Title: Written On a Thumbnail
Author: cofax
Email: cofax@mindspring.com
Rating: R for language and violence. Consider yourself warned: this is a bumpy ride.
Spoilers: Through "Scratch & Sniff" only.
Summary: Humpty Dumpty took a big fall. John, John, Aeryn, Harvey, fights, flights, captures, and desperate choices.
Distribution: Please let me know, and keep my headers attached. When posting is complete the entire story will be archived at Leviathan and my website, http://cofax.freeservers.com.
Disclaimer: Just taking them out for a spin; I'll return them only a little worse for wear.
Notes: This story is finished and is being posted one section per day as the final edits are made. Please note that this story spins off from canon just after "Scratch & Sniff", and never comes back. In this little universe, "Infinite Possibilities" and the ensuing episodes have not happened. Other notes at end.
Feedback makes me do the wacky: please send it to cofax@mindspring.com.
***
Written on a Thumbnail
by cofax
March 2002
"Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first and second secrets of nature: Motion and Rest. The whole code of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring." - Ralph Waldo Emerson.
***
I used to feel like I was falling.
Every once in a while I would look up from splicing cables together thirty feet below Pilot, or wake to the sound of D'Argo rattling the hilt of his blade against my door, or see Chiana slicing green and purple spotted fruit into careful rounds, and I would blink, and none of it would make sense. I'd lose my sense of balance, and the world would begin to swim around me. As if gravity stopped working for a moment, and I was falling through a psychedelic rabbit-hole. Nothing made sense: not Moya's warm curves, not D'Argo's amusement, not the inhuman beauty of Chiana's face. It was just a mass of colors and shapes with no meaning to me. And then I would find my footing, and it would all fall back into place, my eyes and my inner ear functioning together again.
And then, after the Chair, I stopped fighting it. I stopped trying to compare any of it, any of life out here, to "normal". It wasn't what I had expected, it wasn't what my brain had been bred to deal with, and I'd been screwed over six ways from Sunday -- but you know what? I may have piss poor vision, and I won't live 800 cycles, but humans are adaptable beggars. So I adapted; I rode the flow; I made my life be what it was and not what I thought it should be.
And for a while, that seemed to work.
I'm not into existential dilemmas; I always left those to DK. But what do I do now that I've got this life, and I'm dealing with some crazy stuff, but I'm dealing, and I have friends and a gun and a coat -- and all of a sudden there's someone else in the room? And *he's* got the gun and the coat and the girl?
I feel like I'm falling all the time now.
*Part 1: Raven in the Storm*
"Commander Crichton!" Pilot's voice comes out of nowhere, and the knight goes flying. Chiana snickers, I glare and take a swipe at her ear. She dodges it easily.
"Yeah, Pilot?" I drop to my knees and scrounge for the knight under the table. It took me a long time to make this set and I don't want to lose any of the pieces.
It's about midmorning, I guess, if Moya has mornings. Morning for me, at any rate. Absent emergencies, there's only two or three of us awake at any one time nowadays. We can't leave Jool in command by herself yet, so Chi, D'Argo, and I are taking shifts round the clock. I'm actually on duty but there's not much going on and Pip stuck around to cook. She hates what I make, anyway. Not much call for grits and eggs in the Uncharteds, and what they call "eggs" don't cut it anyhow.
So there's a pile of dirty dishes in the galley and I'm trying to teach Chiana how to play chess. Pilot, thankfully, is mostly over the snit-fit he threw at LoMo. It's an ordinary day, if it can be considered ordinary without Zhaan, or Rygel, or even Stark. And most definitely without Aeryn.
I haven't seen Aeryn in over two months. I don't keep track of it that closely. Seventy-two days according to Pilot.
"Moya has detected a Peacekeeper signal!"
Frell.
I run out the door, down the hall, up the ramp, down the hall to Command, yelling first for D'Argo and then quizzing Pilot over the comms. By the time I get to Command D'Argo's there, still pulling his robe over his shoulders, and that cleaver is in his hands. I wonder sometimes if he sleeps with it. Chiana would know, but hell if I'm gonna ask.
"So it's not moving?" I skid to a stop next to D'Argo. One of these days I'm going to calculate how many miles of hallway Moya has. Maybe we can start an annual marathon. Winner gets two packets of foodcubes and a spare pulse rifle.
Chiana comes in as Pilot pulls up a holographic image of the immediate area; the Peacekeeper ship, if that's what it is, is at the limit of Moya's senses.
"No, Commander. It's holding position, but I'm certain that Moya has been detected."
D'Argo grunts at the hologram, and taps the controls to enlarge the image. Chi pokes her head over his shoulder and stares at it wide-eyed, then dances away when he shrugs irritably.
"Then what are we waiting for -- let's get the frell out of here!"
I shrug; can't argue Nebari pragmatism. "Fine by me. Pilot, there any reason *not* to Starburst away?"
His see-through head waggles. "None that I am aware of, Commander."
D'Argo has been staring at the image in the hologram for several seconds now. "D? You got a problem?" And when doesn't he have problems these days?
He grunts, then frowns. "Simply that that is a *very* small Peacekeeper ship. Not one I would expect to see alone this far out in the Uncharted Territories."
"But?" I wave him on. "That it?"
He growls at me but nods. So it's alone. Big deal. Maybe they're lost. Or maybe they're not alone. There's no good reason to investigate; the last time I wanted to discover the whys of the situation I got myself cloned. Once bitten -- I roll my eyes and turn back to the clamshell.
"Fine. Pilot, let's blow this popsicle stand." I don't want to give any of these guys a chance to collar us.
Pilot's in no mood to take any chances either: he starts hitting controls immediately. "Prepare to Starburst." And Moya leaps; I stagger against the console, and there's a wail from the comms as Jool is thrown from her bed. Chiana snickers.
Just an ordinary morning on Moya.
Ten hours later, and seven light-cycles away, we encounter another Peacekeeper patrol. It scans us, knows we're there, does nothing. We run anyway.
A day later, twenty-three light-cycles off at a random tangent, another one.
How are they finding us? You can't follow someone through Starburst. But they're tracking us. Fuck, they're *herding* us.
When I was a kid I used to watch those nature programs on PBS; one of them showed some African tribesmen hunting gazelle on foot. They'd spread out, and approach the gazelle, which would sprint away, and then the hunters would jog after the gazelle, which would dash away again, maybe not as far this time. The hunters would never stop, and sometimes they'd go for days. But they'd always run down the gazelle eventually, taking turns tracking their prey. Planning and stamina wins out over speed if you give it enough time.
Now Moya's the gazelle; and there's nothing we can do to escape. It lasts for days, running, hiding, sheltering among asteroids and in cold cometary belts far from any star. But they always find us. We've never felt our vulnerability more, as Moya runs herself ragged to avoid even a two-man scout vehicle. It's shift on and shift off, grabbing three arns of sleep at time, tearing through Pilot's navigation data to find somewhere, anywhere to go. No one will protect us from the Peacekeepers; no planet can hide us; and we can't keep running at this pace.
It ends twelve days after it started. Moya maneuvered desperately enough to avoid being driven into Peacekeeper space. Instead, we come out of Starburst for the last time a long way from any inhabited system, to find ourselves surrounded by Peacekeeper ships anyway.
I haven't seen this many in one place since we blew the hell out of that Gammak base. Moya tries to turn away, but she's exhausted and we don't have a snowball's chance.
The Vigilante on the monitor gets larger and larger, and Moya groans, and I'm slapping controls on the panel like it'll make any difference at all, and D'Argo's yelling something -- and then there's a bolt of lightning spearing at us, and everything just goes kablooey.
You can barely see to the other side of the hangar bay in the dim light, and the air is getting thin. Cables swing from the ceiling and there's some kind of fluid sprayed across the floor. There's a couple of DRDs trying to clean up, but it's like this damned near everywhere. Poor Moya.
D'Argo crouches behind a barrel of cesium fuel on one side of the main hangar door; I'm on the other side. We'd raced through the lower tiers to the storage room where most of the weapons were kept, and pulled several extra pulse rifles each. Problem is, most of them have been in storage since Moya was freed three cycles ago. Few of them have much charge left.
Still, they're weapons. And I'll use sticks and stones before I let Scorpius take me again.
We left the girls upstairs, trying to help Pilot get some kind of control -- any kind of control -- back. I saw what the immobilizer pulse did to Talyn, but this is crap on toast. Moya's drive is down for the count, and I can't hear the constant shoosh of the air circulators. She's a big ship. There's enough air. We'll be okay for a while. At least the gravity bladders weren't punctured: a firefight in free fall would suck.
She'll be okay.
Be okay, Moya.
Talyn's not coming. We sent the message days ago -- who knows if they even got it, or understood it. Maybe they're already dead, maybe the retrieval squad caught up with them.
*Quite possible, John. Peacekeeper retrieval squads have a great deal of . . . incentive. They're probably all dead now. Wouldn't it be better to surrender?*
*Shut up, Harv.* I can't listen to this. I'm not going to see Moya collared, D'Argo chained, and my brain taken apart in millimeter-thick slices. I can think of better ways to die.
For once D'Argo agrees with me: we meet them as they come, and we take as many with us as we can. It's all we can do.
So we wait.
And we wait.
No movement in the docking bay. It has to have been nearly an arn. Peacekeepers are punctual bastards; they probably even make the trains run on time. So where are they? They gonna starve us out?
Moya lurches. D'Argo staggers sideways and only just keeps his Qualta blade from hitting the floor.
"Pilot! What's going on?"
"I -- I don't know, Ka D'Argo. It's very hard to tell, with Moya so injured -- but we've lost the pressure seal in several outer chambers--" He pauses, and when he speaks again, he sounds less frazzled. "We have an incoming message from the Peacekeepers."
"Well?" snaps D'Argo. "Let's hear it!"
It's a woman's voice. "Renegades and criminals. Your Leviathan is paralyzed, and has been injected with repnart gas. Leave the ship within 500 microts and you will be picked up for processing. If you do not surrender, you will be paralyzed by the gas and then die. Painfully."
There's a brief pause, and Pilot says, "That's the entire message."
I look at D'Argo; he's paled as much as he can with that perpetual tan of his. "D, what's rep--what?"
He swears viciously in Luxan, swings around, his blade singing through the air, and smashes the toaster I'd been assembling on the workbench. When the pieces hit the floor he kicks them across the bay, then raises the blade again.
I grab his arm, hang on when he snarls at me. "Wooah, big man-- that's cesium!"
Give him a minute, he'll snap out of it, and he does. He shakes me off, and looks around the bay. The DRDs didn't even notice: they're still cleaning up the fluid on the floors, splicing cables. At least they still have power.
"Repnart gas. You don't want to die that way, John." He raises his arms to slide the blade back into its sheath. "If they used repnart gas, they won't come in. They won't have to."
I look around. We have a bunch of weapons that do us no good if the bastards won't come in range; a paralyzed ship; and a compromised ventilation system. What if they were lying, and they are coming in anyway? Can we risk leaving the hangar bay to find out?
Okay, time to re-evaluate. "Pilot! What's the situation? Are they right?"
"Yes, Commander. Moya has been harpooned, and gas is being distributed through most of the upper tiers forward of my den. My control of her systems is very limited after the immobilizer pulse, and I do not think I can purge the air. And -- and I am susceptible to repnart gas."
Oh, man. This is bad. Maybe we can stop it, close the doors and purge the air manually, before it gets too far. I slap my gun back into place and head out of the bay. I don't get very far before hearing Chiana's voice.
"Frell, what's that! It's moving!"
"Chiana!" D'Argo followed me, and we run down the hallway towards the ramp to the upper tiers. "What is it? Where are you?"
She doesn't answer. We turn a corner, race up a ramp, turn another corner. As I swing around the corner, pivoting off the wall with my left hand, I catch a glimpse of something moving off to the right. Something metallic, about the size of a fast-pitch softball, and spewing neon green gas like a jammed-open can of spray paint. "Shit! D'Argo, look!" One of the DRDs approaches it, pincers outstretched, and the little metal ball bounces over it without stopping. DRDs aren't going to be any help here.
Then I see another ball, and another one. They gather in a little pack at the far end of the corridor, and then split up, one heading right toward us, the other two bouncing through the hallways like a grounder through Bill Buckner's knees.
While I scramble to pull my gun, D'Argo grabs my arm and yanks me up the ramp. "Can't we shoot them?"
"No, there's dozens of bezner balls all through the ship by now. We're going to die." He doesn't stop moving. "So we have to find the girls and kill them before the gas does."
"Jesus! NO!" Killed enough friends accidentally since I got here.
He yanks me around in front of him. "I've seen people die from repnart gas poisoning, John. First your muscles lock so you can't move. Then you bleed from your pores until you die. I will *not* die that way."
Gas poisoning. Gas chambers. We're three tiers below and still several hundred yards aft of the den. Maybe -- "Chiana! You with Jool?"
Her voice is strained but controlled. "Yeah, we're in the upper maintenance bay. There's a couple of those balls in Command. You got a plan?"
D'Argo and I come out of the ramp, turn the corner, and see three balls rolling down the ramp toward us from above. Crap. D'Argo points up the hallway branching off this tier: two more are down there, and there's a dense cloud of smoke moving rapidly this way. We can't go any higher, and we can't work around. There aren't any access panels in the ramps, either. We are trapped, with no way to access the upper maintenance bays or Pilot's den.
I shake my head, spin around, and run back down the ramp. "Not much of one, but it should keep you guys alive. I want you and Jool to lock yourselves in the pressure chambers in cargo bay four. You know the ones."
"Frell, not those again!"
"Pip, it's that or you *die*. You got another option, I'd like to hear it." This is ugly. I turn off my comms. "D'Argo, how long does that stuff last in the atmosphere? Could they survive it?"
He shakes his head, eyes solemn. Guy may have a hair-trigger temper but he comes through in the clinch. "The gas goes inert after three hours but no one ever survives that long. And Pilot can't survive either vacuum or repnart gas."
"Crap." I turn my comms back on. "Okay, okay, we need another plan. Pilot can't fit into any of the suits, and there's no guarantee the gas won't penetrate the den."
"John," Jool's voice comes over the comms; breathless, but not screaming. For once. "There is breathing apparatus in the medical bay."
Thank you god. "Can you get one to Pilot in time?" We come down another tier; I skid on some fluid and D'Argo yanks me up. We keep running.
"Me?" Trust Jool to drop the altruism as soon as it becomes a problem. But I hear a scuffle and then a squeal that nearly melts my comms.
"We can do it!" says Chi. That's my girl. "What are you gonna do?" One more tier down and no bezner balls this far down yet.
I glance over my shoulder at D'Argo pounding down the hall behind me. We're nearly back at the hangar bay where we started. His eyes meet mine as we come through the door. He's already figured out what we have to do.
I was ready to die to keep from being captured, when it looked like we were all going to die anyway. But the gas goes inert in three hours, and the guys they want are me and D'Argo anyway. If there's a chance the girls and Pilot and maybe even Moya can be saved, we gotta take it. Even if it means risking Scorpius's dubious hospitality.
"We're going to make you some time."
Time, time, time the avenger. What we are probably going to do, is die. Badly.
Deja vu all over again; me and D'Argo off to give the universe the finger. Except this time I don't think we're getting any last-minute rescue. Aeryn's not here, and her Prowler's long gone. And D'Argo lost my good-luck charm. I wonder sometimes, what Yuri Gagarin would say, if he knew his puzzle ring is in orbit about a blackened moon in the Uncharted Territories.
It's all Pilot can do to get the hangar open for us, and the pod grazes against the bay doors like DK on a beer run. I played for scissors, so D'Argo is driving.
As arranged, Pilot vents two of the outer tiers as we clear the bay, and the grenade I left on the terrace goes off. Perfect timing: Moya looks like she's just decompressed explosively. Her lights dim, and I bite my lip. They have to buy the fakeout, have to believe she's completely out of commission, so they don't need to search her. It's our job to lead them away so Moya can slide into hiding behind the gas giant without anyone noticing.
We come out of Moya's shadow and turn into the clear.
"Frell." D'Argo barely whispers.
The command carrier hangs there before us in the sunlight, surrounded by a swarm of Prowlers. There's no way we can even hope to escape them; there isn't a habitable planet for a couple of light-cycles, and even on a good day a pod will only get to Hetch 5.
"Frelled, screwed, shafted, shagged, nailed, and fucked-over," I agree.
D'Argo laughs harshly and guides the pod on a sharp course away from the carrier, putting one of the gas giant's moons between us and Moya. When she's a couple hundred metras behind us, a squadron detaches from the Carrier and heads our way. They're almost on top of us, and we're just that much farther from Moya, when I hit the comms. "Yo, Scorpy! What's the deal, man? I thought you didn't care about the prisoners!"
But it's not Scorpius who answers. It's the same woman, her voice less cultured than Scorpy's. "Scorpius may not, but I certainly do. Our sensors indicate that you have the Luxan prisoner on board the transport pod. Surrender peacefully and you will not be harmed."
D'Argo's got the pod moving as fast as it can; the Prowlers are following us, and I can see the carrier itself begin to turn. They do still want us more than Moya.
"What, like I should believe you? Just how stupid do you think we are? Cause if we surrender, you're not gonna give us hot chocolate and cookies -- " Keep 'em talking, keep moving, just another few minutes and the moon's orbit will hide Moya from the carrier's sensors. Out of sight, out of mind: there's no one else on Moya they want, and she looks too badly damaged even for transport now. Let them think she's dead, drifting, let the girls have enough air to breathe --
The pod swerves suddenly, and a Prowler streaks past. D'Argo says something untranslatable about the pilot.
Dunno who this gal is, but Scorpius has got to be there too. No way he'd let anyone else get their hands on the one and only John Crichton. Well, so far as they know, I'm the one and only. "C'mon, Scorpy, you gonna let this broad kill us? You don't want to see all that valuable wormhole data go poof, do ya?"
"Power down the pod and surrender." Still not Scorpy, dammit. There's a brief pause. Suddenly her voice reverberates, as if we're hearing her over a loudspeaker. "You were directed to surrender and you refused. Open fire on the transport pod."
Not good.
"Goddammit, Scorpy! You're supposed to want us alive!"
Another Prowler goes by, and this one takes out the treblin-side stabilizer with one shot. Frelling well-trained xenophobic racist assholes. The pod tilts sideways, and we begin to spin on the pod's long axis. We get hit again, and the gravity goes.
"D'Argo? You ever think the universe is out to shaft us?"
No seatbelts. I slam against the ceiling, bounce away, narrowly miss clocking my head on the edge of the console. D'Argo's hanging onto the controls, but can't do much with the stabilizer gone. I manage to grab the back of my chair and pull myself closer to the console.
"I *know* it is."
Three trips in the shuttle -- you'd think I could handle zero-gee by now. But hitting the ceiling was a bad idea, and I can't seem to focus on anything long enough to calm down my inner ears. Free fall is hell on the gag reflex.
*Don't barf don't barf don't barf*
"Frell!" D'Argo yells, and slams both hands down on the controls. Of course, with no gravity, this sends him shooting across the cabin; I realize, too late, that turning my head to watch him is a bad idea. I lose the fight with my digestive tract, and breakfast spews all over the comms console. The bits that don't stick to the console form perfect globes that disperse through the pod like stars rushing outward from the big bang.
D'Argo howls -- I can't tell what he says but I expect it has something to do with what I had for breakfast. I'm suddenly filled with pity for DK; I never forgave him for ralphing all over my Mustang the summer after our freshman year. "Crichton!"
Harvey snickers, and I turn to see D'Argo batting at a vomit-ball like it's a badminton birdie, and that does it to me again. I'm too busy being miserable for the next twenty seconds to even notice the Marauder before it hits us hard. All I see is the floor rushing up to meet me.
*G'night, John-boy --*
***
END part 1
Author: cofax
Email: cofax@mindspring.com
Rating: R for language and violence. Consider yourself warned: this is a bumpy ride.
Spoilers: Through "Scratch & Sniff" only.
Summary: Humpty Dumpty took a big fall. John, John, Aeryn, Harvey, fights, flights, captures, and desperate choices.
Distribution: Please let me know, and keep my headers attached. When posting is complete the entire story will be archived at Leviathan and my website, http://cofax.freeservers.com.
Disclaimer: Just taking them out for a spin; I'll return them only a little worse for wear.
Notes: This story is finished and is being posted one section per day as the final edits are made. Please note that this story spins off from canon just after "Scratch & Sniff", and never comes back. In this little universe, "Infinite Possibilities" and the ensuing episodes have not happened. Other notes at end.
Feedback makes me do the wacky: please send it to cofax@mindspring.com.
***
Written on a Thumbnail
by cofax
March 2002
"Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first and second secrets of nature: Motion and Rest. The whole code of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring." - Ralph Waldo Emerson.
***
I used to feel like I was falling.
Every once in a while I would look up from splicing cables together thirty feet below Pilot, or wake to the sound of D'Argo rattling the hilt of his blade against my door, or see Chiana slicing green and purple spotted fruit into careful rounds, and I would blink, and none of it would make sense. I'd lose my sense of balance, and the world would begin to swim around me. As if gravity stopped working for a moment, and I was falling through a psychedelic rabbit-hole. Nothing made sense: not Moya's warm curves, not D'Argo's amusement, not the inhuman beauty of Chiana's face. It was just a mass of colors and shapes with no meaning to me. And then I would find my footing, and it would all fall back into place, my eyes and my inner ear functioning together again.
And then, after the Chair, I stopped fighting it. I stopped trying to compare any of it, any of life out here, to "normal". It wasn't what I had expected, it wasn't what my brain had been bred to deal with, and I'd been screwed over six ways from Sunday -- but you know what? I may have piss poor vision, and I won't live 800 cycles, but humans are adaptable beggars. So I adapted; I rode the flow; I made my life be what it was and not what I thought it should be.
And for a while, that seemed to work.
I'm not into existential dilemmas; I always left those to DK. But what do I do now that I've got this life, and I'm dealing with some crazy stuff, but I'm dealing, and I have friends and a gun and a coat -- and all of a sudden there's someone else in the room? And *he's* got the gun and the coat and the girl?
I feel like I'm falling all the time now.
*Part 1: Raven in the Storm*
"Commander Crichton!" Pilot's voice comes out of nowhere, and the knight goes flying. Chiana snickers, I glare and take a swipe at her ear. She dodges it easily.
"Yeah, Pilot?" I drop to my knees and scrounge for the knight under the table. It took me a long time to make this set and I don't want to lose any of the pieces.
It's about midmorning, I guess, if Moya has mornings. Morning for me, at any rate. Absent emergencies, there's only two or three of us awake at any one time nowadays. We can't leave Jool in command by herself yet, so Chi, D'Argo, and I are taking shifts round the clock. I'm actually on duty but there's not much going on and Pip stuck around to cook. She hates what I make, anyway. Not much call for grits and eggs in the Uncharteds, and what they call "eggs" don't cut it anyhow.
So there's a pile of dirty dishes in the galley and I'm trying to teach Chiana how to play chess. Pilot, thankfully, is mostly over the snit-fit he threw at LoMo. It's an ordinary day, if it can be considered ordinary without Zhaan, or Rygel, or even Stark. And most definitely without Aeryn.
I haven't seen Aeryn in over two months. I don't keep track of it that closely. Seventy-two days according to Pilot.
"Moya has detected a Peacekeeper signal!"
Frell.
I run out the door, down the hall, up the ramp, down the hall to Command, yelling first for D'Argo and then quizzing Pilot over the comms. By the time I get to Command D'Argo's there, still pulling his robe over his shoulders, and that cleaver is in his hands. I wonder sometimes if he sleeps with it. Chiana would know, but hell if I'm gonna ask.
"So it's not moving?" I skid to a stop next to D'Argo. One of these days I'm going to calculate how many miles of hallway Moya has. Maybe we can start an annual marathon. Winner gets two packets of foodcubes and a spare pulse rifle.
Chiana comes in as Pilot pulls up a holographic image of the immediate area; the Peacekeeper ship, if that's what it is, is at the limit of Moya's senses.
"No, Commander. It's holding position, but I'm certain that Moya has been detected."
D'Argo grunts at the hologram, and taps the controls to enlarge the image. Chi pokes her head over his shoulder and stares at it wide-eyed, then dances away when he shrugs irritably.
"Then what are we waiting for -- let's get the frell out of here!"
I shrug; can't argue Nebari pragmatism. "Fine by me. Pilot, there any reason *not* to Starburst away?"
His see-through head waggles. "None that I am aware of, Commander."
D'Argo has been staring at the image in the hologram for several seconds now. "D? You got a problem?" And when doesn't he have problems these days?
He grunts, then frowns. "Simply that that is a *very* small Peacekeeper ship. Not one I would expect to see alone this far out in the Uncharted Territories."
"But?" I wave him on. "That it?"
He growls at me but nods. So it's alone. Big deal. Maybe they're lost. Or maybe they're not alone. There's no good reason to investigate; the last time I wanted to discover the whys of the situation I got myself cloned. Once bitten -- I roll my eyes and turn back to the clamshell.
"Fine. Pilot, let's blow this popsicle stand." I don't want to give any of these guys a chance to collar us.
Pilot's in no mood to take any chances either: he starts hitting controls immediately. "Prepare to Starburst." And Moya leaps; I stagger against the console, and there's a wail from the comms as Jool is thrown from her bed. Chiana snickers.
Just an ordinary morning on Moya.
Ten hours later, and seven light-cycles away, we encounter another Peacekeeper patrol. It scans us, knows we're there, does nothing. We run anyway.
A day later, twenty-three light-cycles off at a random tangent, another one.
How are they finding us? You can't follow someone through Starburst. But they're tracking us. Fuck, they're *herding* us.
When I was a kid I used to watch those nature programs on PBS; one of them showed some African tribesmen hunting gazelle on foot. They'd spread out, and approach the gazelle, which would sprint away, and then the hunters would jog after the gazelle, which would dash away again, maybe not as far this time. The hunters would never stop, and sometimes they'd go for days. But they'd always run down the gazelle eventually, taking turns tracking their prey. Planning and stamina wins out over speed if you give it enough time.
Now Moya's the gazelle; and there's nothing we can do to escape. It lasts for days, running, hiding, sheltering among asteroids and in cold cometary belts far from any star. But they always find us. We've never felt our vulnerability more, as Moya runs herself ragged to avoid even a two-man scout vehicle. It's shift on and shift off, grabbing three arns of sleep at time, tearing through Pilot's navigation data to find somewhere, anywhere to go. No one will protect us from the Peacekeepers; no planet can hide us; and we can't keep running at this pace.
It ends twelve days after it started. Moya maneuvered desperately enough to avoid being driven into Peacekeeper space. Instead, we come out of Starburst for the last time a long way from any inhabited system, to find ourselves surrounded by Peacekeeper ships anyway.
I haven't seen this many in one place since we blew the hell out of that Gammak base. Moya tries to turn away, but she's exhausted and we don't have a snowball's chance.
The Vigilante on the monitor gets larger and larger, and Moya groans, and I'm slapping controls on the panel like it'll make any difference at all, and D'Argo's yelling something -- and then there's a bolt of lightning spearing at us, and everything just goes kablooey.
You can barely see to the other side of the hangar bay in the dim light, and the air is getting thin. Cables swing from the ceiling and there's some kind of fluid sprayed across the floor. There's a couple of DRDs trying to clean up, but it's like this damned near everywhere. Poor Moya.
D'Argo crouches behind a barrel of cesium fuel on one side of the main hangar door; I'm on the other side. We'd raced through the lower tiers to the storage room where most of the weapons were kept, and pulled several extra pulse rifles each. Problem is, most of them have been in storage since Moya was freed three cycles ago. Few of them have much charge left.
Still, they're weapons. And I'll use sticks and stones before I let Scorpius take me again.
We left the girls upstairs, trying to help Pilot get some kind of control -- any kind of control -- back. I saw what the immobilizer pulse did to Talyn, but this is crap on toast. Moya's drive is down for the count, and I can't hear the constant shoosh of the air circulators. She's a big ship. There's enough air. We'll be okay for a while. At least the gravity bladders weren't punctured: a firefight in free fall would suck.
She'll be okay.
Be okay, Moya.
Talyn's not coming. We sent the message days ago -- who knows if they even got it, or understood it. Maybe they're already dead, maybe the retrieval squad caught up with them.
*Quite possible, John. Peacekeeper retrieval squads have a great deal of . . . incentive. They're probably all dead now. Wouldn't it be better to surrender?*
*Shut up, Harv.* I can't listen to this. I'm not going to see Moya collared, D'Argo chained, and my brain taken apart in millimeter-thick slices. I can think of better ways to die.
For once D'Argo agrees with me: we meet them as they come, and we take as many with us as we can. It's all we can do.
So we wait.
And we wait.
No movement in the docking bay. It has to have been nearly an arn. Peacekeepers are punctual bastards; they probably even make the trains run on time. So where are they? They gonna starve us out?
Moya lurches. D'Argo staggers sideways and only just keeps his Qualta blade from hitting the floor.
"Pilot! What's going on?"
"I -- I don't know, Ka D'Argo. It's very hard to tell, with Moya so injured -- but we've lost the pressure seal in several outer chambers--" He pauses, and when he speaks again, he sounds less frazzled. "We have an incoming message from the Peacekeepers."
"Well?" snaps D'Argo. "Let's hear it!"
It's a woman's voice. "Renegades and criminals. Your Leviathan is paralyzed, and has been injected with repnart gas. Leave the ship within 500 microts and you will be picked up for processing. If you do not surrender, you will be paralyzed by the gas and then die. Painfully."
There's a brief pause, and Pilot says, "That's the entire message."
I look at D'Argo; he's paled as much as he can with that perpetual tan of his. "D, what's rep--what?"
He swears viciously in Luxan, swings around, his blade singing through the air, and smashes the toaster I'd been assembling on the workbench. When the pieces hit the floor he kicks them across the bay, then raises the blade again.
I grab his arm, hang on when he snarls at me. "Wooah, big man-- that's cesium!"
Give him a minute, he'll snap out of it, and he does. He shakes me off, and looks around the bay. The DRDs didn't even notice: they're still cleaning up the fluid on the floors, splicing cables. At least they still have power.
"Repnart gas. You don't want to die that way, John." He raises his arms to slide the blade back into its sheath. "If they used repnart gas, they won't come in. They won't have to."
I look around. We have a bunch of weapons that do us no good if the bastards won't come in range; a paralyzed ship; and a compromised ventilation system. What if they were lying, and they are coming in anyway? Can we risk leaving the hangar bay to find out?
Okay, time to re-evaluate. "Pilot! What's the situation? Are they right?"
"Yes, Commander. Moya has been harpooned, and gas is being distributed through most of the upper tiers forward of my den. My control of her systems is very limited after the immobilizer pulse, and I do not think I can purge the air. And -- and I am susceptible to repnart gas."
Oh, man. This is bad. Maybe we can stop it, close the doors and purge the air manually, before it gets too far. I slap my gun back into place and head out of the bay. I don't get very far before hearing Chiana's voice.
"Frell, what's that! It's moving!"
"Chiana!" D'Argo followed me, and we run down the hallway towards the ramp to the upper tiers. "What is it? Where are you?"
She doesn't answer. We turn a corner, race up a ramp, turn another corner. As I swing around the corner, pivoting off the wall with my left hand, I catch a glimpse of something moving off to the right. Something metallic, about the size of a fast-pitch softball, and spewing neon green gas like a jammed-open can of spray paint. "Shit! D'Argo, look!" One of the DRDs approaches it, pincers outstretched, and the little metal ball bounces over it without stopping. DRDs aren't going to be any help here.
Then I see another ball, and another one. They gather in a little pack at the far end of the corridor, and then split up, one heading right toward us, the other two bouncing through the hallways like a grounder through Bill Buckner's knees.
While I scramble to pull my gun, D'Argo grabs my arm and yanks me up the ramp. "Can't we shoot them?"
"No, there's dozens of bezner balls all through the ship by now. We're going to die." He doesn't stop moving. "So we have to find the girls and kill them before the gas does."
"Jesus! NO!" Killed enough friends accidentally since I got here.
He yanks me around in front of him. "I've seen people die from repnart gas poisoning, John. First your muscles lock so you can't move. Then you bleed from your pores until you die. I will *not* die that way."
Gas poisoning. Gas chambers. We're three tiers below and still several hundred yards aft of the den. Maybe -- "Chiana! You with Jool?"
Her voice is strained but controlled. "Yeah, we're in the upper maintenance bay. There's a couple of those balls in Command. You got a plan?"
D'Argo and I come out of the ramp, turn the corner, and see three balls rolling down the ramp toward us from above. Crap. D'Argo points up the hallway branching off this tier: two more are down there, and there's a dense cloud of smoke moving rapidly this way. We can't go any higher, and we can't work around. There aren't any access panels in the ramps, either. We are trapped, with no way to access the upper maintenance bays or Pilot's den.
I shake my head, spin around, and run back down the ramp. "Not much of one, but it should keep you guys alive. I want you and Jool to lock yourselves in the pressure chambers in cargo bay four. You know the ones."
"Frell, not those again!"
"Pip, it's that or you *die*. You got another option, I'd like to hear it." This is ugly. I turn off my comms. "D'Argo, how long does that stuff last in the atmosphere? Could they survive it?"
He shakes his head, eyes solemn. Guy may have a hair-trigger temper but he comes through in the clinch. "The gas goes inert after three hours but no one ever survives that long. And Pilot can't survive either vacuum or repnart gas."
"Crap." I turn my comms back on. "Okay, okay, we need another plan. Pilot can't fit into any of the suits, and there's no guarantee the gas won't penetrate the den."
"John," Jool's voice comes over the comms; breathless, but not screaming. For once. "There is breathing apparatus in the medical bay."
Thank you god. "Can you get one to Pilot in time?" We come down another tier; I skid on some fluid and D'Argo yanks me up. We keep running.
"Me?" Trust Jool to drop the altruism as soon as it becomes a problem. But I hear a scuffle and then a squeal that nearly melts my comms.
"We can do it!" says Chi. That's my girl. "What are you gonna do?" One more tier down and no bezner balls this far down yet.
I glance over my shoulder at D'Argo pounding down the hall behind me. We're nearly back at the hangar bay where we started. His eyes meet mine as we come through the door. He's already figured out what we have to do.
I was ready to die to keep from being captured, when it looked like we were all going to die anyway. But the gas goes inert in three hours, and the guys they want are me and D'Argo anyway. If there's a chance the girls and Pilot and maybe even Moya can be saved, we gotta take it. Even if it means risking Scorpius's dubious hospitality.
"We're going to make you some time."
Time, time, time the avenger. What we are probably going to do, is die. Badly.
Deja vu all over again; me and D'Argo off to give the universe the finger. Except this time I don't think we're getting any last-minute rescue. Aeryn's not here, and her Prowler's long gone. And D'Argo lost my good-luck charm. I wonder sometimes, what Yuri Gagarin would say, if he knew his puzzle ring is in orbit about a blackened moon in the Uncharted Territories.
It's all Pilot can do to get the hangar open for us, and the pod grazes against the bay doors like DK on a beer run. I played for scissors, so D'Argo is driving.
As arranged, Pilot vents two of the outer tiers as we clear the bay, and the grenade I left on the terrace goes off. Perfect timing: Moya looks like she's just decompressed explosively. Her lights dim, and I bite my lip. They have to buy the fakeout, have to believe she's completely out of commission, so they don't need to search her. It's our job to lead them away so Moya can slide into hiding behind the gas giant without anyone noticing.
We come out of Moya's shadow and turn into the clear.
"Frell." D'Argo barely whispers.
The command carrier hangs there before us in the sunlight, surrounded by a swarm of Prowlers. There's no way we can even hope to escape them; there isn't a habitable planet for a couple of light-cycles, and even on a good day a pod will only get to Hetch 5.
"Frelled, screwed, shafted, shagged, nailed, and fucked-over," I agree.
D'Argo laughs harshly and guides the pod on a sharp course away from the carrier, putting one of the gas giant's moons between us and Moya. When she's a couple hundred metras behind us, a squadron detaches from the Carrier and heads our way. They're almost on top of us, and we're just that much farther from Moya, when I hit the comms. "Yo, Scorpy! What's the deal, man? I thought you didn't care about the prisoners!"
But it's not Scorpius who answers. It's the same woman, her voice less cultured than Scorpy's. "Scorpius may not, but I certainly do. Our sensors indicate that you have the Luxan prisoner on board the transport pod. Surrender peacefully and you will not be harmed."
D'Argo's got the pod moving as fast as it can; the Prowlers are following us, and I can see the carrier itself begin to turn. They do still want us more than Moya.
"What, like I should believe you? Just how stupid do you think we are? Cause if we surrender, you're not gonna give us hot chocolate and cookies -- " Keep 'em talking, keep moving, just another few minutes and the moon's orbit will hide Moya from the carrier's sensors. Out of sight, out of mind: there's no one else on Moya they want, and she looks too badly damaged even for transport now. Let them think she's dead, drifting, let the girls have enough air to breathe --
The pod swerves suddenly, and a Prowler streaks past. D'Argo says something untranslatable about the pilot.
Dunno who this gal is, but Scorpius has got to be there too. No way he'd let anyone else get their hands on the one and only John Crichton. Well, so far as they know, I'm the one and only. "C'mon, Scorpy, you gonna let this broad kill us? You don't want to see all that valuable wormhole data go poof, do ya?"
"Power down the pod and surrender." Still not Scorpy, dammit. There's a brief pause. Suddenly her voice reverberates, as if we're hearing her over a loudspeaker. "You were directed to surrender and you refused. Open fire on the transport pod."
Not good.
"Goddammit, Scorpy! You're supposed to want us alive!"
Another Prowler goes by, and this one takes out the treblin-side stabilizer with one shot. Frelling well-trained xenophobic racist assholes. The pod tilts sideways, and we begin to spin on the pod's long axis. We get hit again, and the gravity goes.
"D'Argo? You ever think the universe is out to shaft us?"
No seatbelts. I slam against the ceiling, bounce away, narrowly miss clocking my head on the edge of the console. D'Argo's hanging onto the controls, but can't do much with the stabilizer gone. I manage to grab the back of my chair and pull myself closer to the console.
"I *know* it is."
Three trips in the shuttle -- you'd think I could handle zero-gee by now. But hitting the ceiling was a bad idea, and I can't seem to focus on anything long enough to calm down my inner ears. Free fall is hell on the gag reflex.
*Don't barf don't barf don't barf*
"Frell!" D'Argo yells, and slams both hands down on the controls. Of course, with no gravity, this sends him shooting across the cabin; I realize, too late, that turning my head to watch him is a bad idea. I lose the fight with my digestive tract, and breakfast spews all over the comms console. The bits that don't stick to the console form perfect globes that disperse through the pod like stars rushing outward from the big bang.
D'Argo howls -- I can't tell what he says but I expect it has something to do with what I had for breakfast. I'm suddenly filled with pity for DK; I never forgave him for ralphing all over my Mustang the summer after our freshman year. "Crichton!"
Harvey snickers, and I turn to see D'Argo batting at a vomit-ball like it's a badminton birdie, and that does it to me again. I'm too busy being miserable for the next twenty seconds to even notice the Marauder before it hits us hard. All I see is the floor rushing up to meet me.
*G'night, John-boy --*
***
END part 1