A/N: You get two chapters today for being such wonderful little reviewers! But I still can't tell you about the kritta fish...
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Telemachus heard Andromeda's sirens blare as he sat in his quarters, privacy mode on. He had slipped out of Command as Beka was piloting the ship to Allpoints; slipstream was the best time for such quiet maneuvers, as no one quite felt themselves outside normal space. While he navigated the corridors back to his quarters, he wondered if Lieutenant Refractions of Dawn had been slipping when his ancestor had made his traitorous move on the Andromeda.
Telemachus Rhade thought about a lot of things as he paced his quarters, trying not to picture the rest of Andromeda's senior staff battling for their survival against the combined fleets he knew waited for them. He wondered if his parents had known their son's remarkable genetic resemblance to the infamous Gaheris Rhade and if that had influenced their decision to name him after Odysseus's son from the ancient human epic. He couldn't imagine that his family could have iwanted/i him to grow up anything like Gaheris; Tarazed's Commonwealth blamed him among others for the fall of history's greatest civilization.
Telemachus, out of Penelope by Odysseus, had been left to his mother's care after his father had disappeared during the Trojan War. The young boy had grown up seeing his mother surrounded by unworthy suitors, only protected from their lusts for her and her estate by her own wit. The part that Telemachus Rhade mused on the most was the part of the story where Telemachus, son of Odysseus, came to manhood after earning respect for himself—apart from the great Odysseus—by planning the overthrow of the suitors and aiding in his father's defense of his family's honor. Telemachus out of Odysseus had earned his own name; would Telemachus Rhade likewise forge his own identity, or would he be dismissed as yet another treacherous Nietzschean, one in a long line of many?
He thought about the Commonwealth's three incarnations: the ten thousand year-old empire/republic, the miniature that had survived the Long Night on Tarazed, and the current government which had succumbed to corruption with astonishing speed. What was it about this newest Commonwealth that made it so susceptible to the unwholesome whims of powerful men and women?
Doubtless the old Systems Commonwealth had contained corrupt members, but the government itself had remained strong, prosperous, and generally fair until the Magog invasion. Tarazed might have been too small to experience the large-scale corruption that now riddled the restored Commonwealth, but he had attained the rank of Admiral and never heard whispers of such underhanded dealings, besides the business of Triumvir Raquelle—which, he admitted, she did commit with the truly best interests of the planet at heart. He couldn't say the same for the Collectors, who had sullied the name of that elite division of the All Sytems University and then proceeded to strong-arm their way into the highest levels of Commonwealth government and use it for their selfish ends.
When he had finally discovered the truth about Gaheris Rhade, he had raged for a long time at the treachery that stained his name. Then, as reports of the growing power and undue privilege of the Collectors reached him through confidential sources, he began to wonder if the Rhade clan was doomed, as in the ancient Greek myths he had come to study, to repeatedly betray friends and state. Gaheris lost everything to save his people from the weaknesses of a decadent system which had fallen so low that it compromised with monsters, and now Telemachus was faced with the Commonwealth—which he had defended time after time—falling again into rot.
The hardest part of all this, he discovered, was the play-acting he performed everyday for his crewmates, now his friends, and the plans that he helped to create behind their back. Plans to betray and ultimately deliver them into the hands of an enemy. None of them deserved treachery like this, not again, but Telemachus could not let his attachments prevent action that he knew could save the Known Worlds from the tyrannical Collectors. He felt what his fore-bearer must have felt and Tyr Anasazi, who had lived with these people for three years before pursuing the destiny that had been his since birth, the destiny that would unite his people and bring down the Pride he so despised.
With a start, Telemachus realized that the ship was no longer moving through space. Something was dragging her down. He knew what was happening and thought with bitter humor that Beka Valentine must find this sudden immobility very frustrating. He could picture her perfectly, railing at the useless and unresponsive piloting controls, and smiled a little at the image. Over the past few months, he had understood what had made Tyr so reluctant to leave, and Beka was not the smallest part of that.
Andromeda's klaxons were beginning to hurt his head, so loud had they become. The ship was on its highest alert, and Andromeda's voice was announcing through the ship that intruders had gained entry to an airlock. Telemachus stood with a weary sigh and stepped out of his quarters.