Orona was fascinated by Aeryn's memories of the smallest creatures, a whole universe beyond her understanding. Bugs, birds, spiders... They could talk for arns and still she would not get tired.
Her voice came to her without words, without sound, as if it were being projected from inside Aeryn's own mind. They came to her like half-remembered lyrics to songs she never heard, in waves of emotions wrapped in layer upon layer of meaning and remembrance. Sometimes she could sense the distant presence of Pilot's species, as if she were watching them through dirty binoculars. She sensed them, but they could not sense her.
It amused Aeryn to talk, and it soothed Orona to listen.
"Well, that's what I meant," Aeryn thought loudly in her own mind. Her physical body may have been bound by cables and structures, but her mind was free to wander the dark, and follow the sounds and images wherever they went. Sometimes they were mere dim lightbulbs flashing briefly and dying again, like pulsating stars in the cold of outer space, other times they were overwhelming and blinding and magnificent, and exhausting.
"Can you feel them, or are they just insects living on your skin? Are they like trees sprouting from the ground, or children growing from your body?"
Both. And neither.
It wasn't like her to be so curious, or to know much about biology, or life. Perhaps it was Orona's own sense of wonder rubbing on to her, bleeding through the connection, just like she sometimes saw her own disciplined and even merciless stubbornness reflected back at her. Orona could get cranky. When she didn't get what she wanted, she'd try to block Aeryn out of her mind, and mentally sever the link between them. Aeryn kept fighting back, and despite the physical connection, she wondered if it might even work if she gave in.
Last time she grew impatient, she didn't speak for a day. Then slowly, like a mighty rumble from the deep, a thought emerged, a question, directed at Aeryn. Orona wondered if she was still there.
"I am," Aeryn replied, feeling the loneliness in Orona's echo.
They couldn't be more different. A Sebacean woman and a planet-sized creature. And yet the connection they shared made every thought personal to both. At first, Aeryn was afraid Orona would feel violated or attacked, but she didn't. She had been alone for so long. She had forgotten she had once been an individual being, instead of a mere whisper in the DNA of Pilot's people, guiding them from pool to pool over many centuries.
Orona liked her. She could feel it. Aeryn sent the sensation right back, flanked by gratitude and relief. It was strange to communicate in such a manner. For cycles, she'd hid her emotions, even from Crichton, and found it hard to talk about them when all he wanted was to talk emotionally. Now, there was nothing else to do but feel, and share, and talk with emotions, and Aeryn found that she did it as if she had been doing it all her life. This personal connection with Orona removed the need for pesky things like words, with which she'd never been good with, and facial tics. There was no point in acting tough or presenting oneself in a certain manner, and she didn't have to worry about inspiring the proper kind of emotion in others. Her husband needed a wife, her children needed a mother, her ship needed a captain, her friends needed a soldier. Orona saw right through the veil and saw her true self, and it scared her. And Orona didn't understand why it scared her. Orona had never been anything but Orona her entire long life.
"In our lives," Aeryn explained. "We are many different things, often at the same time, but even as we age, we change. I am not the person I was before, when I was young."
And will you change again? Are you changing right now?
Aeryn thought about it. "Yes, I think I am."
That scared Orona. This single notion of discontinuity made her distrust Aeryn somehow.
"Don't the Pilots change? They must not have always been like this."
Pilots? I don't know that word.
Aeryn sent her an image of Moya's indomitable controller. Her Pilot. She felt peace, trust, guilt, and forgiveness. It was something she only realized now as the emotions echoed back at her, like sound waves bouncing off the walls. Her love for Pilot, dissected in so many ways, almost felt quantifiable. Orona thanked her for sharing it.
A part of me has lived alongside you for so many cycles. He has protected you...
But something in Aeryn made her send more. Now that the memories came rushing back, there was no way of stopping it, but in its own way, Aeryn didn't want it to. She wanted Orona to see it.
She showed it the time she massacred Moya's old Pilot. She heard its screams again, and the anguish paralyzed her. Orona fell silent, and Aeryn felt the same sting of distrust, the fear of betrayal, Orona had shared with her before. Aeryn's pain was multiplied a thousand times over.
Orona saw the dead Pilot's face, its carcass still smoking from the pulse blasts that ended its life. The technicians proceeded to cut into its flesh. It would never wake up.
Is this change?
Aeryn found it within her heart. The words to beg forgiveness and make her understand. The woman that killed that Pilot, that is who she was, but not anymore, she was the woman that committed to this connection to save Pilots, that is who she's now.
And as she felt it, Orona felt it. As she saw it, Orona saw it. The memories came back to her, of a voice, a face, a stranger, a lover, a monster, a man...
"You can be more."
Memories of Crichton blurred, his old face, his young face, the man he was, the man she saw...
And she remembered the first time she reached her hand out to Pilot's face, his initial hesitance, and then acceptance, as she brushed the side of his cheek. The touch of his skin.
"I made him a promise," Aeryn said, and this time her lips spoke along with her mind. She said it with the certainty of a soldier proudly accepting death. She said it with the certainty of the end of the universe. Her new constant in life, to never break it, to never change and come back on her word. And Orona knew she meant it.
Thank you.
Braca arrived on the command deck of his Command Carrier well rested. His yeoman informed him the fourth drill had increased response time sufficiently, and Braca agreed, although he had little time to do it.
Bring me the duty roster," he said. "It's time to start the next shift."
"Already, sir?"
"We have to be vigilant, lieutenant. We cannot trust the Nebari to be predictable. They're a pathetic drug-addled people, and their religious zeal will drive them to do anything."
Braca looked out into open space. The giant cone-shaped window was a facade, a computerized illusion created from outer hull sensor readings and lens-based light recording facilities, projected on to the giant wall. As he walked the promenade, Braca could see the Leviathans lingering in the shadow of General G'dishi's Command Carrier, until a massive white vessel blocked their view.
"They're trying to intimidate us," Braca said, and ordered the view to be changed.
The Nebari ship was twice the size of a Command Carrier, possibly even larger than a Scarran Dreadnought, and could easily overtake them in military engagement. Reinforcements were on their way, including Ambassador Rygel's Hynerian military escort, but even with those vessels on their side Braca wondered if they even stood a chance.
100 cycles ago one of these ships crippled the Carrier Zelbinion and defeated and enslaved its legendary captain Durka. The Nebari probed and conditioned his mind for eons until he was able to free himself. As the thought crossed Braca's mind, he adjusted his leather captain's jacket.
"Sir," one of his navigators spoke. "There seems to be activity..."
He stopped, and checked again. "Sir! There is a vessel inbound!"
"They're early," Braca said. "What kind of configuration?"
Braca peered over the navigator's shoulder and checked the readings for himself.
The colour drained from Braca's face. "Contact Scorpius. Immediately!"
"Sir! There's a Scarran Decimator on a direct course for the planet, but en route something seemed to have detached itself from the ship and is heading straight for the fourth moon. It's small. It can't be more than a Pod carrying no more than a single passenger. There's more.
We've intercepted a transmission between the two craft and managed to decode it. Sir, it reads: "Board the Leviathan. Secure Crichton's ship at all cost, and take his offspring captive. Terminate the rest."
Rygel gazed out the forward portal at Pilot's request. He didn't seem worried. The Scarran vessel was heading straight for the planet, but indeed there was something else getting rather close towards the fourth moon.
"They can't know we're here, can they?" Rygel wondered aloud.
Fess stared at the same object and sheathed his knife as he walked closer to the screen.
"Pilot?" he said, what's it's trajectory? Pilot?"
"It's heading straight for us! Moya is afraid! She will not risk being seen by the Peacekeepers! She won't run!"
"What else is she going to do?" Rygel bellowed. "Just Starburst already! Get us the frell out of here! We don't have another choice!"
Pilot agreed. "Initiating Starburst!"
Rygel closed his eyes, almost in prayer. "Forgive us, Aeryn..."
Sometimes she'd slip in and out of consciousness, and lose sense of what was real and what wasn't. It was as if she was trapped down a deep dark well shouting upward for anyone to hear her, but they all passed by the well as if they could not hear, ignoring her pleas. At the bottom of the well, there was only the voice for company.
"Are you all right?"
When Aeryn opened her eyes, a young girl looked up at her. A young technician, with sweat and fluid sticking to her forehead, and a spanner in her hand. Orona did not feel them working inside her brain, but Aeryn did. With every adjustment she felt connections being severed or made, and Orona's consciousness seeped into her own, like waves on a beach, sometimes close, other times distant.
"You were talking," the technician said. "Out loud. Was it the creature? Can you hear her?"
"Listen," Aeryn said, cutting her off. "I need you to find my husband. It's important."
"But we're not allowed to-"
"Something's gonna happen, and I can't... "
She tried to reach out to him as she did before, but with so many memories and sensations flooding her she couldn't be sure whether she hadn't dreamed it all.
"You have to find him..."
"I'll have to talk to commander Deccan..."
"No! I don't trust him!"
Aeryn buried her face in her hands, but they felt alien to her, as if the cold that was coursing through her body numbed her, disconnected her, from herself.
The weight of the cables attached to her arms, spine and neck pulled her down. She wanted to scream, she wanted to tear them off, but she managed to contain herself, restrict herself within her discipline and will.
Her mind touched a million other minds waiting on the edges of her senses. Orona was all of them, and none. Aeryn could hear them, feel them, and little by little their collective memories, their cultural heritage lasting a thousand generations, rushed over her.
It was torture. There was no other word to describe it. There was no other way to deal with it. She couldn't even hear the girl anymore, even though she vaguely understood she was still there. She was the enemy. She was a child. This technician had no idea what she was tampering with. She was a cog in the machine. One scale among many. One star in the night sky, blinded by the sun.
And what about Aeryn herself? Who was she? She couldn't remember.
She focused on her children, what they looked like, what they felt like in her hands, how she felt when she held them in their arms, how they maddened her, and frightened her, and made her stronger. She closed her eyes and saw them on Moya, imagined them alive and well and safe.
She was losing it, like a drop of water in the ocean.
The young technician ran for the Peacekeeper physicians for help.
"I don't know what happened," she said as she lead the doctors across the bridge. "One microt I was talking to her, the next she started rambling on, always repeating the same phrases."
They found Aeryn in an almost catatonic state, her eyes glazed and blank staring out into nothing, and her lips mouthing breathlessly the same words until her voice returned to her.
"Officer Aeryn Sun. Special Peacekeeper Commando. Icarion Company. Pleisar Regiment."
The words had been memorized long ago and came to her by nature. The doctors ordered the shutdown of the system, lowered the rate of fitration, and ordered a full examination of the symbiotic connection before they were allowed to continue.
After a while, Aeryn began to slowly regain control of herself, if only for a moment, to finally realize her words were wrong. She closed her eyes, cleared her dry mouth, and began anew.
"Captain Aeryn Sun," she started, and the doctors looked up. "Mother. Moya. Wife. Soldier. Pilot. John. Rygel. Chiana. D'Argo. Zhaan..."
She repeated the names. Over. And over. It was the only thing that kept her from going insane.