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The fic © Cyril the Sixteen Goldfish
"Lieutenant Braca," began Scorpius. John finally gave up the struggle and dropped his gaze. He was beginning to suspect Peacekeeper training of including staring contests as well as everything else. Then again, it might just as easily have been Aeryn.
Braca examined his bare toes in minute detail.
"I am quite certain that you will provide me with a reasonable explanation of this...of this...when you report to my quarters in half an arn. As for you, Crichton, I leave you in the capable hands of Officer Sun." Scorpius gave the two something that probably wasn't a friendly smile and walked off. Braca scuttled back into the room, returning a moment later to push John's shoes into his hands and shove him firmly out into the corridor, shutting the door behind him.
"No socks," he muttered. "Oh well..."
He glanced up. Aeryn was still staring at him.
"Well?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"One of the most important things I have learned about your species from my time with you, Crichton, is that if it can do something really, unbelievably idiotic, it probably will. I will believe almost anything."
"We were playing a game."
"I see. Do all human games take all night and involve removing your clothes, or only the good ones?"
John couldn't think of an answer to this that wouldn't earn him a slap, so he settled for putting his shoes on, which also provided a valid excuse for not looking at Aeryn. When he looked up again, he was just in time to see her disappear round a corner at a high-speed stride. He jumped to his feet in pursuit, and managed to catch a glimpse of her jogging round another corner way ahead of him. He resisted the urge to turn round and check she wasn't running across the corridor behind him, reminding himself that this, however ridiculous, wasn't actually an episode of Scooby Doo.
~~~
Elsewhere on the ship, Scorpius had been on his way to sit in his quarters and dread what Lieutenant Braca, whom he had hitherto regarded as being capable of rebellion in the same way that a sun at ten metras was inconspicuous, was going to tell him. He had, therefore, been rather grateful at being summoned to an emergency meeting - something about an alien intruder on the ship, which the Peacekeepers, with their obsession with purity, tended to get very upset about. Personally, Scorpius wasn't very concerned, since alien lifeforms occasionally found their way on board, and were generally harmless or, at the worst, annoying. This one seemed to fit the mould - it apparently had a penchant for finding its way into people's quarters and stealing items of clothing.
Actually, he was more worried by the mysterious stabbing pain in his side and the fact that his legs had started, inexplicably, to ache. It was probably nothing, but since in his body's case hybrid vigour wasn't as noticeable as hybrid not-quite-working, he made a mental note to have a medic check him over.
~~~
John wasn't entirely sure when this had turned into a game of tag, but there was no doubt that that was what it now was. Aeryn was running flat-out and he was having a hard time keeping her in view, let alone catching up. He was getting tired, too, and the increasingly painful stitch wasn't helping, so he was grateful to see her duck into what he suddenly realised was their quarters, although she'd brought him by a very circuitous route. Of course, trying to slow down and take a sudden corner at the speed he was now running, he stood a significant risk of skidding and falling over. This was exactly what he did, with the added bonus that he clipped his head hard on the doorframe as he went down.
~~~
Scorpius barely suppressed a yelp and clutched at his head, stumbling sideways until he reached a wall and leant against it, wondering frantically what could be going on. Headaches he'd experienced, the occasional moment of blinding agony being an unfortunate consequence of his mismatched breeding, but that had felt exactly like being hit with something extremely heavy. He looked around suspiciously to check that this wasn't some kind of bizarre joke or, alternatively, an assassination attempt, but the corridor was devoid of life.
He lowered a hand from his now impressively throbbing skull, which was when he caught sight of the bracelet encircling his right wrist. Glaring at it, he wondered if it was possible that Sun had assaulted its partner's wearer - he wouldn't have been at all surprised, considering the morning's events. However, whatever it was had apparently stopped happening and he was still both alive and conscious, which suggested that either she had finished or the blow had simply been the result of the human's clumsiness. Whatever it was, he hoped that it had finished, since being randomly attacked by remote control wasn't going to add much to his authority.
~~~
Aeryn stood looking down at the figure now sprawled on the floor, holding its head and swearing furiously in a language which she didn't understand in the slightest but whose tone was easily interpreted, and tried not to smile. It was something of a lost cause - much as he had been incredibly stupid, the sheer familiarity of his doing something as ridiculous as this was actually rather sweet. And, really, it was hard to be angry with someone who had chased her round the entire ship, only to run into a doorframe and collapse at her feet, however unintentionally.
"So", she inquired, "why, exactly, were you playing a game with Lieutenant Braca? It can't have been his fascinating conversation."
John rolled onto his back and shifted his hands until he could look up at her.
"He took Wynnona. I was trying to win her back."
That made sense. It would, of course, be something small and almost meaningless, and John was irrationally attached to the pulse pistol.
"And did you?"
"Did I what?"
Aeryn sighed. "Did you win it back?"
"Damn..."
"Oh, well done. Have I told you that you can be unbelievably idiotic sometimes?"
"Often. God, my head..."
Aeryn crouched down to examine the bruise forming above his left eyebrow.
"You'll live," she announced finally.
"Great. Thanks for the sympathy, too."
"It was entirely your own fault."
"Hey, you were the one who was doing the damn roadrunner act."
"Is it worth asking?"
"Doubt it. He ran away from things a lot."
"I see."
John's curiosity got the better of him.
"Ah...Aeryn? What were you doing with Scorpius, this, um...?"
"Looking for you, since I woke up and you'd disappeared. I bumped into Scorpius, he asked me where you were, and then he opened the door and...you were."
Why did you have to go and ask? You think she was wandering around the ship arm in arm with Scorpy, talking to bluebirds?
"Aeryn, I...I'm sorry. I mean, all this. It was stupid, I know."
"You're right. It was."
John looked up and studied her expression as best he could, given that the face it was on was nearly six feet above him. Despite her clipped tones, she was wearing a faint smile, which suggested that he wasn't in too much trouble.
He let his gaze linger on her face for slightly longer than was necessary, until she rearranged it into something approaching a disapproving glare and cocked an eyebrow, wordlessly demanding what the frell he thought he was doing. Maintaining a carefully nonchalant expression, he shifted his eyes downward slightly, moving them with slow determination while Aeryn looked at him ever more disbelievingly, and finally asked the question verbally.
"What the frell," she demanded, "do you think you are doing, John?"
"i'm...appreciating the view," he replied solemnly, keeping his eyes working on their census of said view.
"Is it a good view, then?"
"Amazing. Wonderful...mountains."
Aeryn's eyebrows clambered a little further up her forehead.
"Really? Well, what if the mountains were to suddenly move away?" she asked, walking across the room and sitting down on the bed. John rolled onto his elbows and looked at her sternly.
"Now, in my experience, Aeryn, that isn't something mountains do a lot. But, I suppose, if they were to do something that un-mountain-like, I would have to follow them."
"Seems like a good plan to me." She sat back and watched as he pulled himself to his feet, not taking his eyes off her.
"I've been thinking," he said, "about my actions. I think it's time I apologised..."
"You already did."
"...properly."
~~~
Scorpius listened to various Peacekeepers recount their encounters with the intruder. All were of a similar nature - they had entered their quarters and found something which was described as smallish and consisting mainly of hair. When approached or fired on, the creature would vanish, taking with it some small item of clothing.
His ability to concentrate on the problem was being somewhat hampered by the strange things that seemed to be happening to his mouth. Whatever Crichton was doing now, while not as distracting as being suddenly hit, it was not conducive to finding solutions to hair-monsters.
The talking had stopped, and everyone in the room was looking expectantly at the head seat. Everyone, that is, except the unfortunate Lieutenant Braca, who had carefully selected a seat as far from the head as possible and was staring resolutely at the table. He'd succeeded in tidying himself up, Scorpius noticed, although he was still faintly green.
Scorpius pulled himself back to the matter in hand.
"Has anyone encountered this creature outside of their quarters?' he asked.
One hand went up, attached to a young woman whom Scorpius vaguely recognised as being something to do with engineering.
"I caught a glimpse of it in cargo bay ten, but it disappeared when it saw me."
"Oh? Is there a possibility that it could be building a nest of some kind? It would account for its stealing clothes."
"I'll have someone check the cargo bays for signs of one, sir."
The meeting progressed, with ideas being tossed around and mostly rejected, as in all such situations. Scorpius tried to keep up and look normal, whilst determinedly ignoring whatever was happening to his tongue and taking no notice, for now, of the nagging suspicions now being formed - suspicions which were only added to by the increasing sensation of pressure around his ears. Time enough to berate Crichton later.
Then, rather suddenly, it stopped. Scorpius thanked any available god, since, along with the distraction and difficulty talking, his jaw had been beginning to ache, just to add another dimension to the still-persisting headache. His relief was short-lived, however, since a moment later what felt worryingly like fingers began to trace their way down his chest.
~~~
John was suddenly aware of a pause in Aeryn's ministrations, and of an impatient tapping on his stomach. He propped himself up and looked down. The sebacean was staring fixedly at his nether regions with a strangely deadpan expression.
"What," she inquired gently, "are these?"
"Huh?"
She moved slightly, allowing him to see more clearly that, in place of his familiar and much-loved white Calvins, he was clad in something made of black and red leather, with a look about it that very clearly said 'Peacekeeper'. He groaned and lay back.
"Great," he informed the underside of the top bunk. "Just frelling wonderful."
When he looked up again, Aeryn was staring at him quizzically.
"I guess I must have put them on by accident after...you know. We had to get dressed pretty quickly, what with Scorpy banging on the door and all."
"You're telling me this is Lieutenant Braca's underwear?"
John winced. "Yeah."
"Well, are you going to give it back?"
"You know, I have a feeling if I go anywhere near him ever again he'll probably shoot me."
"True," Aeryn conceded, returning to the task in hand. A few microts later, Braca's pants described a graceful arc across the room, landing on a chair in the opposite corner.
~~~
In lieutenant Braca's recently-vacated quarters, there was a faint pop and, a moment later, a gentle thump. The hair-monster straightened up cautiously and approached the post-snap litter still occupying a large part of the room. It poked at the residue in the glasses, licked its fingers, made a face and turned its attention to the scattered items of clothing adorning the floor, picking each one up and sniffing it before throwing it down again with an air of great disappointment.
Suddenly, it caught another, far more attractive scent, which it followed, first on foot and then crawling on hands and knees until, eventually, from behind Braca's bed, it triumphantly extracted a single faded blue sock. Cackling gleefully, it dived through the door in pursuit of the sock's owner.
~~~
Scorpius' eyes were beginning to glaze over with the effort of maintaining a normal expression and trying his best to take no notice of whatever it was Crichton was doing. Fortunately, the meeting appeared to have dissolved into a complicated argument over how best to deal with an enemy that vanished when you tried to catch it and then further dissolved into a much more heated argument over whether it should be referred to as an intruder or as some new kind of pest.
The fingers stopped, and he had to forcefully restrain himself from breathing a sigh of relief. Maybe it was...
Cold. A sudden, surprising sensation of coolness.
And then, not as suddenly - in fact, if truth be told almost teasingly - an equally surprising sensation of warmth, and now there was no doubt whatsoever about what Crichton had been doing with his mouth.
He wouldn't. Not with the bracelets. Surely not even he would be stupid enough to...ah!
He would.
"Sir? Are you all right?"
Scorpius opened the eyes he had been unaware that he had closed, to discover twenty or so confused expressions examining him curiously. Apparently the gasp had been out loud.
"Sir?"
"I...I...fine..." Scorpius managed. The asker eyed him doubtfully, taking in the white hands gripping the table edge hard enough to make the knuckles even whiter. and the glassy expression.
"Are you s--"
"Yes!" The voice had an edge of panicked snarl which suggested that pressing the matter further would be somewhat suicidal. He turned back to the table and contrived to indicate, using only his eyebrows, that the best approach would be to ignore the occasional small strangled sounds coming from the person supposedly in charge and proceed as usual.
Glup.
Scrabblescrabblescrabble.
Snuffle.
Under the table, the hair-monster darted from foot to foot, sniffing at ankles and muttering in disappointment as they all turned out to be not only the wrong person, but the wrong species. Above it, the argument was winding down and chairs were being pushed back to allow their occupants to peer under the table in search of the source of the noise.
The monster paused and glanced back at a foot it had just passed over as being entirely wrong. There was something...an overtone of familiarity. It buried its nose in the sock it was still carrying, just to check. Yes, that was it. Somehow, the conflicting scent was absolutely right. With an ecstatic squawk, it leapt toward its source.
Lieutenant Braca screamed and propelled himself backwards from the table with sufficient force to crash into the wall behind him. When he came to a standstill, slightly dazed, the mass of hair now occupying his lap stopped clinging leechlike to his jacket and resumed its quest to get to the part of lieutenant Braca from which emanated the smell so like that of the sock. Braca whimpered and tried to push it off, but it snarled at him and grabbed his arms with surprising strength, so he settled for just whimpering.
Someone levelled a pulse-pistol at it and fired.
The creature looked up and vanished abruptly.
Braca gave a high-pitched scream and folded up as the bolt, deprived of its original target, hit him squarely in the knee. Several Peacekeepers rushed across the room to either help him or, at the very least, shut him up, while the rest stood up to search the room for the hair-monster. Eventually it was established that it was nowhere to be found and the lieutenant, no longer screaming but grey and barely-conscious, was carted off to the medical facility. Someone turned to the head seat, intending to ask Scorpius for instructions, but he, too, had disappeared.
~~~
Several corridors away, Scorpius leant, panting, against a wall, and swore fervently that if he even considered using the bracelets for anything again, ever, he would have someone kill him quickly. Having his brain invaded by the lusts of an insane alien was not something he ever wanted to experience again, and the worst part of it was that he kept having his thought processes interrupted by a less clinical voice which was admiring in the extreme of Sun's talents, if not in a particularly coherent fashion. He could, in theory, find some way to stop them - but if he did that he would have to be on the receiving end of John's half-finished frustration until the bracelets came off, which would be infinitely worse and almost as distracting. The only available course of action seemed to be to stay here until they finished and then, when his mind was working properly again, decide how to deal with them.
~~~
John gave a final gasp, a satisfied sigh and relaxed into the pathetic mattress, while Aeryn pulled herself back up the bed and lay down beside him.
"Can I take it that I'm forgiven, then?"
"Absolutely not. You are going to be paying for that for a long time."
"We-ell, I think if the payment all works like this I could deal, y'know?"
There was something that was partly a knock and more a resounding crash at the door. John glanced at Aeryn, who shrugged, indicating that it was his turn to do the work. He rolled off the bed, taking a sheet with him and wrapping it round his waist for some semblance of decency. He could always say that he'd been napping, or something.
He punched a button and the door slid back, revealing Scorpius, who looked awful. He was breathless and looked like he had just stopped running, and he was glaring at John with an expression of insane malevolence like unto nothing the astronaut had ever seen.
"You," he growled, "are either the most benightedly stupid lifeform I have ever enountered, or you are insane, or, possibly you are both."
"Whoa, Scorpy. What exactly have I done?"
"Done?" Scorpius spluttered. "Done? This..." he waved an arm at John's lack of clothing and Aeryn, eyeing him curiously whilst recumbent on the bed. "Could you not curb your adolescent instincts for a few solar days, John? Are you that undisciplined? As far as officer Sun goes, I--"
John raised a hand in an attempt to slow the tirade.
"Wait a minute, wait a minute. How did you kn..." he trailed off, looking at his upraised arm, with specific reference to the bracelet encircling his wrist. "These bracelet things...they don't...uh...do they transmit impulses other than pain?"
"You grasp my meaning with all of your usual perception, Crichton. You will be off my ship in one arn. I will meet you in the docking bay then." He turned in a swirl of leather that spoke volumes about affronted melodrama and, too irritated to stalk, stomped down the corridor.
~~~
After the allotted arn, John and Aeryn walked into the docking bay to find Scorpius already there, looking slightly saner than he had the last time they saw him. He was almost calm as he exchanged the codes to release the I-yensch bracelets with John, although his relief as the thing unlocked itself and came away from his wrist was palpable. Aside from the code, he didn't speak until the two were halfway through the transport pod's hatchway.
"Crichton!"
John turned and looked at him enquiringly.
"You might want these." John instinctively caught the scrap of white fabric before he was aware that it had been thrown, or of what it was. He looked at it, identified it, followed a train of thought that he really didn't want to follow, opened his mouth to ask and was jerked sharply inside by Aeryn, whose instinct for self-preservation was still alive and kicking. The hatchway hissed shut and the pod moved, slowly, towards the end of the bay.
~~~
In space there are few outside observers, and therefore, as the transport pod glided towards the much larger shape of Moya, it was unlikely that there would be anyone to see a smaller and hair-covered shape detach itself from the hull and glide toward the leviathan's outer hull. Nor was it probable that there was anyone to observe as, while the ship prepared to starburst, the shape vanished downwards through the surface, before the whole thing was lost in a blaze of light. Nevertheless, against all odds, the events had an audience.
In the region of space which had, microts earlier, contained Moya, a point of blue light, which had been indistinguishable from the surrounding stars, began to expand. As it grew it changed shape and, at its centre, the misty light coalesced into two vague figures. As their definition increased they took on the appearance of two young women standing side-by-side. The expressions on their faces showed an odd blend of annoyance and tranquillity as they gazed at the stars twinkling where a large ship should have been.
"I knew we shouldn't have let her go off on her own," said the taller of the two, with a musical sigh.
"Well, what's the worse that can happen? She can look after herself."
"I suppose so. But still, we probably ought to get her back. People never seem to appreciate her."
"You may be right."
The two figures blurred back into a mass of light, which contracted. When it had become a point, it sped away in pursuit of the departed ship, vanishing quickly into the distance.