Vila clung to the teleport control desk, ready to dive behind it if the alien device made a move. It continued to stare at Blake, bobbing up and down slightly as it flexed its tiny legs.
Blake faced it, perfectly still, arms to his side. ‘What’s it doing?’ he hissed.
‘Deciding which of us to blow up first?’ suggested Vila.
‘Ah,’ said Blake.
The alien’s antennae flicked briefly.
Vila’s tone was more urgent. ‘Don’t get too close.’
‘Maybe I’ll kick it over to you.’
‘Don’t you dare, Blake! It will explode…’
The next few moments were a bit of a blur. Vila’s shouting drew the alien’s attention. Its antennae turned towards him, and the rest of its body rotated too. With the speed of a gunslinger, Blake drew his weapon and fired.
The alien chattered wildly, fizzed and popped, then dropped to the floor as its legs collapsed beneath it.
Vila emerged from behind the desk where he had dropped for shelter. He stared over to the far wall. The alien was propped at an angle against it, smoke and slime oozing from its cracked carapace, and its antennae drooped pathetically to one side.
‘What were you thinking?’ Vila said quietly.
Blake holstered the gun. ‘Call it a controlled explosion.’
Vila dreaded the thought of what an uncontrolled detonation would have done. He didn’t have time to worry about it, though, because he was now receiving a telepathic message from Cally. Even though he heard her only in his head, she sounded angry.
‘Vila? Vila! I have Jenna. Bring us back.’
Vila scurried around the control desk again, and operated the return switches.
The familiar electronic swirling heralded the arrival of Cally and Jenna in the teleport alcove.
Blake didn’t hide his delight at their return, holding out his arms in a welcome that suggested he was going to hug them both at once. ‘Well done, Cally! Vila, help Jenna out of her hull suit.’
His arms dropped to his side as Jenna shrugged off his embrace.
Vila was already at her side, reaching for the clips on her helmet. She wriggled away from him, pulled the helmet off for herself, and glared at them all.
‘Get off me!’ Jenna didn’t seem remotely happy about what must have been a daring rescue. Why were none of them grateful for anything today, Vila wondered.
Jenna turned her anger on Cally. ‘What were you doing?’
‘Rescuing you,’ said Cally.
Jenna sucked in a lungful of air, then exhaled a long and calming breath. ‘I had things under control.’ When Jenna set down the helmet on the floor, Vila noticed that she wasn’t wearing the gloves. Well, he wasn’t going to that alien ship to recover them, that was for sure.
Cally took in Jenna’s anger, and made a calming gesture with her hands. ‘But I sensed…’ Her tone conveyed a mixture of apology and embarrassment. ‘I thought you were going to kill yourself.’
Jenna surprised them with a laugh. ‘I was steering straight at their fleet. The last thing they’d expect.’
‘The last thing we’d have expected,’ said Vila.
‘I would have done a slingshot around the back at the last minute. And we’d now have control of one of their ships.’
‘Hmm.’ Blake was surprised by that. ‘Rather dangerous.’
‘An old smuggler’s trick,’ Jenna snapped at him. ‘I knew what I was doing. I didn’t need rescuing by Cally.’
‘Well, I am sorry,’ said Cally. Vila didn’t think she sounded very contrite. She also seemed to be half-listening to something else. ‘What is that noise?’
It was an all-too familiar chittering sound. Vila’s head jerked towards the far wall, but the alien lay there as still as it had since Blake shot it. Besides, the noise was coming from…
He leaped away from the teleport controls. On the side of the desk, just where he had been sitting, a second alien was stretching its legs. ‘Another one of them!’
‘Another one of what?’ asked Cally, and moved nearer to look at it.
Vila pushed her unceremoniously aside, and dived for cover.
‘Vila!’ Jenna towered over him, glaring. ‘You let them in?’
‘Only one or two,’ Vila protested feebly. ‘I was trying to tell Blake that I was…’
The end of his sentence was lost in the sound of the alien exploding. The lights dimmed. A mushroom of smoke surged towards the ceiling and curled its way across to all four walls.
The sprinkler system surged into action, and everyone in the room fled into the corridor, hacking and coughing. A fire screen dropped down between them and the teleport area, cutting them off from the conflagration and the choking fumes.
‘Thank goodness for the fire safety system,’ said Blake. He peered through the filthy glass of the transparent partition. ‘That seems to have done it.’
‘It seems to have done for the teleport, too,’ moaned Vila. ‘That’ll take forever to fix. You know what the auto-repair systems are like. Aaagh!’ Something had caught his eye across the corridor. He stumbled away from it, pressing the back of his thick hull suit against the wall in a hopeless attempt to put distance between himself and another of the limpet mine aliens. ‘Another one!’
A shot from a handgun rang out. Vila wheeled to see Blake had taken aim at the creature. But he had missed. The alien lifted itself up onto its scrawny little legs as though it was hoisting its shorts, and scuttled away around the next junction.
Blake chased to the junction. His furious expression told Vila that it had already vanished from sight. ‘Lost it!’
‘But it’s gone, thank goodness.’ Vila looked eagerly at Blake, who glared back at him. ‘It has gone, hasn’t it, Blake?’
‘Into the ship somewhere.’ Blake’s furious expression was still there. Now it told Vila that he was in big trouble. ‘How many of those things got inside Liberator?’
‘Only a couple.’ Vila watched Blake’s reaction. He didn’t look convinced. ‘Or three. Maybe three.’
Blake took an ominous step closer. ‘We’ve seen three already.’
There was no point lying any longer. Vila knew how many he had seen scurrying away from him in the corridor outside the airlock antechamber. ‘Oh all right! There were five.’
Blake didn’t look any happier. He exploded almost as loudly as one of the aliens. ‘Five!’
‘One blew up in the airlock. Another was already damaged.’ Vila was babbling. The others were looking at him with growing incredulity. ‘I tried to track the others…’
‘Well?’ asked Blake.
‘I lost one in the weapons section. And it…’ Vila hesitated. No point in pretending otherwise, he decided, and plunged on. ‘Well, it blew up before I reached it.’
Blake turned away in despair.
‘I had everything under control,’ Vila pleaded. ‘Until Avon made me come and rescue the two of you.’
Cally glowered at him. ‘Thank you, Vila,’ she noted pointedly, and walked off. She began to peel off her thermal suit to reveal her regular tunic underneath, and ignored Vila’s fumbled attempts at an apology. She was making an exaggerated effort to concentrate on hanging the suit back in the storage cupboard, beside the entrance to the wrecked teleport area.
‘So…’ Blake was working out what to do next. Vila was relieved, because he himself didn’t have a clue. ‘There’s just one of those things left?’
‘I think so,’ wavered Vila.
‘You think so?’ Blake looked intently at him, urging him to remember. The staring wasn’t helping Vila focus. ‘Come on!’
‘Yes. Er…’ Vila racked his brains. ‘Yes, I’m sure.’
‘Well, you’d better get after it. I have a bigger bomb to worry about.’ Blake thumbed the wall-mounted intercom control at the corridor junction. ‘Flight deck?’
The comms crackled in response. ‘What’s going on down there?’ asked Avon. ‘Zen says that the emergency fire systems were activated.’
‘Some of those things on the hull followed Vila through the airlock,’ said Blake. Vila shrank under his condemnation. ‘Caused a bit of damage around the ship.’
‘That explains it.’
‘The damage?’
‘No, the fact that it was Vila’s fault.’
Vila shrank under the pitiless gaze of his assembled crewmates.
‘It’s all under control,’ lied Blake.
‘Are you all back on board now? We need to move.’
‘Not yet, Avon. Megiddo is an orbiting bomb.’
‘It’s an orbiting…’ There was a furious pause over the comms link. ‘Did you not think to mention that when you first got in contact?’
‘I’m telling you now,’ Blake replied placidly. ‘It’ll detonate when it reaches the alien fleet.’
‘Oh.’ Another, more thoughtful pause. ‘And your problem with that is what, exactly’
Blake grimaced. ‘It’ll cause the biggest plasma explosion you’ve ever known. And probably the last you’ll ever witness. It will take everything with it.’
‘Well, thanks for the update.’
‘We have to destroy it, Avon.’
‘With what? Those things that Vila let in have disabled our weapons systems.’
Vila bridled at the relentless accusations. ‘Oh, it’s all my fault, as usual!’
‘He has a point, don’t you think.’ Blake turned back to the comms unit. ‘Avon, do we have enough power to deflect Megiddo instead?’
Avon’s sarcasm was evident even over the intercom. ‘Not unless you’re proposing to crash this ship into the planetoid.’
‘Maybe I am,’ said Blake harshly.
Everyone in the corridor stared at him. Jenna and Cally exchanged nervous glances.
Eventually, Avon said: ‘Are you serious?’
Blake looked like he was pondering an answer. After a moment, he simply said: ‘I’m coming up to the flight deck.’ And switched off the comms.
Jenna touched him gently on the arm. ‘If you are serious, Blake…’
‘Yes, I know, Jenna. I’ll need you to steer Liberator.’
Jenna didn’t question his decision. ‘I’ll get out of this hull suit,’ she said, and started off down the corridor.
Blake indicated Vila’s hull suit. ‘You might want to do the same.’
‘All right,’ said Vila. He was pleased to have an instruction to obey, something to show willing, anything to redeem himself in the eyes of his crewmates. With the added advantage that taking off a hull suit wasn’t remotely dangerous.
‘Cally,’ Blake continued briskly. ‘You’d better help Vila to track down that alien… thing.’
The suit slipped to the corridor floor from Vila’s nerveless fingers. Chasing after an exploding invader wasn’t very high on his list of things to do next. In fact, thought Vila, it was the last thing that would be on his schedule, if at all.
‘But… but…’ he protested feebly. He indicated the torn and crumpled remains of his hull suit on the floor. The rips and scorches on that were evidence enough that he should be steering well clear of incendiary aliens. ‘I’ve only just taken that thing off.’
Blake’s look was withering. ‘Get a move on.’
‘What do you want me to do – hunt for it half-naked?’ He was already regretting stripping off. This corridor wasn’t as warm as he’d expected.
‘Well, get some clothes on!’ shouted Blake. ‘And then get after the one that scuttled off. Here, take this.’ He unbuckled his gun belt and handed Vila the weapon. ‘I’ll get another when I’m on the flight deck.’
Vila took the gun reluctantly, fumbled with it until he found the buckle, and fastened the thing around his waist. Cally looked at him curiously. Perhaps it did look a bit stupid to have a gun belt strapped over his underwear.
‘Those things have taken out our weapons,’ Cally said. ‘And our auto-repair systems.’
‘Precisely,’ agreed Blake. ‘So what would you go after next? Hmm?’
Even Vila knew the answer to that one. Suddenly the corridor seemed even colder. ‘Life support!’