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Just what was it like to serve as a PeaceKeeper? This little Fic picks up where the TWWW epilogue ends.
Crichton said, "You say you think you loved this man?"
Aeryn opened her mouth to speak, but failing to find the words she stared a while into the near distance, then gave him a half smile.
Her look told him all he needed to know.
It was over two days later that he brought the whole unhappy time up again. Something still nagged at him. He could not let it lie.
Aeryn was in Pilot's den, smiling with the great crustaceous creature. As John entered she patted Pilot's 'hand' where it lay on her knee and swung herself down from her perch on the console. " You got a minute?" John asked her. He walked her back to quarters.
"Aeryn - back then – " he began awkwardly. "Rygel asked – Did you? Did you ever torture a Hynerian?"
There was the merest falter in her stride. They turned into her quarters. She settled with her back to the bulkhead. She often sat like this now – as though she gained comfort from contact with Moya's living self. John wondered if it was a part of her Pilot heritage.
She had not answered.
He picked up a flask, took a swig, passed it to her, and sat waiting quietly. Her eyes were unfocussed, somewhere far away – and long ago.
She drew a sharp breath at last. "John. I was a Peacekeeper – "
She turned.
"You will come with me." It was the head of Interrogation attached to this flotilla, a man widely feared and despised.
"Sir I'm not . . ." She wanted to explain that she was already under orders.
"You are a part of this regiment are you not, Officer?"
"Sir."
"You wish to remain so . . .?" he said.
"Sir. I am a pilot."
"Precisely. A pilot. You will come with me. You will assist in subduing my prisoner, and you will fly her to the command carrier."
She stared hard at a space just over his shoulder. "Yes sir!"
He strode off and she had no option but to follow.
The cell reeked. Medics were dragging out two troopers, their faces white with pain. The stench was, in part, from their burned flesh. The prisoner was a Sheyang. She lay gasping now on the floor, chains tethering her to the walls, but the other two troopers in the room hung back, neural whips hanging useless in their hands.
"Get her secured and out of here!" the Interrogator ordered, marching out and leaving them to it.
"Sir!" they said obediently – but there was doubt in their voices.
They looked at each other, Aeryn and the troopers; the troopers wondering what use this single reinforcement could be, Aeryn realising she outranked them and they would expect leadership.
"Subdue and transport," she repeated, giving herself thinking time.
"Yes, Officer . . ." they said. No more.
"I have never transported a Sheyang. What have you tried?"
The prisoner was recovering, showing signs of getting up. Aeryn swung a boot at her chin. It connected with bone through the rolls of flesh and she sagged to the floor again.
"The Captain wants to see her – talk to her . . ." The implied message was that the prisoner needed to be capable of talk when she reached the carrier. Crais would not forgive errors.
"We have to get this bridle on." It was a brutal mask-like device, designed to prevent further fire spitting.
Aeryn pulled her gun, covering the Sheyang with it. "Try again!" she ordered. They approached from either side, so that the next muted fireball scorched only one of the troopers. It also caught Aeryn across the hand.
Wincing with the sudden pain she fired in anger, and the Sheyang lost a couple of fingers.
Why did they have to waste their time with these lower lifeforms? Cowards and scavengers, the Sheyangs barely deserved to be counted among the sentient species. And why did she have to be involved? It was bad enough that she had been pulled from her fast clean Prowler – but this . . .
The prisoner was young, in what passed as her prime in this ghastly race. It took only moments for her to be ready to spit more fire. In those few microts Aeryn knelt, cautiously to one side, and growled right into her ear.
"Listen;" she grated. "I don't care if you live or die, but the Captain evidently does. He did not say anything about your being intact. Where in this," she paused, gesturing at the lumpy body; "Where in this body do you store the fuel, hmm?" As the Sheyang breathed in again Aeryn stabbed like lightning. Slime spewed out, but there was still fire left. Aeryn flung herself out of range, behind the creature.
She glared at the troopers – "And where were you in support? You will get that mask on!"
It took several more passes, the troopers circling warily and Aeryn darting in again and again trying to puncture the oil sac, until, in an unseemly scrummage the Sheyang was secured. Aeryn, nursing another scald, kicked viciously at the beaten, broken creature.
The chains were released from the cell walls and used to drag her to the transport. All the while Aeryn's gun was trained on her, ready to blast away another extremity if needed; a neural whip at the ready too.
Flying her to the Carrier was the easy part. And then Aeryn could return to the Leviathan and get her burns dressed. It took many more working days to remove the stench of that cell from her nose, her uniform, her memory.
John frowned. He did not want her to be saying this. Right now he wished he had never asked.
"John – you can't know how it was. I did not torture a Hynerian, or a Luxan –" she paused – "or a Delvian – here on Moya. Leave it at that." The clouded eyes she turned on him said, 'Please.' It didn't need words.
He passed her the flask again – touched his head briefly to her shoulder as she drank. He had to accept the dark places this ex-PeaceKeeper had been to – and forget.
"Time to move on, " he said.
She nodded, and handed the flask back.
