Part I

Prowler pilot.

L'Tan Sun felt a silent twinge of jealously as she studied her opponent from across the exercise mat. Delvar Corsair was big, brutish, made more for infantry than a prowler pilot. He was not fast, just clever and strong. And, until now, very lucky.

"What are you waiting for, Sun?" Corsair shifted the blade from hand to hand and lowered his cunning brown eyes on her from beneath the disheveled hood of dirty blond hair. "I've got a schedule to keep."

"Would that include stopping in the surgical bay for sutures?" The corner of her mouth curled up into a dangerous smirk.

"Be happy to walk you--"

Swiftly she charged him before he could finish his taunt. She ducked the surprised swing of his blade, to throw her weight below his center of gravity. Balance cut from under him, Corsair fell forward, recovering at the last minute into a neat roll.

"Clever... for what I've heard about you." He granted her an icy smile as he regained his footing, eyes daring her to move. A brief flicker of mock disappointment fluttered over his face. "But you didn't get me."

"Slow to move. Slow to bleed." L'Tan jerked her chin at the spreading blossom of red along the flank of his white shirt. "Corsair, do you do everything as slowly? How did you ever become a pilot?"

The surprised look on his face was brief, but the wave of satisfaction stayed with her much longer. Her smirk broadened into a smug smile that failed to touch the dare in her green eyes.

"This is only an exercise, Sun." His fingers traced the flesh blood to come away deep maroon. The anger was gravel in his voice as he stared her down. "You're lucky it wasn't deeper."

"No...You are." She arched an eyebrow, smirk evaporating.

"That's it, Sun." All pretense at play disappeared. The knuckles wrapping the shaft of his blade were a baleful white. "If that's how you want to play... "

But she made no response. The purpose had been served. His concentration was compromised. She remained motionless, blade en guard, to calmly watched him circle like a great murderous beast.

"If the stories I've heard about you are right, I shouldn't be surprised. Should expect such behavior out of a hybrid."

"Careful, Corsair." She warned. L'Tan felt the sudden build of blood along the skin of her neck despite her self-control.

"Did I hit a nerve?" He granted her a deadly smile of even white teeth.

His strike was furious and hard, sending her knife with a muted clatter to the floor. She grasped his wrist, halting his blade a hair's width from her throat. But his strength was greater, too much to overpower. Instead she flexed with the momentum of his body, bending into it, feeling the brief sting of cold metal on her skin.

Balance spent, she fell with him to the mat, her weight forcing the flat edge of his blade between them. They lay, face to face, locked in a stalemate over the weapon, gasping for breath.

"You shouldn't listen to rumors. Very dangerous." L'Tan purred through clenched teeth.

"A threat?" He pulled at his knife. Her command on his wrist was slipping. "From the product of irreversible contamination?"

"I warned you."

With a quick burst of feline grace, she arched her neck and brought her forehead down full force against his. She rolled from his chest and stood shakily. Her forehead pounded painfully in time with her racing pulse as she cautiously retrieved her blade.

With eyes like flat stones, she regarded her fallen opponent. Corsair rolled into his hands and knees, blood slipping from his broken nose. The quiet air was filled with the sound of the thick heavy droplets slapping the mat.

"Bitch. Frelling half-breed bitch!" He spat in a plume of saliva and blood.

L'Tan slipped behind him to grab a fistful of his hair. Her knife pushed under the crook of his jaw to lightly kiss the skin there.

Too easy. Almost disappointingly so.

Prowler pilot.

Indeed.

Like a lover she moved closer to whisper into his ear. Her chestnut hair fell from her unraveled plait to flirt with his cheek. "Now... choose your next words very carefully, Corsair. Do you yield?"

"Frell you!"

"What's that?" She mocked, with a painful tug at his hair. The blade dug deeper, bringing new blood. "My baser heritage must affect my hearing."

"Yield... I yield." He hissed.

#

My ship.

Jocosta.

L'Tan repeated the words over and over silently. A private chant, as she moved a tremulous hand along the prowler's sleek hull. A rush of pride filled her heart. The ship was beautiful, unique. Any other prowler paled in comparison and with good reason. It represented a full cycle of tireless work; built from the deck up with her own bare hands. And now it was ready.

The quiet was suddenly broken by the insolent hiss of a cutting torch. L'Tan followed the sound around the prowler's sharp nose. Her face twisted into an incredulous scowl. The torch rested in the clumsy hands of a technician. He was cutting her ship!

"What the frell are you doing?" L'Tan grabbed the torch from the shocked man's hands before he could gather his words.

"Orders! Remove the secondary shielding components." He blurted out, reaching for the torch like a greedy toddler.

"What? Who's frelling orders?" L'Tan held the torch out of his grasp like a school yard bully.

"You know who... him." His voice took on the frigid lilt of a taunt.

Him.

Scorpius.

With a disdainful sneer at the tech, she tossed the torch over the Jacosta's arched canopy to skitter noisily along the deck of the deserted hangar.

"Go fetch." She glared.

He drew breath to speak, thought better of it, and left in pursuit of the cutter.

My Ship. Jocosta.

A cold stone of dread formed in her stomach.
But the Jocosta was never really hers.
Not really.

"L'Tan... We seem to be missing our pilot. You wouldn't know the whereabouts of Officer Corsair, by chance?" Her master's voice snapped the silence.

She felt her spine constrict with surprise. Smoothing her face into a dispassionate mask, she turned to regard him.

Her s'duhar, an ancient Sebacean endearment, the owner of her life. Her patron and demon. Scorpius.

He stood, back-lit. A manifestation of shadow and darkness, seeming to know and fully enjoy the dreadful image he presented to her, an object of loathe and, above all, worship.

L'Tan, bowed her head and demurely kept her eyes on some imagined middle distance between them. Her emotions were a devotional of perfect fear and awe.

"There was a… small accident sparring today. Corsair requires sutures." Her voice was soft and reverent as she stole a side-long glance to judge his reaction. Fear of his anger clawed at the walls of her chest.

Scorpius lifted her chin with one gloved finger and she looked into those eyes, capable of piercing the pale shade of her soul. There was a breathless moment before his black lips split into a reptile's smile. A distantly amused chuckle followed like the rasp of dry leaves on stone.

"Be more careful with our pilots, L'Tan. They are not playthings."

"Yes, s'duhar." The clawed creature in her chest relaxed, basking in the dim promise of his approval.

"Now... why are you troubling our technician, young Sun?" His tone was smooth, patronizing. It told her to move with caution, but her impatience to protect her ship was stronger. With a snap of his black hooded head, he pivoted, surveying the Jocosta.

She winced at the plaintive desperation in her own voice. "He was removing the secondary shielding-- "

"At my direction, L'Tan." Scorpius interrupted. His rheumy gaze fell on her, a reprimand unvoiced.

"But... the shielding is essential. The pilot would be vulnerable to-- "

"I am aware of the risks. They are acceptable." He said over his back, as he once again regarded the experimental ship. "The shielding creates interference with the wormhole development."

L'Tan weathered his following tense silence. She had over-stepped the mark to question her master. A punishment might come. Swift. Irreversible. He could easily turn on his prize, his pet. There were enough scars on her body to remind her of that.

"You have come to forget your position of late." He would not turn to face her. A hint of exasperation edged his words. "I've have been more than patient with you. I am more than generous. I've given you free roam on this carrier, and I've turned a blind eye to your... personal engagements."

"Yes, s'duhar. Forgive me. I owe you everything." L'Tan fell to her knees in a graceless heap, head bowed.

Penance. Regret. Fear.
Her trinity swam in a muttering mass through her head. The only way of life she had known since she was first brought before him as a terrified child twelve cycles ago.

"You are willful. Ah... had you been a full Sebacean... " His voice trailed off, deceptively thoughtful. "But you are a splendid trophy nonetheless."

She squeezed her eyes shut as she heard his approach in a creak of leather. His hand cradled her bowed head, bringing a shallow happy flutter to her stomach.

"I absolve you, L'Tan. You cannot be blamed for your father's baser… human qualities."

She smiled thinly at the floor. The concerns about her precious prowler temporarily forgotten. Her universe was righted on its axis as her master smiled upon her once more.

#

The sheets were a smooth tangle on her bare legs as she shifted restlessly in the bed. Drowsily L'Tan looked over at Corsair's back. The steady rhythm of his breathing rolled over the cushions to her. Her forehead pinched with an irritated frown. He was obviously falling asleep.

"I know you don't like your barracks. You have my sympathies. But you can't sleep here." She punctuated each sentence with a nudge of her toe against his legs.

He rolled to face her, a mischievous smirk dominating his rugged features. His hands roamed through the sheets to snake around her waist.

"Who says I want to sleep, Sun?"

A smile slowly stretched across her mouth. And she yielded to the delicious warm cradle of his bare skin on her back.

"Wait! There's something strange on your face." Corsair abruptly pushed up on an elbow to study her features. He arched an eyebrow in exaggerated consternation. "I think it's a smile. I'm afraid it's not regulation."

She erupted in a thin peal of giggles.

"Now, I'm in trouble. I've broken the stern concentration of L'Tan Sun, feared by torch-wielding technicians and prowler pilots throughout the regime."

He bent to her mouth and collected a lingering kiss.

"Prowler pilots too stupid to cheat at sparring." L'Tan corrected.

Their eyes met for a silent awkward moment. With delicate fingers she touched the small dark cut on the bridge of his nose. Her smile evaporated as the thought of the secondary shielding ripped from the delicate hull of her ship flickered through her mind, unbidden. There was an unsettling twist of regret beneath her ribs. The warmth, his closeness became suddenly unbearable.

L'Tan pulled out of his embrace and sat up, sheets pooling around her waist. But his hands found her again to trace alone the ridge of her spine. They paused on the brand seared into the skin between her shoulder blades: a raised circle intersected with a maze of delicate lines that marked her permanently as Scorpius' property.

Her back went rigid and she inhaled sharply as though Corsair's touch brought pain. Although she could not see his face, she felt his tempered hesitation.

"It's true, then. You are a hybrid." Corsair's voice was lower, sorrowful. She refused to meet his eyes as she slipped from the bed, pulling the bedclothes with her. A sullen rage bloomed in her chest.

"You should leave." She gathered his uniform into an untidy bundle and tossed it onto the foot of the bed. "Get dressed."

"L'Tan, had I known there was any truth to the rumor--"

"Had you known, you would not be in my bed. I am repulsive. Untouchable. The product of irreversible contamination, remember?" Turning to face him, her anger refreshed at the blatant pity she saw there. She felt the urge to forcibly remove the expression from his perfect features.

"That is not what I was going to say. I don't really care--."

"Then you are a fool! I don't need your pity, Delvar. I do not need you! Go! Now!"

L'Tan turned on her heel, seeking imagined sanctuary in the field of darkness beyond her window. Reflected, ghost-like in the glass against the black, she watched him hurriedly dress.

The door sealed between them.

L'Tan Sun was alone, left to stare at the rapidly blurring stars.

#

The hum of the great leviathan surrounded, protected. The sound was special to Eleanor. It was the comfort of a silent mother's heartbeat, a constant for her entire eight years of life. The adults on board, not even her father, would understand. But she liked it that way. It was her secret to share with Moya.

Eyes alert for any sign of the Delvian priest, the child pressed her face against the cool spine of the wall. The engine hum vibrated though her skin, beneath it the dense mutter of a giant pulse. The sensation tickled the small hairs at the back of her neck. She stifled a giggle.

From her hidden vantage point, she watched the Zhaan glide into view in a graceful flutter of blue gauze. She moved cautiously through the corridor, investigating every possible hiding spot.

"Eleanor? Ellie? Please come out, my dear. It's time for your lessons."

At the mention of her lessons, her selective hearing kicked in. Eleanor squirmed in the opposite direction from Zhaan's pleas, through the DRD conduit, to find the larger chamber beyond. The young girl stood, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. With all the stealth she could muster, she picked her way through great room. The hangar was strictly out of bounds. This forbidden moment quickened her pulse.

Elenor's lively imagination took over: She was a spy sent to glean knowledge from a mysterious Peacekeeper stronghold, a brave commando sent by the IASA. Curiously she sought out the familiar shapes in the dimness.

Her hand met the sleek white curve of the flight module. She traced the red and white stripes of the standard on its dingy side. An alien symbol that never failed to captivate her curiosity. It seemed odd to her that anyone would draw a star with such jutting angry lines when every star she had ever glimpsed from Moya's portals was a delicate globe of brilliance, impossibly more elegant.

Suddenly, the insect-like buzz of a DRD raised the alert. She slipped around the module, keeping its bulk between her and the tiny yellow beast. Breathlessly she watched as the creature paused, its eye stalks no doubt seeking her out. After a tense moment, it moved on again with a defeated purr. A sigh of relief slumped her tiny shoulders in a air of melodrama. So far the spy had not been found out.

Ellie left the sheltering bulk of Farscape One, its intrigues forgotten. Her true goal was nearby. The prowler. She smiled victoriously to herself as she approached the menacing angle of its nose.

The moment was filled her with awe. The prowler's battered black hull seemed to suck in the room's energy, even light. Fingers trembling in the excitement of her discovery, she caressed the scorched scars of some ancient battle along its side.

A vivid picture filled her energized mind. A dark-haired goddess for the fearless prowler pilot, azure eyes blazing. Forever strong and beautiful. Triumphant against impossible odds in a tense dog fight in a field of envious stars.

An odd wave of loss, an emotion well beyond the grasp of her eight years, flooded her heart. A frown wrinkled the perfect skin of her forehead. This story did not have a happy ending. That brave pilot was long gone, casualty of a baser death.

Ellie backed away from the ship with a final sweep of her outstretched hand to collide blindly with Scorpius.

L'Tan snapped awake with an abrupt jerk, triggering an avalanche of components and delicate instruments from her table. The dream unraveled like a tattered flag in a windstorm, but the mingled terror and sadness of that long lost little girl remained in its wake.

She looked owlishly about her sterile quarters and found her chronometer. A tingle filled her spine. The test flight had started already. L'Tan dressed quickly and bolted through the door.

#

Before the next solar day's shift, the command carrier was quiet, its corridors virtually deserted. Nevertheless there were those she passed in its halls, officers or infantry alike, their eyes averted in a mix of contempt and barely veiled curiosity. Of their actions, she acknowledged nothing. L'Tan Sun existed only in the shadows of the Peacekeeper regime, as rumor and intrigue. Their reactions were a constant reminder.

The hanger, unlike the sleeping ship, was alive with activity.

Too much of it.

A sharp tug at her jacket betrayed her nervousness as she sought out the Jocosta in the flurry of bodies and equipment. Like a great winged insect her ship lay at the center of a swarm of technicians. A thread of black dread wove through her stomach as the hideous curve of a body bag was lowered to the deck away from the Jocosta's cockpit.

Remnants of chaotic chatter filled the anxious air:

"Radiation caused too much heat.... poor bastard."

"... living death... had to administer a kill-shot."

The wave of guilt tugged in her chest, catching her off balance. She knew this would happen and allowed Corsair to blunder off to his death.

"Your ship is imperfect, L'Tan. And we have lost our pilot because of it." Scorpius' voice erupted at her elbow. It was impossible to judge the fierce anger beneath its glossy surface.

She tore her eyes away from the sad dark mass on the deck and turned to face him. "But, s'duhar, I tried to warn you about the secondary shielding--"

"Do not presume to warn me, child!" The glossy tone rolled into a thick growl, more in keeping with the eyes that penetrated from beneath the dark sheen of his hood. His voice smooth once again, becoming venomous and cool. "I cannot begin to tell you of my disappointment."

She could feel his anger like a bitter heat falling on her. A cyclone of needle-sharp fear invaded her body. Never had she seen or felt such danger from him. Quickly she averted her gaze, happy to look upon the featureless metal of the flight deck.

"We may salvage the core systems and propulsion." Scorpius continued. "The ship shall be dismantled."

"No!" L'Tan cried. She plied frantic fingers around his gloved wrist, heedless of her meager station. Her motion did not go unnoticed. Several members of the crowd of technicians, paused in their tracks with incredulous expressions plastered to their faces.

"My ship works! Let me prove it. The heat won't affect me like it did Corsair. I can get the wormhole to work!" Her voice was frenzied. The words tumbled out in an impassioned torrent.

With crushing strength Scorpius twisted her pleading hands from his arm, a curl of revulsion set on his thin black lips. In a smooth wave of a glove hand, he motioned for his security operative. The hulking commando was instantly at L'Tan's side, collecting her arm in his powerful grip.

"Remove her from my sight, Officer Tristis."

#

"A mhaithrin dhilis...
Fa bhruach an chladiagh's fa bheal na tra...
Ta mise tuirseæch agus beidh go la.

L'Tan rocked back and forth on her haunches in the oppressive quiet of her quarters, humming the ancient Delvian words. Her voice was tinny, frail as it locked into the comforting cycle of the chant, its meaning long lost in the bleak memory of her childhood.

Restlessly her finger traced the raised stitching on the battered rectangle of fabric in her hand. A blue field of angular white stars. Red stripe. White stripe. Red. White.

L'Tan had overheard the discussion of Tristis to a passerby. Scorpius was far from pleased with his hybrid servant. Delvar Corsair was the progeny of an officer with many curious friends in High Command. There would be an investigation. All activity of the wormhole project was halted.

Which meant one thing, she realized with a reckless flutter as her spine straightened. The Jocosta was still in one piece, waiting for her in the hangar. There was a way to win back Scorpius' favor. All could be proven… and forgiven. All would be as it should.

Under the dim glow of starlight, she found her flight-suit and began to dress. Her decision was made.

Part 2

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