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They needed to meet to finalise the plan. She had far less freedom of movement than he, which meant that he was the one who took their only working shuttle and spent a cramped and ugly few days smelling rust and an overheating coolant system as he nursed the ship along until he had it in parking orbit over Earth. He found this fact ironic as he waited for extremely well-faked IDs to be made available to cover his poorly maintained ship, and even more poorly maintained self. She was a highly placed servant of the state and he…? Well, freedom fighter was a grandiose phrase he'd never liked, and these days, in such dire straits of poverty and desperation, it had an ominously humorous feel. He felt more like an old soldier that war had left far behind, battered and bruised, but yet unbowed. Well, he thought to himself as he waited, perhaps unbowed was being generous. But he still appreciated the irony of his freedom, and wondered if she felt the pressure of her gilded prison bars. So he laughed out loud at her little joke, when the IDs finally arrived, and dressed to play the part. He thought she would appreciate that when they finally met, and anyway it was a good disguise. He walked with a spring in his step as he left the ship. To think of the number of wanted lists his name appeared on even now, and yet the ID, when it arrived, had 'bounty hunter' listed as occupation. It was delicious. It made him look forward to meeting her.
"Why me, Avalon? Why not someone who cares? Why not someone who's alive?"
The connection was bounced through numerous stations to prevent any possibility of the Federation tracing it, and when Avalon pursed her lips and frowned, a bolt of white static rippled up and down the screen. It made her look like she'd been shot, Blake thought, a shiver almost running its way down his back, the screams of the dying sounding in his head.
"Because it's you she's asked for, Blake. She won't negotiate with anyone else."
Professional to the core, unwavering in her dedication, Blake could never the less still hear the impatience in Avalon's voice, even at a distance of over a hundred light years. He wanted to smile at that. He remembered she was such a diminutive figure in person, but her spirit had seemed indomitable… He remembered feeling like that too once – his belief in himself a core of steel, never to be questioned. He wondered absently how much it would take for her to break, and how long she might last… He blinked at the screen, belatedly realising she was waiting for his response.
"Does it really matter?"
"I wouldn't ask you if it didn't."
You wouldn't ask me at all, if you could help it, Blake thought, not even tasting bitterness any longer, the cup was so familiar. I'm barely even the figurehead people have always wanted me to be…
Avalon reached to adjust something off-screen. "I'm sending you the file now. Please, Blake. It's important. This could be the start of everything we've hoped for. And you owe me."
He nodded, and turned away, uninterested but unwilling to argue. The computer beeped, pregnant now with data. He thought, we owe each other. But it was a distant thing, and he found himself unwilling even to feel resentment, instead wondering what could possibly be important enough to force Avalon to beg.
He walked through the concourse with his shabby leather coat slapping against his worn boots and scowled at the slowly moving crowds. They moved a little faster when they looked at him, and he wanted to smile at that, but it wouldn't really be in character. He found he liked it when a path magically melted before his heavy tread, and tried not to think about a time when he would have fitted into this uniformly dressed, soft-featured gaggle of clones without even leaving a ripple. Things had certainly changed. Well. Of course they had.
He found he stopped wanting to smile when a child, a little girl, looked at him and started to cry. He felt old then, as though his skin was stretched too thin over reconstructed bones, and his scars began to ache. All of them. He should get this over with. He wasn't here to reminisce, or… Well. Again, perhaps he was.
The base echoed. Maybe it always had, and Blake was only noticing it now. It was old, this place, used by smugglers, and enforcers since the Open Planet designation. The staging post for a hundred different operations. Theirs was only one more. Absently, Blake considered what the original farmers might have built the place for, as a grain silo perhaps, or a store for the larger machinery? It saddened him to think he'd never know, that he had never even been near a farm long enough to really guess.
He walked down empty corridors and listened to his own footsteps. The base was too big, really, they didn't need this much space for the few of them exiled here. Blake wondered what use the rest of it was being put to. He hadn't been interested. This place, this planet – Gauda Prime – was a refuge, but it was also a hiding place. A dumping ground. And not just for criminals. It irritated him suddenly, he didn't want to think about being dumped here with the rest of the rubbish, but that's what it had boiled down to. He didn't owe Avalon anything, really, in the end.
He strode into the control centre and looked about at the shabby consoles, at the dust, and the neglect. Klyn stared up at him, her eyes huge in a pale face. She looked surprised.
"I need this mission prioritised. Avalon's orders." He handed her the file, and watched as she fed the data into the main system and began to run checks.
"Earth? But…"
"Apparently this contact will only talk to me. But I'm supposed to be dead. You remember, you were there. Find out who she is, and why she thinks I'm alive."
Klyn's face looked pinched, as though she was in pain.
"We haven't got the facilities. I don't know if I can…"
Of course they hadn't. What had he been thinking? This wasn't the Liberator. They didn't have Orac. He realised he was staring at Klyn and tried a smile. It had worked in the old days. He pulled the tattered remnants of what he remembered as charisma around him, and felt the scar by his eye stretch.
"Never mind. Just a print out then. But see if there's an image in the public databanks. She's supposed to be high level. Maybe there's a Presidential function she attended. Maybe I'll recognise her. It might explain things."
Klyn relaxed, given an easier task. Her face glowed when she did that. Or was she glowing for him, for the effort he had made? It made him tired, and it made him hurt, thinking she was happy that she had pleased him. He didn't want that, not any more. He turned and left.
The gun was as old and shabby as the rest of him, and as worn. The stock had been repaired too many times, its casing cracked. But it fitted into his hand as though it was made for it. He found that disturbing. When had a gun become his best friend? His closest companion? He shied away from thinking any more deeply on the necessities of companionship, although he supposed it was only natural, given who he was meeting. No, what disturbed him most wasn't the familiarity of the gun in his hand, but the fact that he hadn't noticed its gradual hold, its creeping indispensability. Shouldn't he have noticed that? Instead, he was just glad the bounty hunter ID gave him permission to carry it, and it swung and bumped his back as he strode through the concourse, hanging heavy on its strap.
It wasn't so strange that she had contacted him, after all. Blake stared at the picture Klyn had found, a snapshot of her laughing, holding a glass. It was a party of some kind, and her dress sparkled in crystalline light, the delicate slopes of her shoulders pale and smooth and well-cared for. He found himself unconsciously rolling his own, untwisting knots he didn't know he had, in thoughtless imitation.
It explained some things and asked others. But it made him interested. Perhaps that was a bad thing, but Blake had discovered that he was slowly reconnecting to old lives, to old loyalties; it was painful yet fascinating. Like the tingling of returning circulation to a deadened limb. Appropriate really, given he was supposed to be dead. Had felt dead now, for weeks. But then, she was supposed to be dead too.
Deva looked up a little too quickly when he walked into his office. He seemed wary, and Blake wondered a little at that, wondering when he'd made even Deva start to treat him like the walking wounded.
"I'm going to Earth. Apparently. To start another revolution."
Deva looked at him, and this time the worry spilled out, too acute to be masked.
"Are you sure, Blake? That you're ready, I mean. It's only been… I mean, since Jevron. Your wounds are barely healed."
Healed? Oh, he wasn't healed. But it was good of Deva to think about him like that. But then Deva always did. Thought about others before himself. If only Blake had done so then the others might still be… But then there were so many to regret, over the years. Jevron was only the last in a long line.
"It has to be me. She won't talk to anyone else." The picture still crackled slightly in his hand. "Is there any intel to be had from those sectors? No need to fly in blind."
Deva didn't want to be distracted from his concerns, but in the end he turned unwillingly to his own computer, obedient to the note of leadership Blake could hear in his own voice. It surprised him how easily that had returned.
"Del Grant's been through recently. He left a report. Casualty numbers, war damage, how far the regrouping has progressed. There's still massive disruption. If ever there's a time you can slip through into the Inner Worlds, it's now. I suppose that's something."
Grant? Oh, how appropriate. How ironic. He ought to talk to him, tell him… But then, it was hardly his place. He had had enough of interfering, of playing God with people's lives. He had given all that up, remember? After Jevron. After the massacre. But it would be only sensible to check with Grant before this little trip. If he was going at all. It surprised Blake then to realise he had stopped thinking about if, and had seriously begun to consider when and how.
He smiled at Deva's anxious frown. "Don't worry so much. Worse things happen in space." And laughed a little when that only made Deva frown harder.
She lived well, he thought. But then that came as no surprise. It was in the report, sketchy though that was. Although he remembered areas like these all too well – full of painfully clean lines and sterile plastic, patrolled constantly for the utter safety of their Alpha inhabitants. Pastel corridors in neutral designs hiding luxury and decadence. Not that he would get to see her particular version of an Alpha paradise, it would draw far too much attention, if they met at her home.
So they had arranged this. A public garden carefully selected to be empty at the right time. A commonly recognised meeting point for those who wished to buy, and those who wished to sell. A doubly secure location because even if they were observed – not impossible in the politely back-stabbing world she lived in – a well-connected politician seen attempting to purchase the skills of a bounty hunter? Not unknown. Not even unusual. He smiled as he thought about it. It might even make her rivals nervous.
"Grant. It's good to see you survived the war."
The large screen showed the bolts and crackles of static even more clearly than the smaller terminals, but Blake liked it anyway. He liked striding up and down in front of the image, watching the recipient follow his movements with their eyes. He always had. It only now struck him that he could tell they could still see him, that way. He could tell that he hadn't disappeared, attenuated down to nothing, his body still a present physical bulk, not vanished into memory or pixellated recording…
"I'm alive, at least." Grant was as Blake remembered him, round-faced, sandy-haired, ship-suit covering a bulky yet surprisingly fit frame. Much like Blake himself. Grant cocked his head a little and stared appraisingly. "You're also looking well – for a man that rumour says is dead."
"Rumours of my death have been…"
"Yes, yes. So I see." Grant laughed and ran a hand through thinning hair. "Heard you'd left the Liberator. I see that was true, at least. What happened?" His eyes were serious behind his smile. "Did you finally lose the argument?"
"I paid a debt."
"Really? Because if you need any help re-taking the ship from him, then…"
"No."
Blake stared up at the image and watched as Grant seemed to process that. He was still smiling but seemed watchful, opaquely serious. A mercenary's smile. Blake wondered if he should tell him.
"Does he know?" Grant asked, suddenly.
"What?"
"That you're alive. That you weren't on Jevron. Glad to see that particular story was wrong as well, by the way."
"It wasn't wrong. I was there. I got out."
"Too many didn't. It was a bloody shambles." The professional tone was back, and Blake closed his eyes.
"My fault," he whispered.
He opened his eyes to see Grant assessing him again. Blake clasped his hands behind his back to hide their shaking, and moved on to details of blockades and the minutiae of travelling to Earth. Grant let him, and Blake found he was grateful for that.
The picture felt stiff and accusing in his pocket and Blake knew he couldn't tell him. It wasn't his secret to tell. Better Grant never found out than telling him of it now. What purpose would that serve? What purpose would that serve any one of them? Better that he deal with it, than Grant. Than… Avon. Better Blake found out what she wanted, found out her own reasons for survival. Better.
The garden was peaceful, as he waited. It even had a tiny trickling stream, fed artificially in a piped loop no doubt, but the sound of it was relaxing. He fingered his gun, that old familiar ally, and thought about friendships and rivalry. He thought about all the reasons there were for remaining dead, he thought about his disguise, the reasons why she'd arranged it. The reasons why she'd specifically arranged a cover that would let him carry a gun. He thought about the message that sent, about her confidence, her nerve.
He fumbled it a little, but then, it wasn't his job. Klyn was an expert with these systems, with the labyrinthine procedures required to set up a secure link. He could have asked her, and she would have been happy to arrange it for him, Blake knew that. Too happy, perhaps. He hated the way people here looked at him all the time, as though he was their greatest hope, or their greatest fear. No, it satisfied him in some fundamental way to painstakingly set up the dummy trail himself, to disguise the caller ID, to run a jamming signal, before he called her. His hands moving over the controls were large and blunt, the nails a little ragged, and Blake tried not to think about a time when they could handle delicate tools, and draw precise plans with ease. He ignored the tremors in his fingers now, subtle evidence of nerve damage, in favour of cross-checking his work again and again. It would be embarrassing, if not fatal, to get it wrong.
As he waited, the hum of an open line turned into the crackle of connection and Blake jumped. As suddenly as that, she was there before him on the large screen, looking slick and poised, her chin raised just a little. She was neat, her hair short. She was prettier than the bald printed picture had made her seem. Blake found he was remembering an image with a softer haircut, tousled with sleep, a more relaxed face, and he caught his breath. Her lips curved into a smile.
"Blake. What an unexpected pleasure. I presume that this line is secure, or we may have a much shorter working relationship than I had anticipated."
"I took all the necessary precautions, Sula."
She looked quizzically at him, "Well? What is it? I nearly didn't take the connection. All communications are monitored, you know that. This is very dangerous, the more so the longer we talk. Meeting with your agent will be safer in the long run."
He found he was struck with an overwhelming clumsiness. His tongue felt too large for his mouth, the questions he held too large for the words needed to express them. Her confidence unnerved him.
"Why me, Sula? Why ask for me?" He discovered his tone was mild, almost academic. It surprised him. "You asked to work with a dead man. Did you know that?"
She smiled. "Do you mean Jevron? I've worked in politics long enough to recognise a good cover story when I see one."
"You thought it was a cover story? A massacre of that size?" Blake found his voice rising a little, and took a breath.
She cocked her head as she looked at him. "To hide your whereabouts from the Liberator? It would have to have been an extreme measure."
"I am not that extreme!"
She paused and Blake held onto the edge of the console until his knuckles turned white.
"Of course, you're not. But you are expedient, Blake, and you used it, didn't you?"
"I was unconscious."
She stared at him, smiling slightly, and he found his anger turning cold and hard. He marvelled that she could twist him up inside with just a few words. Exactly like… His guts clenched.
"What about you?" he shot back, "What was your excuse for leaving him? Anna? He thinks you're dead too. Everybody does, even your brother."
Her body stilled, and she looked down. Smoky lashes dark against her cheek. Blake found he was holding his breath. Had he meant to confront her? Danger thrilled along his muscles, making him feel alive. He rather thought that he had.
"Well. That changes things, don't you think?" she murmured, "Stupid of me, of course. I didn't think you'd know who I was. But I took a calculated risk."
She looked at him again, a wide grin showing all her teeth. It reminded him of… Oh. How strange.
"Why, Anna?" And his hands relaxed as the quiet syllables fell into the hot stillness of the room. That was what he needed to ask, just that.
Connections. Connections through the web of stars and lives, and the patterns of infinity… Why? Why him? Why now?
"I was… curious, I suppose." She'd stopped smiling, and Blake found he was glad of that. "I wanted to meet the man who'd caused the Administration so much trouble. Who had come the closest in a generation to raising a successful revolution here on Earth."
Blake looked at her image, so many millions of miles away, so calm and so untouchable.
"And I suppose I wanted to meet the man who had persuaded Avon to enter the fight. Goodness knows, I tried hard enough. But I never succeeded."
"Have your political views always been so anti-establishment, Anna? Really? Avon never mentioned that."
"I haven't worked as hard as I have, set up all that I have, for nothing, Blake. Haven't you seen the plans? Not everything is about you. Besides," she raised one elegant eyebrow, "Are you telling me that you and Avon discussed me? Talked about our relationship over tea and cakes? Because I don't believe you."
Blake laughed then, at the preposterousness of that image, a great cracking bark of it, welling up from inside like water from a spring. "No. Not exactly."
He thought about it. Precisely never, in fact.
"He showed me your picture once," he offered, her cool gaze prickling at him accusingly.
"Ah. And that satisfies my own curiosity. I wondered how you knew."
Blake walked from behind the console to stand in front of the screen.
"And why have you never told him you're alive?" His voice was deep, and sounded desperate even to his own ears. Anna stared at him, her eyes flat and opaque, even in an image.
"Have you told him you're alive?" Silence fell, softer than words.
"There are things that he is safer not knowing. Aren't there, Blake?"
But he found he had no reply.
She walked into the garden with a jaunty swing to her steps, a small jewelled bag dangling negligently from her fingers, her body clad in sheer silk. He felt rough and clumsy beside her, and too large. She was tiny. He hadn't realised that. He looked at her, and thought of all the things he had planned on saying, all the questions he had wanted to ask. Even questions about the work, practical questions, fled in the face of her reality. He stood and fingered his gun.
"Have you decided what you're going to do?"she asked.
She walked towards him, closer and closer.
"That is why you're here, isn't it? In person. Because you don't know what to do."
He raised the gun, and she walked up to it, to him. The stock pressed into his hand, the barrel now lay flush against her midsection.
"Have I betrayed him? That is what you're wondering. Isn't it? Well, have I, Blake?"
The gun was solid and warm, pressed between their bodies.
"I survived. That's all. I survived. Like you did."
"Is that betrayal?"
He laughed then, the sound bitter and lost. What was betrayal, after all? He found he didn't know himself any more. Her eyes were kohl-rimmed and dark, but bright with life, with unnameable emotion. He couldn't do it. His half-formed intentions sputtered and died in the cavern of his mind.
Who was he to accuse her? Who was he to cast the first stone? Not he. Not any more.
He clicked the safety on.