A huge surge of light burst from the grid, coursing out in an explosion of devastating energy. The alien vessel instantly blipped out of existence on the schematic overlay.
The force of the blast rippled out across space. Even though the other alien ships had held back from the devastation, they shifted in its backwash like flotsam and jetsam bobbing on an outgoing tide.
Or an incoming tide, thought Avon.
The force of the wave reached
Liberator
. The three of them clung to whatever was nearest as the flight deck groaned and lurched.
Just as they thought the worst was over, another shock wave buffeted the ship, and they were thrown down onto the dusty floor.
Avon struggled back to his feet again.
‘INFORMATION. ALIEN VESSELS HAVE BREACHED THE DEFENCE BARRIER IN FIVE CONTIGUOUS SECTORS.’
‘Zen, wide shot,’ barked Blake. ‘Show us everything.’
The image expanded in a sickening zoom outwards. The shimmering plane of the satellite grid was sundered, like a shattered window smashed by a thrown brick. Beyond it, the hundreds of bobbing dots that indicated the alien fleet began to settle. And then they began to move forward.
‘Won’t the defence grid re-establish itself?’ asked Blake. ‘It’s still active.’
Even as they watched, the edges of the gap were beginning to fill in again.
‘It can’t fully regenerate in time.’ Jenna stared in appalled disbelief. ‘They’re swarming through!’
Avon saw the dots grow larger. The alien attackers speared through the chasm in the defence grid, and sliced into the human fleet. ‘You can guess where they’re heading next.’
Blake’s face was greyer than ever. ‘For us.’
‘Don’t flatter yourself, Blake.’ Avon pointed to a red indicator at the far right of the display. The final connection in the ragged remains of the defence grid. ‘They need to deactivate it completely. So they’ll target Star One.’
Vila shrugged on his jacket, and slapped his palm on the door release. He’d hurriedly changed in his quarters, and was now ready to hunt for the alien.
Ready wasn’t quite the word. Resigned was more like it. He stepped into the corridor, wondering if this was the last he’d ever see of his room. Perhaps he’d just nip back for one more glass of that bottle of Menaii red he’d picked up during his stay in the vineyards of Tregar. It would go untasted otherwise, wouldn’t it? And that would be a terrible waste.
Not as much of a waste, though, as it would be if he didn’t track down this alien. The wreckage of the teleport had shown clearly enough what damage they could do inside the ship. Cally had already set out for the port side of
Liberator
. He was supposed to scour starboard. Was that left or right? He could never remember.
He tightened his grip on the gun Blake had given him, hesitating about whether to strap it around his waist. It was a very good bottle of Menaii. One quick swig wasn’t going to do any harm, was it? He slipped back swiftly into his quarters.
Three quick swigs later, Vila emerged left his quarters for possibly the last time, and crept softly down the corridor.
Just beyond the next junction, he picked up the tell-tale marks left by the limpet creature. A series of serrated scratches caused by its odd little feet. They spread across the full width of the corridor, a meandering trail that suggested it was unsure where it was going, or may be damaged. Or drunk, thought Vila guiltily.
He kept walking. The scored trail veered off into the life-support section. Blake had been right. Somehow, these things knew how to target the
Liberator
‘s vital systems. They were smarter than they looked.
His mind was wandering. He needed to concentrate. The fumbling fingers of one hand found the wall-mounted light controls, and flicked them into the ‘on’ position.
Concealed lights faded up to reveal the complex equipment that ran ship-wide life support. A wide bank of equipment spread across the whole of one wall, with power lines dropping down towards it from the high ceiling. Oxygen reclamation tanks to the other side. Water recycling units gurgling busily. A control desk set in the centre.
But no sign of the alien scurrying about near the base of any of them.
Vila sighed with relief. The trail suggested it had come in here, but there were no scratch marks further than the doorway.
Perhaps it had doubled back. But he couldn’t remember another trail going past the door.
He hurried back to the entrance. Sure enough, a serrated line was scored into the floor, and curled in through the doorway. But it stopped shortly after that, bent back at a sharp angle, and veered off to one side.
And upwards. The damn things could climb walls.
Vila followed the line up and across. It traversed the length of one wall, and cut across towards the power lines that descended towards the oxygen reclamation unit. In a poorly-illuminated cranny beside them squatted the alien.
The flat disk was pressed up against the ceiling. Its spindly legs were extruded beneath it, entwined around a downpipe. It must have heard Vila, because its antennae rotated to point in his direction.
Without taking his eyes off the alien, he reached around his waist. And that was the moment Vila remembered when he had taken the belt off. Just before he’d sat down in his room to pour that first glass of Menaii red. Belt, power pack, and handgun were still lying on his bed.
The alien chittered angrily above him, and flexed its legs.
* * *
Blake had ordered Jenna to steer the
Liberator
towards Star One. He saw Avon bristling with suppressed anger, probably worrying more about having his authority usurped than anything. Well, Blake had been down to Megiddo. He’d seen the threat that it posed, and now the satellite grid was clearly breached. He had to take charge, and Avon would just have to accept that.
‘We’re underway,’ Jenna confirmed.
Avon sat at his own console, his arms crossed. ‘And what do you think we’ll do when we get there?’
‘We’ll think of something,’ muttered Blake. Though he was racking his brains to think of what that might be.
‘The weapons systems are offline, and our defences are down,’ said Avon. ‘Wishful thinking is not a plan, Blake.’
‘What do you suggest?’ Blake snarled back. ‘We can’t just leave them.’
‘Can’t we?’ Avon looked across the main screen. ‘Zen, status.’
‘ENEMY STRATEGY IS NOW CONFIRMED. BATTLE COMPUTERS INDICATE FULL ALIEN COUNTER-ATTACK IS UNDERWAY.’
The view screen showed a mass of attacking ships bursting through the wide gap. Blake surveyed the scene with a sinking heart. The ragged edges of the grid began to encroach again, and slowly leached into the central rift within the defence shield. A handful of alien vessels near the perimeter were caught unawares, and exploded into glittering shards as the satellite grid detonated. But the regeneration was too slow to prevent the bulk of the alien fleet from flooding into human space, and each fresh explosion only tore a fresh hole in the defence network.
Blake’s deliberations were interrupted by the comms chime, and a nervous voice over the speakers.
‘Blake?’
‘What is it, Vila?’
‘I’ve got news about those alien bombs.’
Blake grimaced. ‘We could do with some good news.’
‘Ah. You see, it’s good news and bad news, actually.’
‘Go on.’
‘The good news is that there are no more on board.’
Blake took a deep breath. ‘And the bad news?’
‘Er…’
There was a crackle of static over the comms. Vila was clearing his throat apologetically. ‘
Well, the last one just blew up the life-support systems’
Avon obviously couldn’t believe his ears. ‘What happened, Vila?’
Blake thought it was just as well Vila wasn’t reporting this to Avon in person. Nevertheless, he imagined him quivering somewhere in a corridor.
‘I couldn’t catch it in time,’
babbled Vila.
‘It was a sneaky little devil. Sorry, Blake.’
Blake blew out the breath he’d been holding in. ‘You’d better get back up here.’ He switched channels to a ship-wide broadcast, and the intercom chimed its response. ‘Cally, are you there?’
‘I heard,’ she replied. Her tone suggested she was as frustrated with Vila as everyone else. ‘I am on my way back, too.’
She may be shocked by what she finds when she gets here, thought Blake. He surveyed the grimy wreckage of the flight deck. Still just about operational. As he looked around, he took in the faces of Jenna and Avon. They looked tired. Like the
Liberator
, their reserves seemed to be running low. ‘All right,’ he announced. ‘Once Vila and Cally get back, we need to–’
A brutal jolt to the whole ship interrupted Blake, and sent him sprawling to the floor. He landed heavily on his injured side and howled in agony and frustration.
Jenna recovered faster, and was next to him almost at once. He tried a smile of reassurance, to tell her he was all right, but he imagined that it looked more like what it really was – gritting his teeth against the agonising pain. ‘What was that?’ he managed to grunt.
The flight deck continued to rattle with the aftershock.
Avon indicated a pinpoint of light on the screen that bloomed brighter than anything else in the display. ‘That was Star One.’ He ran his fingers over the comms controls, and played in an external channel. The speakers crackled with distortion, but the anguished note in the voice was unmistakable.
‘Battle Commander squadron six to flagship. Star One is destroyed.’
There was no reply from the flagship. Only cross-contamination from several other channels used by the alien vessels. The bizarre gargling noises of their communications masked the Federation message.
‘Do you copy? Repeat. Aliens have destroyed Star One.’
Another bubbling, gurgling interruption. Avon snapped the speakers into silence.
Cally and Vila entered the flight deck at a run. Both came to a halt at the entrance, astonished at what they saw.
‘This place is wrecked,’ Vila said unhelpfully.
‘It’s in better shape than Star One,’ Avon told him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Star One is in lots of little shapes now. Scattered across the whole of this sector.’
‘What?’ Cally was dismayed. She looked from face to face, as though for some reassurance that it wasn’t true. ‘That means the defence shield is gone, too!’
‘Oh, I should have stayed where I was.’ Vila slumped into a chair, the impact expelling a huge cloud of dust. ‘In fact, I should have stayed in bed today.’
‘You are of more assistance here, Vila,’ Cally reassured him.
Avon barked a short laugh. ‘That remains to be seen.’
Cally tutted her disapproval. ‘What has happened to the human flotilla?’
‘It is being utterly overwhelmed by the alien counter-attack.’ Blake adjusted the view screen to reveal the devastation now taking place at the former site of the defence shield. The rag-tag army of civilian vessels and Federation pursuit ships were hounded and harried from every direction by the overpowering might of the alien incursion.
Cally stared at the horrifying evidence. ‘Then where is the rest of Servalan’s fleet? She said she was holding it back.’
‘Still out of range,’ confirmed Jenna.
‘That alien fleet will be coming for us next,’ Blake said.
‘Why?’ Avon clearly wasn’t convinced. But he wasn’t making any constructive suggestions either. ‘Our weapons systems are down, auto-repair is marginal, and now thanks to Vila our life support is compromised.’
Blake stifled a groan of pain, and carefully made his way over to Avon’s position. ‘We can’t understand their communications or signals, Avon. So I doubt they can read ours. They’ll see us as their biggest threat.’
Avon was considering the implications of this. ‘And they don’t know we’re crippled.’
‘We’re not flattering ourselves,’ said Blake. ‘They’ve seen right from the outset that
Liberator
is the strongest warship in the human fleet.’
‘You’re not one for false modesty, are you?’ Avon favoured Blake with one of his familiar, sardonic smiles. ‘But how does it help? What do we do when they reach us? Strangle them with our bare hands?’
Blake took an image pen from the desk, and began to sketch brief, efficient lines on the display. The screen updated to show his superimposed annotations. ‘We use Jenna’s smuggler’s trick. Draw the aliens towards Megiddo as it arrives. And it will destroy them.’
Vila eyes popped. ‘It will destroy
Liberator
too!’
‘If we don’t get out of range, yes,’ Blake admitted.
They all stared at him, waiting for some further explanation. Even Vila didn’t say anything, but stared at him in the wild hope that he had some further reassurance.
When that reassurance wasn’t forthcoming, Avon spoke up. ‘You’d better know what you’re doing with this smuggler’s stunt, Blake.’
‘Don’t worry, Avon.’ Jenna had a tired smile on her face. ‘He knows someone who does.’
When Blake contacted the human fleet, they were wary at first. Pummelled from every direction, vastly outnumbered, and completely outflanked by the alien opposition, their first suspicion was that this was some cruel final trick.
It may have been because his initial contact was an all-points broadcast to every human receiver within range. There was obvious disbelief that any potential ally would communicate their intentions over an open channel that the enemy could overhear. But Blake had persevered, explaining that the aliens were unable to translate his words.
Nevertheless, he’d needed Avon to persuade Orac to identify some strategic participants among the surviving ships. They chose a selection of both civilian and military vessels, to make a specific communication directly to them, to exploit Orac’s ability to access their computers directly. Once the astonished captains of the chosen ships accepted that the message really was coming from the
Liberator
, they were prepared to accept what they were told.
And in truth, it was what they desperately wanted to hear: disengage from the enemy. Let them through, so that
Liberator
could handle them.