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 VIII
The girl slept for
another three days straight, and it wasn't until late the ninth day that she
awoke again.
When Aiden finally
opened her eyes for the first time in over a week, the first sight she saw was Trance
sitting on the side of the bed, staring down at her.
Turning her head
slightly, Aiden saw that the rest of the crew stood nearby, staring expectantly
at her.
"Hey," she
whispered, letting her eyes get used to the bright light above her.
She slowly pulled
herself up into a sitting position, cringing as pain shot across her side. "Oh yeah, that hurts," she hissed through
clenched teeth.
She felt Trance's
hand on her shoulder.
"Are you alright?"
the purple girl asked softly.
Aiden nodded,
closing her eyes, trying to overcome the pain. "I'll be fine." She opened her
eyes and looked from Trance to the other crewmembers, then back to Trance.
"I guess I have some
explaining to do…"
The entire group
seemed to nod in unison.
"Um, I don't really
know how to tell you guys this, and I know you probably won't believe me but…"
she looked at Trance, her sapphire eyes almost begging for support from the
purple girl.
"Perhaps it would be
better if you just told us, child," Rev Bem said, his voice soothing from the
other side of the room.
Aiden nodded, her
long hair falling in front of her face, which she tucked behind her pointed
ears.
"Um, I'm …well, I'm
Trance and Harper's daughter…" she trailed off, staring down at the floor,
unwilling to meet their eyes.
The entire group
stared at her, unable to find words to respond.
It was well over a
minute later that Aiden looked up them; her eyes glistening with unshed tears.
Trance put her arm
around the quivering girl, lending her support.
Dylan stared at the
two young women.
"Trance," he said
quietly, "you don't actually believe that this girl could be your daughter… do
you?"
Trance met Aiden's
eyes with her own and nodded.
"There's no other
explanation," Trance said. "When she was in the coma, she said the word
'mother' in my language. Generally,
only my people can use my language properly, it has something to do with the
way our vocal cords are designed or something. No other species seems to have the ability to reproduce the sounds we
can make. Even when Harper knew my
language, he was only able to copy what he thought the words sounded like… she
said it with the accent that only my people have…"
Harper just stared
at the two girls in front of him. Aiden
looked up at him, and bit her lip nervously.
"Say something," she
whispered to him.
A grin slowly broke
out on his face. "Tell me what stocks
are gonna skyrocket."
Everyone turned to
stare at him. He looked at them and
shrugged.
"What? She's
obviously from the future. If I'm gonna
be a dad, I'm gonna want to be a rich, rich man…"
As if on cue, they
all started laughing at him, especially Aiden. The young girl clutched her side in pain as she tried to stop her
laughter.
Harper grinned and
walked up to her, hopping up to sit next to her on the bed.
"Oh God, don't do
that," she hissed, wiping tears of laughter from the corners of her eyes. "Laughing really really hurts right
now."
He just smiled at
her. "Sorry, but you seem to be
assuming that I was kidding. Come on, I
want to know what's gonna happen."
Aiden grinned at
Harper. "Well, it's good to see that
you haven't changed much, but I'm sorry, I can't tell you."
Harper stared at
her, mouth agape. "Why not?"
Smiling, she said,
"your future self told me to give you a message if you asked about anything
like that."
"And what was that?"
Trance asked, eager to hear what the girl would say.
"To tell you that
you'd just have to try to figure it out for yourself. Of course, it took about three hours of Mom telling him about
screwing with fate and timelines and everything to get him even remotely close
to agree to saying it."
The group burst into
laughter again. Well, everyone except
Tyr. Aiden looked up and met his eyes,
and as if reading his thoughts, and perhaps she had, said, "a bit surprised
that the offspring of these two could ever knock you out?"
He snorted. "The words shocked and humiliated come first
to mind."
Aiden gave a little
smile and gave a mock bow.
"I learn from the
best."
Tyr stared her
down. "And that would be?"
Aiden raised an
eyebrow at him. "How do you think I
knew your moves? You've been training
me how to fight since I was first able to stand on my own two feet."
Beka shook her
head. "I don't buy it," she said,
crossing her arms over her chest. You're telling us about a future that can't possibly exist without
the Andromeda, and since you killed our ship I just don't see how any of this
is possible."
Aiden stared at the
blonde woman. "You actually thought I
killed Rommie? Man, I'm better than I
thought."
Dylan looked at her,
trying to size up the situation. "Are
you saying you didn't?"
Aiden shook her
head. "I didn't kill Rommie, I'd never
hurt her. Hell, this ship has been my
home my entire life. I'd never do anything to jeopardize that…"
Her eyes shifted
from Dylan, to Beka, and back again.
"Look, despite what
Gerentex may have told you, I didn't delete Rommie. I copied the program that connected her personality to the
network, hid it where Gerentex wouldn't find it, then deleted it off the main
network grid."
The entire group
fixed its eyes on her. Aiden sighed,
realizing that they, with the exception of maybe Harper, had no idea what she
was talking about.
"Ok, it's like this,"
she said, attempting to explain it to them in simpler terms. "If you take away the program that makes the
personality work, it acts just like you deleted the personality itself. Trust me, she's not gone; she's still in the
computers. She just can't touch
anything. And don't worry, once I put
the program back Rommie will be as good as new."
Harper nodded. "So where did you hide the program?"
Aiden grinned and
pulled her hair back away from her neck, revealing her neuro-port. "In me… the last place Gerentex would ever
look. I don't think he even knew that I
had a neuro-port…"
She let her hair
fall back into place, and looked up at the group again. "What happened to Gerentex? Is he…"
Dylan shook his
head. "No, he isn't dead. He's locked
up in a cell on one of the lower levels. He won't be going anywhere for a while."
Aiden smiled. "If he hadn't been such a jerk I might
actually feel bad for double-crossing him. I mean, he did help me find you guys, even if he didn't know it at the
time."
"Speaking of which,"
Beka said, crossing her arms in front of her. "What are you doing here?"
"Um, well, my
grandfather, Trance's father, found out about me and he wasn't really happy
about it. So, um, they decided to send
me back here to keep me safe."
Beka was the first
to ask the question that had been going through everyone's mind, "What do you
mean keep you sa-,"
"She means," Trance cut
in, wrapping her arm around the girl's shoulders tighter, "that my people don't
like the thought of mating with a different species. They look down upon it. They disapprove of it so much that they will try to destroy any child
they think is of 'impure' origin."
Aiden nodded. "So my father, Harper, sent me back here by
sending me through a stable time dilation using his matter transporter, and,
well, here I am…"
"There's no such
thing as a stable time dilation," Beka said. "Time dilations are unstable by nature, you're lucky to still be alive."
Aiden grinned. "Luck has nothing to do with it, Beka. My future family has the same memories that
you do. They remember me telling them
this information; they already knew where each side of the time dilation
goes. They know where I enter and exit,
for my initial trip anyway, my father already knew that his machine worked
before he ever dreamed of trying it on me, he knew I would make it here safe…"
"But they don't know
if you'll make the trip back," Dylan said, suddenly concerned for the young
girl's safety as though she had been his own child, not someone else's. "Do they?"
Aiden shrugged her
shoulders. "No one can ever know that
for sure. You can only be sure of the
past, not of the future. They never
really told me what happened to me after I went through the time dilation, they
just told me that I was to find you, and I did." She yawned, covering her open mouth with her hand.
Trance looked at her
future daughter and smiled, stroking her hair back.
"Um, guys," Trance
said, looking back up at her friends. "I don't think that she's got enough energy to explain any more, she
needs her rest."
The others nodded,
and murmured their goodnights to the girl, who was already half asleep, leaning
against Trance.
The purple girl
motioned for Harper to help her, and together they helped their daughter lay
back down on the bed, covering her with a light blanket. The girl's eyes were closed before her head
even hit the pillow, and Trance and Harper were left alone to marvel at the
life that they would one day create together.
End Part VIII