A/N: Takes place right after Thank God It's Friday, Again and before PK Tech Girl.
Aeryn Sun had fallen asleep. She hadn't intended to, had no conscious intention even to explain why she had come down to the former barracks, tucked low and deep in Moya's belly. Restless, after a combat of a sort she'd never faced before, with no training to rely on. But she had returned from Sykar with the same pointless, familiar urge to frell or fight. Instead she had dodged the crew to walk equally pointless patrols through the ladders and passages, until she had arrived at this empty hall, finally tired enough to lay down on a dusty bunk.
The others had convinced Pilot to wait an additional solar day before leaving the system. Partly to take on provisions and let D'Argo and Zhaan clear the tannot fog from their systems, but also to provide a little more support to the planet's disoriented denizens.
Sun didn't understand her shipmates' loyalty to useless people who had drugged and assaulted them. Walking through the Peacekeeper warehouse, though, looking at the countless rows of containers being stacked by drones, and then wandering out into the endless blistering fields, almost barren, had been uncomfortable.
Sun had never once in her life considered where chakkan oil was made, or how. Now she had one of those containers of tannot in the cargo hold, awaiting distillation. Payment for three of their spare pulse weapons. A meager start to a revolt, but she had armed the revolutionaries. That made whatever happened next at least partially her responsibility.
It was only the latest evidence of how far and how fast she had fallen since her contamination. Perhaps that was what had led her to the barracks, and the comforting familiarity of a cold bunk. But what had woken her?
The darkness was rarely deep on Moya. Even in alter shift, her walls would glimmer with streaks of phosphorescence, and forgotten lights would emerge from random cells or glow from the stalks of scuttling DRDs. Beyond the curtains surrounding the bed, Sun thought she detected movement, a dimming and lightening of shadow.
Fully awake now, Sun didn't move, except to reach for her pulse pistol, not at her thigh, but where she had tucked it, from habit, in the gap between mattress and frame. Easy to hand, with no danger of misfire if her dreams were restless. Comforted by its weight, she stayed still, running through possibilities. Peacekeepers arriving unexpectedly for their tannot root shipment and finding Moya instead. Refugees from the surface trying to steal a ride to a less devastated planet. Another Marauder from Crais's carrier boarding in stealth and infiltrating the ship.
Then she heard the scuff of a shoe hitting furniture, followed by a clatter, and a smattering of profanity her microbes didn't bother to translate. Crichton's swearing was becoming too familiar to really require it.
"Aeryn?" he called sheepishly.
She could not pretend to have slept through that racket, but Sun considered pretending not to be there at all. If they were being invaded, surely Pilot would have used the comms, not sent the human to alert them. But she didn't trust the man not to search every bed if he was determined to find her.
"Yes, Crichton? Is there a problem?"
"You missed breakfast." The voice was coming closer. "Just wanted to be sure you hadn't overheated yesterday."
Sun had slept for hours past her usual. She sat up before the human could reach her, swinging her feet over to the floor. "I'm fine, Crichton. Just… not hungry."
"Locals gave us some fresh fruit. Didn't want Rigel to eat your share." He tossed a small hard object over to her, and took a seat opposite her on the next bunk. "Starburst in about an arn."
Eating together was important. As trying as she often found the noisy, chaotic affair, Sun did force herself to join in most of the time. With so few people, each a very strong personality, on a ship meant for hundreds of prisoners and staff, it would be too easy to grow dangerously disconnected. Communal meals were a tactic for unit cohesion, and she was in the wrong for avoiding it.
She bit into the unknown food. It would be edible. Crichton always scanned new comestibles now, and their digestive physiology thus far seemed almost identical. "Thank you." It had an unusual texture, grainy and unpleasant, but she'd learned as a child never to turn down food. Fresh food especially was a rare treat.
"So why did you sleep down here? Something wrong with your quarters?"
She couldn't tell him what she didn't know. So she just took another bite. "No."
"Ohkay." He flipped down, stretching out on his mattress. "Well it's not as uncomfortable as it looks."
She watched him lie there. Crichton had been through his own ordeal the last few solar days, culminating in being subjected to her first non-combat medical procedure, extracting the tannot-nullifying worm. It hadn't occurred to Aeryn to check on his well-being. But clearly he was fine.
Sun waited to hear what was truly on his mind. The human couldn't have come looking for her out of actual concern that she was hungry, or delirious.
"I guess you'd get used to it after seventy years," he eventually continued, ignoring her silence.
That wasn't a topic she was expecting. Crichton had seemed as startled as she was that another divergence in human-Sebacean physiology was dramatically different life spans. But he hadn't brought it up in the solar days since their expedition to the scrub runner. Why now? "I've slept on worse," she finally answered.
"I bet. Me too." Of course he took her response as invitation to pry. "So I've been wondering, you said something once about a service anniversary. And flying ships when you were shorter-younger-um younger than twenty-five cycles at least. When did you join the Peacekeepers?"
"I was born a Peacekeeper."
"No, I know your parents were Peacekeepers too, but when did you start, you know, active duty?"
Ah. This was an explanation Sun had given many times. Few species had a military force as devoted as the Peacekeepers. Mercenaries, and even Sebacean conscripts, were often curious, or scornful, of the carrier-born. Crichton would no doubt be appalled. It was clear from how often he talked of his family that his upbringing has been very different.
Sun laid back down on her own bunk, already tired of a fight that hadn't started, and unwilling to watch it happen. "I was born in service. My service anniversary is my birth date. I was raised in the carrier nursery, and moved to cadet corps on my fifth service anniversary. I entered pilot training on my tenth, and was fully commissioned as an officer in Pleisar regiment on my twentieth."
He thought this over for a while. "In America you can enlist at eighteen, but many officers go to advanced military training academies first. Pilot school at ten years- cycles old. Wow. Some kids have learned to fly atmospheric craft that young, but not without an adult co-pilot."
"I didn't begin flying missions until I was thirteen."
"Oh, much less impressive." Crichton fell silent then. When he went on it was with a harsher timbre. "Earth has child soldiers too, in some places. That's not a good thing."
There it was. "Do you not educate your children, and prepare them for their professions? It is a vast universe and Sebaceans sometimes face species with better weaponry or physical advantages. Peacekeepers prevail through our unity, our dedication, and our superior training and discipline."
"Yeah, yeah, I get that that's the Peacekeeper party line. But would it really be so bad if you let children be children for a few years?"
"Children are children, Crichton, until they are adults. You are speaking nonsense again."
"All right, maybe I'm misunderstanding. How fast do Sebaceans grow up? You live three hundred years, but how long are you considered children?" She heard him sitting up again, could almost hear his arms waving in agitation, but Sun remained motionless, staring up at the familiar underside of the top bunk.
He kept going before she could compose an answer. "Human five year olds are just starting school, learning to read, to ride a bysickle. They need their families, they need protecting. We hold their hands when we cross the street and remind them to put their jackets on before they go play in the snoh. We don't ship them off to be soldiers. So tell me, do Peacekeeper kids mature faster? I know you aren't done growing by ten."
Aeryn felt buffeted by this typically confusing Crichtonian rant. "In times of war, growth accelerators are sometimes given to older cadets to improve their field readiness. Otherwise, most Peacekeepers reach their full height and weight between twenty and twenty-five cycles, at least in infantry."
"Most human men stop growing by twenty and women by sixteen or so. Sounds like Sebaceans take a little longer, but not two or three times as long. So your five cycles might be even less mature than our five year olds. Three or four. Still babies." Instead of remaining explosive, Crichton's voice had dropped into that low, slow register.
Aeryn was already out of patience with his human judgements. "I have no idea what is typical for human babies, but of course our Cycle Five cadets still require protection and instruction. Their mental and physical abilities vary widely, depending on their service category. But even infantry cadets cannot possibly defend themselves at that age."
"You mean you don't give out pulse pistols instead of baby raddles?"
Whatever that meant was clearly insulting. She forced herself to remain clinical. "Cycle five is when we would start hand-to-hand instruction. Few cadets are ready for intensive weapons training before their branch assignment at ten cycles."
"Oh, so you're only arming third-graders. Wait... service category. Branch… assignment." Crichton repeated these words the same way Sun sometimes did when a translation didn't make sense. "You mean at three or four or five years old you people are already deciding whether your kids will be scientists or soldiers?"
The test was one of the earliest moments Aeryn could remember. An endless gray wall stretching up above her, covered in handholds that looked like hundreds of eyes staring and glaring at her. Her arms were tired, and she didn't want to grab any more, afraid they would start blinking, afraid she would fall. She was already almost level with her carer's face, but his eyes were staring too, stern and disappointed. "You must climb, Aeryn. Higher. All the way to the top." She could still recall the shove, close to knocking her off. "Only brave girls get chosen."
"Or servitors." She blinked away the memory. "It's not a final decision, until commission. Even after branch assignment, transfers sometimes happen. But it is more efficient to give children the training that best suits their abilities as early as possible."
"What about the late bloomers?" He was sounding as outraged as Sun had predicted.
"I don't know what you mean." It was exhausting, even after a long sleep. She closed her eyes.
"What about the kids who just take longer to get their growth spurt? Who barely talk because they're so shy, until they get over it at twelve and then won't shut up? Who don't show their talent for chemistry until they're seventeen? Or seventy?"
That was clearly a jab. Crichton had been making condescending little remarks about her necessary scientific efforts for the last solar day. She wasn't going to rise to the bait.
"Peacekeeper cadets are constantly evaluated and ranked to ensure they are fulfilling their genetic potential. Our instructors excel at discovering the best use for every child. It is very rare for even Cycle Ten cadets to switch their service category."
"That doesn't make it better, Aeryn, it makes it worse! At ten I wanted to be a football player. And a member of a rok band. And own a restaurant."
"You told me you always wished to be an aztronaut."
"ASSStronaut, Aeryn. And I did. But that isn't all I wanted to be. People are large, Aeryn. They contain multitudes. You can't just put a little kid in a box and say, 'this is who you are and all you will ever be' for the rest of your multi-century life. No wonder you people are so frelled up."
Sun rolled off the bunk on the opposite side, lashing the curtain out of the way. The human's opinion was worthless, not even worth her anger. "You are the child, Crichton. Insulting what you are incapable of understanding."
He was between her and the door, so she went the other way, along the row of empty bunks. The other exit from the barracks was down a shaft to the lower hangar. Unfortunately, the ladder was missing, torn away by Prowler fire during Moya's escape, and low priority for replacement.
For a microt, Sun considered dropping into the dark hole anyway, but she didn't want to risk injuring herself, or give the human the impression she was running away. Instead she went around it and waved open the door to the captain's chamber. She slipped inside, to wait Crichton out.
Little on Moya could be described as opulent. But this room made an attempt, with a round, non-regulation bed dominating the space, headed by a curving wall of shelves. A desk, flanked by rounded cabinets enveloped the opposite side of the chamber, and a lounge, repurposed from a Moyan bed, but covered with red upholstery, rested against the near wall. The typical warm bronze of Leviathan interiors had been sprayed with a black tint, which gave even the veiny ambient light a cool tone, and set off the red bedding and accents. Clearly the decorator admired traditional Peacekeeper aesthetics.
When Aeryn had first investigated the officer's quarters, she had gathered the most useful items: the captain's personal store of intoxicants, pulse pistols that had been secreted near the desk and bed, and a well-stocked medical emergency kit. But Aeryn had left the rest of the contents in place, straightening items disordered in the rush to escape, but not cataloging or carrying them away.
Now, she went to sit on the red couch just inside the door, and as heart slowed its racing and her eyes fully adjusted to the gloom, Sun was enveloped by Peacekeeper symbolism.
A chromatic etching hung above the bed, the view from a rocky cliff looking out over red plains and green waterways. Sun had never been, but it was a famed landscape, from one of the home systems. The other walls had well-executed versions of classic ideographs. Decorative phrases locked into the memory of every carrier child, comforting and absolute.
She didn't recognize a majority of the art secured to the shelves; misshapen statues and abstract shapes in a variety of materials. A couple were in styles she recalled from worlds in Crais' command jurisdiction. Many of the small weapons on display she did know. She had investigated them on her first visit, determining most were broken, and the rest without ammunition. None were Peacekeeper tech; they had been taken from enemy forces.
The captain had been a collector. Many were. It was a distinction of the command branch that they had greater storage allowance even as junior officers. Sun had rarely been in a captain's chambers that didn't have some sign of this privilege. It was intentional. Reminders to all who entered of the scope and power of Peacekeeper presence in the galaxy.
Sun could not recall meeting Moya's former captain, but she could picture him anyway. Polished, strict, uncompromising, harsh on himself and others. It took her a moment, but she finally spotted the book she was expecting on a lower shelf. A hardbound copy of the Military Code, placed where the captain could reach it, as if he read it often, right before rest. Whether in earnest or artifice, he had been a model officer.
The loss of his Leviathan to trickery must have been devastating to a commander so focused, if he survived the event at all. And Sun had played a part in the destruction of a man she would have admired. From the moment she let Crichton uncuff her hands, when she had chosen an amorphous 'more' over submission to duty and discipline, life over honorable death, she had become the chaos that Peacekeepers were meant to calm.
- She had piloted Moya through the slingshot that freed them from the carrier group's grasp.
- She had betrayed the location and properties of the tracking device that would have allowed Moya to be recovered.
- She had helped the others evade capture by a Marauder retrieval squad.
- She had agreed to become a looter and a smuggler to sustain their illegal flight from justice.
- She had allowed advanced Peacekeeper technology to be used by outlaws and unclassified species.
And now she had given weapons-and explained how to fuel and produce them-to the inhabitants of an agricultural colony, knowing they would use this information to kill Peacekeepers and cut off a needed ammunition supply.
"Prepare for starburst," Pilot's voice crackled through her comms device, startling her momentarily out of her guilt. A few microts later the dizzy disconnection took her over, and another betrayal of all she had been and all she should be became fixed in time. Another point on a journey to nowhere, with no annulment or amendment or absolution possible. She could only go forward, lost, forever.
"Hayy."
An all-purpose but contextually slippery word in the human's vocabulary. Since she didn't want to talk to him, Sun ignored Crichton even after he left the doorway and came to hover nearby. She knew she had been sitting there for far too long. Neglecting duties. She should have been up in Command for starburst, in case they had exited into a difficult situation.
He finally walked past her and dropped down onto the Captain's bed. It was so unexpected, she didn't have time to protest, only stare. He sank back and sprawled out, completely oblivious to the disrespect. "Now this is a comfortable bed. You should have slept here."
No apologies this time. She wished he had at least decided to give her wide berth for a solar day or two, rather than immediately provoke her. "That's the captain's bed."
"I guessed." Crichton wriggled up until even his boots were on the coverlet, rumpling everything. "Why is all this stuff still here?" He waved a hand at the shelving. "Isn't it valuable?"
She didn't owe him an explanation for why she had exempted this room from the inventory. "I don't know." Didn't owe him anything.
He pulled one of the pillows out of place and stuffed it under his head. After a few microts of watching her, he asked, "Is it bothering you that I'm lying here?" There was a tension underneath the casual tone. Their fight from earlier still festering under the surface, even if he was choosing a different plan of attack.
"Your shoes are on the bed."
A little awkwardly, without getting up, he pried them off and kicked them onto the carpet. "Better?"
She didn't see the point in answering, saving her energy for whatever new conversational minefield they were entering.
Crichton craned his head around, looking upward at the etching, then flipping onto his stomach to view it right side up. "Is that your homeworld? Sebacea or something? It's pretty. Reminds me of the grand canyon."
"Sebacea? There is no such place. This is a planet in one of our home systems. Dnatsal Ridge, site of a great victory almost four thousand cycles ago." She glared at his backside as John stared up at the picture. He was always claiming to feel out of place, yet he constantly acted as if he belonged, with an arrogance she found equal parts aggravating and envious.
He turned back over unexpectedly and caught her looking at him. "So what's the Sebacean homeworld called then?"
"We don't have one, it was lost." This made him sit fully upright again, legs crossed, in the middle of the bed. Sun silently scolded herself for answering him, when she was far past being in the mood to indulge human curiosity.
"Lost? What does that mean? Do you think…" he made a gesture, pointing back and forth between the two of them. "Because that would be some wild battle star galactic dren! Humans as the lost tribe-"
"No!" Sebacean biology was malleable and fertile. Sun knew there were dozens of sub species and genetic cousins scattered through known space, like those on the planet they'd just left. And that wasn't even touching on the uncomfortable number of hybrid children birthed in the wake of every extended campaign.
"But it would explain why humans and Sebaceans-"
"No." The idea of being related to John Crichton was indescribably worse. Something about him had always been too close and too far at the same time. She felt the home-sick start to churn acid in her empty stomach. "Our world was lost, but our primary systems are all in this part of the galaxy. Parallel evolution is very common. The similarity is just a coincidence."
Crichton slid off the bed and walked over, sinking down to one knee in front of her and leaning close. "A coincidence." In the gloom, his eyes were colorless, challenging, and far too close.
"Yes." She could smell him. Faint scents of cleanser and sweetness from that unknown fruit, mingled with a maleness. Not musk, or sweat, just John, strong but not unfamiliar. Not dissimilar from other men she'd known.
"You really think this," he reached a warm fingertip up to her cheek, making her flinch, "is just a coincidence? You look entirely human." He turned his hand, pressing knuckles, painting heat down her cheek. "You're just a little cold."
It felt obscene to discuss this here. To be touched here and to want here. She slapped his hand away. "I'm not human, John." Feeling trapped on multiple levels, she pushed past him, rising. "You are a coincidence. Or a joke."
He stayed kneeling, and silent. She didn't trust herself to look at him, moving away until she was in front of the Captain's desk. John had been pushing and pushing at her for what felt like solar days, hoping weakness would turn her into someone like him. Soft, emotional, scientific, human. He was alone, and seized on her as the solution. But she was no more the answer to his loneliness than he could be for hers.
The calligraphy above the desk was elegantly crafted. Every line balanced, precise, and strong, weaving words together so beautifully it required study to understand. 'Imperfections Fracture, Discipline Purifies'. How long had she carried these silent flaws, only to break now, completely, because of one man, one moment, one selfish microt, where she put herself above duty? In honesty, was it just once? Or if she looked back at her life would she trace a hundred lapses, decisions leading her to this place, where her only redemption lay in death she was too cowardly to embrace?
He had crept close in her distraction. Sun imagined she could feel his heat on her back. "Get out, Crichton."
"What are you scared of, Aeryn? What the science will say?" She turned away from the desk. He was just out of reach, shoes dangling in one hand, frustration as clear in his face as his voice. "We've got the fancy equipment now, let's take some blood samples, and you can do some analysis-"
"I don't know anything about genetics, Crichton, even if I wanted to study you, which I don't."
"Study us, and I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit, Aeryn. What you did for Rigel yesterday, it's impressive for someone who's never done science before, even with Pilot's help. I'm not sure I could have figured it out so fast. Maybe you really are just a Tech who's a late bloomer."
"Frell you, Crichton." She lost control of herself, and shoved him, hard enough to make him stumble. Not waiting for a reaction, she checked him again, harder, moving the man over a motra closer to the door. "Get out. You don't belong here."
He stepped back on his own, finally sensing the danger, and again, crossing the threshold. For a moment they met eyes, her anger melting away at the hurt in his gaze. "You don't belong here either."
She waved the door shut, and sank down to the floor, knowing he was right, but too scared to leave.
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