Title: Starlight, Starlight
Author: Steven Quinlan
Disclaimer: I own them all....Psych! However the plot is mine
Archives: Let me know where, but otherwise feel free to archive
Feedback: Praise me, flame me, chop me into chicken liver, but say
something at Steven@interlanes.com

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God help me, I'm blind.

It's not quite like anything else you know, being blind. Everyone thinks that they get it if they just close their eyes, then wander around giggling and trying not to trip on things.

Being blind isn't like that. When you close your eyes, part of your brain knows that you can always open them again and then everythig will be all right. Actually going blind is like losing something so important, so normal, so vital, that your mind can't comprehend it. That's when the panic starts in.

Oh and the guy screaming in the ducts above deck 7 of the High Guard Ship Of The Line Andromeda Ascendant? That would be me, Seamus Harper.

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Starlight, Starlight

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It all started with the Drago-Katsov, it always does start with them, because they seem to spend an incredibly large amount of their time trying to kill us. If they spent half the time they did hunting us, building stuff, or working or having lots of cute little Nietzchean kiddies or something, they'd own half the galaxy by now.

Either way, we had just left the Dronsen Drift when we were ambushed by a pack of Dragan fighters who had used the gravity shadow of a nearby asteroid to hide in untill we were on top of them.

Note to Harper, from Harper, fix the damn sensors so they can actually scan for other things than mass.

So while Dylan is trying to get us out of here, and Tyr is being all Nietzchean and wanting to just kill them, I'm running from the Slipstream core to deck seven, which houses several of the point defense laser com-circuits, because they were damaged in the first blast.

Normally if i'm working on a panel, then Rommie turns off the main power to it so that i don't completely fry myself when i'm fixing it, and true to form Rom-doll did this time, the one thing she couldn't have known was that the charge generator for the point defense lasers was leaking power into the com-circuits.

Let me explain, because you probably aren't all super-geniusses. When either the operator, or more usually Andromeda herself, gives an order to fire the point defense lasers, an order goes from the command deck to the comm-circuits and from there into both the charger and the fire control circuits. While the fire control circuits figure out where to fire, the charger begins the half a second warmup sequence for the lasers themselves.

Of course if it's damaged, then the energy in the charger has no where to go but back, into the delicate circuitry I was peering at.

Funny thing blindness is, first there's this big bright light, then darkness, complete, without a hint of light or color or definition, that's when the pain sets in.

I don't know how long I was out, but the next thing I remember was waking up on a bed, which means either medical or my quarters, and given the amount of voices around me, it's got to be medical. I'd need to clean up for that many people to stand in them at the same time.

I groan, it's a good way of getting attention, when my brain finally tells me that my eyes are closed, so I open them and see nothing.

That's when the panic sets in, even as my brain figures out what happened, I hear everyone but Trance go quiet and all I hear is the word blind. She probably said a bunch of other stuff, but that's all I hear, that and the words 'probably permanent'.

I should be worried, I mean, who'll fix the andromeda if I can't see. I can still jack in but what about if someone needs to crawl a hundred and twenty feet into ducting to replace something.

I don't think about that though, even as I let someone inject me with something that makes me all mellow and stops me from shouting, the only thought on my mind is that I'll never see Trance, Beka, Dylan or anyone else again. I'll never see the two suns of Infinity Atol set again after spending the day surfing, and I'll never see the soft, seductive glow of starlight again

God help me, i'm blind.