Not for the first time that week—or even that day—Harper reflected that his little suggestion to Tyr had worked out well. As he watched Tyr and Beka huddles together, hammering out the details of this 'voluntary extraction', he noticed a mutual comfort between them that hadn't been apparent a week ago. Considering his sentiments toward Nietzscheans in general, maybe it had worked a little /too/ well. Sure, he had wanted a little peace, some easing-up of the tension that had filled the air like a physical thing, but Harper didn't think he was quite ready to admit to himself the obvious… change in the nature of their relationship.
At least they weren't acting like hormonal teenagers—a redundant phrase, Harper thought to himself. Beka and any Nietzschean playing kissy-kissy in the corner would be enough to make Harper /toss his cookies/ in the corner. Toss them over and over and…
"Aah! No! Nothing over and over! Nothing! Aah, Tyr! Aah, Beka! Must think happy thoughts! Hmm… aah, not working! Hey Trance, pick up any good plants lately?" It was a desperate, last-ditch effot to rid himself of /very/ undesired mental imagery; Trance could go on for hours about her darlings.
She was following Harper around the Maru's corridors, jotting down any problems the engineer noticed. They were docking at El Dorado Drift in a few hours, and Beka wanted a list of everything they'd have to acquire, legally or otherwise.
"You really want to know about my plants, Harper? You know, I could set you up with a little garden of your own if you want. I know some really easy plants that you could take care of when you weren't working in the engine room." She wrinkled her nose. "Although I can't imagine why you'd want to work there at all. It's all dark and smelly, and there's nothing pretty there, just a lot of metal and buttons. Buttons can be neat, though, like when you see the prettiest light blue button, and no one else wants it, or else it wouldn't be lying there. You know, you can find a whole bunch of interesting things that people leave behind if you know where to look…" She trailed off and looked at Harper quizzically. "Weren't we talking about plants?"
Harper grinned. "Huh? Oh, um, no. You were going to tell me about your days as Robin Hood, stealing… finding things from the rich and giving them to the poor. Remember?"
Trance considered this and shrugged. "Are you sure? Well, okay then. There was this one time, a poor Ruby Than needed an AP solenoid valve, but the Chichin she'd bought one from had taken her money and left all the sudden, so I…"
Harper let the wave of words wash over him. Nothing like purple pixie chatter to cleanse one's mind of the /wrong/ kind of nudie pictures. "Hey Trance--?"
"Okay, okay, the Chichin's assistant /didn't/ give me the valve out of the goodness of his heart. But I know he wanted to, Harper; it's just that the system makes it so hard for Chichins to show their better natures."
"Uh, that's great, Trance." While the girl had regaled Harper with tales of… Chichin assistants, it seemed, the engineer had made his way to the engine room. He ducked into various corners, checking switches and dials and buttons, wincing at the general state of the Maru's innards. "Aw, look at the wire—it's completely shot! If we're going to pull off this 'voluntary extraction', we're gonna need a total re-haul. I don't think the Princess--"
"Duchess."
"—excuse me, /Duchess's/ loyal subjects will be exactly thrilled to watch her escape while they're stuck behind. That means we're going to need us some Acme rocket shoes if we want to make it outta there in one piece."
Trance looked down at her flexi. "Um, Acme rocket shoes?"
Harper cradled his forehead in his hands. A civilization without Bugs Bunny was no civilization at all, purple pixie powers or not. "Just write down… something to speed up the AP reaction for a few minutes. I don't want to blow out the engines, but we're gonna need a major kick in the ass if someone isn't so happy to let the Duchess go free and decides to stop her. I'll think of the something later. And copper wiring up the ying-yang."
A brief shiver in space/time announced the Maru's departure from the slipstream. Harper had never liked that shiver—he always feared, deep down, that they would be caught in that moment forever, hovering on the edge of a slip portal. Growing up on Earth hadn't prepared him for the oddities of space travel, and he didn't think he'd ever become as nonchalant about them as Beka. She liked telling people that she'd been /born/ in slipstream, and Harper didn't quite doubt her.
"Hey, kids, this is your captain speaking. We've arrived safe and sound at El D., and not a mysterious, secretive, and deadly mercenary in sight, unless you count the Nietzschean standing next to me."
Beside him, Trance smiled dreamily. "Aren't they cute together? I think it's wonderful that Tyr and Beka could overcome their differences and find a little peace, love, and understanding in this universe."
"Yeah, it's great." Harper grimaced. "If only humans and Nietzscheans everywhere could look beyond their /centuries/ of conflict and discover something special, blah blah blah." If the Maru had a sarcasm detector, it would be registering levels rarely reached before throughout the span of civilization. "But we're at El D! Wine, women, and wiring!"
"And water gardens!" Trance exclaimed.
"Water gardens?" This was certainly news to Harper.
Trance nodded enthusiastically. "El Dorado Drift has one of the most beautiful water gardens in this part of the Milky Way. Now, if you like tropical botanical gardens, Pierpont is a good place to go… although you have to be really careful, because stealing is legal there."
Stealing! Now here was a subject /Harper/ could expound on for hours: the most easily bribed guards, the laxest security measures, and most lenient penal systems in the six galaxies he could rattle off before breakfast. "Legal for residents, that is. Ahh, Pierpont—the resting place of one of the Than's most sacred relics, the Hegemon's Heart. It's the crystallized heart of the first bug queen, or something. I hear Pierpont has a top of the line security system. Pressure-sensitive floors, nanobots, hidden cameras… man, I would /love/ to take a crack at Pierpont."
A brief grin crossed Trance's face. "Harper, you're drooling."
Harper's eyes widened as an idea struck him. "Hey Trance, can you, uh, hang from your tail?"
"Well, yeah." Trance furrowed her brow. "Why?"
But Harper had descended into his own world. "So that takes care of the floors. The cameras I can blind if I jacked into the mainframe. The nanobots would be the trickiest…"
Trance shrugged and turned at the sound of footsteps behind her. "Hi, Beka!"
The captain shot her a quick smile. "Heya Trance." She nodded toward Harper, who had progressed from muttering to grandly gesticulating to no one in particular. "He having an epileptic seizure or what?"
"I think he's trying to figure out how to steal the Than heart from Pierpont," Trance replied uncertainly.
"Pierpont?" Beka's eyebrows tried to climb her forehead. "Maybe he should stick to fixing my ship before planning the heist of the century. Harper!" she called sharply.
He jumped. "Boss! Some advice: never sneak up on a guy who spent ten years of his life tip-toeing through Dragan barracks."
"Right." Beka gave Trance a curious glance, and the girl shrugged in reply. "Do you have your list?"
"Nope," Harper responded as he handed Beka the flexi.
As Beka scanned the list, a crease appeared above her brow. "O-kay. I have enough credit for most of this, and I can get a couple more of these if I wear a really low-cut shirt and flutter my eyelashes--"
"Ooh, careful, boss. That other guy on this ship might not approve."
Beka's look very eloquently told Harper that he so did not just say that. "Harper?" Her voice was a little too sweet.
"Yeah?"
"No. Really, no. But a Nietzschean on our side /could/ help in convincing those cheap bastards at El D. not to rip us off." She paused thoughtfully. "Wait. El D. is run by the FTA, isn't it? Harper, is that grand theft charge still current?"
" 'fraid so. Break out the fake ID's?"
"Definitely."
Trance's face lit up. "Ooh, can I pick my name? I always thought 'Laura' sounded pretty."
Beka chuckled. "Sure, Trance. They'll never suspect that Trance Gemini, the sparkly, purple girl with a tail could be Laura, the sparkly, purple girl with a tail."
Trance looked perplexed as to whether Beka was kidding or not. "Um, okay."
Beka activated the ship's comm.. "Tyr! You do falsified personal identification and ship's registrations?"
"Is Harper cracking inappropriate remarks about a relationship that is hardly his business?" a dry voice asked in response.
Beka laughed, Trance struggled to suppress a giggle, and Harper donned an air of injured dignity. "Gotcha. Oh, and Trance wants to be 'Laura'."
"Understood."
"But Beka, it is my business if my gorgeous, blonde captain is no available and getting funky with the resident Nietzschean," Harper pled.
Beka almost choked. "Please, Harper, never again. Besides, it's only your business insofar as we aren't killing each other. Do you see us killing each other?"
Harper considered a quip about 'le petit mort' but sagely decided against it. "Not anymore."
At this, Beka relented. "Oh yeah. Sorry about that. But my arm is better now, and I'm no longer cursing the male half of the species, so I should be tolerable for a while."
"Just one thing, Beka. If you get Tyr to go as your personal Nietzschean love slave while we're at El D., I swear I will worship you forever."
Beka shook her head. "If you agree to work without pay forever, you're on." She laughed. "Thought not. I'll tell you guys when we begin our approach to civilization once again."
Less than a quarter of an hour later, Beka's voice crackled over the com. "Mail call!"
Trance cheered and then skipped all the way to the cockpit as Harper dashed along to keep up. He would never comprehend Trance's elation at the mail she received. "Last time, I got a letter saying I could start my very own religion for only a hundred guilders a month!"
"A hundred guilders? I bet a sparkly babe like you could start a religion without paying a throne. In fact, I bet /they'd/ pay /you/."
Trance smiled and said nothing. When they reached the cockpit, she ran to one of the sensor consoles and eagerly began to sort through her messages.
"When you guys are done with your mail, I got your new identities here to upload into your wrist units. Which, by the way Harper, you are /not/ going to conveniently leave behind this time."
Trance was Laura Lafée, a titled and certified expert xenobiologist. Harper was Dr. Paul Bacchae and quite incensed about it.
"Paul?? What kind of mysterious, sophisticated, and unbearably sexy ladies' man name is /Paul/?!"
Beka glanced at Tyr and grinned before she answered. "I think it's a joke on the part of the false identity manufacturer here."
In a whisper everyone could clearly understand, Trance informed Harper that they probably meant Paul Museveni, the father of the first Nietzschean. Harper scowled. "Ha ha. Real funny, guys."
Beka's turn to verbally protest her alias came about when she discovered the name Tyr had picked for her. "Isolde Francon? What the hell kind of name is Isolde?? Do I /look/ like an Isolde?"
'That would be /Captain/ Isolde," Tyr said mildly. "Think of it as another… amusement of my part."
Beka glared and grumbled. Isolde? It didn't even sound like a woman's name. "And you're Tristan d'Ancomia. Bodyguard. Hey, that must mean I'm either very rich or very important." Maybe Isolde wasn't such a bad idea after all.
She read through her description. "Uh, wait a minute. We work for the Sabra and Jaguar Prides?" Isolde sank once more in Beka's estimation.
"Come on, boss, first I get a name like Paul, and now I gotta be working for Nietzscheans?"
Beka looked to Tyr. "Yeah, I'm gonna have to go with Harper on this one, unless you have a very good reason for this."
Tyr nodded. "Of course. Your position is something of a mediator between the two Prides. It is a well-known fact that Charlemagne Bolivar is attempting to ally his forces with that of the Sabra. As they're Nietzscheans, they don't trust each other or anyone else with a vested interest—and all Nietzscheans have a vested interest. Therefore, the two Prides called on Captain Francon to moderate the negotiations."
It sounded plausible enough, but Harper wondered aloud why 'Cereal Bowl' would choose them out of the billions of non-Nietzscheans sentients who wandered the cosmos.
Tyr smiled faintly. "Because, Master Harper, the FTA will handle any sort of ambassador with kid gloves, and the meanest Chichin is unlikely to cheat someone two large Nietzschean prides hold in favor. If Charlemagne chose anyone else, well, we would be somewhat out of luck, wouldn't we?"
At least they weren't acting like hormonal teenagers—a redundant phrase, Harper thought to himself. Beka and any Nietzschean playing kissy-kissy in the corner would be enough to make Harper /toss his cookies/ in the corner. Toss them over and over and…
"Aah! No! Nothing over and over! Nothing! Aah, Tyr! Aah, Beka! Must think happy thoughts! Hmm… aah, not working! Hey Trance, pick up any good plants lately?" It was a desperate, last-ditch effot to rid himself of /very/ undesired mental imagery; Trance could go on for hours about her darlings.
She was following Harper around the Maru's corridors, jotting down any problems the engineer noticed. They were docking at El Dorado Drift in a few hours, and Beka wanted a list of everything they'd have to acquire, legally or otherwise.
"You really want to know about my plants, Harper? You know, I could set you up with a little garden of your own if you want. I know some really easy plants that you could take care of when you weren't working in the engine room." She wrinkled her nose. "Although I can't imagine why you'd want to work there at all. It's all dark and smelly, and there's nothing pretty there, just a lot of metal and buttons. Buttons can be neat, though, like when you see the prettiest light blue button, and no one else wants it, or else it wouldn't be lying there. You know, you can find a whole bunch of interesting things that people leave behind if you know where to look…" She trailed off and looked at Harper quizzically. "Weren't we talking about plants?"
Harper grinned. "Huh? Oh, um, no. You were going to tell me about your days as Robin Hood, stealing… finding things from the rich and giving them to the poor. Remember?"
Trance considered this and shrugged. "Are you sure? Well, okay then. There was this one time, a poor Ruby Than needed an AP solenoid valve, but the Chichin she'd bought one from had taken her money and left all the sudden, so I…"
Harper let the wave of words wash over him. Nothing like purple pixie chatter to cleanse one's mind of the /wrong/ kind of nudie pictures. "Hey Trance--?"
"Okay, okay, the Chichin's assistant /didn't/ give me the valve out of the goodness of his heart. But I know he wanted to, Harper; it's just that the system makes it so hard for Chichins to show their better natures."
"Uh, that's great, Trance." While the girl had regaled Harper with tales of… Chichin assistants, it seemed, the engineer had made his way to the engine room. He ducked into various corners, checking switches and dials and buttons, wincing at the general state of the Maru's innards. "Aw, look at the wire—it's completely shot! If we're going to pull off this 'voluntary extraction', we're gonna need a total re-haul. I don't think the Princess--"
"Duchess."
"—excuse me, /Duchess's/ loyal subjects will be exactly thrilled to watch her escape while they're stuck behind. That means we're going to need us some Acme rocket shoes if we want to make it outta there in one piece."
Trance looked down at her flexi. "Um, Acme rocket shoes?"
Harper cradled his forehead in his hands. A civilization without Bugs Bunny was no civilization at all, purple pixie powers or not. "Just write down… something to speed up the AP reaction for a few minutes. I don't want to blow out the engines, but we're gonna need a major kick in the ass if someone isn't so happy to let the Duchess go free and decides to stop her. I'll think of the something later. And copper wiring up the ying-yang."
A brief shiver in space/time announced the Maru's departure from the slipstream. Harper had never liked that shiver—he always feared, deep down, that they would be caught in that moment forever, hovering on the edge of a slip portal. Growing up on Earth hadn't prepared him for the oddities of space travel, and he didn't think he'd ever become as nonchalant about them as Beka. She liked telling people that she'd been /born/ in slipstream, and Harper didn't quite doubt her.
"Hey, kids, this is your captain speaking. We've arrived safe and sound at El D., and not a mysterious, secretive, and deadly mercenary in sight, unless you count the Nietzschean standing next to me."
Beside him, Trance smiled dreamily. "Aren't they cute together? I think it's wonderful that Tyr and Beka could overcome their differences and find a little peace, love, and understanding in this universe."
"Yeah, it's great." Harper grimaced. "If only humans and Nietzscheans everywhere could look beyond their /centuries/ of conflict and discover something special, blah blah blah." If the Maru had a sarcasm detector, it would be registering levels rarely reached before throughout the span of civilization. "But we're at El D! Wine, women, and wiring!"
"And water gardens!" Trance exclaimed.
"Water gardens?" This was certainly news to Harper.
Trance nodded enthusiastically. "El Dorado Drift has one of the most beautiful water gardens in this part of the Milky Way. Now, if you like tropical botanical gardens, Pierpont is a good place to go… although you have to be really careful, because stealing is legal there."
Stealing! Now here was a subject /Harper/ could expound on for hours: the most easily bribed guards, the laxest security measures, and most lenient penal systems in the six galaxies he could rattle off before breakfast. "Legal for residents, that is. Ahh, Pierpont—the resting place of one of the Than's most sacred relics, the Hegemon's Heart. It's the crystallized heart of the first bug queen, or something. I hear Pierpont has a top of the line security system. Pressure-sensitive floors, nanobots, hidden cameras… man, I would /love/ to take a crack at Pierpont."
A brief grin crossed Trance's face. "Harper, you're drooling."
Harper's eyes widened as an idea struck him. "Hey Trance, can you, uh, hang from your tail?"
"Well, yeah." Trance furrowed her brow. "Why?"
But Harper had descended into his own world. "So that takes care of the floors. The cameras I can blind if I jacked into the mainframe. The nanobots would be the trickiest…"
Trance shrugged and turned at the sound of footsteps behind her. "Hi, Beka!"
The captain shot her a quick smile. "Heya Trance." She nodded toward Harper, who had progressed from muttering to grandly gesticulating to no one in particular. "He having an epileptic seizure or what?"
"I think he's trying to figure out how to steal the Than heart from Pierpont," Trance replied uncertainly.
"Pierpont?" Beka's eyebrows tried to climb her forehead. "Maybe he should stick to fixing my ship before planning the heist of the century. Harper!" she called sharply.
He jumped. "Boss! Some advice: never sneak up on a guy who spent ten years of his life tip-toeing through Dragan barracks."
"Right." Beka gave Trance a curious glance, and the girl shrugged in reply. "Do you have your list?"
"Nope," Harper responded as he handed Beka the flexi.
As Beka scanned the list, a crease appeared above her brow. "O-kay. I have enough credit for most of this, and I can get a couple more of these if I wear a really low-cut shirt and flutter my eyelashes--"
"Ooh, careful, boss. That other guy on this ship might not approve."
Beka's look very eloquently told Harper that he so did not just say that. "Harper?" Her voice was a little too sweet.
"Yeah?"
"No. Really, no. But a Nietzschean on our side /could/ help in convincing those cheap bastards at El D. not to rip us off." She paused thoughtfully. "Wait. El D. is run by the FTA, isn't it? Harper, is that grand theft charge still current?"
" 'fraid so. Break out the fake ID's?"
"Definitely."
Trance's face lit up. "Ooh, can I pick my name? I always thought 'Laura' sounded pretty."
Beka chuckled. "Sure, Trance. They'll never suspect that Trance Gemini, the sparkly, purple girl with a tail could be Laura, the sparkly, purple girl with a tail."
Trance looked perplexed as to whether Beka was kidding or not. "Um, okay."
Beka activated the ship's comm.. "Tyr! You do falsified personal identification and ship's registrations?"
"Is Harper cracking inappropriate remarks about a relationship that is hardly his business?" a dry voice asked in response.
Beka laughed, Trance struggled to suppress a giggle, and Harper donned an air of injured dignity. "Gotcha. Oh, and Trance wants to be 'Laura'."
"Understood."
"But Beka, it is my business if my gorgeous, blonde captain is no available and getting funky with the resident Nietzschean," Harper pled.
Beka almost choked. "Please, Harper, never again. Besides, it's only your business insofar as we aren't killing each other. Do you see us killing each other?"
Harper considered a quip about 'le petit mort' but sagely decided against it. "Not anymore."
At this, Beka relented. "Oh yeah. Sorry about that. But my arm is better now, and I'm no longer cursing the male half of the species, so I should be tolerable for a while."
"Just one thing, Beka. If you get Tyr to go as your personal Nietzschean love slave while we're at El D., I swear I will worship you forever."
Beka shook her head. "If you agree to work without pay forever, you're on." She laughed. "Thought not. I'll tell you guys when we begin our approach to civilization once again."
Less than a quarter of an hour later, Beka's voice crackled over the com. "Mail call!"
Trance cheered and then skipped all the way to the cockpit as Harper dashed along to keep up. He would never comprehend Trance's elation at the mail she received. "Last time, I got a letter saying I could start my very own religion for only a hundred guilders a month!"
"A hundred guilders? I bet a sparkly babe like you could start a religion without paying a throne. In fact, I bet /they'd/ pay /you/."
Trance smiled and said nothing. When they reached the cockpit, she ran to one of the sensor consoles and eagerly began to sort through her messages.
"When you guys are done with your mail, I got your new identities here to upload into your wrist units. Which, by the way Harper, you are /not/ going to conveniently leave behind this time."
Trance was Laura Lafée, a titled and certified expert xenobiologist. Harper was Dr. Paul Bacchae and quite incensed about it.
"Paul?? What kind of mysterious, sophisticated, and unbearably sexy ladies' man name is /Paul/?!"
Beka glanced at Tyr and grinned before she answered. "I think it's a joke on the part of the false identity manufacturer here."
In a whisper everyone could clearly understand, Trance informed Harper that they probably meant Paul Museveni, the father of the first Nietzschean. Harper scowled. "Ha ha. Real funny, guys."
Beka's turn to verbally protest her alias came about when she discovered the name Tyr had picked for her. "Isolde Francon? What the hell kind of name is Isolde?? Do I /look/ like an Isolde?"
'That would be /Captain/ Isolde," Tyr said mildly. "Think of it as another… amusement of my part."
Beka glared and grumbled. Isolde? It didn't even sound like a woman's name. "And you're Tristan d'Ancomia. Bodyguard. Hey, that must mean I'm either very rich or very important." Maybe Isolde wasn't such a bad idea after all.
She read through her description. "Uh, wait a minute. We work for the Sabra and Jaguar Prides?" Isolde sank once more in Beka's estimation.
"Come on, boss, first I get a name like Paul, and now I gotta be working for Nietzscheans?"
Beka looked to Tyr. "Yeah, I'm gonna have to go with Harper on this one, unless you have a very good reason for this."
Tyr nodded. "Of course. Your position is something of a mediator between the two Prides. It is a well-known fact that Charlemagne Bolivar is attempting to ally his forces with that of the Sabra. As they're Nietzscheans, they don't trust each other or anyone else with a vested interest—and all Nietzscheans have a vested interest. Therefore, the two Prides called on Captain Francon to moderate the negotiations."
It sounded plausible enough, but Harper wondered aloud why 'Cereal Bowl' would choose them out of the billions of non-Nietzscheans sentients who wandered the cosmos.
Tyr smiled faintly. "Because, Master Harper, the FTA will handle any sort of ambassador with kid gloves, and the meanest Chichin is unlikely to cheat someone two large Nietzschean prides hold in favor. If Charlemagne chose anyone else, well, we would be somewhat out of luck, wouldn't we?"