Thanks to everyone who read and to Aileil for reviewing.


"So help me, little man, when I get my hands on you…."

"Kind of what I'm trying to avoid," Harper pointed out, staring down through the nest of tangled wires at Tyr. "Anyway, I don't see why you're blaming me. I mean, how do we know that your blue is really my blue?"

Tyr's lips twitched.

Harper tried and mostly failed to keep a triumphant grin off his face. Score one for him. Probably score the morning for him since while technically Tyr could drag him out of here, he couldn't do it without taking a few nasty shocks, and Nietzscheans didn't allow themselves to be injured like that. Certainly not in play matches; it was 'anti-survival' and all of that.

"All right," Tyr said, shaking his head. "All right. You win. This time."

Harper swung down carefully through the opening in the wires barely wide enough to admit even him, kicking Tyr's arm lightly before he let himself drop to the floor. "Course I did. I am a genius."

"So you keep saying."

Tyr turned towards the door, one hand curling around the back of Harper's neck and tugging him along. Not that Harper needed the encouragement. They hadn't had breakfast yet.

"Do you plan to be in attendance when the cargo arrives?" Tyr asked.

"Is there a reason I'd want to be?"

"Likely more that you would not, but I assumed that you had hacked the manifest at some point and had a preference."

"Hacked, yes," Harper admitted, "but I was mostly checking space requirements." Nothing too big was incoming; it ran more along the lines of trunks or something like that. Nothing that would interfere with his racer, as soon as he figured out how to get the damn thing into the main bay. Which he still needed to talk to Tyr about.

Tyr tilted his head and then apparently decided that it didn't matter. "The Randang and Dire prides recently reached an agreement of joining, part of which requires the transfer of certain ceremonial jewelry and antiques between the Alpha families."

"And on that note I'll just spend the day hanging out with the fab unit and playing with those new toys you were asking me for." 'Prides' was a bad word as far as he was concerned, and if there were Nietzscheans in the cargo bay there was no way that he could get anything useful done on the XR-6. Stupid Uber—Nietzschean—hearing. "Are any of them coming along as guards or whatever?" He didn't really want to be stuck in hiding, be it in engineering or anywhere else, for the whole trip, but he wasn't sure that he wanted direct interaction with any Nietzscheans who weren't Tyr just yet either. He wouldn't be able to avoid it forever, but a little longer suited him just fine.

"That was specifically vetoed as part of the treaty. Three from each pride will accompany the goods into the cargo bay and ensure that all crates are properly sealed and stored with appropriate monitoring and protections against tampering, and then three others from each pride will retrieve them upon our arrival at Kartik. Where you will most likely wish to remain onboard the ship, so if there are any other items that you would like to acquire in the near future I suggest that you do so before we leave tomorrow."

Tyr wasn't stupid enough to come right out and order him to remain on the ship, but if he said that Harper would want to, he probably had a good reason for it. "Good to know. Think I've got most everything I need, though." There was definitely nothing else that he needed personally and nothing critical for engineering; he'd have time to sort out what else he might like for engineering as time went on. "Do you have work on station, or is this just a transport job?"

"As of now transport only, but I have some contacts there that I'd like to speak to. Since the next scheduled job is on Rhahat twenty days after our arrival at Karthik, I wouldn't object to picking up something to pass the time."

Harper was perfectly happy to leave the job-hustling to Tyr—marketing hadn't exactly been his greatest strength when he was running a shop either—but that reminded him of something he'd finished while Tyr was in the middle of his last job. He'd planned to hand it off when Tyr got back to the ship, but as per usual he'd kept getting distracted.

"Where are you going?" Tyr asked as he turned back down the hall.

"Go ahead, I've got to grab something. Be there in a minute."

Tyr dipped his head and moved along, and Harper ducked into his quarters. Now where had he put it? It was similar to the one he'd made for Tyr back on Andromeda, with a few more additions, and one of the features was that it wasn't overly large. Which, of course, made it tricky to find when he couldn't remember where he'd set it down when he'd fin—ah. He should probably clean his bed off so he could actually use it at some point.

Tyr was mixing up something on the stove when he got to the galley, and he went to set the plates on the counter.

"Did you find what you were looking for?"

"Yep. Catch." One of Tyr's hands came free, and Harper flipped it to him.

Tyr caught it and rolled it in his palm. "I have one of these."

"You have one like that," Harper corrected, a little surprised that Tyr had kept the other one. Then again, it played Wagner and to a limited extent could deflect energy weapons, both things that Tyr approved of. "This one's better."

"How?"

"Well, for one it's got a communicator built in." If Tyr thought he wouldn't want to go wandering around on Karthik Harper was willing to stay onboard the ship, but they'd already had problems once when they couldn't get in touch with each other. Harper had no plans to get caught hiding under a bed again, thanks very much.

"Ah. Right."

"Plus I upped the energy deflection capability, and if you squeeze it and tell it to go grenade in some number of seconds, it'll explode on the count."

"Mm." He tucked it into his vest.

Harper rolled his eyes. It figured that the exploding part would make Tyr happy.

"Music?" Tyr asked as he took the pot off the stove and moved it to the counter.

"I loaded the same music as before. Mostly, anyway. I thought about putting something good on, too, but…." He waved a hand.

"As I recall, your music is only 'good' in the sense that it could conceivably be used to force sleep deprivation upon your enemies."

Harper made a face at him and then jabbed a fork into the pot and snagged a couple chunks of whatever. "You're lucky that I like making toys."

"True," Tyr agreed. He took a seat and served himself when Harper finished. "When do you think you'll have the other prototype—prototypes?—ready to test?"

"Given that we're talking bullets it'll be prototypes plural, but figure another day or two minimum and that's assuming you're good with doing the testing yourself." There was no such thing as too much payload as far as Tyr was concerned, and the schematics he'd given to Harper reflected that. If Harper tried to fire something that heavy without some serious bracing it'd rip him in half. Possibly literally depending on which bones went first. Sizing down was possible but it would add another week at least. "I'm not sure where you can do the testing, though, now that I think about it. I'm guessing they wouldn't appreciate you using their crates for target practice, and these aren't something you're going to want to be using anywhere near the hull."

"I've a firing lane that should serve, but you can judge the structural integrity for yourself. And yes, I will do the initial tests."

Harper nodded although he couldn't help wondering where this firing lane was. He thought he'd been all over this ship by this point, and he still couldn't come up with a likely candidate.

He wasn't sure where Tyr had gotten the bullet schematics either. It was possible that he'd designed them himself, Tyr might not be in his league engineering-wise but he was no dummy when it came to the technical stuff either, particularly when it involved weapons. Hell, if Harper needed something like a Gauss rifle stripped down he'd probably just hand it to Tyr and wait thirty seconds. But given what was missing in the schematics...as originally designed the things would have been next to impossible to seat in a magazine, and there was no way Tyr would have missed something like that.

"What?" Tyr asked he finished his plate and took another ladleful.

Harper waved it off. He'd asked where the designs had come from when Tyr had given them to him and Tyr hadn't said anything useful so he wasn't likely to start spilling his guts now. Odds were he'd terrorized them out of some nobody on a drift somewhere. "Any ceremonial antiques or jewelry that are worth taking off their hands? Rango and Dire and whoever? I make a mean counterfeit."

"Randang, and no, keep your hands to yourself with regards to the trunks. You wouldn't enjoy tripping the protections that will be involved."

Once upon a time Harper would have taken that as a challenge, but these days he was more willing to let things go. Especially since he did have other work to keep him busy. "Show me where the firing lane is after they go away?"


Tyr wouldn't have admitted it, but it was a relief when the representatives of the prides in question finally took their leave of his ship. The mutual antagonism between said representatives he could deal with—it was expected, really despite what this treaty was supposed to mean—but their casual disrespect towards himself, the idea that he was somehow beneath them...

He felt his lip curl and shook his head and went in search of Harper. There had been reason to keep a somewhat low profile during his initial attempt to unite the Nietzschean people, especially since he'd expected a full reveal after the fall of the new Commonwealth to be far more impactful, but neither Randang nor Dire had been important enough to rate inclusion in those initial meetings so as far as every single one of them were concerned he was nothing more than a prideless mercenary and their attitudes reflected that. Whether the new bullets were ready or not, target practice would be excellent stress relief. That or he'd go to the gym and destroy a punching bag or two.

He heard Harper before he saw him, the little professor competing with the speakers for who could make the most horrible noise. Apparently Harper had taken the comments about his music as a suggestion. "Cease that infernal racket before station security levies a fine for disturbing the peace!" he barked.

Half of the racket stopped and Harper popped up on the other side of the fabrication unit. "Once again, I know what you listen to, and you have no business talking.'"

"Opera is an art form."

"So's Than vomit if you talk to the right dealer." Harper waved a hand and the rest of the noise mercifully cut off. "Are they gone?"

"They are."

"Good. You look pissed. Were they that annoying?"

"An understatement."

"Great. Well, your bullets still aren't ready. Figure tomorrow at best; I've got another set of calculations running now, but I want to take a look at your firing lane because these things are going to kick like hell. Both back at you and at whatever you hit."

"Hm." Not good news, but for today he had plenty of standard bullets. They would serve.

"Seriously, Tyr, like wear body armor kind of kick," Harper said, amusement disappearing. "Even you. I'd almost swear they were designed for a Vedran if only because not a lot of other species have the body mass to pull something like that off."

Tyr kept his mouth shut, and after a moment Harper's eyes locked on his.

"Do I even want to ask how you got your hands on the schematics for experimental Vedran weaponry?"

"Do you think you'll get an answer?"

"Depends on the subject, but in this case probably if I harass you long enough. The secret was the Vedran part."

Tyr raised an eyebrow, and Harper hopped up onto the fab unit and stuck out his tongue. He could be in the ceiling before Tyr could get to him, and they both knew it. Tyr scoffed and shook his head, relaxing back against the wall. On another day he might have taken Harper up on the invitation, but right now he was too tense to be careful. "I suspect that we were looking for different things in Andromeda's archives. And given some of the security measures," to say nothing of the suspicion he'd frequently been under, "I generally kept my inquiries towards the theoretical."

"Explains the lack of carrying capacity," Harper said, relaxing again himself. "Show me the firing lane?"

There hadn't been any sort of firing lane when Tyr had acquired the ship, and he hadn't—didn't—have the skills to build anything overly complicated, but he'd made a semblance of one along what had once been the far wall of his quarters. Well, his quarters and two others currently serving as storage spaces that ran alongside the hull on this side. Both the new walls and the hull had been reinforced to the highest degree that he could manage with powerful dampers installed at the far end, and the inclusion of that and the double-height ceiling along the bulkhead wall had allowed him to add one more feature that he'd missed since his time on Andromeda. He turned and gestured for Harper to follow.

"You built a firing lane into your quarters?" Harper asked as Tyr waved the panel open. "I mean, I guess I can kind of see it, but there's overkill and then there's overkill."

"You know, I don't believe that there's a single airlock on this ship that you won't fit out of," Tyr pointed out. "Of course, you might possibly require a bit of mutilation first..."

Harper made a face at him and then scooted a few steps away before Tyr could do more than raise a hand.

"Get over here and take a look at the lane." He waved the far panel opened and gestured Harper through ahead of him.

"Fine, whatever. Let's see what you've got for shielding." Harper stepped past him and headed for the target frame at the opposite end of the lane.

Tyr could have told him the makeup, but Harper didn't tend to take people at their word very often, especially when it came to engineering. An attitude Tyr completely supported, especially since his safety would depend correct analysis of these new bullets, and he relaxed against the wall as Harper pulled out a device of some sort and began examining the panels. "Well?" he asked as Harper came back to join him again, tapping at his pad.

"I'll put up a couple more layers of blast sheets everywhere and rig a couple generators behind them for force shields. Won't take more than a day and a half, although I'd really rather just rip out a good section of wall and do force shields the whole way down. Probably better for you too since what I'm going to have to do is going to narrow that end some."

"Why don't you do that now, then?"

"Two or three generators are easy, two or three dozen will take me longer and require some part scrounging. Guessing you don't want to wait a week."

"Put it on the list for later," Tyr said. "That wasn't the only theoretical bullet design I found." Just the one he'd been most intrigued by, and given that their next stop was a diplomatic crossroads for five separate prides, he'd like to have something with him that no one had ever seen, just in case. He hadn't been expecting recoil to the point that body armor might be necessary, though.

Actually the time they were stopped at the station might not be a bad time for Harper to do the reinforcement he'd mentioned if he was amenable. It would not be safe for him to leave the ship alone, and the assumptions that were likely to be made if he accompanied Tyr….

"M'kay," Harper said, back to tapping at the pad, and Tyr decided to let the last go unsaid unless Harper actually wanted to leave the ship. It was unlikely that he would; he was intelligent enough to take a hint, and Tyr was perfectly willing to acquire whatever parts he required.

"Come. You'll like this," he said when it looked like Harper was done, catching the ladder behind the firing point and pulling himself upwards

"Like what?"

Since Harper was following him up the narrow ladder he didn't bother to answer. The Observation Deck on Andromeda wasn't the sort of thing that most ships replicated in this time, not even ships of the line never mind little couriers like this one, but this one had had a small stretch of bulkhead mostly shielded by the engine struts, and he'd had the money—or, rather, he'd had trade goods he'd needed to offload quickly and no desire to have funds linked back to that particular sale lying around—so he'd put in screens to space. It wasn't perfect, but it was...peaceful. If tiny, running only the length of the firing lane and marginally narrower as the bulkheads curved inward overhead.

"Oh, nice." Harper hopped over the hole they'd come through and joined him in front of the low benches along the wall. "How did I not find this?"

"Presumably you haven't started drilling through all of my walls."

"Eh, just the majority. I mean, I wouldn't go into your quarters without good reason so I probably wouldn't have found the firing lane, but we've got to be a deck above by now. Your quarter's ceilings might tilt up, but they aren't double-height."

Tyr shook his head and sank down on the bench, leaning back against the wall. He couldn't quite stretch his legs out straight without turning at a slight angle, but as a place to rest and contemplate—not meditate, thank you, he wasn't a priest—it served.

Harper finished poking at the screens and came back and dropped down beside him. "This is nice. You always did like sitting around staring into space." He frowned and then lifted the pad off his belt again, bringing up another schematic.

"And you remain incapable of sitting still."