"I guess..." Rommie managed. "I am in the presence of the Ghost of Valentine's Day Yet to Come?"
The ghost answered not, merely raised an armored hand and pointed.
"You are about to show me shadows of things that have not happened," Rommie went on, "but will happen in the time before us. Is that so?"
The armored figure nodded once.
"I...I fear you, Spirit, more than any specter I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, I am prepared to bear your company. Will you not speak to me?"
No response at all this time - it simply continued to point the way.
Rommie nodded. "Lead on," she said. "The night is waning fast, and time is precious to me."
The silent giant started down the passageway. Rommie followed, and the world shifted around them. They found themselves in the *Andromeda's* obs deck, another Valentine's Day party in full swing. She saw Dylan, Beka, and Trance mingling with a large number of humans in black uniforms. Dylan and Beka turned as another uniformed man, balding with dark hair, raced into the room, out of breath.
"Ah, Mr. Kemp," Dylan said; he didn't sound happy. "I see you like engineering so much you couldn't tear yourself away."
"Dedication is required in a chief engineer," Beka said sternly. "But punctuality, too."
"I'm sorry, Captains," Kemp panted. "Won't happen again."
Dylan smiled and clapped the man on the shoulder; Beka also broke into a grin.
"Relax," Dylan said. "It's a party. Enjoy yourself. That's an order."
Kemp smiled and nodded, a bit grateful, and made for the beverage table. At which time certain bits of the exchange came together in Rommie's mind.
"Chief Engineer..." Rommie said, backing out of the room. "But...where's Harper?" She looked up at the ghost. "He left-?"
The world blurred around her again, settling on the edge of a huge blast crater. It must have been kilometers wide. From the ruined, burned forest behind her, Rommie guessed she was on a Tarn Vedra class world, but had no idea which one.
A man came up to the edge of the crater and stood next to her, looking over it. He was tall, muscular, more so than an average human, and dark-skinned with penetrating brown eyes. Although bald, he had a goatee. But Rommie recognized him at once.
"Tyr!?" Rommie said. "But where-?"
"Tyr!" a voice crackled from a communicator woven into his flack jacket. It wasn't Dylan's. "It's time."
"On my way." Tyr spent a few more moments looking out over the crater, turned, and headed back the way he'd come.
The world blurred again, a surge of motion, stopping this time in a Sinti MagLev station. A train pulled in; when it had stopped and the passengers began to disembark, the ghost pointed to one particular trio of Perseids. Rommie drew closer to them.
"...don't know all the details," one was saying, sounding more curious than anything else, "just that the ship was lost with all hands."
"But the battle was won?" another asked, just as emotionally detached as the first.
"Of course," the first replied. "We'd have been eaten by now, wouldn't we?"
"True."
"I suppose the government will make a tremendous fuss over this," the third said, sounding bored, "honoring a brave sacrifice and all that. Media spectacle, of course. Still, given that we do work for the ministry, I suppose we could form a party?"
"I detest formal attire," the second sniffed, "and I don't much like being photographed. However, I will go if lunch is provided."
"I don't eat lunch," the first one said, "but I believe the idea deserves consideration. Let's stay abreast of events and see what arrangements can be made, shall we?"
The other two nodded in agreement, but Rommie had a hunch they weren't going anywhere.
"Good day, then," the first said. The other two muttered pleasantries, and the three Perseids went their separate ways.
"They were talking about a High Guard ship," Rommie said. "That crater you showed me must have been where it-"
The world blurred around Rommie again, depositing her in what looked like a huge hangar typically found aboard drifts; this was one was littered with flotsam, jetsam, machinery, and bits of charred hull plating, although some patches of silver could still be seen on it. A hatch opened, admitting a man and a woman, both looking middle-aged, their best years behind them.
The man surveyed the hangar and frowned. "This is all you could get, then?" he asked.
"Well, there wasn't a lot of debris left in space, Joe," the woman said. "The bulk of the ship was vaporized on impact, wasn't it? And the High and Mighty Guard was keen to grab the best bits for itself."
"What-You mean-? Captain Dilber, are you telling me you salvaged these parts while the High Guard was securing the area?"
"Well, what were they going to do with them? Not turn a profit, that's for sure. And *she* wouldn't be needing this stuff anymore, either, the Silver Strumpet."
"Hmmm."
Dilber followed Joe as he wandered through the wreckage, making notes on a flexie in his hands. When he'd seen all of it, he stopped, muttered under his breath as he punched more figures into the flexie, and showed it to the salvager. "There you are, Captain. And not a Throne more if I were to be spaced for it!"
"Oooh... you drive a hard bargain, Joe."
"Please. I'm always generous with the ladies; that's how I ruined m'self!"
Rommie turned to the ghost. If she'd had blood, it would have been boiling.
"Let me get this straight," she said. "A High Guard ship and crew is lost defending the Commonwealth, and the only responses are indifference and avarice? There must be someone who cared about that crew, who has some genuine feeling for the ones who were lost. Show me some tenderness, some depth of feeling!"
The world shifted again, bringing Rommie to a dimly lit if well appointed study, its walls lined with shelves containing everything from books to data crystals. A man sat at an expensive looking desk at one end, an almost-empty glass in one hand. Thin faced and slightly built, the man's blonde hair had flecks of gray in it, and lines had cut into the youthful face, but the living embodiment of the *Andromeda Ascendant* still recognized him.
"Harper," Rommie breathed.
"Harper?" a female voice - probably an AI's - said. "I have Professor Logich for you."
"Thanks, Athena. Why don't you go offline for a while?"
"Seamus-"
"Go on."
"All right. Good night, Seamus."
A hologram flashed into existence on the other side of the desk from Harper. Though his hair was now completely white, Rommie recognized the scientist who had once tortured Trance.
"Seamus," Logich said. "What can I do for our star technologist?"
"I wanna talk about that," Harper said, getting up and walking around the desk. "You guys fed me this whole song and dance about how you needed me. But how much work have I done since I got here? NONE! Geez, I don't think I been in a machine shop in so long, I don't remember what it was like. You got me givin' speeches, attending conferences, and what do I get out of it!?"
"Apart from venues for practicing correct grammar?"
"Was that a joke? Sorry, I left my funny bone at the last embassy ball. Now what's the story?"
"You're a bright boy, Seamus. Can't you figure it out?"
Rommie already had; she hoped she was wrong.
"You told me you needed people like me," Harper said.
"Yes," Logich replied. "But it's difficult to attract such talent when you're chiefly known for selling fertilizer to Pyrian drug addicts. However, with the former chief engineer of the *Andromeda Ascendant* on the board, we look more respectable in the eyes of the kind of people we want to attract."
"Wait a-what the-You tellin' me all these years I been some kinda storefront andro-mannequin!?"
"Did you really need me to tell you that?"
"I was never gonna do any work for ya, was I? *Real* work I mean."
Logich smiled slightly. "Seamus, you are a brilliant technician, and I have the deepest respect for your accomplishments during your time aboard the *Andromeda.* But forgetting your lack of discipline and ... disregard for established procedures, the fact is the cutting edge has advanced so far in recent years that any ideas you may have had were old hat months ago." Logich smiled broadly. "But don't despair! You have it made. The years of struggle and sacrifice are over; you're set for life as long as you don't upset the cally melon cart. Am I clear?"
"Crystal."
"Fine. Be seeing you." Logich vanished. Harper walked around to the other side of his desk and sank into his chair.
"Harper..." Rommie said. "I am so sorr-" She broke off as Harper removed a small pistol from his desk drawer. "Wait ... what are you-"
Harper brought the gun to his head.
"NO!" Rommie shouted. "Harper - SEAMUS - You still have years ahead of you-You don't need Inaris-!"
Harper squeezed the trigger.
There was a sound of thunder.
"HARPER-!"
Rommie found herself and the ghost in a cemetery. A man and a woman walked over to a small, nondescript gravestone near her. The man wore a High Guard uniform; Rommie recognized him as Ryan, the *Wrath of Achilles'* AI. The woman in the simple black outfit must have been the AI Harper had addressed earlier.
"Of all the users I have had, none was kinder," the woman said. "Even his inappropriate behavior made it feel as if he and I were the same species."
"He was unique, Athena," Ryan said. "Unlike any I met before or since."
Athena stepped back a few paces. Ryan snapped to attention and saluted. He held it for exactly five seconds, then both androids turned and left as a gentle rain began to fall.
Rommie walked over to the simple grave. It was devoid of the decorations and plants seen around the others.
"Don't any organics come to visit you?" she asked.
Silence.
Rommie closed her eyes, barely holding in the emotions storming inside her. "And you're saying this is my fault?" she asked the spirit.
Silence again.
"Of course it is." Rommie opened her eyes. "Specter, something informs me that our parting moment is at hand. I need to know, which High Guard ship was lost on that planet?"
The world blurred again, leaving Rommie and the ghost in the center of the crater they'd seen earlier, storm clouds boiling in the sky as the ghost pointed to a point at their feet.
"All right, I'll look," Rommie said, "but I need to know something first: Are these the shadows of things that Will be, or the shadows of things that May be, only?"
The ghost didn't answer.
"I've seen empirical evidence that timelines can be changed," Rommie said. "Our courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me."
Unanswering, unmoving, the ghost continued to point.
"All right; have it your way." Rommie looked down. The small plaque in the ground was maybe thirty centimeters on each side, dented, scratched, and weathered. But she could read:
IMPACT SITE OF THE ANDROMEDA ASCENDANT
She couldn't make out the date.
"No!" Rommie's head snapped back to the ghost. "It can't come to this."
The spirit only stared back, silent, unmoved.
"I am not the person I was," Rommie went on. "I will not be the person I must have been but for you and your brethren. Why show me this if I am past all hope?" She grabbed at the chain holding its cloak around the ghost's neck. "Assure me that I may yet change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life. Dammit, tell me!"
The ghost suddenly twisted, folded, and collapsed, and Rommie found herself gripping the railing on the flight control station in the *Andromeda's* command deck.