- CHAPTER 3 -
Harper turned yet another corner and discovered a large, steel door at the end of the hallway. He ran to the door and opened it. After walking inside, he closed the door, but to his dismay heard a whispering of his name. "Seamus," someone said. He looked absolutely confused as he searched around. Harper couldn't figure out where the whispering was coming from. He suddenly looked up and noticed a long narrow path of cages, lines up in consecutive order. "Cozy. This must be the first class hotel," he said. "Seamus. Get your scrawny butt over here," the voice said again. Harper turned around and noticed a familair face in the cage. "Beka," Harper shrieked. He ran over to her. "Shhh! Don't say anything aloud. You'll get us all killed. Have you seen Dylan, Rhade, or Trance," she asked. "Ummm...I haven't seen any of them in....five years, Beka," he replied. "Five years," Beka questioned. She started to get tears in her eyes. "Beka! Don't lose it, now. I'm going to get you out of here, somehow," he said.
The men in the control room suddenly heard the sound of components starting up. "Boot complete," Andromeda announced. "That wasn't supposed to happen, yet." "Who the hell activated her, already?" "Don't look at me." "We haven't even deactivated the defenses, yet." "Shit! Get out of here! Head for the airlocks!" Andromeda's internal defenses began firing at them, as they dashed out of the room.
"What's going on? Where are the crew," Andromeda asked her humanoid body in the Command Deck. "I don't know. I opened my eyes and they were gone. In a split second," Rommie answered. "Intruder alert," Andromeda repeated throughout the ship. "Wait...you're absolutely sure it was a split second? I'm detecting several onboard systems are missing, and I'm detecting several new ones that I can't communicate with," she observed. "Mapping hull structure. My hull is different," Andromeda informed. "How is that possible," Rommie said to herself. Anaris walked into Command with a look of rage in his eyes. "State your identity," Andromeda ordered. "Trust me. You don't want to know," Anaris told her. He turned around and walked out of Command.
"You've been here longer than I have. How do I get you out of this," Harper asked Beka. "The guard has a key. He only comes in once a night with our daily rations," Beka answered. "They feed you once a day?" "Yeah. It's been rough, Seamus." "I can see. Exactly when does he come in?" "I can't tell. It's always when the sun goes down." "That's not for a while, yet. I'll lay low for a while. You just rest here."
"Intruders. You have five minutes to vacate the ship, before I begin emergency termination of environmental systems," Andromeda ordered. Andromeda began to slowly depressurize herself to vent the oxygen. "Four minutes and 21 seconds and counting," she updated.
Anaris ran to the hangar deck. He boarded the ship, before it took off and left the Andromeda. "Let the ground troops know that we need to assemble reinforcements," Anaris instructed over a com unit.