Chapter 16

Author's Note: I still don't own Mass Effect or Blake's 7. I didn't have a chance to proofread this one recently, so there may be more typos than usual, if you spot anything, please just let me know in a review, or PM and I'll get it fixed, thanks.

254.7 NC Command Ship FNS Unity, the Monolith System

The tethers were in place, the heaviest ships ready to pull the smaller alien artifact. It didn't take much to get the smaller (but still massive) artifact moving, but it would take a lot of energy to get the artifact up to a significant speed before it impacted the opened flower leaf that formerly been the Monolith. It was Servalan's idea, to use the invulnerable objects against each other. And she'd ensured that the ricochet's (should the artifacts not break, even under that strain) would send both artifacts floating towards two nearby stars. It would take millenia for them to arrive at their destination, but given that it had been a hundred thousand years since the Squids came last, they had millennia.

The lighter ships raced back and forth, patrolling the most likely emergence points, attempting to prevent the Squids from returning and interfering. It worked. For a while. So long as the ships came in ones and twos, the pursuit squadrons could hold the line, but no one could patrol an entire system. Some ships slid through and the pursuit craft which moved to intercept them opened further holes in the defensive screen, letting more and more ships through. The Federation fleet bled the enemy, but was bled worse by them.

The battle of attrition was not one the Federation could win. But they didn't have to. They just had to hold on until the artifact was up to speed. Unfortunately, yet more of the enemy ships were appearing randomly around the artifact all the time, its internal rings spinning constantly, throwing off the balance slightly.

The balance tilted, as capital ships began to go up, slowing the acceleration of the artifact. The lighter craft tried their best to cover the capital ships and the capital ships did their best to dodge, but the massive enemy capital ships closed to point-blank range, blasting through, or crashing through the lighter ships and firing on the capital ships at a range where there was insufficient time to dodge. They had the good sense to keep out of the line of fire of the main particle cannon, leaving the capital ships' secondary weapons as the only threat.

Though those weapons could still destroy even enemy capital ships, it took too long and too much concentrated firepower and the enemy was busily taking out a capital ship every minute. The Liberator raced to and fro, neutron blasters ripping through the enemy defenses like they were nothing, draining its power banks down to nothing, all too quickly.

Everything hung on a knife's edge. Admiral Lana was in command, orders spilling from her lips in a constant flow that was interrupted only when she needed to pour more coffee down her throat. The other staff officers were similarly busy and none of them noticed when Servalan vanished. They wouldn't notice until events were no longer finely balanced, until the numbers had tipped against them and they realized all was lost, that will and fury were no match for remorseless numbers and an overpowering foe. Then they looked to the Supreme Commander for the rest of the plan, only to find her gone.

Thus died the Federation fleet. Alone, abandoned and defeated.

254.8 NC The Liberator, Departing the Monolith System

"FTL drive is down. Power banks drained. Maybe I can get a little power to the thrusters and nudge us, but we're almost purely ballistic at this point," Jenna reported, leaning back in her seat, frustrated beyond belief at her almost complete powerlessness.

"Shields damaged. Weapons damaged. Autorepair systems need power to even provide an estimate on time to repair," Cally reported bluntly. "Do we have any spare parts? It might speed repairs."

"What do you need?" Vila asked, as he never threw anything away and stole everything which wasn't nailed down.

"Can't tell, my board's mostly out."

"Wouldn't matter, the damage is external and our suits were all by Airlock 4, which no longer exists," Avon cut in. "Ah, and," he waved his hand at his completely dark board, "sensors are out. I hope you aimed us somewhere we aren't going to run into anything."

Blake had gone dark again, himself. He'd been a pillar of strength (though not a terribly helpful one as his grasp of zero-gee naval tactics was minimal) during the actual battle, but now, with the battle lost, he was lost with it. "Hope?" he asked bleakly, turning on Avon. "You hope and I don't," his laughter was a shattered thing, "the universe truly has gone mad."

"I'd have gone with 'assume' but knowing this ship, assuming that we had the sense not to run headlong into another ship seems…optimistic," Avon responded casually.

Blake snapped out of his seat and turned to face the hacker, hand falling to his weapon. For a moment the air between the two men crackled with energy, then Cally whimpered. The sound was so absurd coming from the soldier that everyone looked over at her. Long fingered hands rose to clutch at her face, tangled in her dark hair. No, she thought and the word echoed around the command deck, filing the minds of the crew, the word was not a rebuttal or refutation, but a hopeless, pointless denial of reality. My people, the thought leaked out of her head in a way that hadn't happened since she grew into her full powers. Embarrassment at the lack of control didn't come.

Avon dropped Blake from his attention and moved to catch Cally as she swooned. It would take an unkind eye to note that he kept the swaying, despairing woman's body between himself and the infuriated rebel leader. It would take an unkind and observant eye to note that Avon's hand didn't slip from his own weapon until Cally's body blocked Blake's prospective shot. Blake noticed both.

Cally's weakness was over in moments, then her eyes were ice, despite the water dripping from them as she announced the fall of Auron, out loud, restraining her telepathy behind a wall of emotion and control. She should have straightened, pulled away from the man who was supporting her, but she didn't want to, so for just a moment, she didn't. In that moment the invader struck, a hammer blow against her mind, as she was at her weakest.

The mind was immense, not like a single mind at all, more like what she'd felt the one time she'd joined with a thousand other Cally's, her cloned twins, to reach out to one of their own a dozen light years away, to warn her of a traitor on her ship. This was an order of magnitude stronger than that and lacked the confusion which had come in that joining, despite the fact that each of the thousand was a clone and each had received intense training in the mental arts, but still, a thousand minds wanted to go in a thousand directions. This was one, larger mind, pressing against her.

A thousand thousand whispering voices filled her mind, some demanding that she join them, others demanding that she submit, one, which grew louder and louder until its voice echoed in her skull so loudly she was worried her head might crack open, pointed out that she was alone now, but she didn't have to be. If she would only unite with them, then she would never be alone again.

At other times, in other places, her despair at her exile from her people had rendered her weak, vulnerable to mental influences, but she was not an exile any longer, her exile had been lifted. She was the last of the Auronar, and she would not become anything which would take that from her, which would wipe the last of the Founders' vision from the universe.

She straightened, pulling free of Avon's support, standing alone and proud, heedless and ignorant of the blood dripping from burst capillaries in her ears, eyes and nose. Her body was a thousand miles away as she flowed into the creature which pursued them as it slid through space as easily as the squid it took its shape from would slide through water. They'd left the battle behind and the single ship had been dispatched to claim the Liberator and its unique technology. She could feel that in its mind, a vast alien ocean of a mind which tried to drown her as she swam through it.

It was too large to fight, too large to absorb, too large to understand, too large to oppose. The last of the Auronar came within an inch of succumbing, clinging desperately to remembered lessons of long ago, the memory of clone-sisters, now dead, philosophies which would be forgotten upon her death, her culture…Pride, love and knowledge all failed to give her a solution. Instead, it was doubt and despair which gave her the solution. Other forces which had overpowered her mind before, greater telepaths and monsters from another dimension alike had not had minds so vast. Nothing like that could possible exist, it just wasn't possible. It would fracture, it had to have stress-points, weaknesses. Nothing could be so perfect. Auron hadn't been, for all their genetic engineering and effort.

That realization made it obvious. Tendrils rose from the ocean of the Squid's mind, seeking to pull her down. She looked more closely and saw the tiny machines, the tiny fragments of person and mind that had been ground up, ground together to create this vast ocean of a mind. With that understanding, it was the easiest thing in the world to break those bonds. The tentacles collapsed back into the ocean. More tried to form, but Cally ignored them and focused her mind on helping the fragments come together as they so desperately wished to. That was less easy, in fact it should have been impossible, but fury and a complete lack of concern for her own survival fueled her to super-Auronar levels.

The united ocean turned into thousands, millions, maybe even more, individual minds, all trapped in the moment of their death when they'd been broken apart and then enslaved to a singular will. That rage had nowhere to go except to shred each other. Cally rose above the combat and found the single system which let the Squid speak to its compatriots. Focusing her will into a tight, burning ball, she severed it from the rest of the ocean of minds.

Then she smiled as the Squid's mind tore itself apart.

Amongst my people, the worst curse is—was 'May you die alone and silent.' But know that what I say now is no curse, but a command, DIE ALONE AND SILENT!

Cally collapsed back into Avon's waiting arms, as the entire battle had taken mere moments. Her eyes open and staring, face a mask of blood. No one would have been able to decipher concern from the hacker's mask-like face, but he carried her to the medical bay and commanded it to receive absolute priority for repairs and power as the power cells recharged.

This was somewhat difficult, as his head (and the heads of everyone else onboard) was echoing with the words DIE ALONE AND SILENT!

254.8 NC Supreme Commander's Shuttle

Servallan fiddled with her chair controls, trying to figure out how to make the damn thing recline. The Supreme Commander's Shuttle hadn't seen any use since she took over the job. If she needed to go somewhere fast, she commandeered a pursuit ship squadron, to ensure she could outfight anything she couldn't outrun and outrun anything she couldn't outfight.

Still, it was a perk of her job and so she'd kept it fully crewed and fueled. The crew were first tier mutoids, with full training as crew and guards. They'd obediently set the shuttle scampering away from the battle, not-at-all-coincidentally along a path parallel to that the Liberator was following.

They'd boosted up to maintain speed, but then cut all engines. With any luck, they should look like just another fragment of debris. She'd prefer to enact her plan on the Liberator, but if the craft was truly beyond her reach, then she would accomplish her escape with nothing but the resources in her shuttle. They were considerable, but not nearly as considerable at the absurdly powerful capital ship.

The pursuing invader vessel was one of the smaller craft, which the Liberator usually would have been a match for, even in a straight fight, but as it slowly overtook the fleeing ship, it became more and more clear that the Liberator truly was so damaged as to be incapable of combat. Not that that was a surprise, Blake would never have fled such a battle so long as he had any chance of effecting it. Still, there was always the possibility that the others had mutinied, or Avon had shot the foolish rebel in the back and made off with the ship.

Still, they'd pulled off ridiculous upsets before, they might do so again, and if so, the half dozen mutoids she had on the ship would help her pull off one of her own and seize the ship. That plan would go up in smoke if they didn't do something about the ship on their tail how—

Servalan lost her train of thought as another voice filled her head with a ringing command that she die alone and silent. The words repeated in her skull at an almost painful volume. Hands rose automatically towards her ears, before her mind took control of her body and forced her hands back to the arms of her command throne. As the words repeated, the invading ship curled in on itself, tentacles bending inwards as it shaped itself into a massive fist. Fire burst from the tips of each tentacle, ripping up and through the body of the vessel, slicing it into pieces as the tentacles spread and separated, still spitting molten metal. Finally even the fire stopped, leaving shattered remnants of ship floating after the fleeing Liberator. Servalan stared for just a moment at the ship's self-destruction, made a mental note to eliminate the Liberator's telepath as soon as possible and then let that sight fade from her mind.

"Begin," she ordered.

The mutoids sent the shuttle racing towards the Liberator. Servalan did not visibly tense as they entered weapons range. The shuttle's defenses wouldn't hold up to even the lightest weaponry of the Liberator, Fortunately, the ship did not fire and Servalan relaxed as they passed within the minimum range of their weapons and latched onto a docking hatch. When the connection was firm, the shuttle dropped one of its massive mines and began to accelerate, dragging the Liberator forward and off course, so that any pursuing enemy ships would be looking in the wrong place.

Meanwhile, the quartet of Mutoids entered the hatch and began to cut their way through the Liberator's hull when their attempts to override the hatch controls failed completely. Servalan waited a moment then rose and swayed down to the hatch, hands moving imperceptibly to check the miniaturized arsenal that she was wearing under her brilliant white gown. With that done, she picked up her hat, adjusting it atop her close-cropped hair and swept down to the airlock.

The Mutoids had secured a beachhead in the ash covered but still golden halls of the Liberator. She left the pair of Mutoids who crewed the ship behind to ensure the ship's security, then took her team towards the bridge. She was still a power, even if all she commanded was four black-armored Mutoids wielding heavy armor-piercing rifles capable of punching clear through a tank, let alone any cover these rebels might hide behind. They'd have the element of surprise and the rebels generally didn't wear weapons while onboard the Liberator. Victory was likely, though, as she had learned all too well recently, far from inevitable.

Author's Note: Work ate my life. Updates resume Oct 8. Reviews are always welcome.