A/N: Big THANK YOU to all my reviewers. Feedback makes my day. And thanks Ash for the three great feedbacks. Yeah!! You increased my review count! My poor sad low review count...hint hint. :)

I'll shut up now. Enjoy the gore and angst.

Chapter 11

Explosion still echoed through Harper's eardrums. He could still feel the vibrations from the seemingly endless shockwaves that wracked the ship for the past three days. Of course, he really couldn't complains seeing that he was the one whom had caused all of the explosions he now complained about.

It had been three days since he left the corpse-filled Med Deck. In those days he had killed almost three thousands Pythos. The body count was getting so high that even the vengeful mudfoot was getting a foul taste in his mouth. By the middle of the second day, his need to see more Pythos in writhing fatal agony was fading. Also fading was the sick smile that had been pasted on his face after each explosion. By the middle of the third day, the causing the constant barrage of excruciating screams of death had become a drudgery. Command all the door an a deck to stay open, drop and Electr-O-Boogie onto said deck, sit back and listen to hundreds of Pythos shriek as they are toasted alive. The ways the screams sounded still held a bit of interest to the genius. It was like a wave of agony coursing through the deck. First the ones closest to the bomb would screech, then the ones nearest to them would join in as the electricity reached them. The wave of cries would continue until the current of energy found the last and farthest away Pytho on the deck. It was almost like a sick, sweet symphony to Harper. Any other joy he had felt from their deaths and pain were gone. Even the few times he would use his favorite bomb, the soft bomb which he coined The Ooze-O-Rama, brought him no sense of satisfaction. He was simply numb. He guessed whoever was right when they said too much of anything is a bad thing.

Right now he just wanted it to be over. He just wanted to get out of the claustrophobic conduits he had confined himself to. He wanted to walk instead of crawl. He now knew how a child feels when they can only crawl and are unable to walk. Very frustrating and slow going. He wanted to scream, to let a roar of all his pent up emotions rip from his throat. Or at least pound a wall, stomp around, make some sort of sound. The quite between the explosions had become more deafening than the actually blasts. But most off all he wanted his friends back, he wanted everything to be back to normal. Of course he knew, even if everything worked out, they could never return to "normal". Not after this. And oh yes, he also wanted that damn imaginary magog to stop following him. Stupid Buzz. The hairs on the back of his neck were sore from standing at attention for so long. Since that pill had dissolved under his tongue, he had felt a set of beady little eyes locked onto his back. Every corner he came upon sent his heart racing around a mile long race track. He kept waiting to round a bend in the creepy conduits and to see those beady eyes staring back at him. Just staring at him in the dark, not attacking, not moving, just watching. Every hour, every minute, every second, for the past three days he felt this. Even with the high from the Buzz, it was becoming exhausting.

On the bright side, at least his Bag-o-Carnage was getting progressively lighter over the days. Now, as Harper made his way to his last stand off, the bag was exceptionally light. Only one bomb, the bottles he got from medical and a few gadgets were left. Luckily, that was all he was going to need to rid Andromeda of the last sixteen remaining Pythos who were all conveniently located on the bridge with all his friends. He had them cornered. Stupid Pythos.

Blood coated, dirt covered and aching in every joint, the wary Harper continued to drag himself with one arm down the dark and lonely conduits. With each movement of an throbbing limb, he edged closer and closer to command and his final stand off.

*******

In the corridor directly outside of command, Dylan Hunt's body was uncharacteristically leaning against the wall. His stance was much more reminiscing of Tyr's that of the disciplined Highguard captain's. Galaver had ordered Fex to take Dylan's body to that location to help guard command. The hope was that the little psychopath of a kludge wouldn't be able to use one of his deadly bombs if one of his friends were in the kill zone. This logic was the same logic that had the rest of the original crew on command gathered around the Alpha.

Fex held in a snicker when he remembered the look on Galaver's face when that runt stated massacring his crew. The Calastor helped himself to Dylan's analogy of a thermometer that had the mercury exploding through the top. The image was priceless. The restrained snicker managed to sneak it's way out past his clenched lips.

"What?!" one of the two Pythos that were on guard with Dylan/Fex snidely asked.

"Nothing, go back to guarding." Dylan/Fex replied annoyingly. The sub-beta gave the human a death stare before he turned back to watching the empty corridors.

The real Dylan still cringed every time he heard his voice be used without his command. He still flinched every time he saw his hand or body move without his say. He saw everything, heard everything, felt everything, but couldn't even blink his eyelids. This was hell for a Highguard captain. He was suppose to be in charge of a whole ship, a full crew, but now he couldn't even control his tongue.

For the past three days all he could do was sit in his mind and watch his ship get taken over by his possessed friends, watch his other friend get beaten, watch his ship get boarded by thousands of Nietzscheans and watch his engineer turn into a psychopathic mass murderer. All this happened and all the captain of the most powerful ship in the known universe could do was watch.

Early on, he had tried to fight for rightful control of his body, but that only resulted in waves of pain. Energy would tear through every inch of his being, not his body mind you, but his being, his mind, his soul, his what-ever-you-wanted-to-call-it. It took about a day of the excruciating pain to teach Dylan that it was better to just watch. There was no hope in fighting Fex. So Dylan just sat back and watched the horror movie that was playing out before his eyes. Eyes that he couldn't even tell where to look or when to look away. He set his wishes lower. Now, he just wanted a big bag of greasy, sweet popcorn to munch on for the length of the feature film.

The current cinematic experience was a bit too gory for Dylan's taste. The villains were just there for fodder for the copious amount of explosions. Their only lines were usually yells and screams. The main bad guy was a bit deeper and smarter, but he was still no match for the hero. Was he really a hero or just a maniac with bombs? Dylan still wasn't sure.

Sure the runt was smaller, weaker, and the last person Dylan would ever expect to fight instead of flight, but was he a hero? The seed of doubt in his mind was planted by the way the bombs were designed, for the maximum amount of pain and carnage.

Dylan remembered when he and Fex were first called to the bridge three days ago right after the engineer's first few massacres were discovered. The doors to command opened and Dylan was greeted with Harper's handy work.

Dylan non-existent stomach convulsed when he saw the view screen that held images of Deck 13. Various live shots from all over the deck still were locked in Dylan's memory. Corpses, hundreds of smoldering, blacken, naked, hairless, corpses. There was so much smoke rising from the charred remains that all of the deck was captured in a thick eerie fog. The thought that made the scene completely unbearable was that his friend and trusted colleague was the one responsible for the carnage.

To add injury to insult, Dylan also had to deal with Fex's emotions. While Dylan was in aghast dismay, Fex was glowing with pride and respect for the scene before them. He deeply respected anyone who could cause that much bloodshed. In fact, he was almost envious. The flood of emotions overwhelmed Dylan. Oh how he wanted a intermission.

However, he never did get a break, not even a commercial break. What he did get was more carnage than he ever wanted to see. At first Galaver tried to locate the mass murdering kludge, but the computers couldn't locate Harper's life sign or any presence of him on the ship. Beka or Velac (whomever...this two persons in one thing was getting quite confusing), anyways, she/they suggested that Harper had most likely made a device that could block his presence from the computer. Dylan could still hear the string of curses that roared out of the Alpha's mouth.

Each hour passed with more Pythos dead and no sign of Harper. That was until early on in the second day. An explosion was just reported from the Mess Hall and the view screen on command went straight to a live shot of that area. More images that will haunt Dylan forever appeared before them.

There were about fifty or sixty Pythos writhing in pain and screaming...that was if they still had the ability to scream. Near one of the walls laid a small metal device, surrounding that device laid five lucky souls who died in the initial small blast. The remaining Pythos weren't so lucky. Something, god knows what, was dissolving their skin, organs and bones into a slimy sludge. The poor Pythos' skin was turning into mush before his eyes leaving glimpses of their muscles. On some, who were farther along, their muscles were dripping off their now visible bones. On others , inner organs were now outer organs. But one face was engrave into Dylan's memory more than any other. A young female Pytho, had to be around Harper's age, was looking directly at the view screen. Her eyelids had already been dissolved as had part of her cheek. Dylan could actually see into her mouth, through her cheek, and could watch as her tongue turned into a highly viscous fluid which both gagged her and silenced her scream at the same time. He watched as her pleading eyes slowing disappeared into the growing puddle of gelatinous liquid. To Dylan's surprise, Fex even got a bit nauseous and weak in the knees after seeing the mess in the Mess Hall.

After what seemed like hours, but in reality was only minutes, the screams died down and the room was void of anything that slightly resembled a living organism. The floors and surfaces were coated in a thick layer of sludge. The color of which didn't even had a description, let alone a name. Then movement. A panel near the incendiary metal object moved and a head popped out. The smile that filled that face made Dylan want to cut out his own eyes. All he could look into were the eyes on that face. They were so filled with a mixture of hate, pleasure and pain. Dylan could not make himself believe that that face belonged to the same light-hearted, joke-making engineer he had come to trust and protect. It was not, could not, be the same person. Dylan knew so little of Harper's past, but he couldn't even imagine what that boy had been through that could make him capable of both that smile and the horror he had just witnessed.

Hunt was now quite glad his wish for popcorn had not been granted, for if it had, that popcorn would be back in the bag after a brief visit to his stomach. Now all he wished was for it all to end. He didn't care how, he just wanted so badly to see those two small words pop up on the screen..."The End."

**********

Deck 28, Engineering, Med Deck, Deck 33, Slipstream core. Images from all over the ship flashed on the hypnotizing view screen on command. Nixic forced Trance to watch through her own eyes. In each new location, they all saw the same thing, corpses, corpses and more corpses. But the one thing, or person have you, that they were actually looking for continued to elude the ever watchful eyes of the ship cameras...Harper. Since everyone one else who was still breathing was huddled on the bridge, remote searching was the only and safest way to look for her friend.

Both inhabitants of Trance's body were shocked by the amount of carnage one person could cause. Trance's shocked was joined with sadness that her friend had fallen so far, while Nixic's shocked was sprinkled with intrigue. The energy creature was captivated by how that runt could do such damage, by what his bombs could do, what it would feel like to be burned to death, the list went on and on. As both inhabitances of Trance's body shared the shock, they also both shared an innate sense of curiosity about life. When Trance realized she couldn't break free and that they might be stuck together for the rest of her life, she decided to take advantage of the situation and get to know Nixic, one on one. So they actually talked instead of simply invading each other's memories. Trance found out that Nixic was a something of a minority in Calastor society. Sure she loved carnage and chaos, but she was rare in that she was a thinker, a scientist some would say. She had agreed to go on this mission not just to relish in the agony of others, but also to experience the universe. To see what it was like to eat, sleep, be corporeal. Trance's species had the same curiosity of corporeality, hence all their transformations in life. Transformations, Trance secretly hoped, would kick Nixic out of her body. Unfortunately the next physical change wouldn't occur for a little over two hundred years. Trance had been looking forward to that growth period since she was a child. The turquoise blue always looked so pretty. And the horns, she always wanted the horns.

Due to Trance's acceptance of her situation, she was taking the inhabitation much better than the others. True, the complete lack of control frustrated her as did the inability to sense any future. The latter part actually scared her shitless, so she kept herself occupied by studying Nixic. She had always been fascinated with other life forms, so this time was no different. A little more annoying, but really no different. Both she and Nixic wanted to learn from this experience, Trance just wanted it done with a lot less violence.

The golden alien would have been more at ease if it wasn't for her friends. She knew they wouldn't be taking the inhabitation well. Both Dylan and Tyr had to be boiling over in anger by now, and from what Velac had said about Beka's emotional state earlier, it sounded like Beka taking it the hardest. Poor Beka. At least Rommie and Andromeda were off line and were speared any real pain, she hoped. But it was the smallest crew member who worried Trance the most. The one who was spared the angst of being inhabited. She was unlucky enough to be on command the one time Harper was spotted in what seemed like years ago. The glaze that laid over his cold eyes broke her heart. She feared for what this situation had released in him, for what demons it brought up in him that allowed him to commit and especially enjoy such atrocious acts of violence. But she mostly feared that the Harper they knew and loved was now lost forever in those heartless eyes.

If only she could see a perfect possible future, if only she could see any future, she would be a bit more at ease. As of now, all the powerful golden goddess could do was watch. Watch and wait.

****

Galaver, Alpha of all Pythos was still quite shocked that he hadn't had a massive heart attack yet. Quietly, he thanked his ancestors for such a resilient heart and arties. For the past three days his blood pressure had been through the roof. The veins on his forehead had not rested since that first explosion in the engine room. All this pressure and tension was all cause by one wounded runt of a kludge. Just that thought made the pressure in his arties double.

Galaver paced, slowly wearing away a rut in the metal floor of command while he half watched the flashing images on the view screen and half wallowed in his anger. How could one single mudfoot take out almost his whole crew? It was unheard of, impossible! He must be dreaming. Yes, any moment, his favorite wife would wake him from his distressing sleep and they would make sweet love. Galaver tightly closed his eyes as he walked, waiting for the strong soft hand to shake him from his nightmare. That hand never came. This nightmare was real. He was about to be humiliated and possibly killed by a lowly human.

What made the situation even more cruel was that help was just a comms away. At any time over the past three day, the Alpha could have just sent out a distress call to the Hive. They would have been to the Andromeda's location in a matter of days. True, he now realized that they would have been too late anyways, but the pure humiliation of having to make that call still haunted the egomaniac. "Help! A single weak, wounded, runt of a kluge is killing all 3,000 of us. Please send back-up." Just imagining himself saying that message, let alone sending it, made him want to vomit. Even if making that call would have saved their lives, he still wouldn't have done it. Why would he want to live with the raging flood of humiliation it would have brought forth. His wives would leave him and his children would be branded as weakling offspring of an pathetic unfit Pytho. Death would be better than that outcome, so that call for help was never made.

Now that he thought about it, there was really never any hope against this unseen enemy. The human struck randomly, fast and invisibly. Before they could even learned about the latest bombing, that runt was long gone already planning the next attack. They even tried to anticipate his next move, tried to figure out his pattern, but there was no pattern. Complete chaos. Galaver eventually ordered Pythos into the vents and conduits to try to capture the mad bomber, but all that the teams found were bombs. Bombs that would explode before the soon-to-be-splattered could even blink an eye.

And what those bombs could do; electrocute, obliterate, de-flesh a living creature, and one even induced such despair in it's victims that they all committed suicide within minutes of exposure to it. Nietzscheans committing suicide, completely unheard of. Amazing, simply amazing. With each bomb, Galaver's lust for Harper's brain swelled. Oh how he wanted that brain. That genius. The thought of what he could do with that technology brought him joy that he thought only being with his wives could bring.

The lust for Harper's genius even brought the Alpha to try to bargain with the little psycho at one point. He announced his terms over the comms only to receive a brief high pitched gritty answer of "Screw you uber". Again, his heart pumped double time and the veins on his forehead rose a few more inches.

On the bright side, the carnage filled expo that the human was giving was at least keeping the Calastors in check. They were getting their daily course of chaos and violence vicariously through Harper. All Galaver had to do was remind them that they were on his side by waving a loaded gun in their faces every once in awhile.

Galaver continued to pace back and forth like a tiger in a small rusted cage. Confined to command, confined to drift through space with no engines, confined to his anger. All his options were spent. All he could do was wait for the genius's next move and react. He had set up command so the boy couldn't attack them with one of his bombs unless he wanted to see his friends fried or obliterated as well. Galaver had his future pined on the hope that the boy was either not insane enough to kill his friend or that the boy actually did like his friends enough not to want to kill them. The Alpha just hoped his gamble would pay off.

**********

The strong, powerful, stoic Tyr had been reduced to a cheerleader and the strong, powerful, stoic Tyr was not happy about this. After three days of being inhabited by Stolic, he still fought and still endured the never ending pain. He was embarrassed to have such a stupid immature being like Stolic inhabit and control his body. On the bright side, the childish alien was bright enough to keep some important information from the Pythos. Since they shared memories, Stolic knew about the bones, Drago Museveni's bones, the highest valued prize in the Nietzscheans empire. Tyr was as ecstatic as Tyr can get when he found out that Stolic had no intentions of telling the Pythos about the bones. Even the Calastor didn't want the Pythos to have that much power. Stolic wanted it for himself and his people. For leverage. Therefore, this gave the psychotic engineer more time to save them before the whole universe went to hell in a handbag. So Tyr donned a nice little cheerleading outfit and pom-poms, and cheered on the little professor.

Actually, Tyr was quite impressed with the show the boy was putting on. He now understood how that cowering whining boy survived twenty years in a place like Earth. He now understood why every so often he would glimpse fire behind that child's eyes.

The Kodiak's non-corporeal grin grew with each new report that a deck full of Pythos had been electrocuted. The grin doubled on one particular deck, Deck 77, when the boy changed his technique a bit. Reports flooded in from all over that deck that the air was being sucked out. A sub-beta on command reported that Harper had turned Deck 77 into a air-tight sealed area. Even life support was not operational on that poor deck. It turned out that several small devices had been hidden in the sealed area and were sucking all the air out creating a vacuum. A vacuum that was slowly killing all life forms in that doomed area. Minutes later the comms went silent just as rescue teams had gained access to the sealed off area. The teams reported that everybody they saw had died from brain hemorrhaging from the vacuum. Minutes after the rescue team had started reporting the new deaths, a loud roar of rushing of air echoed over the comms. The same devices that had sucked all the air in, were now each unleashing the highly compressed air all at the same time causing a massive wave of air to hurdle through the deck. The bodies of the rescue teams and the bodies of the victims were now all mixed together in nice bloody pancakes on the walls on fateful Deck 77.

Tyr continued to watch the view screen waiting to catch a glimpse of his real last and only hope. Fighting Stolic was proving to be futile. That fact was becoming crystal clear after three days of constant pain . His thoughts turned to the incoming images. Seeing all the dead bodies scattered throughout the ship forced a smile to his face due to Harper's genius and cunning. Deep inside Tyr's mind, three words echoed in the void..."That's my boy!"

*******

Beka cried and cried and cried. Or she would have if only she wasn't so emotionally drained and numb. In reality all she could do was curl up and watch her life fall apart. Watch her friends be lost in their own bodies. And watch her adopted baby brother cause more death and pain than she had ever witnessed or could even imagine.

The loss of control is what broke Beka. Control was her center. Control is what kept her from becoming like her Dad, dead and Flash-fried. Control is how she survived as a captain in a cruel universe. Control kept her ship, her home, as her own. Saying that she was a control freak was an vast understatement. Control was all she ever had. And now that control was gone and she was nothing.

Compound that with the lack of control to even turn away from the horrid events that were unfolding on the ship and Beka Valentine was broken. Having to watch what Harper was doing turned her broken heart into nothing but shards of glass. She still couldn't believe it was her Seamus that had killed almost three thousand Nietzscheans in three days. Not her Seamus. With each new report of death, guilt mixed with disgust in her mind. She should be cheering him on. He was trying to save all of them for heavens' sake, but all she could feel was repulsion, dread and....anger? Why anger? Why was she mad at Harper for killing the bad guys? For not taking the higher road? Was there a higher road? She didn't know. Her mind was a storm of questions and emotions and yet it was so numb and empty.

In the dark prison of her mind, she dropped her head into her hands trying to obscure the visions her own eyes forcefully feed her. No matter how tightly she closed her eyelids or how deeply she buried her head in her hands, the crystal clear images of the carnage filled flashing view screen still invaded her mind. What she would do for some real darkness. Darkness that would envelop her and make all the pain go away.

*****

His body ached. His arms, legs, fingers and even toes felt like they would and should fall off at a moment's notice, but still he crawled. Harper had just checked his datapad and saw that two Pytho's and a human were standing guard outside of command. This was not what he wanted. They were all suppose to be IN command. Did they not know the plan? How rude. He would just have to adjust his brilliant strategy.

As he crawled closer to command, his mind raced with new possible updated plans. Within seconds he had arrived at his new course of action. Now all he had to do was drag his poor excuse of a body a few hundred yards more and begin the final phase of Plan Kill-Em-All. In under an hour he would be done with that plan, bu he refused to let his mind wander to the future, to his next plan. He would break down if his mind went there, it was just too horrible.

Closer and closer he crawled to the guarded hall where the final battle would begin. With each trembling forward reach of his arm and with each movement of his tired sore legs, the level of fear and anticipation doubled. He tried to savor the relative moment of peace he was experiencing right now for the near future held such horrors that even his mind cowered from the thought of it.

TBC...