Thanks to everyone who read. As always, reviews are appreciated.


Harper snarled and fought the steel grip on his wrists. He couldn't match the strength that held them to the deck beneath him, but it was by no means the first time in his life that he'd found himself trapped, and he kicked at his attacker even as he curled his upper body inwards to—

"Enough!" Something rapped his forehead. "No biting!"

Harper blinked as the voice penetrated his sleep-fogged mind. "Tyr?"

"Your habit of crawling into the nearest available hole to sleep is not conducive to health or long life, little man. And I'm attached to those fingers. Humans."

The last was added in an exasperated huff and Harper glared as the hand wrapped around his wrists released, but he couldn't deny that pinning his arms had been a smart move on Tyr's part. Aside from the pistol beside him, Harper slept with a knife under his pillow—or arm, in this case—and a nanowelder and shriller somewhere to hand. "Was tired," he retorted, tucking the knife away and rubbing the stinging spot on his forehead. He pushed himself to a sitting position inside the gutted console he'd curled up in. "Besides, you're the one that put them within reach."

Tyr shook his head. "There are perfectly good quarters available. Come out."

Despite the brusque order, one hand shielded Harper's head from the edge of the console as he scrambled out from under it, and Harper nudged him lightly. "Sorry. I probably kicked you, too, didn't I?

"You tried."

He looked amused, which, given how Nietzscheans viewed threats, probably meant that Harper hadn't come within a light year of succeeding. Still. "Didn't mean to. Just a habit." On the Maru and then the Andromeda he'd managed to squash the reflex most of the time, but in his time on Seefra it had returned with a vengeance. After he'd gone back to Andromeda he'd tried to calm it again, but no one had spent enough time around him for it to really matter—even Doyle and Rommie had treated him more like an annoyance than anything—and on the drifts…well, there it wasn't such a bad reaction to have.

Tyr waved a hand, dismissing the matter. "You would have to be either considerably larger or with considerably better leverage to pose any kind of hazard. Come."

Harper couldn't help making a face at his back as he followed Tyr into the corridor, but it wasn't like he'd actually wanted to find out that he'd hurt the big guy. "I think I left my bag in medical."

"You did. Do you want to check your injuries again?"

"Probably wouldn't be a bad idea," he admitted. Tyr had been right about the medication he had being less than human appropriate—Nietzscheans could handle concentrations that a human would find well beyond the toxic threshold, and Tyr's supplies reflected that—but Harper had had enough of his own with him that it didn't matter. Especially since the regen unit had worked just fine. He probably should have listened to Tyr's suggestion that he visit medical before starting work, but it wasn't like he'd never taken hits before. If nothing was actively hemorrhaging he didn't tend to pay as much attention as he probably should.

Tyr followed him, and when Harper boosted himself onto the table and shrugged off his shirt he was relieved to note that the majority of bruising had healed to the point that his scars were hidden again. Not that he was ashamed of them—the ones that were from work didn't matter, and he'd done his best to trade scar for scar where the Dragans were concerned and never mind that Nietzscheans scarred far less easily than humans—but those in the second category still weren't something that he liked talking about. Especially with someone who had blades on his arms, even if Tyr was good about keeping his down and away from Harper most of the time.

The cuts across his arms and shoulders were half-healed as well, and he twisted and took the regen unit Tyr handed him with a nod of thanks. They didn't feel bad, but might as well get them healed up by morning.

"You're ready to remove the virus?" Tyr asked as he worked, leaning back against the second table.

"Yep, everything's good to go. You'll be around, right?"

"That is my plan. Why?"

"A second set of hands would be good to have, just in case. I don't expect to need them, but for this kind of thing it's not a bad idea." He shrugged. It was never a great feeling to see the wire you needed to yank right in front of you but be just a fraction short of actually reaching it. He lowered the regen unit and rolled his shoulders. That'd do. It only took a minute to put the regen unit back up, and then he hopped down off the bunk. "Do you actually have a job here?" he asked curiously. He kind of assumed not given that Tyr was planning to head back to whatever station the bug had been planted on before continuing to Abraxis, but he wasn't really the kind of guy to sit around idle, either.

"I finished a transport job when I arrived," Tyr said as they headed back into the hall. "Given that I've got another job already lined up, it wasn't—isn't—critical to find anything for the interim. Normally I would look for a job taking me in the general direction of Abraxis in the interests of efficiency, but under the circumstances…." He waved a hand. "I will be here tomorrow." He palmed open a door open and gestured inside. "These quarters are yours until we reach Abraxis. If you wish to sleep under the bunk, that is your decision. If I lose fingers having to haul you out you'll regret it."

The last was added in a growl, and Harper rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, I'm shaking. But, thanks."

Tyr nodded and turned back to a door slightly further along, presumably his quarters. Good to know where they were, even if Harper wasn't planning to be bothering him in the middle of what passed for night.

When Harper took a look around, he found nothing to complain about in his temporary quarters. They weren't big, but he hadn't expected that on a ship of this size. And they were still bigger than his quarters had been on the drift, although that was probably because he'd been using the storage closet leading to the washroom as quarters rather than bothering to rent separate ones. Plus he was pretty sure that the extra blankets dumped on the foot of the bed were recent additions.


"Not the blue one, the blue one," Harper ordered, waving a hand in Tyr's general direction.

"Boy…." Harper didn't even seem to hear him, his focus on the panel in front of him, and Tyr temporarily gave up on threats and pulled the second blue wire. Harper may have called the collection of wires running into the console that he was working behind efficient, but the nest in front of Tyr most definitely was not. And Tyr still wasn't entirely sure what Harper had him doing.

The day had started out well enough. Harper rose nearly as early as he did, and by the time Tyr had completed his morning workout Harper had finished whatever he'd needed to do in medical and was poking around the supplies in the kitchen. He'd been happy enough to give up his quest for whatever and chop asi-peppers for omelets when Tyr had told him too, though—just as well, the universe only knew what completely inappropriate disease-carrying device he'd pull out of a pocket and start trying to use to cook with if left to his own devices—and then he'd been ready to start on the virus.

It hadn't looked like much to start with, Harper jacked in and slumped against a console, showing no movement except twitching eyeballs. Still strange, in Tyr's eyes, although he'd kept an eye on him in that state more than once on Andromeda. Then his eyes had snapped open, and with a grin in Tyr's direction and a 'here we go' he'd pulled himself back to his feet and started tapping on the console.

Then though, his head had jerked up and he'd started calling things to Tyr and life had become considerably more interesting. "Red one, red one!" Harper yelled, yanking Tyr back to the present.

"There are three red ones," Tyr snapped, even as he reached for the nearest.

"Uh…the one in the middle!"

"I am going to beat you so hard that your ancestors bleed," Tyr informed him as he removed the correct wire. When Harper had said that it might be useful to have him around, it had sounded very much like a remote possibility, but now he was dealing with a mass of wires none of which had any sort of useful labels on them, and whatever he was doing was clearly not makework.

Harper made what Tyr assumed was supposed to be a rude gesture in his general direction—it wasn't as if he kept up to date on the meaning of random human hand signs, especially when the human in question had a fistful of wires that made the whole thing look like nothing more than a roll of his wrist anyway—and he made a mental note to carry out that threat when next convenient. He'd forgotten how annoying the little man could be when he was in the mood.

"Damn, damn, other blue too," Harper said, hands back on his console suddenly. "And, uh…." He scanned the mess in front of Tyr quickly. "Uh, the green. The one on your upper left. Yeah, that one, quickly."

Tyr did as he said, and a moment and a few taps later and Harper blew out a slow breath.

"All right, that's got it. As of now you are virus-free, with the exception of this console which will happily send whatever jump coordinates you want off to whatever dead-drop their using. And keep pinging that you are happily oblivious right along with it. I wouldn't count on it lasting more than a week or so unless I go in and tweak more of the programming, but for the next couple days you're solid."

"What was all that about?" Tyr asked, indicating the wires he'd been pulling.

"They were smart. Smarter than I thought." He made a face. "Of all the life support systems to tap I couldn't figure out why they'd be looking at carbon filtration, but there are some markers there that work out differently in slipstream than in normal space. I didn't realize what the equations were until I was in the middle of them. I might have been able to deal with them in software later, but I'm not sure I'd care to bet on that. It's not a bad way to crosscheck that kind of virus, actually." He gave the console a considering look. "I'll have to keep it in mind."

"Provided you don't plan to use my ship as a test vector, I have no objection," Tyr said, stepping over to take a closer look at the console that Harper indicated could control the remains of the virus. The interface seemed clear enough. "When was the virus inserted?"

"Three weeks, two days, and about sixteen hours ago. I can pull it up to the second it went active if you really want."

"That's accurate enough. Madras, Corteo sector." Tyr curled his lip. It had a poor reputation, even among the other stations in that sector, but he had dropped off a local fool with more money than sense and his son with no incident, and no one had been fool enough to molest him or his ship before he'd left a day later. Or so he'd thought.

"Ew," Harper said. "Why did you go there?"

"The pay was good, and I was in the region." He considered for a moment. Four jumps to get there, perfectly doable for a competent pilot, but it was a situation likely to leave him at marginally less than his best upon arrival. On the other hand, there were now two competent pilots on this ship, and he doubted that Harper would want to go wandering on Madras. It wasn't a Nietzschean colony, but the Corteo sector was—or at least had been—contested space between Sabra-Jaguar and the smaller Komodo Pride, and that showed in the not-quite warships that passed time on the various stations.

"What?" Harper asked, looking up at him.

"When was the last time you piloted slipstream?"

"Before I left Andromeda. Why? You want me to pilot?"

"It would be faster if we split it. I don't, however, want to find myself three centuries in the past."

"Hey, that was the purple princess," Harper said, holding up his hands. "I've got more reason to hate time travel than just about anyone, remember? And sure, I'm good to take part of it. I mean, I'd say it's like riding a bicycle, except that I haven't done that since I was like eight so I don't know if I can still ride a bicycle, but I'm sure that I can still pilot slipstream so maybe piloting slipstream is like riding a bicycle is supposed to be."

"Did that make any sense before you started speaking?" Tyr had to ask.

Harper opened his mouth and then shut it again, which Tyr decided was answer enough.

"Secure anything that you need to in your quarters and meet me on command."

"Uh, sure, but you're going to have to tell me where command is," Harper pointed out. "I haven't exactly gotten a tour, you know."

"Ah." He should have realized that, but he'd had other things on his mind. "I will remedy that later. For now, continue past quarters and the kitchen and follow around the cargo bay."

"Okay." Harper nodded at the console. "So do you want to let them know you're coming, or have them think that you're still here, or convince them that you're headed for Mars, or what?"

"Mars?"

Harper shook his head. "Just another dead planet in a dead solar system. What'll it be?"

"Pick a reasonably-sized commerce planet in the opposite direction from Madras and let them think we're going there. I prefer the element of surprise."