‘INFORMATION,’ chimed the ship’s computer.
‘Yes, Zen?’ called Jenna.
‘THREE FEDERATION PURSUIT SHIPS AT EXTREME DETECTOR RANGE, ON COURSE FOR LIBERATOR.’
Avon jumped out of his seat, where he’d been watching the proceedings. ‘Estimate time to intercept,’ he snapped.
‘THREE POINT SIX HOURS,’ Zen replied.
‘Sooner than we thought,’ said Gan.
That worried Blake, but he didn’t panic. There was a chance that three hours might be long enough. ‘Have you calibrated the powerlines?’ he asked Jenna quickly.
‘They’re ready for link-up,’ Jenna nodded. ‘But I’ve no idea how big a payload they can take or how efficient the transfer will be.’
‘Then we’ll just have to take our chances,’ said Blake. ‘Get a suit on, Vila. Gan, can you suit up and come with us as an extra pair of hands?’
Gan nodded. ‘Of course.’ He gently nudged Vila towards the corridor again. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Be ready to start the transfer as soon as we connect the lines,’ Blake told Jenna. ‘We need every second we can buy.’
*
Servalan closed the door of her office, still annoyed at having her fitting disturbed. She found Travis’s report and opened the file, punching in her personal clearance code when prompted. She expected it to be yet another of his moans about Blake evading his tactics for the umpteenth time and then sloping off in the direction of some hiding place, but it wasn’t. It was something entirely different. Servalan stared at the screen. Liberator had moved into one of the most dangerous sectors of Federation space: dangerous to the Federation itself if anything abandoned there were to fall into hands of insurgents such as Blake and his crew.
The news wasn’t good. Servalan thought for a moment, wondering precisely which of the junked experiments Blake would be interested in. Then, just as Travis had, she guessed. She made no attempt to call up any information on the ‘missing’ space station. It loomed large in her recent memory. In fact, the very thought of it made her shudder.
She activated her direct communications link to Travis’s ship.
‘Travis,’ the voice on the other end of the call answered curtly.
‘I’ve read your report,’ Servalan told him, expediting formality in favour of reaching the point.
‘The Liberator has entered the close vicinity of Station Amber, Supreme Commander,’ Travis reported, a note of concern in his voice.
‘I’d guessed as much,’ Servalan said coolly. ‘And I know what he’s up to.’
Travis sounded surprised. ‘Supreme Commander?’
‘Blake wants the AE105.’
‘Shall I engage Liberator now?’ Travis asked eagerly. He had no idea what the AE105 was, Servalan thought, and he didn’t care. He was just excited at the prospect of getting his teeth into Blake’s hide.
‘No, Travis,’ Servalan said, with a wicked smile. ‘I am commanding you to leave the sector. If Blake wants the AE105, let him have it.’
FOUR
BREAK AND ENTER
Travis was bewildered. Why would the Supreme Commander, who had herself engaged him on his current mission to permanently eliminate Blake, who knew that all of the projects in the Restriction Zone were highly dangerous, simply order him to step back and let her enemies take possession of one of these things? If any of the projects were in a usable condition and Blake and his crew managed to adapt them so that they could be controlled remotely, then all kinds of devastation could be caused. Did Servalan know what kind of a monster she could be unleashing?
Perhaps she did. Perhaps that was the very reason why she was giving this AE105 thing, whatever it was, to Blake. She’d certainly been closely involved with the project on Amber for most of its run, and she’d personally authorised its shutdown. She’d issued the report to the government about its deactivation.
‘Ready to withdraw, Commander?’
Travis ignored the mutoid for a moment, pondering his conclusions. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘Hold position. Have our detectors picked up the Liberator?’
‘Alongside Station Amber,’ the mutoid confirmed. ‘Approximately sixteen hundred spacials from our position.’
‘Put her on the viewscreen,’ Travis ordered quietly. ‘I want to see what she’s doing.’
The viewscreen lit up but showed only a colourful blur of fuzzy lines. ‘Interference, Commander,’ reported the mutoid.
‘Blake?’ asked Travis.
‘No, sir,’ the mutoid answered after completing a quick scan. ‘Liberator has been positioned close to the Station’s hull, inside her scanner repulsion field.’
Blake was clever. He’d pulled the ship inside the field of transceiver disruption generated by all abandoned Federation bases. Or perhaps there was another reason why he was so close to the hull. He had been heading out a long distance at breakneck speed. Perhaps he’d had a breakdown and had to take cover to repair it. That would be good news if it were true. If the Liberator were vulnerable then the kill would be easy… Then Travis’s heart sank as he remembered the Supreme Commander’s orders. It was just his luck. Blake’s ship was probably a sitting target and Travis wasn’t allowed to shoot it down.
*
Vila didn’t like spacewalking. Despite still being able to touch the Liberator‘s hull, he’d felt too far away for comfort. Of course he’d guessed that he wouldn’t like it, but he was too unhappy to draw any satisfaction from the knowledge that his guess had been right.
He was sure that the spacesuit he wore didn’t fit him properly, though he was thankful that the seals preventing the escape of any air or heat seemed to be doing their job. Gan was behind him, also holding on to the line. Blake was pulling himself forward in great leaps and bounds, confident and determined as if he did things like this every day.
Cally was waiting at the teleport suite to pull any or all of the boarding party back up the moment any call to do so came in. Vila gripped the safety line a little tighter at that thought.
Gan could obviously tell that he was nervous. ‘Blake’s almost at the hull now,’ he said comfortingly, and Vila could hear him clearly inside his bubble helmet. The communicator frequency was kept open so that the three could hear each other talking as if they were simply in a room together. ‘As soon as he makes contact, we can get the powerlines out.’
‘I hope it doesn’t take long,’ grumbled Vila. ‘I wouldn’t like to be stuck out here for hours, hanging on to this line and waiting for my air to run out.’
‘It’ll be all right,’ Gan said calmly. ‘It won’t take long to connect those powerlines, and then we can start charging the Liberator‘s cells up.’
‘Get them up to maximum and get out of here,’ added Vila with a forced smile. ‘I feel better already.’ He pulled himself awkwardly towards the enormous looming underside of the space station.
‘I’m on Amber’s hull,’ Blake announced to both of them, and they looked down to the far end of the line to see him clinging to the huge grey shape like a spider on the underside of a gutter. ‘I’ll find an airlock.’ Blake held on to the hull, taking advantage of its minor gravitational pull, and clambered down a little until he found what he was looking for: a sealed square aperture large enough for a man to pass through should it be unsealed. ‘Get down here, Vila,’ he ordered. ‘I need you to help me get this hatch open.’
Vila swallowed hard and pulled himself forward, still holding on to the line, and moved just a few inches. ‘I’ll be all day at this rate!’ he moaned.
Blake was getting frustrated. ‘Don’t argue, Vila,’ he growled. ‘We can teleport you back aboard the Liberator if anything goes wrong.’
‘Or maybe you could teleport me back right now,’ said Vila. ‘I’m feeling a bit sick.’
‘Gan!’ Blake barked. ‘Push him!’
Vila screamed as Gan barged forward and slammed into his back. Instantly he was tumbling in slow motion, head over heels through the inky blackness of space. His hear
tbeat quickened and he felt dizzy. He shut his eyes.
‘You’re right on target,’ Blake told him calmly.
Vila opened them again and found he was looking at Blake, who was clinging to the roof of the space station.
Grumbling under his breath, Vila pressed his body to the station’s skin and clambered down to have a look at the airlock. It wasn’t long before he found the maintenance panel and cracked it open. ‘It’s one of the simpler external to internal communication locks,’ he told Blake as he started inserting the heads of tools into it. ‘That might actually be a bit of a problem.’
‘How?’ asked Blake.
‘Well,’ Vila explained, ‘it’s supposed to connect up to a computer for a verification signal to allow it to be opened from the outside, but if nothing’s switched on in there, the computer won’t be working.’
‘I see,’ said Blake. ‘So, we could ring the doorbell but nobody would answer. Does it have to link up to a particular kind of computer?’
‘No. The design’s really basic. It’ll take the order to open from any machine.’
‘What about Zen?’
‘Probably, but how would we get this lock and Zen to communicate with each other?’
Blake started to slip his teleport bracelet off. ‘Avon. Can you patch Zen into my teleport bracelet?’
‘Give me a moment,’ said Avon. ‘Zen, scan for teleport bracelets outside Liberator.’
‘THREE LOCATED.’
‘Blake,’ Avon called. ‘Transmit your bracelet’s frequency test signal.’
Blake checked his bracelet and found the control sequence required. ‘Should be transmitting now.’
‘Zen,’ Avon said. ‘Lock on to the nearest frequency test signal.’
‘CONNECTION ESTABLISHED.’
‘Zen,’ Blake called. ‘Can you hear me?’
‘FREQUENCY CLEAR AND TRANSMISSIONS RECEIVED AT OPTIMUM CAPACITY.’
Blake handed his bracelet to Vila. ‘What do you think?’
For the first time all day, Vila smiled. ‘Should be easy,’ he said cheerfully. With a flurry of hands and tools, he quickly wired the bracelet into the locking mechanism. As he worked he asked, ‘One thing, though. If we’ve got to connect up these lines inside the station anyway, why didn’t we just teleport in, hook them up, recharge our cells and teleport out?’
‘Because we could teleport ourselves in, but not the powerlines,’ Blake answered. ‘They’d need to be threaded through one of the airlocks from outside.’
‘Ah,’ said Vila. Then he glanced over his shoulder at Blake. ‘But if these are running through the airlock, how will the door shut? All the air could escape.’
‘That’s why we’ve brought the emergency air plug. Once we’re inside, we can plug one of the internal corridors. The plug will fit itself around the powerlines without any air getting out.’
‘That means we won’t be able to go back out that way,’ Vila said.
‘We’ll worry about that later, Vila,’ Blake said hastily.
Vila stopped fiddling with the locking mechanism. ‘I think that’s about as good as I can get it.’
‘Zen,’ Blake said. ‘Order this lock to release for access from outside.’
‘CONFIRMED.’
There was a loud clunk and the airlock hatch slid open.
FIVE
STALEMATE IN SPACE
Jenna released the powerlines the moment she was asked. They shot into space towards Blake’s position and their connector heads clattered against the hull of Station Amber. Gan collected the heads and pulled them through the airlock to be linked up.
‘Where are those ships, Zen?’ she asked.
‘PURSUIT SHIPS ARE HOLDING POSITION.’
Jenna hadn’t been expecting that. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked.
‘CONFIRMED,’ said Zen.
‘It’s a machine,’ Avon reminded her. ‘It can’t lie.’
Jenna knew that. She knew that Zen was a highly sophisticated computer, far more sophisticated than anything she or anyone on the crew could grasp, even Avon, but she also knew that the information it had just given her was very strange indeed. ‘Why are they standing off?’ she asked Avon. ‘We’re sitting targets. They could fly in and pick us off easily.’
Avon seemed to ponder the question. ‘Perhaps they’re trying to work out what we’re doing,’ he murmured. ‘Or perhaps they already know.’
Could the Federation have known that Blake was looking for Station Amber and set a trap for him? Jenna wondered. It was unlikely. Even Servalan and Travis did not know the full extent of the Liberator‘s capabilities, and the fastest of the pursuit ships could not catch her – even at less than maximum speed. It had to be something else. Something suspicious.
*
The rounded metal shells of the connector heads hit the hull just a short distance away from the airlock and then floated a little way back out into space. Gan managed to grab the powerlines before they drifted too far away, and he pulled them into the hatchway towards the inner door of the airlock.
‘This one’s easier,’ said Vila. ‘It’s just a standard pressurise-and-release system. We can trick it into thinking the outer door’s closed, so it will let the inner door open.’ He probed the small computer pad next to the door with his tools. ‘Find something to grip onto.’
Gan was still holding the safety line. ‘How about this?’
‘No. When the door opens there’ll be a gust of air. Even if you hold on to that line you’ll still be blown all the way back to the Liberator. You need to hold on to something that’s part of the station.’
‘Or I could just get clear of the blast,’ Gan suggested.
Vila was surprised. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. Shame I can’t join you. Someone’s got to open the door. Take Blake with you, though.’
Gan ushered Blake out of the airlock and back onto the hull, hoping that the column of escaping air would blast out of the hole in a straight line and miss anything at right angles to it.
They waited in silence.
‘Are you all right, Vila?’ Gan called at last.
‘Fine,’ Vila said. ‘I flattened myself against the outer door. I thought the pressure would crush me for a minute. I have to say I’m surprised it was all over so quickly. That can’t have been all the air from the ship.’
‘I’ll bring Blake and the powerlines round,’ said Gan, and he took Blake’s arm again and led him up to the airlock. The party of three entered the airlock reception unit, a small semicircular room with three doorways leading to corridors in other directions. Guided by Blake, they headed through one of the doors into the corridor beyond and found it to be a dead end.
‘Let’s try one of the others,’ Vila suggested, starting to turn back, but Blake grabbed his arm and pushed him towards the blind end of the cul-de-sac. He pointed to a panel next to the blank wall. ‘Oh!’ exclaimed Vila. ‘Of course! That’s why the air escape cut off so fast. It’s a safety system. When there’s air escaping, these bulkheads close to cut it off.’
‘I’ll close the door at the other end,’ said Gan and marched down towards airlock reception. He found the control and the door-to-airlock reception buzzed almost shut. The thick power cables stopped it from closing completely.
Vila pulled out the emergency air plug, a grey-white object the size and shape of a beach ball. He held it up in one hand and punched it hard with the other, then scrambled clear as it self-inflated, rapidly moulding itself to the corridor walls, the door and the cables, sealing the gaps and excluding any further escape of air.
He sank down as the pressure normalised and Blake unclipped the seals on his space helmet and took it off, indicating that the others should do the same. He looked back at the way to airlock reception, now blocked by a huge inflated cushion of thick greyish polymer. That part of the plan had worked better than he’d hoped.
‘Well done, you two. Now let’s get on with it,’ said Blake. He started towards the other end of the corridor. ‘Ha
ve you still got the cables, Gan?’
Gan held both the connector heads in his left hand and raised them to show Blake. ‘Where do we connect them?’
Blake motioned for the others to follow him, looking around. ‘Well, there must be an emergency generator nearby. All the main power’s disconnected – that’s why there are no lights, but something did close those bulkheads. All we’ve got to do is find it.’
Vila opened his toolbox and started unfastening the bulkhead release switch from the wall. ‘I’ll run a circuit trace,’ he suggested. ‘If I find out where this switch gets its power from, you can go right to the source.’
‘Perfect,’ said Blake. ‘I don’t have a bracelet any more, but if Gan comes with me then you can call him as soon as you work out where the power’s coming from. In the mean time, we can search the station, see what’s here. All right?’
‘Fine,’ Vila said, his concentration fixed on the task of tracing the circuit in the door panel. ‘I work better on my own anyway.’ As Blake and Gan started off, he called after them, ‘But do me a favour, will you? If you find a power switch, make sure you don’t turn on any security systems.’
Gan’s bracelet chimed.
‘We’re here,’ said Blake. ‘What is it?’
‘Zen says the Federation pursuit ships have stopped moving,’ said Jenna. ‘They’re just holding their position.’
Blake was surprised. ‘Are you sure?’
‘No, but Zen is, and he’s not usually wrong.’
‘How long have they been there?’
‘Zen reported it about twenty minutes ago.’
‘Twenty minutes?’ said Blake, astonished. ‘And you’re sure they can pick us up on their scanners? The damping field of the station would affect them getting much idea of our movements, but they should still be able to see the Liberator on their viewscreens from fourteen thousand spacials.’
‘Zen says they have scanned us,’ said Jenna. ‘They definitely know we’re here, but they’re just sitting there.’
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