I&R 4 chapter 8
Hope everyone had a good holiday - those that had them.
Still trying to get back into the flow of things and I had two versions of this chapter, but I have decided to go with this one. Now I'm not sure its right choice but hey ho...
Blake reflects on going wrong and Avon, Jenna and Vila have a heart to heart and Servalan is not quite herself.
About as close to angst as I can ever get myself.
I&R 4 Chapter 8
Blake had not gone to the flight deck when he returned, preferring solitude, a detour via his cabin and a shower. Gauda Prime might be cold enough to freeze the blood now that winter had taken hold but he didn’t think that was the reason for the chill inside him. Nor, if he were honest with himself, were the firing squads. But cold he was and hot water seemed the best way to counter it, at least for the moment.
He passed a couple of Grant’s men as he made his way through the corridors, both on their way to their bunks and both pale and sombre faced. One of Cauder’s people scuttled by too, teleport bound by the look of her clothes, and though she gave him a faint smile as she passed the tension in her was easy enough to see. Blake paused for a moment to think about what was happening down there, to wonder what these events must mean for the visiting rebels. Liberator would leave as soon as the matter of Jocaster's people was decided but many of the people who had come here in search of Avon would be staying for a while, establishing another bulwark against future Federation expansion, and it wasn’t the most auspicious of starts. Even Grant had seemed subdued, something that a ticking solium bomb hadn’t managed to achieve on Albian.
Reaching the privacy of his cabin he stripped off his jacket and sank down on to his bunk, his thoughts continuing their uncomfortable turn. The memory of Albian had been a source of some bitterness for a long time.
His earlier conversation with Jenna came back to him again, the words seeming to echo around the silent room bringing with them all the half expressed doubts that he had only touched upon. ‘Though God knows I’ve through it all more times than I can remember in the time since Star One,’ he thought,’ and always without finding an answer.No reason for it to be different now.’ He rubbed at his eyes, would he ever be free of it, or would it go on like this? Events beyond his control opening up those avenues for self doubt again and again. For the moment there was no pushing it aside for his mind seemed determined to pursue it, despite his knowing that all it could ever be was fruitless speculation. He groaned at the thought, knowing that time had not yet robbed the memories of their ability to cause pain and guilt. For the moment he could not imagine a time when it would be different.
What would he have done if he had found Provine alive? That was the crux of his uncertainty. How would the encounter have gone if the Federation man hadn’t tried to kill him and ended up dying instead? What if Provine had dropped his gun, raised his hands and resorted to name, rank and number; if Provine had just refused to co-operate? What would he have done then, desperate as he knew himself to have been? As those three men they had just executed on Gauda Prime had done? Would he have stooped to the very tactics that they condemned in their enemy? Would Cauder and Ralli have colluded in that and what would he have done if they had not? Would he have taken Provine at gun point, leaving Avon to fight for Albian's survival while he tried to to drug or, heaven forbid, beat an answer from his enemy? How far into the madness of those last months had he already fallen by that time? God, he wished he knew. But he didn’t, even now he didn’t, and the bitter truth was that he probably never would.
Sitting here it was so very tempting to brush the idea away, to persuade himself that he would never have been crossed that line, at Albian or anywhere else, and maybe he would have managed it once upon a time. Certainly he would have done so then. Not now, not any longer. He didn’t have the certainty to pretend that he could be sure of what he would have done then any more. The man that he had been on the way to becoming might have done things that the saner man sitting here would not allow. Even now, with the desperate mania of those days leading up to Star One all but burned out, he was unsure about just how far his sanity had slipped in that last disastrous year. Nor was he sure how or why it had happened at all. At the time had blamed Avon, as he had blamed him for so many things towards the end. Looking back he could recall the anger and bitterness easily enough, what he could not remember now was how or where it had started, nor why he had let it continue. What he did recall suggested that it pre-dated Gan's death, but his mind shied away from any of the possible sources of the anger that introspection supplied. Coping with Avon had always been difficult, for the other man had been a constant challenge to his own certainties, but Avon had never hidden his lack of concern for wider humanity and that had always seemed to him a sad, but obvious, justification for the opposition. Then, at some point he couldn’t pin down, for some reason he couldn’t identify, it had changed. It had become personal.
Looking back he remembered only too well how the gnawing need for Avon to accept the justice of his fight had eaten into him in those last months, that desperate determination for the other man to accept him for what he wanted to be. He knew now that the change had been in him and not in Avon, just as he recognised that the need for Avon’s acceptance had been the first sign of what was happening, if only he could have seen it. It had been the first indication that he was losing his grip, that something was going wrong badly within himself, and perhaps he should have realised that even then. If he had done so then how much else might have changed?
It was certainly a need that he had resented, and one that he had not understood even as he had known that it would never be met. Sometimes when he looked back he thought it had been the truce between Avon and Jenna that had triggered it, the knowledge that they had found enough common ground to share a bed on occasions. Perhaps there had been the idea, the fear, that if Avon continued to oppose him then one day her allegiance might waiver. Even when Jenna and Avon fell back into antagonism after Gan’s death there was the worry that Cally had taken her place and might come to take Avon’s side. Other times he thought that it was the growing reliance on the other man’s technical skill that had bothered him, the feeling that somehow it was Avon, his challenger, who held all their lives in his hands. Now he couldn’t be sure if it was any of those things or even how real those feelings had been, but they had certainly wreaked havoc with his unsteady relationship with Avon, and eventually with the others too.
How many angry flight deck confrontations had it driven, how many furious conversations with himself, how many bitter night watch recriminations?
‘If Avon supported me too it would be different,’ he had told himself on to many lonely and angry watches, ‘if Avon just accepted my leadership, the justice of my determination to defeat the Federation, that we have the chance to do it, it would be alight.”
After Gan had died it had changed, then it had been ‘If only Avon wouldn’t keep pushing all the time, then I wouldn’t feel so isolated, then I wouldn’t feel this desperate pressure to be seen as right all the time.’ How often had he told himself that in those last weeks?
He could remember those conversations with himself so very well, even after all this time, and yet he hadn't seen the implications, not then. He had not seen what they said about him. Only the confrontation with Travis had ended them, or rather finally coming face to face with what he had intended to do. That, and the realisation that some things were worse than Servalan and her kind, and that maybe he was on the road to becoming one of them.
Or perhaps it had been those moments when he thought he was dying, when he looked back at his life thinking it was done, the fight over, that had thrown everything into perspective, stripped away the evasions and revealed his own mania in such awful clarity. In those hours that he had lain in the medical unit, as a silent Cally pulled him back from the edge of life while the others prepared for a battle that even he didn’t think they could win, he had seen it all. Had seen himself more clearly than he had done for some time, and the view had made him feel sick. Gan dead, the others alienated, and Avon hating him; some leader he had turned out to be!
He had been prepared to become Travis to win, and Avon’s bitterest claims had been proved right.
Only then, as they waited for the Andromeans to begin their invasion, while he lay unable to help and wondered what had brought Travis to such a point, had he faced up to the fact that he had lied to the others almost from the beginning. Just as Servalan had used Travis so had he used them, sometimes against their will. Certainly against Avon’s will. Servalan had used Travis because she didn’t care, but he had used them even though he had cared for them. ‘Which of us was most culpable? Which the most despicable?’ he had wondered in despair. He had understood Avon then and admitted that the people he was now relying on to hold the line alone against an army had little reason to listen to his wishes, and even less to accept his command. In those terrible hours even his grief after Control had suddenly seemed the self indulgent posturing that Avon had claimed it. He had decided then, as he sat alone and listened to the ship labour under more fire power than even Liberator could cope with, that he would not be staying, whatever happened. His instincts about using Orac had been the last flare of self knowing against the increasing obsession and he could no longer trust himself with this much power, even though some of the others might. So he must leave them and stay away, however much he hated to do it.
Desperate to make some form of reparation before what might be the final act of defiance he had dragged himself to the flight deck, to show that he understood the enormity of what was being asked. He might not be able to stand but he could be beside them at what was probably the end, let them see that he understood, that he had become himself again. But despite his intentions even that had seemed the wrong thing to do. He could not fight alongside them, he was too weak, and having brought them to this point he had to retreat and leave them to make that desperate last ditch stand without his help.
It had seemed to underline that his days on the ship were over, and Avon’s words when he had sent him back to the medical bay had sealed it.
It had hurt more than he thought possible but the realisation of his own fault had driven him to try that last ditch effort to recover things, to make it right with Avon even as the enemy waited to advance; at least as right as he could in the circumstances. But it had been a poor attempt he had to admit, and, as he inched his painful way back to the surgical unit, he had known that it could not be repaired, the damage was too great. But even then some part of him had accepted that Avon's forgiveness would have changed nothing, it didn’t really matter whether they could trust him again when he knew that he could no longer trust himself.
Miraculously it had not been the end. They had survived the battle under Avon's leadership, he and Jenna proving a formidable team that got more from the great ship than any of them could have expected. Certainly more than the enemy expected. Blake had been glad and sad at the same time. Even so the damage incurred in holding the line had been huge and it had become clear that they would need to evacuate for a while, an unlooked for blessing for it made his departure so much easier. As Jenna sealed his escape capsule for him it had been hard not to say goodbye, but he had known that it was and he had silently wished her well even as he agreed they would soon be back aboard.
At that point he had had no plan other than finding himself again on some open sky world where the closeness of life and death would keep him in touch with the real meaning of his fight against the Federation. Jevron had been just such a world, and look what had happened there!
Blake sighed, the image of Carnell’s bounty hunter coming to him, an image that had never been far from his mind since he had first seen it. Was that what he would have become if events had not intervened? A desperate man on a back water world with the last remnants of his humanity slipping away unnoticed. How much had Carnell known about him or about those last weeks on Liberator? Was that the point the psycho-strategist had started from, the assumption that he was not really any different from those he fought, and that he had finally discovered as much? Carnell was a clever man and the weakness, the veniality, of humanity was his stock in trade, for that reason alone his images could not be shrugged off easily, even though they had been produced for Servalan’s pleasure. Blake rubbed his hands over his face and wondered, not for the first time, why Carnell had chosen to portray that particular version of his possible futures.
With another sigh he shook himself out of his lethargy and reached down to pull off his boots, pushing the image of the scar faced bounty hunter away with some effort. ‘Sitting here and moping will not provide the answers’, he chided himself, ‘nor is it going to change things.’ It was better he got on with what needed to be done. One day he would have to ask the puppeteer his reasons, he could admit that he needed to know, but not yet. For the moment he wasn’t sure that he could bear the answer.
***
On the flight deck Jenna remained at her station, but though her hands and eyes worked their way through the standard half watch checks most of her mind was taken up by worrying about Blake. But at least she was practiced at that, and it allowed her to suppress any suggestion that she was worried about Avon.
No denying that Avon was a problem though in more ways than one. Perhaps she should have dissuaded him from going down to the planet, but swaying Avon had never been easy. There was fair chance that was what Blake would have expected her to do though, given that the two men had barely begun to settle the differences between them and that Blake was more than a little disturbed about Carnell’s constructs of them all. Blake was a haunted man for all his rationalisations, and he had a more than passing acquaintance with having ones past altered. He more than any of them must understand the enormity of what Avon had to deal with, though it would take more than hot irons to wring the admission out of him. What would he say when he discovered that Avon had gone to lay a few ghosts, and gone to face them alone?
Jenna frowned at her console as she recalled her words to Avon before he had teleported down. Maybe she had handled it wrongly, the echoes of their recent intimacy softening her when she should have been tougher. Maybe she should have resisted the urge to sympathy and been more abrasive, set herself to change his mind, even though he was doing nothing more than what she would want to do in his position. Should she have called Cally or Vila, or even Illyan to give another opinion? Now she wondered why she hadn’t. Not that it was likely that they could have changed his mind, it would have just brought more people into the argument, and what could any of them do to stop him, short of putting him in restraints? Avon could simply tell Orac to put him down, and he could control the Liberator, he had shown as much, so short of drugging him and then tying him down there wasn’t much any of them could do to stop him doing what he wanted to do.
And that was a thought better not dwelt upon!
But what would happen if the two men should meet unexpectedly in the corridors of that wretched base?
Jenna shook herself impatiently, that couldn’t have happened, Blake had returned to the ship but so far he not come to the flight deck, and if there had been a confrontation between him and Avon she was sure they would all know of it by now. The two were rarely quiet about their confrontations. But then their one meeting, here on the flight deck, had been decidedly ...odd. Nothing she could put her finger on but there had been a sense of unusual restraint on both sides, and it had left her feeling both relieved and uneasy. Of course Blake had been through a lot, and while Avon’s recent experiences and his thoughts about them were still largely unknown it had been almost certainly unpleasant. So it maybe was not surprising if they were being a little more careful of each other than usual. After all they had that damned psyco-strategist’s wretched little play to keep them on their guard.
No, there would be no fatal misunderstandings between them now. Blake, at least, had good reasons to make sure that was so.
She looked back at the forward screen and the planet below them. The three rebels had been executed but not in Blake’s presence, she had Grant’s word for that. At least he had not been allowed to take up any part of that burden, but she did not underestimate the degree to which the actions of those three had shaken him. Carnell’s bounty hunter had been shock enough and now Blake was being forced to confront a few more of his demons, and she was no longer sure how he would cope with that. But it was not a burden she could help him with, and truth be told she would not even try. Not now.
Since she had been reunited with Blake on Horizon she had been aware that the nature of their relationship had shifted, but only after viewing Carnell’s illusions had she begun to understand the full nature of that change. Once she would have brushed away Blake’s self doubts with a careless shrug, and a few comforting, if abrasive, words, but those days were gone. But maybe they had gone before Star One, because she could see now that her feelings for Blake had changed even before Freedom City. Had it been Gan’s death or Blake’s reaction to it? Or had it been his response to Avon’s challenge on the way to Star One? She had searched her memory in those early weeks after they had left Liberator looking for the point where it had all changed. During the times when she had struggled to find an excuse for her own behaviour as the world had exploded into death and destruction on an unimagined scale. She hadn’t found the answer then and she didn’t have it now.
Had she ever loved Blake? Truth was that she didn't know. She had been drawn to him that was certainly true, she been attracted to his surface warmth and his commitment to an ideal. Disillusioned and cut off from all she had known and relied upon, more afraid then she had ever allowed herself to admit, his vision of a better world governed by honest men had been enticing. A world where if you did not harm you could prosper and be safe, a world where there would be no need to run. Looking back from a place of relative safety Jenna could see that she had been vulnerable, ready to be seduced by the dream, and that for all her tough pragmatism there had been a deep sense of emptiness inside her and his vision had held out a hope of that void finally being filled. He had been her friend and she had valued the way he trusted her above the others, but had it ever been love? Probably not.
She had desired him that was true enough, but then she had desired Avon too and she had never had any thought of love where he was concerned, at least not at the time. But the physical pleasure and easy companionship she had found with Avon in their private moments was not enough to satisfy her where Blake was concerned. Though Blake had never seemed to find physical intimacy particularly interesting, at least not with her. She had forgiven him for that and ignored it, telling herself that his fight took up the energy that other men expended in love and pleasure; at least she had until Exbar. Maybe that was the point it all changed, with …....what was her name? Inga, yes, little cousin Inga and the way Blake had looked at her, had pricked that particular conceit. Maybe that was when it all changed, maybe jealousy was why. She didn’t like the idea but she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t the case. It was only after Exbar that she had noticed how much Blake had shifted from being the man she thought she knew in those first heady and terrifying days. But she had struggled with the idea even then, wondering if it was her own anger and disappointment colouring what she saw, until that last confrontation between him and Avon had driven it home. After that there was no room to doubt how much the man she thought she might have loved had changed.
“Penny for them?”
Vila's voice cut across her thoughts and she raised her eyes to see him standing at his station. He cast her one narrow-eyed look before strolling down the flight deck towards the couch, his smile dissolving into an uncertain frown as he passed her.
“Mind you I'm not sure what a penny is, and looking at your face I'm not sure that I want them after all.”
Jenna gave him a rueful smile and sighed, Vila could be inconveniently shrewd and he was hard to discourage when he thought he was on to something that might be worth knowing. At least he had been when she first knew him. She wasn’t sure quite how to read him anymore.
Vila had been the litmus of change when they rejoined the ship, and she had been shocked to discover how much their resident thief had been crushed by the events that had cost them Avon. The Vila she and Blake rejoined been a pale shadow of the man she had known in the early days, his humour soured and his much flaunted cowardice become somehow grubby and cheap, his protests closer to whining than she had recalled them. Some instinct told her that Tarrant’s Space Command attitudes had more than a little to do with that and she had liked the pilot the less for it. Dayna was too young and inexperienced to affect Vila in such a way, not when Avon, far more formidable and with a frequently cold and abrasive tongue, had never shriveled him. But something in the time since Star One had shaken Vila and while the frightened and ineffectual man of the matrix had not yet come into being he was not that far distant. No wonder Vila hated Carnell’s world so much.
But as she looked at him now it seemed pretty clear that the old Vila was back, or very nearly. In the weeks she had been back on board Liberator the thief had seemed to gradually rediscover himself, and the process had quickened noticeably when he had been faced with Carnell’s shallow and distorted version of them all. Vila, like Blake, had been appalled by the vision of his matrix self, but unlike Blake he had been honest enough to both admit the possibility of him, and had set about making the prediction wrong. He had been surprisingly successful at it as far as she could see. How much of that was due to the return of Avon she couldn’t begin to guess, and she'd never get a straight answer out of Vila himself, but if anyone would understand her current doubts then it might well be him.
She cast a quick look around the flight deck to make sure that no one had come in with him then she checked the intercoms and set the flight deck approach indicator, making sure there was no chance of being overheard. Only then did she step away from her console and go to sit beside him.
Vila smiled at her and handed her a glass of something from somewhere, before taking a drink from the glass that appeared also somehow in his hand. The look in his brown eyes was bright, alert and definitely considering, a long way from the look of a broken, drunken fool. Jenna smiled in return suddenly glad he was not so changed after all, that Carnell had got it so wrong.
At least for the moment.
Those brown eyes suddenly lost the faint challenge and became warm and kind,and his voice held a wealth of understanding.
“Let me guess. You're worrying about Blake. You think that maybe he is still mad, bad and dangerous to know, and that these executions, and what caused them, are going to set him off looking for the nearest river of blood to wade in again? To wash away whatever guilt it was that drove him round the bend in the first place? Or is it just that you are afraid that Avon will shoot him after all?”
“Vila!” the protest was out before she realised it.
He waved a hand at her and took another swallow from his drink.
“Alright, I know what you are going to say, that's not fair. But you always did take Blake’s side. “
He leant closer to her.
“But when was he ever fair? Answer me that. He was quick enough to call me a coward and accuse Avon of self interest in the old days, and I don't recall him ever asking why, or if we had reasons for it. Never stopped him making use of our skills either as I remember it. Don’t recall you protesting much then either.”
Jenna sighed, memory stirring.
“No. I suppose not.”
Vila smiled again.
“But I never really minded you know, Blake I mean, because I liked him.”
The smile died and he waved his glass at her.
“Avon now, he did mind and he didn't always like him, but as Carnell little games show us it took an awful lot to make Avon shoot him even so. Blake’s safe enough.”
Jenna sighed again.
“From Avon perhaps, but not necessarily from himself.”
Vila shot her another of those sharp eyed looks.
“Maybe not. Something has happened to him since we jumped into those life capsules, and it’s not good that’s obvious. I mean… on the surface it’s like he’s his old self again, but there’s something eating at him.” He gave her a wry look, “Believe me I’ve learned to know looks like that since Star One. In fact I’m practically an expert on them.”
Some part of Jenna’s mind marked that down as something to ask about later, but for the moment the mention of Blake and the war was upper most in her thoughts. Anyway Vila could only be talking about Avon and she didn’t want any more reasons to regret letting him go down to the surface alone, so better not to go there. But what could she say to Vila, how much did she actually know? Not a lot, however much she might suspect. Even so….
“I don’t know, not for certain.”
She paused and took a drink from the glass still in her hand, not overly surprised when Vila produced a jug from somewhere and leaned forward to refill it.
“And?” He prompted, his eyes alight with curiosity.
Jenna looked down at the glass, unwilling to meet that look.
“I met a woman called Carrill, on Horizon,” she said slowly, “She knew Blake, in fact he had spent several months as crew on her ship. She told me that she had picked him up on a planet called…”
She paused for a moment wondering if Vila would remember and make the connection, then decided that he probably would, and continued.
“Jevron. Something bad, something that Blake is ….. unhappy.. about happened there. But Carrill wouldn’t tell me what, even if she knew.”
Vila was silent for a moment and then he grinned.
“The plot thickens doesn’t it? Jevron. That was the place Servalan said Blake died, when Avon was on Terminal. At least she did in that holoworld from hell. I wondered if it was a real place, and why she or her puppeteer sidekick had picked on it. But maybe she was telling the truth, maybe she really thought he died there.”
Jenna emptied her glass at a gulp.
“Perhaps.” She said after a moment. “But he is hiding something, and yes maybe I am beginning to wonder if he is slipping back into old ways.“ She looked down to her empty glass, “ All I know is that I don’t want to find myself there again.”
She remained staring at the empty glass for a moment or two, appalled at what she had just admitted, only looking up as Vila refilled the glass again. She was surprised to see both understanding and something that looked close to kindness there, as if the if idea was nothing new to him. Slowly he raised his own glass, never breaking eye contact, and took a slow swallow before he smiled softly.
“I got there before you on that one, but I don’t think there’s any need to worry. “
Jenna wondered what was coming now, what else the others had discovered in the long year and more than she and Blake had been away. What they knew that she did not. Catching Vila’s eye she realised that he suspected what she was thinking, then was certain of it as his smile died and he adopted that blank faced, pained innocence look that always meant he was about to stir things a little.
”Avon thinks it was Ven Gylend that did it you know. Him and his little box of tricks,”
“Did what?”
His reply didn’t disappoint her.
“Sent Blake raving mad of course.”
***
Servalan woke slowly. Once upon a time she had gone from sleeping to wakefulness in the blink of an eye, but since her injury her mind seemed less willing to face the day.
For a moment she lay and stared at the wall and wondered if she would ever feel the same again. It was all healed now, not even a mark to show where the laser wound had pierced her or where it broken open in her fall. Oh yes the medics had done their jobs well, her heart, grazed by the blast, was back to its normal steady rhythm, at least as long as she didn’t think about what had happened.
She had been threatened before but never had she been that close to death, never before had she seen her own blood on the ground, staining her hand, and the sight of it had broken something inside of her, a tear that she was beginning to fear would never be mended.
In all her years in Space Command, even in the long ago days when she had seen combat, and she had seen it despite what some might think, she had never sustained so much as a scratch. In fact her luck had been legendary, one of lubricants that had greased her rise to Supreme Commander, for the powerful smiled on those who seemed lucky, provided they were on the same side.
Even when the world took a dangerous turn and the attempts on her life became more frequent she had not truly feared for herself. Surrounded by guards and technology how could she be threatened? The came Blake and the Liberator, that piece of someone else’s luck that she knew from the first could shake the foundations of her world, and suddenly even her position seemed less protection. After the attack on Headquarters, it had seemed no protection at all. Yet even then she believed that somehow her personal, private luck would hold. Even after the bungled coup and the assult at Residence One she had not felt truly vulnerable. Not until Gauda Prime.
Gauda Prime, she had to suppress a shiver at the very thought of the name. Her luck had very nearly run out there, in more than one way. For the first time in many years she could imagine failure, for the first time that she could remember she felt vulnerable, like nothing more than a human being, any human being. She did not doubt that she could still win, that she would do it, but for the first time the breeze of uncertainty was drifting across her mind and it was a cold draft. It infuriated her, but here in the silence of her room its’ presence nibbled at her.
She pushed back the soft sheet and rose quickly, crossing the room to stare into the mirror. There was no difference in her face, nothing that could be seen in her eyes, but she knew that somehow things had changed, that the rot had started. Silently she promised herself that what ever it took she would make sure that no one else knew.
Still trying to get back into the flow of things and I had two versions of this chapter, but I have decided to go with this one. Now I'm not sure its right choice but hey ho...
Blake reflects on going wrong and Avon, Jenna and Vila have a heart to heart and Servalan is not quite herself.
About as close to angst as I can ever get myself.
I&R 4 Chapter 8
Blake had not gone to the flight deck when he returned, preferring solitude, a detour via his cabin and a shower. Gauda Prime might be cold enough to freeze the blood now that winter had taken hold but he didn’t think that was the reason for the chill inside him. Nor, if he were honest with himself, were the firing squads. But cold he was and hot water seemed the best way to counter it, at least for the moment.
He passed a couple of Grant’s men as he made his way through the corridors, both on their way to their bunks and both pale and sombre faced. One of Cauder’s people scuttled by too, teleport bound by the look of her clothes, and though she gave him a faint smile as she passed the tension in her was easy enough to see. Blake paused for a moment to think about what was happening down there, to wonder what these events must mean for the visiting rebels. Liberator would leave as soon as the matter of Jocaster's people was decided but many of the people who had come here in search of Avon would be staying for a while, establishing another bulwark against future Federation expansion, and it wasn’t the most auspicious of starts. Even Grant had seemed subdued, something that a ticking solium bomb hadn’t managed to achieve on Albian.
Reaching the privacy of his cabin he stripped off his jacket and sank down on to his bunk, his thoughts continuing their uncomfortable turn. The memory of Albian had been a source of some bitterness for a long time.
His earlier conversation with Jenna came back to him again, the words seeming to echo around the silent room bringing with them all the half expressed doubts that he had only touched upon. ‘Though God knows I’ve through it all more times than I can remember in the time since Star One,’ he thought,’ and always without finding an answer.No reason for it to be different now.’ He rubbed at his eyes, would he ever be free of it, or would it go on like this? Events beyond his control opening up those avenues for self doubt again and again. For the moment there was no pushing it aside for his mind seemed determined to pursue it, despite his knowing that all it could ever be was fruitless speculation. He groaned at the thought, knowing that time had not yet robbed the memories of their ability to cause pain and guilt. For the moment he could not imagine a time when it would be different.
What would he have done if he had found Provine alive? That was the crux of his uncertainty. How would the encounter have gone if the Federation man hadn’t tried to kill him and ended up dying instead? What if Provine had dropped his gun, raised his hands and resorted to name, rank and number; if Provine had just refused to co-operate? What would he have done then, desperate as he knew himself to have been? As those three men they had just executed on Gauda Prime had done? Would he have stooped to the very tactics that they condemned in their enemy? Would Cauder and Ralli have colluded in that and what would he have done if they had not? Would he have taken Provine at gun point, leaving Avon to fight for Albian's survival while he tried to to drug or, heaven forbid, beat an answer from his enemy? How far into the madness of those last months had he already fallen by that time? God, he wished he knew. But he didn’t, even now he didn’t, and the bitter truth was that he probably never would.
Sitting here it was so very tempting to brush the idea away, to persuade himself that he would never have been crossed that line, at Albian or anywhere else, and maybe he would have managed it once upon a time. Certainly he would have done so then. Not now, not any longer. He didn’t have the certainty to pretend that he could be sure of what he would have done then any more. The man that he had been on the way to becoming might have done things that the saner man sitting here would not allow. Even now, with the desperate mania of those days leading up to Star One all but burned out, he was unsure about just how far his sanity had slipped in that last disastrous year. Nor was he sure how or why it had happened at all. At the time had blamed Avon, as he had blamed him for so many things towards the end. Looking back he could recall the anger and bitterness easily enough, what he could not remember now was how or where it had started, nor why he had let it continue. What he did recall suggested that it pre-dated Gan's death, but his mind shied away from any of the possible sources of the anger that introspection supplied. Coping with Avon had always been difficult, for the other man had been a constant challenge to his own certainties, but Avon had never hidden his lack of concern for wider humanity and that had always seemed to him a sad, but obvious, justification for the opposition. Then, at some point he couldn’t pin down, for some reason he couldn’t identify, it had changed. It had become personal.
Looking back he remembered only too well how the gnawing need for Avon to accept the justice of his fight had eaten into him in those last months, that desperate determination for the other man to accept him for what he wanted to be. He knew now that the change had been in him and not in Avon, just as he recognised that the need for Avon’s acceptance had been the first sign of what was happening, if only he could have seen it. It had been the first indication that he was losing his grip, that something was going wrong badly within himself, and perhaps he should have realised that even then. If he had done so then how much else might have changed?
It was certainly a need that he had resented, and one that he had not understood even as he had known that it would never be met. Sometimes when he looked back he thought it had been the truce between Avon and Jenna that had triggered it, the knowledge that they had found enough common ground to share a bed on occasions. Perhaps there had been the idea, the fear, that if Avon continued to oppose him then one day her allegiance might waiver. Even when Jenna and Avon fell back into antagonism after Gan’s death there was the worry that Cally had taken her place and might come to take Avon’s side. Other times he thought that it was the growing reliance on the other man’s technical skill that had bothered him, the feeling that somehow it was Avon, his challenger, who held all their lives in his hands. Now he couldn’t be sure if it was any of those things or even how real those feelings had been, but they had certainly wreaked havoc with his unsteady relationship with Avon, and eventually with the others too.
How many angry flight deck confrontations had it driven, how many furious conversations with himself, how many bitter night watch recriminations?
‘If Avon supported me too it would be different,’ he had told himself on to many lonely and angry watches, ‘if Avon just accepted my leadership, the justice of my determination to defeat the Federation, that we have the chance to do it, it would be alight.”
After Gan had died it had changed, then it had been ‘If only Avon wouldn’t keep pushing all the time, then I wouldn’t feel so isolated, then I wouldn’t feel this desperate pressure to be seen as right all the time.’ How often had he told himself that in those last weeks?
He could remember those conversations with himself so very well, even after all this time, and yet he hadn't seen the implications, not then. He had not seen what they said about him. Only the confrontation with Travis had ended them, or rather finally coming face to face with what he had intended to do. That, and the realisation that some things were worse than Servalan and her kind, and that maybe he was on the road to becoming one of them.
Or perhaps it had been those moments when he thought he was dying, when he looked back at his life thinking it was done, the fight over, that had thrown everything into perspective, stripped away the evasions and revealed his own mania in such awful clarity. In those hours that he had lain in the medical unit, as a silent Cally pulled him back from the edge of life while the others prepared for a battle that even he didn’t think they could win, he had seen it all. Had seen himself more clearly than he had done for some time, and the view had made him feel sick. Gan dead, the others alienated, and Avon hating him; some leader he had turned out to be!
He had been prepared to become Travis to win, and Avon’s bitterest claims had been proved right.
Only then, as they waited for the Andromeans to begin their invasion, while he lay unable to help and wondered what had brought Travis to such a point, had he faced up to the fact that he had lied to the others almost from the beginning. Just as Servalan had used Travis so had he used them, sometimes against their will. Certainly against Avon’s will. Servalan had used Travis because she didn’t care, but he had used them even though he had cared for them. ‘Which of us was most culpable? Which the most despicable?’ he had wondered in despair. He had understood Avon then and admitted that the people he was now relying on to hold the line alone against an army had little reason to listen to his wishes, and even less to accept his command. In those terrible hours even his grief after Control had suddenly seemed the self indulgent posturing that Avon had claimed it. He had decided then, as he sat alone and listened to the ship labour under more fire power than even Liberator could cope with, that he would not be staying, whatever happened. His instincts about using Orac had been the last flare of self knowing against the increasing obsession and he could no longer trust himself with this much power, even though some of the others might. So he must leave them and stay away, however much he hated to do it.
Desperate to make some form of reparation before what might be the final act of defiance he had dragged himself to the flight deck, to show that he understood the enormity of what was being asked. He might not be able to stand but he could be beside them at what was probably the end, let them see that he understood, that he had become himself again. But despite his intentions even that had seemed the wrong thing to do. He could not fight alongside them, he was too weak, and having brought them to this point he had to retreat and leave them to make that desperate last ditch stand without his help.
It had seemed to underline that his days on the ship were over, and Avon’s words when he had sent him back to the medical bay had sealed it.
It had hurt more than he thought possible but the realisation of his own fault had driven him to try that last ditch effort to recover things, to make it right with Avon even as the enemy waited to advance; at least as right as he could in the circumstances. But it had been a poor attempt he had to admit, and, as he inched his painful way back to the surgical unit, he had known that it could not be repaired, the damage was too great. But even then some part of him had accepted that Avon's forgiveness would have changed nothing, it didn’t really matter whether they could trust him again when he knew that he could no longer trust himself.
Miraculously it had not been the end. They had survived the battle under Avon's leadership, he and Jenna proving a formidable team that got more from the great ship than any of them could have expected. Certainly more than the enemy expected. Blake had been glad and sad at the same time. Even so the damage incurred in holding the line had been huge and it had become clear that they would need to evacuate for a while, an unlooked for blessing for it made his departure so much easier. As Jenna sealed his escape capsule for him it had been hard not to say goodbye, but he had known that it was and he had silently wished her well even as he agreed they would soon be back aboard.
At that point he had had no plan other than finding himself again on some open sky world where the closeness of life and death would keep him in touch with the real meaning of his fight against the Federation. Jevron had been just such a world, and look what had happened there!
Blake sighed, the image of Carnell’s bounty hunter coming to him, an image that had never been far from his mind since he had first seen it. Was that what he would have become if events had not intervened? A desperate man on a back water world with the last remnants of his humanity slipping away unnoticed. How much had Carnell known about him or about those last weeks on Liberator? Was that the point the psycho-strategist had started from, the assumption that he was not really any different from those he fought, and that he had finally discovered as much? Carnell was a clever man and the weakness, the veniality, of humanity was his stock in trade, for that reason alone his images could not be shrugged off easily, even though they had been produced for Servalan’s pleasure. Blake rubbed his hands over his face and wondered, not for the first time, why Carnell had chosen to portray that particular version of his possible futures.
With another sigh he shook himself out of his lethargy and reached down to pull off his boots, pushing the image of the scar faced bounty hunter away with some effort. ‘Sitting here and moping will not provide the answers’, he chided himself, ‘nor is it going to change things.’ It was better he got on with what needed to be done. One day he would have to ask the puppeteer his reasons, he could admit that he needed to know, but not yet. For the moment he wasn’t sure that he could bear the answer.
***
On the flight deck Jenna remained at her station, but though her hands and eyes worked their way through the standard half watch checks most of her mind was taken up by worrying about Blake. But at least she was practiced at that, and it allowed her to suppress any suggestion that she was worried about Avon.
No denying that Avon was a problem though in more ways than one. Perhaps she should have dissuaded him from going down to the planet, but swaying Avon had never been easy. There was fair chance that was what Blake would have expected her to do though, given that the two men had barely begun to settle the differences between them and that Blake was more than a little disturbed about Carnell’s constructs of them all. Blake was a haunted man for all his rationalisations, and he had a more than passing acquaintance with having ones past altered. He more than any of them must understand the enormity of what Avon had to deal with, though it would take more than hot irons to wring the admission out of him. What would he say when he discovered that Avon had gone to lay a few ghosts, and gone to face them alone?
Jenna frowned at her console as she recalled her words to Avon before he had teleported down. Maybe she had handled it wrongly, the echoes of their recent intimacy softening her when she should have been tougher. Maybe she should have resisted the urge to sympathy and been more abrasive, set herself to change his mind, even though he was doing nothing more than what she would want to do in his position. Should she have called Cally or Vila, or even Illyan to give another opinion? Now she wondered why she hadn’t. Not that it was likely that they could have changed his mind, it would have just brought more people into the argument, and what could any of them do to stop him, short of putting him in restraints? Avon could simply tell Orac to put him down, and he could control the Liberator, he had shown as much, so short of drugging him and then tying him down there wasn’t much any of them could do to stop him doing what he wanted to do.
And that was a thought better not dwelt upon!
But what would happen if the two men should meet unexpectedly in the corridors of that wretched base?
Jenna shook herself impatiently, that couldn’t have happened, Blake had returned to the ship but so far he not come to the flight deck, and if there had been a confrontation between him and Avon she was sure they would all know of it by now. The two were rarely quiet about their confrontations. But then their one meeting, here on the flight deck, had been decidedly ...odd. Nothing she could put her finger on but there had been a sense of unusual restraint on both sides, and it had left her feeling both relieved and uneasy. Of course Blake had been through a lot, and while Avon’s recent experiences and his thoughts about them were still largely unknown it had been almost certainly unpleasant. So it maybe was not surprising if they were being a little more careful of each other than usual. After all they had that damned psyco-strategist’s wretched little play to keep them on their guard.
No, there would be no fatal misunderstandings between them now. Blake, at least, had good reasons to make sure that was so.
She looked back at the forward screen and the planet below them. The three rebels had been executed but not in Blake’s presence, she had Grant’s word for that. At least he had not been allowed to take up any part of that burden, but she did not underestimate the degree to which the actions of those three had shaken him. Carnell’s bounty hunter had been shock enough and now Blake was being forced to confront a few more of his demons, and she was no longer sure how he would cope with that. But it was not a burden she could help him with, and truth be told she would not even try. Not now.
Since she had been reunited with Blake on Horizon she had been aware that the nature of their relationship had shifted, but only after viewing Carnell’s illusions had she begun to understand the full nature of that change. Once she would have brushed away Blake’s self doubts with a careless shrug, and a few comforting, if abrasive, words, but those days were gone. But maybe they had gone before Star One, because she could see now that her feelings for Blake had changed even before Freedom City. Had it been Gan’s death or Blake’s reaction to it? Or had it been his response to Avon’s challenge on the way to Star One? She had searched her memory in those early weeks after they had left Liberator looking for the point where it had all changed. During the times when she had struggled to find an excuse for her own behaviour as the world had exploded into death and destruction on an unimagined scale. She hadn’t found the answer then and she didn’t have it now.
Had she ever loved Blake? Truth was that she didn't know. She had been drawn to him that was certainly true, she been attracted to his surface warmth and his commitment to an ideal. Disillusioned and cut off from all she had known and relied upon, more afraid then she had ever allowed herself to admit, his vision of a better world governed by honest men had been enticing. A world where if you did not harm you could prosper and be safe, a world where there would be no need to run. Looking back from a place of relative safety Jenna could see that she had been vulnerable, ready to be seduced by the dream, and that for all her tough pragmatism there had been a deep sense of emptiness inside her and his vision had held out a hope of that void finally being filled. He had been her friend and she had valued the way he trusted her above the others, but had it ever been love? Probably not.
She had desired him that was true enough, but then she had desired Avon too and she had never had any thought of love where he was concerned, at least not at the time. But the physical pleasure and easy companionship she had found with Avon in their private moments was not enough to satisfy her where Blake was concerned. Though Blake had never seemed to find physical intimacy particularly interesting, at least not with her. She had forgiven him for that and ignored it, telling herself that his fight took up the energy that other men expended in love and pleasure; at least she had until Exbar. Maybe that was the point it all changed, with …....what was her name? Inga, yes, little cousin Inga and the way Blake had looked at her, had pricked that particular conceit. Maybe that was when it all changed, maybe jealousy was why. She didn’t like the idea but she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t the case. It was only after Exbar that she had noticed how much Blake had shifted from being the man she thought she knew in those first heady and terrifying days. But she had struggled with the idea even then, wondering if it was her own anger and disappointment colouring what she saw, until that last confrontation between him and Avon had driven it home. After that there was no room to doubt how much the man she thought she might have loved had changed.
“Penny for them?”
Vila's voice cut across her thoughts and she raised her eyes to see him standing at his station. He cast her one narrow-eyed look before strolling down the flight deck towards the couch, his smile dissolving into an uncertain frown as he passed her.
“Mind you I'm not sure what a penny is, and looking at your face I'm not sure that I want them after all.”
Jenna gave him a rueful smile and sighed, Vila could be inconveniently shrewd and he was hard to discourage when he thought he was on to something that might be worth knowing. At least he had been when she first knew him. She wasn’t sure quite how to read him anymore.
Vila had been the litmus of change when they rejoined the ship, and she had been shocked to discover how much their resident thief had been crushed by the events that had cost them Avon. The Vila she and Blake rejoined been a pale shadow of the man she had known in the early days, his humour soured and his much flaunted cowardice become somehow grubby and cheap, his protests closer to whining than she had recalled them. Some instinct told her that Tarrant’s Space Command attitudes had more than a little to do with that and she had liked the pilot the less for it. Dayna was too young and inexperienced to affect Vila in such a way, not when Avon, far more formidable and with a frequently cold and abrasive tongue, had never shriveled him. But something in the time since Star One had shaken Vila and while the frightened and ineffectual man of the matrix had not yet come into being he was not that far distant. No wonder Vila hated Carnell’s world so much.
But as she looked at him now it seemed pretty clear that the old Vila was back, or very nearly. In the weeks she had been back on board Liberator the thief had seemed to gradually rediscover himself, and the process had quickened noticeably when he had been faced with Carnell’s shallow and distorted version of them all. Vila, like Blake, had been appalled by the vision of his matrix self, but unlike Blake he had been honest enough to both admit the possibility of him, and had set about making the prediction wrong. He had been surprisingly successful at it as far as she could see. How much of that was due to the return of Avon she couldn’t begin to guess, and she'd never get a straight answer out of Vila himself, but if anyone would understand her current doubts then it might well be him.
She cast a quick look around the flight deck to make sure that no one had come in with him then she checked the intercoms and set the flight deck approach indicator, making sure there was no chance of being overheard. Only then did she step away from her console and go to sit beside him.
Vila smiled at her and handed her a glass of something from somewhere, before taking a drink from the glass that appeared also somehow in his hand. The look in his brown eyes was bright, alert and definitely considering, a long way from the look of a broken, drunken fool. Jenna smiled in return suddenly glad he was not so changed after all, that Carnell had got it so wrong.
At least for the moment.
Those brown eyes suddenly lost the faint challenge and became warm and kind,and his voice held a wealth of understanding.
“Let me guess. You're worrying about Blake. You think that maybe he is still mad, bad and dangerous to know, and that these executions, and what caused them, are going to set him off looking for the nearest river of blood to wade in again? To wash away whatever guilt it was that drove him round the bend in the first place? Or is it just that you are afraid that Avon will shoot him after all?”
“Vila!” the protest was out before she realised it.
He waved a hand at her and took another swallow from his drink.
“Alright, I know what you are going to say, that's not fair. But you always did take Blake’s side. “
He leant closer to her.
“But when was he ever fair? Answer me that. He was quick enough to call me a coward and accuse Avon of self interest in the old days, and I don't recall him ever asking why, or if we had reasons for it. Never stopped him making use of our skills either as I remember it. Don’t recall you protesting much then either.”
Jenna sighed, memory stirring.
“No. I suppose not.”
Vila smiled again.
“But I never really minded you know, Blake I mean, because I liked him.”
The smile died and he waved his glass at her.
“Avon now, he did mind and he didn't always like him, but as Carnell little games show us it took an awful lot to make Avon shoot him even so. Blake’s safe enough.”
Jenna sighed again.
“From Avon perhaps, but not necessarily from himself.”
Vila shot her another of those sharp eyed looks.
“Maybe not. Something has happened to him since we jumped into those life capsules, and it’s not good that’s obvious. I mean… on the surface it’s like he’s his old self again, but there’s something eating at him.” He gave her a wry look, “Believe me I’ve learned to know looks like that since Star One. In fact I’m practically an expert on them.”
Some part of Jenna’s mind marked that down as something to ask about later, but for the moment the mention of Blake and the war was upper most in her thoughts. Anyway Vila could only be talking about Avon and she didn’t want any more reasons to regret letting him go down to the surface alone, so better not to go there. But what could she say to Vila, how much did she actually know? Not a lot, however much she might suspect. Even so….
“I don’t know, not for certain.”
She paused and took a drink from the glass still in her hand, not overly surprised when Vila produced a jug from somewhere and leaned forward to refill it.
“And?” He prompted, his eyes alight with curiosity.
Jenna looked down at the glass, unwilling to meet that look.
“I met a woman called Carrill, on Horizon,” she said slowly, “She knew Blake, in fact he had spent several months as crew on her ship. She told me that she had picked him up on a planet called…”
She paused for a moment wondering if Vila would remember and make the connection, then decided that he probably would, and continued.
“Jevron. Something bad, something that Blake is ….. unhappy.. about happened there. But Carrill wouldn’t tell me what, even if she knew.”
Vila was silent for a moment and then he grinned.
“The plot thickens doesn’t it? Jevron. That was the place Servalan said Blake died, when Avon was on Terminal. At least she did in that holoworld from hell. I wondered if it was a real place, and why she or her puppeteer sidekick had picked on it. But maybe she was telling the truth, maybe she really thought he died there.”
Jenna emptied her glass at a gulp.
“Perhaps.” She said after a moment. “But he is hiding something, and yes maybe I am beginning to wonder if he is slipping back into old ways.“ She looked down to her empty glass, “ All I know is that I don’t want to find myself there again.”
She remained staring at the empty glass for a moment or two, appalled at what she had just admitted, only looking up as Vila refilled the glass again. She was surprised to see both understanding and something that looked close to kindness there, as if the if idea was nothing new to him. Slowly he raised his own glass, never breaking eye contact, and took a slow swallow before he smiled softly.
“I got there before you on that one, but I don’t think there’s any need to worry. “
Jenna wondered what was coming now, what else the others had discovered in the long year and more than she and Blake had been away. What they knew that she did not. Catching Vila’s eye she realised that he suspected what she was thinking, then was certain of it as his smile died and he adopted that blank faced, pained innocence look that always meant he was about to stir things a little.
”Avon thinks it was Ven Gylend that did it you know. Him and his little box of tricks,”
“Did what?”
His reply didn’t disappoint her.
“Sent Blake raving mad of course.”
***
Servalan woke slowly. Once upon a time she had gone from sleeping to wakefulness in the blink of an eye, but since her injury her mind seemed less willing to face the day.
For a moment she lay and stared at the wall and wondered if she would ever feel the same again. It was all healed now, not even a mark to show where the laser wound had pierced her or where it broken open in her fall. Oh yes the medics had done their jobs well, her heart, grazed by the blast, was back to its normal steady rhythm, at least as long as she didn’t think about what had happened.
She had been threatened before but never had she been that close to death, never before had she seen her own blood on the ground, staining her hand, and the sight of it had broken something inside of her, a tear that she was beginning to fear would never be mended.
In all her years in Space Command, even in the long ago days when she had seen combat, and she had seen it despite what some might think, she had never sustained so much as a scratch. In fact her luck had been legendary, one of lubricants that had greased her rise to Supreme Commander, for the powerful smiled on those who seemed lucky, provided they were on the same side.
Even when the world took a dangerous turn and the attempts on her life became more frequent she had not truly feared for herself. Surrounded by guards and technology how could she be threatened? The came Blake and the Liberator, that piece of someone else’s luck that she knew from the first could shake the foundations of her world, and suddenly even her position seemed less protection. After the attack on Headquarters, it had seemed no protection at all. Yet even then she believed that somehow her personal, private luck would hold. Even after the bungled coup and the assult at Residence One she had not felt truly vulnerable. Not until Gauda Prime.
Gauda Prime, she had to suppress a shiver at the very thought of the name. Her luck had very nearly run out there, in more than one way. For the first time in many years she could imagine failure, for the first time that she could remember she felt vulnerable, like nothing more than a human being, any human being. She did not doubt that she could still win, that she would do it, but for the first time the breeze of uncertainty was drifting across her mind and it was a cold draft. It infuriated her, but here in the silence of her room its’ presence nibbled at her.
She pushed back the soft sheet and rose quickly, crossing the room to stare into the mirror. There was no difference in her face, nothing that could be seen in her eyes, but she knew that somehow things had changed, that the rot had started. Silently she promised herself that what ever it took she would make sure that no one else knew.