Body Guard

Rating:  G

Disclaimer:  Not mine.  No profit.

Spoilers/Time Frame:  This story takes place sometime in the general realm of early Season 1, roughly around ‘Exodus From Genesis’; with a smidge set during ‘Terra Firma’.

Feedback:  You have never done anything other than leave me stunned by your response to my stories.  You are Scapers -- the best people on the planet.

Beta-readers:  Written too quickly, posted even faster.  No beta this time.  It’s all my fault.

Gestation:  What’s going on inside Crash’s brain today, you ask?  Well, I was trying to make a little room in a drawer and discovered some items that I haven’t needed in my house since the last time my very young niece came to visit.  As usual, my brain kind of went sideways with the idea.

Body Guard

Aeryn hurried into the Den, glanced quickly at the small group gathered there, and then threw a fistful of tools to the floor.  Splicers of varying sizes, laser probes, and a half dozen other items spun rattling and clanking into the shadows, launched with the type of energy that only anger could produce.

“Where’s Crichton?” she demanded once the clattering died away.

“In his quarters,” Zhaan answered, demonstrating a far greater degree of calm than anyone else assembled.  “I gave him something to help him sleep.  It will hasten his recovery.”

“We should hasten his departure from Moya,” D’Argo interjected.  “So far he has been nothing but a burden on the rest of us, and now he has become a liability.”

“He wasn’t a liability when the Marauder landed on Moya, and he did better arranging a truce with the Monarch and her brood than you did!” Aeryn accused the luxan.  “The coupling he tried to connect the cable to looks similar to the socket for a standard powercell.  There were recruits in the Peacekeepers who made the same kind of mistake.”

“And how many of them survived to complete their training?” D’Argo demanded.

Aeryn glared at him and withheld the answer to his question.

“None,” Rygel concluded on a chortling laugh.  “If Crichton were a Peacekeeper, he would have been executed for this mistake.”

“Listen, you useless sack of intestines --” Aeryn began.

“This is not solving anything,” Zhaan interjected, stepping between the trio of bickering crewmates.  “The important thing now is what action we take now that this has happened.  What were you able to repair, Aeryn?”

“I’ve restored power to the maintenance bay, but most of the tier is still without power,” she spat out.  “The DRDs are working on it.  Pilot, how extensive is the damage to Moya?”

“There are ruptured power conduits throughout the tier, Officer Sun.  Nothing worse.  It seems that Crichton took the brunt of the backlash.”

“How is Crichton?” Aeryn asked.

Rygel guffawed.  “I once saw a Gelfinnian farrier kicked by one of the beasts they use for transportation on that planet.  He did not get thrown anywhere near as far as Crichton got propelled across the maintenance bay.”

“Singed but not burned; bruised but not damaged,” Zhaan stepped in once again.  “The salve I concocted will heal his hands, and sleep will give him time to recover from the remainder of his injuries, which are minor.  I believe the more critical matter is to decide how we can prevent a similar accident from occurring in the future.  Moya’s well-being is in our best interest.  If she is injured, it increases the chances that we may be recaptured.”

“What do you suggest?” Aeryn asked.

Zhaan gestured toward Moya’s large partner, who was watching the discussion with patient interest.  “Pilot has an idea.”

All four of the shipmates turned toward Pilot and waited for his explanation.  “The DRDs are constructing dozens of these,” he began.  One claw handed an object to Aeryn.  “If the high-energy access points are capped off, leaving only the low voltage conduits available, Commander Crichton and Moya should be safe from injury until he learns the difference.”

“There must be hundreds of those couplings scattered throughout Moya!” D’Argo objected.  “This is a waste of time and effort.  Let him electrocute himself -- it makes no difference to the rest of us!”

Pilot’s calm tones answered first.  “There are two hundred and seventy eight locations that need to be sealed, of which the DRDs can reach one hundred and six.  The remaining one hundred and two will need to be closed by all of you.”

Zhaan ignored D’Argo’s hiss of aggravation.  “We need to think of Moya.  This is more for her than it is for Crichton.  If we each do a quarter, it shouldn’t take more than a few arns.”  She reached over the raised bulwarks of Pilot’s station and gathered up a double handful of the slightly flexible objects the DRDs had produced.  Consisting of a flattened disc attached to a cylinder, when inserted into the power coupling, it would cap it off from mistakenly inserted cabling connectors.

“This is ridiculous,” D’Argo grumbled one more time, and grabbed his own supply.

* * * * * *

John Crichton tossed his jacket onto a chair in the livingroom and wandered toward where he could hear voices.  He stumbled to a stop, feeling inexplicably self-conscious at the nearly identical smiles coming from Aeryn and Olivia.  They were lounging at the kitchen table, dishes and cups pushed to one side, looking no different than two housewives who have spent the morning discussing the latest set of bruises and traumas of their respective children.

“Hi,” he said, feeling even more uncomfortable at the expanding grins coming from the pair.  “What’s up?”

“Aeryn was telling me a little about what it was like living on a leviathan.”

Searching for any sort of clue to explain the increasing level of humor, he spotted a collection of small plastic items in the center of the table.  “Oh God!  You didn’t tell her about that!” he moaned to the accompaniment of their laughter.

“Aeryn wanted to know what these were for,” Olivia offered in way of an explanation.  She tossed one of the small outlet covers in John’s direction.

He batted it away in barely contained exasperation.  “Yeah.  Fine.  So I was a little clueless about Moya’s electrical system at first --”

“-- not to mention her doors, the lights, the --” Aeryn interjected.

“But I learned, and it came in handy when we needed to rewire the power to the defense shield when we were dealing with the Halosian weapon, if you’ll remember!”  The initially quiet objection rose to a shout by the time he finished, working to drown out Aeryn’s growing list.  The pair went abruptly quiet as the last word emerged from his mouth, and they stared at each other, Aeryn struggling to contain a grin.  John closed his eyes, clearly dismayed by his choice of events to mention.

“What are Hello-sians?” Olivia asked.  Her gaze alternated between the two, trying to make some sense of their expressions.

Aeryn’s turned toward the other woman.  Her grin broke into a full-blown smile.  “Let me tell you about what happened when their weapon interacted with -- Where are you going?” she asked.  John was headed for the door.

“Siberia.  Mars.  A galaxy far, far away.  Someplace without sentient lifeforms.  I’m never going to live this one down.”  He snared his jacket, paused long enough to listen to Aeryn beginning the story, and then fled.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *