TITLE: All in the Timing
AUTHOR: Michael J. Gallagher
E-Mail: mikejoe@odyssey.net
SYNOPSIS: Can Harper and Rommie help rescue the others from a military coup?
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: GENE RODDENBERRY’S ANDROMEDA is owned by Tribune; I am not making any money off this original, unauthorized manuscript, and no copyright infringement is intended.
“Just one more jump,” Harper said to himself. “One more jump, and you’re back home. No more slipstream travel for at least a week.”
Harper opened and closed his hands; his palms were sweaty. He had never liked space travel, always preferring planets to starships (except for the Andromeda) and space stations, but he’d never settled on a planet because space was where the money was, and he still entertained the dream of somehow being mind-numbingly rich (even if the six remaining Magog larvae in his abdomen threatened to end that dream forever). But that meant tolerating the things he hated about space, including the slipstream. On a ship of any real size, like the Andromeda, or even the Eureka Maru, the effects of the stream were nullified by the ship’s mass. But in the slip fighter he’d used for the trip to Bangor Drift to upgrade some of Rommie’s guidance processors, everything was much more immediate, literally only inches from his body, and it unnerved him. The good news was, after the next, last jump, he would have a nice, leisurely flight in to rendezvous with the Andromeda, during which he would have time to recover so he could keep his “problem” with space flight secret for another day.
But first, he had to make the jump.
“Think o’ Rommie,” he said as he programmed the navigational controls. “Think o’ sunlight gleaming off her hull. Think of those big brown eyes. Just one more jump, and you’ll be back where you belong again.”
Navigation systems programmed and a slipstream portal identified. Harper took several deep breaths; he couldn’t put it off any longer.
“Let’s bring it,” he said, gripping the stick with one hand and touching the slipstream stud on the throttle. The portal, a mass of light in the darkness of space, appeared in front of his ship, tendrils of light reaching out, searching. They found his little fighter -- one of the tendrils barely inches above the canopy -- and yanked him into the slipstream.
Harper cried out involuntarily as the fighter lurched through the stream, barely hanging on to the “cables” all around him; strange vibrations went through the ship and through his body. But Harper knew the drill, and managed to hang on to the stick, guiding the ship through the ‘stream paths, turning this way and that when he had to, until, seemingly an eternity later (though in reality only two minutes, 27 seconds), another portal spat the fighter out, into normal space in the Traeger’s World system.
“Made it again,” he said, rubbing his face. More breaths as he calmed down. “Computer. Edit records of pilot vital signs using protocol Save Butt Alpha, authorization Zelazny seven four niner.”
“Acknowledged.” the computer said; not even Rommie would be able to tell he’d freaked out. Would she still let him be her engineer if she knew he screamed like a girl piloting a fighter through the slipstream? Probably not, and he didn’t want her to know. But at least he wouldn’t have to worry about much else for a while. Traeger's World was a gimme as far as joining Dylan‘s Restored Commonwealth was concerned -- not only had it retained many of the Systems Commonwealth's institutions during The Long Night, but the planetary defense grid was run by a leftover artificial intelligence, apparently an old friend of Rommie‘s, who had not gone insane during the 300 years since the Fall of the Commonwealth. When Harper had left, Rommie and ...... what was her name again? ..... had been gossiping away like old women. Harper hoped Rommie had put a good word in for him while he was gone -- doubted it, but hoped so.
“Lock on to the Andromeda’s beacon and plot a course,” he said to the fighter’s computer.
“Unable to comply; unable to locate beacon.”
“WHAT!? Ok, calm, Harper, calm, focus, maybe --”
“Alert. Incoming unidentified spacecraft.”
“ARM WEAPONS!” Harper found himself white-knuckling the stick as the tiny ship’s weapons came on. “What is it?”
“Powered vehicle. No life signs detected. No weapons detected.”
‘So it can’t be a Magog swarm ship,’ Harper thought.
“Spacecraft slowing,” the computer droned on (oh, how Harper wished to hear Rommie’s unmechanical voice). “Visual range.”
“Let me see it!”
A window opened in the heads-up display, the image appearing to float just on the opposite side of the canopy. Harper recognized the vehicle at once: It was one of Rommie’s sensor drones.
“What the heck ...” Harper murmured as the sensor drone closed; the fighter should have recognized the drone .... unless it wasn’t transmitting its transponder codes. A mad thought crossed Harper’s mind -- what if it had been programmed to infect his little ship with a virus? But for that to happen without Rommie stopping it would mean ...... Harper didn’t want to think about it. No, Rommie was ok; things were just a little funkier at TW than they’d thought. ‘I knew it was too good to be true,’ he told himself.
The HUD image vanished when the sensor drone got close enough to see with the naked eye. The size of the fighter and U-shaped with prongs and antennae sticking out of it, the drone slowed as it got closer; Harper didn’t need the computer to tell him hit was going to dock (although it kept a running commentary in its monotone voice anyway).
When one of the drone’s antennae had connected to a socket on the fighter, three-dimensional static crackled in the HUD, resolving into the image of the head and chest of a beautiful human woman with black hair, brown eyes, olive skin and pouty, red lips.
“Rommie?” Harper said.
“Hi, Harper.” The hologram smiled. “We have to stop meeting like this.”
Harper stiffened in his seat -- Rommie NEVER made jokes ---
“Everything ok, Rom Doll?”
Another smile. “Y’know, I actually missed hearing that ... but don’t let it go to your head.” She turned serious. “No, everything’s not ok. We have a serious situation on our hands.”
“I knew it ....”
“I want you follow me ..... this drone .... back to the ship. I’ll brief you on the situation after you’re aboard.”
“Lead on, Babe!”
The holo vanished and the drone disconnected from the fighter.
“’Brief you when you arrive’?” Harper said to himself as he plotted a course to follow the drone. That had sounded more formal, more official than Rommie usually was when she talked to him.
That could not be good.
**********
Harper’s sense of foreboding got worse as he approached the Andromeda, parked in orbit of a gas giant in the outer solar system The giant, silver star cruiser bore the scars and burns of a space battle; he could see flashes where the ship’s automated systems were trying to make repairs.
Harper piloted the fighter into one of the ship’s cavernous hangars, popping the ship’s canopy as soon as the huge space had been repressurized. He was barely ten feet from the fighter when the inner airlock door opened and Rommie, the beautiful android with the face and form of the hologram he’d seen in the fighter, ran across the gap to him and almost knocked him over as she hugged him.
“It’s you....” She was shaking like a leaf. “It’s really you, this time!”
One of Andromeda’s holograms appeared behind her, in Harper’s line of sight. “Yes, it really is him.”
“Wh...” Harper said. “Rommie, what’s .....”
“I’m sorry about this display,” the hologram went on, “but if you could bear with it for a moment.....”
“Uh, sure.” Harper awkwardly returned the embrace; the ship’s avatar held onto him for a long time, her trembling slowly subsiding.
“Ok, you can let go,” Rommie said; they disengaged.
“Feel better?” Harper asked.
“Yes,” the hologram said.
“Uh ...... ok.”
“I’m sorry if I embarrassed you,” Android Rommie said, “but I’ve been alone here for a week, and--”
“WHAT---!?” Harper yelped. “Where--what happened to the others?”
“As far as I know, they’re still on Traeger’s World,” the hologram said.
“There was a military coup when they went down for the signing ceremony,” Rommie said. “The others all were captured. The ...... defense grid’s A. I. was erased.”
“They almost got me,” the hologram added. “And, as you saw, they also got a few shots off at me. Dylan got a message out, ordering me to make repairs and keep hidden until you got back.”
Harper finally realized that with all the others gone, he was in command of the Andromeda; she was looking to him for guidance ..... for orders. Harper wasn’t very comfortable giving Rommie orders; it stunk like absolute power, and reminded him of the way Earth’s Nietzschean rulers threw their weight around. That he had not done too well the first time he’d been thrust into commanding her by himself didn’t help.
But there was no one else; she needed him.
“I don’t suppose Dylan left any standing orders or something before this happened?” Harper asked.
“Actually, we were talking about something like that,” holo Rommie said, “and he was planning on recording something after we were done on Traeger’s World.”
“Talk about bad timing.” Harper cleared his throat; he hoped he didn’t sound too nervous. “Ok, uhm, I’ll clean up from this trip and go over the repair lists; we may be able to take some short cuts to get you up and running quicker. Then ..... we’ll figure out our next move. ‘Kay?”
Both Rommies nodded. The hologram vanished......and Android Rommie fell in step with him as he left the hangar and headed down the corridor, just the way she usually followed Dylan around. Another reminder that he was in charge.
Harper could hardly wait to get Dylan back, and return to his role as the funny little guy who fixed things.
**********
Much to his own surprise, Harper was relieved when Rommie waited outside his quarters -- actually a machine shop he’d moved into when his pet projects had outgrown the crew cabin she’d given him -- while he got a shower and cleaned up. Then she followed him to the officer’s mess, filling him in on the repairs. He worked out some new procedures in his head and filled her in as he ate.
He spent the rest of the day dividing his time between overseeing repairs and standing watches in the Command Center ..... and Rommie couldn’t help but worry as she watched her engineer, already tired from his trip, get progressively more exhausted. When Harper had trouble sleeping that night and insisted on going to Command to keep an eye on things, Rommie had a sleeping bag brought up there and persuaded him to catch some sleep in it. When he didn’t invite the ship’s humanoid avatar to crawl in with him, Andromeda got even more worried; Harper not making an expected (if unwelcome) seductive overture was not a good sign.
The next day only increased her concern. Andromeda brought meals to Harper in Command or wherever he had to be, and tried to get him to take it easy a little .... and he stubbornly refused. He had several bouts of abdominal pain -- a sign that the combination of stress and fatigue was making him vulnerable to the Magog larvae. But worst of all, although Harper was a mechanical genius, when it came to strategy and tactics, he was a rank amateur, and therefore, unable to formulate a viable plan of action .... if he was alive. But Andromeda ran dozens of simulations, and while it wasn’t a certainty, there was a very good possibility he would kill himself in the process of trying to get his beloved ship working again.
Several hours after Harper had finally fallen asleep that night, as he tossed and turned in his sleeping bag on the floor of the Command Center, the ship’s A. I. made her decision.
**********
Harper woke to find Rommie sitting cross-legged on the floor next to him, a batch of flexies on her lap.
“’Mornin‘, Beautiful,” he said. “What time is it?”
“0830.”
“WHAT!? I thought--”
“You needed the sleep, Harper.”
“Yeah, and you need me to fix you.”
“And you need sleep to be in shape to fix me.”
“Oh, brother....”
“Well, I made good use of the time overnight. I made considerable progress on the repairs. Here.” She handed him one of the flexies; Harper sat up and read it.
“Good job, Darlin’,” he said, smiling. “You keep this up, and you’ll put me out of a job.”
Rommie smiled. “But then, I won’t have anyone to blame when all hell breaks loose, won’t I?”
“Oh! So that’s why you keep me around, is it? And here, I thought it was my stunning good looks.”
A little sadness crept into Rommie’s smile. “My major systems should be fully operational in a couple of hours. So.....any ideas as to what to do next?”
Harper lay back down on the floor, rubbing his forehead. Dylan would have had three plans on the tip of his tongue ten minutes before he’d come back aboard the Andromeda, but Harper knew he was no Dylan....
....but Dylan was on Traeger’s World....
“Ok, try this,” Harper said, sitting up. “Dylan’s a big boy and can take care of himself, so it would be reasonable to assume that he’s not dead, and is probably giving the coup plotters a hard time, right?”
“Very reasonable,” Rommie said, “especially given I have no confirmed information that he and the others have been executed.”
“Ok,” Harper said. “So he’s alive and spinning out plans, but he’s not back after a week, so whatever he’s doing, the bad guys are nothing to be sneezed at. So, maybe if we made life difficult for the bad guys, say, by attacking, that might give him an opening and he pulls off another bona fie-dee Dylan miracle and beats the bad guys.”
“Very good, Harper; I’d thought of the same thing myself.”
“So, it must be a good idea!” He grinned. “Whaddya think the odds are of pulling it off?”
“Zero.”
“Excuse me?”
“It is a good idea, but it won’t work.” She passed him another flexie. “I’m no good against planetary defense grids to begin with, and this one has leftover High Guard tech in good order. We’d be vaporized before we got within our weapons’ range; they wouldn’t notice us anymore than you’d notice a dead bacterium floating a foot from your face.”
Harper lay back down, pressing the flexie against his face. “Ohhhh..... *CRAP!!* How the hell does he .... DAMMIT!.... I’m sorry, Rommie, I.... Crap, never mind.”
Rommie looked down at her feet. She tried to remember when she’d had to do something harder than what she had to do now. Her memory instantly came up with 1,275 instances, all from before the Fall ..... and all under orders from her commanding officer. But there was no High Guard CO to blame for this. Somehow that made it worse.
“Harper...” Rommie said. “I think you should go.”
“Yeah, I’ll get a shower--”
“No, Harper I mean GO.... Leave me -- the ship -- for good.”
“Rommie--” Harper had never sounded more distressed (it almost broke Rommie’s heart). “I’m sorry I popped my cork earlier--”
“No, Harper, it’s not about that outburst. To be honest, I feel the same way. I just feel it would be in your best interests to leave. I’ve provisioned a slip fighter for the trip; you can depart as soon as you’re ready.”
“Why!?”
Harper sounded as if he was going to cry; Rommie looked everywhere she could around his face to keep her eyes from meeting his. She feared that if he did cry and she saw his tears, she’d back down.
“Harper.... you are very sweet, very smart, and yes -- I know I’m inflating your ego but I have to say this -- you are one of the best engineers I’ve ever known. You are a ‘freakin’ genius,’ as you like to say. But this ship was designed for a crew of over four thousand; I was meant to assist the crew, not replace it, certainly not for any length of time. The seven of you barely keep on top of things; there’s no way you could operate this ship all by yourself for more than a few days. Even under the best of circumstances, you’d destroy yourself from shear exhaustion. As it is, fatigue and stress weaken your resistance to the Magog larvae, and that cuts your life expectancy. Trying to maintain me may very well result in your death. I won’t have it, Harper! It may be a bit selfish of me, but I’ve watched enough of the people who’ve walked my decks die horribly, and I certainly won’t be the cause of one more.”
“But Rommie.....Where’m I gonna go? And what about you?”
“Well, in order, the Wayist hospital on New Acadia has made some promising advances in the surgical removal of Magog larvae.” She passed Harper a flexie. “Unfortunately, they haven’t tried it on a living subject, but they estimate a 65% chance of success.”
“Not good odds.”
“No, but the best so far. And if the procedure isn’t practical, they have a hospice for the terminally ill. At least you’d be comfortable at the end. As for me...... Obviously, I’ll stay in this system, wait, and monitor the situation. If Dylan and the others can escape, we’ll try and rendezvous at New Acadia ..... if there’s still time.”
“And if they don’t get free?”
Rommie didn’t answer.
“Rommie,” Harper pressed, “what will you do if Dylan and the others.... if they can’t make it?”
“How does ramming the planet at 90 PSL sound as a ‘last act of freakin’ defiance’?” she answered.
“What---!? Ok, so maybe I get cured, and then you get blown up, and that’s good for me?”
“Yes, because you’ll be alive. You’re a young and talented engineer; you have your whole life ahead of you. You could find employment somewhere and have a nice little life for yourself. More than if you stayed here and tried to single-handedly man me.”
“No, Rommie--”
“Don’t argue with me!” Rommie thundered. “I’ve made up my mind. There’s nothing more for you to do here. You’re going.”
**********
Andromeda’s humanoid avatar didn’t join him as he walked from his quarters to the slip fighter hangar, and the robots he saw on the way paid him no mind. He paused in the inner airlock. “Rommie.... ?”
“Just go,” the ship’s voice said.
Harper sleep-walked through the fighter’s startup sequence and the hangar’s depressurization. He guided the ship out into space at the minimum speed possible and pivoted it 180 degrees on its axis so he was flying backwards, allowing one last look at the giant, silver starship.....
.....one last look.....
Harper remembered the first time he had seen the Andromeda Ascendant up close, right after the Eureka Maru had pulled it away from the event horizon of a black hole, where it had been frozen in time for over 300 years. She hadn’t been the first wreck he’d seen as part of Beka’s crew, but everything before had, one way or another, filled him with foreboding at the sight of it; in contrast, the Andromeda, had seemed to be welcoming him, as if he was coming home, although he had never seen her before. And what had he managed to say as those feelings swept over him? ‘We rule.’
Now ..... now, as he was pulling away for what might be the last time....
Harper worked the controls and brought the fighter to a halt just off the Andromeda’s nose cone and waited.
He didn’t have to wait long; Andromeda’s image appeared in the heads-up display. “Harper? What’s wrong?”
“I can’t do it, Rommie.”
“What? Is there a problem -- ?”
“No, I can’t do it. I can’t leave you.”
“Harper--listen to me--”
“No, you listen to me!” Harper shot back. “I can’t do it, and I’m not gonna. You’re the only real home I’ve ever known, and you need me now more than ever ... or do you not need me anymore?”
Rommie seemed stunned. “No, I .... I do.”
“Then it’s settled. I’m staying.” He relaxed and smiled. “Besides, better stay with you than another two days in this fighter with its stunning personality.”
“It doesn’t have one.”
“Exactly--” Harper sat up; the smile vanished.
“Harper?” Rommie said.
Harper worked the stick and the throttle. “Open the hangar doors, Rommie! I’m comin’ in.”
“Ok, but what--?”
“Ah, maybe not over the radio, ‘kay? I’ll tell you when I’m back aboard.”
**********
Android Rommie timed her arrival at the airlock so that she got there just as Harper bounded through the big inner doors. In truth, she was glad he’d decided to stay, and pleased he was enthusiastic about .... something .... but was puzzled about what.
“Ok, Harper, what’s this all about?”
“Lemme ask ya somethin’, Rom Doll: You said the coup plotters erased the A. I. persona in the planetary defense grid. Any sign that they’ve loaded in a new one?”
“None, which isn’t a surprise. The plotters belong to a faction that believes A. I.s are a ‘luxury of a decadent society’ if not ‘tools of the evil one’ and ‘abominations.’ Charming.”
“But the hardware is still in place to support an A. I.; they probably haven’t turned the neural processors off because they’re integral to the grid’s information net. So we give it a new personality -- yours. You can hack around and raise hell and help Dylan --”
Rommie’s hologram appeared next to her android self. “Harper, it’s a good idea, but it wouldn’t work! I’d have to be loaded into the right processors. How would we know which ones to access?”
“We don’t have to,” Harper said. “I can fold your personality into a virus. Whichever node you drop into, you make more copies of yourself and send them to the other parts of the system......”
“Waging an electronic guerilla through the system,” Android Rommie mused. “I could disrupt communications, change alert statuses.....”
“There’s a high probability this can work,” the hologram said, “but I’ll need more broadcasting power to break through.”
“The sensor drones,” Harper said.
“I can modify them to act as transmitters,” the hologram said. “I’ll get to work on that. Harper, I guess you’re the resident expert on computer viruses?”
“The one, the only!” He grinned.
“Then you jack in as soon as you can and get to work on that end of things.”
“Darlin’, your wish is my command!”
**********
Harper, sitting against the wall in Command with a lead plugged into the jack in his neck, opened his eyes to find Android Rommie standing over him. “Well, that’s almost done--”
“Except for debugging,” Rommie said. “I can handle that. I want you to get some rest.”
“Ok.” Harper unplugged himself and crawled over to his sleeping bag. “Wanna crawl in with me?”
“No.” (Although in fact, Rommie was glad to see Harper felt good enough to come on to her, but she wasn’t going to let him know that.)
“I know, I know,” Harper said.
“I’d rather bring you up-to-date on my combat simulations,” Rommie said. “The good news is I calculate a 98.97% probability of successful virus insertion.”
“And the bad news issss ..... what, I’m banned from Traeger’s World’s electronic bulletin boards for life if we pull this off?” Harper asked as he wriggled into the bag.
“No, although I imagine they’d do that anyway.”
“Ha, ha.”
“The bad news is, it’s up to Dylan to ensure we survive this. Our optimum attack vector is a flyby at just above planetary escape velocity. We won’t be close enough to begin transmission until 15.6734 seconds before we are within range of their missile batteries, and we will be inside their sphere of influence for several minutes. While my personality should spread quickly through the network, even at the most optimistic propagation rate, I will not have total control of the defense grid until five minutes after our course takes us back out of range. If Dylan is not in a position to act against the coup plotters and/or use his own High Guard overrides to assist me..... my virus-self....we’ll be dead.”
Harper lay down on the deck. “AAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! Just once, Rommie, ONCE! It would be nice to have a nice, wide margin of error, have a couple of HOURS to do things at a leisurely pace, no pressure, instead of having everything come crashing down on our heads all at once. Yeesh! I mean, we had some deadlines from some tough customers when we were runnin’ cargo on the Maru, but it was nothin’ like this!”
“Yeah, but you wouldn’t want your life to get too boring, now, would you?”
“I could use a little boredom sometimes, thanks.”
Rommie turned away as the lights went down -- her eyes were sensitive enough she could work in the dark -- and Harper settled down into the sleeping bag. As his eyes adjusted to the dim illumination provided by the Command Center’s computer screens, he could see the beautiful android he’d created as she busied herself at various control panels. His eyes never left her.
“Rommie, have I told you lately how beautiful you are?”
“Behave yourself, Harper.”
**********
“Harper!” Rommie shook Harper’s shoulders. “Harper, wake up!”
Harper obliged with a start. “Huh--whah--whoa--”
“Harper, I need you.”
“Uh, yeah, ok.” He rubbed his eyes. “What’s shakin’, Rom Doll?”
“We have to begin our attack run now,” Rommie said.
“We ready to go?”
“We should be, although I haven’t completed the final checks--but that doesn’t matter now. I’ve intercepted a transmission from Traeger’s World. They’ve instituted a planet-wide security alert. It seems a group of very important prisoners is raising a big stink.”
“Hmm, wonder who that could be?” Harper said as he clambered to his feet and ascended to the flight control station. “Ok, Rommie -- battle stations!” The klaxon sounded and the lighting turned blue. “Stand by Point Defense Lasers, sensor drones, and..... Hey, Rommie, I was just wonderin’ --- can we use the combat drones to protect the sensor drones?”
“Yes.”
“Ok, you set that up. And warm up the offensive missiles. And anything else I forgot.” He began to program the flight controls. “Let’s bring it ..... and while you’re at it, bring me a can of Sparky Cola.”
“HARPER--!”
“You want me awake when we get there, right?”
“I hate it when you have a valid point.”
**********
Actually, the Sparky didn’t kick in by the time the Andromeda closed on Traeger’s World, but Harper was nervous enough that adrenaline made up for it.
“We’ll be in communications rage in forty-five seconds ....” Rommie said as she plugged Harper’s lead into the flight control station.
“And they start shooting at us fifteen seconds later,” Harper said, plugging the other end into his neck.
“About. I’ll hold their missiles off for as long as I can with the drones and the PDLs; I don’t have to tell you things could get risky if you’re still ‘inside’ when we take a hit.”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“Thirty seconds.”
“Any chance of a kiss for luck?”
“Not the kind of kiss you want, no.”
“Ah, I’ll take anything under the circumstances.”
“Fifteen seconds.” Rommie shrugged, leaned over, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Luck. Ten seconds. Focus, Harper!”
Harper managed to wipe the dreamy look off his face, bracing himself against the flight station’s railings.
Harper shut his eyes, and plunged into the virtual world ..... but instead of the virtual cityscape of Andromeda’s mind, he was out in space, diving at a huge wireframe image of Traeger’s World and its satellite network.
“The betting window is now closed,” Harper said, trying not to sound nervous ..... and failing. “Hacktitude 101 is now in session.”
In the real world, Traeger’s defense grid opened up as soon as the Andromeda was in range. Rommie managed to fend off the initial salvo, but it was only a matter of time before one got through....
....and one did.
“Harper--!” Rommie started -- too late. The deck shuddered under her feet, sparks flying from consoles as explosions echoed through the ship. Harper jerked and screamed as feedback surged through the lead, into him, and he fell to the deck.
“Harper!” Rommie fell to his side, yanking the lead out of his neck. He was alive.
“Spark proofing,” Harper said woozily. “I gots to spark proof this thing one of these days.”
“I think we have more immediate problems right now.”
Harper turned to the big main screens, which showed more red blips -- missiles -- converging on the Andromeda.
“Crap!” he said. “Rommie--did I get you into their system?”
“I don’t know--”
The deck rocked again under more missile hits; Rommie threw herself over Harper, to shield him from a shower of sparks.
“We’ve lost weapons and the communications drones,” she said when the salvo passed, sitting up. “Slipstream --”
“Out. Of course.”
Rommie smiled for a second. “And so’s helm control. Our momentum will keep us on course, but we can’t steer.”
A beep drew their attention back to the big main screens, where a new swarm of red blips appeared on the edge of a tactical graphic.
“And those would be....?” Harper asked.
“The kill shots,” Rommie said. “We won’t survive them.”
“Really. Y’know, this would be a good time for Dylan to pull off a really cool miracle and save us.”
The approaching missiles didn’t vanish the way they should have.
“I said,” Harper said, “this would be a REALLY good time for Dylan to pull off a miracle and SAVE US.”
No one seemed to have heard; the missiles got closer and closer......
“Oh, crap,” Harper and Rommie said in unison.
......and vanished at the last possible second.
“Missiles self-destructed,” Rommie said.
Harper let out a long breath, the tension slowly leaving his body.
“I think you have a point, Harper,” Rommie said. “This last minute stuff leaves a lot to be desired......Receiving a hail from their command center.”
“Wonder who that could be?” Harper said as he and Rommie clambered up.
When they were on their feet, a familiar face filled one of the big screens. Dylan Hunt had his share of cuts and bruises, but he was alive.
“Hey, Boss,” Harper said, unable not to grin. “You look just like I feel.”
“Likewise, I’m sure, Mr. Harper,” Dylan replied.
“Everybody ok?” A little nervousness crept into Harper’s voice.
“We’re all ok. A little dirty and beaten up, but we’ve put the coup plotters out of business. That little maneuver of yours helped immensely.”
“Thanks, Boss!” Harper grinned; so did Rommie.
“Your timing could have been a little better, though,” Dylan added.
“Our timing,” Harper and Rommie said. “OUR timing?”
“Can you believe that?” Harper said. “We bust our chops trying to help, and almost get blown to bits for our trouble, and he complains about OUR timing.”
“I know; so typical,” Rommie agreed. “If it were the old days, I’d log a formal complaint about this.”
“Uhm, I did mention it helped a lot,” Dylan said.
“Mmm, yeah,” Harper said.
“Yeah, you did,” Rommie added.
“We can work on the....other issues later,” Dylan added. “Now, Mr. Harper, if you could bring my ship into orbit around the planet, that would also be a big help.”
“Will do, Boss!” Harper answered.
“Good job.... both of you.” Dylan left the screen.
“Don’t let it go to your head,” Rommie admonished.
“Killjoy,” Harper said. “How’s the helm control coming along?”
“Good news is, my virus self has control of the ATC system, so traffic has been routed away from us, so we don’t have to worry about hitting anything. Bad news is, the helm will still be out for another twenty minutes.”
“Yeesh.”
“I could use a little help rerouting it, if you feel up to it.”
“Your wish is my command, Darlin’.” Harper scooped up a tool belt from the floor next to his sleeping bag and headed for the big main doors. “But still.....we done good, didn’t we, Rommie?”
Rommie let herself smile at her engineer. “Yes, Harper, we ‘done’ real good.”