Blake’s 7: Warship (13 page)

He stumbled to the control desk and dumped himself heavily into the nearest seat, his heart thumping. After a moment to catch his breath, he flicked the intercom switch. The comms connected with a chime.

‘All right, I’m in teleport.’

‘Not before time,’
said Avon.
‘Bring them back. Get a move on!’

The comms chimed off again.

‘Thank you, Vila,’ grumbled Vila to himself. ‘Very grateful, Vila.’

The teleport controls were still set for the surface of Megiddo. He patched the communications connection from Blake into the coordinate tracker on the desk. Not from Blake’s teleport bracelet. That was odd. Some unfamiliar Federation channel instead. A weak signal, but it should do.

The coordinates aligned, and he left the rest to the automatics. He pressed home the teleport controls, and a shimmer of power filled the arrivals alcove.

Blake’s shape had barely finished coalescing before he was stamping over to him. ‘What kept you, Vila?’

‘Much appreciated, Vila,’ muttered Vila to himself.

At least Cally looked pleased to see him. Her smile of thanks melted into a look of puzzlement. ‘Why are you wearing a hull suit?’

Vila thought about some smart rejoinder about the grimy-looking thermal suits that Cally and Blake both wore. Instead he indicated his own torn suit. ‘Jenna and I went out to do some repairs.’

Blake stood over him at the desk, ‘Where’s Jenna now?

‘Not sure,’ Vila explained guardedly. ‘Can’t get a signal from her suit comms. She must be out of range.’

‘Then fix it!’ demanded Blake. ‘Or get back out there and look for her.’

Easy for him to say, thought Vila. ‘Bit of a problem with that, actually.’

‘Such as?’

Vila waved his hands in a vague approximation of the devices they had been facing out there. The devices that, until a few minutes ago, he had been hunting in the weapons section.

‘Infestation of aliens,’ he said.

Blake was looking increasingly suspicious.

‘On the hull,’ added Vila. ‘Well, mostly on the hull… you see…’

Suspicion had changed to incredulity. ‘What about Jenna?’

Blake’s shouting provoked a coughing fit. He clutched his hand to his chest, as though he was in considerable pain. Cally moved to his side, placed a calming hand on Blake’s shoulder, and took the opportunity to turn down the heating dial on his suit. ‘Let me try to find Jenna,’ she said soothingly.

‘There’s something you should know about the aliens…’ Vila began.

‘Not now, Vila!’ snarled Blake. His coughing fit had subsided, but his temper hadn’t. ‘Just let Cally concentrate.’ He was quieter when he spoke to Cally. ‘Go on, try now.’

Cally sat at the teleport console with Vila, and closed her eyes in concentration. Vila recognised the signs of her entering a trance state, just as she had earlier on the flight deck when she had picked up the thoughts of the human fleet.

Her eyes fluttered behind her closed lids. ‘Jenna?’ she said softly, barely audible. ‘Jenna?’

There was a pause. Cally’s lips moved wordlessly, until she said clearly and distinctly. ‘She is not on the hull. She is some distance away.’

‘I could have told you that,’ grumbled Vila.

‘Hush, Vila!’ Blake moved closer to Cally at the desk. ‘Where is she? Is she all right?

‘She has control of an alien space vehicle,’ Cally said softly. ‘The original pilot is dead. I sense Jenna is… so alone. So determined. She cannot contact
Liberator
.’ Cally’s serene expression was hardening, and her brow furrowed. ‘She is steering the ship… away from us… towards…’

Cally’s eyes snapped wide open. Her expression was appalled. ‘No!’

Vila was startled by her explosive change of demeanour. ‘What is it?’

‘I think Jenna is steering into the alien fleet.’ Cally stared at Blake and Vila, an anguished look on her face. ‘It’s a suicide run.’

The hull suit gloves hampered fine control, so Jenna removed them. Her helmet stayed on, because there was no way of telling whether the atmosphere in here was breathable. She just had to hope that it wasn’t toxic when in contact with skin. Well, she’d know soon enough. If that turned out to be important, anyway.

The alien controls felt unnervingly like warm flesh fused with cold metal. But in her experience, the basics of space flight were the same whether it was a space skimmer or a planet hopper or an interstellar cruiser. The fundamentals of yaw and pitch and roll were the same across the known universe. And if she wasn’t familiar with the environment in which these aliens usually operated, well she knew for certain that they were in
her
galaxy now.

A pirate she’d once known had tried to teach her the rules of space flight, but the explanations of angular velocity and integration drift, hyperbolic trajectory and inertial reference frames had meant little or nothing to her. And he’d soon realised what she had always known – that her piloting skills were innate, instinctive. She was born to it.

Jenna had got to grips with an alien ship once before. She’d boarded the vessel after escaping from a prison transport. And she’d named it the
Liberator
. Had she known the ship, or had the ship known her? Something of both, of course. But it meant this latest alien vessel in her hands was nothing to be afraid of.

It just relied on complete concentration. Giving herself over to instinct once again. Nothing would get in her way. Not the many irrelevant controls that remained out of reach. Not the oozing remains of alien on the floor beside her. Not the glittering threat of the satellite grid that grew larger and larger through the view screen.

Nothing was going to distract her from the only option left to her.

The engines thrummed in response to her commands. The alien vessels loomed ahead.

She was going in.

* * *

Blake stared in desperation at Cally. ‘A suicide run?’ He could barely dare to contemplate it. ‘You must stop her, Cally. Tell Jenna we’re coming for her.’

Cally closed her eyes again in contemplation. Her frown did not fade, and her jaw clenched. It was clear she was not making the connection she needed.

Her shoulders sagged in defeat, and she opened her eyes again. ‘Jenna cannot hear me, Blake. She is too focused on what she is doing.’

Blake exhaled a long breath of frustration. ‘There must be something we can do. There must be.’

Cally manipulated the controls on the teleport desk, gesturing for Vila to move aside and give her more space to work. Blake watched the tracker lines converge on new coordinates as she completed her adjustments.

Cally stood up, checking the bracelet on her wrist. She stepped over to the recharging unit, and picked out a second bracelet. ‘You must teleport me across to her.’

Blake wasn’t sure he understood. ‘How?

‘Those are the coordinates of Jenna’s spaceship.’ Cally indicated the marker point on the teleport desk.

Vila shuffled back along his seat, and studied the display more closely. ‘And
those
are the coordinates of the alien fleet.’ He tapped an adjacent area on the screen. It zoomed to show a shoal of bright points of light swimming into view. ‘It’s another suicide run, Cally. Only this time, it’s yours!’

She strode into the teleport alcove, waving away Vila’s concern. ‘I am ready.’

Blake could see that Cally was utterly determined, but she was being unnecessarily reckless. ‘You don’t even know if there’s air in that ship,’ he argued. ‘At least put on a hull suit.’

Cally shook her head. ‘There is no time.’

‘What are you going to do,’ asked Vila, ‘hold your breath?’

‘Vila!’ She glared at him, and pointed an unwavering finger at the teleport controls on the desk in front of him.

Vila shrank under her accusing gaze. ‘All right, all right.’

Blake didn’t have time to add another protest. Vila had already pushed forward the teleport controls. Cally’s shape shivered and shimmered and dissolved in a ripple of energy. She was gone.

Blake stared at the empty alcove. ‘Be ready to bring her back, Vila. I must get to the flight deck.’

He turned on his heel. As he strode towards the exit, his toe kicked against something unexpectedly. A flat disk covered with odd markings skidded away from him until it bumped to a stop against the wall. He walked over, and was bending to pick it up when a couple of eyes on stalks popped out of the top of it and looked around the room.

‘Keep away from it!’ called Vila. He hurriedly got up from the teleport desk, and tugged urgently at Blake’s sleeve.

Blake didn’t get any closer to the thing. It had started to make a chittering noise. ‘What is that?’

‘I tried to tell you,’ wailed Vila. ‘It’s one of the aliens.’

‘Oh.’ Blake considered the innocuous creature that seemed to be cowering by the wall. The complex organisms he had encountered on Star One had been able to assume the appearance of humans. This wasn’t at all what he had expected in his subsequent alien encounters. ‘It looks like a machine.’ He decided it required a closer look.

‘Don’t get too close!’ Vila had not released his grip on Blake’s sleeve. ‘It’s also a bomb!’

As they watched, the disk rose up from the floor, raised on half a dozen thin legs underneath it. The antennae stopped moving, and pointed directly at Blake.

* * *

The glittering array of the satellite grid lay dead ahead. Jenna made a fine adjustment at the controls, and rechecked her forward view.

To starboard lay the human fleet, a motley assortment of civilian vessels and Federation pursuit ships that weaved a determined pattern towards the enemy. The alien fleet stood before her, a collection of shapes that seemed to defy the conventions of space flight. Yet, from her most recent experience, Jenna knew them to be extremely manoeuvrable and lethally quick.

She renewed her grip on the flight controls, and prepared for her final manoeuvre. This was it. ‘Here goes nothing.’

The engines vibrated all around in response to her coaxing. The ship angled as it made its last approach.

And then there was a disconcertingly familiar flash of light. An outline snapped into focus to her right, and slowly solidified. It was Cally, wearing a tatty thermal suit and no helmet. Wasn’t she going to asphyxiate?

Cally seemed to have her lips tightly closed. Perhaps she was holding her breath.

‘How did you get here…?’ Jenna’s words stumbled to a halt as she listened to her own echoing voice. Cally would be unable to hear her words. Jenna reached for the clasps that held her helmet in place.

‘I’m glad to see I have got your attention now,’
said Cally’s cheerful voice in Jenna’s mind. As Jenna raised her hand to her helmet, Cally reached out and clipped a teleport bracelet around her wrist.

‘No!’ Jenna called. The cry echoed unheard within her helmet. She shook her head, and mouthed the word again.

‘Do not argue with me, we have no time.’

Cally stabbed urgently at a button on her own bracelet. From her expression, it was clear she was receiving no response. Jenna saw her try again, but to no avail.

She stared at Jenna with wild eyes. Cally had still not taken a breath.

‘There is no response from the
Liberator
!’

Vila clung to the teleport control desk, ready to dive behind it if the alien device made a move. It continued to stare at Blake, bobbing up and down slightly as it flexed its tiny legs.

Blake faced it, perfectly still, arms to his side. ‘What’s it doing?’ he hissed.

‘Deciding which of us to blow up first?’ suggested Vila.

‘Ah,’ said Blake.

The alien’s antennae flicked briefly.

Vila’s tone was more urgent. ‘Don’t get too close.’

‘Maybe I’ll kick it over to you.’

‘Don’t you dare, Blake! It will explode…’

The next few moments were a bit of a blur. Vila’s shouting drew the alien’s attention. Its antennae turned towards him, and the rest of its body rotated too. With the speed of a gunslinger, Blake drew his weapon and fired.

The alien chattered wildly, fizzed and popped, then dropped to the floor as its legs collapsed beneath it.

Vila emerged from behind the desk where he had dropped for shelter. He stared over to the far wall. The alien was propped at an angle against it, smoke and slime oozing from its cracked carapace, and its antennae drooped pathetically to one side.

‘What were you thinking?’ Vila said quietly.

Blake holstered the gun. ‘Call it a controlled explosion.’

Vila dreaded the thought of what an uncontrolled detonation would have done. He didn’t have time to worry about it, though, because he was now receiving a telepathic message from Cally. Even though he heard her only in his head, she sounded angry.

‘Vila? Vila! I have Jenna. Bring us back.’

Vila scurried around the control desk again, and operated the return switches.

The familiar electronic swirling heralded the arrival of Cally and Jenna in the teleport alcove.

Blake didn’t hide his delight at their return, holding out his arms in a welcome that suggested he was going to hug them both at once. ‘Well done, Cally! Vila, help Jenna out of her hull suit.’

His arms dropped to his side as Jenna shrugged off his embrace.

Vila was already at her side, reaching for the clips on her helmet. She wriggled away from him, pulled the helmet off for herself, and glared at them all.

‘Get off me!’ Jenna didn’t seem remotely happy about what must have been a daring rescue. Why were none of them grateful for anything today, Vila wondered.

Jenna turned her anger on Cally. ‘What were you
doing
?’

‘Rescuing you,’ said Cally.

Jenna sucked in a lungful of air, then exhaled a long and calming breath. ‘I had things under control.’ When Jenna set down the helmet on the floor, Vila noticed that she wasn’t wearing the gloves. Well, he wasn’t going to that alien ship to recover them, that was for sure.

Cally took in Jenna’s anger, and made a calming gesture with her hands. ‘But I sensed…’ Her tone conveyed a mixture of apology and embarrassment. ‘I thought you were going to kill yourself.’