Stephen wrote: <Fairly strongly is putting it mildly - The Liberator is his price for his participation in the attack on control.> Yes ... and no. He does this quite carefully, you will notice (sorry, long quote coming) ...
BLAKE: Yes, that had occurred to me. You better start getting kitted up. Do you want to tell me why?
AVON: I like the challenge.
BLAKE: You dont want to tell me why.
AVON: If we succeed, if we destroy Control, the Federation will be at its weakest. It will be more vulnerable than it has been for centuries. The revolt in the Outer Worlds will grow. The resistance movements on Earth will launch an all-out attack to destroy the Federation. They will need unifying. They will need a leader. YOU will be the natural choice.
BLAKE: Possibly.
AVON: Dont be modest, Blake. You are the only one that they would all follow. You would have no choice. You would have to stay on Earth and organize the revolt.
BLAKE: If theres no other way.
AVON: There wouldnt be.
BLAKE: That still doesnt explain why youre backing me.
AVON: With you running the campaign on Earth, somebody has to take charge of all this.
BLAKE: [Laughs] You want the Liberator.
AVON: [Almost laughs] Exactly. If we succeed, the destruction of Control gives us both what we want.
Avon very carefully *doesn't* say that being given the Liberator is his price - that he won't join in unless Blake agrees to it. Instead, he puts it as the natural consequence of Blake succeeding (and therefore a strong reason for him to go), but not as a condition of his involvement. I think it's a rather brilliant way of putting a claim in *without* having to deal with Blake's answer to a more direct 'price'. This way, Blake knows he wants the ship, but he hasn't actually demanded it, Blake doesn't need to answer either way, and as a bonus, Avon has a nicely self-serving reason to Do The Right Thing.
Gorgeous bit of verbal game-playing on both sides, actually.
<After all, in pressure point the conversation between Avon and Blake presupposes that control of the Liberator is something that can be decided between Avon and Blake. (Interestingly Blake hedges. "There's no hurry" He needs Avon's cooperation at this point, but realises that the crew might have something to say).>
Jenna might, true. From his knowledge of Cally and Vila, Blake could IMO predict that if Avon wanted command, Avon would have it (as in fact happened in S3).
The ownership status of the Liberator is a difficult point (bearing in mind, of course, that the actual *legalities* of ownership would hardly count with this lot anyway). The three of them - Blake, Avon and Jenna - were sent onto the Liberator, but it was Blake who saved them from the same fate as Leylan's men. Then Jenna was the one whose mind Zen read, but that seems not to have counted for much where the crew (or indeed Zen) were concerned, and was never mentioned again.
Blake clearly considers it his from the first. He calls it 'my ship' to Vargas; I hope he hasn't been silly enough to say it to the others *just* yet, but the line "I need a crew" was fairly blunt. In that wonderful bluff in Time Squad, he seamlessly shifts the status quo from 'not doing anything without discussing it thoroughly' to 'anyone who wants out of *his* agenda also wants to leave and should say so' (and I for one love it - and him). And Avon actually helps him ("Oh, I will ..." thereby conceding Blake's 'right' to do this, whether wittingly or not).
After this, the others do seem to accept that if there's a disagreement about what the ship is being used for, it's the other person who has to leave, not Blake (Jenna and Gan as early as Time Squad, Avon and Vila in Breakdown) which would imply very strongly that they see it as his rather than a joint possession (Horizon is different, since Avon was IMO trying *very* hard to pretend that he believed that the evidence said that they might sort of kind of be dead. And failing utterly, BTW).
_________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.