Thanks to everyone who read and to FDWurth for reviewing.


Confusion, pain, and unconsciousness warred in Harper's mind. Engines roared, his dislocated shoulder slammed against metal, and black and stars flashed in front of his eyes. The world shivered again and he was flipped sideways with his weight coming down on the leg that had been shot. When the world finally blackened, all he felt was a fleeting wave of relief.

Of course, the next thing that he was aware of was a spike of white-hot pain through his shoulder, and he struggled automatically. To no avail. Whatever was pinning him in place wasn't hurting him, at least not any more than he was already hurting, but that didn't mean that he liked it.

"Be still, Harper."

The voice was familiar, at least. He'd figured that Tyr would come out on top once the shooting started. But the idea of ongoing pain wasn't appealing and he ignored the order.

"Still," Tyr repeated. "You will hurt far less when your shoulder is wrapped."

Probably true, even if he didn't much like the idea. Tyr didn't seem inclined to give him a choice, though, because a hand wrapped around the back of Harper's neck held him firmly in place, and as another jolt went through his shoulder things darkened again.

The next time he woke up he felt almost like a human being again, and he blinked hard. The lighting was dim, but medical was recognizable enough. One arm—the one that had been dislocated—was bound to his chest, and the rest of his injuries had been treated and were either healed or wrapped and on their way in that direction. A pretty good indication that he and Tyr were the only two still alive, even if there was no sign of the big guy.

"Ah, hell." The lights weren't dim, the flicker program was still running. Tyr's skull was probably about ready to split. Well, that or he'd smashed the light enclosure in his quarters or Command or wherever and was sitting in darkness ready to yell at Harper to fix it. Knowing Tyr, that was more likely.

Harper took a quick look around and then swung his feet over the edge of the bunk and lowered himself to the floor as carefully as he could with one functional arm. The bound one felt okay, but he knew as well as anyone that dislocated shoulders didn't heal instantly, and if it was wrapped there was probably a reason. At least color and feeling had returned to his fingers.

Unfortunately the one who'd shot him in the leg—the leg opposite his arm, at least, so small favors—had been aiming to hurt and had done a pretty good job. His knee ached fiercely when he put weight on it, and he was pretty sure that the bandages that weren't there for support hid burns. Wasn't like he hadn't had worse, though, and he managed all right by keeping his good hand on the wall as he limped his way over to the screen. The idea of trying to hack in while standing on unsteady legs didn't exactly thrill him, especially since he knew that his ribs had taken some hits too even if they weren't bothering him at the moment, but fortunately the panel below the screen was reachable from the floor. Even better, when he popped it off seemed to have the connections that he needed.

He'd lost his jack, or at least he'd left it behind in Tyr's quarters when the Ubers had grabbed him, but it wasn't like he didn't carry a spare, and he sank down and stretched his legs out in front of him before jacking in.

Lights were the first thing to fix, and then Harper did a quick check of the rest of the ship's systems. The engine readouts said that someone had done some damage, but nothing critical and nothing he couldn't fix when he got a chance; they'd managed even less when they'd tried to get into Tyr's encrypted logs. And from what Harper could tell, he and Tyr were now somewhere well off the standard slipstream paths so there was nothing immediate that he needed to do. He disconnected himself and wasn't surprised to find Tyr standing in front of him.

"You are a menace, little professor." One hand caught the back of Harper's collar and swung him back onto the bunk.

"They started it," Harper returned, fighting down the urge to snarl. Not that he was entirely sure how he'd have gotten back up from the floor without some help, but being moved like that without his consent wasn't something that he enjoyed. Light shoves and gentle cuffs didn't bother him, he'd learned back on Andromeda that Tyr was just as tactile as he was in his own way although it wasn't something that everyone saw, but actual force raised unpleasant memories. And what had happened earlier hadn't left him in a good frame of mind in the first place. Still, it wasn't like Tyr intended any harm, and his collar was probably about the safest place to grab right now all things considered. "You okay?" he checked.

"You did more damage than any of those fools. What happened to my lights?"

"Nothing complicated. I set them to cycle at the frequency just below where Nietzschean eyes stop compensating. Optic nerves get so tied up trying to handle the light-dark transitions that they can't do much else; insert blindness here. Plus it seems to hurt like hell." When it came to Ubers—most of them, anyway—it was a bonus as far as he was concerned.

"Take that as given." Tyr rubbed his forehead. "So the glasses change the amount of compensation that needs to be done."

Tyr was a smart guy and it wasn't quite a question, but Harper nodded anyway. "Exactly. Returns some vision. I can account for it if everyone is wearing more or less the same glasses, but at that point it's usually not worth the effort." At that point there were usually Dragans either hunting for or shooting at him, or at least there had been back on Earth, so he'd had other things to worry about.

"It doesn't bother you?"

"Nah, human eyes adapt way slower. Especially on light-to-dark. Things look a little dimmer, but it's not a big deal."

Tyr made a disgusted sound.

"Hey, thank the Dragans. If they'd ever shut up about Nietzschean superiority, maybe I wouldn't have found so many ways to throw it back in their faces."

The expression on Tyr's face made it clear what he thought of that.

"Any idea what triggered this mess?" Harper asked. "I didn't see any sign that the guy digging in your computer tried to resurrect the virus or anything like that, so did they just see your ship and go for it or what?"

"I'm not certain." Something Tyr clearly didn't like admitting. "It is possible." He nodded to the open panel. "You are certain that they didn't put anything new in?"

"I'll do a full scan before we go anywhere else, assuming we aren't leaving now, but no, from what I saw their engineer mostly wanted your records. And then he was pissed off about the lights." He gestured at his arm. "Thanks for patching me up."

Tyr waved it off. "It doesn't appear you have any injuries that won't heal, though being jostled going through slipstream did you no favors."

There were a few things Tyr and Harper agreed on without question, getting out of bad situations before worrying about injuries being one of them, and it was Harper's turn to wave off the comment. He started to lower his feet back to the floor slowly, only to halt as Tyr put a hand against his uninjured shoulder. He didn't even have to push to hold Harper in place, but Harper found himself jerking back anyway, and then sucking in his breath as his shoulder protested. "Come on, release the human. I want to see what their engineer did."

"And allow you to fall on your face and worsen your concussion? I've no plans to go anywhere for several days." He tilted his head and then removed his hand, taking a seat on the bunk beside Harper. /You've got quite the vocabulary, little man. Are you fluent?/

/Fluent when listening. Speaking…,/ Harper shrugged. Well, he started to and then winced when his bound shoulder objected again. That was going to get real annoying real fast. /Speak—I speak—okay if you want insults./ Another pause as he tried to find the right words. He would know them if he heard them, and once upon a time he had been the next best thing to fluent, but it had been a long time since he'd even heard High Nietzche. /If you want nice, speak Common./

/Where did you learn?/

Harper looked up at Tyr, rolling his eyes. /Where do you think? Got—I got—caught in…by…./ He gave up and switched back to Common. "I got caught in a slaver sweep when I was twelve or thirteen. Usually they'd throw someone my size back unless they needed charge boys in the mines since it's not like a sixty pound kid is much use for anything else, but this time they dragged me up to a suborbital with a couple dozen others."

Tyr scoffed. "A Nietzschean child would be twice that size that by that age. Easily."

"Yeah, there's a shock." He wasn't too much more than twice that now. "Anyway, I'm pretty sure that that place was punishment duty for everyone involved, Dragans included. Probably why there was such turnover in the human population; they took it all out on us. Given how cramped it was, they used High Nietzsche among themselves when we weren't supposed to understand." He couldn't help a snort. "It would have worked better if it wasn't such a damn easy language to pick up."


Tyr wasn't sure he'd say that, but Harper didn't always define 'easy' in the same way that other people did. High Nietzsche was one of Drago Museveni's few…Tyr wouldn't call it a failure, exactly, but it hadn't taken over as the lingua franca of the galaxy in the way that the Progenitor had envisioned. About the only usage it had in these times was among Nietzscheans in formal situations, and even that was becoming steadily rarer. His joining with Freya had been conducted entirely in Common. "How long did they have you?" he asked.

"That time, maybe two or three months." Harper rocked his free hand. "Something like that, anyway, although it was always hard to mark time up there. Spent our shifts loading and unloading tributes from the settlements, but they were never on a very regular schedule."

"An undersized child is hardly a good choice for such a task," Tyr observed. Harper still wouldn't be much use for something of that sort today, in Tyr's opinion. Although it was just as well. He had seen firsthand how long charge boys in the mines survived; despite his affinity for explosives Harper would have had great difficulty beating those statistics. Tyr had been fortunate that he'd been too large at fifteen to be considered for such a task.

"No kidding," Harper said with a roll of his eyes. "Especially when the antigravs kept shorting out. But they weren't exactly interested in my opinion. Anyway, it took a bit, but eventually I hacked their computers and shipped myself home in a load of turnips. Or, technically I shipped myself to the Dragan compound in Boston and then snuck out through the vents, but you get the idea."

That sounded about right. "And no one noticed?" Tyr asked. Even the Drago-Kazov shouldn't have been that unobservant.

Harper went quiet for a minute. "There was one guard who might have. He liked to—" Whatever he liked doing was enough to make Harper's knuckles go white where he clenched his hand, but he cut himself off and shook his head. "Doesn't matter. Especially since he and some friends of his died in an airlock malfunction a few days before I did it. None of the others ever looked at me twice except to knock me around, same as they did everyone else, and as for the other slaves…humans died all the time. I doubt anyone thought a thing about it when I didn't return from shift."

"You, of course, had nothing to do with that airlock malfunction," Tyr said, not bothering to make it a question. Or to ask what the worthless excuse for a Nietzschean had done. There was a long list of unpleasant possibilities, and in the end Harper had dealt with it.

"Would I do that?"

Harper started to push himself up again, and Tyr caught his collar again and set him further back on the bunk. There was no good reason for him to be up on that damaged leg just yet.

Harper twisted hard and his eyes flashed without humor. "Let go. I'm fine. I want to see what they did to the engine room."

"You want injure yourself further, from what I can see," Tyr said, although he moved his hand away. It probably hadn't been the wisest thing for him to do given the history that Harper had just related; the little professor was perfectly capable of being dangerous when he felt trapped, even when there was no need for it. "Stay there and I will get us dinner," he offered.

Harper scowl didn't fade but he did nod, and Tyr went to see what he had. According to the regen unit Harper's jaw had taken damage so perhaps soup or stew.

By the time he got back to the medical bay with two bowls, Harper had returned to the floor in front of the panel and jacked himself back into the ship, and Tyr sighed and sank down beside him. "Boy…."

Harper didn't hear the grumbled complaint, of course, and Tyr put his back against the wall beside Harper and waited for him to pull himself free. At least he'd left his bandages alone, and the binding on his shoulder as well. Tyr hadn't been willing to risk any Nietzschean numbing agents on a human—if anyone was going to have a bad reaction it would be Harper, and he was no medic—and everything that Harper had was topical, so he'd had to put it back in the socket without the help of medication. It hadn't been a pleasant experience. Harper had only regained consciousness for a moment, but it had been a moment of screaming.

Harper's eyes twitched and then one hand came up and removed the wire. Tyr waited until Harper had blinked a few times and focused on him before cuffing at him.

"Ow!"

"I didn't touch you." Nor would he have, given Harper's injuries, although Harper was back to looking more mock-offended than upset which was a good sign.

"It's the principle of the thing."

"That's what I was going to say." He passed Harper a bowl and kept the other for himself. "I forgot that you are categorically incapable of being still."

"How'd you forget that?"

"I find myself curious as well." He nodded to the panel behind Harper. "What did you find?"

"My hacks to pass whatever fake travel info you want to whoever was tracking you are still in place, although I don't know if there's much point in keeping that going at this point. There are some missing connections in other systems, probably things that got smashed, but since I haven't been allowed to go to the engine room and your surveillance systems are pretty spotty, I can't say for sure. This is good."

Tyr nodded at the compliment and ignored the complaint. "What happened? Aside from the concussion, dislocated shoulder and the shot to your leg, to the regen unit said that you had a couple broken ribs and a few loose teeth as well."

Harper downed another spoonful before answering. "I was poking around your smuggler bay when they broke in. Thought it was you getting back, at first, but when I realized what was going on I borrowed the command panel in your quarters to make their lives unpleasant. Unfortunately they found me when they were sweeping the ship and decided to make my life unpleasant."

"Short of stopping your heartbeat, you couldn't have avoided it once they were in the room," Tyr offered. "You shot one of them."

"Yeah, the one that was right in front of me when my proximity alert dropped me out of your computers. Didn't help much since his friend was behind me and there was another one by the door, though. The one ripped my arm out of its socket when he pulled me out from under the bed, and it turns out that screaming into a shriller is a lot less useful than blowing into one. Made him drop me long enough for me to get a few shots off at the other guy, I guess, but then he backhanded it out of my mouth—and me into the wall—and…." He started to shrug. "Ow. Got to stop doing that."

"It will heal in a day or two. They destroyed your whistle, though."

"I'll make another. You got them all?"

"Of course." Tyr tilted his head and then flicked Harper's uninjured shoulder lightly. "You need to learn to count. There were seven onboard, not six."

"Hey, genius here. I can't do much if the leader of the whole mess can't be bothered show up on time."

"The leader?"

"That's what I figured he was, anyway." Harper put the spoon down and lifted the bowl to his lips, taking a quick sip before speaking again. "The other two were knocking me around when he showed up and told them to bring me to Command, and then he's the one who ended up shooting me."

"To be fair, wanting to shoot you is probably a fairly common desire."

Harper jabbed an elbow in his general direction. "Did you have any luck finding whoever you were hunting for before your ship got invaded?"

"No." Tyr couldn't help an annoyed growl. "I know there's a great deal of turnover on this station, but I was unable to find anyone that I wished to speak to."

"Wow, that doesn't sound suspicious. Assuming 'anyone' isn't one guy, anyway."

"It isn't, and that was the conclusion that I came to as well, especially since it hasn't been that long since I was last here. And none of the four left anything in the way of contact information, either. I felt no eyes on my back, though, and no one was following me."

"You're sure?"

"Yes."

Harper had better sense than to question his assertion further, tiling his head back and humming quietly. "Maybe they figured they didn't need to follow you if they were lying in wait when you got back?" he asked after a moment, looking back over at Tyr.

"As reasonable a suggestion as anything," Tyr agreed. "You said that they were trying to get into my files?"

"Yeah. Pretty rudimentary stuff from what I saw, though; no way was he cracking your encryption."

"Have you?"

"Not yet."

He smirked, and Tyr growled and swatted at him again. "As soon as you're healed, professor."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Could you tell what he was trying to get?"

"More logs than travel info, I'd say, given file sizes and locations, but that's mostly an educated guess based on what I was seeing in your slipstream records when I was virus-hunting."

That was not good news, and Tyr felt himself tensing. "Is it possible that he copied something or transmitted my data elsewhere, even if it was still encrypted?"

"Copied, sure, that's no trick when you've got direct access to the hardware. Transmitted, though…I don't know. I didn't see any outgoing transmissions when I was inside, but the only comm stuff I was really paying attention to was what I could use to access your personal communicator."

"Can you find out?" There were plenty of things that in his past it didn't really matter if someone discovered, almost all of the jobs he'd taken among them. No doubt that his clients would disagree, and he wouldn't like his reputation being tarnished in that manner, but it was nothing that he couldn't overcome. Information of a personal nature, however, was a different story. He'd kept knowledge of the genetic changes he'd made to an inner circle, knowledge being power and Nietzscheans recognizing that, but it was hard to say how that inner circle might spread the information after he'd split from them. Given that the intruders had been Nietzscheans, if someone—be they connected with the virus or not—was looking for proof, or worse, if they'd accessed one of the few items that indicated the existence of his son and now merely needed to decode it….

"That important, huh."

It wasn't a question, and Tyr didn't bother to answer as Harper drained the last of the liquid from the bowl and handed it back, reaching for the wire. "Give me a few minutes. I can at least say for sure if someone accessed your comm array after you registered for docking."