After the Day
It was not, she thought, too much to say at the time that she had saved the day. A pity that the day had turned out to be endless, nightmarish night.
She wiped her sweatstained brow, and stared out into the night with blurring, angry eyes.
It had been her plan from the start, and she had ruthlessly ensured that the credit was mostly hers. Oh yes, her male colleagues had done their share, the doctor, the politician, the assistants... but the mastermind of the scheme, that had been her and her alone.
She had been the one to first see that the whole thing could have been a disaster... just one man, he would have been killed had she not stepped in, and that would usually have been the end of it. But he meant far too much to the rebellion to risk that. She had seen that, she had made the others see, she had taken over, come up with the ideas, come up with the whole plan that would deny their enemies the bloodshed they needed.
It was her doing that he had not died a sacrifice to the cause...
Oh yes, she had done it all. She had saved her government from that unwanted martydom, and made sure everyone who mattered knew it.
And she had been well rewarded. A Hero of the Federation. A Patriot's Medal. A new and oh so lucrative position. A hundred ways, big and small, to enrich herself, her department, her family. A path to greater things...
A path to this.
Slave Alta Morag wiped her brow, and bent her gaze back to the poisonous mineface that would be all she knew till the work killed her, and that was her final reward after her plan - that she had so carefully, so ruthlessly, so shrewdly, seized all the credit - for having saved... Blake.
- the end -