Standard Fanfic Disclaimer that wouldn't last ten seconds in a court of law: these aren't my characters; they were created by the late Terry Nation and either belong to his heirs or to the BBC. I'm just borrowing them, and will return them unharmed (or suitably bandaged). This was one of my early stories, previously published in Gambit #1, from Peacock Press in 1987, slightly edited in 2013.
Avon and the Widow
Blake's Seven
by Susan M. M.
Kerr Avon laughed long and loud. Blake would have appreciated the delicious irony - Roj Blake avenged by Federation troops. It was Blake's own fault he was dead. He kept coming and coming when Avon had told him to stop. Why hadn't he listened? Avon had had no choice but to shoot Blake. But now Avon must die, too. Fratricide must be punished. An eye for an eye, the forbidden books said. Die ... Avon must die. He knew that, accepted it, welcomed it. But a lifetime of obstinacy was a hard habit to break. Stubbornly, perversely, he shot the Federation troops and waited for them to shoot him.
"Do let us in on the joke, Avon," a dulcet contralto invited.
"Servalan." Avalon looked up. As always, the elegant ebony evening gown looked insanely incongruous on a battlefield. Avon raised his gun and smiled. "This is for Blake."
A blast of pain and heat seared Avon's left hip. He collapsed over Blake's corpse. Avon lay there a few seconds, gasping for breath and attempting - futilely - to stifle the moans. Struggling to his hands and knees, Avon turned his head to see what Federation soldier had been impertinent enough to shoot him.
"Soolin?" Avon wondered. He spoke in a whisper, afraid he would be unable to hold back the screams if he used a louder voice.
"I paid for him whole, Soolin," 'Commissioner Sleer' scolded.
"He'll live," Soolin replied nonchalantly. "Blake's dead, and Tarrant's dying, but the rest will survive."
"A pity you won't." Servalan took a gun out of her muff and shot Soolin. "There's a quarter million credits of the taxpayers' movie saved." She smiled down at the blonde corpse.
"What do you want done with the prisoners, ma'am?" asked a lieutenant. He was barely older than Dayna, hardly old enough to shave.
"Bind them hand have their wounds attended to," Servalan ordered. "I'll want to interrogate them personally."
"Yes, Commissioner." The young lieutenant saluted.
The wounded rebels offered no resistance as they were manacled. The lieutenant ordered gurneys for Tarrant and Deva. As the prisoners were limping and/or being carried out, a squad of troopers attempted to enter the crowded doorway, dragging a bruised woman with them.
"What is the meaning of this - this traffic jam?" Servalan demanded.
"By your leave, Commissioner, we've captured a very important prisoner," the sergeant announced pompously. "Roj Blake's wife."
"His widow, you mean." Servalan laughed with pure glee as the soldiers pulled the struggling captive forward.
"Widow?! No! What have you done to Roj?" The petite brunette broke free of her captors and rushed to the side of the dead man laying on the floor. "NO!"
"I know you," Servalan mused. "We have met before." She studied the woman weeping over Blake's corpse. Small, slender. Dark hair reaching almost to her shoulders. She wore pink tights under a pink and lavender paisley tunic. The leather belt around her waist held an empty knife-sheath.
"Your hair is longer," Servalan realized. She snapped her fingers triumphantly. "You are the slave girl Coser stole. We'll soon have you chained and collared again. But ... Coser's slave ... That wasn't Blake, that was a clone. Only one of the clones!"
"Clone?" Avon and Vila repeated.
"You mean he wasn't real?" Vila Restal asked hopefully. "Blake's not dead?"
"He was real. He was human," Rashel declared angrily, her face awash in tears.
"I didn't kill Blake," Avon muttered, then repeated, louder, "I didn't kill Blake?"
"You? You killed Roj?" Rashel threw herself furiously onto Avon.
Reluctantly, Servalan ordered her men to separate the pair. She needed them both alive for questioning.
Two Federation soldiers dragged Vila into the sickbay's convalescent dormitory on Commissioner Sleer's ship.
"On your knees, Delta," the Gamma corporal ordered as he forced Vila down. "Show some respect for your betters."
"Yes, sir," Vila muttered as they chained his handcuffs to a bedpost. As soon as they left, Vila shifted to a sitting position and looked around. The woman who had claimed to be Blake's widow sat across the floor from him, also chained to a bedpost and half-sprawled on the floor. A red handprint decorated her left cheek. Dayna Mellanby sat atop the bed next to her, one arm chained to the bedpost. Lying on the bed next to him, Vila saw Del Tarrant's too-still body smothered in bandages, tubes, and monitor wires.
"Are you all right, Vila?" Dayna asked anxiously. She was a pretty, dark-skinned girl.
"I think so," the thief replied. Although only in his thirties, his brown hair was already thinning. "I'm not hurt - just very much confused."
"This is Rashel," Dayna introduced. "Rashel Blake, the local underground leader's wife. On the other side of Tarrant - you probably can't see him from there - is Deva, his assistant. Apparently, her husband was cloned from the real Roj Blake."
"The original Roj Blake," Rashel corrected. "Roj was as real and as human as anyone else. More human than Servalan!"
"Sorry," Dayna murmurred.
"I'm sorry about your husband," Vila said earnestly. "I didn't mean to sound pleased at his death. I was just relieve to learn it wasn't my Blake."
"I understand," Rashel said quietly.
"Well, I don't," Vila confessed. "Understand, I mean. Please, Mrs. Blake, could you explain some of this? Any of it?"
"A man named Coser invented a weapon, then stole it. He - "
"He stole his own weapon?" Vila interrupted, professional curiosity replacing his manners.
"Yes. I was a slave; I cleaned the laboratories. He 'freed' me and took me along, to cook and clean for him ... and other duties. Servalan had a clone of Blake made - my Roj. She knew Coser would never tell her about Imipak - that was his weapon - but she hoped he'd tell Blake. Only Roj wouldn't give it to her once he had it; he said it was too dangerous. If only we still had it. I'd kill the bitch without a second's hesitation or regret."
"What happened to Imipak?" Dayna was the daughter and student of weapons designer Hal Mellanby; now her professional curiosity was whetted.
"It was destroyed when our ship crashed," Rashel answered. "We met your Blake about a year ago, getting to know him so Roj could impersonate him successfully. Blake said Avon was his friend, his best friend. How could Avon shoot him?"
Rashel broke down into tears, but chained to their beds, the others were unable to reach out and comfort her.
"Why did you shoot him?" Servalan asked.
"Does it matter?" Avon countered.
"Possibly."
"In that case, I shan't tell you. Of all the people in the universe I am unwilling to help, your name is at the top of the list ... Commissioner Sleer." Avon used her alias in deference to the presence of the guards and the surgeon.
Servalan turned to the guards. "Chain him. Then leave us."
"The prisoner really isn't up to intensive interrogation," the surgeon protested.
"Do you command this vessel?" she asked imperiously. "Out!"
"You forget," Avon chided after the guards and doctor had left, "that you are now a civilian official, not the fleet's supreme commander."
Servalan merely smiled. She had once been Supreme Commander of the Federation's Starfleet. She had once been President of the Federation. She intended to regain both positions. "You could be useful to me, Avon. I could restore to you all you've lost: comfort, wealth, position, prestige. All yours again ... if you work with me."
"I suspect you'd prefer me to work with you the way I was on Domo - a slave kneeling at your feet."
"Perhaps you'd prefer it if I knelt at your feet?" Her tone made it sound an offer rather than a query.
"I'd prefer you lying dead at my feet."
"Like Blake?" Servalan asked. "Why did you kill him? Did you know he was an imposter? Or did you deliberately try to kill your colleague, your friend, your captain, your ... lord and master?"
"No one's my master," Avon snapped. "Not Blake, and not you either, Servalan."
"Me thinks you doth protest too much," Servalan taunted, misquoting one of the forbidden books. There had been rumors about Blake and Avon, rumors that their relationship was more than friendship. She had never given much credence to them, before now. She ran a hand down his sleeve, feeling the muscle beneath the strait-jacket. "Surely you're not overfond of this garment? Your skin is soft beneath it, Avon, as an Alpha's skin should be. Not hardened by rough labor like a Gamma's or a Delta's. Have you been in space so long that you've forgotten what it is to be an Alpha on Earth?"
"No," Avon confessed quietly, remembering. Her words reminded him of something else. "What will you do with the others?"
"The slave girl will be flogged and sent to the thorium mines or the canna fields. Perhaps I'll have Vila join her. After all, there's so little difference between a Delta and a slave. My father used to knife the table Deltas for poor service," she reminisced. "Or perhaps you'd prefer him assigned to you?"
"Vila's too insolent to make a decent slave," Avon stated.
"Oh, but a neurowhip can work wonders with behavior problems. Perhaps you'll have an opportunity to find out for yourself," Servalan threatened him casually. "As for Mellanby's daughter, she'd make an excellent mutoid."
"And Tarrant?" Avon inquired. His voice was light, his tone bland, as though they were discussing the weather rather than the torture and destruction of his shipmates.
"He may not live long enough to be executed," Servalan said.
Avon thought he detected a twinge of regret in her voice, but he said nothing.
Servalan changed the subject. "The look on your face when you realized Soolin was the one who had shot you I shall never forget. Absolutely priceless."
"Priceless?" Avon repeated. "I should have said a quarter-million price tag. You've piqued my curiosity, Servalan. Just how did you manage all this?"
"Intelligence sources indicated Blake might be on Gauda Prime. Soolin provided enough hints and misinformation for you to infer Blake's whereabouts. It seems she preferred being a wealthy woman to being a hunted member of an outlaw revolutionary bad. She had few political sentiments or ambitions."
"But she did have financial ambitions," Avon finished for her. "So you planned to capture us and Blake all in one fell swoop?"
Servalan nodded. "It was to have been the move that restored me to the presidency. But I can still accomplish that, Avon. With you at my side, there's nothing I can't do. Orac will make us unstoppable. The rest of the universe -"
Avon laughed. "I wondered when you'd get 'round to Orac. You don't have it, and I have no intention of telling you where it is."
"The Federation has many methods of persuasion," Servalan reminded him. "Some of which you've tasted before. Of course, once ... persuaded, you'd be of little use or interest to me. I prefer you whole."
"I have a great many faults, Servalan, but betrayal is not one of them. I am not Soolin."
"I could spare your companions, if you preferred," Servalan offered. "I can afford to be magnanimous. Tarrant could have his commission restored, for example." A half-smile crossed her lips as she remembered her time with Tarrant on the planet Virn. "I could arrange something for the others. Details, Avon, petty details. With you and Orac working for me, I don't have to settle for the presidency. I could be galactic empress. And you," she caressed his cheek gently, "you could be anything you wanted to be. Imperial consort, perhaps."
"I wouldn't live ten minutes past the time I ceased to amuse you, or once you found me no longer useful," Avon scoffed.
"Think of it as incentive to remain useful." Servalan went to the door and called for the guards.