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igenlodeI finally got round to doing the picture of 'Rall' and 'Cris' in their crossover "Blake's 7" incarnations that I've been vaguely planning for years -- it started off with the idea of being based on one of my favourite sketches from deviantArt, but once I actually got round to drawing my own version, four years later, the characters took on a look of their own...
(Click to view) :origin()/pre00/6d5b/th/pre/f/2017/107/2/e/blue_remembered_hills_colour_2__by_igenlode-db66ymq.jpg)
Which means that, for the first time in years and years, there is actually no remaining obstacle (other than the physical separation of computer from Internet) remaining between me and publishing my Grand Crossover Story. A very strange and unaccustomed situation.
(Although I do now have to go back and edit the details of the relevant chapter to make it match what's shown in the picture -- my ideas at the time about Federation uniform turned out to be based on a memory of Tarrant's costumes from the final series rather than what anyone in the Federation Space Fleet actually wore!)
And if I'm going to adopt my accustomed habit of posting new chapters here first for a final check-and-edit, it would probably make more sense, before I start, to post the Prologue chapters that are already uploaded to fanfiction.net...
BLUE REMEMBERED HILLS
Prologue-1: Carla
It was strange sometimes how things turned out, Dar Ogar thought, leaning on the counter and observing his customers. But there were worse planets to end up on than Newparis, and worse ways to be seen to make a living. He'd had experience of both, in his time... but there were things one didn't talk about, under the Terran Federation.
And these days the Federation held sway from Earth Sector to the Outer Worlds. Newparis was an old colony, one of the first to be settled here in the Second Sector, and as a Class 3 world it was barely viable for human life. The air was thin and harsh-tasting, unbreathable for offworlders like himself, and when duststorms blew up — like the one scheduled to hit later tonight — even the descendants of those first settlers were forced to take refuge in face-masks and breather sets like the rest of them.
But for now the sands lay quiet on the endless plains. Streetlights flickered on beneath sealed city-domes one by one as sunset slid across the continent. Here in the great central city — home to almost a million of the five million humans scattered thinly across this planet — the streets around Ogar's Bar were bustling with workers changing shift, the dockyards beyond the Dome had a full roster of repair jobs, and few people wasted time in checking on the weather. When the dust-warning came, the airlocks would be sealed down but life would continue as ever; meanwhile, for Federation personnel and locals alike, home lay within the city. Few bothered with more than the occasional glimpse through the viewports at the barren world outside.
Little Cris in the corner there was one of the exceptions. She sat quietly with her friend, as always, eating her meal and causing no trouble; but like Dar himself, she saw more than she spoke of... And then raised voices and cheerful laughter came jostling in for attention as the first little knot of junior officers spilled into the bar, and Dar sighed and turned his attention to serving as the business of the evening started in earnest.
All these youngsters saw themselves as Lords of the Universe: but when it came down to it, the sheer imperishable confidence of youth had as much to do with the matter as the privilege of Space Command uniform. It wasn't hard to look beyond the reflected halo of power displayed by the planet-and-arrow symbol of Federation service, and spot the roughened patches on shoulder or lapel that betrayed a promotion of only a few days' standing. Dar knew the mark of cadet badges all too recently removed — but he kept the private smile to himself, and dispensed drinks with the air of respectful awe proper to a mere civilian before such elevated mortals.
Twenty years down the line, the hard-bitten survivors might swagger with that same entitlement but the arrogance would be more cynical: corrupt superiors, resentful populations, and the odds of a political purge or two would see to that. But for now, Dar Ogar thought, watching as ever from his shadowed station behind the serving counter, these young sprigs were tolerable enough as the Federation went. Wet behind the ears and apt to assume an unearned authority, perhaps — pilot cadets were all Alpha-grades, by the rigid stratification their Civil Administration had imposed, and it went with the territory — but for the most part still essentially a fresh-faced bunch, some almost touchingly naïve.
That fair-haired boy in the middle, for example, blushing like a girl as his companions elbowed him. What was evidently another ribald comment from behind brought deepened colour to the tip of the young pilot officer's long nose, and a look of disapproval from Cris's friend Carla, who'd clearly taken the remark personally. Judging by the glances the two girls were getting, she'd probably been right about that.
Dar had frowned himself; passing banter was one thing, but those two were regulars of his. They worked up at Central Communications in the dockyard, and called in for a bite to eat on the way home two or three days out of every ten — while Dar might dish out his meals into the same moulded dispenser-trays as those at the ration canteen, the daily menu here was considerably more varied. And he liked to offer a touch of the offworld exotic. With the native Newpies almost without exception as flaxen fair as pale Cris, he'd traded on the striking effect of his own dark-skinned colouring to draw in custom.
An amazing number of people seemed to pass through Ogar's Bar one way or another, if the surveillance crews ever took pause to reckon them up. And Dar made sure to be the public face of that.
Hence the little arrangement he had with the old sergeants who manned the gates; the care he took to acquire the custom besides of these callow young hopefuls, and of all the spacecrews burning time while their Mark III Comet- or Nebula-class sat on the landing-pads for a few days' repair at the Newparis dockyards.
He'd known from the start he could never blend in undercover, and he'd established himself openly with the Federation as harmless. He could face the world on even terms and be returned a smile. Unlike Erik: Erik, who compensated in other ways.
Ways it was better not even to think about, not with a group of young spacers clamouring for service and threatening to turn their attentions on a couple of Newpie girls sitting quietly and minding their own business...
Dar turned up the light strip behind the counter and let one of the serving nozzles drain down a moment or two, sending a volatile alcoholic waft across the Federation contingent. It had the desired effect. He grinned broadly at the transfixed youngsters.
"Now, what can I get you...?"
The last of the stragglers plunged back across the room, in what was rapidly descending into a fresh free-for-all at the bar, and comm-tech Carla made a grab to save the contents of her meal-tray just in time. She scowled, an expression that was incongruous on her pretty features.
"Alphas." The single word held all the accumulated disdain of one who had never once, since the moment she had left the Federation testing station, been able to accept or forgive the system that had assigned her to a mere Beta grade. "Bad enough down in the dockyard — but then they come in here off-duty and try to throw their weight around—"
It was different for Cris. Everyone had always known she'd never test out above the labour grades, not after what had happened with her father — she'd been lucky not to be shipped off to one of the frontier slave planets — and she'd never shown an ounce of talent after that, anyway, it was as if all the life had been crushed out of her. But some people had potential, and they had expectations...
Carla tossed her head furiously, sending her bright bob of hair flying, and turned her habitual glare on the little wisp of a girl sitting opposite. Just look at her: pale hair, pale face, pale eyes — oh, she was as much a Newpie as Carla herself, all gold and pink and blue, but Cris was a poor bleached shadow of her friend at most and it was clear she would never amount to anything. The best that could be said for her was that she was properly grateful for the time and affection that Carla deigned to afford her, which was more than any of the other comm-techs in their block, Delta-grade or not.
But it was clear she was off in a dream again. She hadn't even noticed when that black-haired boor of a cadet had slammed into their table and slopped the remnants of her meal across the tray, and her pale blue eyes were wide and unfocused in the short-sighted way that men seemed to find so endearing. At any rate, she'd got away with dreaming at work often enough.
Oh, in the last few months Cris had taken, when caught, to claiming that she was trying to revise some complicated ratio of frequencies or work out theoretical interference along a narrow-beam broadcast — a whole lot of rubbish beyond anything their dockyard work ever expected them to do, and which Carla herself had barely grasped in her supplemental studies — but that was just part of the girl's slyness. She would blink those big blue eyes up at Tech-Commander Revier and escape with the mildest of reprimands; but nothing had changed, Carla was certain. Cris still had a head full of those ridiculous stories her father had started to come up with after her mother had died.
Some nonsense about hills over the horizon, just out of sight, where the ground was blue and the air was soft and houses lay wide open beneath the sky... and when people disappeared, it wasn't because they'd been shipped off-planet or coughed their lungs out in a punishment cell overnight, it was because they'd run off to the better life in those far remembered hills...
Carla rapped her spoon sharply on the edge of the table, and watched the silly Delta jump.
"I don't believe you've heard a word I've been saying. All these Alphas, as patronising as old Revier and as clumsy as a load of groundworms—"
"It won't last." Cris's dreamy voice was as gentle as the rest of her, but on occasion it could carry disastrously. "The whole Federation will come down like a rotten beam some day, you'll see..."
Shocked into momentary, uncharacteristic silence, the older girl saw Dar's sudden movement from the corner of her eye and froze. They said Dar Ogar had been in security once, off-planet. And everyone knew he had contacts in Civil Administration.
What if one of the pilot louts had heard? What if Dar set more value on his own skin than on protecting his favourite, precious little Cris?
And what — what, above all, had come over the girl to say such a thing? It was the sort of dangerous sedition that her father might have come out with, and Cris of all people should have known better. What if she took it into her head to start repeating some of Carla's own remarks in the wrong hearing?
Besides, Cris hadn't a political bone in her body. She obviously didn't know what she was saying. The best thing was not to make an issue of it.
"I suppose you're going to tell me you weren't busy dreaming away about those old stories of blue hills again?"
"Oh no, I was listening; truly I was." The girl's earnest gaze was completely innocent. "I was just thinking — I used to know an Alpha once. When we were little. We used to play together a lot."
"Really?" Despite herself, Carla was impressed. "What, up in the administration block?"
She'd heard stories — all gleaming walls and old-Earth luxury—
"Oh no, they wouldn't have let me up there," Cris said, guileless. "Just out and about, you know. I don't think his father liked it much — he'd been in Sector Command out in space, he was really old — but Daddy was always there, and he thought Daddy was wonderful, of course. Everyone did."
Until he went that little bit too far and started calling for the reform of the Federation, Carla thought. Then they couldn't disown him fast enough.
"But however did you meet an Alpha brat in the first place?" She was genuinely curious. Not envious; of course not.
"He wasn't a brat." A faint flush of animation came briefly into the other girl's face. "He was kind, and bright, and... quite nice really. And he wasn't really an Alpha yet."
She looked down at the table, pushing trails with her spoon through the spillage. "I suppose I must have been quite little. Too little to understand properly about Outside... or maybe I didn't listen. It was after the flyer accident with Mama, and there were a lot of things I didn't listen to in those days.
"I used to run off and go and stand down by one of the airlocks on my own where the people went in and out, or hang around by a viewport somewhere hoping I might catch a glimpse of Daddy's blue hills, even though you never could. And that day I was out by the lock at East-One, which was always my favourite because there was a viewport nearby and you could see where people went. Only there wasn't anyone using it. Just a few Federation troopers in masks and breather units, the same as they always wear Outside. I knew they couldn't breathe the Newparis air properly without them, and I knew about duststorms, when the inner airlock door comes down... but I'd watched people like us walking around out there almost every day without masks, and I didn't understand about lung capacity and acquired tolerance and symbiotic bacteria and all the things we learn later on, when they start to take us Outside. I knew I was too young to be allowed out of the Dome without an emergency suit. But it was a lovely day, you could see the glitter of the sand in the sun, and a purple haze on the rocks where the scrub-horns were unfurling, and ever since Mama died—"
She broke off.
"So I went out just as I was, in my red scarf and my patch-tunic and my indoor boots. I jumped to reach the control-box, and waited for the outer doors to cycle, and ran out into that great gust of air... and I was so excited, I couldn't breathe. I got halfway over to the scrub-horn patch before I was bent double and had to stop because my lungs hurt, and there was that bitter Outside taste in my throat. I coughed, and then I couldn't stop coughing. By the time I was scared it was too late, because I was down on the ground and couldn't get up. I couldn't even scream... and then Rall came."
She took a deep breath, remembering.
"You mean this boy ran after you? Without a mask?" Carla demanded in disbelief. "That was unbelievably stupid — you could both have been killed!"
"He was the only one close enough," Cris said simply. "He was hardly any older than I was, but he'd been brought up on stories of decompression drills and space disasters; as soon as he understood what I'd done he grabbed one of the emergency breather sets from the cabinet by the airlock doors and went after me. Of course it was an adult size mask and didn't seal properly, and he wasn't in much better state than I was by the time he got there... but the first thing I remember was a strange little boy trying to push the breather mask over my mouth and nose, with a fold of my red scarf held over his so that all I could see was those terribly anxious blue eyes. He was so sweet, Carla, even then when he didn't know me."
Carla treated this unsolicited confidence with the snort it deserved. "You could both have been killed," she pointed out again.
"But we weren't, and Daddy says that's what matters." Cris was infuriatingly serene. "He got me up and onto my feet, and most of the way back to the airlock with the scarf shared between the two of us, even though he was dragging me all the way. The woman who was the first to reach us said she'd never seen anything so brave. And Daddy — when they let Rall come round the next day to see how I was, Daddy couldn't thank him enough."
Her lips parted into the hint of a smile, pale lashes sweeping down to hide her eyes.
"I've never seen anyone go so pink... poor boy, all he could do was hold my hand and look embarrassed. But I clung onto his fingers and wouldn't let him go, and in the end Daddy told us a story to get me to go to sleep. Rall was fixed to the spot. He was the first person I'd met who loved Daddy's stories as much as I did."
Carla's attention had begun to wander, over to the far side of the room where the Federation cadets were starting to reach the rowdy stage. There was a lot of shoving and jostling going on, and glances were being thrown in the two girls' direction. Recognising the symptoms, she tossed her head and heard the banter increase, not displeased with the effect she was producing.
Cris was still busy rhapsodising about her infantile romance, which seemed to have involved a lot of hand-holding. They'd been staring out of one of the viewports, two children alone—
"I thought you said your father was always there?" Carla interrupted with an air of triumph.
Cris dropped her gaze, staring down into her lap again. "He was... to start off with. But he was busy, and he trusted Rall to keep me out of trouble — and Rall's parents didn't need to know."
In short, so far as Carla could gather, the two children had been allowed to run wild all over the Dome and fill their heads with all sorts of foolish dreams.
"We used to talk about where we'd go when we grew up," Cris said wistfully. "He was going into Space Command, of course, like his father — I'd study at the Central Science Complex and we'd discover new planets and see the stars all across the galaxy."
She sighed. "I suppose even then we knew that it wasn't ever going to happen, not really. Not even before... before they took Daddy away."
And after that... well, by the time Carla had first set eyes on her, the anarchist agitator's daughter had been a scrawny creature assigned directly into comms training school after a seven-year stint in the re-education institute; and no Alpha family would have tolerated any association like that.
"So you never saw him again." Carla cut off the story briskly, drawing the obvious conclusion. She thrust away her empty meal-tray and started to get to her feet. It looked to her as if the entire Federation party was making a move — the long-nosed boy who'd been the butt of the jokes earlier was being carried, protesting, in their midst — and it was entirely possible to have too much of a good thing.
"Only once." Cris, as ever, was entirely oblivious. "It was when he—"
And then it was too late. She broke off short — even Cris couldn't miss the mass of young manhood currently bearing down on them — and jumped to her feet in the moment before the table rocked at the impact.
"Come on, lieutenant—"
"Let's see you win those stripes—"
"Here's one set of merits you won't get by keeping your nose clean—"
"With Newpie girls you should feel right at home—"
Baying voices. Cris, backed into the corner, looked terrified, and Carla herself bit her lip, raising her chin defiantly. There was a brief struggle amid the crowd before numbers won out, and their reluctant aggressor was thrust forward to sprawl briefly across the table, scarlet from ears to nose-tip beneath the thatch of fair hair.
A moment later, with a thrust of his shoulders, he'd rolled back onto his feet and was facing down his friends, temper finally rising. "Look, this has gone far enough — I'll kiss a girl when I'm good and ready, and it won't be one who's been scared to death—"
He turned, to throw an apologetic glance at the two trapped behind the tables.
"Ladies, I'm sorry. I'm afraid—"
Carla, watching the others back off shamefaced as Dar made an angry intervention, glanced round sharply as his voice ebbed. The colour was draining slowly from his cheeks, even as it mounted into Cris's pale face in a sudden flush of delicate pink like a statue coming back to life. Her lips had parted, and Carla had never seen her eyes so bright.
"Cris?" It was hesitant, and he'd gone sheet-white. But the smile that had begun to form in answer to hers was an echo of that same sunburst of sheer delight.
Cris nodded. "It's me... oh Rall — Rall!"
On impulse, she held out both her hands; and for a moment, the young pair standing there together were almost beautiful.
Carla looked over automatically at Dar, seeking an ally to bolster her shaken cynicism. But the offworlder was staring up at the camera pickup in the corner of the room with an expression of deep concern that made no sense to her at all.
Every public place was under surveillance, they all knew that. But what would the Civil Administration care about a few rowdy juniors from Space Command? And if an Alpha-grade lieutenant went gooey-eyed over a girl in a bar — she could hardly imagine it was the first time.
She caught the eye of the black-haired boy who'd knocked the tray earlier on, and let him see her assessing gaze in reply. This lot were out of the cadet ship, the Borda, newly arrived on a month's refit; they'd be around a while. Some of them might even be worth cultivating... one or two at a time.
A/N: To any readers who have a nagging sense that the setting and/or characters appear distinctly familiar from a different fandom... congratulations!
This story was written in response to a Least Likely Crossover prompt, and will eventually be a full crossover featuring the "Phantom of the Opera" story in the format of a classic "Blake's 7" episode (and be posted as such). Characters from both fandoms will ultimately play a major part in events, though I've tried to write all my cast in such a way that prior knowledge isn't needed — I'm hoping they work as original characters for those who aren't already familiar with them. For the first few chapters, however, it's probably best to consider this as a science-fiction AU set in the future dystopia that is B7's Terran Federation: the Phantom of the Space Opera.
Prologue-2: Cris
"Do you remember the red scarf?"
It was almost the first thing he'd said to her — the first words they'd ever exchanged since that stilted interview before he'd left for the Federation Space Academy, when he'd found where she was and come to say goodbye.
They hadn't been children any more. She'd been a gawky, uncomprehending adolescent, colourless and beaten after years in Re-Education down in Zone Three. She hadn't understood the courage it must have taken for him to defy his family and seek her out after all that had happened; he'd been an overgrown boy, nose and hands and feet all too large, and neither of them had known what to say.
"I'm never going to forget you—" He'd blurted it out in the last moments of the half-hour she'd been allowed, with the matron already waiting at the door to escort her back. She'd flung herself face-down on her dormitory bed, afterwards, in the only illusion of privacy the inmates could ever find, and cried herself sick at the changes in him; at the loss of the dear ghost who'd shared her father in her mind; at the intrusion of awkward, blundering reality into her last childish bastion of hope.
She'd tried to put Rall out of her mind. She'd almost succeeded, after a while. But as the years dragged past and she built up a fragile new self, she'd let the sweet comfort of those old memories slip back.
They'd been children. They'd been happy. And... how could she ever forget their meeting, and that red scarf?
Following Dar through to the back rooms, Cris looked back and smiled, catching a glimpse of Rall at the outer door. He'd changed so little — and yet so much. He'd grown into himself: the hands she'd once known as well as her own now enveloped hers, firm with unexpected calluses from starship life. The wiry child had become a slim-shouldered young man: the growing boy who'd left to join the Space Academy had overtopped her by half a head, and he still did — but his friends had overtaken him by as much again.
She'd seen Carla — poor Carla, who must never be hurt by the knowledge of how much Cris understood and forgave — dismiss him at a glance, as those bold eyes roamed on elsewhere. But his own eyes had been for Cris herself, and only for her; and she cared nothing at all for the outer self when the old trust was still there within him, warm and sound as a bell. The friend she'd thought lost, from a world she'd thought lost — they had so much to catch up on, he and she.
Had it been any other day, she would have been sitting with him still: but she had duties for the Organisation, duties that a Federation lieutenant could never know... She couldn't tell Rall, any more than she could tell poor dissatisfied unloving Carla — and there had been a queer uncomfortable moment when that realisation had struck home, and she'd seen the knowledge of her evasions in his eyes.
"Rall, I can't." He'd pressed her to stay, the warmth of his hands enclosing hers as Ogar's Bar emptied around them, and in so many ways she would have valued nothing more. But there were betrayals that cost more than memory alone. "I can't — don't you see, things have changed!"
"Tomorrow, then. Here — at the old airlock — down at the Level Two concourse — anywhere you like... Cris, I can't just let you walk out of my life again after five minutes."
She'd nodded, and promised, and let him see a shy smile. But all the while time had been ticking away, and though she'd tried to keep that consciousness from him she didn't know how much he had sensed. It hurt to lie to him, even by omission. He was so very much the same as he had always been. Only... the divide that she'd barely known as a child had opened wider yet, and he was stranded on the other side.
Standing in the doorway now, he raised a hand in answer to her smile, haloed dimly against the streetlights beyond. There was an ache in her throat, and she almost turned back.
"You need to be careful with that one, Cris," Dar said softly as the private door opened. He put a hand on her arm as if to guide her through; the grip tightened in warning. "I don't doubt he means well; but a word from him in the wrong place or the wrong hearing... Or from Carla, for that matter. I know you're sorry for her, but she's not to be trusted."
Cris flushed, knowing herself at fault, and let the door close behind them. Dar's own quarters, behind the bar, were small and neatly furnished in bright colours that always dazzled after the Federation-standard seating in the main room. Like the man himself, their style was at once flamboyant and unobtrusive.
He was moving quietly around the walls, checking on the various safeguards. After a moment he nodded and gave her the signal.
"Am I still in time?" Cris had dropped to her knees and was fumbling with the switch under the offworld rug.
"Plenty of time." His voice was calm and reassuring as ever. "The Ghost always schedules your session last, you know that."
Cris bit her lip with an involuntary shiver. The Ghost heard everything; saw everything. There wasn't a computer file or surveillance pickup on this planet that was beyond his reach if he so chose. Dar might be the everyday voice of the Operation, but everyone knew that the Ghost was in control. His orders were not to be disobeyed — even by Dar.
The switch pin slipped home at last despite over-hasty fingers, and she let out her breath. "Got it — I'm ready."
She held on to the catch as Dar tripped his own control, and felt the surface move beneath her weight.
"Good luck." Dar kept a watchful eye on her as she reversed the rug and slipped down into the hatch below, but she made it in a single graceful movement and got a nod of approval. "Study hard — we'll need someone on the inside for the dockyard job, and that'll be any day now..."
But the last words were muffled by the closing thud of the seal above her as she dropped down the shaft, boots ringing on the ladder.
It was three months since the voice in her headphones had led her to Dar Ogar, and the secret room beneath his premises that none of the Federation's blueprints ever showed; and she was not foolish enough to suppose this one compartment was at the heart of all that network of resistance on Newparis known as the Operation. Even so, the sheer power represented by the massed equipment here awed her every time. She had so much still to learn, she knew.
The time-display at the corner of one of the main boards indicated three minutes left until her scheduled transmission, and Cris sat down hurriedly, adjusting her pale braid of hair as she settled her headset in place and began to bring the comms to life. Never miss a contact: it had been drilled into her from the start. Never arrive late to a rendezvous. Never fail to make a call. If your counterpart doesn't show up, assume the Federation have you compromised and go to ground at once.
She brought the big crystal deanalyser online and tapped into the Dome's trunk traffic as she'd been taught, listening for the telltale signature that was the transcontinental feed. Somewhere in that vast rush of traffic was the encrypted overlay of her predecessor on tonight's schedule, operator Gamma Reserve-E: if she applied some of what she'd been taught, she might even be able to listen in on the exchange. It had never actually been forbidden... and if there was one thing she'd learned, it was that initiative was approved of, at least where her tuition was concerned...
The time-display light was blinking blue in alarm, and Cris realised with a guilty jolt that she'd let her mind wander again. GR-E's allotted slot was over, and it was high time for her to report in her turn. How long had it been? — only seconds, she thought—
But well-trained fingers were moving in the drills she'd been taught, and the background hiss on the headset had steadied to the responsive silence of an open voice channel. She checked the encryption and started up the cover traffic: a recorded viscast of last night's Sector bulletin, numbing upbeat propaganda as always, but more than enough to slip her compressed transmission through, anyhow.
"Angel Six. Angel Six, this is operator Delta Infiltration-A. Delta Infiltration-A, reporting in."
The indefinable change in the quality of the silence that came from another shielded room, another secret chamber somewhere across the world... His voice was low and warm, as always. "Hello, DI-A."
She could hear the smile, and wished, as ever, that she could see it. "Hallo, Angel. It's so good to hear you again..."
And the few more words of personal talk that was all he would ever permit before the lesson began. Work was work, and lives might some day depend upon it and upon her unthinking accuracy in times of stress: but if she did it quickly and well — and more often than not, these days, she did — then afterwards what remained of their time was their own.
In the three months since his low voice had crept into the drudgery of her work at Central Communications and spoken of her father, the three months of training and new friendships and secret rebellion, she'd become the smallest of units in the linkage of the Operation. A proud member of the resistance movement that some day would overthrow the corrupt system that had crushed her father's dream of justice along with his life — and hers. And throughout those months that voice across the air had been her one constant: an endlessly patient teacher, a listening ear for all her petty fears and worries, a gentle caress of comfort that told her she could be more than just a Delta drone — more than Carla, if she chose.
Her father had spoken, once, of men whose voice was their instrument, whose charisma could play upon the passions of a crowd or could call forth the higher nature of millions with the music of their words. Cris pictured her Angel as one such on the steps of the Governor's Residence, head thrown back as the masses below hung on his every phrase; but she could also see him in a lecture room, with brilliant experts from every planet leaning forward, fascinated, to follow his impassioned voice as he paced. Whoever he was, he must be a great man, she knew. And yet for the sake of the Operation he shared his time and his talents with an insignificant girl like her.
"Perhaps your father sent me," he'd said on a soft laugh, the one time she'd dared to ask. "Perhaps somewhere out there, in body or in spirit, he found those blue hills and watches out for you still..."
Even thinking of that moment, her heart hammered painfully. If it were only true — if some at least among the disappeared and the free-thinkers of her father's day lived on, in the far refuge at which those childish tales had hinted — then surely, surely they would be in touch with the Operation, however guarded, however secret. However little Angel Six was permitted to tell her...
With the memory of that tiny flicker of hope held close, she let her hands sweep deftly through the final challenge her tutor had set her, and warmed to the quiet measure of his praise.
"Well done, Di-A; well done. Very good indeed — you will have to be more careful in the dockyards now in case they suspect."
She glowed in pleasure. "I'll need to take down the dockyard systems soon, won't I? Dar says it will be any day now."
"Dar says?"
There was an unfamiliar cold note in his voice that she did not understand, and she faltered.
"Yes, but... Angel, I'm sure he's only acting on orders from the Ghost..."
"And I am very sure he is not." Absolute ice. "He had no business to say such a thing — and I will decide when you are ready, not Dar Ogar and not anyone else. Do you understand?"
Cris bit her lip, the old sick churning sensation welling up within her. She could not bear angry words; and now maybe Dar would get into trouble, Dar who had always been so good to her, and it would be all her fault.
"Please..." She swallowed, taking refuge in babble. "Please, Angel, I'm sorry. Let's — let's talk about the mountains. Tell me again about your view. Is it still light there? I wish — I wish I could see."
Too late, she heard it for what it sounded like — a naked attempt to pump him for information they were forbidden to give — and felt hot blood rush to her cheeks. Now he would think...
"It's sunset, child." The amused affection in her ears told her that he saw right through her — he always had — but also that she was forgiven. "And yes, it's very beautiful..."
Cris closed her eyes to the magic of his voice, letting him paint the scene: shadows creeping upwards across the gold-edged faces of the great triple peak, the glitter of water-ice locked away forever in the high snows, deep colour ebbing from the foothills across the scrub-hazed bay in the plains that lay between... (Seventy minutes' time difference, a small, trained part of her mind calculated, relentlessly; somewhere in the northwest arm of the Servin Range, then, near DepCol Two on the Orbital drop. Far across the horizon.)
"You're very abstracted tonight, child." The words were gentle, but belatedly she became aware of the silence that had fallen between them. "Before I go — I gave you a little of my trust, just now; will you lend me yours? Is there... something you wish to confide?"
Warm hands enfolding her own; a long nose beneath a boyish thatch of hair; steady blue eyes that offered without reserve, held back nothing and trusted without guile... and more than all the rest, an unexpected little leap of the heart that caught her breath away in the moment before she could speak.
Her Angel had comforted her, sheltered her, received the confidences that, childlike, she had bestowed. They'd spoken together of her father: of the man who'd adored his little girl, and of the ideals that had taken him from her, and — until she had shied back from violent reality — of where they led, of the Federation and its downfall. But of Rall, who had loved Daddy almost as much as she, there had somehow been no mention.
And the miracle that had brought him back into her life — the miracle that had sprung so eagerly to her lips an instant ago — was something that all at once she found she didn't want to share. It was not, any more, a childish thing; and it was hers, a secret of sudden fierce possession.
"I was just — talking about the old days. With Carla." It came out in a little rush, the evasion seeming to echo in her own ears, and there was a pause that stretched horribly long.
"I... see." Another pause, and she had an uncomfortable sense that he did see, and only too well. If she were to lose her Angel's approval, she did not know if she could bear it...
But the voice that resumed was as soft as ever. "Good night then, Di-A. This is Angel Six, signing off. Operator Angel Six, ending transmission now."
And then static.
Cris shut down, automatically, checking every protocol for signs of disruption, for any inconsistencies in normal traffic; the lights on the board splintered through lashes that had caught a brief upwelling of tears. She had broken something — a bond of trust, a final innocence, an unacknowledged boundary: she was not sure — and the knowledge of it was a dull ache within her. But it was an ache of womanhood and fledgling independence.
She would make her own way in the world, and take her first few steps. They had made a flinching, broken-spirited creature out of her, and she had fled into her dreams. But somewhere... somewhere inside was the rebellious little girl who had run out into the Newparis air to greet the sun in her indoor boots, and her red scarf.
Prologue-3: Ghost
The last embers of the sunset still glowed behind the mountains in the sweep of the great viewport, a final drop of beauty in the life of one who loved it and had so little remaining. Every fold and every pinnacle of rock lay exactly as he had described it to her, etched into his mind's eye over the years. He could have recited any view, any scene on the planet from a vis-screen or holo record, Erik told himself bitterly, and she would have known no difference: it would have been safer. But he had never lied to her... save by omission, in everything that really mattered.
He slammed one gloved hand down on the console in the dusk; controlled himself. The ghostly blur of his own face — distorted and cratered where flesh and bone had been devoured — mocked back at him in miniature from every monitor in multiple grotesque reflections, each enough to set her screaming.
Sweet, gentle Cris, who won the hearts of everyone, who held out her hand to the proud and the hated, who gave without thought of return... he tortured himself, sometimes, with dreams of her touch on his face, a cool caress soothing tortured flesh with her acceptance and her trust. And then the dream would smear into remembered eyes of hate-filled horror, reddish choking faces of those who had shrieked to see him, and he would wake to his own hoarse outcry and crooked, clawing fingers.
Her face — that pale, unremarkable little oval beneath its flaxen coif of hair — had begun to haunt him, driving all else out of his mind; and it was folly, he knew, for one who had seen the galaxy and all its treasures, who had at his fingertips reproductions of the most beautiful women of all time, to strain constantly for grainy glimpses of this nonentity, this provincial Newpie child.
The Ghost sees everything, hears everything: they whispered it to one another. It was the carefully-built mystique that was his safeguard and his power, down here beneath the rampart supports of the Garnier in the long hillside gallery that tapped into the arteries of the Federation's comms net. He had long since wired his tendrils into every system on the planet: with his skills and the outmoded tech, it was simple enough. He had two-way control of almost everything, access to enough secrets to bring in a pretty flow of funding, and a growing network of acolytes whose hands and bodies would strike — out of fear or naïve conviction — at his command. He could topple the Federation on this world, move by move and blow by blow, until the whole rotten edifice crumbled and slid down into anarchy.
It would be repayment — of a sort. But nothing could give him back the life he should have had, nothing... save her.
Her eyes, her trust, her affection: with that prospect dancing before him, what did he care for the Federation, its politics or its petty concerns? How could he plan, how could he think of anything, when all he could see was her — the beauty of her dreamer's soul, the depths of forgiveness in her heart, the quick talent that he longed to nurture with his own and flaunt in the face of the world?
He had to hold her; had to have her here, to take that risk. But he dared not.
And now she was lying to him, slipping away from that power he had over her... Erik brought the long bank of monitor screens up to brightness with a snarl, blotting out his own fractured image.
The message alert with Dar's code was still blinking. It had been blinking for some time. He continued to ignore it.
"Just what do you think you're playing at, Erik?"
The bitter accents, uninvited, hissed out from the counter-top pickup back at Ogar's, and Dar's face swam into view, grotesquely large, stooping to the lens with a half-polished glass in his hand. Erik moved automatically to cut off the sensor; remembered, too late, that he had given his friend — curse him — the override keycode to that particular system long ago.
"And don't give me that nonsense about a security risk"—Dar finished the glass with a swirl of his wrist, shelved it, and bent to select another, the vivid off-world green of his eyes glaring at close quarters—"I entirely agree, and if you'd answer your calls like a civilised human being we wouldn't be playing this ridiculous game, would we?"
Silence.
Dar continued polishing with quick, jerky movements in the empty room, the hand-held cleanser punctuating each word with a soft buzz. "Fine. Then perhaps you'd like to tell me just what you think you're doing by holding off on that dockyard job. We've been ready to go for months — with a ship the size of the Borda on the pads, you couldn't ask for a better chance — and you know as well as I do that the girl's more than qualified to work the inside end: it won't take one-tenth of the stuff you're teaching her. I could crack it myself from the outside at a pinch... and if you push this far enough, Erik, I will."
Bluff: he wouldn't dare. Erik's mouth twisted. Without the Ghost, without the network that made up the Operation — a network kept in line by the unseen mastermind's terror and genius — Dar would be nothing: just another ex-security contractor growing old and stiff behind a bar, too weak to bite the hand that fed him.
Dar was persistent. "It's been too long since we made a move. The men are getting restless, and I can't keep them under wraps for ever. A few more weeks like this, and some fool's going to go off on his own account like Buquet and stir up the Federation."
Maybe it was time a few more of them learned Buquet's lesson. Gloved hands began to twitch of their own accord, remembering. In his current mood... it would be a pleasure.
"It's the girl, isn't it? Erik—"
Even through the grainy screen, the green eyes betrayed an unwarranted, an intolerable pity.
"Erik, there's no future in it — can't you see that? How long do you plan to string her along with fantasies of her father dug out of old data-banks, playing guardian angel to a child too simple to suspect your motives? She's scared stiff of the Ghost: they all are, and with reason. How long do you think you can tutor her before she starts to guess... and even if you win her over, how long before she wants to see your face?"
An indrawn hiss of breath; and moments later, the hiss of empty speakers as Erik cut power to the entire bank with a jerk, the displays dying in a synchronised dwindling flicker that only fed his fury. In the distance beneath the Dome, Dar would still be mouthing impotent, sanctimonious words... and who was he to judge Erik? Just who were any of them, to judge Erik, to mock at Erik...
Not Cris. He clung to that. This time would be different.
This time Erik would not be betrayed.
This time no-one would have to die.
Prologue-4: First montage
Across the Federation screens glimmered, week in, week out. Some were scanned avidly, obsessively; some formed background fodder for a mind-numbed populace; some looped on endless routine surveillance in front of bored guards; some spooled unseen directly into storage, where countless chattering data processes analysed, pattern-matched and discarded.
Time passed; its ghosts in image-form remained.
~o~
Earth Sector, Quadrant One. In the heart of the Terran Federation, WestEurop Dome sprawled across a scarred but verdant landmass that the inhabitants, conditioned to a life of perpetual artificial light and filtered air, never saw; its millions were dosed into docility and its security forces held on constant alert.
Above the hurrying masses on Plaza 96-4E the daily broadcast was repeating in steady cycle on giant screens, the announcer's voice alternately harsh in condemnation and anodyne in its reassurances, and few of those below even spared it a glance. When a familiar image brought Gol Mayner's head up sharply, his next movement was a quick look round to check that the reaction had gone unobserved.
At his side, his younger colleague in Supply & Distribution broke stride to follow suit, her own breath hissing in indrawn recognition at the screened footage.
"Months, now." Shaita's voice was a bitter undertone. "It's been months, and still they can't let it rest."
Above them, forty feet high, a heavy, alert face beneath thick-springing hair stared out blankly from behind bars... recanted his politics... and was once more condemned, this time for offences that no secret sympathizer could condone. Roj Blake's fresh fall from grace was to be permanent, his charisma tainted for all time by dint of constant repetition.
"Why would they let it rest?" Gol glanced round again, his tone even lower than hers. "It's their biggest coup in years: the Freedom Party discredited by association, and the one man who might have brought about peaceful change smeared and sent into exile — the fools. Oh, they knew better than to martyr him — Blake still had a following — but mark my words, the uprising will come in the end all the same. Sooner or later, ten years or a hundred, but the longer delayed the bloodier it will be... and Blake and his like are the only ones who might have held it back. Small chance of that now, with a life sentence to the hell that's Cygnus Alpha."
"You mean... you still believe in him?" Shaita's eyes had widened; they were sharp in reassessment now, focussed on a colleague she knew to be neither idealist nor dupe.
"I believe he's innocent of that." Gol indicated, with a jerk of his head, the slowly-looping details above them: the testimony of the children, the damning medical reports. "Innocent of all but political naïveté. At heart, Blake still trusted the system. He's paid for that, and so have the rest. If he survives Cygnus Alpha — and his fellow convicts — then he'll learn; too late, but he'll learn."
~o~
Civil Administration Ship London under Commander Leylan.
Flight authorization K-701 out of Earth system to Cygnus Alpha, cruising at Time Distort Five: function, prisoner transport. Neither fast nor shapely, it would take her eight months to deliver her convict cargo to the prison planet — eight months of deep-space tedium and mind-numbing routine.
The little screen at the elbow of Artix, the junior officer, flicked automatically between surveillance views of the prisoner quarters. Caught up in his study tapes, he spared it a brief, dutiful glance from time to time. Nothing had changed. Nothing ever did.
"How's it coming, Mr. Artix?"
The Commander had entered the bridge quietly; he motioned the young man back into his seat as he made a move to rise. "As you were... Ready to face those exams?"
"I think so, sir."
"And then you'll be up and off for better things." Leylan sighed. "Not the glamorous end of the service, this. Space Command goes dashing off to strafe their experimental war zones and reduce a rebel planet or two to rubble, and here we just plod along with a cargo of cutthroats and swindlers and hope everything stays quiet. Don't be in too much of a hurry to get promotion, Mr. Artix. You'll find yourself in command over men like Raiker, and you'll have to lose that conscience of yours fast."
He nodded at the surveillance screen. "How's our trouble-maker getting along?"
"Blake, sir?" Artix selected manual override and located Blake's strong figure in the aft bay, seated with a couple of the other prisoners. One of them said something inaudible and Roj Blake laughed, joined a moment later by those around him as he gestured in response. The little group grew gradually larger as passing idlers drifted in.
"I... see." Leylan was frowning. "As Raiker claimed: no actual trouble as such, but the man draws a following."
Artix nodded. "Yes, sir. Should I—"
"No." The Commander rubbed at tired eyes. "I can't put a man under restraints simply for appreciating the jokes of his fellow unfortunates, however much pleasure Sub-commander Raiker might derive from the exercise. We haven't needed to up the suppressant dose so far this voyage; let's keep it that way."
But his gaze lingered a moment longer on the screen as Artix resumed his study, and the older man's weary mouth had tightened a little at the corners. Blake's face, even on the grainy image before them, was neither pacified nor resigned. And the same spark of awareness flared between those around him.
Leylan drew breath; hesitated. "Keep good watch, Mr. Artix."
The words held a caution; but the tone was one of defeat.
~o~
Internal Safety Monitor Unit E1ts/P052 had been installed some years previously in response to atmospheric drill breaches by underprepared personnel. Its recording modules triggered sporadically and automatically as Federation lapel flashes were registered within its visual field of detection: at circa eleven hundred hours, local Newparis time, it duly logged the departure of a standard three-trooper patrol from East-One airlock in full environmental gear. A few minutes later, data upload resumed with the arrival of a young Space Command officer in his off-duty tunic, portable civ-issue mask slung round his neck. He was fair enough to be native-born, and the girl whose hand swung together with his as they walked was fairer still, pale eyes sparkling beneath a coronet of flaxen braids.
She tugged him towards the exit, almost dancing.
"There's the old sandslip, where they found the crystals last year, and the little corrie where you can sit in the sun and look out over the dockyard — maybe we can even see your ship — and the place I told you about, where the garnians grow... oh, and Rall, do you remember, the big rock the boys used to boast about climbing when they went Outside, and we never believed them? I'll show you what really happened." A squeeze of his hand. "It'll be just like all the times we missed out on when we were growing up... Come on, it's a lovely day"—he had paused to pull up his breather, though she wore none—"you won't need that—"
Rall caught her arm just as she reached out for the control box to vent the outer doors. "Cris, wait. I've been off-planet too long: I'm not adapted. I'm not going to be able to go out there without a mask."
The glow in her face had ebbed a little. "But then we won't be able to talk properly without using the comm-links... and anyway, I haven't brought mine. Oh Rall, you're a Newpie born and a man grown — can't you try? I wanted us to go out together under the open sky, not trail round like off-worlders coming up from the docks..."
"For you, anything." But the bravado that accompanied the words held a sad edge. He took her hand again, drawing it up to hold against his cheek. "Only don't expect too much of me, Cris... wishing can't work miracles."
"Come on then." Her fingers lingered for a moment, cradling his face, and drew an answering smile. Then she had keyed open the doors, and drawn a deep, instinctive breath of the air that rushed Outside in their wake.
Rall, following suit, dropped briefly to one knee, running his fingers through the tinted sand of their homeworld, looked up, and began to cough. "Cris, I—"
He sought refuge in his mask, fumbling at the controls, as another spasm took his breath. The external door was closing; Cris, who had turned, eyes widening in distress, sprang back to wedge a boot in its direction, and between them, with her hands hauling under his shoulders, they managed to get him back inside.
"History repeats... itself not as... tragedy, but... as farce," Rall managed, gasping, before Cris, manÅ"uvring him into a sitting position beneath the camera's indifferent eye, thrust his head down between his knees and held the mask firmly over his face with the other hand. The boy's shoulders shook beneath her arm in great sobbing breaths.
After a few minutes she let the mask fall and put both arms around him, and Rall raised a wet face and turned it against her breast. Cris buried tears of her own against the fair head and held tight.
"Stage one atmospheric exposure: minor irritation of soft tissues, no harm done. A textbook offworld case." Rall sat up at last, his voice almost steady. They avoided looking at each other. "It seems I don't make much of a showing as a Newpie any more... After Space Command, you can't go back."
He swallowed, and Cris put out a hand blindly to cover his. "Rall, it's my fault — I didn't listen — I'm sorry. But if you just give it time..."
"It's not just a matter of Outside." The words were rough, and she flinched. "Cris, I—"
But he broke off with an upward glance at the monitor unit, any avowal dying stillborn, and instead wrapped his fingers around hers.
It was Cris, hesitant, who broke the silence.
"How... how long do you have here on Newparis?"
"A month..." He cleared his throat and tried again. "The Borda's in for major refit: they've given us all a month's leave before embarkation starts."
"A month?" Cris looked down at their hands lying clasped together at his side. "In a month... a lot can happen."
Prologue-5: Second montage
Hours, days, weeks; transmissions, reflections, fractured images.
A great warship drifted derelict amid the discharges and debris of a battle that was none of the Federation's doing. Beside that flared elegance, the London — herself limping from the backwash of that unseen combat — lay edged in, a tiny squat shape in that vast shadow. And high on the alien flight deck, where Roj Blake and his fellow-convicts stood transfixed, an insane light pulsed where three of their guards had died already to salvage this prize beyond price.
Minutes later the ship's own power sent her curving away, ripping apart the London's transit tube, as Blake's party broke through the guardian defences and claimed freedom and the ship for their own. Undermanned by a ragtag crew all but ignorant of the alien technology in their grasp, the newly-christened Liberator posed more of an embarrassment than a threat to Federation rule— as yet.
But if Roj Blake had any influence in the matter, all of that was about to change.
~o~
Disciplinary recordings in the Borda's data banks should have been off-limits to any access lower than Captain Philp's own, let alone planetbound civilian systems.
The Ghost's D-crystal matrix had bypassed the ship's ground-link security in something under two minutes, and the captain's personal codes in rather less. Confirming the existence of the clip in question had been a matter of a simple scan.
The boy's face looped now on endless repeat, as exposed before those burning eyes in the Garnier's depths as it had been before his captain's scowl. Erik's breathing was harsh, but his hand moved almost of its own accord to hit replay again and again.
"Brawling again, Rall?" Philp's voice had been curt.
"Yes sir."
"This is the third offence: I can't ignore it."
"No sir."
"And all over this girl." Philp made an exasperated noise and leant forward. "Far be it from me to cramp your style with the local lovelies, Pilot Officer, but I'm sure we'd all appreciate it if you confined your defence—"
The boy's hands were clenched as tight as Erik's own, but he kept a grip on himself.
"This is my home planet— sir. And I've known her since I was a child."
A moment's silence. The captain laughed.
"Sweet stars beyond, are you trying to tell me it's serious? Some cheap bar trollop out of the Delta warrens—"
"Cris is a comm-tech— a good one." Stubborn blue eyes blazed out of the screen, defying watcher and accuser alike. "And I love her."
A convulsive movement in the dark, as the Ghost keyed the cut-off. The unmarred young face dwindled and froze, its glow cast back on the maskless ruin that looked on.
Then the replay began, to the sound of hissing breath. Outside, along the buttressed walls of the great Garnier Complex, the night-wind howled in the rocks.
~o~
The girl had faltered.
"Angel, of course I care for him. He's the closest I ever had to a brother—"
"That is not what I asked, Di-A." The unseen voice of Angel Six held as much soft music as ever; but it was no longer gentle. "Do you know what you risk by this folly— do you understand what one word from a lover of yours could do? The Operation has no time for these involvements: if I find— if I even suspect you have given yourself to this Federation pup, then we will have spoken together for the last time. Is that plain enough?"
No response.
"Is that plain?"
"He isn't... Federation. Not in that way. And he's my friend — he saved my life — he'd never betray anything..." A small, stubborn plea trailing off in the face of silence. "He's my friend: like Carla, like you, Angel. Nothing more, I promise it. I'll work harder than ever—"
"Goodbye, child." The words were soft but implacable, and the girl cried out.
"Angel, no, please! Angel, I— Angel? Angel— Angel..."
"So..." A sound of satisfaction at last across the open connection, met by a stifled sob. "Then shall we say... until tomorrow?"
In the room above, Dar Ogar clicked shut the internal audio link, his own mouth set.
"Curse you, Erik." It was said under his breath into the listening air. He watched Cris leave, her uncertain eyes reddened with tears. "Curse you..."
~o~
"I can't see you any more." Cris had waited for him outside the corner of Ogar's Bar. Her pale braids were pinned together roughly at the back of her neck, and her tunic looked as if it had been dragged on backwards.
The slim boy in Federation uniform took one look at her, his face darkening.
"And I can't see you any more— my captain says so." He took her by the shoulders, holding her out as if to survey her from head to foot. "And yet here we both seem to be..."
A quizzical grin brought no response, and he drew her closer, turning her face up to his as she tried to avoid his gaze.
"Cris, you look terrible. What is it? Tell me— what have they been doing to you?" His voice roughened. "It's not... is it Federation security?"
"No— no." She did laugh at that, and at the fierceness in his eyes, and after a minute Rall returned the smile.
"That's better... For a moment I thought— Captain Philp—"
He glanced round and back along the street in a betraying gesture, and Cris frowned. "But Rall— you're Federation yourself—"
He cut her off with a jerk of the head towards Ogar's. "Is it safe? In there?"
"As safe as anywhere, I think..." Cris looked up at him, her expression troubled. But neither of them said anything until they had ducked inside.
He pulled her down into one of the half-booths along the back of the room, despite her protests, with a glance for the camera pickup in the corner.
"Rall, I can't— I promised my Angel—"
"I need to talk to someone." Their faces were very close together, and he put a hand out towards her. "Cris, I need a friend..."
Cris made no answer; but she took the hand and held it between both of her own.
"I was always going into Space Command— you know that."
A nod.
"You were going to see the galaxy... and now you have." Her smile was a little shaky, but it might have come from the little girl she'd once been. "Four, five, six planets— or was it more?"
"More?" A quick convulsive shudder; and then another, and another. "I've seen much more..."
And the avowal poured out at last, in all its broken illusions and shattered ideals. It was not treason, precisely, to say it. Most of it was no secret: the Terran Federation preferred to broadcast a ruthless reputation rather than hush it up. And even the Supreme Commander — that lethal, elegant, utterly venal careerist in all her deadly grace at the head of Space Command — might have taken his naïve view of her appetites as flattery in essence.
But it was not the stuff of childhood dreams. And it was not — however unwittingly — to be confided in the hearing of the Operation, or any other resistance movement.
A watcher, reviewing the camera footage with an eye to incrimination, might have considered that he had struck gold.
"There are no blue remembered hills out there, Cris. No undiscovered paradise planets to explore. No dashing adventures across the antimatter interface... no space maidens, no lions or unicorns or creatures long extinct. Just a galaxy of greed, and fear, and oppression, and blood— blood on our hands..."
He tried to draw his own hand back from her grasp as unexpected tears spilled over, but Cris caught it and kissed it firmly, as if to wash it clean, and he buried his face in her shoulder.
"You could... resign," Cris said softly, stroking his hair.
"I gave my oath." Muffled. "It would be desertion."
Her lips parted in a sudden excitement. "Then—"
Across the room, Dar moved abruptly from his place behind the counter, signalling an adamant no, and she broke off, biting her lip.
"Then"—her fingers moved again, slowly, brushing the nape of his neck for comfort—"you have to carry on, Rall; try to make a difference. Try to keep believing... in those blue hills—"
Her voice shook almost as much as his had done. Dar watched, silently, the green eyes grim.
And the camera lens observed, relentless and dispassionate.
~o~
The Liberator hung in orbit high above Cygnus Alpha like a passing light. Far below, men struggled before the grim altar of a darker religion as priests and prisoners fought. The broad shoulders of Olag Gan towered above the rest, his face contorting as he flung off assailants; but knives were at work, and fellow prisoners who had followed Blake's call to freedom were dying before that promise could hold true.
Only Gan's strength against the refuge of a door held back destruction for the little band of survivors, as Blake, who had given his trust, called desperately for the ship to act. Then as they broke to hide among the hills the miracle came.
Alien technology flared, and the teleport glow that had set Blake down upon the surface of the planet dwindled to a bright outline around each man, and then winked out. And when the dazzle had gone, so too had Gan and the rest.
So too, a little later, had the light that was the Liberator. In her wake, already alerted, Federation pursuit ships plunged. The London's report had not lain idle; the hunt was on. One ship, one haphazard band of fugitives against a power that spanned to the Outer Worlds.
The Federation would strike back— rebellion would be quashed, as ever. But this time, at least, it might not be so easy. Not unless the ship could be crippled or recaptured before Blake learned to make full use of her...
