Blake's 7: Mediasphere

By Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman

BRAND NEW STORIES OF THE CLASSIC TV SERIES!

Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman are best known for their co-written Doctor Who novels, including Fallen Gods, which won the 2003 Aurealis Award for best Australian science fiction novel. They live in Sydney.

Mediasphere is set between the TV episodes Powerplay and Volcano.

Look over there. Do you see Dayna in the shadows, instinctively pressed to the wall? Zoom in, study her: the hint of sweat, the tautness of her face, the tightness of her breath. That last moment when she can let the tension show, before she steps out and strikes. She thinks no one can see her yet.

It doesn’t really register until she stops singing, until she stops moving, until the audience erupts into noise. More people are going to see that than were living on the whole planet she grew up on.
And that’s when her knees try to buckle.

Dayna is in the spotlight as the Liberator crew infiltrate the Mediasphere, a space station which produces the Federation’s propaganda and popular entertainment. But who is really controlling the Mediasphere – and scripting a series of deadly encounters for our heroes?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Big Finish Productions
• Release date: Aug 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781781785645

Book preview

Library.

BLAKE’S 7 BOOKS FROM BIG FINISH

1: THE FORGOTTEN

2: ARCHANGEL

3: LUCIFER

4: ANTHOLOGY

5: LUCIFER: REVELATION

6: CRIMINAL INTENT

7: LUCIFER: GENESIS

8: MEDIASPHERE

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

THE LIBERATOR AND CREW

Liberator: A powerful spacecraft that far exceeds anything known to Earth technology, it is equipped with neutron blaster weaponry, force wall defences, auto-repair systems, and a teleport. The main computer, Zen, is the speech interface to the ship’s systems.

Kerr Avon: A technical expert, particularly with computers, Avon’s attempt to embezzle millions from the Federation saw him exiled from Earth. He escaped to the Liberator, where his instinct for self-preservation meant that he became the most unwilling member of Blake’s team – perceived by the others as a man whose cold calculation is primarily self-serving.

Cally: A telepath from the planet Auron, who can communicate her thoughts to others. Sole survivor of a guerrilla attack on a Federation facility, Cally felt unable to return to her isolationist homeworld. A mutual distrust of the Liberator crew mellowed, and her growing empathy has made her an instinctive medic.

Vila Restal: A petty thief, a conjurer, but most of all an expert lockpick who can breach even the most complex security systems. Vila has been in trouble with the Federation since he was a juvenile. He prefers to be lazy, even if that might look like cowardice, and has a weakness for drink and an eye for pretty women. Vila is smart enough to know that playing the fool is a good way to stay safe.

Dayna Mellanby: Taken from Earth as a baby by her father, Hal, after his failed revolt saw her mother executed by the Federation. Dayna grew up in his grounded space vehicle on the primitive planet Sarran. There she learned to devise and build innovative modern firearms, and honed her talents with more traditional weaponry too. Avon brought her aboard the Liberator after Servalan killed Hal.

Del Tarrant: Trained by the Federation Space Academy as a captain, Tarrant worked his way through the junior ranks before he deserted for a life of smuggling and self-interest. After the alien war, he commandeered the abandoned Liberator by masquerading as a Federation officer – but then sided with the returning crew. He clashes with Avon on authority, and bullies Vila. But his value as a trained pilot outweighs his arrogance and impetuosity.

Roj Blake: Once leader of the Freedom Party and a charismatic opponent of the Terran Federation, who escaped from Federation custody and commandeered the derelict Liberator. At the start of the alien war, he entrusted the vessel to Avon – but, along with Jenna, has not been seen since the crew had to abandon ship.

Jenna Stannis: A smuggler sentenced by the Federation to exile on the penal colony Cygnus Alpha. Jenna assisted Blake’s mutiny and commandeered the Liberator. The ship’s name was taken from her thoughts when she first came aboard. Jenna’s expertise made her the Liberator’s principal pilot.

PREVIOUSLY, ON SARRAN

The best prey is people, of course, but the planet Sarran was rich in other things to hunt. One year, when the wet season started and the natives moved their tents and horses far inland, Dayna and Lauren Mellanby took their canoes to the mouth of the river and paddled until they reached the spot where the salt and fresh waters started to mingle. They knew that was where to find the qocatrils.

A qocatril was twice the size of a man, something like a cross between a python and a crocodile, thick-bodied and blunt-snouted. The Sarran natives, who would kill anything for food or entertainment, avoided them religiously.

Dayna and Lauren slung their beds in the trees and spent two rainy days watching qocatrils swimming and hunting, until they saw one of the heavy beasts throw its foreparts up the trunk of a tree after a shrieking animal with six skinny arms. Its bulldog snout snapped at the monkey’s heels as the little creature scrambled further up the trunk. It paused, looking back down at the monster, goggle-eyed and panting. Then the qocatril leapt forward again, standing on its tail, almost its whole length flat against the trunk. The monkey vanished. The tree creaked. Dayna and Lauren moved their beds higher.

‘Did you see its skin?’ said Lauren. They whispered, as though the creatures could hear them. Perhaps they could. ‘Opalescent! I want a pair of boots made out of that.’

‘How hard is that pretty hide?’ wondered Dayna.

‘Let’s not use the lasers! There’s no point in killing if it we ruin it.’

Dayna smiled indulgently. ‘Anyway, the lasers are no fun. But we’d better keep them handy.’

They watched for two more days. A qocatril wrapped a hopping creature in its thick coils; its underbelly looked less heavily armoured than its back, and the six wide fins on which it walked also looked vulnerable.

‘Armpit,’ said Lauren. ‘When it rears, jumps, coils – all of those moves expose the thin spot where the fins join the trunk. When it attacks its prey, it makes itself vulnerable.’

‘You’ll have to do a lot of damage to slow it down,’ said Dayna. ‘The face for me. The business end. Eyes and mouth.’

‘It’ll have to be looking at you!’

‘From a distance, I hope.’ Dayna grinned. ‘All right – you take the first turn!’

Despite her pale skin, Lauren was superb at invisibly creeping through the rainforest foliage; Dayna had to slip on her scanner goggles to follow her progress. The goggles were also tracking the qocatrils in the area, so she’d be able to warn Lauren if one started stalking her. She hadn’t told Lauren, who’d be cross about it, but it was Dayna’s job to look out for her younger sister.

Their father knew perfectly well what they were up to. That wouldn’t make it easier to face him if anything happened to Lauren.

They both preferred primitive weapons, though not so primitive as the Sarrans, who still hadn’t developed the bow. By contrast, the lasers required no skill at all; you only had to dial up the power and wave one in the general direction of something to slice it into boiling chunks. And where was the fun in that?

The problem with gunpowder was the noise, of course. Lauren only got off one shot the whole morning; the explosion sent monkeys and hoppers screaming in all directions and the hungry qocatril slithering hastily back into the water, leaving its mangled prey behind.

Lauren climbed up a tree, her hand-made rifle slung on her back, to wait until the rainforest had calmed down. In the afternoon she lay stretched out on one of the lower branches, watching the water, waiting for the bubbles that would show her where a qocatril was waiting for an animal to come and drink.

Something hit the tree trunk with a bone-jarring thump. Lauren grabbed at her branch, looking around in confusion. The qocatril couldn’t reach her this high up – there was no qocatril down there. What –

She twisted. There was a qocatril behind the trunk. As she watched, it threw its whole weight against the tree again. Roots groaned, branches shook. It was trying to shake her out of the tree!

Lauren wrapped her arms around the branch and held on through the next blow, which made her teeth snap together. She let go with one hand and fumbled for her laser.

The tree was noticeably leaning. The monster wasn’t trying to knock her loose; it was going to bring down the whole tree.

Lauren tried to aim her laser, but the qocatril was almost entirely hidden by the tree trunk, and she was in no hurry to cut through that. She tried letting off a shot at its foot, with no effect. In the water, eyes appeared, watching her with interest. She screamed.

Dayna was there on the ground.

Dayna picked up a stick and threw it at the qocatril.

The qocatril seemed to take no notice, but it stopped pushing the tree.

Dayna picked up a stone and threw it at the qocatril.

The qocatril slithered down the tree trunk and turned to face her.

Dayna shot a half a metre of aluminium wrapped in carbon fibre into its eye.

The eye was thickly armoured by a covering scale; the arrow only penetrated a few centimetres, not enough to reach the brain. The qocatril’s mouth gaped in an angry hiss, showing three rows of inward-pointing teeth.

Dayna shot an arrow right down its throat.

The qocatril thrashed and rolled, snapping its blunt jaws. Dayna tried to send a second arrow after the first, but the creature was moving around too much. It tumbled down the riverbank and vanished into the water, sending up a plume of purplish blood.

Lauren climbed down from the maimed tree, hyperventilating, staring at the water.

‘I told you,’ said Dayna. ‘Kill the head. Once the head is dead, the body will follow.’ She clapped a hand on Lauren’s arm. ‘Sorry about your boots.’

‘To hell with my boots,’ said Lauren.

*

It was Dayna, and Lauren, and their father; a grounded spaceship hidden under the sea, hidden from the galaxy; the personal weapons research laboratory which started as his and became theirs. An idyllic exile. The world was against them, but it was a simple world.

Then two people fell to Sarran, from the war that tore up the star systems. The man in black gave Dayna a chance to leave everything behind. The woman in white made sure there was no reason to stay.

She’s been aiming for a head-shot ever since.

CHAPTER ONE

Look over there. Do you see Dayna in the shadows, instinctively pressed to the wall? Zoom in, study her: the hint of sweat, the tautness of her face, the tightness of her breath. That last moment when she can let the tension show, before she steps out and strikes.

She thinks no one can see her yet.

She’s riding the nerves, making them sharpen her focus instead of wearing it down. That’s the difference between hunters and prey: blunt panic takes you out of the game. So she holds herself there, waiting to be triggered, feeling the rush but not letting it rise any higher, and the moment her cue comes she springs out of the darkness.

And the audience goes wild.

*

Dayna struts down to the front of the shiny floor, letting the intro carry her, feeling the cameras swoop in to reveal her to the watching worlds. Stares proudly out at the unlit faces in the rows of seats, and thinks you’re mine.

The song’s a Sarran hymn, one Lauren used to sing... but not the way she used to sing it. Words of devotion now coming from somewhere below the heart. Slinky bass and swooping string lines, a relentless thrusting beat. It’d keep the audience in the palm of her hand. It had better. Orac had hacked one of the best song-coding computers in the Outer Worlds to generate that backing track.

The corner of her eye: cameras flitting about like firing range drones, haloed in the blinding spotlights. Her instincts shout to wheel and take them out – but she turns slowly, lets them take in her face, singing straight to the people on the other side.

Remember you’re the one pulling the trigger, her father had always taught her; your weapons are an extension of you. Everything’s a weapon. Everything can be aimed. The tilt of her hip, the proud set of her chin as she turns towards the close-up. The dancing – well, more walking with intent – showing poise and control rather than availability: painting a picture of a young woman who’s not yours for the taking, but just possibly hers for the giving. All aiming now towards just one end: making the judges think I want to see more of her.

Rounding the corner out of the second chorus now, and she draws the secret weapon slung across her back.

She’s not just a good body or a good voice, she’s a good lyre. She’s fiddled the tuning so those tricky-sounding runs can be played as simple arpeggios, rolling her fingers across the strings, only moving the starting position of her hand. But she’s playing live, and the world can’t help but see that. That alone should set her above the half-dozen half-baked starlets going up against her.

It doesn’t really register until she stops singing, until she stops moving, until the audience erupts into noise.

More people are going to see that than were living on the whole planet she grew up on.

And that’s when her knees try to buckle.

*

Gwin reached out with her foot and punched the ‘stop’ button with her big toe. ‘Well, what do you think?’

Moya stopped brushing Gwin’s hair long enough to moan, ‘She’s so pretty.’

‘Of course she’s pretty,’ said Gwin. ‘I’m pretty, you’re pretty, all the girls are pretty, all the boys are pretty – in case you haven’t noticed, Entertainment don’t employ anyone who looks like a fungus.’

Moya giggled. She was a gangly teenager, even taller than Gwin, her body still adjusting its proportions after a final growth spurt.

‘What I meant was: what did you think of her performance?’

Moya, absently counting strokes of the brush, considered. ‘She’s had formal training, with the instrument as well as her voice. But I don’t think she’s done a lot of performing in front of people.’

‘Mmm. She’s going to need to learn how to hold an audience.’

‘Were you surprised they picked her?’

‘I thought there were stronger contestants.’

‘You thought that about some of the other talent quests, too.’

‘Sometimes it isn’t talent they’re looking at... but you don’t have anything to worry about, love,’ said Gwin firmly. She started massaging moisturiser into her golden-tan skin. ‘You’ve made it. Your face has been on screens all over the galaxy. These new trainees are starting over from the bottom.’

Moya giggled again. ‘Maybe that’s what they were looking at!’

The message slot in the wall made a grinding sound and produced a slip. Moya got up off the bed, padded across the rug, and pulled it out. ‘They’ve moved rehearsals up by four hours,’ she said, in a monotone. ‘They want us in the practice room in fifteen minutes.’

Which meant they’d miss their entire sleep break. ‘That’s the third time this week,’ growled Gwin. ‘Are they trying to kill us?’

Moya just slumped against the wall. Gwin got up and hugged her, hard. It was as though the teenager had been suddenly switched off, leaving nothing but an empty human sack. These moments were happening more and more often. It wasn’t right. The kids were the ones who coped with the routine best of all, the missed meals and the missed sleep.

She manoeuvred Moya to the bed and leaned her back against the huge stuffed Good Ant doll she used as a pillow. ‘Why don’t you grab ten minutes right now? And maybe you can sneak a nap during the rehearsal.’

Moya didn’t even shake her head. ‘If I start sleeping now I won’t be able to work. I’ll get some more stims from Sline.’

‘Stims?’ said Dayna.

Gwin let out a tiny scream. ‘I didn’t hear you – what are you doing here!’

‘Sorry.’ Dayna was standing in the open doorway connecting the trainee’s dorm to Gwin and Moya’s room. ‘Is she all right?’

‘I’m just tired,’ said Moya.

Dayna saw her own face frozen on the screen.

‘We were just admiring your winning round,’ said Gwin. ‘When the bad news arrived.’ She grabbed her practice clothes from the floor and started tugging them back on. ‘Learn to knock, new girl.’

*

A trio of staff members rounded up the new trainees from the dorm rooms, shushing and shooing them down a hallway. It was only a dozen young women, but it was the biggest crowd Dayna had been in since leaving Earth. Their chatter formed a constant nervous swirl. They were wearing more scent than necessary. The movements of their limbs, the glances of their eyes – part of Dayna’s mind was trying to keep track of it all.

Keep your cool, she reminded herself: these young women are not a threat. Most of them are a few years younger than you are. Not one of them has ever killed something and then eaten it.

Dayna thought that guards and security cameras would be her main obstacles. Instead, it was the impossible schedule of classes – dance, singing, basic acting, two musical instruments. Since her arrival two days ago she had eaten twice and slept once, and then only for a few hours.

Constant work, not enough sleep, not enough food, definitely not enough privacy... Mediasphere was a slave pit with good plumbing and a fresh coat of paint. In these conditions there should have been continual squabbles and fits of tears, but the Federation-standard suppressants in the food and drink kept everyone in the dorm agreeable.

Before Dayna left the Liberator, Cally had given her an anti-suppressant shot. The counter-agent was mild and slow-acting but it was still giving her the odd palpitation.

And on top of it all, there was the small crew doing behind-the-scenes filming of the bands. Their vistape drones seemed to be everywhere – in the practice room, in the cafeteria, in the hallways, in the dorms.

Worse, the crew were nice. Funny. ‘Okay, so can some of you move half a dozen steps to your left?’ said the wavy-haired camera-op, as she shinnied up on top of the heating unit to retrieve an errant drone. ‘I just need someone to fall on if I slip.’

‘Is it the stabilising fin?’ asked Dayna. The drone was slowly pivoting round its axis, wobbling. ‘We had to brace ours with a bit of cardboard.’

‘Was it a 320? They’re always nasty.’

‘Target practice drone. Same principle.’

‘Guess so. Ours shoot back too.’ She snagged the drone, and Dayna helped her down. She didn’t seem used to getting help from the talent, even the marginal talent. ‘Lyz Markos.’

‘Dayna Melissos.’ She hadn’t hesitated over her cover name.

She squeezed into the practice room between a pack of camera drones – between them, Lyz and her assistant were controlling half a dozen, as well as wearing small eyepiece rigs for POV shots.

The practice room was a deep, wide hall. Its two long walls were plated with mirrors, making the flock of trainees seem almost infinite. Its entire far wall was a screen showing milky clouds floating in a blue sky. The band was still there, the galaxy-famous XK5, one of the groups the trainees might in time work with as back-up dancers and singers. The five of them sat lifelessly on plastic chairs, their instruments – props, mostly – dangling in their laps. Moya, the youngest, was fighting to keep her eyes open. Gwin, the leader and the eldest, lifted her head and pushed her apricot-and-coral-streaked hair aside long enough to take an uninterested look at the trainees.

‘Sit down on the floor and keep quiet,’ said a harassed staffer, who looked ready to start hitting girls with her clipboard.

Growing up, Dayna hadn’t got much exposure to popular culture. She wasn’t really all that familiar with current music styles, other than the pieces she’d learned for the talent quest. XK5 was a new attraction in the Federation’s entertainment programming, one of a squadron of such groups: musical performances, of course, but also variety shows, talk shows, celebrity athletic competitions... no wonder they looked half-alive.

The difference, when they started performing, was remarkable. As staff members dragged the chairs to one side, the band took their opening positions, beaming, postures perfect. Gwin counted them in, and there was an elegant swirl of motion as they began to play, stepping through a simple dance as the melody unwound. Each of them sang a different part and could play a different instrument. Gwin’s high notes were flawless. Moya provided harmonies in a low, sweet alto. She strummed an electronically enhanced phorminx, not too different to the octachord Dayna herself played.

The intricacy of it was amazing to watch, even in a flatly lit, echoing rehearsal room. The women took it in turn to be the centre of the dance and the song for a line or two, so that no one of them had to carry too much of the load.

The lyrics were so stupid Dayna forgot them as soon as she heard them, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter.

It ended. The trainees burst into cheers and applause. The band took an elegant bow and then all stumbled over to their chairs.

There was a sort of awkward pause while the managers conferred with each other or their communicators, and then a man in a crisp blue suit strode in, trailing yet more staff. It was the first time the trainees had seen the band’s manager slash producer, Ven Sline, in the flesh. He had been a performer himself once, Dayna knew; it was instantly obvious from his posture, his pout, the precise cut of his headful of black curls.

Moya pulled herself out of her chair and went over to Sline. What they were saying was inaudible, but Sline turned abruptly to Lyz and made a chopping motion. Lyz obediently pressed a button, and the drones settled to the ground.

Sline gave Moya a small container – presumably stims – but there was more to their conversation than that. Sline was shaking his head. The girl looked desperate. What had he not wanted caught by the cameras?

The manager turned away from Moya, already smiling, raising a manicured eyebrow at the neophytes. ‘Hello, lemmings! All come to hurl yourself off the cliffs of fame? Welcome to Mediasphere.’ He paced in front of his student audience. ‘Once you’ve completed your training, you’ll be able to do what you’ve just seen. Perhaps some of you will even outdo these girls, given time.’ He glanced back at the band, who ignored him. ‘Right, that’s the pep talk over with. Now let me give you the benefits of my experience. Ladies: you’re cattle.’ There was a sudden stillness in the room, as though everyone was holding their breath.