SCIFI.COM | Farscape: Journey Logs

Captain's Log ... frell this. Crichton's full of dren.

This is Ka D'Argo, Captain of Moya.

The jumble of electrostatic impulses in Tormented Space was driving Moya mad. She needed additional zyntian filtration to muffle this "noise," and Khurtanan's mechanics could install it. But Khurtanan was a planet of misogynist hypochondriacs, and they wouldn't help us until one of their doctors, Tumii, declared us healthy. This took time.

Meanwhile, the food Tumii offered us was sickening — as in deadly. If a Qatal Mollusk's two halves are eaten by two different people, the halves form a sensory link between those beings — and cause fatal food poisoning. We learned this because, after Doctor Tumii fed us the Mollusks, he explained our danger and announced that only he knew the cure. In exchange for a quarter-million currency pledges per poisoned crewmember, he'd save our lives. The scheming frellnik had us by the mivonks.

Crichton and Sikozu had eaten one Mollusk, so they were sharing physical and emotional sensations. Same for me and Noranti; same for Aeryn and Rygel. Never mind the pain and embarrassment — without a cure, we'd soon become paralyzed and die.

Since Chiana hadn't eaten a Mollusk, she supervised the mechanic who'd be fixing Moya. Noranti began researching a cure, while Crichton, Aeryn and I went planetside to visit Tumii's office.

There, the doctor lectured us on how the Mollusks worked, which was almost more nauseating than the sickness itself. We agreed to pay him. Crichton offered Tumii double if he'd spare us the lecture. Then Tumii announced that he required additional Mollusks to cure us; he only had enough on premises to heal me and Noranti. Great news, if I could endure both the medicine's "special" ingredients and holding hands with Noranti for arns while the Mollusk's bacteria left our bodies. I returned to Moya to begin the waiting.

As Tumii, Aeryn and Crichton waited for the delivery of more Mollusks, the doctor received another visitor — who shot him. (That made me very angry — I was looking forward to shooting him myself.) Though he survived, the assassination attempt opened our eyes to a new problem.

Khurtanan's repression of females had spawned a resistance movement. These women imported the Qatal Mollusks to use as discreet murder weapons against the male government, who mistook the symptoms of poisoning for those of Space Madness. Tumii had discovered their plot and demanded that the women supply him with Mollusks for his extortion schemes in exchange for his silence. Their shooter was trying to end the blackmail.

So the Mollusks we needed were in the hands of dangerous revolutionaries. Our luck never changes.

While Rygel joined Crichton guarding the doctor, Aeryn and Sikozu visited a gentlemen's club. The women working there seemed submissive, but were actually the core rebel group. Their leader, Selva, didn't dare trust Aeryn and Sikozu. Instead, she ordered them captured. Knowing that the girls had eaten Mollusks, Selva hoped to lure their linked partners into coming to the club as well.

Naturally, Crichton and Rygel did exactly that. To infiltrate the club, they dressed as females — which I really, really wish I'd gotten to see. Unfortunately, I was on Moya rubbing fingers with the old woman — I even missed the good stuff that happened onboard. For instance, Chiana realized that our mechanic was really a woman in disguise....

Anyway, suspecting that Crichton and Rygel were in the club, Selva told her henchwoman to cut off Aeryn's finger — guessing that whoever was linked to Aeryn would also feel the pain and scream, betraying himself. That would have been Rygel, who was searching the club's storage rooms for Mollusks. But Sikozu volunteered for the torture instead — so Crichton shared her pain. And Crichton happened to be dancing just then with some frisky pervert, right under Selva's watchful eyes.

This all would obviously have been a really great joke if he and the others hadn't been microts from certain death....