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Everything that could go wrong on Gauda Prime had gone wrong, yet Avon felt absolutely no surprise.
It was not his usual weary cynicism, the hard-earned pessimism of countless wasted journeys and failed missions. Even in his bleakest of moods, he would have expected the meaningless chaos of life to offer more respite than this. Just how unlikely was it that in the space of a few short hours he could have lost everything bar the clothes he stood in and a gun in his hand? Even if he had deliberately sought this kind of oblivion, he wouldn't have expected things to go this badly.
And yet, simultaneously, he felt no surprise from the moment the blockade gunships had opened fire upon Scorpio. Everything that had happened, everything that had been said and done and thought felt... right. Logical. Inevitable. As merciless a juggernaut as a string of binary commands.
Of course the plan to crash-land on Gauda Prime would not work, of course Vila and the others would use the teleport, of course Tarrant would stay behind, of course bounty hunters would close in around that one random shack in the middle of the woods. Avon might have even considered this suspicious, worrying and yet he couldn't. It seemed very strange that despite knowing teleport was the only way off Scorpio, he had done nothing until Vila suggested it. In his guts he knew that the others were in danger, yet he remained stubbornly in the woods arguing with Orac. He was aware Tarrant was alive, yet was incapable of telling his suspicious crew the fact. He was aware of the mistakes he was making, but he was helpless, a prisoner of a narrative.
When they'd entered the tracking gallery, things had gotten worse. He hadn't been surprised to see Tarrant, impossibly alive and so conveniently in the very first room of the very first silo they'd come across. And he'd known before Tarrant had gasped out a single pained word that Blake was here, that everything suggested that Blake had betrayed them, that Blake was innocent. Even so, Avon's body had turned and shot the man down, his mouth screaming accusations of betrayals. Avon knew troopers were arriving and that if he did nothing, they would all die. He didn't want to stand there over Blake's body being useless. He couldn't move a muscle, do anything except the role that had been played out for him.
The sense of unreality, that he was a character following a predetermined course, got worse with every gunshot he heard. It was as if time itself was starting to slow down, seconds dragging out into minutes. Avon had the odd feeling that either he or the universe were no longer in sync despite their best efforts. At last he heard Tarrant's death cry and was allowed to lift his head and see the approaching black-clad soldiers. They glided forward, like some delicate ballet in time with the warbling music of the alarms. A dance, a pattern he had to follow. He tried all he could not to turn sharply as the troopers stepped over Tarrant towards him, but he had to. He had to turn in a circle, he had to stand over Blake, he had to raise his gun as the alarms stopped and so many guns were aimed at him.
He felt himself smile at a cosmic irony he'd not found amusing for a very long time and commit suicide in a manner he'd definitely had second thoughts about.
The blast froze in mid air.
Everything was frozen, like a paused image.
Avon couldn't move or breathe, but he didn't need to. He could still think. That strange slowing down had now reached the point everything had stopped.
I knew there was no future, but I expected a slightly more subtle metaphor.
The blast flung itself back into the barrel of his gun. The troopers, starting to relax, began to shuffle backwards. Someone turned on the alarm. Avon's concentration was dragged back to Blake's body. He heard more un-shots, the odd sound of footsteps sucking up noises, explosions compressing themselves into charges leaving no damage, the coppery scent of blood draining and the choke of chemical charges softening. Things were unhappening. Events were in reverse, winding backwards.
Suddenly Blake was staggering back to his feet, alive and getting healthier by the second. Avon's gun rose and sucked three plasma bullets out of the man's torso, instantly repairing his flesh. Angry, desperate words were inhaled into throats. Things were speeding up. Blake and his companion scuffled backwards out of the tracking gallery and out of sight. Avon brought a woman back to life, who stopped security from coming, then collapsed half-conscious from oxygen starvation. Suddenly Avon, together with Vila, Soolin and Dayna were running back out of the silo. As a parting shot, Soolin un-killed a technician who began to remove some of the injuries from Tarrant with his bare hands.
Avon was trying to focus, but in that momentary lapse they were in the stuffy heat of the stolen flyer racing out into the winter sky as the morning sun dropped below the horizon. He was talking with the others, making them more ignorant as they grew more alert yet less tense. Then suddenly they abandoned the flyer and were racing backwards through the forest as night fell. He left the others in the hut, bringing to life two more bounty hunters as he scooped off Orac and ran off alone into the darkness. In the blink of an eye it was daylight again and Avon watched the wreckage of Scorpio wrenching itself out of the landscape. Up and up into the air it hurtled, chunks of hull flying together as the battered ship repaired itself until it was flight-worthy again.
Avon was wrenched back by the teleport aboard. Tarrant, looking healthy if not happy, steered the ship backwards up into the sky. The vibrations faded, the lights brightened, a string of unexplosions restored more of the flight deck. Vila, Dayna and Soolin teleported aboard and ran to their positions as they finally catapulted out of the atmosphere and into free space. A swarm of gunships circled them, then retreated with a salvo of improvements and repairs. Scorpio was suddenly in perfect working order and all of them were standing around Orac, Gauda Prime further and further away.
Then with a sickening wrongness the acceleration - or was it deceleration? - bled away. Air molecules vibrated back and forth as noises happened and unhappened. Scorpio was moving backwards and forwards. Orac's lights were dark as they glowed brightly. Avon felt a blinding headache that threatened to split his skull open as he found himself lecturing to the others about the Day of the Bounty Hunter. His words seemed so pretentious and ominous, almost embarrassing. But how often had he said them?
"Thieves, killers, mercenaries..."
His voice slurred and he realised for the first time things weren't happening without his say so anymore. He fell backwards, legs buckling beneath him without commands to stay upright. The others were collapsing like drunkards during an earthquake. Orac was silent.
"Er, Master?" asked Slave. Which he hadn't before. Which couldn't happen. He was supposed to stay idiotically silent until the gunships opened fire. "Sirs? Madams? I do not wish to interrupt but our approach to Gauda Prime appears to have alerted a fleet of space vessels in lower orbit..."
"Get us out of here, Slave!" screamed Tarrant, every word scraping against his throat. Noises he should not make, commands he should not be giving. "Maximum speed!"
"Yes, sir," the computer simpered. "New course laid in and rising to standard by fifteen."
The planet hopper shuddered violently around them but there were no explosions or smoke or flame. Avon gazed sightlessly at the others, still sprawled across the flight deck. He couldn't remember seeing them like this before. It was wrong. Different. They should have been spinning out of control into the atmosphere of GP now, shouting accusations, witticisms and insults over the sound of overloading engines.
"We are now out of the star system specified, sir," Slave said politely. "No sign of pursuit from the Gauda Prime fleet."
"Slow us to stationary," croaked Tarrant. He might as well have been moaning in agony. "Just... just stop."
"Of course, sir."
More time passed before any of them were able to speak.
"Never again," sobbed Vila. "Not another drop. There really are demons in the bottle."
"Wh... what are you talking about?" croaked Dayna feebly.
"I had this horrible dream we crashed on GP and then Avon shot Blake and everyone else got shot too." Vila looked apologetic. Put like that, the events did seem rather contrived and ridiculous. "Must have been the sediment in that last bottle of wine? Or maybe I've inhaled some chemical gas from when the base was smashed up?"
"If you did," said Soolin in a tight, quiet voice, "it's catching. I had the same dream. Hallucination."
"Yes," Dayna rasped. "But everything went backwards, back to before it started."
"Good thing..." grunted Vila, who took several minutes to continue, "You got us away, Tarrant... nearly went through it... twice..."
"It would have been more than the second time," said Orac waspishly. "Your disorientation should fade the more this new timeline overrides the previous one."
"Timeline?" It was the first thing Avon had said, and he immediately felt like he'd overreached himself.
"The chain of cause and effect," the computer said impatiently. "Now Scorpio has not been shot down, the entire pattern of events cannot occur. The crew will not be caught in a Federation trap and thus will not be killed in a pointless and gratuitous display of violence. At present, the scenario on Gauda Prime is no longer a certainty but a probability. With each second that passes, it becomes less and less likely until it becomes an impossibility."
"Are you saying..." Soolin paused, trying not to be sick, "...are you saying we've travelled back in time?"
"Precisely."
"You know how to time travel?" Vila spluttered angrily. "You kept that quiet, didn't you?"
"Generating a temporal fold is elementary quantum mechanics," came the smug reply. "It has been well-known and understood throughout the galaxy for over two hundred and eighteen years. It is, however, to all intents and purposes a meaningless and pointless waste of effort and energy. If the flow of time is restored to a previous point, it will simply start again with the same influences and outcomes as before. Events occur in the exact same pattern until the threshold of the fold is reached. In its simplest terms, a temporal fold merely replays a recording of history without anyone able to influence or change it."
"But we have," Dayna said, brow furrowed. "If you wound us back here and we stopped going to Gauda Prime..."
"You are under the forgivable misapprehension that this is the first and only attempt at a temporal fold."
"You mean it isn't?" Tarrant asked, already guessing the answer.
"Far from it. When your timestreams were reversed to the point before Gauda Prime, your brains were likewise reversed. You had no memory of events to come, therefore you all behaved in exactly the same manner in exactly the same circumstances leading to exactly the same outcome."
"Because we can't remember something that hasn't happened yet." Soolin nodded slowly. "But why now?"
"As the initiator of this temporal fold, I was partially-shielded from the reverse of events."
"The eye of the storm," supplied Dayna.
"A crude but not inaccurate comparison. I was able to calculate a rough approximation that the events on Gauda Prime would lead to mutual destruction and thus was able to prepare the temporal fold ready to activate. With each replay of events, my systems were able to recollect and recalculate the events of the timeline. Eventually, I had enough data to construct a perfect prediction of the events I wished to undo. This I then generated on subliminal frequencies into the sensors of all crewmembers. Each time you went to Gauda Prime and perished, each time I reversed events and attempted to warn you in this manner. At last, your brains have assimilated enough of my projections so that you are aware of the reversal of time and have the capability to alter events."
"So we get a second chance!" Vila laughed weakly, part of him unsure if that was a good thing or not.
Tarrant got to his feet. His legs were wobbly and he remembered bruises and broken bones that couldn't occur now. "Vila's right, you could have told us this before."
"It would have helped us to avoid some other disasters," Dayna agreed.
"Those 'disasters' as you term them, were never of this magnitude. All of you died on Gauda Prime and it was a virtual certainty that I myself would demolished for spare parts by ignorant bounty hunters. This situation was intolerable and a temporal fold was the only possible escape route." Orac cleared its artificial throat. "Furthermore, my reversal of less than twelve hours has not been a simple or straightforward task. The energy requirements were massive and the constant repetition required to break you from your self-destructive pattern were far in excess of expectations. I have spent, relatively speaking, nearly five decades constantly undoing your deaths and the destruction of Scorpio, for the subtotal that the universe outside has barely missed one standard day..."
"Fifty years?!" boggled Vila, sitting up sharply. "You mean we're all fifty years older?!"
"In terms of elapsed time within the fold, you are all forty-seven years five months and two minutes older. In outside term you are actually younger by eleven hours and twelve minutes. In conclusion, I believe it is clear this extreme action can hardly be considered a first resort when circumstances fall against you. And in anticipation of your next suggestions, reversing events to a point before the Liberator was destroyed over Terminal would require not only fifteen thousand three hundred and twenty years of repetition but also the power requirements of eight supernovas over a period of one solar epoch. It is, quite simply, out of the question."
Avon crawled and then clawed his way up into a flight seat. Even with the strain of the temporal fold fading, he felt like never moving again. He'd shot Blake three times, entirely unjustified, watched him fall and die every day for forty seven years. "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it," he heard a voice say, only vaguely-concerned that it was his own.
"So what should we do with our newfound life?" grunted Tarrant.
"Well, we know what will happen if we keep listening to him," said Dayna, glaring at Avon.
"Leave it, Dayna," said Soolin with a sigh. "Getting obsessed over this won't help, especially as it literally won't happen."
"But what happens instead?" she demanded.
"I say, that 'running away' plan we talked about earlier," Vila opined. "Somewhere not covered in bounty hunters and Federation agents. Is that a good idea?"
"What about Blake?" asked Tarrant, feeling a dull ache that he'd nearly/actually got them all killed over his mistake.
"He'll be doing a hell of a lot better without Avon around to blow holes in him," Vila said, swallowing nausea.
"There's still the matter of the spy," Dayna reminded him. True, Arlen had never shot her but that didn't make her feel any more forgiving.
"Yeah, I suppose we better use our newfound knowledge." Vila directed the comment at Avon who was still silent. "Learning from history and all that!"
Deva punched in a set of commands to the wall computer and watched it print out a fresh plasti-square with the same information. He was a successful expert in all the computer sciences and, while at times he wondered if anyone could keep these ramshackle museum pieces working, he was not expecting this sort of malfunction. Quite simply, every time anyone in the silo accessed the computer network, they got the same message. It was impossible not to be confronted by it.
The redhead tapped the latest printout against his teeth as he contemplated the problem.
"My latest capture is in the medical unit," announced Blake, striding into the office. "Superficial wounds to the right leg, should be easily fixed. You can start on the checks."
"No need," said Deva, handing a print-square to the bounty hunter.
His one good eye widened in amazement. "When did this come in?"
"Just a few minutes ago. I think everyone here has probably read it by now."
"Veta Arlen is a Federation Officer specially-planted on Gauda Prime to infiltrate the law-restoration operations for rebel acitivity?" Blake read incredulously. "She is well-trained, highly-resourceful and implanted with a variety of tracking devices... and these atrocities she's been part of! Sigma Two, Cynra, Palmeiro..." He looked up at Deva. "Just where did this information come from?"
"The command prompt is ORAC. The sender is one Philosophical Flea, apparently."
Blake's features flickered into a brief, rare smile. "Well, then I think we can trust it."
"It means the Federation are onto us, Blake. We've got to get out of here right now, before Arlen's disappearance causes questions."
"We can't just give up, Deva..."
"Staying here and getting wiped out by the enemy isn't going to help anyone, even if we're forewarned! I've been worried about something like this all the time, Blake, and so have Klyn and the others. We're not wasting this second chance. If you want to go and dispatch Arlen yourself, I suggest you hurry - there's probably quite a queue forming outside her cell." Even as Deva spoke, gunfire drifted down the corridor into the office. "Well, instead we can focus on getting out of this alive."
"And you're sure the message got through?" asked Tarrant.
"Of course I am!" huffed Orac. "As per your instructions, I informed every individual in Blake's silo and have laid false evidence that Arlen has yet to be captured. Current data suggests that Blake and his movement are preparing an imminent evacuation."
"To somewhere safer than Gauda Prime, presumably," said Dayna.
"Anywhere else would be safer. Almost certainly worth trying to save," Soolin agreed. "But until we know where there's no point chasing after them."
"So what do we do now?" asked Vila guiltily.
Avon still sat at the flight console, silent.
"I suppose someone had better ask him," Tarrant suggested. "Unless any of us have a better idea?"