‘Can’t you bring the Liberator in any closer?’ asked Vila. ‘It would make the teleport targeting a lot more accurate.’
‘I’m trying,’ Jenna replied.
She moved her hand fractionally on the controls and the ship responded instantly, nosing towards the stricken prison ship.
‘INFORMATION,’ Zen intoned solidly. ‘LIBERATOR IS NOW IN RANGE OF POTENTIAL DAMAGE FROM SPACE DEBRIS.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Jenna.
She gritted her teeth and brought the ship in even closer. At this range she could see the portholes at the front of the transport ship. She could also see the storm of ice and rock on the edge of ring system. She could see individual pieces that were hard enough and jagged enough to slice through the prison ship like lasers.
‘INFORMATION…’
‘If this is about the ring system, Zen, then forget it! I can see where we’re going!’
‘FEDERATION PURSUIT SHIPS MOVING INTO ATTACK FORMATION.’
‘What?’ Jenna whipped her head around to check the secondary screens on her flight controls. Two red marks were closing in on the centre of the gridlines, right where the Liberator was situated. ‘What do they think they’re doing?’
‘MOVING INTO ATTACK FORMATION.’
‘I know that! I meant why?’
‘TACTICAL ANALYSIS INDICATES THAT THEY ARE PLANNING TO ATTACK.’
‘No –’
‘Jenna!’ Vila shouted. His voice was distorted in panic through the intercom from the teleport bay. ‘You’ve got to get closer! I can’t get a fix on the next lot of bracelets!’
‘I’m trying!’ Jenna teased the controls again and the Liberator edged forward, near enough for her see through the York’s portholes into the flight cabin. ‘Any closer and I risk clipping it, Vila. Bring the next lot up!’
‘All right, all right…’
Jenna felt her hands sweating on the controls. She bit her lip and nudged the Liberator closer, metre by metre. There was a series of distant clangs and bumps.
‘ENTERING RING SYSTEM,’ declared Zen calmly. ‘MINIMAL DAMAGE TO EXTERIOR HULL.’
‘We can take this low-level stuff for a while,’ Jenna said, biting her lip and hoping it was true. ‘A few dents and scratches never hurt anyone.’
‘FEDERATION PURSUIT SHIPS IN ATTACK RANGE,’ Zen said stiffly.
Jenna glanced at the computer. Was that a rather wounded tone she detected? Maybe Zen was concerned about dents and scratches after all. ‘Let me know if they’re preparing to fire. In the mean time power up the force wall.’
‘CONFIRMED.’
*
Vila pushed the teleport control levers and the bay filled with a swirl of light that quickly resolved into a group in prison fatigues, a Federation navigator and Gan.
‘Gan!’ Vila exclaimed. ‘I thought you were dead!’
‘It’s good to see you, too, Vila.’ Gan turned to the people standing with him. ‘Welcome to the Liberator.’
‘I never really believed the stories I heard,’ said Zola, looking around the teleport bay. ‘But it’s all true, isn’t it?’
‘Please don’t attempt to take over the ship,’ Vila told her. He was already aiming a gun at her with his free hand. ‘We’re not very keen on the Federation around here, as you may have gathered.’
‘I won’t try anything,’ said Zola. ‘Just let me take charge of my prisoners.’
‘Your prisoners?’ repeated Gan.
‘These men are Federation prisoners. They are on a penal transport ship, in case you’ve forgotten. With Captain Garran and First Officer Norton dead, they become my responsibility. You can drop me off with them at the nearest Federation base.’
‘I’m afraid it’s not going to work like that,’ said Gan. There was no mistaking the firmness in his tone. There was a gun in one of his meaty hands and it was pointing at Zola. ‘As far as I’m concerned these men are free. You’re the prisoner now, Zola.’
‘Right then,’ said Vila, beaming. ‘That’s that settled.’
‘If you would just step to one side…’ Gan said, gesturing with the gun.
Reluctantly Zola moved to the seating area and sat down. She looked suddenly helpless and confused. Vila had seen that look before: on the faces of innocent men and women who had been captured by the Federation and sent to distant and inhospitable penal planets. In fact, he had worn that look on his own face once.
‘Funny how things turn out, isn’t it?’ he said brightly.
*
Blake fixed the last seal on his spacesuit and looked down at the finished result. It didn’t inspire much confidence.
‘Don’t worry,’ Travis told him. ‘It’ll do the job – at least as far as it needs too.’
‘Looks like it will tear the first time I move,’ Blake muttered, flexing his arms experimentally. The material stretched and reformed but stayed whole and sealed. ‘I’d hate for this to get a puncture in deep space.’
‘What a shame that would be,’ Travis said drily. He handed Blake the helmet. Attached to the back of it was a slim rod of oxygen. ‘Enough air for one hour.’
Blake took the helmet. He wouldn’t put it on until the last minute – which wasn’t far away, judging by how much the ship was rocking and reverberating with the impact of every minor ice fragment. He quickly familiarised himself with the method of sealing the helmet latches onto the collar of the suit in case he needed to move fast; he had the unpleasant feeling that any second now the hull could be split wide open and all hell would break loose.
‘You’re going to regret this, Travis,’ said Kilus Kroe. He was sitting on the floor, dressed in an identical suit to Blake’s. His hands, encased in transpex gloves, were on his head, fingers laced together. Behind him stood Kiera, the mutoid, with a blaster held against the back of Kroe’s skull.
‘I very much doubt that,’ replied Travis. ‘On your feet.’
Kiera kicked the FIB man in the small of the back and he grunted in pain. ‘Watch the suit, mutoid.’ Carefully, Kroe stood, swaying as the ship was buffeted by another cluster of heavy ice particles.
‘Those hits are getting bigger,’ Blake noted solemnly.
‘The ship is going deeper into the ring system,’ Travis agreed. ‘It’s time to move out. Helmets on.’
Swallowing hard, Blake pulled the transparisteel dome over his head and set the latches. It sealed with a faint hiss and the oxygen rod immediately started to convert into gas. It smelled like every other spacesuit oxygen supply he’d ever used – a strange, cool mixture of metal and plastic.
Travis put his own helmet on – the sleek, armoured lines of a Federation combat suit looked a lot more appropriate for extra-vehicular activity than the emergency suits. Blake envied him and felt his pulse rate begin to climb in anticipation of what was to come. He tried to breathe calmly and slowly to maximise the oxygen supply, but the ice impacts were increasing in ferocity and frequency with every passing minute.
‘I said put your helmet on,’ Travis told Kroe, who was still standing immobile.
‘What if I don’t want to?’
‘Then Kiera will shoot you dead where you stand and I’ll leave without you.’
Kroe smiled. ‘So I do have a choice, then…?’
*
‘INFORMATION. A LARGE ACCRETION OF RADIOACTIVE SILICA AND HEAVY ICE IS ON A COLLISION COURSE WITH THE FEDERATION PRISON VESSEL.’
Jenna looked up from her instruments, frowning. On the forward viewer, the York was entering the maelstrom. ‘Will it destroy the ship?’
‘INSUFFICIENT DATA. HOWEVER THE DAMAGE WILL BE CONSIDERABLE.’
Jenna nursed the controls as the Liberator began to shake with the impact of the ring edge. ‘Estimation?’
‘FIFTY-ONE PER CENT PROBABILITY OF VESSEL DESTRUCTION.’
Jenna hit the intercom switch. ‘Vila – how many more prisoners are there to come?’
‘I’ve no idea. I’ve just bought another batch on board. You’re doing a great job, Jen
na. Hold her steady.’
‘It’s getting difficult. Zen says there’s an iceberg heading for the prison ship. If it hits, it could destroy it completely.’
In the teleport bay, Vila looked up at Gan, white-faced. ‘Avon and Cally are still on that ship!’
Gan was trying to direct the prisoners to some of the crew cabins, but most of them were confused and anxious and now just getting in the way. ‘How many more to come?’
Vila activated the communicator link to Cally. ‘How many more, Cally? The situation’s getting critical!’
‘Just four of us, Vila – but please hurry!’
Vila licked his lips as the Liberator shook with a series of meteor strikes. ‘There may not be time...’
‘Just get a fix and teleport, Vila!’
Vila fiddled with the control panel, but his fingers felt clumsy with panic. ‘I can’t! The prison ship’s moving too much and now so’s the Liberator!’
The Liberator shook again with enough force to throw Vila out of his seat. Prisoners were scattered everywhere like skittles.
*
Jenna picked herself up and slid back into the flight console seat. She grasped the steering controls and shook her hair out of her eyes.
‘INFORMATION: LATERAL VANE HAS SUSTAINED MODERATE IMPACT DAMAGE. AUTO-REPAIR SYSTEMS ENGAGED.’
‘What about the prison ship?’
‘ESTIMATED TIME TO MAJOR IMPACT: TEN SECONDS.’
Instinctively Jenna looked up at the viewer. She could see it now – a huge, jagged piece of ice heading straight for the York. It was nearly half the size of one of the prison pods.
‘FIVE SECONDS.’
*
In the rear prison pod, Avon held his wrist communicator to his lips and snarled, ‘Vila! Teleport now!’
There was a sudden, deafening crash and the whole ship seemed to slew sideways. Avon, Cally, Stygo and Drena were all hurled across the pod and smashed against the far wall. The opposite bulkhead buckled with a shriek of tortured alloy followed by a massive bang that split the air.
A storm blew up from nowhere, a howling wind screaming out of the pod and into space.
Avon, clutching at a support stanchion, peered through slitted eyes and saw the gash in the far wall. ‘Decompression!’ he yelled, grabbing hold of Cally with his other hand as she began to slide across the floor, lifted by the wind and the vacuum of space.
Larn Stygo rolled across the deck, fingers scrabbling at the metal as he was pulled by the same forces. Drena tumbled overhead, pinned to the ceiling, scraping along the metal cable-joints and pipework. All were heading for the split in the hull.
Cally grabbed hold of a support, wrapping her arms tightly around it. The shriek of the wind was deafening. She could feel the pressure building up behind her eyes as the atmosphere bled out.
Avon was yelling into his communicator. ‘Vila! We’ve got a hull breach! Get us out of here!’
The reply squawked out of the bracelet but was lost in the noise of the decompression. Alarm klaxons were whooping and the lights had turned to a deep, emergency red. Cally looked at Avon. His face was scarlet, as if he had been bathed in blood. Even his teeth, gritted between the rictus of his lips, were red.
‘Can’t…. hold… on…’ he yelled, fingers beginning to slip from their grip on the support stanchion.
Drena suddenly flew across the pod and hit the rent in the wall. The wind instantly dropped as she plugged the gap with her own body. For a second her face filled with panic and then the pain hit her.
‘Somebody help her!’ Cally shouted over the noise of the alarms.
‘She’s blocking the hole,’ yelled Stygo. ‘She’s saving our lives!’
‘Get…out…’ Drena gasped painfully. ‘While you still can…’
‘She’ll never withstand the vacuum,’ Avon shouted. ‘She won’t survive.’
‘That was never her intention,’ argued Stygo. ‘She’s just bought us time!’
But even as the criminal spoke, his eyes were locked on Drena. She was staring back at him. Her eyes were full of fury and pain. ‘The intention doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘It’s the result that counts.’
And then the ineluctable forces of nature exerted their grim authority. A look of utter despair and anguish took over Drena’s face. Cally watched in horror as the woman’s body began to cave in, ribs cracking and folding as the vacuum of space sucked her out through the narrow gap. Her mouth opened wide in fear and agony, and then her entire body collapsed in an instant and suddenly disappeared through the gap in a brief tangle of arms and legs. For a moment all that was left was Drena’s head, but then her skull was crushed and it, too, slipped away.
The howling wind resumed immediately, and the remaining occupants of the pod screamed with it as they hurtled towards the gap.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Blake fell on all fours as the iceberg struck. He’d never felt anything like it. For a second he was convinced he was going to die there and then as the ship inevitably broke apart and they were all hurled out into space to rupture and then freeze.
But somehow, despite the massive impact, the York held together. Blake landed hard, gasping with shock. Kiera fell too, and Travis staggered. Only Kilus Kroe, it seemed, reacted fast enough to take advantage of the sudden chaos.
Kroe launched himself from the floor at Travis, shouldering him backwards as he lost his footing. The two men crashed against the far bulkhead, Kroe catching Travis with a vicious head-butt.
Kiera was on her knees, recovering her fallen autoblaster.
It was now or never, Blake realised. He dived for where his Liberator gun had been discarded by Kroe, rolled, came up with the weapon in his hand and fired. The blast took Kiera in the left shoulder, spinning her around. He didn’t have time to check if she was finished or not. Blake twisted, aimed at Kroe’s back.
Hesitated.
He’d never shot a man in the back before.
A gigantic pain exploded through his neck as something hit him from behind. He crashed forward, his arms and legs numb. Dimly he realised what had happened as Kiera stepped into view. The mutoid had punched Blake in the back of the neck and practically taken his head off.
But she was wounded. She was holding her left arm awkwardly, although the armoured spacesuit had saved her from the worst effects of Blake’s shot. The right arm was still fully functional however. She was breathing with some difficulty judging by the raucous gasps she gave as she limped across the pod towards Travis. Perhaps the shot had collapsed a lung as well, thought Blake vaguely. His vision was beginning to blur now and the pain was pulsing through his head with every beat of his heart.
Stygo hit the gap next, his arms and legs braced for the impact. For a few seconds he held that position as the remaining oxygen slipped past him in buffeting waves through the narrow gash in the bulkhead wall. The muscles bunched and stood out like steel cables in his arms and shoulders. He began to shake, but the pressure was lessening. Yellow foam was emerging from the edges of the hole, hardening and narrowing the gap still further.
With a roar Stygo turned and backed into the wall, his wide shoulders covering the split in the metal. The wind dropped. He could feel the foam bubbling between his shoulder blades, struggling to fill the gap.
‘What are you doing?’ gasped Cally. There wasn’t much oxygen left now. Every breath was a long, wheezing effort.
‘Breach sealant can’t do it on its own,’ Stygo growled. His teeth were clamped shut.
‘The gap’s too big,’ Avon explained. ‘The automatic sealant is only meant for minor punctures.’
‘If I block the gap the sealant might stand a chance,’ Stygo said.
‘It won’t work,’ Avon told him. ‘It’ll harden but it won’t be able to plug a gap like that. You saw what happened to Drena!’
Cally swallowed. ‘Avon…’
‘The sealant will dry and harden with you as a part of it,’ Avon continued remorselessly. ‘You will either have to stay
there, or break the seal when you move.’
Stygo grunted. The pod was shaking and rattling, but if he stayed where he was the immediate danger was averted. ‘Just get out of here,’ he snarled. ‘While you still can. You heard what Drena said.’
‘Cally, we have to go,’ Avon yelled.
She turned to look at him. ‘There must be something we can do!’
‘There is.’ Avon lifted his communicator. ‘Avon to Liberator. Bring us up now, Vila!’
Vila stabbed at the teleport controls and a vivid orange glare filled the bay. A scintillating nimbus of energy appeared and then quickly resolved into Avon and Cally. ‘Thank goodness you’re safe, Cally,’ said Vila. ‘And hello, Avon.’
‘How could you?’ Cally exploded angrily, turning on Avon. ‘You just left that man to die!’
‘He was dead anyway,’ Avon strode out of the teleport bay without looking back.
Vila looked from one to the other. ‘What happened?’
‘A brave man gave his life to save us,’ said Cally bitterly. ‘Only I don’t think he had any choice.’
*
Avon ran onto the Liberator’s flight deck with Vila and Cally close behind. Jenna was still struggling with the flight controls.
‘Is that it?’ she asked. ‘Can we pull out?’
‘Blake is still unaccounted for,’ Avon told her. ‘Zen, close biometric scan of the prison ship – now. Check for life-signs – anything that could be Blake. At this range you should be able to pick up individual pulses, electromagnetic brain activity, anything that could identify him.’
‘CONFIRMED.’
The York was now fully immersed in the rings. It looked more like a dense asteroid field at zero range. Jenna could see lumps of ice hitting the vessel, fragmenting, sending dazzling showers of frost into the rays of the distant sun. It looked spectacular but deadly.
‘What if he’s not there?’ she asked. ‘What if there are no life-signs?’
‘Then Blake is dead,’ Avon replied. And the Liberator is mine. The words were left unspoken, but they hung in the brittle air like a promise.
‘INFORMATION,’ said Zen sombrely. ‘LIFE-SIGNS ATTRIBUTABLE TO ROJ BLAKE’S BIOMETRIC DATA DETECTED IN FORWARD POD SECTION.’
Blake's 7: Criminal Intent Page 19