Blake had said nothing during his entry remaining engrossed in the image displayed in front of him, the flight deck of a ship in flight. Carnell waited patiently taking the rare opportunity to watch the other man without himself being observed. Blake looked less tired, he thought, more in control than he had when they had first met. He relaxed slightly, all in all the rebel looked less likely to kill anyone out of hand. Given what he was sitting in front of at this moment, and knowing what it was a window onto, that at least was something to be grateful for.

“What is this Carnell, what is its purpose?”
Blake didn’t look up from the image as it rotated to show all observer angles.
“The unit itself is the sensor input mixer and control console, the system you are currently accessing is the MEM,” he caught Blake rising eyebrow and smiled deprecatingly.“The master event matrix, and the image you are seeing is the flight deck of a planet hopper named Scorpio.”
“Its importance?”
“Scorpio is the ship that Avon was supposed to have inherited from Dorian. The computer is called Slave.”

Blake looked up at that, mouth twisting in a parody of a smile. Carnell made a depreciating gesture before he could comment.
“I know, hardly subtle. I had left the detail to some of my colleagues, unwise perhaps, and it appears that it appealed to their sense of humour.” He frowned on a sudden thought, "Or maybe Servalan's"
Blake grunted, his mouth setting into a hard line, then he waved his hand in the direction of the rotating image,
“It has teleport.”
Carnell nodded,
“That was one of the justifications we used for Dorian rescuing them, that he wanted Orac and teleport.”
Blake grunted again, then sat back,
“What were the other justifications?” There was an edge on that last word.
Carnell shrugged slightly;
“I wouldn’t trouble yourself with them Blake, I admit they were….. weak.
“Really?” Blake’s eyebrows rose to his hair line, “I would have thought you could have done better than 'weak.”
The other man’s blue gaze didn’t slip and he smiled back calmly.
“Well time was something of an issue for us, and it served other…..purposes that it was.”

Blake frowned at that,
“Even so I’m surprised that you would agree to something that so obviously offends your professional pride.” His voice was bland, almost disinterested, but the hard look around his eyes told a different story.
Carnell shrugged,
“ It was not intended that it be quite so weak, I will admit. Servalan was very demanding and too much was left to others. Chalco, at least, has an odd sense of humour.”
“So why not change it?”
“Time, as I said. We had already created the destruction of Liberator and planned the objectives of this next ‘episode’. It met those objectives.”
He smiled blandly,
“This whole project has had to be pushed through at a much greater rate than I would have liked. Just completing the necessary events within the matrix was a major achievement given the timescale, re-engineering those that did not meet the ideal standard was not an option. Nor was it really important, as I said it served the purpose.”

He raised a graceful hand to forestall Blake’s intended comment, the less he was pressed on this the better,
“True it lacks finesse as well as logic but with everything appearing to bear the events out, nothing to compare it with, and with neural augmentation plus a large load of drugs it was unlikely that Avon would see through it. Certainly not immediately. It got him from A to B and that was enough. It was only a bridge from his reality to our reality and as such it was sufficient in that it introduced the important necessary elements.”
Blake was not to be put off,
“And what happened in this illogical and crude event” he persisted.

Carnell made a dismissive gesture.
“It would be a waste of both our times to discuss it in any detail. If you are really interested then find a copy of a banned book called the Picture of Dorian Grey and read it, allowing for the advancement of technology the plot varies only marginally.” He sounded bored.
Blake turned away and back to the matrix console.
“You mentioned necessary elements, what were they?”
“The replacement for Cally and Liberator, and a base." Carnell drawled, then his eyes flashed engagingly and his voice took on a humorous note, "After all we could not give him another ship equal to the one he believed to be destroyed. Drugged or not he was unlikely to believe in that. Also it would have made leading him here very difficult. So we had to introduce somewhere he could hide and plan.”
Carnell paused for a moment looking under his lashes at Blake, judging his response. He lowered his voice slightly and moved a little closer;
“ There was also another objective. To make explicit the idea that Avon was bound to the others, a part of them and they of him, whether he would acknowledge it or not.”

Blake nodded without looking away from the display. After a moment he turned to meet Carnell’s eyes and flicked his hand in the direction of the console again.
“So this event matrix, how does it work?”
“It is very complex, are you sure you really need to know?”
Blake’s look hardened and he smiled hugely, but coldly.
“ In my shoes what would you think Carnell?”
The other man gave a short laugh then nodded,
“Yes, well we had better change places, and I would be grateful if you could arrange some refreshments, this will take some time”.

***

They had spent the night in the upper gallery of the mine, cold and tired, trying to sleep in turns; but both too concerned about the detectors monitoring of the strangers to be able to do much more than close their eyes for a while. Even then their ears strained for the telltale change of pitch.

Huddled close together in the chilly darkness Soolin allowed her head to drop onto Avon’s shoulder, he didn’t protest but made no move towards any closer contact until the dropping temperature made sharing body heat a necessity. Neither of them felt like unpacking to find the blankets so they folded their bodies together and tried to pretend they were warm enough.

But whoever that it was wandering in the forests came no closer, the stationary signals and the rise in heat output suggesting they had made camp for the night. Maybe the loss of one of their number made them cautious, maybe they weren’t searching at all, there was no way of telling. Even so they both felt that the sooner they could get away the better.

“Where do we go from here?”
Soolin’s voice was low, somehow the rock around and above them suggested that loud noises might be dangerous. Avon didn’t reply immediately but she felt him shift against her, felt the brush of hair against her neck as he raised his head and realised he must have been close to sleep.
“Towards the base, find somewhere to hide while we assess our chances of getting in and out alive.” He sounded weary and cold. “ We will have to fly low to avoid visual sighting, it won't be easy or pleasant but staying here doesn’t seem to be an option any longer.”
“No, I agree.”
She let the silence lengthen for a moment as Avon leant his head back against the rock and closed his eyes, apparently not intending to say anything more. A momentary anger ran through her, be damned if he was going to spring anything more on her at the last moment! She shifted closer to him tilting her head onto his shoulder again.
“And then?”
She was careful to keep the annoyance from her voice.

Avon had tensed slightly as she moved closer but after a second he had eased his shoulder into a better position to accommodate her head and slowly relaxed.
“I have no intention in charging in unprepared if that is what you are afraid of.”
There was a tartness in his voice that warned her to be careful about what she said next.
“I didn’t think that you would. But what exactly do you have in mind, and what are you expecting me to do? I may be Soolin, I may not, I agree that we can’t be sure; but either way I would be unhappy if I thought you were expecting me to help your shoot your way in.”
“No.”
There was a hint of a smile in his voice; in the darkness she couldn’t see exactly what type of smile.
“We need more information. The first objective must be to discover if they are still looking for us around the base. Then we need to find a way in without them realising we are present. If I can get access to the main computer then I may have a chance to get the information we need.”
“And if you can’t?”
“Then we try other ways. But before we go anywhere we need to know more.”

“Why don’t we just run Avon? There will probably be something that could get us away from here in the silo. Even if it’s only off this continent.”
She felt Avon shrug slightly,
“To go where? Without knowing what has been going on we have no way of knowing where there is that we can run to. Unless you have an inclination to spend the rest of your life skulking in these forests, or others just like them.”
Soolin stared into the darkness reviewing her options and wondering why it was so hard to make the choice.

Her silence was noticed by Avon, not that he was overly surprised. Going back was a risk for Soolin even if she were herself, as she was and uncertain of her abilities in a fight it must be a nightmare. Not the best situation from his point of view either, he would give a lot to have the old Soolin with him at this moment in time. But he could see no other way. Sooner rather than later their food would run out, hunting would make it almost impossible to stay under cover, even if there were sufficient suitable game that they could trap. They had to move and that meant they needed to know what they were up against, and if they didn’t find out soon they would risk being caught both weakened as well as unprepared.

The weather might yet get worse too, the snow storms were becoming more frequent and even down in the valleys around the base the cold would be taking a grip. If they didn’t make a move now they might never survive the winter.

Desperation was gnawing at the edges of his mind. The rock all around him didn’t help; when he closed his eyes all he could see was the collapsed base at terminal and the mounds of rock and debris that had killed Cally. The echoing silence seemed to taunt him, reminding him that he had taken her there to die alone in pursuit of an illusion. And that at the end she had rejected him, she had called for Blake, not for him. Even though she had thought Blake was dead.

Nor had she bothered to hide it, they had all heard her cry. He frowned as he wondered if that had been a deliberate cruelty on her part, had she known how much it would hurt? Not that she had cried out to Blake but that she had let him, all of them, know it. The others had wondered about that, he had seen it in their eyes as they had sat around the fire. Both Tarrant and Vila had seemed to take some pleasure in it; knowing that at the end Blake, not himself, had been in Cally’s thoughts.

But then why should it have been different? What had his relationship to Cally been. Either of them had ever been sure. Was that last cry her revenge for his remarks in that cellar on Earth? ‘There is no one else’ he had said, but even then it hadn’t really been true and she must have known it. It was only then, at that moment, looking at Anna suddenly back from the dead, that it had been. Then the grief and the guilt had taken over and blotted everything else out. The years of cold restraint, of locking it inside himself had given way to a torrent of feelings that he had ridden helplessly, until finally exhausted he had beached on the shores of acceptance. Those shores had been cold too, but that pitch of emotion couldn't be sustained, all excess ends, and eventually he had begin to find his way back to some measure of comfort. Cally had known that, he had thought she understood, that she would wait until he could find the man he used to be.

But she hadn’t been given the chance and at the end she had turned away from him.

Maybe she hadn’t meant that, maybe in her desperation she had simply shouted as loud as she could; but as non telepaths they could only hear her when she wished, and sometimes not even then, it must have taken a lot of effort for them all to hear it. Somehow he hadn’t thought that she would do that to him, not knowing…. Avon blinked at the darkness and decided he wasn’t going there, not now.

He shifted against the rock feeling the warmth of Soolin, the softness of hair against his jaw. It was a reminder of things long lost. He had never found himself again of course, Anna had finally killed him.

He had gone looking for Blake because of Anna, he could admit that now. He had failed others because he believed in her, and though he could do nothing about that, or them, he could avoid repeating the error. So he wouldn’t fail Blake too, not after he had given his word. But he had been careful about it, made sure that he put no one at risk unnecessarily, until that last message. That had been the first mistake, even knowing that it was probably a trap he had been driven to go, and doing so had cost him everything, including himself. If only he hadn’t gone through that cloud! But then why hadn’t Zen seen the risks? Why hadn’t the auto repair computers picked up the danger until it was too late? It shouldn’t have happened that way, by the time they were approaching Terminal Zen should have known there was a problem.

Mentally he shook himself, there was no point in going over all of that again, he couldn’t change it any more than he could alter Blake’s death. Assuming what he remembered of Blake's death was reality of course; but, given the way his life tended to run these days, it probably was. Avon cast a glance at the detectors again then checked the time, the strangers were still stationary and there were six or more hours to dawn. He eased Soolin’s head into a more comfortable position and tried to sleep.

***

The base was more basic than Lille had expected. The corridors were lit with standard lux banks and the walls were lined with prefabricated panels in colour coded primary hues, their scarred surfaces betraying how long it had been since the last refit. The floor coverings were scuffed and dull and the furnishings verging on the shabby, it was a utilitarian and rather bleak environment. Only the equipment gave lie to the general feeling of down at heel functionality. Much of it was standard Federation, but even that was state of the art, and some of it was very special indeed. It confirmed her expectations and suggested that she might be right about the missing woman.

If she was correct then the sooner they were away from here the better, because this was not a place she wanted to be. Not that anyone would recognise her, but even so it sent the personal danger level off the scale. No, Blake must be disposed of and she must get control of the ship and get them away from here as soon as she could manage it.

Lille swore silently at the thought of Blake, by all her reckoning he should be out in the plantations looking for Avon, instead he had left that to Kearne and was himself closeted with some exiled Federation expert playing mind games! At that moment Lille thought that whatever Avon had said about Blake in the past it couldn’t possibly do justice to the selfish contrariness of the man.

She’d managed to orchestrate him changing his boots by the simple process of removing the ones he’d been wearing while he slept, but unless she wanted his death to be considered suspicious there was nothing more she could do until he was outside of the base. However matters were becoming urgent and she might need to find some way of persuading him to join the searchers; at the moment she couldn’t quite see how.

Lille had stayed a little while with Kearne's people before professing a desire to see the control room, it had taken a little deviousness to get away on her own but she had managed it. Now she wandered the base, always heading in the general direction of the control room but making several detours on her way. What she found confirmed her initial impressions, they had been very careful, what technology they had brought with them had been well hidden, screened behind things Servalan would find familiar. Which pretty much decided it, they had not wanted her to know too much about them, and they had been planning on double crossing her. Given that the only thing they could have wanted out of all this effort was Avon it opened up an interesting line in speculation. What was it he had that they wanted so badly that they would risk showing themselves to Servalan?

Wandering from room to room Lille let her mind explore the possibilities. That she knew nothing about this operation was no surprise, she was equally sure they would know nothing of her own efforts or objectives. But it still left the important question of just whom they represented; there were three possibilities and she didn’t like any of them. If the missing woman caught her here, found out what she was trying to do, it was likely to prove uncomfortable if not fatal. After all others had already ruled out trying to regain the ship, in fact the Council had specifically forbidden such efforts; if she were caught before it was achieved then things would get quite unpleasant for more people than herself. She couldn’t understand why they took the view that they did, and for her it was just another example of why they were unfit to govern.

But for the moment they held the power and what her people were planning would be seen as mutiny. Once they had the ship it would be different, then the balance of power would shift; people would see how obviously right this course of action had been and how weak their leaders had been. But until then there was no denying that she and the others were in a very exposed position.

In which case she had better take steps; Blake might not be able to find the missing woman but Lille thought she might know how to, if she could only find the development lab before someone asked her what she was doing.