Farscape House of Cards

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CHAPTER 1 Rygel flipped his cards over. "Four priestesses. I win again." John Crichton snarled, threw his cards on the table, and got up out of his chair. "Enough. I'm gonna owe you my module at this rate." The Hynerian's tiny form quivered with laughter. "Only if you put it in the pot. Though don't think I don't appreciate all the food cubes you've lost to me." Rotating his flying ThroneSled ninety degrees, he popped one of those cubes into his oversized mouth. Shaking his head, Crichton sighed. "Yeah, I'm sure they'll last you at least a few minutes." Rygel started shuffling the twenty-eight-card deck. "Care for another chance at winning your cubes back?" "Remind me, Sparky," Crichton said as he sat back down, "why did I let you talk me into learning this game?" "Because Haunan doesn't work with only one player, and no one else on this ship has even come close to comprehending it. Zhaan refuses to gamble, D'Argo couldn't seem to wrap his poor Luxan brain around the rules, and Aeryn wouldn't even sit down with me to learn it." "What about Chiana?" The wisps of white hair that jutted from Rygel's cheeks twitched as he shuffled, but he said nothing. Crichton smiled. "Wait, let me guessshe beat the pants off you? Or she would have, if you wore pants." "I prefer an opponent who stimulates me," Rygel retorted, with a haughty sniff. "And while Chiana has many virtues" "You're only 'stimulated' by winning, right?" Crichton tossed a food cube into the middle of the table as an ante. "Fine, Maverick, one more hand. Deal." The deposed dominar of the Hynerian Empire dealt a card face down to both Crichton and himself. Crichton peeked at the card, and saw that it was a paladin, which meant it was all but useless. Haunan was an odd game. Rygel had been after Crichton to learn it for some months, and Crichton had finally broken down earlier in the day, out of boredom as much as anything. It was just similar enough to poker for Crichton to be able to follow the basics. You get six cards, of which you can use four; you're dealt two cards, one up, one down, and then you bet; repeat that process until you have six cards, three showing that everyone can see, three down that only you can see; and the highest hand wins. It was just different enough from anything Crichton had ever seen to confuse the hell out of him and give him the mother of all headaches. Still, it wasn't like he had anything better to do. Moya, their sentient, bio-mechanoid Leviathan ship, was resting between StarBursts in this uninhabited star system. Crichton had done as much maintenance on theFarscape Imodule as he could with the materials at hand. The rest of Moya's crew were busy with other occupations or duties. That left Crichton in the unusual position of hanging out with Rygel. When John Crichton found himself on the Leviathan after his space shuttle,Farscape I, had torn through a worm-hole and zipped him halfway across the galaxy, he'd become a member of a very strange crew. Though Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan and Ka D'Argo were both convicted murderers, Rygel XVI, a "mere" political exile, was the hardest to warm to. Whatever crimes they may or may not have committed, they had all been incarcerated by the Peacekeeperswho were sort of a combination of the Mafia, the Green Berets, and Genghis Khan's army. Even Moya, the Leviathan, had been e