The Dimension Riders.

by Daniel Blythe.

Prologue.

Input For a full day and night, the Cardinal's mind wrestled with the creatures in the Matrix.

The observers monitored his breathing and the beating of his hearts, and occasionally they would hear words half-forming on his parched lips. No one knew what demons had assailed him, but when he finally emerged from his ordeal, he was drained and grey. He was helped to the recuperation chamber by two Capitol guards, and accompanied by his fellow statesmen, but it soon became clear that the mind games had caused more damage than had been at first apparent.

The systems indicated that regeneration was imminent, and the watchers relaxed, confident that the Cardinal, refreshed in his new body, would be able to tell them what he had found at the heart of the Panotropic Net.

The regeneration never came. The incredulous medics checked the systems, and checked again. There could be no doubt. The Cardinal was dead. Subsequent analysis was to reveal that he had come to the end of the twelve regenerations of a Time Lord body. And yet his last incarnation had been only his second.

Somehow, the Cardinal's life had been eaten away from within. Some force with its roots deep in the Matrix had stolen his remaining regenerations, and he had aged to death.

Fearful members of the High Council suspected what had caused the Cardinal's accident. As some pointed out, his hearts had been healthy, his constitution strong. And if the suspicions were correct, then a long-buried menace had once again been released upon the universe.

(from 'The Worshipful And Ancient Law Of Gallifrey')

The captive within the silver sphere shivered with fear and anger. The probes which injected the information sent twinges into it, new data, new food. And as it had done now for some time, the sphere swung in its perpetual motion through the freezing room, a motion unending and rhythmic.

Surely there had to be an end for the prisoner. But for now, it was bent to the will of another. Through the probes, in impulses half-heard and half-felt, came the voice of its torturer.

'You can see the Time Lords' history is rich, my friend.' There was a brief pause, which could have been a clearing of the throat, or a giggle. 'Like anything rich, it goes rotten rather quickly. You know some secrets now...'

The prisoner was not interested in this creature's machinations. All it could articulate was a silent scream of Freedom Freedom, a jet of icy breath within the sphere.

'Oh later, later,' said the captor, who now sounded rather irritable. 'We have a history lesson to do first. With your power, I can summon a legend. A creature of dark history, banished long ago. Someone we both know did something very important to keep that creature trapped in the Matrix. Now supposing... just supposing that never happened?'

The captive bristled with fear now. It could feel information prodding and poking it, tingling like a million needles.

Two essential pivots. Earth, 1993, and deep space, in the late twenty-fourth century. Those were the breakthrough points. Two holes, between which the line was to be gashed.

'The Doctor,' said the captor's gleeful voice, 'has just returned from one of those interesting alternative universes. Now he's back in the real cosmos. Almost the same time, almost the same place. I've selected our most appropriate meddler...'

An image of a human face was implanted on the creature's mind. On the walls, the clusters of time-lines flickered with energy. It could taste the force it was calling on, now, and the captive sensed what was, for it, akin to horror.

It knew what it was being asked to do.

The previous test of the Doctor had been a challenge, almost a diversion for it. This, though, was something new, dangerous. It was something untried.

There had to be an end.

It saw the images in its mind. The process was beginning, and nothing could be done.

Chapter 1.

Time Ghosts.

Half the galaxy had been abandoned, Henson knew that. But he thought the salvage squads had moved in after the first cease-fires, picked everything clean, then vanished. He had certainly not expected to see Station Q4 still intact. It was just coming into view against the blackness on his monitor.

He took the survey module in low. His instruments recorded Rubcjek's craft, the twin sister of his own, keeping a constant linear distance from him and descending at the same velocity. Henson heard her voice in his helmet. It sounded as clear as if she were whispering close in his ear. As clear as the time when she had, in fact.

'Keep this gentle. We don't know who might have got there before us.'

They could already see that something was very wrong with the space station. It ought to have been alive with the glitter of shuttles and lights, blazing with beacons, but the central globe was dark, like a forgotten asteroid. Henson's infra-red detectors should have been dancing madly. They were still. The sub-space interceptors, which should have been picking up a chattering crowd of communications before they were three hemi-traks from Lightbase, were emitting nothing but a quiet clicking. A death rattle.

Henson guided his module around the towering pillar, the central body of the station, which skewered the globe like a stick through a cherry. Rubcjek, meanwhile, was skimming at right angles along the secondary arm.

'Are you getting all this?' he murmured.

'All what, Matt? It's dead. The whole place.'

'I wish you wouldn't use emotive vocabulary.'

'Are we going in?'

'I don't think we have a choice. Scan the docking bays.'

'Have done. All reflex systems inoperative. No, wait '

Henson held his breath as he nudged the craft back round the edge of the station's hull. He was responding to an urge to get Rubcjek's module in sight. The detectors picked her up as a glittery dart aiming for the primary arm.

'What is it, Tanja?' he snapped.

'Bays 24 and 25 are open.'

'What do you mean, open?'

Her voice, louder, nearly deafened him. 'As in not closed, all right? Head round thirty degrees, you'll get a full-face scan and see what I mean.'

'So that's the way we go in,' Henson said.

They met in the vast, cathedral-high darkness of the docking bay, two silver-suited figures picked out on each other's infra-red scanners. Henson didn't like the way he could hear the blood rushing in his head. Normally he would have looked into his partner's eyes for comfort, but the anti-glare film of gold on her helmet rendered her anonymous. Another astronaut. The second half of a two-module unit and no more.

The detectors were registering minimal air in the station itself, but strangely the level was constant. If there had been a leak, it had somehow been stabilized.

Henson did not like the idea of what they might find on the other side of the airlock. He paused with his hand a few centimetres from the release button.

Rubcjek, impatient, slammed the control.

Above their heads, the airlock door rumbled into unseen heights. They stepped into the main body of the station.

Henson swept the scanner in a forty-five degree arc, saw the readings and turned a full circle, waiting for the information. He didn't need to relay it.

'Massive structural instability,' Rubcjek had reached the same conclusion, her voice barely audible in his ear. 'Internal molecular disruption of all surfaces.'

'You mean the whole damn place is falling apart,' Henson responded flatly. His glove pushed an internal bulkhead, and came away with a handful of dust. He was sure that the aural sensors were picking up creaks and groans, like the sounds of metal and joints under massive pressure. He stepped further into the corridor, the detector pad a guiding hand in the unknown.

And then he found the first crew member.

It was not the ragged uniform, hanging in threads, that made him stop in horror, nor the way the snapped body was rammed up against the bulkhead at an obscenely unnatural angle, the spine evidently broken. Henson's fear and disgust, making his call to his partner stick in his throat, was caused by his sight of the crewman's face. The skin was a yellowish-grey, blotched with brown, and it had shrunk so that it barely covered the skull. All that remained of the jawbone was a rivulet of dust around the neck. The eye-sockets were empty, and the hands were claws with only shredded remnants of parchment-like skin hanging from the bone.

Rubcjek joined him. She shuddered once, briefly, almost as if to get the standard reaction out of the way. Then she swept the scanner across the man's shrivelled body, reading the input relayed by the Rontgen ray.

Henson kept his voice level. 'So how did it happen?'

The answer, when it came, was equally calm, as if Rubcjek were hoping to forestall the hatred, the incredulity.

'This man is three hundred years old, Henson. He died of natural causes.'

In the control centre, still and dusty, they found more. Some still bore the remains of flesh. Others had decayed to no more than bones, shreds of ancient uniforms hanging on the rib-cages, grinning skulls meeting the two surveyors' gazes as if in mockery of their horror. One of the tallest skeletons was sitting upright in the Supervisor's chair. His hand, or what remained of it, was gripped firmly around the disc of the distress button.

Henson was at the control panels, sweeping dust and debris aside. He flicked a couple of switches experimentally, and to his surprise the relevant panels were illuminated. 'There's power left in these circuits,' he said.

Rubcjek did not answer. Henson looked up, and saw that her attention was fixed on something else. He joined her on what had been the mezzanine gallery of the control centre.

Two more crew members were fixed rigidly in their seats, facing each other. One of them had his hand stretched out as if to clutch something. And then Henson looked down, following Rubcjek's gesture. On the table between the two men he saw the dusty remains of a chess-set. From the positions of the few pieces that had not crumbled beyond recognition, it was evident that a game had been in progress. The absurdity of the tableau clicked in his mind like a confusion of coloured dots resolving themselves into a picture.

'What now?' Rubcjek asked.

Henson hurried back into the centre of the room. 'Power,' he said. 'I'll see what I can do.' He set his earpiece to detect the widest range possible, and as the hissing he had expected echoed in his head, he tried the best combination of controls he could think of.

'I've re-pressurized the lower levels,' he called, 'and the others should stabilize soon.'

He swung around, and his scanner failed to pick up an image of his partner. The grinning skulls met his gaze impassively.

'Tanja?'

The dusty stillness did not allow an answer to be heard.

Henson moved to the bulkhead as fast as his spacesuit would allow. He shut off the wide-range relay, but the hissing sound in his ears did not abate.

'Rubcjek! Report, please!' He drew his side-arm, swinging in a wide arc with the detector in his left hand and the weapon in the other. The sound grew in intensity. It was alien, but strangely lulling, like the sea, and it was filling Henson's mind.

The detector readings were going wild. Nothing clear was readable on its tiny screen. The sound was now unbearably loud, and he was seized with a sudden insane urge to tear the helmet from his head. The sound was almost visible, tumbling towards him like an avalanche, chunks of noise smashing the landscape of his mind. And borne upon it came The impact was incredible. The room rushed towards Henson, through through him, until he was enveloped by a blackness beyond. him, until he was enveloped by a blackness beyond.

Tanja, was the word he tried to scream into the void.

And then the dust settled in the control centre, leaving no trace of the survey team.

Her mirror-lenses reflected the bustling crowds of Terminal Two. She strode onwards with a regular, almost automated pace, trim brown legs encased in white boots, her perfect figure outlined in black and silver. The briefcase at her side, black and oblong, was glossy enough to send light bouncing back towards the fittings high above her.

She was aware of the exact position of the four blue-uniformed guards in the departure hall. It was going to be difficult with all these people.

The earphone crackled. 'Target fifty metres and closing.' She strode onwards.

The departure board was flashing Last Call for the 1200 flight to Paris Charles De Gaulle. She registered it out of the corner of her eye. A couple with a laden trolley cut straight across her path, but she did not slacken her pace. It was almost as though they were not there.

'Target thirty metres and closing.'

The security gate came into view. She tightened her grip on the reflective briefcase. Still advancing. Heels clicking like a clock's breath. Ironic, as Time was her reason for being there.

'Target twenty metres and closing.'

The important thing was the swiftness of the immediate moves. Her reflexes were going to be quicker than those of anyone else in the hall, and it was just a question of making it to the exit. After that, they would not know where she had gone.

Timing had to be accurate. But then timing was not a problem for her.

'Target ten metres.'

The data rush identified the target. Visual confirmed it. The face under the thinning grey hair was the right one. He was reaching for his boarding pass.

She swung the case up and threw it vertically into the air. The target rotated ninety degrees as he became aware of the movement. When the case came back down into her hands, its halves had split open and it came to rest on her palms like a giant bird. The material of the case was curving, fluttering, and around her the people and their reaction seemed to have been slowed as if they were battling against driving winds.

She saw the terror in the grey eyes of the target. Then the laser-tube snicked up from the centre of the case and sent three pulses. He was slammed into the barrier, three red stars torn into his suit.

She snapped the case shut and headed for the exit. If at all possible, she did not want to have to eliminate any other life-forms.

Someone screamed. As Time gathered its natural momentum again, about five hundred people hit the floor of Terminal Two in panic. An alarm began to howl dementedly.

As the glass doors swished open, she was aware of the four primitive projectiles that thudded into her back. They tore the fabric of her dress. Her index finger pressed a button on the handle of the briefcase, and a black sports car sprang into view, directly in front of the terminal.

She slipped into the driver's seat just as three of the blue-uniformed guards emerged from the building. Their bullets spattered the tinted windscreen like rain. And then, above the noise of the alarm, came a new sound. It was like the trumpeting of a thousand elephants, mixed with the screams of tearing metal, and it emanated from the car.

The black car's headlights sprang from their concealed sockets, glowing red as the cacophony intensified. The car began to fade. It paled to a smudge of grey, and then to nothingness. Where it had stood, there was a swirl of dust.

Inside the departure hall, panicking travellers were picking themselves up.

Three seconds later, the target achieved critical blood loss and died.