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Title: Slave to Time
Author: Crankygrrl
Recipient: Kernezelda (who’s got to be tired of getting me as a writer by now)
Rating: PG (harsh language, implied violence)
Fandoms: Battlestar Galactica, Farscape
Summary: Crichton’s on a mission, Starbuck’s in a jam and the fate of us all hangs in the balance.
Author’s note: Thanks to Feldman and Thassalia for the beta.
Crichton wanted to know why the godlike aliens always picked on him to clean up their messes. Sure, freeze time or bounce you light years across the galaxy — no problem. But why was it that whenever someone was threatening the fabric of space-time, it always John Crichton who always got the, how did they put it in Dirty Harry — the dren end of the stick?
Next time, Einstein could take his favour and shove it.
His host, the green glob of goo pooled beside him, oozed closer.
“Are you well, Ser Crichton?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Crichton squeezed sideways in his seat as coolly as he could, wanting as much space between him and the sentient snot-bag as he could get without actually appearing to be rude. “Just ah,” he coughed ostentatiously, “Dry throat.”
“Would you care for refreshment?” The glob, whose name his microbes translated as Ss’lyrrkk, rippled, rolled and a comber rose on his left side, signaling a minion forward with a laden tray. A tendril of goo slipped out and goosed the loincloth-clad male as he passed by. The drinks and Ss’lyrrkk were the same sickly shade of iridescent green. Crichton shook his head and swallowed a gag.
“No. Thank you. I’m fine.”
“As you wish,” it purred. It actually purred, like it was flirting. In fact, a tendril of goo seemed to be wafting in the direction of his thigh. Crichton pressed his butt against the far side of his seat and cursed Einstein again.
“Shall we begin?”
Crichton nodded. “Yeah, lets.”
Another tendril flipped a switch, and the curtains in front of their seats parted to reveal a sand-filled oval like out of a gladiator flick, complete, Crichton noticed, with gladiators: two dozen or so by his count, males and females from a variety of species he didn’t recognize and one he did.
She was stretched out against the back wall of the arena, zoning out when a guard kicked her foot and ordered her to get up. Kara’s first impulse was to take his foot and see if she could actually shove it up his own ass — let’s face it: the odds that she could actually do it had increased by at least threefold in the last month. She bared her teeth and the guard took an involuntary step back and shifted his grip on the shock stick they all used to keep the prisoners in line. Maybe once she would have. Maybe she’d give it a shot tomorrow. For right now, Kara put her pride in neutral and husbanded her anger for another time, joining the rest of the group in the center of the ring to wait for her moment.
She took her time about it, though.
The pussbucket gave him the sales pitch, a song and dance about how he didn’t normally sell his ‘performers’ ‘contracts’ but that he’d be willing to make an exception. Crichton made the right noises in the right places and watched her join the group in front of their balcony.
The gladiators were dressed in identical white clothing — form-fitting pants and sleeveless tops in a stretchy material that left nothing to the imagination (unfortunately in the case of one massive (and massively endowed) reptiloid male) — except for the wide coloured stripes down the side of each shirt and pant leg: red, green, blue, orange and black. But her attitude stood out even if her clothes didn’t: her insolent swagger as out of place among the prisoners as her blonde hair and fair skin.
“What do the stripes mean?”
“Ah,” Slimer quivered with delight at his question, “The stripes signify the class and, ah, lethality of each competitor: blue indicates our newest stock. Then, as we determine their abilities, they are assigned to a class with a corresponding colour.
“The Orion, for example, is red class: suitable to be matched in armed and unarmed combat with bipeds, quadrupeds and undulates. The Wookie, green class: suitable for combat with all classes—”
“What about the blonde? The female with the black stripe?”
“You have a very good eye, Ser,” the goo boiled with approval. “1128: she was originally contracted by my partner on the pleasure side of the business but we found that she was more suited to more aggressive pursuits—” which Crichton figured was a polite way of saying she broke some john’s head when they tried to pimp her out. “Excellent hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness; disease-free but a slightly diminished reproductive function—”
“Sebacean?” Crichton interrupted before he got the rundown on her last pap smear.
“No, no,” it shrank back, “We don’t contract Sebaceans. We find that it brings too much attention from the wrong areas. No, 1128 is from an older genetic line. Not as long-lived or powerful but hardier with fewer climactic intolerances.”
“I see.” Crichton stood and moved stand at the edge of the balcony, which was also further away from Ss’lyrrkk. ‘An older genetic line’ was one way of describing it: she was human.
“How long have you had her?” he asked.
“Not long — barely four weekens — but she’s already one of our most popular performers. Won me 700 Quatloos in the arena only yesterday.” Meaning that Crichton could expect to pay through the nose for her.
John turned away from the arena. “She’ll do.”
A greedy shimmer rippled across its glassy green surface. “A wonderful choice, Ser. Would you care to select an opponent? May I recommend the Narn?”
“No, that won’t be necessary. But I would like to ‘discuss’ the terms of her new contract with her before you and I talk price. In private, if you get my drift,” he added gratuitously, wondering if he was laying it on too thick.
But it responded with aplomb, which made Crichton wonder how many guys it had helped pick out a bodyguard based on breast size. “Of course, Ser. If you would just follow Lunnkk, and after we can discuss terms.”
“Yeah, that’d be great.” Crichton bobbed his head and nearly ran Lunnkk over leaving the room: godlike aliens and mucous-based pimps — why him?
“You’ve got to be kidding. What—” Kara demanded as the guard closed the manacles over her wrists — “Suddenly felt like getting a little freaky? A bit of S&M to liven up the tedium between death matches?”
The guard just jerked on the chains between her wrists and the wall, making sure they were securely fastened.
“What? Nothing to say?” Kara taunted. “Conversation take the fun out of rape?
“Motherfrakker,” she called after his back as he left her alone in, in — frak it, she was chained to the wall of what looked like the Eros theme room of a cut-rate whorehouse. Kara’d been wondering when the other shoe was going to drop. Sooner or later, they always tried to get in her pants.
She pressed her back to the padded pink Velveteen wall and gathered the slack in her chains. They’d used a single fixed length run through a carabineer to restrain her instead of two separate chains. Stupid them. Kara gathered the slack in her hand behind her leg and waited.
27 days she’d been waiting for the right moment. 27 days ago, she’d been in her Viper, about to start a gunnery run, and then she was here, on a space station that was part brothel part gladiator school. Her first day, she’d broken the arm of the guy stupid enough to try and cop a feel. After that, she was sent to the gladiator levels. She’d survived 13 matches and she’d waited for her chance. Waited until they frakked up, let their guard down. Waited until they did something stupid like locking her alone in a room with a single man and no spy-eyes.
They hadn’t let her close to a customer since ‘Lefty’ but this guy wasn’t what she expected: leather pants, combat boots, black tee — he looked like a cross between a fetishist and a Sagittaron pirate. Solid but not too big: she could probably take him. Under other circumstances, she’d find him attractive — like if he weren’t a slave-trading scumbag looking to sample the merchandise. Her fingers tightened around the chain.
The door closed behind him and Crichton turned to the woman chained to the wall.
He stepped forward — “I’m John Crichton, I’m here to—” and nearly got hit in the face with a chain, which was pretty much the reception he was expecting — he had bad luck with women and jail cells. He caught the blow on his arm and clamped his fingers tight over the links, yanking her forward and pinning her far arm against the wall behind her.
“Damn woman, what are you trying to do? Kill me?”
“That was the general idea,” she snarled, yanking back on the chain.
“Look, I’m here to rescue you.”
“Sure you are.”
He let go of the chain and stepped back out of range a she staggered backwards. “You’re Kara, right?”
Her eyes blinked wide when she heard her name.
“I’m here to break you out.”
“Yeah, right.”
Maybe Kara didn’t believe him but she didn’t seem likely to try and hit him again. He grabbed her wrist to take a look at the manacle. She pulled her arm away.
“Who sent you?”
“A friend.” Crichton took her wrist again and examined the manacle. He reached for the screwdriver.
“What friend?”
“Just a friend.”
She jerked out of his grip again. “I don’t believe you.”
He growled in frustration. “A godlike alien I call Einstein, yanked me out of my home, away from my wife and my son, told me I owed him a favour and that to make it right with him, I needed to break you out of here before the slimebag upstairs sold you off or got you killed.
“Apparently,” he said heavily, “You’re special. If I don’t get you out of here, the walls between realities are going to rupture and the universe as I know it will cease to exist. So, if you don’t mind shutting the frell up, I’d like to haul eema out of here before Lunk stops by with extra towels and some baby oil and I end up chained to the wall beside you.
“If that’s okay by you.”
Crichton grabbed her wrist, tugging her forward so he could get a better grip and set the screwdriver’s aperture against the manacle’s lock.
“You know you’re clearly insane, right?”
The manacle sprang open. He reached for her other wrist. “It’s been mentioned.”
And then she was free.
“So, you want to get out of here or what?”
Kara rubbed her wrists and considered her options.
She had none. “After you.”
They slipped out into the corridor and closed the door behind them. Crichton pointed the screwdriver at the door panel, fusing the circuit closed with a flash of sparks.
Kara looked on, interested. “What is that thing anyway?”
“Sonic screwdriver.” Crichton considered which direction to take: left back towards the pussbucket and the arena or right?
“Where’d you get it?”
They went right.
“Won it in a poker game with a guy named Jack,” he answered absently. “How well do you know this place?”
“They mostly keep us in the dormitory and gymnasium levels. Why?”
“I need to find a power source. The bigger the better.”
Crichton paused at the T-junction, flattening himself against the wall and peeking around the corner.
“What for?”
He held up a silver golf ball. “For this.”
“And what’s that?”
The corridor was empty. Crichton straightened. “Something that’s going to close this place down for good.”
“I like it,” Kara jerked her thumb to the left. “This way.”
For someone who’d been kept under close watch, Crichton thought Kara had a good handle on the station’s layout.
“Viper pilot,” she said as if that explained everything.
“How come no guards?” he asked as they reached the hatch to the reactor room.
“Most of the guards are busy keeping tabs on the prisoners and the customers. The rest of the station seems to run on passive and electronic security.” She gestured to the palm reader on the door.
A buzz from the sonic screwdriver and the hatch rolled open.
“Handy little gizmo,” Kara murmured, following Crichton through the doorway.
The reactor core cast a fluorescent blue glow over the room from behind the containment shield. She watched Crichton twist the ball — arming it, she supposed — and then reach behind a console to place it out of sight near the base of the shield.
“All right,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “Time to boogie.”
“If you mean let’s get out of here, I’m with you.” Kara said.
He nodded. “Give me a hand.”
She put her shoulder against the hatch next to him and together they rolled it closed again.
“So how’s that thing going to keep Ss’lyrrkk from starting up again somewhere else,” she asked as he sealed the door with the sonic screwdriver.
“It’s a time disruptor.” Seeing her blank look, he elaborated: “Ss’lyrrkk’s been using stolen tech to create wormholes—
“You know what a wormhole is, right?” he asked.
“Yeah. I didn’t totally fail Cosmology.”
“Well, Ss’lyrrkk’s been using wormholes to stock his whorehouse and his gladiator matches without pissing off local planetary authorities. As long as no one files a complaint about friends or family going missing, no one’s going to look too closely at his little sideline in slave trading.
“There,” Crichton slapped the hatch, “That ought to hold it.”
They headed back to the lifts.
“So where do I figure into this?”
“Time’s resilient. It takes a lot to knock it out of sync. Most of the losses from the other realities healed on their own.”
“But not me.”
“Nope.” They stepped into the lift and Crichton punched the button for the hangar level. “Without you, your reality is collapsing and that’s creating a ripple effect, sending each level of reality — each universe — smashing into each other. Einstein says you’re ‘significant’, that you have a destiny.
“I’m sorry,” he added, seeing her dark expression.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s been mentioned.” She exhaled and squared her shoulders like she was bracing for a fight. “So, universes crashing into each other: that’s bad, right?”
“Yeah, like end of time everywhere — end of existence — bad.” He considered the sonic screwdriver, “Although, it’s not the worst party I’ve ever been to.”
“So, the reactor goes boom and everything goes back to normal?”
“That’s the theory: the disruptor blows the reactor and uses the energy from the explosion to seal off any space-time holes in this sector.”
“And what happens to the people on the station?”
“If it works, time will ripple outward from the explosion, into the past as well as into the future. And all of this will just fade away like a bad dream.”
“Uh-huh. And if that’s not how it works?”
The lift doors slid open on the hangar deck.
“Then I get to play Slim Pickens in the remake. C’mon,” he grabbed her arm; “We need to get you off this station before the big bang. Which one of these is yours?”
“That one,” she pointed to a single seater near the back of the bay, “But you can forget it. I’m not leaving you and everyone else here to die if this disruptor thing doesn’t do its stuff.”
She shook off his hand. “There are half a dozen transport ships in this bay alone. If we trigger an atmosphere failure, they’ll have to evacuate. “
“Y’know, Princess Leia never gave Luke Skywalker this much trouble.”
“Well, I’m not a princess. And I don’t leave people behind,” she said defiantly, reminding him so much of Aeryn, he had to smile. She’d insisted on finding a way to evacuate the command carrier, he remembered. Tough soldier girls — why him?
He rubbed him thumb against his bottom lip, trying to figure out a way to reason with her that wouldn’t involve a fistfight.
“This isn’t about you,” he said finally, “This about the end of all things if you don’t get back to where you belong. Trust me, I’m not into being noble and I don’t have a death wish but I have a wife and a son out there who won’t be there tomorrow if you don’t get the hell out of here right now.”
“Fine,” she spat. Why did her choices always have to suck? “Tell me what I need to do—”
The siren screamed through the hangar, deafening them both.
“Frell!”
“Frakk!”
“Looks like our cover’s been blown,” he yelled, “You gotta get out of here now. As soon as you get beyond the station’s gravity field, look for the giant blue swirl and fly straight at it. Einstein says it’ll take you home.”
“This Einstein: has he ever been wrong before?” she yelled back.
John shook his head, “No — give or take 10 years. Go, I’ll make sure you can get out of the bay.”
“Right,” she jogged towards her Viper and climbed to the cockpit.
“Hey, Crichton,” she twisted and yelled after him, “Thanks for the assist. Take care of yourself.”
She saluted crisply and hopped into the cockpit. Crichton grinned. ‘Assist’ his eema — it was probably just as well that she and Aeryn would never get the chance to meet. That’d just be scary.
The sonic screwdriver popped the lock on the hangar control room and fried the mechanism on the interior door control, locking him inside the booth. He powered up the bay doors and vented the atmosphere as soon as Kara gave him the thumbs up. He watched her pilot the fighter off the deck with the VTOL engines and, with a final salute in his direction, turn on a wingtip and slide out the narrow crack in the hangar doors in a manoeuvre even Aeryn would have appreciated.
Crichton sighed. “Okay, Einstein, it’s all up to you now.”
Kara kicked in the burners as she left the station’s gravity.
“Look for a ‘big blue swirl’ he says. Yeah, no problem, big blue— Oh, frakk me: one big blue swirl, dead starboard.”
She flipped the Viper sideways and pointed the nose at the center of the wormhole.
“‘Fly straight at it.’” The Viper reached the edge of the wormhole’s gravity well and felt its pull through the ship’s controls. “Well, Lords — here goes noth—
“—ing.”
“Starbuck, repeat your last.”
Kara blinked and tried to focus on what Dee was saying.
“Starbuck, Galactica: I say again repeat your last transmission. Over.”
“Uh, Galactica this is Starbuck: please disregard my last. Over.”
“Roger that, Starbuck.”
Lee’s Mark VII sidled in beside her.
“Hey, Starbuck, you okay?” Lee asked over the wireless.
“I’m fine, Apollo.” Kara blinked hard and stretched her jaw. “I just spaced out there for a moment.”
”You sure? You seem… weird.”
”I’m fine. Just,” she switched on the autopilot for a moment to shake out her hands, “Got a weird twinge in my wrists there. It’s nothing.”
“Okay,” he said, not sure whether or not he believed her, “As long as you’re not planning on using that as an excuse for your crappy marksmanship.”
“‘Crappy marksmanship’? Oh, you’re so dead now, Apollo,” she threatened, “If both my arms were broken I could still beat your piddly-ass score.”
“That’s ‘beat your piddly-ass score, Captain, sir‘” he taunted her. “Well, Galactica, that sounded like a challenge to me.”
“Roger that, Apollo,” Dee agreed.
“What do you say, Starbuck: loser buys the first round?”
“Roger that, Apollo,” she grinned at him and switched back to manual, kicking in the burners, peeling left to start her gunnery run, “Tally-ho, I’m in.”
It felt good to be flying free.
fin
Author: Crankygrrl
Recipient: Kernezelda (who’s got to be tired of getting me as a writer by now)
Rating: PG (harsh language, implied violence)
Fandoms: Battlestar Galactica, Farscape
Summary: Crichton’s on a mission, Starbuck’s in a jam and the fate of us all hangs in the balance.
Author’s note: Thanks to Feldman and Thassalia for the beta.
Crichton wanted to know why the godlike aliens always picked on him to clean up their messes. Sure, freeze time or bounce you light years across the galaxy — no problem. But why was it that whenever someone was threatening the fabric of space-time, it always John Crichton who always got the, how did they put it in Dirty Harry — the dren end of the stick?
Next time, Einstein could take his favour and shove it.
His host, the green glob of goo pooled beside him, oozed closer.
“Are you well, Ser Crichton?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Crichton squeezed sideways in his seat as coolly as he could, wanting as much space between him and the sentient snot-bag as he could get without actually appearing to be rude. “Just ah,” he coughed ostentatiously, “Dry throat.”
“Would you care for refreshment?” The glob, whose name his microbes translated as Ss’lyrrkk, rippled, rolled and a comber rose on his left side, signaling a minion forward with a laden tray. A tendril of goo slipped out and goosed the loincloth-clad male as he passed by. The drinks and Ss’lyrrkk were the same sickly shade of iridescent green. Crichton shook his head and swallowed a gag.
“No. Thank you. I’m fine.”
“As you wish,” it purred. It actually purred, like it was flirting. In fact, a tendril of goo seemed to be wafting in the direction of his thigh. Crichton pressed his butt against the far side of his seat and cursed Einstein again.
“Shall we begin?”
Crichton nodded. “Yeah, lets.”
Another tendril flipped a switch, and the curtains in front of their seats parted to reveal a sand-filled oval like out of a gladiator flick, complete, Crichton noticed, with gladiators: two dozen or so by his count, males and females from a variety of species he didn’t recognize and one he did.
She was stretched out against the back wall of the arena, zoning out when a guard kicked her foot and ordered her to get up. Kara’s first impulse was to take his foot and see if she could actually shove it up his own ass — let’s face it: the odds that she could actually do it had increased by at least threefold in the last month. She bared her teeth and the guard took an involuntary step back and shifted his grip on the shock stick they all used to keep the prisoners in line. Maybe once she would have. Maybe she’d give it a shot tomorrow. For right now, Kara put her pride in neutral and husbanded her anger for another time, joining the rest of the group in the center of the ring to wait for her moment.
She took her time about it, though.
The pussbucket gave him the sales pitch, a song and dance about how he didn’t normally sell his ‘performers’ ‘contracts’ but that he’d be willing to make an exception. Crichton made the right noises in the right places and watched her join the group in front of their balcony.
The gladiators were dressed in identical white clothing — form-fitting pants and sleeveless tops in a stretchy material that left nothing to the imagination (unfortunately in the case of one massive (and massively endowed) reptiloid male) — except for the wide coloured stripes down the side of each shirt and pant leg: red, green, blue, orange and black. But her attitude stood out even if her clothes didn’t: her insolent swagger as out of place among the prisoners as her blonde hair and fair skin.
“What do the stripes mean?”
“Ah,” Slimer quivered with delight at his question, “The stripes signify the class and, ah, lethality of each competitor: blue indicates our newest stock. Then, as we determine their abilities, they are assigned to a class with a corresponding colour.
“The Orion, for example, is red class: suitable to be matched in armed and unarmed combat with bipeds, quadrupeds and undulates. The Wookie, green class: suitable for combat with all classes—”
“What about the blonde? The female with the black stripe?”
“You have a very good eye, Ser,” the goo boiled with approval. “1128: she was originally contracted by my partner on the pleasure side of the business but we found that she was more suited to more aggressive pursuits—” which Crichton figured was a polite way of saying she broke some john’s head when they tried to pimp her out. “Excellent hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness; disease-free but a slightly diminished reproductive function—”
“Sebacean?” Crichton interrupted before he got the rundown on her last pap smear.
“No, no,” it shrank back, “We don’t contract Sebaceans. We find that it brings too much attention from the wrong areas. No, 1128 is from an older genetic line. Not as long-lived or powerful but hardier with fewer climactic intolerances.”
“I see.” Crichton stood and moved stand at the edge of the balcony, which was also further away from Ss’lyrrkk. ‘An older genetic line’ was one way of describing it: she was human.
“How long have you had her?” he asked.
“Not long — barely four weekens — but she’s already one of our most popular performers. Won me 700 Quatloos in the arena only yesterday.” Meaning that Crichton could expect to pay through the nose for her.
John turned away from the arena. “She’ll do.”
A greedy shimmer rippled across its glassy green surface. “A wonderful choice, Ser. Would you care to select an opponent? May I recommend the Narn?”
“No, that won’t be necessary. But I would like to ‘discuss’ the terms of her new contract with her before you and I talk price. In private, if you get my drift,” he added gratuitously, wondering if he was laying it on too thick.
But it responded with aplomb, which made Crichton wonder how many guys it had helped pick out a bodyguard based on breast size. “Of course, Ser. If you would just follow Lunnkk, and after we can discuss terms.”
“Yeah, that’d be great.” Crichton bobbed his head and nearly ran Lunnkk over leaving the room: godlike aliens and mucous-based pimps — why him?
“You’ve got to be kidding. What—” Kara demanded as the guard closed the manacles over her wrists — “Suddenly felt like getting a little freaky? A bit of S&M to liven up the tedium between death matches?”
The guard just jerked on the chains between her wrists and the wall, making sure they were securely fastened.
“What? Nothing to say?” Kara taunted. “Conversation take the fun out of rape?
“Motherfrakker,” she called after his back as he left her alone in, in — frak it, she was chained to the wall of what looked like the Eros theme room of a cut-rate whorehouse. Kara’d been wondering when the other shoe was going to drop. Sooner or later, they always tried to get in her pants.
She pressed her back to the padded pink Velveteen wall and gathered the slack in her chains. They’d used a single fixed length run through a carabineer to restrain her instead of two separate chains. Stupid them. Kara gathered the slack in her hand behind her leg and waited.
27 days she’d been waiting for the right moment. 27 days ago, she’d been in her Viper, about to start a gunnery run, and then she was here, on a space station that was part brothel part gladiator school. Her first day, she’d broken the arm of the guy stupid enough to try and cop a feel. After that, she was sent to the gladiator levels. She’d survived 13 matches and she’d waited for her chance. Waited until they frakked up, let their guard down. Waited until they did something stupid like locking her alone in a room with a single man and no spy-eyes.
They hadn’t let her close to a customer since ‘Lefty’ but this guy wasn’t what she expected: leather pants, combat boots, black tee — he looked like a cross between a fetishist and a Sagittaron pirate. Solid but not too big: she could probably take him. Under other circumstances, she’d find him attractive — like if he weren’t a slave-trading scumbag looking to sample the merchandise. Her fingers tightened around the chain.
The door closed behind him and Crichton turned to the woman chained to the wall.
He stepped forward — “I’m John Crichton, I’m here to—” and nearly got hit in the face with a chain, which was pretty much the reception he was expecting — he had bad luck with women and jail cells. He caught the blow on his arm and clamped his fingers tight over the links, yanking her forward and pinning her far arm against the wall behind her.
“Damn woman, what are you trying to do? Kill me?”
“That was the general idea,” she snarled, yanking back on the chain.
“Look, I’m here to rescue you.”
“Sure you are.”
He let go of the chain and stepped back out of range a she staggered backwards. “You’re Kara, right?”
Her eyes blinked wide when she heard her name.
“I’m here to break you out.”
“Yeah, right.”
Maybe Kara didn’t believe him but she didn’t seem likely to try and hit him again. He grabbed her wrist to take a look at the manacle. She pulled her arm away.
“Who sent you?”
“A friend.” Crichton took her wrist again and examined the manacle. He reached for the screwdriver.
“What friend?”
“Just a friend.”
She jerked out of his grip again. “I don’t believe you.”
He growled in frustration. “A godlike alien I call Einstein, yanked me out of my home, away from my wife and my son, told me I owed him a favour and that to make it right with him, I needed to break you out of here before the slimebag upstairs sold you off or got you killed.
“Apparently,” he said heavily, “You’re special. If I don’t get you out of here, the walls between realities are going to rupture and the universe as I know it will cease to exist. So, if you don’t mind shutting the frell up, I’d like to haul eema out of here before Lunk stops by with extra towels and some baby oil and I end up chained to the wall beside you.
“If that’s okay by you.”
Crichton grabbed her wrist, tugging her forward so he could get a better grip and set the screwdriver’s aperture against the manacle’s lock.
“You know you’re clearly insane, right?”
The manacle sprang open. He reached for her other wrist. “It’s been mentioned.”
And then she was free.
“So, you want to get out of here or what?”
Kara rubbed her wrists and considered her options.
She had none. “After you.”
They slipped out into the corridor and closed the door behind them. Crichton pointed the screwdriver at the door panel, fusing the circuit closed with a flash of sparks.
Kara looked on, interested. “What is that thing anyway?”
“Sonic screwdriver.” Crichton considered which direction to take: left back towards the pussbucket and the arena or right?
“Where’d you get it?”
They went right.
“Won it in a poker game with a guy named Jack,” he answered absently. “How well do you know this place?”
“They mostly keep us in the dormitory and gymnasium levels. Why?”
“I need to find a power source. The bigger the better.”
Crichton paused at the T-junction, flattening himself against the wall and peeking around the corner.
“What for?”
He held up a silver golf ball. “For this.”
“And what’s that?”
The corridor was empty. Crichton straightened. “Something that’s going to close this place down for good.”
“I like it,” Kara jerked her thumb to the left. “This way.”
For someone who’d been kept under close watch, Crichton thought Kara had a good handle on the station’s layout.
“Viper pilot,” she said as if that explained everything.
“How come no guards?” he asked as they reached the hatch to the reactor room.
“Most of the guards are busy keeping tabs on the prisoners and the customers. The rest of the station seems to run on passive and electronic security.” She gestured to the palm reader on the door.
A buzz from the sonic screwdriver and the hatch rolled open.
“Handy little gizmo,” Kara murmured, following Crichton through the doorway.
The reactor core cast a fluorescent blue glow over the room from behind the containment shield. She watched Crichton twist the ball — arming it, she supposed — and then reach behind a console to place it out of sight near the base of the shield.
“All right,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “Time to boogie.”
“If you mean let’s get out of here, I’m with you.” Kara said.
He nodded. “Give me a hand.”
She put her shoulder against the hatch next to him and together they rolled it closed again.
“So how’s that thing going to keep Ss’lyrrkk from starting up again somewhere else,” she asked as he sealed the door with the sonic screwdriver.
“It’s a time disruptor.” Seeing her blank look, he elaborated: “Ss’lyrrkk’s been using stolen tech to create wormholes—
“You know what a wormhole is, right?” he asked.
“Yeah. I didn’t totally fail Cosmology.”
“Well, Ss’lyrrkk’s been using wormholes to stock his whorehouse and his gladiator matches without pissing off local planetary authorities. As long as no one files a complaint about friends or family going missing, no one’s going to look too closely at his little sideline in slave trading.
“There,” Crichton slapped the hatch, “That ought to hold it.”
They headed back to the lifts.
“So where do I figure into this?”
“Time’s resilient. It takes a lot to knock it out of sync. Most of the losses from the other realities healed on their own.”
“But not me.”
“Nope.” They stepped into the lift and Crichton punched the button for the hangar level. “Without you, your reality is collapsing and that’s creating a ripple effect, sending each level of reality — each universe — smashing into each other. Einstein says you’re ‘significant’, that you have a destiny.
“I’m sorry,” he added, seeing her dark expression.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s been mentioned.” She exhaled and squared her shoulders like she was bracing for a fight. “So, universes crashing into each other: that’s bad, right?”
“Yeah, like end of time everywhere — end of existence — bad.” He considered the sonic screwdriver, “Although, it’s not the worst party I’ve ever been to.”
“So, the reactor goes boom and everything goes back to normal?”
“That’s the theory: the disruptor blows the reactor and uses the energy from the explosion to seal off any space-time holes in this sector.”
“And what happens to the people on the station?”
“If it works, time will ripple outward from the explosion, into the past as well as into the future. And all of this will just fade away like a bad dream.”
“Uh-huh. And if that’s not how it works?”
The lift doors slid open on the hangar deck.
“Then I get to play Slim Pickens in the remake. C’mon,” he grabbed her arm; “We need to get you off this station before the big bang. Which one of these is yours?”
“That one,” she pointed to a single seater near the back of the bay, “But you can forget it. I’m not leaving you and everyone else here to die if this disruptor thing doesn’t do its stuff.”
She shook off his hand. “There are half a dozen transport ships in this bay alone. If we trigger an atmosphere failure, they’ll have to evacuate. “
“Y’know, Princess Leia never gave Luke Skywalker this much trouble.”
“Well, I’m not a princess. And I don’t leave people behind,” she said defiantly, reminding him so much of Aeryn, he had to smile. She’d insisted on finding a way to evacuate the command carrier, he remembered. Tough soldier girls — why him?
He rubbed him thumb against his bottom lip, trying to figure out a way to reason with her that wouldn’t involve a fistfight.
“This isn’t about you,” he said finally, “This about the end of all things if you don’t get back to where you belong. Trust me, I’m not into being noble and I don’t have a death wish but I have a wife and a son out there who won’t be there tomorrow if you don’t get the hell out of here right now.”
“Fine,” she spat. Why did her choices always have to suck? “Tell me what I need to do—”
The siren screamed through the hangar, deafening them both.
“Frell!”
“Frakk!”
“Looks like our cover’s been blown,” he yelled, “You gotta get out of here now. As soon as you get beyond the station’s gravity field, look for the giant blue swirl and fly straight at it. Einstein says it’ll take you home.”
“This Einstein: has he ever been wrong before?” she yelled back.
John shook his head, “No — give or take 10 years. Go, I’ll make sure you can get out of the bay.”
“Right,” she jogged towards her Viper and climbed to the cockpit.
“Hey, Crichton,” she twisted and yelled after him, “Thanks for the assist. Take care of yourself.”
She saluted crisply and hopped into the cockpit. Crichton grinned. ‘Assist’ his eema — it was probably just as well that she and Aeryn would never get the chance to meet. That’d just be scary.
The sonic screwdriver popped the lock on the hangar control room and fried the mechanism on the interior door control, locking him inside the booth. He powered up the bay doors and vented the atmosphere as soon as Kara gave him the thumbs up. He watched her pilot the fighter off the deck with the VTOL engines and, with a final salute in his direction, turn on a wingtip and slide out the narrow crack in the hangar doors in a manoeuvre even Aeryn would have appreciated.
Crichton sighed. “Okay, Einstein, it’s all up to you now.”
Kara kicked in the burners as she left the station’s gravity.
“Look for a ‘big blue swirl’ he says. Yeah, no problem, big blue— Oh, frakk me: one big blue swirl, dead starboard.”
She flipped the Viper sideways and pointed the nose at the center of the wormhole.
“‘Fly straight at it.’” The Viper reached the edge of the wormhole’s gravity well and felt its pull through the ship’s controls. “Well, Lords — here goes noth—
“—ing.”
“Starbuck, repeat your last.”
Kara blinked and tried to focus on what Dee was saying.
“Starbuck, Galactica: I say again repeat your last transmission. Over.”
“Uh, Galactica this is Starbuck: please disregard my last. Over.”
“Roger that, Starbuck.”
Lee’s Mark VII sidled in beside her.
“Hey, Starbuck, you okay?” Lee asked over the wireless.
“I’m fine, Apollo.” Kara blinked hard and stretched her jaw. “I just spaced out there for a moment.”
”You sure? You seem… weird.”
”I’m fine. Just,” she switched on the autopilot for a moment to shake out her hands, “Got a weird twinge in my wrists there. It’s nothing.”
“Okay,” he said, not sure whether or not he believed her, “As long as you’re not planning on using that as an excuse for your crappy marksmanship.”
“‘Crappy marksmanship’? Oh, you’re so dead now, Apollo,” she threatened, “If both my arms were broken I could still beat your piddly-ass score.”
“That’s ‘beat your piddly-ass score, Captain, sir‘” he taunted her. “Well, Galactica, that sounded like a challenge to me.”
“Roger that, Apollo,” Dee agreed.
“What do you say, Starbuck: loser buys the first round?”
“Roger that, Apollo,” she grinned at him and switched back to manual, kicking in the burners, peeling left to start her gunnery run, “Tally-ho, I’m in.”
It felt good to be flying free.
fin
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