"Exiting slipstream now." Dylan said. "Anything?"
"Nothing detected on the planet." Rev replied.
"Well. That sure helped. Now we've put ourselves about a day behind them and we have no idea where they are." Dylan said and got up to check the sensor readings for himself. It wasn't that he didn't trust Rev he just felt like seeing for himself.
The door hissed open and Beka sauntered in. "I've found 'em.", she announced.
"What?"
"Coyote Pride live on Fortuna Prime. Seven slipstream jumps away from here. In other words three and a half days."
"How-?"
"I hacked into the database on Janet's ship."
Dylan rolled his eyes. Why did he ask? He then said "Good work Beka."
"What's the matter Dylan? You don't seem too happy."
"Do you always have to hack into a computer to get the information you want?"
"Hey it worked didn't it?" Beka said while strapping herself into the pilots chair.
Dylan couldn't argue with that. "All right. Take us into slipstream Beka. Where's Tyr by the way?" His mind had been so preoccupied with finding Harper and Janet he hadn't noticed until now that he hadn't seen Tyr in a while.
"I haven't seen him" Beka said.
Andromeda appeared on the screen. "He's not anywhere. I can't detect him."
"Tyr what the hell have you done now?" Dylan said quietly to himself and walked off the bridge.
********************
A cell door opened and Janet was thrown in landing hard on the floor. She pushed herself on to her hands and knees breathing heavily. She had been beaten, electrocuted and had been subject to many other different kinds of torture. They had done everything to her except break any bones, rape or kill her. They were trying to force her to admit that she was a murderer, a traitor and inferior to them. She had refused to do so and had only been beaten more and more. She looked around the room. It was in the block of cells where the slaves had been housed. The walls were made of thick stone and the only light came in from a narrow slit near the ceiling. She remembered when she used to sneak in here late at night and give the slaves some food she had saved for them. She had also tended to the most serious of their wounds. It had been good for them and for her. She had liked showing them that there were different kinds of Nietzscheans and not all of her people were cruel and selfish. She wouldn't tell them her real name for fear that they would reveal her unintentionally to the rest of the pride, so they had called her 'The Different One'. It had fit perfectly in more ways than they could ever imagine.
Then she remembered Harper. Where was he? She looked around the dimly lit cell. She couldn't see him. She stood up and steadied herself by leaning against the wall. She moved slowly towards the door and peered through the narrow bars set in the door at about shoulder height. There were no guards that she could see. She gave a small smile. They underestimated her. That was good. The more power they thought they had over her the less they actually had.
"Harper?", she whispered. "Harper, are you there?"
No response. Janet hit the door in frustration. She had an awful temper that she always tried to keep in check but at times like these it was impossible. She then realized she wasn't helping herself. She needed to rest and give her nanobots time to heal her wounds.
She moved to a corner and curled up but she couldn't sleep. Her thoughts kept wandering all over the place. She thought her childhood, the death of her father and the day she had left Maceak, the village she had grown up in. No one had been sorry to see her go. She was a Nietzschean, she didn't belong there. The villagers' greatest fear was that her parents would show up someday and kill them for keeping her there- at least that's what Janet thought. They probably would have killed her when her father had died because there was no one to protect her from them any more. So she had left and wandered around for over ten years, looking for her place in the big wide universe.
She had always wanted to join her people. She had read alot of Nietzschean history, paying close attention to recent history looking for some clue as to what Pride she was from but had found nothing. The battle that had most interested her was the fall of the Kodiak Pride. It had been awful. The betrayal of the Kodiak was terrible and she really felt for them. Tyr hadn't told her much about the fight and she could see it had hurt him. His parents had been killed in it. He was considered inferior because of it. She had told him that he wasn't inferior. He had survived hadn't he? He was better than Drago-Katzov because they hadn't beaten him. She didn't know why she had said that. She had just blurted it out. Now that she thought of it she had told him more about herself than anyone else. There was something about him that made it very hard to lie and it wasn't because she had been brought up with a sense of honesty. Even the lie about helping Trance sort out medical files just to get away was hard to say because she didn't want to leave. She had wanted to stay with him and talk some more but she knew if she did she would end up telling everything to him and she didn't want to do that. He would turn his back on her, he would consider her inferior and she wouldn't be able to stand it. He had stirred up feelings in her that she had never felt before and she didn't want them to go away. She smiled despite the pain and discomfort she felt and fell into a light sleep.
Authors End Note: Sorry about taking so long to update. Unfortunately writers block set in. :-) I wasn't sure 'bout the romance subplot but my friend forced me to do it so blame her. :-)
