The Maze

by ChianaGray

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"I'm telling you, this is a mistake!" She protested in a light, gentle voice that seemed to catch in her breath as she tried to follow the guard back out of the cages gate with her hands behind her. "At least take these cuffs off of me."

She jerked back as he slammed the gate nearly into her delicately featured face. Her gentle black eyes narrowed cooly though as she turned down the fence with the guard, shoulders hunched as she tilted her head and began to whisper to him. The tall human-like being laughed as he pointed into the pen.

"Right now you have bigger problems."

She cut her eyes around slowly. The cage was a building in width and two stories tall, settled easily between three buildings somewhere just beyond the market square. She was apparently in the brink on this odd planet but her fellow prisoners made up a very unusual bunch even to her. There were about fifty or sixty beings and creatures, many of them seemed more like non-sentient animals.

"Frell," she muttered to herself as several of them began to mob around her. She stepped back, closer to the building wall. As she glanced up her attention was caught by the pen that made up the second story where prisoners milled and peered back down from what looked like several rows of cages. They were neatly slid into tracks like rectangular shaped crates for shipping them. A deeper fear tightend in her chest.

Hands snatched her and slung her down to the hard stone floor. She quickly drew to her knees, searching the eyes of those who encircled her in a feral manner as someone came up from behind her and literaly stood over her. Their boots planted on either side of her as knees hugged her sides. She twisted around slightly to get a look at them. The young man was fairly lean, standing at a six feet in height and clad in a black, sleevless tunic over a royal blue shirt. Deer like antlers swept back from his tempils and sharply slanting eyes of a fire blue gazed over the others silently as he crossed his arms. His intricately featured face was framed by rabbit-soft, metalic silver hair that streamed passed his shoulders in waves and cowlicks. He looked something next to faery like, almost elfish, his mild, calm expression gazing over them until they reluctanly backed down without a word being passed.

She barked a high pitched laugh as she whirled around to him and stood with her head tilted to her shoulder, eyeing him rather craftily as she struggled with her restraints. "So what did you do to get in here?"

"I didn't do anything," he spoak softly though his voice seemed to carry an authority as he rested his fire blue eyes into hers. "Only the ones who have done something come in chained. You're lucky though, usualy they end up above us."

"They just picked you off of the street while you were minding your own buisness?" She mused as she narrowed her eyes. "And you expect me to believe that."

"I don't expect anything," A small, wistful smile crossed his thin lips. "And my delema is having Eshran without permits in this sector. I thought this was over, at least, it is to most of the land."

"Eshran."

He turned and nodded slightly towards a younger female that looked as he did only she did not bear antlers and her pointed ears seemed larger and more sweeping like a leaf in a short, wild thrash of smokey colored silver hair. She sat squat on the stone ground, playing some kind of pretend game with a collection of little stones, marbles, bits of string and coins. She seemed a little old for it though.

"You strangers are never on my planet long enough to learn anything swiftly enough, new commer." He spoak more seriously, his thin, smokey brows creased with the discontent he felt though his eyes sharpend with the worry that blazed intently deep within them. "You're in allot more trouble than you may think."

"You want to tell me what kind of trouble that is? My name's Chiana by the way."

"Valkry," he spoak kindly as he uncrossed his arms and lightly placed his fingertips on her forehead and then placed them on his own as his eyes seemed to gently smile. "Come sit with us, I will explain."

"Chiana!" Crichton banged on the bars with his pulse pistol. "Yo! Pip! Are you in there?"

Chiana ran to him, smiling brightly with relief as she leaned against the gates bars and looked up to him. She moved to speak when a stick smacked against the bars. She lurched back as Crichtons pulse pistol met the guards face. He looked much the same as Valkry except his hair was black as well as his antlers and his sharply slanting eyes were solid black like mirrors.

"Hey!" He snapped as he bit his lower lip. "I'm talking to her."

"You'll be joining her if you don't lower your weapon," the guard snareld as he hefted his prod.

"Right," Crichton snipped out without budging. "How much to bail her out?"

"There is no way out. She can take the test or wait for pick up."

"You want to explain that?" Crichton narrowed his eyes as he let Aeryn lower his pistol. "What test?"

"She can go through the maze," the guard sneered as he pointed towards the back of the pen. "It's a very simple test of intelligence. If she is sintient at all she can pass it and be on her way. If not, then she will be shipped with everyone else to our governmental services laboratories for scientific study."

"She is sentient, what are you frelling blind?" Crichton snorted. "She's a Nebari, I'm sure you heard her speaking just fine with every curse word available to your interpretation microbes when you stuck her in here."

"Crichton." Chiana muttered.

"Anyone of average intelligence can pass through the maze. If she did not have a problem with that she would have gone already."

"Crichton."

"That sounds so frelling familiar," Crichton seethed his ice blue eyes at him, shaking his head as he raised his pistol again. "I've heard that one before somewhere. Seriously, how much would it be worth to you to bail her out?"

"Aeryn." Chiana cut her eyes to her in exasperation.

"So let her take this maze," Aeryn stated as she lowered Crichtons pistol again. "She would only get a good lesson out of it. I'm sick of something always comming up everytime we land on a commerce planet."

"Aeryn!"

"My planet is not for your commerce," the guard grimanced as two more of his men came up behind him. "You are here only because the Governmental Services values alien trade. That does not make you immune to racial law."

"Oh, so now we're the frelling tourists trying to get our wayward stray out of the dog pound. How much more insulting can it get around here?"

"Can I say something?"

"Shut up!" Crichton and Aeryn stated in unsion as Zhaan leaned slightly to peer through the bars at Eshran as she peeked around Chiana. Her dark midnight blue eyes stared wildly at Zhaan with fascination as she aproached, her gentle lips parting as she dared a touch of her finger tips to Zhaans forehead and then touched her own where she squated.

"A trace memory of mind linking," Zhaan muttered softly with interest as she knelt down to her. "You carry your traditions well, such a pity you've forgotten what that was for."

"She might not understand you," Chiana said as she sighed and looked into Zhaans eyes desperatley as Aeryn and Crichton continued to argue with the guards. "Zhaan, they aren't going to let any of us leave unless we take thier maze to study us. Eshran may not pass because she's Feyan and none of us might - might even survive because there's a frelling monster loose in the maze they've been trying to flush out for half a cycle and there's only ten arns left before these scientists come to stick us in experiments in thier labs which is completely legal but only on this particular continent. I told you we should have landed on the better looking side but noone would listen to me and now I'm stuck in here and all I did was help myself to those giant nuts with a straw in them because I was frelling thirsty. Valkry says we're all frelled because he's not letting them take his sister and the -the intelligence test is-"

"Chiana." Zhaan sighed, rolling her eyes as she stood. "Would you please slow down and explain this to me more briefly?"

"Explain it on the way," Crichton stated as he stepped through the gate with Aeryn and took Chianas cuffs off of her.

"I can't just leave Valkry and Eshran here like this!" Chiana protested.

"You're not," Cricthon glared beneath his brows as he brought his face closer to her ear and passed her a pulse pistol from within his leather cloak. "We just got arrested. You want to introduce us to your new pound pals? The quicker we get off planet Frell You the better."

"I tried to tell you the smaller continent looked better. I was right too, the Kree are against this Governmental Services thing."

"Back up," he muttered as he took her arm and pulled her further into the pen. "Who are the Kree and what is this maze test, exactly."

Chiana nudged her head to Valkry as he aproached and then pointed to a door way to the back wall. The wall inside the door slanted down, indicating a stairway down into an underground.

"Valkry said that the sciences can study anyone they want to if they refuse to take the test or don't pass it."

Crichton nodded warily to Valkry as Zhaan aproached holding the shoulders of Eshran who stared distantly up at the cages above.

"It is not because you are strangers," Valkry explained as he settled his eyes worridley apon his sister. "Our world has been trying to elminate imperfection within the defunitions of the racial law introduced by the Governmental Services generations ago. My kind have overthrown them on this land Chiana speaks of, Shanas, but the Kryn still support them in many colonies abroad this region."

"If it's racial law, then it would be because we are strangers, right?" Crichton asked. "We don't exactly look like you or these Kryn. I mean, what's so imperfect with you guys, wrong pigmintation, not born in the same place, antlers not screwed in tight enough?"

"You do know enough," Valkry spoak in his same calm, gentle voice as they aproached the door. "But you don't understand what is going on. We have been invaded by aliens from a nearby world who created this government to imprison us all. They are mostly gone now, but thier interest in using us for experiments still remains and the Kryn are still blind to the needs of our world because we have been enemies long ago. It is a dying planet, new commer. Dying in everything but the secrets of our ancestors that still carry within us to keep trying to over throw this and remember what we once were. You did not become a prisoner until you walked through that gate, but we have been prisoners catering to the commerce and sciences of the Governmental Services since the fall of the High Realm."

Crichton wiped his face as he turned to stare at the girl as she played with her long embroidered shirt of forest green and scratched at her ankle with a foot snuggly within her soft suade boot.

"This is your sister?"

"Yes," Valkry bowed his head slightly as his fire blue eyes stared into Crichtons with the same intense worry deep within them as before. "I did not know this citadel was under the control of the Kryn. I had heard it had been liberated only three cycles ago. I was returning, because this had once been our home."

"And you don't think she'll pass this test..."

Zhaan nodded to Crichton as he spoak, still holding protectivley to Eshran as she tilted her head and began to waggle her hand in front of her chest with a thoughtful if somewhat lost expression as her lips pursed.

"I think she can," Zhaan spoak with genuine relief as Eshran found a great deal of interest in the small silver buttons along Aeryns jacket and began to try to pick at them until Chiana slinked around her and shared a curious stare with her. "She is-"

"Feyan," Valkry interupted. "Before the Governmental Serivces our kinds spoak empathicly, we hadn't even heard of interpretation microbes until 300 cycles ago. Sometimes we come out as my sister has without the sharing our ancestors once knew. You have to understand, we were well advanced races. We could not fly ships into the universe, but we had little to need for and we were all united by the empathic bond. It is those like my sister who can restore it, at the same time, she knows only the empathic thought and is lost without the ancient bond to guide her. It can happen to any of us at any age, that is what the Governmental Services wants to eliminate. The only thing is, they are the cause of it."

"Don't look too worried," Crichton said as he turned and peered down the dark stairway. "If we get out of this fun house, it'll be together. We'll help you out, hell, maybe someday you'll repay the favor."

Valkry grasped Crichtons shoulder as he looked profoundly into his eyes. "I will speak your names in the Hall of Azura where they shall echoe for a hundred turns of Last Moon."

"I wouldn't go that far," Crichton smirked. "Maybe just a 'kilroy was here' in some old mages scroll."

END OF PT 1