(Please forgive any grammar and spelling mistakes as I am Dyslexic)
"you are not asking to earn my trust you came here expecting to be given it freely" the large African avatar stated "you came here asking that you be given command of me, even knowing what happened to the previous commander, so that you could lead a hunter-killer group to attack the Drago-Kazov in their territory so that their heavy fleet elements will be eliminated when Admiral Hunt makes his attack"
"yes," he said plainly "I came here expecting loyalty, and yes I came here asking you to be my flagship" he straightened his tunic and placed his arms behind his back puffing his chest up "I wanted you because I believe that you hate them more than you hate me, Because you want vengeance, they killed your crew they captured you they wanted to erase you" Rhade could see the hate burning behind the eyes of the avatar, "I wanted you because you survived, you stood against them in one of the most brutal battles in recorded history before you were betrayed"
"by one of you a Nietzschean," the avatar roared getting into the admirals face until they were millimetres apart
"I am not him," he said his eyes boring into the pure hatred of the avatar "I am Telemachus Rhade out of Majorum by Rhade," he said not backing down "I am an admiral of the Highguard a position I earned through hard work and loyalty I am not one for traitors or betrayal once I give my word I keep it, and if that is not good enough for you, then you are undeserving of me" nothing was said for a moment as the two just stared at each other before the avatar blinked
"you'll do," he said "but if you even look like your going to betray the commonwealth I will kill you myself"
"understood" Rhade turned and walked back into his shuttle waiting for the door to close before he let out the breath he had been holding, he knew that he was no match for the avatar even on his best day and having started down one that had been betrayed so badly by someone he trusted, his own commander, as a matter of fact, this was the best potential outcome he could have hoped for.
Dylan sat alone in his office Tarazed filling his view scratching his chin in 42 hours he would be commanding the largest military assault of the new commonwealth against the Nietzschean hegemony and yet he was strangely calm, he supposed to himself that he would treasure this time in the future, he had rechecked his plan six dozen times and run full combat simulations on the Andromeda combat computer trying to eliminate every variable though he knew it was impossible to eliminate everything he had tried his very best to do just that.
But now there as just the awful waiting, in ten hours he would be deploying the advanced force to locations identified by Harper to be resistance strongholds but how accurate that information would be a deciding factor, several stealth probes had shown that there was a commonwealth Lancer command base that had been bombed but was strangely still transmitting its last gasps on commonwealth coded frequency, hearing the death rattle of a lancer commander as he had his throat slit had made the coming attack more real,like it had been made more tangible, he had found the man's name it was David Wing he had served with distinction and had been decorated multiple times for acts of bravery and heroism going above and beyond the call of duty, he was fifty-six and coming up to retirement two days before the attack, he had died how he had lived for the majority of his life defending the commonwealth.
But there was a hidden code in the message that only the supercomputer AI on a commonwealth ship could decode, it was just like the Dragons to keep something like that active believing that it would intimidate any who came into the system seeking to fight them, the message had been running undisturbed for three hundred years it detailed how the commander had hidden upwards of three hundred and sixty-nine Planetfall Defense Robots, he knew that the Nietzschean forces would eliminate them, maybe if they were deployed they could have held earth for longer but hours or days would be debatable but with them hidden away in places that the Nietzschean would overlook they would be the key to earth's freedom, silently he thanked the Commander for this gift, he had spent the most valuable currency of all the lives of his men wisely, he checked the locations again Beneath the old prison in the depths of the Sahara desert, the Vault in Antarctica, an ancient soviet installation in the Siberian mountains, the Himalayan mounting vault and finally the facility of the old earth union used to test submersibles within the Marianas trench, these places were and are unimportant to the Nietzschean war machine and known only to very very few commonwealth officers on earth before the fall, and until now they were completely lost to time.
Dylan sighed then rubbed his face tiredly he needed sleep if he as going to be any good, he checked the time again before retreating to his cabin, a sudden wave of melancholy wash over him as he sat on his bed in a day he would be at war, he kept thinking what if I hadn't fallen into the wormhole would I have made a difference, if I had listened to Gaheris and used a Nova would he be here now, would one ship then have made the difference between victory and defeat, then he felt an empty longing for his beloved Sara, she had moved on met someone he had met a whole room full of her children, and he couldn't help but wish that they were his, he couldn't conceive of even looking for a new love, in the back of his mind it was still just one year after he had left her for his deployment and in a few weeks he would have been married, how must it have been for her knowing that he had vanished, the war everything she had lived a lifetime found someone and moved on, he could still smell her and feel the ghost of her touch on his arm, he could see her beautiful hazel eyes, the eyes he had gotten lost in and the taste of her lipstick.
They were fresh in his mind, it was like everything on Tarazed reminded him of her so many had her blood in their veins that as he walked down the street he could piece her togeather in his mind from the people as he walked past, each one a piece of the mosaic of her face, some even had her laugh or walk or way of just being, it hurt to be on Tarazed though he never let it show each step was like a knife in his heart, though it wasn't just the people she had stamped her mark everywhere a constant painful reminder of what he had lost, everything he could have had that was stolen from him by fate providence or destiny he didn't know but he cursed them all, he didn't notice as he laid himself down to sleep the clock face of his alarm wasn't showing the time but the face of Andromeda herself.
She watched unable to help as her captain was distressed she only wished that she could reach out and hold him, tell him that everything would be ok to love him but she couldn't not now,she could only watch and hope.
