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  AVON

  A TERRIBLE ASPECT

  In the frozen North of their mother planet, two brothers fight a duel to the death—and Rogue Avon is slain. This, the Federation feels, spells the end to rebellion in the universe, and the status quo of peace without freedom can continue. But they are wrong. The son of Rogue Avon, obviously an Earthling and entitled to return to the mother planet, has sworn to his mother to avenge his father. He manages to return to Earth, and there works out the inevitable conclusion to this ingenious and fascinating tale.

  BASED ON TERRY NATION’S

  “BLAKE’S SEVEN”

  CAROL PAPERBACKS/CAROL PUBLISHING GROUP

  COVER DESIGN: MORRIS TAUB

  Terry Nation’s

  by Paul Darrow

  Imitate the action of the tiger;

  Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,

  disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;

  Then lend the eye a terrible aspect.

  —Shakespeare, Henry V

  A Carol Paperbacks Book

  Published by Carol Publishing Group

  To Terry Nation—a great writer—

  and to Janet, my wife, without

  whose help I could not have

  attempted to emulate him.

  First Carol Paperbacks Edition 1991

  Copyright © 1989 by Paul Darrow and Terry Nation

  A Carol Paperbacks Book

  Published by Carol Publishing Group

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  Carol Communications, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.

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  Manufactured in the United States of America

  ISBN 0-8216-2503-9

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Carol Publishing Group books are available at special discounts for hulk purchases, for sales promotions, fund raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details contact: Special Sales Department, Carol Publishing Group, 120 Enterprise Ave., Secaucus, NJ 07094

  Prologue

  In the fourth season after the wars for Uranus, he walked into the sanctuary.

  I was eighteen years according to the Earth calendar and would never again meet a man quite like him.

  Well concealed, I had watched him for some hours as his firm yet unhurried stride carried him towards me.

  From time to time, he would disappear from view as clumps of rock and thick undergrowth hid his progress.

  At other times, sulphurous mounds would cast grotesque shadows and these, combining with the prevalent heat haze, caused his outline to shimmer. It was as if he was a mirage hovering above the wilderness.

  Some sixth sense warned me that his eyes, that would never be still and that would not miss anything, had already searched me out. It warned me, as I cowered in my hiding place, that this man, though he travelled through a strange and frightening land, had no fear of it or me.

  While he was still far off, I told my mother of his approach. For the moment, she appeared unconcerned and continued her work in and around our cabin.

  Constructed of Raphael teak, a wood as strong as iron, this was set into a solid rock face that hid it from above and all but masked it from prying eyes below.

  The stranger came nearer, ever nearer, until I was able to see him quite clearly. Of average height and build, he was dressed in a black leather coverall and appeared to be unarmed.

  I grew confident. I was equipped with a pump action gun and a twin-bladed knife with a serrated edge. I was also familiar with this terrain. It was my sanctuary into which he had come. But, despite my advantage, my judgment of distance must have been faulty. All too soon, he was upon me.

  I rose to my feet and pointed the powerful gun at him. No more than a few feet separated us. He stopped, stood very still for a moment, then turned to look at me. Was it my imagination, or did he smile? It was hard for me to tell, for my eyes held his and I found myself peering into deep, dark reservoirs of exhaustion and pain. The exhaustion that comes from the act of mere living and the pain of disappointment in the acts of others.

  For all that, our visitor exuded a kind of menace that caused me, even in the intense heat of that day, to shiver with apprehension.

  Neither of us spoke until my mother walked over to us and asked his name.

  He seemed reluctant to take his eyes off mine, but now he turned them like twin lasers upon her. The intensity of his gaze caused her to step back in alarm. I pumped a charge into the chamber of my gun.

  “Do you intend to shoot me?” the stranger asked.

  “It’s possible,” my mother replied.

  “Ah! Then the matter is open to discussion.” This time there could be no doubt that he smiled. It was as if a bright light had been switched on or a cloud had scudded away to reveal the rays of a sun. But it was a smile that was soon gone and that might never have been.

  “Who are you?” my mother asked him again.

  “My name is Avon.”

  I frowned. Avon was an Earth name and the Earth was the heart of Federation power.

  “Where have you come from?”

  Avon pointed to the sky.

  “And where are you going?”

  He seemed to have to think about that. “I don’t know. Perhaps somewhere I have never been,” he said finally.

  “I am called Mara and this is my daughter Rowena,” my mother said. “Do our names mean anything to you?”

  Despite her show of confidence, I could tell she was afraid. My father had been killed fighting with the Dissidents in the recent wars and it was possible that this could be a Federation officer or a bounty hunter.

  Avon seemed to read our thoughts. “I am not of the Federation,” he said.

  “How can we be sure?”

  “You can’t!”

  He and my mother laughed.

  “You are welcome here,” she said.

  I was surprised. She rarely welcomed anyone, but forced them to move on.

  I looked once more at the man who had somehow succeeded in piercing her armour of distrust. He looked back at me. He reminded me of a great cat considering if it would be wise for him to enter another’s domain.

  For a while, it seemed as if he was about to reject the offer of hospitality. My mother, older and wiser than I, indicated that I should lower my gun. I did so and only then did Avon move. He followed her to our cabin.

  Pushing aside the canvas cover, my mother ushered him into the single room that ran thirty meters from east to west. After the brilliance of the day outside, it took some moments for our eyes to adjust to its semidarkness.

  Avon saw the fireplace at one end of the room and the two cots that my mother and I used for sleep at the other. His glance passed over our few sticks of furniture and came to rest on the hole at the base of the rear rock wall. He raised an eyebrow in enquiry.

  “It’s a well,” my mother told him, “fed by a stream in the hills. It’s good, clean water.” She began to prepare food for us. “We were forced to move here from Phax’s city,” she said. “We’re able to hunt for f
ood and we brought with us an adequate supply of protein and vitamins.”

  Avon eyed my gun. “What about ammunition?”

  “Limited, but Rowena is careful and accurate.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  My mother nodded to me and I placed the weapon on a rack attached to the wall. Once I had done so, the tension seemed to drain out of Avon’s body and I was able to see how tired he was. “Lie down,” I said. “I will bring your food and water to you.”

  Avon sat on the edge of my sleeping cot. His back was to the wall. His field of vision covered the entire room as well as the canvas entrance. “Where is Phax’s city?”

  “A thousand kilometers from here. On the dark side of the moon,” my mother replied.

  “The moon?”

  “Phax is one of eight moons that orbit the satellite Raphael.” I interrupted. “Didn’t you know you were on Phax?”

  “I’ve run from the Edge of Uranus,” he said. “I’ve lost my sense of direction.”

  “Are you running from the Federation?”

  “Subsidiaries more like.”

  I shuddered. Subsidiaries were half-crazed female mutoids paid to hunt down important fugitives and to engage in other unsavory tasks.

  My mother handed me food and a beaker of water. I passed them to Avon. “Are you a Dissident?” I asked as he devoured what I had set before him. He shrugged.

  “You fought against the Federation?” I persisted.

  “Yes.”

  “Through the wars for Uranus?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you killed many men?”

  My mother gave me a look that seemed to forbid the question, but Avon answered it.

  “Many men. Some women.”

  “Of the Federation?”

  “What else is there but the Federation?”

  I don’t know why I asked the next question or how I knew what the answer would be. “Are you a Killer man?”

  Avon looked at me sharply. “I was once.”

  I frowned. Killer men formed an elite group whose members carried out assassinations and torture on behalf of the giant Earth corporations. I turned my back on him and walked from the room into the outside air.

  Darkness was gathering and the moons of Raphael were fading into temporary oblivion. They must have distracted me, for I did not hear Avon approaching me. He was as silent as a cat.

  “By the light of one moon,” he said, “you appear very beautiful. Imagine the effect created by seven.”

  Night fell like a black curtain and we stepped back into the cabin where my mother had prepared a bed for him.

  He washed in clear, cold water. Then he laid himself down and was instantly asleep.

  We could have killed him then. We didn’t and he knew we wouldn’t.

  The night time passed and, waking at first light, I could see that my mother still slept. Avon was gone.

  I sprang from my cot and, not bothering to dress over the simple shift I wore for sleeping, I ran outside.

  All the moons were full and gave off a light equivalent to that of two Earth suns. I was temporarily blinded.

  When my vision cleared, I saw that Avon was standing in the shadow of a rock. His head was tilted to one side as he listened intently.

  I approached him and his eyes flashed a warning. Then I heard it. The swish of rotor blades as they cleaved the air. The drone of a muffled engine.

  Avon beckoned me into the shadows. “Heliplanes,” he said. “Two of them flew past us heading west.”

  “Are they looking for you?”

  “I think they’ve found me!” He smiled. This time there was no bright light, no hint of the rays of a sun. This was a smile like a shard of ice.

  I noticed he was carrying my pump action gun. I looked into his eyes. They held a strange fire. His skin seemed alive, as if charged with an electric current. He quivered with excitement, reminding me of a great hound straining for the kill.

  “I’ll help you,” I said, but my words were drowned as a heliplane suddenly appeared as if from nowhere. It roared into plain view directly above us.

  Avon threw himself to the ground, rolled out of the shadows, rose on one knee and fired the pump action three times in rapid succession. Almost in an instant, he was on his feet. He fired again at the heliplane as its impetus carried it away from us. For a moment it seemed to hover in the sky like a gull, then it exploded in a ball of fire.

  I gasped in terror, shock, excitement and admiration.

  Avon took my arm and we ran to the cabin. “Protect Mara,” he said. “Whatever happens, don’t leave here.” Then he was gone in search of the other aircraft.

  My mother, rudely awakened, stood guard with me at the entrance to our sanctuary. There was silence.

  We knew that heliplanes carried a maximum of three. Each one would transport a pilot and two Subsidiaries.

  A shot rang out and splinters of Raphael teak splattered the room. I saw a Subsidiary dash from cover and charge towards the cabin, its giant strides eating up the ground.

  Almost immediately, there was another blast and the creature exploded as if it was a canister of flammable liquid. Then there was a tremendous noise of firing and dirt and debris rose in clouds as pump action bursts scored the ground in front of us.

  I took cover as best I could. I was shaking with a combination of fear and excitement.

  The gunfire seemed never-ending.

  My mother cried out as a rock splinter struck her face and I turned to help her. A second Subsidiary entered the cabin behind me. I whirled round and stared at it. I was frozen with fear. It was hideously scarred and its mouth was covered in a white foam like some rabid dog. It. stepped towards me and I fell back in horror. Then it cried a terrible cry and crashed to the floor. A parabolic knife was thrust into the back of its neck.

  Avon stepped nonchalantly into the room. “Are you all right?”

  I nodded. He smiled and was gone again.

  I ran to the entrance and watched him as he loped away to the west. There he would find the other heliplane and its pilot.

  Within a short while, a column of smoke rose into the sky.

  Some time later, Avon returned. He extracted the knife from the Subsidiary’s corpse. “The pump action jammed on me,” he said. “It was as well I had this.” He smiled. He knew that I had thought him unarmed. “I’ll get rid of this,” he said and dragged the body outside.

  My mother was unconscious, but not dangerously wounded. I bathed her cut face and, deciding not to move her, covered her with a thick animal hide to keep out the chill of the night.

  The day went. Later, in deep darkness, Avon came to my bed. I did not protest when he removed my shift and lay down beside me.

  I had never been loved before and I would never again be loved so well.

  His mouth sought mine. He carassed my eyes, my face, my breasts, and his bitter perspiration mingled with mine. He entered me. Pain and pleasure commingled. Even as he burst within me and I cried out, I knew he had planted his seed. That I would mother his child.

  Long afterwards, as Raphael’s moons spread their fingers of light in anticipation of the dawn, we walked outside the cabin on the killing ground of yesterday.

  “I must go to Phax’s city,” he said.

  “Why?” I clung to him.

  “I am the prey of many hunters. Sooner or later, they’ll find me. There’ll be a reckoning and I would prefer it to be on my terms and on ground of my choosing.”

  “What if the Federation have taken the city?”

  “I doubt that they have. Otherwise, we would be fighting Death Squads not Subsidiaries.”

  “If you go, I know I will never see you again.” I said helplessly.

  He smiled a sad smile. “I was a Killer man,” he said, “for the corporations on Earth. I had a change of heart and mind and ran from them. They do not forgive easily.” All the time he was speaking, his eyes scanned the sky and the wilderness that surrounded us. “I ran to Ur
anus,” he went on. “It’s an awful place.” He shuddered.

  “It has great mineral wealth,” I said.

  “Yes. It was a secret that was soon discovered. The Federation moved in and the wars began.”

  “My father died in those wars,” I said quietly. “Once we heard of his death, Mara and I left Phax’s city and hid here.”

  “We fought a great battle on the Edge of Uranus,” Avon said as if he had not heard me. “We fought and lost. The survivors ran. Some went into the Beyond, where even the Federation does not dare to follow.”

  “Stay with me in this sanctuary,” I said urgently.

  “It won’t remain a sanctuary for long. If I stay, they’ll come for me. When they find me, they find you. I think you’re too young to die!” He smiled. Then he took me back into the cabin and loved me once more.

  I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. When I awoke, Avon was gone forever.

  When many Earth months had passed, the thought that he was dead came into my mind.

  I cradled his son in my arms. “Your father is dead,” I whispered. “Rogue Avon is dead.”

  The child was silent. He looked up at me and I saw in his eyes the familiar darkness of disappointment and pain.

  The boy was my whole Universe. He was Kerr Avon, the only son of Rogue. The Universe would know his name.

  PART ONE

  Rogue

  1

  The Federation had conquered Uranus and its satellites and ruled most of the known Universe. Its empire stretched to the rim of Andromeda, to the edge of the Beyond.

  In celebration, it now assumed a benevolent expression and declared a new era of harmony and peace.

  It allowed the cannon fodder of resistance to return to its former controlled, monotonous routine. Reprisals were few. Surveillance techniques were such that this majority could be effectively policed.

  However, those who were thought to have the potential for leadership were ruthlessly pursued and captured or slaughtered.