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Just Another Day in the Life of John Crichton
Just Another Day in the Life of John Crichton...or is it?
Author: LeatherGirl
Summary: Something strange is happening on Moya and no one can quite figure out why Crichton suddenly seems to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Archiving: anywhere-contact me first please!
Category: Action
Rating: PG-13
Warnings/Spoilers: none really, but all relationships of characters are pretty much up to date to ACN
Disclaimers: the usual
Note from Author: This story is copyrighted. It is also an entry for the second annual SACCer Challenge. Enjoy! Feedback is greatly appreciated!
Hissing with intense heat and steam, the duct spewed its contents out into the interior of the docking bay. This only added to the unstable atmosphere as sparks were flying in every direction from their source, John’s module. But this was not the end of the events gone awry. No, there was more. The temperature was dipping quickly to frosty temperatures that even Moya could not tolerate. A thick smell of heavy oil-scented smoke billowed throughout the bay. The floor of the docking bay was coated with a brownish-green thin liquid that resembled gooey slime and smelled worse than anything imaginable in the entire Uncharted Territories. The lights faltered for several moments as things continued to worsen.
Aeryn cowered in her Prowler’s cockpit, a loaded pulse rifle securely fastened in each white-knuckled, gripping hand. Chianna was hanging for dear life onto the side of the Moya’s interior wall, shivering and struggling not to let her body weight pull her down onto the floor. Zhaan stood on top of a crate, taking the scene in with a shocked expression. Rygel had just hovered into the docking bay and stopped short, avoiding a flow of steam from the duct above and arriving at Zhaan’s side with an equal expression on his face. Pilot’s image seemed frozen on the clamshell nearby as he pondered the scene before him. D’Argo stood in the center of the bay next to the Transport Pod. The front of the pod was crunched into the side of Moya’s interior wall, with various shards of metal littered around the ground near the scene of impact. Pooled around D’Argo’s stilled feet were several small crates smashed and leaking the horrible liquid that had now made its way to the entrance leading into the rest of Moya. He wore a look of shock on his face. The aliens had been standing in confusion for what seemed like several monens to John. He stood near D’Argo, frozen in step, absorbing the scene around him.
That’s the precise moment when everyone heard the loud, undistinguishable cracking sound of something breaking. There was only enough time to look. A portion of a duct came hurtling down from the ceiling of Moya…in the direction of John Crichton.
John would have laughed at the unanimous scream from each and every alien aboard Moya including Pilot. He probably would have laughed at the look on his face, too. There wasn’t even a second to think. The duct hurled down and came crashing into the floor with a loud bang, sending pieces of biomechanoid parts into the air and splashing droplets of liquid on everyone and everything in the docking bay. As the pieces settled and everyone had a chance to take their next breath, only a cry of surprise could be heard from the most mystified individual in the room. John Crichton stood, sprayed from his waist down in liquid guck, metal shards scattered around him, staring at the damaged duct and then making eye contact with every individual in the room.
“What the Frell just happened?” John finally asked, breaking the silence of conversation since the transport pod slid into the wall of the docking bay. Silence continued for another micron.
“How did you get out of the way so fast? I didn’t even see you move!” Chianna asked, still clinging to the wall. She tilted her head back at Crichton with a bewildered look spreading across her face.
“You tell me. I didn’t.” John stated distractedly, glancing nervously back up at the ceiling, slightly crouching in a pose as if ready to dart out of the way of another falling duct.
“I’ve got a better question…what happened in here?” Zhaan asked. She glanced down at the oozing liquid and then to John, thinking he would be able to answer. John gave her a bewildered look and shrugged before turning his gaze to D’Argo, who still work a look of shock on his face. The look of shock slowly melted into one of frustration.
“The transport pod malfunctioned…probably because of some repairs you made, no doubt. I couldn’t stop it from smashing into Moya. Pilot, is Moya okay?” D’Argo explained. He loosened his tense pose and began to shift his feet. The goo strung upwards, clinging to his boot as he lifted his foot to examine the foul liquid. D’Argo frowned and lowered his foot, again looking to Crichton.
“Moya is okay…but I don’t think we’ll be able to use the transport pod anymore…it’s beyond repair.” Pilot reported, still taking in the scene displayed to him.
“Next time you decide to take Chianna with you to gather supplies I suggest you secure Chianna in an airlock! Her gift for procuring items of unusual content seems to be quite frequent on these little trips to the commerce planets!” Aeryn stated angrily, standing up in her Prowler and throwing an angry glare at Chianna.
“Indeed, perhaps you should have brought a Dominar such as myself, gifted with the ways of negotiation, to bring aboard some items of real value!” Rygel stated with a huff. He turned his throne sled towards the exit and headed out of the docking bay.
“Those crates were filled with a very rare synthetic liquid used to strengthen fellip nectar. Kylian Fectar. When the two liquids are stored together, over time, they converge and form quite a tasty and heavily rich drink!” Chianna stated, obviously offended by the way her shipmates viewed her shopping talents. She jumped down from the wall and wringing out her arms, sore from hanging onto the wall for so long. Why she had run to the wall for protection in the first place was beyond even her sense of reasoning.
“You bought fermenting supplies for alcohol? I didn’t think they had stuff like that out here. Nice choice, Chi. Next time, just buy the fellip nectar and save us all the headache.” John stated, thrusting his hand out as he talked.
“If D’Argo hadn’t stored them so close to the exit of the transport pod, we wouldn’t have this problem, now would we?” Chianna asked, cocking her head to the right. She posed with a smile on her face and looked as D’Argo began to sneer at her. She was beginning to enjoy…what was it that John said…pissing off him? Chianna crumpled her nose at that thought and turned her attention back to the matters at hand.
“Just let it go, Pip. Why don’t you go get something to clean this up, huh? Pilot, get some DRDs down here. This place is a mess.” John ordered. Chianna gave him a look but John pretended not to see it. She spun on her heels and left the room with her nose in the air. John looked to Zhaan and Aeryn, who were still observing the scene quietly.
“Girls, girls. It’s just a little sticky goo. It’s not some green slime monster that’s gonna come out of the swamp and snatch you at the ankles and tug you under or anything. Come on.” John stated with a smile. He mushed his feet around in the goo to show them just how harmless the stuff was. Unfortunately, at that moment, John’s foot began to slide out of control, heading in one direction while the rest of his body decided to fall backwards. John let out a yelp and grimaced for impact. But the slimy impact never came. John opened his eyes and found himself in Aeryn’s arms. She stared at him with a nonchalant look and helped him back to his feet. John looked to her with one eyebrow raised and straightened with embarrassment.
“Gee, thanks. How’d you get to me so fast?” John frowned looking to Aeryn with question. The Prowler was several metras away from where they stood now. Aeryn smiled and shrugged, before walking over and picking up her weapons she had dropped in the cockpit of her Prowler.
“PeaceKeeper instinct, I guess.” Aeryn checked her weapons over and looked to Pilot’s image.
“Pilot, are systems intact?”
“Yyyes…I believe so. Moya and I are finding it difficult to understand how this all happened.” Pilot wore a look of concern on his face as he fiddled with some controls in front of him. Systems were still in check. The steam from the duct within the docking bay came to a slow steady whir and soon dissipated completely.
“Friday the 13th.” John stated, displaying a foolish look on his face that Aeryn could not possibly interpret. “Déjà vu. Come on, people, don’t you ever experience freak events that just don’t make sense? It happens all the time on Earth.”
“What are you frelling talking about? We must clean this place up! This dren is unimaginably the worst smelling thing since Rygel.” D’Argo ordered, slightly angered over his poor landing.
“Better yet, let’s just let Moya flush this entire bay out into space and save ourselves the trouble…and our stomachs.” John said, daring not to inhale the foul scent too deeply.
“By the Goddess, what else is going to go wrong here?” Zhaan finally said. The others turned to her almost forgetting that she was even in the room. Zhaan looked to the three with a concerned expression and stepped off the crate, her bare foot forming into the goo as she walked out of the room. John grimaced at the fact that Zhaan didn’t seem to mind walking barefoot in the slime from Hell. The fact that she was bare foot told him that she had been previously meditating…or whatever it was that Zhaan did when she was on her own time.
“At least you didn’t hit my module.” John stated turning to his precious ship he spent much of his spare time spiffing up. John’s eyes widened in shock and his mouth dropped open. His module was crisped to the bare skeleton in one large, nasty gaping hole to the side of the cockpit. John slipped and slid over to his module and caressed the still singeing metal with painful realization. He looked back to Aeryn and D’Argo allowing barely a whimper to escape past his lips.
D’Argo smirked and turned his attention to cleaning up the mess he had caused. Aeryn holstered her weapons. After the initial shock of the transport pod ramming towards her, she was beginning to calm down. Only moments before, she and Crichton had been discussing certain matters beside her Prowler. When the transport pod came crashing towards them, Aeryn saw Crichton had been in the path of destruction. She only glanced away for a second to see if the pod would stop in time before hitting the wall. When she looked back, Crichton was fine and barely inches from the steaming wreckage. The door to the pod flung open, Chianna raced out of the pod in fear with D’Argo close behind and Crichton running to get away in case of an explosion. How she ended up in the cockpit of her own Prowler was beyond her reasoning.
“Tell you what. I’m just going to walk out of here right now and pretend that nothing has happened and that my module is fine. See ya.” Crichton stated quickly without waiting for a response and headed out of the room. Aeryn turned to D’Argo and shook her head.
“For once we can’t blame this on Crichton.” Aeryn stated with a smile. D’Argo lightened for a moment to share a smile with Aeryn. A chunk of loose metal slid off of the transport pod and landed with a splash nearby. D’Argo’s smile soiled slightly and he turned back to cleaning up the mess. Several DRDs began to filter into the room, pausing at the very edge of the pool of slime threatening to spread into the hall. They activated several mechanisms to rise out from their body shells, poking and prodding at the mysterious liquid before burning their lasers onto the stuff to see what would happen.
“I’m going to talk to Pilot. I’m sure Chianna will show up sooner or later…she can only hide for so long.” Aeryn stated, referring to the fact that Chianna was young and didn’t like to face up to her mistakes too readily. D’Argo nodded in agreement, his face displaying a look of disgust. Aeryn then headed off towards Pilots den.
*****
Crichton only had a moment to yell one word of warning before the throne sled Rygel had just stepped off began to go haywire. The throne sled shook with a maddening rage and began to overheat, sending sparks into the air. The machine then began to zig zag around the room, barely smashing into the walls several times in Command. John ducked twice to get out of the possessed chair’s target, once shoving Rygel underneath a control table as it whisked past one of his whiskers. John hovered near Rygel and called to Pilot. There was no answer. Suddenly, without warning, the throne sled exploded and zoomed at light speed-right for Rygel. Rygel muttered helplessly in fear and John pushed Rygel out of the path of the doomed sled, surely to be struck instead. To Crichton and Rygel’s amazement, just as the heat of flames brushed before them, the throne sled clunked to the floor. The fire was completely out, leaving behind a burnt, crisp throne sled. Rygel looked to Crichton with absolute astonishment only to receive the same look back. The two scurried out from underneath the table and stepped back several large steps. John nervously twiddled his fingers and looked to Rygel. The same thought passed through their minds…get out before something else happens! Rygel scurried in one direction and John in the other.
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Continued to Page 2
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