"It's not going to work!" Harper mused from behind the pilot chair. Beka sat with her hands on the controls, gently pushing them through the asteroid field that had been waiting for them from the slip point. They were following Rafe in a stolen star fighter, who had a plan to steal the sacred Chord of the Guard. "I'm telling you," Harper insisted, "Rafe's plan is as good as aquaman."
"What's Aqu- never mind. It'll work. Rafe actually thinks these things over." Beka concentrated on the task at hand. She was the best pilot in the galaxy. Well, she was probably the best pilot in the universe. The controls were like extensions of her own arms, and she could utilize them with about as much effort. "It's the only thing he thinks over." Beka looked through the window as if she were thinking about how her brother used to be, before Ignatius had banished him. The runaway thief used to be a carefree boy. But worries and concern had etched his face, and when he smiled any of the 200 or so documented ones, the skin around his eyes crinkled as though he were laughing at some long-forgotten joke. Now he sat, a tense criminal, in a star fighter that just happened to be stolen.
"I still have my doubts." Harper stressed, his tool belt weighing him down. "I mean, just yesterday this guy was stealing your music… and now you trust him?" Harper shook his head, pinching his nose with his fingers. "I just don't get it."
"You don't have to get it, Harper." Beka said harshly, straining against the seat belts, whilst narrowly missing several asteroids. "He's family and he wanted my help."
"You're only doing this for your piece of the prize," Harper teased, a crooked smile on his face. "An artefact like the Chord of the Guard is insanely expensive. And assuming you'll get a third-"
"Half." Beka said. "I get half. You're lucky if you get anything." She smiled into the view screen as she dodged another asteroid. They were almost clear of the field now. Rafe's star fighter was only a few light seconds away.
"Well then, assuming you get half, because your brother is oh-so-generous, you could retire and never have to go salvaging again. Just think of it. You, me- or at least, you, and me off somewhere surrounded by babelicious ladies-"
"Harper?"
"Yeah Boss?" He quickly replied, used to the phrase.
"Shut up." Beka said, keeping her eyes trained on the screen. "And… We've cleared the asteroid field."
Harper silently thanked the gods he didn't believe in and leaned on the side of the pilot's chair. He popped the lid of a sparky cola and took a sip. They had been doing salvage runs ever since Captain Dylan Hunt of the starship Andromeda had lost his sight of the new Commonwealth and had given up. They hadn't seen him in years, and, though the Eureka Maru was home, they both had times where they wished they were back on the Andromeda. It's lovely spacious halls were ideal for leg-stretching, and Harper obviously missed his greatest creation, Rommie. And even though she never admitted it, Beka missed the strong-willed man that led them through the halls, and guided them through some tough parts of their lives.
"Beka! Rafe on line two." Harper called from behind her, through a mouth of sparky cola.
"Patch him through," Beka replied, catching up with Rafe's ship.
A garbled image of her brother appeared on a small screen next to her. The image pieced itself together. "Hey booster rocket. One more slip and we're there. I'll send you the plan in detail in a sec." The screen went black again.
A red light blinked on the panel on front of Harper, and he downloaded the encoded message. Holding up the new flexi, he shook his head. "Uh, no way. This is a suicide mission. He can't really expect to do this, can he?" He chucked the flexi at Beka. It seems that Rafe's plan included pissing off the local faux-High Guard and sacrificing one of the ships to cause a diversion. While the other ship got past ten layers of security and traps.
"Um, I don't know." Beka ran a hand through her now-brown hair. "I guess he can. We wouldn't be trying if he didn't know that we had a good chance of coming out on top." She tossed the flexi over her shoulder and Harper caught it with an oomph.
Rafe's voice crackled over an apparently open communication line. "We can do it, don't worry little man. We'll be in and out so quickly you won't have time to hatch a Magog."
Harper winced. The larvae inside him had been paralysed by an overdose of his medication, and he planned to keep it that way. Or, even better, to get them out of him once and for all.
"Fine, let's do this." Beka said, cruising into a slip point.
Seconds later, they were in a system with a few uninhabitable planets and a few normal ones. Rafe shot out of the slip point a moment later, and continued on a course to the Maru. "I'll be over in a few seconds and then we can start."