BIRTHRIGHT

by Soledad

Author's note:

For disclaimer, rating, warnings, etc., see the Prologue.

A few lines of dialogue are modified versions of what was said in All Great Neptune's Oceans.

The permanent Castalian representative aboard Andromeda, Arkazha, is borrowed from the Original Trek novel From the Depths by Victor Milan (page 81, to be accurate). I followed the physical characteristics given in that novel, because they matched the needs of a sentient water-breather a lot better than what we were shown in the actual episode. Novels don't underlie budget restrictions, thank God. The original idea with the security codes belongs to Keith R. A. DeCandido, author of the Andromeda novel Destruction of Illusions. I modified it for this story.


CHAPTER 7 – LOST AND FOUND

It had been a long two days since former president Chandos' arresting, and they had still no news from the planet below.

"Are you sure that we did the right thing, Dylan?" Beka asked; they were sitting in the officer's mess, trying some of Tyr's cooking. The Nietzschean had been in an uncharacteristically good mood lately, and cooked for the entire crew… well, with the exception of the Than, of course, whose culinary interests were rather… different from those of the humanoid crew. But the stir-fry and the fruit-filled pastries found general agreement among the humans and Perseids.

"Have you been following the news reports?" Dylan asked, around a mouthful of food, and Beka nodded grimly.

"Apparently, there are riots on some of the islands. The air-breathers are demanding retaliation. The water-breathers, of course, answer with counter-demonstrations…. Castalia could be facing civil war."

"I don't think so," Dylan said with a shake of his head. "It'll probably blow over soon. But the people of Castalia needed to know the truth."

Beka gave him a doubtful look. "I dunno… the whole thing with the Nietzscheans happened eighteen years ago. And they were the invaders in the Castalian system. If there weren't the fact that the slaves got killed, too…"

"Precisely," Dylan nodded. "We couldn't let Chandos – or Colonel Yau, for that matter – cover up a genocide. If the Commonwealth stands for anything, it stands for open process of the law. And if the institutions of Sebastian Lee can survive his death, they certainly can survive the truth about his life."

"Says who?" Beka asked cynically. "You? I hate to break it to you, Captain, but you're not infallible. And I can understand Colonel Yau wanting to hide the truth about the man whom she loved like a father. The man whom she'd have died for. That he betrayed her people. Believe me, I know what it means being betrayed by one's father." She fell into silence, obviously reliving unpleasant memories.

"Sebastian Lee was a great man," Dylan said. "But he did commit a horrible crime against his own people. And the people of Castalia should know that. Nothing is more important than the truth. A whole society can't be based on a lie."

"It worked well enough for eighteen years," Beka replied dryly. But Dylan shook his head.

"They were sitting on a time bomb, in all those years. The truth has an inherent tendency to come out – usually in the least passable moment. Besides, President Lee wanted the truth to be known. He's even died for it. We owed him to fulfil his last wish."

Beka still wasn't entirely convinced, but before she could have said anything, the small holographic image of Rommie popped up in the middle of their table.

"Captain, we have an incoming message from the Castalian Parliament," the hologram said.

Dylan pushed away his almost empty plate and stood. "On my way. Beka, you with me?"

"Won't miss it for all the Known Worlds," Beka answered sarcastically and followed him out.


When they reached the command deck, everyone else was already there, waiting with excitement for the news.

"Are they transmitting a visual?" Dylan asked Rev Bem, who happened to sit at the comm station, as always. The Magog seemed to have developed a keen interest for Andromeda's comm system. It enabled him to much easier correspondence with his fellow Wayists, after all.

"They do," he answered to Dylan's question.

"Well, put them on the screen, if you please," Dylan said, a little impatiently. Rev Bem inclined his furry head in a respectful manner and touched a control with one long, curved claw.

The screen came alive, showing three Castalians seated in a room that could have been anything from a clerk's office to the council chamber of the Parliament itself. It was mostly dark, except for a few dim lights shining on the representatives from the ceiling. They couldn't see much of the room itself, just control panels and viewscreens on the walls. The three occupied a low dais, sitting at a computerised desk that probably also served as their comm device. At their backs a window opened on the night and a grey sea whipped to thrashing frenzy by a storm. Obviously, the room, whatever its purpose might have been, was situated on one of the islands scattered across Castalia's oceans.

The three individuals onscreen, however, surprised the Andromeda crew a great deal. Until now, they had assumed that Castalian population was fairly homogenous, at least where looks were considered. Not even between water-breathers and air-breathers seemed to be such a big difference, save the breathing tubes on the 'fish people', as Harper called them. These representatives of the Castalian Parliament, however, appeared to belong to three entirely different species.

"Greetings, Captain Hunt," said the man who was sitting in the middle. He looked more or less human – almost theatrically handsome, with dark skin, webbed hands, pronounced epicanthic folds to his large, ocean green eyes, and short, springy black hair that was streaked with red and yellow stripes, like the scales of a lionfish. He wore a loose, russet jacket and trousers over a collarless black shirt, the wide neckline of which revealed a row of quills on each side of his neck. "I'm Iason Havila, spokesman of the Castalian Parliament in foreign affairs. This is Angus Thege, representing the Undersea Miners, and this is Rahyl Arkazha, representing the Deep-Sea Rangers."

Thege was an air-breather, but obviously engineered for heavy labour – for strength and endurance. He was a hulking humanoid, covered in pliable grey armour like a Terran rhinoceros, but the glittering of his small, dark eyes revealed a keen intellect, despite his unproprotionally small head.

Arkazha, on the other hand, was clearly a water-breather – a squat being, hairless, with rubbery-looking black skin. A clear respirator mask covered the lower half of her broad face. A dark metal yoke enclosed her short neck, and flowed down over the top of her heavy shoulders. It surrounded her with a constant iridescent shimmer of mist. She had webbed hands and feet, two vertical slits for a nose and no external ears, just holes in the sides of her head; both nose and ear orifices could be closed by special lids. Where the skin was close to bone, on knuckles and feet and under her square jaw, it showed yellow highlights.

She wore no clothes, except for some sort of harness holding small implements whose function Dylan didn't recognize. She looked like some kind of amphibian, only vaguely humanoid… not at all alike the water-breathers that had visited the Andromeda. Either she was the result of more extensive genetic engineering, or that of some spontanteous mutation.

"I assume you'd be relieved to hear that the Parliament ratified the Commonwealth Charter with three votes to spare," Iason Havila continued.

"That's a relief, indeed," Dylan answered.

"However, there is one condition," Havila added. "We want a permanent representative of our world on that ship of yours, so that we can protect the interests of the republic in any given situation."

Dylan nodded. "That's acceptable. We've got representatives of various other worlds aboard already – and we certainly have enough room for passengers. Who'll be your Commonwealth ambassador?"

"I will," Arkazha said; her voice was deep and strongly accented. "And as my subspecies has to face more environmental restrictions than the majority of the Castalians, Iason will accompany me as my attaché."

"I assume you'll need specific conditions in your quarters," Dylan said.

"We both will," Iason answered. "I can go on without a maritime environment perfectly well – for about twelve hours. After that, I'd start getting respiratory problems, bad skin conditions and the likes."

"Wouldn't it be more practical to assign the average water-breather to this job?" Dylan asked. "All they'd need is their breathing apparatus."

"True," Iason agreed, "but after the recent… revelations, most of the minorities are a little… wary of our main race. It was specifically requested that someone of the minor races get the assignment. And we couldn't really trust air-breathers around Nietzscheans right now," he added with an apologetic smile. "Tempers are running high among them at the moment."

"I wonder why," Tyr commented cynically. Dylan gave him a glare, but he Nietzschean simply shrugged, not really concerned about his displeasure.

"We accept your condition, of course," the captain told the Castalians. "In fact, I welcome the presence of other Commonwealth members on board. Or that of potential members," he added, glancing briefly at the Than and the Perseids present. "I'm sure Mr. Harper will be happy to provide you with the required environment."


Contrary to Dylan Hunt's optimistic estimate, Harper was not happy to have been assigned to the noble task of building the Castalian ambassador's quarters. He was glad to go planetside again, for sure, but he had been hoping for shore leave, not for more work.

"Am I really asking so much?" he fumed, checking his list of required parts for the maritime quarters. "All I wanted was some leave, to find a bar, get drunk and get laid, for a change. I've been working around the clock for… well, forever. I really think I deserve a break. Does Dylan think I'm a freaking robot or what?" he added, stomping off angrily.

The four low-class Amber Than workers ignored his rantings with practiced ease. They'd been working with him since they'd come aboard, and were used to his rants by now. Like all other Than, these four, too, wore elaborate names like "Songs of Ocean, "Element of Air" and so on. Names that Harper was unable to remember, despite his otherwise excellent memory and the highly individualistic traits of his Than co-workers. So he simply called them Brownie One, Brownie Two, Brownie Three and Brownie Four.

This practice irritated the Than at first – until he explained them what a brownie was and how much humans liked it. Especially the now-dead members of the Harper family. After that, the Than accepted the nicknames without further protest. Truth be told, they were rather fond of their highly talented and quite flamboyant human boss. And Harper valued them, too, despite the bug jokes he couldn't resist making.

The two Perseids spent a great deal of time down in the machine shops as well, studying Commonwealth technology first hand, and Rekeeb could frequently be talked into helping with Harper's personal projects, while the Than were doing the basic tasks. The younger Perseid appreciated working with someone of Harper's abilities – his and Höhne's talents were more of theoretical nature – and the two of them made an excellent team, even though Harper's efforts to make Rekeeb as addicted to Sparky Cola as he was failed spectacularly.

As soon as Rekeeb heard that Harper would be sent planetside to check out the exact parameters for the ambassador's quarters, he hurried down to the machine shop to take over coordination there. The than had accepted him as Harper's aide right after his first visit. They only competed against each other, but acknowledged other authorities readily enough, as they didn't endanger their positions in Than society in general and their local mating group in particular.

"Has Harper found a suitable room already?" Rekeeb asked Brownie #4, whose actual name was Crimson Shadow.

The Amber Than wiggled her antennae in acknowledgement. "One of the empty biomatter storerooms near Hydroponics. We're about to seal the side doors and open a trap door on the ceiling, so that the fish-necks can plunge in from above, once the room is filled with seawater from the planet. Tank ships are just about to start from the surface.

Rekeeb grinned. Spending most of their time in Harper's company had definitely influenced the bugs' speech patterns. He couldn't remember having heard Than speaking so... colourfully, on all their settlements he had visited in Höhne's company.

"Very well," he said, "why don't you show me the specifics? I've never worked with underwater equipment before – it's going to be a fascinating experience, no doubt. Have the Castalians sent up the instruments that need to be built in already? And hat about furniture?"

Entering the machine shop, Tyr rolled his eyes, hearing the unbroken chatter. As useful as Perseids could be when it came to technology and science, their constant babbling could drive a man mad, after a while. Not even the otherwise dignified Höhne was an exception from that rule.

"Where's Harper?" he asked Brownie X3, known among her fellow bugs under the quite poetic name of Sunset Upon Blue Hills.

"Machine Shop 2," the Than replied curtly. Of all the bugs, she was the one who could stand Nietzscheans the least, having lost several family members to Orca attacks. She didn't even bother to be remotely polite.

Which was fine with Tyr, who didn't feel the urge to make friends with the Worker bugs. Plus, it spared him the effort to thank her – not that he'd have intended to do anyway.

He walked over to Machine Shop 5, where he found Harper still ranting about not getting any shore leave. In a way, he could understand it; the boy worked harder than anyone else aboard, with the weakest physical condition. If Dylan was unable to realize that his only engineer needed some recreation time, at least Beka could have reminded him. Harper was supposed to be her crew in the first place; they'd worked together for five years!

Humans, Tyr thought in disgust, they're not even capable of managing their resources properly.

But this wasn't really his concern, not as long as Harper was able to run the ship at peak efficiency. So he turned his attention to the more urgent task at hand.

"I heard you're going planetside," he said without a preamble. Harper, not having heard his approach – which was unusual, as he had a sixth sense to feel the approach of any Nietzschean (or Magog, for that matter) and probably showed the degree of his exhaustion – practically jumped in the air.

"Geez, Tyr, trying to gave me a heart attack here? Can't you warn a guy before you sneak up to him or whatnot?"

"That would make the sneaking up part rather pointless," Tyr said reasonably. "You haven't answered my question, boy."

"And you're gonna stand here and glare me until I do, aren't you?" Harper sighed. "Yep, I'm gonna down, checking their databases, so that I can buy them a proper fish tank. Which concerns you – how exactly?"

"It does not," Tyr replied. "But I need you to do me a favour when you are down there, doing that. I need some… confidential data from their archives."

Harper shot him a dirty look. "Lemme set this straight: You want me to hack into restricted databases and steal information for you? Do I see it correctly?"

"You do," Tyr was completely unfazed, as always.

"Uh-huh. And what's in for me – assuming, I'm willing to do it, which is by no means certain right now?"

"My continuing gratitude," Tyr grinned. "I heard it has its advantages." Harper snorted.

"Yeah, if I need someone to be assassinated – which I don't, not really, unless you are willing to kill Gerentex for me. No offence, Tyr, but you can shove your gratitude where the sun never shines. The only good you could do for me would be to beat out of Old Ratface the eighty-four thousand thrones he still owes me for the Andromeda rescue operation, and we both know how likely that is to happen, now don't we?"

Harper's rant gave Tyr an interesting insight into the boy's personal problems, which he never considered before. Why should have been? Now he realized that they gave him certain advantages.

"If money's all it takes to make you get me the data I need, I can pay you," he said. "Within reasonable margins, that is."

"Define 'reasonable'," Harper countered, a little surprised that the Nietzschean would be actually willing to pay him for the job, instead of trying to intimidate him into doing it. Not that it'd work… well, not at once…

"Name your price, and I'll tell you if I can afford it," Tyr replied; he wasn't about to reveal the true magnitude of his financial sources, but he boy was right. This was a job nobody else would be able – or willing – to do; he deserved at least some payment. Besides, he liked it that Harper wasn't that easy.

Harper thought about it for a moment (Tyr could almost see the little cogwheels whirling around in that clever head of his). Finally, he named the sum – one just slightly over his usual price for hacking jobs. There was some risk involved, after all. It was only proper.

Tyr nodded. The price was a reasonable one. "We have a deal. Give me your account number, and I'll have the money transferred as soon as I have the data."

"Okay," Harper said, momentarily delighted by the thought of having some money to spend, soon. "So, what's it exactly that you want?"


Up to the moment when he first set foot on Castalia, Harper had thought that the Nietzscheans of Völsung Pride had only chosen to live on a habitat in geosynchronous orbit above the planet for tactical reasons. Now that he stepped out of the Andromeda's landing pod, he saw that it had to have got something with the famous Nietzschean self-preservation as well.

The planet was hot and humid like Hell. The primary star of the system was a yellow-white sun, its mass ninety-two per cent of that of Earth's sun, with a comparative luminosity of 9.80 and a surface temperature of 7600 degrees Celsius.

At last that was what Rommie had told him before he left for Castalia. Experiencing it on his own skin felt a lot worse. He glanced down from the relatively high setting of the landing place to the stormy green sea, above which the sky hung like a grey blanked, slashed to pieces in irregular intervals. Painfully bright blue shone through those rents; he shuddered. Nah, this was definitely not the sort of sea where he'd like to go surfing.

Which explained the Niets' decision to stay away from the planet surface, save the occasional slave-gathering sweep. As much as Niets preferred to live on planets to living in space, where the radiation might have damaged their precious genes, this planet was definitely worse. Which also explained the great deal of genetic engineering the various Castalian subspecies had invested into themselves.

Someone called him by name, and Harper turned in surprise, seeing Iason Havila approaching him. The Castalian was depressingly large in the flesh – Harper hated it when people towered over him – although not quite as huge as Tyr. Of course, few people were as huge as Tyr, even among Übers. Harper eyed the brightly coloured dashiki the other man wrote today enviously, guessing if he could somehow get his hands on one of those… it met his taste in colour exactly.

"I came to show you the local data archives," Havila continued in a surprisingly friendly manner, considering that it came from a water-breather, whom Harper had thought were all arrogant bastards. "Akyula is one of the largest islands on Castalia, the main settlement of the air-breathers, which is why he main inland archives are situated here."

"How big is it?" Harper asked, suddenly curious. Havila thought for a moment, looking for a suitable comparison.

"You're from Earth, aren't you?" at Harper's nod, he grinned. "Well, think about Greenland – same size, just with a hot climate. There aren't any bigger landmasses here. Of course, our underwater archives would be much more detailed than this one, but…" he shrugged apologetically.

"Can you create an interface for me?" Harper asked, tapping with one fingertip at his dataport. "If you can connect this archive with one of the bigger underwater ones… well, I do have my way with computers."

Havila grinned again. "I can see the advantage of that. All right, I think I can arrange it for you – but you'll have to hurry up. Weather forecast foresees a rather violent storm within two local hours. These storms are electrically charged, and big lightning discharges tend to interfere with oversea computer systems."

Harper glanced up worriedly at the sky, which was now clear overhead, though cumulus balls rolled along the western horizon like white tumbleweeds. "Two local hours, huh? I wouldn't like to have my neural net fried."

"Two hours tops, Havila emphasized. "But if I were you, I won't stay in cyberspace longer than one hour. These storm cells can move with unexpected speed and charge directions rather abruptly. The weather conditions were the main reason why our ancestors decided to undergo genetic modifications."

"I thought it was the lack of land to settle," Harper said, and Havila grinned again.

"That, too. Well, come with me, I'll show you around," he herded the younger man towards a low, domed building some two hundred meters from the landing area. "You shouldn't spend too much time in the direct sunlight anyway. The UV-output of our primary star is relatively high, even for someone who grew up on a planet with a ruined ozone layer."


The domed building housed nothing else but a large, circular room with floor-to-ceiling control boards and large viewscreens around the inner walls. It could be entered through a surprising number of different doors, as it was for public use, Havila said. Few people were working in it at the moment; all of them air-breathers from the same subspecies to which Colonel Yau belonged. Their pale skin revealed the fact that they had been born in space (most likely as the offspring of Völsung slaves) and kept out of the harsh sunlight of their home planet all their lives.

Havila talked to the one in charge in a low voice for a while, then he gave his security code into one of the terminals, and in a few minutes, the connection with one of the underwater archives had been established. The spokesman gestured to Harper.

"You can access anything you want from this terminal – even further archives. Look out for the firewalls protecting confidential information, though. They could cause serious damage to your neural net if you happen to stumble across them by accident. I'll return within the hour to escort you back to your landing pod."

Harper nodded and jacked in, wincing a little at the sudden – and rather violent – pull into cyberspace. Shit, rough ride; these fish-necks really oughta do something about their computer systems. The thinly veiled threat – or probably well-meant warning, it was hard to tell – of the Castalian made him unexpectedly angry. There had been very few security systems he couldn't outsmart to begin with, and having spent a considerable amount in Rommie's mind had trained his reflexes and tracing abilities to peak efficiency.

We'll see it, fish-neck, he thought angrily. You think you can scare the Harper into behaving himself? Well, think again!

Iason Havila shot the young man, slumped against the console like a rag doll, an uneasy look. This wasn't the first time he saw someone interface with a computer, but he could never get used to the sight. It was somehow… creepy.

"Alert me, when he's done… or if something goes wrong," he ordered the technicians on the archive and left. He needed to return to the sea. At once. A nice, long swim might calm he down. He shuddered in advantage when he thought of the long time he'll have to spend on a ship, with only a small basin to his disposal. But he couldn't leave Arkazha alone. She needed someone who could spend at least half his day out of water.

Harper, on the other hand, was in his element. Well, in one of his elements anyway. His body safely protected in the central archive of Akyula, his avatar wandered the VR landscape of another archive, deep under the surface of the Castalian ocean. Cruising the information highway, on the surface he searched for available data about environmental requirements for Castalian water-breathers, catalogued for the various subspecies and downloading them into one of the miniature data discs inserted into his dataport.

Under the surface, however, he managed to gain access to confidential databases through a series of back doors that only someone with his abilities could have navigated without getting caught.

The most critical part of the whole operation was to implement a series of encryption codes that would allow him to hack into the computer network that controlled the security around the hidden data. Harper had already harvested a wide collection of codes, due to his earlier connection with the Cardassian systems, but he couldn't be exactly sure which ones to use and how – at least without the fish-necks to notice that someone was tampering with their security system.

That was, of course, where the patented Harper genius came in. In computers designed by people with no imagination – like Nietzscheans, for example, or three-hundred-years-dead High Guard programmers – the VR landscape looked like little more than walls of circuitry. The Castalian designers, however, had given this landscape some personality: it looked like deep sea, with underwater streams playing around coral riffs and rocks to indicate different sections of the mainframe, multicoloured fish swimming along the invisible pathways and music playing in the background.

Unfortunately, it was the same 'fish music' the Castalians had tortured them with aboard the Andromeda during the negotiations. Although in this virtual undersea environment it didn't sound quite so bad as before, even though Harper would never admit it. Not in a thousand years.

Of course, this imaginary landscape made it a little more complicated for him to find the areas he needed to rewrite or disable. But he didn't worry too much – as long as he managed to find the right codes and used them on the right spots, no one would discover his presence. The computer would think he was an authorized user, because only authorized users would have the codes. Still, it required a great deal of improvisation and damn good reflexes, but Harper always worked best when facing a challenge.

He only hoped that the codes would be the right ones. He had acquired them more or less as an added bonus when he first gained remote access to a public Castalian database via Rommie at the very beginning of the negotiations. Finding those codes actually happened by accident, thanks to a system glitch – he committed them to his dataport, simply out of curiosity. He hadn't really intended to use them, until Tyr approached him with the offer.

He knows whom to ask when a genius is needed, the engineer grinned mentally, as he shut down the security to the database containing history files from twenty to ten years ago. If there was anything to find about the Völsung, the data would be there.

But after that, he hit another firewall. They had come up more and more often as he poked around in confidential databases, but once again, Harper was ready with a code. The codes were six characters made up of letters from the old Earth Greek alphabet, something Harper hadn't seen on anything since leaving his homeworld behind (and even back home only above the front door of Costas' Cantina, a long-abandoned tavern in one of Boston's suburbs). Additionally, they each added up to a different prime number, which was the same prime number that had been assigned to a particular subsection of the programming.

That was all good and nice – the problem only occurred when Harper had to realize with a mild shock that he had two different codes, both of which added up to the same prime number.

Crap, he thought, his mind racing, that's not good, not good at all!

He found himself with three different options. Either the fish-necks had two codes for the same archive branch (which was rather unlikely), and it didn't matter which one he used. Or the code had been changed in the recent weeks, which meant that one of the codes would be out of date, and if he used the wrong one, he'd be caught immediately. He didn't even like to think what sort of punishment there would be for espionage.

Could Tyr pay me enough to make it worth the risk at all?

Or else one of the codes was a totally false one, for the exact reason to create the problem he was facing now. In any case, he had very little time to make the right choice – or to give up the whole thing, lose a modest amount of money that he desperately needed, and prove himself an incompetent klutz in the eyes of an overbearing, arrogant Nietzschean who frequently treated him like a lower life form. Which was absolutely out of question. This was a matter of pride, after all.

He took a mental look at the codes again. One of them, EHITTS, appeared strangely familiar. After a moment, he also realized why. It was an anagram for Thetis, the goddess of the seas.

Could it be that easy? He wondered, not quite believing it.

Of course, most people wouldn't even know that the letters corresponded to a practically unknown alphabet, and even fewer would know what those letters actually meant. Not even the majority of humans were familiar with old Terran writings – one had to bee a mudfoot from Earth itself to recognize them in the first place.

Or a very sentimental Castalian programmer, with an interest for old legends, who was clever enough to realize the advantages of an easy code, which would still be unbreakable for outsiders. Unless they are called Seamus Zelazny Harper.

Harper had about three-and-a-half seconds to make a decision, before the alarm set off. He decided to take the risk and entered the code.

He got immediate access.

"Yes! Meet Seamus Zelazny Harper, super genius!" he crowed and hurriedly downloaded the history files, hoping that the disk space would be sufficient. He really, really didn't want to store the files of the entire Castalian War directly in his brain, thank you very much. He had several lifetimes worth of nightmares concerning Nietzschean cruelty from the time back on Earth.

And once again, he was lucky. Data safely stored in the mini-disc, he withdrew from the archive with mild regret (he'd have loved to see more about maritime life, had he had the time for it), looking directly in the worried green eyes of Iason Havila.

"I'm glad you came out on your own," the Castalian spokesman said. "Bringing someone out is always risky business, but it wouldn't have bee safe for you to remain connected any longer. The storm cell has turned and picked up speed."

Harper shuddered from the thought of being connected to the system while an electric storm hit. "I' whole-heartedly agree. Your VR landscape is fascinating, but not worth of becoming fast-fried. Can I get away before the storm reaches Akyula?"

"When you start now, then yes," Havila answered.

"In that case, uh, I think I'd best go now. Thanks for the help and anything," and with that, Harper jogged away towards the landing area, as quickly as it was doable on a place as hot as Castalia.


Getting back to the Andromeda, Harper checked in with his voluntary engineering team, and he found Brownies #1 through 4 checking the freshly sealed ambassadorial 'fish tank' with the customary thoroughness their race displayed by every task assigned to them. They had inserted a floor to ceiling window instead of the slide doors, and were now looking for possible leaks before filling the whole area with water.

Rekeeb was still down in the machine shops, with a tiny portion of his mind occupied with the organization of the work, while the great majority of it happily absorbed in familiarizing himself with waterproof Castalian equipment. Harper decided that his immediate presence wasn't required at the moment, so he gave the specifics to Rekeeb and declared that he'd take a much-deserved break.

In truth, however, he was heading towards Tyr's quarters to finish the business transaction with their resident Über. It was the first time ever that he'd enter the lion's den, and the simple but very comfortable furnishing, plus the domestic scene of Tyr and Freya cuddling on the living room's couch seemed a little… weird to him. He didn't know what he'd expected – wall hangings featuring martial scenes, or weapons displayed everywhere, perhaps, but not this Spartan elegance, for sure.

"Did you get it?" Tyr never wasted time with small talk.

"'Hello Harper! What was your trip to Castalia like? Hope you didn't get caught, either by security or by one of those monster electric storms that could have fried your dataport and your brain right with it,'" Harper rolled his eyes. "Oh, why the heck do I even try? What I got for you are all confidential history files for the last twenty years, on a data clip. You'll have to sort through them and see for yourself if there's anything you can use. I expect to be paid anyway, just so that you realize that."

"Why should I pay you if there's nothing useful in the data?" Tyr raised an eyebrow.

"Because I guaranteed you the files, not their usefulness," Harper pointed out, "and because otherwise I'd have a nice little chat with our esteemed captain. I don't think you'd like to leave the Andromeda just now."

"Neither would you," Tyr said. "And Dylan wouldn't be delighted to learn that you've been spying around in the secret files of his most important allies."

"Maybe not," Harper shrugged, "but he couldn't afford to fire me, not right now anyway. I'm the only competent engineer aboard. Every warrior bug could replace you."

To his surprise, Tyr broke out in a sudden grin. "I doubt that, but I must admit, I like the way you negotiate, boy. Very well, you get your money. Now give me the data chip."

Harper shook his head. "Nah. First the transaction. The Niet I'd be foolish enough to trust has to be born yet."

Tyr laughed. Who'd have thought that Harper had such… spunk? He walked to the computer terminal and sent the necessary message to his bank on Haukin Tau Drift, which still was registered as his permanent dwelling place, at least theoretically. All the time, he felt the watchful eyes of the young human on himself, as if Harper expected to be cheated. Maybe he did; the boy truly had no reason to trust anyone, with the possible exception of Beka.

"It'll take some time until the money gets transferred," Tyr said, "but it's no the way. Now, can I have that data clip?"

Harper shrugged – he seemed to do that around Tyr a lot – and extracted the mini-disc from his dataport. Then, without waiting for an invitation, he sat down on the only available chair, from where he could have undisturbed view at the computer screen.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" he asked. "Put in the chip already!

Tyr raised an eyebrow again. "I can't remember inviting you to stay and watch."

"That's because you haven't," Harper replied blithely. "But I would like to see if the results were worth risking to fry my brain just the same."

"Why would it be of any importance for you whether we find the Völsung survivors or not?" Freya asked in surprise.

"It's not," Harper said with a shrug. "But if some of them managed to escape, that would mean that maybe, just maybe, someone of my family could be still alive back on Earth, too."

"So, you're looking for a miracle?" Freya asked.

Harper shook his head, suddenly very serious. "Nah. Miracles don't happen, not to people like me anyway. I'm looking for hope."

That silenced the Nietzscheans for a while. Then Tyr shrugged.

"As you wish. Whatever there is, it's not my secret."

They searched the files for almost two hours, listing up every single Nietzschean name that got mentioned, for whatever reason. Some of them Tyr was even familiar with, like that of the Völsung Matriarch, to whom he was actually – if very indirectly – related. But they couldn't find any trace of Pride members who might have survived the destruction of their home, although some families of lesser rank were mentioned to have lived and worked outside the Castalian system.

"This is not much," Freya said pessimistically. "Although we can do a thorough search for all those names on the list, I guess. Maybe they will show up in the records of drifts or ports or the likes."

At the same moment, Harper unexpectedly stopped the playback.

"Look," he said, pointing at a record about someone called Dr. Kaveh Hamayouni, out of Parendi by Tahamtan. The Niet was apparently a physician, more accurately a surgeon and genetic researcher. Or at least he had been eighteen years prior, when he had been the only Nietzschean who got invited to some big medical conference.

"What about him?" Freya asked with a frown. Tyr shook his head.

"The name doesn't ring a bell for me. Do you know the man, Harper?"

"Not me," Harper said, "and I'm not sure it's the same person, but I could swear I heard Höhne mentioning a Niet contact of his. Guy was supposed to be a doctor, somewhere on some drift. You tell me, how likely it is for two Übers to have the same name and the same job at the same time?"

"Zero to nothing," Tyr agreed. "Where is this… person supposed to live?"

"Can't remember," Harper admitted. "You'll have to ask Höhne. He's the man… hermaphrodite… whatever… whit the contact."

"And he would share this piece of information with me – why exactly?" Tyr snorted. Contacts on different worlds and drifts were important. One didn't give them away without a very good reason.

Harper shrugged again. "I dunno. You'll have to offer him something in exchange, I guess." He stood. "Well, it was nice to chat with you, but if you'd excuse me now… I have a fish tank to finish."

He sauntered out of the cabin. The two Nietzscheans looked after him for a while – then at each other.

"It's a beginning," Freya said softly. "The question is: do you have anything to offer the Perseid?"

"I'm not sure," Tyr said, "but we'll find out."

TBC