Servalan on Sarran
Servalan, President and Supreme Commander of the Terran Federation. In the second year, she would whisper it to herself each night before she slept.
~oOo~
In the first weeks after Avon left her on Sarran, she planned her escape again and again. Waiting for rescue, like a tame and helpless Alpha trophy spouse, was unthinkable; she would contact the fleet and command them, command them, to leave everything and escort her in triumph back to Earth to tighten her grip on the power that was now hers. She could almost taste the victory that was there to be claimed...
But contacting the fleet - or anyone at all - proved beyond her reach. Why Hal Mellanby and his vicious little daughters had put locks, codes, passwords on their communications system, she had no idea, there was no one else to use the wretched thing, but locks, codes and passwords there were. She could send... nothing.
Nothing.
Oh but she could receive... messages, viscasts, news reports, all manner of useful and useless information. She heard on the fifth day that the useless fool she had deposed and thought disposed of had reappeared, claiming her presidency for his worthless self, claiming credit for the victory that was rightly hers. She waited to hear that he failed, that those loyal to her and her alone, those she had selected and promoted and bribed and moulded, were fighting back...
Nothing.
She heard on the ninth day that it was worse than she'd said to Avon, that most of the civilised worlds were cut off from their military controllers, left to their own fraudulent freedoms, without order and stability and discipline...
On the tenth day she tried to leave Mellanby's underground home, thinking that there had to be some technically adept natives on the surface, from which she could contact her people and rescue. The barbarians had been watching, and with no Orac and no Avon to blackmail or bargain with, she barely escaped alive.
She was secure inside Mellanby's base, safe underground. There was food, drink, luxuries, even weapons... enough to keep her in comfort. It would not be long... they would be searching, putting every man, every soldier, every resource, into the hunt.
~oOo~
In the second month, she watched and listened as the so-called President - the failed President - the deposed usurping President - floundered as she knew he would. Worlds broke away and anarchy spread, her military - her power base - was battered and bleeding away, and the Federation was crumbling at the edges.
They needed her. They needed her to stop the rot, to destroy the dissenters, to rout the rush to freedom for those who neither needed nor deserved it. They would surely be searching for the only one who could save their - her ruined Empire. Waiting for rescue was the only safe, comfortable, Alpha thing to do... and then to return in triumph.
~oOo~
In the fourth month, she fought the doubts of rescue, and watched as the so-called President was routed and reported as dead. As dead as she was supposed to be... ah, but they'd learn. Even as the Warden of the Third Fleet - now calling himself President and Supreme Commander - displayed the body and called for fresh efforts against rebels and traitors, she spent her days composing her speeches, her orders, her schemes for retaking power.
And her nights watching as the viscasts came in. She still could send... nothing.
~oOo~
In the fifth month, they declared her a deserter. She screamed in rage at the screens, swearing terrible revenge on the warden she'd promoted and flattered, the officers she'd courted and controlled, the troops she'd demanded loyalty from... the rebels and the worlds that she'd destroy when power was back in her hands. Surely they had none of them forgotten her.
She took Mellanby's weapons and killed the natives who trapped her in this bunker. There was some freedom in being able to leave, and walk on the surface... but she was even more alone there, and retreated to the base again, and the screens and the viscasts and the disembodied voices from a tattered Federation.
~oOo~
In the sixth month, she convinced herself that Avon and the Mellanby child would return, would come back if only to finish her, and carefully prepared for the Liberator to come. She could do this, could still turn Avon against his own and use him to take control of the ship. And with that ship - the one Blake had used so well and so criminally, that he had no more right to than she did - she would take back power. Blake hadn't, in the end, succeeded, but she would.
She waited, her plans laid, her schemes and seductions all ready. They would come. They would not be able to stop thinking about her, they would not be able to take the risk that she would get free, be rescued, be returned to power. They would come to destroy her, and she would destroy them.
~oOo~
In the ninth month, she watched as the reports of Sula Chesku - the coup, the rout of her forces by a rabble, the final battle and destruction, the heroine's mysterious death at the hands of a dark stranger who vanished afterwards - came in. She knew she could use this - she knew who it was, and why, and that Blake would never forgive him. She could blackmail Avon into betraying Blake, and giving her the ship.
If Blake was there. The viscasts showed the rabble, showed the fighting, showed the new leaders... but no Avon, and no Blake.
They would come for her now. Someone - whether her own people or her enemies - would come for her now. Someone would still be searching. All this could have been prevented... by the right force, the right hand, the right deaths... she wept at night for her lost, ruined empire, and waited to be called back as a saviour.
She noticed that none of the reports ever mentioned her, ever called her by name, ever wondered where she was and why she had vanished. She wanted to hear her name on their lips - it became a need, an obsession. They could not have forgotten... she would not be forgotten...she could not bear to be forgotten. She listened, day in, day out, waiting for someone to speak of her.
They never did.
Servalan, President and Supreme Commander of the Terran Federation. She began to whisper it to herself, every night, needing to hear it before she could sleep.
~oOo~
In the second year, the message came.
Servalan had drunk all the wine in Mellanby's cellars, eaten everything fit to eat. She'd watched the carve-up of a military power that had lasted centuries, and toasted the seventh President's demise with water, concentrate and foul-tasting but mildly intoxicating berries. She'd worn every stitch of clothing the Mellanby child had left - all of it dreadful, tasteless, ugly stuff - and ripped much of it to shreds in fury and despair.
She'd watch the power she didn't understand, that she'd never learned to manage, falter and drain, and conserved it greedily, knowing that when it failed she would be even more trapped. She'd learned to live in the dark, the cold, and the dirt, so that she could hoarding the power for the reports from outside, for the communications that were her lifeline, her sanity... her hope of returning. She still followed the news, the reports - political, social, intellectual, anything - as greedy for it as a Shadow addict, working and moulding it in her mind to her best advantage, thinking and planning how each tiny item, each visbyte, could benefit her rescue and rise to power.
She'd rewritten the last year in imagination, building an empire never ruined, always glittering and brilliant under her rule, expanding and taking in more and more worlds, as many as there grains of sand on the Sarran shore. She'd dreamed a thousand times of what she would do to the man who'd left her here... how she'd use him, and abuse him, and destroy him.
She'd always known they would come.
~oOo~
"Supreme Commander."
She listened breathlessly. This was it... she tried to remember the plans, the stratagems, the ruses she had planned for this moment. She was ready for him. For him, and the Mellanby girl, and Blake. For the ship that would be hers, and for her life to begin again with the power that she would ret-
She savoured the sound of her title in his mouth, though his voice was colder and harsher... she didn't know why. She wanted to hear him say her name. She wanted to see him, but this message was voice only.
"The galaxy has buried and forgotten you, none except Dayna and I even know where you were left. A fitting punishment, I think." No! "The Federation is dying, and no one cares enough to search for ex-Commanders, Supreme or not."
She was supreme! She was, and she was the President, the true President. How dare he do this...
"Though it might have been kinder to kill you... the Liberator has been destroyed."
Her... ship.
"Cally and Blake... we believe... are both dead."
Her enemies, and his vulnerable points. Good.
"And I am fool enough to want you to know... we have both lost. But not enough to want to see you again."
Her breath caught. He had to come he had to.. someone had to, there was no other way out, no other way home.
"Goodbye."
Say my name, Avon. Say you've realised your mistake, you've come to take me with you, you'll bow to my will, you'll give me back freedom and command and yourself...
"Goodbye, Supreme Commander."
... and the message stopped.
~oOo~
In the dark, she whispered her name. And his.
-the end-