Unrealized Peacekeeper

by OneEye the DRD

AU: In the fourth season episode "Unrealized Reality", we saw an alternate John Crichton who became a Peacekeeper captain. This is the story of how that might have happened... Wrap up summary in final chapter

15. When the Chips Are Down

Episode 14 - When The Chips Are Down

"I am in control of me!" -- John Crichton

The command carrier didn't look much better close up than it had from a distance, even two solar days after the battle ended. True, the fires no longer raged, and any breached sections that couldn't be quickly repaired had long since leaked the last of their atmosphere into space. All was quiet. But still, two-thirds of the ship was dark, on emergency power only, and the huge section missing from the hammond side ring left the ship looking lopsided and crippled.

And yet it lived. No matter how much the carrier might resemble the dead hulk of the Zelbinion, the ship had survived, and by surviving, it had won.

Not long after the explosion of the Gammak base, which sparked a firestorm on the tiny moon that even the Scarrans could not traverse, the wounded Dreadnought had retreated. Apparently, thus robbed of their prize, they had seen no purpose in pursuing the battle to its end and risking themselves for no gain. Lt. Dak, however, being cautious, had kept the Marauder squadrons hidden in the system's dense asteroid field until reconnaissance ships had returned with confirmation that the enemy had indeed fled the area.

The facilities on the carrier's hammond side were out of commission, leaving the returning Marauders no choice but to squeeze into the already over-crowded treblin side landing bays. Lt. Dak had Aeryn hold their ship back until the rest had settled into the Marauder bay, only to discover there simply wasn't room for them all. Flight ops irritably directed the stragglers to the Prowler bay as a temporary measure.

It wasn't much better there; every surviving Prowler in the convoy was parked wing-tip to wing-tip on the deck, and finding room for the larger Marauders required the efforts of a dozen techs and several hundred microts before they could finally set down. Then, for the first time in nearly fifty arns, Aeryn took her hands off the flight controls and relaxed.

By the time she and the lieutenant finally dropped out of the ship after finishing the complete shut-down procedures, they were both about ready to fall asleep standing up. But when Aeryn spotted a familiar face, she couldn't pass up the chance for some news.

"Kranda!" she called out, raising a hand in greeting when the man turned around.

Kranda looked like dren, his face and uniform stained with smoke and blood and his eyes glazed with exhaustion. Not that that was different from every other crewman on the deck; they all bore the same war-torn and shell-shocked look.

"You unit flew well?" Aeryn asked, politely, as she approached.

Kranda shook his head, a small, rueful half-smile quirking one corner of his mouth. "Never got off the deck, actually. The techs had our ships in pieces when the alert came down and didn't get them back together until the battle was nearly over. We spent the whole time detailed to Xelstar."

Aeryn felt her eyebrows climbing into her hairline. It wasn't what Kranda had said--now that she recalled the arns before the battle, she knew she should have expected something like that--but rather Kranda's unnatural calm. "You're not..." She trailed off, searching for the right word.

"Angry?" Kranda supplied for her. "No. I was kranked at first, but not anymore."

"Why not, what happened?"

"You know, I used to think you were fahrbot for giving up Prowlers and going Special Ops."

Aeryn blinked at the apparent change of topic. "As I recall, you were the one who encouraged me."

"Sure I did. If you'd still been in our unit, I'd never have made squad leader!" Kranda grinned unrepentantly, and Aeryn had to smile at his undisguised duplicity. "Now, though," Kranda continued, "I think I understand why you did it. Prowler pilots don't get to do the important things."

Aeryn didn't have a good response to that. Those hadn't been her reasons for requesting the transfer, but that didn't mean Kranda was wrong. "What does that have to do with--" she started to ask.

"Did you know the carrier got boarded?" Kranda asked suddenly, cutting her off.

"What?" The exclamation came from Lt. Dak, who was still standing at Aeryn's elbow, likely as interested as she in whatever news he could get. He was aghast. "The Scarrans tried to take the ship?"

"How?" Aeryn wondered. It was almost unheard-of for a command carrier to be boarded by an enemy. But then again, she recalled, the Zelbinion had once been thought invincible.

Kranda frowned at the memory. "A damaged Stryker went out of control and rammed into our hammond side."

"We've seen the damage," Dak nodded. "Half the outer ring was blown away."

"That one blow took out nearly all of our defenses on that side of the ship, not to mention the loss of power and environmentals. The Hammond side hangar bays even lost their containment fields."

Aeryn felt her throat constrict. John would have been in one of those bays. "All hands lost?" she asked, managing to squeeze a whisper past the blockage.

Kranda shook his head. "Fortunately for all of us, no. The emergency power finally cut in after about twenty microts, before the bays had completely vented. About half of the techs who were in those bays survived."

The tight feeling eased slightly. Half. John was a survivor. Surely....

"Anyway, that's where the Scarrans managed to get breaching pods aboard. And there wasn't a frelling thing we could do about it; with the bays on emergency power, we couldn't open the pressure doors to mount a counter-attack. It took about a quarter of an arn to get main power rerouted and get in there. We figured they'd be heavily entrenched by that point, and we'd never pry them out."

"Frell," Dak whispered.

Aeryn, too, could picture the situation as it might have occurred, and the near impossibility of driving back an enemy with the advantage of a fortified position without destroying the ship in the process. "What happened?" she asked.

Kranda just shook his head, looking almost...awestruck? "I'm not entirely sure. The only crewmen on that deck when the Scarrans arrived were a single sub-officer and maybe fifty techs. And yet, somehow, they managed to prevent a force of nearly a hundred Scarran warriors from getting a foothold until our troops arrived."

"A sub-officer," Aeryn said, trying to seem nonchalant. Crichton. It had to be Crichton.

"Yes. The deck officer."

"Is this the same one you were telling me about? The one you wanted to rip to shreds?" Aeryn asked curiously.

"That's the one."

Aeryn breathed a silent sigh of relief.

"He beat a hundred Scarrans?" Lt. Dak sounded skeptical, and Aeryn noticed with some amusement that he was dismissing the presence of the techs completely.

"I wouldn't put it that way," Kranda replied, shaking his head. "He didn't actually manage to kill very many of them. I'm not sure what this guy did, but whatever it was left the Scarrans massively disorganized, and therefore much easier to defeat when the security forces finally arrived. All I do know is what I saw just as we finally broke through."

Aeryn blinked. She'd never heard Kranda use that tone before, full of uncharacteristic awe and respect, unless he was discussing some ancient Peacekeeper hero like Dacon or Durka.

"And what was that?" Dak asked, his curiosity evidently piqued.

"This sub-officer was trying to rescue someone--one of the techs, I think, who was wounded--when a Scarran caught him full in the face with a heat blast."

"So he's dead then," Dak stated, as if there were no question. Aeryn, however, was not surprised at Kranda's denial.

"No, that's just it. He got up! And then he grabbed something, some kind of metal bar, I think. He yelled at the Scarran--I didn't understand the words--and when the Scarran turned back around, this guy just ran him through!"

"He killed a Scarran with nothing more than a metal rod?" Now Lt. Dak was starting to sound impressed. Aeryn, for her part, was smiling at the mental picture.

"Actally," Kranda replied, "he killed two."

"What?" Both Aeryn and Dak gaped in shock.

---

It was a nightmare. Or was it a memory? Perhaps it was too much of both. All John Crichton knew was that he was trapped and couldn't escape.

The air was rushing out, leaving him gasping for breath, his joints on fire.

"Hang on!"

The air came back, but with it arrived even more bad news. The Scarrans were coming aboard.

"But sir, we're not soldiers...."

Once he'd realized security wouldn't get there in time, John had known it was up to them. Forty-six frightened techs and one terrified human were all that stood between their ship and the Scarrans. J'hesta clung to his side like a limpet, her eyes wide with hero-worship, and she was the first to accept his assertion that they could do something besides die bravely.

"You gonna just stand here and let them kill you without a fight?"

Half a dozen grounded Prowlers, all fueled up with no place to go, became a battery of close-range artillery, manned by techs, shooting down Scarran breaching pods like fish in a barrel.

"Sir, we have an idea...."

His mild-mannered, self-effacing techs transformed before his eyes into amateur guerrillas, like four dozen MacGyvers on acid.

The Scarrans hadn't quite known what to make of these oddball adversaries. They didn't stand and fight like the usual Peacekeeper soldiers, and didn't use traditional weapons. It was strike and retreat, the techs taking advantage of their quick reflexes and inventive brains.

Fuel bladders became Molotov cocktails, hurled at the Scarrans from every direction until they didn't know where to turn.

Common chemicals were combined in strange ways to create endothermic reaction grenades, which sucked heat from their targets and left them chilled. The Scarrans hated those.

Precious lubricants were spilled across the decks, sending the attackers slipping and sliding. The end result of all of these unconventional defenses had left the Scarran invaders completely confused.

But not helpless. After nearly quarter of an arn of fighting, one tech's luck had run out. Jaden Destral, a middle-aged tech whom John found eerily reminiscent of DK--or rather, the man DK might become in another twenty years--had been just a hair too slow and caught a glancing blow from one of the Scarran weapons. He fell behind the debris of one of the destroyed breaching pods, wounded or dead. There was no way to tell for sure.

Without thinking, John had dashed out and tried to drag Destral back to safety. He'd been careful, of course, staying behind cover as much as possible and leapfrogging forward in short, crouching runs. Nevertheless, he was spotted. Perhaps it was his uniform, which stood out amongst the tech jumpsuits and marked him as the one in charge, but whatever it was seemed to drive the Scarrans berserk.

Just as he'd finally reached Destral's limp and bleeding form and was checking for a pulse, a primal, bestial roar of rage had echoed across the bay. John had jumped up and spun around, just in time to catch a face full of fire. The air seared his lungs like a blast furnace as he tried to draw breath to scream.

And then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over. John had collapsed to the ground, feeling charbroiled and sick. The Scarran had turned away, dismissing him completely, and before John could speak or move, had raked its heat weapon over Destral's helpless body as well.

Rage exploded like a supernova in John's mind, wiping away the pain and rising nausea. He'd rolled to his feet and grabbed the first object that came to hand: a long, jagged length of metal from the wreckage of a breaching pod.

"If I'd wanted a suntan, I'd have gone to the frelling beach!!"

The sudden shout from an enemy it had assumed was completely helpless startled the Scarran into turning.

In that split second, John had spotted the gash in the Scarran's thick hide, a chink in its otherwise impervious armor, likely a result of one of J'hesta's makeshift fragmentation grenades. Before the Scarran could even move to defend itself, John had rammed that length of sharp metal through the opening and into its massive chest.

The Scarran screeched in pain and rage, giving John a face full of hot, fetid lizard breath, and slowly toppled over.

John had had no chance to savor the victory; a second reptilian roar echoed from behind him almost as the body hit the ground. With adrenaline still surging through his veins, he had been feeling neither pain nor fear. Weapon in hand, John spun around to face the newest onslaught.

The second Scarran was bearing down on him at the fastest lumbering run it was capable of, and this one had no convenient wounds that John could target. In desperation, as the distance closed to point blank range, he finally thrust towards the creature's open mouth and pierced through to its brain.

The Scarran had been bringing its arm up, the heat already making the air shimmer, and unfortunately its death did nothing to halt the reflex. A second wave of heat, far more intense than the first, engulfed John at that moment, and he fell into the abyss.

Pain.

And then darkness.

---

Gradually, after what seemed like an eternity of torment, the violent memories started to fragment, leaving behind only darkness and muffled sounds. The remembered agony transformed into the milder but no less unpleasant realities of the aftermath. His skin burned, hot and tight and swollen, but the air wafting over him was cool, like an early morning fog drifting across a mountain lake, and it felt like heaven.

He felt little better beneath the skin, his whole body consumed in aching and lassitude like the worst case of the flu he'd ever had. His joints still ached, too, though much improved from the searing pain he'd suffered when the bay lost pressure and left him with a classic case of the bends.

Something tickled at the back of his brain, dim recall from the distant past of adolescence. A summer day, not long after the family's last move to Florida, when a young John had gone to the beach and made the mistake of falling asleep in the sun. The burn he'd gotten that day had been awful, flushing his whole body a deep, crimson red and leaving blisters on his nose and cheeks. He'd spent the next week in bed, wrapped in cool, wet cloths, feeling much like he did now.

The memory reassured him somewhat; no matter how lousy he felt, maybe he wasn't dying after all.

The quiet murmurs and footsteps he'd heard up until now coalesced into clear voices, growing nearer.

"...keeping him sequestered here. Others might find the sight of his injuries...disturbing."

The first voice was male, and unfamiliar. It was the second voice, a microt later, which sent a thrill of relief up John's spine.

"I was...concerned, when I heard of his injury, that someone would assume he was Sebacean, and thus beyond recovery."

John fought the fatigue and the pain, trying desperately to open his eyes and see the face that belonged to that voice.

"No, ma'am," was the serious reply to Aeryn's concern. "We all know who John Crichton is."

"Has he woken?"

"We roused him briefly right after he was brought in, just in case there was something we needed to know about treating these types of injuries in his species--"

This was news to John; he had no memory of any such conversation.

"--but we've kept him sedated for the past two solar days to aid healing."

"Ah." Aeryn sounded disappointed. John was still trying to open his eyes, or move a muscle, even just twitch a finger, but it was as if there was a double-paned wall of glass standing between him and his body.

"He should regain consciousness soon, Officer," the tech--for so John presumed the man was--reassured Aeryn. "We estimate about two arns."

Hah. Shows what you know. He struggled, beating against the wall, determined to see Aeryn's face before she left.

"Officer Sun!"

This was a third voice, also male. John stopped fighting and lay quiet. The sheer authority contained in those two spoken words said 'senior officer'. Best to stay inconspicuous.

"Lieutenant Dak," Aeryn replied, her greeting mild and curious, lacking the sharp snap to attention that typically accompanied the arrival of a ranking officer. This was someone she knew, then, and was comfortable with.

"Your pilot friend might have believed your excuses, Sun, but I saw you reaction to that tale he was spinning us. You knew something you weren't telling him."

There was a pause, and then, "Yes, sir." John could almost see the small, secretive smile in that resigned tone.

"Is this him, then? Our infamous deck officer who can kill Scarrans with his bare hands?"

Aeryn must have nodded confirmation. "His name is Crichton, sir."

"From the look of those burns, he ought to be dead, but I clearly heard the tech claim he'd be waking up soon. What is he, some kind of special directorate engineered super-soldier?"

John felt his mouth twist into a smirk; apparently the drugs were wearing off at last. He quickly schooled his expression, hoping the man hadn't noticed.

There was a moment of silence, and John wondered if Aeryn was thinking of letting him continue to think that, as part of preserving John's protective anonymity. But then she seemed to decide on honesty, instead. She must trust this lieutenant a great deal.

"No, sir. He's not Sebacean at all, and not susceptible to heat delirium."

"Not Sebacean?" For the moment, John was happy enough to have his eyes closed, so he didn't have to see the look of disgust that went with that tone of voice. "But how--? Wait a microt...wasn't there something about an alien the captain brought aboard? One who looked so much like us that you couldn't tell the difference? What was it, three cycles ago?"

"Actually, not quite two cycles."

"And they made him a Peacekeeper?"

"At the captain's request." Aeryn was being very carefully noncommittal.

"Huh." The short exclamation was thoughtful, and oddly lacking its former hostility. "But I still don't see how one man could have held off that many Scarran troops all by himself."

"Didn't."

The new voice was low and rough, barely a whisper; it took John a second to realize it was his own.

"Crichton?"

This time, when he tried to open his eyes, they cooperated somewhat. The room was dimly lit, thankfully, and his bleary vision eventually cleared enough to make out Aeryn's figure leaning over him. "Hey," was all he could manage as a greeting, rasping the syllable out of a parched throat.

She disappeared then, and John wondered if he'd said something wrong. But then a moment later she was back, along with a nurse who offered him water. He sipped a little, then reached for more with the desperation of a drowning man seeking air.

"Slowly, sir," was the polite but firm admonition from the nurse.

Looking around as he took tiny sips of precious water, John realized he was lying in a far corner of one of the ship's odd, multi-level medical areas, near the base of one of the stairstep mist generators. He was subtly screened off from the view of others by the generator and some portable partitions.

What little John could see of himself was not pretty, and he could understand the efforts to discourage gawkers. The skin on the right side of his bare chest was red, swollen, and starting to peel. His arms, loosely wrapped in a cooling, translucent bandage, looked to be riddled with blisters. He'd gotten his arms up to protect his face when the Scarran's heat blasted him, so it wasn't surprising that they had taken the brunt of the damage.

Aeryn and her lieutenant waited--Aeryn patiently, the lieutenant less so. As his mind started to clear from the drugged fog, John realized they both looked utterly exhausted. Aeryn at least, he remembered, had been worn out from a difficult assignment even before the Scarran dreadnought entered the picture, and had gotten no time to rest. He wondered how many solar days it had been since she last slept.

"You okay?" he asked, once his throat finally felt more like flesh and less like sandpaper.

She nodded, then shrugged, which John supposed covered the situation rather well. She was alive and uninjured, true enough, but she was also about ready to collapse where she stood.

"You should get some rest," he suggested.

She looked over at the lieutenant, who smiled and nodded. "Dismissed, Officer Sun."

John wanted to reach out for her, touch her hand before she left, but such things just were not done here, at least not where others could see. He watched as she vanished around the edge of the partition that surrounded him, leaving the mist swirling in her wake.

It took a microt for him to notice that the lieutenant was still standing nearby, looking down at him with a speculative expression.

"Sir?" He wondered what the man wanted with him now.

"Feel up to answering some questions, Sub-officer?"

"Questions?" He was still a bit fogged with drugs, but he quickly caught himself. "I mean, yes, sir."

"Good." Dak nodded. "I won't stay long; these doctors can be vicious."

John smiled slightly at the joke, wondering if the man was uncomfortable talking to an alien as a near-equal and was using humor to ease the tension.

"I was wondering before how a single soldier could have held off dozens of Scarran troops all by himself. I don't see how it's possible."

"That's because it's not."

"Are you saying the report I heard was wrong?"

"I'm not sure what you heard, sir, but I wasn't alone in that hangar."

"What, the techs?"

"Yes, sir."

"What could techs possibly do against trained soldiers? Against Scarrans?"

"You know, Lieutenant, they asked me that very same question. You'd be surprised; I know they were."

"You gave them weapons?"

"None to give 'em, sir, just my one lousy pulse pistol."

"Then how the frell--"

"You were right in a way, Lieutenant," John broke in. "They aren't soldiers. If I'd handed them rifles, they'd have fought badly and died quickly. What I did instead was let them play to their own strengths."

Dak tilted his head to the right, silently inviting John to clarify.

"They know this ship, and especially those hangar bays, better than anyone else. They also know exactly how many ways those areas can kill you, because they've seen it happen too many times. Next to the generator room, it's one of the most dangerous places to work on the entire carrier. I just let them prove that to the Scarrans."

He could see the soldier's forehead furrowing as he tried to understand. "Try this, sir," John continued. "Imagine it was you, your team, trying to take an enemy vessel. You go in, and you're expecting to face resistance from armed troops. But instead, you see no one, and find yourself under attack from all sides by things you can't identify. Things that explode on impact, or rupture and spill. The explosives spray your troops with shrapnel or engulf them in fire. The other objects might douse you with toxins, or spray chemicals that suck the heat from your body, or just coat the floor with goo that makes it impossible to keep your footing. And all from an enemy you can't see, and therefore can't strike back at effectively."

"Frell..."

John could see the gears turning behind Dak's eyes. He was about to say more, when he happened to glance past the lieutenant and out into the misty chamber. He froze.

A tall figure, all in black. Hooded. A flash of ghost-white skin.

John squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fists, desperately willing the vision away. It's just a hallucination. It's not real.

"Crichton? Crichton!" The sharp voice snapped John out of his panic, forcing his eyes open. Dak was staring at him with combined annoyance and concern. Warily, John glanced back at the spot across the room, but the shadow figure was gone.

"Are you ill? Should I summon a tech?" Dak asked gruffly.

"Nah." John waved away the suggestion with a bandaged arm. "I'm fine. Sorry about that; must be the drugs."

That, or the fact that I am completely losing my mind, he thought darkly. It was yet more evidence of his ongoing mental breakdown. Instead of just hearing Scorpius, now he was seeing the bastard, too.

The lieutenant dragged John's attention back to the previous discussion before he could dwell on that subject any more. He spent the next half an arn explaining his actions, and those of the techs, in greater detail.

By the time John finished, his audience seemed to have forgotten about him being alien. Or perhaps he simply no longer cared.

---

It took ten solar days after he woke up before John was deemed recovered enough to return to duty. The burns on his arms had been pretty deep, and he'd felt lousy enough for a while to be glad of the excuse to just lie in the healing mist and doze. But the past three days had been simply tedious, and John suspected they had been keeping him sequestered for aesthetic reasons instead of medical ones. Finally, however, his skin quit peeling, his blisters faded, and they let him go.

The carrier was limping its way back to Peacekeeper space at a lowly hetch two, en route to one of the central station facilities for major structural repairs. In the meantime, however, the surviving Prowlers and Marauders still had jobs to do, patrolling the area and protecting the crippled vessel. All of which meant that the hangar bays were back in full operation.

That first day back, as he paced the length of the bay surveying the repairs and the remaining signs of damage, John felt like he'd wandered into some strange alternate dimension. On the one hand, there were the techs. The events of the past weekens had apparently infused them all with a new self-confidence. They no longer lowered their eyes or shied away from the pilots, though they were still polite and deferential. They spoke, instead, with the authority of their expertise, and, wonder of wonders, a few of the pilots were actually listening.

John marveled at the scene, but his pleasure was short-lived. The invisible voice from the back of his mind mocked the sentimentality. John had caught glimpses of the phantom Scorpius twice more during his time in the medical section, and each time the voice in his head redoubled its intensity. Long months of practice kept him from showing too much outward reaction, but inside he was cringing. It was nearly constant now, though it seemed to fade when he was around other people, as if the wraith did not want to risk calling attention to itself by distracting him in front of witnesses. It was growing harder and harder to ignore as it continued to badger him about wormholes, taunting him with promises of home and threats of imminent capture. And yet, despite the increasing severity, John still hadn't been able to make himself tell anyone about the problem. Every time he had started to confess his affliction to one of the doctors, his voice failed him and nothing emerged.

"Like what you see?" Avena asked, appearing at John's elbow. She had been in charge of the bay during John's absence, and if what he was seeing was any indication, he might as well just go back to bed and let her continue to run things.

The voice in his head faded to a whisper, allowing him to maintain at least the appearance of sanity for the moment. He nodded at the rush and bustle before him. "It's what I wanted," he affirmed, "but the price was too high." There were too many familiar faces missing from the crowd.

Avena tsked. "We Peacekeepers pay that price every day, sir, to serve our people. Those who were lost would be proud to know they spent their lives in service."

They paused at the far end of the bay to watch a half-squadron of Prowlers glide into the landing bay and touch down on the deck. The pilots, too, had taken heavy losses during the battle with the Dreadnought. Nearly a third of the ships had been destroyed, though some of their pilots had managed to eject and been retrieved. There wasn't a single regiment that hadn't suffered massive casualties.

"I wanted to ask you, Chief..." John started, then paused.

"Ask me what, sir?"

"I want to do something. For the techs, to reward them for everything they accomplished. But somehow, giving them a few days off just doesn't seem like enough anymore, and I'm not sure what else I could give that would properly express how grateful I am."

The older woman stared, then smiled. "And to think I believed you could no longer surprise me, sir."

"Well, we can't let that happen," John joked back. "Think how boring your life would be." This, too, was a surprise; his relationship with Avena had always been one of utter professionalism and strict protocol, to the point that John hadn't been sure the woman even possessed a sense of humor. To learn that she did hide one beneath her severe mask was a pleasant change. "The only other thing I can think of," he went on, veering back onto his original topic, "would be to offer them a chance at a transfer to some less dangerous assignment."

Avena actually gasped. "No, sir, please. Don't do that, not if your intent is truly to reward them."

"Why the hell not?"

She paused, glancing away as if marshalling her thoughts. "I think I can safely speak for all of us, sir, when I say we would rather be here. Serving under your command is preferable to that of any other officer aboard ship."

It was John's turn to gape in astonishment.

"Do you realize, sir, that you have not executed even one tech for a failure during your tenure here? Nor have you even truly punished anyone for making mistakes, unless those mistakes were the result of negligence. On the contrary; you have risked yourself to defend us all. Do you understand how rare that is? We would gladly face far more danger than this for the privilege of being treated so fairly. Please, sir, if you care for these people at all, do not send them away. They would rather serve you, even knowing what you are, than any pureblood Sebacean officer."

John was amazed. And flattered. And humbled. And then he realized what Avena had just said and everything ground to a halt. "Wait...you're telling me that they know...."

"That you're an alien? Of course. All the techs do. We know far more about what goes on aboard our carrier than anyone gives us credit for, and you have been a favorite subject of tech gossip almost since the moment you came aboard. We knew Gilina Renaez loved you, and you her. We knew the captain blamed you for the death of Lt. Crais, and sent you here as punishment, intending you to die or wither away in disgrace. Most people in your situation would have taken out their resentment on their subordinates; instead, you chose to help us. Is it any wonder that so few of us care what race birthed you anymore?"

John looked away from Avena's earnest, sincere eyes and gazed around the bay at his crew. He had treated them by the Golden Rule, as he would want to be treated himself. Now he reaped what he had sown. "Fair enough. Do you have any suggestions? About the reward?"

She thought about it for a moment, her eyes moving across the bay from person to person. "I do have one idea, sir." She looked sideways at him, the corners of her eyes wrinkling in bemusement. "But you may find it a bit strange."

"'Strange' is practically my middle name, Avena, you know that." He smiled back encouragingly. "Lay it on me."

She told him what she had in mind, and she was right. It was a bit odd. But the more he thought about the techs he'd known over the past two cycles, the more it made perfect sense.

---

Forty solar days had passed since the end of the Scarran attack, and for the first time in all those weekens Aeryn Sun finally felt rested. The carrier was once again deep inside Peacekeeper controlled space, which meant that the constant strain of maintaining full-strength patrols with less than three fourths of their usual complement of pilots had finally eased. Most of the wounded were back on duty, and all the repairs that could be completed with the resources available were finished. Life was back to something approximating normal again.

Aeryn was taking advantage of the respite today by indulging in a quick midmeal in the officers' lounge. Barring some emergency, tonight would be her first opportunity to visit the environmental recreation deck since the night of the alert that preceded the Scarran engagement. Perhaps John would be there.

Sensing motion, she glanced up at the door then groaned silently. During one of their late night conversations, some monens ago, John had explained the concept his people called "Murphy's Law". The Peacekeepers had no such belief in the universe's perversity, but seeing Lt. Dak heading straight for her before she'd even taken her first bite, she had to wonder if the humans weren't onto something after all.

"Lieutenant," she greeted, standing as he approached.

"Come with me, Officer Sun," he ordered brusquely. "I require your assistance."

"Yes, sir." She left her meal uneaten and followed at Dak's heels as he strode quickly back the way he'd come, wondering what she was in for.

Instead of the Marauder bay, as she'd been expecting, Dak led Aeryn on a circuitous route through the ship's core to the hammond side Prowler bay. She had been curious about the unusual summons before, but now she could no longer contain it. "Sir? If I may ask--"

"You may not," he interrupted.

Long cycles of bitter experience had taught Aeryn never to argue with an officer who was using that tone of voice. The results were never positive, and usually painful.

As the marched through the main hangar doors--now repaired from the damage Xelstar regiment had inflicted while trying to force their way in--Aeryn saw Lt. Malarr, commander of all carrier-based flight operations, waiting for them just inside. The older officer nodded to Dak and fell into step with him, taking up a position behind him, mirroring Aeryn's own.

Odd. Malarr was Dak's direct superior; she ought to be leading, not following.

"You, Tech!" Dak called out. A young girl, her arms filled with an engine component that looked like it outweighed her, turned at the summons. She snapped to attention as best she could, being so encumbered.

"I wish to speak to the deck officer. Where is he?"

Aeryn blanched. Crichton. He must have stepped over the line at last. What the frell had he done this time?

The tech hesitated, glancing at each officer facing her in turn. She bit her lip, seeming reluctant to answer.

"I will not ask again, Tech," Dak growled. "Where is Sub-officer Crichton?"

Fear finally overcame the girl's reticence. She tossed her head aft, towards a knot of people clustered around several ships.

"Take us to him."

She scampered off, still clutching the engine part, and they followed briskly. Aeryn wondered how much trouble John had gotten himself into this time, and why. Knowing Crichton, there would be a reason.

And why was Dak involved? For that matter, why was she here?

The young tech reached Crichton first and spoke to him in a desperate whisper. He turned to see the phalanx of senior officers bearing down on him, then placed a reassuring hand on the girl's shoulder before stepping forward to meet them.

"Lieutenants. Officer." He greeted them formally, his hands clasped behind his back.

"Sub-officer Crichton. Are you aware that there are consequences for the acts you have committed on this deck?" Dak's voice was loud; heads turned all across the bay. This wasn't like him. In Aeryn's experience, Dak almost never raised his voice, not even when delivering a reprimand. This must be very serious, to get him so worked up.

"Yes, sir." John's reply was quiet and proper, but his eyes showed his alarm and confusion.

"I didn't hear you, soldier."

"Sir, yes sir!" John snapped out, much louder. All around the bay, the techs were drifting closer, concern written large on their faces. That, more than anything, told Aeryn exactly how highly John was regarded here. Most officers' subordinates would not have cared.

"And are you prepared to face those consequences, soldier?" Dak asked harshly, pacing around his victim like a Collarta on the hunt, still speaking loudly enough to be heard by everyone.

Aeryn saw John swallow nervously, still looking confused. Wisely, though, he simply responded, "Yes, sir."

Lt. Dak stopped pacing in front of his victim and drew himself to full attention. By reflex, Aeryn found herself following suit, bracing herself for the bad news. She was therefore just as shocked as everyone else by Dak's next words.

"Sub-officer John Crichton: in recognition of your valor and quick thinking in the recent engagement, and the actions by which you saved so many of your fellow crew members' lives--and possibly the entire ship from enemy capture--it is my honor to confer up on you the rank of full Officer."

There were gasps and cheers from all around them as Dak continued through the formal field promotion ceremony. The cheers continued even after he finished, gaining volume, until John self-consciously ordered the techs to pipe down and get back to work. He looked dazed, and Aeryn couldn't blame him. She didn't know whether it would be worth the reprimand to smack her commanding officer silly for scaring them like that.

As the uproar finally diminished and the chattering techs wandered back to their tasks, Dak and Malarr stepped aside for a quiet conversation, leaving Aeryn and John standing alone in the middle of the cavernous hangar.

"Congratulations," she said with sincerity.

He glanced up at her and smiled ruefully. "Yeah. Sure. Thanks."

"Aren't you happy about this?"

He just shrugged. "Don't see that it changes much. Though, on the upside, at least I don't have to call you 'sir' anymore." They both had a brief chuckle over that.

"I don't understand why you aren't pleased." Her own promotions, especially the last one, were some of the proudest days of her life.

"Is this going to change how the captain sees me, Aeryn? Is it going to get me back to working on wormholes, so I can find a way home? Hell, I can't even believe Crais signed off on this--"

"He didn't." Dak joined them at that moment, and Aeryn could see Lt. Malarr heading for the exit. "I sent the recommendation to High Command myself."

"Why?" John blurted out rudely. Aeryn winced, but fortunately, despite his earlier churlish façade, Dak was actually in a fairly good mood.

"Because you earned it," he explained, "and no one else was doing anything about it."

For a microt it looked like Crichton was going to respond, but then his eyes shifted to one side and his mouth snapped shut. He looked away quickly, then looked back, his eyes shifting back and forth restlessly, as if there was something he didn't want to see but couldn't help looking.

Aeryn turned to look at what had drawn John's eye, and saw Lt. Malarr standing at the exit, talking to someone. The second figure was partly hidden in the shadows, so all she could see was a hint of black leather. After a moment they turned and disappeared into the corridors.

She turned back. "What is it?" she asked John, wondering what had upset him.

"Nothing. Just thought I saw someone I knew." He dismissed the incident with a casual wave. Too casual.

Returning abruptly to the aborted conversation, he gave Dak his usual self-deprecating smile. "Well, I'm sure we both know why no one else was jumping in line to pat me on the back."

"True." Dak nodded, acknowledging the point. "And I can't say I don't understand their feelings; I'd be more comfortable if you were Sebacean, too."

"Yet you managed to get past that; I'm impressed." John's expression became sly as he glanced sideways at Aeryn. "It took Officer Sun here six monens before she'd give me the time of day. And after all I'd done for her, too. Rescuing her, single-handed, from the clutches of a nasty horde of escaped criminals, risking life and limb--"

Aeryn smacked him smartly across the back of his head, halting the tall tale in progress, but John just busted up laughing. Dak joined him, more quietly but still genuinely amused, and all Aeryn could do was glare at the two of them and roll her eyes.

---

That vision he'd had of Scorpius in the hangar had apparently been the last straw. The microt that Aeryn and the others had left, the voice in John's head transformed from a whisper to a bullhorn blasting his inner ear. And it didn't let up for a moment.

He'd tried to ignore it, tried to keep working, but after a while the hallucinations were joined by a headache the likes of which he'd never experienced, as if someone had shoved an ice pick into the back of his skull and was stirring around for something. The techs were starting to look at him oddly, so finally he made up an excuse and left the crowded hangar for the privacy of one of the little-used storage bays.

Once inside, away from the glaring lights and the quizzical stares, John stumbled forward, drawn like a compass needle to a familiar snub-nosed shape tucked into a dark, dusty corner. He ran his hands gently over the sleek, white surface. "Hey girl," he rasped out. "How's it hangin'?"

The Farscape was silent, a condition for which John was oddly grateful. Disembodied voices and visions of Scarran hybrids were one thing, but if inanimate objects started talking back at him....

*...blind...blind...never see it coming, will you, John? It will all be much easier if you just give in....give me what I want. The pain...the pain will be over...submit...surrender...I've already won....*

Oh, who the hell was he kidding? He could feel his sanity slipping through his fingers like water. It was just a matter of time. "Shut up!" he demanded, grinding the heel of his hand against his left temple, and the battle was joined.

Time passed unnoticed; it might have been microts or arns before his solitary struggle was interrupted.

"Crichton?"

From his position on the floor--he'd squeezed himself into the farthest, darkest corner of the room at some point--John looked up to see a familiar silhouette standing in the doorway.

*Ignore her...send her away...she can't help you, no one can help you...no one but me....*

"Shut up," he muttered, rubbing a hand across his scalp. The hand came away bloody; he'd managed to scratch furrows into his skin fighting the voices.

Aeryn must have heard his voice; she stepped into the room and moved unerringly towards him. "Why are you hiding down here, Crichton? Visiting that archaic pile of dren you call a spaceship?" Her voice was light, teasing. "Come on, you should be celebrating--"

As she stepped around the Farscape and finally caught a good look at him, she gasped. "What's wrong? Are you injured?"

*Tell her to go away...do it...if you don't, I will make her go away, and you wouldn't like that, now, would you John?*

"Go away, Aeryn."

She shook her head, all stubborn resolve, and crouched down in front of John's huddled form. "What's wrong?" she repeated. "Tell me."

He gestured feebly towards his head, unable to form the necessary words.

"The voices?" Her look of concern deepened.

John nodded, the motion more of a twitch than a controlled gesture. Then he groaned and leaned forward, grabbing his skull in an attempt to contain the explosion that seemed suddenly imminent.

"Is it as bad as before?" She sat down on the floor beside him and placed a cool hand against the sweat-soaked hair at the back of his head.

"Worse," he managed to croak, leaning back into that blessed touch. It seemed to ease the pain just a little.

The peace was fleeting however. John suddenly leapt to his feet, unable to keep still, and started pacing restlessly. His arms wrapped around his ribs in unconscious mockery of a straitjacket.

Aeryn's face contorted with both concern and frustration at her own helplessness. "You have to be strong, Crichton. Fight it!"

"I'm trying. I'm trying--Shut up, you bastard! Stop it!--I can't...he's yelling, wearing me down. He wants control, he wants me to go to Scorpius...."

"Scorpius is gone, John, you know that."

"I know, I know. Tell him that!" He waved vaguely at his head. "I've been seeing him, you know. Flashes. Everywhere. Ever since the Scarrans boarded. They couldn't have brought him aboard, could they?"

"No, John. Any intruder would have been discovered long ago; you know how tight security has been."

"Yeah. Sure." John continued to pace, his agitation rising by the microt, taking occasional pointless swipes at his head, like trying to shoo away the horsefly that was buzzing around inside his skull.

"What can I do, John? How can I help? If you told the medtechs--"

John burst into slightly hysterical giggles. "Can't. Tried that. Don't think anything'll help, anyway, short of a chakan-oil lobotomy." He chuckled at his own joke, while Aeryn frowned. "That's elective surgery, though--don't think it's covered by my insurance." Another wave of hysterical laughter escaped, despite his efforts to hold it in.

Aeryn stood and grabbed John's shoulders, halting him in mid-step. "Not this time, Crichton. You're going to come with me, and you're going to tell the techs everything."

John shook his head, trying to back away, but she held tight. "But Crais--"

"Doesn't need to know. Trust me, John, the techs will keep him from finding out. They seem to like you, for some strange reason. If you ask them to keep it quiet, they'll do it. I promise. Let them help."

Another jerky nod was all the reply John could muster. As Aeryn led him through the halls, her hand firmly clamped around his upper arm, the wraith in his head howled in protest and clawed for control. Several times along the route he came close to collapsing when the pain and struggle became too much, but Aeryn's firm hold and stubborn resolve kept him on his feet and moving forward.

The sudden increase in pressure from the mental specter he'd once nicknamed 'Harvey', instead of depressing him, actually brought him hope. If it was so desperate to keep him away from the medtechs, then maybe there was something they could do to rid him of it. Why else would it care?

He let Aeryn do the talking, let her say the words he had so far been unable to force past his own larynx. The techs frowned, asked questions John couldn't hear over the din between his ears, and got those grim, thoughtful looks that were common to doctors on both sides of the universe.

While the techs were setting up their tests, John realized it was getting late, and suggested to Aeryn that she go get some sleep. "No need for both of us to be walking around like zombies tomorrow," he pointed out.

"No, John. I'm staying." She folded her arms stubbornly. "I'm not going to let you go through this alone."

John lowered his voice. "Aeryn, I love that you want to help. I really do. But you can't stay; that's just asking for trouble. What if someone sees you? They'll wonder why you're so concerned about some guy who's not even part of your unit. You'd be up on report before you could say 'irreversible contamination'."

She bit her lip, caught for a microt in a conflict between duty and feeling, then raised her chin defiantly. "I don't care."

He silenced any further protests with a single finger on her lips. "But I do," he said quietly. "The last thing I want to do is drag you down with me. You deserve better."

"But--"

Two off-duty soldiers walked in, one of them supporting the other, who was limping badly. A training accident, by the looks of it. The healthy man dropped his companion off on an examination table and turned to leave, giving John and Aeryn an odd look as he passed by.

John raised an eyebrow at her as his point was driven home. He put his hands on her shoulders. "Aeryn, please, just go. I promise I'll be a good boy and do what the docs tell me." He saw one of the techs heading their way and felt Harvey's ghostly fingers scrabble wildly for control once again. Twisting his neck with the effort, he managed to force the wraith back down, then tried to pretend he had just been stretching some sore muscles. "You go on," he said to Aeryn, attempting a reassuring smile.

She wasn't buying the act, he could tell, but she nodded anyway, showing great reluctance. "All right, if you insist. I'll stop by the hangar deck tomorrow at the midmeal, so you can tell me what the techs had to say."

And to make sure I really did stick around for the tests and didn't sneak off when your back was turned, John added the unspoken reason in his head. He smiled, relishing Aeryn's forceful and forthright brand of caring. "See you tomorrow," he agreed.

---

Later, as the arns crept towards morning, John was glad he'd sent Aeryn off to catch some shuteye. He certainly hadn't gotten any himself.

On the upside, once the techs started their testing, his own personal Harvey seemed to resign itself to its fate and stopped trying to wrestle his body away from him. Instead, it settled for a constant barrage of verbal abuse. The techs had been treated to a few of John's one-sided dialogues, as he argued and pleaded for the voice to Just. Shut. Up.

Once the tests were done, John had waited nearly an arn while they compiled and analyzed their data, hoping against hope that they'd find a cure. A treatment. Something. Anything to pull him back from the razor's edge of sanity he was teetering on.

But it only took one look at their faces when they came to tell him to dash those hopes onto the floor.

There was something in his head, they told him. Something that didn't belong there, that hadn't been there when they first examined him nearly two cycles ago. At first John didn't understand, but then the tech touched the back of John's head to demonstrate where the foreign object was lodged, and the simple touch sparked a memory.

Scorpius. Something in his hand. Something metallic and sharp. John hadn't paid attention at the time, unable to pull his eyes or his mind away from the body sprawled on the floor nearby. Then pain, stabbing pain at the base of his skull, and darkness. His next memory was Aeryn. And Stark.

"The bastard put something in my head," John murmured, breaking the silence of his empty quarters. He wondered what Aeryn would make of that revelation. It wasn't the deficient human going off the deep end due to stress or too long in space, after all. This was something Scorpius had done to him. No wonder he was hallucinating the bastard around every corner. And no wonder Harvey was always badgering him about wormholes.

But while the revelation was comforting in one respect, that his visions had been somehow 'real' all this time and not figments of his imagination, it was also unfortunate that he wasn't suffering from transit madness, since the techs could have actually done something about that. With this, they were stumped. Whatever that Scarran half-breed had plugged into his skull might have started out small, but according to the scans the techs had spent the night running and re-running, it had grown, spread, and burrowed its way deep into his brain's delicate circuitry. They'd never seen anything like it before, they'd told him sheepishly, so they didn't know if it was even possible to remove it without causing death or severe brain damage.

They'd promised to keep studying the problem and let him know.

Just as the lights finally snapped on, heralding the start of his shift, the comms in John's quarters crackled to life.

"Officer Crichton," addressed the voice of Crais' second in command, Lt. Teeg. "Report to Captain Crais' office immediately."

Beneath the sound of his own voice acknowledging the order, John could hear Harvey chuckle and mutter, *I told you so, John.*

Great. Just great. Somehow Crais must have found out about Crichton's little 'problem'. Whether that had been accomplished through surveillance or was simply the result of a report from the med techs, the result was the same. And if it had been one of the techs, John couldn't really find it in his heart to blame them. Crais was their commanding officer, after all, and no matter how much of a self-righteous asshole the man was, they had all sworn their loyalty to him a long time ago. John was nothing compared to that, just an odd alien specimen who'd been dropped into their laps.

Well, there was no point in delaying the inevitable. Making Crais wait would just make things worse in the long run. With just a quick glance in the mirror to assess his appearance--shadows under the eyes, mussed hair, rumpled and grease-stained uniform--he shrugged and headed for the door. Making a good impression was pretty low on his priority list this morning, and Crais would probably relish the opportunity to complain about his slovenliness.

Two hundred microts later, he was standing outside the double doors to the captain's office.

"Ah, Officer Crichton, come in." Captain Crais gave a nasty sneer to John's new title.

"Reporting as ordered, sir." John saluted, keeping his eyes firmly forward and ignoring the latest hallucination. The silent apparition of Scorpius--no, Harvey--was lurking just out of the corner of his eye, near the dais at the back of the large office.

Crais' eyes raked over John's sloppy uniform and sweat-matted hair, but strangely, he said nothing about it. "As of this moment, Officer, you are relieved of your duties as deck officer. You are being reassigned."

John blinked. Well, well, perhaps he'd been wrong and Crais didn't know about his late-night visit to the medtechs. Which meant this was just more of the same old crap, finding new and unique ways to screw him over. Come on, Captain Crunch, he thought tiredly, quit gloating and just get on with it.

"My first choice for your new duty station was as a target during the next Prowler exercise." John still showed no reaction, and Crais frowned. "Our guest, however, has persuaded me that you can still be of some small use in another capacity."

"Guest, sir?" John asked curiously. Had someone just arrived aboard? Was the Admiral back?

Crais' scowl deepened. "I did not realize your eyesight was quite so deficient as that."

"Hello, Crichton."

It was the oily voice of his nightmares and his insanity, but this time something was different. He was hearing it, with his ears, not from within his own mind.

Glancing towards the sound, he saw his earlier hallucination leaning over his right shoulder, mere denches away. There was a wash of hot breath on his cheek.

And he knew.

---

When the midmeal arrived, as promised, Aeryn made her way over to the Prowler deck to find John. As she walked through the main doors, she met Kranda and his squadron heading out, still clad in their flight suits and with helmets in hand. Probably just returning from a patrol.

"Sun!" her former squad mate greeted her brightly. "Slumming down here with us lowly Prowler jockeys again? I'm going to start to think you miss us if you keep this up."

"Not likely," she growled back, matching his teasing with her own.

"We were heading up to the lounge for some refreshment; care to join us?" Several others in the squad, primarily the ones she'd flown with when she'd been in the unit herself, nodded and seconded the invitation.

Aeryn shook her head, honestly regretful. "I'd love to, but there's something I have to do first."

"Duty over pleasure, I understand. If you get done in time, come find us."

"I will." Hopefully, her talk with Crichton wouldn't take too long.

After parting with her old compatriots, Aeryn made a quick scan of the huge chamber, looking for John, but did not immediately spot him. It was odd--he ought to have been expecting her, and it wasn't like there was anything pressing happening on the deck to distract him. All was quiet.

After walking half the length of the bay without seeing any sign of her quarry, Aeryn finally approached a young tech working by herself in one of the smaller maintenance bays. She opened her mouth to ask about Crichton, then forgot what she'd been about to say as the tech's project distracted her attention. Perched on the work bench was a standard Prowler comms array, and right next to it, a piece of equipment that Aeryn couldn't identify. The design looked Scarran.

Though Aeryn hadn't made a sound, the tech glanced up and gasped in surprise. "Sir! Sorry sir, I didn't see you there!"

Aeryn waved her apologies away. "It's all right, Tech, I can see you were concentrating on your work. What are you working on, by the way?"

The young woman went into a long, involved explanation involving Peacekeeper and Scarran signals technology, and her attempts to adapt the former to avoid interception by the latter. Aeryn boggled, both at her own uncharacteristic curiosity about something so clearly outside her purview, and at how much of the tech's explanation she actually understood.

"Is there a problem, Officer Sun?"

Aeryn turned. The chief tech, whom John had previously introduced to her as Avena, had approached without her noticing. "No problem, Chief," she assured the woman. "I was looking for someone, but the tech's project caught my eye. I'm impressed; isn't this the kind of work that would usually be assigned to a comms specialist?"

Avena nodded. "We have no such specialist aboard at the moment, however, so Tech J'hesta is in charge of the project."

"Crichton assigned this to her?" Aeryn could see him ignoring such details of rank protocol if it suited him.

"Not precisely. It's part of Officer Crichton's reward program."

Reward? Aeryn glanced over at the young tech, who was laboring hard during a time that she should have been free to relax. It seemed more of a punishment than a reward--until the girl glanced up at them and grinned. She was clearly having the time of her life. It was, Aeryn realized, perhaps like someone offering her the chance for an arn of free and undirected flight in her old Prowler. A rare gift, indeed.

"After our confrontation with the Scarran boarding party," Avena explained, "Officer Crichton was looking for a way to show his appreciation, since we don't receive promotions or decorations like soldiers. So he awarded each tech who participated in the encounter a free arn every second shift--barring alerts or other emergencies, of course--to work on a project of their own choosing. If the projects show success, the time allotted to them is increased. J'hesta here is already getting an arn every shift, and works through her midmeal break to increase that further. She's making good progress."

Aeryn shook her head, one corner of her mouth quirking up. Techs were weird. And the strangest one of them all--

Suddenly she remembered why she had come here in the first place. "Chief, can you tell me where I can find Officer Crichton? I was supposed to meet him here."

Avena and the young tech shot glances at each other, faces filled with worry and nervousness, but so quickly that Aeryn might have easily missed the exchange. "I don't know, sir," was Avena's careful reply. "I...I haven't seen him recently."

She was a poor liar, and Aeryn felt dread settle into her stomach. "He didn't report for duty at all today, did he?" She pinned her older woman with her best commando glare.

It worked--Avena might have wanted to dissemble some more, but what came out of her mouth was a simple, "No."

Aeryn indulged herself in a few microts of silent profanity, fists clenched tight, then took a deep breath. "And you didn't report it?"

"Well, uh..." Avena fumbled, looking panicked. "I didn't think it was my...I mean, I wasn't sure--"

"Thank you."

Avena stopped in mid-babble and gaped at Aeryn in shock. "Sir?"

"For protecting him. I don't know if you've noticed, but Crichton has been having some...problems lately--"

"The visions."

Aeryn gaped. "You know about those?"

The other woman just smiled, though there was no humor in it. "With all due respect, Officer, we've spent far more time with him than you have. He hides it well, but yes, we've noticed. It's gotten worse these past few weekens, but we've respected his wishes and haven't mentioned it."

Aeryn shook off her surprise and nodded. "I finally forced him to go to the medtechs last night. Hopefully his absence just means they're still--"

The blare of an alarm shattered the quiet conversation, causing all three women to jump. The announcement that followed shattered all trace of Aeryn's former hope. Security was on the lookout for Officer John Crichton, to be detained for the attempted murder of a fellow Peacekeeper. There were no details. Obviously, though, he'd become mentally unbalanced--more so even than the night before. The most recent reported sighting was not too far from where she now stood.

J'hesta looked up at Aeryn, her face pinched with worry. "Do you think he's coming here, sir?"

Just as she was about to answer, Aeryn saw a dozen security grots pour into the hangar through every entrance. "I hope not," she said quietly, "but if he's this far gone, I don't know what he'll do. I should have taken him to the medtechs sooner."

Then Aeryn realized there was something else near John's last known location, something security might not think of. She shot a quick question at the two techs, and at the affirmative replies, took off at a dead run.

---

From the shadowed recesses of a cramped access tunnel, John held his breath as another squad of security pounded past, the sound of his own heart in his ears nearly drowning out the tattoo of their boots on the deck.

Gotta get out.

*This is pointless, John.*

Gotta get away.

*There's nowhere you can run, John.*

Possibly true, but he'd be damned if he was going to be taken alive, or a least without a fight. Not that he didn't already have a fight on his hands, what with Scorpy's damned chip clawing for control every step of the way. So far John was holding his own through sheer cussedness and rage; he didn't want to think about what would happen if he dropped his guard.

How the hell had things gone so wrong so quickly? Just yesterday, he'd been accepting a promotion and allowing himself to start thinking he could fit in here, be accepted. Now all that was gone, wiped away by a single act of desperation, leaving him with no one to turn to and no place to go.

It was all Scorpius' fault, of course. The Scarran half-breed--who by all rights should be the one being hunted in John's place--had somehow wormed his way into Crais' good graces, making promises and telling Crais exactly what he wanted to hear. Scorpius was using the captain's grief--and greed--to further his own nefarious plans.

John had been so sure, so confident that Scorpius would never be able to bother him again. The admiral's report should have guaranteed that. From the hints dropped during that nightmare interview in the captain's office, however, the admiral had never reached High Command to deliver that report, and the cocky smirk on Scorpy's face told John that the half-breed had somehow had a hand in the assassination.

The corridor was quiet at last, so John wriggled his way out of his snug hiding place and moved quietly on towards his destination. His life here was gone now, his position, his friends, every ounce of respect he'd earned for himself over the past two cycles. All stolen away by Scorpius in a single stroke. John only had one thing left, one object to call his own. She was his last hope, his only chance of escape, and barring that, at least they could leave this place, this frelled up life, the same way they'd arrived. Together.

There was no one standing guard over the storage bay when he arrived. Good. Apparently his module, like his alien origins, had been gradually forgotten over the cycles.

It took less than two hundred microts, using tricks Gilina had taught him in those long-gone, happy days before Scorpius, to override the controls on the main access doors. Launching the Farscape took even less time--she was still fueled and flight-ready despite the passage of time and the layers of dust.

As the module shot out into the main hangar, John caught a brief glimpse of some soldiers trying to bring weapons to bear. None of them got close to hitting such a fast-moving target, though, and within microts John was racing through the huge maw of the hangar bay and out into open space.

"Wahoo!" he shouted with exhilaration, throwing the module into a caper of rolls and acrobatics for which it had most emphatically not been designed. He let himself become completely consumed by the joy of free flight in space after so many months and years trapped inside that great tin can. He was determined to enjoy these moments to the fullest, since they would probably be his last. Any microt now, Crais would order him shot down and it would all be over in a flash. But this moment belonged to John Crichton, astronaut, and nothing could take that away from him.

That peaceful resignation to fate, however, vanished utterly a moment later when John caught sight of something wondrous and rare not far from his course. A bluish-gray planet, shining faintly in the light of a distant sun. It was a frozen ball of ice, smaller than Earth, but still large enough to have held on to a shroud of atmosphere. It was Mars dressed in blue, and adequate for John's needs.

He'd bought himself some time by exiting the carrier from the hammond side, where there was still no functional weaponry. It wouldn't take long for the ship to change course and pursue him, though, and even as crippled as it was, the carrier could still run the Farscape down without any trouble. One sling-shot around this heaven-sent little planet, however, and he could leave his pursuers in the dust for good.

Maybe. It would be a massive risk; even considering it was insane. Without knowing anything about this planet--the gravity, the density of the atmosphere, the magnetic fields--he would have no way to calculate a proper entry vector. It would have to be done the Jack Crichton way--by the seat of his flight suit.

With one hand, John unconsciously fingered the puzzle ring that still hung around his neck under his uniform. The ring's original owner had been the first human to fly in space. That great man had later given the ring as a gift to another space traveler, a man who had walked on the moon. And now Jack Crichton's son had taken it further yet, unknown hundreds or millions of light-years from where it had been forged. He wondered what Gagarin would say if he knew.

As he dove towards the alien atmosphere, John saw a bolt of energy shoot past his starboard wing. The carrier must have turned in pursuit, but the fact that they'd missed told him they were still a good distance behind. He didn't bother looking back.

"Kiss my exhaust pipe, Crais!" he shouted, though with the radio off the only one to hear the taunt was John himself. And Harvey, but he didn't count.

The chip, or the clone, or whatever it was Scorpy had called it, was being strangely quiet at the moment, perhaps realizing that any distraction would almost certainly lead to disaster.

The sling-shot maneuver was the ugliest, bumpiest ride John had taken since his first spinning plunge down the wormhole, and he was just as surprised now as he'd been then to find himself still alive when it was over.

He'd done it! It hadn't been pretty, but he was free at last. Free of Scorpius. Free of Crais.

*This is pointless, John. There is nowhere for you to go.*

But not free of Harvey.

*You'll never be free of me, not unless you go back. Give Scorpius what he wants.*

"Not. Going. To. Happen," John growled at the disembodied voice.

*You're all alone out here, John. No place to go, no one to help you. You'll die out here.*

"If I die, I die, but don't count me out just yet, Leatherface. I'll find a place, find someone to yank you out by the roots, and then I'll find a way to get home."

*I cannot allow this.* The pressure inside John's head increased as the clone once again fought for control. *I will not allow you to kill us both with this insanity!*

John was about to snap back with another smart remark when a second pulse of weapons fire flashed by outside the canopy, close enough this time to rock the tiny ship.

"What the--?" No way the carrier could have followed him through that maneuver; John had long ago calculated that the stresses inherent in the sling-shot would tear a ship that big to shreds.

In spite of that, when he looked back John fully expected to see the command carrier bearing down on him. But it wasn't the carrier. A single Marauder was shadowing the module less than half a metra away. It fired another shot, once again missing John by a narrow margin.

How the hell had a Marauder managed to come after him so quickly? Had he just blundered into its path by rotten luck? Or had it somehow followed him through--

A third shot grazed past the Farscape's nose, and realization struck. That Marauder was too close. Any commando team worth their stripes could have destroyed him with the first shot at that range. Which meant...they were missing on purpose. What kind of Peacekeepers fired warning shots?

A sudden flare of hope, and John reached out to flip on his radio.

"--ichton, you frelling drannit, answer me!" A familiar voice, harsh with annoyance and desperation, blared out through the speaker.

"Aeryn?"

---

She'd guessed right. By rushing directly to her Marauder and demanding emergency clearance even as her thrusters fired, Aeryn had managed to exit the carrier less than thirty microts behind John's module and set out in solitary pursuit.

She tried calling Crichton on the comms, but got no response. Flight control, on the other hand, was far more forthcoming; Lt. Malarr confirmed Aeryn's authority to apprehend the dangerous fugitive by whatever means necessary. The simple translation of that order was, as John would have termed it, "Shoot first and ask questions later."

She wasn't going to shoot John, though, not if she could help it. He was ill. He needed help, and Aeryn was going to see to it that he got that help, whether he wanted it or not.

When the module veered towards the nearby planet, Aeryn realized instantly what John was planning. She called again, pleading with him to stop and talk to her, but continued to get only silence in return. Even the warning shot over his wing got no reaction, making her wonder if John was so far into his own delusions that he wasn't aware of anything else. And if he wasn't in possession of all his faculties, how could he hope to complete a complex and dangerous maneuver like the sling-shot?

She held her breath even as she followed him in, and only remembered to breathe again when Crichton succeeded in breaking free of the atmosphere at the right moment. He'd done it. Somehow.

She tried a third time to contact John, taking his success as a sign that he might still be in there somewhere. If she could talk to him, she could reach him, make him listen to reason, but his continued silence wore away at her patience. Her calls got progressively angrier until she was punctuating her demands with weapons fire, aimed close enough to singe the tiny module's skin.

Finally, though, when her temper was nearly frayed to nothing, a plaintive, stricken voice called back to her.

"Aeryn?"

"John! What the frell do you think you're doing?" Tact, it seemed, had gone the way of patience.

"Leaving." Simple, to the point, and completely, frelling insane.

"John, you can't do that."

"I was doing just fine until you showed up. How the hell did you do that?"

Aeryn smirked, but didn't feel like letting him in on her secret. "Pure skill, Crichton."

The response was muffled, but sounded like, "Pure something...."

It was time to try to talk him down, before he got any deeper into the dren hole he'd already dug for himself. "John, cut your engines. We need to talk."

There was no change in the module's speed. "I'm not going back there, Aeryn. Either let me go or shoot me down yourself. You're not taking me back to Scorpius."

Scorpius? "John, Scorpius isn't there, remember? You've been hallucinating again."

"I am not--damn it, Harvey, shut the frell up and let me think!--I'm not hallucinating, Aeryn! He's there, aboard the carrier, and he's got Captain Crais in his hip pocket. He wants what's in my head, but I won't let him have it. I won't!"

John's module changed course then, veering away in what was either a pathetic attempt at evasion or a worrisome lack of steering control. She followed easily, pulling her own ship closer. This was going to be more difficult than she'd thought.

"John, calm down. You told me you'd been having visions last night, remember? What did the techs say?"

"Scorpy put a damn chip in my head. That's why I've been hearing him all this time. It wasn't me losing my mind, it was the chip. And now he wants it back."

"What happened after that? Why is security after you? Why are you running away?" She bit off the question before she could add a judgmental 'again'.

"Can't fight. Won't surrender. What's left?"

"John, I'm trying to help you."

"Well, do us both a favor and don't. I don't want you getting caught in the middle."

"Too late for that, I think. I'm here, you're here. Talk to me, damn it!"

"Tsk tsk, Ms. Sun. Such language." That was a different voice, John's and yet not. Calm and coolly rational, it nonetheless sent shivers up Aeryn's spine.

There was a growl on the comms then, a roar of rage, followed by a string of invective that was pure John Crichton.

"John?" she queried.

The tirade stopped and she could hear the human take a deep breath. "Yeah, mostly."

"What happened?"

"Just now, or earlier?" The question was dripping with sarcasm.

Aeryn opened her mouth to snap at him, then bit down on her tongue. First things first. "After you left the med bay."

"Got called to Crais' office. Thought at first he'd found out about my little...problem." John's voice trailed off.

"And had he?" she prompted.

"Hmm? Oh, um, actually, no. He called me there to 'reassign' me. Scorpy was there, too."

He started hallucinating right there in the Captain's office. Frell. Aeryn touched the engine control, boosting the power to gradually increase her speed. Slowly, carefully, her Marauder crept up on the small, white pod. "John, think for a microt. Scorpius can't be aboard the carrier. He'd have been arrested the microt he showed his face in Peacekeeper territory. The admiral saw to--"

John interrupted her with a harsh, humorless laugh. "The admiral's dead, Aeryn. Never made it back to High Command. Tragic accident in space. S'what Scorpy told me. Way he was smiling, I'll bet he had something to do with it."

"What happened after that, John? Why was security after you?" As if she couldn't guess.

"Crais 'n Scorpy, they had a good ol' time talkin' 'bout what they were gonna do to me. Scorpy wants his chip out, wants the wormhole information from my brain. Crais wants me dead. Or worse. So they made a deal. Scorpy yanks his chip out, along with about half of my brain, and Crais gets to throw whatever's left of me after that into a cell so he can gloat."

That had to be more hallucinations, Aeryn reasoned, dredged up from Crichton's own deepest fears.

"I couldn't take it any more, Aeryn." John's distant voice pleaded for understanding. "Had to get away. Escape. One way or the other. I tried to kill him. Scorpy. Chip wouldn't let me; couldn't pull the trigger. So I ran."

The insane human had pulled a weapon in Captain Crais' office, threatened an apparition only he could see, and then ran out. No wonder security had been hard on his heels. Aeryn was surprised Crais hadn't ordered Crichton shot on sight. "John, come back to the ship with me. They can take the chip out and make you well again. You're not thinking clearly."

"Actually, Aeryn, I'm clearer than I've been in a long time. I'm not going to let that half-Scarran bastard get his hands on what the Ancients gave me. He doesn't deserve it. He killed Gilina. I won't let him beat me."

"John, where do you think you can go? Your module doesn't have the range to reach a habitable planet; you'll run out of air long before you get anywhere."

There was silence on the comms for a long moment, and Aeryn wondered if she'd finally gotten through. "Better that than the alternative," John finally said quietly, dashing her hopes.

Oh, dear Cholak. John's mind had clearly been subsumed by his own delusions. There was no reasoning with him. "John, I have to take you back, whether you want to go or not. I hope someday you'll understand that I'm doing what's best for you." She brought her weapons back online from standby, set them at their lowest power, and targeted the module's engines.

"What?" John's voice called back, panic-stricken. "No, don't-- Oh, God. Harvey, don't! Don't make me-- Aeryn! Stay back...please, don't...." The strain in John's voice was heart-wrenching as he fought his own inner demons. Aeryn brought her finger down on the firing button, but at the last microt the module swerved away and the shot merely singed one wing.

And then the chase was on. Aeryn's skill was the greater, honed by cycles of training and trial by fire, but the tiny module, for all its primitive origins, did have an edge over her larger ship in sheer agility. She'd have been better off in her old Prowler.

John's flight path was erratic, swinging wildly between sound evasive tactics he'd learned in the past cycle of training classes, and uncontrolled, unpredictable gyrations. Aeryn was hampered by her reluctance to hurt him, but she couldn't be sure of the reverse. If John was no longer in control of himself, anything was possible. Several times, he flew across her course, brushing close enough to frighten her, almost as if he were daring her to shoot him down.

Finally, after a dozen such feints, the module turned and flew straight at her. Collision course.

With a wrench of the control stick, she veered away, avoiding a catastrophic collision by a mere fraction of a microt. "Hezmana, John, are you trying to get yourself killed?" she yelled through the comms.

The reply was distracted, strained, full of desperation. "Do it...do it...better you than...please, Aeryn...."

The agony in that voice, greater now than even the night before when she'd found him in his quarters, stabbed her to the heart. To hear a man like this, whose courage had so often saved her and others, beg for death....

"Let me help you, John. Let me take you back, so you can get help." She was unused to this, to soothing fears. Mercy and compassion. Weakness, her superiors would say, but if it saved John's life, she didn't care.

"No...no...can't. Told me...."

The brief distraction of conversation had been enough; with his mind on her, John's course had steadied for the few critical microts Aeryn needed. One shot at lowest power left the module drifting dead in space, leaking atmosphere, and its occupant cursing a blue streak. She ignored the stream of insults as she maneuvered to capture the tiny ship in her Marauder's cargo hold.

Once it was safely inside and the hold repressurized, Aeryn killed her engines and set a retrieval beacon. The carrier would find them soon.

John was out of the Farscape by the time Aeryn arrived, slumped against the far wall with his pulse pistol cradled in one hand.

She froze at the sight, worried by the drawn weapon. Under normal circumstances, she knew John would never hurt her. But the circumstances were far from normal, and this might not be the Crichton she knew.

Dark-circled, bloodshot eyes looked up at her, dark hollows bored into a lined and hopeless countenance. Aeryn shivered.

"John?"

There was no change in expression, none of John's characteristic humor at her uncertainty. He looked back down at the pistol, and she could see his hand shaking with effort.

"John, put the gun down."

There was a low sound, half moan and half chuckle. "That's just what Harvey's screaming in my ear, too. Won't let me...." His hand shook harder, the gun barrel rising half a dench and then falling again.

"Won't let you what, John?" She stepped forward slowly, carefully, as if approaching a wild animal.

"Failsafe. S'what Scorpy said. Can't kill him. Can't kill me. Fucking chip." John's bleak, horror-filled gaze tilted up towards her, nearly making her flinch at the intensity of pain contained in those eyes. "You did this, y'know," he accused. "Went down to that gammak base. Brought him aboard."

"John, please, try to think." She crouched down just out of arm's reach, but close enough to lunge forward if she had to. "Don't you think I would have known if I had brought that monster aboard the carrier? Don't you think I would have told you?"

That logic seemed to freeze Crichton in place for a microt. Then he shook his head and gazed back down at his frozen hand around the butt of the pistol. "Doesn't matter. Whether he's there or not, he's still in here." His free hand tapped fiercely at the side of his head. "He's fighting me. He wants control. And he's winning."

"They'll take the chip out, John. When it's gone, the voices will stop."

"They can't. They can't remove it, they told me so last night. This morning. Whatever. Not without killing me or leaving me second cousin to a vegetable. Scorpy said the same thing."

Aeryn met John's pain-filled eyes, trying to discern where his delusions stopped and reality began. She should have stayed with him last night and frell the consequences.

Slowly, haltingly, John's trembling hand reached out, pistol held loosely. "Take it, Aeryn. He won't let me...you do it."

She sucked in a horrified breath as she realized what he was asking. "No! You are not giving up, you hear me? We can fix this! Someone has to be able to fix this!"

John grasped her hand gently, easing the pistol into her grip, then placed his hand on her cheek. His eyes, still haunted but now strangely calm, gazed into her own. "Aeryn, listen to me. I see two possible futures. If the chip stays in, pretty soon the Scorpy clone in my head will take over. I'll be trapped in my own body, with no control, while he does heaven knows what. If they take it out, there's a good chance I'll be so damaged that High Command will 'retire' my ass, assuming Crais doesn't kill me himself and mount me on his wall as a trophy, or toss me in a cell, brain damaged and helpless."

Aeryn shook her head mutely, not wanting to hear this. She felt a small vibration through the deck plates, but John seemed not to notice. Time was running short.

"No matter what, I'm dead. Or worse than dead. You understand that fear, Aeryn. Sebaceans call it the Living Death.

"If I go back, Scorpius wins. He gets the keys to the kingdom, wormhole technology, and I don't trust him with it." He raised a finger to her lips to silence her objection. "Or Crais, if you don't believe in Scorpius. Neither one of them deserves benefit from what they've done to me. If I'm going to die, I want to do it knowing they didn't beat me."

He put his hand over hers, caressing both her and the pulse pistol she now held. "You were willing to do it for Tauvo. To spare him more pain."

The Marauder jolted suddenly, settling down hard on the carrier's hangar deck. The vibration she'd felt earlier was the docking web capturing them. John seemed to realize he was running out of time and grew desperate, dragging Aeryn to her feet and pulling the pistol in her hand upwards to aim at him. "Do it! Please, Aeryn...I can't...I won't...please...."

She hesitated. He wanted this. In all probability, he was right, and he'd be better off dying here rather than suffering whatever punishment Crais had in store for him.

She gripped the pistol and shifted her finger towards the trigger, seeing a flicker of hope light Crichton's eyes as she did so.

The airlock cycled.

She couldn't do it. There was still a chance, a faint chance that he could be cured. That she could have her John Crichton back. The man she--

Two uniformed security officers pounded into the cargo bay and grappled the struggling Crichton roughly to the deck. They snapped restraints onto his wrists, then hauled him to his feet. John continued to struggle and rage, fighting every inch of the way, giving every evidence of insanity.

Aeryn lowered the pistol as she watched them drag the human away. She'd go to the captain. She'd tell him what she knew, plead with him to give Crichton a chance to be cured. Transit madness, though it could hamstring a soldier's career advancement, was not a capital offense. She would--

A shadow approached out of the corner of her eye. "Officer Sun, I believe?"

She turned, snapping to attention...then froze, horror-stricken.

"Congratulations, Officer Sun," Scorpius said, a pleased expression twisting his reptilian features. "You have regained me my prize. I will see to it you receive a commendation for your efforts."

Without another word, the Scarran half-breed turned and ducked out of the ship through the open airlock.

Aeryn's knees gave out and she collapsed onto the floor, John's pistol clattering away from her nerveless grip.

Oh, dear Cholak, what have I done?

TBC...