Disclaimer: Andromeda belongs to Tribune Entertainment
and Fireworks Productions. Set pre-series, with the premise
that Beka is expanding the salvage nature of the Eureka Maru
into 'accquiring' relics.
Rating: G
words: 673
100/100
Prompt: #94 dirty
"Untitled" by Karrenia_rune
Harper didn’t mind having to tally up the value of the stuff that they’d salvaged, after all the bonus for him anyway, is that every so often he’d stumble across a lucky find. He also did not overly gripe about the fact that Captain Valentine had more or less still grudgingly accepted his presence about the Eureka Maru as acting engineer and inventory keeper.
What he did mind was that she kept the really good stuff and well as where she’d managed to acquire to herself. Harper had never really had time to enjoy music growing up on Old Earth but he did have to admire the gusto and the effort that had gone into assembling the collection.
He looked up from the now nearly empty crate that he’d been going through on the small workspace when Beka had come in, after putting the ship on auto-pilot.
“Anything we can use?” she asked.
“Some of this stuff is too hot, Beka,” I think we should get rid of it.”
“Nobody cares about bits and pieces from that came from the space-ship junkyard, Harper,” Beka replied shrugging, rotating her shoulders to loosen the stiff muscles from sitting in one place for too long.
“Look, I know you’re trying to expand the salvage business with a little ah, relic hunting on the side, but that’s the case maybe we should be targeting…”
“Such as?” Beka asked, perhaps with a touch more asperity than she had intended when she saw Harper flinch.
“Oh, I don’t know, such as people with private collections.”
“It would be more of a challenge than I’ve set myself, but you might have something there. I’ll have to think about it.
“Uh, I know I suggested it, but Rev might have some objections to that plan, of course you could tell him that we’re not stealing the stuff just putting it back where it belongs like museums or something.”
“Harper, sometimes it is both scary and impressive the way your mind works,” Beka remarked.
Harper flushed and ruffled his heads through his mop of ash-blond hair, doing nothing for its already disheveled appearance.
Beka thought that over. “I can handle Rev, and I doubt that Trance will be a problem and the relic business as you call it is just a way to make some extra money. It’s not like I plan to pawn it to the highest bidder.”
“You don’t?” Harper asked in some surprise. “That’s not ah, completely legit, but it’s not wrong.”
“Of course not,” she replied, adding, “The relics and what not are going to an individual in the market for such things and his specialty is cataloguing, and displaying it.
“A museum curator?”
“Sort of,” Beka hedged.
“What aren’t you telling me,” Harper asked, standing up with his arms folded over his chest.
“It’s nothing dangerous, really, it’s just that in his line of work he has to straddle a fine line because of his funding, and some ah, artifacts, as you put it, could cause more than a little misunderstanding when the reach their final home.”
“Great, just great, forget I mentioned it.”
“No, no, we can make this work, “Beka reassured him. “And I’ve already delivered at least five shipments, so he’ll be expecting us once we reach Hammas IV.”
“Isn’t that a drift-world?”
“It is, and you how I feel about being planet-side, so I’m going to need you, Trance and to help me transport the cargo.”
“Sure, Sure, Boss, whatever you say. But, now I really want to know what’s in there.”
“Just stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Oh, all right, bits and pieces of the Persied Library, a folios, gold ingots and statuary from a few of the outlying colony worlds from before the fall of the Commonwealth, and some status symbols from a few of the big guns from among various Neitzchean clans.”
“Beka, when you do something, you do it all cylinders firing.”
“Yes, thank you. Now, will you help me or not?”
“Of course, I will,” Harper exclaimed.