[Author's note: This is a Farscape-based story. 30d954A, that's me, makes no attempt to pretend to own the characters expressed here, unless, of course, he does. No direct attempt to purposefully violate copyrights held by others was made on the part of <--P e o p l e H u r t i n g T V s-->]
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The night was sultry.
At least, they thought it was night. All times on this Planet 53101 looked the same. 53101 was a popular stopping place for Peacekeepers who needed supplies. That's what brought Lieutenants Omali and Oock to a dreary, discount market located in one of the more run-down districts of the planet.
Omali and Oock were just two of several thousand Lieutenants staffed on the command carrier Llphonz. Llphonz has always been an important cargo runner, for when other, more powerful Peacekeepers didn't want to risk cargo loss. However, at about the same time Omali and Oock were assigned to it, about 5 cycles ago, it became a prison transport. They had filled most of the rooms on the lowest 30 tiers with prisoners, and had retrofitted the doors to contain them. However, every officer or other personnel staffed on Llphonz knew that this was just a formality. High Command had made the Llphonz a prison transport to specifically take care of one particular prisoner.
The marketplace on 53101 was brown. The streets were brown, the buildings were brown, and the sky was brown. This last was due to the pollution mixing with the clouds, which produced rain. The rain that came from the brown clouds was very dirty, and splashed dirt over every up-pointing surface in the marketplace. Omali and Oock, chosen because their names were next on the list, were sent to this marketplace by their Commanders to get food for the prisoners. Their superiors gave them a strict order to hunt for deals, and to not leave with anything unless they were sure they had the cheapest items there.
So Omali and Oock had just emerged from "Very Good Meats" located on a dingy corner of the mostly-dilapidated marketplace. With them, a large box of week-old meats, as well as a large can of spoiled EZ-Mix beverage powder. The powder rested on top of the box of meats, which was on top of a sophisticated dolly. The dolly was specially designed by Peacekeeper techs to handle very large cargoes by creating a magnetic field of a polarity directly opposite the polarity of a planet or ship's natural (or manufactured, in the case of the ships) magnetic field. This enabled Omali and Oock to push the dolly to their Marauder, by remote control, so they don't overly strain themselves.
It was while they were pushing the sophisticated dolly that Oock struck up the classic conversation about the one prisoner they both knew was important. "You know what I heard about that guy?"
"What?" Omali said, not really caring. He was sure that whatever Oock had heard, Omali had heard too.
"I heard that he acrually destroyed the Zelbinion and then ran away."
"Oh, give me a break, Oock! Everyone knows that the Zelbinion has been missing for a hundred cycles."
"Yeah, I know. He stowed the ship somewhere, decimated it and it's crew, and then ran away."
"I really don't think he's even been alive long enough to have done that."
"How do you know? Have you ever seen him?"
"Well... no."
"I have."
"You saw him?"
"Yeah. One time, I was walking down a hallway on the eighty-third tier, and I saw six guards following a prisoner down a hall. He was walking slowly, of course; the guards were in control. Later on, I asked the Commander what was going on, and he told me that was him."
"Wow. Was he scary-looking?"
"Not really. He actually looked rather normal."
"Huh. Well, I still don't think he was responsible for the loss of the Zelbinion. I have my own theory about him."
"Really? What is it?"
"I think that he was working on some secret project and he flipped out and killed everyone. But they can't kill him because of his knowledge about the project. You know, he's too important to kill."
"Aw, you're crazy."
Omali and Oock pushed the dolly up the ramp and into the Marauder, which promptly took off and headed for Llphonz.
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