Title: Late Knight's Fall

Author: Union-Jack2.0

Disclaimer: Various American individuals and companies own the stuff from the telly series. I own all characters, planets, places, ships and other stuff I create for this fic. I'm just messing around, getting some practice in and enjoying myself, I'm not here to make any cash from this. If anyone wants to use elements of this fanfic or base a fanfic of their own in this AU, call me at 'oblivion727 at fsmail dot net' (this applies to Tribune as well—yeah, as if they'd be interested! ;-)). Chances are I'll say 'yes', but I'd prefer if you checked first—my characters, my AU, I'd like to know what people are doing with 'em, yuh?

Rating: Oh what the hell, 'M', stay out of trouble. There'll be no explicit sex, usual explanation for that (I find porn dull, I only write stuff I'd want to read so I don't bother writing that), some violence, possibly disturbing scenes, some language guaranteed and in all honesty half of that'll prob'ly be from me in my own bloody Author's Notes.

Spoilers: I HAVE NO HIT LIST. This is an AU where things are very VERY different. You could probably get away with reading this without having seen more than just a couple of episodes provided you knew what all the characters from the series looked like and how they behave and react and how Andromeda's decks, control centres and virtual reality matrix appear. Some miniscule references that will have vague meaning to regular viewers may be encountered, but you don't need to be a die-hard watcher to understand this fic. If you've seen one or two episodes and can recognise the regular characters, that's good enough.

Season: Technically, Season One, but more on that later…

Pairing: Some romance possibly, but again more on that later…

Summary: AU. The Magog were only a minor threat in the days of Captain Dylan Hunt. As time passed, Dylan married his fiancé and later turned over command of the Andromeda Ascendant to his first officer Gaheris Rhade. Rhade would in time relinquish command to his own first officer, Refractions of Dawn.

Three centuries passed. The Magog grew as a threat, until they finally struck a series of deadly blows against the Systems Commonwealth. The High Guard were eventually able to drive them back, and the treaty of Castalia was signed with the Magog.

Now, Andromeda's captain and first officer are Rebecca Valentine and Telemachus Rhade respectively. And the Known Worlds are about to change most drastically…

Author's Note: The inspiration for this was from the end of 'The Widening Gyre' when I played it back last summer, when Dylan told Beka that in the days of the Commonwealth she would have "made one hell of a commanding officer." The next morning I awoke to find my imagination had gone into overdrive blitzkrieging away at five-times the speed of light and I had this footage in my mind's eye of 'Under The Night'…but very different.

Because what if she had been Andromeda's Captain, with Telemachus Rhade as her first officer? And thus arose this great work…

Apologies for the first half of Chapter One being a semi-rehash, but I can guarantee that from the second half on out, this fic will only vaguely resemble what you can see on the telly. At times, it may not bear any semblance to it at all…

Many, many thanks to Khalia Morningstar who kindly previewed and reviewed this for me before I posted.

Usual notes of reassurance: Any character who doesn't normally do so will not be written with a British accent. For the reasons why, see my earlier fic 'Of Larvae and Love'. Carl Forbes, however, is supposed to be of English descent so his dialogue will be written accordingly and by that I'm talking about a genuine accent, not the stuff that most people who've never met an English person for real before seem to believe in for reasons beyond my comprehension. We don't all sound like Hugh Grant, y'know. If it comes to that, the only person on the whole planet who sounds like Hugh Grant is Hugh Grant. Secondly, no porn here. Romance I like, porn I find dull.

Now ladies, gentles, all, list to my tale of a…

LATE KNIGHT'S FALL

CHAPTER ONE:

KNIGHT FALL

"There are no all-encompassing

cure-all answers to the great questions.

Only individual solutions that we

make for ourselves."

—Davis Crombie from England, circa Earth Year 2004


"Battle stations. Battle stations. All crew, man your battle stations." Andromeda called out over the cacophony of blaring klaxons.

'Beka' Valentine, Captain of the Andromeda Ascendant, grinned as she leapt down a ladder, using her anti-gravity harness to catch herself at the bottom of the fifteen-storeys deep shaft.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," Andromeda chided as her maverick Captain floated gently to the deck plates. "What if your anti-grav harness failed and I couldn't catch you in time?"

"Oh, Rommie, you wouldn't let that happen, because then you'd have to break in a brand spanking new captain," Beka grinned mischievously.

Andromeda materialised a hologram beside her, shaking her head. "You remind me of one of my former Captains. He took crazy risks just like that."

"Give me his contact details and address and I'll look him up sometime, buy him a drink or two," Beka chuckled as she ran onwards, espying her first officer. "Sounds like we'd get along famously."

"Sorry. Dylan Hunt died of old age over two-hundred and forty years ago."

Beka sobered. "The Dylan Hunt? Wait, you're telling me he was—"

"Like you?" Andromeda smiled to herself inside her matrix. "Oh yes."

Beka shook her head in disbelief as she slowed and halted beside her Nietzschean first officer, Telemachus Rhade. "Report."

"All stations manned and ready Captain," he announced.

"Elapsed time, two minutes seventeen seconds," Andromeda called.

Rhade growled deep in his throat, the bone blades on his forearms briefly extending then collapsing as he activated an intercom panel. "Too slow!" he roared.

Beka winced, gently pressing against her ear to re-equalise the pressure. "Too loud."

"All hands, stand down!" Rhade bellowed, apparently not heeding her.

Andromeda grinned widely, remembering Telemachus' genetic ancestor Gaheris, and his banter with Dylan in the old days. An alarm sounded. "All crew, stand down from stations. All crew, stand down. End of drill," she declared.

"Ship-wide, Rommie," Beka ordered. "This is the captain. Not bad people, but I'm not doing any cartwheels. Team leaders, co-ordinate additional sessions. You know what to do. Let's get it under two minutes. Dismissed." Andromeda's hologram dissipated in flickering shower of light.

"I didn't think they did that badly," Beka commented as Rhade accompanied her to Command.

"That's a somewhat optimistic attitude, Captain. And Nietzscheans don't believe in optimism," he pointed out. "It inhibits survival."

"So does pessimism," she countered. "Anyway, about two months from now. You never did tell me whether you'd be coming to my brother's wedding with me or not."

He grinned. "Agent Valentine, married man. Hard to believe. I understand your mother, the admiral, is pleased by the news?"

She returned the grin teasingly. "You're still not answering my question…"

"Captain Valentine, we're receiving a hail from a Systems Courier ship," Andromeda informed them. "It's indicating a stellar level emergency."

The two officers exchanged glances. "On our way."


"Captain On Deck," a Lancer sergeant called as Beka walked onto the Andromeda Ascendant's command deck, closely followed by Rhade.

"As you were," Beka returned as she headed for the command station, unconsciously straightening her crimson jacket. "Status."

"A courier just transited to normal space, we're moving to intercept," an ensign operating the sensor console reported.

"Are we close enough for real time?" Beka asked.

Rhade took his station across the deck from the Captain and readied himself. When communications were established a dark-skinned Nietzschean woman filled the monitor.

"This is the Systems Courier ship Alacrative Missive, do you copy?" the courier pilot called out insistently.

"Go ahead Missive," Rhade responded.

"It's a rogue black hole! Hephaestus system. They're trying to evacuate, but there aren't enough ships."

"Hephaestus has a population of nearly a billion sentients," Andromeda informed her captain.

"You're the first ship I've contacted," the Missive's pilot told them.

"Andromeda, are there any other High Guard ships in the area?" Beka asked as she took over the piloting console and began plotting a course to Hephaestus.

"Yes. The Balance of Judgement, a Siege Perilous-class destroyer is two systems away on a combat training assignment."

"Keep moving, notify everyone you can," Rhade ordered the courier pilot. He turned to a nearby crewman. "Dispatch our own couriers. Tell them to spread the word, and make sure one of them's headed for the Judgement."

"Ship-wide. This is the captain," Beka broadcast. "All hands, prepare to receive refugees. Rig the ship for maximum capacity."

"Ejecting cargo from bays one through five," Andromeda's hologram calmly announced.

"Approaching transit point," Beka broadcast over the intercom. "All hands, brace for slipstream. Transitting to slipstream on my mark. Three. Two. One. Mark."

With that, a shimmering, glittering tear in the fabric of space and time opened before them. Within, strands of energy flickered and writhed like living things. Then the captain nudged Andromeda forward, and the silver chains of the slipstream grabbed them and pulled them in.

Her eyes glued to the flickering threads of electricity they were riding through, Beka yanked the controls around, ever searching for the right turns and twists, and most importantly safe exits.

A faint, barely audible groan rose from Andromeda's straining walls as she forced the vessel to pick up speed and they went hurtling through the 'stream until at last she smoothly yanked them over to the right exit.

"Transitting back to normal space in three, two, and…"

Moments later, the stream hurled them out, leaving them gliding through empty space, small residual sparks of electricity dancing on the hull.

"We're receiving over a thousand distress signals," the communications officer reported.

"Reading a powerful singularity in the outer solar system. Mass: three times ten to the thirty-first kilos. Range: one-point-two light minutes." Andromeda stated calmly.

Rhade looked up from his console to his commanding officer. "Hephaestus' population is over seventy-five percent Nietzscheans. If my people are running, the situation must be desperate."

She nodded at this. "We'll take on as many people as we can. Deploy outrunners. If there are any orbital habitats near the singularity, we've got to evacuate them immediately."

"A contingent of ships is closing on us, aft and port," the Than at the sensor console chittered.

Beka groaned at this news; just what they needed, panicky evacuee ships making things complicated. "Communications, tell them we'll get to them as soon as we—"

The deck shuddered under multiple missile impacts.

"They're firing on us!" Lieutenant Lance, a heavy-gravity worlder, shouted from the fire control station.

"It's a trap," Andromeda's hologram practically growled in anger.

"Battle stations!" Beka yelled.


A light flickered through the shifting waves and folds of the timestream…

A whisper of death swept through the physical realm of the universe…

And, the board set, the pieces moving, the end of the beginning at last came to a close after so very long…


"All battle stations manned and ready. One minute, thirty-one seconds," Rhade thundered over the din of weapons impacts on the hull.

"Deploy combat drones. How many ships are we up against?" Beka demanded.

"I'm detecting over fifteen thousand enemy vessels." Andromeda sounded almost daunted.

"What?"

"Five hundred ships are already within combat radius. All of them appear to be of Nietzschean design."

Lance shook his heavy head incredulously. "Fifteen thousand ships? It must have taken years to gather a force this big."

Rhade's expression was unreadable. "Sir, I recommend we deploy Nova bombs."

Beka was aghast. "This system is inhabited! I will NOT use strategic weapons, no matter how many ships we're up against."

Her old friend shrugged as more blasts impacted with the outer hull. "As you wish."

"More ships are closing," Lance snapped. "Requesting permission to return fire with offensive missile batteries and hunter-killer drones."

"Launch 'em. Missile tubes one through forty, ten salvos firing as you acquire targets, ten salvos of hunter-killer drones."

"That's half our offensive payload," he observed, unleashing the first volley.

"Sounds about right. We need to punch through, warn the rest of the High Guard."

Rhade looked at her questioningly. "Do you believe this is some kind of Nietzschean conspiracy against the Commonwealth?"

She nodded toward the main viewscreen. "They're Nietzscheans. They're shooting at us. They have fifteen thousand ships. What else can this be."

"Given the circumstances, I should be confined to the brig, along with the other Nietzscheans in the crew."

"Are you telling me I can't trust you?" She could hardly believe what she was hearing.

"I'm saying you can't afford to take any chances," Telemachus told her, a bland expression effectively masking his feelings.

She sighed, and turned to sergeant Tan Uthrew, a Lancer veteran who'd worked with her in her Argosy Special Operations days. "Sergeant, take Commander Rhade to the brig. See to it that the other Nietzschean crewmembers are relieved of duty."

"Aye, Captain," he saluted her gravely, then joined another Lancer and escorted Telemachus from Command.

"Dammit," she snarled, as two squadrons of frigates broke formation, making strafing attacks on their hull. "We can't manoeuvre. There's too many of them."

"We've lost over seventy percent of our drones," Andromeda told her, sounding worried.

"And we can't transit to slipstream." Beka groaned as another, heavier volley struck them amidships. "The gravitational pull of that black hole is too strong. We're trapped."

"Hull breach on level eight, section three. Personnel are evacuating…Captain, I've lost contact with the lower decks."


"C'mon, everybody out! We're losing life support, go go go!" Lieutenant Seamus Harper sighed with relief as he followed the last of his engineering detail to safety, as emergency bulkheads sealed off the damaged section behind them.

"What's going to happen Chief!" Uthel looked frantic, and the chief engineer was more than a little worried when he noticed that the Castalian ensign's skin looked unhealthily dry.

"Don't you worry too much about it," he assured her, as he advanced to lead the engineers to the upper decks. "No Valentine has failed before, and sure as hell our captain won't let us down today either. Now come on, all of you, we've got to get out of here before this section loses life support as well. Haul it!"


"Andromeda, is there any way we can contact the Judgement, warn him off?"

"Impossible, Captain. I met him once, sixty years ago. If our courier ship reached him, it is most likely he will have entered slipstream at the earliest possible time and we won't be able to contact him. I'm sorry, but there's nothing we can do." She sounded somewhat choked with emotion. If she had been organic, she would most likely have been blinking back tears at the knowledge of the terrible fate that surely awaited the noble ship.

The fate that she would herself most certainly meet.

"We've got multiple hull breaches," Lance growled as he laid down suppressing fire. "Life support is failing."

"And we need ten more minutes to get past the gravitational distortions before we can transit. We're not gonna make it." Beka hated herself even as she verbalised her conclusion. She looked over at Andromeda's hologram. "How many of your androids are still functional?"

"Twenty-nine. Fifteen others are still on-line, but I can't…"

"It'll have to do. Man the critical systems. Give me ship-wide."

"Ship-wide."

Beka cleared the lump from her throat. She had known ever since becoming Andromeda's Captain that she might someday have to issue this order. She had also hoped to never have to do such a thing.

"This is the captain. All hands abandon ship. Repeat. All hands abandon ship. Use every available escape pod and drone. Get away from the Andromeda as fast as possible, then scatter. Make your way to Acomba One Starport and warn the High Guard what's happened here."


Harper sighed with relief as the last of his team's escape pods vanished into the inky blackness of space. His people were safe, and now part of his duties were fulfilled.

He ran onwards, swiftly climbing ever upwards toward the Command Centre. When he'd been promoted to Chief Engineer of the Andromeda Ascendant, finally reaching the peak of his meteoric rise through the ranks, he had sworn two things; to look after the personnel under his command, and to care for Andromeda herself.

In many ways, they were family. She was his light, his closest friend, someone with whom he shared a bond far more intense than that shared by lovers, and he would be damned if he would flee and abandon her. Through their incredible link that was possible with his High Guard dataport, they had shared one of the most intimate and special bonds and relationships that two people could ever enjoy.

To have left her would have been nothing less than to have betrayed her. And to have betrayed her would have been to have betrayed himself, and his love for her.

That was something he would never do.


"Abandon ship. All crew, abandon ship. Proceed to escape pods. Shuttles available on Hangar Deck Three. Abandon ship. Abandon ship. Abandon ship."

Uthrew gestured respectfully to his superior. "This way, sir."

Before he could so much as blink, Rhade's bone blades snapped out, and the Nietzschean plunged them into the throats of Uthrew and the other Lancer. They were dead long before they hit the ground.

He shook his head sorrowfully. "Should train 'em better," he muttered, as he relieved the sergeant of his force lance and headed off at a dead run.


Beka was surprised when the doors to Command slid open to admit her Chief Engineer. But then, perhaps such a reaction was unwarranted. She knew that Andromeda and he had a strong, if professional relationship, but still…

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"With all due respect Captain, whatever trick you've got up your sleeve, you'll need a good engineer to make it happen." He smiled disarmingly, spreading his arms wide. "And here I am."

"I ordered you to abandon ship."

He grinned as he vaulted the engineering console. "Let the record show that Chief Engineer First Lieutenant Seamus Zelazny Harper respectfully refuses to comply. If we get out of this in one piece, you can always court-martial me."

She tutted, grinning widely despite herself. "You can start helping by sealing off Command. Vent the rest of the atmosphere. We need to make Andromeda as light as possible."


With his superior Nietzschean senses, Telemachus heard a noise that ordinary humans couldn't possibly hear. It was a faint hissing, and he realised that it was the atmosphere being vented. He reached into the fold of cloth in which he had stored breathing apparatus, then placed it into his mouth.

"The rest of the ship's been depressurised."

"Setting a course. Heading zero-nine-zero by negative fifteen."

Harper looked at her, shocked. "But Captain, that takes us right—"

"I know where it takes us," she cut him off. "Straight into the black hole."

The deck trembled again, as though in fear, but they both knew that they were being fired on again.

Andromeda's hologram looked worried to say the least. "Beka, are you sure about this? My connections to the rest of the ship are shot. We're leaking anti-protons from the port reserve tanks. I can't guarantee I'll have enough power left to pull us away from the singularity."

Beka grinned wickedly as they shook again under the Nietzscheans' furious assault. "We're not strong enough to fight our way free," she explained. "We've gotta use the black hole's gravity to slingshot us away from the Nietzscheans. It's our only chance. All forward."

"Gravity fields are holding!" Harper yelled over the noise of the bombardment. "Fire control is offline! All we've got left are PDL's."

"All right. Let's build up some speed," Beka grinned in challenge to their pursuers. "Let's see how crazy these guys are."

"We're at twenty-five PSL," Harper called. "Twenty-six. Twenty-eight. Thirty!"

The androids manning the stations around Command started to collapse, and the power died around them. Andromeda's hologram and visage on the main viewscreen flickered, emitting occasional bursts of white noise. "The main energy grid…I'm losing power…" Her words were heavily distorted.

"We've lost all power," Harper whispered.

"Going to reserves." Beka fought to keep a firm grip on the piloting controls.

"Rommie! Are you there?" Harper looked almost frantic.

Andromeda's hologram partially materialised, flickering in and out of existence.

"The A.I. network's been disrupted," Beka realised.

"How could that happen?"

"We can still make it. One thing's for sure. There's no turning back now."


On his way to the bridge, he heard Andromeda's familiar voice, calling out not his rank, but his name, which hinted at how close the ship was to its officers. "Rhade?"

His response was to shoot out the screen with a single shot from his force lance.

He reached the doors leading to Command, which opened with a compliant hiss.


"Ten light seconds away." Andromeda said.

"Diverting all power to starboard engine and plotting a hyperbolic flyby. Just gotta keep us at least a half light-second away from the event horizon." Beka grinned in satisfaction as she successfully executed the course despite their mounting damage. "Got it."

Andromeda managed to stabilise her hologram for a brief while, maintaining cohesion through sheer willpower. "Beka!" she cried. "Sabotage!"

"Sabotage. Great," Beka groaned. "That's all we need."

"Captain!" Harper shouted. "The starboard engines are off-plane."

Beka grimaced. "Rotating ship to compens…"

She trailed off as the doors slid open.

Harper looked up from the engineering console in surprise. "Commander?" he warily asked. Shortly before losing life support, a pair of Lancers had arrived in engineering and taken a Nietzschean officer on his team into custody.

Telemachus aimed and fired straight at the diminutive engineer, the effector punching through the human's shoulder and severing an artery even as he hurled himself to one side in a futile attempt to avoid the shot. He then began to fire at his best friend, who had leapt behind a console at the sound of his shot.

"Rhade!" Beka shouted as they exchanged fire.

His face remained a mask of stone. "I tried to warn you." He fired, advancing into Command and prowling about its perimeter, steadily approaching her.

She didn't understand. "What are you doing!"

"Ensuring the survival of my people!" Telemachus shouted. "The Commonwealth is weak. It bargains with its enemies, it compromises. My people are engineered to be perfect! And the Commonwealth is no place for the strong."

"So the Nietzscheans decided to destroy it."

"We spent years preparing, waiting, arguing," Telemachus told her. "For a long time, I opposed the destruction of the Systems Commonwealth. So did many others. The Treaty of Castalia changed all that."

"The Magog," realised the Captain before sliding behind another console as her shelter disintegrated under Telemachus' fusillade.

"Yes!" he snarled, rage swelling within him. "The Magog. Savages. Predators. They eat sentient beings. They reproduce by rape." He paused to reach down and impale a fallen android on his bone blades, ensuring that they would battle alone. "They killed over two billion people in the Moebius system. They invaded Earth, raping and murdering its citizens for two whole years. They destroyed the Nietzschean colony on Newton, and obliterated the Tarazed research outpost. And what did the Commonwealth do!"

"We made peace with them!" Beka protested.

"You compromised with monsters! The blood of over two billion people cried out for vengeance, and you made peace," Telemachus spat out, the memory and emotions clear. He used them, fuelling his attacks, guiding his shots. "You have sown the wind. You shall reap the whirlwind."

Beka countered again, but with far more than just words. "You know what your trouble is, Rhade? You talk too much."

Her force lance slid across the floor in his direction. Telemachus recognised the beeping noise it emitted, and leapt away as quickly as he could. It almost wasn't enough, and he felt the heat and force of the explosion propel him forward as his force lance fell from his fingers.

Beka rushed him, trying to take advantage, but Telemachus had already recovered from the momentary shock, and met her head on, bone blades extended and waiting.

She dodged his first pair of blows—feints, she realised, as the heel of his hand caught her squarely in the chest and sent her sprawling onto her back. Her booted foot intercepted his kick before it could be landed, and she retaliated by slamming the toe of her boot into the side of his kneecap.

He grunted in pain and surprise, took a step back and took a running leap. Her eyes widened briefly and she rolled to one side, his precisely-aimed boots barely brushing the tips of her closely-cropped hair. She swung back up to her feet, exchanging a furious flurry of blows that would have exhausted an ordinary pair of humans and left them lying dead in defeat.

The High Guard officers barely worked up a sweat.

Rhade dodged, and Beka's momentum propelled her forwards. He paused, hesitated for barely a quarter of a second. He believed she would stumble past him, leaving herself vulnerable. Could he really do this? Could he kill his captain? His friend? The woman whom he had so greatly admired for many years? The person for whom one of his daughters had been named?

She proved him wrong.

A single stride catapulted her forwards too fast for him to take advantage of, and she sprang into the air, extending her long legs before herself. She lashed out at the bulkheads beyond, twisting herself in mid-air—

Time slowed.

—as she spun, she kicked out.

Telemachus was caught off guard.

It was enough. Beka's boots connected with her first officer's temple, knocking him to the deck.

Time returned to normal.

"What was that?" she demanded of Andromeda.

"A temporal distortion. Our artificial gravity must be amplifying the time dilation effects of the black hole," came the prompt reply.

By this time, Telemachus had recovered, and leapt to attack once more. As she approached, his legs span out, boots catching her in the stomach and on her chin, staggering her as he effortlessly flipped himself to his feet once more, charging.

He lunged at her, intent on impaling her upon his bone blades. She seized his forearm, adrenaline coursing through her as she slammed the limb against the surface of a nearby console, snapping off the right foremost bone blade.

She redoubled her efforts, slugging him in the face and following through by kicking him squarely in the gut. He stumbled back a few paces, then halted against a door, grinning as he nursed his injuries.

"Give up, you can't win," he told Beka.

"I told you before," the blonde woman said, spying Harper's force lance. Telemachus noted the movement, saw his own force lance, and they both leapt away at the same time.

Time slowed again.

Beka lunged over the console, tugging the weapon from her now-unconscious chief-engineer's holster, whilst Telemachus spun over the fire control station to where his weapon had dropped.

"Time dilation is increasing," Andromeda reported, her voice slurred by the distortion.

"Pessimism is not a survival trait!" Beka shouted as they both raised their respective force lances.

Telemachus fired and she recoiled, the ruby-red effector just barely missing her.

They leapt into the air again, firing at each other. Telemachus' shot almost clipped his Captain, but Beka's aim was to prove the surer, and punctured the Nietzschean. Both fell heavily to the deck.

Beka crossed to her dying friend. "Telemachus, what have you done?" she asked, wracked with grief at her own actions.

The other gasped in pain, fighting to speak as he gently grasped her hand. "I'm proud of you. You should be…"

Time stopped.

The Andromeda Ascendant had reached the event horizon of the black hole.


The Quicksilver Arrow shuddered as the Kalderan fighters came about for another pass. Seated in the pilot's chair at the very fore of the cluttered cockpit, Reverend Behemial Far Traveller prayed fervently to the Divine under his breath, his claws clinging to the controls as he desperately manoeuvred the salvage vessel to avoid the worst of their firestorm. A steady stream of choice and intense swearing punctuated the opening of the attack run as Carl Forbes blazed away at them with the ship's AP gun batteries to little avail.

"Come on, come on me old son. I got you ya li'l bastard, I got you…in…my…sights. Lights out, sunshine!" he snarled victoriously as a fighter erupted into an expanding ball of flames under his barrage. "Reverend, come about to zero-two-niner, negative thirty degrees and cut to half cruising speed."

"Coming about," the Magog priest agreed, carefully and swiftly executing the manoeuvre.

"Trance, how're we doing back there?" the blonde man hollered. Since the intercom system had finally given up the ghost last year, they were reduced to either using radio headsets or simply shouting at the tops of their lungs.

In the depths of the Arrow's engine room, Trance Gemini relaxed her grip on a pipe with her tail and tumbled to the deck below, landing neatly in a roll onto her feet. She groaned as she stowed her nanowelder into her toolbelt as she crossed to one of the consoles. "Go easy on the sub-light engines!" she yelled, positioning her head a little better to take full advantage of the room's echoes. "Keep under two-thirds, the AP tanks are starting to become unstable! I'm gonna try and lock them down as best I can, but it's not going to be easy and I'll need to cut all engines in a few minutes else they'll either shut down or blow up on us!"

"You get that Rev?" Carl asked.

"I certainly did," came a gravelly reply.

"Cut to one third and come about to five-eight-one at forty degrees positive. Lining up a shot…"

Rev sweated, staining his fur and robe as he set their new course. The remaining pair of fighters seemed to be learning from their pack mates' demise, and were spreading out their formation so as to avoid the enfilation techniques that the Arrow was reputed and famed in spacer circles for executing so perfectly.

"Come on…right this way lads…that's it…"

"New contact!" Rev shouted. "Closing fast from behind the Kalderans… they're firing! Missile contacts from the Kalderan fighters!"

"Firing!" he snarled, loosing shots from the AP guns and manually scattering point-defence-laser fire into an impregnable grid to block the incoming missiles in a manner that was as instinctive as it was methodical in its undertaking. The warheads were destroyed before their homing computers had even fully locked in on the Arrow's position.

"The new contact…sensors say it's a Gargoyle-class Nietzschean fighter!" Rev was surprised indeed. Nietzscheans and Kalderans working together? Well, they were returning to Than-Thre-Kul having salvaged what they could of a wrecked Nietzschean battlewagon in the Witchhead nebula, so perhaps it wasn't an entirely implausible notion.

As he watched, the two Kalderan fighters erupted under the fire from the Arrow

—and from the volley of firepower from the Gargoyle.

What was going on?

"Ah…Carl, we're receiving a transmission from the Gargoyle?" Rev was thoroughly confused now.

"Come to all stop and put 'im on," his captain grinned, clambering from the fire-control seat and clapping him on one furry shoulder.

A pleasantly familiar face swam onto the overhead monitor. "IT'S ABOUT BLOODY TIME!" Carl mock-roared at the handsomely featured, dark-skinned Nietzschean. "What kept you?"

"Enga's Redoubt is somewhat heavily defended," Pyrrhus Anasazi sniffed, seemingly hurt and playing along with the joke. "In all seriousness Captain Forbes, I fear that my route had to be extended far further than I believed it would be. The Drago Kazov were most dogged in my pursuit, and I felt it best if you were not faced with the…inconvenience…of a Nietzschean battlegroup."

A broad grin worked its way across Carl's features. "You must've read my mind, mate. C'mon over—I'm sure we can squeeze that thing in at the top of the cargo hold."

"Why, thank you Captain," Pyrrhus returned the expression, nodding slightly to him as he ended the transmission.

"Nice going, Rev. Take a break, mate, get some sleep if you can. I'll see to Pyrrhus, and then give Trance a hand."


"OW! You know, this is just impossible," Trance moaned as she finally resealed the engine housing. "Face it, we need a proper engineer Carl. We're all amateurs when it comes to this."

"Been—hnf—keeping an eye out for just such an employee," Carl assured her. "They don't exactly drop out of the stars—come on, that's it you li'l so'n'so—unfortunately." He straightened, mopping sweat from his brow as he flipped a tool over his shoulder and neatly into a toolbox on the far side of engineering. "I get your point, though."

"How long?" A dreadlocked head appeared in the hatchway.

"Yonks," came an exhausted reply. "We've been at 'em for six hours now, and believe you me we'll need a couple of days solid if we're to get the Arrow up to full speed again."

The Nietzschean mercenary nodded solemnly at the news. "If the slipstream drive is still operational, I recommend we relocate to a less conspicuous system for the duration of the repairs."

"Yeah, I reckon you're right on the money there," Carl grinned tiredly as he wiped his hands on a rag. "The Gravian system's quite close."

"What about Hephaestus?" Trance asked. "I mean, since that Nova bomb went off during the Fall of the Commonwealth, no one's ever been there. I heard that not even the Kalderans are likely to go there. People keep talking about the system being haunted or cursed or something."

The human and Nietzschean exchanged glances. "Good point," Carl finally broke the silence. "Know anyone who uses that place?"

"One," Pyrrhus allowed.

"Seriously?"

The Nietzschean broke out into a broad grin. "Me. And I've never had any problems there. Indeed, it usually makes for a fine solution to some of my problems."

"Like losing pursuit," Carl twitched a golden eyebrow. "Let's get going."


Time resumed as if it had never before stopped.

Beka Valentine was shocked. Just a few moments ago, she had been fighting a battle to the death with her best friend. A traitor to the Commonwealth.

And she had won.

Andromeda's hologram flickered back on, her form full of static. "Captain Valentine! Beka, are you all right?"

Beka rose from Rhade's body, drained. "I'll live," she told Andromeda. "I've…I need to get Harper to Medical. If you have an android operational, could you get it up here please, give me a hand?"

"Captain Valentine, something's wrong." That swiftly caught Beka's attention. "We're moving away from the singularity, but the Nietzschean fleet, our escape pods, they're all gone. The system's planets, the asteroid belt…I can detect only debris."

"That's impossible," Beka replied immediately.

"We may have experienced more severe time dilations as we approached the event horizon of the black hole."

"How severe?" Beka demanded.

Andromeda's hologram shimmered slightly as she looked to be deep in thought. Suddenly, a shocked look appeared on her face. She hesitated.

Beka was too impatient to wait, her patience snapped. "Spit it out!"

Andromeda replied, somewhat reluctant to cause her Captain pain but unable to refuse orders, "According to my calculations, we have been frozen in time for over three hundred years."

"Three hundred years?" Shock descended over the Captain. "Oh my God," she whispered. "My family? The-the rest of the crew?"

"I'm sorry, Beka. Everyone we know—our entire world—is gone," Andromeda said softly.


A most unusual sight greeted the crew of the Quicksilver Arrow as they dropped out of slipstream.

As Pyrrhus had described them, there was a star with nothing but rocky rubble encircling it, the remains of the planets of the Hephaestus system. At the opening of the Nietzschean revolt, two High Guard ships had been lured to this system. Lured to die.

According to all legends, the Andromeda's captain had ordered her crew to abandon ship whilst she and the Andromeda led off the Nietzscheans to buy the survivors as much time as possible. Many theories existed as to the Andromeda's final fate; some believed the Nietzscheans had blown her out of the stars whilst others believed that she had been devoured by the black hole. Others claimed that the silver ship was lost, wandering uncharted routes of the slipstream. Indeed, a great many treasure hunters had scoured out many new routes, all in aid of searching for the near-mythical vessel.

The fate of the Balance of Judgement was far more definite.

The Balance had fought to the last, tearing into the Nietzschean fleet and laying waste to all the ships he could. To this very day, Nietzschean legends of Hephaestus spoke of the Balance as a 'warrior archangel of death'.

But even angels can die.

Most of the Nietzschean fleet had left the system when the Balance's end came. Eight hundred ships had been detailed to eliminate him whilst the others left to go about their own attacks into Commonwealth territory. Of these, a quarter had been destroyed when the fatal blow was struck.

A few High Guard slipfighters and high-speed Nietzschean attack craft had escaped the ensuing explosion with recordings of the disastrous event. A stray Nietzschean armour-piercing warhead had penetrated the Balance's hull more cleanly than expected, and had detonated within him. Deep within the Nova bomb weapons lockers.

The explosion had destroyed the Judgement, nearly all of the surviving Nietzschean ships and every planet in the system. The sun had been diminished in size, although not destroyed outright.

And thus it now was that the salvage crew looked upon a sight that no one had seen in almost three hundred years.

"Get me a thorough sensor sweep on her, Pyrrhus," Carl hoarsely ordered from the pilot's chair.

"Believe what your eyes see." Pyrrhus too seemed almost overwhelmed. "Sensor contacts confirm that it is indeed a High Guard Glorious Heritage-class heavy cruiser of pre-Fall vintage. She's taken a great deal of damage…I'm reading life signs, but I can't tell how many. I'm fairly sure that they are few in number, though."

"How…" he shook his head in disbelief, "how did this happen? Have you ever seen anything to indicate this before?"

The mercenary slowly shrugged. "I don't believe so. At a guess, I'd say she was caught in the gravity well of the black hole. The gravitic effects must have interacted with those of her AG field…effectively freezing time within the hull whilst the ship just cleared the singularity by herself, her orbits steadily increasing over the centuries."

"What do we do, Carl?" Trance asked.

He grinned. "Pyrrhus…do their hangar bays still work?"

"I believe so. Why?"

He gestured toward the Andromeda. "Mutual help. If there are survivors and they're even half as good and pure and noble and so on as the legends make the High Guard out to have been, they could probably use our help, and we could always use theirs. I mean, c'mon, we were going to have to go external for some of our repairs anyway. It's just if we could land in one of their hangars, we wouldn't have to worry about problems with EVA suits or anything."

Pyrrhus leaned forward. "Are you sure that's entirely wise? According to the sensors, she is the Andromeda Ascendant—the last thing those survivors will remember will be Nietzscheans—my people—attacking them. They may not be entirely hospitable."

"Well look at the alternatives. We can either leave and risk getting attacked by Kalderans again whilst still damaged, or we can stay here outside and do things the hard way and maybe attract some awkward questions from them."

"Well, if it comes to a vote you've got mine," Trance smiled, leaning back a little in the seat behind the fire-control station. She stifled a yawn as she peeled out of her overalls, revealing rather more casual attire beneath.

Pyrrhus sighed, knowing he wasn't going to convince them otherwise. "I'll go and wake up the Reverend."


"Three hundred years. I wonder if anyone even remembers what we were fighting for," Beka said absently, still coming to terms with the situation. She followed a pair of androids as they sped a stretcher through the corridors leading to Medical. Harper's injury had been bound, and the young officer was mercifully unconscious.

"They died for what they believed in," Andromeda said, trying to comfort her Captain.

"That's the same speech I always give," Beka said with a bitterness that had never been present before. "Except there's no one to give the speech to now, is there? Their children, Rhade's wives…they've all been dead for at least two hundred years by now."

"We'll find someone. Their descendants. The Commonwealth will know where to find them."

"The Commonwealth," Beka realised. "We need to make contact, let them know we're still alive."

"I'm not picking up any local signals," Andromeda began. "We'll have to…" She paused. "Beka? We have intruders on board!" Indignantly, she added, "They're trying to rewire me!"

At the possibility of some action, Beka seemed to snap out of her depression. "Do they have full control?" she demanded.

Andromeda assessed the situation; "No, but they do have control over the doors."

"Put them through to my wrist monitor," she growled, drawing her force lance.


"Nice one Trance," Carl nodded appreciatively as the hangar bay's inner doors opened, adjusting the bulging pack on his back.

"Magnificent…" Rev breathed, awestruck, as they stepped into the corridor beyond.

"All of you watch out for unexploded munitions, anti-personnel nanobots, automated attack drones, radiation leaks, blown pressure seals, and especially shrapnel," Pyrrhus sternly warned them. "Believe me, apparently 'inert' wreckage is far more dangerous than most people think."

"Good point. We'd best split up. Keep in touch. As soon as you find anyone, let the rest of us know about it. And see if you can find anything that might tell us if Andromeda herself is still alive."


"A human, a Magog, a Nietzschean and some pointy-eared purple girl with a tail." Beka shook her head in disbelief. "That sounds so much like a pathetic bar joke. I mean, a Magog? They have to be insane."

She stared at the four images on the little holoscreen. The quartet had spread out, and were now scattered all over the place.

The human, a handsome, classically-featured blonde man somewhere in his early-thirties, was unknowingly headed in the direction of one of the weapons lockers. He wore a pale grey shirt with short sleeves and drab-blue trousers that both adhered tightly to his slender frame, a pair of sandy-yellow flat-soled boots on his feet. He would have looked completely harmless if it weren't for the pair of gauss pistols in cross-draw holsters strapped to his thighs. He moved with caution and an unusual level of stealth, but the weapons remained in the holsters the whole time. A pack was strapped to his back, bulging with anyone's guess what.

The Magog looked like no other that Beka had ever seen before. His fur was clean and combed, his claws meticulous and neat. He wore an orange robe and an unusual medallion of some sort around his neck, but was unarmed.

He moved with a quiet dignity, looking about himself in almost wonder and a deep curiosity that was humbling to behold. He would occasionally run a hand gently across a wall, as though still unable to believe where he was.

The purple girl had entered the Hydroponics bay, and Beka had snorted with a faint stab of mirth at her stunned reaction of 'Pretty.' Andromeda had confirmed that she had no idea as to what her species was, and had informed her captain that scans had revealed almost nothing about their violet guest. They knew her pulse, respiration, electrical activity, body temperature and that she had a tail, but nothing else. She wandered amongst the plants, an almost child-like innocence projected from her.

The Nietzschean, however, caused both Beka and Andromeda a considerable shock.

"Th-that's Tyr Anasazi!" Beka stared at the image in disbelief.

"Or rather, a descendant of his," Andromeda corrected. "My scans indicate that it is most likely that he is of the Kodiak Pride, and Captain Anasazi's genetic reincarnation. It's rare, but hardly unheard of. Commander Rhade was genetically identical to an old Captain of mine from almost three centuries ago, Gaheris Rhade."

Beka grinned at her. "Wouldn't that make this guy sort of your nephew? After all, your sister was his first wife."

Andromeda smiled, her hologram's head tilted to one side as they watched the Nietzschean stealthily making his way down a corridor that would lead him to herself and Harper in Medical, gauss rifle at the ready. "It's complicated how these things work out, but in a very obscure way, we could be considered to be distant relations. Although I wouldn't exactly say he was my nephew. We'd be more like very distant cousins."

"Let's go welcome our guests, hmm?" Beka grinned.


Carl Forbes was far from taken off-guard when the High Guard officer plummeted from a nearby ladder shaft. His senses, intensely and meticulously honed from his youth, had alerted him to the sounds of her movements and her scent fully five minutes in advance.

Thus it was that he found himself staring down the muzzle of a force lance, and she the barrels of his gauss pistols.

"Who are you and what are you doing on my ship?"

Fighting every instinct so very deeply ingrained into his mind and body, he put up the pistols and slowly holstered them. "Carl Forbes. Captain of the salvage vessel the Quicksilver Arrow."

She nodded, jaw grimly set. "So you're here to, what, loot the Andromeda?"

He actually grinned at this. "Hardly. Everyone believed the Andromeda to be as dead as this system, destroyed with the old Commonwealth."

The officer ground her teeth, staring in a blind, naked fury into his eyes. "You're lying. The Commonwealth could never—"

"Unfortunately, it did." His return was cold and harsh, her boiling fury matched with icy calm. "The Nietzscheans destroyed it, then their Empire collapsed when Pride infighting overtook their dreams. Several inter-Pride wars led to ruin and devastation for thousands of systems—"

He was cut off as the corridor filled with weapons fire. Instinctively he dove to one side, kicking out the High Guard officer's legs out from under her. She toppled to the ground even as a volley of energy blasts tore through the space her skull had occupied a mere second earlier.

"Condition Red!" The call thundered in the confines of the corridor, echoing easily above the sounds of her internal defences as Andromeda's hologram materialised, flickering, shifting in appearance. "We have Condition Red! Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!"

Even as they watched, clambering to their feet once more and dodging weapons blasts, the hologram stabilised. Her attire and demeanour were distinctly different.

She glared at them as fire from her internal defences chased them the length of the corridor, eyes cold and merciless.


Seamus Harper winced as bright lights stabbed into his eyes, instinctively reaching up to shield them with a hand. He sighed as he felt the cast holding his right shoulder rigid, stretching over with his left hand to swipe at his eyes.

"An-Andromeda?" he rasped, throat dry.

"Intruder Alert! Any authorised personnel, report to Command. Intruders have taken over the ship and all known crewmembers are missing. If I do not receive a direct countermand in two minutes, I will begin emergency venting."

"Oh, great," he groaned, pulling himself upright. He attempted to stand, pushing himself from the bed. He landed in a crumpled heap on the floor, swearing up a storm as pain coursed through his injured shoulder.

"Oh, Rommie, Rommie, Rommie, what are you up to this time?" he muttered to himself, half-stumbling, half-crawling to a console.


Trance's eyes widened as the doors to the hydroponics garden opened to admit a pair of androids carrying extended High Guard force lances.

"You." A hologram she recognised from the Arrow's historical files as Andromeda materialised between the androids. "Accompany these androids. Attempt to run and you will be eliminated. Attempt to resist and you will be eliminated. Understood?"

She nodded hastily, raising her hands as they advanced and the hologram winked out.


Anyone want to see this continued? Click that little purple button and let me know. Reviews don't have to be long – although they're great to get…