As the beating continued, John found his mind going numb to the pain, splitting off from the contradictory sensations of pain and pleasure his body was experiencing. Physically it felt like the abuse had gone on for hours, but the tiny, cold part of his brain that was protecting itself watched Crais' body temperature rise and breathing quicken as emotions gripped him harder, and that part of John's mind calculated they had been at it for close to a quarter arn.

A heavy, overhand blow to his shoulder blade knocked John to his knees, coughing and gasping for air, and in the close confines of the cell he had no choice but to come to rest against Crais' legs. Leaning against Crais' left hip for support, that cold part of his mind began listening to Crais' ragged breathing and counting off microts, waiting for exhaustion to overtake his captor.

In a few more microts he felt the strength drain away from Crais. Clutching his waist for support, John shifted his mouth lightly over the hard, pulsing bulge in Crais' trousers. Startled, Crais jerked back slightly, and John repeated the gesture, a little more firmly this time, to make sure he had Crais' full attention.

"I can take Tauvo's place..." he whispered, letting the heat of his breath soak into Crais' groin through the fabric, "...give you back some of what you lost..." A rumbling began deep in Crais' chest; his hips twitched, and his free hand came up alongside John's head. "....what you think I took away from you...."

"I promised Tauvo vengeance," he said on the edges of a groan, but one hand was lightly directing John's attentions to his crotch, and the other slipped the blunt edge of the kioga along John's chest, the cold metal shocking against his nipples. John ignored the little electric jolts radiating through his chest and increased his ministrations, coaxing the head of Crais' organ up past the waistband of his pants. Awkwardly he used a nudging motion of his chin to fold the waistband down, rasping his rough cheek against Crais' cock.

The kioga moved down John's belly, sliding along the rising length of his own organ as his mouth worked over Crais' heated cock. Above him, Crais' eyes were closed; his whole body rocked lightly against John's head. "C'mon, Crais. Making me your prisoner indefinitely, being able to make me do anything you want..." he let his teeth brush over the sensitive tip of the cock as he spoke. "...there's a kind of revenge in breaking me down like that, isn't there?" Praying Sebacean anatomy matched up to humans', John slid his tongue along the underside of the head, where a particularly sensitive fold of skin could be found on his own cock, and was rewarded with a sharp thrust toward his mouth."As long as I'm in your....custody.....you can kill me anytime you please...."

"Indeed." Crais jerked him to his feet and shoved him roughly against the wall of the cell, pushing up against his back. "And rest assured, human, that fate awaits you no matter what other uses I might find you have," he hissed into John's ear. "You will not be bargaining for your life today." With a last vicious shove Crais backed away. Clinging desperately to the wall, John heard him readjust his uniform and close the kioga with a loud snap, then leave the cell. As the echo of footfalls died away, John slid down the wall and into a heap on the floor. /Maybe not for -my- life, fella, but..../

After a stop by his quarters to shower, change and collect himself, Crais returned to the command center and resumed his day's work. Though he flattered himself he appeared perfectly normal, in fact he spent much of the day prowling the comm deck restlessly, shifting the compressed kioga end over end from one hand to the other as he paced, radiating such darkness the command staff gave him a wide berth.

"Captain?" called Lt. Teeg from a console across the deck.

"Yes, lieutenant. Have you located the leviathan yet?" He joined her to peer over a tech's shoulder at the screen.

"No sir, but the techs have completed their projections of her range from the point we first found residual traces of Starburst. Even the smallest Starburst Moya could have made would have taken her out of our sensor range, but we believe we can catch her if we can overtake this radius," the cool blonde replied, pointing to the figures on the screen.

"Yes, but in which direction?" Crais muttered. "Too little time....Teeg, is this radius within our communications range?" She nodded. "Transmit a wide-band broadcast in all directions across this field, Lieutenant." She glanced up at him, wide-eyed. "Send them the playback of our capture of Crichton's pod. With any luck we can make Moya meet us halfway."

"Surely they'll know it's a trap, sir?"

"Of course they will, Lieutenant. But if they've even a fraction of the loyalty Crichton's shown for them, they won't have much choice but to come back, will they?" he smiled.

"Honor among fugitives?" she asked, arching a brow skeptically.

"Oh, the Hynerian wouldn't, of course, but the Luxan's size would out vote Rygel in any argument. And Officer Sun has an intimate working knowledge of this carrier; she may think she can make a rescue attempt work, even with our crew on the alert for her." Teeg shook her head sadly. "Problem, Lieutenant?"

"It's just...Officer Sun, sir. The escapees are one thing, but the thought of a Peacekeeper officer, leading an assault force against her own crew, her own captain - it just, it defies -"

Crais nodded. "Words fail, don't they? And there you have the reason the regs about irreversible contamination were made so strict in the first place." He patted her shoulder lightly. "Call up Sun's duty records, Teeg. Go through every posting and assignment she's ever had on this ship; try to determine exactly how well she knows the carrier, and postulate some possible attack scenarios. You have command; signal my quarters at the first sign of Moya." She nodded, and he left.

Back in the captain's quarters Crais sat at his desk, staring heavily at the reports he was trying to work through without really seeing them. Images kept intruding: the first night he spent with Tauvo; Crichton's blood on his hands; the human offering himself up on his knees. Finally Crais thumbed a toggle on the edge of the desk and a small screen rose up from the desktop.

He cued up playback of Tauvo's death, hoping to find a decision, but he'd watched the scene so many times over the months he'd become numb to it; the images no longer seemed to hold any meaning to him. The pull towards the human he'd experienced in the cell felt treacherous, and a large part of his mind wanted to deny it.

A memory swam before him: Tauvo laughing, as he told him about Teeg's offering herself to him for a night in exchange for promotion to his second. He liked Teeg well enough, and was going to give her the job anyway, but he found the offer....distasteful. "Take her, brother," Tauvo had said, "and let her know she failed to please you. What better way to keep control of your second, than to make her fear you'll replace her - or that you'll make her sleep with you again?"

Still he'd hesitated. "Tauvo, there have been women I've - liked, in this way - not Teeg, but others, from time to time...."

Tauvo had stepped closer, stroking his hair. "Do you desire her, brother? At all?" he'd asked softly, and Crais shook his head. "Then it isn't sex, my friend. It's only an exercise in power. Teeg thinks she can get power over you in this way - turn it around and make it a way to keep her in check...." And Tauvo had been right; though they never referred to that night again after, Teeg had been just a bit fearful of him ever since.

Finally he leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes and shutting out everything for a long moment. Then he opened a signal to the brig. "Clean him up and bring him to me."

Soon the doors slid open and a guard shoved Crichton into the captain's quarters. John used the time it took him to regain his balance to recover from the escort, naked and cuffed, through the decks of the command carrier. He'd been wrong, before: *that* was his classic naked-in-junior-high nightmare experience. All along the dark corridors Peacekeepers had sneered at him with a mix of curiosity and contempt.

"So, didya miss me?" John asked with more bravado than he felt.
"No." Crais rose from the desk and approached him. "I thought you'd like to know we've recaptured Moya. I've sent a marauder out to bring her back into custody; they should rendezvous with us in a few solar days." He was gratified to see Crichton jump at this. "So you see, there's not really much justifiable cause for me to keep you alive very much longer, is there?"

John swallowed hard. "Sure there is. I'd make a great trophy. Not like those over there - " he gestured toward the severed Hynerian heads decorating the room "- more like a pet." He grinned. "Nobody'd ever cross you again if you made an example of me, that's for sure."

"Nobody crosses me and lives to make it common knowledge now," Crais growled. "But it is true I've been thinking about your....offer," he said, one hand stroking John's flank. "You imagine, I suppose, that you can prostitute yourself to me for the lives of Moya's crew."

"They did cross my mind," he said, gritting his teeth as Crais' hand slid around to cup his scrotum.

"Not necessary," he replied, starting to stroke John rhythmically. "It's their freedom I want, not their lives. Just yours. Oh, the Hynerian would be more a nuisance than a menace, but there's a principle at stake. I could never justify leaving a renegade Luxan warrior at large, and the priestess...." He squeezed the hard cock and was gratified to hear a sharply indrawn breath from his prisoner. "She's a cold-blooded murderer, Crichton. Haven't you ever considered that as you lay in bed at night, with her just a few corridors away?"

"You....don't want to kill them?" John's mind was reeling, on sensory overload from the overheated emotions of the day.

"Never have, unless it proved necessary." Crais backed John into a sitting position atop the desk. "And now that they are back in my charge...it's up to you to ensure that it does -not-become necessary."

"How so?" John asked, sensing a trap.

"Please me - make good on your offer - and I'll see they are not harmed. They can live out their sentences on the lifers' colony as scheduled." Seeing the warring emotions in John's face, he pushed in closer, slipping a thigh between John's legs. "Officer Sun, now, there is another matter...."

"Aeryn?" John's head snapped up to attention.

"Please me...enough, and I could be persuaded to allow her to 'evade capture,'" Crais whispered in his ear. "The Peacekeepers will send someone after her to impose sentence, of course, but it won't be me and it won't be today."

Swallowing hard, John brushed his lips across Crais' cheek and seized his mouth in a fierce kiss, using his tongue to force his captor's teeth to part. Crais pressed hard against him and returned the kiss. When they finally broke apart, Crais gripped John's chin hard and gave him a feral smile, then bent to take John's throbbing erection in his mouth.

/C'mon,/ John said to himself as a mix of pleasure and disgust warred within him. /Baseball. Multiplication tables. Rygel after he got into that bad batch of Delgarian mollusks./ Then an image flashed into his head: Aeryn in her prowler, zipping away into the uncharted territories, far away from the Peacekeepers. Crais stroked and squeezed John's balls as his mouth pulled on him harder, and John's semen pulsed in a steady stream down Crais' throat. /Just like I dreamed it. Oh God, what have I done?/

"Not bad," Crais purred, licking at John's belly. "For a -start.-"

end part 6