Blake’s 7: Warship Read Online Free Page A

instinctively.
    Everyone, Vila noted, except Cally. She remained standing by her console, rocked from side to side by the lurching movement of the flight deck, yet otherwise unmoved by the bedlam around her.
    Her expression had glazed over. Despite the commotion of the alien bombardment, her attention was somewhere else entirely.

Chapter 4
Ragtag Army
    Cally could feel her body swaying to and fro. She sensed movement around her, the flicker of lights in her peripheral vision, and the sense that her friends were trying to talk to her.
    But there was a more insistent conversation in her mind. She’d perceived it faintly at the start of the alien attack, but dismissed it as her mind playing odd tricks at a time of great stress. Odd sensations that had tickled at the edges of her consciousness since arriving in this sector had continued to build, like a voice calling ever more insistently from a distance. Was it trying to attract her attention?
    It had grown into many more, all calling, all appealing… to her? Low whispers that were building into a shout. Becoming a chorus of voices.
    She concentrated. Tried to make out what they were calling out to her. No, it wasn’t a chorus. They were not all chanting the same thing at once. The words were not the same. But surely, Cally sensed, their meaning was the same. Not the same words, exactly. Not the same vocabulary. Not even the same language. But the same theme .
    Cally focused in on that theme. They were not even voices – they were minds.
    She felt a thrill ripple through her whole body. A mixture of dread and exhilaration. For a brief moment she contemplated the prospect that she had reached out to the consciousnesses of the alien fleet. The excitement faded as she realised that the enemies’ thoughts were utterly closed to her. Unknown. Unattainable.
    Despite this, she felt no disappointment. Because there was something else. Something reassuring. Something familiar. Sensations she knew all too well.
    She sensed fear. Not her own, but the fear of whoever was out there. Cally felt like weeping in acknowledgement and relief, because she also felt in every fibre of her being that they knew fear could not hold them in its cold grasp. Because the coiled spring of anger was driving them onward. The primal urge to defend and survive.
    They were relentless. They were defiant.
    Cally laughed out loud. ‘They are humans!’
    The flight deck surged back into reality. Weaponry slamming its relentless bombardment against the hull. The heat of the flight deck around her. The yaw of the Liberator as the alien assault continued. Her friends staring at her in concern.
    ‘Humans!’ Cally repeated. ‘Not alien vessels. There are human ships coming!’ She took a few unsteady steps across to the main computer. ‘Zen – visual.’
    ‘CONFIRMED.’
    The main screen flickered and refocused, revealing a motley array of space vessels approaching from sector ten. Although they had many and varied designs, their appearance was reassuringly familiar. A comforting alternative to the unrecognisable shapes of all the alien attackers they had faced so far.
    Cally almost laughed again at her friends’ expressions. ‘I could feel their emotions,’ she explained.
    ‘What? You can read their minds?’ Vila looked amazed. And then he had another thought. ‘Can you read my mind?’
    ‘No-one would want to read your mind, Vila,’ she smiled.
    ‘Where did they come from?’ Jenna wanted to know.
    Cally closed her eyes to concentrate. Trying to recall the intense emotions and intentions of the approaching humans. She focused her mind again on what disparate humans were saying, thinking, hoping ‘It is a flotilla from the nearest frontier worlds,’ she explained.
    Avon was already checking the call idents from the arriving ships. He ordered Zen to filter key information and incoming messages. Cally could see relief in everyone’s faces as human voices spoke to them over the audio, rather than the