Gan looked worried when he saw the levelled weapons, but he rose to his full height and fixed Stygo and East with a towering stare. One meaty hand rested on the butt on his gun. ‘What’s going on here? Trouble?’
‘We’re negotiating,’ replied Blake.
‘Carry on, then,’ said Cally. She already had her weapon drawn. The crystal barrel covered Stygo and East from where she stood.
‘We’ve got forty men and women on our side,’ added Gan. ‘I’d say negotiations are over.’
Stygo and his followers – twenty or so cut-throats, murderers and rapists – stared back at him. ‘We might want to have a say in that,’ Stygo said.
‘Maybe,’ said Gan. ‘But not much of one.’
‘Open fire in here and you’ll go down with us, along with a fair few of your men,’ explained Cally. ‘Either way, we win. It’s simple: you’re outnumbered.’
‘A very good point,’ said Vila, peering out from behind Gan’s shoulder.
‘Yes, I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ said Avon with a smile of satisfaction. ‘Let’s go, Blake. We’ve got what we came for.’
‘Agreed.’ Blake raised his communicator. ‘Jenna – this is Blake. Stand by with the first batch of teleport bracelets, please.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ said a deep, commanding voice from behind them.
They turned to see a tall, bare-headed man stepping through the doorway from Pod One. Behind him were five mutoids armed with multicharge autoblasters, covering the entire pod and everyone in it.
They opened fire without another word.
The first shot killed Jo East, punching a hole straight through his skull. The second shot killed the crimo standing beside him. After that it was simply carnage. Energy bolts streaked through the pod like lightning, felling prisoners at random.
Cally returned fire immediately, but in the confusion of the massacre there was no way to aim properly. She was knocked backwards by a falling prisoner, blood jetting from his chest.
Cally scrabbled for her wrist bracelet. ‘Jenna! Bring us up!’
Cally saw Avon hit the metal deck and lie still. Energy bolts crackled overheard and the stench of roasted flesh and melting plastic filled the air as the slaughter continued.
PART TWO
IMPRISONMENT
SEVENTEEN
Travis opened his eye when the red alert sounded. He was awake instantly. He was naturally a light sleeper, but years of conditioning, training and iron self-discipline allowed him to come into full wakefulness in a second. The alarm automatically deactivated once consciousness returned.
He sat on the edge of the bed for half a minute, considering the implications of the alarm. He knew exactly what it was for. He’d been waiting for it. He was ready.
He picked up the room remote, clicked on the wall screen. It was hard-wired to start up on the state-sponsored news channel, but he never took any notice of that. He flicked through to the Federation security feed, scrolled down until he saw something about a massacre on Corchoris Major, smiled. Thousands dead. Battledrones, apparently. There were some grainy images of urban landscapes being swept by matrix lasers. He didn’t need to see the rest. It was only to be expected and it didn’t really concern him. He clicked another button and the wall screen turned transparent.
He stood and looked out across the worn landscape. His personal apartment – rarely used, but he had been due recuperation leave – was positioned high on the main north-western hemisphere dome. It was dawn, and the grey-yellow sun, tinged with a red halo, was rising like an inflamed pustule on the horizon.
Travis hated Earth. He loved the Federation, but the Federation had long since left Earth for dead. It was still the centre of government, nominally, and it was strategically and politically vital, but it was a ruined planet. No-one cared for it. It was horrendously overpopulated for one thing, although most decent people with the necessary means or connections had long since left for better worlds. That left the dregs of society to form the bulk of the population.
Travis maintained the apartment out of habit. Earth made his skin crawl but he felt it did him good to be reminded of where he came from. Where the Federation came from.
Travis ran through a series of brief, intense isometric exercises and then showered. He wasn’t youthful any more but he was in the prime of his life. The muscles that swelled in his shoulders and chest as he dried himself were firm and the bones beneath them hard. The eye that stared back from the mirror was grey and sharp; the black patch across the other side of his face hid the mechanism of his bionic eye. The image intensifier built into the optic computer fed a constant stream of high definition visual data across a range of spectra directly into his brain. The crosshair targeting mechanism was constantly online. It made Travis a self-contained killing machine when allied to the powerful laseron destroyer built into his bionic left hand. Travis had insisted that the weapon was of paramount importance. He had lost a hand but he had gained so much more. No matter where he was, or what he was doing, Travis was armed and dangerous.
The transport ship arrived, as he knew it would, just as he finished dressing. He wore his black combat suit. He marched out through the passageway that connected his apartment with the exterior of the dome and a wide private docking cradle. The transporter’s engines whined loudly as the cold wind buffeted the ship and the dome. Travis caught the whiff of a radioactive tang borne from the distant steppes of nuclear slag that formed one half of the subcontinent before striding up the steps of the gangplank that extruded from the ship’s underside.
The transport banked sharply and turned away from the dome as the gangplank retracted and the airlock closed. Travis entered the flight cabin and sat down in the empty command seat.
The transporter ship arced high into the air over the dome and punched straight through the low grey cloud cover. It reached the upper atmosphere in less than a minute, ignited its photonic boosters and left Earth orbit.
The mutoid, Kiera, was an expert pilot. In a former life she had been trained to fly a variety of Federation starships and shown all the signs of a first class flight officer in the making. That was until the Federation – or rather the Central Computer data core located, it was rumoured, in in the Forbidden Zone itself – selected her for modification.
The modification programme was one of the Federation’s greatest successes – and worst failures. Officers were scanned and profiled by the central computers and removed from duties if they were considered suitable candidates. They were subjected to full memory erasure, genetic recalibration and a high bionic upgrade. The result was an ultra-efficient, ultra-strong soldier that never tired and maintained an almost psychopathic aversion to empathy. Most importantly for the Federation, they were also ultra-obedient. How much of that was due to the fact that they survived purely on a supply of synthetic blood plasma strictly controlled by their masters was open to debate. It was an argument Travis didn’t care for. The result was all that mattered to him. He preferred mutoids to humans because they were more reliable in almost every aspect.
‘Leaving Earth orbit,’ said Kiera. ‘Course set for Space Command.’
Mutoids did not normally have names. Their original identities were eradicated. All records of their previous human existence were deleted. But Travis had found a way to access one of the central computer’s deepest information dumps and had traced the original name and identity of this particular mutoid.
He watched her for a full minute as she operated the transporter controls. She did not turn around to look at him. He knew she wouldn’t. He stared at her shoulders, the back of her neck, and the strange, moulded black plasteel headpiece that replaced mutoid hair. Beneath the headpiece was a nest of computer circuitry surgically fused to the mutoid’s organic brain. A section of the skull was removed to facilitate this augmentation. The moulded headpiece acted as both helmet and bone.
‘Estimated time of arrival: 0728 Earth Standard.’ Her voice was flat, with barely
a trace of emotion. It was cold, efficient, admirable.
‘Turn around, Kiera,’ Travis ordered.
There was a pause. Normally, a mutoid would respond to any order from a senior officer without hesitation. But Kiera was different.
When she did turn around she looked directly at Travis. ‘Yes, Space Commander?’
‘Do you know why you’re here, Kiera?’
Her eyes were inscrutable. But there was a definite hesitation before she answered: ‘No, sir, I do not.’
Travis allowed the ghost of a smile to haunt his thin lips. ‘You’re here, Kiera, because I commanded it.’
She blinked when he spoke her name; he had deliberately emphasised it.
‘I was due to stand court martial,’ she said.
‘I know. The incident on Sinofar’s World. You failed me. Court martial is the standard procedure in such an event.’
‘I was low on plasma, sir.’
Travis leant forward. ‘I’m not asking for excuses.’
She blinked again, which Travis thought was interesting. He said, ‘I decided that you may yet be of use to me. I had the court martial put on hold. From now on, you report to me, and me alone. Do I make myself clear, Kiera? You are mine.’
‘Yes, sir,’ she said. ‘Quite clear.’
EIGHTEEN
Space Command Headquarters were located in an area of cloaked space between Earth and Mars. The space station was traditional in shape – a torus of grey steel housing all the fundamental offices of the Federation’s military controllers.
It was guarded by three squadrons of fighter ships, and the operational battlecruiser Justice For All. The transport ship carrying Travis cleared the battlecruiser’s protection field by broadcasting the correct access code and was then escorted to the space station’s hangar deck by a pair of the latest pursuit ships.
Kiera touched down with great efficiency and Travis stood up to leave. ‘I won’t be long,’ he told her. ‘Report to my pursuit ship. Have it fuelled and ready to leave in the next twenty minutes.’
Travis walked down the gangplank, barely acknowledging the nervous salutes from the flight-deck attendants who were swarming around the transporter, attaching fuel lines, checking hull integrity and cosmic ray shielding.
He left the hangar deck and entered the space station proper, fully aware of the sneers on the faces of the senior officers behind him. Travis had a reputation, and it was both a good and a bad one depending on exactly how loyal one felt towards the Federation’s averred policy of ruthless efficiency.
As Travis started along the main corridor that followed the curve of the space station’s hull, an interior door hushed open and a vision in white swept through.
‘Supreme Commander,’ Travis acknowledged.
‘Travis,’ replied the woman, walking directly ahead of him. Her stunning figure was accentuated by the almost improper curves of a sparkling white gown. Travis increased his pace slightly and drew level.
‘I won’t keep you,’ Servalan told him. ‘Speed really is of the essence.’
Travis felt his heart pound a little faster, recalling the alarm. ‘Blake?’
‘Probably,’ she said with a dismissive wave of one hand. As always, the hand was impeccably manicured, elegant and antiseptically clean. Travis found it impossible not to notice these details. It was impossible not to notice every detail of this woman; when she was in the same room she captivated the attention of everyone else.
Travis came to a halt with a sharp click of his heels.
Servalan, sensing his immobility, swept herself around in a tight, but perfectly poised arc and regarded him with one raised and perfectly formed eyebrow.
‘Is something the matter, Space Commander?’
‘I prefer to deal in certainties, Supreme Commander. Blake is Federation Enemy Number One. He has in his possession a band of ruthless cut-throats and – possibly – the fastest ship in the cosmos.’
‘Your point being?’
‘My point being that I can’t afford to go rushing around the galaxy on every rumoured sighting or glimpse of Blake. I need hard facts. I need certainties. Only then can my mission stand any chance of success.’
Servalan appraised him coolly. ‘You can’t afford…?’
‘I’m a resource. The Federation must use me – you must use me – wisely.’
‘And you don’t think that I do that?’
‘The Federation isn’t short on manpower. We have planetary systems stretching across hundreds of light years, a network of agents and informers feeding intelligence to a military fleet equipped to wage war on a galactic scale. It can’t be that hard to find one man.’
‘Oh but it is, Travis. It is. Because the Federation is so large, and so powerful, and its influence so far-reaching, it is eminently possible for just one man to evade capture. Blake has already proved that once, twice, goodness knows how many times. And that is why I have chosen you to find him. That is why you, Travis, have been charged with the duty of tracking him down and killing him...’ Servalan’s huge, liquid eyes fixed him carefully, ‘or bringing him to justice.’
‘Absolutely, but –’
‘It’s you against him, Travis, don’t you see? I’ve reduced the problem to a scale that even the Federation can manage. Man on man. You… and him.’
She started walking then and Travis had no choice but to follow. He was seething, but he knew it would do no good to show it. The Supreme Commander was as capricious as she was beautiful and powerful.
‘Did you hear about the incident on Corchoris Major?’ she asked.
‘I heard reports of a massacre.’
Servalan’s red lips split into a happy smile. ‘There was an uprising. The local government was overrun with fanatics. I decided it was time for the Federation to intervene. It was also an ideal opportunity to test two new battledrones supplied by the Weapons Research Base on Aranar.’
‘Oh yes, battledrones,’ Travis struggled to keep the distaste out of his voice. ‘The latest computerised antipersonnel weaponry sublimated to an artificial intelligence. What could possibly go wrong?’
‘We’re not entirely sure, yet. Space Commander Yorran was overseeing the operation from an orbiting dreadnought. According to the preliminary report filed by him, it appears a stray particle beam might have ricocheted and struck one of the battledrones. Its AI identified it as a threat, overrode the subroutines that prevent friendly fire incidents and attacked the other drone. The other drone realised it was being outgunned and activated its self-destruct mechanism.’
‘A five megaton yield, I believe.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Uprising dealt with, then.’
It was Servalan’s turn to stop. She looked at him again, a fraction more warmth in her eyes. ‘Sometimes you impress even me, Travis.’
‘Perhaps now the Weapons Research people will agree that it’s not the sophistication of the weapon that matters, but the sophistication of the user.’
‘Meaning?’
‘The gun doesn’t matter. It’s the finger on the trigger that counts – and who that finger belongs to. It should be a human being.’
‘Quite. A human being. One man.’
Now Travis understood why she had raised the subject of Corchoris Major. She was merely using it to demonstrate her earlier argument. How typical, he thought, that Servalan should use the death of tens of thousands of innocent people simply to prove a point. ‘It is Blake, isn’t it?’ he said. There was a sudden hunger in his voice now. ‘A definite sighting. Raw intelligence. You know where he is, don’t you?’
‘Oh yes, Travis. I know exactly where he is.’
NINETEEN
The pursuit ships blasted out of their launch harnesses. There were three of them, flying in customary arrowhead formation, scarlet Starburst-class rockets from the Galactic Eighth Fleet. They swept out from the underside of Space Command and headed for deep space.
They were the Federation’s latest, fastest ships – sl
eek, agile red missiles. The space station shrank rapidly to a gleaming speck behind them, and even as the sophisticated sensors on the hovering battlecruiser Justice For All tried to track the heliospheric vector, the pursuit ships leaped into Time Distort speeds.
They were out of the solar system and on their way to the Zotral system before Servalan had even sat down in the comfortable chair behind her office desk.
Travis was too restless to sit. He paced around the flight cabin of the lead ship, fizzing like a plasma bolt in a firing coil. Kiera was at the helm with another mutoid. Travis had checked the records for her as well; she was an ex-field medical orderly named Chan, re-engineered two years ago. She wasn’t as experienced as Kiera but she was good. Very good. Travis did not accept substandard.
‘Time Distort Seven,’ Chan announced, her hands moving with calm precision across the flight controls.
‘Increase to Time Distort Nine,’ ordered Travis.
‘Sir.’
The pursuit ship leapt forward. Travis calmed himself and sat in the central control chair overlooking the mutoids’ flight stations. His natural eye focused on the flickering starscape on the forward viewer. His bionic eye saw differently: identifying, labelling and mapping each star system that streaked by faster than human thought could follow.
Travis punched the control that called up a computer monitor in the arm of his command chair. He loaded the mission briefing and scanned the contents. It all looked surprisingly ordinary. There wasn’t a direct mention of Blake or the Liberator – just a stream of data on a penal transport ship bound for the Kylon system. There was nothing unusual about a class-three transporter towing O-line cargo pods. Four pods, twenty prisoners in each, plus eight guards and a three-man flight crew. Travis felt a worrying sense of anti-climax. Hundreds of these prison ships left Earth every year, aimed at penal planets dotted around the edge of Federation space. There was no reason why any one of them should require an escort of pursuit ships.
Anger boiled in Travis’s gut. It had to be some kind of joke. But it wasn’t like Servalan to joke; not even in her cruellest of moods.
Blake's 7: Criminal Intent Page 8