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farscapefriday challenges, 2004/2005
-----------------------------------------
Season 1 Challenge, mild spoilers for Throne for a Loss
A Little Club Soda
124 words
His shoulders ached from leaning over the side of the tank. Amnexus fluid felt like Bactene in the pinpricks on his forearm (stimulants, needles and ray guns, oh my!). Still he knelt there, stubborn, scrubbing.
"That's my flight suit! And it smells like..." Tavloid sweat? He couldn't finish the line, because it had smelled like nothing he'd ever smelled before.
Zhaan hadn't understood. "Moya's amnexus reserves are on tier two. The fluid is quite hygenic; you can wash it there."
"Fabulous," he'd growled. "Trading alien sweat for alien slime."
That wasn't fair, he'd known it even as he slunk to the basement to do his laundry. But still, he couldn't shake the thought that he'd never smell Tide with Bleach again.
He scrubbed harder.
-------------------------------------------
First Time Challenge (first experience of *something* for a character). Spoilers for Premiere.
Untitled
It was hard not to think of the woman beside him as human. She looked human. Hell, he had a cousin named Erin, a market researcher for some company in Chicago. They hadn't spoken in years.
"I'd eat, if I were you," Erin said. Holding the fork in both bound hands, she speared another green cube off the plate and brought it awkwardly to her mouth.
Eyeing her warily, John sniffed at the cubes. No way he was touching them. They were lightyears away from Chicago, and this Erin wasn't human. She could live on rat poison for all he knew. Screw her anyway, his ribs still hurt like hell where she'd kicked him.
Erin spoke through a mouthful of pasty green. "It may be the only chance --" suddenly the awkwardness was gone, and she tucked the fork neatly up her sleeve in the space of a swallow, "-- we get."
Human or not, this was an ass-kicking commando.
The cube tasted like wheat germ and glucose with a hint of grass. Now for that trick with the fork.
-----------------------------
Discipline Challenge, mild spoilers for Won't Get Fooled Again/end of season 2.
The Little Things
(169 words)
Harvey is disdainfully intrigued by the seasons. He rummages through all of John's first days of school, watches the orange-brown leaves swirl down the street. He lingers in freak Carolina snowstorms and rainy April nights, all the while humming snatches of The Byrds,
To everything, turn, turn, turn . . .
Shove it, Harve. John's fingers brush Moya's ridges at regular intervals as he paces, studying the tops of his shoes in the dim corridor. Moya does her best but he misses the sky. Days. nights. More so now that his mind is cracking.
There is a season, turn, turn, turn . . .
I mean it. He scratches uselessly at the back of his head. He misses seasons. Cycle is a word that has no meaning in space.
Pathetic, John. An entire race slave to precession and spin.
Slave, huh? He plunks Harvey into the middle of the July '96 heat wave, 3am in a 6th floor apartment with no air conditioning. I'm still in control.
This once, the clone glowers and melts away.
--------------------------------------------
Where are they now? Challenge, spoilers for The Flax.
The Standard Mold
196 words
Her luck ran out during a supply run on Urto. She barely had time to duck under a table before six bar patrons were blown apart in an impressive show of Zenetan force. Now she found herself face down in a pile of unsalvagable refuse, Kcrackic's pulse pistol digging into her neck, his hot breath at her cheek. She was about to die and all she could do was thank God she'd had her smell pods cauterized.
"Staanz," Kcrackic sneered. "You--"
A pulse blast exploded in the room. She flinched-- still alive, still alive under a crush of dead weight.
"Not very smart, was he?" came a wet voice.
"What? Who?" She heaved the body off of her and sat up, peering through the settling dust.
Her rescuer gave a shudder and crossed the room. Tentacles quested like a thousand tiny arms as it moved, gathering bits of itself off of tables and chairs and independently reattaching them.
"Couldn't stand by," it garbled, "and see a beautiful lady ravaged."
Staanz blushed, dumbstruck, stuttering and shaking. "I... y-you... really?"
The boolite put a tentacle to her cheek, shushing her, and she let herself fall into its arms.
------------------------------------------------
Unconventional Pairings challenge, season 4, mild spoilers for The Choice. PG-13, inter-species het
Afterglow
Rygel came to her with no apologies. He offered her nothing in return. If she had asked, if she had wanted, she thinks he may have been willing. It wasn't modesty or revulsion that held her tongue. She knows how Hynerians feel about body breeders. And she doesn't want . . . she doesn't need anything more from him than what he gives freely.
They meet in her quarters like two nervous young lovers.
"Could you," Rygel starts, eyeing her medicine pouch. "I'd like it if . . . Kellor . . ."
"Shhh," Noranti takes a handful of powder. She brushes his cheek. "Just close your eyes."
Afterward Rygel sleeps deeply, which she takes as a compliment. And somehow, climaxing is easier for her to do-- quietly, unapologetically-- in his slumbering company. As her body relaxes she thinks maybe she will cook some krawlda for him, if she can find the right ingredients.
--------------------------------------------
Warren Zevon Title Challenge, futurefic, post-ep to season 2's Look at the Princess trilogy:
Veracruz
Side by side, they listen to a five day war. They listen to Councilor Sedreck’s speeches, to Councilor Rayner’s tight fear, to Empress Novia’s misgivings about the strength of an accord that rests so pivotally on the shoulders of one man.
In the world beyond their pristine shells, so much fades away. Scant cycles later, Crichton and his threats disappear. The Scarrans grow bold again.
They listen as the Scarrans take Hespal Colony. Then Magridda, Caranday, and New Sebacia. Then there is no luxury left for listening. They take on skin and bone, only to flee before the approaching Dreadnaughts.
-------------------------------------------
Random book quote challenge, no spoilers.
"...perhaps one of the most elegant methods of constructing set estimators and calculating coverage probabilities is the use of pivotal quantities."
The den fell silent, and Pilot assigned a sub-task to savor the moment.
In front of him, John stifled a cough.
"It’s... very nice."
Most task levels were busy adjusting Moya’s internal harmonics, but the sparse attention Pilot had assigned this conversation still recognized that the human’s verbal and non-verbal postures were out of alignment. He frowned.
"You didn’t like it."
"I did." John put a hand on Pilot’s claw. "But I think Pilot poetry loses something in translation."
--------------------------------------------
farscapefriday challenges, 2004/2005-----------------------------------------
Season 1 Challenge, mild spoilers for Throne for a Loss
A Little Club Soda
124 words
His shoulders ached from leaning over the side of the tank. Amnexus fluid felt like Bactene in the pinpricks on his forearm (stimulants, needles and ray guns, oh my!). Still he knelt there, stubborn, scrubbing.
"That's my flight suit! And it smells like..." Tavloid sweat? He couldn't finish the line, because it had smelled like nothing he'd ever smelled before.
Zhaan hadn't understood. "Moya's amnexus reserves are on tier two. The fluid is quite hygenic; you can wash it there."
"Fabulous," he'd growled. "Trading alien sweat for alien slime."
That wasn't fair, he'd known it even as he slunk to the basement to do his laundry. But still, he couldn't shake the thought that he'd never smell Tide with Bleach again.
He scrubbed harder.
-------------------------------------------
First Time Challenge (first experience of *something* for a character). Spoilers for Premiere.
Untitled
It was hard not to think of the woman beside him as human. She looked human. Hell, he had a cousin named Erin, a market researcher for some company in Chicago. They hadn't spoken in years.
"I'd eat, if I were you," Erin said. Holding the fork in both bound hands, she speared another green cube off the plate and brought it awkwardly to her mouth.
Eyeing her warily, John sniffed at the cubes. No way he was touching them. They were lightyears away from Chicago, and this Erin wasn't human. She could live on rat poison for all he knew. Screw her anyway, his ribs still hurt like hell where she'd kicked him.
Erin spoke through a mouthful of pasty green. "It may be the only chance --" suddenly the awkwardness was gone, and she tucked the fork neatly up her sleeve in the space of a swallow, "-- we get."
Human or not, this was an ass-kicking commando.
The cube tasted like wheat germ and glucose with a hint of grass. Now for that trick with the fork.
-----------------------------
Discipline Challenge, mild spoilers for Won't Get Fooled Again/end of season 2.
The Little Things
(169 words)
Harvey is disdainfully intrigued by the seasons. He rummages through all of John's first days of school, watches the orange-brown leaves swirl down the street. He lingers in freak Carolina snowstorms and rainy April nights, all the while humming snatches of The Byrds,
To everything, turn, turn, turn . . .
Shove it, Harve. John's fingers brush Moya's ridges at regular intervals as he paces, studying the tops of his shoes in the dim corridor. Moya does her best but he misses the sky. Days. nights. More so now that his mind is cracking.
There is a season, turn, turn, turn . . .
I mean it. He scratches uselessly at the back of his head. He misses seasons. Cycle is a word that has no meaning in space.
Pathetic, John. An entire race slave to precession and spin.
Slave, huh? He plunks Harvey into the middle of the July '96 heat wave, 3am in a 6th floor apartment with no air conditioning. I'm still in control.
This once, the clone glowers and melts away.
--------------------------------------------
Where are they now? Challenge, spoilers for The Flax.
The Standard Mold
196 words
Her luck ran out during a supply run on Urto. She barely had time to duck under a table before six bar patrons were blown apart in an impressive show of Zenetan force. Now she found herself face down in a pile of unsalvagable refuse, Kcrackic's pulse pistol digging into her neck, his hot breath at her cheek. She was about to die and all she could do was thank God she'd had her smell pods cauterized.
"Staanz," Kcrackic sneered. "You--"
A pulse blast exploded in the room. She flinched-- still alive, still alive under a crush of dead weight.
"Not very smart, was he?" came a wet voice.
"What? Who?" She heaved the body off of her and sat up, peering through the settling dust.
Her rescuer gave a shudder and crossed the room. Tentacles quested like a thousand tiny arms as it moved, gathering bits of itself off of tables and chairs and independently reattaching them.
"Couldn't stand by," it garbled, "and see a beautiful lady ravaged."
Staanz blushed, dumbstruck, stuttering and shaking. "I... y-you... really?"
The boolite put a tentacle to her cheek, shushing her, and she let herself fall into its arms.
------------------------------------------------
Unconventional Pairings challenge, season 4, mild spoilers for The Choice. PG-13, inter-species het
Afterglow
Rygel came to her with no apologies. He offered her nothing in return. If she had asked, if she had wanted, she thinks he may have been willing. It wasn't modesty or revulsion that held her tongue. She knows how Hynerians feel about body breeders. And she doesn't want . . . she doesn't need anything more from him than what he gives freely.
They meet in her quarters like two nervous young lovers.
"Could you," Rygel starts, eyeing her medicine pouch. "I'd like it if . . . Kellor . . ."
"Shhh," Noranti takes a handful of powder. She brushes his cheek. "Just close your eyes."
Afterward Rygel sleeps deeply, which she takes as a compliment. And somehow, climaxing is easier for her to do-- quietly, unapologetically-- in his slumbering company. As her body relaxes she thinks maybe she will cook some krawlda for him, if she can find the right ingredients.
--------------------------------------------
Warren Zevon Title Challenge, futurefic, post-ep to season 2's Look at the Princess trilogy:
Veracruz
Side by side, they listen to a five day war. They listen to Councilor Sedreck’s speeches, to Councilor Rayner’s tight fear, to Empress Novia’s misgivings about the strength of an accord that rests so pivotally on the shoulders of one man.
In the world beyond their pristine shells, so much fades away. Scant cycles later, Crichton and his threats disappear. The Scarrans grow bold again.
They listen as the Scarrans take Hespal Colony. Then Magridda, Caranday, and New Sebacia. Then there is no luxury left for listening. They take on skin and bone, only to flee before the approaching Dreadnaughts.
-------------------------------------------
Random book quote challenge, no spoilers.
"...perhaps one of the most elegant methods of constructing set estimators and calculating coverage probabilities is the use of pivotal quantities."
The den fell silent, and Pilot assigned a sub-task to savor the moment.
In front of him, John stifled a cough.
"It’s... very nice."
Most task levels were busy adjusting Moya’s internal harmonics, but the sparse attention Pilot had assigned this conversation still recognized that the human’s verbal and non-verbal postures were out of alignment. He frowned.
"You didn’t like it."
"I did." John put a hand on Pilot’s claw. "But I think Pilot poetry loses something in translation."
--------------------------------------------
