Part 31

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A body hurtled around the corner the moment Kastara opened a door for Bursamen. Kastara and Bursamen scrambled against the further wall. The body rolled in a ball for several feet before springing up and shutting the door.

"Orren!" Bursamen exclaimed before he thought better of acknowledging that he knew the lady. The Sebacean had other things on her mind, bracing her pulse rifle in aim at the door. A moment later, the door shattered in a shower of splinters, revealing a large silver metal Orb hovering behind it. The instant before Orren's shot struck the orb in dead center aim, a static charge flashed around the Orb. The shot deflected from the orb.

As she fired again, metallic strands shot from a tiny opening toward the front of the orb, becoming a net of strands stretching from the orb to myriad hooks now caught around Orren.

Bursamen drew his gun and fired at the opening the net led into. The shot deflected. Bursamen hurtled away as an instinct. A smoldering black spot was soon in the wall where he'd been standing. Kastara cowered down to his knees, but the orb didn't act toward him.

A brilliant burst of blue light trailed out from the Orb, enveloping Orren in a charge. Orren shook and yelled in pain. Bursamen fired again at the entrance to the orb. This time his shot wasn't shielded. Sparks from the orb showered the would-be victims. Bursamen leapt up just in front of Orren with an agility and length of leap that no Sebacean could do, tackling her to the ground.

The orb quickly fired back, just missing the falling pair but striking Bursamen's pistol. An explosion from his pistol sounded well ahead of them, and an explosion behind showered them with sparks. Bursamen landed on his side and rolled onto his back, attempting to avoid a possible follow-up shot from the Orb, but the Orb wasn't there. He looked around frantically, finding the Orb was now a lump of shredded metal on the floor.

Tannac stepped over the wreckage and lifted her massive, multiple barreled pulse rifle. Bursamen and Orren stared at her with their mouths open. "I thought" Orren looked over her shoulder and yelled, despite obvious pain "you were searching guest areas."

"I'm hard to get rid of" Tannac shrugged, absently wiping a cut on her chin. Bursamen stood and looked her up and down. She was spotted with soot, somewhat battered and singed in a few places. "I hate those things" she gestured over her shoulder.

Tannac reached down to grab Orren's arm. Orren swatted her hand away with her arm. "I'm all right!" Orren shouted.

Tannac gestured with her hands to quiet her. "Fine, fine" she stepped on Orren and bent over Kastara. "You're all right too?"

Kastara looked both ways. "I'm not sure" he replied.

Orren stood, holding a couple of the wounds from the hooks the sentinel had used. "Fine, so you saved me, I can't get rid of you, are you happy now, can we go look where we should be searching?"

Tannac shrugged. Orren brushed past Tannac and back down the hall she had been following. Tannac shrugged again and turned to follow.

"Wait" Bursamen took her arm. He gestured his head to Kastara. "The Bannik is taking me to the Sister."

"Is he?" Tannac raised one brow. "Hard eema and I are following a farbot plan of searching likely places for the Sister, her hunk, or Larran's sorry eema. Likely areas to conceal her, house her, or, our latest and most sublime concept, reveal her to the gathering throng. There are only eight likely balconies in completely different areas for us to be at once. So the main front balcony is next. Which way does your Sister finder say?"

"Laboratory" Kastara elaborated when Bursamen bent his arm. "This way, under ground level," he gestured daintily with a small finger.

"It's the best I've got right now" Bursamen lightly shrugged and smiled, sliding his fingers up Tannac's tiny arm. "I think I know how to keep protected. The sentinels don't seem to attack Larran's slave."

"Oh" Tannac patted his shoulder front and back. "You go ahead and trust Larran's servants, you dear thing, I'll go follow commando buttocks and look for the Sister, bye" Tannac withdrew.

Bursamen shook his head. Kastara finally stood and peered around the corner. "Are there more of those?" Bursamen asked.

"I think so" Kastara looked around with frightened eyes.

"Then" Bursamen grabbed Kastara's belt and stood immediately behind the Bannik "to the Sister. You first."

---

Harvey walked around the gurney and primed a syringe. John looked around at the nondescript cream to beige operating room the gurney he lay on was placed in the center of. He looked at Harvey. "I suppose it'd be silly to ask if this is gonna hurt?"

"Silly and" Harvey paused and patted the exposed inside of John's elbow "quite characteristic. No, I'm here to spare you pain." Harvey leaned forward. "Give you the old shot in the arm" Harvey patted John's arm again cheerfully.

"If it wasn't coming from a creepy neural clone I'd be comforted Harv, thanks."

"Your appreciation is" Harvey paused and carefully placed the needle "well, appreciated." He began administering the shot. Some fluid of some kind squirted up into the air. Harvey jumped onto the side of the gurney, grabbing a saw. Clear fluid sprayed around. "Drat!" Harvey said, grabbing a roll of duct tape.

John began screaming from pain, until something slipped into his mouth and he swallowed. The pain melted away. He looked up to see Chiana in a very cute nurse outfit. Chiana smiled and pawed the side of his head. John couldn't help a goofy grin.

Chiana walked around and looked at what Harvey was busy doing. She pressed her finger down on a point. A raspberry sound was followed by a burst of fluids. Chiana giggled. "Hey guys?" John asked. What's going on?"

Looking to John with alarm, Chiana lied. "Nothing. It's fine."

"El Toro Crapo, Pip!" John shouted. "You think I don't know when you're pulling my leg?! You better fix whatever it is!"

"Got it" she nodded and stepped back.

Harvey stepped back and unfastened John's restraints. "We might as well face it, John. You needed a hand."

John sat up to see his arm from the elbow up sticking out where his male anatomy used to be. John screamed.

---

Kastara's eyes darted between the agonized victims and the Nebari standing beside him. Well, Bursamen figured, he'd done sillier things for sillier reasons. So he sort of shrugged, unfolded his arms, kept the nearer arm to Kastara in place, put the other under his jacket and pointed his finger to bluff having a pistol hidden under his jacket and pointed at Kastara.

The Bannik slave seemed far from alarmed. Bursamen shrugged slightly again. The Bannik looked between the yelling victims and Bursamen. He shifted his stance in a very bad attempt to look suddenly alarmed. "Are you going to force me to treat them?"

Bursamen forced his eyes from the now silent, shuddering figure of Chiana. "Huh? Yeah. I guess so."

"Oh" the Bannik looked aside at the floor with his eyes wide. "You leave me no option then!" he warned Bursamen and rushed over to the victims. Kastara grabbed Skarle's forearm. "The armed rebel insists we assist them!"

"But" Skarle fretfully replied in an unnecessarily loud voice "if we are tending to them, we could not protect the Minister from harm."

"We have no choice" Kastara replied with overwrought dread.

"Yes.....I see" Skarle agreed. Both Banniks rushed to help Chiana, colliding into each other. They squealed at each other and stumbled around, fighting to get the other out of the way and get over to Chiana. Finally, Skarle shoved Kastara in the direction of John and continued toward Chiana.

Bursamen's eyes narrowed slightly on the distinctly underweight female shuddering in agony on the ground, naked and covered in some sort of apparently sticky gel. He looked away, trying not to watch her. As far as he could tell, she was just a very unfortunate victim of Larran's evidently ruthless obsession with recreating the Sister. She was certainly a very strong willed person, and there was something about her..... He wondered if she could possibly be the one, the Sister.

Bursamen distracted himself with the Stakira and Larran. Walking up beside them, he squatted down, watching intently. The glow radiated a sort of queasy sense of disorientation the more one looked, so he tried avoiding any direct glance. He stared at Larran, still but not serene, seeming to be asleep sitting up in the Stakira's light. There was much here he didn't comprehend.

Gathering a surgical blade on his way, Bursamen withdrew from the room before he could be seen by Larran should he wake, carefully observing from behind an appliance in the adjoining room.

---

"I assume that reduces their pain?" Bursamen yelled over to the Bannik slave.

"Eliminates, even" Kastara replied. "It might have a very, very minor hallucinatory effect though" he sheepishly added.

"Might?!" John yelled back at Harvey. "Buddy, my brain cell to drug level count is about as unfavorable as a Miami model at 2 a.m.! Minor hallucinogen?"

"Yes" Harvey replied, patting John on the shoulder. "Or so I hear. At any rate, we should find reprieve as we are no longer under the affected environment."

"Good, Chi's lookin' about as happy as a heroin junky there. Chi honey, can you get these straps off me? Please?"

"Strapped down and die" Chiana glowered up, dark from her stare to the dark circles under her eyes.

"See what I mean, man" John gestured to Chiana and sat up, perfectly normal again. He looked around at their surroundings, which resembled a traditional middle-eastern restaurant for the elite. "Where's the belly-dancer? Wait a minute, what environment? We're not in that environment? What do you mean? If that was me, where are we? Me? Us? Whatever?"

"I'm not sure" Harvey simply replied, turning as John does to see a tall, stately, lushly curvaceous version of Oshana bow into the room bearing trays of delicious looking offerings. "But I would assume we are in Oshana's mind at the moment."

"Brilliant, man" John comments to Harvey with a perfectly straight face. "I never woulda guessed."

"I coulda" an obviously recovered Chiana hung off of John's side, taking a good look over Oshana. "Whoa nice lummas."

"Thank you" Oshana bowed, the considerable cleavage of the elegant rust brown dress baring more of those voluptuous lummas as she did so.

"No. Thank you" Chiana insisted. Looking down at her own little self in the French maid's bodice John had again placed her in, Chiana half sneered. "Well. Can't have everything." She laughed and swayed to hang off John's other side.

"Feeling better, Pip?" John grabbed her around her neck and squeezed until she kicked his shin. Fortunately the pain only lasted as long as her urge to do that, fading in a moment.

"Yeah" Chiana affectionately rubbed her face into him, which left a more lasting warm buzz. She laughed at his gee-whiz smile. He was so cute sometimes. She knelt into a seat with John, Harvey and Oshana, each on one side of a giant banquet spread on a raised dias, to partake of the offerings.

John looked at the dinner suits Harvey and himself were suddenly wearing, then at Chiana's silky silver evening dress complete with orchid in her hair. "Nice dress, kid," John leaned over and told her, resting his chin on her shoulder a moment. She gaped down at it.

"I'm not sure I understand, John" Harvey ate a date and pondered their fate. "Is there some purpose to senseless eating instead of a meaningful meeting?"

John hesitated from putting a bite size alien potato into his mouth. "I know, eating this root is moot" he swept his hands away in a gesture. "Scoot."

"You're just in a snoot" Harvey adjusted his tux "cause I look too all root, zoot."

"Mute!" John hollered. Harvey found himself unable to make a sound. "Enjoying the rhyming game?" John slid Chiana a droll look.

Chiana shook her head and widened her eyes. "Lame," she rhymed in reply.

John closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Okay" he opened his eyes again "I guess this is as good a time and place as any to get in our good- to Larran" he inserted the distinction with a glance at Chiana, who nodded "-servant." Chiana nodded again with her agreement, looking to Oshana. "Okay Oshana, we are here to listen to you, you talk, we listen, give us the news, the 4-11, the dish, that dirty, dirty, dirty lowdown."

Oshana sat there as still as could be, looking even more like a deer frozen in the headlights than usual.

"Well why," Chiana helped herself to a long vegetable stalk, "are you giving me a banquet here, but don't out there?"

"Banquet! Won't you have some Drar?" Oshana urgently began carving a large smoked carcass of meat that reminded John of roast boar. Her eyes darted between the Drar and Chiana nervously. "O-out...?"

"You know. Where it matters" John clarified.

"Not here!" Oshana's increasingly frentic cuts at the stubborn meat turned to manic hacks with the knife "Not noooow...."

"Whoa no, don't go psycho, now, um, miss" John very delicately held her shoulders to calm her while watching the knife with wide-eyed dread "Not while we're aah, uh huh, there, there."

Hyperventilating and wide-eyed, Oshana ripped a leg of the minced Drar carcass the rest of the way out and handed it out to Chiana on a plate. "Have Drar- all you like."

"Well ah" Chiana took it with an edgy smile "you know, nixa, for some things there's never a right time, or place, so....it turns up at the wrong time" Chiana said, around the vegetable stalk she was eating, and shrugged.

"Listen to her on this, Pumpkin" John slowly sat back down in his own spot and casually gestured to Chiana with a pointing finger across his chest "this is something she knows allot about."

Chiana slowly turned her head and attention to John, a blank look on her face. John shrugged. "Yeah so" Chiana got up onto her knees and pulled a leg of something out of the banquet "here I am getting frelled over, and there you are, my big worshipper and oooh so nice to me, and you follow bondage boy's wishes. Not my wishes" she pointed to herself with a finger, then to Oshana "his wishes." Chiana gaped at the leg of appetizing meat under her nose a moment before taking a slow bite. Her eyes then cut up to Oshana, a smirk on her face as she chewed. Chiana swallowed, keeping her eyes on Oshana. "Waiting to get me too?"

John and Harvey both moved nothing but their eyes over to Chiana, surprised she'd confront possibilities like that in a place like this. Chiana didn't seem the slightest bit worried, munching on the meat. Both John and Harvey looked then to Oshana.

The Stakira's small fingers waved slowly in her thought. "He is- the Minister!" Oshana looked, but there wasn't an impressed face between them.

Chiana hardened her brows at the leg of meat she was eating. It was so perfect, she kept getting a perfect bite each time from the very same spot, with no bone to be found. With a bite full in one cheek, she sneered at it.

Harvey gestured to his throat. John nodded and allowed him to talk. "May I suggest we are wasting potentially valuable time?" Harvey spoke up to John.

John looked aside in thought for a moment. "Yeah, if it floats your boat" he allowed, muting Harvey again. Harvey looked aside in annoyance. "I'm thinkin' we might be in here a while, Harv, unless that goop is there to speed up healing of burns and isn't just your run of the mill obligatory sci-fi cocoon goo-goop. If it's not gonna salve too well, hey, you can borrow the pain prison for a while."

Oshana looked mortified and grabbed at her ears with her hands. "Goop, goop...."

"Yeah" Chiana gargled, suddenly naked but for the goop covering her, lurching around spastically on the floor and trailing runs of goop from everywhere "Gggggooop heha!"

"A clear, viscous liquid?" Oshana asked, grabbing John's shirt in both fists "Viscous?!"

"I wouldn't say it was vicious liquid" John replied as he watched a suddenly seated, dressed and clean Chiana making a game of tossing grape like fruits up in the air and catching them in her mouth or dress "just kinda gooey, like an all day marathon of The Young and The Reckless."

"Yes" Oshana seemed to try to make sense of that but assumed he meant yes "it will effectively reverse the damage to skin in a few arns."

"Cool!" John replied with a clap, helping himself to some more veggies "long enough to pretend to eat enough to make King Kong Bundy look like he eats like Kate Moss. Pip, you good?"

"Yep" she kept playing with the food.

"So, Madam Stakira, what've you got on Ministers that you just gotta love 'em?" John asked, tossing a grape like fruit at Chiana.

"We are theirs from the purging!" Oshana urgently explained, her hands ripping a large, rich napkin on her lap. Looking then at the destroyed napkin, she quickly hid it behind herself. But to her obvious horror, the napkin stayed caught on her fingers despite her frantic attempts to get rid of it. Still struggling with it, she continued as if no one noticed. "Before, even."

"When the Nebari came marching in?" John asked. "So the Stakira Schindler was a Minister, and the Stakira haven't forgotten?"

"Only Ministers can guide the Stakira" Oshana brought her hands together in front of herself, forgetting about the shredded napkin that decided to stay draped from her hands. "Only they, only Ministers, this House was the one, it all began here, because of her and the one that was with her."

Chiana swallowed and pointed to herself. "Her- me?" Chiana tapped her head when Oshana nodded yes, though Oshana was preoccupied trying to get the shredded napkin off of her hands.

"One that was with her? Who was with her?" John asked, more than a little impatiently, or was it jealously, Chiana wondered at a glance.

"Stakira?" Chiana asked.

Again Oshana nodded yes, after ripping the shredded napkin off her hands with manic fury. "He said they will be back, until then we must serve, must serve. The Minister will keep us."

"He didn't make it back" Chiana looked distantly at John. "We...."

"Aren't here at Bates Motel on vacation?" John fished for something relevant, his hand moving in a twirl. "So when the Nebari started getting everything goin' their way, the poor unacceptably unconformable, not-so-normal Stakira were saved from persecution by some Minister predecessor of sicko boy. Minister Schindler was going to supposedly control the Stakira with permission of the annoyed Establishment. Pip here and some Stakira were involved somehow. Right?"

Chiana simply kept eating but was listening. Oshana looked completely mystified. Harvey was feverously writing notes in a ledger with a pencil, a spare pencil stuck behind the lip of the partly opened cooling rod holder on the side of his head. "I'm not sure I'm reaching the same figures you are" Harvey commented. "But do carry on, John, next bet?"

"Okay. Now, Nostradamus predicted that Pip would be back eventually to free the Stakira. Now everyone read themselves into those quatrains, everyone's gonna be led to freedom from tax collectors and mental laundering by some mystical Sister, because that sometime has turned out to be hundreds of years, cycles, whatever, later. Some of the lost records in my archives suggest I had something big to do with this mess, but nobody knows what."

"The lineup is lookin' interestin'" Harvey remarked, still furiously scribbling in the ledger. "But I's says we's a few races from knowing us a good bet, boss."

"I'm bettin' the Sinister Minister, unworthy caretaker of the Sister and Stakira Heritage Society, gets his news from the feedbag, and so does our lovely hostess" John sat back down in a more relaxed poise and looked to Oshana from his brows.

The following instant, John found himself smothered up against Oshana's side, with Chiana gaping back at him from Oshana's other side. "Ggk" John replied. "Thanks ma."

"If only you knew...." the voluptuous Oshana snuggled them against her side under her arms, radiating a sense of being smothered by a very heavy furry blanket "....but you can't know what you know not as I don't know what you know not...." Oshana reclined back, John and Chiana becoming buried between her side and the deep pillows behind her. "....always a trial, always a trial...."

Chiana's head popped up from under Oshana's armpit. Chiana shook her head negatively twice and frowned. "Gotta do better."

"EeeeeAAA-Have some!" Oshana sat up and thrust a tray of foods at Chiana while both Chiana and John found themselves slipped back to sitting across and aside of Oshana around the banquet. Chiana tossed the whole tray over her shoulder and helped herself to some nuts in a little basket. "You will tell me what you know, and I will tell you what I know that you don't know" Oshana looked at them hopefully.

John sat more upright and held his hands out, looking to Chiana. "Hey, I don't know exactly how long we've been here, but it's been months. Now she's starting at the beginning. These here natives are tough to get in with."

"You'll do it" Chiana nodded. "You just gotta conform" she cut him a look from her brows, turning her attention back to trying to peel a fruit.

"Hey I'm a well respected man, going about town, doing the best things so con-servatively. I'm hip, I'm so in the groove every needle hits me. Like Larran and the Stakira?" John looked back to Oshana. "You two consider yourselves the well adjusted types?"

Oshana clearly had no idea what to say.

"You Stakira and the Minister have a responsibility in this, and you're twisting it up in Larran's taffee twirler. We need a return of the king, that movie came out great, always a good sign" he added to Chiana.

Chiana was preoccupied biting into a nut shell. A couple of teeth exploded, shooting out to the side. Chiana dropped the nut and checked her teeth with her thumb, but the teeth were right back to normal. She gaped at the unbreakable nut and nodded absently at John's rambling.

John kept a closed stare toward Chiana a moment before returning his attention to some date-like fruits and Oshana. "Unfortunately for our historical fairy tale here, this end of the resurrection of Arthur and Camelot got royally screwed up, Pumpkin, so it was really bad timing for the Round Table Heritage Trust to go morally bankrupt-"

A different Harvey cut into John's mind's eye, fully superseding his awareness. "Do not follow, the answer is not there" it spoke directly to his mind. Just as suddenly his awareness returned to where he had been.

John grabbed his head. "What the he- something pirated my brain waves!"

"That's the one, John" Harvey said, suddenly seated at John's side. "The one I saved your Chiana from. The one that can reset your memory and control your mind-" Harvey lifted his head in thought "-or perhaps not any longer as a result of the Nebari neural controllers you ripped from your head. Do not confront it, John, until we learn the extent of its control. The risk is too great if we-"

"-Help!" John heard Chiana say in panic, but he looked aside at where she had been and saw nothing. "Help! John! Crichton!" her voice sounded from the space she had been. John reached and felt an intangible presence. "What-" he pointed at Oshana "is going on?!"

"She does not have- a place!" he heard Oshana's voice speak, although she appeared frozen in place.

John held a halting gesture toward Oshana. "A place?! What place?!" he asked, realizing Oshana meant a body, but resisting the oncoming assumption that Chiana's body had perished with every fiber of his being.

"Noooo!" Oshana snapped back into motion, her head slapping down into her palms. "He is there!" she jerked her head upright and looked in horror at John.

"Nonono, that was a very bad episode!" John yelled and pointed at Oshana. "No way is David Bowie's psychotic asian evil clone with Anime hair walkin' off with my honey sticks!" Oshana dissolved into a swirl of air current as he yelled. "Larran, you bastard! If you can hear me, you're not gonna be the one walkin' out of this!" He looked around, but there was only silence in the empty, seemingly tranquil restaurant. At least Harvey was trying to look impressed.

"Am I going to die?" Chiana's presence was cold fear at his back.

John turned and looked where he thought she would be, but he had no answer.

"I would hazard a guess not," Harvey stood, resting his hands on the lapels of his dinner jacket.

"Yeah, you would" John agreed with a hand gestured at Harvey. John rested his hands on his hips. His hands slid into his body as if it were a hologram. "Oh crap. You better be right, Harv!" John shouted while his awareness became formless, merely present somewhere, somehow, trapped. He felt Chiana's presence was near, and distantly, others. "Uh oh I'm Stakira soup."

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