It was a kaleidoscope of their experiences and beliefs and emotions. She saw their homes. The families they left behind. Brief glimpses into their everyday lives. Gathered around the table for a meal, laughing at some absurdity, arguing amiably over some minor information… unwilling at first to acknowledge their true purpose.
They resisted her. Did not volunteer their thoughts willingly. But she knew they were old. So very old. And over these past centuries, imprisoned in these boxes, they had only had their private thoughts and memories to accompany them on their long, lonely journey down the decades. And now, through Cally they could reach out to each other again. Once they realised that, the dam burst. The relief in knowing that they had survived the centuries together gushed out in an unstoppable torrent.
Cally feared she would be washed away by the outpouring. But she had to know. Had to listen.
Behind the joy of new contact, there was much old pain. It had been such a long time since the Federation had found them. Taken each one from their loved ones and brought them here. They did not know the pretext for their work, at first. And once they had done, it had repelled them.
That was before the Federation had set to work on them. When it broke into their psyches. It took their recollections, their beliefs, their values… and disassembled them, piece by piece, memory by memory. Until they had nothing, and were built up again from scratch. Until they accepted their new purpose.
At first, their reluctance had made them prisoners in this Federation facility. Trapped far from their home worlds, unable ever to return. They knew that the Federation had chosen them for a combination of mental agility and perseverance, so they also knew that they could outlast their prison guards. That they were stronger together than they were on their own.
That’s why the Federation placed them in the life-support capsules. Sedated them. Separated them from each other, and from the world. And as the months went by, they were no longer just prisoners in their individual caskets. Their mental fight faded as their incarceration made them prisoners in their own bodies. Fighting a battle within the trap of their own physical forms.
Ready for their true purpose.
The purpose the Federation would never reveal. The purpose these prisoners carried with them on this silent, watchful journey down the centuries. The longest war in Federation history. One that could only end one way.
Cally awoke with a jolt. She was lying on the dusty walkway, beside the silent cabinets. Blake knelt beside her to hold one of her hands and stroke her forehead.
The room returned to her in a rush. The lights and the sounds and the smells. In her thermal suit, she suddenly shivered. She realised she had been crying.
‘Welcome back,’ Blake said softly.
He helped her to sit up. She coughed a little at the dust around them. ‘They are alive, Blake. They did not die.’
‘I was worried
you
might.’
‘And I know what this place is.’ Cally focused on Blake’s face as she mentally returned to the present, trying to separate now from then. ‘They told me, in their own way. This place pre-dates Star One by two hundred years.’
Blake harrumphed. ‘I think we’d established that much.’
‘Listen to me, Blake.’ She fixed him with a stern look, and he fell silent again, suitably abashed. ‘This is the failsafe, in the event that Star One is ever threatened.’
‘Ah.’ She saw how worried Blake looked at this thought. ‘I can’t imagine that Star One has ever faced a bigger threat than now.’
Cally nodded. ‘When Megiddo’s strange orbit returns it to the satellite grid, the men and women linked together in their caskets take over the operation. They override Star One and… and…’
‘What, Cally? Did they tell you?’
She was close to tears again. Mourning what these people had lost two hundred years ago. Grieving for their loss yet to come. ‘This facility is a bomb.’
Blake looked around the room. ‘Which part?’ He straightened to peer across the cavern at the distant generators. ‘Over there, perhaps?’
Cally stood up next to him. ‘All of it.’
‘What? How can they launch it?’
‘No, Blake.’ She took his arm. ‘The whole of Megiddo is a bomb. When it reaches the satellite grid, the planetoid will consume itself in a massive plasma explosion. It is designed to wipe out the alien fleet.’
Blake stared at her. She hoped it was because he was taking in the enormity of what she had discerned from the sleeping operators, and not because he simply could not believe her.
‘That’s old technology,’ he said. ‘It long pre-dates the focused plasma bolts of today’s Federation weaponry. Not subtle. Not discerning.’
Cally recalled a word from the heart of the operators’ gestalt. ‘Cataclysmic.’
Blake was still considering the consequences. ‘A plasma explosion that big will wipe out
everything
! The alien fleet, the Federation pursuit ships, the whole flotilla of Earth ships. Not to mention the
Liberator
.’
Cally released his arm, and moved over to the nearest semicircle of cabinets. ‘It will kill all these poor people, too.’
Blake’s dismissive gesture waved away her comment. ‘We have bigger things to worry about.’
‘You are missing that perspective again,’ said Cally sadly. ‘They’ve been trapped here as part of Megiddo’s operating system for hundreds of years. But they are people, Blake. Not headcount.’
‘They are a weapon.’
‘They are humans,’ insisted Cally. ‘They have a right to live.’
‘They surrendered that right two hundred years ago.’
She rounded on him angrily. ‘And what would you know about them?’
Blake raised his hands to placate her. ‘All right, all right. They spoke to you, and not to me. I understand that.’ He was pacing between the caskets now, peering into them occasionally as though he might get a clue from the long-silent occupants. ‘But it’s not as though they can discuss it with us over a drink and light refreshments…’ He fell silent as a thought came to him.
‘Or perhaps we can. Can’t you reach them telepathically? Can you explain? Ask them to stop it?’
‘No.’ Cally looked mournfully through the glass of the nearest casket. It was one of the young men, Geraint Jones. Over two hundred years old, but he still looked Cally’s age. ‘No,’ she said again. ‘Over the centuries, their purpose has been indelibly etched into their minds.’
Blake was his usual brisk, decisive self again, though he spoke softly to her. ‘Well, that means we
can’t
save them.’
‘But it does not mean we cannot
feel
for them.’ Cally reached out for some of the rock dust, and scattered it over the glass so that she could no longer see the man’s face.
‘We could open all the cabinets,’ suggested Blake. ‘Destroy the operators, defuse the bomb.’ He looked at Cally pleadingly, almost apologetically.
Cally thought back to what she had detected in her contact with the gestalt. ‘The system is already under way,’ she decided. ‘Kill them, and there is no reversing it.’
Blake paced back along the semi-circle, grimacing with frustration. ‘What about an override? The Federation brainwashed them – so they must be able to issue a counter-command as well?’
Cally considered what she had learned. Even now the contact with the gestalt, the experience of being them, was fading into faint memories. What had seemed so real, so vital, so immediate only a few minutes ago was becoming history, anecdote. ‘I suppose that must be true,’ was all she could say.
‘Well, come on then!’ Blake had been galvanised into action. He stormed off across the bridge, en route to another collection of equipment. ‘Those pursuit ships are within range. And there must be a comms system in this place.’ He was already at the next island of machinery in the cavern. He brushed the dust off the paraphernalia he found, and examined it in fresh desperation. ‘If we can contact the Federation, they can defuse this bomb before it’s too late.’
Vila wondered if it was too late to escape the limpet bombs. They scratched and scraped their way across the hull toward him. Their antennae twitched as they sought out their targets. He and Jenna were only part way to the airlock door, and the creatures had already closed in. One of them perked up on spindly legs, eyed him with its antennae, and then exploded in a ball of flame.
Vila reeled back, throwing his hands up to ward off the explosion. He heard a spattering of fragments strike his helmet. It was a disconcerting noise from outside his personal bubble in the quiet of space. He rolled forward, over and over, away from the blast. He was frightened that his suit might be holed. Even more terrified that he would bounce away from the hull and vanish helplessly into space. Tumbling forever, until the air in his suit was exhausted and he died a cold, lonely death.
‘
Vila!
’ Jenna’s concerned shout brought him back to reality. And grabbing a nearby handle brought him back into contact with the hull. He had rolled within reach of the airlock. Jenna was forty metres behind him.
He tried to calm down, so that he could listen for tell-tale suit alarms or a sudden, increased rush of air. All he could hear was the sudden, increased rush of his own breathing. And then Jenna’s voice again.
‘Vila, you’re all right. It wasn’t close enough to rip your hull suit.’
And then, in case he’d forgotten:
‘Open the airlock door!’
He stared back at her. The first thing he noticed was a fine line across his helmet. Not a reflection of the
Liberator
, as he first thought. When he focused more closely, there was a second line that stretched to meet it. With a thrill of horror, he recognised that there was a crack in the visor of his helmet.
Beyond that, the limpet mines had moved into the gap between him and Jenna. The nearest was only a metre away. It had popped up on its stilt-like legs, and slowly rotated to survey the area. Vila saw the dark circle where it had originally burrowed into the hull, its thin limbs still clinging to the torn metal.
He thought it should be easy to dislodge it, simply by activating his sub-atomic probe on one or two joints. But the probe was not in his toolkit. Because he’d handed it to Jenna earlier, when she offered to help him.
The creature turned to look directly at him. Assessing him before it blew up in his face, Vila supposed.
Well, he wasn’t prepared to let that happen. He seized his toolkit by the strap, swung it in an ungainly circle around his body, and slammed it against the alien. The antennae shot protectively back into the creature’s body, but it didn’t compress its legs fast enough. The toolkit slammed into its side with a very gratifying thump. The thin legs buckled and bent. Vila gave the toolkit another great heave, and this time the blow severed the creature from its legs, and it tumbled off into the darkness.
Vila looked for Jenna. She was still some distance away.
‘Get to the airlock!’
‘What about you?’ He reattached his toolkit, and hesitated. Should he help Jenna clear a path through the limpet mines so that she could reach him? Or turn and open the airlock?
The urgency of his decision was underlined as another alien ignited twenty metres from him, between him and Jenna. The light that blossomed from it didn’t fade as fast as the others. He wondered whether that was an after-image of the flare, until he worked it out. Beyond the exploded alien, and far behind Jenna too, an aurora of light was building over the horizon.
‘The flare shield,’ he gasped. ‘It’s like a wave! Cresting over the hull!’
Jenna didn’t look back.
‘Stop admiring it and start avoiding it!’
‘Watch out for those alien ticks,’ he warned her. ‘They’re everywhere. Converging on us.’ He scuttled backwards as best he could, towards the airlock.
Avon’s voice crackled and spat in his helmet.
‘Hurry up, you two. Another alien ship is approaching.’
‘I see it!’
acknowledged Jenna.
‘Go on Vila. Get inside!’
He’d reached the airlock door, and managed to bat away another limpet mine. Vila scrabbled at the hatch, panicking that he couldn’t find a handle in its smooth, sealed surface. ‘I’m at the airlock, Avon. Open up!’
He looked back to locate Jenna. She had barely covered a further ten metres. The shield’s wave of energy washed over the hull behind her, towards her, a tsunami of power that tore up the limpet mines and discarded them indiscriminately in every direction.
And above that, an alien spaceship closed in. It was the size of a planet hopper, but shaped like no ship Vila had ever seen before. Its lines were not like any conventional vessel. It wasn’t even symmetrical. The surface glistened with an oscillating pulse of lights in a melting, changing melange of colours, like oil on water. It loomed ominously over Jenna.
‘Vila,’
she said. She had no need to shout, because she knew he could hear her over the comms. It made her voice sound unnaturally calm.
‘Don’t let these things in with you!’
An abrupt movement told Vila that the airlock door had dropped away beneath him. Even from where she was, Jenna must have seen this.
‘Get inside!’
‘Then hurry up,’ he told her as he began to climb in through the hatch.
Jenna wasn’t making up any new ground. In fact, it looked like she had stopped moving forward at all. Alien limpets were closing in on her from three sides.
‘I have a better idea. Close the door behind you!’
‘I can’t leave you!’ Vila no longer cared that he was shouting. Almost every instinct told him to dive back inside
Liberator
to safety. But a tiny part of him was urging the opposite – to go back and rescue Jenna, despite the overwhelming odds.
Fresh light crested over the hull. The surface vibrated with a further burst of energy. The crack in Vila’s visor looked to have a fresh fracture joining the other two.
‘You have to go. Close the door!’
Vila watched her stand up, unsteadily, and turn her back on him. She had made her decision. She wasn’t hiding from the oncoming threats of the shield wave and the bizarre alien ship. Jenna was facing them down, right to the end.