MIRAGE -- Chapter 6

The Only Reality



by Jean Graham
 

It shouldn't take this long to die.

He could hear voices, boots scuffing the floor nearby. The alarms had gone silent, but the sanguine red of the emergency lighting still found its way through his closed eyelids. Death clung to the air; the scent of discharged pararifle energy and the stronger, more puissant odor of something else. His own pending death, perhaps.

Why hadn't it come yet? The gunfire had ceased an eternity ago. Or perhaps it had only been minutes. Still, it had been too long.

His chest was numb, devoid of any feeling at all. But he could feel something that lay awkwardly under his feet. No, not something. Someone.

Blake.

"Hants is dead, sir," one of the voices reported briskly. The response was a disinterested, guttural sound.

"See about the rest of them, then."

Avon tried to draw in a breath; the effort brought a wave of pain and a half-strangled coughing spasm. His eyes flew open to the indistinct sight of two black-clad figures towering above him, blocking the harsh red light, paraguns held loosely at their sides.

"Bastard's still alive," one of them mumbled from behind the anonymous shield of his helmet, and the other grunted and savagely worked the slide on his weapon.

"Not for long he isn't."

The gun swung into firing position, aimed unerringly at his head.

Avon waited, welcoming a quickened end to it, and felt cheated and angry when the trooper hesitated.

//Shoot, damn you! Pull the trigger, and have done with it!//

Calmly, he watched the gloved hand flex once, the forefinger reaching through the metal guard to curl over the trigger and close...

"Garen!"

The authoritative voice Avon had heard earlier marched into the periphery of his vision in the person of a Federation Captain, and an arm shoved the paragun aside, aborting the shot.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"He..." Trooper Garen's voice broke, an oddly childish sound muffled by the concealing helmet. "He killed Hants."

"Disobey orders again and you'll get the same. You were told to fire warning shots. Warning, Garen."

"With your permission, sir," the other trooper said, "we did. But this one opened fire and... well, Hants returned fire before he went down, sir."

Disbelief tinged the reply. "Mm. And the same with all the others, I suppose. Well, the lot of you can tell the Commissioner your troubles; it's her plans you've cocked up and I don't imagine she'll exactly be thrilled with your handiwork."

The Commissioner...? Servalan. It had to be Servalan.

The Captain's stern voice was barking orders now, but Avon could no longer distinguish the words. More black shapes gathered around him, faceless, indistinct. A booted foot caught him sharply in the ribs, wrenching a gasp from between clenched teeth. Then more gloved hands reached to seize his arms and haul him to his knees. Involuntarily, he cried out, falling to his knees as the numbness in his chest became lancing fire. He had a brief, dizzying vision of what had once been Gauda Prime's command center, its floor covered over with lifeless forms, some clad in black and others... Others...

The hands jerked him roughly to his feet, and the fire burned a path through lungs and throat and brain, until the world turned to searing white and there was nothing left to see or hear any longer.

He didn't remember being carried from the room.

There hadn't been anything more until SHE had awakened him. Then had come her threats and velvet promises, lies concealed within half-truths, cajoling, seducing, all the things at which she so excelled. And her ultimate cruelty had been to allow his escape, knowing he had nowhere left to run, no place that would shelter him, no one who would care.

He'd gone to find Tav...

"Avon?"

Cold stars stared back at him through Mirage's observation window. The nearer suns receded into infinity, leaving illusory light trails behind. They carried away with them ill-favored memories of a place called Gauda Prime, a man named Blake, and a woman...

"Avon -- are you...? Well I know you're all right, but I mean, are you all right, if you know what I mean?"

He addressed the hazy reflection in the window. "What do you want, Vila?"

"Nothing, really. Just wondered if you were... you know."

"The state of my physical health is a matter of grave concern to you, suddenly, is that it?" He turned to confront the other man and found himself surprised at how changed Vila seemed. The thief's face was drawn and pale, his eyes hollow; the picture of too much wine and too little sleep. He hadn't seen Vila like that since... since just after Malodaar.

Malodaar and Gauda Prime. Both an eternal two years before.

"That's not what I meant," Vila said in abject tones, and there was a faint slurring of the consonants in his sentence. "I thought you might... I thought..."

He trailed off and sat down on one of the observation couches to cradle his head in his hands. "You're no easier to talk to than you ever were," he complained miserably.

"Talk? You're drunk, Vila. As I recall, your customary cure for that condition is sleep. In proliferate amounts."

"Not drunk." Vila's voice broke on the words, and Avon realized with some horror that the man was crying. He had only seen Vila reduced to tears once before, and alcohol had played no part in that instance at all. This...

"Vila..." He started forward, stopped himself, and feeling at a sudden unaccustomed loss for what to do with his hands, clamped them in front of him at chest level, unconscious tension compressed in fist over fist. No less helpless than he had ever been to deal with emotional displays, he stood awkwardly and waited, half wishing he could walk away and leave Vila to whatever demons had chased him here in the first place. But something wouldn't let him go.

Nothing occurred that seemed appropriate to say, either. So he listened to the ragged pattern of Vila's breathing until it had assumed more normal proportions. Regaining a modicum of control, the thief sat straighter on the couch, but he did not look up.

"She warned me," he said without preamble. "It was her."

Avon's eyes narrowed in confusion. "Who? Servalan?"

"No." Vila's voice broke again and he swallowed, fighting more tears. "Cally. It was Cally."

"Cally is dead, Vila."

"I know that! Don't you think I know that?" For the first time, the smaller man's eyes came up to meet his and Avon was startled to find a chillingly sober fury in their depths. "I'm not drunk and I'm not crazy, and I wasn't then, either. She was there."

"Where?"

"On Gildar. And here on the ship before that, only I didn't know it was her, then. She spoke to me, Avon. She touched me."

It was a statement nothing but cold logic could answer. "It had to be someone else, then," Avon said. "Someone who looked like Cally."

Vila shook his head in adamant denial. "She knew," he insisted. "Don't you see? She warned me they were coming after us, and no one on Gildar could have known that! I tell you it was Cally!"

"All right, Vila." Avon frowned, conceding the unlikely point rather than evoke another outburst. Two years ago he would have denied the merest suggestion of anything so ethereal as a ghost. Today...

"I didn't expect you'd believe me," the thief said miserably. "Who ever did? Even Cally..." The name caught in Vila's throat and for an embarrassing moment Avon was sure it was about to become a sob. One of his clenched hands unfolded, reached out of its own accord, and hovered for the briefest of moments over Vila's shoulder. A breath away from touching, it curled in upon itself and fell, soundless, to his side.

What do you want of me, Vila? he thought with bitter resignation. Why come to me at all? I cannot offer comfort or companionship, not now, not ever. After the horrors of Malodaar, and Gauda Prime, what makes you continue to trust me? To stay with me at all? Eyes slitted, he looked down at Vila's abject form and wondered how, for so many years, he could have found the man uncomplicated, little more than a Delta with talents above his station. When truth presumed to breach Vila's own rather intricate defenses, it became clear that in fact, he was as complex in his way as Avon was in his, and certainly more than an ample match for Tarrant -- or, as he had just more than adequately proven, Servalan.

"Vila..."

The hand drifted hesitantly outward again, but recoiled in almost the same instant at the sound of Mirage's alarm klaxon. Vila's head came up, his eyes now both fearful and questioning.

"What...?"

But Avon was already running for the corridor and the flight deck beyond.

*      *      *

Tarrant barely had time to notice Avon and Vila's arrival: he was too preoccupied with the effort to reclaim control of a flight console that had suddenly gone dead beneath his hands.

"Mirage, explain the alarm!" Avon's question was the same one Tarrant had voiced only moments before -- the central viewscreen and external sensors both failed to record anything more hostile than passing star systems in their vicinity. The ship's only response to Avon's demand, however, was to cancel the wailing alert signal, leaving the flight deck in sudden, eerie silence.

"Mirage," Tarrant tried again, "respond please. Why the alarm, and why have you frozen the flight controls?"

No answer.

Tarrant caught a brief glimpse of Vila, wearing a curiously resigned expression, standing at the entryway. Then the viewscreen flickered and crackled with static, drawing his attention forward as the image of a man began to form there.

Avon's features hardened as the picture clarified, and Tarrant recognized Mirage's auxiliary control room. The blond man with the smug expression sitting behind the control console, had, until now, been locked in the ship's security cell.

"Vaylan." Avon breathed the name through closed teeth, much as he had once pronounced Servalan's. "How the hell...?"

"I'm so glad to see you're all together," the man on the screen said, as though Avon had not spoken at all. "Togetherness is such a comforting thing in times like these. I'm sure you'll agree."

Before Tarrant could ask what in blazes this idiot was on about, the squeal of activating gears sounded from behind Vila. The thief started as a metal fire door sliced rapidly across the keyhole-shaped opening to seal itself firmly to the opposite side. They had only just reacted to that when a second, far more ominous sound came from the ship's overhead. It was scarcely more than a stilling of the air, a soft hiss, and then stillness once again. But Tarrant had a forbidding suspicion...

"What is he doing?" Avon queried tersely, though his tone indicated he knew as well as Tarrant did.

"What does it look like?" Vila's eyes were searching the overhead's perimeter. "He's turned off the oxygen supply."

Tarrant made a hasty check of the life support readings and shook his head grimly. "It's worse than that. He's reversed the flow. We'll be hermetically sealed in less than seven minutes."

Avon wheeled to confront the viewscreen, only to be met with Vaylan's fading after-image. Not surprising, Tarrant thought acridly. They had nothing at all to bargain with, and Vaylan hardly need be inclined to listen.

Avon's fist slammed down on the nearest console, a familiar gesture of frustration. "How the hell did he get out of that cell?"

"Does it matter?" Vila's meek voice put in.

"It was his ship," said Tarrant. "He obviously still has control codes we weren't aware of." Avon's inactivity irritated him suddenly and he snapped, "Well are you just going to stand there?!"

The tech spared him a brief scathing look before he turned and stalked toward the cobalt-colored panelling that housed the Mirage computer. Lights still played up and down its surface in rapid patterns; proof that it still operated despite its refusal to answer them. Avon knelt, reached out for the access panel and tugged, frowning in puzzlement when it did not open.

"Auto-locking mechanism," Tarrant guessed. "He probably activated it at the same time he triggered everything else."

The word 'lock' prodded Vila from his unexplained apathy, and he shuffled over to inspect the panel, pulling tools from various pockets as he went.

"Remote-triggered magno-lock," he announced after tapping on the plex in several places. "It's all on the inside, but if I try the frequency modulator it might--"

"Never mind the postulations," Avon cut him off. "Just get it open!"

Vila nodded, producing more tools. "Give me five minutes."

"Do it in three." With a discreet glance at the overhead air vents, Avon came to his feet and paced back toward the viewscreen, where the moving stars prevailed once more. He passed the weapons rack on the way, drawing Tarrant's attention to the Federation paragun that stood among the others -- Trienn's gun.

"We could always try shooting our way out," he suggested, half-serious. He immediately wished he could take back the words. Avon's glare said all that Tarrant already knew: even if they'd had the time, the door sealing off the flight deck had been designed to withstand blaster fire.

Tarrant gave up and fell silent, concentrating instead on a futile effort to get something on the flight console to respond. Nothing did, but for a few moments it kept him from dwelling on the fact that the air around him had already grown painfully thin; breathing was becoming progressively more difficult. He felt an overwhelming urge to put his head down on the console and simply go to sleep. Fighting it off required a herculean determination to move, to stand, to do anything other than sit here. But his legs felt like neutronium, and his hands weren't even his own anymore. From what seemed a great distance, he heard Avon admonish Vila to get on with it, they were running out of time. Vila's three minutes had come and gone, and the panel wasn't open. If Avon couldn't bypass Vaylan's override before they all passed out...

"I've got it!"

Vila's triumphant cry came seconds before a light flash and an oddly muffled explosion threw him backward away from the computer. Smoke billowed from the panelling, although the access door, Tarrant noted, remained stubbornly shut. The pilot forced his way out of the flight chair, told his feet to move, to carry him in Vila's direction, but he found himself on hands and knees on the deck instead, fighting just to fill his lungs with air. Two tiers of the flight deck away, he could see Vila rolling away from the force of the blast, the front of his clothing black with scorch marks.

Booby trap, Tarrant thought groggily. There had been a charge hidden in the lock and Vila, in his haste, had failed to detect it.

He tried to crawl in Vila's direction, but finding even that impossible, collapsed where he was, and watched with bleary detachment as something else interposed itself in the interminable distance between himself and the injured thief. Avon, moving sluggishly but somehow, incredibly, still moving, had clawed ineffectually at the burned-but-intact lock before he turned away from it and stumbled toward the writhing figure on the deck nearby.

It had to be the effect of oxygen deprivation: Tarrant could have sworn, before the lancing pain in his lungs drove him all the way into unconsciousness, that he saw Avon -- cynical, self-motivated, uncaring Avon -- gather a trembling Vila into his arms and cradle him protectively against the smoldering bulkhead.

*      *      *

The unlikely tableau remained when Tarrant opened his eyes, but several other realizations distracted him from it: the fact that he was alive, to begin with, and breathing apparently fresh air, though his chest ached sharply with the exertion. He still lay where he had fallen on the deck, and found that he could move now -- but there was something else he'd been aware of from the start: there was no flight vibration in the deck, no whisper of far-away engines, and the gravity ratio had noticeably changed. Mirage, wherever she was, was no longer spaceborne.

But if they were planetside and on one of Vaylan's bases, why hadn't he come to collect them? And why, for that matter, were they still alive at all?

In the process of finding his feet and then the flight console, Tarrant noted movement from across the deck. Avon's head lifted; dark eyes stared up at him, blinking in confusion. Vila lay motionless in his arms, and looked, Tarrant noted morbidly, as though he might very well be dead. Grimacing with the effort of regaining his chair, Tarrant forced himself not to think about that for the moment: Vila dead meant there was nothing he could do anyway, and just at the moment, Vila alive amounted to much the same thing. The vital question of the hour was how to get out of here.

#Tarrant?#

Mirage's querulous voice startled him; he'd only had time to discover that the controls were still useless, and he hadn't expected to hear the overridden computer's vocal circuits.

"Mirage, where are we?" His demand came out in a hoarse whisper, but the computer responded, as it always had, with solicitous affection.

#We are grounded in Omega sector, planet Kidron,# she announced in rapid succession. #I have reversed override commands to environmental control. This was necessary to prevent your expiration.#

Tarrant made a mental note never to argue again with the computer's pseudo-romantic notions. "Thank you," he said, and meant it. He was aware of Avon moving behind him, but didn't spare the time to look around. "Mirage, can you open the blast door on the flight deck?"

#I have sustained circuitry damage,# she replied with a distinct air of sadness. #Bypass procedure will be complete in three point two minutes. It will then be essential that you vacate these premises at once: there are eight armed individuals en route to this ship with orders to clear the flight deck of all obstructions.#

Tarrant refrained from comment on what had to be Vaylan's wording. "Can you free the flight controls?"

#Flight control remains locked on remote activation.#

Tarrant scowled. "Meaning 'no.'" He pushed away from the console, intending to head for the weapons rack, and met Avon coming back from the starboard alcove, carrying an armload of emergency medical supplies. Tarrant changed directions to follow him back to Vila, and knelt beside him as Avon began applying a regenerating balm to the burns on the unconscious man's chest and hands. Vila's color was too pale, his breathing much too shallow, and Tarrant's tentative search for a pulse told him the heart rate was none too steady, either.

"He's not going to make it, Avon."

The other man ignored him to continue working in obdurate silence. Seeing nothing else to do, Tarrant rose and made haste to the weapons store, where he confirmed for himself that Trienn's gun still held a full charge. There was a second paragun, one he had taken from a dead guard on Dauban, but it was empty. He therefore selected two of the smaller handguns in the rack, clipped one to his own belt and carried the other back to Avon.

The tech accepted the weapon without comment, secreting it away in between ministrations to Vila. Hating himself for having to say it, Tarrant stole a nervous glance at the still-closed entryway and murmured, "Avon, we've got to leave him. He'll never make it as far as we've got to go, and if we try to take him, neither will we." He seized one of the rapidly-moving hands. "Avon..."

The algid fury in the other man's gaze warned him to subside in the same moment that Mirage proclaimed curtly, #Flight deck access opening.#

With a reluctant hiss, the door receded into the bulkhead, leaving the keyhole entry exposed. Tarrant was there at once, paragun at the ready, but there were as yet none of Vaylan's troops on the other side of the door. The outer hatch stood open further on, the landing ramp down, and a vast expanse of landing field visible beyond. It was occupied by another vessel, one whose outlines Tarrant did not recognize, but she dwarfed Mirage with the sheer bulk of her pitted, battle-scarred fuselage. An unmarked troop carrier, perhaps?

The scene was suspiciously devoid of activity; nothing moved at all other than a warm breeze wafting in the hatchway, and Tarrant thought the total silence more unnerving than he might have found entering a war zone. Why was it so quiet? And where were the eight armed troops Mirage had warned him were on the way?

The unidentified ship sat alone out there on the tarmac, her afterburners venting billowing plumes of white exhaust. Tarrant didn't like the look of her. She seemed to be... waiting for something.

Avon had moved away from Vila again and was collecting small pieces of equipment from the supply alcove. "Mirage," he said, and his voice sounded oddly tight to Tarrant, "does the remote flight systems lock originate in auxiliary control, or is there an external influence?"

#Locking facility is now external to this ship.#

"Can you defeat it?"

#Rerouting of flight control systems will require one point nine-nine hours.#

"Do it, then. And initiate the following priority security program: all previous codes are to be erased forthwith. You will respond exclusively to the voiceprints of myself, Tarrant and Vila. No others. Is that understood?"

#New program accepted.#

Mirage fell silent, as though contemplating her instructions, and Tarrant chafed at the doorway. "Can we get the hell out of here now?"

Avon cast him an unreadable look, eyed the paragun pointedly, and then bent to gather Vila from the floor. Though he would have preferred having Avon's gun to back his own, Tarrant said nothing and accepted responsibility for covering their descent to the landing. Nothing and no one challenged them, but before they had reached the safety of the nearest building, a series of explosions shook the ground beneath their feet, and gunfire erupted from somewhere not very far away.

"Welcome back to the war," Tarrant breathed, and yanked open a door marked 'FLIGHT PERSONNEL ONLY.' He preceded Avon through the opening and a short distance down the deserted corridor before he noticed a red sign with an arrow extending from the wall just ahead. It proclaimed 'MEDICAL' in stark white letters.

"I think Vila may just be in luck," he said. Avon was already moving in the direction of the arrow; Tarrant had to rush to get ahead of him again. The man's reactions bothered him more than he liked to admit. Not that he minded the newfound revelation that Avon cared about something after all: it was this dogged determination to get Vila to safety at the risk of their own that was too unlike the Avon he remembered. And Vila might well die anyway. Left alone aboard Mirage, even in the cryo unit, he would certainly have done, once Vaylan's people had arrived. If they had arrived. Where the hell were all of them, anyway?

The med section was as deserted as the rest of the base, though a new eruption of gunfire told them that someone was here, somewhere. Oblivious to the sounds of the battle, Avon carried Vila to the closest of the three couches, laid him down and began attaching the life support equipment. Tarrant stood guard at the door, watching an empty passageway while gunfire continued sporadically in the distance.

"They're not Federation guns," he observed, though he had the feeling he was talking to himself. "Unless Vaylan's valiant are fighting amongst themselves, that ship out there is a pirate -- which means the worst of the rabble are moving in to pick up the spoils."

If Avon heard, he did not respond. Having activated Vila's respirator, he was now unclipping three items from his belt: the gun, a communicator and a miniature directional locater, and was heading stolidly for the door.

"And where do you think you're going?" Tarrant's annoyance at being treated like a service robot came broiling to the surface, and he deliberately blocked Avon's way, despite an awareness that he could not physically restrain the man. Nor, however, did the answer he received do anything to alleviate the tension.

"Stay with Vila."

"I want to know where you're going, Avon."

The gun in Avon's hand came up, accompanied by a threatening tone he remembered only too well. "Stay here." Avon snarled the words, gesturing sharply with the gun. Tarrant moved unwillingly aside to let him pass, and when he had gone, moved back into the doorway to again guard both the empty hall and one Delta thief who would probably never be aware of the care than had just been lavished on him from one exceedingly unlikely source.

*      *      *

Liberator sounded... well... wrong. It felt wrong, too, though he couldn't identify a reason.

Vila turned a juncture, drifting into yet another darkened, hexagonal corridor, and reached out to touch the familiar reflective striping of the walls. That felt wrong, too, not at all like Liberator ought to, and why was it so stifling down here? Something was constricting his air passage, forcing up a fiery agony every time he tried to draw a breath; it made his eyes water with the effort to breathe at all. Where was everyone?

Blake? Jenna? Cally? Gan? Avon? All gone and left him behind?

"All but one, Vila."

Avon stood at the corridor's end, clothed in black that was still not as dark as his gaze, and there was a gun in his hand. A gun pointed at Vila.

There's only you to deal with now, the spectre of Avon said, though its mouth didn't move. Only one more 'friend' (with the faintest pause on the word) to be dispensed with.

Vila didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the ludicrous image, for all that it evoked a memory of something he could not quite call to mind; some other closed, dark place where Avon had stalked him, and carried a gun. Vila had no wish to pursue the memory. So he turned and bolted down the passageway, running for all he was worth until Liberator wasn't Liberator at all anymore; there were rocks, dead grass, patches of snow beneath his boots, a sharp bite to the air and the acrid smell of smoke. The blackened splinters of a glass housing smoldered on the hilltop.

Terminal.

Terminal, where Cally had died and Liberator had been lost. He could see four figures huddling round a fire in the gathering dark. Avon, bent over a broken Orac. Tarrant, flat on his back with a concerned Dayna at his side. And Vila himself sat alone and dejected, apart from the rest.

He hadn't wanted them to see the tears.

Why do you cry for me, Vila?

He started, twisting to see where the voice had come from. Cally stood behind him on the hillside, her hair and clothing unaffected by the chill wind, and she was smiling at him.

You needn't mourn for me, she said. Not now, not then. She nodded to the morose group around the campfire. On Auron, it was always known that death is not the end of life.

"Cally, why did you...?" Vila's courage deserted him and took his words along with it. Infuriatingly, his voice caught, and he couldn't ask her why she'd left him alone, why she had warned him once and then not come again.

"Vila?"

Someone else's voice had intruded then. He didn't recognize it until the mysterious obstruction was removed and he could breathe more easily. Then it was clearly Tarrant's voice, repeating his name.

Tarrant?

But Tarrant was unconscious, over there on the ground, and the others were...

Where? Terminal no longer surrounded him. The frosty air was gone, replaced by a grey, soundless nothing, and Cally... Cally was there, reaching out to him. But she was fading even as he watched, blending into the nothing, becoming the same hue of colorless grey.

"No!" He tried to run after her, but his feet had grown impossibly heavy and refused to move. "Cally, don't go! Please, Cally!"

There were hands on his shoulders, shaking him gently. "Vila, can you hear me?"

"No... no, don't!"

He saw a shadow move against the grey, a black shape with a gun in its phantom hand.

Only one more friend, it said, to be dispensed with.

One dark hand came up to clutch him, the other pressing the gun to his head. Vila fought to back away, and couldn't.

"Don't," he begged. "Avon, please don't--"

"Vila, wake up. It's Tarrant. Can you hear me, Vila?"

Tarrant. Tarrant could help him, if he would; Tarrant could stop Avon.

"Don't let him," he pleaded with the unseen pilot. "Help me..."

"No one is going to hurt you," Tarrant's voice said. "Even the computer says you're out of danger. It's all right, Vila."

But he was wrong. It wasn't all right, it wasn't all right at all -- because the shadow was still out there, waiting, and it wanted to kill him.

Vila coughed, and immediately the pain in his chest returned with a vengeance. Tears formed in his eyes, forcing him to blink, and in a moment, when he had forcibly quelled the cough, he saw the ceiling of an unfamiliar room, flashing banks of medical equipment -- and the puzzled face of Del Tarrant.

"You were dreaming," the pilot said awkwardly, and tried to smile. He didn't quite succeed.

The staccato echo of gunshots came from somewhere, and Vila realized with a start that they were not aboard Mirage.

"Where...?"

"We're on Kidron. Vaylan's base, only it's under attack and I think most of the rebels have evacuated. Avon's gone, after Orac I expect."

Vila shuddered, reminded of the shadow, and squeezed his eyes shut once again. "Please don't let him," he said weakly.

Tarrant's voice came from above him, strong and confident. "Don't let him what? What are you talking about?"

No, of course it wouldn't make sense to Tarrant. He'd never known about Malodaar, had never seen the Avon-shadow. Or Cally... Dream and reality colliding, Vila tried to turn over in the bed, alarmed when he found that he couldn't: his arms were secured to the couch by restraints, and his hands were heavily bandaged. Oh gods, his hands. Avon hardly need bother to kill him; he would be useless anyway. To be rid of him now, all Avon had to do was...

"Don't let him," Vila repeated in desperation, and forgetting that his hands were immobilized, tried to reach out for Tarrant. "I don't want to die here. Please."

A confused Tarrant shook his head in denial. "You're not dying," he affirmed, and glanced aside at the diagnostic indicators as if to reassure himself. "It was touch and go for a while, but you're stable now."

Vila's terror made words near-impossible, but he had to say it, had to somehow gain Tarrant's support -- and protection.

"Avon..." The name wanted to wedge in his throat. "Avon will try to leave me here. I don't want to die that way... not left behind like that... Don't let him leave me here."

He saw dismay on the pilot's face, followed closely by something that looked very much like guilt. Then the younger man turned away slightly and said, "He won't, Vila." He got up and paced away across the room, long legs carrying him to the far wall in just a few strides. "Believe me, he won't."

Taking that as a promise, Vila relaxed against the sweat-damp pillow and let his eyelids grow heavy again. The ache in his lungs still made breathing difficult; his hands were hurting now as well, and he was suddenly very, very sleepy...

*      *      *

Avon found the central control room of the complex without difficulty. Mirage's trace on the carrier wave had led him here with the directional finder and with instructions broadcast to him over the communicator. He'd waited outside the door for some time, listening to voices that he finally determined were of electronic origin. He went in gun-first just the same, but found no one inside.

The room's front wall was formed by a gridded tracking screen, mapping the area of space above them, though the only ships visible there were nearly off the grid. Vaylan's fleet, no doubt, escaping yet another invasion -- except that this one had not been of Federation design. It must be expensive, conquering Federation outposts only to abandon them again at the first sign of trouble. He wondered if Vaylan had had time to turn tail and run with them.

The thought dissolved as he found the source of the babble he had heard from outside: a newscast was chattering excitedly to itself on monitor screens all around the control center. As he approached one of them, he saw a flash of Earth Residence One -- the house Servalan had constructed on her ascension to the Presidency. The house where Anna had died. The shot promptly changed to an interior view, the President's executive office, and Avon immediately recognized Carnell surrounded by a squadron of Vaylan's rabble. The man's usually-dazzling smile was visibly daunted: he was signing something and handing it reluctantly back to a severe-looking woman among the rebel contingent.

"These scenes of the official resignation were taken late yesterday," the reporter's rapid-fire voice-over exclaimed. "And among the documents signed by the retiring President Falco were those legally dissolving the Terran Federation as a governing body in any sector of the galaxy." The scene changed again, this time to an innocuous corridor and two rebel guards on either side of an open door. "Less than two hours after his resignation," the reporter went on breathlessly, "ex-President Falco, who was to be held for trial, somehow disappeared from this guarded room on an upper floor of the residence. Search parties have thus far failed to locate the dethroned President, but rebel forces are confident that he will be unable to escape the palace compound. Celebrations of the Rebellion's victory have meanwhile drawn thousands to--"

Avon found the broadcast's control switch and flipped it to 'off.' The screens died instantaneously, plunging the room into contrasting silence.

So Vaylan's troops hadn't necessarily run from the mysterious invaders after all. More likely, they were on their way to join the victory party on Earth, then. Over one night, Blake's dream had come true. There was no longer a Federation. Avon wondered idly if the man would have approved of the people who were fulfilling his legacy. People like Par Vaylan.

Somehow, he doubted it.

Scanning the large circular room at length, Avon's gaze fell to the control banks left of the tracking screen. There, amid a clutter of dysfunctional circuit boards and wiring, acquiring its own matching patina of dust, sat a familiar rectangular shape.

"Orac!"

He hurried to it, using the tip of the gun to clear debris from its top, relieved to find that none of the discarded circuitry was Orac's own. His left hand slid into his pocket to close around the key he had taken from Vila before leaving the medical section. After the briefest of hesitations, he pulled it out, and brushing dust from the activation slot, slapped it home with a flourish.

Orac sputtered to life with a decidedly anemic whine and said raspily, *Where have you been??! My casing and circuitry are inexcusably dirty and will require immediate maintenance if I am to function at peak levels of effic--*

"Shut up and listen," Avon interrupted, though he'd never thought he would actually be glad to hear the computer's habitual complaining again. "Do you know where Par Vaylan is?"

*No,* Orac shot back petulantly. *Nor do I care. I am not a personnel roster. Furthermore, I must protest the lengthy period of time in which I have been--*

"Then tell me about the invading forces," Avon cut it off again. "Who are they?"

Orac's lights flashed dully for a moment before it answered. *The ship's computer registry lists it as the privateer Croesus. Crew complement is one-hundred-seventy-five. That is the only information I have obtained thus far.*

"Then obtain more. I want to know who and what--"

"Perhaps I might be of help."

Avon spun with the weapon ready -- and found Vaylan framed in the doorway, hands held outward in cautionary surrender.

"I'm not armed," he averred, and when Avon showed no indication of relinquishing the gun, he moved into the room with an expansive shrug that raised his hands still higher. "But I'm afraid that they are."

Someone moved into the doorway behind him, a woman in dark blue fatigues with an assault rifle tucked all-too-comfortably under her arm. The snick of doors opening at several other points around the room was closely followed by the intrusion of at least a dozen other figures, most of them women as well, all similarly outfitted and armed.

Avon kept his own gun targeted dead center of Vaylan's chest.

"I have two debts to settle with you," he said tightly, ignoring the newcomers for the moment. "That's twice now you've attempted to kill me. I should like to return the favor -- albeit, more successfully."

Vaylan paled ever-so-slightly, then opted for a characteristic bluff. "Go ahead. Won't stop them killing you, I'm not sorry to say."

Avon's teeth made a brief appearance before he drawled, "Well now, that might just be worth the investment."

"It might." One of the women, a stocky brunette with another assault rifle, closed in on Avon with her armed cohorts on either side. "But we have orders to bring both of you back to Croesus alive. Put down the gun."

Avon considered refusing, weighed the worth and the consequences, and then with a grimace, surrendered the pistol. One of the men in the assault force took the weapon, nodded toward Avon and said to the woman, "You sure he's the one?"

She smirked, an expression that made her hard features still less attractive. "Oh, it's him all right. Doesn't look much like the wanted-holos, maybe, but the Captain saw him on the monitors, and she was sure."

The man looked Avon over, smirking in his own stead. "What's she want with him anyway? Doesn't look like much to me."

Avon couldn't restrain the question. "She?"

They ignored him.

"Hell if I know why she wants him. Just do as you're told." The brunette turned and started barking orders, gesturing at Vaylan with her gun. "Take this one aboard and put him in a cell. Gibbon, Boles, you two rendezvous with Fourth Division and tell the Captain we're taking her 'catch' to the flight deck. Carnes, you take three others and finish searching for the rest of his crew. And Dekker," she turned to the man who had spoken earlier. "Bring that thing." She pointed at Orac with her chin; the small computer continued to hum irritatedly in the corner, as though it disapproved of the proceedings.

"What is it?" Dekker demanded in cautionary tones.

"How would I know? He was talking to it and I heard it answer him. Just bring it."

She left a disgruntled Dekker to the task and brought the muzzle of her rifle up to swing toward the door. Vaylan and his escorts had just vanished through it.

"Let's go," she said to Avon.

He regarded her with disdain for a moment, deliberately hesitating. Dekker hefted a buzzing Orac and marched out ahead of them. Then, as though complying were entirely his own idea and not her command at all, Avon wheeled and followed.

They headed down a side corridor he did not recognize, and along the way passed a rather grisly array of eight corpses; men still clutching their weapons, the shock of death staring, ill-disguised, from sightless eyes. They lay variously sprawled on the polished tile flooring, or propped in ungainly poses against the walls where they had fallen. And died.

Mirage's warning that Vaylan had dispatched an armed party of eight to 'clear the flight deck' teased at Avon's memory as he was marched past the gruesome scene, but he refrained from comment.

The thought fled altogether when, in the next moment, they emerged into the waning sunlight of the airfield.

Two ships occupied the tarmac.

Neither was Mirage.

The imposing bulk of the Croesus towered in the foreground. Where Mirage had rested, however, sat a tiny, rusting cargo transport, its squat hull perched on sagging metal legs that screamed imminent collapse. Avon did an involuntary double-take, automatically searching beyond the two ships for the one that ought to be there -- and yet was not.

The smile nearly escaped before he thought to hide it.

His escorts, fortunately, had not noticed his reaction. They strode on toward Croesus as though nothing were amiss, as though the sorry little cargo ship had been there all along.

As indeed, it had.

In their haste to get Vila to cover, Avon mused, neither he nor Tarrant had bothered to look back at the ship from which they had come. And whether by its own volition or Vaylan's, Mirage, worthy of its name, had adopted camouflage. Until now, Avon hadn't realized how effective -- and how thorough -- her defensive cloaking could be. Nor had he known her to be capable of deceiving human eyes as easily as she beguiled those of electronic origin.

There was a great deal about Mirage he would still have to learn.

If ever he saw her again...

"Inside!"

The assault rifle prodded him rudely out of his reverie, prompting Avon to give serious consideration to the strangulation of its owner. Were it not for the fact that she held a ready finger on the weapon's trigger...

That was not the only thing giving him pause. He admitted to more than a little curiosity about this captain. Someone, they had said, who saw him on the monitors and recognized him. Someone who was certain she knew him despite his dissimilarity to the old wanted holos, despite the reports that Kerr Avon had died on Sekros some weeks ago, despite various other evidence to the contrary.

In all his life, precious few had known Kerr Avon that well. And he had thought all of them either dead or accounted for.

At the rifle's insistence, he strode up the ramp and through Croesus' main hatch. She was as dark a ship inside as out. Laser scars marred her bulkheads at several points along the accessway; peeling paint and broken cables hung batlike from the overheads. The air carried a taint of rust and old oil, overlaid by a peculiar, heady scent Avon recognized as cylotane -- the germicidal chemical many old air recycling systems had utilized to combat bacteria breeding in their oxygen-mixtures.

"Not that way. Move."

He realized he had stopped walking only when the woman's martinet command echoed near his ear and he was shoved in another direction, down a corridor bustling with returning 'troops' (if that was indeed what they were), toward a round door painted a garish shade of red. Or it had been, once.

Most of the traffic had turned into side corridors by the time Avon reached the door, which irised open with a slight wheeze to reveal the flight deck.

'Command center' would perhaps be the more accurate term. He stepped into a red-lit room of indeterminate size, with scaffolded galleries rising into seeming infinity on either side. The galleries were manned by shadowy figures bent over squawking instruments and consoles. Catwalks between the various levels were alive with activity as well: people in the same blue coveralls Avon's 'escorts' had worn moved back and forth with a decided sense of preparation. For what, he wondered?

"Hold there."

This woman's conversational abilities were beginning to grate on his nerves. Avon treated her to a Pleistocene glare, which she ignored, and halted beside a bank of flashing monitor screens. A cluster of blue uniforms, dyed mauve in the harsh illumination, stood with their backs to him, studying readouts on yet another console. They turned as a unit when his 'keeper' said, "This is the one you wanted, Captain."

"Thank you, Ries. Stand by."

Until she had spoken, Avon had utterly failed to recognize her. The hair was styled short and close, the face still coldly beautiful, yet somehow almost alien in the blood-colored light. Only the voice, diamond hard and self-assured as ever, still brought to mind the woman he had once known as Jenna Stannis.

They regarded each other in strained silence until she said, "I'd hoped the viscasts were telling the truth when they said you were dead. I suppose I should have known better."

He answered her with a look both knowing and querulous, but anything he might have said was pre-empted by the arrival of another uniformed subordinate, a man who handed Jenna a clipboard and cast Avon a sidelong glance as he reported curtly, "Divisions one through five aboard and accounted for. Carnes and three others are still on search detail."

Jenna studied the board fleetingly, then lay it aside. "Searching for what?"

Ries moved slightly behind Avon, raising the tip of the rifle. "The rest of this one's crew," she said.

"Ah." The captain of the Croesus tossed her head back and propped one hand on her hip, addressing Avon directly once again. "And how many were there... in your 'crew,' Avon?"

He allowed the smile out, tightly controlled but effective. "Well now, that rather depends upon who is asking. And why."

"Stannis," one of the crew said from behind her, and Avon's eyes widened at the name as the man continued. "All holds secured for cargo; flight window in twelve point four-four minutes."

"Right." She turned back to the first man. "Recall the search party, Dylan. It's time to get out of here."

With a sharp nod, he disappeared again into the general confusion.

Jenna strode to the bank of monitors where Avon stood, touched a control and brought the image of the sagging cargo transport onto a primary screen.

"You really are coming down in the world, travelling anywhere in that. I'm surprised you ever achieved orbit."

"We managed."

"She's better than she looks, is that it?"

"You might say that." The answer was as deadpan as he could make it. Jenna seemed not to notice.

"Well whoever was with you, they won't be coming after us." Without explaining that, she shot another question at Ries. "You've got the ransom demand ready to transmit?"

"We've got it."

"Good."

Avon's eyes narrowed. This was all moving too rapidly, with too many unexplained factors. "Ransom?" he echoed, and caught Jenna's eyes again.

"Yes. For your friend in the cell block. Vaylan, isn't it?"

"He's hardly--"

"A friend, yes. Sorry, I'd forgotten; he'd not likely be alive if he were." Avon only half-managed to conceal a flinch at that. She went on without pausing. "But he has plenty of friends on Earth who'll pay to get him back all right. And they'll pay quite a lot, by the look of it."

He glanced around the control center at length before he said, "You've done rather well for yourself, I see."

"I've stayed alive."

"By picking up the pieces after other people's wars?"

"Any way I could. I never claimed to be particular." Her gaze hardened, centering on him. "Or altruistic, either. When I saw you on that monitor, I came damn close to ordering you shot on sight."

He feigned unconcern. "But you didn't."

"No, I didn't." Her smile was more akin to a smirk. "The Federation were still likely to pay a reward for you then, provided I could prove you were alive after all. Now there's no Federation to pay anything..." She left the threat implicit, letting him wonder.

"And no tedious qualms," he breathed, "about playing both sides against the middle."

"Not a one." She swept a hand at the screens depicting Croesus' cargo holds, most of which appeared full. "That's how well we've done for ourselves. Booty from a hundred ships, a hundred planets, sold back to the highest bidder with no questions asked. It's a business I know how to run."

"So I see."

His disapproval was more obvious than he'd intended; he saw anger flash in her eyes at his tone. "Someone I knew once," she said, "used to tell me he found the idea of being wealthy rather appealing. In fact, he called it 'the only reality.'"

"'Someone you knew once' must have been a very cynical man."

"Oh, he was."

Dylan spoke again from the nearby console. "Ready on minimum power," he announced.

Jenna's gaze went back to the screen with Mirage's camouflaged image. "One burst, three seconds," she said, and in the same moment, Avon started forward to protest, only to be halted by the barrel of Ries' gun pressed firmly against his spine.

He heard a sharp power hum. On the screen, a halo of brilliant blue flashed over the tiny ship for a split second -- and then exploded into one brief, blinding fireball.

Jenna cut the screen signal as the smoke cleared from a now-empty landing field. Her expression held both wariness and warning. "We're better than we look, too," she said, and with a wave to Ries, she headed back to the forward consoles. "Put him in the cell block and report back to your launch position. We have lift-off in six minutes."

"Right."

Avon scarcely heard Ries' acknowledgment; he was staring at the blank screen with a sense of loss he had not felt since Liberator's 'death' in orbit over Terminal. Useless, of course, to form attachments to such things as ships, computers... They betrayed you less often than people, but they were just as easily lost. As easily destroyed.

"Let's go."

Ries jerked the rifle in the direction of the door. Avon didn't move for a prolonged moment, watching Jenna, her back to him now, bent to the task of launch preparations.

Wealth is the only reality, came the long-ago echo, and though the words were his own, the voice that whispered them belonged to Blake. And the only way to obtain wealth is to take it away from somebody else.

With all the contempt he could rally, Avon shoved the rifle's barrel aside and preceded a scowling Ries to the door.

What's the matter, Avon? Blake's patronizing tones inquired as the door spiraled open. Is it disturbing, seeing another's practice of your own philosophy?

His own philosophy. His own reality. Or at least he'd thought them to be, once.

Kerr Avon walked on through the ship's crowded corridors without seeing them at all. To Blake's spectral accusation, he offered no defense.

There wasn't really any point.

*      *      *

Vila hadn't stirred in over an hour -- and Avon had been gone too long.

Tarrant hovered near the open door of the medical unit, torn between duty and necessity. No further sounds of battle, no signs of life out there at all. The base was quiet as a proverbial tomb. And no Avon.

It had been too long.

"Vila..."

Tarrant paced back to the bed, released the restraining bands and put a light hand to the thief's shoulder. Vila's eyes fluttered open at once, fever-bright but aware, and fastened on him with an intensity Tarrant found more than a little disturbing.

"I have to go," he blurted, and when the brown eyes filled with fearful understanding, Tarrant damned himself for a fool. "Avon is--" he began.

"Go on then." Vila's voice broke, but his words were forceful and taut with resentment. "What are you waiting around for, anyway?"

"That's not what I--"

But Vila had turned away in denial, drawing his bandaged hands to his chest as he curled onto his side. Never one for bedside manners, Tarrant felt his patience dissolve completely.

"Oh hell, will you listen to--"

From somewhere outside the complex came the abrupt whine of a plasma blast; a single, short burst followed again by eerie silence.

Tarrant bolted for the door. "I'll be back," he said, but Vila lay still and gave no indication that he'd even heard. Paragun firmly in hand, Tarrant swept out the door and charged down an empty corridor toward the air field -- toward the new sound that had begun to rumble through the flooring underfoot; the roar of a ship's thrust engines.

Launch warning lights flashed red-and-white patterns over the exit, which sealed automatically even as he reached it. Tarrant could do nothing but watch as steam jets obscured the view through the door's double glass, joined minutes later by clouds of exhaust backwash from the troop freighter's lift-off. The ship was well away before the seal retracted, cancelling the warning lights, and he could once again see the landing field.

The empty landing field.

Swearing, he kicked at the release bar, letting the door swing all the way out before he stepped through it, gun first.

Sunset dyed the field deep amber, but even in the failing light, he could see that Mirage was gone. Not launched: only one ship had lifted off, and he was sure it had been the pirate. Just as he was sure, now, with a sickened confidence, exactly what the single plasma burst had signified.

He didn't know how long he'd remained there, feeling lost and staring at absolutely nothing, before it occurred to him to wonder if Avon might still be somewhere on the base.

He took a different hallway back, searching room after deserted room, finding nothing and no one, though there were signs of both looting and general ransacking throughout. The third corridor he tried yielded the startling sight of eight armed corpses littering the floor. They were the only casualties he'd come across, and their number did not escape Tarrant's notice. They'd probably been on their way to board Mirage when they'd run head-on into the pirate assault force and unwisely decided to shoot it out. In the meantime, it appeared, their compatriots had all abandoned them.

And Vaylan? Tarrant examined the eight faces with practiced detachment, looking for the rebel leader. Not among the dead. So, perhaps he was still here as well. Somewhere.

Five empty rooms later, he found the tracking gallery, replete with lighted wall grid and its flashing echo of the pirate freighter breaking orbit. Moving slowly past the humming banks of equipment, Tarrant arrived at the communications consoles, which he studied at length before coming to a decision.

"Why not?" he said aloud, and tucking the paragun carefully under one arm, he reached to open the base-wide comm circuit.

"Avon." The name echoed overhead and out the open door, reverberating down the corridors. "Avon, are you there? I'm in the tracking gallery; if you can hear me, please respond."

His amplified voice ricocheted away, dissipating into nothing.

Scowling, he tried again. "Vaylan? Is anyone there?"

The question repeated itself to the uncaring walls. Nothing answered.

Defeated, Tarrant dropped into a chair. The paragun fell with a disgusted clatter to the console. He glared at the instruments in front of him; frequency modulators, signal enhancers, satellite relays. None of it of any help unless he could find a way to coax it into locating a ship for him. And there were none on the base, according to the grids.

Then again, it was a fairly large planet...

The faint noise sent his hand flying to the gun by reflex: he checked the reaction only when he'd swung around -- and found a wan, unsteady Vila looking back at him from the doorway.

"What the hell are you doing out of bed?" he demanded crossly. "I might have blown your head off."

Vila leaned, propped back-first to the door frame, and said in a pained voice, "Didn't answer you, did he?"

Tarrant glowered at the console again, an act Vila apparently took for adequate reply.

"Thought not."

"He could be anywhere," Tarrant said hotly, determined to deny what seemed more and more evident. "He could be dead, for all I know."

"Or out there." Vila eyed the departing blip on the wall grid.

"He wouldn't do that." Tarrant shot to his feet to storm around the comm station. "Not willingly." At any other time, he might never have believed that he, of all people, could defend Avon. But damn it, he had seen the man insist on saving Vila's life despite the danger to his own: that Avon should suddenly acquire a conscience he found shocking enough. But to acquire it only to end up abandoning both his shipmates... It didn't make sense. Not the way Vila wanted it to, anyway.

Tarrant's angry stalk came to a sudden halt in front of a workbench, one that hadn't been used much by the look of it. It was the dust, in fact, that had arrested his attention. A surrounding layer of grey defined a perfect black rectangle on the countertop: one that was precisely the correct dimensions for...

"Orac." Vila's voice at his shoulder made Tarrant start. "Or it used to be."

"Or something roughly the same shape. It doesn't prove a thing."

Vila swayed, prompting Tarrant to catch him by both shoulders. "For God's sake, man, sit down before you fall down. Regen healers can only do so much -- the rest takes time."

The thief slid unprotesting into a chair, but went on as though Tarrant hadn't spoken of his injuries at all. "Don't need to prove anything," he murmured. "He has a ship, he has Orac. What's he need with us, then?"

"It doesn't follow, Vila. Avon, hand Orac over to a pirate and then just fly away with him, friendly as you please? It would never happen."

Vila's look said otherwise as he rubbed absently at his gauze-taped hands. "So what do we care, anyway? We don't need him or old Plastic-mouth either one. We can go our own way now, take Mirage and just get out of here."

Tarrant sat down again. "I'm afraid it's not that easy, Vila..."

*      *      *

Jenna Stannis deliberately strapped on a side-arm before entering the cellblock. Croesus was two days out en route to Earth, and the ransom demand for Vaylan had been answered with the promise of a handsome sum -- provided the news services were not permitted access to the story. It wouldn't do to have it known that the leader of the Glorious Revolution and new President of the People's Galactic Republic had been kidnapped on the eve of his victory over the Federation.

Jenna smiled.

The former Federation.

What wouldn't Blake have given, while he lived, to hear that phrase? A great deal, though the man's own ingenuous nature had never allowed him to think beyond the Federation's overthrow. Had it not been for that naiveté, she might have found more of a confidant in Blake; a friend, perhaps even a lover, time and circumstances permitting. Neither had, though, and thanks to Avon, never would.

Her smile dissipating with that thought, she drew the gun in one sharp, efficient motion, and bypassing the room that held Par Vaylan, palmed the locking disk on Avon's cell.

She saw the dark head come up at the sound of the door. Seated on the cot's edge, he took in the gun at a bored glance before his gaze fell back to his interlocked hands. He said nothing, and the disinterest puzzled Jenna. Did he believe she wouldn't kill him, or was it simply that he didn't care? Neither contingency fit the man she remembered.

"I've been deciding what to do with you," she said bluntly, and let the gun rest loosely in her hand, ever-present but less threatening. Avon gave no indication of having noticed. "I'd like the answers to some questions, first."

She'd worded that badly and knew it. The eyes that came slowly up to meet hers, chillingly defiant, challenged her to make him answer anything at all -- or to pull the trigger and have done with it.

Cursing to herself, Jenna plunged on anyway. "Is it true?" she demanded. "Did you kill him?"

She saw Avon tense at the first question. His gaze darted to the far wall and fastened there, on nothing. For the longest time, she was sure he wasn't going to respond at all -- then he rose stiffly and moved across the cell to address that same wall.

"Blake is dead. It no longer matters how--"

"It matters," she cut him off. "To some of us." Relentless, she pressed the question. "Did you kill him?"

His face, when he half-turned to look at her, answered the accusation beyond any doubt. If there was any regret there at all, Jenna failed to find it.

"Why?" She'd never truly believed those reports -- until now. It was not an easy acceptance. "I want to know why."

For just a moment, she thought she saw something akin to anguish cross his face. But it was gone again too quickly for her to assess.

"The condemned," he breathed, "offers no defense. Why don't you just get on with it?"

Jenna found this weary acceptance unsettling. The Avon of Liberator's crew had valued self-preservation above anything else: this, by contrast, was a man whom most of the known galaxy had been trying to kill for so many years that the threat had long ago lost its novelty.

"Damn it, Avon--"

She stopped, curbed her temper, demanded another answer she probably wouldn't receive. "Who else is there? The viscasts claimed you'd all been killed, but a year later they were back offering a reward for you. Who else survived?"

As ever, Avon's look said more than his words. At the moment, it wondered plainly why she cared.

"Call it curiosity," she told him honestly. "For old times' sake. Who else?"

"No one." He said it so quickly that she was confident it could not be the truth. And she knew he hadn't arrived on that base alone...

"Someone was with you on Kidron. When I've finished my business with Vaylan's friends, just maybe I'll send someone back to find out who it was."

He said nothing, and his expression this time was closed and unforthcoming, completely unreadable.

Someone moved in the open doorway: Jenna recognized Ries, assault rifle still in hand, hovering expectantly in the corridor. She stepped to the door to meet the woman, though she never turned her back on Avon.

"What is it?"

Dour-faced, Ries handed her a computer read-out. "Vaylan's new government isn't wasting any time. They issued that on general frequencies this morning. The viscasts are already broadcasting holos to match."

Jenna scanned the print-out with pragmatic calm: it was a list of 'criminals wanted for capital offenses against the Republic,' and for whom generous rewards would be offered to anyone who should bring the miscreants to justice. It was topped by a five-million-credit bounty on former Federation President Falco. Prominently etched below that worthy title was the name Kerr Avon and the tidy sum of four million credits. Del Tarrant and Vila Restal came seventh and eighth, below several names she did not recognize. Her own fell low on the list, but still carried the old Federation price tag of one million: a prize tempting enough to any bounty hunter with the nerve to try collecting it. Something in the neighborhood of twenty had done just that over the years. Jenna did not regret that none of them had survived to boast of the effort. She was a little disappointed, though, that ransoming the new President in the hour of his triumph hadn't moved her higher in the criminal ranks, secrecy notwithstanding. But then, perhaps the wheels of this new 'Democracy' moved just as slowly, in some respects, as the Federation's had.

She handed the paper back to Ries with a wry smile. "I suppose I should be honored, having my name on the Republic's most-wanted list in such distinguished company." To Avon, she added, "You've come second this time round, under Falco. Not to worry, though. They've added a magnanimous bonus to the price on your head. I can't imagine where they've got all this newfound wealth from, can you?"

Avon stared bleakly at the paper in Ries' hand and did not respond to Jenna's sarcasm. Ries crumpled the report in one gloved fist, tossing her head at Avon as she spoke. "So we turn this one in at the same time we collect for Vaylan. Double return."

Jenna slipped her handgun back into its holster, buying time to deliberate by fastening the safety strap. Avon had turned his head to look at her, but the eyes were flat, impassive.

"No," she said finally, and held up a hand to forestall Ries' protest. "I have other... uses... for this one. And Ries--"

The stocky woman turned back, disapproval rife in her expression. "Yes?"

"As far as the rest of the crew are concerned, his name is... Kerron. Dev Kerron. And he isn't on that list at all. Clear?"

For a moment, the disapproval became naked hostility. Then Ries masked her reaction with a succinct, "Clear, Captain," turned on her heel and left. Jenna didn't watch her go; her eyes were on Avon again, waiting for a question that didn't come.

"Don't you want to know why I did that?"

The response was as flat as his facial expression. "Am I supposed to be overwhelmed with gratitude?"

"No. Curiosity, perhaps, but never gratitude. Not you." She walked across the cell, keeping her stance relaxed, her tone capitulating. "We can help each other, you and I."

His brows went up at that, the closest thing to surprise Avon ever registered. Jenna hesitated, certain that what she was about to propose was mad, even more so in light of the fact that this was not the Avon she had known. This man had lost two... no, three ships, and their crews. And he had killed Blake. If any one thing remained the same, it was that he could not be trusted, not then, not now. So he would bear watching, provided he agreed to her demands. Well, she was used to that. Most of her crew bore watching.

"I have a base," she told him, "on a planet the Federation never touched, and the Republic's never heard of. It's a place a wanted man can live his life out, if he wants to, without looking over his shoulder. Nearly everyone there is on a wanted list somewhere. Safety and protection, for as long as you want it."

"In return for...?"

Jenna straightened. "I have the base, the personnel, the ship. And now I have Orac as well. That alone is enough to secure our safety from just about any threat. What I don't have is an easy way into the vaults and the cargo holds; a way around dockings, shuttles, surface landings..."

"The teleport."

"Together, you and Orac could rebuild it. Or do I overestimate your capabilities?"

He didn't answer that, but his countering question surprised her. "Is protection all you have to offer?"

Jenna scowled. "Isn't that enough?"

"Perhaps not." There was a little of the avaricious Avon she remembered in that tone.

"Well it's all I'm paying, for the moment," she said, and headed for the door. "Think it over. When I'm finished with President Vaylan over there, I'll be back."

A bit annoyed, though hardly surprised, Jenna left him to consider the proposal, secured the cell's lock and headed down the corridor.

She had business to conduct with the 'passenger' next door.

*      *      *

Bored, Vila sat and watched Tarrant work at the communications station.

It had been two days, and he hadn't located so much as a flyer. At the moment, the pilot was occupied with what Vila frankly considered a futile effort: attracting the attention of some passing ship with a distress signal. Dangerous to begin with, but then again, maybe not. No one was out there to see it, after all.

"Damn." He heard Tarrant mutter the oath as yet another attempt to contact some operating ground facility failed him.

Maybe there wasn't anybody down on the surface of this worthless planet, either.

Vila pulled himself out of the chair and ambled to the comm board, conscious of the tightness that lingered in his chest, and of the stiffening ache in his fingers. He'd removed the bandages this morning to find that the regen healer had done its job, at least cosmetically. There wasn't any way to know how long it would be before he regained full use of his hands.

Or if he would at all.

Tarrant ignored him until he gestured at the sensor grid under the younger man's nose. "I thought you said there was a city less than twenty miles away."

"There is. They're not answering messages without a recognition code, and neither is anyone else on the planet. Martial law's been declared in most of the communities. From the look of it, Kidron doesn't know the war is over."

Vila squinted at the blinking lights. "Meaning...?"

"Well the local broadcasts are sporadic, but there are reports of skirmishes in all the major population centers. The Federation may have fallen, but it still has a number of ardent supporters -- on this planet anyway."

"So what do you want to talk to 'em for then?" Vila complained. "For that matter, why hang around here at all? Let's go into the city and steal a ship."

Tarrant snorted derisively. "It's a long walk, Vila."

"Beats sitting here."

"Look, go find something else to do, will you?" Tarrant snapped. "I'm sure there's a bottle of booze somewhere on the base."

With that, he turned back to the controls, unconscious of how much the remark had stung. Vila fell silent, only half-aware of Tarrant's continued muttering between various beeps and clicks of the comm-unit controls.

"There's a weak signal. Keeps coming in from somewhere close by, but something's interfering... blocking it."

Vila turned away without replying. The comment hadn't been addressed to him in the first place, and who cared about some damned phantom signals, anyway?

Nobody out there did.

Nobody in here, either; not when you came right down to it.

So go on, Vila, find something else to do. Get out of everyone's way; they don't give a damn about you anyhow.

So why do you stay?

Avon had asked him that once. Aboard Liberator... A century ago.

He'd answered that he didn't have anywhere else to go, and at the time it had been true. Now... well, maybe it wasn't so true anymore.

Let's see if we can't find that bottle, eh? And then maybe, just maybe, we'll take that twenty-mile walk.

Alone.

Well, hell, he'd been alone before, hadn't he? Plenty of times. Hands or no hands, he still had his wits and he'd use them to find a way to stay alive. He always had, all his life, and he could do it again.

Vila took a long, slow breath, and purposely did not look back as he made his way out of the comm center.

Tarrant never saw him go.

*      *      *

Avon had not anticipated more company so soon. Some four hours after Jenna's departure, the cell door again rumbled open -- this time on the taciturn figure of Dekker. No longer armed, the man regarded him from the doorway with open loathing before he ground out a terse, "You're to come with me."

Not favoring this gruff invitation with a reply, Avon took his time getting up off the bunk. Dekker apparently had nothing more to say: they negotiated several well-populated corridors in silence until they reached an unmarked door; one of a long line of similar entries. Crew quarters, by the look of them.

Dekker palmed the lock release, gesturing sharply once the door had slid open.

"Inside."

Avon didn't move. "Where is Jenna?"

At his familiar usage, the other man's lip curled disparagingly. "Captain Stannis," he grated, "will see to you when she's free. You're to wait in there."

Dampening the wattage in Dekker's glare with a frostbitten one of his own, Avon brushed past the man into the cabin.

He halted again just inside, not even aware of the door snicking shut behind him.

Orac, no longer the slightest bit dusty, rested on a high glass and chrome table, key in place and lights oscillating casually to its familiar, buzzing drone. The rest of the room was too plushly appointed for most shipboard cabins: mirrors, suede couches, objets d'art. Surely not the common crew's habitat. Unless of course they spent all of their ill-gained booty on interior decorating...

The only reality indeed.

He pivoted back to face the table.

"Orac..."

The response came at once, as pithy as it was prompt. *Yes?*

"Where are we? What is this ship's current heading?"

*That information is not available.*

The echo of Zen brought a frown to Avon's face. "What do you mean, 'not available?' Tap the navigation computers. Make it available."

*If it were possible to comply with your request I would already have done so!* the little box snipped impatiently. *My initial theory that the presence of cylotane in the oxygen supply disrupted my circuits has proven incorrect. I can only conclude that either the computers are somehow shielded, which is unlikely, or--*

"Or," Avon picked up the thread, "they are too old to contain tarial cell technology."

*That is, as you deduce, the far greater probability.*

Avon drummed contemplatively on Orac's plex rim, unknowingly prompting an annoyed rise in the machine's hum.

"So there is no way," he said at length, "for you to... influence... the shipboard computers."

*I did not say that!*

Avon's eyes widened. "Oh?"

*No, I did not. Your question referred expressly to the navigation computers. There are a number of tarial-age systems aboard which could be disrupted, if you so desire.*

"Specify."

*The food processing centers on decks two, five and eleven. Various personal entertainment equipment on recreation deck four. Intercom systems on levels--*

"Orac."

*Yes?*

"Shut up."

Avon yanked the key just as the door clicked open to admit Jenna. She spared him an amused glance on her way to the mirrored wall unit on his left, where she poured a drink from a decanter full of something dark amber. She carried it back to one of the couches and sat back against the cushions, her look demanding rather than inviting that he take an opposing chair.

He remained standing, one hand poised over Orac's key in its holding slot.

"I thought you might appreciate somewhat more comfortable accommodations." Her opening move, delivered with complaisant banality, did nothing whatsoever to inspire his cooperation.

The picture of insincere decorum all the same, he nodded in response. "Very impressive... as far as bribes can go. If, however, we are discussing payment..."

The liquor glass rapped the table, splashing part of its contents on the polished chrome. "I've already told you what I'm offering. Give me an answer, damn you. Yes or no. I'm a busy woman -- I don't have time for games."

"So I'd noticed."

"Yes or no, Avon." She fixed him with a cool stare, devoid of any pretense that she intended to wait long.

Avon moved behind Orac, using it as both a physical and psychological barrier. This was incontestably a Jenna with whom he had never dealt before.

He worded his question as concisely as possible. "Have I a choice?"

"Yes. Two."

"And if I select 'no?'"

"Then I make you part of the bargain for Vaylan," she said easily, "and double my take. It's as simple as that. Yes or no?"

He tried to smile, knowing that it came out a tight grimace instead. "Given the terms..."

"I just did," she overran him with calm but lethal tones. "Say it, Avon. I want your word."

Without effort, the grimace blossomed into full rictus. He bit out a clipped, "Yes," his fists tightening on the corners of Orac's casing.

Jenna's curt nod sealed the agreement. She unfolded herself from the couch and left without another word.

Not long after, when Avon tried the door, he was not surprised to find it locked.

*      *      *

One little store of spirits should be easier to find than this.

Vila's hunt through the supply rooms had yielded nothing but empty liquor crates so far. Inconsiderate snobs must have taken it all with them. Well, maybe if he tried checking out near the flight hangars...

Unless Vaylan's people had found it, which he doubted, there was an even bet that a bottle or three would be stashed somewhere in the hangar area. Federation flight mechanics were notorious for sneaking it past the COs; probably explained why so many of their ships crashed on take-off.

Vila knew all the best hiding places.

Unfortunately, the booze wasn't in any of them.

Having inspected eight successive land-flyer bays, each of them open and empty, he was intrigued to encounter a locked door on the ninth. Simple combination tumblers; any child could open it. If only his hands would co-operate.

Bending to the task, he put his ear to the panel and went to work on the numbered dial. Primitive mechanism. Surprising that a Federation base would still use it, but then, they probably hadn't had much to protect or anyone, for that matter, to protect it from.

It took him a full ten minutes to crack a door that should have required only two, but when the last tumbler clicked, Vila's grin rivalled any beginner's at his first burgling triumph.

"Knew you could do it," he congratulated himself. The door rolled upward at his touch, overhead lights flickering on automatically to glint off the painted blue hull of a flyer nestled in the bay.

"Hullo," Vila breathed. "How'd you get left behind, eh?"

He jumped when a soft, nasal voice replied, ~My portside guidance gyros are in need of repair.~

Vila hesitated, then sidled cautiously into the bay to get a better look at what had spoken. On the little vehicle's dashboard, four triangular light-studs winked in sequence. They had flashed brighter in tandem with the voice.

"What're you?" Vila asked timidly.

The lights shifted patterns, growing brighter again. ~I am Flyer 4-5-9,~ it said deferentially, enunciating each digit. With a hopeful air then, it added, ~Are you a gyro-repair engineer?~

"Uh... sorry, no." Vila felt genuine sympathy for it, fellow maroon-victim that it was. "I don't suppose you know where they hide the booze around here?"

Flyer 459 cogitated that, humming to itself in a manner that reminded Vila a little wistfully of Orac. ~Is this a question significant to gyro systems repair?~ it asked.

"One track mind, haven't you?"

With a faintly perplexed buzz, the flyer said, ~One of your references is not contained in my language file. Kindly define 'booze.'~

Vila sighed. "Never mind."

Another buzz. ~Thank you,~ the flyer said. ~The definition has been filed in data stores.~ A series of thoughtful clicks sounded from the cockpit.

"That's not what I--" Vila stopped himself. "Oh, forget it." Leaning on the starboard-side roof, he tried the door and found that it opened easily. Unable to restrain a furtive glance around, he then slipped in behind the controls and took a closer look at things. "So are you completely grounded?" he wondered out loud. "Can you fly at all?"

~I am entirely flight capable,~ it replied in noticeably offended tones.

"Eh? So why'd you get left here, then?"

~I have no information on that,~ it told him. ~My endeavors to signal base operations have failed. The bay doors contain murlanian shielding, which has apparently rendered my communications equipment ineffective.~

"You tried to contact the base?" Well, that explained Tarrant's phantom signal, anyhow.

~My efforts were abortive,~ 459 apologized. ~But perhaps, now that the door is open...~

"No, don't do that," Vila interrupted it. "There's... uh... no one left anyway; they've all gone. I don't suppose you'd care to take a little side trip while you wait for the mechanic, would you?"

~Side trip?~ the flyer queried. ~Please define 'side trip.'~

"You know, a short flight," Vila added helpfully. "Into the nearest city, for instance?"

~That is within my tolerance limitations. The nearest habitation is eighteen point four-four-nine miles distant.~

"Well then," Vila grinned. "What are we waiting for?"

Flyer 459 bleeped softly in reply. ~For you to compress the ignition lever,~ it said.

Vila did.

*      *      *

Tarrant's preoccupation with the comm-board kept him from noticing the wall tracking grid until a pre-set alarm squealed for attention. A mechanical voice announced that an unauthorized ground craft was leaving the hangar area.

He made it out onto the tarmac in time to see the flyer speed away, heading in the direction of the town. And though he couldn't have sworn to it in the harsh amber glow of the field lights, he was certain the face behind the controls had been Vila's. His first reaction was to vent every colorful adjective he'd learned in his three years of FSA training. His second was to sit down then and there, pitching a handful of imaginary rocks after the departing flyer.

Well, he'd cocked that up royally, hadn't he? Now, for better or for worse, he really was on his own.

He didn't harbor any self-delusions.

Vila would not be coming back.