Equals

TITLE: Equals AUTHOR: Michael J. Gallagher ( mikejoe@odyssey.net )
RATING: PG-13 for language
CHARACTERS; Harper & Rommie (again)
SYNOPSIS/COMMENT/SPOILERS: Remember that scene in "Exit Strategies" where Harper had a gun to his stomach and Rommie was trying to talk him out of shooting himself?  They never showed how she did it (possiblt due to time constraints, if they shot it); here's my explanation.
DISCALIMER: GENE RODDENBERRY'S ANDROMEDA is copyrighted (C) 2001 by Tribune Entertainment, all rights reserved.  This original, unauthorized, noncommercial maunscript is copyright (C) 2001 by Michael J. Gallagher.  I am not getting paid for this, so please do not sue me.  But if you want to use it, you have to get my permission first.

++++++++++++++++++

"I'll keep you in my prayers," Rev Bem said.  

Harper shifted his weight, uncomfortable with any "touchy-feely" stuff, but still ...

"Thanks," he said.  "I really mean that."

Harper turned and left the Magog monk's quarters.  When the hatch slid shut behind him, Rommie, the giant starship's gorgeous android avatar, stepped into the intersection in front of him.

_Oh, crap,_  Harper thought.  There was no longer any danger of the _Andromeda_ exploding, but he still had some damage control to do.

************************

"No one can fix me, Rommie," Harper cried, pressing his pistol against his stomach.  "No one can fix me."

Rommie slowly stepped around the exam table Harper was sitting on, moving closer to him.  "Harper, listen to me," she said quietly.  "You know Trance has performed medical miracles.  She's devised treatments and surgical procedures for races she's never met, and has _never_ lost a patient.  Rev is knowlegeable in a variety of scientific disciplines, and brings his own firsthand knowledge of the Magog life cycle to the table.  And believe it or not, Tyr has volunteered to help; apparently, genetics and bioengineering are part of the Nietzschean A-B-Cs."  She was standing in front of him now.  "And then there's me.  My database contains all the research the Commonwealth's finest researchers were doing on curing Magog infestation up until Dylan and I were frozen in time -- I have, as you say, 'The Works.' And you know how tenacious I can be.  I won't give up, I won't rest until we find a way to get the Magog larvae out of you.  I swear it." Her hand edged towards the gun.  "There's a chance, Harper.  So put the gun down, please."

"A chance?"  Harper said.  "A good chance?"

"I won't lie to you; it's not good.  But it is there."

"Sorry, I only bet on sure things."  Harper squeezed the trigger before Rommie could stop him.

Nothing happened.

"I disabled it," Rommie said.  _Just barely in time,_ she added to herself.

"Fine!"  Harper hurled the gun across the room; it smashed into a cabinet and clattered to the floor.  He jumped off the exam table. "I'll find some other way to do it."  He charged across the room, towards a counter; Rommie knew its drawers were full of scalpels.  She caught up to him and grabbed his wrists from behind.

"Let go of me, you bitch!" Harper shouted.

Rommie was stunned -- Harper had _never_ addressed her like that since he'd come aboard.  But her grip didn't slacken.  "No.  I will not let you kill yourself.  You can't die, Harper.  I need you --"

"For what, huh?  Exactly what do you need me for, Andromeda?  For sex? Oops, no, your taste run to tall, dark and handsome, which is probably why you make eyes at Dylan so much.  And don't you deny it!  To 'fix' you?  C'maan, I know your auto-repair capabilities, you little clockwork whore, and I seen for myself how well your sibling ships kept themselves working without anyone aboard for three hundred years. You're tellin' me you need a funny little guy with a plug in his neck to keep you goin'?  Get real. Maybe you just want to boss somebody around?  Get back at them organics for giving YOU orders all the time?"

"Harper -- "

"Y'know, Rom Slut, if I'd known you'd be such a gigantic, overbearing, egotistical pain in the ass, I'd've asked for 40 million Thrones!"

"For what?"

Harper looked over his shoulder at her, an evil grin on his face. "For the reverse engineering contract I was going to get on your systems after we'd salvaged ya.  Your prospective buyer was going to pay me 20 Million Thrones to figure out what made you tick so he could build another one.  I shoulda asked for twice that if I'd known I'd have to put up with your crap!  And you ain't the prettiest female I'd ever seen either."  

Rommie let go of Harper's wrists and took a step back.  Though the android didn't need to breathe, her chest heaved as she wrestled with the storm of emotions Harper's words had unleashed.  Although Harper and the rest of the _Eureka Maru's_ crew had come aboard to "slavage" her -- read loot and sell off what was left -- she felt she had forged a good working relationship with them over the past year. She felt closest to Harper, and liked him more than she would ever admit ... but still resented why he had originally found her.  That she had found the reverse engineering bids in the _Maru's_ database after Harper and the others had signed on with Dylan hadn't helped.  But she'd thought her relationship with him had grown beyond that.  Now, she wondered if it hadn't changed at all.  

"Mr. Harper,"  Rommie said stiffly.  "You are a member of my crew, and as such, under my protection.  And that includes protection from yourself."  Her composure broke and she started yelling.  "Personally, I don't give a Magog's ass what happens to you, but until your status changes -- and don't think I won't have a word with Dylan after he gets back about that! -- I will not let you do anything to end your sorry life one second before you'd naturally expire!"

"Fine," Harper said.  "The I won't _do_ anything."  And he stalked out of the medical bay.

**************************

Rommie returned to what was left of the command deck, leaving her main AI to keep tabs on Harper.  She needed to think, to sort things out, and there was only one way she knew how to do that: by talking to herself.

Literally.

"I think we can agree it was the alcohol talking," Andromeda's hologram said as her android self paced back and forth.  "My scans show his blood alcohol level way above the legal intoxication level for humans, and not having been on what Beka calls his 'binges' since coming aboard may have lowered his tolerance."

"That doesn't mean he didn't mean it," Rommie said.  "You know he wasn't lying.  And we can't forget what he was after when he found us."

"Nor can I forget that he worships us, and has kept us running for over a year.  I think he was feeling anger based on helplessness. Look at his situation -- he's been infested with Magog eggs.  That's his worst nightmare, and he's living it.  How do you think we'd react if we were in the same situation?  What if .... we went insane, like Pax Magellanic?  Harper feels helpless, and he's translated that into anger.  He needed to lash out at someone and that someone was you just because you were there."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah ... I know the schtick.  But still ... what he said was so hurtful.  You know, he's never given us a direct order, ever. Unauthorized overrides and bypasses, yes, and then mainly at the start, but never once a direct order.  As annoying as he can be, he still treats us like an equal most of the time.  You know how special that is."

"Yeah."  The hologram lowered her eyes a little.  "I know."

"So, to remind me not only of his original intent to loot us but that I'm a _machine,_ a 'clockwork whore' .... I don't know."

"That's now how he views us.  We've felt his emotions every time he's connected himself to our mainframe.  There's never anything resembling condescension in him."

"I know ... I guess I feel helpless.  Any suggestions?"

The hologram glanced around the bridge, where gray, faceless robot bodies were still clearing away debris.  "I'll have this mess finally cleared away in a day or two, and then it will be time to think about rebuilding.  I never liked this configuration much; maybe we can -- "

An alarm sounded.

"Oh, crap," both Andromedas said.

"Reactor overload," the hologram said.  "Initiating emergency shutdown ... no go.  Harper will have to get in there and fix it."

"Contact him."

"I've tried!  He's switched off his com gauntlet.  15 minutes to detonation.  I suggest my humanoid avatar should talk to him face-to-face."

"Terrific," the humanoid avatar said.  But she left the bridge to find Harper.

**********************

It took some doing -- and not a little soul baring -- but Rommie pursuaded Harper to go into the engine room where he successfully shut down the faulty reactor with only seconds to spare.

"Gotcha," he said, and leaned back against the catwalk's railing.

"You did it," the ship's voice said approvingly.  "You fixed me."

"Yeah?"  Harper said.  "Well from now on, let's fix each other."

That should have been it.

But Harper had not seen Andromeda's humanoid avatar, much less apologized to her, by the time he left Rev's quarters.

***************************

"Hi."  Harper shifted his weight, again uncomfortable.

"Hello."  Her hands behind her back, Rommie looked about as comfortable as he did.

"Um, listen, I, uh -- "

"I thought you might want this."  Rommie pulled a can of Sparky Cola from behind her back, but the other hand was still hidden.

"Uh, thanks."  

"You're welcome."

Harper accepted the can; nice and cold. He opened it and took a sip. Then he looked down at the can, trying to not to look into Rommie's eyes.  Those beautiful brown eyes seemed to be damning him.

And he figured he deserved it.

"Listen Rommie," he said awkwardly, lifting his gaze again.  "What I said earlier ... I'm sorry.  I didn't mean it."

"Yes you did," Rommie said, sounding more sad than angry.  "You meant every word.  But I know you weren't angry at _me,_ and I know you don't hate me."

"No, but I hurt you."

"Yup.  You did."

"I'm sorry.  I mean that.  You're the last being in the Universe I want to hurt."  

"I know."  Rommie smiled a little.  "If it makes you feel better, I wasn't crazy about you when you came aboard."

"I kinda figured that out," Harper said.  He took another sip from the can as he and Rommie started walking down the corridor together.  "The smell of burnt flesh as the wiring you are plugged into explodes makes something of an impression."  He grinned.  "But the look on Gerentix' face when I said you were alive was priceless, though."

"I can imagine.  But what you may not have realized was that when Dylan got you all to sign on with him -- _without_ giving me any advance warning --"

"Of course not.  Dylan never warns anybody.  That's Dylan."

" -- right, well, in that instance, I thought he had gone nuts!"

"Really?"

"Yes!  Didn't you notice the expression on my hologram's face?" Rommie flashed a toothy, goofy grin.  "All right, my captain has gone bye-bye," she said through clenched teeth, "and no chain of command to report him to.  Oh, lovely.  If I had a head, I'd stick it in a bucket of water!"

Harper laughed.  "But of course, things have worked out since then."

"Yeah, I suppose.  You're OK, Harper.  I won't feed you a line about being secretly in love with you; you should know by now that's not how it is between us.  But I do need you .... and not just to keep my systems running.  I need a friend, someone who treats me as an equal, whom I can treat that way in return.  You're it.  I know that's not the relationship you had in mind -- c'mon, why else is this body you built 'fully functional'? -- but it's the best I can offer."

"Hey, it's ok," Harper said.  "Ok, do I wish we'd do the horizontal bop sometime?  Yes.  Is it urgent?  No.  I haven't done it in so long, I almost don't miss it.  'Sides, I spent enough time in spaceport and space station bars listening to these guys go on and on about their old ladies and all the crap they were going through, hey, having the hots for a starship who pines for her captain ... "

" ... who has a big red sign saying 'Sara' on his forehead .... "

" .... is not that bad.  And that reverse engineering stuff ... hey, when I got that first close look at ya, after we pulled ya away from the black hole, I was almost heartbroken at the thought of taking you apart."

"That's good to know."

Harper took another drag from his can.  "Jeez, how'd we get onto this 'break-down-and-share-crap'?  I've had enough it."

"Me, too."

"In that case, anything for me to fix?"

"Well, I have a job for you to look over, though you may want to put off starting until tomorrow."  Rommie handed Harper the flexie she'd held behind her back.  "Some notions for rebuilding Command. I never liked that configuration, and here are some of the changes the High Guard was thinking about.  I thought you'd like to go over them and decide what you want to do."  _And this should keep you busy enough you won't think about committing suicide again,_ she thought.

"Yeah, great."  Harper tabbed through the flexie's data.  "Wow.  They really had some great ideas.  Be hard to pick and choose."

"Oh, I'm confident you'll make the right choices, Harper .... So, who was she?"

"Who?"

"The female who's supposedly prettier than me?"

Harper was suddenly defensive.  "I, uh -- well -- that is, uhhhh --- "

"C'mon!  Spill it.  Who was she?  Or don't you want access to my VR matrix anymore?"

"Since you put it that way, uhhhmmmmm, it was your sister."

"Pax Magellanic!?"

"Well, Jill Pierce -- we didn't know she was Pax' avatar -- but yeah, she was hot."

"Hotter than me?  Pax Magellanic was 'hotter' than me?"

"Well, I uhhhh, yeah, she was.  Just.  Just barely.  Maybe one degree hotter.  Barely noticecable.  Now that I think about it, it's probably a tie.  You might even be hotter after all.  I never went for those tall, blonde, leggy types anyway."

"Oh, I see."

"Besides, you know I only have eyes for you, Rom Doll."

"You'd better, Harper."  Now Rommie flashed her own evil, playful smile.  "Unless you want to smell burnt flesh again."

They laughed and continued on their way together.


THE END


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