Blue Remembered Hills (ch20)

[igenlode]

I can't remember if I thought that telling this scene from the point of view of Gan-the-outsider was inherently a good idea, or if it was just Gan's turn to narrate a chapter, or what... At any rate the impact doesn't seem to have come out as inadequately as I remembered it in retrospect. Fortunately.

The B7 characters' contribution to the crossover plot is basically limited to providing a magic means of exit, but then they did supply the entire setting and political scenario in the first place, so their role isn't quite as uneven as it might seem. Still, it isn't a 'what if character X turned up in plot Y and totally changed everything' plot, more of a 'what if plot Y took place in an AU setting from series X'...

---

Chapter 20: And Cannot Come Again

The first thing Gan had known about the atmospheric breach had been the buzz of warning as the pressure doors in the shaft to the lowest level began to close while the two of them were still only halfway down. Blake, who’d been ahead of him, had let go instinctively and dropped down onto the floor plates below with a jolt. All that saved Gan himself from injury or worse had been lack of maintenance in the mechanism.

Doors that should have slid shut in a seamless rush moved jerkily on their tracks, and caught in the panic of those jaws he’d torn loose a rusty rung from the shaft and jammed the mechanism solid. His makeshift pawl lasted a matter of seconds before sheer force completed the demolition job and sprang it free in two jagged halves that embedded themselves scant inches above his sweating grip; but terror had done wonders for his agility in that time, and he’d swung himself hastily clear of the closing gap and down to cling to the wall in one piece as the relentless weight snapped shut above his head.

“Gan. Gan!” Blake abandoned caution to clamber back up when Gan did not move. “Gan, are you all right?”

“Bit shaken... that’s all,” he said honestly, trying to force fingers to unclamp from what had become a death-grip and move down to their next holds. His belt-light snagged and almost caught him; he heard it tear free and rebound down the shaft in an echoing fall. The beam was still on, aimed upwards now at a crazy angle that was half-blinding him. It shone on a pitted expanse of steel above their heads.

“Should hold the Federation up for a while, anyway,” he managed, flailing for a rung with one boot and almost hitting Blake, beneath him.

Blake caught hold of the errant foot with some force and deflected it to its proper place. “It would be nice to think so, wouldn’t it?”

Even nicer if their pursuers would just leap to the conclusion that the two of them had perished in whatever disaster had taken place up ahead, Gan thought, hearing Blake jump clear below. But they both knew the chances of that were close to zero.

And they both knew something had gone very badly wrong. The air was notably worse on the lowest level, and they were forced to mask up yet again scant minutes after having left behind the dust from the debris-fall above. Blake called one last time for Rall over the comm-circuit, but there was no more reply than before.

“Still switched out,” he said shortly. Neither of them had mentioned the other — and much more obvious — conclusion.

They threaded the final passage at almost breakneck speed but without much hope. Gan was in the lead when they came round that last corner and saw the light change ahead of them, unmistakable shadows of day widening under the yellowish beams of their own flickering haste. The rough walls grew more finished and began to take on a more lofty aspect around them, and the daylight became stronger and stronger. He checked his pace a moment as they came headlong into the vast hive of computer banks, unable to hold back a response of mere awe — nothing in Dar’s briefing had given him any idea of the scale of the place — and heard Blake’s exclamation behind him. Then he saw the torn panel beside the great panorama in the outer wall.

There’d been no sign of life or movement in the whole place at his first glance, and he found his heart lifting out of all proportion to the sight of that scrap of sunlight, as if it were in itself a message. Somewhere outside, then, there was a chance—

He’d moved almost without thinking, and it wasn’t until his boot-soles were actually gritting on wind-blown sand and the ragged gap was within arm’s reach that he heard Rall’s voice from behind, and Blake’s heated answer. Gan swung round, saw the boy trapped against the wall, and caught sight of the other two figures in their frozen tableau only a few yards away.

The girl had managed to drag herself to a sitting position against a computer cabinet. Brows and lashes were almost colourless against the pallor of her face, and tight-bound hair scarcely a shade darker was wound about her head in a braided ring smeared now with dust. Telltale streaks marked the grime beneath her eyes where she had raised her head to stare at him. She wore no mask. It was the face he’d last seen white with terror underneath the Dome.

Half-supported against her was another figure, almost prone, that he recognised all too well from that same night. The Ghost lay as if helpless, long limbs slack and unresisting in Cris’s grasp. But the eyeholes of his mask were fixed on Gan, and behind that faceless blank the other man had the impression of a mind that was very much aware.

He drew his gun, wondering what he would do if he actually had to use it, and came closer. Cris was having trouble breathing — Gan could see her hands tightening around the edges of the Ghost’s mask, her eyes fixed on Gan himself with a look of panicked indecision — and with his free hand he felt for his Liberator breather, the makeshift substitute he’d shoved into a pocket.

“Here”—he held it out to her, afraid to approach any nearer to that dark figure she held until he understood what had happened here—”take this. It’s not what you’re used to, but it should help.”

He wasn’t sure if she could understand him through the breather, but the gesture was self-explanatory. The girl hesitated a final moment, then slid out from beneath the Ghost and pulled the unfamiliar mask over mouth and nose with a grateful haste that told him that, Newpie though she was, she’d been seriously scared. The Ghost, sitting up slowly, appeared to be refastening his own mask. Gan made the connection with a jolt of disbelief.

Then all heads swung round to a blast from the Liberator weapon in Blake’s hands. He’d shorted out the control box that had kept Rall pinioned across the room, and in the next moment the young man, free from his confinement, was seizing Cris in both arms and pouring out a torrent of muffled avowal and concern that left little room for anything else. He’d clearly forgotten to switch his mask back into the comm circuit; Cris was feeling instinctively for the non-existent control on the one Gan had given her. But from the answering look in her eyes Gan thought that the actual words mattered very little to either of them at all.

“Gan.” He’d glanced round for Blake, thinking to share a smile at the sight, but the other man’s voice was grim and sober in his ear. “We need to get her out of here. And we need some kind of deal with the Ghost.”

Half an hour earlier, Gan might have been of Rall’s opinion that what they needed was to deal with the Ghost, pure and simple. If he’d ever backed Blake’s idea of an alliance, still less that of taking tips from the supreme strategist of Newparis, Gan had long since recoiled from any such concept — and if Blake possessed sense to match his undoubted intelligence, then he too must have come to the same conclusion on his own. Dar’s friend Erik was no model for any man seeking to win the hearts and minds of the masses... or even of one slim girl.

Only... sane or not, safe or not, the fear Gan had seen in her eyes had been for Erik, not of Erik. She’d shared his breath. She’d flinched from unmasking him under Gan’s gaze. And the Federation was coming down on all of them, with the power of the Ghost as their only defence.

Just where was the Ghost?

That absence registered with a spark of alarm. Gan had seen him struggle painfully to his feet. Then Rall’s arrival had swept away all attention, and it seemed that Erik had simply... vanished. And if Erik had watched that reunion, Gan told himself — how could any of them have been so oblivious? — then it would scarcely have been with a fond smile.

He drew in a sharp breath, fists bunching at his sides, and saw Blake stiffen to the same realisation, swinging round instinctively to cover Gan’s back. The gun he’d used to free Rall was still in his hand. “We should—”

“Dar’s men.” The voice of the Ghost seemed for a moment to come mockingly from everywhere at once, and Gan found himself gazing round wildly before the telltale flicker of the white mask showed itself deliberately up above. Despite his weakness Erik had found his way up to that high seat amid banked screens; enthroned there with his control centre at his fingertips he held a chilling aura, and Cris and Rall by the viewport clung closer together like two children.

“Dar’s men.” It might have been a jeer or a sob; beneath the amplification, the voice was a broken thread. “Do your errand, then, Dar’s men, and let Erik do what he can. Take her with you — take her far from here, for if any chance for Dar is to remain then the Federation must not seize this room.”

Cris cried out in protest, pulling against her lover’s hold, and Gan caught the note of horror in her words. The Ghost rose to his feet, leaning down over them all. He was supporting himself with one arm on the console; it trembled slightly.

“So loyal, Cris... such a good girl.... Will you not be happy, if Erik does this for you? Oh, you are thinking of the thousand lives... they will not be harmed, no-one will be harmed. That was all you ever wanted, only I did not understand... There, let him wipe away those tears — how gently he does it, your passionate boy, how tender his touch, all those fires of his quenched in your sweetness.... I know you love him. Go with him and be happy, go as soon as you please. It will be Erik’s gift to you for those moments you gave him today, moments in your care when he was blessed, that he will remember until the time comes for his end....”

It was grotesque and pitiable, poured out before an audience of onlookers who could not choose but overhear, and Gan would have given good money to be able to wipe away what he had no right to witness, and a suffering that was not his to see. Cris was frozen, stricken, and Rall could only hold her and dry the rolling tears that threatened to flood her mask.

“Go,” the Ghost said quietly, his voice shaking on that word. “Go, all of you, and let Erik do what he must — what no-one else can do for the Operation. Fight in your own ways, fight together on your own ground, and let me alone to fight in mine.”

His voice had risen, swirling around and around them, and the final word was little short of a sob. “Go!”

“I think the man means it,” Blake said briefly over the comm, laying a hand on Gan’s arm. “At any rate I’m certainly not planning to argue.... Do you think you can find your way back to the flyer out there? It looks to me as if our young pilot is just about all in; the girl and the excitement are all that’s keeping him on his feet, and I don’t know how long that’s going to last — better keep an eye on him. And we need to find out if this Cris knows anything about what’s going on with Dar. It was starting to sound to me as if we may not find much to go back to.”

His tone was grim, and Gan’s heart sank. They might get out of here alive, but what chance would any of them have as fugitives trapped on the surface of a hostile planet?

More chance, at least, than they’d have if they let themselves get caught in the Garnier basement, he told himself firmly, with a last glance up at the Ghost. But that shadowy figure was once more seated behind its screens, face averted as the long fingers worked the equipment unseen.

When the white mask rose to stare down on them, it was with a hissed warning. “Go now—”

Sounds on an intercepted comm-channel flooded the gallery: Federation commands, angry jostling, and an all-too-familiar jolting groan beneath the chime of the override as pressure doors slid back. They’d opened the shaft. Of course they had. Federation security had all the codes.

Gan got his arm round Rall and peeled him away from Cris with something akin to main force, feeling the girl stumble as the young man’s weight left her. Blake had been right about who was holding whom. He got Rall’s feet moving with an effort, not liking what he heard of his laboured breathing, and half-lifted him out through the hatch opening. The hazy sunlight beyond was almost dazzling, despite the chill in the air.

For a moment he wasn’t even certain where they’d left the flyer. The valley was a vast bowl of sand, lapping up to the foot of the Garnier’s cliffs in rippled bays and inlets between great ribs of flaking rock, and the marks of their landing had been erased by the wind. Then Rall turned in his grasp, trying to point, and he caught a glimpse of battered paint a little lower down behind a second outcrop, where a buttress ran out from the wall to end in a crumbling stack.

Behind them Cris and Blake were coming at what was almost a dead run across the sand. He got Rall up into a seat somehow — there was no way he was going to let him handle the pilot’s yoke for this trip; Blake would just have to manage the take-off as he’d claimed — strapped him in, and was ready to swing Cris over the side of the vehicle and up into the neighbouring seat as she arrived. Compared to Jenna’s steely strength she weighed nothing at all. But her hands in his were small and competent, and she had her seat-harness fastened and got herself plugged into a fresh mask and the flyer’s comms systems before Blake could get the canopy shut and the engine into lift-off pitch.

Gan took his own seat in the row ahead, prompting her gently into telling what little she knew about Dar and the dockyard raid back in the Dome. He kept half an eye on Blake’s back view in front of him in the cockpit as the other man took the flyer cautiously off the ground. But Blake’s shoulders tightened only when Cris described betrayal and disaster; and by that time they were already clear of the cliffs and running steadily out towards the open plain, with the prow of the Garnier Complex passed and falling behind them. The building clung to the mountain, its lights barely visible in the Newparis sun.

Cris had a side-panel loose now in some attempt at eavesdropping on pursuers and had unclipped the tray of tools there, working with the neat dexterity of a trained tech. She’d released her harness to lean forward and bridge two receiver modules together, linking in a spare unit from the tool-set with a pair of probes held together in one hand, and Rall was trying to steady her from the side, strain evident on his pale face. One wing of the flyer dropped in an ungainly lurch as Blake struggled to gain altitude, and Rall made a frantic grab, not quite in time. An ugly burst of static spat across the comm as Cris lost her balance.

She flinched. “Sorry— I’m sorry—”

“Bad flying. Not your fault,” Blake said ruefully from up front. “Have you got access to the military transmissions yet? If we’re being chased I’d like to know about it — and there’s some kind of signal coming in...”

He broke off. “No, wait— it’s coming across all channels—”

“It’s not a signal. It’s an activation code.” Her voice was very quiet, as if some sixth sense had told her, even then. Gan could hear it too, now, brief staccato groups against the engine noise from the cockpit. Di-A. Di-A. Di-A...

“No!” Cris understood a moment before the rest of them. “No, Angel, no—”

And then static; flame, a brief intense pulse of it there behind them across the valley, and smoke. Black, sluggish smoke that began to drift lazily out of that distant abandoned hatch, one more faint toxic stain across the valley-floor haze.

The Garnier Complex stood unmoved and tranquil against the rock, and somewhere deep within it the holocaust was over now, a network of computers and connections that the Federation would never use. The Ghost had kept his word. A thousand oblivious lives were still untouched; he’d done only what was needful to set things right.

“Angel Six, signing off,” Cris whispered into thin air. “Angel Six... signing off...”

Rall’s hands were still held out helplessly to brace her; she turned and burrowed suddenly against him, huddled across the seat in a frantic struggle to hold back tears. The young man’s eyes lifted desperately to Gan’s across the seat back for a moment of appeal, but Gan could only turn away. He had no help to offer either of them; only the sudden, unwanted memory of a woman — tall, dark, with a slow rich smile — who’d sought comfort in his own arms from all the little tragedies and frustrations of the life they’d had then. He’d fought for her as Rall had tried to fight for Cris. They’d both failed... but Cris was young and warm and living, and his own woman was dead and their life vanished as completely as if it had never been.

He spared a brief backward glance at the two fair heads clinging together, and told himself that Rall seemed to know very well what to do in any case. Cris had been shaken, but she would forget... and she was nestled already against her lover’s shoulder.

When the teleport bracelet chimed suddenly to life against Gan’s wrist, his first, instinctive thought was of some final trick from the Ghost.

“Blake. Gan.” Avon’s voice was ragged beneath the familiar caustic edge. “This is Liberator. Please confirm — I repeat, please confirm.”

“Confirmed,” Blake came in swiftly, sounding more than a little stunned himself. “Avon, just where have you—”

“Zen reports incoming Federation ships altering course to intercept — and take-off preparations from that unholy mess down in the dockyards. We’ve just wasted twenty minutes trying to locate you in the middle of that bloodbath after it popped up out of nowhere across all the communication channels on the planet... and then your bracelet signal suddenly shows up on the tail of another explosion hundreds of miles away. Explanations go two ways, Blake, and the Federation know we’re up here. Now, do you propose to exchange life stories, or are you ready to teleport up so we can get out of orbit before we get blown to bits?”

A moment’s silence. “All right... but give us thirty seconds, Avon. And be ready for company.”

Blake clicked the channel shut and turned. “Gan — spare teleport bracelets. Quickly.”

Gan was fumbling in the pockets of his parka already, hoping desperately that the spares were still in one piece. They’d brought down those half-dozen bracelets with such optimism. Now it looked as if the only recruits they were likely to get were those who had no option.

He unbuckled his own restraints — it wasn’t as if it was going to make any difference to any of them in a few seconds’ time — to scramble back between the seats in mid-flight. Two pairs of startled blue eyes looked up at him.

“Here.” He thrust two opened bracelets at them, wondering if he had time to explain; deciding he hadn’t. “Put these on— yes, over your sleeve will do—”

Probably better over her sleeve, at that. She was so slimly made that the whole thing seemed ready to slide off. Rall, looking dazed, drew breath to protest, and Gan caught hold of his arm and clipped the teleport bracelet around the young man’s wrist himself.

“Bringing you up... now,” Avon said, precisely on cue, and the flyer’s interior shimmered briefly about them and was gone.

~o~

High above the atmosphere, the Liberator’s main drive flared into pulsing life as her trajectory changed, elongated, then began to curve gracefully away. A flurry of messages from in-system detectors marked the beginning of a new pursuit as the Federation noted the fugitives’ course, and patrol craft were redirected to intercept. On Newparis, the Civil Administration licked its wounds and counted the cost of tentative victory over insurgency.

Some miles from the Garnier Complex, a solitary unmanned flyer continued on its increasingly erratic course. A moment or two later, impact was marked only by another puff of dust.

Comments

[betweensunandmoon]

I'm so happy everyone made it out! :D Everyone except for Erik...but he did what he had to do.

How many more chapters are after this one?