Twenty minutes later in Med Deck
Trance was busy double checking Harper and Beka's life sign readings as Beka was adjusting the VR interface equipment for a more comfortable fit one last time. She knew from experience that even though she wouldn't feel the interface equipment while in the VR matrix, a bad fit would leave her feeling sore once she was out of the matrix. Both Rommie and Evie's were already out of their android bodies and were waiting for her in Andromeda's VR matrix. Trance had insisted that they sit in chairs in her office even though it didn't matter what position their bodies were in when they entered the matrix.
After a few more moments of making adjustments Beka said, "I'm as ready as I'll ever be," then activated the interface. She felt a sensation of tremendous speed as the link activated and her surroundings changed to those of the VR matrix . She immediately saw Rommie and Evie waiting for her as she arrived. Beka looked around at the familiar images of active electronic circuitry lit up in electric blue and inactive circuits in a flat navy blue color.
"Ok I'm here so lets get this show on the road," Beka said as soon as she got her bearings.
"I have just given Trance the signal to connect us with Harper," came Andromeda's voice from no discernable point, "but I want to remind you Beka that time in here doesn't flow at the same rate as it does in the real world. What seems like minutes here are only seconds out there. So it will seem like a few minutes before we are connected."
"Ok while we are waiting I've got a question, I thought that you could make it look like anything you want to in here, so why does it always look like this?" Beak asked while indicating the surroundings.
Rommie replied saying "I can," pausing as Andromeda appeared as a large disembodied head with an angry expression on her face. "We can," Rommie corrected and the head disappeared, "make it look however we like in here. We have found that most organics expect this appearance for at least their first few visits in an AI's VR matrix. Besides Harper likes it like this."
"Now why doesn't that surprise me," Beka commented in a sarcastic tone of voice. Beka noticed that both Rommie and Evie were wearing holsters with a force lance in them. When she looked down and saw that her gauss pistol was right where she normally wore it she gave a sigh of relief then began to draw it out of the holster to check it.
Before she could do anything else Rommie said "We can directly effect things in here, however you are more like our hologram is out there.. You can influence things by what you say but you can't directly effect them. So your gauss pistol won't function in here."
"But Harper does it all the time."
"That's because he is using his data port and his mind is connected directly to my VR matrix Beka, while you are just using the VR interface visor which doesn't connect directly to your mind." Rommie explained.
"In other words, in here you will be like my hologram avatar is out there." Andromeda's voice added.
"Get ready, Trance is inserting the jack into Harper's data port now" Rommie warned them .
After a few moments of disorientation they found themselves in a shabby rundown concrete hallway. There was a smell of dust and decay in the air that Evie found unsettling. "Where is this place," she asked?
"Earth" replied Beka with the tone of disgust in her voice that she usually used when she was on a planet.
"Boston to be more precise," Rommie added. "This appears to be the same underground complex where we met Harper's cousin Brendan Lahey."
She started to lead the others down the hallway when they heard sound of children approaching. Moments later a pair of children entered from a previously unseen doorway. A young boy and girl who were obviously twins stopped and called through the doorway to someone else, "Hurry up Seamus, you'll miss all the fun." They then turned and ran down the hallway. Seconds later Harper came running after them desperately calling out for them to come back as he followed them.
Beka, Evie and Rommie all started after him but could not catch up to him no matter how fast they ran down the seemingly endless hallway. Then suddenly they were out in the middle of a sunlit grassy field. They could see the children and Harper headed for some caves in the distance. Harper was calling, "Declan, Siobhan, come back . Please come back, its not safe." As he closed the distance between himself and the children his feet moved slower and slower until they became rooted to the ground and by that time he was about fifty yards inside a wide and rough hewn cave.
As the three women approached Harper and the two children they found that they couldn't get any closer than 50 yards the children no matter how hard they tried. Shortly after learning this they saw six Magog appear and swiftly capture the children. Beka reached for the gauss pistol before remembering that it wouldn't work while Rommie and Evie drew their force lances. They started firing in an attempt to stop what they knew was coming but to their astonishment the bolts from their force lances faded and disappeared before they reached the Magog. Instead of carrying them off the Magog began to infest the now helpless kids with larvae; after which they held them up as they began to writhe and scream in agonizing pain as the larvae grew within their bodies. It wasn't long before the women could see the now hatching Magog eggs moving under the childrens skin.
Evie could no longer bear to watch the children and focused on Harper instead. She saw that he was also in agonizing pain as he watched the horrifying spectacle that was taking place before his eyes. It was then that she realized that she had seen him with this look on his face before, but had never truly realized the cause even though he had told her of it before. This was what his terrible nightmares were about. Then Beka's voice broke in on her thoughts "I remember seeing that look when he first came aboard the Maru I had hoped that I would never see it again."
Their attention was brought back to the children; their dying screams grew impossibly loud as the Magog started to break through their skin. They watched as the first one started to emerge from the boy's stomach. As it emerged from the hole in his skin it had made the three women saw not a Magog paw but a blood covered metallic claw emerge from the gaping wound. Then another blood drenched claw appeared next to the first and the parasite began pull itself out of the boy's blood covered stomach. What emerged from the gaping wound looked not like a Magog but a large robotic insect of some unidentifiable type. "Replicators" Beka exclaimed viciously. At first just one Replicator emerged at a time from the hole in the boy's body but very quickly there were at least a dozen holes in the childrens now dead bodies. Soon there were hundreds of Replicators swarming in front of Harper.
As the women watched this happening the cave that they were standing in started changing and the entrance behind them changed into a solid wall of rock. As the cave entrance changed the Replicators disappeared into the walls. When they looked back to where the children and the Magog were they had disappeared as if they had never existed. In front of Harper a beautiful young woman had appeared and was holding him with one hand while looking around the cave. More specifically she was looking at the squad of 25 armed Lancers that had appeared behind him. Harper and the Lancers were all wearing headlamps which provided sufficient light to see by.
"Look out!" he shouted, his eyes locked on the ceiling. The Lancers followed his gaze and whirled around to face the danger. But it was too late. A gigantic blade swung down from the ceiling, instantly decapitating two Lancers in the center of the cave. The rest of them shrank back from the carnage and aimed their guns toward the ceiling, but it was impossible to see what was up there in the formless darkness.
Two arms silently extruded from one side of the cave, wrapping around two of the Lancers who had stepped close to the cave walls. As they both shouted in surprise, the rest of the Lancers brought their weapons to bear, but did not fire for fear of harming the captives. Maybe they should have. The cave extrusions covered the Lancers from head to foot, so only their outlines were visible. Then, horribly, the extrusions constricted until they were no more than a cube one foot on a side. Retreating back into the wall, the extrusions left behind two tightly compacted heaps of material on the cave floor. The three women were thankful that the cave was not brightly lighted
The Lancers moved to the center of the cave and stood back to back with guns raised. They whispered among themselves, and suddenly one of the Lancers took aim with a gauss rifle and blew Reese's arm off at the shoulder. Harper ran toward the Lancers, opening the dead fingers and dropping the dead arm on the floor. As Reese screamed in pain and rage, the cave attacked.
But the Lancers were ready. The O'Neill bug squashers erupted with flames, sloughing the Replicator cells off the walls and ceiling of the cave. Giant constructs rushed at them from all sides, only to be reduced to component pieces. Several of the Lancers were relating a running commentary on the radio, but Harper could not hear the words over the roar of the guns. He had retrieved a gauss rifle and was firing at whatever he could see, but he was afraid he wasn't doing much damage. It appeared that the entire cave was covered to a depth of about twelve inches with Replicator cells. The Replicator cells were moving, massing in some areas and becoming sparse in others, so it was becoming difficult to know where to fire to get the maximum effect. As the gunfire died down, Beka, Evie and Rommie could hear Reese screaming angry threats from deeper in the cave. They looked back toward her and noticed that her arm had grown back. As she waved her arms this way and that, the cave Replicators seemed to follow her motions as though she were a conductor and they were the orchestra. "She's the damn Replicator Queen" Beka commented with revulsion.
Harper's gauss rifle ran out of ammunition and the action locked back, ready to accept another magazine full of rounds. Harper looked around for another magazine, but couldn't find one. Two of the bug squashers had run out of ammunition at the same time, and it was taking longer than planned to connect a fresh magazine. They had practiced in the staging area under the bright lights, but the cave was dark and the connections required a certain amount of dexterity. Harper looked at a large wave of Replicators rolling toward him, directed by an angrily shrieking Reese, and prepared to meet his end.
The air around him appeared to shimmer, and the approaching wave collapsed. Reese raised one arm as if to ward off a blow, but it made no difference as she melted into the floor. Replicator chips rained down from the walls and ceiling, completely dead. Harper spun around and looked toward the cave entrance.
Hovering at the entrance to the cave that had suddenly appeared, her force fields depressing a huge crater in the ground, the Samantha Carter fired the Weapon of the Ancients into the cave, killing the last Replicators in the cave.
Harper stood there as if in shock for a minute while the ship, the cave entrance and the remaining Lancers shimmered and disappeared. After a few more moments the dead Replicators began to form up in piles until there were three distinct piles, which began to grow. They grew slowly at first but faster as they grew bigger. As they grew bigger the individual Replicators started to flow together, joining into humanoid shapes. In a matter of minutes where there had been a swarm of Replicators there now stood 3 large Dragans.
One of them said loudly, "Kludge, we have you now you good for nothing trouble maker. "
As he said that the other two each took hold of one of Harper's arms. As soon as they had his arms his feet came free of the ground. Harper struggled hopelessly to get away. The leader held out a bloody tin whistle before Harper's eyes. When he saw it a look of fear and recognition came across his face.
"You recognize this don't you, Kludge."
Harper looked the Dragan in the eye and said defiantly "No, but if you blow on it real hard I might be able to recognize the sound, you big stupid Uber."
Upon hearing this, the leader hit Harper in the mouth.
With his mouth bleeding Harper smiled and said, "Is that all you got, my little sister can hit harder than that and she's a weakling Kludge."
Enraged by the insult the leader launched a flurry of blows upon Harper. As the blows landed Harper continued to insult the Nietzscheans. All the while this was going on Evie was calling to Harper, begging him to stop and listen to her. Meanwhile Rommie tried shooting them with her force lance with the effects as with the Magog.
"Evie he is trying to get them to kill him so they can't torture him later." Beka said trying to get Evie's attention.
As soon as she had said this the Dragan leader stopped saying, "Take him away we don't want to kill him now when we can make a proper example of him." As he was saying this a large hole appeared in the cave wall where none had been before. The Dragans carried Harper through the opening which was now large enough for three men to walk through side by side. Without a moments hesitation the women followed them through the opening.
