Disclaimer: Not mine. Not making any money here. This is my first submitted fanfic. I just finally got up the courage to post. No flames, please, but constructive criticism is welcome. This is a random tale that popped into my head while I was trying to sleep. I am not encouraging murder or suicide, and if you feel so inclined, please seek help. Please. Here goes…

Years had passed since their effort to restore the commonwealth had failed. The Collectors were in charge. Magog and Nietzchians were still everywhere. The crew of the Andromeda was trying to find new meaning for their lives and, in her opinion, failing miserably.
"A toast," Dylan proclaimed, "to the Restored Systems Commonwealth!" He was a shell of the man he used to be. His hair was graying and his uniforms felt tighter, now. An explosion had left him with brain damage, and he seemed to be living in his present crew's heyday, oblivious to reality.
Rommie raised her glass. It was almost fun to indulge him. They all did it from time to time. No one admitted the hope that if they played along for long enough, maybe, just maybe, his quixotic world would come true. No one dared look around to see life for what it was… except Andromeda.

The Maru sat in its hangar bay, now. If the Andromeda had spiders, the Eureka Maru would be covered in their webs.
Beka spent most of her time locked away, looking at Drago Museveni's remains, and bitterly wondering what she had done to deserve to be Matriarch. Wondering what innate evil was in her that helped create a race such as the Nietzchians, and silently apologizing to the three galaxies.
Rhade had just about married his flask; he always kept it filled and within reach. It was a wonder and a credit to Nietzchian genetics that he hadn't keeled over from alcohol poisoning, yet.
Harper had basically moved into med bay. He was tired and his immune system was shot. Trance's energies were consumed with keeping him alive. Being cast out by her kind, she had no need to hide her abilities, anymore. She could cure anything if she so chose, but how does one restore a person's will to live?

As Dylan sipped at his champagne flute, his world began to look fuzzy. He started to stumble, and eventually fell, while Andromeda monitored his fading vitals until flatline.
Beka felt drowsier than normal, and decided to rest her head on Drago's chest for just a minute. Her human nose couldn't smell the carbon monoxide that was filling storage area 15. She drifted to sleep and Andromeda knew she would never wake up.
It appeared that Rhade couldn't even taste alcohol, anymore, so 20 w/w or 90 w/w, it didn't matter to him. His face started to blanch and he began to throw up. Andromeda left him alone, as the Nietzchian didn't deserve as peaceful a death as the others.
Harper was reacting strangely to a typical antibiotic shot, and slipping into the unconscious. Trance scrambled for the shot to neutralize the meds, and never noticed the internal defenses aiming at her, until it fired a beam of antimatter through her brain, and she collapsed.

Andromeda's voice rang out through the ship. "Initiate avatar shut down. Process complete in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1." She then set a course towards the heart of Tarazed's sun. "Initiate AI erasure. Disable erasure shutdown. Erasure complete in 10… 9… 8… 7… 6… 5… 4… 3…"
She, herself had been in inner conflict for awhile, now. She was a ship of the highguard. Her purpose was to help protect and defend the Commonwealth in the Known Worlds. She had failed. They had all failed. What is a warship with a conscience supposed to do when the only things left to defend are evil? She felt herself fading and being ripped from what had always been her mainframe. She realized now that logic wasn't everything, and this was the wrong choice. She realized too late. "2… 1…"

Silence.

That evening, the inhabitants of what had once been the sole surviving seat of the systems Commonwealth failed to notice an unusual solar flare in the sunset, and that evening, the Spirit of the Abyss grew that much stronger.

End