Chapter 14
I do not own Blake's 7. Another very short chapter as I had more material for Mass Effect's interregnum than Blake's 7's destruction.
254.4 NC The Liberator, en route to the Monolith System
"Is there a plan?" Avon asked.
Blake remained seated, ignoring the hacker's question. He hadn't left his seat since Earth had fallen. Nor had he said anything. Despite Jenna's best efforts, he remained in the pilot's seat, a death grip on the controls guiding the Liberator to follow the Federation Fleet. Over and over he moved the ship into position to fire on one of the Federation ships. Fortunately, his unwillingness to leave his seat also meant he couldn't reach the controls to fire the weapons. The freedom fighter was surprisingly functional for someone who was damn near nonresponsive.
No one else answered his question either.
There was not a plan.
So Avon set about making one.
254.4 NC Command Ship FNS Unity, the Monolith System
Servalan had a plan.
It was not a good plan.
The good plans had all failed. All that was left was the bad plans. The suicidal plans. The plans with little hope of success. There would have been a mutiny, if there had been anywhere for mutineers to go, and Servalan hadn't carefully segregated all command functions with her guaranteed-loyal mutoids, and the pitiful handful of survivors amongst humanity hadn't been furious wrecks, with nothing left to them but hatred and revenge. And if Servalan had told them the plan in any detail beyond 'Strike back at these genocidal alien bastards!' Say what you will about her and there was much to say, she knew how to manipulate people.
With the plan, came the inevitable need for backup plans and plans within plans. With all her previous schemes destroyed, her ambitions derailed, Servalan scrambled through the darkness of her own mind, seeking a point of certainty. Before it had always been the Federation. She would rule it and the galaxy with it. Now, the Federation was gone. The galaxy was gone. Yet, she would not succumb to the panic, the madness, the hatred of the other, lesser people. She was Servalan and she would find an alternative.
This required her survival. And that was the point of certainty from which all things would flow. Survival required escape from monsters which could not be outfought. The question was how to achieve that? No Federation ship could survive the voyage between galaxies and even if they could, who knew if there would be squid-scum there as well? After all, the monsters had to be somewhere during the hundred thousand years they hadn't been butchering everyone in our galaxy. Maybe they made a great cycle through the universe, culling everyone and everything in their path.
Who knew?
What she did know was that they'd come before, a hundred thousand years ago and had not returned until now. So the only true way to escape from them was to live and die in the millennia between their arrival. An opportunity she had lost by virtue of being born and surviving to the present.
A slow, cruel grin appeared on Servalan's sculpted features. Or did I?
Author's Note: I'm on vacation next week, recovering from last month, which was hellish. The Effect of Liberation will resume September 17.