Fandom: Blake's 7
Title: Smoke on the Water
Rating: General
Notes: Another inspired by a challenge on the B7Friday community.
The ships had flown over. Nothing had happened.
Cally couldn't understand why the rest of the cohort were so anxious. The Federation had been fighting them all the way along the line. Now they'd given up, gone home.
It started slowly. First one of the women started seeing strange things, then another. They kept muttering about fire and the base burning. Cally couldn't understand it. When she'd realised they were ill, she'd tried to save them. They wouldn't listen, wouldn't understand. They screamed, hid from illusory flames. Some were killed by the plants; the ones called "triffids". They'd laughed at the name. Now they rushed into them, trying to hide from a fire that wasn't there.
The final throes were terrible. Everything burning, even as they burned themselves from the fever the Federation had set in their flesh. Smoke on the water, fire in the sky; the freedom fighters of Saurian Major were killed by a disease they never even realised they had.
As she burned the pyre to send their bodies on to their final rest, Cally swore she would give the Federation back their fire. She might be alone now, but she would have companions for her death.