"Liars, Guns and Money, Part 2: With Friends Like These" As always, the crew has made a bad situation worse. In order to raise enough money to buy an auction lot of slaves that included D'Argo's son, Jothee, the crew robbed a Shadow Depository — a high-security bank for criminals. And as if that were not risky enough, they stole the deposit belonging to Scorpius, who arrived at the depository as the plan was being carried out and very nearly captured Crichton, who he has been chasing for more than a cycle. We narrowly escaped and arrived at the auction to place our bid on the group of 10,000 Banik slaves. Unfortunately, Scorpius had deduced our plan and had already purchased the lot and executed all of them except Jothee — who he offered to release unharmed in exchange for Crichton. The crew, of course, was unwilling to give Scorpius what he wanted, so they came up with yet another dangerous scheme. They decided to use Scorpius' own stolen money to hire mercenaries to rescue Jothee. But for the plan to work they had to contact a number of our former enemies: the Vocarian Bloodtrackers, for their sharp sense of smell; the Sheyang, for their ability to spit fireballs; the Tavleks, for their strength-enhancing gauntlet weapons; and the Zenetan pirates, for their ship-neutralizing trap, The Flax. Shortly after the Human, the Sebacean and the Luxan left to recruit our old foes, Moya began experiencing severe metal fatigue, and neither she nor I could determine why. It was Chiana who stumbled upon the cause quite by accident: While she and the Hynerian were counting their new fortune, she discovered that the Borinium ingots they'd stolen from Scorpius were actually parasites known as Karack Metallites, and they had awoken and begun eating Moya. Natira, the administrator of the Shadow Depository, had planted the Metallites to double-cross Scorpius, but now we were the victims. With Moya in agony, Zhaan searched for a way to remove the parasites, but there seemed no way to do so without hurting Moya. After much difficulty, the crew returned with their band of mercenaries, who looked hardly capable of carrying out the plan Crichton had proposed. But even more troubling was the fact that we no longer had any means of paying the mercenaries — all the stolen currency was now running amok as parasites and devouring Moya from within. The situation seemed hopeless. The Karack Metallites were spreading through Moya despite Zhann's efforts, the mercenaries were threatening mutiny, time was running out for D'Argo's son, and Scorpius seemed prepared to do anything to capture Crichton. I feared that no matter what happened, this time things would end badly for us all.... Wayne Pygram  . . . . . .  Scorpius Paul Goddard  . . . . . .  Stark David Franklin  . . . . . .  Lt. Braca Claudia Karvan  . . . . . .  Natira Matt Newton  . . . . . .  Jothee Nicholas Hope  . . . . . .  Akkor Thomas Holgrove  . . . . . .  Teurac John Adam  . . . . . .  Bekhesh Jeremy Sims  . . . . . .  Rorf Jo Kerrigan  . . . . . .  Rorg David Wheeler  . . . . . .  Durka David Bowers  . . . . . .  Kurz Writer  . . . . . .  Naren Shankar Director  . . . . . .  Catherine Millar << Previous Log Next Log >>