Fallen From Grace

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It was more than just sand that choked her. It was cloying, acrid, poisonous. She tried to tuck her face into the crook of her arm but she couldn’t breathe any better for it, and the dust still clawed at the delicate corners of her eyes. Instinctively she reached for her weapon, but doubted she would be able to see well enough to shoot anything, anyway. This was a bad idea. It must be a clear day in Hezmana for Chiana to be right.

Backing up the steps into the pod, she checked her sensors again. Let the transport be her eyes for her. Still nothing. Not even a weak signal from Moya. She could try going back the way she had come, but a third or fourth attempt at breeching the strange, golden mist might just do enough damage to her only means of transport that she could get stuck on this dust ball indefinitely. If Crichton were here, he’d at least have an idea, a plan. Conversation for her to take her ill humor out on. She looked at the plant Zhaan had given her where it perched precariously on her console and inhaled deeply. Her headache wasn’t getting any better, either. What else could go wrong?

Inside her mind Crichton grimaced. What was it he had said to her once? “Say shit like that and fate might just take you up on the challenge”? What had the Peacekeepers taught her? If you’re lost it’s your own damn fault. No. The other lesson. Stay put and your unit will find you. Traipse around like a wounded animal and you’ll have less pleasant circumstances to deal with than a commanding officer with a penchant for making an example of you. She sighed. Nothing to do but wait for Crichton and D’Argo to find her. That thought in itself was enough to set her already frayed nerves even more on edge.

She got up from her seat at the controls and took stock of her supplies. It had been a scouting mission. Long range recon but food and water were sparse. More like a couple snacks she had packed for herself because flying always made her hungry, and barely enough water to get her through the day, even if she rationed it with all the intent of a supply sergeant.

Aeryn smoothed her hands over her head, trying to remember if she had forgotten any minute detail of procedure. Satisfied she hadn’t, she sat down heavily on a passenger bench, stripped off her vest and shirt and bundled the shirt into a pillow before putting the vest back on. She idly thought this would be the most appropriate time for John and D’Argo to find her, but the sensors she had set on automatic alarm stayed quiet. Lying on the bench, she closed her eyes and managed to fall into a restless doze.

***********

Her headache was gone, but so was her food and water. It had been nearly two solar days and not even the suggestion that the crew of Moya were TRYING to find her. A cycle ago she would have thought they were well rid of her, but when a man who you’ve treated with barely more than contempt for 9 monens risks his life to save you, you tend to undergo a radical attitude change. Not that she’d actually tell him that, of course. The only obvious conclusion now was that whatever phenomenon was keeping her from returning to Moya was also keeping the crew from finding her.

She shook the last few drops of water out of the flask and decided it was time to find a better place to wait or else all that would be left to find would be clothes and a dried out corpse.

As the pods engines fired up Aeryn realized how good it felt to actually be doing something. The arns spent waiting had frustrated her as much as the actual fact of being stranded. She was not a woman used to being confined with nothing to do and not being able to even go outside had left her with too much time on her hands and too little to occupy it. She had even found herself on the floor of the pod, a small tool in her hand scratching hash marks and circles into a grid. One of Crichton’s games. What had he called it? Tic tac toe? That couldn’t have translated correctly. She’d have to ask him about it when she got back to the ship.

Once in space she veered away from the amorphous glittery cloud and set a trajectory towards a small constellation of planets that suddenly appeared on her sensors. Why hadn’t she noticed them before? Her training was slipping and she made a mental note to find a way to maintain her strategy skills once she got back to Moya. It was easy to keep up with piloting and physical fitness, but her mind was getting soft. That wouldn’t do at all.

As she approached the nearest planet she could tell even before she checked her sensors that it was more hospitable than the one she had just left. She saw verdant green continents and slate blue bodies of water compared to the solid brown of the uninhabitable waste of dirt she had just left. As she flew in closer she saw small colonies of life forms sporadically dotting the areas of land. She frowned. Low or minimal technology, very little that her sensors could pick up that would be any use to her. But she needed food and supplies and most importantly, answers. She just hoped this wouldn’t turn into, what did Crichton call it? A clusterfrell like the one they had encountered when trying to locate anesthetic for Moya just over a cycle ago. Her stomach rumbled loudly. She would just have to take her chances.

************

That had been…she didn’t bother ticking off the time in her head. Arns, monens. Any amount of time was too frelling long. The people here had been kind, giving her food, clothes, suffering her ill humor with as much good grace as could be accorded. They had offered her lodging but she declined, creating a bivouac for herself on the outskirts of the settlement. After that, only two or three people actually sought her out…the leader of the community, his son Cerric, and his son’s wife. They brought her fresh things, invited her to this celebration or that, but always she declined. She did not belong in their community.

It was a warmer than average day when she saw the bright shock of Cerric’s red highlights breech the hill her transport rested on. She had finally given in to the rise in temperature and changed from her leather to the light linen tunic he and his wife had provided for her. Although comfortable, she couldn’t quite get the knack for wearing a skirt and kept tucking it awkwardly between her knees as she sat on the transport steps, watching her neighbor approach.

“Our clothing suits you,” he said, the smile that reminded her so often of Crichton brightening his face.

“It suits the temperature,” she answered crossly.

“Well, at least you seem to be of easier spirits today than in the past.” He leaned heavily on a walking stick, waiting for an invitation to join her. She didn’t extend it.

“And you’ve come to this conclusion in what way?”

“You’re weapon is still holstered.”

She sighed. “What do you want, Cerric?”

“My wife has invited you to join us for dinner this evening.”

“I’m busy.”

“Of course you are. I told her you probably already had plans, but I am joined to one of those tenacious sorts who never take no for an answer.”

Aeryn almost had to laugh. “You too?” she said under her breath.

“Pardon?” His smile never faltered, and Aeryn could tell, for as much as she could read people, it never slipped from his eyes, either. So few people she knew in the universe had a genuine smile like that.

“Nothing, I was just thinking of someone.” She stood up and wrapped her gun belt around her waist, though with nowhere to put the thigh strap it flapped uncomfortably against her leg.

“A friend? A mate?” Without an invitation forthcoming, he slipped into the thick grass where he stood and sat there, expectantly awaiting any kind of answer.

“A friend.” If he was shocked to get even that much out of her, he hid it. They were mournful, regretful words, as though she were unhappy she had ever had any friends at all. And they were more than she had ever spoken to anyone since she had gotten here.

“You were a soldier, right? A member of your unit?” Cerric had never understood what a soldier was doing out in a non-military craft performing recon. Not that he knew that much about military, but it seemed odd to him. Deserter? No, not Officer Aeryn Sun, she had loved her life. That much he could tell.

************

“What do you mean you don’t have a standing military?” she had raged, desperate to find a place, anyplace to fit in on the planet when she first arrived. “What kind of backwards frellnicks don’t maintain a military?”

He had shrugged casually under her onslaught. She’d only been here a weeken, perhaps. She had finally acknowledged she couldn’t get back to where she came from. Acknowledged, perhaps, but never accepted it. She had never told them where she had come from, either. Not directly. But she carried a weapon, and carried herself like an extension of it.

“We have no need of a military--” but before he or his father could finish she had stomped off, taking pot shots at trees with her weapon and muttering under her breath.

“Leave it to me to get stuck on the only frelling planet in the universe with no guns. Even the frelling Delvians have a use for the Peacekeepers.”

**************

So that left him here, in a cushion of grass under the shadow of her transport pod on a warm day, perhaps finally getting to hear some of what brought her here and why she couldn’t give up what was left behind.

She raised her head to the sky, like she expected Crichton to come down at any microt and rescue her from this mundane existence. The clouds floated lazily by, mocking her.

“He was a member of Moya’s crew, but no soldier. No one could ever mistake Crichton for a soldier.” He could tell from her tone of voice it was a trait that amused her as much as it caused her a certain amount of agitation. Like a beloved pet that refused to perform, or a child that could not seem to grasp what appeared to be the simplest tasks.

“And he was your friend?” Cerric wondered what sort of man could actually get this hard woman to call him friend.

She nodded, still not taking her eyes off the sky. “He was--is--a good friend. But stubborn. Like your mate, very stubborn.”

She didn’t say anymore and Cerric didn’t prompt her. She was a woman who took time, and the wrong word could send her back into her pod with only rude words and admonitions to be left alone in her wake. This Crichton must have had a gentle touch to be spoken of so warmly.

“If he were here right now, he’d probably already have gotten us off this frelling planet. He always had a plan. Not a good plan, but somehow his plans always worked out. One way or the other.” Her hand strayed to a spot just under her rib cage and rubbed absently. An old wound perhaps?

“It must be hard, leaving behind a good friend. You must have known him a long time to feel the loss so strongly.” Cerric prodded gently. Aeryn hadn’t taken her eyes off the sky. Even after she had sat down again on the pod stairs, she leaned her head against the one behind her and let her eyes drift upwards.

“I’ve barely known him a cycle and a half.” It was spoken as much as a revelation to herself as to Cerric. Had it only been that long? How could she feel such an acute loss for a group of people she had barely known. She’d known her unit for cycles. Some of them had even been her crèche mates, and yet it was the faces of Moya’s crew who dominated her sleep and her daydreams. And always one in particular.

“I left behind a lot of good friends. And they’re probably waiting for me, trying to find me right now and all I’m doing is sitting here. Waiting. I don’t do ‘helpless’ well.”

Cerric laughed, his voice loud in the open space. Her head jerked up, her hand instinctively going to her weapon. Cerric shook his head and held up a placating hand.

“No disrespect is intended, Officer Sun, but it is a far stretch of the imagination to ever think of you as ‘helpless’. You are about as helpless as my wife down there,” he nodded his head in the direction of his house, where Aeryn knew Laran would be gardening, her long skirt bunched under her knees for padding and a wide brimmed hat shading her eyes. “Which brings me back to our original point, if you want to see someone helpless, come take a look at me tomorrow after you don’t show up for dinner. She’ll have me strung up and drying like one of her herbs. Stubborn. You know what it’s like.”

But Aeryn was still lost in her thoughts. She must have cared about this Crichton very much, no matter what she said about his only being a crewmate. Her previous venom had evaporated into a blank look, though her hand still languidly stroked the handle of her pulse pistol.

“We searched a quarter cycle for Crichton. Zhaan and Chiana and Rygel searched I don’t know how long for us…maybe twice that? And they have all risked their lives for me when I didn’t deserve it. Strangers welcomed me when they should have killed me and I’ve lost them again. I lost Crichton. Again. I can’t even,” her voice cracked and she turned away from Cerric, collecting herself before continuing, “I can’t even get a message to them to warn them.”

“I am sorry this pains you, Aeryn,” Cerric stood up, trying to decide if he was brave enough to approach her to offer physical comfort. He leaned on his walking stick and waited for her to turn around again. “I’m sorry you have to suffer the loss of your friends. But our lives are made up of endings and beginnings and you must learn to work with what you have. Plants grow from seeds, plants grow from roots, and plants grow from cuttings. You still have strong roots, let them flourish here.”

Aeryn all but snorted. “Spoken like a true gardener. I’m NOT doing this again. I had a life I liked, I had a life I loved, and I had friends, and order, and I knew everyday what the next day would be like because it was the same as the day before. Then it changed. I didn’t want it to, I didn’t ask for it, but it did. I lost everything I ever loved and found something…new.”

“You found this Crichton.” Cerric smiled, for all of her rage at being stranded on this planet, away from her ship and her friends, he suspected that if Crichton had been stranded with her she wouldn’t have minded half as much.

“I found friends who genuinely cared. That’s not something a Peacekeeper even covets, and now I miss it. I miss them. I miss Zhaan chanting and I miss Rygel eating and I miss D’Argo and Chiana, who are probably frelling themselves into oblivion right now, and I miss Crichton. I don’t want to start over again.”

Cerric looked down and shuffled his feet a bit before speaking. “Then come, join us for food and you and my wife can be two stubborn women sharing stories of their stubborn men. If it will help, grow your roots slowly. You may find they have grown deep even before you realize it.”

For the first time since Aeryn had started talking about her previous home, she looked directly at him. “Zhaan would have liked you. And Crichton. I’m sure Crichton would have, too.”

“And you?”

“You’re tolerable,” she started up the pod steps, his indication that the conversation was over.

“Does that mean we should set an extra place?”

“I’ll think about it.” She turned as the hatch closed, shutting her off from his view.

Well, Cerric thought as he made his way back down the hill, that was more than he had ever gotten before. It was, actually, better than he had hoped for. He had information now, and that would give he and Laran plenty to discuss, and hopefully keep him out of trouble if Aeryn didn’t show up for dinner. She was a soldier fallen from grace. She had a home and a life among the stars. She had been fiercely devoted to a man she would not call mate, but who was probably searching for her right now as desperately as though she were his.

He loved his wife, he loved his home, and never in his life had he ever considered something was missing from it. But if he hadn’t found this stranger fallen from the stars intriguing before he knew anything about her, he certainly found her so now. He picked up his pace, anxious to return to his dwelling and share what he had learned, then just as quickly slowed down again. Aeryn had entrusted him with something he could nearly guarantee she hadn’t told anyone else in the colony. Quite possibly hadn’t even told her lost shipmates. That was a precious gift. He would brave his wife’s wrath if it came to that, but he would do it without betraying Aeryn’s words. Her friendship was not to be taken lightly, and it’s probably the least that this Crichton would have done.


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birthsister

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Author's Afterword, Fallen From Grace

Return to Aeryn Years Index