like_jonah_from_the_whale6

Like Jonah From The Whale
by Xenutia



Disclaimer: See parts 1-4. They're not mine.
Rating: PG-13. I don't think there's anything worse than the surgery' coming up.
Summary: You all know this part, right? Now that Beka has realised the truth about Eric, Harper and the blueprints, it's up to her to get them back. It looks like this story's going to go to 10 or 12 chapters, now that I've gotten far enough in to judge.
Spoilers: There are nods to some episodes in some chapters, mostly Fear & Loathing In The Milky Way', but not really spoilers. They just relate to background information on the characters a little bit.
Author's Note: Thanks so much everybody for the feedback! I couldn't do it without the support and I live for the stuff, I do. This is for you, this little fic that was going to be a short and has suffered, as they all tend to, from my contagious elephantitis, and become quite a long fic.

*** 6 ***



Beka was speechless. She regarded Rev, anxiously scouring his gentle expression for a sign, any sign, that he was wrong. Her gun belt swung limply from one hand, penduluming with a slow, constant swish-swish sound that barely broke the silence.

she demanded, stammering and hating the sound of it even as it came. Beka Valentine did not stammer. Rev's face was pitying, remorseful, even though his only part had been to relay the news to her.

I am truly sorry, Beka. It appears your friend was not to be trusted, after all.

Beka threw her gun belt down and turned fiercely to the helm. Yeah, I kinda figured that out, thanks Rev, she snapped, and regretted it instantly. So now what? Can we track him?

Rev approached on his soft-padded feet, making no sound on the deck as he walked, until he was beside her. She leaned into the helm, breathing hard to try and gather her thoughts, to try and control that spark igniting deep down in her gut where her legendary temper always began. With a spark, a flare, and a sudden inextinguishable blaze. If I may hazard a guess, Beka...this is not about those blueprints, is it? he prompted, mildly.

Beka huffed, her teeth ground together till her jaw hurt, arms straining as her fingers tightened convulsively on the helm. You're damn right it's not. Eric Guldavian, he's the problem, he always was the problem...well, he won't get the better of this Valentine, oh no, you can bet your ass on that. Rev listened with a faint nod of his head, but she was no longer talking to him, muttering these empty threats and tempered curses beneath her breath, angering herself deliberately because the rush was just so sweet.

I never make a Rev replied, teasing kindly. But I will make a prediction; that you will get those blueprints back.

At last Beka smiled, reluctantly feeling the gesture breaking her resolve to stay angry, to feed off the adrenaline like she had so often before. What, are you psychic now, too? she laughed.

I merely know my friend, Rev answered. She does not give up so easily.

***

Harper blinked against the probe of light, his stinging, tired eyes burning as the flashlight beam shone into them, piercing through the thin eggshell of his skull to the pulsing, raw mass of heat and pain inside. His torn and cut neck was an agony, shooting from his shoulder to the crown of his head, burrowing a million red-hot needles into his brain. He was losing consciousness.

He was brought back with a blow to the stomach, and the distant, hysterical laughter of the flash addict. He had heard that laugh many times throughout the endless day, sometimes thin and wailing, skipping across his frayed nerves like a knife on a plate...other times it was low and shook from the man's stomach like an earthquake, mirth at a joke none but he were parley to. It was driving him even more insane than that drip, or the pound in his head likes waves on a shore, or the tunnelled yellow light pinning him, feeling like a pike skewering him to the wall through the back of his head.

He tugged at the bonds around his wrists uselessly, too weak to do much more than a token show of resistance, blackness swimming in and out of his vision like a flickering light. All he wanted, and it was as naked and simple as all his usual wishes at times like these, was to close his eyes, and be allowed to pass out. To just sleep, to let the blackness take him where it beckoned, and escape the pain of his operation and the fatigue and starvation and thirst driving him crazy. He never wanted much; just enough food to stay alive, enough untroubled sleep to keep his mind functioning, a chance, once in a while, to breathe, and know he was in no immediate danger. The passing thoughts of wealth, wine and women, they were a distraction, they helped take his mind off the other things - but when you stripped away all the distractions, all the self-defence built into his brain, it was as simple as that. Just to stay alive. It wasn't much to ask; but the universe seemed to take perverse pleasure in denying him even that. He must have really pissed somebody off in his previous lives or whatever came before to deserve the life he had.

Three of the pirates stood around him, staring him further into the chair they had thrown him into to, and Harper shrunk away from their gazes, especially from the captain's. The cold grey irises glinted in the gloom beyond the invading, penetrating flashlight.

Let me get this straight, the captain said, reasonably, that same conversational tone he had adopted before coming into his voice again. Just for my own mind, you understand. See, from what I could tell, my guest' was snooping around in the exact same area of the ship where you were working. And you're telling me you didn't speak to her? A stranger, somebody you knew wasn't a part of my crew - and you didn't think Hey, she could help me get the hell outta here.' You didn't think that once?

Harper gulped, but it stuck in his constricted throat, fear and unbearable thirst closing it against the reflex. His mouth was too dry to attempt it again. he slurred, painfully. I figured any guest' of yours wouldn't be any help to a mudfoot like me.

The captain's eyes narrowed, suspiciously. Very astute of you, he said dryly. But of course, you had nothing to lose, right? I can't see any reason at all to imagine you didn't try.

Harper turned his gaze flinchingly to the man that had done this to him, that had stuck a port into his head in some dirty underground butcher's shop, that had kept him a prisoner and starved him and denied him sleep since he started work on their dying engines - and was now interrogating him, with words, and that light...and his fists. His torso was a mass of bruises, sucker-punched and rammed with a rifle butt, but his head was out of bounds; it was too liable to start bleeding again, to rupture and kill him, taking their precious cargo with him. Harper smiled at that. Little did they know.

I guess it doesn't make any difference, anyway, the captain sighed, pacing across the beam of light ponderously, his blocking body casting a hellish silhouette against the bulkhead. Miss Valentine wasn't interested in reminiscing, and she can't find us now to do anything about you. He paused, and the cool gaze fixed maliciously on him with a calculated, cruel smile. Assuming she'd want to, he said. And it seems pointless to bother doing something nasty to you when we're headed...where we're headed.

Despite his mugginess and headache, that last made Harper sit bolt upright, his bound arms twisting awkwardly behind him. he asked, haltingly. Where are we headed?

The captain laughed, and his two men joined in the rabble, the sound raucous and callous. Why, to extract my property, of course. I have a friend where we're going who knows enough of neuro-technics to remove your implant without disturbing the data. Forcibly remove.

He paused again, for effect, letting this sink in. The utter horror Harper couldn't keep from his face must have pleased the son of a Magog; the smile twisted deeper, like a knife turning in an open wound. What, you didn't think I'd lose an expensive piece of equipment like that port, do you? the man who still had no name chuckled. You might be disposable, but it isn't. But don't worry; you'll die too quickly in the operating theatre to feel it.

Their laughter echoed back to Harper where he sat, watching the three walk away through the haze of exhausted agony that he was losing the will to fight. Moments after their laughter died, Harper let go of the struggle, and let the blackness take him.

***

Rev and Beka were scouring the surrounding space for signs of an engine signature which might be the Magnus' when the viewscreen to the right of the helm bleeped, hailing a rush of static, and finally, a video display of Randall Stamp. His half-human, half-cybernetic face leered towards the pair in his mechanically-hindered approximation of a smile, his one human eye blinking big and green in the left side of his face, the right dead and black in its socket, glowing with a faint reddish infra-red light. Stamp had been involved in an accident a while back, and had been cybernetically repaired', as he had explained it to Beka and Rev. His right eye, gored and useless, had been replaced with heat-seekers, and his right arm featured a metallic replica of a Nietzschean's inbuilt bone spurs.

Beka knew she must have been desperate to ever take a job from a guy who looked that that. But his transaction had seemed, from all of their background checks, to be perfectly legitimate.

Miss Valentine, his filtered, scratchy voice articulated through the plug burrowing into his throat, fixed into his voice-box and relaying electrical impulses to his speech centre. His own ability to do so, and speak unaided, had been destroyed with his eyes and arm. You're even harder to find once you're hired than you are before.

Listen, Stamp, if you're calling to harass me into getting my butt in gear and delivering your prints, I gotta tell ya this isn't a good time.

Is it ever a good time, Beka? Stamp asked ambiguously. His tone, always difficult to interpret beneath the fake grate of the synthesiser, was even harder to decipher than usual.

Now that you mention it... Beka tried to joke. Rev remained peacefully silent beside her, the slight curl of his lips implying he found her struggle to keep her temper all rather amusing. He continued his signature scouring in the background, not looking up from the display.

They're due tonight, Beka. Don't make me try out these spurs I had fitted. And, grotesquely, Stamp winked at her with his good eye. With that, he signed off, and the screen went dead.

I hate that guy! Beka exploded. Who does he think he is, on my case every damn hour of every day?

Rev grunted. I assume he thinks he is the one paying you twenty thousand thrones for your services, he said, calmly. In her current state, Beka completely missed the teasing, ironic quality to it.

And what would you know, Rev, huh? I didn't see you jumping in to defend me there.

I wasn't aware you needed defending. But I am aware that you would like a lead on your friend Guldavian's vessel. I believe I have it right here.

Set a course, she said without hesitation. She was beginning to pace, that steady flow of fury and adrenaline pulsing through her veins like a drug. She couldn't stand still. She couldn't stop until they had those blueprints, and the boy they were hidden in, safe and sound on the Maru. And Rev?

Yes, Beka?

He's not my

To Be Continued...

Author's Post Script: Sorry if this chapter seems a little choppy'. I just saw It's Hour Come Round At Last' for the first (and then second) time, and I can't get past the adrenaline! I hope it's okay, my head's kinda fuzzy tonight.