Soolin eased herself into the shadow of an ice slicked tree and stared around her; this white draped landscape was as cold and inhospitable as that around the last camp. The surface of the snow rose and fell with the contours of the ground below it, but other than that it was unmarked; the wind had already blasted away her footprints. The white sheet shifted restlessly as she watched it, clouds of shimmering powder rising and falling with the vagaries of the air. There would be no animal tracks to betray any prey out here, assuming that the shield didn’t drive them away.

She cursed, never before had her education seemed so deficient. 'Little knowledge of Avon’s shield and no knowledge of how any thing eatable might behave' she thought bitterly,' some might say that she didn’t deserve to survive.'

Avon himself might well see it like that if he got passed that carefully implanted conditioning. She was aware of a tightening in her stomach at the thought. He might just do it too; the drugs were exhausted now and so too was he, in that uncertain state of body and mind the barriers might not hold. If he did manage it then their next confrontation would be more dangerous than the last one, and she wasn’t sure if plucking him off the side of that quarry would count as a plus or a minus in his mind.

Soolin pushed the seeds of panic to the bottom of her mind. After all she had spent time with him here in the wilderness, she hadn’t betrayed him when he was vulnerable and that must count for something, unless he was less sane than she gave him credit for. If she told him she had been given no choice he might decide to believe her. Just as long as he didn’t think she had willingly betrayed him he would give her the benefit of the doubt.

But if he thought she had betrayed him then…. No, that thought couldn’t be allowed either.

She stretched her back, wincing as the cold muscles protested. The strains of rescuing Avon were still there, once she was away from the relative warmth of indoors. It had been more than twenty-four hours since the worst of the drug recoil had passed, maybe she could risk a painkiller now.

She scanned the bright, cold, and empty world around her once again and sighed, nothing for her to do out here. Her mood suddenly lifted, maybe Avon could rig up some form of animal detector for them; maybe even some form of trap? Yes, of course, he wouldn’t want to starve either. If he brought the wildlife to them she could do the shooting, a fair sharing of labour.Carefully she began to wade back towards the accommodation block and shelter. There was enough food left for today, maybe tomorrow if they were careful, he’d be in a better shape by then.

The big question remained unanswered of course, where exactly did they go from here?

***

Servalan read the message again and sighed; then she filed it away, reluctantly accepting another delay. Lindor and Teal were up to something. Some thing not openly aggressive, but provocative, and certainly something they had never done before; it was making the intelligence and strategy services uneasy Space Command was demanding some form of pre-emptive action. Her sympathies were with them in that, but deciding what to do was no longer an easy matter.

Not an invasion, there was no real possibility of success. But there had to be a warning, a reminder that she was a still a force to be reckoned with. Some show of strength then, a sign that the Federation was not quite a spent force. Something designed to show the fleet at its best. Others could arrange it, but it meant that it would be unwise for her to leave headquarters for the moment. The danger of another coup rose each time her absence was noticed, and no amount of track covering would hide her absence in the middle of a diplomatic and military standoff.

It was the work of a moment to instruct Kant to set up the necessary meetings. Maybe she wouldn’t have to delay for very long; once the manoeuvres were underway she might be able to find a reason to leave, and once away from headquarters there were several ways she could be in more than one place at a time.

One place she needed to be was Gauda Prime, she needed to find Avon, or at least to be sure that no one else had found him. The idea of him in a rival’s hands sent a chill through her; and there were still rivals, she hadn’t got to them all yet, despite the purges.

Thirty so far; thirty dead, or awaiting trial. Enemies who plotted against her, or who protected and hid those who did. All of them experienced officers she could not afford to lose, but nor could she risk leaving them in place. The last two had come from front line squadrons, officers decorated in the war, and their removal would be unpopular. But there was nothing she could do about that, she couldn’t take the risk of ignoring them. They wouldn’t be the last either, that was certain, her agents were sending the stalkers and other spies out to all corners of their territory and there would be more to be dealt with before the matter was settled to her satisfaction. More people that she couldn’t rely on.

Servalan turned and stared out into space. The size of it seemed to mock her, the cold brilliance of the stars drawing her eyes out into the depths, reminding her of what she had lost. So many planets had escaped from Federation control, and the longer they stayed that way the harder it would be to restore order. The Federation didn’t have the armies any more, or the ships any more. What it needed now was a new advantage, and power would rest with whoever managed to deliver that. Servalan felt her smile widen, and she would do whatever it took to make sure that it was her.

***

Avon thought that he had been awake for hours, but he knew that he might be wrong. He was aware that he was finding it difficult to distinguish the difference between being awake and asleep. Even so, this time, he was nearly certain that he was awake.

It was dark and there was a smell in the cold air that disturbed him, a faint aroma of damp and neglect. Like a cellar he though blearily, and he knew only too well which cellar it reminded him of. But he also knew he wasn’t there, that if he turned his head and looked around him there would be nothing of the past, no Anna, no wall, no Servalan. At least he thought he was sure, but he was too tired to put it to the test.

The bed was hard and the bedding dusty, but that didn’t matter. It was fatigue that was the enemy; it stripped away his control and left him prey to memories he would rather not possess. It brought doubts too, doubts that at any other time could be rigorously suppressed. They had taunted him endlessly in the weeks since the tracking gallery. He had grown accustomed to the pale ghosts that haunted his sleep, but at least he had been able to keep them at bay while awake. Now he couldn’t even do that.

Strange, then, that it was another set of memories that arrived now he was at his weakest. He found himself remembering the early days. The days after Cygnus Alpha when it was both too late to avoid events and too soon to do anything to change them. Not that the time had ever seemed to be right for that. In the darkness it all came flooding back to him, the fear that he had been so desperate to hide, the occasional panic that he couldn’t control, the anger and the bitterness and an overwhelming sense of desperate helplessness. Of a reprieve thrown away.

Most of all he remembered the feeling of helplessness. He had never stopped blaming Blake for that. Not even when it became just another unpleasant memory.

He wasn’t sure when it had changed; only that, slowly, it had. Somehow the fear and panic had come under control, been buried under a veneer of confidence that had itself eventually become so much second nature that it was as good as real. With it he had found a sort of courage that even he had never understood. He had told Vila that he didn’t like hero’s, but he had played the part so often that it had become second nature, so much so that now he doubted he could play it any other way. Even when he wanted to, and he had wanted many times. Though somehow he hadn’t wanted to quite so often once Blake was gone. Except at Malodaar maybe.

A feeling of bitter regret rose up momentarily through the darkness of the exhaustion. Malodaar, one of the few things in his life he would give rather a lot to undo. But it had seemed so necessary at the time, Servalan couldn’t have Orac and he would do what it took to make sure that she didn’t get it. If it had to be Vila’s death or his own then obviously it had to be Vila’s. Another example of the corrosive power of Blake’s greater good. It would have been logical, justifiable, if only he had thought it through properly; but he hadn’t. That fearful panic had suddenly overwhelmed him again, fuelling an unforgivable carelessness that had wrecked his relationship both with Vila and with himself. No, that shuttle might be a small regret but somehow it was an important one.

But even there at Maladaar he had hesitated for just long enough. Something had held him back, slowed him down, and that delay had made Vila’s death unnecessary. Sometimes he wondered what exactly he would have done if events had run their course, and what it would have done to him. It might even have meant his own demise, he didn’t think that Vila would have allowed himself to be thrown to his death without a fight; even a coward can fight ruthlessly when their back is really against the wall.

A bitter smile twisted his mouth, or rather against the airlock.

Not that it had mattered in the end, he had killed Vila as certainly as he would have done by throwing him off that shuttle. Just a little less cold bloodedly. But Malodaar had been the closest he had come to standing out against that inconvenient inner voice that had plagued him all his life.

Avon knew it was stupid to blame Blake for this inner tyrant, however seductive the idea might be. It had existed long before they had met, it had kept him quiet about Tynus despite the painful consequences, it had fed and sustained his love for Anna, and made a deal with the crew of the London impossible. He smiled wearily into the darkness, Blake had been naive if he thought that he would have allowed the crew to dispose of him, to fix the log they would have needed to give him access to the computers and once he had that then they would have been at his mercy every bit as much as their prisoners. No, the impediment had been that ever demanding inner voice.

It had been that same lurking voice that had prevented him from overpowering Jenna and taking the ship when Blake was still a stranger and on a planet far below them, and which had kept him looking for the other two when they went missing. It had sent him back for Soolin and was here now, whispering to him in the darkness, holding him on this wintry hellhole searching for answers. It wouldn’t allow him to accept what his memory told him of his recent self without explanation, and he knew that ultimately it would drive him to some form of expiation for Blake and the other’s deaths, just as it had for Anna. All he could hope was that this time he would be spared the disillusionment.

Memories from a longer way away came to plague him, himself as a child. That voice had been there even then, his angel his mother had called it, and she had forgiven him a lot because of it. Even then he had resented its whisperings, but he had been unable to deny it however much he had wanted to. Just like now. He wanted to run away and hide, to lose himself somewhere no one would ever find him, to lick the wounds he would deny existed, to turn his back on the responsibility he wouldn’t own and make a new identity for himself. An identity in which he could get rich, and be safe.

Yet he knew he wouldn’t go, even if he could.

Rich and safe! All he had thought he ever wanted. With the others gone there was no rational reason why he shouldn’t do it, but then rationality had little to do with his actions over recent years. Certainly not this last year. Why then should he expect it to be different now? Whatever it was that had driven him since his first losing of Anna was still driving him. If he was honest with himself he didn’t understand it any more than he had done in the days after his capture, no more than he had done on Albian, at Star One or at Terminal.

Sometimes he thought it was simply pride, or anger, or just the bloody minded determination to go to hell by his own route rather than follow someone else’s map. Somehow he had never doubted his destination. But the truth was that he didn’t know what it was. Only that there was something that acted to constrain him, preventing him from following what he saw as his inclinations, even as he railed against it. Whatever it was it won the battle of wills between his warring sides too often. In the end, despite all his resolves to be the loner, to follow his own best interests and nothing else, this other thing, and the need it bred, would have its way.

Avon sighed into the cold air, his breath rising cloudlike before his face, and idly wondered why darkness and fatigue made it easy, almost acceptable, to think such improbable and ridiculous thoughts. In the light he could sneer at them, discipline them into a cold pragmatism; veer away from an analysis of why he did what he did with a muttered ‘it was logical’. But in the darkness it was different, and now he was surrounded by the dark and too tired to find something to take him out of it.

He shifted on the bed, swallowing hard as the sluggish movement of his body stirred other memories, these were even less welcome because they carried only pain and fear and humiliation. Biting his lip he concentrated on his body; the fatigue was overwhelming now, moving took more energy than he had, but he realised that he needed to move. The bed was uncomfortable while dry, wet it would be unbearable, and he wouldn’t allow himself to experience that particular humiliation again while he still breathed.

He turned his head towards the door, there seemed to be a deeper shadow there. Concentrating on that particular slice of darkness he managed to force himself to his feet. Once there his legs appeared to move of their own volition. Endless seconds and the shadow was in front of his nose, he reached out aimlessly but found the door lock anyway. A blast of freezing air told him it had opened and he moved forward, shivering in the raw cold, to where a tunnel of darkness led to a lighter haze. He made his way down the corridor to the exit and, after a moments fumbling, out into the night.

Off to his left he could see a small fire with a shadow hunched close by. The figure rose as he appeared and called his name, he raised his hand slightly in response and the shadow collapsed by the fire again. Soolin was on watch. Round to the right, the wall of the accommodation block rough under his guiding hand, another door, another lock. It opened and the cold lessened fractionally. The smell was faint but unmistakable, years of poorly maintained sanitation followed by total neglect. Still at least it was functional, Soolin had checked it out. An improvement on snow coated bushes in the freezing air. One discomfort eased at least.

Staggering slightly he retraced his steps. This time Soolin approached him, put her hand on his shoulder. He wanted to snap at her, to tell to stay away from him, but his tongue refused to frame the words and the muscles of his throat were as tight as a strangler’s hands. He moved away but she followed him indoors talking as they went.
“You need to sleep. Something warm to drink might help. There isn’t a lot left but enough for tonight. Tomorrow we will need to think about replenishing the rations. We might be lucky, there might be an emergency store somewhere.”
He didn’t reply, it didn’t seem worth it. Collapsing onto a musty bed he let his head fall into his hands. After some time he felt the warmth of a heated surface against his skin, Soolin’s warm drink had arrived. Thick cold fingers closed around it without thinking and his arm moved, bringing the cup to his lips. The heat was startling against cold skin and swallowed reflexively; the liquid burning down his throat, easing the tight bands that closed it. Eventually the warm flow stopped and he must have lowered the cup because it was taken from his hand. Someone pushed him back against the lumpy surface of the bed and raised his feet from the floor. A cloud of unpleasant smelling dust suggested he had been covered with something.

The warmth had reached his stomach now and was spreading out, chest, shoulders, arms, legs, hands, then feet, seemed to take on a faint, comfortable, glow. Blinking into the darkness for a moment he heard faint footsteps move away. Finally the waves of warmth reached his head, he felt himself sigh as the darkness took on a red velvet edge just before sleep finally claimed him.

***

Vila sat on his bunk, feet drawn up, knees hugged to his chest, misery written in every line of him. Below them lay Gauda Prime and its cold, silent forests. They had arrived two hours ago and already Vila had seen his fill of the place, already it filled him with a smouldering sense of dread that got worse with every hour that passed. In the years since the London he had done some things that he preferred not to remember, things that he couldn’t honestly believe that he had done, and would have preferred not to, but this time was going to be different. This was going to be an all out battle.

Blake had never taken him into battle before, the Liberator yes, but never him. Other people might not see it but Vila knew that there was a difference. Yes, he had been on the Liberator when it fought the aliens, but he had been surrounded by the ship then, protected by Zen and the neutron blasters, with familiar things around him. This would be something else, as different as that battle had been to dodging pursuit ships. This time he would be just a man against other men. Not shooting at targets any more, but shooting at people, maybe even people with faces. Not ships but people with names, and families, and friends and comrades and hopes, and fear. Just like his fear, and there was plenty of that.

They were waiting now, waiting for dusk to fall on the base that they all hoped held Avon, and possibly Servalan. Part of him wanted the waiting over and another part wanted it to go on forever.
Most of those on board spoke with relish of the possibility of the Presidents presence; Dayna didn’t speak of it at all, which was more worrying; somehow Vila didn’t think that Blake would be as successful as Avon in restraining her. God alone knew what would be the outcome of that, Servalan alive was bad enough but Servalan dead might be even worse.

Servalan dead, but probably not the only one. Vila shuddered and gripped his knees more tightly.
“People will die!” he had said to Cally when she came and found him.
“People always die Vila, you know that. That’s what war is about.” There had been a patient sadness in her voice. “If we don’t do this then Avon might die.”
“Avon won’t die,” he had scoffed, but it had been half hearted. “No one would have the nerve to kill Avon, he might not stay dead.”
“Vila!” Cally had sounded really angry.
“But it means shooting at people, real people.” There was panic in his voice.
“You mean people who might shoot back?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know what I mean. Just that killing people doesn’t come easy to me.”
“Unlike the rest of us?” Cally’s voice was hard and he saw her muscles tense.
He reached out to grasp her arm, but she got up and walked away from him.

“It’s never stopped you firing the neutron blasters.”
“That’s different.”
At least in the light. In the dark you knew it wasn’t different, but there were ways to keep the dark from letting you see their faces, ways to stop the whispering. After a while it got almost easy, and when it wasn’t you could always trade darkness for oblivion.
“Is it?”
Cally’s voice made Vila wonder about the quality of her darkness. He wriggled uncomfortably.
“I don’t know any more. It’s just that I’ve never been involved in an out and out battle before, not on the ground.”
Cally sighed and sat down again,
“Maybe there won’t be one.”
“Dayna thinks there will be, she seems to be looking forward to it.”
“Dayna is young, and her upbringing means that she tends to look at it in a different way.” She smiled slightly, “from the heroic viewpoint.”
“What is there to be different? People fight, people die, sometimes your people. Usually people like me, like Gan. Remember him?” His voice rose in fear, or anger, even he wasn’t sure which.
“Yes I remember him,” her voice was carefully even but the hard look was back in her eyes.
“Sorry, of course you do.” Vila wasn’t quite sure what he was apologising for but knew that he had to. “But you know what I mean, people like Blake and Avon don’t get killed, it’s people like me who do.”
“They can die too Vila, they have no special protection. When have you ever known Blake to hang back from personal danger, or even Avon when it came to it?”

Vila wriggled again, his face mournful. He was losing the argument, and he knew it, but he tried anyway.
“Someone is going to die tomorrow Cally, someone on this ship. They are going to die because we go looking for Avon. Maybe it will be one of us, maybe one of Kearne’s lot or Cauder’s; but someone is going to die. Tomorrow night there will be someone, people maybe, who aren’t here any more. That scares me.”
“It scares us all. But that could be the case whether we fight or not Vila.” She sighed again,
“And if we don’t take the risk, if we go away and leave him, who knows how many more will die? That’s why those other people are here, they know what is at stake. If Servalan gets Avon to talk she will use what he tells her to kill or enslave millions. It will be as bad as before the war. There is no choice Vila, we must find him and take him away from Servalan.”

Vila hung his head and hunched his shoulders, what could he say?
“I know, but I don’t want it to be that way. Couldn’t we get to Avon without fighting? Sneak in and steal him. I could do that Cally, steal him I mean, I’m very good at stealing. But not fighting. I don’t think I can do it. I want him to be safe, but I don’t think I can do it.”
Cally reached forward and patted his arm,
“If we could we would. You don’t think that any of us want a fight do you? Well do you?”
Her voice was sharp again and Vila shook his head wearily. She sighed once more and suddenly she looked tired,
“If there was another way we would use it, but this time we can’t sneak in and steal anything, you know that. We have done all we can to make sure they aren’t prepared, to reduce the resistance, but either we fight or we leave Avon to whatever Servalan has in store for him. Would you want us to leave you if you were in his place?”

Vila had shaken his head again, there had been no point in saying anything more. Cally had looked at him for a moment then she had gone to help Dayna with whatever mayhem she was planning and left him to the darkness.

So he sat and watched the hours tick away, thinking of Gan, and of dying, and waiting for the battle.

***