I have no excuses for not writing sooner, except for we moved.
Beka had given Rhade a room after talking to Dylan. Dylan had been a little frightened about the situation and ordered Beka to bring Rhade back in one piece. Anjel and He had had a short encounter on command. It went well, but I had been awkward, so both were keeping a good distance from each other.

After Rhade was situated, Beka went to check on her young bloody crew member. Anjel was back in the infirmary, laying on her stomach fighting with a weeble. Beka barely made it out of the way before the bug came flying at the wall next to her. She gave Anjel a death glare, which caused the girl to swallow heavily and apologize.

"Where is Rhade?" Anjel asked, Changing the subject.

"He's in his quarters sending transmissions to Taren Vedra." Beka said as she went to the cabinet and retrieved gauze, painkillers and various surgical tools. It was going to take a lot more than a skin grafter to fix Anjel's arms and back.

"Ah." Anjel said as the weeble came back and tried to pull out her fake bone blade again. She hit the bug across the room again, she knew it was futile, but it was still a temporary solution.

"Here, let me help with that." Beka kicked the bug the rest of the way out of the room and shut the door so it couldn't get back in. Then she helped Anjel adjust her towel to that beka could get a good look at her injuries.

"Be careful of my right side. It really hurts." Anjel whispered. It was taking a lot of Faith to let Beka help her like this, even if she had grown up with her. She wondered if Beka knew just how much trust Anjel was showing.

"That's not a very nietzschean thing to say." Beka laughed. She pulled the tools on the table next to Anjel and placed the gauze on the areas that kept bleeding.

Anjel laughed, despite her vulnerability and condition "Hell, you're more nietzschean that I am. OW that hurt!" Beka poked her in the neck with something. She felt the rush of painkillers, but she knew that they wouldn't help much.

"How do you know that anyway?" Beka asked as she worked

"I've spent a lot of time around you that's all." Anjel said easily

Beka stopped and threw down the bloody gauze. "Ok enough with the mysterious crap. Spill it." She snapped

"Spill what?" Anjel played stupid. She was good at it, so why not use it now?

"What's your story?" Beka said patiently, but the patience was wearing thin, and Anjel knew it, so best not test her luck.

"What you mean my life story?" She looked up at Beka jokingly. But Beka's eyes seemed to think that was a great Idea. "Hell that's a dozy."

"Well we've got time," Beka smiled evilly, "so spill it."

"Whatever you say o Captain, my Captain. Were do I start?" Anjel smiled. She had been so busy since she had gotten to the Andromeda that she really didn't have time to reconnect with any of the crew. Beka was the first, so she was actually quite comfortable telling the woman her history, if she wanted to listen.

"How about how you know so much about us, and everything about Andromeda." Beka said as she concentrated on the large bone that was poking out under Anjels skin. Beka guessed it was a rib.

Anjel laughed "That's easy. I was born and raised there." Her laugh faded as she seemed to slip into some distant memory, which was fine for Beka, she didn't need Anjel focusing on what she was doing. "My parents were on the Andromeda when I was born. They were officers. I spent a lot of time with everyone aboard. My mama and Daddy had to work a lot, but there were always people to play with. Rommie was with me the most, but I liked Trance and Harper. Uncle herpy, which I used to call him, taught me everything about the mechanical stuff. Helped me build my first slip fighter -Ow" Anjel was brought back suddenly when Beka forced the rib back into place.

Anjel buried her face into the pillow and let out a scream. Beka wasn't sure if she had forced the rib back in to far, but she checked the scanner and it seemed to be in the right spot. Anjel was just a big baby.

"Sorry. Your muscles are to tight ... try and relax." Beka said as she injected the area with nano bots and the bone started to heal itself. She also shot the girl with an extra shot of painkillers, which would have killed a giant heavy world male.

Anjel forced her breathing into a pattern and tried hard to relax. "Ok, but it's hard"

Beka smiled, "just keep talking, it will help."

The pain killers seemed to take affect, sort of, because Anjel's words became slurred and childlike. "Ok, um oh yeah Herpy, he basically showed me everything to do with ships. He also sent me up through the maintenance shafts when my mom or dad weren't around to do the tight work. I didn't mind. He told me lots of stories. Of course they all ended with the great hero genius hero saving the day and living happily ever after on a planet of gorgeous women, the he "Played with" whenever he wanted."

"Yeah that sounds like Harper. What else?" Beka said as she took strips of skin from Anjel's legs and placed them on the forearms. Then she used the skin mender to fix the donor spots and attach the donor skin to Anjel's arms.

Anjel obviously want affected by it because she kept going "Well then there was Trance. She was always really nice. When mom was away she would read me bedtime stories and hold me when I woke up from naps. She was the safe one, well other than Rommie, but hell she is an entire ship. Know what I mean? Of course then there was you. Dylan almost hung you, but you taught me how to fly. Even let me go into slip stream a few times. You were the fun daring one. Of course you were overprotective as hell, but sometimes we could talk you into almost anything. You are such a pushover by the way. OW!"

Beka poked on of the girls bruises, hard. "I am not. What about Dylan?"

"Dylan he was fun. Overprotective too, but still fun. I had breakfast every morning with him, unless he was on a run or something then I would have it with Tyr. But if there wasn't anything going on or if we weren't in battle mode, he let me have free reign of command. Of course no one followed my orders, but it was fun playing captain."

"Wait, you said Tyr. Why Tyr?" Beka asked, confused.

"Well he was defiantly there, him and his mate. I called her Rici. But, no, they were there. Of course so much has happened that that particular future may not be true. That's what I don't know. Hell not even Trance knows. Scary huh?"

"Yeah. So what happened?" Beka said getting back to work, she had Anjel's right arm fixed, but she was running out of donor areas on her legs.

"What do you mean?" Anjel slurred

"Why did you leave?"

Anjel laughed, "ah, the foreboding question. Well actually I don't remember everything. I remember I was little, really little, maybe 4. Something hit Andromeda, actually a lot of somethings. It shook like mad. I called for Mama, and she and Rici ran in. They were arguing about something. They stopped though when a magog busted through the door. Mama picked me up and we all ran to the slip fighter launch. It was bad. There were magog everywhere. Andromeda was using her internal defenses, but there were so many. Daddy and Tyr were fighting to clear the way for us. None of them would touch Trance or Rici. I don't know why. They were all scared by them. Well we got to the slip launch and mom put me in a slip fighter. She was crying. I didn't want to go. She told me that she would see me soon and that she and daddy loved me. Tyr pulled her back ad Rici put something into the fighters computer. Then she said "Squirt, you're going to have to go on a trip for a while. You will be back with mommy and daddy before you know it.' then she shut the slip fighter and it launched."

"You were 4 and you knew how to pilot a slip fighter." Beka asked, not really believing.

"I was taught by the best after all." Anjel smiled

"Well what happened next?"

"Well Andromeda became this big sphere of light. But I really didn't see it long because something swallowed me up. Everything went black. And it stayed black for a long time. It got cold for a while, and I was hungry. There was food in the slip fighter, but I dint know how to get into it. Now that is one of the worse feeling ever. I cried a lot. I missed my mama, and I missed my daddy. I was mad at Rici for making me go." Anjel's voice became less care free, and had a sense of sorrow to it. Beka caught a glimpse of a single tear falling down the girls cheek.

"Did Andromeda explode?" Beka asked, trying to keep her talking, she wanted to know if the chick slipped into a coma from all of the pain meds.

"I don't think so. But some crazy shit was happening to it when I left- What the hell are you doing!?" Anjel yelled as she felt something rip skin off of her upper thigh, way to close to her ass.

"I'm skin grafting." Beka said a matter of factly.

"It hurts like a mother!" Anjel yelled pathetically. Beka wondered if the pain meds had worn off already, what was wrong with this girl?

"Yeah well do you wanna die of infection?" She threatened lightly.

"No ma'am." Anjel pouted

"Then shut up and keep talking."

"Alright alright. Well when I finally came out I was no where near andromeda. The auto pilot took me down to the surface of the first inhabitable planet. Rojuiar, I think it was called."

"Rojuiar?" Beka stopped, "As in the cloaked planet of a thousand dreams?"

"Well I don't know anything about hundreds of dreams or anything like that, but it was pretty. I wasn't alone for long either. A Nietzschean male found me. At first he was ready to kill me, but somehow I charmed the hell out of him. He took me in immediately. Brought me into his family. I became part of the Goliath pride. But it was strange; their customs were different than most nietzscheans. Monogamous, one man for one woman. Not very technologically advanced. Well, actually they were, they just didn't like using it. Oh lord I will always remember the cool night with the other children, hopping through the trees. My new mother and father had 3 children of their own already, and my new father was the Alpha. He spent a lot of time teaching me fighting techniques and whatnot. He said he liked my genes. What a hoot." Anjel laughed

"How long did you stay there?" Beka asked, now intrigued by the story.

"Not very long. Maybe 2 years. Slavers soon found us. Most of the men were killed just because they hadn't been trained with guns. I don't care how good you are at hand to hand, it doesn't matter when you're fighting against blasters. What they didn't kill they took as slaves. My new father was wounded, my new mother raped then left for dead. All of us children were herded into the slavers ships. "It didn't take long for them to figure out that I was good with mechanics. Uncle herpy taught me how to pick locks, and by the Divine I picked every lock they put on our cell. Almost had a successful revolt one time, but again, they had guns, we had nothing. They would have killed me if I wasn't so useful. I was sold to a nightsider with a few other slaves. He used me as a pickpocket and a ship hijacker. He liked my piloting skills too. My life was relatively easy, considering that I was a slave. I still was beaten, but not near as much as the others. My master let me sleep on the floor in his room, let me eat his leftovers." Anjel said almost happily

Beka was appalled "You call that a good life?"

"Did you see the kids back on that drift? Imagine being one of those, imagine someone gives you a roof to sleep under, a few scraps, makes sure your not sick, hell lets you bathe. It was heaven. But it didn't last long." again the remorse came back

Beka was beginning to realize that nothing for her really lasted long. "You got caught?"

"Exactly." Anjel smiled, happy that Beka was catching on, "I got caught robbing the wrong ship. When I didn't come back, my master used my tracking devise to come find me. He walked right into a trap. They killed him and I was given to another master. This one wasn't nice at all."

"How long were you with him?" Beka had finished a long time ago. She couldn't do anymore for Anjel until they got back to Andromeda where Trance could take a look at her, and Rhade, who wasn't in the best shape himself.

"Surprisingly not long. Master had me working on one of his ships, under another slave named Ragnor. God I hated him. He ate our food, beat us for his own pleasure, drank our ration water, and blamed his laziness on us. It was hell, really hell. But one day it changed. I was cleaning out one of the rooms because a prominent Nietzschean Alpha was supposed to be boarding with his mate and his son. Well I look out the window and I see it; Andromeda. I was so happy I was crying, I thought, finally I'm back home. I ran as fast as I could to get to the loading ramp, but Ragnor caught me. He knew I was running away so he beat me, bad. I was almost gone when I heard Rici calling him off. I was so happy to hear her voice, and then I don't know what happened. It was like something inside of me exploded, as if this thing was trying to escape from me. I heard Rici telling me to stop. I even heard Tyr pulling her back. But he didn't get Tamerlane. I pulled Tamerlane in with everyone else. I felt Rici shielding Tyr and Andromeda from it, from me, well actually from the abyss." Anjel said her last sentence quite flatly.

"You brought on the Abyss?" Beka asked, Appalled.

"It's a gift. Can we talk about something else please? It's kinda hard for me to talk about this stuff." Anjel tried to minimize the shock of what she had just told Beka, and decided that she had heard enough for today.

"Sure, I think I've done everything for you I can. We'll get trance to look at you when we get back." Beka picked up all of the bloody gauze and tools and placed them in the bio cleansing station.

"Thanks Beka. What else can I tell you?" Anjel smiled, proudly checking over Beka's work. She had done quite well, she had even placed living skin over the prosthetic bone blade, it was going to take a hell of a lot to break that thing off again.

Beka repositioned Anjel's towel than pulled up a chair in front of Anjel "Can you tell me about my future?"

"I could, but it may not come true, and Trance may kill me." Anjel weighed the consequences.

"Just give it a go." Beka squirmed eagerly.

Hell, if the woman was that excited to hear it, who was Anjel to say no? "Alright, you and Dylan will have a very happy relationship, but you will have to work at it."

"ok, what else," Beka said, hungry for more.

"WHAT ELSE? Damn woman I just told you that you will have a stable relationship with a man and you want more? That the hell is wrong with you?" Anjel laughed
Next chapter is homecoming, so we get back to Dylan and Tammy and the rest, I swear I will write more soon, I still need suggestions for what Harper can do to get Tammy back. anyway, toddles.