Part 9
The information trapped him, and he couldn't move. Seamus Harper was powerless to stop what was happening and forced to watch as his own projection, and the bytes it had brought with it, slowly rewrote Andromeda's core programming. Even as his hands seemingly moved to destroy Andromeda's functionality, Harper was denying what he was seeing as another trick or a nightmare he hadn't woken up from yet.
"Harper."
"Rommie!" Harper gasped in part horror, part relief at seeing a familiar face. "Stop me, please, stop me," he pleaded, showing his distress.
"I can't."
"Yeah, you can," Harper insisted frantically, his desperation showing through. "I'm not me, this isn't me, and I can't fight this on my own, Rom Doll, please help me out here."
"Harper I," Rommie began.
"You can't think like that, Rommie," Harper pre-empted. "You're a warship first, friend second, you can't forget that order of things."
"I'll be killing you."
"You don't know that, you'll be killing the virus, not me."
"You are the virus, Harper!" Rommie stressed, clearly at odds.
"It's more frightening seeing you like this, than anything I'm doing, I mean this projection of me is doing to you," Harper admitted, and for a moment all the fear had left his voice and his words began to sink in.
Rommie just stared at him, and saw the damage his presence in her mainframe was doing to him. "One of the last times you were in here, I thought I had hurt you."
"What?" Harper questioned, momentarily confused and then he remembered how he had fallen ill inside her mainframe a few days before. "But you didn't, you didn't hurt me, I was fine."
"You were sick."
"I'm still sick, Rommie, more so now," Harper encouraged, and then his expression changed to one of hope. "That's it!" Harper suddenly exclaimed. "I need to do that again, let the illness render me unconscious both outside and inside the system, just like before."
"That's dangerous, I can't ask you to do that," Rommie stated.
"Your other option is to kill me, Rom Doll," Harper reminded her. "Look at what I'm doing to you; I'm nearly a third of the way through already, sometimes it sucks being a genius," he said with a seriousness she rarely saw in her engineer. "Neither of us want to die, right?"
"Correct," Rommie answered.
"I need to return to my body, I need to encourage my illness," Harper decided.
"I can push you back, but only what I recognise as your consciousness, I can not move the virus," Rommie offered, and Harper rapidly nodded his head.
"That could be enough because I can't move at all right now, but I hate to leave you with this," he gestured to the virus code that was taking her over. "Let's hope that the stress of the return alone will be enough to set things in motion," Harper considered thinking on his feet. "Before it was the stress of the onset of the illness that knocked me out, this time it's going to have to be the illness taking complete hold that does the deed."
Rommie let her head drop. "The Gogorstum virus is not a virus to be encouraged or messed with, Harper, and with your weakened immune system," she began, showing some concern.
"Rommie, you know I don't want to die but more than that, I don't want to be the reason you do," Harper stated with fear and sincerity. "I'll do anything for you, babe, haven't I always said that?"
"Harper."
"No time for this," Harper distracted himself by preparing to return. "Push me out of this place, Rom Doll and I'll see you on the flip side," he grinned, and with a last glance between each other, Rommie used all of her strength to push what remained of Harper's consciousness, amongst the virus, from her system and back into his body.
Beka held Harper tight as suddenly his body tensed and he omitted a loud scream, she waited for his senses to return.
"Harper?"
Harper was having trouble breathing, the stress of being in the mainframe had allowed the virus to spread to his lungs, and he was struggling. "Beka," he gasped.
"What is he doing back?" the kid asked with annoyance, glancing up from his work. "Get back in that mainframe and do your job, runt!"
"Kid, back off!" Beka snapped, and the kid took a few steps back. "Seamus, talk to me, what's going on?"
"I'm killing Rommie, how's your day going?" Harper stressed, with a pained expression, his face caked in perspiration as he weakly lay in her arms.
"Not the time for jokes," Beka chastised, but her concern was clear. "You're sickness is taking over."
"That's good, that's great," Harper enthused madly, looking delirious. "I need to get up, I can't lie around here all day," he decided, knowing he had to make his body weaker for the virus to speed up its natural process.
"Seamus, stop this," Beka pleaded.
"No, you don't understand," Harper stressed still attempting to move in Beka's vice like grip. "It's the only way, trust me," he could see she couldn't take his words seriously. He was in her arms, and she was clutching to him like she was never going to let go. Suddenly Harper realised that Beka was afraid, and afraid because of him; she feared losing him and he forgot the plan for a moment to look her in the eye seeing something he rarely saw in her stare.
"You told me not to worry, right?" Harper spoke as calmly as his illness allowed, and then without care Harper reached up and brushed her lips with his own, and everything seemed to stop for that brief second before he pulled away. "Now trust me," he stated before suddenly gasping, and tensing up as his body struggled with the virus. Beka was caught in a daze, his tenderness and then sudden further relapse hitting her all at once and by the time she had recovered her senses, Harper was once again unconscious in her arms.
"No," Beka held him tighter. "Seamus, come back!" she demanded, tears now in her eyes.
"You kissed her."
"Rommie, if I survive this I'll explain, but right now, I'm busy with trying to let the illness render me unconscious in here, ok?" Harper spoke, his voice lacking energy as his projection lay down, weakening before her.
"Your readings are fluctuating to dangerous levels," Rommie explained.
"Now, Rommie, kill the virus now," Harper instructed as his eyelids grew heavier. "I can't hold on," he whispered before slowly his head rolled and his projection flickered.
In that instant Rommie rose up with all the power she could muster and with a simple gesture, she used her hand to squeeze the threat out of her system, destroying the virus with ease and stopping its progress.
Tyrone grabbed the kid by the neck and pushed him against the bulkhead. The kid in turn just looked at the larger man with wide eyes.
"You told me the virus would over power him!"
"It should have," the kid blabbed. "It did but somehow he came back, he was talking to his lady friend, but I don't know how that was possible, it shouldn't have been possible! Somehow he was stronger, but look at him!" the kid gestured clearly confused.
"Not good enough!" Tyrone threw the kid to the deck.
"Boss," another voice spoke up.
"What?"
"The takeover, it's kind of, boss, I think it has stopped?" he stated and his voice carried fear, not knowing how Tyrone would react.
"Stopped?" Tyrone checked with disbelief.
"No," the kid pushed himself up and to his make shift panel to check the readings for himself. "I don't believe it, the Andromeda has killed the virus."
Beka looked up, her heart almost missing a beat on hearing the words and she looked down at the unconscious form of Harper in her arms, but couldn't bring herself to check if he still had a pulse.
"The ship has killed her engineer, one of her own crew?" Tyrone couldn't believe the news either.
There was a sudden flurry of noise as Tyrone looked up to see Captain Dylan Hunt, flanked by his own men approach.
"Andromeda is a warship, did you forget that part?" Dylan stated confidently with his force lance aimed, as he stood alongside Tyr at the entrance to engineering.
"I was not going to let a bunch of brainless scavengers take me over," Rommie then joined in and moved forward between Dylan and Tyr with her force lance raised, temporarily disconnected from her mainframe and powered up enough to assist Dylan and Tyr as they had boarded the Maru.
"This is way beyond anything I know," the kid then admitted, overwhelmed by the way he'd been defeated.
"Just so you don't worry, your twenty missing men are currently being escorted to the brig, you, that kid and the other losers in here will be joining them shortly," Dylan stepped forward with a smile. "I would advise you to drop your weapons, no one is a quicker shot that Andromeda, but you're welcome to try," Dylan then suggested and it was enough of a threat for all of Tyrone's men to drop their weapons.
"This was a stupid plan, I told you right off, Tyrone!" the larger man of Tyrone's main crew conceded once his weapon had been dropped, and he offered his surrender.
"Now you, Tyrone," Dylan gestured to the last man standing.
Tyrone still kept his weapon raised, as all his men around him surrendered without a fight. "This isn't over, I still have your crew hostage right here," he gestured to Beka, clutching Harper sat on the deck. "Well at least one of them."
"It's over Tyrone," Dylan reiterated.
Rommie then took matters into her own hands as she strode up to Tyrone, and her presence alone was enough that she could easily take his weapon from him without a fight. "You learn quick, Tyrone," Rommie smiled sweetly. "Never piss off a warship you have already pissed off."
Rommie continued moving towards Harper, and she quickly administered meds straight into his arm, before she put a comforting arm on Beka to try and snap her out of the shocked daze she was in.
"Let him go, Beka," Rommie spoke softly.
"I can't," Beka shook her head, her emotions threatening.
"No, I mean let him go so I can lay him down and check his vitals," Rommie smiled warmly, and saw the sudden joy in Beka's expression that was missed by Tyrone as he looked back at Dylan.
"You really killed Seamus Harper?" Tyrone then checked with disbelief. "Then I truly underestimated you, and that was my undoing."
"No one has been killed, and it wasn't me you underestimated," Dylan confidently spoke on seeing Rommie briefly nod her head towards him, before glancing at Beka and seeing her smile, and he knew Harper was still alive.
Both the kid and Tyrone looked back at Harper. "But," they both said in unison and then stopped when they saw Harper flinch, and then begin to slowly stir.
"Take them to the brig," Dylan ordered towards Tyr who wasted no time in following Dylan's orders, taking pleasure in man handling the kid and Tyrone off the ship.
Dylan moved quickly to where Rommie and Beka were checking on Harper. "How is he?"
"Weak, but I think his plan worked, his own virus protected him," Rommie stated. "We should move him to the med deck, so Trance can properly assess him."
TBC
