MOYA MET TALYN AT THE DESIGNATED COORDINATES.
They would proceed to Hogatha Primus and Moya would meet them there after they dropped Jool off on her homeworld. Miriya took Crichton over in The Edge where he got a chance to see her handiwork. The ship looked like a Marauder, built on that spaceframe, but inside it was a conglomeration of disparate ship controls, parts.
Astonishingly, however, it all worked flawlessly.
"If I ever get myself a decent ship, I know who to send it to for customization." He told her, impressed.
"You say the sweetest things," she smirked at him. "I'm not cheap either, John."
"I didn't expect you to be."
He countered, earning a light punch in the stomach. Miriya piloted well too, cruised smoothly toward Talyn.
"Where the hell did I put that duffel…?" Crichton said absently, wandered back to check. Miriya watched him go briefly, turned back to her controls.
She knew his history, more or less – well, knew the stories, anyway. It wasn't every day you met legends, and certainly not every day you recreated with one. She knew all the names. One missing though. There was another ex-Peacekeeper supposedly on that Leviathan, conspicuous by her absence – the deserter Aeryn Sun. She was also supposed to be his lover.
So… where was she – and did Miriya even care?
Not surprisingly, she didn't. Miriya had known who he was pretty much from the moment she'd seen him and her intrigue had goaded her on for a while, led to her offer of recreation which she'd been sure she'd regret.
He was the most famous outlaw going after all and handsome which never hurt. So… what-the-Hezmana, even if it had been lousy, well, doing it was half the battle won.
Only it hadn't been lousy. It had been a little strange, though that was only because he did things no usual Sebacean would have cared about – the point to recreation was to relieve tension and then sleep - but… frell – she'd only slept the last two days after she'd been too exhausted to stay awake.
Frelling frustrating. He was supposed to come to her. He didn't. She found herself going back over and over and it wasn't supposed to take that long to get to the main event for frell's sake and it certainly wasn't supposed to feel that frelling good. He'd done… maddening things - and she'd just laid there and taken it until those delicious little spots began dancing in her eyes forcing her to grab his head, trying to keep him there and…
Frell! Stop it! You have work to do!
This doesn't happen. Males wanted her. She did not go back for seconds and thirds on her own. They had to earn it. That was the frellin' point.
She had to tread carefully. Don't get distracted. It was likely how he turned the deserter.
Still… while she was here, there was nothing to stop her from indulging a little…
Damn him.
Miriya shook her head as he was returning, trying to concentrate on her approach. She again briefly wondered what happened to Sun. What did he do to entice her to desert in the first place – was it that thing he did with his lips on her…?
Stop it, Miriya, she chastised herself, trying for some mental ice water. It's just the novelty of it. Don't make a recreation into something it isn't. There was a little voice somewhere down there, however, that was calling her a big fat liar.
Crichton stopped behind her seat, leaned over it, looking at the approaching Leviathan.
"Talyn's bay is a little different from Moya's," he told her, right by her ear. "The approach is a lot shorter."
She nodded, hesitated, looked back at him.
"It's just sex, right?"
Where the frell, she wondered, had that come from?
"Just sex." he echoed. "It's just 'recreation', right? Sebacean distancing. Isn't that what you said? It's not like you care."
He was looking out the main viewport. It wasn't said with any kind of reproach or coldly, it was just said.
Miriya looked back to her controls, nodded, feeling oddly disappointed when she knew she had been handed a way off the hook.
"You don't like it?" He asked, looking down at her.
"Oh, no," she laughed, suddenly, feeling flustered. "I like it."
"Life's cheap out here, Miriya. Enjoy it while you can, regret nothing, right? That a philosophy enough?" He said matter-of-factly. "All you ever have to say is 'no'. Then it's done."
She turned in her seat. That easy, was it? Bastard.
"Just keep it civil?" She tried a joke to ease her own tension. A tension she knew she shouldn't have had. 'Contamination', they'd say. I think I get it, now. "It'll be just matter-of-fact."
"Sure." He stepped back. "By the book."
She leaned out, jabbed a finger in his face. I'll be a damn hermit first.
"You do that and I'll frelling shoot you."
He sat in her co-pilot's chair, put his feet up, looked insolent.
"Have it your way."
"I intend to," she told him in no uncertain terms.
To Hezmana with it, she told herself, I'll worry about repercussions later.
THEY STEPPED ONTO TALYN'S COMMAND, TO BE GREETED BY CRAIS.
Crichton was going to introduce them. He'd been per-empted by a contemptuous laugh from Miriya.
"You have some righteously strange friends," Miriya told him, not at all amused. "They are not gonna like this at Abbanerex."
"He's not my friend." Crichton told her. "You know him?"
Crais seemed at a loss.
"I am not familiar with…"
"Captain Bialar Crais," Miriya said with that same contempt, "let's just say I know of him."
"Again I am at a loss…" Crais tried.
"I doubt you'd remember," She replied acidly, "just a little thing called the 'Dredoon Incident', maybe seven cycles ago." She turned to Crichton. "He had the best time. He was in charge of a Leviathan hunt - a bit of a cull too, wasn't it?" She saw Crais go a little pale. "Killed twelve - including younglings - slaughtered the Yh'vraini trying to protect them."
Crichton grimaced as Crais looked away. Crais remembered it a little too well. Talyn rumbled around them.
"You there for it?" Crichton directed at Miriya.
"The aftermath." Her hands had clenched into fists. "Lost a few friends that day. He raided the frelling Mithrai-Edann. Their Breeding Space. We had to kill the ones he crippled with his defective damn collars."
"I am not that man any longer." He straightened. "No longer."
"I'm sure your change of heart matters now." She said icily.
"You have the coordinates for Hogatha, Crais?" Crichton interrupted. Moya had gone to Starburst long since.
Crais nodded.
"Talyn, please prepare for Starburst." Talyn warbled and started to tuck in. There was juddering jolt and he followed his mother into slipstream.
"Cripple another one?" Miriya spat.
"I acknowledge my sins." Crais rejoined calmly. "All of them."
"Direct neural interface." She ran a knowing and critical eye over Talyn's interior. "So this is one of your monsters."
Crais turned casually to her, his eyes darkening.
"Talyn is no monster!"
"No. You are." She turned to Crichton, stepped closer to him. "I'll be on The Edge. Air stinks in here."
"I am a monster." Crais said in a low tone. "I accept that."
Miriya sent him a withering glare and walked out.
"Moya come from that cull?" Crichton said, leaning against the manual override console, arms folded.
"She did." Crais was candid. "I will encounter much like this, I think. It is not easy to prepare for, I must say."
"At least you're honest."
"An honest monster is yet a monster," Crais said with a sigh, "I am not seeking forgiveness."
"There isn't any," Crichton agreed, "not for you."
"No." Crais squared himself. "Have you any information on what will be required to help Talyn, Commander? More details?"
"The kid will probably be down for awhile. Miriya said something about neural grafts. I also suspect you'll be having to pull your plug to the kid for a while, too. How long depends on how extensively they'll have to rewire, as it were."
"I had suspected as much."
Crichton pushed off the console.
"It should only take us about a solar day or so to get to Hogatha." He walked a few paces, stopped. "Oh, by the way, Crais…"
"Yes?"
"Keep in mind that since we're paying for this – your say in what happens is going to be frelling limited. This is for the kid – not you."
"I understand that, Commander."
"Just as long as you remember it."
Crichton walked out and Crais followed him through the linkage, curious about him and Breannados. What she had said had been rather painful. It had been true, of course, which made it worse. Talyn knew all of his atrocities. There was no hiding anything through their link. Talyn accepted though he did not forgive, either.
I can only pay, Crais told himself, though it will never be enough.
Crichton found her on The Edge, seated at a small table in her mess, tapping her fingers in an agitated manner.
Tik-tak, her nails went.
"Frellin' drags all Sebaceans down," she muttered, still angry, "makes me…"
"What?" He sat opposite her, watched her fingers continue tik-tak-ing.
"Glad you're not Sebacean." She brushed a strand of her red hair off her face. "Feel disgruntled and faintly disgusted."
"He's not that guy anymore, I guess," Crichton knew it sounded lame, though there was truth in it, "he accepts it."
"No remorse in him." She was certain. "Stick him in a frozen corner of Hezmana."
Crichton stuck a finger between her tapping ones, stopping them.
"Kill 'im and that's a kind of justice - for him. He's done then, done and over. He can't change anything and he knows no one is ever gonna buy remorse from him."
Miriya just shook her head. That was true.
"You want him to suffer?" Crichton added. "He's doing that. He's as alone as he can get. Only him and Talyn - his creation, yeah. Now his burden."
"Oh, please…!" She dropped her head onto her hands.
"I know. I'm not defending him. I'm the last dude to ever do that. I think I get it, though. We just keep going, all we monsters. It's all we've got."
"Are you a monster?" She looked up, her eyes quizzical, fingers tightening around the ones he'd yet to pull back.
"Probably." He turned his hand over and she took it, examined the lines on it. "Is it done?"
"Done?" A violet eye regarded him.
"You saying 'no'?"
He saw a small smile form.
"Not likely." A small puff of breath. "Not now. Not yet."
She abruptly stood, pulling him up and to her with the hand she would not relinquish.
"Come be my monster for a while, would you?" She pressed herself to him. "Just for a while."
Crichton looked into the distance over her head.
"I can do that," he told her, making no promises.
"LET ME DO THE TALKING," MIRIYA TOLD THEM AS THEY EASED INTO ORBIT AROUND HOGATHA PRIMUS.
"Do it." Crichton replied, glancing at back at Crais, who was standing stiffly stoically behind them.
Crichton was watching the planet roll around outside the forward viewport.
"Where the hell have you been?" he said in his head at the specter suddenly present. "Unlike you to keep your mouth shut this long."
Scorpius' doppleganger was "wandering" around Talyn's Command and had stopped behind Miriya, casting an appreciative eye over her.
"Merely giving you some space, John – after your recent… trauma." He turned to regard his host. "'A ghost', now, am I? Interesting."
"What's in a name? Harvey was in his head. You're in mine. We're both ghosts now. Harvey suits you, I guess. A figment of a figment."
"I accept it and your reasoning behind it. You believe us to be just shadows now?"
"There's your trauma. Interesting word for it. Do I act like I've been traumatized?"
Harve wandered around Miriya all the way, a leer on his face.
"You do, actually. Interesting therapy you've chosen. Ms. Breannados here is quite fetching. Definitely worth exploring, I think."
Crichton chuckled in his new dry way, without humour.
"That she is. Layers upon layers."
"You're a suspicious one."
"Eternally."
"A rather good habit to cultivate."
"I think so. She offered. Ports, storms, all that shit."
"Do I detect just the faintest trace of bitterness in your tone?"
"Women are stronger than we are. I don't care because she certainly doesn't. It's a strength they all have."
Harve looked her over again.
"Tsk – such heavy cynicism. Unbecoming, John."
Crichton just scoffed.
"Why're you here?"
"I have concerns."
"Such as?"
Harve gestured to Miriya, to take in all of her.
"What do you want? Guarantees?" Crichton scoffed. "You gotta learn to relax."
"If only it were so easy. I believe this belief you have been concocting of late is dangerous to contemplate. Certainly to attempt to implement. My presence in and of itself should be all the proof you need."
"You losing it? What 'belief'? Proof of what?"
"That you are not John Crichton."
Crichton just snorted derisively.
"Why? Because I have the face, the voice, the name? I didn't even rate a fond frell off."
"How is that proof of disdain?"
"Let's ask her… oh, wait.."
Harve shook his head, put his arms behind his back and began to pace.
"That is still a shaky proposition for which to base an entire life, John." Harve conceded.
"People live their entire lives based on silly beliefs all the time. You're a Harve and I'm just some damn shadow waiting for the light to erase us. We are what we are."
"You may have a point."
He eyed the shade of Scorpius for a long moment.
"Let's get one thing perfectly straight in that vein - you work for me, O Figment. I will lobotomize myself before anyone ever again gets inside my head. Like your other, you can also be erased."
"I am your ally, John." Harve could feel how serious Crichton was - there was no doubting his sincerity.
"No. You're an employee. My brain, my space. You're gonna start paying rent." He shrugged. "Or you get evicted. Couldn't be simpler." Crichton dismissed him with a "You think about it, Harve. Contemplate it. Things are different now."
Without saying anything further, Harve nodded and vanished. Crichton looked up to notice both Miriya and Crais looking at him oddly.
"What?"
"We have clearance to dock, John. I asked you if you were okay with that."
He shook his head, feeling faintly foolish as he walked forward.
"Yeah, of course. Let's do this thing."
Miriya nodded, and told Crichton told Crais to head for the station that was looming before them. Crichton looked out and saw it then.
Abbanerex was huge, a central vertical complex with long cylindrical tubes running horizontally to it. It looked like someone had supersized a game of jacks – with balls and jacks stuck together. There also appeared to be a great deal of activity around it. He counted about four Leviathans already docked to the station, and as they came around, he could see others in the long tubes, being swarmed over by tiny figures. The tubes he deduced must have been the repair and rehab bays. Talyn eased into a standard docking port, there was a slight bump, and then he stopped.
"We are docked," Crais informed them. "Talyn reports grapples and processing tubes are being attached to him."
"That's a standard courtesy, Abbanerex will top off his calorics." Miriya told Crichton, refusing to address Crais directly. "He'll also be scanned."
"Scanned? Why?" Crais seemed not too pleased with the idea.
"Any Leviathan that comes here comes here because the crew requires repairs or whatever – no other reason. He'll be scanned to see if he qualifies and for security reasons. The Warlords have standards about what they'll tolerate when it comes to mods on Leviathans." She turned serious eyes to Crichton. "I probably should have told you this earlier – Talyn might not qualify."
"Excuse me?" Crais asked, curtly.
"Yeah – you might have informed me of that little detail a few days ago, Miriya."
"Well, he's a special case, because he's armed – some people try to arm Leviathans artificially. He was born this way, so they might make an exception."
Crichton turned a baleful look on her, turned and motioned Crais to follow.
"They had better. We haven't come all this frelling way for nothing."
He stopped at the door and Miriya came as well.
"And we're not leaving until he's fixed – one way or another."
