Title: Left Turn at Albuquerque
Author: Harper's aka Weird_Peace
Rating: PG-13
Synopsis: Sequel to And You Thought Larvae Were Bad and Effervescent Essence. I highly suggest you read the previous fictions.
Disclaimer: I don't own 'em, but I love 'em anyways.
Spoilers: All around.

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Harper looked up and down the corridor of the Andromeda even though he didn't need to. Dylan, Tyr, and Rommie had gone to Vialne III to meet with the Lupus Pride on their current military proceedings. There was something about an explosion and loss of workers...Harper wasn't exactly concentrating at the time on the details. The most important thing about the event is that Dylan had agreed to take Trance with him. Beka had just happened to hint that if Harper and Trance had some apart time to work out their differences, the tension on the ship might lower to something you could cut with a butter knife.

Now the salvage captain was busy distracting Rev, and Harper had easily diverted Andromeda's sensors from his location. The ship would most likely be pissed at first, but hopefully Rommie would understand later. Three weeks had already passed, Harper's anxiety only growing with each second. His friends had to remind him to eat and often force him to sleep. The engineer had run out of his huge stores of Sparky already and became dependant on Andromeda's ability to make coffee. He was dead tired as it was right now. But he wasn't going to let this deter him.

Harper pushed down his goggles and pulled out his trusty laser saw. If he couldn't hack through Trance's defenses, he'd just go the basic route. Harper started to cut into the metal, frowned, tried again, then turned off the saw and pushed the goggles back up. He ran his hand over the smooth metal of the door. It wasn't marred the least bit. He tried his nanowelder but received the exact same results. Even small explosives only left soot marks.

Harper blinked at the door, trying to think of something, anything that would let him get in. He couldn't get past the keypad since it was programmed to change it's code randomly every 9.453 seconds. It was a mystery how Trance knew the right one to get in her room. All vents into the pixie's room were conveniently missing. Harper's frustration began to rise, and like many emotions, Harper's frustration was quickly transforming into anger.

In order to get into Trance's room, Harper would have to think like Trance. The problem with that was the pixie was truly an enigma. Harper had never expected this situation to arise in the first place because he never guessed Trance would ever give up his child. Had he even an inkling, Harper would've done everything to prevent the event from taking place.

The door is hopeless, he thought despairingly. Why do I even bother with it?

That's when it struck him. But it couldn't be that easy, could it?

"The simplest solution is usually the right one," Trance had once told the young man. "Sometimes I fear you over think things Harper. Sometimes you just have to accept something for what it appears to be and not what you think is hiding under the surface. People will surprise you that way."

Harper sighed and decided to go for it. He was out of options anyway. He stepped to the right and stood in front of the wall next to the door. The saw cut through it like a starving man through a loaf of bread. Trance must of thought Andromeda would try to stop anyone cutting into her quarters. And if she didn't, well, who would think that if the door was so well guarded, the walls would be any better?

It was either that or Trance really liked her riddles.

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Trance stared at the table top, drawing pictures with the sweat running off her glass of water. She looked at the globes and triangles, tracing a path among them wit the tip of her pinky. The golden pixie was bored. Tyr was piloting, Dylan was looking over some important information, and Trance didn't even bother to try Rommie. She had guessed wrong when she thought the ship would just ignore her as punishment. First the food she ordered was actually toxic, and later just rotten. Ice water showers and alarms going off at various times during the night were a common occurrence. And the face that the gravity seemed to increase and decrease whenever Trance was walking alone only served to remind her when it's engineer suffered, the ship did too.

Dylan had first politely asked Andromeda to quit. She had responded that since losing his son, Harper was having eating and sleeping troubles. Well Trance had lost a child too. Wasn't it logical, then, that the pixie should receive all the "benefits" that had been bestowed upon Harper? Dylan ended up resorting to directly ordering the ship to take care of all of her crew.

Andromeda was wrong. Trance had been suffering. She often fell asleep crying. She knew she was losing her baby with every ticking second, and Trance believed she could feel Owen as he slipped away each of those seconds.

Trance sighed again, this time causing Dylan took look up from his flexi and frown in her direction. Rev and he had been the only two who continued to talk to Trance beyond needing to. The captain shuffled through his papers and handed a stack to Trance.

"Trance, read those and then write a summary on them. Makes my job a lot easier." She nodded gratefully to which Dylan smiled before going back to his work.

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Harper stood back as the rest of the metal peeled away from the wall. He stood there for a few moments, letting the fact he had won one round soak into his mind. But he couldn't stay there for long. This was just the battle, the war was far from over.

The young man stepped to the side and looked into the gaping hole at the room beyond, grateful there was no one around to hear the small gasp that passed his lips.