11.20.10087-1.4.10088 [ TDTtH ]

This was a pretty uneventful month for Beka, Trance, Rommie, that other guy and me, ferrying a boatload of emergency medical supplies to a bunch of hungry bugs (yeah, I know, Than) on Pythia. But man, it sounds like Dylan and Rev got put through a meat grinder. They took the Maru to some little Wayist mission called Serendipity and tried to defend the natives against slavers. The nutcase Wayist in charge (not you, Rev!) blew up their crate of forcelances, they fought off the slavers with spears and homemade bombs, and something really freaky and horrible happened to Rev that he and Dylan still won't tell me about. Anyway, they seem okay, but no one's in a rush to go back and pay Serendipity another visit.

11.5-11.13 [ FaLitMW ]

Road trip! Road trip! Actually, a week spent cruising from drift to drift with Trance on the Eureka Maru, being good-will ambassadors and giving away Anstarian tundra flowers to help with life support costs, didn't turn out to be as fun as I hoped. Sure, that Nietzschean exotic dancer on Mendocino Drift was a fiery one, and Catleen wanted some Harper lovin', too, but I really could have done without Gerentex holding us hostage.

Apparently his latest scheme for wealth and power involved recovering the diary of Hasturi the Mad Perseid and learning the location of Tarn-Vedra. Guess who he wanted as his taxi service? So after some witty banter, a really cathartic experience beating the tar out of that rat face, and a fun excursion to Albuquerque Drift (note to the lovely Andulasia: call me!), we all ended up at Hasturi's asteroid lair. And thanks to some dazzling footwork and truly quick thinking by moi, we recovered the diary while Gerentex got sent away with flowers, promising to turn over a new leaf. I'm really not holding my breath, though.

10.18-10.19.10087 [ TSoIP ]

That HG. I actually liked that funny little Consensus of Parts ambassador, at least until he infiltrated Andromeda's systems in an attempt to hide from his nasty boss VX and avoid de-consensusing. Still, it was nice the way he got Andromeda to combine with all of those scrap parts and turn into a super fighting machine to get rid of bad ol' VX. Trance sure was sad when HG died. It didn't bug me, though. Not at all. Sniff. What's that? Nothing. I've just got something in my eye.

10.2-10.7.10087 [ FP ]

The things we go through to replace a broken AP solenoid valve. While Rev and I scrounged around on one drift and Beka and Tyr did who-knows-what back on Andromeda, Dylan got himself captured by commandoes and sent to Mobius, where they're not exactly known for their hospitality. I guess their El Supremo was still pissed at Dylan for overhtrowing the government 300 years ago, so put him on trial and tortured him and stuff. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I'm the engineer. What am I gonna be tried for - a faulty weld?

9.20-9.28.10087 [ SSC ]

Boredom city! We spend a week twiddling our thumbs in orbit around San-Ska-Re while Dylan negotiates with the Than to try and get them to sign the Commonwealth charter. No luck with the stubborn bugs, though they were nice enough to barter us for some Commonwealth-era parts…everything except for a pesky AP solenoid valve.

9.13-9.15.10087 [ Me2.0 ]

This was not my best week. First Beka and I had to leave Tira Na Nog Drift, just as I was getting close to a Celtic cutiepie there. Then a renegade Perseid librarian in a giant beach ball boards the ship and gives me the gift that just keeps on giving - an involuntary download of a secret All Systems University data archive. Sure, it superpowered my brain and gave me access to all sorts of cool information, but it also made me the target of a giant bounty hunter named Jeger who wanted to split open my skull and get to the creamy goodness inside. And get this - the guy could walk through walls and fire Point Singularity Projectiles at the ship. Ouch!

So I barely escaped becoming three inches shorter, we managed to get the data out and hide it someplace safe (damned if I can remember exactly where), and I'm back to being plain old original recipe Harper. So today's lessons, kids: never let a strange Perseid tongue kiss your dataport, and always practice safe downloading.

8.4-9.1.10087 [ MoaDD ]

Tyr steals the Maru - big surprise! - and we had to go looking for him. Lots of fun for the Harper, oh yeah. Turns out Tyr went to Enga's Redoubt and did something that got the whole Drago-Kazov Pride mad at him. Hey, maybe he's not so bad after all. Anyway, we ended up finding Tyr on Midden, a Dragan slave world, where he'd evidently been shacked up with some fishwife and her kid. Actually, I saw what she looked like, and whoah! She can tend to my nets anytime!

7.28-7.29.10087 [ TMoT ]

Hmmm…what's this? A 300 year old intact High Guard Glorious Heritage Class heavy cruiser, just floating there in space near the shattered planet of Herotodus? With the original crew still alive and looking quite well? You don't suppose they might be, well….EVIL! Hey, you're right!

Turns out that this ghost ship, the Pax Magellanic, was being run by its incredibly beautiful but sadly deranged AI. So she fashioned her robot avatars into likenesses of the original crew and walked them around, all to preserve the illusion that everything was hunky dory. But when we started poking our noses around, the Pax and her minions got a little…agitated, and tried to kill us all. We ended up escaping with our lives, but the Pax went out in a case of Suicide by Starship. What a waste.

7.7-7.15.10087 [ TPTWHE ]

So Beka and Trance went off on some crazy quest to help Beka's Uncle Sid. He turned out to be some big evil business tycoon who first wined and dined 'em, then tied them up, tortured them, and dosed Beka with Flash, all to get some data he thought she had hidden. And the worst part of it all? They didn't invite me! No, I ended up stuck at El Dorado Drift running a glorified flea market, selling our excess junk to some smelly Chichin trader while Dylan brooded about his old crew and Tyr stood around leaning on things. Yeah, big fun.

But one good thing came out of it all. When Beka and Trance came back, the unlimited credit disk Sid had given her still worked! So I used it to buy memory chips, offensive missiles, spare parts, and a year's supply of Rodina vodka and cranberry juice - and stuck Sid with the bill!

6.28-6.30.10087 [ AGNO ]

A really nice dinner party with the Castalian fish people - and my chances of scoring with their hot security chief - were ruined when Tyr accused the president of genocide against their evil Nietzschean overlords. Yeah, I know, boo-hoo-hoo.

To make a long story short, the president ended up dead by Tyr's force lance with you know who as the prime suspect, but for some reason Dylan didn't want to believe that an ex-mercenary killer would be capable of assassinating a president. Then Andromeda got accused, we got boarded by fish commandoes (don't ask), and little ol' moi discovered that the true murderer was none other than fellow fishman Chancellor Lee. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for that meddling supergenius!

6.10-6.19.10087 [ ARITA ]

Maybe trying to sign up the paranoid, xenophobic Arazians to a new Systems Commonwealth wasn't such a hot idea. It got Dylan and Rommie locked up and sent to a prison planet, where the nasty prisoners made Dylan fight a giant furball and put Rommie in a studded halter top and see-through plastic pants - okay, maybe they weren't all bad. Thanks to a lucky guess from Trance (how does she do it?), we were able to track them down and spring them from the pokey. For some strange reason, the other prisoners decided to stay on their planet that couldn't grow food instead of coming with us. Hey, fine with me. Andromeda's already fully stocked up with homicidal sociopaths.

6.1-6.5.10087 [ BoTL ]

This was actually one of Dylan's better ideas. In exchange for the Perseid planet Sinti agreeing to join the new Commonwealth, we played host to a delegation of chinheads who took us back to Hephaistos system so we could run a bunch of really cool experiments on the black hole. Little did we know that using the black hole as an information sink and tinkering with quantum entanglement-enabled communication and teleportation would put Dylan back in touch with his long gone fiancée, Sara. She seemed like a nice lady, the way she was trying to tug Andromeda out of that black hole 300 years in the past. But as we know, her plan didn't work.

As a consolation prize, I actually got to teleport Dylan through the Kerr black hole and reassemble him on the deck of Sara's ship - it kinda made me feel like Benjamin Franklin…only Dylan was the kite. I tried to bring them both back using a signal booster, but a badly-timed Nietzschean attack and an inadequate IS network put the kibosh on reuniting those two lovebirds. Another love story with an unhappy ending. Is there any other kind on this ship? The Perseids did sign the charter, though. As Dylan would say, score one for the good guys.

5.15-5.28.10087 [ TTTB ]

While I caught some major tubes on Infinity Atoll (and a really nasty case of Bamiyan pox, but we won't go into that), Beka got set up and betrayed by her brother Rafe, the Resters tried to tangle with us again, and Andromeda's systems were overrun by invasive nanobots that caused the automated defenses I'd just rigged up to fire on the crew. Yeah, the bad guys got what they deserved and it all turned out okay in the end, except for Rafe stealing most of Beka's CD collection. Luckily, I'd already made my own copies of the essentials - London Calling, Straight Outta Compton, and the collected works of The Pogues. But see what happens when I take a vacation? Sheesh.

5.7.10087 [ AD,DB ]

Letting Trance pick out your clothing - bad idea. Letting Trance cook - really bad idea. Letting Trance pilot Slipstream - the worst idea in the history of the universe. Somehow, the Purple One took us back in time over 300 years to the Witchhead Nebula, the day before the last battle between the Commonwealth and the Nietzschean Alliance. Oh, and she broke the engines, too. So while Dylan and company are brooding over what to do, I come up with my cleverest plan to date - rig an AP-catalyzed fusion reaction to blow the hydrogen in the nebula and create Nietzschean war fleet flambé. It was a beautiful plan, you must admit.

Then Trance found out, and got all "Harper, you can't change history" on me. Rommie confined me to quarters (I'm sorry, Rom-doll, I really am), and then they decided to use my invention anyway! Something about fate and predestination and preserving the existing timeline or something. I don't know. All I'm sure of is that history went on as recorded, we got home, and wiping out 2/3rds of the Nietzschean war fleet didn't feel quite as good as I thought it would.

4.26 - 4.29.10087 [ 2*helix ]

Here's a great idea. Let's walk right into a shooting match between a bunch of bugs - sorry, Than - and the pirate Nietzscheans of Orca Pride. Speaking of which, Orca Pride is right! Hasn't that Guderian guy heard of salad bars? And someone needs to tell him that black is only slimming to a certain degree. Anyway, this is the asteroid where we went up against a bunch of Nietzschean pirates and their REALLY BIG GUN. I think Tyr fell in love and got married and thought about betraying us - again. Whatever. The Nietzscheans ended up taking over the ship and smacking us all around before Dylan faced them down with a really cool bluff to blow up the ship with them on it (it was a bluff, right?) Did I mention that REALLY BIG GUN?

4.20.10087 [ D-0 ]

So I nearly died of radiation poisoning while we were hiding out in a sun's corona from a crazed Restorian stealth ship. I don't remember a whole lot about it, but that FMS I built sure fooled 'em, though. Boo-ya! I also have a vague recollection of Beka and Tyr plotting mutiny against Dylan and all of them having a fight over whether I should stay or go, but it's all pretty hazy. Oooh, shiny. Bottom line is, Dylan showed everyone that an old High Guard fossil could still come up with a few new tricks when he had to. Maybe we'll stick around after all.

4.14.- 4.16.10087 [ TLTFL ]

This here is GS 92910. Another High Guard remnant, but not nearly as pretty as Andromeda. Oh yeah, and it's filled with rabid, homicidal teenagers (I know, that's redundant). This station is mainly notable as the place I found the schematic to design and construct the Ship Made Hot, the avatar we all know and love, Rommie. That Nassan chick was pretty cute, too, but she should really comb out those dreads and have that cough looked at.

4.7.10087 [ UTN/AAF ]

Ah, Hephaistos black hole. The place where I first met Andromeda - pride of the Commonwealth and one gorgeous piece of, er, hardware. Oh yeah, there were some other people there. We had to fight off a High Guard fossil who actually turned out to be pretty nice, and rat-faced fashion emergency Gerentex cheated me out of 84,000 thrones! (if you're out there, you still owe me…with interest!) I especially liked the part when they blew up the black hole with nova bombs.

Head on that way to find out about my oh-so-exciting life Before Andromeda

Or back there is stuff that happened in 10088