Blake’s 7: Warship (12 page)

He looked back over at the desk. The screen still showed the crisscross pattern of interference. ‘That comms equipment…’ he mused.

‘I doubt the Federation will rescue us,’ said Cally bitterly. ‘Servalan will have relayed her own orders to them by now.’

‘That’s not my point,’ Blake said. ‘If it has a connection out of here to reach the Federation, then we must be able to reconfigure it to contact the
Liberator
!’

Vila didn’t know how long he’d been there, slumped against the wall of the tiny airlock. He couldn’t bring himself to contact Avon. To tell him what had happened. He started to wonder if falling away from
Liberator
and vanishing into the depths of space wouldn’t have been a better option after all.

With his hands covering his eyes, he could still visualise those last moments. Jenna waving him back, then standing, then turning away from him. The looming alien ship, its colours changing and coalescing. The shield wave bursting towards her, starkly silhouetting her.

He removed his hands, and looked bleakly around the airlock. His hull suit was peppered with burn marks, with a clear hole in one of the legs. That exploding mine must have been closer than he’d realised. His helmet lay to one side, its visor cracked. The toolkit and his gloves were discarded beside them.

‘What have I done?’ he muttered to himself, over and over. ‘What have I done?’

No, it didn’t have to be like this. He could fix this. He could get a gun and go back out there. Face down those alien things. Bring Jenna back inside to safety.

Vila pushed himself up the wall, new resolve filling his shaking legs. He lunged for the comms unit, jabbing furiously at the transmit button.

‘Avon!’ he shouted. ‘Deactivate the flare shield! Jenna’s still out there. I have to let her in!’

The comms unit hummed in response.
‘You’re too late,’
said Avon. He sounded resigned to the fact.

‘What do you mean?’ Vila choked back a sob, his mind whirling. ‘You mean, she’s dead?’

‘I mean, she’s gone.’

Vila struggled to find the right words. ‘Don’t dress it up to soften the blow, Avon. She’s dead.’

‘No,’
said Avon levelly.
‘I mean, she is no longer on the hull.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Vila’s mind raced. ‘Is she floating out there in space somewhere? Can we get her back?’ Another awful thought came to him. ‘Or did the shield wave… y’know. Did it leave no trace? What are you saying, Avon?’

‘I am saying,’
Avon continued calmly,
‘that she boarded that alien ship.’

‘What?’ A conflicting jumble of emotions coursed through Vila. She was alive. But what fresh trouble was she in? ‘Boarded the…? Well, tell her to get off it!’

He dashed across to his abandoned helmet, and crammed it back onto his head. He bellowed into the microphone inside it, desperate to get back into contact with her. ‘Jenna? Jenna!’ His own voice boomed inside the helmet.

‘You’re wasting your time.’
The tinny sound of Avon’s dispassionate voice filtered from the helmet’s dangling earpiece.
‘Those hull suits are designed for close-quarters work. She’s already out of range.’

‘Get her back in range!’

‘If I can locate the ship. And that’s difficult, because you didn’t complete the repairs on the sensor array.’

Vila fumed. ‘Well, we both got a bit distracted. What with the mines exploding and the alien ship. And you trying to scrape us off the hull!’

‘Get back here to the flight deck,’
snapped Avon, and the comms link disconnected.

Vila put the helmet back down on the floor. It rolled over onto its side beside his toolkit.

The toolkit moved.

Vila stared.

The bag moved again. Fell onto its side. And revealed the flat round shape of an alien limpet mine.

Vila let out a yell of alarm. It had got into the airlock with him! If the one outside had cracked his visor and ripped his suit from a distance, what could this one do to him this close up?

He looked around frantically for something he could whack it with. All his tools were in the bag, right next to it.

The alien rose up on its thin legs. It began to vibrate.

Vila leapt back towards the inner airlock door, and threw himself into the antechamber.

The alien exploded with a dull crump. A gout of flame belched out of the airlock, and smoke roiled out into the antechamber. Vila banged hard on the wall control, and the inner door sealed the fire within the airlock. He peered back in through the inspection window. The ceiling sprinklers had kicked into action, dousing the flames.

He backed away from it in relief. His foot caught on something on the floor. Another alien mine beneath him. Vila leapt into the air with shock.

The alien’s antennae were crooked, and the legs splayed out at awkward angles beneath it. Perhaps it had been damaged before it got in through the airlock with him.

Vila was taking no chances. He jumped into the air again, and came down on top of it as hard as he could. His hull suit boots crunched onto the alien. He repeated this, again and again, until a crack appeared across its carapace. An oily green liquid seeped out, staining the antechamber floor. Vila stumbled back from the mess and pressed up against the antechamber wall.

While he was catching his breath, he heard a grating noise from the corridor nearby. It sounded like metal being dragged along a smooth surface. Instinct told him to stay hidden in the antechamber, but nevertheless he stuck his head out into the corridor.

He groaned in dismay. He had peered out just in time to see more of the alien devices as they scuttled away down the corridor on their tiny appendages. Their antennae tweaked inquisitively as they vanished around the far corner.

* * *

Jenna clung on desperately as the ship bucked and weaved on its departure route. Her hands clutched a ridge high up on the access door that she’d seized when the ship swooped low and close to
Liberator
. As the door closed, she caught one last glimpse of her ship as the shield wave crashed over its exterior. The limpet mines sparkled and burned as the radiation spilled over them and stripped them from the hull in a merciless wash of lethal energy.

This ship had artificial gravity. That much was clear from the buffeting Jenna got as it veered abruptly away from the shield wave’s devastating effects. Otherwise the ship was, indisputably, alien. Like the limpet mines, it was a bizarre combination of the mechanical and the organic. Though what she might look like to the aliens in her battered hull suit, Jenna could hardly imagine.

She was in a loading area, of sorts. Or maybe it was a bomb bay. All around her were more limpet mines. Close up, she saw that they were concave underneath, so they could be stacked in piles ready for deployment. Unlike the ones on the hull, these were immobile, silent. Hibernating, maybe.

Jenna picked her way cautiously through the bay. She almost laughed as she realised she was holding her breath. There was no sound penetrating her helmet from the outside, and it was improbable that the aliens would be able to hear her breathing inside her helmet.

Or talking.

‘Vila, can you hear me?’ Her own voice echoed inside the helmet. ‘Vila? I got on board the alien ship. I’m safe.’ She gave the area around her a wary inspection. ‘Or at least, safer than on the hull.’

There was no reply.

‘Vila?’ Not even a static hiss over the comms. ‘
Liberator
? Are you receiving? Can you hear me, Avon?’

Nothing.

Her hull suit made it hard to navigate the uneven corridor. In particular, the helmet – designed for a good all-round view when inspecting the
Liberator
‘s exterior – was not so useful in the confines of this alien vessel. She dared not remove it, because it was unclear whether the atmosphere was breathable. Or whether there was any atmosphere.

Ahead was a star-shaped mark on the wall. Jenna approached it cautiously. It was an odd combination of machine and creature. When she got close enough to examine it properly, it twitched. She took an involuntary step backwards, but the thing had activated. The central point of the star split apart, and it irised open into an aperture.

It was doorway from the corridor, into what Jenna recognised as a flight control deck. A transparent forward screen offered a view of space – the satellite defence grid shimmered ahead, and the flashes of conflict flickered fleetingly in the distance. To either side were banks of inscrutable alien equipment.

And in the centre, facing away from her, was an equally inscrutable alien.

The noise of the aperture opening drew its attention – so, there was an atmosphere of some kind, then. The alien twisted around on the spot.

The thing was barely humanoid. Its bulbous head throbbed with cranial veins. Six eyes nictated in sequence as it surveyed this intruder. The eyes glittered hypnotically. Jenna almost didn’t see that the creature had extended a pseudopod arm that reached left towards the controls. Or maybe a weapon.

Jenna surged forward. She thought the eyes may even have widened in surprise. She plunged her hand at its pulsing forehead, twisting the switch on the device that she clutched between her gloved fingers.

The alien’s maw opened wide, revealing a dark gullet full of curved teeth. Jenna’s helmet visor spattered with vile mucus. She felt the vibration of the alien’s dying roar just before it slumped sideways, twitched briefly, and fell still.

Jenna clipped the device back on her belt. ‘Vila was right,’ she told herself. ‘This sub-atomic probe
can
be dangerous.’

She braced herself as the alien vessel lurched sideways. Its pilot was no longer in control. The strange door sealed behind her. She had no way of telling whether there were other crew on board. And just like the dead pilot, she would have no advance warning of any arrivals.

She tried a few of the controls in front of her, and was surprised to find that they were almost intuitive. A pilot’s instinct, she told herself

‘
Liberator
, do you read?’

Still no comms in her helmet.

‘If you can hear me… This ship is already heading back to the alien fleet. By the time I’ve worked out how to steer this thing, I’ll be a long way from
Liberator
. Well beyond the range of this hull suit’s communicator.’

She surveyed the controls again. Through the view screen, many alien vessels grew larger as the ship approached them.

‘
Liberator
, I hope you understand why I’m doing this.’

Jenna seized the controls, and felt a deep vibration around her as the alien engines responded to her command.

Avon paced up and down on the empty flight deck. He would never have let the other crew members see that he was this agitated. It didn’t suit him to let them suspect he had uncertainties or doubts. And usually, he’d prefer to be on his own anyway. It wasn’t unusual for him to spend plenty of time alone, away from the others, with only Orac for company.

This was different. Despite his clear desire to keep the crew together for this confrontation, they had ended up scattered who knew where. Cally off with Blake in the forlorn hope of finding salvation for them on some icy rock in the middle of nowhere. Jenna in the clutches of the enemy. Even Vila was taking his own sweet time getting back from his excursion outside the ship.

Avon stared up at the fascia of the ship’s computer. It flashed pensively in response to his most recent command.

‘Come on, Zen. Jenna can’t be all that far away yet. Can’t you get a signal from her?’

‘NEGATIVE.’

Avon glared at the computer.

‘Can you locate Blake and Cally?’

‘NEGATIVE.’

‘Damn it, Zen. What
can
you do?’

‘THAT QUESTION HAS TOO MANY PARAMETERS.’

Avon laughed at this. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have assumed the computer was being sarcastic. But it was, after all, only a computer.

He pressed the ship-wide intercom. ‘Vila, what’s keeping you?’

There was a pause, presumably while Vila located a wall communicator. And then presumably tried to operate it.

‘Vila?’

‘What do you want?’

‘I want to know where you are.’

‘I’m on my way,’
Vila replied evasively.

‘Where?’

There was a telling pause, before Vila replied.
‘I’m in the weapons section.’

Avon grunted in disapproval. ‘That’s an odd route to take from the airlock to the flight deck. Did you get lost, or are you taking the scenic route?’

‘I had a few things to… er… locate on the way
.‘ The intercom conveyed an apologetic cough.
‘Tidying up.’

Vila didn’t sound any more convincing than usual, decided Avon. But there was no time to berate him further. Zen was interrupting with an important update.

‘INFORMATION. THERE IS AN INCOMING MESSAGE FROM THE FEDERATION FACILITY ON MEGIDDO.’

‘Put it through,’ snapped Avon.

The main view screen crackled and spat, resolving itself sporadically into an image of Blake. He was crouched close to the camera, and his tone was urgent. ‘Come in,
Liberator
! This is Blake. Two of us to teleport up. Quickly!’

The sound continued to crackle through the flight deck speakers, but the image had frozen. Blake’s earnest face stared across at Avon.

‘All right, Blake.’ Avon switched back to the ship’s intercom. ‘Did you hear that, Vila? You’re needed in teleport.’

‘I heard him.’

‘That means now, Vila. No detours.’

* * *

No matter how many times Vila had run through them, the
Liberator
corridors never seemed any shorter. His heavy boots weren’t helping. Avon’s insistent voice continued to squawk demands over the intercom system. Hounding him along to his destination.

‘Oh, hang on, won’t you?’

He stumbled across the final junction, and raced into the teleport room.

‘Vila, what’s keeping you?’

‘Keep your hair on,’ he muttered breathlessly. ‘I haven’t even had time to get out of my hull suit.’