Thanks to everyone who read. As always reviews are appreciated.
"When they finally threw me out I was in rough shape again," Harper continued, refusing to dwell on what had happened with the Chorrams. He'd liked them, damn it, and then they'd gone and turned out to be lunatics, but in the end it had only been the first in a long line of disappointments on Seefra. "I'd figured out the lay of the place by that point, though, and it wasn't too tricky to sneak onto a transport down into the city. Cities are easier." He'd proved that back in Boston once upon a time, and there had been more Ubers to dodge in that case.
"Easier for what?" Tyr asked. "I can't imagine that you opened a repair shop."
"Disappearing. And I'm reasonably good at avoiding obvious stupidity, thanks."
"Empirical evidence would suggest otherwise." He gestured towards Harper's face, smirking.
Harper rolled his eyes. "Like I said, you're hilarious. I stayed in the shadows and picked pockets until most of the bruises healed and then got a job in a bar. Drink orders are easy enough to remember, and most drunks get to talking eventually so I figured I'd hear where the others ended up soon enough."
"Talking or fighting," Tyr pointed out, serving himself another dumpling and gesturing towards Harper's plate.
"Please. And or fighting," Harper acknowledged, splitting the new dumpling open. One advantage to working on Tyr's ship for the next couple weeks; he was going to eat really well. "There were a lot of bar fights, no argument there, but until I ended up running the bar, I wasn't much of a target. I mean, seriously, if you were drunk and looking for a fight, would you look at me twice?"
"I don't get drunk, but were I such a fool I'd be more likely to trip over you."
"Hysterical. Really, don't let anyone tell you otherwise."
Tyr's lips twitched.
"Exactly my point, though," Harper continued. "No one paid me any attention me unless I gave them a reason. About the only thing that did that was if I forgot to hide my 'port." Or when he'd enforced the one-drink max on water, but at least by the time he'd been running the place he'd had some backup. Most of the time. "Anyway, a variety of mostly bad shit happened," including the part where he'd ended up running the place, "three freaking years pass, and then suddenly I've got Dylan and Rhade shooting at me. Well, technically shooting at Doyle, but…." He shrugged.
"Doyle?"
Oh. Right. He fiddled with his fork. "So I did find Rommie. Not too long in, actually. But she wasn't…she got hurt bad when the Magog came. Back in normal space, I mean. If I'd been on Andromeda—or really anywhere with a decent tech base—I might have been able to do something, but as it was I couldn't even get her to talk to me." He shook himself. He wasn't going to dwell on that either. "The best I could manage was scrounging enough to build Doyle from what was left."
Tyr raised an eyebrow. "Another android? That fixation will be the death of you someday, boy. I'm surprised that it hasn't been already given that you just said that you were in a technophobe system."
He was tempted—not for the first time where Tyr was concerned—to point out that he wasn't a child, but since he was in the process of admitting one of the stupider things he'd done in the past few years, it wasn't exactly a great illustration. "I didn't tell anyone that she was an android. Her included."
"I refer back to my previous comment on empirical evidence," Tyr said after a moment.
Harper scowled, but as he was well aware in this particular instance it was true enough. And at least the smirk had disappeared.
"She figured it out, I assume?" Tyr asked.
"Yeah. Wasn't real happy with me, but by then we had other issues. It turned out that Rhade had been there about six months by then—don't ask me what he was doing; he didn't volunteer and I didn't ask—but Dylan had basically just showed up. With Andromeda, beat up as she was, because Rev's Divine forbid that he ever be inconvenienced."
That got a chuckle, but it had been far less amusing from Harper's perspective. Or maybe he'd already just been sick and tired of the universe by then. With everything that had happened with Marika, it wasn't much of a stretch. Another shake. Yet another place that he wasn't going. "So Dylan starts one of his crusades, admittedly a more useful one this time since I wanted out of that hellhole too, and all of a sudden it turns out that Beka's been around for nine freaking months. She wasn't…she was different, though. At least by the time I saw her again. Meaner." He still didn't understand what had happened to Beka. Yeah, being on your own sucked, but he couldn't imagine just shutting people out like she had. He'd have done anything that she asked him to, even after three years, and she hadn't cared.
"You and Captain Valentine were always close," Tyr said.
"Not on Seefra. Not after Seefra." He shook his head and pushed his plate away despite the fact that there was still a good portion of a dumpling left. Despite how long he'd been stranded he'd still wanted his friends, but she'd never let him back in no matter how he'd tried.
"And the previously purple one?" Tyr asked as the silence began to stretch out.
"Oh. Yeah. That…you don't want that headache. I don't even want that headache and I was there at the time. She's as alive as she ever was and changed yet again; call her Trance 3.0 and move along. Eventually a sun collapsed and the planets condensed and we got out of Seefra and hey, here's another attack coming. Left in a wave of Magog, back in a wave of Ubers, why not mash all my personal hells together?" He shrugged and didn't wait for an answer. Tyr wouldn't have one any more than he did. Although he should probably work on curbing his use of the U-word while he was around Tyr, now that he thought about it, because the guy didn't exactly have unlimited patience. "I don't know. The Route of Ages and Seefra and exploding suns and exploding Trances—which is kind of the same thing as it turns out—and I was just sick of it. I wanted to go home, and after everything that sure as hell wasn't Andromeda anymore, but then there was no Earth either so screw that plan. I finally gave up and took off. It's not like the drifts are any better, but at least they don't pretend to be."
"I would have thought you'd have picked another planet," Tyr said after a minute. "Perhaps that water resort that you enjoy so much."
"I probably should have," Harper admitted after a minute. "I don't know why I didn't at least take a vacation first." He hadn't surfed since before Seefra, not even on a hoverboard, and he missed it. Hell, he missed his hoverboard. For some reason he just hadn't had the energy to build a new one since his had been smashed back on Andromeda during the attack. The first one. "But here I am." He met Tyr's eyes. "And here you are. Why weren't you leading the Nietzschean fleet?"
It was a fair question and Tyr knew it, especially since Harper had answered his. More or less honestly, too, it seemed, although he was sure that a great deal had been left out. He nodded slightly. He would be editing as well, but he would answer. Although…he wasn't used to hearing that level of exhaustion in the little professor's voice, though. It wasn't the exhaustion of overwork, he'd seen that before on Andromeda and it had generally resulted in Harper curling up in whatever small, dark place was closest and then coming back with even more energy a few hours later, in this case he just seemed tired.
He reached out and nudged the little professor's plate back towards him. "You know that I had plans when I left the Andromeda."
Harper rolled his eyes. "When don't you have plans?"
"Do you want to hear or don't you?"
Harper gestured for him to go ahead. And picked up his fork again, which was good to see. Tyr hadn't thought much about it before, but he'd also lost some weight since they'd last seen each other, and he didn't have a great deal to spare.
"I know that your experiences with Nietzscheans have been…bad," Tyr said slowly, trying to figure out how best to start. Humans didn't necessarily see things the way that his kind did.
Harper shot him a sardonic look but didn't say anything.
"That isn't the way they—we—are supposed to be. Petty tyrants wrapped in senseless squabbles." He shook his head. "We were supposed to be—"
"Save the speech, Tyr," Harper interrupted. "I've read the books. Hell, I've met Drago Museveni. The guy's an asshole, by the way. Was an asshole. Whatever."
"Excuse me?"
"Seefra. Sucked."
"You've clearly suffered a head injury." There was no other explanation.
"I wish. He figured out the Route of Ages for whatever insane reason that he had—probably some great master plan, you're more into those than I am—and showed up. Got the shit beat out of him by Rhade, got the shit beat out of him by Dylan…hell, he was Beka's boyfriend for a while, so that ought to tell you something."
Tyr had no idea how to process what Harper was saying. "You're serious." It wasn't a question, but he had no idea what else he could possibly say. "You've met Drago Museveni."
"Unfortunately." He shook his head. "Look, it's complicated. Most everything about Seefra is complicated when it comes right down to it. Well, except for the sucking part. And where he's concerned the asshole part. My point was that I know all about the whole creating a master race scheme, and I hate to be the one to break to you, but it didn't work. Nietzscheans suck too." A pause. "Present company excluded." A longer pause. "Usually."
Tyr's lips twitched. He still wasn't sure how to deal with what Harper had just told him, but as usual the little professor managed to interject humor exactly where there should be none. "Fine, then. His plan failed. The first time around. But it is still a worthy goal." Harper's skepticism was clear on his face, and it was Tyr's turn to shake his head. "I have no use for slavers and you know it. Nor the cowards and bullies who spend their lives preying on those weaker than themselves. We were meant to be better. We were made to be better."
"You know, delusions of grandeur are a common sign of psychosis."
Tyr growled, and Harper scooted his chair back quickly.
"Just saying!"
"If you were not necessary for the removal of this virus from my ship, little man…."
Harper grinned, previous melancholy melting away. "Good thing I'm indispensable, then."
"Be quiet and finish your dinner before I forget that fact," Tyr ordered, feeling a flicker of amusement despite himself. Despite the story that he was relating. "As I was saying, we were made to be better, and I thought they could be. And I was able to convince the Prides to follow me. At first."
"Because of that crap you pulled with Andromeda or something else?"
Tyr met his glare evenly. He had hidden his son thus far and intended to continue to do so, and in this instance Harper's automatic distrust of all things Nietzschean would serve him because he doubted that Harper actually cared why the Prides had followed him. "It was not so difficult as you might think. Despite Dylan's deep-seated beliefs," not to say blind faith, "the Commonwealth is not a Nietzschean ideal."
"Well, obviously. That would require acknowledging that other people are, you know, people."
Tyr wanted to disagree, but in the end, Harper's words were more accurate than Tyr was comfortable with. The behavior of the Drago-Kazov and the other Prides who had followed their lead after the fall had done their kind no favors. "Regardless, after the initial alliance, factions developed more quickly than I expected. Between their absurd squabbles, their ridiculous, irrelevant politics…." He shook his head, feeling his lip curling in disgust as he remembered those nigh-unending 'discussions.' "I began with the support of Bolivar and the Sabra-Jaguar, reinforced by the destruction of Enga's Redoubt, but soon enough Bolivar found reason to put himself forward to lead." Tyr had expected that to happen at some point, Bolivar was Nietzschean to the core and one didn't become an Alpha by sitting back and allowing others to determine his path, but he'd thought to have his own power base better supported by then. He might have if the others hadn't been so focused on their insignificant, inconsequential concerns. Or if he'd had a Pride of his own to back him. "Perhaps Bolivar might have been a viable choice," as much as he hated saying it, "but in the end he too was forced back."
"Dragans," Harper spit.
"Precisely." Tyr heard the same venom echoing from his voice as he'd heard in Harper's. "One world destroyed, even their homeworld, meant little to a Pride of that size. And the loss of their Alpha and his closest supporters merely left a power vacuum that far too many were eager to fill." He scoffed. "And still, in the end, the new Drago-Kazov Alpha was no leader at all. All of the possibilities in the universe and he made himself into nothing more than a tool of the Abyss. Fool."
"So that's why it was an U—a Nietzschean—fleet on top of a Magog fleet," Harper said quietly. "Figures." He tilted his head. "So, what, they just kicked you out? Last I looked slitting throats and blowing up ships was the way to get ahead where Nietzscheans were concerned, and I can't imagine whatever these 'reasons' they originally had to follow you just up and disappeared."
Harper was far too intelligent for his own good, sometimes. And he did know Nietzscheans. "Under normal circumstances you would be correct," Tyr acknowledged, "but there were certain other considerations in this case." DNA, genetics, the most important things to even the most inferior Nietzschean, and in his case DNA that made him valuable enough to risk keeping as a prisoner. It was why he never intended to allow any of them to lay hands on his son. "Enough so to make me a useful figurehead, among other things."
That statement was enough to replace the calculating stare on Harper's face with shock. "Figurehead? Like, figurehead, seriously? You? How did you not slit their throats?"
Tyr smiled. At least one person in the universe knew him well enough to recognize the level of sheer stupidity in their actions. "I dispatched perhaps half a dozen of my erstwhile 'honor guard' as I was leaving. There are others that I will deal with when the opportunity arises."
"Well, that sounds about right, at least." Harper's eyes dropped to the counter between them. "So you weren't there at the end."
"Just as well, I suppose, given how it went." A defeat that left the Nietzscheans scattered nearly as badly as they'd been after the fall of the Commonwealth, and there was little comfort to be had in the fact that the Drago-Kazov had taken the worst of it. It was Tyr's turn to focus on the counter between them for a moment and then he shook his head and pushed himself to his feet. "If you're done with that, give me your plate. You might as well get started on whatever other horrific things you're planning for my engine room."
