Blakes Seven Tales

Roj didn't say anything. Even based on the few brief encounters and conversations that they'd had, he sensed, intuitively, that Cral was entrenched in his views. Converting him would not be easy, nor could it happen overnight. But Roj loved a good challenge, and he believed Cral was worth the trouble.

The long conversation he anticipated could not happen on that same day, though. They both needed to return to the dome urgently, before their absence raised suspicion. Roj parted with Cral and retraced his steps through the same old tunnels and service corridors which he had passed on the way out.

For the next few days, he was busy searching for a way to neutralize the suppressants in food and water. He consulted with Aran and relied on her expertise to find the solution. Meanwhile he made reserves of water from the spring he had found outside, and bought food from the free traders who smuggled their goods from the non-Federated worlds.

He waited eagerly for a message from Cral. Even after their love-making, Cral had remained closed and secretive. He would not give Roj any contact details, nor tell him anything about his unit, about where it was stationed or what his daily duties were; so there was no way Roj could reach him first or initiate their next meeting. All he could do was wait, wait for Cral to get in touch, and meanwhile plan what he was going to say, work out the best way to explain his struggle to Cral and win him over.

When the message finally came, Roj realized that he had been planning in vain.

Roj,

I won't be able to meet you this week, or the next. Not for the next two years, in fact. The conflicts in the Outer Worlds have escalated and there is an urgent need for reinforcements. I'm leaving Earth this very day.

They are sending me to Zircaster. It's bad there. The uprising is violent and the troops are getting killed every day. Yes, the rebels too. I know you care more about that lot. Me, I just want to survive. And if possible, protect the lives of men under my command. It won't be easy. But if I make it, and if I do well, I will be promoted. Then I can come back to Earth, and we can be together.

Roj, I wish I could see you one more time before I leave, if only for a short while. Then I could make you look me in the eye and promise me, swear, that you would keep out of trouble until I return. But since I can't get that promise from you, I can only hope that you will do as I ask. Finish your studies, take the job the administration has assigned to you. Live quietly and wait for me. For while I'm freezing in some muddy trench with one meal a day, under laser fire, I will think of you and hold on to the hope that you are safe.

Yours always, Cral

"Cral," Roj wrote back,

What you ask is impossible. Much as wish I could see you one more time before you leave, meeting you face to face would not change my mind. I cannot make the promise that you want me to. I cannot ignore the terrible injustice in this society and focus only on personal happiness.

I wish you could stay. I wish I had time to explain to you that serving the Federation is wrong, and that you should quit, side with me and join the rebellion. But you haven't given me a chance.

I will be here when you return. But I expect that by then we will be two different men.

Love always, Roj

*

Two years later, Roj Blake and the members of his rebel cell found themselves surrounded by the black-clad troopers who appeared seemingly out of nowhere, having waited in an ambush long before the rebels' meeting started.

Blake raised his arms, looking into the eyes of his former lover.

"Cral, we are unarmed. We surrender."

Space Commander Cral Travis returned his gaze coldly, without saying a word. Then he ordered his men to open fire.

"I've no idea what you're talking about."

"Don't try that with me," Cral warned. "I saw the girl. I saw her leading you up the pass. But I was too far away to follow, and by the time I caught up, the two of you disappeared somewhere among those hills." He pointed with his head. "Now you're alone. So clearly, she must have been an Outsider, and she took you to their hideout. I have orders to locate them. You'll tell me where they are."

"Not a chance."

"We'll see about that," Cral said, and fired.

*

When Roj opened his eyes, he realized he was tied to a tree. His hands were cuffed to a branch above his head and almost all of his weight rested on them, as his feet were hardly touching the ground. The position was distressing, the metal cuffs already starting to cut into his wrists. The blast from Cral's gun must have been a stun blast, Roj realized: painful muscle cramps throughout his body confirmed it.

Cral saw him coming to, and walked up to him.

"Where are the Outsiders?"

"Go to hell, Cral," Roj said angrily. "I won't tell you anything. I thought you were different."

Cral grabbed the collar of his shirt with both hands and leaned into his face.

"You're still an idiot, aren't you? You haven't got any smarter. You don't realize how bad it is. If you don't talk to me, I'll have to hand you over to Central Security, to their Interrogation Division. They'll torture you. I've seen what they do to prisoners. I – I don't want to see it happening to you."

Again, there was a strange note of warmth and concern in Cral's voice that Roj found so difficult to understand.

"So I'll make you talk."

Cral drew his truncheon. Roj clenched his fists, steeling himself. The severity of the first blow still caught him by surprise. Cral struck him hard across the face. More blows continued to rain down on him, as Cral repeatedly hit his stomach and ribs, and kicked his shins. Those were not the precise, calculated strikes of an interrogator; they felt angry, intense, personal. Roj gasped in pain. Cral stepped back, catching breath.

"Talk, damn you!"

"I can't!" Roj cried, his mouth filling with blood. "If I talk, those people are done for! There are families there, women and children and old folk. They'll all be butchered, or taken to slave pits. How can this be all right with you? You say you care about me. Why can't you care about them, too?"

Cral swung his truncheon again. Helplessly, Roj shut his eyes and turned his head away, expecting another blow.

It didn't come. Instead, Cral took out the magno-key and uncuffed him.

Roj almost collapsed, his body shaking with strain. He dropped on one knee and supported himself with his aching arms. Slowly, he regained balance and stood up, nursing his injured wrists.

Cral sat on the ground nearby, hiding his face in his hands.

"Go," he said. "You're free. Go wherever the hell you like."

Roj tilted his head, confused, wary. Was it a trick? Did Cral want him to go so that he could secretly follow, hoping that Roj would inadvertently take him to the Outsiders' hideout? But Cral couldn't possibly expect him to be so naive. Besides, the man's behaviour suggested something entirely different. Cral seemed genuinely shaken. Carefully, Roj approached him.

"Just leave me alone, Alpha. Go."

"Is this what you really want?"

Cral uncovered his face and lifted his eyes, looking hurt and bewildered. "I don't know," he said. "I don't know what I want."

He clenched his fists, firmly deciding that he would rather die of thirst than return to the dome to drink drugged water. Half-instinctively, he headed east, towards a hilly terrain and the mountains looming misty in the background.

At one point, in the distance, he spotted a single trooper patrolling the area: luckily, the man was not looking in his direction at first, and by the time he did, Roj had managed to find some cover among dry bushes. He dropped to the ground and kept still until the trooper walked away.

He spent several more hours walking, tormented by increasing thirst. He checked his chrono: it was now twelve hours since his last drink of water. He was beginning to experience severe symptoms of dehydration: headache, dizziness, muscle cramps. His mouth and throat were parched. Several times he tried to chew on the stalks of greyish summer grass, but there was hardly any juice in them.

Finally, reaching the first slopes at the foot of a mountain, he heard a faint rumbling noise. Stumbling, he hurried towards it, and on the other side of a hillock spotted a small pond and a clear stream filling it with water. He almost threw himself into it, plunging his head and torso into the water, drinking greedily. It was the best water he had ever tasted. He drank and drank, and then, exhausted, he rolled onto his back on the soft grass on the shore and fell asleep in the mild heat of the summer twilight.

*

"Roj?"

He opened his eyes lazily, enchanted by the quiet of nature. He didn't sense any threat: the youthful voice calling his name merged with the sounds of his surroundings, the rustling of vegetation, the buzzing of night insects, the soft sighs of nocturnal wind.

"Roj, wake up! It's dangerous to stay here."

He opened his eyes fully, finally recognizing the girl's voice and her face, hardly visible in the moonlit darkness. She was a member of Ida's activist group, a Delta girl he knew from the time of their peaceful protests. "Loree?" he muttered. "How come you're here?"

"Not now," she said, tugging at his arm. "We're in the open. There are patrols. Come on, I'll take you to safety."

He got up, then changed his mind and turned towards the stream to drink some more. He ran to catch up with Loree. They reached a hidden plateau and he saw an entrance into an old tunnel. Loree turned on a torch and took him inside, down a corridor and into a wider area that once could have been an underground train platform. There were people there: dressed in all kinds of torn rags and old-calendar style clothes, sleeping in niches, cooking meals on an open fire, talking in small groups. Some of them lifted their eyes and observed the newcomer inquisitively, but seeing Loree, they felt reassured and resumed their activities.

"They're Outsiders!" Roj exclaimed. He had never seen them before. He was delighted to see so many people living out of reach of the Federation's control. No wonder contact with them was strictly prohibited, he thought: they represented a viable alternative to tyranny.

"Yes – I've been living with them for more than a year now," Loree said. "After Ida was arrested, and after that terrible false confession that they forced her to make, I knew there'd be no point in staying in the domes any longer."

"So this is where you've stayed, ever since?"

"No – we keep changing location, every month or so. The Federation wants to wipe us out completely. The Outsiders are massacred, or sold into slavery on the frontier worlds. Our settlements are razed to the ground. In the domes, no one knows that this is going on. My group has been lucky to avoid it so far."

Roj's face darkened. "It's time we stop avoiding the Federation, Loree, time to stop running and start fighting back."

Loree nodded. "He wants to fight, too... He has changed."

"He?"

"Come," she said, smiling, and took his hand. "I'm taking you to meet Bran Foster."

*

He and Bran Foster talked for hours; discussing politics, strategies of resistance, their ideas of a just society. Roj discovered that he liked the old man much more than he would have guessed. He had always considered Foster a moderate; but exile and persecution had radicalized him, too. When Roj proposed guerrilla tactics, Foster did not oppose.

"Precise strikes," Roj explained. "Carried out by small, well-trained groups. We'll blow up communication relays. Arms depots. Factories producing assault ships. Everything that makes the empire tick. And also," he added, thinking of his father and of Ida, "I want to strike at the Rehabilitation Centre in our dome. Free all the prisoners undergoing treatment there."

"Very well," Foster said. "We'll discuss it in detail the next time we meet. Now it's time for you to return to the dome, before anyone notices you're missing."

"Return? No, I want to stay here with you."

"I know," Bran said and placed a fatherly hand on Roj's shoulder. "But we need people in the domes working for our cause. You will be able to bring us news, learn things we cannot know from here. Stay inside, Roj. Pretend for as long as you can that you're a loyal citizen. Recruit more people. Alert them about the tranquilizers in food and water. Find a way to neutralize them."

They parted and established the time and place for their next meeting. Roj left the Outsiders' shelter, feeling more hopeful and optimistic than ever.

He returned to the valley from which the lights of the dome were visible in the distance. The darkness was thinning; it was close to dawn. Passing through a sparse forest, Roj suddenly felt weary after all the excitement of the previous day. He sat on the dry summer grass, leaning against a tree to rest.

He felt the cold metal of a gun muzzle press against the back of his neck.