Title: Chasing Aeryn
Author: Paradox761
Email: Paradox761@mail.com
Website: members.tripod.com/~Paradox761
Disclaimer: Joss and co. own all things Buffy, and SFC (in their infinite stupidity) own Farscape. No copyright infringement is intended, so please don’t sue. I don’t have any money anyway. Some elements of this story and some dialogue have been taken from the Farscape episode “Promises”, no plagiarism is intended.
Summary: Following another lead on Aeryn's location, the crew of Moya discovers her Prowler adrift. But when they bring it aboard, they find someone unconscious inside. Someone who is not Aeryn, but who may be able to lead them to her. Will they find Aeryn? And will Xander be able to control the beast that he has discovered still lurks within him?
Author’s note: This story is the fourth in the ‘Sympathetic Ear’ series, following A Sympathetic Ear, Back to the Uncharted Territories, and Enter the Cleavage. Special thanks to A. Grandt, Rob Clark, MagnusXXN, Forgotten Code, dragon_hulk, C. J. Whittaker, Greywizard, Hatten, Calen, Saffi, Woodlandchild, and Paradigm Shifter for the feedback. It’s much appreciated.
Dedication: To Jordan and Jessica, my angels. May they rest in peace.
(BtVS/Farscape, Xander/Chiana, John/Aeryn)

(4/6)

Xander made it to the Hangar bay without incident. He found Chiana sitting cross-legged on the hood of the DeLorean, staring off into space. She looked to be lost in thought. He walked over to her quickly.

“Chi,” he said, breaking her out of her daze. She turned to him and smiled slightly. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just thinking.”

“What about?” Xander asked. He knew that he should be getting her to Pilot’s den, but something about her expression made him curious.

“Do you remember how we met?”

“Of course.”

“I was this strange creature on your world, speaking a strange language. You didn’t know if I was friendly or hostile, or a demon or what. But you treated me with kindness. I was confused and scared, and you put me at ease. You risked your life to protect me, and you didn’t even know me.”

“I knew that you didn’t deserve what the army had in store for you.”

“You were amazing that night.”

Xander cleared his throat and looked at the floor. He was never very good at accepting compliments, especially from someone that he was feeling guilty about keeping secrets from. “Why the sudden trip down memory lane?” he asked.

Chiana slid across the hood closer to Xander, taking both of his hands in hers. “You’ve been so wonderful to me. From the moment we met, until we were reunited again, and even now, it seems like all you do is help me. I want to help you. I want to show you how much I care about you, the way you show me.”

“I don’t understand, help me with what?”

“I know that you’re dealing with something, something that happened on Grayza’s ship. I know that you’re used to doing things on your own, but you don’t have to anymore. I want you to know that you have me to lean on now.”

“Chi, you don’t have to…”

“I know I don’t have to. That’s exactly why I want to.”

Xander found himself staring into her eyes. They were filled with such warmth, such concern, such…it had been a long time since he had felt that from another person. Part of him wanted to give into that feeling so much, but the rest of him was scared. Xander considered himself to be a fairly brave man. He’d risk his life, his body, his mind for what he believed in, at the drop of a hat. But when it came to risking his heart, he was a coward.

“I, um…Pilot needs us. He’s having problems with the comms, and…”

“I’m sure Pilot can wait a little while.”

“No, he really can’t, trust me.”

“Xander, I know you’re scared, but you can’t keep hiding from this.”

“I’m not, I swear. This really is important, it’s…Frell!”

Xander fell backwards and pulled Chiana with him just as an energy bolt sizzled through the air above her head. He pushed Chiana to the side and drew his pulse pistol, peering over the hood of the car across the Hangar bay. He raised the weapon and fired twice before ducking back down again.

“What the frell was that!” Chiana exclaimed.

“Told you it was important. We have company, and not the good kind,” Xander answered.

“Peace Keepers?”

“No, pirates or bounty hunters probably. Same species as the freighter captain that told us Aeryn was on L’lidor.”

“So this was a trap! How did they get onboard? When? What are we going to do?”

“Yes, don’t know, don’t know, and kick their asses,” Xander answered curtly before popping up and firing again. He ducked down again as the fire was returned. “We have to get back to Pilot’s den, make our stand there. The others are already there. I was hoping to make it before they made their move, before they knew that we knew they were aboard.”

“Xander, I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

Xander shook his head. “Not your fault. Are you carrying a weapon?” Chiana nodded and drew a small energy pistol from behind her back. “Good. There’s only one of them now, we have to do this quick before his friends get here. I’ll draw his fire, you pick him off when he exposes himself. He’s using Aeryn’s Prowler for cover. Keep a sharp eye.”

“Xander, wait.”

He was already making his way toward the back of the DeLorean. “No time,” he said before darting out into the open bay. He made his way to John’s module, firing his pistol the whole way.

Chiana peeked above the time machine’s hood toward the Prowler at the other end of the hangar. She saw a man dressed in black poke up from behind it and aim his weapon at Xander. She didn’t think, she just reacted. She raised her own weapon, and fired. She struck the nose of the Prowler, a good metra from her target. The pirate swung around and took aim at her. She didn’t have enough time to get down, she was as good as dead.

Until a red energy bolt lanced across the bay and struck the pirate in the side, knocking him down. Xander kept firing as he ran back to Chiana’s position. He didn’t bother to check whether the man was alive, dead, or injured. There wasn’t time, there were others no doubt on their way. “Pilot’s den, now! Go, go!” he yelled.

Chiana didn’t need to be told twice. She sprang up and followed Xander out of the Hangar bay at a full run.

*

To John’s credit, he managed to make it aboard Lo’La before he lost it. He grabbed Scorpius by the front of his coolant suit and threw him up against the wall. “You knew, you bastard!” he hissed, his face inches from Scorpius. “That’s why you were so frelling calm, you knew! What did you do to her? Why is she trying to protect you?”

“John, what are you talking about?” D’Argo asked.

“Aeryn,” John started. “She made me promise not to kill him. She won’t save her own life, but she’ll save his!”

“John, I assure you, I had no idea…” Scorpius began.

John slammed him against the wall again. “Bullshit! You knew there was no reason to keep you around once we had Aeryn. You had to have known. Why? Why!”

“I did save her life, John,” Scorpius answered. “Perhaps she feels that she owes me the same.”

“I don’t buy it.”

“Believe what you will, the fact is I had no idea that she would make you promise such a thing.”

John glared at the hybrid a moment longer before letting go of him and turning his back. He kicked the back of the pilot’s chair with frustration and screamed.

“I take it Aeryn isn’t going to give Ullom what he wants,” D’Argo said.

“She said she gave her word,” John answered. “Apparently she feels that’s more important than her life.” Scorpius opened his mouth to speak but John interrupted him. “If you say ‘I told you so’ Scorpy, promise or no, I’ll shove you out of an airlock.” Scorpius didn’t think he’d really do it, but he chose to keep silent.

“I say we kill him anyway,” D’Argo said.

John sat down in the co-pilot’s seat and let his head fall into his hands. He shook his head. “No. Aeryn has her reasons. And until we know what they are, I don’t feel comfortable going against her.” He looked up and glared at Scorpius again. “But that doesn’t mean you get a get out of jail free card. You cross the line and I will take you down. A promise isn’t worth risking any of our lives.”

“Understood,” Scorpius said simply.

“So what do we do now?” D’Argo asked. “We can’t fight our way out, and we can’t talk our way out.”

“Actually, I don’t believe that to be entirely true,” Scorpius said.

“What are you talking about?” John asked.

“I made an observation aboard Ullom’s ship. I believe I understand now the strange mass readings we’ve been getting from it.”

“What sort of observation?” D’Argo asked.

“The fact that Aeryn was being kept in a cell only a short corridor away from the docking port made me wonder. On a ship as large as this, it seemed unusual. I believe that this ship’s bulk is an illusion, a projection.”

“That makes sense, this guy seems big on holograms,” John said. “How big do you think it actually is?”

“Small. A crew of four or five at the most.”

“That’s certainly better odds,” John said, glancing at D’Argo. The Luxan just nodded. “Now all we need is a plan.”

*

Xander and Chiana made it to Pilot’s den in a few minutes, luckily having not run into anymore pirates. Xander shut the door behind them and made his way toward the others. A quick head count showed that they were all there. “Is this room sealed?”

“All other access points have been closed,” Pilot confirmed.

“Why didn’t you just tell us what was going on?!” Rygel demanded angrily.

“I didn’t want to tip off our visitors, they could have been listening. Unfortunately, we weren’t quite fast enough. One of them opened fire on us in the Hangar bay. They know that we know they’re here now. Pilot, shut down any of the consoles that you haven’t already.”

“Understood.”

“Have you figured out why we can read these guys on sensors?” Xander asked, motioning toward the prisoner who was still bound on the floor in front of Pilot’s console.

“He appears to be wearing some kind of stealth suit. The material is reflecting Moya’s scans.”

“Would Moya be able to detect them without the interference from the nebula?” Xander asked.

“Hard to say,” Pilot answered. “But most likely she would be able to get some kind of reading.”

“Then we should leave the nebula,” Rygel said. “Find out where these invaders are and flush them out into space.”

Xander shook his head. “We can’t leave, we don’t know what’s out there.”

“We know what’s in here!” Rygel insisted. “If we don’t they will eventually find a way to get into this room.”

“They could have more ships waiting for us,” Xander argued. “Hell, Grayza herself could be out there.”

“So what do we do?” Jool asked.

Xander looked down at their prisoner. “These guys new exactly when, where, and how to hit us. We need more information.” He kneeled down in front of the man and took the gag out of his mouth.

Rygel hovered next to Xander, looking down at the prisoner with a sneer. “On that point we agree,” he said. Chiana, Jool, and Noranti stood behind them.

Xander patted one of the DRDs that sat next to the prisoner. “You guys can scoot now,” he said. The droids beeped in acquiescence before scuttling away. Xander turned back to the pirate. “Why don’t we start with, who the hell are you guys and what are you doing on our ship?” Xander asked.

“I won’t tell you anything,” the prisoner said with a tremble in his voice. He was clearly scared.

“Give me an hour with him and a tokar knife and I’ll learn everything he knows,” Rygel said.

Xander glanced sideways at the Hynerian. He had no intention of letting that happen, but there was no reason to let the pirate know that. “We’ll save that as a last resort,” he said.

“I could whip up some truth potion,” Noranti offered, kneeling down next to Xander.

Xander seemed to consider it. “I don’t know, the last guy who drank one of your potions ended up vomiting out his internal organs,” Xander bluffed.

“That was quite a mess,” Noranti said, playing along. “But I’m pretty sure I know what went wrong.”

“Zendali!” the pirate blurted out. “We’re Zendali.”

“I’ve heard of their species,” Noranti said. “Their planet was destroyed forty cycles ago when their star went nova.”

Rygel nodded. “Refugees who fancy themselves pirates.”

“We are pirates!” the Zendali insisted.

“How did you get aboard?” Xander asked.

“There’s an access port on all Leviathans, tier seven, hammond side. It’s primarily used for waste disposal. We modified our ship’s docking port to dock with it.”

Xander glanced up at Pilot. “He is correct, there is such an access port.”

“These guys sure did their homework. Can you tell if there’s a ship docked there?” Xander asked.

“Negative. The interference is too great.”

Xander turned back to the prisoner. “How did you know we’d be here?”

“We happened upon the Sebacean mercenaries on L’lidor, we knew the fugitive Aeryn Sun was among them. Rather then attacking them, or attacking your ship, both battles we would no doubt lose, my Captain had the idea to lure you to L’lidor. We knew that in the process of recovering your comrade, you would be vulnerable.”

“You knew we’d split up and hide Moya in the nebula,” Xander said.

“We hid our ship in the nebula first, and waited.”

“How many of you are aboard?”

“Fifteen.”

“What about Scorpius?” Xander asked. “What part did he play in this plan?”

“Who?”

“Scorpius. Scarren/Sebacean hybrid, about so tall, dressed like a dominatrix.”

“I don’t know this person.”

“He’s lying,” Rygel said. “Scorpius has to be behind this.”

Xander considered their prisoner for a moment. It didn’t make sense that he would tell them the truth about everything else and then lie about Scorpius. So either he was lying about all of it, or Scorpius really wasn’t involved, or he was and this guy just didn’t know about it.

Xander stood and turned back to Pilot. “What about the rest of the stuff on his belt, did you figure out what it was?”

“Various weapons and tools, a communications device, nothing out of the ordinary,” Pilot answered.

“Anything Moya can track?”

“Not as long as we remain in the nebula.”

“What about changes in temperature or air currents? Can she detect anything like that?”

“Again, not while we are still in this nebula.”

The others all had their attention turned to Xander and Pilot as they speculated as to what to do next. No one noticed the Zendali pulling his bonds apart behind his back.

“I say we shut down life support everywhere but Pilot’s den and let them all suffocate,” Rygel said.

“They’d have plenty of time to get back to their ship,” Xander pointed out. “And for all we know, they have EVA suits.”

“And Moya cannot shutdown life support in every chamber without a complete systems shutdown,” Pilot added. “Which would also deactivate it for this chamber.”

Chiana was standing closest to the prisoner, but even she didn’t notice when he got his hands free. “What about the temperature?” Chiana asked. “Can’t we cook them out, like we did with those Peace-Keepers that time?”

“Zendali don’t have the same weakness to heat as Sebaceans do,” Jool said.

“And again, all they have to do is go back to their ship and wait us out,” Xander pointed out.

The Zendali struck fast and hard. He jumped to his feet and snatched his weapon from Pilot’s console in one motion. He reached out and grabbed Chiana around the neck, dragging her back with him as he put his weapon against her head. He kept her between him and the others. The whole thing took less than a microt.

“Back up, all of you, or I’ll kill her!”

There was a stunned moment of silence where everyone just looked at each other, like they couldn’t believe that they had been so stupid. Even Chiana looked more embarrassed than scared.

Rygel broke the silence with his usual tact. “I told you, you should have let me do it my way.”

“Shut-up! Drop your weapons! All of you, now!”

Xander’s face was cold as ice, and his eyes never left the Zendali’s as he slowly unfastened his gun belt and let it drop to the floor. Jool slowly reached behind her back and retrieved an energy pistol, which she dropped to the floor. Rygel did the same. Noranti stood perfectly still, her hands raised, as she had no weapon to drop.

“The sword too!”

Xander slowly pulled Hero from the sheath on his back and laid the sword on the floor. “You’re making a big mistake,” Xander said, his voice deceptively calm.

“You’re the one who’s made a mistake! It didn’t have to be like this. You could have just come quietly and nobody would have gotten hurt. We would have turned you over to the Peace-Keepers, collected our bounty and been on our way. But now you have to learn, that nobody frells with the Zendali!”

On the outside Xander may have appeared calm, but what no one could see was the rage that was boiling inside of him. It was building, with every passing second this piece of dren held a gun to Chiana’s head. First they threaten his home, his pack, and now his mate. He knew it was the hyena talking, but he didn’t care. He could feel the beast inside of him, beating against the walls of his cage, screaming to be released. And for the first time since the animal had been reawakened, he allowed himself to admit that he was tempted to give in. Maybe that’s all it took. One single moment of weakness for the beast to gain a foothold.

Xander slowly took a step toward the pirate. And then another, and another. “Stay back! I’ll kill her, I mean it!” But Xander’s slow and deliberate pace continued, his eyes never leaving the other man’s. The normally warm brown orbs were filled with cold determination. The others exchanged puzzled looks behind him, even Chiana was starting to look worried. “One more step and I’ll kill her, I swear it!” But Xander didn’t stop. He could smell his fear, and he knew that the pirate knew that if he killed her, he would be dead before either of their bodies hit the ground, and he was too afraid of death to chance that. But what the pirate didn’t know was that it didn’t matter, he was as good as dead the second he pressed a weapon against Chiana’s head.

That’s when he made his mistake. Xander was less than a metra from him when he panicked. He took the weapon from Chiana’s head and pointed it at Xander. It was all the opening that Xander needed. He lunged forward, knocking the gun one way and Chiana the other as he tackled the pirate to the floor.

By the time Chiana rolled away and stood up, the room was filled with the screams of the Zendali, along with an inhuman high-pitch cackle that she didn’t recognize. She could only see Xander from the back as he was sitting on top of the pirate, beating the hell out of him. The sounds of bones crunching could be heard between screams. Until finally Xander bent down, and one final shriek sounded, ending with a gurgling sound.

The silence that followed was in a way even more frightening than the bawling of the pirate, because it meant that he was dead. That Xander had killed him with his bare hands. Everyone in the room wore near identical horrified expressions as they watched Xander stand up, except for Jool who had dived to the ground when Xander attacked and was still lying there. His posture looked different as he stood, more hunched over, his legs wider apart. Finally, Chiana worked up the nerve to break the silence.

“Xander.”

He turned at the sound of his name and snarled. What they saw made everyone take a step back and caused Chiana to gasp. His hands and mouth were covered in blood. His once brown eyes now blazed yellow, and his canine teeth protruded longer than normal. There was no humanity left in his eyes, only bloodlust. His expression softened though as he locked eyes with Chiana. He sniffed the air and made a few grunts as he tentatively stepped toward her. Chiana instinctively took a step back.

“Xander…what…” The question died in her throat as she realized that she didn’t even know what to ask. She just couldn’t wrap her mind around what she was seeing, what it meant.

That’s when Jool finally lifted her head up and saw what was happened. She caught her first look of the hyena possessed Xander and did what came natural to her. She screamed.

The shriek ripped through the room, drilling into everyone’s head like a bore. Xander cried out with a growl, even more affected by the high pitch sound than usual. He turned and ran toward the door.

“Xander, wait!” Chiana called out. But it was too late. He hit the control on the side of the door and slipped out into the corridor before anyone could stop him. His animalistic cackle echoed as he left.

They all just stood in stunned silence for a few moments, no one quite sure what to make of what just happened. Finally, Rygel vocalized all of their thoughts with five words.

“What the frell was that?!”




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