Part 49

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Bursamen made a signal with a small laser device under his sleeve. The door locking released, and he pushed the corroding, creaky warehouse door open. Grumbling at the lack of silence, he was at least relieved to look around and see that no one was around to hear the racket.

Under a milky yellowed light cast from long neglected lighting, the warehouse areas near the door were well occupied with the small group of militia and those recovered from the Minister's Estate, some busily attending to projects or still trying to move unwieldy crates of abandoned junk out of the way. Most obvious was a room-sized area largely filled with an ad-hoc assembly of found, stolen or improvised technical equipment, orchestrated by Vega, who was very conspicuous in her white overcoat. She wasn't a medic, but her knowledge more than compensated for their lack of medical care. A few were practicing with their weapons. A few more were still sleeping, as most had been doing allot of. Still, Bursamen's eyes widened in surprise at how much had been done in only a solar day.

John Crichton met him at the door. "Hey persimmon. How's it hangin?"

"No problems?" Bursamen asked.

"No, seems this warehouse might be as abandoned and forgotten as it looks. All the clan, the bros, the sister, the groupies and the hangers-on are all here and groovy. Old Mac Donald was just filling me in about his adopted kid, Scampi. Meanwhile, Scampi's off makin' hay with one of the ladies I suspect. Two of the clan are having a pissing contest with weapons. After avoiding each other all this time, Seecozy Shamu and Chi are finally alone in the offices up on the second story loft up there, and it's titillating my imagination so bad I'll be playing pocket billiards without any balls before I find out they're just arguing again or something. Pumpkin and Kastara are over there being mysterious with the geeky guy."

Bursamen nodded as if he were following John's conversation. Clan saw Bursamen after a moment and hurried to meet him, even more hyper than he remembered her being before their ordeals. "I have the supplies" Bursamen pointed over his shoulder. "Or some of them."

Clan gestured to the couple practicing with their weapons to come over, then locked wide eyes on Bursamen. "She's awake" Clan told him.

Bursamen stared in amazement. Hurrying over to where Vega was, Bursamen saw that Tannac was still stretched out on a couple of crates, hooked to several makeshift bits and pieces of tech. Vega was applying some clear stuff to Tannac's patched chest.

"Hey impulsive" Tannac held a wrapped hand up.

"Tannac" Bursamen replied, nearly in awe.

"Yeah, Clam's been drilling her for a report since she's come to" John gestured to Clan, who hurried over to sit on a crate at Tannac's side and work on a data pad.

"The Scarran?" Clan prompted.

"No I tried" Tannac explained to Clan and tried not to look while Vega applied more of a clear salve to the patched wound in her chest.

"Remain still" Vega stonily told her.

"But the Scarran was already lost in the trees by the time I could have reached my gun" Tannac further explained to Clan. "A pity she didn't say anything of value to John Crichton. Whether she went back somewhere and will bring some overwhelming force, or if she'll just run off alone and die, we don't know." Tannac drew out a deep sigh and slid a dry look to the visibly overwrought Clan. "You getting all this?"

"Clam" John interrupted. "I think you can give the report depositions a rest. Excuse me, gang, I gotta go uh, see how the uh, ladies are, just excuse me a few" John tried to make a casual getaway.

Clan looked up from her data pad. "I-I...."

"A Scarran, imagine. Never thought I'd see a Scarran. Would y-you give me my smoke?" Tannac dryly requested.

"No" Vega answered for them.

"I-I!" Clan's hands shook and her eyes were wide. "The whole operation! I-it was a-a...."

"Fiasco beyond all description? Tell me about it" Tannac replied.

Bursamen nodded at the floor.

"I-I guess I'm not appropriate for this sort of activity" Clan hung her head.

Tannac lifted her head and yelled from a stab of pain. She glared at Vega, who pressed a button on a unit she had patched into Tannac. "Just testing" Vega smiled coyly.

"That sort of activity" Tannac told Clan, resting her head back down "is appropriate for no one. Unforeseeable."

Clan solemnly stood.

"You did well" Tannac told her. She chewed on her lip.

Clan looked back at Tannac and quietly withdrew.

"She's so young" Bursamen shook his head to himself.

"She needs looking after" Tannac noted.

"Yeah" Bursamen agreed, realizing it for the first time. "Yeah."

Tannac smiled. "When it comes to that, so are you. You'd think you hadn't frelled all those nixars" Tannac shot back.

Bursamen looked down at his feet and smiled. "You know I have. Since I have another chance" he said, pausing for a deep breath. "It's, in some ways as if I hadn't been alive before." He knelt by her side. "Thank you for making me feel, and when I wanted feelings the least." He finally looked at her face. Her eyes were closed. "Tannac?"

"Asleep or unconscious, finally" Vega informed him.

Bursamen sighed and walked away further into the warehouse. Tannac smiled to herself.

---

"Finding enough to eat?" Bursamen asked Koresh and his companion.

"You wouldn't think so" Sheyza snickered. Bursamen looked twice, realizing after she spoke that the person shrouded in mismatched, oversized clothing was Sheyza, a woman he'd never met before, now living in a body that he could still recognize as Chiana's.

"How is she doing?" Bursamen asked Koresh, surprised to hear her speaking.

"Talking. Allot" Koresh rubbed his forehead.

"I think I can speak well now" Sheyza smiled. Sliding a makeshift cap back from sliding over her eyes, Sheyza stood up from her seat up against a crate, or tried, wobbling and lurching into an ungraceful stance with her knees together and arms tilting to one side. After holding in place a few moments, she leaned over to support herself against another crate. Her teeth clenched in pain, she roughly sat down where she was. "But I can't walk."

Bursamen, his arms folded, sternly watched Koresh staring intently at Sheyza. He felt that Koresh was certainly the worse for what had happened, and that he was fiercely attatched to Sheyza. Perhaps with time Koresh would recover, perhaps even smile. But Sheyza was definitely stuck with him.

"It's the burnt skin" Sheyza looked up to Bursamen and sniffed. "Even with all this gooey dren, if I move much it hurts."

Bursamen frowned, remembering the quietly tormented Vega telling of her assistant dying in the fire, how desperately they'd worked to save their life's works while Larran's plans exploded and he himself fed the fires of destruction, and how the fluids had began to boil before she could rescue only one of the three bodies that could possibly survive without their support systems. It was a wonder the body survived at all, but then, Bursamen felt that it was a wonder any of them had survived.

Sheyza recovered from a fit of coughing, hacking up a blob of bloody phlegm. She inhaled a sharp, moist sniff. "And it's not very strong. But other than that it feels good, I can move better now." Sheyza hung her head. "I'd like to talk to Chiana."

"No, I think you would better wait a while" Bursamen told her. "She goes a little way into farbot every time she sees you. It's not me" Bursamen imitated Chiana. "Doesn't look like me. Hey does that look like me?" Bursamen rolled his eyes and wandered off.

Sheyza collapsed into a seat next to Koresh, but facing away from him. "It's not my face, my voice, my lummas, or any lummas really" she snickered. After a moment she softly continued. "Or anything."

"That's not what matters" Koresh replied.

"We're going the opposite direction we started" she sullenly added.

"That was pretty stupid, huh?" Koresh muttered.

"But I wish it didn't change you" Sheyza whispered.

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