That Same Old Familiar Feeling: Part 1 - Tempus Fractus

FARSCAPE

That Same Old Familiar Feeling

Rating: G
Category: Action
Description: Paralysed by a rare Leviathan disease and being pursued by Peacekeepers, Moya is forced to take cover in a mysterious nebula. But as her symptoms worsen, the crew begin to experience strange phenomena all over the ship. Are they connected with Moya's ailment? Or are they something stranger still?
Setting: Between "Different Destinations" and "Eat Me"
Spoilers: "Liars, Guns and Money"; "Self Inflicted Wounds"
Disclaimer: Farscape and all its characters and settings are © the Jim Henson Company. Please don't sue me for using them.

Part One - Tempus Fractus

It hangs there in space - serene and alien, an artist's palette of colours and shades, ever changing and ever beautiful. Superficially, it appears to be nothing more than an immense cloud of gas - a witches' brew of exotic, toxic chemicals that blazes a multitude of vivid hues - stunning, perhaps, but not hazardous. But beneath the beauty, beneath the veneer of vibrant colours, hides a destructive secret.
Look closer, and you will see the victims of this enthralling, deadly phenomenon. Like an insect trapped in a spider's web, they struggle to escape, but to no avail. Their ship is injured and afraid, ensnared like a bacterium in the amoebic mass of the nebula, and like any panicked creature, it tries to flee. It flares blue-white, a jumbled tracery of light that glows brighter and brighter until the brilliance around it is outshone for an instant by the flash that surges outward. The light flares so bright that for a moment it obscures everything, a tide of energy that cleanses the void, erasing all sign of the ship and its occupants. When the flash dies away, they are gone. Nothing remains - not even memory...

John Crichton stepped out of his quarters feeling unusually cheerful. There was a strange feeling at the back of his mind, prodding at his thoughts like a memory trying to make itself heard, but he ignored it. If it was important, he would remember what it was. He strolled jauntily down the corridor, whistling a song that none of his shipmates would have recognised. Indeed, even someone from Earth would have been hard-pressed to identify it, but even his musical ineptitude couldn't dampen his irrationally joyful mood. His contentment lasted about thirty microts. An industrious DRD scuttled out of an intersection just as he was passing, and before he could help himself, he had stubbed a toe on it and tripped. The Drone scurried away, as John fell sprawling to the ground. It chittered an incomprehensible rebuke, then gave a little electronic squeal of terror as the former astronaut swung a fist at it. Still emitting a series of chastising beeps, it scooted off down the corridor.
His high spirits dampened by the encounter, John pulled himself up into a sitting position. As he did so, he became aware of quiet laughter from behind him. He glanced over his shoulder. As he did so, the sound stopped.
"Honestly, Crichton," Rygel reproved, mockingly, "you should have better things to do than lounge around on the floor all day." The pint-sized alien was obviously struggling to speak around his suppressed mirth.
"Actually, Sparky," John answered, getting up slowly, "it's quite relaxing." There was a note of forced calm in his voice that should have alerted Rygel, but the diminutive Dominar ignored it. Abruptly, annoyance and anger surged into the Human's tone. "Perhaps you should try it!" With this, Crichton leaped at the Hynerian, his fingers gripping the edge of the alien's hovering ThroneSled. Rygel cried out as John's added weight pulled the front of the floating throne downwards. For a moment the undersized alien was balanced, precariously, on the edge of his royal seat. Then suddenly, the extra load became too much. The ThroneSled tilted; Rygel's arms flailed wildly; John held on; and the irksome Hynerian dropped, unceremoniously, to the ground.
Standing up, and ignoring Rygel's outraged protestations, John brushed off his hands, and resumed his walk, some of his earlier cheer restored by the Dominar's irate tirade of insults and wounded pride. As the Hynerian's objections faded from hearing, Crichton tapped his communicator.
"Pilot - you there?"
"What is it, Commander?"
"Would you mind telling your DRDs to slow down a little?" John asked, his tone only vaguely irritated now. "One of the frellin' things just ran into me." There was a short silence, and then Pilot's voice, sounding puzzled.
"Commander Crichton - there are no DRDs in your area." Crichton frowned.
"Don't give me that, I just ran into one," he shot back. "And I've got the bruises to prove it." There was another, longer pause.
"Moya isn't detecting any DRDs in your area," Pilot insisted. "However, several of them are... missing." His voice sounded halfway between bemused and uneasy. "One of them was last detected near your position."
"What d'you mean, missing?" There was another hiatus before Pilot replied.
"Moya is not detecting them at all," he said, sounding more and more troubled.
"I'll keep an eye out for 'em," John told the other, although how Pilot distinguished one DRD from another, he didn't know. As he made his way down the corridor, D'Argo appeared at an intersection and fell into step beside him, slowing his long strides to match the Human's shorter legs.
"John - what in hezmana is going on?" he demanded. "One of those frelling DRD just tried to steal my Qualta blade."
"Pilot says he's lost contact with some of the DRDs," John explained. D'Argo gave a snort.
"He has certainly lost contact with that one," the Luxan said, a hint of vengeful satisfaction in his tone. "It's lying on the floor of my quarters in pieces." However, before he could continue, Pilot's voice cut in, over the communicators.
"I'm sorry to interrupt," he informed them, "but we have a problem." John's heart sank, and the uneasy feeling at the back of his mind returned. "Moya has just detected Peacekeeper signatures at the edge of her sense horizon," Pilot continued.
"Have they spotted us yet?" D'Argo snapped.
"I don't think so, Ka D'Argo," Pilot responded, uncertainly. "However, they are heading in our direction."
"Frell." The Luxan's comment summed up the situation pretty well as far as Crichton was concerned.
"We'd better get to Command," he suggested, and D'Argo nodded. The two of them set off at a run.

They arrived in Command along with Jool and Stark, with Rygel hovering along as fast as he could behind them, to see the image of Pilot's grey-blue head splashed across the clamshell-shaped display screen. Before they could speak, however, the silence was broken by a chitter of electronic terror.
A microt later, a DRD scuttled into the Command with a panicked scream, followed closely by Chiana. Like a hunter in pursuit of its prey, the young Nebari charged across the bay, herding the DRD into a smaller and smaller space. The Drone reached the junction between two consoles, and found itself backed into a corner. A triumphant grin lit up Chiana's pallid features.
"Gotcha!" she exclaimed. She reached down to grab the recalcitrant DRD, but the diminutive robot was not about to give up. Extending one of its many appendages, it prodded Chiana's finger. The Nebari leaped back, with a squeal of pain. "You little..." Seeing its chance, the DRD scuttled between Chiana's feet, and with a triumphant chirp, motored off down the corridor. Infuriated, she glared up at Pilot's image on the screen.
"Pilot - one of your frelling DRDs just tried to weld my finger!" she complained.
"They are not my DRDs, Chiana," Pilot told her, a little stuffily. "They appear to be operating independently of Moya's influence." Chiana frowned.
"I thought they couldn't do that," she said, warily.
"It appears that Moya is having... some difficulty in controlling them," Pilot answered. His tone sounded exasperated, but John guessed that the subject of the alien navigator's displeasure was not the Nebari, but his own inability to discern to source of the problem. "I am... not certain why." Chiana turned to the others.
"Great," she said, sarcastically, but no one seemed inclined to care.
"Frell the DRDs," Rygel snapped. "What about those Peacekeepers?"
"They are still headed in our direction," Pilot answered him, testily.
"I say we just StarBurst the hezmana out of here," D'Argo declared, but Pilot shook his carapace-crowned head.
"Moya is currently... unable to StarBurst," he said, apologetically. "I am still trying to ascertain the cause."
"Unable to StarBurst?" There was a hint of apprehension in Stark's voice, and his one eye gazed uneasily at Pilot's grainy image. Crichton said nothing - he was getting the strangest feeling that he had seen all this before somewhere. The feeling became even stronger when he looked over his shoulder, and saw Aeryn storming into Command. An expression of irritation simmered on her face.
"What the frell is going on?" she demanded, and John blinked in surprise - somehow, he'd been expecting her to say that.
"Whoa - déjà vu," he muttered to himself.
"Pilot has just detected a Peacekeeper taskforce pursuing us," D'Argo explained tersely, but before he could add anything else, Aeryn's gaze lighted on the sensor display.
"That's a Peacekeeper retrieval team," she remarked, sounding puzzled. "What would they be doing in the Uncharted Territories?"
"Who the yotz cares?" Rygel demanded, irritably. "How are we going to get away from them?"
"Can't we just StarBurst?" Aeryn inquired. Pilot looked slightly put out.
"Moya is not able to perform StarBurst at this time," he reiterated, stiffly. Aeryn's expression soured further.
"First, my communicator goes missing," she said, sounding annoyed, "then the temperature in my quarters suddenly drops to freezing, and now we can't StarBurst. Pilot - what's going on?"
"I'm... not certain, Officer Sun," Pilot answered, haltingly. "It seems that several of Moya's systems are malfunctioning, including life-support, StarBurst - and the DRDs."
"OK, Pilot," Crichton cut in, "here's the sixty-four thousand dollar question - why?" There was a long pause from the other end of the comm.
"I am... still not certain," came the eventual response. "However, I am beginning to suspect that Moya has contracted some kind of disease."
"Disease?" Rygel sounded incredulous. "What sort of disease?"
"And how would Moya catch a disease?" Stark added.
"I'm not sure," Pilot answered, "but it would explain why so many systems are not functioning properly. She may have picked it up from the supplies we brought on board at that Commerce Station."
"Could the disease be dangerous to Moya?" Aeryn asked, concernedly.
"Or dangerous to us?" Rygel added.
"I do not think so, Rygel," Pilot replied, slowly. "Most Leviathan viruses are not transmissible to other species."
"So, what, Moya's got the 'flu?" John sounded incredulous.
"I do not know what this 'flew' is, Commander Crichton," Pilot told the Human, hesitantly, "but I believe that I have made a diagnosis. It seems that Moya may be suffering from Amnexial Paraiasis."
"Amnexial what?" D'Argo demanded.
"Amnexial Paraiasis," Jool repeated, slowly, as though she were explaining something to a child. "It's a malady that affects a Leviathan's Amnexus System."
"Hey - I didn't know you knew about Leviathan biology." John sounded surprised, but the Interon woman gave him a scathing glare.
"One of the many things you didn't know," she told him, scornfully. "Amnexial Paraiasis isn't fatal, but it can cause the host entity to lose certain neural functions. It can also linger for some time."
"How much time?" John enquired, urgently. "Are we talking arns, solar days?" There was a pause, and for once, Jool looked a little uncomfortable, as if she were the bearer of bad news.
"Sometimes the disease can last for over half a cycle," she announced, baldly. All eyes in the Command fixed on Jool. Stark and Rygel both stared at her in open horror, and Crichton gave her a shocked look.
"We can't go that long without StarBurst," Aeryn pointed out, a grim note in her voice. "Especially not with that retrieval team hanging around."
"Don't worry about that," Jool said, not very reassuringly. "I can easily synthesise an antibody that will destroy the virus."
"We still need a way to hide from those Peacekeepers until you find a cure for this Amnexi... whatever-it-is," Chiana put in. Pilot nodded.
"Moya's sensors are picking up a large nebula only a few zacrons from here," he reported. "It should be dense enough to hide us from the Peacekeeper scans." John looked across the table at the others. D'Argo and Aeryn nodded. Stark shrugged, and Crichton took that as an agreement from the former Banik slave.
"Go for it, Pilot," he said.

The nebula filled the viewscreen, a riot of swirling pastel colours broken by splashes of vibrant gold, green, silver, blue, and a myriad other shades. The smooth, organic shapes glittered and shimmered in the faint starlight, rearing far off into the distance. As he stared at it, John found its majestic, alien beauty strangely, disturbingly familiar. The uneasy feeling that had been gnawing at him all day was beginning to grow steadily stronger, and it had nothing to do with the increasingly erratic behaviour of the DRDs, or the maddening glitches in Moya's systems that had become all the more frequent in the past few arns. Something was wrong... very wrong. He just couldn't put his finger on what it was.
"Beautiful, isn't it John." Startled, Crichton turned to see Scorpius standing beside him, staring into the multi-hued miasma. The half-Scarran smiled infuriatingly. "It seems so alien, so otherworldly," he went on, softly, tauntingly. "And yet somehow, strangely familiar."
"Shut up, Scorpy." Despite his half-hearted rejoinder, John had a disturbing feeling that Scorpius was right - it did seem familiar somehow, and yet the former astronaut was sure that he'd never seen anything like this before. Still, as he gazed out on the jumbled mass of shifting forms and hues, he was almost certain he'd seen it somewhere else.
"Hey, John." Crichton turned, to see Chiana enter the Command. She walked over to him, and stood beside him for a moment, looking out into the nebula. After a few microts of silence, she said, "That thing gives me the junteks." John looked at her, noticed how on-edge she was - even more so than usual.
"You can feel it too?" he asked, surprise evident in his tone. There was no answer - the monochrome-skinned Nebari simply went on gazing into the distance, a far-off look in her eyes. Crichton reached out to wave a hand in front of her face, but he suddenly found it difficult to move his arm. It was like he was trying to move it through treacle. The air shimmered, like a heat-haze hovering around his elbow. Disturbed, John tried to pull his arm away. Slowly, his limb responded, drawing back sluggishly until, with a barely-audible pop, it broke through the wall of... whatever it was. Crichton stared for a moment at the strange column or bubble of dancing air that seemed to centre on Chiana. Then he looked down at his hand, then back up at Chiana again.
Ever so slowly, the Nebari raised her own hand, her face contorting into an expression of pleading, but almost as if in slow-motion. Lethargically, Chiana reached out towards John. Then, abruptly, her grey-tinged hand broke through the intangible barrier between them. Crichton grasped it, and noticed with surprise how cold it felt. Interpreting her gesture as a call for help, and seeing the expression frozen on her face, he braced himself, and pulled. Slowly, henta by henta, the Nebari was dragged forwards. As more and more of her arm was freed from her ethereal imprisonment, the task became easier and easier, until eventually, Chiana burst through the barrier and sprawled on the deck. John hauled her to her feet. Before either of them could say a word, Pilot's carapace-crowned head appeared on the clamshell-shaped viewscreen.
"Chiana; Commander Crichton - are you alright?" he demanded, sounding shocked and concerned. "Moya just registered a massive energy surge in your area."
"We're OK," John told him, still sounding dazed. "What happened?"
"I am not... certain," Pilot answered, haltingly, his voice breaking as he spoke.
"Pilot?" Chiana's voice sounded even more nervous now. "What's wrong - are you hurt?"
"I am not... physically injured," the carapace-headed alien replied, from between gritted... teeth, John supposed, but he had learned not to jump to conclusions in matters of alien anatomy. "It's just that... Moya's Amnexial Paraiasis is... worsening rapidly. I am... beginning to lose my... contact with her."

In the open space at the centre of one of the cargo bays, D'Argo was practicing with his Qualta blade. As Aeryn looked on, the Luxan warrior twirled the fearsome weapon easily in a firm, two-handed grip, weaving it through an increasingly complex pattern. As he pirouetted and whirled, dancing his dance of death, steam hissed from his mouth and nostrils - the temperature in the bay had dropped so low that Aeryn had to pull her jacket around herself to keep from shivering. Even so, sweat stood out on D'Argo's brow as he slashed and stabbed. The exercise seemed to involve fighting off a series of invisible enemies, and from what Aeryn could make out, these intangible warriors attacked with progressively greater ferocity. The technique reminded her of a Peacekeeper training procedure designed to hone muscle control and combat skills. The Luxan certainly seemed to be honing his muscle control - his movements were becoming faster and faster, and yet he retained his henta-perfect precision. The blade flashed like a whirlwind of silver death. As the cadence of D'Argo's imaginary battle reached a frenetic pace, however, Aeryn began to realise that something was wrong. The Luxan warrior's motions became more and more rapid, transforming his Qualta into a metallic blur. As Aeryn looked on, her shock riveting her to the spot, D'Argo stopped. In a final movement, almost faster than her eyes could follow, he slid his weapon back into the sheath that hung across his back, and stepped forward.
Something rippled in the air for a moment, like the afterimage of the Luxan's flashing blade. Aeryn shivered, and she knew that it was not because of the icy chill that hung in the air. Then her attention was drawn back to the alien warrior.
"You've been standing there watching me for over half an arn," he snapped, somewhat to her surprise. "Don't you have anything better to do?" Biting back a cutting reply, Aeryn frowned.
"Half an arn?" she repeated, incredulously. "More like about 30 microts."
"30 microts?" D'Argo sounded vaguely offended. "I just practiced the Qu'ala pattern, and you watched me the entire time." Still struggling to control the urge to snap back an angry response, Aeryn tried to reason with the Luxan.
"You were moving pretty fast," she conceded, "but..."
"Ka D'Argo; Officer Sun." Pilot's concerned voice cut off whatever the former Peacekeeper would have said. "Moya has... just detected another... large energy surge in your area," he continued, trying with stoicism to hide any signs of pain in his tone. "Are you alright?"
"We're fine, Pilot," Aeryn answered, before D'Argo cut in,
"What do you mean, another energy surge?"
"Moya detected... another, almost identical... surge a few microts ago... in the Command... where Chiana and... Commander Crichton are," Pilot explained. His voice shook slightly as he spoke, and as he finished, he gave a muffled gasp of agony.
"Pilot - are you alright?" Aeryn sounded genuinely concerned for the alien navigator.
"Moya is... in pain," Pilot told her, with difficulty. "And my... connection to her is... weakening. The Amnexial... Paraiasis is worsening... rapidly."
"I thought Jool could cure it," D'Argo said, sounding irritated.
"She says she is... ready to inject the... antibodies into Moya's... Amnexus system... now," Pilot managed. He sounded breathless and his speech was pained, as though he was struggling to maintain his self-control.
"Then I wish she'd get on with it," the Luxan snapped. Aeryn rounded on him.
"She's doing the best she can," she told him, her voice hard as steel and colder than the freezing air. "I don't notice you doing anything useful." The Luxan snarled, but before he could react to the ex-Peacekeeper's cutting remark, the entire room shuddered. The lights went dark, and a low rumble filled the air. A throbbing vibration rattled the bulkheads, and sent cargo crates tumbling to the deck. An instant later, the tremor stopped. The low growl was replaced by silence - a silence so complete, it seemed as though death hung in the air.
"What the frell was that?" D'Argo demanded, sounding shaken but trying to hide it under his veneer of masculine courage. Static hissed through his communicator. Frowning, Aeryn tried hers. Nothing.
"I don't know," she answered him, dubiously. " I don't know..."

In the Command, alone now that Chiana had left, John felt the deck beneath him shiver. The almost imperceptible motion set something tingling in the back of his mind like an alarm bell, and the former astronaut, who had long ago learned not to question such subconscious warnings, braced himself against a bronze-coloured bulkhead. Even so, when the shock came, he was unprepared for the sudden power of it. It was as if Moya had run straight into a brick wall - he was thrown to the deck, inertia and thwarted momentum sending him sprawling on his face in the sudden darkness. His head hit something hard, snapping his teeth together with a sickening crack, and he tasted bitter, iron-hot blood in his mouth, felt a lance of pain stab through his tongue. Muscles tense, ready to react to any aftershocks, he levered himself slowly up onto his elbows. He paused there for a moment, listening. What he heard was not encouraging - the still air was filled with a low, creaking moan, a pained sound like the dying gasp of some strange metallic creature.
"Ah... Pilot - what's goin' on?" Crichton asked, tentatively, massaging his aching jaw. There was no response. "Pilot?" Louder this time, but still no reply. John shook his head - damn. Comm system must be out. Carefully, he crawled across to the exit. As he did so, Moya shook again - less strongly this time, but still enough to make Crichton lose his balance. He reached out a hand to steady himself, and came into contact with something soft and yielding. Abruptly, something hard clamped around his fingers. John dropped to the ground. With his free hand, he yanked the gun from the holster at his hip. He was about to use it to forcibly dislodge whatever it was that was grasping his hand so painfully, when the pressure was suddenly released. There was a muffled sound, then a familiar voice exclaimed,
"Eurgh! You taste like a rotten trat." Crichton holstered his gun again, relieved and angry at the same time.
"Rygel, next time you bite me like that, I'm gonna kick your little ass all the way to Hyneria." The alien Dominar gave a snort.
"You shouldn't have tried to flatten me, you great oaf," he riposted, haughtily.
"Look, Buckwheat, if it weren't so dark in here I wouldn't have gone anywhere near you," John shot back. "Now I'm gonna need a rabies shot."
"Oh, stop moaning and just get us out of here, you stupid Human." Rygel pronounced the last word as if it were the most heinous insult imaginable. Warily, and trying to ignore the irksome Hynerian, Crichton stood. His fingers still stung, his tongue and jaw ached, and as he got up, he discovered that he'd also managed to pull a muscle in his left leg. The only positive thing was that his eyes had finally adjusted to the gloom, so that instead of total darkness, he could discern a faint shadowing of black against the lighter grey of the background. The lumpy, muttering shape at his feet, he decided, had to be Rygel; the regular, sharp-edged shadow in front of him, the control console; the thin arc of pale luminescence in front of him, the hatch that led out of the Command. Hands extended in front of him, he began to make his way tentatively towards the dim, crescent-shaped glow. When he reached the hatch, his first instinct was to try to lever the immense metal portal open, but when he wrapped his fingers around the cold edge of the door, he found that it wouldn't budge. Straining, he tried harder.
"Come on, Crichton!" Rygel urged, irritably. Giving up on the brute force approach, John appraised the curved opening.
"Hey Sparky," he called, in a tone dripping with false camaraderie. "Come over here a minute, wouldya?"
"Why should I?" the Hynerian demanded, arrogantly. "I am Rygel the Sixteenth, Dominar of a thousand worlds..."
"The get your ass over here, Your Majesty," John retorted, sarcastically. The diminutive alien gave a snort of disgust.
"I will not be spoken to..."
"Ah, can it Sparky," Crichton interrupted. "I'll do it myself." Exhaling hard to drive the breath from his lungs, he slipped into the crescent gap. It was awkward, and for a moment, he was held between door and frame in a vicelike grip that crushed down on his ribs, but then he had wriggled past and out of the Command. Thank God food cubes aren't fattening. Paying no attention to Rygel's indignant blustering, he stared down the darkened corridor, gazing into the murky shadows that seemed to fill the rapidly cooling air with menace. Abruptly, the lights flickered and pulsed. For a moment, they blazed back into life, sending bronzed highlights coursing along the walls of the hallway. The lights flared, brighter and brighter, then suddenly, one by one, winked out. In front of him, John saw a shimmering in the air, a mounting blue-white glow... and then, abruptly, an explosion of smoke and silver fire. Gradually, elegantly, a fountain of sparks leaped outward, flowing from the heart of the eruption with torpid grace. John stared. The hairs on the back of his neck began to tingle, and he watched in amazement as the slow-motion drama unfolded before his eyes. The cascade of tiny, glaring-white fragments was tumbling towards the deck, but slowly, ever so slowly. As he watched, the first minute embers reached the floor, sagging to the chill metal without a sound, sending up a thin wisp of lethargic grey smoke that curled around itself like a twisting snake. The air rippled, and Crichton heard a burst of noise - a high-pitched sizzle like the sound of electricity arcing across a gap. He reached out a hand, and felt something resist for a moment. The air rippled again, a mirage of concentric wavelets, spreading out as if someone had dropped a stone into a pond, or like the distorting effect of a heat-haze. Cautiously, the former astronaut leaned forward, pushing his face through the intangible barrier. The cascade of sparks leaped into action. They no longer hung gracefully in midair, tumbling unhurriedly downwards - instead, the shower of glowing particles dropped rapidly, hitting the deck with a hiss and sending up a cloud of smoke and steam. Puzzled, John pulled his head back, dragging himself forcefully out of the strange, ethereal rippling membrane. The sparks slowed instantly, arrested in mid-fall. Crichton stared for a moment, then, steeling himself, plunged through the barrier. The sparks resumed their swift descent.
"Twilight Zone, eat your heart out," he commented aloud.
"Fascinating." At the sound of the familiar voice, John whirled. Leaning on the bulkhead behind him, Scorpius grinned infuriatingly. "I'm glad you took the time to watch that." Crichton turned his back.
"Shut up Scorpy," he said, in a weary, long-suffering voice. "You're not real anyway."
"What is reality, John? Was what you just saw real? Is any of this 'real'?"
"Don't go getting all philosophical on me Scorpy," Crichton mocked, but when he looked over his shoulder, there was no one there. The corridor was empty. John shrugged. Voices in his head, Leviathan diseases, weird phenomena, strange sensations of déjà vu... as days aboard Moya went, this one was turning out pretty normal.

As Chiana made her way down the corridor, the sound of thumping and angry curses drew her attention. Turning the corner, she saw Jool hammering ineffectually on the door to the infirmary, an expression of annoyance on her face. As she watched, the Interon woman kicked the recalcitrant portal venomously. When that provoked no response, she lashed out with a cry of frustration, hitting the door with the ball of her fist. Immediately, she drew back, clutching her bruised hand and moaning in pain. Chiana laughed. Jool rounded on her.
"I don't see what's so funny," she snapped. "Pilot won't open the door!"
"I have already... told you - Moya is... losing control of some of her... systems." Even over the comm, Pilot sounded harassed and impatient. "I could not... open that door... even if I wanted to."
"I could," Chiana said, brightly. Jool looked at her with something close to distaste.
"I don't believe you," she told the Nebari, flatly.
"Then watch and learn." Chiana opened a panel on the wall next to the infirmary door, and fiddled about for a moment. Triumphantly, she touched one wire to another. The door ground open, and Chiana grinned infuriatingly. "Told you," she said, impishly. Jool shook her head, and stepped into what had once been Zhaan's apothecary. Peering into the viewer that was set up on one of the benches, she nodded.
"The bacteria have multiplied enough to inject the vaccine into Moya," she asserted. Picking up a long, brushed-chrome canister, she slid it into an immense, cylindrical device that looked somewhat like a very large syringe. She inserted the end of the object into a cavity in the bulkhead, touched a control. With a hiss, it discharged its contents into Moya's Amnexus system. Jool looked pleased. "Moya's Amnexial Paraiasis should be cured within an arn," she said, proudly. Chiana shot her a mischievous grin.
"Good for you," she commented. "Bye." And with that, she pulled two contacts apart. The infirmary door rotated closed. As muffled hammerings began to emerge from the other side of the portal, Chiana doubled over with laughter.

"I have... already told you, Moya... cannot StarBurst until... Jool's vaccine has eliminated the Amnexial... Paraiasis." Surrounded by D'Argo and Aeryn on one side, and Rygel, John and Stark on the other, Pilot seemed to be fighting a losing battle. Anger and pain added a strained, halting quality to his words, and his movements seemed awkward and uncoordinated. His normally elegant limbs seemed limp and unwieldy, and his head hung low, resting on his chest. His eyes were dull, his skin a paler, more sickly hue than its usual slate-grey, and his entire manner was weak and lethargic. "And in... any case," he continued, "it may... not be wise... to attempt StarBurst until we can... determine the... source of these... energy surges. We must... exercise caution."
"Caution," D'Argo echoed, scornfully. "If we hadn't exercised 'caution' and hidden in this frelling nebula, we wouldn't be dead in space and unable to StarBurst."
"No, Pilot's right," Aeryn argued. "We don't know what's causing these energy surges, and we don't know whether or not it's related to these strange... what did he call them? 'Dislocations'?"
"I know what's causing the energy surges," Stark said, matter-of-factly, but his voice was drowned out by D'Argo's angry response.
"What 'dislocations'?" he demanded.
"They appear... to be some kind of... temporal... discontinuity," Pilot reported, hesitantly. "They may be... being caused by... this nebula." Rygel looked sceptical.
"Either that, or they're caused by someone chewing too many morna lobes," he suggested.
"Whoah, just wait up a microt." John sounded confused. "What the heck are 'temporal discontinuities'?"
"They're..." Stark began to explain, but before he could begin, Aeryn interrupted him.
"We've been seeing them all over the ship," she told Crichton, shortly. "They slow down time, or speed it up, or frell with it in some way."
"Whatever they are, I say we StarBurst out of here as soon as Jool's vaccine has cured Moya." John had to admit, D'Argo had a way of staying on a particular subject that was impossible to deflect.
"For once, I agree with the Luxan brute," Rygel contributed.
"Well I don't." Aeryn sounded more than a little angry, frustration curling her hands into fists.
"Shut up!" Stark's voice was louder now, but D'Argo ignored him.
"So, you think we should just go along with whatever you tell us," the Luxan fumed. "Typical Peacekeeper arrogance." With what seemed like a Herculean effort, Pilot pushed aside his weakness. He raised his head and glared at D'Argo.
"Officer Sun is... only trying to... ensure that Moya..."
"Keep out of this, Pilot," the alien warrior snapped. Stark shook his head.
"Shut up!" he cried, pleadingly, raising his voice above the sudden babble of angry voices. "Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up!" Silence fell. Everyone present turned to stare at him.
"Hey, simmer down, Astroboy..." John said placatingly, but the Banik continued, as if he hadn't heard him.
"This arguing is pointless!" There was a slightly manic look in the baleful stare of his one eye. "Moya cannot move. She is trapped by these dislocations."
"How?" D'Argo demanded. "Why is she trapped?"
"The dislocations mark the boundaries between timescales," Stark explained, not very enlighteningly. "On either side of them, time runs at different speeds. Slow time, fast time, slow time, fast time, all... jumbled together."
"Yes..." Pilot sounded as though understanding was beginning to dawn, although in John's thoughts, the darkness of confusion still dominated. "When Moya... moves, different... parts of her have different... momentum."
"Exactly!" Stark exclaimed, grateful that at least someone understood what he was saying. "Moya is trapped amid the dislocations. She's being pulled in all different ways - slow time, fast time." The former slave gestured wildly to illustrate his point. "Slow time fast time slow time fast time slow time fast time slow time fast time - it's tearing her apart!" The anguish in his tone was second only to Pilot's. Remembering his behaviour in the cell on Scorpius's Gamak Base, Crichton edged away. Rygel gave the Banik a sideways look- a look that he had often directed at Crichton - as if he doubted his sanity. D'Argo, as always, was less subtle.
"Stop talking dren," he told Stark, flatly. "The only thing wrong with Moya is she's suffering from Amnexial..."
"Paraiasis," Pilot supplied, tersely.
"It's not dren!" Stark protested. "I can see them! I can see the dislocations."
"What?" John and Aeryn demanded, simultaneously.
"I can see the dislocations," Stark repeated. His gestures were becoming more exaggerated, his movements more erratic by the moment. "They're like cracks - cracks in the fabric of space and time!"
"The only cracks around here..." Rygel began, but before he could continue, John clamped a hand over his mouth. Mindful of his earlier encounter with the diminutive Dominar, he made certain that his grip was firm enough to prevent the Hynerian from biting him. Over the sound of Rygel's furious, inchoate protests, Crichton said,
"Cracks..." His thoughtful tone brought a look of apprehension from Aeryn.
"John, whatever it is you're thinking," she advised, "forget it."
"Maybe we could escape that way," he continued, as if he hadn't heard her. "Y'know - slide through the cracks." Aeryn shot him a look of contempt.
"John, of all your stupid ideas, that has to be the stupidest."
"And that's saying something," Rygel remarked, wriggling out of Crichton's muffling grasp.
"It's not as simple as that..." Stark put in, more tactfully, but Pilot interrupted him with a weary shake of his immense head.
"I believe... it could be," he said. "If we could... align Moya's insertion... vector with one of the... dislocations, we could... StarBurst... away." There was silence for a moment, as John regarded the others with a superior smile. "However," Pilot continued, and here a note of contrition crept into his pained voice, "Moya is... damaged... wounded. She requires... repairs and... many of my DRDs are... not functioning."
"We'll get onto it immediately," D'Argo asserted. John nodded.
"Sounds good to me," he agreed, hiding his sudden apprehension. Somehow, he knew that something was wrong... or that something was about to go wrong. The feeling was elusive, like an itch that couldn't be scratched, but as time went on, it was becoming stronger and stronger. I just hope I figure out what it means, Crichton thought. Before it's too late...

It was deadly silent outside Moya's transport hangar, and the gloom cloaked every corner in murky grey-black. Silently thankful for the shroud of darkness, Chiana slipped through the doorway and into the vast, cold hangar. The vaulted ceiling was invisible in the shadows; the transport pods were nothing more than sharp-edged silhouettes, Crichton's module a smooth lump of obsidian-black punctuated by a thin line of reflected light. Creeping forward without a sound, the young Nebari crouched in the cover of a stack of cargo crates. She held her breath, listening intently, heard nothing. Abruptly, a noise shattered the stillness.
"Looking for something to snurch?" Rygel's voice sounded impossibly loud in the immense, echoing hangar.
"What is it to you?" Chiana demanded, in a defensive half-whisper.
"I know why you're here," the Hynerian told her, conspiratorially.
"I just want to take a look at that ship D'Argo found in the wreckage of that Commerce Station." The Nebari's ingenuous denial convinced Rygel that he was right.
"I don't believe a word of it," he revealed. Chiana, realising that the Hynerian had seen straight through her blatant fabrication, tried another tack.
"Well, what are you here for?" she asked, slyly.
"Moya's frelled," Rygel said, succinctly. "And we will be too, if we don't get the yotz out of here."
"You're going to snurch a transport pod?"
"Not snurch," Rygel corrected her. "Acquire."
Together, the two thieves slipped through the darkness towards the bulbous shape of the mysterious ship. In the blackness, however, they failed to see the faint shimmering in the air in front of them, or the way the dust motes hung motionless in the still air. Unheeding of the rippling of the very fabric of space and time, they pushed blithely through the dislocation. To the rest of the crew, several arns passed before Moya's destruction. Rygel and Chiana didn't even have time to scream.

"OK, Pilot - we've reached the neural cluster." Aeryn's voice was surprisingly steady, considering the fact that, even wrapped in D'Argo's immense cloak, the chill in the air cut to her very bones. Ice crystallised on the silver clouding of her breath, and crackled in her hair as she moved. Long icicles hung in a forest of delicate blue-white witches' fingers that glittered in the torchlight, and a thick rime lined the bulkheads. "John, hold this while I try to find the damaged connections."
"Easy f-f-f-f-for you to s-s-s-s-say." Crichton shivered convulsively as he spoke. "You're not the one whose fingers are turning into popsicles."
"Just stop moaning and take the frelling wrench," Aeryn complained. With bad grace, John snatched the tool. The former Peacekeeper sighed, expelling a nebulous cloud of frost-filled air that crackled as it froze. Humans. Leaning over the complex, ice-hardened webwork of neural fibres, Aeryn began to systematically inspect each one, checking for damage. Behind her, John dropped the wrench with a clang, and blew frantically on his hands to warm them. Aeryn stopped working.
"I told you to hold the wrench," she said, flatly.
"My hands were freezing to it," he told her, from between chattering teeth. "Now I know how Luke Skywalker felt on Hoth."
"Who?"
"Ah, forget it." Crichton shook his head, and picked up the wrench again. "You got anything useful I could be doing?"
"Yes - you can reconnect those caloric veins behind you," Aeryn answered, without looking at him. With another sigh, Crichton turned, walked over to the panel Aeryn had referred to, and flipped it open. I hate it when she's like this...
Ignoring the former astronaut, Aeryn gripped a neural fibre and pulled. However, instead of it disconnecting from its socket, the frost-hardened cable snapped with a brittle crack. The former Peacekeeper cursed. Frustrated, she grabbed the remnants of the shattered fibre and gave them a vicious twist. The neural cable broke off with a shattering sound, showering Aeryn with ice from the ceiling above. Shivering and swearing profusely, she threw off the cloak she had wrapped around her. It hit the deck almost completely rigid. Aeryn shuddered again, as a tendril of freezing-cold water trickled down her spine. There was a loud snap, and she felt a sharp pain in her scalp. A frozen lock of hair clattered to the floor. Muttering Sebecean curses, she grasped another of the neural fibres.
Above her head, in the dark, impossibly cold space between Moya's tiers, the air rippled. Where the neural fibres intersected with the dislocation, energy crackled and sizzled, sparks setting the icy air humming. Inside the neurons, electrical signals began to mass at the boundary between timeframes. Electrons struggled to push through from the zone of fast-flowing time below into the sluggish flow above, accumulating like a river behind a dam. And, with the voltage mounting like a river's inexorable power, the slow build-up of energy was becoming more and more dangerous.
Hearing Aeryn's stream of invective, John turned. He was about to speak, when something caught his attention, driving the words from his brain. Above her head, a blue glow was beginning to build.
"Pilot - what the frell's goin' on?" he demanded, apprehensively.
"Moya... is panicking!" Pilot sounded close to panic himself. "She... may attempt... StarBurst!"
"She can't do that!" John protested, despite all evidence to the contrary. "If she tries to StarBurst now we'll all be toast."
"My... connection... to her... is weak," Pilot explained, almost frantically, the urgency cutting through the pain in his voice. "I cannot... stop her," he added, with a hint of sadness.
"Is there any way we can stop her?" D'Argo demanded, over the comm.
"Yes." The effort required to get out that single word was evident in Pilot's voice. "Disconnect... neural cluster... tier... seven."
"I got it," John affirmed. At the same moment, he heard a sizzle of energy, accompanied by a low, menacing hum. He turned. The blue glow above Aeryn's head was getting brighter... "Aeryn!" Crichton broke into a run. But as he sprinted towards her, he didn't notice the rippling in the air in front of him, or the patch of glassy ice under his feet. He slipped and plunged headlong into the dislocation. Time slowed down. Aeryn turned, her expression of puzzlement metamorphosing into a mask of agony as the energy that had built up in Moya's neural fibres surged through her body. As John struggled to his feet, he saw her falling slowly, ever so slowly, to the deck. Despairingly, he lunged forward, and caught her as she fell.
Grief and pain and anger and sorrow surged up inside him. Cradling her limp body in his arms, he looked down at her. Her face was pale, her skin cold, her hair matted with a crystal tracery of ice. Her eyes were rolled up into her head so that only the whites could be seen, and her mouth hung open slightly, a trickle of blood running down her chin. But John saw nothing of this. All he saw was how beautiful she looked.
"Aeryn," he breathed, pleadingly, as if his anguished whisper could somehow change the horrific thing he had just witnessed. "Aeryn." Gazing down at her, he found that he could find nothing more to say. So he repeated her name again and again, over and over, as if it could bring her back. "Aeryn. Aeryn. Aeryn..."

In the infirmary, Jool felt the deck shake beneath her feet, saw the sparks erupt from all sides of her, heard the terrible, rising wail of energy like the roar of a wounded beast. Almost paralysed with fear, she had just enough sense to dive for cover, curling into a foetal position underneath a shelf-full of biosamples. When the StarBurst began, Jool started to scream. She screamed uncontrollably, at the top of her voice, as if she would never stop. She screamed in pain; she screamed in anger; she screamed in terror. She was still screaming when she died.

D'Argo sprinted down one of Moya's darkened, frost-silvered corridors. He could smell the odour of melted insulation and burning flesh, hanging in the air like the scent of death.
"John?" he demanded, for the hundredth time, into his silent comm. "Pilot? Anyone?" The hiss of static was obscured by the low rumble of energy surging through conduits, the crackle of arcing current, the keening buzz of calorics discharging their powerful, deadly load. Wormlike energy trails skittered and danced down the bulkheads, charring and searing all in their path. As D'Argo rounded the corner, a vicious crack rang out in the chill air. A glowing finger of electricity surged away from the wall.
The blast caught D'Argo right in the chest, pitching him backwards and slamming him onto the deck. His limbs twitched once, convulsively, and then he was still. The icy cloud of his last breath dissipated slowly in the chill air.

In the Command, Stark stood calmly amid the destruction. He knew that he had one last task to perform - a final duty before he could leave his corporeal existence and join Zhaan at last. Removing his mask and raising a hand, he began the ritual of death.
"Noble Moya..."

In his cavernous Den, Pilot steeled himself for the agony. Pain like nothing he had never known before tore through him. His many limbs trembled, as the snakelike fibres that formed his connection to Moya began to overheat. Lightning bolts hurled themselves across the cavernous space, leaping from bridge to bridge in fantastic, glittering arcs. White-hot anguish burned through Leviathan and Pilot, each feeling the other's suffering in a deadly, lethal symbiosis. In the midst of it all, Pilot threw back his head, and screamed a final, wordless cry of despair and agony. But the stars would not hear him, and the varicoloured beauty of the nebula was cold and uncaring.

A cyan tracery began to spread across Moya's back, reaching along her spine and down her immense flanks in a glowing pattern of cobalt blue. Tendrils of energy skittered along the Leviathan's gentle curves, like coruscating snakes of glittering azure leaping and writhing against the dull bronze of her hull. The light grew brighter and brighter, swelling and building into a blaze of incandescent glory that swathed the Leviathan's bulk like a silver aura. For a moment, it rivalled even the multitudinous colours of the nebula. Then, it washed outwards, like a wave of pure energy, cleansing the pristine colours of space, burning and searing away imperfections. As it receded, it left nothing behind - not a single piece of charred flesh, nor a single fragment of twisted debris. The nebula was empty. It was as if Moya had never been.

To be continued...