Disclaimer: I don't own Andromeda…Tribune Entertainment does. Though I do think they should do more Harper centered plots. g Let the little psycho out to play. g

Notes: Is anything ever gonna happen in this stupid fic?!? Ugh. Feel free to skip this chapter. I may cut it out entirely after the story is whole.

Thanks to Brat64, Parisindy, and Starfish. (You guys are still here? What, are you gluttons for punishment?g) Really, the encouragement means a lot to me. ::smile:: Thanks.

Wanta throw rotten tomatoes? Feedback is welcome.

Just a reminder:

Early Days

By: Ghost

Chapter 5~

~~*~~

It was hotter then hell in the engine room.

Well, okay, maybe not hell. But it was definitely almost as hot as the dorms in high summer, when the sun had beat down on the tin roof all day, and the heat just built and built until he had developed this odd fear/hope that the whole place would just suddenly burst into flame in a bout of spontaneous combustion.

The Maru's engine room did smell better though.

Harper shook his head, breaking free of memories that would do him no good. He pulled his button-down over-shirt off, leaving only a sleeveless tee. It was just too damned hot to wear layers down here. And besides, there was no one here to see. He absently draped it over the catwalk railing.

He grabbed a valve and turned, watching the meter carefully, making sure the new splice on the feed-line held. Tomorrow. He had to have the thrusters rebuild and primed because the were leaving tomorrow.

Tomorrow he would be off this hellhole and once again in space. Moving. Doing. Free.

Mostly, anyway. It would give him four months to figure out a way to get himself free, at least. He sighed, laying his head on his hands, ignoring the sweat.

It was all good, though. At least he'd be the fuck away from here. Everything was set. The AG was purring, the slipstream was functioning without a hitch, and the thrusters would be burning in a couple of hours. Almost twelve hours ahead of schedule.

Cool.

He slipped through the guardrail and dropped down to the next platform to check the splice.

Not a drip. He nodded slightly and pulled his flexy out of his belt, looking for his next chore.

"Harper?" Beka's voice echoed from up top. Sharp and angry.

"Down here, Boss." Harper responded, wondering just what he'd done to piss her off now. She'd been cold the past couple of days. Cold and easily annoyed if he did anything remotely surprising. Her hovering had kept him from getting some…things done.

She appeared, crouching down on the catwalk above his head. He kept his head down eyes on his work. "What're you up to?"

Irritated, he flashed the flexy at her, "Just working the list, Boss." He knew his voice was hard, sarcastic, but he couldn't control it.

She actually winced, as if chastised. "Sorry. I'm just…anise."

"Yeah." Whatever. He sighed tiredly and rubbed a hand over his face, clearing the sweat.

Baka, who had been crouched there watching him awkwardly, now cleared her throat. "Interesting decoration. Where'd you get it?" She gestured at his upper-arm.

On his arm was a brand. A perfect circle bisected by a sharply stylized 's'. Three patterned slash marks, looking almost like lighting, cut through the 's'.

He flinched, and reached up to pull his over-shirt down from the rail next to her. "Did you want something?" he snarled, pulling his shirt on again. Not a smart way to talk to the person who decides whether or not you get to live for the next few months. But he was beyond caring. He was tired, his port was getting more sore everyday-- and the memories were way, way to close today.

She actually looked a little shamed faced. "Right. Don't talk about the mark. Got it."

He shrugged, still not meeting her eyes. Swallowing against remembered anger and pain.

"Anyway, I just came to tell you both Tev and I will be dockside for awhile. Both the water and fuel tankers showed up at the same time as the sewage. We have to keep an eye on things. So…."

"'Kay. Have fun." Harper looked up, trying to project distracted innocence. From Beka's dark look, he didn't think it worked completely.

But she stood up anyway, brushing her hands off on her pants. "Right. Okay then. Remember, we're just dockside." It was a warning. He smiled as if it were a reassurance.

She gave him another look, and left, striding purposefully out of the engine room.

He gave it five minutes then scrambled upstairs.

The galley was empty. Harper worked quickly and quietly, first unscrewing the coverlet then pulling the circuit board. Pulling a length of cable from his pocket, he plugged the shorter, thicker end into the jack on the board.

He played out the cord and, taking a deep breath, inserted the long, needle like jack into his port. He hissed out the breath slowly as the jack worked its way in, a deep trail of fire pulsing through his neck, back and up, growing worse, until the jack touched the access deep in his brain-stem. As always, Harper felt that moment as a flash of white and cold and a popping sensation, like someone had shoved an ice-pick into his skull.

Opening his eyes, he panted through the last of the pain. They said it got easier. That he would grow used to it and it would get easier.

He could only hope they were right.

He could already feel the system pulling at him. A tug in the back of his mind, a sort of hum, as the ship's computer worked on about a billion things all at once. It was so much better, in the system. Clean, neat, painless.

With a sigh, he let go of his hold on his physical form and dropped into the data-stream.

At first he just wallowed. Stretching. Exploring. Coming to know the Maru's soul.

Then he got to work.

No one knew that Harper had two memories. His normal, everyday, namby-pamby, *human* memory… and a small chip, a computer memory that functioned as both buffer and cache. A sort of interpreter between biological thought and data flow.

He had set a small part of this memory aside. In it he had stored three programs of his own design. The first two he wouldn't need. The last one….

He uploaded a "masking" program. As soon as he activated it, he became invisible to the Maru's computer. Just one more random program doing random program things. And if the Maru looked too closely at him, it would get distracted by a sensor blip. Or a minor program glitch. Or a miss-read of the core temp. Anything to distract it from the insignificant entity running around its mind.

Harper was now a ghost in the machine.

That done, he turned his attention to his second chore, rifling through the Maru's files and memory, looking for a weak spot, a place to build his back door.

Maps and star charts. Nope. Sensor loads. Nuh-uh. Entertainment files. He considered, then abandoned. Too centralized. In coming/outgoing mail. Please. That'd be the first place they looked. Personal files. That was a possibility.

He opened them, looking for something he could use. Most of the files were Beka's. Notes, observations, little known slip routes. Even one or two she had found herself. He was impressed. It took one hell of a pilot to find a new route. Still, he couldn't use these as a cover for his backdoor. They were too likely to be activated by Beka during the trip.

He was about to leave when he saw it. A small file, labeled ROCKET. Curious, he opened it.

A data file. Listing of apparently random information. Stupid stuff, like the cost of the Maru, and the rates of hauling water. The population of Senceane Drift. The street price of Flash on three different planets and dozens of stations. And much more of the same.

Confused, he started to pull back, then saw an attachment. Of course he opened it.

Rocket,

Keep this stuff, you'll want it some day. It'll make more sense when you're in the black. I promise.

Fly free,

Dad.

Weird. Harper shook his head. At least now he knew why
 Beka was about as stable as a pulsar; it appeared to be genetic.

He closed the file and moved on.

In the end, he finally wedged his back door into the fire-control system. He knew from his repair work that no one had even looked at the system in years, so it seemed a safe enough place to create his access. Then he attacked the communications system, building a sub system that he could use whenever he wanted. It would be text only, no visual or holographic communications, but it would be nearly undetectable and almost completely untraceable.

Which was a good as he was gonna get, 'cos although he had no sense of time while in the matrix, he knew he'd been in awhile, and that Beka or Tev could come to cheek on him at any time.

With a sort of mild reluctance, Harper reached out and made contact with his body, tugging himself out of the data stream. He blinked, reorienting himself with both his body and surroundings, then pulled the jack free, trying to ignore the slithery feeling as it came out.

He bundled his connection cord up and put it away. Bolted the panel back to the wall.

He had done it. He now had a way to contact the Fungus at anytime, without Beka's knowledge.

He sat at the galley table and told himself he did not feel guilty.

If he said it enough times, he might even believe it.

~~*~~

The next few days were some of the easiest in Harper's memory. The launch— and the exhilarating sense of escape it brought-- was quickly replaced by tedium. Working the boards, or the engines or the computer. Eating when he was hungry (luxury beyond measure) sleeping when he was tired. The Maru had no set schedule.

Which suited Harper just fine. It made sending his 'non-progress' reports to the Fungus easy, though not guilt free. But he kept the messages simple and brief: "4 slips out from SN. More later." And if they contained no real information, well, that was just because there was really nothing to report.

Well, nothing except for his Plan.™ Not that he was going to report *that* to the Fungus. Not that he was going to share it with anybody. Once he had calmed down, it had dawned on him that the Maru was a treasure trove of parts that he could use…and if he had built one jamming device, he could build another…one that could even simulate the bio-electric impulses of human nerve-endings, maybe.

All in all, Harper was in a good mood. Tev was cool. Sweet and disarming, despite the muzzle and claws. Even he and Beka had this funky kinda push-me-pull-you, teasing vibe going. Relaxed and not needy or threatening. Just… almost…. It kinda reminded him of the way he had been with his cousins—

He was not going there.

He pushed the memories away, but his mood turned sour. If Beka ever found out what he was doing…. That he was spying, she probably figured out already, but stealing from the ship-stores while they were in transit and the life of her crew might depend on those parts…it was a crime of a whole 'nother level.

She would never forgive him, and he would loose….

Loose what? A place on a ship that wasn't really his? A growing relationship he didn't understand and didn't want with a person who was just as dangerous as she was funny? A home.. a place to belong…?

Screw it. If he didn't steal, he would loose more than that. His freedom. His life.

He stuck another chip into his pocket.

~~*~~

"Brace for transit."

Beka gritted her teeth against the weird, familiar *stretching* sensation as the Maru slid into the stream. It was a long slip, and she misjudged the angle twice, the ship jerking as it tried to veer out of the stream and she yanked it back.

She was breathing hard by the time the ship emerged.

"That was a rough one." Tev said from the weapons station.

"Loosin' your touch, Boss?" Harper called from behind her.

"I've been doing this for the last two weeks without a break and I'm freakin' tired!"

Two weeks. It had been two weeks of pecking at the fringes, of dancing with the stream, trying to get it to lead her just a little closer to the stellar nursery each time. Two weeks, during which her crew had become more and more tense, as the slips gotten progressively more deadly.

They were three days behind schedule, and a run that was *supposed* to have taken three weeks now looked to be a month long venture.

There were supplies to be worried over. Fuel levels. Water and air.

And as each day passed and they *weren't* there, she worried more. Telling herself that the trip back would be quicker because the route would have already been forged. That, if the were lucky, they could restock from the station. That she still had time.

"Look, Boss, you seem done in. Why don't you go rest for awhile and I'll…tweak the drive, see if I can give you a little more oomph."

Harper. That was another worry. The longer the trip went on, the more helpful he got. It didn't make sense. Out of the three of them, he was the one *not* getting paid. He should be screaming the loudest about how stupid this was, and how they should turn back. Instead he was literally working till his fingers bled, trying to make the ship respond to her slightest touch. She had never had the Maru react to her so quickly or fully. It was heady.

And it was wrong. He should be trying to sabotage her, not smooth her way.

And on top of it all, the little bastard was stealing parts.

It wasn't blatant. Nothing big…yet. Just a blinding grin, and a twitch of those too quick hands, and poof, another unnamed piece disappeared into those endless pockets.

She dropped her face into her hands, overwhelmed. She was still strapped into the pilots chair.

"Beka," Tev barked softly, "You're exhausted. We'll never get there if you dump us into a sun because you're sleep deprived. Harper's right. Go get some sleep." Tev she should listen to. Tev she trusted.

Tev had been on the boy's side right from the start. It wasn't fair.

Still, they had a point. Her brain felt numb, foggy. Her hands were sluggish. "Okay," she heard herself say in a dead voice. "I guess a few hours won't hurt. Any of us. Let's shut her down for awhile. We'll go at it fresh in the morning."

Which would come whenever the turned the lights back on.

~~*~~