Thanks to everyone who read and to Aileil for reviewing.


The bones of the XR-6 were starting to show through, even if Tyr would probably argue the point, and Harper took another look around the bay. Someone had gotten the frame in here intact, which meant that there had to be a way to get it out, but damned if he was seeing it. Tyr would be legitimately annoyed if he got back to find that Harper had cut a giant hole in the ceiling of the main bay, not least because it would make the existence of the smugglers' bay obvious, but the only other option seemed to be cutting it open to space. Which wasn't any less obvious and had the additional downside of causing the rest of the items in the bay, at least a few of which had to be of some value, to be sucked out into space. There weren't any grav generators in here like there were in the big bay to keep it from happening, and those were beyond his capability to build from the scrap Tyr had onboard.

Aside from minor considerations like the eventual the usability of the little ship, it would be a lot easier for him to work on it if he could get it down into the big bay, though. Tyr had cargo incoming in a few days, but Harper had looked at the manifest for that as well as the manifests for the last half-dozen times Tyr had moved cargo—if Tyr cared he would have done more to hide the records; he hadn't so he didn't—and there would be plenty of room for everything. Assuming that he could get the damn thing down there.

Harper frowned, turning in a slow circle. He'd found a second hatch before. He hadn't seen any sign of a third yet in his forays through the random piles of whatever up here, but unless they'd literally built the bay around the thing there had to be one.

Maybe there was a third and larger hatch but despite his previous thoughts it did open to space?

He dropped to a crouch and looked up at the ceiling. It would be a little weird and potentially more than a little inconvenient, but any smuggler with sense strapped their cargo down so it couldn't make just the wrong noise at just the wrong time so having to expose it to space on occasion without grav generation might not have been as much of an issue as it seemed at first glance. And Tyr had told him that the last owner had been the non-smuggler, so maybe the last time the bay had been opened was when they'd moved the XR-6 in and he'd been building up the other crap ever since. It made things inconvenient for Harper, but at least it made marginally logical sense. The spools of wire he'd already pulled down were probably the next largest things up here, and they had fit through the ceiling hatch albeit not without a few kicks on Harper's end.

He shook his head and gave up his surveillance of the ceiling. Temporarily, at least. The XR-6 was one of his side projects anyway, and his primary plans for today involved finishing the rewiring of the engine room and then getting started on command.

And hopefully Tyr would be back soon. He'd said before he left that the security detail for the princess generally ran for seven to ten days and that he didn't expect to be able to get back to the ship more than a few times in that timeframe, but it had been eight days and Harper hadn't seen him once. Aside from a few terse messages that he was busy and one set of supplies or another was incoming he hadn't even heard from Tyr.

Harper would have worried that things had gone south somewhere along the line, but he'd been keeping an eye on station feeds out of habit, and while Princess whoever and her retinue had popped up occasionally, it was always in conjunction with some kind of trade agreement or whatever. Nothing even vaguely interesting. Once or twice he'd caught sight of Tyr glowering in the background, perfectly fine and probably perfectly bored. Just dealing with a busier schedule than he'd been expecting, apparently.

It had been easy enough for Harper to handle the arriving supplies, at least. They'd come earlier in the day than he'd have chosen personally, but he'd done that kind of thing often enough for Beka, and the one delivery person who'd been reluctant to release supplies to him rather than to Tyr had been confused into cooperating without too much hassle. And then he'd ended up going out and acquiring a few things of his own, partly because he wasn't nearly as good at Tyr at turning ingredients into anything resembling actual food, and partly because Tyr's shopping list had included neither Sparky nor any kind of alcohol. Since Tyr had transferred the previously-agreed upon funds to his account, he'd fixed both omissions and then added a few more things that he'd never gotten around to reacquiring after Seefra.

He'd gotten his hands on a few basics that Tyr was missing in engineering too, but those had been put on the ship's account. Tyr wasn't likely to argue with him about engineering needs, and it wasn't as if the costs had been particularly high for what he'd found. Way too many people insisted on completely replacing things as soon as they broke rather than looking at what was actually wrong and making a simple repair, and when the first thing he'd found that needed repair was a fab unit...well, it was pretty obvious how that paid for itself.

Repairing the fab unit was actually number two on his priority list, and Harper slid down the ladder and then headed back to engineering and the wiring he was rerouting to make his life easier. Major conduits up high in the ceiling and walls, great. Access panels up that high, pain in the butt. As long as he was going to be staying on Tyr's ship, he was going to fix engineering up the way he liked. Tyr would laugh at him when he noticed, but he wouldn't actually care.

Part of him, a small part, but hard to ignore all the same, was still screaming that he was crazy for agreeing to stay here. It was Tyr, sure, and he and Harper got along pretty well all things considered, but in the end Tyr was a Nietzschean and no kludge with sense willingly worked for a Nietzschean.

Then again, kludges didn't usually get a choice. At least not those born on slave worlds. They did as they were ordered or they were beaten. Or worse. A short trip had been one thing, Harper had needed to way off that station and Tyr had been the only immediately viable option, but long term...

He shook himself. Tyr was Tyr. He'd never hesitated to make his opinion on slavery known, and however another Nietzschean might behave, Harper was damn sure that Tyr would never treat him like that. Or let anyone else, although as with any Nietzschean you had to keep your eyes open because he'd absolutely stab someone in the back if the calculation came out that that was best for him. Still, of all the people to stab in the back your engineer was a pretty stupid choice, and Tyr wasn't a stupid man.

Sure, he might get a little harsh sometimes—back on Andromeda Harper had been on the receiving end of more than a few rough shakes and sharp tugs to his hair, especially when things got tense, and from what Harper had seen Tyr hadn't changed that much in the intervening years—but considering the strength differential between them Tyr was usually downright gentle. Even when he caught Harper in one of their morning matches, which happened at least two-thirds of the time since he was bigger and faster and stronger and there were only so many tricks that Harper could come up with in a twenty-four hour period and still get any actual work done, the worst Harper had to contend with was light drumming against his sides until he was yelping and squirming. And some of the joint and pressure-point focused attacks Tyr was showing him might actually come in handy someday since they relied on speed and accuracy rather than any kind of overwhelming strength. Not that Harper would ever admit that out loud. He still thought that the whole idea was mostly lunacy and he was always perfectly happy to hide in some out of the way location until Tyr gave up.

With another shake of his head, he told the annoying screaming voice to can it and got back to work. The idea of being out in space on a ship again made him happy, and Tyr was Tyr and his friend whatever Tyr might have to say about it. The rest he'd just keep shoving down until old instincts shut up.

The big wall panels were a little tricky to move on his own, but it wasn't anything he hadn't done before, and at least he was getting a good idea of how this ship was wired in the process. When he finished with engineering he took a quick break for a Sparky and whatever was in the ready-meal he grabbed and then moved on to command. There was less work to do there but more complicated routing, and he'd probably still be working on it through tomorrow.

An alarm chimed as he was deciding where the best place to run the secondary power through was, and it took Harper a minute to recognize it as the one he'd put on the main hatch. After last time he wasn't taking any chances, but a quick glance at the screen told him that it was finally Tyr, and he swung himself down out of the ceiling.

"Hey," he greeted as he reached the entrance. "You'll be happy to hear that I increased the efficiency of your kitchen appliances by three hundred percent."

Tyr turned to look at him, and Harper's amusement faded immediately.

"What happened to you?!" Nietzscheans had increased stamina on top of everything else, and Harper wasn't sure that he'd ever seen one look as exhausted as Tyr did right now.

Tyr shook his head and held out his primary gun, and Harper took it and looped it over one shoulder. He took the secondary as well, but given the weight of the magazines that was about all he could handle, and he trailed Tyr to his quarters.

Tyr still hadn't said anything, and Harper checked the safeties and then put both guns on the side table and looked up at him. "Seriously, Tyr, you look like crap. What happened?" There was no sign that any of the guns had been fired, nothing on Tyr's body armor to indicate that he'd been in a fight—then again, it was Tyr, so there might not be any sign—but….

Tyr dropped the other weapons onto the table and Harper winced as he fumbled trying to release the shoulder straps of the chest plate he was wearing.

"Here." He reached up, and Tyr sighed and let his hand fall from the catch.

It only took a moment to help Tyr get the armor off, and then Tyr finally focused on him, cuffing him away gently. "Apparently stims have become popular among the princess' lot, to the point where she's decided that it's more efficient to sleep one or two days out of every twenty than get actual reasonable rest. None of those days coincided with her visit here."

"Well, there's a good way to go insane." It explained why Tyr looked like death warmed over, though. Harper couldn't think of too many circumstances where Tyr might considered taking a stim shot, boring bodyguard duty definitely not making that list, but he wouldn't accept doing less than his best on a job, either.

"As evidenced by the fact that they've continued the practice." Tyr shook his head and then actually wavered in place. "I need to sleep."

"So sleep." Harper waved a hand in the general direction of the bed. "You still have a couple days before anyone shows up with cargo to load, and I don't need any help with what I've got going." He started to step back towards the door before pausing. "You want something to eat? I've got some ready-meals that'll only take a minute or two." Tyr would probably complain about them, but Nietzscheans could eat practically anything.

"No, I was able to eat on a semi-regular basis, at least." He stepped towards the bed and then twisted and looked back at Harper. "If you did anything to my kitchen, you'd best undo it before I wake up."

Harper hadn't, actually, although he definitely could. He settled for a smirk and then got out of there before Tyr decided to throw something. Exhaustion was more likely to reflect in his forgetting that Harper was more breakable than he was than he was than in his accuracy.


Tyr blinked and sat up with a groan. A glance at the chronometer told him that he'd slept over fifteen hours—or at least it had been over fifteen hours since he'd left the princess' company, he hadn't bothered to check the chronometer before collapsing face-first in his bunk—and he was still tired. Ridiculous.

He threw himself back down on his back, staring up at the ceiling for a few minutes and debating whether or not he should go back to sleep. Unfortunately, aside from the fact that it had been almost nine days since he'd seen his ship and he felt the distinct need to walk its corridors and ensure that everything was as it should be, he was also hungry and badly in need of a shower. He sighed and rolled to his feet.

That was the last time he'd be serving as part of Princess Regor's retinue if they didn't cease their insane use of stimulants because while he had no intention of putting any of that swill in his body, he could only sustain so many sleepless days and nights and maintain any acceptable level of alertness. He had no idea how she and the rest of her retinue had managed it even with stimulants, especially given her advanced age and to his knowledge very little in the way of genetic engineering.

He'd managed to snatch a few minutes of sleep here and there on the occasions when she needed to handle something personal, but nothing like what any reasonable person required. Especially since he'd had to shower, change, put his discarded clothes through the fresher, and eat in those short stretches as well since he couldn't do any of those things while on duty. Towards the end he'd been downing protein bars and skipping the showers entirely in the interests of maximizing those minutes—it wasn't as if he was exerting himself in any way, he'd had to remain vigilant but in the end no one had offered so much as a minor threat—but even that had been barely enough to keep him on his feet.

It was just as well that nothing had happened, especially in the last two days, because he wasn't entirely sure that he'd have been able to refrain from shooting the princess in any potential mayhem. Just on principle. He'd have dealt with any attackers first, of course, but the idea of anything that allowed him sleep had been getting more tempting by the second. He was just glad that the duty had ended in eight days rather than the potential ten her schedule had indicated because he'd never have been able to take another forty-eight hours.

While it was early in the day it wasn't unreasonably so, and as much as he knew that he should go to the gym since he hadn't been able to do that at all during his time with the princess, he skipped any sort of workout in favor of an absurdly long shower and a truly clean set of clothes before storing his weapons and armor properly on their hooks. Under normal circumstances he'd never have gone to sleep with them strewn about so, but last night had been anything but. If Harper hadn't been here, it was entirely possible that he'd have gone to sleep in the body armor and never mind that that would normally be so uncomfortable that he wouldn't have slept at all.

After he was done putting his things back where they belonged, he headed for the kitchen and whatever horrible things the little professor might have done to it. It looked fine at first glance; in fact it seemed that Harper had even unpacked new supplies. Some of which Tyr had ordered, some of which he hadn't...frankly those instant meals bore only the most superficial resemblance to nutrition even for a Nietzschean, and he had no idea how Harper could stomach them.

He pulled out real breakfast supplies and then turned back down the corridor to see if Harper was awake yet. He was fairly certain that Harper wouldn't actually have done anything to his appliances, but he didn't particularly want to find out that he was wrong as he attempted to cook the first full meal he'd had in days, either.

Harper's door wasn't locked, in fact it opened without so much as a chime when he waved a hand at the panel, but Harper was nowhere to be seen. He hadn't slept in his quarters at all this night, and possibly not for the past several nights if the random bits of electronics scattered across the bed were any indication.

Tyr shook his head and headed for engineering. Harper's penchant for curling up in the nearest available nook or cranny when he was done working for the day hadn't abated—more than once he'd used it to give himself a head start in their morning not-quite-sparring-matches, in fact—and it was the most likely place to find him. There was no sign of Harper there, though, and the smugglers' bay was quiet as well even if the little ship the professor was so enamored of bore signs of more work having been done in Tyr's absence. From the design he could see emerging it was going to be fast, and Tyr made a mental note to probe Harper for more details the next time he caught him working on it.

Tyr was about to query the computer for where exactly Harper might be when he heard a low heartbeat as he passed by command. He hadn't seen Harper when he'd glanced in before, and clearly his lack of sleep had made him neglect his other senses if he was only hearing him now, but it only took a minute to realize that he hadn't seen Harper at first because Harper was curled underneath the pilot's seat. Tyr crouched beside his head. "I do not understand you, little man." If Harper hadn't cared to return to his quarters to sleep, surely the padded seat would have provided a bit more comfort. It wasn't as if Harper wouldn't fit.

Tyr did a quick check to make sure that he was well clear of Harper's legs—Harper tended to come up kicking at the best of times—and then gave his shoulder a quick shake with one hand while flattening both of Harper's hands to the floor with the other so he couldn't grab whatever his current choice of weapon was. And then caught Harper's hair tugged lightly as Harper lunged forward. "No biting!"

"Ow!" Harper blinked hard and then tilted his head back. "Oh. Hey, big guy. Is it morning?"

Tyr shook his head and released him. "Near enough to make no difference. I'm going to attempt breakfast. Did you fix whatever horrible thing that you did to my kitchen?"

"I didn't do anything to it in the first place," Harper confirmed. He pushed himself to a sitting position under the pilot's seat, one hand rubbing at his head. "That wasn't very nice, you know."

"You're lucky that's all you got given that you keep attempting to take chunks out of my person."

"You started it. If you'd just let me grab my blaster and shoot you it wouldn't even come up."

Tyr didn't even bother to dignify that with a response.

"You're making real food?" Harper asked as he scooted out from under the seat. "You have way too many ingredients and not enough real food, you know that?"

Tyr shook his head and then pushed himself to his feet, offering a hand and bringing Harper up with him. "You understand that that doesn't make any sense. Especially when your idea of 'real food' apparently encompasses things that resemble nothing so much as compressed plastiboard with salt on top."

"Does so. And…well, yeah, I guess that is kind of accurate. You can't starve on them, though."

"A resounding recommendation."

Harper jabbed an elbow at Tyr's side and ducked a retaliatory cuff. "At least you look kind of like a person again. Was it really that bad?"

"I feel kind of like a person again," Tyr admitted as they headed for the kitchen. "And unfortunately so. I believe I'll be looking a bit more closely at proposed itineraries after this." It wasn't that he hadn't noted that her itinerary was quite full before he'd joined up with her entourage, he'd just missed the part where 'quite full' actually meant 'around the clock for days unending' full. Probably because no sane person would set such a schedule.

"Smart," Harper said. "If I hadn't seen you glaring at people on the vidscreens every now and then I'd have thought you'd been kidnapped or something."

At least he hadn't appeared to be trying not to fall asleep on whatever vidscreens Harper had caught sight of. Small favors. "You restocked the entire kitchen?" he checked.

"Filled up the cabinets as best I could remember you had them organized before. The rest of it's in the room you were using for food storage. Except my beer. I'm keeping that."

"A vile liquid that I can assure you that I have no interest in." Harper rolled his eyes, and Tyr shoved him into the kitchen ahead of him lightly. "Thank you. Now be useful and chop something."

"That sounds familiar."

Tyr hadn't noticed them in his first survey of the room, further confirmation that he needed more sleep, but his kitchen had acquired several of the rails that Harper used for reaching various things in engineering. He couldn't help a quick chuckle as Harper grabbed a knife and scrambled up a cabinet for a cutting board before taking a couple of the vegetables that Tyr had set out. The little professor made the world work for him, even when it shouldn't.

"What?" Harper asked.

"I assume I should expect to find more of those rails scattered about my ship?"

"Well, you're the one who has a ship built for giants and yells at me when I step on your counters. Anyway, I bet you end up using them for those upper cabinets too."

Tyr scoffed, turning on the stove on and breaking a few eggs into the pan. And then he added a few more because he was hungry and clearly Harper hadn't been eating properly in his absence.

It was good that Harper had been here to accept the new supplies when they'd arrived. He hadn't considered that advantage when Harper had agreed to stay on, but then again he hadn't considered not being able to get back to the ship at all during his assignment, either. Previously it hadn't been an issue to slip out at the end of a sleep cycle to deal with the various items as long as he set up an early enough delivery time with the merchants, and while some of them might have left their goods outside his hatch when he wasn't here to accept them, there was no way that they would have gone unmolested for days on end.

"Have you been off the ship at all?" he asked as he tossed Harper's vegetables in with the eggs. "I assume you must have since I know I didn't order any of those disgusting meal things." And Abraxis was hardly Madras where Harper had made it clear that he had no plans to set foot off the ship, although Tyr was just as glad that he didn't seem to be having second thoughts about staying.

"A couple times," Harper agreed with a nod. "I had to order some Sparky too, since you didn't, and then I needed to find a few new shirts." He tugged on the one he was wearing lightly.

"That one makes it easier to find you in the dark, anyway." It was true, the whorls on Harper's current shirt were an especially violent shade of yellow, but then Harper's idea of fashion sense never had made any sense to him. "And I suppose it was too much to hope that they'd stopped manufacturing your overly-caffeinated sugar water in the past two weeks."

"Hey, Sparky is a food group!"

"Calling something a food group implies that it is in some way food. You see my issue with the designation." He flipped the egg mixture quickly and then raised an eyebrow in Harper's direction. "You know, I don't believe a tongue is required for engineering."

"Hey, be nice. " Harper jabbed a pair of forks in his general direction. "I found you a fab unit."

Tyr looked over at him. "How did you manage that?" He had no doubt that Harper could—and almost certainly had, not that Tyr particularly objected for something like that—hacked his basic ship account, but he didn't keep those kinds of funds liquid.

"Scrapyard. It's not a big one, and it needs a few tweaks, but I'll have it up and running soon enough."

Tyr smiled and shook his head. "Fine, I suppose you can keep the tongue. For now. Give me your plate."