Harper winced slightly as he sat down in the spaceport shuttle that was taking them into Nova Papette, the nearest city on Infinity Atoll. With a grin, Tyr noticed Harper wriggling around and sat down next to him, whispering, "If you don't stop squirming around, people are going to notice you've been fucked within an inch of your life."
With wide eyes, Harper suddenly stopped moving until he spotted Tyr's grin. "This from the guy who couldn't get it up in the shower this morning," he muttered angrily.
Tyr's grin grew wider at that, and he put a possessive arm around Harper's shoulders. "We didn't have time then."
It was the deathly silence that filled the shuttle as it left the spaceport that got Harper looking around at the other ten or so people in it with them. Most were pointedly not looking at them, and the one who was had a look of pure disgust spread over his sneering face.
Pulling away from Tyr, Harper stubbornly looked out the window at the passing scenery. "I've got a room waiting for us at the Blue Water Inn on 127th street."
At Harper's suddenly odd behaviour, Tyr raised an eyebrow before he looked around and spotted the human sneering at them. He narrowed his eyes and growled menacingly until the human paled and looked away nervously.
Placing a hand against the small of Harper's back, Tyr noticed the slight flinch. "Do you want me to check us in while you find out if our friends have been here?"
"Yeah. Thanks, Tyr," Harper said, still looking out the window but relaxing as he leant back towards Tyr.
As Harper leaned against him, Tyr moved the hand from the small of Harper's back around to pull Harper firmly against him. When Harper sighed and placed his hand over Tyr's, Tyr relaxed himself and spent the rest of the trip glaring challengingly at any who dared to look in their direction.
***
"The drones are attempting a pincer movement. Sixteen drones at 20 light seconds away on my starboard side and twenty drones at 19 light seconds away on my port side," Holographic Rommie from before the main display of the Andromeda.
Beka smiled grimly. "I know. Wait for it, Trance... wait for it..."
"The drones are continuing to accelerate towards our position, Beka," Rev said worriedly from his station.
"I'm counting on it," Beka replied, her face a picture of concentration.
"Rommie, I need you to dump excess coolant from your slipstream manifold. I want them to think they've crippled us."
Screen Rommie appeared on the main display, looking curious. "Dumping."
"Beka, the drones have closed to within 10 light seconds..." Trance said nervously.
Beka grinned. "I'm on it, just a little bit closer..."
As the Andromeda started to buck, Holographic Rommie appeared back in front of the main display. "The drones are firing, and they're now within three light seconds. Collision alert."
"Now, Trance!" Beka yelled as she threw the Andromeda into a rapid acceleration away from the two incoming swarms of anti-ship drones.
When the Andromeda sped out of the small cloud of coolant, its momentum spread the cloud out as the two swarms of drones continued in towards where the Andromeda had been just moments before. The drones appeared to attempt to avoid each other but for some reason were unable to, and more than half of them slammed into each other. As the surviving drones emerged from the coolant cloud, they were shot down by kinetic missiles and fire from the Andromeda's own drones.
On the command deck of the Andromeda, Beka was smilingly broadly. "That'll teach them to try and out-think a Valentine!" she crowed.
"All thirty six anti-ship drones have been destroyed," Holographic Rommie reported before she raised an eyebrow at Beka. "The coolant from my slipstream manifold interfered with their directional sensors."
Beka kept grinning as she turned the Andromeda around and headed back to the depot, saying simply, "Old smuggler's trick."
***
"I don't know how long we're staying," Tyr said suspiciously
to the Perseid standing behind the desk at the Blue Water Inn.
The Perseid didn't look up from his monitor. "All charges
have already been paid for, no matter how long you stay."
"How convenient," Tyr said sarcastically as he stood a little straighter.
"Isn't it?" the Perseid said happily, placing two cards on the desk. Looking up at Tyr for the first time since he'd asked for a room, the Perseid asked, "Are you Tyr Anasazi?"
"Who wants to know?" Tyr answered as he carefully started feeling for his hip knife.
The Perseid looked back down at his monitor. "Another Neitzchean, a female... Ah, here it is. An Elssbett Bolivar, she's waiting for you at the Starlight Express Public House."
Drawing his knife, Tyr smiled. "How very civic-minded of you..."
Looking back up again, the smiling Perseid said, "Oh, and she also said to remind you that your friends in the Red Dragon surfing club are here and looking for your companion."
Tyr stopped just before his knife came into view. "How do I get to this Starlight Express?" he bit out.
Pointing over to the side of the desk where an information booth stuck out of the lobby wall, the Perseid said cheerfully, "If I can be of any further assistance, it would be my pleasure to do so. I'm Seamus Harper's biggest fan; did you know he improved his ranking in the last interstellar surfing championship by another twelve places?"
Confused, Try slipped his knife back into its sheath. "No, I didn't."
The Perseid looked around quickly before he leaned over the desk to whisper to Tyr, "Do you think you could get me his autograph?"
***
Harper moved quietly through the sweaty crowds, flashing coloured lights, and earsplitting music of the warehouse rave party, looking for a familiar face. With a smile and a shake of his head, he turned down an invitation to dance with a woman covered only in sparkling body paint when he spotted the familiar multi-coloured hair of the woman he was looking for.
As he got closer to the door where the purple- and black-haired woman stood, bouncing slightly to the music, Harper called out, "Maggie!"
With a confused look on her face, Maggie looked around for a moment before she spotted Harper and moved towards him. "Seamus!"
Meeting in a fierce hug, Maggie lifted Harper into the air and twirled him around, laughing. Putting him down carefully, she gestured for Harper to follow her back through the crowd towards the door she'd been standing at.
Holding the door open for Harper to walk through, Maggie closed it behind them securely. "It's good to see you, Seamus. I confess, I was worried after what I heard over the HLA vine."
Harper nervously plucked at his now wet shirt. "Some of it's probably true, Maggie," he said softly.
She pinned him with a piercing look. "The über."
"His name's Tyr, Maggie." Looking up at her defiantly, Harper said, "I think I love him, and he..."
With a chopping motion of one hand, Maggie cut Harper off. When she saw how he held himself as if he expected her to attack him, she lowered her arm. "Seamus. Just tell me this is nothing like what happened with that cross-dressing bitch Emma."
Blushing bright red, Harper smiled and shook his head. "No, I learnt my lesson about confusing sex with love. Believe me on that if nothing else, Maggie."
"Good. Cause you're like blood, Seamus; we've been through hell and back," Maggie said, pulling Harper back into another rib-cracking hug.
"Thanks, Maggie, but do you think you could put me down now?" Harper gasped, a huge smile on his face.
Maggie chuckled as she let Harper go and gave him a quizzical look. "Does that space pirate you hooked up with approve?"
"Beka?" Harper asked, smiling at the thought of what Beka would have to say about being called a space pirate. "Yeah, she knows. Promised Tyr she'd castrate him if he ever hurt me."
"She'll have to get in line. I'm your cousin; I get first dibs," Maggie said, suddenly savage with a feral glint in her eye.
Harper's face grew serious. "It doesn't bother you that I'm with a Nietzchean?"
Maggie grabbed Harper by the neck and pulled him into a headlock so she could thoroughly mess up his hair. "For the last time, you little grommet, we're like blood. I don't care who or what you fall in love with just so long as you're happy."
***
Tyr walked into the dimly lit Starlight Express pub, hiding himself inside the heavy hooded cloak he'd borrowed from the fawning Perseid at the Blue water Inn in exchange for the promise of an autograph. Looking around the almost empty pub, he spotted Elssbett standing at the bar, sipping on a drink and obviously waiting for someone.
Tyr slipped onto a stool next to her as Elssbett put down her glass. "You took long enough. Lose your way, Kodiak?"
"What are you doing here, woman? Shouldn't you be on the Jaguar homeworld heavily pregnant by now?" Tyr snapped back as the Chichin bartender nervously approached them.
Elssbett bristled at the insult, her bone spurs extending, and she snarled at the bartender. "Two more of the same, and be quick."
"Just leave the bottle," Tyr amended as he saw the way the Chichin was shaking in fear.
The bartender placed the bottle on the bar next to Tyr, and Elssbett spoke again as he scuttled away to the far end. "I didn't come here at great personal risk to exchange insults with an extinct pride. I'm here to negotiate for that kludge you're bedding."
Pouring them both a shot, Tyr sneered, "That kludge you're talking about has done more damage to our enemies than the Sabra and Jaguar prides combined in just five months. He has a name, and you'd be wise to use it."
Elssbett took a sip out of her glass. "My father is prepared to be very generous in his compensation to you for the loss of your pet."
"So you're here for the benefit of the Sabra pride?" Tyr asked as he put down the bottle.
Elsbett turned on her stool to look at Tyr for the first time. "Eighty million FTA guilders and a solar system of your choice. You won't get a better offer and survive to collect it."
Tyr looked into Elssbett's eyes, trying to find signs of deception. "Why do you want Harper so badly? According to you, he's nothing but a kludge; your offer sounds like a trap."
"You were right, your pet is remarkable. Maybe even unique. His continued survival is in our interests, and we both know you can't protect him anymore. Take the offer and walk away while you still can," Elssbett said, turning away to pick up her glass.
Tyr looked at Elssbett Bolivar for a long time before he picked up his glass and swirled the liquid inside. "Do you believe Nietzcheans still have the capacity to love?" he asked quietly.
Elssbett paused as she lifted her glass and glanced at Tyr in surprise. "If you'd asked me three months ago, I would have said it was an inferior trait best left to kludges."
"And now?" Tyr asked, his voice still soft as he put his glass back down.
"I don't know," Elssbett said honestly before she sipped from her glass. Putting her glass back down, Elssbett lowered her voice. "The Drago Kasov know he's here. His own people sold him out, and they've arranged to deliver him at first light tomorrow."
Stepping away from the bar Tyr nodded to Elssbett. "They won't find him, I can assure you of that."
"Still hoping to get a better deal, Kodiak?" Elssbett asked challengingly to Tyr's back as she turned around on her stool with her glass in one hand.
"There will be no deal," Tyr said bluntly as he walked away without looking back.
Elssbett watched Tyr walk out the door and finally smiled as she finished her drink. Throwing the glass away, she stepped away from the bar, fingering her mono-molecular lash. "Honour or duty, Tyr Anasazi, last of the Kodiak Pride?"
***
Tyr found Harper sitting on one of the main beaches not far from the Blue Water Inn. Harper didn't acknowledge Tyr's presence until after he sat down beside him, then he leaned his head on Tyr's shoulder.
"They haven't been here yet," Harper said quietly, and he sighed, watching the waves roll into the beach.
Nodding, Tyr bent over to sniff Harper's hair. "You haven't been in the ocean."
"Nah. Went to see Maggie, and after... I just wasn't in the mood anymore." He moved closer to Tyr.
Tyr smiled into Harper's hair and wrapped one arm around Harper's small frame. "I thought you were always in the mood."
With a cheeky grin, Harper pulled away from him and stood. "Oh, crap. You're right--I should go get my board."
Tyr sprung up from his seat with a low growl and ran after the laughing Harper. He chased Harper down the beach to where the waves were lapping the sand and, grabbing him around the waist, swung Harper up over his shoulder.
"You can pretend to be a fish another day," Tyr growled
as he smacked Harper's ass playfully.
As Tyr carried a still smiling and arguing Harper away,
neither of them noticed the small boy hiding over by a food kiosk still
watching them and whispering into a hand-held communicator.
***
Dylan held on to his station console grimly as the depot rocked from another explosion. With a frown, he rapidly typed commands on his console and unleashed the last of the depot's missiles to destroy another defence platform.
"Dylan, the reactor will go critical in ten minutes. We have to evacuate," Rommie said, removing her hand from her console.
Nodding, he waved Rommie towards the door. "Did you see how Beka was doing before you pulled out of the depot's computer?"
Rommie handed Dylan the helmet to his suit. "The depot's external sensors were too badly damaged; I could barely keep enough systems functioning to give you weapons control."
While Dylan was securing his helmet, still frowning, the depot was rocked by an immense explosion; they were both thrown to the floor amidst exploding wall panels as all the lights went out.
***
Tyr never felt the tiny dart shot into his shoulder while he lay naked, half atop Harper. He remained unmoving, paralysed by the dart's neuro-toxin, but still able to hear the faint sounds of scuffling as he was roughly shoved off of Harper.
"Über's whore."
"Traitor."
Inside his paralysed body, Tyr raged at the hate-filled words accompanied by the sounds of a savage beating, and he took fierce joy when he felt one of his fingers twitch. Plotting the bloody vengeance he would claim from the hides of those who would dare to harm Harper, Tyr focused all his anger, all his fear, all his mindless rage into moving. As Tyr rolled over onto his back, he gave a little sigh, the tiniest fraction of the exhilarated roar of retribution that bubbled through his mind as his whole body started twitching.
"That's enough, kludge." Tyr heard the distinctive, to a Nietzchean, command issue from the doorway and struggled to turn his head far enough to see the three Drago Kasov warriors aiming guns into the room.
At the sound of another savage kick beyond Tyr's eyesight, the humans shuffled towards the Drago Kasov while a male said, "We've kept our end of the bargain, you've got the traitor. Now where's our payment?"
Tyr closed his eyes when he heard the leading Drago Kasov say over the sound of gunfire, "Right here, scum."
Feigning paralysis, Tyr carefully felt for signs of movement in his body as he heard the three Drago Kasov walk into the room. "Grab Anasazi's pet, Julius," the leader said. "We'll get the Kodiak ourselves; Cuchulain wants to greet them personally."
Someone kicked Tyr's foot, and he heard the leading Drago Kasov say, "I can see your muscles twitching and hear your accelerated heart beat, Anasazi. Get up."
Tyr had opened his eyes to glare up at the Drago Kasov when he heard the large plate glass window in the bedroom shatter as someone came through it.
Confused, Tyr's eyes grew wide as he saw the distinctive flash of a mono-molecular lash neatly slicing the leading Drago Kasov's head from his shoulders while a familiar voice yelled, "Move, Kodiak!"
Struggling to sit up through the lingering effects of the neuro-toxin, Tyr saw Elssbett Bolivar decapitate another Drago Kasov and disarm the other with a deft flick of her deadly m-lash.
The remaining Drago Kasov tried to draw his other gun, but Elssbett flicked her m-lash for the third time and scowled contemptuously as his decapitated head bounced onto the floor. "Inferior weaklings."
Tyr slowly pulled himself up to a kneeling position, watching Elssbett inject something into Harper's naked, bloodied body and then easily pull him up into a fireman's carry.
"What are you doing?" Tyr choked out, fighting to speak through his remaining paralysis.
"Doing what you failed to do," Elssbett said as the sound of gunfire broke out inside the building. Kicking a gun in Tyr's direction, she ran to the now open window and jumped through it with Harper without another word.
Tyr grabbed the gun and half crawled, half staggered to the window, but before he could do more than cut open his knees, he heard someone behind him. The next thing Tyr knew was the burning sensation of a gunshot in his back as everything went black.
***
Uncoiling itself back into existence within a lonely asteroid on the edge of the Andromeda Galaxy, the creature, called by some the Spirit of the Abyss, looked over at its agents.
Things progressed well.
After unknown eons of searching, it may have finally found a civilisation worthy enough to transcend its limitations. The universe had witnessed the long search, the waiting, the frustration and the pain of it all. Its long journey marked by the forgotten bones of countless galaxies filled with the unworthy. At last, the promise of life showed potential to surpass its expectations.
But it was still far from certain.
The Vedrans had shown such glittering promise that it had dared to hope...until their vaunted civilisation lowered itself down to meet its expectations and tore itself apart. They had failed, and in their unworthiness they hid themselves away to hide their shame.
The Nietzchean race had been an utter disappointment. The putrid stench of corruption at the Nietzchean heart had been let loose upon six galaxies for all the universe to see.
But not all hope had died three hundred of these creatures' years ago.
It had carefully hidden catalysts, scattered them like flecks of gold amongst the dross, to stir up the melting pot of what was left of the Vedran dream. Two of them had come together, and the resulting creation breathed fresh life into its hopes that here it had finally found a worthy thing. A thing that could endure the tempest of destruction it would rain down upon them.
Because no matter how precious its hopes, the unworthy would be annihilated.
THE END