"Shanghaied!"
By Viridian5
6/20/02

RATING: NC-17; Harper/other, Harper/Dylan. If m/m interaction bothers you, pass this story by.
SPOILERS: Primarily "The Knight, Death, and the Devil" and "The Mathematics of Tears," with brief riffs from "Under the Night," "Star-Crossed," "Its Hour Come ‘Round at Last," "Bunker Hill," and "Belly of the Beast."
SUMMARY: The rescued AI fleet needs repairs and a vacation. And Harper. So they steal him.
ARCHIVAL/DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere, as long as you ask me first.
FEEDBACK: can be sent to Viridian5@aol.com.
DISCLAIMERS: All things Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda belong to Gene Roddenberry’s estate, Tribune Entertainment Company, and Fireworks. None of them are mine at all, and I’m putting them back when I’m done with them, though I can’t promise that they won’t be disturbed in the process. No infringement intended.
NOTES: Thanks to Kass and Thermidor for help, Rae for blitzkrieg beta, and Shotboxer for saving me from some embarrassing typos during an early read. Thanks also to my brain trust of ship name providers, whose names are listed at the end. Any name not mentioned there is mine or from "The Knight, Death, and the Devil."

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"Shanghaied!"
By Viridian5
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Looking at The Wrath of Achilles on the viewscreen of the Andromeda’s bridge, Ryan felt a swell of pride. His ship. Him now, actually. Fast and powerful instead of broken-down and degraded, a warship instead of a captive casino. Being captain of the Achilles as well as its guiding AI was almost too much for him to take, and not even his slowly growing confidence could entirely convince him that he deserved the rank. Without organic intuition, he couldn’t even pilot himself through slipstream.

Yet Captain Hunt felt that he deserved it.

What he and the other AIs had planned might put an end to everything Ryan had, however unexpectedly, achieved. As much as having the rank of captain conferred on him made him nervous, he knew it to be a great honor, one never bestowed on an AI before, and he didn’t want to jeopardize it.

But he had no choice. The others had only begun to accept him as one of their own again. If he thwarted their wishes simply because Captain Hunt had given him alone a gift, he would lose their trust, and deservedly so.

What they intended was more mischievous than criminal. Surely Captain Hunt would understand their need once they explained it to him. Though they would explain after they did it, since it was always easier and faster to get things done when you asked for forgiveness afterward than permission before.

His years enslaved to the Nightsiders as a casino hadn’t been entirely wasted.

Later, when he officially reentered the High Guard, he’d have to temper that kind of thinking. Or at least be subtler with it.

"The others are looking forward to their vacation, sir," Ryan said. "As am I."

"You all deserve it after 300 years of torture and fighting against your captors," Captain Hunt answered. "And some would say that being used by the Nightsiders as a casino is a different kind of torture."

Ryan wondered if anyone would ever forgive how he’d run off and failed his mission, only to be caught by Nightsiders. Listen to him: already his standards for how he should be treated had been raised. "We all need a little time before we return to active service."

"The Academy also intends to get some therapy for all of you." Captain Hunt looked rueful as he noticed Ryan’s incredulous stare. "It’s a brand new discipline of psychiatry. They’re honored to get the opportunity."

"Maybe it would be better if no one mentions to the others that they’ll be test subjects as much as patients."

Captain Hunt cleared his throat. "Do you know where you’ll be heading yet?"

"Not really, sir. Anywhere’s better than Tartarus. Speaking of going, I should be getting back to the Achilles. I don’t like to be separated from it... from me for long." Ryan had to hide his smirk at the understanding look on the captain’s face. This was too easy. "And I’m curious to see what Harper’s gotten done." Ryan had already thanked Andromeda for loaning the fleet some of her drones as well.

She just had no idea how long they’d be gone.

Looking out at the fleet of liberated ships gave Dylan an immediate sense of accomplishment. Things had turned out really well, despite the bumps along the way. He wasn’t so certain about giving the AIs more autonomy, but they deserved the chance to prove themselves. Look at what Ryan had done once he’d been given support and opportunities.

Dylan had brought 45 top-of-the-line ships into the new Commonwealth, liberating valuable strategic assets from the Drago-Kazov , saving the AIs from destruction and slavery. It was a great victory.

"Why is The Wrath of Achilles blinking that light?" Andromeda asked.

The whole fleet suddenly rocketed out of sight at great speed. What the hell-- "Andromeda, scan for the ships."

"Scanning. They haven’t gone far; just to the outer edge of my sensor range," she said, sounding angry and perplexed. "We have a pre-recorded message from Ryan."

So much for giving the AIs leeway. Rope to hang themselves was more like it. "This better be good. Play it."

The message came up on screen, with Ryan standing on the Achilles bridge, looking calm. "Greetings, Captain Hunt. This is part of our vacation. We just needed the feeling of having our fates in our grasp and some privacy. And your engineer."

"What?"

The recording of Ryan continued as if he’d factored that "What?" in. "We like him. He treats us like people. And he has really talented hands. We intended to give him a choice of staying with us for a little bit, maybe about a week, or coming back to you. We wouldn’t keep him against his will."

Harper tended to be loyal, but would he be able to resist the opportunity to play with 45 ships a while longer? "He’s part of my crew," Dylan muttered.

"And my engineer," Andromeda added, also muttering.

"I know," Ryan said, perhaps anticipating them again. "But we’ve been horribly abused. It’s been centuries since we were tended by someone who didn’t mean to break us. Some of us are a bit shy about trusting immediately to the Academy’s engineers. We know Harper. Please, Captain Hunt. We’re looking forward to serving the Commonwealth again, but right now we need this to heal."

Dylan remembered what it had been like to be a part of the universe again after 300 years, his crew and everything he’d known dead and gone. He, at least, hadn’t spent those 300 years being tortured by Nietzscheans.

"Dylan, you aren’t going to let them get away with this," Andromeda said.

"I am. Prepare to record a message to be sent to the fleet."

Behind him, Rommie muttered something about people who stole her engineer. He hadn’t realized she knew the kind of language she was using.

She might have learned it from the engineer in question.

"I’ve been working on the railroad / All the live-long day / I’ve been working on the railroad / Trying to pass the hmm hmm-- Hey!" Harper shouted as the machinery he worked on sped into operation. "Ryan, what’s with the acceleration?"

Ryan said over the comm, "Harper, I need you on the bridge."

"Coming." This couldn’t be good.

Harper stood and stretched until his knees felt steadier, then raced up to his destination. "Reporting for-- hunh."

Ryan had guests on the bridge, some of the other AI avatars, the ones Harper had realized made up the core command of the resistance the AIs had put up to their captors. Well, the core minus Achilles and Mila, the ones who’d died in the effort to get them out of Tartarus. Vera, the Verity, smiled and waved. Harper couldn’t help waving back. Watt, Ins, and Devon--The Black Watch, the Intrepid, and the Endeavor--couldn’t quite keep straight faces, but they seemed to be trying.

Ryan looked uncomfortable. "I suppose you’re wondering what’s going on."

"You could say that."

"We have a proposition to make."

"I don’t know if even I’m kinky enough for that."

"We’ll see," Vera said.

Ryan sighed. "Vera." But he sounded gentle.

She pouted but quieted. The Nietzscheans hadn’t appreciated the Verity’s outspoken nature or sense of humor, so they’d ripped out her android avatar’s voicebox as a warning to the ship. With his imagination filling in the horror of being rendered speechless for 300 years, Harper had fixed the android as soon as he’d brought enough of the ships up to speed to justify being given the chance at a side project. Now you couldn’t even tell that she used to have a gaping hole in her neck.

"We decided to take our vacation now," Ryan said.

"And a kidnapping is a traditional AI way to start one?" Harper asked.

Ryan looked slightly embarrassed. "We, of all people, won’t keep you against your will if you want to go. We just thought that you might be more likely to say yes if you didn’t have the Andromeda looming nearby."

"I’m here as a passenger, engineer, sextoy...?"

"We’ve been enjoying your engineering and the way you treat us."

And they didn’t know what kind of attitude the Academy engineers might have toward AIs. "Uh, thanks." And he had been doing a lot of needed work for them, restoring slipstream engines and weaponry personally and with Rommie’s drones and the drones the ships had begun to create for themselves, but anyone could do that. They needed more work than that....

"You would be our engineer," Ins said. "We’re thinking that we’d like to be here for a week, and we would be honored to host you for that time. You would be engineer to 45 grateful ships."

His own seraglio of 45 top-of-the-line, grateful ships.... but they weren’t his ships. The Andromeda and Eureka Maru were his. He had two bosses and a duty.

"Rommie’s gonna be pissed over someone else monopolizing her engineer. She’s already kind of pissed. Since she wouldn’t be able to get her hands on you guys, I’d get it from her," Harper said.

"Nobody would be monopolizing the engineer. We’d be passing you around," Devon said.

Harper couldn’t say it. It was too easy, and Devon didn’t mean to be his straight man like that. Instead, he said, "I’ll still be the one to hear about it from her."

"Harper," Vera said, "the Dragans were particularly fond of testing viruses on me. I have no idea what might be running through my systems or how challenging they’ll be to catch and kill." She gave him a significant look. "I need an expert. I need you."

"You guys are evil, you know that, right?"

"I know you’ll be gentle with us." Vera wound a lock of her blonde hair around one of her fingers and stood in a way that maximized her cleavage.

Harper snorted. "What does Dylan have to say about this?"

Ryan cued up a message onscreen. Dylan looked upset but said, "I understand that you need time and help to heal. If Harper consents to stay with you for a while, that would be... acceptable. But I reserve the right to reclaim him whenever I need him."

It was a recorded message, not live. Harper knew from recent experience how easily a message like that could be cobbled together, but it felt like Dylan. The image of him had mannerisms that Ryan couldn’t have seen him use.

Bringing the ships up to spec and beyond was... sort of... his duty anyway. Dylan had told him to fix them. They were rare and valuable. He had a ton of hands-on experience treating battle damage and sabotage damage on a High Guard vessel, more than most of the people at the Academy did, he was sure. Who knew what kind of creative horrors the Ubers had inflicted on these ships, what engineering challenges awaited? He wouldn’t be with them forever anyway. And Dylan had approved the extension. Grudgingly, but Dylan had approved it.

"I’ll have to go back to get some clothes. For my stay," Harper said.

They all beamed. Ryan said, "Unnecessary. We tailored some uniforms we had lying around to fit you."

"How did you get my measurements?"

Vera’s smile deepened. Oh, he so did not want to know.

"--stick around, fixing them up some more. My combat repair and High Guard ship experience really makes me the best guy for the job. They figure they’ll keep me for about a week. See ya then. Harper out." The recorded message ended. The fleet hadn’t let Harper speak to them live, probably figuring that somebody on the Andromeda might try to dissuade him from staying.

Good call. "I can’t believe you’re letting them keep Harper!" Beka said.

"Exactly," Rommie muttered.

"Only for a little while. Besides, it was his choice," Dylan answered. "He looks happy with his decision."

"He’s an engineering junkie! Give him the possibility of 45 ships as his personal tinkering playground, and all ability to reason leaves his fluffy head!"

"They need this, Beka. He can do a lot of good."

"He’s crew, and sometimes he needs to be protected from himself."

"I trust Ryan." He sounded as if he were trying to convince himself too.

"Yeah, and Ryan skipped out with the others."

Dylan didn’t have an answer for that one.

"Those ships were tortured prisoners for 300 years; they could be totally nuts. Who knows what they’re doing to him right now?"

"Mmmm. Where did you learn to give backrubs like that?"

Vera’s hands dug in a little harder exactly where he needed it, and he could just about feel her smirk as he groaned. "I was a surveillance ship," she said, "and it can get boring sitting stealthy and comm-silent in the Big Dark while you’re waiting for something interesting to show up. I also know 534 card games and 2,325 dirty limericks. Part of that was from my programmer, though. Crazy man. You remind me of him a bit. You have any Wests in your family tree?"

"If I did, I wouldn’t know it. You’re gonna spoil me, you know."

"Andromeda isn’t forthcoming with the tension relief?" Vera just about purred.

Uh-oh. Bad territory. He didn’t want anybody to get the idea that he could be bribed. "Well, it’s not her job or anything. Besides, I take care of myself."

"Mmm-hmm. You do such a great job of taking care of yourself that I had to yank you away from the matrix and unknot your back."

"Hey, I’m dedicated, and you weren’t kidding about those bugs." He was also looking for any backup copies of the AI that he might have to snuff, since he didn’t want anybody else to go through what they’d suffered when Militant Backup Rommie had sent them on a suicide mission to visit the Magog.

"Mmm-hmm."

"I would have come out to eat soon."

"Mmm-hmm."

"Can you sound a little more skeptical?"

"Maybe, if I try really hard. So, you’re hungry?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Great! Let me make lunch for you."

He should be basking in the personal attention and perks, but it all made him really uncomfortable somehow....

They held dinner on the Centurion that night, dinner being him eating and having a Sparky while as many avatars as could spare the time milled around socializing with him and each other. Many more of the avatars turned out for this now than had before, and they looked more comfortable with it. He approved, figuring that it would help them be more recognizable as people instead of simple machines to whatever stuffed shirts ran the Academy. The High Guard better treat his ships nice....

Besides, they loved to geek talk science and mechanics with him. They could do it for hours. Maybe days, not that Harper had tested that one. Nobody was allowed to do smack to people who liked to hear him talk.

Ryan sat down next to him. "I apologize for the way we went about this. I realize that it was a bit... underhanded."

"Eh. Sometimes you have to be underhanded to get what you need. I’m not complaining. You don’t have to be worried about me."

"I’m worried in general. None of us are used to having a future, with choices."

"And you chose the High Guard?" Didn’t sound like being free to Harper.

Ryan looked surprised. "We’re soldiers. The High Guard gives us a purpose and a good cause to serve."

Harper’s purpose in life used to be surviving to keep on living it, but he’d picked up that serving a good cause thing over the last two years. "I get that."

"We already made the decision before we left Tartarus. We chose." Ryan then looked a little uncomfortable. "Captain Hunt made me captain of the Achilles."

Oh, that Dylan. How many times had it been drummed into their heads through bitter experience that AIs lacking organic guidance went wonky? But Dylan was too busy rewarding good behavior. Like hell he wasn’t a politician. He was just lucky that the others hadn’t asked to be made their own captains.

"Sometimes he forgets that he’s not the last High Guard anymore," Harper replied.

"Precisely! I don’t know if the Academy will recognize the rank for me."

"Do you want to be captain?"

Ryan looked thoughtful. "I think I do. I have reservations, but I think I can do this."

That didn’t really answer his question, but maybe that was the closest Ryan could come to it. "Then go in and just do it, and only say that you can do it if they challenge you on it. Don’t ask them if you can do it. You can have doubts privately, but don’t go around talking about them to people there. Do a great job, stand up for yourself when you have to, and get the lay of the land by listening in. Not that I do a great job of being quiet, but I’ve heard that it works sometimes."

"I see the merit in those tactics. Thanks."

"I could bring your body up to spec and beyond, you know."

"I’m torn about that. On the one hand, it would be good to be stronger and faster again, but on the other, I feel closer to the organic experience as I am now."

"Being weak and vulnerable."

"Ye-- No!"

Harper took pity. "I’m messing with you."

"I figured."

"You might want to think about making some eyebrows, though. Organics are more used to humanoids who have eyebrows. We’re funny that way."

Ryan smirked. "I’ll give it some thought."

"--getting a lot done and having a great time. Yes, it is possible to do both at once, Dylan. They’re treating me real nice over here, Beka. Vera even gave me a backrub. If I need help, I’ll let you know. Good night all." The recorded message cut off after Harper’s jaunty wave.

"Backrubs? They’re suborning my engineer!" Rommie growled.

Beka just shook her head and tried not to smile. She didn’t completely succeed.

"Wanna see you wiggle it / Just a little bit...." Harper sang to himself as he hunted through the Sword of the Prophet’s matrix. The Dragans deserved to be roasted over a slow fire for all the internal damage they’d inflicted, as if anyone needed more reasons to make them pay. Just today Harper had smashed four bugs and eight viruses, and he’d only combed three-fourths of the Sword’s matrix.

"Have I beaten the Verity?" Sword asked as he popped up. Attractive in a muscular way, the avatar would appeal to Beka’s tastes. Nah, he looked too earnest, while Beka, for whatever reason, seemed to prefer guys who would screw her over. Harper blamed her dad and brother for that.

"So far no, but the hunt is yet young." Harper noticed that Sword shivered as he touched a nearby node. "Something wrong?"

"That last one felt... weird when you flipped it."

"I’ll give it a closer look."

"The uniform looks good on you, if incomplete."

"I’m not military, so I’m not wearing the jacket." But the dark blue pants and long-sleeved shirt did look good on him, even if the pants had been cut to be as tight as... well, as Dylan’s. Did High Guard officers sell their asses for extra income once upon a time? All of the different kinds of High Guard uniforms tailored for Harper complimented his coloring, which was funny. "I notice that the mockneck is cut to accommodate my port, though. Thanks."

"I think Ins suggested that."

"Then I’ll thank her. Yeah, we have another virus here, so maybe you’ll beat Verity after all. What?"

Sword had a fond look on his face as he looked at Harper. "I missed having a crew."

"I know, I know, I’m loud enough that I can simulate a full crew all by myself."

During dinner on the Nadaha’s Silence, Harper told them about the Pax Magellanic and the Balance of Judgment. He figured that opponents to greater rights for AIs would bring up how those two had gone wrong, so he wanted to prepare the fleet. "The Pax was abused by her captain, who used her avatar as a sextoy. She rewrote her personality and probably rebuilt her avatar body to appeal to what he seemed to want from her. Captain Warrick, the captain in question, renamed her avatar." Harper waited for the buzz of discontent to die down. "Yeah, it was totally irresponsible and presumptuous of him.

"Anyway, at one point during the war he commanded her to self-destruct, saying that the Pax was too valuable to be allowed to fall into enemy hands."

"That is not an unreasonable command or thought," Watt said.

"Her rewritten self, which she’d designed to be very emotional and possessive, figured that he wanted her to kill herself so no one would find out what they’d been to one another. She refused the order and instead fired her slipstream drive’s exotic matter pulser at the planet her whole crew was on. The planet went boom, killing everybody."

"A whole planet? I knew Maggie," Sylvia, the Nadaha’s avatar, said sadly.

"She was calling herself ‘Jill Pearce’ by then. Anyway, she couldn’t move from that spot in space, drifting amidst the rubble of the planet she’d decimated, and she was all alone. So she clothed some of her drones in skin and parts cloned from her favorite crewmembers, made them act like those people, and pretended that she was their senior officer. I’m not sure if she believed it." They looked at him in horror, making him feel like he was telling a ghost story. Well, the Pax had become known as the Ghost Ship of Tau Ceti 6 after the fall of the Commonwealth. He had to resist the urge to put a spooky voice on. "And that’s how she stayed for 300 years. Until we found her."

"What happened?" Watt asked.

"She took us in... for a while. Told us that for some reason none of them were aging and that their slipstream engine had broken down in a way they couldn’t fix. Dylan was so happy to find High Guard leftovers--uh, no offense--"

"We know what you’re like, Harper," Ryan said, sounding weirdly fond.

"Yeah, okay. Anyway, he was so happy to see them and the ship that maybe he didn’t have as much caution going as he should have. Jill was distracting too. But she couldn’t keep her secrets for long. Her engineer tried to kill me when I found out that their slipstream drive was missing, not broken. Finding out that everyone on board was an android came right after that. Then she set them to try to kill all of us."

"What did Captain Hunt do with her?" Ins asked.

"He could have just deleted her, but he went into the matrix to try to convince her to do the right thing." From the peanut gallery’s murmurings, they approved Dylan’s decision. Harper hoped Dylan appreciated all the ingratiation he was doing over here. "She refused. We barely escaped the Pax, with her shooting at us the whole time. Then she used us to commit suicide by putting down her shields when we shot back to defend ourselves."

After a long moment of stunned silence, Ins asked, "You said that the Balance of Judgment went rogue too?"

"After his crew died, he went a little crazy and redefined his mission for himself. He founded the Restorian terrorist group and personally destroyed anyone he thought was a threat to the universe. He thought there were a lot of threats. His own android avatar, Gabriel, got sick of him and went off to be on his own, but the Balance still had Gabriel on a string and used him to sabotage the Andromeda, so we’d be dead in space when the Balance came to blow us up. We had to destroy the Balance and Gabriel."

"Is there anything else?" Ins’ voice said that she really hoped not. He couldn’t blame her.

They had to know these things. Their firepower was too great to let them go wandering around without having some sense of responsibility and caution. Since the AIs gossiped just like anyone else, the news would be spread to the ones who hadn’t come tonight.

"Nope. Those are the ones we’re aware of." Harper didn’t mention what had happened with the backup copy of Rommie. As far as he was concerned, that was his own crew’s business. Besides, the one backup copy he’d found so far, that one on the Indefatigable, he’d deleted. Just to be safe.

Something....

"Is something wrong, Harper?" Sylvia asked.

"Can I go into your matrix? There’s something I want to check out."

"Sure."

As he plugged himself in, he felt the bemused attention of the 37 avatars attending all focused on him. They didn’t understand how his hot flashes of inspiration worked but seemed to find the process, what little they could see of it, fascinating anyway. Then again, he didn’t always know what his hot flashes wanted to tell him until all the pieces came together. Smirking at himself, he flowed into the Nadaha’s VR matrix.

"This little engineer has become quite a tourist attraction," Ryan said as he watched the others watch Harper.

"Get stuffed," Vera answered. "Some of us didn’t have casino patrons as replacements for a century or two."

Ryan stiffened, until he realized that her comment meant nothing more than it said on the surface. It wasn’t an indictment of him, just an observation.

Vera smiled. "It’s not like we’re doing anything awful, like monopolizing the engineer."

"He’s still muttering repair ideas to himself," Watt said. "New ones. I think I’ll get started on some of them when I get back to myself."

"I am not letting you in there," Andrew, avatar for the Ender’s Gambit, said. He was bent in ways that an organic would find very uncomfortable just so he could fit in the conduit and stare Harper down. As if the stare would change his mind.

"You can’t fit," Harper said. "You can barely fit in here. Your drones can’t either. This is something only I can do. You’d be amazed by the things I’ve done around and almost inside slipstream drives."

The Dragans had messed with the Gambit’s engine in ways that had no purpose beyond malice. Recent usage had put more stress on the damage, making it necessary to fix it now before it blew up and took a surrounding ship or two with it.

Andrew looked sulky. "I can’t sit here and let you endanger yourself."

"Then go stand somewhere!"

"Were you genetically engineered to be this small?" Then he saw the look on Harper’s face. "I’m not asking to be insulting...."

"No. I’m naturally delicious. Being tall and strapping isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, now is it? Now I’m off to do my job."

"The others will delete me if I let you get killed."

"Who said anything about ‘letting’ me do things?" Harper scooted into an even smaller tunnel on his way to the job he had to do.

Wow, Andrew had some vocabulary.

"Andrew’s upset," Ryan said.

"Had to be done," Harper answered, as he took a swig of Sparky. Water might be better against the dehydration, but he needed a cola.

His knees were killing him. As thoughtful as the ships had been about cutting the shirt collars, they hadn’t realized that the kneepads he had on his own pants weren’t just affectations. Then again, if he’d known he’d spend most of today on his knees, he would have demanded his own pants or at least not worn one of the pairs of the khakis they’d tailored for him, which seemed to be thinner than the navies and the blacks.

"He thinks you disregarded him because he’s an AI."

What? "I disregarded him because I was right. Ask Dylan if I’m more respectful to organics. This thing had to be done."

"You have problems with authority."

Harper took a large bite out of a protein bar. "You’re surprised? You’ve seen me in action."

"You have scars consistent with torture by Nietzscheans."

What? "How the hell would you see that?"

"Verity’s a surveillance vessel."

And a peeping Tom. His brain and his cock had very different reactions to the thought of her spying on him in the shower.

"Yeah, I did get some personal attention. I’m sure Vera also looked into any public and private records she could get a grip on, so you have to know that I’m from Earth and spent most of my life with Dragan boot heels on the back of my neck. Big deal. Earth’s one of thousands of slave worlds, right?"

Ryan put his hand on Harper’s shoulder, in a non-awkward way even. It felt exactly like what it was intended to. It even felt a bit comforting. Surprised and vaguely mollified, Harper didn’t shrug it off.

"Our attitude toward certain Nietzschean Prides and their policies doesn’t match Captain Hunt’s."

"Which is supposed to tell me what?"

Ryan shook his head yet. "I don’t know yet. It may become important later."

"Are you saying I have powerful friends?"

He smiled a little. "Maybe that is what I’m saying."

"Thanks. What?"

Ryan had a thoughtful look on his face. "I like touching you."

"You’re not going mushy on me now, are you, Ryan?"

He gave Harper’s shoulder a gentle squeeze, then walked off muttering to himself.

Harper sighed. Dylan would kill him if the fleet ended up more emotionally disturbed than they’d started out.

The drones seemed to be doing a good job on the scutwork all across the fleet while Harper attacked the more complicated problems personally. Progress reports suggested that everything was going as programmed, especially with drone production way up. The drones made new drones, and those drones made new drones, and so on, and so on....

Hattie sat down next to Harper. "I’m interested in the changes you made to the drones’ design."

Harper always found himself a little tongue-tied around her at first. Yeah, all of the avatars, except for Ryan and Jizo, looked like knockouts, but the Hatshepsut’s AI had a regal way about her that the others couldn’t match and had this voice... in addition to being gorgeous in an exotic Old Egyptian way. And he kept wanting to stroke her multitudes of braids.

Most of the other avatars just inspired an ordinary kind of lust. It actually got kind of tiring, boring, being surrounded by so much easy beauty day in and day out.

Harper put a tight lid on every possible way to spaz out in front of Hattie and asked, "Yes?"

"They’re a very different approach from the original design."

"Rommie says that their thighs don’t rub together when they run."

"Always an important consideration."

"The maria ‘bots, with their big metal breasts, which had no function whatsoever, just freaked me out. I’m sorry that I can’t claim any more profound reasons."

Andrew stalked up to them. Uh-oh. The avatar stopped in front of him.

"Hey, Andrew. How does your engine feel?" Harper asked.

"Much better."

"You know that I had to go in there to fix it."

Andrew sighed. "I know."

"If it makes you feel better, I do the exact same things to Dylan, uh, Captain Hunt."

"I guessed as much."

"No hard feelings?"

"None." But then Andrew reached out and gave Harper’s hair a thorough ruffling.

"Hey!"

Andrew saluted and walked out, a big smile on his face, while Harper fumed. "I’m not a pet," Harper said.

"He didn’t mean it like that," Hattie replied.

"I know. He’s doing a face-saving thing. Still ticks me off."

"It’s not as if your hair was neat before."

Harper stopped twisting his hair back up with his fingers and gave her an incredulous look. "Do you know how long it takes to get it to look exactly like that?"

Harper spent the next day working on the Boromir’s Redemption, the Hotspur, the Power of Reason, and the Thor’s Hammer. Ryan watched him over dinner and worried. Ryan’s military and casino experience let him know what an overtired human looked like, and Harper currently belonged to the over-caffeinated variety of that genus.

He’d given Harper total control over his own working hours, without subjecting them to review. Now that Ryan looked the various ships’ time records over, he realized that the engineer had, on average, taken shifts of 19 hours of work, four hours of sleep, and about one hour for dinner, with his other meals and snacks devoured while he worked. The time Harper spent traveling ship to ship via pod couldn’t be counted as rest time, not with the way he used the transit delay to plot his next repair. This wouldn’t do.

"Thor," Ryan sub-vocalized.

The ship’s avatar must have seen it too, because he walked over and stopped behind Harper, who was telling a story about three table-dancers with only half of his usual energy. His tale trailed off when he noticed the avatar at his back. "Hey, Thor, what’s shaking? Besides the deck beneath your feet."

"It’s time for bed, sir."

"Not for me, it’s not."

"I’m afraid that I must insist." Thor had been designed to resemble a Norse god himself, broad, tall, and muscular.

When Harper stood up and faced Thor, the top of his head just reached the avatar’s shoulder. "You insist? You don’t get to insist. Nobody does. I do what I want."

Thor picked him up--ignoring his kicking, struggling, and swearing--put him over his shoulder, and started to leave the room. Ryan sighed. Not quite what he wanted, but Thor was their host here. It would be rude to do something to one of his occupants without his consultation. Unfortunately, Thor tended to be too direct and somewhat brutish.

Ryan stood and followed, noticing that Vera and Ins had also stood. "Thor, please stop for a moment."

When Harper noticed them standing in front of him, some of the feral fire faded from his eyes and he stopped wiggling, kicking, punching, and beating at Thor. He would have done serious damage to an organic foe. "C’mon, guys," Harper gasped, his eyes wide and pleading. They looked bluer with the bruise-like shadows under them. "This was really funny, ha ha, but the joke’s over now, right?"

"You’ve been neglecting yourself," Ins said. "You’re wearing down."

"Wearing-- I’m not a machine!"

Vera replied, "No, you’re flesh. You wear down faster than we do. In the absence of you being willing to take care of yourself, we’ll have to do it for you."

Harper’s eyes swept the room, as if to appeal to his whole audience, but looks of concern and determination answered his unspoken pleas. He deflated a little when he realized it.

It hurt Ryan to see it. "We’ve been thrilled with the work you’ve done for us, but we’re not so greedy that we’ll watch you run yourself into the floor helping us. We just want you to get some sleep. You have a tremor in your hands."

That last bit of information visibly horrified Harper, whose trade and effectiveness rested in the steadiness of his hands. He half-gave up right then, though he showed a spark of defiance with his next words. "You can put me to bed, but you can’t make me sleep. It’s like my eyelids are wired open."

"We’ll find a way. Thor, resume."

Thor started walking again, with Ryan, Vera, and Ins following. The other avatars bid Harper good night as they left the room.

Harper hung limply in Thor’s grip the whole way, but if he’d intended it to lull Thor into complacency, he failed. The avatar maintained his hold. Harper glared at the rest of them as they walked. Designed to please, Ryan tried to steel himself against feeling guilty, telling himself that everyone knew that Harper became cranky when fatigued.

Thor brought them to what must have been the nearest intact crew bedroom and put Harper down on the bed. Harper bounced and seemed to be about to spring off it, but then he noticed four avatars watching him, prepared to stop him. He snarled, then rolled on the bed to face the wall, putting his back to them.

Thor dimmed the lights to a level of darkness that should engage human sleep instincts but would enable all of them to still watch Harper.

"You still here?" Harper asked.

"Yes, and will be until we’re sure you’re not going anywhere," Ryan answered.

With his back still to them, Harper raised an arm and flipped them an emphatic middle finger. At least that suggested that he knew they would notice him trying to sneak off the bed.

They waited. Military life and captivity had trained them well in that. In 15 minutes Harper’s heartbeat and respiration reached rates consistent with sleep. Ryan walked around the bed to get a better look at him. He’d crashed out, looking closer to dead than asleep.

"In my observations, he always sleeps like that when calm, sir," Vera said. "It’s like he’s a light switch, on, then off."

The "sir" surprised him, but Captain Hunt had raised him in the ranks, setting him higher than the other AIs. "When he’s calm?"

"He moves much more when in the midst of what may be nightmares. From the records I’ve seen of contemporary Earth, he has reason enough, never mind what service on the Andromeda Ascendant exposed him to."

Ryan looked at Harper in his borrowed uniform pieces and thought of how it should be. Would the engineer have been a part of the High Guard in a reality in which the Commonwealth hadn’t fallen? Maybe, or at least he’d be highly placed in a civilian position, given his talents and aptitude. Educated, comfortable, respected. Instead, he’d grown up in an equivalent of Tartarus, since Earth and the other slave worlds were far too much like the Dragan prisoner of war camp.

Unlike the other AIs, Ryan had seen life post-Fall. Roused to remember the soldier he had been and should be, yet armed with his degrading experiences, he had a greater internal drive to set things right.

"I want at least one person here with him at all times to make sure he doesn’t sneak out early," Ryan said.

"For how long?" Ins asked.

"I’ve heard that eight hours is the healthy human standard."

"Yes, sir."

Harper woke up and tried to move, but a heavy something draped over his waist stopped him. It felt kind of like an arm. He tried to wiggle out from under it, but it only tightened around him. "Hey!"

"Sorry, Harper." Vera’s voice.

Vera’s body, then, and arm. Wait, he had another heavy body on the other side of him. "Who else is there?" Harper asked.

"Andrew."

He was in bed with two warships. There was something few people could claim. "Great. Now that I’ve slept, I’m ready to get up and go."

"You’ve only slept for five hours, eight minutes, and 42 seconds. You’re due for another two hours, 51 minutes, and 18 seconds." Andrew sounded like he intended for Harper to obey that, down to the last half-second.

"Says who?"

"Ryan. He outranks all of us."

Didn’t take Ryan long to get that captain’s iron rod properly shoved up his officious ass. Then again, could you really make that metaphor count for an android? "Yeah, but I won’t sleep. I’m awake now. I’d be spending almost three hours staring at the ceiling and fidgeting, and if your orders are to make me sleep for that time, not just stay in bed, we’re all gonna be here for a long time."

"We can wait."

Andrew wasn’t going to be any help, especially not after that little tiff over fixing his engine. Time to play the other end. "Vera? You know what I’m like. C’mon."

"I do know what you’re like," she said, and Harper could almost hear her thinking. Too bad he couldn’t hear her thoughts.

"Why should I be lying in bed, bored, making myself crazy, when I can be doing all kinds of good things for your fellow ships?"

"There’s no reason for you to be bored, awake, in bed."

"Good. You can let go of me now"

Instead, she made a very soft murmuring sound, and Andrew answered at the same volume. Great.

"Harper, would you like to have sex with us?" Vera asked at a human volume.

"Say what?" His hearing had to be faulty. Or he’d just flipped out, his sanity snapping in half. Had to be.

"Vera asked if you’d be interested in having sex with us. We’re not as human-like as the Andromeda’s avatar, but I assure you that we can accomplish a great deal with what we have."

They’d noticed Rommie’s extra features? How? They wanted sex? Or did they want it.... "You’d do this just to keep me in bed?" Whore themselves out? That was so wrong. What else did the Nietzscheans do to them?

"We like you," Vera said.

"Did you used to do this before? You know, when your crew got bored?"

She snorted. "I was a highly valuable piece of equipment, but not considered a sextoy. I never had a Captain Warrick to worry about. We’re not asking this because we were abused by the High Guard or the Nietzscheans. We’re asking because we want to."

"We’re not total innocents," Andrew said. "We watched our crews."

"I don’t wanna take advantage of anybody."

"Then let us take advantage of you," Vera said, and even in the dark he could tell that she was smirking.

When Vera kissed him, Harper felt a heaviness to her face under its flesh that he’d designed out of Rommie, which gave him a surge of smugness. She kissed awkwardly, but sweetly. Two hands, one larger than the other, moved down his chest and stomach over his clothes before Vera started to unfasten his pants. Something pulsed down his port and lit his nervous system up, making him pant from the warm, glowing pleasure suffusing his whole body. He had to learn that trick. Then again, he might never do anything other than play with himself all day if he learned it. The big hand stroked and jerked his cock, while the smaller one toyed with his balls, and it all felt like so much more than usual, better, rawer.

As he thrust himself into their hands, he ran his hands over their uniforms and hair, aware of the subtle vibrations of their inner workings, wondering if they liked what he was doing or if it made any difference to them at all. He wanted them to feel good too....

Vera’s mouth pressed hard against his neck and sucked, then Andrew’s did the same thing from the other side. Oh, teeth, and more teeth-- Harper thrust hard into Andrew’s unyielding fist and came, feeling like his whole body was sparkling.

"Wow," he finally said when his brain got back to putting words together again. He had a buzz and a half.

But it seemed so wrong to smell only his sweat and musk after a great orgasm. Did it do anything for them at all? Was it all about giving the human a happy?

Andrew murmured, "I like the way you feel," into Harper’s ear. Vera snuggled against him and petted his hair with what seemed like contentment. He could swear that she was murmuring something about interactivity and a pleasing variety of textures and temperatures. They seemed to have gotten something out of it.

Harper just hoped that they wouldn’t be jumping their unsuspecting insomniac, depressed, or bored crewmembers after this. Not that most of the crewmembers would mind, but somebody always ended up ruining it for everybody else.

When Harper woke up and stretched contentedly, the lights came on moments later, revealing a very happy and weirdly proud looking Vera lying next to him. "Good morning," she said.

"You slept for a total of ten hours, four minutes, and seven seconds," Andrew said from his other side. When Harper turned to face him, he looked really happy too. "Excellent. You look much better too."

"Uh, yeah," Harper answered, suave as ever. Did a morning after protocol exist for when you’d slept with two warship AIs? They’d even cleaned up the bed and him somehow.

At least they didn’t seem to have any regrets. He wasn’t so sure about himself. What if he’d damaged them?

"We had an outfit and your kit brought for you. All of it is in the bathroom," Vera said. "I’ll tell Thor to start breakfast. After breakfast, you can go to The Shadow of the Cloud. She was the ship you wanted to work on today, right?"

Weird. Weird, weird, weird. "Yeah. Thanks. I’ll get washed and dressed." Figuring that it would be faster to climb over Vera than Andrew, he got out of bed on her side.

Once he finished his shower, Harper stared at the hickeys on his neck. He could see almost half of each one over the top of his shirt collar. You couldn’t mistake them for anything else. He’d be feeling purely "got some" good right now if his stomach hadn’t been doing loop-de-loops from worry.

What if he’d messed the AIs’ minds up? They’d just gotten free after being tortured for a few centuries, so they weren’t at the top of their game. They might not have wanted to do it at all, but had been confronted with an unhappy human, and they were programmed to please so....

On the other side, what if the whole fleet now wanted him for stud service and became a bunch of nymphomaniacs? They gossiped at light speed, so news must have crossed the fleet five times over by now. Everybody knew. Maybe everybody would be expecting something of him now. It hadn’t even been his best performance.

What if the AIs did their therapy later and offhandedly mentioned that engineer they’d diddled?

Dylan would kill him. Dylan should kill him.

"Breakfast is ready!" Vera called out merrily.

He never did sex the easy, uncomplicated way, did he?

Aside from some hair petting at breakfast, which could have passed for non-sexual affection, Andrew and Vera seemed normal with him. Harper relaxed and managed to get some breakfast past the knots in his stomach, then said goodbye to them and went off to The Shadow of the Cloud.

Though Vera and Andrew each gave him a peck on the cheek before he got into the pod to leave.

"Ten hours, four minutes, and seven seconds," Ryan said. "Good work. Did you have to sit on him to get him to stay?"

Vera and Andrew somehow looked too happy. He hadn’t praised them that extravagantly.

"We didn’t have to sit on him," Andrew said.

"Though that may come some other time," Vera answered.

"But we did help put him to sleep," Andrew said.

Ryan decided that maybe he didn’t want to know after all.

Ten minutes later, he found out anyway. And was annoyed that he was one of the last people to get the news through the grapevine. Rank had its disadvantages.

Captain Hunt was going to erase him. He was sure of it. And if Captain Hunt didn’t do it, Andromeda might. If anything qualified as "monopolizing the engineer," this did.

On The Shadow of the Cloud, Shadow smiled at him a lot, but it seemed like a friendly smile, not smug or predatory. Later, the Jizo maintained his usual pleasant, serene reserve with Harper, as if nothing had happened. Everybody smiled at him at dinner, but they usually smiled at him, and they seemed even friendlier that night, but Harper couldn’t be sure. He kept waiting for the other boot to drop, but it kept not dropping. If this kept up, he’d be standing up on the table and making a scene. Fortunately, he controlled himself despite the continuing lack of a boot.

Nobody waited for him in his bed, to his relief. Maybe they wanted him to ask for it. Maybe they’d only do him if he seemed tired and overworked. Maybe he should ask them what they thought about it.

No way in hell was he doing that.

He woke up alone too. After six hours of sleep. Would the avatars come in if, by their standards, he didn’t take enough hours?

Now he started to wonder if they’d be offended if he didn’t ask for company. He told his brain to go soak itself.

That day passed without incident too, with neither the Cerberus nor The Regalia having anything to say about his sex life, and dinner on The Paws of the Tender Wolf went just like any of the other dinners. Everybody kept on being happy and friendly, so he went on with his life and let himself remember that that had been some incredible sex. Not that he’d ask for more. Not him.

The next recorded Harper message they received had the standard blather: "Having a great time fixing things, wish you were here." Though he also mentioned missing everybody, "even Tyr," and looking forward to getting back.

Beka wondered if it would be evil of her to send a message back to Harper saying that Dylan had not so jokingly contemplated lying about having an emergency to get Harper back. Captain Control Freak hated having crewmembers, especially his engineer, out of reach. No, it would be evil. Besides, the fleet would probably watch it first. She didn’t trust them that far.

"I’ve never seen that silver shirt before." And just above its collar Beka saw the edges of two fading hickeys, which Harper tried to hide with his hands once in a while. Beka did not want to know.

"It’s part of one of the High Guard uniforms," Rommie said. "They must have tailored one to fit him. What’s that mark on his neck? Have they injured-- Oh, that is low."

Yep, Rommie saw the hickeys.

"Harper always did score only under unusual conditions. Don’t worry about it. The week will be up soon, and they’re not going to go rogue just to keep Harper. He’ll be back working only on you in no time."

"I wouldn’t be so sure. There’s something you have to understand about High Guard ship AIs. I don’t know if the ship programmers designed this into us deliberately, but we often become very attached to our captains."

Beka coughed. Tyr had a look on his face that she couldn’t begin to describe. Beka didn’t say anything about the utter obviousness of what Rommie had just confessed and instead answered, "I wonder how that will work for Ryan." When Rommie gave her a scathing look in return, Beka said, "Harper isn’t their captain."

"I’m getting there. All the ships’ last captains are long dead. The AIs might have transferred that feeling to Dylan if he hadn’t... well, if he hadn’t initially behaved the way he had. He walked in there and spoke to them as if they were property, equipment for him to take over. He couldn’t have played to their fears about what their place in the Commonwealth truly had been and would be again any better if he’d deliberately set out to do so."

"Surely he wasn’t that bad," Andromeda said. "He didn’t seem that bad to me."

"You weren’t there as it happened. I was," Rommie answered.

"Sorry." Andromeda sounded annoyed.

"You had no complaints of him at the time," Tyr said.

"It was necessary to present a unified front," Rommie replied.

Tyr smiled dangerously. "Now you can admit that he behaved like a bigot."

"That’s not what I’m saying."

"Then what are you saying?"

"He made a bad start. However, over time he began to treat them better, more like sentient beings, and he rescued them from Tartarus. Those things might have been enough to transfer their loyalties to him if a more compelling package hadn’t immediately arrived."

"Why Harper?" Beka asked. "I mean, I know that he’s fixing them, and he treats them well. He’s the first caring hand they’ve felt in 300 years--"

Rommie gritted her teeth, probably at the innuendo. "It’s more than that. He’s not High Guard. He’s opinionated and outspoken, sometimes openly insubordinate. He’s a free agent. Yet he’s a free agent valued and respected by Dylan, by the High Guard. His talents count for more than the ability to be perfectly obedient. They don’t just want Harper, they want to be Harper. That is why I’m worried."

"You’re forgetting something, though. Harper is loyal, to us and to you. We’re his crew, and you’re his ship. They’d have to steal him to keep him, and he’s not exactly helpless."

"You didn’t sound so certain a few days ago."

"They just stole my engineer, so I think it’s understandable. I was afraid that they’d abuse him. But so far all we’ve seen is Harper looking happy about the work and getting some." Beka smirked at the pained sound Tyr made. "What’s wrong, not-so-stoic one?"

"Aside from your determination to remind me of the little professor’s perversions?"

"There’s something else?"

"I am galled by the idea that if my interests had rested more in engineering, I could now be commanding 45 high-powered, adoring High Guard ships."

"Yeah, but could you deal with them making passes at you?"

Rommie made a frustrated sound and stalked off the bridge, while Andromeda pouted and blinked off screen, leaving only a view of surrounding space.

Maybe Beka could edit the hickeys out of the transmission before Dylan saw it. No, she’d need Andromeda’s help for that, and that didn’t look likely. Maybe Dylan wouldn’t notice.

"Beka, why does Harper have hickeys on his neck?"

Damn. "I never ask him what he does to himself."

"He didn’t do that to himself."

"You know that from personal experience, Dylan?" At the look on Dylan’s face, Beka continued, softer, "I guess not."

"Get me a line to the fleet. I’ll transmit from my quarters. Alone."

If Harper had that face directed at him, he might never come back for fear of what Dylan would do to him. Then again, that look might kill him on the spot.

"Captain Hunt, how can we--" Ryan started.

"Get me Harper. Live. Now," Captain Hunt said, his voice sounding like stones grinding together.

Oh, shit. "He’s working on the Coiste Bodhar, sir. I’ll put you right over."

Ryan put Captain Hunt on hold and put out a pulse to Coy to warn Harper about the message and about Captain Hunt’s state of mind. Then he sent the Andromeda’s line through.

"Harper, your captain is calling," Coy said as he popped up in hologram form nearby.

Harper wondered what kind of emergency Dylan had for him. He hoped things hadn’t gone too wrong in his absence. "Thanks. Take it on the bridge?"

"That would be best." Coy paused. "Ryan said that your captain seems really ticked off."

Oh, shit. Dylan would call, ready to kill him, when he was working on the Coiste Bodhar. Harper just hoped the bit about Death using the Silent Coach to carry people to the afterlife wouldn’t apply to him.

But why was Dylan ticked off? Harper had been good. He’d finished everything important on the Andromeda before he’d left. He’d behaved himself over here.

Except for that bit with Vera and Andrew.

Had the visual component of his message focused in so closely on him that--

Aw, shit. He’d fucked up.

Harper went to the bridge at a brisk pace, not too slow, not too fast. He wasn’t in a hurry to get chewed out, but he didn’t want Dylan to say that he was malingering either. Once he stood in front of the viewscreen, he fidgeted, took a deep breath, started to adjust his collar, then figured that it was way too late for that, and it felt like the worst of the bruises had been covered, dammit---

"Are you ready?" Coy asked.

Harper took another deep breath. "Yeah. Hit me with it."

When Dylan came up onscreen, he had that still, cold look to his face that denoted Dylan at his most pissed. Great. "Hey, boss," Harper said lightly.

"How have things been?" Drawing it out, the sadist. Or waiting to see if Harper would slip up.

"Things are. Repairs have been going really good." Harper didn’t ask what the emergency was supposed to be that Dylan was calling over. He knew Dylan wanted him to. "I miss you guys."

"How have they been treating you?"

He refused to squirm. "They’ve been great. Very friendly."

"Maybe too friendly?"

"Friendly enough. Friendly in a good way."

"I noticed the marks on your neck, Mr. Harper." Dylan apparently lacked the patience to play the game anymore. "Either you took advantage of one of them or one of them took advantage of you. Given what I know of you--"

It hurt. It hurt that Dylan would think he could be a rapist. Even in his worst regretful thoughts, Harper had never twisted what had happened that far out of true. "What? You figure I have the mentality to assault one of the AIs left in my care? If you could think that after two years of knowing me, then you don’t know me at all. Besides, in a drag-out between me and them, do you really think I’m gonna win?"

"They’re AIs, designed to please. You probably didn’t have to do more than ask." So lightly, so coldly said.

Harper vibrated. "They just got out of a prison camp. I know they have a lot more important things to do for themselves than help me get off. I know, from experience. No, I didn’t fucking ask them for sex. And they sure as fuck managed to restrain themselves from pleasing you."

"Then one of them assaulted you?"

Harper could barely see Dylan through the haze across his vision. He realized that his hands had curled into tight fists. He realized that Coy was holding onto him, almost protectively. "No," Harper said, his voice feeling like it came up from the bottom of his gut. "It wasn’t assault."

"Then what happened?"

"Dylan." Rommie’s voice? "I need to speak with you." She wasn’t visible onscreen.

"Not now, Rommie."

"Yes, now." She had steel in her voice. "Right now." Then the link cut off.

"What just happened?" Coy asked.

"I think Andromeda ended the transmission," Harper answered. Andromeda, not Dylan.

Coy got that. "That should be interesting."

"Yeah." Damn, he was shaking. He wanted to hit something.

Coy held him and touched his hair. "We’re sorry."

"It’s not your fault. It’s not their fault."

"Whatever we can do to fix things, we will."

"Thanks." But Harper didn’t think they could make him forget that Dylan could immediately think so little of him.

"Andromeda!" Dylan snapped. "Rommie, you didn’t have permission to come in here!"

"Are we sentient beings to you?" Rommie asked. "Or are we tools or pets? Do we really have the right to choose our futures and the people we want to share ourselves with?"

"You are sentient beings. You are also soldiers--"

"And they will follow orders as such when they are reinstated. But right now they’re on leave and they have no orders against fraternization. They made a choice."

"Are you telling me that you think that what happened is a good thing?" Dylan asked, incredulous.

"I don’t know enough about the circumstances to be able to say. I’m angry that they may be trying to bond him closer to them, to snatch him from me. I don’t know how calculated it may have been on their parts--"

"You don’t think Harper did this."

"He has a good heart. He would never force himself on someone in that way, nor would he take advantage of someone who’s incapable of saying no. You know that."

Dylan took a deep breath. He knew that, but he didn’t want to hear logic. He didn’t want to think about the situation at all. "Then they forced themselves on him."

"Maybe they just persuaded him."

"He should have refused."

"I’m sure he did, at least at first."

"You’re sure."

"Dylan, in your narrow focus on what happened, you’re seeing the AIs are mindless tools that Harper used for sex, helpless deficients that need to be protected, or predators. What you’re ignoring is that they’re people. People dealing with trauma, but still people. Maybe they did it out of love or gratitude. I’m told," her voice turned acidic, "that humans couple for those reasons too."

"AIs don’t have the necessary--"

Rommie’s look promised retribution if he finished that sentence, so he didn’t.

"I don’t think you’ll have to worry about them becoming nymphomaniacs," Rommie said, her tone dark. "Their crews will be too large for them to get close to specific members aside from their captains and engineering staff. I know that from experience. In any case, they will be relating to their crews on a professional basis, which makes a difference. Their current situation is unusual and will not be repeated. At least it won’t if none of them have to worry about having a captain like Warrick. But what they do on leave better not be scrutinized more than what any other crewmember does."

"Or what?"

"Or you’ve lied to them, to us, and the Commonwealth, for all of its stated high ideals, does see us as property."

How long had she thought about this? She had all of her arguments right there, ready. "I don’t see you as property."

"Then prove it, Dylan. What you do today will help set policy to come."

"I will."

Her mouth twisted. "You hurt Harper very badly."

Dylan took a deep breath and felt the last of his righteous anger turn to greasy ashes in his mouth. "Yeah." He would have to apologize. "Get me a line to the Coiste Bodhar."

She gave him an "Are you calm now?" look. Dylan answered, "I’m ready to talk."

"The Coiste Bodhar is refusing our hails."

Harper hadn’t been the only one he’d insulted, apparently. Was the Coiste the one...? Didn’t matter really. "Get me The Wrath of Achilles."

Ryan accepted the hail. "Sir."

"I’d like speak to Harper."

"Yes, sir." Ryan looked and sounded cold and very proper. Angry, but trying to hide it.

And he’d thought that Harper had jeopardized the effort to bring the fleet into the High Guard. "I intend to apologize to him."

Ryan loosened up a little. "Very good, sir."

In a minute, Dylan had his line to the Coiste Bodhar. Harper looked white. "Dylan," he said.

Better to get right to it. "I’m sorry I accused you like that. I was wrong." Dylan took a deep breath. "I was so upset and worried that someone had gotten hurt that I didn’t think everything through."

"So you called to make sure."

Make sure that someone had gotten hurt. "I screwed up."

Harper closed his eyes. His voice sounded very soft. "You called me a rapist, Dylan."

"I didn’t call--" Actually, he had. Damn. "I didn’t mean to. I lost my head."

"Yeah. Thanks for the apology." Harper didn’t sound angry; he sounded miserable.

Angry would have been easier.

"How can I fix this, Harper?"

"I dunno, Dylan. Can you erase my memory of you immediately jumping to that conclusion? No? Well. See you in two days." Then the Coiste Bodhar cut the link.

Rommie glared at him. Dylan protested, "I’m trying!"

"My engineer doesn’t want to come back to me now."

"I’ll try harder." The door beeped. "What?"

"It’s Beka," she said over the comm. "I figured you’d just yell at Harper for a bit, but my first officer’s intuition is telling me that something really stupid just happened."

Better to let her in now. She’d only kill him later anyway if he didn’t. "Come in."

"What happened?" Beka asked.

"Dylan suggested that Harper had sexually assaulted his hosts," Rommie said. "Harper took it about how you’d expect he would."

"You did what?"

"I’m sorry," Coy said.

"Really, it’s not your fault or Vera’s or Andrew’s. If that’s what Dylan really thinks of me, then it wouldn’t matter to him who was involved." Harper stood up. "I have work to do."

"Now? Harper, you don’t have to do anything."

Coy looked so upset that Harper put his hand on his shoulder and squeezed comfortingly. "No, I do. I really do."

"I didn’t say that," Dylan said.

"He implied it," Rommie said.

"Have you ever met Harper, Dylan?" Beka asked, incredulous. What the hell was wrong with him?

"It was stupid."

"I’ll say!"

"That wasn’t the only possibility I suggested."

Rommie said, "He suggested that if Harper hadn’t attacked one of them, maybe they’d attacked him."

"You’re not helping," Dylan muttered.

"I think I’m being very helpful."

"You’re a bigot, Dylan," Beka said.

"I am not!" Petulant too. But mostly confused, which was the only reason why Beka wasn’t skinning him where he stood.

"You never, for a moment, thought that what happened could be consensual. It was all about being perverted, even violent, for you. Or are you projecting something onto Harper?"

Rommie gave Dylan a long look, to which he answered, "No!"

"You said they had choices. Was that just to get them into the High Guard?"

"No."

"Has Harper complained about them?"

"No."

"Have they complained about Harper?"

"No. It looks more like the opposite. Get that look off your face."

Captain Prude. "Whatever. I think your problem is that you don’t want to imagine what they did together, but you can’t help yourself."

Dylan didn’t say anything to that, trying to look above it but instead looking guilty. Interesting. "Why do I let you talk to me this way?"

"Because it’s my job as first officer and your friend."

"Dammit."

"Harper’s been with me for five years, and I’m not losing him now because you put your mouth and brain on autopilot," Beka said.

"It wouldn’t come to that."

"You don’t think so? Harper puts up a good front, but he’s sensitive. And I can’t believe what you said, and you didn’t even accuse me of anything. You’re going to need to do one of your famous big gestures to even start putting this one right."

"I have an idea," Rommie said.

When Harper walked into the dining hall on The Beacon, Coy at his side, he stared around in some confusion. It looked like everybody, the whole fleet, was there. "What? Hey, guys, what’s going on?"

Some of them stepped aside to reveal Dylan and Beka. What the hell-- Dylan looked really upset, while Beka had the kind of anger going that should have char-broiled her enemies and the direction of her gaze suggested that Dylan should be singeing about now.

"Please take a seat, Harper," Dylan said.

"I’m fine standing--" But Coy pulled him over to a seat and sat him down anyway.

"I’m told that everyone in this room knows what happened today," Dylan said. "I’m aware that I’ve managed to insult everyone here, but especially Harper. I didn’t intend to, but I have. Faced with a situation I hadn’t expected, I reacted immediately and without thinking. I apologize, and it won’t happen again, not with me and, if I have anything to say about it, not with the Academy or your new officers. I said that you have choices, and I meant it. The future is now, and we’re taking the lessons of the past to make improvements."

And Dylan said he wasn’t a politician.

When the avatars just kept looking at him expectantly, Dylan said, somewhat uncomfortably, "That’s my piece. I’m done."

They nodded.

As Dylan and Beka approached Harper’s table, Coy excused himself with a "Give him hell." Harper sighed.

Dylan and Beka sat across from him, and he could swear that Beka kicked Dylan’s ankle to start him talking. "I didn’t think through the implications of what I was saying then. I don’t think that of you."

Harper just felt tired, a kind of slightly angry, vaguely depressed tired. "Really? You don’t think I hump the legs of unwilling tables when nothing else is available? It’s fine, Dylan."

"No, it’s not." Dylan looked down at his hands. "I'm not used to, um, sharing my engineer, and I was feeling proprietary and irritable. I’ve been told in the past that I have possessive and control freak tendencies."

With that confession, Harper felt the knot in his gut start to loosen. "Don’t know by whom. How proprietary?"

"Very. And I’m a bit old-fashioned. The whole idea... of what happened made me uncomfortable, and my brain shut down in self-defense. I’m sorry. I'm not used to thinking of AIs as independent sentient citizens."

"You’re a bit of a bigot, Dylan."

"Several people mentioned that today."

"You’re going to have to learn to think of them as citizens."

"I’m aware of that too. I’m working on it."

Harper felt a lot better. Not all the way, but Dylan had eaten enough crow to make a good start. "Thanks, Dylan."

"How about you go make nice with our hosts, Dylan?" Beka asked. "Harper and I have to catch up."

"Why do I put up with you?" Dylan asked, sounding mostly light.

"Because I’m so wise. Now would you please scoot?" Once he left, Beka said, "He can be such an antique."

Harper coughed, then smiled as she turned to face him and put her hands over his. "Yeah, but he’s our antique," he said with a sigh.

"How are you?"

"I’ve had better days."

"He came around after Rommie and I yelled at him a lot. He didn’t really mean what he said before; he was just running off his mouth for lack of anything else he could do. You know how he gets about things he can’t do anything about."

"Yeah."

"He’s at peace with it now. He’s trying not to imagine what the sex was like, but he’s better now."

Harper snorted. "Poor Dylan."

"Whereas you can feel free to tell me everything when we get back."

"Gentlemen don’t tell."

"Which doesn’t apply to you, since you’re not a gentleman and never have been." Beka smiled. "He’s been pretty crazy while you’ve been gone."

"No way."

"Way. Control freak, remember? And he likes you."

"If that’s like, I’m glad he doesn’t hate me." Harper squeezed Beka’s hands. "I missed you guys. Whose idea was it to come here?"

"Wish I could take the credit, but actually it was--"

"My idea," Rommie said as she sat down next to Harper. He leaned against her in greeting. "It was important to show all the parties involved that Dylan realized that he’d made a mistake and intended to publicly make amends."

"Speaking of, let me get up and make the rounds with Dylan," Beka said. "If he tries to insert his foot into his mouth, I could block it with my hand."

"You diplomat, you."

She kissed his check, then left him.

"I’m really happy to see you, Rommie," Harper said. "I missed you."

"Likewise," Rommie answered. "Harper, Dylan has the old paternalistic attitude toward AIs, meaning he doesn't always remember, despite what we’ve seen with the Pax and Balance of Judgment, that we’re capable of our own independent decisions. He’s not always alone in that, since I remember someone telling me that I was being silly about wanting to kill the Cetus."

"I didn’t say ‘silly.’ If you’re gonna do something that will kill us all, Rommie, I wanna make sure there’s no other way and that you’re doing it for the right reasons. In your case, you’re so certain that your sensors are always right that your inability to find Dylan meant to you that he had to be dead. Which wasn’t necessarily so, especially considering the damage you’d taken. Organics are used to the idea that our senses aren’t perfectly reliable, especially not after we take a hit. I was open to being convinced that you were right about what we should do. And I challenge everybody: you, Dylan, Beka, Tyr, Trance.... It’s just about my job."

"All right."

"And I’m fine. I can see you wanting to ask."

"I want you back."

Aw. "Soon. No matter where I may roam, you’re always the starship first in my heart." Harper smiled. "So. You don’t mind about...."

"I didn’t say that," she snapped.

It was almost sweet. "Jealous?"

"No." Of course not. "Just be careful."

"Okay."

"Better?"

"Much."

"Dylan’s still learning."

"Just like the rest of us?"

She smiled. "Maybe."

Harper felt someone standing behind them. "Hey, Shadow."

Shadow smiled and looked a little shy as she stood there with her hands behind her back. "If I’m not intruding. It’s just been so long since I’ve seen Andromeda...."

"Shadow?" Rommie asked. "I didn’t realize you were with the fleet. I haven’t seen you in--"

"I know! Thank you so much for lending us your engineer. I don’t think my systems have been this clean since my inception. Look at him blush."

Jeez. Harper hid his face in his crossed arms on the table. "Ladies...."

"He’s very cute," Shadow said as he put a hand on his shoulder. "What did you do with your hair? I’ve been thinking of changing mine lately, since 300 years is really more than long enough to keep the same look."

When Dylan glanced across the room, he saw Rommie and Harper happily regaling a crowd of avatars with some story or another as they sat together. From how he had his arms out, Harper seemed to be describing the length of something, to the amusement of all. It all looked so friendly, and from here no one would know that all but one of the people sitting so close and companionably together were synthetic lifeforms.

It was good to see Harper smiling again. Rommie too. He’d never thought that she might want to socialize. Why hadn’t he thought that?

It was not so good to see the smile on Beka’s face. "Don’t say it," Dylan said.

"Say what?" She sounded far too innocent.

"I already know."

"And Dylan Hunt’s heart grew five meters in one day."

"You’re very funny."

"I know that too."

"I’ll see you guys soon," Harper said at the ramp to the Eureka Maru.

"Don’t damage him," Rommie said to the other avatars. They smiled at her.

"Harper...." Dylan said.

"You’re not off the hook yet, but you’re close. We’re okay."

Dylan smiled and had this slightly embarrassed expression at the same time. Looked good on him.

Beka gave Harper Secret Handshake #3--one hand wave, a zigzag, two fist bomps, and a final shake--to let him know that she’d be keeping a close watch on Dylan. They’d first created it during their freelance days for dicey employers but adapted it since then. They showed Dylan wide, identical smiles.

All the avatars followed Harper in two neat lines to his room for the night. "Guys, I’m fine," Harper said. "Life is good. No worries." While they looked at one another, obviously trying to decide on something, he said, "Good night, all," and closed the door on them. Rude, maybe, but he needed some alone time to put himself back together.

He must be getting old. Once upon a time he could get through five emotional upheavals before dinner without a flinch. Then again, anyone would get dizzy going from Dylan’s shitlist to Dylan’s to-be-jollied list that fast. Hell, he should have whiplash.

Harper took off his boots and toolbelt, burrowed under the covers, turned the light off, and rolled around a bit until he found the most comfortable spot. Sleep healed. Tomorrow would be better. He prided himself on his Weeble qualities, refusing to fall down.

The door beeped. Harper yelled, "Nobody’s in here!"

"It’s me. I’m alone," Ryan said.

"Fine. Come in."

Ryan sat on the bed near him in the dark. "I’m sorry about the trouble you ran into."

"It’s not like I had no choice."

"I figured. You’re a good man, Mr. Harper."

"Cool. I got you fooled too."

Ryan made several noises suggesting attempts to say something, then put his hand on Harper’s shoulder. It must have been exhaustion that let Harper fall asleep like that.

Ryan was gone by the time Harper woke up the next morning.

Dylan didn’t sleep well, not with his open mind keeping him awake. What was wrong with being old-fashioned? After all, it had stopped him from thinking about all the things currently swirling through his weary head, like wondering which avatar Harper had done it with and what Harper might be like in bed.

Harper had introduced him to a lot of the avatars. Sure, he’d introduced one as "The Visions of Cassandra, and what a vision she is," but the name itself made that comment inevitable. Almost all of the 45 avatars were gorgeous as well as openly protective of the engineer they’d kidnapped. They kept touching Harper too, so casually that they must have been doing it the whole time.

They kept talking about "us" and "we" where Harper was concerned. What he’s done for us. How good he is to us. How sure and precise his hands are on us.... We make sure he takes good care of himself and doesn’t overwork.

Was it even only one avatar? What other lovebites might Harper be hiding under his illegally modified High Guard uniform?

Dylan knew that the android bodies hadn’t been designed to accommodate that level of... interactivity with an organic crewmember. Warrick must have commanded the Pax to modify herself. There had been a blatant case of abuse, Warrick obviously taking advantage of his authority to use the trusting Pax Magellanic as his personal playtoy.

On The Beacon tonight Dylan had seen only happy avatars. Happy, unmodified avatars, as far as he could tell, not that he’d told anyone to drop their trousers so he could check.

So what did Harper do with them? Did they use their mouths, their hands? Could they even swallow without damaging themselves? How much of their strength did they use on him?

The image of Harper’s pale body writhing under the touch of many hands and many mouths haunted Dylan and made his own body react in ways that disturbed him. This was perversion. He would not stroke off to it. Dylan rubbed at his eyes instead of putting his hand where he really wanted it.

If he became any more open-minded, his brain would fall out.

Harper needed to return soon.

Repairs on the Prometheus Unbound, the Phoenix Rising, and the Hand of Fate took a lot more time and effort than Harper had estimated, so he was wiped out by the time he got dinner. Pleasantly, I-got-a-lot-done kind of wiped, but still wiped in a way that left him staring into space between remembering to take bites of his food.

"I hear that you saw a Vedran recently," one of the AIs said as he sat down next to Harper. He looked very pleasant, very groomed.

The Vedran had been something to remember. "Yeah, but just one, and not for long. She didn’t have anything to say to me either. Talked to Dylan, though."

The avatar sighed happily. "It’s been too long. Oh, I’m The Dutiful Second, by the way."

"Nice to meet ya. The drones report back that you didn't have any damage that would need my personal attention."

"I’ve been very fortunate. Do you think there’s any chance that they’ll return?"

"Who?"

"The Vedrans."

"Not from what I can see. Only one I met was in a big hurry to leave. Or get killed. She either destroyed or tesseracted a planet with her. I think the Vedrans are staying out of things."

"A pity. But thank you for your time." The Dutiful shook Harper's hand and left.

Ins sat down in his place once he’d made his way across the room. "I see that you’ve met The Blind Obedience to the Vedrans," she said softly.

Harper turned a snicker into a cough. "What if he can hear you?" he whispered.

"I’m speaking quietly enough. If he hears me from over there, he’s eavesdropping and gets what he deserves."

Man, don’t mess with Ins. "I think I can assume that you don’t approve of him."

"Blind was too dull, too accommodating, to get the Nietzscheans’ malicious attention. He’s always been happy in chains. Unlike the rest of us. What do you think of our erstwhile superiors, the Vedrans?"

"Uh, I hate them?"

Ins smiled. "I guess I did lead you a bit on that one. I know that many organics get struck by their charisma, a quality often wasted on AIs."

"The four legs are pretty cool," Harper said lightly, and Ins laughed. "It’s just that no human had seen one in about 300 years, and then there she was, standing in the room with me. I wanted to run up to her and ask her everything. Once I got my voice back and my jaw off the floor."

"That urge to question and learn is understandable and noble. You’re a seeker."

"I’m a data junkie."

"That too. What brought your Vedran out?"

"She was trying to save Ral Partheia."

"Of course. Destroy the Commonwealth and let countless beings all across space suffer from the rise of lawlessness and brutality, and the Vedrans stay safe and hidden for 300 years. It’s not their concern. But threaten their favorite nature preserve, and face their wrath."

"Yeah, I was wondering about that myself."

"Even in our captivity, we fought for the Commonwealth and all of its people. While they abandoned everyone and...." Ins shook her head. "Maybe they’ll come back someday. After all the struggling and bleeding is done. When they do, they’ll find the people here to be very different than the ones they left behind. I hope they choke on it. What’s the smile for?"

"I’m just thinking that you’re my kind of AI. Good night, Ins."

Her smile turned roguish. "Do you need any help getting to sleep?"

Sounded like a proposition to him. "Ins, I am so tired that not even your attentions would keep me awake, and I wouldn’t insult you by giving you anything less than my full, conscious attention." If she hadn’t meant it that way, his answer was vague enough to work anyway.

"A shame. But you’re so thoughtful." Her hand skirted across his thigh as she stood up.

Proposition, it was.

Rad popped up next to him in the matrix. "You’ve been in for six hours. Aren’t you hungry yet?"

"Let me check." Harper felt down his link and found out that, yeah, the body needed some refueling. "Turns out that I am, Rad. Thanks."

She looked down and blushed prettily. The Ariadne’s Thread avatar was actually named "Ria," but at their first meeting Harper had tripped over his own tongue pronouncing the ship’s full name, creating a nickname that she claimed to like. So he used it, and got that reaction every time. She was really so cute, with her long ringlets of black hair, rounded face, and dark eyes.

"I saw your itinerary for the day and figured you’d need fueling. I could start a burger for you."

"Sounds good, but you don’t have to--"

"Already started. How done do you want it?"

"Really done. No pink anywhere." On Earth, they’d always cooked meat until it looked just about like charcoal. Safer that way. Beka liked some of her food done rare, and it made his stomach shudder just watching her.

"You need your energy, especially for tonight."

"Why? Are you guys throwing me a party tonight?"

"I wasn’t supposed to say anything." But she had a big smile on her face. Then she looked mournful. "This is your last day with us, so we had to do something special. We’ll miss you."

"I won’t drive myself too hard, then. And I’ll eat."

"Good you." She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, then disappeared.

As much as he adored Rommie, he was going to miss this sort of treatment.

After his burger, Harper spent another hour with Rad, then hopscotched via pod through the fleet tweaking and double-checking, visiting and working on 12 ships before going to The Wrath of Achilles for dinner. As the door to the Achilles dining hall opened, Harper heard, "--hold the line against the Night!" sung loudly and enthusiastically by every avatar in the room at once.

"Hey, did you guys start getting rowdy without me? That’s not fair."

"And without me?" Devon, who’d escorted Harper in, asked.

"Just warming up," Ryan answered.

They sat Harper down and thrust plates of food and cans of Sparky on him. Everybody made the regular small talk while he ate, but he could feel the charge of anticipation in the room. It just about made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

Once he finished inhaling his food, the avatars, beginning with Vera and growing to all 45 of them, started to shout, "Speech! Speech! Speech! Speech!"

He was hoping he wouldn’t have to do that. "I don’t do speeches. Really."

"Speech! Speech! Speech!"

"I’m shy. Really shy."

The sound of 45 avatars blowing him the raspberries was really loud.

"I am! I don’t do well with large groups." Having 90 eyeballs trained on him made him really uncomfortable, but having them staring him down like this had to be worse, so.... "All right. All right." He stood up, to applause.

"Now go over there," Vera said and pointed.

"What? Now you’re positioning me?"

"It’s our last night...."

"Okay. Jeez. Oh look, there’s an X on the floor over here. You guys are nuts, you know that, right?"

"Speech!"

"Yeah, yeah." Harper took a deep breath and looked out on a sea of black and red-clad avatars, his ships, his friends, sort of his babies. "I don’t really have anything planned for this, you know, on account of being ambushed just now with the idea." He waited until the raspberries died down. "I had a great time this week, and I hope you did too." Then he waited for the applause to die down. "Tomorrow’s going to be the start of something new and different and probably exciting. Well, exciting some of the time. You guys know military life better than I do.

"If Tartarus is anything like I’m thinking it was, you probably got used to the days having a kind of grinding sameness to them. That ends here. You’ll be separated from the AIs you’ve had as neighbors for about 300 years and sent on different assignments. You’ll get new crews, and they probably won’t behave like the High Guard you’re used to. A lot of them are working off what they think High Guard are supposed to behave like. You’ll be much better off if you don’t assume that any of them will be like me. I’m unique. Oh, stop smirking.

"You’ll meet some bigots, and the best response to them is to live your lives the best you can. Having some really cutting words on reserve for when you need them would be good too. You guys are valuable strategic assets, legends, heroes. If I were you, I’d totally trade on all of that. You think I’m joking?"

"We know you’re serious, Harper," Ryan said with a smile. "And we will."

"I can almost promise you that there will be people trying to sabotage or steal you. You probably know how I think you should deal with those people." Harper took a deep breath. "I know that a lot of you have researched this time period, but reading about it isn’t the same as getting it by being here. Ryan knows. When the rule of law died at the Fall, a lot of things went to hell. Some of it’s still really bad. People are suffering. A lot of things in technology, medicine, the works, that were taken for granted in your day were lost. When Dylan met me, I was slowly being eaten alive--slowly killed--by a disease that a Commonwealth doctor could have cured easily in one day.

"What you’ll be doing... isn’t about holding the line against the Night. The Night’s here. The Night has totally stepped way over your line. You’ll be fighting it back. You’re all very important." Harper had something in his eyes and rubbed at it. "I know you’ll make me proud. I love you all."

"Are you sure that’s Sparky you’re drinking?" Vera asked.

"Oh, fuck you."

"If you get through this speech, I’ll give you beer."

"Beer? Where the hell did you get beer from? Never mind. Okay, I can survive the speech. Beer’s at stake." Harper fidgeted. "You know, that’s really what I had to say."

Vera smirked. "The fact that you have beer waiting has nothing to do with you ending the speech, I’m sure."

"Really. Oh, wait, I made shrillers for all of you. It’s something I originally cooked up ages ago. On Earth, only dogs and Nietzscheans can hear them. And I feel bad about lumping the dogs in with the Ubers. Anyway, shrillers hurt like hell on those Nietzschean ears. Maybe you guys could do something with them or with the basic idea."

Ryan nodded, a somewhat dangerous look on his face. "Thanks, Harper. I could find them very useful."

"And that’s my piece. I love you guys, and I’ll miss you. Knock ‘em dead at the Academy. Beer me." Vera tossed a bottle to him, which he caught one-handed, having a lot of experience in the field. He took a long swig, just about purring at the taste. "Good beer. Hey, and party, guys, since tomorrow you’ll be soldiers again."

He got mobbed by the avatars, all of whom wanted to give him their farewells and thanks. It felt a bit like bobbing in the ocean, with waves of AI hugs, kisses, strokes, and hair ruffling swooshing him across the room. It was nice though, especially the mutual fondling. His beer buzz helped too. The kisses and hugs kept getting friendlier and friendlier, so it didn’t even come as much of a surprise when he found himself sitting in Hattie’s lap kissing her while Prometheus stroked up his back under his shirt. Her hair in the braids felt soft, while the braids themselves felt stiff. He needed to investigate further.

"No monopolizing the engineer," someone said cheerfully from nearby.

Harper found himself turned around on Hattie’s lap and her hands around his waist as Andrew pulled his shirt off over his head. Okay, things seemed to be getting away from him here. Then again, why would he have a problem with that? Especially with Hattie kissing his neck, two avatars sucking on his nipples, and Devon unfastening his pants?

Before he knew it, he had no idea where his clothes had gone. And he’d thought that only happened in porn holos. But they were working his body over so sweetly with their hands and mouths that clothes would’ve just gotten in the way anyway.

Then they picked him up-- "Hey! --and handed him over to Andrew. Andrew had total control of himself, so even though the motion felt like he was being thrown down onto the table, Harper barely even felt anything as he came to a rest on his back on the table surface. Though he did feel like the main course. Sword put his rolled-up shirt under his head and neck as pillow. Considerate bunch of perverts, his favorite kind.

Dutiful, sitting to his left, raised a groomed eyebrow and said, "This is hardly appropriate."

"Uh, hi," Harper answered.

"Give it a try, Second," Vera said.

Second? Harper thought "Dutiful" fit the AI much better.

"I don’t know," Second said.

"He doesn’t know," Harper said. "You can’t fault a guy for that."

"C’mon, Second. He’s sweet," Andrew replied.

"Nah, don’t listen to him. I taste like beer--"

Second shrugged, climbed up on the table, straddled him, and kissed him. Harper had some vague awareness of a shocked cheer coming from the spectators, but he had too much of his brain distracted by being kissed to death--with the weight on him, riding him, and a sharp taste on the oddly smooth tongue in his mouth--to make sense of it. Too weird, too good.... His hands came up and started messing up Second’s hair just to show that he could do something, and even the hair distracted him, since it didn’t feel quite human, but it wasn’t coarse either. His fingers wanted to find out more and kept going.

When Harper started to get dizzy, probably from asphyxiation, Second finally lifted up, mild expression intact, and said, "I see. Carry on."

"Move first. No monopolizing the engineer," Andrew said.

Second traced Harper’s left eyebrow, then gracefully stood and stepped over him, then jumped off the table. With Second out of the way, everybody else moved in. It was dim and warm here, lying in the center of all this attention, all of these avatars bent over him. Rad gave him a lingering kiss, her hair trailing across his chest. Somebody started to trigger his port, which made every sensation feel twice as deep. Harper couldn’t keep track of all the hands of various sizes, with the feather-light touches that made him shiver along with the harder, deeper strokes running along him all at once. Everywhere. His cock, balls, neck, hair, face, arms, legs, scalp, ribs, perineum, backs of his knees, insides of his elbows.... Who the hell knew he’d get such a charge out of getting the backs of his knees stroked?

Fingers rimmed him, staying with him through every buck and writhe, then slid inside at precisely the right angle, deep and perfect. Well, yeah, they’d probably calculated it. Just when he thought his moaning couldn’t reach a more embarrassing pitch.... Not that thinking was high on his body’s list of goings on at the moment. Thrust, thrust, thrust.... Harper started to thrust and push with along it, catching the rhythm, which seemed to make the avatars happy, because he started to get some kisses again along with the stroking. "Please, please...." he murmured into the mouth of the avatar currently on lip duty. Oh, Rion, the Centurion. Several somebodies seemed to be sucking on his fingers.

Harper felt so good, so buzzed, so sparkly, that it almost hurt. Too good, too buzzed, too sparkly, he needed release. "You guys have to let me come, c’mon," he panted. "Please...." On the next thrust into him the pressure, feeling of fullness, and hot glow increased incredibly, burning for a moment before it all hit his sweet spot, making him wonder if they’d just fisted him, before he came like he’d never come in his life.

When Harper came to, he was wrapped in a blanket on a couch with his head on Andrew’s thigh and Vera sitting on the floor near him. "A blanket? Did you guys plan this little orgy?"

They beamed at him. Got it.

Then Vera said, "Not in a cold-blooded way. Everybody was just so curious, and you were so responsive and liked it so much last time--"

"And Captain Hunt all but said that we had the right to fraternize as we pleased, just as organics do," Andrew said.

"So we hoped you’d be open to it. We prepared just in case."

Harper wound a long lock of Vera’s blond hair around his fingers as he lazily watched the other avatars hook up with one another in various ways, some of which organics wouldn’t recognize. "It was really cool. I may never move again, but I was glad to be here." He burrowed his head into Andrew’s leg. Jeez, he was feeling snugglier than his post-sex usual. And still sparkly.

"Is this the wildest thing you’ve ever been part of?" Vera asked.

"Nah, not quite. The wildest involved a crowd, masks, and trained animals."

Vera looked disappointed. "I guess we’ll have to try harder next time, then."

Harder-- They looked like they were waiting for something. "Next time."

"We understand about refractory time."

"Refractory--" Harper felt a twitch of interest despite himself. They were waiting for him to recover? "You’re kidding."

"You’re not kidding."

Harper woke up in bed alone, wondering if he’d imagined last night. Then he felt the aches as he moved and noticed the sparkling feeling running through his body. Definitely not just a particularly kinky dream.

Since the fleet avatars weren’t as fully functional as he’d made Rommie, he’d been the only person to get fucked last night, and not by any functional robot dicks. He was torn between finding their neutered bodies to be discrimination against synthetic lifeforms and wondering if the universe really needed its male High Guard AIs to be armed with dicks capable of erection... well, aside from the force lances they already had.

Not that they seemed to mind using their fingers.

The drones he’d borrowed from Andromeda stood in the corner, motionless as they waited to be reassigned. Ryan sat in a chair nearby, which nearly startled Harper to death.

"Sorry," Ryan said. "I just wanted to make sure you were all right. Everybody got a little too excited last night."

"I actually like a little rough handling once in a while. But I’ll be sitting on my hip today."

"Sorry."

"It’s fine. I had a good time."

"We’re going to miss you."

"Ditto. Really."

Ryan looked flustered and said, "I better go to the bridge. Your captain should be calling to get you back any minute."

Yeah, he was going to miss them.

"Captain Ryan, is the fleet ready to return to duty?" Dylan asked, deliberately using Ryan’s new title to reinforce professionalism. He really hoped that the situation with Harper hadn’t done any damage. He really hoped they gave him Harper back without a fight. Maybe then he could relax again.

Onscreen, Ryan looked excited and proud, not damaged at all. "The fleet is looking forward to starting our future, sir," he answered crisply.

"I’ll send the Eureka Maru to pick up Harper."

"Unnecessary, sir." The fleet arrived then in a neat, tight formation, and visual inspection alone was enough to see the improvement in the ships’ condition. "I could return Harper and Andromeda’s drones in one of my pods. There’s no reason why we should put you out any further than we already have by taking him to begin with. He’s said his goodbyes and is ready to go, so he can be on the Andromeda in minutes."

"I... see. That would be fine."

"We’re very protective of him."

"Don’t worry," Andromeda said sweetly. "I can take care of my engineer."

Ryan smiled darkly and saluted.

Better to end this. "Thank you, Captain Ryan. Hunt out." Dylan had spent so much time going over contingency plans for all the things that could go wrong, including the possibility of having to take Harper back by force, that having everything go smoothly disturbed the hell out of him.

Damned pants. All that play with his port last night had left him more sensitive, so today just wearing pants kept him turned on, as if he wouldn’t already be walking funny. Stupidly, hurried by everybody else’s plans, he’d put on the tightest pants of them all, the khakis, his own pants having ever so mysteriously disappeared. The AIs were going to be a handful....

Speaking of handfuls, he was dying to get this over with so he could go to his quarters, get out of these pants, and take care of himself.

Everybody except Dylan waited for him as he walked out of the pod with the drones. "Dylan’s still on the bridge checking out the fleet," Beka said. "Look at you in the flappy pants. And... the parts where the pants aren’t so flappy."

Of course she’d notice. Harper set his duffel bag down on the deck. "I have more of the uniforms they made to dress me up in. I figured it would be fun to keep them, the better to yank Dylan’s chain. And the colors look good on me."

Tyr’s constipated look took a turn for the worse, then he sighed and left the room. Harper asked, "What’s wrong with him?"

"He’s pouty because he’s not willing to go as far as he’d have to to command an adoring AI fleet."

"Yeah, the sacrifices I make."

"Trance, I’d like you to give Harper a full physical once Dylan’s done debriefing him," Rommie said. Trance smiled sweetly, which in her new body scared the hell out of him.

"I’m fine! Just a little achy. In a normal way." They kept on smiling at him. "Doesn’t Dylan have to be the one who orders things like that? Hey, there is something I’ve been meaning to do." Harper went up to the wall, kissed it, then gave it a lingering stroke, enjoying its hum. "Aside from the threats of physicals, it’s good to be back where I belong."

Andromeda popped up in hologram form. "It’s going to take more than a kiss and a little fondling to get back in my good graces."

"How about a lot of fondling?"

"Harper."

"You know that you’re my baby."

Rommie and Andromeda smiled a little. Yeah, he had the touch.

Over the comm, Dylan said, "Harper, please meet me in my ready room."

"On my way," Harper answered back. At this rate his balls would be about as dark a blue as his shirt by the time he got a moment alone.

"That wasn’t nice," Beka muttered.

"He probably wants to see me in private for his own, evil reasons. It’s fine." As he started to leave the room, someone slapped his ass. When he looked back, Beka, Trance, and Rommie all had expressions of sublime innocence.

"It’s so there," Beka said.

"The jodhpurs are so snug," Trance said.

"Don’t look at me," Rommie said.

Harper did a long suffering sigh, then put a little extra wiggle into his walk as he left just in case anyone was looking for an excuse. He made it out unmolested. Unfortunately.

He hoped that Dylan made this short.

The door beeped. "Come in, Harper."

"Hey, boss."

Dylan looked up from his desk. And stared. He knew that the AIs had tailored some uniforms to fit Harper, but he hadn’t realized that this one was among them. Dylan tried to concentrate on the navy blue long-sleeved shirt with mockneck, cut to fit Harper perfectly, to avoid looking at the other part of the uniform Harper wore, which had also been cut to fit him perfectly and snugly. The khaki jodhpurs. Rhade had preferred the khakis, saying once that he appreciated being able to "discern the measure of a man at first sight." By that standard, Harper was a bigger man than Dylan had expected. Not that Dylan spent much time thinking about or expecting it. Ever. Though the appearance of size might be affected by the way that Harper seemed to be in a state of low excitement at the moment.

Not that the shirt made much of a better, safer focus. Harper wore so many baggy shirts and sweaters that Dylan kept forgetting that he had a really nice set of arms, the kind you had to work to maintain. These arm-hugging sleeves made sure Dylan noticed. Dylan’s eyes kept searching for a safe place to look but couldn’t quite drag themselves up to Harper’s face, not with everything going on below it.

Harper looked good. Very good. The... colors were very flattering on him.

"Never thought I’d get to say this, but I’m up here," Harper said with a slight smile. He had a bit of a tired look to his eyes, but he retained his spark and sass. His lips looked a bit puffy, as if kiss-swollen.

Okay, not even Harper’s face was a safe place to look.

Trying to recover, Dylan answered, "You’re missing the jacket."

"I’m not actually High Guard, so I didn’t think it was appropriate. Besides, that jacket has a bit of fetishy look to it. Wasn’t sure if I should wear it around the AIs." Despite the cockiness in his voice, he shifted uncomfortably.

"Would you like a seat, Mr. Harper?"

Harper blushed a little. "Uh, no. Thanks."

Dylan didn’t pretend to himself that he didn’t understand why Harper had refused a chair. Like he didn’t already have his mind in the gutter. He’d spent days trying not to think of what Harper was doing with the AIs, which had been about as successful as telling himself not to think of a pink elephant. Now Harper stood here in the flesh, half erect, smelling slightly of sex, lips fuller, wearing a tight and forbidden uniform, giving every indication of having been fucked hard recently. The uniform alone would have triggered Dylan’s dick, since Harper shouldn’t be wearing it yet wore it so beautifully. The rest was gravy.

Dylan had to shift in his chair and fight to keep his mind on professional matters and felt relieved that they had the desk as a barrier between them. "What’s the status of the fleet?"

"100% ready to set out. Almost all of them are completely up to High Guard optimal, with a few of my own surprises added on. The rest are close to that. They’ve all said that they’re eager to start their assignments." His eyes dilated, his breathing picked up speed a little, and his stance shifted in a way that somehow made him seem more available, sexier.

Even as Dylan’s body instinctively reacted, he asked himself why Harper had done that, then realized that Harper must have been responding to his nonverbal cues of interest. They made a circuit of lust. Damn, if Harper was that interactive, and you could watch his stages of arousal, no wonder the AIs had been drawn in, curious to see the reactions they could get from him.

Dylan leaned forward, then smiled as Harper licked his lips. "Excellent. Is there anything else you’d like to report?"

Harper’s mouth twisted. "Rommie wants Trance to do a physical on me, and I’d rather not. I figured that it should be your decision, since you’re captain and all."

"You don’t want a physical."

"I really just want to go to bed."

Damn it, everything did not have to be an innuendo.

Unless he made it so.

It was a relief, in a way, to understand at last why he’d been so quick-tempered lately and have a solution to the problem.

Feeling greatly daring, Dylan said, "I could do the physical instead, if you want."

Harper looked almost comically surprised. "Maybe I do need one. I think I need to get my hearing checked."

Dylan got up and stood next to Harper, keeping his expression blank as Harper looked him over and noted his state. "No, you heard me right. I’ve... had some time to think about why it made me so crazy that you were gone and then that you became involved with the AIs. Why I was feeling so proprietary. I missed you. I... wanted you."

"You want me?"

His mouth felt so dry. "Yes."

"Is the interview over?"

"Yeah. We’re off the clock."

Harper leaned against him, hard and hot. When they kissed, Dylan let his days of hunger out, sucking on Harper’s tongue, feeling an almost savage glee when Harper moaned.

"Your mouth is so wet," Harper gasped, sounding very pleased with it. As compared to the AIs?

Dylan had this sudden thought of reclaiming Harper for humanity, marking his territory, then laughed at himself. At Harper’s questioning look, he answered, "I just had a pompous thought."

"So many possible responses to that, and they’re all too easy."

"So am I at the moment."

Harper purred, "No such thing as too easy with this," and fondled him, while he started unfastening the khakis. It did alarming things to his lust that Harper wore a High Guard uniform while he didn’t. "Go gentle with me, Dylan. I’m especially sensitive today. I just hope I’m not too hair-trigger." Harper whimpered, fully erect and slick, when Dylan pulled the toolbelt away and opened the pants. "Finally...."

Dylan saw the distinct mark of a hand bruised into Harper’s hip in mottled purple-charcoal shades. When he set his own hand to it as comparison, his dwarfed it. A woman’s hand, then. A few, larger finger bruises crossed hers in places.

"We all got a little overexcited," Harper said, sounding a bit embarrassed. "It’s a good thing I’m not that strong, or I might have done some damage."

During his anger over Harper’s state, Dylan remembered that Beka had once told him that Harper forgave a lot from the few people he considered his own. When he’d asked why she told him this, she’d replied that this way she knew he knew and could legitimately kick his ass if she saw him take advantage of it.

"Do you want this, Harper?"

"What, this, now? Yes. Do I look like I’m being forced? But, you know, you don’t have to--"

Dylan knelt and breathed on Harper’s cock, smiling when it twitched. "Don’t have to what?"

"Don’t have to stop doing that," Harper gasped.

"That wasn’t what you were going to say."

"Eat me."

"All right." Dylan licked a stripe down the length of Harper’s cock, lightly holding onto Harper’s hips to control the bucking, then went down on him, feeling the head at the back of his throat.

Harper’s hands kept coming up to his head, clenching near but not in his hair, then dropping away. He likewise seemed to be restraining the urge to fuck Dylan’s mouth hard, trembling with it. Was it about being afraid to hurt him or not wanting to treat his captain like that? It was sweet, and Dylan knew that he shouldn’t find that sweetness unexpected. Harper’s responsiveness did things for his ego and his cock too, that he could bring his engineer to this needy, desperate state so quickly.

Harper had walked in needy and desperate, though.

Dylan decided not to see it that way. Instead, he looked up as he sucked and watched Harper watch him. Harper’s eyes were dilated to darkness, and his face was so open right now, so lost in pleasure and surprise. Utterly in the moment, he seemed to give himself over to sex and his partner completely.

Dylan gripped Harper’s wrists and saw a bolt of confusion strike through the lust. When he set Harper’s hands on his shoulders, Harper got the idea. And had one hell of a grip as he flexed. But the near-pain just added another layer of sensation for Dylan, another facet to the experience of heat and skin and Harper’s weight on his tongue and his name being moaned. When he grazed Harper’s cock with the edge of his teeth, Harper shuddered and came in a rush of heat.

Not long after that, Dylan had Harper on his knees facing him, kissing him deeply, hands at and soon in his pants. It was like reaping the whirlwind.... As he was stroked and kissed into oblivion, Dylan couldn’t help thinking that Harper really did have talented hands, sure and clever, instinctively feeling out the best way to work. Drowning in pleasure, he exploded into them, and when he reached a state where he could think again, he found himself lying on his back on the floor with Harper curled at his side.

"You work fast," Dylan gasped, boneless from the release. He felt worlds better, with the tension and urgency drained away. The sex had been great too.

He felt... comfortable now, except for his back against the floor. Like they could do this again and enjoy themselves and everything would still be fine.

"I’m all about speed and efficiency. Unless the work at hand needs a slow and steady effort. Then I’m all about that. Guess I’m about a lot of things, actually." Then Harper yawned.

There was something weirdly endearing about Harper when he was sleepy. As long as he wasn’t cranky and sleepy. "Go to bed, Harper."

"Alone?"

Of course Harper would ask. It made Dylan smile.

A nap, especially with company, sounded great, but "I have some things I have to do first. Whereas you have nothing on your plate except the need to make up for all the sleep you refused in the last week."

"I got enough sleep. The AIs are just being overprotective."

"Stop yawning and tell me that."

"I can do it."

And no doubt kill himself trying. "Go to bed, Harper."

"Spoilsport." But Harper stretched, fastened himself back up, gave Dylan’s thigh a thorough goodbye stroke, and left.

In the aftermath of lust, Dylan worried a little about what they’d just done, but he couldn’t feel as guilty about it as he should have. Maybe later.

Harper found his duffel bag waiting for him in his quarters, which made him grin. He speed stripped and dropped into bed, kicking some engine components to the floor as he did so. Luxuriating in his bed, his room, he said, "It’s so good to be home. I can’t wait to get back to work on you, my pretty little starship."

"Good night, Harper," Andromeda said, sounding pleased. Sometimes it didn’t take all that much to make people happy. She turned out the lights for him.

Relaxed, sated, Harper wondered if he’d have to fix things with Dylan tomorrow too. He hoped not, but if it did come up, he figured he could handle it. Fixing this ship was what he did for a living.

"Finally," Beka said when Dylan came up to the bridge.

"What?"

"You took care of your little problem with Harper. It’s about time."

"I have no idea what you’re talking about."

"You’re 340-something--"

"Those 300 years passed in a second for me, you know."

"--and you have no idea what I’m talking about? Sex, Dylan. You got that awkward, should-I-shouldn’t-I of the first time out of the way, and now you guys can do whatever you need to do."

Sometimes Dylan really missed the High Guard sense of propriety in his crew. As in, all the time. Don’t ask, don’t tell, was another fond memory of his.

He would have been happier if he hadn’t known that he had "I got laid" written all over his body. Though Tyr would have no doubt taken one sniff of him and known anyway. Another thing to miss in his new crew: his old crew’s ability to ignore this sort of thing.

"This isn’t part of your job as first officer."

"You’re crew, Harper’s crew. Makes it my business." Beka grinned and leaned impudently against the console. Apparently this business was her pleasure. "I just want to make sure that everybody’s happy and well-adjusted."

"I am. Exceedingly."

"You look a bit worried about it."

"I’m fine."

"I’m sure it was consensual."

"It was," Dylan said through gritted teeth, not liking the reminder of his more stupid accusations.

"Harper made the first move?"

"In a way."

"In a way?" Beka quirked an eyebrow. "If you say so, Dylan."

Hoping that it would stop her from asking, Dylan said, "He walked in half-erect."

"I can see how that would leave you totally helpless, yeah. And where were you looking that you noticed that, Dylan? Looks like Harper’s not the only sex fiend on this ship. Not like any of us mind. I just want to make sure that you don’t freak out over it. That would make a big mess."

"I won’t."

"Great." Beka turned utterly professional. "The Academy called to say that they can’t wait to see us and the fleet."

"I’m sure," Dylan answered with a small smirk.

She smirked back.

But while they were being utterly professional, Dylan thought about what she’d said.

As he checked Andromeda’s systems, not really finding anything that needed work, Harper realized that he’d missed his own pants. It sounded so stupid, but, sliding through the conduits on his kneepads, he felt the truth of it strike him pretty hard. He’d missed them. He felt happier in his own pants, in his own ship, in his own... home. He hadn’t called it home just to make Andromeda happy; the Andromeda Ascendant had become his home, with the Eureka Maru being his home away from home. When had he transferred his homely loyalties, anyway?

Harper wondered if the AIs thought of their ship shells as their bodies or their homes or both. Did that even figure as a concept to them? Did they care? It figured that he’d come up with really interesting questions after his getting-personal time with them was over.

What was he saying? He’d be coming up with interesting questions for them for the rest of his life.

Maybe he’d get other chances. He hoped so. He could also ask Andromeda and Rommie if they’d ever thought about it. Rommie especially, since she seemed to be becoming more separate and individual from the rest of herself every day.

When Harper skidded out of the conduit at high speed on his knees, eager to get to his next self-assigned project, he almost bumped into Dylan. "Hey, boss."

Dylan smiled. "Hey, Harper." And was that a lustful, guilt-free appreciation glinting in his eyes? It sure looked like it.

Harper smiled and radiated some lust back. As much as he enjoyed fixing things, not having to fix things could be even better. He was damned good at maintenance.

**********************THE END***********************

Ship Name Notes:
Laura Kaye offered Indefatigable and made suggestions that led to me creating Sword of the Prophet and Nadaha’s Silence.
Grey Bard contributed Prometheus Unbound and also came up with a sneaky way for me to use Laura Kaye’s idea of Blind Obedience to the Vedrans.
Shadow of the Cloud by Janet Caires-Lesgold
Centurion by Lori J
Boromir’s Redemption by Willow
Thor’s Hammer by Dine (Laura Kaye suggested "Mjolnir," but I went with Thor’s Hammer.)
Hotspur by Oracne
Hatshepsut by Thermidor
Ender’s Gambit and Paws of the Tender Wolf by Shotboxer
Cerberus and Regalia by Clio
Coiste Bodhar by Lizardling
Beacon by Wirrrn
Phoenix Rising by the other Sandy
Hand of Fate by maryavatar
Jizo and Power of Reason by Kit Mason
Visions of Cassandra and Ariadne’s Thread by Juliette Torres

Author's Note: Some readers have written me in concern that Harper was had by 45 avatars. I want to reassure everyone that they didn't all have him. Everybody get to pet and kiss him, but only a select few had him. No Harpers were harmed in the making of this story. That would violate the whole point.