SquidgeWorld Archive

Tyr found Harper drinking in the Officer's Mess. "What?" Harper asked as he sat with his feet up on the table. "You heard about Lyra playing me and needed to find me to get a good laugh?"

Tyr sat across from him. "No. I'm wondering how a people known for dire punishments for lying could lie to us so convincingly. You would think that they'd have no practice in it and thus no facility. I don't believe the 'vacation' hypothesis."

Harper saluted Tyr with his bottle. "Join the club."

"Our captain may find it amusing, but I dislike the idea of any member of our crew being used for amusement."

"Listen to you using all the right words. When I'm king of the galaxy, you'll get to live."

"I'm inclined to think that I'll achieve that throne before you would."

"Don't write me off so fast. I'm sneaky."

"True," Tyr answered. Harper had stealthily taken a DNA sample from Able Ladrone with commendable ease. That he'd done so just from sheer paranoia, having no reason to suspect anything about Ladrone's DNA, only made the move that much more praiseworthy.

"I didn't even get a kiss out of Lyra. Beka's guys may screw her over 98% of the time, but at least she gets some jollies before they knife her in the back."

This could be a good opportunity to learn more about Captain Valentine's proclivities, considering that this time they'd put the Andromeda and an entire planet at risk. The mating drive might be a powerful urge, but he didn't appreciate it putting him in danger.

"I've noticed a certain theme in her choice of partners."

"You mean that they tend to be good-looking, built, rugged, sleazy, and totally untrustworthy bad boys? Congratulations, you have eyes. You were a partial exception. You're not sleazy."

"Am I totally untrustworthy?"

Harper smiled at him.

Tyr smiled a little back. "Thank you."

Harper shook his head. "She went out into terra incognita on even me this time. I mean, yeah, with Beka you have to understand that the cute, thieving, lying friends who are sponging off her sometimes take precedence over the real ones, but she fucking turned a gun on us and left us to deal with Technocore. At least Able wasn't as bad as some of them. He seemed to actually care about her a bit. Maybe that's why it took her years to finally hook up with him. Wonder when she saw him since she met me, since he knew something about me." Harper sneered, "'You should know that the universe is not by nature an equitable distributor of good health and good fortune.' What do you know about that, Mr. Smooth? But you don't wanna hear this, do ya, Tyr?"

"If you need to talk...."

"Don't play a player. You know I'm sloshed and wanna hear what you might find out."

"Is that a problem?"

"Not really. So, you wanna hear about Beka's taste in men? Any reasons why aside from how her thing with this guy almost got a lot of people blown to hell, us included, and nearly started a major diplomatic incident?"

"Aren't those reasons enough?"

"Okay." Harper tapped his fingers on his thigh. "Damn, when the hell did she meet up with Able again? We might not be welded together at the hip, but--"

"Harper."

"Yeah, fine. Better enjoy this, because you can't get me to talk shit about Beka very often."

"Understood."

"You didn't get to actually meet Bobby face to face, though you saw his work. Not that he was all Bobby at that point. He should've shot the guy who put his cyborg stuff together for him, 'cause, wow, was that a shit job. Then again, he probably did.

"Bobby's the first one I know of. I knew he'd use me for what I knew and toss me away afterward, but chances to get off Earth didn't come along every day, so I jumped. Fortunately for me, the bastard was screwing Beka over on that run, and I made her aware of it. Secured myself a berth and got his ass kicked off." Harper's face turned somber. "Though he kept coming back every once in a while and Beka fell for him every freaking time. It hurt to watch.

"Beka has scumdar. She's so beautiful and fierce and together, but she goes for these assholes who want to run her life and don't appreciate her. I love her, but I swear...." Harper took a long drink. "She doesn't always fall for scum, but she seems to prefer them. A lot of them weren't much of a problem, since they were flings or station stopovers, about the usual for people in our line of work. I mean, Beka's favorite brand of scum isn't big on the patience and work ethic necessary to deal with the boredom and hard labor involved in long distance shipping and salvage. Some of them, though, got proprietary. They thought they owned the Maru. They thought they owned us. They knew they wouldn't last if they walloped Beka but figured it would be fine if they smacked her little engineer around."

"They hit you?"

"Sometimes they succeeded, sometimes not. I'm not known for my ability to keep my mouth shut and my head down, you know? Little guys who don't know their place piss that type off. And they didn't always realize that Beka usually didn't believe me when I told her about the shit going on. She passed it off as jealousy and me misunderstanding poor Dick Studly or whatever. Rev told me to pray for and forgive them." Harper's gaze turned flat and opaque. "Something needed to be done, and I would do anything to protect a friend, even if it's from herself."

Tyr leaned forward. "Such as?"

"It's amazing how often their sleazy pasts caught up with them. The law found them and took 'em in. Sometimes they died resisting arrest. Loansharks and old partners tracked them down and shanked them. One guy keeled over dead in a bar after a few sips of his drink. Nobody knows what happened there. Some of them had accidents. One guy...." Harper ran his finger in circles over the rim of the bottleneck. "He was like a hard-on with feet, like the rest of his body was just a transport system for his dick. Beka's a lusty girl, so she didn't mind at all, but sometimes she had important things to do instead, like piloting and closing deals. He thought I might do in a pinch. It wasn't like he was gonna try to take Rev."

Harper's face looked harder, sharper, colder, and older. Tyr had briefly caught flashes of this face before.

"What happened?"

"I let him think I was too scared to fight, then fought when he least expected it. He definitely deserved his accident. Trying to crack the codes so he could take control of the Maru when he wanted? Uncool. Beka didn't mind that he was fatally electrocuted in the attempt. The burns were really bad...."

"She never blamed you for any of the incidents?"

Harper shrugged. "Live by your thieving, lying wits, and you often die by them. The game has lots of casualties. Beka knows that. For the really bad ones, she'd say she was glad she found out now instead of later, since it hurt less this way." He finished his Weissbrau off in one last, long swallow. "Able seems to be an okay guy, considering. Plus, he didn't intend to stick around."

"Thus, he's allowed to live."

"Yep."

While a Nietzschean would consider Harper's actions in those instances to be logical and correct, mere humans would have a different opinion. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Maybe I'm more sloshed than I thought. Maybe having people backing me up this time makes me feel more comfortable. It's rough being alone. Maybe having Beka turn a gun on me and look at me like I was shit for not understanding why she had to screw us over left me a bit unbalanced and pissed at her. Maybe I'm bitter over how much love sucks. Maybe I thought you would understand." Harper tossed his bottle into the recycler, then stood and stretched. "Maybe you called me 'boy' and 'child' a few too many times recently, even if you do say it with something that's almost affection."

"Drowning your sorrows?" Beka asked from the doorway.

Harper transformed. His face softened into a bright, adoring expression that made him look younger again. "It's not every day I meet a girl who uses lines as bad as mine and immediately takes off one-third of her top. How was I supposed to know that she would be so fickle?"

"Unlucky in love."

"You know it. Not that she could hold a candle to you, boss, but I get tired of saving myself for you."

"I've forgiven you."

"You won't kill me?"

"Nope. I know why you and Dylan faked Able's death and why you didn't tell me. They were good ideas, and they worked."

"Whew! Thanks."

"I still don't forgive you for sampling his DNA."

"What? C'mon!" Harper whined. "I was just curious. That curiosity has led to me thinking up stuff that's saved our bacon in the past. I bet you kissed and made up with Able before he left."

She smiled. "Maybe."

"You like scoundrels!"

"Goodbye, Harper," she said as she walked away.

Watching her go, Harper muttered, "I have no luck with women at all."

Unable to resist, Tyr said, "Perhaps, then, you should try men."

Harper looked comically surprised with his mouth gaping like that. "Say what?"

"I think you heard me."

But as Tyr passed him, Harper asked, "Was that an offer?" Then he shook his head. "Yeah, really. Never mind me."

Tyr hadn't expected him to recover his wits so quickly, but Harper often surprised him. He knew he had to make a decision immediately. "Perhaps for a time when you're less sloshed."

Harper's face brightened again. "Yeah? I'll keep that in mind. When I'm king of the galaxy, you can be my consort."

"Only your consort?"

"Hey, I didn't know how you'd react if I said I'd make you my queen."