Blake's 7: Criminal Intent

by Trevor Baxendale

  ‘My mother was worried...’ Dort rambled. ‘She always… wanted me… to stay in… the Civil Administration. It was safer, she said.’

  ‘Don’t talk any more,’ Cally said.

  ‘Mother always said… stay out of the fighting.’

  ‘You should have listened to her,’ said Gan.

  ‘I avoided… the front line. Took sentry duties instead. The easy option.’ Her lips quivered into a smile. ‘Kept myself out of the firing line.’ Dort started to laugh at the irony, but it turned into a rattling cough.

  ‘Be still,’ Cally said softly.

  ‘I’m going,’ the trooper breathed. There was blood on her lips. She shifted suddenly, as if her body was making one last panicky attempt to avoid death. It was little more than a convulsion. Her eyes lost all focus. ‘I don’t want her to know,’ she whispered.

  ‘I doubt she ever will,’ Cally told her.

  ‘There’s something else… you should know…’ Her words were now barely audible. There was a sharp, unhealthy smell on her breath now. ‘You shouldn’t have… come here…’

  Cally wanted to tell her to stop speaking, but her words were all she had left now. When she stopped, it would be because she was dead.

  ‘Too… dangerous…’

  ‘I thought you said this was an easy option,’ said Gan.

  ‘No. You don’t know who’s in Pod One... You shouldn’t have come.’

  The trooper’s hand closed around Gan’s wrist, pulling him closer with feeble strength. Gan leant down reluctantly until his ear touched her lips. ‘Who is in Pod One?’ he asked.

  Cally saw her lips move as she told him; then Dort’s grip on Gan’s arm faded. The fingers loosened.

  Drena gently closed the dead trooper’s eyes. The three of them stared at the body for a long moment until Gan looked back up at Cally. ‘I think we may have a problem,’ he said.

  TWELVE

  Vila was through the next airlock in record time. Blake and Avon knew what to expect and overcame the guards without having to fire a shot. Caught cold with their weapons holstered, the troopers in Pod Two had no choice but to surrender when unexpectedly faced with armed intruders.

  So far so good, thought Vila, but it was only as the three of them fanned out into the pod that he began to suspect something was wrong.

  The two Federation guards had sensibly raised their hands. Instantly, two of the prisoners sitting nearby reached up and took their weapons. These prisoners were hard-looking, burly men with hands like great, hairy paws. They closed on the blaster rifles with worrying alacrity and disturbing familiarity.

  Blake sensed it too, realised Vila. The rest of the prisoners in this pod had the same look about them: mean eyes, grim expressions, rock-hard fists. Vila had seen plenty of men like this before, and they were always bad news.

  The two criminals with the guards’ blasters stood up and casually pointed the guns at Blake and Avon.

  Vila’s own gun was in its holster, and it crossed his mind in a second that while these toughs were happy to allow a certain status quo – they had two guns, Blake and Avon had two guns between them – they might not allow themselves to be outnumbered. Vila made sure to keep his hands away from his own gun. He didn’t want to give these men any excuse to even up the odds.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ asked the first criminal. He stood nearly two metres tall – taller than Gan, even – with broad shoulders and a wide chest. His arms hung heavy with muscle and the blaster rifle in his hands looked like a toy. It was aimed at Blake’s gut.

  ‘Roj Blake.’ Vila thought Blake’s voice was remarkably level and calm. It was a leader’s voice. ‘This is Avon, and this is Vila. We’re here to free you.’

  Vila wasn’t sure how long the tension lasted. It could have been one second; it could have been ten. The criminal’s eyes were like tiny little chips of rock under heavy brows. His nose had once been smashed almost flat against the rest of his face, although Vila seriously doubted that he had even noticed it happen.

  Blake returned the stare coolly. Vila marvelled at the way in which Blake could meet a gaze like that without flinching.

  Avon’s eyes were blazing with a quiet, manic intensity. Vila had seen that look before. It meant that Avon was ready to fight to the death and without mercy. The finger on the trigger of his gun would be frozen one hair’s breadth from action.

  ‘Larn Stygo,’ the criminal introduced himself. He had a voice like oiled gravel.

  No triggers had been pulled yet and so Vila allowed himself a sigh and wiped his sleeve across his brow.

  The two Federation troopers stood together with their hands on their helmets. It was impossible to know what they were thinking, but Vila guessed they would be assessing the situation in exactly the same way he was. They could see that two of the prisoners were now armed and pointing their weapons at Blake and Avon. Vila wondered if either of the guards would chance making a move. There was a comms unit on the bulkhead wall but it was out of reach.

  The prisoner who held the second gun was checking the firing mechanism – a quick, precise movement that showed, deliberately or not, that he knew his way around this kind of weaponry very well indeed. He was a tall, thin, gnarled specimen who looked considerably older than Stygo. He didn’t have anything like the body weight of Stygo but the leanness was all sinew and gristle. And then there was that look in his eye – the careful, flat gaze of a killer.

  ‘This is Jo East,’ said Stygo, noting Vila’s worried glance. ‘He’s with me.’

  He’s with me. Not he’s with us. A line had been drawn. Blake, Avon, Stygo and East all had guns, but they certainly weren’t all on the same side.

  ‘Good,’ said Blake. His voice was still level but he was cautious. ‘We’re not done yet. We still have Pod One and the transport ship to take.’

  Neither Stygo nor East replied. Vila noticed that a number of other prisoners – tough, hard characters like these two – were now getting to their feet. They all stood and faced Blake, Avon and Vila.

  One of the captured Federation guards made a lunge for the communications panel on the wall. He had taken one stride before East cut him down with a blast from the trooper’s own rifle. The guard crashed into the bulkhead wall and left a long smear of blood all the way down to the floor.

  ‘There was no need for that,’ said Blake. ‘He wasn’t even armed.’

  ‘He was goin’ for the alarm,’ replied Stygo.

  ‘There was no need to shoot him dead.’

  ‘Ain’t no need to shoot the other one dead either,’ said Stygo, turning his gun towards the second trooper and blasting him down where he stood. The guard died with his hands on his helmet and a smoking hole in his chest.

  Blake’s hand tensed on his own gun and his eyes were dangerously narrow. He didn’t take them off Stygo. ‘That was murder.’

  ‘I know,’ said Stygo. ‘I’m a murderer. I’ve done it before.’

  ‘That’s not how we do things.’

  ‘It ain’t how you do things. It is how I do things. The way I see it, that’s two less Federation dopes to worry about. What were you hopin’ to do? Recruit them as well?’

  There was an ugly smile on Stygo’s lips. Avon still had his own weapon centred on East, while Blake covered Stygo. Avon turned his head slightly to address Blake. ‘Low-level crooks and swindlers? These are crimos, Blake. Criminal psychopaths! They weren’t part of the plan.’

  ‘Who are you calling a crimo, mush?’ asked one of the prisoners. He stood up and glared belligerently at Avon.

  ‘I would have thought that was obvious,’ Avon replied, ‘even to a crimo.’

  ‘Don’t give me any of that fancy talk, mush. Kill him, Stygo!’

  Stygo pushed the other prisoner away. ‘Don’t tell me what to do, Jixx.’

  ‘He’s just insulted us!’ Jixx said.

  ‘He’s just freed us, you idiot. Now shut up.’ Stygo looked back at Avon. ‘So what if we’re crimos? This pod’s full of convicte
d murderers, rapists, psychopaths… all on a one-way trip to a penal planet. You’ve done us all a favour, freeing us.’

  ‘That’s a matter of opinion.’ Avon looked at Blake. ‘Well, Blake?’

  ‘It changes nothing,’ Blake said.

  ‘There’s only four of us.’

  ‘Forty,’ said Blake. ‘Don’t forget the men in the first two pods. They’re on our side now.’

  ‘You’re quite sure of that, are you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Blake said. He turned back to Stygo and East. ‘I’ll make you the same offer I’ve made the men in the first two pods: join me and fight the Federation, or go on your way as free men.’

  Vila noticed East curling his lip into an ugly smile, while Stygo just said, ‘We make our own choices.’

  Blake said, ‘Exactly. You’re free to do that. Now.’

  ‘Like I said, you’ve done us all a favour.’ Stygo’s blaster was still aimed at Blake. It was clear he wasn’t going to be forced into saying one thing or another about his plans, if indeed he had any.

  To break the stalemate Blake simply chose to ignore him. He turned to Vila. ‘Open the next airlock, Vila.’

  Vila looked at the next airlock, the one leading to Pod One, and then instinctively looked at Stygo. He couldn’t help it. There was something in Vila that automatically put his own survival first. He was cautious. He considered his options. Often he did this in less than a second, sometimes without even consciously realising it. Some called it cowardice. Vila called it survival.

  Stygo just looked at him and shook his head. Vila noticed that the barrel of his gun only had to travel a very small distance to cover him. His mind calculated how many steps it would take him to reach the next airlock. Roughly seven. Possibly eight. Stygo’s gun would cut him down before he’d taken his second step.

  And so Vila hesitated.

  ‘Vila!’ Blake’s voice cracked like a whip.

  Vila looked at Blake and then, again, at Stygo.

  The crimo smiled. ‘If he touches that airlock I’ll kill him.’

  Avon said, ‘If you kill him, I’ll kill you.’

  East raised his own weapon fractionally, just so that Avon knew it was pointed at his head.

  ‘Well,’ Stygo said, ‘if he touches the airlock it looks like there’ll be a whole lot of killin’.’

  Something chimed softly in the silence that followed, making nearly everyone jump. Blake snatched the communicator bracelet up to his lips. ‘Blake. What is it?’

  ‘Cally here. I think we may have a problem.’

  Blake glanced at the prisoners in the pod and lowered his voice. ‘You could say that. The prisoners in here aren’t low-grade offenders, Cally. They’re hardened crimos.’

  ‘It’s worse than that,’ Cally’s voice crackled over the speaker. ‘We know who’s in Pod One.’

  THIRTEEN

  ‘Now,’ said the prisoner.

  That was the word. Simple but effective.

  For a moment nothing happened. Perhaps there was a slight change in the atmosphere, a sub-electric frisson that passed invisibly between the two men who stood guard on either side of the containment field.

  They were highly trained men: the best of the best. X-class Federation troopers were trained to react with only a fraction of a second separating thought from action. As the first echo of the prisoner’s voice faded, both guards were already pulling up their weapons. Sheer instinct and a lifetime of relentless training had already taken over.

  They were the best that human beings could be at their jobs. But it still wasn’t enough.

  The first trooper’s autoblaster was only halfway to its firing position before the mutoid behind him shot him between the shoulder blades. The shot severed his spine and blasted out of his chest in a scarlet spray.

  As the trooper fell, the second guard turned his gun on the mutoid, but he never fired a shot, because the mutoid had already discharged her own blaster into his chest. The impact drove the trooper backwards into the arms of the second mutoid. She wrenched the autoblaster out of his grip like an adult taking a toy from a child. Her other hand held him by the back of the neck.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he gasped, feeling the slender fingers digging into his throat. He felt the vertebrae grind together and a massive spasm of pain ran down through his legs as the bulging cartilage crushed his spinal cord.

  The mutoid did not reply. She turned the guard around like a puppet so that he was facing the prisoner in the centre of the room. The prisoner smiled back at him through the humming containment field.

  ‘What – what are you doing?’ the guard croaked.

  ‘Escaping,’ said the prisoner. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  The mutoid pushed the guard’s head into the containment field. The energy barrier screamed as it bit into the hardened polymer helmet, striking sparks from the metal lining and fizzing through the padding beneath.

  The guard fought back, trying to push himself away from the force field, but the mutoid’s strength was too great and the pressure inexorable. In less than three seconds the top of the trooper’s helmet had been cut away as his head was forced through the energy barrier.

  The red plastic visor disappeared in a boiling spray and then the man’s face was pushed through the field. The last thing the trooper saw was the prisoner smiling at him, before his own face was burned away and the field sheared through his skull and brain.

  *

  The mutoid dropped the decapitated body onto the deck and stepped back. Her comrade moved to the wall controls and deactivated the containment field. The maddening hum slowly died away.

  One of the mutoids stepped forward with a remote key and aimed the device at the prisoner’s chair. The metal clamps over his wrists and ankles retracted and he let out a long sigh of relief.

  ‘Well done,’ he said, standing up. He moved his head from side to side, stretching the muscles in his neck to release the tension. ‘That was easier than I thought it would be.’

  He stepped over the trooper’s headless body and looked at both mutoids in turn, noting that while they were very beautiful they were also very similar. One of them – the one who had forced the trooper’s head through the containment field – had a somewhat thinner, crueller face. Her eyes were the colour of storm clouds, her lips the colour of fresh bruises.

  ‘I’m going to designate you Alpha,’ he told her. He turned to the other mutoid and said, ‘You are Beta.’

  ‘We are yours to command,’ said Alpha.

  ‘What is it you wish us to do?’ asked Beta.

  The prisoner smiled broadly. ‘Activate the other mutoids, of course.’

  FOURTEEN

  ‘What’s so bad about this particular prisoner?’ asked Zola.

  ‘Think of your worst nightmare, then multiply by about a million,’ Norton said. ‘You might just be getting close to the man they call Kilus Kroe.’

  It felt as though the temperature had suddenly dropped inside the York’s flight cabin. Zola fought the urge to shiver.

  ‘Kilus Kroe?’ she repeated.

  ‘As far as we’re concerned he’s a Category A-Zed prisoner, under heavy guard, isolated in Pod One,’ said Garran. ‘That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘But what’s he supposed to have done? At the end of the day he’s just another criminal and our prisoner, isn’t he? What’s he on his way to K5 for?’

  ‘That is classified.’

  Zola blew out her cheeks. This trip was unbelievable. ‘So we had this… Kilus Kroe… on our prisoner manifest and you didn’t think fit to tell me?’

  ‘You didn’t have the right security clearance.’

  ‘Yes, I get that now. But you two were planning a course deviation and an unscheduled stop at a space casino.’

  ‘There was no problem,’ Norton insisted without a trace of irony. ‘Kroe’s safe in his pod, he’s under heavy guard, and as far as the trip to K5 is concerned, there’s no change. The short cut allows us to stop over at Space City on th
e way back. We won’t even have the pods, let alone the prisoners. It’s perfectly safe.’

  ‘Then why have we come under fire? Why can’t we contact any of the other pods?’

  *

  In Pod One, the mutoid named Alpha moved to the aft section and knelt down next to a hatch concealed in the metal floor. Using an electronic key mounted in her wrist computer, she unlocked the hatch and opened it.

  Metal steps led down into a dark space. This was a storage area for general supplies and the propulsion and landing machinery for the pod when making planetfall.

  Alpha stepped down into the darkness. The scant light from the main part of the pod filled the storage area with deep shadows. The mutoid’s night vision was excellent, however – bionic augmentation of the visual cortex in her brain allowed her to process high-definition images of near total dark with the clarity of infrared vision.

  Located in two ranks along the outer bulkhead walls of the storage space were four coffin-like objects. Control lights flashed dimly on the sides indicating the status of the contents. They were stasis units – an advanced form of cellular storage that did not rely on cryogenic freezing. The machinery was used to keep the prisoners in stasis during high-level Time Distort where there was insufficient shielding in the pods, but it had been adapted for the secret cargo stored beneath Pod One.

  Alpha walked between the stasis units and touched the controls that would activate the contents. Inside each was a mutoid. The lids of each unit slid back to reveal the body beneath. In each case, eyes snapped open to full alertness as the activation programs in their brains were initiated.

  Alpha gave each mutoid a plasma phial. The mutoids sat up and carefully inserted the glowing green rods into the receptors in their chests. The green fluid was sucked greedily into the mutoid bodies, completing the revivification process.

  Each mutoid climbed out of their casket and stood to attention. All except the last one.

  Alpha held the plasma phial out but the mutoid did not take it. There was no response at all. Milky eyes stared blindly up into the shadows.