Title: The Commerce Planet
Author: AsianScaper
Disclaimer: Farscape and its characters are owned by Jim Henson, The Hallmark Network, and the Sci-Fi Channel. No infringement is intended.
Rating: PG for language and situations
Category: General
Feedback: Friends, enemies: Send your comments or constructive criticism to larq003@hotmail.com
Summary: John and Aeryn meet an odd Sebacean on a commerce planet who not only asks them to join him in a bar but also knows their names. Is it a trap or merely an innocent gesture?
Spoilers: None
Archiving: I'd be honored to have this posted wherever you fellow Scapers wish. Though, I'd appreciate it very much if you could drop me a line and tell me where it's at.
Dedication: To all ye Scapers out there.
Author's Note: Please read and review! It's a story in progress and I'm not sure if any of you would like it. Even the title's not final. It'll come slow though not steady since only a few chosen things inspire me to write but I will try to finish it. Once I get the final draft, I'll squeeze it into one file. I need your help to prod me onward. I need your ideas! Other than that, enjoy! Hope you like it! And tell me if you do *grin*.
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The planet was a dark mass of unrelenting dread where swirling clouds from below the bowels of Neptune seemed to sing their twisted tendrils. The violet of a cosmic bruise marked the sky and it swirled about the black of unlit gloom. Unrelenting fingers of thunder flashed their baneful glare across the horizon and blared trumpets that the angel of death would envy.
If one were to see the state of the cramped marketplace of rotting stalls, a decaying corpse would flower to life to simply flee from the place. The smells told of back alleys littered with dead peasants having lived a goodly life but at the coming of the silent scythe were stabbed for the same money they had so pitifully earned.
Vendors cried their wares with voices that told of a better time, of a better place, of a better life. Yet to John, their voices were the drowned cries of a rat, the scratching noise of nails against the wall that barred a man from the living. The putrid fragrances of decay wafted across his senses and he nearly cursed in sarcastic delight.
"Found everything you wanted?" he asked the woman beside him.
"Yeah, sure," came Aeryn's voice as she lumbered to his side with a package twice her weight. "All those dren-faced merchants…" she muttered. "Thieves, all of them!"
"Here, let me help."
John reached out, slipping the goods he had bought under his arm and wistfully staring at the Sebacean and at the load that engulfed both her shoulders.
"Trust me, Crichton. You don't want to carry this load of dren."
He frowned. "Well, thanks Aeryn but I think it was courteous of me to offer some help."
He was wise enough to push the issue as far as he had. After all, the Sebacean's superior strength outlasted the best of any exercise he created for his daily workout.
They waded their boots against the pulpous grit of half-dried mud. Yet every time their feet would sink into the earthly bile, the stink of untold remains left much to the imagination. One could see that John was having a difficult time keeping the insides of his stomach where they were.
"God," he was saying, "What kind of dren did these people get into?"
"Don't even think of praying to your higher entity," Aeryn said. "These people are better off the way they are."
"Is that discrimination I hear in your voice?"
"No, Crichton. I've long passed that." Her eyes jolted the very fibers of his feeling when they stared their icy fire. "You of all people would know."
"Sorry."
"No offense taken."
They had not stopped their trek across the marketplace and more than a single bandit stared at them with curiosity. They were bandits, Aeryn told him, by their dress and by the manner their perfunctory eyes gathered John and Aeryn's way of dress with hunger seen by the haggard cast of a vulture.
"You were saying about 'not praying to a higher entity'?" John asked once more, initiating a conversation when they arrived at the spaceport not a few minutes later.
"Mogrid'in was and still is a commerce planet. The Peacekeepers don't want it and you could see why." She breathed deeply. Her eyes told of a memory that bothered even her inner voices. Suddenly, strength slipped away like the marauder. She seemed suddenly tired and she heaved a sigh that echoed a sorrowful past. The planet had somehow robbed her of her will as she continued. "There were countless atrocities committed here," she continued, if not reluctantly. "This was once a prison planet called Altralla. The Hevtans were relocated here since a Peacekeeper raid had destroyed their planet. They were suppose to just stay for a few months but the head of the stationed Peacekeeper carrier ordered the billions transported killed. He had the carrier shoot the relocation camps to cinders."
John's eyes widened and he stopped in his tracks, halting their progress, much to Aeryn's dismay. He was surprised at her seeming callous display but once he studied the way her eyes avoided his gaze, she was trying hard to hide whatever emotions haunted her.
"Aeryn. Billions?" he whispered, choking on his own words.
Hitler had but a fourth of the world to massacre.
"If you want proof, Crichton, go to the next continent but if you are, I'm not going with you." There was finality in her voice. "I haven't seen it and I don't want to," she said, resuming their walk. "I have enough of my own crimes to worry about.
"Aeryn, honey. Nobody's trying to accuse you of anything…You weren't here when it happened, right?"
She dodged his question with finesse and he was not able to pursue it when she voiced, "They say that their corpses are half rotten Crichton. Ever since they were wiped from the face of the planet, the weather has been like this and the air smells like dren."
She stopped their conversation soon enough.
Two hunkering guards looked at them from under their caps and by the tone of colors splashed about the asperity of their uniforms, they were there to see to the peace, though not to a great extent. Someone from Aeryn's left had shouted a curse and before long, a tall barbarian grabbed him from behind and slipped a cruelly curved knife into his back.
The guards watched the fray with nothing more than a sniff and silently, they turned to the two off-worlders with something close to contempt.
"Your passes," one demanded.
His breath stank of an open grave and John wondered at the dexterity of his Sebacean when she handed the sentry a chip and nonchalantly tapped her foot at the concrete below her in impatience.
The guard's companion nodded to their direction when his device turned a gaudy green. Aeryn simply slipped her package inside, John following close behind.
They were an odd pair, Aeryn and he, when they crossed the spaceport. The Sebacean woman, who was smaller in frame, exuded an air of superiority as she hunched over her burden while John, studying the tools he had recently bought, walked behind her.
There was nothing particularly endearing about the landing. For one, the port itself seemed like a bassinet for the vices. There were aliens in assortment, Sebaceans mostly. Others, John could not even identify but many were straining in the poor light, smuggling goods that looked more like borjesh, or what was literally translated as 'dream smoke', than the crates that labeled them as food.
Suddenly, a voice from behind him tickled the back of his neck like chains against a marble floor.
"Hello, Sebacean. Care to have a drink?" Hoarse as the voice was and filled with drink, John stopped.
He turned to find a toothy grin and a face lathered in dirt. "What do you want?"
"Nothing. But I do have something for you, John Crichton." The alien smiled even wider at John's irate glare.
"How do you know my name?" John demanded, his voice rising to the point that Aeryn, already two meters ahead of him, was forced to stop and join him.
She was not glad to see the diminutive alien, Sebacean in nature, though not the genetic paragon his specie was known for.
She doubled the displeasure John felt with a sentence laced in contempt, "What the yotz do you want?"
The small Sebacean, his back hunched by a disease unknown even to Aeryn, said, "Your name, Officer Sun. I know your names." The irregularity of his sentences accounted for madness as well. "We want you at Al'dahara. Both of you. News. Many news."
And the man left in a hurry.
John did not bother to follow him. Neither did Aeryn.
"What was that all about?" he muttered.
"A trap, from the sound of it."
"Scorpius would never send a little bastard like that."
"A new strategy, perhaps."
John laughed and his laughter startled his counterpart. "You are odd, Crichton," Aeryn told him indifferently, making her way to the transport.
***
"Did you get the herbs I wanted, John?" Zhaan asked.
The blue alien started to rummage through the crates Aeryn had carried and eventually dumped at the transport for them to take to Moya.
The crew had awaited their return aboard the Leviathan and once they had arrived, all were more than happy to oblige the Sebacean and human to a flurry of concern.
"Sorry, Blue," John replied, sympathetic and not all that glad. "Nothing nice grows on that planet."
"Yes, yes. I understand. I would never have expected it either."
John shrugged. "Aeryn. I want to go back and have a look at this place that loony was talkin' about. Al'daha-what?"
"Al'dahara," Aeryn completed for him, taking a huge device from her crate. "Ahhh. Weapons, weapons. Have a look at this, D'argo." She handed the cannon to the Luxan who was busy unloading the other crates.
"Finely welded, Aeryn. You intend to keep it?" D'argo asked.
"You can sell it at the next commerce planet," came Rygel's voice.
The Luxan glared. "For once, Rygel…!"
The Hynerian stared in a fury of his own. "Come, come, D'argo…"
"Stop it, you two," Zhaan said. "Now, Al'dahara, you say? Whatever are you talking about?"
Aeryn answered for John. "It's a bar in the middle of the capital."
"Bar? How can a bar be famous across the galaxy?" John inquired, heavily immersed at the gadget he had newly acquired. It beeped once in a while and John's face lit like that of a child at the eve of Christmas. "Cool," he said. "Have you seen this, Aeryn? Look at it! I could fix the hydroponics with this little baby!"
"What a child you are," Aeryn accused him, returning the cannon to its proper place. From what John had heard, it had cost them a little less than he had expected. Anything that killed Peacekeepers or creepy crawlers certainly was all right with him and they usually cost more than what he bargained for. He left the haggling to Aeryn who bullied her merchants into submission. "That was invented a century ago. I don't know how you got your hands on that one." She rolled her eyes as she unloaded another crate filled with crackers.
The human shrugged, whiling away with his new toy and grinning like an idiot. "You know, I think I will go down to the planet and get myself some beer…I mean, fellip nectar." His head turned from what he was doing. "So, anyone wanna hang?"
Chiana raised a hand and the Luxan, seeing her do it, also raised his. Rygel smiled contently at the array of affirmatives and Aeryn, who was looking at him oddly, finally frowned. It was her way of affirming her decision. She was going with him.
Zhaan laughed. "He is Crichton," she reminded the Sebacean. Turning to John, she said, "I will not go, John. I think I need the time here for myself."
"To commune with the goddess and yakkity yak," John filled in for her, waving his arms to dismiss any possibility of her coming. "Alright. No problem. You don't have to go." An evil look glinted from under his brows. "Hey Pilot, wanna come?"
Someone snickered as Pilot's curiously asked, "Commander…?"
"I was kidding, Shelly boy," John said. He turned to the crew, gathering his belongings. He immediately unloaded the last crate and handed it to the waiting Luxan. "Alright everyone. Why don't we get something to eat before we go to this bar Aeryn was talking about. What's so bad about that place anyway?"
"Don't ask…" Aeryn said. "I'll meet you at the Mess."
***
To be continued in "Al'dahara"