Part 15

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"Is there some sorta problem?" John slowly walked halfway across the special personal tech store's fair-sized floor space toward the stocky Nebari man behind the counter. Tannac swept in behind John, hung back looking out the windows onto the street and kept her hands in her overcoat pockets.

"Don't have problems" the man tipped his head very slightly in a thin courtesy.

"But you don't have the money. And you wouldn't accept any....help." John moved closer and looked over the contents of the counter's display. "Just one of these trinkets ought to cover what the man's asking to help things go smoothly."

The spike-haired big man smiled thinly. "The man can make things go smoothly for me from the money he takes from the Establishment. I paid for these trinkets. If he wants them, he can pay me for them. And I'm not going to owe favors to any....helpful parties."

John was about to repeat the drill about contributing to Larran's coffers and accepting resistance help, but something about this guy reminded him of a good ole down-to-earth honest-to-goodness redneck poorer Harley-Davidson type from home. Besides jostling awake a bunch of memories, he decided this guy was right and he was feeling like an ass by arguing against him. Enough was enough.

"You know, you're right" John said while Tannac produced a massive multi-facility pulse rifle seemingly about the size of her trunk from under her trench coat and pointed it at the man. "He can use the damn money he's embezzling from the city. Or county. Or State. Or Establishment. Whatever. Probably steals lunch money from schools. We'll forget to mention it. If he takes it out of my hide, fine, but if he tries taking it from Pip's, I can't help you, pal."

"No, no here, if you could accept this, it's more than enough of value to him" the man looked distantly past John and urgently fumbled into his display. He brought out a group of small silver components and laid them on the counter. He took a few steps back.

Tannac replaced the weapon into her trench coat. John walked over, took the pieces and gave him an odd look. "Thanks. Appreciate it. You're a pal. I'll make sure you don't get bothered." He nodded and turned to Tannac. They walked to the door with John quietly talking over her shoulder. "Now you see, you just use some reasoning, and if they're half-way okay, thing's'll turn out. You guys got to get over the strong-arm crap."

"Yes. Well I'll be going back to my garbage dump" she said, flexing her back when they got out front onto the sidewalk.

"Yeah after a while one misses the smells of home" John supposed, since he remembered the phrase but not any smells from home. "I'll be going back to report to Larran. Man that's fun let me tell you. Hope he don't try to make me beg and roll over again."

"Hm that must look nice" she slid a glance to him under mostly closed eyes. "You could come with me to my place and show me how you beg and roll."

John creased his brow and looked at her. "I don't think so, babs. But I'll see your dump."

"Krew" she dryly replied. John supposed it was something like saying "kewl." She started to walk and he walked alongside.

She didn't talk, so he didn't bother. She led him for a few too many miles until they ended up rounding a dumpy building to find a clearing. It was about the size of a baseball field he guessed. It looked like it was a junkyard. It was closed down, probably because the junk left around really is junk.

He followed her in a crazy walk over and around junk to get to a tiny shanty made out of a bunch of tan, rippled panels of different sizes. It seemed to be held together by a few odd pieces of trash stuck into place. Wide enough to lay in if one had their knees up, deep enough to lay to the right of the doorless opening and just tall enough to stand in, it sure wasn't spacious. John stuck his head in. "Nice pad."

"Have a seat" she offered.

John looked surprised to notice the place featured a board propped on some trash for a bench. "Wow" he said, helping himself to a seat. He moved over to let her sit next to him, but she picked up a piece of trash outside and dragged it in to sit on the top of it.

"I use the fancy chair for my patio" she dryly explained. She sat down across from him with a condescendingly amused look that John was figuring to be patented by Nebari. "Like my house?"

"Well it ain't Peacekeeper surplus."

"A what? Oh. Peacekeepers. They were around then weren't they?"

"Oh yeah. Back in my day. Actually I was almost always having bad days, so maybe that wasn't my day. Ah hell I don't know. I don't miss them. Peacekeepers. Maybe there were good ones but all the ones I met seemed to be corrupt as hell and obsessive. Why they had to get obsessive over me, hey, just my luck."

"So what do you remember from "your time"?"

"Not a hell of a lot. It's like there's this stoned lady and she keeps saying "I hear space is very cold" over and over, and I can't stop it playing. Say is there a drink anywhere around anywhere....?"

Tannac shook her head slightly. "Ain't none."

"Damn. Well I'd tell you more about Peacekeepers but for one I don't happen to remember much in whole pieces and for another, well I'd probably put you to sleep. Hey" he looked around "what do you use for a blanket or something?"

Tannac sighed slightly. "Ain't none."

"Dangit. I take it when it comes down to the "your place or mine" it's theirs. To be honest I don't even remember how we got here from there, it's in the M aisle for memory and man I think there's some overdue books not checking in. I bet Harvey's got a hold on 'em ahead of me, too. Damn grasshopper. Well so what do we do? Wanna go out to the patio, look over the dump and slug rats?"

Tannac shrugged slightly. "Ain't none."

"I know you were asking how Chi and I ended up on this death star, but I really don't know. Hey you got something to chow? I'm famished. We got off on the wrong foot here to begin with. No let me guess"

"Ain't none" they both said at once.

"Or was it the right foot? Anyway all I seem to get from it is a blur of incredible pain and incredible frell. Chi. I don't even remember that, it was like we never did the funky before but she's real familiar in a way that I'm sure we did. You don't mind me talking about it? Cause if I were you I'd be kicking my ass out to the rest of the junk."

She smirked, getting his meaning more or less. "You know why I brought you here, but I....want to hear about her. Chiana. If...."

"Yeah I know it ain't for the scenery."

"Don't concern yourself with your comforts either, we're not staying long. I'm to ask you to meet with Benefactor Perkunas. I mentioned him-"

"-Yeah the shoe-in for Larran's chair, hallelujah. Yeah I'll see him. Here?"

"No. At....another location. I'll take you for your protection. We have....about an arn before we should leave."

"That's great, cause I've got a mind full of Chi, I won't be much good for much else. And yeah it's her but I'm afraid I can figure why you'd have to wonder."

"Some of the reasons" she had him know while she stood.

He watched her get up and stand in the empty doorway, resting a fist behind the small of her back. Despite her being very, very thin, her motions had a suppleness and muscular way that got him interested in a hurry. "Well either we do some body talk, or I tell you about Chi, cause I'm sure as hell not doing both on the same breath. I know she's big about these things, she'd probably just ask how good it was, but I know I'm going to kick myself later as it is."

Tannac sat back down across from him and rested her chin on her fist. "So tell me about Chiana first, and frell me another time if you're still thinking about it."

He blinked. "Uh. Sounds reasonable, ma'am. Very thoughtful of you. Well I call her Pip. Yeah I forgot why. I'll say this, I thought she was touchy. But....she's very- she's a very sensitive soul, that's why...."

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It was just at the corner of her eye. She didn't think to look, she just reflexively looked straight at the place she seemed to see something. For an instant she thought she saw a shadow cast from nothing standing in the open between the main pool and the wall far behind. The instant she began to think something was there, she clearly saw nothing was there. But her gaze was following what it seemed to see and her abilities responded without her being aware. Time slowed and the form began to return just where it had been.

Chiana's mouth fell open while the distorted figure became more clearly a woman. Misshapen, naked and caught at the beginning of falling from a standing position, the figure seemed to both move and stay in place. While the rest of her vision began failing, the figure remained visible. Many more shadows were revealed, shadows of people buried in a twisted jumble under the paving of the pool area around the woman figure. Almost unfeeling of her own pain, Chiana stepped backwards in horror, grasping what she was seeing.

She stepped off the paving into the spa. As she fell, screaming, unable to see anything but the figure and the shadows, her eyes stayed wide open. The shadows stayed visible, spread out as if in a pool of their own. She could feel and hear that she was under water and tried scrambling toward the exit further away from the shadows. The shadows began stirring.

Chiana felt her way out of the spa but fell onto her back still looking to the figure and shadows. The suspended figure seemed to wick as if water being blown by a wind that led straight to Chiana. Like a comm that suddenly received, something spoke inside her. Just as instantly, it stopped. It was a thought that seemed so much like herself she realized in the next flash of it that it was her.

The Chiana that spoke in her told her of falling into a depthless place and that there was no leaving. Larran flashed to mind, laughing at her as she screamed in a body that was a mutated form of herself. She screamed in unbearable pain, connecting to the shadows and raising a joint scream that drowned out Chiana's own desperate screech.

The sounds were tuned away when the form began moving. Still posed at the beginning of a fall Chiana somehow sensed was its moment of death, the figure seemed to float. It beckoned and Chiana followed, unconsciously walking around the pool over the shadows buried below her feet. She slid into the secret passage where the figure seemed to claw at all the walls yet never move in the same sense.

It led her to the empty attic which Chiana's sightless eyes now saw as familiar, where the figure Chiana had spent what seemed like ages in its miseries, hidden in the attic. Only its misshapen body could pass the railing it had somehow made, until Chiana's own thinner body made it through. She knew the figure had beckoned her here, but she couldn't ask it who had opened the passage. It wasn't really there, just a shadow that moved back and forth from the place it felt it belonged to the place by the pool where it had finally dropped dead.

It wasn't content with her here, Chiana sensed in a push she felt inside herself. It wanted Larran, to be trapped here as it was, and then it would release itself to be no more. Chiana realized it all and stumbled backward from the figure in the attic, but it stayed the only thing she could see.

Its hollow pain was a chord that reminded her of the mutated Chiana she had met with in Larran's secret places. She had unknowingly blocked the memories of the trauma, but now the memories tore through her self protection. They were both the same, wretched products of Larran's experimentation to clone the Sister. Yet the rest of the shadows were other victims, who emanated the same blame on Larran, she sensed. She didn't know how they came to be and seemingly couldn't reach them.

Chiana stumbled back away from the figure, finding her way to the pool, crawling around the pool, spa and the shadows, and down the stairs, trying to put the horror behind her and find the clone she had almost forgotten.

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"Benefactor Perkunas" Tannac identified the man John saw when he walked into the small storage room with Tannac covering his back.

"So what'd you want to see me for?" John asked Perkunas.

"Larran."

"Oh my favorite subject" John muttered. John looked over the big shot in whatever the Resistance begun by Chiana's brother had become. He didn't remember much about any other Nebari, and not much about Chiana when it came to that. But Chiana was sure her brother was Nerri, that Nerri started a resistance that her people really deserved, and it's the same Nerri that Bursamen claimed founded and still inspired this group. That was enough for him.

The man seemed to be a younger middle-age, not that John had any idea how old that might make him. He had no sideburns, just jet black hair combed into a neatly coiffed 'do with the bangs combed up and back. It looked vaguely '50's to John.

"Tannac" Perkunas prompted her to speak.

Tannac turned from watching the door as if she expected some assailant to break it down and enter shooting. She looked at Perkunas with one eyebrow up and the other flat.

Perkunas rubbed his chin, realizing he'd have to say whatever it was. John turned and looked at Tannac. "He's the big shot, right?"

"And she's Tannac" Perkunas explained. "Oshana has said many....difficult things to accept."

"Really?" John was very far from surprised.

"About Larran."

"Hardly news, big kahuna, considering Larran's done some difficult things to accept. Are we going anywhere with this? You trying out for a job giving depositions or you fishing for an eyewitness or something? Bummer my credibility won't hold on the stand, dude."

Perkunas was silent for a while, probably because he was trying to decipher John's replies. "Oshana claims....Larran has enslaved, raped, assaulted and murdered many people. She claims he's obsessed with gaining immortality and has many secret experiments financed to gain a method of becoming immortal. For a while now, she contends, Larran has become obsessed with the immortal Sister. Oshana claims he's gained artifacts including remains of the Sister and made several innebarane attempts to clone the Sister from recovered DNA. Since coming into power a little over a century ago, he has been a fairly successful Minister, for his own gains...."

"Yeah he's a perfect Minister for hypocrites. Unfortunately, he's also a serial killer obsessed with getting the supposedly immortal Sister in his collections and is basically more deserving of mind cleansing than anyone the Establishment's thrown into the washer for the last thousand years. And I wouldn't be too surprised if he's bankrolling some freaky-deaky experimenting to get the elixir of life or whipped up some unspeakable mutant Chiana clones. How do those lines wash down your bread? I'm guessing most of it's true and a little of it could be nutsy's imaginations."

"Nutsy?"

"Oshanana. Hey, I'm thinkin she can't help it. So far Bannik Stakira's are 2 and 0 for nutcases versus complete ratchet sets."

"Can you confirm any of those claims?" Perkunas folded his arms in thought. "Do you know anyone who can and will provide evidence of Larran's criminal involvement in rape and murder?"

"Sorry man. Larran the Nebari Portrait of Dorian Grey? Wouldn't surprise me if he's got a real interesting portrait stashed around in his basements. Ain't seen it, but I know it's gettin' powerful ugly. Only thing I know for sure is that the man's a friggin demon that needs exorcizing from all planes of existence. Yeah he's obsessed with Chi, like Cruella's obsessed with Dalmatian pups. He's tortured, raped, killed people, I'm sure of that. He even dropped hints at me, he gets off on that. I'm sure I could lead him into telling me more but I'm not a respected citizen to go against him and I'm not working for Court TV. Yeah, grade-A creep. Needs to come down with a real bad case of persistent Death."

Perkunas lit up for a moment, getting the reference. "We might help him catch something then? Hm. For some time we've been similarly interested in his well-being, but the lack of a means to have any impact on his well-being without destroying the fragile resistance we have during or after any attempts has prevented us. Perhaps now, with yourself and....her on the inside....I'm expected elsewhere, I must be going to avoid suspicions. Tannac, with me." Perkunas nodded sharply to John, turned and started walking out.

Tannac held John's arm for a moment, to his surprise. He patted her back that he'd be alright and she followed Perkunas. She fell into stride alongside Perkunas. "I'll leave at the 23rd-59th intersection. Do you believe him?"

"That he is the Sister's companion, John Crichton? That the lady is really the Sister? I could not even guess. If they're not, they're good imposters that got trapped in a very unfortunate situation. Even should they be imposters, they're good enough to give me ideas."

"Killing Larran?" Tannac voiced the thought. "Don't look shocked, you've considered it."

"Rumors are already raising widespread suspicions without our help. I believe that the claims are true. It's high time people ceased accepting that abomination simply because he holds a high office. It is already a good opportunity for gaining sentiment against Larran."

"And gaining positive sentiment for you" Tannac smirked.

"Oh shut up" Perkunas rolled his eyes.

"So word goes out on the news vine then?" Tannac went to light her pipe, but after a few attempts to light it, threw away the lighter instead.

"That we've found the Sister? That she's alive and being held prisoner by Larran?" Perkunas smiled to himself. "Soon. Yes."

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