"Owww!" Harper gasped as he ripped his connector out and waves of pain rolled over him. "That was not nice."

"Are you okay? What the hell happened?" Beka asked as she helped him up from the cold floor.

The engineer rubbed his port tenderly as he slowly made his way over to the computer. "That rat put a mega safety over his hack, and believe me I'm not talking about those little safe guards. This sucker is a major, super encrypted security shield. And it's all for one teeny tiny little code, consisting of 12 numbers to be precise."

Harper's fingers were now flying furiously over the console in front of him as he tried to get some reaction out of code he'd changed. "I don't get it…."

"What?" Dylan asked. He, Beka, and Rommie were crowed around their resident genius trying to make sense out of what he was saying.

"I changed the encryption code when I was in the VR matrix, but it's not showing up out here. Rommie should have complete control by now…"

Rommie frowned, "I don't detect any change."

"What?! That's impossible!"

Harper adjusted his attention to the floor as he thought. Why had Gerentex needed him to fix the ship? The rat wouldn't have tried to hijack the Andromeda unless he was sure he'd have control of her. The hack Harper had destroyed hadn't been even been dissecting any programs, which meant it hadn't been what had taken the ship offline, but there hadn't been anything else. So what was keeping the Andromeda dead in space, and cold?

"I have a question," Beka interrupted his trail of thinking. "Why does Gerentex want the ship anyways? The only reason he salvaged it last time was for the nova bombs, but we don't have any on board now, so what exactly is his motive?"

Harper's head snapped up and he looked at Dylan. They both exchanged a knowing glance.

"He knows," Dylan said.

"What are you talking about?" Beka was bewildered, and whenever that happened, she got mad. "What's going on?!"

The engineer looked at the door, looked at Dylan, and looked at the door again, his body language pleading that Dylan let him go.

The starship captain nodded, "Do it."

Harper flew to the door.

"Hey!" Beka yelled.

He was out of there before anyone could say anything more.

****************************************

I'm changing the whole ending and I'm probably going to end up making it a lot longer. It's actually really hard to remember where I had been going with this before and getting back into writing for it hasn't been easy. So if these next couple chapters are a little off bear with me until I get back on track. Thanks ; )