Cholak's Demon
Chapter 3
Crichton sat up, abandoning the attempt to get any more sleep. He’d been napping for what felt like arns,
sliding in and out of consciousness as his body continued its shivering without his direction, until the waking
and dream moments merged into one large surreal continuum full of warped images and the constant fear that
he would say something about …
“She left,” he reminded himself in the quieter-than-a-whisper voice that he was sure wouldn’t carry to the
surveillance equipment. “She walked out two cycles ago. She left.”
Crichton got up and walked around the cell several times, bouncing up and down until he felt warmer, then
tucked himself back under the pathetic covering and tried to think of something more pleasant.
“Okay, so what’s gonna cheer you up, John?” he asked himself. He glanced at the glinting lenses of the
monitors embedded in the walls, and didn’t care if anyone was listening. “Just sitting here freezin’ your ass off.
So how about ‘Gidget Goes To Hawaii’?” He shuddered, the chill sinking deeper. “Maybe that’s a bad idea.
God, I thought dying of hypothermia you just nodded off and went to sleep.” He knew it wasn’t true. He knew
that the cold wouldn’t kill him until his body ran out of the energy it needed to create heat, and assumed they
would shift to a different method of keeping him awake before that happened.
“… just a prisoner in a chain gang,” he sang to himself, slightly off key. “Wish I could tunnel out of here. The
Great Escape. I could be Steve McQueen … what’s his name? … Hilts. Hilts was always in the cooler.
Definitely in the cooler now. No, you can’t tunnel out of the cooler, stupid, it was solid concrete. Gotta dig
under the wire. Now that would be brilliant, John. You could just dig your way right into outer space. Been
there, done that. Bought the t-shirt.” His head nodded and he jerked it back up. “Sure. Space myself.
Anything’s better than this.” His chin settled onto his chest and he was finally silent.
* * * * *
Aeryn fastened the front of the stealth suit, enabled the circuitry and checked in the mirror to make sure it was
working correctly. Her disembodied head floated in the middle of the room, her bound hair standing out as if by
magic where it lay against the shoulders of the coverall. Invisible hands tucked her hair inside, and the lower
half of the queue disappeared. She nodded with satisfaction and began pulling the hood into place. In the
process of getting rid of the tech’s body, she’d gotten the suit wet, and hadn’t known if it would work
afterwards. The relief that it was functioning freed her to consider her developing escape plan.
She had the uniform for herself, as well as one that would fit John, both taken from the two officers in the
planetary terrain hall. Another tech had disappeared several arns earlier in order to obtain the equipment
necessary to reprogram the palm scanners, regretful but necessary when she’d discovered that the encoding
units were kept under heavy guard. She’d started to adapt the scanners to accept her handprint, but had
disconnected the unit when she’d remembered that the data bank of stored patterns was reviewed on a regular
basis. It would have to be done after she figured out the rest of the process.
She’d acquired several weapons -- two knives and a pulse pistol from the first officers she’d killed, and a pair of
pulse rifles from an armorer’s workshop. The haphazard stack of repaired weapons had suggested that the
armorer himself would be missed before anyone noticed that the rifles had disappeared.
There was still the problem of actually getting off the carrier. John’s rhotarri engines represented the best
chance of getting out of the hangar. She would need to find out if the folded space drive could leap them
straight out of the carrier without first exiting into open space. There was only one way to get the answer to this
question, and that would be to find John and ask him. Then she’d have to figure out how to repair the power
cabling that he’d ripped out. A test run was out of the question, which meant that she’d have to trust that her
handiwork was correct.
“This plan stinks,” she said to herself. “This is even worse than one of Crichton’s plans.” The room lights
seemed to dim as she pulled the suit’s mask into place, the specially formed fibers allowing her to see clearly
through the cloth although everything appeared marginally darker than it was without the obstruction. Aeryn
activated the doors, checked both ways for pedestrians, and flitted into the corridors.
* * * * *
“Commandant.” Braca’s summons drew her attention away from the analysis of the political situation on an
apparently insignificant world located near the boundary of scarran-controlled territory. As an isolated event
the military coup meant nothing, but when considered in combination with four other takeovers along that
border, it suggested that someone was manipulating the power structure of the inhabited planets there.
“What is it?” she snapped, irritated by the interruption. The developing pattern of facts, suggesting where the
next regime might get overthrown, had scattered into chaos at his nervous summons.
“Several divisions have reported personnel missing their duty assignments.” Braca laid a data readout in front
of her.
“Find them, discipline them,” she answered brusquely. “You should be able to handle this on your own,
lieutenant.”
“They can’t be found, ma’am.” His gaze remained fixed on the wall behind her chair. “Request permission for a
full security lock down.”
“We do not cripple our operations with a security lock down just because an officer or two missed a duty
period,” Grayza lectured him. “Perform a sweep for them and restrict departures from the carrier until they are
located. Bring them to me for action when they have been located. How many personnel have gone missing?”
“Six, ma’am.” Braca fidgeted for a microt, freezing when she looked up at him.
“Six?” She grabbed at the readout. “From where?” she asked, starting her own scan of the assignments.
“Two officers from Prowler operations, two technicians, one security guard, and an armaments supply officer.
Commandant Grayza …” Braca looked uncomfortable, his eyes shifting nervously toward her before locking
onto the wall over her head again.
“Report!” she demanded.
“A search has been conducted, ma’am. There is no sign of them in their quarters, or anywhere else they would
reasonably be expected to go. Some of the … younger officers are concerned. One or two have suggested
that it is …”
“Spit it out, Braca,” Grayza ordered, getting to her feet.
“They are blaming it on Cholak’s demon.” He took one step away from the fury in the ice-blue eyes.
“That myth? The next person heard spouting that nonsense will be brought to me immediately, do you
understand?” She glared down at the list of names. “This still does not warrant a top level security status. Put
all checkpoints on ident chip verification, perform a deck by deck search, and report back to me when that is
completed.”
Braca snapped an acknowledgement and hurried from the room. Mele-On Grayza stared at the closed doors
for several microts, then tried to return to her review of the intelligence reports, working through no more than a
fraction of the schematics before pushing the entire heap aside with a growl of frustration. “Cholak’s demon,”
she muttered angrily. “Weak-minded fools.”
The displays embedded in her work surface went dark, powered down by a fast slap against a master circuit.
Grayza wandered toward the bed, mounting the steps one slow pace at a time to view the rumpled sheets and
disarrayed pillows with a cold smile. Her thoughts turned to Crichton, who would be escorted into her quarters
within the quarter arn. He’d displayed a resilient physiology so far, one that withstood more physical stress
than the average sebacean, although there was a commensurate increase in his resistance to the heppel oil.
It would take more time than with a sebacean, but she knew that all of his secrets would tumble out sooner or
later. Mele-On Grayza smiled, looking forward to the next several arns.
* * * * *
She’d gotten herself trapped. Aeryn moved faster, trying to stay ahead of the guards while taking the time to
give each cell door a fast tug. The door codes were a simple progression, so she knew the combination that
would release each of the locks. All she had to do is type in the right sequence, every keystroke emitting a
loud tone until the indicator changed colors, both of which would alert the guards to her presence. She
glanced into another cell, hoping it would be John’s, assuming that the guards were coming to get him and
would stop when they reached the appropriate door.
When she’d entered the control room this time, the changing view on the screen had finally included Crichton,
her first sight of him since he’d been taken from the hangar. The surveillance camera showed him sitting with
his back against the wall, his chin on his chest, possibly sleeping. It had switched to another view before she
could note the cell number, and she’d headed down here without considering how she was going to talk to him
or what would happen if they came to get him while she was still in the narrow walkway outside the door. The
visceral rush resulting from that brief sight of him had left her shaking slightly, and distracted to the point that
she’d made this huge mistake, possibly dooming them both.
‘Frell.’ She mouthed the word in time with a frustrated jerk of her head, giving it no sound in this area of
maximum surveillance. She dodged to the next door, glanced in the grill at an empty room and moved on,
beginning to wonder if she had somehow misread the corridor designation. She peered into another cell,
pausing at the sight of brown hair and bowed shoulders, struck by the man’s resemblance to John. Her
lingering study of the prisoner had to be cut short; the guards were catching up to her.
She hurried to the next door, and then came to a complete stop, staring back the way she’d come, realizing why
the figure had looked so familiar. In some respects the person in that cell was more important than Crichton at
this point, but the guards had passed that doorway and were still coming toward her. This cellblock was nearly
deserted, the monitors showing only four prisoners, one of which appeared to be a Peacekeeper officer,
probably awaiting disciplinary action. The guards had already passed the other three occupied cells, which
meant they were going to run into her within microts.
There was nowhere to go. The armored shoulders of the men coming toward her spanned the narrow
passageway nearly from wall to wall and there were only two cells left in the block. The last door was set almost
flush with the wall at the end, offering no room for her to hide there. Aeryn eyed the distance between the wall
and the feet of the soldier on the left, then she lay down in the corner formed by the floor and the metal
bulkhead, and pressed herself tightly into the angle.
“Did you hear what that frellnik Vekman said?” one of the guards was asking as they approached where she
lay.
“About the missing personnel you mean?” the second one answered. “Yeah. Cholak’s demon.” The two men
laughed. “Did they try to scare you with that when you were a cadet?”
“I’m younger than that. They’d stopped using it by my time. And who would believe it anyway?” The boots
clashed past her without breaking their rhythm. She was sure one of them had brushed against her shoulder
but they weren’t stopping.
“Vekman for one!” They laughed again. “What do you think is really happening?”
Aeryn got to her feet, hesitating for a microt. She was curious to hear their theory of the disappearances, and
desperate to get one clear look at John just to make sure he was holding up.
“I think they frelled up and the Commandant has decided that a little uncertainty will keep everyone on their
toes,” the younger guard theorized. “I think they’ve been separated from the service.”
Aeryn smiled. Their theory would serve her purpose as well as a bizarre belief in the demon. ‘Separated from
the service’ was the parlance traditionally used by an officer’s comrades whenever ‘Executed for substandard
performance’ closed out a soldier’s personnel history. Several members of her unit had been ‘separated from
the service’, and instead of keeping everyone sharp and alert, it led to a rash of accidents when everyone
started worrying more about staying alive than performing their duties correctly.
The guards began keying the lock to the end cell. Aeryn took one step toward them before drawing to a stop.
The rescue was everything, she reminded herself. It had to come first, and that meant getting out of this
potential trap. Turning her back on the open door of what she hoped was John’s cell she hurried back along
the line to where the familiar-looking prisoner was being held. She was ninety percent sure of her identification,
but his head was still down, creating a margin of uncertainty.
Aeryn snapped a single finger against the outside of the door, generating a sharp metallic crack. The man’s
head came up at the sound, revealing bruises, black eyes, and a swollen nose. Despite the injuries, it was
clearly John’s friend, Gallenn -- who had helped John build the rhotarri drive. Here was the answer to repairing
the ship.
As if cued by her thoughts, the guards emerged with John between them. He was stumbling and looked tired
but they were only guiding him, not carrying him, which held promise, and there were no signs of injuries. Her
feet refused to move as they came toward her, stuck to the floor as though magnetized, held there by the
desire to touch him, talk to him, assure him that she was going to get him out of this mess. She allowed herself
one more microt to look at him, used the knotting anxiety in her chest to restore her resolve, and fled down the
corridor before they could catch up with her.
* * * * *
“You look tense,” Grayza smiled as she approached Crichton.
John gripped the edge of the bed with both hands, trying to steady himself as the room seemed to oscillate
around him, lightheaded from fatigue and hunger. Her bare feet stopped in front of him, disappearing a microt
later beneath the fluttering fall of her robes. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor, unwilling to look at the body
that he knew would be using him like some sort of sex toy before the arn was over.
“Must be time for some more of that mammary mojo.” John permitted himself a fast, slanting look at her.
“Is it so bad?” she questioned. “You must agree that this is better than what Scorpius did to you.”
“Don’t be so sure. The comfy chair sounds kinda nice all of a sudden.” Her fingers began rubbing at the back
of his neck and he jerked away from her touch. “Let’s do a consumer survey. Sit me down and let me spin for
a while, and I’ll let you know which is worse,” he proposed. That agony might actually be preferable to her
attentions.
“The Aurora Chair, although highly effective, has been known to cause enough neural damage to permanently
eradicate memories before they could be retrieved. I intend to be far more careful with your knowledge,
Crichton.” Her fingers approached his face, and he tried to slap it away. The wild flail missed by a wide
margin. “Don’t waste your energy,” she purred. “Save it for something more pleasurable.”
“That’s not more …” He tried to scramble away from her, but she was faster, and his denial was lost as the oil
induced insanity struck again. “It’s not … Oil of Olay,” he said slowly, no longer resisting her manipulations.
“What is that stuff?”
Grayza stroked her chest, gathering more of the slick emulsion. “Heppel oil. It has … certain special qualities.”
She tilted his head up with her other hand, letting the glistening fingers drift beneath his nose. John took
another convulsive sniff, jerking against her grip, and then breathed deep.
“Come,” she urged, pulling him to his feet. His overalls disappeared in a quick slide, the rest of his clothes
following as his hands found the familiar textures of her body. “Not yet,” she slowed him, pushing him away
long enough to finish undressing him. “Something to relax you first. And maybe we can do something about
this.” She ran her fingers through the thickening beard, then took him by the hand and led him to the sunken
tub. She slid into the steaming water first and then guided him in, turning him so that he sat in front of her,
leaning back against her chest. “Is that nice?” she purred into his ear.
“Yes,” Crichton sighed, the hot water driving out the chill that had set in over the arns in his cell. Her hands
moved about beneath the water, beginning the slow, calculating touches that would bring him to the point where
he would tell her anything, absolutely anything, as long as it could go on longer.
“Tell me,” she began, tilting his chin back so his head lay on her shoulder. “Tell me about the engines on your
ship.”
“Hetch drive with a Mazda-Einstein whammy backup,” he replied and settled lower into the water. It didn’t matter
that she was asking about the engines, he decided. Telling her about a failed drive system didn’t constitute a
risk.
“Masa-dine-stine wammie,” she stumbled through the unfamiliar syllables. “Explain what this is.”
John caught her hands as she began running a soapy wash ball over his chest, intertwining the fingers of one
hand into hers as he explained. “Mazda. Revolutionary new idea for an engine. Major league commercial
flop. Einstein. Brilliant guy who had trouble with grade school math.” The whirling inside his head accelerated,
the sharp scent of Grayza mixing with his own fatigue to make him sillier than usual. John shook his head
slightly to clear it, and returned to the subject.
“Einstein figured out that space was flexible, like a rubber sheet. It can be distorted. That’s the whammy part.
Fold space over on itself --” John cupped her hands inside his, trapping the soapy scrub inside the double
grasp to demonstrate his explanation. “Then use some funky bits of energy that no one in the Milky Way has
ever run into, and punch from one side to the other.” He pulled their hands apart and the wash ball was in her
other hand. “Unfold space and you’re somewhere else.”
Grayza lifted one of his legs and placed it to the outside of hers. “We haven’t been able to find one of the
rhotarri class ships. Where are they hiding?” She moved his other leg. “Where have you hidden them?”
“Lost,” John answered agreeably. “Gone.” He grabbed the sponge-like scrub and flung it backwards over his
head, the sloppy landing occurring somewhere on the lower level of her quarters. “Presto, vanished.”
“No, you’ve hidden them. The ships began disappearing just when we became interested in them. Where are
they?” Grayza’s hands disappeared beneath the water, reaching between his legs.
“They’re … oh, god …” He shuddered as the submerged hands began to work at him. “Lost. It … it doesn’t
work right.”
“Is that nice?” she whispered into his ear.
“Yes … yes.”
“Tell me more. Explain why the drive system doesn’t work.”
* * * * *
Gallenn rubbed the heel of his hand against the side of his eye socket, trying to ease the ache there. He’d
been convinced at one point that the headache left behind by the Aurora Chair was going to melt his skull, but
the blinding pain had gradually faded, leaving the exterior parameters of his head intact. What had happened
to the interior sections was still in question. The cursory beating by the guards two days earlier had been a
minor discomfort compared to what the energy of the Chair had done to him.
“Frell you,” he said quietly, carefully checking his ribs. The bruising had eased enough that he thought maybe
they weren’t broken after all. “It’s your fault,” he said to Crichton, wherever he was, and wondered if his
betrayal had resulted in John’s capture. “Everything started going to dren when you left.”
The first of his customers had disappeared the same day John left, demonstrating what he’d secretly known all
along. It was Crichton’s easy, smiling manner that they liked, as well as his obvious competence with anything
mechanical or electronic. The business had been headed right back into the big dren funnel the microt he’d
arranged with Aeryn Sun to lure his former partner off the planet. His luck had gone from bad to worse after
that.
First an overloaded electrical system had blown up, injuring two of his techs but more importantly leaving the
huge facility without power for two planetary days while they’d repaired the damaged circuitry. Then he’d
received word that a rhotarri drive equipped craft had jumped from ‘here’ to ‘there’ right into a star, undoubtedly
another example of the type of error Crichton had discovered was inherent in the process. It was bad that it
had happened, worse that a scientific ship had been monitoring the star and had recorded the extremely brief
presence of the ship as it emerged from folded space and was promptly incinerated.
His reputation and his business were irrevocably frelled within a matter of days. When the Peacekeepers
burned the facility they’d done little more than cremate a corpse.
Gallenn rolled onto his side, stared at the locked door, and considered his brief session in the Aurora Chair.
He wondered if that was part of what John had been running from, whether he knew what that abomination of
technology was like when it began ripping memories out of his head to the tune of agonized screaming. The
first images of Crichton had appeared on the screen in less than thirty microts, his attempt to hide the
knowledge completely futile. “Sorry,” he offered to his absent friend. “I did try not to tell, John.”
He sat up again, finding that lying down had resulted in a resurgence of his headache. The blue-eyed officer --
Commandant Grayza -- hadn’t seen any reason to stop the process when his conversation with Aeryn Sun had
been yanked onto the monitor. They hadn’t discussed the exact coordinates of where she intended to go with
Crichton, but they had worked out how long it would take to get to where the leviathan was waiting if Aeryn used
only the hetch drive. The Chair had reproduced his memory of that star chart in exacting detail, providing a
pinpoint location for the Peacekeepers to arrange an ambush. Grayza had smiled coolly as she recorded the
image and then had ordered the tech at the controls to keep probing.
“Frell, frell, frell,” he moaned, resting his head on his hands. It had taken no more than fifteen microts for them
to find his real identity, bringing his own flight from the Peacekeepers to an end. Grayza had laughed at him,
the throaty chuckle barely audible over the last of his cries as the spinning chair came to a stop.
“Hold him for now,” she’d ordered. “We may need him if we don’t capture Crichton.”
Gallenn got to his feet and went to the door, peering out through the small grill. According to the number of
meals he’d been served, more than six solar days had passed. He’d heard prisoners being moved in and out
of some of the adjacent cells, drawing him to the door to see if any of them were John or Aeryn, but he’d been
too late to see every time.
“Dren!” he barked one more time. Gallenn kicked the door angrily, stalked back to the bunk and flopped onto
the hard surface. He wondered how much longer he’d have to wait before they executed him.
* * * * *
Fatigue had become his ally. John stared at the sheet in front of his nose feeling the first hint of control
returning to his befuddled mind. Grayza had dragged every fact and statistic about the rhotarri drive out of him
before she’d let him crawl out of the cooling bath, then had toweled him dry with a little groping added in for her
pleasure, and had shoveled him into the bed to start over again. Relief had come only because he was too
damned tired to formulate another answer, wrung out both mentally and physically. “Brownie points,” he
mumbled into the black satiny covers.
“What did you say?” she asked, leaning close.
He could smell the oil on her, the scent wafting into his brain every time he inhaled. “Cosmic brownie points,”
his mouth ran on without his consent. She deserved extra points just for imagination. He closed his eyes in an
attempt to concentrate, willing his brain and his mouth to stop blabbing.
“Let’s try a slightly different subject,” she proposed. “What sort of destructive device have you placed on your
ship, and where is it located?”
Crichton kept his eyes closed, grinding his molars together in an attempt to keep his mouth shut. This question
was somewhere far beyond ‘unexpected’. It had to mean something … something that eluded his tired brain.
He needed to figure out why she was making this peculiar inquiry before his tongue took over. “What?” he
stalled for time. Slurring the word made it sound as though he’d been half-asleep and hadn’t heard the
question.
“You have rigged your ship with a device to destroy it. Where is it located?” She walked her fingers up his
spine and began rubbing his shoulders. The fingers never stopped exploring him. It was constant. “What
does it look like?”
The fragrance of the heppel oil commanded that he answer. John felt himself slipping, the first syllables of his
answer battering to get loose. Make the truth sound like a lie, he decided. If nothing else it would confuse her
as much as her question confused him. “Didn’t,” he answered truthfully, but managed to make it sound like a
five year-old denying guilt when the smashed object lay at his feet.
Grayza rolled him over, straddling him so that she sat on his stomach. “A lie,” came the verdict. “You are far
stronger than I’d imagined. Try again, Crichton. What sort of device?”
“Really. Isn’t one.” He saved a little energy by not adding the headshake that belonged with the overly
guileless look. The tone of voice and facial expression worked, sucking her one step further into his miniscule
deception.
“Yes, there is. Why else would you disconnect the drive system that would have allowed you to escape?
Where is it?” She leaned over him to pin his arms out to the sides, her breasts wobbling soft and pale near his
chin, enticing him to touch them. The scent spun in, spun out, left him unarmed, deprived of his restraint.
“Where is it?”
John fought against it, managed one more overly agreeable denial, telling the truth because it was the only
choice that the oil would allow. “Didn’t. Honest.”
Grayza sighed as she released one of his wrists, freeing a hand to drift up her sternum, gathering the glistening
droplets. Crichton watched with eagerness growing in the depths of his hips, the slick taste and odor already
linked to the idea of physical ecstasy -- as though he were one of Pavlov’s prize students. “You continue to lie,”
Grayza told him. Her fingers brushed across his lips, smearing them with the oil. “We will have to start over.
There is something I’ve wanted to try for almost a cycle now. I believe you have enough stamina.”
The sob of despair turned into a deep rasping breath as she began to touch him again, his misery
compounded by the knowledge that it had been his success in deceiving her that led to this latest assault on
his body.
* * * * *
Aeryn backed away from the checkpoint at the primary entrance to the hangar bay. The ident chip verifications
were having little affect on her movements except in the more highly traversed areas such as this one. The
knot of personnel waiting to pass through the security point made it virtually impossible for her to get through
without bumping into someone. While trying to get past a similar bottleneck an arn earlier, a pilot officer had
stepped back into what he’d thought was empty space just as she tried to cross behind him. His startled shout
had nearly put an end to her free movement about the carrier. A well-timed shove against a female tech had
created an avalanche of collisions, nearly everyone in the crowd falling against someone else, and she’d
slipped away in the confusion, hoping that the first phantom touch would be forgotten.
She backed away from the hangar entrance carefully, backtracking through the corridors until she could cut
cross-ship toward the repair facilities adjoining the hangar. On her third try she found a less used entrance to
the hangar, sliding past the lounging guards while they argued about the carrier’s unarmed-combat competition
and which team was likely to win.
An enormous bulbous tank, corroded and streaked by rust, sat to one side just inside the hangar. She slid
between it and the bulkhead, and sank to one knee, shaking slightly as her body began to object to the
constant tension. Their ship was in exactly the same spot where it had landed, several teams of specialists
examining it. It appeared intact, only a few of the engines’ access panels propped open, scaffolding
conveniently in place beneath the exterior nacelles. As she watched, several of the specialists gathered
around the hamman side engine, peering in at it.
“Check from the inside!” one of them yelled to a team member below.
That was where John had hidden her gear. If it was found, not only would the rescue be jeopardized, she knew
that John’s interrogation would become increasingly brutal until they located her. “Frell!” she allowed herself
the whispered expletive. “Think,” she ordered herself. The specialist on the floor was arguing with the man
above her, flinging technical terms back and forth, giving Aeryn more time to arrange a hasty diversion.
It had to be something that would keep everyone away from the ship a while longer, but not so explosive that it
damaged the craft. “Think, think,” she exhorted herself, looking around the hangar. Aeryn grabbed an
outcropping on the rusty tank to pull herself up, then released it with a nearly silent snarl of disgust when her
hand encountered something wet and viscous. She realized with an unpleasant shock that she’d been hiding
behind one of the mobile “Biological Extraction Units” -- the polite label for the tanks used to clean out the waste
tanks on the long-range ships like the Marauders.
She looked up at the ladder leading to the top hatch, and nearly laughed out loud. A fast check confirmed that
no one was wandering nearby. Aeryn pulled the front of the suit open and yanked her pulse pistol out,
resealed the opening, and mounted the rungs two at a time. She crouched on top of the tank, taking a few
microts to judge her escape route.
This small bit of sabotage was in some ways more hazardous than anything she’d ever tried before. “Make
sure it’s a clean getaway,” she told herself, smiling at the small joke because it was the type of thing Crichton
would have said. It would have been accompanied by the silly grin as he waited for her reaction. She dropped
her head, letting her chin rest on her chest until the unpleasant tightness in her stomach unknotted itself, the
thought that she might never see that stupid smile again rendering her breathless for several microts.
“Don’t give up, John.” The whisper went out to him wherever he was at that moment. Aeryn shrugged her
shoulders, easing tight muscles, then she set the pistol for a pulse chamber overload, held her breath, and
opened the hatch just long enough to drop the overcharged weapon inside. Then she bolted for the exit,
casting all caution aside in the interest of getting as far away as possible before the tank exploded.
The muffled explosion shook the deck plates beneath her feet as she was rounding a corner five corridors
away. Even from that distance she could hear the howls of dismay. No one would be working in that hangar
willingly for at least a full solar day, if not longer. Aeryn allowed herself a laugh as she ran back toward the
detention block. She’d wanted to check on the interior of their ship to make sure nothing had been dismantled,
but she’d just decided to wait until later.
* * * * *
Crichton pulled the covers over his shoulders and tucked his knees against his chest, trying to retain some
warmth. His body was no longer shivering in response to the cold, which meant that he was nearing the end of
his energy reserves and they would have to resort to some other method of keeping him awake soon, or watch
him succumb to hypothermia. The monotonous gray metal walls offered little in the way of distraction,
encouraging his thoughts to wander as he lay with the chill eating into his muscles.
“Dunbar had it worse in Stalag 17,” he mumbled. “He held out for days. Hid in a freezing water tank without
any sleep. William Holden helped him escape. Where’s Bill when you need him?” Aeryn had promised to help
him escape.
She sat down next to him, taking a moment to pull the covers up around his ears, trying to keep him warm.
“You promised to hang on, John.”
He snapped awake, uncertain whether he’d spoken to the dark-haired visitor created by his brief dream. “Think
about something else,” he ordered himself. He tried focusing on the preceding arns.
Grayza’s latest ‘interrogation’ had been cut short by an alarmed report that something had blown up in the
hangar bay. It had come too late to prevent him from telling her truthfully and sincerely that there was no
booby trap aboard the ship. Nor had it come in time to stop him from describing how to reattach the cabling to
power the rhotarri system. He’d given up everything with the possible exception of …
“Stalag 17 had a stoolie,” he interrupted the errant wanderings of his mind. He envisioned the movie, trying to
divert his thoughts away from the gray-blue eyes and long, dark, sweet-smelling hair that felt so warm and soft
when he let it run through his fingers. “No! Something else. Price was the fink. Would have betrayed them all
if he had the chance. Dunbar stayed awake for days … no problem. Don’t remember Elvira having her way
with Dunbar in that movie though. Who does that make you, John? Price or Dunbar?”
Was he the stoolie, spilling all the secrets? Or was he the prisoner, trying to hold out against the Nazi
interrogators? The answer eluded him. Crichton closed his eyes, trying not to think of the person he wanted to
call out to, fighting hard to keep himself from imagining his own voice begging her to hurry.
“Be strong,” she said beside him, invisible in her magical suit.
“Go away,” he pleaded quietly. If she kept visiting him like this he wouldn’t be able to not remember her if
Grayza began asking about her. The cold-eyed officer had been concentrating on the rhotarri technology so
far, but the focus of the interrogation was bound to shift at some point. “Don’t talk to me anymore. It’s … ”
It was too dangerous because he would blurt out something that would tell them she was here, somewhere
aboard the carrier. He sat up, ignoring his need for rest, and began the cadence again, restoring the blank in
his mind where someone used to reside. “She left, she left,” he chanted almost silently, trying to keep her safe.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Chapter 3
Crichton sat up, abandoning the attempt to get any more sleep. He’d been napping for what felt like arns,
sliding in and out of consciousness as his body continued its shivering without his direction, until the waking
and dream moments merged into one large surreal continuum full of warped images and the constant fear that
he would say something about …
“She left,” he reminded himself in the quieter-than-a-whisper voice that he was sure wouldn’t carry to the
surveillance equipment. “She walked out two cycles ago. She left.”
Crichton got up and walked around the cell several times, bouncing up and down until he felt warmer, then
tucked himself back under the pathetic covering and tried to think of something more pleasant.
“Okay, so what’s gonna cheer you up, John?” he asked himself. He glanced at the glinting lenses of the
monitors embedded in the walls, and didn’t care if anyone was listening. “Just sitting here freezin’ your ass off.
So how about ‘Gidget Goes To Hawaii’?” He shuddered, the chill sinking deeper. “Maybe that’s a bad idea.
God, I thought dying of hypothermia you just nodded off and went to sleep.” He knew it wasn’t true. He knew
that the cold wouldn’t kill him until his body ran out of the energy it needed to create heat, and assumed they
would shift to a different method of keeping him awake before that happened.
“… just a prisoner in a chain gang,” he sang to himself, slightly off key. “Wish I could tunnel out of here. The
Great Escape. I could be Steve McQueen … what’s his name? … Hilts. Hilts was always in the cooler.
Definitely in the cooler now. No, you can’t tunnel out of the cooler, stupid, it was solid concrete. Gotta dig
under the wire. Now that would be brilliant, John. You could just dig your way right into outer space. Been
there, done that. Bought the t-shirt.” His head nodded and he jerked it back up. “Sure. Space myself.
Anything’s better than this.” His chin settled onto his chest and he was finally silent.
* * * * *
Aeryn fastened the front of the stealth suit, enabled the circuitry and checked in the mirror to make sure it was
working correctly. Her disembodied head floated in the middle of the room, her bound hair standing out as if by
magic where it lay against the shoulders of the coverall. Invisible hands tucked her hair inside, and the lower
half of the queue disappeared. She nodded with satisfaction and began pulling the hood into place. In the
process of getting rid of the tech’s body, she’d gotten the suit wet, and hadn’t known if it would work
afterwards. The relief that it was functioning freed her to consider her developing escape plan.
She had the uniform for herself, as well as one that would fit John, both taken from the two officers in the
planetary terrain hall. Another tech had disappeared several arns earlier in order to obtain the equipment
necessary to reprogram the palm scanners, regretful but necessary when she’d discovered that the encoding
units were kept under heavy guard. She’d started to adapt the scanners to accept her handprint, but had
disconnected the unit when she’d remembered that the data bank of stored patterns was reviewed on a regular
basis. It would have to be done after she figured out the rest of the process.
She’d acquired several weapons -- two knives and a pulse pistol from the first officers she’d killed, and a pair of
pulse rifles from an armorer’s workshop. The haphazard stack of repaired weapons had suggested that the
armorer himself would be missed before anyone noticed that the rifles had disappeared.
There was still the problem of actually getting off the carrier. John’s rhotarri engines represented the best
chance of getting out of the hangar. She would need to find out if the folded space drive could leap them
straight out of the carrier without first exiting into open space. There was only one way to get the answer to this
question, and that would be to find John and ask him. Then she’d have to figure out how to repair the power
cabling that he’d ripped out. A test run was out of the question, which meant that she’d have to trust that her
handiwork was correct.
“This plan stinks,” she said to herself. “This is even worse than one of Crichton’s plans.” The room lights
seemed to dim as she pulled the suit’s mask into place, the specially formed fibers allowing her to see clearly
through the cloth although everything appeared marginally darker than it was without the obstruction. Aeryn
activated the doors, checked both ways for pedestrians, and flitted into the corridors.
* * * * *
“Commandant.” Braca’s summons drew her attention away from the analysis of the political situation on an
apparently insignificant world located near the boundary of scarran-controlled territory. As an isolated event
the military coup meant nothing, but when considered in combination with four other takeovers along that
border, it suggested that someone was manipulating the power structure of the inhabited planets there.
“What is it?” she snapped, irritated by the interruption. The developing pattern of facts, suggesting where the
next regime might get overthrown, had scattered into chaos at his nervous summons.
“Several divisions have reported personnel missing their duty assignments.” Braca laid a data readout in front
of her.
“Find them, discipline them,” she answered brusquely. “You should be able to handle this on your own,
lieutenant.”
“They can’t be found, ma’am.” His gaze remained fixed on the wall behind her chair. “Request permission for a
full security lock down.”
“We do not cripple our operations with a security lock down just because an officer or two missed a duty
period,” Grayza lectured him. “Perform a sweep for them and restrict departures from the carrier until they are
located. Bring them to me for action when they have been located. How many personnel have gone missing?”
“Six, ma’am.” Braca fidgeted for a microt, freezing when she looked up at him.
“Six?” She grabbed at the readout. “From where?” she asked, starting her own scan of the assignments.
“Two officers from Prowler operations, two technicians, one security guard, and an armaments supply officer.
Commandant Grayza …” Braca looked uncomfortable, his eyes shifting nervously toward her before locking
onto the wall over her head again.
“Report!” she demanded.
“A search has been conducted, ma’am. There is no sign of them in their quarters, or anywhere else they would
reasonably be expected to go. Some of the … younger officers are concerned. One or two have suggested
that it is …”
“Spit it out, Braca,” Grayza ordered, getting to her feet.
“They are blaming it on Cholak’s demon.” He took one step away from the fury in the ice-blue eyes.
“That myth? The next person heard spouting that nonsense will be brought to me immediately, do you
understand?” She glared down at the list of names. “This still does not warrant a top level security status. Put
all checkpoints on ident chip verification, perform a deck by deck search, and report back to me when that is
completed.”
Braca snapped an acknowledgement and hurried from the room. Mele-On Grayza stared at the closed doors
for several microts, then tried to return to her review of the intelligence reports, working through no more than a
fraction of the schematics before pushing the entire heap aside with a growl of frustration. “Cholak’s demon,”
she muttered angrily. “Weak-minded fools.”
The displays embedded in her work surface went dark, powered down by a fast slap against a master circuit.
Grayza wandered toward the bed, mounting the steps one slow pace at a time to view the rumpled sheets and
disarrayed pillows with a cold smile. Her thoughts turned to Crichton, who would be escorted into her quarters
within the quarter arn. He’d displayed a resilient physiology so far, one that withstood more physical stress
than the average sebacean, although there was a commensurate increase in his resistance to the heppel oil.
It would take more time than with a sebacean, but she knew that all of his secrets would tumble out sooner or
later. Mele-On Grayza smiled, looking forward to the next several arns.
* * * * *
She’d gotten herself trapped. Aeryn moved faster, trying to stay ahead of the guards while taking the time to
give each cell door a fast tug. The door codes were a simple progression, so she knew the combination that
would release each of the locks. All she had to do is type in the right sequence, every keystroke emitting a
loud tone until the indicator changed colors, both of which would alert the guards to her presence. She
glanced into another cell, hoping it would be John’s, assuming that the guards were coming to get him and
would stop when they reached the appropriate door.
When she’d entered the control room this time, the changing view on the screen had finally included Crichton,
her first sight of him since he’d been taken from the hangar. The surveillance camera showed him sitting with
his back against the wall, his chin on his chest, possibly sleeping. It had switched to another view before she
could note the cell number, and she’d headed down here without considering how she was going to talk to him
or what would happen if they came to get him while she was still in the narrow walkway outside the door. The
visceral rush resulting from that brief sight of him had left her shaking slightly, and distracted to the point that
she’d made this huge mistake, possibly dooming them both.
‘Frell.’ She mouthed the word in time with a frustrated jerk of her head, giving it no sound in this area of
maximum surveillance. She dodged to the next door, glanced in the grill at an empty room and moved on,
beginning to wonder if she had somehow misread the corridor designation. She peered into another cell,
pausing at the sight of brown hair and bowed shoulders, struck by the man’s resemblance to John. Her
lingering study of the prisoner had to be cut short; the guards were catching up to her.
She hurried to the next door, and then came to a complete stop, staring back the way she’d come, realizing why
the figure had looked so familiar. In some respects the person in that cell was more important than Crichton at
this point, but the guards had passed that doorway and were still coming toward her. This cellblock was nearly
deserted, the monitors showing only four prisoners, one of which appeared to be a Peacekeeper officer,
probably awaiting disciplinary action. The guards had already passed the other three occupied cells, which
meant they were going to run into her within microts.
There was nowhere to go. The armored shoulders of the men coming toward her spanned the narrow
passageway nearly from wall to wall and there were only two cells left in the block. The last door was set almost
flush with the wall at the end, offering no room for her to hide there. Aeryn eyed the distance between the wall
and the feet of the soldier on the left, then she lay down in the corner formed by the floor and the metal
bulkhead, and pressed herself tightly into the angle.
“Did you hear what that frellnik Vekman said?” one of the guards was asking as they approached where she
lay.
“About the missing personnel you mean?” the second one answered. “Yeah. Cholak’s demon.” The two men
laughed. “Did they try to scare you with that when you were a cadet?”
“I’m younger than that. They’d stopped using it by my time. And who would believe it anyway?” The boots
clashed past her without breaking their rhythm. She was sure one of them had brushed against her shoulder
but they weren’t stopping.
“Vekman for one!” They laughed again. “What do you think is really happening?”
Aeryn got to her feet, hesitating for a microt. She was curious to hear their theory of the disappearances, and
desperate to get one clear look at John just to make sure he was holding up.
“I think they frelled up and the Commandant has decided that a little uncertainty will keep everyone on their
toes,” the younger guard theorized. “I think they’ve been separated from the service.”
Aeryn smiled. Their theory would serve her purpose as well as a bizarre belief in the demon. ‘Separated from
the service’ was the parlance traditionally used by an officer’s comrades whenever ‘Executed for substandard
performance’ closed out a soldier’s personnel history. Several members of her unit had been ‘separated from
the service’, and instead of keeping everyone sharp and alert, it led to a rash of accidents when everyone
started worrying more about staying alive than performing their duties correctly.
The guards began keying the lock to the end cell. Aeryn took one step toward them before drawing to a stop.
The rescue was everything, she reminded herself. It had to come first, and that meant getting out of this
potential trap. Turning her back on the open door of what she hoped was John’s cell she hurried back along
the line to where the familiar-looking prisoner was being held. She was ninety percent sure of her identification,
but his head was still down, creating a margin of uncertainty.
Aeryn snapped a single finger against the outside of the door, generating a sharp metallic crack. The man’s
head came up at the sound, revealing bruises, black eyes, and a swollen nose. Despite the injuries, it was
clearly John’s friend, Gallenn -- who had helped John build the rhotarri drive. Here was the answer to repairing
the ship.
As if cued by her thoughts, the guards emerged with John between them. He was stumbling and looked tired
but they were only guiding him, not carrying him, which held promise, and there were no signs of injuries. Her
feet refused to move as they came toward her, stuck to the floor as though magnetized, held there by the
desire to touch him, talk to him, assure him that she was going to get him out of this mess. She allowed herself
one more microt to look at him, used the knotting anxiety in her chest to restore her resolve, and fled down the
corridor before they could catch up with her.
* * * * *
“You look tense,” Grayza smiled as she approached Crichton.
John gripped the edge of the bed with both hands, trying to steady himself as the room seemed to oscillate
around him, lightheaded from fatigue and hunger. Her bare feet stopped in front of him, disappearing a microt
later beneath the fluttering fall of her robes. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor, unwilling to look at the body
that he knew would be using him like some sort of sex toy before the arn was over.
“Must be time for some more of that mammary mojo.” John permitted himself a fast, slanting look at her.
“Is it so bad?” she questioned. “You must agree that this is better than what Scorpius did to you.”
“Don’t be so sure. The comfy chair sounds kinda nice all of a sudden.” Her fingers began rubbing at the back
of his neck and he jerked away from her touch. “Let’s do a consumer survey. Sit me down and let me spin for
a while, and I’ll let you know which is worse,” he proposed. That agony might actually be preferable to her
attentions.
“The Aurora Chair, although highly effective, has been known to cause enough neural damage to permanently
eradicate memories before they could be retrieved. I intend to be far more careful with your knowledge,
Crichton.” Her fingers approached his face, and he tried to slap it away. The wild flail missed by a wide
margin. “Don’t waste your energy,” she purred. “Save it for something more pleasurable.”
“That’s not more …” He tried to scramble away from her, but she was faster, and his denial was lost as the oil
induced insanity struck again. “It’s not … Oil of Olay,” he said slowly, no longer resisting her manipulations.
“What is that stuff?”
Grayza stroked her chest, gathering more of the slick emulsion. “Heppel oil. It has … certain special qualities.”
She tilted his head up with her other hand, letting the glistening fingers drift beneath his nose. John took
another convulsive sniff, jerking against her grip, and then breathed deep.
“Come,” she urged, pulling him to his feet. His overalls disappeared in a quick slide, the rest of his clothes
following as his hands found the familiar textures of her body. “Not yet,” she slowed him, pushing him away
long enough to finish undressing him. “Something to relax you first. And maybe we can do something about
this.” She ran her fingers through the thickening beard, then took him by the hand and led him to the sunken
tub. She slid into the steaming water first and then guided him in, turning him so that he sat in front of her,
leaning back against her chest. “Is that nice?” she purred into his ear.
“Yes,” Crichton sighed, the hot water driving out the chill that had set in over the arns in his cell. Her hands
moved about beneath the water, beginning the slow, calculating touches that would bring him to the point where
he would tell her anything, absolutely anything, as long as it could go on longer.
“Tell me,” she began, tilting his chin back so his head lay on her shoulder. “Tell me about the engines on your
ship.”
“Hetch drive with a Mazda-Einstein whammy backup,” he replied and settled lower into the water. It didn’t matter
that she was asking about the engines, he decided. Telling her about a failed drive system didn’t constitute a
risk.
“Masa-dine-stine wammie,” she stumbled through the unfamiliar syllables. “Explain what this is.”
John caught her hands as she began running a soapy wash ball over his chest, intertwining the fingers of one
hand into hers as he explained. “Mazda. Revolutionary new idea for an engine. Major league commercial
flop. Einstein. Brilliant guy who had trouble with grade school math.” The whirling inside his head accelerated,
the sharp scent of Grayza mixing with his own fatigue to make him sillier than usual. John shook his head
slightly to clear it, and returned to the subject.
“Einstein figured out that space was flexible, like a rubber sheet. It can be distorted. That’s the whammy part.
Fold space over on itself --” John cupped her hands inside his, trapping the soapy scrub inside the double
grasp to demonstrate his explanation. “Then use some funky bits of energy that no one in the Milky Way has
ever run into, and punch from one side to the other.” He pulled their hands apart and the wash ball was in her
other hand. “Unfold space and you’re somewhere else.”
Grayza lifted one of his legs and placed it to the outside of hers. “We haven’t been able to find one of the
rhotarri class ships. Where are they hiding?” She moved his other leg. “Where have you hidden them?”
“Lost,” John answered agreeably. “Gone.” He grabbed the sponge-like scrub and flung it backwards over his
head, the sloppy landing occurring somewhere on the lower level of her quarters. “Presto, vanished.”
“No, you’ve hidden them. The ships began disappearing just when we became interested in them. Where are
they?” Grayza’s hands disappeared beneath the water, reaching between his legs.
“They’re … oh, god …” He shuddered as the submerged hands began to work at him. “Lost. It … it doesn’t
work right.”
“Is that nice?” she whispered into his ear.
“Yes … yes.”
“Tell me more. Explain why the drive system doesn’t work.”
* * * * *
Gallenn rubbed the heel of his hand against the side of his eye socket, trying to ease the ache there. He’d
been convinced at one point that the headache left behind by the Aurora Chair was going to melt his skull, but
the blinding pain had gradually faded, leaving the exterior parameters of his head intact. What had happened
to the interior sections was still in question. The cursory beating by the guards two days earlier had been a
minor discomfort compared to what the energy of the Chair had done to him.
“Frell you,” he said quietly, carefully checking his ribs. The bruising had eased enough that he thought maybe
they weren’t broken after all. “It’s your fault,” he said to Crichton, wherever he was, and wondered if his
betrayal had resulted in John’s capture. “Everything started going to dren when you left.”
The first of his customers had disappeared the same day John left, demonstrating what he’d secretly known all
along. It was Crichton’s easy, smiling manner that they liked, as well as his obvious competence with anything
mechanical or electronic. The business had been headed right back into the big dren funnel the microt he’d
arranged with Aeryn Sun to lure his former partner off the planet. His luck had gone from bad to worse after
that.
First an overloaded electrical system had blown up, injuring two of his techs but more importantly leaving the
huge facility without power for two planetary days while they’d repaired the damaged circuitry. Then he’d
received word that a rhotarri drive equipped craft had jumped from ‘here’ to ‘there’ right into a star, undoubtedly
another example of the type of error Crichton had discovered was inherent in the process. It was bad that it
had happened, worse that a scientific ship had been monitoring the star and had recorded the extremely brief
presence of the ship as it emerged from folded space and was promptly incinerated.
His reputation and his business were irrevocably frelled within a matter of days. When the Peacekeepers
burned the facility they’d done little more than cremate a corpse.
Gallenn rolled onto his side, stared at the locked door, and considered his brief session in the Aurora Chair.
He wondered if that was part of what John had been running from, whether he knew what that abomination of
technology was like when it began ripping memories out of his head to the tune of agonized screaming. The
first images of Crichton had appeared on the screen in less than thirty microts, his attempt to hide the
knowledge completely futile. “Sorry,” he offered to his absent friend. “I did try not to tell, John.”
He sat up again, finding that lying down had resulted in a resurgence of his headache. The blue-eyed officer --
Commandant Grayza -- hadn’t seen any reason to stop the process when his conversation with Aeryn Sun had
been yanked onto the monitor. They hadn’t discussed the exact coordinates of where she intended to go with
Crichton, but they had worked out how long it would take to get to where the leviathan was waiting if Aeryn used
only the hetch drive. The Chair had reproduced his memory of that star chart in exacting detail, providing a
pinpoint location for the Peacekeepers to arrange an ambush. Grayza had smiled coolly as she recorded the
image and then had ordered the tech at the controls to keep probing.
“Frell, frell, frell,” he moaned, resting his head on his hands. It had taken no more than fifteen microts for them
to find his real identity, bringing his own flight from the Peacekeepers to an end. Grayza had laughed at him,
the throaty chuckle barely audible over the last of his cries as the spinning chair came to a stop.
“Hold him for now,” she’d ordered. “We may need him if we don’t capture Crichton.”
Gallenn got to his feet and went to the door, peering out through the small grill. According to the number of
meals he’d been served, more than six solar days had passed. He’d heard prisoners being moved in and out
of some of the adjacent cells, drawing him to the door to see if any of them were John or Aeryn, but he’d been
too late to see every time.
“Dren!” he barked one more time. Gallenn kicked the door angrily, stalked back to the bunk and flopped onto
the hard surface. He wondered how much longer he’d have to wait before they executed him.
* * * * *
Fatigue had become his ally. John stared at the sheet in front of his nose feeling the first hint of control
returning to his befuddled mind. Grayza had dragged every fact and statistic about the rhotarri drive out of him
before she’d let him crawl out of the cooling bath, then had toweled him dry with a little groping added in for her
pleasure, and had shoveled him into the bed to start over again. Relief had come only because he was too
damned tired to formulate another answer, wrung out both mentally and physically. “Brownie points,” he
mumbled into the black satiny covers.
“What did you say?” she asked, leaning close.
He could smell the oil on her, the scent wafting into his brain every time he inhaled. “Cosmic brownie points,”
his mouth ran on without his consent. She deserved extra points just for imagination. He closed his eyes in an
attempt to concentrate, willing his brain and his mouth to stop blabbing.
“Let’s try a slightly different subject,” she proposed. “What sort of destructive device have you placed on your
ship, and where is it located?”
Crichton kept his eyes closed, grinding his molars together in an attempt to keep his mouth shut. This question
was somewhere far beyond ‘unexpected’. It had to mean something … something that eluded his tired brain.
He needed to figure out why she was making this peculiar inquiry before his tongue took over. “What?” he
stalled for time. Slurring the word made it sound as though he’d been half-asleep and hadn’t heard the
question.
“You have rigged your ship with a device to destroy it. Where is it located?” She walked her fingers up his
spine and began rubbing his shoulders. The fingers never stopped exploring him. It was constant. “What
does it look like?”
The fragrance of the heppel oil commanded that he answer. John felt himself slipping, the first syllables of his
answer battering to get loose. Make the truth sound like a lie, he decided. If nothing else it would confuse her
as much as her question confused him. “Didn’t,” he answered truthfully, but managed to make it sound like a
five year-old denying guilt when the smashed object lay at his feet.
Grayza rolled him over, straddling him so that she sat on his stomach. “A lie,” came the verdict. “You are far
stronger than I’d imagined. Try again, Crichton. What sort of device?”
“Really. Isn’t one.” He saved a little energy by not adding the headshake that belonged with the overly
guileless look. The tone of voice and facial expression worked, sucking her one step further into his miniscule
deception.
“Yes, there is. Why else would you disconnect the drive system that would have allowed you to escape?
Where is it?” She leaned over him to pin his arms out to the sides, her breasts wobbling soft and pale near his
chin, enticing him to touch them. The scent spun in, spun out, left him unarmed, deprived of his restraint.
“Where is it?”
John fought against it, managed one more overly agreeable denial, telling the truth because it was the only
choice that the oil would allow. “Didn’t. Honest.”
Grayza sighed as she released one of his wrists, freeing a hand to drift up her sternum, gathering the glistening
droplets. Crichton watched with eagerness growing in the depths of his hips, the slick taste and odor already
linked to the idea of physical ecstasy -- as though he were one of Pavlov’s prize students. “You continue to lie,”
Grayza told him. Her fingers brushed across his lips, smearing them with the oil. “We will have to start over.
There is something I’ve wanted to try for almost a cycle now. I believe you have enough stamina.”
The sob of despair turned into a deep rasping breath as she began to touch him again, his misery
compounded by the knowledge that it had been his success in deceiving her that led to this latest assault on
his body.
* * * * *
Aeryn backed away from the checkpoint at the primary entrance to the hangar bay. The ident chip verifications
were having little affect on her movements except in the more highly traversed areas such as this one. The
knot of personnel waiting to pass through the security point made it virtually impossible for her to get through
without bumping into someone. While trying to get past a similar bottleneck an arn earlier, a pilot officer had
stepped back into what he’d thought was empty space just as she tried to cross behind him. His startled shout
had nearly put an end to her free movement about the carrier. A well-timed shove against a female tech had
created an avalanche of collisions, nearly everyone in the crowd falling against someone else, and she’d
slipped away in the confusion, hoping that the first phantom touch would be forgotten.
She backed away from the hangar entrance carefully, backtracking through the corridors until she could cut
cross-ship toward the repair facilities adjoining the hangar. On her third try she found a less used entrance to
the hangar, sliding past the lounging guards while they argued about the carrier’s unarmed-combat competition
and which team was likely to win.
An enormous bulbous tank, corroded and streaked by rust, sat to one side just inside the hangar. She slid
between it and the bulkhead, and sank to one knee, shaking slightly as her body began to object to the
constant tension. Their ship was in exactly the same spot where it had landed, several teams of specialists
examining it. It appeared intact, only a few of the engines’ access panels propped open, scaffolding
conveniently in place beneath the exterior nacelles. As she watched, several of the specialists gathered
around the hamman side engine, peering in at it.
“Check from the inside!” one of them yelled to a team member below.
That was where John had hidden her gear. If it was found, not only would the rescue be jeopardized, she knew
that John’s interrogation would become increasingly brutal until they located her. “Frell!” she allowed herself
the whispered expletive. “Think,” she ordered herself. The specialist on the floor was arguing with the man
above her, flinging technical terms back and forth, giving Aeryn more time to arrange a hasty diversion.
It had to be something that would keep everyone away from the ship a while longer, but not so explosive that it
damaged the craft. “Think, think,” she exhorted herself, looking around the hangar. Aeryn grabbed an
outcropping on the rusty tank to pull herself up, then released it with a nearly silent snarl of disgust when her
hand encountered something wet and viscous. She realized with an unpleasant shock that she’d been hiding
behind one of the mobile “Biological Extraction Units” -- the polite label for the tanks used to clean out the waste
tanks on the long-range ships like the Marauders.
She looked up at the ladder leading to the top hatch, and nearly laughed out loud. A fast check confirmed that
no one was wandering nearby. Aeryn pulled the front of the suit open and yanked her pulse pistol out,
resealed the opening, and mounted the rungs two at a time. She crouched on top of the tank, taking a few
microts to judge her escape route.
This small bit of sabotage was in some ways more hazardous than anything she’d ever tried before. “Make
sure it’s a clean getaway,” she told herself, smiling at the small joke because it was the type of thing Crichton
would have said. It would have been accompanied by the silly grin as he waited for her reaction. She dropped
her head, letting her chin rest on her chest until the unpleasant tightness in her stomach unknotted itself, the
thought that she might never see that stupid smile again rendering her breathless for several microts.
“Don’t give up, John.” The whisper went out to him wherever he was at that moment. Aeryn shrugged her
shoulders, easing tight muscles, then she set the pistol for a pulse chamber overload, held her breath, and
opened the hatch just long enough to drop the overcharged weapon inside. Then she bolted for the exit,
casting all caution aside in the interest of getting as far away as possible before the tank exploded.
The muffled explosion shook the deck plates beneath her feet as she was rounding a corner five corridors
away. Even from that distance she could hear the howls of dismay. No one would be working in that hangar
willingly for at least a full solar day, if not longer. Aeryn allowed herself a laugh as she ran back toward the
detention block. She’d wanted to check on the interior of their ship to make sure nothing had been dismantled,
but she’d just decided to wait until later.
* * * * *
Crichton pulled the covers over his shoulders and tucked his knees against his chest, trying to retain some
warmth. His body was no longer shivering in response to the cold, which meant that he was nearing the end of
his energy reserves and they would have to resort to some other method of keeping him awake soon, or watch
him succumb to hypothermia. The monotonous gray metal walls offered little in the way of distraction,
encouraging his thoughts to wander as he lay with the chill eating into his muscles.
“Dunbar had it worse in Stalag 17,” he mumbled. “He held out for days. Hid in a freezing water tank without
any sleep. William Holden helped him escape. Where’s Bill when you need him?” Aeryn had promised to help
him escape.
She sat down next to him, taking a moment to pull the covers up around his ears, trying to keep him warm.
“You promised to hang on, John.”
He snapped awake, uncertain whether he’d spoken to the dark-haired visitor created by his brief dream. “Think
about something else,” he ordered himself. He tried focusing on the preceding arns.
Grayza’s latest ‘interrogation’ had been cut short by an alarmed report that something had blown up in the
hangar bay. It had come too late to prevent him from telling her truthfully and sincerely that there was no
booby trap aboard the ship. Nor had it come in time to stop him from describing how to reattach the cabling to
power the rhotarri system. He’d given up everything with the possible exception of …
“Stalag 17 had a stoolie,” he interrupted the errant wanderings of his mind. He envisioned the movie, trying to
divert his thoughts away from the gray-blue eyes and long, dark, sweet-smelling hair that felt so warm and soft
when he let it run through his fingers. “No! Something else. Price was the fink. Would have betrayed them all
if he had the chance. Dunbar stayed awake for days … no problem. Don’t remember Elvira having her way
with Dunbar in that movie though. Who does that make you, John? Price or Dunbar?”
Was he the stoolie, spilling all the secrets? Or was he the prisoner, trying to hold out against the Nazi
interrogators? The answer eluded him. Crichton closed his eyes, trying not to think of the person he wanted to
call out to, fighting hard to keep himself from imagining his own voice begging her to hurry.
“Be strong,” she said beside him, invisible in her magical suit.
“Go away,” he pleaded quietly. If she kept visiting him like this he wouldn’t be able to not remember her if
Grayza began asking about her. The cold-eyed officer had been concentrating on the rhotarri technology so
far, but the focus of the interrogation was bound to shift at some point. “Don’t talk to me anymore. It’s … ”
It was too dangerous because he would blurt out something that would tell them she was here, somewhere
aboard the carrier. He sat up, ignoring his need for rest, and began the cadence again, restoring the blank in
his mind where someone used to reside. “She left, she left,” he chanted almost silently, trying to keep her safe.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
