A post Star one story_ Duel Revisited_ Jenna VS Avon. Part
Jenna took Travis back up to the flight deck of the Cat's Eye.
"Does Blake know?" he asked her begrudging but trying not to be difficult for Jenna's sake a goading edge to his bitter hatred of the man still evident in his accented voice.
"About you being here?" she scoffed, almost wryly "No. No, he does not and with luck he won't have to either. I'm not sure he'd make the trade if he did, and I don't know what else he'd do" her expression said it all, but before leaving she added pragmatically "I'll be back soon so tell Cat to be ready to leave"
"Aren't you at least going to take cat with you?" Travis exclaimed, his rough voice rising. He hated to admit he was worried about her going alone but he was. He crossed his arms over the chest of his green boilersuit in dour frustration, but Jenna shook her head, her golden waves bobbing around her head like a halo.
"No. I think this will go better if I go alone. Besides if I do need a quick getaway, I'd like to make sure I'll get one, alright?"
Travis looked away from her but nodded once, his jaw clenching tightly. It was sensible but it didn't change anything.
"Alright alright but be careful Jenna." he snapped frustratedly, his flesh hand clenching, his other bionic limb stiff and rested by the elbow on a high computer panel.
"You can bet on it." she replied with fire, before adding with utmost certainty "I won't be long."
She turned and left, determined to make the trade on time, leaving Travis' dour figure to shadow the flight deck until her return. Dev grimaced from over a console at the other side of the deck. This was going to be an unpleasant few hours and no mistake.
The area she'd agreed upon for the rendezvous was sparse and canyonlike, tall spires of grey stone disappearing into the mist above her like unending towers into the skyline. The air itself reminded her of Goth but less rancid. She felt like she'd been here before, the landscape seeming so familiar yet she couldn't place it. She'd only been to this sector once and not to these coordinates, so she assumed she must be mistaken.
She heard movement behind her, and within a moment her blaster was in her hand and she was spinning towards it. As it turned out she wasn't quite quick enough. Avon stood in front of her, an expensive silver blaster of some sort in his hand and an unbalanced grin on his gilded features that chilled her somewhat. Another man came up beside her, a weapon of apparently similar origins in his own hand.
"I'll take that, thank you." he told her smugly with an ostensively charming grin, taking her blaster and handing it obediently to Avon. The second man was tall, as tall as Travis, with a suave feckless cockiness about him and a head of curls to rival even Blake. She had never seen him before but she could see from the way he held himself that he had also been an officer in the federation, but he had none of Travis' guarded sullenness or irascibility about him. The tech's grin grew even more as the gun was passed over, showing white predatory teeth.
"What did you do to my buyer, Avon?" Jenna asked the all too familiar man confidently. She thought she'd been rid of him when she'd been left behind by the Liberator. And that was one loss at least, that she was never have going to mourned.
"Nothing!" Avon proclaimed triumphantly "He's late, apparently. But now you're going to give ME the weapon!
"He's my buyer Avon. He might not sell to you." Jenna replied, her tone warning, assuming Avon wanted the credits, same as she did. 'The only reality' just like he had said all those years ago.
"And why wouldn't he?" Avon replied with unnecessary panache
.
"Why would I?" Jenna countered. She was never going to hand it over to Avon!
"Anyway. I don't, plan, to sell it!" Avon proclaimed, his teeth showing like a shark that had smelled blood.
"You don't?" Asked Tarrant. Clearly Avon hadn't told the rookie hothead the particulars of the plan. Jenna found she wasn't surprised by that.
"No! I don't can you imagine what that thing could do to Servalan's base of operations." Jenna thought perhaps Avon had gone mad. When did he start to be a believer anyway.
"I don't know what it does" Tarrant countered, looking boldly confused. A gormless fop then, despite his bravado, Jenna assumed pragmatically.
"Neither do I exactly. But I intend to find out! Do you have any objections to that Tarrant, because if you do, then I don't want to hear them." It seemed to her that Avon agreed with her assessment.
"I didn't suppose that you would." the decorative moron replied sassily.
"I am still here you know!" Jenna cut in tartly. She was in charge here and she wasn't going to let Avon forget that.
It was then that the noise started. Time seemed to stop as a deafening boom echoed in their ears then Avon, and Jenna, both found themselves standing in a canyon on another part of the planet, and they were not alone.
"I am Sinofar, the guardian. This is Giroc, the keeper. You have come here before. Why did you come again?" an ethereal voice sounded through the cloying mist. Jenna tensed.
"What happened to your planet. I've never been to these coordinated before. You were in this sector yes, but not here." Jenna queried, practical as ever.
"There was a meteor storm. The location of our place of rest has changed but not our purpose." Sinofar replied, stepping out of the mist, the smaller old visage of Giroc by her side.
"And that is to make us fight? Avon queried, his voice grating on her nerves like metal grinding against metal, already making sparks.
"Only if you cannot agree" Sinofar repeated impassively.
"I won't give my cargo up, and certainly not to Avon." Jenna pushed in, fire in her feminine blue eyes.
"Nor will I leave without it. It seems we have come to something of an impasse, does it not. Well then Jenna. What happens now." Avon grated once more, exuberance seeping into his words like damp into an old coat. A cloying damp, that chills you to the bone. Jenna refused to let herself shiver.
"It's not like you've forgotten" She replied sassily instead.
"No, it's not, is it. I've lost enough that it doesn't matter either way, so, bring it on!" Avon replied, just as callously. Brains but no heart he had said hadn't he, and remembering Travis' mention of Avon's threat of pointless torture from back on Star One she felt bile rise in her throat at the techs attitude.
"Half the lesson the death of an enemy; the other half is the death of a friend. Are you prepared."
"I didn't think you had any friends Avon. Are you sure she'll find someone?" Taunted Jenna a vicious streak clearly in her voice, before adding dryly "Just hurry up, alright. I've heard the rules already."
"I've lost everyone I've ever cared for; do you think one more will make any difference?" Avon replied to Sinofar with bravado, ignoring Jenna's barbed insult.
"Then it may begin."
Avon appeared in the woods, at a similar location it seemed than Blake was all those years ago, where he had fought a Duel and chosen not to kill. There were trees, moss, leaflitter, but little else. By his feet was a machete, and Avon crouched down to pick it up. Suddenly there was someone behind him, but when he turned, what he saw took his breath away.
"Blake!" he stated, unable to say much else, his eyes wide as saucers "I... don't understand. You were dead. You died, on Jevron, Servalan saw you!"
"And you believed Servalan?" Blake replied, casually surprised.
"It seemed to me, like she was telling the truth." replied Avon slowly, and Blake thought he saw the glimpse of a ghost in Avon's eyes.
"Perhaps your slipping Avon "Joked Blake lightly, trying to lighten the oppressive mood.
"Apparently!"
"What don't you understand Avon." Blake asked to his previous question "I'm Jenna's buyer. Or I was. What about you?"
"I wanted the weapon. What else." Declared Avon flatly.
"But not for yourself" Blake summarised, sounding amused.
"How did you know" Avon said slowly, and Blake summarised that his companion's sentiment was showing.
"How did you think. I trusted you Avon. Well then tell me about the resistance movement you've started up." Now Blake sounded damn well pleased with himself. Avon glowered darkly at him but it made the revelation of his involvement with the resistance no less true.
"How could you possibly have known"
"You're not a hard man to predict. Well not for me anyway. I was hoping we could join forces, when the time was right. In fact I'm relying on it." Blake replied nonchalantly.
"Then I definitely am slipping. We have a base in the Sylvestri system, sector six, all we need is a weapon... and a leader." Avon delivered the statement enigmatically.
"Not you Avon?" Blake asked, more amused than surprised.
"Well, I couldn't take your spot could I. There'd be nothing left, for you to do!"
Blake gave a very amused chuckle.
"I'm glad I could rely on you Avon" He said at last.
"Always. Apparently." Avon replied with more than a little sarcasm in his voice.
"Apparently, anyway who exactly are we fighting?" Blake asked with a sudden, and probably important change in subject.
"Jenna" The short answer was somehow not what Blake was expecting.
"Jenna?" he asked, his voice sounding horrified "Why?
"Does it matter?" Avon drawled savagely.
"Well yes actually it does." repeated the shaken Blake, a frown growing on his usually casual features.
"I needed the weapon, to hand it over to you. I didn't realise, that you, were in fact her buyer. Actually, I thought that it was Servalan. It has all become quite a fiasco hasn't it." Avon clarified, smooth as a snake.
"It does seem to have done doesn't it. Can't we talk to her?" Inquired Blake, looking a little hurt.
"I doubt that very much. "Drawled Avon even more enthusiastically cynical.
"Why." Demanded Blake, his brown eyed gaze staring down Avon expectantly. Avon glossed over it.
"Well, she always did I suppose, but now she hates me more. Quite possibly for the fact that I threatened to blow Travis' other arm off while we were at Star one. And she knows I wasn't bluffing." This explanation did not seem to satisfy Blake in the slightest.
"Travis?! Never mind the fact that I thought he was dead..." Blake began.
"That seems to be a repeated mistake of yours Blake." Avon cut in snidely "But I suppose, so did I. Until recently. I am simply more well informed." Avon's teeth showed like a shark.
"...But what does that have to do with any of this, or Jenna for that matter?"
"I believe they are, together, or have been for a while actually. That, is what Jenna has to do with that. I have good intel Blake, don't ask me where I got it." Avon may not have liked Jenna but he got no pleasure from telling Blake. He had a good idea how the other man would take it.
"What? I mean..." Blake looked rather hurt, but Avon didn't know how to comfort, only to give the facts. It wasn't that he didn't care, just that he didn't know how.
You, did not want her Blake." He said grimly "You were always too busy. Any way it makes little difference now, and most likely even less to Jenna, now let's get going before one of us ends up making this awfully easy for them."
Sorry there was a little too much of Blake and Avon in that chapter. Never mind. I'll be uploading another chapter soon. Thanks for reading.