Part 34

---

"I assure that his request was handled consistent to our prior understanding" Authority Guide Gulmac blandly spoke on the visual screen that rested on a warehouse crate.

"Then I may assure the rebels that there will be no security presence until it is proven the crowds will not disperse as rumored?" Perkunas asked, his back still facing the screen.

"At this moment, I see no cause to impose order at the risk of escalating the situation to the result of potential violence" Gulmac placidly replied. "I trust the....organization which you are in contact with wishes the situation to remain so."

"That would be preferable to all of us" Perkunas assured Gulmac. "Your considered restraint is exemplary, my Guide." Perkunas nodded over his shoulder to the man operating the visual screen. The tech closed the contact. "Oh I would have traded all of my holdings to have seen Larran's face when the Authority Guide brushed him off" Perkunas thought out loud.

"Negotiating against Minister Larran with the Urlain sector's Authority Guide? You, and Gulmac, surprise me" Inton remarked, polishing the coating of his now-assembled precision pulse rifle.

Perkunas shrugged slightly. "Whoever turned in Trun after the Elnto Nohj heist was too intimidated to reveal themselves, so, since some fortunate circumstances made it appear to be possible, I took the credit."

"But if we escalate the situation?" Inton asked, the sharp eyes of his chiseled face peering intently while he fine tuned the sight assist on the rifle.

"It would take something more drastic than the death of a few disturbing elements to oblige Gulmac to send enforcers with this crowd around" Perkunas replied. "So it seems that whether or not something drastic enough happens to bring in immediate Establishment action is in the hands of the crowd." Turning to the screen, Perkunas walked over and watched the tech working for a moment. "Mish" Perkunas asked the tech "you are confident they can't trace our communication to this particular building?"

The skinny tech half smiled, busily disassembling some delicate equipment. "We have it entering the datastream remotely from a junction several hundred metras from here" he explained. "The Establishment systems are so homogenously integrated that if you develop any variation, in some ways it's easier to enter the datastream without it being able to read identifiers or trace specific strains in their systems than to make a properly compliant component. Oh add that the Establishment programming is slipshod. It's much more vulnerable with less diversity."

"Very fitting" Perkunas mumbled.

---

"So there you have it" John switched of the clattering projector, unhooked the rolled screen for it to wind back up into its holder with a snap, and walked back over to sit near Tannac. "All the latest rushes."

"What can Oshana do?" Tannac asked.

"That's a really good question. Wouldn't we like to know" John looked twice at a sprout of greenery sticking out of the tunnel wall behind them and pulled at it. "Shuffle us around I guess. I'm not so sure she knows. I get the feeling she's kinda wingin' it, going by instinct. Maybe she didn't come with a manual and she can't register for the tech support. Not sure she has control so much as she's a medium and it's hard for anyone else to associate with it enough to get around." The greenery John pulled from the tunnel wall proved to be a carrot top. He brushed the carrot off and took a bite. "So basically, the way I figure it, doc, it's part of my half-assed subconscious trying to associate with Spookyspace."

"Very interesting" Tannac snapped back to attention from a weary slump and stood up. "Now let's go stop Larran from warping any more minds."

"Got any ideas?"

"Shoot him dead?" Tannac shrugged and offered John a hand up.

"I....dunno" John took Tannac's hand and stood, noting that in this state, where thought seemed to make fact, the skinny Nebari seemed to be as immovable as stone to his pull. "Thanks, tank. Strung up by rioting mob isn't really far up there on my list of exit strategies. Maybe Oshana can interrupt him. Come on, let's get up to the surface and get a bug in her ear."

"Whatever you say, bigstick" she replied, meeting his queer glance with a smirk and wag of her brows.

"Up and at em!" John hopped up, grasping onto a hanging root and digging to the top of the tunnel. The dig became increasingly liquid and facile while his mind momentarily drifted to what he was going to say. Before he could form a plan, he found himself emerging into daylight, with Tannac's hair popping out in front and slightly below him. John looked around, noticing Tannac and himself were shoulders and above sticking out of what appeared to be an ear canal filled with dirt, his ear in fact, and so small that they easily fit in the ear canal. "Wow we all really do live in a Yellow Submarine. And yes ma'am, that's one dirty mind in there."

"Krew" Tannac called it, swaying her head in a nod.

"Oshana!" John bellowed.

"What?!" Oshana burst from the dirt several feet from John. "Whaaat!" she furiously dug her fingers into the dirt to either side of her and flung it in the air. "I caaan't nooow!"

"Now hang on Sloopy!" John pointed at her, only to get showered with dirt she began trying to scoop at him. But her fingers were kept open and he just got peppered with debris. "Sloopy! Hang on!"

Tannac pulled up some roots laying around, tied them around a ball of dirt and set the ball of dirt onto Oshana's head. Wearing the ball of dirt on her shoulders made Oshana sit still. After a moment, Oshana felt around her head. "Are we all calm now?" Tannac asked.

The ball of dirt nodded, so Tannac took it off. Oshana rested one side of her dirty face on her hand, looking pouty.

"Ookay, now I know you tried to stop Larran, Pumpkin, but he's not leaving you any choices is he?" He waited for her to make a little negative nod. "You want him out there giving the Fenas the new testament?" Her eyes stared wildly. He half gestured up. "Then put him in his place, uhh, Sister."

The dirt liquefied and drew down in a whirlpool, drawing Tannac first into black then back into her own body, gazing at the floor she was laying face down on. Drawing a gasp, she struggled to regain breath and sit up. She realized she must have fallen hard, however, and couldn't move more than her head while John began to stand and turn towards the balcony.

---

"Identify yourselves with the elected, and let that elected meet with me so that we may all know one another" Larran instructed the entranced flocks of Fenas below and beyond the balcony. "And you-"

"Minister" a voice interrupted him from behind. It was slurred, but he recognized it as John Crichton's voice.

Upper lip snarling in outrage, Larran in Chiana turned a deadly glare to John Crichton. "No" he gasped breathlessly at a golden glow emerging from John's forehead like a sunrise, realizing then that it was Oshana in John Crichton.

Larran swung around, clutching the balcony railing. He intently gazed across the throngs of Fenas gazing up to him in awe, while a fear was slicing like a blade through his mind. He could not speak. Again he tried, but this time a choking suddenly overcame him. Clasping for his throat, he stumbled and gagged, hanging onto the railing and lurching as the murmurs from the crowd rose into cries of alarm.

Senses removed from his reach, an emptiness insulating himself as though he were shrinking inside of his, or her, body, increasingly replaced by something that belonged there more than himself. "Chiana!" he hurtled his fury in his thoughts, appalled in horror at being encased and smothered within his own prize as the world slipped away. What seemed only a moment later, Larran felt himself somewhere else, hanging as if by strings being manipulated by something.

A giant face of John Crichton emerged from the shadows to smile deviously at his puppet, fixed by strings from a sentinel which John held in one hand.

"Oshana!" Larran yelled, blindly grasping into the darkness ahead. "Oshana!"

"Hey Massah, whuz duh trouble?" John leered at his puppet from behind. "Chi got her tongue?" He moved the strings, making Larran dance. "Woop de do- de do- de do."

"Oshana!" Larran yelled and snarled.

"Yo sho' gits mad when yo's a fearin'. Wooo! Ain't cho' slaaves a scramblin' to yas feets, suh?" John swayed Larran side to side. "'Taint dat a shame. Yo bid low, git low." Chiana fell back against John's back. "Whoa Pip, you hangin' in there at the wheel?"

"Nnn-nah, mm-m, think it's making, ah, trouble" Chiana recovered enough to get on her knees beside John and gestured to take the sentinel in her hand.

"She says trouble? Well if that doesn't shiver them timbers."

"Get out! Get out!" Larran yelled.

"Arr, like enough you'll borrow my boat, but I ain't takin' you to Jamaicer" John bounced Larran on the ends of the strings.

"L-let me, mine, my place" Chiana put her hand over John's, almost indignant.

John handed the sentinel to Chiana. "Well if you think you can handle it now, here's Pinoc."

"I got it, get back, yeah? I think they're, there's gonna be a scene. Get Oshana, yourself back....mm-mbut get me, Oshana and, and Larran to, to my rooms."

"Rooms? I don't know, this seem like the time to catch up on 40 winks?"

"Nno! Do it, please? Just do it, tell Oshana, don't let him back in his own!"

"No, you are not going down with him" John radiated fury.

"Not going down, just do it! Help me! Frell....fine. Look, are you going to help me or, or think you know it all, as usual?"

"As usual? I don't know much of anything usually but neither of us rank high on the command protocol around here."

"Promise, or you can't go."

"What?! That is, oh no, that just ranks."

"Frelling do it! Promise."

"Fine. I promise. But this is not over. This is so not over."

"You promise? Hey" she seemed to envelop him, a sensation of want, need and a white heat washing all around him. It passed, leaving him cleansed of more than merely doubt. "Promise?" she repeated, somewhere close.

"Yes ma'am" John ran for a rabbit hole hovering somewhere behind. "Move over, Spooky!"

---

Next Page