OF LARVAE AND LOVE

Disclaimer: Tribune owns the characters and the original storylines, themes, location, species and other names etc. All I own is a vague and possibly weird desire to enjoy myself playing with all of the aforementioned. I'm out to have fun here, not make cash of any sort. No, no, not even donations. In the words of Phoebe Buffay, 'I don't need your charity' and I bloody mean it. Any characters, species, planets and/or spacecraft that I design from scratch to use in this story are things that I do own...sort of. Bit hazy on the details, but then it is very late at night at the time of typing this so I'm a bit hazy about a lot of things. The five mile run and hour-long swim at the local beach combined with my daily workout have left me bloody knackered.

If Tribune really wants to use any of 'em (excuse me whilst I go to an NHS hospital so they can repair my ribs from my laughing too hard :D) just contact me and we'll hash out the details. is where I can be contacted for the foreseeable future (hey, I just don't have precognitive abilities like Trance!). If this changes for whatever reason, I'll put the info up here along with the name, address and police mugshots of whoever is responsible.

Author: Union-Jack2.0

Rating: 'R'.

The reasons for this rating are nothing to do with sex. I want that to be clear from the start. The reason I've applied this rating is because if this goes as I'm planning it to there will be some language (half of which will probably be mild and from me), dark, possibly disturbing scenes of angst (if I can pull 'em off right, fingers crossed) and very likely some extensive violence—none-too-sure about that last one myself, but considering that I've written short stories that feedback has indicated that no-one between the ages of twenty-five and forty should be allowed to read without parental supervision, I feel it's best to be on the safe side.

Hey, I'm not a violent bloke in reality. In fact, the only combat technique I've got any skill with—admittedly, I have mastered it almost completely—is ducking out of the way of whatever fist/foot/knife/fire extinguisher/brick/crowbar/pickaxe/mobile telephone (yes, there are some real psychos out there) that happens to be headed in my direction.

Spoilers: An Affirming Flame, Under The Night, To Loose The Fateful Lightening (only very, very vaguely), All Great Neptune's Ocean (again, vaguely), Its Hour Come Round At Last, The Widening Gyre, Exit Strategies (well, sort of), Ouroboros, maybe some others in Season Two—hey, I haven't got a set hit-list or anything. Be warned, Ouroboros is going to be weird. And that's saying something. Admittedly, I bloody loved that one.

Season: Two, starting right after the escape from the worldship. No idea how long it'll be.

Summary: It's all to do with those Magog larvae. Honestly, the smallest of things can really be the biggest of pests, to ruthlessly paraphrase the Lord of the Rings films. This is an alternative universe in which things went very different with those wee beasties, and various events in Season Two change as a result. In this reality, Magog eggs are a damn sight tougher...

Anyway, I'm hoping to get some mileage out of all the characters to greater or lesser extents, but mainly we're talking about Harper, Tyr and Rommie. Things go very different from canon in some very weird ways...it's complicated. Short version, Trance does NOT successfully remove ALL of Tyr's Magog eggs, and Beka and Rommie find there's another way in which Harper could survive if the worst comes to the worst—question is, will he take it? And for what reasons?

If anyone has already had this idea and is or has written it up and posted it on the web, I extend my very deepest apologies. I seem to be cursed like that; half the fiction I come up with has had something similar already done that I just didn't know about until the most embarrassing moment possible. I won't waste your time ranting over how pissed I was when I found out just what the stuff about the Bermuda Triangle involved—my thing wasn't set anywhere near there, but turned out to have a few similarities to the fics in question re. events involved. Most annoying.

Chances are there'll some romance deployed later on, hence the title, but I'm a tad hazy on the details right now...just stick with me and together we'll see what comes naturally. I can assure you though, there are igneous rocks that will still be more erotic than this, however it turns out. If you want porn, you're in the wrong place and you'll be dissatisfied. Personally, that stuff isn't to my taste, so you won't find a trace of it here. If you want something other than porn to read, take a butchers' at this...

Pairing: Uncertain yet, but there will be some romance, mild at least—dunno how far it'll go, who'll get involved, how it'll turn out. But I guarantee I won't kill someone off just 'cause a 'ship won't work and I can't find a reasonable way to end it. You have my word on that. If someone does die, it'll be for other reasons.

Author's Note: This is a first-time 'What-if?' Fanfic. Thus far this is my first Andromeda fanfic, although I have had some fanfic published in the now no-longer operational "Delta Source" Fanzine. More fic is planned, of multiple types and milieus, including crossovers, one of which I'm already writing—to make those easier to find, when I post them they'll be in both relevant areas (I won't be trying for more than two milieus colliding at once!)—if FFN has areas for both...oh bloody sue me already, I'm experimenting here. I'm not settling into a mould. I get an idea, I have a go with it, that's the way I do everything in my life. I ain't bleedin' changing.

Argh. Sorry to be so harsh there, it's just that at time of writing this (mid July '04) I've just completed my A-level exams at college, I'm waiting for feedback and my poor fingernails have lasted all of five minutes. If anything, I'm suffering from more stress NOW than before the exams. And FYI, non-British readers, A-levels are the British final-year-of-college examinations that come just before you have to select a degree course at university... assuming you get the results necessary... ohgodI'mgoingtofailaren'tI. FaceitIdon'tstadachance.

Anyway, feedback is very much appreciated. Just...use your flamethrowers sparingly, okay?

P.S. Yeah, I know, you want the story. Last comment. Just for your peace of mind, the only bugger in this whole shebang with a Brit accent will be ME. The characters will NOT be attempting that under my writing. Besides, no one who hasn't lived in the United Kingdom for a lengthy period of time and spent a lot of time with us natives can pull off a proper fake accent or at least one that could fool the real deal, so I seriously doubt a bunch of aliens and A.I.'s three thousand years down the road would have the slightest clue what we sounded like, especially as there's been no one on the show who's used an even half-believable Brit accent. I mean c'mon, I've known people over here who stopped watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer because James Marsters' accent was about as genuine as Jeffrey Archer and anything he's written, and just as insulting to the point of being downright racist. Mind you, I was curled up laughing at that accent meself. Oh ye gods. Enough!

Now ladies, gentles, all, list to my tale...

OF LARVAE AND LOVE

CHAPTER ONE:

AFTERMATH

"Keep Buggering On."

—Winston Churchill, 1940, just before the Battle Of Britain.

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CY10088
Specific time: shortly after the escape of Andromeda and her crew from
the Magog worldship.

Harper slept fitfully, his dreams and nightmares merging. Within them he saw himself being attacked by Magog. He could feel their claws tearing into his flesh, their teeth as they sank into him, smell the sweat in their matted fur and the scent of dead meat and freshly-spilled blood on their breath, they were so close...

He suddenly awoke, bolt upright, screaming in sheer, instinctive terror, screaming louder than he had in a very long time.

"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! It's okay!" Trance was instantly at his side. She gently took his hand in hers, soothing him tenderly and he slowly sank back against a soft pillow. He eventually realised he was on a bed in the Med Deck, and that Trance and Rev were there. Tyr lay on a bed next to his own, unconscious and a little worse for wear.

Harper sighed in relief. "Oh, man. Talk about nightmares! I dreamt I was being infested by Magog eggs, and they were, uh..." Harper trailed off as he noticed the others were looking serious. "...not a dream?" he asked, his terror slowly, inexorably returning.

"I'm afraid not." Rev admitted.

"But everything turned out okay, right? I mean, we escaped, uh, the bad guys' worldship was destroyed, and you just took the eggs out, right?"

"Well, we've escaped," Trance admitted, looking uncomfortable.

Rev sighed. "The worldship was not destroyed, although we did cripple it somewhat. As for the eggs..." He trailed off, hesitant.

Trance cupped his hand in hers as she sat on the bed beside him. "Magog larvae, they kind of wrap themselves around things and when you try to take them out, they attack the host. I figured out a way to get them out, but I wasn't sure if it was going to work, so I tried it out on Tyr, and...well, he survived—barely."

"But I'm not a Nietzschean." Harper pointed out, trying to hide his panic.

"That's not all the bad news," Trance looked into his eyes, tears faintly welling up in her own. "It—it didn't work. I almost got him killed, Harper. He's—Tyr's still infested. I got most of them, but three of larvae are still in him."

Rev held up a vial of a white substance. "This is a drug. It is a lukaprine variant. If you and Tyr take it religiously and remain in otherwise good health, it will keep the larvae dormant for a time." He passed it to Harper, who looked at it dubiously.

"And while the two of you are taking it, we will try very hard to find another way to get them out," Trance added, blinking back the tears. "Everything will be just fine. We promise."

Harper snorted. "Gee, I feel better already. Just out of curiosity, what happens when you can't figure out a way to get the larvae out? We're supposed to take this forever?"

Rev shook his head slowly. Harper grew worried for him; his feelings for most Magog aside, he knew his friend must have gone through hell on the worldship. The sight of that thing, the 'Spirit of the Abyss'...that had to have been hard on him, and his faith. "No. Eventually, the medication will cease to be effective. If we have not found an alternative treatment by that time, the larvae will become active and you will die."

Harper groaned. "Why don't you just shoot me now?"

"Harper!" Trance exclaimed, releasing his hand.

"No, I mean it, Trance. I don't want to walk around life waiting for my stomach to burst open. You shoulda just left me to die. You shoulda..."

A thunderous roar burst forth from Tyr's bed, as piercing brown eyes slammed open and drilled Harper to the very depths of his soul, interrupting the diminutive engineer.

The brawny Nietzschean paused, drew breath, and mimicked Harper in his whiny, pathetic tone of voice. "Kill me. I'm doomed. You shoulda just let me die." He abandoned the tone, and bellowed, "Listen to yourself! Child, if I can teach you one thing..."

Harper cut in. "If you're gonna give me anymore of that 'Where there's life, there's hope' crap...thanks." He smiled lopsidedly at his fellow inmate of hell. "'Cause I really need to hear it right about now man."

Tyr seemed pleased at this, and flashed his teeth at him playfully. Harper grinned, and shrank back in mock-horror, causing the pair to burst out laughing.

Yep, Harper thought to himself as the noise subsided, we fought together, got captured together, escaped together, we might yet die a horrible death from these li'l thievin' parasites together, but ... hell, at least we'll do it together we're not alone. I mean c'mon! I've gotta be okay if Tyr's in for the ride with me.

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Specific time: Three weeks later.

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Tyr winced slightly as pain burst forth like water from a breached dam in his stomach, and he inhaled deeply of the medicine phial that hung around his neck. He breathed a sigh of relief as the pain—and the larvae's movements—subsided.

He continued onwards through the conduit, knowing that Harper had to be close. Having heard about his recent behaviour from the Ship, he felt it was only his duty to at least have a word or two with the boy. The Purple One had only released him from Medical less than a week ago, and before that time had come, Harper had visited him constantly despite his own pain.

Much as the Earther usually annoyed him, Tyr had found himself come to welcome the visits. For a time, this young man, this mudfoot that he'd barely glanced at only for threat assessment when they'd first met, had successfully made him forget the prospects of his potentially imminent death to the spawn of those who had...

He shuddered. Together, he and Harper had been brutally violated. And hardened though he, Tyr Anasazi, the sole survivor of the Kodiak Pride had become over the course of his long life, that was one of a very miniscule list of things that truly and deeply disturbed him.

A year ago, he would have ignored or killed Harper without a second's thought either way. Now...now things were different.

The youth had saved his life that fateful day. And before, on the numerous occasions when without him, Andromeda would not have been repaired in time and all aboard killed, himself included. He owed Harper.

He'd had an easy way out. The human could have said the word, and he would have obliged by planting a gauss round through his skull. And yet he hadn't taken that option in the end. He'd stood and fought at Tyr's side instead, and paid a truly horrific price.

No doubt ordinarily Captain Hunt or Beka would have talked to the boy, and succeeded where his life-sized love-doll had failed. But they had gone with the Reverend Behemial and taken the Eureka Maru off to some drift or other to procure supplies and spare parts, and thus were hardly in a position from which to object to his course of action.

He rounded a corner, finally locating Harper. The boy looked up, a brief, instinctive fight-or-flight look in his eyes from one glance at his bone blades, a look swiftly usurped by one of relief. The Nietzschean grunted from a faint stab of pain from his cramped muscles as he squatted beside the engineer.

There they sat for some time. Silence prevailed between them. Harper seemed to begin to snuggle a little closer to the Nietzschean, then caught himself and stayed right where he was.

"I heard about what happened in Medical," Tyr finally began. "Is it something you particularly wish to discuss?"

"Not really," Harper sighed, expecting a tirade, and so was surprised at the response he did receive.

"As you wish." Tyr smiled tiredly. "I quite understand your reasoning."

Harper grinned in return. "Thanks."

"Like it or not, we're both in the same situation Little Professor. I may not know every detail of your life, but your decision is one that I quite frankly agree with in many ways."

"Really?"

Tyr laughed bitterly. "Never mind getting attacked...they did more to us than just that." He sighed. "The question you need to truly ask yourself is how much you will surrender to the filth who did this to you. To us."

"WHAAAT?" Harper was caught off-guard. "I haven't 'surrendered' anything!"

"No?" The Nietzschean crooked an eyebrow. "You have denied places to yourself because of them. You have let them deny you access to the locations in this universe which nature and evolution may as well have intended to be your primary habitat. Andromeda's machine shops and engineering are places in which you practically live almost as much as you do your own quarters. They are your places, your territory, if they are anybody's. And yet you have given them up. I understand your fear. Believe me, I..." he faltered, then ploughed on. It was too late to turn back now "Harper...ordinarily I wouldn't say something like this...but then again, there's a ship the size of a sun, filled with five trillion septic, hungry Magog, coming our way—MY way. Something like that will make a man rethink his priorities.

"Harper," he said, his voice gentle, as he looked the young man in the eye, "the truth of the matter is, I understand your fear because I feel it as well This situation scares me, Harper. You and I—we can't give in to that fear. It is a perfectly rational reaction, but it is one we must not allow ourselves to succumb to."

Harper looked as though his world had been knocked sideways. "You—afraid?"

The corner of his lips twitched upwards briefly at the boy's incredulity. "I am. There's no point in denying that, certainly not to myself, and nor I believe to you. You know this fear just as well as I do, if not better. So I have no reservations about telling you this Professor. You understand me equally as well as I understand you on this matter."

Harper nodded, smiled weakly in sympathy. "Thanks Tyr."

"You're welcome," he assured the youth. "And...if you'd like, Harper...I'll go with you to engineering. If you'd feel better if I were with you, that is. And we can probably pressgang your finest artwork into accompanying us as well."

Harper smiled, and Tyr could see a small tear brought to his eye. "Yeah," he whispered. "Yeah, I think I'll take you up on that man. Let's go get Rommie and get down there. I s'pose I really oughta take a look at those transfer lines."

"Then lead on, lead on MacDuff!" Tyr laughed lightly, as they started out for the nearest corridor. Harper chuckled, an honest, hearty, straight-from- the-stomach chuckle that brought a feeling of satisfied accomplishment to his friend's mind.

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Specific time: two hours after the return of the Eureka Maru.

================================================================

"What?" Dylan looked incredulously at Rommie. He had just finished interrogating Tyr as to the reasons why the Maru had just been attacked by Nietzscheans. Nietzscheans who had originally flown straight past them and doubled back twice as though they'd recognised the vessel. Fortunately, Beka had flung them into slipstream just as their pursuers had opened fire and they'd escaped, but the High Guard officer was still angry with his acting-fire-control officer

"Dylan, I'm afraid it's true. The larvae are already growing more active, more resilient to the drug."

He sighed, running his hands over his face in frustration as he collapsed into his chair. "Who else knows about this?"

"So far Trance, you and me."

"Good. I'll...I'll tell Beka myself later today," he groaned. "How long do they have?"

She shrugged slightly. "I'd say Harper has a month, perhaps a little more at best. Tyr might survive a week longer than that. However, in all honesty they could both be dead by the end of tomorrow. I'm sorry Dylan, but it's impossible to be certain."

================================================================

Specific time: An hour after Rommie's report to Dylan

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Rommie eventually found Beka in one of the storage bays, a wild gleam in her eye and a manic expression on her face as she consulted a flexi. She looked up at Rommie's approach, grinning broadly.

"Just the person I needed to see!" she beamed. "Listen, I need your advice on this idea I've got..." She broke off at Rommie's serious demeanour.

"Dylan needs to have a word with you," Rommie quietly told her. "He said to let you know it's...it's important. And it's not good."

Beka swallowed, blinking furiously as tears welled up in her eyes. "It's about the larvae, isn't it." Rommie nodded sadly. "Well," Beka smiled weakly, rubbing her eyes, "all the more reason I need to see you."

"What is it?"

She tapped a few commands into the flexi and handed it to Rommie. "Look familiar?"

Rommie's lips twitched upwards into a smile as she stared at the schematics.

Beka grinned broadly, clapping her on the shoulders and forcing Rommie to meet her gaze. "So what do ya think?"

Rommie shrugged. "It's an insane plan, fraught with risk...and it might just work."

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Author's Note: Cue the OTT dramatic music...? Not a chance. Seriously though, whatever you think of this, I'm interested in hearing it. Well, right up until someone blasts me with a flamethrower, at which point I'll be busy rolling on the ground swatting the flames out. I'm working on the next chapter, and I've written a couple of sequences to be used later on, and it is thus that I can guarantee that on Friday 30th July (English time) at the latest I'll have some more stuff posted, one way or another.

If anyone's got any comments, problems, ideas, questions, preferences etc., send 'em along and I'll take a dekko, make a few adjustments here and there if I see something that I like or fancy experimenting with and don't cause my poor little PC to short circuit in shock. Mind you, please keep things serious—ideas involving Bugs Bunny or cheesy Star Trek monsters or sending William Shatner forwards in time to visit when he picks up Tom Baker's scarf at a Doctor Who convention or whatever are out. If, on the other hand, you think you can see the beginnings of a good relationship between some characters in my gibberish—ahem, 'scuse me, writing—then by all means get in touch and point it out even if it's bloody obvious—I'd rather have to read half-a-dozen reviews, postings etc. all telling me the same thing rather than miss a turning that could turn out to be quite nifty. Send your opinions and observations along and I'll see what I can do.

I may not have a physical office on Fan Fiction Dot Net, and I certainly don't have a door here either, but just imagine it as being open, hmm? And unlike Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully of the Discworld (someone and something else which I also do not own), it is not so that when I'm bored I can fire my crossbow over my desk, across the corridor and into the target above my accountant's desk. It is open because I need, nay, crave information, and indeed welcome the stuff as the very essence of life. Besides, I'm a student. I have no possible requirement for an accountant. Oh well, looking forward to hearing from you,

Union-Jack 2.0