Title: Engine of Creation, what Engine of Creation?

Characters: All the season 5 gang, minus Rommie. Sorry Rommie.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Andromeda. I am making no money. Thanks.

A/N: This doesn't really fit in at any specific point in season 5, but it either precedes or ignore the events of Pride Before the Fall and all the episodes thereafter. Mostly 'cuz I had already written the first chapter before it aired, and the way I depict Beka and Rhade doesn't reflect the change in their relationship at the end of that ep. I could have re-written the chapter, but I really like how it is now, so que sera.

In one of Andromeda's machine shops a large piece of scrap metal flew past a pile of similar pieces and out into the hallway. A coil of damaged optics, several small pieces of tubing, scraps of the outer hull, and several unidentifiable bits followed quickly behind. One especially large and pointy piece of junk narrowly missed Rhade's head.

"Watch it Valentine! You nearly hit me that time."

Beka, looking rather disheveled, stepped out from a storage closet. "Well maybe if you were doing more to help us find the thing instead of just sitting out there 'supervising' you might not be in my way. I wasn't aiming at you, so what are you complaining about anyway?"

"I'm complaining about the fact that I'm sitting ten feet away from the pile of junk you were aiming for and you still almost hit me. You're a lousy shot Captain Valentine, I'd be less worried if you were aiming at me."

"Oh really Mr. Self-sufficient? Well next time I see Kalaz's cretins aiming guns at the back of your head I won't bother shooting at them, I'll just aim for you and save your life for the umpteenth time that way."

Rhade wanted to retort, but there really wasn't much he could say; Beka had recently saved his life by killing would be assassins and was actually an excellent shot. "Well perhaps you could at least explain why we are searching for it here of all places? I can't believe Dylan would hide something that valuable in a junkyard like this anyway." Rhade looked around himself in disgust, "Even Harper would call this stuff junk. Shouldn't we be looking in the high security storage lockers?"

Beka was more than a little sick of the search herself, but she was even more tired of Rhade's childish attitude. "I told you already Rhade, Dylan had Trance hide it back then and she says she hid it in one of the machine shops Harper rarely used but she can't remember exactly which one. If you don't want to help us find it, just go back to one of the planets and call one of your girlfriends!"

Rhade snorted, "As if I would let you find it alone." He glanced over at Beka. She was getting seriously pissed off. He decided to change tacks. "So Trance, why did you hide it somewhere like this? Why not lock it in one of the high security areas?"

"Well, I thought that if anyone ever found out we had it that would be the first place they looked. So I figured I would hide it in plain sight like in The Purloined Letter." Ever dedicated, Trance never stopped looking through the scraps.

"The Purloined Letter?" Beka and Rhade asked in unison, immediately glaring at each other.

"Yeah, that old story from Earth." Trance finally did pause. "I don't know how I know that." Looking down again, Trance burst into a huge smile, "Hey look, I found it!"

Beka and Rhade walked over to Trance. Rhade looked a little skeptical. "So that's it, the mythical Engine of Creation? A tool for manipulating the fabric of the universe, which you two and Dylan claim to have won as a prize from an alien race over 2 years ago?" Beka and Trance both nodded the affirmative. "Well, now what?"

Beka flinched slightly. "Now we have to tell Harper it's here." Beka spoke into the air, trusting Andromeda to direct her message to Harper's location, "Harper are you there?"

"Yeah, Boss what is it? I'm kinda busy here trying to repair Andromeda's interphase…"

"Whatever Harper. Leave that for later, we need you to come to machine shop…" Beka looked around, "umm I have no idea what machine shop this is; you guys? No, of course not." Fortunately Holo-Rommie was somewhat functional that day and appeared to provide the necessary information. "You are in machine shop 59 on deck…"

"That's okay Andromeda, I'm sure Harper will know where it is. Harper, you still there? Come to machine shop 59, pronto."

"Machine shop 59? Are you kidding me? Why? That's where I keep all my junk, I mean all my essential materials for my most important projects. What are you guys doing down there?"

"Harper don't argue, and never mind why, just get your butt down here now. Beka out."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Dylan, Beka, Trance, Rhade, and Doyle all stood outside of the machine shop. Trance and Doyle were was calm as always, but the others were pacing around impatiently. Beka stopped suddenly and smiled at the two men. "We look like a bunch of parents-to-be waiting outside a delivery room."

Staring at the wall Rhade gave a half grimace of a smile, "Well I suppose that makes Harper the expectant mother. That's a disturbing thought." A real grin appeared as he turned to Beka, "Does that make you the proud father Beka?"

Beka gave him a look of half surprise-half disgust. "Ahh no. Most definitely not. Think of Harper as the doctor just there for the delivery, he wasn't even with us when we found the Engine anyway."

Rhade raised an eyebrow, "Well now, that would have been you, Trance, and Dylan correct? And Trance was forced to watch from the sidelines while you and Dylan were tested? So that you makes you and Dylan the lucky parents?"

Beka would have replied, but Dylan interrupted. "Finding and retrieving the Engine was a team effort, just like making it useful will be." He was seriously tired of Rhade and Beka's incessant bickering and sniping. It seemed like he spent half his time trying to keep them from mortally insulting each other and the other half wishing they would just sleep together or shoot each other, whichever it had to be. But he was fairly certain that whichever action they took only one would come out alive, and he needed them both. "We all need to just calm down and have a little patience, I'm sure Harper will give us some sort of progress report eventually."

Just then Harper emerged from the shop, smiling triumphantly. "Well, I suppose you're all waiting for news on whether or not the" his voice became theatrical, "ENGINE-gine-gine-gine OF-of-of-of CREATION-tion-tion-tion" then returned to normal, "can be made functional. But I have a question first. Why the hell did we never use this thing before?"

Everyone looked at each other, waiting for someone else to answer. Trance finally spoke up, "Well, maybe we didn't know how to use it? I can't really remember, but that makes sense though, right?"

"Nuh-uh. I'm not buying it. 'Cuz maybe if someone had mentioned this littl' beauty to the resident genius he, meaning me, could have told you how to use it. I mean, it took me what, 35 minutes to figure it out?"

Beka decided that it was only fair that she took her turn as the object of the engineer's agitation. "Well, it's not exactly that we didn't trust you Harper…."

"Oh, so that's it exactly! Never trust the Harper because he would sell his own grandmother to make a buck! Why do people always think that about me?" He paused mid-rant, arms still up in the air. Everyone was looking at him strangely. He dropped his arms to his sides. "Ok, well, I can see your point. Anyway, that still doesn't answer my question!"

"Wait a minute Mr. Harper. Are you saying you already know how to use the Engine? We've been keeping this powerful tool a secret for years when a half hour of tinkering would have made it ready to use? I thought it was supposed to be a hugely complex piece of Vedran technology. It has the power to create universes for the Divine's sake, you can't tell me you've figured it out already!" Dylan was most definitely grumpy at the universe at that moment. Why was it never easy?

"Well, Boss, it's only a part of the Engine, so we can't create any universes here, but yeah, I figured out how to tap enough of it's potential to be useful. Enough to stabilize the suns for now, and hopefully get us back to our universe."

Doyle spoke for the first time. "It doesn't really matter why it was never used before Harper, the important thing is that you can use it now. You should get back to work."

Trance cut off any protest from Harper by grabbing his hand, "I'll help Harper, I think I use to know a lot about the Engine before." She gently pulled him back into workshop.

Doyle waited for the doors to close before turning back to the others. "So really, why didn't you ever use it before? From the logs I've read it seems like it would have come in useful several times."

The others all looked at each other again. They really had no answer. Rhade disavowed any responsibility, "Hey don't look at me, I didn't even know it was on board Andromeda, that little fact was left out of the official record. Judging by the looks on our two captains' faces though, I'd guess they forgot about it. Forgot about one of the most powerful pieces of technology in existence." Rhade shook his head while Doyle looked at them doubtfully.

Beka just shrugged. "Well, I won't say I forgot about it, but it's not like it's the only time we found a powerful weapon and then never used it again."

"Like what Beka?"

"Like that bell, Dylan"

"What bell?"