ONE
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Aeryn came to a stop under the awning, flicking the rain from her shoulders with her thick Peacekeeper gloves. "Come on," she said confidently, "I've got the rest of it. All we have to do it get it into the transport pod."
When there was no reply she looked up at the human next to her, also sheltering from the heavy rain. John's mouth was sealed shut in an 'o' shape and his jaw slid from side to side as he apparently studied the rained-out alley in front of him, but something about the way his eyebrows were in charge of all frowning duty told Aeryn he wasn't actually seeing anything at all.
"Crichton?" she prompted, knocking his elbow with hers.
He blinked in surprise and looked at her. "Yes. Right. Got it," he nodded quickly. "You get the water, too?"
"Techbots are loading the dry food for us, we'll have to get the water in ourselves," she said.
"Let's go then - this place is a little too moist for me," he grunted.
She watched him walk round her and off, the steadily hammering rain bouncing off his head and the adopted black Peacekeeper jacket currently keeping him warm in the less than comfortable climate. She sniffed and let her hand wander over her pulse pistol attached to her right leg, stepping out into the rain.
She caught him up as they reached the docking bay. Wire-thin robots with four arms each were lifting and craning fifty crates into the empty area of the transport pod, zipping backwards and forwards with unexpected agility.
The two aliens ducked inside out of the hissing rain, John making an effort to shake his head, Labrador style, to rid himself of a little precipitation. All he succeeded in doing was making his spiky sopping hair stick up further and his ears drip like badly maintained air-conditioners.
He stopped to watch the robots at work, hearing Aeryn stop behind him.
"So where's our water?" he asked, putting a hand up to his jaw and rubbing the side suddenly.
"The blue crates," she said, nodding to the four of them on the far side.
"Just four?"
"That's all we could afford - it's not cheap you know."
"Bet it don't grow on trees, either," he allowed, letting his hand drop and walking over to the first crate. "At least we're out of the rain."
A head shot up from behind the stack of blue crates. Something black swung up. It cracked into John's head. He staggered back. Aeryn snatched up her pistol. The figure from behind the crate grasped at a buckle on the front of John's jacket, taking a good hold.
John blinked tearing, shocked eyes to realise something was pushing into his front.
"Son of a bitch," he managed with indignation. He put his hand up to his jaw, pressing. "You had to hit me there, right?"
"Shut up!"
"Let him go," Aeryn commanded.
John wiped at an eye so he could see, his nose and jaw still burning with pain from the impact. He found a short, snub-nosed gun pressed into his chest and some short, no-nosed alien holding onto his jacket. He looked down at it: long limbed, scaly green, black coveralls and grumpy. Definitely grumpy.
"How much is he worth?" the alien hissed, tiny holes over its face opening and closing quickly in some kind of concerted effort.
"Not that much. Let him go," Aeryn snapped angrily, her aim never wavering.
"Not that much?" John echoed. "Thanks!"
"Shut up," the alien rasped, pushing the gun more firmly into his front. "I could shoot you, Peacekeeper, and find a good use for all that leather you're wearing."
"You want my leathers? Take 'em," he snorted. "They're not even mine. Hell, I don't even have my bike any more."
"What do you want?" Aeryn called clearly.
"You're Peacekeepers. You must have a weapons stash on that transport shuttle you're loading. I couldn't find it - you show me where it is," the alien ordered.
John began to laugh, thick but high-pitched, making Aeryn frown.
"Sorry," he managed, still chuckling. "We don't have any more weapons, Greedo, so unless you're gonna shoot us where we stand, we're all going to be here a good long while."
Aeryn rolled her eyes and simply fired.
The shot flew so closely over John's shoulder that he could swear the leather jacket itself winced in fear. He heard the thunk and sizzle of impact and turned quickly.
The alien was already dropping to the cold stone floor, lifeless. John stepped back quickly.
"Uh… thanks," he managed. He put his hand up and massaged his jaw slowly. "I think."
"Just get the water. He might not have been alone."
"Right," John swallowed. He put a boot round the fallen criminal and reached for the first crate, turning to the transport. "R2 units have finished," he observed.
Aeryn appeared next to him, hefting a crate and turning to see. "Fast workers. Makes a change."
"Uh…" John dropped the crate he had, edging slightly round Aeryn so that she was pushed up the lip and into the pod.
"What are you doing?" she protested.
"Maybe you should start the pod," he said nervously, and she looked round his shoulder to see three more lizard like aliens entering the large docking bay.
"You do it. I'll keep them away from the ship," she ordered. She put a hand out and grabbed his shoulder, yanking him back and then pushing him up the incline of the pod a tiny way. "Go!"
He disappeared up the loading ramp and she edged the blue crate up and over the lip, watching the aliens surreptitiously. She heard the engines start to spin and whine and stepped back slowly, gripping the doors to close them.
One alien called something and hurried over to their fallen colleague. Aeryn aimed her pistol at the nearest one as the pod began to lift. As one, the three of them turned and spotted her, drawing weapons. The pod lifted from the ground just as the first shot was fired.
Aeryn pulled the doors to but fired back. One of the aliens ceased firing. The others took over. She slammed the doors shut and sealed them off, hurrying round to the control deck. John was already trying to navigate them through the small twists and turns of the docking lanes.
Aeryn jumped into the empty command chair and helped manoeuvre the small craft. Neither of them said a word as they broke free of the designated lanes and rose up from the cloud of rain and smog, heading for the upper atmosphere, and beyond it, Moya.
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"You got real growing stuff?" Chiana grinned, opening a crate and poking her head in. "Cool!"
"What?" Rygel protested, floating over on his tiny chair to peek in too. "What do you mean, it's still growing? I want my food ready and waiting to be eaten, not sitting there taunting me with its dirty un-processed-ness!"
"A contala plant," D'Argo put in, a few crates away. "Aeryn, you have outdone yourself."
"Is that good?" she hazarded, wiping her hands clean on a rag as she watched them pore over her purchases.
"I shall have some contala tea ready for everyone before long," D'Argo continued, and he did indeed seem well pleased.
"I just thought that getting the bushes and trees would be better than dead dry foods - that way if we looked after them, we could keep getting food from them," Aeryn offered.
"Well I think it was a marvellous idea," came a gentle voice, and Aeryn looked down to find Zhaan stroking the leaves of a small, wide red plant, a beatific smile on her face. "Forward thinking becomes you."
"You're just happy to have relatives who possess a similar IQ to your own on board," Rygel tutted, before steering his chair round and disappearing from the room.
"Officer Sun. You mentioned some trouble leaving the planet," Pilot interrupted slowly. "Do you believe us to be safe from further attacks?"
"It's hard to say, Pilot," she answered. "But I would think so." She looked around the transport hold slowly. "Pilot, where's Crichton?"
"The Commander is back in his quarters. It seems he is not at all interested in the supplies you bought."
"Hmm. Oh - we only got one crate of water, due to those people trying to shoot us. We do have enough for the next solar week, but we should start looking for another commerce planet," she sighed.
"I shall see to it straight away," Pilot chirped.
"Was John hurt in the altercation?" Zhaan asked suddenly from her place among the red bushes.
"I don't think so," Aeryn blinked. "He seemed fine helping me unload all this stuff."
"Well did you check?" Chiana pressed, with a little more concern than the former Peacekeeper found acceptable.
"What am I, his mother?" she shot back. She turned to the door, thought about it, and left the hangar quietly.
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"Goddamn - useless--" John huffed, bending to another not very well hidden cupboard by his knees and hauling it open. "You'd think in this big galley thing there'd be just one little particle of something resembling a painkiller or--"
"What are you doing?"
John froze and thought about the voice. Judging it to be Aeryn's he straightened up slowly. He turned and rested back on the large wraparound counter top, adopting a rather too casual lean.
"Uh - nothing," he shrugged. But as he folded his arms one of his shoulders twitched, only emphasising the guilty way his chin was tilted a little high.
Aeryn's eyes narrowed. "Right," she allowed scathingly, sparing him one last look before walking from the doorway and toward the centre console. She opened a flap and looked in to see what was edible. "Did you forget something?" she added expectantly.
John didn't move, still watching her and doing his best to radiate innocence from every pore.
"Probably. It's a side effect of living on this ship," he replied guardedly.
"You got all excited about those small brown edible bricks when we were on the surface, but as soon as they were in the cargo hold you forgot about them. I'd be surprised if Rygel hasn't tasted one or two by now." She picked a few assorted cubes and set them on a tray, pushing them into the hatch and closing the lid.
"Let him. If he dies, I'll know not to eat them," John allowed. He watched her walk to the far table and sit slowly.
"Have you eaten? Or are you going to pester me while I eat this?" she asked carefully.
"No. I'm good. Enjoy," he said quickly.
She turned, her mouth open to ask after his mood, but he was already crossing the room and disappearing out of the doorway.
She looked back at her tray, picking up a large green cube and biting it thoughtfully. Then she shook her head and let it go.
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"I notice you were upset when we found him dead," the taller, green alien sneered.
The shorter female didn't even let her many orifices flutter in indignation. Instead she turned and looked up at the male member of the pirate crew, letting her head tilt slightly in consideration.
"You want to be Captain, yes?" she hissed.
"Everyone on board does," he grunted, cautiously noncommittal.
"You are not exactly a thinker, Pajjet," she challenged. "If you want to kill the Captain and take charge, I can help you."
The taller male let all of the holes over his head ripple with the sharp intake of breath. He let his slightly webbed hands drop from the console in front of him and leaned closer to the slightly-built female.
"And why," he hissed quietly, "would you want to do that?"
The female pulled in a long, languid breath, loathe to reveal her nervousness.
"I want those two Peacekeepers who killed him. I know which ship they went back to, and I know where that ship was headed when it left," she allowed. "What I don't know is if the present Captain would help me follow them."
"And… if there were a new Captain?" Pajjet asked, his wide, frog-like mouth bending into a curve that could have passed for a smile on a more appropriate face.
"We could find them, I could have the two Peacekeepers, and the new Captain could take all the spoils from the ship - and the ship itself," she sniffed, affecting indifference.
"Hmm," Pajjet nodded slowly. "That would be agreeable. To anyone wanting to become the new Captain."
"I should imagine it would. Should anyone decide to get some backbone… they could do worse than come to me," she nodded.
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See? I told you I'd be doing another one... Thanks for reading. :)