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"When all things beautiful and bright
Sink in the night,
If there's still something in my heart
That can find the way to make a start,
To turn up the signal,
Wipe out the noise..."
-- "Signal to Noise" by Peter Gabriel
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When the Eureka Maru took another hit, Harper said over the comm from engineering, "Bet now you wish you'd looked into why those Ogami mercenaries were after you. But, no, you had to take a three-week tour with Molly the Perky Pilot instead."
"You're not helping," Dylan answered as he prepared to slipstream them away. "We might have gotten this group after us even if I had investigated."
"Oooh, defensive. And I'm helping and talking. I am the multi-tasking master."
Dylan sometimes wondered if he should let his crew do all the cargo runs in the future, since he seemed to draw trouble every time he went out, but he refused to give his enemies the satisfaction. Whoever they were this time. This was supposed to have been a simple, two-day, in-and-out pickup....
"Entering slipstream now," Dylan said over the comm. Slipstream opened around them, its bright white threads seeming to pull them in.
Dylan heard the impact as a deafening boom before he felt it, before it threw him hard against the pilot chair's straps.
Sparks. Darkness. When Harper came to, his hands ached from clutching the railing so hard and his head hurt for reasons he didn't know. This wasn't the usual slipstream experience. The way decompression was trying to suck him out through that new hole nearby made sure he understood that. Damn, damn, damn. He'd sealed the others already, but they'd been smaller....
Since he couldn't get his feet to stay on the floor, Harper moved along the railing by his hands and looked for something about the right size to block the hole with. Found it. Holding on one-handed, he shot the restraints off his large metal tool chest and smacked it with his gun arm as it flew by so it would be angled right. It blocked the hole beautifully. Once he had his feet on the deck again, he put his goggles on, traded his gun for a welder, and welded the chest to the wall.
With the crisis averted and his adrenaline rush starting to fade, Harper hooked his welder back on his belt and slid down the wall to sit on the floor. His arm hurt, reverberating with pain down to the bone, his head really hurt, and he had blood running into his right eye.
"--per! Harper, are you there? Come in, Harper!" From the tone of his voice over the comm, Dylan must have been calling for a while.
"Yeah, boss. That absence of a big sucking sound means that the hole's patched."
"It went through engineering."
"Didn't hit anything vital, fortunately. I'll have to give everything a closer look later to be sure, though."
"Are you okay?"
"I think so." He probably should try to sound more certain. "Yeah, yeah, I'm good. We're out of slipstream?"
"I'm trying to--" It sounded less like the comm had gone dead and more like something had stopped Dylan from talking.
"Dylan? Dylan!"
"We're being hailed." Dylan sounded... shocked? Awed? "Opening a channel."
"Tarn-Vedra atmosphere traffic control. Unidentified ship, please decelerate. You're endangering other travelers."
Tarn-Vedra? The Tarn-Vedra?
"Shipping vessel Eureka Maru, attempting to decelerate after taking on some damage," Dylan answered, sounding breathless. "May we have permission to land on-planet?"
"If you can decelerate successfully. If not, we will find a way to slow you down, but it might not be pleasant."
"Understood. Maru out."
Harper ran to the bridge and looked out at the world in front of them. "It's really Tarn-Vedra?"
"Yeah." Dylan looked shell-shocked, though he was still piloting and decelerating well enough that Harper didn't see any need to get in there and take over. "Harper, it's more than that. I recognized the voice and call sign of the traffic controller who just called us. This isn't present day Tarn-Vedra."
"We went back in time again?" What a life he led that this was his second trip in the Way Back Machine.
"I'm not sure how far back. I'm thinking it's a few years before I was frozen in the event horizon."
"Something to look into." Harper put his hand to his neck dataport. "Do people have these here?"
"Never saw anyone with one."
"Gotcha. If anybody asks, it's exotic jewelry."
"You don't seem really upset about this."
"About lying about my port?"
"About being back in time 300 years."
"Speaking of that, any chance we can go to Earth? I'd love to see it before it got stomped and raped by the Magog and Nietzscheans."
"We don't have time for that."
"We're back in time! We have all the time we need!" Harper took a look at his face and sighed. "Of course we don't. Look, Dylan, as far as time goes, now, then, whatever, I'm not going to get bent out of shape over how impossible it is for us to be here, because we are here, which makes it possible. This is my second trip back, so why stress? I'm upset that I'm going to have to work hard to get us to exactly where we should be, but that's it. You think it was a walk in the park adjusting to spacer culture after living on Earth my whole life? Well, it wasn't, but I did it. And being here is deeply cool. From about the time you figure, we've probably shown up before the treaty with the Magog." The Treaty of Antares, the one the Nietzscheans had separated from the Commonwealth over, which had led to the Long Night. Harper still had no idea how anyone could think that a treaty with Magog was a good idea that would work.
"If we have, we're not going to try to stop the treaty. It already happened in our timeline."
"It turned out we were supposed to be at Witchhead to thin out the Nietzschean fleet."
"Trance brought us there, because she knew something. This is a freak accident, total chance."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
Liar.
"Do you have any idea how fucked up it is for me to empathize with the Nietzscheans on the reason why they split?"
"I have some idea."
"Sure you do." Harper shook his head. "Fine. The treaty will go through. I doubt anybody would listen to me anyway, and I don't think I can fake the kind of Magog attack that would change their minds."
"Don't even joke about that."
"If anybody has the right to joke about that, it's me."
The hail signal flashed, and Dylan accepted the message.
"Tarn-Vedra traffic control. We'll guide you in."
"Thank you," Dylan answered. "Maru out." He sighed. "I just found out the year we're in."
"Yeah?"
"CY 9780."
"About a year before the treaty." And 14 years after the massacre at Brandenburg Tor.
"Yes. And we're not going to do anything to change it."
Of course not.
As Dylan followed the directions streaming into the Maru's computers, Harper said, "Wonder where we would have ended up with me at the wheel. Oh, get that look off your face. I don't mean that you suck as a pilot, I'm just saying that you actually lived on Tarn-Vedra in this time period. If I'd been piloting, would we still have come here?"
From the look on Dylan's face, he didn't want to think about it but knew he'd have to. "Something to look into."
"Yeah." But Harper was too busy watching their surroundings as they landed, and took his goggles off to get a better look. This part of Tarn-Vedra was beautiful, with most of the buildings seeming to be carved of translucent white stone. He hadn't expected it to be beautiful in a way that humans would see as beautiful, not when the top of its native food chain was a bunch of blue-skinned, four-legged centaur types.
"You're bleeding," Dylan said.
"Think I hit my head or something." At least the blood had stopped dripping into his eye. "I was bleeding. Not anymore."
"We're looking at that when we land."
"Aw, you really do love me." Harper tapped his fingers against the pilot's chair. "Hey, while we're back here, does that mean that everybody else is worrying about us in the future, with every day we're here being a day they spend looking for us? So when we get back there, we may be creating a parallel future in which they never got to experience us being gone?" Damn, he couldn't get it out right even though he felt it clearly in his head.
But Dylan seemed to understand and didn't want to think about it. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
"Gotcha, Captain Cliché. Hey, what do IDs look like here? I imagine we'll need to show some. You're covered, but--"
"No, I'm not."
"Dylan, you're from here."
"But I don't have my ID with me since I haven't needed it in two years, and anyway I can't be here as Dylan Hunt. I'm stationed elsewhere, and I'm not going AWOL."
"You were black ops. Tell anybody who asks that you're here on a mission, and it's 'need to know' only."
"People who need to know are here. I need an identity."
"You can see your parents--" Harper would kill for the chance to see his parents alive again.
"They're the last people I should see under these circumstances," Dylan replied, emphatically.
Weird. "Okay, okay. Give me some information on medium and appearance for this thing. And what are we gonna do about cash?"
"Tarn-Vedra lets damaged ships use their landing yards for free--"
"Generous of them."
"--but we'll have to work for money for everything else."
"We have enough food in stock to last us a while. Ow!" Harper put the hair he'd plucked out of his scalp against Dylan's hair.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"Hold on a moment. Don't move."
Dylan held still but obviously under duress. "I assume you'll explain this."
"In a moment. Hmm, that should be enough time for them to spread and reproduce. Okay, imagine yourself as a dark blond. Maybe with some light blond streaks." Harper figured that Dylan's brown hair had been blond when he was a kid, so the base color would work.
"Excuse me?"
"I just gave you some nanobots. Try a dark blond with light blond streaks. Streaks distract people from your face a bit."
Dylan kept the incredulous look on his face, but his hair changed color, turning much lighter and blonder all over and then much, much lighter and blonder in streaks, with each streak exactly the same width, probably to the millimeter.
"Looks good," Harper said. "Works with your skin and eyes." Just like he'd thought. "You can fine-tune the shades later if you want to."
"You're kidding."
Harper shrugged. "Take a look."
"I'll take your word for it. What was that?"
"Beka's dad made some hair color changing nanobots for her when she was a kid."
Dylan smiled a little. "What's her real hair color?"
"None of your business. Anyway, when one of my shade lightening experiences left me with crispy hair and a color I ended up calling 'nuclear winter,' she took pity on me and gave me some. Now I'm spreading the wealth."
"I don't know about this."
"Says the guy who didn't tell us that the medical nanobots he put into our bodies could be used to track us."
"That was a precaution for your safety." Dylan said that with a completely straight face. He always meant well. Wasn't his fault that he didn't tell them what he was up to. Right. "This is... frivolous."
"Frivolous, huh? Tell me that after the officials meet somebody who doesn't look so much like Dylan Hunt. Speaking of which, who are you now anyway? I still get to be me, but you say that you can't."
"I can't be you?"
"Choose a name or I'll choose one for you," Harper said sweetly. "You know how imaginative I can be."
When they came out to meet the officials, Harper was glad that he'd seen a Vedran once already, because he was a'gawk enough as is being faced with a small group of them, plus a few Perseids. Dylan said that Vedrans usually did things as a herd or pack or something and that Uxulta had only been alone because hers had all died. They were so tall and serene.... Shit, he was reacting like a star-struck kid. Harper stopped staring and rocking up and down on his toes and tried to look serious and seen-it-all.
Dylan handed over their ID chips for the Perseid officials to scan. Harper had a story ready about electrical damage if the IDs didn't pass muster, but he didn't want to be forced to use it. The officials seemed to be going for it, though, and handed the chips back to them.
"Cargo?" one of the Perseids asked.
"Food, spare parts, medical supplies," Dylan answered with a slight accent. They'd been meant for the Maru and the Andromeda's stores but could pass for standard cargo. "Something hit us en route. A few somethings, actually. My engineer will have to assess and repair the damage."
Oh yeah. "Something" had hit them. Nobody would be mentioning armament or pursuing Ogami. Did this time period even have Ogami mercenaries? Harper just hoped that the hole could pass for a meteor hit or whatever to the naked eye.
"Your engineer is wounded," one of the Vedrans said before she put her hand under Harper's chin and tilted his head up.
He wanted to complain and yank his head away--he hated being treated like property to be manhandled--but words deserted him. Her fingers felt pleasantly cool against his skin, and she had a sharp, almost minty smell to her. Harper just breathed slowly and blinked, blanking out.
Finally she let him go, and he almost dropped to his knees, just barely recovering in time. She said, "You should check his right arm as well, Captain Cantrell."
"It's just bruised," Harper immediately protested, hoping she wouldn't touch him again.
"And swollen."
Dylan bowed to her. "Thank you."
"You will keep us apprised of your circumstances. We can't let your ship stay here free of fees forever."
"Understood. Thank you again."
Harper stayed quiet as the officials left and he and Dylan walked back into the Maru, then said, "She mindfucked me. I can't believe it."
"What are you talking about?"
"You saw!"
"She just touched you."
"She shouldn't have done that either. Strangers do not get to handle the Harper without asking or coming on to me first."
"I would have noticed if she'd handled the Harper."
Pissed off as he was, it took Harper a moment to figure that one out. "Yeah, you're funny. Leave the humor to me. Dylan, you know exactly what I mean."
"You were just awed by her presence. It's a common human reaction to Vedrans." Did Dylan sound a wee bit bitter over that? Sure did. So much for telling Harper that he trusted Uxulta.
"I didn't have a word in my head. I have been struck speechless before, but never wordless. Really." It made his skin crawl.
"Come over here."
"Hunh?"
"Sit down and take your shirt off."
"Why, Dylan," Harper purred. "If you want to handle the Harper...."
Dylan sighed in a long-suffering way. "I want to check out your head and arm."
"You want to play doctor."
"Shut up and sit down."
"Yes, sir." Harper peeled off his shirt, which took more time than usual since his arm had really started to ache, and sat down in ostentatious obedience.
Dylan looked at him like he was a live pulse grenade but opened up the med kit, passed the hand scanner over Harper's injuries, and started to clean up the head gash, leaning a bit harder on the swab than Harper felt he needed to. "No concussion, but your eye might blacken."
"Lucky me." He'd have to clean blood off his goggles. And his shirt, which had a rusty stain that didn't match with the white and gray bits at all and couldn't be made to look like anything other than a bloodstain. Soaking should help.
"It won't if I put this dressing on. Hold still."
"Yeah, yeah."
"After we do this, you can take a look at the ship's damage from the outside. What the hell did you do to your arm?"
"Used it to direct my tool box at the hole."
"That must have hurt."
"Duh."
"You didn't have any other way?"
"I was a bit pressed for time. Anyway, my tool chest is no longer mobile, and we might have the Steadfast logo peeking out."
"We have an anachronistic logo showing to the world?"
"If it's anachronistic, they won't know what it is." Harper winced as Dylan applied a coldpack to the purple-black swelling on his forearm. "Great, it's right on the bone."
As he focused down on Harper's arm, some of Dylan's now dark blond hair straggled into his eyes. "You're being a big baby."
Harper stuck his tongue out. "When do we get to take your shirt off and look at the bruises the pilot's straps left on you?"
"Never."
"Now who's the baby?"
"I'm not the baby. I'm the captain."
"You can be both. Anyway, I want your help making up a timeline of what happened when, so maybe I can figure out why that hit skewed us off-course and back in time. I'll be putting mine together in my head while I'm examining the hull."
"You just hit your head. I don't think it's such a good idea to be climbing around outside the ship after that."
"You'd be amazed at the shape I've been in while climbing around outside."
"No, I wouldn't. I know you."
"Concussion, stomach wound, drunk...."
"I'm not listening."
"It's not as easy when you're not in space, is it?" Dylan yelled up to Harper, who was laboriously climbing the Eureka Maru's hull.
"If I didn't have thick gloves on and didn't need both hands to hold on, I would flip you off so hard...." Harper yelled back.
The items looped across his body and attached to his toolbelt swayed as he moved, part climbing, part leaping up. Some of the leaps toward the next handhold scared the hell out of Dylan. And was the ass wiggling necessary before each jump? The short-sleeved shirt he'd put on before going out pulled up to bare the small of his back every time too.
"Excuses."
They seemed to be attracting an audience. Harper must have noticed, because he shouted, "Maybe we should charge admission!"
It was a pretty good idea, actually. Dylan turned to the crowd, spacefarers all, and said, "We've had some hard luck. Something hit us as we approached slipstream and we lost most of our cargo when it happened." He was lying for money. Harper would be so proud. "Any monetary help you could spare us would be appreciated." Dylan heard cursing from above and just barely sidestepped a falling pipe. "You can't get entertainment like this everyday."
"We see people repairing ships every day," one woman said.
"That's why you're all congregating here to stare? Look, it would just be a nice thing to do. If you don't feel like it, don't."
Ostentatiously ignoring the onlookers, Dylan sat down and started to write down his impressions of the slipstream incident on a flexi. He could check it against the ship's recorder when he went inside. The soft sounds of welding and cursing from above even became restful after a while.
It all felt very familiar, him sitting outside in the sunlight working on a problem. He used to do it here all the time. He was on Tarn-Vedra, home.
And he couldn't stay here. He didn't dare see his family home or visit his parents. He wasn't supposed to be here, and he didn't dare touch anything.
The light and smell of home started to feel oppressive. "Harper!" he yelled.
"What?"
"I'm going inside!"
"You want a medal?"
Harper would be fine.
"Can you believe that a few people actually did leave money?" Harper asked as he walked in. "I guess the extra wiggling I did paid off."
Dylan looked it over. "We have just enough for our next meal."
"I didn't say they were generous, just that they gave." Harper pulled his gloves and goggles off. The bandages on his forehead and arm already looked dingy. "How's the timeline of disaster coming along?"
"I'm done. Take a look."
Harper leaned against the wall and looked over the flexi Dylan had handed him. "Hmm. Your timeline checks out with the Maru's?"
"Yeah. Do you have anything to add?"
"Not much. I was out cold for some of it and spent the rest trying to plug the hole. I didn't have much time to analyze what else was going on."
"You didn't tell me you lost consciousness."
"Scanner says I don't have a concussion. I got a hard head, Dylan. I can cross-reference what else was going on in the ship at these times to see if any interactions there might have sent us off-course. It might not just be your piloting at fault."
Dylan made a move like he was going to throw his stylus at Harper's head, and Harper ducked, grinning. The scent of metal and welding burn almost drowned out the smell of Tarn-Vedra's air and sun on Harper.
"So," Harper continued, "I figure I'll do that, do a double-check on engineering to see what needs to be repaired there, then go to bed. Tomorrow I'll see if I can pick up any work to pay the bills, which I assume you'll be helping with, 'Captain Jerrold Cantrell.'"
"A bit early for bed. You just had a head injury."
"I just spent four hours climbing Mount Maru. I am tuckered out. Give me a break."
"I'll be waking you once every hour to make sure."
"I hate you."
"I know."
Harper walked around to get a feel for the kind of work and prices available in the city, since he wanted to know what services he should offer and how much he should charge. He mostly stayed in the human and Perseid quarters, since his walk into mostly Vedran areas didn't feel comfortable. More precisely, he got that illusion of pressure between his shoulder blades that he had on his first days out in space when he looked so ragged and shopkeepers followed him around stores to make sure he wouldn't lift anything.
He knew when he wasn't wanted. He didn't often follow that, but he knew. This time he went along because he didn't want to attract attention and he doubted anyone would hire him there.
The looks would have been worse if that dressing Dylan had put on his forehead yesterday hadn't sped up healing, kept the swelling down, and stopped his eye from blackening. He just had a scab on his forehead now, which he'd left bare to the air. A section of his forearm, only faintly swollen, looked like a rainbow of misery in black, brown-purple, blue, and green, but a long sleeve hid that. He didn't let on to anyone that it still ached.
Walking around looking for work like this made him miss Beka even more. No fun being snide about the locale and locals without an audience and fellow wise-ass. They'd almost always gone out looking for hires for the Maru together.
He found some of the tech at the places around him intimidating, though not as intimidating as some of the stuff he saw in the Vedran sectors he was stared away from. Vedrans kept the best for themselves, looked like. Lots of knowledge was lost during the Long Night, but some advances had been made in other areas during those 300 years. Some of the proprietors chased him away when he spent too much time examining the goods, trying to figure out how they worked by sight.
Harper had never seen so much casual wealth scattered across such a large territory. Everything looked pretty, new, and groomed, and even the alleys seemed quaint and picturesque. Landscaping dominated by flowers provided splashes of living color and showed that water rationing didn't exist here. He kept looking for signs of poverty, but it either didn't exist or was carefully kept contained at a distance. It left him feeling raw, jealous, and out of place. He wanted to find fault here, because he just couldn't believe in this harmonious utopia.
Well, it was harmonious as long as you stayed in your place.
Still, he could just see himself trying to tell Dylan this stuff and Dylan getting incredulous. It would probably go like this: "You decided that Tarn-Vedra has deep class and racial divisions and prejudice because you think people were looking at you? I'm not sure if you're paranoid or oversensitive." Thus, Harper would have to keep his keen societal observations to himself.
The temptation to knock Dylan out, tie him up, and pilot the Maru to contemporary Earth kept popping up like a bad rash, but Harper knew that Dylan would never trust him with anything again if he tried it, and his berth on the Andromeda, with Beka, meant too much to him. Besides, the thought of seeing Earth scared him as much as tantalized him, and this wasn't his favorite time period.
Still, Earth....
Harper shook his head. Even in idyllic Tarn-Vedra, daydreaming in public wasn't a good idea. He had places to check out.
Then he saw the library, which was huge. With its reputation, it should be called "The Library," capital T on the "the" even. The All Systems University Library, the main Tarn-Vedra branch, lost to the rest of the galaxy for 300 years, had its doors open right in front of his face. Works that no one outside of Tarn-Vedra had seen for centuries were sitting in there, begging to be looked at.
Feeling his palms itch, Harper rubbed his hands together. He shouldn't. He had things to do. Important things.
But. But he was doing research of a kind out here, researching the job market for engineers and mechanics. He could do that in there too, and he could look into works that might give him some insight into the slipstream incident that had knocked them back here. This was research. Good stuff. Dylan would commend him for his diligence and utilization of available resources.
Harper believed in keeping up with his joneses.
His idea of playing hooky was to hang out at a library. He really was a geek. Well, que sera sera.
Harper crossed the threshold into the library proper and absorbed the change in atmosphere, the still and the low murmur. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath of ionized air. Opening them, he looked out upon a large, airy space full of computers, drawers of flexis, and shelves that seemed to contain actual books. Some books remained on Earth in Boston, but they looked as ragged and victimized as their owners.
Harper sat down in front of one of the terminals and started a search program through the library's 'net. He had to stop his jaw from dropping at the wealth of information that came up. This place had everything, every work he'd wanted to read, every author he'd ever seen footnoted. He could get the originals. He'd never seen some of the listings for Rochinda before, never known they existed. Well, duh, Rochinda had been Vedran, so of course the Tarn-Vedra library had all of this. Rochinda had discovered slipstream, so Harper really could claim this as a research trip.
To his relief, the tech on his pad matched up pretty well with what the library used--which made sense since his pad was Andromeda-issue, with some of his own customization, and only a few years ahead to the eye--so he hooked it up to the system and started to download. He could only hope that he had enough room for everything he wanted. What was he thinking? He could download this stuff into the Maru, wipe it from the pad, and come back another day for more.
This was... wealth, rare and precious wealth. He could expand his mind and his personal fortunes with this material.
"Doing a little bit of light reading?" a voice asked.
It took a moment for the realization that the person was talking to him to penetrate Harper's orgasmic daze. He turned his head and saw an elderly Perseid gazing very intently at him. Please let that not have been a pickup line. His hand went to where his gun would be if Dylan had allowed him to wear it and clenched when it only found absence.
He hadn't told Dylan about the knife he had in his sleeve.
"I believe in taking any opportunity that comes my way," Harper heard himself answering. Oh no, oh fuck. What a rentboy answer! They'd be making euphemistic talk about payment soon. Course correction now. "I only got to see excerpts and reconstructed copies of these before, so I wanted to pick up the originals."
The Perseid sat down on the chair at the next terminal and dragged it closer, too friendly. "You're a student?"
"Of life."
"Yes, yes, I don't recall seeing you at the university before."
"We're just in port for a little bit." Harper wanted to make sure that John Perseid knew he had people waiting up for him.
Okay, chinheads rarely tended to be murderers or rapists, but some of them went twitchy....
"I notice a lot of Rochinda on that list."
"You were looking over my shoulder?" Badness alert.
"Oh no, I'm attached to the facilities here."
Oh. Well, made sense that the library would put tags on its stuff to see what was most popular. Harper could deal with the guy being a librarian interested in his selections. "Okay. Yeah, I'm interested in slipstream."
"Do you pilot?"
"A little, but mostly I'm an engineer."
"The toolbelt should have given me a clue."
Harper further calmed at that admission that the Perseid hadn't been checking him out. Still, annoying, clingy chinhead. "I'm kind of involved at the moment."
"Your choice of Macaluso.... is that related to your Rochinda and slipstream study?"
Harper had picked up Macaluso's temporal research. "Unrelated." Like hell. "I'm just interested."
The Perseid gave him a frighteningly shrewd look. "I see. And Breen's work on black holes."
"It might turn out to be useful."
"What kind of ship do you work on?" From the Perseid's tone, the question was actually "What kind of ship do you work on that you're studying slipstream theory, temporal mechanics, and black holes?"
Harper smiled sweetly. "Shipping vessel. A spot of salvage when it comes up."
"Not everyone believes that Breen's theories on the temporal and gravitational properties of black holes are correct."
"I think some of them are." Hell, Dylan had personally proved some of them, not that Harper would be mentioning that.
"Please enlighten me."
Why not?
"C'mon, Walks By Sunset was blowing smoke out her thorax about that. She couldn't possibly--" Then Harper glanced at his terminal and saw the time. Three hours! How the hell did he spend three hours talking to Chansa? Maybe it had something to do with how Chansa reminded him of Höhne at his best.... "I gotta go." Harper unplugged his pad from the terminal and shoved it through his belt.
"Harper, hold on a moment."
"My captain's probably wondering what the hell happened to me." Dylan hadn't wanted to come outside much for fear of being recognized or something, but if he thought that Harper had gotten into trouble, he might go storming around.
"Harper."
"Get your hand off my arm."
Chansa took his hand away. "I want to make you an offer."
Was this a pickup after all? "Say what?"
"I don't often do this," worse and worse, "but you have exactly the kind of mind we want to attract to the university. Sharp, inquisitive, hungry, quick to absorb knowledge. You often attack problems from a fresh angle I haven't seen anyone else try before. I want to give you a full scholarship to the engineering program at the All Systems University."
Words. Harper had them. Somewhere. "Hunh?" He knew he was standing there fumbling with his pad and staring stupidly at the Perseid, but he couldn't make himself do anything else.
"I'm the head of the university's engineering department, and I have the authority to grant a paid education to especially deserving candidates. You can consider our conversation a test that you passed spectacularly."
Oh please. "You're yanking my chain."
"Yanking your chain?"
"Joking with me. Toying with me!"
"Not at all! Harper, I would never joke about something like this. I'm completely sincere." Chansa smiled. "I want you to let the Commonwealth pay for your education, because I think you're that good."
No. Way. "I. I don't--" Words! "I have no formal education." Those weren't the words he wanted, no, and they came out in a whisper, the preferred speech of mudfoot kludges everywhere.
"That only makes your achievements all the more amazing."
"I work for a living."
"You may continue to do so. In fact, your practical and professional experience would only be a gift to our program." The Perseid's eyes just about twinkled. "Please say yes. You know you want to."
They wanted him. They really, really wanted him. Everything he knew he'd taught himself, and it had come from whatever scraps he could get. He had no formal training whatsoever. And they still wanted him. The All Systems University, best of the best, the golden school of the golden age, wanted him badly enough to pay for his education. It was like climbing to the top of Mount Olympus and being taken in as a god.
But he was going to be leaving as soon as he could, because he didn't belong here. He shouldn't be here. His heart, which had been light and giddy three seconds ago, dropped to the ground like a ball of lead.
"What's wrong, Harper?" Chansa asked.
"I... I have to ask my captain. And I don't know how long we're going to be here." Which he could say because it could apply to a ship that wasn't knocked out of time too. "And I have to work--"
"We would be happy with you for as long as we had you. Let me give you my address and download the agreement to your pad."
Harper nodded, probably more emphatically than he had to. "Yeah. I'll talk to my captain and let you know." He wanted this so badly. There had to be some way to make it work. He could make anything work if he thought it through long enough.
He wanted this.
"Hey, boss." Harper stood just out of arm's reach and looked almost embarrassed. Actually, he also looked breathless and uncertain and nearly shy.
Dylan was afraid to ask but did anyway. "How did your day go?"
"I felt out the job market a bit, then went to the library to do some research. I gotta tell you, the All Systems University Library rocked. I could live there. Macaluso, Breen, Walks By Sunset.... They had Harmonies of the 'Net and some of Rochinda's original work! I went into a downloading frenzy. Then this guy approached me and asked what was up with the light reading, and my first thought was 'Ew,' but I'm a stranger in a strange land so I figure, hey, I could be polite and I could always vamoose if he turned out to be a pervert for real. We ended up talking slipstream theory and link-ups and fuel injection and half a dozen other things." Harper shifted from foot to foot and took a deep breath. "Then he offered me a full scholarship to the All Systems University."
He had to have heard that wrong. "What?"
"I guess my reading material had red flags. I mean, I know the library had a tracking system on each entry but I figured it was to let them know what was popular, not to tip off the head of the school engineering department for recruiting purposes."
It could all be over for them right now, though Dylan didn't know what the authorities could charge them with.... "What did you say to the offer?"
"I said I'd have to think it over, since I work for a living, and I didn't mention anything about being three hundred years out of time. The offer's great," that light in Harper's eyes was more obviously triumph now, "and sucks all at once. I mean, it sucks because even though I'm a frigging genius, I never had any formal, structured schooling before. None. All of my education I picked up on my own. Instructors will assume a certain kind of common experience or language for things I do on instinct and book learning. And the kids are so much younger than me."
"I doubt that." Then Dylan gave him a closer look. "Right?"
"Dylan, I think I'm about 25, but at eight I was older than these students. And that's all part of me sticking out in classes like a sore thumb. But the great stuff..." he started to just about bounce, "the great stuff is that I have no formal, structured schooling and no real socialization but they still want to pay for me to attend their school, which is more than most of those educated, socialized students can say. And it's the frigging All Systems University, best of the best! I could lay our problem down in front of the greatest minds of the time--"
"You can't do that."
"I can pass it off as a project. I'm not gonna tell them I'm from a dystopic future 300 years from now and I wanna get back."
"Harper, time travel wasn't invented. Our own uncontrollable flukes aside, it still hasn't been invented. I can't take the chance of you helping them go down a path that will change history." Dylan had no idea what advances Harper's distinctive brain combined with the All Systems University's best minds might lead to and didn't want to find out.
"History sucks, Dylan. Remember that? The Long Night? The invasions, the slaughters, the loss of life and knowledge?"
"We've gone over this before--"
"At Witchhead and when I asked if we could stop the treaty with the Magog. Blah de blah. Maybe we should stop breathing too, since we're taking in oxygen somebody else who belongs to this time period should be using."
"You don't still think you can disrupt the treaty and change history."
Politically and scientifically and maybe even socially, Harper was dangerous. The thought of what Harper might try to do scared the hell out of Dylan, but short of tying him down for however long they had to be here, there was no way of stopping him from going outside and interacting with people.
Harper crossed his arms. "Dylan, if the slaughter of three billion innocents at Brandenburg Tor couldn't convince your Commonwealth that the Magog are bad news, I don't know what the hell I could do that would. Triumvere Spring Rivers Flowing's speech didn't do it either, and she was one of you."
"You've been reading up." Dylan remembered the "If I Had a Heart, It Would Break" speech and steeled himself.
"Hell yeah. I'm not just a pretty face."
"I already know what she said."
"Yeah? Maybe you just didn't really listen. 'The victorious Magog slaughtered indiscriminately, feasting on the dead. They destroyed everything they touched, burning and looting unchecked. Now Brandenburg Tor is theirs, the despoiled prize of a cowardly and brutal attack.'"
Harper warmed to the speech, putting fire into it. "'But this aggression will not stand. This brutality will not go unchecked. And the people of Brandenburg Tor will not go unavenged.
"'Even as I speak to you, the brave sentients of the High Guard venture forth to do battle with this new and dangerous foe. With them go our hopes and our prayers. The High Guard will not rest-- We will not rest until this threat to our lives and our liberty has been expunged. Until the citizens of the Systems Commonwealth can enjoy the blessings of Peace once more.' And somehow that 'venturing forth' and 'vengeance' became a treaty that didn't do anything about the Magog but ending up splitting the Commonwealth instead. Some peace."
Phrased that way, it sounded awful. All right, it was awful, but it was still what had happened. Dylan was a soldier, not a politician, and hadn't been given a say. He'd trusted his leaders, as he was supposed to.
"That's not fair," Dylan answered.
"I'm sure the dead at Brandenburg felt the same way. I'm sure that everybody who died when the Commonwealth crumbled and since then wondered how it was fair that a treaty with a bunch of marauding, raping monsters was more important than them. Earth... Earth knows all about unfair." Harper's eyes burned into him. "I want to enroll in the university. I think it could help us. It can't hurt, as long as I don't start confessing all about my dark, dark past to them. Getting my mind jogged with engineering concepts daily can only help."
It always surprised Dylan when Harper showed anger, as opposed to hiding it under a façade of mild grumpiness and general bitchiness. He kept forgetting that the anger was under there.... "And you want to go. And you deserve to go."
"What?"
"In a just galaxy, you'd already be in the All Systems University."
Having Dylan side with him seemed to unsettle and defuse Harper. "Uh, yeah. I'm kinda worried about the cost of living, though. I was gonna start looking for a job to pay our parking, food, etc."
"Are you arguing against going now?"
"No. Just trying to be realistic."
"I got a job." A job he wasn't proud of, but it would pay well and didn't hurt anyone.
Harper had a comical expression of surprise on his face. "How the hell did you get a job? You won't leave the Maru."
"I looked and applied on the 'net. I can even work on the Maru."
"It's not healthy staying cooped up in here."
No matter how hard he tried, Dylan couldn't get Harper to understand his position. But he kept trying. "I'm known."
"Everywhere? By everybody? I still think you should--"
"No." He couldn't see his parents. That was final. "The ID you put together for me worked perfectly."
"Exactly!"
"Harper."
Harper shook his head. "Pays well?"
"Very. Hey, I have marketable talents."
"Mmm-hmm."
"Aside from selling my ass on a street corner."
Harper beamed evilly. "Was I thinking that? No."
"We could sell your ass on a street corner...."
"The noble, the perfect Tarn-Vedra has prostitutes? Horrors."
"Companions."
"Semantics. 'Sides, I intend to retain ownership of my ass."
"What do you need for your education?" When Harper snorted, Dylan said, "You know what I mean."
"A computer pad that isn't an anachronism and some loose cash. I'm lucky the head of the engineering department didn't notice that mine looks a little more advanced. I have two days until the first class, so I can enroll, look at our trip again, maybe even pick up some short-term work projects for pay." Harper perched on the arm of Dylan's chair. "So, what's your marketable skill? What kind of job are you doing? If it's some kind of dial-up sex thing, it's nothing to be ashamed of."
"Harper."
"C'mon, tell me, tell me!"
As annoying as this was, Harper looked... cute while he was beaming and excited. Dylan, of course, knew better than to say that and decided to try to wipe that thought out of his head as soon as possible. "Don't you have to tell the head of the engineering department that you're taking him up on his offer?"
"The more you put me off, the more I start to wonder how bad this job is, and I have one hell of an imagination. You should just 'fess up now."
"I'll tell you when I feel like it, not because you're sitting on my arm and whining."
"I'm sitting on your--? Sorry." Harper shifted over. "Okay, fine, kill me with suspense. I'll call Chansa with my news. If you don't want to be seen by anybody, you might wanna vacate the cockpit for a bit." Harper rubbed his hands together in what seemed to be anticipation. "You're shocked that I got in like this, right, full scholarship and all?"
"Not really. I'm proud, actually, but not surprised."
Harper ducked his head and turned his face away. "Jeez, boss."
"I'm vacating the cockpit."
"Good, because I don't know how long I can hold onto my manly, stoic façade."
"What manly, stoic--"
"I'm calling Chansa!"
"Vacating." Though Dylan found an out of the way place he could watch from.
Harper couldn't sit still as he put the call through. "C'mon.... Oh, hey, Chansa. I'm following up." And trying to play it cool, apparently, from how he calmed down a little.
The Perseid on the screen seemed to be in a state of high excitement. "Harper, I have even better news. I mentioned your working circumstances to our board, and they're willing to give you an extra stipend in addition to the full scholarship."
"That's great! Chansa, I'm coming to school!"
So much for cool. It made Dylan smile.
"Excellent!"
This might turn out to be a problem later, but he really couldn't deny Harper the chance at a Commonwealth education. Besides, Dylan had never seen someone beam that widely before.
"What the hell is this?" Harper asked as he looked at his list of classes for the term. "Introductory Slipstream Mechanics? Literature of the Second Vedran Interregnum?" Even worse: "Gym?" At least his other three engineering classes looked all right, if he could trust the titles.
"The university believes in creating well-rounded students of life," the bored looking Perseid registrar answered.
Harper told himself that he couldn't reach across the desk and shake the guy. Must not. "First off, Chansa tested me and told me I'd scored high. I'm here on a full scholarship. I've been a mechanic most of my life and a working engineer for about four years already. What the hell is up with me taking 'introductory' anything?"
"Our students come to us from worlds across the Commonwealth, so we believe in giving them a common frame of reference."
That sounded fair. It sucked, but it sounded fair. "Okay, fine. But literature? Gym? I don't have the time to be messing around."
"Mr. Harper, we don't play favorites here. There are some classes that all students must take. Even you. Freshman year contains a higher percentage of introductory and well-rounded-student requisite courses than the other years."
Thus, he wouldn't get to take any of the really good classes before he and Dylan left. "Great. Just great. Thanks a lot."
"You're welcome. Are you finished with your form yet?"
"Almost." Fortunately, his current address was the Maru in the spaceport, so he didn't have to go into much detail about Earth aside from listing it as his place of birth. Any information he had about Dunwich or Boston wouldn't fit this time period. The form asked students from planets to list the name of home landmass and city or water habitat, and Harper wanted as little information on record as possible to try to stave off slip-ups in his cover story. "Done." Harper handed the flexi over, his distinctive handwriting converted by it into easy-to-read text.
"Excellent. You'll be reporting for your first class at eight hours the day after tomorrow."
"Eight?" Pretty early in the morning, but he could hack it. "Eight." The university's literature said that it made students congregate together in classrooms instead of conferencing in because the social and interactive components of education were important. "Got it."
Now he'd go home to Dylan and bitch, since bitching was better than getting depressed.
"What am I supposed to do?" Dylan asked when Harper took a breath at the end of his rant.
"Sympathize? I know you won't pull rank." Harper sat down and looked miserable. "Look, I know that everybody has to do these shit classes, but not everybody is trying to get back to the future within the next month or two. I'm going to miss all the cool stuff I wanted to go to school for. It's like I got something I really wanted with one hand but the other hand yanked it away just as I reached for it."
"I'm sorry."
"I should have known it was too easy. You know, getting in and getting a scholarship. Something had to go wrong."
"This isn't really wrong."
"For me it is."
"It's just the way things are. What are you going to do?"
"Go anyway." Harper shrugged. "I agreed to. Besides, maybe it won't be as bad I think it'll be. What's that smile for?"
Dylan doubted that Harper would appreciate it if he said he was proud of him. "I think you're making the right choice."
"Yeah, that and my nobility will keep me warm through all those thoughts of the things I could be learning or the money I could be making while I'm stuck in gym instead."
The first class, one of the cool engineering ones, lifted Harper's spirits a lot. In amongst the introductory stuff were nuggets of a different outlook on a few engineering principles that might lead to some interesting places in days to come. The professor had some fire in her too, which he took to be an encouraging sign. No calcification here. He walked out of there exhilarated by possibilities. This was what he wanted.
Gym class quickly knocked him back down to the ground.
Harper still couldn't believe that he was wearing a stupid-looking university gym uniform. In umber and dark blue, even down to the shoes. The guy handing over the blue longish shorts had been amused by Harper's size too, the bastard. The umber T-shirt with dark blue lettering declaring Harper to be school property just put a cherry on top and exposed the big brown-yellow-green bruise on his arm. Maybe this class was a lesson in shame? The umber and blue didn't look flattering on humans, Nietzscheans, or Perseids of any gender.
Humans, Nietzscheans, and Perseids shared a gym class, while Than, Vedrans, and some of the other alien races each had their own. It seemed like a discriminatory system to Harper even if the university used the excuse that different races needed different kinds of exercise. He'd noticed that he hadn't seen people other than Humans, Nietzscheans, and Perseids in his other class either, but he couldn't really judge on only one class and gym.
He had to get used to the idea that he couldn't automatically see the Nietzscheans as enemies. Okay, around this time they were deciding whether to betray the Commonwealth, but Harper couldn't show his distrust, not if he wanted to attempt to fit in.
The teacher was humanoid and maybe female. Hard to tell with the build and voice. "First off, my assistants and I are going to take the measure of your level of fitness in various ways."
The Nietzscheans preened, and Harper sighed. When the teacher yelled at him to report for the flexibility test, Harper trotted over fast, his shoes squeaking against the floor like everybody else's did. Okay, shame looked more and more like it was the purpose here. Better to get the test over with fast. Except that he did the thing where you sit on the floor with your legs straight out and touch your toes, but the assistant wanted him to do it again. So he did.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing," the Perseid said, but she had a kind of twinkle in her eyes. It gave Harper a bad feeling.
Harper grumbled through push-ups, pull-ups, sprints, and longer runs. His scores on the later tests had to be suffering as he got more and more tired, making him sure that the tests were bullshit. Maybe they wanted to wear the new students down to make them more receptive to something. Maybe they wanted to make students bond through adversity or some crap. Whatever, it was ticking him off. What was next, a relay race with dizzybat?
"You're turning an intriguing shade of red," a Perseid student told him.
"Yeah? Well, you're turning nearly black."
"Go home and hit the showers!" the gym teacher bellowed.
Harper had wondered at first why the gym didn't have a shower section, then realized that putting Perseids in a room with bared homo sapiens genitalia would lead to the kind of questions they might get killed for. Creating a male shower room, female shower room, and Perseid shower room might be more than the university was willing to spend on. Ditto for locker rooms people could actually change in. Students had to dress in the gym uniform at home, go to gym, then go back home to shower and change. It was a major pain in the ass.
"What are our grades for the tests?" one of the female Perseids asked.
"They'll be delivered to your residences. Now get out of here! I'm sure that some of you have some classes coming up."
No public grading? Definitely a bonding thing, then. If they wanted the students to be competitive or strive harder, the scores would be posted or handed out in front of the class.
Harper slung his bag over his shoulder, desperate to leave. He felt so grungy that he intended to walk the grounds in his gym uniform, because he didn't want to subject his clothing to the sweat reeking on his body at the moment. Most of the class seemed to feel the same way.
As he tried to leave, the gym teacher tapped his shoulder and drew him aside. What was he supposed to have done this time?
"I'd like you to try out for the gymnastic squad."
"Say what?"
"Flexibility, arm strength, grace. You have them. Your size works in your favor too."
Harper just barely restrained the urge to say that the ladies liked his size. Instead, he answered, "I can't. I have studies, plus work. I'd never find the time." Besides, enough people would want to kick his ass already just because he got the full scholarship. "But thanks." For nothing.
"If you change your mind in the next two weeks, the offer stands."
Dylan's job may have put him in voice contact with people all day long, but the lack of face to face interaction made it feel hollow. Thus, Harper running in like a whirlwind actually gave him a welcome distraction.
"Nice outfit," Dylan said. Harper had run out too quickly earlier for him to get a good look at it. The umber and midnight blue had always looked odd together, but the umber didn't flatter Harper's coloring at all, and Dylan could just imagine Harper's initial reaction to wearing a shirt that had "Property of All Systems University" written on it.
"Bite me. They didn't make you wear anything embarrassing at the High Guard Academy?"
"Uh, no."
"Liar."
As Harper ran for the shower, Dylan asked, "How has it been so far?"
"The engineering one was cool. Gym sucked, though not in exactly the way I thought it would. And they wanted me to try out for extracurricular gymnastics, which I absolutely refused to do. Now I shower, eat my lunch on campus for that social experience everybody keeps raving about, then go to my next class."
"They want you to be a gymnast?"
"That was my reaction!"
After a ten-minute shower, Hurricane Harper ran back over, wet but clothed, threw a small lunch bag into his backpack, and poured a can of Sparky Cola into a thermos. "I can't believe I have to ration this stuff, but this time period is barbaric. No Sparky. Hasn't been created yet."
"Cola's been around for thousands of years."
"I have brand loyalty, so sue me. Besides, those colas aren't turbo-charged. I get irritable without my daily requirement of caffeine."
"I would never notice the difference."
"Laugh it up now, because you don't want to see me when I'm deprived. Later, Dylan!"
The Maru felt very empty once he'd gone.
Harper looked for some empty space to sit and eat at and found some near some of the other engineering students. He could give them some space and just sort of listen in at the periphery. Social interaction and sharing were cornerstones of the All Systems University education and all. Besides, just about everybody here was good-looking, to the point where it freaked him out a bit, but not so much that he didn't still cruise people.
He sat. The whole table of people stood up with their food and moved away, like they'd choreographed it. He heard a few giggles.
Fucking child games. It didn't hurt. At all.
Okay, he saw how this would go. He had enough socialization to know that the snob handbook said that someone so ostracized would henceforth slink about the corners of the room trying to quietly find a small corner to sit and hide in, trying not to draw any further attention to his repugnant self. Of course, everyone would notice anyway, but they'd pretend not to, even as they gossiped about it.
Well, fuck that noise. The Harper handbook made him spread out his stuff on the table and put his feet up on a nearby chair as he started to dig into his lunch. He'd stay here today and be comfortable. Be a shame to waste an empty table. Furthermore, he'd see how many days in a row the pigs were willing to disrupt their lunches to stand up to avoid him for, because he intended to sit near them every. Fucking. Day.
They wanted to be assholes? Let 'em have to work at it.
Lesson learned.
When Dylan woke up, he wasn't certain where he was. Once he remembered that he was on the Eureka Maru, he felt silly, because he actually spent a great deal of time on the Maru for missions or cargo runs, and he'd slept in this bunk for three days even before they hit Tarn-Vedra.
They were on Tarn-Vedra. Home, but not home. Dylan had a certain festering resentment over the whims of fate or the Divine or whatever it was that kept playing with him. He'd wanted to go home so badly....
Harper breathed softly in the bunk above him, a comforting presence. The irony of being comforted by having someone from the dark future with him while he was back in his own time didn't escape him. Except that it wasn't his own time, not anymore.
This didn't help him at all.
Dylan went to relieve himself, then washed his hands and splashed water on his face. When he looked up, his reflection shocked the hell out of him until he remembered that he had those nanobots changing his hair color. Even though he didn't leave the Maru, preferring to stay immersed in the grimy future he belonged to now, he kept the dark blond with streaks going just in case, presenting a steady façade of Captain Jerrold Cantrell. A Harperish voice in his head asked if he expected people to board by force specifically to unmask him, but he disregarded it.
He wondered if his need to look different from himself reflected a dissociative problem.
Dylan concentrated on getting his own color back, but the resulting brown didn't look right to him, being somehow too brown and too dark. He couldn't have forgotten his own hair color in just a few days. His next attempt had a little too much red. All right, he didn't understand the technology very well and could ask Harper for help next time. Disgruntled, he went back to the dark blond with streaks.
When he opened the ramp hatch, a cool breeze carried the scents of home into the ship, briefly freshening the Maru's stale, recycled air, which smelled mostly of metal, plastic, and oils. This late at night he could smell the thick sweetness of plants. In a few hours, his father would wake up to go to work. His mother might already be awake, flying. The thought of them and the temptation to meddle made his chest hurt.
Murmuring in his sleep, Harper sounded bereft, though Dylan couldn't make out any of the words. Dylan closed the hatch and went back to his bunk.
The table of engineering students got up the second day too. Different engineering students even, since every student's lunch time depended on daily class scheduling. Once they got bored of standing up every time and he'd made his point, he'd have to see if the students of one of the other disciplines stood up if he tried to sit near them.
Then Harper noticed a group staring at him and writing on flexis. Once they saw him watching, some of them put innocent looks on their faces, others looked away, but all of them looked guilty. Harper wasn't sure if he even wanted to know what they were up to.
"Harper."
"Oh, hey, Chansa. Checking up on me?"
Chansa walked down the hall next to him. "I like to support my students. You look very busy. How has your time here been so far?"
"Most of the engineering classes are good."
"'Most' of them?"
"I'm sure you know the one I'm not so happy with."
The Perseid smiled. "Rite of passage, I'm afraid. How are you finding the literature class? You don't have to answer, I can tell from the look on your face. I'm sorry, but it's another rite of passage."
"Somebody should tell Professor Juras that she can't browbeat and belittle us into loving Vedran literature."
"Maybe you're the one."
"Oh no, I don't want to fail that class too badly."
"I hear that you were asked to try out for the gymnastics team."
"I don't want to be in gym at all, let alone spend more time there after classes. Just no, okay?"
"It might help gain you some friends."
Harper cast an annoyed sidelong look at Chansa. "My social life is fine."
"That's not what I heard."
"Becoming a jock isn't going to make the people I'm having problems with like me any better. Might makes things worse, actually. Everything will work out." One way or another. Harper might be gone in a few weeks.
"I wish you could have lived in campus housing. It's part of the full university experience, and we're willing to pay for your room and board."
Living on-campus would give Harper one or more roommates he'd have to lie to full-time, while going home to the Maru at night gave him time where he could be himself and not have to think twice about everything he said and did. Besides, he liked the familiar surroundings and having the company of somebody he knew, someone from his own time. Even if Dylan had partial citizenship in this time period too.
"I can't leave my captain high and dry like that. The ship needs me."
"I understand, and I commend you for your level of commitment to your employer."
"Now I have my welding shop." He hoped Chansa would take a hint. Harper really didn't want to talk about this stuff.
"If there's anything I can do for you, let me know."
"Sure thing."
"Harper. In the gardens behind the library you'll find a group of vines festooned with small white berries. Humans find them very tasty."
"Thanks, guy."
Aside from the gardener, no one spent much time in the gardens. Familiarity breeding contempt, maybe. Harper liked the colors and the vivid scents and would walk barefoot through the grass if he didn't have to worry about Vedran insects. He had to search a bit for the vines but that had to be a plus. More berries for him, right? Besides, he got a little kick out of his treasure hunt.
Would firm berries or soft berries be tastier? Firm had a tart flavor that smacked his taste buds, but he liked it. Soft tasted candy sweet and rich. Both had a complex vibrancy that only fresh fruit could provide. He could just about taste their sun warmth as well as feel it. Stopping his feast occasionally only to lick sticky, sweet green juice from his lips and fingers, Harper let himself be gluttonous for a little while before he thought that he should save some of these. He might be dying for some variety in his diet later, and he wasn't exactly starving.
Virtuous, with sweetness on his tongue, he felt a bit happier.
Harper looked at the test on the screen and just blanked. Was it even written in Common? It looked like Common.... Oh, fuck. He knew this stuff, he knew he knew this stuff. He was just panicking. If he fucked this up he would just be proving everybody right, that he didn't belong here, that he was an idiot engineer savant, who could hack it well in the real world but couldn't do diddly in an academic setting.
Essay questions too?
Think. Think!
Then the answer for question #9 bobbed up to the top of his brain. And #7. And #5.... Harper picked up his stylus and went to work. The more he wrote and keyed, the more the rest of it came back to him. It was easy, especially when he pictured the stuff in his head. Feeling a stare at the back of his neck, he glanced back to see one of the other students glaring at him. He put his sunniest smile on and returned his gaze to his screen.
Harper may not have been the first student to finish the test and leave the room, but he was the fifth. Out of a class of 50 members of the crème de la crème of the Commonwealth's freshmen academic engineering talent. Take that, snobs.
When Harper got home, Dylan was still sitting in the cockpit involved in his super-secret, mysterioso job, so Harper didn't bother him. Or spy either, since he wanted Dylan to tell him what it was. Harper just threw his backpack up to his bunk and went to Engineering.
Dylan worried him. The guy was back home--in the right time zone, even--but seemed miserable and didn't leave the dubious comforts of the Maru. Didn't go outside. Harper kind of understood the AWOL argument and not wanting to mess with his past self thing--though if Harper had a chance to see his parents, he'd find some way, sure as hell--but Dylan didn't even go out to see the sights, commune with nature, or enjoy the fresh air, and Tarn-Vedra had lots of sights and fresh air. Unlike some people's home planets.
In plain terms, Dylan was depressed and distant. Sometimes cranky too. More than usual. Had to be something Harper could do....
Harper saw that he had a message from school. How fucked up was it that he and Dylan each had addresses here? Felt way too permanent for two guys going back to the future soon. What the hell did they think they were doing? Hell, what did he think he was doing? Going to school. Dylan shouldn't be encouraging his pipe dream like this. Did Dylan intend to wait here until he graduated?
Harper called the message up and read, then started to smile. "Whoo! Oh, yeah!" he shouted. "I. Rule."
"Rule what?" Dylan asked. He must have somehow heard the jubilance even through his headset.
"I got 100% on my test! They even liked the essays! 'Strong, distinctive, and creative problem-solving.' Hmm. Think they might have a little sarcasm on that 'creative.'"
Dylan smiled a little. "That's great. You had doubts about this test?"
"I had a scary moment or two on it." Harper bounced. "Yes! Eat that!"
"Who do you want to eat what?"
No way Harper was going to tell Dylan that the other kids at school were being mean to him, especially not when Dylan was down. "Figure of speech. This deserves a beer. Want some?"
"I... have to get back to work."
Okay, depressed, distant, cranky, temperamental, almost shy, and weird. "Suit yourself, D. But it's good future beer, so don't expect to get any later."
On the fourth day, the other students didn't stand up from the table at lunch. No staying power, kids these days. Then one of them stood, approached Harper, and asked, "Do you have any idea why we hate you so much?"
Harper wanted so badly to hit the stupid punk, but he knew that they wanted him to do that and prove what a barbarian he was. Like hell he'd play their game. He stood up to face him. "Sure I do. I didn't go to the schools you thought you had to go to. I didn't take the tests you sweated over. I don't come from your kind of family, and I don't wear the latest fashions. I don't have any favors to call in. I don't have the terminology down. But I got a full scholarship anyway, most of the teachers like me--at least the teachers who are capable of liking students do--and in an emergency I could fix anything anyone put in front of me. Is that about right?"
He looked disconcerted for a moment, then said, "All of that, except for the bits about being more competent than I am, and you missed the fact that you're a freakish little fuck-up."
"Ah, barbs about my height. Now I'm hurt." But he was. He didn't expect to be accepted or understood or really liked, but he hadn't expected to be hated.
"We know how you got that scholarship and stipend."
Harper had heard those rumors, and they were as ugly to Chansa's reputation as they were to his. "I got in here based on my brains, not my mouth and ass. Maybe you got in that way.... You know, if you put half as much energy into your studies as you do into zinging me, maybe you'd make something of yourself."
"You're right. You're really not worth the time." Noses in the air, he and his posse of bootlickers walked off.
So much for the brotherhood of engineers.
Harper took a deep breath and made sure his sneer stayed in place, then went to his next class. Maybe he wouldn't be a spectacle there.
Harper laid low, sitting quietly at the back of the room. It was easy in this class, since he knew all of this crap already and the teacher was a bore. A bore who was teaching his students a mixture of fundamentals and the absolute wrong way to think.
"Mr. Harper, is there anything you'd like to share with the class?" the professor asked.
Shit. He hadn't been doing anything! "Not really, sir."
"The look you had on your face said otherwise."
The class made this amused little murmur that made it impossible for Harper to keep silent on this one. "You just said that there was only one part and one way to fix this kind of AP converter breakdown. What you just told the class is the best way to do it, but sometimes you don't have the proper parts around. In that case, you can hand machine a temporary replacement. If you want more detail, I'll even tell you what part you can adapt this way." Oh yeah, making friends and influencing people the Seamus Harper way. Maybe he should just put a target on his back.
"Enough. Thank you, Mr. Harper."
"Don't mention it." Please don't.
Harper tried to ignore all the sidelong glances directed at him for the next 20 minutes. Then the class finally ended. "Mr. Harper, I'd like see you afterward," Professor Aburai said. Ended for everyone else. The rest of the class left, some of the students staring at him until they walked out the door.
Once they were alone, the professor asked, "Why are you here?"
Harper resisted the urge to treat that as an existential question and instead answered, "This is a necessary introductory course." He shrugged. "I also have to take gym."
"I'm aware that you're already familiar with most of this material, and I'm sorry this is boring for you, but the rest of the class can only prosper from learning what I have to teach."
"I didn't say anything until you asked. I didn't make any wise-ass noises or roll my eyes or anything."
"You just looked at me like I was an idiot."
"Now you're putting expressions on my face." Harper wanted to blow off some steam so badly, but it wouldn't do him any good here. Bitching or snarking would just make things worse. He wished Dylan could see how reasonable he was being. And maybe the top of his head would blow up from the pressure of all that repressed bitchiness hitting the boiling point. "I don't think you're an idiot; I just don't agree with you teaching them that only one part or way works and no other. If you only stick with the stuff everybody else always does, you never come up with anything new."
"I'm teaching them the right way to do things."
"Teaching them the best way is fine, but sometimes real world conditions don't let you do the best way. Give them the emergency alternatives. Or, you know, don't, and I'll just sit at my desk, do my assignments and tests, and say nothing. I can't promise that I'll have an attentive expression on my face, though. Maybe you could just not look at me or ask me what I'm thinking in front of the class."
The professor gave him a searching look. "What kind of engineering duty have you done? Shipping isn't as exciting as your experience suggests."
Yeah, this time period didn't have that many pirates and hijackers. "I've seen some bad luck is all."
"And your ship is hardly top of the line."
Thanks for the reminder. Harper knew he shouldn't be so surprised that everyone at the university seemed to be a snobby, classist pig, but once in a while even he fell for Dylan's propaganda about the golden days of the Commonwealth. In an era in which "everyone" was well-off, poor people had to have some kind of moral or intellectual failings or they'd be well-off too, right? "We're not the image of prosperity, that's true. It leads to a lot of recycling and ingenuity."
Amazing how many ways he'd been finding to say "fuck off" without actually saying "fuck off." And Beka thought he had no talent for other languages.
Damn, he missed Beka.
It had to be the stresses of the day making him get nearly teary-eyed. He was frustrated and tired, and he wanted to go home and see all the people who made home home. He'd do anything to get back to Beka, Rommie, Tyr, and Trance, Warrior Princess. And he had all that work to do on Roseanne too....
"I'll think about it," the professor said, though his tone suggested nothing of the sort. "Dismissed."
"Yes, sir." Just in time too, since he didn't know how much longer he could keep it together.
But when he walked out, a Perseid just about bounced up to him and said, "Harper? I'm Nejat."
"Uh, yeah? And?"
She smiled, undeterred by his unfriendly tone. "I waited for you, because I wanted to hear what you had to say. Innovation and experimentation lead us to greater knowledge, and Professor Aburai... isn't welcoming that."
Harper's spirits lifted. A little. "I'm not the most popular person in that class right now."
"Popularity is far less important than knowledge. I have some friends who agree with that too and would be very interested in the experiences of an actual working, field-tested engineer."
"They're Perseids too?"
"Of course. We lack the petty jealousies of your human peers."
Perseids seemed to like him, though Harper had no idea why. "Was that a compliment to me or a slur against humans?"
"The first, of course."
"Then, sure. I'd be up for some data exchange. I have another class now, though."
"I know. Rhouhi has that class with you. Perhaps afterward?"
"Are you guys stalking me?"
She just smiled harder. Yeah, Perseids could be freaky. Still, they were the best thing to come his way in a while.
That was really sad.
Dylan took off his headset and pressed the bridge of his nose hard with his fingers. What a meaningless job he did.... An ironic one too, considering the horrors of the Fall soon to come.
A small bowl full of bianberries had been placed next to him. He hadn't even heard Harper enter and leave.... The skin of one of the soft ones just about melted in his mouth in a burst of refreshing, sunny sweetness. Fresh fruit, so much tastier than what they had in their stores, and this had the flavor of home, making Dylan happy and melancholy all at once. Rather more happy than melancholy, though. He alternated sweet and tart berries, just like he did when he'd been young and picked them off the vines that grew in the alley behind his home.
Dylan wanted to thank Harper, but Harper wasn't on the ship. It could wait for later.
To Jon's disgust, Lau was messing with the new student again, not that Lau was alone in that particular hobby. So far the new guy hadn't shown any signs of hurting over it--not even when the Nietzscheans, understanding him to be a pariah and thus vulnerable, growled at him, which he just growled back to--but anyone being verbally worked over by 90% of the student body had to break eventually.
Jon walked up and grabbed Lau by the arm. "We have to go."
"No, we don't. I'm just complimenting Kaspar Hauser here on his social skills."
The new student looked up at them with a sardonic twist to his mouth. "Kaspar Hauser? I thought you were supposed to be a history major. Try Wild Peter. Asshole."
So he had an attitude to match his spiky hair. Interesting. And how would an engineering student know obscure ancient Earth history?
Lau stepped forward angrily but stopped when the new guy put a metal rod to his stomach. "What the hell is that?" Lau asked.
He smiled, and his whole face sharpened and hardened. "If you come any closer, I'll demonstrate."
In the face of genuine menace, Lau backed off fast, then sneered trying to make up for it. "I have someplace to be."
"What's keeping you?"
Lau walked off quickly, trying to disguise fear with anger and not entirely succeeding. "Sorry about that," Jon said, almost feeling ashamed himself.
"Are you a friend of his?" What was that accent?
"Same program, and there aren't too many of us, so we start feeling responsible for one another."
"I'm sorry." The "for you" was left unspoken.
"I'm Jon. I'm in your Literature of the Second Vedran Interregnum class."
After a pause, the new student said, "Harper."
"Is that a first name or last name?"
"My better name. It's my last."
"Wild Peter? I never heard that one before."
"If he was trying to call me a unsocialized wolf boy, it fits better. My own name's Seamus. You can see why I use Harper."
"The engineering students usually stick together, but you're sitting alone." Obviously sitting alone, since the engineering students may have been sitting at the same table, but they had set their chairs as far away from Harper as possible.
"Jon, this conversation is over." Harper took the remains of his lunch and stood up.
"Wait! That wasn't an insult. Just me thinking out loud." Jon realized that he wasn't as plugged into the grapevine as he'd thought. He'd have to ask Jemmy about the engineers' campaign against Harper, which he'd thought Harper had won. It seemed to be a separate and darker thing than the general ragging Harper was taking from the rest of the student body.
"That can get you killed in some places."
Harper was dangerous; it rolled off him in waves. The university campus was too close to the High Guard Academy for Jon to have failed to meet dangerous people before, but Harper had a harder, more energetic danger, hot instead of cold. Edged....
"Yeah," Jon said, then wanted to smack himself for how breathless he sounded. "What was that tool you threatened Lau with?"
"Manual screwdriver. The most I could have done was poke him hard with it."
Jon had to laugh. "What if he called your bluff?"
"I knew he wouldn't. Besides, if you poke the right areas, you get good results." Harper looked toward a bunch of the abnormal psych majors sitting nearby, then sighed. "You'll have to excuse me for a moment." He went over to them.
Jon couldn't hear any of the discussion, but he noticed that their eyes pinned Harper as if he were a specimen to be studied. Then Jon understood and sighed. And wondered if everyone was trying to drive this guy crazy or if that would just be a nice side effect for them.
Harper returned to his table and sat down. He shot a glance back at the students and caught them staring at him. "Jon, do you know who their advisor is?"
"I think it's Professor Serad. I could find out for sure."
"Nah, I can do it. I just need to have a little talk with whomever. If that doesn't work, I'll have to start yanking their chains right back. What's that smile about?"
"My concentration in history is language. Yours is interesting."
A Perseid girl interjected herself. "Harper, we have another fascinating period with Professor Aburai, and you're almost late."
Harper looked relieved to go, which told Jon that he had to be much less obvious next time. "See you around, Jon." Harper didn't sound pleased by that.
That would change. Jon would make sure of it.
Dylan signed off work early. He could, since he'd already met his quota for the day and then some. It wasn't like his job mattered or helped anyone. He couldn't help anyone. He knew that he couldn't stop what was coming yet couldn't leave, and it left him feeling listless and lost, ghost-like. "What the hell is wrong with me?"
"Is that a private question, or can anyone play?" Harper asked as he walked in, looking worn out.
"Private. Is everything okay?"
Harper threw his backpack down on the table in the break room and rummaged through the cooler. "Everything's great. Peachy. It's the golden age of the Commonwealth, so what could be wrong?"
That sounded promising. Dylan had asked Harper about his classes but not about the people. "Making lots of new friends?" he asked, realizing that he sounded like his father.
And he wasn't thinking about that.
"Nope, and I'm better off that way." Harper took a long swig off a bottle of beer.
What? "I don't get it."
"Dylan, all of these people have been dead for about three hundred years. And when we go, I'll never see any of them again. So what's the point? You know exactly what I mean." Harper's voice sounded too light, too casual. He finished his beer and put his toolbelt on. "I'll be back in a few hours. I picked up some freelance work at a nearby shop. See ya."
This couldn't be good, but Harper hadn't made any complaints more pointed than mild bitchery over his curriculum. The culture shock had to be rough, yet Harper seemed to be dealing with it. He probably needed a little more adjustment time, and then he'd be thrilled by the unexpected opportunity he'd been presented with here. If Dylan pried any further, Harper would be sure to tell him to back off because he could handle it.
"Hey, Nejat?" Harper asked as they left the class.
"Yes, Harper?"
"How come Vedrans don't teach any of our classes?"
She gave him an odd look. "Everybody knows that only Vedrans can take classes from Vedrans because the other races get too distracted by the Vedrans themselves to pick up any of the lessons."
Mindfuck. How convenient. "So the Vedrans get to keep their technological hegemony." Say what? "Oh, ow."
"What's wrong?"
"I think I've been in the university too long. If I keep this up, only other students will be able to understand a word I say."
She had a speculative gleam in her black eyes and smiled in a way that made her long chin... bob. "I think it's cute."
"Uh, I have to get to class." Harper had been aware for a while now that Nejat was... interested in him, but he knew just enough about Perseid reproduction to figure that sex for them had to be way different, since they were all bisexual and couples of all sorts impregnated each other.
She liked him, he knew she did, but she might also see doing him as some kind of big science experiment, with him as the prime specimen. Kijani had been like that with him a few years ago, and it still made him cringe to think about it. After all, he could get self-conscious. Sometimes. And her Perseid's long, bony chin had seriously gotten in the way of things during the proceedings, which hadn't helped make their attempts at sex any smoother. Finally things had gotten too awkward and weird, so he'd given up on trying to get any futher. Kijani hadn't, which had made things more awkward and weird...
"Enjoy gym!" Nejat said to him as she bounced off. It was a shame that Perseids were bald, because she really needed to have a ponytail that would swing when she moved.
Harper so hated Literature of the Second Vedran Interregnum. Much of the fiction and poetry were all right, though bland, but he got the feeling that all the historical events mentioned in the literature had been sanitized. Just a feeling, especially since no race could be as noble as the Vedrans presented themselves here. He couldn't forget that the Commonwealth had originally been the Vedran empire, started through conquest, and that the Vedrans hadn't wanted humans in the Commonwealth at all.
Did the Vedrans get a different version of their literature to study?
"You use these obscure references even though you know people won't get them," Jon said, though it sounded more like a question than a statement to Harper. Jon had been hanging around lately and usually tried to get some conversation in before class started.
"Context is your friend. Aside from that, yeah."
Perched on Harper's desk, Jon leaned in closer, trying for intimacy, maybe. Though intimacy couldn't really be achieved in front of 31 other students plus a professor. "You do this so other people can't get close to you."
Oh for-- Harper wanted to smack him. Instead he said, "Wow."
"I'm right?"
"No."
The look on Jon's face made it worth it.
"But--"
"Mr. Desaix, if you would please get to your seat so the other 32 students don't have to wait on you any longer?" Nothing beat a bitchy professor, and Professor Juras never had any good days, at least not in front of this class. She seemed to be certain that none of her students had a proper respect for Vedran literature and intended to beat said respect into them via verbal sledgehammers, since the director frowned upon corporal punishment.
Jon hopped off of Harper's desk. "Moving."
"You can psychoanalyze Mr. Harper on your own time."
Who knew that Jon could blush like that? Sometimes, though rarely, Professor Juras was Harper's kind of evil.
Dylan woke up and looked at his chron. Too early. Something had woken him up.
When he turned over and looked at the bunk across from his, he saw Harper sitting there, silent, eyes closed, face peaceful and open, his school pack lying across his knees. Dylan had no idea what he was doing, but he looked so content and young and still that he didn't want to disturb him. Usually Harper only stayed still while absorbed in a task. Lately, Harper had constantly been absorbed in one task or another.
Sometimes Harper made Dylan feel almost lazy by comparison.
Harper had that early class today, and Dylan must have sensed him sitting there.
Harper opened his eyes, which had a dreamy look to them, and noticed Dylan. "Oh, hi," he said softly.
"What are you doing?" Dylan whispered back.
He looked up at the ceiling. "Listening to the rain."
Dylan vaguely heard it too, sounding soft and gentle against the Maru's hull. Given the hull's thickness, the rain could be pounding down outside. "You miss it?"
"Yeah. Though I might change my mind once I walk outside." Harper put his hood up and stood. "Better go. Don't wanna be late for a class that isn't a waste of my time."
"Hey, Harper. Have a good day."
He smiled, almost sadly, then leaned down and kissed Dylan's cheek. "You too, honey."
Dylan didn't know what to make of it, but that was his usual reaction to Harper's behavior.
This had to be the right room. Harper hoped. "Professor, can I have a moment of your time? You're the head of the abnormal psych division, right?" he asked.
Sitting at his desk all authoritative, he looked up. "Yes. You're not one of my students."
"Nah. I'm your students' unwilling class project, and I'd like you to ask them to stop."
"Surely you're overstating it."
"I've caught about 20 of them spying on me. That leaves 10 who either have another abnormal psych subject to study or are playing it cool."
"Did you ask them to stop?"
"I did, and 95% of them said, 'Oh, that's interesting,' and kept inputting. You're their teacher, so you have more authority." Harper sighed. The teacher had that same look of interest. Shit. He wasn't going to do it.
"I understand why they chose you."
"Is that a yes or no?"
"I'll tell them to choose another subject."
What do you know? Maybe everybody wasn't so bad after all. "Thank you." But as Harper left, he thought about it and said, "You might want to mention that I'll still be watching out to make sure nobody's studying me. I'm not gonna relax my guard."
The professor smiled. "I'll let them know. I'll also tell them that they're supposed to be more subtle in their study. If the subject knows about the scrutiny, the subject's behavior changes."
"Great. Thanks." Everybody did suck. No wonder he kept having dreams about being bound and gagged, and not in any fun way.
Harper, who'd twisted and folded himself into what looked like a hideously uncomfortable position in his bunk as he read a flexi, said, "Please tell me that The Stars in the Plains gets better."
Wow. That made him nostalgic. Dylan sat in the lower bunk across from Harper's top one to better talk to him. "That's classic literature."
"It's a gigantic list of four-legged people begetting other four-legged people, with a little bit of plot for flavor. It's driving me out of my frigging mind. But more stuff happens eventually, right?"
"Actually it's a gigantic list of four-legged people begetting other four-legged people throughout."
"I'm going to go put a bullet in my brain."
"There are more exciting selections to come."
"There better be."
Dylan tried not to smile. "Just think of all the art and culture you're being exposed to."
"My life would be richer without it. Art and culture are taking all the fun out of reading." Harper closed his eyes. "You know, I think I've analyzed our trip here about as much as anyone could. I don't think we're going to find out anything else."
"You want to leave?" Why did Dylan feel so torn over that? He wasn't even letting himself go outside. Sure, attempting to go back to the future, their true present, would be dangerous and uncertain, but so was most of their lives.
Harper put the flexi down and turned to face Dylan. "Well, yeah. That was the idea. We don't belong here, remember? Besides, we might as well. Best that I can figure, we hit space with you as our pilot, we approach slipstream, I replicate a kind of disturbance that would jolt you into using your subconscious mind instead of your conscious one to make piloting decisions and temporarily disturb the AG fields--"
"You found a disturbance in the AG fields that might have something to do with it?"
"Yep. We do all that and hope we end up back home. Of course, you'll have to convince your subconscious mind that the Andromeda of the future is your home, but you can do that, right? And we can't do tests first, because if we sent anything into slipstream we wouldn't be able to find out where it exited. We have to be our own guinea pigs."
"It's risky."
"Fuck that! It's always going to be risky, Dylan. I can't see a point when it will stop being risky. Our lives in general are all about risk."
"What if we would end up somewhere entirely different?" Somehow, the thought of ending up in an entirely different time from the ones he'd known suffused him with dread. He was stronger than this....
"Then we deal. It's not like Tarn-Vedra's been a picnic."
"What's going on, Harper? I can't believe that you're dying to go back just because you can't stand The Stars in the Plains. You wanted to attend the university." They'd been staying so Harper could get at least some time in there.
"And it's been a thrill a minute, really, but I don't want you to think that we have to stay here so I can go to school, because I don't think we should stick around for five years. I'll survive, okay? Look, Dylan, if you wanna stay here, I'd understand. You could lay low for a few years, then sometime after the Andromeda got stuck in the event horizon you could pop up somewhere and use your knowledge to try to fix things or at least stop them from going as wrong as they did. You could even see your fiancée again. I get that."
That wasn't it. "Harper, this isn't my time anymore. I'm not the same person I used to be; being here has just nailed that home to me. I'm also... beginning to think that the Commonwealth will fall no matter what I do, that it was heading on that path but the Nietzschean Uprising just pushed it there faster." Dylan hadn't even fully articulated that despairing thought to himself before. Said aloud, it sounded awful, but it followed what Rhade had told him two years ago, that the Nietzscheans, seeing the Commonwealth as weak, had been arguing for a rebellion for years before the Treaty of Antares pushed some of the hold-outs like Rhade to go along.
From what Dylan had surmised from Uxulta's actions, Tarn-Vedra had cut itself off from the slipstream routes during the war and allowed the rest of the Commonwealth to flail in its death throes and suffer through the centuries of anarchy that followed. Uxulta and her herd had left the safety of Tarn-Vedra's isolation only to protect the Vedrans' favorite nature preserve 300 years hence, not to help anyone else. The all-encompassing self-interest suggested by their actions flew in the face of everything Dylan had believed about them.
He could imagine Harper's reaction to finding out what Dylan knew now about the Vedrans.
"I think that's possible too," Harper said. "Like you'd be that little Dutch kid with his finger stopping up a hole in the dyke, but all these other holes keep breaking out all over."
Dylan had wanted Harper to disagree, but he should have known that Harper wouldn't. He wished he could get an honest answer as to whether Harper agreed out of inborn cynicism or because he'd already seen signs of rot after only two weeks.
"Back in the future, we have 50 worlds ready to ratify the charter which will create the foundation of a new Commonwealth. After that, they'll elect a new triumvere. I can't miss any of that." It might fall apart without him.
Besides, if he stayed here he might unintentionally kill his future crew by doing something that led to none of them existing.
"Then why don't you want to move on this?" Harper sounded so frustrated. "I'm worrying about you, Dylan."
"It's a gut feeling."
"Well, tell your gut to start putting it into words, because right now it looks like something else."
Dylan had to laugh. "Are you calling me a coward?"
"No." Harper shrugged in a way that strained to be casual. "I just think you're depressed and maybe immobilized by it."
"I can't believe you just said that."
"Dylan, you don't go out. You're on your home planet that you haven't been able to see in years, and you don't go out. Aside from me and the people of your mysterious job--which you seem to be ashamed of--you don't talk to anybody. What is that?"
"Caution."
"Yeah, whatever." Harper jumped down from his bunk, his bare feet making a slapping sound against the floor. "I gotta take a break before I make a go on the next generation of noble Vedrans. You want anything from the Mess? I figure I'll grab a snack, then do some maintenance work."
"I'm not depressed." He just wanted to leave but wished he could stay.
"You should be. I'd be." Harper walked off before Dylan could answer that.
"Hey, everybody," Lau said, "guess what Jon is going to talk about."
"I'm not that predictable, am I?" Jon asked as he sat down.
"Usually no, but lately it's been Harper this and Harper that. Ever since he threatened me, you've been hot for him."
"It wasn't the threatening!"
"Of course it was. His face went hard and voice went dark, and you got wet."
"You were noticing his face?"
"No. Keep your mind on the topic, which is that he's all you talk about lately. He's a treasure trove of ancient Earth slang. He seems like a barely caged wild animal. He makes your toes curl."
"Yes to slang, no to wild animal--where do you get these ideas?--and ew to curling toes."
"I think it's cute," Jemmy said. "Maybe if you'd stop stalking him, he wouldn't run from you."
"I'm not stalking him!"
"No, just annoying him," Lau said. "You've been pretty creepy. If I were him, I wouldn't go for you."
Jemmy said, "Sorry, but I agree."
"What am I doing wrong?" Jon asked plaintively.
Jemmy rolled her eyes. "You're letting him know that you're studying him. Jon, you're telling him that you're studying him. That has to make him uncomfortable, especially since the abnormal psych weirdos were doing it as a class project and he went to their advisor for an order to stop."
Jon forgot sometimes how everybody knew everything on campus. "Okay, I won't let him know that I'm analyzing him."
"Just treat him like someone you're interested in. But be low key about it. Stop looking so intense and desperate."
"What?" Jon asked. "I don't look desperate."
"Yeah, you do," Lau answered. "You treat him like he's a bombing target. You might also want to try making things enjoyable for him too. You know, offer him some fun things to do."
"I hate you both."
"Only because we're right. Jon, he has to be starving for friendly company, but you're creeping him out so badly that he's running in the other direction. You know you're doing something wrong, so just admit it."
"Fine."
"And if you do finally get close to him, find out what that disk on his neck is about." Lau's tongue tip touched his lower lip. "I keep wondering if it's some kind of weird piercing or something."
Alarm bells went off in Jon's mind. Was all that taunting Lau's way of flirting with Harper? Possibly, if Lau had never mentally matured to an age beyond early adolescence. He also had no morals and wouldn't have any problems with trying to snatch away someone he knew Jon wanted. Jon would have to keep that in mind and be wary of any advice he offered. The things Jemmy agreed with had to be safe, at least, and what he'd been doing so far hadn't worked, so....
"How could I possibly be more attentive in that class than I am?" Jon asked.
"Maybe if we propped our eyelids open with little sticks she'll believe us," Harper answered.
Jon gave him an incredulous look as he obviously pictured Harper's words in action, then laughed. "I don't know if we want to give her any ideas. Let me buy you a coffee?"
"Why?" Harper didn't believe in turning down free things usually, but he wondered about ulterior motives.
Jon shrugged. "I want to. Besides, you have to tell me how you figured out the plot to The Stars in the Plains. When I read it, I only saw five generations of Vedran genealogy."
Harper couldn't help smiling at that. "If I do that, I want a cookie too."
"Done. You realize that Professor Juras isn't going to let you quietly lurk in class anymore now that she knows you can pick up this stuff."
"Sure. Cheer me up." Though it had been nice seeing the look on her face when he'd relayed the plot and themes to her. She'd cold-called on him in the hopes of making him look like an idiot. "You realize that she's going to hate me even more now that she knows I get this stuff and still hate it. I'm seeing my future in that class, and it's not pretty."
"Coffee and cookies can only make it seem a little better."
"Maybe. Hey, did you just say 'cookies,' plural? I'm holding you to that."
Jon squirmed in his chair as he watched Harper eat. Harper had chosen some kind of sandwich cookie and taken it apart, eating it component by component. Watching him lick the filling off the cookie pieces in strong, swirling strokes kept doing things to Jon's dick. Watching him bask in the sunlight--relaxed, sprawling, and luminously blond--as he sexually frustrated Jon through cookies didn't help. Harper, who had to be planet-born, had wanted to sit at an outside table for the fresh air.
Jon, needing more air, took a deep breath and asked, "Why can't I see a plot in the damned thing?"
"Yeah, it's boring as all hell, but you read history books so--" Harper laughed. "Sorry. I'm really not trying to say that all history books are dry and boring. Though some of them are. Maybe you're so caught up in reading the facts of the genealogy like the history major you are that you're forgetting it's supposed to be literature."
"Maybe. So how do you have a tolerance for it?"
"You ever read specs, Jon? Some of them are written like they were translated--badly--from another language. Overwritten too, using five words where one would totally get the point across. Makes 'em boring and impenetrable, so you have to make your own fun with 'em." Harper grinned and licked chocolate crumbs off his lips. "You keep getting this weird look on your face every time I eat one of my cookies."
"I never saw anyone take them apart like that before."
"They last longer this way." Harper screwed another one apart in one quick, efficient twist and licked the filling out of it in slow, thorough swirls, his eyes closed, savoring.
Jon fidgeted and tried not to imagine that tongue licking anything else clean. The soft crunching sound as Harper ate the remaining cookie broke him out of his trance.
Harper had a dark smile and an almost teasing light in his eyes. Was he flirting? Please let him be flirting.
Was it possible that Harper hadn't realized that Jon had been flirting before today? Jon wanted to smack himself.
"You look like you're really enjoying those," Jon said, his voice coming out huskier than usual.
"Oh yeah. I have a major jones for sweets. Wait a minute, what time is it?"
"I don't know." Damn, he sounded... dreamy, dazed.
"Crap, I gotta go. Work. No rest for the wicked." Harper gulped the rest of his coffee, then stood and gathered his things. "Thanks for the snack."
He couldn't leave! He was leaving.
"We have to do this again sometime," Jon managed.
"Sure!" Harper shouted back as he rushed off.
That was an improvement from the usual irritable reserve, definitely, even if it didn't go as far as the chocolate cookie and coffee kisses and hot sex in a nearby stall Jon might have really hoped for. Speaking of a stall.... Hard and aching, Jon put down the money for the bill, then went somewhere private.
"--you won't regret it. Thank you," Dylan said over the line to a customer, and Harper bounced in, crackling with a pleased energy Dylan hadn't seen from him in some time. Setting aside his headset, Dylan asked, "How was your day?"
Harper leaned in companionably close, smelling of coffee, chocolate, and sunshine. "Not bad, not bad. The history majors didn't stand up at lunch. Professor Juras totally failed to catch me out in front of the class about The Stars in the Plains. In fact, I may be one of only three people in the class who get the damned thing, and that's counting her. Then I got free goodies from somebody. I think the cookies had real chocolate or cocoa or whatever in 'em."
"Coffee and cookies and probably sugar, right?"
"Wouldn't be cookies and coffee without sugar!"
"Of course not." Dylan knew that Harper had been rationing their supplies as strictly as he'd been. It would probably surprise people to know that Harper's conscientiousness extended beyond engineering. Harper loved doing things to excess, but only when he could afford to. With his daily allowance of caffeine decreased, he'd been dragging a bit lately. "Is this free goody person someone I should know about?"
Harper's smile turned sly. "I dunno. He wants things, and I left him wanting more. The Harper charm is fully operational."
"Are you out there being a tease?"
"Tease? Tease? He gives me cookies and coffee so I should give him a blowjob? Or, what, bend over? I can't be bought that cheap!" Harper leaned in closer, resting his head on Dylan's shoulder, and whispered into his ear, "At least, not anymore."
Dylan just about choked. "Harper!"
Harper pulled back and snickered, then shrugged. "Maybe he'll turn into someone you should know about if he keeps treating me right. It was a decent day."
As opposed to all the other days Harper had come back from classes, quiet and subdued? "Speaking of decent days--"
"Can't, got work to do outside, docking fees aren't paying themselves!" And Harper was gone.
Harper sighed as he did the usual warm-up jog in gym. Everybody had figured out pretty quickly that he wasn't the best player to go to for basketball, since he could shoot well but couldn't compete well during ball tosses unless he took people out at the knees. All the fouls he kept getting from trying to even the odds or get back at someone who'd pissed him off didn't help either. How come the teacher never noticed the others giving him elbows in tender places and "apologizing" by saying that they hadn't seen him "down there" but always saw him retaliating no matter how sneaky he tried to be?
He knew he shouldn't get upset. It wasn't like he'd ever thought this class would be anything other than a waste of time.
The whistle blew. "Enough!" a bigger than usual Nietzschean said. "You will cease all activity now and listen to me. Your instructor is ill--" he sneered to show his opinion of people who let mere illness keep them from their duties, "--so it is my obligation to oversee you today. I do not care what you were doing before. Today you will participate in an exercise that will test your speed, reflexes, and will to survive. It is called 'dodgeball.'"
Rhouhi whispered to Harper, "I don't think I've ever seen such a wicked smile as the one you have on your face now."
"Just wait," Harper whispered back. He could feel himself twitching, ready to go. "It'll probably get better."
"If you are done chatting--" the Nietzschean stared at Rhouhi, who turned grayer under the scrutiny, "--I shall explain the rules. If you are hit by the ball being thrown at you, you are out, functionally dead until the end of the game. If the ball is deflated by an arm spur, the rest of the class has my permission to laugh at the culprit. That culprit will also be taken out of the game. You can touch the ball without being tagged out if it has bounced at least once. The last person standing at the end is the winner, superior to his comrades. That means that the object of this exercise is to throw everyone around you out. You can only hold the ball for half a minute. There are no friends here, though there may be some alliances of the moment. We will start now." The Nietzschean tossed the ball into the center of the gym floor.
The humans and Perseids all ran away, while the Nietzscheans cautiously but quickly ran towards it. Harper rolled his eyes. No way he'd take on some giant Uber just to get first shot at the ball, not when being first didn't mean squat. He expended as little energy as possible while avoiding the shots, pacing himself.
Rhouhi got knocked out quickly, since he didn't have the instincts. Ditto for most of the Perseids. To Harper's amusement, the Nietzscheans mostly went after each other first, seeing themselves as the strongest contenders, until only one remained. Typical. As the crowds started to thin, Harper had to work harder, but he'd been training for this kind of game his whole damned life. The adrenaline rush felt good.
He picked up the ball after one bounce, threw, and hit the remaining Nietzschean from behind. Said Nietzschean turned to find out who'd removed him, but Harper had already melted back into the masses. Friedrich's friends would probably point him out later, but Harper couldn't have ignored the opportunity and the guy's inattention. Five minutes later, Harper got another chance at the ball and hit someone else. He hadn't enjoyed himself this much in a while.
With five people left, the proceedings turned a little more cutthroat, and some of them must have noticed him before because they went straight for him. At least they did until he dodged every shot and picked up the ball after the bounce every time. Out of the three throws he took, two hit, and the third just barely missed and only then because the girl ducked.
With three people, a lot more running needed to be done to get the ball, but running felt good. The girl hit the other guy out, putting it down just to her and Harper. They ran around like maniacs, feinted, threw, and dodged and ducked. He could feel his breath sawing through his lungs from all the effort he put out; this girl was good. But finally Harper hit her. Once he knew he had her, game over, he bent over and huffed a bit, then threw himself out of the way as the ball flew at him.
The Nietzschean fill-in gym teacher, who'd thrown the ball, raised an eyebrow at him. Harper sneered and nodded back.
He'd won. Even with the attempt to cheat him, he'd won.
It felt damned good. Even the odd looks from some of the other students felt damned good.
"You seem to be very adept at this," Rhouhi said once he carefully approached, as if Harper were a bomb that could go off.
"We all have our talents." He couldn't stop grinning. After all that basketball with no kneecapping allowed, he'd needed this.
Jon, waiting outside, gave him a look. Harper asked, "What? You may want to stand back a little since I'm overheating."
"Don't I know it." The look became hotter as well.
Got it. So got it. Harper cocked his hip a bit. "You want something?"
"Yeah. But I think you have lunch and a class coming up, so how about later? Tonight, maybe? A bar, a few drinks, a little socializing...."
Harper felt a little disappointed and reminded himself that he wasn't the type to put out immediately anyway. Besides, he felt like he could beat the world at the moment. Not even lunch daunted him, especially since people had stopped standing up on him.
"Sure. See where the night takes us?"
Jon smiled deeper. "That's what I hoped to hear. See you later."
"It's just a few drinks, a little socializing," Jon said as he gently pushed Harper through the door. Great, Jon could see how nervous he felt.
Damned endorphins and adrenaline. Harper had to remember not to agree to anything while under the influence. Who knew that dodgeball could impair his judgment so badly? Going out for some drinks had sounded better then.
Even though the bar was dark and cozy and smelled like most of the bars Harper had been in, he worried about the people. "I can't stay long." Better to hedge his bets.
"That's fine," Jon answered. A young woman stood up from one of the tables and waved, then the guy next to her stood too. "There they are. This is Ron, my roommate and another history major."
"Ron?" Harper asked.
"Yeah, yeah," the guy said. "Ron and Jon, I know. I've just been 'Ron' all my life, so I wasn't going to change now just for Jon-boy here."
"I can respect that."
"I'm Jemmy Liu," the woman said, and her dark eyes looked friendly and a little excited. "Where are you from originally?"
"Uh, Earth."
"Me too! Vancouver."
"Boston." She was from Earth. She was from.... "Do you have any pictures? I... haven't been there in years." An Earth that didn't have the scars and pollution of Magog and Nietzschean invasions was something he had to see.
"That was a mistake," Ron said. "You're never getting away now."
She elbowed Ron, then beamed at Harper. "Not with me, but I have lots in my apartment. Another North American. That is so great!"
Harper relaxed a little. Maybe this wouldn't be so excruciating. He noticed Jon giving him an almost fond look. "Hey, Jon, I thought you said they served drinks here," Harper said.
"I know a subtle hint when I hear one."
"And that wasn't a subtle hint."
"Yeah, Jon, go get drinks," Lau said.
At least Jon didn't look happy to see him, so this hadn't been a set-up. "Can I talk to you, Lau? Privately?" Jon asked through gritted teeth.
"Why sure."
When Lau and Jon walked off, Jemmy tried to get a conversation started at their table, but her efforts sounded lame and trailed off into an uncomfortable nothing. Harper could feel the tension stretch as they waited to see what would happen next. As Lau and Jon walked back, Harper could just hear Lau drawl, "I'm staying. After all, Harper's here." Lau looked drunk. Jon just looked pissed.
Lau sat down and twinkled his eyes at Harper. "Get us drinks, Jon."
"I think you've had enough."
"Not nearly."
"I'll get some," Ron said, rushing off, escaping, even if only temporarily.
"It's nice to see you again, Harper. Jon talks about you all the time. He likes you, you know. He's always been into wild, rough boys."
While Jon looked like he wanted to hide under the table, Harper answered, "Yeah? Don't know why he'd be interested in me, then."
Harper stayed on in some attempt to spite them. When Lau couldn't get a visible rise out of him by telling him all the things Jon said about him when he wasn't around, Lau switched to discussing history major doings, which Harper couldn't possibly participate in. The others tried to include him in the conversation at first, but eventually talked around him like he wasn't there. Unless Lau got in another dig at him, and then they smiled nervously.
Jon just drank. Like Harper just drank. Knocking back glass after glass, saying nothing, and seething. Though Jon's seething couldn't be anything like Harper's seething, since Harper's seething was all about being considered some kind of lab subject or trained animal, just the thing a kinky history major might be into. Jon hadn't given a decent defense or correction on anything Lau had said. Neither did Ron or Jemmy. It just went on and on.
Jon was interested in him because he was a Wild Peter who had a little bit of training. Harper wasn't civilized enough to be anything other than a curiosity to these enlightened members of the galaxy's greatest civilization.
The galaxy's greatest civilization could go fuck itself. Harper's time may have been dark, but at least there people screwed one another over for important, life-and-death things.
Disgusted, Harper started tuning out the conversation and just drank down the free booze. Hey, he wasn't buying, so why not?
But eventually he heard Lau saying, "--all the money being wasted trying to fight the Magog. We should just make peace with them already."
"What?" Harper asked.
"If we could establish common ground with them, we could stop the killing. They're just fighting for their species' survival. Their biological imperatives made them kill. It was just a messed up first contact."
Jemmy nodded, Ron looked uncertain, and Jon looked nervous but didn't seem to disagree.
Apparently, 14 years had been long enough for people to forget what had happened at Brandenburg Tor and come up with their own alternate reality versions. Lau thought he was such an expert, even though he'd never faced a Magog attack. Harper said, "Any race whose 'biological imperatives' involve the slaughter of three billion people in less than five days is way too dangerous to races who have a biological imperative not to get impregnated, killed, or eaten. That was Brandenburg Tor, and it wasn't all that long ago. They're still killing now. My biological imperative is all about staying alive. How about yours?"
Lau made a dismissive gesture. "If we just talk to them--"
"They don't talk. They either claw you down or spit paralytic poison in your face to save you for later. You're nothing more than food or a host to them. They don't care about who you are as a human being."
Lau sneered, "And you're an expert?"
Harper laughed, then laughed harder when he saw them all flinch. He ground out his words. "Do you know how the Magog reproduce? They paralyze you, penetrate your body, and lay their eggs in you. You're their eggs' host and first meal. The larvae will slowly eat you alive from the inside over days. You feel it the whole time. Eventually they finish you off and rip their way out of your body, finally killing you. Hey, they even carry some of your DNA around with them, so some tiny part of you will be raping and pillaging across the galaxy even after the hatching larvae leave you looking like kibble and bits. Ain't motherhood grand? If you get attacked by Magog, you better hope they kill and eat you, because it's better and a hell of a lot faster than the alternative."
"I'm going to get more drinks," Jon said, and just about ran.
Lau leaned forward across the table, just about in Harper's face. "What the hell do you know about it anyway? Just what you read, just like me. Who's to say you're right and I'm wrong?"
Lau wanted his fucking street cred? He had so much cred it would take him at least 15 minutes to get into it, and he had nothing to prove. "Grow up."
"No. I think you're full of shit."
Harper leaned in close to him, eye to eye, and grabbed his collar. "I had two cousins I really loved when I was a kid," he said softly, his voice coming out dark and twisted. "They were raised with me like they were my brother and sister. One day, the Magog got them and infested them. They were just kids! And they were in agony, and in a few days the larvae would rip their way out of their ravaged bodies and come after the rest of us. So my family mercy killed my cousins, then burned their bodies to make sure. And nothing was ever the same for us again. This is what you want to make peace with, monsters who slowly rip children open from the inside. You can take your biological imperatives and your cultural relativism and your 'boo hoo, the Magog are misunderstood' and shove them up your ass, because some things are still wrong no matter how you try to excuse them." Harper looked over at Jemmy and Ron, who were frozen in horrified shock, eyes and mouths open wide. "I'm sick of the sight of all of you." He let Lau go with such a hard push that Lau tumbled over backwards, taking his stool with him.
Harper's stool tumbled back as he stood and pushed his way free. He banged into Jon on his way out and ignored Jon's pleas to wait.
The cool night air hit him like a slap in the face. Rage carried him far, but he still threw up twice on his way to the Maru, feeling worse with every step he took, and fumbled the locking code three times because sometimes he could hear Siobhan and Declan screaming and sometimes he could hear the high-pitched squeals his own larvae used to make, the ones Trance swore were all in his head. Everything was spinning....
Harper collapsed into a bottom bunk, clutching his stomach, his head pounding. "Harper?" Dylan asked drowsily from the bunk across from him.
"I'm fine. I'm fine," Harper said as he struggled with his boots, taking five times as long as usual to get them off. Eventually, to his great pleasure, he passed out.
Horrible sounds woke Dylan up. Kneeling in front of the toilet with his head over the bowl, Harper sounded like he was turning himself inside out. Dylan resisted asking the first question that came to mind, because it seemed pretty obvious that Harper had drunk himself to this state. "Is there anything I can do for you?" Dylan asked.
"Kill me," Harper rasped. He still wore yesterday's shirt and pants instead of his usual sleepwear. Though he had taken off his socks to go barefoot.
"How about I get you a hangover cure instead?"
"That's... good. I'd get it, but I'm afraid to move." Harper winced then sighed as Dylan shot it directly into his arm. "Thanks."
Dylan handed him a cup of water and winced at the broken blood vessels visible in his eyes. "You usually know your limits better than this."
Harper propped himself against the wall, with his head tilted back, as if he couldn't sit upright without help. "Rough night. Went out with some of my fellow students. Not the engineering students, the history students. Not doing it again."
"I thought you weren't trying to make friends."
"I'm still not. They've been dead for hundreds of years and all, plus we have our secrets to keep. I got weak is all." Harper put his hand to his head, then winced as they touched. "Think I might have said something.... It'll come back to me. Unfortunately."
The misery screaming in every line of Harper's body spoke of something beyond the physical. Dylan had been feeling lonely himself, but how much worse would it be to face loneliness while in a large group of people, most of whom had friends? "How has school been?" Dylan asked.
Harper rolled his eyes, then winced again, as if everything hurt. "It's been great, Dad. I'm thinking of trying out for the football team."
If things had really been great, Dylan knew that Harper wouldn't be able to shut up about it. Harper's busyness and running out had disguised that lack before. Was he being harassed? Teased? Shut out? Was he falling behind and depressed about it? He'd never admit to any of it.
The comm buzzed. "The hell?" Harper asked, then tried to get to his feet.
"Stay there. I'll check the camera." The young man standing at the base of the Maru's ramp didn't look like anyone they'd dealt with, nor did he have the uniform and badge of an official.
"Great." Harper's voice made it sound anything but. "It's Jon." He'd walked over anyway to see their visitor.
"Should we acknowledge or ignore him?"
"He might not go away if we ignore him." Harper opened a channel. "Jon, I'm really not up for anything today."
"I need to talk to you."
"What you need isn't something I care all that much about right now."
Jon's face fell, which made Dylan's teeth clench, to his surprise. Jon was just a young man, probably a student. Aside from his warm blue eyes, which didn't quite seem to go with his café au lait skin, he looked pleasant and human-average, nothing special.
But he was trouble somehow.
"Harper, I was afraid that you got the wrong impression from last night and now I know you did," Jon said. "Come talk to me?"
"I don't feel well."
"I could come to you."
"My captain's not real big on unauthorized personnel walking the deck."
"Then just come down to me here. Please. You might feel better after you hear what I want to say."
"I doubt that." But Harper didn't sound strong enough about it. Dylan could hear him wavering.
So did Jon, apparently. "Please?"
"Fine." Harper turned to Dylan. "I'm gonna just go down for a bit." He looked tired and sad.
"You don't have to," Dylan answered.
"I know. I'm...." Harper made a sharp, sweeping hand gesture that could mean anything, then ran his fingers through his hair in a fruitless effort to tame it and walked out.
"You're barefoot," Dylan yelled after him.
"Been barefoot before. I can take it."
Dylan stayed by the screen to watch, prepared to intervene on Harper's behalf. The angle just showed him Harper's back, though he had a good look at Jon the whole time.
"You look like shit," Jon said softly, then rushed forward to hug Harper.
Harper twitched him free. Angry twitches. "I had a bad night."
"My friends loved you. Lau's not my friend--he's a malicious asshole with an axe to grind--and if I could have gotten rid of him and kept him gone, I would have."
"I figured out that he's a malicious asshole with an axe to grind, but is he a lying, malicious asshole with an axe to grind?"
"I never said anything that he claimed I said!"
"But your friends--and Lau--somehow saw me as your trained animal exhibit anyway, so that must be how you presented me, even if you didn't say it right out."
"That's why you left early?" So guilelessly said.
"That and the drunkenness."
"I wasn't showing you off like you were a dancing bear."
"Really."
"Really. I was showing you off like...." Jon grabbed Harper and kissed him. Dylan couldn't see it very well from this angle, but that had to be what it was, especially with how long it was taking. Harper shuddered, then shuddered harder as Jon's fingers stroked and gripped the hair just above the nape of his neck. Was he hugging back?
Trouble.
"I just finished throwing up with this mouth," Harper said softly when Jon finally let him go a little. Dylan wanted to see his face but couldn't.
"I don't fucking care about that."
"I'm killing your language skills."
"I want you, Harper. I don't know anyone like you and that's a good thing."
"I don't need your social rehabilitation."
"Like hell you don't. I want you to have friends, lots of friends, lots of people who appreciate you. I want you to be happy. I want to make you happy."
"I do have friends."
"You have some Perseids who hang around you for your engineering skills."
"Should I have friends like Lau? Or maybe like Jemmy and Ron and you, who respond to the rough stuff by giggling nervously and going along with the badness? That's not friends. Friends aren't bullies, and friends have spines."
"We didn't--" Jon had a look on his face like he couldn't process or respond to any of it, then answered, "You make me crazy, do you get that?"
"Yeah, I do make you crazy, and you don't need that." Harper had steel in his voice. "I'm not looking for a boyfriend or a lover, Jon. I just want to be left alone."
"No, you don't."
"Yes, I do. I have work and my studies, and I'm just too busy for this too."
"You're lonely, Harper. You're lonely and it's eating at you. Anyone can see it."
Although Dylan had been unaware of it until today. He wanted to go down there and put an end to this, but he didn't think he'd be able to do it without looking evil. And without admitting that he'd watched the whole thing, which Harper wouldn't appreciate.
"All I could give you is a little sex now and then, and I think you want more than that."
Jon snorted. "I know better. You can't help yourself."
"That minor in psychology is really unattractive. Jon, I have my studies and I have my job. Right now I have a lingering headache and an awful taste in my mouth and the feeling that you're trying to take advantage of me while I'm down."
"I'm not!"
"You're not gonna get any declarations of undying love from me today. Or ever, but definitely not today. I gotta go, 'kay? I need to sleep."
"Harper--"
"Good-bye, Jon." Harper turned his back to Jon and walked up the ramp. His face looked ashen.
Jon glared at the ship, then directly at the camera, before stalking off. Good riddance, but Dylan knew he'd be back.
Harper locked the ramp door behind him, walked to the bunks, stared up at his bunk with a pathetic expression on his face, then fell into a bottom one instead, Dylan's, and burrowed under the covers. Dylan sat on the edge of the mattress and said, "If you're having any problems at school, you can tell me."
The pile of blankets shuddered and sighed. "I can hack it," Harper said.
"Of course you can." Dylan put his hand atop Harper's forehead, which only took a little bit of rooting around under the covers. It felt hotter than he thought it should.
"Cold!" Harper jolted upright.
"Sorry. I think you're running a fever."
Harper shrugged and settled back down, leaving the covers to lie below his neck this time. "I always get that reaction to the hangover med. A little sleep, and I'm good to go."
"Okay." Dylan gently stroked Harper's limp hair, and it made him feel fatherly and perverted all at once.
"That's nice," Harper murmured. Then his eyes snapped open. "Aw, shit. I think I said something really stupid in public last night." He closed his eyes again. "I did. Dammit."
Dylan kept stroking, refusing to let any agitation show. "What was it?"
"They started talking about the Magog, and I let 'em know what the Magog really do. Which isn't so bad, except that when they questioned my cred, all 'how dare I pretend that I know what I'm talking about,' I mentioned how we had to mercy kill my cousins after they were impregnated. At least I wasn't drunk or stupid enough to mention that I was an eyewitness of Brandenburg Tor and I walked through a 3-D representation of what the Magog did to Captain Perim's bridge crew and that I was a victim myself."
Too much information. "You had to mercy kill your cousins?"
"My family did. They were raised with me like they were my brother and sister, and we had to... and I watched...." Harper blinked. "Yeah."
Dylan didn't even want to deal with the cousins yet, so he said, "I hoped that the footage of the Brandenburg Tor massacre left you along with most of the rest of the data archive." Dylan knew full well about Harper seeing Perim's bridge, since he'd sent him into the matrix to find that scene.
"Funny, isn't it? All the useful information drains out of my head, but the horror show downloads straight to my subconscious. I lived through the massacre. And died through it. Just like I was there. You add my virtual walk through the carnage on Captain Perim's bridge, and I may be the galaxy's human expert on Magog mayhem in any era."
How much horror did one person have to live through? "I wish I'd known all of this before."
"What, you would have been fine with trying to stop the treaty if you'd known? Don't think so."
"You're right. But I prefer to know."
"And now you do."
"Yeah."
"Maybe everybody else was too drunk to be certain of what I said, or maybe they'll think I was a drunken loudmouth spouting off crap. I can hope. Otherwise, some uncomfortable questions may come up about my background, since people will wanna know where my cousins ran into the Magog. Sorry. I just couldn't take listening to people excusing the Magog with shit about biological imperatives and cultural relativism." With his energy diminished, Harper seemed so much smaller.
"They provoked you." From what Dylan had heard and overheard about the night's events, he should probably count himself lucky that Harper hadn't responded in ways he'd need bailing out of lock-up for.
Harper smiled a little. "Yeah?"
"If it becomes a problem, we'll deal with it."
"Cool. And it won't happen again. I'm through with socializing with these people."
And Dylan resolved to pay more attention to what was going on with his engineer. "Go to sleep."
"Yes, sir."
Since the hair stroking seemed to calm Harper, Dylan kept it up until he went to sleep.
As Jon walked back home, his thoughts tumbled. He didn't understand Harper, but he wanted to, so badly. At least he understood enough to know that last night had been a disaster and that he might never get Harper back to the level of trust it had taken to get him to go to the bar with him. Harper had looked so miserable and sick....
Jon was going to kill Lau, who should have known that if he wasn't invited, he wasn't supposed to show up. To not only show up but show up blasted, start ripping into Harper, then segue into politics....
Jon knew he should have said something last night, but he'd.... He didn't even know what his damage had been. He'd been horrified. He'd frozen. Now Harper thought he'd been in on it.
When Jon reached his apartment, he saw Jemmy waiting there with worry on her face. At least Ron's door was still closed. "Where were you?" she asked.
"I went to see Harper, since Lau was such an ass last night. What?"
The look on her face had gotten worse. "I wish you hadn't done that."
"Why not?"
"Jonny, he said something last night after you went to get more drinks."
Jon's heart sunk. "About me? Something nasty?"
"No. Lau... waited until you were gone to say--"
"What? What could have been worse than telling Harper that I'm into him because he has no social graces whatsoever, then drunkenly discussing politics and the Magog with him?"
"He asked what made Harper such an expert on the Magog."
"Like Lau knows anything!"
"Jon. Harper said that two of his cousins were... impregnated by the Magog. They were like a brother and sister to him, and they were kids. And his family had to mercy kill them because they couldn't stand to see the kids being eaten alive by larvae from the inside."
Jon couldn't breathe. "Oh. Fuck," he gasped.
"And then he left."
"I saw him going... on the way out." Jon tried to imagine what it would be like. He couldn't. Like a brother and sister to him.... No wonder Harper had looked like shit this morning. "So what you're saying, is that Lau made Harper dredge up what had to be one of the worst times of his life. Then I went over to see Harper this morning and asked him what was wrong?"
Jon hadn't known. Once Harper had stormed out, they'd all gone home, silent. Lau, who'd looked unsettled, had stayed at the bar and kept on drinking.
"I didn't tell you last night because you were drunk and hair-trigger after Harper rushed out. I thought I could do it this morning, but you'd already left when I woke up." She put her hand on his shoulder.
"He's never going to want to be in the same room with any of us ever again."
"At least now you have a better idea of why he is the way he is, huh?"
Oh. No. "Jemmy, how many people heard him? This isn't something he'd want the world to know!"
"I don't think too many heard. His voice was low and quiet. Scary." She shuddered a bit. "Me, Lau, Ron, maybe another person or two. And we were all either buzzed or drunk. Maybe nobody will really remember it right, or won't trust what they heard."
"I'm going to smash Lau's head in. How could he be such a hurtful asshole? He knew what I was trying to do here!"
"Yeah, he did. Maybe that's why he invited himself."
"Jemmy, I have to go back and talk to Harper."
"I don't think that would be a good idea right now."
"What?"
"You were just over there."
"And?"
Jemmy looked... afraid. "Maybe he went back to sleep. Do you want to wake him up after everything that's happened?"
Jon sank onto the couch. "Fine. You're right. I just.... I wanted to make things right, but I just made them worse."
"Last night or this morning?"
"Last night definitely. This morning... I don't know. I grabbed him and kissed him."
"And? And?"
"He responded physically but didn't give at all verbally. He told me that he couldn't give me what I wanted and that I should go away. Jemmy, I want him so bad. I think about him all the time. Now I have no idea how he'll be the next time he sees me." Jon couldn't imagine what was going through Harper's head right now and he wasn't sure he wanted to.
She sat down next to him. "You'll just have to wait."
"It'll kill me."
"No, you'll only wish it would."
Dylan awoke feeling warm and contented, snuggled with someone. That someone was Harper, who made a soft sound in his sleep. It looked like the stroking had calmed Dylan into sleep too. He tried to get up, but Harper had his arm hooked.
Harper opened his eyes and asked, "In a hurry to get somewhere?"
"I didn't mean to fall asleep in your bunk."
"Actually, I fell asleep in your bunk, so no harm, no foul. 'Sides, I like this. It's kind of cozy."
Dylan liked it too. "Feeling better?"
"A bit."
Dylan put his palm to Harper's forehead, which felt cooler. Harper pressed his head closer into the hand, making Dylan wonder about the sudden flirtatiousness. Wait, Harper was always flirtatious. But not like this.
"Don't trust me?" Harper asked, but the question sounded light and flippant.
"Just making sure."
"Go out to dinner with me? My stomach's settled enough now that it wants to replace some of the stuff it lost. C'mon, you should get out. We can go someplace you've never been before, where they don't know you." He rhythmically stroked Dylan's arm and sometimes chest.
"Dinner?" Looking at the chron showed that they'd slept for nine hours. Unbelievable.
"Yes, dinner. In many cultures, it's the last meal of the day."
"Wise-ass. Okay, I'll go out."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Cool. Let me take a shower. I don't smell good even to me."
"You're not moving."
"I'm comfy."
"You're the one who suggested going out to dinner."
Harper sighed. "Okay, getting up." He squirmed against Dylan in some very distracting ways as he freed himself from the blankets.
As they walked out of the Maru, the sun was setting, streaking gorgeous colors across the wide sky. The air smelled sweet and achingly pure. Dylan took a deep breath and kept moving.
"Hey, Dylan," Harper said.
"Yeah?"
Harper looked concerned. "When were you gonna tell me that you had a problem with Tarn-Vedra and that's why you weren't going out?"
"I just figured that I wouldn't tell you at all."
"Oh. Okay. That's really dumb."
"I'm not supposed to be here, so being here just reminds me of everything I lost." Dylan was conscious of how careful he had to be while speaking about their situation in public. It had to be torture for Harper to interact with other students. "Like you said, it's like something was given to me with one hand and snatched away with the other just as I reached for it."
"Sorry. Really."
So he knew now. It was a bit of a relief.
But.... "You're not going to ask why, if it hurts me to be here, I'm dragging my feet about leaving?"
"Would you give me a real answer if I asked?"
"Probably not."
"There ya go. Hey, would it hurt you too bad if I took us to one of those part-Vedran restaurants in the human quarter? The places there use Vedran ingredients that are safe for--and supposedly tasty to--humans. I wanted to try some cuisine I can't get anywhere else."
"As long as it's a place I haven't been before, it should be fine."
"I had Acala's recommended to me."
"That should be fine. You haven't tried it on your own?"
"Been saving money, remember? I didn't buy any food unless I had a major attack of the munchies and none handy. Compliment me on my sense of fiscal responsibility."
"You wear it well."
"Thank you, kind sir."
After that, Harper quietly walked at Dylan's side. While a quiet Harper felt somewhat unsettling, the silence seemed comfortable enough. It really was a nice evening out here.
Acala's looked comfortable in a human way. It must not have had a Vedran clientele at all, since seats abounded and the tables were at a height to make use of them. Vedrans ate standing up and needed more aisle space. A scattering of humans and Perseids populated the dining room.
"We could eat inside if sitting outside in the air bothers you," Harper said.
"Either's fine." He had to be strong. Really.
"We'd like to sit inside," Harper told the host.
Dylan refused to be coddled. "We don't have to."
"Don't confuse the nice host, Jerry."
"Who's the captain here?"
"You are. But we're sitting inside." Harper's smile had a knife's edge to it. "Don't embarrass me."
Dylan just about sputtered. "You're obnoxious."
"You wanna sit outside while I sit inside? Your choice."
"I'll sit inside."
"Table for two. Inside," Harper told the host sweetly.
The host sat them, left menus, and hurried away. Smart man.
Harper opened his and asked, "What do you think I'd like, human expert on Vedran cuisine that you are? Though I don't know if I should trust your answer after I just pissed you off."
"Is there anything you wouldn't eat?" Dylan asked the barrier of menu, since he couldn't see Harper.
"Nope. But enjoying it is another matter."
"I'm not really pissed off, just annoyed. Your heart was in the right place. Not that I'll ever let you use that as an excuse for anything."
Harper pushed one emphatic finger up over the top of his menu, then wiggled it a little.
Dylan smiled and gave the menu selections some serious thought. "You might like the pethnat in the kethla sauce."
"The whoosie in the whatsit. Got it."
"It tastes a bit like pumpkin ravioli in pesto sauce."
"Still sounds weird, but I'll try anything once. Twice or more if I like it."
"You might want to try larolola as your beverage, since you like colas with a kick."
"Got it." Harper put his menu down. "You realize that I'll try to steal anything interesting on your plate too."
"I expect that."
"Oh good. Just so we understand each other. Mmm, everything's real wood in here. It's been a while."
Once they gave their orders to the waiter and had the menus taken away, Harper tapped his fingers on the table, then tapped Dylan's fingers. "Got your fingers," Harper said.
More confused than annoyed, Dylan asked, "What are you doing?"
"Uh. Just a little thing Beka and I would do when eating together sometimes and we were bored and waiting for the food."
"Do I look like Beka to you?"
"Gosh, there are so many ways to answer that. Fine, keep your fingers. I'll play with our candle instead."
"I thought you'd decreased your caffeine intake."
Harper made slow, mystical passes with his hands over the candle flame. At least he'd rolled the sleeves of his blue shirt up to his elbows first. "This is my natural vibrancy you're seeing. That and nine hours of sleep."
The candle, locally made judging from the kind of flower scent coming from it, cast romantic shadows when Harper didn't have his hands over it. Dylan looked around at the cozy, secluded seating and noticed that couples occupied the other tables. "You heard that the food was good here. Did they say anything else?"
"Just that musicians play here sometimes. I can sense you trying to get at something here."
"Nothing."
"Your nothings are pretty scary... Jerry."
"I was just thinking that it's so romantic here."
Taking his hands away from the candle, to Dylan's relief, Harper looked around, then snorted. "Okay. I see it. When something hits my eye like a big pizza pie, I do know that it's amore." Then he looked a little depressed.
"What?"
"Another social cue missed."
Dylan reached forward and tapped Harper's hands, which were hot from the candle flame. "Got your fingers."
Harper's smile returned. "Sneak."
"Oh, are you saying there are rules to this?"
"Kill or be killed, baby. That's all."
To Dylan's total lack of surprise, Harper had fast hands. Dylan didn't tap them again, hitting the table over and over instead. He got his own tapped a few times, though. This had to be the silliest thing he'd done in a long time, but it was weirdly fun too. The waiter had to clear his throat when he brought their food over, but he'd probably seen all kinds of bizarre behavior from couples here.
"Uhm," Harper said as he looked at his dinner.
"What?"
"It looks like alien eggs in ooze. Yummy."
Okay, Harper had a point. The dark filling showed through the little, white, translucent pasta envelopes, while the green, creamy sauce they sat in looked a bit... challenging to an unprepared eye.
"Try it."
"Okay. But if anything comes up out of the sauce and bites my nose, I'll never forgive you."
When Harper cut one of the pethnat open and watched the umber-colored filling ooze out a bit, he made a funny face but put one bit into his mouth. "Hmm. Sweet and herby. Nice texture. I think I like it." Another bite. "Okay, I do like it."
"Told you."
"No need to rub it in."
As they ate, Harper filched some of Dylan's steak off his plate, not even trying to hide it, making Dylan ask, "Are you enjoying my meal, Harper?"
"Yep. Your food's good too." He seemed to be trying everything and giving it serious consideration, even the decorative garnishes.
Dylan helped himself to a bit of Harper's pethnat. "What? You're stealing mine. It's fair."
"Stealing? You said I could. I didn't give you any such permission to take my food."
"Permission? I just said that I expected you to steal mine."
"Sounds like permission to me."
"You're impossible."
"See, the fact that I'm here doing these very things just shows how possible I am."
Dylan could actually watch the meal lift Harper's spirits, making the excursion outside worthwhile. The fresh food, so much more flavorful than the packaged stuff they'd mostly been living on, made an immediate, positive difference in his own mood as well, though Harper's enjoyment helped that by being so apparent that it was contagious. And he could swear that his engineer was getting slightly high from the larolola, so he grabbed the bottle, poured a little into a glass, and took a swig himself to see if it tasted any different than usual. It didn't, having exactly the sweetness and kick it should, nothing Harper shouldn't have been able to handle.
"Hey!" Harper protested. "Gimme that." His fast hands grabbed the bottle back, and he drank directly from it, closing his eyes.
"Barbarian." Focusing on Harper's lack of table manners didn't dissipate any of the heat Dylan felt while watching him suck from the neck of the bottle, his throat working....
"You left almost nothing, but you call me a barbarian?" His tongue darted out, probably to chase the last drops.
Dylan had to adjust himself under the table. "You're just doing that on purpose."
"What?" Harper's grin had a smug edge, and he gave Dylan a heavy-lidded look.
"You're teasing me."
"Like hell. I fully intend to put out if you'll let me. Whether I'm a tease or not is all up to you, Blondie."
It was inevitable that their loneliness and isolation would lead to this point. They each needed comfort and some sense of connection. It was human nature. Natural. Nothing wrong in it. It would be good for them. Maybe it would even foster a better crewmember bond and "us against them" attitude that could only be advantageous in their current situation.
If Jon wanted a taste of feral future flesh, he better hope someone else had a slipstream accident. Actually, he and his friends would be well advised to stay far, far away from the Eureka Maru in general.
Dylan leaned across the table a little. "You're not a tease."
Harper's grin deepened, growing more smug. "Sometimes you're a really smart guy."
"Would you like dessert?" the waiter asked.
"What have you got?" Harper asked, turning his attention away from Dylan, who felt some relief from that.
The waiter fidgeted under Harper's gaze. "We have sweet custard or a kind of flan."
"Not my thing. How 'bout you, Jerry?"
"I'm not interested."
"We'll have dessert at home," Harper purred. "Thanks."
Maybe it wasn't the larolola. Maybe Harper just needed a lot of fresh food, good company, and targets to flirt with.
The waiter put their bill on the table and fled. Amused, Dylan asked, "Were you flirting with him?" It made him feel better to think that Harper's hot-eyed looks made other people crumble too.
"I was just looking at him. Jeez. 'Sides, we are having dessert at home. You're looking mighty tasty to me."
Getting back to the Maru felt like torture, to the point where Harper wanted to find an alley and just get down to it before he died of waiting. Dylan didn't help by stroking his arm or nudging his hip every so often. Sadist. Who knew his sadism extended to this?
When Dylan's hand lingered on his ass an intolerably long time, Harper yanked him into a dark alley and attacked back, kissing, yanking Dylan's vest open and pulling his shirt out of his pants. Not that Dylan seemed to mind, since he reciprocated. Well, reciprocated except for the vest part, since Harper wasn't wearing one. The lack of a vest to deal with put Dylan ahead on the stripping his partner game, and he had the waistband of Harper's pants already unfastened and his hand sliding under his boxers.
Harper surged up. "Oh, Dy-- Damn. Bastard." Dylan had a secret identity to protect.
Dylan laughed. "You're very good."
"I'm the best, baby. Discretion is what I'm all about."
"You're kidding me."
"Yeah, I am. Maybe we should get back to the Maru where I can scream your name as many times as I want to in peace if I feel like it."
Dylan had to refasten himself up a bit in an effort to look presentable, but Harper just let his shirt hang over his pants and called it his style. His style was a broad, inclusive thing.
As soon as the ramp hatch closed, Dylan whipped the vest off, pinned Harper against a wall, and went straight for the skin around his dataport, with every tongue stroke feeling like it connected straight to his cock. Harper jumped up and climbed Dylan a bit to get closer to that mouth, wrapping his legs around Dylan's waist to stay up there. In this position, he could feel Dylan's hard cock pressing against his ass.
"You like that?" Dylan purred, sounding smug.
"Ya think? Just don't... electrocute yourself, hey?"
Dylan sucked hard there, and Harper felt his bones melt. He'd heard that some pierced areas became very sensitive and fun to play with for erotic purposes, but when he'd gotten his ever so practical port he'd never guessed that he'd get this kind of perk from it for years to come. Then again, it did let him say that he had one more orifice than most guys did.... He pushed down and rubbed himself against Dylan's cock, since it wouldn't be fair to do nothing.
"I can feel some of your hardware, just under the skin," Dylan murmured, his breath on the sensitized area making Harper shiver. "I wondered about it."
Harper didn't want to come just from this--from Dylan making out with his hardware, as good as it might feel--so he said, "The rest of me is looking for some loving too. Maybe we can take this to the bunk, so I can do more than hang on?"
"I have to carry you?"
"Getting too old, Dylan?" Harper had noticed that Dylan's few gray streaks had disappeared suddenly a few months ago, suggesting a certain vanity that amused him.
Dylan growled softly.
"Fine," Harper said, as he let go.
But Dylan kept him in place, clumsily walked over to the bunk, and dropped them down on it. Harper let himself enjoy the bounce for a moment, then jockeyed for position so he wouldn't end up on the bottom under the big guy. They wrestled a bit, rolling on the bunk, making a rumpled mess of the blankets, Dylan taking advantage of his greater size while Harper used speed and every dirty trick he knew. Dirty tricks managed to position Dylan lying on his stomach while Harper sat atop him.
"Nice view," Harper said, then glanced behind him and said, "Nice ass," as he playfully smacked it.
"This is not what I had in mind." But Dylan couldn't keep his tone straight and seemed to be throttling back laughter.
Yeah, if Dylan didn't like it, he could always move and knock Harper off. Hadn't happened so far.
Harper pulled Dylan's shirt free of the tight leather pants--Dylan dressed to showcase that fine ass, and Harper appreciated it--and tugged it up, baring skin. Being helpful, Dylan lifted up a little and pulled the shirt off over his head.
Harper kissed the back of his neck to show his appreciation, taking a moment to grin at the sight of Dylan being that blond, then said, "Your shoulders are really tight." Looked like Dylan's stress went into the muscles of his shoulders and lower back.
Harper, back rub champion, found the worst knots and applied his magic fingers, calling on a talent he'd honed over various long, dull cargo-running trips with a stressed self-employed business owner who operated in the red far more often that not. Oh, the many times he'd nearly gotten into Beka's pants this way....
She teased and said that their relationship would suffer if he ever resolved his sexual tension toward her. He knew a lot of sadists.
Dylan's muscles felt hard and unresponsive at first, but they loosened and became more pliant under Harper's pressing fingers. In fact, Dylan's whole body stopped instinctively fighting him and started to let him do whatever he wanted. Total surrender. It always gave Harper such a rush of pleasure and power to fix things and make them run better, and he rocked and rubbed himself against Dylan's back. Shame he didn't have any massage oil.
Dylan groaned and thrust his hips into the mattress. "You can keep doing all of that," he said, his voice sounding deeper than usual. Then he looked back and grinned. "You have your tongue hanging out."
"It's just resting on my lower lip, and it helps me concentrate. You don't want to be the recipient of a back rub gone wrong, bub."
"I've... heard of horrific back rub accidents."
"Oh yeah. Lives have been ruined that way." Harper leaned down to whisper in Dylan's ear. "Me, I want you loose in all the right ways."
Harper moved down to work on Dylan's lower back, which had already gone looser just from the work he'd done higher up, then unfastened and tugged down Dylan's pants, then underwear. It almost seemed like Dylan's cock had hunted for his hand from the way it pushed right into it, begging for attention. Ever accommodating, Harper gripped it and stroked up and down a few times, grinning at the rather embarrassing noises Dylan made.
When he let it go, Dylan growled an aggrieved "Harper!"
"You want me to stroke you off? I can do that."
"What else did you have in mind?"
"Given the really nice ass I have right here in front of me, I was thinking of fucking, but maybe you don't want that." Harper ran his hand down the curves of Dylan's ass like he owned it, then set a kiss atop one cheek. "Or I could suck you off." Damn, he was making himself too crazy just thinking about all of this. He pulled his fly and boxers open to let his cock free. "I'd like to hear what you want."
Since Dylan was thrusting into the mattress, the word pictures must have done wonders for him too. "Fuck me," he finally said, sounding hoarse.
Harper had to grip his cock hard to control the surge those words had put into him. Captain Terrific wanted something bigger and more fun up his ass to replace the usual iron rod and wanted him to give it to him. Harper hadn't thought he'd actually go for it.
"Be right back," Harper said as he stood and launched himself up to his bunk, jumping back down with slick and protection. "Hey, you got up! You weren't supposed to do that."
Dylan had his boots off and pulled down his pants, achieving full nudity. "I wasn't going to have my legs tangled up."
"I liked having your legs tangled up."
"I bet." Dylan grabbed the front of Harper's shirt and pulled him in close, stroking his hands up under it and kissing him. "Are you going to take your clothes off?"
Dylan's big, warm hands felt good on his back. "I dunno. I thought my fly made a nice frame for my dick, the better to display it and all."
"This is coming off." Dylan's hands stroked back down, gripped the hem of the shirt, and pulled it up over Harper's head.
"Bossy! And you messed up my hair!"
Dylan threw the shirt aside. "How can anyone tell?"
"Hey, I'm hurt."
Dylan's stroked the top of Harper's cock with one hand and cupped his balls with the other. "No, you're not. I can tell."
Cheater. Not that Harper really minded. "I recover quickly?"
"I should hope so." Dylan took the packet of protection out of Harper's hand and set it aside. "Don't need that either. I know exactly what your health nanobots do."
"Not that they're as effective for me as they are for everybody else." Weird to be balking now, especially when he just about ached with lust and had a very naked and ready Dylan close at hand. Was he just that used to arguing with people that he'd argue against getting something he wanted?
"Effective enough. You asked me before what I'd like...."
"I can take a hint." Harper moved in close and slid his hands down Dylan's ass and cupped it. Since he now had a view of a whole lot of bare chest, he tilted his head up further and asked, "Can you?"
"I think I'm starting to get some idea of what you're after."
"Starting? How much spelling out do I have to do for you?" Harper slid his hand further down, then rubbed a certain spot.
Dylan did a little grind against him, then answered, "I really can't get into position with you holding on to me."
"You could get into a good position this way too, but fine." Harper pulled his hands away, kept his hands far away from his body, and backed off.
"Better." Dylan sprawled out, stomach-down, on the bunk, then wiggled a little in what seemed to be an effort to entice. "Okay, stop laughing."
"You're just... really not the cute wiggle type. On you, it's surreal."
Since he was already doubled over with laughter, Harper took advantage of his current posture to take his boots off. He debated removing his socks too but figured that Dylan might overheat if he did.
Sure enough, Dylan set his chin in his hand and gave Harper an excessively sour look. "Are you going to fuck me, or do I have to go elsewhere?"
"Give me a moment to appreciate those long limbs and that nice ass first, huh? I don't get this kind of display every day."
Dylan just about preened. Vain man. Fortunately, at this moment Harper found that cute.
He climbed onto the bunk and over one of the long legs in question and appreciated the view closer up. Sliding his first slicked finger in, he got to see how much good that back rub had done for Dylan's overall looseness, since he faced little resistance.
"You're whistling?" Dylan asked.
"I enjoy my work." He found exactly the spot that would stop Dylan from complaining and worked it with his fingertip. Hard to complain when you were groaning and pressing back.... Yeah, that did it. Two fingers got even better results, and the sight of Dylan physically begging for it like a total slut had the expected result on Harper's lust. "You ready?"
"Give it to me."
"You're the captain."
Just applying the slick to his cock almost set him off, so Harper figured he better get some self-control going if he didn't want to look like an ass. But the slow push in was so sweet that he almost lost it again. He really had to get out more if he didn't want to be this hair-trigger. In to the hilt, he took deep, steady breaths and kissed Dylan's back, tasting salt and feeling Dylan's heart pounding. Nice, hot skin. Nice, hot.... Think pure thoughts....
"Fuck me already," Dylan growled.
So much for pure thoughts. Harper started to thrust hard and fast and, being a considerate lover, fisted Dylan's cock, trying to match the rhythm. Dylan seemed to like whatever Harper was doing from the sounds he was making and the way he'd pretty much handed his body over to Harper's ministrations. No resistance anywhere.
Harper couldn't believe how much more immediate than usual this felt, though barebacking for the first time in years might have something to do with it. Or maybe getting to fuck his oh so arrogant and stubborn captain had something to do with it. Oh, hell, with the friction, pleasure, and power highs he had going, no wonder he was enjoying himself.
Dylan clenched down hard suddenly, and it sent Harper over in an orgasm that he felt all the way down to his toes. His hand clenching on Dylan's cock had Dylan thrusting harder into his fist and then collapsing under him.
As Harper basked in the afterglow, Dylan turned a little to look at him and said, still gasping a little, "I'm lying in the wet spot, and you're still wearing your pants."
"Both things that can be remedied."
Dylan rolled over to face Harper. Relaxed, post-fuck, his face looked years younger. Sweet. "You fucked me in your socks? Okay, what's so funny?"
"Sorry, weird mental image there. We were in my socks, fucking, and-- I'm back now."
"Glad to hear it."
Damn, this was nice, but Harper couldn't see any ways of agitating toward getting it more often. Though if he wanted to make sure Dylan never let him touch him again, he could try "Ya know, 'slut' is a good look for you, Dylan; you oughta try it more often" or "I like you better when you're naked and accommodating." Dylan didn't understand how being called a slut could be a compliment, so no on those. It would need subtlety.
Harper could do subtle. It just took a little work.
Aglow with endorphins, Dylan felt great: loose and satisfied. The back rub alone had done wonders; he wished he'd known earlier that Harper was that talented. As for the sex... he'd seen Harper get turned down so often that he hadn't given any thought to the possibility that Harper might bring the same intense, high enthusiasm to sex that he did to flirting.
Dylan had guessed, correctly, that the terrible lines Harper used while flirting would continue through the sex, but it was almost... cute.
Seeing Harper now, Dylan realized that Harper had been muted and quiet, withdrawn, for most of their stay here so far. At least, the Harper version of muted, quiet, and withdrawn, which was louder and more energetic than the standard human version. Occupied with his own concerns, Dylan hadn't noticed then, but he did now, and he wanted to get to the bottom of it. That conversation with Jon had alluded to difficulties Dylan hadn't been aware of.
"You're not being treated well at the university, are you?" Dylan asked.
That look of happy openness immediately faded from Harper's face, and Dylan was sorry to see it go. "Hey! You're messing with my afterglow," Harper said.
Having started this, he might as well carry it through. "So you're not."
"Chansa gave me a free ride. Seems 'well' to me."
"That's not what I'm talking about, and you know it."
Harper made an angry noise, sat up, and started to climb over Dylan to get out of the bunk. Dylan gently grabbed his wrist and said, "I'll trade you. If you give me an honest appraisal of your peers at school, I'll tell you what I've been doing to earn money. I know you want to know."
Dylan could almost see the wheels turning in Harper's brain. Got him. "You tell me your job first."
"Okay. I'm working in sales. I'm calling people trying to sell vacation timeshares."
Harper coughed. Or giggled. Maybe both. "Vacation timeshares? Do they get a toaster if they sign up?"
"See, this is why I didn't tell you."
"This is your big, dark shame? C'mon, it's funny, but it's not humiliating."
"I've heard that I may be making employee of the month."
Okay, that was giggling. Harper fell back into bed next to him. "Oh, the shame. The horror. You're good at it." Harper tried to take a breath and stop laughing. "Dylan, getting a new Commonwealth started is all about you having incredible sales skills, so of course you're closing in on employee of the month. You sold us on it, and we're tough, so hell yeah you kick ass."
"I'm selling vacations, when the Fall is coming."
"It makes sense that you're selling vacations, since Tarn-Vedra checked out of the Fall early and has been on vacation for the centuries since."
Harper wasn't getting it, so Dylan said, "I feel like I'm abusing my abilities."
"Abusing your--"
"I'm selling people on the Commonwealth to make the galaxy a better place. What I'm doing here is very different."
"Supporting yourself so nobody else has to is selfish? Or are you trying to tell me that your reasons for signing up all these worlds for a new government have nothing to do with making yourself feel better?"
Dylan couldn't find a countering argument. "I hate you."
Harper grinned evilly. "You love me. Let me guess: you've been torturing yourself for almost two weeks with this. Well, torture no more. You're working for a good cause, and it's nothing to be ashamed of. Though I still think that the real money for you would be in virtual sex--"
Dylan couldn't help grinning back. "Harper, I really hate you."
"Nah, you don't. Even better, now you don't have to worry about me finding out, making jokes, and mentioning toasters because I already have and it's over now. It's a win situation all the way."
"You're right."
"See?"
"It is a win situation, because now you have to tell me the truth about what's going on at school."
"Damn. See, I made that promise figuring that you were doing something actually mortifying and I'd get a ton of entertainment out of it...."
"You promised."
"Fine." Harper's tone tried to sound casual. "School has sucked. Aside from some friendly Perseids who love me for my engineering experience and a history student who wants my ass because he thinks I'm some kind of wild boy, I'm getting ostracized by all of the other students. I don't look right, talk right, dress right, or kiss their asses right, but I'm ahead of them and they hate that. They won't sit with me, they won't talk to me, and they giggle about me when they know I'm looking. Stupid stuff. The abnormal psych majors made me their project."
The abnormal psych majors made him.... "You must have done something to inspire all of this."
Harper's face went hard and edged in cold anger. "I exist. That's all they needed. People could have spent this golden age of leisure and prosperity the Commonwealth gave them by making advances in the arts and sciences, or bettering themselves, but instead they just perfected the art of being snobs."
"I don't understand that." He didn't. Had things been like this before and he just hadn't noticed then?
"Of course you don't. Dylan, I'm sure you have fond memories of this time, but most of the people I've met here don't deserve the gifts they have. They're soft and spineless."
Soft and spineless. How weird to have Harper echoing some of the things Rhade used to say. Then again, Harper had occasionally expressed Nietzschean sentiments before; maybe he'd been forced to become nearly Nietzschean in mindset to survive the ones who ruled Earth.
"I'm tired of it all," Harper said, and he looked it. "I've been hacking it because I'm stubborn and I hate to let other people's stupidity get in my way, but I'm tired of the stupid child games. And I'm tired of being treated like a kid by my teachers just because I'm in classes with people who are pretty much children. I've put a hell of a lot of effort over the years into getting people to see me as an adult, and I hate this automatic demotion." Harper cooled down a bit, trading sadness for rage. "I'm tired, Dylan. This isn't a golden age for me. I want to go home. Do you have any other burning questions?"
So Harper had been imploding the whole time, while Dylan hadn't expected it or noticed, figuring that Harper would complain if he had trouble. Harper was tough, but here he was far away from everyone and everything he loved and facing stupid shit from people he shouldn't have to worry about. Yet he bore it quietly and kept trying to make it all work. Dylan felt a surge of affection.
"I have a question."
"Yeah?"
Dylan leaned over and kissed him. "Do you want me to go any further with this?"
Harper grabbed him. "What do you think?"
"I think you still have your pants on."
"You could help fix that. Or I could let go of you and take care of that."
"I like having you hold on to me."
"Really?" Harper purred. Then he shook his head. "Oh, hell, all this flirting isn't getting my pants off." Harper let go of Dylan and, lying on his back, folded himself in half to take off his socks and pull at his pants. It was a nice view, especially once he had the pants and underwear off. The intense, focused look he had on his face as he stripped was endearing too.
"Practical."
"That's me."
"Flexible too."
"Also me." Done, Harper unfolded. "Ta-da!"
Dylan ran his hands up and down the sides of Harper's now bare thighs and smiled at how it made him squirm. "Earlier, you mentioned something about screaming my name several times. I didn't hear my name even once."
"That's something you have to earn."
"Yeah?" Dylan tongued Harper's navel--detecting the scent of sex and his own body on Harper's skin, which made his cock twitch--and felt Harper's rising cock brush his neck.
"Yeah." Harper rocked up against him a little and looked at him with eyes darkened by dilated pupils. "Don't want people to think I'm easy. They start putting out less effort."
"Less effort? I wouldn't want anyone to think that." He crawled up Harper's body and went back to kissing him.
In between kisses, Harper protested, "You were in the right area before!"
"You mentioned something about more effort, so I didn't want to go straight to the main event without showing some technique first."
"Evil man. You sell timeshares by twisting people's words into something they didn't mean?"
Dylan saw deep red marks on Harper's neck from his earlier attention to the skin around his dataport. With a smile Harper would probably call evil if he could see it, Dylan went back to kissing and sucking there, fascinated by the smoother skin and its sharp, slightly metallic flavor. Harper groaned and bucked up hard.
"I'm living up to my reputation," Dylan murmured directly against Harper's neck. "Somebody mentioned evil...." It amazed Dylan how much pleasure Harper got out of this, pleasure apparent in the way his hard, slick cock rubbed against Dylan's stomach as they rocked and thrust together.
Harper's hands clenched forcefully on Dylan's back in a way that made Dylan very glad he kept his nails very short and blunt. "Gonna... kill you. Nobody'd convict me." A long, slow drag of Dylan's tongue made him whimper. "If I survive that long. If I start... screaming your name now... would you stop before I explode?"
Harper had stopped him before. Maybe this felt too intense. Okay, his eyes had rolled to the top of his head. Definitely too intense.
"Serious offer?" Dylan asked, kissing Harper's nose. He'd already decided to follow Harper's wishes and stopped, since he had no urge to torture him. But he enjoyed the verbal give and take.
"Scout's honor," Harper gasped, heaving against him.
"I find it hard to believe that you were ever a scout."
Recovering, Harper smiled a little, and his breathing slowed. "I was small. I fit in tunnels. I scouted. Thus I was a scout. I may even have honor. Okay?"
"Okay." They rocked together, and Dylan half closed his eyes from how good the friction felt. The first go had been about taking the edge off, and now he could take his time.
"You sure you don't want me to scream your name a bit anyway?"
"Not if you don't mean it."
"No 'Dylan, oh Dylan'?"
"Maybe later."
"Dylan." Harper thrust up hard. "Oh, Dylan." He did it again.
"You're funny." Dylan stroked his hands down Harper's back and tried to ignore the faint tracings of scars, since he didn't know exactly how he felt about them. They made him angry and turned him on all at once....
"Thank you. Mmm. Hands in new places." Hot and sinuous, he moved up a bit and wrapped his legs around Dylan's waist, which put Dylan's hands on his ass and rubbed Dylan's cock against....
"Do you want that?" Dylan asked, fighting the urge to just thrust now.
Harper nibbled his ear and handed him the container of slick, on top of everything even while on the bottom. "I haven't been fucked in ages, and you looked like you were enjoying it when it was your turn."
Dylan slicked a few fingers and stroked one in for a start. Harper's legs clenched around him in reaction. As Dylan fucked him with it, Harper's eyes closed, blissed out, and his head fell back onto the pillow. "This is good, but it can't be all you got," Harper said.
On the next thrust, Dylan put three fingers in, then four, and smiled at the moans he heard. All the rubbing and bucking Harper was doing brought Dylan to a height of aching lust that needed relief. "Harper--"
Harper's smile had a fierce edge. "Go for it."
Despite the want that hazed Dylan's mind, he had no desire to hurt Harper by going too fast or hard, so once he slicked his cock he pushed in slowly and steadily, no matter how much Harper's whimpers and clutching fingers inflamed him. The slow slide into that tight heat drove him crazy too, so he tried to distance himself from it a little by counting backwards. Harper had given him a lengthy turn, so he couldn't do any less.
But Harper, probably impatient, used his grip on Dylan to push himself all the way down onto Dylan's cock, then put his hand down to where their bodies were joined, caressing Dylan's balls, making him gasp. As he pulled out, Harper's hand slid along the length of him. It felt so good.... Dylan groaned and thrust forward hard.
"Oh, yeah," Harper gasped. "Let's get the party started. Hard and fast, big guy."
Dylan happily followed orders. Anyone listening to them would have thought for sure that Harper was being murdered from the tortured noises coming from his throat, but anyone who could see the bliss on his face and the rosy flush on his sweat-sheened skin would have known otherwise. The steady stream of "yeah, Dylan, Dylan...." between the noises helped too, but Dylan had to keep checking anyway, something he retained just enough brain to do once in a while. It became even easier to tell when Harper started to fist his cock, so both cock and fist were rubbing against Dylan's body during his thrusts.
Coming, Harper pushed up hard and bit Dylan's shoulder. Between the pleasure/pain of the bite and the echoes of orgasm making Harper's muscles clench around his cock, Dylan followed him.
Dylan lay contentedly tangled with Harper until it finally started to get uncomfortable. He realized that he was draped heavily on Harper. "Sorry."
Harper squirmed but looked happy. "'Sokay."
Dylan also realized that they were starting to stick together. "We're such a mess."
"I like messy. Okay, not this messy. I have packets of wet naps under my pillow. We could clean up, then switch to a drier bunk."
"You have all the answers."
"Of course I do. It's about time you realized it."
Dylan woke up with his arms wrapped around Harper, the back of Harper's head nestled under his chin, and his morning erection pressed into Harper's ass. Nice, but he didn't know if his bedpartner would appreciate it.
Harper snuggled back, rubbing, and put his hand over one of Dylan's. "Rise and shine."
The rubbing, of course, made it worse. "Tease."
"Not really." Harper grabbed Dylan's hand and set it over his hard cock, its head already slick. "How does frottage for you and a handjob for me sound?"
Dylan could see some major advantages to a slut's lifestyle and rubbed his thumb over the head, smiling at way Harper writhed against him. "Like a good way to start a morning."
For a while Dylan lost himself in heat, friction, pleasure, and motion, the tight clasp of Harper's thighs around his cock, the rub of Harper's cock thrusting into his fist, the salty taste of Harper's neck. They clasped one another and rocked into orgasm.
Dylan didn't think he'd ever get out of bed again. He had just about everything he needed here.
Eventually Harper said, "If we get fastidious, we can move to another bunk. We'd have to climb to do it, though." He turned around to face Dylan. "Oh, cool. That bite's gonna last a while. Only fair after what you did to my neck. Wait, not quite fair." He tongued one of Dylan's nipples, then started to suck it, applying the edge of his teeth.
Sensitized by sex, Dylan felt it more as "too much" than pleasure. "I can't do anything yet! I'm--"
Harper moved back a little and grinned. "Old?"
Dylan lightly cuffed the back of Harper's head. "Spent. Temporarily."
"We could take a shower in a little while."
"Together?"
"Well, yeah."
"You remember that the Maru has a hot water cutoff. Once we hit our time limit, the ice cold blast would end the festivities quickly."
"You're no fun."
"Harper, you're insatiable." The limberness, the sex drive... Harper couldn't be human. Maybe his family had evolved from minks at some point?
"You think I don't know that? Look, I heard that there are these fish eggs that go dormant when their ponds run dry. They stay dormant for years, but once they have enough water around to live in they rehydrate, hatch, and aren't any different from fish that had hatched immediately after being, uhm, laid."
"That's a metaphor about your sex life?"
"You're so smart. It's very sexy."
"You scare me."
Harper laughed and ran his finger down Dylan's chest. "Fine. I'll just have to take a shower all by myself and be lonely, you cruel bastard."
"You have to get out of bed?" That wasn't fair.
"School. I don't keep those wacky salesman hours like you do, employee of the month."
Dylan stroked his hand down Harper's back. "You sure I can't keep you in bed? I just need a little time."
"Are you suggesting I play hooky? I'm scandalized. But I gotta shower and go. It's too tempting to stay here and avoid the fallout from my bar crawl. Better to get right back up on the horse."
"You have an overdeveloped sense of duty."
Harper grabbed Dylan's shoulders. "What have you done with Dylan Hunt, you bastard?"
"Got him laid. Several times. You helped."
"Oh yeah," Harper purred.
"Smug isn't a good look for you."
"Says you. I like it. But I gotta go." Harper kissed his nose, then climbed out over him out of the bunk.
As Harper showered, Dylan listened and entertained some thoughts of going in and sharing after all, but he remembered all too well getting the ice water blast once. He had no intention of braving that again, especially considering the shriveling effect it had. A while after the shower turned off, he heard a low, annoyed Harperian growl that he figured he better investigate.
Harper glared at himself in the mirror, then glared at Dylan as he walked in. "You! My neck looks like ground chuck!"
It wasn't... quite that bad. But the many marks on Harper's neck near his port were vividly dark red and very obviously the work of somebody's mouth. "Can't you wear something over that area?"
"Dylan, you remember what kind of reaction I had to you sucking on 'that area' yesterday. Now it's even more sensitive. I'm gonna put cloth over it? I don't think so." Harper sighed. "Maybe I could wear my leather jacket all day and keep the collar turned up? I don't mind people realizing I got lucky, but I don't want to shove it into the face of everyone who crosses my path. I already have a reputation."
"How?"
Harper gave him a sickly smile. "How do you think I got my scholarship and stipend? According to the rumor mill, my exam had an oral and anal component."
Enraged, Dylan couldn't find any words. He just pressed up against Harper's back and put his arms around him. Harper snuggled back and sighed. Dylan rested his chin on Harper's damp hair and tried to think through the haze of red in his brain. He couldn't believe....
Finally, Dylan found some words. "The Maru is space- and slipstream-worthy?"
"Yeah. Of course." Harper looked and sounded offended at the thought that it wouldn't be.
"Let's go. Soon. I don't see any reason to stay here." It was that or go on a spree through the university with his force lance.
Harper smiled. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. We do what we have to do, finish any business we need to, and go home." There wasn't anything they could do here.
There wasn't. The Commonwealth didn't fall just because Captain Dylan Hunt had missed the faint, mostly visible-in-hindsight signs of treachery in his First Officer, and its problems were too big and widespread for him to make a difference alone, with one crewmember, a few years earlier. He couldn't tell yet if having the sole responsibility for the Fall lifted from his shoulders made him happy or mournful.
In the future, he could make a difference. He'd proven it.
"Hey," Harper purred. "You're still naked."
Dylan had to smile. "Harper."
"What? I've been deprived!"
"Depraved is more like it."
"I'm always depraved. Still spent?"
"Mostly." Dammit.
"See you later, then." Harper turned around and kissed Dylan's chin, then left with a big smile and a bounce in his walk.
Dylan felt better now that he had a course of action to follow. And Harper coming back later.
Harper had gotten through the day with no major incidents. The people who ignored or sneered at him didn't do it any more vigorously than usual or change their behavior. With his collar turned up, he didn't attract as much attention as he might have otherwise, though he could see some people trying very hard to avoid looking. Didn't want to be seen as too nosy, maybe. If anybody knew about his history with the Magog, no one mentioned it. He managed to avoid seeing Jon or his crew too.
He kept getting hijacked and distracted at random moments by pornographic memories, though. Not that he minded much, aside from how it heightened his current state of sexual frustration. Dylan could help him alleviate the tension when he got home.
"Harper."
"Chansa!" Harper didn't like the look on Chansa's face. "What's going on?"
"Nothing's wrong!" He looked way too skittish for nothing being wrong. "You're being offered an opportunity."
To what, plan his own funeral? "Uh, okay."
"Please come to my office. There's someone who needs to see you privately about this opportunity."
Harper so wished he had his gun. "Lead on."
The woman waiting in Chansa's office stood when they entered and closed the door behind them. She was about Harper's height, but he easily outweighed her. Not that she looked like somebody who'd go down easy, not when she had this bone, sinew, and steel look to her that some especially domineering older women got. The deeply red and blatantly fake color of her short hair could suggest vanity or such power that she didn't have to give a damn what people thought of her appearance. She wore a black High Guard uniform.
Harper unconsciously backed up a little at that, but Chansa's arm behind him stopped him from moving far enough for her to notice. Harper hoped.
"So this is the young man I've come to see," she said. Even trying to sound warm, her voice had a steel tone to it. "You can go now, Chansa."
"I'd prefer to--"
"This is a private conversation, and you are not Mr. Harper's guardian that you have to hear things for him."
"Yes." Chansa gave Harper's back a light pat before he left. Great.
She sat behind what must have been Chansa's desk, and Harper recognized it as an authority-proving move. "You can approach me. You don't have to be shy," she said, sounding amused. "Or is it caution instead?"
Harper stepped forward. A little. "I really have no idea what I'm doing here."
"You're here at our request. We wanted to make the offer directly to you, without Chansa interpreting it for you in a possibly incorrect way."
Royal "we," hunh?
"He mentioned an opportunity."
"Indeed. We've been watching your progress. It's not every day that someone impresses Chansa enough to earn a full scholarship and stipend. Your grades have proven that you deserve what you've won from him. We're aware that you have a great deal of practical and professional experience that makes some of your classes dull to you, so we have come to make you an offer. We'd like to put you on a fast track to the High Guard Academy. You would finish three years in the All Systems University, then go to the academy for two years. At the end of those two years, you would join the High Guard."
Holy shit. Everybody wanted him. Funny what a difference 300 years made. "Me? Joining the High Guard?" Dylan would just die hearing about this.
Interesting how they sent a human to talk to him.
"It's not so hard to believe, is it? We're looking for the best, and you're it. We have a research and development division that I think would put a sparkle in the eye of any engineer who looked at it. That's what we want for you, and we believe that you want this for yourself. Your work suggests that you have exactly the inquisitive, inventive mindset necessary for R&D."
"Fast track through the university?" No more introductory level hackwork?
"Accelerated coursework, but that is what you hoped for when you agreed to enroll here, isn't it? Though you might have to give up some of your extracurricular work to keep up. We could give you the support you'd need to get along without it."
This was exactly what he wanted. If he did a fast track, he might actually get some of the education he'd hoped for before he and Dylan had to blow this joint. It wasn't like he'd be around long enough to have to pay the High Guard back by working for them. Except that "long enough" wouldn't be very long at all, because he and Dylan were blowing this joint really soon, so what was the point?
"It's great that you want me to join the High Guard, but I already have a job and commitments. My captain is being real understanding about me going to the university, and I think it would be a lot to ask him to give me up forever."
"We appreciate your loyalty and sense of commitment to your captain--" Did she just look at his neck and the hickeys on it when she said that? "--but you have a higher duty here. You have a commitment to the Commonwealth, which is even now supporting you so that you may better yourself. Here is a case where you can better yourself and your fellow sentients at the same time. Your captain can hire another in your place, but you are irreplaceable to us."
Okay, something weird was going on here. "I don't see how. There's no way I'm going to agree to anything if I don't know what's going on."
"I had hoped to convince you without divulging this."
"You hoped I would agree, then you'd spring something on me later after I couldn't get out of our arrangement? That's real nice."
"It's classified."
You had to love the military. "Thanks but no thanks."
"Stay. I'll tell you, if you swear that you'll never breathe a word of it to anyone. You can agree to join us or say no, but if we find out that you've spoken to anyone of this--"
"You guys will find me, disappear me, and hurt me?"
She smiled coldly. "We'd be very disappointed in you."
Yeah, they'd disappear him. "I swear I won't tell anybody. I don't think I could live with your disappointment."
To his surprise, she gave him an almost fond look. He knew that she would torture and kill him without qualms if she had to, but he suddenly had the feeling that she liked him despite that. He tried not to let it go to his head.
"In fact, our little secret may inspire you to join us. Once we became aware of your existence, we started to keep a very close eye on you."
Uh-oh. "How close?"
"We wanted to see where you might do the most good. Our findings suggest that you might do very well in weaponry R&D."
If they only knew. "Yeah, I have some interests there."
She leaned forward. "We need someone to design better weapons to use against the Magog, and we think you may be the one to help us."
Oh, fuck. Had word gotten to them somehow about his little performance in the bar or was this just coincidence? Either way, he had to play it cool. "C'mon, everybody's talking about making peace with them."
"Not everyone," she said, "though I'm sure that you hear more peacemakers in the ivy tower of academia."
"By the time I get out of the academy, there won't be any call for weapons against them."
"I don't doubt that they'll do something else to warrant armed force by then."
"Yeah."
"It doesn't matter though. There will be a treaty, but it will be a holding action as we build up our offensive and defensive weaponry in private. We don't trust the Magog. How good are you with high-powered bombs? If you're good enough, you might even bypass the academy and go straight to High Guard R&D, which I think would appeal to you. We may be needing something stronger than a nova bomb."
They needed Roseanne.
Harper tried not to let his shock show. Of course they needed Roseanne, because they'd sent the Andromeda out to find the Magog, and she'd run into the Magog Worldship and gotten her crew's asses kicked. The military knew this, but the public didn't. In fact, the mission itself had been top secret. They knew about the coming threat of billions of Magog heading toward the Commonwealth and had been preparing.
They just did the treaty and never told anyone about it. The Nietzscheans had seen making peace with the Magog to be the last straw, a sure sign of the Commonwealth's weakness and lack of spine. The Nietzscheans rebelled, started a civil war, and brought the Long Night down on everybody. If the Nietzscheans had known about the continued build-up, there wouldn't have been an uprising and everything would have been much different....
"You don't think people should know about this?" he squeaked.
"There have been attempts to remind the public of how rapacious these creatures are, but the public doesn't want to listen. The last large-scale Magog atrocity happened 14 years ago, and that's a long time. It's old news. Their continuing predations have been smaller, less in the public eye."
"What about the Nietzscheans? I'm sure they wouldn't need to be convinced."
"They are not a large enough group to overrule all the members of the Commonwealth who want peace and closure."
Harper sneered. "Closure."
"Yes." They shared a moment of disgust, then she said, "For them, we need a public peace."
"And a private buildup of weapons. What about the Nietzscheans, though? They're gonna hate this."
"Of course they will, but they are loyal subjects. They'll have the bragging rights when it becomes necessary for us to use our weapons, as it will become necessary."
Right. Because the Vedrans had such powerful and awe-inspiring mojo that no one would dare think of rebelling against the Commonwealth and such a strong policing force in the High Guard that no one would get away with trying even if they did think of rebelling. Except that the Nietzscheans had hoodwinked them all. But the Nietzscheans had been hoodwinked into hoodwinking them.
The Nietzscheans had destroyed the Commonwealth over a peace that hadn't been real. It was the blackest joke ever.
Harper had so many things he could tell the High Guard, things that might prevent the civil war. He, the galaxy's human expert on Magog mayhem, had so many things he could do for the High Guard, including giving them a weapon that might give them a chance in hell against the Magog Worldship. Unlike Dylan, he didn't have to worry about being declared an imposter or fucking up his contemporary self's life, because only one Seamus Harper existed here. This was bigger than big; this was his chance to stop all of his enemies before they could even do the damage that had made them his enemies. He could save Earth. He could save the Commonwealth, not that this Commonwealth really deserved to be saved, but its power kept the worse elements at bay.
He could prevent himself from being born in the first place, but who cared? Even if, in the end, nobody knew he'd even existed, he'd know that he'd saved countless lives. All he'd have to do was create the perfect shell casing of lies to hand over the truth in.
All he had to do?
How would he have found out about the Nietzscheans preparing to rebel, even down to date, place, and time? How did he know about a mission into Magog space that was so top secret that even Andromeda was made to suppress it from herself? Where would he have gotten the experience with nova bombs necessary to upgrade a bomb to Roseanne's class when he was just supposed to be a student and the engineer of a rustbucket cargo ship? How did he know that the empress was going to be assassinated? No one would dare to try!
He would have to be the greatest liar who'd ever lived to make all of that go down easy. At best, they'd figure he was a nut and lock him away. At worst, they'd figure he was something worse and lock him away and try to torture the truth out of him. Not that they'd recognize the truth even if he did finally give it up.
Not telling anybody what would happen, staying in the background, and trying to subtly change things from there wouldn't work because he couldn't possibly get high enough in anyone's food chain in time to influence the right people. He'd only get a front row seat as history went to hell all over again. Maybe the Commonwealth would do a little better against the Nietzscheans with his weapon work, but maybe not. Soon enough the Commonwealth would be too busy trying to hold itself together to use anything he'd designed against the Magog, the way he'd intended it.
Did he trust them to use his weapons well? Not really.
Everything might get even worse somehow. Harper believed in Murphy's Law.
And Dylan, the Commonwealth's number one booster, had seen signs of decline in the Commonwealth even aside from the Nietzschean Uprising. It wasn't just Harper.
He wondered what Tarn-Vedra was like today. He'd probably think it sucked if he ever got a chance to be there. All that arrogance floating around probably made the air hard to breathe. Tarn-Vedra could stay cut off from the slipstream; who needed them? It wasn't like they'd share any of their good stuff even if they did rejoin the rest of the known worlds.
Okay. It sounded like he'd made his decision. Now he just had to decide what to tell the nice recruiter so she'd leave him in peace.
"Your talents could help you achieve justice for what you'd lost," she said, her tone saying that she figured that would be the deal cincher.
Damn. She knew about his cousins. How many others did? He knew that not many people had heard him, and what were the odds that one of the few just happened to think the High Guard would find it interesting? Low. What were the odds that it would get to the High Guard and they'd have a deal ready for him a little over a day later? Even lower. Was the High Guard listening in on everybody's conversations through spies and informants, trying to get the pulse of the public, or had they just been checking up on him alone? Either way, what they were doing was illegal.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"I understand that you might not want to talk about it under most circumstances." Her attempt to sound sympathetic just sounded hungry.
"Yeah, I'm glad you understand that." Far be it for him to corrupt her story for him with any facts that might not fit with her picture, especially since he had no real idea what she'd dreamed up for his past.
Brandenburg Tor, probably. In the mass slaughter and the chaos that followed it, some of the few evacuees could have slipped between the cracks of the bureaucracy's confused records. Maybe.
The best liars knew when to keep quiet.
She wanted an answer. Having underestimated his paranoia and misread his circumstances, she thought she knew what his answer was. Harper had to figure out what reply would get him the least trouble. He'd love to say yes to the fast track, since he'd be skipping out well before he had to worry about his side of the obligations, but he and Dylan would have to clear the Maru's departure with air traffic control, and a High Guard that spied to his drunken bar room confessions might take it amiss if he and his ship tried to skip town after he'd signed his life over to them. Hell if they didn't have an in with the air traffic controllers.
"I don't know what to say," Harper answered, stalling.
"Say yes."
"I--" Be star-struck. Use the truth where possible. "I have to think about this. You have to understand, I figured I'd be working my whole life and never get to go to school. I never thought I'd be able to go to the All Systems University. Now I'm in, and it still feels crazy. I definitely never thought I could go to the High Guard. This is a big decision. I need some time."
Her lips pursed. Definitely not happy. "How much time do you think you need?"
"Two days."
She nearly smiled. "Such certainty on the time."
"I work best on a deadline. Is there a way I can contact you? I understand that you might want to retain some secrecy here."
She did smile then. "You can tell Chansa. It will get to me. We hope you say yes."
"I'm sure that I won't be thinking about anything other than your deal."
"Dismissed, Mr. Harper."
Harper left the office at the pace of a calm walk. Running screaming to the Maru wouldn't look good at all. At least she'd made her offer after all of his classes for the day were over, so he didn't have to make the choice of going to class or going to the Maru, having to ponder which would look best.
Still looking jittery, Chansa walked up to him. "I need to speak to you privately."
This should be promising. "Yeah. Okay."
Harper followed him across campus, through the gardens, through the library, and finally into a cabin full of parts and projects in progress. It looked like a neater version of Harper's quarters and machine shops on the Andromeda. "Is this your house or your workshop?"
"There's not much of a difference, actually."
Harper grinned. "Yeah. I get that."
"I'm afraid this won't do your reputation or mine any favors."
Damn. "You heard about that?" And Chansa hadn't been anything but nice to him.
"I am amazed at the level of savagery that has been on display lately. Oh, don't worry about my feelings. The rumors are contemptible, and I treat them as such. I'm concerned more about you."
"You said it. Contemptible. I don't let them bother me."
Chansa obviously didn't believe it. "I'm afraid that I haven't done you any favors by giving you that scholarship. First I exposed you to a depth of cruelty I hadn't realized existed in our student body, and now you've come to the attention of the High Guard. You're not the first student of mine they've taken away."
Harper picked up a small, half-completed motor just to have something to do with his hands. "I told them that I didn't know yet. I'd make my decision in the next two days."
"You may not have a choice," Chansa said, looking mournful. "Another student of mine said no outright. She was a pacifist. Three days later she returned to tell me that she'd changed her mind."
"Like hell."
"Exactly. Her chin trembled as she told me so. I'm not sure what pressure they put on her. She refused to go into any detail."
"If they tried to threaten my captain, I can tell you that they wouldn't get very far."
"Your affinity for the darker things concerns me, but it may preserve your freedom." Then he looked slightly embarrassed, his chin trembling. "Unless you want to join the High Guard."
"Chansa, they had me watched. They listened in on a conversation I had at a bar the other night. I don't want anything to do with 'em."
"They've been interfering in other ways. Your substitute gym teacher recently was part of their psychological evaluation of the university's students. Your unusual circumstances and high grades have made you especially interesting to them. While the academy has always kept an eye on our more promising students, lately there's a desperation to it that worries me, as if they're afraid of something and feel that they can dispense with the niceties of a free society while trying to combat it."
"Sounds about right."
"Harper, I hate to say this, but I think that you and your captain should leave while you still can."
It looked like it hurt Chansa to think that way, but Harper had been way ahead of him. "Yeah, I know. I just hope they let us off the planet."
Chansa bustled about, then picked up a pad. "Let me upload something to your pad. This code is the university priority code. Hopefully, using it will help you depart."
Harper handed his pad over for the transfer. "I'm sorry, Chansa."
"You're sorry? Harper, I have failed you."
"What? What do you mean?" Harper asked. Crazy Perseid.
"I promised you an education."
"I got that. Really I did. You gave me something I never thought I'd get." Chansa reminded him so much of Höhne sometimes, and look what had happened there.... "I don't want you to get hurt over me. Any more than you already have."
"Harper.... But you expect the dark things." Chansa put his arm around Harper's shoulders. "I am far too useful to be done away with. But I will miss you. I expect to hear great things of you in years to come. Your mind is too fine."
"Thanks," Harper said, his voice wobbling. "I'll miss you too."
"Keep that if you'd like."
Harper hadn't realized that he was still holding it. "I can't." He put it down. As much as he twitted Dylan about changing the past, he didn't have as flippant an attitude as he pretended to.
He hadn't even bought that music disk for Beka; just downloaded the material on it.
Chansa stuffed Harper's pad and a small packet into his backpack. "Go, Harper. I pronounce you a graduate of the All Systems University."
"I won't forget this, Chansa."
"See that you don't." He smiled a little. "When you make your big discoveries, be sure to mention my name to the media."
Harper saluted and left before he could totally lose his cool. As he crossed the garden, the High Guard officer waited at the other end. Oh, shit.
"Time flies," Harper joked when he reached her.
"I just worried that Chansa might have tried to dissuade you."
Oh, yeah, Harper loved this kind of behavior. Sure he'd join the High Guard.
He missed his gun.
"He just said that he loses a lot of students to the High Guard program and that he didn't get any complaints from them." Probably because they weren't permitted to complain.
"I'm looking forward to your decision." She nodded and walked away.
When Harper returned, he had a hard, focused look that just about changed the shape of his face. This couldn't bode well. "What happened?" Dylan asked.
"We have to get our asses out of Dodge now. The High Guard wants me to join. If I don't want to join, the High Guard will just take me anyway."
"Are you kidding?"
Harper paced. "Wish I was. They've been watching me since I entered school. When she talked about my loyalty to my captain, I could swear that she was staring directly at the hickeys, so someone may have followed us yesterday. Hell, somebody was at the bar the other night and told them all about my Magog thing, and that was part of the pitch they used to get me to join. This little scary woman they used to recruit me said that they'll put together the Treaty of Antares but keep making weapons against the Magog in secret."
"Then the uprising--"
"Was over a peace that was never taken seriously."
The waste. The horrible, horrible waste. Dylan remembered how Andromeda had made a past mission into Magog space and returned with news of the Worldship, news kept so classified that only a select few knew of it, and it was lost during the Fall. He hadn't known about that past mission until the debacle with the AI copy led to them doing it over.
Harper looked pissed off. "I told them I needed time to think about it. Chansa said that the High Guard didn't take no for an answer with a past student of his, and he suggested we get the hell out of here. I was way ahead of him already, but just in case I thought that maybe things weren't so bad, the scary little woman was waiting for me outside and asked if Chansa tried to talk me out of joining."
"This scary little woman. What did she look like?"
"About my height, but stringy, all sinew and bone. Oldish, with deeply red short hair. Fake color and obvious about it. Brown eyes. Attitude of command. Black uniform with these red flourishes."
It was a time for dark jokes. "You were considered important enough that Admiral Stark herself arrived to recruit you. She was also my fiancée's aunt. She gave me the promotion to captain and the Andromeda." And made Rhade his First Officer. All as a reward for a black operation turned bloodbath. Hell, she'd brought him and Rhade together for the first time for that operation. And thus shaped the future.
"Small galaxy," Harper answered.
"You have no idea. Harper, they're not going to let us leave."
"And we can't just bust out of here like we would at a station because we have to clear air and space traffic out of our way, so we need the traffic controllers. Chansa figured. He gave me the university priority code to help us out." Harper handed Dylan his computer pad. "It's in here."
"It might not work."
"Then we do whatever we have to." Harper had a hard, intense look on his face. Feral, ruthless. Admiral Stark had probably liked him... as much as she liked anyone. "They're used to obedience here. If we started to take off anyway, it might take them a while to scramble people to stop us."
"You have a way to engineer an incident that might help me get us back home?"
Harper nodded fiercely.
"Then let's get out of here." Dylan opened a channel to air traffic control. "This is shipping vessel Eureka Maru in dock B-419 asking for clearance for liftoff." He didn't want to give out the priority code unless it became necessary, though he had it ready.
"Eureka Maru, wait for clearance."
It could be a normal wait, but it might not be. Dylan mentally prepared for the worst but stayed cool.
The loud buzz made him jump. Somebody was buzzing them from the ramp? Dylan switched on the camera to look.
"Who the hell is that?" Harper asked from the computer bank behind him.
"It's Jon," Dylan snarled.
Harper's face traveled through so many emotions so quickly that Dylan couldn't name any of them until it hit a terminus of savage disbelief. "You have to be fucking kidding me."
"It's Jon."
When Harper opened a channel, his tone could have crushed stone. "Jon. Go. The fuck. Home."
"I have to talk to you!"
"You don't have to do anything but go home. I don't want you, Jon." To Dylan, he asked, with the channel off, "Clearance yet?"
"No," Dylan said. "Not yet. And he's not moving off the ramp."
They couldn't take off while they had someone standing on the ramp.
"Dammit," Harper said. "I have to go down there and move him off. I know the little bastard, and he won't leave if I just talk to him because he'll take talk as encouragement." He pulled off his backpack and jacket, tossed them to the side, and stalked toward the ramp hatch.
Rage transformed the entire shape of Harper's face, changing from its usual boyish softness to hard planes and angles. Jon shivered a little on the inside while watching him approach.
"What part of 'go home' don't you understand?" Harper's voice sounded dark and rough. "They're just two words, two syllables. Easy."
"What happened to your neck?" Jon asked, angry. Jemmy had told him about the hickeys, but her description hadn't really prepared him. It looked like Harper had been attacked by someone.
Harper's expression twitched, and he crossed his arms, which made him look even more unfriendly. "You know exactly what happened to my neck. Not that it's any of your business, but my captain and I went out for dinner, then came home and fucked each other's brains out. Multiple times. It was really hot."
Harper's captain, the one who stayed inside the ship while Harper earned money for them to stay on Tarn-Vedra and who didn't allow Harper to have visitors. "Your captain saw that you had a bad night and took advantage of you?"
"More like we took advantage of each other. What romance novel are you living in?"
"You deserve better than him."
"And you're it?"
"It was one night!"
Harper sounded so cold. "It gave me a good idea of your character."
"It's not f--"
"You better not be trying to say that it's not fair. You don't have any idea what unfair really is."
"I know. Not compared to how you do." Jon pushed the words out in a rush, trying to finish before Harper could stop him. "When I came here yesterday I didn't know about your cousins, and I know that you don't want me to know about them even now, but not many people know about it, and I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry Lau was such an ass and pushed you so hard."
"Don't totally blame Lau for this. You could have saved your ass. Hell, if you'd handled it right you could have won bonus points from me for showing grace under pressure. But you didn't."
"Stop looking at me like that."
"Like what?"
"So cold. Like I'm too beneath you for my opinions to matter." It would have been better if Harper had been angry and yelled. This hard coldness gave Jon the bad shudders.
"Jon, it's not going to happen for us. Not now. Not ever. We're too different."
"Your captain treats you right?" Harper hesitated, and that chink in his ice armor gave Jon strength. "He's using you! You're so smart, and you can do so much more with your life than working on this ship. He's holding you back!"
When Harper smiled, it made Jon step back. "Jon, you don't know anything about us. If you did, you'd realize what a huge mistake you just made." He cocked his head as if listening to something, then said, "Get off the ramp. Go home."
"Harper--"
"Get off the ramp. Go home."
"Harper--"
"Get off the ramp. Go home." Same dead, even tone as the last two times Harper had said it. Same dead, bored eyes.
He was like stone, impossible to argue with. But he couldn't stay like stone. Jon shook his head and stepped back, off the ramp. "I'll be back."
Harper sneered, then made a showy goodbye wave. Jon turned and started to walk away so he wouldn't have to see it. He'd never had to work so hard at something in his whole life as his effort to melt Harper, but he refused to back down from the challenge. Harper would hold him in even more contempt if he gave up.
"Everything okay?" Dylan asked when Harper walked in.
Harper shook his head in what seemed to be agitation. "He is so fucking young. At least I got him to back off." He went to his computer bank. "From what the sensors are telling me, we'll have a window of clear air in about three minutes. I have to tell you, I'd feel better doing this if we had Beka piloting."
"Me too." Chansa's priority code hadn't made a difference with air traffic control, which now seemed to be stalling for time. From Dylan's personal experience, he knew that pilots were never left waiting this long legitimately. Thus, they'd have to try to reach space without clearance or traffic control. It was possible but tricky. "I'm trusting you to tell me where to go."
"You wouldn't be the first person. And I'm always willing to tell people where to go."
While they waited, Dylan said, "I'm sorry about Jon." He'd listened in, unable to help himself.
Harper didn't quite succeed in sounding offhand. "He's not even evil, just soft and spoiled." He sighed. "Would have been nice getting some cool classes before we had to leave, but your time screwed me over even on that."
Dylan flipped some switches with, perhaps, a little more force than he had to. "It's not my time."
"I'm sending coordinates to your station, Dylan. Prepare to liftoff in three, two, one... go!"
It relieved Dylan that he couldn't hear any sounds of impact as the Maru took off. As much as he trusted Harper to keep a careful eye, it felt wrong not to get official sanction. But the commonness of that very attitude would help them get away. Now the control officer was speaking on the line, yelling at them to stop and return or face police action. Somewhere behind Dylan, Harper muttered, "Bring it on." Dylan turned off the channel, figuring that he wouldn't want to hear anything anyone outside wanted to tell him anyway.
Dylan slavishly followed the commands on coordinates and speeds streaming in from Harper's station. Sometimes they flew frighteningly close to other ships, and Dylan could see them through the cockpit window. The traffic congestion actually worked for them in one way, because no one dared try to shoot them down when they had so many ships nearby. He jumped in his chair when he heard a bang, but Harper shouted, "Ignore it! C'mon!"
As they finally reached space, Dylan could hear Harper running to Engineering to do whatever needed to be done to simulate the event that had brought them here in the first place. Sensors showed ships in pursuit. "Harper, we have to slipstream soon!"
"I'm ready whenever you are!"
"You have everything ready already?"
"I've been raring to go for some time."
Dylan thought of home... the Andromeda, its future crew, his goals. Home. "Slipstream in three, two, one... now!" Slipstream opened, but everything seemed to be going on as normal. "Harper!" Had Harper's plans failed? What the hell was going on? "Harper--"
The whole Maru rocked and boomed. Jolted, dazed, Dylan fought to hold onto the controls and thoughts of home....
Dylan flew forward against the straps of the pilot's chair as the ship sped and shuddered out of slipstream. As soon as he could pull his thoughts together, he had the ship's sensors try to figure out their location.
Harper raced over to him. "Where are we? When are we? Oh, shit! Put on the brakes!"
They were coming up on the Andromeda. Too fast. Dylan decelerated immediately, then stopped the ship completely. "We're being hailed," Dylan said, then put it onscreen.
Andromeda sneered at them and said, "Imposters! You're not as clever as you thought you were. If you don't stand down and surrender, you will be destroyed."
"It's us!" Harper said.
"Your timing was a little bit off." She smiled darkly. "My captain and my engineer are on board, and your intelligence on what my captain looks like was faulty as well."
Oh, shit. Now Dylan remembered that he still had the blond hair. He made the nanobots turn it brown, but it was the wrong brown... "Harper!"
Crouching next to him, Harper looked almost amused. "Dylan, turn the nanobots off."
He did, and his own hair was back; he could see its true shade when he shook his head. Having no urge to be blown up by his own ship, he immediately said, "Andromeda, we had a temporal incident on our way back from Glitter Drift." The image's hairstyle suggested that they hadn't come back too far back in time. He hated time travel. All right, sensors said that the Andromeda was in the area it had been a few days before the mission to Glitter Drift. "I'm sending you a few Argosy codes that should verify my identity."
As Dylan broadcasted them through the channel, Harper said, "Really, it's us. Remember when the Cetus swallowed us, and I was in a conduit restoring manual control, and your avatar told me that you wanted to do something I disagreed with because your sensors were confused and I was attached to my skin? Or how about when I tried to get you--well, Rommie you--to count cards for me during our educational trip to Albuquerque Drift? I could tell you lots of things that only we would know, but do I have to? And Dylan had a different hair color because I gave him some of Beka's hair nanobots, like you have, and we were trying to be incognito. You won't believe where we ended up."
Andromeda now looked much less hostile. "Amazing. The both of you seem to be who you claim you are, and it would be difficult for someone to simulate the exact wear conditions of the Eureka Maru. How did this happen, and how was the Maru damaged?"
"It's a long story, and we'll tell you everything after our... other selves leave. Though I'd like you to comb through all the information we have on Ogami mercenaries, since they're the ones who attacked us before the temporal incident," Dylan answered. "And please tell me that the Glitter Drift stocking trip will be occurring soon."
"Within two days."
"Hey," Harper said, "Andromeda's the one hailing us because we were all off the bridge and at that reception in the obs deck then. Rommie was at the reception too."
Andromeda smiled, looking further convinced. "Exactly. I assume that you don't want me to inform anyone of your return yet."
"Since none of us knew this would happen before we left, it would be better if you didn't tell them," Dylan answered.
Harper tapped his fingers on the pilot's chair. "Or maybe this happened before, and Rommie didn't tell us then either."
"Harper." Dylan hated time travel.
"Hey, just because you don't want to contemplate temporal mechanics doesn't mean I'm not interested."
"We'll occupy ourselves for awhile, three days, until it's safe to show. Hunt out."
It had worked. They'd done it. They'd arrived early--by only a few days!--but that was small compared to what could have happened, like death or ending up somewhere completely bizarre. They'd done it.
Harper's joy felt like a big, expanding bubble inside him. Adrenaline and lust sizzled along his nerves. Hot and excited, he swept down and straddled Dylan's legs, facing him. "We did it. We're home," Harper said, since Dylan looked a bit shaky.
Dylan finally smiled. "We did it. We're home." He held Harper close and kissed him deeply, with a tangle of tongues.
A little honest lust chased away the nearly-attacked-by-my-own-ship shakes anytime. "You said we'd occupy ourselves for awhile. You have any plans for that?"
"I always have plans." But the pilot chair's straps stopped him from moving any farther forward when Harper playfully pulled away.
"You better plan to unstrap yourself first, hero." Harper plucked at one of the straps. "Though I could have a lot of fun with this." He darted forward for another kiss and started to unfasten Dylan's fly. Too bad Dylan hadn't gone commando.
"I'm starting to wonder if you have a fetish."
"You're just cute when you're partially immobilized. Not my fault."
"I'm not into it."
"Okay." Harper stood up and unstraddled Dylan.
"Where are you going?"
"Hey, there's no point in making out in an uncomfortable pilot's chair if there's no bondage. If I don't get any kinky fun, I want to have my sex in a nice comfy bed."
Dylan snapped one of the chair's straps in an alluring way. "Maybe I changed my mind."
Harper sighed dramatically. "Nope, I'm just not feeling it anymore. Sorry."
Dylan's expression showed his extreme incredulity. "You're a pain in the ass."
"You weren't saying that yesterday 300 years ago."
His fly still undone, Dylan unstrapped himself and walked over to Harper. "You're not interested anymore?"
"I'm open to having my mind changed."
"Are you?"
"Very. I like to keep an open mind."
Dylan kissed him deeply and cupped his ass. "And an open mouth."
"Always," Harper answered between kisses as he backed up to draw Dylan toward the bunks.
"Nice of you to distract me from what almost happened with Andromeda."
"I'm a noble guy. I do this all for you, because sex has no appeal to me whatsoever. None."
Smelling like sex, Dylan pulled Harper close, pressing them together, rubbing a little. "You're hard."
Dylan felt so good.... Harper did a little bump and grind and put his hands down the back of Dylan's pants to make it better. "See? I'm really noble. I hope my eyes aren't turning brown from all the bullshit I'm full of."
"No, you're good."
"I'm glad."
"You didn't trigger the AG field event when I expected you to." Then Dylan got a look on his face like he understood it. "Oh. That was the point. You are good."
"You have no idea." Harper turned them around and knocked Dylan down onto the bunk, falling with him, on top of him. "But I'm working on that." Harper bent his knees and reached behind him to unbuckle his boots, knowing full well what a show of flexibility would do for Dylan.
The fact that Dylan looked like Dylan again made it even better. The streaked blond hair had been a kick, but now Harper had the occasionally holier than thou captain of the Andromeda Ascendant bucking under him and getting more lustful watching him unfasten and kick off his boots and pull off his socks.
"You like it up there?" Dylan asked, amused.
Harper sat up, straddling Dylan's waist, and pulled his shirt off over his head, then said, "There's a nice view from on top of Mount Dylan. Works for me."
"I'm going to have to do a change of scene on you." Dylan sat up quickly, though he cushioned Harper's fall backward with his arms. It left Harper still straddling Dylan's waist but lying over his legs, held up a bit by his arms.
"Now I just see the bottom of my bunk. Dullsville."
"Yeah, but now I can take off my shirt." Dylan let Harper down gently, then pulled his shirt off.
"Okay, that's much better."
Dylan flopped backward and bounced Harper up with his arms to put the both of them in their original position. Harper couldn't help laughing. "I think I saw a move like that in a circus once," Harper said as he petted Dylan's chest, which was a bit... furrier than his usual partners'. Not that he minded.
"Did X-rated scenes follow?"
"Nope. Which was a pity."
"Turn around and take off my boots?"
If Dylan wanted a view of his ass... why not? Harper stood up as much as he could in the bunk, putting out his arms as needed for balance, then turned around to face the other way. He could feel Dylan taking a good look at the merchandise as he unbuckled and pulled the boots off, then yanked off the socks. A hand gripping his waistband pulled him backward, and he let himself fall against Dylan's bare chest, his head under Dylan's chin. Dylan's hand on his fly, unzipping, and moving into his pants, cupping and stroking.... Unlike Dylan, Harper had gone commando.
Harper bucked into that hot, rough grip. "Feeling athletic?" He rubbed his head against Dylan's neck and his ass against Dylan's hard cock, smiling at the shivers he caused.
"I always enjoyed watching you move. Now I get to move you. You can't blame me."
"Blaming isn't on my mind at the moment. Getting fucked is."
Dylan's heart pounded beneath his back. "Really?"
"Oh yeah. I'm gonna ride you like a pony."
Dylan exploded into laughter. "Like a pony? I can tolerate the bondage thing, but bestiality? I hope you don't do the kind of thing you're about to do with me with ponies."
Harper was offended. Mess with his sex talk? "No, I'm the pony, you ass."
Dylan had a serious case of the hysterics. "So we're both animals?"
"You have to ask?"
"You've never even ridden a pony, have you?"
Grrr. Harper put his hand into Dylan's underwear and gripped his cock. "Since my similes are giving you trouble, I'll tell you exactly what I'm gonna do. We're both going to get our pants off, then I'm going to slowly lower myself down onto your cock until it's in me as deep as it can go." He smiled as hot slickness pulsed down his fingers. "You'll thrust, and I'll slide and clench. We may both start speaking in tongues; I don't know. Am I making myself clear, or do you need me to draw you a diagram?" Harper squeezed a little for emphasis and heard Dylan moan.
"I think I got it."
"Because I could, with the arrows, and tab A and slot B."
"I get it."
"Good." Harper pulled his hand out with one final caress along the length of Dylan's cock, then licked the pre-come off his fingers.
So quickly he didn't even see it coming, Dylan had grabbed him and set him sitting up and astride again. Harper liked seeing him get that impatient and desperate; it was hot. Dylan had the tube in his hand and slicked a finger, then ran that finger under the loosened waistband and down the crack of Harper's ass--yay for opened pants--and rimmed his hole with it, around and around and around.... Harper pressed down against it, wanting more, wanting it in.
He hadn't always been so hot for getting fucked, but gaining the port seemed to have increased his appreciation for penetration of all kinds. He'd tried to do a survey on that with any port owner he could find, but the ratio of getting slapped and snarled at to getting information and/or sex had been way too high toward the "slap and snarl" side, and thus too punishing.
Maybe he'd do better if he rephrased the question....
Dylan kept circling and teasing instead of penetrating, smiling as he watched Harper writhe and groan. Revenge for the diagram talk and finger licking maybe. Well, revenge was sweet... in its frustrating way. In situations like this you had to give the other side something he wanted--that you also wanted--to break the impasse.
"Pants off. Now," Harper snarled. Sometimes incomplete sentences got the point across better, especially when said with the right tone.
From the almost greedy look on Dylan's face, he must have liked the idea. He removed his finger... and got off a bit on Harper's whimper at the loss, damned if he didn't. The guy became just about transparent during sex.
Harper then engaged in the most graceless, spastic stripping of his life. He couldn't speak for whether Dylan's efforts qualified the same way, though Dylan too appeared to have need and speed more on his mind than dignity or grace, especially when he almost rolled right off the bunk. Times like this, Harper missed the loose cargo pants that he used to wear all the time until he'd realized that Dylan and sometimes even Tyr were more likely to sneak looks at his ass when he was wearing something tighter.
Finally they achieved full nakedness, and Dylan, thoughtful guy, was slicking up his cock. Watching him do that in such thorough strokes drove Harper nuts with lust. Wanted that. Wanted that badly.
As soon as Dylan moved his fingers out of the way, Harper pounced and straddled, grabbed Dylan's cock, and guided it in as he started to lower himself down onto it. The first press in hurt a bit, burned in a slightly different way than the struggle to take this slow and cautious made the muscles in his shaking thighs burn, so he closed his eyes and relaxed more as he pressed further down, adjusting his angle. It turned into a good pain, then a good thing, then sparking waves of pleasure when he hit his sweet spot. Finally he had Dylan all the way in and opened his eyes.
Dylan looked dazed yet focused all at once, staring at Harper. Then he started to thrust, the friction making Harper groan. Felt so very good, felt full. It took him a little time to figure Dylan's rhythm, but then he got it, and pressed down at the best times to make the most of Dylan thrusting up. He started to jerk himself off and play with his balls at about the same rhythm too, making it more showy for his audience, letting himself make as much noise as he wanted to since Dylan seemed to like hearing his partner have a good time.
Harper enjoyed the ride, the shuddery goodness of it, the insistent push and pressure of Dylan's cock all the way up inside him, the clenching and stroking of Dylan's hands on his hips. Dylan had that look of pleased surprise on his face--very "Wow, how did I get here?"--that Harper had come to know in detail over the last two days, and Harper wondered if that was his standard on-his-way-to-orgasm face or something he did only for Harper. Only one way to find out. Harper would have to lock himself, Dylan, and Beka in a room and tell them to ignore the camera and get it on. The thought made him giggle.
"There's something funny about this?" Dylan gasped, looking confused.
Harper squeezed down with his muscles because he enjoyed the Dylan face that maneuver made. "Nope. I'm just happy."
One of Dylan's hands stroked back to Harper's ass and trailed down until it reached where they were they joined and rubbed. Harper gasped and jumped a little, imagining Dylan thrusting one or more fingers in along with his cock, how it would feel so good.... He hit orgasm hard, working himself up further as he watched himself come all over Dylan's chest and felt Dylan thrust up harder as he came.
Harper lazed for a while at Dylan's side, feeling mellow and buzzed, and smirked as Dylan toweled them down with a soft cloth. "Somebody came prepared."
"I was hopeful." Dylan toyed with Harper's hair a bit. When it got sweaty enough, it could be finger-styled despite the gel, so Dylan might be sculpting it. "That was something at the end. What was that?"
"Me imagining what you were gonna do with those fingers." He wondered if he could get Dylan to fist him....
Raising an eyebrow, Dylan asked, "You got off from imagining what I was going to do to you?"
"My brain is easily the most sensitive and erotic part of my body, D."
Dylan hmmph!ed dramatically. "It makes me feel like I'm barely necessary."
"Somebody's fishing for compliments. Look, my imagination isn't good enough to give me a hot, breathing, orgasming partner. Real dick feels a hell of a lot better than imaginary."
"So... what did I do with my fingers?"
"Thrust one or two in along with your cock to stretch me more." At Dylan's laugh, Harper asked, "What?"
"That wasn't what I was going to do."
Harper smacked his chest. "You didn't have to tell me that."
"But now that I know that you like the idea, I might give it a try sometime."
"What were you going to do?"
"Nothing half as interesting as that."
"Jeez. I feel cheated. Can I take back my orgasm now?"
"No."
"If I'm going to do all the work...."
"Do you really want the fingers?"
"I can't do anything with them now. I'm old right now."
Like a good little straight man--pardon the term--Dylan asked, "You mean you're spent?"
Harper smiled sweetly. "They're synonyms, right?"
This time Dylan did the smacking.
When Dylan woke up, he woke up alone. Pushing himself up, he saw Harper sitting on the bunk across from him, engrossed in something.
From two fingers Harper dangled a deep blue tassel with a wide silver streak in it in front of his face, stroking it gently, almost reverently, with his other hand. "Chansa put this in a packet he shoved into my backpack. There's the year, my engineering concentration, and my degree level etched on the band, just like I really did graduate. But the All Systems University used tassels?"
Dylan remembered how his own had felt in his hand, the strands so soft even though they looked so stiff. "It was a human custom that most of the races liked. I think they enjoyed the way all the strands swing. That silver streak means that you graduated with honors."
Harper's smile wobbled, and his eyes filled with more emotion. "Not everybody there sucked."
Dylan patted his bunk. "Come back here."
Harper raised an amused eyebrow but obeyed, snuggling with Dylan under the covers. Only his tassel hand remained free, and Harper held it over his face and let the tassel slowly swing.
"Honors stripe," Dylan said.
"Yep." Harper beamed.
"I'm impressed."
"They never knew what hit them."
Amazing how Dylan could just about feel Harper's happiness radiating out from his skin. "Chansa gets my approval. This is the way all of them should have been treating my engineer, with respect and honor."
The swinging tassel briefly brushed Harper's nose. "It's probably better they didn't. Would have been hard to leave if everyone had been decent to me."
"I would have jumped at the chance to attend too, if I'd been in your place. No one ever gave me a full scholarship. I didn't graduate in a little over two weeks either."
"I'm fast, baby, like the wind. So fast that I graduated almost 300 years before I was born." Harper carefully put the tassel back in its clear package. "I need somewhere nice to put this. Shame I don't have a rear view mirror."
Dylan petted Harper's hair, trying to impose some kind of order on it. When that effort failed, he teased it to stand up more. That it was willing to do. "We'll have to think of something."
"Admit it, Dylan. You only want me so you can play with my hair."
"Not just your hair."
"Good answer."
As they kissed, Dylan smelled a hint of soap on Harper's skin, and his hair had been freshly clean as Dylan had tangled his fingers in it. Harper had also put on boxers at some point. "What have you been up to?" Dylan asked.
"Got up and did a bit of maintenance."
"Naked?"
Harper elbowed him. "Yeah, naked. Because it's so much fun burning and banging myself on things. Got grungy, so I took a shower. Then I remembered that Chansa had put something in my bag and got curious about what it was."
"And I slept through all of this."
"Yep." Harper kissed his nose.
"I never expected that I could get an engineer who was a Commonwealth-styled All Systems University graduate, not after the Long Night. Getting a graduate who did it with honors boggles my mind. I don't know what to do with my unexpected good fortune." Stroking Harper's back produced the most amazing wiggles....
In answer, Harper turned his wiggles into a bit of a grind. "I have some suggestions. But they're all really dirty."
"I have no problem with that."
"An attitude like that will help you retain that All Systems University honors graduate."
Dylan softly ran his finger down the skin near Harper's port and smiled when Harper shivered. "What else will?"
"Let me show you."
They didn't spend the entire three days in bed fucking; not even Harper would have been able to tolerate that. Sometimes Dylan turned off the autopilot to fly the Eureka Maru himself, discreetly shadowing the Andromeda at a distance. When Harper found out that Andromeda would be lying to Beka and Tyr about the Maru's presence, he said that if Tyr ever found out he hoped he'd be there to see it, not--he vowed--that he'd be the one to spill the beans. Harper did maintenance work or studied some of the texts he'd downloaded.
Though Dylan often ended up pouncing Harper during those reading sessions. He couldn't seem to help himself. Something about Harper sitting curled up in his bunk so focused on his text that he didn't move, so focused that he'd barely react when Dylan climbed up, did something to Dylan's lust. Of course, once Dylan moved in close and kissed him or nosed his neck he reacted, with a laugh, some comment about Dylan's insatiability, and reciprocation.
But as pleasant an interlude as those days were, Dylan chafed at the need to wait and the necessity of staying away from his ship, as if all the urgency he hadn't felt during their weeks on Tarn-Vedra had come to him all at once. Although Dylan tried not to be too obvious about it, Harper noticed and tried to be more entertaining and sexy, talkative and kittenish, as a distraction.
Dylan found it depressing. "You don't have to try so hard, Harper."
"Hunh?"
"I admit that I can be a bit... moody at times, but you don't have to go to such lengths to try to cheer me up."
Crouching beside the pilot's chair, Harper dramatically and quickly pulled his stroking hands away. "Who says I'm doing it for you? You're not as much fun to be around when you're brooding."
"Maybe I want to brood."
"You wanna brood? You could always watch the other us leave on the other Maru through our long-range sensors. We're doing it right now."
Dylan would really rather not. "I hate time travel."
"We all travel through time, Dylan."
"Are you getting philosophical on me, or was that just a smart-assed remark?"
"Can't it be both? So, how much longer are we gonna hang out before we go home?"
"Another day should be good."
"Just don't gnaw off your hands or feet waiting, ya know?"
"I won't. Harper," Dylan put his hand to the back of Harper's neck, "if you're still interested--"
Harper felt taut and unresponsive under Dylan's fingers. "Don't do me any favors. I don't need to suck on your dick like a pacifier, and the thought of you lying back and thinking of England makes me sick." In his anger, his face sharpened and turned hard.
"Because I hate sex?"
"Maybe I'm making it too easy on you. Maybe you're not really interested, but I'm so available that you might as well just do me. You can tell yourself that it's not your fault, since I'm so demanding."
Where had this come from? And Dylan hadn't realized that Harper could look so hard, so dark. Dylan found it... interesting. "I meant it. I want you."
Harper loosened under his hand a little and a lost a bit of his anger, but he still had a tone of challenge in his voice when he said, "Prove it."
"All right." Dylan unstrapped himself from the chair and stood. When Harper stood to meet him, Dylan couldn't help smiling, amazed by how much shorter Harper could be when not wearing boots. The thick soles didn't just protect his feet....
Dylan backed Harper toward a bunk and gently pushed him down back onto it, and Harper let him. Harper's edged, challenging smile sent a surge of lust through him. It took him a moment to decide on his plan of attack, then he opened Harper's fly, approved of the absence of underwear, and slowly and thoroughly licked his half-hard cock into full hardness. Then Dylan took it in totally, sliding his mouth up and down on it to simulate a fucking motion. Harper gasped and surged under him, murmuring, "Dylan...." and losing the edged look from his face, making him look more like his usual self. His fingers scrabbled at the back of Dylan's head, shaking in what seemed to be an effort not to grip, just as his stomach muscles trembled in what seemed to be an effort not to start thrusting hard.
Harper's struggle to be gentle touched Dylan... but Dylan wanted it rough, so he ran the edge of his teeth along Harper's cock to pass the idea along. That did it. Harper fucked his mouth and gripped his hair. He hummed his approval, and Harper came with one last, hard thrust and a yell. Dylan couldn't swallow it all and didn't try.
"Sorry about that," Harper gasped, sounding sheepish. "I didn't mean to be hair-trigger on ya."
"I was trying to get a reaction."
"You succeeded." Harper grinned, pulled him closer, and put a possessive hand on his fly. "I like it when you have something to prove. Now I have something to prove."
"Eureka Maru coming in," Dylan said over the comm.
On the viewscreen, Beka had an eyebrow raised. "You're back awfully fast."
"It's a long story," Dylan answered.
Harper said, "We were attacked by Ogami mercenaries, something happened during slipstream that knocked us back over 300 years ago and dropped us out in front of Tarn-Vedra, then we spent a few weeks there until we found a way to get back, though we didn't hit the exact day."
Dylan shook his head. "Okay, maybe it isn't such a long story."
Perhaps Harper thought that Beka looked doubtful too, because he moved in closer to the communicator and displayed his neck. "I didn't have these yesterday, did I?"
"Nope," she answered. "Some of them look about four or five days old."
Harper grinned. "Five days old. You know your hickeys, Beka."
"Weeks, huh? I imagined that you used a lot of the supplies while you were gone."
"Yeah, and we don't have the budget to get more. It sucks."
She shook her head but smiled. "Welcome home, guys."
As he flew the Maru into the docking bay, with the comm off, Dylan asked Harper, "Why did you do the big recitation?"
"I could feel her and Tyr's trigger fingers getting itchy at all the mystery."
"You instinct was probably on target."
Harper beamed. "Thanks."
"Remember to tell Tyr that we just came back today."
"So the top of his head won't explode over Andromeda being able to lie to him. I get it, I get it."
With Harper just about twitching beside him, Dylan asked, "You're that excited about being back?"
"I missed everybody. Besides, I can't wait until Beka sees what I downloaded for her. It's a live performance she hadn't even known existed."
"It'll only be a few more minutes."
"Nah, I gotta give it to her privately. If I do it in public, everybody else will expect presents, but I don't have any others." Harper's expression turned sad. "Shopping for Tyr and Rommie is just impossible, and I have no idea what Trance likes anymore."
"I'm sure Beka will appreciate it."
Dylan really felt now that they'd come home. The Andromeda Ascendant was home. Here was a time and place where he could make a difference. With the foundation of a new Commonwealth so close to completion, he had so much to do....
"Earth to Dylan. Come in, Dylan," Harper said as he waved his hand in front of Dylan's eyes.
"It's just good to be home."
"Yeah. It sure is."
Harper just about lit up when they reached the welcoming party, making it obvious to Dylan how much he'd missed everyone. He opened his arms wide and approached Rommie, but she raised an eyebrow and said, "I don't think so."
"I haven't seen you in weeks!" Harper protested.
"While I saw you just yesterday."
"Have some mercy for the temporally tossed!"
She smiled. "No."
Harper put his hand over his heart and looked stricken. "To think, I used thoughts of this homecoming to get me through the rough moments."
"Did you meddle while you were there?" Tyr asked, looking amused.
"Meddle? Us? Never!"
"Never?"
"Hardly ever."
Beka grabbed Harper's arm and pulled him aside, saying, "We're going to have a little talk about the damage done to my ship."
"It's fine! Really!"
Rommie, standing next to Dylan, softly said to him, "I looked into the Ogami mercenary situation. While I've narrowed down the list of possible clients, I still have no definitive answer on who ordered the attack on you."
"I suspect that it's someone who wants to stop the 50 worlds from signing the charter," Dylan said.
"That was my thought," she answered dryly.
"There's only way to react to that. The charter has to go through, so let's give our enemies less time to sabotage it. If we push subtly, we may be able to gather the representatives sooner." So close to his goal, Dylan felt energized. He hadn't even realized how dull and dead he'd felt during his sojourn in the past until now. He had so much more power here.... "In the meantime, we keep searching for the person who wants me dead."
"Dylan, the Ogami mercenaries haven't attacked you and Harper yet?" Beka asked.
"They haven't. But we're too far away to get a message out," Dylan had made sure of that, "and we shouldn't anyway. Harper and I didn't expect the attack."
Beka sighed. "My head hasn't hurt this much since--" She didn't finish her sentence, but Trance smiled anyway.
"After weeks of doing nothing, I'm ready to get back to work," Dylan said. "Let's get this reception planned."
As he left the room, he could hear Harper trying to convince Beka to let him use the Maru for more time experiments, but he didn't worry. He couldn't see her doing it.
Over the next several days, Dylan buried himself in putting together the reception for the 50 signing delegates, far too busy to spend time with his engineer. Far too busy to even talk to his engineer, even for Roseanne-related matters. After two days of getting brushed off, Harper stopped trying.
He had expected that things would return to status quo when they returned, when it wouldn't just be him and Dylan very much alone anymore, though he hadn't expected quite this manic a level of activity. Moody bastard, that Dylan, as usual. So it didn't bother Harper at all. He'd expected this.
It did bother Harper that he couldn't make the Maru travel back in time again, no matter how many times he simulated the circumstances that had worked twice for them. He did the exact same things he'd done when they'd traveled back. No joy. He messed with the AG fields in different ways. Also no joy. Nothing worked.
"Maybe I need you to be the pilot, Dylan," Harper said when he finally got Dylan for a few minutes. "Maybe being stuck in time at the edge of that black hole gave you unusual temporal properties." Maybe the fact that Dylan had done slipstream piloting back when made a difference in slipstream destinations if you messed with the ship's AG fields at the same time.
"Why aren't you working on Roseanne?" Dylan asked. Classic avoidance.
"She's almost done. A guy can't work on a super-destructive bomb 24/7, Dylan; it blunts his edge." The bomb was all about assembly now, with no challenge to it. He almost had it done anyway. "Besides, you weren't complaining."
"I didn't know."
"Yeah, you've been busy."
Dylan's blank expression cracked a little. "I'm not going to pilot. Not to learn time travel."
"Not for science? Knowledge?"
"Not for anything. We're better off without it."
"You have no imagination, you know that? Think of what difference temporal mastery might have made while I was infested. If I could have slowed down time for the larvae I could have lived with them while coming up with a cure; if I could freeze time for them I could have just removed them. I could figure out how to use the tesseract technology without doing bizarre things to time and reality. Worthwhile stuff. I convinced Beka with those." He'd mentioned profit to her too, actually, in his effort to get her to let him use the Maru.
"I don't have," Dylan laughed a little, without much humor, "the time right now."
To think, 300 years ago on Tarn-Vedra, people had been begging Harper to do research and development. "You're never going to have the time, are ya?"
"I would prefer it if you worked on Roseanne." Dylan had put his jocular "I'm a reasonable guy, a light-hearted boss" voice as a glove over the iron fist of his "you will not change my mind, I am the captain" demeanor.
Things had definitely gone back to normal. But Harper had expected that. "Thanks, Dylan."
Harper had hung his tassel near his bed but hadn't told anybody about his education, since he figured that nobody would understand what it had meant to him. It was something he didn't feel like getting razzed about.
"You're looking very triumveral," Harper said. Very big reception-ready.
"I'm not a politician, Harper," Dylan answered.
"Yeah, you're not a politician like you're not a salesman. But I get it. 'Dylan Hunt, Two-Fisted Legislator' doesn't sound like it would be as much fun as captaining a starship." Harper took off his visor and turned away from Roseanne to face Dylan full-time. "I think you're making a mistake by turning it down, though."
"They have to rule themselves. It's not up to me to impose my values on them."
Harper snorted. "Since when?"
Dylan gave him a sour look. "See, this is why I don't want you near the politicians."
"I know, I'm too honest. Feels good after all the lying and sugarcoating I had to do on Tarn-Vedra. Dylan, as triumvere, you can make sure the Commonwealth is what you think it should be. Handing the power over to someone else takes the control out of your hands and gives it to someone you may not even agree with. You spearheaded this whole movement, and it might fall apart without you, because I really don't think that anyone thought that you'd get 50 worlds this quickly and they'd actually be forced to pay up on their promises."
"Everybody tells me I'm such a control freak. Well, I'm being hands off here. I did my work, and now it's time for the professional politicians to take over."
"That's what I'm afraid of."
"I trust the delegates to see the advantages of the Commonwealth without me standing right behind them, looking over their shoulders."
"I don't trust the delegates as far as I could throw them."
"Again, this is why I'd rather you didn't go to the reception."
Even if he didn't want to play diplomacy games with these people, especially after weeks of holding his tongue on Tarn-Vedra, it annoyed Harper to be told to stay in his room. "Don't worry, Dylan. I won't ruin your shindig with my honesty. I'll just keep working on the bomb that'll help keep you guys safe."
Dylan looked annoyed. "Harper, this isn't anything personal."
"You saying I'm a menace isn't personal? You know, I knew things would turn out this way."
"This way?"
"Go on to your reception. Don't worry. I won't make an appearance."
Dylan took on a thoughtful look, and Harper sourly hoped that Dylan wouldn't strain himself. Then Dylan moved in close and kissed him, warmly and lingeringly. "I'd be happier if I didn't have to do this reception, but this is the way diplomacy works. See you later."
Surprised, Harper stood there motionless and silent as Dylan started to leave, though he managed to fire off a "You son of a bitch!" right before Dylan got out of the room. Dylan cheerily waved as the door closed. Harper shook his head as he put his visor down, but he had a smile on his face.
At least life with Dylan was never boring.
End
"Oh, the slow clouds pass us by,
Make the empire state look high,
As you take me in your sea-stained sweetness.
It spills, it tingles, and it stings,
All the pleasure that it brings,
'Til the door has let the outside inside
Here.
"My ghosts like to travel
So far in the unknown.
My ghosts like to travel
So deep into your space.
"Well, on the floor, there's a long wooden table.
On the table, there's an open book.
On the page, there's a detailed drawing.
And on the drawing is the name I took.
"My ghosts like to travel
So far in the unknown.
My ghosts like to travel
So deep into your space..."
-- "Growing Up" by Peter Gabriel