Author's Note: I'm sorry I was away for so long, guys. I had some major problems with my computer, and the "borrowed computers" approach wasn't working too well. I want to extend my thanks to all of you for waiting for this chapter. The rest of them should be up really quickly; I have them all written (see, I
didn't spend the computer-less time doing no writing!) and I just have to get them typed and posted, which should be within the next couple of weeks, knock on wood.
Special thanks to: darkshadow-23, Soulfire, Dark Topaz, Rainbowscape, Makura Koneko, and The Sugar Junkie. Your reviews were great, and I really appreciate them. As you all can see, I did write more. Grins and giggles to everyone, see you next chapter!
The Child
Chapter Eleven: Arrivals
By B.L.A. the Mouse
When Beka and Tyr stepped out of the slipfighter, they were met by the entire senior staff and Asher (who was hanging onto Harper's hand only under duress). The first ones to greet them were, in fact, Asher and Harper, pelting forward at the same time. The engineer caught Beka in an exuberant hug as Tyr picked up the child.
"You're back!" Harper shouted, giving her an extra squeeze.
"Tyr!" Asher shrieked.
Beka laughed and hugged Harper back as Trance approached, a little more sedate but still walking awfully fast. The alien had a broad grin stretching across her face, the usual combination of sheer happiness and a little lurking shy reserve that had hung around since her purple days. She didn't hug either of them- she couldn't get between Harper and his captain without a crowbar anyway- but accepted Beka's effervescent greeting and Tyr's nod.
Coming forward together, Dylan and Rommie were the last to meet them. The latter was beaming at them both, and even the captain seemed slightly softened. "Hi," he said. "Have a nice trip?"
Beka answered, tongue-in-cheek. "Oh, great, except for the work and the partner. I had no time to bar-hop."
Tyr gave her an affronted look, while Trance was amused, Harper commiserated, Rommie was faintly disapproving, and Dylan was more so. Asher missed the entire thing, choosing that moment to fling himself from Tyr to Beka and shout her name instead.
"Hey, kid. I'm glad to see you too."
Dylan was eager to get to work. For one thing, the drift they were orbiting wasn't a member of the Commonwealth, so he had to at least try to make a pitch. "So did you accomplish the job?"
"Geez, Boss, let them unpack their stuff before you start talking shop, will ya?" Harper frowned at Dylan, then grabbed Asher as he tried to make an escape from the small circle. For all his original squeamishness about children, he was by now almost an acting big brother to the boy, and spent unorthodox amounts of time with him.
"I agree with him," Beka stated flatly. "How've you guys been?"
That sparked off a discussion that lasted several minutes. It slowed slightly when Tyr left to get the bags from the slipfighter, and even more when Harper and Asher went with him, reasons respectively to check the ship status and just to tag along.
After a few minutes, Dylan declared, "I have to get back to Command deck, I'm on duty this shift."
"Aw, come on, we just got back," Beka teased, smiling, but he cut her off.
"No, I have to get back." With that, he turned and walked off.
"Gee, sorry to take up his precious time," Beka muttered as they watched his retreating back. "I think I liked him better back when he was human."
The other two didn't say anything, but they agreed mentally. Dylan had gotten fairly distant in the past year, since they'd actually gotten the Commonwealth up and running. He still had the occasional moment, but they were fewer and farther apart.
"Actually, I have to get back to Med deck," Trance said quietly. "The new technicians having trouble with the equipment, and I need to take care of Gracie."
"Gracie?"
"New plant," Rommie explained.
"She's got disease and she needs pruning. She'll be much better once I'm done, and then I'll put her with George."
"Let me guess- another new plant."
"A set of rose bushes," Rommie clarified again, "that Harper got for her at the last planet we visited."
"Oh."
Trance nodded. "And you and Tyr need to come to Med deck sometime. The new mission protocol that got instituted. Remember?"
Beka shook her head at the girl, then turned her attention back to Rommie. "So what else did I miss? We covered the new crew already."
"Three member worlds, a near diplomatic incident, and Asher started running." Her smile grew on the last one.
"A near diplomatic incident? What did Harper do this time?" Beka was by now well used to the vagaries of the crew, and Trance's strangeness and Harper's ineptitude at subtlety were two of the big ones.
"It wasn't Harper." At the surprised glance she received, she went on. "We were negotiating with the Bard system, and Asher and I took a break. I started talking to one of the citizens and lost track of time. Dylan wasn't very happy, but luckily enough the president had no idea what was going on."
"Who was so interesting as to risk Dylan's wrath?"
"A trader. Spark Hanson, he said."
Beka frowned in concentration. "Never heard of him. What was so interesting?"
Just then Tyr and Harper came out of the fighter, carrying a couple of bags. Setting them down, they joined the group.
"Harper," Rommie asked, "where's Asher? He was with you." And he hadn't come out with them.
"He's on the slipfighter." At the glare she sent him, he turned back. "All right, going!"
He didn't have to go far. As he moved, Asher came out of the slipfighter backward, pulling on a bag and dragging it out to the pile. He was red-faced with the effort by the time he finished, but he ran over to Rommie and tugged at her hand, smiling. "Good?"
"Very good, Ash. Thank you." He smiled enough to show a dimple, then started to walk laps around her.
Tyr looked at him critically. "It's been two months. What progress has he made?"
"He can run, his walking's getting better, and he learned two new words," she informed him, proudly.
"What words?"
"Toe and what."
The Nietzschean had been keeping track of Asher's development, and now he nodded and glanced at him again, but not before she caught the faint smile. After the first few months, and especially after Carmens demise, most of the crew had pretty much adopted Asher into their small family. As the new crew joined, most of them at least became remotely familiar with him, and now the sole holdouts were Dylan and Rommie's own mainframe.
"How did the mission go?"
"Better than she described," Tyr cut in, before Beka could comment again. He gave her a warning look, which she promptly ignored.
"Only for him. I had to spend two months playing near-housewife. Absolute joy."
Most of the assembled rolled their eyes. Harper, on the other hand, threatened, "I'll interrogate you two later. Let's go, Ash, this is threatening to become boring." He left, with a delighted toddler trotting along beside him.
Rommie didn't worry about it. Whenever he was with Harper, Beka, Tyr, Dylan, Trance, or Jenkins, she didn't- well, not any more than usual. "Did you get the information?"
"His goose is cooked," Beka answered succinctly.
Tyr translated, "We have it," needlessly, as shed heard enough Harperisms to get it.
"Dylan'll get it all later, so I won't bother with details." She flashed a quick smile. "Do you want any help with the bags?"
"Nah, we're good. I'll talk to you later."
She nodded. "I'd better go make sure Harper isn't taking Asher into slipstream core." She always told him not to, but she was never sure whether or not he listened.
Beka stared at the pile of bags. "Um, that one's yours, but I'm not sure which one of the others you have."
"I'm fairly sure that those two are yours." He tossed her them, then took his own. "And if I'm incorrect, then we can switch."
Beka let herself into Tyr's quarters and smiled at what she saw- Tyr sitting on the floor playing some sort of ball game with Asher. "Did you even unpack yet?" she asked, bending down as the boy came over and hugged her enthusiastically. After a moment, he wriggled until she let him go, then took off after the ball.
Tyr had stood, and now he spoke to her. "You've unpacked, then?"
"Yes," she answered, grinning cheekily at his warning look. "That's why I'm here. This one's yours, and I threw in some of the stuff that was in my bag." She handed him a duffel bag to punctuate the statement.
Taking it, he riffled through enough to determine that it really was his before tossing it on the bed. "And I suppose you want your items back, as well?"
"You'd suppose. Will you drop them back at my quarters, or do you want me to stay?"
"Feel free to stay," he replied, with a feral smile at the possible subtext.
Aware of Asher running around the room as the ball bounced off the furniture and walls, Beka changed the subject. "So why do you have Ash?"
"Harper had to do work in the slipstream core. Everyone else was unavailable, and I happened to be the one pressed into service. Lieutenant Jenkins should be here shortly to take him."
"In the meantime, we've got him, right?"
"We?"
"I'm free to stay, aren't I?" She kneeled down as Asher came over with the ball he'd finally managed to retrieve and started rolling back and forth. Tyr snorted in amazement at the amount of license she took with the one sentence, but gave up and joined them.
It wasn't long before Jenkins arrived, but it was long enough for the game to degenerate into chaos. Tyr was sitting, leaning back against his elbows, on the floor, with Asher standing on his stomach; Beka was standing straddling his legs, holding the boy upright by his hands. "Now," she said, fighting back the urge to laugh but not succeeding, "do you surrender?"
Tyr was having only a little bit more luck at suppression, just grinning ridiculously but not giggling. He replied, faux haughtily but interrupted by a couple of snickers, "Nietzscheans do not surrender!"
"All right." She leaned down next to Asher and asked, "What should we do now?"
He beamed at them both and started marching in place, letting out a peal of laughter as she led him up Tyr's chest and back down again. In only a couple more minutes, Beka gave up the fight and sat down next to Tyr, erupting in paroxysms of mirth and catching Asher as he toppled. Even Tyr chuckled openly as they sprawled over the floor and each other.
Someone chimed for entry.
Beka and Tyr stopped laughing immediately, and Asher trailed off when they did. After a moment, it chimed again, politely demanding attention. Tyr got up to answer, while Beka picked herself and Asher up and started searching for anything he'd brought besides his ball. She was still wiping off the tears of laughter when Jenkins stepped just inside the door.
"I'm here for Asher?" She had the feeling she was interrupting something, though she had no idea what.
"Right here." Beka ushered him forward. He was scowling at having his fun interrupted, clutching at Blob with one hand, but he brightened at seeing Jenkins.
"'Lex!"
"Hi, Asher." She accepted the ball as Beka handed it to her. "Thanks for holding him until I came on duty."
They didn't say anything as she tugged the boy toward the door until he turned back and said cheerfully, "Bye-bye."
"Bye, Ash." Beka added a little wave to her words as they left. There was silence for a moment before Beka turned to Tyr. "Too bad he left so soon. I was having fun."
"Really? Was it the part where Asher hit me with the ball, or perhaps when the two of you were calling for my surrender?"
"Come on, you were enjoying yourself just as much as we were." She stepped closer and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial level. "Admit it."
"I was not having fun." He had been, but it didn't seem very dignified to admit to having fun when it also meant admitting to being even playfully threatened by a female and a child. Still, her plaintively mocking expression got to him and he half-smiled.
"See? Toldja." She smirked, then suggested, "Since I'm already here, why don't we start sorting some of my stuff out from yours?"
Command deck was mostly quiet, with low beeps of machinery, clanks of repairs and upgrades, and a dull hum of conversation interrupting. Rommie glanced at Dylan as he stepped up beside her, interrupting her contemplation of the sounds of the room. "I never could wait to form a High Guard crew, but after the Maru crew, they seem very... bland."
"Beggars can't be choosers, Rommie, and we are very much beggars when it comes to crew." He hit up a new display on the console. "How are Beka and Tyr settling back in? They've been gone for so long they might have trouble."
She called up information on their whereabouts from her mainframe. They were both in Tyr's quarters, with privacy mode engaged- nothing unusual about that, Tyr's quarters were always in privacy mode. Asher had been in there for a while, but for the last half hour it had been the two of them alone. She decided to edit that before telling Dylan; he might not react well with the idea of two senior crewmembers, especially when one was Tyr, closeted away like that. "I think they're doing fine."
"Good. They already gave me the information regarding Markio and got the medical checks, so I guess they can have a couple more days before going back on duty." Actually, when they had been in his office giving him the information, he'd noticed something odd. "Have you noticed them acting strange around each other? I was talking to them earlier and they seemed to get along much better than before. They said they hadn't had any real problems with the cover, either."
"They've been living together for two months. They're bound to getting along better- unless, of course, one of them killed the other, which was an equal possibility."
She was spared another question when an ensign- one of the ones she'd met when she and Asher had eaten with Jenkins- interrupted. "Incoming message, Captain. It's from a small craft in a holding pattern around the drift. Should I put it through?"
Dylan gestured in an obvious "go ahead" movement. "Of course."
"Hello, Captain Hunt." The woman on the other end of the link appeared extremely young, despite the expression that suggested the cat toying with the mouse. Her hair, an unlikely shade of raspberry red, fell around caramel-colored shoulders laid bare by her shirt. "Since you probably remember me fairly well, I'll cut to the chase."
In the back of the room, someone started to ask "What-" but was quickly shushed. Talking wasn't the best thing to do when the captain was negotiating.
"I learned that you were in the area, so I decided to stop by." Now she leaned forward, looking serious and somehow much more like when they had seen her last. "I needed to take care of some unfinished business, and I think you can help me. In fact, I'm fairly sure you can." She waited for a response, done saying her lines.
Dylan didn't speak now, startled into silence. Nobody said anything, quiet absolute now, stretching longer
At last, Rommie broke the hold of the curious muteness, speaking the next words in the bizarre script of the day. "Hello, Carmen."