Red Shift

Text too small or too big? You can change it! Ctrl+ (bigger), Ctrl- (smaller)
or click on View in your browser and look for font or text size settings.
Home/Quicksearch + Random + Upload + Search + Contact + GO List

Red Shift

by Maayan

Subject: [glass_onion] FIC: Red Shift - Rated R Date: Thursday, May 30, 2002 2:31 AM
TITLE: Red Shift
AUTHOR: Maayan
EMAIL: maayan42@yahoo.com
SPOILERS: Spoilers for everything up to Dog With Two Bones. RATING: R
WARNINGS: Language, sexual situations
ARCHIVING: Divine Collective. Leviathan. SUMMARY: Where John has sex with the dead in an orange city, Scorpius looks for a window, Peacekeepers learn something about contamination, Aeryn lies, and Harvey wears a kimono.
THANKS: To Makiko and E for shouldering beta duties. To Neil for the crash course in virology. Mistakes are my own. NOTES: Red Shift follows The Eleventh Hour. It will make a lot more sense if you've read that one first. Chapter titles are taken from T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. Browder's, Black's, Henson's and Co.

Red Shift (or Redshift)
A Doppler shift of observed spectral lines toward longer wavelengths caused by the recession of the object; believed to occur because of the movement of celestial objects outward at increasing rates of speed, and providing the basis for theories suggesting that the universe is constantly expanding. -- Academic Press Dictionary of Science Technology
PROLOGUE -- Let us go then, you and I
Nakedness under the covers -- a shoulder, round, pale, peeking above the sheets.
Darkness and neon lights spill through the window. The heat is cranked up, and it's uncomfortable, but Aeryn can draw the blankets back and he will not be cold.
Vast expanse of bare skin against the dark bedding, Crichton, snoring softly, generous even in slumber. He sleeps as she remembers, on his back, arms flung out, thighs a little spread, left leg bent at the knee. Other times, he would sleep curled around her, or-- John, her John would sleep curled around her, but when she left the bed he would go back to this heavy sprawl, this sated stretch of limbs.
"I'm going. When it's over -- when we're done and everybody's safe. I'll go."
He told her before going to bed. She waited a few arns. She forced open his door and cranked up the heat. She pulled the rumpled bedclothes back to expose his nakedness and sat on the dirty floor next to the futon, sipping fellip nectar.
There might not be much time left to map all the scars.
It's raining, of course, it's raining; the window is closed to keep the heat in and muffles everything: the propulsion engines of the transports zooming by, the brutal orange of the street signs and the glowing angles of the twisted buildings, rising high. There's wind up here, rattling the soiled panes of glass.
Aeryn crouches. She looks close enough to detail the pores of his skin. John used to say that he liked the idea of her watching him sleep, that he slept better with someone watching him; she thought he was insane, but it was a pleasant kind of insanity.
She inhales. It no longer lingers, the lushness of the rain, the tang of fertile earth, the abandon of his land of wild children.
The missing scars she catalogues first.
His brow, obviously, unmarred.
His left thigh, no puckered tissue there.
No burns, most of all, no burns.
Aeryn pulls on the neck of the bottle, a long swallow.
He had said, "I can work with you," and there must be some comfort in that. He also walked back down the mountain before he was fully healed. She waited for a day. Grabbed some Taflik ointment, packed her bag, a few weapons, and sent for Tarek. The mercenary helped her track Crichton down. The Human was still on Tarn.
Tarek gave her an address and Aeryn, who knew better than to break down the door, knocked. The girl couldn't have been more than twenty cycles. Thin and white, track marks on her arms, a dull yellow shirt, dull like the desert. She stepped aside, made way for Aeryn.
Crichton was sitting up on the mattress. Awake. Naked.
That's when she told him, "I want to go with you, John."
"To find Moya?"
She nodded.
He didn't keep her waiting for very long.
Aeryn puts the empty bottle down, to join half a dozen other empty bottles. Crichton will not wake. She smells the alcohol on him. She retrieves the small jar of Taflik ointment from her discarded coat. Crichton's side is a dark shade of blue, almost black. He bruises deep and she doesn't. His wrists look tender. The skin around his neck is still inflamed.
Aeryn takes the time to warm the ointment in the palm of her hand. She follows the ridges of Crichton's ribcage. His breath hitches, his eyebrows tighten a little. She thinks it's about the pain.
Wrapping her arms around his waist to turn him on his side would be indulging in the solidness of him, and tending to his wounds while he is unconscious is enough of a new indulgence. Long thighs, narrow hips, flat stomach. She knows how to play him. She blows a thin cold stream of air across his belly and he curls tightly around himself, exposing his back to her. Aeryn applies the ointment where the bruises reach around his side. Her hands tread in warm, unblemished places.
She forgot the bandages; the ointment will have to do. She'll bind his ribs tomorrow, if he'll let her. They will leave this hole of a hotel, go to the spaceport and pick up the Farscape. She will be cooped up with this man inside that tiny bucket of dren, and they will set after Moya. They'll find a star and make a wormhole.
"When we're done and everybody's safe, I'll go," he had said.
"Home? To Earth?" she asked.
"I'll pick a planet."

CHAPTER I -- Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets
"Two suns."
The alienness settles down in some part of him, although he no longer gawks.
"What did you say?"
"Nothing."
The same answer to too many questions, but it's all he's got; he can't be angry for that long. It's not anger now. It's something else entirely.
"We've got clearance to land," Aeryn says from behind.
"I heard." He pushes the gear stick forward and the Farscape takes a nose-dive through the exosphere. He has to ask. "You know anything about this place?"
"Tesaris. Old civilization, although none of the original population remain. Peacekeepers don't come here. The inhabitants are a mix of different races. Trading planet. Everything is for sale."
John registers every word, but all he really cares about is no peacekeeper presence. Aloud, "That's good. We can lay in some supplies while we follow this lead."
That's it until they land and they need to talk again.
There's one thing worse than hopping from planet to planet for four months alone in the Farscape, and that's hopping from planet to planet for five weeks with someone else in the Farscape. He's not counting Harvey. John knows deep in his marrow what it means to miss Moya, to miss the space, the warmth and the light. The comfort of a good night's sleep in his quarters.
The wormhole was a dead end. Not really, but close enough to make him grit his teeth. It opened in the middle of nowhere. It was sheer luck that the closest inhabited system was within range of the module. John didn't look forward to asphyxiating again. Three worlds later, the first glimpse of hope: a Leviathan with a Luxan and a Nebari on board had stopped for supplies a while back. Nervous, the shopkeeper had told them. The Luxan kept his blade in his hands the whole time. D'Argo, Chiana and Rygel might have freed Moya from whoever opened that wormhole, but something else must have happened. Perhaps they were being pursued.
They slept little or not at all. At one point, Moya was only a week ahead of them, travelling slowly on an opposite vector from Pembra station. John didn't need to voice his suspicions. Aeryn beat him to it. "Moya must have been damaged, crippled in some way," she had said on the way to Keret 3.
John nodded, although Aeryn could only see the back of his head. Moya hadn't starburst to get away, or they would have lost the trail.
They haven't said it, haven't talked about it. If not for his fruitless quest, John could have gotten to Moya first. Maybe it would have made a difference, and maybe not.
John brings his hand up to his forehead, squints in the light. The module speeds through the thermosphere. Entering the mesosphere now, and John's entire world turns sodium orange.
"The hell?"
"Ridium particles in suspension," Aeryn says. "I've seen this before."
Through the stratosphere and the troposphere, down to the surface bathed in a soft, dim orange. The rays of the twin suns filter through the particles and the orbs radiate dully -- lazy, overfed monarchs perpetually setting.
The chromatic haze mitigates the industrial harshness of the city. Megalopolis, John thinks. Keeping an eye on the landing vectors, he banks the Farscape to the right, taking in the sight before him.
The urban conglomerate is the size of a small country. From the sprawling high-rise pad of the spaceport, it expands in every direction. The homegrown architects know something about structural engineering because each construction is an exercise in defiance. Skyscrapers challenge gravity as far as the eye can see. In the murky glow of the suns, the city walls remind John of Moya's skinsteel.
It's almost homesickness.
He lands the Farscape in the allotted parking spot and runs a quick checklist before popping open the canopy. The module is dwarfed by hundreds of ships of all shapes and sizes. The spaceport comes closer to organized chaos than a Disneyland car park on a national holiday. A small fleet of transports is circling the sky above like a flight of wild zambonis.
John jumps out of the Farscape and Aeryn follows suit. He hides the flinch when his feet hit the ground, jarring his stomach. Last stop, he threw up and found blood in the half-digested food.
He stretches his neck, shoulder muscles protesting too many hours in the pilot seat. Aeryn is adjusting her sidearm. John stuffs a couple of extra cartridges in his coat.
"Let's take care of the paperwork, maybe grab something to eat before getting down to business."
They need sleep as well, but it's obvious, so he doesn't say.
They track down a spaceport official -- some creature half the size of a Sebacean that Aeryn almost steps on -- pay the fee and sign the register. John asks for directions and ends up buying an electronic map that would look like a glorified Game Boy if Super Mario were played in 3D.
"The little guy said we'd find food down one level."
"Level risers," Aeryn says, pointing behind him.
John steps inside the glass bubble affixed to the side of the titanic building supporting the spaceport. He moves closer to the glass panel. Looks down. Blinks. He can't see the ground.
"What's all this fog?"
Aeryn stands beside him. "That's clouds."
John steps back. "Aeryn, just how high are we?"
She reaches for the Game Boy and their fingers brush. He's wearing leather gloves. She pushes a few buttons. The level riser is still going down, and that's just one level.
"It says that the city was built in-- layers."
John cocks his head to the side, but she isn't looking at him. "Layers?"
She nods, absorbed in the details of her reading. "The first inhabitants, the Shelk, built the original city. They died out, some kind of disease, and others came. They built new structures on top of the existing ones, and so on." She purses her lips: quick mental calculation, John gathers. "The spaceport culminates at about-- four thousand metras."
"We're over two miles above ground?"
Aeryn returns the gizmo, unimpressed. The riser grinds to a halt, but the door doesn't open.
"Now what?" John doesn't have the time to build up nightmare scenarios of elevator breakdowns. The cabin pivots around and slides sideways, until it seems to be suspended in the air amid a maze of skyscrapers, flying transports and, John realizes, hundreds of railways supporting thousands of level risers going up, down, left, right and center.
Sweet Jesus. He can still think this. It gets lost somewhere on the way to his mouth.
When the cabin comes to a full stop, they step out into an open-air market wedged between three massive towers. John glimpses slivers of orange sky through a web of rails and suspended bridges. A Nightmare Before Christmas, John muses, because what he can see of the sky reminds him of mashed pumpkin pulp left out to dry in the sun.
"Let's get some food," Aeryn says, pushing through the crowd.
John has been on many commerce planets, in many star systems, but he's never seen that many different species in one place before. Every single creature is different from the next, and John wonders if the two of them look like a couple to the casual observer. He doesn't ponder the question long enough for it to bother him. He's still a little confused as to what should feel like pain, and what doesn't.
Three steps between Aeryn and himself: it's enough and not enough. It's something he wants right now, something he doesn't mind working for. Moving feels closer to inertia all the time. Perhaps, he's really not moving at all. The drift is a function of the expansion of the universe, and he is washed away along with the rest of the galaxy at a rate decreed billions of years before the birth of his world.
"Crichton."
He doesn't know why Aeryn picked that food stand over all the others; he doesn't ask. It looks like a dozen other food stands on dozens of worlds -- hell, it looks like that place he used to stop by for lunch on Quay Street, in Sydney's Chinatown.
Aeryn hands him a bowl. The food is warm. Doesn't smell spicy. Good. His stomach can only handle so much abuse.
John pokes the brown sludge. Checks that everything's dead.

Easy routine. Once fed, they check with the spaceport authorities for records of a Leviathan. They come up empty-handed. It's not enough to deter them, but it could delay things a while.
"We'll hit the local dives for information and gather supplies tomorrow," John says, moving slowly down a platform. He scrubs at his eyes with the back of his hand. It's tempting to fold around the knifing pain. "I'm tired."
He doesn't tell Aeryn that she looks like shit too. They haven't slept since Keret 3, two days ago, tracking another half-assed lead all the way here.
Aeryn nods distractedly. There are tiny lines of tension around her eyes. Muscles are coiled to hold her wiry frame tight and upright. John looks at her and he almost doesn't think about the child. Almost doesn't come up with another list of names.

The silence wakes Aeryn. Her fingers curl around the pulse pistol wedged under her pillow. Habit, nothing more. She rolls onto her back, weapon resting on her stomach.
The spidery cracks of the ceiling are a little hypnotic. If she follows each chink in turn, she won't have to look at the makeshift bed by the windowsill. If she stands and crosses the small space to the disarrayed pile of covers, if she kneels and lays her palm down, the mattress will be cold.
Crichton has been gone a long time. She doesn't wake when he leaves anymore, but something, somewhere, registers the absence. Her senses have adapted to his comings and goings. They've shared accommodation every night over the last few weekens. Funds are tight.
Aeryn wipes the sweat off her brow and rolls her neck around, watching the play of night lights on the walls of yet another sullied hotel room. Her skin is sore, taut, like a scream is building underneath, but she isn't sure why. She ventures her free hand between her thighs; the other one holds onto the gun. The butt will leave an imprint in her palm.
Crichton doesn't touch her, in any way. He doesn't allow her to touch him. He's not obvious about it. He doesn't glare, or snarl. There is space between them. His mouth tightens every time they climb together in the Farscape. She can almost touch him then, because there isn't enough room not to. She sits behind him, monitoring the communications, watching his shoulders bunch. When he lets her fly, when it's his turn to sit in the back, he fakes sleep. He thinks she can't tell the difference.
"Last passenger was Scorpy," he said in the beginning. "Seat's still warm."
Aeryn arches into her own fingers. Her heels dig into the mattress. Her spine coils, her legs spread until the strain burns. It's almost pain. Her right arm, still holding the gun, flings out wide. She stretches, takes over the bed. The covers are warm, like sand and radiation. The scream, when it comes, is hoarse.
She collapses onto the mattress, sticky and gapping.
Aeryn shoves the gun back under the pillow. She curls on her side, naked, cold. She stares at the makeshift bed bathed in neon light. Disarrayed bedclothes and blotches of color, it's what they are to each other now.
Crichton will be back in the morning. It's a ritual. Land on a new planet, find a hotel in a cheap district, make separate beds, pretend to fall asleep. Every other night, Crichton sneaks out and picks up a tralk. Lets her take him home. More often than not, the girls don't make him pay.
"I don't fuck them," he told her the first time. She woke up alone, thinking he had been abducted right under her nose, thinking he had abandoned her. She tracked him down to a sex house. "I don't fuck them," he'd said, still warm and mussed from the tangle of a female's embrace. "I sleep with them."
Aeryn drags her protesting body out of bed, pulls a sheet from John's couch. She wraps it around her shoulders and sits on the windowsill. She buries her nose in the linen.

"What is this stuff?"
John tips the glass to the side and the contents wobble like Jell-O. Blue Jell-O. Aeryn went with raslak, but he had to be adventurous. Next to him, Aeryn looks annoyed that she can't tell him the name of the drink or where it comes from, and John rubs his forehead. He's making conversation and he doesn't even know why.
He returned to the hotel room well after sunrise.
Their host, a Velek called Gorn, raises his own glass in a scaly green hand. "This is Jnk, imported from Balldan. They have a terrible pest problem, but they discovered that you could milk--"
John waves his hand up and down. "No, no, no. Forget I asked."
He purses his lips and tips up the glass, using his tongue to draw some of the Jell-O in his mouth. It tastes cold, and bitter, like cranberry juice. Not bad, overall. It's kind on his stomach.
"We've asked around," John says with a little cough. He encompasses Gorn's noisy, crowded refreshment house with a look. "You're the-- being to talk to."
Gorn is smiling. Gorn smiles at everything. His mouth is just shaped that way. It ranks right up there with Scorpy's grin on the list of Things That Creep John Out.
"We got a tip on Keret 3 that the ship we're tracking was heading this way, but spaceport authorities haven't seen a Leviathan in monens. So what'd you think? Either they're messing with us, or we're out of luck."
Aeryn shifts next to him and produces a small handful of coins. She drops the currency in the middle of the table. Gorn knows better than to reach for the bribe. They pulled the good old bounty hunter scam. It's John's turn to smile.
"I have not heard of any Leviathan, Butch. But I will inquire," Gorn says, teeth showing through his lunatic grin.
John wraps his gloved fingers around the coins and draws them back to himself. Gorn's leer flickers. "You do that."
Aeryn tenses next to him and his body goes taut in response. He follows her gaze and spots the group of Sebaceans by the back door. "Oh, great. Where the fuck did they come from? I thought you said there're no Peacekeepers on Tesaris."
The heel of his hand rests comfortably against Winona, but he doesn't move, simply observes the Sebaceans from under his lashes. They haven't been spotted. Getting up to leave would be drawing attention. Aeryn balances on the edge of her chair, elbows free of bodies and furniture.
Gorn is having the time of his life. John clenches his left fist under the table. "What's so funny?"
"They are Sebaceans, but not Peacekeepers."
Three men, dressed in signature black leather. Standard PK issue pulse pistol strapped to their thigh. "Could have fooled me," John says, resting Winona on his knee.
"You wear the uniform. You are not a Peacekeeper," Gorn observes amiably.
John gets all the funny ones.
"No insignias," Aeryn whispers, close enough to disturb the short hairs at the back of his neck.
He scans the leather vests. The sleeves have been torn at the shoulder, where their rank and regiment insignias should have been. "Deserters?"
"There have been Sebaceans on Tesaris for some time," Gorn supplies. "They live Below. No one knows what really goes on there, no one wants to. They're Civilians - you will recognize them easily. They are small, thin, light-haired. The Uniforms came only a few monens ago. They visit my house often to do business. Arms, food, supplies. They don't bother me, I don't bother them."
Gorn gestures discreetly, and John catches a glimpse of fair curls behind the wall of dark leather. Another man, older. Blond, but built like a Uniform and dressed like one. He sits at a table, his profile to John, in deep conversation with some-- species John doesn't have a name for.
"You are thinking it too," Aeryn says.
There's a little stab under his sternum, because of course he is. "An influx of Peacekeepers a few monens ago? We just happen to be in range of the last known position of the command carrier? Hell, yeah, Sundance. I'm thinking it."
Gorn's ears perk up. "Command carrier?"
Oh, great, John thinks. A fan. "We should hightail it out of here."
Gorn's gaze slides to the back of his chair, no doubt looking for a tail. Aeryn is already on her feet, keeping bodies between their position and the oblivious Sebaceans.
"Don't fear them," Gorn says, all teeth flashing. "The one who leads them is no friend of the Peacekeepers. Everybody knows that."
John frees Winona from her holster. There isn't enough smoke in the bar and too much distance to the closest exit. He doesn't load the pulse chamber because there's noise in this place, but this is another kind of noise entirely. If they start something here, it's going to be messy and gory, and funnier than shooting fish in a barrel. Grunting, "We ain't everybody."
"You're bounty hunters," Gorn tells him, nodding toward the Sebacean seated at the table. "Don't you recognize John Crichton?"

Crichton smirks like a man who just heard a very bad joke. Aeryn knows the look. John often said his life was a very bad joke, although never on Talyn. He's frozen in the middle of the refreshment house, and he hasn't smiled enough lately to justify his almost-laughing. Hasn't been safe enough to account for him not running at all.
"Butch," she hisses between her teeth.
"What is it with people wanting to live my life? And do I get royalties?"
He didn't even hear her, but she heard him loud and clear. She grabs his elbow, pulling. "They could recognize us. Let's go."
Backing away from Gorn and the table, she makes her second mistake of the day. She steps on the sensitive paw of a Tehla and doesn't apologize. The first mistake was agreeing to a meeting in a crowded establishment. When the Tehla howls his outrage, the inebriated patrons close around them like a wall. Things get a lot louder. She loses sight of Crichton in the swarm of bodies hungry for a fight.
"Oh, fuck."
The words are squeezed out from somewhere to her left. There's tehla fur in her face and fingers clawing at her back. She clears the space with a pantak jab, a strategically aimed elbow and a lot of pistol-waving.
"Crichton!"
She forgets about Butch. She forgets and she uses his name. The crowd contracts like a thing alive and breathing, before rushing away from her.
"Frell."
Aeryn dives into the thickest pack, pushing past the table they just vacated. Gorn is nowhere to be found. She'd rather not fire. She can't see through the screams, the roar of boots trampling the floor and maybe bodies, the limbs waving, the teeth flashing, gnashing, grinding. John Crichton has that effect on complete strangers.
Too many creatures much bigger than she is block her line of sight.
She ducks at the first shot. Pounces forward at the second.
The crowd fragments like a Tarek grenade.
"Hey!"
At the epicenter stands Crichton surrounded by the three Sebaceans Gorn said weren't Peacekeepers. His pistol isn't aimed at them, but at the retreating mob. The uniformed men face away from Crichton, weapons raised in a dissuasive stance.
"Who the hell are you guys?" Crichton is asking no one. "Search and Rescue?"
There's a small pile of debris on the floor, and the ceiling is still smoking. They shot only to disperse the assailants.
One of the Sebaceans spots Aeryn and motions for her to follow. The other two are already herding a protesting Crichton to the backdoor. He turns to catch her eyes, then stares hard between the pack of Tehlas regrouping by the front door, the thoroughly worked up patrons, and the relative safety of the exit. They can't fight in here.
Aeryn steps over fallen bodies and allows herself to be shepherded outside. She loads the pulse chamber. The sound of the weapon charging sends the Tehlas back two steps. Small groups of patrons are already going back to their drinks.
The back door opens, unsurprisingly, on a level riser. She enters backwards, covering her exit and Crichton's, keeping one of the Sebaceans in her line of sight. She trusts John to handle the other two. She doesn't turn around until the door closes and the riser, big enough for twenty men, begins its descent. Crichton stands against the glass, both hands wrapped around the butt of his weapon, muzzle pointed at the floor.
"Every day's a party, babe," he says, and it would mean something if he were looking at her. Here, now, it's just a way not to pronounce her name on the very slim chance that these people don't know who they are. Who she is.
She answers "Yes," out loud, to let him know that she wasn't wounded in the fight. That much he never minds.
Crichton rocks on his heels, looking up at the Sebaceans who are all taller than he is. "You're the strong silent type, right? If I ask you what's going on, you're just going to stare, uh? Is this the part where you take us to your leader?"
The man next to Aeryn smirks, and she wonders if he once was a Ghost. He certainly has the attitude.
"I won't have to hurt you if you shut up, Crichton."
That only makes John cockier. "My reputation precedes me," he says. There's an imploding carrier between Crichton and these men. The commandos shift to present the smallest target. Oh, yes, they were there, and no matter what happened, whether Crichton took Scorpius down, or Crais did, or she did -- it will always be Crichton. It's always about Crichton. Humanity is its own form of betrayal.
The riser is accelerating. They shoot through the layers of clouds, and down, down, until the ridium haze fades to a dull brown. The cabin slows. They've covered well over a thousand metras in a handful of microts. There's little to see through the glass: muddy, artificial light and shapes that could be the lower levels of buildings or even darker things.
"At least they don't think I'm dead," Crichton says, but that's not for her. He's rubbing his ribs with his free hand. His skin is no longer raw with sunburn, but the bones never knitted right.
The riser comes to a full stop. Light spills from a bulb overhead. The door slides open. The air smells stale. The men wait for Crichton to move. They don't prod him with the muzzle of their weapons, although they must want to. Aeryn sure does.
John stands very still, feet slightly apart. He halts the moment, just because he can, because these men will let him get away with it for a while, or he would already be dead. He does it to her, forces her to cross that one last metra time and again. When she calls him on it, never out loud, he backs away one more step and she's so close to hurting him. She doesn't know where she would be if he had died in the desert. She doesn't have an answer for that. So more often than not, she crosses that open space with a blank face.
John is done bending things around himself. He holsters his weapon and he walks past the men, past Aeryn, like a betting man boarding a command carrier, only without the dread. Aeryn wonders what could bring the fear back; obviously not the darkness outside of the level riser, not the room stacked with broken furniture, and not the blond Sebacean waiting in the middle of the chaos. It's the same man who was sitting at the table in Gorn's refreshment house. He beat them down here. He wears a peacekeeper uniform with no distinctive markings, not even a torn insignia.
Crichton walks up to the man, hands on hips. Aeryn follows, standing at attention two steps behind. The light is too dim to make out much of the man's expression.
Crichton asks, "John Crichton, I presume?"
Aeryn takes a step forward to see beyond the hard line of John's shoulders. His voice betrays nothing at all, and he's been unpredictable enough of late. She can tell little more from his profile: no tension that she can read in the lines around his mouth or eyes. Which doesn't mean anything at all.
"Come," the blond stranger says in a gravely voice, turning around.
Crichton sighs, shaking his head, but he swaggers after the man, talking to the walls. "I ain't a trademark, you know? If you want to be John Crichton, go on, have at it. Sign on the dotted line and we're done. You'll do me a favor."
One of the men mumbles behind her, "Does he ever shut up?" and she almost smiles for the first time in a cycle.

CHAPTER II -- Let us go and make our visit
It's room after room, lived-in rooms and yet not lived in, a contrast of phosphorous light and walls of harsh steel. There's worn furniture that's all sharp angles, little trinkets and dusty pictures on the walls, and cracked, full-length mirrors on both sides of the sliding doors. More than once, John flinches at his own reflection. He's seen clothes hanging in closets and small objects that look like children toys. The first rooms have windows, but no light flows through them, which makes sense because there are two miles worth of buildings and railways and people piled on top of them.
This must be the place Gorn called Below.
They come across other Sebaceans on the way to wherever they're going. Some smaller than others, the ones Gorn nicknamed Civilians, and others in cannibalized uniforms. The Civilians seem curious, yet almost fearful. The Uniforms clench their jaws like they want to bite John's face off, but worry about food poisoning.
John could be dead but he isn't. That's the cutting line for now, so he doesn't turn around to check on Aeryn, because he feels her there, and he doesn't keep his hand on Winona, because the pulse pistol, his most precious possession after the Farscape, doesn't make as much difference as it used to. He hasn't talked to his gun in a while, but he's still talking to the module.
"This is a little bizarre, John, even for you."
He takes on Harvey with his eyes wide open. They've been practicing with Aeryn in the module. Phasing away, John in Harvey's world and Harvey in his, not letting anyone suspect that for a handful of seconds, John isn't quite all there. Aeryn hasn't picked up on it yet -- at the very least, she hasn't said a thing -- and if she doesn't see, no one will.
"Shouldn't we be shooting our way out? What do you know about these people?"
Harvey looks cute in his ninja gear.
"I know as much as you do," John says, but his words make no sound. "They're pissed off and I don't think sorry is going to cut it."
"You don't owe them anything."
"No, I don't." John navigates his way around some kind of desk. This room looks like it's been recently colonized by a tech. He blinks quickly. Some of the rolling nausea from the level riser is starting to abate. "I don't think they're after an apology. There's something up with those Sebaceans. You've seen PKs and civilians mix before? Remember the Royal Planet?"
"I didn't even know there was a Sebacean colony on Tesaris," Harvey grumbles.
"Man, what good are you if you don't know this stuff? Gotta pay the rent, Harve."
"I'm going to form a union," Harve muses. "A union of one." That's a change too: Harvey can take a joke without fearing for his life, such as it is. "Truly, John, you're not very worried, and we don't know what to expect."
John rolls his neck around. "I'm the crash-test dummy of the universe," he says out loud.
Aeryn's stare is heavy -- the girl knows her stare-downs -- but he doesn't bend. Harvey hisses like a scalded cat. The clone has passions of his own.
Deep in the entrails of the crazed skyscraper, they penetrate a much larger room the size of Moya's command. There are wilder shadows here; phosphorous lamps burn in each of the four corners. A dozen Sebaceans are scattered across the room, leaning over consoles, reading flimsies and talking, generally looking very involved in something. The phosphorous glow smoothes their faces over like wax, like cadavers on a slab. When they spot the newcomers, they fall silent.
The blond Sebacean stops in the middle of the floor and turns around. His eyes are a rich moss green. He's taller than John. Deep lines crisscross his forehead and his cheeks. He reminds John a little of his father.
"My name is Loss Ari."
John has a few choice words about refreshment houses where everybody knows your name ready to fly, but there's a Leviathan out there and friends in trouble. It's hard to keep this in mind at all times, but right now, he remembers.
"It's about the carrier," he says.
He's not going to thank them for saving his ass if they are in a hurry to put it back in a sling.
"No, not really."
Ari pulls up a chair around a small cluttered table under a naked light. The air is dry as dust, and John is becoming aware of the itching in his lungs. He sits opposite the Sebacean. The peanut gallery drills holes into his back, until Aeryn comes to stand behind him, pinch-faced, all tightness and foreboding.
"You want to expand on that?"
"We have been working at cross-purposes for some time," Ari says.
Ari isn't interested in who's got the biggest. Good thing too, because macho crap aside, John's has a tendency to shrivel when he's surrounded by bad-asses with bigger guns.
"That's why you've been using my name?"
"I find that your reputation can be useful when dealing with weapon merchants and impressionable intermediaries. It cuts through the-- more tedious preliminaries."
"You're the Jabberwocky," Harvey says. And is that it: scores of PK children convinced that the Big Bad John Crichton will devour them in their sleep if they don't march in formation?
John leans on his forearms, setting his stomach on fire. "And if you piss anyone off in the process, I'm the one who gets the check." He shakes his head. "You said cross-purposes. Just who the hell are you?"
The muscles in his shoulders and neck are already cramping. His nocturnal escapades don't relieve the tension like they used to, but it's a weakness to wish that things were different.
His throat is turning to sand.
"Not all Sebaceans are Peacekeepers," Ari says, "and the Peacekeepers were not always as they are now. There are some of us who remember this, and are willing to act on it."
Memories of hordes and nurses are best left alone.
"What are you doing out here?" John coughs in his fist. "Can I have some water?"
Ari motions for one of his men, and a glass materializes in front of John. "The ridium particles in suspension in the mesosphere are also found closer to the surface. The effects are negligible on Sebaceans. We have respiratory aids if you are in any distress."
The water feels wonderful, but the silent audience watching like a murder of crows is getting on his nerves. "Go on."
"There are pockets of-- dissention on every carrier, on the ground bases, we suspect even at High Command, although we are not organized enough to keep track of who is doing what."
"PK Fifth Column. Resistance cells."
"We were not always like this," Ari says again. John doesn't know who he's trying to convince. "We were once deserving of our name."
"Yes," John says. The last guys who thought they were deserving of the name beat him up to a pulp and left him for dead in the desert. And what are the odds? What are the odds-- "This--" John waves at the room and its occupants. "This is what remains of the cell on Scorpius's command carrier."
"Not all of it."
John averts his eyes. He doesn't want to have to apologize. He can't kill a thousand people, say sorry and sleep tonight. "What about--" He cocks his head toward one of the Civilians, a young blond woman in a dress. "They're not Peacekeepers."
"They're planet-born. They fled their world and hid on Tesaris to escape the military draft."
The recruiter is here to pick you up. The memory isn't his to carry, but there's no one else left to carry it. "Deserters," John says without thinking.
Ari's irises turn to stone. "They are the ones who deserted us first."
John's experience can't compete with the depth of that betrayal; he imagines that Aeryn's can. "You could have gone back, let yourself be rescued along with the others." A pause. "I assume the other escape pods were rescued."
Ari shrugs. "It took time. High Command wanted to keep the incident as quiet as possible; they didn't want to show weakness to their allies. And things changed after you came on board. New parameters for us to consider."
"Grayza," Aeryn says.
Ari lifts his attention up to her for the first time. A kind of unfathomable Peacekeeper understanding is reached over John's head. "Whatever else he's done, Scorpius sees more clearly into the Scarran mind than High Command ever will."
The last piece falls into place with surgical precision in a far corner of John's mental chessboard. He rises slowly, palms flat on the tabletop. Half a dozen pulse weapons follow the movement.
"Moya was never here, was she?"
A screech of leather signals Aeryn stepping up to the plate. Sharp, crisp, assessing, close enough that he can smell her hair. He'll punish himself for the cheap thrill later.
"We always maintained contact with other cells on the outside. A few monens after the destruction of the carrier, when it became obvious that we would need your assistance --" Ari should be complimented on his poker face "-- we attempted to track you down, without success. We heard that Sun had joined a unit of former Black Ghosts on Tarn. We knew you would turn up there eventually."
How Pavlovian of him.
"We lost you after the wormhole, and picked up your trace again two weekens ago. When the time came, we planted the information that led you here. You reached Tesaris faster than we thought. It was a-- surprise to hear your name in the refreshment house, but we were not unprepared." Ari takes a sip out of John's glass. "Sit down."
John looks down at his left hand: the symbols etched on his skin, scrubbed clean every night, somehow tattooed again every morning. His words are even, collected. There is nothing they can possibly do to him now.
"I'm not going to help you. When will you people understand that I will never, ever develop this weapon for you? Not for Scorpius, not for High Command, not for the PK underground-- hell, I wouldn't do it for Princess Leia if the fate of the Alliance depended on it." His fingers flex over dark metal and the equations ripple across his skin. His alone. It's all he's got left to take care of. "No."
Ari sighs the sigh of the long-suffering. "We are not asking you to develop wormhole technology. Now sit down."
John wants to remain standing. He wants to deny them the right to ask anything of him at all. They don't need to know about the not-quite-promise to deal with one evil at a time; they don't need to know that he meant the words at the time. In this part of the universe, Humanity with a capital H is what John decides to make of it. If he keeps the standard to a minimum, perhaps they won't expect too much.
He doesn't know how to say "go fuck yourself" in Sebacean. He's missed his chance to ask Aeryn. He sits. "It's only our first date, and you don't even like me."
"I don't need to like you," Ari says. "You do what you have to do, I do what I have to do. On the basis of that understanding, we can negotiate and leave-- passions out of it."
"You have nothing I want. And don't point weapons at me."
Tesaris is nowhere near a certain Diagnosan's lab with cryogenic facilities and surrogate mothers; it's nowhere near a time machine, therefore Ari has nothing that John wants. For the sake of Uncharted decorum, he'll let the Sebacean lists his demands, will compare said list against what he's willing to give, and they'll meet in the middle armed to the teeth. These things have scripts and rules.
Ari gestures for his men to put away the toys as if it were an afterthought. "We will help you locate Moya. We will make sure that your crewmates reach Tesaris safely."
"This is not how it works," Harvey says from a corner so obscure John can't see him.
"This isn't how it works," John tells the Sebacean. "First, you tell me what you want, then I tell you when, where and how you can shove it."
Ari doesn't get it, but Aeryn sure does. She steps back, brushing his shoulder on the way. Passive-aggressive Aeryn. They are both learning too fast, getting way too good at it. Those are not tricks that can be unlearned.
Oblivious to their little games, or not oblivious but uncaring, Ari produces a small data crystal and deposits the stone at the center of the table like a cherry on a cake.
"We have been-- active, in the time since we left the command carrier. The strength of our cell has always been intelligence gathering and information dispersal. When we learned of the existence of this data, we did what was required to secure it. A few disruptors are sympathetic to our cause. Others had to be-- persuaded."
John doesn't ask. If he stops to remember that everyone has sound reasons for doing what they do, justifications and histories, races to save and people to feed, he'll be paralyzed. He might as well give himself up to Scorpy, fetch the Chair himself, do it all over again.
"This crystal contains data on Scarran troupe movements, weapon development, secret bases and other vital strategic information. Data that the Special Directorate has voluntarily kept from High Command."
"What?" Aeryn says, beating John to it.
"It's in the Special Directorate's interest to avoid open conflict with the Scarrans. The SD will be of little use in the event of a military assault, considering the balance of forces. The underhanded approach works to their advantage. With this information, High Command might consider striking first."
"Is Grayza Special Directorate?" John asks, but Aeryn and Harvey are shaking their heads before he gets all the words out.
"No. She's a political officer," Ari says.
John snorts. "The Polit Bureau." He pulls the tumbler of water back to himself and drinks slowly. If this were Earth, he would worry about catching something. "Thank you for the lecture on PK power games, but they forgot to tell you that I've got a limited supply of patience. If this is so damn big, why don't you give the stuff to High Command? You don't have the resources to act on it, do you?"
Ari leans forward, a little like something feral. "We need the data for leverage. The Scarrans are not our primary concern."
Startled laugh. "Whoa. That's new."
And now his curiosity's picked. The guy is good. He reminds him less of his dad, and more of Dan Rather. Another reason to get the hell out of Dodge before these people kill his dog, steal his Bible, and rape his --
daughter.
Aeryn's hip rests against the side of his chair. She did this for months before he found her, this underground resistance commando crap. It's her world. If not for Moya and the rest of the crew, she would still be on Tarn, in the desert. On the mountain.
He is no Moses. More like St Jude.
"The Scarrans are predictable," Ari says. "It's never hard to see them coming."
"The Nebari," Aeryn says.
John massages his forehead. His tongue slides across his molars. There's some Jnk stuck between his teeth. He's trying not to throw up. "The contagion."
Ari nods shortly. "We need scientists, and you're going to-- We need you to get them for us, Crichton. We need you to bring us Scorpius."

The epitome of off-balance is John Crichton being asked to seek out Scorpius for the benefit of an obscure Peacekeeper resistance cell; it's John Crichton not giving up a flinch or even a sound, pushing his chair back just enough to make the legs screech against the floor. He folds his hands in his lap, palms up.
Aeryn can't rely on her instinctual understanding of his body language, not anymore. She moves away from him, fetches another chair and comes back to sit at the table. He'll have to look at her now, but it's his fault. His back is so unyielding.
"Your rank and regiment," John says quietly.
Ari is off-balance too. Aeryn wipes her palms dry on her thighs with vicious satisfaction.
"When you were on Scorpius's command carrier," John prods. "What were your rank and regiment?"
"Lieutenant," Ari responds automatically. "Velkar regiment, Tarien company."
John tilts his head towards her. "Technical support, intelligence gathering," Aeryn supplies, and considers the lines etched on Ari's face. This is an experienced officer. "Lieutenant?"
Ari sits a little straighter. "I was wounded. Paraphoral grafts were not what they are now."
"It doesn't explain how a soldier your age could be a lieutenant," John says bluntly.
A muscle twitches along Ari's jawbone.
"Reassignment shouldn't have jeopardized your commission," Aeryn says. "Unless you were disciplined, or unless--"
"I was a Ghost," Ari enounces clearly. "My injury was debilitating. Ghosts aren't bred, officer Sun, you know this. Ghosts are the ones who don't fit, the ones who can still be useful. Ghosts aren't reassigned. They get killed." Ari turns to Crichton, showing a little teeth. "More often than not, Ghosts are drafted. Contamination parameters don't apply to Ghosts, like they don't apply to disruptors, but the troupes don't have to be in contact with disruptors. They have to deal with us. Better that a planet-born be exposed to contamination, rather than a pure born and bred Peacekeeper. They don't want to do what we do, but someone has to do it. They don't trust our bloodlines, but our blood is good enough to spill."
Ari glares like he just spit the words on the floor.
"You were born on planet," John says. For some reason, this seems important to him.
Ari unclenches his jaw. "My father was a pilot. My mother was a med tech on a civilian colony. The Peacekeepers came for me when I was ten cycles old. I showed some disposition towards intelligence data analysis, that's why they reassigned me after my injury, rather than release me to civilian life. With my history, I was never going to go far."
John smirks. "Is that why you deserted?"
The words unleash a roar. "That's enough," Ari says, waiting for his men to settle down. "It's a fair question."
"I think so too," John says, rubbing at his cheek. "You know what you're asking me to do."
"Yes."
"It was me, right? Intelligence data analysis, working for Scorpius. You were tracking me. Us. Moya."
"And the Scarrans. But you too, yes. Scorpius requested my assignment after your escape from the gammak base. He doesn't have-- issues with contamination, obviously, and he recognizes the value of experience."
Aeryn notices for the first time that quite a few of the former Peacekeepers present are closer to the end of their lifespan than the beginning, but it's not her concern. She almost reaches out, almost pulls John's hand away from his cheek. She settles for calling his name.
"Crichton."
"Note that I haven't asked for details," Crichton says, ignoring her. "Stuff like why do you need Scorpius, what's up with the Nebari, and why can't you get Scorpy yourself, because frankly there's only one thing I care about, and it's this: are you trying to screw me?"
"Screw you?" Ari echoes, nonplussed.
Oh, yes. Aeryn knows from experience that this one translates literally.
"Are you going to turn around and deliver me to Scorpius in exchange for whatever it is you need from him?"
"We are not giving Scorpius wormhole technology," Ari says.
"Forgive me for being a little skeptical. You're playing fast and loose with your own people by withholding military information from High Command."
"We are not giving Scorpius wormhole technology," Ari says again. "We will, however, give him the data crystal in exchange for his help. If he goes back to them with this information, Command will get over the loss of the carrier. Grayza herself won't be able to disgrace him." It's Ari's turn to stand to make a point. "They don't take the Nebari threat seriously, Crichton. We do. By the time High Command wises up, it'll be too late."
John pushes his chair back, and so does Aeryn.
"You're asking me to screw myself over, Ari."
Ari looks old and worn so close to the naked light. "I'm asking you to face up to some of the mess you've left behind."
"It's not just my mess," Crichton says, swallowing.
"I'm not saying that it is. And I-- accept-- your choices. Your allegiances and your code. But I have studied you, Crichton. You are a poor tactician and your grasp of strategy is appalling. You can't afford to think like that any longer." Ari gestures at Crichton's left hand. "Not with what you're carrying."
"I have to be-- careful," Crichton says through the shadows. There's a waver. The light falls too hard on his forehead.
He used to need her, but Aeryn stands there. It's another stillness, more of a lie than the first, more of a chimera than the peace she found on Tarn. At least, she gets to keep him alive. She can have him, and not have him. At times she likes this new thing between them.
"You have to be more than that," Ari says.
Crichton dips his head down, hands on hips, and stares at the floor. "You'll help with Moya?"
Ari's "Yes" echoes like genuine relief. Aeryn struggles with the sharpness of unilateral decisions.
"I need some time," Crichton says. With those words, he's gone.

CHAPTER III -- Time for you and time for me
Aeryn concedes thirty microts to the illusion that he can get away.
She stares at Ari, hard. There's no need to go into details, to formulate the threats out loud. Pulse pistol held flat against her belly, she sets off after Crichton, following the trail of hostile armed men and solemn civilians left spinning in his wake.
He didn't go far. She stops in the door of a deserted room, which opens on nothing. She almost asks him the question, the question she almost asks when he comes back from another embrace in the morning, and every night when he leaves. Why does he mourn for something that isn't really gone? She knows mourning. It never felt like an ice field. This -- most days she can ignore it. Some days it doesn't even hurt. The pain is so bland she forgets it's there.
"They are not asking me to destroy anything," he says, standing in front of a yellowed mirror. His voice is raspy from coughing.
Some light spills from the diodes of an electronic control panel blinking on the wall by the looking glass. Aeryn noticed the yellow and orange indicators in most of the rooms they visited. Environmental controls, perhaps. Crichton sways, ghastly in the flickering halo. Beads of sweat have collected between his eyebrows. "Granted, I haven't read the small print yet." He worries the pad of his thumb with his teeth. "If it's for real, that means-- Man. If it's for real-- Anything's gotta be better than-- this."
She imagines that there are words for this; she could talk him back from this. Had she shared those words with another man, in another time, things might be very different. She might have come and gone to Earth. This Human might have moved on to greater things, rather than hold her up to an ideal she can't possibly meet.
If he is so tired of running, she thinks, why is he always in movement?
"You're not responsible for the whole universe, John."
Crichton recoils and seems to fold. He breathes quickly, three times, and turns around. She chooses to believe that he was talking to his own reflection. It's a lesser degree of madness, a quirk she longed for during the thickest parentheses of silence aboard the Farscape. It's better than the alternative. She doesn't want to know how close to his reflection that thing is now.
"That's not the point," he says, like a recruit caught favoring a broken arm during combat training. "You're not responsible for me."
"I'm responsible for the crew," she shoots back without thought.
He shakes his head emphatically. "Not since you left, no."
It would be wrong to pound his face into the mirror. Wrong. "That's not fair, John."
"You're only catching up to this now?" he asks, laughing.
What does he think he knows that she hasn't learned already? Self-righteous, arrogant son of a frelak. She crosses the small room, sticky floor squeaking under the high soles of her boots, sliding her pistol back in the thigh holster. In three steps she's on him, palms flat against his breastbone, shoving him against the wall. He's warm and solid, and she hasn't done much more than brush against him in weeks.
"Stop acting like a frelnik," she spits. "This isn't about you."
"Wrong, Aeryn," he says, not even putting his hands on her long enough to shove back. "That's the part you just don't get. It's all about me."
She shoves harder, just to make a point. There's water dripping somewhere. She pushes against his thighs with her own. She despises women who use sex to get what they want, but she never hesitated to use her own weight.
He reaches around to cup her ass and his eyebrows rise on a question. There's sharp bone underneath the leather. "I don't think I'm gonna last long," he says. "Are you going to close your eyes?"
This isn't any John Crichton that she knows.
She tears herself away, his touch and his smile more dissuasive than a punch to the stomach or a pulse pistol shoved in her face. She's going to wrap her hands around his throat and squeeze if she doesn't wedge some space between them. His eyes are nothing like their customary optimal plus fifteen, and everything like frost. He wants her to go away, and Crichton is turning out to be a better tactician than Ari gave him credit for.
"And Moya? And the crew?"
"You go after them," he says. His breath scratches against her cheekbones. "You take Ari's men. Hell, I'm sure he'll make you squad leader." Her fists convulse and he points at her face with a single finger, teeth bared. "Fuck no, Aeryn. You don't get to hit me. Don't even think it."
She won't concede the shot, won't take another step back. There's too much here, more than her, more than the fetus, more than a flipped coin.
"I can't believe you're going along with this."
"Why?" he asks. "Because he wouldn't have? How well did you know him?"
She hears herself hum to the background of his moans and the small, interconnected bones of his hand snapping, crushed under her boot--
Aeryn discards the pleasant mental image.
"Why are you sending me away?"
"I'm not," he says. "I'm thinking strategically. You go after Moya, I take care of things here. Two birds, one stone. Or is it two stones, one bird--"
"You're going to look for Scorpius. Alone."
"I doubt that Ari will send me wherever alone. It's worth the risk."
She chokes on disbelief. "You'll let a former Peacekeeper, a Ghost, watch your back." And realizing what she just said, she finally takes a step back. "You don't want me here."
"It makes no difference," he says softly. Crichton turns to face the mirror again, one arm wrapped tight around his midsection. "I don't trust you to do what's best for me."
There's a void. She had no clue that she could shelter something bottomless.
"The risks you take--"
"Are mine," he says, stressing the last word. She wasn't just talking about putting Scorpius and wormhole technology back in the same room, and he isn't either. "Go back up there. Don't worry about me. I'll be fine down here."
"This is what's best for you?" she asks coldly, the words springing from a deserted land of too much sand.
Crichton nods at his reflection in the mirror.

He watches the marauder take off from one of the spaceport's lower platforms. No goodbye this time, like all the other times minus one. Aeryn took three of Ari's men. She chose them herself through a barrage of questions about rank, regiment, weapon training and tech support capability. It took a solar day to gather munitions and supplies, to review maps and call in favors from mercenaries and other cells. John's urgency came with a sense of direction. Nothing's felt right lately, except for this: watching the marauder lift up in the orange sky.
"I understand, John," Harvey had said from the mirror, and this time perhaps he did. Or perhaps the clone was too happy to see Aeryn go.
John massages his stomach through his shirt. Hopefully the pain will abate now that he no longer drags Aeryn's unawareness, her false stillness, her wounded coldness, her mouth, her eyes, her long, interminable body on his coattails. Since Tarn, none of the words he's wanted to hear have crossed her lips; he isn't even sure that there are words which could make this right. Probably not, but he gave it a shot.
He's tired of hurting. Or not hurting. Or whatever the hell this is.
John is tempted by a celebratory drink in a dive somewhere; he doesn't know what's to celebrate, but there's something in the marauder vanishing that feels like a weight lifting. He tilts his face back in the sodium embrace of the suns, the gesture a little dramatic. If he can hold onto the warmth, the thinner atmosphere, the brightness of the orange ether and the roar of life Above, he won't be so drained when he goes back to the Lower Levels and pours over maps.
The maps, the maps. "Uncharted, my ass," he'd muttered when Ari gave him the codes to the console. Uncharted is just another word for No Jurisdiction. John delved into the data contained in the crystal. If he had to sell the deal to Scorpy, he had to know his material. He reviewed one hologram after another. All of the maps. It was too funny. If he had fallen in Scarran hands that first day out of the wormhole, would he be home already, or would he be dead? How fucking typical of the obscurantism of his favorite space Nazis to have maps with big gray areas on the edges. Did they think the universe was flat?
It's really all about maps. Troupe movements, advanced posts, domination of space. Faced with charts and raw numbers, it's hard to believe that the Sebaceans stand a chance, even with allies and solid intelligence.
And big fucking guns, he had thought, watching Aeryn load a phallic fashion statement of a rifle.
Harvey sees strategic value in Grayza's alliance, but he also believes that negotiation will hasten the conflagration, and John's thoughts drift to Katralla. Bring on war, and she'll be defrosted in a hurry. He can't see how it can be handled any other way. What of his daughter then? Another Popsicle of a child who won't bear his name. DNA strands forced into shape-- doesn't anyone make kids the old-fashioned way anymore?
"Ari," he says, "I need a favor."
The Sebacean standing next to him on the platform nods to show that he is listening.
"Before joining up with the commandos on Tarn, Aeryn stopped by a medical facility. I need to know which one."
"It'll take time," Ari says without batting an eyelash.
John ignores the twinge of pain in his stomach. He hasn't eaten yet today, although he knows that lack of food only makes matters worse and dry heaving is no fun at all. "I've got time."
The marauder is long gone, swallowed by the deeper hue of the exosphere, and an the even darker, colder haze beyond that.
Ari allows him a few drinks, and when the suns set they take another ride down to the dark belly of the city. John's not enjoying the risers. Nausea aside, he feels like dried shark meat, shelved and salted. Could be worse, could be Iceland. They pee on the meat and bury it in the sand.
"What's next?" he asks once they are back Below.
"You're very-- trusting."
"I've already been fucked in all the ways that matter," he says, coughing. Damn ridium particles. "And Aeryn could take your men with an arm tied behind her back. This isn't about trust. What's next?"
Ari points to a series of vectors on a screen. "We sent the coordinates of a rendezvous point in a nearby system with the vid you recorded. We don't know exactly where Scorpius is, but we have ways of spreading a message coded to his DNA, so no one can intercept it. And now we wait."
"I'm just--" John can't help but laugh. "It's just that we've done this before, and it didn't end too well for Scorpy."
"We know he won't reveal himself for Peacekeepers, but we thought that he would for you. You think he will refuse?" Ari sounds like he already knows the answer to that question.
"No." The last time they had plenipotentiaries, I-Yensh bracelets and command carriers. Commandant Cleavage, the Aurora Chair, Co-Kura, Talyn, fifty thousand bystanders. Even if the galaxy hangs in the balance, it's just the two of them, and Scorpius won't be able to resist that. Scorpius has no wormholes, and John, who has it all figured out, might as well not have wormholes. Their fates -- dear Holy Mary he hates that word -- are truly linked.
"No," he says. "He'll come runnin'."
Fate is for the dying and blind people in love.

The environmentals are courtesy of Sebaceans Ltd. and later, sitting on the bed in the room he chose for himself, John curls around his aching belly, trying to keep warm. Hunting down a blanket sounds like the lesser of the Twelve Works of Hercules.
He hasn't slept alone in a while. More often than not, there's been a woman wrapped around his back. At the very least, there's been Aeryn breathing on the bed while he always, always slept on the floor. He couldn't let the softness of the mattress remind him of the softness of other things, vague memories of her palms pushing against his shoulders. He couldn't risk those dreams with Aeryn in the room. What if he called her name? Four months of running himself ragged for a woman who finds new ways to break him every day, for a dream in a test tube, is about all his limping self-worth can take.
He's searched for touch in other places, where the girls don't care if he calls out the wrong name. Girls who draped over him, and slept around him, and when he was very lucky, one on either side. Can't get anymore bare than dying alone, no oxygen, no friends, no fuel, no Aeryn -- in space --and he's not going through that again if he can help it. The next time he dies, there'll be lots of people around, preferably warm and naked. With the ulcer, it's a little less theoretical than it could be.
He told Aeryn that he didn't fuck his sleep mates, and it's true, inasmuch as the word is to be taken literally. The girls can get pretty inventive, and he's not completely inexperienced himself. He's never fallen asleep hard. First night on Tesaris, the girl had flavored nipples. Flavored. Something vaguely spicy, but sweet, like cinnamon and coriander. He tumbled into dreams suckling on her breast, an uneven little numb of flesh rasping against his tongue. The bed had a broken leg, testament to the girl's skill.
He's beginning to wonder if the old woman's herbs haven't screwed up his dreamscape forever. There are flashes of could-bes and have-beens, or could-have-beens in between the touches and the velvet-fingers circling his belly button. The dreams are almost idle compared to the visions he had before, out of the professional league, back with the amateurs. He dreams of soft, feminine hands -- different soft feminine hands. He was drawn to the old woman because she loved him, that much he knows, and he can't help but wonder about a universe where he fell out of that wormhole into soft, feminine hands, rather than hard, warrior hands. A universe where Gilina lived and so did Zhaan, where he went to his mother's funeral. A universe where he is better off for not having known Aeryn Sun.
"Man," he gasps when the pain rips him up from the inside out. "Why does it hurt so much?"
"You're angry," Harvey says, sitting Indian style on the musty floor.
"I'm not-- I'm just tired. I don't think I've got what it takes to be angry."
"'Are you going to close your eyes?'" Harvey parrots back at him, mimicking his inflections and his body language.
John slides off the bed on his knees, one hand flat against the cold stone, the other holding his stomach. "I-- I don't know how to talk to her anymore."
He only inflicts wounds that don't bleed. When Aeryn doesn't know better than to stay the hell away from him, he retaliates with blunt instruments.
"It doesn't matter. She's not the only one you're angry at."
His saliva tastes-- metallic. "What are you--"
"It's been a half-cycle since you last saw them," Harvey says. He doesn't sound quite right. He's blurry. "But you're still so very, very angry."
Everything positive I do with the rest of my life will be because of you.
You better not ever forget me. You better not ever forget that I love you.
Of all the lesser species, I admit that I've come to like yours the best.
"Just words, John. They didn't love you as much as you loved them. They left. That's why you sent Aeryn after Moya. Why you sent them after Moya in the first place. You're too angry to face them right now. You would have copped out, found some excuse to send her on the last leg alone even if Ari hadn't come along."
"No, I-- They came back for me. I was dying, I was dead, and --" there's bile rushing up, along with something warm and coppery " -- Chiana made them come back. D'Argo saved-- saved me."
"Right-O. Broke your ribs."
Harvey is singing, arms and hands waving up and down like a conductor.
Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends. Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends. Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends.
What do I do when my love is away? (Does it worry you to be alone?) How do I feel by the end of the day? (Are you sad because you're on your own?)
"What's the first thing you would rescue from a burning building?" Harvey asks.
John's been cold until now, but this is ridiculous. "Something's not--right."
"They'll always leave," Harvey says. "But I'll always be here. And you can make new friends. You're good at that. New hands touching you, everywhere you go."
John's going to throw up. He tilts on his side and winds into a ball, as if he could smother the pain by depriving it of oxygen to burn and room to expand. Harvey is gone. Maybe Harvey was never here. Fuzzy edges hug John's vision a little too tight. He is numb, no floor underneath him, floating.
I have the knowledge, he thinks on a sea of fire. I am the weapon.
"John Crichton?"
Light flares out of the corner of his right eye, but raising his head is beyond his strength. The halo moves around and over him, coalescing into feet and slim ankles he can see through. His breathing grows labored.
"John Crichton."
The voice is definitely female. When the specter crouches to look into his eyes, long dark hair spills over her left shoulder and pointed teeth gleam through the concerned O of her mouth. She glows brightly in the shadows of the room.
My better angel, he thinks crazily.
"I'm going to call for help," the creature says.
John's got nothing in particular against living at that moment.

Climbing in the marauder with her improvised crew, Aeryn almost took the pilot seat, but Mali is an excellent pilot, and Aeryn's never sat in the captain chair of a marauder. If Velorek could see her, he would be proud.
Her crew are all former Ghosts. Lieutenant Lak Mali, the pilot, is a tall man with long wavy black hair, which he does wear tied. He would have never passed a standard review. He is older than Aeryn. Hovo Rias, weapons officer, is a dark skinned man of medium stature -- definitely drafted, perhaps from Brini 4 where Sebacean skin mutated to adapt to the high ultra-violet emission of the sun. He can't be more than twenty cycles old. Xetak Nela, communication and radar officer, is Aeryn's age and height, with short-cropped blond hair and a jagged scar, which snakes around her left arm from wrist to elbow.
All in all, it's very much like being back on Tarn before Crichton came for her, except that there is no Joriel to give orders or make the strategic decisions. The big picture, John called it. She wonders how big it is and who drew it. She could sit in that chair, back ramrod straight like she was taught, or slouch across the seat like a Ghost, and she would be back to those days before Moya, or those days before Crichton came to Tarn and shattered a peace she thought could not be shattered.
At their present speed and vector, they will leave Tesaris's system in an arn. Another solar day and they'll have reached Moya's last known location. Ari called in all of their informants and it's Nela's responsibility to keep track of the data which is still coming in.
Rias distributes field rations, but Aeryn is not hungry. She gives her share to Mali, who looks startled. She's not doing it to be liked; she hates to waste food, and Mali is the biggest of the four of them.

Hospital sheets itch the same everywhere, although this isn't a hospital, it's an infirmary, and he's not going to get Jell-O for his troubles, unless Gorn comes down Bellow to offer him more Jnk. John pokes at the gray sludge in the bowl with his spoon. Intoxicants aren't what the doctor ordered. Ari took the words 'bland food' to heart. No color, no smell, no taste.
"You're lucky to be alive," Harvey says, sitting on the edge of the bed, holding a bunch of wilting flowers and a Get Well card. He's only wearing his leather suit, because John was scarred for life by the nurse outfit.
"I know," John sighs into his bowl. "I didn't realize I could hallucinate you. Did you know I could do that?"
"It was the blood loss," the clone says, unfazed.
"Yeah."
Sharp knock at the door. Ari comes in without waiting for an invitation. He's followed by Hena, the tech who took care of John when he came to the first time. She reminds him eerily of his mother in the wedding photographs he's seen of her. Her eyes are shadowed like his mother's were each time his Dad was late coming back from a mission, or spent the night in a bar.
"I heard noise," Ari says, stealing a glance at a blinking monitoring panel by the door.
John shrugs. "It's a human thing. I talk to myself."
Hena's no-nonsense touch and her cold hand make him jump, and she flinches away as if she had been burned.
"Sorry," he says, reaching tentatively for her. "Your skin is cooler than mine." It's not his best grin, but he's proud of it under the circumstances. His fingers loop gently around her wrist and guide her hand back to his jugular. "Here."
He submits patiently to her ministrations. They've talked a little before. Well, he talked, stoned out of his head from the painkillers. He tried to give her a crash course in human physiology, only to realize that she didn't need one. Someone has his entire file, including the records of the Aurora Chair sessions, stashed somewhere around this joint.
"You should have told us you were ill," Ari says. He looks like a guy who bought a used car only to have it give up the ghost right out of the gates.
"I didn't know it was that bad." John lets Hena take the bowl from him and lies back down to give her access to his stomach. He wouldn't have told them, even if he had realized how quickly the ulcer had deteriorated. It's one thing to trust strangers with his life, another entirely to trust them with his psychosomatic illnesses.
"So how did you patch me up?" he asks Hena. He tries to catch her eyes, but she's focused on the portable scan aimed at his navel.
"Some form of acid ate away at the protective mucous coating of your stomach and attacked the lining underneath," Hena says, talking a little fast. "I imagine the cause was bacterial. The sore perforated a blood vessel and you almost bled to death. You were lucky that we found you in time. I repaired the blood vessel and prepared a graft from a sample of healthy tissue to replace your damaged stomach walls."
"Forget I asked," John mutters, feeling queasy again. The phosphorous lighting gives him a headache and the corroded steel of the city walls stinks like blood.
Hena pulls away, fetches something on a table behind his head and comes back holding a handful of capsules. "This," she says so quietly that he strains to hear her, "will block the pumping mechanism which floods your stomach with acid. And this," she says, holding up a different pill, "will protect your stomach lining and kill the bacteria responsible for the development of the sore."
"Pepto." John grins.
Hena blinks at him.
"Never mind."
She drops the pills in a goblet on the bedside table, helps him sit up and shoves the bowl of gray blob back in his hands. "You have to eat. Food is the best reliever, as far as I can tell. Why you weren't inoculated against this at birth, I have no idea."
She walks out. John counts to ten, but there's no way around the words. "Thanks, Ari."
The Sebacean, who's been standing unobtrusively in a corner throughout the entire process, comes closer to his bed, forcing John to crank his neck back.
"Will you be well enough to travel?"
You're welcome, John. What's so damn difficult about the concept of civility? Thanks, excuse me, please. Or not. This place burned out the desire to say please.
"I'm fine. People live with this condition all the time on my planet. It wouldn't have gotten so acute if I'd had the proper medication to treat it. Now I do," he says, pointing at the goblet.
"You didn't tell Sun."
"There's nothing she could do to help."
Ari gets the singing telegram and backs off. "Rest, Crichton. We're still waiting to hear from Scorpius."
"Ari, wait," John calls out before the Sebacean can leave. "I'd like to thank her. Is she around?"
"Who?" Ari asks.
"The woman who found me. She saved my life." He chuckles. Bad idea, considering the ripple of pain it sends through his mid-section. "I was so out of it-- I thought she was an angel."
"I don't know what an angel is, Crichton," Ari answers in the low monotone John's already grown accustomed to. "But she isn't one. She's a Shelk."
He's heard that word before-- "The Shelk-- the first inhabitants of Tesaris. But-- aren't they all dead?"
"Yes," Ari says before closing the door. "They are."

Harvey doesn't have the answers he seeks, and Hena rarely remains in his presence for more than a few microts. When he feels strong enough, John leaves the infirmary and returns to his room, walking slowly, resting often on old furniture and unmade beds. He didn't really pay attention before, but each room is a snapshot, as if the occupant had just stepped out for a run to the grocery store. There are a couple hundred Sebaceans down Below, but there are thousands and thousands of rooms.
His quarters are empty and he sits on a small red couch, for the first time really taking in his surroundings. There's a tiny commode against a cast iron wall, with a circular mirror mounted on top. There's a closet next to it, the door halfway opened, and clothes inside: dresses, garments that shimmer and scintillate, weird kinds of elevated shoes at the bottom of the closet. There's plenty of dust everywhere and something like cobwebs in the corners; he picked that room half-asleep and in the dark.
He feels pretty silly calling out to nothing, despite all the other times he's done much sillier things. It's one thing to hallucinate Scorpius, it's quite another to courtship a ghost and expect it to respond.
"Hm-- Hey. Lady?"
There's no wait and no bolt of lightning. There's no embarrassing silence. One moment he is alone, not even Harvey in the background, the next his savior shimmers in the middle of the floor, hands joined across her stomach, smiling tolerantly. He can see through her; he didn't dream that part.
"Uh. Hello."
"Hello, John Crichton."
Her voice is melodious and comes from everywhere at once, which is a little bit disorientating. He makes to stand, but she waves him back down in his seat.
"No, no. I heard that you were very ill and need the rest. I could have guessed as much myself," she says, pointing mournfully at the blood on the floor. He almost apologizes for ruining the carpet. "We get bored easily. So we gossip."
She sashays to the other end of the couch and takes a seat. She's not very tall. 4'9'', maybe.
"I've never had a visitor. I'm very excited."
Up close, John focuses on details he glimpsed while losing consciousness, and others that he missed. Her canines are sharp and peek out when she grins or when she talks, giving her a bit of a feline air. Her pupils aren't slit, but her irises are of the brightest orange, perhaps a mutation brought on by the ambient ridium. It's hard to define the color of her skin through the light shimmer which accompanies her movements. Some kind of subdued yellow. Her black hair rivals Aeryn's in length and curls at the ends.
"I have only one request, if you would. Could you not move the furniture around? It only confuses the program, and I'll end up sitting on thin air, which I'm told can be very off-putting to our guests."
"Program," John echoes.
"The holographic program. Are you feeling any better? Maybe you should lie down."
He gets off the couch and limps his way to the bed, stepping over the blood. It would be too weird to put his head in her lap and have it fall through. He collapses on the top cover, the weight of the city on his back and his spine about to snap. He curls himself up into a knot.
"What's your name?" he mumbles into his pillow.
"Loa."
Her name is the softest thing to his reptile brain. She can't touch him, but she can caress him in other ways. "Loa. Tell me a story."
"What kind of story, John Crichton?"
He turns his head a little and finds her kneeling by the bed, her chin resting on her crossed hands atop the mattress, her feral smile inches from his nose. "Who are you?"
"You do not know about us?" she whispers until his heart breaks.
"No. Tell me about you."
The quality of the hologram is astounding from this distance. Her chest rises and falls as if she were breathing. The velvety material of her dress catches the light. He can count every single lash on her eyelid; he can warm himself to the twin suns of her eyes.
"We are the Shelk. Tesaris was our home for thousands of years, until one day we fell sick. A few of us in the beginning, then more and more. The city was falling silent, and we were dying. We could not find a cure. So our engineers built a neuro-holographer. Are you asleep?"
"No."
"The neuro-holographer would retain a neurological imprint of the person taken moments before their death, and create a perfect holographic reproduction, memories intact, after their passing." She smiles sadly. "Fathers could go on living with their sons and daughters, children could keep their mothers at their side-- Eventually, the holograms outnumbered the living. Until the last ones downloaded themselves into the matrix before they died."
"And you've kept on-- inhabiting this place, all this time," he says, a little amazed.
"Seven hundred cycles. Others came. They believed we were ghosts. They built their own homes on top of our city and left us alone. I've heard it said that there are many, many creatures that came after that."
John nods as best he can lying on his side. "Yes, many."
That seems to please her.
"And you-- what do you do now?"
"We-- exist," she says, perplexed by the question. A pretty furrow bisects her brow above her nose. "We have lost-- some. We cannot maintain our own systems anymore, and some fail. The matrix itself runs on solar energy. Endless."
"You'll be here-- forever."
"The city was built to last, but there is no such a thing as forever. Still," she sighs. "There is no one left to shut the system down. Even if we could ask Loss Ari, it would have to be a unanimous decision, and we have no way of reaching such consensus."
He's tempted to stay here forever too, lullabied by her words and half-slept dreams that are not his own. Never again alone and terrified by the infinite possibilities of the future, himself a blank slate, gray lips breathing life into his lungs, like being born again, like being asked to choose the man you will be right out of the womb. The equations on his skin are the legacy of the last three years, and the thirty-six years which came before. It should have been the child. It should have been. Instead, he has this.
He shifts, hugging a long tube pillow to his chest and stomach. "Why can't you reach consensus?"
"We have no way of communicating with everyone at once. Look," she says, standing. She walks to the steel door -- quick short steps -- and stops in the frame. "My holographic cell is inside this room. I have no existence past these walls. I can talk to Jona, who lives in the next room, and she can talk to Gani and Veti, because she has three doors. The luckiest ones among us had families when they died, several cells in one room. Me--" She comes back to the bed and crouches by his face. "I lived alone. I died alone. I was a teacher, and I can't open a book." She reaches for John's hand and when her long-nailed fingers pass through his, he feels nothing. "This is my world now."
This is hell, he thinks. He can't conceive of a single thing in the universe that could be more terrible than this fate, in that moment. He'd rather have the Chair suck his brains out through his nostrils once and for all.
"The survivors didn't want to go on alone," she murmurs against his cheek. "The dead didn't want to let go. We didn't want to disappear."
He falls asleep to the phantom beat of Loa's silent breathing, wishing she could lay her palm flat against his stomach and appease the heat there.

CHAPTER IV -- There will be time to murder and create
This particular asteroid in the outer belt of the system shelters a mining colony. Aeryn left an atmosphere thick with orange dust for an atmosphere thick with black dust, where every day is night and even starlight doesn't filter through. Rows upon rows of corroded pipes spill orange fire in the thick atmosphere. The marauder shakes to the drumming beat of the hydraulic drills. There's a core of ice under the dead surface: water, power.
The spaceport is nestled under a dome of nardium steel to protect the ships from frequent rains of space debris. It's a noisy place. The clangs of the engines beaten into shape and the chatter of hetch drives being traded for food by the more desperate ricochet against the solid walls. Giant fans keep at bay what would otherwise be an infernal heat no Sebacean could withstand.
The marauder is parked between a Venek scout ship and a Zenetan piercer that looks about ready to fall apart. Aeryn stands under the marauder's left landing gear, out of sight of casual observers. Nela is in the ship's command, monitoring orbital activity, Rias has gone looking for backup cells for their emergency welder, and Mali, sitting on one of the rafters above, is smoking beacha leaf -- an habit he must have picked up on Tarn. Mali is covering her back with a high-powered tarek rifle. Hopefully he won't burn his hand if he needs to scramble for the trigger, and she won't be killed stupidly.
It's a different way of getting through a mission, one she rekindled with after leaving Moya. A strange kind of trust without the trust, or competency standing in for trust. It was nothing like that with Crichton, because Aeryn trusted him before he got skilled at anything besides getting himself killed in inventive and painful ways. Since Tarn, he's trusted her at his back because she is competent. Perhaps that's the safer, predictable kind of trust -- the trust of a unit.
Mali signals the approach of their contact from the rafter with a small torch light. She can't hear anything above the ruckus of welders sparkling and giant hammers banging. She leans against the hull of the marauder, this way she doesn't have to worry about her own back. The informant isn't a threat, but the people he works for might be.
The Gael'n is hard to miss in a hangar where everything is coated in black dust or otherwise rotting. His skin, his windblown hair, the spikes along his spine, his long pointed ears, even his overalls streaked with oil are a furious shade of blue. That's his best asset. He's too visible to be anyone's spy.
He looks left, right and above before joining her under the gear. He spots Mali on the rafter and shakes his head. "Ah, Ghosts." He spits on the ground out of the corner of his mouth, his own roll of something smelly and mind-altering stuck between yellow teeth. "There's a thing I don't understand," he says without preamble. "Can't you get that information from the other guys, you know, the others like you?"
"I doubt there are others like us," Aeryn says.
"Uhn. There's nothing cockier than a Ghost. What is it? A little power struggle between commanders? No, don't tell me. The new one scares the living dren out of me."
The trick with the Gael'n is to let them ramble until they run out of information, or out of oxygen, whichever comes first.
"She's got something up her eema, that's for sure. She dragged everybody who's ever been on the Peacekeeper payroll on her ship and told us that locating Moya was the absolute priority, but we had to be discreet. No wanted beacons and no bounty hunters because she wants Crichton alive, and the others too as an extra."
He chews on his leaf roll and spits out some green mucus well away from her boots. She angles her head so that the stink of his breath isn't a problem.
"She went back to High command, left her men behind and I don't know anymore now than I did then. All your people are still in the Razia system and they're bad for business. I feel it all the way here. The last thing we need are Ghosts. You start blowing things up and all the traders in a thousand quadrants go to ground."
He takes a deep breath and stares at Aeryn like a nielak who lost its mother. He knows the process as well as she does. He waits for a sign that she's picked up the information she needed through the blabber. Aeryn rather likes working with Gael'n. Most times, they don't even realize what information they supplied.
She lifts her right hand once, which serves the double purpose of indicating to Mali that the meeting went fine and to the contact that he's free to go. The Gael'n slithers away behind the piercer. She waits for Mali to give the all clear and bounds inside the marauder.
"Razia system," she tells Nela.
The communication officer rubs her scar questioningly.
"We need to get a message to Ari," Aeryn says. "Grayza's hunting Moya. She's after Crichton."

It's not quite naked Sebacean girls and pizza with margarita shooters, but it comes pretty damn close. The girls aren't Sebacean and wear skimpy thongs with feathers tucked in them where other girls would stick five-dollar bills. The drinks don't have little umbrellas in them, but he's been offered canaps with some kind of pink pat; he skipped that, but he allowed himself a bottle of fellip nectar. Hena can rip him a new one for drilling holes through his shiny new stomach lining later.
The sun is high and John's sweating like a pig under the leather, looking completely out of place by the side of a pool the size of Texas. If Las Vegas were a planet, this would be it. When John asked Ari what he was thinking when he chose this location, the Sebacean let go of a rare smile and told him the pleasure planet suited John Crichton's image. Which leaves John to wonder what kind of reputation he has out there. If Jena's been telling tales--
He scans the patrons of the hotel, looking for familiar faces. No chance Scorpius is going to make contact himself. It's too hot by the pool, and from what John heard Scorpy's got a couple of wanted posters to his own name.
Another bottle of fellip nectar materializes in front of his nose and he lifts his head off the headrest of the deck chair to thank-the-waitress-but-no-thanks. He's done throwing up blood for the time being.
The angry muzzle of a PK issue pulse pistol digging between his ribs forces him to sit up a little straighter.
"Get up, Crichton."
He stands, keeping his hands well in evidence. "Wait, Braca."
The Peacekeeper presses tight against his back, one hand bunched around his jacket, dragging them both slowly into a shaded area away from prying eyes. Not that anyone would care if Braca executed him summarily by the beach bar; most of the patrons are drunk or engaged in loud activities with multiple partners in the deep end of the pool.
The lips of the smaller man press against the skin behind his ear. The lieutenant is shaking with anger.
"You're unbelievable, Crichton. I told him to let me handle it, but no, as always where you're concerned he has to deal with it himself. Where are your little friends?"
"There's a marauder in orbit," John says. "Two prowlers came down. There are three men watching us. A shooter on the roof. I'm not armed and you know who I'm with, Braca. Scorpius wouldn't have come without doing his homework. They're from your own carrier. Moya isn't anywhere near here."
The gun is shoved harder into his side and John can't hold back a grunt. Braca seems to come to some sort of decision, or most probably he's been under orders to bring him back in one piece all along but wanted to make him sweat. Nothing but the sun makes John sweat. These days he'd rather jump to the fun part and vomit.
Scorpy, however, isn't worth waking up his ulcer. Strange the way he can contemplate facing the hybrid without flinching. There had still been fear, overwhelming, smelly, nauseous fear the last time. The Polaroid of Scorpius choked up with despair while the carrier folded like a badly-timed souffl sort of overwrote the nastier Kodak Moments.
Braca is having a good time, pulling him backwards regardless of the furniture John trips on, spinning him around and shoving him roughly through a door leading to a flight of stairs. John manages to reach the landing on his feet despite Braca's best efforts. They stumble a hundred yards down some service corridors that lead to an industrial laundry room. They cross the threshold. A punch in the kidneys sends him crashing to his knees between a washer and a drier.
Groaning, he looks up at Braca. The lieutenant dropped the red too. Black leather, all black. They could be freaking twins. "Okay. You deserved a freebie."
The next kick flips him on his back. Braca's boot on his sternum keeps him sprawled on the ground. A stretch of measured steps and Scorpius's face, unreadable, invades his field of vision.
"Hello, Grasshopper."
Braca leans more weight on his foot and something shifts inside that probably shouldn't.
"Let him up," Scorpius says tonelessly.
Braca backs away with one last vicious twist of his steel-toe boot. John struggles to his knees, pain bursting fresh and red through his belly. He grabs onto a steel pipe which runs conveniently along the wall and pulls himself up, unfolding slowly. "Fuck," he gasps. "If you broke me again, Hena's gonna be pretty pissed, and she doesn't even like me."
"What are you doing here, John?"
He straightens up and looks into Scorpy's face, waiting for the twinge, waiting for the ever-present flashbacks, waiting for anything at all. Save for his burning mid-section, he can't feel a thing. He'll torture himself with that later.
"I have a business proposition," he says, breathing a little hard through the pain. Scorpy's eyes lit up for a fraction of a second, a fraction of a fraction, and John knows what Scorpy will torture himself with. "It's not about wormholes."
"You've figured them out," Scorpius says, although John scrubbed every single trace of ink off his skin. "All of it." The last time Scorpius's eyes were that wide and that bright, they weren't dusting crops.
"You won't take me off this rock alive," John says. Despite the civility and the impossible odds, despite having gone through this a million times and change, the words still need to be said.
Scorpius tenses and Braca revolves like an attendant moon.
"We don't need to do it this way," John says as quietly as he can, panting. "It's not because we've always done things this way that it has to end the same way this time. Listen to what I have to say. And if you aren't happy, I'll let Braca beat me up." He puts the accent on let, because he's a good boy, but sometimes he isn't that good.
Scorpius smiles his diseased smile. "Let's sit, John."

Later, after he's stopped Ari's men from storming the place, all the cards are on the table. John explains about the PK cell (information Scorpius already had, it seems) about the Nebari and the data crystal. Scorpius perks up like a kid on Christmas morning at the mention of Scarran military information, and that's a scary sight.
Scorpius, it turns out, is still busy running his own gammak project. Braca and a handful of renegade PKs are loyal to him, he has always employed non-Sebacean scientists who don't have any official PK status (opening channels that Grayza never heard of) and all that currency stashed in shadow depositories across the UTs now serves its purpose. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense. PKs are distrustful of hybrids, and practical as he is, Scorpius had to have planned for something like this. Whether the gammak project revolves around wormholes, John doesn't ask. If he doesn't know, he won't have to track it down and blow it up later.
Rinse and repeat.
Scorpius agrees to help long enough to get the lab up and running in exchange for the crystal, so long as John guarantees his safety. John gives his word, and that seems enough for the hybrid. The irony in that is just too thick to swallow, but this isn't a conventional war. They won't win it by conventional means. They are both resigned to their bastard alliances. Scorpius is in disgrace ("They confiscated your comfy chair, Scorpy? My sympathies") and John has been in disgrace since he set foot on this side of the universe.
In the middle of the conversation, Scorpius sends Braca out for drinks and they keep on talking over intoxicants -- two old horses winding down after the race.
"Their decline started with their ridiculous contamination parameters, which were meant to preserve their apogee," Scorpius says, growing maudlin as the alcohol flows. "They believed that their greatness resided in the purity of their blood, but by keeping the bloodlines pure, they have only succeeded in making it stale. Look at their failure at pure research. Why do you think they gave me control over a gammak project of this scope?" Scorpius swipes his hand out like a man crushing a bug. "The draft of civilian populations is no more than a hasty bandage slapped over a festering wound." Scorpius refills his shot glass with raslak. "Joining a unit of Peacekeeper renegades, coming here," Scorpius says, tilting his head towards the silent Braca, "without officer Sun to protect you, I might add-- This is quite reckless, John."
That makes John grin, a lazy grin that spreads sort of pleasantly across his face. "So what's new?"
Scorpius is looking at him through an amber glass of intoxicant, and John is tempted to ask Harvey whether his alter ego is reading his aura. "Oh, no. It's-- different. But we have established with impressive finality that I cannot anticipate your moves."
Scorpius wants to leave for Tesaris right away. Whether he is caught in the urgency of the situation, or refuses to let John out of his sight under the delusion that the Human might just trip and cough up the secret to wormhole knowledge, it doesn't matter. Probably the latter, but the fantasy serves its purpose. It occurs again to John that Ari knows Scorpius well, that he knows John Crichton and the things between them.
Sitting side by side in the marauder, Scorpius looks like he's expecting an apology he shouldn't need, but would like to hear anyway. There's a new rawness around the eyes, something John missed in the interval.
"So was it worth it, John?"
What he's really asking is "Why aren't you on Earth already?"
John doesn't have an answer Scorpius could accept, and "worth it" are two very strong words; saying no would rip new holes in both of them, and he can't just say yes. Scorpius would ask him what he has to show for it.
A Popsicle baby.
Uh, uh. No way Scorpius will understand that one, and the knowledge of a child isn't the kind of leverage he wants to hand out.
John hangs his head, which infuriates Braca, who smolders silently in the pilot's seat. The Peacekeeper needs a reason. Everyone needs a reason, even though there is none. Life sucks and then you die. Or life gets so good you can't take it -- and then you die.
"You remember the trip down memory lane? Everything you showed me, about your mother, your childhood?" His attention shifts quickly to Braca, who doesn't turn around. The lieutenant got the After-School Special too, but John doubts that Relani's screams reminded him of his own. "You remember what you did to that Scarran?" John rests his face in his hands, tired of always explaining his choices. "Why did you expect any different from me?"
Scorpius opens his mouth, gasping like a fish, but no sounds come out.
"You're going to say it's not the same thing, what happened to me and what happened to you. Fuck that. Relani screamed when you were born, and I screamed when your neural clone was born." It's the closest he's ever going to get to something Scorpius can grasp, or not. "I could try and explain what you did to me, but you wouldn't understand. Whatever I said, you wouldn't understand."
He was smart to send Aeryn away. If he can still get that frustrated with Scorpius for not understanding, how frustrated can he get with her for the very same thing?
"I never got Co-Kura to talk," Scorpius says after a breath. "Thorough work you did with him."
They touch down on Tesaris before the suns set. Before the cinnamon dusk and the last note of Loa's evening lullaby, which she sings just for John.

The Razia system is overrun by Peacekeepers trying to be unbearably civil to the local populations, but persuasive enough to obtain the information they came for. It's a bizarre sight. Travelling on a fully crewed marauder, Aeryn ponders the status of inconspicuous fugitive, literally hiding in plain sight. They stake out a planet, wait for Grayza's men to leave, and circle down like Betyn birds coveting a pile of crumbs. The inhabitants welcome them suspiciously as the follow-up, the clean up crew sent to ensure that they haven't been hiding the prey under the guise of cooperation. We are not that stupid, their eyes say. Despite her diplomatic veneer, Grayza has built a reputation to rival John's.
Each world brings with it tales of the hunters. Nela pulled together the last known vectors of two Peacekeeper patrols they've been tailing, and three others which Ari's contacts agreed to shadow. So many renegade cells, so many traitorous units. Aeryn wonders what action High Command will take when they become aware of the gangrene in their mist.
Nela generates a hologram from the communication console, and the pattern takes shape. The patrols are loosely converging towards the rim of the system, towards the Fenotant nebula, and Aeryn understands why Grayza's officers didn't bother sending clean up crews of their own.
"They're hounding Moya," she says, looking at the nebula and the star nursery on its edge. She points at the gas masses flooded in a torrent of energetic ultraviolet light spilling from the nebula's hottest star. "They expect her to use the clouds for cover. The vigilante is already waiting there."
"So what do we do now, Sun?" Mali asks, chewing on a cold leaf. "We can't overtake them. And we don't have the firepower to take on a vigilante."
She may be in charge, but he'll never call her officer Sun. None of them will. Ari's men share the same bunk in the back, share the same food. They never ask Aeryn whether she is hungry or tired. They are traitors, but not the kind that murder their brothers and sisters by the thousands.
Aeryn lets her eyes go unfocused long enough to unsettle her crew, and when she comes back, they are staring at her like a pack of rodents facing a giant Ketian cat. "Moya won't hide in the Nebula." She reaches for one of the knobs, brushing Nela's arm on the way; the communication officer starts and pulls back. Aeryn manipulates the control until the hologram shifts to another section of the outer rim. "Here. Asteroid field. Moya will head there."
"How d'you know?" Mali asks reluctantly.
Aeryn folds slowly in the captain's seat. She braved the desert on Tarn at high light, she buried her lover in another sea of sand, she learned sun, gun, run, she ripped her offspring out of her own womb and she pleasured herself to the memory of a cold Human. There's really nothing she wants from these people, not even respect.
"I know how Pilot thinks."

You can take the Peacekeeper out of the command carrier, but you can't take the command carrier out of the Peacekeeper. No, that's not right, but it's close enough to what John means, watching Braca watch Ari and his men. The lieutenant is fuming like a bull about to charge. If he doesn't breathe soon, he's going to pass out.
After three years on Moya, John understands this one truth: your own will not always accept you. A common genome means very little out here. Ask D'Argo, Chiana or Rygel. It meant very little on Earth, but now he accepts that it's a universal principle -- one which Braca, the immaculate Peacekeeper, is experiencing for himself. His fidelity to Scorpius hasn't endeared him to the renegades. There is no unified ideology in this room: some drafted, some space-born and some not, some repulsed by the hybrid and some indifferent. The air sticks to the tangle of allegiances like a fly caught in a spider web.
Scorpius, who expects any and all loyalties to shift but his own, is in deep conversation with a tech -- Ari's chief genetic engineer. John's forgotten his name, if he was ever told. Scorpius is oblivious to his lieutenant's distress, while Braca looks poised to do something heroic like throw his body between his master and a poisoned dagger, or perhaps not something quite so Shakespearean. There's always been some weird vibe there, duty mixed with single-minded loyalty, mixed with hero worship and a bastard filial love, mixed with some sort of odd zealotry. There's something more now, that thing which John wasn't privy to, after the carrier collapsed like a sandcastle in a hurricane.
Scorpius looks almost frail, his graveyard pallor sharp and malnourished in this light. "You've been wise to keep this quiet, lieutenant Ari," Scorpius is saying in his syrupy, scientist voice. "The fewer know about the Nebari's plan, the better, at least until High Command can be convinced to take this threat seriously." The bitterness is exquisite. "The territories would descend into chaos. The Scarrans feed on chaos."
Not single-minded. Not single-minded at all, John smirks to himself, but there's some good in seeking one's own advantage in all things.
"It makes sense," Scorpius growls savagely, banging his gloved fist on the tech's console. The hologram it displays fizzes and sizzles before settling down. Scorpius knows his genetics; no surprise here. He would have wanted to learn, to understand where he came from. "How did you come by this information?"
"Renegade Nebari," Ari says tonelessly. John can't quite figure out Ari's relationship with Scorpius, but it's obvious that both men are used to sharing their views on many things. Scorpius would respect that kind of discernment, even in a subordinate. "We've traded arms and intelligence from time to time. It is to their advantage if the Establishment is attacked on several fronts. They didn't think we would help them. We fight our own battles. But this changed things."
"Indeed."
That's what John said when Ari spilled the beans, but he used another word. John is no geneticist. His little sister Sally is the one who made a name for herself in genetics, while he peed on trees in his father's own backyard. Still, he got the gist of the tech's explanation, if not all of the technical details. The scope of the Nebari threat makes wormhole research look like child's play. He doubts Chiana herself is aware of the extent of the contagion, although her brother probably was when he split.
At the first stage, the contagion was horizontal. The Nebari infected thousands of their own with a sexually transmittable virus and sent them out to fuck their way through the galaxy. It got the ball rolling, but as far as large scale transmission went, the system could be improved. To contaminate a maximum of the galaxy, the Nebari needed transient carriers who hopped from planet to planet, and whose genetic material was compatible with the greatest number of species. Nebari rarely produce hybrid offspring. But Sebaceans do. Sebaceans could guarantee a vertical transmission of the disease.
Sebaceans are the universal sperm donors of the galaxy, John had said, thinking of Jothee, of Talyn, of Scorpius, of his daughter, of an anonymous cryo-unit. Ari hadn't laughed.
Contaminating the DNA of Sebacean populations could be achieved any number of ways; with regular Peacekeeper troupes, it was another story. The Nebari would want to take out one of the most serious military threats, as well as ensure the vertical progression of the contagion.
"Any idea when they started?" John asked.
Ari could only offer a guess. "A generation, two? I don't know. Information is limited. All we know is that the plan is long-term."
A PK generation wasn't quite a generation the way John's mind conceived it. Fifty years, a hundred--
"We never found that many bodies--" he said, trailing off.
"What bodies?"
"Remember the Zelbinion?"
"Captain Durka's carrier," Ari said. There was no admiration in his voice, and John wondered if he knew of Durka's true fate.
"It was taken out by the Nebari a hundred cycles or so ago. Did you know that?"
"I read the report," Ari admitted.
John skirted around the memory of Gilina. "There's about fifty thousand souls onboard a standard carrier, right?" He remembered who he was talking to, didn't wait for an answer, and skirted around that one too. "We came across the wreckage. That never made it on Crais's report. His tech lied." He waved his hand before Ari could interrupt. "My point is, we found a handful of bodies showing signs of deep space decay, and the structural damage to the ship was minimal. The Nebari could have blown the Zelbinion to smithereens, but they didn't. Even if they had boarded it, used some kind of chemical weapon, anything-- there should have been bodies piling up to the ceiling."
He had been, at that point, mostly thinking out loud, the pads of his fingers rubbing harshly at his upper lip.
"The Nebari are the masters of mind fuck and new personalities. What do you need to create a PK? A Sebacean, knowledge of the system, an ident chip. Genetic records can be altered -- Gilina did it and I'm not even Sebacean--"
"Crichton," Ari said, not without patience.
"Look." He jumped off the desk he was sitting on, restless. "I know contamination parameters aren't what they used to be-- either that or I've been meeting the wrong kind of Peacekeepers. Hell, even Commandant Cleavage didn't look one hundred percent homegrown to me. But we're still talking a pillar of the doctrine here. If you wanted to contaminate a xenophobic society, you'd have to do it from the inside. The guys on the fringe" -- he was careful not to look too hard at Ari and his men -- "you might get them with aliens, with sex, but the bulk of the troupes--"
"You think the Nebari took most of the fifty thousand crew off the Zelbinion, infected them, wiped their minds clean, gave them new identities and reinserted them into PK ranks?"
"Yeah," John said, warming up to his own idea. "You don't send them back all at once. You drop one here and one there, you fake the transfer orders or something-- I mean, man, I've infiltrated enough PK bases to know it's feasible, and I'm not even a PK, not even Sebacean. These guys wouldn't be impostors, not really. They'd fit. They'd recreate, some of them would even procreate, and they aren't monogamous. That's fifty thousand infected to start with, and I bet you've misplaced other ships before. Shit happens in the UT--"
Ari's face spelled "Oh, fuck, God," except that he didn't believe in that kind of thing.
"The virus was engineered from a common lysogenic virus found in Sebaceans," the nameless tech is saying, gamely facing Scorpius. "It wouldn't show up in the standard screenings because the analysis wouldn't identify the virus as a foreign organism. Once it's recombined itself with the transposon it was built from, it looks like any number of benign mutations which occur naturally in every generation."
John already heard that part. Like carbon, Sebacean DNA sequences can hook up with pretty much anything. A Sebacean lysogenic virus would propagate quietly through Sebacean populations, transmit easily to other species, and any resulting offspring would be a carrier. Talk about irreversible contamination. The situation is as comical as it's desperate -- from this side of John's life, anyway.
"If the data we received is correct, the virus remains dormant until a helper virus is introduced in the infected organism. The second virus cuts a piece of DNA out of the transposon, putting it in contact with the promoter. In the meantime, the lysogeny makes detecting the infection almost impossible in the absence of a whole scale insertion."
"Yes," Scorpius whispers thoughtfully. "If you are going to use a biological weapon, you might as well control the time and place of its delivery. Sexual transmission is random and unpredictable. Not all species will develop the same symptoms at the same time-- Yes, very ingenious."
John thinks about epidemiology and complexity studies. There might be ways to track down the progression of the contagion across the galaxy, but it's really not his domain of expertise.
He's done his bit here.
Dodging Braca, who's swelling like a bullfrog, he abandons Scorpius and Ari to their Armageddon. Which, if he remembers his Sunday class, was a city much like this one.

CHAPTER V -- Till human voices wake us, and we drown
The asteroid field is millions of square metras wide. Broadcasting on an open band is a risk, but one Aeryn is willing to take. She bets on the bulk of Grayza's fleet hiding in the nebula, where the clouds of gas and the radiation will disrupt scanners and communication.
The marauder is poised at the periphery of the field. Nela set the message to broadcast on a loop at one hundred-microt intervals. "This is one of the good days," Aeryn's voice carries across the void. They'll know it's her, because this is so obviously not. They'll trust the man behind the words, if they don't trust the marauder.
She's in the cargo hold, because the rest of the crew is in command. She relies on them to handle watch while she rests, even if she can't count on them to care. Only their loyalty to Ari is keeping them here.
Rest, as it turns out, was an overly optimistic goal. She stands in front of the bare wash basin, hands floating limply in the cold water. Next time, she'll wash up with her head down, so she won't have to catch her reflection in the mirror. Xhalax is there in each line, Talyn is there in each line, John is everywhere. When his body was cold and unyielding, she took him down to DamBaDa and buried him in the sand. It was too hot, her skin got burnt by the sun. The lines around her eyes and mouth have been harder since.
She holds onto the sink on either side, lowers her face to the water's surface and lets herself sink, until the ship's engine is muffled and her dry eyes stop itching. She opens her mouth on a noiseless scream; her tongue is heavy and parched. She stays there, blinking at the gray bottom of the basin through the water. Her lungs burn. She comes up quickly, spilling wetness and ice down her neck, her throat, the soft dip between her breasts.
Mali clears his throat loudly behind her. When she turns around, he hands her a rag to wipe her face dry. "You didn't hear us," he says around the ever-present beacha. "It's the Leviathan. They're hailing us."
She dries herself up and drops the rag on the floor. In command, D'Argo is growling at Nela and Rias from the main screen, swearing and daring them to take on a Luxan.
"Are you afraid, Peacekeepers? Sons of cowards. Hiding behind this pathetic ruse--"
"D'Argo."
D'Argo's eyes grow to the size of kerian coins. "Aeryn?"
Does she look that different?
"Yes, D'Argo."
"It wasn't a trick."
"No. We've been looking for you."
D'Argo doesn't smile. There are deeper lines etched across his face as well. "Is John with you?"
"He was," she says. "We had to separate. D'Argo, can we come on board? It's dangerous to keep a comm channel open for so long. The only reason we risked sending that message was because the marauder couldn't scan this entire field, and I know how good Moya is at hiding."
D'Argo hesitates. A brief, almost unnoticeable beat, but Aeryn is still attuned to the rhythms of Moya's crew. "We'll have the docking web ready for you," he says gruffly. "Can you determine our position?"
Brief glance at Nela, who nods. "Already done. Better close the comm channel now. We'll see you in a moment, D'Argo."

That night in Loa's bed, John pushes the covers back. He's wearing shorts and a t-shirt, but he's too warm. He twists and turns, and falls in and out of dreams -- glitter of dark hair and round bellies.
"She still haunts some corners, but you don't visit them," Harvey says, tangled at the foot of the bed.
John flips around and buries his face in the mattress. He pushes against the closed doors of his mind; the hinges squeak. There's a deep tangerine darkness on the other side.
"I'm forgetting," he sighs. "I'm forgetting Earth, and I'm forgetting her."
"You're forgetting the things you saw in Earth that were never there, and you're forgetting the things you saw in her that were never there." Harvey scouts away when John stretches, almost hanging off the edge of the bed. "Haven't you ever noticed," he says tartly, "that there is a slight discrepancy between the world in your head and the one out here? Out there?"
"Everybody dreams, Harve."
"Not everybody dreams like you." There's more rearranging of limbs. "You're the wrong size, the wrong shape, the wrong color for that puzzle. Always were. You couldn't leave Earth fast enough."
John brings his knees closer to his chest. It's hard to imagine any scenario -- debriefing at IASA, coffee at Starbucks, filling in his tax form, diner and a movie -- that doesn't end up with John checking himself on a psychiatric ward.
"It's never just science," Harvey whispers. "Not with you, it never was. You worked so hard, you were so proud of those letters after your name, so proud of your project. The Farscape wasn't just science, John. It was very, very personal."
The temperature is still rising. John pulls the sticky t-shirt over his head. His movements are sluggish, his limbs heavy like stone. He breathes in shallow, short gasps. The environmental controls are blinking madly by the door.
"I'm never going home, Harve. Nothing feels like home. I think I'm going a little crazy."
Harvey nods woefully. "I think I'm going a little crazy too, John." He crawls back inside his refurbished condo at the back of John's brain.
The room is a furnace. John pants, the thick cotton of the mattress cover stuck to his back. "Loa."
The Shelk coalesces by the bed and John slides over listlessly to make room for her. She perches on the edge, looking down on him.
"It's too hot, Loa."
"I know," she says, "I want to try--"
Her hand descends on him with some hesitation. He sinks into the mattress, boneless, spreading arms and legs in search of relief from the heat. Loa's phantom fingers map the contours of his chest, and, puzzled, he lets her. She frowns in concentration, the tip of her index drifting up his sternum, then to the left.
A short, cold blast winds around his nipple and the sensation wrenches a gasp from his throat. Loa trails her palm flat up his pectoral, to his shoulder, along his throat to his mouth and the chill kisses him deeply. The shivers drive his shoulder blades off the bed. It's-- God--
"I'm touching you," Loa says, watching the blatant reaction of his body in awe.
His eyes are wide open to her strokes and her caresses. She moves away before the cold paralyzes his lips and tongue. At the edge of his awareness, he hears the whirs and the fizzles of the centuries-old scrubbers, until Loa turns her attention to his other nipple and there's little more than the buzz of blood in his ears and his cock. Another shock of freezing air on the overheated plane of his stomach rocks him from head to toe.
"Does it hurt?" Loa asks. "I don't remember."
John shakes his head helplessly on the pillow. The aftershock pain of needles piercing his skin is a small price to pay for her arctic touch. Icy fingers climb up his legs to his inner thighs, and he moans. Oh, this isn't going to last long--
Loa's hand closes around the bulge in his shorts, not so cold now, and hunts him down through the thin material.
"Ah--"
The pleasure that isn't really pleasure twines around his spine and sends him arcing off the mattress like a mouse hooked up to a battery. His left hand rips holes in the sheets; his right hand overlaps Loa's with a jerk, tightening. Once, twice, three times -- friction and an age-old rhythm.
It's short. White and cold.
Loa sits in silence until asthmatic panting tapers into measured breaths.
"Was that what you needed?"
John's throat closes up with the aftermath. "Nice set of scrubbers you've got here," he croaks.
"I have full control over the environmentals," she says, nodding towards the control panel. "It's all I have control over. But the scrubbers aren't what they used to be." Loa stares gloomily at the dust piling in the corners of the room.
John hasn't come in his shorts since he was fifteen. He stares at the moldy ceiling for a while, then drags himself out of bed. He pulls off his stained underwear and wipes his hand on it. Loa trails him noiselessly into the washroom, stepping into the shower cubicle after him. He watches her watch him scrub himself clean. Harvey has the good sense not to pop in with his rubber ducky.
The water cascades through Loa. She won't be washing his back. If he reaches out, his fingers won't get tangled in knots of wet hair. He can't get on his knees and return the favor. He can't turn her around and crush her between his body and the wall.

He dries himself off and finds a pair of clean shorts in the things Ari's men retrieved from the hotel room he never shared with Aeryn. He rubs his jaw line. He could stand a shave, but the mirror is more than he can take right now. He exits the washroom. Loa doesn't follow.
Braca stands inside the door.
It's late, the city is one big tomb, and he's fucking the dead. His stomach is beginning to churn again and he can't escape this room because every other room is a new encounter, the potential for one more connection that'll rip everything from him.
John pinches his nose and closes his eyes. "Can we do this tomorrow?"
He doesn't see the punch coming. One second his skin is tingling from Loa's touch and the shower, the next pain spreads through his belly like wild fire. He falls, one knee to the floor, his arm wrapped around his waist, coughing too hard to raise his hand and hold off another attack. His diaphragm cramps like it's trying to crawl out of his throat and John jams his free hand against his mouth to hold it in. His lungs contract and his sight whitens around the edges.
"Crichton?"
He's dimly aware of hands pulling him roughly upwards, of the mattress dipping under his weight. Lying down only makes breathing harder, and he struggles against the hands until they allow him to sit up.
"Frell, Crichton. What's wrong with you?"
John gags until surely the lining of his throat has been pared away. He pulls his hand away from his mouth. His palm is specked with blood. "Man," he rasps. His voice is barely audible to himself. "Not again."
He catches Braca's expression out of the corner of his eye. The PK is fidgeting next to him, inching away at the sight of blood. Contamination. It's all about contamination, and John's wrecked more havoc than the Nebari contagion so far.
"Don't worry," he says with as much confidence as he can muster, trying very hard not to snicker. "S'not contagious."
Braca looks like he just stepped into something foul. "Do you need medical assistance?"
Now he asks. "M'fine."
John staggers to a small table three feet from the bed. He picks up the bottle of pills Hena gave him and a cantina of water. He pops a couple of Pepto capsules in his mouth, even if Hena only prescribed one.
The lieutenant is standing at attention, wearing his boots, pants and shirt, but no jacket; it's all just very pathetic. "You never got personal, Braca." It's true. Braca never came after him without orders from Scorpius, no matter how many times John broke his nose. "What's going on?"
Braca's sweating even though Loa normalized the temperature. His face is pinched and he's not looking John in the eye. Are these men really bred to be cold, unemotional soldiers, John wonders. Velorek, Talyn, Crais, Braca, Jena, Gilina, Larraq, Ari, Aeryn. They are not passionless.
He bends to retrieve two bottles of neon blue fellip nectar hidden behind an old couch. He really shouldn't mix alcohol with the meds, but what the hell. He pops the caps open on the side of the table and offers one to the Peacekeeper. "I bet you prefer raslak. Fellip's for girls, right?"
He perches on the arm of the couch and Braca sits gingerly on the unmade bed, clear of the wet spot. They drink in silence; John is content to wait now that Braca is no longer trying to turn his innards outwards, but he knows from much experience that Peacekeepers don't start conversations. Not with him anyway. He lets Braca get through half the bottle.
"What did I miss?" It must be bad if PK Jeeves's drinking with him. "What did I do to piss you off -- I mean, save for the whole imploding carrier incident?"
Braca is still drinking stiffly.
"Man, work with me here. You obviously didn't go down with the sinking ship. You took an escape pod and got away. Then what?"
"We did not get away." Braca gets to his feet and drops the empty bottle on the table. He comes back to stand in front of the couch, looming above John, hands joined behind his back. "Our pod was recovered by Commandant Grayza's ship."
John loses all interest in the booze. He puts the bottle down on the floor at his feet.
"The first thing she did was to publicly strip Scorpius of his gammak status, in front of her own crew and all of the survivors of the carrier who could be rounded up," Braca says like he's reciting the alphabet, eyes fixed on the wall somewhere above John's head. "But that wasn't enough. She had him-- she had him interrogated."
"What about you?" John asks, although he isn't sure why it matters.
"I had to pretend to betray him. I was there. I watched." He blinks. "She made him beg. She waited until the cooling rod failed, and then she made him beg for a new one. Again. And again."
John puts his face in his hands and pretends he's not hiding, feeling very naked in his shorts. How much will Braca hurt him this time if he says he's sorry? Because he is, really. Not for the carrier, but he's been there, and he's seen Scorpy's vid chip. The Chair, Relani, the neural implant, the shadow depository, Grayza are merging into one indistinct, meaningless blur. Pain is pain.
"I smuggled him out. There are still some who think Scorpius's approach to the Scarran threat is the right one. The rest of them, I paid." Braca sniffs. Even now, the idea of a Peacekeeper who can be bought is distasteful to him. He's contaminated, but he doesn't understand that yet. He might never understand, but it doesn't matter. "We escaped. We hid on the gammak base, but Grayza is still after him."
"She wants to deliver Scorpius to the Scarrans," John says. His nerves are too raw, too callused, too many things that shouldn't be asked to cohabit. "A show of good faith when High Command opens the negotiations." He offers his half-empty bottle to Braca, who doesn't even wipe the neck clean before drinking. "You don't think that the Scarran military information Ari offered will make any difference, do you?"
"Once Grayza has signed an order of termination, it's already too late. She doesn't think like a military commander, Crichton. With her, it's about politics. She'll have the support of the Special Directorate. Even with military data to bargain with, Scorpius will just disappear. We can never go back."
Braca puts his second bottle down, turns around, and leaves.

Stepping through the hangar bay inner doors, Aeryn is greeted by D'Argo, his Qualta blade, Chiana, and a pulse rifle. Keeping an eye on her people, she crosses her arms to make it quite obvious that she won't be reaching for her weapon.
"Hello, D'Argo."
D'Argo stares at her long and hard, and Chiana stares at D'Argo. When the Luxan relaxes his grip and lowers his blade, the Nebari aims her rifle at the floor.
"We had to be sure," he says. "Recordings and visual displays can be altered."
They've used that trick themselves once or twice. She can guess how tired and desperate they must have been to take the risk at all and let a marauder board them.
"Who are they?" Chiana asks, tilting her head at the ex-Peacekeepers. Her voice holds none of its usual lilting quality. Her skin looks darker, her lips paler. Thick white strands hang limply on her forehead. She's wearing a bulky fur coat on top of her ever present outfit. It occurs to Aeryn that the lights are dim, dimmer than they should be, and that the air bites at her exposed hands now that she allows herself to feel such a thing.
"They are ex-Peacekeepers. Allies," she says, answering Chiana's question but keeping her attention on D'Argo. She has neither the time nor the patience to deal with displays of territoriality. She'll keep her own crew in check, and D'Argo will have to control his temper. There's too much potential for conflict between the crew of Moya and three Peacekeepers who used to serve on Scorpius's command carrier.
"Where is John?" D'Argo asks again.
"Let's go to the galley," she says. "We need to talk. We have records of the last known position of most Peacekeeper patrols in the area, as well as detailed scans of the field. The data could help Pilot plot a course out of here. I assume Moya can't starburst."
D'Argo snorts and turns around, heading out of the bay. Aeryn signals Nela to remain with the marauder and monitor Peacekeeper frequencies. The comm officer doesn't look pleased to be left behind. The wildest stories circulate about Moya, even among seasoned soldiers. Aeryn heard a few good ones on Tarn. John would have laughed until his stomach hurt.
On the way to the galley, Aeryn gets a proper idea of the damage done to Moya. She couldn't see much in the maintenance bay, but so close to the walls of the Leviathan's corridors she counts every burned conduit, every patch of broken skin, every faulty connection. She hasn't seen Moya in such bad shape since the collision with the Pathfinders, but she recognizes the pattern of the damage.
"You were hit by an immobilizer pulse."
"Just as we were going into starburst," D'Argo says. "It didn't hit us as hard as it hit Talyn that one time, but worse than the last time Moya was captured. We haven't been able to starburst since. The chamber is beyond our ability to repair." D'Argo will not say that John might have been able to fix what they couldn't, but he doesn't need to.
Aeryn wonders at Pilot's conspicuous silence. D'Argo has handled all the communications, and the clamshells they've come across have remained blank. It would be like Pilot to be angry with her for leaving, but he wouldn't put a personal grudge above Moya's safety in the circumstances.
"Moya's injuries are putting a lot of strain on Pilot," Chiana says, as if she read her mind. The Nebari pushes her hair away from her face. It's grown. Aeryn takes note because it's harder to read her eyes. "He-- he doesn't really lose consciousness, but he sleeps a lot. Plotting a course out of here will have to wait."
Aeryn has never heard of a Pilot sleeping. She might have to send the marauder back to Tesaris and remain here; they can lose themselves in an asteroid field indefinitely. They don't have to worry about Talyn this time. John can return with reinforcements and supplies.
A DRD zooms between her feet, a small square of yellow tape wrapped around one eyestalk.
"Some DRDs have been acting oddly," Chiana explains. "We color-coded them to keep track of them. They're going around in circles, one on each tier for no apparent reason. We think they're malfunctioning. Or it's Moya trying to tell us that she's confused."
The galley isn't in much better shape, and the rations are tight. Food cubes, the green ones. The old woman is right where Aeryn left her, peering at something burning on the stove.
"Her name is Zelani," D'Argo makes the introductions. "It only took her two weekens to share that much. You don't want to know the rest right now."
Zelani's third eye glows at Rias and Mali, who take a step back. Perhaps there's some use for her.
Speaking of useless.
"Is Jool with Pilot?"
The crash of plates and tumblers hitting the far wall sends Mali and Rias to their feet, reaching for their weapon. D'Argo doesn't even seem to notice. His hands are locked into tight fists in front of him. Chiana didn't flinch at the outburst. She's looking at the broken dishes on the floor. Zelani comes quickly around the counter and lays her hand on D'Argo's back. He lets her.
"It's just the three of us, and Rygel. He's in command," Chiana says tonelessly. "We lost Jool more than a weeken ago."
Mali and Rias lower their pistols and sit back down.
There's something in D'Argo's face that Aeryn recognizes. "She's dead."
Chiana shrugs, her eyes focused far away. "We don't know. We--" She rubs D'Argo's arm up and down slowly, but she doesn't seem to be aware of what she's doing. "Moya was already in bad shape when we caught up to her, after John opened the wormhole for us. We never found out what had happened. Jool, Pilot and Wrinkles" -- Zelani scowls at the Nebari --"they didn't know. One microt they're with John in the sacred space, and the next-- You remember Moya's bio-mechanoid structure doesn't take to wormholes too well? We had to replace most of the connections in the neural cluster."
She sips some water from her glass. Her words are eerily sharp against D'Argo's stony silence.
"For a while we sort of drifted. We didn't even know in what part of space we were. We didn't know how to get back to Pembra station, or send a message there for Crichton. Eventually, we found a commerce planet. It looked free of Peacekeepers. We were negotiating some bio-mechanoid parts and one of the merchants recognized Jool. Well, recognized her species. He'd traded with Interons before. Their world wasn't too far from there. Jool was so excited, she melted half the shop."
Chiana is still not focusing on Aeryn, but on something that is no longer here.
"We agreed to take Jool home. It's-- It's what John would have done. What we were all preparing to do when we left Moya. It-- it didn't-- We barely made it out of orbit. A vigilante was waiting for us. D'Argo never had time to fly his ship out to protect us. Moya managed to starburst, but we ended up in the middle of nowhere barely able to make hetch five. It took us monens to find a planet with suitable star maps. We were still in range of the Interon home world and Jool said they would have the technology to fix Moya."
Chiana's laugh echoes the cry of a small creature dying.
"We did it. We finally got one of us home." Her eyes shine with gray tears. "But Jool had been gone for a long time. Interon colonies on the outskirts of the system had been threatened by Scarran scout ships and--"
"They hired Peacekeepers to protect them," Aeryn says. She doesn't really want to hear any more, but she wants this conversation to be over.
"Jool didn't believe her own people would turn her in," Chiana continues, barely acknowledging her. "They never supported the use of military force. But things-- change. She insisted on going down to the surface, to see her family. We wouldn't-- We wouldn't go with her." Chiana cries like John. Silent trails of water. "An arn after she left, we lost her comm signal and the retrieval squad appeared on Moya's sensor horizon. We-- we tried to contact Jool, tell her to come back, but it was too late. We fled. We--we left without her."
Zelani is petting D'Argo's brow.
"Why Jool?" Aeryn asks softly.
"She was on the carrier. She was one of us," D'Argo says. His words struggle to cut through the mucus in his throat. "That's enough."
Aeryn searches for words. "You did what was best for Moya and for yourselves."
D'Argo rises slowly. Zelani leans against his back like a cloak, dwarfed by the Luxan's stature, yet she seems to be the only thing holding him upright. Chiana is a wretched pile of gray and black next to them.
"That's a load of dren, Aeryn," D'Argo says in a voice softer than she expected. He leaves the galley, Zelani under his arm.
"We'll be in command," Chiana says. She wraps herself inside the fur coat until a mop of white hair and unnatural black eyes are the only traces of her peeking out.
Aeryn is left with her food cubes.

Zelani has taken to trailing Aeryn all over the ship. Perhaps trailing isn't the proper term. She doesn't so much follow her as appear in whichever room Aeryn happens to be in. When Aeryn is in command waiting for Rygel to get over an acute case of the intons, Zelani materializes at the door with an armful of garments to ask the ex-Peacekeeper if she needs her shirts laundered. When Aeryn visits Pilot, who can't be roused long enough to welcome her back, Zelani is already in the den administering the symbiot some foul concoction. Later, they bump into each other in the maintenance bay, while Zelani is hauling around a massive cauldron. Assessing the damage with D'Argo in the neural cluster, Aeryn almost shoots the old woman when she sticks her head down the ladder from the tier above, watching them for no reason Aeryn can figure. D'Argo doesn't bother to comment.
Aeryn lets it go. She survived five weeks in close quarters with Crichton; she's become quite adept at ignoring some aspects of her environment and focusing on others. Also, pulse fire would shatter the oppressive silence of the Leviathan.
At the end of the day, the crew gathers in the galley, save for Mali who took over for Nela monitoring comm frequencies on the marauder, and Rias. D'Argo was convinced to hand over watch in command. It wasn't as much of an argument as Aeryn expected. Moya's crew hasn't rested in weekens.
Zelani produced some broth to accompany their meager plates of food cubes. Aeryn decides not to ask where the herbs and the chunks of dark meat come from. They exchange a handful of words over the table. Nela takes her leave under the pretence of downloading some maps of the asteroid field into Moya's databanks, which Aeryn knows she's already done. She lets her go.
The food cubes are down to crumbs, which she eats dutifully. Chiana's wide, dark eyes keep straying to the seat next to Aeryn's. Perhaps she expects Jool to appear, although Chiana knows better than to want the impossible. Perhaps she wishes Crichton were filling that seat.
Aeryn rises to clear up her dishes, but Zelani waves her back down. Her third eye is closed, her hand brushes Aeryn's arm when she takes the plate from her. Aeryn sits there because John would have known what to say, and since she doesn't, she has nothing to offer her grieving friends but her presence. She won't pretend to be mourning. She mourns, but not for Jool.
Zelani places a steaming cup in front of each of them. Chiana wraps her hands eagerly around hers. The old woman brings her face close to Aeryn's. Her third eye is open and glowing.
"He wouldn't have liked you if he had taken you there anyway," she says with a small, crooked grin.
This seems to be some sort of signal, because Chiana pushes away from the table and leaves the galley, Zelani on her heels tsking between her teeth.
Aeryn counts her own heartbeats. D'Argo's nose is buried in his drink. Ten beats. Fifty. He won't come up with words Aeryn can understand.
"You've missed too much," D'Argo says finally. He doesn't make it look easy. "It's been too long."
"Half a cycle--"
He puts the cup down. The liquid sloshes over the rim. "Longer."
He doesn't know about the child. He would have asked, if Crichton had told him. "I don't answer to you, D'Argo."
He sighs. "No, you don't. You don't answer to me. You don't answer to John. You don't answer to Pilot." He stands, heads for the counter, reaches high into one of the most innocent looking pots on the upper shelf and brings it back down. He takes off the lid, and produces a flask.
"Shanti extract."
Aeryn is suitably impressed. Who the frell did D'Argo kill to get his hands on Shanti extract?
He waits for her to empty the cup of strong smelling tea, which sloshes unbearably in her stomach, and fills it back up. He helps himself too, mixing the intoxicant and the tea. Barbarian.
"Jool must be dead. I hope she is dead," he says after the first sip. "John was dead when we found him after you left. Did he tell you that?"
Her stomach contracts like it did when they took the fetus out.
"He was not breathing. His heart was not beating. His skin was as white as Chiana's and the module stank of death. Chiana had to breathe for him and I had to break his bones to reach his heart. Inconvenient place to put a heart, if you ask me."
The tea and the Shanti merge and burn on the way up. She runs to the disposal unit and makes it in time; she doesn't spill any of it over the sides. D'Argo waits for her at the table with a wet dishrag.
She wipes her mouth and chin clean, empties her cup in the basin and refills it with fresh tea, although it breaks her heart to waste the Shanti. She used to play Bagon Lan against Henta for a single glass. Almost lost a finger once.
"I am not surprised that he didn't tell you." D'Argo nods to himself, picking at crumbs on the tabletop.
Aeryn coughs, once, to relieve the pressure in her throat. She needs a dentic. D'Argo is almost jovial in his despair, as if he didn't expect her to get sick, but body fluids somehow make her redeemable. If her legs could support her, she would walk out of the room.
"You came alone. He trusts you with us but not with himself." The Luxan shakes his head, sending his tenkas flying. "He died, but John would forgive you for dying alone. I don't think I want to know what you did, Aeryn."
"You left him, too," she says, lips pressed tight. D'Argo can get to her. She forgot.
"Yes," D'Argo sighs, after more Shanti. "And he sent us after Moya on our own, so he could be free to run after you. I am still angry at him for that. But that's between John and I. He'll forgive me, and I'll forgive him." He smiles. "Eventually. I should write this. Luxans do not have a long tradition of writing down the lessons learned. Perhaps I should change that."
He contemplates the many empty chairs gathered around the table.
"Friends aren't always around until it's finally convenient for you." D'Argo replaces the hidden reserve back in its pot. "You'll have to decide soon if you're going to tell him the words he needs to hear. That is, if you know the words." He sniffs at the pot simmering on the stove. Mutters between his teeth, wriggling his nose. "What in Hezmana is she cooking now? Sometimes I want to check if Moya isn't missing some parts."
Aeryn pointedly doesn't look at the half-eaten bowl of broth in the basin.
Her stomach doesn't have time to rebel again, because her comms crackle to life.
"Sun." Nela. "You better come to command. Right away."
D'Argo barely lifts an eyebrow at the abrupt address before taking off at a full run after her.
"Mali," she calls into her comms.
"Sensors are clear, Sun. It's a remote transmission."
The first thing Aeryn registers upon entering command is Grayza's face on the central screen. At the periphery of her vision, she's aware of Chiana huddled on the floor, lips parted, eyes wide, tears flowing, and Zelani holding the unresponsive Nebari to her chest. Rygel hovers by the auxiliary comm console, earbrows drooping and mouth hanging open.
"Negotiations are not an option--" Grayza is saying.
Aeryn steps up to the main console, next to Nela.
"It's a recorded message set on a loop, transmitted from a deep space Padak beacon," Nela reports, flexing her fingers. "It emits on a Leviathan frequency."
"Deep space beacons," Aeryn echoes. Space equivalent of the planet-bound wanted beacons she fiddled with so often. "They must have released them all over the system."
"-- surrender yourself and your crew, John Crichton, and I will spare your friend more discomfort."
The view changes to a half-conscious Jool strapped in a Neura Chair, sobbing and sagging in her restraints. Blood drips from her mouth. She must have bitten her own tongue. The Neura Chair does to the body was the Aurora Chair does to the mind.
"As far as I can determine, the beacon has been active for several solar days," Nela says.
Chiana keens high at the ceiling. There's no telling if Jool is still alive after days in the Chair.
"I have no interest in the Interon," Grayza drones on. "If you give yourself up without resistance, I will release her in the custody of her people. She has already damaged quite a few pieces of equipment. I have no desire to keep her any longer than necessary."
The display switches back to Jool. A tech activates the Chair, the Interon coils in her seat and screams, and screams--
D'Argo punches a hole through the auxiliary console, killing the transmission. His next words don't translate.
"That's not going to help, Luxan," Rygel says, head bowed. He floats over to D'Argo and pats him gently on the arm. This Aeryn was never a part of, even in the middle days of John's madness, when she too held the crew together. A brotherhood of torture which, after the Aurora Chair, made her feel more than anything else like an intruder on board.
"There's a set of coordinates attached to the message," Nela says gamely. She will refuse to show fear, even if the Luxan seems on the verge of hyper rage.
"Location?"
Nela points at the strategy table and the stellar maps she downloaded into Moya's databanks. She activates the three-dimensional holographic projector and displays a view of the asteroid field, relative to the nebula and the rest of the system. "We are here," she says, pointing at a miniature of Moya. "If our prior triangulation was correct, the retrieval squad is somewhere in the nebula. The coordinates lead to a small attendant moon, orbiting Vex'y-la." She zooms in on a giant red planet midway between the nebula and the asteroid field. "The database identifies it as an abandoned Zenetan settlement. There's no Peacekeeper base in this sector."
Aeryn crosses her arms over her chest. Grayza is a high ranking political officer. She joined the track when she felt that the capture was imminent. The personal capture of John Crichton would be quite a coup. She must still be unaware that Crichton is on Tesaris, or she would not be leading the retrieval squad herself. She is either aboard the vigilante in the nebula, or on the moon waiting for Crichton to rescue Jool.
If they remain concealed in the asteroid field, they'll be safe.
"We're taking my ship," D'Argo says, striding out of command. He glares at her over his shoulder. "You don't have to come along, and I don't give a flibisk's eema if you don't like it."

CHAPTER VI -- I know the voices dying with a dying fall
John doesn't wake so much as he tumbles out of bed. Sleep eluded him the rest of the night, a miasma of too hot and too cold, pain radiating from his stomach. It's not the ulcer; he's been taking his pills like a good boy. Braca didn't pull his punch back: the bruise is already a deep ugly black.
"You get hurt a lot," Loa says, watching him get dressed from the couch. She reappeared after Braca left, and lay down in bed with John. The mattress is so narrow, she curled herself inside his back rather than around it. It didn't help him fade into an oblivion where enemies are enemies, allies are allies, friends are friends, and people don't pull the rug out from under him so damn often.
"Scratched, bumped, cracked and dented, lady." The buckle of his belt digs into the bruise when he bends to lace his boots, and he swears colorfully. Loa seems puzzled by the subtler nuances of the language.
She doesn't mention last night. Perhaps dead Shelk have environmental sex with strangers all the time. Perhaps they go on in death carrying the desires which sustained them through life, forever stuck in the moment. One sure thing is, Loa didn't die wanting John Crichton.
He meets Jona at the door; she smiles slyly at him. Veti snickers when he crosses her room, Fana waves derisively, then Keluni and Feria, Detina and Detina Junior, and Andro who had his pet holographed alongside him. The buzz of gossip sets the air alight in his wake. There's no knowing how far the story will have spread by the end of the day. A hundred rooms? A few thousands? There's one thing all the Shelk died wanting, and that's life. John's is all they've got.
He stops by the kitchens on the way out. The kitchens, the command and the labs, huddled together in the middle of the largest construction, must be rooms where the holographic cells failed, or were deactivated by the renegades. John's never seen a Shelk there. He grabs a cup of something warm and sweet, a handful of food cubes and a couple of yellow fruits the size of oranges, which Hena deemed safe for his digestive tract.
Ari gave him an ident chip, which controls access to the level risers Below. Aside from the main railways which lead Above, there are smaller risers which navigate within the Shelk quarters. There's half-a-dozen stories made up of rooms just like this one above their heads, each spreading across the inner district of the city. The Middle Levels, between Above and Below, were abandoned hundreds of cycles ago, and although Tesaris has spread far beyond the perimeter of the original Shelk settlement, no one's lived at ground level for a long, long time.
John takes one of the internal risers up to the last Shelk floor. Down a corridor for a few hundred yards along the side of the building, then off to the right through a double door sealed by an electronic key. He's on a platform outside, crammed between two titanic skyscrapers. The ground is littered with half-smoked beacha leaves, old cups and empty bottles. Ari showed him the place when he was recovering from the stomach graft. If he stands just so, at a precise angle and at a certain time on a clear day, he can catch a glimpse of the bright orange ether through the transports and the railways and the risers zooming around the beehive above.
From this distance, the specks of sky look like stars -- dim, tangerine suns dotting a black canvas -- and the giant constructions teeter like mad fire-eaters. The ridium particles are denser here, although invisible. He won't be able to stay for long before his lungs start to complain, but escaping the claustrophobic embrace of the Shelk is worth the discomfort. There's color tumbling down this artificial well: open pyres burning like pinpricks, steel pipes spitting heat, neon lights and smoke, the roar of revelers, merchants, tourists and a million street walkers. Life drones on and on above his head, away from frozen babies and frozen touches of dead lovers.
"I'm not dead yet," he says, gliding his hand along the handrail. He looks down at the hexagonal cells under his feet. There are other platforms scattered across this level, each one a powerful solar captor. There's no sunlight to capture anymore, but there are other captors, Ari told him, on hills far outside the urban conglomerate, which still pump power into the city. Like starlight turns the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen present in clouds of gas and space dust into life, solar energy bestows the Shelk with the illusion of life.
"There's life up there," Harvey says, leaning on his elbows. He's chewing on a weed, his head tipped back to look at the sky. "Perhaps there wasn't enough life where you came from."
Panspermia, John thinks. Life everywhere. At the beginning of the century, some astronomers had postulated that the Solar system might distinguish itself not by the fact that it held life on one of its worlds, but by the fact that it held so little of it.
"I'm not dead," John whispers softly. I'm not dead and there's life out there, he thinks. He's always been good at finding it.
"Hello, John."
John's never had to deal with Harvey and Scorpius at the same time. The clone has the good grace to slink away before John embarrasses himself by confusing them both. "Hey, Scorpy. Let me guess. You can follow my trail because I smell."
"As a matter of fact, I asked the holograms. They were most helpful."
"Et tu, Shelk?"
"You've lost me again."
John throws one of the yellow fruits; Scorpius plucks it out of the air. "How bad does it look? The contagion. How bad?"
"I would say it looks quite-- bad."
In Scorpius's mouth, bad is just another word for hopeless, for PK trains which no longer run on time.
"While we know that the Nebari virus was designed from a common Sebacean lysogenic virus, we know little else. We would have to procure the genetic records of thousands of individuals, and screen those individuals again for any mutation occurring in transposons in the interval, identify the virus, then find a way to reverse the mutation, or alter the DNA sequencing to render the helper virus ineffectual."
"And you don't know what the virus is supposed to code for," John adds.
Scorpy's eyes narrow in impotent anger. "It could be anything. It could mutate Sebaceans into a different species, it could render them dependant on a compound only the Nebari could supply. Anything."
John drinks silently from his cup. If the Nebari mindwipe the entire galaxy, no one will remember his name.
Scorpius breaks the moment with a sigh.
"On one side the Scarrans, and on the other--" The hybrid's tone is bleak. "I would expect the Nebari to wait out the conflict. Whoever wins, their plans will be served. They have surely taken steps to contaminate the Scarrans, or they have the weapons to exterminate them. Peacekeepers are the most immediate threat. They have been supporting the Nebari resistance for a while."
John nods. He hasn't forgotten Varla and the control collar. The Peacekeepers are caught between a bunch of rocks and a big hard wall.
"You're going to have to think sideways, Scorpy."
Scorpius looks at him quizzically.
"I've noticed this side of the universe isn't big on lateral thinking, but we have a saying on Earth. When a door closes, a window opens." He scratches his neck. "Or is that the other way around? Anyway, it means there's always another way in. Means that if you can't take your enemies using brute force, you might want to look for alternatives."
It's like baiting a wounded three-hundred pound tiger, because John is the door, he's the window; he's the goddamn house. Scorpy grabs tightly onto the handrail, like he can't bear to look at John without doing some damage. "Damn it, Scorp. Forget that I exist for a minute, okay? What would you do if I were dead, uh? And believe me, Ari's thought about it long and hard. If he hadn't needed me to get to you, he would have just as soon killed me to get rid of the headache. What would you do if I were dead?"
"Don't you think we've studied other options?" Scorpius snarls, and John can picture him begging Grayza. Begging not for his life, but for the chance to fight his enemies another day, to save those he considers his people. We were not always like this, Ari had said on John's first day Below. Sometimes, it's almost easy to believe. "There were other gammak projects. Scarrans outnumber Peacekeepers ten to one. We looked for ways to produce more soldiers."
John blanches when he catches on to what Scorpius is talking about, but the Peacekeeper is lost in his impassioned tirade and doesn't notice.
"We lost the entire project, although no one is quite sure how it happened. Five hundred men and a Leviathan. It was a miserable failure."
"That's still frontal assault," John says, pulling himself away from Chiana dead, D'Argo dead, and the hellish months that came after. He counters the sick memory with an even worse one. "You have to work your way around the problem. When the Aurora Chair didn't give you what you wanted, you put a neuro chip in my head, right?"
Harvey is clapping loudly, whistling and hooting from a scaffold above the platform. John's getting better a speaking a language Scorpius understands.
"Look. Look," he grinds out, pointing at nothing. "Look at the Nebari. If their outbreak scenario pans out, they'll take over the galaxy without one goddamn shot fired. Doesn't that tell you anything?"
Why he is so hell-bent on giving Scorpius a reason to keep fighting, John isn't quite sure. Single-mindedness kills men faster than the plague. One revenge, one woman, one home -- it gnaws at the soul until there's nothing left to salvage. Perhaps he feels like sharing the insight, since there's no one else left to listen.
Scorpius is staring at John like he just gave up the secret to wormholes.
"Uh, oh," Harvey says.
"A biological weapon," Scorpius says, pushing away from the handrail.
John, who knows all about adopting the methods of an enemy to survive, is saved from having to paint himself out of that corner by the appearance of Ari. Judging by the look on his face, the former Ghost expected to find them at each other's throats.
Scorpius smiles amiably, polishing the yellow skin of the fruit on his black suit. "What is it, lieutenant?"
"We've received word from Sun."
"She on the comms?" John's already halfway to the door.
"Wait, Crichton," Ari says, grasping his arm. "It wasn't a transmission. She's too far away for that. She sent the message to one of our outposts in the Jveny system. The recording is two solar days old. She's located Moya's last known coordinates in the Razia system, but she isn't the only one tracking the Leviathan. Commandant Grayza is after your friends."
John shakes his arm free. "Grayza? Why didn't she come after me? Why Moya?"
Scorpius and Ari exchange a glance that would qualify as amused were they any other men. John forgot that he's talking to the head chapter of the John Crichton Hunting Society. One hunter's prey is another prey's hunter. They've all been one and the other.
"Moya is your last known location," Scorpius explains, like John needs the words spelled out. "Grayza can use the rest of the crew as bait to draw you out if she doesn't find you there. Tracking you down at this stage is practically impossible. If every sighting were to be believed, you would have the ability to be in two places at once."
Scorpius is chuckling -- a couple of gasps like an asthma attack to accompany his smile. If he knew the whole E! True Story of the Crichton Twins, he would burst a cooling rod.
John turns to Ari. "Is there a way to get me out there?"
"We don't know where they are now. If Grayza is after them, they'll be maintaining absolute radio silence. There's no point going to Razia until we receive more information."
John looks upwards. Wrong angle; he can see only darkness. "I really shouldn't have pointed a gun at her, uh?"
"It wasn't your-- smartest move," Scorpius concedes, as if John had any smart moves. "As far as Grayza is concerned, you have done far more damage than the Nebari. All the Peacekeepers you've encountered are either dead, or traitors." He drops the uneaten fruit over the handrail. It makes no dramatic splash. The shadows swallow it whole. "It's a matter of interpretation as to which ones are better off."
"I kind of hoped she would be too busy," -- with you, but John doesn't say that -- "to bother with me."
"She'll want to take you alive. She'll want a public trial and an execution. Remember, John. It's about politics. You thought I was your worst enemy." There might even be regret. They don't make nemeses like they used to. "Reconsider. There is nothing Commandant Grayza wants from you but your destruction. Nothing for you to bargain with."
Scorpius's cooling apparatus shines like a lighthouse in high seas.

D'Argo always rushed headlong into life-threatening situations completely unprepared to face the consequences. This is no different. The Luxan ship makes him more likely to get out of the deadly mess alive; the ship also makes him more prone to overlook the basic rules of successful covert operations. In this case, stealth.
The derelict Zenetan compound is located on the dark side of the attendant moon. Standard procedure would dictate a stealth trajectory, entering the atmosphere on the bright side, using the red giant's mass as a shield for as long as possible, but D'Argo engages on a direct path, setting down a thousand metras from the ruins. Mali and Rias stare at the Luxan as if he were insane.
"No orbital defense stations. No upper atmosphere patrols," Aeryn observes.
"It's a trap. It's always a trap," D'Argo growls, powering down the ship. "Why do they bother? They know that we know that they know we're coming." Emphatic shake of the head. "Peacekeepers."
Rias and Mali will never, ever call her officer Sun after this: the way the Luxan talks to her, the way she allows him to get away with it without a broken bone. They've been living among ex-Peacekeepers all this time; they don't know what contamination means, not really.
The surface of the moon is covered in dark ice and buffeted by raw, cutting winds. The progression is slow. Their heads are wrapped in thick scarves and the starlight is very little to go by without night goggles; they test each step gingerly. Mali carries the scan-imager and walks ahead, warning them of mines and motion sensors. They find a handful of the firsts and a couple of the seconds. They're all inoperative: their energy cells haven't been recharged in a couple of days. There is no underground power network to keep them running, but Aeryn worries about decoys. There could be more detectors, which escaped their scan.
Past a boulder, they're in sight of the compound. D'Argo takes the absence of an operational defense grid as an invitation to charge. He runs ahead under cover of an irregular rock formation. Aeryn runs after D'Argo. If they're going to be ambushed, they might as well stick together. She wonders if Mali and Rias will go back to the ship once her attention is diverted, take their chances with the alien technology.
She hears them jog after her. Ghosts. Suicidal. Loyal too, it seems.
She catches up to D'Argo twenty metras from the main building. She grabs the back of his tunic and pulls down, hard. She drops next to him on the ground. "Stop struggling," she spits in his ear. "You won't do Jool any good if you get captured again." D'Argo snarls at her. She drives her elbow in his side to silence him. "We've been through this with Jothee, and I'm not John. I won't pay the price of your stupidity."
"Who put you in ch--"
"Shut up."
She holds him down, and turns to Mali, lying on his stomach to her left. Quick hand gestures and Mali checks the scan-imager. Shakes his head. Still no peripheral sensors. Shaking off her uneasiness, Aeryn takes stock of the target laid out in front of them. Three constructions, hardly worthy of the name settlement, but there might be more underground. The tallest building is four stories high, backed against a rocky hill, which insulates the compound from the worst of the lunar winds. Two smaller constructions on the side, possibly storage areas. No sentries that she can see, no shooters on the roofs. No signs of life at all anywhere. The windows are dark.
She spots a service entrance to the side of the main building and signals Rias. The commando slinks over the short distance to the door, testing the hinges for detectors, checking the lock. Rias must have found the door open, because he disappears inside. Aeryn waits, half-lying on D'Argo, her elbow jammed painfully between two vertebrae. The Luxan is going to be a handful when she lets him go.
Microts tick by. They can't use the comms. Her fingers are going numb inside her gloves.
Rias reappears and gives them the all-clear signal. Aeryn rises, unleashing D'Argo. The Luxan jumps to his feet, forcing Mali to take a step back or be flattened. Surprisingly enough, D'Argo doesn't waste time arguing with her. He runs across the distance to the entrance, sliding down the ice, followed by Mali and Aeryn.
They have to use small torch lights inside, dimmed and always pointed at the floor. Rias indicates that the ground floor is clear and D'Argo tears ahead in a straight line. There are signs of a military presence in every room: field bunks on the floor, unmade, and rations in the corners. Small boxes of ammunition are piled on a table. Aeryn passes a finger over the top of the containers. A couple days worth of dust has collected on the lids.
Mali raises his fist to get her attention and points at the scan-imager. One life sign, below their feet. Aeryn's frown matches Mali's. A basement would make a perfect spot for an ambuscade. Using field hand signals, she orders Mali and Rias to remain on that level and keep the exit clear. Switch to open comms if it looks like they are discovered anyway. D'Argo's ship answers to voice commands. It could cover a hasty exit, but they need some advance warning to get it here.
Aeryn retrieves D'Argo, who's prowling the rooms lined against the south wall. "One life sign, downstairs," she whispers. They're only moderately successful at communicating with words. There's no point attempting sign language.
D'Argo is off again, to the door and down the stairs; the urgency which drives him is something beyond Luxan heritage, something she remembers from gammak bases and shadow depositories. She was better at denying it. D'Argo isn't even trying.
The basement level is musty and even darker, each shadow a potential death trap. The layout is different: fewer rooms, more open spaces. D'Argo slows down because he didn't look at the scan-imager and doesn't know where to go. She follows the walls, her pulse pistol preceding her everywhere, arm slightly bent at the elbow to absorb the recoil of the weapon.
When they reach a closed door, she lowers the handle and pushes it open, crouching out of the line of fire. When the pulse blasts don't come, she crosses the threshold shoulder first. Presenting her weapon first would be the surest way to get her arm snapped in two when the enemy shoves the door shut.
She aims her torchlight at eye level to blind ambushed shooters. A rapid sweep of the room reveals nothing. There's no one to disable and nothing to shoot. D'Argo hits the light controls without warning, flooding the room in brightness. She squeezes her eyes shut for an instant, cursing D'Argo's ancestors. By the time her vision has cleared, he's already on the opposite side of the room, crouching in a corner.
The ground is made of dirt, the air sharp as ice. Aeryn covers the three other corners quickly, but this room is as deserted as the rest of the compound. She blocks the door with a chunk a rock to make sure that it doesn't close behind them.
D'Argo is bending forward, whispering words in a voice she has not heard since her paraphoral nerve was damaged and she asked to die alone. His big shoulders shift, his back flexes. When he rises, a curtain of blood-red hair pools in his arms.

John is standing by the comm console. If anyone asks, he's watching a nest of bugs in the corner -- tangled webs and eggs hatching, hungry young and the mother who takes forever to die. If he asks himself, same thing. He's watching the bugs.
It's been a while since he last stood still, a while since he's been this useless. Scorpius is barricaded in the lab with the techs; Braca guards the door of the lab. The comm console is silent. The comm technician fidgets, and John tries to think of something to do with his hands that won't send the kid running away screaming. He's been on Tesaris for two weekens and no one died, but the grunts still get jumpy when he hovers. The Civilians have vanished altogether.
John walks away from the console. He can't go back to his room to take a nap, even if he'd love to do just that. He doesn't want to face Loa, she trapped by her holographic program, he trapped by himself.
"If we could be free of our wants," she had said, and it gave him an idea, but he'll have to talk about it with Ari first.
Ari is Above, back in Gorn's refreshment house. John wanted to go along, but Ari wouldn't allow it. Not because two John Crichtons were more than his contact could handle, but because Hena wanted to run additional tests on John.
"So what are you negotiating this time?" John asked. He didn't want to think about his stomach lining.
"Nothing," Ari said. "It's a delivery." He was carrying a large box full of vid chips. "We smuggle unaltered historical documents on carriers and distribute them. We try to recruit those who are sympathetic to our cause, or we pull them out if they want to get out. It's-- dangerous. It attracts attention. We don't do that often."
John sits in the kitchen because he can't go out. Hena ordered him to give his lungs a break and stay inside where the scrubbers can do some good and free the air of the ridium. He stares at his left hand, which has been devoid of symbols and phase equations for longer than he remembers. The knowledge hums under his skin. So much power in a single cell. A whole unifying system, quantum metaphysics holding him together.
"Ari has propaganda, and railroads. He has labs. What do you have, John?"
Harvey's chin rests on his bunched fists. He smiles a Buddha smile at John over the table.
"I've got my brain," John says.
"Yes. For what that's worth."
Sticking his tongue out at Harvey and finding Hena staring at him from the door is only mildly mortifying. He jumps to his feet and coughs. "What's up, doc?"
She looks at him like he is the lowest of the lowest life forms. "I need you again," she says.
John flinches. Hena hasn't got the smoothest bedside manners.
"It won't hurt," she adds quickly.
He wants to reward her effort; he grins and follows her to the infirmary, past the lab and Braca who's pulling an Aeryn -- not acknowledging John at all. They walk through a couple of empty corridors to the medical wing. Most men are in command, others Above with Ari, or locked up in the lab with Scorpius. He's Hena's only patient.
"I really appreciate what you've done for me," he says.
She points him to the bed, which isn't necessary because by now he knows exactly where to lie down, when to cough, when to say 'ah' and when to scream. She spent ten agonizing minutes poking the site of the graft this morning from the inside, reaching his stomach through his navel. It hasn't been all fun and games.
"So what's wrong with me?"
He takes off his holster, drops Winona on a side tray and starts to lie back, but Hena shakes her head. "You can remain seated for this."
It can't be so bad if he doesn't have to be lying flat. He lets go of some of the tension, until Hena reappears with a needle. "Oh, man. Not again." His inner elbow is black and blue from Hena's repeated attempts to find his 'good vein' -- vitamin shots, immunizer shots, blood taking. As far as body artwork goes, he likes the equations better.
"You were showing early signs of hypoxia this morning. Shortness of breath, tiredness. I put together this compound to help clear your lungs of the excess ridium, and reestablish proper oxygenation."
Anything that will get rid of the cough and the tiredness is worth a few more holes in his body.
Hena wipes the area clean with a disinfectant. She's careful. Her touch is lighter than he's become used to. She pulls one of the naked bulbs closer to the site, and when the needle breaks the skin, it barely stings. He feels the warmth of the light on his arm. When she pushes the depressor and the liquid flows in his veins, it burns, but no worse than a flu shot. She removes the needle, still mindful, and gently massages the injection site with a cotton swab.
She says, "It's not going to hurt at all."

Aeryn doesn't turn her back on the door when she kneels by D'Argo and the inanimate woman in his arms. "Is she dead?" she asks softly. She can't take her eyes off their only exit long enough to check whether Jool's chest is still rising and falling. Open spaces make Aeryn nervous.
D'Argo is bowed over the Interon, facing the corner, not worrying about who or what might come from behind.
"D'Argo?"
"No," he says. "She's alive."
"D'Argo, we can't stay here." He doesn't budge. "If Jool is wounded" --how can she not be? Aeryn isn't even convinced D'Argo isn't seeing things, that she's not dead -- "she's going to need medical attention. We have to go."
D'Argo vacillates, and she thinks he's going to fall, but he rises like a small mountain, cradling Jool against his chest. He turns around. "Activate vocal recognition," he says into the comm badge pinned to his tunic. "Activate retrieval protocol, coordinates--"
Here he looks at Aeryn, because he has to. She feels his eyes on her without the need to take her attention off the door.
"Delta five, Premno one, Lerg fifteen," she says.
He repeats each word for the benefit of his ship.
"We are walking out now," Aeryn says, holding the butt of her weapon in both hands. She's lost her back cover, since D'Argo is otherwise occupied. She has to secure a much larger perimeter around the three of them, and that's always a strain on her senses.
She keeps three feet between herself and her charges, following the same route they used on their way in. They reach the ground level unchallenged. Mali is waiting for them at the top of the stairs, his torchlight switched off. He signals that Rias is covering the side door.
Rias is crouched inside the frame of the service entrance, surveying the expanse of dark ice. The starlight injects life into every boulder. When the roar of D'Argo's ship sweeps over the compound, the commandos bring their weapons to bear on the dark sky, but Aeryn waves the rifles down. The ship lands without drawing any fire, or triggering automatic defense systems. They wait for the rear access door to lower before taking off at a full run. Aeryn keeps close to D'Argo, Rias in front of her and Mali at the rear. They jump in one after the other, and don't lower their weapons even after the door has locked behind them.
"Automatic pilot protocol," D'Argo says. "Destination coordinates: quadrant helta ergo nine."
He bares his teeth and the commandos get the point. They shift to the front seats, liberating space in the cargo hold when the ship takes off.
"Don't touch any of the commands," D'Argo says without looking over his shoulder. "They're keyed to my DNA."
Mali snatches his hand back like it's about to spontaneously combust.
"Coat," D'Argo grinds out.
Aeryn takes her coat off and spreads it on the floor. D'Argo lays his burden down, holding the back of Jool's head to make sure it doesn't hit anything.
"Lights, low."
The soft illumination is enough to reveal the extent of the damage. Jool is covered in blood, dried blood. Brown flecks are clinging to D'Argo's tunic. The blood soaked into her hair and coagulated through the curls. Her face is bruised and it's hard to see Jool under the mass of swollen tissues, the cuts on her chest, the arm bent at an unnatural angle.
"Pass me the field medical kit, behind you," D'Argo says.
Aeryn turns around, extracts the small black box from its container and gives it to D'Argo. The Luxan keeps his head down. She knows he's crying, quietly, not at all like a Luxan. He takes out some rudimentary bandages, a bottle of disinfectant, scissors, a syringe full of clear liquid.
"Painkiller," he says. "I'm not sure-- I don't think I should use it. It's not for Interons."
D'Argo wipes away most of the blood around Jool's nose, mouth and eyes. The Interon doesn't stir, doesn't make a sound. There's no telling what kind of internal injuries Jool sustained without a scan. This isn't the work of the Neura Chair, which inflicts pain without permanent damage to the body. This is a deliberate beating.
Aeryn steps away from the situation, because D'Argo won't. "Those injuries are about two days old," she says.
D'Argo grunts.
"They left her behind. It wasn't a trap. And they didn't kill her."
D'Argo shifts Jool gently on her side to inspect her back.
"They were there, waiting for us, but something happened and they left in a hurry." She curls her hand around his shoulder. "D'Argo," she calls as low as she can, "are you listening to me?"
The Luxan shrugs her hand off. "No, Aeryn. I'm not listening to you." He lifts his reddened eyes off Jool. His next words are almost inaudible. "She's dying." He wraps the coat tightly around the young woman. He's done all he can for her. "We're taking her back to Moya. Zelani will know what to do. She's a healer, did we tell you that?"
Aeryn leans forward on her knees, cold without her coat. "They did this to her and they left her behind to delay us, D'Argo. They found themselves another target and they needed of all their men. They didn't want to chance Moya catching up to them." Her voice is rising. Not very loud, but still louder than it should be. "Grayza is going after John."
Grayza found out that Crichton was on Tesaris, maybe Scorpius as well. Two birds, one stone, Crichton had said. Isn't that what he meant?
"Someone on Tesaris alerted the Peacekeepers." Rias and Mali can't hear her over the dull roar of the propulsion. "There's a traitor down there, and Crichton doesn't know."
Crichton being Crichton, he's already fraternized with the traitor and calls him friend. John could never tell when he was about to be betrayed.
"With your ship we stand a chance of catching up to them. Probably not, but--"
D'Argo strokes Jool's forehead. The ship goes where he goes, and he knows this. He doesn't need to yell at Aeryn to make his point. "We are taking Jool back to Moya," he says. Because if John were here-- If John were here. Aeryn's heard those words too many times since she rejoined the Leviathan. If John were here, he would tell them to transport Jool back to Moya, that he can take care of himself, that he's been on his own and he's coped this long.
D'Argo's hand on her wrist isn't rough. "When she is safe, we will go and find John."

John stands on legs the consistency of roasted marshmallow. He's not even sure that he's standing, but he sees above the furniture and looks down on Hena, so he assumes that he's not lying down.
"This -- is one hell of a shot," he says. His voice ping-pongs across the infirmary and inside his head.
Hena is very close to him, pressed against his side. Under his arm, maybe, but he can't feel his arm. "I thought there might be side-effects due to your physiology."
Side-effects is right. The world is tilted way to the left -- further to the left than it's been since he got spit out of the wormhole.
"I'll take you back to your quarters," Hena is saying. "You can rest there. The effects will dissipate in a few arns."
They stumble out of the medical wing, past the corridor that would take them back to the labs, through to the living quarters. Oh, the Shelk must be pissed, John thinks fuzzily. The Peacekeepers who took over those rooms have pushed the furniture against the walls or removed it all together. A bed, a chair, a table. Not even a carpet.
He doesn't remember going through those quarters to reach his room before, but Hena knows the layout of this level better than he does.
"John, your attention, please."
Oh. Harvey on drugs is quite the sight.
"What happened to you, man?" he asks inside his head. "That's a kimono." If Hena weren't pulling him forward, he would have stopped in his tracks. "Where the hell did you find-- No, don't tell me. I'm glad I don't remember."
"John, there's something wrong."
He smirks, "I'd say."
"The drug does not seem to be having the effect Hena indicated."
John groans and Hena looks sharply up at him. Her shoulder is round and inviting. He rests his forehead on the curve. "I'm allergic, right? I knew it. Zhaan had to try so many combinations before she found the safe one."
Harvey is struggling to keep up -- small, rapid steps on wobbly Japanese high sandals. "No, you're not allergic. The drug isn't acting on your lungs. It's altering your brain functions." He waves a calligraphy around; John focuses on the arcane drawing, but it's not a language. It's a molecule.
5-(o-Fluorophenyl)-1,3-dihydro-1-methyl-7-nitro-2H-1,4-benzodiazepin-2-one
Benzodiazepine. That's familiar. His mother took Valium often enough. Fluorophenyl-- Flunitrazepam.
"Rohypnol? She slipped me Rohypnol?" Hena's hair tickles his nose. "And I didn't even get a date out of it."
"You have to get away from her, John. You're still in the early stages, but the effects of the drug will peek soon. You'll be completely incapacitated."
"There's something rotten in the kingdom of hm-- Tesaris." John giggles.
Harvey makes a face. "Hmpf. That Shakespeare again."
"Rohypnol. Poisoned sword." His knees give out, but Hena sets him back straight. "Don't think m'legs can carry me very far."
Harvey wedges himself under his other arm. "I can give you a boost. Clear your head, but it won't last. Your organism will have to metabolize the drug eventually. Your blood pressure is decreasing rapidly. Sooner or later, you will lose consciousness."
John doesn't think Hena wants him for his good looks. Wherever they are going, deeper into the bowels of the giant Shelk graveyard, he's not going to like it.
"Okay, Harve. Do your magic."
It's like taking a kick in the gut and being flooded with a rush of adrenaline. Norepinephrine versus flunitrazepam. The epinephrine takes over and John gasps in a big gulp of air. Hena slows down. She shrugs his head off her shoulder, peering at his eyes. He smiles like a goof. Pacified, she picks up the pace, as fast as she can go with John's legs dragging behind.
"Hurry up, John," Harvey urges. "This isn't going to last long."
As far as he can tell, Hena isn't armed. The others would wonder at a tech carrying a weapon. Doesn't mean she hasn't got a pulse pistol stashed somewhere, or hidden under her tunic. The room they're crossing is furnished a deep red and full of strange statues of some-- animal, not unlike a giraffe. Perhaps a religious figure. Faking a stumble over a revolting crimson rug, John staggers away from Hena and catches himself on a shelf.
"Sorry," he says, playing up his loss of balance. "Lost my happy thought there."
When Hena reaches for his shoulder, he twists under her arm, grabs the top of the shelf, and pulls. He throws himself off to the side to escape the crashing noise, Hena's cry of pain, and the shards of ceramic flying over his head. John lies on the blood red rug, breathing heavily, wondering if he should apologize to the Shelk who lives here; someone with that taste in furnishings doesn't deserve an apology.
The holograms seem to have fled at Hena's approach.
"Crichton!" Hena bellows.
"I think she disabled the control panels of the rooms you had to cross," Harvey says, free of the kimono. "No time to rest. She is still conscious and you don't know where you are."
John struggles to his knees, not looking back at Hena who's thrashing under the shelf and calling his name. He grabs onto a settee to pull himself up. His head is spinning again.
"Harve."
"I'm sorry, John. I can't do anything more."
If Hena brought back-up, he's screwed. "Uh. Which way?"
"The way you came, John. There're only two doors." Which doesn't help, because he got turned around and he has no idea which way's up. "To your left, John-- No, your other left."
His vision is blurring, but he finds the frame of the door by touch and stumbles through. He stays close to the walls, holding onto the furniture to remain upright. He's looking for a side door. If he can get back to a room where the holographic programs are active, perhaps the Shelk can raise the alarm.
"She must have deactivated this entire section of the matrix grid," Harvey says.
"Oh, man." John leans against a cupboard, holding his hand to his mouth. He's beginning to have a bit of experience with that and lets the nausea wash over him. There's no fighting it.
Harvey pats his back. "It's the drug. I don't think it agrees with your ulcer treatment. John, you can't stop."
"Yeah." He's almost blind, between the fuzziness and the sweat dripping in his eyes. He lurches in the general direction of the next door. The sharp angle of a corner table catches him in the side and he staggers.
A pulse shot zings past his head.
"Oh, great," John mutters, crawling out of the room on his knees. "She's armed." He can't hear steps. Wild shot: she's still trapped under the shelf, but pulse fire ricochets on steel walls. He keeps crawling until his stomach has had enough of the bumping and the twisting and the shaking.
He vomits all over the floor, heaving until there's nothing left. He coughs and hacks, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Should be feeling better now.
"The drug is in your bloodstream, John. Not in your stomach."
"Cm'on, Harve," he says hoarsely. "No one likes a know-it-all."
He makes it through four other rooms on a perpendicular line from the inactive grid before he collapses flat on his face. His heart beats like a wild thing, and he's on the brink of hyperventilation.
When light flares and bare feet materialize in front of his nose, he almost cries in relief. Hands pass through him with grunts of frustration. "In here, John Crichton. Quickly."
He raises his head off the floor: his saviors are a mother and a daughter, the child no older than eleven in appearance. They are gesturing frantically, trying to get him to crawl inside the washroom. It takes what meager strength he's got left to slink past the sliding door and curl into a ball between the wall and the shower unit. The steel floor chills him to the bone.
"Fani, watch the door," the adult Shelk says, kneeling by him.
"You know me," he gasps.
She nods, "Yes, John Crichton."
He's at least four grids and three hundred Shelk away from Loa. These guys have turned gossip into an art.
He winds tighter around his aching stomach, the cramps enough to make him scream. It's a wonder he hasn't barfed the whole thing by now. He hears Fani and her mother talking, but he can't concentrate on the words. In the background, someone is calling his name. He wants to sleep, but that's not an option, although he can't remember why.
"The drug is affecting your short term memory," Harvey says, stroking his back. His muscles are seizing, the shakes spreading down to his fingertips. He crams himself further into the dark corner.
"She's here," someone whispers over his head. "Be quiet."
That's fine; he doesn't feel like talking.
"I don't want to kill you, Crichton," the voice is saying. "But you have to answer for your crime. We are Sebaceans, taking on Sebaceans. It's our affair. It wasn't your place to intervene."
"Did I point a gun at her too?" he rasps. Harvey and the transparent woman close their hands around his mouth at the same time, and that's pretty weird. He can't taste either of them on his lips.
"I'm not going to kill you now," the voice says again, in case he didn't understand the first time. "I could have killed you before. You will have a trial."
Other voices join the first. The transparent woman whispers to her transparent daughter, and the daughter to someone else he can't see but he can hear. A buzz of voices rises far into the background, receding away from him like a tide sucking away the sand.
The next pair of feet is solid and encased in military boots.
"He was my lover," the voice says above him. "He was my lover, and I made it to an escape pod, but he stayed behind and Crais killed him. You killed him too." Kick in his side. Shouldn't have done that. "Get up, Crichton."
John rolls on his side and lifts his eyes -- up the end of a barrel, along a finger on a trigger, an arm, a shoulder, to a shapeless face that reminds him of his mother.
Before the world fades to black, he throws up all over her shoes.

CHAPTER VII -- And would it have been worth it, after all
"Rescued by the dead twice in-- I don't know, two weeks? Don't take it personally. It's just, you know-- worth mentioning."
"I'm not offended."
"What's the furthest you've ever reached? The furthest person you've heard from, or passed a message along to?"
There's no time at all between the question and the answer.
"Noe and Keta, grid fifty-seven."
Flimsies are flicked and shuffled around. A soft whistle.
"I think it can work, then. Do you really want me to go ahead with this, Loa?"
A pause.
"Yes."
Aeryn stands very straight and very still behind the half-open door. Her shoulders brush against a cast iron wall, close to the hinges of the door. The temperature fluctuates inside the other room. A cool draft sneaks through the cracks and licks her cheeks.
"That's nice, Loa, but-- no." A chuckling breath rolls out on the air.
The soft wind dies down.
"All right, John."
"Of course, if it's, you know-- last request before--"
The delicate woman's laugh reverberates like an echo in high land. "No, John. It's quite fine."
"I'm not that irresistible, uh?"
The breeze picks up again.
"Oh, Christ, Loa--"
John's full blown mirth has the acidity of choices made in her absence.
Jool was still alive when they left Moya, and the old woman was cautiously optimistic. Moya was to remain hidden in the asteroid field until the starburst chamber could be fixed. They left Rias onboard to help Rygel.
They counted on D'Argo's ship to slip through the perimeter which Grayza would have undoubtedly set up around Tesaris, but the orbit was free of Peacekeeper when they reached the planet. It was impossible not to anticipate the worst: Crichton dead or on his way to High Command. They were two days late. They would never catch up to them.
They hadn't dared call ahead and give away the location of the renegades to anyone who might be listening. They set down on the surface and took the first riser down. They were greeted by Scorpius. D'Argo -- who wasn't in the mood to deal with Peacekeepers who tortured their prisoners in Chairs -- almost took the hybrid's head off.
Ari's sudden intervention had interrupted a row between D'Argo and Braca.
"Grayza is gone. There's no longer danger here."
D'Argo didn't back down until Aeryn squeezed his forearm hard enough to leave bruises. Scorpius was smiling at her. John had come through for Ari and brought Scorpius back. "Where is Crichton?"
"He's resting in his quarters. He's been-- ill. You can visit him," Ari said.
He saw the battle-readiness in her, she could tell. It was hard to back away from it. "What happened?"
"One of our techs tried to deliver Crichton and Scorpius to Grayza. She only planned to take Crichton, but she wanted to make certain that Grayza would come. She used Peacekeeper identification codes. She arranged a meeting Above, to keep the renegade presence here a secret. She drugged Crichton, but we-- intercepted her before she reached the level risers. She's no longer a threat."
"And Grayza?"
"We used a decoy. Crichton and Scorpius have very specific energy signatures, which we have on record. One of our own flew a rapid stealth fighter off the surface. The computer simulated a human and a sebacean-scarran presence onboard. Grayza picked up on the ship's trajectory as we knew she would, and left in pursuit."
"If she takes your man alive--"
"She won't," Ari had said. "We all make sacrifices."
Aeryn left D'Argo to gather the supplies needed to patch up Moya and do what could be done for Jool. Last she heard, Mali had grudgingly offered to help, and D'Argo and Braca were still parading around the command like a pair of undersexed dranits.
Now she stands very straight and very still behind a half-open door. She won't go inside. Later, she'll tell Crichton about Jool. It's enough for now to know that he is alive. It's enough beyond now. She was bred to subsist on very little.
"How did you let go?" Crichton is asking on the other side of the door.
"The same way you did," the woman voice answers. "We are dead, and still we learn. We have a very sophisticated neuro-program."
It sounds like a joke that Aeryn would get, if she knew what they were talking about.
"In the beginning, I would have given anything to open a window, but they built their houses on top of ours, and around ours, and no light comes in anymore. I-- I miss the suns. The warmth of the atmosphere."
"Yeah," John says. "Me too."
"But you can go outside."
"Yeah," he says, and Aeryn retreats.

Scorpius is the first to leave, with Braca in tow. John didn't come to say goodbye. He just happened to be in the corridor by the level risers. It would feel weird to let Scorpius just-- go, especially after their last melodramatic parting, but he won't push the Twilight Zone moment so far as to stand on a spaceport platform and wave. Sort of running into each other by the riser however-- yeah, that's manly, that's sane, that will do it. He can make sure that Scorpius doesn't leave Braca behind with strict orders to kidnap John and smuggle him off planet by any means necessary.
"We'll meet again, John," Scorpius says. It's in the nemesis handbook, except that John has a new nemesis now; he should draw charts to keep track of who's trying to kill him at any one time. "In the meantime, I will be looking for, as you say, a -- window."
He looks hungrily at John, who, for all intents and purposes, is still the goddamn French doors at the front of the house.
"Yeah," John says, because that's all the words he seems to have today. "Me too."
When Aeryn came to find him, all hardness and bad news, she said very flatly, "I missed your back-up." So he said, "Yeah, me too," even though he didn't.
Aeryn also happens to be in the corridor by the level risers, for some of the same reasons and, he can guess, others completely different. John doesn't look at her though; he's too busy drinking in the almost-fear in Scorpius's eyes.
"I gave the access codes of the gammak installations to Ari. If anything should happen, he can continue the work. I will send more scientists as soon as I am able." There's a tacit understanding that John has work to do, and should be told these things. When Scorpius decides to make something of the Scarran information stolen from the Special Directorate, John knows he'll get the message.
"What could possibly happen?" John asks.
They both almost-smile.
"Grayza will catch up to me eventually, John. The crystal won't be enough to protect me against her." Braca steps closer to Scorpius, hands behind his back, and the admission angers John. He doesn't want to be running alone now that he's moving and no longer drifting.
"Come on, Scorpy. Don't pull the sacrificial lamb routine on me. I've escaped Peacekeepers this long, and I'm an inferior species, remember?"
Scorpius smiles tightly, like an enduring father. John hates that face, hates that look.
"I've never considered you inferior, John."
John glances briefly at Aeryn. "No," he admits.
The day ends without carnage.

More than half way through the sleep cycle, John contemplates carnage on a different scale. Standing in command in front of the strategy table, he studies the three-dimensional reproduction of the Shelk city. Each active room is represented by a tiny blue dot, which means that every single Shelk got the word.
"Are they ready?" Ari asks from the main console.
John probes his split lip gingerly. Earlier, D'Argo tracked him down. The Luxan patted him on the back with something like relief, then punched him in the mouth. Better than his stomach.
"All the temperature adjusters are set on freezing," he says. "They got the message."
Ari is waiting for his go-ahead, of course, because later this will feel like genocide. John nods. Ari pulls the main power lever down, and command is plunged into darkness, along with the rest of the city Below. Ari counts to three, then raises the lever back to its upright position. The power comes back on. The strategy table springs back to life, displaying the grids and each single cell, each single room.
One by one, in some grids all at once, the blue dots switch to red.
The city is turning into a furnace. Good thing they evacuated the Sebaceans to uninhabited rooms before this.
At last, it seems like enough time has passed. There isn't a single blue dot left in the overwhelming tide of red.
"This is it then," John says. "A unanimous decision."
Blue to indicate that they've been told about the vote, power cut to mark the start of the voting session, red to signal agreement.
Switching off the matrix is about as anticlimactic as it gets. No big lever, no red button. A simple line of command entered in the central console. It looks dramatically like the Aurora Chair controls, but he's not wearing gloves this time. He doesn't want to be disrespectful.
The first time, John came back from the dead for Aeryn. The second time, he came back for D'Argo, for Chiana, for the child. This time, he comes back on his own. John passes his hand over the main control. The display switches to a deep red, then a dull red, then the console emits a meek beep, and that's the last of the Shelk.

At the very end, John stands on the spaceport platform by his module. Aeryn and D'Argo already left with supplies for Moya, and two commandos to fly the marauder back to Tesaris with Rias.
John basks in the warmth of the orange sky. He won't miss the ridium, but he'll miss the suns and the Halloween walls of the city. Ensconced in miles of steel, surrounded by renegade Ghosts, Scorpius, Braca, a revengeful tech and a flock of dead people, he felt the strangest kind of safe he's felt in a very long time.
He throws his travel bag inside the cockpit. It's weighted down with medicines. Something for his ulcer and something to counteract the side effects of the drug Hena gave him. He's got enough holes in his memory as it is.
He remembers distinctly regaining consciousness in his quarters, Ari and Loa hovering above the bed. Loa had heard of his rescue by the Shelk: Fani had passed the word on to Bera, who had passed it on to Falo, who had passed it on to Neve, and on and on, until it reached Ari's people. Loa recounted all of it in hushed words, as if she had been there herself: the mad rush to Fani's quarters, the renegades catching up to Hena before she could drag John's inert form Above.
His first words had been to ask Ari to spare Hena, because John didn't know her lover's name. The man had died cursing John's name, no doubt, but John didn't know his. There was some fundamental, human unfairness in that. He was too late though; Hena had already been summarily executed. Traitors didn't take well to other traitors.
When John is done filling in the paperwork and paying the release fee to a miniature spaceport official, he turns to face Ari. He offers his hand to the older man. The Sebacean frowns, then gets the idea. Ari is an ally but not a friend. The gesture couldn't be more appropriate.
"Scorpius is going to try and crack the genetic sequence of the viruses to mutate the outcome and control the contagion," Ari says.
John lets go of the Sebacean's hand. "Yeah, maybe. It'll take a while, though." And he'll cross that bridge when he gets to it. "Keep in touch, and I'll do the same."
They don't talk about wormholes, about all the work ahead.
"Don't do something stupid. Don't go after Grayza."
John has no intention of doing such thing -- Jool never thought much of revenge anyway -- but he says, "Haven't you heard? I'm crazy."
"No," the old Ghost says. "I don't think you are." Ari's moss green eyes never stray from his. "If you are captured, or if it seems that you might fall into the wrong hands, I will have to terminate you."
It's not a question, but John nods his understanding.
"I will do it myself," Ari says.
It's the one kindness available to a Peacekeeper renegade, his one mark of respect, and John takes it at face value. It's good that an ally who is not a friend will be there to take care of the nastier details should shit happen. Should he not be careful enough. Truth be told, he expected Ari to greet him with a shot to the back of the head as soon as Aeryn took off.
John climbs in the module, fires up and shoots up through the tangerine sky of Tesaris, leaving the city and its ghosts behind. At escape velocity, the canopy bathed in a solar blaze, he fetches inside his pocket for the data chip Ari gave him earlier. He puts it down in front of him on top of the controls, the way he used to keep his mother's St Jude medallion wrapped around the rearview mirror of the T Bird.
He keeps one eye on the navigating instruments and one eye on the data chip. He's out of the system and well on his way back to Moya when he shoves the chip and the coordinates to a certain Diagnosan lab back in the right pocket of his leather jacket.
His fingers stroke the dark, cool metal for a while.
What's the first thing you would rescue from a burning building?
"That's not trust," Harvey says from the backseat, and John isn't prepared for all the things that it means, but he's less tired now. Last night, he dreamed smaller dreams and some of them were even possible.
"No," he says. But it'll do for now.

EPILOGUE -- That is not it, at all
Crichton sleeps with one hand wrapped around Jool's, the other stuck under his chin. His lashes flutter in dreams, a dark, soft contrast against his cheeks. His disheveled hair, too long, fans across the girl's arm. His mouth is wet and bruised.
It's been four solar days: starburst has been repaired, Pilot is awake and irritable, Ari's men have been sent on their way home, but Jool hasn't woken. Crichton spends all of his sleep cycles in Zhaan's lab. He dozes on a stool; sometimes Chiana is draped across his back like a furry blanket. He still, it seems, sleeps better with someone else in the room.
Aeryn perches on a stool on the other side of the unconscious Interon. Zelani's herbs have worked wonders with the cuts and bruises, but the internal injuries are severe. Aeryn reaches out tentatively to touch the girl's brow. She can feel sorry for this.
"We can't take her home, you know?"
She jerks her hand away and finds Crichton watching her. He hasn't shaved in a while, and she wonders if the facial hair hides new scars, gauntness, or the remnants of illness. She caught him swallowing two colorful pills the night before.
Aeryn nods, but doesn't say any more. She can't talk about home with Crichton. It took her this long to realize that they've never been talking about the same thing. Translator microbes have their downside. They perpetuate the illusion of understanding.
Crichton is no longer looking at her. His lips press lightly, lingeringly against Jool's battered mouth. He's so sorry. He hasn't said the words yet, that Aeryn knows. She thinks he's saving them for Jool.
Aeryn has questions. Questions she forgot she wanted to ask. Now is not the time, but someday, later, she might sit with him and talk about being old and gray, talk about Valdon, and time that passes differently for John. Crichton is closer to the end of his lifespan than to the beginning. Perhaps he knows what it was that the old man remembered, what it was that he knew, what the old pain in her chest means.
For this moment, she only needs to ensure that there will be time to ask.
"I'm sorry," Aeryn says.
She could find more words, if he asks; she wants to give him that, but she would rather not have to lie any more, even if he needs to hear it. "I'm sorry," those are safe words, simple words. Something John would say.
Crichton clears his throat, and she thinks he's going to ask for the lies he needs to hear. He pulls away from Jool, just enough for Aeryn to catch a snapshot of his eyes. Bright and violently blue, not blinking. His face is wan from sleeping on a stool, almost expressionless from talking to Jool who doesn't talk back.
"I can work with you," he tells her.
He smoothes the creases out of the blanket covering the Interon. Aeryn is drawn to the hand spread on the golden cover: the broken finger which didn't mend straight, the raised veins, the strong wrist, the fine hairs which used to tickle the underside of her breasts.
It's enough to go on, for now.
THE END.

And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it toward some overwhelming question, To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"-- If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all."
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1919)

T. S. Eliot

Divine Collective
http://www.divinecollective.com/
"Anywhere in the universe. You pick the planet." John Crichton [Farscape]

If you enjoyed this story, please send feedback to Maayan

Home/QuickSearch + Random + Upload + Search + Contact + GO List