Chapter Two: Involuntary vacation

"Harper!"

Tyr's roar echoed slightly between the brick walls of the alley. He picked Harper up by the front of his jacket and slammed him against the cold stone. Maybe he was hurting him, but he was too angry to care.

"What have you done? Where are we?"

"Let me go!"

Harper started kicking violently, trying to free himself from the iron grip that kept his feet off the ground. It was of no use.

"If I did not think that we would need you to get back, I would gladly break your neck right now!" Tyr scowled.

From the look on Harper's face, he understood perfectly that Tyr was not exaggerating. Or not exaggerating that much. He looked frightened and angry, but there was something else as well. Tyr did not even bother trying to put his finger on what it was. He had even less time for Harper's annoying personality than he used to. Come to think of it, he had much less time for anybody lately. He had been feeling irritable and... trapped for a while now. Thinking back, it was probably a good while. About six months. Tyr did not really want to admit that it might be more than just a coincidence, that the events six months previous was not the sole reason for this feeling of discontent. He had already admitted to himself that he had made a mistake, telling Milon to go. A mistake that had cost him... what? A valuable asset to the crew? An ally? A... friend? Having to admit, on top of that, that he had let that mistake affect his feelings for this long after, it was just something he would rather not do. So what if he took some anger out on Harper? He had plenty to spare.

"Tyr! Let him go!"

Beka did not sound panicked, or even very angry, more annoyed. Like this kind of behaviour from Tyr's side was starting to get old. Tyr dropped the engineer, but did not stop staring him out.

"Don't panic!" Harper said, sounding like he was panicking, "I think I know what happened. And... I think I have a pretty good idea where we are... I think."

"Well, share!" Beka said.

"The channeller... must've activated. I must have missed something..."

"Is it bad?"

Beka kept her calm, something Tyr always admired even though he did not seem to be so good at it himself these days.

"Well, I have good news and bad... It's pretty clear we're not on board the Andromeda anymore. That's the bad news. The good news is that there's really only one place we could've ended up. The last co-ordinates that were activated. The last place the portal opened to. And if we're there, at least we know we can get back!"

"Oh no!"

Beka covered her eyes and shook her head.

"Please, tell me you're joking! We're not there, are we?"

Harper nodded. Tyr failed to see why she would be so upset. This dimension, the place where their visitors had come from six month earlier, surely that would be the least unfortunate place to end up. Like Harper had said, at least they knew they could get back from here. There were channellers in this dimension. All they had to do was find them.

The three of them walked slowly out of the darkened alley, and looked down the street. It was truly a depressing place. Hardly a single house was left intact. Most windows were either boarded up or stared empty and glassless out into nowhere. A burnt out car was carelessly parked on the pavement. The street was desolate. No streetlight left unbroken, and night was rapidly falling.

"Yeah, we're here, and we should probably make the best of it," Harper suggested, "Like a holiday, right?"

"No Holiday," Tyr said, "We'll find Milon and tell him to get us back home. He said he was well known on his homeworld, it should not prove too difficult to track him down. The sooner the better."

"Hmm..."

Beka did not look too happy.

They walked rather aimlessly along the streets for a while. There were a few houses that seemed inhabited, but most looked too run down for anybody to live in. The odd shop, windows primitively reinforced with chicken wire. Then, suddenly, they turned a corner and it was like walking into a different world. Huge, brand new skyscrapers reached towards the sky. There were lights all around and they could see people walking around, looking like they were anxious to get wherever it was they were going. This looked like the main street, but there were surprisingly few vehicles.

"Look!"

Beka pointed to something across the road, at the brightly lit signs on what looked like a square on the other side. Tyr followed her finger and saw what it was that had caught her attention. A big television set in the window of one of the buildings. And it was showing a familiar face. They ran across the street, avoiding the few cars that were coming, and stopped in front of the window. There sound was turned down, but as the pictures changed behind the glass, they knew that this had to be an episode of the television show that Milon had been talking about. It looked like it had to be an old one though, Tyr thought, because Milon looked a good bit younger even than he remembered.

As the show broke for ads, a loud crashing sound dragged their attention away from the window. Across the square, a glass pane had shattered, spraying sharp shards across the cobblestones, and a big, human shape fell to the ground amongst the glass, followed by another one, jumping out the window. People were gathering around to watch, blocking Tyr's vision of the scene before he could get a good look at either of them. In a gap in the crowd, he could see the thrown man quickly getting up and brushing the glass off as if it had been sand or dust. The fight had clearly only started, and there did not seem to be anybody attempting to stop it. Suddenly Beka took off; heading straight for the mayhem that was quickly building up.

"Hey! What are you doing?" Harper called after her, but she did not even turn back.

Tyr drew his forcelance and was just about to follow her across the square, when a big van with rotating lights on the roof came screeching around the corner, getting in his way. Several men dressed in kevlar and armed with what looked like some kind of stun guns jumped out. Clearly some form of riot squad. A short burst of chaos ensued and the crowd scattered like a flock of mice when the lights come on. Tyr instinctively understood that getting caught up with the police -or whatever they were here- would not be a very good idea. He reached out, grabbed Harper by the arm and pulled him into a narrow alley just off the square.

"Tyr! What are you doing, we have to hlp..."

Tyr put his hand over Harper's mouth, cutting off that never-ending stream of words. Not because he really thought they had to stay very quiet, but simply because he was just not in the mood for the boy arguing with him right now. Harper struggled briefly to free himself, but not for long. Tyr let his hand fall down onto Harper's shoulder, just in case the boy would try something stupid like running out there and rushing into trouble. He did not though, just stood there calmly, not even shaking Tyr's hand off. Around the corner, Tyr could see the police grab the man who had been thrown through the window and drag him into the van, which sped off. Order returned. Tyr walked out onto the square, looking around. The crowd was gone. Unfortunately, so was Beka.