Chapter 5
When you see the storm is comin'
See the lightning part the skies
It's too late to run
There's terror in your eyes
- Marsha Norman, The Secret Garden Musical
00000
"Dylan, this plan is freakin' crazy!" Harper hissed out of the side of his mouth as the two crawled through the air duct, trying not to clank their boots on the metal plating. Harper's sore leg protested slightly at the forced method of movement, but he studiously ignored it.
"Do you have a better one?" Dylan whispered.
"Yes," Harper shot back. "We turn around right now, I put the first security system back up before they notice my hack, and we get our tails back to the Maru and skedaddle."
"Mr. Harper, you know I can't do that," Dylan sighed.
Harper sighed as well. Of course he knew that. He was just trying to keep his rising panic under control by the one method he knew best: talking. His heart was pounding out an erratic rhythm inside his chest and all the Earth instincts he'd fought so hard to smother were screaming 'flight.' He was terrified, and it was taking all his willpower not to just turn and run and leave Dylan on his own. Shaking his head to clear it, he glanced down at his wrist device to check where they were.
"Boss, the next grate is the one we want," he whispered again, now just wanting to get this over and done with as quickly as possible.
Dylan crawled over the grate mentioned and stopped on the other side. As Harper came up to it, Dylan reached down to lift the piece of metal up and out of the air duct.
"Wait!" Harper hissed, his voice louder than it should have been in his urgency. "Don't pull on it yet, Boss! I've got to check it for traps."
"You've already disabled the security system to get us in here; do you really think they've gone to the trouble of booby-trapping each individual grate?" Dylan asked, eyeing his engineer skeptically.
"Boss," Harper whispered back as he took out several tools to scan the grate with, "I've been hacking Drago-Jerkoff systems all my life. Believe me, that is exactly what they would do."
As if on cue, Harper's tool let off a little beep and started flashing. "See, what'd I tell ya: traps."
"These Dragans really need to develop some new hobbies," Dylan muttered as he watched his engineer prepare to jack in.
"Tell me about it," Harper grumbled and brought the jack up to his dataport. "Well, see ya in a few." He grimaced as he pushed the lead in and Dylan leaned forward and caught him as his eyes rolled back and his body went limp.
With nothing else to do, Dylan studied his friend carefully. He wasn't often around when Harper completely jacked in and he forgot how vulnerable and exposed it left him. In the dim light, Harper looked incredibly young and very pale. Dylan frowned. He knew his engineer was unnaturally uptight about being on this particular drift, but he still hadn't been able to figure out why. It was no secret that the kid hated the Dragans, and with good reason, but it had to be more than just that. Once again, he was reminded of how little he really knew of his friend's past. Almost all the background he knew about the boy he had learned either second-hand or from random, bitter comments Harper occasionally dropped. Dylan didn't say it as often as he should, but he really did consider the young man a friend, and friends were supposed to talk to each other, share things. He could literally count on one hand the number of times he and Harper had sat down and just talked. If he had been a little bit less preoccupied with saving the universe and a little bit more concerned about the really important things, he might not be wondering why Harper was so worried right now.
As Harper started to stir beside him again, Dylan made himself a promise to begin rectifying that problem. As soon as he and Harper were back safely on the Andromeda, he was going to see if Harper was interested in a nice, friendly chat, maybe over a few beers or something.
"All right, now you can open the grate," Harper whispered as he sat up and stashed his lead back in his pocket.
Making as little noise as possible, Dylan lifted the heavy metal plate out and set it aside. "Here we go," he muttered and quickly dropped through the hole, Harper right behind him. For a moment they both just gazed around, trying to get their bearings.
They were in a sort of indoor courtyard, complete with benches and live plants. From the sound of trickling water that echoed faintly through the air, it appeared that a waterfall had even been stashed in a corner somewhere. It might have been relaxing and pleasant, if you could forget for a moment that the people who built it would probably find a nice round of torturing just as relaxing and pleasant.
It being the drift's equivalent of night, the whole room was steeped in shadow, making it hard to judge the exact location or size of anything. All around the edges of the courtyard, doorways gapped, their dark openings whispering of mystery and terror at the same time. They almost appeared to be mocking them, daring them to enter and see what fate had in store.
Shaking his head, Dylan forced thoughts of monsters and spiders and headhunters out of his mind. He really, really needed to stop dipping into Beka's secret stash of holo-novels. Concentration, that's what was needed. He already had a slightly panicked Harper with him, it wouldn't do to start letting his own imagination run away. Besides, at any moment, they could find themselves face to gun with a bunch of angry Drago-Kazov, and that would be worse than anything his imagination could dredge up – something, he realized with a sickening flash of insight, Harper could probably attest to first hand.
"Which doorway do we take, Boss?" Harper asked quietly from beside him, the eeriness of the place getting to him as well.
His words pulled Dylan back on track, and he glanced around with purpose. There it was – second door from the corner along the right wall. The intelligence he'd been provided with stated that through that doorway lay a hall which led to several of the drift's more important government offices, including the local big-wig's treasury, or grand stash.
"This way," he whispered and started toward the correct opening. Behind him, Harper moved carefully, checking constantly for any hidden traps or alarms. As they got closer, Dylan could see that the molding around the door contained several strange symbols, icons he'd never seen before, and he turned to ask Harper if he had a clue what they meant. His engineer noticed them at about the same time and suddenly he stopped short, a strange mix of anger, fear, and shame flashing across his face.
"Um, Boss, we have a slight problem," Harper spoke, but it looked like each word was being forced out reluctantly.
"Yes?"
"I…um…I can't go in there."
"Of course you can go in there. We've come this far, we can make it the rest of the way. Just a little farther and then we can follow your own plan and as you suggested, 'skedaddle'," Dylan reassured him, fighting the urge to remind him that they were sort of on a tight schedule and really didn't have time for debates in dark courtyards.
"No, Dylan, that's not what I meant," Harper tried again, his voice even quieter. "I said I can't go in there. It has nothing to do with not wanting to."
Now Dylan was really confused and it showed on his face, even in the near darkness. "We don't have time for riddles, Mr. Harper. What do you mean then?"
Harper seemed to be fighting some inner battle for a few seconds before he sighed and stepped forward, pointing to several of the strange symbols surrounding the door. "These symbols are really like abbreviated signs. Warnings, if you will, or notices. Basically, it means no Kludges or slaves allowed."
Harper's words brought Dylan's thoughts sharply back to places he didn't like to dwell in and he started shaking his head even before his friend finished speaking.
"Harper, listen to me. You're not a Kludge and you're not a slave. You have every right to walk through that doorway," Dylan said forcefully, but then amended, "Well, other than the fact that we broke in illegally and are here to steal something, of course. But that's beside the point. I've never known you to worry about breaking a few Nietzschean rules, why start now?"
His words didn't even seem to penetrate, and he watched as Harper ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "Dylan, you just don't get it. It has nothing to do with rights! I'm a Kludge; that's what marking Earth as your hometown means. I was born a Kludge, and in that respect, I'll always be a Kludge. And, as I'm sure you've worked out by now, I was also a slave. The Dragans aren't just gonna put these little pictures up here and hope all their pets will play nice and stay out! No, they're gonna make darn sure they have no choice."
Harper stopped for a moment, as if gathering his thoughts, and then looked the captain straight in the eye. "Dylan, do you have any idea the amount of crap that's been pumped into me over the years? Did you think my immune system just destroyed itself? From the time I was old enough to walk, I've had so much junk injected into me from one Uber or another that I've lost track, and that's just counting what I was conscious for. I have no idea what's still floating around in here. Even if most of the normal Earth goodies are gone, chances are some of the wonderful slave treats are still present and accounted for." Gesturing harshly, Harper got to the point. "If I walk through that doorway, enough alarms are gonna go off to make this place sound like a circus drift. Now, being the super-genius that I am and having the previous experience that I've got, I could disable the alarms, but only if you're willing to sit around and wait for the next five or six hours. And trust me, that's exactly how long it would take. I know."
By the time Harper was finished with his whispered torrent of words, Dylan was more than a little bit stunned. In the last minute he'd almost learned more about Harper and the state of this messed up universe than he had in all of the last three years combined, and none of it was pleasant. That aside, however, this information also seriously messed up his plans. Dylan could manage a decent hack on a security system when needed, but nothing along the lines of what his young engineer could pull off. And the lock on the treasury door was dead certain to be the toughest job yet. As much as he wanted to digest all the information Harper had just spilled out and maybe take the time to offer some pathetic condolences, the number one priority at the moment was to complete the mission and get out, preferably alive and in one piece.
"So, what do we do?" Dylan asked.
"You'll have to go on alone. I'm sure I can jack in from here, cut the security, and get the door open for you," Harper muttered. He didn't relish the idea of entering the Nietzscheans' mainframe again. Three times was really pushing his luck, but he didn't know what else to do.
"I can't leave you out here in the courtyard alone," Dylan protested, remembering exactly how vulnerable Harper was when jacked in. He would have absolutely no way to defend himself if things suddenly went south. Or make that went south more than they already had.
"I don't exactly like the idea myself," Harper shot back, "but thanks to our friendly neighborhood Dragans, we don't really have a lot of choice."
Dylan opened his mouth to protest again but he never got the chance. The lights suddenly flashed on, so bright after the dim they'd grown accustomed to they were blinding, and the sound of stomping feet was heard.
"Oh crap," Harper yelped, "they've detected my hack!"
"I thought you said it was undetectable!" Dylan growled, pulling Harper with him in a desperate search for some cover, any cover.
"I said I thought it was undetectable! I told you from the beginning this was a very tricky system!"
In the end, cover wouldn't have helped anyway. Before they could do more than move in the general direction of the air duct, they were surrounded by what looked like a whole Nietzschean security detail. They were outnumbered at least twenty to one. Reluctantly, both raised their hands in the air as their weapons were taken from them.
"Howdy, boys," Harper squeaked, trying to hide his fear behind quick words as always even though he knew that usually got him into more trouble. "We were just…uh…looking for the…restrooms and we got a little lost. Maybe you could help us?"
One of the guards stepped forward and without a word backhanded Harper hard across the face. He staggered and would have been knocked off his feet if Dylan hadn't caught him.
"Hey," Dylan complained as a little trickle of blood started to seep from the corner of Harper's mouth, "That's no way to treat your tourists! You know, this could give you a very bad rep in all the drift guides."
No sooner had the words left his mouth than Dylan was sporting his own split lip, just like Harper's.
"Jeeze," Harper muttered, messaging his face, "These guys have no sense of humor."
The apparent leader of the squad stepped forward and glared at the pair. "Enough with the Kludge comedy act. I am not a fool and you are most certainly not tourists."
Harper snorted under his breath at the last comment and muttered, "You could have fooled me…"
Like a cat pouncing, the Nietzschean advanced on Harper and grabbed him around the throat with one hand. He was huge and Harper looked absolutely fragile in his grasp. Panicked, he started gasping for air as his feet left the ground.
"Little Kludge, you open your mouth one more time without my permission and I will personally cut out your tongue," the leader oozed, enjoying Harper's desperate struggle for breath. He held on for a moment longer before throwing the boy harshly to the ground.
"Look," Dylan said, trying to divert attention from Harper, "We don't want any trouble. We'll just leave now and get out of your way."
"Oh, I don't think so," Mr. Big-and-Glaring smirked. "You were here for something, and I think certain persons would like to know what that was."
"You can't prove that. For all you know we really could be lost," Dylan tried to reason as Harper picked himself up off the ground. Dylan knew there was nothing he could say that would get them out of trouble, but at least the more he talked the less that trouble would be zeroed in on Harper. Just looking at the boy, Dylan could see he was fighting a rising tide of emotions. Right now really wasn't the time for them to boil to the surface.
The Nietzschean leaned right into Dylan's face as he whispered menacingly, "There are ways to prove almost anything, if you are patient enough."
"Restrain them. We will take them to the ship," he ordered to his waiting men with a casual gesture. Dylan thought he looked far too pleased with himself as their hands were forced behind them and secured. They were then surrounded and shoved through one of the doorways on the other side of the courtyard. Throughout it all, the captain was desperately racking his brain for a way out of this mess.
"You are really very lucky," Big-and-Grumpy continued, making conversation as if they were going for a summer walk through the park. "It's not often the Commander is here in person these days. Due to your excellent timing, you will have the distinct pleasure of meeting Commander Gaius Felix face to face."
Not really caring who they were going to meet, Dylan said nothing, but beside him he felt Harper stumble. Concerned, he glanced over at his young friend, wondering if his leg was bothering him again. He was prepared to see a look of absolute terror laced with anger on his engineer's face. After all, Harper knew better than most what Drago-Kazov "pleasures" usually consisted of and what was probably waiting for them at the end of this little walk. He was not, however, prepared for what he did see. Settled grimly beneath that anger and fear in his eyes was acceptance, but a horribly twisted kind of acceptance. The look on Harper's face was one Dylan had only seen a few times in his life, but was one a person never forgot. It was the look a man wears when he's willingly sold his soul and the Devil is now there to collect. And somehow, Dylan got the feeling Harper had known the Devil was waiting and there would be no coming back.