Episode 3 - Trial by Fire
"Well, I try to save a life a day. Usually, it's my own...." -- John Crichton
"So, that's the big mystery ship, huh?" John commented, staring at the picture on the viewscreen.
It had taken three weekens of travel to reach the location of the missing carrier. And almost that long for tempers to finally settle down between Crichton and Jelko.
Finally, though, John had accepted that Gilina was right--he should be grateful for their one success and not dwell on opportunities lost. They had good data now; hopefully, it would be enough.
In the meantime, the PKs had dragged his ass halfway across the galaxy looking for a shipwreck.
"That's the Zelbinion," Gilina said, her voice hushed with wonder and sadness.
"Man, someone sure pounded the hell out of that thing. Hope whoever it was isn't hanging around anymore."
"No species we're aware of should have been able to destroy her," the other tech, Saitek, said from behind them. "She was the largest and most powerful ship the Peacekeepers ever constructed, and was commanded by one of our most revered heroes, Captain Selto Durka. That's why we were ordered to do a full survey; High Command needs an explanation for her defeat."
The three of them were huddled together in the sensor bay the Marauder had been equipped with for the wormhole experiments. Marauders were very versatile spacecraft, with a number of sub-types within the class. They performed tasks ranging from straight cargo and troop transportation to long-range scouting, intelligence gathering, and commando raids. Battle types had more power and weapons, while the cargo and troop transports were stripped down to provide more interior space. Fitting one of the cargo variety out for a scientific mission such as this had been relatively easy; the techs back at the carrier had installed the complex sensors, recorders, and computers here in one storage room, and then modified the tiny cargo transfer bay so they could store, repair, and launch the Farscape module.
The coms on the wall crackled to life, and Officer Sun's voice sounded into the room. "Renaez, Saitek, prepare all sensors for a full exterior scan. We'll get a full survey of the hull before boarding."
"Aye, sir," both techs called back, jumping into action. John stepped back out of their way, letting the experts handle things.
The image on the screen grew and spun as the Marauder slowly circled the Zelbinion, first one way and then another. John whistled under his breath at the severity and extent of the destruction. The ship had essentially been gutted from beneath, and thousands of pieces of debris still spun lazily in slow orbit of the battered behemoth.
After several hundred microts of cataloguing damage and decay, the view suddenly swerved. "Hostiles detected, secure for combat," Sun announced on shipwide coms in a serious tone. "Esk and Fala, man weapons."
Up in command, Aeryn and her superior were focused, almost relieved to finally have a real threat to deal with. This was what a soldier was for.
"Sheyang vessel is priming its plasma conductor, preparing to fire," Officer Sun reported from her position at the helm. "Holding at fifty metras, outside our weapons' range. Estimate approximately a hundred microts before they can fire."
"Any communications?" Jelko asked.
"None, sir. They can see from our profile that we're no match for them, so why bother negotiating?"
"Options?"
There was a short pause; Aeryn wasn't used to being asked for an opinion. "We could shelter inside the Zelbinion, sir."
"Agreed," he nodded. Aeryn quickly set a least-time course to get into shelter behind the main body of the wreck. "Unfortunately," Jelko pointed out, "the Zelbinion has no active defenses. Even those Sheyang cowards could destroy it right now. It may not be much protection."
"The Sheyang are scavengers, sir," Aeryn replied, thinking fast even as she spoke, "so they are unlikely to attempt to destroy the wreck to get to us. It would cost them too much valuable equipment they might otherwise be able to salvage. I think they will most likely send soldiers aboard to pursue us. In that case, we can fight them on more even terms."
"And in the mean time, we can have the techs attempt to get one of the Zelbinion's weapons systems operational again. With a carrier's frag cannon, even an old one, we could blast that frelling ship apart in one salvo." Jelko sounded bloodthirsty; he disliked retreating from any enemy, even when they outgunned him. Maybe especially when they outgunned him.
"Sir!" came the voice of one of the techs through the coms. "Enemy ship has fired, impact in seven microts!"
"Can we evadein time?" Jelko demanded, turning to his pilot.
"Possibly, sir. All hands, brace for acceleration!" Aeryn called out over the shipwide coms.
It had been a chaotic and terrifying ten minutes for John Crichton. The Sheyangs' first shot, though they'd avoided the full force of it, had sent a tremendous power surge through every console in the sensor bay, blowing out screens and starting small spot fires behind the panels. The impact had set the ship spinning and thrown them all to the deck; John found himself lying with Gilina sprawled on top of him. Under other circumstances, this might have been the opportunity he'd been waiting for....
But, things being as they were, he just let go and helped her to her feet the second Sun regained control and the ship stopped jostling them around.
John was kept busy putting out fires while the others scrambled to keep essential systems functioning. The Sheyang ship fired a second time, grazing their treblin side engines, before Officer Sun finally squeezed the Marauder through a small opening in the Zelbinion's secondary hangar doors. The hangar itself had long since been vented to space, but the Sheyang ship was too large to follow them, and the superstructure of the carrier's hull would protect them for a time while they regrouped.
Jelko assigned Tech Saitek to stay with the Marauder and attempt to repair the damaged engines and communications systems. Crewman Fala would stay with him, both to assist as necessary and provide protection against the Sheyang boarding parties that were sure to follow. Hopefully, the vacuum surrounding the Marauder would provide some protection, as well.
John and Gilina would accompany Jelko, Sun, and Esk into the heart of the Zelbinion. They would make their way to the ship's weapons rooms, hoping that one or more of the main cannons could be rendered operational by a tech and a half-trained alien, while the soldiers attempted to draw the Sheyang raiders into traps and ambushes.
Since the part of the ship they had landed in was a vacuum, they all had to suit up in the black PK spacesuits. It was only a minor annoyance, and in a way, they'd been supremely lucky; had the Sheyang arrived even an arn later, the Marauder would have been firmly docked to one of the exterior airlocks leading to a pressurized section, helpless and vulnerable. The Sheyang weapon would have incinerated it completely, leaving them trapped. Fortunately, the PK suits were a thousand times easier to put on and maneuver in than the old IASA monstrosities John had trained in. He thought it might be the single best improvement the PKs had made in their technological advancement.
It took the group half an arn to climb through the debris and shattered superstructure to find an airlock leading to a still-pressurized portion of the derelict ship. Once they assured themselves that the air was still breathable, the suits were removed and tucked away in a nearby storage container for use on their return.
John had spent the last half-cycle aboard a ship very much like what this one had once been. He'd considered Crais' carrier dark and depressing, the décor Spartan, the corridors claustrophobic, and the whole ambience reminiscent of an old Soviet gulag. But the Zelbinion almost made him homesick for that home away from home. After a century of drifting dead in space, the passageways were dark and, strangely, often wet from water trickling down through the conduits from above. Dozens of bodies, long since decomposed, lay scattered about. The only illumination came from the lights mounted on the soldiers' rifles, and from a couple of hand-held flashlights carried by the techs. The constantly moving shadows made the journey that much spookier.
"Where'd all this water come from?" John whispered to Gilina.
Gilina glanced nervously at the soldiers leading them, then leaned over towards John. "Some of the planetary terrain reconstructions may have lost structural containment during the last battle, or in the cycles since. Uncontained, the water would seep out into the conduits and pervade the entire ship. When it reaches the lowest decks, the heat from the old partanium power core probably evaporates it into the atmosphere, and the water in the air condenses on the cold surfaces of the inner hull on every deck. The evaporation/condensation cycle explains the constant dripping."
John really wasn't listening to most of the explanation, distracted by two simple words Gilina had spoken in passing. "Planetary terrain? Wait a minute, are you telling me this ship had places that weren't all metal walls and red paint?" John was suddenly envious of this long-dead crew, to have been so blessed.
"Of course; all Peacekeeper carriers have them. Ours has about forty such terrains all through the ship, and the Zelbinion had more than that. The plants convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, and the reservoirs are rich with microscopic life forms that help purify the water we use for drinking and bathing. The soldiers use the terrains for ground combat training, too, and some people go there in their off duty time to relax and gossip."
"What? Well, damn!" John cursed, a bit too loudly. Jelko turned and shushed him, his expression annoyed. Well, more annoyed than usual, anyway. John lowered his voice back to a whisper, but with no less force. "I sure as hell wish someone had bothered to mention that little feature to me before; I'd have given my right arm some days to see a tree, smell a flower, lie on the grass--or whatever you guys use. I miss the color green. Promise me, when we get out of here, first thing you do when we get back is show me to the nearest terrain. Okay?"
"All right, John," Gilina agreed, without much enthusiasm.
They moved on through what seemed like miles of dank, creepy hallways, John and Gilina doing their best to stay quiet while the commandos leading them moved with effortless stealth, checking every junction they passed for hidden dangers, and communicating with each other in silent hand signs.
John found himself watching Aeryn Sun. The intricate dance of muscles and grace. When he'd first met her, she'd been a captured prisoner, and nearly as disoriented by the situation they were caught up in as he was. Now, though, she was in her element, and he was seeing her in her full, confident, self-assured glory.
In spite of the tension of the situation--or perhaps because of it--John felt his body respond. He allowed himself a rueful smirk. Trapped in the dark with two beautiful women, and there was nothing to be done with either of them. Gilina was pretty, and smart, and just as insatiably curious about the universe as he was. She was everything he'd ever found attractive in a woman, but after all these months of trying, he had pretty much given up hope that she'd ever see him as anything but a comrade, possibly a friend.
And Aeryn? Beauty with a spice of deadly danger, passions held constrained by duty and regulations. Smart, too--he'd caught glimpses of her mind at work--but her job, this structured, restrictive life she led, sadly stifled that aspect of her potential. She was a tiger in a cage, but John was no Siegfried and Roy. The woman embodied the concept of 'look but don't touch.' And don't let her catch you looking, either. Forget it, Johnny boy, his brain tried to tell the rest of him, PK Commando Bitch is definitely not your type. Some parts, however, were reluctant to listen to reason.
Their first destination was the highest tier of the ship, where the dorsal guns were located. The partial scans they had completed of the exterior showed that the rear and lower parts of the ship were the most seriously damaged, with weapons either gone or obviously ruined. Fortunately, the Sheyang ship had been holding position several metras in front of and slightly above the bow of the carrier. Either the dorsal or forward cannons, if they were intact, stood a chance of hitting it.
When they reached the dorsal battery, however, they found...nothing. Some time during the past hundred cycles, scavengers had stripped the ship. Probably several times. The components of the frag cannons themselves, not to mention the support systems in the adjacent service bay and the large quantities of chakan oil from the ammunition tanks, were valuable prizes. The huge guns had been stripped down almost to their metal skeletons, and the tanks were dry.
No one said a word; they moved on, heading forward and further away from the landing bays. The hope, John assumed, was that given their greater distance from the points of entry, the forward sections might be less thoroughly pillaged.
The forward gun battery contained a total of four triple-barreled cannons, each in a self-contained and well-armored housing. The cannons were each fully eighty feet in diameter and stretched the length of a football field. They were all showing signs of visitations by scavengers, with major components ripped out and pieces scattered willy-nilly across the floor space around them. It was obvious, even to John's unschooled eyes, that parts were missing.
Gilina made a swift survey of each gun, climbing through the maintenance tunnels and over the whole outside perimeter. Cannon number four, to the far hammond side, was the one she determined was their best shot. While it had been almost completely disassembled by careless foragers, it was actually missing the fewest essential parts.
The reason for that, once it was discovered, was obvious. Each gun bay had a large cargo hatch overhead, leading up to the service deck where the firing controls and chakan oil tanks were stored. Large pieces of equipment could once have been lowered into each bay via an arrangement of lifts and cranes. In the case of the fourth gun, however, that access port was jammed shut by debris. The armored chamber was accessible only through a maintenance hatch connecting to the third battery and some tunnels underneath which couldn't be opened from the outside. Only the smaller bits of equipment that the scavengers had been able to carry out through the small hatches had been taken.
Gilina claimed she could find or jerry-rig substitutes for all of the essential missing pieces. With luck, she said, she could get this one weapon rebuilt and functional in about ten arns.
"But, sir," she pointed out, "there are two problems I'll need to use the Marauder to fix. The targeting circuits are missing from every cannon I've examined; they're small and highly valuable. I can get the cannon ready to fire, but I will need to salvage the Marauder's navigation console and tie those circuits into here in order to aim it. Also, the chakan oil tanks are all but empty. To use the cannon, we will need to drain every weapons system on the Marauder and feed all of the oil into here. And even that will give you, at most, one or two shots. I'm not sure how powerful those shots will be, either."
"If we do this right, one shot is all we'll need, and even a weak volley from a carrier's frag cannon should blow that ship out of the sky. Permission granted to use whatever you require from the Marauder--she's of no use to us until we deal with the Sheyang. Get to work. Crewman Esk, stay with the techs, assist as required. Since you're armed, you'll be the one to go get whatever they require from the Marauder and elsewhere. Sun and I will position ourselves in the service bay to intercept any Sheyang who might try to interfere, so you won't be able to get out that way. Use escape hatches under the cannon to access other parts of the ship. Since you can't open those ports from the outside, just use the standard knock code and the techs will let you back in."
Esk looked ready to explode in protest at what he likely viewed as a thoroughly degrading assignment, but years of training and indoctrination won out over his resentment, and he kept silent.
Officers Sun and Jelko climbed up into the service deck through the third cannon's hatch. Aeryn looked around, assessing the tactical potential for defending this position while the techs labored to reconstruct a century-old weapon. The chamber was immense, as wide as all four gun bays beneath it put together, and a hundred motras deep. Three decks in height, the chamber was densely webbed with conduits, pipes, and suspended equipment. Everything was badly corroded by the constant drip of water. The large ammunition storage tanks that had once contained chakan oil were crowded against the back wall, with gravity-feeds leading down into the firing chambers below. The area near the door, however, was open and mostly clear of debris, providing little cover. A number of catwalks, level risers, and walkways gave access to the upper levels.
"We'll establish our defensive positions up there," Jelko said, pointing to the highest catwalk . "Except for the hatches down to the gun bays, there's only the one entrance to the chamber, here at the floor level. Have you ever faced Sheyangs before, Sun?"
"No, sir, although we learned a little about them in training." Not a lot, though; as a rule, the scavengers kept themselves primarily to areas outside of Peacekeeper control. When faced with a Peacekeeper ship, Sheyangs were almost always outgunned and would retreat in haste; on this occasion, the Marauder had simply not been strong enough to intimidate them.
Jelko lectured as they climbed the ladders to the upper levels. "They may be frelling cowards in space, but one on one they can be a bit bolder. And with good reason; their species' ability to spit superheated gases at a target is a formidable weapon in close combat. Most of them don't carry hand weapons at all. They don't need to.
"Their maximum flame range is about ten motras, but it's a good idea to hit them from a greater distance than that if you can. That's part of the reason I've chosen that vantage point. A fully-charged Sheyang, with its flame nutrients undepleted, will explode violently when shot by a pulse weapon. The heat and blast force can melt metal and destroy nearby equipment; no need to explain what would happen to an unprotected Sebacean that was too close.
"If the creature has flamed a great deal recently, then the explosion will be significantly smaller, though still dangerous. Best not to shoot it at all if you are closer than ten or fifteen motras."
"That's what we were told in training, sir." Aeryn wondered if he was testing her, or simply thought she was that ignorant.
"Good to know you were paying attention, Sun. What your teachers may not have mentioned is that these frellniks can't flame upwards very well. It reduces their range by at least half when they try to bend that way. So as long as we stay at a higher vantage point, they can't hurt us."
Sun smiled. He was right; they hadn't covered that detail. "Understood, sir."
Jelko paused and looked around the room. "We'll take positions on either side of the entrance, to create a cross-fire."
John and Gilina were crammed back-to-back in a narrow access shaft, attempting to replace burnt-out and corroded connections with new ones, scavenged from better preserved systems throughout the ship. They'd been at it for three arns already, working by hand-held lights in the pitch-dark chamber, and had much of the primary cannon assembly rebuilt already. Now came the hard part, bypassing missing components or replacing them with similar equipment and hoping the match would be close enough.
Esk had already brought part of the navigation system from the Marauder, which Saitek had carefully dismantled for him into portable sections. He had set out after the next piece a while ago, and ought to be back any microt. The chakan oil would be the hard part, as he'd have to cart it through the corridors in small containers, requiring many trips.
Gilina strained to reach into a tight space, then decided it would be more effective to remove the entire component from its housing to work on it. She tugged, but it was wedged in tight. "John?" she asked over her shoulder.
"Hmm?"
"Can you help me with this? I need to remove the control node, and it's stuck. Can you brace this while I pull?"
"Sure," he said, turning, careful not to hit her with his elbows. He placed one hand on either side of the component Gilina wanted and said, "Okay, go."
She pulled, and for a couple of microts it seemed they might have to find another way. Then, suddenly, the node popped free. With the unexpected loss of support, she collapsed back into John's arms. He caught her, and for a moment they stood still, neither knowing what to say or do.
John was torn between pleasure and embarrassment. He knew Gilina couldn't help but feel how her presence in these close quarters had affected him, and wasn't sure what she'd do about it. She might ignore it, as she had all of his previous, less-blatant indications of interest. She might ask him in all innocence what it meant; after all, John really had no idea if Sebaceans and humans were as similar under their clothes as they looked at first glance. For all he knew, they might reproduce by fission. He just hoped Gilina wouldn't get upset by it.
She was frozen for a moment, clutched in his arms. Then, as if coming to a decision, she turned slowly, looked John in the eye, then reached up and kissed him deeply.
John's eyes widened, and he almost flinched away. When she finally came up for air, he said, "Gilina? What was that for?"
Gilina looked confused and lowered her eyes. "I thought...you'd like it. Thought you wanted it."
"I did! I mean, I do. I've wanted to do that ever since I met you, but I didn't think you were interested."
"I couldn't...not before, not with everyone around watching all the time. I couldn't let anyone know how I.... It's one of our strongest taboos. I ..." She trailed off, lowering her eyes.
"What's wrong, Gilina?"
"You're not Sebacean."
"Oh." Comprehension dawned. Peacekeepers in general were a supremely racist group; he'd experienced that first-hand. Stood to reason they'd have miscegenation laws. It simply hadn't occurred to him before. "So," he said, smiling to soften the question, "why now?"
"I wanted to. I wanted you to know, in case...in case this doesn't work and we die here."
He put a hand to her cheek. "We're not going to die, Gilina."
"John, how long has Esk been gone?"
He paused, confused by the apparent change of topic. "I dunno, maybe ... half an arn?"
"More like three quarters. It shouldn't have taken half that long to get to the Marauder. He's not coming back, John. And we can't finish this without his help." With that, she reached back up and kissed him again. Part of John's brain was busy trying to come up with an argument to counter Gilina's pessimism. The rest was telling that annoying part to shut up and enjoy the ride.
Aeryn Sun stood, as she had for the past three arns, leaning against the damp and rusted railing that lined the upper catwalk, keeping her rifle pointed squarely at the entryway far below. Senior Officer Jelko was stationed at the opposite end of the walkway. It was a good tactical position; each of them possessed good cover from a vertical metal support pylon, with a wall at their backs, the only entrance directly in front of them, and no cover for those who might attempt to enter within twenty motras of the door.
One could almost wish, she found herself thinking, that these creatures were more worthy adversaries. Where was the challenge, after all, in facing opponents so incompetent that it took them over two arns to even find the Peacekeepers they sought? And that first one, striding into the chamber below without even checking his surroundings, had simply exploded with volcanic force when she and Jelko fired at him simultaneously. There was little or nothing left of the body, except some smoldering fragments scattered across the floor.
Since then, the Sheyang soldiers had been more cautious. She'd seen them looking in from the corridor, though how well they could see with those tiny, pathetic excuses for eyes, she had no idea.
Jelko expected them to attempt to storm the chamber en masse; he'd told her to be ready. Peacekeeper intelligence reports estimated that the standard Sheyang vessel carried anywhere from one to two hundred soldiers, each with an agile single-man boarding capsule. With numbers like that, they might feel confident enough to take on the entrenched Peacekeepers. But all they were doing was looking in every few dozen microts.
She recalled complaining to her commanding officer early in the mission about the tedium and ignominy of herding a passel of techs around, when she'd transferred to Marauders looking for action. What was it she'd overheard the human say? 'Be careful what you wish for'?
Now, where had that thought come from? She was glad for this, wasn't she? She was a Peacekeeper, a Commando. Facing an enemy and doing battle with it was her highest duty. Victory was success, fulfillment of the purpose for which she had been bred and raised.
Why the frell weren't these hezmots doing something? Were they just going to sit down there and stare her to death? She was sorely tempted to take a shot at one of their observers just to break the tedium, in spite of Jelko's strict order to conserve ammunition.
Perhaps this strange, uncomfortable feeling was just due to the novelty of the situation. Aeryn had been in battle before, many times, but always before she had been at the helm of her Prowler. Ground fighting was something she'd experienced a great deal in training, but never before in a real situation.
That must be it, she decided. All this sitting around and waiting must be making her nostalgic for the speed and excitement of space combat.
It was odd, she thought distractedly, that in this one respect she might have more in common with their alien 'scientist' than with her fellow soldier and commanding officer. The human was a pilot, with a love for flying that equaled her own. She'd heard it in his voice, back at Dam-Ba-Da when he was demonstrating his 'sling-shot' technique. A strange, unnatural combination--tech and pilot. Her mind could barely wrap itself around the concept.
Another brief view of a Sheyang soldier, glancing around the edge of the door. Her finger tightened on the trigger, preparing to shoot if this was prelude to an invasion, but the figure just disappeared again. Aeryn sighed in frustration and wiped a bead of sweat off her forehead.
She recalled the human's blatant exhilaration at his first success, not with wormholes, but with the maneuver itself. She'd been pretty impressed herself, though she'd been careful not to let it show. For such a tiny, primitive vessel to achieve such astounding acceleration--she'd had visions of Prowler squadrons racing across space at high velocities, outrunning pursuers or pursued. Jelko had dismissed its usefulness out of hand, probably unwilling to consider that anything an alien had developed might have any worth. But then, Jelko wasn't a pilot.
If there was one thing she almost regretted about her recent transfer, it would be loss of that feeling of freedom and excitement that she used to have flying her Prowler. Piloting a Marauder was just not the same. You mostly flew them in a direct course, from origin to destination, and you always had a senior officer looking over your shoulder. She thought Crichton would probably understand if she tried to tell him about that.
Her thoughts on the alien male brought her to wonder how much progress he and the tech were making on the frag cannon. Renaez had said ten arns...which might mean eight, or twelve, or might simply be her refusal to admit that it couldn't be done at all. Aeryn had endured enough Prowler repairs and overhauls to know what tech estimates were like.
The Sheyang observers down below were showing signs of tension, their brief appearances at the edges of the entryway getting both more frequent and more furtive. She wiped more sweat away, noticing consciously for the first time how warm it was getting. Why was it getting hotter?
Aeryn felt her guts clench, the subtle feeling of nervousness suddenly flaring into full-blown anxiety. What would she be doing were she in a situation like the one the Sheyangs faced--enemies cornered in a room, with the single entrance guarded by troops with the advantage of position?
When the answer flashed across her awareness, she turned to call out to her commanding officer. Before she could speak a word, however, the back wall, between her and Jelko, exploded inwards with a shower of flame and molten metal.
Of course. She'd be looking to find--or create--another way in, to ambush an unguarded flank. She'd known. Deep down, she'd been worried that they were ignoring something important, but had let Jelko's confidence in his own tactics lull her into complacency.
Almost before the lastshards of flaming debris hit the floor, Sheyang soldiers rushed through the opening they'd created. The ingrained reflexes built by decades of Peacekeeper training took over, leaving Aeryn's mind almost a detached observer of the chaos that followed. She and Jelko turned to face the invaders who poured onto the walkway between their positions. She could see her senior officer, through the crush of bodies and smoke, firing his rifle again and again. Her own rifle was spitting pulse fire just as fast, though she was being careful not to hit Jelko with any wild shots.
The first soldiers through the door fell quickly, with very little explosive backlash since their nutrient reserves were all but gone. By the end of the first wave, the smoke from the explosion and the dead soldiers was hanging thick around the breach, concealing the opening, and obscuring Aeryn's view of Jelko. There was a pause, then several jets of flame shot out from the smoke. Since the Sheyangs hadn't been able to see their targets either, Aeryn only had to duck to the side to avoid getting scorched. But just as she was rolling to her knees again, two Sheyangs burst out of the haze and charged her.
Since she could no longer see Jelko, Aeryn knew she needed to shoot carefully and not miss her targets. She waited a microt for the two soldiers to get clear of the smoke, then shot the one in the lead squarely in the center of the chest.
She'd expected him to fall quietly, as those before him had, but this soldier had not done much of the work of burning through the wall. Most of his nutrient stores were still present, and the blast of those combustible fuels released and ignited all at once knocked Aeryn backwards for several motras until she skidded to a stop on her back. The rush of heat left her feeling dizzy. Even the Sheyang's companion was dazed by the explosion, having landed square on his eema, and was just blinking stupidly, neither advancing nor retreating.
The headless body of the dead alien wavered on its feet for a moment, then toppled over the railing, falling onto the ammunition tanks on the floor below. Thanks to the century of corrosion, the empty tanks were greatly weakened and collapsed under the impact. The vapors and residue of chakan oil in the tanks met the still-smoldering body of the Sheyang, with predictable results.
As the body disappeared over the edge, Aeryn struggled to her feet, preparing to kill the remaining alien before he recovered and attacked again. But just as she was bringing her rifle to bear, there was a crash from below, and then a tremendous roar of noise, a flash, a wave of heat and light. The floor dropped away from under her feet and she was flying over the railing, falling, falling....
The chamber containing the frag cannon was well insulated, so the first indication John and Gilina had of the battle being waged over their heads was the sharp jolt and muffled concussion from the last huge explosion.
The flames from the conflagration quickly traveled down the feeder lines into the cannon itself, and within microts of hearing and feeling the blast, they found themselves dodging gouts of flame as valves and relays blew out in sequence all through the weapon's superstructure.
"What the frell was that?" John demanded when he finally caught his breath.
Gilina seemed a little stunned; John supposed it wasn't often that a machine she was repairing tried to incinerate her without warning. "The feed lines," she muttered, looking around at the damage pattern. "Something ignited the chakan oil residue."
"That was a big explosion somewhere, Gilina. Could it have been the tanks up on the service deck? Where Sun and Jelko are?"
"I suppose--"
"Damn, we gotta go help them. They could be hurt." John was already halfway out of the crawlspace they'd been working in by the time he finished the last sentence, his flashlight beam weaving wildly in front of him.
"John, no!" Gilina cried. He didn't stop, and continued to ignore her as she called after him. "John, they ordered us to stay here!"
He ran headlong for the door leading to the adjacent bay, and was halfway up the stairway, heading for the access door to the service bay, before his brain caught up with his instincts. Gilina was right, to a point. He'd catch ten kinds of hell if he was wrong and burst in on a gunfight without orders.
But, unlike his dad, John had never been much of one for strict military discipline or taking pointless orders. Based on what he'd heard of that explosion and seen of the secondary effects, it had to be serious. The PKs might really need help, and he wasn't going to let something as trivial as a mere direct order stop him.
On reaching the access port, John reached out and touched it gingerly, recalling old childhood lessons about not opening doors that were hot. The surface was faintly warm, but not dangerously so. He hoped.
The door swung up and opened easily, a well-balanced mechanism, so far uncompromised by time or corrosion. He stuck his head carefully up to peek into the service bay.
"Holy shit," he breathed, horrified. The picture before him was eerily reminiscent of a building in Oklahoma City he'd seen on the news a few years back. It was like a giant alligator had taken a bite out of the room, leaving bits of metal and wiring hanging loose and sparking erratically on all sides. The tanks on the floor were indeed burning vigorously, many of them having blown themselves to bits and ignited their neighbors. The fire was spreading. Smoke billowed upwards, casting a pall over the scene, and it was already thick enough to make him cough, even at floor level.
It took a moment for John to locate the officers he'd come looking for. Jelko was lying on the mesh floor of the highest catwalk, two levels above him. He was apparently unconscious, and lying almost directly over the worst of the fire.
Aeryn was harder to find, but John finally spotted her sprawled awkwardly on the floor halfway across the deck. She looked like she'd fallen, and landed badly on a pile of debris. Her face was obscured by blood and hair, but John could see her fighting for breath in the thickening smoke, so he knew she was still alive.
Within microts, John had rushed across the deck and pulled the woman into his arms. He dragged her back to the hatchway and down to the first landing of the stairwell. Gilina was there, having followed him against her better judgement, and he asked her to look after Officer Sun while he went back for Jelko. Gilina had had some med tech training as a cadet, before she'd been steered into a maintenance specialty, so she knew basically what to do.
They could both feel the heat radiating down from the room above, and Gilina tried once again to object. "It's too hot, John! You'll never make it!"
Crichton just shook his head and climbed back towards the burning room. He'd only be in there a few minutes; he'd survive. Just pretend you're Kurt Russell in Backdraft, he thought hysterically, wishing he had one of those fireproof coats and a big-brimmed hat to protect himself, instead of this lightweight, tech-issue jumpsuit.
The catwalk Jelko was on had been blown loose from its anchors at one end and was teetering precariously over the burning tanks. John bounded up the one remaining staircase that gave access to that level and raced across the maze of walkways, ducking through damaged and hanging wires, praying he wouldn't get a nasty shock from anything. Fortunately, the ship's old-style partanium power core was almost completely depleted after all these cycles, only providing a bare minimum of environmentals and gravity, and not much else.
Well, Gilina had been right about one thing: it was frelling hot up here, with the waves of heat and smoke rising from the inferno below. The railings and supports were scalding, too hot to hold onto. Jelko was probably going to have some nasty burns from lying on the metal grating. Moving with great care, so as not to jostle anything loose, John eased across the walkway to the man's unconscious form. A quick check confirmed that he had a pulse and was still breathing, though he did appear to be suffering from some kind of constant, small seizures. Perhaps he'd hit his head. Shrugging mentally, John heaved the soldier into a fireman's carry and headed back down.
By the time John staggered down the stairs with the increasingly heavy body of Officer Jelko, Aeryn Sun was coughing and hacking her way into a semblance of consciousness. The fall had left her with a number of visible injuries, cuts and bruises forming all over. She was greatly disoriented and confused at first, seemingly unable to track a train of thought to the end of a sentence when Gilina asked her questions. Combined with the nasty cut on her scalp, John decided she must have a severe concussion, and hoped it wasn't anything worse.
John couldn't find any obvious wounds or marks on Jelko that would explain his unresponsiveness or the constant twitches and shudders that wracked his extremities. Gilina moved across from where she'd been assisting Officer Sun and examined him. She peeled back his eyelids for a moment, shining her own hand-held light into them, then sat back on her heels and sighed.
Sun reached an arm over to touch her and seemed to pose a question with her eyes. Instead of responding, however, the blonde tech turned to Crichton. "Could you go back up and close the hatch, John?" she asked. "The heat is getting uncomfortable, and isn't good for any of us."
John paused, nonplussed, but nodded and headed up the stairs to do as she asked.
Just as he was pulling the door closed, however, the report of a pulse pistol sounded from behind and below him. Whirling around, he saw Aeryn Sun, still lying prone on the landing below, holding her gun in a trembling, outstretched hand. It was pointed at her commanding officer, who was now quite obviously dead. Gilina was still kneeling between them, her head bowed as if in prayer.
"What the hell did you do?" John cried, horrified. He rushed down the stairs two at a time and snatched the pistol out of Aeryn's hand. She was still weak and let go far too easily. "What was that, Aeryn, a standard Peacekeeper promotion? Trying to rise through the ranks?" His voice dripped with anger and scorn. To kill a man while he was lying helpless and unconscious... he'd thought she had more honor than that. And why hadn't Gilina tried to stop her?
The dark-haired woman just looked up at him with an expression of combined sadness and confusion. "No," she murmured, almost too quietly to be heard. "M-mercy...." Her voice trailed away to nothing as she lost consciousness again.
Crichton snorted derisively. "Mercy, my ass," he muttered, shaking his head in disgust. He hadn't liked Jelko much, but no one deserved this.
"John," Gilina said quietly, raising her head at last, "she was right, and she had no choice. There was nothing else we could do. It was the Living Death."
"Living what? What the hell does that mean? He got knocked out, maybe slightly charbroiled, but otherwise he looked fine!"
"It was the heat, John. Heat delirium, irreversible. Aeryn's got a mild case, but she'll recover. Since you were able to go into that inferno twice and show no signs, I'm assuming Humans don't suffer from it."
John shook his head, confused. "The heat did something to them?"
"We Sebaceans can't handle high temperatures. The original Sebacean homeworld was extremely temperate, with an almost perfectly circular orbit around its star and only one degree of polar tilt. It had no seasons, and little variation in weather or temperature. No point on the planet was ever measured a temperature above optimum plus five in all of recorded history, so the species that evolved there never needed to develop any of the heat tolerances that races from most other worlds have."
"You're telling me that you--all of you--you're cold blooded?" They looked so human that he sometimes expected them to be the same in every other way. It was a shock to realize that there were such fundamental differences.
"No, we maintain a higher-than-ambient body temperature, as you do, and we can function in colder environments as well as any other race. Better than some; the Scarrans hate the cold. We simply can't handle our cells overheating. Heat delirium symptoms start appearing at approximately optimum plus eight, and progress gradually from short term memory loss through loss of motor coordination, and finally to long term memory. At higher temperatures, like near that fire, the condition progresses faster, and if the body isn't cooled in time, it reaches a stage we call the Living Death. Even if you cool the body completely after that, it never recovers, and will live on indefinitely in that state--paralyzed, brain-damaged, and in constant pain."
"So you kill them, to put them out of their misery?"
"It's the only thing we can do; there's no treatment, and no cure. None of us wants to live like that, knowing we'll never recover. Officer Sun overcame her own injuries and heat delirium to give Senior Officer Jelko his final peace, because it was her duty. He would have thanked her for it, had he been able."
John sat down on the stairs and cradled his head between his fists, remembering the hurtful accusations he'd spouted in his ignorance. "Guess I owe Aeryn an apology when she wakes up, don't I?"
Gilina, kindly, said nothing.
John dragged Jelko's body down the stairs to the floor of the weapons bay and covered it with a tarpaulin he found in an old supply crate, then came back to sit with Gilina while she tended to their remaining injured soldier. They stayed where they were. With the fire blocking access from above, they were in just about the most secure part of the ship, and there really wasn't anything two techs, with one pulse pistol between them-- which neither of them knew how to use with any skill--could do against the Sheyang scavengers overrunning the ship.
Officer Sun faded in and out of consciousness. John had been partly right; her confusion was due as much to a head injury as to the moderate heat delirium, and did not improve much even when her temperature stabilized.
He was growing more worried about her as time went on, though not for that reason. During her conscious periods, Aeryn had demonstrated ability to move her head and arms, assuring Gilina that no bones were broken. Her legs, however, never moved. John remembered how he'd found her, sprawled across an uneven surface after an apparent fall from a higher point. A spinal injury was a real possibility, and there was a good chance he'd made it worse by moving her.
It had been a life-or-death situation, and leaving her where she was had not been an option. He knew that. The fire had been spreading, and there would be no ambulance with flashing red lights and competent paramedics rushing to the scene. She'd have died if he hadn't moved her, but that didn't diminish the guilt he'd feel if it turned out she was paralyzed because of him.
Finally, John simply couldn't sit still any longer. "Gilina, I'm going to go see if the Sheyangs are still lurking around out there. Maybe I can find Esk, or Fala and Saitek. "
"John, no, it's too dangerous," Gilina pleaded.
"I'll keep my head down. I can't just sit here, and we'll need a way off this boat at some point. But we need to know if the bad guys are going to be coming after us, or if they're just gonna take what they want and leave."
Gilina relented with a sigh, then tried to hand John Officer Sun's pulse pistol. He waved it off, shaking his head. "Keep it; you might want it. And Ms. PK over here would probably kill me bare-handed if she found out I'd taken her gun."
"Then take Officer Jelko's, John. He certainly doesn't need it anymore."
John finally nodded, reluctantly. Jelko's pistol had still been securely fastened in its holster, though both his and Sun's rifles had been left behind in the service bay. Carrying a weapon wasn't something John had ever done before, not really. He didn't want to start, even now, but Gilina was right that it might come in handy. Better to have it and not need it, he rationalized, than to need it and not have it.
After arranging to have Gilina come check for his return every arn, since he wouldn't be able to open the escape hatch from the outside, John crawled out into the dank, cramped tunnels in search of trouble.
Surprisingly, it took him a while to find it. The carrier was a huge ship, and even a hundred Sheyangs could have wandered the endless corridors without him ever meeting up with one. He kept to the ducts and hidden passageways, and finally stumbled on a group of the ugly creatures who were busy ripping apart some consoles John didn't recognize. They didn't talk much among themselves, but after a few minutes one of them stepped aside to answer a hail from their ship.
"Lomus," called a deep, slow voice through the coms, "are you certain the vessel is secure?"
"Yes, Teurac. The Peacekeeper Marauders carry crews of five. We killed two on their ship, one in the corridors, and the other two burned up in the weapons bay. The vessel is ours. There is not much of value left, but we have gleaned what we can."
John almost swore aloud, but managed to bite his tongue. If the bastard was telling the truth, then he and Gilina and Aeryn were all that were left of the original seven members of the expedition. It was fortunate that the Sheyangs didn't know they'd had a higher-than-normal crew complement for the scientific foray.
The voice on the coms returned. "Gather your unit and return to the ship, Lomus. Our holds are at capacity. We will return later for the rest, including the Marauder. That alone will fetch a fine price."
"Agreed. We will return within the arn."
John slipped back into the shadows and began retracing his steps to the weapons bay where he'd left the others. They had work to do.
TBC ...