Title:
Sapphire Fire
Author:
Kia Lee, (trance_harper@yahoo.com)
Rating:
PG-13 (a little bit of swearing and violence, but not too much )
Summary: Gerentex returns to reap his revenge on the
crew of the Andromeda, but things don't go exactly as planned.
Disclaimer: I don't own Andromeda, those characters
belong to Gene Roddenberry. But Aiden,
Talen, Gerentex's new crew (though they are nameless), and others who are not
on the show (and never will be) are my own creation, so if you wanna use them,
just ask!
Feedback: Oh please... oh please, oh please, please,
please...
Part II
The last thing
Harper remembered, he had been seated on the floor of the crawlspace, trying to
repair Andromeda's slipstream driver. He remembered hearing someone walking up behind him, but as he turned
his head to see who it was, the person had brought a rather hard object down on
his head. Before he had been given the
chance to even cry out for help, his vision had been taken over by large black
spots, and he had passed out.
He was now lying on
the ground in one of the unused crew quarters, his head pounding with
pain. Blinking, he tried to clear his
vision, which was still dancing with little black spots, making his headache
even worse.
Harper pulled
himself off the ground, into a sitting position, only to find someone pointing
a laser gun at his face.
"Woah!" he yelled,
trying to back away as quickly as he could, still in his sitting position. "Um look, I don't know what I did to make
you mad, okay? But whatever it was, I'm
really, REALLY sorry."
The stocky human
stood, towering above Harper, the gun taking direct aim at Harper's chest. "I'd stop moving if I were you. You wouldn't want me to think that you were
trying to escape, now would you?" the man asked, obviously enjoying being able
to toy with Harper's fear.
Midway through the
man's little speech, the door to the room slid open, and someone entered. Harper wasn't able to see the new person,
since his back was facing the door, but if the guy in front of him was any
indication, he wasn't sure he wanted to anyone else.
"I don't think you
want to do that, Talen. The boss said
that we might need this one." The voice
said, and Harper's head instantly turned towards the owner. It was a girl!
The man, Talen,
Harper assumed, didn't even flinch, his eyes never leaving their target, the
center of Harper's chest. His finger
almost seemed to tighten on the trigger as the girl walked closer.
Even in the dim
light, Harper could make out what she looked like. She was human, and a beautiful one, as if that counted for
anything, and had light skin and long brown hair that was streaked with blue
and white. She wasn't very tall,
probably shorter than Harper himself, and seemed younger, maybe 20 years old,
22 tops.
His observations of
the girl were interrupted by the girl's voice, addressing the man who held
Harper at gunpoint once again.
"God, Talen. If you're that trigger-happy, go kill some 'droids. Gerentex doesn't want any of them wandering
around the ship, as if they'll do any good."
That statement made
Talen look away from Harper for a moment, his eyes darting quickly to the girl,
then back to the engineer seated on the floor.
"What about this
one?" he asked, his voice so rough and grating that it almost make Harper
cringe.
"I'll watch him, he
won't get away. Besides," she said,
leaning against the desk, facing Talen, "the Nietzchean's still missing. The last thing we need right now is him
wandering around the ship.
Talen gave a quick
nod, and, lowering his gun, turned and left the room.
The young woman
smiled as she leaned against the wall, turning her attention to the young
engineer. Harper began to study the
girl who stood before him yet again, not really out of interest, but to size
her up, wondering if he could take her in his wounded state.
The girl just stared
right back at him, her sapphire eyes focused on his face.
His headache fading
for a moment he thought, if she's not
armed, I could probably take her. If I
can get out of here, I can try to find the others…
Then the name the
girl had mentioned before finally clicked and his eyes visibly widened…
Gerentex… he was back…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I really don't see
why this is necessary…" Beka muttered as the dark-skinned woman pressed the end
of the gun, almost painfully hard, into her back, holding her by the collar of
her shirt.
"Shut up!" the
Nightsider growled from beside her, as he held Trance in a similar position,
marching her forcefully down the corridor. With that, the woman holding Beka made an abrupt turn and shoved the
blond woman through an open doorway, into one of the unused crew quarters.
Before Beka even had
a chance to gain her bearings, Trance's body collided with hers, and the two
women went tumbling to the floor.
Looking up from
their position on the cold metal floor, they saw their hostages on the other
side of the archway, and with an almost lightning-quick movement, the woman
reached out and hit the controls beside the doorway. Before either Beka or Trance had a chance to realize what was
happening, let alone react, the door slid shut with a loud hiss, and there was
a soft clicking sound that followed almost immediately.
Trance looked at
Beka and voiced the only reason behind the noise.
"They locked us in…
we're trapped…"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"What did you do to
Rommie?" Dylan hissed through clenched teeth. Gerentex only continued to grin.
"I myself did
nothing to her, captain. But my new
engineer, on the other hand did. She
made a few adjustments to this marvelous ship of yours…or should I say…mine…"
"And just what kind
of 'adjustments' would those be?" he asked, barely able to control his anger
towards the rat-faced man who stood before him.
"Well, I'm sorry to
say that your little 'Rommie', as charming as she was, doesn't exist any more."
Dylan's eyes
narrowed. "What are you talking about?"
he growled.
"Just as I
said. She no longer exists. My new engineer, darling girl, took the time
to remove a rather large liability from my plan. She deleted Andromeda's personality from her internal
network. It was a wonderful idea,
really. I couldn't exactly reclaim this
ship if Andromeda's personality was as adamant as last time in preventing me,
now could I?"
Dylan's jaw
dropped. It's not possible, he thought. No one has the ability to do that; most of
the original engineers of warships couldn't even delete a personality once it
had been implanted in the ship's network. It just isn't possible…
"You're lying," he
hissed. "You can't delete Rommie's
personality. You just don't have the
ability."
Gerentex grinned
evilly. "Quite right, captain. I
don't have the ability, but my engineer does. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to take a
seat at the helm of my new ship," and with that, he brushed passed Dylan and
Rev, and sat in the helm, getting a feel for the controls.
Unable to move, as he
was still held at gunpoint by Gerentex's crew, he looked at the fur-covered man
who held the controls to his
ship.
"I won't let you
take my ship without a fight, Gerentex," he said, dark fire burning in his eyes
as he glared at the man. "That I promise
you."
Gerentex turned the
seat around so that he faced Dylan.
"You don't seem to
understand captain. There will be no
fight. You've already lost." The rat-faced man looked from Captain Hunt,
to his guards, and gave a small nod.
All of a sudden,
Dylan felt pain running though his body like liquid fire, and he collapsed to
the floor, and just before everything went black, he saw Gerentex's face
appeared in his vision. The Nightsider
grinned with triumph, and Dylan's vision was quickly shaded with black.
He lost
consciousness seconds after his vision went black, just in time to hear the
Nightsider speak once more.
"You've already
lost, Captain. That I promise you."
End Part II