igenlode | Entries tagged with fiction: blakes-7

I wrote this while trying to demonstrate to someone the different possibilities of attributing dialogue *without* ransacking a thesaurus...

Avon looked up. "Do you have to hang over me like that, Vila? If I hadn't already had to watch you devouring that appalling garlic-laden stew at lunch-time, I can assure you I'd be able to name its principal ingredient by now."

"I happen to like garlic." Vila assumed a look of injured innocence. "Besides, you ate it too, so I don't believe you can smell a thing."

"You flatter yourself," Avon said drily, bending again to the task of repair. "Is it merely the unaccustomed spectacle of work that fascinates you, or would it be the thrill of watching other people engaged in gainful employment while you enjoy this period of enforced leisure?"

"My fingers are my fortune. You think I like having them all smothered up like that?" He thrust his gauze-swathed hands in front of Avon's face, obscuring the view of the damaged circuit-boards. "Suppose -- just suppose you wanted me to get you in through a locked door in a hurry, or to lift a key out of some guard's pocket? Can't do it like this, can I?"

"Then you should have been more careful about trying to handle stolen goods. Particularly ones that turned out to have a heat-field protecting them."

(Not sure Avon would actually use that many gratuitous multi-syllabic words; I was trying to illustrate the concept that if your characters' 'voices' are sufficiently distinct then you don't necessarily need to attribute dialogue at all...)

And finally, four years and seventy-five thousand words later... Erik gets the last word. Well, it's canon!

Although I had quite a lot of trouble getting Dar to feel plausibly sympathetic towards him, given that he basically sabotaged everything the two of them had been working for in a fit of pique...

A pair of scenes here to mirror the pair at the beginning; I'd forgotten how amusing Carla is to write, with her overweening self-deception -- she takes care not to think in a straight line even about herself (and very rarely thinks about anybody else). But I did want to show that a lot of the faceless goons on the 'other side' would actually have been boys just like Rall, with people to grieve them. Revolution isn't all bright colours and heroism and Good versus Evil :-(

Chapter 22: The End of the Ghost’s Love Story

Carla trod down the street with a spring in her step, humming a little.

She’d cried buckets — positively howled — when she heard about Salj, of course she had. She wasn’t completely heartless, whatever some people might think, and they’d had a lot of fun together. The last thing she’d expected was to come into work one morning and learn that he’d died in some stupid botched-up attack on the Federation ships just outside her office.

He’d done his duty, defended his post to the last, and helped to beat off the dissidents; no doubt they’d make sure he got some kind of posthumous medal. But all it came down to in the end was that handsome, black-haired Salj, who’d known how to give a girl a good time, had been shot in the head by some angry lunatic with an antiquated energy gun and had his brains boiled out there on the landing field. She hadn’t been able to walk past that point for days.

( Read more... )

Familiar bickering amongst the Liberator's crew, a happy ending for some, and a hint of foreshadowing: though none of them know it, Blake's crew are of course about to run into Cally in the subsequent episode...

Just a few loose ends left to tie up back on Newparis.

Chapter 21: The Far Northern Lakes

“They’re ridiculously young — both of them.” Jenna tossed back her head, clearly still far from reconciled to the presence of the two newcomers on board the Liberator, and Blake sighed.

Cris was on the flight deck, keeping watch together with Gan, whom she seemed to regard in the light of an unofficial protector among the crew. Rall, still suffering the after-effects of exposure to the Newparis atmosphere, should by all rights have been back in the ship’s medical unit, where he’d spent most of their first day on board. But Blake was quite certain that a check would once again reveal the treatment couch empty and its occupant curled quietly somewhere in a corner of the flight deck, or wherever else Cris was at that moment to be found. ( Read more... )

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.

( Read more... )

And finally (after I'd edited it, and the computer crashed, and edited it again, and discovered I hadn't installed the HTML mode when I upgraded my text editor...)

I still remember the sense of achievement when I succeeded in finishing this chapter after breaking off to write To Ease Your Troubled Mind in an unprecedented (and since unequalled!) rush of inspiration — oops, that was back in March 2014! https://igenlode.dreamwidth.org/35318.html

This of course was the chapter where I could finally use that eerily apt line from Housman's original poem.

Chapter 18: Into my Heart on Air that Kills

Dar’s men were dying.

Cris watched disaster unfold with dry eyes and an aching heart.

Erik was beyond her pleas entirely now, voice and mind lost behind the mocking, raging mask of the Ghost. He’d routed Dar’s communications back through the control tower at the dockyard and flung them wide open to Federation monitors; every move, every desperate attempt to regroup was betrayed before it could even begin, and long-planned routes of retreat were compromised at the very outset. The Operation on Newparis was falling apart in the vengeful hands of its creator like the toy of an angry child, and the Ghost’s electronic laughter reigned over all.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: impressed

Rall needs to keep his hand at the level of his eyes... for perfectly good pseudo-technological reasons :-)

Chapter 17: What Spires are Those?

“Keep your hand up— up at eye-level,” Gan prompted again, urgently, as Rall’s wrist wavered; the deactivators themselves weighed little enough, but the strain of keeping them high enough was more than any of them had bargained for. Gan had traded his own device gratefully enough with Blake after only a few minutes of fumbling one-handed through the sub-basement — these haphazard passages past blocks and between girders had never been meant for a man his size — but the young Newpie had been carrying the second deactivator without complaint since they’d plunged through the first hidden door, and Gan suspected Rall’s arm was aching more than he was prepared to admit.

( Read more... )

Female protagonists in the B7 universe don't usually wait around for someone else to rescue them...

Chapter 16: Mistress of Her Own Fate

Cris slid her boot back on and tried to get a grip on herself, shivering. Her hair was escaping from its loose plait; she pulled it down across her shoulder and began braiding it again properly, the fierce grip of each strand upon her scalp a source of reassurance and strength. It was an armour against the world... and it was a defiance of Erik. She was not going to be his damsel in distress, or his veiled doll in soft colours and pretty tunics. He would have to take her as she was, not treat her as he pleased.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: determined

I was a bit stuck on a title for this chapter, but it was of course inevitable once I'd remembered my Blake's 7! ( progress of Swedish story )

Chapter 15: Rumours of Death

MURDER.

Communications buzzed with it. Alerts ran out across the planet. Dispatches were encrypted to Space Command. Sentries neglected their duties to discuss it; surveillance officers, chasing shadows, missed the purposeful movement of bodies of men. Dar Ogar, moving among them, heard the news and had no reason to doubt it. A Federation commander meant nothing to him, and he spared a moment’s wry gratitude for the distraction — the boy had just made his life a great deal easier.

( Read more... )

I'm not even going to bother posting ch13 over in the Blake's 7 section, since this chapter is entirely B7-centric and is unlikely to attract much interest in the POTO section -- I may as well upload this one briefly, then move them both over at once.

At any rate, in chapter 14 we finally find out just what did happen to the Liberator, and why Blake and Gan are currently stranded on Newparis. When writing this story, I'd originally intended to insert the 'Liberator-chapter' in its chronological place, e.g. immediately after Blake and Gan are set down on the planet. But I came to the conclusion that it would be much more effective to do it retrospectively so that the reader would have no more idea of what had happened to the ship than Blake did -- the result of which is that most of this chapter, as usual, consists of what is effectively flashback :-p

Yet another (unavoidable) point of view switch, which means a chance to explore yet another character's opinions and motivations...

Chapter 14: Adrift in Space

‘WISDOM MUST BE GATHERED. IT CANNOT BE GIVEN,’ Zen had assured them once, evading the answers Avon demanded.

Well, they’d learnt that now all right, Jenna Stannis thought bitterly. And most of the wisdom she’d gathered over the past endless hours was wisdom of a variety she could well have done without. Right now she’d have given half the contents of Avon’s famous treasure room — still stored up in useless splendour deep within the ship, just as he had discovered it — to hear Zen’s electronic philosophising again. To hear anything at all from Zen.

( Read more... )

This was the chapter where I had to amend the text to match the picture, having got the wrong mental image of Federation uniform!

Chapter 13: Rebel Alliance

Gan pounded behind Blake at a heavy jog-trot, neither of them worrying any longer about attracting attention: if Dar’s timetable worked out, the Federation were soon going to have more than enough distraction to deal with, and in any case haste went unnoticed in the general urgency of a dust-storm. He pictured the seething cloud of sand and rocks outside with a sinking feeling.

( Read more... )

This is the chapter I remember having a lot of trouble with when it came to writing up the scene, as I'd imagined the whole thing from an omniscient external perspective, then had to decide whose viewpoint I could possibly use to recount it from: none of the characters are actually on the spot the whole way through. It's a similar problem to the one I would have with my Buquet-story several years later, but in this case I decided to show Erik and Cris eavesdropping through the omnipresent surveillance system rather than telling the story from the viewpoint of any of the actual participants; however, this then raised the question of how I was going to format Erik's little interjections, especially given the extremely limited options accepted by fanfiction.net (bold, italic and underline, basically)!

I think it works...

Chapter 12: A Disinterested Gift

Cris clutched at Erik’s arm, terrified eyes glimpsed through the pale silk of her hair as if through a lying veil of innocence, and he shook her off. She had never been a beauty; with her face blotched and red, she was more ordinary than ever. Just another silly, shallow-minded child, he told himself, trying to staunch the howling tide of pain that swept over him whenever he saw her look at the boy. Whenever he saw her pouring out that sweetness, that compassion, on youthful limbs and a foolish nose... why, it was long enough to provide noses for the both of them, Erik thought savagely. Perhaps he should propose it to her. It was ironic, after all, that one of her lovers should be so gifted and the other so deprived in that department...

“Please—” Desperate hands grasped at him again. “Erik, please — what’s happening to him? Oh, what have you done?”

“You’ll find it’s a question of what you have done,” he flung back, and saw her flinch. There was bitter satisfaction in it, though she still did not understand. But she would. Oh, she would see.

( Read more... )

Switching between the two sets of characters here leaves rather more of an unresolved cliffhanger at the end of the previous chapter than I'd realised!

Chapter 11: That Far Country

Dar watched the two offworlders in the shadowy light, wondering how much to tell them; how far he must betray his friend and that scarred, unhappy past. They’d given him a wild enough story of alien marvels, of teleport travel and miraculous escapes, and he was not entirely sure he believed it.

But whatever —whoever— they were, they would be new faces to Erik. They would have that moment’s precious advantage... and whatever tales they had heard, they were not in unthinking awe of the Ghost. They had not been terrorised, dominated and manipulated; they had not been moulded like the Organisation into an instrument aimed by Erik’s hand. And they had not seen Buquet’s body, broadcast one morning in all its splayed ragdoll ruin as a warning. As an object lesson, Erik had said blandly, when Dar, who’d had to deal with the Federation and the resulting enquiry, had dared to question the act.

The Ghost hadn’t been content to break Buquet’s neck. He’d broken practically every other bone in his body. Most of them, Dar thought, all too familiar with human debris, after death. Most of them.

( Read more... )

Well, after all the excitement over the initial chapter of "In Regret, Always", the second chapter got precisely eighteen visitors and one review (so much for "please update soon"). I ought to be grateful for the one loyal reviewer (who has reviewed just about everything — except "Blue Remembered Hills"! — since the start, when she was for some time my only person doing so) but... it would be nice to know whether people inherently object to the plot, or the experimental structure, or just don't find it that interesting :-(

Time to try again with the next update on the next story... I think it does pay to write either longer stories or one-shots in this fandom; people seem to like epics, and one-shots don't require much commitment. At any rate, my one-shots seem to do relatively well. (It couldn't possibly be anything to do with the longueurs of my writing, could it? ;-p)

Chapter 10: Happy Highways Where We Went

Rall dreamed of loving Cris, and woke smiling, with the vivid warmth of that memory almost close enough to touch. He lay quietly on the hard pallet, drowsing, reliving the clumsy, exquisite miracle of each kiss behind closed eyes. The ghost of her mouth under his moved against parted lips; drew away in shy disbelief, and gave itself again with an eagerness that brought a stab of sheer joy now in remembering.

She had wanted him.( Read more... )

Current Mood: determined

Erik really should have answered his messages...

Chapter 9: On the Move

Someone was knocking at the cabin door. Blake groaned and rolled over to look at the chrono on his wrist. Half an hour late for the morning watch: he’d overslept—

The jolt of realisation sent him upright in the unfamiliar bunk and reaching down for his boots before he was fully awake. His head struck hard against a too-close ceiling that should not have been present. Beneath his feet there was only a lurch into open air.

Not his cabin. Not the Liberator after all.

( Read more... )

I'm seriously running out of time on posting this one before I disappear, but I can manage to give it a few hours here before the mandatory pre-FFnet reread..

I'd forgotten just how much E/C I'd put into this story in the hopes of attracting the 'mainstream audience' -- at this point, we're practically in classic "Christine is Erik's prisoner and is learning to love and pity him" territory. What with that and "In Regret Always", I seem to have been paying a lot more attention to Christine's relationship with the Phantom recently than I have for a long time!

Chapter 8: The Land of Lost Content

The third time Cris woke from the nightmare, it was dawn, and light was flooding across her face.

She curled up shivering, attempting to stifle the whimpers. Every time it was the same. She woke... only to exchange the dreamed horror for one that was real. She was trapped here, trapped in a tomb— with a monster who loved her.( Read more... )

Current Mood: rushed

I've been spending an awful lot of time over the past week or so up to my ears in French, but here we are finally with the essential scene in any Phantom retelling: the unmasking scene (combined here with the kidnap, since events are being compressed into a single day...) And an Erik-PoV chapter; the gentleman known to my fandom-blind beta-reader of the time as "Crazy Erik" :-p

It's interesting writing a character who is insane but -- of course -- isn't aware of it...

Chapter 7: Behind the Mask

The great chamber beneath the hillside was dark, lit by only the faintest midnight glow through the viewport from the dust-laden sky high above. The shadows of the gallery stretched away far out of sight, in long shapeless aisles that threw back only a random glint or two in answer to the faint pool of light at Erik’s feet as he moved; at any other time he would have welcomed that refuge, a deep anonymous night in which all men were equal, both marred and unmarred. But he was no longer alone. And she— she was not at home here as he was. He had to see that all was well; that all was ready for her.

His body still ached from the vibrating drone of their long flight, but he would not have sacrificed one hour of it. To have her there, cradled close in the soft black leather of the seat with her white throat thrown back, utterly yielding in the heavy-breathing stupor of her drugged doze... If he had reached out — taken his hand for one moment from the yoke of the little flyer — he could have brushed that wisp of hair that curled behind her ear, or set his gloved wrist against the smooth curve of her cheek that still held the downy bloom of a child. He longed to set loose those tight-bound braids and see her veiled in the sheen of her hair, brushed out like true rain as Newparis would never know it. She had been close enough to touch... and that had been enough.( Read more... )

And here's the other half of the Blake/Gan chapter; Blake's scenes weren't really long enough to stand on their own, and Gan's big scene would have made a very long single chapter in contrast. So we have here the combined outsiders' view of some fairly tumultuous events (and I've tried to distinguish the two different viewpoints).

Chapter 6: Broken Trust

Gan felt his mouth go dry. The spectre in black and white held them all, effortlessly, by sheer force of dominion. The voice, when it came, was distorted: a rising inhuman hiss through circuits that shielded and manipulated alike.

“People of Newparis— I have brought you here to make an example. An example that some among you have forgotten. An example to all those in whose talent we trust.”

Long, gloved fingers gestured, and a girl somewhere to the right cried out in one short sharp whimper of surprise. The crowd stirred, parting, as two broad-hewed men in dockyard clothes elbowed through with the chosen one caught up between them.

Gan got one glimpse down at her face, white as ash beneath the pale plait that crowned her head; the whisper of Vargas’ double axe sang ghost-like through his mind and he almost reached out to her, but Blake caught at his sleeve, both of them unsure in that moment if she was to be heroine or sacrifice of the hour. “Gan, wait— we don’t know—”

And then she was past and gone, hastened up to the stage where Dar stood rigid and grim, and Gan had only the memory of blue eyes pale as waxen thread, filled with all-consuming terror of the Ghost.( Read more... )

In which our two sets of crossover characters finally meet... just about. (Sadly I suspect the Daroga doesn't really count for most people ;-p)

This was the chapter that was originally written in flashback with Gan looking back on prior events while waiting for the rally to start; in the end I decided to restructure it into chronological order simply so that I could split the scenes involved over two chapters, since it was running very long. As I'm discovering with "In Regret, Always", an enclosing flashback structure makes dividing things into sub-scenes very difficult :-(

Chapter 5: First Contact

Gan’s face was beginning to ache from the effort of keeping up a genial smile, and even Blake’s bonhomie had slipped considerably. A mutual glance confirmed that right now they had a single thought in common: how to get away from their pressing new acquaintances. With hindsight, buying everyone in the bar a drink had probably been a mistake.

Blake peeled away the arm of one burly spacer from around his shoulders and clapped another over-enthusiastic crewman across the back in farewell, navigating an unobtrusive path across the crowded room towards the exit. Shaking off the old man at his elbow — and the pocket-case of highly contraband ju-gems he’d been trying to sell him — Gan followed, wearing a politely fixed grin as an assortment of affectionately-inebriated strangers tried to detain them, accost them or offer inside information on trade deals guaranteed to be highly profitable for a small initial outlay. Between the raised voices and the flicker of the overhead lights, his head had begun to swim unpleasantly.

“Well, that didn’t go quite as planned.” Blake stopped in the street outside, taking a deep breath, and glanced behind him. Gan found himself doing the same, as if to check that the most persistent of their erstwhile boon companions had finally abandoned the fray.( Read more... )

Current Mood: exhausted

I finally got one fanfiction.net review on chapter 3 after I basically begged one of the story followers from an earlier chapter to tell me what she thought of it... which basically amounted to "I don't know anything about the characters, but nice landscape" :-(

( hide moaning )

Chapter 4: To See it Shining Plain

The viewport lay high in the city, up on the third level, and looked north-west, towards the mountains. Towards Angel Six: that memory came unbidden and uncomfortable, and Cris thrust it back down. If only her Angel could see Rall for himself— could know how shy and protective he was towards her, how utterly different from the jaded black-uniformed betrayer the Angel had surely been picturing when he’d spoken so harshly to forbid her his company. She had not wanted to hurt her beloved teacher; she’d tried hard to keep Rall at a distance. But surely her Angel, so wise, so gentle, could not have asked her to make her dearest friend this unhappy?

Rall had taken a few paces to one side, and stood now gazing out over the land almost as he had done when they were children— when they had painted the imagined distance with plants and animals out of old tales of her father’s, and dreamed of far countries beyond the horizon and worlds beyond the stars. Only... the young man’s hands were locked together tightly behind his back when once they would have reached out eagerly for hers, and three stiff paces separated them both. And she knew that it was her own actions that had set this new constraint between them.

( Read more... )

And... back to the "Blake's 7" perspective. Reposting the story cynically in one section or the other of fanfiction.net according to which set of characters are being featured (as opposed to using the official 'crossover' section, which very few people bother to check for new entries) at least gives me a chance to gauge readership in the two separate fandoms. Unsurprisingly, it's considerably larger on the 'Phantom' side. (Unfortunately, I forgot to change the fandom back when initially posting chapter 2, so any alerts that went out to my 'followers' will have listed the story as a "Blake's 7" one and thus of no interest to them...)

'Considerably', of course, is a relative term. A grand total of thirty-four people actually went so far as to glance at chapter 2, but one of them was so excited as to 'follow' the story (which I hope means she'll recognise the update when I post this chapter into the other fandom) :-p)

Chapter 3: Down and Safe

Blake was asleep when the call came.

They’d all been on edge for far too long — in the case of Avon, himself and Jenna, more or less constantly since they’d first boarded the Liberator — and Avon for one was starting to look exhausted, all the squared angles of his face drawn sharper and more uncompromising than ever. No doubt he’d barely rested all this time for fear that the rest of them might somehow double-cross him or work out a way to put the ship to profit at his expense. No doubt, Blake considered wearily, Avon himself could have come up with two or three ways of doing just that. He wondered if all geniuses were paranoid, or if it was close proximity to computers that had soured Avon on humanity at large... or more personal reasons, perhaps.

Well, he wasn’t about to pry; he needed Avon’s cooperation, and it was hard enough to get that out of him anyway. Any attempt to restore the man to the human race would have to wait until later. Much later.

( Read more... )

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Entries tagged with fiction: blakes-7

Chapter 22: The End of the Ghost’s Love Story

Chapter 21: The Far Northern Lakes

Chapter 20: And Cannot Come Again

Chapter 18: Into my Heart on Air that Kills

Chapter 17: What Spires are Those?

Chapter 16: Mistress of Her Own Fate

Chapter 15: Rumours of Death

Chapter 14: Adrift in Space

Chapter 13: Rebel Alliance

Chapter 12: A Disinterested Gift

Chapter 11: That Far Country

Chapter 10: Happy Highways Where We Went

Chapter 9: On the Move

Chapter 8: The Land of Lost Content

Chapter 7: Behind the Mask

Chapter 6: Broken Trust

Chapter 5: First Contact

Chapter 4: To See it Shining Plain

Chapter 3: Down and Safe

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