Blake bit his lip. ‘Now why are they doing that?’ he murmured.
*
Back at her headquarters, Servalan was wondering the same thing. She had ordered Travis to leave the sector. She knew that he was given to disobeying orders, but Servalan was not in the mood for having her orders disobeyed, even by him. She tried his direct channel again, but there was only static.
Her intercom buzzer sounded and she pressed the button. ‘What is it?’ she snapped crossly.
‘Keelian Vardor is here, Supreme Commander,’ the secretary announced. ‘She has some new material samples to show you.’
‘Keelian?’ Well, that was quite different. Servalan was starting to like Keelian. The girl was obedient, respectful and humble, but without the irksome grovelling qualities exhibited by the likes of Cashlan. She was as a young person of her limited status should be in the presence of the Supreme Commander, a fine example of a Federation citizen. Keelian, Servalan thought, had potential.
*
The Liberator was quiet. Jenna stared through the viewscreen worriedly at the three pursuit ships, wondering what – if anything – she should do. She decided to be ready.
‘Zen, put up radiation flare shields,’ she said.
‘Don’t,’ said Avon. ‘The pursuit ships present no current threat. The shields will increase the loss of energy from the power cells.’
‘We could bring the battle computers online,’ Jenna suggested.
‘No,’ replied Avon. ‘That will use up power too.’
‘So we just stare at these ships and wonder what they’re up to?’
‘While they stare at us and wonder what we’re up to. It’s a classic stalemate.’
‘Until they decide to make a move. They don’t know our power’s virtually drained.’
‘That depends on the kind of move they decide to make,’ Avon said thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps the Liberator won’t be the next piece on the board to be taken.’
SIX
RACE AGAINST TIME
The two mutoid crewmen fastened their spacesuits and put on their helmets. Travis fitted his own spacesuit and fixed the seals before checking the communications unit.
‘Can you both hear me?’ he called.
‘Yes, Commander,’ two mutoid voices chorused almost in harmony inside his sophisticated space helmet.
‘Good,’ Travis said. ‘Move out.’
He watched the mutoids march ahead of him towards the airlock hatch and followed them. They clambered inside the cramped space, sealed the inner door and waited for depressurisation.
‘Why do we not dock, Commander?’ asked one of the mutoids.
‘Blake didn’t dock, did he?’ Travis replied. ‘He has something in common with the Supreme Commander that we don’t: he knows exactly what’s on that station and how dangerous it is. I don’t want our ships too close.’
‘Blake has a teleport device,’ the mutoid reminded him.
‘But he hasn’t used it,’ Travis said. ‘At the extreme range of our scanners’ penetration of Amber’s damping field we picked up three life forms loose in space. One of them will surely be Blake. He felt the necessity to spacewalk, and so do I. You have to think like your enemy if you’re going to beat them.’
The outer airlock hatch opened and they clambered onto the hull of the pursuit ship. Travis looked out across space. Fourteen thousand spacials was a long way, but it would be worth it. He gripped the control handles of the jetpack he wore on his back.
‘Go,’ he ordered his mutoids. ‘Try to keep out of sight of her scanners and head for the station.’
‘Yes, Commander,’ the near-harmonious chorus came again and the two mutoids suddenly vaulted into the blackness above, each catapulted on a column of flame, and plunged towards the underside of the Liberator.
‘I have you now, Blake,’ Travis said quietly with a vicious smile. ‘There’s no escape.’ He pulled on the handles at his sides and blasted himself after the mutoids.
‘INFORMATION.’
Jenna looked up. ‘Yes, Zen?’
‘THREE LIFE FORMS APPROACHING STATION AMBER.’
‘What?’ Jenna was shaken by the news.
Avon gave her worst fear a voice. ‘They must be from the pursuit ships,’ he snapped. ‘For some reason they’ve decided that firing on us would be unwise, so they’ve sent a spacewalking party to try to hunt Blake down in person. Zen, analyse the life forms.’
‘ALL THREE LIFE FORMS ARE ESSENTIALLY HUMAN,’ Zen reported, ‘MODIFIED WITH TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED APPARATUS.’
‘Travis and a couple of mutoids, no doubt,’ Avon said dourly. ‘How long will it take them to reach the station? Surely a spacewalk over fourteen thousand spacials should take quite a while.’
‘ALL LIFE FORMS ARE USING CHEMICAL ROCKET PROPULSION AND WILL REACH STATION AMBER IN POINT NINE HOURS.’
‘Jenna,’ said Avon urgently. ‘Call Blake quickly and tell him if he doesn’t get back here in fifty minutes he’s a dead man.’
Jenna was already on it. ‘Gan? Blake?’ she called desperately. There was no answer. ‘Gan?’ Still nothing. ‘Vila? Vila, this is Jenna. Can you hear me? Liberator to boarding party, can you hear me? Gan, Vila, answer me!’
‘There’s no response,’ Avon interrupted before she could press further. ‘Don’t waste your time. Zen, why aren’t the communicators working?’
‘A LOCALISED INCREASE IN RADIATION IS AFFECTING TRANSCEIVER SIGNALS.’
‘They must’ve got one of the generators on,’ Avon said. ‘But it’s leaking radiation and that’s affecting the detectors as well as the communications.’
‘Will it affect the teleport?’ asked Jenna.
‘Inside the radiation field, yes,’ Avon answered. ‘If they can get outside its influence we should be able to pick them up, if they’re not dead already.’
*
Vila was slow in reaching the emergency generator plant. He had managed to trace the circuits in the bulkhead system to their power source so he could give Blake and Gan a location fix from the circuit mapper. Vila had been walking to meet them, following directions from Gan, but when they fired up the generator the radiation cut communications. Vila was left halfway to his destination with no idea where to go.
He put his space helmet back to provide protection from the radiation leak. He tried a few corridors until he spotted a light and heard machinery humming, and then he’d followed those signs of life to their source.
Blake and Gan were inside the generator plant, helmets on. Blake was trying to patch the leak in the large glowing cylindrical power converter at the centre of the small room. Gan was lashing the connector heads of the powerlines to a coupling in the wall. Vila quickly opened his toolbox and rushed to Blake’s side to help him.
Comforted by the protection of his spacesuit, Vila tackled the leak with considerable aplomb. After a few minutes the radiation readings on the computer bank above the leaky instrument started to descend. Blake watched the readings intently until the marker registered a low level, then risked taking of his helmet again.
Vila pulled his off too, and as he did an urgent voice filled the room.
‘This is Avon. Can you hear me? Blake!’
‘I hear you, Avon,’ Blake answered. ‘There was a radiation leak but we’ve patched it up. I’m afraid you’re going to have to send over another communicator, though. I left mine behind.’
‘I can send one now,’ said Avon. ‘Are the powerlines connected?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. We don’t have much time, Blake. Zen detected three life forms with jetpacks heading for the station. They’ll be there in less than forty minutes.’
‘Right,’ said Blake. ‘I’m sure we can give Liberator enough charge to get away in that time.’ He grinned. ‘The question is, what shall we do while we’re waiting?’
Vila groaned. ‘You’re not suggesting what I think you’re suggesting are you?’
‘Twenty minutes is long enough to have a search
around,’ said Blake. ‘We passed by a big laboratory on the way here. I’d like to take a look. Coming?’
‘Blake,’ Vila said urgently. ‘The damaged area of the generator. The bit that was causing the radiation leak. Did you notice anything odd about it?’
‘No. What?’
‘It wasn’t accidental damage. Not the kind of thing you’d get from a technical fault or something. The conduit housings were disfigured as if they’d been melted.’
Gan pointed up. ‘Look,’ he said. Many of the lights in the corridor had come back on. ‘The generator wasn’t the only thing that was damaged.’
Blake looked all around him in stunned silence. The corridor walls, floor and ceiling were blistered, potholed and cracked, some sections of the internal architecture barely recognisable.
‘Perhaps we’re starting to get an idea of why this station was shut down,’ said Vila.
INTERLUDE II - STATION AMBER, SIX MONTHS AGO
Another section of the corridor wall exploded, showering molten metal and polymer in all directions. Servalan was still on the floor, face down, trying to avoid being spattered by the seething hot droplets, trying to keep clear of the smoke that seemed to be filling every inch of corridor space.
How had it happened? Ban Kerralin was an expert. He was supposed to be brilliant. How could the machine have gone haywire so close to its final testing stage? It couldn’t have been an accident. He must have sabotaged the machine and set it loose on the station to kill anyone in its path.
Alarms were going off everywhere, their deafening howl drowning out all but the sounds of explosions. Servalan looked up and saw the booted feet of a guard running by.
‘Guard, come here!’ she shouted. ‘Come here at once!’
The man stopped and turned. At first Servalan thought he wouldn’t see her and would leave her behind. But he crouched down beside her head. ‘Supreme Commander!’ he gasped. ‘I thought you’d been killed, ma’am. Are you all right?’
‘I just need to get out,’ she answered and thrust her hand into his. He pulled her up and she immediately started to cough. The guard unhooked a remote control from his belt, and closed one of the emergency bulkheads to stop not only the smoke but also the machine getting through. Not that a mere emergency bulkhead could do much about the latter, Servalan thought bitterly.
‘Where’s Kerralin?’ she demanded as they ran.
‘I think he’s dead, ma’am.’
‘But we need him to deactivate the machine before it kills us all!’
‘There’s nothing we can do. We’re evacuating the station and activating the self-destruct.’
Servalan shook her head. ‘The machine knows how to operate all the computers by remote control,’ she told the guard. ‘If you arm the self-destruct, the machine will shut it down or jettison it.’
‘And then what will it do?’ the guard asked worriedly.
‘And then,’ said Servalan, ‘it will hunt me down and kill me. And once it’s killed me it will kill the first person it saw after it saw me, and then the first person after it saw him. And so on.’
‘It’s got a queuing system?’
‘It’s not designed to wipe out people indiscriminately,’ said Servalan. ‘It’s designed to intimidate. Imagine an unstoppable machine loose on your planet, killing each and every citizen one by one. As soon as you’ve seen it, that’s it. You are somewhere on its list. You know it’s going to hunt you down, but you don’t know when. The only way to stop it is to give in, to beg to have it turned off.’ Her smile was chilling. ‘An effective way to stop a rebellion, I think.’
‘Who do we beg to turn it off?’ stammered the guard.
‘Ban Kerralin,’ snapped Servalan. ‘He’s the only one who can stop it. And you’ve just told me he’s dead.’
There was a flash and the recently closed emergency bulkhead split in half, smoke pouring through. Servalan ran without looking back. She knew all too well what was coming for her.
The giant metallic blue sphere of the AE105 crashed through the broken pieces of the fallen door and fingers of blue light trickled over its surface to form a single bright ball a couple of inches from it like a small star orbiting a huge planet. It was preparing to fire.
Servalan tripped on the hem of her dress and hit the deck again. The machine couldn’t halt its attack process at such a late stage. It fired. A flash like a streak of brilliant blue lighting connected with the body of the guard, and that body turned into a cloud of vapour instantly. The vapour mingled with the smoke and the guard was lost forever.
The machine was suddenly still, hovering ominously in the corridor. It had accidentally killed someone a long way down the queue. It was confused – momentarily – but it wouldn’t take long before it reset itself.
Servalan lay still on the floor, hidden from its detectors under the sheet of smoke from the corridor damage. Some more guards would appear soon, the machine would start killing them and she could make a getaway. Things were going to be fine. She had thought of a way she could immobilise the AE105.
She just needed to get through the next few minutes unharmed.
SEVEN
POTENTIAL
‘There we are,’ Drav Cashlan simpered, stepping back and resting his hands on his hips. ‘Absolutely perfect! You look a picture, truly a picture! Doesn’t Madam Servalan look a picture, Keelian?’
‘The Supreme Commander looks very beautiful,’ Keelian said, lowering her eyes respectfully. ‘The dress fits and suits her well.’
Servalan smiled as she looked into the mirror Cashlan had set up in her office. The dress was complete, every stitch sewn, every rough edge trimmed neat. The material glittered and shimmered under the bright lights of the office, and Servalan was pleased. She was also pleased with Keelian’s attitude.
‘Thank you, Keelian,’ she said, looking at the girl. She could not tell her that she looked nice too. Keelian was short, plump and plain. She wore a dowdy grey pinafore designed for working. She was young though, and still developing. If she lost some weight, learnt how to use make-up and did something about her hair she might look rather sweet. But Keelian would never be beautiful, Servalan thought. The girl just didn’t have the features for it. Provided her development went in the right direction, by the age of twenty she might just about manage pretty.
But looks weren’t everything. Keelian’s words were good ones and well used. Through all the fittings for this dress, the girl’s respectful attitude had helped temper Servalan’s annoyance at Cashlan’s irritating chatter. Great care had been taken by her to avoid informality and insult towards the Supreme Commander. Perhaps Keelian might have a better contribution to offer the Federation than that of a mere dressmaker’s assistant. Perhaps she could be a good secretary. Servalan decided on something then and there.
‘I want you to stay here, Keelian,’ she smiled at the girl. ‘Cashlan, you may go. Payment for the dress will be credited to your account within the hour.’
She could tell that Cashlan’s smile was fake.
‘Of course, madam,’ he stuttered. ‘But I shall need Keelian. I have other dresses to make.’
‘You have other seamstresses as well, Cashlan,’ Servalan said.
‘Ah,’ Cashlan said in a plaintive tone, putting an arm around little Keelian’s shoulders and gently squeezing her in a show of affection. ‘But none so nimble-fingered, so patient and so totally devoted as dear Keelian. Won’t you let me have her?’ He looked at Servalan with pleading eyes.
‘This is an executive decision on behalf of the Federation government,’ Servalan told him flatly. ‘Will you protest and risk a charge of insurgency?’
Cashlan’s face went white. ‘Er, no, Supreme Commander,’ he stammered. ‘Of course not.’
Servalan smiled venomously. ‘I find it fascinating the way fear induces respectful formality, don’t you, Cashlan?’
‘Oh, quite, madam. Quite.’
‘Keelian will be returned to you when I have finished with he
r, provided she has no other duties. You will be informed.’
‘Of course, madam,’ Cashlan nodded and quickly scurried out of the door.
As Servalan closed it, Keelian looked shyly at her. ‘Is something wrong, Supreme Commander?’ she asked. ‘Have I offended you?’
Servalan took her hand. ‘On the contrary,’ she smiled at the girl. ‘Come and sit down. I have a proposition for you. One that may change your entire direction in life.’
Keelian obediently sat in the chair opposite the desk and patiently waited for Servalan to sit before asking, ‘Supreme Commander?’
‘Keelian,’ she said in the kind of voice a proud mother might use to congratulate an exceptionally good child. ‘I think you have it in you to be much more than a seamstress and errand girl to Cashlan. I think you have the potential to work for the Supreme Commander.’
Keelian’s eyes were like saucers. ‘For you?’
‘You’ll need training of course,’ Servalan said. ‘I assume you accept?’
Keelian smiled. ‘Oh yes, Supreme Commander,’ she said. ‘Yes I do.’
EIGHT
LET HIM HAVE IT
As soon as Vila forced the door of the laboratory open, the boarding party entered and began to search.
Blake switched over to auxiliary power so that the systems would take the energy they needed from the recently activated generator, then turned on the computers. He began to search for any details on the weapons being developed at Station Amber. Gan pulled open cabinets and drawers, stuffing data crystals into his pockets to take back to the Liberator.
‘It looks like the weapon being developed in this lab was called Assault Engine 105,’ Blake said. ‘The vault that should currently contain it is through there.’ He pointed to a large double doorway at the far end of the long rectangular laboratory. ‘It’s hard to tell precisely what it was, all these files are encoded. But if the name’s anything to go by it’s obviously a weapon and the schematics show it to be a small sphere. It looks like it’s small enough to carry by hand.’
Vila scurried towards it. ‘I’ll have a look at the lock.’
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