Ma’ctor watched as Harper bounced around a lab, correcting his pupils and at times arguing with them. After two weeks of teaching them, Harper seemed to have gotten over his fear of the Nietzscheans

"That will not work. There is no way for the power to simply do that." One of Harper’s pupils objected.

"Well, Mr. Toughman, it does work. I made it work on the Andromeda. Now I’ll teach you to make it work here. True, your gear is less... advanced than Rommie’s but that’s OK. Before Dylan, I worked with a lot of useless Nietzschean machinery. So it’s no trouble to bring myself back down. I’ll just visit Rommie’s engine room and bring myself back to civilized engineering. Now try it again! If it blows up, don’t be afraid. We can repeat it until we get it right. That’s the point. That’s part of engineering. TESTING. Go." Harper pointed to a workstation. He watched the Nietzschean move over there with a stiff back. Closing his eyes, he let out a deep breath. Turning he headed over to where Ma’ctor stood. Eyes closed he kept walking until he walked up onto Ma’ctor. "Ahhh. Blue boy! Do not do that to me again."

"Didn’t mean to this time. I see... that you are working well with your enemies."

"You mean the supermen? Yeah." Harper nodded and pulled a couple of chairs from a nearby table. "So what’s up? Need something from my wunderkids?" He smiled.

"No," Ma’ctor sat down and leaned close, "What do you know about a Nietzschean slave named Chrome? According to Raa, he was rather famous."

"Not much. Earth born, taken by Cobra Pride, he had an experimental jack, and he’s dead." He rattled off.

"Well there’s no proof that he’s dead." Ma’ctor looked to the side. "But he was a mechanical genius bar none. It was thought that he was so good that he rivaled the best scientists of the Commonwealth. He was considered young and handsome, fair of hair and skin. He had the most amazing light grass green eyes. I found a picture of him but he was young and it’s not a good picture. You have dirty blond hair and light blue eyes. Surgery? Had them do a little restructure with your hair and eyes?"

"Why are you asking this?"

"Have you told Tyr... who you are?" Ma’ctor asked, taking one of Harper’s hands in his.

"Chrome is dead. I killed him. I don’t want to be him." Harper whispered.

"Why, from what I’ve read, what I’ve learned, he’s miraculous. He’s intelligent."

"He’s a slave." Harper hissed. "I won’t be a slave again."

"He was not a slave. He never stopped fighting. When he had the chance, he stole the enemy’s tech and ran with it. Besides, once claimed by another clan, the slave belongs to the new clan, I think. Give me time. I will find out, but we don’t have much time."

"True, once we leave here, that’s it and hopefully Dylan will want to leave soon." Harper leaned back.

"That’s not what I meant... There was a short Nietzschean, for one of them; he has bronze skin tone with long straight black hair. He also has almond shaped eyes. While we were entering the pride, I saw him stare at you. He said, ‘Very soon, Chrome... Harper’. I’m afraid for you. I want to tell Dylan but I won’t do it behind your back. Tell Tyr soon. Tomorrow morning, we will meet on the ship for our weekly meeting. I will tell them then. It is because you are my shipmate that I will do this. We will all fight. Cobra will not take you back." Ma’ctor stood up and walked out.

* * *

Ma’ctor entered the media center and sat down at the first empty station. Head bowed, he started entering his search terms.

In a corner of the media center, Caeilla sat and watched the blue furred alien type. Sometimes he would switch screens as he seemed to look for something. Grabbing the book files she came for, she smiled and walked to the door. The alien’s blue ears followed her.

"Caeilla. What do you know of Nietzschean law?"

Caeilla started. "Ummm well depends on what type of law you want to know about. I don’t know all of the laws. But what I do know, I can tell you."

"Slave law."

"I know that... what do you need to know?"

"A slave of the Cobra clan escaped. He was experimented on before he escaped. He had a piece of tech in his head. He lived for ten years on his own. Met and was claimed by another clan. This clan is small but it is allied with a large clan. A powerful clan. This clan will support the small clan. The slave is valuable, very."

"I see... well what about Cobra clan? Do they know you have the slave?"

"We must assume so. Very smart, Caeilla."

"It’s Harper or Beka isn’t it? If it was Trance then we would have heard of her before now and her appearance wouldn’t have been such a surprise. The only slave of note to escape and not be stolen from Cobra was Chrome." Caeilla stared at Ma’ctor. "Chrome was male... they love that since it means they don’t have to wait nine months before reusing them for breeding purposes. So it’s Harper. Well..."

Ma’ctor smiled and watched as the little girl nibbled one of her braids. For a moment, she looked like her mother; a shudder ran down his back. Slowly he started twitching and shuddering.

"Caeilla, obey Dylan. He will bring the herd. He will call forth the universe. If you are not careful you will die. For your mother, nothing can be done. She has sealed her fate. She bargains with greater forces than she can command. They are already arming to betray her.

"We must prepare. We must be as one or the Killers will sweep us away. Soon... soon we must find a way to stop them... we must seek the S’thela. They have... have..."

Caeilla ran to the wall and slapped the medical button. In less than a minute a medical team stood in the media center and tried to make Ma’ctor comfortable as someone tried to find a crewmate.

* * *

Rev stood over Ma’ctor, in a medical bay, frowning. "Yesss. Well, this is not so simple. Our Ma’ctor is a Thinker. A subset of the Valu species. Every so often these Thinkers fall into a trance and connect extremely varied inputs. Much like you would solve a puzzle they do as well. Their puzzles are usually missing many of the pieces."

"I see... so basically, he intuits what he feels is missing?"

"Yes, though he knows some of it. We hear everything around us but only listen to what interests us. We still hear it and we still remember it. He will pull this information and make sense of what we cannot. I have learned much of the Divine by watching him."

"We don’t believe in a god or the divine but I can understand how you can understand how this universe works by one who works in such mysterious ways." The medic said as he took data from the machines, "Is this normal?"

"Yes, those are normal readings for Valu. He will be fine. We have helped him through this before and likely shall again. To have such a gift is truly great of the Divine."

* * *

The dark closed over him and he slipped into the darkness of healing.

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