I just finished watching "Wheel of Fire" and then "Objects in Motion" for the first time these past two saturdays. Well . . . I just **had** to write something! No need to let everyone else take up all the webspace in the world. All comments welcome at "h_raelynn@hotmail.com". PG-13 rated: Gok may splash through the occasional gutter of slush, but does not go swimming. Spoilers for Season 5. Massive ones! ;)
- Gok
~~~~
"Lyta, wake up."
"mmmf," came the faint sound as she buried herself deeper under her blanket.
"Wake up, you silly human, or you'll miss it again."
She shoved her pillow out of the way just enough to blink an eye at him in the dim light. Then she retreated again, mumbling something incoherant about narn priests having lousy hours.
"Lyta, I mentioned you having missed it yesterday. You told me you'd be sure to catch it today. Dispite your sarcastic tone, I have decided to hold you to your word."
She coughed once, then complained, "No. It's cold out and I'm not getting dressed at this unholy hour in the morning. We'll be on this planet for several more days at least, it'll take that long to repair the ship. Whatever you want can wait. I'm never up this early if I can help it. You know that."
G'Kar sighed. "No, it can't wait. And if I argue with you for much longer, you won't see it at all. I want it to be today. End of discussion." He located a second blanket, laid it over her hidden form, then scooped up the entire package as she yelped. "This will help keep you warm. Are you willing to walk, or do I continue to carry you?"
"Does this involve me getting wet?" Lyta queried carefully, her voice muffled from being inside the blankets.
"Goodness, no. And you can go back to sleep afterwards if you want. Watch your head!" He adjusted his grip to prevent her from bumping the walls as she squirmed out of his arms and down to stand on the floor.
"Let me put shoes on, then. I'll walk." She pulled on socks and the closest pair of boots, then wrapped the blankets around her again, having decided this was the fastest way to get G'Kar to leave her alone. She'd only gotten to sleep a few hours before, having spent half the night resetting more of the ships systems because of the incident. "Why today?" She grumbled as her guide, protector and companion led her out of the ship and across the clearing in the near-dark, to the top of a nearby hill, indicating for her to sit on a fallen log.
"Because today is today, that's why. You'll be reminded afterwards. Keep watching that direction."
The chill was seeping through the blankets, making her wish she had put clothes on. Her underwear might be comfortable for sleeping when in the controlled climate of the ship, but right now she was on a primative planet, listening to the twitterings of local bird-like creatures beginning to wake up, her breath visible with every exhale in the dim red glow along one horizon. There was dew on the grass and thousands of stars still bright in the sky, a thick trail of the the closest galactic spiral.
They were considerably closer to the center of the galaxy than when their journey had begun many months before, and were a long ways from any place earth ships had visited yet. It might be as long as three years before an Earthforce explorer ship would arrive to look around, but the local resources weren't sufficent to make building a jumpgate cost-effective. It would probably be another century before the Alliance population grew large enough to warrent starting a colony here, since domes and contained fields would be required to grow crops. The planet's biosphere was too young, lacked the nutrients to have useable soil.
It did have a breathable atmosphere, which was the reason G'Kar picked it. Being able to breathe while the ship was completely shut down meant finding a safe place to land where sufficent oxygen existed to live off of while their vessel was quickly overhauled before the electronic virus could erase their computers, leaving them unable to navigate through hyperspace, drifting towards a slow death.
The systems were more than 90% repaired, and the last bit would be taken care of in the next few days, long before the virus would activate. The antagonists, however, had been 100% destroyed. Lyta had ruptured their skulls from the inside with ease, then blew the fusion reactors that powered their ships. It was a very pretty lightshow. Part retrobution, for trying to hurt her and G'Kar, part preventative maintenance - she wasn't about to let this threat bother the Alliance. The Drakh were trouble enough without these other shadow-allies adding spice to the baking. Former shadow-allies. Whatever name they had been called before, the only title now carried by them was 'extinct'.
However, Lyta was still feeling the predawn chill. "Straddle this, would you?" she asked tiredly.
G'Kar froze, then looked at at the woman sitting beside him with just a hint of carnal curiousity.
"The LOG, you dumb Narn, I meant the LOG. I don't play with other species, and you know it. I'm cold, and you're the warmest thing out here. Why are we out here, anyway? The suns haven't even risen yet."
G'Kar waited until she'd snuggled back against him and rearranged the two blankets to cover her legs better against the chill. The low temperature didn't bother him as much, partly from his sturdier physiology, partly from the fact that that a pretty (even if she wasn't a Narn) female was curled up between his legs, leaning against his chest.
G'Kar had no problems with other species being near him, human females he had once considered to be more attractive than narn females, and the brothel owners on B5 had received large amounts of his monetary estate as a result of his frequent 'meetings'. The ones he'd met in the more recent months had been formerly completely unknown species to him, yet hookers were hookers no matter what the culture. But, when he asked Lyta to come along on his journey, she'd made it clear her body was off-limits. It meant re-supply trips to inhabited worlds were rather expensive, since it was weeks or months between receptive females, but he was gentle with the prostitutes and had yet to be banned from any place. If anything, his visits were considered very profitable by the local establishments.
But at the moment, the only female he'd set eyes on in two very long and trying months was wrapped in a blanket next to him, and G'Kar was feeling quite warm. He reminded himself to 'think clean thoughts'. "In all our time together, we have never seen a sunrise together. Set, yes, but never a sunrise. Since we have two suns now, I thought it would a good way to begin the day. The numbers match. Two suns together, two years together. Look, here comes the first one now."
The red glow had slowly spread to cover almost a third of the sky, turning pink at the center, chasing the stars away at the edges. Slowly, a warm orange arch began to peek over the distant mountains, outglowing the few volcanic flows, but still weak enough to look directly at. Mist began to rise as the air slowly began to warm.
The red giant took it's time rising, rippling in the turbulent atmosphere, surrounded by a thousand shades of beauty as the mineral-laden air took on a multitude of colors. Static electricity made a borealis of crackling luminesence dance over their heads as the magnetic fields argued with the oncoming solar winds from the second sun, which had yet to become visible as it's larger sibling cleared its huge bulk of the mountains on the start of it's fourteen-hour journey.
Some of the riot of color had gradually faded, leaving half the sky a blueish-purple stain, smudged at the lowest edges from ash tossed up by the 3 dozen visible volcanic vents. Lyta shrugged off one of the blankets in the growing heat, watching eagarly now for the second half of the show. The borealis had begun to fade, it's fast energy outdone by the more patient sunlight. Then the occasional 'meep!' of birdcall expoded into a flying, untuned orchestra as every living creature in the area announced the rising of the second sun. A white dwarf, hot, blueish, and too bright to look directly at.
"Watch the grass-stems!" G'Kar whispered into her ear, pointing out the thick clusters of buds at the end of each stalk as the light from the second sun reached downwards along the surrounding hills, the pale green mat which surrounded the sparse trees exploding into fuzzy color a few seconds after the light-line touched each area.
A moment later, the light touched the grass around them, and Lyta watched curiously as the buds swelled in reaction, then exploded, spreading a multicolored dust into the air in puffballs several feet across. The largest, green specks were the casings, and fell to the ground quickly dispite the breeze. Brown shells drifted upwards for a few seconds, releasing a bright neon pink cloud, then also fell. Sticky blue specks were picked up by the wind along with the pink clouds, and were swept up into the air to show a purple haze as it was carried hundreds of meters into the atmosphere, a feast for the thousands of circling birds.
G'Kar felt a a mental tap. Lyta wanted to know what the powders were, but was too reverent to speak out loud yet.
"Pollen, mostly." He whispered. "The plants here haven't yet evolved enough to have actual flowers. The blue is the 'male' gene carrier. The pink clouds are spores, which will probably drift until next spring. When the rains fall, the surviving spores will grow new stems. The blue ones only live a few days. They'll keep drifting down, fertilize the stems already growing - you see those little spikes left where the buds broke? They'll swell up in the next few hours, turn sticky, and catch the blue dust. Then they'll harden, and by tomorrow's sunrise, pop again. I spent most of yesterday tracking the progress. That's why you couldn't find me to help reset the ship's systems. I apologize."
"It's all right. I'm glad you woke me up. It was beautiful. If dusty." She looked at him and laughed. "You've gone from having spotted to blue-colored skin. I supposed I'm the same-" She broke off her sentence, grabbing the blanket from where it had slipped and wrapped it around herself again, a deep blush showing through the sticky powder covering most of her body.
"Darn. And here I was enjoying your company!" He grinned.
"G'Kar!!" she warned.
"My dear Lyta, I've hugged you for more than the past hour without you objecting."
"Um . . . I hadn't noticed."
"I realize that. The stream's about 300 meters that way. The pollen washes right off of skin, but you'll likely need soap to get it out of your undergarments. Would you prefer I brought you a change of clothes at the water, or that I 'make myself scarce for a while' instead?"
Lyta paused, not wanting to be rude after G'Kar had shared such a beautiful sight with her, but not really wanting him to see her naked and wet. He'd behaved himself around her almost without failure, dispite her having to remain alone on the ship, not seeing anyone or being seen by anyone, at ports while he spent a solid week or two at the closest whore-house. The glazed happy expression he always wore upon returning just made her own isolation worse.
She wondered if this would be a chance to even the score slightly . . . and promptly dismissed it as a very stupid idea. G'Kar's occasional planting of his eye where it watched her change clothes was bad enough, Lyta didn't need to provoke him. "Go for a walk for a while, if you don't mind."
He nodded and sauntered off, heading downstream to remove the blue layer. Lyta returned to the ship to get clean clothes, then headed upstream to rinse. She'd gotten used to regret and loneliness. She'd felt them long enough.
Two and a half years . . . that's how long since Byron had killed himself, because of her. She'd burned his mind by accident, she was too powerful - it had drove him insane, turned him violent, and she had gone from trying to comfort him briefly to frantically trying to save him, both without any success. She'd gotten greedy, having gone so long without a lover, because being Corps meant you were forbidden to 'associate' with mundanes. Zack hadn't understood, but had complied with her tearful request not to touch her anymore. They hadn't gotten to kissing, even, when she'd had to stop it. Losing Zack as her potential lover meant being able to stay on B5 in relative safety. It meant she could still see him, talk to him sometimes, something that made it both easier and harder to stay.
But when Byron had arrived a few months afterwards, he didn't follow the rules. He would touch her, whenever and wherever he wanted to. He would get her with her back to a wall then start kissing her. She'd been too lonely to stop him, but didn't go forward with the relationship . . . until Zack confronted her, said all the wrong things, lied about being jealous, and upset her to the point where she turned to Byron.
Friendly, peaceful, willing Byron. He wasn't even a very good lover, much too passive. But the look of stunned appreciation when she'd pulled off her shirt was more than she'd gotten in years, and she couldn't stop herself. Less than an hour later, every telepath on the station woke up to Byron's mental screams of horror when he scanned her, found out who she was, WHAT she was. Only part of her, and his mind was burned.
A strong, fully trained P12 couldn't defend himself, died because he learned a small part of what she was. Zack had refused to speak with her after that night. She was too ashamed to press the issue, too busy trying to save what she had thought was her one chance of freedom from himself. She'd had to accept her mistake, months later, as she walked away from the broken shackles, towards the ship that now was sitting on the other side of a grove of trees from where she tried to rinse the sticky pollen from her long hair. She'd felt Zack as he tried to find the courage to say goodbye, felt his mental mantra that he wasn't going to cry, because if he didn't look at her now he'd never see her again. Zack blamed himself, in part, for her having to leave. Blamed himself for hurting Lyta's feelings. She'd never spent more than a hour or two with the telepaths in downbelow, until he confronted her, angry and unable to say what he wanted to. She'd spent that night with Byron, and every night afterwards, until Byron's death.
That had been the last time she'd touched the mind of her own species. Not her own kind, but her own species, there in the cargo area. Zack had also been close to her before, a few hours after her arrest. She could feel him in the next room through her sedative as the doctors took genetic samples and made a full medical scan. She could remember Steven's confusion and shock as he discovered her gills . . . and a few other modifications. She'd had to lie there, pretending to be unconcious, making the scanners believe she wasn't awake, not react to the sting when the knife lifted open a gill and the doctor swore in surprise, how the hell can this be here there was no sign what did the vorlons DO to her?
Lyta didn't regret coming along, the things she had seen were preferable to the walls of a cell. Being able to move around with all the freedom of the ship was preferable to being drugged and straightjacketed. G'Kar was better at conversation than a bloodhound unit, and being on a hot little world with too much sticky pollen was better than either being killed and sliced up, or having to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of fellow telepaths and earthforce troops because she'd been shipped back to earth.
But she was as lonely as ever. She could feel G'Kar's presence. He was about half a mile down the water, singing out loud. He was planning something, because today was today. A surprise he hoped she'd like. Lyta didn't feel up to prying to find out what the surprise was, she was just too depressed, dispite the lightshow she'd just watched.
She glared at her rippling reflection as she gave the blanket a final swish through the water, then wrung it out and laid it on the shore to dry. An annoyed bird yelled at her for being in it's territory as she pulled on her dress, then fastened the buttons telekinetically.
Light blue, with long sleeves, long skirt, and a high neckline, it probably was her favorite. It had been an apology-gift from G'Kar. He'd always brought back some trinket for her during supply trips, sometimes chocolates, maybe a book, a crystal of music, a stored archive of the latest ISN broadcasts. But the dress was special. Handwoven, handsewn, of a material both more pliable and softer than silk, but stronger than any fabric she knew of.
G'Kar had it made specifically for Lyta's measurements, placing the order along with a large amount of money at a tailor on some backwater worldlet she never saw from the ground. G'Kar then spent the next 23 days at all four of the local brothels. Lyta had been terrified at his much-longer than usual absence, fearing he was dead, injured, or on a ship heading back to Narn. She couldn't pilot the ship by herself, and couldn't go down onto the planet for fear of hurting anyone. After 22 days, she took the strongest sedative the ship had, choosing to try to sleep the problem away.
It had worked. When she regained conciousness, they'd been in hyperspace for 3 days, and the dress was waiting, a silent apology.
She had refused to speak to G'Kar about it, but several sarcastic comments had appeared in the margins of his latest book. She hadn't worn the dress while he was around, saving it for the days G'Kar was 'busy' elsewhere. But there'd been enough time passed and enough tears cried, and Lyta believed that there was no more grief left. She wore it for him today.
It fit her perfectly.
She sat down on a rock, staring at the ground while her bare toes drew a line in the dirt. "Go back to the ship, Lyta. Help fix something."
I don't want to, she thought.
She sat there, staring into nothing, lost in memories for quite a while, waiting for everything to dry. She blinked out of her revere when she heard G'Kar calling for her.
"I'm over here."
"Great. So where's 'here'? Ah. There you are." He smiled as he came through the trees, one hand behind his back. He noticed she was (finally!) wearing the dress he'd gotten for her. "I have something to give you."
"A second anniversay gift? I'm flattered. But unable to return the gesture."
"No, by the earth calendar, we've still got 3 days left until the anniversary of our departure. This is for you, today. I was unable to have a celebration last year, because you were too ill-"
"The second fever. Yes, I remember how long it took me to recover. You never stopped caring for me, dispite how hard it was."
"It was easier after the first few days, you had nothing left in you to vomit. But I digress."
He pulled out a small cloth bag, showing it to her while she recalled the date of departure. . . 28, 27, 26 . . . Oh God. "It's Christmas again," she whispered to herself.
She'd missed it for years. Last year, because of illness. The year before, she was in a straightjacket, refusing to eat, or speak with anyone. Before that . . . the mars underground, planning on how to free Sheridan (damn him!), being ostracized by everyone except Steven. She didn't know the exact date it had happened, just that she missed it. Before that, she was on an errand the second vorlon had sent her on. She'd returned to B5 to find it was a new year - and that Sheridan had apparently died on Z'Ha'Dum. This came after the year she'd been adbandoned in a lifepod to drift towards vorlon space, which came after the two years she'd spent the 'holidays' sealed in an interrogation room - her home for over 18 months - while the Psi Cops continued their barrage of scans and questions, trying to find out about the vorlon she'd scanned.
It had been '56 since she'd celebrated Chistmas. That huge hotel suite the group of them had rented for the week, fourteen women, all friends since they were young children at the academy. Marie and Talia had planned everything, right down to making sure there was enough hot chocolate and that everyone had a ski suit that fit.
Of that group, six were confirmed dead - turned into rogues, then killed. Two more, P12's, were responsible for 5 of their deaths. One was on Teep, safe and with a new baby to love. Talia . . . was probably dead and sliced up. 3 she didn't know about, but hoped they were alive and well. The last one, herself, was hundreds of lightyears from any of the others, and was crying uncontrollably as the realization set in.
G'Kar was a little bewildered. He knew there was so many traditional aspects to the holiday that he couldn't do for her - eggnog, candles, a decorated conifer tree, mistletoe, magical beings that brought gifts down chimneys that didn't have to exist. But he didn't expect Lyta to just stop, her face deviod of expression for several minutes before closing her eyes and weeping. He wasn't sure what he'd done wrong, but he carefully opened the bag anyway, placing the item inside on her, fastening it while she tried to wipe her face off. "I hope you like it, Lyta, but did I do something wrong?"
"No, no, thank you, you've done things so well I just didn't know what to do. What . . . what is it?" She touched the weight around her neck tenderly. "A necklace, right? What are these?"
G'Kar unclasped it again, lifting it away to show her. Jewels, set in a polished silvery chain. Uncut and rough but polished, ranging from several pea-sized blue opals to varying pearls - both white and black - small brown stones with rippled stripes, a pair of crystals, all balanced right and left by size, color, and number of stones. The center-stone was a large, beautifully clear emerald, hung down from the main circle by a half-inch length of chain, a glittering droplet larger than the last joint of her thumb.
"Too dramatic?" He asked.
"It's beautiful! Where did you ever manage to buy it?"
"I didn't. I made it." He looked quite proud at her astonished expression. "The stones I have been gathering since the first world we visited together. I polished them whenever I could - your mindwalking keeps you busy for hours, it kept you distracted while I spent time on this. These pearls are from that reef-world, I remember your surprise at finding black ones, although you seemed to not want to eat any of their rather delicious makers."
"No raw, no. Ick. Please, continue. How'd you manage to do the chain? It's too heavy to be silver, but you couldn't have formed it out of platinum - the links are too finely shaped to be handmade, aren't they?"
"Silver would tarnish after a while. It's pure platinum. As are these." He shook the bag out, then picked up two small circles, each with a tiny blue jem attached. "Matching Earrings. Try them . . . they fit? Good! I had to guess on how to make them - my first five attempts were rather unuseable. Human hands couldn't have shaped them, but as you've seen numerous times, I am far stronger than the average human. Or the above-average human. I bought the tools from the mining colony - sorry, the first mining colony - that we picked up supplies from. One of the cases of geological survey equipment wasn't. I did have to buy the refined metal, a small bar, but I did all the shaping myself. I finished setting the last stone 3 weeks ago, just before the attack. Do you like it?"
"I love it! You must have spent months, thousands of hours on this! Why?"
"Why not? You're worth it." He placed it on her again, then stepped back to study the complete look. "I was trying to get the brown ones - they're called tigereyes, I think - to match the color of your eyes. Some are closer than others, but considering I had to locate every stone myself without letting you discover my plans, I did quite well, yes?"
"Yes!" She stood up and hugged him, much to his delight."Just don't get smug about it."
"Never. We should probably return to the ship. I'd prefer to have everything repaired in the next day or two, return to space. As you've said before, 'its the gypsy in me'."
"So I've noticed. We've never stayed anywhere for more than a few weeks, besides here and-" She stopped midsentence, choosing to concentrate instead on lacing up her boots.
"The five months we spent on your new homeworld. Well, perhaps one day you will be able to return to Teep without fear of hurting anyone by accident. I know how much you loved being there."
"I've never been to anywhere as beautiful, with the sky and the mountains and the critters. Everything was colors. So different from growing up in the Corps. All colors, patterns, flowers, beauty. I wish you could have heard the songs the animals gave off, but only telepaths can, when there isn't interference from power sources. They were so wonderful."
"Well, I wasn't about to try Dust, I'll never again tamper with my own lack of telepathy. One horrible experience was enough." He paused. "Are you still annoyed at me? For what I named that island, the main city."
"Port Alexander . . .no, not really. Dispite the honorific name, It was a good idea. There shouldn't be many problems, the island's bigger than New Zealand is, back on Earth. Plenty of room for the mundanes who want to stay. Family members, Specialty teachers, crews from space down on shore leave. Although I suspect prostitution will soon be the biggest industry in the city, with all the different races bringing ships in for stop-over. You certainly seemed to enjoy it. There's enough variety to please almost anyone, and 'everyone' knows that teeps make the best hookers, since they can tell just what the customer wants. As long as it brings in the much-needed funds to continue construction, I don't object. And having only the one access point for entering or leaving the planet will be a big help for controlling who leaves or enters, but there'll be enough space that it doesn't have traffic jams. Using boats to restrict the mainland continents to telepath-only gives us the privacy needed to be free. To enjoy the beauty." She hoisted the clean and dry blankets onto her shoulder, scooping up the rest of the items to carry back to the ship.
Beauty didn't begin to describe it. Larger than Earth, rich in soil, rich in flora and fauna and water, the rocks thick with minerals and precious metals, young enough to be around for a billion more years but almost entirely inactive geologically. A huge gas giant hung in the sky nearby, twice the size of Jupiter but appearing triple the size of earth's moon. Teep's gravity was 82% of Earth's, and her oxygen level was just a bit lower - a deficit evened out by the thicker atmosphere.
Teep was a moon, actually, with two smallish moons of her own, one with a methane atmosphere. There had been almost 200 meth-breathing teeps setting up their new home when the pair was leaving. There were 26 major bodies in the System, besides the bright yellow star. Only one planet: the Gas giant. Twelve moons orbited it, some with moons of their own: 13 moons orbiting moons. The sky was never empty. And the millions of stars visible at night . . .
That planet had been the hardest to leave, of anyplace either had ever been to. There had been no news from Teep since their departure, and Lyta was craving solid information. The main reason given at their initial departure from B5 was to find a telepath homeworld. Global mapping was complete, Construction was well underway, crops were started, and the first colonists had snuck in. There had been almost 7,000 colonists when Lyta and G'Kar had left, mostly human, not many at all when you considered that there were over 400 million telepaths in the dozens of known worlds in the Interstellar Alliance, most of which might want to live on Teep eventually, or it's methane moon. 10 million of which were human. Mostly (8 million) in Psi Corps, the rest either rogues (a few thousand, many of which safe on Teep), in Jail/re-education centers (several thousand), or on sleepers (just under 2 million). Had been on sleepers. The most recent ISN archive, several month ago, showed that the situation might be changing rapidly.
Only 4,000 of the colonists were telepaths. The rest were mostly immediate family members who'd helped their child/parent/sibling escape, or construction workers. Some of the latter were under pay by Edgars Industries. When Garibaldi had made it known helping teeps set up their own world would a) get them away from the rest of us, b) annoy the Psi Cops legally, and c) be a tax-deductable donation to charity, several of Earth's mega-corporations had made philanthropic gestures, to the tune of millions of credits total. Lots of smaller companies had also aided in the effort, and funds were also trickling in from other planetary governments. There was no offical support, however, apart for the Minbari, because no-one wanted anyone else to think they'd been mistreating their own telepaths. Which they often were doing, but this was a chance to start mending wounds.