Title: One Evil at a Time
Author: Auna
Setting: Approximately 27 cycles after Bad Timing (or, if you know this series of fics, four cycles after Old Haunts… Aeric is 17)
Spoilers: Absolutely none
Disclaimer: The Farscape universe is not mine. However, every single character in this story IS.
Beta: Aeryncrichton- a HUGE thank you
Authors Notes: Thank (or blame, whichever you prefer) this one on GotLeviathan. We were having a harmless conversation about Sethya and Aeric, and he made one statement that instantly brought this first paragraph into my head with a shadowy sketch of the rest of the story. I gave him a virtual thwap upside his head for doing this to me, and then I sat down and wrote five pages. Today, I blew off work to finish this. Now that it's out, maybe I can get some work done!
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Dirt. Grey, silty, dry dirt. As far as the eyes could see. Yes, there was the occasional beige tree to break the total monotony. But if you smiled, or talked, or breathed at the wrong moment, your mouth would be filled and your lungs would shut down.
Brennik was having that problem now. Pulling up the hem of her voluminous shirt to cover her face, she coughed in an effort to expel the nasty substance. It wasn't working. She felt her chest heave with the effort, her stomach convulsing. A hand began smacking her back and finally, the awful moment began to pass.
"You all right?" Sethya asked from beside her.
"Yeah," she said through the dry air passages, trying to breathe in deeply without getting more dirt in her lungs, moisture collecting at the edges of her eyes. "I'll be fine."
"The baby?" he asked in what she knew he felt was a casual voice.
"I'm sure he's fine, too," she answered, rolling her eyes. She couldn't even cough these days without him hovering.
"This is a bit of a waste hole, isn't it?" her husband asked, scanning the view of the small town before them from where they stood near the transport pod.
She nodded as she wiped the tears from the corner of her eye.
"Reminds me of Zedlon Three," Tean said, bumping past them with a large empty bag slung over his shoulder. "Did you guys need anything?"
"A supply of Wyfag juice," Brennik told him, and ignored the shudder of disgust that both men tried to hide.
"Anything else?"
"You've got the list," Sethya told his brother. "If I think of anything else, I'll call you on the comms."
A roaring noise blasted through the stillness of the quiet morning, and all three heads looked up to see John's module descending through the atmosphere. Tean started laughing, and Brennik shook her head.
"How did he do it?" she asked.
"What makes you think he got permission?" Sethya asked. "If I remember correctly, young Crichton's aren't notorious for their obedience."
She thwapped him on his arm and began to waddle away, her extended stomach making the movement awkward. "Tean, Aeric's coming was your idea."
"I didn't tell him to steal the module!" the man defended himself. "I'm not taking the blame for this one. But he does have some good ideas about rerouting the coupler frame to the—"
"Just get him home in one piece," Sethya interrupted his brother as he followed his wife's path. "We'll meet back here in an arn."
Tean waited while the module finished its landing, blowing the grey dirt into whirlpools around the small platform. His face was coated by the time Aeric finished landing and lifted the hatch.
The ex-smuggler shook his head, sending the dirt flying in all directions, and shot a smile at the teenager. He looked so much like his father these days that sometimes Tean had to take an extra look before speaking. "Did you get permission?" he asked as the boy hopped out and landed on the ground in one smooth movement.
"Are you my dad?" the kid answered with an upraised eyebrow.
Tean shook his head, throwing a congenial arm over the young man's shoulders and leading him away. "No I'm not," he answered. "But if your Dad does ask, I had nothing to do with you being here."
"Coward," Aeric teased with a laugh.
"Yes," Tean agreed with a smile. "Yes I am. Now, about that idea with the coupler frame," he said, momentarily forgetting the wrath of the senior Crichton. "It's an interesting concept. Don't you think that it would…" he continued their previously interrupted conversation as they walked into the small town and headed for the nearest parts shop.
xxxxxxx
Life was good. Sure, his wife was being hunted by countless Peacekeepers, wanting her for knowledge she didn't have. And they were lost in the middle of Tormented Space. But he'd been a fugitive for two cycles before he got married, and being a felon was nothing new to him.
Being a husband was new. Being a father was even newer. He was terrified. But today, he was walking in the sunshine next to her, and the healer had just given her and the baby a clean bill of health. The clinic had a machine that let them see their baby, and they'd discovered it was going to be a girl.
How the hezmana was he going to carry this off? How was he going to keep from killing anyone who ever looked at her wrong? How was he ever going to stop men like him from getting their grubby hands on her? Brennik squeezed his hand, pulling him from his worried thoughts, and pointed across the road with a laugh.
Sethya couldn't do anything but shake his head. Tean and Aeric were in the technology shop with a still-empty bag, looking like Dne on Christmas morning. Picking up item after item, they were inspecting the hardware, debating the uses and practicality of each one.
"Think we ought to go pull them out?" Brennik asked. "I hate to spoil their fun."
Sethya, despite himself, actually agreed. "I'll go get the bag. We'll get the supplies and let them keep wishing."
She smiled at him, and his heart flipped. Squeezing her hand, he left her looking at the jewelry in the window beside them and turned to step off the walkway.
A view out the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he turned, recoiling at what he saw.
xxxxxxx
Tean happened to glance out the window the precise moment Sethya did his double-take, and his eyes followed the path to the storefront window next to his brother. Dren. Six armed men were robbing the store.
Tean knew what was going to happen next. His soft-hearted brother would have to go step in other people's business and charge in there to save the day. Any microt now, Sethya would lift his arm as a signal for him to follow, and they'd go in there and…
To his surprise, his older brother, the ex commando, grabbed his wife's arm and began dragging her across the street. She was arguing with him, and he scooped his arm under her legs and lifted her and her huge stomach into a hold she couldn't escape.
A few microts later, he charged into the store with Aeric and Tean, Brennik scowling in his arms.
"You didn't have to do that, you fekkik," she snarled at him as he lowered her legs to the ground. "I was capable of getting across the street on my own. I was following orders."
"You weren't fast enough," he told her without looking at her. "I had to get the baby out of danger." He was trying to say something to Tean in the same breath, but Brennik was too fast and cut him off.
"You think that I'd endanger—"
Sethya whirled around, pointing a finger at her and doing a lousy job of keeping his cool. "Not now, Princess," he ordered, ignoring the blazing fire of anger in his wife's eyes. Turning back to Tean, he continued. "Are you ready?"
He motioned out the window with his head, and Tean sighed. "Local law enforcement is going to be here any microt now, Sethya, there's no reason for us to get involved."
"Actually," the haggard looking shop owner mumbled from a few paces away, nervously peering across the street, "that IS the local law enforcement."
"Frell," Tean mumbled, knowing that was all his brother would need to hear.
"Aeric, get your sister out of here. We'll follow in the transport pod."
"Frell you," Brennik said. "I can—" for once, the look on Sethya's face silenced her. He'd never, in four cycles of knowing each other, been this overbearing.
While Sethya and Tean inventoried and inspected their weapons, Aeric went to the door and peered out. The street was mostly empty now; most of the pedestrians, realizing that trouble was brewing already sought shelter. "Brennik," he said, still scanning the escape route. "Let me have one of your pistols."
"Where's yours?" she asked.
She saw him roll his eyes and shake his head. "Most people don't need weapons to grocery shop, Bright Eyes. Believe it or not, *I* am the normal one around here."
"I'm normal," she said petulantly as she pulled one of her pistols from its holster and slapped it in his outstretched hand.
"Yeah, 'cause all pregnant women walk around with specially designed holsters so they can still pack their double pistols to their baby doctor appointment."
"I'm normal," she insisted, holding her other pistol in her right hand and letting Aeric grab her left.
"This is the plan," Sethya began, holding a pistol in each hand and making his way to the front door. "Tean and I will go first and give you cover. Take the alley and head three blocks south, which will bring you right in front of the transport pod."
"Sethya, have you thought this out?" Aeric asked. "You go in there with your guns blazing and take out their enforcers, and what are you going to leave them with?"
"Peace," Sethya stated firmly.
"Chaos," Aeric reasoned. He kept waiting for Tean to jump in and say something, but the man had been through this argument with his brother too many times to bother. "How do you know that whoever takes over next won't be worse than what is already here? This isn't our fight."
Sethya glanced over to the shop owner and saw the concern and worry on the tired man's face. "I'll leave it up to you," he said, much to the surprise and horror of the shop owner. "Do you want them gone, or are you all happy with the way things are?"
The man gulped, his purple eyes wide as they darted to the shop across the street and back to the men in his store. "We used to have a council," he said, sounding winded and scared. "They were all assassinated by this band of thieves. Now we pay them protection money."
"Was that a yes, or a no?" Sethya asked impatiently.
A scuffling in the large window across the street caused everyone's eyes to turn, and they watched as the female shopkeeper was dragged through a curtain to another room by two men, her mate held at gunpoint.
Sethya's eyes set in stone, and he headed out of the door without another word. Everyone else could follow or not, there was no more decision to be made. Tean took up right flank, his usual post. Aeric took up left flank, and the three of them stepped into the sunshine. Brennik crouched low in the window, kneeling on the floor and peeking over the edge of the sill.
Her stomach clenched, and she realized she was grounding her teeth. She wanted to be out there with them. The baby girl chose that moment to squirm inside her, and her hand started caressing her round belly. "It's all right," she cooed. "Daddy will take care of everything. He'll be right back."
xxxxxxx
Aeric squinted into the sunshine, trying to focus on their target. He'd known the instant that woman was dragged through that curtain that there would be no more negotiating. His stomach curled and his hands shook slightly. He hated this. It wasn't that he didn't want to help, he did. And he would do what it took to help his family and those people.
But the vision of Jeleen lifeless eyes floated through his mind, and he had to swallow the bile that rose in his throat. He remembered the dream from that night, the blood, the desperation.
Breathing deeply to cleanse the memory from his mind, he adjusted the grip of the pistol in his hand for a more comfortable fit and stepped forward, walking in Sethya's wake. The four thieves remaining in the main room of the store didn't even glance up as the three Moyans crossed the grey dusty road.
Without preamble, without breaking stride, Sethya lifted his left hand and fired two quick shots in succession, the first shattering the glass and creating an explosion of sound on the empty street. The second hit the thief closest to the poor shop owner, the one with the weapon trained on the defenseless retailer.
As the dead body dropped, chaos ensued. The jeweler dropped to the ground and began crawling to the curtain his wife had been dragged behind. The three remaining thieves began lifting their weapons, but as Aeric, Tean and Sethya fired through the now-glassless window, the enforcers dropped in quick succession, their blood pouring from their wounds and creating red pools on the wooden floor.
The three men never broke stride, still walking toward the store and the sounds of the woman screaming behind the curtain. A shot rang out, and Tean stumbled back slightly with an angry "Frell!", red ooze seeping from the shoulder of his jacket.
Aeric barely registered what had happened, only ducking slightly and firing Brennik's pistol in the direction the shot had come from. He didn't want to shoot at the curtain; the woman might be in the way. Before he could decide how to handle the problem, a loud shattering of glass exploded behind them, and another shot rang out.
All three turned to find a body on the ground, the window of the techno shop gone, and Brennik peering over the edge of the sill, scanning the road with her pistol ready.
Another shot from inside the jewelry store rang out, and Aeric vaguely felt a burn on his shin. Running for cover, the three of them were now just outside the window, trying to find a way to get in. More men were appearing from between buildings and rooftops.
What had started out as three against six had quickly turned into a war. The sounds of blasters and rifles was deafening, and the grey, silty dust created a fog that cut visual to a minimum. Aeric simply fired until his chakkan oil ran out, and then reloaded… again and again.
How many times did he miss? How many of these men did he kill?
Finally, the rifle blasts ended. The piercing lights stopped. A breeze picked up, and the only sound was the wind whistling through the windows of the shops that now lay gutted. With the breeze, the grey fog of dust was carried away, and he found himself standing near Sethya and Tean.
Dead bodies surrounded them, hung out of windows, leaned precariously over rooftop ledges. He didn't bother counting them. He'd remember them tonight, when they all came back to life in his dreams.
He heard a woman crying behind him, and he turned to find the woman holding her wounded husband in her arms. The jeweler still held a gun in his hands- that she was trying to pry loose. One of the thieves that had attacked her was lying next to them, half his head a mass of charred flesh.
Brennik stood from her position, her face pale, her body shaking slightly. Slowly, the small trading town came back to life, began to breathe. People began to exit their houses, and the sounds of feet crunching on broken glass echoed through the air. Many of the simple townsfolk held small weapons in their hands, a few still smoking from use. The Moyan's had had help they didn't know about.
The techno-shop owner stepped through his window and onto the walkway outside, kicking the man laying face down a pool of his own blood.
"What are you going to do now?" Aeric asked, horrified by the devastation.
"Rebuild," was the simple answer.
A woman started sweeping the glass. Men began dragging the dead bodies away. Children started picking up the items that had been strewn in the chaos.
These people would survive because they would not give up. Because Sethya, Tean, Aeric and Brennik had been willing to fight for them, they had the courage to stand up for themselves.
Just as he was starting to feel a glimmer of hope, pain seared his shin, and he looked down to find his pant leg soaked in blood. Frell.
"Let's go," Sethya ordered.
Aeric looked up to find the ex-peacekeeper beside Brennik, supporting her weight against his side. He was bleeding at his side and his face was chalky-grey. Tean was bleeding on the shoulder, and was starting to tie a cloth around his wound.
The four of them began to limp their way back to their vehicles, tired, sore.
From the side, Aeric felt a tug on his shirt. He looked down to find a little girl with bright purple eyes and green freckles staring up at him, tears streaming down her face. Without warning, her arms flew around his stomach and hugged him tightly.
"Thank you, Mister," she whispered.
He knelt down, and she transferred her arms around his shoulders. He couldn't help but hug her back as she cried on his shoulders. She couldn't be more than five or six cycles old, and she had the haunted eyes of a woman ten times her age.
Something shifted inside him then. He wasn't sure what the change was, but he simply knew; he would never be the same again. And he would never forget those purple eyes looking at him with gratitude and love.
Maybe the nightmares wouldn't be quite as bad tonight.