~oOo~

Dayna was watching him. "I'm sorry," she said finally. "I let you down."

"Let me down?"

"There were only two; I should have been able to kill them both."

"We all have our off days." He felt his jaw gingerly. "That uniformed fool was quicker than I would have expected. Did you hear any more?"

"Not much," she shrugged. "Another message. The Subcommander - Jarriere - said it was Blake."

"It was - is Blake. Damn."

"You don't want him found?"

"By us, yes." An image of Klegg's grim, heavy face flashed across his mind. "Come on," he stood, ignoring the wave of nausea that came with the act, "we need to get out of here."

"And how do you propose to do that?" Dayna glanced at the doorway, thick, metallically heavy and very, very shut.

He quirked an eyebrow at her disbelief, and bent to pull off a shoe.

"Avon?" The disbelief turned incredulous. The heel slid apart under his hand, and the little lockpicks he carried fell into his palm. Dayna peered over his shoulder, and sniffed disparagingly. "You know you have room for a bomb in there."

He merely looked at her in silence, then turned to the door and got to work.

~oOo~

It was taking too long. The lockpicks needed replacing; if they both survived this, Avon thought, he'd have to get Vila to steal him something better.

"You want me to try it?" Dayna finally asked.

"Are you any good with locks?" He didn't bother looking up.

"No, but then neither are -" At which moment, there was a soft click, and the door slid away. Dayna stopped, shrugged, and gave him an easy, half-admiring, half discounting-it-as-luck smile.

The corridor was empty, as was a small plasteel stool by the door.

"What's this?" Dayna bent to pick up something from the floor. Two somethings - what looked like a broken and rust-stained military badge, and a small, pale, round earring that sat in her palm, glowing softly in the light. "One of your crew's?"

"Possibly Jenna's," Avon glanced down at it without interest. "Though faux-pearl was never her... never mind." And Jenna may not care to be called my crew. If she comes back. He took them both, dropped them in a pocket, and forgot about them, and - for the moment - Jenna.

He had more important things to think of. If Zen had brought Blake on board, if the Death Squad and that idiot aide-de-camp had him, if they tried to torture him...

He didn't care, he wouldn't care. This was his ship now, and all he cared about was that Blake lived to honour the agreement, that was all. Or failing that... No. Failing is not unacceptable. There was only one way to find out what was happening. Zen.

Or Orac.

Well, three. Zen, Orac, or getting caught and brought painfully up to date by Klegg.

"Come on."

~oOo~

The last time Avon had been in the life capsule launch section, it had been a wreck, and - having wasted precious time forcing Blake off the ship - so had he been. Now it was self-cleaned, self-repaired, nearly as good as new, and nearly empty. Just one capsule left.

"How much longer are you going to be?" Dayna, he thought for the fiftieth time, meant well but was all too fond of asking questions. She also had less imagination than he did, which made explanations even more tedious than they had been with his less-than-beloved crewmates. "Why aren't you worried about your Blake? Why aren't we trying to rescue him? I thought you cared about -"

"I care about ensuring this ship stays out of the hands of the Federation," Avon cut her off icily, "as does Blake. He has been prepared to die to ensure that far too many times, so I doubt if Klegg and that Subcommander will change his mind. They are more likely to kill him trying.

"Now, when I give you the signal, fire two shots. I don't want anyone to miss this."

~oOo~

Klegg was as happy as he was capable of being - not much, but enough to bring a glow to the small eyes and a thinning if the lips that might, to a fellow thug, be taken for a smile.

The battered life capsule had been taken into the ship without problems. Presumably whoever or whatever was in control of the Liberator, and refusing to acknowledge Klegg and his men as in command, had an interest in the contents: one revolutionary, rather worse for wear but still worth more to the government than most of them could even imagine.

Not more than he could imagine, Klegg thought smugly, as he kicked the limp, bloodied body on the flight deck floor. His eyes went to Jarriere, watching him with bright eyes. Nor the President's aide-de-camp, probably. Which might be a problem.

Not a problem he couldn't deal with, of course.

He kicked Blake again. They had dragged the man from the capsule, tossing him down with unthinking callousness in front of the officer from Space Command as if for approval.

"It's Blake, Subcommander?" Klegg grated.

"Och, it's him." The bright eyes lifted to his face. "You mean you've never seen the viscasts?"

"It's forbidden, innit?" Moules bleated. "Penalty of ten years in the slave pits."

"At least." This came from fleshy, warglike Stahl.

"If yer lucky," thin little fugface Kroy added.

"Ah..?" Jarriere gazed at each of them for a minute - possibly trying for the fifth time to commit faces to memory - then sighed and shook his head. "That's ver'... admirably obedient of ye all." He turned that bright, flat gaze down to the unconscious man at his feet. "Is he dead yet?"

Moules bent to fumble for a pulse. "Ye- no. Mostly."

"Mostly?"

"He'll be dead soon."

"So if we're going to get information out of him..."

"Take him up to the flight deck - careful!" The burred voice sharpened slightly as two of Klegg's men grabbed a foot each and tugged. "We don' want him too damaged to question, do we?"

Klegg summoned a contortion of the face that might, at a stretch, have passed for a smile. "No, sir," he growled, "not yet. Stahl, Harmon, carry him. Moules, go and check on our other priso-"

"Guests," Jarriere corrected cheerily.

"Guests," Klegg agreed, his small, greedy eyes not leaving the grey face of the most famous criminal in the galaxy, and his - their - ticket to unimagined wealth.

~oOo~

"We need to wake him up," He glared down at Blake some time later, frustrated by his inability to coerce information out of an unconscious man. "Harmon, get the tazer -"

"Ah, I wouldna thought that would work, Section Leader," Jarriere said mildly as he entered the flight deck. He sat on the centre couch, near the dulled fascia of the computer, and watched the black-clad Death Squad milling around the body. "Hurtin' a man who canna feel it, 'tis a waste of good power. Do any of ye have a medkit?"

Four pairs of flat, vacant eyes looked at him in confusion.

"For each other, o' course, not for prisoners."

The confusion lifted - but not enough.

"Or for yourselves?" That seemed to click, and Kroy nodded. "Bring it here, there may be somethin' to bring him round."

Klegg grunted. "I still think our other friend -"

"Chevron? Ye could be right," Jarriere watched as that sank in. "Doesna matter, he'll keep for the moment. And we want Blake alive."

"Why? If we can control the ship, we don't need him."

"The Commander - I'm sorry, the new President - wants him alive. Are ye willin' to stand in front of her and admit to killin' someone she wants alive?" There was a silence. "We don't argue with orders, Section Leader, not unless we want to risk those slave pits your Moules mentioned. Speakin' of which," he looked around, "where is Moules?"

Klegg glared around in his turn. "He was supposed to come back -"

"You seem to lose men all over the ship, Section Leader," Jarriere shook his head sadly, "even though it is a big ship... strange, don't ye think? They shouldna be wanderin' around alone. It could be dangerous."

"Because that man Chevron could be out there."

"Nooo, I dinna think so. Because it's..." Jarriere's burred voice lowered in an odd mixture of sepulchral drama and witless cheer, "a death-ship, Section Leader, an alien death-ship that kills people. D'ye know the stories of when they found it?"

Several sets of eyes - confused, uneasy, frustrated, furious - turned on him.

"The prison ship sent over guards... and more guards... and then more. Most never returned, and those that did..." his voice further lowered, "...were out o' their minds wi' fright. No one ever found out why..."

There was a silence.

"For all ye know," he went on, "Moules and the others might've been evaporated."

"Evaporated?" Stahl squeaked - as much as a human warg could.

"Or just dissolved. Liquefied. Burned. Fried. Absorbed."

"Absorbed?"

"No one knows how the guards died," Jarriere said with murky satisfaction, "no one came back who could tell."

Klegg gritted his teeth. "With all respect, Subcommander, you had no -" He was stopped there - by a faint, almost breathless groan from the man on the floor.

"He's waking up," Stahl leant over the body, wetting his thick lips. "Permission to interrogate, sir - sirs?"

Klegg turned his head, glaring a challenge at Jarriere, who met it with a bland, guileless look of his own. "You're in charge, Section Leader," he said cheerfully. "Just remember the President's order. The reports on his previous arrests say he has a high pain threshold, so you'll need to be careful not to kill him."

Klegg bared teeth in what some might have called a smile a smile as Kroy came back. "But it looks like we won't need that," jerking a thumb at the basic, inadequate kit in the trooper's hands. "Thank you," he turned the bared teeth to the aide-de-camp, "Subcommander."

And that was when two shots rang through the acoustically enhanced corridors of the ship.

~oOo~

"They've launched a life capsule," Stahl, having left and come back with Kroy, reported.

"Which means they've escaped." Klegg turned on the aggravating, infuriating, intolerably placid little man who outranked him. "Do you doubt they're with Blake now?"

Jarriere simply blinked at him - at them - and then counted heads. "Where's Relfe?" he asked cheerfully.

~oOo~