Work Text:
"You have to help me, Beka!" Harper whispered. "My eyes are closed, and I can't get them open again!"
"If you make me laugh, so help me I'll kill you," she whispered back. "And stop fidgeting."
That only made him fidget more. "This suit was made for me. Why the hell is it binding in so many places?"
"Maybe some people aren't meant for formal wear."
"That would be me."
"And me." Though Beka looked pretty good in her black almost-dress. It may have looked like the bastard child of an evening gown and a bodysuit, but it worked for her.
Dylan glared at them. Harper managed to resist the urge to make a face back.
They stood side by side with Trance and Tyr as representative 3,256 gave a speech about what a great honor it was to give the famed Andromeda Ascendant, flagship of the new Commonwealth, a full complement at last blah blah blah. As if something had been wrong with its current complement. Yeah, they could use more help running a starship originally designed for 4,000 people, but Harper hated the idea of bringing strangers on board and figured that they should be the ones who got to pick who served with them, not some stuffed shirt who didn't even know them.
New crew fresh from the Academy. That should be hell.
The representative droned on.
Harper paced down the corridor a bit, knowing full well how stupid this was. He'd been here first. What they thought of him made no difference... though he'd worn dark, sober colors for this first impression anyway even if there was no way he'd turn into a starched shirt.
But they had to respect him.
They would, or they'd be out on their keisters so fast their spit-shined heads would spin.
Harper took a deep breath and walked into Engineering, where his subordinates waited. Subordinates. Who would have thought he'd ever get subordinates? Dressed in their uniforms, standing ramrod straight, they all looked like they had sticks shoved up their asses, but not as badly as the newbies in the other divisions. For instance, he pitied Beka from what he saw of the fill-in bridge folks and the fighter jocks. If he couldn't loosen his people up more, this would be miserable.
He stood in front of them and set his attitude controls to stun. "I'm Seamus Harper, head of the Andromeda Ascendant's engineering section and all-around ship fix-it man. You can call me Harper. After Captain Hunt, I'm your boss. Odds are good that you'll take orders from me far more often than you will from him. I'm pretty informal. I mean, obviously. You can be as formal or informal as you like to me, but I'm your boss. I don't wear a uniform or have a High Guard rank, I didn't go to an academy of any kind, and I can be irreverent as hell. If you know you're gonna have a problem taking orders from me, we'll transfer you. You can talk to me privately after this. No harm, no foul. We don't want to find out that you can't follow my commands while we're getting shot at, something that happens often here." Okay, talking way too fast. Harper started to consciously slow himself a little.
"You should also be ready to take direction from Captain Valentine, Tyr Anasazi, and Trance Gemini, depending on the situation, even though none of them are High Guard either. You probably knew that coming in, but I want to be sure.
"Moving along. I know you've all studied the Andromeda's specs as a circa-original Commonwealth Glorious Heritage class ship, which is great, but only half the story. You'll have to study my private stuff--well, formerly private stuff, since they're now on Engineering's public files in Andromeda's systems--because I've modified some things."
"You departed from the specs?" one tall, blondish man asked in horror, then colored a little as everyone stared at him.
"Yeah. Doing it by the book is great when you have the time and parts and no one shooting at you, but here you improvise when you have to. We didn't have government funding until recently, and competition for the remaining Commonwealth ship parts was fierce. Things may be different now, but you'll be running into my improvisations for some time to come. Plus, I made some improvements."
They stared at him, intent, focused only on him. Kind of freaky. They all looked so young, even the ones older than him, and spit-polished. Come on, there had been a 300-year Long Night. The High Guard couldn't find anybody who'd looked like they'd done what most people had to do to survive in that time?
"You can ask me stuff if you want to. I'm pretty approachable most of the time. When I'm not, believe me, I'll let you know.
"You wouldn't be here if you weren't the best, and I'm looking forward to working with you. I took care of the ship alone for two and a half years, so I'm glad to have a crew." What now? Oh yeah. "Meeting over."
They picked up the order details he'd worked out for them and trooped off in various directions. No one approached him to ask for a transfer. That had to be a good sign, right? Or they would put up with anything for a chance to serve on the flagship. Harper watched all the unfamiliar people walking around his area and stifled a sigh.
"Sir, I found a number of things that don't work according to the specs." It was Renfield, the guy who'd objected during the orientation.
Harper so hated staring up at people, especially when they were wrong. "I told you about that."
"I think they'd go better if done by the rules."
Harper took the flexi from him. "Okay, this thing here? This system? If you tried to run it by spec with my modification, you'll lose 15% efficiency. As it is now, it's 10% more efficient than the original model."
He almost deflated as he blushed. "Oh."
"Maybe you should study my work more before you start telling me it's wrong."
"Yes, sir." And he fled.
"That guy's gonna turn me gray," Harper muttered to himself.
"Sir, AP tank 3 is showing some abnormal readings," a guy--Gritschuk? Who named these people?--rushed up to him and said.
"But it's all good now, right?" Harper asked.
"Sir, it's not my department."
Oh my lord. "You noticed the problem and left it?"
"Uh."
"Do you know how to fix an AP tank? Or is it that you want me to do it? 'Cause I can, but that sorta ruins the whole frigging idea of having more engineering crew."
"No, sir! I'll do it, sir!" Gritschuk started to run.
"Hey!" Harper shouted to him. "Next time this happens, you tell me about it as you're fixing it, got it?"
"Yes, sir!"
Great. Another necessary meeting.
"You're probably wondering why I called you together," Harper said, trying to keep his slow boil under wraps. What did they have crew for? "Well, somebody found a problem in the AP tanks, and it wasn't even his assignment." The section that had that duty today stood straighter and looked nervous. "Somebody got careless, and we don't want that to happen. So bad you, and good catch for him. But instead of immediately fixing it, he went to me about it. It sounds like he thought I'd then send today's AP section to fix it. Wrong move. If it's important, you see it, and you can fix it, fix it immediately. You're all highly trained, so the odds of any of you running into something you're totally unfamiliar with are nil. You can tell me while you're fixing it. That's just dandy. But fix the damned thing. Thank you." He walked off without looking back, hearing the soft, anxious murmuring behind him as he left.
"You really want me to call you 'Skeeter'?" Harper asked her.
"Sure. It's a tradition," Desporte answered.
She had three perfectly serviceable names in "Lilane," "Jiang," and "Desporte," but she preferred to be called "Skeeter"? As in "mosquito"? No accounting for taste, but.... "Hey, whatever makes you happy."
She smiled. Beautiful and an electronics wiz. No way that blonde was real, but Harper liked a bit of artifice. It was a damned shame that he couldn't ask her out. He couldn't put her in the position of possibly having to turn down her boss, and if she said yes he'd wonder if she did it because he was her boss.
Responsibility sucked.
At least Dylan didn't seem to be poaching the lovely ladies of Engineering. Harper would have been forced to give him a stern talking to about abuse of power otherwise.
"You're from a Drift," Harper said. "How do you know what a 'skeeter' is?"
"Oh, I don't. It's just a tradition."
Well. That explained it.
"I've been here for months, but I still haven't seen Captain Hunt up close," Equiazabel said.
"You saw him when we first got the assignment," Meghoo answered, bored.
"That wasn't up close! Besides, everyone got to see him then."
"Oh, so it's like that."
She directed a sour look in his direction.
"Don't feel so bad. I don't get to see him up close that much either lately," Harper said from behind her, then walked on.
Once she unfroze in shock, she smacked Meghoo's arm. "Why didn't you warn me that Chief Engineer Harper was there?"
"Why would I do that?"
What happened to Engineering? "What the hell did you do?"
"We neatened it, Mr. Harper," one of the Perseid newbies said. The small group of newbies that had been smiling behind him now looked more uncertain.
"Neatened it. Where is everything?" The area looked barren. Empty. Wrong. "I knew where everything was before. I could whip it out in seconds. What am I supposed to do now?"
"We have a diagram that shows the location of everything."
"Why would I want to study a diagram when I knew where everything used to be and was happy with it? Where did you find the time for this? Are you bored? Do I have to give you more work?"
"No, sir!" one of the human guys--Meghoo, maybe--said quickly.
"I hope you realize that everything will end up pretty much the way it was before."
"Oh," the Perseid said.
Harper had to go kill somebody. Maybe he'd start with Dylan. "If we die in an attack because I can't find anything, I will haunt all of you, and I have a flair for sadism."
Harper sprawled in one of the chairs in Dylan's ready room and tried not to pull out his hair. "I have to bitch, Dylan. If I don't, I'll explode, and nobody needs messy little Harper pieces littering the decks."
Dylan smiled his "let's everybody be calm and reasonable" smile. "What's the problem?"
"My so-called subordinates. They're making me nuts. I know we can't send them back... but can we send them back? They need to be frigging micromanaged. I waste so much time planning their work schedules when I can actually be doing work. They cleaned up my organized workspace. They need an engraved invitation to do anything that's one step away from their duty. All day it's 'sir' this and 'sir' that. This one guy in particular seems nice, but he's working my last nerve! And it's freaking me out having the ship part-full of people. Sometimes they're there, and sometimes the ship seems nearly empty again. And don't try to needle me about my overactive imagination, because my 'ghost' turned out to be real even if he was an AI instead of a ghost. I'm sensitive. It keeps me alive."
Dylan seemed to be struggling not to smile. The bastard. "We can't send them back."
Harper sighed. "I know that. I'm just wishing out loud."
Dylan folded his hands in front of him, taking on the "voice of wisdom and calm experience, seated" position. "Harper, this is what leadership is about. Delegation and responsibility."
Lectures. Self-importance. "And wondering why everyone is so stupid."
"There are aspects of that."
"Not that the Maru crew was ever stupid. Nope. We were a bright, lively, whip-smart group of people."
Dylan smiled. "Don't push it."
"Was the 'lively' thing was overdoing it a bit? Nah, we are lively."
"It will get better when you get used to them and they get used to you."
"And after I've rubbed some of the spit-polish shininess off 'em. They're so... High Guard."
"What's wrong with that?"
Harper smiled sweetly. "We're still working on you, though we've made good progress."
Dylan gave him a fake sweet look back. "Feel better?"
"Nah. But maybe I've made you worry about what I might do to them, and that made this bitchfest worthwhile."
"I think you're doing a good job as head of Engineering."
"And of making you worry? Aw, boss, I'll blush, and then I'll lose that pit bull rep I've gotten amongst my people."
"Your people?" Dylan sounded amused. More amused.
"Leaving now."
"Do you think he'll send all of us back?" Rennie asked as he sat on his bed. "He was really ticked off."
"It's not his decision," Meghoo answered. "He's just the head of Engineering, not the captain."
"Things'll get better once we stop stepping on his toes. We all have to get used to each other," Skeeter said. "He's just different from what we're used to."
"You're the voice of wisdom?" Meghoo asked with a smirk.
"I'm the voice of somebody who actually followed the press clips for the Andromeda Ascendant before landing the assignment, numbnuts."
"Meghoo, you don't know anything about Harper?" Rennie asked, surprised.
"He's not my pretend boyfriend like he is for some people," Meghoo snapped back. "The Andromeda Ascendant is the plum assignment, and that's all I had to know."
Skeeter shook her head. Meghoo was kind of almost a friend of hers, but she knew he could be an ass, especially to Renfield. Whoever assigned these two to a room together....
But Renfield wasn't backing down. "He's from Earth. Do you have any idea of what kind of work it must have taken and genius he must have to come from such disadvantaged beginnings and land the position of chief engineer on the new Commonwealth's flagship?"
"He was lucky."
"Oh, like hell!"
Whoa. Skeeter sat down on Meghoo's bed to better enjoy the show.
Meghoo, taken aback a bit, said, "Okay, he has talent and brains. But sheer luck put him on the salvage ship that found the Andromeda Ascendant."
"If he hadn't been good, do you think the crew of the Andromeda Ascendant would still be alive and the ship would still exist? They put their lives on the line almost daily."
"All right. Point."
"Thank you."
Skeeter said, "Our problems are a cultural thing. The Long Night fell hardest on the slave worlds."
"Duh," Meghoo replied.
She glared at him. "Harper comes from a culture of doing what needs to be done when it needs to be done, no matter what you have to do. He only follows rules if he can see how they're useful." She cast a sly glance at Rennie. "If somebody would stop quoting the regs book at him, it would help."
Rennie blushed. "I know. I know. I can't seem to help myself."
"Maybe we should invite him to have a beer with us sometime. Okay, maybe a beer with me and Rennie, since you seem to think he's just lucky."
"Skeet, he's our CO, even if he isn't an officer!" Meghoo said.
"So? I think it might brighten his day."
"That might help, actually. Stop him from snapping at us so often. How the hell did one little man do all of this work?"
"You've seen how much coffee and Sparky he drinks."
"Still! He won't even let us work on that junkpile of a salvage ship. He worked two whole ships by himself. During that fiasco with the space maggots and insane AI, he still worked both ships just about by himself."
Skeeter smiled as she remembered the music that had thundered on a continuous loop through the ship while Harper had worked. Their boss had been so stressed in dealing with them that until then he hadn't shown them the side that enjoyed cheesy oldies. "I think he worked them alone on Captain Hunt's orders, though why the captain did that, I don't know."
"The captain must have great respect for his abilities," Rennie answered.
"Or he's so used to making one guy jump around to do his engineering bidding that he didn't think to call on the rest of us, and Harper took the order to do it himself more literally than usual," Meghoo said.
"Meghoo, if Harper had any idea that you think the Eureka Maru is a junkpile, I'm sure he'd feel justified in keeping you far away from it."
Meghoo sneered. "He is so your pretend boyfriend."
"Shut up until you can come up with a better rebuttal."
Go Rennie!
"You're drinking on duty?" Renfield asked. Of course. Only Renfield would crawl into a conduit after him to critique his level of sobriety.
Harper put down his Weisbrau and his wrench. "Come over here and I'll show you how steady my hands are."
Renfield blushed. "Sorry, sir. That was presumptuous of me."
It was like kicking a puppy. "Come over here. I won't smack you."
Renfield sat next to him. "Yes, sir."
Would this kid do anything he told him to? And he shouldn't call him a "kid," not when Renfield was two years older than he was. "Did I ever do you wrong?"
"Sir?"
"Sleep with your sister? Kill your dad?"
"No!"
"Then why do you keep busting my hump?"
"I'm not! Sir, I respect you thoroughly! It's a great honor to serve with you." Renfield looked down. "My family kept the traditions through the Long Night."
"You guys kept the Light on?" For 300 years?
"What? Oh." He smiled a little. "Yeah. You could say that. So it's a great honor to be on the new Commonwealth's flagship and in your division."
"Why me?"
"I've followed the press on the Andromeda's crew, and your story especially caught my interest. You're self-made."
Harper had to ask. "What does the press have to say about me?"
"Not as much as they should. I think that they don't want to offend any Nietzscheans."
"Oh, yeah, those despotic types are so sensitive."
"But I've chased down what I can. I've been trying to impress you but I keep tripping on my own tongue. It's a pleasure to serve under you-- with you, sir. Uhm."
The guy really was like a gawky puppy. "Would it kill you to call me 'Harper'?"
"Uh, no. I don't think so, sir."
"Harper."
"Harper, sir."
Harper shook his head. "Get on with you. For the future, if you can think carefully about whether the regulation really is better than my way before you bring it to my attention, we're good."
Renfield nodded intensely, then got up and walked away. Harper shook his head. His division actually depressed him, because he wanted to warm to them but they wouldn't let him. They kept putting distance between themselves and him.
Harper had his ideas of what you did for bosses. During the crunch time you obeyed orders, maybe offering suggestions for something better where necessary and possible, but the rest of the time you ate and drank and bantered and played with them. You poked them if they started to get too self-important and made them laugh when they got too down. You commiserated over breakups and helped dream up horrible revenges involving Magog larvae, nanowelders, and castration on their deadbeat ex-boyfriends.
When he'd walked into the rec area yesterday to be friendly, everyone had stopped dead and gone stiff, and nothing he did or said had loosened them up. Finally he left. He never thought a High Guard command would be the equivalent of leprosy.
Harper tapped the board. "Okay, you've checked the power, replaced all the faulty circuits you can find, and recalibrated, but you still aren't getting anywhere. Thing won't work. What else can you do?"
"Punch it where it will do the most good, sir?" Renfield asked. The whole group let out a surprised breath.
Harper grinned. "Yep. It's worth a shot, anyway."
"Harper corrupted Rennie!" Skeeter whispered to Meghoo.
"It's about time someone did," Meghoo whispered back. "But if Rennie bends over and gets preferment, I'm gonna be pissed."
Skeeter elbowed him so hard that he nearly crumpled over.
"But you have to be particular where you hit it," Harper continued. "Consider how the system works and where the best spot to smack it would be...."
Later on, Rennie passed by Skeeter and whispered, "He likes Neubayern Weisbrau."
"How did you find that out?"
"I saw him drinking it." Then he got her point and gave her a dirty look. "It wasn't like that!"
"If only it had been like that."
Once the meeting finished, Skeeter walked up to Harper and said, "We'd like to buy you a drink. All of us would."
Harper smiled. "Everybody?" Kind of them. Or they were trying to ingratiate themselves.
"Whole engineering section, yeah. As a bonding experience."
"You realize that if we're all gonna be socializing, we have to get clearance first."
She looked surprised. "Damn! I didn't think of that. You're such a law unto yourself."
"I like to think so. Lemme ask, okay?"
"Sure! Let me know."
They were such... kids.
"...they wanna socialize and drink with me as a bonding thing, so I wanna let them. Of course, I immediately came to you before saying yes or no," Harper said as he sat in front of Dylan's desk. Always paid to let the captain think he or she was the be-all and end-all. They were so delicate in some ways.
Dylan smiled, while Andromeda's hologram "standing" behind him looked like she wanted to sigh. "I see," he said. "I want to help the bonding experience. It should be fine. Of course, you'll all go back to duty if an emergency comes up."
Got him. "Of course! We're engineers. We're not gonna let the ship blow up even if alcohol is beckoning."
"We?"
Yep, letting the captain feel superior definitely paid off. "Don't rub it in, okay?"
Skeeter smiled as she watched the gathering, since everything seemed to be going well. Harper had been so surprised and pleased when they'd handed him a Neubayern Weisbrau. Way to go, Rennie.
Captain Hunt showed up at the door. "I heard there was drinking here and didn't want to miss it."
When he heard the captain, Harper appeared to be part annoyed and part something else. "C'mon in, Dylan. We'll hand you a brew, and you can meet your groupies."
"I have groupies?" He didn't look surprised.
"Shit," Rennie said from behind her.
"What?"
"Look at Harper looking at Captain Hunt."
She didn't get it. "So?"
"Look."
Harper looked annoyed. Annoyed and-- Oh. "Hunt isn't looking back at him like that. You still have a chance."
"A chance against the originator of the new Commonwealth?"
"Did you ever get the feeling that Harper is as impressed by him and the new Commonwealth as we are?"
Rennie sighed, obviously unconvinced. "I have to do something to impress him."
"Maybe if you lounged naked on his bed? He'd be impressed by the nakedness and the fact that you got through his lock."
Rennie sighed again.
"Hey, look on the bright side," Skeeter said. "At least now you know he swings both ways."
"So if he turns me down, it would be because of me instead of disinterest in men."
"The glass really is half-empty for you all the time, isn't it? You have to proposition him before he can turn you down."
Rennie squeaked and skulked off. Skeeter sighed.
"They seem like a good bunch," Dylan said.
"Don't let 'em fool you. People always seem good when they're handing you drinks," Harper answered.
"Harper."
"Yeah, they're okay. Skeeter organized this."
"'Skeeter'? Does he know what that name means?"
"It's a she, and no. Lots of things got lost during the Long Night."
Dylan took on a vaguely melancholy look--oh, please don't let him be the type who got easily depressed while drinking--then asked, "Where's the nice one who works your nerves?"
"It's weird. He's made himself scarce for once. Can't miss him, though. Tall, blondish, broad-shouldered, nice ass." Shit, did he just say that? This was definitely his last Weisbrau. "Not that I'm harassing my division, even if it is filled with attractive people. They're all too puppyish for me anyway."
Dylan raised an eyebrow, then said, "I think I see him. There?"
"Yeah." And he looked like he was skulking and a bit depressed. Harper wondered why.
"He does have a nice ass."
Harper thanked God he hadn't been drinking anything at that moment. Dylan had noticed Renfield's ass? Dylan didn't notice men's asses unless they were Nietzschean, or so Harper had thought. This moment gave a whole new depressing spin on why he hadn't noticed Harper's.
"I think the party went well," Skeeter said. Clean-up duty sucked, but she sacrificed for the good of the team.
"Yeah," Rennie said. Sweet of him to help her.
"You're a universe away. What's going on?"
"I've decided what I can do for Harper."
"You'll finally tell him that you're into him?"
"No, that'll never work out. I'm going to give him Captain Hunt."
"You'll attack Captain Hunt, tie him up, and present him to Harper?" Nice image.
Rennie blushed. "Of course not! I'll just help Captain Hunt see that he wants Harper back, and then they'll be happy together, and I'll be content."
Oh, sure. "Are you out of your freaking mind? How can you be content while Harper's with someone else?"
"Because he'll be happy."
"You know, I've seen him checking out Tyr Anasazi's ass too."
Rennie paled but said, "Everyone checks out his ass."
"Not the way Harper does."
"I'm not listening."
"I think it's l--"
Rennie stuck his fingers in his ears and left the room. Skeeter knew she could be an evil bitch, but sometimes one needed to be cruel to be kind. She just hoped it did some good.
Damn, now she had to clean up alone.
Two days later, Rennie tossed himself onto Skeeter's bed and said, "Captain Hunt is completely oblivious! I want to hit him with something!"
She smiled. "That bad?"
"I can see why Harper hasn't made any headway. The captain is...." Rennie shook his head in frustration. "What can I do that Harper hasn't already done? If Hunt can't already see that his engineer is a genius willing to give him anything he asks for, professionally and personally, what can I do?"
"Probably nothing."
"Tyr Anasazi just growls at me when I approach him."
"Whoa, you tried to get Tyr for Harper? Damn, that's guts. Or stupidity." Rennie really was a sweet guy. Too bad he wasn't into girls. She had to help him out. "So you got guts. I say you tell Harper how you feel about him."
"Then he says no, and even the illusion that we could have had something is gone."
"You're that certain he'll say no."
He looked so sad. "Skeet, I've studied him from archival footage and in person. I know his type, and I'm not it."
"I am not giving you a choice."
"Yeah? What are you going to do?"
Harper was halfway done on the refittings. Now that they had a new Commonwealth making Glorious Heritage parts for them, he could put the actually designed parts in where before he'd jury-rigged what he could find. Of course, now he had to un-jury-rig the connections to fit the official stuff.
He kind of missed the challenge of making do.
"Harper?" Renfield asks as he approached, looking very uncomfortable in the small space. Being tall didn't always pay off, whereas being Harper-sized had its advantages.
"Yeah." At least he'd gotten the guy to stop sirring him all the time. Harper so wasn't a sir. "What can I do for you?"
Renfield briefly glanced back, as if someone waited somewhere behind him. "I have something personal I'd like to tell you."
Oh, this couldn't be good. "I'm not really the person for that, but sure."
"I don't know how to say this."
Getting worse by the second. "Is it something I'll have to punch you for?"
"I hope not."
"Will it be something where we'll both pretend that you never said anything afterwards?"
"Maybe. I... like you. I don't expect anything from you in return!" Though he obviously hoped for something.
Being the usual rejectee didn't make being the rejector any easier. "That's really flattering." And not totally unexpected, considering the looks and blushes. Renfield made him feel so old. He felt so bad about this. "But I can't date anyone I have command over." And Renfield was such a puppy. Harper would always be afraid of breaking him.
"And I'm not your type. I know."
That made it a tiny bit easier. "Yeah. I'm sorry. Did Skeeter put you up to saying something?"
"Uhm."
"I thought so." She was probably the thing Renfield had glanced back at. "Is this also why you've been talking to Dylan about me? 'Cause he asked me if I put you up to it."
From the disgusted look on Renfield's face, that wasn't it. "He's so... thick." Then he looked horrified. "I didn't mean that."
Harper smiled. "Sure you did, and he is. I won't tell."
"Good. Thank you, sir... Harper."
"Get on with you."
Renfield nodded and left. Harper wondered how people could reject him so easily when rejecting Renfield had made him feel so crappy.
When Rennie walked past her, Skeeter followed him back to his quarters. "I'm sorry, Rennie."
He looked miserable. "At least it hurt him to have to reject me. Wasn't that nice? Now we both feel like shit."
She felt like shit too. "I really thought you had a chance. I wouldn't have put you up to it otherwise."
"I know."
"What will you do now?"
"I figure I'll wallow for a while. I'll be fine. Don't worry about me. I'm sure that Harper won't treat me any differently now."
"I can't not worry."
"Some things can't be fixed. I need to be alone, Skeet."
That just sucked.
Three days later, Meghoo was still busting her hump over making Rennie confess to Harper. Then Nietzscheans had boarded the ship and taken hostages, and all hell had generally broken loose, which shut his mouth about Rennie's love life.
With the battle over, Engineering buzzed with rumors and suppositions. Tyr Anasazi had betrayed them and slipped a bit of sabotage into the ship that Engineering and Harper had missed. Skeeter figured that Rennie had to be even happier now that he hadn't set Harper up with Anasazi. The Nietzschean alliances had turned on them, united under someone they claimed was their messiah. Now Engineering had heard that most of the Commonwealth fleet had been destroyed. It might be the end of the Commonwealth itself.
When Harper returned to Engineering, Renfield said, "Harper will let us know what's going on. He looks good."
Which might be a sign of hope and not just Renfield pining over his lost love. Skeeter settled down to listen to what Harper had to say.
"Okay, everybody, speech time." Harper rubbed his hands together. "I know you guys are upset about the Commonwealth, but the Commonwealth isn't dead whether we find more surviving remnants of it or not. Hey, listen, okay? I know you think that the Commonwealth is a year old, but it's actually three years old, because it started when Captain Dylan Hunt came back and started to act as if it existed. That's the trick to it. The government may be a disaster, but the Commonwealth is in how you act and how you treat other people. It's alive in all of you, as long as you let it be. And our mission hasn't changed. Our responsibility is to this ship and to everybody who needs us."
Skeeter had to ask, "So, Harper, do you think the new Commonwealth failed because most of the members didn't act like they belonged to it?"
He smirked. "What do you think?"
Of course he did.
"I know that the new Commonwealth government assigned you to us, but this current sitch isn't what you signed up for," he continued. "Dylan will probably offer you the chance to leave if you want to."
Skeeter saw many of the people around her shaking their heads, so she said, "I think that most of us aren't going to leave."
"The Andromeda Ascendant is ours, and we are the Commonwealth," Rennie said. "We won't abandon our duty."
Skeeter watched as the whole division stepped forward to claim their loyalty. Harper smiled, and Rennie beamed to see him so happy.
"Then let's get back to work," Harper said.