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Harper rocked back on his heels and stared up at the frame in front of him. Not only had he been right about what it was, the frame was in decent shape, too. He hadn't taken much more than a glance at the internals yet, and if the one fried control panel that he had seen was anything to go by it'd take at least a solid month of work to get it into anything like a usable state, but it was definitely in the realm of doable. Of course, he wasn't going to be here to do the work, but maybe if Tyr wasn't too attached to it he wouldn't object to giving the frame to Harper as part of his payment. Assuming that they could get it out of here.

Harper looked behind him. Assuming that Tyr didn't murder him. Sometimes his mouth got away from him, and he really, really should have shut up rather than blurting out his conclusions this morning. Not that he thought they were wrong, just...really badly timed.

Normally he didn't consider Tyr dangerous. Well, okay, he always considered Tyr dangerous, he wasn't an idiot, but it had been a while since he'd seen Tyr as dangerous to him. When all was said and done he was just a scrawny kludge, after all, and while he had no particular problem with reducing Nietzscheans to their component parts—with explosives and from a safe distance, thank you—he'd never been the one to start the fights. And as long as he wasn't starting it and his presence didn't somehow endanger Tyr's life, Tyr wasn't the kind of person who'd bother with more than the occasional threat. Especially since he liked Harper, even if he'd never admit it.

Except now there was a kid involved. At least one. You didn't mess with a Nietzschean's kids. You didn't even think about messing with a Nietzschean's kids if you knew what was good for you. Harper had never been one for that kind of twisted guerrilla warfare anyway, but he'd known some guys back on Earth who'd been much less discriminating in their targets, and it had never ended well. For them or for anyone else within a pretty extreme blast radius. Presumably Tyr had been keeping his kid-or-kids a secret for some reason, and what he was likely to do now that Harper knew Harper couldn't even begin to guess. As it was Tyr had just dropped the console and stalked away, but Harper hadn't seen him in a while. Long enough that he'd retreated into the smugglers' bay and wasn't too sure if he'd come back down for dinner or not.

A quick look around the bay didn't reveal any sudden answers, and with a sigh Harper braced himself and hopped up on the nose of the racer, ducking his head as he did so to avoid slamming his skull into the ceiling panels. Putting himself to work wouldn't give him any answers either, but at least it would keep him occupied. Nothing good ever happened when he gave his paranoia free reign, and if worst came to worst he had a new shriller and half a dozen flash-bangs on him along with his gun and tools.

He dropped in through the gaping hole where the racer's front shield should be and landed on a gritty floor. As he'd noted before, the control panels were a mess, but maybe there was something worth salvaging hiding in here somewhere. If nothing else, it'd be good to get a general idea of what the systems had once looked like before he tried to build new versions himself.

The pilot seat had been ripped out at some point and it only took a few kicks to dislodge the passenger seat in the rear as well, after which it was tossed out through the same hole he'd entered through. From the look of things it had been held in by a few years of dust and not much else, and without it he had a little more room to work.

Wall panels first, they tended to do the best job of protecting internal conduits provided that the frame remained intact, and when he pried one free he found that that was the case here as well. Older tech but usable enough. Mostly. He'd put some test current through, just in case, before he actually tried to use the old conduits to power anything.

He'd worked his way all the way forward, mentally noting what absolutely had to be replaced versus what might be salvageable, and managed to pry open the obviously-fried front panel to investigate the rat's nest of corroded wires inside it when the little hairs on the back of his neck lifted and he tensed automatically. "Hey, Tyr."

Tyr leaned against the frame, craning his head to peer inside at Harper. Well, to peer at Harper or just to avoid hitting his head on anything. He really did not look comfortable in the cramped bay, and under other circumstances Harper might have snickered. Now wasn't exactly the time to be laughing, though, even if Tyr's blades were down and he didn't look immediately murderous.

"What are you doing, professor?"

"Seeing what can be salvaged."

"From this?" He sneered. "You have low standards."

"Hey, this was impressive engineering work in its time." Just because Tyr might be planning to do away with him was no reason to let Tyr be rude about his work.

"A time clearly long past. You're late for dinner. Are you planning to join me?"

"Oh." His stomach was starting to complain a little, now that Tyr mentioned it. It was an annoying fact about eating; once you started doing it regularly your body expected you to keep doing it regularly. He rocked up from his kneeling position into a crouch. "Depends. Are you planning to poison me?" It would be kind of a silly thing for Tyr to do since he could just reach in and grab Harper by the throat and that would be the end of it right now—or it would be if Harper didn't stab him in the arm, which of course he would, and then things would get really ugly—but there were plenty of things that would kill Harper that wouldn't even give Tyr a stomachache so it wasn't completely out of the question.


Tyr couldn't read any humor in the steady eyes staring up at him, and he couldn't precisely blame Harper. Harper had known immediately that he'd been trying to hide his son's existence, even if Tyr hadn't confirmed his words and had found reason to be elsewhere before Harper's mouth had even shut, and obviously the surest way to protect Tamerlane would be to remove Harper from the equation. But it wasn't as if there was anyone here for Harper to tell. He'd have plenty of time to find a more permanent solution before they reached another station.

Harper was still watching him, and he waved off the question. "Don't be absurd. It would be far more efficient to simply break your neck."

"You know, if that's your idea of being reassuring, you're awful at it."

Tyr didn't bother to dignify that with a response. "Get out here, Harper. If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it by now, and the meal is growing later as we speak." He could think of half a dozen ways offhand, despite the fact that Harper was nowhere near as helpless as he appeared, the simplest of which being to shoot him.

"You know, it's kind of a sad commentary on my life when that is reassuring." Harper waved at Tyr to step back and then scrambled up and out the front of the whatever-it-was, landing where Tyr had been standing. "So what's for dinner, anyway?"

Tyr suppressed an annoyed grumble at the fact that Harper barely had to tilt his head to clear the ceiling panels. Why whoever had built this place hadn't made it half again as tall as it was he would never understand; he already knew from the layout of the kitchen that they had been his height or better so this couldn't have been comfortable for them either. "The last of the Algelican bluefish," he said as he turned for the hatch. "Hardly something I'd waste on poisoning someone."

"Most things that would poison me wouldn't even give you a stomachache," Harper said. "I've tried."

Tyr looked back at him, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, not on you. I'm not an idiot. Besides, you complain whenever I'm in the galley without you anyway."

"That's because you make a mess whenever you're in there without supervision." At least when Harper made a mess of one of his engineering spaces he had the excuse that things usually functioned better when he was done. When it was the kitchen, it seemed to be a mess just for the sake of a mess, and Tyr had no idea how he managed it in less than half the time of a simple morning workout. An omelet was not that complicated.

Harper denied the accusation, of course, but Tyr ignored him as he slid down the ladder to the bottom of the cargo bay and waited for Harper to follow a bit more sedately. At least he seemed to have been telling the truth earlier and his arm was healed, although he was still favoring one leg as much as he tried to hide it.

"So if you aren't going to kill me, does he or she or they have a name or names?" Harper asked as he reached the deck beside Tyr.

"Excuse me?"

"Well, if you're going to kill me for knowing at all, you might as well fill in some details."

Tyr shook his head at the absurdity of the statement, but in some ways Harper had a point. Or he would if it wasn't just Tamerlane's existence that Tyr felt the need to hide, at least. And in some ways it would be a relief to tell someone about his son, just for the sheer relief of being able to talk about his son rather than constantly guarding his words. "His name is Tamerlane," he said finally as they reached the kitchen. The counter was already set with plates, and he was pleased to find the fish still looking nicely done when he pulled it out of the warmer. Fish had an annoying tendency to dry out, and it had taken a longer than he'd expected to find Harper when he'd gone hunting earlier. He still needed to find Harper a communicator.

Harper gave his hands a desultory wash—it was amazing that he hadn't killed himself through simple negligence yet—and then hopped up on to one of the stools. "So how old is he? Or did your wife and son somehow survive when you pulled that disappearing act way back when and you just decided not to tell the rest of us about it?"

Tyr slapped his fingers before he could snatch any vegetables from the tray. "Kindly use a serving fork like a civilized person. And Freya's death was genuine, but I was able to smuggle my son out of the area without the Gennites becoming suspicious. The secrecy was—is—necessary for his safety."

"Right."

The word was drawn out with an accompanying eye roll, and Tyr glared. "Eat your dinner before I do kill you."

"Yeah, yeah. So what's he like?"

"He is...young. He's very clever and has quite the vocabulary from what Olma has told me, but on the rare occasion that we speak he never says much." Next to nothing without Olma's prompting. Solemn and quiet and Tyr could count the number of times that he'd managed to get a smile from him on one hand. "I suspect that it's simply unfamiliarity," he said, although the justification sounded even more hollow when voiced. "I'm sure that things will improve as he grows to understand the situation more."

Harper nodded and kept eating, and after a moment Tyr continued.

"He does quite well in his classes despite his age, and Olma tells me that he handles himself admirably in his activities and as measured against the other children on the station." Of course, that was only to be expected from a properly-raised Nietzschean child, but still, it was good to hear.

"What kind of activities can a four or five year old do? I mean, I can't imagine she—his grandmother or something, I guess?—has him out scrounging for food or kindling or whatever."

"He is involved in sports, of course, to build muscle and improve coordination and agility. Small crafts to build dexterity." Not in the same type of facilities that he'd had access to as a child, perhaps, but under the circumstances he accepted that Olma was doing her best. In that respect, at least.

He found himself describing a short vid of Tamerlane's last match against another child who was older but of similar size, and somehow that led into a story about the small object he'd designed for Tyr as a gift—not one that Tyr had been able to collect, of course, but in this particular case he'd been pleased enough to accept the thought despite the fact that normally Nietzscheans eschewed such things—and then some of his class results and the next thing he knew the food remaining in front of him was cold and Harper was trying to hide a yawn.

"Sorry," Harper said with a quick smile when he realized that Tyr had caught him. "He sounds like a great kid, honest. I'm just beat."

As well he should be considering that the meal had started late and then Tyr had somehow managed to talk for almost four hours without realizing it. He never did that, and he was just as glad that his complexion was such that it hid his flush when he realized that he was actually growing hoarse. "You should have said something rather than expect me to entertain you for hours," he snapped.

Harper rolled his eyes and hopped off the stool, putting his plate in the washer and patting Tyr's arm. "Love you too, big guy."