Free Blake’s 7: Warship by Peter Anghelides Page B

equipment in the room was, in reality, a thin patina of dust that had settled in a regular layer across it over… well, years. Decades, maybe. Centuries? Who knew.
    Blake couldn’t remember seeing an underground facility like this since the time they’d tried to rendezvous with Avalon. But while the caves in the system on Kelvern had been extensive and interconnected, none of them had the scale of what they were looking at now.
    And it was warmer here, too. He saw that Cally was already adjusting her thermal suit. He turned the dial on his own down to fifty percent, before he cooked. The heat had helped his injuries, mitigating the pain caused by any abrupt movements he’d made on the surface.
    A walkway led from the arrival platform. Their progress down it kicked up whorls of dust that spilled and scattered over the edge and towards the cavern floor. At the end of the walkway, they crossed a cantilever bridge that led over the cavern floor to the first island of equipment.
    Blake used one glove to brush the red-brown dust from the surface of the nearest apparatus. ‘Look at all this equipment!’ His gesture encompassed the whole of the cavern. He had seen stuff like this before. Back on Earth, the Aquitar project had a dedicated zone of fifteen sub-levels in the primary dome. But nothing this extensive. And he could tell it was still operational, from the droning background hum that permeated the chamber.
    Cally was baffled by what she saw. ‘Does this mean anything to you, Blake?’
    ‘A little,’ he admitted. ‘Some of this equipment is really old.’ He flicked at some of the control switches, amused by Cally’s worried expression. ‘Don’t worry, if I see a button labelled Self Destruct then I promise not to press it.’
    ‘Orac said it could be weaponry.’
    ‘He also said it could be a storage facility,’ Blake reminded her. ‘This equipment has been here a very long time. I’d hate to think that we braved that ice storm just to break into a junkyard.’ He straightened one of the fallen stools, slapped the dust from its upper surface, and sat down on it beside the largest computer desk.
    Cally made her way across the next bridge, towards an adjacent island of equipment. ‘Can you tell how old it is?
    ‘A lot of this stuff dates back to… well, it’s from long before my project work back on Earth.’
    ‘That is indeed a very long time.’
    Blake smiled. ‘Thank you.’ He scrubbed the dust away from the side of one machine. This revealed an image of five arms forming a pentagon, each hand firmly grasping the wrist of the next. ‘Look at this,’ he called out to Cally. ‘It’s the original Federation insignia. If that was embossed on this machine, then it goes back at least a century.’ He noted that the indicator dials on the computer showed low-level activity, and its lights flickered sporadically. ‘The equipment is barely ticking over. But it is still going.’ He was about to tap on the control keys. Then he thought better of it, and tapped his fingers pensively against his lips instead. ‘I wonder what’s keeping it operational?’
    ‘Perhaps its operating personnel are doing that,’ said Cally from across the bridge.
    Blake indicated the empty, overturned chairs around him. ‘Not that I can see.’
    ‘Then come and look at this,’ she called.
    Something in her voice made Blake hurry across to join her. His boots clanged on the runway as he ran over the metal bridge.
    Cally sat at a control console within the semi-circle of oblong boxes. As Blake approached, she rose to show him what she’d found. She had scraped the dust from the nearest three boxes to reveal a glass partition on top of each of them.
    Behind the glass of the first one was a human body. She had been a young woman with medium-length brown hair and pale skin. Paler still in death, thought Blake. Her sapphire eyes were glazed and unseeing. Protected from the dust, the woman’s purple uniform looked as pressed and