AERYN'S JOURNEY - #22 Interlude 2 - FALL
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nymeria_dwAERYN'S JOURNEY - Interlude 2 - Fall
(a Farscape fanfiction)
Author: Nymeria
Disclaimer: the Farscape universe and its characters do not belong to me - I'm just borrowing them for a little while.
Rating: PG
Setting: the uncharted ground between Seasons 3 and 4
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*
The Prowler's engine screams through the atmosphere's upper layers reaching for the freedom of space. Like me it sounds eager to leave this planet, and this frelling botched mission behind.
Mission.
It was a trap. One someone is going to answer for, in excruciating detail.
"Essok, Yerray, you still with me?"
"Yes." Both voices reply through the comms, their tension echoing my own.
"Let's split vectors, just in case those frellniks try to pursue. We'll regroup at the rendezvous point with the Vigilante."
"We'll do more than regroup!" Yerray is seething with rage, and with good reason. But now is not a good time for thoughts of payback.
"Let's get away from here, first. And good fortune to you both!"
"To you too, Aeryn."
The comms cut off and only the hum of the engine breaks the silence of space.
I had wanted challenge, needed the total involvement that only heart-pounding danger can provide, the kind that wipes all thoughts from your mind, except the mission, and survival.
I found it in this elite group specialized in hit-and-run assignments, a cross between Black Ghosts and Disruptors coordinated by Lechna, once a high-ranking Special Directorate officer. Now a renegade like most of us.
I disliked him since our first meeting on Rijalk: arrogant, confident with the kind of assurance born of a high opinion of oneself, not real skills. But that hardly mattered.
What mattered was doing once again what I was trained to do: protect the weak, make a difference. Move into the power vacuum created by chaos, where abuse and terror dictated the law.
Wrap myself in the honed skills that had been my training since birth.
It was perfect. For a while.
The support ship is late.
No sign of pursuit from the Hokhotians, so far: I don't know if it's a good sign or not – not with the massive disaster that this so-called vital mission turned out to be.
One I frelling volunteered for, trying to do something worthwhile in what I had decided would be my last assignment.
No time for recriminations. I have to focus on the task ahead, and the decisions we need to make: the Prowlers' limited autonomy will soon force us to choose an alternative course of action if the Vigilante doesn't show up.
"They're not coming, are they?"
"I don't think so, Yerray. We'll have to go back on our own."
"What went wrong? Or better: who frelled up?"
"We'll find out when we rejoin the others. Listen, from here we can reach Gherhan, stop over and refuel. From there it's just one solar day to the base."
"Sounds like a plan. What do you say, Essok?" Silence. "Hey, vork-head, you there?"
"Yes…" Essok's voice is slurred, distant. "Sorry, I– I dozed off…"
"Keep alert people, we are still a long way from safety." And it looks like we're losing control of the situation. If we ever had it.
It had felt right at first.
Purpose, and concentration on the task at hand had provided all the distraction I needed, and with it came the focus. My path was clear, the pieces fell together into a well-ordered whole again.
Until someday I realized I was trading order and sense of belonging with mindlessness.
I don't know how it happened, what finally woke me up: maybe it was another senseless assassination, a target with no pattern, no connection, like many others before it. Maybe the sight of blood on my hands and clothes. Blood that I had not spilled in self-defense or to protect someone else.
-They made me kill again and again. And finally I stopped caring.-
Xhalax's voice had never been that clear in my mind, her words never so plain, or revealing.
-You live for me.-
And you don't live backwards. You pick up the pieces and build again. Go on.
Because it's never too late.
The base is deserted.
There are no people exercising on the training field, no techs tending to grounded crafts. Nothing moves, not even the wind.
"Where the frell is everybody?"
"Not here." It comes out harsher than I intended, but this new twist doesn't help my temper, not on top of the worry for Essok's increasingly listless behavior and the pounding headache that's been troubling me for arns. "Sorry Yerray. Let's take a look around."
Inside the barracks we find the chaos of a hurried evacuation: discarded pieces of equipment, bits of clothing, spent cartridges.
"They left two solar day ago." The voice from the door startles us, and we turn around toward it, weapons drawn, but it's only Moran, an older man from the nearby village who sometimes runs errands for us. He steps inside cautiously. "Nothing worth snurching left."
"Where did they go?"
"Didn't say. Were in a frelling hurry, though…" Then he peers closely at me. "You Sun, right?"
"Yes."
"Something for you. Jaksha left it, in case you came back." He rummages in his vest pocket and takes out a vidchip. "Said was important."
"Thank you." I watch him palm the coin I give him and move out of the barracks.
"Let's see if there's a reader in this mess."
Lechna was not willing to let me go, or as he said, to lose his best "killing machine".
Telling him I was not a 'killing machine', nor wanted to be one, was next to useless – it was as if his microbes had suddenly stopped working.
Telling him about being more seemed just as pointless.
That's when he asked me about a last mission, one he knew I would not be able to refuse. Not when a blood-thirsty tyrant was involved, not when hundreds of thousands of innocents suffered every day at his hands.
It would be a good way to end this side-trip, doing something worthwhile, atoning for the past...insanity.
Little did I know.
"He sold us, Aeryn. The frelling bastard sold us all."
Jacksha's grizzled hair looks more disarrayed than usual, her rough voice thick with anger. The recorder pick-up shows a flurry of activity behind her head and shoulders, people hurrying back and forth, shouting.
"The mission he sent you on was a suicide in disguise: to eliminate the Prime so outsiders could be blamed and this high-and-up freller could take power. His name's Ullom. Lechna took money from him – a great deal of it – and left us to fend for ourselves. If Kelny had not intercepted a message he sent to the Hokhotians, we would have been here when they arrived. Easy prey."
I pause the recording to look at my two companions: Yerray is hitting his left palm with the right fist, eyes scrunched up in fury, while Essok just stares blankly at the still image, face flushed and sweating.
"Let's hear the rest," asks Yerray, "go on, Aeryn."
"I'm leaving this with old Moran," Jacksha' image continues, "he can be trusted. If you make it back and see this, go to ground as deep as you can: part of the deal was that the Hokhotians would ‘attend’ to the rest of us for Lechna, so he could enjoy his blood money in peace." We see her glance behind her, nod curtly and then turn back to the pick-up. "If any of us gets caught, the others are dead as well. Remember that. Take care." The reader turns off.
In the following silence, the thud of Essok's body hitting the ground bonelessly sounds much too loud.
It had seemed too simple from the start: the palace's alarms too easily sabotaged, the few guards too easily put out of commission, the Prime too easily surprised and killed.
Something was not right.
I was almost relieved when we met the five armed Hokhotians a few motras from the exit: one of them – the leader, judging from the insignia on the uniform – screaming at his men to get the assassins of their beloved Prime.
That's when we knew we had been pawns in a game not of our choosing.
The short, bloody fight that ensued left them all on the gleaming marble floor – dead or dying. And us wondering how long it would be before we shared the same fate.
Yet we had managed to escape – barely, but we did. Hardly noticing our own wounds or the pungent mist that enveloped us for a few microts, when we passed the last empty checkpoint in our mad dash toward the Prowlers.
"We can't leave him like this."
"I know."
"I'll do it if you don't–"
"My mission. My responsibility. The duty's mine, Yerray." I don't want to, but I must.
"Where will you go, Aeryn?"
"Away from here, obviously." I squeeze his shoulder, in a sort of comforting gesture. "The less we know, the better. You heard the recording."
"We killed them! They were dead, we might–"
"Can you be sure? Risk all our lives on a wish? No, Yerray. Go now. Good fortune, my friend."
We embrace in silence, then I watch him climb in his Prowler and take off.
Back in the barracks I kneel beside Essoks' inert form: skin paper-dry and burning, eyes staring blindly into nothingness.
Drawing the knife from its sheath, I try to ignore the trembling in my hand that has nothing to do with the duty I'm going to fulfill. Just a matter of time, now.
"Good-bye Essok. I'm sorry." A quick twist of the wrist and it's done.
And I wonder who will perform this kindness for me.
(a Farscape fanfiction)
Author: Nymeria
Disclaimer: the Farscape universe and its characters do not belong to me - I'm just borrowing them for a little while.
Rating: PG
Setting: the uncharted ground between Seasons 3 and 4
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*
The Prowler's engine screams through the atmosphere's upper layers reaching for the freedom of space. Like me it sounds eager to leave this planet, and this frelling botched mission behind.
Mission.
It was a trap. One someone is going to answer for, in excruciating detail.
"Essok, Yerray, you still with me?"
"Yes." Both voices reply through the comms, their tension echoing my own.
"Let's split vectors, just in case those frellniks try to pursue. We'll regroup at the rendezvous point with the Vigilante."
"We'll do more than regroup!" Yerray is seething with rage, and with good reason. But now is not a good time for thoughts of payback.
"Let's get away from here, first. And good fortune to you both!"
"To you too, Aeryn."
The comms cut off and only the hum of the engine breaks the silence of space.
I had wanted challenge, needed the total involvement that only heart-pounding danger can provide, the kind that wipes all thoughts from your mind, except the mission, and survival.
I found it in this elite group specialized in hit-and-run assignments, a cross between Black Ghosts and Disruptors coordinated by Lechna, once a high-ranking Special Directorate officer. Now a renegade like most of us.
I disliked him since our first meeting on Rijalk: arrogant, confident with the kind of assurance born of a high opinion of oneself, not real skills. But that hardly mattered.
What mattered was doing once again what I was trained to do: protect the weak, make a difference. Move into the power vacuum created by chaos, where abuse and terror dictated the law.
Wrap myself in the honed skills that had been my training since birth.
It was perfect. For a while.
The support ship is late.
No sign of pursuit from the Hokhotians, so far: I don't know if it's a good sign or not – not with the massive disaster that this so-called vital mission turned out to be.
One I frelling volunteered for, trying to do something worthwhile in what I had decided would be my last assignment.
No time for recriminations. I have to focus on the task ahead, and the decisions we need to make: the Prowlers' limited autonomy will soon force us to choose an alternative course of action if the Vigilante doesn't show up.
"They're not coming, are they?"
"I don't think so, Yerray. We'll have to go back on our own."
"What went wrong? Or better: who frelled up?"
"We'll find out when we rejoin the others. Listen, from here we can reach Gherhan, stop over and refuel. From there it's just one solar day to the base."
"Sounds like a plan. What do you say, Essok?" Silence. "Hey, vork-head, you there?"
"Yes…" Essok's voice is slurred, distant. "Sorry, I– I dozed off…"
"Keep alert people, we are still a long way from safety." And it looks like we're losing control of the situation. If we ever had it.
It had felt right at first.
Purpose, and concentration on the task at hand had provided all the distraction I needed, and with it came the focus. My path was clear, the pieces fell together into a well-ordered whole again.
Until someday I realized I was trading order and sense of belonging with mindlessness.
I don't know how it happened, what finally woke me up: maybe it was another senseless assassination, a target with no pattern, no connection, like many others before it. Maybe the sight of blood on my hands and clothes. Blood that I had not spilled in self-defense or to protect someone else.
-They made me kill again and again. And finally I stopped caring.-
Xhalax's voice had never been that clear in my mind, her words never so plain, or revealing.
-You live for me.-
And you don't live backwards. You pick up the pieces and build again. Go on.
Because it's never too late.
The base is deserted.
There are no people exercising on the training field, no techs tending to grounded crafts. Nothing moves, not even the wind.
"Where the frell is everybody?"
"Not here." It comes out harsher than I intended, but this new twist doesn't help my temper, not on top of the worry for Essok's increasingly listless behavior and the pounding headache that's been troubling me for arns. "Sorry Yerray. Let's take a look around."
Inside the barracks we find the chaos of a hurried evacuation: discarded pieces of equipment, bits of clothing, spent cartridges.
"They left two solar day ago." The voice from the door startles us, and we turn around toward it, weapons drawn, but it's only Moran, an older man from the nearby village who sometimes runs errands for us. He steps inside cautiously. "Nothing worth snurching left."
"Where did they go?"
"Didn't say. Were in a frelling hurry, though…" Then he peers closely at me. "You Sun, right?"
"Yes."
"Something for you. Jaksha left it, in case you came back." He rummages in his vest pocket and takes out a vidchip. "Said was important."
"Thank you." I watch him palm the coin I give him and move out of the barracks.
"Let's see if there's a reader in this mess."
Lechna was not willing to let me go, or as he said, to lose his best "killing machine".
Telling him I was not a 'killing machine', nor wanted to be one, was next to useless – it was as if his microbes had suddenly stopped working.
Telling him about being more seemed just as pointless.
That's when he asked me about a last mission, one he knew I would not be able to refuse. Not when a blood-thirsty tyrant was involved, not when hundreds of thousands of innocents suffered every day at his hands.
It would be a good way to end this side-trip, doing something worthwhile, atoning for the past...insanity.
Little did I know.
"He sold us, Aeryn. The frelling bastard sold us all."
Jacksha's grizzled hair looks more disarrayed than usual, her rough voice thick with anger. The recorder pick-up shows a flurry of activity behind her head and shoulders, people hurrying back and forth, shouting.
"The mission he sent you on was a suicide in disguise: to eliminate the Prime so outsiders could be blamed and this high-and-up freller could take power. His name's Ullom. Lechna took money from him – a great deal of it – and left us to fend for ourselves. If Kelny had not intercepted a message he sent to the Hokhotians, we would have been here when they arrived. Easy prey."
I pause the recording to look at my two companions: Yerray is hitting his left palm with the right fist, eyes scrunched up in fury, while Essok just stares blankly at the still image, face flushed and sweating.
"Let's hear the rest," asks Yerray, "go on, Aeryn."
"I'm leaving this with old Moran," Jacksha' image continues, "he can be trusted. If you make it back and see this, go to ground as deep as you can: part of the deal was that the Hokhotians would ‘attend’ to the rest of us for Lechna, so he could enjoy his blood money in peace." We see her glance behind her, nod curtly and then turn back to the pick-up. "If any of us gets caught, the others are dead as well. Remember that. Take care." The reader turns off.
In the following silence, the thud of Essok's body hitting the ground bonelessly sounds much too loud.
It had seemed too simple from the start: the palace's alarms too easily sabotaged, the few guards too easily put out of commission, the Prime too easily surprised and killed.
Something was not right.
I was almost relieved when we met the five armed Hokhotians a few motras from the exit: one of them – the leader, judging from the insignia on the uniform – screaming at his men to get the assassins of their beloved Prime.
That's when we knew we had been pawns in a game not of our choosing.
The short, bloody fight that ensued left them all on the gleaming marble floor – dead or dying. And us wondering how long it would be before we shared the same fate.
Yet we had managed to escape – barely, but we did. Hardly noticing our own wounds or the pungent mist that enveloped us for a few microts, when we passed the last empty checkpoint in our mad dash toward the Prowlers.
"We can't leave him like this."
"I know."
"I'll do it if you don't–"
"My mission. My responsibility. The duty's mine, Yerray." I don't want to, but I must.
"Where will you go, Aeryn?"
"Away from here, obviously." I squeeze his shoulder, in a sort of comforting gesture. "The less we know, the better. You heard the recording."
"We killed them! They were dead, we might–"
"Can you be sure? Risk all our lives on a wish? No, Yerray. Go now. Good fortune, my friend."
We embrace in silence, then I watch him climb in his Prowler and take off.
Back in the barracks I kneel beside Essoks' inert form: skin paper-dry and burning, eyes staring blindly into nothingness.
Drawing the knife from its sheath, I try to ignore the trembling in my hand that has nothing to do with the duty I'm going to fulfill. Just a matter of time, now.
"Good-bye Essok. I'm sorry." A quick twist of the wrist and it's done.
And I wonder who will perform this kindness for me.
