Chapter 10
The radiating disc of the wormhole's mouth flared outward like the bell of a horn, its outer rim spreading across space as the inner passage narrowed. As John approached, the wall of luminescence consumed his visual field, but his eyes never left the vessel plummeting before him. Aeryn's Prowler twirled in a near-perfect flat spin, her trajectory zipping her bottom-side-first towards the wormhole's center. But deep within, the funnel's writhing interior prohibited straight passage. She would be consumed at the first turn.
"Aeryn! Can you see me?"
"Crichton? Is that you?"
"Yeah. I'm gonna close in and..."
"Get the frell out of here, John!" she screamed. "You can't catch me in this..."
Click. He turned the radio off.
"And that won't help us," he muttered, wiping the back of his wrist across his sweaty brow.
With further acceleration and some fine maneuvering, he caught up with the Prowler just as they crossed the plane of the wormhole's entrance. He could feel the gravitational force in the controls as it sucked them into the churning depths. With one hand on the control stick, he reached across to the co-pilot's console and activated the grappling arms, extending them out from the sides and into the space before him. He gave the claws a quick test with the thumb-control, opening the clamps and closing them again. But there was a problem. Aeryn's craft was spinning, and the mechanical arms weren't fast enough to snatch the sturdier portions of the Prowler as it twirled about, and reaching out blindly would only bang their ships together and send her spinning off into the walls. He had to eliminate the opposing motion.
John positioned his ship just above the Prowler. In a view screen he could see the dorsal surface of her ship rotating beneath the belly of his craft. He did his best to match their forward velocity and trajectory, then cut the power to the rear thrusters. Free of engine acceleration, they coasted together at an even speed – the Prowler twirling just beneath the Grappler.
Okay. Nose down, ass up. It would be a tricky maneuver, but not impossible. Another day of Corsair ballet – just like the Earth Day space shows. He'd just have to do in an RV what he was used to doing in a Ferrari – and it would have to be done with a passive-flight partner. Two ships, tumbling in apparent chaos but locked together in tandem motion.
John ignited two auxiliary thrusters, one just above the nosecone and the other below the tail, bringing the front down and pushing the rear up. There was a little lateral drift, but he expected it and compensated with side-thrust. Within seconds he was positioned perpendicular to the Prowler, the nosecone's tip just two motras above Aeryn's cockpit. He could see the paleness of her face looking up through the canopy, but she was spinning too fast to read her expression. It was a dizzying sight. Then, in his peripheral vision, he caught a glimpse of the bend ahead, turning at a point where the funnel tapered inward. There wasn't much time.
The clockwise rotation of the Prowler whirled its tail and nose across John's bow like a fan, its speed and closeness making details impossible to discern. John took a deep breath, focused on the center of the Prowler, and tapped at the right bank thrusters. With each successive thruster burst, the Prowler's spinning appeared to slow as his own rotation accelerated to match hers. Then, with a final burst, he matched her speed and looked into her upturned face, steady beneath him.
He turned the radio on.
"I'm clamping down on your fuselage." He extended the metal arms and clamped the claws down on either side of the Prowler's fuselage, squeezing down until he felt the resistance of the reinforced frame beneath the metallic skin.
"Okay, I've gotcha. I'm gonna stop this turning now."
But as he reached for the thruster control, the massive wall swelled beneath them, rushing in like a sudden tide.
"Shit!" he yelled, slamming on the reverse thrusters.
Still spinning with the dangling Prowler, the Grappler shrank back from the approaching wall. It had to be a turn in the wormhole. He needed to regain control, and it had to be fast. As he drew back with reverse thrust, he turned the lateral thrusters on to counter their spin. The jolt of the sudden change in momentum threw him to the right, banging his ribs into the armrest and doubling his body over sideways. And then a loud crack rang out, the high-pitched snap of breaking metal.
He pulled up to the console and looked out. One of the arm joints was snapped in the middle, leaving the Prowler hanging by one arm. The turn's deceleration had been too fast. Now the Prowler was hanging off center. Quickly, he drew the Prowler in, bending the mechanical arm in the middle and tucking the vessel beneath the Grappler's belly. It would have to hold. Then, he tapped the lateral thrusters again to slow the spinning, this time in spaced increments, all the while maintaining reverse thrust to pull away from the wall. Lost in vertigo, he teetered on the edge of panic.
Please god don't let it swallow us.
The moments passed as John brought their spinning to a halt. But he barely had a second to get his bearings before a sharp turn appeared ahead. Quickly, he banked into the turn and pulled out of it as the funnel straightened, barely missing the opposite wall. It was chaos, and the defile was narrowing more and more.
Think around the corner. You know what's next.
He took a deep breath and relaxed his eyes. The swirling patterns of the adjacent walls blurred in his peripheral vision. In his mind, he searched for that silent place where psychic math wrestled with the equation of infinite variables. All he needed were small predictions. See the funnel, know how it will twist.
Then it clicked.
He pulled the stick back just before the passage turned upward, then banked right to twirl through a descending corkscrew. With each sudden twist, his body reacted, holding their position within the passage's center. After nearly a minute of sharp maneuvering, he shot out into a gaseous surround. He was thrown forward when his ship met the sudden friction of a yellowish atmosphere. The wormhole had terminated in the sky of a gas giant.
Wingless, John felt himself plummeting towards the planet's surface. But the Grappler was built to tug enormous loads and had powerful engines. He adjusted his pitch, pointed the nose to the darkness of space above, and gradually increased power to the rear thrusters. Once on his way out of the stratosphere, he glanced at the view-screen of the Grappler's belly. The Prowler was still clamped there. Given all the jarring that occurred, it was nothing less than a miracle.
"Aeryn?" he rasped, short of breath.
No answer.
"Aeryn? Baby? Answer me, please."
Nothing.
Panic threatened. What if he'd banged her cockpit into the Grappler's hull? Was her suit pressurized? Had the violent turbulence broken her visor?
He raced away from the planet, reaching a high-enough velocity to ensure their escape from its gravity. Once on an outbound trajectory, he pulled himself across to the co-pilot's seat, legs floating in the zero-gravity environment. He strapped himself into the seat, took the controls for the grappling arm and maneuvered the Prowler from beneath the Grappler's hull and out into the space before him.
He was met by the sight of her looking back. The relief sent a shot of warmth through his viscera. Nose to nose their vessels drifted as they gazed at one another across the sliver of space. He leaned in, bent at the waist with hands spread over the console, feeling a sudden sense of familiarity.
He and Aeryn, two ships, and a buffer of space between them.
We're in the hands of fate now.
Aeryn opened her hand against the cockpit window.
We have to trust in that.
"Not this time," he grumbled, snatching the controls of the grappler arm.
He began the maneuvering process to position the Prowler against an airlock tube at the Grappler's aft. Taking his cue, Aeryn rushed to unfasten her safety harness.
After a couple of minutes of delicate positioning, the Prowler was tucked in as close as it could come. Then, in one of the console's view screens, he saw Aeryn pulling herself from the Prowler's cockpit and into the Grappler's airlock shaft. Once she was inside, he pressurized the chamber and opened the airlock's inner hatch. Then, releasing his own seat harness, he pulled himself back through the pilot's cabin and opened the door to the crude living quarters. There, on the other side of the chamber, Aeryn emerged from a portal in the floor, her helmet already cast off and pressure suit half unfastened. With eyes locked, they pulled towards each other, John past a stack of bunks and Aeryn over a small table. Then, in the middle of the room, they grasped one another's hands and pulled together, lining up vertically as they looked into one another's faces. John palmed her face between his hands and took in the sight of her, awed by the power of his feelings. Yes. This was it. The love he felt so long ago -- the overwhelming sense of belongingness.
Aeryn pulled his face to hers and kissed him gruffly, casting delicacies aside in her own need for him. His hands found the remaining clasps on her suit and peeled away the layers and components between them. Aeryn pulled his shirt over his head and kissed him again as she cast the garment aside.
Once they were undressed, John pulled them into a recessed bunk and lowered the drift-barrier over the bed's outer edge. Then, snaking his arm around her waist, he drew her weightless body against his, marveling at the feel of her bare skin. He slowed their kissing, taking time to explore the warm velvet of her mouth. She moaned against his lips and tucked into him, her chest and hips rippling against his midriff in slow waves as the arch of her foot rubbed down his leg and back up again. And then, without effort or pause, their lovemaking began. With a small turn he laid her beneath him and looked down on her pale countenance and perfect features. He would remember everything about this moment for the rest of his life, even if it amounted to the three days of air they had left. They held each other closely, moving together and sharing their rising pleasure in a shroud of affection, hardly looking away from one another's eyes.
Then, just as they finished, John looked down at her again to recapture that majestic sight – her beautiful face nestled in swimming jet hair.
And with eyes glistening, she whispered a single utterance.
"Stay with me, John."
He froze at those words. No proposal on Earth was ever delivered so beautifully. Stay with me. Yes. I do. I accept.
He pulled her face to his, kissed her once then touched his forehead to hers. His mate -- for the rest of days.
"Always," he said.
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Wrapped in a blanket, Aeryn pulled herself into the Grappler's cockpit, careful not to disturb John's slumber. She settled into the pilot's seat and strapped the lap belt across her legs. The controls were strangely familiar, many of the gauges and switch-arrays bearing a striking similarity to the ones in John's old module. Where was that thing anyway? She'd have to ask when he woke.
She found the radar and communications array. Strangely, they were switched off. She turned a knob on the radio, switching its audio feed from the main speakers to the headphones hanging above. Then, holding one of the ear cups to her head, she turned the radio on and set the channel selector for automated scan. Hopefully, it wouldn't be too long before Terra-3 and the Leviathan fleet arrived.
A sudden bump brought her attention to the rear. In the chamber beyond the cockpit's open door, John emerged from the bunk, still cocooned in the insulated pouch they'd slept in. The 'sleeping bag'. She turned back to the console and muttered the words in English a few times while watching the numbers cycle on the channel scanner.
"Sleeping bag...sleeping...sle-e-e-e-p..."
In the rear cabin, John banged around through a locker, muttering something about the poor arrangement of its contents.
"Coffee, coffee, coffee...," he kept saying, then a sudden, "yes!"
After more loud fumbling, John pulled himself into the cockpit with one arm while clamping the sleeping bag at his waist with the other hand. As he settled into the co-pilot's seat, he flared his eyebrows at her with two liquid pouches clamped in his front teeth.
"That's not coffee is it?" she asked.
"Not this one," he said, handing her one of the pouches. "It's juice for you, your highness."
She scowled. "I don't know how you drink that dren."
"It ain't for the taste. I'm in it for the boost. And if I don't get my coffee in the morning..."
"Yes yes, you'll talk about it until second meal -- sometimes third. I remember."
"Actually, I was gonna say I get downright nasty. Be afraid," he said, raising his hands with claw-like fingers.
Aeryn shook her head and pierced the aluminum pouch with the attached straw and sucked in the juice. It had a strange, sweet flavor, somewhat tart but tasty nonetheless.
"Is this from your 'nabana' plant?" she asked.
"It's 'banana' actually – and no, that's orange juice."
"'O-ran-nge'. It's good." She looked at him and took another sip, her smile turning up at the corners of her mouth as she sucked through the straw.
He leaned in, grinning. "Oh, now that's just too cute. I'm gonna have to take this blanket away, young lady," he said, tugging at her covers.
She swatted his hands back and grabbed the floating headphones. "Why are the communications and radar turned off?"
John shrank back to his seat. "Just tryin' to save a little power."
"What if your ship shows up somewhere other than here? Shouldn't we be listening for them?"
He looked impassively through window. "Have you heard anything?"
"No. But there's no way to know if they've tried to contact us before now."
"They didn't."
"How do you know?"
His chest rose and fell with a single, deep breath. "Chances are, they're not coming."
It didn't make sense. "Why not? Don't they know where the wormhole ended?"
"Yes, but the generator was damaged in the fight. And even if they can restore basic function enough to open another funnel, they won't be able to navigate it until the stabilizing magnets are recalibrated in the computer."
"And why is that a complication?"
"Because it takes weeks and the opening of several wormholes to get a representative dataset. The only alternative is to stabilize the funnel manually."
"Why can't they do it manually, then?"
He tapped his temple. "It requires a bit of that wormhole magic."
"That dren in your head?"
"Yep, 'fraid so." He looked away through the window.
"But others have gone through them before."
"Yeah, in small craft. And they were lucky. This guy included," he said, pressing his thumb to his chest.
"What about the Scarrans? They brought three Dreadnaughts through to Earth."
"'Cause we were holdin' the door open for them."
Aeryn lowered the juice pouch to her lap. "Then there's nothing that can be done."
"Not short of a miracle."
"And you knew all this before you came," she stated flatly.
He kept looking out the window, saying nothing.
"You shouldn't have come after me, John." Her tone was sharp.
He stuffed his arms together and tightened his mouth. "Yeah, well, I made a choice, Aeryn."
"You know I'm right. They're stranded now in the Uncharted Territories without you and your wormhole knowledge, battered and cut-off from their home world. How long do you think they can last against the entire Scarran fleet?"
"They won't have to make it long," he answered.
"Why not?"
"There's a check-in scheduled for five days from now. If Terra-3 doesn't contact Earth, they'll recall Terra-4 and the Ancient mothership and come searching."
"Recall them from what? They should've been assisting you [ithis whole time[/i. Cholak!" she said, flopping back into the seat. "Who's making the decisions on your frelling planet?"
"Aeryn, it's not that simple."
"What do you mean it's not that simple? You were attacked in your own space and you respond with only a fraction of your might? What could be more important than dealing with your attackers?"
He paused for a moment. "Getting ready."
She huffed. "For what, John?"
"For something much worse than Scarrans – or anything else I could've imagined, for that matter."
His quiet, level tone unsettled her. There was introspection in those words, dark thoughts lurking behind his blank stare. She drew the blanket tight around her shoulders.
"What are you talking about, John?"
He paused for a moment. "It's obvious the Ancients are real powerful. Right?"
She nodded.
"So powerful, in fact, they could flush a whole planet into a black hole simply by connecting the two with a wormhole. Hell, they could even destroy stars that way."
"Yes, John. They're very powerful. I get it."
"Good," he said, slanting his back across the chair. "Because I want you to imagine something that could take a civilization like that and reduce it to a single hive on a single ship."
She took a moment to consider it. A race able to destroy whole planets faced extinction at the hands of this implied enemy. And it was coming here?
"The Ancients are fleeing this threat?" she asked.
"Yes."
"And you brought them to Earth?"
He nodded and raised his hand. "I know what you're thinking."
"I hope so," she said, eyes wide. "Because it seems like an obvious concern."
"We know, believe me. Whole sessions of Congress can testify to that. But with Scarrans and Scorpius and all the lions and tigers and bears out there, an invasion was imminent anyway. Besides, this enemy doesn't know the Ancients are on Earth. Technically, they don't even know which galaxy."
"Galaxy?" Aeryn asked, straightening up. "Where the frell are the Ancients from?"
"M31. Andromeda."
Andromeda. That was an Earth name for the nearest spiral galaxy. She remembered it from their long talks on the terrace. It was one of the few cosmic things they could share a mutual wonder about in those early days.
"So its nearness makes our galaxy the most likely place they'll look first," she said.
He nodded. "If they make it here."
She furrowed her brow. What did that mean?
"Getting from Andromeda to the Milky Way was no easy task," he continued. "Of the two dozen or so Ancient ships that set out, only one made it, and it came in on fumes. It took 'em five generations of coasting after the last wormhole to reach the Milky Way's edge."
"Cholak," she muttered. Such a fight for survival. All of a sudden, she felt a slight connection to them.
"So our thinking is, when the bad guys come, they'll be most vulnerable when they arrive. With that in mind, we've been building a defensive post at the galaxy's outer edge -- facing Andromeda. That's where Terra-4 and the mothership were when the Scarrans attacked."
"You don't have to do this alone, you know," she said. "The Luxans, the Nebari, us – we should all work together on this."
"We've thought about that, but decided it wasn't a good idea."
"Why not?"
He crossed his arms. "Wormholes. You've seen how it works out here. As long as the other kids know we've got 'em, they'll do everything they can to get their hands on our toys. We're better of alone."
"Back to your xenophobic ways then?"
He fixed her in his glare. "Tell me I'm wrong."
How could she? Almost every source of his misery in their days together rose from wormhole greed. But there was something about the way he held that power, keeping it exclusive. It was unnerving. She raised her chin a little, narrowing her eyes in cool regard.
"You used to tell me that all your people wanted was to know if there were others out here, and to maybe join a greater community one day."
He looked away.
"And when you first told me that, I thought you were an idiot."
She saw the beginnings of a smile in the creases of his eyes.
"But now, it pains me to see that feeling's lost in you." She reached out with her foot and nudged his knee. "Look at me."
He turned his face to her.
"Do you know what I used to tell Jack as a child – when it would get bad?"
His eyes focused on her, alert and attentive.
"I told him there was a place where people weren't hurting each other all the time. Where strangers met one another with smiles and handshakes – and space wasn't a killing ground, but a place of wonder."
The muscles of his face softened.
"And I would show him your faint little star, and tell him he was special because he was from that place." She paused for a moment. "You can't imagine how much strength he drew from that."
She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, recalling the most horrific memory of her life. And as she described it to John, she paused several times to collect herself. It started with her and Braca, himself barely conscious from the wound on his face. The two of them were pinned face down by Scarrans against a dirty wooden table, caught on a primitive planet with a small group. And there was Jack, a young adolescent, kneeling at the end of a row of dead sebaceans, his face cast down before a Scarran commander. She and Braca held their tongues, keeping the transponder codes used by the forming Leviathan band secret as comrade after comrade died under heat torture. But when the sneering commander got to Jack, she begged for his life, finally telling him everything he wanted to know.
But still he raised his hand over Jack's head and struck him with the shimmering violence. She screamed and struggled beneath those arms of impossible strength, and through watery eyes watched Jack crumple to the floor, his face contorted in pain. But just as the Scarran commander looked over to gloat, she saw the most heartening thing of her life. There before that brutal killer, her Jack rose to his feet under the shimmering heat. And with eyes caged forward and teeth gritting against the pain, he stood before the Scarran commander and took the torture with his shoulders up and back straight.
She'd never seen such alarm in a group of Scarrans, screaming their curses at this Sebacean who refused to collapse under their torture. Then, under direction from their commander, one of the Scarrans pinning Aeryn ran to a hearth and grabbed a pot of boiling water. Jack was thrown face down on the table across from her, his arm twisted behind him, then doused over his back with the searing fluid.
His screaming was the last thing she remembered with any clarity, the rest of it a haze of rage as she killed four Scarrans with a swiped blaster and whatever else she could get her hands on.
It was impossible not to cry. Every time she spent more than a microt recalling the event, it crumbled her to her bases. When she looked up at John, he was sitting sideways in the seat, his back tucked against the wall as if to draw back from something horrid. The look in his face was one of shock, grief and rage. Her eyes fell to the crinkling sound of his drinking pouch, crumpled in his clenched fist.
Sniffling, she said, "he didn't speak much for a few days after that. And we've never talked about what went through his mind during that time. But whenever the terrace was positioned right, he would sit there for hours and look at your star."
John stared back, his mouth open as if to speak, but without utterance. Then, shaking his head, he grasped for words and spoke in a mournful tone.
"Aeryn…I should've come back sooner. I don't know why…I just…"
"Shhh," she said, leaning in to touch his hand. "There'll never be blame for that. I only want you to remember that planet and the people I told him about – with all its handshakes and dreams. You have no idea what power such a thing can have on those who've almost lost hope."
John nodded, squeezing her hand. "Hope."
"Yes," she said. "I've held onto it, and it's seen me through to now."
He looked back with a slack expression of wonder. "Come 'ere," he said, leaning in and unclasping her seat belt. He pulled her across his armrest and into his lap, hugged her tightly and tucked his face into the crook of her neck.
"I'm just...amazed at you."
She smiled, her cheek pressed against his crown. "Good. You should be."
"We're gonna die here. You know that?"
"I figured as much."
He pulled back and looked into her face. "Anything crazy you wanted to do before it's over?"
She roughed her fingers through his hair. "Maybe. After I drink some more juice, we can go back to bed and see what happens."
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John woke up on his right side with his face in Aeryn's hair. His arm was tucked beneath hers, falling over her ribs and across her chest, her back nestled against his midriff. The cabin was dark with the exception of some dim light flickering from the cockpit's console.
The back of his hand rested in Aeryn's. He could feel the coolness of her palm on his knuckles. Three days had passed, much of it spent in this bed -- talking, loving, and a little bit of wishing. A few hours back, the oxygen supply hit the red zone. Knowing they'd be retrieved eventually, they wrote letters for Jack and Liz, telling them everything that came to mind in pages and pages of rambling emotion. And within Liz's note, John wrapped his wedding ring, telling her to keep it as a symbol of their family's happy years together. He also wrote a note to DK, thanking him for a lifetime of friendship, but also to pass on an important charge – to see that Jack was brought to Earth, and to do everything he could for the Sebacean and Leviathan band, even if it meant taking them to a remote part of the galaxy, far from Scarran reach.
And after a final meal they got back in the bed, ready to take their final rest together. They made love one more time, then looked at each other in silence until they fell asleep.
He didn't expect to wake again.
But when he did, Aeryn was sleeping soundly against him, her breathing deep and steady. The cabin was quiet, the hush of the air-cycler no longer coming through the vents. The oxygen tanks were empty. Whatever oxygen was left rested in the still air.
Gently, John drew Aeryn's wisping hair away from her face and looked across the delicate line of her cheekbone, following it down to the fanning tips of her dark lashes. She looked so soft and feminine sleeping there, belying the image of that tough, detached soldier he once knew. He thought about her life these past years without him, this warrior that once sought combat for solace.
She was changed. Her need for a soldier's life had been sated, then overindulged and ultimately forced down her throat through years of being hunted to near-extinction. And the suffering she bore witness to – the torture of her own son – what protocol did a soldier have to fall back on for that? No, it wasn't a soldier that killed four Scarrans that day. It was a mother. Duty, service, honor – they were all shades of the past. This woman was driven by love more than anything else, and she was both deadlier and more beautiful than ever because of it.
Suddenly, Aeryn shifted beneath his arm and turned her face sidelong as she stretched against him.
"Shhh," John said. "Go back to sleep."
She blinked her eyes, groaning. "How long has it been?"
"About two hours."
She looked across the cabin, her sights settling on the now-quiet vents.
"No more air," she muttered.
"No, 'fraid not."
She turned over beneath his arm and faced him. They exchanged quiet looks for a minute before she spoke.
"I'm tired."
He was beginning to feel it, too. Light-headed and fuzzy-eyed. "I know. It's okay. At least we're warm."
Her lids drooped down. "Warm," she muttered, then closed her eyes.
His body wanted to breathe faster, but he held the pace back. There was no air to be had and no point in fighting for it. Resigned, he just stared at her face, so still and peaceful.
"I love you," he whispered.
And just then the cabin lit up in a brilliant blue. The shimmering luminescence danced over her pale features like sunlight through a clear lagoon. She was so beautiful in the soft light.
Content, he watched the heavenly display until darkness took him.
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Voices.
"She's struggling!"
"Ms. Sun! Calm down and breathe. Okay?"
"Ow! God bless! Somebody get her restrained!"
John opened his eyes to a ring of faces superimposed over a bright light high above. There was something covering his nose and mouth. A cup. Air. It was oxygen. He blinked with sudden awareness. They were alive. Holy shit! They were alive! He looked to either side and saw Aeryn struggling to his left, pinned to a stretcher by several med techs. But after a few seconds, she calmed down, taking deep breaths as she looked over the surroundings.
"Let her go," John said, pulling his mask away. "She's okay now."
A man looked back with a red, blinking eye. "Sorry, sir. We can't do that."
"Trust me, son. If she wanted to get away, she could. Now get off her."
The med techs eyed each other for a moment, then released Aeryn's arms and legs and scuttled back from the stretcher.
She looked around, the heaving of her chest slowing beneath the sheet. When she turned her head and saw him, she looked confused for a second, then smiled weakly with the oxygen mask askew on her cheekbone.
John reached his hand out to her, stretching his arm as far as he could.
She reached across to him. They could just curl their fingertips together. Slowly, they pulled towards one another, rolling their stretchers inward until they clanked together, side-by-side.
"Ya'll move it now," came a gruff voice through the crowd. "Get out of the way."
Tom Sturgeon pushed through the crowd of techs. His stethoscope swung loosely over his chest, hooked haphazardly to his collar by a single ear-bud.
"Holy Christ, John! You're a lucky son-of-a-bitch."
"Yeah," John said, grinning back. "We were cashin' it in, there."
Tom stood at the foot-ends of their stretchers, smiling at Aeryn. "Ms. Sun, I'm Tom, the ship's chief physician and Dr. Crichton's poker superior."
"Hello, Tom," Aeryn answered. "Do we shake hands now?"
"That'd be the human thing to do," John said.
Tom reached out and shook Aeryn's hand. "You guys don't know the half of it. It's gonna be one hell of a debriefing. Come on, let's get you out of this hangar and into some clothes."
John lifted the sheet at his chest and looked down, flaring his brows. "Yep. In the buff."
As the techs rolled them towards a corridor, John turned on his side and lifted up on his elbow, shouting back to the crew tending the Grappler. "Give that one a thorough steam-cleaning, boys. Nobody's gonna wanna sit on any surface in there 'til you do."
"And don't touch my Prowler!" Aeryn yelled.
They rolled through the corridors as guards at their fore urged the growing crowd to move back. John looked at the faces pressing in from doors and adjacent halls, giving them grins and thumbs-up. And then, scattered through the crowd, he began to notice more and more Sebaceans, marked by their unique clothing and uniforms. Aeryn was also noticing.
"What's this?" she asked.
"Don't know," John answered. "Must've thrown a mixer while we were gone."
Tom looked back with a sidelong grin.
"What're all these Sebaceans doing here, Tom?" John asked.
He shrugged. "Don't know what you're talkin' about. All I see is people."
Aeryn leaned in and whispered, "is he drunk?"
"Probably," John said. "That doesn't explain any of this, though."
A right turn brought them through a damaged corridor and into a vast room containing one of the key components to the wormhole generator. Suddenly, they both sat up in amazement at the sight before him, Aeryn cinching the sheet at her chest. The generator was heavily adorned with golden cables and machine components of hallmark Leviathan design. Humans and Sebaceans scurried all about, passing tools back and forth to one another in their busied maintenance of the clunky, hybridized machinery.
"Oh my god," John said, staring up at the massive sight. "That's gotta be half a Leviathan."
"Dad!"
Liz crawled out from under a nearby duct and ran to him, throwing herself across the stretcher and knocking him flat against it. She hugged his neck so tight he felt his eyes could burst.
"You asshole asshole asshole!" She pulled away and looked into his face, her grimy cheeks etched by tears. "Don't you ever do something like that again without me!" She grabbed him in another hug. "Why are you so bad all the time?"
John wrapped her in his arms. "I'm know, hon. I know. I'm sorry."
Liz sat up and reached for Aeryn's hand. "I just told him you were alive."
"Jack?" she asked.
She nodded with lips pressed tightly in a prideful smile. She flashed her eyes towards the hybridized machinery. "He hasn't slept a minute this whole time. We've been on this job non-stop."
John looked up to the machinery's vaulted heights. "This...thing. How?"
She followed his eyes. "The Sebaceans knew some things. We knew other stuff. When we got together, ideas flowed and we all went at it."
Tom threw a sack of clothes into John's lap. "You guys get dressed."
As the med techs rolled them into a room, Aeryn looked back. "Where's Jack?"
"He's on the bridge," Tom and Liz said at once as the door closed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aeryn was on the last button of her shirt while John was still hopping around with one leg in his pants.
"The bridge?" he asked. "What's he doing? Installing a clamshell?"
Aeryn grabbed John's shirt from a table and threw it at him. "Hurry up," she said, turning to a mirror to adjust her gig-line.
"Hold your horses, mom. I'm coming."
When they emerged from the chamber, the crowd was moving towards an enormous display built into the wall above a large corridor. The view was from atop Terra-3's apex, near the aft, looking forward over the anterior portion of the ship. Stars passed laterally over the bow as the ship turned to its hammond side. Then, beginning with a shimmering edge, a wormhole moved into the center view. When the bow lined up with the funnel, they started moving towards its center.
A deep voice boomed through the speakers above.
"We're reentering the wormhole. Take your stations."
John walked up behind Tom and Liz, stuffing his shirttails into his pants. "How'd you guys calibrate the magnets so fast?"
They looked at each other, exchanging furtive glances.
"We didn't," Liz said.
"What? You guys came through that tunnel in this big-ass thing without stabilization? And we're going back in it? Uh-uh, no way. Com the bridge and tell those idiots to wait for me to do it manually. Come on, Aeryn," he said, running off.
They pushed through the crowd as they ran through several corridors. After a couple of minutes, they arrived at some kind of priority elevator, "a straight shot to the bridge deck," John said as they got on.
"I can't believe they did that," John said, panting. "One bad turn or a tall wave in the wall…"
"So you'll work these magnets yourself? That's part of the…?" she asked, tapping a finger to her head.
"Yeah."
She crossed her arms. "Not that I'm condoning it, but wouldn't it have been a good idea to give this ability to more than one human, given that you're building a fleet of these ships?"
John chuckled. "Baby, you should'a been there when they tried to put squares on the first wagon axle. Might'a saved us a hundred years."
"So you want something broken then, Dr. Crichton?" she asked, stepping in and cracking her knuckles. She twisted the front of his shirt in her fist and walked him back against the wall. The light impact rang out through the elevator's metallic casing.
"It's complicated," he said, grinning.
"So I'm a frellwit, then?" she asked, twisting his shirt tighter with the other hand.
"No, that's not what I said." He grasped her lower back and tried to kiss her dodging face.
"Answer my question, John."
"Alright, alright. Truth is, I don't fully understand it. There's only a handful of 'em that could ever pass on mental constructs to others, and the one who found me was one of only five in this bunch."
"And he's dead now," she added, sneering at the bitter remembrance of Furlow. "Then what about the other four?"
"They've been forbidden from interacting with us."
"Why?"
"Partly because of what was done to me, but ultimately because they threatened to do it to others."
When the elevator doors opened, they exited and walked briskly down the corridor.
"That makes no sense, Crichton. That Ancient's actions led them to Earth."
"I know. But these mental games – they were at the heart of their war back home. And somehow they represent the greatest risk of being found again."
Just then, they passed another view screen, this one clearly showing Terra-3 entering the wormhole.
"No no no!" John said, starting off in a run. "What the hell are they doing?"
Aeryn followed him around a few more corners. They came to a final corridor and ran past some guards. At the hall's end, the door opened before them.
Their running brought them several paces into the bridge chamber before they halted. As they stood before everyone on the highest tier, faces all around turned their way, many standing up and smiling. There were even Sebaceans present, monitoring a few portable towers of Leviathan equipment. But none of them was Jack.
Standing beside the high back of the Captain's chair, Commander Simmons turned and smiled.
"You may have to get up a little earlier, Captain. Your job's not so secure any more."
John and Aeryn padded forth towards the chair, approaching it from either side. Then, as they passed the wingbacks, they saw Jack sitting there, his face alight and eyes focused on the bright fractals dancing on the view screen before him. They knelt on either side of him, just within his peripheral vision.
Aeryn moved to touch his arm, but stopped her hand just above his sleeve.
He smiled when they knelt, his eyes caged forward on the screen. "I thought I'd never see you again."
"Jack," she murmured, a hint of distress in her tone. "It's in your head."
"It's okay," he answered. "It feels fine. And it's not that hard, really. You just relax your eyes…"
"And let it take you," John said in a hushed tone. He looked to the forward display, showing the funnel's spreading interior. "You're doing great, son. I couldn't have pushed it out further myself."
But Aeryn could only think of the grim possibilities as she watched Jack's concentrating face.
"They'll come for him, John," she said. "If they ever find out, he'll be a target."
Simmons stepped in behind John's kneeling form, crossing his arms. "Well whoever 'they' are, they'll have to get through me first."
"And me," another man said, standing up.
"Me, too."
"Yeah, and they better bring friends."
Raucous pledges rang out across the bridge. Everyone, human and sebacean alike, muttered their intent to protect Jack, standing tall with their promises. Aeryn looked across their faces, this blended band of two species, mirroring one another in almost every way. The way they stood together, shoulders close as they crowded in around them -- it was impossible to see their differences without the uniforms.
John seemed just as amazed at the display. He rose to his feet and looked over the gathering faces.
And just then, Tom and Liz pushed through the crowded ring as the shimmering light from the wormhole gave way to the fluorescent luminescence of the bridge's normal lighting. Jack stood from his seat after the console rolled back, and stepped to Aeryn. He was filthy and listing from exhaustion, but took no time in crushing her in his arms. Aeryn pulled him as close as she could, gripping the fabric of his shirt in her fists.
Jack looked at John. "Thank-you," he said, his voice choking with gratitude and emotion.
Tom looked around at everyone, holding his arms out. "Fitting reunion for a family, don't you think?"
"Yeah!"
"Hear, hear!"
Applause and shouts rang out across the bridge.
Tom smiled at John and Aeryn. Then, peering furtively around for a moment, he drew a flask from inside his lab coat and raised it high, yelling, "and a fitting reunion for a people!"
The screams and applause were near deafening. When Aeryn looked at John, Liz was hugging him tight and saying something into his ear. Then Jack pulled on her sleeve.
"You remember that survey from Earth? With the extinct animals and early humans?"
Aeryn nodded.
"It was taken by a species from a planet called Arnesk thousands of cycles ago," Jack said. "They brought a few things back with them."
Earth things. All the way out here in the uncharted territories? Amazing. For a moment she tried to connect some familiar things to Earth, but then it came to her in a moment of startling clarity.
"Humans!" she said.
"Brought out here by a species called the Eidelons and cultivated into us." He stood up straight, grinning as he touched his fingertips to his chest. "We're them! They're us!"
Aeryn grabbed Jack's arm and looked over the faces again, her eyes wide and mouth agape. Yes. It all made sense. The appearances. The breeding compatibility.
The bond.
She smiled in awed amazement. And just then her eyes found John's, his look equally astonished. When Liz finished speaking in his ear, she wrapped her arms around John's midriff and smiled at Aeryn with a brilliance that flared in her blue eyes.
John's shoulders rocked in short bursts of astonished laughter, his head shaking in overt amazement. Aeryn walked into his open arm and hugged the two of them in a single embrace.
"I can't believe it," John said. "I just can't believe it."
"I can," Liz said.
John leaned in and kissed Aeryn, hugging her tight in his arm. They touched their heads together, smiling through whispered words of love. The feeling was frelling amazing. Aeryn knew right then and there, it would never be this good again.
Then John looked up, his eyes filled with joyous pride. Standing there at the crowd's center was their Jack, tall amongst the people as everyone moved in to grab a shoulder or shake his hand. Aeryn saw her own feelings reflected in their faces -- joy and awe at this living example of a new beginning.
"All right, Jack," Simmons called as he walked to a console. "We've got one more hole to make. And it'll have to be a big one if we're gonna drag all these Leviathans through."
Jack rubbed his face and walked back to the chair, people patting his back along the way. "All right. Let's do it."
"Where're we going?" John asked.
"Home, Captain," Simmons said. "We managed to open a little twizzler yesterday and got a signal through to Earth. We got our orders back just before we came for you."
"What were they?"
"Retrieve your delinquent ass and bring everyone home ASAP."
"Everyone?" John asked.
"Yes, sir," Simmons said. "Everyone. Leviathans and all."
Aeryn stood with her back to John, draped in his arm and staring across the bridge as it lit up in the glow of a new wormhole. Barely two weekens ago, she and Jack were scrambling for derillium on a desert planet, drinking rusty water and hiding from everything. And now they stood on the doorstep to Earth, seeing it like never before. How strange it felt to know that what she once thought of as John's backwards little planet was actually a part of her all this time, long before she ever set her sights on him.
"The universe is a strange place," she said.
"Yeah," John replied. "I've been tellin' everyone that since the day we met."
And just then, the last turn in the wormhole passed as Earth's glowing blue orb came into view, flecked across its surface with puffs of brilliant white. Several sebaceans padded forth towards the display, their eyes wide before the sight of it, this home both old and new.
And in between the clouds Aeryn saw Florida, and to the left of it Mexico. And she suddenly realized she'd uttered the words aloud when John laughed behind her.
"That's pretty good, baby. We're gonna have to work on that accent, though."
Yes. There would be much to learn but plenty to love. For everyone.