"There are hundreds of Peacekeepers, Aeryn. I cannot infiltrate that base without detection," said D'Argo angrily.

"Well, I can," said Aeryn, nobly sitting up.

D'Argo looked directly at Zhaan as he placed a hand in the middle of Aeryn's torso, gently pressing her back down. "I need to speak with Aeryn. Alone." His voice made it clear this was not a request, and Zhaan quietly left the room. "This rescue attempt will not happen without my cooperation."

"Zhaan is perfectly capable of staying with a transport module while I enter the base to get Crichton. Neither of you could help in there, anyway."

"That is true. But if I say this attempt is guaranteed to fail, she will not risk it."

"What do you need in order to cooperate?"

"Answer three questions. Answer them truthfully, answer them thoughtfully. The answer to the first question can change my mind about cooperating, but not the other two. Do you understand?"

Aeryn nodded.

"First. Can you do this: enter a Peacekeeper base without betraying weakness, find Galina and Crichton, defy the orders of any senior officers you meet?" He looked at her steadily, expressionlessly. Just waiting for her answer.

"Yes," she said, no hesitation.

"Aeryn, think. If we do this now, and you are not ready, Crichton remains prisoner. You die, anyone who goes with you dies, and possibly Moya and those who stay aboard her die. If we wait, there is the possibility of return. You will be stronger, and the Peacekeepers may become complacent. The benefits of going immediately are nearly equal to those of waiting."

"Back up." When he had moved away from her, Aeryn stood up, carefully. After thirty microts, her dizziness had passed. She took one step. Then another. In perhaps one hundred microts she was walking normally, but her arms were shaking badly. She looked around, picked up a large instrument whose purpose she did not recognize but whose weight was roughly equal to her pulse rifle. The shaking actually decreased with the weight in her hand, and she walked twenty paces with it, then headed back to the bed and sat down. "I can do this. And Crichton cannot wait for me to recover further."

"Good. Answer these two questions, and I will call the others to plan your assault. Remember, your answers must be honest for my cooperation. Honest and considered."

He took a deep breath. "What do you know of Luxan sword brothers?"

She shuddered, rolled her eyes. "Trouble. You can't separate them, if they're held prisoner. If you injure one, you have to watch out for the other to get revenge. As I understand it, the bond they swear is like the loyalty Peacekeepers are supposed to display towards High Command, except that it's personal, one warrior to another."

"That is an excellent understanding for someone who is not Luxan. There is a little more to the bond than that. The bond consists of a Quathai and a Quathali. The Quathali must submit to his Quathai, in all things. It is the purpose of the bond, to establish hierarchy and announce alliance. We have a saying, 'An unbonded warrior guards his own full circle; a sword brother cares only for the 180 degrees behind him.'" He stopped speaking, and looked at her, as if expecting some response. His gaze was intense, and she felt naked before it.

"Are they lovers, then? Is that why they're so fierce? You could ... sometimes you could talk to prisoners, and the way they talked about lovers, and cousins, and uncles, and all sorts of family ... I always figured those things must be very compelling."

"Often, but not always. It is not that they can have no other lovers. But sword brothers share everything: food, weapons, housing, clothing, children, and even lovers."

"That's beautiful, D'Argo." Her voice was reverent, as it had been when he'd finally been able to show her a Kkore cannon on a trading planet they had passed. "That's really beautiful. But what has it to do with me, or Crichton, or the Gammac base? As you've pointed out, time is short, and we should begin planning."

"We must trust each other for this mission to work. It has been so before; it will be so again. There have been ... situations where trust was needed on this ship, and it was broken." He saw Aeryn's eyes cut quickly to the display screen Pilot typically used to interface with this room, then up to one of the internal monitors. Her shaking increased a bit. He touched her shoulders, leaned down, and the weight on her arms seemed to help.

"I ask you to be my Quathali. I feel ... drawn to you. I want to trust you. You are like home to me. A warrior, like my shield brothers. Female and Sebacean, like my wife. Will you take me as your Quathai?"

"This is ... unexpected. You are, you are basically requesting to be my commanding officer in a unit of two. There is a certain ... harmony in a chain of command. This ship, these people, are so unstable. " Her voice was choppy, breathy, and she gasped a little between sentences. Her eyes were wide and her mouth hung open a moment. "But why my Quathai and not my Quathali?" And she had gained control of herself, returned to her normal way of speaking, between a growl and a purr, with just a hint of challenge in every word.

"You do not know what being Quathai is." He looked, for a moment, as if he had something else to say, but did not re-open his mouth.

She nodded. She knew, from experience, that each type of command was different, that a captain was different from a lieutenant was different from a seargeant. Leaping from ensign to captain was impossible, because an ensign did not understand a captain's responsibilities or a captain's prerogatives. "I don't know." An affirmation of his good sense.

"It is more than commander/subordinate. It is," he paused, the right word was so important here. "Familial."

"I don't know about that, either. It's unusual for a Peacekeeper to have one. They single us out so young, and it's rare for more than one child to be taken from a family. It's impossible for someone who is not a part of it to really understand ... anything. We all envied Crais desperately because he had a brother, a brother who would serve with him." Her eyes had unfocused during this speech. Now, she looked directly at him. "Are you expecting to be my lover?"

"No. The bonding ceremony, the full bonding ceremony includes sexual acts. Other than that, I would not ask. But, if you ask me, I will not say no. "

She laughed, a bitter, nasty laugh. "I don't know if the same can be said for John about you. We had begun a sexual relationship. "

He nodded, a little sadly. "That is a choice you must make. If we were brothers, he would have to be my lover, for as long as he is yours."

She looked away from him then, the first time that evening. "It's not fair to him, to make that sort of choice when he can't know. He's out there, being tortured because he wanted to save my life. I'm trying to decide whether or not to whore him off so I can have a--," her voice broke. "A family."

"It is not fair to him. It is not fair to you. But if we do this thing, now, it will better his chances of safe rescue later. Balance his life against his virtue."

She kicked him. She kicked hard and without meaning to, and D'Argo grunted in pain, backed away from the bed. "I'm sorry. I guess you don't want to be my Quathai anymore."

"I attacked you. Should I be surprised when you defend yourself?" He sat, on the floor, far enough away so she could not kick him again without first rising. "It is not a question I can take back. I can wait for your answer. I can wait until after we have rescued Crichton, and you have had a chance to speak with him. But, I believe it is best done now."

And she sighed, because it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair, but it was also true that John needed every bit of strength they could muster. And she, Aeryn Sun, needed this bond. John had been the one to tell her that she could be more than a simple Peacekeeper drone. And she was now, she was a person, complete and fully realized. And D'Argo was offering to love that person, protect her, cherish her. She realized that she was going to say yes, eventually. The question was whether she would present John with something that had been completed or something just started, that he would falsely believe he could influence. And looked at that way, it all became so clear. "It is best done now. What do we have to do?"

"Normally, you would submit to me, sexually. But you are recently injured and we have to deal with a Peacekeeper base soon. We can wait until this is all done for that. What we must do now is share blood."

He stood and removed a blade from his tunic. He handed it to Aeryn and presented his hand to her, palm up. She sliced across it, and the thick, black-brown liquid bubbled up. Quickly, she returned the knife and presented her palm. He slashed across it, and the bright red liquid seeped. They clasped hands and watched as the blood oozed from between their fingers. The color started as a nasty brown shade, but after several minutes had lightened to an odd sort of dark pink. D'Argo released Aeryn's hand, and pressed his own to Aeryn's cheek. When he lifted it, she had a maroon mark on her face in the shape of D'Argo's palm.

A few seconds later, she did the same to him.

La Fin