THRONE FOR A LOSS
(I don't own Farscape, etc, etc, please read and review, gracious readers.)
The guard wasn't wearing a helmet, so Kabaa could clearly see that his keeper wasn't a Tavlek: he was bald as a Tavlek, and he had enough scars on his face to pass for one at a distance, but he didn't have the distinctive snout or the jagged teeth.
No, clearly this was a Sebacean, or something very like one.
"When's my ransom arriving?" Kabaa asked.
"Less than a solar day," replied the guard, sounding inexplicably bitter. "Your buddies want you back bad, Hanji; they made Bekesh an offer he couldn't refuse."
Well that didn't make much sense: LoMo's porn-makers weren't that concerned about his wellbeing at the best of times. Why would they be willing to pay up for him now?
"And what was that offer?"
"He left a fuckin' horse's head in his bed," snapped the guard irritably.
Kabaa looked blank: "What's a horse?"
Mirthless laughter echoed past the bars of the cage. When the man spoke again, his voice was just about drenched with nostalgia- that same drunken tone Kabaa heard so many times back on LoMo when the freslin-addicts and boozehounds started reminiscing.
"Goddamnit… I remember the day I saw that movie. It was with DK; he couldn't get over how I'd never seen it before, about how I never got those jokes about cannoli and horses and Marlon Brando's voice. And then Alex turned up at around the time Luca Brasi slept with the fishes. And that was all before the Farscape Project started, before she took the Stanford job..."
In the silence that followed this rambling speech, the gauntlet attached to the guard's wrist emitted a soft gurgling sound; without changing his expression, he drew a fresh bottle of stimulant from a pouch at his waist, emptied it into the gauntlet, and continued speaking: this time, he sounded almost lucid, though Kabaa doubted he'd ever understand half the things the guard said.
"You know, it didn't reallychange, even after the Farscape project, even when I got here. I was still a scientist then: I had a floor to write on, I had a bed to sleep in, I had Zhaan to talk to, and I had Aeryn, D'Argo and Rygel to be insulted by. But then we came here. Followed the fuckin' yellow brick road and got mugged by the munchkins."
"What the frellare you talking about, Sebacean?"
"I ain't Sebacean, Hanji. I'm human."
Kabaa rubbed his hind legs together in derision: "Never heard of you, never wanted to."
"Fine by me, grasshopper," said Human. "You'll never meet my people out this far anyway."
"Just as well, then. By the way, do you want to explain what the frell you've been talking about for the last thirty microts, or shall we languish in silence for a bit?"
Quite naturally, the bastard kept talking:
"Do you remember that big goddamn crater we passed on our way to the camp- The one with the big metal spire poking out of the ground? Well, that was Moya; big beautiful biomechanoid Leviathan, my home for about two and a half weeks. She came crashing down on the night I arrived on this planet and she sure as shit didn't get back up again."
This was news to Kabaa: Leviathans in this end of the Uncharted Territories were virtually unheard of. A Leviathan actually crashing was another rarity- especially with Peacekeeper control collars keeping high-spirited ships in line.
"What happened?"
Human sighed. "Rygel- Hynerian gasbag- stole some part and got kidnapped by Bekesh and co. And while I was poking around this bug-infested jungle, looking for the filthy bastard, wondering if I should wait until the morning before sneaking into the camp, Moya hit the dirt: she landed hard enough to crack her bulkheads open like eggshells, brought every Tavlek running to scavenge what they could. By the time I got there, they were tearing out her neural tissue.
"And Pilot- he was still alive, the poor bastard. They were ripping out anything that they could use, and that included his connections, his console, and any of his arms that were still operating it; and they didn't even kill him afterwards, they just grabbed Zhaan, their kid, and ran off. Left meto help him. But those Tavleks, once they got the loot, they decided they didn't want to wait for me, D'Argo and Aeryn to try and go commando on 'em.
"So they went tearing through the jungle looking for us. D'Argo and Aeryn put up a fight and didn't back down while I hauled ass out of there. I just kept running, God only knows it was the only thing I was good for back then, until one Tavlek charged past me and sliced me in the head."
Human indicated the tattered ruins of his left ear: "Yeah, my first scar, certainly not the last. After that, everything was the way Bekesh wanted it to be: he had D'Argo and Aeryn hanged, Zhaan sold, and dear old Buckwheat the Sixteenth barbecued. They couldn't figure out what to do with me… they figured that I'd be better off with them. They gave me a gauntlet and a share of the spoils, and told me that so long as I was a good little boy and did my chores and kept my room clean, I was an honorary Tavlek."
For twenty microts, Kabaa was silent.
"You accepted this?" he burst out at last.
"Like I had a goddamn choice, Lobsterboy," growled Human. "My life had gone flushing down the toilet just over two weeks ago: what's another two or three lives between mercenaries? Besides, that's the beauty of the Gauntlet: once you're on a steady dosage, nothing in the universe is hopeless."
"And that was enough for them? They just decided you were Tavlek material because you didn't put up a fight? Because you liked the drugs? Because they didn't know what to do with you?"
There was another uncomfortable pause, as Human shuffled uncomfortably beneath Kabaa's compound gaze.
"Rygel was dead at that point: they'd killed him, cut him up, and cooked him. It was a joke, see- even Tavleks don't think much of cannibalism unless they feel like letting off some serious steam. And they were wondering what to do with me, and eventually decided to let me stretch my legs around the compound. And in the middle of the courtyard, there was this big dinner table.
"And there they were: big, juicy steaks, fresh off the barbecue. I was hungry, so I asked if I could have some. They just looked at me and asked "Do you know what that is?" I said "No," and they said, "That's your Dominar." So I thought about it, took the biggest steak I could find, and started eating... and they tasted so good…"
It was then that Kabaa heard a sentence that would haunt him for the rest of his natural life: it would wait in every single corner of his memory where it wasn't welcome, gatecrashing his dreams and invading his nightmares.
"They said they'd give me the hostages that weren't paid for. That's why I was so disappointed when your buddies agreed to pay your ransom: I haven't eaten lobster in years..."