Con Amore

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Con Amore

By Marian and Nico
(The Alternate Universe Brigade)

    "I shall go under an assumed name," Avon said, flipping through the ship-spotters convention catalogue.

    Vila leaned over his shoulder, an action calculated to annoy. "Why's it called Redemption?"

    Avon frowned and answered with exaggerated patience. "Because it's sponsored by the Used Spaceship Dealers Association and they will be selling redeemed ships there."

    "Eh? Redeemed? Sounds sort of religious."

    "They have a lower class of customer from whom they often have to retrieve their goods when they don't meet their payments."

    "Ah. Repo men."

    "With whom you are no doubt very familiar."

    Vila was offended. "I've never bought anything in my life." A thought struck him and he looked nervously at Tyce, who was leaning against the wall enjoying the conversation. "Come to think of it, we never bought this ship either, you know. I hope we never run into the original owners."

    "I wouldn't worry," Avon said absently, reading an article on Wanderer-class planet-hoppers. "Given your record, we'll just blame you."

    "I wasn't even there!" Vila was outraged, then thoughtful as the implications of being held responsible for the theft of the fastest and most powerful ship in the galaxy. He would be a legend...but a dead one. He scowled. "Oh now look, your reputation--"

    "Is this your first convention, Avon?" Tyce asked quickly, wanting to forestall another argument. She was fascinated by these eccentric people and she had grown oddly fond of Vila. She had never regretted stepping smartly off the teleport bay as her pompous and tedious father flickered away to his destiny, or, to be more precise, his Lindor. "I've never been to one. In fact I'm still a virgin where cons are concerned."

    Vila was successfully distracted. "No, you're not," he said smugly. "I'm your first con."

    Behind Tyce, Avon smiled and said nothing. Vila looked a trifle worried.

    "Avon's just winding you up, Vila. I have better taste than that and he thinks he does. Come here and let me smooth that troubled brow..."

    "Don't you mean soothe?"

    "Both."

    "Oh... Mmmm, that's nice... Don't you have a gadget to invent, Avon?"

    Avon's smile got wider. "I already did."

    Blake burst into the room. "Oh, hello, Tyce, listen, I have to borrow Vila for a moment. Avon's gadget brought us Servalan's private safe from the future. I must see her diary!" He clamped one large hand down on Vila's neck and dragged him, protesting, from the room.

    Avon's crocodile grin showed a few more teeth.

    Feeling mollified that Blake had used the word 'borrow' implying Vila was indeed her con, Tyce followed curiously. Avon followed her which gave her a twitchy feeling between her shoulder-blades, which were about on the same level as his eyes.

    "There you are," Vila was saying. "Opens like a pub door." He put his head in the safe only to have Blake exasperatedly pull him away.

    "Just a moment. Ah, here it is." Blake opened a small book-pad bound in white leather, and began flipping through the entries, while Vila and Avon banged their heads together in their eagerness to get at the rest of the safe's contents.

    "Ow, that hurt!"

    "Fool!"

    They glared at each other, then dived for the safe and promptly did it again.

    "Damn it, Vila, age before idiocy." Avon snaked his hand in and retrieved a chamois pouch of what felt like large jewels.

    Vila sighed and took the only other object, a small closed-comms device. Grumbling, he retreated to the corner beside Tyce and opened it. His eyes widened. "It's direct access to her numbered bank acc--"

    "Bloody hell!" Blake stood there like a pole-axed ox. "Terminal! I'll give her Terminal in another sense of the word. The bitch."

    "Tsk, language, Blake, language," Avon said distractedly as he upended the pouch over the coffee table. "Ugh!" He recoiled in repulsion.

    "Why would Servalan keep a collection of children's toy marbles?" Vila wondered, then gulped as the round objects stopped spinning and stared upward at him with brown irises, blue irises, green, hazel, gray, black, albino pink and even, disconcertingly, purple. "Travis's spares?" Vila guessed. "They are synthetic?" he said hopefully.

    Avon prodded a brown one with a laser probe and the orb fell open. After his initial flinch, Avon leaned closer. "Not only synthetic, they appear to be sophisticated holographic record/playback devices."

    "Ah," Blake said, looking up from Servalan's diary. "I wouldn't..." just as Avon triggered the playback.

    An image of Blake appeared, grinning, and wearing...

    Blake lunged forward and crushed the eyeball, shutting off the image.

    Avon blinked. He had an afterimage seared across his retinae which his brain was still processing. Blake, young and glossy, shining white and smooth as a peeled hard-cooked egg--all over, with the exception of shoulder length curls. Blake, expansive chest and expanded...well, that too, criss-crossed with black leather strips lavishly dotted with chrome-silver studs. Blake, holding a white ostrich feather duster in his left hand, and liter jug of honey in his right. Avon frowned. "You lied."

    Blake said defensively, "No, I didn't. I never did say exactly why I wouldn't let you kill Travis."

    "I don't mean that. You said you didn't like honey."

    Blake looked at Avon, and put his finger in his mouth, slowly, sucking on it as he drew it forth, his eyes continuing to hold Avon's gaze. "I don't anymore. I had a sweet tooth in my youth, but my tastes have matured. I now prefer something a bit more tart ."

    Avon's grin sprouted a few more sharp teeth as he moved closer to Blake. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean. Would you care to explain it to me in detail?"

    Vila turned to Tyce. "They'll be busy for hours," he whispered. "Why don't you and I go have a night on the town at Servalan's expense?"

    He snatched up Servalan's diary as they left. "Something racy to read," he said with a grin.

*******

    "I've never done that before!" Vila's eyes were bright, his face flushed, and he was still a little breathless.

    Tyce was much the same. "Neither have I." She slid her arms around him. "But I've always wanted to. It's wonderful, and just the right size."

    Vila snuggled into her, his head fitting nicely between her breasts. "I thought you might think it was a bit small."

    She kissed him on the top of his head. "Well, I've seen bigger, but it's just beautiful."

    Vila beamed. "And fast too. What are we going to call it?" They turned to look at their new spaceship. "How about 'The Getaway'?"

    "Perfect." She took his hand. "Let's put it into practice."

    "Hang on a mo." Vila looked nervous. "What will Blake and Avon say when they find out?"

    Tyce thought about how they had looked the last time they had seen them. "Somehow I don't think they'll notice for a while."

    Vila's face fell.

    "Oh, come on, I didn't mean it like that. When they do come up for air, they'll find we left Servalan's diary for them to read with our message explaining that if we change the future it won't happen."

    "All right." Vila cheered up. "And we'll make sure never to go anywhere near any of those planets, especially that Gauda Prime hole."

    "Done."

    They joined hands and ceremonially leaped over the threshold of the ship's open airlock together. They prepared for takeoff and Vila struck a pose in front of their new ship's renamed computer and looked at his fingernails. "Take us up to high orbit, then time distort 20 to somewhere nice, will you, Avon?" he said casually. "Now."

    "At once, master."

    Vila sighed with pure happiness.

*******

Blake rolled over. "How will we know if they succeed in changing the future?"

Avon sniffed, offended that Blake was thinking about anything. "Who?" He lunged for Blake's throat with amorous intent.

*******

Servalan kicked the mutoids, then went off and had a good cry when no one showed up for her Terminal party.

Epilogue:

Jenna and Tarrant flew off with Liberator II while Blake and Avon were visiting the planet GudNookie. (After six months, Blake and Avon still haven't realized they were abandoned.) Soolin and Dayna have gone in business together, leading hunting safaris on 'UkillEm' a planet populated solely by robotic dinosaurs. Gan and Cally were reincarnated as rare, tropical fish that Blake bought for Avon's birthday. (They had discovered that Orac was behind all their troubles so they gutted Orac and turned him into a fish-tank. Slave bribed the dust-man to give him Orac's works in a new computer case and then seduced Orac into bonding with him.)

Deva and Klyn became tired of waiting for Blake and Avon, respectively, and took up needlepoint. They are currently working on a tapestry of 'The Battle of Gauda Prime', which they intend to hang in the tracking gallery to brighten up the place.

(Explanation of the Epilogue, which appears on the surface to be inconsistent and down-right contradictory to the story that preceded it. Read further, and be enlightened.)

1) Jenna and Tarrant flew off with Liberator II

Eh? Liberator II? And how did Tarrant and Jenna get to meet? Surely there's a whole story in that line.

    It's an alternate universe, but they still went to GP, where Tarrant was gun-running and met Jenna as she was sulking in a bar, having walked in on Blake and Avon having a private 'Discussion'. Tarrant really wanted to fly Liberator, and Jenna thought it would be nice to have a 'boy-toy' to flaunt, but the two of them discovered a mutual affinity that went beyond that. When Avon and Orac discovered a method of 'force-growing' a new Liberator (the old one having decided that it was tired of war and wanted to go cruising the galaxy by itself for awhile) they skipped with the ship once the battles were over, and Blake was talking about using the ship to ferry supplies at no cost to various underprivileged planets and Avon was talking about using the ship to ferry very expensive merchandise to overprivileged planets.

    This time Blake and Avon stood shoulder to shoulder against the Feds on GP. Blake had discovered in Servalan's diary that the planet was not only ripe for revolution but had minerals to fuel ships and herculaneum for hulls, and plants that naturally produced an antidote to Pylene 50, which Servalan used (in the universe the diary came from) for many years to decimate the galaxy after the original GP, in which all the good guys bit the dust and Servalan pranced in to claim the rewards and used the money to further her new takeover of the government.

2) Soolin and Dayna have gone in business together, leading hunting safaris on 'UkillEm' a planet populated solely by robotic dinosaurs.

Presumably with enough blood to satisfy Dayna. Did Servalan take a tour she never returned from? And how did Soolin get mixed up with the pre-Terminal crew?

    Servalan got shot down on GP. It was a ricochet from the gun Avon was using to mow down Feds. Avon was annoyed, and so was Dayna because she felt cheated. Soolin was on Gauda Prime, working her way through her family's killers, one of whom was a trooper, so she had disguised herself as a mutoid to get close enough to kill him. She switched sides by blowing away the trooper that was sneaking up on Dayna and then fought side by side with them. Vila voted to include her in the group. (Soolin had been on Avalon's planet and kept transferring from one unit to another until she found the man she was hunting.)

3) Gan and Cally were reincarnated as rare,

How did poor Cally die?

    In the shootout. Things got very confusing, so they aren't quite sure whether she was shot by the trooper aiming at Vila, or by Tarrant aiming at the trooper who was aiming at Vila. But she died with a smile on her face as she connected with the Soul of Auron and dragged Servalan's dying lack of soul along with her, because she knew that the Auronar would be safe from Servalan's schemes (which she had warned Zelda about in a telepatha-gram after reading Servalan's diary). As most of the younger generation had been bored by the isolationist policy which kept them at home playing Galactic Monopoly, they eagerly joined Zelda's Expansionist Party, and the Zeps forced the leaders to begin building space-ships so they could colonize other worlds and spread the Truth of Auron to the Universe.

4) (They had discovered that Orac was behind all their troubles so they gutted Orac and turned him into a fish-tank.

Now that sounds like a very good idea to me. I've often suspected as much.

    Orac blamed Blake for letting Ensor die, and he planned the Whole Thing.

5) Slave bribed the dust-man to give him Orac's works in a new computer case and then seduced Orac into bonding with him.)

   That would serve the little rat-in-a-box right. Soolin bought Slave with her? What happened to Dorian?

    Dorian had showed up on GP because he was an old friend of Servalan's. He was handy for doing various sneaky chores for her, and she often gave him her used-up boyfriends for lunch. He figured he couldn't die, so he walked right into the massacre, grinning like a maniac, but Slave had been able to talk to Zen II (who was much nicer to him than Orac, but as is often the case, Slave fell in love with the one who treated him like dirt and not the nice guy.) Slave's warning was enough for them to capture Dorian. They went to Xenon base and figured out how to switch Dorian with the creature, who reverted back to a really cute, human guy who had affairs sequentially and simultaneously with nearly everyone in the crew and remains on a friendly basis with them although he now lives in Freedom City with Toise and Krantor.

(Further Explanation to a question raised by the Explanation)

1) She (Soolin) switched sides by blowing away the trooper that was sneaking up on Dayna and then fought side by side with them. Vila voted to include her in the group.

     Ah. Now when did our Vila turn up, and was Tyce in tow? I rather thought they'd gone off to do their own thing.

    They did, but when Avon sent them a message that Blake was determined to go to GP, Vila looked at Tyce (no doubt using the 'Twin Brown Pools' method- AKA 'puppydog eyes'), and she surrendered to the inevitable. They went to GP. Tyce was wearing ridiculously high-heeled boots and sprained her ankle on the staircase leading into the base, and sent Vila on ahead of her to try to salvage the situation.

Or did he break up with Tyce and take up with Soolin? Mind you, Tyce may have dumped him...

    Never! Tyce had Vila's wanted poster pinned up above her bed for years.

(Any further questions will be referred to the Dorian -in-the -cellar. )

*******

(This is like potato chips- one explanation leads to another. All right, Dorian-in-the-cellar is now taking messages.)

     But what about Deeta? Surely if everyone is off having fun, then Vinnie will still kill him in the combat ground, and Teal and Vandor will go to war, and the adorable Max could die horribly in the ensuing carnage.

    Since Servalan died before messing around with Teal & Vandor, Vinnie was never built on her order. Tarrant told Jenna he had a nearly identical brother, and she thought the idea had possibilities, so they tracked him down via ads in 'Interstellar Soldier of Fortune' magazine, and added him to their little crew.

    Max stayed at home, and Deva met him on holiday (Teal & Vandor kept the idea of experiencing other people's emotions, but set them up in bordellos instead of battlegrounds after Vila and Soolin visited and gave them the suggestion), and the two decided they were ideally compatible, so they joined forces and began breeding championship Papillon dogs, with such names as 'TealStar Princess of Fluffydom' and 'Herzog Vandor Bremerhaven'.

*******

1) Since Servalan died before messing around with Teal & Vandor, Vinnie was never built on her order.

    NOOOO!!!!!

    Not to worry, the company had the basic Vinnie on the design board for years, and when they switched over to Always Agreeable And Intelligent Escorts he became one of their most popular models.

    Just call AAAIE! and ask for a Vinnie for the night and see what happens.

2) (Teal & Vandor kept the idea of experiencing other people's emotions, but set them up in bordellos instead of battlegrounds after Vila and Soolin visited

    Surely Vila and Tyce?

    No, Tyce was taking the children* to the zoo, and she was afraid Vila would let the lions out again, so she asked Soolin to find something suitably amusing to keep Vila out of mischief.

*What children, you ask? After all, they haven't been together long enough to have children old enough to be interested in a zoo. They adopted three boys they rescued from a Federation cross/cloning project. Avila is a surprisingly biddable child, but Vilak is a holy terror and Jake has to be bribed to keep still.

*******
The end- unless something else needs to be explained.