Disclaimer: I don't own any of these lovely people. I swear. Do you think I'd let Kevin Sorbo out to risk his life once a week if I owned him?

Rating: M, and a SLASH warning.

Note: I'm still relatively inexperienced with Andromeda. Please, please, please don't hesitate to correct me on factual errors (the characters are easier to remember than the sci-fi details) or even inconsistencies in the way I write the characters. Send me an e-mail if you like. And, yes, I know the story is contrived. But it's not PWP (actually, I wouldn't call it 'P' at all since I write fade-to-black sex), so I stand behind it. I'd put it mid to late season four (even though Steve Bacic looks better in season five with long hair); placing it in season five is just too sticky. If you're still reading at this point and my note hasn't put you off, I'm so happy to have you read the story. :0

Desperate Measures

The transmission was fuzzy, and Beka had to yell at Harper to get him to shut up so she could hear them.

Her voice said, "Where are you?"

Dylan replied, "Below the surface, I think. It appears as though we're trapped in a tunnel of some sort."
Rhade said, "We're in jail."
Dylan looked at him. "What?"

Rhade said, "If this isn't a holding cell, I don't know what is."

Beka's voice: "Just sit tight, and we'll—"

And that's when the audio cut off.

Dylan watched as Telemachus Rhade paced back and forth in what he himself was beginning to view as a cell. They'd walked around a perfectly ordinary bend in the tunnel only to find a dead end. When they turned to go back they way they came, they'd hit a force field with no apparent source. All they knew was they were stuck in a three meter by roughly six meter section of dusty, hot tunnel. It was too warm to be stone. They could only assume it was artificial, and that whoever had constructed and hidden it beneath the planet's surface had also booby trapped it. That didn't bode well, because the only reason they were down there in the first place was they believed the tunnels had long been abandoned. There had been no signs of life, only emanations from a strange power source that they'd decided to investigate. Now they had no way of knowing if anyone would find them and release them.

Rhade said, "I knew Harper should have been the one to come down here."

"Then why did you agree to come?"

"I was bored. I wanted to do something physical."

"Well, your pacing isn't going to help matters now."

"And your platitudes and brave hero routine won't help either."

"I think I liked it better when we weren't talking."
So they stopped.

Rhade continued to pace, and Dylan once again set his mind to figure out just what was wrong with the man. He'd been shocked when Rhade had volunteered himself for the mission, mainly because Rhade had been doing his best to avoid him lately. Rhade had been dissatisfied with everything on the ship, except maybe Trance, because nobody could be all that annoyed with Trance. He'd noticed that Rhade was often coming from the direction of the hydroponics lab, but when he questioned Trance about their conversations, Trance only admitted that Rhade had a problem, and he didn't like to talk about it. Except, that is, to her. Dylan had genuinely thought Rhade was beginning to feel at home with his crew on the Andromeda. Perhaps he was wrong.

It was a desert planet, and they had been sweating when they descended from the surface. Surprisingly, the tunnels weren't any relief; in fact, they were much warmer than the surface. He judged that the air temperature was near 32 celsius. It wasn't humid air, but it was still hot enough to leave a sheen of sweat on both of them. Dylan felt his scalp bead with perspiration, and it began to soak his hair and fall down the back of his neck. They were losing too much water, and neither one of them wanted to think about the inevitable dehydration that they faced if Harper didn't find them. The reason they were wandering was only because Harper couldn't pin-point the source of the power; he more than likely couldn't pin-point them either.

Rhade suddenly stopped his pacing, looking at Dylan with eyes carefully shrouded in coolness. Behind them, Dylan thought he sensed something…primitive.

Rhade said, "How can you just sit there, so calm?"

"What do you want me to do? We've searched for exits, weaknesses, circuitry panels."

"You're just too relaxed. We have no idea who's holding us—"

"If anybody."

"But my point is, there are occasional times when being the cool, collected leader doesn't get you shit."

"You've never had a problem with my leadership skills before. I can distinctly recall a few times when you've given me a compliment—however back-handed—because I'm level-headed."

"There are some times when being so…like you are is a detriment."

"Would you like to tell me what your problem is?"

"Well, I'm stuck in a warm tunnel behind a forecfield, I have no food or even water, and—"

"I meant your problem with me."

"I don't have a problem with you. I have a problem with this situation."

"Could you just stop pacing, then. I think that would be better for the both of us." It wasn't a question but an order, and he was shocked to see Rhade follow it, reluctantly but quickly. Rhade sat against the opposite wall, stretching out his long legs so that they lay parallel to Dylan's own. But Rhade was sitting as far from Dylan as he could, leaving perhaps a man's heighth of space between them. It was only after Rhade got settled that he realized Rhade wasn't just annoyed—he was nervous. He was trying to appear calm and doing such a masterful job that if someone didn't know him, they'd swear he was fine. But to Dylan, it was obvious he wasn't. And that scared Dylan more than he wanted to let on, because if Rhade wasn't in control, something was wrong.

"Are you okay?"

Rhade was about to answer when movement caught their eyes. A small figure approached the force field, and they scrambled to stand, to ready their weapons. It was a girl or a small, frail woman, and she seemed a lot more scared of them than they were of her.

She said, "Please, those weapons will only hurt you. This is a one-way force field. Things go in, but they don't come back out."
"Who are you?"

"There's no time. I mean you no harm, but you never saw me. If you wish to continue to get water, you must never say you saw me." She had set down two large canisters on the ground, and she poked them through the force field with a staff she carried. "They will come. They will not harm you but you should not trust them."
"Why should we trust you?" Rhade said.

But she was backing away, glancing around the corner before she was gone.

It took them roughly two hours of looking at the clear liquid in the canisters, smelling it, dropping tiny amounts of it on the floor, and pouring it directly onto their skin before they decided it was water and they had no choice but to drink it.

"You believe her, don't you?" Rhade asked him. He was pacing again.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"She has honest eyes."

"Does she?"

"I can tell when a person's screwing with me. Like I can tell you're hiding something."

Rhade frowned. "You assume she's honest because you are. It doesn't even occur to you that someone might be lying—except me, of course. You've never trusted me."

"No. There was a time when I didn't trust you, but I do now. I would have thought my actions had proven that. I just don't like it when someone is visibly bothered by something and they refuse to talk about it."

Rhade's expression flared to anger for a moment before it went back to that calculated calm again. He sat down without saying anything. So Dylan drained his water and took off his shirt, folding it carefully to use it for a pillow.

"It's hot. I'm tired. Since you're so perfectly fine with everything, I'll give you the option: do you want to sleep now, or will you stay awake while I sleep?"

"I'm not sleeping."

"Good," he said, staring at Rhade's jittery form intently for a moment before he turned his back and went to sleep along his wall, with his feet almost touching Rhade's.


He was awakened by a kick and the sound of Rhade scrambling around the cell. It wasn't the girl coming, unless she was in the larger group of larger people they could hear moving down the tunnel toward them, their heavy shoes clacking loudly against the ground. Apparently, Rhade thought enough of the girl's warning to hide evidence that she'd been there. He had removed his shirt, and he was now hastily wrapping it around his canister and his weapon.

So Dylan did the same, dropping the shirt over his contraband only seconds before they saw their captors. Or who they could only assume would be their captors. They were faced not with larger people but several women just like the one before. They were strikingly beautiful if not a little pale and squinty-eyed. They all had long blonde hair and they dressed in form-fitting green ensembles that could only be some sort of military fatigues. Not a single one of them was over five feet tall—most shorter, in fact—but one was clearly the leader. She walked right toward the force field, but she somehow knew exactly where to stop.

All the women watched them with interest, and Dylan found himself unnerved. They were looking at him in a way that he had never been viewed before, or at least in a way that no one had dared openly stare at him before. It was a combination of appraisal, like the way a person might view a painting, and possession, like the way a person might view a future conquest. And it was unmistakably sexual.

The leader said, "We are lucky, comrades."

"Indeed," one of them replied.

Another said, "And look at the brown eyes."

The leader snapped, "I can see very well, Felicity. I'm more interested in their stature. I've never seen a man this tall before."

"Perhaps they're giants. Maybe they can't—"

"No, Honoria. They aren't giants. They're…totally new blood."

The women cooed a response, and Dylan suddenly felt a little ill. Rhade was looking sick too.

The leader suddenly showed some interest in talking to her captives. "Do you have names?"

"Yes," Dylan answered.

"Would you care to tell us?" she said, and the tone was obviously patronizing.

"No," Rhade said. "We would not."

"It's no matter. That will not be important soon enough," she said. Then she turned and her gaggle of ladies followed behind her.


It had not been hard to figure out what they wanted. It had just taken Dylan and Rhade a few minutes to articulate it.

"We're studs," Rhade said, his back thudding against the tunnel wall as he sat down.

"Looks like."

"They actually plan to force us to have sex with them."

"Appears so."

"Don't tell me you're anxious to impregnate untold strange women. Don't tell me you're okay with this."

"I'm most certainly not okay with this."

"I wish we knew why they were doing this."

"It's obvious, isn't it? You're a Neitzschean."

"Why does everything come back to me being Neitzschean? When did that become my whole personality to you?"

"I just meant that you can understand genetic manipulation, however crude. They must be inbred or else they're just sick and tired of being short and fair. We must look like ideal additions to their gene pool."

"You are," a voice said, and it was their friend again, bearing a pouch of liquid and a package wrapped in paper. She seemed less nervous now. "Bring me your canisters. I'll pour this water into them. I couldn't risk bringing more or else they'd notice they were gone." But first, she dropped the package into the cell. "It's bread. Conserve it. I have no idea when I'll be back."

"Who are you?"

"One of them."

"Why aren't they feeding us? Why do you have to hide from them?"

"They want you weak."

"Why?"

Dylan answered Rhade's question. "They want us docile enough that they don't have to be afraid of us, so we'll do what they want."

The girl simply nodded. "I don't like it."

Dylan asked, "That they're not feeding us, or that they want to force us to have sex with them?"

The girl sat down for a moment, now that she'd finished carefully pouring out the water. "We breed the wrong sort of man. Our men are no taller than I am, and they contiune to get killed when they leave these tunnels to raid the neighboring towns. The few men left are the weakest of the group, and they are the only ones that are left to procreate. It's a cycle. Now, the women in the colony have turned to raids themselves, for lack of men."

"How long has it been like this?" Dylan asked.

"Since before my grandmother's time."

"What do they raid for?"

Suddenly, she got up, as if she heard something coming. "I must go."

"What do they raid for?"

"Power. We steal from their generators because we have no way of getting the polyplautinol we need to run our own generator. It maintains everything." She snuck away, turning to say, "Conserve your bread. And you can…well, if you need to relieve yourselves, and you can aim toward the walls. They will absorb the liquid." And she was gone.

They didn't even question it. They had to pee so badly that they chose a spot quite close to the force field and relieved themselves as she suggested, without bothering to consider just what kind of walls absorbed liquid. It didn't all seep in at once, but they were glad to see the wall suck up the remainder of their waste without leaving so much as a scent of it behind.

They sat back down in their places and Rhade said, "That's why it's so dry in here."

"Oh?"

"The generator powers a dehumidifier system using the tunnel walls. It's how they get water in a desert climate."
"We should keep those canisters tightly closed."

"Indeed," Rhade said.

They didn't touch the bread, choosing to save it for when they were truly hungry. They had only been in their prison for ten hours, and they had no idea how much longer they would be there.

Though they'd momentarily cooperated to face the women, the tensions returned soon after the silence settled in again. Rhade sat there, fidgeting, and Dylan couldn't stop looking at him. It was hard to see Rhade, a man formidable both in mind and body, reduced to barely holding himself together. His hands went through his hair, over and over again, and he finally stopped to look up at Dylan.

"Stop staring at me."

"There's not much else to look at."

"Why don't you go back to sleep."

"What is your problem?"

"I don't have a single problem in this tunnel besides you. It would be so much easier if you went back to sleep."

"You haven't slept yet."

"So what? I'll wake you up if I get tired."
"Fine," Dylan said. He figured he must be behind on his sleep, because is earlier nap had made him more tired than refreshed. Besides, the heat was still unbearable. Even Rhade was starting to sweat. "Fine. You stay up and prove how much better-equipped you are to handle anything physical."

Rhade started to protest, but he didn't, instead pulling his knees up to his chest and looking at the wall ahead of him, just a meter above where Dylan stretched out his legs.


When Dylan awoke, Rhade was in the same position. He'd been asleep for five hours, and he felt like hell from having slept on the hard floor. He didn't open his eyes until he felt Rhade's eyes on him.

Rhade said, "You snore."

"No, I don't."

"Trust me. You snore like nobody I've ever heard."

"Why didn't you wake me up?"

"I'd rather listen to your snoring that deal with any more of your insults." He was angry, suddenly, his face twisting into a look only a step away from his battle face.

"What?" was all Dylan could say. Had he spent the whole five hours working himself into a fight?

"Neitzschean this, muscle that. I'm always the big, dumb enforcer. You make the decisions and I do the dirty work. I'm shocked that you even care what's bothering me. It doesn't matter, right? I'm just a big, stupid Neitzschean to you."

"Have you ever met a stupid Neitzschean? I don't have a clue what's wrong with you, but I don't think of you that way. You do a lot more on the ship besides physical things when you want to. Your problem is, you spend a lot of time keeping up the appearance that you're invulnerable, that nothing can harm you or even penetrate that thick skull of yours. Pardon me for being shocked when I find out differently."
Rhade stood and looked as if he wanted to pummel Dylan, but as soon as he got very close to the wall, he suddenly shirked from it, and his hand clenched at his side. He breathed slowly, in and out, and Dylan watched as his eyes went from control to panic and back to control again.

"Rhade, tell me what's wrong."

He practically spat out his next words. "If I was so invulnerable, would I be this close to freaking out?"

"What is it?"

"The walls. It's too close in here."

"You're claustrophobic?"

"You don't miss much, do you?" he retorted.

"How come this has never been a problem before?"

"You've never been cramped up in a tiny area with me for more than a couple of hours. If I know I'm getting out, I can handle it. But if I don't…"

"You find the nearest corner and try not to scream."

"That's about it."

"They'll have to let us out eventually."

"That's not a comforting word. And, besides, who knows where they'll keep us when we're not providing our services."

"They may not actually need us to have sex with them. Maybe they'll just want a…deposit in their sperm bank."

"If you think I'm making any such deposit with you two meters away from me, you're crazy."
"As strange as this sentence is going to sound, I'd much rather watch you jerk off than have to stay and have sex with God knows how many women for God knows how long."

Rhade only snorted and sat down, wiping the sweat from his face with his shirt. But the look on his face was indeterminable.

Two hours passed, and Dylan was sick of watching Rhade fidget. He scooted around so that he was beside him, clamping a hand over his knee as he did, to keep him from moving.

Rhade said, "Please, just get away from me."

"No. Obviously, I'm in your space no matter where I go. Maybe if I'm actually touching you, it won't be as bad."

"Or worse," he said.

"You tell me. Is it worse?"

Rhade took a deep breath and let his legs drop to the ground. "You really think you can make the whole world do what you want, don't you?"

"No. I can only hope." At that, Rhade gave him an annoyed look, but not before Dylan saw that his initial reaction had been a smile. "I'm tired of seeing how miserable you are. What relaxes you?"

"Nothing."
"I bet you've never had an occasion to fight real fear, have you? Or real stress? You ever had a good backrub?"

"No."

"Lay down."

"What?"

"Lay down on your stomach. Just trust me."

"So many near death experiences start with those words."

Dylan pointed to the floor in the middle of the tunnel, hoping the farther he got from the walls, the less claustrophobic he would be. Dylan pulled up his feet and had Rhade stretch out in front of him, longways. Crossing his legs, Dylan reached out and began to knead his hands into Rhade's back. Though it hurt his own back to bend that way, he was confident that it was necessary, because Rhade was so close to either freaking out or taking his frustration out on Dylan physically.

The other man's back was wide and tight and knotted up so much that Dylan doubted even his strong hands could release the knots. As his hands slid smoothly but heavily through the sweat, Rhade stopped feigning annoyance and started to let himself feel what Dylan was doing. An almost inaudible moan issued from his throat from time to time, and Dylan got braver, working the muscles from his shoulders all the way down to his lower back, the hollow in the middle right above the waistband of his pants. That elicited a pronounced moan, and Dylan smiled.

He said, "See, I told you to trust me."

Muffled, Rhade's reply was slow and quiet: "Neitzschean women are trained in massage, but it's mostly for show…or to coax a reluctant man into…well…Nothing that we'll be doing." Rhade closed his eyes and said, "I just might be able to go to sleep."

A few minutes later, as Dylan was making small, light circles over his shoulder blades, he noticed that Rhade was breathing steadily, sleeping finally. Dylan moved down the wall to where his feet were and stretched out his legs as he leaned back into the wall. He still felt Rhade's skin under his hands. He was rather glad Rhade was asleep. It made it much easier to keep Rhade frown seeing the erection he now had. He knew all too well how sensual a massage could be; he just hadn't counted on being that turned on by Telemachus Rhade and his off-hand mention of what a massage could lead to. It had been a very long time, since his academy days, that he felt any pull toward a man, and he had certainly never had those feelings about Gaheris Rhade. Of course, this was a whole different version. Maybe it was how he had pratically purred at his touch, once he calmed down. Maybe it was Dylan was just that desperate for physical affection. Looking at Rhade's sleeping form, now turned on his side facing away from him, he thought, Or maybe I've honestly never noticed just what sort of perfection I've had on my ship all this time. Physcial perfection, intellectual strength (despite what Rhade thought about Dylan's vision of him), and supreme control. Just this one weakness. It made him a little jealous, really. Rhade had one Achilles Heel, as opposed to the several Dylan hid every day: his uncertaintly about his mission, his fear that he was leading his crew into danger daily, his knowledge that he wasn't the perfect calm person they always saw, deep down. He had plenty of imperfections. He honestly hoped he didn't have to add uncontrollable lust for one of his crew members to that list.

continued…