SCIFI.COM | Farscape: Journey Logs

I'll make this short and sweet, because today's been neither. D'Argo, Chiana, Rygel, Sikozu, Noranti and I were searching for Moya in D'Argo's ship, Lo'La. Since we hadn't eaten in about three solar days and there weren't any BBQ shacks on the horizon, we risked eating Noranti's chow.

Cut to all of us puking our guts out on the first planet we could find. All of us except Sikozu, who was the only one of us smart enough to skip breakfast at Noranti's Intergalactic House of Nausea. (Maybe Sputnik really is a genius.)

Then Rygel, who'd flown his ThroneSled into a volcanic cave so he could take a shlock in peace (or maybe because he thought a pit of boiling sulfur would mask the smell), discovered crates filled with valuables. Before we could talk him into leaving the stuff alone (like we don't have enough enemies dogging us already), he tripped a booby trap. An amber substance solidified around most of his body. An identical material sealed the cave's entrance. Chiana and Sikozu were outside; after a futile attempt to blast our way out with D'Argo's Qualta Rifle, he, Noranti, Rygel and I accepted that we were locked in.

The first two gun-toting guards to arrive (I'll call them Larry and Curly) were stupider than Stooges. From our hiding place, D'Argo and I watched them poke Rygel, who — gotta give him credit — actually tried to cover for us and said he was alone. Before Big D and I could dot the I's and cross the T's on a plan, Noranti decided these guys were Tarkans — noble freedom fighters who'd forgive us for trespassing on their secret stash and probably thank us for stopping by. Granny stepped out to say hello, and suddenly everyone was shooting at us. (What a surprise. Like that's never happened before.) D'Argo and I still could've ended it right there if these clowns hadn't been wearing shield belts, devices that blocked our pulse blasts.

Larry and Curly took Rygel — still stuck in amber like a Jurassic Park mosquito — deeper into the maze of lava tunnels. D'Argo, Noranti and I followed. Their buddy Moe tried to kill us, but accidentally fried himself when he released a river of lava on his head right in front of us. I beat my high school's long-jump record getting over that thing.

Up above, Chi and Sputnik guessed that Lo'La's cannon could blast open the entrance, but they couldn't activate the ship without D'Argo's DNA. Too bad D'Argo hadn't left them a convenient supply of his bodily fluids. Oh, wait — he had. Large, steaming mounds of it, in fact....

Over comms, D'Argo and I negotiated with Raa'Keel, the leader of the Stooges. We explained this was all a big mix-up, and he seemed reasonable; said he'd send two of his guys to lead us to Rygel so we could pick up our li'l green buddy and skedaddle. Since we never trust reasonable people, D'Argo and I decided to attack the escorts and claim their shield belts for ourselves.

Noranti mixed up one of her powders to help catch the guards, well, off-guard. Whatever she dusted them with must've been industrial strength, because it would take one hell of a hallucination to mask the horrors D'Argo and I were forced to see while stone-cold sober....

We got the shield belts, left Granny to put her clothes back on, and headed to the bottom of the cavern. There, our plan hit a snag. These guys were Tarkans, all right, but they were thieves, stealing from the real Tarkan rebels, and Raa'Keel didn't want any witnesses to his perfect plan. If our new belts blocked lava as well as pulse blasts, D'Argo and I still could've chilled out. But they didn't, so we were now at the mercy of a guy waving a bucket of molten rock in our faces.

That's when Sikozu, her hands coated in D'Argo's vomit, blasted open the cavern entrance with Lo'La's cannon. Big D and I told Raa'Keel that our "squad" was coming in to whup his ass, and if "they" found us dead he was toast. We forgot to mention that our squad was a couple of girls who looked more like Catholic-school dropouts than the big, ugly thugs we said were on the way. Raa'Keel handed his bucket of lava to another of his sub-genius lackeys and told him to keep an eye on us. Then boss-man left to check out the explosion.

While we were trying to talk sense to Raa'Keel's bucket boy, Rygel — who was looking sicker than a Delta House pledge at the end of Hazing Week — toppled head-first into another one of the booby-traps. The distraction helped me and D'Argo get the drop on the guard, but the trap covered Rygel completely in amber. And, just to make matters worse, our shrink-wrapped sovereign of stink fell ass-over-earbrows into a giant pool of lava nearby.

There are adventures you volunteer for out of duty and honor, adventures on which the fate of civilization rests. Then there are adventures in which, because a talking frog with delusions of royalty tries to take a dump on a treasure pile, everyone you know nearly gets flushed down the galactic toilet. Personally, I prefer adventures that center around beer, girls, firecrackers on Cocoa Beach and nobody getting killed.

Guess which one I had on my hands this time?