Blake studied the tactical display that Zen projected onto the main view screen. The jumbled collection of markers that indicated the relative positions of the fighting ships began to separate. Federation pursuit ships navigated a speedy route out of the central conflict. Mining vessels and tourist cruisers and civil defence craft swiftly extricated themselves from close combat, peeling away in dozens to leave the mass of alien attackers unopposed.
One or two of the aliens squirted off from the main bulk of the offensive, vanishing deeper into the Federation galaxy in search of plunder elsewhere. But the vast majority of the oncoming invasion coalesced into a solid bulk, and its focus was clear: the
Liberator
.
‘All right,’ called Blake. ‘We’re approaching Megiddo again. Jenna, take us in. Zen, advise on anything unexpected.’
‘CONFIRMED.’
‘Program epsilon zeta delta. Execute!’
The ship’s engines surged anew as the manoeuvre commenced, and the whole flight deck rattled alarmingly. Blake clung to the console in front of him, feeling the vibrations shake his entire body, and trying not to shout in pain. ‘Vila, how are we doing?’
He knew Vila had been obsessively checking his readouts. When he did so yet again, he would see that nothing much had changed. They were still in big trouble. ‘They’re gaining on us!’
Cally confirmed the diagnosis from her own data. ‘Looks like most of the alien fleet is behind us.’
‘And the Federation fleet is in front of us,’ said Avon. He switched the main screen to a forward view. It revealed the blood-red arrow points formed by an array of arriving Federation military vessels. ‘This could get interesting.’
‘INFORMATION. DETECTORS INDICATE LIBERATOR IS DANGEROUSLY CLOSE TO THE PLANETOID SURFACE.’
‘Compensate!’ shouted Blake.
‘NAVIGATION COMPUTERS ARE OFFLINE.’
Jenna wrestled with the flight controls. ‘Yes, I know that!’
Avon glared at her. ‘You’d better!’
The engine note became an almost unbearable screech of protest. ‘Hold on everyone!’ Jenna yelled. ‘I’m going to execute a three-sixty slingshot around Megiddo.’
The artificial gravity must be overcompensating, Blake thought. It felt like he was being crushed into his seat. He looked wildly around the smashed flight deck to see what the others were doing.
Avon was ramrod straight in his seat, his face an impassive mask of concentration. Vila’s head was thrown back, and he had his eyes squeezed tightly shut.
Cally’s eyes were closed, too. She looked almost serene. Was she listening to the minds of the distant civilians, to know if they were now safe? Or the oncoming Federation crews, to discern their motives? Or perhaps the abandoned operators back on Megiddo, trapped throughout the centuries for this very moment? The final act after their long, long wait.
Over in her pilot’s position, Jenna continued to wrestle with the flight controls. She had to physically lean against them to force them to her will.
On the main screen, the ice-white surface of Megiddo loomed large and threatening as
Liberator
skirted its ravaged atmosphere.
‘Now, Zen!’ Jenna was shouting. ‘Standard by twelve, now!’
‘CONFIRMED.’ Zen’s measured tones sounded odd amid the maelstrom of noise that shrieked around the flight deck.
Blake was pressed harder into his flight seat. Brilliant sparks flashed in his eyes. He couldn’t tell if it was in his mind or on the flight deck itself. His consciousness was slipping away. He forced his eyes to stay open, glaring at the screen as
Liberator
finally cleared Megiddo’s orbit and powered away towards… towards…
‘The Federation are dead ahead,’ said Vila.
As
Liberator
pulled clear of the planetoid, the pressure on Blake’s bruised body started to abate. He pulled himself forward in his seat. ‘Open a channel, Zen.’
‘CONFIRMED.’
Blake reached for the comms. ‘Federation fleet, this is the
Liberator
. We have no weaponry and our navigation systems are offline.’
The main screen dissolved into a frenzy of interference, before resolving into the image of a spaceship interior. No ordinary spaceship either, Blake noted. It might even be one of the Mark IV Star Cruisers that Orac had been hearing about recently.
What was certain, however, was that it was under the command of Servalan.
She peered from the screen at them, like she was conducting an unannounced inspection. ‘
Oh dear,’
she tutted. ‘
You are in a spot of trouble.’
‘Servalan,’ Blake said. ‘We are unable to control our approach vector, but pose no threat to you. We advise you to keep away.’
Servalan smiled broadly.
‘I advise you to surrender, Blake.’
A fresh rattle shook the flight deck as the ship picked up speed. ‘You need to listen to me, Servalan.’
‘No, you need to obey me, Blake.’
Her smile and fake bonhomie had abruptly dissipated.
‘Escort Group Nine is ready to take control of the
Liberator.’ She leaned to one side, beckoning to one of her subordinates. A short, nervous man with a thin moustache trembled in anticipation of her next order.
‘General Howells, target that ship. It is unarmed, and it is mine.’
Blake struggled to his feet. He felt that he had to stand right in front of the view screen. To confront her directly. To show her that he was in command. That he was not afraid. ‘The aliens are right behind us.’
‘And my fleet is right behind me.’
She looked to General Howells, who confirmed whatever she was looking for.
‘So, consider Liberator to be… the spoils of war.’
Blake felt the moment weigh down on him more pressingly than before. ‘Which side are you on, Servalan?’ he asked quietly.
‘Her own, as always.’ Avon had come to stand next to him. He too stared defiantly back at the main view screen. ‘To Servalan, everyone and anyone is a potential enemy. More so than ever, now.’
Servalan merely smiled back at them from the screen, utterly unmoved.
Behind them, Cally suddenly gasped. Blake whirled around just in time to see her clutch her temples. Her eyes rolled up into her head and, with a further cry of shock and pain, she slipped from her seat and onto the rubble-strewn floor.
Blake hurried over to her, checked her pulse, and put her in the recovery position.
He didn’t have time to do more, before Zen’s announcement filled the flight deck.
‘INFORMATION. THE PLANETOID MEGIDDO HAS REACHED THE ALIEN FLEET, AND EXPLODED. PLASMA EXPANSION WAVE IS APROACHING AT SPEED STANDARD BY FOURTEEN.’
‘Here it comes!’ yelled Vila.
Blake hurried back to his seat. ‘Zen, on screen!’
‘CONFIRMED.’
Where previously the view beyond the defence grid had been a black, almost starless vista of space, now there was a violent flow of undulating yellow-white energy surging towards them. Megiddo no longer existed, and in its place was this concentrated hub of pure energy. It roiled and churned and bloomed to fill the whole of the screen.
The image zoomed out to provide the wider context. Between
Liberator
and the plasma explosion, the alien fleet looked like a scattering of dark specks against the approaching firestorm. One by one they winked out of existence, bursting even brighter for a transient moment before vanishing forever. A few at first, then handfuls, then swathes of the fleet.
‘INFORMATION. THE PLASMA EXPLOSION WAVE WILL OVERTAKE
LIBERATOR
IN THIRTY SECONDS.’
‘The aliens were too close to escape it,’ gasped Vila. ‘But can we outrun the blast?’
The screen cut back to reveal Servalan. She was studying the scene on the
Liberator
flight deck with an indulgent smile.
‘You think you have us,’ Blake told her coldly. ‘But you’re wrong.’
‘Ah,’
she nodded. ‘
The famous Blake optimism. Well, you really have no option. You must surrender.’
She faltered at some fresh interruption.
‘Oh, what is it now, Howells?’
The General was whispering something urgently to her. Her smug smile faltered, then vanished.
‘There’s a what…?’
‘Your apocalypse device, Madam President,’ Blake explained. ‘Megiddo has destroyed itself, and everything in its vicinity. And the plasma explosion is still expanding. So even if you survive this shock wave, you are not getting your hands on my ship.’
Servalan had stood up now. She appeared to be clutching at objects around her, slapping away the attentions of General Howells and her crew.
‘No!’
she muttered.
‘No!’
Perhaps she was also clutching at straws, thought Blake. Making an attempt to flee. Though he had no idea where she thought there was left for her to run.
‘Goodbye, Servalan. I wish I could say it had been a pleasure.’
He jabbed a finger at the comms, and cut the connection.
‘I think that’s the last we’ll see of her,’ said Avon.
‘INFORMATION. PLASMA EXPANSION WAVE WILL OVERTAKE
LIBERATOR
IN TEN, NINE, EIGHT…’
‘It might be the last we see of anyone,’ said Blake calmly.
The countdown continued as Avon faced him. ‘She’s not getting her hand on
whose
ship?’
Blake put his hand on Avon’s shoulder. ‘Our ship.’
Avon smiled. ‘That will do for now.’
Blake seized the console in front of him, and held on tight. ‘Brace yourselves!’
‘… THREE, TWO, ONE.’
And the plasma wave struck.
The hull suit felt suffocating. Jenna tried to heave in another deep breath, but it hurt her lungs. There was a pressure on the side of her face, but when she squinted sideways in the restrictive helmet she could see nothing.
What she could see was
Liberator
, spinning silently on her axis in the distance. Jenna reached her hands out towards the ship, but it slipped further and further into the distance.
There was a tugging sensation on her outstretched arm, though she saw nothing in front of her now except the emptiness of space. Her suit was rotating her away from
Liberator
, slowly, slowly. She twisted her head in the helmet to keep her eyes on the ship, until she had turned too far.
When her body had revolved back to face the ship, it was too far away to identify. Just another brilliant white dot indistinguishable from the surrounding stars.
She needed to call out to the ship. She wanted to let the others know where she was. But there was a strange kind of peace inside her, and the words would not come.
‘Jenna! Come back!’ Vila’s voice was loud and insistent in her ear.
‘Don’t shout, Vila,’ she mumbled.
‘Cally, come on!’ Vila shouted.
‘Don’t shout,’ she insisted. ‘Just speak normally into your helmet microphone.’
The alarm sound in her suit was more insistent, dragging her back.
Alarm sound?
‘Jenna!’
She awoke to find herself slumped over her own console. She was still clutching the flight controls, her face pressed awkwardly against one of the arms. That was what had prevented her being thrown to the floor of the flight deck. The warning alarm continued to sound out across the room.
‘Oh, Jenna!’ Vila was right next to her, shaking her by the arm. He grinned with delight as she stared blearily up at him. ‘She’s all right, Blake!’
‘Good,’ called Blake from the other side of the room. ‘Zen, shut that alarm off. We know there’s a problem.’
‘CONFIRMED.’
The insistent alarm squawked into silence. Now Jenna could hear the fizzing and sparking of loose electrical cables. The scoosh of fire extinguishers wielded by her crewmates. The wavering, uncertain note of the
Liberator
‘s failing engines. Vapour hissed in thin lines from fractured conduits across the ceiling of the flight deck.
Blake was beside her. ‘You did a brilliant job. You steered us away from the worst of the plasma blast.’
‘We caught the edge of it,’ Avon explained, ‘but we think the worst of it has dissipated.’
Jenna stared at the wreckage of the flight deck. ‘Doesn’t look like it.’ A jolting memory made her sit bolt upright. ‘Where is Cally?’
‘I’m here. I’m all right.’ Cally walked around to see Jenna, pale but evidently unhurt.
‘You collapsed,’ Jenna said.
Cally gave her a thin smile. ‘It was the Megiddo operators. For a moment, I was overwhelmed by their thoughts. Their final purpose. Or their final farewell, I’m not sure.’ She closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them again, her smile had faded sadly away. ‘They are gone now. I have lost them.’
Jenna rose from her seat, and embraced Cally.
‘Their work was done,’ Blake observed briskly. He stood before the main computer display. ‘Zen, what’s happened to the alien fleet?’
‘THE PLASMA EXPLOSION FROM MEGIDDO DESTROYED THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN ALIEN VESSELS.’
‘And the Federation fleet?’
‘SIXTY PERCENT DESTROYED.’
Avon brushed dust from the sleeves of his tunic. ‘The remains of the plasma explosion would have washed right past
Liberator
and over the fleet like a tsunami.’ He tapped at a display, and registered the data with bleak satisfaction. ‘I’m reading scattered remains over the whole quadrant.’
Cally was checking her own instruments. ‘The rest are on a hunt-and-kill along with the civilian craft. They’re pursuing the few remaining enemy vessels.’
‘Then we can get after them. Help them finish the job.’ Blake gave a great laugh of delight that broke down into a coughing fit. He hugged his sides to stem the pain. Jenna could see he was struggling, so she went across to him.
He hugged her in delight. His legs faltered a little, and she held him closer for support. There was a sheen of sweat across his face. He smiled weakly. ‘We’ve done it!’
A fresh shower of sparks scattered across the front of the flight deck. The main view screen flickered and went dark.
‘I think you mean we’re done for,’ said Vila.
Blake’s brow furrowed as another thought crossed him mind. ‘What about Servalan?’
‘Who the hell cares?’ Vila said. He seized an extinguisher and began to attack the fire beneath the view screen. A further furious flash of light and smoke sent him scuttling back out of the way again.