, but Chris soon deduces that the killer was someone whom Sam knew and narrows down the suspects to the bartender at Sara's Cellar. The bartender confesses but claims he was hired for the murder by Custodiex, and Chris goes to Custodiex and blackmails the managing director into giving him the name of his client -- the mining company DevCorps. Garshak's contacts amongst the Wolverines also give him the name of DevCorps, and when Benny researches the crimes she finds that many of the killers have been miners who were recently fired in a round of layoffs at DevCorps.

 

Benny, Chris and Harkon take their discoveries to Mayor Ramarr, who is at first reluctant to tarnish the city's relationship with DevCorps. He agrees eventually to let Benny and Chris go in undercover as representatives of the Interplanetary Business Inspectorate; however, he is in fact on DevCorps' board of directors himself, and he alerts the CEO, Joseph Devlin, to expect them. After determining that they know nothing about the Project, Devlin orders his sadistic security chief, Simeon Kragg, to kill them; however, Garshak -- ignored by the security guards, who think he's just another dumb Ogron chauffeur -- breaks into the computer room and forces a terrified technician to upload all of the information on the Project into Harkon's remote terminal. He then rescues Benny and Chris, and they return to the city, access Harkon's terminal and learn the truth.

 

Benny and Chris break into the next meeting of DevCorps' board, and reveal to the shocked directors that Devlin and his father before him attempted to improve the company's standing by using genetic engineering to make their miners stronger and better. Unfortunately, the Project has failed, and an atavistic mutation has resulted in a breed of psychotic killers capable of passing on their madness to their offspring. St Oscar's ARD was hired to find a solution, but has so far been unsuccessful. When Kragg, himself the child of a Project volunteer, realizes that the secret is out, he snaps and kills Devlin before anyone can stop him. The board of directors has no choice but to begin hunting down the affected miners and treating them, although the financial outlay will bankrupt the company.

 

With justice served in Megacity, Benny returns to St Oscar's to bring down the Advanced Research Department for her dead student's sake. She intends to reveal all to the Faculty Ethics Committee, and refuses to bow down even when Silvera has the charges against her dropped and the listening devices removed from the University. She finally agrees to abandon her pursuit of the Department, however, when Kendrick is killed in a mysterious "accident".

 

Source: Cameron Dixon

 

 

 

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Tempest

by Christopher Bulis

 

 

 

Cover Blurb

Tempest            

Smith consulted his watch very deliberately. 'You have one hour to find the Imnulate and hand it over to me. If you do not, I will tear this train and its passengers apart piece by piece!'

 

Tempest: a wild and untamed world perpetually wreathed in cloud and storms. The only means of long-distance travel across its surface are the great transcontinental monorails that traverse its lonely and dangerous wastelands. Returning home from a lucrative lecture, Professor Bernice Summerfield finds hserself on the most celebrated of these mighty trains.

 

The Drell Imnulate: a fabulous and unique religious idol. Precious enough to kill for. So important to those rival factions who follow the way of its maker that they will dare anything to ensure its return.

 

Isolated in the wilderness and far from civilisation, death strikes the luxurious Polar Express, and a routine journey turns into a nightmare. But can Bernice save a train on the brink of disaster?

 

Notes:

Another book in the new series of The New Adventures featuring Bernice Summerfield.

Released: January 1998

 

ISBN: 0 426 20523 5

The TERMINUS review of this book.

 

 

Synopsis

Benny is invited to the planet Tempest, a world with a poisonous atmosphere and turbulent weather patterns, as a guest of the amateur archaeological society. After delivering her lecture she attends a reception at the home of businessman Nathan Costermann, where he shows her the prize of his art collection -- the Drell Imnulate, which he intends to auction off in the polar city of Thule due to pressure from the followers of Drell. The next day, Benny boards the Polar Express, a monorail which will take her to the spaceport at Thule, and is surprised to be greeted by Costermann; for security reasons, he'd decided not to publicise his trip, and had booked passage under a false name. The Imnulate is being transported in a MaxSec case with a time lock; although it is still possible to touch the Imnulate, anyone who does so has their vital statistics recorded, and any attempt to remove the Imnulate from the case triggers an instant security clampdown. Nevertheless, the next morning Benny is woken with a severe hangover due to a commotion in the corridor outside, and learns that someone has gassed Costermann, stabbed his bodyguard Tralbet with a letter opener and stolen the Imnulate...

 

One of the passengers, Gerv Ferlane, identifies himself as an agent from the insurance company, sent to provide extra security without Costermann's knowledge. Ferlane arrests passenger Jordan Tyne, a known con man whom he'd spotted some time earlier and who booked passage under a false name; Tyne tries to flee but is brought down by the helpful passenger Wilver. Under questioning, Tyne admits that he has a reason to dislike Costermann; years ago, he cheated Costermann at poker, and Costermann sent Tralbet to rough him up and take back his money. Someone sent Tyne an anonymous tip about the Imnulate being moved, and he admits to boarding the monorail with the intention of stealing it -- but insists that someone else beat him to it. Ferlane is skeptical, but Benny comes to believe Tyne.

 

The monorail's medical officer confirms that Benny was too drunk on the night in question to have committed the crime, and Benny agrees to help in the investigation. The train's security cameras have recorded two strange shadows on the night in question, one of a head shaped unlike any of the alien passengers on the train, and one of a snake-like form reaching up to the ceiling and then retracting again. To make matters worse, the Proctor at Sirocco Flats is delayed in the wilderness, and the train must continue on without him. All passengers departing at Sirocco Flats are searched and questioned, and news of the murder is leaked to the press -- soon becoming the most publicised story on the planet.

 

Benny and Ferlane interview the passengers in the first class compartments. Wilver is a polite non-human here to evaluate Tempest's suitability as a vacation spot for other non-human races. Merch is a salesman here on business, and the Versons are an elderly retired couple; neither has any connection to Costermann although he did let them see the Imnulate, showing it off for one last time before selling it. Montague Klemp is rumoured to be Tempest's biggest crime kingpin, but Benny and Ferlane have to agree that he wouldn't be so foolish as to steal the Imnulate while he's on the same train. But two other passengers have reason to hate Costermann; Dell Lankril blames Costermann for reneging on his promise to underwrite a loan his family needs to keep their business afloat, and Lucas Sommers blames Costermann for seducing his wife away from him, and then abandoning her once he'd had his fill of her.

 

Costermann claims that he turned down Lankril's request after looking over his business proposals, and that Lankril had foolishly assumed too much in advance. Also, Lucas Sommers smothered his wife for years, and she fled from him the first chance she got and became self-destructively hedonistic in response. Costermann doesn't seem to have any other enemies on the train, although the connection may be less direct than it seems; some years back one of Costermann's companies was accused of selling faulty medical equipment, and the company manager took his own life to avoid scandal. Tralbet had been accepting regular payments to a private bank account for some time; perhaps he was being bribed to betray Costermann, and the thief chose to silence him, choosing the nearby letter opener to make it appear as though the murder was a spur-of-the-moment decision. But Benny and Ferlane are still no closer to a solution by the evening -- and during the night, the salesman Merch is beaten to death in his compartment and his laptop computer's memory core is stolen.

 

News of Merch's murder provokes a near-riot on the train, but Benny and Ferlane are able to calm down the panicking passengers. But they aren't able to prevent word from reaching the outside world, and when the train reaches Roaring Cavern rioting townspeople refuse to let anyone get off the train unless they're immediately arrested. Local law enforcement is too busy holding back the rioters to board the train and relieve Benny or Ferlane, and the monorail is forced to continue on its journey without letting anyone disembark. Fortunately, the Equatorial Express is on its way to meet its sister monorail with a team of investigators. Meanwhile, the medical officer performs an autopsy and Merch and finds lens implants in his eyes; the monorail engineer, Yorland, informs the others that Merch had reported interference on his communicator the other day; and Ferlane learns that Merch used to work for a famous gem dealer, but was dismissed under a cloud when some gems mysteriously vanished while in his care.

 

Meanwhile, a skystation technician named Owen Rosen has been approached by a mysterious man named Smith, who offers to tear up Rosen's gambling debts if he plants a certain device on the skystation -- and to call them all in at once if he refuses. Having planted the device, Rosen eventually comes to suspect that Smith is in some way involved in the incidents he's seeing reported on the news, and decides to contact him and blackmail him for more money, threatening to reveal the existence of the device if Smith refuses. Smith sends the money as requested -- and Rosen discovers too late that the credit chips, all forgeries, have been coated with contact poison...

 

The monorail is forced to stop so the crew can clear a landslide away from the line, and some of the passengers volunteer to help. Ferlane eventually emerges as well, telling Benny that he's sent for more information in order to follow up a hunch. But someone has sabotaged Ferlane's breathing unit, and when he passes out Benny fractures her arm saving him from falling over a cliff. A plastic cast is sprayed over Benny's arm, to be dissolved later once the bones have set; but Ferlane has fallen into a coma and can't be woken. Word then reaches the monorail that the Equatorial Express has suffered an accident -- which proves to have been no accident. Someone has deliberately blown out its drive unit to prevent help from reaching the Polar Express, and Benny must solve the mystery alone.

 

Benny, reviewing the security corridor tapes, identifies the snake-like shadow as an arm planting a line tap in the corridor communications unit, just out of camera range -- obviously so someone could eavesdrop on the progress of the investigation after the crime was committed. The tap is located, but is found to have burned out. The other shadow is eventually identified as that of Lucas Sommers' daughter Clarris, who was wearing head curlers and was on her way to Dell Lankril's suite. After what happened to his wife Sommers has become overprotective of his daughter and disapproves of her relationship with Lankril, but as Sommers had taken a sleeping draught on the night in question Clarris was able to slip out of their quarters to see Lankril.

 

The Versons report that their room has been searched, and Benny, trying to work out why, deduces correctly that they are followers of Drell. They admit that this is so but deny any involvement with the crimes; they abhor the use of violence and were simply sent to keep an eye on the Imnulate to ensure no harm came to it before the auction. However, they must warn the others that there is a radical offshoot of their religion -- the Kedd-Drell -- who believe they must spread the word of Drell by any means necessary. If the Kedd recover the Imnulate first, it will be seen as confirmation of their beliefs, and it may trigger a jihad.

 

The train is brought to a stop again, by a tree blocking the line -- but then a second tree falls and blocks their retreat, and Smith and his men emerge from hiding to take the Polar Express hostage. Smith contacts the train's crew, and, recognizing Benny the moment she speaks to him, tells her that he's aware of the theft of the Imnulate. Nevertheless, he still requires that the Imnulate be handed over to him -- otherwise he will kill everyone on board the train. Unwilling to risk their lives to the goodwill of a double murderer, the passengers prepare to fight for their lives, while Benny makes a private deal with Tyne. Just as Smith's deadline expires Tyne rushes into the first-class dining car with the Imnulate, which he claims he found hidden in Costermann's suite. Wilver now reveals himself to be working for Smith, and he seizes the Imnulate and takes it out of the train -- at which point Benny and Tyne admit that the Imnulate they handed over was a fake to draw Wilver out of hiding. Since Smith had recognised Benny as one of the investigators right away, although her identity hadn't been publicised in the news reports, Benny had realized he must have an agent aboard the train reporting to him.

 

Smith orders his men to attack the train, but the people have had time to prepare -- and the people of Tempest are pioneers in a hostile landscape, who are now fighting for their families' lives. During the fierce battle which follows Costermann, who'd made his start in life as a chemist, makes a bomb which Benny uses to blow up the tree blocking the track. The train gets underway again, but Smith pursues it in an experimental ship capable of piloting through even Tempest's turbulent atmosphere. Smith deactivates the proximity safeguards in order to ram the Express and derail it, but the train's crew slow down and fire flares at Smith's ship. The pilot instinctively pulls back, but overcompensates -- and since the proximity safeguards have been deactivated he flies straight into the canyon wall, destroying the ship and killing all aboard.

 

The survivors on the Polar Express deal with the aftermath of the battle, and Tyne identifies one of the dead, a young woman, as his partner Lil, whom he'd been trying to keep out of things when his scheme went wrong. Lankril has saved Lucas and Clarris Sommers' life, and Sommers has reluctantly given his blessing to their relationship. News reaches the Express of Rosen's death on the skystation, and Benny realizes that he must have planted a relay which enabled Wilver to transmit his reports to Smith without using the Express' communications unit. Although they can't be sure, it seems that Smith must have been working for the Kedd-Drell. The monorail is only hours now from Thule, and Benny is still no closer to solving the original mystery; until a chance comment from a little girl that the stars in the clear polar sky look like diamonds sparks a certain train of thought...

 

Benny gathers the suspects in the dining car to go through her reasoning. Someone leaked information to the Drell about Costermann's intention to move the Imnulate, and that could have been anybody; but someone also sent an anonymous tip to Tyne. Only Tyne, Tralbet, and Costermann knew of their relationship, and as the killer can't be Tralbet, it must be Costermann himself. Benny suspects that Costermann was more deeply involved in the medical supplies scandal than has been revealed, and that the manager who supposedly took his own life in fact had it taken from him. Tralbet must have been involved, and Costermann was paying him off to keep him silent. The real Imnulate never left Costermann's house; he distracted the MaxSec personnel at a vital moment and substituted a fake made out of the same material used for Benny's arm cast. After killing Tralbet, he dissolved the "Imnulate" out of its case, and the security clampdown wasn't activated since the case didn't recognize the chemical goo as the Imnulate it was programmed to protect. Merch must have realized the truth when he saw the fake Imnulate, thanks to his gem dealing background and the lens implants in his eyes, and attempted to blackmail Costermann. Costermann used the line tap to generate interference on Merch's communicator, burning it out in the process, thus preventing him from getting out word of his discovery before Costermann could kill him.

 

All the pieces of Benny's theory fit into place, and when she looks into Costermann's eyes she knows she's right. But he admits nothing, she has no proof, and he has very good lawyers. As he prepares to return to his cabin, however, Tyne attacks him, realizing that he's going to get away with his crime and blaming him for the circumstances that led to Lil's death. As they fight they fall against a panel damaged during the battle with Smith's men, and although Benny manages to rescue Tyne, Costermann falls out of the train to his death in the poisonous arctic atmosphere. His companies subsequently disassociate themselves from his name, fearing scandal. As Benny departs Tempest, the new hiding place of the Drell Imnulate is yet to be found; once again it has vanished into legend.

 

Source: Cameron Dixon

 

 

 

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Walking to Babylon

by Kate Orman             

 

 

 

Cover Blurb

Walking to Babylon   

'I'm scared of letting all these people down. Like the whole human race. At least if I get blown up as well, they can say I died heroically. Assuming I ever existed at all.'

 

When Bernice Summerfield visits the People -- an incredibly advanced civilisation living in a Dyson Sphere -- she discovers that even in utopia they still have their problems.

 

An illegal time travel experiment threatens a war which could destroy them all. Rather than risk it, the People and their ultra-powerful computer, God, are prepared to eradicate the source of the problem -- the ancient city of Babylon. But such action would involve the death of a quarter of a million human beings, and do incalculable damage to Earth's history.

 

Babylon -- and the human race -- have one hope. Benny returns to the cradle of civilisation to try and stop the interference. She has just one week to prevent a catastrophe that could mean she will never be born. Her only assistance comes from a Victorian linguist who has stumbled across the experiment himself. But he's no help at all -- even though he has a power neither of them suspect.

 

Notes:

Another book in the new series of The New Adventures featuring Bernice Summerfield.

An audio adaptation of this story has been produced by Big Finish Productions.

Released: February 1998

 

ISBN: 0 426 20521 9

The TERMINUS review of this book.

 

 

Synopsis

God invites Benny to a party on the Worldsphere, as he wants her to demonstrate her perspective to a group of war veterans who lost their sense of peace and certainty during the war with the All of Us. Benny realizes that God didn't want to involve any barbarians from the People's own galaxy because he doesn't want them to know that the People also have emotional problems. After the party ends, Benny returns home to continue work on her book analysing Ikkaban poetry, only to be contacted desperately by God, who has a problem. Two of the veterans Benny met at the party, wiRgo!xu and !Ci!ci-tel, have built an experimental and highly illegal time-travel device and fled to ancient Babylon, and the result of this blatant Treaty violation could be an intergalactic war. To prevent war God intends to destroy the renegades' Path, which will incidentally wipe out Babylon and change all human history, unless Benny can contact the renegades and convince them to return and shut down the Path.

 

John Lafayette, an Edwardian linguist on an archaeological dig to Babylon, stumbles across the Path when he investigates the wild stories of a fellow archaeologist named Smith. Benny finds him lost in Babylon and he flees from her in terror; when she eventually catches him he tells her that, to him, she seems to be on fire without being consumed. While chasing him she stumbles across a party being held by the priestess Ninan, and gets herself invited to another party tomorrow by promising to tell Ninan tales of the world beyond Babylon. She explains the situation to Lafayette, who agrees to help her. Apparently Lafayette is psychically time-sensitive, which explains how he was able to access the Path and why Benny, a seasoned time-traveller, appears to him to be afire.

 

At Ninan's party, Lafayette sees another person who appears to be on fire; this is the merchant Itti-marduk-balatu, who turns out to have had recent dealings with the renegades (thus taking on some of their temporal energy). Benny and Lafayette manage to negotiate terms with the merchant and find out where the renegades are staying, but their investigation is interrupted by the Babylonian day of penance, and in the confusion Lafayette nearly succumbs to culture shock and he and Benny end up making love back at their inn. Later, while on their way to the renegades' new home, they are attacked by bandits and Benny is kidnapped. Lafayette asks Ninan for help but foolishly attempts to rescue Benny himself, and is beaten nearly to death by the bandits; fortunately, a People drone, I!qu-!qu-tala, arrives and heals him. The drone, however, refuses to pass on Benny's message to the renegades.

 

Benny and Lafayette confront the renegades in person, but the renegades refuse to believe that God is willing to destroy Babylon and all the people therein; in any case, they claim to have left a booby trap which will feed the energy of the explosion back to the Worldsphere if they try. !Ci!ci-tel is intrigued by Lafayette's presence and tries to investigate, but when he touches Lafayette, the temporal energy caused by their individual time journeys interacts and !Ci!ci-tel ages to death within seconds. Benny convinces the furious wiRgo!xu not to kill Lafayette in revenge but to let him go back home while Benny remains to help wiRgo!xu cope with life in Babylon. I!qu-!qu-tala even-tually admits that the trip was his idea. He and the renegades believed that the People are too complacent, and that since the People never really stood a chance of losing the war with the All of Us, they need to fight a war where there's a real possibility that they'll lose. In other words, the trip was intended to provoke a war with the People's rivals, an intergalactic war of time-travel which could wreak havoc upon countless civilisations and the Universe itself. I!qu-!qu-tala admits it hadn't thought through all the implications of the plan.

 

Benny and Lafayette manage to slip a message to Ninan, who confronts wiRgo!xu and I!qu-!qu-tala as they prepare to send Lafayette back along the Path. WiRgo!xu intended that the People could evacuate to Babylon if the Worldsphere was threatened during the war, but when he realizes that he'll never be able to establish himself in Babylon now that Ninan is keeping an eye on him, he snaps and tries to kill Benny. I!qu-!qu-tala restrains him and realizes that he's responsible for wiRgo!xu's condition, since he pushed him to these extremes. Ninan offers to let them stay if they allow her to accompany them on their travels around the world, and I!qu-!qu-tala agrees and lets Benny and Lafayette go while he shuts down the Path. Benny and Lafayette arrive on the Worldsphere just in time to stop the People from detonating the bomb and destroying Babylon, and a deal is then struck with the People's rivals, allowing Lafayette to return home. Benny returns to Dellah, believing that everything has been settled...but God isn't so sure. Lafayette's psychic time-sensitivity appeared to be genetically engineered, which might mean there are more like him, spread out across the human galaxy as an early warning system. Yet another step in a cold war which could precede an actual one...

 

Source: Cameron Dixon

 

 

 

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Oblivion

by Dave Stone               

 

 

 

Cover Blurb

Oblivion            

Roz snarled up into the face of her abductor. 'If you touch me I'll kill you. Who are you? Just what the hell is going on?' The blond man looked down at her with a mixture of what looked like fear and pain. 'My name's Chris Cwej,' he said. 'And as to what's going on, hell is probably as good a word for it as any.'

 

Something has burst through the worn and patchwork fabric of the universe, like a high-velocity round through a rotten apple. The timelines are cut loose and whipsawing -- alternative pasts, presents and futures slicing through the world we think of as real.

 

At the centre of the disruption three adventurers, Nathan li Shao, Leetha and Kiru, are trapped on a parallel Earth -- flung from one twisted alternative to another by a man called Deed, who has usurped the power of the Godhead. If their friend Sgloomi Po cannot reach them in time they will be obliterated. Deed is attempting to forge his own reality and consign all others to oblivion.

 

To help end the chaos, Sgloomi has assembled a number of old friends: Bernice Summerfield, the feckless Jason Kane and Christopher Rodonante Cwej ... but there has been one small mistake. A miscalculation has placed someone among them who should not be there. Someone who should be dead.

 

Notes:

Another book in the new series of The New Adventures featuring Bernice Summerfield.

Released: March 1998

 

ISBN: 0 426 20522 7

The TERMINUS review of this book.

 

 

Synopsis

Benny is supplying herself with extra money by baby-sitting a group of spoiled rich children on a quasi-archaeological field trip to the planet Malanoor, when she is contacted by her old friend Sgloomi Po the Sloathe. Sgloomi has already collected Chris, who explains to Benny that something from outside the normal parameters of time and space is eliminating the alternative Universes that arise whenever quantum possibilities diverge from one another, and that the resulting fractured Universes are whipsawing through our own, threatening the collapse of all timelines into total oblivion. The nexus of the possibility disruption is on Earth, where the former crew of the Schirron Dream -- Nathan li Shao, Leetha t'Zhan, and Kiru -- are trapped, flipping from one alternative to the next and failing to hold onto a sense of their own identities in the process.

 

Sgloomi has also picked up Jason, on the assumption that humans mate for life and Benny and Jason would wish to spend the end of the Universe together, and it's somewhat taken aback at the vitriol with which they greet each other. Nevertheless, the expedition sets off, and Sgloomi takes the Schirron Dream to pick up the last remaining member of the expedition. Somehow, the ship passes into a different probability line while doing so, and Chris and Benny are appalled when Sgloomi returns to the ship with a panic-stricken, much younger, and definitely not dead Roz Forrester. Chris tries to explain the situation to her as best he can, while the ship approaches Earth; but it passes through another probability wavefront as it does so, and the crew suddenly find themselves facing armed marauders from the outer limits of the Solar System while Roz is transformed into a vicious Space Marine who's willing to kamikaze-strafe the enemy ships in order to save the Earth. Benny is surprised when Jason unexpectedly demonstrates a grasp of highly trained martial arts maneouvres in order to immobilise Roz until they've passed into another probability. Roz begins to lose her grasp on her identity and long-term memories as the ship passes through probability wavefronts, but Chris and Sgloomi help her to hold on to what's important; she has friends in danger and must help them.

 

The ship eventually lands on what's left of Earth, where it locates Nathan, Leetha and Kiru. After passing through alternative Earths and experiencing the same quest in the style of a film noir epic, a Holmesian mystery and a futile rebellion against an Orwellian totalitarian government, the three travellers have finally remembered who they really are and have been able to hold onto a sense of their identities despite the severe fluctuations to reality occurring around them. In every reality, however, one thing has remained constant; their mysterious enemy has been a man named Simon Deed. When the Schirron Dream lands, Simon Deed appears to them all in the form of a vast omnipotent Godbeing, who scorns these lesser beings who rebel against him, and blasts them into oblivion.

 

Except that doesn't happen. In fact, Roz remains conscious throughout the entire "death" experience and realizes that her companions have just been stunned by a galvanistic discharge, and then taken from their ship into a mysterious hangar by men in radiation suits. Sgloomi escapes due to the kidnappers' inability to come to terms with his polymorphic nature, and he manages to free Roz and they set off to find out what's really going on. They are quickly captured and brought before the man responsible; Randolph Bane, an extremely old, borderline (on the other side of the border) senile, and unbelievably rich man, who has been experimenting with an alien Egg he found in the archives of an organisation known as the Shadow Directory. With the Egg he can change the Universe, but only by using the mental energy of people displaced in Time, people who have no sense of their own identity.

 

After brainwashing one of his own minor employees, Simon Deed, Bane used Deed to set a trap for any travellers who might happen across the Earth, and then used them to set a trap for even more of the "Living Material" he required for his experiment. The Universe is not in fact on the point of collapse (yet); Bane was transmitting false mental images to the people he required in order to lure them to Earth. The process didn't work on Roz because she comes from a different probability line than the others. Roz's companions have been hooked up to virtual reality software connected to the Egg, and are living alternate lives corresponding to their own ideas of Hell. Jason is living a life as a down-and-out wife-beater sentenced to life imprisonment for beating his ex-wife until she miscarried; Chris is an Adjudicator who succumbed to temptation and bribes and became wholly corrupt; the army's attempt to brainwash Benny into obedience succeeded and she became a concentration camp commandant directly responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of sentient beings. Once their sense of self crumbles under the strain of their experiences, they will become empty slates receptive to the power of the Egg, and Bane will be able to use it to change the physical laws of the Universe itself, and thus ensure that he will never die. The fact that this means oblivion for every other sentient being in the Universe is irrelevant to him.

 

Bane orders his robot servants to take Roz and Sgloomi away and kill them, but Sgloomi shape-shifts out of the robots' clutches and frees Roz as well. Before Bane can stop her, she destroys the Egg, waking the others from their virtual-reality Hells. Deed breaks free of his restraints and snaps Bane's neck, and a freak backlash of energy from the broken Egg traps the two of them in an endlessly repeating loop of Time in which Bane dies over and over again for all eternity. The Schirron Dream, meanwhile, recovers from the energies fired into it by Bane's employees, and, sensing that its family is nearby, the ship blows up Bane's laboratory and rescues them itself. Roz loses consciousness, perhaps due to a backlash of energies from the Egg, and Sgloomi takes her back where he found her, restoring her timeline to its original course. The others return to their ordinary lives and try to come to terms with their personal Hells.

 

Source: Cameron Dixon

 

 

 

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The Medusa Effect

by Justin Richards      

 

 

 

Cover Blurb

The Medusa Effect     

'Bernice Summerfield?'

'That rather depends on who wants to know.'

'I'd like to offer you a job. I think you'll find it interesting.'

'Isn't this just a little inappropriate? I mean, we're at a funeral.'

'That rather depends on the job.'

 

Medusa -- an experimental spaceship developed by the Advanced Research Department of St Oscar's University. Missing since it was launched, presumed lost in the wars, it was a project so secret that it has never been declassified.

 

Now, twenty years on, Medusa is coming home.

 

After one of the investigation team dies suspiciously, Professor Bernice Summerfield is assigned to help discover what went wrong. But to do so she must solve a riddle. What is the strange link between the original crew and the team now on board the drifting ship? And why do their ghosts still haunt Medusa?

 

Notes:

Another book in the new series of The New Adventures featuring Bernice Summerfield.

Released: April 1998

 

ISBN: 0 426 20524 3

The TERMINUS review of this book.

 

 

Synopsis

Twenty years after its launch and disappearance, the spaceship Medusa is drifts back into Dellah space, and an expedition is prepared to find out what went wrong. One of the expedition members, Maryanne Decleiter, dies in a mysterious accident at the Advanced Research Department, and the head of the project team, Taffeta Graize, invites Benny to join the expedition in her place. Benny is suspicious of Graize's motives, as is Decleiter's friend Commander Skutloid, who privately tells Benny that she and Decleiter had a lot in common. Benny and Skutloid enlist Irving Braxiatel's help, and he digs up information on the Medusa's launch and gives a datacube to Benny to peruse later. Medusa was entirely remote-controlled from Dellah; the purpose of the project, conducted in the final days of the war between humanity and a race of exterminating aliens, was to launch a new class of remote-controlled luxury space liners to bring enjoyment back to space travel again.

 

Before the expedition sets off Benny undergoes a medical examination, including an injection to protect her against any lingering viruses on board the Medusa; she's told to abstain from alcohol to avoid side-effects, but quickly forgets the warning. When she's introduced to her fellow expedition members she finds it surprisingly easy to categorise their personality quirks into quick pigeonholes. The expedition sets off to the Medusa, where things go wrong almost immediately; all of their equipment shuts down, and a stranger named Stuart Stonely shows up, claiming to have been sent on ahead to get the Medusa ready for their arrival. The expedition soon finds the former crew and passengers' bodies, and realize that they've all been murdered.

 

As the first few days pass, the expedition members begin to experience intermittent hallucinations, seeing the Medusa fully functional, just as it was twenty years ago. Benny and Stuart slowly begin to realize that the expedition members are slipping into the behavioural patterns of the former crew, and that history is beginning to repeat itself. Even Benny is beginning to unconsciously adapt to some of the traits of a former passenger. While Stuart is exploring the bowels of the ship, Captain Chromsky finds and attacks him for no apparent reason, and Stuart accidentally kills Chromsky in self-defense. Benny, meanwhile, has the strangest vision of all, seeing something humanoid burst out of a shattered pillar in the ballroom in a spray of amniotic fluid.

 

For some reason Benny finds it easier to think when she's had something alcoholic to drink, and eventually she remembers Braxiatel's datacube and discovers that it's still functioning. She and Stuart discover that, during the launch of the Medusa, Jackson Hart -- one of the research team who designed the Medusa, accused and convicted of killing all the others on his team -- escaped from custody and stowed away on board. As Benny ponders what she has learned, she accidentally discovers that two expedition members are having an affair, and, desperate to keep their affair a secret, they drug her and seal her in an airtight cabinet in the medical bay -- which is exactly what happened to Benny's counterpart on the original passenger manifest. This time, however, Stuart is there to save her, and after surviving beyond her counterpart's death she finds the intrusive personality traits are no longer present in her mind.

 

The expedition members lose all sense of their former identities and take on the roles of the former crew and passengers, and when they find Stuart they accuse him of stowing away and murdering Chromsky and nearly beat him to death; Benny saves him, but discovers that this is exactly how Jackson Hart died. The rest of the expedition members murder each other when the jealous Andrea discovers her co-workers' affair and kills them both, triggering a gunfight which ends with everyone dead, including her. Again, this is exactly what happened to the previous expedition. But this time, Stuart and Benny have survived.

 

Benny finally confronts Stuart about his true identity, having guessed that he made up his name on the spur of the moment after seeing a door marked "Stewards Only". Stuart admits that he doesn't really know who he is; his first memory is of awakening aboard the Medusa twenty years ago, and for some reason the memories of the other expedition members are all jumbled up with his as well. Now that the experiment is over, however, a hologram of Taffeta Graize appears and explains the truth to them; a select group of individuals with sharply defined personality traits were selected and drugged in order to create a composite mental entity. Graize accepted military funding and turned the original project towards the creation of a race of super-soldiers, and arranged for the rest of the project team to be murdered when they discovered the truth; Hart was blamed for the murders but escaped and stowed away on board the Medusa, only to become part of the process himself.

 

Stuart realizes that he's the first of the breed, who awoke prematurely; the team sent to dissect him underestimated his strength, and he killed them in self-defense and smashed Medusa's navigation and communications systems in a blind panic before fully achieving self-awareness. This is why Medusa was lost and diverged from its course. When it was detected again, Graize organized a follow-up expedition with the same basic personality traits; the "inoculations" in the team's medicals were meant to smooth over any differences between their own personalities and their counterparts'. Benny's didn't take properly because it was a rush job to replace Decleiter's, who was murdered when she got too close to the truth; also because Benny's alcohol habit interfered with the drugs she'd been given. But now the expedition has achieved its purpose; the other genetically engineered soldiers are awakening, their first impulse to kill. Graize sends the ARD's head of security, Kirk, to lead the soldiers on their first test run -- the murder of Benny and Stuart.

 

Kirk blames Benny for the death of his predecessor following the fiasco that was the Megarra Project, and takes delight in sending his soldiers to hunt her through the Medusa. Benny and Stuart try to deactivate the ship's sensors, but accidentally destroy too much and trigger a self-destruct sequence. However, Graize hasn't realized that Stuart still has a mental connection to his genetically engineered kin, and Stuart and Benny are able to take advantage of this to delay the hunters' reactions while they steal Kirk's shuttle and escape. Kirk tries to shoot them down, but is so preoccupied with killing them that he doesn't realize that the Medusa is about to self-destruct. Until it does.

 

Benny and Stuart return to Dellah and tell their story to Braxiatel and Skutloid, who help them to break into the ARD and confront Graize. The head of the ARD, Director Silvera, has abandoned her to her fate after the failure of her project, and when Stuart, drawing on Hart's memories, reveals that Hart was secretly in love with Graize but never admitted it, Graize -- who was secretly in love with Hart but never admitted it -- breaks down and confesses to arranging the murder of her project team. Stuart, feeling the deaths of everybody who contributed to his memories, kills Graize in a fit of anger. Benny, Braxiatel and Skutloid help him to escape from the ARD after the murder, and he sets off to find a new life for himself, possibly under the name Jackson Hart.

 

Source: Cameron Dixon

 

 

 

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Dry Pilgrimage

by Paul Leonard and Nick Walters  

 

 

 

Cover Blurb

Dry Pilgrimage              

'I am going to make you immortal.'

 

Bored with her job, bored with being perpetually skint, Bernice Summerfield leaps at the chance of a free holiday arranged by her new friend Maeve Ruthven, St Oscar's Professor of Comparative Religion.

 

But all is not what it seems.

 

Benny's holiday rapidly goes from bad to worse to downright dangerous. For a start, the 'luxury cruise' is a religious pilgrimage, and alcohol is forbidden to those on board. Then she is attacked, badly injured and confined to a wheelchair.

 

And that's before the murder.

 

Benny finds herself caught in a web of intrigue -- not knowing who on board can be trusted or which way to turn. And with the future of more than one world depending on her actions, she must decide who to believe, expose the hidden killer and prevent a ruthless grab for power.

 

Notes:

Another book in the new series of The New Adventures featuring Bernice Summerfield.

Released: May 1998

 

ISBN: 0 426 20525 1

The TERMINUS review of this book.

 

 

Synopsis

Bernice's new friend Maeve Ruthven, professor of comparative religions at St Oscar's and a devout Marunianist, invites Benny on a sea cruise. The religious orders of the hermaphroditic Saraani have been exiled from their homeworld following an atheist revolution, and the authorities on Dellah have agreed to let them settle on one of the unoccupied islands in the Silvasic Sea. The Saraani have booked the Lady of Lorelei for the journey, but for most of the pilgrimage they will confine themselves to their own separate area of the ship. Benny will thus have the run of the luxury accomodations, and she leaps at the chance of a holiday.

 

Arriving on the ship with seconds to spare, Benny is shocked when her alcohol is confiscated per the Saraani's instructions. Maeve is also shocked by the presence of her ex-husband, Brion Arvaile. She and the other academics on the journey have come to learn about the Saraani's religion and psychology, but Brion is a genetic engineer; this is why he and Maeve split up, as she couldn't reconcile his work with her religious convictions. The Saraani are a private people -- why has he been allowed on board?

 

Benny meets a Saraani named Vilbian, who has stolen her alcohol from the stores despite his religion's prohibition; she promises not to turn him in if he shares it with her, but he doesn't explain why he's turned to drink. The ship arrives near an island which appears perfect for the Saraani's purposes, but the Khuylan, the pilgrimage's religious leader, seems to be trying to prolong the pilgrimage for some reason. While sunbathing on the island, Benny is attacked by a military bioconstruct which calls her by name, seriously injures her, and then flees back into the sea for no apparent reason. While Benny recovers in sickbay, Arvaile explains to her, Maeve and the captain that the bioconstruct appeared to be from his homeworld Vishpok. Arvaile had claimed to have fled his homeworld's repressive government, but he now informs the others that he is in fact a member of the Resistance which recently overthrew that government -- and it appears that the former Czaritza, Violaine, has sent an assassin to kill him in revenge.

 

Maeve believes that Brion is lying and follows him to the ship's hold, where she finds dozens of bioconstructs in cryogenic storage. Before Brion can explain what they're doing there, the one which attacked Benny comes back to life and kills Maeve. Benny, who has realized that the bioconstruct appears to have the mind of a student who disappeared from St Oscar's some time ago, emerges from sickbay to find Brion and Vilbian standing over Maeve's body, with Vilbian sticking an organic protrusion of some kind from his mouth into Maeve's. Brion pushes her away, and by the time she gets back, Brion and Vilbian are gone and Maeve is dead.

 

Vilbian later contacts Benny and explains that he was conducting a ritual known as Holy Transference -- and she's startled to learn that it involves transferring a dying mind into a Saraani host for later reincarnation in a newborn Saraani. Maeve's mind may still be alive somewhere inside Vilbian. The Khuylan demands that the alien mind be exorcised from Vilbian's, but Benny convinces Captain Fontana to use his authority to prevent this; if Vilbian can commune with Maeve's mind he can find out who or what really killed her. Meanwhile, the Saraani discover that they have all been sterilised by a drug in their water supply and suspect that one amongst them is a Renaissant traitor.

 

The Saraani Mirrium, worried by Vilbian's apparently heretical actions, contacts him and discovers him using human communications technology. Vilbian refuses to explain himself, only telling Mirrium to tell Benny to look in B-Hold for answers. Mirrium passes on the message to her, while Vilbian goes to B-Hold, transfers Maeve's mind into one of the bioconstructs and orders it to download its programming information. Benny and Fontana arrive and catch him, but when Fontana pulls a gun on Vilbian this triggers the active bioconstruct and it attacks him. The weapons activity triggers Maeve's bioconstruct, and she nearly descends into madness when the wetware takes control and forces her to kill the other bioconstruct. As Maeve flees in shock, Brion and the Khuylan arrive -- and to Brion's and Benny's horror, the Khuylan kills Captain Fontana and prepares to kill Benny as well.

 

Brion saves Benny by claiming that she's his wife, and privately explains the truth to her; he's not a Resistance member at all but a covert agent for Czaritza Violaine, and the Khuylan has agreed to serve Violaine in return for help to conquer Saraanis and expel the Renaissants who took control from the religious orders. In fact Brion has realized Violaine intends to take control of Saraanis herself; Dellah has taught him that there can be a better way of life than Violaine has shown, and although he initially married Maeve as a cover he had truly fallen in love with her. He thus convinced Vilbian to conduct Transference on her in the hope of bringing her back to life. But Violaine is on her way...

 

A Vishpok battleship lands on Dellah and Vishpoi soldiers seize control of the Lady of Lorelei. The confused Saraani are herded over to the ship, along with Vilbian, who admits to Mirrium that he was working on behalf of Earth authorities to prove that the Khuylan had allied himself with Violaine, and had begun drinking to blur his confusion over his clashing responsibilities. Brion and Benny are taken to the cruiser as well, where Benny learns the rest of the plan; the Saraani are to become slaves, used to transfer loyal Vishpoi soldiers' minds into bioconstructs and provide Violaine with an invincible army. The Khuylan sterilised the other Saraani so they could perform Holy Transference on the soldiers without automatically giving birth to new Saraani with the soldiers' memories, and Brion kidnapped Benny's student in order to test the process before Violaine arrived. One of the Saraani turns out to be a Renaissant who had joined the expedition to investigate rumours of a conspiracy to conquer Saraanis; the Khuylan uses him as a scapegoat for the sterilisations and executes him, and the horrified Mirrium realizes that Vilbian has been telling the truth.

 

Maeve, trying to keep control while her bioconstruct's wetware urges her to kill, hides with the rest of the bioconstructs and is shuttled over to the Vishpoi ship with the others. There, Brion finally snaps and speaks out against Violaine, who orders her guards to kill both him and Benny. Maeve, trying to help them, loses control of the wetware and her bioconstruct body goes on a rampage, killing everyone it encounters -- including Brion. Benny helps the Saraani to escape, but the Khuylan dies. Mirrium, who has learned to reconcile his religious beliefs with the shock of learning that the Khuylan betrayed them all, helps to calm the other Saraani, and thus becomes their new Khuylan.

 

Maeve kills her way through the Vishpoi until she reaches and kills Violaine herself. Sickened and horrified by what she has become, she tries to kill herself, but fails as the bioconstruct resists any attempt to inflict damage upon it. Since it has already been damaged during the fighting, however, she is able to tell Benny how to deactivate it for repairs. Benny urges Vilbian to conduct Holy Transference and save Maeve's mind, but the bioconstruct's wetware resists the removal of its central intelligence core, and Vilbian only succeeds in killing Maeve -- for good this time.

 

Source: Cameron Dixon

 

 

 

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The Sword of Forever

by Jim Mortimore        

 

 

 

Cover Blurb

The Sword of Forever

'I'm sure the Beach Boys didn't have mutant elephants in mind when they wrote "Surfin' USA.".'

 

When Bernice Summerfield finds human skull fragments containing her own DNA in the stomach of a mummified dinosaur, she embarks on a trail of murder and betrayal. From the alien jungles of France to the primal continent of Pangaea, the trail leads ever further back in time. Together with Patience, the cloned smart-raptor, Benny must brave alien hybrids, agents of the Knights Templar guarding a secret older than time -- and have breakfast with the man who would be Emperor of Earth.

 

All to find the fabled Sword of Forever, a mythical device with the power to destroy and create civilisations -- but at what price?

 

Everything goes critical as Bernice and Patienece travel across 120 million years and two universes -- where ancient traps guard crumbling ruins, love is unrequited, time is running out, treasure is always buried and X never fails to mark the spot.

 

Notes:

Another book in the new series of The New Adventures featuring Bernice Summerfield.

Released: June 1998

 

ISBN: 0 426 20526 X

The TERMINUS review of this book.

 

 

Synopsis

** 1287 - 1354 AD **

Two Knights Templar, separated from their comrades in the Sahara Desert, discover a secret chamber beneath the Sphinx, where a woman in armour holding the seal of the Knights kills one of them before realizing who they are. She vanishes after giving a mysterious box to Hughes de Chalons, who becomes the new "Guardian of Forever". Years later, when the Knights Templar are forcibly dissolved by King Philip of France, Templar Knight Jacques de Molay sends his nephew Guillaime on a mission to fetch the Finger of John the Baptist and use it to find the great secret of the Knights Templar. de Molay is burnt at the stake before Guillaime can complete his mission, but Guillaime and his companions go to the Templar reliquary in any case and find what they believe is the correct coffer. Guillaime takes it back to his castle in Arginy, where he hides the great secrets of the Order in a subterranean labyrinth, filled with traps. He eventually dies at war, and the treasures of the Templars remain buried for centuries...

 

** 2562 AD **

Young Bernice Summerfield and her lover Daniel set off through the alien hybrid jungles of France in search of the Finger of John the Baptist. Following the war, alien retroviruses have spread mutations throughout most of the Earth, but Benny and Daniel successfully evade the dangers of the jungle and reach Castle Arginy, as described in Guillaime's journals. But time has eaten away at the traps he set centuries ago, and Daniel is trapped in a flooding subterranean chamber when the correct combination of stones proves to have eroded too much to trip open the door. Benny flees, unable to remain and listen to Daniel drown, and her dreams of academic glory die along with him.

 

** 2592 AD **

Someone sends Guillaime's journal to Benny on Dellah, along with notice that Daniel's parents are now dead. Feeling guilty, Benny books passage to Arginy to face her demons, but backs down at the last minute and goes to Antarctica instead, the first available alternative destination. She nearly dies while on walkabout but is eventually rescued; and somehow she's found the mummified body of an intelligent velociraptor with human bones in its stomach -- fragments of a skull with a map carved onto it. In order to analyse the raptor and its stomach contents, Benny borrows laboratory time from a nearby expedition, whose leader, Marillian, seems intrigued by her discovery. Benny decides to follow the map to its destination -- a secret chamber beneath the Sphinx. There, she discovers the skeleton of a Templar, but as she takes a rubbing of the carvings on its skull she is attacked by bandits. Marillian shows up at the last minute to rescue her and kill the last remaining bandit -- who may have been a member of the Templar order himself. But did Marillian kill him to save Benny's life or to keep him silent? Benny accompanies Marillian to London, which it turns out he owns. In order to conduct any independent research Benny requires a childbirth license, which means she has to be married. She thus agrees to marry Marillian, and thus gains access to the British Library and forbidden books of knowledge. Analysis of the bone fragments in the raptor's stomach proves that they are her own -- the DNA is identical. Benny eventually pieces together a fragmentary theory involving the Knights Templar, time travel and excised passages from religious texts; whatever is going on seems to involve the legendary "Sword of Forever", which can kill death -- or cause death -- or kill time? It sounds like a ticket to immortality, and Benny asks Marillian to clone the raptor so they can access its memories and learn more.

 

Further clues lead Benny to a box buried beneath Cleopatra's Needle by its discoverer -- who may have been a Freemason, an organisation which evolved out of the remains of the Knights Templar. Within the box is a piece of bone with carvings similar to those on a Masonic temple near Loch Ness, but as Benny tries to make her way there she is repeatedly confronted by two mysterious strangers. Newton and Kepler claim to be members of the Institution for Freedom and Benevolence, but Benny soon realizes that the IFB is in fact an offshoot of the Freemasons -- and Newton and Kepler are trying to keep her silent. Eventually, they take her to the Masonic temple she was trying to reach, and she realizes that the carvings there are too obscure to answer her questions in any case. They agree to tell her everything, but only if she agrees to undergo a Masonic initiation ritual. She does so and dreams of being crucified by a velociraptor -- or was it more than a dream?

 

** 80 million BC **

A raptor named Patience discovers a sword in a river near her home, and the Elder Sibs of her nest decide that she has shown enough intelligence to merit education. After years of learning under the Sibs, she joins forces with Raptor Old to investigate a new species which has appeared from nowhere -- humans. Accompanied by several students, Patience and Old set out on an expedition along with Raptor Fast, a representative of the Ruling Families. Most of the students flee back to the nest when they are attacked by raptors from another nest, and Old is wounded. Despite Fast's objections, Patience contacts the humans and tries to communicate with them, seeking their help. They take the wounded Old to their temple -- and he emerges some days later, healed of his mortal injuries. Despite Old's belief that the raptors can learn from the humans and communicate between their cultures, Fast is unnerved and decides that the humans are too powerful, mysterious and dangerous to live. He thus kills some of them, hoping to provoke them into striking back and killing Patience and Old, thus giving the Ruling Families the excuse they need to wipe out the humans. In the fight which follows Old is killed, and Patience, wounded, makes her way to the temple, hoping to find proof that the humans are not as primitive as Fast believed. But instead she finds Old's days-dead body, and in her confusion and terror she kills the female human guarding the box at the centre of the temple. Seeking a weapon to protect herself from the attacking humans, she then opens the box, and destroys the world.

 

** 2592 AD **

Marillian somehow rescues Benny from the Masonic temple, although he doesn't go into any details about how he found her -- and she doesn't tell him what she learned from the Masons. Patience has successfully been cloned, and the strange trio sets off for Arginy to complete Benny's previous expedition and learn the secret of the Knights Templar. But Benny is in for an uncomfortable shock when she meets Daniel's cousin, Sara, who still hasn't forgiven Benny for letting Daniel die but insists upon accompanying the expedition to Castle Arginy. Sara is the one who sent Guillaime's journal to Benny -- she was trying to forget the past, but now Benny has shown up and unearthed it again. On the way to Castle Arginy they are attacked by Templar assassins trying to stop "Gebmoses", but Patience kills them before Benny learns anything further.

 

Castle Arginy turns out to be a near-dead-end; even upon surviving the traps, Benny discovers that Guillaime accidentally took the wrong coffer from the Templar mausoleum. Although she has successfully acquired the Finger of John the Baptist, the expedition must continue through the dangerous hybrid forest to Paris, and the Templar mausoleum. There, Benny theorizes from clues in the Bible and the legends of resurrection that Jesus Christ may have been John the Baptist risen from the dead, and Marillian scans the Finger and finds identical genetic material in another coffin -- a mummified head which the Templars may have believed was the skull of Jesus himself. Marillian then holds the others at gunpoint, steals the skull and departs, leaving the others at the mercy of the human/alien hybrids that now populate Paris...

 

** 2572 AD **

A young Marillian, on behalf of his Masonic chapter, infiltrates the Jennings-Bankhurst expedition to find the fabled Ark of the Covenant -- which the Masons do not want to be found. Jennings-Bankhurst manages to trace the Ark to Axum, a centre of retroviral infestation which is due to be sterilised by the Military Red Cross. Marillian bribes the border guards and he, Jennings-Bankhurst, and their translator Ondemwu get into Axum as the Red Cross begins burning away the plant/human hybrids at the village centre. Some hybrids have retreated to the church, believing that God will protect them, and Jennings-Bankhurst is convinced that the "miracle" of which the wooden priest speaks is the Ark. Indeed it is, a small wooden box handed down throughout the millenia -- and doomed to destruction when the Red Cross nukes Axum. The Red Cross soldiers burst into the church and begin napalming the hybrids there, and in the confusion Ondemwu murders Jennings-Bankhurst and steals the Ark. Marillian eventually traces the Ark to Kampuchea, and Gebmoses III, the mad self-proclaimed Emperor of the Third World. Determined to keep the Ark out of the hands of a madman, Marillian sets off to destroy it -- but he ends up being captured and killed before the open Ark. And when he is then resurrected he is so terrified of dying again that he pledges eternal loyalty to Gebmoses III.

 

** 2592 AD **

Benny and her companions are confronted by hybrids -- including Daniel, who survived the flooding chamber after all only to be infected by the alien retroviruses. What's worse, he still loves Benny and has forgiven her, which is more than she can bear. Sara, who has known of Daniel's true fate all along, actually summoned Benny to Earth to draw Daniel out of hiding so she could kill him and end his pain, but Patience stops her, as Daniel in fact doesn't want to die. Benny, Sara and Patience return to Sara's aunt's farm in Arginy, where Newton and Kepler arrive and reveal the truth; they've known of Marillian's betrayal for years and tried to kill Benny when they first met because they believed she was working for him. They believe that the Ark is a control mechanism for the Sword of Forever, an artefact capable of creating worlds by the will of the operator. Unfortunately the operator must die in the process of using the Sword; perhaps it was never intended to be used by anyone other than God. Gebmoses III intends to use it to rule the world, but all the evidence gathered so far suggests that it will be used to create a culture which exists backwards through Time -- and that the operator who creates that culture will be Benny.

 

Benny, armed with this knowledge, goes to Marillian with the relics of Christ's death -- the Grail, the Crown of Thorns, and the Spear of Longinus -- all of which are necessary to operate the Ark and the Sword of Forever. Marillian admits that he served Gebmoses willingly after his resurrection but has come to realize that Gebmoses is insane; he intends to clone an army from the DNA in the skull of Christ, and use the army to rule the world, crushing out all individuality in favour of a single "perfect" master race. He takes her to Kampuchea, where she breakfasts with Gebmoses III and learns his true plans; he believes that the Sword is capable of creating Time, which explains how God created the world in seven days. He intends to create a new non-linear timeline in which his cloned master race can survive in an Eden pure and untouched by alien contamination. Gebmoses has his high priests crucify him so he may be resurrected by the Ark to lead his people into the world he has created -- but Marillian, Newton, Kepler and Patience are waiting, and once Gebmoses is dead Benny can fulfill her destiny. She is crucified and welcomes God into her heart as she dies, and her blood enters the Ark and the Sword is activated...

 

(And in a timeless time where time is created, Benny learns from her father, her teacher, her professor, to create life, to create the past from the future...)

 

** Legend **

The Saviour, Bernice Surprise Summerfield, gives her people the secret of DNA coding to help them be fruitful and multiply despite their gene pool having come from a single source. But the people go to war over her gifts, until, angered, she opens the Ark and allows the wrath of God to scatter her people to the corners of the world. Her knowledge is slowly forgotten and passes into legend, and she has the mystics of the Orient carve the knowledge into her living skull to preserve it for all time. Eventually the Earth approaches its birth, which her people believe to be its death; as they never discovered space travel they are doomed, and the Saviour passes on her knowledge to the last of a new species -- a raptor named Old, the new Guardian of Forever.

 

** 2592 AD **

Benny awakens but refuses to look at her body; as long as she denies that this ever happened to her she may be able to live with it. She bids goodbye to Marillian, Newton and Kepler, and returns to Dellah with Patience, to try to resume a normal life.

 

Source: Cameron Dixon

 

 

 

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Another Girl, Another Planet

by Len Beech and Martin Day             

 

 

 

Cover Blurb

Another Girl, Another Planet               

'I'm being stalked. I'm sure of it now. I'm frightened, and I need a friend.'

 

Lizbeth Fugard is an archaeologist working on a backwater rock of a world. She's bankrolled by a government she despises, and has recently split up with her partner. And, just when she thinks life can't get any worse, someone starts following her -- keeping to the shadows, but always there. Watching. Waiting. Eyes boring into her soul. The most beguiling eyes she has ever seen -- and the most terrifying.

 

All she can think of is to call on the help of her old friend Professor Bernice Summerfield, and Bernice is only too happy to get away from her own work and see a bit more of the galaxy.

 

But on arrival she is soon immersed in sabotage, political secrets, gun-running, and an age-old love affair that ended indisaster and disgrace. To end a cycle of violence and hate, Bernice and Lizbeth must discover the truth -- but doing so could have implications far beyond this obscure world.

 

Notes:

Another book in the new series of The New Adventures featuring Bernice Summerfield.

Released: August 1998

 

ISBN: 0 426 20528 6

The TERMINUS review of this book.

 

 

Synopsis

A mysterious stranger contacts Benny in the campus pub and warns her to expect danger on the planet Dimetos, and when she returns home she finds a message waiting from Lizbeth Fugard -- an industrial archaeologist currently working on Dimetos. Lizbeth believes she's being stalked, and needs Benny's help. Dimetos used to be a company world owned by Eurogen Butler, and the colonists who remained behind when EB left are currently trying to attract other business interests to their world. Lizbeth was hired to excavate old EB sites and validate the planet's cultural heritage, but lately she's suspected that someone is trying to frighten her away from her work -- and when she receives a threatening e-mail and someone fills in her dig with polycrete, this seems to confirm her suspicions. Lizbeth confesses to Benny that she suspects her ex-lover Alex Mphphalele of hiring the stalker to keep an eye on her; they split up after Lizbeth suffered a miscarriage, and Alex may not have gotten over her yet.

 

Lizbeth agrees to meet Alex at a nightclub, and Benny trails them to watch Alex and determine for herself whether he's reponsible. She catches a glimpse of Lizbeth's stalker at a nearby table, but can't make out any of his features -- apart from a pair of cold, alien eyes. Benny follows Alex when he leaves, but he spots and confronts her; when she explains her presence he assures her that he would never do anything to hurt Lizbeth. Later that night, Benny finds and destroys a surveillance device in Lizbeth's apartment.

 

The next night, Benny accompanies Alex to a government function where she meets some of the people who are funding Lizbeth's work. The government of Dimetos is currently courting the Bantu Cooperative, a company famous for its advanced weapons technology; and Lizbeth is also at the party with her new acquaintance, Karl Csokor, a Bantu representative. Alex suspects that Lizbeth is dating Karl on the rebound, while Lizbeth seems jealous of the time Benny and Alex are spending together.

 

Someone slips Benny a note arranging a secret meeting the next day; when she arrives at the location specified in the note, she meets the son of a government minister, who reveals the reason for the conspiracy. The old Eurogen Butler maps proved to be inaccurate, and the government didn't do their research properly before beginning construction. Many buildings on Dimetos have been constructed over top of unsafe old mines and abandoned nuclear reactors... and Lizbeth is on the verge of discovering this.

 

Benny shares her discovery with Alex, who decides to confront the young man and demand more information. But their conversation is monitored, and by the time they return to the marina the young man has vanished -- probably for good. Benny and Alex are pursued by two mysterious men in a hovercar, but escape thanks to Alex's piloting skills. Benny tells her story to Lizbeth, but when she suggests that the government underestimated Lizbeth's skills, and hired her for show without expecting her to discover the truth, Lizbeth is insulted. This may, however, be due to her jealous suspicion that Benny and Alex are becoming more than friends.

 

Alex arranges for Benny to speak with Katri, another representative of the Bantu Cooperative, to try to learn more about Dimetos' government policy. She claims to be researching the Cooperative on behalf of Dellah, and Katri suggests that she might get the chance to see Bantu's technology in person once their research and development facility on Dimetos is complete. As Benny leaves, she sees a strange shift in the musculature or shading on Katri's face -- and catches a glimpse of Karl Csokor, spying on her. Benny goes to Csokor's hotel to confront him but bumps into Katri, whose behaviour is more subdued for some reason. He invites her to accompany him to a public place where he can tell her more than he was permitted to earlier -- but instead he tries to blow up the car with himself and Benny inside. Benny leaps to safety before the car explodes, and while Alex tries to bring her around he too notices Csokor watching from nearby.

 

Alex and Benny try to warn Lizbeth about Csokor, but she is too jealous of their developing relationship to listen. They go to Lizbeth's office to find out how close she is to the truth, and learn that she's already discovered the government's secret but has remained silent for fear of reprisals. Now Benny and Alex must find proof of their discovery in order to protect themselves. Benny is convinced that Katri was pressured to kill her after he foolishly mentioned the existence of Bantu's R&D facility, and Csokor's surveillance of her would certainly seem to prove that Bantu is somehow involved in the conspiracy. Benny sets off to confront Mastaba, the head of the Bantu delegation, but Alex notices Lizbeth and Csokor leaving the city and decides to follow them.

 

Mastaba claims that although Katri did err in telling Benny about the new facility, his subsequent decision to kill her and himself was his own. Csokor was sent to spy on Lizbeth to learn what she had discovered, as it had become obvious to Bantu that the government was trying to cover up something. But when Benny informs Mastaba that Csokor and Lizbeth have developed a relationship, Mastaba becomes worried, as Csokor is somewhat... unstable.

 

Csokor takes Lizbeth out of the city to a park, where his entire demeanour changes without warning. Suddenly he begins babbling about morphic codes and the patterns of mythology which underwrite all existence; and then he accuses Lizbeth of being the Shiga, the ancient evil which destroyed the Naryayan people, and which (so it is said) hides in the bodies of others until it hungers again. Csokor claims to be the last of the Naryayans, and his skin dissolves into a mist which pursues Lizbeth, trying to kill her. Alex witnesses the attack, radios Benny and tries to hold off Karl until help can arrive. Benny points out to Mastaba that he really doesn't want the kind of publicity that will result from Csokor murdering Lizbeth, and Mastaba gives her temporary use of a war-scarab, a hovercar equipped with Bantu's most advanced weaponry. Benny flies out to the park and fires stun grenades at Csokor, which seem to kill him -- indicating that he wasn't as human as he appeared. In a fit of pique, before her control over the scarab is severed Benny sends it to destroy Bantu's R&D facility.

 

Alex is taken to the hospital to recover from his injuries while Benny takes the shaken Lizbeth back to her apartment to recover. But Csokor recovers in the hospital morgue, kills the two doctors who were about to perform an autopsy on him, and returns to Lizbeth's apartment to finish her off. Alex recovers and arrives just in time to rescue Lizbeth and Benny, but as they flee they are confronted by Mastaba and his personal guards. Mastaba admits that Bantu already has an interest in Dimetos; the planet was in fact already occupied when Eurogen Butler shows up, and EB bought weapons from Bantu which they used to commit genocide on the native population. Csokor is in reality the last survivor of the native Dimetan race, taken away as an example of a now-extinct species, and experimented upon by EB and Bantu. Bantu gave him a new identity and used nanotechnology to augment his already existing shape-shifting and empathic powers. Now Csokor is a living weapon... but he has become unstable, just as Katri did when they tested the same technology on him. Csokor's return to Dimetos has exacerbated his growing madness, and he has become fixated upon the legend of the Shiga and its parallels to his former life. His lover betrayed the people of Dimetos to Eurogen Butler, and he identifies Lizbeth with her.

 

Now that Mastaba has learned what the government was trying to hide from him, he no longer needs to keep the potentially embarrassing Benny, Alex and Lizbeth alive -- especially since Benny has foolishly given up her one advantage by destroying the R&D facility. But as he gives the order to kill them, one of his guards reveals himself to be the shape-shifting Csokor in disguise. Having learned the truth of his existence, Csokor loses control completely, and slaughters Mastaba and most of his guards before finally giving up the ghost and dying himself.

 

The survivors of the Bantu delegation decide to drop the matter in order to avoid any further bad publicity, but they do ask Benny to keep an eye out for any further legends of the Shiga, as the parallels to Csokor's life are uncanny. Benny suspects that they intend to turn the Shiga into a weapon if they do in fact locate it. Lizbeth and Alex reconcile, and Benny returns to Dellah, where the mysterious stranger who first warned her about Dimetos informs her that Lizbeth was kicked out of St Oscar's after discovering something she shouldn't have. When Benny next speaks to Lizbeth, Lizbeth refuses to discuss the incident -- and informs Benny that the most extensive of the native Dimetan archaeological sites used to lie beneath the Bantu R&D facility, until Benny destroyed it.

 

Source: Cameron Dixon

 

 

 

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Beige Planet Mars

by Lance Parkin and Mark Clapham              

 

 

 

Cover Blurb

Beige Planet Mars      

'Professor Summerfield, your very presence here has raised this hotel's insurance premiums by seven point two percent.'

 

It is the year 2595. Mars, once the distant target of humanity's ambitions in space, has been colonised for five hundred years. To mark the anniversary, the planet's university is holding an academic conference. Naturally, esteemed expert on Martian archaeology Bernice Summerfield is invited to present a paper based on her long career in this field.

 

But other matters distract Bernice from academia. Decades ago, hostile aliens invaded Mars. At their moment of greatest need, Mars' human population was betrayed by its leader. And although the occupation was swiftly ended, the anger of those who fought to save Mars still runs deep.

 

So when a veteran of the war is found dead, old wounds are reopened. Bernice finds herself investigating a murder with the least reliable of allies -- and soon discovers that the consequences of the Siege of Mars are far from being ancient history.

 

Notes:

Another book in the new series of The New Adventures featuring Bernice Summerfield.

Released: October 1998

 

ISBN: 0 426 20529 4

The TERMINUS review of this book.

 

 

Synopsis

Five hundred years ago humans and Martians fought on the surface of Mars, and the humans won. Fifty years ago there was another war on Mars, with alien invaders; although humanity had expected the aliens' approach and had prepared for them, at the critical moment Mars' Minister of Defense, Tellassar, did not launch the nuclear missiles. The aliens took out all launch platforms except Tellassar's missile control base, and landed on Mars, using the human population as a living shield to prevent Earth from launching an attack. Eventually humanity and its allies expelled the invaders from Mars and drove them back to their home system; but Tellassar was never seen again, and it is presumed that she was exterminated by her angry allies after the invasion failed.

 

To celebrate the 500th anniversary of the terraforming of Mars, Philip and Christina York, the humanitarian owners of YorkCorp, have sponsored an academic conference, and as an expert on native Martian culture Benny has been invited to attend. She arrives without a prepared lecture and meets some of her fellow lecturers; the elderly Elizabeth Trinity and the Pakhar Scoblow, who instantly takes a dislike to Benny. Perhaps this is because the young and attractive Gerald Makhno is such a great fan of Benny's... or perhaps it's got something to do with Scoblow's human lover in the penthouse suite of the Hotel. A convention of war veterans is also staying at the Hotel, and Benny meets and talks with old vet Isaac Deniken for a while before going to bed. That night, Makhno's seedy friends Seez and Soaz see a Xlanthi -- one of a race of vicious warriors -- climbing down the wall of the Hotel, but nobody listens to them.

 

The next morning Benny is woken by a policeman investigating Isaac's death, and when she realizes that the case is not going to be pursued she decides to investigate on her own. But before she can begin she unexpectedly runs into her ex-husband, Jason, who has written an alien-pornography novel -- an autobiography with the autobiographical bits taken out. Following a typically tempestuous reunion and lovemaking session in Jason's penthouse suite, Benny asks him to investigate Isaac's death while she tries to write her lecture. Jason, still hoping for an eventual reconciliation, agrees to do so; unfortunately, his idea of investigating is to hire Seez and Soaz to help, and the three of them get drunk and decide to break into the police station where the evidence will already have been collected. They are, unsurprisingly, arrested -- but not before finding that Isaac's heart was torn out of his body, which leads Seez and Soaz to conclude that the Xlanthi was responsible.

 

Benny bails them out but is utterly furious with Jason. Shamed, he gives her his credit chit to reimburse her, but she finds that he's already spent his entire advance and is once again stone broke. Meanwhile, Seez and Soaz follow another lead to an old folks' home and the room of a recent arrival, Cromwell. There, they find an empty Xlanthi disguise -- and flee moments before it self-destructs. Benny, meanwhile, has found evidence that Isaac was present at Tellassar's Mission Control during the war; but he can't have been Tellassar, who was female. She tries to get back to her lecture only to suffer a computer crash, and Makhno offers to help and finds that it's been infected by the remnants of a virus set to destroy all information in the terminal in Isaac's neighbouring room. When Seez and Soaz arrive with their story, they all compare notes and determine that Cromwell must be a hired assassin sent to kill Isaac -- but he has now left the planet for good, and they have no further leads.

 

Depressed and with only the sketchiest of notes, Benny is forced to begin her lecture -- but while free-associating in a desperate attempt to come up with a theme, she suddenly realizes that Elizabeth Trinity is really Tellassar. She inadvertently blurts this out in mid-speech, provoking a riot, and she, Seez and Soaz flee with Trinity before a lynch mob can tear her apart. Trinity admits that she is Tellassar, and is horrified to learn that Isaac, her lover, is dead. Ever since the 20th century, it has been decided that in order to ensure that the person with the authority to launch nuclear missiles -- thus killing uncountable millions and destroying the entire planet -- was not operating on a detached level from reality, the launch codes should be implanted inside the heart of a loved one. In order to access the codes the authority figure would have to kill the person they loved. Even faced with the arrival of invaders bent on the extermination of all life, Tellassar couldn't bring herself to cut out Isaac's living heart while he stood by and let her do it. But now somebody has done just that -- and that means that they have the launch codes for the missiles which still remain in the old Mission Control base.

 

Trinity takes Benny, Seez and Soaz to Mission Control, using her old codes to get past the defenses. There, they find that the missiles and warheads are all still present -- but the militar AI controlling them, CATCH, has been downloaded from the system computers. Over the past fifty years, AIs have been installed with limiters to prevent them from getting too complex for the human race's own good; in practical terms this means that CATCH is more advanced than the systems currently in use. And the only people with the resources to steal CATCH and run him are the Yorks. In fact, YorkCorp is facing a hostile takeover from the Bantu Co-operative, which has better computers and AI software; the Yorks, fearing that their loyal employees will suffer under the faceless corporate hands of Bantu, have stolen CATCH in order to stop this from happening.

 

Unfortunately, fifty years of isolation and downtime have driven CATCH slightly potty, and he interprets their warning of a hostile takeover to mean that Mars is once again facing invasion. When he accesses MarsNet and finds no sign of such an invasion he concludes that the invaders must be particularly devious and clever, and thus he takes over the terraform units and incites fluctuations in the gravity net and weather control in order to confuse the enemy. The Yorks, realizing that things have gone too far, flee for their private shuttle on a ship in the Borealis Sea -- and Trinity, Benny, Seez and Soaz arrive too late to stop them. They are however reunited with Jason, and are forced to rent a fishing boat to get out to the Yorks' automated liner. This isn't particularly easy; the Borealis Sea has been stocked with mutant sea leviathans for the wealthy to hunt, and they are being driven to the surface by the tectonic and weather disturbances.

 

To avoid the liner's sea defenses, Makhno rigs up a catapult which flings Benny and Jason onto the York's liner -- but Jason breaks his leg and Benny must continue on alone. She confronts the Yorks, only to find that they took these actions out of genuine concern for their employees. Now, they concede that things have gone too far, and flee Mars, leaving Benny with the laptop on which CATCH is running. Benny destroys the laptop, thus terminating CATCH and putting an end to the disruption of Mars. A rescue team arrives, led by Martian hero General Keele -- and Trinity places her fate in his hands, letting him decide whether she deserves to die for the crime of being unable to kill her lover.

 

Benny and Jason are not permanently reconciled, but they've established it as a possibility for the future. The Yorks, meanwhile, drive YorkCorp into bankruptcy in such a manner that their employees benefit from its collapse and only banks and creditors with a history of unethical and ruthless investments suffer. Before departing Mars, Benny gives Jason's nearly-expired credit chit to Seez and Soaz as thanks for their help, and soon afterwards, the first advance on Jason's novel comes in. The chit is suddenly worth millions of dollars, but Seez and Soaz decide not to tell Benny or Jason; after all, they'd just waste it.

 

Source: Cameron Dixon

 

 

 

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Where Angels Fear

by Rebeca Levene and Simon Winstone     

 

 

 

Cover Blurb

Where Angels Fear    

'Do You Believe?'

 

Something very odd is happening on the cosmopolitan planet of Dellah, home to Bernice Summerfield, famed archaeologist, adventurer, raconteur and barfly. A long-ignored religion is rapidly gaining recruits. The faithful rejoice and talk of their God walking the land once more. And in secret rooms on campus, arcane arts are practised with dangerously successful results.

 

Behind these seeming absurdities, something far darker is going on, something that has consequences for everyone. The most powerful races of the universe are running scared, withdrawing to their own strongholds, and leaving the lesser races to their fate.

 

But what can have warped reality in this way? And why? Or has the time of the gods finally come? As Bernice and her friends begin to investigate, they soon realise that in the terrible conflict to come each of them will have to choose sides.

 

Notes:

Another book in the new series of The New Adventures featuring Bernice Summerfield.

Released: December 1998

 

ISBN: 0 426 20530 8

The TERMINUS review of this book

 

 

Synopsis

God unexpectedly withdraws all of the People's agents from Earth's galaxy, abiding by the rules of the Treaty, but the angel Clarence suspects that these are more than merely precautionary measures. Before leaving he tries to convince Bernice to come to the Worldsphere with him, but as he doesn't know exactly what the danger is she chooses to remain on Dellah. She does remain suspicious of God's motives, however; neither she nor Clarence have yet figured out why God remade him in the image of a religious icon from a forbidden galaxy, especially since the People have no gods of their own except for the one they built themselves. Clarence departs from Dellah, and soon afterwards, fifteen people are found horribly slaughtered on a passenger liner, with no sign of the killer...

 

In the following weeks the University experiences an upsurge of religious sentiment, and the god Maa'lon is seen walking amongst his people, the Hut'eri. Benny's friend, the Reverend James Harker, is unnerved by the stories, as he'd always assumed Maa'lon's teachings to be metaphorical. A party of Grel arrive on Dellah to seek the facts behind the stories of gods walking, and Benny and Harker agree to accompany them to the home of the Hut'eri. Before leaving, Benny asks Emile Mars-Smith to look into the murders on the passenger liner; occult symbols were painted on the walls of the liner in the passengers' blood, and as a former cult member, Emile may be able to provide an insight into the killings.

 

Braxiatel becomes concerned when he learns that the Sultan of Tashwari is forming a "New Moral Army", which is cracking down on immoral activities across campus and demading that all students and faculty join a religion -- any religion. Furthermore, Braxiatel's people order him back home and recall his travelling machine when he refuses to leave Dellah, and the mysterious smoking man named John who warned Benny about the trouble on Dimetos reappears with dire warnings which he can't explain -- other than to say that if Braxiatel believes what's happening, that will make it all the more dangerous. At John's suggestion, Braxiatel sends the New Moral Army recruiters to the home of his friend Renee Thalia, the sole follower of the Church of the Grey. She is forced to enlist when they threaten to cut off her salary, and is furious when she learns that Braxiatel put her in this position in the hope of getting news from the inside.

 

Benny, Harker, and the Grel find that Maa'lon does indeed walk among the Hut'eri, and is just as warm and loving as the stories claim. He forgives Harker his doubts, and Harker pledges his life to the god without a second thought. Benny, however, feels that if possible Maa'lon is providing his followers with too much proof of his divinity, and shares her musings with the equally doubtful Grel Shemda. An outlying Hut'eri settlement is then attacked by the N'a'm'thuli, an offshoot of the Hut'eri race who worship a bloody god of death and vengeance. After the brutal slaughter of Hut'eri children, Maa'lon sadly concludes that the N'a'm'thuli have strayed too far from the path of light and must be taught a lesson. Harker gladly joins the Hut'eri as they prepare for war.

 

Back at the University, the New Moral Army continues to grow in strength, and the Sultan passes a decree announcing that all under his authority must join a religion of their choice or face the "ultimate sanction". People begin to take the decree more seriously when a student is stoned to death for apostasy and a Jewish professor is burned at the stake for working on a Saturday. The most attractive religion turns out to be Renee's; the Church of the Grey was founded by those who believed that the aliens of abduction legend would one day reveal themselves and bring enlightenment to humanity, and until that day comes, the Church encourages its followers to think for themselves and make up their own minds about what to believe. Renee thus ends up converting several hundred people who have no choice but to join a religion or die, and is promoted to Captain for her devotion to her religion. Braxiatel, accepting his error in manipulating her, tries to rescue her from the Army, but she now has no intention of leaving.

 

Emile, simultaneously trying to join a religion and discover the cause of the slayings on the passenger liner, is approached by Adnan, an attractive leader of an occult coven. Once Emile joins their ranks, bringing their number to thirteen, the coven is able to tap into the powers surrounding them and summon a demonic imp. Nobody is willing to pay the price the imp demands for its services, however. Emile eventually has a flash of insight thanks to a chance remark from a friend, and realizes that the murders were committed by one of the passengers on the liner -- a depressed policeman from Tyler's Folly. Needing more information, he breaks into Adnan's room to steal the grimoire, but Adnan catches him -- and reveals that he only approached Emile because the auguries had said Emile would join the group, not because he was attracted to him. Adnan allows Emile to take the book, since he was willing to risk his life for it, thus paying the ultimate price for knowledge -- a tenet of Adnan's religion.

 

Back on the Worldsphere, Clarence is contacted by a remote drone from the ship B-Aaron, which has learned that the evacuation of Earth's galaxy is being referred to as "Operation Ragnarok" -- a reference to the death of gods. They attempt to investigate, and learn that Dellah was chosen for a particular purpose since its native population only worshipped inanimate forces; unfortunately, the imprisoned entities were able to twist those religions to suit their own purposes. Clarence confronts God, who admits that Benny's chances of surviving the changes to come are negligible at best, and Clarence realizes that if she dies he will spend the rest of his very long life missing her.

 

Benny and Shemda accompany the Hut'eri army to the lands of the N'a'm'thuli despite their doubts about Maa'lon's divinity -- doubts which are not shared by James or the Grel Master. Upon discovering scores of mutilated bodies in the N'a'm'thuli territories, the Hut'eri's anger grows until they finally fall upon the N'a'm'thuli hordes and battle is joined. Their faith appears to grant them all superhuman strength, but as they fight their way through the N'a'm'thuli towards their dark nameless god, Benny and Shemda notice Maa'lon observing the slaughter with a smile on his face. Just as James is about to kill the nameless god of the N'a'm'thuli, Maa'lon announces that this was all a test to see how far his followers would go in the name of their belief, and that the god of the N'a'm'thuli is an aspect of himself as well. The belief of his followers is unshakeable, and he orders them to kill the unbelievers. Benny and Shemda flee, and hide in an abandoned underground temple as the Hut'eri and N'a'm'thuli search for them.

 

Braxiatel realizes that things have gone too far when the University board refuses to stand up to the Sultan's decree. He goes to John for advice, and John is appalled when Braxiatel casually mentions that he sent Benny to investigate the appearance of Maa'lon. John rushes off to rescue her while Braxiatel leads the surviving academics to the spaceport, to evacuate while they still can. Emile, meanwhile, uses the grimoire to summon the imp and strike a bargain with it, and learns that the Tyleran policeman, having awoken his own god's brethren, has returned to the spaceport to blow it up and trap more potential followers on Dellah. The spaceport security guards won't listen to Emile, but he finds Braxiatel and warns him of the danger. Together they use the grimoire to broadcast Emile's own fear into the crowd, thus evacuating the spaceport. Emile remains behind to find and defuse the bomb, but fails -- and, trapped with the bomb about to go off in front of him, he must keep his bargain with the imp.

 

Shemda informs Benny that there are 512 major religions on Dellah, all of which sprang into existence within the space of a century three thousand years ago, and all of which regard the gods as originating from beneath the surface of the world. Believing that the hunt has died down, Benny and Shemda emerge from the temple only to be trapped between their pursuers and the worshippers of the god Anoouki -- who has also appeared to his people. Maa'lon gives them one more chance to worship him, but Benny has finally realized what the "gods" really are -- and much more besides. Just as James is about to kill Benny, John arrives, and the gods find that they have no power over him; he simply isn't afraid of them, knowing they are parasites who feed off their followers' belief, twisting their minds and disposing of them when they are of no further use. John sends Benny and Shemda to safety, but as they depart Maa'lon decides that John is bluffing and is in fact frightened of their power. John's fear gives Maa'lon the hold he needs to control his mind, and he psychosomatically splits open John's skin and bursts both of his hearts. The Grel Master then uses his data link to his orbiting spacecraft to shoot down Benny and Shemda's skimmer before it can reach safety.

 

Braxiatel attempts to lead the refugees to a safe point designated by John, but Renee and her followers pursue them with orders to arrest them and kill Braxiatel. Having been told that her god will appear to her if she carries out her orders, Renee places Braxiatel before a firing squad, and waits. The Grey arrives to support her actions, but Renee unexpectedly reveals that, following First Contact, the Church amended its tenets; the Grey is an ideal, not a real alien, to be sought and not found. Before the Grey can react, Renee and her followers turn their weapons on it and blast it to ash. Thus having escaped the New Moral Army, they release Braxiatel and accompany the refugees to their destination -- a fleet of ships assembled by John to evacuate the people of Dellah. The Sultan's troops eventually realize what's happened and pursue them, and the fleet is forced to take off -- and Braxiatel is forced to abandon Benny.

 

Having crashed their shuttle short of the fleet's landing site, Benny and Shemda are once again menace by a god who demands their worship, but this time they are rescued by Clarence and B-Aaron. The god's worshippers are transfixed by the sight of an angel, and their temporary confusion combined with B-Aaron's shielding enables Clarence to fly Benny and Shemda to safety. Clarence admits what Benny had already guessed; the gods on Dellah are the former gods of the People. After they were expelled from the Worldsphere, God genetically engineered the psychic need for gods out of the People's mindset to prevent them from returning. The gods were imprisoned within Dellah because its native religions were based upon the worship of natural forces, but they were able to twist those religions to suit themselves, and due to the Treaty God was unable to keep as close to the situation as he had hoped. And once the gods escaped, he pulled his people out, and left the natives to fend for themselves.

 

Benny realizes that all the time she thought God was interested in her, he was just using her presence as a gambit to keep an eye on Dellah. She and Clarence now understand that God made him in the form of an angel in anticipation of this day, as demonstrated by the effect of his appearance upon the god's worshippers. But as the gods continue to grow in strength, even Clarence may not be enough to shake their followers' belief. Shemda locks the Grel Master out of the ship's systems and launches a buoy which will warn other Grel away from the planet. The escape fleet quarantines Dellah, cutting it off from the rest of the galaxy; perhaps confining the gods to a single world will be enough. But on one of the ships, a changed Emile is searching for believers...

 

Source: Cameron Dixon

 

 

 

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The Mary-Sue Extrusion

by Dave Stone               

 

 

 

Cover Blurb

The Mary-Sue Extrusion         

'Bernice Summerfield seemed to hold the key. She was in it up to her neck, and she was the one person left who could tell me what I needed to know. I rather hoped it wouldn't be necessary to snap said neck and kill her.'

 

The planet Dellah was once one of the cultural centres of the galaxy. Now, it lies in ruins and things walk through the barren landscape, twisting the unfortunates who remain there to their unholy will.

 

The tragic effects of this cataclysm have been felt throughout local space, from cruel and draconian Thanaxos to the multiplexal chaos of the Proximan Chain Rafts. All know the ultimate result: a war is coming - is inevitable - and is set to blow the fragile stability of the galactic sector apart.

 

Only one person has the pieces of the puzzle that might prevent the coming collapse - Bernice Summerfield. The problem is, she's missing, and what's more she's not feeling precisely herself. And if Benny doesn't find out exactly who she is, and how she can fit into her newly shattered world, there isn't going to be a world for her to come back to at all.

 

Notes:

Another book in the new series of The New Adventures featuring Bernice Summerfield.

Released: February 1999

 

ISBN: 0 426 20531 6

The TERMINUS review of this book.

 

 

Synopsis

The quarantine of Dellah has destabilised the balance of power in its sector of the galaxy, and the multiplexal corporation Pseudopod Enterprises needs an agent in the area to represent their interests. A special agent with Stratum Seven clearance has just arrived on Earth's Moonbase looking for work, but moments after accepting Pseudopod's offer an attempt is made on the agent's life. The agent survives and attends a meeting with Volan, a company director -- or rather, a method actor with subliminal implants who plays the part of Volan in Earthspace, just as other actors represent him in other regions of the galaxy. After being briefed on the situation, the agent sets off for the Dellahan sector, and conducts initial research which indicates that a certain Bernice Summerfield may have crucial information about the quarantine. Since she is a noted heroine of the "True Adventures of the New Frontier", a pulp fiction series based on real-life incidents from the fringes of Earthspace, the agent passes the time reading some of the novels to get an idea of her personality. "Berni" in the books comes across as a fast-talking, quick-witted, gun-slinging heroine who can always rely on her dumb but loyal ex-husband Jason as a sidekick.

 

Having determined that many Dellahan fugitives were evacuated to Thanaxos, the agent deliberately crashes on Thanaxos in a stolen spaceship and makes enough of a fuss about the incident to get arrested and sent to a refugee centre. The refugees have simply been dropped in a platform camp over a hundred kilometres out to sea and left to fend for themselves, and the camp has become a hellhole run by the criminal gangs. The agent begins looking for Benny while establishing credentials amongst the gangs, and eventually takes on an assignment to rescue a former professor from St Oscar's who is being held by a rival gang. Instead of taking Professor Jones to the other gang, however, the agent questions him about Benny, and is disappointed when the traumatised Jones claims that she was taken away by an angel, which the agent interprets to mean that she's dead.

 

When Jones is accidentally killed in the escape attempt, the agent sinks into a state of depression, but fortunately rescue comes in the form of a news team led by interplanetary reporter Sela Dane. The agent once rescued Sela and her team from a group of White Fire terrorists, and they developed a relationship; Sela thus convinces the guards that the agent is in fact an undercover member of her team. The agent returns with her to the Thanaxan capital, where it becomes apparent that the people are preparing for war in the hope of establishing Thanaxos as the new centre of power in this sector. The agent is invited to the House Royal, where the Minister of Foreign Affairs turns out to be the Thanaxan version of Volan. A diplomatic party from Thanaxos has been invited to Dellah, and Volan offers to hire the agent as a bodyguard for Prince G'jimo, an inbred congenital idiot commonly known as Jimbo. The agent checks in with the Earth-Volan first, and then accepts the mission, hoping to track down Benny from Dellah. Sela also insists upon being allowed to accompany the mission.

 

For some reason the people of Dellah ignore the agent's presence in their midst, and thus, certain that the "talks" are just window-dressing before the war starts, the agent takes the first opportunity to slip away with Jimbo to the ruins of St Oscar's. Evidence suggests that a ship recently landed in the ruins and then took off again, and a trail leads the agent to the Xeno/archaeology department, and Benny's abandoned diary. The diary contains anecdotes about Benny's life and her lover Rebecca, philosophical asides and comments on the pain of existence -- and ends with the revelation that Benny has done a "Mary-Sue", an old term for inserting oneself into a work of fiction. Rather than face the pain of having lost everything she loved once again, she has rewritten over her personality with a new one, to start her life over elsewhere. Blinded by this understanding, the agent fails to notice that Jimbo has begun to behave oddly -- and when, after a night of bad dreams, Sela breaks off her "immoral" relationship with the agent, the agent is too hurt to question her decision. Instead, the agent returns Jimbo to the diplomatic party and sets off for the Proximan Chain Rifts, the only place in the galaxy where Benny could get a Mary-Sue done.

 

Eventually the agent's nosing around attracts the attention of Jason Kane, whose sources confirm that the agent is a genetically constructed bioweapon from the Catan Nebula. Jason lures the agent to a meeting where his quasi-telepathic associate Mira confirms that the agent doesn't mean Benny any arm. The agent in turn claims to have a genuine personality, lifted from the memory banks of a 21st-century think tank after the original body was shot by company goons for inciting rebellion against their policies, and eventually relocated and implanted in an artificial body. The agent hands over Benny's diary, and Jason realizes from the references to Rebecca what Benny has done. The agent accompanies Jason and Mira to Beta Caprisis, Benny's birth planet, where Jason is horrified to find the emaciated Benny grinning childishly, telling them her name is Rebecca, and showing them her childhood doll, "Benny".

 

The hired guns who tried to kill the agent on the moonbase arrive on Beta Caprisis, but Mira and the agent overpower them and leave them stranded on the planet. On their way back to Thanaxos, the agent researches the goons' identities and finds that they are simply petty thugs, who must have been working for someone else -- someone who wants the agent dead and doesn't care who gets caught in the crossfire. Jason reawakens Benny's original personality, and she reveals that she didn't undergo the Mary-Sue in order to escape the horror of her life, although she admits that thought might have had some subconscious bearing on her decision. In fact, she did it because she felt the gods of Dellah tugging on her mind to bring her back, and tried to escape their attention by temporarily turning herself into someone else. The agent learns what really happened to Dellah -- and then sees a recent press release from Thanaxos written by Sela Dane, pledging eternal loyalty to the High Gods and their prophet G'jimo...

 

Before returning to Thanaxos, Benny takes the others to a deserted planet where Emile Mars-Smith has shut himself off from the rest of the galaxy in the hope of containing the power which has possessed him. With the help of Mira's quasi-telepathic powers and Emile's ironclad self-control, they are able to take Emile off the planet without falling victim to the powers of the entity within him. The people of Thanaxos are beginning to fall victim to the religious fervour which gripped Dellah and their preparations for war are becoming preparations for a jihad. But Benny and her friends are able to get Emile to the House Royal, where his entity confronts and consumes the entity within G'jimo. As it grows in strength, Mira finds she is no longer able to control it -- but the agent, who as an artificial life form is not affected by the gods' influence, simply punches Emile in the face, knocking him out and allowing Mira to regain control.

 

Those controlled by G'jimo's entity return to normal, but before returning Emile to his self-imposed solitude, the agent confronts the Thanaxan Volan, having realized that he has been using his political connections on Thanaxos to embezzle money from Pseudopod Enterprises. It is this Volan who hired the assassins to kill the agent so his scams wouldn't be discovered. Volan flees, creating a distraction with a bomb keyed to kill the most stupid person in the room. Fortunately, the public reaction to Prince G'jimo's death disperses the tension amongst the populace and war is thus averted. The agent realizes that the original Volan always inteded to expose the schemes of his counterpart, and that all the rest of what happened was just window-dressing. The agent contacts associates who will ensure that Sela Dane's career survives her recent embarrassing press releases, and then writes up a report in the form of a fictional narrative -- excising or rewriting all personal information, to ensure that anyone who doesn't already know who he, or she, is, will never be able to tell.

 

Source: Cameron Dixon

 

 

 

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Dead Romance

by Lawrence Miles     

 

 

 

Cover Blurb

Dead Romance           

'All right, let's start with the basics. The world ended on the twelfth of October, Nineteen Seventy...'

 

I don't know why I'm writing this. It's not like anybody's going to read it. At least, nobody who cares about the fact that I'm a desparate, dying, 23-year-old human being who's just had the whole of history taken away from her.

 

To whoever's out there, to whatever's left, this is the way things were, just before the end. This is the story about the last days of London, about murder and love and waking up in the ruins, about all the people buried in the wreckage...

 

I'm lying, obviously. This is my story. This is what I was doing, when October the twelfth came. Because, let's face it, I'm the only one who really matters.

 

I'm the only one who got out alive.

 

Notes:

Another book in the new series of The New Adventures featuring former Doctor Who companion Chris Cwej.

Released: April 1999

 

ISBN: 0 426 20532 4

The TERMINUS review of this book.

 

 

Synopsis

Just before midnight on 27 September 1970, two weeks before the end of the world, a young woman named Christine Summerfield is found in an abandoned building site, babbling and screaming. She calms down by the time she gets to the local police station, and eventually they release her, as it isn't worth holding her and they've just arrested someone much more important. Two unidentified young women have recently been killed and mutilated in a manner reminiscent of the Manson killings, and the police have just arrested a tall blond man who was behaving suspiciously in the area of the building site, and carrying unidentified electronic components and a sharp knife. Christine returns to the shop of her friend and drug dealer Lady Diamond, where she is attacked by a man who looks like Manson. After biting her leg open, he departs from the shop, and Christine is left with the confused impression that he somehow changed shape and sprouted wings as he left. Bleeding profusely from her leg, Christine returns to the police station, only to find no sign of any other policemen; the creature has forced its way through to the cell area, leaving the desk sergeant in a state of shock. Christine passes down a hallway which seems longer than physically possible, and reaches the cell with the blond man, who has surrounded himself with electronic components and is chanting a poem loop to contain the creature -- now a fleshy lump with a glass-mirror face and a single, bat-like wing.

 

Christine faints from shock and blood loss, and awakens the next morning to find herself in the blond man's flat. Her leg has been patched up with with a lump of false tissue which is growing into place. As she explores, she hears the blond man on the phone, arranging to change the terms of a treaty so the people on the other end will have access to the technology which will permit them to develop time travel. The blond man, who seems nervous and hesitant around her for some reason, introduces himself as Chris Cwej and apologises for getting her involved; since she interrupted the ceremony to control the sphinx, however, she has become a part of it, and he had no choice but to bring her here with him.

 

Cwej is an agent of a race of time travellers, having worked for them since they rescued him from one of their own kind, an Evil Renegade who travels through Time interfering with other civilisations, kidnapping people and then depositing them randomly throughout the Universe whenever he tires of playing mind games with them. The creature from the cell is a sphinx, a creature which feeds on extradimensional forces and excretes raw space-time. In the 26th century, the galaxy -- and possibly all of time and space -- is under threat by the Gods, creatures whose origins are still unknown; they may even be part of the fundamental forces which hold the Universe together. Most of the Gods have only recently woken, but some have been active for some time already. The Evil Renegade once fought the sphinx's gods, the Kings of Space, and fled with a bottle of sphinx-shaped space containing an entire Universe. After Cwej left him, the bottle fell into the hands of the time travellers, and they intend to plant a team in the bottle to carry on rtheir culture should the Gods attack their home world. Cwej was sent into the bottle first, to prepare the way and open up the bottle from the inside so the survival team could get in. But he hasn't opened it yet.

 

Cwej shows Christine the sphinx which he captured; it is a control antibody programmed to remove all alien material from the bottle environment, and Christine guesses that it went for her and then changed its mind when it scented Cwej on her from their brief encounter at the police station. When she asks about the two previous murders, Cwej realizes from the sphinx's reply that there is something else present in London, a third party whose presence may endanger the time travellers' agenda. He uses the sphinx to open up a path out of the bottle into the real Universe, and another agent, Khiste, arrives in response. The time travellers have given Khiste the ability to regenerate his body tissue after injury, and he has changed his appearance, becoming a more and more efficient warrior until his skin looks like a suit of leathery, impenetrable armour. He ignores Christine, and warns Cwej that they have a problem outside; the sphinxes have come to the fortress on Simia KK98 to take back the bottle.

 

Christine accompanies Cwej and Khiste out of the bottle to see the truth for herself, and finds herself in a fortress on a psychedelically coloured world where the soldier agents of the time travellers are preparing to fight an army of sphinxes. The sphinxes fight by reshaping the space through which the time travellers pass, and Khiste has sent for reinforcements, a fleet of warships which could destroy the entire world. In a desperate attempt to prevent a battle, Cwej goes to speak with the sphinxes and makes a dangerous deal. The Kings of Space aren't interested in the machinations of the other Gods from whom the time travellers wish to hide, and if the sphinxes agree to let the time travellers use the bottle as a survival zone, then the time travellers will negotiate for the exchange of time technology. The sphinxes find this bargain acceptable.

 

Christine returns to the bottle with Cwej, where he releases the control sphinx under the terms of the new treaty. Christine is numbed by her realization that her world isn't real, and Cwej convinces her to stay with him where it will be safe, and she realizes there's nothing left for her in her old life in any case. On the one occasion when she returns to Lady Diamond's shop she sees a blonde girl sitting in her accustomed place, acting exactly as she used to, and returns to Cwej without even saying hello to her old friends. Over the next several days, Cwej travels the galaxy outside the bottle, contacting various other powers and making deals with them to trade time technology in exchange for alliances; the other powers don't necessarily have to fight alongside the time travellers, as long as they agree not to fight against them.

 

Christine is now sleeping with Cwej, and she accompanies him to a couple of the treaty signings -- one on a world turned inside out with a sun in the centre, and one where a sphinx pulls apart the body of a soldier, occupies the space within his body and uses it to sign the treaty. Cwej assures Christine that the soldier was specially bred in a vat for this purpose, but this doesn't make her feel any better. At one point Christine makes love with Khiste just to see what it's like, and is amused when Khiste doesn't understand the lack of resolution between them later. She also learns that she shares a surname with a friend of Cwej's, Benny Summerfield, who went missing and was presumed killed after her home world, Dellah, was taken over by the Gods.

 

Eventually, the control sphinx determines the nature of the third party in the bottle. Control of the bottle's operating system involves the use of psionic rituals, and the more advanced rituals require human sacrifice; but when Cwej first entered the bottle, his employers didn't fully understand the rituals required, and used their own technology to penetrate the final barriers. In so doing, they opened a connection between the bottle and the Vortex, a null-dimension which exists outside space-time. Over millions of years, by accident or design, various people, places and things have become lost in the Vortex, an eternity of living death without form; and now these creatures have entered the operating system of the bottle, infecting the very structure of its universe. These ghosts are now trying to change the rules of the Universe to make new bodies for themselves, and according to the terms of the new treaty, if Cwej can't expel the alien matter from the bottle Universe, the sphinxes will destroy everything and start over again.

 

Cwej's employers place a monitoring station in orbit to keep an eye out for the ghosts, and soon the people of Earth start to spot anomalies; strange flying animals are seen and the inhabitants of a mental institution in India transform into sphinx-like creatures. A fossil of a half-man, half-sphinx creature appears in a quarry, and Cwej realizes that although it's millions of years old it has only been there for a few hours; since the ghosts are now part of the bottle's operating code, they can affect all of Time and Space within. Cwej and Christine visit Simia KK98 to discuss the problem with the time travellers' scientists, and while there, Christine sees more clones being bred in vats of intelligent liquid; per the treaty, these will be used to take the biodata of the time travellers to sphinx-space.

 

The ghosts create a body for their collective intelligence, which takes the form of a living hole, the shape of a sphinx, between the bottle Universe and the outside world. Cwej attempts to convince the Horror to leave the Earth alone, but the Horror is only interested in destruction and begins to claw apart London. Cwej is apparently lost in the carnage, but Khiste takes Christine back to the monitoring station. The Horror has already blocked access to the outside Universe and it now attacks the monitoring station as those aboard make a desperate attempt to regain control. Christine, in a state of shock but determined not to hide from the inevitable, confronts the Horror head-on and demands an explanation. She is allowed into the heart of the Horror, where all of the people lost to the Vortex over the centuries have been joined into a single group being, controlled by a vast computer which was expelled into the Vortex in the 25th century following a battle with Chris' "Evil Renegade".

 

The Horror explains that, in the Vortex, all is revealed to be less than meaningless; even meaninglessness is a concept with some meaning. Obsessed with its own anger and pain, and granted a perspective over everything in all of Time and Space, the Horror knows that there is no reason at all not to destroy everything it encounters. Christine, however, points out that if there's no reason for anything then there's no reason not to be happy. The Horror is now a part of her Universe, where things aren't neatly resolved; therefore, she suggests that it take on human form and live as a human for thirty years to find out how things work in her world, rather than just destroying everything. The Horror is intrigued by her suggestion but isn't convinced that it's worth it, and in sheer desperation Christine challenges it to a game of rock-paper-scissors. She wins, best out of three, and the Horror agrees to her terms. The Earth is thus saved.

 

Cwej turns out to have survived the attack, but over the next few weeks as he recovers from his injuries he becomes difficult and standoffish. Finally on the night of 11 October, he leaves the flat for a walk, telling her to stay where she is. Instead, she decides to return to her old home for the first time in two weeks, but once there she finds a photograph of herself and her friends -- with the blonde girl from Lady Diamond's shop in her place. Finally realizing the truth, she returns to Cwej's flat and breaks open the padlocked room she has never entered, where she finds a vat of intelligent liquid programmed with the memories she thought were her own. She goes to the building site where she was found babbling by the police two weeks ago, but is too late; Cwej has already killed the clone which he has been growing in the tank for the past two weeks.

 

The advanced control procedures for the bottle require human sacrifice, and since Cwej was unwilling to kill even the "unreal" bottle people, he grew his own sacrifices and named them after himself and his friend Benny. The Christine Summerfields were programmed with the memories of a girl he met when he first entered the bottle, in order to make them real enough to count as sacrifices. The third Christine somehow managed to get away from him, and by the time he found her again her memories had settled into place and she had become too "real" for him to kill. The incidents with the sphinxes and the Horror have delayed him, but his orders still stand -- and with this third sacrifice, he has completed the ritual which will allow his employers to enter the bottle. And they aren't sending in a survival team; they're moving their entire culture into the bottle, uprooting themselves from their homeworld and invading the bottled Earth to make a new home as far away from the Gods as possible. This, of course, means the end of the world.

 

Christine never resolves her issues with Cwej, a generally good and decent man who deliberately sacrificed three people and brought the world to an end. The time travellers begin to reshape the Earth to their own needs, ignoring the human race as an irrelevance except for those who choose to surrender to a new life as the time travellers' servants. Christine leaves the bottle for the "real" Universe, where she sets off on a quest to find the time travellers' homeworld, which has now been abandoned and ruined so the Gods will never suspect the time travellers' race ever existed. As the last survivor of the bottle-world Earth, Christine decides to find Benny Summerfield, the closest thing she has to family in this Universe. If she can't do that, she will find the Gods, whom she suspects are inhabitants of the Universe beyond this one. Perhaps if she continues moving onwards and upwards, through different levels of reality, she will some day find the one which is really real.

 

Source: Cameron Dixon

 

 

 

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Starring Lisa Bowerman

A1-1      Oh No It Isn't  Audio

A1-2      Beyond the Sun            Audio

A1-3      Walking to Babylon    Audio

A1-4      Birthright           Audio

A1-5      Just War             Audio

A1-5a   Buried Treasures          Audio

A1-6      Dragon's Wrath             Audio

 

 

 

Adventures in the 27th Century

YOUNG BERNICE SUMMERFIELD

N15      Genius Loci     Novel

N17      Old Friends [The Ship of Painted Shadows]               3 Novellas

N20      Missing Adventures    Short Stories

N21      The Vampire Curse     3 Novellas

 

THE NEW ADVENTURES

N01      The Dead Man Diaries              Short Stories

N02      The Doomsday Manuscript  Novel

A2-1      The Secret of Cassandra       Audio

N03      The Gods of The Underworld               Novel

N04      The Squire's Crystal  Novel

A2-2     The Stone's Lament   Audio

A2-3     The Extinction Event  Audio

N05      The Infernal Nexus      Novel

A2-4     The Skymines of Karthos        Audio

N06      The Glass Prison          Novel

A3-1      The Greatest Shop in the Galaxy        Audio

A3-2     The Green Eyed Monster        Audio

AS-1      The Plague Herds of Excelis Audio

A3-3     The Dance of the Dead            Audio

N07      A Life of Surprises       Short Stories

A3-4     The Mirror Effect           Audio

DW        The Company of Friends [Benny's Story]     Audio

A4-1      The Bellotron Incident              Audio

A4-2     The Draconian Rage  Audio

A4-3     The Poison Seas           Audio

N08      Life During Wartime   Short Stories

A4-4     Death and the Daleks               Audio

N09      The Big Hunt   Novel

A5-1      The Grel Escape           Audio

A5-2     The Bone of Contention          Audio

N10      A Life Worth Living      Short Stories

A5-3     The Relics of Jegg-Sau              Audio

A5-4     Masquerade of Death               Audio

DWM5 Silver Lining    Audio

N11      A Life in Pieces              3 Novellas

N12      Tree of Life       Novel

A6-1      The Heart's Desire      Audio

A6-2     The Kingdom of the Blind       Audio

A6-4     The Goddess Quandary          Audio

N13      Parallel Lives  3 Novellas

N14      Something Changed Short Stories

A6-3     The Lost Museum       Audio

A6-5     The Crystal of Cantus              Audio

A7-1      The Tartarus Gate        Audio

A7-2     Timeless Passages    Audio

A7-3     The Worst Thing in the World               Audio

N16      Collected Works          Short Stories

A7-4     The Summer of Love  Audio

N17      Old Friends [Cheating the Reaper / The Soul's Prism]         3 Novellas

A7-5     The Oracle of Delphi  Audio

A7-6     The Empire State          Audio

A8-1      The Tub Full of Cats   Audio

A8-2     The Judas Gift                Audio

A8-3     Freedom of Information          Audio

N19      Nobody's Children      3 Novellas

N18      The Two Jasons            Novel

A8-4     The End of the World Audio

A8-5     The Final Amendment              Audio

A8-6     The Wake          Audio

A9-1      Beyond the Sea            Audio

A9-2     The Adolescence of Time       Audio

A9-3     The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel       Audio

A9-4     The Diet of Worms      Audio

A10-1   Glory Days       Audio

A10-2  Absence            Audio

A10-3  Venus Mantrap             Audio

A10-4  Secret Origins               Audio

N22      Secret Histories           Short Stories

N23      Present Danger             Short Stories

01          Dead and Buried          1 episode

A11-1   Resurrecting the Past               Audio

A11-2   Escaping the Future   Audio

A11-3   Year Zero           Audio

A11-4   Dead Man's Switch    Audio

 

 

 

 

Bernice Summerfield Themes

New Adventure Theme            Bernice Summerfield Song

New Adventure Theme            Bernice Summerfield Song

 

 

 

CHARACTERS IN THE BERNICE SUMMERFIELD AUDIOS

(External links to Wikipedia)

Bernice Summerfield

Jason Kane

Irving Braxiatel