****************************************************************************************
DISCLAIMER: Still not mine. Still wish they were.
SPOILERS: Takes place post- "The Things We Cannot Change"
P.S. Reloaded Chapter One and fixed the typos and annoying box things that are where the
punctuation should be. Apologize profusely for my poor proofing skills, hope this one's
better.
**************************************************************************************
CHAPTER TWO: NIGHT IS FALLING IN MY HEART
It couldn't be . . .
Dylan sighed deeply, exhaling what felt like every ounce of air in his lungs. He buried
his face in his hands. He barely felt the bed he was sitting on. Whomever had said that
familiar spaces brought comfort was highly mistaken. The familiarity of his bedroom
was doing nothing to calm him or help him make sense of things he did not want to make
sense of. Shaken to the core of his existence, he had removed himself from deck while
he still had his dignity. Harper, who had bounded onto the deck a moment after Rommie
had made the announcement, was in pieces. Even Tyr had looked shaken. And they had
all looked to him to be the one to hold them together. Something he wasn't willing or
able to do. He was going to fall to pieces and he felt he owed it to everyone to lose his
sanity in private.
It couldn't be . . .
*What?* he asked himself, trying to get past the shock of it. *It couldn't be what?*
It couldn't be so simple.
"Dylan?" Rommie's holographic self. Ever-attentive, ever concerned.
"Privacy mode," he ordered, his voice barely understandable through the hands covering
his face.
"Dylan," the avatar insisted. Even a machine (and how long had it been since he'd last
though of her as a machine? He had to be out of his head.) could tell he did not need to
be alone.
"Andromeda, engage privacy mode immediately!" He snapped. Practically shouted.
He finally looked up. Rommie's mouth hung slightly open, as though she were searching
her immense, multi-language vocabulary for something that might offer some shred of
help. Unable to find anything, she obeyed the order. Dylan did not miss her reluctance
to do so. He would talk to her, eventually. He could always talk to her. They had no
secrets from one another and eventually, once the shock wore off, he'd turn to her and
demand to know how he'd been foolish enough to let something like this happen. Ever
since Harper had given Andromeda a human body and, indeed, a personality, he'd
developed more than a professional attachment to her.
He shook his head. *If you're not careful, you're going to wind up like the Pax
Magellanic.* The last thing the Commonwealth--what was left of the
Commonwealth--needed was a repeat of what had happened to Andromeda's gilded sister
ship. Besides, he told himself, it wasn't like that. He didn't love her. She didn't love him.
But they had been through a three-hundred year time warp together and had averted
galaxy-wide disasters on several occasions. She understood him, probably better than
anyone would ever understand him. They'd been through it all, together.
So of course Rommie would know how much Beka's sudden loss had shaken him. Of
course she'd want to help. Beka and Rommie had grown into close comrades themselves.
Of course Rommie's ever-strengthening emotional capabilities would be equally shaken.
Again, Dylan shook his head. For the time being, he refused to accept that anyone else
could be as numbed and shaken as he was.
*A nova?* He refused to believe that, too. He could hear himself shouting that disbelief
on deck. *Who the hell else in the galaxy had novas?* Rommie, still maintaining her
professional detachment, had answered. Nietzscheans had novas. Specifically, the
Dragons had novas, and had probably left them behind to detonate if anyone ventured too
close to their territory. Abandoned or not, Nietzscheans never gave up what was theirs
without a fight.
Which meant that the explosion had overtaken Beka before she could see it coming. At
least she'd--
At least--
She hadn't seen it coming. At least putting it that way didn't sound so final.
Dylan could feel himself on the verge of tears, something else he wasn't quite ready to
accept. If he cried it would mean he believed it. If he believed it, he would have to
accept it. And Beka was tough. And smart. And she would have seen it coming and
even if she hadn't, she would have found a way out before--
Well, before the bomb had a chance to detonate.
He'd survived a nova bomb not so long ago. Ironically enough, Beka had been the one to
launch it. He and Rommie and Rev and Tyr and Harper had all survived the blast. And
Trance, Trance had come back from the dead on more than one occasion. They'd all
survived, that's what it all came down to. They'd all been through the worst imaginable
circumstances, and quite a few Dylan had never thought could exist. And they'd
survived. Now, it was Beka's turn. She'd survived. She had to have. She was out there.
Somewhere.
She had to be.
Because Beka was tougher than Harper, who had survived the Magog infestation. She'd
proven time and time again that she wasn't some helpless damsel in need of protection.
She was an equal to himself or Tyr. There were times when she'd been better than both
of them. And they were all still here, and it was so damned unfair that she wasn't.
"Rommie?" he asked. He could feel the helplessness in his eyes as he looked around the
spacious quarters. He'd just sent her away, and here he was, voice wavering as he asked
her to return. Though he knew she would never think about saying so out loud, Dylan
knew that there were times when she had to hate him.
"Dylan?" the voice, this time, belonged not to the Rommie the holograph, but Rommie
the android. He hadn't even heard the door to his quarters open, but there she was,
slowly, cautiously stepping inside. She hung back, hands laced behind her, expression
empty save for a brightness in her wide eyes that told him she'd do whatever he needed.
"Anything?" he asked. His last order before leaving the deck as calmly as he could was
for Andromeda to begin searching as far as her sensors would reach for any craft
remotely similar in size or structure to the Maru.
Rommie shook her head, overcome with a genuine sadness. She finally came into the
room, her steps still slow, as though she expected him to order her out again. Finally, and
only after he ran a hand along the bedspread, she sat down on the bed beside him. She
sighed and shrugged her shoulders, lacing her fingers nervously in her lap. "Dylan,
there's no trace of life in this system. No trace of a working craft, not even a blip from a
machine." She turned her head to look at him. "There's nothing here." She spoke the
words almost as an apology. "I've checked."
His mouth moved as he struggled to make the words come. He was not going to cry. He
was not going to fathom the possibility. "Then check again."
"I have. The nova radiation wiped out any chances of picking up any activity before the
blast. If Beka did manage to slipstream--"
"Which she did--" he insisted, though he wasn't sure if he believed himself.
Rommie placed a hand lightly over his. "Even if she did, there's no way to know."
"So we look for her," he said, the words sounding crazy even in his own mind.
"It's a big universe, Dylan."
"I know." He shook his head, chewed on his lower lip. "I know. Who knows where to
start, right?" Unable to stand the helplessness of sitting around doing nothing, he stood
and began pacing. "I know. What am I supposed to do?"
Rommie regarded him, calm and composed. At least one of us is, he thought.
"I suggest we go back to our original position and wait."
"Wait?" he repeated. That was the word he least wanted to hear. No, the second worst
word he could ever hear. The other one, he was not going to think about. Not until he
had proof.
"If Beka's--" Rommie hesitated, searching for the right word. She didn't want to say it,
either. "If she's looking for us, she'll be looking where we were. We can track her,
Dylan, but she can't track us. We go back. It's the only thing we can do."
"Then set a course," Dylan said. Waiting. Waiting? How could he ever wait? He was a
man of action, not someone who sat around and waited for a situation to sort itself out.
The Andromeda had never left a crew member behind, not in three hundred years had he
ever abandoned one of his own. By leaving Centauri, he was abandoning Beka and the
Maru to whatever hand fate had dealt them.
He wanted to stay. To find out what had happened and why and what on earth had
thrown Beka into the middle of all of it? The Dragons had razed Centauri and moved on.
Fair enough, for now. But why had they left traps behind, and why a trap as powerful as
a Nova? It didn't make sense. Nothing about anything made sense.
Absently, Romime's free hand played with a strand of her short hair. The simple gesture
almost made Dylan smile. At Beka's prodding, Rommie had started using nanobots to
alter her hair color. It became bluer and bluer by the day. Though Dylan had yet to get
used to the change, he had a feeling he would like it.
"She could very well have transited back to Vestus," Rommie said. "She's probably
screaming at the Maru because she can't figure out where we took off to."
"I said set a course," Dylan rmeinded, far more harshly than intended. "And leave me
alone. All of you."
"Dylan--"
"I'll be fine," he said, not sure if he believed that, either.
"Are you sure?"
"I'll be fine," he repeated. "I'll be back on deck in a moment."
"Dylan--" she tried again.
He sighed. He appreciated her effort, he really did, but right now it was the last thing he
wanted. He wanted an explanation. Or someone who could give him one.
"Where are you going?" Rommie sprung from the bed as Dylan made an abrupt turn
and practically bolted from his quarters.
"To talk to Trance!" he shouted back. Trance had seen the future. Hell, she'd come from
the future. She'd come from the future to make things right. She'd begun altering the
future when she'd removed the Magog larvae from Harper. Since then, who knew what
else she had done? When his thoughts drifted to Liandra, they inevitably drifted to
Trance as well, as though there was a connection. Maybe there was, maybe there wasn't.
Right now none of that was important.
All he wanted to know was how in the hell sacrificing Beka was supposed to make the
world a better place in the long run.
DISCLAIMER: Still not mine. Still wish they were.
SPOILERS: Takes place post- "The Things We Cannot Change"
P.S. Reloaded Chapter One and fixed the typos and annoying box things that are where the
punctuation should be. Apologize profusely for my poor proofing skills, hope this one's
better.
**************************************************************************************
CHAPTER TWO: NIGHT IS FALLING IN MY HEART
It couldn't be . . .
Dylan sighed deeply, exhaling what felt like every ounce of air in his lungs. He buried
his face in his hands. He barely felt the bed he was sitting on. Whomever had said that
familiar spaces brought comfort was highly mistaken. The familiarity of his bedroom
was doing nothing to calm him or help him make sense of things he did not want to make
sense of. Shaken to the core of his existence, he had removed himself from deck while
he still had his dignity. Harper, who had bounded onto the deck a moment after Rommie
had made the announcement, was in pieces. Even Tyr had looked shaken. And they had
all looked to him to be the one to hold them together. Something he wasn't willing or
able to do. He was going to fall to pieces and he felt he owed it to everyone to lose his
sanity in private.
It couldn't be . . .
*What?* he asked himself, trying to get past the shock of it. *It couldn't be what?*
It couldn't be so simple.
"Dylan?" Rommie's holographic self. Ever-attentive, ever concerned.
"Privacy mode," he ordered, his voice barely understandable through the hands covering
his face.
"Dylan," the avatar insisted. Even a machine (and how long had it been since he'd last
though of her as a machine? He had to be out of his head.) could tell he did not need to
be alone.
"Andromeda, engage privacy mode immediately!" He snapped. Practically shouted.
He finally looked up. Rommie's mouth hung slightly open, as though she were searching
her immense, multi-language vocabulary for something that might offer some shred of
help. Unable to find anything, she obeyed the order. Dylan did not miss her reluctance
to do so. He would talk to her, eventually. He could always talk to her. They had no
secrets from one another and eventually, once the shock wore off, he'd turn to her and
demand to know how he'd been foolish enough to let something like this happen. Ever
since Harper had given Andromeda a human body and, indeed, a personality, he'd
developed more than a professional attachment to her.
He shook his head. *If you're not careful, you're going to wind up like the Pax
Magellanic.* The last thing the Commonwealth--what was left of the
Commonwealth--needed was a repeat of what had happened to Andromeda's gilded sister
ship. Besides, he told himself, it wasn't like that. He didn't love her. She didn't love him.
But they had been through a three-hundred year time warp together and had averted
galaxy-wide disasters on several occasions. She understood him, probably better than
anyone would ever understand him. They'd been through it all, together.
So of course Rommie would know how much Beka's sudden loss had shaken him. Of
course she'd want to help. Beka and Rommie had grown into close comrades themselves.
Of course Rommie's ever-strengthening emotional capabilities would be equally shaken.
Again, Dylan shook his head. For the time being, he refused to accept that anyone else
could be as numbed and shaken as he was.
*A nova?* He refused to believe that, too. He could hear himself shouting that disbelief
on deck. *Who the hell else in the galaxy had novas?* Rommie, still maintaining her
professional detachment, had answered. Nietzscheans had novas. Specifically, the
Dragons had novas, and had probably left them behind to detonate if anyone ventured too
close to their territory. Abandoned or not, Nietzscheans never gave up what was theirs
without a fight.
Which meant that the explosion had overtaken Beka before she could see it coming. At
least she'd--
At least--
She hadn't seen it coming. At least putting it that way didn't sound so final.
Dylan could feel himself on the verge of tears, something else he wasn't quite ready to
accept. If he cried it would mean he believed it. If he believed it, he would have to
accept it. And Beka was tough. And smart. And she would have seen it coming and
even if she hadn't, she would have found a way out before--
Well, before the bomb had a chance to detonate.
He'd survived a nova bomb not so long ago. Ironically enough, Beka had been the one to
launch it. He and Rommie and Rev and Tyr and Harper had all survived the blast. And
Trance, Trance had come back from the dead on more than one occasion. They'd all
survived, that's what it all came down to. They'd all been through the worst imaginable
circumstances, and quite a few Dylan had never thought could exist. And they'd
survived. Now, it was Beka's turn. She'd survived. She had to have. She was out there.
Somewhere.
She had to be.
Because Beka was tougher than Harper, who had survived the Magog infestation. She'd
proven time and time again that she wasn't some helpless damsel in need of protection.
She was an equal to himself or Tyr. There were times when she'd been better than both
of them. And they were all still here, and it was so damned unfair that she wasn't.
"Rommie?" he asked. He could feel the helplessness in his eyes as he looked around the
spacious quarters. He'd just sent her away, and here he was, voice wavering as he asked
her to return. Though he knew she would never think about saying so out loud, Dylan
knew that there were times when she had to hate him.
"Dylan?" the voice, this time, belonged not to the Rommie the holograph, but Rommie
the android. He hadn't even heard the door to his quarters open, but there she was,
slowly, cautiously stepping inside. She hung back, hands laced behind her, expression
empty save for a brightness in her wide eyes that told him she'd do whatever he needed.
"Anything?" he asked. His last order before leaving the deck as calmly as he could was
for Andromeda to begin searching as far as her sensors would reach for any craft
remotely similar in size or structure to the Maru.
Rommie shook her head, overcome with a genuine sadness. She finally came into the
room, her steps still slow, as though she expected him to order her out again. Finally, and
only after he ran a hand along the bedspread, she sat down on the bed beside him. She
sighed and shrugged her shoulders, lacing her fingers nervously in her lap. "Dylan,
there's no trace of life in this system. No trace of a working craft, not even a blip from a
machine." She turned her head to look at him. "There's nothing here." She spoke the
words almost as an apology. "I've checked."
His mouth moved as he struggled to make the words come. He was not going to cry. He
was not going to fathom the possibility. "Then check again."
"I have. The nova radiation wiped out any chances of picking up any activity before the
blast. If Beka did manage to slipstream--"
"Which she did--" he insisted, though he wasn't sure if he believed himself.
Rommie placed a hand lightly over his. "Even if she did, there's no way to know."
"So we look for her," he said, the words sounding crazy even in his own mind.
"It's a big universe, Dylan."
"I know." He shook his head, chewed on his lower lip. "I know. Who knows where to
start, right?" Unable to stand the helplessness of sitting around doing nothing, he stood
and began pacing. "I know. What am I supposed to do?"
Rommie regarded him, calm and composed. At least one of us is, he thought.
"I suggest we go back to our original position and wait."
"Wait?" he repeated. That was the word he least wanted to hear. No, the second worst
word he could ever hear. The other one, he was not going to think about. Not until he
had proof.
"If Beka's--" Rommie hesitated, searching for the right word. She didn't want to say it,
either. "If she's looking for us, she'll be looking where we were. We can track her,
Dylan, but she can't track us. We go back. It's the only thing we can do."
"Then set a course," Dylan said. Waiting. Waiting? How could he ever wait? He was a
man of action, not someone who sat around and waited for a situation to sort itself out.
The Andromeda had never left a crew member behind, not in three hundred years had he
ever abandoned one of his own. By leaving Centauri, he was abandoning Beka and the
Maru to whatever hand fate had dealt them.
He wanted to stay. To find out what had happened and why and what on earth had
thrown Beka into the middle of all of it? The Dragons had razed Centauri and moved on.
Fair enough, for now. But why had they left traps behind, and why a trap as powerful as
a Nova? It didn't make sense. Nothing about anything made sense.
Absently, Romime's free hand played with a strand of her short hair. The simple gesture
almost made Dylan smile. At Beka's prodding, Rommie had started using nanobots to
alter her hair color. It became bluer and bluer by the day. Though Dylan had yet to get
used to the change, he had a feeling he would like it.
"She could very well have transited back to Vestus," Rommie said. "She's probably
screaming at the Maru because she can't figure out where we took off to."
"I said set a course," Dylan rmeinded, far more harshly than intended. "And leave me
alone. All of you."
"Dylan--"
"I'll be fine," he said, not sure if he believed that, either.
"Are you sure?"
"I'll be fine," he repeated. "I'll be back on deck in a moment."
"Dylan--" she tried again.
He sighed. He appreciated her effort, he really did, but right now it was the last thing he
wanted. He wanted an explanation. Or someone who could give him one.
"Where are you going?" Rommie sprung from the bed as Dylan made an abrupt turn
and practically bolted from his quarters.
"To talk to Trance!" he shouted back. Trance had seen the future. Hell, she'd come from
the future. She'd come from the future to make things right. She'd begun altering the
future when she'd removed the Magog larvae from Harper. Since then, who knew what
else she had done? When his thoughts drifted to Liandra, they inevitably drifted to
Trance as well, as though there was a connection. Maybe there was, maybe there wasn't.
Right now none of that was important.
All he wanted to know was how in the hell sacrificing Beka was supposed to make the
world a better place in the long run.
