Episode 15 - The Sound Of Silence
"For everything there is a season...." -- Harvey
When Lt. Dak finally ducked through the cargo bay door a quarter arn later, Aeryn was still huddled on the floor in shock, staring at nothing.
"Officer Sun!" Dak rushed over and knelt beside her. "Are you hurt?" He scanned her for signs of blood or injury. When she didn't reply, he jostled her shoulder lightly. "Sun?"
Aeryn blinked, emerging at last from her fugue of guilt and grief. "Is it true?" she asked in a small voice. "Did we really bring that monster on board?"
Dak looked confused. "Who, Crichton?"
"No!" She shook her head impatiently. "Scorpius."
"Oh." Dak's demeanor became immediately subdued; he glanced back at the door, as if wary of eavesdroppers. "The Scarran half-breed. Yes. Head scientist at that Gammak base, I was told."
"I never saw him." The tone was accusatory, though whether she was blaming Dak or herself for the failure was unclear.
"He was wounded in the initial firefight--one of our troops mistook him for a Scarran--so he was one of the first evacuated."
That explained it. Several ships had already left, Aeryn recalled, before she took charge of the evacuation. And if Scorpius had spent much of the time since sequestered in the medical areas, then it was understandable that she hadn't run across him.
And that the injured Crichton had been seeing him around every corner.
"Sun." Dak broke into her reverie. "What happened out there? All I was told was that you were in pursuit of Crichton. Was he a spy, then? Trying to escape?"
"No!" Aeryn snapped vehemently. Of course people would think that; Crichton was an alien, after all, and therefore automatically suspect.
"Then what?" Dak looked pained. "I'd grown to respect Crichton; I recommended him for promotion. For him to turn around and try to kill a fellow soldier, and then desert his post...."
"It's not what you think, sir." Lt. Dak knew the official version of her first mission to the Gammak base, but it was time he learned the truth. She knew what she had to do now, and what the likely consequences would be. There ought to be someone left behind who knew what Scorpius was capable of. "It all began a cycle ago," she began, "when Crichton was still a Crewman. The Captain sent him to Scorpius' Gammak base, disguised as a tech."
She told him of Crichton's capture, when he was discovered to be non-Sebacean and presumed to be a spy. Completely understandable, Dak pointed out, given the secrecy and high security of the base. His objections faded, however, as Aeryn's story went on, detailing how Crichton continued to be tortured even after his identity was confirmed by Crais.
She told Dak about the murder of Gilina Renaez--a mere tech, perhaps, but still a Peacekeeper--and about Scorpius' later attempt to interfere with a Special Directorate operation at the Breakaway Colonies.
By the time she finished recounting John's tale of the chip Scorpius had put into his brain, the lieutenant was grinding his teeth in disgust and repressed rage. "I had heard stories about Scorpius, but I never truly believed them."
"He is a monster."
"Since he's been aboard, I've also started hearing other rumors. He has apparently begun maneuvering himself into Captain Crais' inner circle."
Aeryn shuddered at the thought. "Crais wants the wormhole tech; Tauvo used to talk about how ambitious his brother was, how desperate for recognition and advancement. Perhaps so much so that he will even tolerate that abomination."
Dak glanced around nervously again. "We should not be discussing such things. Even here. Scorpius has power, and he is greatly feared. From what you've told me, with good reason."
Aeryn nodded agreeably, pretending to a resignation she did not feel. No need to arouse her commanding officer's suspicions.
Once they disembarked from the Marauder, Aeryn was ordered to attend an immediate debriefing with Lt. Malarr. She endured the cross-examination stoically, while inwardly begrudging every wasted microt.
By the time she was released, over an arn had passed since John's capture. As she strode through the corridors, outwardly calm and composed, Aeryn's mind raced. Where had they taken him? What was Scorpius doing to him? How could she find him, get near him?
Passing through the last intersection leading to her quarters, Aeryn heard a quiet voice call her name. She turned and spotted a slight figure with dark hair beckoning from the shadows of a smaller side passageway. Aeryn glanced around warily. There was no one else in the corridor, so she stepped into the dim, narrow tunnel and followed cautiously as the unknown figure led her deeper into the back service areas.
She soon found herself at a main junction point, facing a group of over a dozen techs. Her guide, she realized on closer inspection, was the girl she'd been talking to a mere two arns before, the one who had been spending her midmeal break working on a comms project. The others were somewhat familiar--anonymous faces from her Prowler days, mostly--but she could not recall any names.
The group was silent, anxious, and Aeryn quickly grew tired of waiting for one of them to muster the nerve to speak. "Well?" she snapped, focusing her gaze on the girl. "Are you going to tell me what you want, or do I have to guess?"
The young tech glanced around at her companions, as if seeking support. Several made encouraging gestures, and one voice murmured, "Go on, Pi. Ask her." The girl bit her lip and looked down, obviously paralyzed with nervousness.
"Ask me?" Aeryn prompted, more gently this time.
"About...about Officer Crichton, sir."
"He's in custody." The simple statement was delivered using the same bland, matter-of-fact inflections that had served to conceal her emotional state through the endless debriefing.
"Scorpius' custody?" It was not the girl this time, but one of the others, his voice harsh and accusing. The sentiment behind the query was echoed by a dozen other silent glares.
Aeryn's façade of cool indifference collapsed under the weight of those staring eyes, washed away in a wave of guilt-ridden anguish. In her pain, she lashed out at the only targets available. She grabbed the girl, who was closest, by the front of her uniform and lifted her almost off her feet. "You knew? You knew that monster was here and you didn't warn Crichton?"
Pi's head jerked back as if she'd been slapped. "We thought he knew. He saw Scorpius."
Of course he did. Aeryn took a deep breath, fighting back the tears that threatened, and carefully unclenched her hands from the fabric of the girl's jumpsuit. They could not have known that Crichton would disbelieve the evidence of his own eyes. "Yes," she finally replied more calmly. "Scorpius has him."
Aeryn saw her own grief and anger staring back at her from a dozen faces. These people, she realized, cared for Crichton as deeply as she did. What was it about the man that inspired such loyalty?
Aeryn and Pi spoke at the same moment, their voices overlapping.
"I could use your help."
"How can we help?"
Taking a deep breath and bracing her shoulders back, Aeryn marched into the food preparation area for the prison level. She wore her old ship-board guard duty uniform, complete with helmet, rendering her appearance both anonymous and vaguely threatening.
"You, Crewman!" she snapped.
The young soldier assembling the trays spun around, startled, then braced and saluted. "Sir?"
"Are the rations prepared for the prisoner in cell four dekka nine?" That's where Crichton was being held; one of J'hesta's techs had teased the information out of the ship's processors, along with the fact that he was due to be turned over to the med techs within the arn.
"Aye, sir." He turned and picked out a tray that had been set aside separately. "I was just about to--"
"I will deliver it."
"Sir?" The young man's double-take would have been highly amusing under other circumstances. She took the tray out of his hands, leaving him fluttering helplessly. "Sir, this is most irregular...."
"Orders, Crewman."
The magic words, as Crichton would have said. The food preparer was young, still intimidated by rank, and did not challenge her.
As she strode away, tray in hand, Aeryn sent silent thanks to J'hesta and her network of techs. She never would have made it this far without their able assistance. The techs' dedication to John Crichton was without precedent. Indeed, the human would already be suffering Scorpius' brutal extraction surgery were it not for the med techs' stubborn insistence that they needed time to study the problem. It was a conspiracy bordering on mutiny, yet it was occurring at a level so far beneath the notice of most higher officers that it might go undetected indefinitely.
The soldier standing watch on the detention level wore a uniform essentially identical to her own, though she fortunately still out-ranked him. He glanced up at her approach and then peered more closely through her visor. "You're not Braton," he observed.
"Very perceptive," she responded in a gruff voice. "I will be delivering the rations to cell number four dekka nine. I have matters to...discuss with the prisoner."
The guard smirked and gave Aeryn a knowing wink. "Heard he tried to desert, that one. The boys who brought him in already expressed their opinion to him. Should I have the med-techs stand ready?"
"That won't be necessary. Just let me in and leave."
It took several dozen microts, brushing off the guard's veiled hints--he obviously had a sadistic streak and wanted to help with the abuse of his prisoner--before the cell door finally shut, leaving Aeryn alone in Crichton's cell.
She froze for a microt at the sight before her. It wasn't the bruises that shocked her, nor the split lip and blood-smeared chin. Those were expected; Crichton had not gone quietly, and she suspected he'd done his utmost to provoke his captors into finishing the job Aeryn herself had shied away from.
She'd been prepared to face John in a rage, or perhaps deep into another depressive funk. What threw her off her stride was the sight of the human lying in perfect repose, hands folded across his chest and eyes half-lidded in utter relaxation, a picture completely at odds with his battered face. There was no sign that he was even aware of her presence, though given the anonymity of her helmeted uniform, it might simply be that he didn't recognize her.
Crouching down to place the tray on the floor, Aeryn twisted her helmet loose and set it down as well. "John?" She took one step across the tiny cell and placed her hand on his arm. Out of reflex, she pitched her voice at a whisper, though the precaution was pretty pointless. If the techs hadn't managed to shunt the cell monitors into a diagnostic cycle, she would be discovered and apprehended no matter how quiet she was.
John's eyes shifted towards her at the sound of his name, then narrowed in surprise. He opened his mouth to speak, but Aeryn laid a restraining finger over his lips.
"Let me talk, John, please. I needed to see you, to apologize for doubting you. I swear, I had no idea Scorpius was aboard." She found she couldn't look Crichton in the eye as she spoke, though her hand still rested on his chest. "I promise, though, I'll make it up to you. We're getting you out of here. When the guard comes back--"
"On the contrary, Officer Sun," Crichton's voice broke in. "I should be thanking you." He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bunk in a smooth, graceful motion.
Aeryn rose and took a step back, all of her internal alarms sounding. "Thanking..." She trailed off, confused. The expression was all too familiar, though Aeryn had never seen John's face wear it before. The cold, calculating, almost sinister look was one she'd only seen before on the faces of hardened Peacekeeper officers, the kind she dreaded having to serve with.
"Indeed." Crichton stood, clasping his hands behind his back and raking Aeryn's figure with a gaze that left her feeling dirty...or vulnerable. "You accomplished what I could not, and allowed me to complete my mission. He was fighting me, you see, and I was not yet strong enough to gain control. He might have escaped, were it not for your timely actions, and then where would I have been?"
"Him? Him who?" This was wrong. He was wrong. Something in the voice....
"Why, Crichton of course."
A cold shill crawled up Aeryn's spine. "Who...?"
"'Who am I?'" The human's face twisted into an evil smirk. "Perhaps the better question would be 'what am I?' I am Scorpius...or rather, I am very sophisticated neuro-chip, containing a mental clone--"
Aeryn stopped listening.
The chip. This was the chip John had told her about, the one Scorpius had put into his brain. John had told her it was trying to assert control, and that it scared him. That fear had been much of the driving force behind his earlier flight...and the main reason for that final request.
Aeryn had come here to rescue John Crichton, to get him free of Scorpius once and for all. But it was too late for that now, she realized. John Crichton was gone. All that was left for her to do now was fulfill his last wish and release him from the torment.
She had failed him once, but she would not do so again.
Quickly, before she could think about what she was doing, Aeryn drew her pulse pistol from her side and brought it to bear on John's head, finger already tightening on the trigger.
But as fast as she was, the clone was faster. John's arm lifted to knock hers aside, energy pulse flashing past his head. The pistol flew from her hands and skittered into the far corner.
Using the momentum from the block, Aeryn spun into a kick toward Crichton's knee. He dodged, swung a fist in a wide arc and caught her across the jaw, rocking her back. Had it truly been Crichton she was fighting, Aeryn knew, she would have had him on the ground in four microts flat. But the chip, evidently, contained not only Scorpius' personality, but also his combat skills.
More blows were exchanged, but the fight was anything but even. The clone's control of John's physiology was sufficient to increase the human's strength and speed far past his usual capabilities, and the blows Aeryn managed to land brought almost no reaction. Aeryn used every trick she knew, but the chip was always half a microt ahead of her.
Finally, the clone slipped a wide, powerful strike through Aeryn's guard, sprawling her onto the floor in a momentary daze. He reached down and gripped her neck, lifting her off the floor, fingers tightening until she couldn't breathe. She clawed at John's arm, raking bloody grooves in the skin, but the clone behind the human's eyes only smiled.
"My dear Officer Sun, how very disappointing. After you fulfilled your duty so admirably before, refusing Crichton's pathetic pleas, I was prepared to be generous and refrain from mentioning your other questionable actions. But I see now that I was incorrect. Crichton has thoroughly contaminated you."
The world was growing dark, her vision fading as the relentless grip cut off the blood to her brain.
John's face twitched, and the ice-blue eyes seemed to focus inward for a microt. Then the evil smile on his face widened. "It seems Crichton has some fight left in him after all. His human tongue has such a fascinating variety of profanity."
It was the last thing she heard.
He had found the beach again, retreating to the sanctuary of his own mind. Instead of the crowded summer scene he had created before, however, John now found himself alone on a cold and austere expanse of sand in the depths of winter. The water was gray beneath the overcast skies, the wind sharp and chilling.
Aeryn had been his last hope, and her betrayal the last straw. He had raged, clawed, kicked and screamed against the guards who dragged him away--not truly trying to get away, but hoping to provoke them into making a mistake. When he was thrown sprawling onto the bare metal floor and the cell door slammed behind him, he had nothing left. No hope, no future. The clone inside his head had still been struggling for control, and in that moment of despair it gained the upper hand.
Well, if dear old 'Harvey' wanted possession of a body and a brain that Scorpius was preparing to strap down and slice into sushi, he was welcome to it. John would wait for the inevitable here, where he could at least have a moment of peace before the end.
The gentle ebb and flow of the waves against the sand was hypnotic. He wasn't sure how much time had passed when he heard that annoying voice again.
*Oh, Joooohn,* the oily voice teased from behind him.
"Go away, Harvey. Go haunt someone who cares."
*There's something here I think you should see.*
"Not interested." John clambered to his feet and began to walk down the lonely beach, away from the creature who had cost him so much.
*Oh, I think you will be, John. It seems a friend of yours has come to visit.*
John felt a hand touch his arm and spun to drive his fist into the clone's face, rage momentarily overcoming his resignation to fate. As he turned, though, the scene changed, and his fist smashed into a hard glass wall instead. He winced, shaking out the pain. He stood in a small, dark room, looking through what he recognized as a one-way mirror into his own cell. It was like he was standing behind his own eyes, looking out.
Expecting to find himself alone, as before, he was shocked to look up into the beautiful face of Aeryn Sun. What the hell is she doing here?
He wanted to ask, and for a moment he could even feel his mouth opening to speak, but before he could she laid a long finger against his lips.
"Let me talk, John, please. I needed to see you, to apologize for doubting you. I swear, I had no idea Scorpius was aboard."
She was looking down, not meeting his eyes. John had never seen her like this, the confidence and authority that defined her entire being totally absent.
*How very moving, Crichton.* John looked around to find the specter of Scorpius standing at his elbow, sneering contemptuously at the scene before them. *You have quite thoroughly contaminated this one.*
"I promise, though," Aeryn went on, oblivious, "I'll make it up to you. We're getting you out of here. When the guard comes back--"
"On the contrary, Officer Sun," John heard his own voice say, "I should be thanking you." John felt his body moving, rising to its feet, leaving him no more than a passenger along for the ride.
Like an echo, Harvey's leering voice spoke from behind him, audible only to John himself. *Scorpius will be very interested to learn about Officer Sun's...lapse of judgment. I look forward to telling him.* The leather-clad specter smirked at John's horrified expression, then vanished in a wisp of illusory smoke.
"Aeryn!" John screamed, pounding both hands on the glass that separated him from the world outside, trying to warn her. "Get away! It's not me!"
She could not hear his cries, but as the clone continued to taunt her, John watched Aeryn slowly realize who--or rather, what--she was talking to. He could see the emotions flickering across her face: confusion, horror, and finally determination.
When she reached for her pistol, for an instant he was overcome by a rush of emotion. There was a quick jolt of fear, of course, the purely instinctive reaction that was hardwired into every living being facing its own end. The fear, though, was quickly washed away under the rush of relief and muted satisfaction. Scorpius had tortured him, captured him, stolen everything from him, but in the end the Scarran half-breed would not win. The secrets of wormholes, those elusive keys to the kingdom, would go with John Crichton to the grave.
As she drew her weapon, Aeryn's features contorted in a mixture of grief and resolve. John could see that this was painful for her, and wished it hadn't come to this. She would get over it, though, he reasoned. Death was something she understood, something she had been trained to accept. She'd been surrounded by it all her life, had lost more comrades than even she could count. One more would not make that much difference.
Time seemed to slow as the pistol rose towards him. He watched through the glass, waiting for the flash that would usher in the darkness, keeping his eyes glued to the radiant Aeryn Sun as the last thing he would ever see.
In the next instant, a bestial roar in his ear jolted him out of his calm acceptance. He had forgotten to factor in the clone's reactions, and its preternatural reflexes. John felt his muscles tense, his body shift, and in a blink of an eye Harvey was using his arms to knock aside Aeryn's weapon. The flash John had been waiting for went astray and the battle began in earnest.
The fight was fierce, and John could only watch, horrified, as his own hands and feet struck at Aeryn. She held her own for a time, landing blows that John knew would have had him quickly on the floor under normal circumstances. Harvey, however, clearly felt no pain and was not concerned about any damage to the body he inhabited. Within mere dozens of microts, it had John's hands clenched tightly around Aeryn's throat, squeezing the life out of her, while his voice taunted her.
He saw Aeryn's hands claw at his arms, gouging deep and bloody gashes that he couldn't feel, but she quickly weakened as her air supply was cut off.
"You goddamn fucking son of a bitch!" John screamed, pounding and kicking helplessly against the mental walls surrounding him. A few cracks started to appear where he struck. He could hear his voice pause and then speak a few amused words to Aeryn.
*It is really far better than she deserves, Crichton,* Harvey whispered into his ear as he watched in helpless horror. *She should be facing the Living Death for her treason.*
"Nnnoooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" John whirled, catching the clone off guard, wrapping his own mental fingers around its scaly throat in incoherent rage. He spun, bashing the figure against walls, squeezing tighter and tighter in desperation. The dark room faded as he slowly wrenched control of his body away from the clone, until at last he opened his eyes and found that his hands wrapped around Aeryn's neck instead of Harvey's.
He could suddenly feel the warmth of her skin, the pain of the wounds she had inflicted in her struggles, the weight of her body on his arms. With a gasp, he pulled his hands away, and Aeryn's body collapsed to the floor like a puppet with the strings cut.
John's vision blurred with fatigue. Was she still breathing?
He tried to reach out to her, but the room seemed to spin and tilt. His legs gave out and he crumpled to the floor himself, his head clanging against the metal wall as he fell backwards.
"Aeryn?" he gasped out. There was no response from the still form.
He scrambled forward, crawling, stumbling, fighting the dizziness, desperate to reach her. "Aeryn?!" he cried again, louder this time, begging her to respond.
Before he could touch her, though, the cell door slammed open and a rifle barrel in his face brought him to a halt.
Glancing over the guard's shoulder, he could see Scorpius standing just outside the cell door, frowning at the scene before him. He made a gesture, and suddenly there were others in the room. Two burly guards grabbed John and lifted him bodily onto the gurney they had brought with them. He struggled, clawing and writhing against their restraining hands. "AERYN!" He was panicking now, but the guards were strong and John was nearly spent. They soon had him strapped down, immobilized, though he craned his neck to keep the dark-haired figure on the floor in sight.
Scorpius stepped into the room and stopped next to her. Using the toe of his boot, like she was something dirty that he did not care to touch, he tipped Aeryn over until she flopped bonelessly onto her back. A med tech approached and crouched down to make a cursory examination.
"Dead, sir," she reported in a bored, business-like tone, not looking up at Scorpius looming over her.
"No...." John gasped. The world stopped when he heard those words. He couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, not even to scream out in anguish. Blood roared in his ears, blocking out all other sounds. He clenched his eyes shut and rode through the next thousand microts in a darkened haze of self-recrimination.
Dead.
His own hands, crushing her throat.
That was Aeryn Sun's reward for choosing friendship over duty.
The next thing John was aware of was being wheeled into the surgery in the medical area. He didn't remember leaving the cell, nothing since the tech's pronouncement.
"You are certain you can remove the neural chip?" Scorpius' voice spoke from somewhere outside his visual field.
"Absolutely, sir." That voice was unfamiliar, probably another tech or a medical specialist. "Thanks to the records you provided from the subject's interrogation, we have sufficient information to identify and remove the relevant portions with the data intact."
"And the host?"
There was a brief silence. "Probability of survival less than five percent, if you want the chip to be our first priority."
"I do. Once it is removed, the host is unimportant."
"What do you want done with the body when we are finished, sir?"
John stopped listening, no longer interested. It would be over soon, that was all that mattered. John Crichton had lost. Everything.
He hoped Aeryn would wait for him, on the other side. He needed to tell her he was sorry.
Maybe, one day, she might even be able to forgive him.
For a long time, John drifted, listening to the familiar mechanical background noises of the carrier, feeling distant and disconnected from everything, thoughts fuzzed into a hopeless muddle.
Where was he? After what felt like an eternity of formless existence, there was finally enough coherent thought to wonder where he was, and know what the question meant. There were blank spaces in his mind, holes where he was sure there ought to be memory, voids which drew his attention like a missing tooth draws the tongue.
He lay face-down on a hard surface, a bundle of something rolled up under his head as a cushion. The back of his skull was a mass of dull agony.
He tried to open his eyes, but the first glimpse of light stabbed into his retina like a hot needle. Lids snapped shut and he whimpered softly.
His second attempt at vision was more successful, though the illumination still seemed blindingly bright. Then, in a flash, memory assaulted him, and he clenched his eyes shut again at the pain of it.
Aeryn! His mind screamed in anguish. She was gone, gone. His fault. She would never smile at him again, never roll her eyes at his human antics.
It was all gone, everything.
Earth, his home, his family, lost in the vastness of space, a thousand light years out of reach.
Gilina, his love, and their child, cut down before either had a chance to live.
Tauvo, his friend, fallen at his side, victim of both Scarran brutality and Sebacean physiology.
And Aeryn. The promise, the possibilities. Everything she was, everything they might have been together, gone. Murdered by his own hands.
Why was he still alive? Something--a feeling, a fragment of recall--said that he was supposed to be dead by now. Would even that mercy be denied him?
Memories were trickling back to him in disconnected flashes, slowly filling in the events surrounding that overwhelming first vision of Aeryn's neck gripped in his own hand, the life fading from her eyes.
The chip. The surgery. Somehow, against all the odds, he had survived the removal of Scorpy's neural chip. At least Harvey is gone, he thought.
The world flipped around. Suddenly John found himself standing, apparently healthy, on the beach he had created inside his mind again. He looked out at the waves, but the peaceful scene was quickly interrupted by an unwelcome voice.
*John.*
He turned and saw Scorpius, or rather Harvey, standing behind him on the sand looking quite un-amused.
"No! You're gone! I want you out of my head!"
*As do I, John. My work is done, and I have no wish to remain a prisoner here. Finally, it seems, we have something in common.*
"What's that?" John shook his head, still not quite accepting that the demon infesting his mind hadn't been exorcised by the removal of the chip.
*We both agree that the best course of action now is for you to die.*
The world flipped back before John could respond. Opening his eyes, he found himself in his prison cell, face down on the metal slab. He opened his eyes, staring at the blank walls as if they could provide answers.
There was a sound just then. Reflexively, John tried to turn and look, but the first muscle twitch sent pain stabbing like lightning through his head and neck. A tortured whimper escaped his throat and the room turned darker as consciousness receded.
A touch accompanied the low voice, and the world came floating back. A young man's face hovered near him, swimming in and out of focus. He was speaking, in a gentle tone and measured cadence, but the sounds meant nothing to John. Translator microbes. The words flashed across John's mind as if from nowhere. Something must be wrong with his microbes.
"I don't understand," he said to the med tech. Or at least, he tried to say that. What came out of his dry and fetid mouth instead was a slurred jumble of syllables, with no more meaning to him than what the tech had said. Maybe it wasn't the microbes.
The tech frowned, obviously having the same trouble comprehending John's words. He said something else, this time using an intonation that sounded like a question, but it was still incomprehensible.
John tried again, but everything still came out in the same garbled mess of syllables.
The tech huffed, impatient and obviously frustrated. He held up something for John to see, and after a microt John recognized it as an injector, used to deliver medicines without a needle. Unable to speak, or even nod, he had to settle for a deliberate blink to show his understanding and agreement. He didn't need to know what it was. The worst it could do was kill him. Or perhaps that would be the best thing.
There was a brief pressure on the side of his neck, a hissing sound, and the tech was gone, door slamming shut in his wake.
John tried to worry about his sudden inability to speak, but the darkness was creeping around the edges of his vision again, the pain becoming more distant as his mind drifted.
*...the best course of action now is for you to die.*
As he faded away completely, John was still trying to decide if he disagreed.
It was cold.
There were footsteps, whispering voices, all hushed.
A small, cool hand touched her throat gently, applying something cold and strong-smelling that left her skin tingling. The area felt bruised, tender. She swallowed, and winced at the pain.
"Officer Sun?" A male voice, speaking softly in her ear.
Her eyelids fluttered, blinking against the light until her eyes adjusted. "Where am I?" she asked, her voice fading from a painful croak to a whisper by the last syllable.
"You're safe."
It wasn't the most informative answer, but as her eyes scanned the room she understood the man's reticence. She'd been in this room exactly once before in her life, as a child, during the orientation tour when she and her crèche mates were shown every chamber and corridor on the carrier.
This was the morgue, where the bodies of aliens were preserved for study, and the bodies of her fellow Peacekeepers were prepared for disposal. Aeryn realized she was lying on one of the metal tables, flanked on each side by corpses.
She turned her gaze back to the man who was still hovering nearby. The face was unfamiliar, the uniform that of a med tech. "Why am I here?"
The tech looked uncomfortable. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then shut it again. His eyes shifted past Aeryn then, widening as if in relief.
Aeryn turned to follow his gaze, and saw a face she knew. "J'hesta! What the frell is going on?"
The young tech stopped near Aeryn's feet, standing halfway at attention out of habit, looking harried and frightened. She bit her lip nervously as if unsure how to answer. The male tech took advantage of the distraction to slip out the door, leaving the two women alone.
Aeryn managed to lever herself up onto her elbows and glared. "What am I doing here?"
J'hesta looked down at the deck. "You're dead."
Aeryn raised a suspicious eyebrow at the absurdity of that statement.
"Officially, I mean," the tech clarified.
"What?"
"You were dead when they came to take Crichton, and that's probably all that saved you. Scorpius had discovered you were in the cell. He had the guard who let you in executed on the spot, and would have done the same to you. The med tech Scorpius brought with him confirmed that you were already dead, so he dismissed you and went about his business. After the others left, she managed to administer a nerve shot to revive you, then gave you a sedative to keep you unconscious. We brought you here to preserve the illusion that you had died."
Aeryn lay back on the table and stared at the ceiling. Her life as a Peacekeeper was over. She was dead to them, and safe only so long as she remained so. If she were discovered, she would be worse than dead. She was a fugitive in her own home.
She pushed those thoughts aside for later; there were more important concerns at the moment. "What about Crichton?" she asked, still gazing upwards.
"He's dead, too."
Aeryn's heart froze for a microt, but then she realized how J'hesta had phrased the statement. "Officially?"
The young woman actually smiled slightly, though it was a thin, anxious expression, and nodded. "He survived the surgery, though it was a close thing. He's in a cell, still unconscious the last I heard, and as far as anyone other than a few techs know, expected to be dead quite soon." J'hesta's expression grew slightly sad. "In actuality, we think he'll live, but we won't know what damage he's suffered until he wakes."
"Damage?"
"Brain damage. There was no way to avoid it, no matter how careful the surgeons were. The chip had buried itself too deep."
Aeryn felt a shiver of horror crawl up her spine, but fought it down and shoved it aside with everything else, to think about later. "So, we're both dead. We need to get off this ship somehow, without being discovered. What's the plan?"
The girl's eyes widened in panic. "I don't know! I'm not...I've never done...."
"You've been making this all up as you go," Aeryn replied, nodding. "I understand. Crichton has taught you well."
J'hesta chuckled nervously.
Aeryn turned on her side and sat up, struggling against the latent weakness from the sedative. "We can't steal a Marauder. They're too slow; we'd be shot down in ten microts. But there's nothing else aboard with the range to get us out of Peacekeeper territory."
"Except the prison transports," the girl pointed out, then shook her head regretfully. "But they've all got collars on, so they're not going anywhere."
Aeryn stared at her. J'hesta got nervous after a few microts and said, "What is it?"
"Moya."
Waking the second time was a radically different experience from the first. While he still lay face down, the surface was softer, the lights gentler on the eyes, and the sounds no longer rang with the hollow echo of an oversized, empty tin can.
He lay there, gazing blearily at the brown, ribbed walls and the strangely familiar vials of powders and herbs arranged along the shelves. He had been here before.
Leviathan. The name popped into his head without effort. There was another name, too, teasing the edge of his consciousness, but it slipped away when he tried to grasp it.
Before he could pursue it further, an insistent sensation informed John that he needed to get up and walk to the 'fresher if he wanted to avoid wetting the bed. There was no one around that he could see, so it was up to him.
He tried moving his arms first and, to his relief, found that his muscles, while weak, were working again. It took a lot of slow, careful movements, not to mention the fortuitous presence of tables and walls for support, but he managed to reach his destination in time to avoid an embarrassing accident.
On the trip back to the bed, however, a wave of dizziness washed over him. John stumbled and fell against the work table, sending bottles and jars crashing to the floor. A microt later, he joined them as his legs crumpled underneath him.
"Damn it!" he tried to exclaim, but the words came out garbled. He remembered that happening before, but had hoped it was a side-effect of the anesthesia. Frowning, he tried again, this time attempting one of his favorite childhood tongue twisters. "Gah bahs zazor...."
He stopped there, seeing no point in going further. He could feel the words forming in his mind, but what came out was just so much gibberish. Not even translator microbes would decipher it.
*Do you see now, John?* Harvey crouched down beside him. Before his eyes, the empty room had transformed into his mental landscape. He found himself sprawling on the cold sand, surrounded by broken shells and rotting seaweed. *Do you see that there is nothing left for either of us?*
John felt weary all of a sudden, worn thin and brittle by the weight of events. "Go away, Harvey." He could still talk here, at least.
*Aeryn is dead.*
A wash of grief. Tears stung his eyes. Harvey knelt down by his side, placed a leather coated hand on his arm.
*Your ability to communicate is gone.*
Long cycles of loneliness stretched out before him, an eternity of empty, hopeless days. Harvey turned his hand over and placed an object in his palm.
*I am the only one you will ever speak with again.*
Worse than being alone, to be trapped in the confines of his own mind with this specter of evil.
*End this, John. Free us both from the endless misery.*
John blinked the blurriness from his eyes, not bothering to wipe the tears away when the ran down his nose. His gaze fell on a jagged broken shell in his hand, the mother-of-pearl interior shimmering and glinting in the sunlight.
It was a thing of beauty. The gloved hand closed his fingers around it and moved it into place. *Yes, John,* the clone breathed.
There was a faint sound in the middle distance, an indrawn breath, footsteps approaching rapidly. "Crichton!" The voice was far away.
Strong fingers gripped his hand, pulling it away from his wrist. Pain shot up his arm as he felt the sharp edges of the shell cutting into his palm. Another hand touched his face, lifting his eyes upwards. The bright whiteness of the beach faded into the dim browns of the Leviathan chamber, and a sinuous figure of blue in the foreground.
He felt as if he was waking from a nightmare, and it wasn't until the pain forced his eyes back down to see a piece of broken glass in his hand, smears of red staining the edges, that he realized the reality.
The woman's hand came away from his cheek. Slowly, gently, she pried apart the fingers of his other hand and removed the shard from his grip. The cuts were deep, but not dangerous.
"Why, John?" The woman's voice was kind, full of sympathy and concern. Like the ship itself, she was somehow familiar to him, but his swiss-cheese memory could not find a name for her. And as comforting as her presence was, she wasn't the person he wanted to see.
He looked into the woman's blue eyes, so like his mother's, and tried to convey to her without words that she should leave well enough alone. It might have been Harvey's impetus, but John no longer had the will to argue with the clone.
Hope. It had kept him going for two cycles, through every hardship and failure and loss. But he had killed that hope with his own hands, and without that...without her.... If this strange blue woman would just go away, he could finish what Harvey had started, see her again, see everyone again--
There was a hiss of indrawn breath from the direction of the doorway. John looked up...and realized that he had finally, once and for all, lost his ever-loving mind.
Aeryn stood frozen in the doorway, struck dumb by the scene before her: John Crichton, still bandaged and weak, sprawled on the floor amidst a sea of broken glass and scattered herbs. The glittering shard in Zhaan's blue hand, stained red with human blood, loomed large in her eyes.
John's eyes shifted up to see her standing there. She expected him to be surprised, even shocked, and for a microt those emotion did cross his face, his eyes going wide. What she hadn't expected was the fear that followed.
John shouted something unintelligible, pulled away from Zhaan's restraining hands, and started to scramble back away from them both. In his panic, he seemed to not notice the glass all around him and managed to acquire several more deep cuts on his hands, arms, and bare feet as he fled. He continued shouting, the words mangled, alternating between pointing at Aeryn and trying to ward off Zhaan's concerned advance.
Eventually, after a struggle, the Delvian managed to grab hold of both of John's wrists and get him under control. Aeryn hadn't moved from the doorway, but even from there she could still see him trembling, his eyes darting between her and the Delvian. He continued to whisper urgently, as if trying to warn Zhaan of something, but still nothing he said made the slightest sense.
Slowly, carefully, Aeryn stepped into the room, her boots crunching loudly on the debris as she approached. "Zhaan, what's wrong with him?" she asked in a quiet voice. Crichton flinched at the sound and squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head violently in denial.
"I do now know, dear," the priestess replied sadly. "When I arrived, he appeared in a type of trance or fugue state, holding this," she gestured with the blood-smeared sliver, "like a weapon. I fear he might have harmed himself had I not intervened. His speech seems to be severely impaired, most likely by the surgery you told me about. His current distress, however, seems focused on you."
Aeryn gasped in realization. "Oh, for the love of Chilnak...J'hesta told me, the med tech declared me dead, to fool Scorpius. John was there, he must have heard that. He must think I'm just another hallucination, or a trick being played on him."
She knelt down next to the Delvian and tried to look Crichton in the eye. "John, it's me. I'm alive. I'm here. I got you away from him."
Crichton's only response was to wrench his hands away and wrap his arms around his head, curling himself into a ball and rocking back and forth.
It was all Aeryn could do not to growl in frustration. She wanted to slap some sense into the frelling human. She wanted to run from the room. She wanted to wrap him in her arms.
"Can he even understand us?" she finally asked.
The Delvian woman was gazing compassionately at the huddled form. "I do not know if he lacks understanding, or simply refuses to hear."
Aeryn nodded somberly. "He's suffered hallucinations for monens thanks to Scorpius' frelling chip."
"And so he has learned to distrust his senses. Quite understandable."
Sitting there, looking at the huddled form of John Crichton, Aeryn could not help but remember the nights they had spent together all those weekens ago, talking in the planetary terrains. She remembered the quiet companionship they had shared. Most of all, though, she recalled their last meeting before the carrier went into battle against the Scarrans. He had kissed her, touching her in something more than friendship for the first time since they met, and had seemed to draw strength from that. And just a few solar days ago, when the mental attacks of the chip had been at their worst, he had been comforted for a time by her hand stroking his head.
John's eyes and ears had betrayed him far too many times, but perhaps there was one sense he could still trust.
Slowly, carefully, Aeryn reached across the space separating them and brushed her fingers against John's hand. He flinched, then froze, his face still hidden. She wrapped his hand gently in her own and squeezed it, willing the feel of her living touch to get through to him.
Within microts, his head came up and he stared at the fingers that were holding his. Aeryn reached out with her other hand and touched his face, lifting his gaze with gentle pressure to meet her own.
John's eyes were wide, frightened, almost as if he did not dare hope that she was real. His free hand came towards her and first brushed tentatively against her hair, then took and held a lock of it in a feather-light grasp as if fearing she might fade away at any moment.
Moisture pooled in his blue eyes as they hung in that tableau for several microts. Finally, with a sob and a sudden fervor, John reached out and wrapped Aeryn in a desperate embrace. His voice was choked, full of relief and joy, and while the words were muddled, Aeryn knew exactly what he was saying. She embraced John in return and let herself bask in the careless joy of the moment, neither of them caring what had been or what might yet be to come.
Aeryn's alive.
John sat on the edge of the examination bed he'd woken up on, watching in silent amazement as the two women cleaned up the mess he'd created, with the help of some little yellow robots. He couldn't seem to tear his eyes away from Aeryn, still half-fearful that if he blinked, she'd vanish.
He wanted to talk to her, ask her what had happened. Why was he here, instead of in a cell aboard the carrier? How was she alive, when he'd been so certain he'd killed her? He hadn't imagined it, he was sure--the bruises still visible on her throat told that story.
Harvey's voice continued to whine and growl in the background, trying to push him back towards the precipice the blue woman had pulled him back from earlier. That was another reason he kept staring at Aeryn; as long as he kept her in sight, he could block out the clone's morbid whispers, fight the misery.
Aeryn glanced up and saw John looking at her. She paused, cocked her head to one side in a curious expression, then rose gracefully to her feet and walked over to him. "Is something wrong?"
John shook his head, then reached out to touch her hair again, letting the soft strands run through his fingers. Aeryn smiled, then reached up and grasped his hand, twining her fingers into his.
*She'll leave, you know.* The clone's whispers gained volume. *You're useless now, and she'll soon realize that. She's a Peacekeeper, born and bred, and helping you has cost her everything. Your weakness will disgust her.*
John clenched his eyes shut, gripping Aeryn's hand harder in desperation as the clone dredged up his darkest fears.
*It's hopeless. One by one, they'll abandon you. You'll be alone, with no one to talk to but me. You'll never find your home, never see your family again. Eventually, Scorpius or Crais will find you, and you will spend your last arns screaming in the Chair.*
There was a voice, as if from a distance but growing nearer, cutting through the clone's rant. "John? John, can you hear me?"
Fingers touched his cheek, and he opened his eyes to see Aeryn's face just denches away. "John, what's wrong?"
He tried to gesture towards his head, made a talking motion with one hand, but he could see that neither woman was understanding. Apparently translator microbes didn't work on sign language. Finally John shook his head, frustrated at his inability to explain.
"Frell this," Aeryn exclaimed. She turned to the blue woman. "Something is wrong, but he can't tell us what it is. We need a way to communicate with him, Zhaan."
Zhaan. That was her name. Bits of memory, conversations, experiences, all flashed across John's mind. He remembered her now. Delvian. Priestess. The kindest, gentlest person he had met on this side of the universe, and yet she had been, by her own admission, justly imprisoned for a murder she admitted committing.
He remembered something else, just a brief flash of a long-ago conversation. He and Zhaan had spent quite a few arns on their journey to the Royal Planet talking about their respective home-worlds. Their customs, their beliefs, their rituals. One thing had stuck in his mind, because of its similarity to a familiar science fiction concept. He'd even given it a nickname in the privacy of his own thoughts: the Delvian mind-meld.
With a look and a wave, he beckoned Zhaan over to him. Gently, he took one of her hands and brought it to the side of his face, looking into her eyes, willing her to understand. She looked perplexed, so he tried pointing once at her forehead, then at his own. The Delvian's blue eyes widened in shock as she finally understood what he was suggesting. She shook her head and tried to pull away, but he held her hand in place and pleaded silently with his eyes.
"No, I cannot, John," she murmured.
"Can't what?" Aeryn looked at them both with a stern glare.
"He is asking me to try Unity, but I cannot risk it. I have never attempted such a thing with another race. His mind is untrained, and he has been so weakened by events...it could make things worse."
"What is this...Unity?" Aeryn asked dubiously.
Zhaan explained to her the ritual merging of minds and its role in the Delvian Seek, as she had to John so long ago. "In theory, it could allow us to communicate without the distraction of language, but as I said, I have never done this with any but another trained Delvian Pa'u. I could damage his mind even further."
John shook his head, pulling Zhaan's hand back to his face with more determination. He'd take the risk, if it meant he could talk to someone, tell her about Harvey and his insidious whispering.
"I think he wants you to try it anyway, Zhaan. It must be an unbearable torment for the human not to be able to talk." She shot John a wry glance and a smirk.
He smiled back. Aeryn's jokes were rare and precious things, even when they were at his expense.
He turned back to Zhaan, who still looked dubious.
From the dark corner of John's mind, Harvey broke into his thoughts again. *You see? It begins already. They say they care--*
"They do care!" Eyes clenched shut against the pain of the intrusion, John growled at the phantom. "Aeryn cares. She came back for me, got me away from Scorpius."
Harvey scoffed. *A lapse of judgment she will soon come to regret, I assure you.*
"John?" Aeryn's cool hand on his cheek drew John back towards reality.
*You'll see. She's lost everything thanks to you: her place, her life, her reason for existence.*
Aeryn's eyes were full of concern now, but Harvey's words dug into John's heart.
*She's alone, now, stuck with an inferior alien who can't offer her anything, even simple conversation.*
John pulled away from the comforting hands, drawing his knees to his chest and covering his ears in a pointless gesture of denial, as if it could keep him from hearing the clone.
*You realize, she could probably go back if you were dead. Scorpius might decide she was actually trying to kill you in the cell, out of revenge for your 'defection'. Revenge is something he understands, something he might even forgive.*
He would not listen to this. Would not admit, even to himself, how much sense the specter was making.
*We were so close. Who cares if she lives for now, what does that change? If she is not captured and punished with the Living Death, she will grow to despise you and abandon you. She will have to eke out a pathetic existence away from everything she knows, and will likely meet her end quite soon, in some dark back alley, alone.*
Through tear-blurred eyes, John could see the pistol riding in its usual place at Aeryn's side. Always a soldier. Never leave home without it.
*You can save her. Release her from that fate. Release yourself from the guilt and loneliness that will surely haunt you for the rest of your days.*
He looked up at Aeryn's eyes, drinking in her features, heedless of the tears running down his face. She stepped closer, drawn by his gaze, and he reached out with his right hand. She met his gesture, palm to palm, and he let their fingers twine together.
*Free us from each other, John.*
Even if he could speak, there would be no words. He gazed deeply into Aeryn's eyes, blocking out everything else. She looked back at him curiously, then frowned. He wondered what she saw in his face that so puzzled her.
And then he knew. In a flash, he felt his body move under Harvey's control. Using his grip on Aeryn's hand for leverage, Harvey spun her around so that the holster riding her right hip was facing him. He pulled the weapon free and shoved Aeryn away, throwing her off balance and delaying her reaction for that one precious microt. John saw her spin around, stumbling against the unexpected motion, and watched her eyes widen in horror as she realized what was happening.
Time seemed to slow. The pistol rose into position as Aeryn scrambled to reach him. She would not be fast enough, though.
He closed his eyes. This was his gift to her, the only thing he had left to give. His life for hers.
A strong hand grabbed his wrist and wrenched his arm away, hard enough to nearly dislocate his shoulder. It slammed his hand down on the bunk, dislodging the pistol from his grip and sending it spinning off across the floor. Dazed, John could only blink at the blue hand holding him in its grip, and the implacable face of the Delvian priestess glaring down at him.
An instant later, Aeryn was on him, gripping both of his arms and forcing him down against the surface of the bunk, screaming Sebacean obscenities into his face while tears ran down her own.
Harvey screamed too, a howl of frustration that was quickly echoed from John's own throat. He bucked and struggled against the restraining hands, but between Aeryn's skill and the Delvian's strength, they quickly had him pinned and helpless.
Eventually silence fell over the room, marred only by the heavy breathing of all three combatants. "Zhaan," Aeryn gasped. "It was the neural clone, it's still in his head. I saw something, just before he went for my weapon. It wasn't John."
She paused, looking from John's face to the Delvian's. Her voice dropped into a pleading tone. "We cannot hold him here forever. The clone is driving him to this, and next time it might succeed. You're the only one who can help John force it out. The risks are no longer important."
John could not see much of Zhaan's face from this angle, but he saw her fold her hands prayerfully, then run them over the sides of her head in a familiar gesture.
Before he knew what was happening, two palms settled lightly on the sides of his face and the Delvian's intricately-patterned forehead dipped down to touch his own. The chamber disappeared and darkness closed in.
What is this? Where am I?
Unity.
You shouldn't be here. Go away, there's no point.
Listen to the human, Priest. Hear his suffering. Taste his pain.
You are the source of his suffering, the cause of his pain. Remove you, and he will be whole again.
He's too strong, I can't fight him.
His strength was the device Scorpius planted within you. It is gone.
And I wish that I had departed with it. I have no more desire to be imprisoned here than he has for me to remain.
There's nothing left for me, Zhaan. Everyone I love is lost to me, everything I had stripped away. With me gone, Aeryn can go back, have the life she wants.
Perhaps you do not know what Officer Sun wants. I think she does not even know herself. Would you deny her the chance to discover what that is?
I just want her to be safe.
Go away, Priest. There is nothing you can do here but meet your own destruction along with his.
So you would like him to believe. John, this is your mind, not his. He is a trespasser. The only power he has is that which you give to him.
...
Remember what he has done--
He nearly killed Aeryn.
--what he has cost you--
My place among them. My chance to go home.
John, be reasonable...
I can help you fight him.
Can we win?
No.
Yes.
Guess that makes my vote the tie-breaker....
John lay motionless on the cot, Zhaan hovering like a statue over him, their foreheads pressed together. The only movement visible was behind John's eyelids, a constant flickering and twitching that began less than a hundred microts after they started this "unity" thing.
Aeryn realized she was drumming her fingers against the butt of her pistol, now safely returned to its holster, and stilled her hand through force of will.
She hated waiting.
Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the jerky movements behind John's eyelids increased. Then suddenly, as if they were a single entity, John and Zhaan's muscles tensed and each gasped out a breath. John's hands clenched into fists, while Zhaan's once-gentle hold on the sides of his head grew firmer, her fingers pressing into his skin.
Aeryn stepped forward, then stopped, helpless to render any aid. This was a battle she could not fight.
The synchronized breathing of the human and the Delvian grew harsher, faster, until with a choked cry John arched away from the surface of the examination table, every muscle straining. His face contorted into a grimace of pain.
Aeryn was almost ready to tear the Delvian's hands away from him, stop the torture John was clearly enduring, but just as suddenly both of their bodies went limp and their breathing quieted. She though she saw a brief twitch at the corner of John's mouth, like the bare beginnings of a smile, but it was gone before she could be sure.
There was another stretch of endless, silent microts as the two fell back into their earlier pose of relaxed meditation.
Eventually Aeryn, too, managed to relax, though she still watched John carefully for any further signs of distress. Nothing more was apparent, but she was so intent in her scrutiny that she jumped when his eyes finally popped open.
John looked around the room blankly for a moment, then locked his gaze with Aeryn and broke into a wide grin. He held up a single clenched fist and pulled it back to his side in a vehement gesture she didn't quite understand. Given his expression, though, she assumed it was something good.
Zhaan had released him and stood back. After a moment of prayerful silence, she looked over at Aeryn. "You were correct, Officer Sun. The neural clone which had infested John's mind was still present, still exerting influence. I helped John understand that in the absence of the clone's physical source in the neural chip, what remained was weakened, and well within his power to subdue."
"So it's gone?"
John shook his head with a grimace of distaste, while Zhaan voiced the reply. "Not gone, but contained. Once he realized he could defeat the clone, John was...most forceful."
Aeryn looked at John, who merely shrugged. "What about his speech? Can you fix that?"
John looked up at Zhaan as well when she asked this, obviously just as curious as Aeryn.
"As you can see," the priestess said, nodding at him, "he understands us fairly well, although I believe that may be more the function of the translator microbes than anything. The damage is extensive. My herbs can aid in the healing of the surface injuries and prevent infection. A Diagnosan might be able to do more, but unless his brain is significantly different from other species', this is not something I can heal."
John looked down at his hands and clenched them into fists. Aeryn understood the disappointment. She put a hand on his shoulder and felt him trembling.
Zhaan stepped forward and tipped John's face towards her with a gentle hand. "Have faith, John," she said kindly.
He tried to brush her off and turn away, but she held firmly onto his chin and kept him facing her. "There is hope," she insisted. "The brain is a remarkable organ. Resilient. Flexible. It cannot regenerate, but it can be retrained. Given enough time and patience, I believe you can re-learn what you have lost."
On impulse, Aeryn squeezed his shoulder where her hand was resting. "I will help," she assured him.
"As will I," Zhaan affirmed.
"As will Moya and myself," came a new voice. The clamshell mounted on a nearby wall flickered, and an image of Pilot appeared. "Moya, too, is slowly recovering from a type of brain damage, due to NamTar's sabotage. She understands what you are going through, Officer Crichton, and would be happy to share any part of her experience which might help."
John, likely out of reflex, tried to respond to Pilot, but of course the words were unintelligible. He cut himself off quickly with an annoyed scowl.
"You are welcome, Officer Crichton."
John's eyes shot towards the clamshell image, gaping in shock. Aeryn voiced the question. "You can understand him, Pilot?"
The symbiont paused and cocked his huge shelled head before replying. "Not the words, no. Because of my bond with Moya, I am accustomed to non-verbal communication. There are many ways in which sentient beings communicate that transcend spoken words."
"That's wonderful, Pilot," Zhaan smiled.
John's eyes brightened and suddenly Aeryn saw something in his face that had been missing for a long time. He immediately jumped to his feet and limped over to the clamshell, babbling away in rapid cadence at the image hovering there.
Aeryn had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. She'd been right; being unable to talk had indeed been sheer torture for the human, but now he had an audience.
With a soft groan, John collapsed onto the bench and laid his aching head down on the table in the Center Chamber.
"Are you all right, John?" Aeryn asked, caressing the back of his head lightly.
He reveled in her touch for a moment, then raised his face and nodded. He was fine. Exhausted for sure, both mentally and physically, but that was to be expected. It had been less than seven days since the surgery, after all, and he and Aeryn had spent the past three arns trying to fill in his tattered, Swiss-cheese memory of Moya's layout. They'd probably walked several miles.
There were so many questions he wanted to ask, so many things he needed to know. About how they had escaped, and why they had come here of all places instead of getting as far away from Scorpy and Crais as possible. And about why Aeryn was here at all, why she had given up so much so pull his sorry ass out of the fire yet again.
He'd tried asking the questions through Pilot, but contrary to his initial hopes, his ability to communicate with the huge symbiont was quite limited. Simple, emotional cues like gratitude or hunger transmitted well, but more complex ideas simply could not get across the linguistic gulf. So John was left wondering.
As Aeryn bustled about the Center Chamber, gathering food and utensils, he couldn't take his eyes off of her. Part of him still had trouble believing she was really here, alive and well. He still saw flashes, every time he blinked, of his own hand squeezing her throat, her mouth gaping, her eyes pleading and frightened.
He swallowed the bile that threatened to rise up at those memories and shivered. When Aeryn finally put down a plate of food cubes in front of him, his appetite was gone. Even at the best of times, it was a struggle to eat these chunks of tasteless, unappetizing 'nutrition'. Lately, more often than not, it was a battle he ended up surrendering.
Aeryn had no such difficulties, chewing her way through her own plate of cubes with single-minded efficiency. But then she had spent half her life eating the things, during missions and training away from the well-provisioned carrier, so to her it was normal. John just wanted a burger and fries from the nearest fast food joint.
He set the cube down on the plate, unable to take a bite. Without even the distraction of conversation to keep his mind awake, he ended up playing with the colored blocks. Eyes half-lidded, his head propped up on one hand, John built towers and formed random designs on the plate while his mind wandered.
Exhaustion aside, John felt a hundred percent better now than he had five days ago when he first woke. Harvey was firmly locked down in the cage Zhaan had helped him construct. Having control of his own mind again, after so long, was a relief. Even knowing how precarious their situation was, hiding practically under the noses of his bitterest enemies, John felt better now than he had in monens.
John smirked as he looked down at his plate and the designs his hands had built while his mind wandered. A smiley face, an edifice he privately dubbed the Leaning Tower of Food Cubes, and a curved line twining through them like a snake.
Wait.... What the hell? Was it possible?
Hands shaking, John swept the food cubes off his platter and started a new design, very deliberately. The motion caught Aeryn's attention and she turned towards him.
"John, what's the problem? Why aren't you eating?"
John just shook his head as he carefully placed the last food cube and gazed down at the pattern. All thought of weariness washed away in a flood of discovery. He stared for a long moment, then turned to Aeryn to speak, only to shut his mouth again with a frustrated growl. He gazed once again down at his plate, slammed his palms against the table, then jumped up and bolted for the door. He heard Aeryn's voice call after him, but paid it no mind.
"John?" Aeryn called out to the retreating figure, but he did not turn or pause in his rush away. Confused, she gazed back down at the pattern he had so carefully constructed on his plate. Three strange shapes -- one vaguely triangular, one a broken circle, and the middle one looking strangely like the Luxan symbol for 'female' -- but none of them held any meaning for her.
She rose from the table and left the center chamber, intent on following the human, but he had long since vanished into the maze of corridors, leaving no clue as to his destination.
"Pilot?" she called to the air.
"Yes, Officer Sun?"
"Can you help me find Officer Crichton? He just left the center chamber in a hurry and I'm worried he'll get lost."
"I will have the DRDs begin searching immediately."
Rather than wait idly for news, Aeryn started retracing their steps, revisiting locations with which John had been recently reacquainted. He wasn't on command, or in the maintenance bay, or on the terrace. As time passed with no sign of him, she began to grow more concerned that he had wandered into an unknown part of the ship.
"Officer Sun?"
"Yes, Pilot, have you found him?"
"Officer Crichton is currently in the living quarters he inhabited during our journey to the Royal Colonies. He is not responding to my queries, but seems very intent on something."
In his old quarters? That was one place they hadn't visited yet on their tour; he must have remembered it on his own.
When she arrived at the open doorway, John was huddled on the floor with a scrap of diagnostic flimsy and a marking stylus. She called his name several times, but got no response until she moved to his side and touched his shoulder.
The expression on John's face as he turned to look up at her was a shocking mixture of joy and excitement. He gestured towards the flimsy he'd been so intent on and Aeryn followed with her gaze. The surface was covered with lines of geometric figures, some of which resembled the shapes John had left on his plate in the Center Chamber. Though the symbols meant nothing to her, Aeryn did finally realize what they were and what had John so excited.
"You can write?" The human nodded ecstatically, confirming her guess. "Odd...we'll have to ask Zhaan about how that's possible. This is your language, I presume. Can you write in Sebacean?"
John looked at her quizzically, then down at the sheet. He grasped the stylus as if preparing to write and hovered over the sheet for a long moment. She could see his hand trembling with effort, knuckles growing white as his grip tightened anxiously. Finally, he threw the stylus against the far corner, shoved the sheet away, and slumped back against the wall with a growl of incoherent frustration.
Aeryn remained still for the moment, watchful. Since he'd woken in Zhaan's apothecary three solar days earlier, John had been prone to wild and sudden mood swings, from joy to rage to despair and back again. The alien healer claimed this was to be expected; the human's mind had suffered horrendous abuse, both from the surgery and the preceding months of invasion and manipulation by Scorpius' neural chip. It would take time for John's system to heal those wounds and find its equilibrium again.
Aeryn had never been trained for anything like this. Emotional outbursts in her experience were subject to only derision and disciplinary action, neither of which was appropriate to her current situation. Cast adrift as she was from all she had ever known, Aeryn had no idea how to help, but she found herself strangely compelled to try.
She approached John like she would a wounded animal, warily, expecting him to strike out at any moment. He'd caught her by surprise the first time he lashed out in a rage, on the second day after regaining consciousness. It wasn't the strike itself that had been so bad -- she'd had worse in training exercises as a fifth-cycle cadet -- but the arns of dejected looks and apologetic noises that followed.
John flinched once when Aeryn touched his hands but did not react otherwise. One by one, she wrapped her fingers around his and pulled his hands away from his face. His eyes were clenched shut, his forehead creased in pain.
"John, calm down. Remember what Zhaan said; you can fight this. Control it." The Delvian had included Crichton in the discussions of his condition, and through a combination of Unity and verbal counseling had tried to show him how to mitigate the emotional fluctuations.
Gradually, she could see John's breathing grow deeper and more regular and his muscles start to relax. His eyes stayed closed, but he made no attempt to pull his hands away.
Aeryn frowned for a moment as she realized she was seeing this scene as if through two people's eyes. One of them, the Peacekeeper automaton, bred and trained for brutal efficiency, saw in John nothing but a pathetic, crippled, and useless figure. He was a drain on the unit's resources, a weak link, and by rights should be excised ruthlessly for the good of the whole.
But standing beside the emotionless drone she had once been was a new Aeryn Sun, one who grew stronger and more confident with each passing day. Though still a soldier to her very core, she had nevertheless been exactly in John's position just over a cycle ago, and she remembered. Remembered both the shame and helplessness when she first learned of her paralysis, and the feelings of hope and fulfillment that followed, when John had first tricked her into learning that she could still contribute, and then showed her that she could make a life outside of the Peacekeepers.
That was what she had to keep in mind, she realized. Though her childhood training left her with no clues for the current situation, she did have an example to model herself on. She could provide to John what he had once given her.
Suddenly, it was all so simple. She reached out and touched his face.
"John, look at me."
The human's bright blue eyes snapped open at the terse command. He was calmer now, no longer trembling, though his cheeks were still flushed. After a microt, he looked away, glanced back, and then away again as if unable to meet her gaze, though he never pulled away from her hand.
"We have a mission."
John blinked in surprise at that bland statement, his eyebrows rising expressively. Gently pulling one hand free of her grip, he ran a single finger under the edge of the plain black shirt she wore in place of her usual uniform. Then he looked back at her face.
"We may not be Peacekeepers anymore," she answered his unspoken question, "but that doesn't stop us from still being soldiers. Our mission is survival, and that means we work together and help each other."
Consternation and shame rushed back into John's eyes. It was amazing, Aeryn thought, how much better she had become at reading the human's face and body language just in the past few solar days. She understood exactly what he was feeling, because she had been there herself once. She ran a comforting hand down his arm.
"We make a good team, John," she pointed out. "But a team needs to be able to communicate, so that will be our primary goal. I...miss being able to talk to you."
John's expression softened, and his eyes finally locked with hers. He gently cupped her face in one hand and rubbed his thumb under her eye as if wiping away an nonexistent tear. Gradually, his face regained its former expression of determination, and he nodded his agreement.
At a loss for how to proceed, Aeryn just sat still, gazing at the man she had almost lost. Where could they begin? She didn't speak his language, so how could she help him learn to speak again? Caught in her own circling thoughts, she was surprised when John got up and moved away from her. He retrieved his flimsy and stylus from where he'd thrown them. Sitting back down, he handed them to her.
Aeryn looked from the stylus in her hand up to John's expectant face and back again. It took a few microts for the clues to fall together. "You want me...to teach you? To write Sebacean?"
He nodded, then gestured to his throat.
"You want to learn to speak it, as well?"
John nodded again.
"Then that will be our mission."
Aeryn rose to her feet and held out a hand to help John get up. He grasped her wrist without hesitation and stood, but then paused and didn't release her right away.
Aeryn looked from their clasped hands up to John's face and found him staring at her with an unusual intensity. She stood still, waiting, wondering what was going through the human's mind now.
With his free hand, John reached towards Aeryn's face slowly, tentatively, eyes alert for any sign of denial or aversion from her. Finally his fingers brushed across her cheek and his thumb grazed lightly along her lower lip. Then he paused, biting his own lip, and waited for her to decide the next move.
Aeryn understood what he was asking, needing no words to explain. Speech, in this case, would actually have hindered her; this was not a situation where rational thought or Peacekeeper training had any relevance.
She was no longer a Peacekeeper.
She was no longer bound by Peacekeeper rules, or Peacekeeper prejudices.
She could want something for herself, and take what was offered without guilt or recrimination.
Releasing John's wrist, she brought her hand up and placed it over his, pressing his warm skin against her cheek and shutting her eyes briefly at the simple pleasure of the touch.
Still moving slowly, but with more confidence, John shifted his hand around behind her head and pulled her gently towards him. She mirrored him, weaving her fingers through the short hair at the nape of John's neck and stepping into his embrace.
Their lips met, gently at first, but with ever-increasing hunger as they indulged in the most basic form of communication, free of the constraints of both custom and speech. All of their other worries faded away, and neither noticed when the DRD that had been watching from the corner of the room rolled quietly away and left them to their privacy.
Frowning in concentration, John added a short, curving line to the Sebacean symbol and waited for the response.
It had only been twenty solar days since Aeryn had agreed to teach him her language, now that he had lost his own, but already he was approaching a basic level of competency, at least with the written symbols. Speech was still a distant dream.
His discovery that the damage that had scrambled the pathways between his mind and his voice had not done the same to the connections with his hands had been a dizzying ride of giddy joy and crashing disappointment, but it had opened a door to hope he hadn't been able to find before. Soon, very soon, he'd be able to communicate freely again.
Re-learning Sebacean in written form had been far easier than either of them expected, for a number of reasons. First, he'd already learned the written language once, so while his conscious memory might have lost the information, there were still echoes, and his hands remembered the motions.
Second, he'd been immersed in the Sebacean language for almost two cycles now, and though the translator microbes had previously made it unnecessary for him to speak it, he knew the sound of it, the differences in syntax, and the odd quirks that made the language both beautiful and complex.
But most importantly, he and Aeryn had worked out a most remarkable system for learning and positive reinforcement.
Aeryn lifted her leg gracefully to get a better look. "Good," she said simply.
John smiled, more interested in watching the play of Aeryn's muscles under that smooth skin than in his own success. Her body was breathtaking to watch...and it made an excellent writing surface.
"Now try to say it," Aeryn continued, keeping her leg pointed straight into the air like a sexy sign-post, making it very difficult to concentrate. "'Gun'."
John tried to wrap his larynx around the simple Sebacean word. It probably said something about both of their cultures, he mused with dark humor, that it was one of the simplest words in either language. Easy or not, however, the mangled speech center in his brain still couldn't manage to match the sounds in his head with the sounds he was producing. On rare occasions a correct sound would emerge, provoking a surge of hope, but it would only last until the next attempts were unable to reproduce the success.
The pleasant scenery of the learning environment, however, helped keep the disappointment to a minimum.
They hadn't started out this way, of course. His first language lessons with Aeryn Sun had been the epitome of professionalism. She took her role in this 'mission' very seriously.
They had started off very innocently, using the stylus and diagnostic flimsies John had first discovered, heads bent together over the center chamber table. After the initial explosion of hormones in John's quarters, he and Aeryn had backed off and slowed down by mutual, unspoken agreement. The first few lessons contained little more than casual touches and playful kisses, which gradually grew more intense and deliberate as the days passed.
On the fifth solar day, though Aeryn tried stoically to ignore John's explorations, his wandering hands discovered that the severe, no-nonsense soldier was ticklish. She'd eventually discovered the same about him. The next few sessions had ended with both student and teacher rolling on the floor laughing like children.
Finally, one such incident had escalated into a frantic, teasing chase through Moya's corridors and culminated in a heap of tangled limbs and panting breaths in Aeryn's quarters.
An arn or so later, when the laughter had faded and clothing lay in scattered heaps across the floor, John had sat tracing his finger lazily through the beaded drops of perspiration across the bare expanse of Aeryn's back. One thing led to another, until their daily writing and speech lessons evolved -- or perhaps degenerated was the better term -- into this organized foreplay.
"What's the English word for it?" Aeryn asked out of the blue, breaking into John's pleasant reverie. He hesitated for a moment, peering quizzically at Aeryn's innocent expression, the reached across and wrote G-U-N on Aeryn's other thigh. He looked back down at her bemused face and raised a questioning eyebrow.
The Sebacean's expression grew a bit more serious. "Now try saying it again, in your language this time."
John opened his mouth as if to argue, then shut it again with a frustrated click and looked away. He'd had no more luck saying things in English than he had in Sebacean, and it wasn't like she'd be able to tell if he was saying it right anyway.
"Gun."
John whirled around in shock and confusion. Aeryn had just said that in near-perfect English! How the hell...?
Aeryn gave him a broad grin, clearly pleased by her success. "Pilot found some recordings of transmissions you made on the mission to the Royal Planet," she explained. "I listened to them earlier, and he helped me break them down into individual words."
John gazed at Aeryn, for once completely oblivious to her mostly-unclothed state. The existence of recordings of his own voice speaking English was sparking a number of ideas in his head, but he pushed them aside for later. Taking up his stylus again, he drew another simple Sebacean word on Aeryn's leg.
Why?
"If you are going to learn my language, then the least I can do is try to learn yours," Aeryn replied in a bland, expressionless voice that made John wonder what other reasons she was hiding, and why she didn't want to talk about them. Unfortunately, while his vocabulary was now sufficient for basic conversation and questions, it wasn't quite up to a full verbal sparring match with the iron-willed Aeryn Sun.
For now, he decided, he'd just have to be grateful for the effort. Those hidden motivations could wait for another day.
Aeryn rested her arms against the dais surrounding Pilot's consoles and watched with placid fascination the strange interplay taking place around her.
For the past two monens, John had spent every spare arn holed up in the maintenance bay, working on something he refused to tell her about until today, when he'd issued her a written invitation (in both English and Sebacean) to join him for the first test run of whatever it was.
John was now seated on the edge of Pilot's console, a small, flattened tablet resting in his lap and connected through wires to something on the deck that appeared to have started life as a DRD. While the basic shape was still there, along with a single glowing eye-stalk, most of the yellow carapace had been cut away to make room for a tangle of grafted-on parts and data crystals. John looked unbearably pleased with himself as he made some final adjustments to the unwieldy contraption.
Aeryn sighed in resignation. For all that John had become a decent soldier over the past two cycles, blooded in battle and decorated by High Command, he was still, at heart, a tech, and far more comfortable with a tool in his hands than with a gun.
John pressed several buttons on the tablet in front of him, frowning in concentration, then looked up at Aeryn and winked as he hit one final key.
::Hello, Aeryn. Hello, Pilot.:: A toneless, mechanical voice, resembling John's, sounded from the DRD on the floor, speaking in understandable English.
Aeryn's jaw dropped in amazement. "What...how?"
John grinned and tapped keys at a rapid clip. After about a dozen microts, the voice spoke again. ::Pilot help. Use my voice. Speak words by typing. Now I speak again.:: The jubilant human grimaced ruefully at the poor sentence structure. ::Few words yet,:: he explained through the machine.
"Moya and I were pleased to be of assistance, Officer Crichton," Pilot interjected, his arms not pausing in their constant movements.
The large door across the chasm from Pilot's console swung open, admitting the ship's remaining resident.
"Zhaan!" Aeryn called out in greeting.
The Delvian strode across the bridge in her usual graceful, gliding gait. "Pilot tells me you have news to share."
::Hello, Zhaan.::
The blue woman whirled around at the unexpected voice, taking an uncharacteristically defensive stance. Upon seeing John's elated grin, she quickly relaxed and stepped forward. "Was that you, John?"
The human nodded and tapped out a new message. ::Part me, part Moya.::
Aeryn watched as Zhaan took in the much-modified DRD and the keypad in John's lap. "You built this? John, this is amazing." She reached up and squeezed the human's knee.
John was practically bouncing in his seat at the sheer joy of being able to be part of the conversation again. ::Still working. Need more words. Good to see you, Zhaan. Have not seen you in many days.::
The Delvian smiled coyly, glancing over at Aeryn. "I did not wish to intrude. You seemed...well occupied, as it was."
Aeryn blinked at the priestess' teasing tone and wry look, while John coughed and flushed bright red.
The babble of conversation continued for nearly an arn, with John as a full participant for the first time in monens.
Finally, as the discussion died down, Pilot spoke up once more. "While you are all here, Moya and I have a question we wish to pose to you."
::What wrong, Pilot.:: Though the machine was incapable of the tonal upswing that marked a question, everyone understood.
"Nothing is wrong, Officer Crichton, we are merely curious about your plans."
"Plans?" Aeryn echoed, confused.
"Surely you do not intend to remain hidden in a Peacekeeper convoy forever."
The three passengers shared a startled look. Zhaan and Aeryn were soon deeply involved in a tactical discussion of how best to escape the convoy and evade capture, while John looked on.
Finally, after several dozen microts of overlapping argument, John typed some more words into his new invention. ::Pilot.:: There was a pause, as both Zhaan and Aeryn stopped talking mid-sentence to turn towards the new voice. ::We should ask, what you and Moya want.::
Aeryn snapped her mouth shut as John's words subtly pointed out how far she still had to go in her quest to overcome Peacekeeper prejudices. She had not even thought to ask Pilot his opinion, or that of the ship who had so generously offered them sanctuary.
Pilot, for his part, looked startled at the question. He looked down at the consoles in front of him, clearly hiding his discomfort under a pretense of concentration.
"I would be pleased to help you leave Peacekeeper control," Pilot finally said without looking up. "I did, after all, assist with Moya's first escape, and my reasons have not altered. Moya, however, is...hesitant."
"Why, Pilot?" Zhaan asked, concerned. Aeryn knew that Moya, and by extension, her symbiont, were Zhaan's primary concerns.
The great, four-armed being did not meet any of their eyes. "Moya does not remember her reasons for wishing to escape," he pointed out. "She does not remember Peacekeeper cruelty. All she knows is that she was free, and she was hurt. And now the Peacekeepers have been taking care of her."
::So....:: There was a pause while John's hands hovered motionless over the keys. ::Moya not want to leave.::
"I have explained the situation to her as best I can. She believes me, she says, but I can still sense her fear. Before, she feared the Peacekeepers more than the uncertainty of freedom. Now...." Pilot's voice trailed away.
Aeryn wanted to argue with him, wanted to berate the Leviathan for stranding them here with her cowardice. Before she could speak, however, John's long-absent voice of reason spoke to them all.
::Understand, Pilot. Moya stay for same reason I once stay. No other place to go. Trade safety for freedom. Bad trade, but only one possible then.::
Pilot nodded. "Moya thanks you for your understanding, Officer Crichton. And yet, now you are wishing to leave?"
::Different now. No more safety. Death or freedom. Only options left for me.::
Aeryn nodded her understanding, both of John's eloquent explanation and the Leviathan's predicament. She, too, had made the safe choice once--more than once--and compromised her own conscience in the process. It would be hypocritical to chastise the young, confused Leviathan for making the same choices.
She met John's eyes and nodded at the message she read there. "We will respect Moya's wishes, Pilot. If we do decide at some point that we need to leave, we will find another way if Moya chooses not to accompany us."
Pilot nodded a quiet acknowledgment and reverted back to his more typical aspect of quiet concentration on his task.
The room they sat in was quiet, insulated. The floor was smooth, the walls black and crystalline, their surface jagged and irregular like rock candy. A three-pronged structure occupied the center of the floor, blinking and glittering with its own internal light. It wasn't the most comfortable resting place they could have chosen, but it was safe.
Peacekeepers had come aboard.
They weren't searching for fugitives -- as far as Aeryn could tell, both she and John were presumed dead. This was just a checkup for Moya by Lt. Larell and her crew of techs. According to Pilot, they rarely ventured beyond his den and the neural cluster during these visits. Still, it was better to be safe than sorry, so John and Aeryn were hiding in the starburst chamber until they left. There was no reason for anyone to wander this far afield.
John made some small adjustments to the glorified Speak 'n Spell he'd built. The main processing unit, built into the basic structure of a damaged DRD, now sported a platform to carry the keyboard, so John could have it follow him around without needing to carry anything. He had also spent the past two weekens attempting to expand the machine's vocabulary. That endeavor, however, had been frustrated at nearly every turn by the sheer illogic of the English language, something John had joked about in the past but was only now beginning to truly appreciate.
In mild frustration, John tapped his fingers against the yellow painted shell of the DRD, as if rebuking the machine for its limitations.
"John," Aeryn interrupted quietly from across the room. "Is something wrong?"
John dialed down the volume on the speaker before replying; Pilot claimed the starburst chamber was sound-proof, but he figured they'd both be more comfortable keeping their voices down anyway. ::Machine insists on following rules. English does not follow any rules.::
Aeryn snorted. "I've noticed," she grumbled. She now spoke English almost as well as the DRD, but was not immune to the same frustration that John was dealing with. "I've been meaning to ask you, how did you come up with the idea for that contraption?"
John smiled as his mind flashed back years to a memory he fortunately had not lost in the surgery: a graduate-level lecture he had attended at MIT, given by one of Earth's greatest minds in cosmic theory. ::Knew of a man on Earth,:: he tried to explain. ::Great mind, but crippled by sickness until body could not move. Could not speak or write. Others, wanting to help, made a machine to speak for him. After, he could teach again. Wrote books.::
Stephen Hawking had been one of John's greatest inspirations, back when he was a student. He wished he had the man here now; between the two of them, he figured they'd have wormhole theory licked in a month.
Aeryn's head shot up, listening, and John stilled his hands. He didn't hear anything, but her ears were better than his.
Less than five microts later, she was gesturing urgently for John to hide and sliding the chakan oil cartridge back into the butt of her pistol with a practiced. She didn't have to ask twice -- he ducked into one of the large, round side-chambers, pulling the DRD with him out of sight of the hatch.
There was a hum and a scrape of metal from the entrance -- a door that only the ship herself could open, they'd been told -- then silence for a moment. John held his breath. Across the room, he could see Aeryn. She crouched half-hidden in the opposite alcove, with one arm and one eye peeking out, pointing her weapon at the hatchway.
"Officer Sun?" a voice queried hesitantly.
Aeryn's gun remained steady. "Identify yourself," she ordered.
"Tal Shekar, sir. Pi J'hesta sent me. The Pilot told me where to find you."
John breathed again. This was their contact. Aeryn had told him about their escape from the carrier, about the help she'd received from J'hesta and the other techs, and about their promise to keep her informed when possible.
A cycle ago, John might have jumped out in welcome, but he was no longer that naive. Pilot had trusted this tech, and Moya had opened the door for him, but Aeryn would be the final judge. The risks were too great for them to trust easily.
After several long microts of code-word exchanges, however, Aeryn nodded at John and they all came out into the main chamber.
The young tech, a man John had not seen before, reacted with wide eyes to the sight of the human. "I had not expected to see you so healthy, Officer Crichton," he said by way of explanation. "Your condition upon leaving the carrier was reported as quite grave."
John shrugged, then looked at Aeryn silently.
"His speech is impaired, but he has otherwise recovered."
"Pi will be pleased to hear that. Good news is a rare commodity these days."
Aeryn frowned. "Has something happened?"
Shekar sighed. "We arrived at the central station facility four monens ago," he began. Both Aeryn and John nodded; Pilot had informed them at the time. "Repairs are progressing, but it will still be several monens before the carrier is ready to deploy again. Three days ago, a message came from First Command. Captain Crais has been promoted to command of a carrier group on the Scarran frontier. Lt. Teeg is going with him."
John snorted. Crais had gotten what he always wanted. Tauvo would have been happy for him, but John just couldn't bring himself to care.
"Has anyone been assigned to command here? Surely not Braca...."
Shekar looked at the deck. "Scorpius has been given interim command, with Lt. Braca as his second. It was Captain Crais' recommendation. 'For the duration of the repairs', the orders said, but many of us believe that Scorpius will make sure the assignment is permanent."
John rolled his eyes. Sure, give the sadistic maniac the keys to the car, see what happens.
"Almost since the moment you left," the tech continued, oblivious to John's silent grumbling, "Scorpius has been working with the wormhole technology he stole from you. He has been building a project, assisted by another of the officers we rescued, a Lieutenant Xhorel. Crais assigned a number of techs to assist them."
John blinked, vaguely remembering the nervous man he'd served under during his short time as a tech on that base. Xhorel had not impressed him much.
"Shekar," Aeryn broke in sternly. "You could have left this information on a data chip--"
"No, you don't understand!" The tech grew more agitated. "J'hesta insisted that I tell you in person. It's important that you hear it all, and quickly."
"Hear what, Tech? This all sounds like shipboard gossip to me." Aeryn was growing impatient.
Tal Shekar turned away from Aeryn to address John directly. "Officer Crichton, you need to understand. Scorpius has been working with the neural chip for monens now, but something is wrong. The data he needs is encrypted somehow, and he cannot decipher it. So far, three of us have died due to his anger and frustration."
John grabbed his keyboard and tapped out a quick message. ::My sympathy for your loss.::
Shekar reached out to still John's hand before he could say more. "Thank you, but that is not the part that you need to worry about. Just before we left the carrier for Moya, I received word: Scorpius has ordered your body retrieved from cryo-storage. I suppose he plans to dissect your brain or something, searching for the key to that encrypted section."
John looked over at Aeryn, and saw his own sudden realization mirrored on her face.
"When he discovers your body isn't there--" the tech began, his voice quavering with anxiety.
"--he will grow suspicious, and begin searching," Aeryn finished for him.
At that moment, keyboard forgotten, John managed a feat that had eluded him for monens.
He spoke a single word.
"Frell!"