Again, I own nothing except Angrogein's and Felinoid races and the idea to put these shows together in the way that they are.

It's that time again, here's the next chapter. Hope you enjoy it.

Wormholes ahead, ho!

Er, I'm not a scientist, and most of the little science stuff I throw it is unlikely to ever work. So there. Don't you just love fiction? As long as you make it sound fairly comprehensive, you can make anything do whatever you need it to do. So in this, I can take berylium and krypton, combine them into a crystaline structure, and have a stronger and faster computer made with the resulting material. instead of silicon chips or crystals to store data, you can have berylium/krypton crystals store more complex information. So there.

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On Planet

Doreater Pringa of Yangou province was an old man. He'd ruled his province on Ryra for more years then even he cared to recall. He'd done so with a blend of tactics, from fear and intimidation to bribery and subterfuge. He'd both survived and perpetrated acts of assassination, a common way in Ryra politics for advancement. He was an excellent shot, and had gathered an impressive array of hunting trophies. He had never served in an active role in the army. His family connections had lead to his being giving a cushy officer job on a ship patrolling the area between the homeworld and the asteroid belt. The only danger had been boredom, and thankfully, there had been enough easily intimidated female crew for him to stave that off.

Now he was in a precarious position because of the idiot Coreager and the ruling of the council in regards to the infamous alien John Crighton. He had promised the Scarrens that he would be able to capture the ellusive man and hold him for their emissary. Unfortunately the council had ruled that Crighton was beyond the reach of their politics and was under their protection as long as he remained in system. The Coreager had placed him under his own personal protection, and that meant he had the protection of the largest faction of the military, especially the spacial navy. Not that Pringa was without influence in the armed forces. Most of the homeguard and ground troops were under his control but in an open conflict, Lyar would crush his forces.

In order to appease the Scarren, and keep his head attached to his body, he would have to take a less open path. He had already made contact with several of the disillusioned members of society, and a few were willing to perform the task he required, but there was one in particular he was waiting to here from. The most vile, despicable and feared man in the entire population. A man who so frightened others, that his name had been stricken from record and he was only refered to by the title of "Yeeroa". A man responsible for the deaths of thousands during the Independance Wars a decade before. He'd released a biocontagion that had wiped out the entire population of three of the largest colonies on the outer planets, making the planets inhospitible for oxygen breathing life. He'd been a commander in the Navy forces, and had created and released the contagion without orders, resulting in a death total of nearly 200 000 in less then 3 days. He had been court-martialed and scheduled for execution, but had managed to escape, killing not only his 5 guards, but several civilians clerks and the tribunal when he caused the transport ship carrying him to the planets he'd ruined to explode.

Pringa chuckled as he considered the possibility of Yeeroa abbiding by his request. What ironies, that Lyar's own brother would result in his downfall and the downfall of the government Lyar had fought so hard to protect.

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On Tinman

Data was fascinated by the process of travelling through the wormhole. Unlike the few previous trips through similar phenominon that he'd experienced, this wormhole seemed nearly alive. He could see the flow and eddy of tidelike patterns in the viewport. Tinman was rocking slightly in the forces of the nonlinear space. It reminded Data grealt of the time before the Cochrane Episode, as he called it. When the crew of the Enterprise had gathered on the holodeck as crew of an ancient sailing vessel. The rocking of the ship on the waves was very similar to the way in which the eddies of the protoplasm and energy waves were rocking Tinman.

It was a beautiful spectacle to witness, though the journey was also longer then any previous trip through a wormhole he had previous encountered. Even the Bajoran wormhole, artificially constructed as it was, was a faster journey then this current trip. He took a glance at Tam, and felt a glimmer of concern by the slightly lost look on the Betazed's face. "Is something wrong, Tam?"

Tam shook his head and turned to Data. "No, not really. Guarm is a little disoriented by the lack of discernable landmarks though. There's nothing for him to focus on, and we are being pushed through by forces he can't name. The material of the space we are in is beyond his knowledge and experience. He's never felt anything like it. He says it's giving him a not dissimilar to what he says we feel as tickling. He doesn't know where he is and has no way of telling where anything else is either. He's a little scared. There's energy waves that are powerful enough to crush his skin and shatter us into atoms and he's worried about how close we've come to some of them."

"I'm sure that whatever is guiding us will not allow us to be destroyed. Given our vectors and trajectory upon entering the wormhole, we should be on a pretty straight course to the other end, unless some type of internal imbalance in the energy waves distorts our passage. As long as Guarm is able to maintain our original heading with a 2.34percent drift in any given direction, we should safely arrive at the wormhole terminus and exit safely into the intended galactic region within the next several moments." Laol stated as she studied the PADD she was holding. "Father and I were very careful with the calculations before we gave the heading for Guarm to follow in order to enter at the proper speed and angle."

Tam nodded, some of the science beyond his grasp, but understanding enough to know what the newly created female android was saying. "He's doing his best. Luckily, we seem to be on a straight path. He doesn't sense any large disturbances in our projected path, but his sensors aren't designed to work inside this level of subspace."

"Perhaps Father and I can work on enhancing a tricorder to be able to interface with his systems and provide him with better sensor data about the wormhole? With the added power of his neural cluster and energy processors, combined with the sensor suites on the new tricorders and the handheld scanners, perhaps he could get a better resolution of the various energy patterns inside the wormhole passage. It would likely increase his scanning distance inside the wormhole, though it would cause a bit of distortion in sensing normal space."

Tam listened as Guarm silently gave his opinion on what the android was saying. "Guarm would appreciate any help you can give him, Laol. He's really unnerved by this whole wormhole experience. He wants to get out and get into normal space, with stars and dust particles not just energy and plasma."

"Than I will get started on modifying some connectors to hook into Guarm's systems. Tam, will you come with me and help me talk to Guarm? I'll need him to let me know when the connections are working."

"Of course, Laol. I will be glad to help."

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On Command Carrier

John and the captain were still conversing while they walked the decks back towards the docking bay. They were still talking about their little gadget, while Aeryn and Gaan walked silently behind them. The pair walked silently, allowing their charges freedom to discuss their passions without interupting with their lack of subject knowledge. They shared a few amused glances and rolled eyes signifying their lack of interest in the field of electron field projection and dispersed particle shield theory.

They reached the bay and Aeryn entered the module to prep it for launch, while John and Holt continued to go over last minute design changes in yet another project Holt had been working on.

"So, if you change from a silicon crystalline structure to something with a berylium/krypton structure, you increase the storage capacity of the computer system by a factor of 20, as well as increasing data recovery speed by a factor of 5. Not only that, but you can decrease the size of portable storage devices, or alternatively, use the extra size to store more complex holographic imagery and sound instead of just text or lower res imagery." Holt stated while holding a sheet of contaning his design specs for improving the Peacekeeper computer systems.

"Okay, but what about stability? Wouldn't the berylium breakdown under the power of the lasers you'd need to read the data? And the krypton would ionize and become radioactive at the heat thrown by the laser and the powercore."

"Not if it's cooled by liquid nitrogen. Sure, you wouldn't be able to make a handsized unit like we have now, but you could still make a fairly portable unit."

"But for that to work at the most efficient rate, you'd have to totally submerge the crystal in the coolant. And the crystal would be cold when ejected from the matrix. Too cold to handle."

"Yes. But, by draining the coolant before ejecting and running a simple two layer scan, then you'd warm the crystal enough for handling without risking any stability."

"And that heats it enough to be safe for handling?"

"Well, according to theory. We haven't had luck yet with putting it in practice. The berylium/krypton crystals have to be pure to almost 97.5percent. minimum. Unfortunately, our equipment can only produce a purity of 89.6, though we have had 1 test cube at 94.7percent. The main impurity tends to be hydrogen and carbon in various forms. We're trying to find a way to cure them out first, before even attempting to mix the berylium and krypton. Even pure krypton or berylium samples that we've attempted to combine have had impurities, though in those cases, mostly oxygen."

John frowned, studying the data he'd been handed. "What about trying in a vacuum atmostphere and raising the temp to boil out the carbon and hydrogen? Krypton and berylium boil at a higher temperature, so heat the solution to a level just below the lowest boil point of those two, in a vacuum chamber of some kind. You can even keep the vacuum suction going, since you're hydrogen and carbon atoms boiling out of the mixture would need somewhere to go." John was again surprised at the efficiency of the translator microbes. He and Holt had been talking subatomic physcis for hours, and yet with only a few concepts that he hadn't encountered before, they'd translated everything into something he could recognize. The first thing they'd done when beginning to work out some of the ion shielding technologies was set up a parallel chart of the table of elements. Luckily, once he'd seen the Sebeccean words for the most basic elements, the translator microbes had filled in the gap and translated the rest into the English versions, and he knew they were doing the same for Holt, changing his English elements into Sebeccean for the Peacekeeper.

Holt considered the suggestion. It was certainly something they hadn't tried yet. Peacekeeper technicians and scientists weren't prone to coming up with such ideas. A vacuum, and perhaps zero-g, environment filled with the impure berylium/krypton solution heated to boil off the impurities while further solidifying the bonds of the berylium and krypton, with a secondary chamberto vacuum off the excess of the boiled impurities with a tertiary chamber that the now pure berkryp solution could be flowed into so that the mixture would form a sphere and be allowed to cool to a solid state. They could then take the solid berkryp crystal sphere and cut/form it to the shapes they need for it's new function.

"That might work. I will have the techs begin to work on the chamber for the purification process." He started to continue, but a tech with a box came up towards where they were standing below the Farscape's wings. "What is it, Siman?" Holt asked, only allowed a slight chill to his words instead of the raw anger most PK's John had met showed when being interrupted by the second class technicians.

"Sir, we've managed to construct two of the prototype shielding devices you and Commander Crighton designed earlier. This, " the tech indicated the case, "contains one of the devices, specially modified to work on a leviathan. It also has all the data from our previous tests and on the build process for the device. As you requested before the Commander's arrival, we've also included specs on all Peacekeeper vessels and the command structure as recently as this morning pre-purge."

"Pre-Purge?" John asked, curious about the data held in the case. They'd come to this system to first find some needed parts and foodstuffs, and secondarily to download and listen to the PK beacon being broadcast for their attention. And now, here he was, standing in a PK docking bay, leaving peacefully and without injury after spending most of the day working side by side with a PK captain-who strangely was also a closet technophile- and being given the entire schematics for all PK vessels and the listing of ALL PK command structure. If someone had told him last night that he'd be doing this, he'd have accused them of being more insane then Stark.

"The incident that we discussed earlier regarding the changes in the command structures of certain select Peacekeeper vessels." Holt explained, taking the case from the tech and waving him off. "Commander, I again extend my request that you consider the options I layed before you earlier. We will remain in this system as long as we can, but by now, the High Command has no doubt learned of the incident and that I am one of the leaders of our little rebellion. They will be sending ships after me, and no matter that this is supposed to be a neutral system, I have no doubt that they would risk antagonizing the Ryra in order to capture me and my crew. We will wait as long as we can, but if our sensor sweeps encounter a Peacekeeper vessel approaching this system before we receive word from you, we will depart. I've already had Gaan give Lt. Sun a data cube with the coordinates for several of the systems were we will be congragating. If you decide to join us, go to one of those systems and send out a pulse message stating your acceptance. Any loyal crew who hears it will reply and send the message on to me and the other leaders."

John nodded, climbing up the small ladder to stand on the wing. He settled and crouched, nodding for Holt to pass up the case. The Sebeccean gave a gentle toss, and the case came up to meet him. He grunted as he caught it and the weight nearly caused him to fall off balance. He often forgot that Sebecceans were physically stronger then humans, except when one decided to beat him. It wasn't really surprising that he forgot considering the other physically superior races he'd met. Luxans, Nebari, Scarrans. Pretty much all the races out here were stronger then humans. Or had abilities that humans lacked. Well, he thought, considering the immense amount of variety out here compared to back home, he wasn't really surprised. A larger variety of competion for food sources usually meant a more diverse skillset for any hunter/gatherers.

He set the case down behind the seat, and slipped in in front of Aeryn, who had moved to the copilot halfseat. The module had originally been designed as a solo craft, but with the adaptions he'd had to make since arriving here, he'd been able to fasten a secondary seating position by pulling the bulky life systems from earth and installing the more compact life support from Peacekeeper vessels. This gave more room, including a small storage space for extra equipment or supplies, and a secondary seating for a passenger. The hatch sealed itself and he looked down to Holt, who had backed off to a safe distance. He gave the captain a thumbsup, and grinned when the man frowned in puzzlement before returning the gesture. He then saluted, and that was something captain was very familiar with, despite the differences in a Peacekeeper salute to his human version.

He taxied the craft to face the open bay doors and flicked on the comm unit. "This is Farscape 1, preparing for takeoff. I have to say, Freedom, this has been the oddest experience of my life. I actually find myself liking a Peacekeeper crew, and something seems almost ...wrong about that. Anywho. We're locked, crocked, and ready to rock. Permission to leave dock?"

"This is Communications. Permission granted, Farscape. And on behalf of the crew, may we wish you well in future journeys. The captain also expresses his hope to meet with you again at a later date to discuss some other ideas he has regarding some tech he thinks you might be able to improve."

"Well Comm, tell old Holty, that I'll definitely think about his offer, and no matter what I decide, I do hope to be able to shoot the breeze with him again. This is John Crighton, signing off, and wishing you all a happy new year, because baby, with all these presents today has to be christmas."

With that, he shut down the comm, and hit the throttle, sending the small craft flying out in to the black expanse of space.