Battle of the Planets belongs to Sandy Frank, I'm just playing with it for fun.

My universe is non-canon in several respects, and if you haven't read "Rumours of Death" and "Reconstruction" you may be confused by some of the references to the team's early history.

Deep space is very big, very empty - and not a good place for systems failure.

Set 3 months after "Strike at Spectra" but before "Conway Tape Tap".

Occasional mild swearing, and what the TV censors would call "scenes of peril".

Thanks to Dei for permission to borrow part of her theory from "A Different Diagnosis."

Thanks to Becky and my husband for beta-reading.

Any and all comments are welcome, especially suggestions for improvement. Yes, I really do like it when people tell me what I could do better :-)

Breakdown

The pilot of the Spectran fighter watched on his sensor screen as, miles below him, the lights which represented the other segments of the mecha blossomed and died. He knew he should be down there, helping them in their fight against the deadly red and blue command ship of their enemy. He couldn't make himself do it. It would be suicide. He'd stay up here in the cloud cover and hope they didn't notice him when they left, then return and report. Maybe useful information on their combat tactics would impress his superiors. Maybe his debriefers wouldn't realise what a total coward he was.

He couldn't believe it when the Earth ship made its orbital boost to pass within a hundred yards of him. At first he thought his luck had run out, but no, they didn't appear to have seen him. They must think they'd destroyed everyone already. This was going to do more than just save his skin - this was going to bring him promotion. He had the perfect weapon for this situation, and tomorrow everyone on Spectra would know his name as the man who destroyed G-Force. He sighted on the giant engines as the ship roared past him towards orbit. Nobody could miss from this distance - all he had to do was fire the tiny warhead into the engines. It would lodge there, waiting for the formation of a jump-field, and explode at the moment of the ship's maximum vulnerability. No more need to worry. He was going to be a hero.

"I'll swear Spectran pilots get more incompetent every week." Jason was wearing a broad smile. "When I saw it separate into that many fighters I thought we were in for a good scrap. But honestly - they fly in close formation, you hit the one in the centre and the whole lot goes up."

"Mark's birthday present!" exclaimed Keyop. "Self-destruct Spectrans!"

"Special deal!" Tiny joined in. "Two-for-one offer."

Princess smiled. "Today only, limited edition with extra-explosive fuel tanks."

"Okay, team. Focus." Mark tried to sound authoritative, but he knew he was smiling. Really, it had been too easy. The mecha seemed designed to intimidate rather than fight, and once it had split into its component parts they had proved ridiculously vulnerable. Jason had gone easy on the missiles, preferring to watch the chain-reaction havoc which his precision shooting had wreaked in the formation.

As birthday presents went, a mission this easy had been unexpected but very welcome. Long-awaited, and a bigger comfort than he'd ever have admitted, was the presence of his second-in-command, newly reactivated after three months of illness, treatment and convalescence, finally back where he belonged. Mark hadn't realised how much he relied on his second's insights until he suddenly wasn't there. With Jason back in his seat, problems seemed smaller, decisions somehow more clear-cut. Everything didn't come down to whether to use one bird missile or two, as Jason sometimes seemed to think - but as a starting point, it wasn't bad. And when his second didn't want to go in shooting, he was invariably right.

"Five minutes to jump-coordinates," Tiny announced, more or less straight-faced.

"Final checks, please." Mark applied himself to his console, and around him the rest of the team did the same.

"Fuel's lower than it should be," Keyop reported when it came to his turn.

Mark considered it. "How much?"

"Five percent. I think maybe the injection system needs overhauling?"

"Note it for the technicians. Anything else?"

There was nothing, and Tiny put them on final approach to the jump-point as Jason's console began to spew the vast array of numbers he needed to compute their jump home.

Mark watched the numbers come up on his console, listened to Jason calling them out, and prepared himself. No matter how many times he did this, the final act of engaging the jump-drive to hurl them faster than thought to their destination was nerve-wracking. There was no room for error or confusion.

He checked his board again. Green lights. This was it.

"Going for jump in five." He narrowed his concentration, used the numbers on his screen to configure the drive. Not a movement needed - this was all via the implant, transmitting his instructions far faster than voice or fingers could have. Set everything, a fraction of a second to settle himself, fire the jump-drive, and engage. His work over, he could collapse back into the chair and endure the blazing misery that was jump.

Not this time. As the drive engaged, the normal shriek was replaced by the roar of an explosion and the Phoenix vibrated alarmingly. A brief moment of normality, and then ghastly, unendurable horror. This was wrong! It had never, ever been this bad, even in his worst jumps, and this one he'd got right. He was sure of it.

From behind him, he heard Princess's desperate gasp, and then Jason shouting.

"Abort, Mark. Abort it now!"

"No!" he gasped reflexively. You didn't abort a jump. It could drop you anywhere. Come out coincidental with space debris and it would shred holes in ship and crew. Or you could come out inside a sun.

"Do it!" There was a note of despair in Jason's voice, and the sensation of wrongness was so strong that Mark reached mentally for an implant function he'd never used, and had hoped he never would.

Nothing happened. Nothing at all. An instant of panic that the implant had failed, and training took over. "Can't," Mark gasped again, and forced his hands to reach out for the manual controls. They responded no better, and his head was starting to swim alarmingly, as reason oscillated from 'it's not the implant' to 'it's the entire system'. "Jason, I've got no control over it."

"Keyop, cut power to the jump-drive. Fast!" Mark had never heard that tone of command in his second's voice, and the technician moved instinctively to obey it. Keyop's board couldn't be responding any better than Mark's was, because through the blur of his red-tinged, failing vision he saw the Swallow unstrap, throw himself to the back of the cockpit and haul down on the emergency manual control which would stop every engine instantly.

A moment of quiet. Then an appalling crash, the Phoenix slammed to starboard, he heard Keyop shriek, and everything went black.

Paula Arkwright reached the end of her checklist, with no more success than she'd had with the previous twenty attempts. There was nothing left to try. Dreading the reaction, she turned to her senior controller.

"Sir, there's no response on any of the emergency channels. I can't make a connection."

Anderson's voice was barely a whisper. "Acknowledged."

"Sir," said David Hamilton from alongside her, "could they still be in jump?"

"Not after three hours." Anderson sounded dreadful, and Paula looked more closely to ensure he wasn't showing signs of recurring heart problems. "I'm officially logging them in as missing. Eleven thirty-two EST."

"Noted." David's voice wobbled, and Paula found herself blinking back tears.

"Lieutenant Arkwright, open a channel to the Rigan high command."

"Yes, sir - but I don't normally do that from here."

"You do when we've lost G-Force." Anderson cleared his throat. "Make the connection."

It wasn't a long discussion. Anderson dictated a brief, bleak message about the location and time of the jump, and the lack of contact since. The last phrase was a simple 'code 26' , then he told her to terminate the connection and signed out of his own console.

"What's code 26, sir?" David asked.

"'We are unable to provide military support.' You two can log off. Switch to automatics."

"But - sir!" David protested.

"We've done everything we can from here."

"There must be something else we can try!"

Anderson looked over his shoulder on his way out, his face haggard. "Prayer."

Paula wandered aimlessly through the corridors of Black Section. The lights were still red, signifying that G-Force was out on a mission. She wondered how long it would be left that way, and what could have gone wrong after Princess had signed off with 'see you in a couple of hours'. That might be the last thing she'd ever said. Would it have been quick, or were they still in some hellish limbo of failed jump, waiting for the Phoenix to disintegrate and end it?

Walking straight into someone coming too quickly round a corner was the final straw. Paula sat on the floor and wept. It took some time for her to regain enough composure to stammer out that she wasn't hurt, and that her tears had nothing to do with him.

He wasn't having any of it. "When the duty comm-tech is in this sort of state, it's the business of everyone in here. Tell me."

Paula didn't have much of an option. Rick was the senior Force Two recruit; the leading candidate for commander; the Red Kite. He'd outranked her even before today's disaster, and now she suspected he was technically the ranking ISO field commander. She stayed where she was and told him that G-Force was gone.

"I don't believe it," he stated flatly. "They're too good to go out like that."

Paula trembled. "Anderson believes it."

"I'll believe it when we find debris," Rick snapped. "Until then, they deserve the benefit of the doubt."