Chapter 20

Hannah sat back, satisfied she had done her job. The Nightsider, his men, and his ship were undetectable by the Andromeda's sensors, and the communications around the docking bay that the Nightsider had told her were completely blocked. Now it was time to find the Nightsider about a certain reward.

She decided to find him by hacking into the camera systems on the Andromeda. There was no point in wandering around the huge ship looking for him when she could just find him using the camera's. Besides, she had already done a lot of hacking today, so what was one more thing? She looked at the screen of the palm pilot she had found in the toolbelt and after a few minutes of tampering saw that the Nightsider and his cronies were over by the docking bay, and were headed towards Hydrophonics. They must have just arrived, since they had obviously parked their ship in the docking bay she had technically made invisible. She wouldn't be able to catch up to them over there, they were too far away, so she decided to wait for them to get a little closer first.

To pass the time, she looked through the camera's to see what the rest of the crew were doing, and to see if they had noticed that she was missing. Switching from camera to camera, she saw Dylan and Trance in the storage area's about half a kilometer away from the Nightsider. They seemed to be looking for something. It was most likely her, but, like the Nightsider, they were quite far off track. She kept flipping. She passed a room that Harper, Beka, Tyr and Rommie were sitting in. Backing up, she looked at them, wondering why Rommie was lying on the ground and why there wasn't any furniture in the room. Then she saw the red that covered Tyr's hands and Harpers arm. She made a quick scan of the room. This was the so-called docking bay that her "employer" had told her to block off, and the only door into it was locked. She clenched her teeth. Harper was hurt, and the Nightsider had obviously broken his promise to her not to hurt any of the crew. She felt extreme guilt. Even when the creature had promised he wouldn't hurt them, in the back of her mind she knew that something like this was sure to happen. How could she have been so stupid? Of course the only way to take over a ship is to take out it's former crew or somehow convince them to follow your orders. Well at least they weren't dead yet, but by the looks of things this might not be for long.

Well, now that she knew for sure that the Nightsider had gone back on his word, she saw no reason not to go back on hers. She tried to unlock the door to the room but the beast had done too good a job at making sure it stayed closed. Then she tried to take off the communications blocking she had put on, sure that since it was her own working she would be able to do something, but it was not to be. He must have done it himself, only telling her that he needed her to do it, so he could have control over her for when he needed her. Or just giving her something to do to keep her at bay while he took over. There was no way she could get them out of there, even if she went to do it manually. She left the image of the prisoners, she couldn't bear to look at them any more, and switched back to the invaders to see what they were up to. They were close enough now that if she hurried she could catch them and find out who attacked her, if he hadn't lied about that too. She decided to pretend she had no idea that he had broken his word. They might be less likely to kill her then. She swallowed and took up the tools to use as a defense if need be. Too bad a gun hadn't been in the shop. It would be much more useful now than these tools.

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