Work Text:
[The following forms part of archive d65036-h58732-p76815, classified secret R. Keywords: Orac, Roj Blake, Gauda Prime, Kerr Avon. Source: action 12857/23499/se, Gauda Prime.]
~~~
[d65036-h58732-p76815.2571a. Attributed to: Kerr Avon.]
Now I've started to write, I worry that I won't have time to finish, even though I have no real plan for what I'm going to say. Perhaps I'll start by explaining why I'm writing anything at all, after so many weeks of saying nothing.
I have kept silent until now because, frankly, I couldn't see the point in doing anything else. The show trial was very well orchestrated—almost up to Federation standards in fact—but it was still a show. Nothing I could have said would have made any difference to the verdict, would it? I wonder if you will even bother to read what I am writing now.
So, why am I writing this? Well, for one thing it's helping to pass the time. For some reason I've had trouble sleeping these last couple of nights.
For another, I think it's only now that I've accepted the truth. There's no point in lying any more, not to myself and not really to anyone else. By this time tomorrow, I will be dead. No. In less than seven hours time I will be dead. There will be no last minute heroic rescue—there is no one left to make it. If I am going to say anything—leave anything behind—it has to be done now.
Not that, even if you choose to keep this document, it will last for long. It will be destroyed or captured when the Federation take you down. And take you down they will. I say that without any particular pleasure or satisfaction.
That is a lie, of course. But I shall let it stand. I think I might allow myself a little leeway in that regard, under the circumstances. Three lies, let us say, before the end.
Perhaps you will accept a little professional advice. Your security is appallingly bad. Sitting here at this terminal to which you have kindly allowed me access—and which I therefore assume is supposed to be secure—I can see into every part of your operation. I can find my way into your links to the Federation network and so most assuredly the Federation can find their way back to you.
I could tip them off right now, if I were a vindictive man or if I were the traitor you've condemed me as. But there's no need. They already found you once, after all, so there is no reason why they won't manage it again. Gauda Prime is under Federation rule now and, from what I have seen of it, I doubt this base will pose any more of a challenge to them than the last one. You obviously share your late leader's flat learning curve.
Most of you will be dead, before the year is out. Dead, or screaming in Federation interrogation rooms, begging for the chance to sell out every last one of your friends who are still running. Perhaps then, while you can still think anything coherent at all, you'll understand why your own attempts at interrogation didn't create much of impression.
I appreciated the gesture, though. It was flattering to be thought worth it.
So, beyond this document which in all probability will soon be lost anyway, what legacy am I leaving?
I suppose I ought to dwell on my accomplishments rather than my failures, but I'm afraid that would make a short last testament indeed. I had successes in my life, before I decided that honesty wasn't the best policy for getting rich. I was very good at my job and professionally respected. Of course, that was inside the Federation so I don't expect you to be impressed.
I had my name on a number of patents, most of them very lucrative—though for the Federation, not for me. Ground-breaking work, if I might be allowed a little immodesty. I expect my connection to those projects has been erased from the records for years now, so there's no hope of my name lingering on there.
In retrospect, I should have stuck to what I was good at. I find it hard now to understand how I could have sacrificed my comfortable Federation life. It all seems like such a long time ago, and I can barely recognise the man I was then.
I threw my life away for a dream of power and security and for a woman who wasn't real. And afterwards I found I couldn't stop chasing that same impossible goal of somehow being able to make myself safe. Wanting Liberator, fighting the Federation—it was all about safety in the end. Perhaps I should take back that comment about learning curves.
To return to the subject of legacies—there is Orac, of course, although I can't take credit for creating it. But it's certainly the most valuable thing I've ever held in my hands. However, I don't think that my will is going to include gifting Orac to you. For one thing, with the future I predict for you, it is practically the same thing as handing it to the Federation. For another, I doubt you would appreciate it.
So, Orac will stay hidden. Someone will find it in the end, of course, but not, I think, you.
Beyond that, what do I leave? Nothing, really. I saved some lives—quite a lot of lives, actually. On Destiny, Albian, Teal and Vandor, Auron, to name some names. We saved the galaxy once, if that counts, or at least we helped. The Federation did most of the hard work on that occasion, to add to the impressive list of ironies which have made up my life.
But they weren't people who counted, to be brutally honest. They weren't people I knew. Those were more Blake's kinds of victories. They mattered on the grand scale, which has never meant much to me.
On a personal level it doesn't make much of an obituary. 'Survived by no friends or loved ones at all'. The ones who didn't die at my own hand died because they followed me here. Or, like Cally, they died years ago for the same reason that we all die in the end—they simply weren't good enough to stay alive. We weren't good enough to keep each other alive.
To put it more charitably, if you play with fire for long enough, eventually you lose the game. We had to be lucky all the time. The Federation had only to be lucky once, as the saying goes. And I never was very lucky.
I am just little bitter that, in the end, we lost because of your mistakes, not ours. Your poor security. Your inability to guard a base. Your failure to spot a Federation agent. The Federation wasn't even expecting to find us when they came to Gauda Prime. But there's no use, now, in pointing fingers and laying blame.
I'm not going to blame you for the execution, either. I came here looking for you. Looking for idealists—the kind of people who would dedicate themselves to the destruction of the Federation. Looking for fanatics, to be honest, and for people I could use. For once, I found what I was looking for.
I suppose I ought to say that I'm resigned to the coming morning. After all the losses, after all the pain, after the endless, exhausting fight that I never wanted in the first place, the idea of dying isn't so bad. I'm almost relieved that it will be over soon.
That's my second lie.
I'm afraid. There. I'm frightened. It's worse every hour and it's more than I can bear in silence. All I've ever wanted is to be safe. Helplessness scares me more than anything. I hate prisons and locks and the loss of control they represent. Being a prize. Being something on show. They used to keep wild animals in cages, didn't they, for people to look at? The idea of a place like that makes me sick.
And there are the other things. I've always fought to stay alive. I've been willing to sacrifice others to do it and I'm not ashamed to say that. I just don't want to die. I don't want to die and it's so close now—the time when the door will open and you'll come in for me. I don't want to die and most of all I don't want to make a fool of myself as I do it. I want to leave the memory of a dignified end, even if that's all I leave.
I'm terrified that I'll break. That at the very end I won't be able to face you all down and pretend to be cold and indifferent one final time. That the panic I'm fighting right now will take me completely and I'll struggle and cry. That the last thing I'll hear will be my own voice, begging for my life.
Worried about how I'll look, even now. The others would laugh, if there were any others left.
Reading that back, thinking it over, I don't think I shall break down. I think I shall be able to manage this. That makes me feel better. Not a great deal better, but a very little bit.
I don't have much more to say. I'm so terribly tired, and although sleeping seems grotesquely pointless, I think I shall have to.
There are some other things I ought to mention. Two things, and one of them I haven't quite made my mind up about. It's not important, anyway. A favour, if I can bring myself to ask you for one when the time comes. It can wait.
The other is that, before I finish, I suppose I should try to say something about Blake. I haven't been able to before, knowing that once I did I couldn't write anything else afterwards. Ridiculous, really.
Now that it comes down to it, I have no idea what to say.
Obviously, I'm sorry that he's dead. I'm sorriest of all that I was the one who killed him. It was a mistake. A misunderstanding. Another time when neither of us said what we meant, nor listened to what the other was saying. I wish I could be surprised, but somehow, looking back, it seems inevitable.
I came here to find him because—finally—I was willing to admit that I needed him. That he'd been right. The irony is so perfect it hurts.
Blake was an idealist, more purely so than anyone else I have ever met. He represented everything I have always despised about revolutionaries—rule by and for the mob, the idea that causes are more important than people. Yet, somehow, he reached through my cynicism and touched me. For a while he almost made me believe in him and in his impossible ideals.
I hated him for it.
And there is the third lie, which means I must be finished.
All done.
And so, with that, good night.
~~~
[d65036-h58732-p76815.2571b. Recovered attached to .2571a. Attributed to: Unknown political criminal.]
The prisoner was taken from his cell at 08:00.
He was asked if he had any last statement or request. The prisoner requested that his remains be interred near those of Roj Blake or of his crewmates. This request was refused after consultation with the council and it was conveyed to the prisoner that his body would be cremated and the ashes disposed of without ceremony. The prisoner indicated his understanding of these facts.
The prisoner refused the offer of a blindfold and made a further request: that he not be physically secured before execution. This request was also refused after consultation with the council members officiating.
The prisoner made no further comments.
Lots were drawn from the pool of volunteers to determine the composition of the firing squad. Those not selected were cleared from the area at the request of the supervising officials after an unacceptable degree of barracking and abuse directed at the prisoner. Those responsible have been disciplined.
The prisoner against refused the offer of a blindfold. The first volley proved effective, and the attending physician pronounced life to be extinct at 08:47.
~~~
[d65036-h58732-p76815.2571c. Handwritten addendum to .2571b. Attributed to: Unknown political criminal (cross-check medic files).]
I've seen many men die—far too many—but until yesterday I had never seen an execution. Before they took him from the cells, they secured his hands behind his back. So when I saw him first, in the yard, he was already bound. He walked steadily across the wide open space, and to begin with the crowd was silent.
While they were asking the questions he didn't look at me, or at anyone. They locked his wrists to a bolt on the wall at about waist height, so he stood upright, facing the crowd, still not seeing any of us. If I hadn't known the manacles were there I would never have guessed, because he didn't struggle. But I knew, and everyone else there knew. I'd read what he'd written just hours before and I thought about the animal on display.
It seemed to take forever, with drawing lots and clearing the crowd when they started to jeer and spit. But he stood absolutely still for the whole time, very calm, very pale. When they shot him he fell forwards almost gracefully onto his knees, arms stretched taut behind him, with his head hanging down. I couldn't see his face, but when went I over to certify death I saw the blood on his hands where he'd been digging his nails into the stone wall, keeping himself together with the pain. Another ten minutes, another five, and we might have broken him without even meaning to.
And then I touched him, felt for the silenced pulse, and it was over.
~~~
[Archival Comments: File listed for low access priority archival storage. With the destruction of the political criminals on Gauda Prime, the recovery of the body of Roj Blake and the acquisition of the Orac computer (see references), this file is deemed unlikely to be the subject of frequent retrieval requests and further additions to the file are not expected. Status: File closed.]