Extracts

Shorter stories

Many a slip

.....I can see her now, stumbling through the dusk. Young enough to be certain, old enough to be believed. A believer. A zealot. Hungry for glory. The zeal in her burning so brightly she could barely hide it, the veiled eyes all too often betraying the direction of her thoughts, if she but knew it. Oh yes, Arlen is perfect.

It’s getting late. The air is becoming chill and the sky is darkening again, stars are showing faintly above the towering trees. I could almost imagine that I see the lights from the ships amongst them. Soon there will be one more. It can’t be soon enough, not for me......

The Ultimate Mary Sue

.......I will never understand how or why she chose me. It’s not as if there is much in me to be proud of, and there was even less before she came. Except perhaps that I have no illusions about myself, and that I have survived that fact. Not that many other people have survived it with me of course. It seems that I have brought pain and death to everyone I have ever cared for......

.......Once I asked her how long they had been together, and she just smiled that mysterious smile of hers, and said 'from the beginning'. I asked her what she meant and she just put her hand on my arm and said that one day I would understand. Now, if anyone else had done that I would have been angry, furious at the implied condescension; but not with Gabi. With her its different, it always is, she is not like anyone I have ever known. When I look into her eyes it is as if she knows me through and through and still cares about me. There is something remarkable, truly magical about Gabi.......

The Meeting

...........As it was it went like clockwork, as my granny used to say. Not that she ever did manage to explain what, exactly, clockwork was.

He wasn’t what I expected, and I certainly wasn’t what he must have done. The tiny room was dim but even so I could see the frown between his eyes,
“This is dangerous, it was stupid for me to have come” was his opening gambit, not exactly friendly but then it had been a long time since he could risk having friends. I knew exactly how he felt.........

Longer Stories

Damoclese

....... “So the new world begins tomorrow.”
It was a comment not a question, she had access to news reports and knew as much as any citizen of his election. If there was mockery in her voice that was to be expected, and it was softer than he had anticipated.
“You could put it like that.” He had replied.
She had sat back in her chair and looked at him for a long moment, then smiled a wide, glittering, smile,
“No Blake, they would put it like that, I would never be so simple minded.”.........

........He had been at the consecration of the memorial to the dead. Laying a wreath on the marble step he had looked up and caught sight of Jenna’s name etched in the stone. Memories shook him and he had suddenly known that it couldn’t be finished until he knew why Servalan had given him the box.

Maybe it was co-incidence that three people had mentioned the ex-president to him at the inevitable dinner later that evening, though only one had mentioned his meeting with her. Perhaps he had imagined the curiosity in the looks cast him when her name was spoken. ....

.........Servalan was finally gone, but she had left him with too many unanswered questions about a rainbow with an empty crock at its end.........

Illusions and Reaities

All from part 1.

......‘Guilt,’ a little voice whispered to him, ‘more guilt. Own it, you were the cause, he wasn’t to blame; you should have stopped it before it came to that.’ The rest of his mind couldn’t summon a counter argument that worked, so he went to face the ghosts, knowing that he was lucky to be alive when others were probably dead, and some certainly so; but somehow not grateful at all. .........

........She let her smile widen and, surrendering to a sudden and unexpected need to touch him, she reached out to trail one finger down the side of his face and along the line of his jaw. He showed no awareness of the touch and his eyes remained locked on hers.
"Oh Avon, that is unkind. I might almost think you were not pleased to see me. When I have come all this way to rescue you."
"Rescue?" he hesitated for a moment, his eyes wary and calculating, before speaking her name,
" Sleer," the rising intonation signalled both mockery and a question, "You seem somewhat inappropriately dressed for a white knight". .........

.......... Carrill's ship had provided him with a sanctuary in some of the darkest hours he had ever lived, but it had become comfortable and its crew easy companions. As the weeks had passed he had found something close to friendship with Carrill and Svend, and an easy comradeship with the others; he knew that he would miss it bitterly.

He was also a little afraid of how he would cope away from their company. In the long weeks of the flight he had wrestled with the demons that had driven him back into space, and, though they still haunted his sleep and shadowed his leisure hours, they had faded to bearable presence. Slowly he had come to terms with his own actions. He knew now that what was done couldn’t be undone, some of it couldn’t even have been avoided, he couldn’t have realised what was going to happen. The probability was that faced with such a choice again he would do something similar, he just had to live with it.......

........He was tired, wet and cold but none of that seemed to matter, he was concerned with other things. On the fringes of his consciousness he was aware of his own shivering, the water that was seeping down his collar, the clammy coldness of clothes against his damp skin and Soolin’s restlessness. The latter he noted for future consideration, but not now. Part of his mind monitored the forest scanning for sights or sounds that might indicate danger, but the other part was wholly taken up with the same concerns that had been dominating his thoughts for days. Escape, and how it might be achieved......

.........Avon looked at her steadily for a few moments before answering.
“Oh yes, we were that, but do you think that is enough to explain it all? Weren’t we familiar enough with the necessary precautions for continued survival? Remember Keiller? You didn’t give him the benefit of the doubt did you? Yet he was far less of a threat than the woman with Blake. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Soolin rubbed her hand over her eyes,
“I suppose so, but where does this get us Avon? I’ll accept that we were careless, and maybe it cost the others their lives, but what is the point of going over it again and again? It doesn’t change anything!”
“Have I said that it did?” his voice was calm and his face composed, “but understanding what was happening here, why Blake did what he did, why we did what we did, that might keep us alive now.”
“Why?” the demand was blunt and for a moment he looked disconcerted, then he turned away again.
“All information is valuable.”
“In other words you don’t want to tell me. Don’t you trust me Avon? Is that it? Or is it that blame me for surviving when Blake, Cally and Vila are dead?”......

From later

.............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.............