Yeesh, I'm a crappy updater Sorry this took so long. Oh well, at least I didn't leave you with a cliffie or anything. ;)

Chapter 2

The crew, and Harper, held their breath. They were waiting for Harper to leap up with sudden super-human strength and snap the Gerentexians' necks. They were waiting for the executioner to misjudge his stroke and for the axe to bounce off another rock. They were waiting for a crewmember to break free and save the engineer. Hell, they were waiting for Superman to crash through the wall and grab Harper, whisking him away just in time. Unsurprisingly, none of these things happened.

The blade of the axe smashed into Harper's neck, slicing through flesh and bone and blood, and severing his head from his shoulders with a nauseating crunch. An unbelievable amount of blood splashed onto the walls in a random pattern, and created rivers and pools of blood on the cave floor that rapidly became a crimson lake. Harper's head came away in one of the creatures' hands and it held it up like a trophy. For a moment, all that could be heard was the resonating clang of metal on rock, then a silence that was impossibly loud. Then Beka started to scream.

Captain Beka Valentine was tough. Ask anyone, they would say that she could be all over a guy one minute, then bite his balls off just to get to his wallet. This was the woman who had pulled more dangerous schemes just for the hell of it than most men put together. This was the woman who had dated and scorned the notorious Bobby Jensen. Yet when she saw her friend, the happy, friendly blonde guy who had been more like a brother than a friend and who had stuck with her through all the jokes and derisive laughs, when she saw him die in such a gruesome way, it hurt. At first she was sure that she must have been stabbed or shot, for the pain in her heart was so immense. Never listen to someone who scoffs at the idea of someone's heart breaking, because a broken heart is an infinite multiplication of the most potent physical pain. It cannot be measured, it cannot be touched or reached and the most skilled doctor in the universe cannot heal it. Beka knew this, and felt there was nothing left to do but scream.

Technically, she had nothing to worry about. Obviously, what she had just seen was impossible; something out of those disgusting holo-horror films that Harper was always insisting she watched with him. He would always cheer when some idiotic girl who was showing more cleavage than should be legal was slashed into or carved up or exploded or whatever the sick minds of the one hundred and first century could conjure up. Beka remained deeply offended that the faceless girl was invariably blonde.

Yet, the fact remained that Harper had just had his head cut off in front of her eyes, and the scream escaped her lips, bouncing off of the cave walls until it sounded ten times louder. It was not even a proper scream like in the films, but a volley of shrieks and sobs that came in time to the panicked tears dripping down her face. The rest of the crew knew that she needed comfort, but each of them could only stare in silence at the bloodbath in front of them.

-

Ow! Harper thought. That really hurt! It was a woefully inadequate description of what had just happened but, hey, he was in shock! He wasn't about to come out with a wailing Wicked-Witch-Of-The-West act. Besides, he wasn't melting. He was just standing there, a little light-headed (such an inappropriate phrase!) but with all his body parts still firmly attached, wearing normal clothes. Woah, destined to spend the rest of eternity in a Hawaiian shirt and orange slacks. He was about to laugh, but then he turned round and saw his body, with his head a little too far away from it for comfort.

'OK, I so didnot need to see that!' he moaned, covering his face with his hands. Unfortunately, his hands had grown slightly less solid and he could see through them. Despite himself, he was impressed. 'Cool! Ectoplasm!' he said, holding up his now transparent hands and marvelling at the slightly misted view of the world that he could see behind them. Then he shook himself. This was no time for playing games. He saw Beka kneeling on the floor, howling in anger and grief, and went over to her.

'Hey, boss, it's OK, I'm right here!' he said, trying to put a hand on her shoulder and shake her out of it, but his hand just went straight through her clothes and skin. He snatched it back, seriously freaked out at this point. It was strange that he was not more upset, considering that he had just died, but it seemed that death came with a free anaesthetic. Pity it didn't work for those left behind.

He had the strange sense of someone clearing their throat without actually making a sound. He turned round and saw a tall figure in a black robe.

'Yeah, what?' he said defensively. Then he remembered. 'Oh, right, the decapitation thing.' The figure didn't move, but Harper thought he saw a grinning skull in the recesses if the hood. A skeletal hand protruding from one of the sleeves clutched a staff that seemed to be made out of human bones. Puh-lease, cliché anyone? Harper thought, but even his diplomacy-challenged mind could tell that this might not be the wisest thing to say. Especially since he had no intention of going with this guy.

'Sooo… that's a lovely dress… uh… I mean… death shroud that you're wearing this evening,' he tried hopefully. Damn, damn, damn! Shoulda stuck with the cliché thing! The skeleton didn't say a word, but extended a bony hand towards him. Harper could feel himself being dragged away from the cave and the others. This skeleton dude definitely meant business.

Suddenly, he was angry. He was Seamus Zelazny Harper, and just because he was dead, it didn't mean that he was about to be dragged kicking and screaming into the afterlife by a vocally challenged, cross-dressing, mouldy old bag of bones. He was going to stay here and help his friends, whatever it took!

'Uh, excuse me, Mr Death guy?' he said cautiously. He gave the skeleton an embarrassed look, leaned forward and whispered: 'Your flies are undone.'

Death, The Grim Reaper, The Destroyer Of Worlds, The Keeper Of Souls, The Ferryman Of The Newly-Dead, whatever he might be called, looked down at his crotch. Harper took the opportunity to abandon all pretence of coolness or bravado and legged it. By the time Death realised that his flies were fully zipped up, the engineer was long gone.

-

Harper was back in the cave. Beka had run out of breath to scream with and was just curled up in a foetal position on the rocky floor. Her face and clothes were covered in red dust and blood that had splattered onto her face when Harper's head was knocked from his shoulders. She was clutching at her heart, squeezing her hand into a fist in an attempt to counteract the excruciating mental pain she felt with the physical pain of her nails digging into her skin. Needless to say, it wasn't working.

However horrific the execution had been, it had been effective in subduing the crew. Perhaps if the twisted Nightsider had shot him or stabbed him, they might have leapt up in fury and overcome him and the Gerentexians. However, they were still trying to absorb the fact that Harper had been beheaded, and that there was considerably more blood in the human body than they had at first thought was possible. To make matters worse, Harper's bloody, mangled remains had been thrown on the fire, and the stench of burning flesh now filled the room. Beka had vomited several times, Dylan had gone a nasty green-grey colour, and Trance could only stare at the flickering flames and the human bones with an expression on her face that spoke of insurmountable guilt and horror. Tyr was sitting with his back to the fire and the rest of the crew. Even if they could have seen his face, they would not have been able to read it, for it looked as though it could have been chiselled from stone. He was only interested in one person.

Gerentex whispered something to one of his followers, who laughed softly. He had an air of unrepentant greed and smugness, but even he was avoiding looking at the fire and the corpse of his adversary. Perhaps he felt that this time he had just gone a little bit too far, losing his balance on the thin tightrope of a line between crime and evil.

Harper's reaction to seeing the remains of himself was beyond grief, beyond crying and screaming. The anaesthesia that had at first numbed the pain of his own demise was gone; perhaps it lasted only until the Reaper arrived. For a few moments he felt a horrifying yet attractive temptation to walk into the fire and lie amongst the blackened bones of his physical body and wait for a second chance to pass on. Perhaps the heat of the fire would burn away the agony he felt. The pure, unmatched ennui and the feeling that it had been his heart ripped away instead of his head. Then the sorrow and mourning was gone and he was left with rage, a thirst for bloody revenge and destruction. He turned away from the fire to look at the Nightsider who had ordered his death.

Taking even himself by surprise, Harper hurled himself at Gerentex. Being a ghost, his swings, punches and curses had no effect on the rat-faced felon, who simply sat there grinning, entirely unaware that he was being viciously assaulted by his one-time arch-nemesis. But for Harper, it was the perfect way to vent his fury and frustration.

'That was me!' he screamed at Gerentex, tears pouring out of his eyes and vanishing into the wind as soon as they appeared. 'That was my life, Goddamnit! I was Seamus Harper; I was a living, breathing human being! That was the only thing I had left and you took it away from me, you bastard!' As his fists passed harmlessly through Gerentex's smugly grinning face, Harper realised the futility of his attack, and sank to the ground as though all the energy had been sucked out of him. Luckily, someone with a little more influence was about to take over from him.

'You…' Beka had stood up and was starting to walk towards Gerentex. Her hair was all over the place and her clothes and skin were filthy, but by the light of the flickering fire she was suddenly impossibly beautiful. Her muscles were taut, her creamy skin highlighted in shades of orange and yellow and red, her cheekbones outlined in shadow to give her an almost gaunt appearance. Her eyes glittered malevolently with hatred and unchecked tears made tiny rivulets in the red stains on her face, making it look like war paint. She may have only been a grieving human but at that moment she resembled a Greek goddess. Gerentex heard the single word and saw her approaching him and something not unlike fear passed across his face. He gave a surreptitious nod to one of the Gerentexians, the one that had killed Harper.

The red-robed fiend stepped forward to meet her. It pulled out the double-bladed axe from its robes once again; the blade still caked in the engineer's blood. Beka stopped and waited without a trace of fear on her face. The Gerentexian lifted the axe, and Harper saw with horror that his friend was about to meet the same fate as him. He jumped back up, screaming and cursing at her to get out of the way, every bad word he had ever heard rolling freely from his tongue. He stood between her and the slowly rising blade, waving his arms frantically, painfully aware of his uselessness. The blade had stopped at the highest point of its arc and there was nothing he could do to prevent it from falling.

Just as the axe began to descend, a bullet travelling faster than the speed of light knocked it far away across the room, breaking every single bone in the Gerentexian's hands. The creature screamed in agony and turned to face its oppressor. Another bullet blew a hole the size of a dinner plate right through its abdomen and out through its back. As the creature fell back, still screaming, the hood fell away to reveal that the Gerentexian was, indeed, a Nightsider.

Every head in the room turned to look at the android walking into the cave. Rommie smiled benignly, as if she was a long way away from it all, lifted the gun and shot another Gerentexian right between its beady eyes. As if this was some kind of signal, every one of the followers in the corrupted Nightsider's cult rushed towards her. Gerentex, who had been looking worried, grinned, but his relief was short-lived. Instead of attacking the beautiful robot in the doorway, the red-robed, rat-faced disciples streamed out into the glaring sunlight, falling over each other to get as far away from Rommie as possible. Despite the fact that he was dead, Harper felt little bubbles of satisfied happiness rekindle his old personality.

'Oops, looks like you're not as good a public speaker as you thought you were, eh, Gerentex old buddy?'

The same thought seemed to have crossed the ex-prophet's mind. He tried to sidle away into a small crack in the wall, but Rommie saw him and shot at him, deliberately high so that the bullet pounded into the rocks a few inches above his head, showering him in sparks and chips of red rock. He dropped to the floor; his hands over his head, quivering like a newborn foal. He didn't escape the watchful eye of Beka, though, nor that of Harper, who watched with a sick pleasure as his boss picked up a knife that had been dropped by a fleeing Gerentexian and walked over to the cowering Nightsider. She looked at him for a moment with open rage and disgust, then lifted the knife above her head with murderous intent in her eyes.

For the second time in the past ten minutes someone stopping a blade from obeying what gravity intended. But this time it was not Rommie who saved a life, but a fierce golden girl with an iron grip.

'Trance? What the hell are you doing?' Beka screamed in frustration.

'You can't kill him, Beka, you mustn't!' Trance didn't relinquish her painful grip on Beka's wrist. The two women stood there for a moment, looking like a crazy statue.

'Can't kill him? Trance, this bastard had Harper murdered! He cut off Harper's head like he was a sick dog! Our Harper, your friend, don't you remember?'

'Then Harper is dead?' Rommie asked. She was standing between them, wondering what was going on. She felt the strangest of sensations running through her. It was similar to what she felt when her shiplier half ran into an asteroid belt. She had felt Harper's heart stop beating, for his vital signs were being constantly monitored on board, but she had retained a wild hope that it might just be a malfunction. No one answered her; there was really no need.

'Yes, I remember. And I will tell you the same thing I told Harper the last time he tried to do the same thing that you are doing right now: There isn't enough love in this universe, and we are not helping to keep what there is by going around killing each other.'

'Oh, I see. I'm supposed to love Gerentex, is that it? Give him a hug, a kiss on the cheek? "Oh well, Harper's dead but who cares, right? Just so long as we love each other." Well, the hell with love, Trance. Me killing him is just my way of showing how I loved Harper!' She tried to pull her arm away but Trance held on tight.

'So that's it, is it? You kill him and everything will be fixed? Three cheers for sweet revenge? Harper's dead, Gerentex is dead, and you're still as empty as ever but so long as it's all in the name of vengeance that makes it OK? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and all that? Well, let me tell you something, Rebeka Valentine: a very wise man once said that an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, and that means you. Before you do this you have to ask yourself if you want to be blind. 'Cause if you don't then you'd better give me that damn knife right now!'

'I can't, Trance, I have to do this…'

'No you don't! Come on, Beka, it's what Harper would have wanted.'

'No it bloody well isn't!' Harper interjected, furious. It wasn't what he wanted at all. What he wanted was Gerentex's head on a plate and his head back on his shoulders.

'Yes… Yes, my dear, listen to her!' Gerentex added hopefully, lifting his head a little. 'It's what good old Harper would have wanted. Oh, how I regret my harsh actions now…'

'Shut up!' Beka screamed, wrenching her arm free. She lifted the knife once more and this time Trance didn't try to stop her. 'You sick, twisted, devious… Don't you dare sit there and lie to me you pathetic excuse for a living being. Don't you dare try to pretend that your heart is anything but a lump of stone. I should kill you right now, slowly, and it would be more than you deserve!' She was suddenly lost for words, and Harper cheered her on, willing her to drive the blade into Gerentex's flesh. Which was why words were not enough to describe his disappointment when Beka let the knife clatter to the ground, where Trance whisked it away with barely disguised relief. Beka dropped to her knees and sobbed.

'Nooo!' Harper yelled, trying to shake her out of it. 'Come on, girl, this is not the time to act all forgiving and love-thy-enemy-y! Just stab him where it hurts and get it over with!'

'Tyr!' Trance called to the Nietzschean, who was happily dispatching one of the Gerentexians that had not been quick enough to escape. He looked up, his chest heaving. 'Take this… thing… back to the Andromeda and lock it up,' she snapped, briskly kicking Gerentex away; he had been doing his best to grovel and kept pulling at the fabric of her coat. 'Feel free to cause him pain but don't kill him.'

Tyr smiled grimly and yanked the Nightsider to his feet. He dragged the rat-faced outlaw away, viciously twisting one of Gerentex's arms up behind his back. Tyr had always been fairly protective towards Harper and had taken his death as a personal insult. He was not the only one.

'Oh, well that's just great isn't it?' Harper snapped in disgust as Dylan and Trance helped Beka back to the Andromeda. Rommie did a last quick sweep of her surroundings before following them. He was deeply annoyed that Gerentex was still alive, but on the bright side at least he wouldn't have to put up with the ghost of the hideous beast and his horrible nasal voice whining in Harper's ear for the rest of eternity. He looked around hopefully one last time in case Death had got over being tricked and was going to give him a second chance, but there was nothing. Seeing that he had no other option, Harper followed the others back to the old high-guard ship.

-

Thanks to all who reviewed, I hope you liked it!