The Liberator‘s hull groaned with the strain of another brutal change of trajectory. A deep, guttural moan, like a wounded animal protesting as it was forced into a painful turn to avoid a predator. It seemed to Jenna as though the flight deck warped and twisted in front of her eyes while she wrestled with the controls. But it was probably just the sweat that drenched her forehead and stung her eyes.
How long had they been fighting? It must have been hours since the first engagement, and yet it felt like a lifetime. Jenna ruefully thought of how all her smuggling career had been about avoiding the enemy. Hiding from them, or making a swift retreat if detected. It went against every instinct she had to steer her vessel into a confrontation. And yet here she was, principal pilot of the Liberator, and facing down hundreds of alien vessels as they forced their way through the single hole in the Star One defence grid.
She risked a look up from her controls. Cally was monitoring the battle formations, and remained calm despite the buffeting of the ship’s abrupt movement. Jenna had long abandoned warning them before she made any sharp manoeuvres – the crew had got used to the idea hours ago that they should expect the unexpected. Vila managed to maintain a firing procedure against the approaching ships, despite his plain terror at the onslaught. It was clear that his every instinct was to flee from the room and cower in a distant corner, but he gripped the weapons controls with grim desperation.
Avon was preternaturally calm, a still point amid the chaos. Jenna suspected it was a cold anger that let him remain in quiet control of the Liberator. How different Blake would have been in this situation. But was that necessarily better?
A hail of shrapnel rattled across the hull, and Jenna wrenched the controls aside to avoid the remaining debris. The flaming wreck of an alien ship, gutted by the neutron blasters, tumbled past Liberator and into the cold depths of space. Like so many of its predecessors, its bulbous shape seemed utterly inimical to conventional space travel.
Avon was already snapping out fresh orders. ‘I want a full sensor sweep, Zen. Have we enough energy in the primary power banks to sustain this strafing pattern ahead of us?’
‘PRIMARY POWER AT THIRTY-SEVEN PERCENT. SECONDARY POWER IS STILL RECHARGING.’
Avon moved over for a closer look at the main view screen. He clutched at the bulkhead to help himself stay upright when the ship lurched again. ‘Initiate pattern sigma positioning. Random manoeuvres at your discretion.’
‘CONFIRMED.’
The next bizarrely-shaped alien ship was squeezing into their sector from beyond the Star One defence grid. ‘Look!’ called Jenna. ‘That’s another of them through.’
This one, however, had an extraordinary turn of speed. Even at that distance, Jenna saw its knobbly hull fluoresce in a rainbow display of colours before it sped at incredible velocity towards Liberator. Vila was caught by surprise. He gave a little squeal of alarm as the vessel loomed impossibly large, impossibly quickly in front of them. Before Jenna had time to wonder if the shield would deflect it, or Vila had time to retarget, the ship had whooshed past and vanished from the screen.
Jenna let out a huge breath. ‘I thought it was going to ram us.’
Cally was already tracking it with the detectors. ‘Vila, can you pick it off with the rear neutron blasters?’
‘I can’t see it,’ he admitted, becoming flustered. ‘Wait… er… No.’ He flapped a bit more. ‘Yes! Oh… it’s out of range.’
‘Should we pursue?’ asked Cally.
‘Leave it,’ said Avon. ‘Stay focused on the gap in the grid. A handful of fugitives can’t do much harm.’
‘That’s what you used to say about us,’ muttered Vila.
‘And now look at us,’ agreed Jenna. She thought about the fluorescing vessel that had just escaped through the defence grid. The display screen showed that another strange ship was easing its way through the breach, growing larger before her eyes. ‘How many alien ships have slipped through now?’
Cally pondered the question. ‘Eight? Maybe nine?’
‘And we’ve destroyed twenty in the past hour alone,’ Avon reminded them. His finger stabbed at the controls for the neutron blasters. A fierce shaft of brilliant green light speared into the oncoming attacker and tore it apart. ‘Twenty-one now,’ said Avon. ‘Zen, how many more?’
Lights flashed across the main fascia of the ship’s computer. ‘SENSORS INDICATE NEARLY ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-NINE VESSELS BEYOND THE OPENING IN THE BARRIER. THERE ARE AN ESTIMATED FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY-EIGHT VESSELS PROBING THE SATELLITE NETWORK AT OTHER POINTS.’
Movement on the screen made Jenna realise they’d forgotten something. ‘Incoming debris!’
‘Hold tight!’ yelled Avon, his previous composure gone. He threw himself into the nearest flight seat and held on. A metallic clatter on the hull indicated that the momentum of pieces from the shattered ship had carried them through the Liberator‘s defences.
‘INFORMATION. DEFENCE SHIELD AT TWENTY PERCENT EFFICIENCY.’
Vila groaned. ‘Now they can see us as well as hit us! Oh, where are those Federation ships?’ He seemed to ponder this irony. ‘We spend years trying to avoid them, but when you really need them to turn up…’
‘You are babbling, Vila,’ said Cally.
‘Babbling is what he does best,’ said Avon. ‘Concentrate on the neutron blasters.’
Vila looked furious. Jenna smiled encouragingly at him, but he wasn’t amused. ‘I’m not a soldier in your army, Avon,’ he snapped. ‘Picking pockets is what I’m good at. And picking locks—that’s my area of expertise. I’m a genius at that. But this is just… madness.’ Even so, he continued to focus on the screen, and his hands flickered over the blaster controls in anticipation of his next target.
Avon wasn’t interested in Vila’s protests, and was already considering their next options. ‘Zen, can you intercept any alien communications? Tell us what they’re saying.’
‘SENSORS HAVE DETECTED ALIEN COMMUNICATION, BUT TRANSLATION IS NOT AVAILABLE.’
Jenna was intrigued. ‘What do they sound like, Zen?’
‘NOW PLAYING INTERCEPTED MESSAGE.’
At first Jenna thought that there was interference in the signal. It soon became plain that the noise they could hear was actually the alien communications. This was what they sounded like. A warbling, guttural gargle of noise, swooping across a full octave and utterly dissimilar to any voice she had encountered. Unlike any animal noise she’d ever heard, too. It was completely… well, alien to her.
‘Turn it off, Zen!’ said Avon. ‘Keep monitoring for anything that makes sense. But if we can’t understand them, I don’t want to hear them.’
Vila agreed. ‘It was just gibberish.’
‘Maybe I should have asked you to translate,’ Avon told him.
This was no time to undermine Vila, Jenna thought. But she didn’t have time to comment, because of a sudden new turn of events. ‘Two more ships are through!’ She pointed urgently at them as they loomed larger and larger on the main screen, spiralling towards the Liberator. She considered an emergency manoeuvre, but concluded that the corkscrew pattern of the aliens’ approach had locked Liberator in their sights. Could she reverse away from them? That would take Liberator off-station and allow other ships unfettered access through the hole in the defence grid.
Perhaps it was already too late.
‘They’re locked on,’ Jenna yelled. ‘Brace for impact!’