Thanks to everyone who read and to Aileil for reviewing.


Harper stared out into space, fingers working mechanically to strip the circuit board in front of him. It wasn't a task that required his concentration, unlike his new safety vest, which was why he'd switched over to working on it.

Tyr's suggestion that he take some extra vacation time on Rhahat while Tyr did a short transport job for a couple Nietzscheans who wanted to get back to wherever their home system was was a pretty good one, all things considered. Tyr didn't need help with said transport; Harper didn't want to be around non-Tyr Nietzscheans. Still something he'd have to get over eventually, but if Tyr wasn't going to push it, Harper wasn't going to either.

And given what had happened before, it made sense that Tyr would want insurance that said Nietzscheans weren't plotting something unusually nefarious while he did the job. After Madras, in Tyr's place Harper would already be implementing safeguards. Since Tyr was Tyr it was entirely possible that was doing just that and just hadn't seen any reason to go into detail with Harper, but what he had asked for….

Harper put the finished circuit board down and picked up the next, giving the top wires a vicious yank. It was just that his shrillers and flash-bangs, the new lighting program that he'd designed, all of that, they were all meant to take down Nietzscheans. The idea of designing countermeasures for a Nietzschean, even just for Tyr, kind of made his skin crawl.

It wasn't that he didn't believe that Tyr would return his counters to him when the job was over, either. Tyr said he would, so he would. But there was exactly zero chance that he wouldn't copy them for himself first. Nietzschean survivalist paranoia, or whatever he wanted to call it, he was basically incapable of doing anything else. Harper could put in some backdoors, counters to the countermeasures, sure, but even if Tyr wasn't in his league when it came to real engineering, he was more than good enough to make a copy. And backdoors were generally pretty easy to spot when something was in pieces.

There was the quiet hiss of a hatch opening, and Harper turned to see Tyr coming in through the new door. He pushed his unease aside as Tyr took a seat on the bench at his back. "Any luck?"

"None worth mentioning."

"Told you, it'll be easier if I just crack it open at this point." Not that Harper was happy that even the most sensitive setting on the medical scanner wasn't working for the knife box, but there was no good reason that lasering it wouldn't work. It had sliced and diced the knife that Tyr had deemed damaged beyond repair easily enough. The other option was for him to build an even more sensitive scanner, but under the circumstances he didn't see the point. It wasn't like Tyr had any need for fancy scanners for anything else he did.

"Mm." Tyr still looked skeptical.

"Mm," Harper mimicked, elbowing Tyr's shin. "You know you've passed paranoid and gone straight on into ridiculous, right?"

The back of Tyr's hand knocked against the side of Harper's head lightly, and Harper shoved at him automatically even as a bit of the unease in his chest subsided. Something had gone seriously sideways in his life when getting manhandled by an oversized Nietzschean was somehow reassuring, but that was the universe for you.

"What are you doing, anyway?" Tyr asked, reaching down to take the board that Harper was working on.

"One of the spares from up in the bay. I'm stripping them down."

"Why?"

He took it back. "Figure they'll come in handy eventually. Things usually do."

Tyr snorted but didn't disagree with his assessment. "Have you found a place to stay while I'm doing the transport job?"

"There's a place that rents rooms right out on the water." He hesitated. "Probably room for you too when you get back, if you want."

"Provided that it's understood that I have no intention in engaging in your senseless, not to say semi-suicidal sport, I suppose a short vacation would be relaxing."

"Fun-killer." He was going to get Tyr in the water whether he liked it or not. Of course, when the answer to that ended up being 'or not' he was also going to pay for it but it'd be worth it. Tyr would probably only dunk him a few dozen times.

"Have you thought about my request?" Tyr asked after a minute of silence.

Harper sighed. "Can't you just shoot them? I really think it would be more efficient if you just shot them."

"Always an option, but in general I've found that shooting my clients rarely leads to useful things. Payment, for one."

"Yeah, but then they're dead and you're not. You can always sell their luggage."

Tyr chuckled. "It is perhaps fortunate for the universe that you are not Nietzschean."

"Oh, thanks for that horrible thought. Your fault if I end up under a console tonight."

"The fact that you're unable to sleep in your own bunk is hardly my fault, I provided perfectly suitable quarters."

"What do you mean 'unable to sleep'? It's fine." He liked his quarters. He was going to need to hollow out a little space for a new surfboard after this vacation, but it was manageable.

"It's covered in electronics nonsense."

"It's not nonsense. And I can so sleep there, I just sleep around stuff. Don't laugh." Which worked exactly as well as he'd figured that it would, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. As far as he could see, Tyr was still stuck too far in his own head, and Harper didn't mind a few jokes at his own expense. There were more serious considerations to deal with, though, and he sighed again as he tilted his head back to look at Tyr again. "Really promise you'll give them back?" Not that he'd actually developed anything yet, but just the fact that Tyr had asked had been enough to get his mind working, and he had some ideas. And he'd figure out some way to work around his countermeasures when he was building them. Just on principal.

"I will return them to you as soon as I finish the job."


Tyr reached Harper's room late, inconveniently far from the shipyard as it was, and was raising a hand to bang on the door when it chirped and opened. "Tyr. Admittance authorized."

Hm. Probably sensible of Harper. Especially since it wasn't uncommon for him to find other beds to spend his shore leaves in as Tyr recalled, and Tyr had no intention of walking all the way back to his ship tonight. If he'd realized just how far from the shipyards Harper's room was he'd have rented a skimmer in the first place.

He entered the dark room and dropped his bags by the door. At first he thought that Harper was elsewhere as he took in the unoccupied sleeping platform, but then his ears detected an even heartbeat coming from under the bunk. A quick glance under the platform confirmed Harper's identity, and his immediate inclination was to drag the little professor out, but given Harper's propensity for violence upon being shaken awake that wasn't likely to be relaxing for either of them. And there was only the one bed in the room unless you counted a narrow padded bench along the far wall; since Harper seemed perfectly comfortable where he was there was no sense in Tyr not taking advantage of the situation.

He frowned at the bunk. As long as he slept on the diagonal. The occupants of this planet, or at least their typical vacationers, clearly did not share his stature.

There was a sleepy mutter from underneath as he got himself settled, and then, "Tyr?" from along the floor slightly off to one side.

Tyr snorted and reached down, shoving Harper's head back under the bed. "Go to sleep, professor."

Harper muttered something uncomplimentary in response, but his breathing evened out again shortly thereafter. Tyr closed his eyes as well. He could always take offense at the insult tomorrow.

Tyr awoke again the next morning to the sound of quiet movement. Not someone sneaking around, that would have had him on his feet with a weapon in his hand in an instant, but when he rolled to his feet he wasn't surprised to find Harper messing around with something on the counter near the door. "And just what foodstuffs are you mangling now?"

"Good morning to you too," Harper said, looking up at Tyr as he came up beside him. "Even I can't mangle sandwiches."

"So you claim," Tyr returned, shaking him lightly, although he accepted the sandwich that Harper handed him with a nod of thanks. "Your vacation has been pleasant thus far?"

"Good weather, good waves, and I found a great board," Harper said with a nod. "How was the job?"

"Uneventful. Two sisters returning home after a small trading venture, with a cousin along for security. They confined themselves primarily to their rooms outside of meals." He finished the first sandwich and accepted a second. At least Harper had laid in an appropriate amount of supplies.

"Were they cute?" Harper asked, shifting around and hopping up to sit on the edge of the counter as he started on his own sandwich. "I could have gone with you."

"They would not have given you a second glance."

"You say that like good taste is a bad thing."

Tyr couldn't help a twitch of his lips at Harper's smirk, but there was a darker side to the comment than Harper knew because neither woman had given him a second glance. Even if their Pride was yet another that hadn't been among those entrusted with the truth, and even if they'd been unusually business-focused from what he'd overheard of their conversations, he was still a man of appropriate age and with some resources to his name. As his ship had clearly displayed. And neither woman had worn the bands of mating. Even if they had prospects, perhaps even promises, among their own Pride, the fact that he hadn't even been deemed worthy of so much as a cursory examination or a single question about his lineage….

"Tyr? Hey, where'd your head go?"

He shook himself and returned the light kick to his leg with a cuff. It had been a simple joke on Harper's part, nothing more, and he had enough to deal with without adding the complication of any interest from two low ranking women from a nothing Pride anyway.

"Mean." As usual, Harper didn't look particularly cowed. "Are you sure nothing happened?"

"It was as I said."

Harper gave him a skeptical look but a minute later finished his sandwich and hopped down off the counter and started moving breakfast supplies back to the preserver. "So how much longer are we here for? I assume you wouldn't have bothered coming down if we're supposed to be leaving this afternoon."

"Cargo is loading in two days. Until then you may feel free to continue your asinine attempts to drown yourself." Personally Tyr planned to avail himself of the deck he could see off the back to get some reading done, especially since the weather was as neatly controlled as any resort planet.

"No faith. No faith at all."

Tyr snorted. "Are any of the nearby rooms available for rent?"

"Probably, but why don't you just stay here? Was serious before when I said there was room. I can sleep on the bench."

"Under it, more likely," Tyr said after a moment, but if Harper genuinely didn't object he would take him up on the offer. His trip back had been quiet—his trip out had been quiet—and the little professor's presence was comfortable enough. Even if he could be a bit more perceptive than he needed to be. Of course, on the opposite side of that Tyr would almost certainly have to throw him in the water a few times before he accepted the fact that Tyr wasn't interested in swimming himself, but that was likely to happen no matter where he was staying.

"Eh, that happens anyway," Harper said with a shrug. "It's plenty comfortable."

Personally Tyr disagreed on that point, but if he wasn't the one expected to sleep on the floor he saw no value in arguing about it. "Ah. A moment."

Harper tilted his head but stayed where he was as Tyr retrieved his bag and fished out an oblong device and a pair of sunglasses. "As promised."

Harper looked at them for a long moment and then shook his head. "You might as well hang onto them. They're better than your copies anyway."

Tyr tilted his head. Not that he hadn't copied them, of course, they had value towards his survival and it would go against his very nature to return them without a reproduction to keep for himself. Harper knew him—knew Nietzscheans—more than well enough to know that. He'd known it when he'd made them for Tyr in the first place, although Tyr hadn't expected him not to take them back at all. "Do I want to ask what kind of protections you've built into them?" he asked after a moment.

"Do you think I'd tell you?"

Realistically whatever safeguards Harper had built into his versions had probably been copied into Tyr's replicas as well, and he shook his head and put the devices away. He'd investigate further later. Or beat it out of him.