The Flame and the Figment (PG-13), Part 2
The Flame and the Figment Part 2
Part 1 is here: http://damnedscientist.livejournal.com/3401.html
Part 2:
“Has Crichton always been this insane?” Henta asked Braca, as she clutched at his shoulders and encouraged him to adjust his position slightly. They had come to a quiet part of the ship together to fix a leaky conduit. Once their work on Talyn was done they had agreed to engage in a little personal routine maintenance. “I mean, the talking to himself and everything?”
“Yes. Scorpius’ neural clone…. In his head… Talks to him…” Braca explained matter-of-factly between gulps of air.
“Hezmanna, really?” Henta frowned and kneaded her hands in Braca’s hair, trying and failing to get a grip on his short-cropped fuzz. “Oh!” She exclaimed, arching her back slightly. She took a couple of deep breaths. “So Scorpius could take him over at any moment?” She asked as they swapped positions.
“Hmm, possibly. Although I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” he sneered. “It’s me that has to share sleeping quarters with the frellwit.” Braca expounded in a somewhat irritated tone.
“Isn’t there…. anything we…. can do?” Came Henta’s somewhat muffled and fractured response. She pulled back for a moment to consider her options. “Other than spacing him, of course.” She plunged back down.
“Yes!” Cried Braca, evidently delighted. “So what’s wrong with spacing him?” he chuckled, although he added more quietly. “Apart from the fact I’ve already tried that and it didn’t work.” He let out a deep, heartfelt sigh.
“I don’t think Aeryn or Bialar would let us,” Henta remarked, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as she stood and began to sort out her dishevelled uniform.
“Well, there’s some sort of medical instrument that I heard is supposed to be able to neutralize the clone. We could go and have a look down in the med lab: I think I saw something like it down there when Jool was patching up my head last weeken? Maybe one of the techs from the carrier left it there?”
“Well, why didn’t you frelling say so?” Henta snapped back, zipping up the last of her clothing.
“You never asked. Besides, neither Scorpius nor the clone would be too happy….” Braca remarked, securing his pants.
“You think that matters now? Let’s get the gizmo and sneak up on him while he’s asleep.”
‘~’
Braca opened a small black and red case and pulled out a long, almost cylindrical black wand. It was maybe a dozen denches long and a couple of denches in circumference. “Got it!” he hissed.
“Are you sure that’s it?” Henta peered at the object. “It looks awfully like a….”
“I know what it looks like!” Braca frowned. “But which of us is more familiar with Scorpius?”
“You are,” she shrugged.
“And who is the senior officer?” he added.
“You. But,” she bit her lip. It really did look like something else, other than a device to remove neural clones. Not that she knew what one of those should look like. Maybe it was multifunctional?
“Correct, I’m the lieutenant, you’re the officer. Just remember that,” Braca blustered.
Henta decided that, put like that, she’d better just go along with him.
A few dozen microts later Braca and Henta crept into John’s darkened room. John lay on his cot, snoring heavily. Biting his lip with concentration, Braca gently pressed the narrow end of the device into John’s exposed ear whilst Henta both watched Braca and kept a look out from the doorway.
Braca pressed one of the flat buttons on the wider end of the device. Almost immediately it let out a loud beep and started to buzz.
“AERYN!” John shouted, seeming to be awake in an instant. Before anyone else had time to react he had pulled Winona from under his pillow and was pointing the gun at Braca’s startled face.
“What the hell are you doing?” John demanded angrily, blinking his eyes to clear the fuzz of sleep and confusion surrounding the circumstances of his awakening.
“Nothing, err, nothing,” Braca replied, somewhat unconvincingly. “Honest!”
“What the hell is that then?” John nodded to the vibrating object Braca still held in one hand.
"Oh…. That… Nothing…. It’s nothing!” Braca replied, looking at his hand as though he had never seen the object before in his life. He pressed the button again and, with another beep, it stopped buzzing.
“Well, if it’s nothing, you won’t mind leaving it here when you go, will you?”
“Ahhh!” Braca considered his options for a microt, before deciding to relinquish the neural neutraliser, tossing it onto John’s cot. “I suppose not.”
“Now get out! Get The Frell OUT!” John shouted, gesturing with Winona. Wisely, Braca complied. Henta had already made herself scarce some microts previously. “And don’t frelling come back!”
John picked up the gizmo and inspected it for a moment. It was nearly a foot long, and twice as thick as his thumb, smooth, slightly tapered, with a couple of buttons at the thicker end. It was, of course, black with red highlights. It’s appearance kind of reminded him of some sort of…. actually, he didn’t want to think about what it reminded him of or what Braca and Henta might have been planning by sticking it in his ear whilst he was asleep. He had long ago decided that Peacekeepers were sometimes just downright weird.
“Pfft! I know everyone and their dog out here is trying to mind-frell me, but this is just ridiculous!” He proclaimed to no-one in particular before tossing the device into the corner of his quarters.
‘~’
Jool couldn’t quite remember how she ended up drowning her sorrows with Crichton. But it was the middle of ship’s night and he was the only one willing to sit up and match her drink for drink, self-pitying anecdote for self-pitying anecdote.
“I think Miklo is recreating with that Henta woman,” Jool moaned as they sought refuge in one of the alcoves.
“Why’d you think that?” Crichton’s felt a momentary pang of hope. If Braca and Henta were together now, then maybe he and Aeryn stood a chance?
“Well, they’re both Peacekeepers aren’t they?” She stuck her bottom lip out. Crichton didn’t comment. It seemed to Jool as though he was lost in his own thoughts. “They’re always at it. Frelling, I mean.”
“I wish,” Crichton muttered morosely. Jool chose to ignore his comment.
“Besides, he wants me to dress up in all this leather fetish gear,” she complained. She ignored Crichton’s raised eyebrow as his eyes scanned up and down her current outfit.
“Well, you’re not exactly averse to…” he caught her scowl and stopped. “Sorry. Go on.”
“I draw the line at a leather balaclava. It’s not only kinky, it messes up my hair!” She finished with a defiant pout.
“So what you going to do?” Crichton offered her a swig from the raslak then took a gulp himself.
“Dump him, the lousy drannit.”
“Best thing,” Crichton advised with an understanding nod. He was beginning to slur his words, being a bottle of raslak ahead of Jool by then. “My gal is bunkin’ up with her homejirl. An’ I don’t even wanna know what they’re getting up to.”
Now it was Jool’s turn to raise a questioning eyebrow. She accompanied the gesture with a derisive snort. “Really?”
“Pah! S’no way they’d ever let me watch,” he snivelled, mistaking her sympathy over his situation for cynicism that he might not want to know what they were getting up to. He took another swig from his bottle.
Jool frowned. “Why would you want to? Watch, I mean?” Jool asked, genuinely not understanding. John leered at her then sniggered. In his inebriated state that meant that he nearly sprayed her with raslak.
“I’m a guy!” He smirked, “Guys dream about….” But then something seemed to make him very unhappy, and he choked out a sob.
Jool put down her own drink and moved closer, lifting a hand to his face to comfort him.
“Oh don’t cry. I’m sure things’ll get better.”
“Really, when?”
“They will. You’re a handsome man….” His eyes met hers and her thoughts started to stumble. His eyes were so blue, so breathtaking. “You could have any woman….” He snagged her hand in his, holding it to his face. She felt a little shiver run up her arm and an excited warmth stirring in her abdomen. “I mean… “ He looked so hurt, so needy. He pulled her knuckles to his lips and kissed gently. She shivered more extensively. “I mean, I know I would…” she continued. But her last words were lost as his hand crept up into her hair then gently pulled her in, closing the denches between them, allowing his lips to capture her mouth.
‘~’
Crichton was in a quandary. Actually, he was in his module, conducting essential maintenance. He was half hoping Jool didn’t stop by, not that he wouldn’t have welcomed a hand from her, but he had other concerns. He’d had girlfriends before who we would have classed as ‘Screamers’, but Jool took the description to a whole new level. On that first, drunken night together his brain had been too befuddled to remember in advance about the head and metal-melting power of her screams. He had nearly paid for his oversight with a perforated eardrum and some serious damage to Winona. He had only been saved from those twin disasters by capturing her mouth in a kiss which he had prolonged until she had calmed back down. Since then he’d been careful to restrict their amorous activities to first base.
Maybe she wasn’t right for him, he wondered? On the rare occasions he had been with Aeryn it was usually him that did the screaming, typically in the form of him begging her for mercy.
John found himself dressed in work denims, sitting on a porch next to a similarly attired, elderly Harvey. Mid-western plains stretched in every direction, as far as the eye could see. The low, satisfied roar of a lion came from a large sweetcorn patch in front of the house. What a lion was doing in such an all-American setting was not immediately obvious.
“Why you backin’ off now Johnny-boy?” Harvey asked, running a cleaning cloth over the shotgun nestled on his knees.
“Go away Harvey, I’m busy.”
“No you ain’t.” Harvey challenged. John ignored him. “What, you wanna get old alone?” John continued to ignore him. “What’s the point of being able to say you that ‘You’re John Crichton and you’ve loved only one woman with a passion no one else can understand’ if y’all end up alone, with just me and Aeryn the second hand Lioness over there?” Harvey drawled, pointing to the sweetcorn patch. ‘Aeryn’ growled contentedly in what seemed like a reply.
“You wouldn’t understand, Harvey.”
“Try me!”
“Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most, because those are the things worth believing in,” John recited.
“You don’t treat her right an’ Jool’s gonna dump you, y’know. Just like all the others.”
“All the others?” John replied angrily. “Oh, frell off, Harv.”
“Jus’ sayin is all….” Harvey continued polishing his gun in silence. After a while the sun began to set.
‘~’
When Jool saw Aeryn and Henta in the galley she almost turned right round and fled. Then she wondered if they’d notice if she did, as they both seemed so caught up in each other and the bottle of raslak standing between them.
She ventured inside, eventually summoning up the courage to join them.
“So,” Henta began, pouring a generous shot of something caustic and viscous into a small, metal beaker and slapping it on the table before Jool. “Now you’ve frelled all three of them, spill.”
Aeryn glared seriously at Henta for a couple of microts and Jool was afraid the dark haired ex-Peacekeeper was about to hit her friend. But then a huge laugh erupted from Aeryn and she slapped Henta on the shoulder.
“Yeah, who’s got the biggest mivonks?” Aeryn demanded. It sounded to Jool as though she might already be drunk. All of the evidence pointed that way. There were a multitude of liquid rings on the table top along with a couple of empty bottles of whatever it was they had found to drink.
“Who’s got the strangest mivonks?” Henta countered, slapping the table top in her mirth. As Jool looked on in affronted disbelief, both the
Peacekeepers cackled like the inebriated, uncouth soldiers that Jool knew them to be.
“It’s not like that!” Jool protested. She took a swig of the raslak. Like always, it went straight to her head, loosening up her tongue on he way.
“What is it like?” Aeryn asked gently.
“All men are perverts!” Jool explained. She swallowed another mouthful of raslak to chase away the pain and disappointment which accompanied that realization.
Henta giggled and nodded vigorously. Aeryn arched a questioning eyebrow.
“Not that I’m disputing you, but in what way?” Aeryn enquired. Jool thought back to Crais and his obsession with what he had termed ‘hardware insertion’. He had pestered her over and over to agree to taking the transponder. He had piled on the emotional pressure in all sorts of unreasonable ways, saying things such as she would do it if she really loved him. And then there was Braca with his weird, leather fetish. It was almost as though she wanted him to look like Scorpius when they were together. And as for Crichton… well, she wasn’t sure how Aeryn would take it if she spoke about her experiences with the frankly strange human.
“Let’s just say, I’ve dumped Crichton,” Jool admitted, thinking that that admission, said up front, might soothe Aeryn. “Or I’m going to, anyway.”
Just the smallest hint of what might have been a contented smile seemed to play at the corner of Aeryn’s lips, giving Jool more confidence to continue.
Having established that that news seemed to go down well, Jool decided, for better or worse, to share what had most upset her about the human. “All he ever wanted to do was kiss. That and play with my hair. Oh, and talk!” She’d be the first to admit that she was a long way from being as experienced as Aeryn or Chiana, but she expected a little more from a boyfriend than just that. “He never seemed to shut up!”
Aeryn laughed knowingly. To Jool it sounded like a bitter, empty sound.
“Men! You’re better off without them,” Henta continued.
“They will only bring you pain,” Aeryn added, a brief shadow of sadness flashing across her face.
“You can bunk with us, if you like!” Henta added, flashing both her companions an encouraging smile.
Jool blushed. She wasn’t like these Peacekeepers, frelling whoever came to hand simply in order to reduce stress, or rebalance fluid levels, as she knew they called it. Even if Henta’s invitation was no more than an honest solution to the combination of Jool’s troubled relationships and the limited sleeping accommodation on Talyn, Jool felt it was not for her.
“I couldn’t….” she demurred, shaking her head frantically, ringlets tumbling from side to side. “I’ll sort something out on my own.”
Henta laughed at that, loud and uncouth. Even Aeryn gave a little smirk. Jool wasn’t quite sure why.
“Hmm, yes, I reckon you’re better off balancing your own fluid levels,” Aeryn muttered into her raslak. “Frell men and their frelling emotions!” she added bitterly.
Henta cackled. “Not literally, though, Aer?” she added. Aeryn scowled back. “Well, not unless they’ve got a really, really big, shiny module?”
Aeryn raised an eyebrow and glowered coldly at Henta before turning her eyes to Jool. However, Jool was distracted. One of the other things that really got to her about Crichton was that he always seemed to want to make out in his module. Not only was it weird, it was downright uncomfortable: It was tiny inside and there were knobs and levers everywhere.
“Don’t listen to her.” Aeryn advised. “She’s just a cold-hearted, Peacekeeper bitch.”
“Pah!” laughed Henta. “And like you’re not!”
“I’m not” flounced Jool. “And I wasn’t!”
“What you need is a Jirls Best Friend.” Aeryn continued. Jool frowned, trying to understand what Aeryn meant.
“One with a good battery life. Copper tops last longest,” sniggered Henta. “But of course you’d know that.”
Jool glowered at Henta. The woman was obscene and incorrigible. But then she was a Peacekeeper, so that was only to be expected.
“You want everything you need to be in your own head,” Aeryn remarked sadly and a little unsteadily, picking her way carefully through the words.
“You want everything you need to be between your legs,” Henta retorted lasciviously.
“Then you won’t be relying on some frellwit to make you happy,” Aeryn snarled, glaring at Henta.
“Oh, lighten up, Aeryn!” Henta responded, thrusting the bottle of raslak towards her. “Have another drink!”
“Come on,” snapped Aeryn, grabbing Jool’s hand. “I’ll take you down to the med bay. Maybe they’ve got something down there you can use.”
“Something, what?” Jool asked, still genuinely not understanding what Aeryn had in mind.
“Hezmanna, you’re a hopeless innocent, aren’t you?” Aeryn replied, her eyes widening. “A vibra…”
“Oh! Umm!” Jool exclaimed, interrupting Aeryn and frowning at her sudden flash of realisation. An object which she had seen very recently abruptly appeared in her mind’s eye. “Actually, I think John might have one in his quarters.” The words were out before she even thought about them.
“So you do know!” Henta crowed.
Aeryn stopped dead in her tracks, frowning every bit as much as Jool. “What the frell would Crichton want with one of…. actually, I’m not sure I want to know.. . Let’s just go and get it!”
‘~’
The black latex sheets on Crais’ bed morphed and twisted, as though some strange creature of no fixed shape were conducting callisthenics beneath them.
The sound of Sikozu giggling filled the room for a few microts before being abruptly muffled.
“Oh yes!” Crais cried out. “Yes! Keep doing that! Talyn loves it when you do that!”
Sikozu abruptly sat upright, tossing back the sheets before going completely still. She glared down at Crais, who lay on the bed beneath her. He was a little confused as to why she had suddenly stopped doing what she was doing and was now staring at him with a thunderous expression.
“What’s wrong?” Crais asked, frowning.
“What did you just say?” Her words fell like lead weights into icy water.
“What? When?” Crais reached out a hand to her chest. She batted it away angrily.
“You just said that Talyn loves it when I do that!”
“No, I meant... ummm…. I don’t know what I meant.” There was a long silence.
“Have you got your transponder in?” Sikozu asked. There was another longer silence.
“Umm… I might have forgotten to take it out before…”
“You mean that little pervert has been watching us all this time!” Sikozu shouted, leaping from the bed and taking the sheet with her. Within two microts she had snatched her clothes from where they had fallen and was making for the door.
“Sikozu! Sikozu! Come back! It’s not like that! Not like that at all!” The door to his quarters swished shut behind Sikozu’s rapidly departing back. “Frell!” Crais remarked. Which was somewhat ironic considering that there now seemed to be very little chance of said activity in his immediate future.
“Yes Talyn, I think she is a little more than just upset with us. No Talyn. I don’t think you should do that. Or that. Look, just for once, leave this to me, understood?”
‘~’
Jool was alone in her quarters: She’d taken Aeryn’s advice, retiring to one of the sleeping quarters alone, except for the device they had recovered from Crichton’s room. Once she’d checked the door was locked, she’d settled down to enjoy some quality private time. It had been a much more invigorating and enervating experience than she’d expected. Almost as soon as she had activated the gadget, she had felt a shock run through her system unlike anything she had ever felt before. She knew the Peacekeepers took their recreation seriously, but this appliance made her feel so much more than she had ever expected. She would have to ask Aeryn what other similar toys the Peacekeepers had.
The rest of the crew had also retired an arn earlier and now all was quiet except for the occasional gasp, cry, or exhortation to a deity from one or other of the adjoining quarters. Oh, and a strangely satisfying argument between Crichton and Braca as to who was going to get to spend the night in the fourth sleeping chamber and who was going to spend the night sleeping in the galley. She had turned down the light to its lowest setting, to aid restful sleep, and was busy brushing her hair. When they had been together Crais had insisted that she do so every night, saying that Talyn would be very upset if she moulted everywhere. Braca had asked her to cut it, so that the leather skull cap he had wanted her to wear would fit better. Crichton had remarked that her grooming yielded a kitten’s worth of fur a night, whatever that was, before asking her if she’d ever considered dying it a different colour. Insensitive fekkiks, all of them! Aeryn was right. She was better off without a man, better off taking everything into her own hands and her own head.
She was naturally surprised when a hand gently snagged hers, peeling the brush from her fingers, but for some reason, she did not cry out.
“Here, let me do that,” spoke a cultured, somehow familiar male voice from behind her. The brushing continued, accompanied by capable fingers deftly fanning through her hair. Fingertips eased her hair aside and then moved closer, stroked her chin, tenderly worked their way up to her ear.
“You know, I have always admired you. Your intellect, your personality, your fashion sense, your….” Teeth gently nibbled her neck, hot breath tickled her ear. A hand oh-so-playfully, and oh-so-briefly, with a ghostly delicacy, cupped one breast before moving away.
Jool awoke with a start, her cheeks reddening to almost the same colour as her hair. Part of her was shocked that she had just had an erotic dream centred on Scorpius. But another, greater part of her wanted to return to the dream.
“Well, that can be arranged, my dear,” he said, his breath once more hot and urgent on her neck.
“Scorpius!?” Jool gasped, feinting to pull away from him in shock, but not exhibiting quite enough determination to actually succeed in doing so.
“Actually, no,” he smiled disarmingly, gently turning her and holding her at arms length. She frowned in incomprehension. “I am nothing more than a phantasm. A figment of your imagination, if you will.”
“So you’re not real?”
“On the contrary, my dear, I am very real. But only to you. I exist….. only in your head.”
Only in my head? Very interesting, Jool thought to herself. But first there were things she needed to know, such as did this mean that she was now as crazy as Crichton?
“But how?” she began to seek answers.
“Let’s just say that I am a clone of the neural clone of Scorpius that lives in John’s mind.”
“A clone?”
“Indeed.” He nodded.” John calls the other me Harvey.”
“Harvey. That’s a nice sound to it.”
“Thank you.” He smiled. It wasn’t exactly pleasant, but it was clearly the best he could manage.
“So how did you get here, in my head?”
“Some sort of botched attempt to destroy the Harvey in John’s head, as I understand it. Instead of neutralizing me, they copied me. And then the copy… Well, maybe it’s best not to think about it too much. What’s done is done. All that matters is that now I am here for you.”
“So you’re just a figment of my imagination?”
“Yes.” He caressed her cheek. Having explained himself, he now seemed intent on returning to his previous amorous activities.
“Oh!” she gasped as he kissed her neck, moving down towards her breasts. “So I can imagine anything I like with you.”
“Why, yes.” He mumbled into her décolletage.
She could feel her heart beating faster with excitement. She grinned broadly. “Well, I must say, this presents some very interesting possibilities.”
‘~’
“An escape pod. Out here?” John vocalised the thoughts of all those present on Talyn’s bridge.
“Apparently it is from the command carrier,” Aeryn explained from another console. It was the most she had said to Crichton all week.
“It’s drifting. Not responding to hails,” Henta supplied.
“But it could contain hostiles?” Braca remarked, looking shifty and nervous. “If it’s from the carrier?”
“We’d best go tooled up, then,” John replied with a snarl, slapping Winona and licking his lips as though he might actually be looking forwards to a bit of a fight.
“Males!” Henta snorted disparagingly.
“Very well, everyone who can do so, meet me in docking bay two in 200 microts. And bring weapons.” Crais announced, heading for the door. He had already instructed Talyn, through the transponder, to pull the pod in with his docking web.
‘~’
As Talyn’s crew waited for the docking bay to cycle the atmosphere was cold enough to freeze raslak. Yet the tension had little to do with the mystery of the pod. Almost everyone seemed to have at least one person that they were trying to avoid, some had two or three. Crais was trying to get closer to Sikozu, whilst at the same time she was trying to avoid him. Aeryn was ignoring Crichton and Henta, whilst Crichton, Crais and Sikozu were all trying to avoid Jool. Jool didn’t mind. She had a grin on her face and a far away look in her eye. Braca was quite shameless: Almost any time anyone bumped into him he tried to smile at them encouragingly. Everyone ignored his overtures.
Finally, the air lock opened and, guns drawn, they filed in towards the battered Peacekeeper transport.
‘~’
It was dark inside, and the air was musty with the sweet yet slightly nauseating smell of urine and stale sweat.
The crew fanned out and moved into the pod, torches searching out the secrets of the cabin. Dust motes rose and danced in the beams. The silence and stillness weighed heavily on the whole crew, causing half a dozen pulses to beat wildly.
“Please don’t shoot!” Came a cultured, female voice from ahead of them. Almost as one the torch beams leapt around, searching for the speaker. “I’m perfectly harmless.”
“Why didn’t any of you turn on the lights when you came in?” Sikozu remarked from the doorway, with just a hint of nonchalant superiority in her voice. She flicked a switch. The pod filled with bright light.
An elderly female was revealed, hiding behind a chair deep inside the pod, grinning like an idiot. From her extra eye and enlarged ears the more experienced amongst the crew guessed her to be a Traskan.
“Oh my, you’re a handsome young crew, aren’t you? I’m surprised you can keep your hands off of each other long enough to get anything else done,” the old lady teased playfully as she stood.
There was a brief, uncomfortable period of silence, broken only by the odd cough or low whistle.
“Shut the door, please Sikozu,” Crais asked, eventually breaking the silence.
“Why?”
“Because everyone is here. Look, just frelling do it,” Crais snapped back, picking something from his neck. Sikozu shrugged and did so.
Crais reached into a pocket and pulled out a little black box. Without further ado he pressed a button on it. Several of the crew enquired as to what it was.
“A comms suppressing device,” Crais explained. Ever since, a day earlier, he had discovered the shocking truth about recent events on
Talyn, he had been waiting for the chance to get the crew off of the ship to let them all know. It had been a hard job keeping those thoughts from Talyn and he was relieved that fate had presented him with this opportunity so soon.
“What’s that for?” was the near-universal sentiment in reaction to that revelation.
“So we can talk without Talyn listening in,” Crais almost explained.
“I thought you liked that?” Sikozu spat. Crais shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot but did not rise to her bait.
“I have discovered…..” Crais faltered, seeming quite embarrassed. “That is to say… erm.”
“Spit it out, man!” John encouraged to nods and grunts of support from all round.
“It seems that Talyn,” Crais began again, his face reddening, “Talyn has been allowing… umm, actually, that’s not quite right. Talyn has been causing a low level Drexim leak.”
Aeryn arched an eloquent eyebrow. “Oh!” she commented. Along with Crais she was the only one present on Talyn the last time that had happened, so she was the only one instantly familiar with what it meant.
“Oh, indeed, Officer Sun.”
“For how long?”
“Since we escaped from the command carrier.”
“Drexim, what’s that?” protested a number of other voices at once, Crichton’s being the loudest.
“Drexim is a substance secreted by leviathans that provides them with the ability to either fight their way out of a situation, or to run away,” Sikozu supplied, as though reciting from a textbook in her head. “In certain conditions, it can seep into the passenger area, and will induce behaviour changes ranging from extreme hunger to an increased sex drive….. Oh!” She finished with a shocked expression as a germ of realisation dawned on her. Beneath her breath, so no one else could hear, she muttered “its effects on bioloids are extreme and almost instantaneous.”
“Indeed. But not only that.” Crais intoned seriously, his eyes moving from face to face to emphasize the importance of what he was about to say. “He has been videoing the… ahem… consequences.”
“He what?”
“Huh?”
“Why?” Came a number of voices, protesting at once.
“I am hoping it was all purely for his own, adolescent gratification.” Crais blushed an even deeper crimson. “At least, I hope that is all that it was,” he reiterated, dropping a small pile of vid chips on the console in front of him. “And I also hope that I have acquired all of the videos.”
“So, we’ve all been horn-dogs for the last fortnight because Talyn has been pumping the air full of some sort of Uncharted Spanish Fly?” questioned John, inserting the obligatory incomprehensible Earth cultural reference. Most of the crew pointedly ignored him.
“Perhaps. We all have to ask ourselves, would we have behaved as we have when not under the influence of drexim?” Crais tapped on the pile of vid-chips with one, black-leather-gloved finger. “And would we want everyone to know what we’ve been up to?”
The faces in the pod reddened to match the colours of Jool and Sikozu’s hair.
“But we do all know what we’ve been up to!” Jool commented.
“And we’re all gonna have to face each other ever day over breakfast!” John added, to the confusion of everyone else, who couldn’t see what first meal had to do with anything.
“It may be best,” Henta suggested hesitantly after a long, poignant silence. “To pretend that the last two weekens never happened. You know. To go our separate ways. Where possible, to pretend we never met.”
There was a silence while everyone considered this suggestion, wondering if they’d be able to look at other members of the crew in quite the same way ever again. The silence was broken by a growing chorus of approval, with everyone being in rare agreement.
“Ah, an excellent idea. I may be able to help you all with that,” interjected the crazy, somewhat smelly three-eyed old woman as she pulled out a little pouch of white powder from somewhere about her tattered clothing. She held the powder up in the palm of her hand and grinned. “So, who is staying aboard this magnificent specimen of a Leviathan?” She asked with a broad grin. “And who wants to get off?”
The end. Your normal programming will resume momentarily.
The Flame and the Figment Challenge, by Nebari Rebel:
"Jool and Crais are in a happy relationship until Crais suddenly runs off with Sikozu. Jool, broken-hearted, has a hot one-night stand with Braca and a brief unhappy affair with John, then follows the wise advice of Aeryn and finds true love with Harvey."
Part 1 is here: http://damnedscientist.livejournal.com/3401.html
Part 2:
“Has Crichton always been this insane?” Henta asked Braca, as she clutched at his shoulders and encouraged him to adjust his position slightly. They had come to a quiet part of the ship together to fix a leaky conduit. Once their work on Talyn was done they had agreed to engage in a little personal routine maintenance. “I mean, the talking to himself and everything?”
“Yes. Scorpius’ neural clone…. In his head… Talks to him…” Braca explained matter-of-factly between gulps of air.
“Hezmanna, really?” Henta frowned and kneaded her hands in Braca’s hair, trying and failing to get a grip on his short-cropped fuzz. “Oh!” She exclaimed, arching her back slightly. She took a couple of deep breaths. “So Scorpius could take him over at any moment?” She asked as they swapped positions.
“Hmm, possibly. Although I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” he sneered. “It’s me that has to share sleeping quarters with the frellwit.” Braca expounded in a somewhat irritated tone.
“Isn’t there…. anything we…. can do?” Came Henta’s somewhat muffled and fractured response. She pulled back for a moment to consider her options. “Other than spacing him, of course.” She plunged back down.
“Yes!” Cried Braca, evidently delighted. “So what’s wrong with spacing him?” he chuckled, although he added more quietly. “Apart from the fact I’ve already tried that and it didn’t work.” He let out a deep, heartfelt sigh.
“I don’t think Aeryn or Bialar would let us,” Henta remarked, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as she stood and began to sort out her dishevelled uniform.
“Well, there’s some sort of medical instrument that I heard is supposed to be able to neutralize the clone. We could go and have a look down in the med lab: I think I saw something like it down there when Jool was patching up my head last weeken? Maybe one of the techs from the carrier left it there?”
“Well, why didn’t you frelling say so?” Henta snapped back, zipping up the last of her clothing.
“You never asked. Besides, neither Scorpius nor the clone would be too happy….” Braca remarked, securing his pants.
“You think that matters now? Let’s get the gizmo and sneak up on him while he’s asleep.”
‘~’
Braca opened a small black and red case and pulled out a long, almost cylindrical black wand. It was maybe a dozen denches long and a couple of denches in circumference. “Got it!” he hissed.
“Are you sure that’s it?” Henta peered at the object. “It looks awfully like a….”
“I know what it looks like!” Braca frowned. “But which of us is more familiar with Scorpius?”
“You are,” she shrugged.
“And who is the senior officer?” he added.
“You. But,” she bit her lip. It really did look like something else, other than a device to remove neural clones. Not that she knew what one of those should look like. Maybe it was multifunctional?
“Correct, I’m the lieutenant, you’re the officer. Just remember that,” Braca blustered.
Henta decided that, put like that, she’d better just go along with him.
A few dozen microts later Braca and Henta crept into John’s darkened room. John lay on his cot, snoring heavily. Biting his lip with concentration, Braca gently pressed the narrow end of the device into John’s exposed ear whilst Henta both watched Braca and kept a look out from the doorway.
Braca pressed one of the flat buttons on the wider end of the device. Almost immediately it let out a loud beep and started to buzz.
“AERYN!” John shouted, seeming to be awake in an instant. Before anyone else had time to react he had pulled Winona from under his pillow and was pointing the gun at Braca’s startled face.
“What the hell are you doing?” John demanded angrily, blinking his eyes to clear the fuzz of sleep and confusion surrounding the circumstances of his awakening.
“Nothing, err, nothing,” Braca replied, somewhat unconvincingly. “Honest!”
“What the hell is that then?” John nodded to the vibrating object Braca still held in one hand.
"Oh…. That… Nothing…. It’s nothing!” Braca replied, looking at his hand as though he had never seen the object before in his life. He pressed the button again and, with another beep, it stopped buzzing.
“Well, if it’s nothing, you won’t mind leaving it here when you go, will you?”
“Ahhh!” Braca considered his options for a microt, before deciding to relinquish the neural neutraliser, tossing it onto John’s cot. “I suppose not.”
“Now get out! Get The Frell OUT!” John shouted, gesturing with Winona. Wisely, Braca complied. Henta had already made herself scarce some microts previously. “And don’t frelling come back!”
John picked up the gizmo and inspected it for a moment. It was nearly a foot long, and twice as thick as his thumb, smooth, slightly tapered, with a couple of buttons at the thicker end. It was, of course, black with red highlights. It’s appearance kind of reminded him of some sort of…. actually, he didn’t want to think about what it reminded him of or what Braca and Henta might have been planning by sticking it in his ear whilst he was asleep. He had long ago decided that Peacekeepers were sometimes just downright weird.
“Pfft! I know everyone and their dog out here is trying to mind-frell me, but this is just ridiculous!” He proclaimed to no-one in particular before tossing the device into the corner of his quarters.
‘~’
Jool couldn’t quite remember how she ended up drowning her sorrows with Crichton. But it was the middle of ship’s night and he was the only one willing to sit up and match her drink for drink, self-pitying anecdote for self-pitying anecdote.
“I think Miklo is recreating with that Henta woman,” Jool moaned as they sought refuge in one of the alcoves.
“Why’d you think that?” Crichton’s felt a momentary pang of hope. If Braca and Henta were together now, then maybe he and Aeryn stood a chance?
“Well, they’re both Peacekeepers aren’t they?” She stuck her bottom lip out. Crichton didn’t comment. It seemed to Jool as though he was lost in his own thoughts. “They’re always at it. Frelling, I mean.”
“I wish,” Crichton muttered morosely. Jool chose to ignore his comment.
“Besides, he wants me to dress up in all this leather fetish gear,” she complained. She ignored Crichton’s raised eyebrow as his eyes scanned up and down her current outfit.
“Well, you’re not exactly averse to…” he caught her scowl and stopped. “Sorry. Go on.”
“I draw the line at a leather balaclava. It’s not only kinky, it messes up my hair!” She finished with a defiant pout.
“So what you going to do?” Crichton offered her a swig from the raslak then took a gulp himself.
“Dump him, the lousy drannit.”
“Best thing,” Crichton advised with an understanding nod. He was beginning to slur his words, being a bottle of raslak ahead of Jool by then. “My gal is bunkin’ up with her homejirl. An’ I don’t even wanna know what they’re getting up to.”
Now it was Jool’s turn to raise a questioning eyebrow. She accompanied the gesture with a derisive snort. “Really?”
“Pah! S’no way they’d ever let me watch,” he snivelled, mistaking her sympathy over his situation for cynicism that he might not want to know what they were getting up to. He took another swig from his bottle.
Jool frowned. “Why would you want to? Watch, I mean?” Jool asked, genuinely not understanding. John leered at her then sniggered. In his inebriated state that meant that he nearly sprayed her with raslak.
“I’m a guy!” He smirked, “Guys dream about….” But then something seemed to make him very unhappy, and he choked out a sob.
Jool put down her own drink and moved closer, lifting a hand to his face to comfort him.
“Oh don’t cry. I’m sure things’ll get better.”
“Really, when?”
“They will. You’re a handsome man….” His eyes met hers and her thoughts started to stumble. His eyes were so blue, so breathtaking. “You could have any woman….” He snagged her hand in his, holding it to his face. She felt a little shiver run up her arm and an excited warmth stirring in her abdomen. “I mean… “ He looked so hurt, so needy. He pulled her knuckles to his lips and kissed gently. She shivered more extensively. “I mean, I know I would…” she continued. But her last words were lost as his hand crept up into her hair then gently pulled her in, closing the denches between them, allowing his lips to capture her mouth.
‘~’
Crichton was in a quandary. Actually, he was in his module, conducting essential maintenance. He was half hoping Jool didn’t stop by, not that he wouldn’t have welcomed a hand from her, but he had other concerns. He’d had girlfriends before who we would have classed as ‘Screamers’, but Jool took the description to a whole new level. On that first, drunken night together his brain had been too befuddled to remember in advance about the head and metal-melting power of her screams. He had nearly paid for his oversight with a perforated eardrum and some serious damage to Winona. He had only been saved from those twin disasters by capturing her mouth in a kiss which he had prolonged until she had calmed back down. Since then he’d been careful to restrict their amorous activities to first base.
Maybe she wasn’t right for him, he wondered? On the rare occasions he had been with Aeryn it was usually him that did the screaming, typically in the form of him begging her for mercy.
John found himself dressed in work denims, sitting on a porch next to a similarly attired, elderly Harvey. Mid-western plains stretched in every direction, as far as the eye could see. The low, satisfied roar of a lion came from a large sweetcorn patch in front of the house. What a lion was doing in such an all-American setting was not immediately obvious.
“Why you backin’ off now Johnny-boy?” Harvey asked, running a cleaning cloth over the shotgun nestled on his knees.
“Go away Harvey, I’m busy.”
“No you ain’t.” Harvey challenged. John ignored him. “What, you wanna get old alone?” John continued to ignore him. “What’s the point of being able to say you that ‘You’re John Crichton and you’ve loved only one woman with a passion no one else can understand’ if y’all end up alone, with just me and Aeryn the second hand Lioness over there?” Harvey drawled, pointing to the sweetcorn patch. ‘Aeryn’ growled contentedly in what seemed like a reply.
“You wouldn’t understand, Harvey.”
“Try me!”
“Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most, because those are the things worth believing in,” John recited.
“You don’t treat her right an’ Jool’s gonna dump you, y’know. Just like all the others.”
“All the others?” John replied angrily. “Oh, frell off, Harv.”
“Jus’ sayin is all….” Harvey continued polishing his gun in silence. After a while the sun began to set.
‘~’
When Jool saw Aeryn and Henta in the galley she almost turned right round and fled. Then she wondered if they’d notice if she did, as they both seemed so caught up in each other and the bottle of raslak standing between them.
She ventured inside, eventually summoning up the courage to join them.
“So,” Henta began, pouring a generous shot of something caustic and viscous into a small, metal beaker and slapping it on the table before Jool. “Now you’ve frelled all three of them, spill.”
Aeryn glared seriously at Henta for a couple of microts and Jool was afraid the dark haired ex-Peacekeeper was about to hit her friend. But then a huge laugh erupted from Aeryn and she slapped Henta on the shoulder.
“Yeah, who’s got the biggest mivonks?” Aeryn demanded. It sounded to Jool as though she might already be drunk. All of the evidence pointed that way. There were a multitude of liquid rings on the table top along with a couple of empty bottles of whatever it was they had found to drink.
“Who’s got the strangest mivonks?” Henta countered, slapping the table top in her mirth. As Jool looked on in affronted disbelief, both the
Peacekeepers cackled like the inebriated, uncouth soldiers that Jool knew them to be.
“It’s not like that!” Jool protested. She took a swig of the raslak. Like always, it went straight to her head, loosening up her tongue on he way.
“What is it like?” Aeryn asked gently.
“All men are perverts!” Jool explained. She swallowed another mouthful of raslak to chase away the pain and disappointment which accompanied that realization.
Henta giggled and nodded vigorously. Aeryn arched a questioning eyebrow.
“Not that I’m disputing you, but in what way?” Aeryn enquired. Jool thought back to Crais and his obsession with what he had termed ‘hardware insertion’. He had pestered her over and over to agree to taking the transponder. He had piled on the emotional pressure in all sorts of unreasonable ways, saying things such as she would do it if she really loved him. And then there was Braca with his weird, leather fetish. It was almost as though she wanted him to look like Scorpius when they were together. And as for Crichton… well, she wasn’t sure how Aeryn would take it if she spoke about her experiences with the frankly strange human.
“Let’s just say, I’ve dumped Crichton,” Jool admitted, thinking that that admission, said up front, might soothe Aeryn. “Or I’m going to, anyway.”
Just the smallest hint of what might have been a contented smile seemed to play at the corner of Aeryn’s lips, giving Jool more confidence to continue.
Having established that that news seemed to go down well, Jool decided, for better or worse, to share what had most upset her about the human. “All he ever wanted to do was kiss. That and play with my hair. Oh, and talk!” She’d be the first to admit that she was a long way from being as experienced as Aeryn or Chiana, but she expected a little more from a boyfriend than just that. “He never seemed to shut up!”
Aeryn laughed knowingly. To Jool it sounded like a bitter, empty sound.
“Men! You’re better off without them,” Henta continued.
“They will only bring you pain,” Aeryn added, a brief shadow of sadness flashing across her face.
“You can bunk with us, if you like!” Henta added, flashing both her companions an encouraging smile.
Jool blushed. She wasn’t like these Peacekeepers, frelling whoever came to hand simply in order to reduce stress, or rebalance fluid levels, as she knew they called it. Even if Henta’s invitation was no more than an honest solution to the combination of Jool’s troubled relationships and the limited sleeping accommodation on Talyn, Jool felt it was not for her.
“I couldn’t….” she demurred, shaking her head frantically, ringlets tumbling from side to side. “I’ll sort something out on my own.”
Henta laughed at that, loud and uncouth. Even Aeryn gave a little smirk. Jool wasn’t quite sure why.
“Hmm, yes, I reckon you’re better off balancing your own fluid levels,” Aeryn muttered into her raslak. “Frell men and their frelling emotions!” she added bitterly.
Henta cackled. “Not literally, though, Aer?” she added. Aeryn scowled back. “Well, not unless they’ve got a really, really big, shiny module?”
Aeryn raised an eyebrow and glowered coldly at Henta before turning her eyes to Jool. However, Jool was distracted. One of the other things that really got to her about Crichton was that he always seemed to want to make out in his module. Not only was it weird, it was downright uncomfortable: It was tiny inside and there were knobs and levers everywhere.
“Don’t listen to her.” Aeryn advised. “She’s just a cold-hearted, Peacekeeper bitch.”
“Pah!” laughed Henta. “And like you’re not!”
“I’m not” flounced Jool. “And I wasn’t!”
“What you need is a Jirls Best Friend.” Aeryn continued. Jool frowned, trying to understand what Aeryn meant.
“One with a good battery life. Copper tops last longest,” sniggered Henta. “But of course you’d know that.”
Jool glowered at Henta. The woman was obscene and incorrigible. But then she was a Peacekeeper, so that was only to be expected.
“You want everything you need to be in your own head,” Aeryn remarked sadly and a little unsteadily, picking her way carefully through the words.
“You want everything you need to be between your legs,” Henta retorted lasciviously.
“Then you won’t be relying on some frellwit to make you happy,” Aeryn snarled, glaring at Henta.
“Oh, lighten up, Aeryn!” Henta responded, thrusting the bottle of raslak towards her. “Have another drink!”
“Come on,” snapped Aeryn, grabbing Jool’s hand. “I’ll take you down to the med bay. Maybe they’ve got something down there you can use.”
“Something, what?” Jool asked, still genuinely not understanding what Aeryn had in mind.
“Hezmanna, you’re a hopeless innocent, aren’t you?” Aeryn replied, her eyes widening. “A vibra…”
“Oh! Umm!” Jool exclaimed, interrupting Aeryn and frowning at her sudden flash of realisation. An object which she had seen very recently abruptly appeared in her mind’s eye. “Actually, I think John might have one in his quarters.” The words were out before she even thought about them.
“So you do know!” Henta crowed.
Aeryn stopped dead in her tracks, frowning every bit as much as Jool. “What the frell would Crichton want with one of…. actually, I’m not sure I want to know.. . Let’s just go and get it!”
‘~’
The black latex sheets on Crais’ bed morphed and twisted, as though some strange creature of no fixed shape were conducting callisthenics beneath them.
The sound of Sikozu giggling filled the room for a few microts before being abruptly muffled.
“Oh yes!” Crais cried out. “Yes! Keep doing that! Talyn loves it when you do that!”
Sikozu abruptly sat upright, tossing back the sheets before going completely still. She glared down at Crais, who lay on the bed beneath her. He was a little confused as to why she had suddenly stopped doing what she was doing and was now staring at him with a thunderous expression.
“What’s wrong?” Crais asked, frowning.
“What did you just say?” Her words fell like lead weights into icy water.
“What? When?” Crais reached out a hand to her chest. She batted it away angrily.
“You just said that Talyn loves it when I do that!”
“No, I meant... ummm…. I don’t know what I meant.” There was a long silence.
“Have you got your transponder in?” Sikozu asked. There was another longer silence.
“Umm… I might have forgotten to take it out before…”
“You mean that little pervert has been watching us all this time!” Sikozu shouted, leaping from the bed and taking the sheet with her. Within two microts she had snatched her clothes from where they had fallen and was making for the door.
“Sikozu! Sikozu! Come back! It’s not like that! Not like that at all!” The door to his quarters swished shut behind Sikozu’s rapidly departing back. “Frell!” Crais remarked. Which was somewhat ironic considering that there now seemed to be very little chance of said activity in his immediate future.
“Yes Talyn, I think she is a little more than just upset with us. No Talyn. I don’t think you should do that. Or that. Look, just for once, leave this to me, understood?”
‘~’
Jool was alone in her quarters: She’d taken Aeryn’s advice, retiring to one of the sleeping quarters alone, except for the device they had recovered from Crichton’s room. Once she’d checked the door was locked, she’d settled down to enjoy some quality private time. It had been a much more invigorating and enervating experience than she’d expected. Almost as soon as she had activated the gadget, she had felt a shock run through her system unlike anything she had ever felt before. She knew the Peacekeepers took their recreation seriously, but this appliance made her feel so much more than she had ever expected. She would have to ask Aeryn what other similar toys the Peacekeepers had.
The rest of the crew had also retired an arn earlier and now all was quiet except for the occasional gasp, cry, or exhortation to a deity from one or other of the adjoining quarters. Oh, and a strangely satisfying argument between Crichton and Braca as to who was going to get to spend the night in the fourth sleeping chamber and who was going to spend the night sleeping in the galley. She had turned down the light to its lowest setting, to aid restful sleep, and was busy brushing her hair. When they had been together Crais had insisted that she do so every night, saying that Talyn would be very upset if she moulted everywhere. Braca had asked her to cut it, so that the leather skull cap he had wanted her to wear would fit better. Crichton had remarked that her grooming yielded a kitten’s worth of fur a night, whatever that was, before asking her if she’d ever considered dying it a different colour. Insensitive fekkiks, all of them! Aeryn was right. She was better off without a man, better off taking everything into her own hands and her own head.
She was naturally surprised when a hand gently snagged hers, peeling the brush from her fingers, but for some reason, she did not cry out.
“Here, let me do that,” spoke a cultured, somehow familiar male voice from behind her. The brushing continued, accompanied by capable fingers deftly fanning through her hair. Fingertips eased her hair aside and then moved closer, stroked her chin, tenderly worked their way up to her ear.
“You know, I have always admired you. Your intellect, your personality, your fashion sense, your….” Teeth gently nibbled her neck, hot breath tickled her ear. A hand oh-so-playfully, and oh-so-briefly, with a ghostly delicacy, cupped one breast before moving away.
Jool awoke with a start, her cheeks reddening to almost the same colour as her hair. Part of her was shocked that she had just had an erotic dream centred on Scorpius. But another, greater part of her wanted to return to the dream.
“Well, that can be arranged, my dear,” he said, his breath once more hot and urgent on her neck.
“Scorpius!?” Jool gasped, feinting to pull away from him in shock, but not exhibiting quite enough determination to actually succeed in doing so.
“Actually, no,” he smiled disarmingly, gently turning her and holding her at arms length. She frowned in incomprehension. “I am nothing more than a phantasm. A figment of your imagination, if you will.”
“So you’re not real?”
“On the contrary, my dear, I am very real. But only to you. I exist….. only in your head.”
Only in my head? Very interesting, Jool thought to herself. But first there were things she needed to know, such as did this mean that she was now as crazy as Crichton?
“But how?” she began to seek answers.
“Let’s just say that I am a clone of the neural clone of Scorpius that lives in John’s mind.”
“A clone?”
“Indeed.” He nodded.” John calls the other me Harvey.”
“Harvey. That’s a nice sound to it.”
“Thank you.” He smiled. It wasn’t exactly pleasant, but it was clearly the best he could manage.
“So how did you get here, in my head?”
“Some sort of botched attempt to destroy the Harvey in John’s head, as I understand it. Instead of neutralizing me, they copied me. And then the copy… Well, maybe it’s best not to think about it too much. What’s done is done. All that matters is that now I am here for you.”
“So you’re just a figment of my imagination?”
“Yes.” He caressed her cheek. Having explained himself, he now seemed intent on returning to his previous amorous activities.
“Oh!” she gasped as he kissed her neck, moving down towards her breasts. “So I can imagine anything I like with you.”
“Why, yes.” He mumbled into her décolletage.
She could feel her heart beating faster with excitement. She grinned broadly. “Well, I must say, this presents some very interesting possibilities.”
‘~’
“An escape pod. Out here?” John vocalised the thoughts of all those present on Talyn’s bridge.
“Apparently it is from the command carrier,” Aeryn explained from another console. It was the most she had said to Crichton all week.
“It’s drifting. Not responding to hails,” Henta supplied.
“But it could contain hostiles?” Braca remarked, looking shifty and nervous. “If it’s from the carrier?”
“We’d best go tooled up, then,” John replied with a snarl, slapping Winona and licking his lips as though he might actually be looking forwards to a bit of a fight.
“Males!” Henta snorted disparagingly.
“Very well, everyone who can do so, meet me in docking bay two in 200 microts. And bring weapons.” Crais announced, heading for the door. He had already instructed Talyn, through the transponder, to pull the pod in with his docking web.
‘~’
As Talyn’s crew waited for the docking bay to cycle the atmosphere was cold enough to freeze raslak. Yet the tension had little to do with the mystery of the pod. Almost everyone seemed to have at least one person that they were trying to avoid, some had two or three. Crais was trying to get closer to Sikozu, whilst at the same time she was trying to avoid him. Aeryn was ignoring Crichton and Henta, whilst Crichton, Crais and Sikozu were all trying to avoid Jool. Jool didn’t mind. She had a grin on her face and a far away look in her eye. Braca was quite shameless: Almost any time anyone bumped into him he tried to smile at them encouragingly. Everyone ignored his overtures.
Finally, the air lock opened and, guns drawn, they filed in towards the battered Peacekeeper transport.
‘~’
It was dark inside, and the air was musty with the sweet yet slightly nauseating smell of urine and stale sweat.
The crew fanned out and moved into the pod, torches searching out the secrets of the cabin. Dust motes rose and danced in the beams. The silence and stillness weighed heavily on the whole crew, causing half a dozen pulses to beat wildly.
“Please don’t shoot!” Came a cultured, female voice from ahead of them. Almost as one the torch beams leapt around, searching for the speaker. “I’m perfectly harmless.”
“Why didn’t any of you turn on the lights when you came in?” Sikozu remarked from the doorway, with just a hint of nonchalant superiority in her voice. She flicked a switch. The pod filled with bright light.
An elderly female was revealed, hiding behind a chair deep inside the pod, grinning like an idiot. From her extra eye and enlarged ears the more experienced amongst the crew guessed her to be a Traskan.
“Oh my, you’re a handsome young crew, aren’t you? I’m surprised you can keep your hands off of each other long enough to get anything else done,” the old lady teased playfully as she stood.
There was a brief, uncomfortable period of silence, broken only by the odd cough or low whistle.
“Shut the door, please Sikozu,” Crais asked, eventually breaking the silence.
“Why?”
“Because everyone is here. Look, just frelling do it,” Crais snapped back, picking something from his neck. Sikozu shrugged and did so.
Crais reached into a pocket and pulled out a little black box. Without further ado he pressed a button on it. Several of the crew enquired as to what it was.
“A comms suppressing device,” Crais explained. Ever since, a day earlier, he had discovered the shocking truth about recent events on
Talyn, he had been waiting for the chance to get the crew off of the ship to let them all know. It had been a hard job keeping those thoughts from Talyn and he was relieved that fate had presented him with this opportunity so soon.
“What’s that for?” was the near-universal sentiment in reaction to that revelation.
“So we can talk without Talyn listening in,” Crais almost explained.
“I thought you liked that?” Sikozu spat. Crais shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot but did not rise to her bait.
“I have discovered…..” Crais faltered, seeming quite embarrassed. “That is to say… erm.”
“Spit it out, man!” John encouraged to nods and grunts of support from all round.
“It seems that Talyn,” Crais began again, his face reddening, “Talyn has been allowing… umm, actually, that’s not quite right. Talyn has been causing a low level Drexim leak.”
Aeryn arched an eloquent eyebrow. “Oh!” she commented. Along with Crais she was the only one present on Talyn the last time that had happened, so she was the only one instantly familiar with what it meant.
“Oh, indeed, Officer Sun.”
“For how long?”
“Since we escaped from the command carrier.”
“Drexim, what’s that?” protested a number of other voices at once, Crichton’s being the loudest.
“Drexim is a substance secreted by leviathans that provides them with the ability to either fight their way out of a situation, or to run away,” Sikozu supplied, as though reciting from a textbook in her head. “In certain conditions, it can seep into the passenger area, and will induce behaviour changes ranging from extreme hunger to an increased sex drive….. Oh!” She finished with a shocked expression as a germ of realisation dawned on her. Beneath her breath, so no one else could hear, she muttered “its effects on bioloids are extreme and almost instantaneous.”
“Indeed. But not only that.” Crais intoned seriously, his eyes moving from face to face to emphasize the importance of what he was about to say. “He has been videoing the… ahem… consequences.”
“He what?”
“Huh?”
“Why?” Came a number of voices, protesting at once.
“I am hoping it was all purely for his own, adolescent gratification.” Crais blushed an even deeper crimson. “At least, I hope that is all that it was,” he reiterated, dropping a small pile of vid chips on the console in front of him. “And I also hope that I have acquired all of the videos.”
“So, we’ve all been horn-dogs for the last fortnight because Talyn has been pumping the air full of some sort of Uncharted Spanish Fly?” questioned John, inserting the obligatory incomprehensible Earth cultural reference. Most of the crew pointedly ignored him.
“Perhaps. We all have to ask ourselves, would we have behaved as we have when not under the influence of drexim?” Crais tapped on the pile of vid-chips with one, black-leather-gloved finger. “And would we want everyone to know what we’ve been up to?”
The faces in the pod reddened to match the colours of Jool and Sikozu’s hair.
“But we do all know what we’ve been up to!” Jool commented.
“And we’re all gonna have to face each other ever day over breakfast!” John added, to the confusion of everyone else, who couldn’t see what first meal had to do with anything.
“It may be best,” Henta suggested hesitantly after a long, poignant silence. “To pretend that the last two weekens never happened. You know. To go our separate ways. Where possible, to pretend we never met.”
There was a silence while everyone considered this suggestion, wondering if they’d be able to look at other members of the crew in quite the same way ever again. The silence was broken by a growing chorus of approval, with everyone being in rare agreement.
“Ah, an excellent idea. I may be able to help you all with that,” interjected the crazy, somewhat smelly three-eyed old woman as she pulled out a little pouch of white powder from somewhere about her tattered clothing. She held the powder up in the palm of her hand and grinned. “So, who is staying aboard this magnificent specimen of a Leviathan?” She asked with a broad grin. “And who wants to get off?”
The end. Your normal programming will resume momentarily.
The Flame and the Figment Challenge, by Nebari Rebel:
"Jool and Crais are in a happy relationship until Crais suddenly runs off with Sikozu. Jool, broken-hearted, has a hot one-night stand with Braca and a brief unhappy affair with John, then follows the wise advice of Aeryn and finds true love with Harvey."