Where's Harper?

Part 2

Rhade winced at the level of the captains voice; as he was questioned over why he didn't feel the need to mention the disappearance of their chief engineer earlier. Beka was going to pay big time for leaving him take the fall on this, he though.

As Dylan continued to voice his opinion on the mater Rhade chose to tune him out in favour of dreaming up ways to ensure Beka Valentine got her comeuppance. One such idea involved tying her up; which suddenly, and unexpectedly took on a completely new direction in his brain. Oh god, where did that come from? He thought.

Beka meanwhile was now getting seriously freaked out over Harper's continued absence, just what the hell had happened to him? If some one had hurt him she would hunt them down and, kill them. Of course however if this really did turn out to be one of Harper's pranks than she'd just as likely kill him too.

Andromeda was now scanning for the signal from Harpers nano bots; so far she hadn't been able to trace him. It made no sense he couldn't have got that far away from the ship so quickly could he? Beka mentally kicked herself when she realised they didn't actually know how long he had been missing. But she realised, she had left it too late to inform the others, maybe if she had said something earlier; he wouldn't have got so far away, and Andromeda would still be able to track him.

An hour later the ship had been searched from stem to stern no corner had been left unturned, and still there was no sign of Harper, it appeared Andromeda was right he was no longer on board.

If Harper had left the ship there had to be some record of it Beka reasoned. The arrival, and departure of ships was something that Andromeda routinely monitored; even if for some reason Harper had tried to cover his tracks their would still be some evidence. An empty spot in the Slipfighter bay would be a rather obvious giveaway she thought. Still Andromeda had accounted for every space worthy vessel aboard her, none were missing. They also hadn't docked with any other vessels their appeared no way Harper could have left the ship. Either by will or force.

Security footage was checked in hopes it would spread some light on the situation, but still it revealed no clues as to Harpers whereabouts. Beka had almost hoped they would find an intruder at least that way she'd have some thing to go, but there was nothing, one minute Harper there, the next he simply wasn't.

At least they now had his last known location; he was working he one of the machine labs when he vanished from sensors. He appeared to working on some invention or another when there was a blinding flash of light; when the light died Harper appeared to have vanished from the lab.

Beka watched the scene with horror she feared that the machine had exploded, and vaporised Harper. It took Andromeda a full 10 minutes to calm her down, and explain that she would have registered an explosion of that magnitude, and even if she hadn't then there would still be organic residue left behind, of which there was none. Besides the device itself remained undamaged.

Andromeda played the log again, analyzing it further for anything she might have missed, and sure enough there appeared to be 10 second gap in the time index. It appeared the explosion had momentarily knocked out her sensors. 10 seconds was more than enough time for almost anything to happen. Which led them right back to square one, thought Beka.