The Last Place - DVD Commentary Edition 2/4(?)
Welcome back to the commentary track for The Last Place. Hope you refilled your popcorn bowl and emptied your bladder, 'cause here we go again...
CONTINUED FROM HERE
~~~
“Stop your pacing, Stykera. I’m sure they’re both fine.” Noranti looked up from the broth she was stirring to see Stark start another circuit of the kitchen.
“They should have been back arns ago, you said so yourself. We should at least check on D’argo…” He’d taken to stroking the smooth skin of his right cheek in times of anxiety, and he was doing it now.
All the true Stark-nuts who've read this have applauded me for that detail, and I have to admit I'm proud of it. I will be sorely dissapointed if when (WHEN!!) we get the Movie or whatever and Stark is (IS!!!) in it, Paul hasn't come up with that himself.
Noranti snorted, and threw another handful of dust into the pot.
Yes, dust. Possibly of the angel variety. What? It's Noranti.
“Oh, I’d very much like to, but the dear mother decided that code locking the door and filling the room with DRDs was much better than letting me at her precious little one.”
Stark nodded absentmindedly, still stroking his cheek. “Aeryn can be irrational…” Abruptly, he stopped pacing and looked up. “Pilot,” he called out, and the clamshell sprang to life with Pilot’s image.
“D’argo Sun-Crichton is still sleeping peacefully, Stark,” Pilot said in a long suffering tone. “I will inform you and Noranti the microt he needs anything.” Stark began to apologize when Pilot suddenly looked concerned.
“Wait…” he said, and held up a claw while the other three moved over his control board.
billietallent pointed this out to me. "Liza, this means he has four arms." *nods* "Yes, he does." *she blinks* "Oh! In canon!" "Yes, Am." It's not her fault she's betaing something she doesn't watch the show for.
“Yes? What?” Stark started to look mildly alarmed, and Noranti reached for her spray bottle.
Because she might have the hots for him, but she's not above valium-aeresoling his crazy Stykera ass if he looks like he's gonna backslide.
“Is it D’argo, Pilot?” she asked calmly, not taking her eyes from the Stykera.
Pilot shook his head. “Moya is detecting the signal of an unfamiliar ship,” he began, then screamed as the ship lurched abruptly to hammond and everything went black.
I was a little worried about the sheer abruptness of this, but in the end I think it works.
~~~
He’s alive. He’s only taking one breath every hundred microts or so, but he’s definitely alive.
Aeryn reaches over him to grab the spears from his back, and thank God I’m quick enough to stop her before she yanks. I pull her away from Stark till we’re both sitting on the floor, her in my lap, still struggling.
“He knows where D’argo is, John! He knows who took him!” She’s nearly snarling with rage, and it’s breaking my heart. I kiss her temple and try to soothe her, even though I’m damn near panicking myself.
“Baby, they took D’argo from him after they shot him. The best he can do is tell us how many there were, so we know if the DRDs got them all.” Something about what I just said flicks a switch in my brain, but before I can get it to solidify Aeryn’s nodding and starts calming down.
She looks up at me, nails me to the spot with those grey eyes. “We have to wake him up.”
“Oh, yeah, absolutely, babe! But we don’t know what those swizzle sticks are doing to him, or what’ll happen if we yank ‘em out. He might start bleeding sunbeams all over the place.”
A little forced, but I still love this image. And John's being so cute!
Aha. That gets me a smile, and I coax another one out with “I don’t know about you, but my glow-worm first aid skills are rusty.”
Suddenly her head snaps up. “Noranti.”
Because if someone mentioned bugs and first aid right after each other, wouldn't you think of Noranti?
“Noranti?” I’d forgotten her again. I just can’t seem to keep a thought in my head, except Where the hell is my son??,
...or "how do I keep this three-ring-circus of a plot moving?"
and if I think too hard about that one I won’t be any good to anybody.
But Aeryn’s all focus. She nods, and starts getting up, grabbing Stark. “We need to get him to Noranti. She’s the closest thing to a medic we have. He might not be dead, but one breath every hundred microts can’t be normal.”
And that’s when I finally remember I left Pilot hanging.
...And immediately get John to notice it too so the readers don't notice and think it's just him who's distracted by everything going on.
“Damn! Right, okay, yeah, but you go to Pilot, make sure he’s okay, and he can tell you where Noranti is.”
She nods, and she’s out the door like a shot.
I turn back to Stark, but suddenly that something that’s been bugging the crap out of me ever since the DRDs turned back on finally resolves in my brain. Where the hell is 1812? I turn to ask Aeryn to look out for him but she’s long gone and the goddamned coms still aren’t working.
“Hey, 1812?” I call out.
Nothing. God, I hope he’s just playing possum again, or lost, or something.
This originally read "God, I hope he's just lost, or something" which made for a smoother Moore transition to the next bit, but I changed it so people wouldn't think I'd forgotten that the "1812 being the only DRD left concious when Moya and the other DRDs are knocked out" thing had happened in canon in ISTIA which I diddn't remeber at all until I was looking up how a vaccum coma works and got desperate enough to resort to transcripts.
~~~
Please let it not be too late, oh Goddess, please, the Stykera offered up in silent prayer as he ran through Moya’s passageways in the dark. He was trying to banish from his mind the desperate memory of running through Moya once before, racing against death, meeting closed doors at every turn…
Because I don't care how sane he is, this has gotta be bugging him.
“This is my fault, my fault, they followed me…” he muttered as he pressed against yet another closed door, feeling the panic rise.
He wanted to scream, lose all control, and give in to the panic, but something wouldn’t let him. Don’t you remember, Stark? You’re a Banik again, a real one, and Banik don’t panic; it’s why they make us slaves.
Paul has mentioned that that bit of canon, the "Banik don't show feelings or pain so people enslave them" thing, seems to have fallen to the wayside, but I just think it's a peculiarity of Stark that he's so "out" whith his feelings and thoughts - and if you watch you notice that he is incredibly good at camoflaging his motives and feelings, at least up to a point.
It was good advice, except for the bitterness laced though it. Fortunately it pointed out his solution for dealing with it. He took a deep soothing breath, and told his “twisted core” to go frell itself; there was family in danger. A “real Banik” would die before allowing an infant of kin to come to harm.
John is family. Aeryn is family. As surely as if they'd been born Banik to the same mother as Stark. You canont disloge this bit of fanon, no sir.
Ah yes. Sanity, he thought, I remember sanity now. How comforting to know it stays when there’s a crisis, now. He allowed himself a small smile as he collected his thoughts. Work now, freak later. I won’t fail you, John. Not after everything you’ve done for me.
There was something unspoken, unthought, lingering in bitterness at the end of that, and the memory threatened to overwhelm him again, as it had so often in the past. But he pushed it aside with practiced ease, a gift once long lost to the embrace of the Aurora Chair. Why should he grieve over what he had lost when it - when she - was always with him?
But he was wasting precious time.
That statement was actually me talking to myself. I was worried that I was going too deep into his head here, wasting narrative time on emotional exposition that didn't go anywhere. Of course, it's Stark, so I really couldn't help myself, and in the end it adds weight to the ending, I think. Plus the fact that this was written for Astro, after all.
He was just trying to determine if trying to find his way by another route - in the dark - was worth it when a bolt of energy crackled next to his head and he threw himself to the ground, eyes straining to catch a glimpse of whatever had fired at him.
Did you know I had to conciously go back and add the "s" to "eyes" in there? Old habits...
He thought it sounded like a DRD, but that was impossible; all of Moya’s DRDs had been knocked out along with Pilot and everything else connected to Moya’s systems…
Wait… That was it! All of Moya’s DRDs had been knocked out, but a memory of the last time he was here came to the surface of his mind. Crichton’s “pet” - salvaged from another Leviathan, painted and named for something from earth history. He remembered it being fiercely loyal to Crichton. If he had some way of convincing the drone he was on its side, an ally…
Stark encountering 1812 during the "Bad Timing/PK Wars" stint and it making enough of an impression to remember was not too much of a stretch, I hoped.
Knowledge born of memories from a life not his flooded his mind, along with a dry chuckle that seemed to say “Blue White and Red, and Tchaikovsky… Cute, Johnny. That’s so me. So us.”
Hopefully it's clear this is TalynJohn speaking, and not Stark. Cause that just makes no sense.
He puckered his lips, and whistled nine notes, then repeated them, then waited.
*grins* Ah yes. The infamous "stop reading to count on your fingers and whistle (or go 'da da da')" bit. I did it when I wrote it, everyone who's read it in my preasence has done it, and when hybridbabe was reading it in while we were both in a Terra Firma chatroom, she exclaimed that the opening has ten notes, not nine, and the argument took over the chat room for ten minutes. Mike was reading over my shoulder at the tme, and figured out that the 1812 overture does have ten notes - but John (like alot of people) slurred the first two together when programming 1812. So we're both right, in a way.
An answering strain of eleven notes floated back to him from the corridor ahead, heralding the arrival of a DRD, painted in what Stark’s mind informed him was the French flag, along with its name in earth numerals across its side, piping out in muted tones the tune which gave it its moniker.
“Hello, 1812,” Stark whispered, smiling. “I’m Astro, and I’m a friend.
That just tickles me. I love that that's how he introduces himself. I'm not entirely sure it's whimsey on his part or some weird-ass sense of ettiquette.
I need to get to little D’argo’s room, and I need to get there now. I don’t suppose you’ve been coded to open the doors?”
But clever Crichton, Crichton who always had a plan, had thought of everything. Or rather the radiant Aeryn Sun - who although irrational at times, was still very good when it came to contingency plans - had.
Very very VERY Stark-POV narration. But I give almost eaqual time to Kosta later on (a bit to counteract this, I think) and the Epilog is really very much all Aeryn, so it balances out, I think.
A few chirps from 1812 and the door slid open.
Stark lifted himself off the floor and swiftly followed 1812 through the doorway, making sure it locked behind them. He hoped Noranti was doing as well trying to revive Pilot, and prayed again that their luck held out when it came to the intruders. They hadn’t encountered any yet, but the Qualati were on Moya by now, he was certain.
~~~
I don’t know what the hell to do for Stark besides make sure he takes that breath every minute or so, so I start looking for 1812.
God, but these cat things are ugly bastards. Big grey charbroiled rugs. I really hope there aren’t any more of them running around, because they’re scary looking enough dead. They’re about the size of small bears, and they’ve got this wicked looking black body armour that reminds me too much of Scorpy for my liking. “Teeth, claws, tails…” I’m talking to myself, but it’s not like Astro’s gonna complain. “It’s like somebody fed a bunch of lynxes steroids and taught ‘em to stand on their hind legs and shoot pulse pistols.”
And the only reason he's talking to himself is to contrast with what comes next, that he doesn't want to say...
And cut open leviathans, and make Banik kabobs, and kidnap babies… I give one of them a good, solid kick and he rolls over, uncovering the crushed wreck of a DRD on its back.
My hand’s shaking as I go to flip it over, but Pilot’s face comes up on the clamshell before I get the chance, and I’m glad.
Because he knows. He suspects. Because he knows how his luck runs.
“Pilot!” I yell, sounding a hell of a lot more chipper that I feel. “Please tell me this means you’ve got the comms working!”
“Yes, commander, but Officer Sun is occupied at the moment.” He blinks in that slow thoughtful way of his, and the poor guy looks tired. “She’s searching for Noranti, and what DRDs I can spare are helping her.”
I’m nodding. “Yeah, good. You need me down there? Stark seems pretty stable, and there’s still…” I nearly lose it to a lump in my throat, but I swallow it down. “There’s still two working DRDs up here,” I finish.
Pilot blinks at me again. “I am aware of my own DRDs, commander.”
God, I’m a stupid, stupid human today. Having your family threatened and missing will do that to a guy. I close my eyes and rub the bridge of my nose. “Sorry, Pilot. What do you need?”
He comes close to smirking when he says “I was wondering, commander, if you would like to interrogate our prisoners.”
That Pilot didn't mention this till now I was hoping was realistic, and was in fact the main reason for shorting out the coms in the first place. I needed people split up and confused and not talking so I could deal with one thing at a time as John encountered it.
My turn to blink. “What? The cat things? We caught some?”
“Indeed, commander.” He gives me a Pilotish shrug. “Captured while Moya and I were unconscious.”
So help me, even if it’s Granny who managed that one, I’ll kiss her!
I leap up to tell him I’ll be right there, and my foot catches the edge of the DRD corpse I was hesitating over, flipping it upright.
Something cold settles in my stomach when I see the twisted and broken shards of red, white, and blue metal.
11:30 PM, during the beta period for Last Place. My phone rings. I pick up. kenderheart yells "You killed 1812 you bitch!" Many weeks later, in the middle of the aformentioned Terra Firma chast, HybridBabe suddenly screams "OMFG YOU KILLED 1812!!!! You TRALK!!" confusing the dren out of everyone else in the room. Both times I supress chuckles and think "oh, you hate me now..."
I lift my head to look at Pilot, my eyes cold, and my voice is deadly quiet when I say “Oh yeah. Me and the Kit Kat Klub are going to talk.”
~~~
Commander Behrin Dhaan of the Qualati Striker Dawn Craft sniffed the air,
Okay. I have a freind named Sabrina Dawn Kraft, and I think that's one of the coolest names I've ever heard. She is obsessed with cats, and roleplays ALOT of Bastet and other were-cats and cat people. absolutely NONE of her personality went into Behrin, whose personality and name instead comes from Be'rHin, a klingon character of Sabrina's. This is also when I found out that the big powerfull cat men in D'argo's room were in fact cat women, because in large carnivores, the females often are bigger and more powerful. Classic sci-fi trope.
then motioned for her second in command to bring the rest of the pride forward while she waited for their scout to report back.
They used to be a "pack" but kenderheart pointed out that they sounded like dogs that way, so I changed it to pride and i'm so glad I did, because it goeth before a fall, you know...
“Well, Kosta?” she snarled when he finally came around the corner.
“It’s a typical Leviathan all right, just like the one I was held captive on. The pilot’s chamber is right ahead. But there’s someone in there…” He trailed off and his tail twitched anxiously.
Behrin’s ears quivered. “Sabacean?”
Kosta shook his head. “There’s smell of Sabacian everywhere, but it’s not fresh. And some of it smells...” he paused thoughtfully, sniffing the air again, “Off, more like an Interion, but not quite. Some kind of half-breed, maybe?” He snorted, momentarily emboldened by his frustration with this hunt. “Not that it’s easy to tell with the stew of Hynerian, Luxan, Nebari, Banik, Kalish, Interion, Scarran, and I even caught a very old whiff of Delvian…”
A beta objected to this, and I defended it, saying it was meant to showcase just how crazy good his sense of smell is, underlining the fact that later he's jerking them around.
“Kosta Vhuus!!” Behrin hissed, drawing herself to her full height to tower over the now cowering scout. “You worthless male, what is in the Pilot’s chamber?”
Kosta shrunk down on his haunches. “Spare my worthless hide, Commander, but I was saving the best for last.” He licked his lips nervously before continuing, “It’s a Traskan.”
Low, purring chuckles went through the rest of the pride, and Behrin’s eyes gleamed as her face split in a feral grin. “Oh, indeed? How fortuitous. We shall have some sport, then.”
At this point I had no idea what these guys had against Traskans, but I knew they wanted to strew Noranti's guts all over space.
~~~
Damn, these things are even uglier in person than they are laying around dead. There’s three of ‘em, which brings us to a grand total of six. Two of ‘em are as big as the three in D’argo’s room, and they’re glaring at me like they’d like to rip my guts out for looking at them funny, but the third one’s a lot smaller and he twitches like… Well, like a caged cat.
I’ll bet anything he’s the one that’ll crack, if I could just figure out a way to get him alone.
Because I'd inexplicably fallen in love with the little bullied male scout (who was the only one who'd been given a name for one of MY RPG characters, Jenny Kostabus) and knew that he'd rat the rest of them out and be more sympathetic.
All I’ve gotten out of these guys so far is ‘name, rank and serial number’ more or less, which really amounts to a bunch of cat snarls, and even then the Commander’s been doing all the talking.
“Okay, Billie Jean…” I start, looking at the big, meanest looking one.
“Behrin Dhaan!!” She snarls. Yup. Definitely alpha female.
Hee. One of my better Crichtonisms.
“Yeah, whatever. Let’s start over from the start.” I start pacing, keeping my voice light. “You’re Qualati traders, which means nothing to me, and you found my Leviathan floating abandoned in space, thought she was salvage, and boarded her.”
She licks her lips, and Twitchy the Omega Male snaps his tail around some more. “That’s correct.” she finally says, and her other big buddy nods before snarling at Twitchy till he shrinks down again.
I hit the bars of the cell with Winona and smile when they all jump back. “No, see, that’s not correct, because that doesn’t explain how there’s three more of you lying dead in my infant son’s room with a bunch of goddamn fondue sticks sticking out of the back of my Banik!” Okay, so he’s not strictly speaking my Banik, but it sounds better than “former cellmate” and anyway I might look more intimidating to these kitties if I’ve got a slave.
Big nasty number two flicks her ears back in what I think is surprise and gasps out “You killed them? You killed them all?”
At this point I feel it only fair that I give credit where credit is due for the vast bulk of the Qualati's body language to Janet Kagan, whose Sivaoans from "Uhura's Song" are my favorite cat-people of all time, and the ones with the most richly develloped culture.
Billie Jean whips her head around and snarls “Silence, Kethrin Klaar!”
Catherine StClaire, a werecat RPG character of Sabrina's...
I know how to deal with boss-lady there; I ignore her and start talking to number two. “Much as I’d like to say so, Kathy Claire, they were already rugs by the time I got here. Near as I can tell they got shot up by DRDs, after plugging my Banik full of holes and grabbing my kid out of his arms.” I step back from the cell and fling my arms out. “Except none of them have my kid on them, with makes me think you guys were there, grabbed the kid, and stuck him somewhere before you got bagged.” I lean in until my face is inches away from Billie Jean’s snarling maw, and I’m snarling right back. “Am I getting warm?”
I don't feel too bad about "lying" to the readers about what happened because they're perfectly reasonable things for John and Aeryn to assume. Hopefully I'm not leading the reader by the nose but re-inforcing conclusions they've come to anyway.
I hear this weird high pitched snort coming from the back of the cell and I look over Commander Kathmandu’s shoulder at Twitchy, who stares at me for a second before blurting out, “You’re John Crichton?”
Aha. Now I think we’re getting somewhere, especially since Billie Jean and Kitty Kath look like they’re going to disembowel him for that one. A pulse pistol in the muzzle curtails that idea right quick.
“Why yes, I am John Crichton. Why do you ask, my good…” I give him my best grin. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”
“Ah, Kosta. Kosta Vhuus.” He’s still looking sideways at his commander, but I keep Winona steady, and he gets the idea that I’m not gonna let her move an inch towards him till I hear what I want to. “I ask because…” and he does some kind of weird bow, baring his neck at me and pulling in his claws, “meaning no offence, you don’t smell like a Sebacean.” Ah. Okay then.
“Yeah, well, that’s a long story, Kosta buddy; it’d probably take me ninety-two arns to tell it.
I'm shamesless. I admit it. :D
But what I mean is,” and I grin at him with a look I stole right off of Aeryn that’s not meant to reassure him at all, “how did me mentioning that the kid was mine make me John Crichton?” His eyes go wide and his ears go back and he’s looking at the other two like he expects them to knock him dead any second for the phenomenally stupid thing he just did. I don’t let any of them answer; I plough right on ahead, gesturing with Winona to make my points. “See, I think you bozos were looking for John Crichton’s son, and you got him, but we got home before you could get back to your ship, and everything went south and here you are, locked in a cage.”
We’re back where we started, with the two tough girls staring at me sullenly and Twitchy Kosta cowering in the back, but I’ve scored a few points, because they’re way more uneasy under the tough-cat act now.
I decide to press my advantage. “Now, I don’t really care how the hell you got locked up. And while I am curious as to why you were after D’argo in the first place, and who hired you, that really can wait.” I let the smile on my face drop like a rock and my voice gets very, very quiet. It isn’t hard when I think about Stark lying still as death on the floor, the broken bits of 1812, the burned hole in Moya, and my son being held by one of these things.
In order of ascending priority for John. Again with the devalueing the Banik.
“So, what I want to know is very, very simple. Where. Is. My. Son?”
They look at each other, tails twitching. Something is very wrong here. Kosta’s about to open his mouth when Billie Jean smacks him across the face, claws out, and he goes down like a sack of potatoes, clutching his face and whimpering.
Originally I had him knocked out, then realized I needed him awake in the next section, and it didn;t make sense for him to be out so short a time, so "he's just stunned!"
Winona’s in her muzzle before she can finish turning back around to face me “Paws up, Kathmandu!” I’m screaming, but I don’t care. I’m this close to looking for an excuse to send these guys to meet their charbroiled buddies.
But she obliges, polite as anything, and Kathy Kat follows suit.
“My apologies, Commander Crichton,” she purrs, tilting her head to one side, “but discipline must be maintained even in adverse circumstances and Kosta Vhuus has spoken above his station one too many times this day.”
I nod, but I don’t drop the gun. “Good help is hard to find. I myself have been having a bitch of a time lately with babysitters.”
This is my FAVORITE line of John's in this fic, because I can hear it so clearly in my head. I want to approach Ben Browder with a tape recorder and get him to say this.
She blinks, but continues, “I have a proposition for you.”
Why don’t I like the sound of that? Might as well hear her out, though. “Oh yeah? Tell me, and I’ll think about not finding out for myself how many ways there are to skin a cat.”
If that gets through the translator microbes as a threat, she doesn’t show it. “Like you, commander, what I want is very simple.” She gives me this wickedly sharp cat-grin and says “I will tell you where to find your son, if you give me the Traskan.”
Takes me a second to realize she means Granny, and for a moment, I’m tempted. I open my mouth to tell her what I think when my comm beeps.
“John?” And she bitches about my timing.
*Snerk*
“Yeah, Aeryn? I’m kinda in the middle of giving the Kit Kat Klub the third degree.” A thought occurs to me. “Did you find Noranti?”
She makes this strangled noise, and I know that yet another thing has gone disastrously wrong, even before she says “Noranti’s dead, John.”
Well, shit.
Gratuitous, but once I wrote that line, the next one wrote itself.
~~~
If only I had some good fresh dung, Noranti thought ruefully to herself, this would be much easier.
She’d hastily grabbed the ingredients she’d known she’d need from the kitchen after she and Stark had picked themselves up off the floor. “That was a Qualati numbing pulse,” she’d told him, “I’ll try to wake Pilot, you see to D’argo.” To his credit, she’d barely had time to say that before he was on his way, looking more focused than panicked.
The sound of movement coming from the other side of the door to Pilot’s chamber brought her attention back to the salve she was working on, and she hastily threw the rest of the herbs into the tiny wooden bowl she held in her lap. “Not enough time,” she muttered, “never enough time. Have to make up for it with spit.”
Deliberate homage to "We're So Screwed", there.
She expectorated as much as possible into the concoction until the consistency was tolerably viscous, then started to smear it on Pilot’s face, hurriedly glancing at the door she could hear them starting to pry open.
She had just finished pouring the last of it over the top of Pilot’s head and had just enough time to slap her palm to her mouth when the Qualati burst in, hitting her with three hakhram darts to the chest.
I had to go back and add that bit about slapping her palm over her mouth when I looked up how the Vacuum coma worked and found it wasn't an inate ability, she needed to eat play-dough.
With her last conscious effort, she leaned backward, causing herself to fall off the edge of the platform down into the darkness below.
She smiled inwardly as she heard the howls of frustration from the Qualati above, and then there was nothing but black.
...because she fell right into the Bat Dren.
~~~
Okay, that's enough for now... I've been at this for HOURS. Don't worry, this will get CONTINUED
~~~
CONTINUED FROM HERE
~~~
“Stop your pacing, Stykera. I’m sure they’re both fine.” Noranti looked up from the broth she was stirring to see Stark start another circuit of the kitchen.
“They should have been back arns ago, you said so yourself. We should at least check on D’argo…” He’d taken to stroking the smooth skin of his right cheek in times of anxiety, and he was doing it now.
All the true Stark-nuts who've read this have applauded me for that detail, and I have to admit I'm proud of it. I will be sorely dissapointed if when (WHEN!!) we get the Movie or whatever and Stark is (IS!!!) in it, Paul hasn't come up with that himself.
Noranti snorted, and threw another handful of dust into the pot.
Yes, dust. Possibly of the angel variety. What? It's Noranti.
“Oh, I’d very much like to, but the dear mother decided that code locking the door and filling the room with DRDs was much better than letting me at her precious little one.”
Stark nodded absentmindedly, still stroking his cheek. “Aeryn can be irrational…” Abruptly, he stopped pacing and looked up. “Pilot,” he called out, and the clamshell sprang to life with Pilot’s image.
“D’argo Sun-Crichton is still sleeping peacefully, Stark,” Pilot said in a long suffering tone. “I will inform you and Noranti the microt he needs anything.” Stark began to apologize when Pilot suddenly looked concerned.
“Wait…” he said, and held up a claw while the other three moved over his control board.
billietallent pointed this out to me. "Liza, this means he has four arms." *nods* "Yes, he does." *she blinks* "Oh! In canon!" "Yes, Am." It's not her fault she's betaing something she doesn't watch the show for.
“Yes? What?” Stark started to look mildly alarmed, and Noranti reached for her spray bottle.
Because she might have the hots for him, but she's not above valium-aeresoling his crazy Stykera ass if he looks like he's gonna backslide.
“Is it D’argo, Pilot?” she asked calmly, not taking her eyes from the Stykera.
Pilot shook his head. “Moya is detecting the signal of an unfamiliar ship,” he began, then screamed as the ship lurched abruptly to hammond and everything went black.
I was a little worried about the sheer abruptness of this, but in the end I think it works.
~~~
He’s alive. He’s only taking one breath every hundred microts or so, but he’s definitely alive.
Aeryn reaches over him to grab the spears from his back, and thank God I’m quick enough to stop her before she yanks. I pull her away from Stark till we’re both sitting on the floor, her in my lap, still struggling.
“He knows where D’argo is, John! He knows who took him!” She’s nearly snarling with rage, and it’s breaking my heart. I kiss her temple and try to soothe her, even though I’m damn near panicking myself.
“Baby, they took D’argo from him after they shot him. The best he can do is tell us how many there were, so we know if the DRDs got them all.” Something about what I just said flicks a switch in my brain, but before I can get it to solidify Aeryn’s nodding and starts calming down.
She looks up at me, nails me to the spot with those grey eyes. “We have to wake him up.”
“Oh, yeah, absolutely, babe! But we don’t know what those swizzle sticks are doing to him, or what’ll happen if we yank ‘em out. He might start bleeding sunbeams all over the place.”
A little forced, but I still love this image. And John's being so cute!
Aha. That gets me a smile, and I coax another one out with “I don’t know about you, but my glow-worm first aid skills are rusty.”
Suddenly her head snaps up. “Noranti.”
Because if someone mentioned bugs and first aid right after each other, wouldn't you think of Noranti?
“Noranti?” I’d forgotten her again. I just can’t seem to keep a thought in my head, except Where the hell is my son??,
...or "how do I keep this three-ring-circus of a plot moving?"
and if I think too hard about that one I won’t be any good to anybody.
But Aeryn’s all focus. She nods, and starts getting up, grabbing Stark. “We need to get him to Noranti. She’s the closest thing to a medic we have. He might not be dead, but one breath every hundred microts can’t be normal.”
And that’s when I finally remember I left Pilot hanging.
...And immediately get John to notice it too so the readers don't notice and think it's just him who's distracted by everything going on.
“Damn! Right, okay, yeah, but you go to Pilot, make sure he’s okay, and he can tell you where Noranti is.”
She nods, and she’s out the door like a shot.
I turn back to Stark, but suddenly that something that’s been bugging the crap out of me ever since the DRDs turned back on finally resolves in my brain. Where the hell is 1812? I turn to ask Aeryn to look out for him but she’s long gone and the goddamned coms still aren’t working.
“Hey, 1812?” I call out.
Nothing. God, I hope he’s just playing possum again, or lost, or something.
This originally read "God, I hope he's just lost, or something" which made for a smoother Moore transition to the next bit, but I changed it so people wouldn't think I'd forgotten that the "1812 being the only DRD left concious when Moya and the other DRDs are knocked out" thing had happened in canon in ISTIA which I diddn't remeber at all until I was looking up how a vaccum coma works and got desperate enough to resort to transcripts.
~~~
Please let it not be too late, oh Goddess, please, the Stykera offered up in silent prayer as he ran through Moya’s passageways in the dark. He was trying to banish from his mind the desperate memory of running through Moya once before, racing against death, meeting closed doors at every turn…
Because I don't care how sane he is, this has gotta be bugging him.
“This is my fault, my fault, they followed me…” he muttered as he pressed against yet another closed door, feeling the panic rise.
He wanted to scream, lose all control, and give in to the panic, but something wouldn’t let him. Don’t you remember, Stark? You’re a Banik again, a real one, and Banik don’t panic; it’s why they make us slaves.
Paul has mentioned that that bit of canon, the "Banik don't show feelings or pain so people enslave them" thing, seems to have fallen to the wayside, but I just think it's a peculiarity of Stark that he's so "out" whith his feelings and thoughts - and if you watch you notice that he is incredibly good at camoflaging his motives and feelings, at least up to a point.
It was good advice, except for the bitterness laced though it. Fortunately it pointed out his solution for dealing with it. He took a deep soothing breath, and told his “twisted core” to go frell itself; there was family in danger. A “real Banik” would die before allowing an infant of kin to come to harm.
John is family. Aeryn is family. As surely as if they'd been born Banik to the same mother as Stark. You canont disloge this bit of fanon, no sir.
Ah yes. Sanity, he thought, I remember sanity now. How comforting to know it stays when there’s a crisis, now. He allowed himself a small smile as he collected his thoughts. Work now, freak later. I won’t fail you, John. Not after everything you’ve done for me.
There was something unspoken, unthought, lingering in bitterness at the end of that, and the memory threatened to overwhelm him again, as it had so often in the past. But he pushed it aside with practiced ease, a gift once long lost to the embrace of the Aurora Chair. Why should he grieve over what he had lost when it - when she - was always with him?
But he was wasting precious time.
That statement was actually me talking to myself. I was worried that I was going too deep into his head here, wasting narrative time on emotional exposition that didn't go anywhere. Of course, it's Stark, so I really couldn't help myself, and in the end it adds weight to the ending, I think. Plus the fact that this was written for Astro, after all.
He was just trying to determine if trying to find his way by another route - in the dark - was worth it when a bolt of energy crackled next to his head and he threw himself to the ground, eyes straining to catch a glimpse of whatever had fired at him.
Did you know I had to conciously go back and add the "s" to "eyes" in there? Old habits...
He thought it sounded like a DRD, but that was impossible; all of Moya’s DRDs had been knocked out along with Pilot and everything else connected to Moya’s systems…
Wait… That was it! All of Moya’s DRDs had been knocked out, but a memory of the last time he was here came to the surface of his mind. Crichton’s “pet” - salvaged from another Leviathan, painted and named for something from earth history. He remembered it being fiercely loyal to Crichton. If he had some way of convincing the drone he was on its side, an ally…
Stark encountering 1812 during the "Bad Timing/PK Wars" stint and it making enough of an impression to remember was not too much of a stretch, I hoped.
Knowledge born of memories from a life not his flooded his mind, along with a dry chuckle that seemed to say “Blue White and Red, and Tchaikovsky… Cute, Johnny. That’s so me. So us.”
Hopefully it's clear this is TalynJohn speaking, and not Stark. Cause that just makes no sense.
He puckered his lips, and whistled nine notes, then repeated them, then waited.
*grins* Ah yes. The infamous "stop reading to count on your fingers and whistle (or go 'da da da')" bit. I did it when I wrote it, everyone who's read it in my preasence has done it, and when hybridbabe was reading it in while we were both in a Terra Firma chatroom, she exclaimed that the opening has ten notes, not nine, and the argument took over the chat room for ten minutes. Mike was reading over my shoulder at the tme, and figured out that the 1812 overture does have ten notes - but John (like alot of people) slurred the first two together when programming 1812. So we're both right, in a way.
An answering strain of eleven notes floated back to him from the corridor ahead, heralding the arrival of a DRD, painted in what Stark’s mind informed him was the French flag, along with its name in earth numerals across its side, piping out in muted tones the tune which gave it its moniker.
“Hello, 1812,” Stark whispered, smiling. “I’m Astro, and I’m a friend.
That just tickles me. I love that that's how he introduces himself. I'm not entirely sure it's whimsey on his part or some weird-ass sense of ettiquette.
I need to get to little D’argo’s room, and I need to get there now. I don’t suppose you’ve been coded to open the doors?”
But clever Crichton, Crichton who always had a plan, had thought of everything. Or rather the radiant Aeryn Sun - who although irrational at times, was still very good when it came to contingency plans - had.
Very very VERY Stark-POV narration. But I give almost eaqual time to Kosta later on (a bit to counteract this, I think) and the Epilog is really very much all Aeryn, so it balances out, I think.
A few chirps from 1812 and the door slid open.
Stark lifted himself off the floor and swiftly followed 1812 through the doorway, making sure it locked behind them. He hoped Noranti was doing as well trying to revive Pilot, and prayed again that their luck held out when it came to the intruders. They hadn’t encountered any yet, but the Qualati were on Moya by now, he was certain.
~~~
I don’t know what the hell to do for Stark besides make sure he takes that breath every minute or so, so I start looking for 1812.
God, but these cat things are ugly bastards. Big grey charbroiled rugs. I really hope there aren’t any more of them running around, because they’re scary looking enough dead. They’re about the size of small bears, and they’ve got this wicked looking black body armour that reminds me too much of Scorpy for my liking. “Teeth, claws, tails…” I’m talking to myself, but it’s not like Astro’s gonna complain. “It’s like somebody fed a bunch of lynxes steroids and taught ‘em to stand on their hind legs and shoot pulse pistols.”
And the only reason he's talking to himself is to contrast with what comes next, that he doesn't want to say...
And cut open leviathans, and make Banik kabobs, and kidnap babies… I give one of them a good, solid kick and he rolls over, uncovering the crushed wreck of a DRD on its back.
My hand’s shaking as I go to flip it over, but Pilot’s face comes up on the clamshell before I get the chance, and I’m glad.
Because he knows. He suspects. Because he knows how his luck runs.
“Pilot!” I yell, sounding a hell of a lot more chipper that I feel. “Please tell me this means you’ve got the comms working!”
“Yes, commander, but Officer Sun is occupied at the moment.” He blinks in that slow thoughtful way of his, and the poor guy looks tired. “She’s searching for Noranti, and what DRDs I can spare are helping her.”
I’m nodding. “Yeah, good. You need me down there? Stark seems pretty stable, and there’s still…” I nearly lose it to a lump in my throat, but I swallow it down. “There’s still two working DRDs up here,” I finish.
Pilot blinks at me again. “I am aware of my own DRDs, commander.”
God, I’m a stupid, stupid human today. Having your family threatened and missing will do that to a guy. I close my eyes and rub the bridge of my nose. “Sorry, Pilot. What do you need?”
He comes close to smirking when he says “I was wondering, commander, if you would like to interrogate our prisoners.”
That Pilot didn't mention this till now I was hoping was realistic, and was in fact the main reason for shorting out the coms in the first place. I needed people split up and confused and not talking so I could deal with one thing at a time as John encountered it.
My turn to blink. “What? The cat things? We caught some?”
“Indeed, commander.” He gives me a Pilotish shrug. “Captured while Moya and I were unconscious.”
So help me, even if it’s Granny who managed that one, I’ll kiss her!
I leap up to tell him I’ll be right there, and my foot catches the edge of the DRD corpse I was hesitating over, flipping it upright.
Something cold settles in my stomach when I see the twisted and broken shards of red, white, and blue metal.
11:30 PM, during the beta period for Last Place. My phone rings. I pick up. kenderheart yells "You killed 1812 you bitch!" Many weeks later, in the middle of the aformentioned Terra Firma chast, HybridBabe suddenly screams "OMFG YOU KILLED 1812!!!! You TRALK!!" confusing the dren out of everyone else in the room. Both times I supress chuckles and think "oh, you hate me now..."
I lift my head to look at Pilot, my eyes cold, and my voice is deadly quiet when I say “Oh yeah. Me and the Kit Kat Klub are going to talk.”
~~~
Commander Behrin Dhaan of the Qualati Striker Dawn Craft sniffed the air,
Okay. I have a freind named Sabrina Dawn Kraft, and I think that's one of the coolest names I've ever heard. She is obsessed with cats, and roleplays ALOT of Bastet and other were-cats and cat people. absolutely NONE of her personality went into Behrin, whose personality and name instead comes from Be'rHin, a klingon character of Sabrina's. This is also when I found out that the big powerfull cat men in D'argo's room were in fact cat women, because in large carnivores, the females often are bigger and more powerful. Classic sci-fi trope.
then motioned for her second in command to bring the rest of the pride forward while she waited for their scout to report back.
They used to be a "pack" but kenderheart pointed out that they sounded like dogs that way, so I changed it to pride and i'm so glad I did, because it goeth before a fall, you know...
“Well, Kosta?” she snarled when he finally came around the corner.
“It’s a typical Leviathan all right, just like the one I was held captive on. The pilot’s chamber is right ahead. But there’s someone in there…” He trailed off and his tail twitched anxiously.
Behrin’s ears quivered. “Sabacean?”
Kosta shook his head. “There’s smell of Sabacian everywhere, but it’s not fresh. And some of it smells...” he paused thoughtfully, sniffing the air again, “Off, more like an Interion, but not quite. Some kind of half-breed, maybe?” He snorted, momentarily emboldened by his frustration with this hunt. “Not that it’s easy to tell with the stew of Hynerian, Luxan, Nebari, Banik, Kalish, Interion, Scarran, and I even caught a very old whiff of Delvian…”
A beta objected to this, and I defended it, saying it was meant to showcase just how crazy good his sense of smell is, underlining the fact that later he's jerking them around.
“Kosta Vhuus!!” Behrin hissed, drawing herself to her full height to tower over the now cowering scout. “You worthless male, what is in the Pilot’s chamber?”
Kosta shrunk down on his haunches. “Spare my worthless hide, Commander, but I was saving the best for last.” He licked his lips nervously before continuing, “It’s a Traskan.”
Low, purring chuckles went through the rest of the pride, and Behrin’s eyes gleamed as her face split in a feral grin. “Oh, indeed? How fortuitous. We shall have some sport, then.”
At this point I had no idea what these guys had against Traskans, but I knew they wanted to strew Noranti's guts all over space.
~~~
Damn, these things are even uglier in person than they are laying around dead. There’s three of ‘em, which brings us to a grand total of six. Two of ‘em are as big as the three in D’argo’s room, and they’re glaring at me like they’d like to rip my guts out for looking at them funny, but the third one’s a lot smaller and he twitches like… Well, like a caged cat.
I’ll bet anything he’s the one that’ll crack, if I could just figure out a way to get him alone.
Because I'd inexplicably fallen in love with the little bullied male scout (who was the only one who'd been given a name for one of MY RPG characters, Jenny Kostabus) and knew that he'd rat the rest of them out and be more sympathetic.
All I’ve gotten out of these guys so far is ‘name, rank and serial number’ more or less, which really amounts to a bunch of cat snarls, and even then the Commander’s been doing all the talking.
“Okay, Billie Jean…” I start, looking at the big, meanest looking one.
“Behrin Dhaan!!” She snarls. Yup. Definitely alpha female.
Hee. One of my better Crichtonisms.
“Yeah, whatever. Let’s start over from the start.” I start pacing, keeping my voice light. “You’re Qualati traders, which means nothing to me, and you found my Leviathan floating abandoned in space, thought she was salvage, and boarded her.”
She licks her lips, and Twitchy the Omega Male snaps his tail around some more. “That’s correct.” she finally says, and her other big buddy nods before snarling at Twitchy till he shrinks down again.
I hit the bars of the cell with Winona and smile when they all jump back. “No, see, that’s not correct, because that doesn’t explain how there’s three more of you lying dead in my infant son’s room with a bunch of goddamn fondue sticks sticking out of the back of my Banik!” Okay, so he’s not strictly speaking my Banik, but it sounds better than “former cellmate” and anyway I might look more intimidating to these kitties if I’ve got a slave.
Big nasty number two flicks her ears back in what I think is surprise and gasps out “You killed them? You killed them all?”
At this point I feel it only fair that I give credit where credit is due for the vast bulk of the Qualati's body language to Janet Kagan, whose Sivaoans from "Uhura's Song" are my favorite cat-people of all time, and the ones with the most richly develloped culture.
Billie Jean whips her head around and snarls “Silence, Kethrin Klaar!”
Catherine StClaire, a werecat RPG character of Sabrina's...
I know how to deal with boss-lady there; I ignore her and start talking to number two. “Much as I’d like to say so, Kathy Claire, they were already rugs by the time I got here. Near as I can tell they got shot up by DRDs, after plugging my Banik full of holes and grabbing my kid out of his arms.” I step back from the cell and fling my arms out. “Except none of them have my kid on them, with makes me think you guys were there, grabbed the kid, and stuck him somewhere before you got bagged.” I lean in until my face is inches away from Billie Jean’s snarling maw, and I’m snarling right back. “Am I getting warm?”
I don't feel too bad about "lying" to the readers about what happened because they're perfectly reasonable things for John and Aeryn to assume. Hopefully I'm not leading the reader by the nose but re-inforcing conclusions they've come to anyway.
I hear this weird high pitched snort coming from the back of the cell and I look over Commander Kathmandu’s shoulder at Twitchy, who stares at me for a second before blurting out, “You’re John Crichton?”
Aha. Now I think we’re getting somewhere, especially since Billie Jean and Kitty Kath look like they’re going to disembowel him for that one. A pulse pistol in the muzzle curtails that idea right quick.
“Why yes, I am John Crichton. Why do you ask, my good…” I give him my best grin. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”
“Ah, Kosta. Kosta Vhuus.” He’s still looking sideways at his commander, but I keep Winona steady, and he gets the idea that I’m not gonna let her move an inch towards him till I hear what I want to. “I ask because…” and he does some kind of weird bow, baring his neck at me and pulling in his claws, “meaning no offence, you don’t smell like a Sebacean.” Ah. Okay then.
“Yeah, well, that’s a long story, Kosta buddy; it’d probably take me ninety-two arns to tell it.
I'm shamesless. I admit it. :D
But what I mean is,” and I grin at him with a look I stole right off of Aeryn that’s not meant to reassure him at all, “how did me mentioning that the kid was mine make me John Crichton?” His eyes go wide and his ears go back and he’s looking at the other two like he expects them to knock him dead any second for the phenomenally stupid thing he just did. I don’t let any of them answer; I plough right on ahead, gesturing with Winona to make my points. “See, I think you bozos were looking for John Crichton’s son, and you got him, but we got home before you could get back to your ship, and everything went south and here you are, locked in a cage.”
We’re back where we started, with the two tough girls staring at me sullenly and Twitchy Kosta cowering in the back, but I’ve scored a few points, because they’re way more uneasy under the tough-cat act now.
I decide to press my advantage. “Now, I don’t really care how the hell you got locked up. And while I am curious as to why you were after D’argo in the first place, and who hired you, that really can wait.” I let the smile on my face drop like a rock and my voice gets very, very quiet. It isn’t hard when I think about Stark lying still as death on the floor, the broken bits of 1812, the burned hole in Moya, and my son being held by one of these things.
In order of ascending priority for John. Again with the devalueing the Banik.
“So, what I want to know is very, very simple. Where. Is. My. Son?”
They look at each other, tails twitching. Something is very wrong here. Kosta’s about to open his mouth when Billie Jean smacks him across the face, claws out, and he goes down like a sack of potatoes, clutching his face and whimpering.
Originally I had him knocked out, then realized I needed him awake in the next section, and it didn;t make sense for him to be out so short a time, so "he's just stunned!"
Winona’s in her muzzle before she can finish turning back around to face me “Paws up, Kathmandu!” I’m screaming, but I don’t care. I’m this close to looking for an excuse to send these guys to meet their charbroiled buddies.
But she obliges, polite as anything, and Kathy Kat follows suit.
“My apologies, Commander Crichton,” she purrs, tilting her head to one side, “but discipline must be maintained even in adverse circumstances and Kosta Vhuus has spoken above his station one too many times this day.”
I nod, but I don’t drop the gun. “Good help is hard to find. I myself have been having a bitch of a time lately with babysitters.”
This is my FAVORITE line of John's in this fic, because I can hear it so clearly in my head. I want to approach Ben Browder with a tape recorder and get him to say this.
She blinks, but continues, “I have a proposition for you.”
Why don’t I like the sound of that? Might as well hear her out, though. “Oh yeah? Tell me, and I’ll think about not finding out for myself how many ways there are to skin a cat.”
If that gets through the translator microbes as a threat, she doesn’t show it. “Like you, commander, what I want is very simple.” She gives me this wickedly sharp cat-grin and says “I will tell you where to find your son, if you give me the Traskan.”
Takes me a second to realize she means Granny, and for a moment, I’m tempted. I open my mouth to tell her what I think when my comm beeps.
“John?” And she bitches about my timing.
*Snerk*
“Yeah, Aeryn? I’m kinda in the middle of giving the Kit Kat Klub the third degree.” A thought occurs to me. “Did you find Noranti?”
She makes this strangled noise, and I know that yet another thing has gone disastrously wrong, even before she says “Noranti’s dead, John.”
Well, shit.
Gratuitous, but once I wrote that line, the next one wrote itself.
~~~
If only I had some good fresh dung, Noranti thought ruefully to herself, this would be much easier.
She’d hastily grabbed the ingredients she’d known she’d need from the kitchen after she and Stark had picked themselves up off the floor. “That was a Qualati numbing pulse,” she’d told him, “I’ll try to wake Pilot, you see to D’argo.” To his credit, she’d barely had time to say that before he was on his way, looking more focused than panicked.
The sound of movement coming from the other side of the door to Pilot’s chamber brought her attention back to the salve she was working on, and she hastily threw the rest of the herbs into the tiny wooden bowl she held in her lap. “Not enough time,” she muttered, “never enough time. Have to make up for it with spit.”
Deliberate homage to "We're So Screwed", there.
She expectorated as much as possible into the concoction until the consistency was tolerably viscous, then started to smear it on Pilot’s face, hurriedly glancing at the door she could hear them starting to pry open.
She had just finished pouring the last of it over the top of Pilot’s head and had just enough time to slap her palm to her mouth when the Qualati burst in, hitting her with three hakhram darts to the chest.
I had to go back and add that bit about slapping her palm over her mouth when I looked up how the Vacuum coma worked and found it wasn't an inate ability, she needed to eat play-dough.
With her last conscious effort, she leaned backward, causing herself to fall off the edge of the platform down into the darkness below.
She smiled inwardly as she heard the howls of frustration from the Qualati above, and then there was nothing but black.
...because she fell right into the Bat Dren.
~~~
Okay, that's enough for now... I've been at this for HOURS. Don't worry, this will get CONTINUED
~~~