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...
