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They had done the right thing, but Cally was beginning to almost regret it. It was turning out to be substantially more annoying than she had anticipated.
It had all started back on Cetaria, where they had been following up reports of Servalan’s presence. There hadn’t been any obvious reason why the Supreme Commander would make an appearance on an unremarkable planet located on the fringes of Federation territory, so Blake had wanted to investigate. When they had found evidence of a mysterious installation tucked away in the countryside it had made sense to investigate.
Things probably would have worked out differently if Cally had stayed on the ship meditating in peace like she’d originally planned, but Orac had discovered some new information about Federation activity and Blake had wanted to take a look at it immediately. Avon, who hadn’t wanted to go to Cetaria in the first place, had decided to ask Cally to join him and Vila on the mission rather than wait for Blake.
“The sooner we start, the sooner we can get out of here,” he said when Blake had assured him distractedly that he’d only be another minute.
They teleported down and broken into the mysterious facility without Blake. There was some security, but it was incredibly easy to break in. Too easy.
As Vila put it, “Even you could have done it, Avon.”
Cally thought she probably could have done it as well, although she would have ended up using a bit more physical force than Vila required.
It seemed like they could get in, look around, and be back before Blake’s ‘another minute’ was up, but then Cally’s head started to hurt a little. It was a strange sort of headache and she decided to try a little test.
Avon. Avon. AVON!
“What?”
Can you hear me?
He didn’t say anything.
“Avon, can you hear me speaking telepathically to you or not?”
“Why are you trying to speak to me telepathically? I’m standing right here and I haven’t seen anyone else since we arrived.”
“Is there something you don’t want me to hear, Cally?” said Vila, like he was trying to make a joke, but also like he was slightly hurt.
“I’ve actually being trying to speak to both of you,” said Cally, sounding slightly sharper to her own years than she had intended. The feeling in her mind wasn’t very painful, but it certainly wasn’t pleasant.
“I did hear you call my name, very faintly,” said Avon.
“Something isn’t right. Both of you can normally hear me perfectly well.”
“Some sort of telepathic dampener?” said Avon.
“Such things are possible,” said Cally, “But what would the Federation be doing with one?”
“This is where you say, ‘That’s what I’d like to know?’ and we go headfirst into unknown danger, isn’t it?” said Vila to Avon, sounding resigned.
What they found, before any danger, was a control room, still with far less secure than they had expected. It didn’t look particularly Federation, either. The only insignia in sight looked something like a curved ribbon.
“I think I’ve found the control for the telepathic dampener,” said Avon. “However, I’m not entirely sure we should deactivate it until we know why it’s in use and we are prepared to alert others to our presence.”
“Oh, go on,” said Vila. “Press the button and lets see what it does.”
“Right,” said Avon. “We won’t touch anything and we’ll go investigate.”
Cally reached over and pressed the button. She immediately felt better. Avon looked over at her, betrayed.
“Sorry, Avon, but I was concerned that its effect on me might become increasingly debilitating over time, and the whole reason I’m here is to provide backup for you if it comes to a fight, isn’t it?”
“Hm,” said Avon, as if he wasn’t completely buying it but wasn’t going to go to the trouble of arguing.
HELPhelphelphelphelp. Dangersadcoldlonelyscaredhelp, said several voices in Cally’s head. It was more in feelings than in words. They weren’t Auronar, that she was sure of, but they weren’t anything else she recognized. After a moment she opened her eyes realized that Avon and Vila were both staring at her.
“There’s someone or something trapped here. Many of them, I think. We have to go help them.”
Vila was in favor of calling in the others for help, but Avon seemed to like the idea of accomplishing some heroics in Blake’s absence, and Cally wasn’t willing to delay when they could always call the others in later.
We’re coming, thought Cally at the mysterious telepathic entities. We’re here to help.
Helphelphelp. Warmfriendhelp? Scaredredballhellohelp. Treatshelphelloscared.
All of that probably should have been something of a clue, especially given her experience with the telepathy of the moon discs. Still, Cally was as nonplussed as the others once they had fought their way past several very ineffective guards and what looked like terrified lab technicians (all of whom ran in the opposite direction) only to find a room full of cages containing large and incredibly fluffy white rodents.
Hellohellonewfriendhellohelpfriendtreatshello, said the animals.
“The prisoners must be at the other end of the corridor,” said Avon.
“These are the prisoners,” said Cally.
“Excuse me?”
“They are telepathic,” said Cally, “in a way that is perhaps similar to the way that certain Earth birds are capable of speech. This is what I was hearing.”
“Cally, are you telling me that we just wasted our time breaking into a laboratory that does research on telepathic balls of fluff?”
“If the Federation is researching telepathy, that could be very important. We should inform Blake.”
“They’re not,” said Vila, coming out from a door she couldn’t remember him entering.
“What are you talking about, Vila?” snapped Avon.
“It’s not a laboratory, it’s a factory,” said Vila, sounding disturbed and holding up a square of white fur.
“A factory?” said Avon, and Cally was glad the animals didn’t seem to recognize the significance of the fur.
“They’re making real fur clothing,” said Vila.
“That’s horrible,” said Cally. “Who would wear such a thing when synthetic is available?”
“Servalan, probably,” said Vila.
“Well, that’s one mystery explained,” said Avon. “Let’s get out of here.”
Avon had been ready to teleport away that instant, but Vila and Cally had both insisted that they needed to take the animals with them. Cally couldn’t possibly have left creatures that spoke to her directly to such a horrible fate, and Vila had already opened a cage and begun cuddling one and scratching its cute little pink nose.
“Gan would have loved you, yes he would have,” he said wistfully in that voice people only use on pets and babies.
In the end, Avon had been convinced that liberating the fluffballs would likely annoy both Servalan, who would lose one of her sources of impractical white clothing, and Blake, who would have to deal with their presence on his ship.
It took two trips, but they teleported all the animals back to the Liberator.
***
In the end, the majority of annoyance had been on Cally’s part, although she couldn’t really regret their actions, not when it had saved members of what Orac had informed was a species originally from a far-flung planet outside federation control.
There hadn’t been all that many animals—according to Vila it had looked like a lot of them had recently been slaughtered, so the ones left were probably the breeding stock. Orac had been fascinated, Jenna had been charmed, and Blake had been annoyed that they now had to make a significant detour in order to release their new passengers back into the wild--which Orac had assured them they could do, given the fluffballs’ ability to communicate telepathically with each other about how to survive.
Blake had insisted that the three who had saved the fluffballs be responsible for the consequences, which had naturally resulted in only Vila and Cally actually trying to take care of them, which had quickly become only Cally doing most of the work, even if Jenna was willing to pitch in occasionally.
Still, Vila had had the sense to liberate a lot of the equipment along with the animals themselves. The real issue was that the animals knew Cally could hear them and wouldn’t leave her alone. It was hard to sleep when your pets were demanding treats and cuddles and chattering loudly at each other about nothing that was particularly interesting if you weren’t a telepathic rodent. They didn’t seem to have any ability, or maybe desire, to filter communication.
Her moon disc might be significantly less soft and warm, but it was a much better companion.
Cally make it a point of pride not to let things ruffle her, but she was annoyed. She couldn’t blame the animals, but she wished there was someone to blame. Probably just herself.
Eventually, through effort and meditation, she was able to block out the voices almost entirely. You didn’t grow up with clone sisters and not learn to filter telepathic communications. Life was much better after that.
At first.
“Jenna, have you been feeling restless lately?” asked Cally, as Jenna came jogging back into the surgical bay for the third time, with no apparent goal in mind.
“I suppose I have, a bit. ”
“Would you like to try some stretches to relax?” asked Cally, although she’d long despaired of getting Jenna to actually participate in her sessions, instead of simply showing up to watch.
“No, thank you. Would you like to go to the flight deck with me?”
Cally went, but then Jenna wanted to go grab a snack, and then to go in circles around the corridors. Cally wasn’t opposed to the occasional stroll together, but eventually she left to find companionship that would be a bit more stationary.
Vila was in the dining room, but he seemed a lot more interested in eating brightly colored and far too sugary breakfast cereal than in talking, which was a little unusual. Eventually, Cally had resorted to checking on the fluffballs, which were admittedly adorable when you didn’t have to listen to them.
You could barely see their features, but they had wide blue or purple eyes and little paws that looked almost like tiny hands, but in a cute way, not a creepy way. They had round little ears that only just rose above the cloud of fluff and they may have had tails, but it was hard to tell. They did tend to try to nibble on your clothing, but they would also lick you affectionately and nuzzle you with their little noses. They were about eight inches long, fluff not included, so you could cuddle two or more at once if you were really trying.
Unfortunately, if she did cuddle two at once, they could sometimes break through her psychic barrier and demand treats. She gave them all a few pieces of Vila’s cereal, which they seemed to enjoy immensely.
***
Cally was a little concerned that they would never make it to the planet of the fluffballs. Blake kept finding higher priorities, and Avon found the whole situation ridiculous and insisted they should simply sell all the fluffballs at the next place they ended up.
Cally and Vila had both nixed that idea and were firmly on team Free the Fluffballs. Jenna wasn’t quite that concerned about the fluffballs on an ideological level, but she was fond of them and for Cally’s sake (both in terms of animal rights and in terms of getting them off the ship so that Cally didn’t have to put so much effort into keeping her mind clear of fluff-thoughts) supported the plan to release them.
It was a little strange, then, that Blake and Avon seemed to be the ones at odds over the situation, but then they were always at odds over everything. It wasn’t strange that they were arguing every five minutes. What was odd was that they both agreed that the fluffballs were a low priority and that they should infiltrate the base on Narkon Prime before dealing with them, and yet they were still somehow managing to have an absolutely blazing row.
Or maybe that part wasn’t that odd. The really odd part was how physical the their arguments were getting. Blake had just actually shoved Avon slightly, much to Avon’s apparent surprise, and now they were standing there facing off, having a minor shoving match, while Avon smiled humorlessly.
Blake won. Cally had always suspected he was actually the more stubborn one. Or maybe it was simply that he had the bulk.
***
The next day, Vila disappeared. Avon suggested not actually looking for him. When Cally finally managed to track him down, he turned out to be hiding in the maintenance tunnels, curled up in a little nest of blankets, with what appeared to be about a year’s worth of cereal stacked up like a fort around him, a few bottles of something or other nearby, and three fluffballs napping on top of him.
It had been slightly adorable, but at the same time it didn’t seem quite right. Vila slept everywhere, of course, but the maintenance tunnels were a very strange place for him to choose to sleep, even if he was shirking his duties and trying to hide his favorite food from the others.
“Vila!”
Vila startled awake, and the fluffballs squeaked in protest as they rolled from on top of him to the blankets. Vila blinked at her and then did a double take of his surroundings.
“I can explain,” he said immediately, but no explanation was forthcoming. Cally sighed.
“Don’t bother.”
She left to go find someone acting normally to spend time with, but then she remembered that she was on the Liberator and even on the best of days finding anyone acting in a way she considered normal wasn’t really a given. (To be fair, she still wasn’t entirely sure what normal behavior was for humans, and if she’d been interested in behaving like a normal Auronar, she would have stayed on Auron).
Still, it was unfortunate that she couldn’t even speak to her moon disc in peace anymore, not with all the telepathic blocking she was doing.
***
Cally sat at the teleport controls, waiting for Blake, Avon, and Vila to get back from their mission. She had predictably been overruled on her vote to release the fluffballs back into their native habitat as soon as possible. Oh, well, she knew it had been a bit of a selfish desire on her part.
She’d almost insisted on going along, to at least get a break from her constant telepathic blocking, but she’d seen the way Blake and Avon were glaring at each other and decided that Vila deserved to be stuck in the middle of their constant male dominance posturing after his recent bout of food hoarding.
At least this meant she had some time alone with Jenna, who had made them both a mug of tea and was regaling her with exciting stories of her smuggling days. She seemed even more wistful than usual.
Cally even told a story about some mischief she’d gotten into as a teenager on Auron, although she was normally very closed about her past, even with Jenna. Jenna laughed in all the right places and reached over to brush some white hairs off her shoulder. There were white hairs all over everything lately.
As if on cue, a small pack of fluffballs went scurring across the room. Cally hoped they weren’t about to go chew on anything important. The auto-repair would get to it eventually, but it would put Avon more out of sorts than usual.
Maybe they shouldn’t let the animals roam free like that, but Orac had said the species needed a lot of exercise to be happy and healthy, and they always found their way back to their food and their little nests in their cages in the end.
There must have been a bunch of fluffball fur stuck in her curls as well because Jenna began picking through her hair. Cally was about to say something, or just go look in a mirror, when Vila’s voice sounded from the communicator, desperately calling for teleport.
***
“My fault? How is what happened down there supposed to be my fault?” sneered Avon. “You were the one who managed to get yourself captured.”
“If you had actually followed the plan and been where you were supposed to be, that wouldn’t have happened.”
“Your plan was terrible, and I never actually agreed with it. I saw a better opportunity, and I took it.”
“You tried to take it and you failed, Avon.”
Blake and Avon were up in each other’s faces again. Jenna was watching them with barely concealed amusement from her usual chair on the flight deck. Vila had started to come on to the flight deck moments ago, but had frozen and scurried off when he’d caught sight of the other men. Cally hoped he wasn’t hiding in the tunnels again. It made her nervous.
Avon grimaced and made to stride past Blake, bumping into him in the process. Blake shoved him back. Avon tripped over his own feet, which wasn’t all that unusual, to be honest, and dragged Blake to the floor with him.
“What is wrong with you?” said Avon, struggling, as Blake refused to let him up.
“What’s wrong with you?” said Blake. “If you could just listen to me for—” the rest of the speech got lost as they continued to tussle on the floor. A pair of fluffballs stared at them interestedly from where they were huddling together on top of Orac.
Blake eventually gained the upper hand.
“I’m in charge here,” he said, panting slightly, and still holding Avon down, “and more than that, I need you watching my back. I rely on you, and if you’re not where you’re supposed to be, then of course things are going to go wrong.”
“I did what I thought would be best. Not just for me, but for the mission,” said Avon. “However, I will concede that I shouldn’t have left you so vulnerable.”
“Thank you,” said Blake, still clearly exasperated, and then he licked Avon’s forehead. Cally blinked and had to replay the memory in her head, but she was still fairly sure it had happened.
Blake got up, ordered Zen to head for a location that was decidedly not the fluffball planet, and left.
Avon looked vaguely affronted, but he usually looked that way when Blake was around, so it wasn’t the more extreme type of reaction that Cally would have expected such an action on Blake’s part to produce. He left in the opposite direction.
“That was definitely strange, wasn’t it?” said Cally, to Jenna, although she was sure it was weird now, and didn’t actually need a second opinion from a human.
“It seems like a perfectly reasonable way to solve a conflict,” said Jenna nonchalantly, and then she jogged around the flight deck and away, even though she was supposed to be on duty.
***
Avon was the first member of the crew to notice that he had been locked out of all the essential systems.
“What did Blake do?” he said, looking distressed and chattering his teeth in an entirely uncharacteristic way.
“It wasn’t Blake,” said Cally. “And I would very much appreciate it if you would come to the surgical bay or at least let stand still so I could run a few--”
“Cally, what is the meaning of this?” said Blake sternly, as he strode onto the flight deck.
“It was you?” said Avon, and Cally backed up a few steps. No one on the crew seemed to be getting violent, unless you counted Avon and Blake’s little incident, but they certainly weren’t in their right minds, so she was a little concerned.
“I will explain everything as long as you calm down.”
“What’s going on?” said Jenna, running in and circling around them all.
“Cally seems to be staging a mutiny,” said Blake.
“Without me,” said Avon, glaring at her.
“It is not a mutiny,” said Cally. “I’ve simply had Zen limit your control over the ship while I determine the cause of your strange behavior.”
“You’re the one who’s been acting strangely, Cally,” said Blake.
“Blake, you LICKED Avon.” Cally was finally losing her temper. “None of you are regaining voice control of the Liberator until I determine exactly what is going on.”
“You licked Avon? That’s disgusting,” said Vila, arriving on the flight deck. “I think? I’m not actually sure. Why is everyone here? I don’t like being alone. It’s scary. We should all stay together where it’s safe and warm.”
Vila walked over to Jenna and leaned against her. Surprisingly, she allowed this, although she did roll her eyes.
“You may not see it, but none of you are in your right minds, and I think Zen agrees. I know Orac does.”
“She is correct,” said Orac, from beneath the fluffballs. “Cally is the only member of the crew acting within her normal behavioral parameters. I have been making careful observations for a while now.”
“But I feel perfectly normal,” said Jenna. “Although now that I think about it, I suppose Blake doesn’t normally lick Avon.”
“Well, that’s what you do after you’re done fighting and you want to be friends again,” said Blake defensively, although he didn’t seem as sure of himself as usual.
“Jenna, you’ve been unusually hyper lately,” said Cally, with as much patience as she could muster. “Vila has been nesting, Avon keeps chattering his teeth and sniffing things, and Blake just licked Avon as if…”
Cally stared at the couch, where a pair of fluffballs were play fighting and rolling all over each other.
“Orac, can you tell me how the current unusual behaviors of my fellow crew members compares to the behaviors of the fluffballs?”
“While I do not have extensive data on the species that you insist on referring to as “fluffballs,” rather than by their proper scientific name, I can make a basic extrapolation based on the behavior of other rodent species and my own observations thus far.”
“And?” said Blake, impatiently chewing on his fingers.
“As I have stated before, the fluffballs have a high requirement for physical exertion. I have observed that brightly colored and sugary foods appeal to them. They will also engage in a teeth-chattering behavior properly called “bruxing” when contented or in distress. As would be expected of a telepathic species, they are highly social and like some other rodent species, engage in social behaviors such as grooming, wresting for dominance or for play, and licking.”
The members of the Liberator crew looked at each other and then at the nearby fluffballs.
“And since I have had ample opportunity to gather data about the species, I would appreciate if you would remove all of its members from on top of my casing,” said Orac.
Cally ignored him.
“Zen, set a course for the coordinates Orac gave you, and get us there as fast as is safe,” she said.
“Confirmed,” said Zen.
***
Freesungrasshappywheeee. Tallfriendstayrunplaygivetreats? No? Okaybyegrasshellonewfriendshello!
It has taken a while to release all of the fluffballs since Cally was the only one who could safely teleport down to the planet without risking further telepathic influence. She and Orac had eventually figured out that the fluffballs’ telepathy had a different effect on telepaths and non-telepaths.
Cally, as a telepath, could hear a jumble of words and impressions whose source was clearly the fluffballs, although she did have difficulty tracing a particular thought to a particular individual, given how communal they were. The others had been completely unable to hear the fluffballs communicating, but had still picked up vague impressions and had over time fallen more and more under the influence of fluffball thought and behavior patterns.
The fur farm had been fitted with a telepathic dampener for exactly that reason, probably at great expense, and probably primarily funded by Servalan, all because she wanted to wear genuine fur coats. The most likely source for the telepathic dampener was Auron’s black market, since Auron wasn’t at war with the Federation, which at least meant they didn’t have to worry about what they Federation was developing, although Cally was a little worried about what else the Federation might have purchased from her homeworld.
The rest of the crew had eventually been convinced that they were not behaving normally, and Cally had allowed them to regain full access to the Liberator’s systems when she realized that they weren’t completely insane or likely to be dangerous, just behaving a little oddly.
She had also had a long telepathic talk with the fluffballs, and while she wasn’t sure how much of it had actually gotten through to them, she had managed to convince them that she was bringing them to a new home where they could run around everywhere, eat interesting new things, and have many new friends (and few natural predators). After that, the ship’s humans had suddenly become really excited about their destination as well, to the extent that she had had to distract them with cereal and an interesting pinging noise while she hid all of the teleport bracelets, just in case.
Everyone had calmed down a little after she managed to communicate to the fluffballs the fact that the humans were her friends and needed to want to stay in their burrow (the Liberator) with the exciting buzzy box (Orac) so that she wouldn’t be left alone.
She had also allowed the fluffballs to speak to her as much as they wanted, and although she didn’t get much sleep for several days of running around trying to keep them as happy and calm as possible, at least the rodent behaviors among the humans started to decrease instead of increase.
She made several trips to teleport them all down, had a few last cuddles, met some of their wild counterparts, and teleported up to a group of friends who now looked very embarrassed, which was a good sign.
“Are you sure they’re all gone?” asked Avon.
“Yes, I’m sure. I would certainly hear them if they were on board. I suspect they may even have been telepathically projecting their dreams. They are all where they belong and happy and safe.”
“Assuming Servalan doesn’t know where they came from and simply send for more,” said Blake.
“Based on available records and some rather bizarre errors in in the data of the scientific survey that originally acquired a sample of the species, I do not think it likely that Servalan would be able to piece together the location of their planet or origin. Even for me it was not a simple matter,” said Orac.
“Does it matter whether Servalan knows where to find the animals or not? We are not an animal rescue society and we should keep it that way.”
“Oh, come on, Avon,” said Vila. “You helped us bring them on board in the first place. We did a good thing and we probably royally pissed off Servalan. You’re only upset because Blake licked you and none of us will ever forget it.”
Avon glared murderously at all of them.
“Avon, I said I was so--” said Blake, but Avon had stalked off with the shreds of his dignity before Blake could finish the apology. Blake followed Avon out of the teleport room.
Jenna made it to about a count of five and burst out laughing, which set Cally and Vila off as well. Vila was right—none of them would ever forget this.