The crew of the Andromeda Ascendant waited at the main airlock for the contingent of Corionis dignitaries. This was an important step towards restoring the Commonwealth: The Conionis system was at a vital trade nexus and was considered to be an enlightened and civilised world. They had stayed true to the ideals of the Commonwealth through the long night.

With this in mind as the delegates approched, Dylan said, "Ok everyone, lets not make any mistakes." he couldn't help flicking his glance to Harper who, although neater than usual, still radiated a lack of professionalism as he scanned the approaching group for women.

"Yeah yeah boss don't worry about us"drawled Harper as Dylan took a deep breath and tugged down his dress tunic, "We won't tell any hot babes you haven't been laid in 300 years".

Dylan's breath whooshed out and only the appearance of First Minister Ezar prevented Dylan from giving Harper another lecture on propriety. Harper noticed that Dylan's ears were pink. Oh man! That was too easy! He grinned as he noticed Beka and Tyr were unsucessfully smothering grins.

"Harper that was mean" whispered Trance into Harper's ear.

"No Trance, that was payback. Dylan has been nagging me about 'behaving' myself for months and I think it's because if he doesn't get any he doesn't want anyone else to get any either" Harper was feeling pretty smug.

"Any what?" asked Trance

Harper rolled his eyes, "Later Trance" he said as they were about to be introduced to the priciple members of the Corionis government.

Not a single woman under 40 Harper thought, grimacing. The only way I'm gonna feel better about this is if they offer me the run of that fancy engineering facility on the edge of the spaceport.

"Ah there you are Harper" came Dylan's voice from behind him, "I want you to meet Minister for Technology Owen" Dylan had a 'don't screw this up' look on his face. "Minister Owen was just telling me that they would like to help us with some of the more urgent repairs on Andromeda".

Score! "Uh yes that would be great Minister Owen, what sort of help were you thinking of?" Harper hoped to hear the three magic words 'just help yourself'. " Our slipstream drive needs some kinks worked out and we've been having problems with our primary grav units. Not to mention about a hundred small things that I can't keep up with. I may be a genius but there's only one of me!"

"One is more than enough" muttered Dylan, "Well I'll leave you two to hammer out the details shall I?" he left with a polite smile that Harper thought was covering up the fact that he wanted to strangle his engineer.

The next day a flood of engineers, techs and programmers arrived on Andromeda. Harper was in his element directing them to all the systems that had been causing problems over the last few months. Rommie was gliding around the place with this big happy grin on her face as a stream of earnest young men and women tweaked her into perfect health.

Dylan was watching her sigh in contentment as a tech replaced a worn relay. Damn: she looks like she's been having great sex thought Dylan, does she look like that when Harper fixes something? He decided that this was too close to the distubing dream he'd had of watching Harper assemble Rommie and it was time to leave. Just as he was about to exit the ship a very attractive young woman appeared on the deck... a very very attractive young woman. She had deep red hair tyed up around her head and sparkling green eyes. Dylan bet that when she let her hair down it fell in glossy waves over her pale smooth skin...Snap out of it Dylan! She looked sort of lost standing there so he walked over.

"Hi! I'm Dylan Hunt, captain of the Andromeda. Were you looking for something?" She smiled back at him Great smile too.

"Hello Captain Hunt I was told to report to Chief Engineer Seamus Harper. I'm Kitrin, the environmental engineering specialist: Owen told me you were having problems with your gravity." Dylan dragged his attention away from her lips long enough to process the information.

"Ah yes Harper. Hmmm. Rommie!" he raised his voice, "Where is Harper?" Dylan already knew that Harper was going to go into a priapic frenzy when he met Kitrin. How do I tactfully warn her?

Rommie swished over. "Section 19. Are you specialist Kitrin? He's waiting for you." and she swished away again.

"I'll take you down" he said. It'll give me a chance to mention Harper's less admirable traits.

Harper was half in - half out of a wall and cursing when he heard Dylan come in. He was laughing with someone. Someone with a light giggle that ran sexy tingles up and down his spine. He wrenched himself out of the bulkhead and looked around.

Ding ding ding ding ding - hot babe alert!

Harper fell instantly into total lust. Oh man! A stacked redhead - have I died and gone to heaven? He completely failed to notice Dylan's interest in the girl which had grown stronger as they'd walked down to section 19. "Hi there!" he grinned over at her, "Are you, by any chance, the woman of my dreams?"

Dylan gave Harper a 'back off' look that went unnoticed.

"If that means, am I here to fix your a-g units? Then yes Mister Harper." She looked like the sort of girl that liked a joke and could give as good as she could get. "Where's the primary interface? Do I need special access?"

Harper held off on the 'special access' inuendoes. Dylan was glaring at him for some reason and he didn't want to get further into his capain's bad books. "I'll hook you up here. It's specialist Kitrin isn't it? That's a lovely name: do people call you Kitten?"

"Only if they want their eyes scratched out" Harper laughed. This babe was aware that he was checking her out and seemed to be enjoying his cheeky brand of charm. Oh yeah! I'm a God!

Dylan left the room. Kitrin seemed to be able to fend off Harper's clumsy attempts at seduction so it would be safe to leave her there. After all Harper wasn't competition - was he?

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