In the Company of Ghosts, Part 2: Escape Velocity
by KodiakkeMax
Section 1: Same Dren, Different Day
Section 2: In the Company of Ghosts
Section 3: In Enemy Hands
Section 4: The Ways of Danger
Section 5: Conspiracy Theories
Section 6: Finders, Keepers
Section 7: To Catch a Rising Sun
Section 8: Being More
Section 9: The Call of Dark
Section 10: Distractions to Endgame
Section 11: A Simple Plan
Section 12: Movement into Pattern
Section 13: Aftershocks
Section 14: The Difference Between Lost and Found is a Thin Line
Section 15: When Coming Home
Section 1: Same Dren, Different Day"Captain. Incoming signal."
Something in the way Marat said it: not necessarily a sign of incipient trouble -- at least not the type that required immediate action and discharging of pulse pistols -- but Aeryn still checked the console readouts before turning her attention to the sergeant. The Nebari had been rattling their sensors more than usual, and what the crew had been able to decrypt -- not much -- hadn't reassured her. Visual confirmation and intelligence reports of Nebari asset allocations and ship movements weren't making sense, and that worried her, she who automatically searched for common threads and patterns. There was something else missing, something she knew existed, but couldn't find the flavour of, an answer to which she couldn't phrase the question. She wished she had access to real-time Scarran data, because then her universe would expand, she would get some distance.
An incoming signal wasn't likely to be from the Nebari. But she hadn't requested any information--
Marat was staring at her comms array. She looked up at Aeryn, met her eyes, and suddenly, Aeryn knew.
She wasn't going to like it.
"Captain."
No, she definitely wasn't going to like it. Her insides chilled, congealed, fell back into a familiar cold layer. No, she breathed, I haven't had enough time--
"You're not going to believe this. We've been recalled for reassignment."
The last word clicked through her, locking something into place. Duty. Recalled. Reassignment. It wasn't the call to war she knew was coming; that would have been a top priority signal.
Only one other thing would be urgent enough to pull them away from the Nebari sector.
They found me, and they need me again.
"Do you have confirmation on the orders?" Her voice was flat. She held herself very, very carefully.
"No, Captain."
But she still knew.
So many people. Filling the corridors. Swarming through the hatches. Everywhere. Moving talking breathing living.
Too long out on the Fringe. How long? Nearly three quarters of a cycle. A blessed space. A luxury. She wouldn't stumble, wouldn't give in. She could handle it; had before. No Scorpius to save her, now.
Scorpius. Her creator. Her saviour, her champion. Her greatest fear. He would send her out again. To capture, and hold, and one day, to destroy.
How ironic, that Scorpius was no longer a part of her life. He had lost his rank, his standing, and some believed, his life. Yet here she was, about to get those orders. Fate, leading her down this corridor. She had always been destined for this task, been created for it. Yet another part of his legacy to her.
They reached the Captain's office, high in the crest of the Command Carrier. The Lieutenant escorting her chimed, entered, showed her through, left. She glanced at the man seated before her; collected the impressions, glad for something to think about, something to set her mind on a track. Younger than usual for a Carrier assignment. His Captain's rank gleamed as though it had been minted yesterday. He didn't stand. She gave a vague sort of salute. It was expected of her. He frowned. That, too, was rote: their dance of stations, of identities. She would do nothing that was not expected of her, especially not now.
"Sir. Captain Sun, reporting for duty as requested."
"Captain Sun. My name is Captain Jessek. Welcome aboard."
Her file was on his desk. It didn't look thick enough to be the real file, so he wasn't important enough to have access to it. She wondered why as he thumbed through it. "Sorry to pull you in from the Nebari Fringe, Captain. High Command specifically requested you for this retrieval mission." Distancing himself. He was a boot-shiner. Knew nothing. A convenient voice through which to work and pull their strings.
High Command. More than that, the Council, for only they would have known about her. Did they call her now to revenge themselves on Scorpius? Or to use her as he had?
"It says here you used to work with Scorpius?"
She took that sentence apart, put it together eighteen different ways. Tasted the flavour, tested the words. No. He was not good; he was exactly what he appeared to be. If he could ask that, he definitely didn't know anything, and High Command wasn't giving him more information. "Yes, sir."
"You're not officially off that duty assignment." He frowned down at the file as though it was offensive. "You're not even a class one."
She'd known that, but apparently, he hadn't. Even though the file was on his desk. "No, sir." Careful here, careful. Now it was not just her at risk, but her unit. High Command hadn't recalled her, hadn't reactivated her for normal duty; instead they'd kept her restricted duty status. She'd never sent a query asking why. She knew better. The turmoil after the Human had destroyed Scorpius' Command Carrier had been widespread. Many things had been overlooked in the maelstrom of destruction John Crichton and his companions had unleashed.
Marat had made sure they, too, were overlooked, and the unit had gone to the Nebari sector, continuing their tradition of extended field exercises, sending back enough data that their recon mission held, was reinforced, monen after monen. How ironic: they had passed so unnoticed because Scorpius had established the pattern, demanded that she be allowed that much freedom. He'd even given her the Vigilante, which allowed her to roam farther, longer, and she was too good for them to take that away.
"Well, I have my orders from High Command, and they, of course, supersede all existing assignments." He passed over a flimsy. "Your orders, Captain."
Aeryn took it with numb fingers. Read it.
"I understand that you've had contact with him before?"
Contact. Pain. Shock. All, and more. "Yes, sir."
"Well, that should make him easy to spot in a crowd; I understand he looks Sebacean." It wasn't a question. "Well. Let my Supply Officer know if there's anything you need before you deploy. Any questions?"
"No, sir." One part of her mind remained on the Captain, mapped him. Apparently he had no questions for her, either. Strange. Stupid. Why him, then? Why him?
The other part was drowning in void. The cold . . . the cold silenced the cries.
"Dismissed."
The Lieutenant was waiting for her outside. She told him she would find her own way down to the Suppo's office. He insisted. She pulled rank and dismissed him, sending him scurrying from the look in her eyes.
Track One: Walk into the corridor, find the first junction. Study the map, scroll through the decks. Begin walking towards the Suppo's office. Detail in her mind what she thought they would need for a mission of this type. A retrieval mission. Perhaps she ought to find Darwa. Having done this before, especially with this target, she knew that having an appropriate amount of firepower at hand would help her chances of survival, not to mention success, enormously. Darwa was nothing if not good at that sort of planning.
Track Two: "You found me," he'd whispered. "You found me . . . like that. Somehow. You've gotten inside of my head. You know me, right? Right?"
"Yes, I know you," she whispered.
Or she had. That one had died. The other -- and she'd known about the other, was not surprised at his existence, his appearance on the doomed Carrier -- well, a lot could change, in a cycle.
But not enough. Not when she knew him better than she knew herself.
He couldn't breathe.
Tauvo stumbled against Moya's corridor wall, reaching out blindly. It was still happening, jumping up when he least expected it, strangling his heart, his lungs, blacking out his sight.
Bialar.
The pain just as fresh as that day. No, more, because if he'd felt this much, he never would have been able to touch his brother one last time with such a steady hand.
His brother's words: "Let me go do this." A request, as Bialar had never requested before. No, Tauvo's brother had been born for command, and once achieving it, had never looked back.
Tauvo looked up from the guards they'd neutralized. His answering words, wrung out of him only because Bialar wanted to hear them. "Go do this." Whispered.
No, surely it hurt worse now. He was so alone. Bialar--
A whirring, and footsteps. Tauvo looked through the gaps between his fingers, scrubbed his hand down his face. John. John, led by a DRD, who waggled its eyestalks at the former Peacekeeper before speeding off. Tauvo stared at the retreating machine, he didn't want to look up at John and see the sympathy in the other's eyes. He hated that sympathy. Didn't want John to see his tears.
John paused beside him, but didn't reach out to touch him. Good. Keep to yourself, Tauvo thought.
"Moya was worried about you," John said quietly. "We're nearly at the planet. We were wondering where you were."
"And so she sent you?"
"She knew I'd want to know." A moment of silence. "You gonna be okay?"
"What kind of question is that?" Bialar was dead. Go away, John.
"An honest one."
"Then, honestly? I don't know." Now he scrubbed at his face; John would be able to hear the tears in his voice, his throat, so there was no point in hiding them. "Will you go away now?"
"No."
The words burned in his throat, they'd waited there ever since the moment Tauvo had seen John on Moya, after the destruction of the Carrier. The words alternated between banked heat and raging fire, but they hadn't moved a single dench. Suddenly Tauvo was tired of holding it in, of feeling the incredible anger which had become his companion.
Anger at John. Because you didn't come up with a plan. Anger at Bialar. Because you didn't have to leave me behind. And the double edges of familiarity and pain, in those few microts where he and John forgot, when it seemed that nothing had gone wrong and they were once again friends. For a few microts.
"It hurts more when you're around, you know." Tauvo kept his tone conversational, but it felt so good to finally say something. There. See how you like that, Human.
"Because you'd rather have him." The words were soft, calm. "I know. I'm used to it." Tauvo turned his head and stared at John, who shrugged. "What? You think I don't get it? Hell, you think I'm not used to it?"
"I never -- I never did that to you. Not until Bialar--" The name choked him, robbed him of all air. He couldn't go on.
John shook his head slowly. "No, you're right. Not with Bialar. With the other guy. The other John."
A chill replaced the dissipating heat in Tauvo's throat. A block of ice, forming around his tongue, cracking around his heart.
"It's okay, Tauvo. I'm a big boy. It hurts, but I understand. You've lost someone you cared for. Two people. The other John, and now your brother. I can't -- I can't fight that, and I shouldn't." He sighed, scrubbing at his face. "It's just . . . I'm tired of being tired. I'm tired of thinking that maybe I'm just better off dead, that there's always someone after us -- me -- and I've hurt so many people -- well, the list goes on, and on."
Tauvo stared at him angrily. Defiantly. "I wanted to die with him."
"I know." Quietly.
A sudden realization. "You wanted to die, too."
John grinned, a bitter twist of lips. "Yeah, well. . . . I didn't think Moya needed two suicidal lunatics on board."
"Are you -- are you better?" He almost wanted to believe so, not because he wanted John to feel good -- how horrible, that Tauvo didn't want that -- but because he wanted to believe that there was an end to this. Not the final end, because Bialar had denied him that, at least by his own hand. When his brother had told him to look after John, Tauvo had been doomed to live. To suffer the agony of being the survivor, when all the rest were dead. His brother. His Carrier, once the place he'd called home. All his friends on board -- dead, scattered, and none of them would bear to look him in the face, anyway. His parents, dead.
"Better? No. Just older."
"But you're still here. You got over it."
Now John laughed, and Tauvo saw that he did look older, much older, and so very tired. "You think I'm over it? It's like a scab, Tauvo. And I can't stop picking at it--"
"But I'm tired too, John." Tauvo was shaking, caught up in fear, bitterness, and even hate. "I don't have your anger at the world." Just anger at John. "I don't have your wormholes. I only had my brother."
"You have me. And D'Argo. And Chiana. And Jool, and Pilot, and Moya. Stark and Zhaan. Honestly, I don't know if you want Stark, but you got him, and anyway, it's the thought that counts." John moved forward, put a hand on his shoulder -- the lightest of touches, not pressing or demanding, just there. "I know we're not what you want, Tauvo. I'm not going to tell you that you'll get over it. That it gets better. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. But we will be here, when you need us."
Tauvo choked. "I don't want to need you. Any of you. Especially you." Go away--
"Yeah, well," John sighed. "I know exactly how you feel. Because for the first few months after Mustang's death, I hated you, too. I wanted you to die. Because if you died, then I wouldn't have to stay around."
He squeezed lightly, once, before backing off. "So I understand, Tauvo. It's okay. We'll be here."
John turned, left, and Tauvo stood frozen in the corridor. It was a long, long time before he could move again, and he raised his hand to rub that spot his shoulder.
"Crichton!"
Another day in the life. Turning around, his hand automatically drifted to Wynnona, even as he recognized the voice. "Yo, Big D!"
"Where do you think you're going?"
He raised his eyebrows as he took in the Luxan's posture. Arms crossed. Shoulders braced. Knees locked. Shit. He shouldn't have stopped. "Out." He tried to keep his voice from hardening.
"You mean, up."
"Out. Up. You get far enough away, it all becomes the same thing." Damn, he could hear the edge in his voice. There were solar flares up there, and he was itching to catch a ride. He'd brought the Farscape One down to the planet for precisely that purpose.
One, not Two. Not Furlow's copy. He still wasn't quite comfortable flying Two, even after removing the remains of the displacement engine. If he was going to go joyriding, rediscover the joys of scientific discovery, he wanted it to be in Farscape One. It was his baby. Even if he couldn't go home. Not after his run-in with Scorpius. Too damn dangerous, to open that door. Too damn dangerous, to go back now. Yet.
Damn you to hell, Scorpius.
He needed this. Needed to feel excitement again. Wonder. There hadn't been enough of that, of late. It had been hard to remember excitement, when all he'd felt, the past few months, was the hate.
Hate, burned into demons, nightmares. All that kept him alive, this long. That and Tauvo. Tauvo had fallen into the Pit of Despair after Crais had -- well. John kept himself afloat in science, field equations, wormholes.
"We came here to trade." D'Argo's voice was careful. Measuring. Good ol' D'Argo. Trying so hard to keep everything and everyone together, even while Macton Tal's location must have been burning in his pocket. But he'd put that off for the moment, his sense of responsibility working overtime.
Hell of a dream you got there, D, killing a man. Look who was talking.
"Hey, we're trading, we're trading! Aren't you supposed to be stocking up for Rygel's next ride in your ship?" He gestured to the bag of foodstuffs slung at his own side. "And you know the girls are whipping up plans for a mongo shopping spree. If the thought of Chi, Jool, Stark and Zhaan doing the girls-at-the-mall thing together doesn't scare you, I don't know what will."
Everyone was trying so hard to pretend that it was okay, that they weren't walking on eggshells around Tauvo. That they weren't wondering about John, who'd arrived back on Moya with Ko-kura's blood on his hands and a tic in his jaw.
Yes, John, Harvey said, his voice sheer silk. Look who's talking now.
Go away, Harvey. He had to keep the wormhole knowledge safe. Had to. It wasn't enough to kill the Carrier; the knowledge had spread, lived inside heads and thoughts. Ko-kura sure as hell wasn't going to offer to empty out the contents of his head, right? So John hadn't bothered asking, simply pulled the trigger.
D'Argo's expression didn't change. John sighed and put down the bag, dropping the cheerful front as well. It was too heavy on him nowadays, too strange for him to wear. "D'Argo. Dude. This is day one of at least five long solar days of R&R. Cut me some slack." He'd become used to that soft, dangerous tone that slid between his lips, as had D'Argo, who stiffened. Too many times that edge led to harsh language, violence. "Solar flares, comprende? You can't think I would miss them."
Science was almost the only thing he had left. Science and dreams. Not the dreams of going home. Those were nightmares. People dying. Screaming. No, he couldn't go home, he didn't have that dream anymore. The old woman sure had seen to that.
"If Pilot had found any other commerce planet that--"
"That what? Was gentle, peaceful, fun-loving, capable of overhauling Leviathan innards, no permanent PK outpost, no Scarran bad guys, and had no solar flares? This is the Uncharted Territories, that shit don't happen out here."
"John. It might be dangerous--"
It would be dangerous. It always was. Now he was tired of faking the fun, and this just became an old argument, one they'd worn into the ground over the past few months. "D'Argo. Let it go, man."
"No, John." So quietly. "Not again."
D'Argo held on to too many memories, too many of the bad moments. Considering that his dysfunctional adopted family was a Jerry Springer special, it wasn't healthy. Healthy? Ironic, that, what with John and Tauvo's dance with death, and hatred, and self-destruction.
And D'Argo. D'Argo caught in between them, having finally come to the acceptance of Tauvo as a friend, something more than just another Peacekeeper male. D'Argo, who had finally accepted John as a warrior, because John had taken him on too many times already. Especially recently. Fighting was good. Fighting was peaceful, at least inside John's head.
Poor D'Argo, trying to defuse each of them before one of them blew.
Well, tough. John didn't feel like being co-dependent. He just didn't have enough in him to keep someone else from the edge; he had enough problems hanging in there himself. When you took a guy's dreams, home, away from him, what else did he have?
Wormholes, and memories taking the place of dreams. Like the memories left over from the Chair.
"There's always something, D'Argo. Doesn't mean I can't stop looking for the right way to make wormholes." Looking for the way to go home without opening that door forever, without stepping blindly through to the other side. Hell, what other side? John had nowhere to go.
No, he couldn't think that. He had to hold on to hope. He had to remember how to dream again. Dream about something other than killing a man. Because he'd been there, done that.
"Perhaps you should wait until one of us can accompany you."
He stared at the Luxan. "Yo. Dad. What's twisted your tentacles?" He didn't really have to ask. He knew. They were still feeling the aftereffects of destroying the Command Carrier, months after it had all gone down.
John's frenzy afterwards, the near descent into suicidal madness when he realized that he couldn't just blindly open that door. Couldn't blame that one on Harvey. John had wanted to die, for a while there, just so damn tired, and the old witch with her magic dust and mushrooms. Too easy to give in to the visions of home, destroyed, everyone he knew dead. Everything he'd thought he'd wanted . . . meaningless. No, he couldn't go home, so what else was there?
But he wouldn't do that to Tauvo. Tauvo wanted to die, to follow in his brother's footsteps, but couldn't, because of whatever Crais said to him before he and Mustang had gone. And so Tauvo lived, as John lived, in some shadowy world where living hurt too damn much and dying meant that they had failed. Both of them wanted to hate the other; John was jealous of Tauvo having had Crais, someone to hang onto, when the going got rough. Someone to trust that implicitly. At least Tauvo had someone, John whispered to Harvey. I didn't even have that much.
You have me, John.
Dream on, leatherboy.
Tauvo hated John, for allowing Crais to sacrifice himself, for accepting it. Tauvo hated John for living.
Finally impatient, D'Argo sighed, uncrossing his arms. "You know what. They're still looking for you, John."
Yeah. Scorpius wasn't gone, that was for sure, and "they" were still after him. Commandant Cleavage, Scarrans, Nebari, people who had just met him-- God, he was still so damn tired, and tired of being tired. "They always will be, big guy. I can't let that stop me. I gotta find the way. I gotta go up there and see what there is to see. Push a little." Push himself, more like. Push past that sticking point, where he was always tired and hurting and he couldn't seem to get past that.
"I would simply prefer that you waited."
John stared at him, his mouth dry. You worried, D'Argo? That this time, when I push too hard, the universe will just clock me and have done with it? And that I'll be so glad to let it happen that I'll roll over? "You ask too much, buddy."
Even he heard the deadly chill in his voice; D'Argo looked like he knew he'd crossed a line. "I'm . . . asking you to be careful."
And how much did that cost him? John slapped D'Argo on the shoulder, suddenly realizing it was the first time he'd taken his hand off Wynnona. "Then I'll be careful. I promise."
She watched the module land, touching down lightly on the ground. A part of her observed carefully, as a trained pilot, analyzed the dance of thrusters against atmosphere. He was a good pilot. He'd landed exactly where she'd predicted: close to the outlying edge of town, on a flat expanse of rock bed. Less than two metras from the market, comfortable walking distance, but away from the main landing aprons. He'd been hunted too long to feel comfortable heading into crowded areas or leaving his module where others could easily stumble over it, and marvel at its alien design. She understood the feeling.
She understood him. Even across the stars. She had searched for the latest sightings of him, reading up on his exploits, her Ghost-level access opening some doors, Marat opening the rest. A part of her marveling. Another part of her reaching out. If I were John Crichton, where would I go?
So now she was here, and she had been right. Again. She was tired of being right.
Another part of her, the part that seemed to ache most, remembered the first time she'd seen this craft. She'd had a nanomicrot in which to note it before she'd begun the evasive maneuvers that would keep her from striking it, and likely spinning off to collide with an asteroid.
She'd succeeded only in not hitting the asteroid. She'd hit him; this same craft had sheared off her Prowler's thrusters.
A tilt in reality: How strange. To think of what might have happened, had I not been the one in the lead Prowler.
The dust finally settled, coating the module's white hull with a dull brown coat. It was less reflective; that was good. Not a lot of foot traffic around; that was better. His friends were still in the market areas, the majority of the crew grounded while the Leviathan ship orbited high overhead, sleeping through some scheduled maintenance procedures. That the ship was debilitated was good; that his friends were here was not. His friends, and they were many, were not far away, almost within shouting distance. She hoped he wouldn't try to call them. For his, their sakes.
Because they would come. For him. That was one of his mysterious powers, that they would come when he called.
His figure was silhouetted against the setting sun as he climbed out the module. Moving so differently from the last time she'd seen him get out of that cockpit. When she had to help him out, because he was so weak he couldn't move.
Flashback, the vividness a blade that cut her with a raw, fine edge: "I don't . . . hurt. I . . . I did some good things. I'm proud of my life. And I'm with . . . friends."
She hadn't thought about whether he'd counted her among them. It hadn't mattered at the time; he hadn't been speaking to her, anyway. Their moments together had been spent mostly in silence, as he slipped away, and as she held him -- the knowledge of him -- and hid it in the void inside her, the only safe place.
Not him. Another John Crichton. The one that had fought the Charrids, the Scarrans, and Scorpius' neural clone. That one had destroyed a dreadnought, saved his precious wormhole information, and gained his freedom from the Aurora Chair. All in the short time before he died.
She had felt the heat leave his skin, his breath leave his body. She had closed his eyes.
This John Crichton would not know that.
He closed the canopy and started off, heading towards her, his hands occupied with several large bags. Food products. She didn't turn away, didn't move her veil further over her eyes. That would tip him off. His survival instincts had been honed by the best. She had no doubt any movement on her part would send those bags crashing to the ground, the hand twitching towards the pulse pistol which rode comfortably on his hip. He had not been bred to become a warrior, but he had become one.
Scorpius had a hand in creating both of them.
He was closing on her. She could feel her heart rate increase, her breath become shallow.
Combat stimulus.
When he was nearly an armspan away, she stepped out of the shadow of the building. Twitched her robe aside, so the muzzle of the pulse pistol was just visible.
"John Crichton," she said softly.
He saw her. She felt the shock of recognition crash into her as their eyes locked. An amusing, brief thought: Wear goggles, next time.
Recognition. A wave of relief: he is still the one I know. Not the John Crichton who had died, but he was still John Crichton. Tied into a knot inside himself, yes. Hard, cold, yes. But still there, where she could find him.
He looked at her weapon, and the way her fingers were curled familiarly, loosely, along the grip. "You're not here to save me this time, are you?" His voice was flat. Harsh. But she still recognised him.
"No." And there was no one here to save him from her.
He looked past her and sighed, and something in him seemed to give way, an easing. "Damn. I hate it when D'Argo's right."
She hoped he wouldn't call his friends. He would never be able to forgive her, that much she knew. He could pardon actions done to him more easily than he could actions done to those he loved.
She wondered if he still dreamed of the Chair, and suspected he did.
"Shall we?" She gestured back at the module with the pistol, careful to keep it hidden. He knew it was there, she knew; that was all that mattered.
He went back to the module. Popped the canopy.
"Get in." She waited until he'd settled, watching his hands. Being unfamiliar with the design of his craft, the operation, this was a risky part of her plan, and so she was careful to note what he did, what he touched. Still holding the pistol on him, she slid carefully into the second seat. Very carefully, so as not to touch him.
He didn't turn his head to look at her. "Now where?"
"Liftoff."
When he reached up to close the canopy, she watched his hands again. The muscles extended, pulled, his light golden skin stretching like a rope. A scar, along one arm, a lighter shade of pale. The canopy closed and trapped them inside. Trapped her, surrounded her with his scent, his feel. His breathing. The engine cell powered on, overlaying her senses, a blessed if thin cushion; the craft began lifting up almost immediately. Again she watched his hands dancing over the switches.
"Low atmospheric, please."
The craft floated on the thermals, a primitive delight.
"These coordinates." It was only a short trip to the empty maintenance warehouse she'd found and secured on her recon three arns ago. He landed and rolled the craft inside at her direction. The wings moved up to fold over the body, a nice touch, a clever design. The ship fit nicely beside her Prowler. She got out first, again maneuvering around him so as not to touch him. His eyes followed her. The muzzle of her pulse pistol remained steadily on him, her own watchful gaze.
"You met him." His question was asked quietly. As though it weren't loaded with Tak Fives.
"Yes." As though he had to ask. Memories, unbidden: a figure lying broken on a bed, struggling to breathe. "There's another John, you know. Another me." An easy camaraderie brought on by circumstances. An alternate reality to the one before her, who was harder, had sharper edges.
This one had survived Scorpius.
He didn't turn to look at her. "He told me about you."
How?
"He told me . . . if you were sent after me, you would come. And you would find me."
Yes, she had.
"He told me you would be honest with me."
Yes, she would be.
His words were hammers that rang when they dropped. "Where am I going?"
"Peacekeeper High Command has ordered your capture and confinement until you can be transported to them. I will take you to a Command Carrier, where the Captain will take custody of you for transport."
He got out from the module under the tracking eye of her gun. Patted the dusty hull, a familiar touch. "Are we leaving her here?"
"Yes. Your module should be safe."
"Safe?"
She shrugged, tilting her pistol to one side to check on the chakkan oil cartridge. "My primary objective is to retrieve you. High Command specified nothing about your craft. If I misunderstood, and they want to retrieve your module, I'll come back for it later. In the meantime, I'm perfectly happy to secure it here." Popping out the cartridge -- some dust had probably gotten into it, and she didn't want to risk the next leg of her journey with a dusty cartridge -- she exchanged it for a new one. Placed the old cartridge carefully on a tool table in the maintenance bay before looking at him. "They want you, and the information for how to build this craft is in your brain. It would be redundant to carry it along simply as a . . . memento."
"Yeah." His hand still lingered on the hull, an intimate caress. She watched his hands. He patted it once more before turning away. She was seized with a sudden desire to check the craft's wingtips, to see if any marks remained of their first, explosive encounter.
Not likely. After all, she didn't bear burn marks from where he'd touched her.
They climbed into the Prowler the same way: he first, she second, sitting behind him. She could fly from either position, and the first thing she did was lock out his controls. Senior Officer Tauvo Crais had taken a Prowler with him, when he'd been sucked in by the fleeing Leviathan's starburst; Aeryn knew that John Crichton would have insisted on learning to fly it.
He was silent as they wheeled out of the old maintenance bay. Said nothing as she coded the locks, whispering the numbers aloud. Said nothing as they took off, just looked around, turning his head to catch a last glimpse of the town as they left atmosphere.
Yes, his friends were back there. Safe from her and her unit.
She checked her sensor plot; still nothing on the boards. The Leviathan's position was rapidly falling behind her; no chance she would "surface" in the ship's sensor envelope. There was barely a shudder as the Prowler left the atmosphere for the smooth ride of space.
"You're a good pilot," he said, his voice casual, unhurried.
"Thank you," she replied absently.
Track One: Leviathan position acquired. Location within acceptable parameters. No possibility of identification at this distance.
She moved further away, just in case. After clearing the planet's gravity well, she applied more tactical thrusters. A tell-tale lit: a designator had been painted across her hull. As expected. Sariv's Prowler came up to fly escort on them.
Track Two: Awareness danced along her nerves, her skin. I thought I had to touch him, look at him, to feel this. Her heightened sensitivity, a product of genetic manipulation with Pilot DNA, was a double-edged blade, cutting into the scar tissue she'd so carefully crafted around her self.
"You feel it too, don't you?" His voice was a crack in the silence, no matter that he pitched it low. His words made it real.
"Yes," she replied. She felt it, and yes, it . . . hurt.
He'd lied; she was a damn good pilot.
But he was trying to be numb. Hard to do when she was in the fucking cockpit with him. He was trapped; he could only suffer the whispers of nerves every time she shifted, every time she made a small noise. Hell, every time he heard her breathe. Plus there was a pulse pistol to his head, not so figuratively speaking.
The other John Crichton had left him a message, brought back with Stark: "I ran into Captain Aeryn Sun again. You remember her. You can't forget her."
No, he couldn't. God knew he'd tried. But he still woke up every once in a while, seeing her pale face in his dreams, his palms . . . aching. These were the dreams he'd held on to, and he didn't know why. Maybe because she was an enigma, and he wanted to explain her. Maybe because in those dreams, he remembered how to feel.
He had two kinds of dreams. One was where she was staring at him, holding on to him, gasping for breath. Her eyes were wild, flooded with pain. Drowning, and she was pulling him under, because he couldn't let go, couldn't pull away.
The other was where she formed out of snow. Melted into being right next to him, a creature of ice. Yet the shock of their touch flooded him with warmth, and his skin burned.
Neither one had started out as a dream. It was just all that remained, all he had left of her. And, when he'd had to give up so much else, it was something he could hold on to.
When he'd met her, that time on the Ice Planet, he'd freaked. Lost if for a good few seconds there, staring at her as though she were Freddy Kreuger or something. This time, this meeting, after all those dreams, that message from the other John, all he could do was die a little inside. She was back. For him.
He remembered their encounter on the Ice Planet as though it were yesterday, instead of two cycles ago. Remembered how it had felt to reach out and touch her. How hard it had been, even then, to pull away.
But now he was trapped with her. He'd finally said something about what neither one of them could talk about. What neither could explain. Not that they'd had the chance, but damn, now that she was here, he wanted that chance. Wanted to know what the hell was going on, what it was, more than he wanted to know if she was working for Scorpius again.
Shit, he didn't want to talk. He wanted to turn around, to look into her face, to reach out and touch her. To figure out what the hell was going on. To find out what the hell his doppleganger had figured out about her, why the other John had tried to warn him.
Too late: he saw a deadly-looking ship -- deadly as in bulging with energy weapons, even if she wasn't as large as Moya -- loom in the canopy. Saw the gleam of starlight off the Prowler close by. Just noticed that one. Gotta start paying attention, John. Don't get distracted.
She took them expertly into a tiny little hangar bay; he realized how much being on Moya spoiled him. The Leviathan had space to move, space to stretch and grow. Maybe that explained the PKs -- they're too cramped. That had to cause some serious psychological issues. Here, despite the fact that there were no other ships present, the Prowler's wings nearly scraped the sides of the bay. After landing, she popped the canopy and gestured at him.
"Yeah, I know the drill." The flight hadn't been that long or rough, he couldn't waste too much time stretching or working out cramps. That would tip her off for sure. His boots clomped against the decking. Another commando waited for him there.
He was interested; he couldn't help himself, and it felt good to . . . feel alive again. Weird, that. But Captain Aeryn Sun was a puzzle, and he needed something to occupy his mind. He'd known that she had commanded a unit, so he really checked this guy out. Kinda short. Grey buzzcut. Blank face. Looked like the typical competent soldier. Big gun. Remember the big gun, John.
She dropped lightly to the deck beside him. Gestured with her pulse pistol.
"Ladies don't go first?"
"No ladies aboard this ship," she responded, and he half-turned to her. Was that a sense of humour he detected?
As they walked down the corridors, he heard the other commando address her. "Any problems, Cap'n?"
"No, Darwa," she replied. "Call in Sariv and tell him to rack his Prowler." Walking abreast with him, like they were buddies, not behind, chivvying him down the corridor. The pistol had been holstered, swinging on her hip. The side away from him, of course. The other guy -- Darwa -- walked silently behind them. John resisted the urge to turn around, to see if there was a pulse pistol in the commando's hand. He kinda doubted it. His shoulderblades weren't itching.
They finally entered the ship's version of Command, a very scaled-down version of what he had on Moya. This one reminded him of submarines, long ago and far away. The dcor wasn't PK industrial, but dark, almost gothic. A woman was poised at the navigational console. She looked up briefly when they came in, but her attention didn't linger on him.
Something about the way she stood at the console almost reminded him of PK Barbie, but this woman was nothing like that freak. This one was just pale. Pale hair. Pale skin. Pale eyes. She almost glowed against the dark background of her uniform. Her hands moved like white spiders over the console, her eyes tracked the information coming over her board. She was in a little world of her own.
How ironic. Every PK he met on his own couldn't seem to keep their damn hands off him. But I come on board her PK weapons ship and these guys act like they don't want to give me the time of day.
Captain Sun gestured to a chair. "Sit."
He sat, wondering why she hadn't cuffed him, or tied him, or caged him, yet.
The other commando -- Darwa -- didn't seem the least surprised that John was still nominally free, just went straight to the comms and gave out the order to come home to momma. Captain Sun also moved over to the comms console, and John wondered if she was sending the "got him" message home.
So, to all intents and purposes, the three of them weren't paying any attention to him. It wasn't that far back to the hangar bay.
Ah, right. These were super-commandos. If he tried to take one on, he'd be eating his toenails for lunch. It would follow, then, that it would very stupid to try to take three of them on at once. And who knew how many of them he would run into in the corridors, trying to escape from this ship?
Maybe this was a test to see how stupid he was?
"Sariv is locked in, Captain." The other woman had kind of a pleasant voice. Calm. Not the disinterested I'm going to take you apart you little worm tone that PK Barbie perfected, but more like a this is your weather update news flash.
"Lay in a least-time course for the Carrier. Estimated time of arrival?"
"Twenty arns."
"Thank you, Marat." Captain Sun finished with her console and turned to him. "If you'll come with me?"
You've got to be kidding me. He couldn't resist; as they walked out of Command, just as they turned the corridor, he lagged, just a moment, just long enough for her to almost tread on his heels, and they stopped, side by side. "So polite," he murmured, leaning close to her ear. "They teach you that at PK finishing school?"
Oh god. Mistake. He could smell her. Feel her. He stared at her. She stared back at him. Neither one of them moved from their position.
"I want to talk about this," he muttered grimly.
She lifted her hand. Laid her fingers across his cheek. He inhaled at the touch, surprised by her movement. She was reaching out to him--
Contact.
Sparks crackled across her fingertips, danced across his skin. Wormholes beckoned in her eyes. He had to concentrate on her mouth, to read her lips, before he heard her question.
"What is this?" Her voice was husky.
"I don't know."
"Have you ever felt this before?"
"No." Not with Gilina. Not even with Alex. Pain and pleasure and the sudden realization that he was feeling, like someone had ripped away the top layer of skin, to bring them that much closer.
"It's real."
His words, on the Ice Planet. Given back to him. Had she chosen those words deliberately, knowing that it was the last time he'd seen her? Him, not the other John? "Yeah," he said roughly, "it's real." That was the problem. It was real, whatever this was between them. It just had to coexist with all the other things, the big things, between them. Like her being on the wrong side, that being the side that was trying to kill him.
She pulled back. He let her, he had to, it was all starting to hit sensory overload. His fingers ached to grab her. He wasn't sure if he would run his hands over her face, tracing her features, pulling her to him, or punch her, pushing her away.
"Once I return you to the Command Carrier," she told him, "my mission is finished."
So am I. His palm ached to cup her cheek, but he curled his fingers closed and walked ahead again.
Section 2: In the Company of Ghosts
Sergeant Marat had felt that strength of energy several times before, and it had scared her to death.
It had all started when then-Lieutenant Sun had come onto Command and gone to a navigational console, where she typed in coordinates to a secret Scarran Gammak base.
No one had been able to touch her, physically or otherwise; she had walked through the ship, armoured with that prescient knowledge, with the ghosts that whispered to her inside her head. Armed with the emptiness in her eyes. Looking at her, all of them had been conscious of the void that separated her from all else. Though they'd all tried, each in their own way, it had taken the Captain, Rayn, to reach her. Even then, he'd only held her for a matter of microts, and then she'd slipped away again.
Ever since then, Aeryn Sun had moments of clarity, of being, where she was their Captain. Where she smiled, even joked. Where she cursed. But there were also the moments when she looked at the others, and there was nothing in her eyes. When her voice was cool, remote, and energy crackled around her, a nimbus of possibilities that she seemed to take, to craft, to use. And it used her, too.
Marat could only imagine how well it used her. There had been one moment, especially, when Marat had glimpsed over the edge into the depths, and that moment had terrified her enough to take matters into her own hands. She had forced some distance in between her Captain and the people that ate away at her, and the Captain had returned from that precipice. Eventually.
This had the same strength. Different feel, though. When the Human was around . . . it was like focus for the Captain's energy. Like . . . a compass. She was always subtly pointed towards him.
Marat thought about that.
The Human had something about him, as well. Marat had never seen him, never been near him before, only heard the rumours, and she didn't know what he would be like around his own kind, his friends. Having Aeryn Sun as a commanding officer, though, had sensitized Marat to the feel of that something, and he had that too. In a different way, more explosive, less deadly, but it was still there.
Just standing in Command, Marat had felt the tether of awareness that stretched between them. As had Darwa. Both of the commandos had taken care never to actually cross that invisible cord, to breach that line-of-sight. Just in case.
Marat's hands caressed her sensors automatically, reaching out into the space around them, listening, reaching for anything that might be dangerous. For anything out of the ordinary. She was the Captain's eyes and ears.
Now she was suddenly conscious that she not only watched without, but within. Little things, signs and portents, nothing she could say, could only feel. Awareness that her Captain had strayed into the dark edges again. Ever since the recall message from the Carrier, there had been a slow fall back into the cold. The shadows flickering in her eyes. The thin thread of humour, stronger after nearly a cycle away from civilization, fraying in her voice.
The little things. It wasn't scaring Marat. Not yet. Her Captain hadn't gotten that deep, that lost. Her attention wasn't on the ticking chronometer inside her head that only she could hear, the one that told her what everyone else would do, say, think.
It's not that I'm scared now, she thought. And if -- when -- it happens, I would follow her instantly. We all learned that lesson, the first time. There's no time for us to think. Just let her go where she needs to go, hope she comes back out in time to return to a world we still know. Because when she gets that way . . . the universe changes.
And he feels the same way.
He too had changed the universe, certainly their portion of it. He had destroyed a Scarran dreadnought. He and his friends had destroyed a Command Carrier. Marat could feel no sense of horror or anger. At least he, or someone in his crew, made sure there had been enough time to reach lifeboats. But the Captain had obliterated a planet. It was hard to feel shock, after having been a part of that.
Neither one of them were pressing the other. The energy was merely crackling in the background, not yet targeted. Just . . . aware. On.
She wondered what they were getting themselves into, and suddenly wished for the familiar dangers of Nebari space.
So what do you say to a commando Captain who keeps finding your sorry ass and dragging you back to be tortured? 'How have you been?' No, that didn't sound right.
"How did you find me?" Better. Not so . . . needy.
"Solar flares."
Ah, right. He was predictable.
They were alone in the mess; her crew had remained on Command or on various parts of the ship. He still didn't know if he'd seen the full complement, and suspected he hadn't. He'd asked what type of ship they were on, and she'd told him it was a Pantak-class Vigilante. Whatever that was. Something heavily armed. Tauvo would have known what it was. Crais would have known, been able to give him the specs, the personnel numbers. John wondered about that. There seemed to be too few personnel for the typical PK shipboard unit.
Nothing typical about any of them. She had yet to restrain him or cuff him. She'd even given him clothes, a jacket. Another difference. The longest he'd been on a PK ship and not been hit, tied up, beaten, prodded or poked. Hell, all that had happened on Moya and Mustang, too, and those were his friends.
He shoved down the automatic pain that came at the thought of Mustang. Repression, baby, and he was all for it.
"How have you been?" He winced and looked down at his food cubes. Okay, he hadn't realized that was going to actually come out of his mouth. It definitely sounded stupid. Yeesh. He hadn't felt stupid and gawky in a while.
She just looked up at him from across the table.
He cleared his throat. "I was kinda surprised . . . I didn't run across you. On Scorpius' Carrier. Did you get off in time?" That had been a great, secret fear, one that had made him check the faces as he'd run through the corridors. A microt's pause. It could have been fatal, it was an easy mistake he'd made willingly, time and time again. But he'd never had to make that choice of facing her, she who would have stood, fought. Luckily. It was part of the reason he'd given in when Zhaan and Tauvo demanded more of the plan, more time to make sure everyone would be evacuated. John hadn't seen Captain Sun on board the Carrier, but that didn't mean she wasn't there. Maybe Scorpy turned her off, stuffed her in the closet when she wasn't out hunting him? If she'd been on board, he wanted to give her enough time to get off.
Payback for the Ice Planet, he'd told himself.
What would he have done, had he seen her, faced her? What would she have done? He looked at her face. So familiar. He'd spent less than two arns with her, total, over the past three cycles, and yet her features were burned onto his retinas. She had been the omen, the raven, before the Aurora Chair, but then she had been the one to pull him from his slump after he'd killed Gilina, rescued him and D'Argo from the Scarran on the Ice Planet.
And then, she and the other John--
No. That hadn't been him. He was here, now, with his own responses to her, his own history. Even now, his pulse ticked along, faster faster. She was here, she was really here, and what the hell was she going to bring him to now, pain and suffering or the kick in the pants to make him struggle onwards--
He felt so raw around her, and didn't know what that meant, just knew that he'd dreaded running across her, on the Carrier. When Tauvo and Zhaan had reminded him of all the people, her face had flashed through his mind with perfect clarity. And now he was here again, staring at that face, comparing it to his memories. He had a history of twisted memories, stolen memories, but yet this one was sharp, clear. I killed Gilina. Would having to kill you been any easier?
No, it wouldn't have been easier.
"I didn't know," she said quietly.
He frowned at the stark, seemingly out-of-place words. "Didn't know what?"
"About the neural clone." She looked him straight in the eye. "I didn't know about the Aurora Chair, or the chip."
He stiffened, readied words crashing down his throat. Jesus Christ. What was he supposed to make of this? It wasn't an apology or an excuse: just the closest thing to either one that he'd ever heard.
"That day," he said woodenly, choosing his words carefully. "At the Gammak Base. When we first saw each other. How did you -- how did you know I wasn't Larraq?"
"I don't know," she said. "I never met Captain Larraq. But there was something in your eyes that wasn't . . . Peacekeeper. I don't -- I can't tell you exactly, it's--" Her voice trailed off, and her eyes were distant, remembering something.
"You looked like . . . you weren't feeling well." An understatement. She had been the icon of pain, when she'd walked in.
"I . . . don't remember much of what came after. You were taken away. So was I."
"I went to the Chair."
"I don't know where I went." Her hands moved once, a restless movement, and then stilled.
"Not even a hint?"
"I have flashes. His lab. A medical section. And then nothing until much later." She paused. "I could remember, if I wanted to."
But she didn't want. He understood the feeling all too well, and didn't press that point. "How much later?"
"At least two weekens later. I came to myself on a transport, with no knowledge of how I'd arrived, or where I was going."
That sounded too much like his own experiences with Harvey. John looked at her in a new light. "Did he stick a neural clone in your head, too?"
"No." She nearly smiled, but it wasn't pretty or easy. "He had other uses for me." Another pause. "When you found him, this last time, I had been sent out on special duty." She wasn't eating; she had gotten a plate of food cubes for him and then sat across the table. As though they were simply passing the time. Like a date. Or something. He wondered how she'd known he hadn't eaten. Oh. His shopping bag, untouched, by the module. Right.
Not that he had much appetite now. "You mean running after me wasn't a full-time job?"
"I was technically on class two status. Restricted duty as a result of injury," she clarified, her voice lightening to match his. "I'm still on it, actually."
He cocked his head. "Injured?" Since when? "Was this part of your black-out stuff?"
"It was an excuse. To keep me permanently assigned to him."
"You didn't answer my question."
She nodded once, acknowledging his point. "Two and a half cycles ago. Scarrans."
He caught himself rubbing his fingertips over his lips, and stopped.
"After the last time I met you, Scorpius allowed me to resume my training exercises. Until he needed me for another retrieval mission. Nebari."
Chiana aside, the Nebari gave him the willies. "You found their version of me?"
"There is . . . no other version of you."
A crackle of awareness between the two of them. John could almost smell the ozone, and the energy rose, almost unbearable. He broke it first, he had to. "Were you there when he died? The other me?" He hated running into this. He hated knowing, but he had to know. Who did she think was the real John Crichton?
"Yes." There was an emptiness in her eyes, he realized, and it was growing as he watched. Following impulse, he reached across the table. Touched her hand.
Touch: it flowed through the two of them, setting up a resonance feedback loop. Didn't hurt. As much. He cleared his throat, still touching her, so aware of the sensations. Feeling her pulse tick lightly under her skin. "I'm sorry."
"Yes," she breathed, "he said that, too." Her smile was a heartbreaking, shy thing, and he wasn't sure what to make of it. Did she miss the other John? Was she smiling for him, here, now?
Uh, John? She's one of the bad guys? She's playing for the other team?
He couldn't keep it up; he removed his hand before he did anything else to make him feel stupid. Cleared his throat again, louder. "What did the Nebari have that Scorpius wanted?"
"Data. On their science exploits." Her voice had returned to business-level. It gave him an anchor, something to hold on to.
Yeah, we're a pair, the two of us.
"We're heading for a war," she told him.
"I figured. I just thought it was more likely to be two-way than three-way. The Scarrans hate your guts in particular. The Nebari just wish the universe would become more civilized." Not that he'd vote for either one.
"Their technology is advancing to the point where they've begun experimenting on other races. At first, they concentrated on their own species."
"They've been branching out for quite a while." Durka had been Sebacean. "We ran across the Zelbinion."
She nodded. "I know. And that concerns me. They won't need wormhole technology if they control those who have the technology."
His secret fear, but he still listened with divided attention, feeling a familiar curl in his gut, a sour taste in his mouth. The Zelbinion. Where they'd picked up Gilina. Sun must have seen something in his eyes; now she reached out and touched him, drew his attention back to her before quirking her eyebrow in silent question.
"Just thinking about the past." About the body, actually. About how he'd left Gilina, cold and stiff, waiting to be cut apart like a trussed-up steer. Forgotten in the rush. Damn it.
"I know." She looked away. "I want to tell you -- I believe it will help you -- I disposed of the body."
A cold flash down his spine; he sat up straighter. "What?" He must have misunderstood.
"Gilina Renais. The Peacekeeper tech who defected and became one of your crew members aboard the Leviathan. I found her body in the Diagnosan's lab, after you left." She paused. "I was detailed to Scorpius, and he asked me to . . . clean up. In my investigation of the lab, I found her. Stored in a cryochamber."
"We left her there. I thought we'd have time. Time to go back. Then we forgot, we ran. I was -- um. The Diagnosan -- those bodies he kept -- he used the parts." John had wanted to retrieve her body, take her with them. He wanted to protect her, one final time.
"I suspected something like that. I decided that my mission objectives required me to dispose of the body. Completely. So there would be no evidence remaining of your presence on the planet."
He closed his eyes, feeling a wave of relief wash over him, wring him out. Gilina. She wasn't scrap. A knot loosened. Something he'd been holding deep within. He had to take a moment, and she gave it to him, withdrawing to someplace else.
He bent down, folding himself over the table. Breathed deeply. Gilina. It was okay. Such a little thing for Captain Sun to have done, but it meant so much to him. She's not scrap. He knew Gilina hadn't believed in an afterlife, didn't care what happened to her -- Peacekeeper indoctrination, and they'd had lots of talks about that -- but he'd cared. It meant something to him.
Sun was right. It helped.
"Thank you," he whispered. When he could straighten and look at her. "Again. And I never thanked you . . . for saving my life. That day."
"You're welcome." She passed him a fork almost absently, not that he'd been picking at the food all that much. Her voice turned conversational, away from the softer tones of pain. "Speaking of that planet, I was interested to note that even Captain and Officer Crais were fooled by Scorpius' tactics with the Marauder."
He was still struggling to find his equilibrium; her voice gave him a handhold, a ledge. "Yeah, well, we all were." He'd thought Scorpius was dead. Had been all too happy to believe it. He knew better to believe that, now.
Only Scorpius ever came back from the dead. Not Gilina, not Crais, not Mustang.
"I expected the rest of you to be." Her glance showed no apology. "But the two of them were Peacekeepers. They understood our ways, our thinking. Yet they fell into the same trap that many of our kind are susceptible to: overconfidence in our own tactics. We are taught to expect subterfuge, yes, but only one layer of subterfuge." She traced patterns on the surface of the table, Peacekeeper patterns. "And so we often miss the blow beneath the feint. We are most of us undone by the knowledge of our own tactics; we see only what we expect to see, and we do not expect the same things from other species."
Warning, or threat? Her voice was light, and that raised the hackles on his neck. He stopped playing with the fork, put it down by his tray. "You're culturally blind."
"As a species, to a fault." She nodded, a precise movement. "But do not make that mistake aboard this ship, John Crichton."
Warning. He held her gaze, nodded. "I won't."
"We are tired," she continued, her tone unchanging. "We've been watching the Nebari too long. My fault, but it was better to be out here, than in Peacekeeper territories."
Especially for her? No one could have missed that she was Scorpius' favourite hound dog. Lt. Braca had been his yes-man. Captain Sun had been the big frickin' stick.
"Why not the Scarrans?"
"Because we know where they're going with their technological advances, we have a good idea. Information and intelligence." A wry smile, self-mocking. "The Nebari movements concern me. They've been gathering different species as test subjects, from what we've been able to discern. Their scoutships -- small units, smaller than Marauders, even -- have been moving as separate assets, not as part of advance units for larger ships. Which doesn't make any tactical sense. I believe they are experimenting. Researching. Slowly, cautiously, carefully. The Nebari way."
Oh, right. She had never met Chiana. She wasn't wrong about the Nebari in general, but Pip took the stereotype and turned it upside down and inside out. John had a disconcerting moment when he realized Sun didn't know everything about him and his friends. Kinda weird.
"Your Nebari shipmate notwithstanding."
Never mind. "What are you going to do . . . after?" After she delivered him, signed, sealed, and delivered?
"My mission orders were simply to return you to the Command Carrier. Since I'm still technically on class two, I should be able to return to my former -- restricted -- duties after I complete my assignment."
"So you're going back. Out there."
"Yes." She stared out of the viewscreen. "As soon as possible."
You're going to leave me. Lead me and leave me. To another Chair--
"Without Scorpius there to lead the effort, they will move more slowly. Carefully."
It still wasn't going to be pretty, with or without that leather freak. And at least Scorpius could have been counted on to want him alive, at least mostly. Though there had been times that John hadn't appreciated that distinction.
"Scorpius was the only one . . . who truly possessed the knowledge to understand and manipulate the information you hold."
She spoke of him in the past tense, but John knew, with a certainty, that she didn't believe Scorpius was dead, either. But apparently Scorpius wasn't a part of her life anymore, hmmm? Do you miss him? Did you admire him?
Do she mourn him?
"Without him there," she went on, "they are even more eager to get the knowledge locked inside your head, but less likely to understand it."
Aw, shit. It was really going to hurt, wasn't it?
"Because of the lack of the expert scientific resources, my understanding--" her words were precise, careful, and she still wasn't looking at him, "--is that you will simply be held, undamaged, until you are delivered to High Command. That will be quite a journey -- several weekens or more."
"Time enough to go crazy," he muttered. To dream up all the things that could, would, happen to him. The one thousand and one ways to crack John Crichton's head, take ten.
And they weren't even professionals, like Scorpius.
"I would use the time . . . wisely." She stood up, grabbed his tray, turned and walked to the dispenser. "As for myself and my crew--" her voice floated behind her, "--we will not be able to wait to leave."
He shivered at her tone. Casual conversation of torture, imprisonment. Damn, was it cold in here, or just him? He grabbed the jacket she'd given him, pulling it on to cover his arms. It was one of their uniform jackets. He wasn't familiar with the specific design, but it was comfortable. Weird material. Looked well-used.
It didn't really help, not against this type of cold. He stared down at the tabletop, feeling himself shudder inside.
The Command Carrier dominated their forward viewscreen. Aeryn didn't look over at the Human, who stood to one side, gaze inexorably drawn to his fate.
She remembered those moments in the snow, cycles ago. Flashed back with the clarity that she took for granted. Remembered each moment. Hoped that he had not changed too much, that she still knew him. You fought that time. Fight again.
"They're hailing us, Captain."
They would have pulled up the ident on her Vigilante; her mission was listed as priority, but it wasn't eyes-only. What had been the mission designation? Retrieval unit. Anyone with any sense or initiative could have figured it out.
"Respond with the authorization codes."
Marat looked up at her. "Any messages?"
"No." She paused. "Wait a microt. Request docking bay eight."
Marat hesitated, waiting for more. The tension in Command went up a notch. Only the Human didn't reflect it. He wouldn't know that docking bay eight was on the Hammond side, away from the permanent Prowler detachments. It was, in fact, a double-duty bay: maintenance and docking. Large enough to hold a Vigilante, the smallest of the cruisers.
She waited while her unit looked at each other. After a very long microt, Sariv turned to Marat, his scarred face expressionless. "Yeah, we better get that modulation flutter in the cell engine fixed. It's not critical, but you know how those things are. Good to have it checked out before we leave."
Marat nodded and sent the message. Out of the corner of her eye, Aeryn saw Darwa draw his pulser and check the chakkan oil cartridge. It was done quietly, casually.
"Let's try to keep this low-key," she said, her voice carrying around Command. "Less of a security risk that way."
"Docking assignment confirmed," Marat announced.
They were silent as the cruiser spiraled around the massive Carrier and entered the open maw of the hangar bay. Their docking lights splashed across the walls of the hangar bay.
Sariv was at the navigational console. "Busy in here," he remarked.
"Vaagen regiment," Marat responded. "Looks like their entire Prowler detail just came in for scheduled maintenance rehauls. Some of the engines are still hot."
Yes, Aeryn thought, it was about that time.
"How many of the commandos are actually in the bay?" Not many pilots would hang around to watch their Prowlers ripped apart. She knew; she'd been one of them. Maintenance had been tech work. Her job was to fly, and if she couldn't fly, secure another craft.
"Activating passive sensors." Sariv paused for the readout. "I'm reading four commandos. Two techs."
Using active sensors would have lit up the bay and called down Security. They could only have been slightly more threatening by painting a target designator on the far wall. She looked over at the Human. He was standing between the navigation console and the tactical table. His face was blank, unreadable. In his eyes--
It wasn't fear. She knew him better now.
But it was close.
"Commencing lockdown," Marat said. "Cycling engine power. Engaging maintenance clamps."
Their ostensible reason for docking here. The Vigilante shuddered as the maintenance equipment slid in and locked them down. She'd considered the ramifications -- no easy exit here -- but then overridden her concerns. No other way that wouldn't draw undue attention, cause more problems.
But that didn't mean she wouldn't take steps. "Sariv. Stay with the ship. Expedite repairs."
"Got it, Cap'n. One arn?"
"Use our priority status. It'll last until I check in with the Captain of the Carrier."
"Take the long way around, Cap'n."
"Got it, Sarge." She smiled at him. Took a deep breath. Turned to the Human. He looked at her. There was a long, breathless moment:
Track One: Would he resist? Would he make a move now? She was closest to him; depending on where he ran, she would either aim for the knee or for the small of the back. Sariv and Marat were the next closest, she had watched Darwa check his sidearm. Now, if the Human attacked her, a Pantak jab was likely to incapacitate him enough for her to follow that up with--
Track Two: Don't. Don't do it. Not now. Not here, where I will have to respond. The void beckoned, cold and empty.
And then his body . . . loosened. He looked at her calmly, his face shuttered. "Time to go?"
"Yes." Her muscles relaxed, minutely. Thank you.
He jerked his chin down at her, an acknowledgement. Perhaps there was forgiveness as well? That would be too much. "Then let's get this show on the road."
They filed down the corridors of the Vigilante, heading for the hatch. Aeryn felt a brief, dislocating moment of amusement as her unit fell into position. Marat in front, she by the Human, and Darwa bringing up the rear.
John Crichton was dressed as she'd first found him, an amalgam of Peacekeeper uniform. A standard-issue tunic, tactical trousers, vest, boots. One of Rayn's old jackets made him look like one of them. Everything was scruffy, nothing quite matched.
It was possible. He just might be able to pass as one of their unit, especially since they weren't part of the Command Carrier's permanent crew. They had spent so little time here, on deployment, that their faces shouldn't be recognizable, their command sigils unusual.
Now, his face. . . .
Well, most people recognized his name.
They came down together, dropping quickly out of the hatch, sweeping along. Heading on a least-time route for the nearest hangar door. Marat, not surprisingly, caught on, and kept her pace brisk.
Nothing happened flawlessly, of course; Aeryn was not surprised when she heard a raised "What's this?" over the whirr of machinery.
They wouldn't have stopped, but one of the pilots stepped into their path, and any other option would have been as suspicious as . . . well, using the active sensors. Aeryn waited. No sense in making the first move. To make a comment about him being a part of their unit, if he'd already been recognized as the Human wanted by High Command, would frell things up to no end. Waiting meant the pilot had to reveal his intel first, and she wouldn't risk her unit over a negligible point of security.
"This here's the Human, isn't it?" The first speaker addressed his comments to Marat; as a Sergeant, she was more approachable. "That John Crichton!"
Two other pilots turned and came over. One of them glanced at her, checked, looked at her again. "Hey, you're Captain Sun! You're the one that captured him the first time!"
As she moved closer to him, assuming a posture more like escort than unit member, she was aware of John Crichton shooting her a quick, amused glance. Yes, it appeared he wasn't the only one who was easily recognized. There was a momentary rush of chagrin. How?
The unasked question was answered when the second pilot turned to the first. "She took him down on the Gammak base three cycles ago! Remember that? In the lounge?"
Took him down? It took no little amount of effort to keep from looking at the Human. She could practically visualize the grin that threatened to split those lips, the creases in the corners of his eyes as he laughed silently.
Strange, that he would find humour in that comment, smile when in such danger. Stranger still that she expected it, and knew what it looked like, especially when she didn't think he'd smiled much recently.
"Was your regiment posted there?" Marat, smiling, chatting. Gathering intel.
"We just staged there. We went to the Scarran Fringe afterwards. Came back in time for the cleanup after this one here--" A jerk of the head indicated the Human. "--took out that Command Carrier."
The third pilot, who'd been silent until now, shot an angry glare at the Human. "Yeah, we were even sent after him for three monens. Searched eight bloody systems lookin', found nothing! Frellin' waste of time!" His eyes were hard, resentful. Aeryn felt a rush through her system, the tensing of muscles. Just in case.
Time to go. She jerked her head; Marat smiled and moved on. "Gotta run, Captain's waiting."
Aeryn knew. The pilot wasn't going to let it go.
She was right. When the Vaagen pilot grabbed at Darwa's arm, she slowed. Didn't stop. Darwa could handle himself against pilots. She watched them from the corners of her vision.
"How'd you guys end up getting him?"
Darwa was the most taciturn of her team. He looked at the Human, then back at the pilot. "'Cause she's better than him."
"Well, how come we didn't capture him?"
She winced. Crichton noticed, and he, too, listened.
Darwa waited a microt, then shrugged. "'Cause she's better than you, too."
That interlude with the pilots was the most exciting thing about their walk. For which he was grateful. Nothing like a little gallows humour to keep him from thinking about what was to come. As it was, he was really trying hard to resist the urge to stop in the middle of the corner, look around deliberately, and say something like: 'Been here, done this, blew up the damn thing.'
Interesting coping mechanism, John.
We do what we gotta do, Harvey. Now shut up and let me get on with it.
Get on with what? I don't hear any spectacular escape plans. Harvey didn't break from his metronome stride. The SS jacket swished as he walked, his weapon held in the classic marching pose. Is this another one of your classic PTSD signs?
If you got something, say it.
Touchy today, are we? Now Harvey was gawking like a tourist, peering down each corridor they passed. Well. We have been here, done this. With friends, of course. He turned to smile at John. Now you only have me. Luckily, I am willing and able to assist. So, what's the plan? He clapped his hands together. Destroy this one, too?
Fifty thousand people, Harv.
You weren't the one saying that the last time, John. Harvey blew him a kiss and left, thank god. The comment about the people on board cut a little too close, and John really needed to get his mind kick-started into gear.
Captain Sun was staying close to him -- close enough that he could feel her, that the hair stood up on his arms -- keeping up the faade of 'just another half-assed bunch of commandos, roaming through the corridors of a Command Carrier.' How very Star Wars. How weird. 'Cause it would have been a heck of a lot easier to slap some dangly bracelets on him, or even a control collar, and have him by the short and curlies. An obvious prisoner. There was a certain amount of security in broadcasting what he was. Woulda added another notch to her reputation, too.
This . . . allowed him his pride. In a deep place within himself, it allowed him hope. It was a heck of a lot easier to sneak out of a place when you hadn't been brought in with the 'Hi, I'm the prisoner of the month' jewelry and accoutrements.
Why the hell was he being so docile, anyway? Overwhelming odds, maybe? Okay, so that was point one. But that wasn't the point. Suicidal tendencies? He didn't feel them now.
So what is the point?
Damn! Harvey, would you go away? I'm thinking, okay?
You call this thinking? Oh, John, we are so dead.
Do you mind? I've got a lot on my plate at the moment.
John: Fork you.
Now that was an ugly visual: the neural echo laughing at his own pun. Go away, Harvey.
The point was John couldn't think around her. It was like everything just slowed down. Not like that sense of loss, after they'd gone up against Scorpius. That had been killing madness. This was just . . . dead.
He shook his head. Jello for brains. There was a hell of a lot going on here, and he'd better start paying attention if Jack Crichton's boy was gonna make it out of here in one piece. Not that there was anything to see in the Command Carrier. Seen one, you seen 'em all. The Peacekeepers weren't much for personalization.
No bright ideas came to him as they marched, but he watched, he waited, knowing that something would show up. Eventually. They managed to get all the way to the Captain's office without one bright idea. He checked her expression as they were allowed in. Pale mask. Cold, carved stone. He almost touched her to see if the spark jumped. Could jump from that dead flesh to his own.
Not here, John. Not now. His own voice, not Harvey's. Harvey had gone away again, leaving him alone, only the merest whisper of her inside his head.
You think you're gonna get another chance?
Well, he'd always been an optimist. Mostly.
Her crew fanned out, fading back against the walls. She walked forward, herding him ever so slightly in front of her. Without touching him.
"Captain Jessek."
"Captain Sun." Crichton remembered that trick. Trying to out-Captain someone. It had kinda worked on Larraq. It kinda worked here.
"So this is the Human, John Crichton?" The PK gonzo walked around him like he was a thing. A sculpture on display -- no, less than that: a piece of meat. John sighed. Why was this always part of the script? Did they have an Evil Overlord version of the Cliff's Notes, which told them what to do when they met the Big Bad?
"This is it?"
Yup. According to script. "Speed it up, man, I don't have all day," he muttered.
She turned and belted him one, cool as you please. The movement was graceful; the delivery of kinetic energy was explosive. He spun in place and dropped to the floor.
"I would be very careful with him, sir." Her voice was steady, providing his thoughts with an anchor while the rest of him whirled on the floor. Steady. Like she hadn't just cleaned his clock. Couldn't she at least breathe heavily, or do something to assuage his bruised male ego? He flopped over, the better to look up groggily at them.
The Carrier Captain was staring down at him. "He doesn't appear to be dangerous."
"He's more dangerous than he appears."
Yeah, right. And here he was, floundering on the floor, looking very stupid, harmless, weak. I wanna know who writes your dialogue, Sun. But it was dialogue, and John was watching some play unfold--
The PK Captain prodded him with one spit-shined boot. John allowed it, the better to seem harmless. That and he still didn't think he could stand up. "Surely you over-exaggerate the danger, Captain."
"I don't think you quite understand the threat he poses. Captain."
Flared nostrils, bruised ego. She was doing a lot of that today. Nice little emphasis on the 'you'. John got a great look right up the guy's nostrils. Ugh.
"What exactly are you insinuating? Captain?"
She didn't seem to flinch from the hit. She did realize that she'd crossed the line, right? John was pretty sure that her level of Captain wasn't as shiny as his level of Captain. And this guy was pretty damn shiny -- silver bars and boots and all; standing beside Captain Sun, he looked like a poser. A wannabe. John couldn't think straight; his thoughts were all tossed together like salad, and he needed a fork. That merited a chuckle. A fork. God, his head was still throbbing. Had she hit him on the head, or had he knocked that on the floor when he'd gone down? Did it really matter? End effect was the same. JC on the floor again.
He had a theory about floors.
She shrugged. "Merely stating that the Human has proven to be more resourceful than previous commanding officers."
Oooh. She said resourceful. A PK red-flag word. Man, was she pushing this guy's buttons, or what? And why? John struggled to his feet. Neither one of them bothered to help him. Of course. Shiny Captain barely even looked at him, all attention on Captain Sun. Bristling like a territorial dog. The funny part? They weren't even fighting over John.
"We are on a Command Carrier, Captain. This is not some Marauder in the backwater of the Fringe." The Captain's tone turned patronizing. "I realize, as a Ghost, you don't often have access to the resources available on a Command Carrier. Rest assured we will be able to take care of this . . . Human."
Temptation beckoned, but John bit his tongue. No. Wait.
She was stiff as a board, mask still in place. "Yes, sir. In that case, I will sign over custody to the senior Brig officer." She paused. "Is anything else required to complete my mission log and perform a checkout?"
"I don't think so, Captain Sun." Oooh, someone thought he'd won. "Will you be returning to your prior duty station?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then I shall not expect to see you again." As in, don't let me keep you, and don't let the door slam you on the ass on your way out. "Thank you for your assistance in this matter, Captain. I shall be sure to make a note of this in your personnel file."
She made no comment, simply nodded at the Captain, collected John with her gaze, and walked out of the office. The others filed out behind, falling into position around her. Around them. The two of them were herded down to the brig like sheep. Lambs to the slaughter. No, one lamb. She got to leave.
Interesting. John hadn't been interrogated. Not even questioned. This was the first PK Captain he'd met who couldn't wait to get rid of him. Or maybe it was just Captain Sun's sparkly personality the PK couldn't wait to wash his hands of? Yeah, must have been that. She'd gone into full-on bitch mode when she'd walked in. Funny, she'd never shown John that side of herself.
If she had, would it have made it easier for you to fight her? He didn't even know her! Damn, why couldn't she have read her Cliff's Notes, too, and just been the simple bad-ass bitch? He could have fought her so easily then.
Wait.
There were people in the corridors, techs, commandos, pilots. The usual complement of PK clones. One of them turned, saw them coming by as a group, and almost jumped back, muttering a word as though it was a curse.
John frowned. Ghost? The Captain had said the same thing. Tauvo and Bialar had never mentioned that word, or anything along those lines. Harvey hadn't, either, but John didn't want to ask Harvey anything. He didn't want to have to rely on that little neural echo, no sir.
She heard the word, too, she didn't miss things like that. I know her that well, at least. "What does that mean?" he murmured in her ear.
She looked at him, though he could tell that her attention was split; tracking him, her unit, their passage. "Ghost," he repeated. "I keep hearing people say that. What does that mean?"
Something flashed behind her eyes. "Your . . . other asked that, as well."
Shit. Not that again.
They crossed a few corridors in silence, his footsteps mingling in time with the others. He couldn't bear the space between him and Sun, that yawning gulf. It had been like this, with the others. Whenever they mentioned his . . . the other John. "Yeah," he said uncomfortably, finally. "We thought alike."
Her look didn't speak volumes; it downloaded libraries. "It's a particular type of unit. Special commandos. Most Peacekeepers call them Black Ghosts."
He noticed the careful phrasing. "Doesn't look like you guys are well-loved."
"We don't fit in."
No shit, Sherlock. "And you're the Captain of a Ghost unit, which makes you even more popular."
"Yes."
"You guys are the big bads around here?"
"No," she muttered quietly, "that honour is reserved for High Command." Her voice turned sharp. "One arn. One arn and I'm off this Carrier."
"Don't rub it in," he muttered back.
"I would say I'm sorry, but that might impede my progress out of here." It was said softly, but he heard it, and reacted.
"No, don't bother. I'm still waiting for an apology for the shiner you gave me."
"Shiner?"
"The clocking. The decking. The punch."
She kept walking.
"No comment?" He prodded at his jaw. "It was totally gratuitous." Why? he wondered. What made her so easy to talk to, so comfortable that he could almost ignore where he was? They were walking, almost hand-in-hand, to put him in a cell, and he could crack a joke. Finally, after months of Life as a Goth, now he found his sense of humour?
That's so that you don't hear yourself screaming, you dork.
"It worked."
"Yeah, I'd say that. You got a hell of a right there, Sun."
She stopped to look at the display map in a corridor, and turned to Marat. "We'll cut through here on the way back. It's a faster route to the hangar, and we can stop by Supply on the way."
Marat frowned. "You want to lift off in an arn?"
"Sooner, if we can."
"If you don't think you're going to run into anything here, I can go ahead to Supply and start checking out." The sergeant barely glanced at him.
"There will be no problems. Go ahead. I'll be along to sign for any controlled items."
Wow, really bad for the ego. He might almost take it personally, if the Carrier didn't creep him out, as well. He kept having flashbacks to those final moments, on Scorpius' Carrier. Would he turn the corner and come face to face with Scorpius? Easier to think of Captain Sun. No, wait. Wrong distraction. Bad. Think, John, think. Focus.
The Brig officer was everything the stereotype called for. Words like "dour" and "meaty" zipped through John's mind as he looked over the area. There were a few cells up front; none of them were occupied. Holding cells? Then a solid door, some muffled voices from back there. The hairs on his neck rose. Max security. Shit.
"Prisoner for you," she said. "From the Captain."
"ID?"
"Just arrived aboard. Hasn't been assigned yet."
Man, she made the guy's day with that comment. From the look on his face, someone had just lit a fire in that ass. "Any belongings?"
"What you see on him."
John was afraid, for a moment, that the guy was going to start slobbering on him. So he was a jailor's wet dream? Great.
"That looks like a Ghost uniform."
"We had to outfit him with some stripped Peacekeeper gear; he didn't come with much. He can keep it until he gets to where he's going. Our guy doesn't need it anymore." Her tone made it obvious why.
"Did you search him?"
"We frelling had to clothe him, what do you think?"
Brig Man looked from her to Darwa. "Well, I got a duty." He walked up to John. "Arms out."
Neurons fired, and arms eventually got the message. He did as the PK ordered. Stiffly. Slowly. John was aware of her eyes, of Darwa's gaze; together they held him still. The Brig Man patted him down quickly, perfunctorily, more of a familiar pat on the ass than anything else. Nodded. "Just put him in a cell here. Unless he's a priority level?"
John froze.
An open cell door before him. Just a few steps. Lift a foot, put it down, walk on. To where, next? Where was left to go? The Aurora Chair--the Ice Planet lab--a Scarran torturer--
Her voice cut through the gibbering in his head. "The Captain doesn't expect any trouble."
"Who hit him?"
"I did." She paused. "He talked back. Once."
The jailor's voice was fruity with anticipation. "Then we'll just put him here."
The cell door slid shut.
Hell of a first date.
He walked in. He turned around.
She would have touched him as he passed her, taking back whatever part of her he carried with him, but she was afraid of breaking through the barriers that surrounded them both. She could not do that to him. Not now, when he had so much ahead of him.
His eyes were bleak.
She met them. Her eyes never left his face, but she spoke to Darwa, her responsibility, still waiting behind her. "Let's go," she told him. "Our mission's done. I want to leave within the arn. Let's get off this tin can and onto some rec planet as soon as possible."
Turned away.
Track One: Get off this ship.
Track Two: Now.
He waited for almost an hour.
"One arn and I'm off this Carrier."
The jailor didn't talk to him much after he'd been checked in. Assigned an ID number. Never a name asked. Not even a strip search. Without much ado, and certainly not due process, the doors slid shut behind the jailor as he walked into his office.
Just him and his tossed salad thoughts. Need a fork to get through that mess. After an hour -- roughly an hour, anyway -- the jailor walked past his cell, smiling at John. "Checking on the other prisoners. More crowded back there. Don't worry, I'll be back!" Obviously didn't expect an answer.
Take your time, buddy.
A clang, as the jailor passed into the max security area. John didn't waste any time getting the fork out of his sleeve. Tauvo had taught him this. "It's a Peacekeeper trick," Tauvo had said. "With the way we live, might come in handy one day."
"We are most of us undone by the knowledge of our own tactics; we see only what we expect to see, and we do not expect the same things from other species."
It was a cinch to get out of the cell. He didn't hesitate on his way out the door, just walked out and went down the corridor as though he knew where he was going.
"We'll cut through here on the way back. It's a faster route to the hangar."
A few people passed him, but he kept his face just slightly averted, and they noticed the uniform jacket. "Ghost," he heard.
Yeah, he was trying.
One person even saluted him. He didn't salute back. From what he remembered of Larraq, what he'd seen of Captain Sun's crew, they didn't do the usual PK BS.
"They fell into the same trap that many of our kind are susceptible to: overconfidence in our own tactics."
He reached the hangar in just a few minutes. The combination maintenance bay/docking hangar. There were several easy-at-hand Prowlers waiting nearby, just recently parked. No sign of the Vigilante cruiser hulking above the smaller ships, low-slung guns pointing accusingly at him. Perfect. He went to the Prowler closest to the docking web.
A tech stopped him. Almost choked as he looked at the jacket, and wouldn't look him in the face after that. "We haven't overhauled that engine yet, sir--"
"Captain's orders. I'm afraid they take priority over a scheduled maintenance procedure." The jacket was a damn hall pass. A get-out-of-jail-free card. So were the words. The tech not only didn't bother him, he actually operated the docking web so that the Prowler would float out of the bay, nice as you please.
John fired the engines up.
It was easy to breathe again.
Marat glanced over at the Captain, who stood at the nav console.
Well, relatively.
She didn't have to move closer to the Captain's still form to feel the . . . energy, or whatever it was. They'd all felt it a time or five, they all accepted that it simply was. It had saved their lives too many times to discount.
When the Captain had come into Supply to sign out the restricted items, Marat had felt it immediately, hadn't questioned how close it was. The void was back in full force; the edge of darkness was sharp, close. Only this time, there were no Scarrans, no Human to fill that emptiness or provide a focus. Just that great distance that yawned in her Captain. Aeryn Sun was getting further and further away.
Walking down the corridors of the Carrier with her had been like holding a pulse rifle that was overloading: the near-subliminal whine raised your hackles. You knew it was going to blow, you just didn't know exactly when, and where to throw the power cell.
It had gotten slightly better when they'd returned to the Vigilante, receded to the point where you didn't want to run screaming after being near her for more than five microts. Marat had expected it to lessen still more as they got further from the Command Carrier, but it hadn't, and she wasn't sure what to make of it.
Space usually helped. This time it didn't seem to have any effect. Despite the fact that there was no mission, no one to find, no need for that focus. No one for her to become.
She cleared her throat, the sound loud in the small Command. "Where to, Captain?"
The answer came back, cold and clear and measured. "Back to the Nebari Fringe." A pause. "Did you get a message traffic download?" A polite way of saying, "Did you hack into the Carrier's systems and find any news?"
"Yes, Captain. I got as much as I could. I uploaded them to our data spools an arn ago." It hadn't been easy to cajole one of the Suppo's clerks to let her use his data console. She'd been in a hurry, so it was possible she might not have covered all her tracks, but those would lead back to one luckless little clerk drone in Supply. "Looking for anything in particular?"
"Yes," Aeryn murmured. "I'm wondering why Jessek was really put in charge of that Carrier."
Marat shivered at the tone, the implications. Oh, frell.
She bent down to her beloved comms, looking for something to distract her.
He touched down on the commerce planet two days after he'd left it, feeling as though he'd forgotten something. Something important. He was feeling strangely dislocated. Lost. Not like when he'd figured out he couldn't go home. Different this time. Like . . . he wasn't where he should be.
A whole other reality.
When he'd slept, he'd dreamed.
D'Argo and Tauvo nearly ripped him a new one. Well, John had expected that. He didn't lie -- didn't say he'd been up with the solar flares -- but instead 'fessed up.
Did we think the PKs were just going to go away, after Scorpius? God, did we ever really think that? We took out a frickin' Command Carrier!
Tauvo looked more animated -- alive -- then than he had in months.
"You were captured by Peacekeepers? Here?" Jool's voice hit a few of the higher registers with that one; she'd looked around as though expecting black-clad PK soldiers to come crawling out of the walls at that moment. Chiana hugged him, her touch desperate. D'Argo had been all for leaving the planet that microt, despite Moya's need for maintenance work. Zhaan and Stark went from peacefully blissed to worriedly pissed. After the cutting words, Tauvo simply looked grim, his eyes sparking in anger. Then again, he always looked grim, nowadays, and John didn't care. Tauvo had yelled at him. Actually yelled. That was a good sign.
"What happened? How did you get away?" Tauvo was slowly getting himself back under control.
How had he? John pulled out the fork, a souvenir, and smiled at Tauvo. God, it felt good to smile at him. Real. "You were right. They never expected their own tricks."
Rygel shook his head. "It could not have been that easy."
"C'mon, Fluffy, if you could do it, so could I," he'd responded, but hadn't said much more than that at the time. What could he say? "I'm here now."
The only reason I'm here now is because I think . . . I'm alive again. Oh, yeah, that would be understandable, and go over well. Right. He was here because Captain Aeryn Sun followed her orders to the letter, and because PK High Command was still stupid.
D'Argo sniffed him over closely. "Wondering what souvenirs I brought back this time?" John remarked lightly.
"Did you?"
"I didn't bring anyone new home with me." No, she'd been in his head for a long time now; she was practically an old friend.
He and Tauvo had taken the Prowler to the warehouse. It had almost felt like old times; on the way, he'd told Tauvo about commandeering the Prowler. "We're assembling quite a fleet here," Tauvo had laughed, almost a bitter laugh, but good to hear anyway, different. "When do we go up against the Peacekeepers again?"
A moment of silence, heavy between them, as they both remembered what had happened last time. Of what they had lost. Tauvo's mis-step, this time, and that was a first.
John made his voice deliberately light. "Uh-huh, right. And you say I'm crazy. Nah, this baby isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Don't forget it needs to be overhauled. I kinda put more miles on it than the warranty specifies." Not to mention they would need to pull out the PK transponder, and change all the security settings.
The area around the warehouse had been deserted, no signs of occupation, of entry. It could have been years since someone had been by. Captain Sun, sure knew how to pick them. Wonder how long it took her to know that this was the spot? An hour? Two?
Was he so easy to figure out?
Tauvo had looked at the door and sighed. "Locked. Great. You want to do this the subtle way and try to shoot it off, or should we call Chiana to meet us?"
God, they were almost normal. It was practically worth it, if this was the result, where he could feel, could laugh, could talk to Tauvo. He'd missed Tauvo, he suddenly realized. He'd missed having someone to really talk to.
"Don't bother." John stared at the door. She'd whispered the numbers out loud.
He got it on the third try. "How'd you know?" Tauvo had asked him.
"I tried to pay attention when it was being shut." Farscape One was still there, shimmering in the stale, cool air. As Captain Sun had said she would be. He ran his hand over the hull, feeling the cold metal underneath his skin, greeting her like the old friend she was. All they needed to do was refuel the various ships, and they could lift off the planet. Everyone was cutting short their shopping trips, even though John felt, at his core, that there was no need. As far as he knew, Aeryn Sun never told anyone where they'd found him, and she was probably making tracks to the Nebari Fringe, out to her beloved space.
But then again, he'd been wrong before. And he, too, felt a need for some of the cold comfort of space.
"I'm surprised they didn't take it," Tauvo had commented. "It's still got a lot of your Earth technology, however primitive that is."
John didn't rise to the bait. "I guess they thought if they had me, they didn't need it."
"My primary objective is to retrieve you. High Command said or specified nothing about your craft. . . . They want you, and the information for how to build this craft is in your brain. It would be redundant to carry it along simply as a . . . memento."
Tauvo frowned, touched his arm. Demanded his attention. "Are you . . . okay, John?"
Too long since they'd asked each other that question. He took a deep breath. Let it out. "Yeah. It was just . . . a close call, you know?"
"Let's not have another one anytime soon, then."
"Yeah," he'd echoed. "Let's not plan on one."
But now he sat here, on Moya's terrace, staring out at a spacescape. They were putting on the miles, getting as far away as possible from their last known location. And what was he thinking about? He was wondering how soon he would see her again. Because he knew he would.
Wasn't like Scorpius. Knowing Scorpius had been out there was . . . waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for the ax to fall.
Waiting for her was worse. It was wondering when she was going to show up. How it was going to happen. It was. . . anticipation.
Footsteps. Tauvo was there, hesitating at the door. "John. Forgive me--"
So polite. More normal, nowadays, the way they treated each other. That polite distance between them. "Nah, it's okay. Come on in, the water's fine and the view is awesome."
Tauvo still hovered at the entrance, and John sighed. He'd hoped that the moment on the commerce planet would last, but it hadn't. Tauvo and he had slipped back into their usual roles. Tauvo had changed so much, since the Command Carrier. Become harder. Sharper. Quieter. He'd lost his brother, his final link to the Peacekeepers.
But John had changed, too. John had lost his home, his dreams. Even, for a while, his identity, lost as he'd been without thoughts of Earth to drive him forward.
But John suddenly needed to pick Tauvo's brain, to understand something, and was tired of giving Tauvo space to grieve. They'd reached the moment of friendship before; they could do it again, damn it. "I actually had a question for you."
"Sure." Tauvo finally joined him inside the room. There was a moment of silence. Not quite awkward, mostly expectant.
"While I was on board the Carrier, when the retrieval unit brought me in, I heard some of the other crew members calling them a name I'd never heard before. I wondered about it."
"Ghosts."
"Yeah. How'd you know?"
"Your jacket." John still hadn't taken it off. "A Captain's jacket. I'd wondered how you managed to get your hands on that."
Captain's jacket? Understanding dawned. No wonder--
"It was in their spares," he stammered. Didn't specify on which ship, or how exactly he'd found it, and Tauvo didn't ask, just nodded. Distracted by his own thoughts.
"You were lucky. It was probably the best thing to grab, if you needed it. No one would question a Ghost Captain. That's what allowed you to get that far into the Gammak base, the first time. Peacekeepers don't much like the Black Ghosts."
"You know you're making them sound like boogey monsters."
Tauvo didn't react to the Earth term. That, too, had changed a bit; he wasn't quite as gung-ho about Earth as he'd been before. "They're dangerous. Carriers only carry one, two units. Never more than three. My . . . brother's Carrier only had one, and they were deployed most of the time."
It must have cost him, to say that, but John pressed on. "Why?"
"They go through the most stringent training possible. They're taught to be completely self-sufficient. The mission is everything. Even their own members are sacrificed to the objective."
"What you're telling me sounds like every Peacekeeper I've ever run across."
"They're not. We've been lucky. We've only run across one Ghost unit, and they were only at half-strength. We were very lucky." He looked grim. "I was lucky."
What was he talking about--? Oh. "Larraq." John had thought Aeryn Sun was familiar, the first time he'd seen her, because she'd moved like Larraq -- a deadly, floating grace.
"Yeah, Larraq. Half-strength squad, and yet he managed to contaminate three members of Moya's crew and nearly kill me." Tauvo's voice was flat and his eyes were distant as he remembered.
"That was the virus."
"No. The virus is the only reason we succeeded in overcoming Larraq. It had its own desires, its needs, weaknesses that Larraq did not have. Without those flaws, he wouldn't have been so easy to distract and defeat."
John shivered. The look in Tauvo's eyes was stark, cold. Bleak. "So you're saying that Captain Aeryn Sun, the one who found me, is like Larraq."
Tauvo jerked back as though he'd been hit, then laughed, a short, sharp bark. "Oh, no, John. Never make that mistake. She is nothing like Larraq."
What was that? There had been a moment, something in that tone -- Tauvo spoke with such vehemence, as though he'd met her, and John stared at him. What was behind those words? How could he be so sure?
Oh, right. Suddenly John realized -- Tauvo must have met Captain Aeryn Sun, if she had been there when the other John had died. She had brought him back, to die aboard Mustang, and so she and Tauvo must have met. John had never thought about it before -- he didn't like thinking about that, for obvious reasons -- and so he'd never thought to ask. Had Sun treated Tauvo and Crais like traitors? Had her first reaction to him, them, been like Gilina's reaction to Tauvo?
Tauvo continued, oblivious to John's train of thought. "Larraq is dead. She is deadly. That is the difference."
"She was with you. At Dam-Ba-Da. You never told me."
"I didn't know she was part of the retrieval squad until you told me her name, just now. At Dam-Ba-Da, I only met her when she came aboard Mustang. At the other Crichton's insistence. My brother wanted to obliterate her with Mustang's main cannon."
"And?"
"The other Crichton said no."
He was scared of her. The knowledge dawned, slowly. She'd walked in, a Ghost Captain, and the other John had chosen to have her stay. And you were there, you were scared of what she meant, or what she could do, or how she would treat you. She was the boogeyman from your childhood and your culture. No wonder why you never told me this part of his death.
"Scorpius chose her, John. Chose her to find you, probably trained her, equipped her. She found you -- that other you -- on Dam-Ba-Da. And then she found you again, somehow! Out of all the systems we'd gone to, how many times we'd been lost, how did she know you were on that commerce planet?"
"I don't know." Damn. He'd never even asked. He'd just taken it for granted that she'd known where he was because she knew him that well.
"You're in great danger, John, and you must recognize that. Scorpius may be out of the running, but if High Command has begun to send Ghosts after you -- us! -- we must be doubly careful. Larraq was the cause of your downfall; which ultimately put you in the Aurora Chair. Captain Sun is aware of your worth to High Command! What's this Ghost going to put us through? How much are you going to risk -- how much are we going to suffer! -- because of Captain Sun?"
But Tauvo didn't know. She was the one who flushed John out, there, at the Gammak base. She was the one who blew his cover, turned him in to Scorpius.
Tauvo put a gentle hand on his arm. "You survived this round, John. Don't expect to survive the next. Let's just take this experience as a lesson learned, and one that we survived. This time! Let's make sure there is no next time."
"I hear you, buddy," he murmured. After a long moment, Tauvo nodded, then withdrew, leaving him alone.
John hadn't come back undamaged. Oh, no, she had thrown him a few curve balls. She was a threat; he just didn't know . . . to what. His body? His mind? His self? What was left, after everyone had their chance at him?
His heart?
You want to talk about suffering, Tauvo? You should feel what I feel, when she touches me.
He put a hand into his pocket; he was still wearing the Ghost jacket. Pulled out a fork and an empty chakkan oil cartridge. Both were standard PK issue. He'd picked up the cartridge from the tool table, in the maintenance bay. Where Captain Sun had left it.
"High Command said or specified nothing about your craft. . . . It would be redundant to carry it along simply as a . . . memento."
Aeryn Sun.
"Yeah," he said quietly.
Section 5: Conspiracy Theories
After having retrieved key intel from Nebari space, a high-priority packet of ship numbers and movements, they had been rewarded by temporary reassignment to a Carrier near Nebari space.
Rewarded. Hah.
The Carrier Captain, a woman named Plaice, smiled at Aeryn and told her to enjoy the time off. "You've been out there too long," she'd said. "Take some time and relax. I see you're still technically on class two status. It's likely just because you've not logged enough time on a Carrier to have access to Personnel officers, requal at class one. Use the Carrier's resources to get as much Med simulator time as possible. We'll be analyzing the data you brought us for some time to come -- enjoy it while you're able."
Hah.
A fleeting expression across that command face -- something uncomfortable, some awareness -- and then it cleared. Captain Plaice smiled again. "You'll be safe here."
She didn't like Ghosts, this Captain Plaice. That wasn't unusual; Command Carrier captains rarely did. So why did she want them to stay?
Three weekens ago, and they were still here. Still waiting. As usual, as Ghosts, they had their own troop area allocated in the bowels of the Carrier. Racks, mess, rec. It was small, their Tomb -- most Carriers only carried two or three squads of Ghosts at a time -- but it was empty, and echoed with silence. She found comfort in this fact; all of the other troops -- the regular line companies -- generally avoided the area. As though Ghosts were agents of contamination.
She smiled grimly. We are our own form of intellent virus. How ironic that my first response would be to destroy such a creature.
Flashback: Rayn, and all that she had done to him--
No. Remember further back than that. The first time she had been in a Tomb. How she waited, in the silence of the Gammak base. Waited for a name. Waited for Larraq.
And she had found John Crichton. He had come to her, that first time.
Now she was waiting again. She had run her own analysis of the Nebari data they'd brought back, and it had set off little sensor trips inside her head. Some sort of cross-indexing was happening inside her brain, too low-level for her to understand, but she'd become used to the sensation ever since Scorpius had changed her. She'd learned to trust it. There was something wrong, there was a pattern beginning to coalesce, but she still lacked data. Ship movements. Something about singular scout ships leaving main Nebari command elements, which went counter to established tactical doctrine--
Marat slid into the seat opposite hers. "Got a moment, Captain?"
She put aside her musings, setting them back to their subliminal tracks -- at their core, free-formed grey thoughts restless in her soul -- and looked at her Sergeant.
"Quiet in here." Marat looked around at the empty area. "Nice change. No little nurfer comments. Quite a difference from browsing the comms channels. Lots of people on board this ship."
Aeryn's attention sharpened. No, no one else was around.
Marat continued. "We've been on this ship a while. You'd have thought they would have found some real work for us to do."
"They'd have to realize we were here, first." Without prior mission orders, she had little choice, if she wanted to remain neutral, but to accept the Carrier Captain's pointed hospitality. And wait.
"There's that." Marat traced patterns on the top of the table. "I'm just thinking about . . . what's next. You know. Always thinking about the next mission. I just hope it's not another retrieval job. I'm tired of those." She looked up briefly. "Especially if it's that Human."
Aeryn watched Marat's hands -- slim, long-fingered. Capable of crushing a larynx, brute strength wiring through the sinews, or piloting a skimmer through atmosphere, deftly riding the clouds of vapour.
Capable of stroking long-range comms, sliding through the encryption like a Prowler through space, hearing echoes of what was to come.
Her own voice was bored, lazy. "You think they're still after him, then?" Of course they were. It was barely two monens since High Command last looked for him. The unit had gone out and fetched him, as ordered. And then he'd slipped through High Command's fingers. Again.
She'd only found out about his escape after her arrival on this Carrier. Marat had routed the information to Aeryn's personal console in her quarters, buried in a bunch of other notices. She'd read it, the words burning into her brain even as she scrolled past that message, to the next. And the next. After she'd gotten to the end of the queue, she'd turned the console off and stared at the display for the next arn, still seeing the words burned onto the darkened screen.
Then she'd gone to work out, nearly drilling a luckless commando into the practice mat.
"He's stung their pride on more than one occasion. And he's fairly good at eluding everyone else, it seems." Honest pride in Marat's voice. Aeryn couldn't bregrudge her that pride; as their Captain, she struggled all too often to deliver to them the honesty they deserved. "I figure it can't be too long before they assign us to that mission. Again."
Aeryn looked at her own fingers, spread atop the table. Cold and pale, they were extrusions of flesh. Her flesh. She had to think to feel, something that was becoming harder to do. "Mmmm. I wonder when they're going to change the mission from capturing him to keeping him." Her mouth was dry. Oh, that use of they was so telling. She and Marat had both slipped.
Marat looked surprised. Aeryn watched the other woman tasting her words, testing their flavour. Marat nodded slowly. "Keeping him. Yes. I think so--"
"Keeping him who?" Sariv moved into the room. Aeryn felt no surprise at his presence. She'd been wondering when he would show up. "Are we talking about that Human?" He took one of the seats beside Marat.
The other woman nodded. "We're just talking."
"I wish he wouldn't keep escaping." Sariv leaned back in his chair and managed to look as though the Human would do such a thing to personally insult him. "Either stay caught or stay escaped. Save us all some trouble. I sure don't want to have to go after that drannit again."
"How'd you like to have to be the one on sentry duty?"
Sariv grimaced. "You're joking, right? Stuck on some miserable ball of dust just to guard the little nurfer? We're Ghosts, we're not frelling boot-shiner grots!" He turned to Aeryn with some urgency, his tone offended. "Captain!"
Aeryn heard herself saying, "You wouldn't like some time on a proper Base? With all the comforts that brings? Guard duty is an easy life, you know."
Marat looked her in the eye. "We're not a simple retrieval squad, Captain. We're not guards, we're not . . ."
"We're not anything," Aeryn whispered. "We're Ghosts. We're whatever we need to be."
"Exactly!" Sariv pounded lightly on the table and met her gaze. "Frell this! Let's get back to some real work. I don't want to chase another Human for the next eight cycles. Give me the Scarrans -- now there's fun to be had with that mission!" The scars on his face were pale against his flushed skin.
Her face was frozen; she could barely hear over the rushing of blood through her ears. "I'll see what I can do." She spread her fingers on the table's top and rose to her feet. Numb. Why was everything numb? Oh, right. Because of the void.