~oOo~

"Why do you stay with Blake, Jak?"

Blake paused in his own labour in the workroom. He was, as he had been for some weeks, slowly and carefully repairing yet another section of the old drive: work that would have taken far less time for the living, but which, however slowly, he would get finished. He could hear the others in the adjoining room, and also that Avon's quiet, precise voice was still laced with the weariness that had less to do with sleep and more to do with - with - well, Blake still wasn't sure what, but it had scared him into taking things slower himself, months ago.

It was six standard days later and Avon was still pushing himself too hard. Blake knew the feeling but he was not going to let Avon lose any more, not going to lose him again, not going to let him fade into a shadowy thing like the ghosts in the lower hold, nor twist himself through anger and bitterness into a ghoul like the girl Broeli, or the creatures he had sensed, even from a distance, clustered around the living President.

He put aside corporeality and his tools and moved closer to the door.

"Well, I can hardly leave, can I?" Jak rumbled. "Staying is rather a given for Romanel and I."

"True. I'm sorry. Let me re-word that, why do you let him lead you?"

Jak paused. "Why not?"

"Surely his galactic crusade has even less point for you than it did for me - for us."

"Not at all."

"How did you -?" Avon stopped. For once, he shied from the words. Blake could almost feel his reluctance, could certainly understand it. "What happened to you? Was it the Federation?"

"Not really. Shipboard accident in the engine rooms. It wasn't uncommon a century ago, safety regulations were low then."

"Then why should you care?"

"Because Blake's right, isn't he? It's evil. I've still got soul enough to care about evil, more so since I've had a century of drifting to watch it and to learn to hate it. I didn't before, the Federation was just there, a part of life, and I had a life to live, a living to earn."

"Yes..." So soft, Blake almost missed it.

"I should have cared then. Maybe that's why I'm here."

"But Blake - and I gather, Deva - did care. And Blake ensured that I did as well." Avon's voice was shot through with that bitterness again; he stopped, and seemed to try to control it. "That hardly fits us."

"No, you have to find your own explanation, I think."

"And how long will that take?"

"Well, mine was a maybe, Avon," Jak spoke mildly. "Which means I haven't really found it after a hundred years."

"How encouraging."

"Besides," Jak went on with a hollow chuckle, "why not? Do you have any better ideas on how to spend the next century?"

Blake waited for the answer but was not surprised when there wasn't one, and decided to intervene. "How is it going?" he said as he wandered in.

"How long have you been there?" Avon snapped, turning on him.

Blake smiled. "I was there when you came in."

"Why didn't you sp- no. Don't answer that." In spite of himself, a gleam of reluctant humour touched his eyes.

"How's the work going?"

"Slowly. This ship is an relic, Blake."

"Most ghost ships are."

"Most ghost ships aren't used to penetrate Earth sector. What happens if it's destroyed?"

"We're willing to take the chance." Blake glanced at Jak, overtly including him in the statement.

"Jak and Romanel could be destroyed with it."

"We know," Jak said. "We've thought it out."

"How reassuring," Avon said sourly, "to know that collective insanity outlives us." He turned away, staring down at the circuits he had been working on. "Angels," he muttered.

Blake glanced at Jak, who nodded and went out.

"And if I am not willing, Blake?" Avon asked.

"I'll think of something."

"What?" Derision dripped from the word.

"Something. I would prefer not to lose you again, Avon," he paused, "but it is still your own choice."

Avon raised his head, his smile savagely brilliant and icily despairing. "Oh, very good, Blake. You still pretend to believe that, don't you?"

"It is your choice, Avon."

"Would you return me to Terminal if I asked?"

"Avon, that's not a good idea."

"Would you?"

No! Blake was silent for a moment, then spoke reluctantly. "Yes."

"I will think about it," Avon said. "Now, Blake, I have work to -"

A bell rang hollowly around them, and Deva was back at the door, Jak hovering behind him - quite literally. "Blake," he said quickly. "There's a ship coming up on us from Sector 6."

"Federation?"

"Definitely not," Jak answered, with a peculiar edge to his voice, "but that is the sector we just left."

"Is it from the direction of Terminal?"

"Not quite, but somewhere nearby."

Blake glanced at Avon, who shrugged.

"All right, we're coming."

~oOo~

It was an old, battered planet-hopper, undistinguished in anything but the fact that it did appear to be closing on them.

Romanel raised his head from the controls. "Do you want it disposed of?" he said mildly.

"No." Blake pressed a finger to his lips, trying to shake off an odd, skittery feeling of unease, like nervous chatter. "No, open a hailing frequency. Even if they can't hear us, we might find out something from them."

Jak shrugged and flipped the switch. There was a sharp crackle, and then a voice - young, female, flat and crisp - echoed through the deck. "Scorpio to unidentified craft. Scorpio to unidentified craft."

Avon, quite aware of the question in Blake's eyes, shook his head.

"Scorpio to - this is pointless," she said, obviously to someone with her. "The ship's deserted. It's derelict. Are you certain the signal came from here?"

Another unknown voice spoke up, unctuous and oily. "I am most terribly sorry, Mistress, but this is indeed the correct location, as closely as my inadequate abilities can establish. The signal was most precise and insistent, and I have been unable to countermand it."

"Yes, yes, you've told us a dozen times." A male voice, further from the communicator, interrupted: a light, youthful voice underlaid with both arrogance and charm. Blake heard Avon's caught gasp. "He means he's certain, Soolin. Keep trying."

"All rather pointless, if you ask me." And now he heard his own gasp, half-surprise, half-pain.

"Vila, nobody did ask you."

"And maybe they ought to. I don't like the look of -"

The woman overrode him easily. "Scorpio to unidentified ship, please answer."

It made sense, Blake thought, detaching himself from the shock. Orac had been summoning help for itself. If they had survived, Vila and Cally - oh god, even the names still hurt, when will I get over it? - and the new people, if they had survived and somehow escaped the planetary hell of Terminal, would be most likely to hear Orac's message. It made sense.

He didn't have to like it, though.

"No answer. What now?"

Somewhere in the background, that oily voice spoke again. "Pardon me, Mistress, but I am receiving further instructions."

"From whom?" The young man asked impatiently.

"I regret that I have no way of obtaining that information, sir, but I have been ordered to dock with the ship, and as the order is from a superior system I have to obey."

"What superior system?"

"I am afraid that information has not been given, sir. I most humbly apologise, but docking procedures will commence -"

"No! Slave, no!"

"I am sorry, sir, deeply and terribly sorry, but I must."

Blake was watching Avon's face, as shuttered as ever but, as ever, more expressive than the man realised. "Charming character," he murmured. "One of yours?"

"Definitely not," Avon said with distaste. "Even more unsupportable than Tarrant, I would think." He met Blake's gaze calmly. "Are you going to let them dock?"

"They don't seem to have a choice, do they? Jak, go and watch over it. Make sure they come straight here." The big man nodded and disappeared through the door.

Avon crossed to one of the seats and sank into it, waiting with patently false composure. Blake followed and stood behind the seat, one hand on the headrest. Waiting. There was nothing to say - yet.

The door finally slid open, and two women entered, both tall and lithe and poised to fire their quite formidable weapons at any provocation. One black, one golden blonde, both beautiful: neither anyone he knew. Jak slipped past them - slightly through the darker one - and ushered them onto the flight deck with a florid bow all the more ironic because they couldn't see it.

"Are they your people, Avon?" Blake murmured.

Avon indicated towards the black woman. "Dayna. The other is a stranger. And that," at the tall young man behind her, "is Tarrant." There was a peculiar tinge to his voice, not dislike or irritation, but a thread of cold mockery more acid than any Avon had directed at him.

Vila - very much the same if a little balder - was next, still hanging back, still holding a gun as if expecting it to bite. Then Cally. Blake heard Avon's caught breath, that echoed his own.

What have they done to you, Cally? Always slender, now thin to the point of gauntness, her face white and more harshly cut than ever, curls pulled back severely: his gentle warrior was now a slim, severe, ice-cold ascetic in dark grey, with thin-pressed lips and eyes as hard as agate.

He looked down at Avon, who was also staring in shock. It must have been since they lost him... oh, Cally.

"There's no one on board, Cally." The tall young man - Tarrant - spoke first. "No one at all."

"But there was a signal," she answered, and Blake felt another shock at the cool, almost metallic tone of her voice. "You are not denying that."

"No, of course not," he answered a little testily, slipping his own gun into the holster. "I was the one who first heard it, apart from Slave."

Blake looked at Avon again. "Slave?" he asked.

"I have no idea." Avon stood, and moved across to the table where Orac was placed. He was now watching the young man, his eyes hooded and dangerous. "It appears that they have managed to land on their feet," with a shark-like smile, "in a manner of speaking."

Tarrant was still talking. "I just don't see how it could possibly have come from here."

"Maybe," the black woman spoke up, "from that." She was staring straight at the place Avon was standing, but it wasn't Avon she was pointing at.

"O-orac?" Tarrant stuttered. "It can't be! Orac was -"

Dayna crossed to the table. Avon, with a slight, graceful gesture, stepped aside before she reached him, as if unwilling to 'touch'... "Orac, is that you?"

"Well, of course it is. Who would you expect it to be?"

"But - but how did you get here?"

A pause. "That information is not available."

"You mean you don't know?" Tarrant asked. "How were you repaired? Orac, what is this ship?"

"I have been trying to trace the records with little success. It is a Nomad-class passenger cruiser from the last century, but was decommissioned at least eighty years ago."

"Well, that helps a lot," Dayna muttered. "But if there is no one here, how did you -?"

"I have been aware of my surroundings for six standard days now. I have had no contact by any person or other computer on this ship, though it appears the central controls are operative and all systems functioning. In short -"

"You have no idea," Cally finished.

"That is -" another pause, a touch of mechanical embarrassment, "- correct."

"Oh, poor Orac," Dayna said sweetly.

"This is impossible," Cally said, irritation in her voice as she gazed around. "This is - impossible. Someone must have brought Orac on board this ship."

"And repaired it," Dayna added.

"And then disappeared, leaving it for us to find," Tarrant chipped in, "and leaving the ship fully operational - operating - just to make it easy for us."

"Which was rather too good of them, don't you think?" Vila finished.

"Too good to be true, certainly," the blonde said from the doorway. "After your last little stroke of luck with Dorian coming to take you from Terminal -"

"And the way that turned out -"

"I'd be wary of yet another unlikely miracle."

Blake glanced at Avon, who shrugged. "We don't know what they mean," he said with icily false sweetness, "and we can't ask them."

"They escaped," Blake said. "That is all that matters."

"Yes..." Softly, consideringly - dangerously.

Tarrant was now looking around with calculating eyes, at the controls, the computer systems, the scattered weapons and artefacts. Blake suddenly recalled his own old teleport bracelet, flung down months ago and forgotten ever since, and slid past the boy. He managed to push it out of sight before Cally joined Tarrant by the console. Looking up, he met Avon's coldly amused gaze.

"Yes..." Avon spoke satirically but was clearly not aware that he had automatically lowered his voice. "That would be rather confusing for them, wouldn't it?"

"You know, we could use this ship," Tarrant said clearly, and all amusement died.

"No," Blake heard from behind him. It was Jak, his voice suddenly harsher.

"Not that it's any great prize," the young man went on, oblivious to the tension around him. Blake could see Broeli, eyes even larger than normal in her pretty, bony face, sidle a little closer. "But then neither is what we've got now. It's got to be better than the Scorpio." He ran a light hand over the console switches. "What do you think, Cally?"

She didn't answer. Blake could see the odd, searching light in her eyes that he recalled when she was trying to - as she had put it sometimes - 'feel the air'.

"Tarrant's got a point," Dayna said. "At the least, we could strip it for parts, perhaps." She shivered. "Hey, did it suddenly get very cold in here?"

"Romanel, Jak," Blake said quietly, "stop that."

"But -"

"Stop."

Vila wandered past Avon, who started and looked at him with something unreadable in his blank, night-dark eyes. "Right, Dayna, and who is going to do the work? None of us are engineers, and none of us are Av-" He stopped, voice oddly skewed for a moment. Avon's hand half-lifted, and fell again. "Anyway, how much do you know about customising? Don't look at me," hastily, "all I know I learned from Jenna, on the Liberator. This isn't the Liberator, in case you haven't noticed."

"Be quiet, Vila." Cally didn't look at him, and there was a harder edge to the all too familiar words. "I don't know, Tarrant."

"Why not? It's a derelict, Cally."

"It's also a mystery, and at this moment I don't care for mysteries."

He grinned. "So we'll read the log book."

"Scorpio can land. This would be of no use at Xenon base, and the five of us do not need and cannot run a base and a starship."

"True, but Cally," abruptly serious, the detached gravity in his eyes at odds with his apparent age, "we may have a base now and we may have a ship. But we don't have fuel for the Scorpio and without it, we *don't* really have a ship."

"Then we will get fuel."

"With Vila's asteroid idea?"

"You have a better one?" Vila piped up, but the other two were ignoring him, intent on their argument.

"Blake," Deva said from behind Cally, "they may have been your friends, but this is -"

"You worry too much, Deva. Leave it." Blake was watching Avon, who was now looking back at him with an expression that was not quite mocking and not quite calculating, but somewhere in between. "What is it, Avon?"

"As you said," Avon said, so softly that only Blake could hear, "I'm not bound to this ship."

"Agreed."

"And they do have another ship."

"Also agreed."

"Aren't you going to remind me that one of them is a murderer?"

"Would it worry you?"

Avon smiled. "Of course. But," turning to look at his old crewmates, "which one?"

Cally and Tarrant were still arguing, neither raising their voice, neither giving an inch. Blake wondered inconsequentially if they had been doing this since Terminal.

"Stop it, both of you. Let's go and have another look around." Dayna glanced at Tarrant, who shrugged and led the way out. The unknown blonde glanced back at Cally with raised brows, then followed.

"Jak," Blake said. "Follow and contain them."

"Cally?" Vila had watched the others leave before he spoke. "Cally, you're not going to agree with Tarrant, are you?"

"I don't know, Vila." She spoke slowly, and the apathy in her voice hurt. "Maybe I should. Fighting with him is rather more trouble than it's worth, don't you think?"

"I think Tarrant's more trouble than he's worth. That's what I've always thought."

"That's unfair, Vila."

"Maybe. Doesn't make it untrue."

Vila wandered back across to the flight console, crossing very close to where Blake stood. Blake could have reached out and touched his arm. Could have, wanted to - and didn't. He watched as Vila fiddled aimlessly with the controls, aware of his own mixed emotions, of Avon's derisive, bitterly angry stare fixed on him.

It wasn't Vila. Please god, just let me believe that it wasn't Vila or Cally. His gaze went back to her and he traced with his eyes the new hollows and hardness of her face.

"I wish Avon was here," Vila said suddenly. Blake was aware of Avon's sudden, rigid stillness, over his own flinching pain.

"I know," Cally said very quietly.

"Or Blake. Well, and Blake."

"I know." Even quieter. "But they aren't, and we have to make do with what we have."

"Who we have, you mean. Them." Vila said with a quick jerk of his head. "And I don't trust lady gunfighters. Not even pretty ones."

"Vila, Soolin saved our lives."

"And her own."

"And she is a member of this crew now. We need her." Cally turned to stare down at Orac. "We need everyone and everything we can get, to help us survive."

"Yeah, I know, I just think -"

"We have to survive," and the metallic sound was in her voice again. "Survival is all we have left."

Avon took a step towards her, and stopped.

"You can leave if you wish, Avon," Blake said softly. "You can't speak to them, and they can't see or sense you. But I think they would be enough to hold you."

"You think."

"Well," with a touch of humour, "we won't know until you try."

"Yes?" Cally turned her head as the three younger ones came back. "That wasn't long, did you find anything?"

"Most of the ship seems to be depressurised," Dayna said, a little grumpily. "Life support only in the main hold and the corridors leading here." From behind her, Jak shrugged and winked at Blake.

Cally raised her brows. "Coincidental."

"Yes, and I don't like coincidence," Vila grumbled.

"That's surprising," the blonde - Soolin - said. "Neither do I."

"It's not a great setback, though," Tarrant crossed back to the control panel, and the others followed and clustered around, still arguing. Soolin watched, a little way back and apart, amused but also guarded and suspicious.

Avon walked past her, his movement smooth and gliding, and walked straight into the loose knot of his former crewmates. He stopped and slowly turned a full circle, hands clasped lightly behind him, face showing no more than mild interest... eyes black and burning. Staring at each of them in their turn. Blake knew that expression, that unearthly fire, a little too well. He'd seen something like it - just a little like it - in Broeli's eyes the first time she'd found out how to kill.

~oOo~