Seeing the Elephant
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: This belongs to Henson and Co or to David Drake. Rating: K Time: The future.
Author's note: This is a crossover between the universes of Farscape and Hammer's Slammers. Seeing the Elephant was an American Civil War term for seeing combat.
Lo' La rocked and shuddered and tried to throw me out of my seat. D'Argo's ship wasn't to blame, rather it was the dozen or more Prowlers attacking us. So far, the defense screens had minimized the damage, but Lo' La was being difficult. Very difficult.
"Ka D'Argo, please authorize Aeryn Sun to control weapons system." Lo' La's computer generated voice asked calmly. I screamed an obscenity and pushed the suddenly useless control stick for Lo' La's weapons against its stops.
"Yes! Aeryn Sun already has my authorization to use the weapons." D'Argo bellowed.
Lo' La quietly replied. "Welcome, Aeryn Sun. You have weapons control." The control stick became active just as the last Prowler slipped out of range. The Prowlers were reorganizing out of range, so for a few dozen microts or so, we'd be safe.
"John, can you get any readings on the ship those Prowlers are from?" I called.
John shook his head and continued working the sensor controls.
"I can't make heads or tails out of any of this, Aeryn." I thought that meant he had no readings.
D'Argo had eventually convinced Lo' La's computer to allow me to use the ship's weapons and John to use the sensors. Naturally, he had found no use for Chiana's particular talents. Unfortunately, D'Argo's understanding of her systems was still incomplete and Lo' La could suddenly lock John or I out, usually at just the wrong moment.
"I'm really sorry about this." Came a voice from behind me.
Chiana just had to answer at once. "It's not your fault, Jool. This sort of thing happens to us all the time." She said cheerfully.
As far as I was concerned, a great deal of it was Jool's fault. Sensible people, of whom we met a very small number, would have never looked back after leaving Moya and her crew of renegades. Especially since those renegades were wanted by virtually every government in the galaxy for one reason or another. But we had run into Jool who just had to come along with us for a while.
All right, I admit it had been pleasant to have Jool aboard Moya for a weeken. Moya was a less pleasant place now with Scorpius and Sikozu aboard again. Chiana alternated between being the same self-centered trelk she had been when she first came aboard and something almost resembling a comrade. John was still John. An enormous bundle of human contradictions that I had been lucky enough to fall in love with. At least I felt lucky today. Some days I felt like my life might as well be over.
Now we were returning Jool to a commerce planet where she could catch a ship back to her archeological dig. At least we had been until we ran into the Prowlers. Now the Prowlers had us trapped between two gray, dead worlds in a deserted solar system.
"Aeryn!" John yelled. "They're coming in again."
I started tracking the incoming Prowlers and let my finger rest lightly on the firing pad. I let them get in range and a little more. Then, saying a prayer to a Goddess I didn't really believe in, I gently stroked the firing pad. Almost instantly, five of the Prowlers faded and then disappeared. I quickly set my sights on a group of five Prowlers nearest to us. Just as I was about to fire, Lo' La's computer spoke again.
"Weapons will now go off line for the routine maintenance you asked for, Aeryn Sun."
"No!" I screamed. "I didn't ask for any maintenance. Return weapons control to me." I could see that the computer was hard at work ignoring me and running unnecessary diagnostics. "D'Argo! Your frelling ship.."
"I know! I'm going to…" The rest of his words were drowned out by a burst of fire impacting on our defense shields. For two dozen microts, I thought it was all over, but then the Prowlers drew off again.
"Aeryn?" Both John and D'Argo called at once. For once John let D'Argo talk. "Aeryn, I think I've isolated the problem Lo' La is having with control by a non-Luxan. I can fix it."
I managed to hold my tongue and not tell him what I thought of his ship and it's problems. I turned to John.
"Aer, I can see more Prowlers headed this way, but I get nothing on the ship they're from. I think it's either jamming or Lo' La needs a seeing-eye dog."
D'Argo growled when he heard that. "Aeryn, see if you can help John. It may be his poor eyesight, again."
Before John could reply to the insult, I slid out of my chair and onto his lap. John soon found other things to occupy his mind, while I worked the sensor controls.
"Aeryn! John! If there are more Prowlers coming, I'm going to try to make a tight turn around the nearest planet. Lo La's capable of handling more acceleration than those Prowlers. We'll use the planets gravity to shoot us off into space and by the time they get around the planet, we'll be out of sensor range."
I nodded to D'Argo. That should work.
D'Argo swung Lo' La around towards the planet and put the engines into overdrive.
I stared at the sensor screen, trying to make sense of what was there. Given Lo' La's unwillingness to cooperate, that wasn't much.
"John, push the green button by your right hand five times." He did and the screen cleared a little. I made a few more adjustments. I almost had it. Then I really had it.
"Frell! D'Argo that's a frelling escort cruiser back there. That's where the frelling Prowlers are coming from." I screamed.
D'Argo nodded vigorously. "The more the reason to get out of here now." Lo' La was headed for the edge of the planet with her engines roaring.
"D'Argo!" I yelled over the noise. "Escort cruisers always travel with Command Carriers."
It was too late. The Command Carrier was slowly coming around the planet that had hidden it from us and we were headed straight for it at full power.
"D'Argo, head for the planet. Get around the carrier." John screamed.
"No!" I yelled back. "The Command Carrier is going to try to use it's docking web to capture us. Head way from the carrier."
"How the frell do I get past the Prowlers and the cruiser then?" D'Argo bellowed back.
We were all screaming at each other when we noticed our voices were the only noise being made. Lo' La had gone silent.
"Lo' La.!" D'Argo immediately started pounding on Lo' La's controls, but it was doing no good. All of the ship's systems were down.
"We're not dead." Jool said quietly.
"No, they stopped shooting " I replied. "The Peacekeepers know they can pull us in with a docking web. Why kill us?"
We sat for perhaps a hundred microts while D'Argo displayed an impressive command of Luxan profanity.
"D-man." John said quietly. "I don't mean to add to things, but you screwed up. You have us headed right for the planet, not past it."
D'Argo snorted. "Bull dren. I had us perfectly placed. If the engine hadn't failed, we'd have cleared the planet by 127 metras."
I stared ahead of us at the planet. "No, we're headed straight for the planet.
"That's not…" D'Argo started. Then he saw it too.
"D'Arg, that damned planet is coming right at us. Do something."
John was right. The planet was starting to bulge outward, headed for us and the Peacekeeper ships. The Command Carrier saw it and was starting to accelerate away from the planet, but the planet seemed to be gaining on it. The planet was no longer just bulging, it was headed our way like all Hezmana. I got a good look at its flat, dead surface just as there was a huge flash of light and then everything went black.
Someone was calling my name, but they were far away. I tried to focus and figure out how anyone could have gotten so far from me in D'Argo's small ship.
"Aeryn! Dammit, honey, wake up."
I was awake. Wasn't I?
"John?"
John's hands were running all over me. Not an unpleasant sensation, but hardly appropriate. I heard him whisper in my ear. "I don't think anything's broken. How do you feel?"
Everything came back to me at once and I was instantly alert. "I'm fine, John." I shook my head and decided I was, if not fine, all right. "How are you?"
"Much better, now, Aeryn."
John turned towards D'Argo. "Hey, D'Argo. How about giving Lo' La some high test so she'll…."
Before John got the rest out, all of Lo' La's systems came back on line at once. I grabbed for the weapon's controls. Those Prowlers had been almost on top of us and could be ready to shoot at any microt. I stared through the sights, but it took a microt to figure out what I was looking at. I finally decided it was the nose of a Prowler about a half a metra off. I ran the sights through three hundred and sixty degrees. All I could see around me were Prowler pieces.
"John…" I began.
"Aeryn, you have got to look at this." John said softly.
"Frell. That's impossible!" Chiana said from behind us.
I looked through Lo' La's forward vision port. Ahead of us was about two thirds of a Command Carrier. The end where the engines were appeared to have blown up.
"Same with the cruiser chasing us." John announced from the sensor array readouts.
He was right. The cruiser's engines had exploded. I guessed that all of the engines of the Prowlers had blown up, too.
"What the frell would cause that?" Jool asked.
"Who cares. I'm taking Lo' La out of here." But before D'Argo could act, Lo' La decided to play games again.
"Only sub-light speeds are now available." She announced crisply. Both D'Argo and I cursed at once.
"D'Argo, where the frell are we?" John asked.
"In the exact center of frelling dren. Where do you think we are?" Was the reply.
John pointed out the side vision port at the planet below us. The dead gray planet was no more. In its place was a warm green world, broken by blue seas and white clouds.
"Curioser and curiouser." John said under his breath. "And I can see Prowlers and transports coming out of the carrier. They must have been powered down when the dren hit the fan."
"I have no idea what the frell is happening here, but we should get out of here at once." D'Argo started turning Lo' La away.
"Over there?" Jool said.
Out the other view port was another green planet that had been dead and gray only microts ago,
D'Argo nodded. "We have to get away from the Peacekeepers.
We headed away from the crippled ships towards the other green planet. I moved over with John and helped him keep track of the Peacekeepers, a simpler task now that there was no more jamming. I stared at the readouts. "Frell! They're headed for the same planet we're headed for."
John chuckled. "You bet. Nobody wants to mess with a planet that'll haul off and whack you one."
That made me think. "D'Argo, are we sure the planet were headed for won't try to attack us?"
"I have absolutely no idea. All I do know is that there are Peacekeepers who'll kill us back there."
"Aw, shit." John interrupted. "Bad news on the doorstep. Most of the transports and Marauders are hanging around the wrecks of the carrier and cruiser, but we have a good three dozen Prowlers headed after us."
D'Argo demonstrated his impressive command of Luxan obscenities again. It must have done some good, since Lo' La sped up enough to give us about a two-hour cushion before the Prowlers arrived. We decided to just get Lo' La down to someplace where we could hide on the planet. In less than ten microns we had punched through the atmosphere and were searching for a place to land amidst a forest of giant trees.
"Man, those trees make redwoods look like toothpicks. They must go three hundred motras straight up before they start branching out."
"Aer" John called. "Look, there's a village over there. And another." He was right. It appeared the planet was inhabited, but from the looks of the villages, there was nothing on this planet that would cause the Peacekeepers any problems.
D'Argo found an immense tree that had recently broken off near the base and fallen. The fallen trunk crossed a small hollow and the upper branches of the tree rested on a small hill. D'Argo was able to push Lo' La into what had been the upper branches, so we were partially hidden. Lo' La's stealth capabilities should take care of the rest, if she could be persuaded to use them.
It took over an arn to convince Lo' La to hide herself and to determine that repair of the faster than light module was possible, given five solar days of work. A flight of Prowlers roaring over us let us know we didn't have five days to work with.
"We should head for the nearest village." John said.
"Why?" D'Argo growled back. "Do you think a bunch of frelling savages are going to have some ancient Luxan military technology lying around they'll loan us for Lo' La?"
"No, but they'll have food and water. Those Peacekeepers aren't going very far from this planet in Prowlers and Marauders. They could be here for a very long time, big guy."
"Crichton's right." Jool finally spoke up. "The carrier and cruiser have been destroyed. There are no Peacekeeper installations within the range of the ships they have left."
"No Peacekeeper installations we know about." Chiana said unhelpfully.
D'Argo snarled, but we headed off to where we thought the nearest village was.
We set off through the forest. John told us it was old growth and then explained what that meant. The biggest strongest trees grew the highest and got all of the sunlight. The weaker trees got no sunlight and died. The result was a nearly solid layer of leaves some hundreds of motras above us, leaving the floor of the forest in shadow. There was plenty of room between each tree. Fine if we wanted to move rapidly, but a problem if we needed cover from the Peacekeepers.
Suddenly, D'Argo put his hand up. "Peacekeepers ahead of us. Maybe a half a metra." We took cover behind a rotting log two motras thick and stared in the direction D'Argo had pointed in.
"We should be headed a half a metra in the other direction, Kemo Sabe." John whispered.
I shook my head. "We need to find out about these Peacekeepers. Are they looking for us specifically? Are they planning to set themselves up here or halfway around the planet? How many survived the explosions?"
"And you think they'll just happily volunteer the information, Aeryn?" John shot back.
"No, we'll just creep up on them and take a look. Six Prowlers went over us and that means six pilots. They won't want to leave their ships unattended, so even if they spot us, they won't chase us far. If at all." Without waiting for any further arguments, D'Argo and I headed towards the Peacekeepers.
"You can observe a lot by watching." Was John's cryptic comment.
We ended up crawling for nearly half a metra and finally ended up behind what John called the mother of all toadstools. Whatever that was, it provided us with some cover.
"Frell!" I muttered under my breath. Nobody else said a word, except for John. "Six pilots?
The Prowlers had shot a hole in the leafy canopy above us and landed in a straggling line. Around them a good two dozen Peacekeepers were forming up. "John, a Prowler can carry another three passengers over very short distances. I should have remembered that. I'm sorry."
John started to say something, but didn't. He just started backing away from the Peacekeepers. We did the same. As soon as we could, we were on our feet and headed away. "Screw the welcome wagon routine." John said as we ran.
"We still need to find out more about this planet and the Peacekeepers." D'Argo growled back.
"Well, this time you think up the plan, D'Argo." John shot back.
They were so frelling busy arguing, we almost ran into the next Peacekeeper patrol. The sound of a Peacekeeper yelling sent us diving behind a huge tree root. There was a narrow slit between the root and the ground that let John, D'Argo and I see. Ahead of us was another patrol, but this one had a prisoner. At first I thought he was a Vorlag, but I quickly realized he was too small. The prisoner was no larger than a Sebacean and appeared to be a biped. But he had the same long, toothy snout of a Vorlag and a body covered with brown fur. His arms were tied behind his back and a Peacekeeper lieutenant was waving a weapon of some sort under the being's nose. It was a short stubby weapon with a cylindrical magazine. Both the prisoner and the weapon were new to me. I nudged both John and D'Argo, but they pantomimed ignorance.
The lieutenant slammed his fist into the prisoner's side. "Where did you get the weapon, beast? Answer me." The prisoner just snarled and got the butt of the weapon across his snout for his trouble, knocking him down. The lieutenant dragged the prisoner to his feet. His last mistake, as it turned out. The prisoner lunged and dug his fangs into the lieutenant's throat. A gurgling scream was followed by a series of pulse blasts, but it was too late for the lieutenant. He was dead by the time they pulled the dead prisoner off of him.
While the rest of the Peacekeepers were distracted, we headed the other way. We got about ten motras, too.
"Report, you two." She was a stern looking gray haired Commander and she made her last mistake that day. Seeing John and I in the lead, she assumed we were more Peacekeepers. John and I drew and fired before she realized she was dead.
"Frell! Did all the Peacekeepers decide to land in one area? What's the drill when invading a brand new planet, Aeryn?"
A pulse blast over my head cut off any answer I might have made. "Dren!" Jool and Chiana said together. The four of us turned and fired at the Peacekeeper patrol behind us. As soon as they went for cover, we started running.
"Who are those guys?" John said pointlessly as we ran for our lives through the forest.
We suddenly found ourselves in an open space and then came to a very sudden stop. We had stopped on the edge of a cliff. It was a good fifty motras to the bottom, but growing up almost to the rim of the cliff was a species of vine with huge thorns. Lots of huge thorns.
"If we jump.." I started.
"Yeah. Don't even think about it, Aeryn. Can we go along the rim of this canyon and try to find a place to cross?" John asked.
"Only if the Peacekeepers are feeling especially cooperative today." Jool replied. "The trees don't grow up to the edge of the cliff. They'll be here in microns and.."
"We see, Princess." Chiana cut her off.
"If we can hold them off until night, maybe we can sneak away." Even John didn't sound like he believed that.
We managed to find another fallen branch to take cover behind and settled down to wait for the Peacekeepers. We knew we wouldn't have long to wait.
"Aeryn," John started. "I know that you don't like me to say anything in public…."
I cut him off. "I love you too, John."
He just grinned and shook his head. The one time I was sure I'd know what he would say, and he said nothing.
I'll never understand humans.
We had only a few microts before I spotted the first Peacekeeper scout briefly sticking his head around a tree and just as quickly pulling it back. We held our fire until they got in the open. Frell! They were charging and there must have been more than fifty of them. The original patrol must have been reinforced. I pulled my pulse carbine against my shoulder and carefully took aim at the closest Peacekeeper. Before I could squeeze the trigger, an unbelievably bright bolt of light smashed my target to the ground and left him as a charred corpse. Their carefully planned assault on us dissolved in chaos. The plasma weapon I had seen fire at first was seen only occasionally, but the ground around the Peacekeepers was raked with explosions. I could also hear a high pitched humming. The Peacekeepers soon discovered they were being attacked from a force high in the trees around them, and switched their fire from us to the enemy above them. I saw a few bodies drop from the trees, but the Peacekeepers seemed to be outnumbered and they had no cover. It took no more than a micron before the forest ahead of us was silent.