In the Company of Ghosts: The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies

An Alternate Universe Farscape Fanfic

By KodiakkeMax
Copyright 2002

Plot Summary: What would have happened had Aeryn Sun, and not Tauvo Crais, been in that Prowler when John Crichton came through the wormhole?

Obligatory: Farscape, and all its characters and worlds, are not mine. I do this in homage to the characters I know and love, which are owned by Jim Henson and Co. No copyright infringement is intended, no money is collected, and hopefully, no characters are seriously abused. Well, more than usual.

Rating: R for graphic violence, language, sexual situations. Author's note at the end.

* * *

Section 1: Down the Rabbit Hole

She didn't even have time to curse aloud.

Her sensors hadn't picked up on any object; the recon satellites hadn't reported anything to her Prowler. And yet, as she'd swept up past the Marauder-sized asteroid, something had materialized out of nothingness. Something white, with upswept wings, something less-than-Prowler size.

Her onboard systems flickered at her in nanomicrots, proximity alarms wailed at her, but she ignored them all. She didn't have time for this. She'd been taught to read her sensors, to fly according to Flight Regulations. There were Flight Regulations for all situations. But there was no time for Flight Regs. No way she could avoid.

Her consciousness of time, of space, sank, enveloping her Prowler. Her skin was its thin, fragile hull, her heartbeat the pulse of its engines, her lungs the hot breath of its thrusters. Only her eyes, her sensors, were ignored; her mind whirled with relative velocities, angles of incidence, roll, pitch, asteroid trajectories, and was abruptly, startling, clear.

Slow motion. Two objects, converging vectors. Two velocities. And suddenly, the space was there, clear as starlight, the angle obvious, the timing ticking in her head. Roll her body, twist it through the weightless waves of space. One breath, there, now. Just the lightest caress of her fingertips over the firing studs of tactical thrusters. One heartbeat. Another breath, now, now. Two heartbeats. And still the roll, slow, inexorable, and the wingtip was close, so close, she could see the convergence--

She didn't miss the strange craft. She'd known she couldn't; that hadn't been her goal. The object of this maneuver had been to slide to the close, not head-on, but so that any blows would be glancing, and so any redirection of vector would spin her off obliquely, not acutely--

Contact.

There was a shudder as the two ships collided; she felt the ricochet off her wing, felt little bits break off her skin. Main thrusters gone; she knew even before the telltales reflected from her helmet, splashing red across the interior of the canopy. She was the loser, with her greater momentum; it was her Prowler that bucked out of control, spun off.

The asteroid loomed over the canopy, blotting the lights of the stars, dwarfing her thin-skinned alter ego. One part of her watched the growing obstacle, aware of features, noting rocky hummocks, shadowed craters. Another part watched the flow of time, ticking off little facts inside her head. Docking thrusters were still operable. Not the raw, muscle-wrenching power of her tactical units, but even little breaths would be better than the sere vacuum of space. One breath, now. Two heartbeats, another breath. The dance of fingers across firing studs.

A shadowed crater glimmered with dust as her Prowler passed over it, deflecting starlight for a brief, endless moment. She twisted slightly, and her wing moved from its inexorable doomed course, shivered, and passed above....

And then there was only the emptiness of space.

* * *

Tauvo Crais stared in shock at the Prowler ahead of him, barely coming to his senses in time to avoid having his own fatal meeting with the white pod. He applied tactical thrusters in a bleeding frenzy of power, self-correcting after a moment to keep from following the first Prowler's path to the asteroid.

Frell! That had been too close!

He twisted his head to verify, with his own eyes, what his sensors told him, and he knew his face was blank, heavy with shock. She had survived. The lead Prowler had come howling over the nape of the asteroid, collided with the odd craft, spun off on a direct course with the asteroid, and yet, somehow, she had survived--

No need to figure out who she was. Just that demonstration - survival where all the odds ratified destruction - told him who was piloting that craft. And if she actually managed to fight her Prowler back under control, despite the obvious damage, despite her continued, crippled motion on a direct course away from the Carrier--

Not possible. She had performed an incredible, impossible feat, but her luck had run out. Now there was just a long, slow death, suffocation in the emptiness of space, because the Carrier would never shift for a mere Prowler.

Tauvo realized he was sweating under his suit. It could have been him. It should have been him. He so often scoffed at Bialar's injunctions against being the lead craft out of the hangar; he all too often proved himself by being the first one out, the first one in the charge to battle.

But today, it had only been an attempted escape by a Leviathan. No honour to be won, no need to prove himself, to the others, to Bialar. And so, as dictated by Flight Regs, the commanding officer had not taken lead, instead allowing the Pleisar regiment to follow its accustomed ways, use its usual point pilot.

He'd heard about her, and attempted to ignore her. She was an excellent pilot, but she was not the commanding officer of the Prowler detachment on his brother's Command Carrier. She had no need, like he did, to retain a certain status. It was acceptable to him that she led this sortie.

He would have died in that first shattering impact. Tauvo knew that, and as much as the knowledge hurt, he was also secretly, shamefully, glad.

She would likely still die.

He turned back to the Leviathan, swooping through the asteroid field just in time to see the white pod vanish into the docking bay in the side of the creature. His lips curled back. Working together, where they? He pressed the comms stud. "All units!" he barked. "Concentrate fire across the nose!" The hits, close to the embedded neural receptors of the control collar, would make that biomechanoid creature desist any further attempts to escape.

The squadron swooped to do his bidding, changing the vector of attack.

He'd whiplashed past the Leviathan for the third time, reacquiring targets for another strafing run, when he saw something that made him gape in shock for the second time in less than an arn.

The control collar--!

Two of the Prowler ships, already committed to their runs across such a tight area, crashed headlong into the collar as it separated explosively from the biomechanoid. Tauvo strangled a curse as his Prowler jinked in response to his slack grip, and slammed his thrusters heavily. The engines screamed as the power loaded across the capacitors, and red warning lights flashed across his displays.

Silver light limed his canopy. His comms crackled with interference.

"All units, return at once!"

He could do nothing, his thrusters wouldn't respond. He was still staring at the red displays, bemused by the crackling coruscation around him, the familiar voice echoing through his head, when the starburst swallowed him whole.

* * *

"Captain! Captain Crais!"

He turned. "Yes, Lieutenant?"

"The Prowler squad has returned. They report . . . the Leviathan transport has escaped. One of the prisoners, the Hynerian Royal, somehow secured the key codes to the prisoner's cells and . . . there were casualties, sir. Four ships lost--"

Captain Bialar Crais growled at the small blonde. "I don't care about casualties! A Leviathan transporting prisoners does not escape from my custody. Has my brother returned yet? I'll dispatch him in the rear battle fighter to track her down." Another chance for Tauvo to shine. To show all the rest how good he was, how much he deserved promotion.

"Sir." She hesitated, then led him over to one of the tech consoles lining the bridge of the ship. "This is playback from a recon satellite monitoring the pursuit of the Leviathan."

He watched the footage, noting the sudden appearance of the strange craft. "What manner of craft is this?" he murmured. Then a Prowler, swooping down. He watched absently as the pilot performed flawlessly, turning what was certainly a fatal collision into ... well, the pilot might survive some time in space with a crippled ship. The lead pilot - Officer Aeryn Sun? Yes, Tauvo's unacknowledged rival for points. His brother could pick her up, too, if there was sufficient time.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sight of a familiar Prowler, and he felt himself smile. "My brother's Prowler. Well, we'll soon see an end to this--". He nodded. Yes, his brother had turned back to the Leviathan and ordered a concentrated attack. Good thinking. Tauvo had the right of it, even if events had proved him less than correct. The biomechanoid would not have been able to withstand a barrage of fire; pain alone would serve as a collar.

And then the collar came off.

Crais watched the next few moments, his face, had he known it, mirroring the same expression his brother had worn less than an arn ago. He watched dumbly, Lt. Teeg a silent shadow at his side, as his brother's Prowler disappeared.

She cleared her throat. "Your brother's ship, sir. It was absorbed with the Leviathan when it went into starburst--"

He whirled on her. "Where did they go?"

She swallowed. "I ... I don't know, sir."

"Find them." His jaw clenched hard enough for his teeth to crack, the noise audible in the sudden silence of Command. "Peel back the image. I want to see what he is. Find the Leviathan, find that pilot, and we'll find my brother!"

* * *

"We can no more trust you than we can trust that!"

John turned his head.

Oh, shit. He hadn't even seen that armoured figure that shared the cell with him. Too busy dealing with the whole naked issue, and the looming possibility of alien probing. He should not have watched all those X-Files and South Park episodes.

He was backed up against the cell door, nowhere to go. A damn PhD to his name and he could barely think straight. Okay, so it had arms, legs. Normal number. What was normal in this zip code? And he wasn't placing any bets that the flesh under that armour had ever needed Skin-So-Soft, no, not just right now. Not after the last ... however long it had been since he'd been sucked through something and ended up somewhere with those - those people with the blue and the tentacles and the eyebrows.

He couldn't help but smile, a stupid dopey smile of relief, as the helmet was unlocked, atmosphere venting in a sibilant hiss. A man's face was revealed. Oh, give the little dog a big cigar! The guy was human: dark curly hair, two eyes, features all human and accounted for. John almost felt an urge to kiss a guy. Almost.

"Hey." He stood up and crossed to the young man, holding out his hand. "My name's John Crichton--"

The young man shook his head in confusion, his helmet dropping to the floor. "You're Sebacean? But ... we had no Sebacean prisoners on the manifest--"

"No, no." He felt dumb holding out his hand, so he dropped it back to his side. "I don't know from Sebacean. I'm just a guy. A human, like you. Did you get caught up in that thing, too, that tunn--"

"What's your rank and regiment?" The young man stood up, nearly as tall as John himself. It was like a switch was thrown, and suddenly the guy had a rod up his ass, his back USMC straight. "Rank and regiment, soldier!"

"Whoa there, GI Joe!" Spreading his hands, John backed up a step, got some breathing space. Okay, so the conversation was not going the way he expected. The attitude, however, he was familiar with. He'd had years of dealing with his old man; this kid couldn't faze someone who'd been raised by Jack Crichton. "I get it. I think. You didn't come through with me, did you? You musta been one of the ones zipping around. Different places, different rules. Okay." He took a deep breath as he tried to readjust. "My rank is commander. I'm not military, least not any military you know. I'm a damn scientist. From a planet called Earth. You heard of it?"

Even as he said the words, he regretted it. Boy, John, was that stupid or what? Of course they're not going to call it what you call it! Well, unless they'd managed to tune in to the Apollo recordings. But he was really starting to doubt it.

As he'd expected, the young man shook his head. "My name is Senior Officer Tauvo Crais."

"Nice to meet you, Tauvo."

The young man drew back and clocked him. John hit the ground - hard, of course; gravity had gotten Newton's memo, wherever he was. He attempted to cough up a lung, his ears ringing.

"You will not address a senior officer so familiarly!"

The floor was cold against his cheek, almost soothing. It seemed that floors were universally cold. No matter where you went, there you were. Second time today. First that tentacled guy, now this. It had been a long day already. Day long. Floor cool.

"Rank and regiment, soldier!"

Something snapped inside of him. He came up off the floor swinging, catching Crais squarely in the jaw. Form was poor, but he made up for it in sheer power. Besides, he was Jack Crichton's son. And unlike the others, this guy looked human enough to take.

"I am SICK!" Crack. "And TIRED!" Slug. "Of being HIT!"

They tumbled together to the floor, finally separating when the other aliens came to get them, squabbling over some possessions. A deep voice rumbled, separating them effectively. "Peacekeepers!"

John glared at the guy, then at the aliens. "Peacekeeper? You're one of those out there attacking the ship, you think I'm one of you?" He turned to the nearest one, the blue-skinned one. Who, so far, had not managed to hit him, knock him out, or puke on him. "Listen to me, I'm not what you think I am--"

"Not a Peacekeeper? Yes, we know that now. You have some decidedly unfamiliar bacteria living within you."

Okay, not thinking about how it knew that one. Yet. Put it on the back burner, John. "I'm from a planet called Earth," he repeated. "I'm human. Homo sapiens sapiens." It didn't seem to have any effect on any of them.

"It's time to eat," it - she - said coldly.

John stared blearily up at the tentacled alien. The seven-foot-plus alien. Who looked like a Globetrotter crossed with a linebacker and a Rasta.

"Eat what?"

Suddenly the young dude didn't seem so bad.

* * *

He looked Sebacean.

But he wasn't. The Delvian priest had confirmed it when she'd told him about the bacteria in his body. Tauvo had listened, fascinated.

He claimed to be "Human". He fought differently, spoke oddly, even with the translator microbes. He wasn't a Sebacean. He wasn't a Peacekeeper. He didn't even know what those two words were.

Two simple words. A world of difference.

Tauvo had eaten the food cubes automatically, his mind reeling in shock, feeding him images of the Human going down the corridor. Poking and prodding. Asking questions about the ship. Showing an amazing lack of knowledge of the world around them.

Tauvo would have sneered, had he not been in so much shock. Here was someone who didn't know their world. Someone who had grown up not knowing the Peacekeepers. Not aware that to be a Sebacean meant to be a Peacekeeper or . . . merely Sebacean. A lesser status. A creature with no great and glorious destiny.

"What do you command?"

The Human looked up from his own food cubes, making a face at his plate. "You guys eat these everyday, or is today special?"

"They're prisoner rations."

A look, briefly passing over that open face. "Prisoners. Right."

"What do you command?"

"Where? On Earth?" He took another food cube and crumpled it. "Like I said, Commander's a scientific rank. At least in my case. I'm not actually part of the military, but a civilian government organization." He pointed to a badge on his outfit, a blue circle with strange sigils on it. "IASA. Means I don't have to deal with a lot of that military bullshit. I don't know if I could ever call my dad 'Colonel' and keep a straight face."

"Your . . . dahd?"

"You know. My father. We work together. Kinda."

"He is your commanding officer?"

"My dad? Hell no. We just kinda ended up in the same place. He was my dad, you know? He was my hero."

Tauvo stopped eating. "You - you mean you chose to be in the same service?"

"Yeah, I guess we did. We got there different ways, but yeah, we work for the same people."

The words filtered through his mind, almost incomprehensible. Not because the translator microbes couldn't understand the concepts behind them, but because Tauvo couldn't. This one. . . . He had never been taken away from his family. He hadn't been conscripted. He had been free. . . .

Tauvo leaned forward, suddenly, astonishingly, finding it hard to breathe. "John Crichton. Tell me more about your Earth."

* * *

He watched the flower revolve until it was all that dominated his vision, his thoughts. The delicate orange petals, the purple hues at the throat. The brilliant green.

The chronometer chimed.

He brought his gaze back to the here and now, lips thinning as he dumped the incoming reports to his console. Tedious, but required. There was too great a need to ignore anything that might possibly hold knowledge of some value. In a universe populated by Scarrans, Scorvians and the like, he could afford the time to scan obscure reports. He couldn't afford the alternatives.

His eyes sharpened on a particular entry, and he called up the full text. An escaped Leviathan - ah, that happened occasionally. Those events fueled one of his side projects, the goal to find some alternative to that requirement. There were casualties taken, of course, in this incidence. He checked the header; no, there was no obvious reason for the attempt, though the Leviathan had once been slated for testing and experimentation. Nothing had come of it; the Leviathan had gone more than a cycle without evidencing results, and the project declared a failure. No, that hadn't been it. The report text from the data dump indicated that the prisoners aboard, due to be transferred to a lifer's colony, had likely instigated the attack, though surely the Pilot on board had been accommodating. The prisoners were - he read further - a renowned Delvian priest, a Luxan general, and a Hynerian royal. Oh, dear. He really must do some work on that Leviathan control project, regardless of how little importance it held to him personally.

Ah. A craft that appeared out of nowhere. A craft of unknown design.

He scrolled down. There was attached imagery from recon satellites deployed at the time of the Carrier's offensive response. He touched the icon, opened it.

The craft was alien to him, and he felt a glimmer of excitement. It appeared on the display between one microt and the next. White. Unknown markings: language? Identification?

A Prowler swept over the asteroid's curve on a direct course with the alien ship's path, and he followed the trajectories carefully. His interest was in what the unknown pilot would do, how it would react. The other craft - well, it was merely a Prowler, one of the thousands of Peacekeeper born-and-bred pilots - but even he was stunned by what happened next.

His fingers flashed out and tapped a command, and the display obligingly replayed itself. He traced the path of the Prowler with a finger, thoughts of the alien craft momentarily held in abeyance.

The Prowler should never have been able to perform that maneuver. A trained Peacekeeper pilot, bred for the task, flying for twenty cycles, could never have pulled off such an exquisite timing of spin, vector, and applications of thrust. Sliding past the alien craft, shearing off at an oblique angle, missing the tumbling wall of rock by micro-metras.

Not even tactical thrusters. Docking thrusters.

He allowed the video to continue, the alien craft once again dominating his thoughts. He watched as it was swallowed whole by the Leviathan, disappearing into the maw of the docking bay.

He could feel no surprise at the release of the docking collar; he watched without a flicker as two Prowlers collided with the drifting structure, disappearing in little gouts of actinic flame. Bad command decision, to concentrate assets in such a small volume of space. He noted with interest the Prowler that tumbled after the Leviathan as the two crafts were silvered in starburst.

The screen darkened, the feed at an end. He sat back and thought, sorting through questions, answers, priorities, possibilities, solutions. Half an arn ticked past, his awareness regulating the time as his suit regulated his body. Then he leaned over his console again.

The question of the alien craft would have to be deferred. He sent the feed to one of the techs, with orders to strip the image. He wanted to know if there was anything else in space around that craft, any abnormal sensor readings, explanations for its sudden appearance. He wanted to know the features of the pilot. He wanted to know everything there was to know.

Next question. One command accessed the long-range comms. He tapped in his query, sent it. Waited for the reply, once again watching the flower.

When his console pinged, he read the resulting report. The pilot had survived, limping back to the Command Carrier. Analysis and debriefing indicated that the sleek attack craft had been returned to its maintenance crew with an estimated loss of over seventy-eight percent of maneuvering ability and power.

He called up the raw data of the filed report and scrolled through the accompanying satellite feed as corroboration. It was just as the pilot had reported. She had righted her spin and redirected her drift using a combination of timed jets from her docking thrusters, explosive venting of her environmental systems, and the feeble remains of her tactical thrusters - of which only the hammond side were operational.

Less than twenty microts of environmental time were left on her suit chronometer after docking. She had literally drifted into the path of the docking web, the result of an early estimation of converging vectors. The calculation of the Carrier's path and her own required flight path must have been performed roughly three arns prior to her retrieval.

Then he accessed personnel files.

"Yes." He spoke aloud, entirely unselfconscious. He'd found it. It was something. It would not explain why she was different, why she was . . . special, but it would allow her to be tested in an arena more fitting for the challenges he could provide. And, perhaps, it would provide him with the answers.

He typed in a command and sent it. Sat back. Watched the flower revolve again.

She would be allowed to transfer, this Officer Aeryn Sun; the only thing that had kept her from transferring was command approval. He himself would authorize it. She would be admitted to Marauder training, and though she wouldn't know it for some time, she would be tested for more.

He chuckled aloud, delighted by the small successes of the day.

* * *

"Man, I wish my dad could see this."

Tauvo looked over at the Human, then back through the viewscreen at the landscape passing below the transport pod. "This? But it's only a small colony on a backward planet."

"Did you miss the wide-eyed wonder cruise, or what?" Crichton laughed and shook his head. "I'm just the red-headed country bumpkin here, I know, but this is amazing. To me, this is cutting edge."

Another workout for the translator microbes. Tauvo suffered through some mind-twisting images as his brain reacted to what he heard, then he simply stopped trying and went back to what he understood.

"Why would you want your father to see this?"

"Because it's what he dreamed of, all his life. Because it's what we always hoped was out there." He fell quiet a moment, then continued. "And because I want to be the one to show Colonel Crichton this view. I'd like to show him and say, 'Yeah, dad, I've been here before.'" He laughed again, but it was a different sound, harsher. Almost like Peacekeeper laughter, what one heard in the locker rooms, the racks. "Talk about a serious case of living in a guy's shadow."

Tauvo thought the words made sense, but the concept didn't. "Living in the space cast by his shade?"

"An Earth saying. A concept. Following in one's footsteps. Living in one's shadow. My dad . . . was a famous man." Crichton suddenly ceased to be animated, his hands dropping by his sides. "Is. Still is. He's led men. He'd been out there. He's a hero. That's what I grew up with.

"I don't know if you can understand that. I don't know if Peacekeeper culture has anything like that. But wherever I went, people always saw my dad. Remembered him. What he'd done. After him, anything I did was . . . just like him. Not mine. At least, not my own."

They were quiet as the transport pod landed, and D'Argo moved past them and opened the hatch. Crichton shook his head. "But I love him. I love him and I miss him." He stood up and left as well.

Tauvo got out of his seat slowly, suddenly aware of the silence in the transport pod. He moved up to the pilot's station, half-expecting someone to come in, to stop him. But no, he made it there; his hand hesitated over the transport's long-range comms.

I understand how it feels, John Crichton, to live in one's shadow.

"Bialar," he whispered aloud. He missed his brother so terribly. Bialar had been everything to him, everything he'd ever known, the only person that could ever truly understand him.

But his brother still wouldn't understand this. Frell, he didn't understand himself. Not yet.

He should have wanted to return. He should have tried to escape, called his brother at the first commerce planet, transmitted rendezvous coordinates. He was Tauvo Crais. Bialar wouldn't declare him irreversibly contaminated, even if he had been around an undocumented species for several arns. Even if, later, he had shared some information on Peacekeeper activities in the area, telling the others which commerce planets had significant Peacekeeper presence on them.

But Tauvo hadn't sent those messages. He'd told himself it was because he hadn't been left alone, hadn't been allowed near his Prowler, near the comms.

Now he was here. Alone. With comms. It would take a microt to send a message.

A fantasy had begun to dominate his dreams. One in which he met with Bialar, told him of a world where children were not taken from their parents, where people could be free. If that world could exist, why couldn't they simply live as they wanted? Why couldn't they determine their own destinies, not follow in the footsteps of those before him? Why couldn't he live as something other than Bialar Crais' younger brother? When would he stop wondering if what he achieved was actually his own?

He caught himself, his thoughts, before he sent the transmission, his fingers automatically setting the controls required. No. He was mad. How could he ask Bialar to do what he himself didn't yet understand? How could he ask his big brother to give up all he knew for . . . this strange, exhilarating feeling of freedom?

Freedom? Hah! He was with fugitives, escaped prisoners. The longer he remained with them, the less likely his chance for escaping consequence and reform. Soon he himself would be hunted, and everything he knew - unit, squadron, even his brother - would be lost to him.

It was his brother that mattered the most.

But he still couldn't transmit the signal. Not yet.

* * *

Section 2: My PK Girl

Gilina and he were working like crazy. Like a team. Crazy, but in a together sort of way. As a teenager he'd have killed to be trapped in close quarters with someone who looked and smelled so good. Then again, he'd been out here in the Uncharted Territories for nearly two months, so of course it would be likelier that he'd be killed, trapped in close quarters with the closest thing to a babe he'd found. "Great, John," he muttered to himself, phasing the connectors. "So you're going to die feeling all warm and fuzzy."

"What?" Gilina was working furiously, her hands nearly blurring in his peripheral vision.

"Nothing," he muttered to himself, and then, louder: "What next?"

She handed him two panels. "When I kill the bypass, these two polaric disks will be attracted to each other. Strongly. So you have to hold them apart. Because if they touch each other, this whole room will be vaporized."

Oh, right. Of course. I had to ask.

"They're going to pull incredibly hard."

He looked at the panels. They were fairly light. Cables were daisy-chained off the ends, waterfalls of black. "Okay."

She dashed back to the fusion panel. "Ready? Now!"

He grunted as power arced through his body. The panels jumped and attempted to occupy the same physical space at the same time. His muscles strained to hold them apart. Dimly, he heard his comms badge crackle to life.

It was D'Argo. "Tauvo, where are you?"

"Maintenance bay, why?"

John's arms were starting to hurt, but he was distracted by D'Argo's call. It wasn't often that D'Argo spoke to Tauvo. John was apparently okay - John was Human - but D'Argo really had a thing against Peacekeeper males. After having been pounded a few times, Tauvo had reconsidered his intentions to make - well, if not friends, then companions - with the Luxan.

"I think one of the Sheyang got onboard the Zelbinion."

Oh, joy. Crichton yelled in the direction of his comms badge, hoping Zhaan was monitoring the calls as well as the sensors. "How the hell did that happen?"

Bluie was monitoring. Her voice was soothing, but her words were not. "It's not important. What is, is that he might be headed right toward you."

He looked over at Gilina, still by the fusion panel. "We gotta stop."

She shook her head and kept working. "No, it won't withstand the process."

"Then finish the process."

"I'm working as fast as I can!"

Damn, he'd snapped at her. He tried again. "I want you to get out of here."

She looked him dead in the eye. "I won't leave you!"

He so did not have time for this. His shoulders were aching with strain and some scavenger dude was probably in the process of kicking Tauvo's butt and heading their way. "Gilina, I want you out of here!"

She stood firm. "If you die here, John, I die too."

He stared at her, frustrated, until his comms crackled to life. "John!" Tauvo's voice was ragged. "He won't let me close to him. I can't pass; I'm going to have to take the long way around to your location. You may have to defend yourself!"

His nerves were as ragged as his muscles, and his frustration with Gilina wasn't helping. "Look, Tauvo, it's a long story, but I kinda have my hands full right now, so you're gonna have to get your ass in here now!" He was gonna be pissed if he did all this hard work for nothing. They were so close! They'd fixed the charred fusion panel, Tauvo had found the correct wire conduits in medical. . . . And the Sheyang was outside the door, breathing on it like the velociraptor from Jurassic Park. John stared at the creature in horror. "And make it fast. Because Ugly's outside the door right now!"

The Sheyang convulsed, and suddenly the window was illuminated in fire.

Fire, which was consuming the door. Was this hi-tech Peacekeeper manufacture, or what? "They spit fire?" he said incredulously. "How come nobody tells me this stuff? How come nobody told me they spit fire?! Tauvo!"

"John, I'm not going to make it!"

The creature was waiting for the flames to die down. John looked back quickly - Gilina was still working her fingers off. John couldn't hear Tauvo coming to the rescue.

"C'mon," he muttered, "c'mon, bro."

The Sheyang tired of waiting and ambled into the room, a ponderous mountain of pain coming to say hi.

God, his shoulders hurt. "Oh, fuck." He took a deep breath. Translator microbes, don't fail me now. "Hi there, big guy. As you can see, it's not likely we're going to hurt you, so take anything you want. But if these two panels touch--"

Its response was to hack up another flammable loogie at him. He dodged nimbly to the side, the panels dipping dangerously close together. Okay, now he was getting really pissed. "Listen, gas-hole, you kill us, you kill yourself!"

"You had your chance to retreat," it rumbled.

He tried to gesture with his shaking shoulders. "Come a little closer, then. Let's see what happens when these panels touch." Gilina gasped behind him, but he didn't pay attention. Move back, Gilina. Move further out from the line of fire--

The Sheyang belched from less than three feet away.

John danced aside, reaching the end of the tether of cables from the panels. There was nowhere else to go. The heat was a wall that struck him on the side, hammering his breath from his body, deadening the area from his armpit to his waist. His clothes melted instantly, even flame-retardant IASA issue. He roared in pain as his muscles spasmed and the heat furled through his body, draining his strength. No. Goddamnit. Keep. The. Panels. Apart.

Gilina screamed as the edge of the nimbus caught her sleeve. He could hear her as a vague echo of his own pain.

"John!"

Tauvo! Too late, too late. His eyes were slitted through the tears, but he could see the dark shape behind the Sheyang. Too far away to do any good, too close to use the pulse rifle at his shoulder.

Tauvo jumped, and Crichton's muscles, screaming in pain, failed him.

It happened with not a moment to spare. Tauvo hit the Sheyang in the back. The Sheyang stumbled forward into John's arms. John's muscles failed and the panels moved towards one another. The Sheyang was framed in between.

There was coruscating light. There were sparks, and pain, and smoke, and blood. There was an explosion of flesh, a pillar of flame, the powder of carbon and the stench of cooked meat. There was a wave of bodily fluids that coated John and Tauvo at least two inches thick.

Tauvo grabbed the panels before they could connect around - or through - the remains of the Sheyang. John fell the floor. Oh, good. The floor was cool again. It felt good. It was the only thing that felt good. Floors were good the universe around.

"Sorry 'bout the mess," he mumbled.

* * *

There had never been any question. Gilina had to come with them. Her injuries were too severe for them to contemplate any other option.

His were worse, but, as Tauvo explained to him, she was a tech. She wasn't bred to sustain damage, especially not heat damage. Her systems were much more fragile, not enhanced through generations of breeding, and not fortified by supplements, training, in childhood. She wasn't intended for the battlefield, for physical contact and visceral movement. It was her job to develop and maintain engineering systems, to stay back, to stay safe.

So he was burnt from just under his arm to his waist, and a long shiny spot on his arm, but his body coped better with the whole heat thing. He went into shock, but Zhaan pulled him out of it, laving salve on his burns, soothing him so he could lapse into normal, if pain-filled, sleep.

Her body went into shock at the expanse of flesh exposed to heat, and didn't recover so easily.

It had totally slipped his mind. The Sebacean heat weakness. What merely burned him, crippled them. They were culturally and genetically programmed to avoid such a fate. Despite that, Tauvo had overcome his fear of the Sheyang long enough to sneak up behind it and push it into the power panels.

He felt almost guilty. He'd been yelling at Tauvo, practically begging the guy, not realizing what he'd been asking Tauvo to do. Face down a nightmare.

"All's well, that ends well," he murmured to himself, and reached out and took Gilina's limp hand in his. He'd learned a lot about Peacekeepers today. He'd seen how Gilina's eyes had widened upon seeing Tauvo; how she had called him a deserter. Tauvo had flinched from the word, but begged news of his brother, learned Crais was searching for them.

John had seen Tauvo, when he'd first woken from his broken slumber. His friend had been sitting in the medlab, watching the monitors. They'd talked, in the way of guys. Or rather, Tauvo had not-talked. But he had said something, while staring at Gilina's pale unconscious form, that stuck with John.

"I don't know what taking her with us will do to her, John."

"But she'll die if we don't."

"She may well die if we do." He was quiet, and John remembered the accusations that Gilina had first thrown at the former pilot, when she'd realized he wasn't a prisoner.

Traitor.

"She's a tech, John. Born and bred for her life. She's not like us, she hasn't known any difference in stress or environments. By taking her with us, we would subject her to something she's not bred for."

"That doesn't mean she can't be something else."

"And if she can't? She would never be able to go back." He'd looked up then. "You can only ever imagine how horrible it is to never be able to return to the life that you know."

"No," John replied softly, "I hope I never know that feeling." But God, there were days that he nearly succumbed.

And now, this news. Gilina had told them more, shocked at Tauvo's defection. How Captain Crais was searching desperately for an escaped Leviathan, its crewmembers, the Sebacean on board the mysterious white module. When, even now, a message was being sent across light space, ostensibly from the Peacekeeper tech, summoning the return of the Command Carrier. A matter of timing, to get that message out, have the Sheyangs hear it and leave, and still be able to burn rubber before Crais came with all his happy PK friends and big-ass PK guns.

Jesus H. Christ. Poor Gilina. What have we done to her? What have we condemned to her, by coming with us?

He'd brought her into this mess, made that decision for her. He'd be there for her, when she woke up.

* * *

Blood exploded, the reduced gravity causing it to arc in all directions. Aeryn turned her faceplate away a microt too late.

Frell. Now her vision was impaired.

Her sensors displayed her movement vectors. She shifted and drifted left, moving past the body of the trainee without a second thought. The gold icon on her screen melted, then her own icon changed, shifting from red into gold.

Neela's death meant she was now in command.

Pulser fights in deepspace ships. Low gravity - barely enough to keep one's feet on the ground - and no internal lights. How often would they have to do this? From how many times they'd trained variations of this scenario, it was obviously something High Command expected Marauder commandos to run into often.

"Our mission briefing didn't include a live deepspace crew!" The angry whisper cut through the squad's open comms channel.

"That doesn't matter," Aeryn cut in. Stop it before it devolves into chatter, and whining, and distraction from their goal. "Primary target is still control of the vessel. Move on to the next tier. We need to locate Command." This ship wasn't laid out like most Decca-class ships. Of course not. That would be too easy.

Too easy. Not something she could say about the past monens of intensive training, and this scenario wasn't turning out any better. Aeryn kept an eye on a tell-tale on her helmet readouts, though it was only confirming what she'd been suspecting for several microts.

"Is it getting hot in here?"

She checked her squad icons. That had been verbal from Third position, broadcast across the unit channel. Third's location: two tiers up and over. If this ship had been laid out in a normal fashion, Third would have been near an environmental access, and the temperature differential could have been attributed to leakage. However, Aeryn wasn't about to count on that. She keyed the command channel. "Squad, report in. Temperature readouts at your location."

"Second. Optimum plus three."

"Third here. Optimum plus three."

"Fourth. Optimum plus four." There was pulse fire in the background. "Oh, and another Luxan down."

"Fifth. Optimum plus four."

Pulse fire. "Sixth. Optimum plus five, and I got another Delvian. Frell, but it's getting hot and crowded in here!"

Aeryn checked her chronometer. Rising steadily, and fast. Sixth was still out by the airlock, too, and should have reported the lowest temperature. However, as she'd suspected, the rise was uniform across tiers.

"First, should we fall back?"

"I'm going to assume the heat is affecting your judgment, Fourth," she snapped.

Fifth's icon blinked, warning of unstable helmet seal integrity, and her temper rose with the temperature. "Do not remove your armour, Fifth!"

"But it's bloody hot, First!"

That was outright insubordination, but another quick check to her readouts made her reconsider saying anything over comms. It was now plus nine, and still rising. They'd be dead soon, or worse.

She made a snap decision and turned back down the corridor, running. Now she could appreciate the benefits of the low gravity. "All units, retain armour. I repeat, retain armour. Do not break the seal on your helmet. This is your only warning." She might lose Fifth, but she was in danger of losing everyone if she didn't act soon, and she wouldn't be able to complete her mission without at least two other members of the squad.

She keyed her channel to Sixth and issued her orders quickly. Sixth made only one comment.

"But what about the crew?"

"They're not our primary target. Besides," she gritted her teeth as she fired at yet another Luxan, watching it spill across the corridor, "I don't think they're real." She bounced once to clear its body and kept running.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know Luxans, but I thought this one had the same tattoo pattern as the last one I killed. And the one the time before that." She was nearly at the maintenance bay airlock. While she ran, she palmed a mine from her stash on her belt and armed it, her fingers flying over the surface in the rote pattern. "Ready?"

"Affirmative."

"Set for five microts." She keyed the command channel. "All units, secure yourself to ship's structures. Now!" There was a murmured babble of voices - they were still trainees - but she ignored it as she moved the last few steps, slapped the mine against the blast doors, pushed off, and sprinted back down the corridor. She made it around the first turn without losing her balance and slid to a stop in front of an access panel. Ripping it off in one smooth motion, she dove in, hitting the floor, just as the mine exploded.

The blast doors between the maintenance bay and the docking hangar disintegrated. The floor bucked beneath her, throwing her up into the roof of the shallow chamber and knocking the breath from her. On the other side of the ship, the mine planted by Sixth exploded, causing another shockwave to the hull, which reverberated through her body.

The immediate rush of vacuum tore at her like desperate fingers, pulling her inexorably across the floor. Her body gained momentum and slid to the opening of the access chamber - and stuck.

She spread her arms and legs, making herself a bigger object, feeling the pressure build against her body. Her chest ached to cave in on itself, pain knotting around her ribs.

There was screaming over the command channel, but no icons were blinking out of existence. Even better, the temperature readout was dropping rapidly as the deadly cold of space ate away at the atmosphere in the ship. They were already at Optimum minus two. It wouldn't be comfortable, but it wouldn't be the Living Death, either. The vacuum would also deal with most, if not all, of the unexpectedly conscious crew.

"Just wait," she broadcast, her voice cutting smoothly over the grunts and the babbling. "The atmosphere will vent in several more microts and we'll continue our mission in zero gee."

* * *

"That was an interesting solution, Officer Sun."

She wasn't sure if that was a compliment, so she said nothing.

"Two members of your squadron questioned the validity of your decision."

Had there been two of them? She only remembered one. A dimly-remembered scream could have been interpreted as a disagreement, perhaps. "I was First, sir. It wasn't their position to question my decisions."

The Trainer nodded thoughtfully. "But I can question you, Officer Sun." He stood at the holo tank, looking at the Decca-class training ship holding peacefully on station with them. "What was your decision based on, exactly?"

She attempted to marshal her thoughts into something resembling sense. She couldn't simply respond I just knew; that would not be an acceptable answer. "My understanding of target priority, sir. Neela's download to me, prior to mission commencement, indicated that the main objective was control of the ship itself. Intelligence indicated that the ship was undercrewed, and, since it's a deep-space ship in long-haul transit, expectations were that any crew would be in cryogenic storage. Once we arrived onsite, however, observation indicated an unknown number of hostile and aware crew members. Analysis showed striking similarities in the crew."

"Whose analysis?"

"My own, sir."

He looked at her and raised his eyebrows. "And when was this analysis conducted, Officer Sun?"

"I began to consider the possibility after the second Luxan, sir. After the third encounter with a Sebacean male, I was certain."

He rubbed his fingers against his chin. "The only indication you gave of any thinking along those lines was well after the first two arns of the exercise, after command had devolved to you. A brief transmission to Sixth."

"Yes, sir."

"Why?"

"Because I deemed my observations to be irrelevant to my squad members. Their concern was to neutralize hostile targets. It was my job to figure out the difficulties, sir."

"Is it, indeed?" She couldn't tell if he was amused; his face was blank and his eyes bright. "Do go on."

"My mission priorities were simple, sir. Capture the ship. Retain enough squad members to be able to return said ship to the proper authorities. Therefore I needed at least three of my unit still viable."

"Why three?"

"A ship of the Decca class, sir, like that one, requires a minimum of three people. One pilot, one person at the engineering console, one person for environmentals. All other command routines can be slaved through the captain's chair."

He turned away, silent, and she waited. Had she failed? Had she passed? Had her mission orders been unclear? She could still remember the download from Neela; she knew the primary mission had been the vessel, not the crew.

"Officer Sun."

She immediately came to attention. The Trainer turned around to face her.

"You have passed one of the most difficult scenarios it has been my pleasure to construct. Your scores place you in the top of your class." He smiled thinly at her.

She felt a rush of pride.

He continued, his voice bland. "You may find it . . . interesting to note that this scenario was based on a very recent occurrence. A seasoned commando unit landed their Marauder on an unresponsive and presumed hostile vessel while it was seemingly disabled. As per standing mission orders, they attempted to take control. We have simulated the events reported in their debriefing as best as we could. Yes," he said, confirming her questioning tilt of head, "the strange similarity of the crew, the rising heat. Some of the details have been changed, but the key elements are there."

His voice held her. His eyes, fever-bright, bored into hers. "The Marauder team was unsuccessful in their mission. They suffered an eighty percent casualty rate, with another two of their unit returning in the full throes of the Living Death. A fielded, experienced team. Useless. We cannot have this, Officer Sun. The time is fast coming when we will have to face the Scarrans, who even now are massing against us." He gestured towards the view at his back, and his voice dropped, soft, soothing, giving ironic lie to his words. "They're hiding out there, waiting. But they will come. And who knows what else will rise with them? The Nebari? The Scorvians? We need to identify the weak elements in our strategy, and remove them. We cannot afford to lose battles with the Scarrans. Our very people are at stake, and if we must remove weak elements, we must do so now, while we still have the leisure of doing so."

He stepped forward, past his desk, and shook her hand. "Congratulations, Officer Sun. You are the first trainee to succeed in obtaining your primary mission for this particular exercise scenario." He stepped back. "Dismissed."

She saluted him and walked out, allowing herself to smile only after she had passed his door. She'd done it!

Something cracked against her lips. A fleck of dust drifted in the seam of her mouth, and her tongue flicked out and tasted it before she could think about it.

Blood. Neela's blood. She looked down over her suit. Dark splashes were drying, drifting flecks of blood around her.

"We will need to identify the weak elements in our strategy, and remove them. . . . If we must remove weak elements, we must do so now, while we still have the leisure of doing so."

She would have to remain the best.

* * *

Section 3: A Human Reaction

His gaze wandered dully as he moved through the labs. People moved around, quiet. It seemed that the activity level had dropped drastically, and he wondered if he should be glad. They had to be getting bored with a Real Live Alien who seemed . . . well, as human as the next woman.

Two weeks, and you'd think they'd get tired. But no. Poke, prod, more poke, more prod.

But not today, apparently. He frowned. No one was hanging around the translation computers, trying to chat up the sexy alien babe.

"Wilson?" His throat dry, he approached the containment chamber. "Cobb?"

No movement inside. No guard outside, reading seven-month old magazines, refusing to answer his questions.

He whirled and ran to the medlab.

Here there was activity. He pushed through two, three people. Caught a glimpse of blonde hair shining under bright lights--

Wilson pushed through the throng, stood in his way. "It was an accident, Crichton. She had a reaction to a tranquilizer we were administering. Her heart stopped. We couldn't save her."

No. . . .

A doctor came up beside Wilson and nodded his head in agreement. John's eyes passed over the guy absently, then boomeranged back. Wasn't that . . . Dan Tartell? He'd once dated Robyn Tartell in school, and her older brother Dan had been in med school--

Gilina . . . dead?

"You bastard," he muttered, directing his glare to everyone in the room beyond. But he faced Wilson, and he repeated himself. Louder. "You bastard."

"We couldn't have known. Different chemistry--" Dan began.

"I wasn't talking to you." He paced forward, targeting Wilson. He was vaguely aware that his dad had come up behind him and was watching the tableau. Pointing his finger at Wilson, he raised his voice. "You didn't have to do shit. Tranquilize her? Gilina wouldn't fight back. You knew that, you had to know, you've been watching her for two goddamn weeks! What sort of little experiment did you want to perform on her that you didn't want me to know about? Huh? Tell me that, Wilson!"

"It was an accident, Crichton."

"I want to see her."

"You're too upset right now," Wilson began, but John had had it with his bullshit and shoved him out of his face. God damn, but he hadn't brought Gilina all the way here just so she could die of some allergic reaction--

Someone else tried to get in his way - Cobb. John swatted him aside. It was frighteningly easy; he'd gotten used to going at it with D'Argo, albeit never willingly. Now he was grateful to the absent Luxan, for teaching him how to give and take blows that mere humans couldn't tolerate.

His momentum carried him into the room, past the people. To the table.

John froze to the spot. He'd seen this naked body before, of course; he'd charted its hills and valleys, tasted its nectar, suckled its fruit. He had communicated his loneliness and fear and the comfort of being together on a nightly basis. He had become accustomed to breathing her scent and seeking her touch as something familiar in a universe gone mad.

But this-- He couldn't take it in. He had to focus on the pieces before he could comprehend the whole. Like the skin of her hand - the familiar, newly-healed burn, the edges, so slick and rubbery, ropy and raw. The stark dividing line between whole and healing.

She had hated it when he'd touched her there. She'd turned the offending flesh away, offering up instead her still-perfect left hand, never seeming to understand that he hadn't cared.

Gilina, what have I done?

She had seemed so happy when they'd touched down in Australia, an emotion he'd rarely seen in her since the day she'd woken up from her Sheyang-induced coma. She'd been scared to go through the wormhole with him, but she'd accepted the moment he asked. He'd never really had any doubt in his mind that she would have come - she had nowhere else to go.

He'd done that to her.

Her short blonde hair, gleaming under the stark and pitiless lights.

She had accepted the containment field; they had been kept together, as he'd been the only one who could understand her. When they'd let him out, they'd kept her there. He'd wondered if it was to assure that he wouldn't go too far. Well, it worked; he returned every day, to sit with her, talk to her, always conscious of the cameras, the recorders, their audience. He'd brought her chocolate, beer, pizza. She'd tried it all, her gaze constantly darting around at the cameras, the people. He had to be careful what he said to her - he still spoke in English, of course - but she'd responded only to his conversation, never demanding to be let out, just asking, and that only occasionally. She'd accepted the strictures placed upon her by others.

His father had remarked that his thing for blondes had apparently continued, even in outer space.

Her pale skin held a greenish cast. Where he could see her skin, that is. He kept his eyes on her face. Finally at some sort of peace. Better to look at her face than at the butterflied flesh, the organs pinned out, little scientific tags marking anomalies--

He snapped at the sight of those plastic little tags. "You cut her open?!" He whirled to face a smirking Wilson. Cobb was panting in the background. "You fucking vivisected her, you bastard?!"

He stalked towards Wilson. "Why couldn't you be reasonable? You're wrong in what you're doing here, Wilson. You're wrong!"

One final step, and he swung, smashing his fist through that mocking, sneering face. Just like he'd been aching to do for these past few days.

Chaos exploded into the room, and the center of the maelstrom was John Crichton. He was its focus; he was its weapon. People were trying to hold him back, but he was having none of that. He fought them, trying to get to Wilson, to smear him across the wall, to make him bleed like John was bleeding now, inside.

He was screaming, and he heard his own words as though they were coming to him through a tunnel. "Goddammit, Wilson! We spent our lives waiting for this moment! We sent Voyager; we left damn greeting cards on the moon, and as soon as they get here, look at what you're doing!"

Someone managed to throw him back, off the project supervisor. He fell against the table, bumping the corpse. She moved, one hand fell - the scarred hand. That just sent him further over into his frenzy and grief.

His father hauled him out - only his father could have stopped that much rage and fear and disappointment. They were his own people! How could they do this to her? To him? His father hustled him out of the room, out into the waiting room, and waited.

How appropriate.

John paced the small room, numb. Walked off the area, counting strides. He felt nothing inside; it was as though his heart had stopped working. Only his brain was ticking, beating, fluttering at the inside of his head. Let me out, let me out, letmeout--

He was in a cage. Everyone he knew, every damn thing, was familiar. It was as though time had stopped seven months ago, when he'd gone. Time had stopped but the people were different. They were subtly wrong. It was like looking at the dark side of humanity. Like--

He stepped forward and stared dumbly at a magazine.

Seven months old. Of course. He turned away and looked at his father, who was watching him with concerned eyes. John knew that look. Hell, he'd caused it, most of the time.

"Are you okay, son?"

"No, dad, I'm not." His own voice was soft. Tightly controlled. Suspicious.

"You're in this too deep, John. They're not gonna let you just walk away."

Yeah, he knew. Everything was just a fucking game to them.

"Come on, John."

"Where we goin', Dad?" Like he cared. This was too unreal. It was time to call the scriptwriters, reshoot the ending.

"I'm taking you home."

How? When? Didn't matter. Home? What a joke. "It's a vacation rental, Dad."

"It's better than what they've probably got planned for you. Both of you need some time to cool off. Think about what's just happened."

"What did happen? A joke. A fucking mistake." Jack shepherded him out the door; John stared blankly at the walls they passed, wanting to put his fist through a few. Leave his mark. Wilson would probably just take blood samples. "They're right, you know," he said dully. "You can never go home again."

His father shot him a worried look.

Right. Remember that the old man was putting himself on the line here. Try to find something with which to care, some last little remnant of humanity. What a joke. "Aren't you going to get in trouble for this?"

"I think you need the space, John. You're all I'm concerned about right now."

Space. Hah. He'd had all the space he could take. The vast endless distances of vacuum. The nothingness. The silence. And to think . . . he'd left that to come back to this?

He allowed himself to be taken back to the rental cottage. Under escort, of course. His dad did everything, talked to everyone, assured them that they would be back in the morning, that everyone needed to cool down. Taking over and running the show, like Colonel Jack Crichton always did.

John walked into the rental feeling separated from reality. Suddenly everything in the UT: Moya, the aliens, even Rygel, felt more real than the Earth he'd returned to.

Home.

House arrest, more like.

It was raining outside. A storm was coming in, pounding its way through Sydney, cleaning all the dirt, all the scum from the streets. Yeah, right. Wishful thinking. He stood in front of the windows and watched. It looked like he felt. His father came, stood next to him, handed him one of two beers. "Sure you should have one of these?"

"Trust me. It's just what I need." He took it without blinking from the view. "Down the hatch."

"John--"

He wasn't in the mood for one of his dad's infamous talks. "Dad, please. Don't. Just . . . just drink your beer." He took a swig, ignoring the pleasure from the familiar taste. Damn. I'm away for over half a year, I dream about being back, seeing him, telling him everything . . . and all I can do is sit here and hurt him.

"Sorry," he offered finally.

"What for?"

"Everything. What's happened here." No, that was too localized a concept. "If it weren't for me, what I did, none of this would have happened."

"There's nothing to blame you for, John."

No way that he could explain that he disagreed. After a moment - a microt - he gestured to the window. "Look at that, Dad."

"What?"

A siren began its mournful wail, an alien sound, after all he'd gone through. "That's it. Earth." Lightning crashed. "Minus the sunshine." All he'd dreamed of. All he'd wanted to come back to.

His father looked over at him. "Are you scared, John?"

"Yeah." After all he'd been through in the UT, he felt no shame in admitting that. Fear had become a daily dose. But he'd learned to live with it, he'd coped, because everything had been so strange. Here, where he thought he would be able to understand . . . he didn't. He took a final swig of his beer, set it down. "I can't do that again, Dad. I can't go back there and pretend."

"I know, son."

You know, he thought, after his father had finally turned in for the night, silences thick and heavy between them, but you're not helping me. He leafed through the magazines in the living room. All seven months old. You're helping them.

This was too unreal. Time had stopped. His father . . . acting like his childhood version of a father, brave, heroic, but ultimately cardboard. Earth was stuck in some sort of weird time warp. Everything was two-dimensional. The Day the Earth Stood Still.

This can't be real.

"I'm just in shock," he muttered. Shock. At seeing Gilina like that. At feeling so much rage at all of them: Wilson, Cobb. Even Gilina herself.

You should have fought back, Gilina.

He should have taught her how to fight. She could have learned. He should have insisted. Shouldn't have let her keep to her data libraries, her circuit relays, her long talks with Pilot about biomechanoid science. Her old Peacekeeper ways. He should have made her spar with Tauvo, learn more commando tricks. Never mind her assertion that she wasn't, that she couldn't. Her ingrained dislike of Tauvo, a warrior. Cultural conditioning. John was okay, he was practically a tech, and so something she could understand, but she wouldn't accept Tauvo. John should have made her, somehow. He could have tried harder. Coulda, shoulda, woulda.

Too late for those kinds of thoughts, Johnny boy.

He turned on the TV. Reruns. He threw the remote across the room, listened to the plastic break against the wall. Goddammit, they were doing it to the rental, interfering with the TV signals. His dad had to know. Why was his dad going along with this crap? Why couldn't he just goddamn watch some TV, catch up with ER and Friends? Assuming they were still on?

He went to bed already tired and edgy, hoping that when he woke up . . . he didn't know what he wanted to wake up to. Moya? Earth? Gilina alive.

Woke up with a nagging headache and that damn feeling of déjà vu. Grabbed the newspaper to read the comics and found he'd already read them before.

Too unreal. The sheer effort they were expending, just to keep him in the dark-- It just didn't make sense. What was so important? What would letting him know what had happened in the world, who had won the Superbowl, do to their . . . experiment?

"Let's go, John."

Stared blearily up at his father from his place on the couch. He didn't want to go. What are they going to do for an encore, autopsy me? He stifled a hysterical giggle just in time, choked down his sudden desire to leap up and scream 'Beam me up, Scotty!'

They went to the lab again, silent in the car. His father tried to start a conversation a few times, but Crichton watched the world roll by from behind the glass. So many of the people looked familiar, or was he just reacting to being able to look in all directions and see human features? The roads were as familiar to him as his bedroom; he and his father had taken the same route many times, their last trip here, testing the Farscape module.

Weird, to think he'd stood upon Moya's terrace and watched star systems in much the same manner. Weirder still, to find that memory more real, more vivid, than this strange grey version of Earth he'd come back to. He felt numb, insulated from everything around him.

They were carded into the lab. The security guards all stared at him; he was surprised he wasn't arrested right off the bat. His father's influence, of course. Everyone spoke in hushed voices.

So who died? Oh, yeah, Gilina. Remember her? The woman you killed? Did I ruin your experiment? Good.

The feeling of unreality was getting stronger. When they hit the waiting room, he turned and walked towards the men's room. Stalling for just a little more time, 'cause he wasn't ready to face Wilson just yet. Just thinking about the guy made him feel dirty. He needed to clean up. Maybe he'd wash away the dust and the grime and he'd be seven months younger and this would all be some strange, psycho trip.

He'd been in the UT for seven months now. You'd think I would have gotten used to the concept of being totally screwed over by now.

He stopped in his tracks.

Yeah, he had gotten used to shit like that. So much that it was normal.

Experiment.

Seven months of lost time. People he knew. Only people he knew. Even when he saw them on the street, or in the labs. Wilson. Cobb.

Places he knew. Déjà vu.

So much effort: the TV reruns, the comics, the magazines. Aimed at who? 'Cause they sure hadn't treated Gilina - the ostensible alien - with kid gloves. No, they'd goddamned cut her open just to see what made her tick like some disposable toy. So who were they really watching? Who was the lab rat?

A goddamn experiment--

People he knew. Places he knew. Everything was familiar; he'd yet to see one new place. His eyes fell on the door before him: the men's room. I've been in there. He took three steps to the side and came up before the woman's bathroom. "But I've never been in there--" He flung open the door.

It was . . . something. Something, glimmering orange and yellow light filling the doorway. Opaque. He turned back to his dad. To . . . whatever looked like his dad. Definite feelings of unreality. "Who are you?" he asked quietly.

"You did well, John. Most species don't do as well."

It looked like his dad. It acted like his dad. His heart was bleeding again, god, it hurt so goddamn much. He took a deep breath, choking past the bile. "What is all this?"

"Everything here is a physical creation from your memory."

"But you're not real." Let's just cut to the chase.

"Well . . . I'm not your father."

He didn't dare ask the next question; didn't dare not to ask. "And what about my friend?"

"She's real, living matter. Since she came with you, through the wormhole we'd created from your memory, we decided to use her in our trial." He turned and gestured, and suddenly the wall between the waiting room and the lab was gone. Gilina was inside the containment cell, looking out through the glass.

"John!"

His knees were suddenly weak. "Gilina!" She was scared; he could see it in her face, hear it in her voice.

"John, get us back to Moya!"

"They didn't kill you?"

The thing that wore his father's face replied. "Of course we didn't kill her. We created her corpse."

"Why? Why would you make me think that she was dead?" He was suddenly, blindingly, angry. So angry that he couldn't think straight. He was furious with her, for having been dead, for not having fought back. It was irrational, but it was there, leaving a bad taste in his mouth. He whirled to face the puzzle. He would deal with this anger later; it had nothing to do with her, and everything to do with him, his own expectations put through the wringer of this fucked-up little acid trip.

"We needed a human reaction, John . . .your reaction."

Goddamn experiment.

Rage again; chaos boiling out of him. He lunged forward, grabbing the mockery of his dad by the shirt and whirling him around, slamming him against one of the building's supports. It was quite satisfyingly solid. "You made me think you were my father!"

* * *

Time meant nothing anymore. She floated through the weightlessness, her body drifting like her thoughts. She was just a piece of debris, floating through the darkness of space.

She was dimly aware that there had once been an Aeryn Sun who would never have survived this long. That there had been a personality, a pilot, a Sebacean, a female.

Now she was simply void.

She floated.

A glimmer of light, reflected, roused a sliver of consciousness. She came to herself like a system going through its initial boot phase, subroutines coming to life.

Her eyes: a crescent of light, silvered from the curve of a hull.

Her senses: twitched her fingers; tested her toes. Rediscovered the dimensions of her body. Felt the brief whispers of atmosphere moving between her skinsuit and her deepspace suit, like phantom fingers, gentler than any man she had ever known. Softer than any emotion.

A phrase formed in her head, a question that surfaced as gently as a gas bubble moved through liquid.

On target?

Her eyes: the hull was closer now, limed in light from the closest star. It was rapidly expanding to fill her field of vision. She could not miss it.

Confirmed: on target.

Her mind began to query the data available to her. Speed?

Within acceptable parameters.

Assets?

A brief movement of her head; she saw reflections of the light from the curved bubbles of two deep-space helmets, barely seen though they were only handspans from her.

She keyed passive sensors to life. Five objects. Four tell-tales.

Twenty percent casualty rate.

She could pick out details in the hull now, and a smile formed of its own accord, cracking her lips.

Within acceptable parameters.

She would still be able to complete her mission.

The four commandos came to rest lightly against the hull; the fifth body hit, then moved off, deflected on a divergent course. None of them looked at it; none of them tracked its trajectory.

Fourth found a hull seal; motioned to it.

She'd had over two solar days, nearly the maximum suit time, to become used to the darkness, as they'd drifted through space; she had no need of helmet lights to see the gesture.

They entered as quietly as they'd arrived, moving with machine-like precision. Tracking. Arming. Targeting. Programmed subroutines humming into existence.

The ship slept silently, unaware.

* * *

Section 4: A Bug's Life

Gilina had managed to do it. While Larraq and his crew had been doing their R&R and secret science experiments, she'd snuck on board their Marauder transport and downloaded all the data spools.

He'd been terrified for her, but he'd asked her to do it anyway, and she'd agreed, because she knew that, ultimately, she had no choice. She'd accepted that much, at least, about her new life.

They had to risk it. The Marauder data banks represented a treasure trove; had offered too much information to replace, in one fell swoop, core components of the data spools that Moya had lost as a result of NamTar's data crystal trap. What they'd managed to scavenge from the various commerce planets they'd tripped across as they bumbled their way across space had not been enough, had been barely a drop in the bucket of data that NamTar had wiped. Crippled as she was, lost within her own senses as well as within space, Moya needed data to fill her memory just as much as they needed to get home. Anything, even something woefully out of date, would serve to hold back the madness spiraling within the Leviathan's brain, the whirlpool that dragged at Pilot's quickly fraying sanity. Even if it was Peacekeeper data spools that hadn't been updated within the past cycle.

At least something in this masquerade had gone right. God, he could hope.

He smiled at her, and held her hand for a few moments. Her left hand. She was still kind of funny about her right, and the scars.

"I was really scared," she confessed.

"I know, baby. But you did it."

"I'll go upload the data now."

He squeezed her fingers. "Keep out of sight."

"I will." Her face glowed with relief at the notion of a task she could do, and do well, and he felt a quick pang of guilt. She hated this, hated the danger. She did it for him. Time and time again, and he'd seen how she'd begun to bite her nails to the quick, how her fingers bled during each time of crisis. Each time he asked just a little bit more of her. She never . . . never seemed to be able to build on those accomplishments, in the past. At least this was sneaking around getting data, interfacing with machines. She was okay with that. Better she did this than try to deal with Larraq and his goon squad.

Comms crackled. "We've found him," Tauvo reported.

He dropped Gilina's hand, feeling the rough, bitten edges slide through his fingers. Chiana was still drifting in the background. "Location?"

"Center chamber."

"On the way." He collected Chiana, smiled once more at Gilina, and set off. They arrived at the Center Chamber at the same time as Zhaan and Hassan. He heard Tauvo telling Larraq, "He's trapped, but you don't have a clear shot."

John wished he'd been able to get together with Tauvo before they'd set off on their Sparky hunt. He still didn't like having to play the Captain, but since it had been too great a possibility that some of the commandos might have known Tauvo as a pilot, and wondered how he'd jumped to command rank so quickly.... And, as Tauvo had pointed out, this whole thing had been his idea in the first place.

Larraq was aiming carefully. "If I miss, it takes this stasis gun several microts to recharge."

"We don't have several microts." Hassan, queen of the obvious.

"Why not just use a regular pulse rifle?" Chiana seemed nervous. And he thought Pip had acclimated better than that. Then again, she hadn't been aboard that long, and she'd become more familiar with the half-mad Leviathan than the gentle Moya who had welcomed him.

"No," Larraq responded, "No, I've got to take him alive."

D'Argo and Thonn arrived, crowding into the space behind them.

Rygel's voice echoed through the chamber perfectly. "What the yotz are you going to do with that?!"

"Certainly sounds like the Hynerian," John muttered.

Hassan heard him. "It's supposed to. That's exactly what the virus does."

"Listen to me!" Rygel called. "Let me explain! I'm not the man you want! It's that creature, isn't it? The thing in the box?"

Chiana briefly blocked his view of the access chamber. He craned his neck, and she began moving towards her, her finger outstretched. He stared at her....

* * *

He rebounded off the corridor wall and sped down hall, D'Argo hot on his heels.

Movement up ahead. Oh, God. Oh, God, no--

He felt a brief moment of relief. It wasn't Gilina. He'd been so afraid the virus would have read his mind, or emotions, and sought out Gilina as a bargaining tool. Gilina, who couldn't even go hand-to-hand with Chiana without getting her ass kicked up and down the training mat, who had tried so hard, and then cried for nearly an hour afterwards, begging him never to make her go through that again.

Tauvo could handle himself. So long as the virus didn't transfer itself into his body, he could at least hold off Larraq long enough.

But no. Larraq was some sort of special commando type; he easily put Tauvo in a stranglehold even as John watched. John and D'Argo skidded to a stop in the middle of the corridor. Larraq pulled a long knife from his personal armoury and smiled at the two members of Moya's crew.

"Stay back!" His eyes were mad, and he grinned at John. "I learned a lot from the time I spent inside you."

John shuddered.

"You fugitives want to stay away from that Peacekeeper base as badly as I want to get there. So here's what we're gonna do - you're going to let me into that Marauder ship without any interference - and then you're free to blast yourselves as far from here as you want."

"If the virus is allowed to spawn," D'Argo said softly, "it could contaminate thousands of species before it's able be contained again."

No pressure, big guy.

Larraq smiled at them through Tauvo's curly hair. "I'm sorry - was that a problem?"

Tauvo still struggled, caught in the other man's iron grasp. "John, don't let him do this!"

Larraq looked down at his victim. "I would take you . . . but you have no status. You are of no use as a host." He quickly pushed down on the knife. John watched it happen in slo-mo, dimly aware that D'Argo started forward. Larraq pushed the suddenly limp Tauvo at them, whirled, and ran towards the docking bay.

As they grabbed Tauvo, John caught D'Argo's eye. They nodded at each other, telepathy in action, and then John took off after Larraq. The virus couldn't re-infect him. D'Argo would take care of Tauvo. He pulled his gun as he ran.

* * *

Aeryn dropped her duffel bag, keyed her new rack, and sat down heavily.

A quick look around. Empty, of course.

Not many Ghosts on this station.

She ran her hand lightly down the side of the new uniform. She still felt strangely disconnected from everything here. There were lights, there were people in the corridors. And the noise.

It wasn't the existence of others that bothered her, the long lines at in-processing, crowded corridors and mess decks. She'd never been alone, not really, not during training. Not even during that final test, when she'd come up with the idea of floating for two solar days through deep space in order to do a stealth insertion of a heavily armed warship.

It had been an unthinkable gamble, but it had worked.

She'd been part of a unit; part of a team. She'd become accustomed to working in the small, dark spaces of a troop ship, or the large dark expanses of space. Relying on her people.

Now she was drifting, nothing to do but wait.

Having never been through this type of training before, never kept in touch with those she'd known who'd gone through it, she could still be certain that what she and her unit had endured had been something more. Scenarios had come fast and furious, drills and field exercises and simulators. Throughout the interrupted rest periods, the summons out of the showers, they'd coalesced into a solid team, suffering only a twenty-seven percent casualty rate overall. Low by commando training standards. They'd done so well together, she'd thought that perhaps, after the final test, they'd go to a Carrier as a ready-made squadron, but no. She had been proven wrong.

They had gone. She had not. Something had gone wrong. She had received her packet, been transported here on the fastest shuttle, arrived to find cryptic orders assigning her a rack space, and ordering her to wait for the arrival of her unit.

Her new unit.

She had spoken to no one but the inbriefing officer. No one else seemed to be aware that she was here, waiting in the dark, ready to move on. No one else seemed to know where she was going. She only knew it was to something different entirely.

She hadn't been surprised to learn that there was a Gammak base in the Uncharted Territories; she had stopped being surprised by how much she didn't know in the last three quarters of a cycle.

She thought she'd stopped reacting, too, gotten over foolish emotions like that, but then she had arrived here, and the camaraderie of the past few monens had been stripped away, and she saw herself again, scared. Alone. Adrift.

She needed to become better. To become harder. If only for her new role.

She was dressed the part; the uniform had been issued to her upon arrival to the Gammak base. The material was rough to her hands; unfamiliar. The armour was padded differently than the commandos who crewed the Marauders, serving as heavier shock troops. This was expensive, lightweight.

Black uniform.

An Ensign, even, as a result of the training. She hadn't known about that until she'd arrived here. She hadn't known about the posting until she'd arrived, either.

This . . . was it as a promotion or a disgrace?

She was one of them now. One of the Black Ghosts. Those who walked in the darkness of deep space, who flitted along the edges of the Fringe, flirting with the Scarrans, the Nebari, the unknowns. Those she had scoffed at before, when she'd seen them on transports or Carriers, sitting alone, apart. Scruffy, no recognition of rank. No understanding of rules.

She would be irreversibly contaminated, but now it would be acceptable; it would be a part of her job.

The lights weren't on; she had no need of them. Darkness didn't bother her. The training had accomplished that much; the training that was labeled commando, but had obviously, in her case, been the precursor for so much more.

No, the darkness no longer held any trepidation for her. The silence did: it wasn't the emptiness in between comms chatter, or the weariness of a task done and a moment's rest before they pressed on. It wasn't the easy quiet of sleep or the spent breaths after recreating.

It was the silence of nothingness. Ten racks, all empty; no sign of recent occupation. Ten racks. They wouldn't be filled, even after the arrival of her new unit. That much she had learned from training. The only reason she was here, the only reason she would be added to a unit that had already been working as a smooth machine for cycles, was that casualties had been taken. A slot was open.

She wondered how many other newly minted graduates would be joining her at this Gammak base, or if they would pick up any other new members at other bases.

Why a Gammak base?

She pulled out the flimsy she'd been given, tilting it to catch what light she could get. She didn't need much light to read; she'd memorized the brief words.

Captain Larraq.

She'd tried to access the public personnel files at Marauder's Moon, as the base was affectionately called, but there had been nothing on Larraq, just an entry. Of course not. He was a Ghost. He barely existed.

The empty space breathed heavily on her bare skin, and she shivered. She was one of them now, and she was so alone.

* * *

He frowned as he caught a glimpse of the dark-haired woman in the hallways. His eyes flicked over her, categorizing instantly. Commando training. Dressed like a Ghost, though, with the special matte synth armour.

Why was she so familiar?

A glint of reflected light off her features, and he knew instantly. Facts whirled together, depositing the answer for his convenience. She had completed her training. As he'd suggested, she'd been reassigned to a Ghost squad.

How ironic, that she would end up here, waiting for them to arrive.

As he was waiting; Larraq was supposed to be delivering a package for one of his projects. Not his main project, but one had to have several hobbies. Not to mention options. One of the experiments, the neural controller that Captain Larraq had assisted so ably on, was still viable, but the subject hadn't been exposed to the full suite of tests yet, and he himself was personally loathe to trust the certainty of neural control. There were always . . . unforeseen consequences. It was excellent as a backup, perfectly acceptable when there was no other alternative.

It was his job to find alternatives, even if the research occasionally proved to result only in dead ends, frustration. No, frustration was his own failure; there was always an answer. He just hadn't looked hard enough, hadn't looked in the correct places. He detoured down one corridor. What a miserable excuse for a delay. That a project so relatively low in his priorities would cause such problems offended his sensibilities. At least when the Aurora Chair malfunctioned, he could always call in techs to solve it. As he'd done now, which gave him time enough to see to these side projects.

He moved impatiently into the lab, accepting a flimsy from one of the waiting techs. Frowning, he checked over the data; didn't find what he was looking for. This was not acceptable. Out of the thousands of personnel on the base, they couldn't find a one reasonable match?

"What are the parameters of your search query?"

The tech gulped. "As you requested, sir. Anyone bred for pilot, commando, or infantry training."

He paused as he considered what she hadn't specified. "What about assignment status?"

"Well, sir, of course . . . only permanent staff."

"Why?"

She swallowed heavily. "Because I assumed you would be monitoring the results of the testing, sir, and preferred that the subject were in a controlled environment, with scientific. . . ." Her voice trailed off.

"You assumed incorrectly." He handed back the flimsy. "Perform the search again. Widen your parameters to include anyone currently on this base." When she remained frozen, he sighed internally. "Now."

She moved quickly to her console, her fingers flying. He waited, ruminating on the great genetic odds that discounted her from being a test subject. Now that was almost a pity.

Finished, she handed him the updated flimsy with hands that shook ever so slightly. Without even a glance at the text. He took it without comment.

The positive results sprawled across the top, immediately drawing his attention. He read it, and once again, the irony was a delicate, dark flavour on his tongue. He smiled to himself, and knew his aide and the tech started at the sight. Oh, but he was pleased.

He'd known from the beginning that she was special, but he hadn't known how special. He had helped create something of her once. And now she could serve him again.

What a lovely thought.

* * *

"Inoculated?"

The tech bustled around her, doing one of the incomprehensible things that the tech class always did. She'd barely ever noticed what they actually did before; now Aeryn watched this one closely. She'd become used to not having them around in training; deepspace Marauder ships carried special mechanoids, capable of fixing almost anything. Expensive, but worth the cost, and a better use of available space than a tech.

"Yes," the tech replied. "You're going to be assigned to deep space. We're going to give you an updated spread of all the inoculation microbes we've got, just to make sure you're at best operational capacity."

She could feel her eyebrows rising. "But you're going to put that thing in my eye."

"Well, if we were simply working at the double-helix level, we'd be able to inject it as normal." Her tone was scornful. It was the 'shut up, you stupid grot' tone that Aeryn hated most about techs.

She reached out and grabbed the woman's arm in a hard grip. Very hard. "What exactly are you doing to me?"

"You aren't . . . questioning orders, are you, Ensign Sun?" The voice was smooth, cool, level.

Without loosening her grasp, Aeryn turned her head to meet the newcomer. Her face was schooled, so she knew she showed no outward sign of surprise. But he was looking for something, and so she even deadened her eyes.

"No, sir." She met his gaze squarely. "I'm gathering intelligence."

Something moved across his face - or the parts of it she could see through his mask. Or perhaps she was reading his eyes, but she knew, she sensed, that she had surprised him.

"A commendable trait. After all, once the procedure is done, it's rather moot to question it then." His voice was completely at odds with his appearance. Cultured, controlled. He wasn't Sebacean; not with that skin texture, those features. His . . . dress was no Peacekeeper uniform.

The tech was completely silent. Aeryn considered the possibilities. He hadn't introduced himself. Neither had she. And yet he knew her name. "Exactly, sir."

He picked up the syringe from the unresisting tech and moved closer to the chair. "It won't take long, Ensign Sun."

She blinked. Deliberately. "You still haven't told me what it is. Sir." She made herself breathe calmly. Evenly. Had she gone too far?

The tech was attempting to disappear.

He stopped, considering her. And then he smiled. "No, I haven't. But I will be honest with you, since you ask so nicely." He gestured with the syringe in his hand. "This is an experimental serum. It is intended to enhance certain characteristics in your genetic makeup. The purpose of this inoculation is to provide you with better odds of survival when encountering such deep space anomalies as you are expected to meet."

"Have the other members of my unit been inoculated?"

"No." He shook his head. "Not everyone has the required chemical makeup, unfortunately. You are one of the few to receive this particular blend."

Lucky or unlucky? He hadn't distinguished, and she didn't ask. He was still watching her; she thought she perceived amusement from him. She waited, knowing from long experience that superior officers had shorter patience than infantry. He finally sighed. "They have received others, of that I can guarantee you. Sometimes we cannot provide a panacea for everyone, and instead have to tailor in order to allow for personal parameters." He held up the syringe.

"Will I perceive any difference?" Her voice didn't quaver, did it?

He considered her question gravely. "This is not intended to make you any less an effective tool for us, Ensign Sun. We have already invested too much in you to throw you away so cavalierly. After all, why make you any less effective in your duty to Peacekeepers?"

A warning. A reprimand. And a choice, subtle in those words. A great truth, one she known all her life. A duty. Her duty, to obey. After a moment, she leaned back in the chair and widened her eyes.

* * *

She was almost perfect, he thought, reviewing her most recent records.

It made wonderful reading while he waited for the Banak slave to be collected for another session in the Chair. Her idea for her final test - drifting through deep space with minimal life support systems, no power signature, realistic tumble, relative speed - had allowed her to infiltrate the ship designated as her target. Applying her pilot's skills to a tactical problem in such a unique way.

He wondered if she thought it had been a scenario. There had been no room for error; deepspace suits carried only sixty hours of environment in them, when used as she'd used them. One mistake and she would have died, she and her unit.

She hadn't made that mistake, or any of the myriad of others. Her timing had been perfect; she had arrived in the ships' crew sleep cycle. He wondered if, and how, she'd known about that. He made a mental note to ask her someday. He was certain he would get the chance.

She was nearly perfect already. As a pilot, she possessed the refined skills of an artist. As a tactician, she was as precise as his Command and Control computer. Perhaps she was the perfect solution to this side project. He personally didn't care; he did expect that the tech chosen to receive the serum would prove to be more suitable for the project, and eventual baseline testing.

Granted, with her pilot's skills, perhaps she was better engineered to actually succeed in the kinesthetic requirements of the test. And, of course, there were other, unpredictable factors. The stress of assimilating the changes could be faint and few, or it could be very disastrous, indeed.

It would certainly be interesting to see how the Pilot DNA would enhance her existing capabilities. He personally was just as curious to see what other abilities she might demonstrate.

* * *

Section 5: Hit the Nerve

He couldn't believe they'd made it this far.

He was all too conscious of time, time. Time Tauvo did not have. Tauvo was dying, trapped on Moya.

He'd had to come. When he'd seen Tauvo thrashing in his room, coughing up gunk and moaning for his brother, he'd known he had no choice. Zhaan had been able to hook Tauvo up to Moya to filter his blood of toxins, gain a little more time. D'Argo, worried about the effect on Moya herself, had left Zhaan's lab, had refused to do anything but watch and worry over the Leviathan.

If I think I got it bad, just look at D'Argo. He takes the blame for crashing Moya's memory, then causing her pregnancy . . . yeah, it probably sucks worse to be him than me.

On the other hand, he's on Moya, safe and sound, and I'm sitting here smack-dab in enemy territory.

He surreptitiously watched Chiana working the room. Pip was, had been, absolutely amazing. It had really been her help that had allowed him to get this far.

God, he wished he could believe in luck. Because then he could pray that it would hold a little longer.

No. Luck would have been Gilina providing a perfect match.

He tried to concentrate on what the guy next to him was saying. Something about Chiana, of course. The strain of playing Larraq was getting to him. He'd grilled Tauvo on all things Peacekeeper prior to leaving Moya, but even Tauvo hadn't known that much about Larraq's type of super-commando.

Apparently, neither did anyone else, and the standard Peacekeeper Captain Villain shtick seemed to be working well enough.

* * *

She stumbled down the corridor, one hand reaching for the wall. She knew it was there, could feel it throbbing beside her even as sight splintered into a million points of light.

What the frell was wrong with her?

Her thoughts whirled through her head, chaotic, shimmering. She heard colours, she saw smells. Food tasted strange. Vision was more than blurred; she noticed wires, conduits, heard what they transported, heard them buzz with energy. And she could hear those around her breathing.

It had begun two nights ago, fading in and out. She'd spent three painful arns shivering in her rack, glad for the privacy of the room. Her skin had changed, becoming waxy in texture, taking on a dappled purple hue in colour.

That had faded. Now remained simply the chaos in her head, her thoughts colliding. She would wait, and it would pass. It had to. She had . . . she had a duty.

And, in the meanwhile, some raslak should slow her thoughts down, and numb her fears.

* * *

Chiana practically shimmered, she shone so bright. She sparkled, she laughed, she drew the eye.

Well, she'd told him that she would provide distraction. She was certainly distracting, all right. Anyone in the room with a drop of testosterone was hooked. John expected to see wagging tails and drooling tongues at any minute.

But then it was his turn to be distracted.

Hello. . . .

Perhaps she wouldn't have drawn the eye in all the bars on Earth. But she would have drawn his.

It wasn't her looks. Or maybe he should say, it was more than her looks. He preferred blondes - obviously - and he'd learned to hate the sight of hair pulled back in that horrible Peacekeeper style. But she had something. It was the way she moved, the way she carried off a presence. The way she held herself, wrapped tightly. It drew his attention the moment she walked into the lounge, as though she'd called his name from across the room.

She seemed almost vaguely familiar, though he would have sworn that he'd never seen her before. She wasn't looking at him, so he watched her openly, listening to the buzz of conversation in the background, the PK stiff asking him how much he'd paid for Chiana. He answered absently, something noncommittal.

She was alone.

That was different. A Peacekeeper, alone? Running around without their team members and rah-rah cheerleader squad?

And . . . something was wrong. He couldn't put his finger on it, but as he noted the way she moved, it came to him.

She was in pain.

Yet no one seemed to notice. Actually, incredibly, people moved out of her way; if not consciously, then at least regularly. She threaded herself between the crowds, heading to the bar, and when she put out her hand, it trembled ever so slightly before she steadied herself.

How could no one notice? The longer he watched her, the more she seemed to stick out like a sore thumb. What's wrong with this picture? Were PKs just bred with an insensitivity gene, or what?

Damn, but she seemed so familiar. There was something about her--

When the realization came, it crashed into him, and his heart leapt into his mouth. She moved like Larraq. All except for the pain part. She was dressed like Larraq's goon squad, too.

Oh, shit.

"Captain Larraq?"

He'd been ignoring his companion too long. He couldn't afford any distractions. He had Tauvo to think of.

* * *

It was beyond painful. Noise came in solid waves, pinning her to where she stood. It had taken her long enough to reach here, swimming through sound, prickles of awareness tracing skeletal fingers over her skin, and now she could only stand still and let it strip her down to raw layers.

It was though she was being watched, and she could not bear the feeling. She ordered raslak, her voice rough, and picked up the cup with shaking fingers.

The cup nearly slipped through nerveless fingers when the name slid through her consciousness, sidled in between the noise, echoed hollowly inside her mind. Captain Larraq.

She turned her head slowly, narrowing her eyes, trying to force focus through her lids. Her vision splintered and swam, but she focused, she held on, and in a moment, she saw him, the man his companion had called--

Larraq.

He was talking to some drone, his back to her. Thoughts sped up and collided. Why hadn't she been told when he had arrived? Why hadn't he summoned her? What had she done wrong? Did he not know she was here?

Did he expect her to report to him now? Later?

Oh, if only she could regain the void she'd lost, if only she could find again the dark stillness in her center. She'd had the way of it once, drifting in space. Why had it gone away?

Where would she find it again?

The noise, the pain--

Larraq was her Captain. He would help her; he had to, she was a part of his unit. She was his duty.

She wavered to her feet. The room swayed around her, revolving, shattering like dust, but she knew his voice now, held it like a lifeline. It took only enough to follow the path, and as she set her steps, it seemed that she had come this way before.

No, she was so dizzy; she could only focus on his back. Turn around, she begged, turn around and help me.

As though he heard her, he turned.

A shock burned through her at the sight of his face. Oh, she was too ill: she was on fire with fever, her thoughts were quicksilver in her brain, firing all at once: He sees me look at his eyes, he's clean, beautiful, who is he speaking to, why is he afraid, there's something wrong--

Slow down what the frell is happening to me--

There was something. There was fear . . . ? in his eyes.

Thoughts narrowed, swept down to focus. There was something wrong. Captain Larraq was a Ghost. What would he have to fear from her? She stared at him, and her thoughts spun down, settled on words.

"You're not Captain Larraq."

The fear clouded his eyes, stiffened his body, and now she was sure. Anger burned alongside fever. Larraq could have helped her. If he was here, in her Captain's place--

In one sudden movement she was on him, pinning him against the wall, her elbow in his throat, rough words spilling from her mouth in raging shrieks. "Imposter! What is your rank and regiment? Rank and regiment now!"

She could feel the rhythm of him underneath her skin; he scorched her, reset her to the pounding of his pulse. Their eyes locked, and the shock danced again down through bones and arced. She nearly cried out at the sensation: pain, pain, oh lovely pain, I'm bleeding. She was being emptied of all that she was while the sensations fused her to him, burned them together.

The shock spread out in waves, with the two of them at its center. They were caught, she by the fear in his eyes, he by something in her own, she didn't know, she could hear only his breathing, she could feel his heart pounding; she was drowning in the whirlpool of his gaze.

touch hurt me bleeding fear pain touch you bleed

Someone was demanding that she release him; no one touched her, she was a Ghost.

"Explain yourself, Ensign Sun."

The voice was a cool balm to the fire inside; it brought sense and sanity. She swung her head, breaking the electric blue contact, seeking out the source of that voice, the familiar, blank, black form. The void--

"This one," there was no need to indicate who she was talking about, "is not Captain Larraq." Her voice was slurred.

There should have been questions, demands for proof, accusations of drinking or chemicals - given the evidence of her current state, it was almost inevitable. She was slandering her new Captain in front of what could only be the Commander of the Gammak base. Everything she had worked for, everything she had become, all to be lost.

But she was to be surprised.

"He is not Larraq," came the bemused comment, and suddenly, the creature beside her stiffened. "No, he is not. Indeed, he is not even Sebacean. He is an imposter. A . . . Human."

She didn't understand; her senses were fading from her control, a miasma of shimmering information overload. Only his touch kept her grounded, his touch and that voice: triangulating her into the here and now.

"I have been aware of his existence for several monens, and have been looking for him for half that time. I was . . . not aware that he was so close at hand. It seems I have you, Ensign Sun, to thank for bringing him to my attention." A gesture summoned guards. "Take him to a cell. This one will go to the Chair."

She nearly cried out at the loss of contact. Take away the shock and everything was sapped from her, even the pain, which had allowed her space to breathe, to spill. Away from those eyes, she lost herself again, melting.

The voice cut through the chaos of threads, thoughts, that spilled out of her. "You do not look well, Ensign Sun." His face drifted closer to hers, so close she could almost make out features. "You do not look well at all."

"I--I don't know . . . what's happening to me." She gasped for air, for sense, for a center.

"Then we shall find out. It will be the least I can do." He gave her his arm. As she touched him, she felt the cold seep in, ice crystals hardening her bones and muscles and reforming her around the void. She felt his eyes on her, but couldn't make out his expression, not even when he supported her gently back to his lab.

* * *

Section 6: Uncharted Territories

"As you've no doubt noticed," the dry voice held a perfect edge, "we have a new member among us. Lieutenant Aeryn Sun."

She looked around at her new unit. They were ranged in the mess, sitting with no account to rank or seniority. No command tags on their uniforms. She had no idea where she fit in, who she was to them. Who they were to her. Why she was here.

She'd had time to adjust to the notion of meeting up with Captain Larraq at the Gammak base. She'd had his name on her orders. Then everything had been frelled beyond belief.

Captain Rayn smiled, and in his eyes she read amusement. He knew what she was thinking.

"We're lucky," he continued. "We have only one name to remember. But she, well, she has to remember eight. So we'll keep it slow, and when we meet her again within the next few arns, we'll repeat our names, so she'll get it right sooner."

Was he mocking her?

"My name is Captain Rayn."

The willowy blonde lounging on - actually on - one of the tables laughed. "I don't think she's likely to forget that one, Cap'n."

"The ever-present mouth over there is Commander Kur. The brute over there is Senior Officer Janak. The young grot is Sergeant Sariv. Sergeant Marat is trying her best to ignore us - she's usually fairly quiet, and too nice for the likes of us. Officer Leej is piloting us currently - you'll meet him later; blink and you'll miss him - and Officers Kwin and Darwa are doing a final weapons check." He crossed his arms and slouched against the table, black hair falling untidily over one eye. "We're a fairly new unit; most of us have only been working together for less than a cycle. Normally you'd come in as a trainee, get the lowest bunk and the worst rats, but you've been sent to us with different instructions."

She kept her face blank; she didn't know what he meant. Which instructions? Certainly not those written on her orders. Had she carried anything else? It was frightening to think that she'd not come to her senses for some time - at least two weekens. Everything after Scorpius had led her away from . . . from the Human, until the world suddenly reasserted itself into a transport pod, was a black hole.

Luckily she'd found herself clutching a set of orders, however succinct they were, and the pilots of the transport pod had been well-briefed, if brief in speech. They'd shuttled her to a small Decca cruiser, unloaded things she hadn't even realized she'd packed, and left her.

Her orders had told her merely to report to Captain Rayn aboard the Binion. No ship coordinates, no docking station. No other explanatory text. As soon as she'd come down off the transport pod, Captain Rayn had been waiting for her, and he had only smiled and called her by name.

"You're coming very highly recommended, and you'll fill our Third slot."

She knew she displayed no outward reaction; well, perhaps maybe a tic at the edge of her eye. She would work on that, when she had a spare microt or five. Right now she had to adjust to his words. A Third? In a unit? Already? She'd just gone to Ensign a monen ago.

Images - memories? - flashed through her mind. Scorpius had helped her; she had some cloudy memory - vision? - of another inoculation, and some half-remembered comments about readjusting the dosage for her sensitivity. Had Scorpius done this as well? And if so, why? What had she done for him, to earn this?

"Your original posting was a detail for the Uncharted Territories. Science stuff. Not bad. Can be fun." His voice was his weapon of choice, finely honed. "I hope you didn't have your heart set on that. We don't do that sort of thing."

There was an exchange of sly looks, muffled laughter.

"So what are our orders, Cap'n?"

"Kur, how predictable you are."

"And how annoying you are. Our orders?"

Aeryn looked at him, to see how he would take the insubordination. He smiled, and now it was meant to include them all. "Coincidently enough, science has something to do with it." He paused, and now he was very serious. Aeryn could taste the mood change as it dominated the room, felt it pass from one to the other.

Rayn activated the holo tank. Three star systems sprang to life. "We've received intelligence reports indicating there may be a forward-deployed Scarran Gammak base in one of these systems. Apparently there's some research being done into new sources of energy to power massive weapons systems or transport systems. Pick your favourite rumour. What does Intel have to say? They're just telling us that two renowned Scarran scientists have disappeared from their central worlds, and they want us to find out what they're up to. Our mission is to find the Gammak base where they've holed up, secure any knowledge or status of current level of research, and destroy anything we leave behind. I know you're all excited about that last bit."

The words made sense, and yet they didn't.

"And, as usual, we need to be quick about it. High Command is concerned that the Scarran technologies may be outstripping our own abilities. So, as usual, we are sent to steal, borrow, and beg."

Going to the Scarran Fringe: that was no surprise to her, it was either that or the Nebari Fringe. The Scorvians were still too involved in their own little feudal struggles to be of much concern. No, no surprise there.

But Third? In an established unit? Promoted into a line officer slot? Yes, that did surprise her.

* * *

John shuddered in the darkness. A faint noise echoed off the walls; it sounded like a small, dying animal. He knew he was making that sound, but he couldn't stop. He couldn't stop. Stop. Whimpering. Shuddering. Dreaming. Remembering.

"What the hell was that?"

"A memory."

He was afraid to sleep, because then he would dream. He couldn't bear to be awake, because then it wasn't a dream. Then it was memory.

Stop. Stop.

Concentrate on the good times, John. Remember the good times.

Gilina jamming the Aurora Chair with a shorted conduit, using her powers for good. Crais realizing that Tauvo was alive, his friend. Crais smuggling him out of the Gammak base, using his ident chip to get him onto the surface. Crais saving him from Scorpius, and their return to Moya. Bialar and Tauvo's reunion.

Even Stark.

But the bad times crowded in.

Stop. Stop.

Any scene with Scorpius. After his return to Moya, the first few painful days, where he'd screamed himself awake, expecting to see his life displayed before him.

His choice to collapse around Gilina. Bad timing. She'd needed comforting, after infiltrating the Gammak base because of him. Brave of her. She'd slipped in ahead, helped him pass through the genetic scans, figured out how to get Tauvo's required genetic mod. He'd thought that would make her more confident.

He'd been wrong. She'd managed to do all of that, help them with their escape, and then she'd promptly broken down.

She'd been back there. Seeing what she'd lost. Walking through her life, an interloper. She'd wanted to stay. He'd seen it in her eyes. But she had rubbed her burned hand and turned, followed them back to Moya.

Just when he needed her most, she had been distant, held herself apart, angry. He'd needed her . . . to be strong. So he didn't have to be. For just one moment.

He hadn't gotten it.

After that, Gilina's growing frustration with his inability to talk about it, to tell her what was so wrong about seeing his life, his memories. He'd tried to tell her. About the physical pain that memories caused when they were ripped out. About the way that the Chair invaded your life, your memories, your self. But he couldn't, he'd choked up with remembering the pain, the invasion, and she had stood apart from him, scared by his reaction. In the end, after the tears and the pain and the drool, he'd told her he had no words to say, no way to put it that was understandable. She'd said he wasn't trying to make her understand.

He'd asked her why he had to make her understand, why couldn't she just accept?

Silence, as they'd stared at each other across the decking.

Don't forget the sequel, John.

He made himself remember. Memories were precious. Memories were his.

The sequel: the scene where he'd told Gilina he needed some space. Moving out of their shared quarters.

God damn you to hell, Scorpius.

What happened? How had he blown his cover? What had he done, what hadn't he done, that had tipped off the commando with pain in her eyes and steel in her fingers?

What had she done to him, to make him freeze so suddenly, to make the world stop around them? That sudden snap, inside of him? Would he ever know?

You'll never see it coming.

Sleeping. Waking. Walking.

Eenie. Meenie. Minie.

Moe.

The whispers inside his mind.

Stop. Stop.

Moving out of quarters with Gilina had been better for both of them. It was safer. He didn't want her to see him like this, not at night. She didn't want to see him like this; her frustration at his inability to just shake this off, regain his balance, be the strong man, the man with the plan, baffled her. They were both angry: she for having had her choices made for her, even though it saved her life at the time; he because he didn't get the type of acceptance, understanding, from her, never mind that it was his failure to communicate which was the problem.

His fault. He'd brought her on board, he'd made her come back, he couldn't properly tell her what was going on.

Just lock him in a cell and throw away the key.

A flash, a vision, a nightmare.

No, no, not the Chair. . . .

* * *

Aeryn frowned at the navigational unit. That didn't make sense.

She pulled the casing off and looked at the wiring. Ah. There was an intermittent short at the circuit bridge, which interrupted the messaging pulses to the processor. The processor timeout was set to half a microt; forever in machine time, the standard. She fixed the short in a few microts and replaced the casing.

"You're quite handy with tech."

She steeled herself not to whirl. She hadn't heard Rayn; how long had he been standing there? Had he meant to insult her?

"That's a compliment, by the way."

Ah. She breathed more easily. She'd been on board for less than a monen. The awareness of being in between worlds - not quite commando, not quite Ghost - was still her dominating sensation.

"Where did you learn to tech?"

"I didn't." She put her tools away and began running a full diagnostic on the nav unit. "Not formal schooling."

"You just picked it up as you went along?"

She frowned. "It's a recent interest." Fairly recent. Ever since she'd left the Gammak base, in fact. Prior to that, any exposure to tech had left her feeling confused, frustrated. Now, it was as though she could hold the concepts in her head, and tracing a problem in circuitry was coming as easily as she would trace a route on a map. Given all the other sensations she felt inside, she was more than happy to follow circuitry; it provided her with focus, calming all the thoughts that blurred together at times. "And we were always told - in training, that is - that in our new units, we would be expected to do some cross-training."

"I'm surprised they told you that."

"I think it makes sense."

"Of course it does. Which is why we've always done it. But that doesn't mean that the High and Mighty Command actually admits aloud to it, or accepts it for mainline troops." He paused. "If I'd known you were familiar with nav systems, I would have asked you to take fewer turns in Command and more time down here, nursing this baby. It's been causing us no end of problems for monens."

Nothing serious enough to warrant a stop, or perhaps their mission priorities had always been higher? Regardless, she wasn't sad she'd not indicated this interest aloud. She loved piloting. The Decca-class cruiser, named as homage to the lost Zelbinion, was more powerful than anything she'd flown before. It couldn't match her Prowler for maneuverability, of course, but this was a different sort of flying. And when she missed her Prowler, well, there were six ships clamped on to the hull.

He picked up one of the components she'd been playing with in her spare time. "Which star system do you think we ought to check first?"

Was this a test? "I don't know," she admitted.

"You haven't thought about it."

Censure? "I wouldn't know where to start, sir." As a Third, it would be some time before she had to think like a Command officer.

"Rayn."

Rayn. Pretty name. She liked it.

"I've got the raw data loaded on the Command and Control console. Look at it when you get a chance. Tell me what you think."

Why?

She wasn't sure if she'd said that aloud, or he'd just read the look on her face. "You're smart, Aeryn Sun. I've been watching you. You're quiet, but you pick up things real fast. You're on my team. You need to start acting like a part of it."

Her back straightened automatically. "Sir, if I've been failing you in any way--"

"No, you haven't. But you've done yourself a disservice." He put down the component, all pretense of whiling away time gone. "You're still caught between the worlds. I can see it. We've all been there. You were raised to know that what's back there--" His vague gesture indicated all that they had left behind. "--what's back there is what you should be. Everything out there, where we're going, is against your upbringing. Everything you've now been trained to be is wrong.

"Most people don't want to be Ghosts. I don't think you did. You just went where they told you; you reported to the proper places at the proper times. You took the proper training. Well, you're here now. There's a part of you that wishes you were still back there, where you know the rules. You know what time to eat, what time to sleep, when to recreate. They tell you where to go and where to die.

"You don't belong there, Aeryn Sun. You're not a part of that world anymore. If you don't step into ours, you're going to leave yourself alone. I don't think that's what you want, either."

She stared at him; she scrambled to keep all those little pieces of herself from spilling out, from flooding her like a rising tide. She pawed through her self, searching for the comfort of the void, and she came up empty. Empty.

"I didn't think . . . I was allowed to want."

"Back there, no, you can't. Not unless it's a prescribed emotion. But out here? Sometimes it's the only thing we have."

"But . . . then I'll never be able to go back."

"It's already too late, Aeryn. You just haven't accepted that yet."

* * *

It was too late to go back.

Tauvo watched his brother. Eagerly. Frightened. The former Captain was prowling around Moya's Command, stalking to read one console, then the other. Learning the dimensions of his new world.

Bialar.

Did he know, yet? Had he accepted? That it was too late for Tauvo to go back?

Do you know who I am, big brother? Do you know who I've become?

He'd wanted to see his brother again. Been overjoyed to find out that Bialar had been the one to save John from the Chair, to smuggle him out of the Gammak base. So Bialar hadn't known that John was his friend, had simply seen his younger brother in John's memories and reacted. Taken John away from Scorpius, only to have met his younger brother trying to infiltrate the base. For the Human.

No, Bialar hadn't accepted it. Not yet. Not fully. Big brother. Always thinking about him. Protecting him.

Do you know you're not in charge here?

Tauvo had grown a bit, here in the Uncharted Territories. A bit. He'd grown out from under his brother's shadow, as John would say.

John and Bialar. That wasn't going to be good; Tauvo sensed it already. Not on John's part, of course. John wasn't like that.

But Bialar was.

He hasn't taken your place, big brother. Can't you see that? No one has taken your place. But neither has anyone sheltered me here, like you did.

John had picked up on it already. Called Bialar 'Crais' instead of by his given name. A way to distance himself, a verbal space that included shadings of rights, respect. He'd also done the physical portion, keeping out of the way. Tauvo hadn't really seen John, talked to him, in some time.

He felt the urge again, strong, to go check on John. Something about him wasn't right, hadn't been, since his time in the Chair. The drawn look was still in his face, and his eyes were always red-rimmed. Tired. John had told him that it was sleeplessness. Tauvo had asked Bialar about the Chair, about how it worked and what to expect, but Bialar hadn't known, hadn't really cared. At the time he'd been told anything about the Aurora Chair, it was only a means to an end, an information conduit from John Crichton to Tauvo. He hadn't cared how it worked, only that it would, and Scorpius had assured him it would.

Bialar was here now, and hackled at the mention of John's name.

John has Gilina, anyway. Bialar has . . . me. Needs me.

Anger crossed his brother's face, marred the Captain's features Bialar had erected for himself oh so long ago. Tauvo remembered, recognized the signs. The storm was coming.

He needs me. Even though he doesn't know it yet.

So he stayed with Bialar.

* * *

Rayn watched as his new Third entered Command and went straight to the C&C console. He hid a smile, returning to his review of the logs.

That was the second solar day in a row. Which was good. They were scheduled to enter the first system in less then ten arns, and then the tedious part of the search would begin. Not something he was looking forward to.

Janak dozed over the environmental console, his hulk dwarfing the machinery. Marat was piloting, her pale hands dancing slowly across the controls. Time passed in that tableau, the hum of the ship throbbing imperceptibly around them, the soft sounds and movements of people working at their duty stations. Aeryn still hadn't shifted from her position when he moved to her side.

"Any new ideas?"

She started, a quick movement that was turned into a shrug. That deep in the raw data, eh? He'd been right about her. There was something . . . special. Something intense. He'd known it before reading the report that came with her. Now if he could only turn it the right way--

"No ideas at all." It was a measure of frustration that she snapped - as much as she ever snapped - at him. "I don't know how to look, Rayn. I review the data, but I feel like I'm concurring with Intel. Everything sounds plausible. Nothing seems to blink in red code and say, 'Yes, right here, look here.'"

He smiled and leaned back against the console, watching her. She was a beautiful woman, striking in her looks and poise. When she was focused, she took his breath away, but he'd never been the recipient of that energy. When he spoke to her, she was always working on something; he could feel her mind somewhere else. It wasn't that she wasn't listening to what he said, it was just that . . . he didn't require enough of her. He wondered, for a brief, guilty moment, how it would feel to have the entirety of that attention. It must be glorious--

Nine arns and counting. He resettled against the console and thought of how else to reach his goal, what other method of infiltration he could use. "How do you find someone on this ship?"

One eyebrow rose. "I call them on their comms. That's obviously not what you mean." She frowned. One finger tapped the console in precise rhythm. "Well, I try to figure out where they might be."

That was the reason why he'd specifically asked her to do this. He'd noticed that about her: she had the uncanny ability to find any member of the crew. It had been remarked upon in the mess deck, when she was otherwise occupied at another station. "How?"

"I don't know. I just think of where they might be. I know where they're not - wherever I've looked, obviously."

"It's a big ship. Not a Leviathan, but it would still take you several arns to check all the spaces. So what else?"

"Well . . . who they are." Her gaze drifted across the viewscreen in front of them. "Marat works on the maintenance bay consoles when she has a moment. She likes working there after shift, not before, so she won't have to interrupt what she's doing and report on duty. She'd rather sleep less than interrupt herself when she's on a sensor trail, or trying to decrypt a comms transmission. Janak, he walks the Tier Five corridors. Because it's an auxiliary level, there's no traffic in the halls. He can even run as long as he wants without dodging people. He doesn't like the gym."

Janak was staring at her. So was Marat, her pale eyes wide. Rayn felt a certain amount of awe - did she realize she not only knew where, but why? This was beyond his expectations! - but he maintained his professional face and his calm voice. "And the difference is?"

"Vast."

She had a dry sense of humour. "You know them."

"More than that. I live with them."

"Would that matter?"

After a moment: "I don't know."

"Then experiment." He looked at the chronometer. "We'll be in-system in approximately eight arns. I won't ask you to have something for me by then, but I will always welcome suggestions."

* * *

"Let her jump!"

"What's that gonna do for her?"

"Who cares? She wants to!"

"Well, did you ask her what she really wants?"

Ah. Yeah. That was the crux of the matter. Isn't it, John?

"She obviously wants to jump!"

How could she have said that? Didn't she care about Pip? Even Tauvo had cared, and had talked to Chiana. Not that it had helped. Tauvo had a crush on Pip; he wasn't going to do anything to pis