Exiles

He couldn't move out of the way in time.

Without warning, sand and shale broke free from the unsupported sides of the well and poured over him in a rapid avalanche of suffocating grit. Tarrant cried out, but the shout was quickly strangled by a mouthful of cloying dust. He tumbled away from the smothering downpour, felt his back strike the opposing wall, and immediately, a new shower of dirt began falling from above him. In moments, he would be buried beneath it.

Abruptly, the roar of the cave-in abated, diminished now to the soft trickle of still-falling silt, and there were voices overhead; shouts, running footsteps, the muffled clank of something metal.

"Take the chain. Come on, damn ye, get yer hands up and take hold!"

The voice was anything by friendly, but Tarrant, amazed that he could still hear at all, was thankful it was there. He moved one arm experimentally, found it mobile, and tested the other. Meeting with surprisingly little resistance, he broke both hands free of the soil and brought them to his face to claw at the dry earth until he could breathe again -- almost. He choked on the first raw intake of dust-filled air, coughing until the spasms brought tears to his eyes. That, at least, enabled him to open them again. The dirtfall had stopped just shy of his chin; he'd been leaning to his left side with his face down, so the mound had at first seemed to cover him. The spade he'd been using to try and coax water from the dry ground was well-buried now; the rope ladder had collapsed along with the wall.

Something rattled behind him. The chain. He could see it, if he turned his head, but to reach it...

He tried to twist his body in that direction, only to find that he couldn't. He stretched his right arm back as far as it would go, and touched nothing but more sand. Someone above must have been able to see him -- he couldn't look up from this position -- but the chain moved, swinging around in front of him. Tarrant caught it on the third pass, struggled to get the crude loop around him, beneath his arms. When the make-shift harness was secure, he tried to call out, choked, and gave the chain two hardy tugs instead.

Someone above began hauling on the chain.

He was still coughing when, some time later, they dragged him over the lip of the hole, and hands worked to free the chain, to carry him none-too-gently to the nearest boulder and sit him down against it. The other voices went away then, leaving only one.

"What in damnation d'ye think ye were doin', Tarrant? Cameron told ye three weeks ago that pit weren't goin' t' yield nothin' but sand. Bloody idiot."

Still fighting for breath, Tarrant stifled a curse at the belated recognition of his rescuer. Out of eighty men on this hell-world, Durk would have to be the one to pull him free. He blinked in the failing sunlight, taking in the man's beard-stubbled, too-red face, thinning hair above the filthy collar of the prison coverall. Something else reflected in the small, hard eyes made Tarrant push away, coming to his feet against the supporting boulder.

"We have to find water." The words came out in a hoarse, rasping croak. "One way or another."

Durk's grimy hand reached out to clutch his shoulder. Tarrant couldn't hide the flinch. "Ye don't have t' play hero, pretty boy." The larger man's leer revealed decayed and missing teeth. "Federation supply ships'll be here any day now. You'll see."

From somewhere, the pilot summoned strength to push the hand off and walk around him. "I shouldn't stake my life on that if I were you."

Durk started after him, intent clear in the force of his stride. As the man outweighed him by at least forty pounds and had been a decorated combat officer before his conviction, Tarrant had little doubt who would win the contest. All the same, he had no intention of granting Durk a passive victory.

The hand grasped his sleeve again, spun him around. "Not very appreciative, are ye, pretty boy? I just saved yer--"

"You got some problem, Durk?"

The new voice belonged to Kendall -- taller, heavier, friendlier Kendall. Tarrant suppressed an audible sigh of relief at the sight of him. Durk's reaction was notably less pleased.

"Let go of him." Kendall's voice was a deep, deceptively quiet rumble.

"What's it t'ye then?" Durk's gnarled hand released its grip on Tarrant's begrimed prison tunic, and the leer turned on Kendall instead. "What're you anyway, his bloody father?"

Kendall's face went dark at that, anger flashing like moonlight on water in his eyes. Tarrant didn't understand -- had never understood him. For the two years he had been here, cellmates with Kendall from the beginning, the older man had somehow always managed to be there when Tarrant needed him most, ready to run 'interference,' as it were, when Durk and others before him had tried to... persuade... the youngest member of Dauban's prison colony. Tarrant had known about so-called 'protectors,' but his understanding of the obligations involved had obviously differed from Kendall's, who had never asked anything of his younger cellmate at all.

"You want me to kill you, Durk?" Kendall threatened in gentle tones. "I haven't broken anyone's neck for a good long while. I could do with the practice."

As ignorant now of Kendall's motives as he had always been, Tarrant extricated himself from between the two larger men and doggedly continued on his way toward the mud-adobe complex stretching below in the red waning sun.

He heard Durk's sneering comment to Kendall as he walked away.

"Don't never share him, do ye? Selfish bastard."

Despite the sweat, dust and heat, Tarrant felt chilled. He wanted nothing now but to seek the relative cool and quiet of his cell; to shut out the sun-parched horror that was Dauban for one more night.

He resisted an urge to search the sky as he approached the compound's southern door, guarded solemnly on either side by twin impassive mutoids. Dauban's heavens were undoubtedly the same shade of muddy grey and yellow they had always been, and there seemed little point anymore in watching the gauzy night sky for some sign of a ship. None was coming. For whatever long-lost bureaucratic reason, the Federation appeared to have forgotten her most far-flung prison colony; abandoned it to its own resources, of which there were pitifully few.

In fact, they were all but nonexistent.

They had to find water soon, somewhere, somehow. They had to. Because there would be no ship. Not from the Federation or from any other source. No reprieves. No daring, last-minute rescues. No Avon or Dayna or Vila.

The thought made Tarrant shudder as he walked on through the door. He knew he would never see them again.

He'd given up all hope of that long months ago.

The computer's monotone startled Vila out of his morose study of the vistapes. Avon had left the flight deck some time ago to investigate the ship's drive systems, leaving the thief alone with the unpleasant task of viewing the tapes he had recently stolen from Servalan's private safe. Vila would have thought the computer tech would be more interested in learning the fates of the rest of Scorpio's crew, but considering what the first few tapes had contained...

#Mirage is now on automatic heading,# the machine announced, its feminine voice sounding thoroughly bored.

Vila looked up at the flight computer's perspex housing, its face panel aglow with oscillating blue lights. It was the first time the vocal circuits had been activated; Avon must have found more to do down there than simply check the main drives.

Grimly, he turned back to the console and ejected the tape marked SOOLIN from the viewer in front of him. He had to admit that finding the tapes aboard Servalan's ship had given him cause to hope; a reason to think the official version of his former colleagues' fates might not be true after all. It certainly hadn't been true of him. And Avon... Avon was the only one who hadn't been officially listed as "deceased." Though now, thanks to Par Vaylan's efforts, he probably would be. The neophyte rebel leader had tried to execute Avon, and in the meleé ensuing from Servalan's attack on his base, had escaped and taken Orac with him. Vila had made away with both Avon and Vaylan's ship, a feat he considered none too small in itself. And Servalan...

With a bitterness that would have been impossible for him not very long ago, Vila hoped that the newly reinstated President could now be called the late President. After two years of subjection to the mental tortures of her psycho-strategists, after imprisonment aboard her ship as a menial, and after nearly being forced to administer the coup de grâce to Avon's execution, he had hated her enough to leave something behind in the lab of her cruiseship; something he had alternately lauded and loathed. But he still hoped that it had killed her...

The stolen tapes clacked together in his hands, stark labels proclaiming the names of their subjects. The three he had viewed had ended, sickeningly, with Federation autopsy reports on Blake, Dayna and Soolin. The tapes marked AVON and RESTAL he set aside, as well as ORAC's. There would be time to look at those later; he already knew their whereabouts anyway. That left only one.

He was still intent on that last tape when Avon returned, striding without comment to the computer housing to check readings on the ship's new heading. Facing the panel, he muttered a question that Vila didn't quite catch.

"What was that?"

Something in Avon's voice was faintly accusatory. "I said why have you changed course?"

"Me? I didn't change anything. I thought you changed it."

Suspicion narrowing his eyes, Avon studied the read-outs flickering across the blue-tinted plex. "It would have announced a course change..." he said.

"It did. I mean I thought you'd done it so I..." Vila stopped, uncomfortable with the familiar look of disgust in Avon's eyes. "Well all it said was 'Mirage is on automatic heading,' or something like that. If you didn't program it..."

"Then it's following a pre-arranged flight plan," Avon said tightly. "Straight to Vaylan, I don't doubt. Mirage -- specify destination of present course."

A moment's pause, then the flat voice responded, #Destination is the planet Dastram, Sector Four. ETA thirty hours, eighteen minutes.#

"Pre-arranged flight plan," Vila groaned. "That sounds familiar. Can you re-program it?"

"Possibly."

Why had that sounded as though Avon weren't at all sure he wanted to? Vila found himself distracted by Servalan's appearance on the vistape. Though the volume was reduced to a whisper, he could hear enough to discern that she was making a personal report of the incident on Virn. A very personal report.

"Dastram..." Avon was repeating thoughtfully. "Neutral planet in the Umbra system. Another of Vaylan's bases, perhaps?"

Vila's eyes widened. "Do we care?"

Avon had come to stand on the other side of Vila's console, hands spread on top of the polished metal casing. "Orac is with Vaylan," he said through closed teeth. "And Orac is mine."

Though he'd intended to object to that, Vila's attention was dragged back to the progressing vistape, where the grisly scene in Gauda Prime's operations center was unfolding yet again. It was the same overhead view the previous three tapes had shown him: Blake falling under Avon's triple barrage, the others going down one by one, beginning with Dayna.

Tarrant had been the last to fall... the last before Avon, anyhow. The tape had been edited to delete Avon's final debacle with the Federation troops, shifting scenes instead to a stark, antiseptic medical lab -- the same one in which he had seen the autopsies performed on previous tapes. But there was one notable difference this time. The life monitor over Tarrant's head was registering...

"Avon..." Vila called the computer tech's attention to the screen. "I think you ought to look at this."

"Pathology was never my field, Vila."

"No, I mean it. Look."

Avon moved stoically to Vila's side, peering at the screen through slitted eyelids. The vistape image promptly dissolved into a curt, computer-generated message that read:

SUBJECT: TARRANT, DEL. FED WARRANT #0579884. CAPTURED 20/40/49
PLANET: GAUDA PRIME. NO REWARD. PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT: KILLED
ATTEMPTING TO EVADE CAPTURE. CONFIDENTIAL DISPOSITION: LIFE
SENTENCE, 20/74/49: MILITARY PRISON COLONY, PLANET DAUBAN.

With that, the small screen went grey, leaving its two observers momentarily speechless.

"He's alive," Vila finally said to the blank screen. "Tarrant's still alive."

Avon said nothing at all, but turned back to Mirage's computer housing, lost in thought.

"Well didn't you see?" Vila prompted. "It says he's--"

Avon cut him off. "I can read, Vila."

"Well aren't we going to...?" The thief turned curious eyes on his companion, who was studying the blue plex panelling with renewed fascination. "We're... you're... not going to go after him?" The silence stretched on for so long that he wasn't certain the other man had heard him. "Avon?"

The voice that responded seemed distant...distracted. "There will be time enough... after we have caught up with Vaylan."

"Vaylan?" Vila echoed the name with unsheathed distaste. "You mean you're serious? You'd go after him before Tarrant?"

Again, he received no reply. Avon's slender hands traced the edge of a seam in the semi-transparent plex casing, stopped, pressed inward, and drew part of the panelling away to reveal the circuitry beneath. Vila popped the vistape from its slot before he got up to go to the computer expert's side and peer over his shoulder. "Well if you're not going to answer my question, you can at least tell me what the hell you're poking about with in there!"

The ire in the demand seemed to take Avon aback somewhat; the Vila of old would never have spoken to him that way. The tech drew back from the panel to fix the smaller man with an oddly bemused look. "Do you know why Servalan left orders that this ship was to be captured intact?" he asked.

The disgust in Vila's voice remained. "Do I care?"

"This is why." Avon indicated the open panel. To Vila, it looked like nothing but common computer circuitry; the only electronics he understood were those designed to lock or unlock doors.

"Servalan wants a tangle of wires and a lot of circuit boards? That's thrilling news, Avon. Why don't you get to the point? I seem to bore rather more easily these days than I used to."

Avon's eyes widened minutely at that, but he put down the removed panel and with one hand, indicated a spherical object perhaps six inches in diameter, embedded deep within the wiring. It glowed faintly, violet light suffusing rainbow colors surrounding it.

Vila squinted. "What is it?"

"If the diagrams I found below are accurate, it is a device Servalan would pay quite dearly to possess. The Federation have been trying to perfect one for decades."

"One what? It's not a teleport."

"No. It is an operational refractory shield."

"Wonderful. I know exactly what I knew before, which is nothing. Avon, will you stop playing games and explain this thing, and what it has to do with not going after Tarrant?"

Avon swung away so quickly that Vila had to step back to avoid being walked on. "Refractory shielding amounts to a virtually invincible ship," he said rapidly, words set to the rhythm of his feet as he paced. "It does precisely what the name implies; refracts sensor scans, of all varieties."

The meaning of that dawned on Vila along with a host of new possibilities. "You mean... it's invisible? Like the shield you built for Liberator?"

"Far more sophisticated than that" Avon stopped pacing to regard the computer again. "It can be programmed to appear as anything -- any asteroid, any ship -- or as nothing at all. And it is as effective on visual scan as it is on automatic sensors." Vila could hear rapt admiration in the computer tech's voice. "Invisibility, or illusion -- at the proverbial touch of a button."

The thief looked morosely at the pulsating orb inside the computer housing and murmured, "No wonder Servalan wanted it."

#Flight time remaining,# the computer announced primly, #twenty-nine hours, fifty-eight minutes.#

Avon shot it an indulgent-but-annoyed look. "Thank you," he said dully.

"Where did Vaylan get a ship like this?" Vila wondered aloud. "He couldn't have built it. He didn't have the brains for that."

Avon's half-smile concurred with that. "According to the plans," he said, "it is from the Tragal system. An experimental craft intended solely for defensive purposes."

"Defense against the Federation, I suppose."

"None other."

"Well I'm glad you've read the owner's manual." Vila reclaimed his chair in front of the now-blank viewer and idly ran a finger over the last two vistapes, the ones with his and Avon's names on them. "Vaylan must have stolen it."

Avon grinned, a full display of teeth that was even rarer these days than it had been aboard the Liberator. "I believe the accepted terminology is 'appropriated for the cause,' or words to that effect."

"Yeah, well, words to that effect are taking us right into Vaylan's lap. Are you gonna reprogram that thing or aren't you?"

Avon circled the primary console, settling into a chair three stations away from Vila. His gaze fell in turn on the computer, on the console in front of him and finally on his companion, who returned a disappointed frown.

"You're not." It wasn't a question.

"I have a certain curiosity to satisfy as to whether Vaylan ever learned to detect the supposedly undetectable."

"Eh?" Vila thought about that for a moment, then nodded. "He won't be able to see us coming."

Avon spread his hands in a gesture of uncertainty. "The ship was preprogrammed to head for Dastram. The question is, was Vaylan expecting it to have passengers -- other than himself?"

Vila scowled. "I still think we ought to go after Tarrant."

"There will be time for that when we have finished here."

"You don't know that! I've heard about Dauban. It's a space fleet penal planet; a desert world, where the Federation dumps military 'embarrassments.' Deserters, awols, insubordinates, people who forget to say 'yes sir' in the right tone of voice. Tarrant may have thought he was tough, but two years in a place like that..."

"Would probably kill him," Avon finished dispassionately. "In which case, it would hardly make any difference, would it?" He stared hard at Mirage's computer alcove. "We go after Orac first. Then, assuming Servalan's records are not yet another trap, we can investigate Dauban."

"Servalan," Vila repeated the name as though it were soured wine. "I'd give a lot to have Orac back right now, so he could tell me if she's still alive, or..."

Avon leaned back in the flight chair wearing a triumphant look. "In good time, Vila," he promised. "All in good time."

Nils Arnak, former Commissioner, appointed Vice President and acting President of the Terran Federation, surveyed the executive offices with approval from behind the polished desk, comfortable now that he had replaced her custom-fitted chair with one molded to his own more ample proportions. The intercom squawked for perhaps the hundredth time that day, and he slapped at it desultorily, not bothering to disguise his peevishness at this new interruption.

"What is it now?"

Unruffled, the disembodied voice from somewhere beyond the President's inner offices said, "Section Leader Trienn has arrived, sir. You sent for her yesterday?"

"Did I?" Arnak feigned indifference. He toyed briefly with the notion of making her wait, then dismissed the thought; he was far too anxious to get on with this. "Send her in, then," he ordered and cut the circuit. Unconsciously, he ran a hand through his fringe of once-brown hair and wet his lips with a nervous, darting tongue. His eyes fell briefly on a door, magno-locked and security coded, inset in the ornate wall to the left of the desk. It was nearly hidden from view by the oversized flag of the Terran Federation that stood mounted on a bronze display pole beside it.

The entry-code chimed, and Arnak turned his attention back to the room's main door, through which a woman in fleet uniform marched, all business down to the military stance she maintained when she stopped in front of the desk. Close-cropped blonde hair framed a hard, if not altogether unattractive face, and the uniform hung loosely on a form that was lithe if too thin for his taste. Arnak chewed his lip for a moment before he said, "You're Trienn?"

Grey eyes regarded him coolly. "I was told the President had sent for me."

Arnak bristled at the tone of dismissal. "The President is away," he said, more at home with the lie now that he had practiced it for some days. "In the interim, I am her proxy, endowed with full authority by Madame President's personal directive. Would you care to hear the tape?"

He watched her consider that, weigh the probable consequences and then concede.

"No sir," she said.

Arnak smiled to himself. Politics could be so invigorating. One of these times, a subordinate like this one was going to take him up on that offer, at which point he would play the voice-synthesized tape that had already convinced the High Council of the authenticity of his appointment -- and summarily order the subordinate's execution. Something to look forward to.

"Do you know the Tragal system, section leader?" he asked with mock politeness. Best to start at the beginning. One never knew just how much the enlisted personnel had heard through the proverbial grapevine.

Her eyes came to life just a bit. "The Mirage project?" she queried, a distinct note of interest in the voice now.

"Ah," Arnak clucked. "So you do know of it."

"It was an open secret... sir." She added the final appellation with seeming reluctance. "I was present for the fleet action against rebel activity on Sekros recently. We had standing orders to take Mirage intact."

"But you didn't."

To her credit, she didn't flinch at the threat implicit in his words. "No sir," she said flatly, and Arnak wondered if anything he'd said had really intimidated her at all. A cool one, this. Probably had refrigerant for blood.

"Well you're going to have another chance at it," he told her. "As well as a chance for promotion to space commander, if you deliver. You see it seems our elusive Project Mirage has been stolen -- again."

"Sir?"

Arnak grimaced, broken teeth showing behind thin lips. "That rebel Vaylan stole it from the Tragals -- now someone's stolen it from him. If there's one thing the Federation doesn't tolerate well, it's people stealing out from under us before we can do it."

Something almost akin to a smile tugged at the corner of Trienn's mouth. "Yes sir," she said.

"You may have a starburst mark 5 and the crew of your choice," Arnak offered, impressed at his own magnanimous impulse. "Our information is that the rebellion may have a second, even more substantial base established on Dastram. It might be a good place to begin looking -- surreptitiously, of course."

"Of course. And, sir..."

Arnak looked at her, waiting. "Yes?"

"Do we know who is in current control of this ship?"

"Oh yes. We have a reasonable idea." He knit his chubby fingers together and leaned back in the new chair. "Two ghosts," he said snidely. "Both listed as dead on the official records. Kerr Avon and Vila Restal."

This time the interest in her eyes was very much apparent, though it was covered quickly. Arnak hadn't missed the glimmer.

"You know them?" he wondered.

"Of them," was all she admitted. "They were part of Blake's crew." Then, when he was sure nothing more would be forthcoming, she asked softly, "Were there any other 'unofficial' survivors of that crew?"

"Possibly. Why do you ask?"

She hesitated. "I... have certain personal interests in the factual disposition of one Del Tarrant... sir."

"Ah yes. The former space captain." Arnak flexed his interlaced fingers thoughtfully. So she was human after all. He made a mental note to track down information on when and where -- and how well -- she had known Del Tarrant. "I'm sure something can be arranged," he said unctuously. "I'll let you know."

Distrust marred the return gaze. "Thank you sir."

"I think that will be all for the moment, section leader."

"Sir." She nodded at the dismissal, spun and marched formally out again. Arnak stared at the closed door for a protracted moment before he touched the intercom control again.

"Yes sir?" the detached voice responded immediately.

"Hold all my calls for the next half hour."

"Yes sir."

Scowling, he signed off, then just to be certain, tripped the magno lock on the outer door. A nearby control released a similar lock on the door behind the flag to his left. He didn't look at it yet. He ordered wine from the desktop dispensary instead; Corinthi wine, delivered in an elegant crystal decanter. With a glass of the deep red liquid in hand, he approached the door now, flipped the tail of the 'sacred' banner irreverently out of the way, and placed his hand over the lighted scanner inset beside it. With an almost undetectable hum, the computer read his palm print, deactivated the secondary lock, and opened the door.

Arnak stepped into a sterile white room, devoid of anything but the single coffin-like structure set against the opposing wall. It was cold in here, as chill as the mist that frosted the cylindrical chamber from the inside, and he shivered involuntarily as the door slid shut behind him and the lights came automatically to life, responding to the presence of body heat.

Gathering his courage, he approached the cryo unit and peered down through the fogged plex at the figure entombed there-in. The exquisite features were still intact; blood red lips, shaved ebony hair, painted lashes resting on pale cheeks in a similitude of contentment.

Arnak studied it for several moments before his gaze fell back to the wine glass in his hand. "Odd how one acquires tastes," he said to the unresponsive chamber. "This wine, for example. I never really cared for it all that much before."

The form beneath the cryo hood slept on, oblivious to his words, his presence and the world beyond.

Arnak held the glass up in mock salute. "I rather enjoy it now, though." The glass went higher, a symbolic toast. "To your health, Madame President."

He drank the wine in one swallow.

The cell had neither door nor lock. On Dauban there was no need for such confinements; the planet itself was a prison, and there was, literally, nowhere to go.

Tarrant collapsed on the bunk, oblivious to years' accumulation of grime on the tattered mattress. His tunic was in even worse condition, torn and filthy from the week-long search for a viable well and from the lack of any facility for cleansing either clothing or person, but he was past caring, past noticing the discomfort of it at all any more. Today's efforts had proven as futile as all the others before it. No water. No sign of a supply ship. No hope that Dauban's eighty exiled convicts would be able to survive much beyond the two or three days their paltry remaining stores would sustain them. Four deaths had already resulted from fighting over the dwindling supplies; deaths which their mutoid guardians had done nothing to prevent. Tarrant had a morbid suspicion as to why. Without benefit of Federation stores, the modifieds had no regular access to the blood plasma necessary for their own survival...

Wearily, he relegated that thought to a part of his mind reserved for problems to be dealt with in their turn, and tried to concentrate instead on where they might attempt to dig tomorrow. He heard the scuff of shoes in the corridor, and assuming it was only Kendall returning to the cell, did not look up. The footsteps, lighter than they ought to be, moved into the small adobe-walled cubicle and approached the bunk where Tarrant lay.

It wasn't until the heavy hand clutched the back of his tunic that Tarrant registered an alarming reality: the newcomer was not Kendall.

"All alone, pretty boy?" Durk's gravel voice was rife with lewd intentions as he hauled Tarrant roughly to his feet and bore him to the nearest wall, pinning him there. "Your daddy's gone hunting, see. I told 'im there was another cave-in at dig twelve. Oughta take 'im at least an hour t'find out there ain't no one down there. Long enough for you an' me to--"

The sentence ended in a strangled cry. Tarrant had brought one knee up and tried to slam it into the part of Durk's anatomy that had been pressed closest to him. Though his leverage was poor, the kick connected. The man fell away, swearing, but recovered quickly enough to head off the pilot's effort to dive for the door. Tarrant's hand sought and found a metal flagon -- one of Kendall's few possessions -- that had been sitting on the dusty ledge near the door, and wielded it as a weapon. The lip was sharp enough to cut, as Durk's next attempt to grab him bore out. Nursing a sliced hand against his own filthy tunic, the bigger man leered at him, maneuvering to herd him once again to the wall.

"Ye like it rough? Two can play that game, y'little bastard."

From somewhere, Durk's injured hand produced a crudely-fashioned knife. It was little more than a sharpened wedge of scrap metal, but Tarrant had no doubt it could kill efficiently enough. He backed to the wall with the flagon held defensively in front of him, prepared to deflect the attack in any way he could, and Durk closed after him, blood from his cut hand already staining the ragged edges of the improvised blade.

"Don't matter t'me if yer a little damaged." He grunted, a sound half way between disgust and laughter. Then, with a vile grin, he added, "It don't even matter t'me if yer dead."

Tarrant waited until the man had come within arm's length. Then, when the knife moved, he swung at it savagely with the tankard, intending to knock the weapon away, to get it out of Durk's hand if he could. His adversary foresaw the action and like a fencer, parried and swung under the blow, driving straight for him with the blade. Tarrant tried to lunge right, only to be trapped by Durk's advancing left arm. The knife found its mark and he cried out, feeling it penetrate flesh and lance painfully over a rib. He brought both hands up, and as though from afar, heard the flagon bounce noisily to the stone flooring. His fingers closed over the knife and the blood-soaked fist still grasping it, but he could no longer find the strength to exert any force against them. He felt suddenly drained, as though he had been dying for a long time now and all these weeks spent struggling for survival had merely been a dream; a useless diversion that had no more than delayed the execution. Life sentence, death sentence. On Dauban, they were one and the same.

Durk's breathy laughter came close in his ear then. "Light-headed, are ye, pretty boy? Don' worry none. It'll pass quick enough." He jerked the knife free, knocking the probing hands away and evoking a gasp from his victim. Tarrant felt himself being lifted bodily and redeposited face down on the cell cot. Then came the rasping sound of fabric tearing, and the heavy, guttural wheeze of Durk's breathing as he worked to clear away this final obstruction.

Tarrant buried his face in the oily ruin of the mattress and tried to will himself unconscious, but that very will, as cruel as it was often capricious, denied him.

Something made a peculiar noise, like the chunk of fresh meat going onto the roasting spit. He heard Durk utter a small, surprised squeak before the hands that had gripped what remained of his tunic jerked reflexively and fell away. Tarrant coaxed his eyes open, lifted his head to look...

And saw Kendall standing, legs spread, over Durk's inert form. From the back of the former combat officer's skull, the distinctive shape of a winch hook protruded, its pointed tip well buried in the crushed mass of flesh and bone. Tarrant looked away again and fought down the dual urges to be ill and incredibly, to cry. A part of him wanted all of it to end here, to simply let him bleed to death and have done with it. But then Kendall's hands, firm and caring, were turning him and probing under the ragged, blood-soaked tunic to examine the wound. Footsteps, heavier than Durk's had been, moved away from the cot and returned seconds later. Water sloshed inside a metal container; the ration bottle, Tarrant realized fuzzily, and then he caught his breath sharply as a dampened cloth was pressed against his ribcage, and Kendall applied a gentle pressure.

"No..." The protest was feeble, delivered in a voice he would scarcely have recognized as his own.

"Shut up." The response, though it brooked no argument, conveyed no anger either. "It isn't much more than a glorified scratch, but if I don't get it clean you could as easily die of the infection. Hold still."

"Why waste the water at all then?" The words came out in a near-sob. "I'll only die slower."

Ignoring the objection, Kendall continued working, tipping the ration bottle to soak a relatively clean corner of the cloth. "No wonder you got into trouble," he muttered. "Never learned to follow orders. Now be quiet or so help me I'll use this to muzzle you."

Chastised, Tarrant fell silent and bit his lip to stifle any involuntary admissions that Kendall's efforts were hurting him. When the older man had completed his ministrations, he pressed Tarrant's own hand over the carefully positioned cloth.

"Hold it there," he admonished. "I'll go and see what's still in medical stores. We ought to at least still have some bandaging, I think."

"Kendall..."

The other man turned back, gazing over the dead thing on the floor as though it weren't there at all. "Eh?" he said casually.

Tarrant had searched the pale green eyes for an answer before he'd asked the question, but as always, there was no hint of explanation there; nothing but the familiar measure of Alpha grade intelligence devoid, in Kendall's case, of the customary arrogance.

"You never told me why."

The friendly eyes feigned ignorance. "Why what?"

"Two years," Tarrant said weakly. "They hated you, you know. All of them. For keeping me. The rest of them only ever wanted... one thing. And you never asked for that. So why?"

He thought he saw a flicker of something akin to discomfort cross the bearded face, only to be vanquished again. His cellmate gestured at Durk's corpse with one protruding thumb and smiled.

"I'll, uh, see if I can't get someone to clean up the mess while I'm about it, shall I? We'll give him to our mutoid friends. Keep the little vampires off our necks that much longer, anyhow."

And with that he was gone, broad footsteps echoing down the outer corridor until they had faded into nothing.

Tarrant closed his eyes again and tried unsuccessfully to draw a breath that wouldn't hurt. Typical of Kendall, even now, not to answer a personal question. After two years, no one on Dauban even knew what crime had sent him here, let alone the reason for his fierce protectiveness toward the man with whom he quartered.

Ironically, it was Durk who had unwittingly provided the only clue. Remembering the look in Kendall's eyes when the brutish convict had inquired, 'What're you, his bloody father?' Tarrant thought that at last, he knew some small part of the answer...

The planet Dastram wore a veritable necklace of orbiting ships, all of them, Avon mused, undoubtedly "appropriated for the cause." It was an odd choice of worlds for a rebel base, covered as it was by ocean. But then, he supposed, a man like Vaylan might have looked upon it as an ideal hiding place.

Mirage's refractory screening had thus far borne out the claims of her builders' diagrams: their approach to the planet had gone unchallenged. Avon had ordered full stop, all the same, several thousand spacials out, and sat now behind the ship's primary control console, watching the oblate green planet fill the viewscreen.

#Automatic programming requires the establishment of stabilized orbit,# Mirage protested mildly. She had not disobeyed Avon's command to hold position here, provided the status was to be temporary, but he doubted she would tolerate any further encroachment on the program Par Vaylan had instated. In the meantime, all the same, he intended to obtain the answers to some vital questions.

"Do you have data on the whereabouts of Par Vaylan?" he asked the computer. "Is he aboard one of the orbiting vessels?"

#I have data,# the mechanized voice replied. #Subject Vaylan is located at co-ordinates 491-04-90.#

Avon frowned. "That is a planetary reference point."

#Affirmative.#

"Then there are sub-oceanic domes?"

#Negative.#

"Explain."

The usually-toneless voice went up the scale at least one full tone. #Specify,# it demanded curtly.

With a tight smile, Avon said, "Relate data regarding nature of human habitation on Dastram's surface."

The viewscreen dissolved promptly into a pre-recorded image out of Mirage's databanks. It showed him a seascape dotted with circular structures that loomed like gigantic mushrooms out of the ocean. They were supported by single pedestals that widened from a tapered segment rising from the water up to a base matching the circumference of each enormous disk. Avon estimated that each was large enough to contain a small town, and he found the architectural dynamics involved fascinating. Either the planet had very shallow oceans, or whoever had created these communities had managed to solve some promethian construction problems. Not to mention the expense...

Laying aside his curiosity for the moment, he plied Mirage with yet another question. "Are there any landing bays located on the surface?"

#For shuttle and flyer craft only.# Light ran in sequential patterns up and down the translucent blue plex of the computer's housing. #Larger vessels remain in geostationary orbit.#

Avon considered that, reflecting that invisibility would quickly become a liability in a parking orbit that populous, and since the refractory screening was unlikely to extend itself to any of Mirage's three small flyers...

"Is this ship maneuverable within a planetary atmosphere?" he asked abruptly.

#Affirmative.#

Avon couldn't help a faint smile at the insistence on formal terminology. " 'Yes' will do," he told it indulgently.

Without missing a beat, the computer announced primly, #Yes.#

"Better. Now tell me if we are capable of flying in under full screen, penetrating atmosphere and launching a flyer -- all without being detected." There were times when he marvelled at how complex life could be without the benefit of a working teleport system. If he ever hoped to reconstruct one, he was going to need Orac, and Orac was down on that planet, with Vaylan.

#The scenario as described is possible,# Mirage answered. #However, detection probability on unscreened flyer craft is approximately seventy-nine point o-three-two percent.#

"Approximately," Avon mimicked with a laugh, and pressed a control to restore the planet's ovoid image to the viewscreen. "I'll take my chances, thank you just the same."

"Chances with what?" The sleepy voice belonged to Vila, who had entered the flight deck from the only corridor, still rubbing his eyes. When Avon had answered the question, the thief slid into a chair several flight stations away, and blinking at the bright green sphere on the screen with its dotted ring of orbiting ships, said hazily, "I'm sorry I asked."

Avon ignored the remark. "Mirage," he said, "relate the specific concluding maneuvers of your pre-programmed flight plan."

The blue lights fluctuated rapidly. #Establish synchronous orbit with deflection capability non-functional,# the soft voice replied. #Notification of arrival to be transmitted to co-ordinates 491-04-90.#

"Wonderful," Vila interjected before Avon could comment. "The dog goes home and then calls its master. You can stop it sending that message, can't you?" His question fell on considered silence as Avon rose and moved to study the viewscreen at closer quarters, its muted light reflecting twin patterns in his eyes. Vila came to stand beside him, the worry in his voice undisguised. "Avon?"

Mirage's announcement suggested new possibilities Avon had not considered until now. "There is a pre-atomic axiom," he said quietly, "about the mountain coming to Mohammed."

Vila's eyebrows moved closer together in consternation. "Eh?" he said.

"Vaylan has no reason to suspect that anyone is aboard. You said yourself that he escaped Sekros before you broke into Mirage."

"The troops drove him off," Vila recalled, still puzzled. "He took another ship."

"And he still believes that I am dead."

"Probably." Vila looked at him cagily, beginning to catch on. "I don't think I like what you're planning," he muttered.

The return gaze was mock innocence underscored with cunning. "Probably," Avon echoed. He favored the thief with a lop-sided smile before he turned away to make the necessary arrangements with Mirage.

He would not have called it the most advantageous of plans, under any circumstances. The most difficult part had been persuading Mirage to continue screening their presence from outside probes after the deflection shield had been dropped. There were still more contingencies here than Avon might otherwise have liked. Too many unknowns. But this course held the best chance of retrieving Orac, and above all else, he intended to do that. If, in the process, fate dealt him the chance to avenge his recent mistreatment at Vaylan's hands, well, that would be nice too. But Orac must take first priority.

Now, in full view of the orbiting flotilla of rebel ships, they were moving once again toward the scheduled rendezvous with Dastram -- and Par Vaylan.

Avon hadn't expected the ship to be challenged two-thousand spacials from orbit range. The voice coming over the intership circuit was male, youthful, and decidedly unfriendly. It demanded that Mirage prepare for inspection boarding.

Vila cast Avon an aggrieved look from across the communications console. "Vaylan's troops?" he queried softly.

"Covering all the angles," Avon conjectured. "Very thorough."

Vila was unimpressed at the tone of admiration. "And very dangerous," he added dismally. "What do we do now?"

From the storage compartment in the aft section of Mirage's circular bridge, Avon produced two compact hand weapons, one of which he tossed casually across the deck to Vila. The thief caught it, fumbling with it before righting it in his hands and staring back at Avon in horror. His expression was more eloquent than words, but its foreboding did nothing to dissuade Avon.

"I think," he said, checking to make certain the weapon was charged, "that we should ask Mirage to invite the gentlemen aboard."

Their docking mate was a shuttle of Federation design, though from which of the appropriated spacecraft Avon could not be certain. When the ships were linked, Mirage sent docking confirmation, and they waited on either side of the closed airlock for Vaylan's party to board.

After a full twenty minutes, there was still no sign of life from the attached shuttle.

"Something's wrong," Vila whispered unnecessarily. "They're not coming."

"I can see that."

"Well are we just going to stand here?"

"Mirage," Avon snapped. "Reconfirm docking status."

#Shuttle docking is confirmed.#

"Where are the crew?"

#Sensors register two humanoid occupants in forward compartment.#

"They're still aboard?" Vila fidgeted nervously with the gun. "Just sitting there? But why?"

#No data,# Mirage said flatly.

Avon regarded the airlock with narrowed eyes. There was something uncomfortably familiar about this ploy. Vaylan had used it on him the first time he had come aboard Mirage.

"Reconfirm status with docking vessel and request reply," he told the computer.

After a beat, the feminine voice said, #Fourth confirmation unacknowledged.#

"Come into my parlor..." Vila murmured.

"Quite." With a decisive gesture, Avon tripped the control to open the airlock. The door swung back onto a narrow transfer corridor: on the other end, the shuttle's lock stood invitingly open.

"You're not going over there!" Vila protested sotto voce.

"You have a better suggestion?"

"Yes. Does getting the dignified hell out of here ring any bells?"

Avon answered the years-old echo with a dismissive nod. "Stay here," he said, and moved gun-first into the transfer tube.

The shuttle cockpit was cramped and dark -- and its pilot sat slumped over the controls with a laser wound staining the back of his Federation uniform. Avon stared at the unexpected sight for several moments before moving cautiously forward to check for a pulse; it was faint, thready, not likely to be there at all much longer. But Mirage had said there were two in the crew...

He was half way to the interconnecting door before a voice behind him said, "Drop the gun, Avon."

A woman's voice, though not one that he recognized. For one terrible moment, he'd thought it might be...

"I said drop it," she said again, and he sullenly obeyed the order, turning to face an armed blonde figure clad in Federation black that had emerged from somewhere in the shadows of the darkened cockpit. He had never seen her before, yet her knowledge of his name and the predatory look in her eyes told him the reverse was far from true. A Federation bounty hunter, perhaps. But operating this close to Vaylan's base? And how could she have known he would be aboard this ship?

"We're going back aboard your vessel," she said stiffly. "Tell your friend to put his gun down, and prepare to initiate a new course. Cooperate with me, and I might let the two of you live."

Avon's eyes strayed to the dying pilot, pointedly belying the promise. She noted the look and returned one equally callous in its assessment.

"He'd outlived his usefulness."

Avon met her eyes calmly. "Apparently."

She motioned with the paragun toward the airlock. "Shall we go?"

On Mirage's end of the tubing once again, Vila gave their captor no argument in surrendering his gun. Only after Avon had silently followed her orders and detached the docked shuttle did the thief finally give vent to his curiosity.

"Who are you anyway?" he asked meekly.

The woman with the gun stared at him, her eyes cold. "Section Leader Trienn," she said. "I'm... an old friend of Del Tarrant's. And you're going to take me to him."

"Are we?" Avon queried from the flight console. "What gives you the idea we would know where to look... assuming Tarrant were alive at all?"

"Oh, you know," Trienn said with confidence. "And you'll take me. Or I'll turn both of you over to Vice President Arnak and take this ship on a hunt of my own."

"Vice President..." Vila exchanged incredulous glances with Avon, who quelled the reaction with a look.

"What do you want with Tarrant?" he demanded.

"That's my concern."

"And it is ours if you expect to use this ship," Avon countered neatly. "We have business with Vaylan."

"I'm not interested in your business. Now reset the course and take us out of here."

Avon glared, debating whether to defy her with a simple 'no,' or try some form of bluff first. The latter seemed more prudent.

"We don't know where Tarrant is," he lied.

Trienn strode to the console where Vila's stolen vistapes still lay beside the viewer. Avon saw the thief close his eyes in chagrin as she picked up the tape bearing Tarrant's name, the gun still held firmly in her other hand.

"I think this might be of some small help," she said.

"Oh now look," Vila's tone became suddenly conciliatory. "If you're really a friend of Tarrant's, there's no reason why we couldn't work this out in a nice friendly way, is there? We could work together."

The response was anything but receptive. Trienn's fist tightened over the vistape until the knuckles went white. "I'm going to ask him a question," she said slowly. "And then I'm going to kill him."

Madame President had owned three palace residences on Earth, two of them "inherited" from her predecessor. The third, which had been painstakingly reconstructed for her during her first term of office, she had reclaimed from the lesser bureaucrat who had taken possession after the rebel coup that had deposed her in the first place.

Nils Arnak considered that as he relaxed on a terrace of the palace in question and sipped a glass of sherry. She had actually been deposed some time later, now that he thought about it. But no matter; the coup that had taken this residence had been the beginning of the end for her. And even though she had found a way, eventually, to regain her office, he, the lowly once-commissioner, had taken it from her. That was a feat many lesser men had tried and failed to accomplish.

Arnak nestled further into the lounge, the sherry finished, and drank in the evening air. Remarkable, how fresh it seemed after the recycled stuff inside the domes. When he had instated himself as fully acting President, he would have to see about enacting legislation to reclaim more of the planet's natural surface. Not that it would be wise to release the entire population from the domes; too much control would be lost that way. But for a privileged few...

Hands spread over an expansive stomach, he ran mentally over the other currently pressing matters-of-state. Threat of the rebel alliance on Dastram; native uprising on Gurdris; the Mirage affair... Then there was that niggling problem of overexpenditures on supply ships to the outer world prison colonies. Cutting off the ship-runs was only half a solution, really. It left the prison planets officially on the books; left the Federation financially culpable as long as the colonies remained, and he didn't doubt that many would remain, supply ships or no.

Obviously, he would have to do something about that. Something decisive.

Then there was Madame President herself to consider. Even in stasis, she had just about "outlived" her usefulness. Keeping her around much longer could be dangerous; she'd obtained a certain notoriety for her ability to return from the dead, after all, and the damage done to her system by Restal's poison, while irreversible by current medical technology, might not be insurmountable at some point in the future.

So he would have to do something about that too.

But not just now.

The evening breeze was cool and pleasant, the lounge comfortable, and his political position secure, to all appearances. No need to rush things then, was there?

Yawning once, Arnak indulged in an inelegant stretch, and then began to snore softly...

Dauban's unrelenting desert sweltered under a lard-colored sky streaked at intervals with iron grey. Those streaks were the harbingers of sunset: to Tarrant they signalled nothing more than the end of yet another wasted day spent digging in the unforthcoming sand.

A fortnight had passed since his altercation with Durk in the cell. The water rations had run out two days ago; six more of their number had died in riots over what little liquid remained in the canned food stores. And through it all, the mutoids stood by, watching, waiting.

They were watching now, ranked like Terran vultures along the prison's mud-brown walls, eyes trained on the pathetic efforts of the latest dig.

Three-hundred yards from the complex proper, Tarrant sat at the edge of the "well" and rested his head on his knees, listening to Kendall and Cameron still laboring in the hole. They were the only ones still out, the rest having abandoned the effort much earlier in the day to return to their cells. But even this group's persistence would be quelled soon, with the loss of sunlight.

Tarrant rubbed absently at the bandaging over his ribs. Healing but still tender, the wound had effectively ended his usefulness in the wells; Kendall had adamantly refused to let him wield a shovel, and so he'd been reduced to hauling up the occasional bucket of sand, and spent the rest of his time standing by and watching.

"I'll be bloody damned..."

The muffled curse had come from Kendall. Tarrant looked up to see him coming over the rim from the rope ladder, the sifting pail slung over one shoulder. Once out of the hole, he dumped the bucket's contents on the ground in front of Tarrant.

"Look't that," he breathed. "Will you bloody look't that!"

Cameron's bushy head popped over the rim then, an inane grin splitting the tangle of curly red beard. "Call that an eleventh hour salvation, I would," he opined.

Tarrant blinked at them in tired confusion, not understanding, and finally brought his gaze to rest on the small mound of sand from Kendall's bucket. It formed a round dark blotch on the dry soil beneath it. Darker than the rest of the sand the well had produced. Darker...

Unbelieving, he reached out to grasp a handful, nearly jumping when his hand came into contact with the loose soil.

It was wet.

"Jus' like a virgin bride," Cameron nattered happily. "All I did was put the 'ol spade in, an' there she flowed..."

He went on, a rambling, euphoric rush, but Tarrant didn't hear the words. He closed a fist over the handful of damp earth, shut his eyes tightly, and...

Something whispered in the skies overhead.

It was a moment before he recognized the sound; it had grown to a throbbing power hum before he was certain, and by that time both Kendall and Cameron had turned their eyes skyward as well.

"What the--?" Tarrant pulled himself to his feet, the wet sand momentarily forgotten, and searched the dimming sky eagerly for the ship. "They can't have changed their minds now. Not after all this time!"

"Why not?" Kendall countered. "And who cares, anyhow? It's a ship!"

They saw it in the same instant: a sliver of gold on the dusky horizon, sun glinting off its tapered hull. Kendall had his arms in the air and was waving like a madman, though the ship was still too far away to see him. It was travelling fast, Tarrant realized, and an abrupt uneasiness seized the pit of his stomach as they watch the glowing ship approach.

"Too fast," he murmured aloud, and grabbed at Kendall's arms to pull them down. "Kendall, that's not a supply ship!"

"Who gives a damn what kind of ship it is?" Cameron answered from the well rim. "We got our luck in today, didn' we? Never thought I'd..."

He stopped, face falling as he recognized the growing shape above them. Tarrant knew the outline all too well. Quasar Class ML7. An armed missile attack craft...

"Get down."

When a confused Kendall made no move to obey, Tarrant caught a shoulder and pushed him, forced to shout now over the growing noise. "Get down! Look for cover!"

But there was none. Kendall fell away from him just as the Quasar roared overhead, a sleek and deadly payload falling with deceptive grace from its launch bay. Tarrant had a fleeting image of the mutoids scattering out from the prison walls, running with what was, for them, uncharacteristic speed. They weren't nearly fast enough.

The adobe building mushroomed into a yellow and crimson inferno. A protracted second later, the ground beneath Tarrant heaved like an ocean wave, buckling with enough force to pick him up and throw him several feet from the well. He'd heard Kendall shout something, a name he didn't recognize. In the same instant had come Cameron's anguished scream as the well had collapsed and buried him. Tarrant had been unaware of his own cry. The ground reared up and slammed into him, and the world spun suddenly away into a warm and peaceful nothing.
 

It was heat that woke him. That and the gritty trickle of sand crawling inside his coverall. He'd barely regained enough of his senses to discern that he was lying, partially buried, against a dune created by the blast, when he heard muffled voices, and boots grinding on the dry sand. His first impulse was to cry out; he stifled it with the bitter realization that this could not possibly be either Cameron or Kendall. When he forced his eyes open, blinking away grit, he could see Kendall lying face down beside the concave depression that had once been the well. His right fist had a death grip on one of the worn spades.

"Couldn' see payin' their keep from the beginnin' if you ask me," one of the voices announced loudly, and two pairs of legs clad in Federation black moved into Tarrant's limited vision range.

"Mm," the other grunted noncommittally. "Here you are. Looks like they didn' all go to bed early."

They were standing over Kendall, blasters held nonchalantly in their gloved hands. One booted foot dug under the heavy body and callously started to lever it over.

The corpse came to life.

Tarrant saw Kendall's hand come up as the trooper turned him, the shovel swinging in an arc toward the nearest paragun and connecting to send the weapon flying.

Had there not been two of them, it might have succeeded.

Quite calmly, the second man raised his gun and squeezed the trigger; one fluid, practiced motion. The weapon discharged with a chuff and a brief flash of light. Without a sound, Kendall fell back into the sand. The spade landed awkwardly on top of him.

Biting back another cry, Tarrant closed his eyes and turned his face to the ground once again. They hadn't seen him yet, but he had no illusions about the efficiency of Federation death squads...

"He's done for," one of the voices said, and there came the snick of a blaster magazine being checked for proper charge. "Must've been more'n just him though."

"Mm," the other one grunted again. "Over there."

Tarrant kept his eyes shut as the heavy footsteps approached, and struggled not to breathe any more than he had to. Perhaps, if they were both as thick-witted as they seemed...

"Blast got 'em clear up here. Remind me t'tell Raben his range is even better'n he thought it was."

"Mm."

The footsteps halted beside him. For several seconds, there was no sound at all. Then without warning, one booted foot kicked him savagely in the side, hitting the injured ribs and forcing out a strangled gasp of pain.

"Well well," chortled the first voice. "It's breathing."

"Not for long it isn't."

He heard the scuff of the paragun against the sleeve of the leather uniform, then the soft click of the trigger readying as the man took aim...

Two shots sounded, one almost on top of the other. Tarrant had curled tighter around the throbbing ache in his side, expecting the heat of the blast to tear into him; bewildered when it did not. And why had he heard two shots?

Lifting his head from its bed of sand, he saw the two black-clad figures sprawled just beyond him, on top of each other, paraguns still clutched in their hands. Both were unquestionably dead. But who...?

"Get up."

Another voice -- a woman's this time. And another Federation uniform. Section Leader. Had they resorted now to killing each other over who was to finish off the survivors? This really was becoming tiresome.

"I said get up!"

He tried to comply, finding that the soil fell away more easily than he'd thought it would. The injured ribs foiled his effort, however, and he ended up falling against the small dune in a sitting position, gazing up at his rescuer/captor with an expression of weary surrender.

"I'm afraid that's the best I can manage, just for the moment."

She didn't say anything, but her gun was trained on him, in a way that signalled she fully intended to use it. She seemed to be waiting for something. Tarrant wondered what. He couldn't see her face clearly -- she stood against the ugly yellow backdrop of Dauban's sunset -- but something in both the stance and the voice was familiar.

Unable to place them, he leaned back further in the warm mound of sand and looked away to the north, at the blackened ruin of the prison complex still sending clouds of oily smoke skyward. He was surprised when she moved around to face him again, and knelt down to his level with the gun still held ready over her knees.

"You look like hell, Tarrant," she said.

He squinted, able to see her better now, to assess the cool grey eyes and the nearly-shaven hair. Recognition came slowly; there was nothing here of the eager young cadet he had known all those years ago. Known and loved... or so they had both believed at the time. Even the voice had changed. It was hard now. Hard and bitter.

"It is you." The words sounded so utterly inane that he almost laughed. Then with a sobering look at the dead troopers, he added, "This is the first mopping-up operation I've ever seen that included killing your shipmates. Not that I'm inappreciative, mind you..."

Trienn made a short, derisive sound. "I wasn't with them. I came with some old friends of yours. Left them locked in their own ship, over the hill there."

His smile was more of a grimace. "I don't have any 'old friends'."

Her gloved hand flexed once over the gun. "Suit yourself. I was glad to know you weren't dead... yet. I wanted to ask you a question."

Tarrant looked away. "About Joram," he said quietly.

"Yes." The slightest of pauses preceded something that was largely more statement than question. "You killed him, didn't you?"

"That's what the wanted holos said."

She bristled at the flippant response. "I want to hear you say it."

"Why? So you can shoot me? 'Grieved wife kills ex-lover six years after husband's murder'?"

"You bastard." The gun was snatched up to point at him, her finger resting over the trigger. "You're still the same conceited ass you were then."

This time he did laugh, but it was a tired, hollow sound. "Probably," he said without conviction.

"You didn't answer the question. Did you kill him?"

Tarrant tried to look at her, but the barrel of the gun was between them now. "I had to," he said seriously. "I guess you're not likely to believe that."

"You guess correctly. You'd planned the desertion all out, hadn't you? Jump ship at the next port, steal the first available transport and leave space command behind forever. Only Joram got in your way. Tried to talk you out of it, I'd bet. So you repaid him -- by shoving him out an airlock."

Tarrant shook his head. "That's very nicely reasoned, but not quite the way it happened."

She looked up over the gunsight, grey eyes narrowed with suspicion. "What's your version, then?"

"I'm afraid I'm the one who got in his way. He snapped, Trienn. Nobody knew why, but it happens. I caught him setting a charge in the airlock. He was going to commit suicide; take the ship and forty people with him."

She made the derisive noise again. "So instead of talking him out like any reasonable human being, you just pulled the ejection lever."

Tarrant's eyes were far away. "No," he said. "I didn't activate the jettison control. He did. I just didn't stop him."

"Liar." Trienn's response was venomous. "You killed him and then betrayed everything you knew -- deserted! Why else would you run?"

He leaned his head back to stare up at a few dim stars growing visible in the grey and amber sky. "Because they were no more willing to believe me than you are." Without looking at her, he said wearily, "I've answered your questions. So why not just shoot me and have done with it? I've been dead for two years anyway."

She stood up with the gun still pointed, looming over him, blotting out the stars. The weapon had begun to tremble in her hands.

"Damn you," she whispered. "Damn you!" The paragun dropped to her side, held loosely in one shaking hand. "I would have killed you. I still should."

A new voice, quavering and oddly familiar, said, "Why don't you be a nice stormtrooper and put the gun down instead?"

Standing there, materialized out of the shadows, was the ghost of Vila Restal with a gun in his hand. Tarrant blinked at the apparition, certain it would vanish again as unexpectedly as it had appeared.

Trienn merely glared at it. "Who turned you loose?"

"Gremlins," said the ghost of yet another familiar voice. "Now do as he says and drop the gun." Avon -- thinner, older, but definitely Avon -- came out of the shadows on the other side of her. He also held a weapon trained in her direction, and when Trienn gave no indication that she would obey his demand, he moved in, aimed...

"No!" Tarrant found his feet, stepping deliberately into Avon's line of fire. "Don't kill her."

Avon lowered the handgun, a dismayed look on his face. "She came here to kill you," he seethed.

"But she didn't." Tarrant took the paragun from unresisting hands and tossed it away. It landed with a satisfying crunch beside the dead troopers. "Now I think you have the same choice that I did," he told her. "You can go back to the Federation and face court martial... or you can come with me."

Vila's mild voice protested. "Now wait a minute..."

"I don't much care which ship, as long as it leaves this planet behind it." Tarrant nodded at the uniformed corpses. "We can take theirs. It's fast and well-armed."

"No." That was Avon. "We go together."

Tarrant grinned at the well-remembered obstinate tone. "Take her back to the ship then. I don't think she'll give you any more trouble."

Trienn shot him a smoldering look. "Tarrant..."

"Later," he said. "I'll catch you up."

She hesitated, deciding, then spun and stalked away. Avon followed, the gun still ready at his side. Only Vila lingered, looking as much the curious child as ever, watching him with eyes that were as innocent as they were shrewd.

"You look like hell, Tarrant," he finally said.

"So I've been told." There was no humor in the pilot's response. He walked past the fallen troopers, past Vila, and paused over Kendall's motionless form, still sprawled near the ruined well that served as Cameron's grave.

"Aren't you coming?" Vila queried in a puzzled voice. "We have a ship, Tarrant. Wait till you see..."

"In a moment." Tarrant didn't look at him. His eyes were on Kendall's face, the once-kind features frozen in a death grimace. "Go on ahead, Vila. I'll be there."

When the bewildered thief had gone, Tarrant said to no one in particular, "There's one last thing I have to do."

And stooping, he retrieved the spade.