Mirage

The ore freighter drifted, void fore and aft of her, enveloped in silent, obsidian null. Not even asteroids disturbed the emptiness here.

It was a good place to hide.

Her meteor-scarred hull, no longer graced by even so much as a name, failed to reflect much light in normal space: here, the ore carrier was virtually invisible to all but the most sophisticated long-range scans. In the void, such a contingency was, at best, improbable.

Not that the improbable had not been known to happen.

Avon leaned back in the shopworn pilot's seat, rubbing eyes that had long ago wearied of scanning the ship's undersized monitor screen. Orac had expertly pilfered one Federation file upon another, but nowhere in the mass of bureaucratic legalese, coded or uncoded, classified or not, had there been any mention of the names he sought. Oh, the official version was there plainly enough. Vila, Dayna, Tarrant, Soolin -- and Blake -- all listed as 'deceased,' though only the latter had garnered a reward for the death squad logged as responsible for his 'execution.'

A tight smile curled the edges of Avon's mouth: there was a distinctive irony to that, though he doubted very much that Blake would have been able to appreciate it.

Those stark computer entries, and the volumes they did not speak, all carried the signs of careful manipulation -- hers. It had to be. And there-in lay another irony. From the day, now more than a year past, that he had awakened in her ice and velvet prison to be taunted repeatedly with assurances that all of his companions were dead; from that day she had wanted only one thing from him. That one thing sat now on the paint-peeling console beside Avon, whirring smugly to itself in diligent search of some trace, some clue that would enable him to trap her, using Orac itself as the bait. There was a way, an opening, somewhere. And Avon fully intended to find it.

Or die trying?

The intrusive echo came couched not in Vila's soft tones, but in Blake's, a subtle prying at the edges of his consciousness that had long ago grown too familiar. Avon ignored it, but as always, it refused to be vanquished by mere default.

Is this how you plan to help them? it mocked, an almost teasing whisper.

Avon rose abruptly from the chair, temper flaring. "How else?" he demanded aloud, and then in more plaintive tones, "How else?"

*How else what?* Orac's clicking increased its meter, in obvious consternation at the unexpected -- and nonsensical -- question.

Avon turned on it with a snarl. "I wasn't talking to you."

*There is no one else aboard this ship,* the computer responded peevishly. *If not I, then whom were you addressing?*

Avon opened his mouth, then closed it again, briefly embarrassed. "Get on with your research," he said curtly. "When I want unsolicited conversation from you, I'll ask for it."

Orac managed an offended *Hmpf* before adding, *I must point out that visual scan of the data on your part is entirely unnecessary. I am more than capable of--*

"You will continue to provide visual scans," Avon interrupted. He paced the cramped flight deck, hands flexing in frustration. Searching the screen readouts was time consuming, true, and probably redundant, given Orac's considerable talents. But it gave Avon something to do -- an edge against the ever-present threat of terminal boredom.

Orac fell silent, light patterns chasing one another through the ostensibly haphazard tangle of its circuitry. There had been times during the interminable months spent aboard this rusting, nameless hulk, when he'd been sorely tempted to dismantle the sarcastic little box down to its component tarial cells; to cure his growing ennui by discovering at long last what really made Ensor's creation function as it did. But -- albeit narrowly -- he'd resisted the urge. He... they... needed Orac fully operational.

Avon's pacing halted midway across the age-worn deck. Orac had said something; he hadn't quite caught the words.

"Repeat that," he ordered.

Petulant, the computer hesitated before it answered sullenly, *I said we are receiving a message.*

Avon's eyes narrowed. It wasn't possible. Not out here. "Directed to this ship?"

*No. It is a general distress call on an automatic beacon emanating from the Algan civil scoutship Mirage. It cites total on-board flight computer failure and resultant inability to retrieve navigational bearings.*

Avon inclined his head and indulged a long-disused grin. "In other words, they are lost."

Sarcasm was a human foible Orac had yet to fathom. *That is what I just said,* it huffed.

Avon very nearly laughed aloud. "So you did." He sobered, moving to activate the freighter's outmoded sensors until he had a hazy electronic image of the lost ship on the monitor. A distress call was really far too easy... too simple a trap. He'd spent too many years evading precisely this kind of subterfuge to be taken in by it now. And yet...

The statistics coming through on Mirage evoked a certain interest. She was rather large for a scoutship, sleek, well-armed, TD capable. Her small cargo hold read empty, and though she was equipped for a crew of twenty, life readings registered only one aboard. That was odd. Such traps were usually sprung with more attractive bait -- a hold full or arms or gems, for example -- and ought to involve more than one bounty hunter in the bargain. Either this one was arrogantly overconfident, or the distress call was genuine.

Curious.

He called up data on Mirage's drive systems: she was flight capable, but with total computer failure she would never be able to navigate out of the void. He made his course correction without further hesitation. Mirage was an attractive lure all on her own. If this wasn't a trap, it might well be an opportunity to better his chances against the Federation and the others who still pursued him.

"Orac."

*Yes?*

"Override Mirage's remaining flight systems. Inform her... captain... that he will prepare to be boarded."

*Such activities are not within my programmed--*

"Don't argue." Avon's voice was ice. "Just do it."

The computer buzzed in annoyance. *Oh, very well.*

Docking under Orac's supervision proceeded without incident. Their challenge had been answered, after a lengthy pause that had undoubtedly verified Orac's threat as real, with a terse, unsigned acknowledgment; a surrender without contest that Avon was uncertain whether to view as suspicious or circumspect. He armed himself as a matter of course, and had Orac open Mirage's airlock before he started across the transfer tube.

She was as beautiful a ship inside as out. In fact, she was visibly larger than the sensor readings had indicated, and that gave Avon pause. At the moment, however, he was not concerned with aesthetics. The airlock had opened onto a polished -- and deserted -- flight deck. Of Mirage's sole occupant there was no sign.

Another ill omen? Or simple cowardice?

Holding the weapon at arm's length, he started for the exit corridor leading off the tiered bridge. Its doorway was molded in the shape of an archaic keyhole, a distinction, Avon mused, that Vila would almost certainly have appreciated.

A subtle change in the electron charge of the air was his only warning of the force field. It came too late. The barrel of his gun touched the unseen barrier, and agony burned a path up his arm, through all of his body.

Trap!

He was conscious of his weapon falling, glowing faintly blue with the ion charge of the field. Then the deck came relentlessly up to meet him.

Sensation returned with the fiery discomfort of a million seared nerve endings. Avon opened his eyes to the sight of a nondescript ceiling. He lay flat on an unyielding surface. Floor. Something hummed softly nearby. He turned his head to identify the source of the sound as twin generators on either side of a narrow door. Another force field. Holding cell. Trap...

Something moved into the nimbus of light at the door. The bounty hunter, no doubt, come to gloat over the catch. Painfully, Avon forced himself to a sitting position, struggling to focus on the indistinct figure. It coalesced at last into a slender blond man somewhere on the shy side of thirty, a man with wavy hair, a charismatic smile, and clothes that looked more like something purloined from an actors' troupe than those of a bounty hunter. The face was... vaguely familiar somehow.

"So you're the notorious Kerr Avon," the figure said loudly. "Rather less imposing than I thought. For three million credits, I'd have expected someone... well, a bit cleverer, perhaps."

"Sorry to have disappointed you."

Green eyes smiled down at him, but there was no warmth in them at all. "I'm afraid I have to make the same apology -- but to myself. Because I shan't be turning you in for the reward." He laughed mirthlessly at Avon's bewildered look. "You don't recognize me, do you?"

"Should I?"

Thin fingers spread themselves in tandem with a constricted shrug. "You're less observant than I'd been led to believe, too. My name is Vaylan. Par Vaylan."

He emphasized the name as though to impart particular significance to it. Avon didn't need the assistance. He knew the name. For the past two years it had occupied a prominent position on the Federation's most-wanted list, one notch below his own. Successful rebellions on eight separate worlds had been Vaylan's handiwork. Not even Blake had managed to assemble a record that impressive.

"Your holos do not do you justice," Avon said tightly.

Vaylan shrugged again. "Neither do yours." Something hard and bitterly cold shone just behind his eyes, out of reach. "Not that it will matter much longer."

Avon looked away, unwilling to ask what that might mean, and rubbed absently at still-tingling neck muscles. Abruptly, he felt power surge through the deck beneath him. His hand froze, then fell to his side as yet another surge, barely perceptible this time, signalled a change in Mirage's drive systems.

Vaylan had noticed his reaction. "Yes, we're underway. Your ship's been cast adrift. Did you mind awfully much?"

Ignoring the sarcasm, Avon carefully masked his surprise. Orac had been left aboard the carrier...

"Oh, you needn't be concerned. Orac is quite safe." The blond man had an annoying habit of anticipating Avon's thoughts. "Two prizes in a single package." Vaylan's teeth were even rows of flawless ivory. "A little creative sabotage on the navigational computers, an automatic distress beacon, some touches of Mirage's own, and the ship herself as bait to the trap. Even Orac couldn't resist that, eh? An invaluable device, Orac. If it's everything I've been told it is, I should be able to destroy the Federation within a matter of months. Better use than you've put it to, I must say."

Avon reflected grimly that the only traits this upstart rebel leader and Blake had in common were overconfidence and a tendency to talk too much. By no means a starry idealist, Vaylan had the iron-edged bearing of a warrior, offset by the strategist who knew his tactics, his allies and his enemies all equally well, and used them all to profitable advantage.

"Orac's already repaired the flight computer and navigation systems," Vaylan went on chattily. "And taken the helm as well. We're on course for Sekros. Do you know the planet?"

Avon stared at the wall. "It's in the Algan system," he said flatly. Orac had initially announced Mirage to be an Algan ship.

"Yes. Domed cities, methane/carbon monoxide atmosphere. Federation-controlled, but inhospitable enough to keep them largely disinterested."

"Your base," Avon said dully. It was not a question.

"Yes. We've never made a secret of it, even to the Federation. But we're very well defended. Very well. I'm rather proud of that. Do you know we've fended off twelve separate attacks from Federation pursuit craft?"

Avon frowned. Twelve attacks seemed far from 'largely disinterested.' Yet Vaylan's having successfully repelled them perhaps spoke more for the declining state of Federation military strength than anything else.

"Why take me there?" he queried softly.

Vaylan's short explosive laugh was tinged with cruelty. "You really haven't got an inkling, have you?"

Avon gained his feet, coming to face his captor across the unseen barrier separating them. "If I had any inkling," he grated, "I wouldn't have to ask."

Vaylan regarded him coolly, almost sneering when he spoke again. "You can't have been all that naive. The man who murdered Blake? From the day you slipped Commissioner Sleer's clutches she's had a death warrant out on you. And for every Federation flotilla, privateer and bounty-hunting pirate out looking for you, there's also been a rebel -- several thousand rebels, in fact -- just as eager for your blood."

Avon's smile came slowly, a mocking façade. "And you're going to give it to them."

The other man fixed him with a knowing look in answer, then without further comment, turned and strode confidently away.

Avon's manufactured smile dissipated in his wake. Out of nowhere, Blake's voice whispered a melodic query.

How often does irony masquerade as justice??

May I offer my congratulations yet again, Madame President?"

Servalan favored the balding Commissioner Arnak with her most ingratiating smile. "You may."

"It was a most flawless coup," he said effusively, and his porcine fingers continually stroked one upholstered arm of her office chair as though it were a lover. "Particularly in light of the fact..." He trailed off, blushing red through his nonexistent hairline. It was too easy to forget that he no longer addressed a fellow Commissioner, but the President of the Terran Federation.

She rose from behind the desk, her gown flowing elegantly after her. It was spotless, impeccable white, symbolic of the restoration of her power, and the reinstatement of her name. "Particularly in light of what?" she prodded from across the room.

Arnak swallowed audibly. "Well I simply meant... well... that..."

"You simply meant that Kerr Avon's continued survival might have threatened my re-ascendancy. Well you were wrong, weren't you?"

"Yes, Madame President."

Behind him now, she rolled her eyes in disgust and swept an errant sleeve back into place above her sculptured wrist. Yes, Madame President; No, Madame President. As sycophants went, Arnak had his uses. In the capacity of advisor he was without any value whatsoever. And as military envoy from the Federation High Council, he was little more than a periodic irritant. She'd found herself considering of late whether his irritation factors had begun to exceed his useful ones.

"You may tell the good Councillors that neither a Supreme Commander nor a President can single-handedly capture every criminal marauding the galaxy." She turned, a soft swirl and rush of fabric. "But if it will ease their collective anxieties, you may also tell them that Kerr Avon has been duly apprehended. His execution will take place in four days, on the planet Sekros."

Arnak's mouth formed a small pink 'o.' "But how...?"

"How is irrelevant." She marched back toward him, red manicured nails raking impatient patterns in the air. "I'm going to be there. My ship is already waiting. And when the execution is over, the High Council might also be interested to know that my security forces will attack and destroy the base of the present rebellion. And Par Vaylan with it."

Arnak's leer revealed short, uneven teeth. "You planted a spy in Vaylan's organization."

"No," she said pointedly, sitting on the edge of the polished desk. "I've planted several. Now if you'll excuse me, Commissioner."

He scooted forward in the chair, but made no move to get up as yet. "Madame President, if I may..."

She waited, annoyed when he failed to complete the request. "If you may what?"

He drywashed his plump hands, nearly wilting under the scrutiny of her eyes, but obviously determined to ask his question anyway. "May I... come along? I've... well I've never seen an execution."

"No you may n--" Servalan stopped herself, pushed off from the desk and paced away again, considering. A witness to her triumph might be valuable at that. Someone to report to the Council precisely how efficient the newly-reinstated President could be. A smile stole across her red-glossed lips. "Very well, Arnak," she purred. "Come with me. You may find this... most entertaining."

The President's ship had been equipped to her precise specifications. Not her usual lavish transport, it was an older, non-military vessel, refitted to match speeds with her Federation escort, but tailored to pose, along with her crew, as members of Vaylan's rebellion come to witness the death of Blake's murderer.

Mutoids would not have served the purpose here. The flight crew were thus human, but humans modified all the same by Federation psychostrategists to obey Servalan without question. She preferred them to unmodified help. Less margin for error, as it were. And one of them in particular...

As the ship prepared for lift-off, she had taken Arnak to the converted cargo hold, to the lab that had been specially constructed there, also to her specifications. The modifieds (how like mutoids the creatures were, she thought; only the lack of uniforms and blood plasma attachments made them differ at all) still worked to ready the equipment. It was not an elaborate facility; quite the contrary. But it would serve its purpose.

"Madame President?"

She realized that Arnak had asked a question, and that he waited now for her to answer.

"I do apologize, Commissioner." She didn't bother to mask the false sincerity. "What did you say?"

"I merely wondered, Madame, what the laboratory is for?"

She smiled. "Oh yes. Well I may have misled you just a bit. I intend to do... rather more... than witness Avon's execution."

Arnak's eyes narrowed. Whispers of Servalan's obsession with the renegade Avon had been rampant for years: the rumors were all plainly readable now on his face. "You're going to take him?" he asked suspiciously. "And bring him here?"

"Not precisely." She paced away from him briefly, halted and called to the modified in drab grey that had been working over the metal sink set against the starboard bulkhead of the hold. "Come here," she said.

The man turned, and with languid obedience, shuffled toward them. Arnak's squint deepened as he approached, and Servalan saw recognition cross the too-round face.

"Is that... isn't this...?" The Commissioner sputtered. "But the reports all said that he was dead."

"Oh, I assure you, Commissioner. He is. My puppeteers are quite thorough. The best in the known worlds." She turned to the waiting figure in grey. "Tell me," she said. "What is your name?"

"Larn, Ma'am."

"And what was your name... before?"

The man stared at her with lifeless eyes. "Before, Ma'am?" His voice was a flat monotone.

"Yes. Before your modification."

The answer came automatically, equally flat. "There is no before."

"Does the name Restal mean anything to you at all?"

The faintest of hesitations, no more than a breath long. Then, "No, Ma'am."

Arnak's mouth had formed the 'o' again. "But I remember this one's file," he muttered. "They said he was resistant to conditioning. Immune somehow."

"A myth which both he and Blake once revelled in perpetuating. Obviously, they were mistaken. I told you, my psychostrategists are exceeded by none. No one is immune, Arnak. No one at all."

If the Commissioner had inferred any threat from that last remark, his face failed to show it. Disappointed, Servalan addressed the modified once again. "Larn, prepare the vistape for the Commissioner."

"Yes, Ma'am."

Arnak watched the man with nervous anticipation while he helped himself to a glass of the President's decantered Corinthi wine. "What vistape is that, Madame President?"

She accepted a glass of the wine from him and led him to a computer alcove, where Larn had cued a tape on the small viewscreen. Motioning the Commissioner to a chair, she said, "Par Vaylan has an obscure and somewhat archaic sense of justice. He has staged a number of executions in the interest of furthering his Cause. Unlike Blake, the man is unencumbered by any tedious sense of morality. He was a military tactician on Alga 4 before the Federation took it over. A political genius, or so they say." She took a chair herself, smoothing the white gown carefully over her lap. "Do you remember Ril Mergen, Commissioner?"

Arnak's limited intellect was having difficulty assimilating her rather convoluted explanation. He drained the wine glass before responding. "The bounty hunter?" He was clearly puzzled by this seeming change of topic. "Yes, I remember. She was... killed."

"Executed," Servalan corrected. "And Vaylan had the event broadcast on an open channel. Audacious, if nothing else. He's never hidden his base. Until now, it's been too well-defended -- or as I'm sure my predecessor would have claimed, too insignificant -- to deal with. But I will deal with it. Irrevocably." She nodded to Larn, and at once the viewscreen came to life with the silent image of what looked like a cryo unit. Arnak cast her a questioning look.

"It is an atmospheric test chamber on Sekros," Servalan explained. "Vaylan uses it, quite effectively, to eliminate his more troublesome adversaries."

While Arnak looked on, two rebels secured a struggling Ril Mergen to an upright support inside the chamber. When they had departed, sealing the transparent airlock behind them, three circular vents opened in the ceiling of the small room, allowing Sekros' poisonous atmosphere to penetrate the dome.

Servalan touched a control, noting the disappointment on Arnak's face when the screen image faded.

"It's a long and rather tedious process." She loathed the bloodthirsty look that had begun to gleam in the Commissioner's eyes almost as much as she loathed the Commissioner. Not that she was squeamish, by any means. It was simply that Arnak's morbid curiosity bordered so closely on the psychopathic. He enjoyed death. To Servalan, it was nothing more than a necessary expediency.

"Death is not instantaneous," she told him. "More akin to an extremely slow process of suffocation. The victim will lose consciousness in approximately one hour's time. Expiration follows within an additional hour. This next portion of the tape," she touched another control, "is one hour into the process."

Arnak leaned forward, teeth trapping his lower lip as he ogled the monitor. It showed him a figure in environmental gear entering the airlock, a sealed container in its gloved hand. Mergen was slumped against the support that bound her. The figure forced her head back, unsealed the container and poured its liquid contents ungracefully down her throat.

Servalan stopped the tape again. Arnak shot her a frustrated look. "And what was that?" His inquiry was laced with strained patience.

"Vaylan's downfall," she answered cryptically, revelling in Arnak's consternation. "It's a stimulant, administered to each of his victims to bring them back to consciousness. Vaylan prefers that his enemies be 'present' to witness their own ends."

Arnak's patience had worn thin. "What's all this got to do with Kerr Avon then?" He put his wine glass down noisily.

Servalan saw Larn's eyes wander fleetingly to Arnak at the mention of the name. Had there been a hint of recognition there? It was possible, of course, that he had heard the name since his modification. Still...

She tore her gaze from the grey-clad menial to answer Arnak's question. "Everything," she said, and her own wine glass thumped to the table, pent-up anger releasing through the motion and further punctuated by her words. "Avon's death is my right. And no one, Arnak... no one is going to take that away from me."

His name was not Larn.

He'd known that for a certainty ever since the first clear day of his memory, when he'd awakened in a lab very much like this one, to begin the indoctrination. Despite the conditioning, or perhaps because of it, he knew there had been a before, another time and another name, though he hadn't recalled it until she'd supplied it for him four days ago. 'Restal' seemed... well... right somehow, if incomplete. No matter. The rest would come. He knew that for a certainty too, even if he couldn't quite fathom why he knew.

There had been other names, dropped into her conversations with the Commissioner. Avon, Blake, Mellanby. He was sure they were... had been... important to him once. Finding out how would require methods a bit more dangerous than he'd employed thus far. But that was why he'd waited until the final day of the flight.

For four days he had slavishly carried out the conditioning's demands, obeying her orders, her incessant, imperious orders, without question. She'd hovered beside him in the lab for hours on end, with that bloated og-weasel Arnak at her elbow, watching the testing procedures her 'menial' had been taught to conduct until she was at long last satisfied with the results. Penthalamide and cantathol. As a poison it would be efficient, if unsubtle, but the initial mixture was volatile. He'd been thankful for the filter mask he wore when the combination of chemicals had produced a brief-but-lethal trace of sickly ochre-colored gas. Madame President hadn't noticed. Intent on the computer's instant analysis of the new-formed substance, she had been commenting enthusiastically to Arnak about the potential for a swift and efficient 'kill.' The miniature gas cloud had dissipated promptly, and Larn had found no need to mention it. It was a pity though, he thought darkly, that she had been standing so far away.

The worst part had come when she'd ordered the poison tested on a living subject. One of the menials, a dull-eyed, greying woman he had never really noticed, had been brought to the lab already unconscious, and unnecessarily strapped into a chair beside the table where the vials of Servalan's concoction were arrayed. The stuff was muddy amber, clouded and brooding like the pit of his stomach as he watched Madame President administer the dosage herself, pouring one of the vials into the unwitting woman's mouth as the figure on the vistape had done to Ril Mergen. The results were both immediate and sickening. He doubted she'd noticed him turn away -- she and Arnak were both far too captivated with the death throes produced by their 'test.'

"Excellent," her mink-soft voice had observed when the horrible choking sounds had finally faded. "A trifle ostentatious, perhaps, but at least Vaylan will know his 'stimulant' has gone badly amiss -- before he dies as well."

There was supposed to be an irony, or so she said, in the fact that Larn would be outfitted with an environmental suit, as on the tape, and made to administer the lethal dosage to Vaylan's latest victim. She'd positively gloated at the prospect. That smile had made him want more than anything to put two hands around her neck and push her into that now-vacant chair, to force the rancid stuff through her blood-red lips and watch her writhe as the menial had done. But even if he could have garnered the courage, there was Arnak, always there, and the two burly modifieds who guarded the door.

Suppressing the fantasy, he'd turned instead to stare at the jumble of discarded drug ampules on the counter top, substances rejected during the day's testing. One label -- hetrazine -- sparked a memory, and a possibility. What was it she'd said about that one? Not strong enough. It only feigned death, except in very heavy concentrations. He had expertly palmed the little bottle and slipped it into a pocket of his grey lab coat. He wasn't keen on experiencing the probable symptoms, but it might be one means of escaping the grisly task she had in store for him. If only he could work out how to avoid getting spaced afterward, along with the genuine corpses she was accumulating.

Not having resolved that dilemma as yet, he'd decided that answering the questions about 'before' would have to take momentary priority. The ship would be docking in a few hours, her battle fleet having fallen back to hide beyond Algan's asteroid belt until the crucial moment. He had very little time, but instinct told him it would be enough.

What his conscious memory failed to grasp, it seemed his fingers remembered very well. The door to her private cabin yielded effortlessly to his improvised tools; the wall safe indiscreetly hidden behind the portrait of Her Magnificence proved no more challenging.

The musk-and-opium scent of her perfumes lingered in the shadow-lined room, an intimidation he fought to ignore as he rifled the contents of the safe. A few thousand in credit notes, papers, a set of gold-inlaid sapphire earrings, more papers. Half the items found a way into his pockets; the papers he left behind. Something else sat far to the back of the rectangular safe. A box. He lifted it out, drew back the sliding lid and found -- vistapes. A solid row of discs that included the one he'd screened for Arnak on the first day out. It was labelled MERGENS in the same bold typeface that identified the others. Most of the names meant nothing to him. But as he ran a finger over the perfectly-uniform labels, reading each in turn, he paused to pluck an occasional tape out of its slot. AVON, BLAKE, MELLANBY, ORAC, RESTAL, SOOLIN and finally TARRANT, though some impulse he didn't understand had nearly made him put the last one back. With the discs safely ensconced in various pockets, he stole out of the cabin, locking the door firmly after him. She wouldn't likely discover the theft until well into tomorrow, and by then he hoped to be somewhere very far away -- with all of his questions answered.

"Larn."

He started guiltily, quelling the reaction only as he realized that her voice had come over the ship's intercom.

"Report to Deck B for outfitting," the voice said in her most strident, authoritarian tones. "Immediately."

He paled. It couldn't be time already, could it? Not so soon!

"Larn," the voice echoed over the ship-wide system. "You will respond."

Starting again, he scrambled for the nearest intercom switch, and adopting his best servile attitude, said, "Yes, Ma'am. At once, Ma'am."

'Immediately' meant there would be no time to detour past his bunk in the menial's quarters. No time to don the grey modified coverall over his lab clothes. He patted the pockets nervously as he hurried down the corridor. Credit notes. Sapphire earrings. Seven purloined vistapes and a stolen vial of hetrazine that he couldn't see any way now of using. Perhaps he could stash some of it on the way. The environmental suit would hide the rest, but...

If for any reason they decided to search him, he was a dead man.

The cell on Sekros was even more Spartan than its equivalent aboard Mirage had been. Avon sat curled in one grey corner of the cubicle. Long hours of tedium had turned once-fiery eyes to dusky smoke, anger to apathy, foreboding to impatience that Vaylan should get on with it. Anything to counteract this endless nothing.

Only the surveillance camera, well out of reach, broke the monotony of the drab metal walls. Nothing but the dim yellow light panel above and the sanitary unit set into the floor interrupted the other two planes of the box that had imprisoned him for four days. He knew exactly how long it had been. Vaylan had quite pointedly left him his chrono, though the rest of his clothes had been taken, replaced by an ill-fitting white tunic. Unusual color for prison garb. Perhaps Vaylan was attempting to make some obscure point? Or was it that the execution of Blake's murderer was to be in kind, and the white would satisfy Vaylan's rather sanguinary brand of sadism?

No one had bothered to bring him food or water. No one had come near the cell at all, in fact, and no sound had penetrated the seamless door from outside. Even Blake's voice had been stilled since that first day aboard Mirage.

Avon had fought the encroaching boredom and depression by trying to mentally replicate circuitry diagrams, star charts, computer programs. They were a way to cheat Vaylan of the mindset he knew this treatment was designed to create. But time, dehydration and the resultant weakness were all beginning to take their exacted toll. He could no longer concentrate on the equations; even simple logarithms obdurately refused to preoccupy him anymore. And somewhere over the course of the past wearisome day, he had finally admitted to himself the simple, unequivocal reason why.

He was afraid.

After all the years spent skirting death, at times even wishing for it; after Cygnus Alpha and Star One and Gauda Prime, Servalan, Travis, Anna and... and Blake... Kerr Avon was afraid to die.

He'd nearly laughed out loud at the realization. His life, at the end, had been riddled with ironies. Not very long ago he'd come quite close to suicide. And now...

He pressed himself to the uncaring wall and fought away an imminent shudder. He wouldn't give Vaylan the satisfaction, damn him. Was the heir to Blake's revolution already broadcasting this cheerful scene to the unwashed masses? Celebrating every moment of the long-overdue downfall of Roj Blake's killer? Perversely, Avon found he really didn't care. But he wondered, more perversely still, just how Vaylan planned to execute him.

Death, for all that he had courted it once, remained an unknown quantity, an unresolvable equation. Continuation... or finality? Not even Blake's 'ghost' had been able to answer that age-old conundrum. Naturally. Tight-lipped, Avon allowed himself a barely-perceptible smile. Because Blake was a fantasy. The spectre of one madman conjured by another.

A sudden noise echoed in the barren room. Avon's head came up. The solid door of the cell had vibrated, shuddering as its locking mechanism released. It rumbled loudly aside and disappeared into the wall, revealing a brightly-lit corridor beyond. Two figures in soiled khaki fatigues moved promptly into the square of light, one female, one male. The latter pointed an archaic projectile rifle at him and barked a single, guttural syllable.

"Up."

The gun jerked in tandem with the word, then swept sideways to indicate passage through the door.

Surprising how difficult complying with a simple demand could be. He found he was forced to rely on the wall for support until sure that his feet would hold him. Determined to conceal the weakness, he shot the camera a defiant glare before walking, with all the arrogance he could manage, out of the cell.

They stopped him three feet outside the door and pushed him roughly, face first, to the wall, where the man held him pinned while the woman manacled his hands, more tightly than necessary, behind him. Neither escort uttered a sound as he was summarily herded through a blurred maze of lifts and corridors that opened at last onto the cavernous structure of a factory complex.

He was marched past operating turbines, up a corrugated metal stair and along a broad catwalk to the door of still another lift, this one flanked by rows of observation windows, desks, and banks of electronic equipment. Avon recognized part of the apparatus as belonging to a life support system: respiration meter, cardio-pulmonary monitor. The rest appeared broadcast related. Remote camera and sound pick-ups, zoom controls and the like.

A door behind the desks disgorged three dour-faced technicians followed closely by Par Vaylan, wearing his triumph like a badge. Pale blond hair, as impeccably groomed as the rest of his outfit, caught the harsh light and almost alluded an aura, an image the man undoubtedly perpetuated. Avon regarded him with cultivated disinterest, pleased to see the too-handsome face cloud with irritation in response. The look vanished quickly, replaced by a confident leer.

"Pretentious and smug to the end, are we?" Then perhaps to benefit the listeners, he added in still more pompous tones, "What a pity Blake is beyond seeing his murder avenged. I imagine he would have taken pride in these proceedings. Wholeheartedly."

Avon contrived to look as fierce as his weakened condition and four days' growth of beard would allow. "It is an even greater pity," he rasped, "that you never chanced to meet. His tiresome morals to the contrary, Blake might just cheerfully have killed you."

Vaylan's leer broke into a derisive laugh that was both forced and decidedly artificial. With a curt gesture to the armed guards, he came around the consoles as Avon was prodded toward the lift. The doors swept back to reveal an open scaffold, suspended above a vast field-length hangar with a curving outer wall and overhead. The edge of the dome. A deep throbbing whine from the nearby turbines was the only sound. Yet belatedly, as the four of them stepped onto the lift, Avon became aware that faces lined the walls, catwalks and railings at every juncture. The floor of the hangar was covered with people as well. Hundreds of faces, perhaps thousands, silent and seemingly uneasy, as though none of them quite wished to be here... or had he imagined that? It was hardly the bloodthirsty arena full of cheering rabble he'd envisioned. Still...

With a jolt, the lift groaned and began its descent to the crowded floor.

Stolid and silent as the green-clad trees they resembled, the human forest parted in front of them and closed in again behind. They neither conversed nor jostled one another as crowds were normally wont to do, yet there was a dark, unspoken menace in their eyes and in their manner. Avon felt uncomfortably like a virus surrounded by rallying antibodies. He wondered if Vaylan's plan included simply giving him over to these... canaille. But then the last of the mass had parted to reveal the glassine test chamber, which he had somehow failed to notice from the lift, and his uncommunicative guards were compelling him through an airlock to the back wall of the unit proper. His bonds were unlocked, only to be resecured to a riveted steel bar traversing the wall above his head.

The woman in Vaylan's party stepped back, slung the rifle casually over her shoulder by its improvised strap, and muttered, "Treg says they die slower in the center of the room. Something to do with dissipation. I can still have the post set up if you want it."

"No," Vaylan snapped, and gazed up at the surveillance equipment set into the wall above the door. "The cameras have a better angle there. Leave it."

They departed, closing the airlock tightly behind them, and wended their way back through the crowd toward the lift. Avon watched it ascend to the observation level once again, where it remained after its passengers had disembarked. Then he studied the rows of faces, watching, waiting, and reflected bitterly that Blake would not have taken any pride in this uninspired progeny at all, even if it was this, and not Blake's own legacy, that had come nearest to finally unseating the Federation.

Ironies yet again.

It was a long time before the circular vents in the dome wall above him shifted gratingly open, and the air began to change...

The environmental suit made his skin crawl. Helmet tucked under one arm, he waited at the observation station, unwilling to join the others in their ghoulish vigil at the windows. One look had already been enough to repel him, not only due to the grim scenario they watched, but also because the figure in the execution chamber was so painfully familiar.

He hadn't yet seen the vistapes, but he was beginning to put faces to the names on them, beginning to remember things... This one and the name 'Avon' went together, as assuredly as he and 'Restal' did. And there were faces for the others now, too. All but Orac. Orac had been, well, something else again. He'd put it all together, in time.

A small stir and murmur at the windows accompanied a beeping alarm from the nearby medical equipment. Eyes began turning on him then, intense and expectant. He swallowed, fidgeting with the helmet clasps until the toothy blond one -- Vaylan -- jerked a thumb at him and said, "Suit up and get down there."

Vila. Suit up and get down there, Vila, that's what he should have said. Everyone had always tacked his name onto the end of an order, as though there were ever any doubt just who was expected to obey the demand.

"Move!" Vaylan was pressing the stimulant container into his gloved hand and shoving him toward the waiting lift. Vila muttered vague apologies, fumbled the helmet on and clumsily slapped at the door control. Vaylan came with him onto the platform, his gaze firmly locked all the while on the now-unconscious man in the chamber below.

Avon...

Pangs of warring grief and guilt made Vila look away. Some re-emerging part of him wanted with growing enmity not to care that it was Avon dying down there. Avon had tried to kill him once. He remembered a cramped shuttle locker, thinning air, warm tears, a terror born of both hurt and betrayal. And a voice, softly calling his name.

The scaffold lurched, severing the memory as he was pitched abruptly off balance. He stumbled into Vaylan, obliged to grab hold of the man for support. Angry hands grabbed him in return, righted him, pushed his own grip away after several moments of awkward grappling. It had been just long enough...

Vila mouthed 'sorry' through the face plate, but Vaylan gave the gesture no acknowledgment. He seemed more interested now in the oddly quiescent mob crowding the massive service hangar. Strange lot, Vila reflected. They all looked like first offenders on day one in the prison yard. His shrug concealed a shiver of revulsion. He'd seen so-called captive audiences before, but this...

Closing his eyes as the lift descended, he wondered just how far through the press of bodies he could travel blind before he'd be forced to look again. There were too many faces, all of them watching him and waiting. He didn't like being watched. Especially not at times like this.

His right hand clenched the stimulant vial while the left strayed to the zippered pouch at his belt that held Servalan's formula, among other things.

Forging through the human sea on the hangar floor frayed his already-fragile nerves still further. He'd never liked crowds, not even when he'd worked them for pocket change. And this one was so... so quiet. His helmet was equipped with sound pick-ups, but the only noise came from his own breathing and the throbbing turbine engines powering the complex. He'd begun sweating inside the suit despite the air circulator, and the added moisture made him fidget even more.

Oh, to get this over with!

He switched the vials as Vaylan was opening the airlock. They were similar in shape, and his glove covered most of it anyway. Enough, he hoped, that Madame President, watching the broadcast transmission, would not be able to see that the bottle contained hetrazine and not her poisonous concoction at all.

"Five minutes," Vaylan was saying to him. "I'll signal you from the booth when we're ready."

Vila nodded, the helmet bobbing once in unison. He had just noticed something of interest inside the chamber. Another airlock. There was another airlock -- leading outside? Yes of course. It was an environmental test chamber, wasn't it? Vila looked away, hoping Vaylan hadn't noticed him notice. He was relieved when the blond man sealed the outer door and headed back to his broadcasting aerie. For a moment, he'd feared that Vaylan would stand outside and watch his every move at close hand. The cameras would be doing that anyway, but there were ways to conceal things from cameras.

Vila waited, casting furtive glances through the inner hatch at the figure hanging limp from the secured chains. Avon's color was ghastly -- the too-deep sunburned red brought about by methane poisoning, lips a contrasting shade of sickly blue. If he was already dead...?

The thought evoked an unwelcome echo. If I've broken my back hauling a corpse about, Tarrant, I'll never forgive you.

He might never forgive Avon, either.

Vaylan's hand signal came from one of the high observation ports beside the returned lift. Vila fumbled the inner hatch open, appalled to find that his hands were shaking.

Just a little longer, he thought fiercely. Hold yourself together just a little longer!

What would Vaylan do when his monitors registered his prisoner's premature 'expiration?' Whatever it was, Vila doubted it would be fast enough. Servalan's fleet was poised to attack the moment she saw Avon 'die.'

Another thought stopped his hand from uncapping the hetrazine. What if the assault were to rupture the dome? Or collapse it altogether? Oh, but she wouldn't risk that, would she? Orac was here somewhere. And she would want Orac. So would Avon, for that matter, but he couldn't stop to concern himself with that just now. One crisis at a time was more than enough, thank you very much.

His own breath roaring like a ship launch in his ears, Vila snapped the vial open and gently lifted Avon's head with one gloved hand.

The coughing fit induced by the drug was mercifully brief. The moment it had subsided, klaxon alarms began wailing in the outer complex. The subdued crowd erupted at once into panic-stricken chaos, screams punctuated by gunshots as Servalan's infiltration force opened fire. Speakers above the test chamber door brought the massacre inside; the graphic and eloquent voice of Federation 'efficiency.'

Vila purposely turned his back to the scene and cut the sound pick-up on the suit. He fished his lock pick from the items in the pouch and swiftly released the manacles on Avon's wrists. Praying that Madame President's attentions were now elsewhere, he opened the primary door to the outer airlock, lifted Avon in a fireman's carry, and headed for what he dearly hoped would be safety.

Sekros was an ugly, featureless world. Small wonder the Federation had shown little interest in it before Vaylan had set up shop here. Vila regarded the flat grey horizon only briefly as he bore his burden toward the nearest docking bay. Hundreds of ships lined the dome's forty-mile perimeter, all of them attached to transparent transit tubes like so many oversized suckling pigs. He could see figures running down some of the tube corridors. There were others waiting for them, and the deadly flash of more gunfire. Madame President's infiltration program had obviously been very thorough. With any luck, however, they wouldn't be expecting anyone to board from outside the tubing. What he'd have to face once he got the ship spaceborne was another matter -- one he preferred not to consider just yet.

The closest ship was a class J planet-hopper, small, fast and well-armed. Beyond it sat Vaylan's cruiser, Mirage. Servalan had left special orders that it was to be taken intact, and to that end a battle royale was raging in its transit corridor. Vila recognized one of the figures trading shots with the Federation troops as Vaylan, and he was carrying something -- something bulky enclosed in a plain metal casing.

Orac!

Vaylan's forces were losing ground, being driven back along the passageway. Servalan's troops followed their retreat with relentless precision until the lot of them had vanished back into the dome complex. The rebels attempting to reach the planet-hopper had been driven back as well, and its corridor was empty. Vila took a deep breath and bore on toward the ship's exposed starboard hatch.

"Avon," he muttered, "remind me to remind you to go on a diet, would you?" His voice was overloud and breathy inside the helmet. They were still a good hundred meters from the docking scaffold, and something was happening again in the planet-hopper's corridor. Vila saw more gunflash reflecting off the plasti-steel girdering. A man running toward the ship pitched forward and fell. More figures surged into the tube behind him, one of them carrying the bulky metal box.

"Vaylan," Vila breathed, and started hurrying as fast as his burden and the sandy grey terrain would allow. Vaylan had lost one advantage in Mirage's corridor only to gain another -- access to the planet-hopper. And if he got to it before Vila could...

Something tripped him just within reach of the scaffolding, and with a cry he sprawled headlong on top of Avon, whose inert form had already catapulted over his head. The fall in all probability saved both of them. Booster engines roared to life with twin jets of backwash that would have scalded anyone on the platform. Quaking, Vila huddled over Avon and prayed to an unknown deity that the launch plating would absorb the worst of the blast. He had to cut the helmet's sound pick-up again as the roar reached a deafening crescendo. Then the ship was gone, and Vaylan and Orac with it.

Vila got to his knees, squinting through the distorting face plate at the platforms stretching beyond this one. There were other ships launching, many from the other side of the dome. But Mirage still waited at the end of her deserted tube, unboarded. Vila stared at it with the echo of Servalan's orders ringing in his ears.

Take it intact, she had said. Did that mean they wouldn't be allowed to fire on Mirage, even if she were escaping the ambush?

Vila grasped his companion's arm and began to pull the dead weight back onto his shoulders. "Come on, Avon," he said. "We're getting out of here."

The world came back into being with a sharp intake of air -- fresh air -- and a pursuant coughing spasm. Avon willed his eyes to open, confused when the not-quite-focused image told him he lay inside a medi-capsule. The soft, distant thrum of engines said he was also back aboard ship -- Mirage, if his memory of its drive-sounds served correctly. No sense to that, though. Par Vaylan's idea of a morbid joke, perhaps? If so, it was not particularly funny.

His throat hurt. Four days of deprivation would have brought him near terminal dehydration, and though the capsule had undoubtedly compensated, its life-saving functions failed to preclude a dry mouth and a knotted stomach.

He felt for and located the release mechanism, though the computers ignored the signal until diagnostic checks confirmed independent respiration. Then, with a loud hum, the fogged cover of the capsule lifted away to reveal the nondescript ceiling of Mirage's medical unit. Of what he presumed to be Mirage's medical unit. None of this made any sense yet.

His first effort to sit up prompted a blinding headache and renewed coughing, closely followed by the resolution that it might be more prudent to rest just a bit longer. He heard the door open, and someone with soft, furtive footsteps came to stand over the capsule. Cheerful and droll, a voice out of the past said, "Welcome back."

Avon opened his eyes again, expecting the voice to be a trick, or at the least, simple coincidence, someone with similar inflections. It was neither.

"Vila," he said dully to the ceiling. Then, with more conviction, "Where the hell did you come from?"

The thief made a wry face before he answered, "Not a bad name for it, in point of fact. And I'm glad to see you too, by the way. No bother, you know. You can always thank me later, when you feel better. There's no hurry."

Avon didn't even try to assimilate all of that. "Vaylan is..." he started to say, but his tongue felt oddly thick and balked at continuing.

"Gone," Vila supplied unhelpfully. "But you can thank him for at least one thing. Most of Servalan's guns went after him and his. We sort of slipped through the cracks while they were shooting at each other. They had orders not to damage Mirage anyway. But last I saw, the Federation were making short work of Vaylan's fleet. He got away I think. Pity. I didn't like him very much."

Headache notwithstanding, Avon pushed himself upright, struggling in vain to make sense of Vila's verbal deluge. "Mirage..." he said fuzzily. "Orac was aboard."

Vila shook his head. "Vaylan took him. And I wasn't quite up to rescuing both of you. Sorry." His hand dug into a pocket of the grey lab coat he wore. "Something else you can worry about later, is Orac. Besides..." The pocket gave birth to a small plastic rectangle with a black button activator in its center. "...he won't be doing much without this anyhow, will he?" Vila tossed the activator once, jauntily. "Well I didn' know he had it when I picked his pocket, but in between the credits and the computer keys and the access cards, there it was."

Avon came closer to genuine laughter in that moment than he had in a very long while. But when he accepted Orac's key from Vila a more sobering thought overtook the levity.

"You mentioned Servalan."

"Oh, yes. She was there." Something cold and unpleasant had surfaced in Vila's voice. It was a tone Avon had never heard him use. Bitterness? Revenge? Neither had ever been a part of Vila's emotional make-up before. He wondered what could possibly have changed that.

"What is it, Vila?"

"Nothing, really," was the evasive reply. The voice was distant, brooding, altogether unlike the Vila he remembered. "It's just that... I may just have done what none of you would do before. And now I'm not sure whether I'm glad about it or..." He trailed off, shuddering. "I don't think I want to talk about it just now."

Surrendering to the headache, Avon gave up trying to decipher the thief's answers and sank back onto the pillow. He pressed Orac's key into Vila's hand once more.

"Keep that in a safe place," he said tiredly. Vila dropped it back into a pocket with a wordless nod, and congruent with the action, his features began to grow oddly indistinct. Avon was suddenly very, very tired...

Commissioner Arnak relaxed in the upholstered lab chair and through slitted eyelids, watched Servalan pace the floor. The President's ship had left Sekros an hour ago, secure in the knowledge that 'mopping up' operations were proceeding apace. There had been no word as yet on whether the bodies of Vaylan, Avon or Restal had been found among the rubble. But she seemed confident that word would be forthcoming.

Arnak, however, harbored no such certainty. While Servalan's attention had turned to directing her battle fleet, he had seen Restal carry Avon's body out the airlock. Intriguing, this curious devotion to a corpse. But since he doubted Restal ranked necrophilia among his numerous other criminal pursuits, there had to be a reason. In due time, he intended to find out precisely what it was. At the moment, however, there was the more expedient matter of Madame President to placate. And a problem: how to bask in at least the corona of her successful kill without losing his head in the bargain. Surely he could find a way to claim some credit. He'd been highly instrumental in the drug research testing, after all.

"Something wasn't right." The President lifted a capped vial of the selected toxin from the lab counter, turning it gracefully over in her manicured talons and studying the muddy fluid inside. "The reaction wasn't the same."

Arnak flexed the fingers that were folded across his expanse of stomach. "What difference does it make? He was dead -- you saw the monitors for yourself. Direct computer links are incapable of lying." Remembering himself, he sat up in the chair and added belatedly, "Madame."

She glared at him a moment. Then the painted face metamorphosed into a dazzlingly artificial smile. "You're right," she said. "We should be celebrating. Avon is dead, and yet another arm of the resistance has been successfully eliminated." She put the vial down, moved instead to take up the decanter of Corinithi wine. "If nothing else, it is at least worthy of a toast, don't you think?"

Arnak smiled as she passed the filled glass across to him. "Oh, I can assure you Madame President, it will be worth a great deal more than that, to the High Council."

She paused, lip of the decanter hovering over her own glass. "How very lovely," she opined in velvet tones. "You will, I trust, see to it that details of my operation reach the proper ears?"

"Oh yes, Madame President. I'll make quite certain."

"Good." On her lips, the single word was a feline polysyllable, rife with any number of meanings other than its own. Arnak had no special desire to fathom any of them. Better to follow, for now. Bide his time.

He'd lifted his glass to meet hers when she suddenly drew her hand back to peer at the wine with renewed interest of another sort.

"What is it?" Arnak stared into his own wine. It looked... cloudier... than he remembered. Starting, he put it down on the table. Surely something so patently obvious would have been beneath Restal's notice? To simply poison the wine... Any idiot would have known she would suspect!

Arnak watched her hold the decanter up to the light and swirl it, sediment swimming at the base of the finely-cut crystal. No... Not simple poison. Restal wasn't at all as dull-witted as Madame President supposed him to be; he would have done something more subtle, surely. Arnak remembered the look in those eyes -- an intelligence that neither 'programming' nor deliberate charade could ever entirely conceal.

Now if he had been Restal...

The Commissioner frowned as Servalan carried the decanter to the lab sink and stood for a moment, still gazing into the depths of the cloudy red liquid. If he had been Restal... He recalled the initial mixing of the drugs; the chemical reaction Servalan had been too distracted to notice, and which he had dismissed as insignificant, at the time. But how to use that? A longshot at best, to second-guess a mind like hers. But if you counted on the first, the obvious response...

"I knew it went wrong," she said with the decanter still poised above the sink. "Whatever he gave Avon was not cantathol and penthalamide. He was saving that for me."

Deliberately, Arnak played the ignorant. "Eh?" he asked stupidly.

"The formula," she snapped, "is in here."

With that, she upended the decanter, sending a cascade of red toward the drain. Arnak watched the flow from a safe distance, not at all surprised when a cloud of acrid yellow gas rose up out of something quite cleverly concealed in the drain pipe; rose and engulfed Madame President before she could step out of the way.

Crystal shattered against metal. Another, heavier sound, came close behind it.

Arnak rubbed his hands together thoughtfully as he regarded his untouched glass.

"Half a formula, actually," he said, and smiled.