WEIGHT OF THE WORLD by analise

Spoilers: Pretty much up through S3's 'Self Inflicted Wounds' 
Rating:R for violence, adult situations, language 
Category: AU, J/A, Action/Adventure, Angst 
Archive: Anywhere,just let me know 
Feedback: Yes, please. analise@2cowherd.net 
Disclaimer: The Farscape characters don't belong to me. Obviously.

Summary: On an Earth devastated and occupied by Peacekeepers, Crichton
struggles to retake his world and his own sanity.

Posted in full at: http://myscape.50megs.com/weight.html

Author Notes: As usual, this turned out to be a lot more work than I had
planned. Funny how that works. The original story was actually three parts, but
I ended up only using the last part, not just for brevity, but because it
turned out the initial extra 300 pages were unecessary to the story I really
wanted to tell. Yeah, this is an Alt-Universe. Just letting you know in case
you, for whatever strange reason, don't like that sort of thing. Of course, its
always possible that it won't end up being AU, but that's pretty unlikely.
Thanks as always to Kirby for the great beta. Always a help in getting me to
focus in on what needs smoothing out. Thanks, doll.

Enjoy.


******

So full of artless jealousy is guilt, 
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

---Hamlet

******


Remember that movie, Independence Day? It was nothing like that. We didn't see
any ships or ray-guns till later. There wasn't even the kick-ass spectacle of
huge glowing beams of green light and exploding national monuments. Instead, I
was knocked out of bed at 3 or so in the morning by a concussion blast that I
learned later had obliterated half of Pike's Peak. I suppose they weren't being
very careful when they bombed us from orbit, why else would you bother reducing
a lousy mountain to rubble?

Half our house fell down that night, killing my folks and my little sister. I
don't really remember too much about it, but I somehow ended up with my clothes
on and my schoolbag in hand before I fled the house. Good thing I saved 'The
Principles of Basic Biology' and that report on 'Treasure Island' I was
supposed to turn in that Friday. I guess some of us don't really have control
of our brains in an emergency.

Colorado Springs was a wasteland when the sun finally came up, something out of
a crazy nightmare. Tons of rubble and dead people everywhere, injured and just
plain cracked up folks stumbling around in a daze. And it was dark, even in the
day. There was so much dust, dust everywhere. Choking and dirty. We didn't see
blue sky for almost a year after that night.

I don't remember crying for my parents, though I must have, right? I mean, they
were great. My dad was gonna teach me to fish that summer and my mom made these
amazing oatmeal cookies, better than you got at the store. And Latisha, she was
only 3 but already smart and funny and way cool for a baby. She would do this
thing where she would go into your stuff and then bring it to you like a gift,
like she was giving it to you. She really dug on that, giving people shit. But,
anyway, I can be sorry later. It takes too much time hiding and running to wail
like a kid. And it won't bring any of them back either.

The Peeks, when they finally showed their faces, looked just like us. No little
green men, no big-eyed, gray-skinned midgets. They were men and women wearing
shiny black helmets and carrying ray-guns just like you always imagined aliens
would have. And they showed no mercy, not at first. I think the point, at least
this is what Gary says, was to cow us. Make us break. They still needed some of
us to do work for them later, to build our economy back up so they could feed
like a tick off our bellies.

That's what Gary says too.

Who's Gary? He's the best. He sort of wound up being the guy that we all found.
Don't know how. Rob says that it was God's Will that led us to him. Screw that
shit. Where was God when the Peeks razed the whole Eastern Seaboard? Nah, Gary
was just the kinda guy you ended up with. I bet there were guys like him all
over the place. Guys who kept their heads, who knew what we needed to do. Guys
like him gave us focus. And they helped us plan for the future when most folks
were just trying to survive. Gary had vision.

He'd also been in the army, or whatever. That was pretty helpful because he
knew things like secret places to hide nearby. The Peeks never found NORAD, and
that was where a lot of big-wig government types ended up hiding out. Cowards.
The people, us, we were out in the trenches trying to help. Finding food and
forming secret roads in and out of the city, keeping folks alive with stolen
and scavenged medicine when the Peeks didn't pass out enough. Gary calls those
Generals and stuff, worthless. I guess they're planning or something. Whatever.
What are those of us out in the open supposed to do in the meantime?

Supposedly there was one guy who knew the Peeks were coming. He tried to warn
the brass in DC before the attack, I heard. I guess they didn't listen or maybe
there wasn't time to do anything. What I think is that even if we'd had a year
to prepare, we couldn't have stopped them. How do you fight an enemy that can
obliterate a 14,000 foot mountain from space?

You don't. You just survive it. We have other ways of fighting back. That's
what Gary says.

And that was why we left Colorado Springs, just a part of the organization we'd
set up since the Bombardment. Gary let me come even though I was only 10. He
said I had skills. He didn't say why we had to go to Denver, though part of it
was to try and set up the same underground systems there... if they hadn't been
set up already. Turned out they had, but not as good. See, there's a Peek Base
in Denver and so the city is under closer scrutiny. More patrols, more
surveillance, more random 'questioning'. They have to be a lot more careful. We
do now, too.

Especially because of Crichton.

I've never met the guy, but Gary and Wanda (she's the leader of the Denver
underground) talk about him in hushed tones of respect. I guess no one knows
specifically *where* he is, but we do know that he's in Colorado. In the
mountains somewhere. And so far, he's the only one that we know of who has led
actual armed, successful attacks against the Peek patrols.

It's because of him that we'll beat them. Everyone knows it.

But sometimes, just sometimes, I wonder if he's real. It almost seems too
convenient to have this Zorro-type guy out there who's gonna ride in at the end
of the day and save us. When I tell Gary that, he grins and shakes his head and
calls me the youngest cynic he's ever met. I never ask if *he's* met Crichton
or not because I don't think he has either.

Hey. It's not like I don't *want* to believe in Crichton.

But I'm afraid - more than anything else - that he'll turn out *not* to be
real. Like the way that Superman and The Lone Ranger and Spawn aren't real.

Because frankly, we really need a hero.

****** ******


The snow was just beginning to fall. The Commander stood at the window and
looked out towards the distant fading blue of the foothills, his heavy brow
furrowed. Viewed from across the room, he was a statue of contemplation, as if
he were pondering the questions of the universe.

Tiah Peller approached him nervously, trying to keep from shaking, clasping her
hands tightly behind her back to hide her fear. Closer now, and she could hear
the muttering. Just below comprehension, but loud enough that it was almost as
if he were hissing unevenly to himself. Or whispering. It sent chills up and
down her spine, that mumbling. For the tenth time that day alone, she cursed
the fate that had made her this man's aide.

"S-sir?" The quiver in her voice made her wince. The Commander seemed to sense
her fear sometimes the way an animal sniffed out prey. The muttering stopped,
but he did not turn around immediately. Instead, he continued to stare out into
the darkening twilight. He seemed to be watching a blanket-shrouded woman pick
through the rubble in the streets below. "Sir?"

He did turn then, his eyes gleaming almost preternaturally in the half-light of
the offices. She swallowed and quickly saluted him, glad for the gesture
because it hid her trembling. The man she served frightened her more than
anything she had ever encountered before in her life. And she could not really
say why. He was not unattractive or malformed. A tall man with gray at the
temples and a strong profile, it was his mouth, perhaps, that made her uneasy.
It was tight and cruel, a thin gash that never split in a smile. No. No, that
wasn't true.  Commander Sallo Darred *did* smile occasionally. And it was more
terrifying than any sneer.

Similar to a predatory showing of teeth, rather than an expression of pleasure.
Or maybe it was a mixture of both things that made it such an unpleasant thing
to witness.

"What is it, Peller? Must you constantly tiptoe around like the frelling rodent
you resemble?" His eyes swept up and down her briefly before he turned back to
the window.

"I just wanted to inform you that AgSec Chief Gevvis is here to see you." Her
spine stiffened at the insult, her chin lifting.

The man's face stilled, the frown smoothing out. He let out a breath and
nodded.

"Excellent. Please show her in. And prepare a glass of Grenit -- hot. It's
chilly in here."

Of course it was chilly. It was winter and there was no temperature regulator
in this primitive, ancient building. The Earthers were no tech-masters, that
was for certain. Her eyes flicked to the windows, noting the snowfall was
increasing. It would only get colder tonight. No matter what she thought of her
Commander, at least being his assistant kept her up in the warmer parts of the
Base. Like most Sebaceans, she was not partial to heat, but icy cold was not
much better.

She moved to open the door, gesturing in Myla Gevvis. The AgSec Chief was new,
she had only been assigned to the Base 7 monens before, but she had already won
the respect of her entire crew and word like that got around. The woman she had
replaced had been competent too, before she'd defected from the Base, but this
one was better. Peller let her eyes flicker up and down the woman briefly
before nodding to her.

"The Commander will see you now."

Gevvis walked past her without a glance, her long legs taking her right into
the room. Peller bit her lip with mild envy before she shut the door and moved
across to get the hot drinks. Myla didn't seem to fear the Commander at all,
not like most of the rest of them.

She concentrated on removing the glasses from their wooden boxes and dragging a
carved box down from the high backed shelving unit next to the refreshment
unit. Flipping open the lid, she could see that the fine gray powdery Grenit
was dwindling. The Commander was going to have to pull whatever strings he
pulled to indulge in the exotic habit of the alien euphoric. She made a mental
note to inform Darred later.

"Commander." Myla's voice was strong and rich, showing no trace of a quiver.
Darred seemed to respect the Chief for it, for he never showed any sign of the
deliberate cruelty that he did when he dealt with Tiah. Or maybe he just liked
tall brunettes.

"Ah, Chief. Sit down. Peller is making hot Grenit."

"Thank you, sir, but none for me."

Anyone with eyes could see that Darred was attracted to Myla. The most
astonishing thing was that she seemed to feel the same way. It was the only
explanation for the fact that she took the occasional afternoon food break with
him. And there were other signs. She would keep eye contact with him and lower
her lashes flirtatiously.

It was enough to make Peller nauseous. The thought of that creepy freak
touching her even accidentally was enough to make her skin ripple with
gooseflesh. She spooned a large amount of the powder into a drink container,
poured in the creamy base and spent a few moments shaking it before setting the 
whole thing into a compartment in the refreshment bar. The small drinkheater
pulsed with blue light and then dimmed. She popped the thing open, careful not
to touch the hot metal, and withdrew the container.

"What can I do for you this evening, Chief?"

Peller heard the squeak of leather as the woman leaned forward slightly, the
tiny beep of the datapad as it was activated.

"As we discussed several days ago, sir, the failing of the entire third
quadrant of Hennoc. I told you then that I intended to bring in Earther
fertilizer, to see if our plants responded better to a more native soil."

Peller filled a single flute with the steaming Grenit and turned.

Myla was a tall, slender woman with long, dark hair pulled into a sleek braid
that reached her mid-back. The hairstyle emphasized her high cheekbones and the
sharpness of her features. It was not entirely flattering, but it was
practical. And prettiness was not what Myla Gevvis was about. But she was quite
beautiful. It was the way she moved and the way she spoke. Myla was magnetic.

"I remember." He took the hot glass without looking at Tiah, and she nodded to
him and then to Myla. The woman glanced at her with astonishingly clear
blue-gray eyes and gave her a small smile. Peller couldn't refrain from smiling
back at her. She could understand why the woman's crew liked her so much. "What
of it?"

"I found a place to obtain large quantities of earth fertilizer. I want to send
out the cargo vessel for a load."

"Why not just take the Ag Skims?" He frowned.

"I want to do it in one shipment. It will be faster that way, only a few arns
instead of a whole day. Crichton's group will be less likely to ambush us if we
do it this way. And I can always have some humans clean it out later."

Darred lip lifted in a sudden sneer of pure hate at the mention of the earther
rebel's name, but he nodded dismissively as he took a sip of the hot drink. It
made Peller shiver when he did that... when he shifted his moods so very
quickly.

"Crichton. Fine, fine. I authorize it. Here, give me that." She handed over her
datapad and he tapped his code into it. "That fatherless traskik. If I ever get
my hands on him or even one of his frelling people..." He started to mutter
under his breath again, but stopped just as suddenly, as if recalling that Myla
was sitting right there.

Peller stood near the door, waiting to see if he approved of the temperature of
his drink before she dared to leave. He seemed to be fine with it and she
quietly opened the low-tech wooden doors, twisting the primitive knob silently.

"About tomorrow night, sir..." Myla's voice had gone huskier and Peller closed
her eyes in disgust as she slipped out. "Are we still scheduled?"

"I'm looking forward to it..."

She shut the door on the conversation, managing not to press her back against
the door. Her desk sat against the far wall and she slid behind it, trying not
to imagine why anyone would want to have a late night meal with Commander
Darred. Much less the well-respected AgSec Chief.

Clearly there was more to Myla Gevvis than met the eye.


+++

"Chief Gevvis." Lieutenant Peller nodded in respect to her as she strode out of
Darred's office, wide green eyes following her with what an odd mix of hero
worship and confusion. No doubt over her behavior with the Commander. She
managed to smile at her as she passed, and then paused, turning back to the
young woman. Peller was a slender little thing with ash blond hair and a narrow
face. She couldn't be more than 20 cycles old. Too young to be tied to a man
like Darred.

"Lieutenant," she flattened her hands on the desk and leaned over it, meeting
the girl's eyes. "A word of friendly advice." Peller looked up at her like she
was expecting punishment, shoulders tense. "Straighten your shoulders," she
said, gesturing at the hunched posture. "Look him in the eye when you talk to
him, don't show him fear, even if you are afraid." She pushed back up from the
desk and gave the girl another smile. "He will go easier on you. Trust me."

She barely checked to see if the youngling nodded, instead walking quickly out
into the enormous round central chamber of the building. Voices and footsteps
melded and merged into a omnipresent hum of noise, bouncing off the high
cupola. The interlude with Peller was already forgotten and she wanted to scrub
at her arms, erasing the disquiet that encounters with the Commander always
left her feeling. Dirty.

Flirtation, never natural for her, was almost a torturous effort when it came
to Darred.

Walking at a brisk clip down the stairs, she passed a huddled cluster of
administrative flunkies, her boots tapping out a staccato beat against the
cracked marble, echoing in the vast chamber of what had once been the City
Capital Building of Denver. It was the only human-built structure still
standing within the Base itself and she often wondered why it hadn't been razed
like the other buildings. Symbols, she supposed, were important.

Two PK troopers stiffened as she strode past them and out the wide doors. The
snow was falling thicker now, but she did not hesitate before plunging into the
swirling gray and white twilight. All around her, the black wall that had been
built around the Base not long after the Bombardment of the planet's surface
loomed dark and gloomy at the perimeter.

She pushed aside the queasy distress she always felt after her conversations
with the Commander. She didn't want to think about it just now. There were
other things on her mind, and she wanted to forget everything else.

Snowflakes gathered in her eyelashes and she blinked them away, glancing up at
the sky briefly to judge the time before breaking into a trot. She was late,
but it didn't concern her. She would be expected to be late. There was no
timetable she could reliably keep. Still, her heart picked up in excitement as
she moved through snow that was now ankle deep, not breaking stride as she
pulled the fastener of her jump shut at the base of her throat to keep the
chill out. The enormous AgSec building, the place where she spent most of her
day, towered over the Base, incongruous among the primitive Earther buildings.
It was the single food supply for the entire place, the only reason the PKs
could survive amongst a hostile, if defeated, population.

She smirked slightly as she recalled the early attempts to force the Earthers
to supply the invaders with food. It had been rotting, poisoned and sometimes
not even food at all. No amount of threat or force had changed things much. At
least at their base. She had heard that other Bases across the planet had fared
a little better with the local populace, but not much.

Only five monens into the occupation, it had been decided that it was better to
simply grow it themselves. Now, five cycles later, the Base was completely
self-sufficient. They grew their own food, pumped their own water and ran their
own power. The rest of the city was on its own. Which meant that Denver was
still dark.

She passed through one of the many checkpoints and allowed herself to be
scanned by the guards. They had installed the checkpoints not soon after the
wall itself, when a few disastrous incursions by the human 'resistance' had
shown the Commander how easy it was for the Earthers to pretend to be
Peacekeepers. The genetic scanners had been installed not soon after the
explosion that had wiped out their main power source for a full monen.

She had to hand it to Darred, creepy or not, he adapted quickly.

Her feet carried her past the sprawling AgSec Complex and towards the Barracks
where her bunk was. The snow was getting worse, but she lifted her chin up to
the cold sting. Cold did not bother her, it was exhilarating, snapping at her
cheeks and pinching her ears. Two lines of troopers marched past her and she
let her lip curl slightly at the sloppy formation. She could almost feel sorry
for the Commander, unpleasant as he was, burdened with the dregs of the
Peacekeeper force and expected to get results.

She ducked into the Barrack and down several flights of stairs to where she had
taken her quarters. The others had stared at her like she was a lunatic when
she had asked to be given the dreary room, but she had her reasons. Reasons she
would never tell anyone.

No one else down here, of course. Just storage. That had been one reason why
she wanted these moldering, dark rooms. And the other reason... she closed her
door behind her, locked it, and quickly moved towards the corner. Shoving back
her metal-framed cot, she bent down, shaking her long braid back over her
shoulder as she hauled up a hidden trap door on well-oiled hinges. A moment
later she was slipping down out of sight into the darkness, pulling the hatch
shut behind her. The tug of a cleverly hidden rope pulled the bed back into
place over the door after she'd vanished from sight.

Her feet touched ground again after a descent down several cold metal rungs and
she quickly pulled out a tiny hand light and flicked it on. Without hesitation,
she set off down the long round passage, ducking slightly at each juncture
where damage or the structure itself pressed down into the tunnel. She did not
slow or falter at a single intersection, moving with the confidence of someone
who had passed through the tunnels many times.

Half an arn later, she found herself at a major juncture where at least five
pipes converged. It was there that she settled to wait, tucking her arms
against her body and leaning against the cold curving metal wall.

It was not too long. She had been late as it was. The sound of several cautious
footsteps echoed down the dismal tunnels and she pushed away from the wall,
pulling the datapad she had taken into Darred's office out of her jump and
tucking it under her arm. It was still warm from her body heat. She could see
the faint vapor of her own breath steaming before her, surreal mist in the beam
of approaching light.

The footfalls echoed louder, stopped, and then a tiny light flickered twice in
a pattern. She replied by switching hers back on. A moment later she was
smiling into the familiar face of Tynan Redarr.

"Ty, I'm surprised they sent you." She smiled and clasped his hand firmly in a
gesture that was meant to express both muted joy as well as respect for a
fellow warrior.

"I didn't have anything else to do," he grinned back at her through graying
stubble.  There were several more lines etched into his face than there had
been the first time they had met, but his eyes still twinkled with all the
strength and spirit of a man half his age. He handed her a small bag and she
opened it eagerly, dropping all pretense of trying to be aloof.

It contained a new transceiver to replace the one she'd had to quickly destroy
a monen ago to avoid a narrow brush with detection. Her braid fell down over
her shoulder as she dug in further, finding small things... luxuries that
wouldn't give her away in her treacherous position, but would make her life
slightly more comfortable. Nothing more. She frowned in disappointment.

"Is this it?" She had been hoping for the letter she usually got. A new image
perhaps. She missed them so much it ached like a wound. Tynan was grinning like
a frelling fool and her frown deepened.

"No, I brought something else." He stepped aside then, his tiny beam of light
streaking up and over to limn the familiar features of a second man. One who
was smirking like his friend.

She didn't take the time to berate either of them for their childish games, she
simply grabbed either side of John's face and kissed him, the bag falling in a
dismissive clattering to the semi-frozen ground. His arms felt wonderful when
they encircled her, tightening to the point where it was hard to breathe.

Hezmana, it had been monens. He smelled so good under the sweat and the muck,
his hair soft under her palms, his heart thumping against her, his mouth hot
and soft and sweet . It was ridiculous, but she felt tears burning the corners
of her eyes and she blinked furiously against them, pulling back from their
kiss to press her face into the hollow of his neck. His pulse beat softly on
her cheek and she took a deep ragged breath.

Hard to believe how much she really *had* missed him now that he was in front
of her again.

Long days. Long nights. Every microt bearing the chance that she would be
recognized, discovered, exposed. The tension drained out of her limbs in a
catharsis of exhaustion, allowing herself to be tired only now. To be needy
only now. It was not a weakness, she had learned that from him long ago and now
she took pleasure in being able to let his arms hold her up, to let his embrace
surround her.

They stood that way, together for a long span of heartbeats, just remembering
what each other felt like, living and breathing and not a memory to be
cherished like a keepsake in a dusty box.

"What ... what are you doing here?" She finally asked it, pulling back to look
up at him. His face was gaunt in the meager light. So tired. More exhausted
than she could ever remember seeing him. He had never quite lost that hunted
look, not since DK had died. He had changed that day, and not for the better.
Something in him, his innocence perhaps, had been lost when his best friend had
stolen his death. When DK had stepped in front of a PK bolt that was meant for
him. But he was still John Crichton, he still had the same heart, even if it
was shrouded by a few new inches of armor. "You know how dangerous it is for
you to come into the city. Darred grows more fixated on you each new day. At
this point I doubt that he would bother imprisoning you if he caught you. He
would pick one of a hundred inventively painful ways for you to die."

His mouth twisted up on one side as he shook his head. His hair was a little
too long and she found herself smoothing it back.

"I don't think I had a choice. It's been too long. I had to see how you were
doing in there. How it was coming with our friend the Commander."

She took a deep breath through her nose, shaking her head slightly. She would
not tell him just *how* she was helping her progress along with Darred, or just
what she intended to do. She would not mar their brief reunion by upsetting
John. He had enough to worry about anyway.

"Good, John. Good. I think I'm really getting Darred to trust me. I think I
might have access to the codes sooner than we had even hoped. Tomorrow night-"
He put his hand up suddenly, touching her lips to stillness as he smiled.

"Not yet. Just ...not yet. I brought you something else." Her eyebrows arched
up and she backed away from him, peering around curiously as if she could see
anything at all in the musty dark. Tynan sat hunched against the far wall now,
giving as much privacy as he could afford them and still stand watch.  All she
could really see was the outline of John's head in the light reflecting off the
corrugated interiors of the rusted pipes they stood in.

"What?" She couldn't help but sound slightly suspicious after the earlier
surprise. John turned from her, leaning down behind him and lifting up a small
form that burst into childish giggles as soon as he was touched. Her heart
skipped a beat and one hand came up to cover her mouth in a gasp.

"I was real quiet, mama. Wasn't I? Are you surprised?" She couldn't see him
properly and she fumbled for her light, switching it on with suddenly trembling
fingers. It had been over half a cycle since she had infiltrated the PK Base as
a replacement for the old Ag Chief. She had done it because there had been no
one else who could, and she knew what was at stake. But if leaving John behind
had been hard, it had been torture to leave her son.

Light streamed from her now-steadying hand and she shone it onto Dylan, named
at John's request after his dead friend. Blue eyes squinted into the light and
she laughed, a short sharp sound that encompassed both joy and shock. He was so
much bigger than he had been. How much of his life had she missed? She didn't
say another word, just gathered the boy into her arms and pulled him close,
ignoring his squeal of protest. He smelled like cold and snow and something
sweet. His hair was sleek as seedfluff against her cheek and she laughed softly
into the crown of his head.

Hezmana, who could have known that something that seemed so simple, just
separation, would be so hard? It wasn't meant to be forever and yet she
couldn't believe how much she missed this. Just the smell of her offspring's
hair. Her life had once been defined by the sharp scent of Chakkan Oil and the
hard boundaries of rifle, knife and fist. This was all at once simpler and
infinitely more encompassing. She took a few steps backwards until she found
the curved wall and slowly slid down it until she was sitting against it, her
knees bent to curve around Dylan. She kissed the top of his head and smiled
through her laughter.

Aeryn only allowed herself so much indulgence before she pulled back, lowering
her knees so that she could make out both boy and father at the same time. She
shook her head, too full of emotion and wonder to be angry at the risks John
had taken this night.

"I thought you might want to see him." John said. The underlying tremor in his
voice told her that he knew very well how dangerous it was to bring the boy
here. She was still absurdly happy, though her practical side was reinstating
its authority now that the first flush of joy was wearing off.

"Da told me to surprise you. To be real quiet and not say a word. Did you know
I was there?" Dylan had put two mittened hands on both of her cheeks in a
gesture that hurt her heart. He had always done that, even when he was a baby,
forcing her to look directly at him. It was like he'd been teaching her as she
went, just what it meant to be connected in such an intimate way to another. It
had been Dylan who had opened those last doors through her fear. It was Dylan
that allowed her to *feel* without fear.

She nodded, bringing one hand up to wipe at the suspicious moisture beneath her
eyes. Cold was seeping up through the seat of her jumpsuit, but she ignored it.

"You certainly did. I didn't know you were there at all. You were quiet as a
moose." John's snort of suppressed laughter told her she had gotten the phrase
wrong, but she didn't care. Dylan was digging through his jacket pocket for
something when John squatted down next to her, smiling at both of them. He had
turned his own light on, adding a little more illumination to the reunion.

"I brought you something, Mama." Awkwardly, with a child's fumbling movements,
he withdrew a malformed piece of wood about as long as her index finger from
his pocket and held it out in one mittened fist. There was a piece of thong
dangling from it. "I made it for you." He exclaimed proudly. "Da helped a
little," the boy glanced sidelong at his father as if he had to grudgingly
admit it with John sitting right there.

"Only a little." John grinned.

"Tynan showed me how." It was a carving, she saw now. A crude pointed lump of
wood that had been sliced into with a knife or a sharp object of some kind. A
hole was fitted at the top and a thong strung through it, likely the part that
John had done. She kissed Dylan's forehead, brushing aside the dark, glossy
wing of his bangs to do so.

"Thank you, its lovely. I can't believe how talented you are."

"Do you know what it is?" John asked wickedly and she shot him a glare before
returning her gaze to the lump in her palm. Dylan stared at her expectantly and
she suddenly wanted to throttle her grinning mate.

"Um, certainly I do." she squinted at it, trying to make out a feature of some
sort. It was impossible of course. She mentally made a note to remember this
injustice. "Is it a ... " she wracked her brain for the earth things that the
child was exposed to, "a... dog?"

Dylan's frown told her immediately that she had guessed wrong. "A knife?" The
small brow was lowering further. "A pulse pistol?" Her sudden inspiration was
rewarded with a smile.

"It's for protection." He grinned proudly. She laughed quietly and looped her
treasure proudly around her neck. She would have to hide it under her clothes
of course, but it was better than anything else she could have hoped for.

"Thank you, Dylan. It will protect me. I'm sure of it." She met John's eyes
then, suddenly serious. She didn't have much time before she would be expected
to go on her evening rounds.

He read the expression immediately and he pushed to his feet, allowing Aeryn to
kiss her son once more before hauling him up and handing him over to Tynan who
appeared from the darkness as if on cue. Then John was grabbing her hands and
pulling her up to her feet.

Her heart was turning cold at the thought of having to go back down that long
lonely tunnel, leaving them behind again, but there was nothing for it. She had
started this job, and as tempting as the idea of simply leaving with John and
Dylan was, she couldn't just quit. Not yet.

She fumbled on the ground for the datapad she'd been carrying, passing it over
to her mate. He didn't even look at it before tucking it safely into his own
coat.

"It's this weeken's roof codes for the AgSec so you can land the Skim. I'm
going to send out the cargo vessel tomorrow with directions to the coordinates
you gave me. They will be collecting Earther fertilizer from the warehouse you
specified. All I can say is that I hope the devices are well hidden. Questions
would be raised if they were found, especially since I was the one who 'found'
the old fertilizer plant." She took a deep breath, folding her arms tightly
across her chest, tucking cold fingers under her armpits. "The bags will be
unloaded in the shipyard, I will make sure they are placed. I hope it will be
easy to determine which bags I need to leave on the cargo vessel itself?" It
was dangerous, that part. She would have to make sure that the devices were not
discovered at any point in the procedure. He nodded to her question.

"After that, all we need are the Carrier's docking codes." His voice was gruff,
his fear for her seeping into the timbre of his words. But escalation was
necessary. He'd said so himself. They couldn't just sneak around blowing up PK
Stingers on patrol forever. That would never get them anywhere. Eventually High
Commander Kregga would become annoyed enough to have the entire area razed from
space. And none of them would be able to escape that. It was only lack of
manpower and the PK need for the resources hidden in the same mountains the
resistance lurked in that had held High Command's hand.

Why wasn't Tynan in her place? He was Sebacean. He could have infiltrated too.
It had been John's silent question the night before she had left to take the
place of the new AgSec Officer they had captured. He would not say it out loud,
selfish as it was. And they both knew that Tynan could not have done it. The
odds of his being recognized were even higher than hers. The ex-PK had been in
the first wave before he'd defected.

She had been the only choice. The only way. She had said it to him the night
she'd left, and she silently repeated it to herself each day when the
loneliness ate at her like a disease. Loneliness. She had been lonely before,
before John. But it had never mattered. It was a fact of life. Now it was
nearly crippling. A price, she told herself. A price she had to pay for
allowing herself to embrace happiness. With John. With her son. Even with the
small, tightly knit community of fighters they had built on Earth.

"I will have the codes by tomorrow night." It was a bold statement. Anything
could happen between now and then. "If something goes wrong, I will signal you
to abort. Can you be ready?"

He stared at her for a long moment, hard. So hard. And then, slowly, he nodded.

"We can."

She stepped away when John made a move to take her hands in his, ducking her
head to keep from meeting his eyes. She was afraid that if she let him touch
her again, she wouldn't be able to leave.

He didn't seem to have the same concern. His fingers brushed her chin, forcing
her to look up again. She did look at him then, forced herself to really look.
Even knowing what she would see. The stripped and whittled version of the John
Crichton who had coaxed her into the light all those cycles ago. Hezmana, the
past monens had not treated him well. Hollow cheeks and sharp edged intensity.
She tried to remember what he had looked like before, what he had looked like
before Scorpius. There was hardly anything soft left in him at all. Burned away
by bitter truth, by hardship and tragedy and most of all, guilt.

Aeryn wondered now and again if things would have been different if DK had not
died. The final turning point for him, the moment he had decided that there was
no real justice, no happy endings. Not for anyone. When Dylan had been born,
she had hoped that he might regain his hope, but it had only made him tougher,
more protective. Never cruel, never unfair. Only ...hard as stone.

She would never tell him that his distance was part of why she had gone into
the BaseOp, never tell him that she felt the need to do something, anything.
Not just to save Earth, save her new family, but to save *him*. To prove that
he could triumph. Just once. That hope was real. That he mattered.

His eyes didn't leave hers and she wondered if he ever guessed her thoughts.
The irrationality of that notion vanished as she realized that it was well past
time for her to go. She swallowed past the lump in her throat and saw that he
realized it too. His fingers threaded back into her hair before she could move
away, circling behind her ears, his thumbs stroking her cheeks. He pulled her
forward until their foreheads touched, and she closed her eyes at the pain of
the simple gesture.

"I want you out of there, Aeryn." His voice was soft, too soft to even echo.
She nodded faintly. Her strength was returning, her resolve. She was doing this
for them. For all of them. And most of all for him. It had to be done.

"I'll wait by the next juncture," Ty called out softly from the darkness, then
to Dylan: "Say bye to your mom."

"Bye, mama. Are you coming back soon?"

"Soon." The word caught in her throat a little as she pulled back from her mate
and waved her hand. She could just make out the glint of the boy's eyes over
Ty's shoulder. He waved back and then the big man vanished into the dark, his
light bobbing. She returned her attention to John. His face was twisted into an
expression of pain to match her own. She reached up to touch his cheek, running
the pad of her finger along the network of lines just beneath his right eye and
then down to touch his lips. He kissed her finger and she let herself press up
against him one last time.

"Promise you'll be careful getting back out of the city." She whispered it,
hearing the darkness repeat her words back in a sibilant hiss.

"Promise me you'll *get* back out." His raw words were lost in her neck.

They pulled back from each other, both fully aware that neither could promise
anything of the sort.

They did not say goodbye as they kissed one last time, a hard, desperate thing,
and then parted, walking in opposite directions down separate dark paths.

They'd never said goodbye to each other, and they would not start now.

***** *****

Wanda died yesterday.

When I say she died, I mean, we killed her. We had to. See, every so often
(more and more lately) the Peeks come out from behind their Base walls and they
grab random people off the streets for questioning. When I say questioning, I
don't mean they sit em' down and ask 'em nice questions. There's no bright
light and no good-cop, bad-cop like on TV. The Peeks have ways... technology...
that will *make* you talk. And there's nothing you can do about it.

Because of that, those of us who know anything about our little resistance
groups, we walk always in threes. And we don't clump up. It's a little scary,
actually. Not just to be scared that you might get caught, but to think that
you might have to 'take care' of someone who does.

Wanda was a great lady, I feel real sorry for Scott. He was the one who had to
shoot her when the Peeks grabbed her. And it scares me too. I don't know if I
could kill someone to protect our secrets... even if it meant saving all the
rest of us. If even one of us were caught, that would be the end of it all. The
Peeks would root out our nest like so many ants.

And then there would be no chance of ever winning.

Shit, Wanda.

****** ******

It was full dark by the time John emerged from the sewer system, climbing up
through the damaged network of ladders and rubble in the ruins of the old Dept.
of Water and Power station. The silence was eerie, that hollow quiet that
always came with a heavy snow. In comparison to the inky darkness of the
tunnels, even the moonless night was bright. After running the oculars over the
surrounding landscape, he braced his legs onto the opening and leaned down to
pull Dylan up from Tynan's hands. The boy was sleepy. With all the excitement
of coming down from the mountain camp and the long hike in the tunnels, he was
worn out. Tucking him against his body and half under his coat, he kept an eye
out with his free hand on his pistol while the ex-PK climbed out of the hole
and carefully covered it back up again with debris.

Squinting back behind him through the falling snow, he could make out the
reddish glow that was BaseOp 43, a hulking eyesore in the middle of the ruined
corpse of Denver, Colorado. Enormous black walls, easily 75 feet high, rose up
on all sides of what had once been part of downtown, the repaired dome of the
old capital building peeking up over the southwest face. Area lights flooded
the area, giving the whole place an unwholesome glow in the inclement weather.

"Come on, John, we have a ways to go yet." His friend's quiet voice was
sympathetic and John nodded automatically. Dylan was already asleep against
him, breathing softly through his mouth. It had been a risk, he thought, but
worth it for the look on Aeryn's face. She had needed it. A lark, he'd thought
before when he'd planned his surprise. But he'd had no idea just how much she
really had needed to see Dylan... to see *him*. He hadn't even realized how
much he'd needed to see *her*. He clenched his teeth and turned away from the
BaseOp. If this all worked, then ... he stopped himself brutally. Hope was for
fools.

He'd realized that the day that DK had died for him.

The snow was already calf deep as he walked through the shadows of the ruined
buildings, trying to keep to Ty's footsteps, always conscious of hiding their
numbers. The darkness was hard to navigate, especially with a four year old's
dead weight on his arm, but he managed to keep the big man's heels in sight as
they hiked. Funny, all the times when he had been on Moya and had imagined
being back home again, this apocalyptic landscape was never part of his
fantasy.

Moya. He hadn't thought of his old friends in a long while. Were they still out
there looking for their homes? He sent out a silent prayer that they would find
their worlds in better condition than his. Or that they wouldn't at least be
the harbingers of doom to the places that they loved. John was fully aware that
it was his fault that Earth had been ravaged by the Peacekeepers.

He had failed to stop Scorpy from opening the wormhole. A wormhole built from
the easy-bake oven instructions gleaned from his brain. A wormhole that had led
straight to his home.

A humorless, self-deprecating smirk stretched his lips and he looked up to see
the ex-PK stopping against a crumbling wall. Darkened streetlights stretched
upwards all along the road like dead weeds, the houses to either side hunched
dark shapes in the snow. And then, a flicker of light.

Ty snapped his light on and off twice, then once more. They waited for the
answer with bated breath, John crushing the old distraction of guilt under his
heel for the moment, his grip tightening on his son. So many PK patrols in the
city, all out 'keeping the peace'. It would be a simple matter for his small
group to be spotted and ambushed. It was a gamble every time they came into the
city.

A million scenarios flashed through his head before the single return flash had
them both exhaling in relief and trudging forward. Through a gaping doorway and
into a living room with half a roof, they found themselves amongst friends
again.

"You were gone a long time, we were starting to worry." Jack Crichton wore a
full beard in the winters and sometimes John still did a double take when he
saw him. His father moved to take Dylan from John's arm before he could ask him
to. "We saw a Stinger move past and wondered if you'd been spotted."

Listening to his dad talk after Ty and Aeryn was always a little disorienting.
Both Sebaceans' accents were odd and fast, but better with each passing year.
Quent had found a way to kill off the microbes in all three of them, enabling
them to learn to speak English naturally, which then enabled them to *teach*
Sebacean without the microbes interfering.

It had been a long process, but well worth the effort. Even if both Aeryn and
Tynan now sounded a little like auctioneers sometimes. Sebacean was a clipped,
hoarse language and one not used to drawing out vowels. At first Aeryn had
sounded like she wanted to reduce every word to consonants and Ty had tripped
over every word that had more than two syllables, but they'd adapted. His
people, on the other hand, had learned Sebacean remarkably quickly. He wondered
if it had something to do with desperate times.

"We had to evade a few scouting parties on the way in." John grunted, rotating
his numb shoulder where Dylan had put it to sleep. The boy made a small noise
and pressed his face into Jack's neck, his arms and legs limp. His dad gestured
at the half-hidden skimmer just beyond the dining room doorway where the
kitchen had once stood.

"We can leave any time you want. We managed to get a little bit of supply
hunting done too, while you were down there. How is she?" The last was thrown
in almost as an afterthought, but John could hear the concern in his dad's
voice. He shook his head, following Jack as the older man walked out to the
Skim where the rest of the group was waiting. Quent Gunderia and Kevin Sprage
were leaning against the side of their stolen skimmer, pulse rifles held up at
the ready. Despite their lounging positions, they were far from relaxed. No one
could afford to drop their vigilance for a moment when they were this close to
a BaseOp. A roving Patrol could catch a glimpse of them at any time. Valerie
was already inside, initiating start-up with a silent humming.

"We've got the AgSec roof now." He patted the datapad she'd given him where it
was tucked in his inner pocket. "The big news is that she says she can get the
docking codes by tomorrow night. That means we step things up. Can we be ready
to go in a day?"

Jack twisted his lips in thought, repositioning the sleeping boy on his hip.
The snow was starting to fall in bigger flakes, stark against the black wool
cap his father wore.

"I think so. It would just be a matter of getting everything we need together.
We can handle it."

"And your team, Ty?" John turned as the big Sebacean came up behind them,
hauling a big box under one arm. He grunted.

"They're ready. They've been ready for a cycle now. Isn't that right, Q?"

Quent's old, scratched glasses glinted in the light of the flashlights as he
nodded, not moving from his place by the Skim. John might have grinned at the
vision of his old Farscape teammate holding a pulse rifle so seriously, if the
situation hadn't been so real. Once mathematician, now post-apocalyptic freedom
fighter.

"I asked how she was." Jack had not been fully diverted from his original
question. John hardened, but said nothing as he turned away from both Ty and
his dad and climbed into the Skim.

He did not miss his father's soft sigh as he handed Dylan into the compartment,
but he ignored it. The last thing that he needed was to talk. His dad, hell,
even Melissa, wouldn't stop trying to unearth things that John had no interest
in letting see the light. No talking. Not now. Jack settled on the opposite
bench, staring at John with measuring eyes though he said nothing more. Only
once Tynan shut the hatch and moved up into the pilot's seat, did he lean
forward and touch John's hand.

"She's doing fine, son. She's strong. Stronger than all of us."

There might have been a time that John would have tried to appreciate his
father's concern, but now it only grated. He turned his eyes down to Dylan's
sleeping face instead. The skimmer rocked as Tynan maneuvered it up and over
debris on the roadways and he tightened his grip on his son.

He looked over at Kevin then, flicking his eyes up and down the kid's too-thin
frame. It had been 2 monens since he'd seen the boy. Apparently food was still
hard to come by in the city. Maybe not quite 20, Kevin had been on Scout duty
the past month in Denver. Watching the Base, watching the Peacekeepers, talking
to the downtrodden population. John had taken the trip to contact Aeryn as an
opportunity to replace him with a new Scout. And it was Mel's turn.

Melissa was good at spying, she had always taken no small amount of pride in
the amount of information she had gathered on his nighttime activities when
they had been kids. Blackmail, she had said, always had its uses.

His thoughts lingered on his sister for a moment, shying away from remembering
that Jen, his youngest sister, hadn't fared so well in the Bombardment. She'd
been in New York, and from what he understood, New York was part of the
Atlantic floor now. Another death he could mark up on his list of crimes.

Jennifer could have never survived in this manicure-free, no-valet-parking,
eating-out-of-a-can world. But Melissa, Mel was her father's daughter. She'd
held up under the trauma of the past years better than he would have expected.
Not that he'd ever thought of her as weak, but she'd always been the one in
library studying instead of out skipping school like Jen. She'd never joined
any teams like her sibs, preferred to read rather than run around. Now she was
a compact bundle of muscle, their best Sebacean speaker and a crack shot with a
pulse pistol. Sister or not, he would be putting her out as Scout.

He had Scouts in nearly every North American Base, and contacts with small
pockets of resistance overseas. The only place he had not managed infiltration
was High Command. And that was only because Kregga, blast him, had built his
headquarters in Greenland of all places. There was no human settlement near the
fortress, and therefore no way to post someone there.

No matter, he reminded himself. He had a few cards left up his sleeve. Things
that no one, not his dad, not even Aeryn knew about. It was safer that way. The
new, ruthless part of him knew that if any of them were captured, it would only
be a matter of time before every detail was spilled out like so much cracked
yolk. There were things that he had to bear the burden of alone.

He closed his eyes in the semi-opaque darkness of the skimmer, his chin tucking
down over Dylan's soft dark hair. The vehicle didn't touch the ground, it used
repulsors to hover only a few feet above the surface, but it still rocked over
every irregularity. They had stolen the thing a few years before, outfitted it
with as much weaponry as they could and now used it and others like it to
transport his tiny army here and there. Mostly in and out of the mountains.
There was always the danger that they would be spotted from the air, either
from satellite trackers or Stinger patrols - but they were careful. Very
careful.

Almost as if to demonstrate his thoughts, the skimmer lurched to a halt and
John felt the sudden unmistakable stilling of the air that meant Tynan had
dropped a Shield over them. Temporary, of course, since it cut off all the air,
but excellent to hide under when a patrol passed over.

"Reaver coming in," Tynan's voice echoed in the silent interior. John's head
shot up, his eyes opening. Reaver? That was highly unusual. Was it Kregga?
Without being told, Kevin switched from his bench across the aisle and held out
his arms for Dylan. John gave the slumbering child over and he and Jack moved
up to the front of the vehicle, squinting at the control panel in the front.

Tynan tapped a few buttons, amplifying the view the exterior scanners gave and
John watched with tight lips as the deadly black wedge of a Reaver swooped
overhead and arched around to disappear behind the massive walls of the BaseOp.
It was out of sight in moments, but not before everyone in the cockpit had seen
the red painted sigil on the belly that spoke of High Command. Not Kregga, it
was a Preklate in that ship, not a Commander.

"I need to speak to Mel. Now." He had to unclench his jaw to talk and Valerie,
who was co-piloting the Skimmer, only glanced at him once before immediately
tapping a code into the comm. He could feel his father's eyes on him, but he
ignored what could only be concern and mistrust. It was exceedingly dangerous
to use the comms. He knew that, everyone knew that. Only in emergencies. But if
that really was a Preklate...

Val handed him a small comm device and he saw that the woman had already set
the frequency for the Denver Scout unit.  He tapped it, one hand clamped to the
doorjamb for balance as Tynan started the Skim forward again, dropping the
suffocating Shield. Clearing his throat, he growled in his best Sebacean:

"SK-1 to Posting 12-6."

All communications were in Sebacean, all terms were Peacekeeper. They used
frequencies that the PKs had not hacked yet, but it was best to be on the safe
side. Speaking English would be a certain death warrant for both ends of the
communication if they were ever overheard. At least Sebacean was a bit of a
mask. Not much, but better than nothing.

He waited for a long moment, swaying to the movement of the Skim, his eyes
glancing back to rest on Kevin and the still sleeping Dylan. That kid could
sleep through a war. He had a few times, actually. Aeryn thought it was because
there was always so much going on, he was just acclimated to it. Whatever the
case, John had always been glad that the boy was not the nervous type.

"12-6." Melissa's voice was low, concerned. "I saw it, SK-1. Orders?" Leave it
to Mel, she was always on the same wavelength.

"Identify. Any means necessary."

Any means necessary meant that she had permission to try and contact Aeryn if
she could do so safely.

"Understood."

The connection cut off. Short, to the point. She would contact them when she
discovered something. He handed the comm back to Valerie and she returned it to
the inner pocket of her heavy jacket without a word. He stared out into the
red-lit screens, watching the dead houses move past as they navigated the ruins
of what had once been Arvada, a suburb of Denver. No one lived here now but
animals. A pair of coyotes scampered across the snowy street, red outlines on
the screen, their heat trail leaving a smeared track behind them.

He had a sick feeling about the Reaver. Swallowing tightly, he turned and moved
back through the swaying vehicle to take Dylan back from Kevin. He treated the
kid as a security blanket sometimes, he knew, but he couldn't help it.

Settling down on the metal bench once more, he tucked his back against the wall
and brought his knees up, cradling Dylan to him and closing his own eyes. He
didn't want to think about who he thought had just arrived on the Reaver.
Didn't want to, but couldn't stop himself.

There was a part of him that was not really him. A part of him that was alien.

And he could feel it stirring.

++++

Melissa Crichton-Myer moved purposefully through the Gather, pushing across the
crowded floor, trying not to think about what her brother had just asked her to
do. Any means necessary. That was an ugly thing. A desperate thing to say. He
was rattled. She doubted that any but a few would have been able to tell by
hearing his voice, but he had been scared. No other reason to be so focused on
something that might not have any importance.

But what did *she* know? He was the expert. They had all realized that early
on. Everyone who followed him now did so on faith of that fact. Of course, they
followed him for other reasons too. His drive. His intensity. It was almost
impossible not to. When you looked at him, you felt like you had a chance, that
things might actually turn out ok.

But if you looked a little longer... if you had known him *before* he'd
vanished into space all those years ago... you would know that the fire in his
eyes masked a frightening coldness. Even as a kid, he'd always taken such stock
in being an optimist. Hope was something that he took for granted. She wondered
now if he had lost it. Hope.

A hand touched her elbow, stopping her in her tracks, and she looked down to
see a thin teenaged boy staring at her with an uncomfortably sharp look on his
dark-skinned face. He wore a low wool cap and a dark red Gore-Tex coat that was
too big for his slender frame. A long, pale scar ran down one cheek, fading out
just under his ear.

"Are you with the resistance?" The voice was a whisper, low and hissed. She
thinned her lips and shook her head. She brushed off his hand and moved on,
trying desperately not to show how shaken she suddenly was. Right now, to admit
to anyone, even to a starved anonymous kid, that she was part of the John's
resistance, was to put them all in danger. And just how had he even known to
ask her? Or was it a coincidence? Her heart was knocking unevenly against her
ribs.

After all, she was the current weak link of the whole effort. She was the
exposed nerve, the Achilles heel. If Commander Darred even guessed that there
was a member of John's group in the city, he would turn Denver upside down to
find her. The PKs had ways of extracting information, John said. They would
know what she knew. She could *not* be caught at any cost. The responsibility
was staggering.

All those lives riding on her decisions, her skills. It made her nauseous to
think about. She had no idea how John did it. How he was still doing it after
five years. Maybe the icy cold armor he wore now was all a part of his own
defenses.

It was only times like these that she came close to understanding the weight of
it.

She could feel the boy looking at her back, but when she tilted her head to
search for him, he was gone. Vanished amongst the other people who crowded into
the makeshift market. Somehow it didn't make her feel better.

What was now called a Gather had once been a High School gym, and it served as
a sort of shantytown/marketplace. There were several such places in Denver now,
Gyms and the once-new football Stadium that served as open bazaars. Places to
talk, to trade, to pretend that their lives still had focus and meaning. Most
of the human population lived as miners and a menial workforce for the PKs. The
rest had been informed that they needed to rebuild their economy. To go on with
life as normal. It would have been a funny joke if it hadn't been meant to be
serious.

The thing was, the Peacekeepers were used to conquering spacefaring races. A
planetary population that had barely managed to land on its own moon did not
qualify. Earth's infrastructure had been unable to handle the pounding that the
over-zealous Carriers in orbit had delivered. There would be no taxes, no
economy, no 'normal life'. Not for a long while.

There was a part of Denver, near Cherry Creek, that had not been hit as hard.
Many houses there had become the new residential center for the city. It had
once been an affluent, quiet neighborhood. Now it was an overcrowded ghetto. It
was where her Scout post was, but it was not where she headed now.

Haggard men and women, ex-bankers and ad executives, waitresses and
construction workers, stood behind and before rickety card tables and haggled
over half-burned blankets and mystery tins of food. It was gruesome to think
what people had been reduced to. Trading a pair of shoes without laces for a
dented metal cup of rice.

She ducked out of the crowded and muggy interior of the gym and into the new
snow. The fall had lightened and she could just make out the glow from the Base
to her right. Finding out who had been on that Reaver would not be easy. She
stopped and leaned against the exterior wall, tucking her hands into her
pockets and just watching with narrowed blue eyes.

Snow flakes stung her nose and cheeks and her breath billowed in a cloud of
frozen vapor. She scrunched her chin further down into her turtleneck and tried
to think. She would need a view of the Base from up high. Kevin had talked
about a place he'd found... a hotel downtown. Dark blond hair fluttered in her
peripheral vision and she reached up briefly to tuck it back under her worn
wool cap. Another touch on her elbow made her jump.

It was the same boy and she gritted her teeth in frightened annoyance. This
time she examined him more closely, at least as best she could in the pale dark
of the snowstorm. Tight curly hair, warm chocolate skin and wide black eyes. He
might have been handsome but for the hollow cheeks and the sunken eyes. She
guessed he had to be around 14 or so.

"Are you with the resistance? It's ok. I can tell you are." She went down on
her haunches without even thinking, grabbing both his arms and staring him in
the face.

"What are you talking about? Are you a fool to say things like that out in the
open?" Her voice was a grating whisper, her eyes flicking back and forth for
patrols. The street they stood on was clear but she could see the melted paths
where skimmers had passed not long before. Empty or not, it was no safe place
to talk.

Grabbing the boy's arm, she dragged him quickly around the back of the gym, and
down a chopped up concrete stair that might have once led to locker rooms. She
squeezed his arms a little too tightly, letting the kid know that she was
serious. Wanting him to be afraid like she was. Had she been ID'd by the PK
Squads? Was her image up on flyers? If it was, she was going to have to abandon
her post immediately.

One long finger reached up and touched the unobtrusive, almost-invisible cross
of scar-tissue at the base of her throat. John had notched the mark into each
member of his group. She'd teased him that he was being too dramatic, but he
had not laughed. He hadn't even smiled at the absurdity. There had to be a way,
he'd said, to make sure that they could recognize each other if the need
arose...a way that couldn't be mistaken for anything else. She peered more
closely at the kid. He was *not* with John's group, she had never seen him
before. And he did not have the mark.

"How did you know?" The question popped out before she could stop it and she
quickly jerked her head around again to make sure that there was no one to
overhear. Christ, if this kid was a plant or a trick... she'd just condemned
them all. Oddly, he seemed to understand, putting one hand on her shoulder like
he was comforting her.

"Don't worry." Thin brown fingers reached into that overlarge coat and pulled
out a much-tattered flimsie. John's image was on it. "You are with Him." She
could almost hear the capitalization. Like John was a superhero or something.

She bit her lip, closing her eyes in instant and utter weariness. For a moment
she was just plain tired. She sank down to the cold concrete of the narrow
stairs and rubbed at her face with gloved hands. For some reason, John's
picture made her think of the first time she'd seen him again, a week or so
after the Peeks had first come.

John had returned from the dead that day. She'd lived through the Bombardment
because she'd been out camping with friends the night her and her husband's
house (oh god, Eric) had been pounded into dust. John had come, accompanied by
a number of high-ranking government suits. They had come to Colorado for NORAD,
he'd told her, but he had come for her.

They'd had gone through the city that day (before the PKs swooped down from
orbit and built their bases) trying to organize, trying to do what they could,
but mostly trying to prepare for the coming occupation. John had destroyed the
power plants, wrecked the Cherry Creek Reservoir, and smashed the water
treatment facilities. The PKs were quick, but they weren't quick enough. By the
time they had come to build their base in Denver, as with most of the spots
they chose, John had already made sure it would be difficult for them.

Quick thinker, her brother, she thought grimly. Even the generals who had gone
into hiding at NORAD deferred to him now. A new order of things, she thought.
And the one with the knowledge had the power. Not that she would have ever
imagined that her brother would one day be the leader of some crazy resistance
aimed at taking back the planet from alien invaders. Her mouth twitched with
actual humor. Maybe he was a superhero.

"I am." she finally said, taking a huge risk, but going with her instinct.
Since the Day, she had learned to listen to her instinct. The boy's face did
not move, but his eyes lit with something akin to savage glee.

"So he's real then. We want to join him."

She'd heard that vow from hundreds over the past five years, but John could not
take everyone. It was too risky to spread too thin, he'd said. The less they
were, the stronger they were. It was counter-intuitive, but because the PKs
could and did take large numbers of the populace under arrest randomly to scour
their minds for information, he was right.

"You can't. And you must forget that you ever saw me. That is the best way to
help." She stood up then, staring him down grimly. He did not break eye contact
with her, his expression calm and cool. She got the impression that he wasn't
just going to nod and walk away.

So *she* did. Turning, she walked up the steps and after another sweep of the
area, headed back towards Downtown. Mel looked back only once, and she saw that
the boy was gone again.

For some reason, she found herself frowning as she moved on. 'We', the boy had
said. Was there another group? It would make sense. Shaking her head, she gave
up on it for the moment. She had to turn her mind to other matters, but she
would look into it when she finished her brother's task. Ask around when she'd
gotten settled into the Scout house. She usually came down to Denver every 6
months or so when her turn came up. She and three others, Kevin, Lindy and
Adam, were the Scouts that John had come to rely on.

She was glad to help in such an important way, though there was a part of her
that wondered sometimes. About John even letting her post here. Not that she
would have welcomed any protective behavior, but she *had* been surprised by
the lack of it.

A colorful fall afternoon over 4 years ago now. They had just moved into the
scenic Alva Camp and Dylan was only a few months old. John needed Scouts to spy
on the Base in Denver and she had immediately volunteered. Dad had put up the
useless arguments while John just stared out at the colorful vista of turning
leaves that spread below the encampment.

'If you think you can handle it, Mel.' That was all he'd said. It sent a chill
down her spine just recalling it. The John she had known would have argued for
a straight week at the very notion of her doing something so dangerous. The new
John, on the other hand, had thought about it and agreed. It was the right
decision, they both knew it. But the fact that John no longer seemed to have
that emotional attachment, scared her. He had even let Aeryn infiltrate the
base with hardly more than a few tight, angry words of disapproval.

Guilt, she suspected, was the culprit. He didn't talk about it -ever- with
anyone, maybe not even Aeryn, but he felt responsible for the PKs being on
Earth. He attributed all the deaths to himself. Chalked up each murdered soul
onto his conscience. Her thoughts circled back around to where she had started.
Too much weight for one set of shoulders. It was cracking him. Maybe it already
had.

She swallowed through a throat that suddenly felt too tight, lifting her face
to the darkened sky and letting snowflakes melt on her cheeks. It wasn't fair.
None of it. She had gotten her brother back, but he was this doppelganger, this
hard, tormented creature who wore John's skin. And though they all - Dad,
Aeryn, Ty - they all pretended that he would snap out of it, she feared deep
down that he never would.

If only DK was still alive... she stopped that chain of pointless speculation
before it got started. After the Bombardment, the 'if onlys' of the world had
vanished into the dust and debris. But she couldn't help wondering if things
would have been different if DK *hadn't* died. If he hadn't died in John's
arms. If he hadn't died taking a shot meant for her brother. Would it have
changed anything? Would the guilt of his homeworld's destruction be easier to
bear without that final straw lying atop with DK's name on it?

They would never know.

She shook her head almost violently and took a deep breath of the icy night
air. Task at hand, Mel. Task at hand. She set her shoulders and pushed on.

15 minutes later a brisk trot through the snow drifts found her standing in the
grim shadows of what had once been downtown Denver. Empty now, mostly dangerous
and unstable, the skyscrapers that used to dominate the skyline were now
jagged, broken teeth gnashing impotently against the gray skies. She paused to
stare up at the old Hilton Hotel. It was one of the few that remained mostly
undamaged...and it had the bonus of overlooking the PK Base.

An oversight on the part of the PK planners, but then, who could expect them to
think or care that someone might be able to peep through their curtains from
above? She had never tried it herself, but Kevin had. A long, tiring climb
through a dark, unstable stairwell, but a view of the compound like nothing
else.

Any means necessary, her brother had said. Bracing herself, she slipped in
through a broken basement window and made her way to the elevator shaft. The
stairwell door had been pried open and she liked to think that it had been
Kevin who had done it. If there were PKs here, her Scouting mission would be
ending very abruptly. Gloved fingers found the handle of the long slender knife
in her deep, inner pocket. No pulse pistol. Owning such a weapon would
immediately give her away as one of the resistance. And the knife was not
really for self defense so much as it was for making quick work of herself if
she was captured. There was no way she was going to be the downfall of all they
had worked for.

No way.

She didn't dare switch on her little light as she entered the stairwell,
instead concentrating on taking each step carefully, feeling ahead in the pitch
black to make sure the steps had not fallen away. Something fluttered against
her face as she climbed, flapping and softly screeching and she fought back a
shriek of her own before slapping a hand over her mouth. She stood for a long
moment, heart pounding dramatically, before she continued on - even more
reluctantly - one hand on the wall, the other waving blindly out in front of
her.

Somewhere around what she estimated was the 13th floor, she decided that she
was going to hate John from that moment on. Panting hard, she continued up,
trying to recall every delicious moment she had blackmailed John into giving
her his car for the night, or blackmailed him into not tattling on her when
he'd caught her sneaking in the window of the hall before dawn. She had frozen
the look on his face into a delicious memory. The moment when she'd informed
him that she not only knew who had put that dent into the door of Dad's prized
1961 corvette; but that she knew who had been in the car with him that night
(and what they had been doing!). It had been worth more than money to her. And
it had gotten her quite far in life too. Very nice indeed to have a brother in
your pocket.

So why was she climbing 21 floors in the dark for him?

Because of that icy core in him now, and her instinct told her that this was
part of it. Finding out who was on that Reaver. From the tone of his voice, she
guessed that he might already know who it was. Her penance for blackmailing him
for most of her teenaged years was at hand.

As if there was anything she wouldn't do for John now anyway.

She was lightheaded when she finally pushed open the metal roof door, gasping
for breath, her side aching painfully with a cramp. Christ, she was in good
shape, too. Her legs burned and she simply stood, bent over, hands on her
knees, while she recovered.

Once she recovered enough to take a breath without coughing, she pushed slowly
through snow that piled up to almost her knees. The orange glow through the
haze of the storm told her which way the Base was located and she shoved
towards the edge of the building, trying not to succumb to vertigo as she
looked out over the vast ruin of the Mile High City.

The snow did not allow for much visibility, but the oculars she had taken with
her cut through the weather and she zeroed in on the red heat cloud that
swirled around the newly landed Reaver. The ramp was down, which was no
surprise considering how long it had taken to get her ass up to the roof. She
skimmed the shipyard, hoping to catch a glimpse of anyone in a Commander's rank
uniform. She knew as well as any of the resistance that a red sigil on the
belly of a ship meant High Command. Their uniforms were recognizable.

She frowned, catching a glimpse of a familiar figure. One they had all studied
pictures of. Commander Darred. Did that mean that the visitor might still be in
the yard? She scanned the men with him, but saw no High Command uniform. The
only figure who stood with the Commander was a man dressed head to toe in
black. He even wore a black hood. She tapped the side of the ocular and tried
to zoom in. It only pulled a little further in and then stopped. She had
reached her range. She could not make out features.

She sighed, blowing vapor out of her mouth in dismay. No sign of the visitor
then, unless this fellow was it. Unlikely. The Preklate or whoever it was, was
probably already inside.

Cold was starting to seep up through her coat and she bit her lip, trying to
decide if she should stay. She was essentially a sitting duck up here, her dark
clothes making her stand out against the snow like a sore thumb. Any patrol
would spot her in moments if it came up this high. She couldn't take the risk.

She would, she decided, retire to the stairwell and wait there till dawn before
checking again. Any means necessary. Well, whoever the High Commander was, he
would come out eventually. She would have to wait till then.

As she slunk back from the edge and made her way to the rusted metal door, she
completely missed the sight of Commander Darred bowing deeply to the stranger
in black, something that a Commander would not do to anyone but High Command.

****** ******

Dismal place. Cold, but then, he liked the cold. His footfalls sounded hollow
as he walked down the ramp, surveying the rather depressing squalor of the
shipyard. Groups of heavily clad laborers worked in straggling crews over the
assorted vessels in the yard, repairing what looked like the most motley
collection of ships he'd ever seen. Not a one was not somehow damaged or
patched. His lips thinned in interest. The occupation force was not doing as
well as had been reported. Not that he'd been keeping up more than a cursory
interest in the place. He only came here now for only one reason.

"Ah, Preklate Scorpius, you honor us with your presence."

The voice belonged to - his tilted his head, recalling:

"Commander Darred, how nice of you to come out into the cold to welcome me."
The tall man bowed to him as it if was not required that he did. Scorpius's
nostrils flared slightly as he nodded in return. The taller man smelled
slightly of sickness. Of dark, red places and cold obsession.

"Welcome to Earth, Preklate. Perhaps if we retire inside, I might show you your
quarters? I know you must be tired."

A fool, then. Perhaps not as bad a fool as High Command Kregga was, but then,
most of the PK Occupation forces on Earth were idiots. High Command did not
want to waste anyone of quality on a primitive mining outpost like Earth.

It was the first time the half-Scarran had set foot on the planet that had won
him his title. He flicked his eyes around again, taking in the homeworld of the
alien who had caused him so much ire and had eventually propelled him to such
heights.

"I think I would like to walk about the shipyard first, Commander. Perhaps you
could explain the state of your fleet to me."

There was a flicker of rage in the Commander's eyes that fluttered on the verge
of unstable, one Scorpius recognized well. It was not directed at him, it could
be directed at only one universal nuisance. A smile stretched his features. He
took a small amount of pleasure in seeing the trials that others suffered on
behalf of John Crichton. And he had no doubt that John Crichton *was* the
cause. The reports he had read indicated as such, that the human had been
spotted in this region and that it was thought he had his base near Denver.

It was, of course, why Scorpius had chosen this particular drenheap to visit
over the others.

Darred led him obediently around the yard, trying to explain the damage to his
ships without admitting that a primitive human had orchestrated it, trying to
describe his hardships without telling a direct lie to a Preklate. Scorpius
took some small amusement in watching the man struggle with his explanations
before finally letting him off the hook.

"John Crichton. You know of this man?"

The name affected Darred like a slap in the face and he turned towards Scorpius
with a look of mixed horror and icy rage pasted on his face.

"I ... do, Preklate. If I may ask, how do you?"

Scorpius smiled again, folding his hands peacefully behind his back as they
stood in the falling snow, the tour forgotten.

"I've had some dealings with him the past. Do not underestimate him, Commander.
That is the first thing you must learn."

Darred's mouth twisted sourly.

"He eludes us." The voice was tight with humiliated anger. "We haven't been
able to get anything on him. His supporters are invisible. We've never captured
a one of them, which is part of the problem."

"He will have kept his efforts small for that very reason, Commander. He
understands how the Peacekeepers work better than you might imagine. We also
believe, through reports from a Disrupter who was on the planet before the
attack, that he has at least one Sebacean working with him."

Darred's eyes narrowed, his upper lip lifting in an unconscious sneer. This
man, thought Scorpius, was only a few steps from the edge. Not the best
possible adversary to pit against Crichton.

"That would explain some things, sir. Why was I not given this information
before now?" The Commander was stiff as a board, his eyes pointing at a distant
spot over Scorpius' shoulder.

The Preklate shrugged.

"I doubt that anyone bothered to put any thought into it, Commander. After all,
you have not really been specific about your "pest problem" out here, have you?
Many bases are suffering the same consequences as you are, but they are not my
concern. Those compounds are not directly within John Crichton's sphere of
influence."

A light flashed in the other man's eyes.

"You have come here for Crichton, sir?"

Scorpius nodded ever so slightly, his head tilting again. The man was dull, but
he caught on eventually. Of course, Darred would never guess the extent of the
shared past between Scorpius and the human. And he would not know that the
Wormhole research was not going as well as Scorpius had hoped it would 5 cycles
ago. No matter what he did, every wormhole he created only ended up here. At
this useless, dead-end of the galaxy. He could not change the original matrix
that he had developed with Crichton's neural clone information.

In Scorpius' mind, there was only one place to turn after beating his head
against a virtual wall for 5 cycles. The only mind who understood wormholes
perhaps better than he did himself.

"Yes, Commander. Yes I have. And I will get him. I always have."

++++

Aeryn had gotten little sleep, tossing and turning on her thin mattress,
twisting from a light doze to uneasy dreams. Nightmares of Commander Darred
touching her with cold, hard hands ... trailing his fingertips along her skin
and peeling her flesh away like she might peel fruit. Dreams of lying still and
allowing her slow mutilation, of John standing over her and just watching.
Dreams of the woman she had replaced. Lora Kreeg, a willowy woman with short
dark hair who had apparently abandoned the Base and gone native. Only in her
nightmare, Kreeg stood over her with Darred and John. A gruesome gallery of
faces splattered with her own blood. Just watching her die...

She finally forced herself to the surface of consciousness, gasping awake with
a sound that was nearly a sob. She curled over her bent legs for a long moment,
pressing her forehead into her knees while she fumbled for a calmer heart rate.
One hand came up between damp breasts to clutch at her new talisman, the little
piece of wood pressing into her palm. It was not the first dream she had had of
Darred. Ever since she had determined the only route to getting the codes was
through him, by getting close to him, she'd been hard pressed to get a full
night's sleep.

Aeryn stayed that way, with head hung, for a long span of microts before she
raked sweaty hair back from her face and swung bare legs out from the blankets
onto the floor.

A quick glance at her chrono showed that she still had enough time to get to
the Mess and eat something before she was expected on duty in the AgSec. She
quickly gathered up her underclothing, pulling it on rapidly and then stepping
into a clean gray jump. She paused for a moment, picking up the mud stained
jump from the night before, lifting it to her nose to see if still retained any
lingering scent of her brief contact with John. It only smelled of cold fabric.
She tossed it into the corner almost angrily. Angry at her useless
sentimentality and at the fact that it did not prove that he really had been
there at all.

One hand climbed up to the wooden carving again. No dream, she reminded
herself. Dylan had been real. So had John. She stood with hanging head for a
long moment, and then tucked the thong inside her undershirt. It would not do
to have it found, as personal decor was not regulation. And she was
theoretically the perfect soldier. But she couldn't bring herself to part with
it.

She stamped into her cold boots, gritting her teeth at the dampness in the toes
before clomping out of her room and up the narrow staircase. The sky was pale
with clear dawn when she walked outside into the crisp air. The snowfall had
stopped sometime in the night. The area between the buildings was a clean white
blanket of snow, glittering blue in the early light. A transitory beauty, of
course. When the rest of the base woke, she knew that frosty shroud would
transform into a muddy slop.

Steam billowed out of the moisture processors on the roof of AgSec as she
walked, kicking through miniature drifts. Her mind would not stop swinging back
to John's haunted face in the darkness of the tunnel, and she had to force
herself to stop dwelling on her mate. She needed to stay sharp, had to keep her
mind on where she was. Directly in the Kraak's Nest. One wrong step would end,
not only her life, but her family's and her friends'.

The huge doors to her domain hissed open before her and the rich, muggy smell
of dirt and growth engulfed her. When they had intercepted the new personnel
orders for BaseOp 43 half a cycle ago, they had simply taken the first
semi-decent ranking female officer that had come along. Aeryn had been
skeptical about the specialty, claiming that she didn't know anything about
farming, but now she was glad for it. To her surprise, she'd loved the loamy,
earthen scents surrounding her, the sight of row after row of lush greenery.
And it hadn't been that hard. Melissa had brought her some books she'd smuggled
out of Denver and she'd spent a weeken with John's sister, struggling over the
Earth text, learning what she could of growing cycles and plant species. It had
been flimsy, but it turned out to apply extremely well to the alien plants the
PKs had transported in for food supply.

And her new, limited knowledge of earth growing patterns and methods had only
made her seem to be smart and proactive to the Commander. Something that she'd
needed to get him to notice her. It was a fact that John perhaps knew on some
level was necessary, but he wouldn't think about it directly. To him, it would
be a matter of spying and snooping... but she knew better. She would have to
get *close* to the Commander in order to get what they needed from him. There
was no other way she would ever get the docking codes to the Carrier that
floated above them in orbit. The Carrier that was the only reason the Earthers
could never succeed in any real revolt against the occupation. And of course,
the Wormhole itself.

Remove both Carrier and Wormhole from the equation and the PKs on Earth would
be stranded among a sea of enemies. Remove the threat of further bombardment,
and those downtrodden primitives would no longer have any reason to hold back.

They needed to destroy both things. And John had figured out a way to do it,
but it had needed one thing that they hadn't had. A stealthy way onto the
Carrier itself. That was why she was here, she reminded herself as she walked
down the aisles in Sec 7, eyeing the wilting Hennoc Root. Not to be a farmer.

Darred. Her regular meetings with the Commander were something she had worked
hard for. He had been staring at her with his cold eyes for some time after
she'd first arrived, but it had only been a weeken ago that she became certain
he desired her. She knew part of his attraction to her was from simple respect.
But her decisions to wear jumps that were one size too small for real comfort,
accentuating her curves, would help it along the rest of the way. It had taken
time to come under his eye, to make herself indispensable, but things were
finally paying off.

Just tomorrow.

By tomorrow, she could get the frell off the Base for good and leave the
unsettling stare of the Commander behind.

It certainly didn't hurt that it was easy to shine when everyone around her
seemed as dull and stupid as herdbeasts. She frowned suddenly, snapping her
fingers at a worker who was supposed to be on the lookout for root rot. The man
walked over to her with enough alacrity but it was all a farce. She pointed to
the row he had just theoretically 'inspected'.

"Torrim. Do you see these spots? Do you remember what exactly it was that you
were looking for here?"

He stared down at the wilted leaves of the Hennoc, his face expressionless.

"Yes, Chief Gevvis. I'm sorry, sir. I must have missed it."

Aeryn yanked the plant up by its stalk, dangling the rotten root in front of
the boy's face.

"Would you want to eat this, Tor?" She did not snap at him. Part of her goal
had been to get her crew to like her. She knew that happy workers would make it
easier for her to do what she had come for if they all trusted her. Any pangs
of conscience she might have betraying them later would have to be dealt with
at the time.

He looked down at his feet and shook his head, but to his credit, he did look
embarrassed.

"I'll go back over this line, sir. It won't happen again."

"All right then." She tossed the root over into one of the waste bins and then
slapped the man on his shoulder as she passed.

"Chief Gevvis! Myla!" Yena, her Op Second, appeared from a side door, lifting
one hand over her head. Aeryn turned and put on a smile for the older woman. It
wasn't hard. She honestly liked her assistant, even if she was about as
imaginative as a post.

"Good morn, Yen. Do you have my morning stats already?" Yena smoothed her hands
down her soiled jump. She looked like she'd already been down in the fertilizer
bins. A strong sniff confirmed it. The woman shook her head, strands of graying
hair falling around her round cheeks.

"Not yet, sir. I was instructed to bring you to the Commander, he wanted to
talk to you about something." Yen's face expressed more than mild distaste. The
woman made no secret of the fact that she was afraid of Darred. She had stated
outright that she thought it was a mistake for Aeryn to attract his eye. Aeryn
agreed with her, but of course, could never tell her the real reason for
cultivating the man.

She raised her eyebrows at her aide. A meeting now? That was unusual. She was
seeing him tonight. In his quarters. Finally. A twinge of unease shot through
her but she showed no sign of it on her face. Something was wrong. Had she been
discovered?

"Maybe it has something to do with the Preklate that came in last night," Yen
speculated cautiously, turning to walk with her Chief as she picked up a brisk
pace to the doors. Aeryn stopped just as suddenly, fixing the woman with a
stare.

"Preklate?" Yena nodded, meeting her superior's eyes.

"He must have come in after you retired last night. A Class I Reaver brought
him in. It would have to be a Preklate, that sort of ship. And it has High
Command sigils."

High Command. What could that mean? Couldn't be Kregga. The old vulture never
left his icy fortress on the northern continent. Had someone come through the
wormhole? New postings? New men? Impossible to speculate, but she couldn't stop
herself. What did it mean? Would plans have to change with the end just in
sight? Her heart was racing.

"Are you all right, sir? You look a little flushed." Yena sounded honestly
concerned and Aeryn shook her head, putting her hand on the smaller woman's
shoulder. Sometimes Yen reminded her of Zhaan a little. She would never be as
sharp as the Delvian Priestess had been, but her compassion was well equal.
Likely it was the very thing that had gotten the woman posted on this distant
outpost.

"No, no, I'm fine, Yen. Just thinking about what High Command might be doing
here."

Her Second shrugged again, a common gesture from the smaller woman.

"Maybe it's finally an inspection of the work we do here."

Naive peacekeeper, Aeryn thought a little sadly. There would be no inspection
on Earth. This was essentially a PK exile. A dismal outpost. A mining
territory. High Command did not care a whit about anything here, or how it was
run. They only cared if the Cargo ships ran on time. And if anything, they were
doing just that. John had not wanted to disturb the mining, had not wanted to
incur a revisitation of the full PK might until he was ready to strike first.

"I suppose I shall go and see what he wants then. Perhaps I'll discover why
High Command has come." She looked back at Yena. "Please compile the morning
report and let's get detailed estimates of how much Earth fertilizer we will
need for the lacking sectors. I intend to send out the cargo vessel today for
collection. I know of a place we can find what we need."

Yena nodded, straightening and saluting. But she hesitated, her lips twisting
with the need to say something more. Aeryn raised her eyebrows.

"Is there something else, Yen?"

"I..." She started dry washing her hands in front of her, and Aeryn reached out
and squeezed her shoulder again.

"Just tell me. What is it?"

"I don't think you should be... spending time... with the Commander, sir."

Aeryn sighed internally. Me neither, Yen, she thought silently. But the woman's
concern touched her, no matter how repetitive. She smiled softly and shook her
head.

"It never hurts to cultivate good relationships with Command." It was a
standard PK line, but Yena was still shaking her head. Her voice dropped to a
whisper.

"No. You don't understand, sir. You haven't been here long enough, but there
are rumors about Chief Kreeg. That she didn't abandon us."

Aeryn frowned slightly at the mention of the woman she had replaced. Her dream
of the night before tickled the edges of her memory. Odd enough that she would
dream of someone she had never met, moreso that her name would be brought up in
an unrelated conversation.

"What kind of rumors?"

Yena looked back and forth down the aisle, but it was only them standing in a
sea of waist-high greenery. Far over their heads, the grinding moan of the
compressors started up. The water cycle would start soon, and unless they
wanted to get soaked, they needed to leave. Aeryn folded her arms, trying to
convey impatience, though she found herself oddly anxious to hear about her
predecessor. It was very unusual, almost unheard of, for a PK to 'go AWOL' as
John said. But it was impossible to deny that the Denver base had a very high
rate of defectors.

"That she didn't defect. That she would have *never* defected. That something
happened to her." Yen swallowed, her voice dipping so low that Aeryn had to
strain to hear her. "That the Commander had her *killed*."

Aeryn stared down at the woman for a long moment, her lips thinned in thought.

Darred was just walking the edge of unstable, it was true. The man had been
frustrated and humiliated by John for four straight cycles. He was a
laughingstock among the other Earth Base Commanders, not to mention the insult
of being posted on a mining planet in the first place. But she did not think
that he would go about killing his officers. Warm bodies, especially competent
ones like Kreeg had apparently been, were too hard to come by out here. He knew
that as well as anyone. But Aeryn also knew that enough Sebaceans had defected
from the Base here that it wasn't too unusual that Kreeg had too. Though she
was, as yet, the only rank officer to have slipped away. The rest had been
minor workers and functionaries.

She shook her head gently, smiling at Yena.

"Thank you for your concern, Yen. But I'll be fine. Darred has no reason to go
killing his own officers. That's just a foolish rumor." Yena opened her mouth
once and then shut it again, nodding resignedly. Her brow remained creased.

"Yes, sir. Well, I will have your morning reports ready when you return." She
saluted once more before turning and moving off to her duty, the little round
form navigating the greenery easily.

Aeryn stood among the Hennoc root for a long moment, breathing in the rich,
lightly spicy scent of the plants' leaves and listening to the clunk and then
distant hiss of Sec 18 being watered. Her Sec would be next. She moved to the
exit, dismissing thoughts of Darred killing Kreeg. What would he gain? And if
the woman had made some transgression, it would only make sense to execute her
officially. No, it was just a silly rumor. The Preklate was the bigger concern
now.

High Command.

With any luck, the Preklate himself would be in Darred's chambers and she would
find out for herself why he had come.

She headed back out into the blinding white morning.

**** ****


I knew as soon as I saw her. It wasn't just the scar, though Gary had told us
to look for it. It was more of how she looked at things, how she walked and
carried herself. She had purpose and determination. No one else around her had
that and it made her stand out like a candle in the dark. She probably didn't
even realize how different she was, probably thought she was blending in. I
didn't think that the Peeks would be able to tell the difference either. Good
thing.

She wasn't giving me the time of day. That was cool. Pretty much expected that,
but she did tell me something. John Crichton is real. Did you hear her? Real.
Somehow I felt light as air, like I could run screaming through the Gather,
howling that everything was going to be all right.

Not that it would be. Crichton was real, sure, but he couldn't bring back my
folks or my sister. Things weren't going to just get better now. But I had my
hope back, and it seemed to make a world of difference.

I'd gone straight back to Gary and the others with the news. Turns out that
Gary had never doubted that Crichton was real. But the fact that one of
Crichton's people was in town, *that* interested him.

"Find her again," he'd said to me after all the speculation had died down and
he'd pulled me into a quiet corner. "But just watch her. She was right, you
shouldn't have talked to her, but I want to know what she's doing here."

"You think something's going down?" I asked, whispering.

"I don't know. But I want to keep up. Crichton's got reasons for not talking to
us, any of us, and they're good ones. But that doesn't mean that I can't be
ready to do my part when the time comes." He clapped me on the shoulder and
smiled.

"Just watch her, and let me know what she's doing."

I could do that.

****** ******

There had been no time to bury him, to throw a wake, to do any of those things
that help with closure. Not that any of it would have mattered. Closure was not
possible when you were a murderer. They had just taken him away, God knew
where, and the Peacekeepers had bombed the surface a few days later.

He was standing over the bloodstained spot on Gregory Wurlitz's Persian carpet
in Washington DC. The weave had soaked up most of the crimson fluid, but it
still seemed to glow with sullen blame as he stared at it.

The enormous house was empty, no sounds of traffic from the street or birdsong
from the garden. He was all alone with the bloodstain.

"Pathetic."

Crichton clenched his teeth and closed his eyes in barely restrained fury.

"How you doin', Harv? How's the wife and kids?" His words belied the frustrated
rage that coiled beneath them. The clone did not answer him, instead leaning
closer over the ruined carpet, as if appraising it for cleaning.

John did not look at the creature. Over the years on Earth, the clone had quit
the waking dreams and had instead been making the occasional appearance in his
sleep. John didn't understand the creature's motives any better now than he had
in the beginning. All he knew was that the clone seemed to delight in taunting
him, in casting a darkness across each thought and memory. To bury John in the
darkest, most despairing memories of the past years.

"You still don't get it, do you, John?" Harvey's voice was soft now, almost
kind. John finally turned his head, looking straight at the clone. Harvey was
wearing the blue chambray shirt and jeans that DK had worn that day. It made
John want to hit something. To *kill* someone. Oblivious to Crichton's fury, or
maybe in spite of it, the spitting image of Scorpius turned and walked along
the length of the room, trailing his gloved hand along art-covered walls. "I
suppose you probably never will at this point."

"What, exactly, am I supposed to get?" His throat was tight. Harvey looked back
at him then, over his shoulder, his expression sly as ever.

"You've changed, my friend. No joke? No inexplicable earth-euphemism? So angry,
John. So bereft. Why is that?"

"You know why, you bastard."

"Maybe *I* do, but do you?" Harvey smirked softly.

He wanted to hit something. Hard.

"My world is a graveyard and it's my fault." He gnashed the words out like he
was chewing broken glass.

"Ah, but that's not it."

John was startled out of his rage for a moment, his head jerking up from where
he had let his gaze drop back down to the spot where his friend had died.

"I'm not in the mood for a mind-fuck, pal. Get the hell away from me."

"What about DK?"

He hauled back and sent his fist smashing into the Halloween mask that was
Harvey's face. The clone went flying, crashing into mahogany sideboard with an
explosion of petals, shattering glass and splintering wood. The room remained
silent and empty of anything but him, the bloodstain and the abomination.
Harvey remained where he was, sprawled in the wreckage. The smile was
unchanged, a snaky oily thing.

"Touchy? Don't like to think about that?"

"I killed him. My fault." John rasped, shaking out his now-throbbing fingers.
"Is that what you want to hear me admit? I *know* it. Everyone knows it. He's
just another one to add to the list."

Harvey did stand then, delicately brushing debris off black leather. At least
he no longer wore DK's clothing. John's heart was pounding. He was terrified
for some reason he couldn't name all of a sudden. The clone only looked at him,
pale eyes boring into blue.

"Who's next, John? Your father? Aeryn?" His head tilted, "Dylan?"

Crichton opened his eyes with a snap, sucking in a deep breath as he broke the
surface of sleep. He was shaking like a palsy victim. Fighting to remain calm,
he forced his breathing to slow and after a moment of struggle, his heart
stopped pounding against his throat. He turned his stiff neck, surveying his
surroundings.

Most of his people were asleep around him in the Skim's darkened compartment.
Dylan slumbered on peacefully, a dead weight on his chest. The tingling in his
right arm told him that it had gone to sleep. He let his head fall back onto
the hard bench with a soft thud.

He shut his eyes again, the lessened rocking of the Skim telling him that they
were well into the mountains. Soon they would be approaching Alva. Dylan
stirred slightly, making a small noise and then bringing one hand up to curl
next to his cheek. John tried to resettle his stiff limbs as best he could
without waking the boy. Trying to sort out his jumbled thoughts did not prove
any easier.

He hadn't had the dream for almost a cycle. Why had it resurfaced now?
Grimacing, he ran one hand through his hair, rubbing tiredly at his stubbled
face. He felt old. Not just physically, but mentally. The burden of guilt that
he bore every minute of every day was getting heavier. Cracking and creaking
his bones with its weight. And it was impossible to escape from. Every time he
looked at the faces around him, every time he saw a ruined landmark or a pile
of rubble where a mountain had been, he remembered that it was his fault. That
the destruction of his homeworld could be blamed squarely on him.

His efforts, what he did now, his pathetic attempts to fight were never going
to be enough. Even *if* he finally drove the Peacekeepers away, it would change
nothing. His world would still be a ruin. Billions slaughtered. Jenn and her
family would still be dead. Melissa's husband. DK - .

He shook his head angrily and brutally forced his mind to other topics.

"Let me take him, son. Give you a break." His dad's voice startled him and he
peered through the half-light to see Jack sitting up with his arms out. Almost
gratefully, John passed the child across the aisle like a sack of potatoes, not
surprised when Dylan made a small noise of protest and woke up.

"Go back to sleep, kiddo," John whispered, kissing the warm temple, not wanting
to wake the others. Dylan blinked sleepily at him, craning his neck up to see
his grandfather above him. One giant yawn later and he was lying against Jack's
shoulder, his eyes falling inexorably shut once more. The kid had insisted on
walking on his own for the return trip out of the tunnels, and he was out of
gas. It had made for a nice quiet hike back to the skim.

Crichton pushed to his feet and moved towards the cockpit, hanging on to the
roof rails for support in the swaying interior. Tynan had switched places with
Val at some point in the night and now she maneuvered the Skim through a dry
riverbed. Tynan snored faintly, his feet up on the console, his chin tucked
down on his chest. Dawn streaked the sky and John craned his neck upward to see
the walls of a deep valley surrounding them. They were almost to the lake.

"Everything good?" his voice was low. She nodded, glancing up at him.

"Yeah. Almost there. No sign that anyone's been here since we last came
through."

It was partly luck and partly the fact that the PKs couldn't find their own
asses out here in the mountains. The invaders continued to look mindlessly on
roads for traces of John's people and continued to find nothing. He knew they
thought he was some kind of ghost or mastermind, but all he had was something
they didn't. Actual knowledge of the planet they stood on. Not a one of them
had ever thought to check dry riverbeds, and there were plenty of them since
the Bombardment. Many of the waterways had dried up with the massive change in
the Earth's weather systems after the debris clouds. Avalanche rubble had
diverted many of the courses that still ran.

It was the first thing he had set up when they had chosen Colorado for their
base. His sister had gone to Boulder for college, and she'd stayed when she
finished. He and his dad had come out more than once for fly fishing and it had
been then that he had learned of the myriad aquifer tunnels that dotted the
Rockies. Tunnels that carried water from one side of the continental divide to
the other. Tunnels that could hide people.

It had taken some doing to find those tunnels, but one had been ideal. Alva B.
Adams Tunnel, Alva Camp, as they called their base, connected Shadow Lake to
Grand Lake. And both lakes had gone nearly dry after the Bombardment. Perfect.
They'd set up a movable base on either side of the 13 mile tunnel. At the drop
of a hat they could hide in the tunnel and no aerial scanner could detect them.

Let the old government cronies huddle in NORAD and Mount Weather with their
long-term plans. They were of no help, and John had wanted nothing to do with
them after he'd discovered that they would not listen to his advice. Hell with
them. Let them run their ultimately useless raids against the Bases. He might
need them later, but for now he let them distract the PKs from the real threat.

Bitter? Not him. He glanced out the narrow viewport, watching the tops of the
pines edging with gold as the sun slowly came up. All around them, fresh drifts
of snow piled in a pristine ivory blanket, outlined by icy blue shadows and
glittering stripes of new sunshine. The beauty did not touch him as it once
had. Nothing seemed to touch him anymore.

John let himself fall into the jump seat, rubbing at his face again as if he
could rid himself of his eternal weariness. For just a moment, he wished that
Aeryn was there, and just as quickly squelched the thought that he was glad she
wasn't. God. What was wrong with him? Was he that fucked up that he couldn't
bear the thought of Aeryn even looking at him? It had been easy in the dark, in
that tunnel where shapes and features were outlined only in memory and the
scant light of a tiny flashlight. Easier to let her rest her eyes on him,
easier when he couldn't really see her beautiful face or the expression of pity
and disgust that he knew would mar her expression if she really *saw* him.

Stupid, he shook his head angrily. So stupid. Of course he wanted her back with
him, it was all he thought about. But what if she didn't want to come back?
What if she preferred the cool discipline of her own people to the empty shell
of a man he had become? Was that why she had volunteered in the first place? He
folded his arms tightly and stared blankly out the viewport, forcing his mind
to other topics.

The Reaver. Who had been on it? He feared that he already knew. Grimacing, he
pulled the comm out of the Skim's panel compartment and stared at it for a
long, long moment.

To hell with communication restrictions. Time to check with Melissa again.

++++


"SK-1 to Posting 12-6."

Melissa grumbled to herself as she yanked her gloves off, blowing on her
fingertips before pulling the comm out of her pocket. For a guy who went on and
on if you used the comm more than twice in a month, he certainly was chatty
cathy.

"12-6 here."

She was huddled in the stairwell of the high-rise, shivering quietly as the
cold concrete seeped up through the seat of her Gore-Tex shell pants. It had
been a long, long night. Dawn streaked the now-clear skies and she had set
herself to counting the minutes before the sun hit. From her vantage she
couldn't see much of the shipyard, she would have to crawl back out to the
edge, and that was dangerous now that it was light out again.

"Any news?" Her brother's voice was tight with tension and she bit back the
sarcastic comment she had been about to impart.

"No uniforms that I could see. The Big Cheese was talking to some Death Metal
reject, that was it. I'm gonna wait here until our mystery Preklate comes back
out." She pursed her lips, peering up at the trailing cloud remnants that still
clung to the very tops of the buildings around her. John was silent for such a
long time, she stared back down at her comm, shaking it slightly. "SK-1?"

"I'm...here." His voice sounded choked, hoarse.

"What is it? Is something wrong?" Her pulse picked up slightly, her eyes
darting around as if there was a threat somewhere near.

"Death Metal? All black leather? Hood?"

"How'd you know?" Unease crept up her spine. John's voice was scaring her.

"You have to warn her. Send up the pre-arranged abort signal." He was growling,
his Sebacean almost too fast to understand. She shook her head as if he could
see her.

"What? We can't pull her out before she completes..."

"Did you not hear me?" She had to hold the comm away from her ear. John had
shouted and feedback squealed briefly from the device. Her eyes widened in
shock.

"Christ, J-" she stopped herself before she said his name over the comm,
swallowing nervously. "I'll send up the signal," she said finally. "But I can't
make her leave if she won't come. You know that."

"Do whatever you have to do. She'll be *recognized*. She has to get out. Now."

Mel was nodding, even though she still didn't understand.

"All right. All right..."

"No more contact between us. He's smart. Smarter then the sack of doorknobs
we've dealt with so far. And if I know him...and I do...he's here for me."

John was hissing his words and Melissa felt a chill that had nothing to do with
the icy morning creeping up and down her spine with a million cold feet.

"I'll try. 12-6 out."

She couldn't shut off contact fast enough, shoving the comm back into her
pocket like it was diseased. She'd never heard such naked obsession in her
brother before, so much hate and fear intertwined that it made her queasy.
There were things, of course, that he never talked about with anyone but Aeryn.
Things that he would not speak of.

The man in black leather must be one of those things. Maybe even *the* thing.

She gathered herself up and prepared for the long trek back down the dark
stairwell. The abort signal. Christ. It would be a bit of hike to the place
they'd agreed on. She might get there before noon if she hustled. And she
would. John's grip was loose enough as it was. If anything happened to Aeryn at
this point...

She refused to contemplate it. Instead she began her descent into the darkness.

++++

"Come." Darred's voice was muffled through the wooden door. She pushed her way
into the inner chamber, nodding at the young Lieutenant as she passed. Already
the girl seemed a little improved, as if she had taken Aeryn's last advice to
heart. Peller managed a smile at her. She would be a good one to cultivate if
things took a turn for the worse with the Commander. Allowing, of course, that
Aeryn wasn't about to be shot for treason in the next few moments.

She shut the double doors and stepped towards the big desk before she saluted
the older man. Darred smiled at her, an expression that she supposed passed for
his version of charm. She let herself return the smile.

"At ease, Myla. Have a seat, won't you?" He gestured at one of the large chairs
he had set in his office. She chose one wide enough for two that was just close
enough to where he stood that he would notice. "Grenit?"

She let her smile grow a little wider, sitting back against the leather.

"No thank you, sir. May I ask why you've called me here? I don't recall that we
had a meeting scheduled." Under her calm exterior, her heart was pounding. Was
he just toying with her?

He faced away from her as he moved over to the refreshment bar, glass chinking
softly against glass as he readied the disgusting supplement drink he seemed to
favor.

"A Preklate arrived last night and he brings news that I think will end up
being quite good. For both of us." He turned, carrying the brimming flute.

"A Preklate, sir? Why?" She knew she was being forward, but it was good to
start somewhere. Darred sat next to her and raised his flute to her before he
sipped. She nodded in return, watching his throat bob as he swallowed the
musky-smelling liquid. A delicacy, he'd told her. For some reason, the smell
made her feel sick.

"He says he's come for Crichton. He talks as if he has had dealings with the
pestilent creature before, but I don't really see how that's possible. Still,"
he swirled the thick, gray liquid in the glass and cast a sideways glance at
Aeryn, "if he is telling the truth and he *can* get rid of our nuisance, then
it could spell very good things for me in the future. Possibly for you, too."

Darred hadn't noticed her reaction, the whitening of her fingers as they
clasped each other or her lips pressing tightly together. She collected herself
just as quickly, trying to determine what Preklate had ever had contact with
Crichton. Her mate had managed to make an alarming number of enemies, but none
so high-ranking. At least that she knew about.

"Me, sir?" She was proud of how cool her voice was. She even managed to glance
rather coyly at him over the rim of her glass. It seemed impossible that Darred
didn't hear the racket her heart was making.

"Yes, you, Myla." She felt dizzy. If it was true, that someone had come in last
night specifically for Crichton ... well, they *had* known he was down here all
this time. The murderous Disrupter she and John had encountered before the
invasion would have made sure of that. But why wait till now? It had to have
something to do with Scorpius. Somehow. But no Preklate would ever involve
himself with the half-Scarran. It was a puzzle.

Darred was still crooning to her and she forced herself to listen. "If I were
to be able to leave this rock, I could bring someone with me." His voice was
insinuating, she supposed he thought it was sexy. Hezmana. She had to warn
John.

The Commander was suffocating her, pressing too close, his hand sliding up her
leg.

"You have beautiful bone structure, Myla. Has anyone ever told you that?"

It was his actual caress that shocked her. Not because it was unexpected, but
because she was suddenly struck by the astounding fact that she wasn't sure she
could actually suffer his touch. It was more than startling, more than
surprising. Using your body was a commonplace tactic among the regiments. You
did what you needed to do to get ahead. It was easy to distance yourself from
it. When had she lost that?

She pushed to her feet and walked to the window before she could stop herself.
It was only once she was there, the chill from the window brushing her skin,
that she even realized she had moved. She forced a light laugh, as if she were
only playing hard to get. Inside, she was panicking. It wasn't just that John
was in sudden and real danger, it was the very real shock that she was almost
positive she was not going to be able to carry out the part of her mission that
she had taken for granted would be the easiest. She actually felt nauseous.

Aeryn took a deep, quiet breath and closed her eyes. If she thought about
things like what would eventually happen to the small group of fighters in the
nearby mountains if she failed. If she reminded herself what Dylan's future
would be like as a hunted animal. If she did all these things she might be able
to get through this. She *had* to.

Her skin was still crawling from the brief, chilling touch. She felt like
hyperventilating. What the frell was wrong with her? She looked down to where
her hands rested on the sill and was suddenly struck with a flash of
inspiration. Perhaps there was another, better way...

"Is something wrong, Chief?" He was suddenly suspicious now, his voice cool and
hard. Damage control.

She turned around, leaning on the windowsill and putting on her best coy look.

"Nothing at all, Sallo. I was just ... surprised ... by your suggestion. I
didn't know that you ..." She trailed off, raising her eyebrows at him.

"Found you attractive? Admired your competence? Yes, Myla, indeed I do." He
stood, apparently swallowing her lame attempts to repair her blunder. He was
taller than John, she thought almost hysterically as he came closer to her,
penning her against the windowsill. His neck was thinner and she could see
tendons outlined sharply against his pale skin, tiny brown hairs peeking from
the top of his uniform's neck. He smelled of Grenit and his breath was moist
with it against her cheek. She tried not to gag.

Her fingers ached from where she clutched the wood windowsill at her back and
she forced herself to loosen her grip as he bent his mouth to hers. Her eyes
fluttered shut and she tried for a split microt to imagine that it was John
before the comparison became too creepy to handle. Better to simply disconnect.
It was another battle to get her arms to move up and around the back of his
neck.

When Peller's gentle knock cut through the ghastly whistle of Darred breathing
through his nose, she could have collapsed with grateful relief. Aeryn was more
certain than ever that she would not be able to couple with the man, not if she
could barely muster up enough will to put her arms around him.

He turned from her and she immediately took the opportunity to spin and fix her
gaze out the window again, trying to control the shuddering that had started up
in her limbs. She fought the urge to scrub at her lips. He had tasted like cold
stone.

"What is it, you fool?" Darred's voice was all acid and contempt. The door
creaked open slightly and the young, nervous voice echoed in the room.

"The Preklate asked me to inform you that he wishes to see you in his
quarters."

Darred's sharp and rather lengthy cursing chased the young woman out, but not a
one of the three present had any doubt that the Commander would soon be
scurrying to the Preklate's call.

"I apologize for the interruption, Myla." She nodded her head, still looking
out the window. Let the man think she was recovering from denied passions. "But
I will see you tonight?"

Taking a deep and silent breath, she turned around then, plastering a smile
across her face.

"Most certainly, sir." With that, she saluted and stalked out of the room as
fast as she could without running. She should have known. Just because she was
pretending to be a PK didn't mean she was one. Not anymore. Not for a long
time. Not since sex had become an act that actually *meant* something.

Half-running down the wide staircase, she burst back out into the cold morning
air and took a deep gasping breath. She felt ill. Too much to handle. A
Preklate had come for John, and now she would have to make a rapid change of
plans. His foul drink had given her the idea. There was a way for her to avoid
the nasty business of recreating with Darred once she got into his quarters.

She would just have to drug him. It was a lot more risky, but a lot more
palatable. In the meantime, she needed to bathe.

Her long strides took her past the training facility and the shipyard, back
towards AgSec. So focused was she on her dilemma that she failed to see the
single column of black smoke rising into the clear blue sky. And that the smoke
was trailing up from the very spot they had designated 6 monens ago would be an
emergency signal.

+++

"Don't be a fool, John!" Tynan wove after his friend through the organized
clutter of the camp, trying to keep up with the younger man's rapid pace.
John's canvas-clad back kept disappearing between tents and crates. "We can't
abort this close to completion! You said she'd have the codes by *tonight*-" He
stopped short as John rounded on him, a look on the human's face that Ty had
never seen before. Something raw and feral gleamed in his blue eyes. His words
died in his throat.

"I won't lose her, too. Do you hear me?" It was a hiss. And then John was off
again, boots crunching through the trodden snow, heading towards the supply
sheds, men and women instinctively jumping out of his way. The Sebacean had a
sudden vision of his friend riding into Denver at the head of his tiny army,
guns blazing. The ex-pilot's stomach did a queasy roll. He stopped dead,
planting his feet, his hands hanging limply at his sides.

"John." His voice was quiet, but firm. He put nothing behind the words but a
plea for logic.

For a miracle, it worked. John stopped, but did not turn around. His shoulders
were stiff. Ty wasn't even sure what to say, he only knew he had to say
something. "You know this is wrong. You aren't acting rationally, and I hate to
say it, but you knew that she was in a dangerous position when you sent her.
What is different now? Can't you say that much? Give up a little of the
burden?"

John didn't move for a long space of time, and Tynan could only hold his
breath, waiting for the moment when John would decide to listen or decide to
disregard. This man was not the man he had first come to know: thinking,
thoughtful, compassionate. This man was a stranger. But he had to believe that
the human who had pulled him out of his burning prowler, who had risked his own
life for his enemy, that he was still there under the ice.

"You don't understand." The voice, when it came, was tight with emotion. Ty
glanced around for a moment, glad to see that the few members of the camp who
had been working nearby had made themselves conspicuously absent. It afforded
them some small privacy. The sharp reek of camp smoke and coffee drifted idly
between the dirty canvas tents, the breeze that brought it flapping the fabric
in a lazy rhythm.

"Make me understand. Tell me why this one Preklate is important. Important
enough to throw away all we've worked for in the past year this close to the
end. Everything that Aeryn's accomplished in there. Everything she's sacrificed
to do this." He kept his voice firm and blunt, put no edge of pleading into it.
He had to appeal to the part of John that still instinctively listened to
rational logic.

"There's too much, Ty." At least he had finally called him by his name, that
seemed a small victory. John turned, and he had to fight not to wince at the
storm of raw fear and fury roiling in his friend's eyes. "I can't ... tell you
everything."

"Just make me understand." Tynan risked taking a step forward, relieved when
John reached up to rub at his eyes. He only looked tired now, not cracked.

"It was Scorpius that came in last night. He's hunting me. He's been hunting me
pretty much since I left Earth all those years ago. He's done things to me, Ty.
Things I can't really get into, but I can't forget. Worse, worst of all, he put
a part of himself in my brain and I've never been rid of him. I never will be.
Ever."

The Sebacean was speechless for a moment, not sure what to believe, what John
even meant. Was he talking about schizophrenia? He risked reaching out and
taking his friend's arm, leading him to a nearby crate and sitting him down on
it. Forcing him when he resisted. Best to start on the concrete things, the
things he *could* grasp.

"Scorpius is here for you? He knows you are here? And you think he will
recognize Aeryn?" There was a cold dread building in Tynan's stomach, and he
thought he could understand the human's panic. No mad ravings after all.
Scorpius was known throughout the Peacekeepers for being coldly ruthless in
achieving the things he wanted. For being brilliant and dangerous.

"If he sees Aeryn, not only will it be bad for her, but for all of us. He has
ways of getting secrets out of you that you don't even know you know. Worse
ways than the PKs here use. And he's also fully aware of how to use her as a
hostage to get what he wants."

"And you're sure he wants you?"

"Yes." Grim.

"Why?" his question was soft, timid, as if he were afraid of the answer.
Scorpius seemed the sort to always have a frightening reason.

John shook his head and laughed, an ugly sound that contained no shred of
humor. Bending over his folded arms, he hung his head and sighed. The rising
breeze played through his son's hair. A cold wind.

"Knowledge, I guess. He wants what I have in my brain. He always has. It's why
he stole a part of it. Why he gave me his shadow. Wormholes, Ty. It's always
been about wormholes."

The big Sebacean had nothing to say to that, frowning at the sudden and naked
vulnerability etched in the line of John's shoulders. He'd never seen him like
this. So crumpled. Crushed.

"But he made the wormhole here. What more can he want from you?"

"I wish I knew, pal. But make no mistake. He didn't come to Denver by
*accident*. He's here for me. And even if he isn't, his presence puts Aeryn in
incredible danger. Plan or no plan, we get her out."

Tynan grimaced, nodding.

"You're right, of course. We can always start over. There will be other
opportunities to get to the Carrier."

John looked up at him like a startled deer and Ty ached briefly to think that
his friend might have ever thought for a moment that any one of them didn't
understand what Aeryn meant to him. That any one of them might not understand
the kind of fear that was written on his face now.

He forced a small smile to his lips. It was colder now, a sharp wind blowing
down from the sides of the valley bringing a stinging cloud of frozen snow-dust
with it. The sky was an icy morning blue. The new snowfall would not be melting
any time soon, not in this frigid wind.

"We'll get her out. We will. But we do it together. No mad, heroic rushes. No
solitary, John Crichton-action." He crouched down in front of his friend,
putting his hands on John's knees. "But we have to work off the assumption that
the plan is still going forward. Aeryn might not know about any of this. She
might not see the abort signal. We have to be there to back her up." It was
cool logic. It was what John needed to hear to pull himself back together. 
Don't shatter, my friend. You hold us all together. He said the last silently,
looking up into John's winter eyes.

He looked down at Tynan then, those eyes dark with fear and devoid of hope. But
a ghastly, forced smile stretched his lips anyway, out of habit more than
anything else.

"Of course, Ty. You're right."

It was the best that any of them were going to get. So he took it.

+++

Melissa waited by the burning car, huddled in the shadows of a ruined
Walgreen's stoop, watching every direction at once. Her palms itched with fear,
her nerves burning in skittish paranoia. This was the sort of thing that could
easily end with her capture. Sending up smoke from the corner of Broadway and
Alameda was the emergency signal to tell Aeryn something was wrong. To abort
the plans.

But it was also a fabulous way to attract everyone else's attention too.

Any means necessary, she told herself, her eyes flicking left and right like a
cat in a dog pound. John knew what he was doing, he had gotten them all this
far. He wanted Aeryn out, Mel would do what he asked.

Black smoke billowed in lazy bulges and streamers up into the morning sky, the
fire leaping and guttering in a rising wind. Aeryn couldn't miss it, could she?
Of course she might be indoors, she might already be captured. So many things
that Melissa could not foretell. All she could do was set the signal and hope
at this point.

Once the fire was going well enough that she was sure it wouldn't go out, she
prepared to vacate the area as fast as she could, but, too late, a low humming
sound announced an approaching ship.

Heart pounding, she pressed deeper back into the doorway as a PK Stinger came
swooping down out of nowhere, parting the column of smoke into a hundred tiny
swirling eddies. It emitted a shrieking, repulsor whine as it settled itself
onto the unbroken white of the intersection, blowing up loose snow.

She flattened herself against the glass, swallowing thickly. A yellow, cartoon
dog gaped a toothless, vapid smile at her from behind the cracked glass of the
display window. 'New Trading Cards Available NOW!' the creature screamed
soundlessly. She was a sitting duck, her and the freakish yellow canine.

Maybe they wouldn't see her.

Sure, and maybe the yellow cardboard dog would bust through the glass and fly
her to safety on his magic sled.

Nine black, beetle-shelled soldiers poured from the opening ramp of the
Stinger, boots tramping the white snow as they descended upon the smoking
ex-Honda.

"Put it out, and be quick!" One of the black-suited men gestured to the others
and two of them separated from the troop and quickly set to spraying some sort
of chemical on the car. In only moments, her signal was doused. She had to hope
that Aeryn had seen it in time. "Careful!" The man shouted again, "it could be
another frelling trap!" He uttered another word that she did not understand,
but gathered that it was just a curse. She began to look around her stoop. She
could break the glass of the drugstore door and escape inside if she needed to,
but the sound would certainly draw them. Stay still, Mel, she told herself.

Be cool.

"Search the area! There must be tracks in the snow. I want to find who did
this. The Commander wants no sign of unrest while the Preklate is here!"

Oh god.

She rubbed her elbow briefly as if getting ready to drive it through the glass
behind her on short notice. The troops broke up into ragged threes, spreading
out, one trio heading straight for her. There was *no* chance, barring an act
of yellow dog, that they wouldn't see her. One hand found her knife tucked into
the pocket of her jacket and she loosened it from its sheath.

She'd always thought of the weapon as a quick out to keep her dangerous
secrets, but now that the real possibility of suicide was at hand, she wasn't
entirely sure she would have the guts to go through with it.

"Freeze!"

Well, that was quicker than she'd thought. She felt an icy calm rush through
her as all three of them brought their pulse rifles down to bear on her. She
could see three sets of herself reflected in the shiny faceplates. Terrifying,
those black visors. Same idea as mirrored cop sunglasses, she thought with a
slight edge of hysterical humor.

"I was just sitting here!" She did not put her hands up, her right fingers
clenching tightly around the