AN: I appreciate everyone's feedback. I have no idea how fair the AU-ness of this fic will extend. I guess we'll find out. From here on, there are obvious, major spoilers.
This chapter is slightly shorter. I needed to cut it off so I had something to write about tomorrow.
Chapter Two
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Moya, Pilot's Den (1792 microts after contact)
It was a standoff.
Neither side moved for a few seconds. The large alien clearly felt more inclined to believe the boy than it did a handful of complete strangers bearing unfamiliar weapons. Pilot suddenly went from passive and trusting, to short and unreceptive.
"Explain," he said sharply. "Or I will have every DRD in this chamber open fire." In the eight years he'd shared Moya with Crichton and his family, he'd learned to trust them above all other beings other than his Leviathan. And he wasn't going to let a few cleverly disguised Peacekeepers enslave his precious Moya again.
"If you open fire, we open fire," Sheppard warned him. "As much as I'd prefer not to. See, we're not the bad guys—we're the good guys. We heard your distress call while we were flying around a nearby planet, and we're here to help. Now, whoever these Plovakian folk are—"
"Plokavian," uttered the boy D'Argo—venomously.
"All right. Plokavian," said the colonel. "I'm sorry about what happened to your ship, but you've gotta believe me when I say we have no idea what's going on. People like you…don't exactly show up around here all that often."
"You're lying," accused the boy, leaning over the console. "You're just saying that to make him trust you! You're going to hand us over to the Plokavian pirates. They're paying you!"
"What? How could you possibly even assume that—" McKay started.
"Colonel Sheppard is telling the truth," Teyla tried to explain, cutting him off. "We are not here to—"
"What the frell is going on around here?"
The loud, somewhat disoriented bellow came from behind them. Immediately, Sheppard spun around and directed his P90 at the newcomer shadowed underneath the oval doorway—the male, human newcomer with a mixture of sarcasm and anger twisting his expression.
The other guy had some sort of weapon drawn, something that looked like pistol with a short barrel. And he didn't look at all happy to see four armed strangers standing so close to the boy, D'Argo.
"Dad!" the boy exclaimed happily, ducking under Pilot's claw to rush forward. In a flash, he'd climbed over the console, buzzed past Sheppard's team and jumped on the man standing across the bridge. Grinning like a maniac, 'Dad' hefted his son into a quick squeeze before lowering him to the ground again. D'Argo turned around, smirking triumphantly. "You guys are in a lot of trouble! My Dad is going to kick your eemas!"
"Sounds painful," Sheppard commented under his breath to Ronon.
"Pilot, would it kill to get a little more light around here?" the boy's father snapped irritably, rubbing at his eyes. He looked like the victim of a bad hangover.
In response, the ship's pilot reached forward—Sheppard realizing awkwardly that this was exactly what he'd been trying to do before Ronon shot at him—and depressed one of the smaller controls. The immense cavern hummed to life. For the first time, they saw the innards of the Leviathan in technicolour.
"Who are you people?" Demanded the pistol-wielding man. He was still rubbing at his eyes groggily.
"We're explorers," Sheppard tried to explain, purposely leaving out the part about Atlantis…just in case. "We're also friends. My name is Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard. This is my team. We're from a place called Earth in another galaxy—
"Oh!" he armed man suddenly dropped his arms, and the gun to his side, hanging his head. And to their surprise, he started to chuckle insanely. "Of course, it's just another dream! You'd think, after eleven stupid cycles, this would all end, but stupid John—Crichton—doesn't—know—when—
He was bashing the pistol against his own skull with every last one of those five words. And then, abruptly, he snapped again, bringing the weapon up to point at them. His face contorted with a sort of—twitch, of pain. "Ow, okay…that hurt. Pain means awake, and awake means real, and real means you, here, now. So in that case—what the FRELL is going on?"
Behind him, D'Argo snickered quietly.
------
Moya, Hangar (3 solar days to contact)
Fear, fear, fear…
There was a pronounced silence throughout the corridors before the first nullifier beam hit Moya. D'Argo dropped the DRD he'd been cleaning and stumbled up against the table, knocking over the small pile of deactivated droids. He struck his head against something hard, and saw stars for a moment. And suddenly the world righted itself again.
He'd been confined to the task of polishing the grime, muck, scuffs and other various bodily fluids from an assortment of DRDs when he refused to show up for dinner the solar day before. D'Argo didn't like food cubes, no matter how his mother prepared them. Sometimes he wished he could attach himself to Moya, like Pilot, and he'd never had to eat another dry, stale, gritty food cube again.
Everything happened faster than he could think. One moment, he was scrubbing a sticky green substance out of the crevice in a DRD's eyestalk, and the next he was on the floor on his backside. He heard Pilot trying to say something over his comm., but his head was ringing too loudly to understand. Moya went into Starburst, and the eight-year old boy slid across the floor and felt his back hit his father's module hard. He knew it would bruise.
Pain. Fear. Stop, stop, stop…
He never thought Moya could Starburst for so long. It seemed like forever. Finally, after what might have been a thousand microts, she stopped. Everything went still.
For a moment, he thought it might be over. He stood up, almost tumbling over an upside-down DRD.
Another shot struck the Leviathan. This time, the boy reacted on impulse. He scrambled wildly under the fierce rocking of the ship, climbing over the side of his dad's module and into the cockpit. Just like Dad had taught, he flicked the red-orange switch under the engine controls, closing the shield above him.
And there he curled up, resting his chin on his knees with his arms wrapped around himself. He waited. Moya swayed and shook, rolled and vibrated under a dozen or so more shots from the enemy. His stomach turned—he was scared, and worried and he didn't know what was happening. Mom and Dad and Gala and Pilot…and even Rygel. And Moya! Someone was hurrying Moya. Was it the Peacekeepers? Mom told him about them. But the Peacekeepers were far, far away.
Plokavians, said the voice in his ear.
D'Argo jumped, and almost banged his head again on the seat. No one was there. He was hearing things again. Mom hated it when he heard things. They'd ground him forever if he told them about even half of the voices he heard…
The hangar stilled. The enemy stopped attacking. He waited three hundred full microts before he cautiously reached out and hit the switch to open the shield. Knees shaking, he climbed out of the module and onto the floor.
He breathed shallowly, shaking with fear as he took in his surroundings. The lights were dimmed. He could still see easily, but most of Moya's illumination had gone down. And it was eerily quiet.
Here, here. Stopped firing. Waiting. Scared. Confused. Unsure. Pilot, Pilot, Pilot…
And D'Argo learned through the voice that the Plokavians had come to capture Moya. They wanted to sell her for credits. They traded things. They were going to execute his parents. Pirates. Traders. He thanked the strange voice, but it didn't hear him, and he raced off towards his parent's quarters as fast as his legs would take him.
But they were asleep. At first, when he approached the bed and saw his mother, Aeryn Sun half-slumped over the edge of the bed he'd thought the Plokavians had killed her—but they weren't on board yet. Dad was on the floor a few feet away. Neither one responded to him, no matter how hard he tried to get them to wake up. He knew they were still alive—they were still breathing, but they wouldn't wake up.
"Pilot, Pilot! Are you there? Mom and Dad won't wake up! What's going on? Pilot?"
No one answered him. Even the voice was quiet. Did Pilot fall asleep, too?
Rygel was slumped unconscious in his chair, drooling a strange yellow liquid that he'd never seen before. When he went to check on Gala, he found her curled up in a ball in one of the storage crates—also asleep, her petite, feline features a mask of complete contentment. He saved Pilot for last, even though his dad had always told him to check on him first—but he was too scared. He didn't want to find out he was alone. He'd never been alone before—there was always someone around to talk to. He didn't want to be left with only the voice for company.
But eventually, even that faded away, sleepily like all the others. The DRDs shut down one by one. And it was only then he felt very, very alone.
Even the ship got cold. So cold he could see white puffs of vapour rise every time he exhaled—which fascinated him for a short while, but fascination was soon replaced with fear.
He did what only his eight-year-old mind could think of in order to survive. He rigged one of the food dispensers to dump its contents, wrapped as many food cubes as he could in his shirt, filled a small container with water and carried it them off to Pilot's den. Careful as to not spill his hoard, he crawled into the warmest and most familiar place he could find—just under Pilot's head and between his two front arms. And there he camped, terrified, certain that Moya would never wake up and he'd be stuck like this forever…
Until the strangers came.
Then the voice returned.
------
Moya, Command Center (1 arn, 933 microts after contact)
"I'm sorry, Crichton, but Moya has no idea what happened to her after the Starburst. There is...evidence of some fort of energy residue trapped in her skin on the outer hull." The broad face, with a somewhat slouched posture and a discoloured carapace wavered in the holographic image.
"Which means?" pressured Crichton, staring at the ship's Pilot on the clamshell.
"It could mean almost anything," Pilot supplied. "Hopefully, it will not be a permanent effect Moya. The shock from the surplus energy…has somehow overloaded our neural nexus, and I find it…increasingly difficult to stay connected to her."
Crichton swore profusely in a language his best pal D'Argo, the Luxan he'd named his son after, had taught him shortly before his death.
"Crighton."
Leaning over the console, John tediously lifted his head to glare at the clamsell. "Yes, Pilot?"
"Moya is…very tired. However, she also seems to be convinced that the four humans who came on board recently are somehow connected to her creators."
This perked his curiousity. "What, you mean the big, smoky, floating Buddha Zhaan told us about?"
"Hmm. That would be a…less than sufficient description of Moya's deity, but that is in fact, whom I refer to. Apparently, the vessel they landed in is…nearly identical in design to those the Creators used before they evolved into…beings of pure energy—the form which I am sure you are more than capable of imagining."
"This is…" John shook his head, wishing his splitting headache would live up to its name and split. "This just isn't happening. I call 'time out'. Pause the game. It's halftime, the show's in intermission, I'm out to lunch—this really cannot be happening!"
His outburst was greeted with only silence on the pilot's behalf. D'Argo, sitting with his back against the wall, only stared into space as though listening to some distant symphony.
Realizing he was being a little crazier than was necessary, Crichton sighed and pushed away from the console, running his fingers through his hair. "Okay, for now…how are the others? How is Aeryn? Did she wake up? Has anyone else recovered other than you and me?"
"I cannot for certain. Many of the DRDs are still… non-functional, and my connection with Moya is deteriorating. I must devote every spare moment to…repairing the damage to our neural bond, Commander."
"And all this is just a fancy way of telling me to go check for myself?"
The image of Pilot shut off. He reluctantly took that as a 'yes'. Even after eight cycles, even after he'd raised his only son on board Moya, even after the dren they'd been through together, Pilot was still a mystery to him.
"Stay here, don't go anywhere," he told his son, pointing meaningfully at the eight-year-old reclining against the wall. "I'll be back right after I check on your mom. And—" he added, before D'Argo could protest. "You don't bug Pilot. Not even a little."
His son nodded dispassionately.
"Okay." And with that, John rushed off to his quarters to find his wife.
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Moya, Detention Cell 47 (1 arn, 1022 microts after contact)
There was a general sort of uneasiness between the members of Sheppard's team. This was sort of like sitting in a Wraith cell, only this time they weren't going to get out no matter how impressive Ronon's collection of kitchenware happened to be.
They didn't consent to being locked up, of course. It had just been a little hard to argue with John Crichton while surrounded by a horde of small yellow robots with their lasers drawn.
In any case, their 'peaceful' intent had somehow gotten lost in translation. That guy's kid was acting like some sort of mini-medium channeling the 'blame-anything-that-moves' spirit. Now, quite absurdly, they were stuck inside a cell inside a living ship millions of kilometers from the nearest Stargate, with no way of contacting Atlantis in the event these aliens turned hostile.
And there was always the matter of Mr. John Crichton's rather peculiar interest in Earth.
Sighing, Sheppard plucked the small, rubber ball that he kept with him at all times (for scenarios such as this one) from his pocket. Rodney eyed him grumpily, but he ignored the scientist as always.
Sheppard tossed the ball against the wall with a 'thunk' and caught it as it came flying back to his hand.
Toss. Thunk. Thunk. Catch. Toss. Thunk. Thunk. Catch.
Pause.
"Yeah, this really sucks."
TBC