Author's Note:
I'd like to apologise. The muse works quicker when she has a cliffhanger to resolve.
Enjoy!
Chapter 11
"Zhaan!"
Once again, Zhaan turned around at the panicked shout. This time, however, she dropped the glass beaker she was holding. It shattered on the floor as Crichton ran into the room, holding an unconscious Willow in his arms.
"By the Goddess!" Zhaan breathed, hurrying towards them. "Quickly, put her over there," she indicated to the other bed. "D'Argo, help me move the scanner."
D'Argo had risen to his feet when he had heard John's shout and now stood staring at the two humans with an open mouth and an expression of shocked disbelief.
"D'Argo!" Zhaan called impatiently, wrestling with the scanner on her own. D'Argo sprang to help her.
John stepped back from the bed as they moved the scanner into position, unable to tear his eyes from Willow's face. Wake up Willow, he thought, almost willing her to live. She was his only link to a world he could feel himself slipping away from. She had to wake up. It took him a moment to realise that Zhaan was speaking to him.
"What?" he asked her in a raspy voice, blinking as he looked up from Willow's face.
"Was she unconscious when you found her?" Zhaan repeated, picking up the scanner remote and switching it on.
"Yeah, but she woke up just after," John told her. "She said her head hurt, then passed out again."
"How did you find her?" D'Argo asked.
"Marvin," explained John.
"Marvin?" asked D'Argo, confused.
"The raht?" said Zhaan, straightening slightly as she looked at Crichton with a slight frown. How was that possible?
"Who decided to call it that?" D'Argo grimaced in distaste.
"Willow," John informed him flatly.
D'Argo shut up.
"She is going to be alright?" John asked Zhaan. "Right?"
"She's exhausted, her heart rate is sluggish, her immune system is low and she's recovering from near-fatal asphyxiation," Zhaan told him, staring up at the scanner display. "But she'll recover," she smiled at Crichton, turning off the display. "She's asleep, which is the best thing for her right now."
"Good," said John, relieved. He began to back towards the door, "Listen, Rygel's still got chakan oil; I want the fact that Willow's still alive kept strictly on the off air until he's found."
"Off air?" Zhaan asked, puzzled by the expression.
"Don't talk about it over the comms," John told her, standing in the doorway.
D'Argo strode forward, drawing his Qualta blade, "I will help you look for him."
"Thanks, big guy," John said.
"Crichton!" Zhaan called out as they left the room together. They stopped, turning around. "How do I tell you when she awakes?" she asked.
"Say that Chiana's awake!" John suggested, gesturing to the Nebari girl as she lay quietly giggling to herself. He frowned, tipping his head slightly to one side as he spoke, "Is she...?"
"She'll be fine," D'Argo and Zhaan interrupted him at the same time.
"Can we go now?" D'Argo asked.
Turning back to Willow as they left, Zhaan drew the covers from the bottom of the bed up over the sleeping girl. Looking down at the seemingly frail human, she sighed, her face worried and her eyes concerned. The fact that she had managed to successfully teleport herself, under those circumstances, only draining a minimal amount of power from Moya... The fact that she had teleported at all! She would have to reassess her assessment of Willow's strength.
It wasn't that she wasn't pleased that the girl had survived, Zhaan thought, more that she was concerned about the power she wielded. The P'au offered up a fervent prayer to her Goddess that Willow only used her powers for good. That she never went down the dark path that Zhaan herself had travelled after her assassination of Bitaal. Teleportation... Transmutation... What else could this slight human girl do? A disappointed voice came from behind the Delvian Priestess as she stood beside Willow's bed, lost in thought.
"Heeeey... when did the room stop spinning?"
l
Outside Moya, Aeryn's prowler seemed to hang effortlessly in space as she surveyed Moya's hull, her face grim. Carefully, she eased the prowler even closer in for a better look at the damage caused by the explosion. She frowned as she noticed the stress fractures on Moya's outer hull.
"Pilot," she said, switching on external comms.
"Yes, Officer Sun?" Pilot responded immediately.
"I'm outside the airlock now," she told him. "There're several small stress fractures around the damage caused by the explosion. It looks like Rygel probably used two of the cartridges inside the actual airlock. Transmitting sensor readings now."
"DRD reports confirm that the explosion came from within the airlock," said Pilot.
"There's not much more I can do here," Aeryn said, manoeuvring her prowler away from Moya. "I'm returning to Moya."
"Thank you, Officer Sun," Pilot said as her prowler headed towards Moya's bay doors.
l
Prowling down one of Moya's passageways, D'Argo trod lightly, almost noiselessly, as he sniffed the air; his senses on full alert. Where the hezmana was Rygel hiding this time? Growling slightly under his breath, he continued onwards, touching his comm button.
"Crichton, any sign of him?" he asked.
"Nada," came Crichton's reply. "You?"
"Nothing."
Crichton sighed loudly enough for D'Argo to hear it over the comms, "Aeryn's heading back to help look. She and Pilot think that Rygel used two of her pulse rifle cartridges to blow the airlock."
"Two?" D'Argo double-checked that he had heard correctly, pausing slightly.
"Yeah," John confirmed. "He took four from her quarters."
"What did he need four for?" D'Argo wondered, frowning.
"Maybe he wanted to be sure he got her, whichever way she went?" Crichton suggested. There was a pause where D'Argo could almost hear him thinking. "I'll check the other airlock!"
"I'll keep looking for Rygel," D'Argo told him, spying several DRD's that were performing the same function.
"D'Argo?" Zhaan's voice came before he had taken more than two steps.
"Yeah?" he asked.
"I need some things from my quarters. Could you come," she hesitated fractionally. "Keep an eye on Chiana for me, please?"
"I'm on my way," D'Argo told her, turning down the hallway that would lead him to her lab.
"Thank you, D'Argo," said Zhaan, smiling gratefully.
Sighing slightly, Zhaan turned around to face Chiana. The graceful Delvian stood in the middle of her lab, halfway between the closed door and the fidgeting Nebari hovering at the back of her lab.
"I still don't see why I can't go," Chiana grumbled. "You-you said it yourself. Rygel's gonna be gunning for her when he finds out she's still alive."
"Which is precisely why you cannot go," Zhaan reminded her wearily. "If you leave then I have no plausible reason to be here and no way to tell Crichton when Willow wakes."
"Yeah, well I'd rather not get caught between them when she does wake up!" Chiana said, glancing over at the red-haired girl as she lay peacefully sleeping. "Once was enough..."
"I'm sure Willow will be gratified by your concern for her wellbeing," Zhaan mentioned pointedly, folding her hands over her stomach.
Well, when she put it like that...
l
"There you are!" Aeryn greeted as she turned a corner on tier eight and met up with Crichton at the junction that led off to the main quarters. "What's so important that you have to tell me in person?"
Crichton stood there grinning at her as she looked at him in exasperation. They were wasting time that they could be spending looking for Rygel. The runt still had at least two cartridges of chakan oil and Crichton was grinning like a lunatic as he glanced around the deserted hallways, stepping closer to her. Why was he so happy, Aeryn suddenly wondered. Willow was-
"Willow's alive," Crichton told her quietly.
"What?" Aeryn asked, shocked. How was that possible? The airlock was still sealed off and that section of Moya exposed to space.
"She managed to teleport herself back to her room," Crichton told her, still speaking quietly as he began to move towards the main quarters. Aeryn walked close beside him, listening intently. "Zhaan's looking after her now."
"Is she alright?" asked Aeryn, already beginning to accept that the impossible was possible where the small red-head was concerned. Willow had managed to teleport herself from her home planet to Moya; that she could teleport from one section of the ship to another wasn't such a huge stretch to believe.
"She's asleep. Zhaan says she's exhausted," said Crichton as they approached the main quarters.
"So why aren't we looking for Rygel?" Aeryn wanted to know. The little slug still had chakan oil and as soon as he found out that Willow was still alive, he was bound to try and kill her again.
"D'Argo and I think he might have rigged the other airlock in this section to blow," Crichton said, heading towards it.
Aeryn grabbed his arm, stopping him from going any further, "You're just going to walk in there and check?"
"Yeah."
"And what if Rygel rigged the cartridges to a motion sensor?" asked Aeryn.
Crichton hesitated, his blue eyes blank, "Uhhh..." Okay, he hadn't thought of that.
Distracted by a skittering noise, they both looked down as Marvin ambled out of the airlock. The large red rat squeaked in alarm when he spotted them; quickly dashing through a DRD hole in the opposite wall and out of sight before either could so much as blink at the bizarre sight, leaving them staring at the arched hole in the wall.
"You forgot to mention that the ra't was loose again," Aeryn was the first to recover.
"R-" John went to correct her and then thought better of it as she glared at him. Quick, he thought desperately, change the subject! "I'm guessing there's no motion sensor."
There were no cartridges either.
l
Even his current cramped surroundings and extreme hunger could not abate Dominar Rygel the Sixteenth's glee. He had successfully dispatched the red-haired human who had attempted to turn him, Dominar to over six billion subjects, into a rodent. He was confident that he could remain hidden until his shipmates' anger had cooled. Pilot had already considered the bitch to be a danger to his beloved Moya and would only be relieved that she was gone. The others would likely take a few solar days to calm down, although he was expecting Crichton to react even more irrationally than usual. His fifth stomach gurgled loudly, protesting its emptiness.
No matter. He only had to wait until everyone was fast asleep – His hiding place shifted dramatically. Light blinded him. He gasped.
"Hello Rygel."