The new crew of the Andromeda Ascendant sat around the Command deck, looking around forlornly at the dark displays. Every once in a while, someone would shoot a glare over at Harper. No one spoke.

Finally Harper broke the silence. "I said I was sorry already!"

Dylan sighed. "We know, Harper, we know."

But the engineer wouldn't quit. "You keep looking at me like I meant to do that! I mean, how was I to know that if you connect this to that, you get kablooey!" He traced an explosion in the air with his hands.

Rommie sat on the floor with her legs crossed Indian style under her. She looked up at the distressed engineer. "Well, you couldn't have picked a better time to blow out my main power. Hidden in a nebula, where no one can find us, it doesn't matter that we're dead in the water."

"Thanks, Rommie," Harper groaned, letting his head fall back against his chair back. "Cause that makes me feel so much better."

"Harper, don't you have something you can be fixing?" Beka asked pointedly. She was tired of the engineering moping around blaming everybody for blaming him.

"Nope, sorry Boss. Not until this ion storm passes, unless you want fricasseed Seamus."

Trance bounded up out of her seat suddenly. "I know!" Everyone turned to stare and she lost some of her bounce. "I mean, um, I thought of a way to pass the time, if anyone's interested."

Harper sat forward. "Anything's better than Six Degrees of Blaming Harper."

"What is your idea, Trance?" Rev Bem asked.

Trance motioned with her tail. "Well, since we're all still getting to know each other, I thought we could go around the room and everyone can share one strange or weird or funny things about themselves. Something that no one really knows about you." She looked around for encouragement or agreement.

Beka nodded. "Could be fun. What do you say, Seamus?"

"Again, anything's better than sitting around blaming me for everything. I'm in."

"Dylan?"

"Count me in."

"Rommie?"

"Okay."

"Rev?"

"I look forward to it."

"Tyr?"

Everyone turned to look at the Nietzschean. He sat with one leg draped over the arm of his chair and his chin resting on his open palm. He was trying to ignore the inane chatter around him, but it became difficult when Harper bounced a foam ear plug off of his head. "Come on, Tyr, it'll be fun."

"Fine," the Alpha finally agreed.

"Oh great," Trance bubbled, clapping her hands excitedly. "Who's first?"

They all looked at each other for a second before Dylan cleared his throat. "I guess I'll start." He thought about it for a minute, then said, "One of my hobbies on Tarn Vedra was horseback riding. I love riding horses, it's one of my favorite things."

"Your favorite thing to do is ride an extinct animal?" Tyr said with disdain.

"It wasn't extinct in my time, obviously. We had quite a few horses, my family and I. Mine was a Thoroughbred named Shekinah Glory. I rode her in competitions and I even won awards a few times."

Beka laughed at the revelation. "Gives a whole new meaning to 'space cowboy'," she giggled. Dylan threw her a half-serious glare.

"Come on, Beka, it's not that funny." Hunt gave the assembly the evil eye. "And if any one of you refer to me as 'space cowboy', ever, there will be blood."

Harper snapped his fingers sarcastically. "Oh rats, there goes my idea for dashing your treaty negotiations."

Dylan rolled his eyes. "Okay, that's me." He turned to the person seated to his right, which happened to be Beka Valentine. "Beka? Your turn."

She moaned and looked up at the ceiling. "Okay, something weird about me..."

"What isn't?" Harper muttered, and got a nasty look from Beka in response.

"Something you would never guess about me... I can sing. Pretty well, too," she added defensively when she saw eyebrows go up.

"Prove it," called out Harper. "You never sang on the Maru."

"I had time to do that when exactly?" she returned sharply.

"Come on, Beka, show us," Dylan coaxed her.

Huffing, the captain of the Eureka Maru sat up straighter in her seat and started to sing an old song from before the Commonwealth fell, one that her friend Abel Ladron had taught her.

When the dark wood fell before me
And all the paths were overgrown
When the priests of pride say there is no other way
I tilled the sorrows of stone

I did not believe because I could not see
Though you came to me in the night
When the dawn seemed forever lost
You showed me your love in the light of the stars

Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me

Beka looked up at the shocked silent group and half-smiled, looking for a response. "I don't remember the rest," she offered shyly.

"That was beautiful, Beka," Trance told her. Everyone else hastened to agree and Beka sat back with a smirk.

"Told you. Anyway, Trance, your turn."

"Alright," said Harper in anticipation, shifting to face her. "Let's see what her purpleness has for us today."

Trance rolled her eyes at him. "Quit it, Seamus." She fidgeted with her tail for a while, thinking. Then she said, "I know this isn't much, but it's all I can think of." She looked down and smiled bashfully. "The word 'pudding' always makes me laugh." Even as she said it she started to giggle.

"Purple, sparkly, tail, don't know her race, where she came from, nothing, and pudding's all you've got for something strange?" Harper snorted in disbelief and she reached out and smacked him.

"Ow, hey!" But his eyes were bright with mischief. A beat passed before he said slyly, "Hey, Trance?" He waited until she looked up at him. Then he said very slowly, very deliberately...

"Pudding."

The purple alien fell into a heap of giggles and her laughter set off a chain reaction. Soon everyone was laughing and nobody really knew why. Recovering, gasping, Dylan flipped a hand at Harper. "Okay, Mr. Harper, you're up."

Harper's cocky grin blossomed into its usual place and he gave his answer without a shred of hesitation. "My favorite fruit is pineapple."

Beka frowned. "Seamus, the pineapple was wiped out two centuries ago. There's no way you could know you like it."

"Way," he said confidently. "Just so happens that Andromeda has a flowering pineapple bush in hydroponics. It was fruiting when we came aboard. Not anymore, by the way," he added as an aside to Rommie. "I dare you to find even one pineapple on that thing. I have laid claim to every single piece of that king of fruits."

She glowered at him. "I may hurt you."

The engineer tipped her a wink. "You know you love me." He swiveled to face Tyr. "Alright, big guy, you're up. What's your story?"

Tyr considered them all for a moment with expressionless brown eyes. Then he said simply, "I sleepwalk." He fell silent again. The crew stared at him. After a moment he turned to Rev Bem and commented, "Your turn."

"You sleepwalk?" said Harper incredulously. "What, that's it? No explanation? Nothing?"

"That would explain a couple of instances during the night in which-"

"Enough." Tyr cut off Rommie's musing on his somnambulent escapades and waved a preemptory hand at Rev. "Magog, your time has come."

"That sounds so final," muttered Harper. Trance nodded in agreement. They both subsided when the Nietzschean glared at them from over his shoulder.

Rev shrugged and spread his clawed hands. "Ever since I became a follower of the Way, I have had the desire to...to fly." In response to the quizzical looks, he explained, "I believe one could call it 'sky diving'."

"A sky diving Magog. Now I've seen everything."

"Harper!" admonished Beka.

"You're serious," asked Dylan, just to be sure. "You have a wish to sky dive?"

"Yes. It has always been an interest of mine. Perhaps I feel that as one is close to the sky, one is close to the Divine."

"There's also the 'I trust the Divine not to splat me on the ground' part," Harper added with a theatrical shudder.

Captain Hunt said, "Well, Rev, when we get the main power back up and running, we'll see if we can't find a nice M class planet we can drop you over."

Rev smiled. "Thank you Dylan. It would be a pleasure."

"Alright, Rom doll, you're last," Harper prompted. "Though I don't know what you can say, seeing as I know everything about you already."

"Keep thinking that, if it makes you happy," said Rommie frostily. "But I do happen to have a fact you may not be aware of."

"This I gotta see," he said cynically.

Rommie hesitated, drawing the moment out. "Out with it!" Dylan prodded impatiently.

"All right! It's not much, but it's the only thing I can think of that'll stump boy genius over there. I've discovered my favorite band. It's an old Earth Vedic metal group known as Rudra. I don't have very many recordings of their work, but what I have heard, I greatly enjoy."

"Define Vedic metal for us, please," Rev Bem requested.

Rommie searched for a different term, then said, "Hindu death metal."

Several someones burst into snickers. Rommie crossed her arms and glared at them, annoyed. "It's not funny. I like the music!"

"Oh, we don't doubt it," assured Trance between helpless giggles.

"It's just that that seems so unlike you," explained Beka.

"That was the point of this exercise, wasn't it? To find out things that we didn't know about each other before?"

"Yep," Harper agreed. "And I think it was a definite success."