TITLE: Vengeance - Chapter ten - Watch my Sky Come Undone
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing from the Andromeda series, I'm just borrowing.
NOTES: Are you ready for the twist?
CHAPTER TEN - Watch my Sky Come Undone
"We can lie, we can run and we can be silent, but nothing will stop the truth when it is ready to surface."
- Jida Ilyana, poet and philosopher
CY 8056
^~*~^
"No, don't!" Harper said desperately. He couldn't allow Rommie to destroy Tierte Drift. Besides the thousands of lives that would end, if Andromeda fired upon the drift, the Ethereal would destroy the ship, and everyone onboard. "None of those people had anything to do with my death!" Harper said, contemplating for a moment how bizarre the statement sounded.
"Untrue." Rommie replied, and continued to rapidly type on the console.
Harper realised that he would have to voice his secret. Rommie must have already known anyway. The Vengeance program was designed to activate the moment Harper died, and relay the last moments of life.
Harper screwed his eyes tight shut in a last vain effort to convince himself it was all a horrible nightmare. Then he uttered the words he had been keeping to himself since he awoke. "It was nobody's fault but my own."
Rommie stopped what she was doing. "Harper shot himself. No-one around him prevented it. That is why they are all responsible."
Harper now understood everything. The Vengeance program hadn't malfunctioned, it had evolved to deal with a situation it wasn't designed to cope with. When Harper created it he never expected he would ever try and commit suicide.
^~*~^
In Command silence painfully filled the room. They had heard everything that was said in the core room via the monitors.
Beka's mind reeled. Why hadn't she seen it? Harper had grown quieter and quieter up to the Autriva mission. She should have seen that something was wrong. Lane Farrow must have triggered something inside Harper that was so terrible he went and shot himself, and everything that happened with Rommie was the result.
^~*~^
"Nobody is responsible, Rommie. I just....I wanted my life to end." Harper said, his voice cracking under the overwhelming pressure.
"Why?" Rommie asked.
"If I show you, will you stop what you're doing?" Harper asked. He couldn't stand to have any more death on his conscience. Rommie nodded and Harper felt the ship stop moving.
Harper approached the console and connected to Andromeda.
In a heartbeat he and Rommie were standing side by side on Carna, just as Harper recalled it. They were in the alley where he killed the stranger. Harper showed her everything he remembered about the murder in it's horrifying detail. When it was over, the body was still on the floor, suspended in time.
"He had people who cared about him." Harper said quietly, staring into the rain, which looked like stars in the night sky, glistening from the moons glow.
"All this time, you told no-one?" Rommie asked.
"Not a soul. Only Lane Farrow knew. She went to prison for it. She was an evil person, I thought she deserved it. But I deserved it more. I made a vow to change my life and try to forget, but I remembered it every day."
"It was an accident. You didn't mean to kill him." Rommie told him. She was slowly regaining control of herself, and the Vengeance program was retreating.
"It doesn't matter. I still killed him." Harper said. It was the same things he had been telling himself for six long years. "He had a son you know. Lane came to see me on Autriva, she had this recording of him. That boy grew up without a father because of me. I saw him and I just couldn't handle it anymore." Harper remembered seeing the young boy on the imager, so full of hurt and anger when he spoke of his father.
"Harper I'm so sorry." Rommie comforted. In truth she didn't know what else to say.
"I thought, if I could just end it, then I could make things even, you know?" Harper reflected.
"It wouldn't have solved anything. You said you made a vow to change your life, and you did that. You are not the same person you were on Carna. Not everyone would have grieved at all for that man or his son. You are a good person who made a mistake. And I think you've punished yourself enough."
^~*~^
In Command all the systems came back online. Andromeda had stopped only a light year out of weapons range. The panels lit up again and the doors to Command slid open.
Dylan, Beka and Trance headed down to the core room while Tyr informed Tierte Drift and the Ethereal what was happening.
^~*~^
"I'm sorry Rommie." Harper said after he disconnected from Andromeda. "I didn't mean for this to happen."
"Think what would have happened if you had died. Either I would have kept on killing innocent people or the Ethereal would have destroyed me and everyone onboard." Rommie scolded, but she couldn't stay angry. Harper had suffered enough. "But you survived, and made everything right again. That's the important thing." She added. "The others are on their way. I'm afraid they heard everything that was said in here."
"Please Rom, I don't want them to know what I did on Carna." Harper begged. He wasn't ready for the others to know of his terrible crime.
"I understand. But they're your friends, they'll want to know why you did what you did."
"I know. I just need some time."
"Rommie?" Dylan said from behind them.
"I've returned control of the ship to you Dylan." She replied. "You'll need to remove the Vengeance program from my systems before we reboot my mainframe."
"Understood." Dylan replied.
"Are you alight?" Trance asked Harper.
"Yeah. I think I will be."
^~*~^
End of chapter ten
^~*~^
The final chapter awaits...