Farscape fic: Left Behind, chapter 13
Left Behind
Timeline placement: earlyish season 3, spoilers for “Eat Me”
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3,911
Disclaimer: The Farscape universe, and all that is in it, is not mine, but rather belongs to the Jim Henson Company. This is a work of fiction based in that universe. No copyright infringement is intended and no money has been or will be collected. No betas were harmed in the writing of this fic. Previous chapter links at the end of the post.
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Chapter Thirteen
Well, Aeryn, here I am. Different Leviathan, different set of faces, different set of problems, and yet the same ol’, same ol’.
John Crichton paused, unconsciously bringing the end of the stylus up to his mouth. Chewing absently on the stylus, he glanced over at the stack of blank flimsies that were in the process of becoming his new journal, the old one having remained with the rest of his gear on Moya. He had discovered the writing materials in what looked to have been the captain’s quarters during Rohvu’s service as a Peacekeeper vessel, which now belonged to Belima. Having also been used by Kaarvok, the rooms weren’t recognizably Peacekeeper anymore, which had made his find all the more surprising.
“Well, it’s not as if they could eat the damn things,” he said aloud. Shaking his head, John returned to his journal.
I don’t know how long it took us to make Rohvu understand that he had to stop what he was doing. He wouldn’t listen to Pilot or me or anyone else, but then something Chiana said or did… Well, Pip was finally able to get through to him that if he killed himself, he killed all the rest of us, too.
Unfortunately, by the time Rohvu stopped trying to bleed himself to death, his power reserves were so low that we’ve had to seal off parts of the ship to conserve life support. All of our quarters except Belima’s are in the same general area, though, so it wasn’t too difficult to do that. And we’ve got more than enough space on the few tiers that aren’t sealed to keep us all occupied with cleanup, since it looks like we’re stuck with each other for at least a few months.
The tiers that weren’t sealed off consisted of the levels that housed Command, the center chamber, the medical facilities, and their own quarters. Belima’s rooms were near to Command, so were included with that tier. If there was a need for access to any of the sealed off tiers, Furlow had two EVA suits in her ship’s supplies - one that fit her and one that fit both John and Tokar well enough to be safe.
John reached up and scrubbed a hand over his face, trying to wipe the cobwebs out of his eyes before he touched stylus to flimsy yet again. We’re doing everything we can, both with physical repairs and just talking to him and Pilot, to keep Rohvu from slipping further downhill. I’m not sure if his lack of response to us is deliberate, a result of his depression, or if it’s being caused by what amounts to loss of blood. And you know what? I just haven’t been able to lay my hands on a copy of Leviathan Psychology for Dummies.
John was interrupted by a huge yawn that snuck up on him and felt like it split the lower half of his face completely from the upper. Going with the flow, he leaned back in his chair, lifting his arms over his head in a much-needed stretch. Thanks to Pip taking his shift on watch, he had been at it all day, working with Furlow and Tokar to get calorics rerouted to some of Rohvu’s more essential systems. Tired as he was, though, he was still too wired to think about sleep, hence the journal entry.
Furlow, surprisingly, had let loose of some spare parts when they were needed and couldn’t be salvaged from the ship himself. She admitted that she had been on the supply station - what had Tokar called it? Relkor Station? - because she had heard of a cache of Leviathan parts and equipment in that area and she wanted those parts to use in building her copy of the Farscape 1. In particular, she wanted a Leviathan-made hetch drive. As payment for those parts, she wanted more help from John on the module as well as on the care and feeding of wormholes. John’s debt to her just seemed to keep growing - he only hoped that it didn’t get totally out of hand.
Swiveling the chair around, John looked over at the narrow, rumpled bed. That was about all the room contained, just that bed with its somewhat ratty blanket and another rolled up blanket that was serving as a pillow, the chair he was sitting in, and the drawered storage container that doubled as a desk. The only light in the cell came from a small lamp on the desk - there wasn’t even any ambient light from the corridor shining through the door, since general lighting for the ship was not one of the essential systems and thus was being kept low to conserve energy.
He gave his shoulders and head a quick roll, causing several vertebrae in his neck to pop in quick succession before picking the stylus up one last time. He wanted to finish this first entry to his new and improved journal before he attempted sleep. Besides, he would be better off if he totally exhausted himself first. If he was able to fall asleep at all, he wanted to stay that way for as long as possible, which was a dubious prospect, judging by the increasing frequency and intensity of the nightmares that had started not long after they’d returned from Relkor Station.
Aeryn, I miss you. And I can’t help but wonder where you are right now, whether you even know I’m not there. Jool was the only one who didn’t leave that transport pod to explore the rest of the ship, the only one of us who never met up with Kaarvok. Pip was twinned and so was D’Argo. It stands to reason that I was, too. Chiana and I were in the same general area for what? Three solar days after we watched the transport leave? That’s three solar days that D’Argo and the others had to make it back to Moya, get a transport pod that worked, and come back for us. But that didn’t happen. No one came.
After all, why come back for us if we were already there?
***
Tokar Rhee jerked violently, waking with a start. He had dropped off to sleep for only a microt, he was sure, but even so, he glanced around Command to make sure no one had observed his momentary lapse. It took him a microt to remember that he was no longer a Peacekeeper and therefore had not committed what could be an offense dangerous to his health. It took him yet another microt to recall that the Leviathan on which they were currently depending was not stable either mentally or physically and thus the lapse could have been hazardous to his health after all.
He was taking his turn in Command, standing watch, monitoring the Leviathan’s systems in the hope that anything unusual could be headed off before it became yet another emergency. Tokar had been there for almost three arns. Three arns spent alternately monitoring Rohvu’s vital signs and cleaning up the mess that was Command in an attempt to do something useful and, in the process, distract himself from the stress of being aboard a suicidal Leviathan.
Prior to the start of his watch, which was now about halfway through, he and Crichton had worked with Furlow doing what Crichton called “plumbing” - rerouting some of the Leviathan’s remaining calorics from the facilities that controlled starburst to the air scrubbers and atmosphere generators. Rohvu was incapable of starburst anyway, with his power reserves so low, so it had been decided to concentrate on life support.
The great ship was currently headed Cholak knew where, at a velocity that could only be described as a crawl. Pilot couldn’t get Rohvu to answer any queries as to destination, but the Leviathan clearly had someplace in mind. Tokar just hoped that it wasn’t so far from the shipping lanes that no one would ever find them. He wouldn’t worry about it so much, if it weren’t for that suicidal streak.
To prevent another lapse, Tokar stood up, shaking the kinks from his arms and legs. It wouldn’t hurt to make a circuit of the room. Turning, he realized what had awakened him in the first place - the strange woman John had introduced as Belima was standing in the open doorway, staring at him. His subconscious must have heard the door opening, because he was certain it had been closed before his impromptu nap.
“Is anything the matter?” he asked.
There was no indication that she understood his question. He tried again. “Belima, right?” he asked, taking a step toward her.
Her eyes widened and she took a corresponding step backward, toward the corridor beyond. Even in the relative darkness, he could see that her eyes were a dark green. She might even be considered attractive, if she weren’t so frelling timid. “Belima, did you want something?”
“I…Belima,” she said, taking a half step back into the light spilling out of Command through the open doorway and pointing at her chest.
“Yeah, I got that.” Seeing her look of concentration as he spoke, a thought occurred to him. “You never received any translator microbes, did you?” He wasn’t sure how that could be - she wore the tattered uniform of a Peacekeeper tech - but he could think of no other explanation for her apparently total lack of understanding. Tokar took a step back from her and gestured to her to enter the room. “You might as well come in. You’re not much on conversation, but at least you’ll help me to stay awake.”
***
“Hey, Reyna! Is this stuff any good?” Chiana opened a jar of a purplish ointment and gave it a quick sniff. “It smells kinda spicy…” She and Reyna Val were in the ship’s medical facilities, such as they were. The room underneath all the drek and dren was very similar to its counterpart on Moya, but Chiana didn’t get the same feeling of ease that she always got from Moya’s med area. Of course, that might have something to do with the lack of Zhaan - and maybe the skeleton they’d found strapped to the examination table.
Reaching up for the jar, Reyna said, “Let me see.” Chi squatted down on the counter on which she stood and handed the jar to the med tech. “Ah, yes.” A dark eyebrow rose. “I’m surprised this is still good.”
“How can you tell?”
“The smell. It’s j’ralla ointment, used in treating burns. When it’s potent, it smells spicy-sweet, if it’s gone bad…”
“Smells like dren?” Chiana asked, an impish smile crinkling her black eyes.
“It smells like dren,” Reyna confirmed. “Is there any more of this?”
“Yeah.” Chiana stood up and poked her head into the cupboard she had opened. There were half a dozen jars of the purple ointment as well as several boxes and vials that looked to be still intact.
Reyna stepped closer, standing on her toes to reach into the cupboard. “Well, you’ve found quite the treasure trove here, Chiana. I think an inventory is in order.” Chi slid a little to the side and reached a hand down to help Reyna up onto the countertop. The Sebacean woman was a bit taken aback by the gesture, but accepted the hand up, even so.
It took the two women about a quarter arn to inventory the supplies - Chiana wrote whatever Reyna told her to on one of the flimsies that Crichton had found a couple of solar days earlier. In the end, there were a total of five jars of the j’ralla ointment that were still viable - Chi thought Reyna was being generous when she had agreed that it smelled like dren when bad - as well as two boxes of a powder that could be used for everything from headaches to sleeplessness and a couple dozen vials that Reyna identified as kill shots and their antidotes.
Once finished with the inventory, Reyna humming in pleasure as she worked following the medical find, the two returned to the task of removing debris from the chamber. Crichton and Tokar had agreed that they would haul anything that was left out in the corridor to the cargo bay and jettison it as trash later.
After pushing a large container of nasty stuff - including the remains of the poor guy who had been strapped to that table - out into the corridor, Chiana reentered the med bay and moved on to the next pile of trash. She stopped short, though, when she saw Reyna looking intently at her midsection. “What?” she asked, looking down at her stomach. Everything looked okay - no new blood stains, the repairs to her tunic still intact.
Reyna smiled. “Nothing, Chiana. I was simply wondering how the stitches are holding, given all the heavy lifting you’ve done today.”
Chiana shrugged. “Fine, Rey, no pain at all.”
“Good. If you don’t mind, though, I’d like to check them.”
“Sure.” The Nebari girl hopped up onto the now-clear examination table, pulling her tunic free as she did so. A lop-sided grin spread across Chiana’s face when she saw Reyna shaking her head at the typical informality of her actions. Once a Peacekeeper, always a Peacekeeper, at least in some ways… “Soon’s you’re done, I’ll go relieve Tokar in Command.”
Reyna poked a bit at the stitches and replied, “You’ve still got half an arn before your shift starts.”
“S’okay. You look like you could use a…uh…backrub or something.”
Reyna’s only reply to that was another arched eyebrow. Chiana laughed, the merry sound a little at odds with the still grim-looking room. She looked at the neat line of small black stitches, the thin blue scar, and the clean whiteness of her skin. “Do you take them out, eventually?”
“No, Chiana, they’ll dissolve on their own in a few a more days.”
“Everything’s okay, then?”
Reyna nodded. “You appear to be healing nicely, yes.”
“Good.” Chiana shoved off from the table, tucking her tunic back in. “In that case, you want me to send Tokar back here or to your quarters?” The last was tossed over her shoulder as she headed out the door.
***
“John…”
John shifted in his sleep. He was still at the desk, head cradled on his folded arms, the stylus having dropped from lax fingers to roll across the floor, stopping when it hit the opposite wall.
“John…”
The voice came again, whispering through John Crichton’s otherwise pleasant dream of Aeryn Sun as he had last seen her, working on her prowler.
“John Crichton…”
John woke suddenly to find himself standing in the maintenance bay on Moya, watching Aeryn work on her prowler as he had done a couple of weeks ago now, before his life had fallen apart. Again.
“Aeryn?” He took a step toward her, confused. This couldn’t be Moya - he was pretty sure he was still in his quarters on Rohvu… Wasn’t he?
The leather-clad figure with the long, soft black hair turned. “Dammit, I knew it.” Even as the figure turned, John realized that it wasn’t Aeryn any more than it was the maintenance bay on Moya. “What’re you up to now, Harvey.”
“John, John, John,” Harvey said, now looking entirely like Scorpius, Aeryn’s beautiful hair having disappeared. Thank God. “Asleep on the job, Commander?”
“What the frell are you talkin’ about, Harv?” John stepped further into the maintenance bay. For whatever reason, Harvey wanted to talk to him here, so he might as well see what the freak wanted this time. It wasn’t always bad, when Harvey visited…
Looking past Harvey and Aeryn’s prowler, he could see what looked like his module, only not. It wasn’t complete, for one thing. For another, Furlow was there, leaning over the cockpit, just as Aeryn had been earlier in his dream.
“Don’t trust Furlow, John.”
“Well, that’s quite the newsflash, Harv. What makes you think I’d trust her?”
Harvey cocked his head to one side and considered John as though he were a lab specimen. “I don’t think that you do trust her, Crichton. I’m simply worried that you may let down your guard. She is not your friend.”
“And you are?” John snorted. “No, she’s not my friend, but she’s not my enemy, either. Was that all you wanted?” John picked up an imaginary driver from the fake workbench next to his module. He hadn’t even noticed when his location had shifted and Furlow was no longer anywhere to be found.
“But I am your friend, John. Have I not proved that to you?” Harvey sounded hurt.
“No, Harvey, you’ve proved to me that you don’t want to die. That’s not the same thing.”
Harvey loosed a long-suffering sigh. “John, if you want to see Aeryn or your other friends on Moya again, you need to start looking more closely at wormholes.”
John felt an eyebrow raise. Wormholes? Why did the clone want to talk wormholes now? “I don’t get it, Harv. Is Scorpy around here somewhere?”
“No, John. No one who can help you is anywhere near here. Only me.”
“Yeah, you and Scorpy are real ‘helpful…’”
“John, if you don’t master wormholes, you’ll lose your Aeryn Sun.”
“How do you figure that?”
“It’s quite simple, really. You master wormholes, you find Moya and thus Aeryn, you stop your twin from stealing her away.”
Suddenly, they were no longer in Moya’s maintenance bay, but rather in Pilot’s den here on Rohvu, but before the debris had been cleaned out. The den was as he had first found it, when Kaarvok had still been alive and Rohvu had been crawling with Xarai. And there was Kaarvok, standing just beyond Harvey, staring at John as though, without Harvey’s protective presence, he would be feeding on John’s brain right then and there.
John shuddered in the dream, the movement mirrored by his sleeping body. The sheet of flimsy he had been writing on earlier fell to the floor as his arm shot out. He woke with an incoherent shout, sweat and fear pouring from his body.
***
“Pilot? Are you awake?”
Pilot recognized the voice as belonging to Furlow, even crackling as it was over the comms. “Yes, Furlow, I am indeed awake. Would you be so kind as to turn down your transmission volume? The signal is breaking up a bit.”
“Sorry. That any better?”
“Yes, thank you. How may I be of service, Furlow?” He was somewhat mystified. Furlow had been taking great pains to avoid contact with him, and by extension, Rohvu, since the rather distressing day of her arrival. It was unclear to Pilot whether her avoidance was due to her irritation at being inconvenienced by Rohvu’s panicked starburst or whether she was attempting to minimize her own effect on Rohvu’s currently delicate mental balance - Rohvu simply didn’t like the woman.
“I was just thinking about what Johnny was saying earlier today, about the ship not telling you where he’s going…”
“Yes?”
“Johnny said he was on a definite heading, but you didn’t know where?”
“That is correct, Furlow.”
“Think you’d be able to upload the info into my database?”
“With some physical help perhaps, I believe that can be accomplished.” His arms were growing back and he even had some small amount of control, but progress had been hampered by a distinct lack of nutrition, exacerbated by Rohvu’s suicide attempt. He had some control, yes, but no reach. It would still be a couple of solar days before he would be able to work those controls nearest to his body and longer still before he would be able to perform at anything near to normal levels.
“If I come up there and give you a hand, I think I can crunch the data through my ship’s comp and maybe get an idea of where he’s headed.”
“That would be…quite helpful, Furlow.” Knowing where Rohvu was taking them would be the first step in possibly preventing the Leviathan from further self-harm.
“I’ll be there in just a few microts.”
***
“Man, what I wouldn’t give for a cup of coffee!” John said aloud as he drank what tasted like watered-down Tang. Even weak, unimaginative, black coffee would be better than this liquid equivalent to food cubes. Taking another swig, he began to run through the possibilities of distilling it into something a bit more palatable…
“What…koh-fee?” He looked over at Belima, crunching away on some food cubes. Mmmm… Food cubes and watery Tang. Breakfast of champions.
“Coffee is a drink we had back home. Sometimes tastes like ambrosia, other times like crap, but even the crap is better than this.” He turned a sour look on his cup as the door to the center chamber opened and Chiana came bouncing in, so he turned the sour look on her instead. “I hate morning people.”
“Hey, Crichton, Belima.” Chiana crossed the room and poked her head into the refrigeration unit, pulling out the container of Tang. “I think of myself as more of a…more of a…” She swung the door shut with her hip, a thoughtful expression on her face, which quickly changed to teasing. “…an anytime girl,” she smirked.
John smiled and shook his head. “Pip, you’re-” His words were cut off by Furlow’s voice, issuing from his comms.
“Hey, Johnny, you there?”
He raised an eyebrow at Chiana as she sat down on the bench next to him, a little too close for true comfort. She continued to smirk at him as she tilted her head back to drink Tang straight from the container.
“Yeah, Furlow, what’s up?” he said to Furlow before continuing to Chiana, “You don’t drink the milk straight from the bottle.” How many times had his mother thrown that one at him, when he was a kid?
Chiana’s response was to put the container down on the table and sling an arm around John’s shoulder before grinning over at Belima on the other side of the table. “Don’t worry if you don’t understand anything he says, Bel, nobody else does, either.”
John pulled away from Chiana and stood, slipping away from the bench as Furlow said, “I think I’ve got something interesting, here.”
“You in Command?” It was Furlow’s turn on watch.
“Yeah, Johnny, and my shipboard comp just finished running an analysis of your Leviathan’s present course.”
“Oh?” He couldn’t help but wonder if she’d somehow managed to hack into Rohvu’s own computers, Harvey’s words of warning still fresh in his mind.
“Yep. Spoke to Pilot last night and the two of us uploaded the course information into my comp. Figured I might be able to get an idea of where we’re headed.” Furlow sounded pleased with herself and John just knew she was working on some new thing to tack on to his tab.
Chiana came over to stand next to him - he felt her heat before she said, “D’you trust her, Crichton?”
“Not as far as I can throw her, Pip.” Then he said to Furlow, “So, you know where we’re going, then?”
“I think I might.”
“Quit being cagey, Furlow…”
“From data I downloaded back when I was trying to find Leviathan-produced ship components, compared to the course we’re on right now…”
“Furlow.” He was too damned tired for this.
“I think he might be heading for the Leviathan burial space.”
John looked a question over his shoulder at Chiana, who shrugged. “Leviathan burial space?”
“Yep. It’s where Leviathans go to die.”
Left Behind, chapter 12
Left Behind, chapter 14
Timeline placement: earlyish season 3, spoilers for “Eat Me”
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3,911
Disclaimer: The Farscape universe, and all that is in it, is not mine, but rather belongs to the Jim Henson Company. This is a work of fiction based in that universe. No copyright infringement is intended and no money has been or will be collected. No betas were harmed in the writing of this fic. Previous chapter links at the end of the post.
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Chapter Thirteen
Well, Aeryn, here I am. Different Leviathan, different set of faces, different set of problems, and yet the same ol’, same ol’.
John Crichton paused, unconsciously bringing the end of the stylus up to his mouth. Chewing absently on the stylus, he glanced over at the stack of blank flimsies that were in the process of becoming his new journal, the old one having remained with the rest of his gear on Moya. He had discovered the writing materials in what looked to have been the captain’s quarters during Rohvu’s service as a Peacekeeper vessel, which now belonged to Belima. Having also been used by Kaarvok, the rooms weren’t recognizably Peacekeeper anymore, which had made his find all the more surprising.
“Well, it’s not as if they could eat the damn things,” he said aloud. Shaking his head, John returned to his journal.
I don’t know how long it took us to make Rohvu understand that he had to stop what he was doing. He wouldn’t listen to Pilot or me or anyone else, but then something Chiana said or did… Well, Pip was finally able to get through to him that if he killed himself, he killed all the rest of us, too.
Unfortunately, by the time Rohvu stopped trying to bleed himself to death, his power reserves were so low that we’ve had to seal off parts of the ship to conserve life support. All of our quarters except Belima’s are in the same general area, though, so it wasn’t too difficult to do that. And we’ve got more than enough space on the few tiers that aren’t sealed to keep us all occupied with cleanup, since it looks like we’re stuck with each other for at least a few months.
The tiers that weren’t sealed off consisted of the levels that housed Command, the center chamber, the medical facilities, and their own quarters. Belima’s rooms were near to Command, so were included with that tier. If there was a need for access to any of the sealed off tiers, Furlow had two EVA suits in her ship’s supplies - one that fit her and one that fit both John and Tokar well enough to be safe.
John reached up and scrubbed a hand over his face, trying to wipe the cobwebs out of his eyes before he touched stylus to flimsy yet again. We’re doing everything we can, both with physical repairs and just talking to him and Pilot, to keep Rohvu from slipping further downhill. I’m not sure if his lack of response to us is deliberate, a result of his depression, or if it’s being caused by what amounts to loss of blood. And you know what? I just haven’t been able to lay my hands on a copy of Leviathan Psychology for Dummies.
John was interrupted by a huge yawn that snuck up on him and felt like it split the lower half of his face completely from the upper. Going with the flow, he leaned back in his chair, lifting his arms over his head in a much-needed stretch. Thanks to Pip taking his shift on watch, he had been at it all day, working with Furlow and Tokar to get calorics rerouted to some of Rohvu’s more essential systems. Tired as he was, though, he was still too wired to think about sleep, hence the journal entry.
Furlow, surprisingly, had let loose of some spare parts when they were needed and couldn’t be salvaged from the ship himself. She admitted that she had been on the supply station - what had Tokar called it? Relkor Station? - because she had heard of a cache of Leviathan parts and equipment in that area and she wanted those parts to use in building her copy of the Farscape 1. In particular, she wanted a Leviathan-made hetch drive. As payment for those parts, she wanted more help from John on the module as well as on the care and feeding of wormholes. John’s debt to her just seemed to keep growing - he only hoped that it didn’t get totally out of hand.
Swiveling the chair around, John looked over at the narrow, rumpled bed. That was about all the room contained, just that bed with its somewhat ratty blanket and another rolled up blanket that was serving as a pillow, the chair he was sitting in, and the drawered storage container that doubled as a desk. The only light in the cell came from a small lamp on the desk - there wasn’t even any ambient light from the corridor shining through the door, since general lighting for the ship was not one of the essential systems and thus was being kept low to conserve energy.
He gave his shoulders and head a quick roll, causing several vertebrae in his neck to pop in quick succession before picking the stylus up one last time. He wanted to finish this first entry to his new and improved journal before he attempted sleep. Besides, he would be better off if he totally exhausted himself first. If he was able to fall asleep at all, he wanted to stay that way for as long as possible, which was a dubious prospect, judging by the increasing frequency and intensity of the nightmares that had started not long after they’d returned from Relkor Station.
Aeryn, I miss you. And I can’t help but wonder where you are right now, whether you even know I’m not there. Jool was the only one who didn’t leave that transport pod to explore the rest of the ship, the only one of us who never met up with Kaarvok. Pip was twinned and so was D’Argo. It stands to reason that I was, too. Chiana and I were in the same general area for what? Three solar days after we watched the transport leave? That’s three solar days that D’Argo and the others had to make it back to Moya, get a transport pod that worked, and come back for us. But that didn’t happen. No one came.
After all, why come back for us if we were already there?
***
Tokar Rhee jerked violently, waking with a start. He had dropped off to sleep for only a microt, he was sure, but even so, he glanced around Command to make sure no one had observed his momentary lapse. It took him a microt to remember that he was no longer a Peacekeeper and therefore had not committed what could be an offense dangerous to his health. It took him yet another microt to recall that the Leviathan on which they were currently depending was not stable either mentally or physically and thus the lapse could have been hazardous to his health after all.
He was taking his turn in Command, standing watch, monitoring the Leviathan’s systems in the hope that anything unusual could be headed off before it became yet another emergency. Tokar had been there for almost three arns. Three arns spent alternately monitoring Rohvu’s vital signs and cleaning up the mess that was Command in an attempt to do something useful and, in the process, distract himself from the stress of being aboard a suicidal Leviathan.
Prior to the start of his watch, which was now about halfway through, he and Crichton had worked with Furlow doing what Crichton called “plumbing” - rerouting some of the Leviathan’s remaining calorics from the facilities that controlled starburst to the air scrubbers and atmosphere generators. Rohvu was incapable of starburst anyway, with his power reserves so low, so it had been decided to concentrate on life support.
The great ship was currently headed Cholak knew where, at a velocity that could only be described as a crawl. Pilot couldn’t get Rohvu to answer any queries as to destination, but the Leviathan clearly had someplace in mind. Tokar just hoped that it wasn’t so far from the shipping lanes that no one would ever find them. He wouldn’t worry about it so much, if it weren’t for that suicidal streak.
To prevent another lapse, Tokar stood up, shaking the kinks from his arms and legs. It wouldn’t hurt to make a circuit of the room. Turning, he realized what had awakened him in the first place - the strange woman John had introduced as Belima was standing in the open doorway, staring at him. His subconscious must have heard the door opening, because he was certain it had been closed before his impromptu nap.
“Is anything the matter?” he asked.
There was no indication that she understood his question. He tried again. “Belima, right?” he asked, taking a step toward her.
Her eyes widened and she took a corresponding step backward, toward the corridor beyond. Even in the relative darkness, he could see that her eyes were a dark green. She might even be considered attractive, if she weren’t so frelling timid. “Belima, did you want something?”
“I…Belima,” she said, taking a half step back into the light spilling out of Command through the open doorway and pointing at her chest.
“Yeah, I got that.” Seeing her look of concentration as he spoke, a thought occurred to him. “You never received any translator microbes, did you?” He wasn’t sure how that could be - she wore the tattered uniform of a Peacekeeper tech - but he could think of no other explanation for her apparently total lack of understanding. Tokar took a step back from her and gestured to her to enter the room. “You might as well come in. You’re not much on conversation, but at least you’ll help me to stay awake.”
***
“Hey, Reyna! Is this stuff any good?” Chiana opened a jar of a purplish ointment and gave it a quick sniff. “It smells kinda spicy…” She and Reyna Val were in the ship’s medical facilities, such as they were. The room underneath all the drek and dren was very similar to its counterpart on Moya, but Chiana didn’t get the same feeling of ease that she always got from Moya’s med area. Of course, that might have something to do with the lack of Zhaan - and maybe the skeleton they’d found strapped to the examination table.
Reaching up for the jar, Reyna said, “Let me see.” Chi squatted down on the counter on which she stood and handed the jar to the med tech. “Ah, yes.” A dark eyebrow rose. “I’m surprised this is still good.”
“How can you tell?”
“The smell. It’s j’ralla ointment, used in treating burns. When it’s potent, it smells spicy-sweet, if it’s gone bad…”
“Smells like dren?” Chiana asked, an impish smile crinkling her black eyes.
“It smells like dren,” Reyna confirmed. “Is there any more of this?”
“Yeah.” Chiana stood up and poked her head into the cupboard she had opened. There were half a dozen jars of the purple ointment as well as several boxes and vials that looked to be still intact.
Reyna stepped closer, standing on her toes to reach into the cupboard. “Well, you’ve found quite the treasure trove here, Chiana. I think an inventory is in order.” Chi slid a little to the side and reached a hand down to help Reyna up onto the countertop. The Sebacean woman was a bit taken aback by the gesture, but accepted the hand up, even so.
It took the two women about a quarter arn to inventory the supplies - Chiana wrote whatever Reyna told her to on one of the flimsies that Crichton had found a couple of solar days earlier. In the end, there were a total of five jars of the j’ralla ointment that were still viable - Chi thought Reyna was being generous when she had agreed that it smelled like dren when bad - as well as two boxes of a powder that could be used for everything from headaches to sleeplessness and a couple dozen vials that Reyna identified as kill shots and their antidotes.
Once finished with the inventory, Reyna humming in pleasure as she worked following the medical find, the two returned to the task of removing debris from the chamber. Crichton and Tokar had agreed that they would haul anything that was left out in the corridor to the cargo bay and jettison it as trash later.
After pushing a large container of nasty stuff - including the remains of the poor guy who had been strapped to that table - out into the corridor, Chiana reentered the med bay and moved on to the next pile of trash. She stopped short, though, when she saw Reyna looking intently at her midsection. “What?” she asked, looking down at her stomach. Everything looked okay - no new blood stains, the repairs to her tunic still intact.
Reyna smiled. “Nothing, Chiana. I was simply wondering how the stitches are holding, given all the heavy lifting you’ve done today.”
Chiana shrugged. “Fine, Rey, no pain at all.”
“Good. If you don’t mind, though, I’d like to check them.”
“Sure.” The Nebari girl hopped up onto the now-clear examination table, pulling her tunic free as she did so. A lop-sided grin spread across Chiana’s face when she saw Reyna shaking her head at the typical informality of her actions. Once a Peacekeeper, always a Peacekeeper, at least in some ways… “Soon’s you’re done, I’ll go relieve Tokar in Command.”
Reyna poked a bit at the stitches and replied, “You’ve still got half an arn before your shift starts.”
“S’okay. You look like you could use a…uh…backrub or something.”
Reyna’s only reply to that was another arched eyebrow. Chiana laughed, the merry sound a little at odds with the still grim-looking room. She looked at the neat line of small black stitches, the thin blue scar, and the clean whiteness of her skin. “Do you take them out, eventually?”
“No, Chiana, they’ll dissolve on their own in a few a more days.”
“Everything’s okay, then?”
Reyna nodded. “You appear to be healing nicely, yes.”
“Good.” Chiana shoved off from the table, tucking her tunic back in. “In that case, you want me to send Tokar back here or to your quarters?” The last was tossed over her shoulder as she headed out the door.
***
“John…”
John shifted in his sleep. He was still at the desk, head cradled on his folded arms, the stylus having dropped from lax fingers to roll across the floor, stopping when it hit the opposite wall.
“John…”
The voice came again, whispering through John Crichton’s otherwise pleasant dream of Aeryn Sun as he had last seen her, working on her prowler.
“John Crichton…”
John woke suddenly to find himself standing in the maintenance bay on Moya, watching Aeryn work on her prowler as he had done a couple of weeks ago now, before his life had fallen apart. Again.
“Aeryn?” He took a step toward her, confused. This couldn’t be Moya - he was pretty sure he was still in his quarters on Rohvu… Wasn’t he?
The leather-clad figure with the long, soft black hair turned. “Dammit, I knew it.” Even as the figure turned, John realized that it wasn’t Aeryn any more than it was the maintenance bay on Moya. “What’re you up to now, Harvey.”
“John, John, John,” Harvey said, now looking entirely like Scorpius, Aeryn’s beautiful hair having disappeared. Thank God. “Asleep on the job, Commander?”
“What the frell are you talkin’ about, Harv?” John stepped further into the maintenance bay. For whatever reason, Harvey wanted to talk to him here, so he might as well see what the freak wanted this time. It wasn’t always bad, when Harvey visited…
Looking past Harvey and Aeryn’s prowler, he could see what looked like his module, only not. It wasn’t complete, for one thing. For another, Furlow was there, leaning over the cockpit, just as Aeryn had been earlier in his dream.
“Don’t trust Furlow, John.”
“Well, that’s quite the newsflash, Harv. What makes you think I’d trust her?”
Harvey cocked his head to one side and considered John as though he were a lab specimen. “I don’t think that you do trust her, Crichton. I’m simply worried that you may let down your guard. She is not your friend.”
“And you are?” John snorted. “No, she’s not my friend, but she’s not my enemy, either. Was that all you wanted?” John picked up an imaginary driver from the fake workbench next to his module. He hadn’t even noticed when his location had shifted and Furlow was no longer anywhere to be found.
“But I am your friend, John. Have I not proved that to you?” Harvey sounded hurt.
“No, Harvey, you’ve proved to me that you don’t want to die. That’s not the same thing.”
Harvey loosed a long-suffering sigh. “John, if you want to see Aeryn or your other friends on Moya again, you need to start looking more closely at wormholes.”
John felt an eyebrow raise. Wormholes? Why did the clone want to talk wormholes now? “I don’t get it, Harv. Is Scorpy around here somewhere?”
“No, John. No one who can help you is anywhere near here. Only me.”
“Yeah, you and Scorpy are real ‘helpful…’”
“John, if you don’t master wormholes, you’ll lose your Aeryn Sun.”
“How do you figure that?”
“It’s quite simple, really. You master wormholes, you find Moya and thus Aeryn, you stop your twin from stealing her away.”
Suddenly, they were no longer in Moya’s maintenance bay, but rather in Pilot’s den here on Rohvu, but before the debris had been cleaned out. The den was as he had first found it, when Kaarvok had still been alive and Rohvu had been crawling with Xarai. And there was Kaarvok, standing just beyond Harvey, staring at John as though, without Harvey’s protective presence, he would be feeding on John’s brain right then and there.
John shuddered in the dream, the movement mirrored by his sleeping body. The sheet of flimsy he had been writing on earlier fell to the floor as his arm shot out. He woke with an incoherent shout, sweat and fear pouring from his body.
***
“Pilot? Are you awake?”
Pilot recognized the voice as belonging to Furlow, even crackling as it was over the comms. “Yes, Furlow, I am indeed awake. Would you be so kind as to turn down your transmission volume? The signal is breaking up a bit.”
“Sorry. That any better?”
“Yes, thank you. How may I be of service, Furlow?” He was somewhat mystified. Furlow had been taking great pains to avoid contact with him, and by extension, Rohvu, since the rather distressing day of her arrival. It was unclear to Pilot whether her avoidance was due to her irritation at being inconvenienced by Rohvu’s panicked starburst or whether she was attempting to minimize her own effect on Rohvu’s currently delicate mental balance - Rohvu simply didn’t like the woman.
“I was just thinking about what Johnny was saying earlier today, about the ship not telling you where he’s going…”
“Yes?”
“Johnny said he was on a definite heading, but you didn’t know where?”
“That is correct, Furlow.”
“Think you’d be able to upload the info into my database?”
“With some physical help perhaps, I believe that can be accomplished.” His arms were growing back and he even had some small amount of control, but progress had been hampered by a distinct lack of nutrition, exacerbated by Rohvu’s suicide attempt. He had some control, yes, but no reach. It would still be a couple of solar days before he would be able to work those controls nearest to his body and longer still before he would be able to perform at anything near to normal levels.
“If I come up there and give you a hand, I think I can crunch the data through my ship’s comp and maybe get an idea of where he’s headed.”
“That would be…quite helpful, Furlow.” Knowing where Rohvu was taking them would be the first step in possibly preventing the Leviathan from further self-harm.
“I’ll be there in just a few microts.”
***
“Man, what I wouldn’t give for a cup of coffee!” John said aloud as he drank what tasted like watered-down Tang. Even weak, unimaginative, black coffee would be better than this liquid equivalent to food cubes. Taking another swig, he began to run through the possibilities of distilling it into something a bit more palatable…
“What…koh-fee?” He looked over at Belima, crunching away on some food cubes. Mmmm… Food cubes and watery Tang. Breakfast of champions.
“Coffee is a drink we had back home. Sometimes tastes like ambrosia, other times like crap, but even the crap is better than this.” He turned a sour look on his cup as the door to the center chamber opened and Chiana came bouncing in, so he turned the sour look on her instead. “I hate morning people.”
“Hey, Crichton, Belima.” Chiana crossed the room and poked her head into the refrigeration unit, pulling out the container of Tang. “I think of myself as more of a…more of a…” She swung the door shut with her hip, a thoughtful expression on her face, which quickly changed to teasing. “…an anytime girl,” she smirked.
John smiled and shook his head. “Pip, you’re-” His words were cut off by Furlow’s voice, issuing from his comms.
“Hey, Johnny, you there?”
He raised an eyebrow at Chiana as she sat down on the bench next to him, a little too close for true comfort. She continued to smirk at him as she tilted her head back to drink Tang straight from the container.
“Yeah, Furlow, what’s up?” he said to Furlow before continuing to Chiana, “You don’t drink the milk straight from the bottle.” How many times had his mother thrown that one at him, when he was a kid?
Chiana’s response was to put the container down on the table and sling an arm around John’s shoulder before grinning over at Belima on the other side of the table. “Don’t worry if you don’t understand anything he says, Bel, nobody else does, either.”
John pulled away from Chiana and stood, slipping away from the bench as Furlow said, “I think I’ve got something interesting, here.”
“You in Command?” It was Furlow’s turn on watch.
“Yeah, Johnny, and my shipboard comp just finished running an analysis of your Leviathan’s present course.”
“Oh?” He couldn’t help but wonder if she’d somehow managed to hack into Rohvu’s own computers, Harvey’s words of warning still fresh in his mind.
“Yep. Spoke to Pilot last night and the two of us uploaded the course information into my comp. Figured I might be able to get an idea of where we’re headed.” Furlow sounded pleased with herself and John just knew she was working on some new thing to tack on to his tab.
Chiana came over to stand next to him - he felt her heat before she said, “D’you trust her, Crichton?”
“Not as far as I can throw her, Pip.” Then he said to Furlow, “So, you know where we’re going, then?”
“I think I might.”
“Quit being cagey, Furlow…”
“From data I downloaded back when I was trying to find Leviathan-produced ship components, compared to the course we’re on right now…”
“Furlow.” He was too damned tired for this.
“I think he might be heading for the Leviathan burial space.”
John looked a question over his shoulder at Chiana, who shrugged. “Leviathan burial space?”
“Yep. It’s where Leviathans go to die.”
Left Behind, chapter 12
Left Behind, chapter 14