Aeryn was jolted back into something resembling consciousness. Was it the Prowler hitting some sort of turbulence which had awakened her or had it been the voice shouting in her ear? Was that John's voice, her heat-befuddled and delirious brain wondered? Everything was so confusing, so muddled, she could scarcely remember anything, who she was, where she was, what she had been doing.
The Prowler shook again, but the voice, if it had been real, did not speak again. Was she even in a Prowler, or had she imagined that? She forced her eyes open. She was relieved that she was indeed in a Prowler, as she had expected, but something was causing it to shake violently, and maybe someone had been calling her on the comms. She needed to 'get it together.' It was not the time to sleep, no matter how badly she craved it.
"Frell!" she hissed, forcing reluctant and numb hands to grasp the controls. She seemed to be in a wormhole. She knew plenty about wormholes - John had used one to take them to the false Earth, and then had created another at Dam Ba Da, trying to get back to Earth while she had been co-piloting his module. She remembered how furious she had been with him that time. Then, of course, there had been... no, she could not quite remember.
She felt a wave of nausea and clasped the controls tightly, squinting to see, trying not to vomit or faint. She'd be on punishment duty for a monen if she threw up in the Prowler's cockpit. That and she'd be the laughing stock of the pilots' mess. Henta, and her other two wing-mates, would be so disappointed with her for letting their flight down. The male pilots, and not just those in her squadron, would mock her mercilessly for weekens.
She was sure John had created other wormholes in other memories too, but her mind was clouded by what she took to be heat delirium. Besides, it didn't matter. She was in a wormhole. Wormholes were dangerous.
The wormhole twisted and she came close to flying into the swirling, blue wall. Don't touch the walls. Touching the walls was very bad she remembered from somewhere. Very, very bad.
Avoid the anti-energy distortions, the peaks in the rantac flux variance; they were the most dangerous of all. They turned Prowler pilots into goo, or so she had heard, but she couldn't remember who had told her. Only the giant, symbiotic Leviathan Pilots could see those, it was said. She could see them, though, she thought with pride. Why was that again? She couldn't clearly recall, but there was another memory of John.
Frell, that was close: Another fork in the wormhole. She'd almost crashed the Prowler into the fork where the tunnel split in two. Concentrate, Sun. Wormholes could take you anywhere. What had John told her?
"Maintain focus. Destination is key." Black eyes. The blank, almost unreadable expression of a face that was only pretending to be Sebacean. Or was it human? Why couldn't she remember?
Maintain frelling focus?! Whose stupid idea was it to say something as trite as that? She almost laughed, despite how sick she felt. All she wanted to do was go somewhere familiar, somewhere safe, somewhere she could lie down, curl into a ball and someone would help her feel better. Home.
She saw a potential exit from the system, coming up in a couple of microts. She knew she couldn't keep this up for much longer. She had to get out of the wormhole before she lost consciousness. The exit felt right.
Home.
'~'
Moya emerged from starburst like a cat nosing its way through a curtain, a trailing gossamer net curtain of blue lightning slipping along her back and into nothingness as she passed from the void of hyperspace into the vacuum of normal space.
"No sign of the Dreadnought?" John half observed, half enquired as he nervously gripped the control console on Moya's command deck. They had been gone for over two arns: Although this time around the birth had been quick and trouble-free, compared to the last time anyway, he was still uneasy about leaving Aeryn and their new daughter in their quarters while Moya starburst back towards Earth and potential danger. But they had unfinished business they needed to attend to - they needed answers and they could not afford to wait for Aeryn to recover before they went looking for them.
"Indeed, Commander. Neither is there any sign of the Prowler."
"Are we in the right time and place?"
"The module is still there. In a decaying orbit around your planet. Other planetary scans match those of when we left." John nodded, relieved that everything was as they expected it to be and that the Dreadnought seemed to be gone. Unless it was hiding on the other side of the planet, of course, or behind the moon?
"Looks like he did it."
"Commander Crichton, we are being hailed by Mr Lloyd."
"Put him on."
"Commander Crichton?" The familiar voice of Lloyd, the CAPCOM hailed from somewhere down on Earth.
"Yep."
"Umm, which one?"
"The new one, the one on Moya," John replied with a sigh and a roll of his eyes. This was frelling confusing. They'd have to work something out if they were going to spend any time in the same vicinity. The twin would have to change his name to something else. Homer, perhaps? "We just got back from a… umm… strategic starburst."
"Are you all OK up there? You won't believe some of the telemetry we got, even from the ground..."
"Is the Scarran ship... is it gone?" John demanded. He needed to know. Everyone on Moya needed to know. It was their asses on the line up in space if it wasn't.
"It would seem so. There seemed to be a massive burst of radiation and a solar flare, almost within spitting distance of Earth."
"The wormhole weapon?"
"That would be our best guess. Can you confirm?"
"Pfft. I'm guessing so. And the Prowler?"
"The what?"
"Frell!" John cursed under his breath. Of course, in this reality he and Aeryn had never been to Earth. No, that wasn't quite right: He and Aeryn hadn't come to Earth last year on Moya and had IASA and the US Air Force's brightest and best prodding and poking at her Prowler. In this reality, no one on Earth had ever seen a Prowler.
"The Peacekeeper space fighter that *your* Aeryn was flying to buy *your* Crichton enough time to destroy the Scarran ship." John explained through gritted teeth. "Have you heard from her, even?"
"Umm. We're not sure. Most of our systems are still out from the last attack. Then your weapon thing blinded a lot of what we still have for a bit. But we think there were two small objects close to the wormhole just after the attack, both the size of the module or thereabouts. One must have gone through after about a quarter hour."
"And I guess the other is the module. Yeah. We can still see it."
"Umm, right, about that. You've been ordered to retrieve it and bring it back down immediately - the Joint Chiefs want our boys to take a good long look at it..."
"Hmm, of course they do. Look I'll get back to you on that." Having seen how his twin and Aeryn had been treated down there the last couple of years, John was in no hurry to put himself at their mercy. They could go whistle if they thought he'd be going back down there any time soon.
"What? No! That's an order from the highest..."
"Look, I'm gonna be busy for a bit recovering the module. Crichton out." John grimaced as he broke the radio connection to Earth. Let them stew – all of the balls were in his court now, and it was up to him - and Aeryn and Pilot - to decide how they wanted to play them.
"Commander Crichton, I am deploying the docking web to bring the module aboard," Pilot broke in.
Crichton nodded. "Thanks Pilot." He toggled the comms. "Noranti, can you meet me in the docking bay, please?" He needed help with whatever it might contain. Aeryn was out of the question, even if she hadn't just given birth: She'd already buried her incarnation of his twin, a couple of cycles earlier at Dam Ba Da, and the experience had left her emotionally broken. He couldn't drag his sister into this and as for Chi, well, she'd certainly suffered enough trauma of her own with the whole dead twin thing. Poor Chiana had witnessed Kaarvok sucking out and consuming her twin's brain, could probably still hear her twin's anguished screams in her worst nightmares. So that left the crazy old woman, who was probably the best choice regardless, for all sorts of reasons.
"Of course, Commander," came Noranti's smooth reply. Was it just him, or was there something really creepy about the way she seemed to know what she was meeting him to do and the way she seemed totally happy with the whole sorry business?
"OK, then. Let's go find out if I'm dead," Crichton muttered to himself as he strode from the command deck.
Better get it over with before Aeryn or Chi started to stick their noses in or ask awkward questions.
'~'
John paced back and forth, anxious to get Furlow's module aboard and get on and find out what horrors it contained. The sooner it was over and done with the sooner his mind could focus on less unpleasant things. That, and Noranti's saintly smile was starting to make his flesh creep.
"Knock it off, will you?" He snapped at her before turning his head away so that he didn't have to look at her anymore. The hangar doors rumbled as they started to open.
"Knock what off?" Noranti enquired of his back.
John ignored her, squeezing through the still expanding gap between the hangar bay doors before he rushed towards the module. He slid to a halt beside its darkened canopy and caught his breath, gathered his thoughts, steeled his resolve. There was no sign or sound from within. He hit the emergency canopy release. The Plexiglas flew up towards the ceiling, propelled by the escaping gases of a dozen or so small explosive charges, causing John to momentarily dodge aside to avoid it. Then it crashed to the floor and John stepped back up to the low-slung capsule.
John Crichton lay motionless within, slumped forward against the harness holding him in the pilot's seat. His head was pitched further forward still. A trail of vomit stretched down the front of his flight suit. A mix of bodily fluids were pooling on the floor. John leant in and stretched his arm out, pausing just before it reached his twin. He took another breath then took hold of his twin's shoulder, pushing him back against the seat.
John Crichton's still, open, dead eyes stared back at him. Horrified, John slid back down the side of the module in shock, barely keeping upright as his feet hit the floor. Part of him had known it was a possibility, but he was still unprepared for the full horror of seeing himself, dead.
With surprising agility for one who professed, and indeed appeared, to be so old, Noranti quickly clambered up the side of the module, peered inside for a microt, leant forwards to do something which John could not make out, and then returned to the deck beside him. She positioned herself to address him.
"The other John Crichton is dead. The divine balance is restored." She waved her hands in the air around her head like some Earthly mystic and smiled at him. It was beyond infuriating.
"I can't believe you just said that, old woman!" John exploded. For all that he hadn't liked his twin, he remembered only too well how the other John Crichton's death had affected his Aeryn three cycles ago, how it had torn her apart. "What about Aeryn!?"
"Well..." Noranti waggled her head noncommittally. "She and your offspring are well," Noranti continued, allowing a trace of confusion to tone down her smile by a notch or two. "In your quarters."
"The other Aeryn!" John shouted in frustration. The crazy old woman could be so... infuriating at times.
"Ah." Noranti nodded, as though some great truth had been revealed to her. "Have faith. She is surely when and where she was always meant to be."
"What the hell!?"
"The Divine Eternal provides. The balance is restored." Noranti waved her arms around in the sort of child's prayer-like gesture that often accompanied her mystical pronouncements and gave him a beatific smile.
John ground his teeth and reminded himself that it was impolite and inadvisable to slap an old lady. He could barely believe his ears, how she could be so blasé, so callous about the whole business. She was definitely cut from a different cloth, of that there was no doubt. He shook his head and blew out a breath.
"Come on, old woman," He forced himself to speak, to act. He took hold of her elbow. He had chosen to bring her down to the hangar for a reason, after all. "We need to deal with the body, preferably before Aeryn, Chi or my sister can get down here."