Gambit 33

Sitting in the cockpit of the Eureka Maru, Doyle was deep in thought about what course to take. Like Rommie she was able to scan her immediate surroundings, but for long-range scans she needed the the Maru's scanners .And for that she would have to power up the ship, something she was certain it would attract attention which was the last thing she needed right now. Still in order to search for Beka's and Dylan's whereabouts as quickly as possible long-range scans were necessary. If she were to use more surreptitious methods it would take her much more time to find out what had happened to them and whether or not they were even in Thetis. And if there was one thing Doyle needed even less than drawing attention to her and the Maru, it was getting back to Harper and telling him that Beka and Dylan were lost to them, to him.

When the crew of the Andromeda had finally been gathered together on Seefra, Doyle had at first perceived them all as nuisances, new figures disturbing the life she had with Harper. But as each one of them introduced new sides of Harper to her, sides she previously never knew existed, her feelings changed.

There suddenly was a Harper whom a Nietzschean treated as an equal, a friend, at times a fellow warrior. And occasionally even like a threat to be taken seriously.

A Harper who was perceived by the avatar of a sun to be some sort of wizard, the famous elder brother figure, who could fix everything, make everything better. Trance used to go to Dylan, when she needed protection, but she looked for Harper, when she wanted answers. The only time Doyle had seen her angry with Dylan had been during the first weeks after Trance's sun had come through the Route of Ages. She had pleaded with them to follow of Harper's suggestions, which they did, sometimes quickly, sometimes more reluctantly. When Dylan had tried to tell Trance that even Harper doubted that he could fix the artificial suns and stop her star the look Trance had thrown him had been one of outraged puzzlement, before she had burst out:

„Dylan, what are you talking about? How can you say such things? Of course he can. Harper can fix everything!"

And Doyle met a Harper who held on to his dream to restore both Andromeda and Rommie, no matter how painful and long and winding the road back to what had been lost turned out to be. For a time she had not known how to define his struggle for the ship's and her avatar's existence. She didn't understand why he could not see that it would have been more merciful to just let go, allow Rommie to find her peace. But as she started to familiarize herself with Andromeda's and Harper's history together, Doyle realized that to ask this of him would have been like asking a father to stand by and watch his child die before her time, before the remotest, most far-fetched chances to save her had all been explored. It would have been unnatural to ask him to accept this. It was the course of life for children to survive their parents, as it was for parents to ensure that this was the way it happened.

It had taken Doyle almost four years to get to meet this other Harper. And she couldn't even imagine going back to him, telling him that after losing his childhood, his family, his friends and in the end his entire home planet, he would now have to resign himself to now having lost Beka as well. Beka whom he not only loved but literally worshiped, with a devotion that was all the more touching as he had no illusions about all her flaws. She was his best friend, his safe harbor, his confidante, the only true home he had left. At some point in his life Harper had decided that Beka would be the rock he would build his life on. And nothing she had done since, none of the things she had submitted them all, herself and Harper to had changed that devotion.

Nor could she see herself telling him that from now on he would have to do without Dylan. For a while after Earth's destruction Dylan had been the only one Harper could turn to, when he needed comfort. Because in the end none of the others understood what the Terran had gone through, exactly how enormous his loss really was. None of them but Dylan, who had the advantage (if one could call it that) to not need understanding. Dylan simply knew. Over the last year the two men had grown closer than they had ever been before. The more so as the new bond had finally enabled Dylan to show the ever present extent of his trust in his engineer's abilities and had enabled Harper to notice it. The Earther had to some degree always been able to see past the imposing figure the captain of the Andromeda Ascendant presented to the others. Still, in spite of being well aware of the man behind the image and all of his shortcomings, not even Harper had ever been totally immune to Dylan's well-trained charisma. And it meant the world to know he was liked, admired and trusted by a living legend. It was a need with Harper, going well beyond vanity and silencing many inbred insecurities.

No, she wouldn't make Harper face more irreplaceable losses, not before she tried everything to prevent it. Her determination was spurred on by the fact that she was the only one who actually knew how, what Harper was without them – and what he could become. It was an experience she did not care to see repeated. After those three years alone with him on Seefra it had been a struggle to put the pieces back together: out of fractured lives, fractured minds and fractured souls she and Harper had managed to restore a jigsawed picture, ending up with the closest thing they could have to a family. And she would not stand by watching as two of the branches of this tiny new tree of life were cut off before it had a fair chance to grow and prosper.

Shaking her blonde mane and pressing her lips together, Doyle brought the up Maru to minimal power. while inserting new security codes into the computer locking the ship to her command only. She quickly performed some wide-range scans, then shut the old freighter down again. She smiled upon receiving the confirmation that there was a subdermal communicator familiar to the Maru about 10 kilometers to the west of the ship's location – and slowly coming closer. An infrared scan of the direction of the signal revealed that the owner of the communicator was most likely in the company of another. Still, it was but one familiar signal, and in spite of her taking the time to double-check the results, the Maru's sensors indicated that there were no others responding to the interrogation signal. The signal was moving closer, but there was no way she could find out whose it really was from the distance. Frowning, she quickly left the ship, being careful to avoid detection by the guards. She wasn't overly concerned considering that their detectors were probably meant to alert them on the approach of organics and that the fog had grown quite thick by now.

Her own sensors led her safely between two of the guard posts, as she moved unerringly towards the area where the Maru had detected the familiar signal. About 700 m down the way there was a 3 m high, probably electrified fence. Without even breaking her stride Doyle simply leapt over it. For a brief moment she stopped on the other side, scanning her surroundings, then continued moving rapidly in the direction the Maru had detected the familiar signal. Minutes later she stopped: the small detector in her wrist indicated that the signal she had been approaching was close, hidden by the fog and by some green bushes that separated the grav-tracks of Thetis' public transportation system leading to the spaceport from the surrounding landscape. A smile of satisfaction came over Doyle's face.

-

He hadn't heard or noticed a thing. He had stopped briefly, gently laying his load on the cold, wet ground, trying to catch his breath and figure out a way to get them through the guard posts and safely aboard the Maru.

The guards at Dylan Hunt's door had not even blinked, when Jonah Draeger had carried the woman all Illion system now knew to be the Matriarch of all Nietzscheans out of the room. They were trained not to ask questions when it came to anything Paul Musseveni or Jonah Draeger did. But they had of course noticed. And they would report some couple of hours later, as soon as the next shift came in to relieve them.

Draeger knew it, and he hurried up, intent on taking full advantage of the time window he had at his disposal – and that he suspected to be narrow. The thirty-six hour long days of Myrmidon were – for all activities – divided into six-hour long shifts. The change of the guards had occurred just before he had left with Beka so he estimated he had no more than five hours to get himself and Beka on the Maru, sober her up enough so she could pilot and make it out of Illion. They were on an tight schedule.

He left the hospital and managed to get into himself and Beka into his anti-grav transporter which had been docked on the parking lot without any difficulties, and began maneuvering it into the direction of the space port. He didn't like transporting himself anywhere on his own. His whole life he had had the means and opportunity to let himself be taken anyplace he wanted. As a result he was clumsy at the helm of any land-, air- or space-craft known in the Three Galaxies.

It didn't bother him much on Seefra – where technology was in any case limited. And it didn't hinder him much afterwards either: when Paul Musseveni had taken him with him through the Route of Ages, into this new universe. Draeger had put his skills and the connections Paul had provided him with to good use, managing within ten years to establish himself as second in command of the largest corporation in the field of biological, medical and pharmaceutical research. A corporation that had emerged from a long discharged branch of a conglomerate of weapons manufacturing companies, that was still well and prosperous, Technocore. The rise of the New Restored Systems' Commonwealth had necessitated that the conglomerate get rid of a line of business that was heavily involved in the research and production of... ‚strategies' for chemical and biological warfare, something that the Commonwealth Charter clearly denounced as illegal. But there were people left who thought differently. The stigmatization hindered open development, but the non-Commonwealth structures ignoring the interdiction grew rich, in spite of the fierce competition in the field. Richest among them was Biocore and its executive officer, one Johah Draeger.
It had been a long time since such activities had troubled him morally and it had provided him, even here, in this new universe he still abhorred on so many levels, with an amount of wealth of indecent proportions. And freed him of the need to steer himself anyplace on his own. So far. That was about to change now.

After a bumpy ride at a rather slow pace which he hoped would avoid attention of the traffic corridors' surveillance, they came to halt next to the anti grav tracks leading to the space port, where he hid the small transporter in an anemic grove of trees. He was now crouching next to the tracks about 4 km away from the spaceport's main entrance, trying to figure out a way to get in as inconspicuously as possible.

Draeger could of course have simply walked in there, without anyone asking any questions, but he had told Musseveni that he was taking Beka to her house to rest. They hadn't showed up, and although he doubted that the guard at the house had informed anyone about it, he didn't want to take any chances. His own house wasn't guarded, and so he had left Musseveni a short note at the labs, stating that he was taking Beka to his own mansion, where he had carefully briefed his personnel about that fact that he did not want to be disturbed for at least the next 12 hours. He did this quite often while he was on his way, making sure that his path was clear as soon as he reached the gates: the people working for him knew that he sometimes wanted and expected complete privacy when he was again in ‚one of his moods', as they often put it. But in spite of having covered their tracks as well as could be expected: who could tell what Musseveni was up to, what orders he had issued in the meantime, whether there wouldn't be an overly zealous officer at the spaceport not satisfied with having only Draeger's clearance for all areas and insisting on getting Musseveni's approval, as well... It was far, far better to not take any chances of being seen at all. Draeger knew all the gates, all codes and every tracking and detection system. He could disable them all and get to the Maru, but he had to do it quietly and quickly, while still carrying Beka. So he took a little time to plan his next steps. And was thinking. Concentrating. Too much, as it turned out.

-

Next thing he knew there was a steely pressure encircling his neck and effectively cutting off his air supply, while the rest of his torso was immobilized by another arm.He kicked backwards and felt his booted foot make contact, but the kick seemed to have no effect on his assailant. His vision was getting blurred and closing in on the edges, when he heard a whisper, strangely clear and crisp in spite of the fact that he was almost desperately trying to gain some air:

„I will release you now, I don't mean to harm you, but if you so much as make a sound or try to get away before I'm through with you, I will snap your neck like a chicken's. Do you understand me?"

The pressure on his neck eased a bit, enabling him to nod. The arm that was wrapped around his neck was removed. With a gasp he filled his lungs with air, taking in deep breaths and nearly choking on them. He doubled over, resting his hands on his knees, trying to clear his head and his vision, then slowly turned around. He must quite clearly have been without oxygen for longer than he had thought for in front of him, a bit masked by the surrounding fog, was the diminutive silhouette of a woman. The fog cleared slightly to show that she was a delicate blonde beauty alone. There was no eight foot tall, 300 lbs mountain of muscles anywhere in sight.

„Better?" she asked in a pleasant, slightly seductive voice. Draeger nodded dumbfounded. „Good," she said, Pushing him out of the way she knelt down next to Beka, her hands slightly pressing against the woman's chest and forehead. To Drager's consternation, judging by the ease with which she had shoved him aside, the colossus that had choked him had been her.

„She's unconscious – and generally in poor shape. What's wrong with her?" the blonde asked the Seefran curtly.

„She nearly overdosed on flash. I took her out before she could do so. She's heavily sedated."

The small blonde acknowledged his comment with a nod, then rose to her feet in a gracious, fluid move.

„Mr. Draeger, I presume?"

„Yes."

„Before you tell me what you're doing here with Beka: where is Captain Hunt?"

„It's a... it's a long story..."

„No story, just the info. Where?"

„He is at the Grand Asclepion, about six km away from here," Draeger answered readily. The girl's eyes narrowed to small slits.

„That sounds rather clinical," she stated, her voice as dispassionate as before.

„It's a hospital," he told her.

„Why is he there? And why couldn't the Maru's sensors detect his presence?"

„That's part of the longer story."

„Then it will have to wait. Why are you here with Beka?"

„I promised to get her out of here. I promised to... to save her..."

„Oh, really?" The blonde cocked her head to one side, a slight pout on her lips and a look in her eyes that said she was not convinced at all. „From what Raphael Valentine told us your eagerness to help her seems to be a rather newly acquired habit..."

„Again, it's a long story..."

She shrugged.

„Whatever. Do you have transportation?"

„Yeah, in that grove behind you..." She didn't turn to peer through the fog. Instead she motioned him to pick up Beka and stepped aside, her hand waving him forward.

„After you, Mr. Draeger..."

„Where are we going?"

„To the grove..."

„But... why?"

„We're taking that vessel of yours and paying Dylan Hunt a visit."

„What?" Draeger exploded. „Are you out of your mind? Why would you want to do that?"

„Because he's coming with us," the girl replied sweetly, her flat hand gently pushing him from behind.

„No, you don't understand..."

„No, Mr. Draeger, I'm afraid it's you who doesn't understand. My name is Doyle. For almost a year on Seefra I was the avatar of the Andromeda Ascendant, sort of. And since the war I've been supervising the restoration process of Tarn Vedra, formerly known as Seefra. Captains Hunt and Valentine are my commanding officers. And my friends. They are both sorely missed and much needed by many. I'm not leaving either one of them behind. Now move. And please remember: like a chicken, Jonah... I may call you Jonah, yes? That's settled then."