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The door opened and John's limp body was thrown unceremoniously into the cell.  The door closed.  Aeryn left the corner where she had been standing and knelt by the body, checking for a pulse.  She felt the tight knot in her stomach unravel a bit when she found one.  She sat beside him on the cold, hard floor.  Almost as an afterthought she took his head and cushioned it on her lap.  Then she waited.

She had counted three-hundred and twenty microts when his body jerked and his eyes fluttered.

"Aeryn?" he said, looking up at her face from where his head lay on her lap. "Did you get the license plate number of that truck that hit me?"

Aeryn rolled his head off of her lap and stood quickly.

Crichton rolled onto his face and lay there for a few minutes before breathing deeply and turning back over.  "Ohhh, god, Aeryn could you have been a little rougher?  I think that there's a spot on my little toe that doesn't hurt," he said through clenched teeth.  He raised his right arm for her to take his hand and help him up.

Sun took his hand and pulled him into a sitting position.

He sat there blinking his eyes.  "What did they do to me?" he groaned.

"A stasis gun.  It doesn't do any damage."

"Then the chills, headache, nausea, and double vision aren't a sign of damage.  That's good to know."

"Those will pass, probably before Crais gets here and executes us." Aeryn went and sat on the lone bunk in the sparsely furnished cell.

Crichton slowly and cautiously stood.  "Lucky me."  When the room stopped spinning, he walked over to inspect the door.  "I guess that our act didn't fool them after all."

"Our act?  You were the one doing all the talking."

He pulled on the door in frustration then turned and went to sit beside her. "Maybe so," he sighed, "but you drawing on a room full of gun happy Peacekeepers seemed just a tad suicidal to me."

The door began to open and both stood.  Aeryn balanced herself on the balls of her feet to be ready to attack if she got the opportunity.  A man stepped in with his pulse rifle pointed at them.  Through the still open door they could see guards in the corridor behind him.  Escape frustrated, Aeryn looked at the Peacekeeper who stood in front of them.

"Erique," she said, trying hard to keep her voice steady.

"You know this guy?" Crichton asked glancing over at her.

"The prisoner will remain quiet," Erique said to Crichton.  "Failure to do so will result in physical consequences."  He then turned his gaze on Sun.

"I noticed you as soon as you walked into that eatery.  I couldn't believe it when that nurf herding Lieutenant let you go."  He walked closer.  "You're surprised to see me here, I can tell.  I don't really know why since it's your fault.  When you turned traitor the whole unit lost honor and was demoted.  I was transferred to this frellin' base in the Uncharted Territories."

"Aeryn's not a traitor!" Crichton began in her defense.

Erique reversed his pulse rifle and brought the butt up under John's chin, knocking him backward onto the bunk.  He brought it back to bear on Aeryn before she could do more than glare at him.  "I said that the prisoner will not to speak!"

John rubbed his chin but made no move to rise.  "If you were in her unit then how could you believe that about her," he said unsteadily.  "Crais never gave her a chance.  She said something that he didn't like so he declared she was irreversibly contaminated."

"You will be quiet!" Erique demanded.

"He was going to have her executed because she was HONORABLE.  She didn't deserve it!  And then when I escaped, she didn't want to leave.  She was going to stay and die for no good reason just because she thought it was her duty!"

Erique raised the rifle and took a step toward Crichton.

Aeryn placed herself between them and calmly looked into her former comrade's face.  "Yes, Crichton," she said, answering John's original question to her. "I know this man and I thought he knew me.  Erique was my wing-man for almost three cycles.  I saved his life, he saved mine.  I thought we were friends as well as comrades.  If he believes what Crais says about me, nothing that you say will make a difference."

Erique met her gaze squarely.  They stared at each other, neither one blinking.  Finally, the black clad Peacekeeper growled and backed out the door.  He slammed it behind him.

Aeryn stood and looked at the door for several microts.  When she thought that her emotions were sufficiently controlled, she went to check on Crichton.  She offered him her hand and for the second time in less than an arn, helped him to sit up.  Seeing that he appeared as well as could be expected, she sat stiffly beside him, her face impassive.  After her initial inspection of his injury, she wouldn't meet his eyes.

John sat uneasily beside her.  Aeryn was trying so hard not to show any emotion that he was certain that she was hurting as much emotionally as he was physically.  He wanted to make it better, hell, he wanted to take all of her pain away.  He just didn't know how to do it.  "Aeryn," he said softly.

"I don't want to talk about it," she said in a dead tone, "I don't want to think about it either."  She turned to him.  "If we were still on your date, what would we be doing now?"

"Well, let me think." If the only thing he could do to help her was to distract her, then he would do his best.  "After we had eaten we would linger over our dessert and coffee.  You would laugh at all of my jokes, I would be fascinated by your job, I would tell you how I was building a prototype space vehicle.  You would ask questions about it that I wouldn't answer because the project was classified.  You would tease me about being pretentious.  The light from the candle on the table would make glossy shimmers in your hair and make me want to touch it."  He tentatively reached out and lifted a strand of her hair and rubbed it gently between his fingers before bringing it to his lips.  "We'd realize that we had gotten so wrapped up in each other that we'd forgotten the time and missed the show that we were going to see."

He paused and when he began talking again, his voice was lower and more intimate.  "We'd decide to go for a walk instead.  It would be a warm, spring evening and I'd drive us to a local park.  The air would be vibrant with the sounds of crickets and frogs.  The earth would be so alive that you could smell it like a perfume.  I'd take your hand, cautiously at first to make sure that you wouldn't pull it away."  He reached out and took her right hand in his left.  He ran his thumb in a caress across its back.  "You'd say something like how bright the stars looked.  We'd stop walking and I would point out and name the constellations."  His voice became huskier as he described their encounter.  He moved his face closer to hers, their lips only inches apart.  He could feel her warm breath.  She leaned toward him.

The door opened abruptly, startling them both and causing them to jump apart. Aeryn leapt to her feet, taking John's hand with her and pulling him to his feet before releasing it.  Unfortunately, he was hit by another episode of vertigo and  immediately went down on his knees.

The nurf herding Lieutenant Kreel entered with two guards who fanned out to either side of the door.  Kreel had his sidearm in its holster but the guards were armed and ready for potentially dangerous prisoners.  "Stand up!" Kreel demanded of Crichton.

Crichton fought down a wave of dizziness and nausea as he carefully rose to his feet.

Kreel looked at Aeryn, his face set in angry lines.  "Ex-officer Aeryn Sun, deserter of Pleisar Regiment, Icarian company, you helped three criminals escape with a Leviathan and were declared irreversibly contaminated and sentenced to execution."  He transferred his gaze to Crichton.  "You are not in our Indentifiles but Captain Crais seemed most interested in you when he was informed that a Sebacean male was captured with Sun.  He is on his way to the base and insisted that you be placed in his custody as soon as he landed."  He scrutinized the human.  "What ever your crimes, impersonation of an officer has now been added to them.  The penalty for that is execution."

"Well, get in line," John said mumbled.

The Lieutenant deliberately turned his back on the captives and walked back to the door to stand between the guards.  "Ex-officer Sun, you could earn the mercy of the court and save yourself from official interrogation by cooperating and telling me where the three escaped convicts can be found.  We have checked and the Leviathan is not currently in orbit around this commerce planet.  Redeem your honor and tell me where they went."

Aeryn held herself at attention, eyes straight ahead and did not respond.

Kreel nodded and smiled in anticipation.  "All right then if you won't volunteer the information then we will take it from you.  Guard, take her." One of the two guards moved forward while the other continued to cover the prisoners.

"She doesn't know where they are!" Crichton intervened.

"Crichton!" Aeryn said sharply.

"She doesn't know where they are because they abandoned us here!"

"And why would they do that, abandon a comrade?" Kreel sneered.

"They had been held prisoner by Peacekeepers for cycles.  Officer Sun was a Peacekeeper.  They never trusted her.  They dumped her the first good chance they got," Crichton explained.

"That might explain why they sent her down but why you?  According to our files, you are not a Peacekeeper."

"That's not the half of it, I'm not even..."

"Important." Aeryn jumped in quickly.  "He wasn't important and he wasn't useful.  He was a drain on their resources so they left him."

"If they were going to leave you here then why would they give you these?" Kreel said, holding out their communication badges.

"I said they abandoned us here.  I guess they didn't want us to know what they were planning.  They sent us to the planet and then left us here.  The communicators don't work any more, the Leviathan is out of range."  Crichton said tightly, fighting down the heave in his gorge.

"Plausible story," the Lieutenant said.  "However, I am certain that that is all that it is, a story."  He motioned. "Guards, take them both to interrogation."  Kreel gave them one more dismissive look and then left through the still open door.

One of the guards brought out a pair of hand binders and started toward Sun as the other continued to cover them.  "Hands behind your back," he said gruffly.  Aeryn started to comply.  Crichton  suddenly bent over and started to retch.  Even a trained Peacekeeper was unable to stop the distracted and involuntary disgust response of stepping back to avoid getting vomit on his boots.

Aeryn exploded into action.  She rushed the guard in the split second that his eyes were down and pushed him into the other.  Both were knocked back, the impact knocking the rifle out of position.  Not losing her momentum, she kicked out with her foot.  The guard who had been going to bind her arms went down in a huff as the air was knocked out of him.  He lay unconscious on the floor.  The other fought to regain his stance and reposition his rifle.  He and Aeryn's hands were on it as they struggled.

"Stop!" Crichton shouted.  He had recovered the rifle of the downed guard and pointed it threateningly at the one with whom Aeryn battled.

The guard opened his hands and allowed Aeryn to take the weapon.  She adjusted the setting quickly and shot him.

"Aeryn!" John said in belated protest.

"I didn't kill him, he's only stunned," she said hurriedly as she stepped to the door and looked both ways up the corridors to make sure that they hadn't been heard.  Seeing no one, she stepped back in, pulling the door too but not closing it completely.  She knelt and began stripping the guard.  "That was quick thinking, Crichton, distracting the guards like that.  Here, put this on and let's get out of here."  She handed him the jacket.

John, now feeling much better, lay down the rifle and shrugged into the jacket.  It was a passable fit.  His pants and boots were already black and to the casual eye he looked like any other Peacekeeper that might be wandering the halls.  He picked back up the gun.  "What about you?"

"There's nothing here that will fit me, I'll just have to chance it."

John looked around the small room.  "Actually, there is one thing that will fit you just fine," he said as he reached to retrieve the binders.  He explained his idea while Aeryn adamantly shook her head.


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