Harper's Girl
By ElJay
1445 Ship's Time
"I am not!" The hologram's voice was strident with indignation. She folded her arms across her chest and tossed her head in complete disbelief of the vile accusation.
"You are so! If you don't believe me, ask Tyr; trust me, you'll get an ear-full." Beka was laughing as she said it, but the truth was out and in her opinion, it was high time.
"I am not spoiled! I am a highly sophisticated AI; my systems are very delicate and require precise maintenance to remain in optimum working order. Shoddy workmanship and mishandling are simply not acceptable. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to run a self diagnostic and see if I can't repair some of the damage." With another toss of her head, she disappeared in a burst of scan lines and a flash of light.
She was replaced by an image on the central monitor, who looked over at Beka with a knowing gaze before adding her two credit's worth to the argument.
"She has a point, you know. The emitter alignment is still off by 0.0583 percent. And that's after three hours of his manhandling. I almost wish we had waited for Harper. Are you sure he can't be reached?" Andromeda allowed just a hint of a whine to enter her vocal program; it was undignified, but it often worked with organic beings. At this point, anything was worth a try.
"No! Absolutely not! Harper is on a well deserved vacation. I am not going to let you ruin it by calling him back here just to realign your emitters. And don't you dare go whining to Dylan or I'll tell him just exactly why gravity controls went off line during his run this morning. Three hundred years old, and still throwing tantrums! Honestly, I don't know how Harper puts up with it some days."
Beka had the bit in her teeth now, and she was off and running. Andromeda tuned out after the crack about tantrums, but the XO continued unabated. Tyr wandered in as she was muttering something about 'workmanship' and 'I'll give you something to mishandle.'
His eyebrow rose at the vivid and colorful euphemisms employed by the freighter captain. He was also quite astonished at the range of hues that were cascading through the woman's hair. He'd never seen anyone lose control of their nanobots in such a spectacular fashion, but the term shoddy work caught and held his attention. He interrupted Beka's flow of invective with softly spoken question of his own.
"Shoddy? Do my ears deceive me? Is the diva of the destroyer fleet claiming my repairs are substandard? Fine. In that case, I'm taking the rest of the day off. If our illustrious leader wants the rest of these repairs done, he can wait for the little professor or he can do them himself." Tyr flung himself into the slipchair and threw one leather-clad leg over the arm.
"Uhm, Tyr ... that might not be exactly pro-survival if the fertilizer really hits the ventilator," Beka said with some concern.
"Captain Valentine, if anything life-threatening arises, I will do my utmost to ensure our survival, but I will not spend another hour on those emitters. They are redundant systems in any case, and I refuse to waste any further time on them."
* * *
The next day
"He what?" Dylan Hunt pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and sighed. It had been such a quiet morning, too. Now ... now, he was counting the hours until his engineer came back off leave.
"You heard me. He refused, point blank, to finish the repairs to my emitter array." Rommie was seething with anger. Dylan had never seen her quite this upset, even after the flame-job some drunken repair tech had pulled at Bangor Drift.
He had to try to smooth things over, before this got any worse. He smiled understandingly and placed a soothing hand on the avatar's shoulder. He reached for his best fatherly tones and dusted them off as he went into counselor mode.
"Rommie, it's not that bad. It's not like the emitter array is a combat-critical system. I think it would be best to wait until Mr. Harper comes back to finish the alignment. No one can tell anything is wrong."
"But Captain, they're off by such a huge amount. The image quality is marginal at best and the scan lines distort everything. It's most unpleasant. Please? It's not like we ask for much."
There was a definite edge of petulance in those final words. Dylan sighed again. This was getting ridiculous.
"I said you should wait. Now have I made myself clear, or do I need to say it to you as you sit in the brig? You are dismissed."
"Aye, Captain." She snapped to attention, barked the acknowledgment, saluted and left his office without another word of complaint.
Dylan very carefully did not hear her when she said, "Harper would have fixed me."
Not surprisingly, dinner was burned that night, the environmental controls were on the fritz, and all the showers ran cold for the next day.
* * *
Two days later, 0130 Ship's Time
"Hey Rom-Doll, didja miss me? What the ... Rommie, who hacked up your holographic emitters? Ya got scan lines all through your face, the image is distorted and it's flickering so bad, you look like you've got stuff stuck in your teeth. Geez Louise, let me put my gear away 'n I'll be right back to get ya all fixed up."
The End
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