Prologue

Finally it was quiet.

Somewhere the others lay where they had fallen, silent and unmoving. Dead? There was no way of knowing. Perhaps it would be best to believe that they were, even though that would mean that he had killed them. Events had finally overcome him. Well now, what else could any of them have expected?

He watched calmly as the troopers came towards him, passing so close that he would have been able to look into their eyes but for the visors; close enough for him to see the quickened rise and fall of their chests despite the uniform. As they moved to stand in front of him, weapons levelled, he waited for someone to put a gun to his chest or to snatch the one that was still loosely gripped in his hand. No one did.

Staring back at the blank shuttered faces his mind analysed the situation, more out of habit than real curiosity. Briefly he wondered why Blake's people had been taken by surprise; and why Orac hadn't warned him of the Federation's presence in the vicinity. This number of troopers meant a big operation, ships and ground transport, and that should have been detected long before they had reached the base. Playing Blake’s dangerous games should have made his people doubly watchful, so how had they failed to see the threat?

Come to that how had the troopers got in? If Orac hadn't detected them on the flight here they must have already been on the base when he and the others arrived, yet there had been neither sight nor sound of a battle. He dropped his gaze back down to the man on the floor, why hadn't he known? Or had he? Had Blake been a part of it after all, had he truly been betraying them?

Not that it mattered any more.

So this was how it would end. He had been right that Blake's death would be linked to his own. Though he had never considered this particular scenario. How had it come to this? How had he come to this?

His thoughts drifted back to that all-important question, had Blake really betrayed him? Had this now very dead man changed so much? Probably not, Blake of all people would never lose his illusions, never let go of his anger or his vision of justice, however deluded it might have been. He would have to have lost all of that, and more, to be willing to set them up for the Federation. Avon found it hard to believe that Blake would have betrayed any of those who had been on Liberator, whatever had happened to him since the war. His legend, if nothing else, had meant too much to him.

Why hadn’t he thought of that before?

He stared down with detached interest at the body at his feet. So what had he been doing? Another game perhaps, if so then one too many. But why had he taken such risks, surely he had seen how this situation could be interpreted? How it might appear to a man like himself, a man with such a very large price on his head. Had Blake been so sure of him, that he thought it didn’t matter?

“I have been waiting for you Avon.” he had said. If that was the case why had he never made contact? Why would he have been waiting anyway, for what? That made no sense either. Had he been lying? Had he sold them after all?

He stared into the blank, dead, face on the floor. Ah Blake, Blake, how did you get it so wrong, couldn’t you see, didn’t you understand this time? You were an honest man once, at least Jenna said you were and she wasn't a fool, except perhaps sometimes where you were concerned. Were you still that honest man? Did Tarrant just jump to conclusions? Probably, after all that wouldn’t be unusual, now would it?

Avon raised his eyes from the man sprawled at his feet. The troopers were still coming, moving so close that it was a surprise that they didn’t touch him, yet even now they made no move to disarm him. He looked back at them calmly as they passed to surround him and wondered at his feeling of detachment. He was tired, so very, very tired. He felt like he had been tired forever, exhaustion seemed to weight his body and fog his vision. Maybe that was why nothing seemed quite right, why none of this felt real.

But the man on the floor was real; the blood was real, and so were the weight of the gun in his hand and the faint smell of propellant in the air.

Strange how slowly everything seemed to be happening, how much time he seemed to have to think. He would give Blake the benefit of the doubt one last time; assume they had not been betrayed, that the mistake had been his. Whatever else he may have done, or been, he had never tried to evade his responsibilities, and he wouldn’t do so now. He would not give them Blake or the others easily.

Now, in these last seconds, when it no longer mattered, he could admit to himself that he had cared; not for Blake's cause perhaps but for the people he had known. Cared enough to protect Blake and the others in life, to take risks for them. Not that it had done them much good. But it was a relief to accept it. The fight to be the man he claimed to be, wanted to be, had been difficult and somehow he had always lost it. Blake had known that he would from the start, damn him, he had noticed every inconsistency and never bothered to hide the fact. No reticence, it was one of things he had most disliked about Blake.

But the fight was over now, he didn’t have to be that man, it didn’t matter any more. That brought a greater measure of peace than he had expected. Peace! It was all he had ever really wanted, but had never been granted; strange that it should come now.

Well now he would have his ending, the ending he had wanted so badly, before Anna had changed everything again. Before he lost Cally and Liberator.

He looked back to the visored faces in front of him; seeing his own reflection, dark and brooding in the mirror of their eyes, blotting out the shadow of the faces within. Time to finish it.

He moved slowly and deliberately to position himself astride Blake's body.

Somewhere deep inside his mind he laughed at himself, here at the end he was giving the act of open allegiance that Blake had always wanted from him in life, but never got. The last act of a very reluctant belonging, Dorian had been right about that. As he had grudgingly protected them in life so he would willingly protect them in death. Somehow it was fitting.

With a small start he realised that the decision was made, and that he was finally past feeling, as he had wanted to be for such a long time. Maybe that was salvation of a kind.

He raised the gun that had killed Blake. Still the troopers made no move to stop him. Tense and wary they just watched and waited. A faint alarm rang somewhere in his mind, why not just shoot him and be done with it, as they gunned down the others? But he let the speculation drift away; somehow it didn’t matter now that he would never know.

Avon didn’t feel the smile as it dawned; his mind was taken up with the determination that this time they would have no choice, that he would give them none. He would have an end to it.

With that last thought he fired.