Blake's 7 - Liberators
The sequel to Blake's 7 - Survivors
Chapter 9
The planet Chenga - The year 300 of the Second Calendar
As the planet's star reached its zenith, the morning mist gradually dissipated and visibility amid the thick forest improved. Narrow shafts of light glinted through the thick canopy of leaves above, forming criss-crossing patterns of peculiar and distracting artifacts on the vision of anyone present.
It was then they made their move, anticipating that their quarry would be at his most relaxed, if only briefly.
They had stalked him slowly, creeping closer and closer in virtually complete silence, more than covered by the sound of rushing water from the gorge, but at the last moment they sprinted, caring little whether he heard their approach or not... They were both armed and ready, and his response would take precious time...
"Hi there!" the tall blonde woman said cheerily, kicking the seated form over, and he collapsed without resistance. Which was odd... She realised what had happened just a little too late.
"Hi yourself!" the voice called laconically from a few metres away, and she turned to find his weapon pointed at her. As her companion moved forward, he adjusted his aim to a point midway between them - The slightest movement and he could shoot either of them down long before they reached him.
The blonde woman thought seriously about raising her long-barrelled gun, but soon dismissed the possibility. She shot a quick glance down at the figure she had kicked over with surprising ease and saw, as she now expected, a crude mannequin made from clothes stuffed with soil and leaves. "This is unusual," she said. "No one has ever managed to do this before. Not to us."
"You haven't faced me before," said Del Grant, carefully moving toward them while keeping his gun trained and maintaining his advantage. He turned his attention to the other woman, the dark-haired one. "But then, last time we were on the same side, weren't we?"
"Mere chance," she answered, a wary look on her face. That face, the same face, the face of... No, he thought. Keep this professional, keep it all together. This can be done.
"The lot of the mercenary," he said.
"A coincidence?" she demanded. "A number comes up, we get assigned to track it down, and it turns out to be my old... friend. How are you, Del?"
"I've been better, frankly. But that wasn't what I came here to talk to you about."
The chain of events gradually became clear to the forty-something dark-haired woman, and a smile slowly developed on her face. "You... were looking for us."
"That's a strange way of going about things," said the blonde woman nonchalantly, poking at the fallen mannequin absently with the toe of her boot.
"This is a strange place. I wanted to talk to you out here, where no one else is listening."
"Did you now?" the blonde woman mused. "A little dangerous. You know what happens here...? You know what could happen to you?"
"I heard you had gone home," he said, still only speaking to the dark-haired one. "Didn't quite believe it... It's taken me a while to find you."
"The hunting is better here," said the blonde woman. "And the remuneration too."
"Perhaps I have something better to offer," he said, looking at her only briefly.
"I certainly hope so," she replied, with just the vaguest hint of a threat in her voice.
"How's my...?" The dark-haired woman hesitated, unsure how to phrase her question. "How is she? Have you told her yet, Del?" The two women shared a slight smile, and it was clear they were used to sharing a thousand private jokes. These two had worked together a long time.
"That's-" He stopped suddenly, as he caught sight of something in the shadow of one of the trees that made him go pale, and despite himself he reached up to wipe the sweat from his brow, visibly shaken. They both noted his long pause, the brittle tension in his jawline, the look in his eyes just before he answered, and they glanced at each other curiously.
"That's what I came here to talk to you about," he finished, and both Zee and Barr listened carefully to what he said next.
Karstus - 9 years later
"Do you ever regret what you did?" asked Avral, looking over at Del Grant where he lay on the nearby camp bed, a few feet away from hers in the otherwise empty dormitory. She would never disturb him if she thought he was asleep, but she had caught the glint of the night-light on his open eyes, staring at nothing in particular.
"Regret?" he asked. "Which regret?"
"Finding her? Bringing her here... Training her to be... You know."
"It wasn't my idea."
"I know, it was her last order... But you didn't need to do it. You could just have left. No one would have blamed you."
"No one?"
"I wouldn't have," she said. "I understood better than any of you thought I did."
"I'm sorry," he offered, as though it was something he had been waiting for the opportunity to say for a while. "When you saw her for the first time, it must have been-"
"-I coped," she said. "I think because... they're not quite the same. Though I can see how others would be fooled."
"No," he replied. "They're not the same. Just close enough for our purpose. And here we are, nine years on. I wish I could be certain it was all worth it."
"It was," she decided. "With Avalon, just the name alone inspires people... The name is indestructible, even if the body..."
"Like Blake."
"I suppose we'll find that out, won't we... Still no answering pulse?"
"Not yet."
The Liberator
Blake's hand-held detector was registering so much data that it couldn't quite cope, and she shut it down irritably before turning and running back down the corridor. It took a couple of minutes to reach the others, just long enough to get slightly out of breath... Too much time confined to a spaceship the last few months.
"Well?" was all that Darvin asked, busy with his preparations. He and Caul almost collided in the long narrow launch bay, and carefully navigated around each other to continue working at the wall-panels, checking all the readings were optimal for what they were about to attempt.
"Readings didn't make sense," said Blake. "That whole section is shut down... Looked like Zen did it automatically."
"INFORMATION," Zen's voice issued from a speaker on the wall. "SENSORS UNABLE TO RECONCILE THE EMISSIONS IN THE HABITATION AREA WITH ANY KNOWN FORM OF RADIATION... OVERLOAD BELIEVED TO BE IMMINENT."
"So Zen is going to initiate that internal configuration program again," said Juni. "Will that get rid of whatever's in there?"
"It'll get rid of... everything that's in there," said Caul, finding it difficult to meet her eye. "Or at least, that's the idea. All safeguards disabled."
"It's disconcerting enough to be here while that's happening, even with the safeguards," said Blake. "Believe me."
"So we push off," said Darvin while he worked. "Launch life capsules, while Zen re-configures the ship, hopefully saves it, and then comes for us."
"That's the plan," said Blake.
"Good," Juni remarked. "I was afraid it might be something a little desperate."
"Hey, desperate is where we live," Darvin grinned, with a wild look in his eyes, before slamming the inspection panel closed. "Good to go! Now, where's my girl?!"
"I don't know... Will I do?" asked Rissa, hurrying toward them laden with several packs of supplies. "Now, no squabbling, kids... Share these out."
"RECOMMENDATION," said Zen. "LIBERATOR CREW MUST EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY TO GUARANTEE IMMEDIATE SAFETY... NO FURTHER WARNING WILL BE GIVEN."
"Well, that was to the point," said Blake. "Into your capsules, please." There was a little jostling around in the narrow bay as they all rushed to the capsules which had their own coats and limited personal effects in them... It was time to abandon ship.
The life capsules launched at high speed, accelerating in the tubes to almost the speed of light, and almost immediately upon leaving they entered into the subspacial dimension the Liberator used to broadcast signals and receive sensor data. To say it was a bumpy ride for the five inhabitants would be putting it somewhat mildly, and all of them were buffeted around mercilessly.
"I think one of my teeth has come loose," Rissa complained over the intercom.
"Teeth?!" yelled Darvin over the noise in his capsule. "I think one of my legs has come loose!"
"I'm getting strange readings," Caul warned. "Something's happening."
"I see it too," said Blake. "I think I'm the other side of it... What is that...?"
"Unknown..."
"Juni..." Blake began. "We seem to be one side of that... artifact on the sensors, and the others are on the other side... But it's pulling us in... We're drifting from the flight-plan!"
"It's an object!" said Darvin. "Asteroid, maybe... Got pulled in by some other ship that used these networks before us!"
"That's interesting!" cried Juni. "Maybe we could stop to study it!"
"Not recommended!" said Caul, and Juni certainly had no idea whether he was in earnest or not. "We're all going to have to compensate using manual control!"
"Manual control?!" That was Juni again.
"Look," said Darvin. "Don't worry, I've got this! Slave your controls to mine... Got me?!"
"I can't," said Blake. "I think that thing is blocking certain wavelengths!"
"Nor me!" said Juni.
"Right!" said Darvin after a very anxious few moments for all of them. "I'm sending you two all my data... Getting it?!"
"Too much," said Juni. "My flight computer can't cope all at once!"
"Look!" said Blake. "Don't worry, all right... Just do your best! Juni, I can see you... Uh, slave yours to me, all right?! The others... See you at the other end... Hopefully!"
"It'll be all right," Darvin reassured them. "Even if we get separated, the Liberator will come for us all eventually!"
"We hope!"
"Not helping, Rissa!"
Blake tried to calm herself, utilising half-remembered exercises learned long ago on Pelios, as she locked Juni's capsule and hers into the same manual control interface, and started to input the co-ordinates... At that point, she noticed the alert being displayed on her other console, and quickly skim-read the accompanying report... Signal received... Priority. Implement emergency redirection?
Without even thinking, she chose Yes. A broadcast from System technology, somewhere not very far away in galactic terms...? That had to be something important, and what's more a virtual guarantee of landing these things somewhere habitable.
"Darvin?!" she shouted into the intercom. "You getting that signal?!" There was a brief message with the signal, and at last the decryption came up on her monitor... "Watchword Avalon."
"Just me!" replied Juni. "What signal?"
"Never mind!" called Blake. "Hang tight!" Hang tight?! When had she ever said hang tight? "We're going to be fine, Juni...! We're going now... Going to see her!"
"Blake...?! My console has just gone down! Everything's down, including the lights...! And...!" And the intercom, one of the last powered systems to go before the capsule went dark.
Blake and Juni's life capsules impacted on the vast cold plain and gouged deep troughs into the landscape as they traveled for a considerable distance before friction finally arrested their motion. The surface of each vessel was pitted and scorched, but the interior intact. All systems dead, but the life support bubble had persisted long enough to preserve both occupants.
They emerged, gasping, into the thin atmosphere, Blake a little before Juni. She scrabbled free of the damaged hatchway and emerged from the cloud of scalding steam enveloping her capsule, protected by her heavy padded clothing. Even so, the thick protective jacket was damaged by the heat, and Blake struggled out of it and discarded it on the ground, immediately feeling the biting cold of the planet surface.
Karstus, this place was called. She had been able to learn that before all systems crashed and shut down. Somewhere, here, there were other people - hopefully including Avalon. Hadn't she traveled on the Liberator? Not many people could still be out there with a piece of the original Liberator in their possession.
"Juni!" she yelled, and was relieved when her friend emerged from the steam and smoke of her own crash-landing, disheveled and shaken but apparently not badly hurt. Both of them had made it, that was the important thing. Now, they had a chance of survival... if shelter could be found, and soon.
"We made it?" Juni phrased it as a question, and Blake nodded.
"We did..." She looked around. "I don't see the others."
"Are they here somewhere, do you think...?"
Blake wanted to say yes, desperately wanted to, but in the end she shook her head. "I think they went off-course. Just a couple of degrees, but that far out..."
"A couple of degrees, in deep space..." Juni said. "They could be anywhere."
"And the Liberator will find them, and us," Blake tried to reassure her. "We just need to keep our bracelets on."
"The bracelets, yes..." Juni held hers up, and tapped it with her finger. Frowning, Blake did the same, and found to her horror there was no faint hum of power from the bracelet, no lit-up panels when she tried to activate it... The device was dead... As dead as the life capsule had been as soon as it arrived in the vicinity of this planet.
"It's something to do with this place," Blake reasoned. "Powered devices just don't work here... Some kind of interference."
"Right!" a voice called, and they both spun around to see the slender figure of a young-woman with dark hair, a short cloak wrapped around her, emerge from the smoke of the crash. She had used it as cover to approach them without being seen. This girl is good, Blake found herself thinking as she approached, even as she and Juni both raised their guns to match the one she held pointed towards them.
"Here to welcome us?" Juni wondered quietly, but it seemed the girl did hear given the reproachful look she directed at her.
"You're right about the power devices," said the girl calmly, not at all troubled by the two weapons pointed at her. "And that undoubtedly includes your energy weapons."
Blake kept her gun trained. "A bit of a risk on your part. These weapons are a product of alien technology."
"So were your lifeboats, I assume," said the girl. "And look at the state of them. I'll take the risk. My gun fires projectiles, you see."
"Ah," said Blake. She tried smiling, and that at least seemed to surprise the girl. Well, if that came as a surprise...
With a brief look at Juni as if to say Do what I do, Blake tossed away her gun.
Darvin, Rissa and Caul struggled from their life capsules with what felt like the last of their strength and rested for a few precious moments amid the sea of what could only be called... wreckage. For as far as the eye could see, they were surrounded by piles of junk, so thick and so deep that nothing of the planet's actual surface, assuming there was one, could be discerned.
Off in the distance, very large objects jutted out of the landscape, and Rissa at least, with her enhanced vision, recognised them for what they were... or had once been. Abandoned spaceships, some of them very large ones, of various origins and affiliations, some identifiable but most a mystery to her. Looking around, scanning the landscape, she spotted what looked to be a complex of buildings... A population centre? A base of some sort?
"What is this place...?" she demanded of no one in particular.
"Wait, I'll ask..." said Darvin. "S'cuse me...! Where-? Oh, no one there."
"Grumpy today."
"Being shaken about like that does that to me. Caul, you all right?"
"Yeah..." Caul was investigating some of the items of refuse around them, finding that it was all kinds of things, perishable and not, organic and not... The most common material was a thick sludge that seemed to bind everything else together, so thick it did not prevent them from moving about or stick to their footwear with any particular insistence. "This place is a junkyard..." He peered into the distance. "A very big junkyard."
"Planet sized?" wondered Rissa.
"Let's not get carried away," said Darvin. A moment later, they all looked at each other, concerned, as it became clear they were not alone after all. Several people were making their way, clambering their way across the obstacles the whole landscape presented, towards them.
Crouching down, they waited, weapons ready, and at the first sight of a UniS trooper Rissa fired and the man fell back into cover. "Did you see that?" she asked.
"UniS," Darvin said grimly.
"Yeah, but the others he was with..."
"You get a good look?"
"Better than good, with my spiffing eyesight," Rissa confirmed. "Civilians, most of them, with a mere smattering of UniS so-called soldiers. And all covered in shit, or whatever the hell this stuff is."
"Someone's been having a worse day than us," said Caul.
Rissa smiled at him. "Might be..."
"You there!" called a voice. "Can we talk?" Before Darvin could reply, a short stocky man about fifty or so emerged from his cover and walked towards them. "I'm sorry if we startled you... We thought you were them."
"Them?" Darvin looked at his two companions, but they were all equally nonplussed.
"The invaders, man! Where you been hiding?"
"Hiding... Yeah..."
"If we'd realised quicker you were just scavengers..."
"Scavengers, yeah... That's us. Scavengers." Darvin looked at Caul and Rissa again. "Scavengers." He turned back to the spokesman. "So... we're being invaded then?"
"Oh yeah, mate..." the stocky man replied. "That we very much are."
"I was expecting Avalon..." said Blake, really just for the sake of trying to engage in some way with the girl and... hopefully, not get shot. The longer this confrontation lasted, the more the prospects for that did not look to be going their way.
"And I was expecting an old man with a scarred face," said Avral. As a response it was interesting, but not exactly what Blake might have hoped for. Neither the young woman's attention nor her gun-arm wavered for so much as a moment.
Blake moved forward slowly, hesitantly. "Well, I'm doing my best..." she said, trying to disarm the situation - "Give me time..." She smiled, broadly, sweetly even, in a way she seldom did or ever had. Without entirely knowing why.
"Time," Avral mused. "That's a lot to ask." Was Blake imagining it or was there something there, something in her eyes that spoke of something other than hard ruthlessness? Just for a moment...
"You want to trust me," said Blake, slowly moving forward again. "I can tell." The smile again, that smile. Why was she doing that?!
"Trust?" Avral demanded, like the word was an obscenity. At the moment Blake had said it, something in her demeanor had changed, and her aim, having shifted a little as she seemed to relax her grip on the gun, moved back to cover them both.
"Was that the wrong thing to say?" Blake asked, expecting to be shot at any moment...
"Blake!" Juni yelled. Not a cry of alarm as Blake first thought, but a warning... Someone else was approaching, scrambling down the side of the low ridge at the edge of the plain. An older man, but none the less quick on his feet, hurried towards them. As his face became identifiable, Blake found herself wondering... Where had she seen it before?
Yes... Back on Pelios, Alek had given her all the available information on the period of the Blake insurrection and the original Liberator... This man had joined them for a while. Not long, certainly not long enough to be counted among the principal crew, but he had been there. What was his name...?
"Are you from the Liberator?" Del Grant demanded, just at the moment Blake successfully retrieved his name from her memory. She nodded. As ever, it was strange to find herself meeting someone who had been involved in those long-ago events. If all went well, or at least something went well, it would be Avalon soon.
"She never said that to me," Avral said, keeping her gun level.
"Did you bother to ask?" Grant stepped forward. "My name is-"
"-Del Grant," Blake said, and Grant turned to his companion and gave her a look that said You see?.
"Put your gun away," he told Avral. "They're not even armed."
"They were," said Avral, nodding at the discarded Liberator weapons. "They just don't work."
Grant saw the weapons, and smiled faintly. "Handy little guns, I seem to remember," he said. "But they have their drawbacks... Such as a separate power source. Not much use on a planet with so much interference flying around." Blake and Juni looked at each other, recognising the reason not just for the guns' failure to work but also for their eventful descent through the atmosphere. "Isn't the Liberator shielded?" he asked. "It used to be."
Before Juni could say anything, Blake replied. "We don't have the Liberator."
"What happened?"
"Long story."
"Right. Then come back with us and tell it." As Grant said that, Avral lowered and holstered her weapon, seeing little point in continuing to hold it. There was, however, no accompanying indication that she herself thought any differently about the new arrivals.
"Yes," said Juni breezily, with just a hint of passive aggressive warning. "Let's tell them everything."
"This is Avral," Grant said as they walked, after Blake and Juni had retrieved their weapons.
"Your bodyguard?" asked Juni.
"A senior operative in our movement," Grant replied, and did not miss Avral's amused reaction at his choice of words.
"This is Juni," said Blake, and hesitated before finishing her introduction. "And my name is Blake." Both of them turned to look at her in response to that.
"I have to ask..." Grant began.
"Ask me anything you want."
"Roj Blake... Is it true that he's dead...? Some have their doubts."
"He is dead. I'm sorry. He's been dead for close to twenty-eight years."
Grant took that information in his stride, but it had a visible impact on Avral even thought she tried to disguise that. Blake remembered her words during their standoff... And I was expecting an old man with a scarred face...
"Are you his daughter?" asked Grant cautiously.
"Not exactly."
"Another long story, no doubt," said Avral, but Blake did not get the impression it was said with the same suspicion as before... Was the girl mellowing toward them a little? Towards her? And why was that question foremost in her mind...? It suddenly felt very important.
Blake made herself concentrate... Grant was the one they had to make a connection with first and foremost. He was the important one. For now...
She found herself watching Avral, on and off, as they walked, and thought she saw something a little familiar in her too. Not from Alek's data dump, for this girl probably wasn't even born till a few years after the massacre on Gauda Prime, but there was something... Of course, even her name suggested an association...
"We came to see Avalon," Blake announced abruptly, and came close to regretting her words when both Grant and Avral looked suddenly guarded once more. "Will that be possible?"
"Yes," said Grant, sounding a little unsure of his own answer. "Before long."
"I'll take you to see her," said Avral, turning away and walking again. "Not now... We'll rest out the night, then I'll take you. Tomorrow."
"Will you?" Grant asked, looking at her more in concern than anything else.
"Yes," said Avral.
The planet Abisian
Tam Nivri - that was their guide's name - led his disparate party of fugitives and stragglers, now including Darvin, Caul and Rissa, along pathways through the junk that no one not intimately acquainted with this place would be likely to know, and it seemed like a long time before there was any thought of stopping for breath. When they eventually, briefly, did, as far as Darvin was concerned it was question time for their new leader.
So far, apart from Nivri's name, they had managed to glean only that this world was known as Abisian, or more frequently by its colloquial name, The Dump. "Seriously," Darvin said to Nivri when he got a chance. "If it isn't Unified Systems attacking you, then who is it...?"
"Oh, mate, I don't know what they're called..." Nivri said, crouching down in the wreckage. "But we've been hearing reports lately... The raids have been getting worse. Never thought they would hit us. I mean, don't get me wrong, we got plenty of value here, but only to those willing to do the work to separate it all and get it sorted, know what I mean?"
"I know what you mean," said Caul, assuming a response was expected.
"So, you didn't expect them to target you...?" asked Rissa, and Nivri shook his head.
"Look at it the way," he said. "Our UniS garrison has been keeping Central Command on Proxima Three informed about everything out here, all right? And info flows the other way too... I mean, there was nothing suggesting we were in any immediate danger... They just came at us out of nowhere, years before we thought they might be a problem..."
"Have you seen them?" Rissa demanded.
"I caught a glimpse, yeah," said Nivri, and shivered. "Look, what I heard, before communications all got jammed, was that they were asking, very insistently I might add, about some... relic."
"Relic?" Of all the words Darvin had expected to hear, that wasn't one of them.
"Yeah... They're religious types, it seems... They do look it. The thing is, I don't know what makes them think we've got their damn thing of theirs here. You've seen this place, right? We got scrap, and lots of it... Unless one of our old ships somehow got this relic thing lost on it. Suppose anything's possible."
"Not anything," said Caul, earning a curious look from Nivri.
"Describe them," urged Rissa, hoping the idea that had formed in her mind was wrong. "What kind of weapons, armour...?"
"Weapons...? Blades mostly. Wicked looking ancient things. Some had guns, but they only seem to use them if the blades weren't enough. No armour, none. Just these strange white robe things, with dark patches down them... Looked like-"
"Blood, yeah." Rissa turned to Darvin. "Boss..."
"Yeah, I know," said Darvin, looking very scared. "The Children of Light." He had just enough presence of mind in that moment to wonder, What are the Children of Light looking at finding in this place...?
He looked up, and just for a moment he saw a figure watching him from a range of thirty feet or so... He blinked and it was gone. She was gone. He suddenly felt very cold.
"Did you see that?"
"See what, boss?" inquired Rissa cheerfully, while Caul followed Darvin's gaze and tried to discern what he meant.
"Nothing... Never mind. It's nothing." Despite what he had just said, Darvin knew it wasn't nothing. He had seen it... Seen her. "Tarna," he breathed, too quietly for the others to hear.
Karstus
Blake and Avral started out early the next day, allowing just long enough for the weak starlight to warm up the surface sufficiently. A walk at a brisk pace along the plain where Liberator's life capsules had impacted, and then up one of the ridges, then up another, until Blake realised the terrain had become a range of craggy hills, and settled in for what might be a long climb.
She eyed the gun holstered at Avral's side. Normally, all her instincts would be screaming danger at her, but the girl had allowed her to take an identical weapon along, and indeed was leading the way with her back to her companion. Trusted...? Perhaps not quite yet, but her feelings on the matter were obviously very different from those of the previous day.
"She's up here so no one will disturb her," was Avral's response when Blake asked where they were going, and she kept more or less silent till they reached their destination.
It was a few moments before Blake realised what exactly she was looking at, and when she did her entire body chilled, and not just because of the sweat drying in the cold breeze, or because the oxygen was thin enough to make breathing a little bit of a chore. She walked forward and examined the pile of rocks, and brushed her hand over the crudely-made marker... The marking, just one word, still legible...
Avalon.
She turned to Avral. "Why didn't you just tell me?"
"You want to know the real reason?"
"Always."
Avral found a convenient place to sit. "I wanted to bring you out here alone, and give you as many chances as possible to show your true intentions. You could have killed me, or taken me prisoner, any number of times today, if that's what you were here for."
"I see," said Blake, sitting next to her on a neighboring rock. Not an entirely inaccurate statement, but not complete either.
"So I can only assume you really are who you say you are, and you really are here to help us."
"Are you glad about that?"
"Yes," said Avral, turning to her. "Yes, I am." Blake finally decided she was not imagining the oddly pleasant tension between them - Certainly, it was more pleasant when Avral wasn't holding a gun pointed at her.
"You don't find it easy to trust."
"I trust far too easily," was the reply. "I just didn't know that till recently."
"I'm sorry," said Blake, turning back to the grave. "How long?"
"Nine years ago... Nearly ten."
Blake frowned, finding it difficult to reconcile that information. "But Avalon..."
"We have a replacement."
"A replacement?"
Avral's faint smile was bitter. "Del knew someone, you see. He had known her before he met Avalon, and at first he thought she was her... Sure enough, the resemblance was remarkable. And with a little work, Barr was made to look and sound so much like my mother that even I could almost be fooled... Sometimes."
"I'm sorry."
"You said that." Though her words were reproving, the look on Avral's face was more one of slight amusement, before suddenly becoming very cold. As she spoke she looked away. "Avalon was assassinated, by agents of President Scarn... They shot her, and she survived that, but that was a trick... While she recovered from the wound, it became apparent she had been infected by a targeted virus... One designed specifically for her." She turned to look at Blake again. "They really were determined to get her."
"I'm-" Blake stopped before she could say sorry yet again.
"Are you really called Blake?" They descended by more or less the same route they had climbed, and this time instead of silence there was easy conversation between them. Avral had clearly been wanting to ask this particular question for a while.
"I am now. I was called Mara for a long time, but that wasn't my real name either. I think I'll probably most likely die as Blake." Realising what she had said, Blake laughed briefly. "Though not too soon, I hope."
"What was your original name?"
"I've no idea."
"That must be strange."
"My father died before I was born, and I barely even remember my mother. The man who named me Mara is the closest thing I had to family." Alek - dead, like so many others. "Till very recently, anyway."
"And now?"
"When you brought me up here, I was hoping I might see the other life capsules down there somewhere, but it seems likely now... They went somewhere else. The others are gone. Just me now, and Juni." She snorted. "And Orac, if he counts."
"Till the Liberator comes back and brings you all on board."
"If it does. The Liberator might be destroyed."
"I suppose then, you'll fight with what you have. My mother managed to fight both the Federation and the Andromedans very successfully without any superior ships like the Liberator."
"Yes, she did." Blake thought for a moment, looking down onto the plain below. "So those caves are shielded from the interference that shuts off the power?"
"That's right. Something to do with the composition of the rock."
"How fortunate."
"Sounds like you have another idea about that."
"So how do your ships function? I mean, I assume you arrived and plan to leave here on one."
"Some kind of generated counter-pulse... I can get you more detailed information on it if you'd like."
"Counter-pulse..."
"Just what are you thinking...? Blake."
"For right now, nothing... Just a thought." She smiled, and reflected once again that she suddenly seemed to be doing that a lot, even though their situation had seldom been more vulnerable. When she cautiously looked over at Avral, it was to find that she was smiling too.
It was enough to make Blake feel a little giddy, more so than the low level of oxygen could explain.
Abisian
The records, stored on primitive ancient drives, were slow to give up their secrets, frustratingly so for Miko. There was a real danger the required information would not be available when he arrived, and if that was the case... Well, who knew. Tylner might shrug casually, and observe that time had little meaning, or he might punish those responsible for the delay with a severity that Miko once would have found unimaginable.
Once. Before he had become aware of the Light. The Light, and what it contained... What it offered.
Tylner was unpredictable, but then he operated on a level of mysteries that Miko was not yet ready to comprehend. Not yet. One day, the old man had cryptically suggested, he might.
"You have it?" the gravelly voice intoned just behind him, and despite himself Miko turned with his heart beating considerably faster. He forced himself to look unconcernedly at Tylner's face with it's empty eye socket on one side.
"Soon," he said. "The drives are yielding up their accumulated data now, but sifting through the relevant information will take some time."
"Very well," Tylner said calmly, and turned away, to Miko's immense relief, the ends of his white robe trailing against the dusty floor of the Abisian operations room... Then, he turned back, and Miko felt uneasy once more. It wasn't yet over.
"You have... seen them here?"
Miko did not have to ask what he meant. "Yes," he said. "Here and there. Not many in this place... But I have seen them."
"The lost ones are our harbingers," said Tylner, though it was a tenet Miko was well aware of by now. "Those who are able to see them are blessed above all others... Remember that, Brother... Whatever occurs."
"I will, Brother." At that moment, Miko's attention was sought by one of the row of white-robed operators extracting the contents of the ancient drives, and he rushed over to view the displays coming up on the monitors. "It's here, Brother... We have it now..." As Tylner came over to join him, he read off the screen in his excitement, lips moving - Miko was not a strong reader. "The manifest, Brother... It is definitely here... Any moment now, we will have a location. It is here!"
"The One will be pleased."
"He will," Miko replied automatically. "What a joy to be the one to bring it to him... What an honour."
"Joy and honour are irrelevant, Brother..." said Tylner, as Miko should have anticipated. "All such things will pass when we join the Light... You see them, Brother...? Around us, at this moment? There are many in this room with us...!"
"No," Miko said with regret.
"They are here," Tylner said with savage intensity. "They have come to us, as we claim what is ours... What should never have been lost to us. If you are beginning to see them, Brother Miko, then you truly are one of us..." He closed his eyes. "The dead are with us."
"INFORMATION," said Zen. "INTERNAL CONFIGURATION PROCEDURES ARRESTED... EMERGENCY CANCELLATION IMPLEMENTED... LIFE FORM DETECTED IN MEDICAL UNIT... INFORMATION BEING COLLATED..."
"Zen," said a weak voice, as Faal stumbled over to a wall-unit. "Report, please... What's happening?"
"CREWMEMBER FAAL... RESURRECTED... EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN INITIATED... COMPLETE RESTART NECESSARY... GOING OFFLINE..."
"Zen!"
"INFORMATION... LIBERATOR IS BEING BOARDED! EMERGENCY-!"
"Zen!"
As the medical unit switched to backup lighting and all systems other than life support powered down, the Liberator became silent, except for the loud clang that echoed throughout the habitation area as another ship linked with one of the airlocks.