Black Wave
She was heading back to Earth, recalled, like all senior officers, for some unspecified emergency conference,when it started. She would have preferred not to go, but ignoring an order at this level would have attracted unwelcome attention so she had turned her ship for Earth. After all the Scorpio crew had been captured, Avon and Blake were dead; there was nothing left to run the risk for.
"Madame, the beacon, it's turned off!" her pilot said as they crossed the sector boundary
She looked up from her report with a raised eybrow.
"Turned off Captain? What do you mean?"
"Its gone Madame, that part of the sector has gone black."
She returned her attention to her report.
"Malfunctions happen Captain, report it." Did nothing work properly any more?
"Yes Madame."
The pilot said no more but it had been clear that he had wanted to. She'd ignored him, closed the report, and left the flight deck. Perhaps if she had pressed him on his concern then things might have been different.
By the time she reached Space Command it was clear that something was very wrong but until she had stood in front of the operations hub just how wrong had not been apparent. Now, in this room, the severity of the problem could not be mistaken. The lights of Federation dominance and influence were winking out. Slowly but inexorably Federation space was going black.
First it had been the navigations beacons, no faults reported but dying one by one all the same, their signals fading away leaving the systems they signposted anonymous and too dangerous to navigate. Then, just before the last beacon failed, the communications stations started, their broadcasts falling silent and then their markers fading out. Now the command posts and repair yards were becoming invisible and unreachable, their heartbeats disappearing from the map, their chatter, like that of the communications stations, falling silent.
"Look," the words came from the commander of the third fleet the only one safely berthed at HQ, "out on the edge of sector 7, a supply yard, its just disappeared."
Fifty pairs of very senior eyes turned to the captain at the console. She checked something unseen then nodded slowly.
"Yes, we have just lost contact with forward supply base delta X-C 11. Until now we have retained contact with the supply bases. But It may just be a normal, routine malfunction."
Servalan looked at the board, at the wash of black that was sweeping across Federation space, bringing silence and darkness where once a thousand heartbeats and telltales had burned, and had the sudden insight that nothing normal, nothing routine, was ever going to show on these boards again. Sector after sector was falling to the black wash and silence, the things that had made space accessible, made the Federation possible, were being shut down.
In silence she felt her way to the chair behind her and sat down, taking no part in the cacophony of protest and disbelief as the life signs of another base was washed away. She didn't know how but she had a very good idea of who was turning the Federation universe black.
She gave a small bitter smile, why has she ever expected him to go quietly?