Trance-centric Chapter. In the parts where Trance is seeing stuff, I will refer to her name w/ brackets.
Disclaimer: Not profiting, not selling, don't own ****.
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Chapter 2 - Destiny Part 1
Trance was walking down a corridor to her quarters. She had an ominous look on her face.
"Andromeda," she said as she entered her room and shut the doors, "Engage Privacy Mode, please. Contact me here only in case of dire need."
"Very well," the AI on the wall monitor spoke, "Privacy Mode Engaged."
Trance walked up to the center of the room, on the table as her bonzai tree, surging energy. She looked at it and a tear began streaming down her cheek, and then she began to panic slightly.
"No! This can't be their destiny! I know they're meant to do more!" Several more tears made their way down her face. "I must find out more. I know I can change this."
As she spoke those words, the green glow of energy that had been surging from the bonzai also began surging from Trance's body. Light filled the entire room.
Suddenly, she emerged surrounded by darkness on one side and light on the other. She had robes on and her body was transparent. Two more robed figures emerged from the light. Both were female.
"Aurelia! Azazel!" Trance's face lit up as she saw her two sisters.
"Trance Gemini," Aurelia was the first to speak, "it's good to see you again. There's little time to chat, however. I know what you want to know."
"We can provide you with the answers," Azazel then said, "but should you alert your companions, you can only do it subtly. To be completely straightforward would solidify the future you just saw forever."
"I understand."
"Come, now, sister," Aurelia stretched her hand out and Trance grasped it, "Let us review what you saw."
The three women walked together into the darkness. All of a sudden, they were back on the Andromeda Ascendant. Klaxon sounds were heard all over and crewmen and women were running through the corridors toward the escape pod bays.
"Abandon ship! Multiple hull breaches! Slipstream Engine going critical! Abandon ship!" Andromeda's voice was heard all over the place.
"This is where the tragedy began. The Andromeda herself." Aurelia said. Then the trio "moved" to Command Deck. Beka, Rhade, Dylan, Harper, Rommie, and Trance were there.
"PDLs are completely offline. We have lost control of all offensive missiles." Rhade reported.
"We can't go into Slipstream. It would tear us apart and the explosion would take out half the system." Beka stated.
"Dammit! Where the hell did all these Nietzscheans come from?" Dylan pounded his console and lifted his fist from it, bleeding.
"From the Drago-Kazov Remnant worlds - mainly Midden, Kalardo, and supplements from occupied Sinti." Rommie recited.
"I didn't want the listing of all Drago-Kazov military, Rommie! It was a rhetorical - " Dylan cut off by another blast, " - question!"
"Boss we're not gonna hold together for long." Harper cut in. "In about 10 minutes we'll begin to fall apart completely. Even as it is Decks 12 through 15 have been punctured. About 30 people who accidentally wandered into those areas were sucked into space by decompression."
"Dylan we must leave the ship now if we have any chance of making it." Trance said.
"She's right." Hologram-Andromeda appeared in front of them. "Leave immediately. You can restore the Commonwealth to unity and the ideals it once represented without me, but that will never happen if you die with me!"
"No, Andromeda!" Dylan yelled at her.
"If I have to, I will force you out of here, Dylan. I'm not lying!" Andromeda retorted.
"Try me!"
"As you wish, Captain." Andromeda then began fluctuating the AG fields in Command Deck and throughout the corridors that connected the Command Deck to the Hangar bay were the Maru was waiting. Immediately everyone floated in mid-air and began flying out of Command Deck, Dylan first, Rhade last, while Rommie ran into the corridor and followed them. The door shut behind them. They kept on flying through the corridor all the way to Hangar 1, where the Maru was docked. Consoles and lights blew all around them as they floated. The Hangar doors closed once all got inside the hangar.
"Captain. Now you have no choice but to leave here." Andromeda Hologram appeared again as Beka was already starting up the Maru's engines.
"I'll miss you, Andromeda. You were the greatest ship I ever commanded and the greatest ship I could ever ask for." Dylan said tearfully as he gave up and hopped into the Maru. Rommie said her goodbye to her shipself and also left. Harper was the last
"I'll never forget all the times we fooled around in the V.R. Matrix!" Harper chuckled half-heartily.
"You wish, Harper." Andromeda winked. "But you still got Rommie with you."
Harper was just turning around as a blast rocked the entire ship and a whole ripped in the ceiling above him - a whole into space. Harper screamed as he tried to hold on to a beam that had broken off, but he couldn't keep holding and finally let go, to the horror of his friends inside the Maru, who had to watch his death. Once outside the ship's hull, although his death was already instantaneous since there was no air for him in the vacuum of space, a Nietzschean Cruiser slammed into his body while ramming the Andromeda. Beka closed the doors of her ship to prevent them from suffering a similar fate. The Hangar doors opened and she piloted out of there, dodging dozens of Nietzscheans.
Before the Maru escaped into Slipstream, they watched as the Andromeda, falling apart, rammed several Nietzschean Destroyers, destroying not only them but completely burning herself in the process. Inside the Maru, Trance weeped, Rommie was unable to speak, Dylan, Beka, and Rhade could do nothing but report battle damage and statistics to avoid the truth they all just saw unfold.
[Trance], [Aurelia], and [Azazel] were all watching this, [Trance] was crying uncontrollably.
"Harper..." She sobbed. "Why must this happen to him? I need him! I need all of them!"
[Azazel] put her hand on [Trance]'s shoulder. "If you do things right, none of this will happen, or at least not till after the final confrontation with the World Ship."
[Aurelia] spoke. "[Trance], do not think that this is the cause of the tragedy that follows the destruction of your ship. It is the first effect, and only the first. Before we can tell you the cause, you must face the rest of the effects."
[Trance] wiped off her tears as the image of the grief-stricked quintet in the Maru cockpit faded away. Now, the three women found themselves on Oedekirk Prime, Beka's home planet. Beka and Dylan were arguing.
"Dylan! She is corrupt and greedy!" Beka yelled.
"No! That was then this is now! Your mother, Senator Talia Valentine, could bring the entire Oedekirk Federation of - what? - 20 systems into the True Commonwealth, adding a number of ships to the fledgling fleet and you oppose this on a personal grudge?!" Dylan screamed. "What the HELL is wrong with you?"
"You've known her for a few days. I've known her since I was a little child. Don't you dare tell me that I wouldn't know what she's in this for! Do you really think that if the Magog reach more major Commonwealth worlds she will join a resistance and send off her fleets to help?"
"YES, AS A MATTER OF FACT I DO! AND IF YOU DON'T SHAPE UP, SHE WILL NOT JOIN US AND IT WILL BE ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT!"
"MY fault? Well, if we're gonna blame people, let's continue the list. After Andromeda was destroyed, YOU were the one who pushed Rommie so hard to compensate for the sudden loss of a lot of strategic tactical info and **** that she overloaded and burned herself! YOU sent Rhade to Arun-Roy on that solo mission to take out the Collector headquarters even though you knew perfectly well that it was a suicide mission! Guess what? He never came back! WHY? Because YOU sent him because of some personal grudge that YOU had against Gaheris look-alikes, one of which Telemachus was unfortunately."
