Are we not plunging continually? 
             Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions?
         Is there still any up or down?
      Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing?
    Do we not feel the breath of empty space? 
  Has it not become colder?
Is night not continually closing in on us? 
                           - Friedrich Nietzsche



 




The Reverend was plagued by a vision. One of black smoke tearing through city streets as a
fire reached inwards, peeling back the planet's crust. A war was being waged on it's surface
as it's inhabitants had no place of solace left to run. The world was turning to ash. 














Watching the oil circle the drain at her feet, Beka counted up her time on the Andromeda in
hot showers, warm covers, cold drinks, and meals that came in every temperature you could imagine. 
She was pretty sure she'd get sick if she ever went back to eating dry, tasteless, rations again. 
Sure, the past few years haven't been what you'd call 'great' but at least she didn't have to run 
from every form of law enforcement in the known galaxy. That was a bonus. She wondered how 
long this was going to last; how far she could run the test of time before life came crashing
back down on her.
A quick pull of her shower curtain made her point when all her brooding was washed away by the sight of
Rommie staring back at her. "Good, you're awake." She noted in a voice so natural, Beka didn't 
know whether to question it or yell so, inevitably, she did both. "What do you think you're doing!?"
Quickly sliding the curtain back in a panic, she found herself staring at the outline on the other 
side. "Get out of here!!" 
Sliding the curtain open again, Rommie stuck her head inside the shower, blinking against the
spray of water hitting her face, "We're having a meeting in twenty minutes. I was sent to come
get you." Yanking the curtain away from her clutches, Beka made sure to hold it closed this time. 
"Well, can it wait!?"
"Not really." Chirped a voice on the other side, this time it was Trance sticking her head in
at the far end of the shower, just out of reach. "It's a matter of..." She paused for a moment 
to take a once-over, suddenly looking at her like she was some kind of cute animal, "Aw, Harper 
was right, you really do have a baby butt." Okay, now this was getting surreal. 
Clinging further to the wall she was using to keep her end of the curtain shut, Beka rolled her
eyes, "It's a matter of...?" 
"Importance." Tyr replied, a large blur behind the curtain. 
"All of you, get out of here now!!" She screamed, wrapping white knuckles around a brush and 
trying to beat back the encroaching hoard. 
"Now this is what I call a meeting!!" Jeered Harper, sticking his head in with a smile that
could curdle milk. "Forget what I had planned, let's all-" 
Brandishing her newfound weapon, Beka could only imagine what it would sound like cracking 
that little egghead of his open. 
"Finish that sentence and I will knock all of your teeth out of your mouth. One. By. One."
"-head down to the boardroom and get this totally professional meeting done with!" He laughed,
nervously, snaking back until he hit a six foot pillar of professionalism incarnate. 
"When I asked you to retrieve Beka," Dylan sighed, "I didn't mean all of you." 
"Well, you didn't mean not all of us, either!" Harper shouted, arms raised in defiance. 












Glancing around the fairly empty conference room, Dylan found himself miserably aware of just how
much more difficult things were going to be now that his crew could, once again, be 
counted off on one hand. On the other hand, if it wasn't for this short spattering of faces, he 
probably wouldn't be able to have a meeting like this in the first place.
"None of what I'm about to say leaves this room." Instinctively, his eyes wandered over to the empty 
seat where Tyr would've once resided. "I've recently received intel of a package that may be under the
threat of not quite reaching it's destination." 
"So we're playing delivery man?" Beka complained, letting the arm she had been using to prop up 
her head drop to the table, leaving herself hunching over it, lazily, "Like all the red tape and bureaucracy 
wasn't enough, now we have to shuffle around their mail too?" 
"Talk about going postal." Harper sneered with a self satisfied smile. 
"I think you'd all want to know what the package is before rushing to any conclusion." Dylan taunted them
in a mix between an ominous warning and a playful jab. 
"I feel like you're underestimating how not-invested I am." Harper inclined just as the viewscreen to the 
side lit up. In the blink of an eye, his demeanor changed. "Wait, that's-"
"The Golden Record." Dylan had to fight against the obviously smug look that pulled at the corners of his 
mouth.
"The what?" Beka blinked at the image of what was, essentially, a very old iteration of a data disk. 
"The Golden Record..." Pause for effect. "...Was a series of images and recordings from an ancient era of
Earth; put together to send into space in an attempt to stretch out our hand in greeting to other forms of
civilization among the stars." 
"Yeah and look where it got us." Harper cut in with a sharpened tongue, despite his tone still deadlocked into 
it's usual joking demeanor. "Hey! Welcome to the great planet of Terra! Please come rape and pillage everything 
in sight!" 
Ignoring his outburst, Dylan went on, "This record was what led to Earth's eventual first contact." 
"Why do I have the feeling like this is where things get complicated?" Beka grimaced. 
"Oh, like they weren't before?" Harper inclined. 

Now was Rommie's time to set the record straight. "The intel we received is that the record is in danger 
of being stolen before it reaches it's proper destination." The hands behind her back slackened a bit, drooping her
shoulders and relaxing her posture. "In the past." 
Blinking in disbelief, Beka's mouth held itself agape for far too long. "In the past?" She repeated, "How are 
we supposed to manage that?" 
"We've done it before." Trance pointed out. 
"Not on purpose!" Beka brought up before staring across the table at Trance, eyes narrowing with suspicion. "Unless..."
"The Commonwealth will provide us with the necessary tools. Not only the means but also with the added accuracy 
in which we will arrive." Rommie interrupted, refusing to allow the conversation to go any further off topic than it already had. 
There was something about this that didn't seem to settle with Beka. To phrase it as an earlier report of hers 
once put it, she tends to 'get the heebie jeebies when screwing around with time and space'. It had always felt like
she had both missed something and lived through it at the same time, constantly wading through feelings of deja-vu
that she still hasn't been able to shake. 
Dylan wondered about what that must be like. To fall through dimensions so consciously. To exist in multiple places 
at once. It was a thought best left to men of theory, not of action. 
"I can't emphasize how important this mission is. The Record's place in our history is just a single thread which led to 
the present day and age we live in now." 
"Which led to humanity becoming universal dog chow." Harper argued.
"Which led to the human race to existing beyond our parameters." Dylan argued back. 
"Which led to Nietzscheans." 
"Which led to that man sitting out in our lobby." 
He knew he had struck a chord with Harper. If it was anyone else, he knew they would've come to blows by now, but, 
due to the Engineer's...disposition, he was, instead, staring into the face of someone who was imagining things far worse 
without any of the intent to back it up. They were in a staring match, now. One Dylan easily won when Harper rolled 
his eyes with a resigned scowl. 

"Meeting adjourned."








Pouring out of the conference room, everybody drifted back into the usual hustle and bustle of their morning routines.
All except...
"Tyr." He summoned, watching as Harper was waving off the guard on standby, bitterly. 
Stirring, Tyr's slackened posture implied he had been resting just enough to relax but not enough to actually get any 
sleep done. Dylan was reminded of the old days, back when he got into brushes with other cadets and found himself at
the end of a lecture. None of which he retained around five or six minutes after hearing them. "If you don't mind, I'd 
like to have a discussion with you." 
If Tyr was someone with any other disposition, he'd probably say something along the lines of 'Do I have a choice?' But
Tyr was Tyr and he, instead, gave him a passive look, vacant of any witty comebacks but boiling over in terms of something
Dylan couldn't quite read. 
Pushing himself out of his seat, he quietly slipped into the conference room without a word. 







"This isn't going to be an easy thing for me to admit but..." Dylan couldn't look him in the eye. 
There was a wall between them now and no matter how hard he tried to break down that wall, he could never quite 
make a dent in it. More or less, earn himself a glimpse of the other side. "...I need you for this mission." 
A scoff on Tyr's part nearly made him turn his decision around, entirely.  
Placing his hands down on the table, nimbly, despite the tension raking through his fingers, Dylan leaned inwards. 
"You'll be working with me. Not at your leisure, not as my equal, but under my supervision." 
Pulling in to meet him halfway, Tyr's face fixed itself into a stare that conveyed nothing but conviction on his end. 
"No." 
Here, they both knew that if they got into a staring match, it would last until the sands of time finally gave way 
and reduced them both to ash. So, instead, they broke off, equally; agreeing to disagree. 
Dylan had never needed to convince someone to accept parole over continued imprisonment, before. 
"This isn't a matter of cooperation, or trust, for that matter. You're simply vital to ensuring that we achieve 
our goal." He relaxed back into his chair; back straight, posture perfect, while Tyr maintained his position. 
"Besides, we work well together." He then sat there, quietly awaiting the over-abundant speech he came to expect 
out of conversations like this. Nothing came of it. 
Whatever words Tyr had to say on his behalf never left his lips, leaving it encased, still, in thought. Thoughts 
that were very much being projected across the table through sheer willpower, alone. 

"Meeting adjourned."






As Tyr left, he traded places with Rommie, who was just in the middle of having her ears talked off her head 
by one particularly aggravated engineer. 
"I'm assuming that meeting went about as well as the last one." She observed the moment the door behind her
whisked to a close. 
Finally unclenching his jaw, Dylan's posture collapsed as he took in a deep breath of air. 
Taking this as confirmation, Rommie continued, "Would you like to hear the statistics of this mission's 
chance at being successful?" 
"No. I don't." Dylan exhaled, feeling the lining of his stomach getting eaten away by something he couldn't
quite place. Something between the high stress of the relationships of the high stress work environment 
in his high stress life. 
"You're starting to look frazzled." 
'Frazzled'? Since when did the word 'frazzled' enter her vocabulary? 
"I'll be fine." He smiled, "Just a quick shower and shave and I'll be good as new." 
"I meant up top." She motioned with her head to his hair that he'd been neglecting to keep cut for a good while, now.
"I'll make sure to take care of that first." 
"Oh, really? I thought it looked nice." She spoke with a demeanor that sounded like it should be served up with 
a warm cup of coffee. "Reminds me of the old you."
The old you.
He grimaced. 













"The planet that received our record had been in the middle of a civil war, passing it's fortieth year..." 
With a few taps on his datapad, Dylan brought up an old visual depicting what the planet was estimated to have
looked like at the time. "It had initially been here for almost a century before being discovered. 
The vessel it was located in had been mistaken for a comet, crashing far off the edge of civilization at the time. 
It was left uninspected for years. Due to the natural overgrowth and weather 
patterns, it had become buried under the planet's surface until the ensuing war unearthed it years later. It was 
said that this discovery, alone, was enough to end their forty year war as both sides were awakened to this 
realization that they, too, were not alone in the universe."  
"So, what, all they needed was a little dose of existentialism?" Harper griped, already starting to poke holes
in the story. It was clear he saw it less as a loose history lesson and more of a fairy tale.   
"More like a reality check." Dylan corrected. 
"I'm not really buying it."
"Well, whatever you believe, they shortly settled their differences and formed a new society. One who made it their
first mission to connect with other planets, creating their own version of the record. Only problem here is that, 
Earth never received their answer. Instead, their record arrived on a completely different planet who, in turn, also
created their own iteration of the record and so on and so fourth..." He rotated his wrist on it's cuff to signal that he
was starting to wrap things up. "Until, finally, Earth did receive communication from a civilization that had caught 
the eye of this little pet project."
"And it only took 'em, what? Like a thousand years?" Harper joked only for Beka to give him a light shove. 
"Actually that'd be correct." Dylan pointed out, "Seven hundred fifty is a closer approximation to just how long it
took before they received a response back."
"Sounds like-" Harper started but quickly changed course once he noticed Beka's arm poised for another shove. 
"...Anyway..." Clearing his throat, he switched gears, "I managed to get everything up and running. Just say the 
word and it's bye-bye gloom and doom Post Commonwealth and hello gloom and doom Pre Commonwealth!" 
"Already?" Beka asked. Not that she didn't have faith in the little guy, she had just never seen him work faster
than his two usual settings of 'I'll get right on it' meaning 'now' and 'I'll get around to it' meaning 'never'.
"Oh yeah, it was easy once I got all the parts I needed." He then paused, "By the way, you...might not wanna take
the Maru out for a spin for a little while." 
"What!?"
"C'mon, sit down, I'll explain how it works." Harper hopped off his seat and onto his soap box, pulling out three
separate blueprints that seemed to overlap each other. "Turns out our good ol' Tyrannical Commonwealth has some 
pretty useful tech under it's sleeve." He began, still obviously sour over being dragged through the worst example of
a citizen's rights violation since...well, last month. "Turns out they've decided to grace
me with one of their old prototypes built exclusively for..." He bent down, lifting something heavy from the ground and 
plopped it on the table for everyone to see. "Fourth dimensional travel!" 
One of the table's legs suddenly gave way under the weight, sending his mockingly beloved prototype sliding to the floor. 
"It doesn't work." Unbothered, he continued, "But, utilizing it's design schematics, I burned right through the midnight 
oil and, thanks to my creative muses; caffeine, old reconfiguration manuals, and one lovely android assistant; I managed 
to create one that does." 
He then pulled what looked like a very small brick out of his jacket and placed it firmly in Beka's hands.
"So, when do we get suited up?" He asked, practically bouncing on his toes. 
Taking the bait, Rommie was the first to sink a pin into his already deflated ego. "We?"
"What makes you think you're coming with us?" Dylan asked, pointedly. 
"Well, first of all, I just invented time travel!" 
"You didn't invent time travel. Improved upon it, maybe, but-"
"Okay, how about this-" Harper spoke over him. "This is a matter of Earth. My planet. Mine. Don't you
think I should be at least get to see this through?"
Beka then realized that nobody else here knew what condition the Earth was actually in besides Harper
and herself. Sure, they'd seen pictures and heard stories, but, no one really wanted to seem to actually talk 
about it outside the past. Like some huge horrible thing just happened in a place that didn't really 
exist. A parable. Only, it did exist and it was still out there, spinning along it's axis, sputtering out it's 
final breaths. 
"I think it'd be best if this mission was handled by people less..." Dylan tried to come up with a word that 
wouldn't make him lose more friends than he already had, "...biased."
"Biased!?" Harper arched forward, over his end of the table, only for Rommie to place a hand on his shoulder and 
return him back to the flats of his feet. 
"Think of it this way." She reasoned, "You wouldn't make someone perform surgery on their own family member, right?"
He looked almost betrayed, "Rommie...You know me, I'm not going to screw up the mission because I can't keep my head
on straight."
"I'm sorry, but, we can't take that chance." Dylan decided and, as far as everybody was concerned, his word was law.
"Make your preparations, now. Tomorrow, we head out."











As the head of Andromeda's notably long bow breached through darkened skies, everybody took to boarding 
their slipstream fighters. They were the only thing small enough as to not draw attention while making
their run to and from the ship. 
"Everybody remember your assignment." Dylan called forth, feeling a sense of pride at the mission set out before
them. Maybe the Commonwealth was not lost to them yet. Maybe the war wouldn't be either.  
Cutting Beka off at her slow, exhausted, stride to her slipfighter, Dylan put his arm out and placed it firmly 
against the hull. "Sorry I gotta take your girl out for a spin." He explained, gesturing to his own vessel as
a fair tradeoff, "I, uh, need the extra leg space." He regarded Tyr at his back. 
She looked at him and then at Tyr, frowning, "Better you than me." 
If that wasn't motivating enough, he noticed that neither Harper nor Trance were there to see them off. He wondered
when it was that he last had a legitimate conversation with either of them and decided it was best to not think 
about it. After all, if they needed anything, it would make sense that they would come to him, first. Not vice versa.




Seated in the cockpit of her slipfighter, Rommie ran her hands over the controls as one would comfort a steed
before riding it over a stretch of land. She knew it wasn't as intelligent as she was, but, even during her brief 
training runs, she still felt the need to do this in preparation of every flight. 
"Whoever touches down first is our main priority." Dylan's voice buzzed in over the commlink, "That means you are not
to waste a moment of time on anything but obtaining the record. The rest of us will back you up and
we'll all meet together at the assigned rendezvous point. In the meantime..." Rommie could hear him stretch his old 
Highguard speech-giving muscles on the other end. "Good luck to you all." Not the boldest statement, exactly, but 
Dylan was never as much of a man of saying as he was a man of doing. 
Cutting off communications, Rommie tilted her head back just enough to speak over her shoulder
without having to turn around completely. "I still can't believe you talked me into this..." 
"Oh, face the facts, Romdoll!" Harper called out from where he had been squatting, "I didn't have 
to talk you into anything!" She couldn't see it but, by the tone of his voice, she could practically 
hear the grin spreading across his smug little face. "Yup, you just can't stay away from your little 
shortcake surprise." 
If it wouldn't endanger both their lives, she'd be rolling her eyes right about now.
"When do I get to the surprise?"
He popped up over her shoulder, staring out the viewport, "You want me to tell you? And what? Spoil the fun?"
"This isn't fun, Harper." She chastised, "There are people here who have been trapped in the same civil war for 
four decades, now." 
"Rommie, this is literally ancient history we're talking about." He pointed out, "By our point of view, whatever happened 
here has already happened."
She started to open her mouth and quickly closed it. Bringing up Earth would just be a petty addition to an argument she 
already didn't want to make. Regardless, from the sudden shift in his demeanor, she could sense he knew exactly what 
she was going to say. Staring down at the blackened smoke pouring up from the ground below, Harper's voice shrunk to 
nearly a whisper. 

"You can't change the past."





With the communication channels turned off and all the slipfighter's settings tuned to a minimum in order to
avoid detection, the cockpit of Beka's(temporarily Dylan's) slipfighter was silently discomforting. 
Luckily for him, he had a conversation partner. Unluckily for him, well...
"I thought this mission would give you a chance to stretch your legs." He spoke up, finally, after who knows 
how long they had suffered through the soft hum of the air filtration unit.
Behind him, Tyr seemed despondent, caught up in his thoughts, apathetic and miserable. 
"I also figured this would give you and I a chance to talk." He continued, gulping down the mounting shame 
that was building in his throat. "After what happened I-" 
"Save your sympathies." 
Well, that certainly cut the conversation off at it's head. He'd call it an argument, but, that'd require some form 
of resilience or pushback. 
 
There was no fight on his end. 

"It's not sympathy I'm offering you, here." He pointed out, determined to get his point across. "It's..." Come on, he'd
given speeches before, hell, he'd even been hand picked for them. How was it that, when it came to Tyr, he no longer knew
what to say? 
It was much easier to do all the talking when you were in the right. He still was, but, not entirely, and he couldn't even
begin to breach where all that went wrong for them. "It's something else." He finally managed to spit out, 
despite how amateur his words were, it the best he could do. 
Just as he heard Tyr begin to stir, a burst of light cascaded off the viewport, turning Dylan's slipfighter down by the nose 
towards the planet, below.
Admittingly, his first reflex was to power up everything he could as to make a sharp exit, but, he then remembered 
that he was given direct orders keep a low profile. His hand almost recoiled from the power bracers at his
fingertips. Another burst of light exploded off the bow, brilliant and burning all the same as he suddenly found 
himself entirely in the dark.





"Not good." Rommie shook her head, she could feel her forehead gaining artificial wrinkles just from the tension in 
her face, alone. 
They had been hit from below, sending her slipfighter spinning forward and off it's initial trajectory. Now it was
moving not only backwards, but, upside down, plummeting further out of reach as the others cascaded across the
sky behind them. 
"You know, I was about to say the same thing!" Harper spoke up behind her. He had to almost shout over the commotion
as she tried to course-correct the ship. "Except, mine was in relation to-" He then raised his voice to 
an unspeakable volume, "-my life flashing before my eyes!!"
Trying to undo the mistake of capsizing was already starting to wane on her sensors, so the conversation was more
than welcome. It kept her from the usual warship etiquette of focusing on technicalities and kept her hard-pressed onto 
more human sensibilities. Like making it out of this flight alive. "Was it a good life?" She asked, only for Harper to 
let out a nauseated groan.
"No, Rommie. It wasn't!" 






Blinded, Dylan groped for the controls, feeling his confidence return as they slid naturally back into 
his hands. All he had left to place his bets on was muscle memory. Muscle memory and a prayer. 

Pulling up, he felt his weight turn in his seat, lopsided, as if he could fall out of it at any second. 
He then pushed down only to feel the ship start to curve at an uneven angle. The blast to the mainframe
had been so bad, the whole damn control scheme had uncalibrated itself. 
They were going to crash.
Through the haze of his vision, he saw a pair of hands at work to try to pry his fingers off the controls
and fought against them. This turned his flight pattern into something even a shiny, new, Highguard Cadet would 
find embarrassing. 
"You're not taking over this craft, Tyr." Dylan warned, his voice hitting a key so low in his diaphragm, he could 
feel it rumble in the back of his throat. 
He then felt those hands clasp down on his own, commandeering not only the controls but preventing Dylan from using them, altogether.
Utilizing his weight in lieu of his strength, Tyr eased the craft to a turn as turbulence began to overtake them.
The vessel seized in his grasp. Every system alarm, every warning mark, every violent jolt imprinting another bruise into 
the palms of his hands until they finally hit impact; sending Dylan's head into the control panel in one, remorseless, blow.




The moment her craft turned upright, Rommie snapped a direct order to Harper for what felt like the first time.
"I need you to get out of your seat and help me." Between Dylan's insistence that nothing bad was going to happen
and Beka's overemphasis on the mechanics of flight, she had realized, now, that neither of them had prepared her
for a crash. Being a ship was one thing. Flying one was another.
"Got it!" Harper had already somehow wrenched himself from his safety harness and was already up on the dashboard, 
trying to get the engine's cooling gauges to stop fluctuating.  
"We need to make a soft impact." She commanded and, without question, he began working on commandeering 
the controls. 
"You steer, I'll take care of the rest!" He then splayed his hands over the screen, pulling every lowered power setting
to it's highest volume. Detaching their engine in the middle of an unknown planet would be far too risky, but 
she knew if they didn't get rid of it soon, it would overheat and explode along with everything else on the vessel.
"Is there any way we can deter the power frequencies keeping our engine going without sending us shooting halfway across the planet?"
"Well, of course there's a way." Harper began, his eyes alight with every single screen he pulled to his attention. "If I 
turn our engine to it's lowest power setting, we might be able to skim the rest of our trajectory on momentum, alone." 
Like a two ton frisbee.
"Will it work?"
"Depends." He took one glance at her, his middle finger hovering just over the engine's power setting. "How lucky do you feel?" 
She wasn't going to answer that one. 
"Do it."














The moment her slipfighter touched down, Beka's blood had run cold. If time had ever been her enemy, now was 
the moment it chose to play it's most devastating card. She couldn't even spare the mercy of turning back to
check to see who made it out alive. 'Whoever touches down first...' The command echoed in her mind. 
"Damn it..." She folded over the dashboard, burying her head in her hands. No time to cry. Not until the mission
was over with.
Wiping a glob of snot off on her sleeve; she disengaged her safety harness, grabbed her things, and began her descent
into the fray. 








The crash had left Dylan as he was, strapped to his seat by it's sturdy belt. As for everything else; 
the broken plating, the busted wires, the collapsed hull, each found it's own way to contribute to the rest of his 
miserable state.

He had no way of assessing the damage done. Worst yet, he had no way of seeing it, either. His eye had taken 
the brunt of the crash and had virtually swelled shut, leaving the other difficult to keep open on it's own.
Suddenly, something began to stir in the mechanical carnage behind him. 'Tyr.' He thought, 'Getting ready to
finish the job.' 
"Are you alive?" He called out, his voice sounding dry, almost grating.
"No." Dylan responded. They both laughed at that one, as bitterly as one could. 
"What's your condition?" Tyr asked.
He thought for a moment. "How about you tell me yours before I tell you mine?" 
Hesitation. 
A shuffle.
"Isn't the phrase, 'show' not 'tell'?" 

A sudden drop from Dylan's throat fell through the lining of his stomach. Even when using the best of his abilities,
he realized he could no longer pin down Tyr's location by sight nor sound. The swelling to the left side of his head 
had deafened his hearing while the resounding high pitched ring to his right drowned out virtually anything else. 
He scrambled for the lock on his harness, managing to get two unfastened before he felt fingers brush through his hair, 
tilting his head back with it. 
Dylan refused to entertain the thought of moving, leaving his body so tense, he could feel the muscles in his neck 
starting to cramp.
"If I were to kill you now it would be a disgrace for both you and I." Tyr explained, revealing he had
at least entertained the notion. "Don't you agree?" 
"How bad is it?" 
"You'll live." 
"I mean the eye."
There was just enough hesitation in Tyr's response time that left Dylan with a sense of unease. 
"There's no way to tell the level of damage that's been dealt until the swelling subsides. Either way, 
with or without it, you will live." 
He made it sound so simple.
"Did anyone ever tell you, you have a terrible bedside manner?"
Here, Tyr held a gentle pause followed by an indifferent, "Yes." 
Somehow, through the pitched whine of tinnitus, he could still hear him rifling around in their supplies.
"What are you doing?" Dylan bristled, groping for a force lance that would've otherwise been affixed to his belt. 
"Continuing the mission." Tyr explained, coldly. "One I was dragged into against my wishes and one I will 
have to finish if I am to survive another day." He could hear the sound of a pack being slung over a shoulder. 
"You may assist me if you like."
"Or?"
"Or you could die here."

Whether or not this was an exercise of Tyr's sense of humor, Dylan laughed, regardless.








"...Rommie, Romdoll, Rom Rom..." As her processors started up again, she felt almost trapped, floating between
a harsh restart and a diagnostics check that kept her from responding. The pleading was less distant, now. Filtering
itself through her audio processors. She felt her power gauges try to take a scan of her damage. It began to circle 
back and reroute power to all the inner circuitry in her head. Again, not good. "Please don't be dead!" He begged 
right as her eyes snapped open to the sight of Harper cradling her head in his hands, the rest of her body lay mangled
at his feet.
"I'm afraid you made me more resilient than that." She observed as he squeezed her head to his chest in what was probably 
not the creepiest thing he'd ever done. It was probably up in the top five, though. 
"Don't scare me like that!!" He fumed. 
"Right. Next time I get decapitated, I'll make sure to consider your feelings, first." 
That was enough to make him crack a smile, as sorry as it was. "As you should!" He then regarded the rest of her with
a quick, discomforting, glance. "This isn't good, though." Quite the understatement. "One look at us like this and the 
locals'll run for the hills." He held that thought. "...Or worse."
"What makes you say that?"
He sighed, "People around these parts just won't understand people like you and me." 
"An android with no body and an engineer stuck in arrested development?" Rommie examined, mercilessly.
"Hey!" Harper called out, insulted. "We're modern!" 
"I don't think that's the word for it, but, alright. What do you suggest we do about it?" 
He pondered over their situation and, from the moment his eyes lit up with the idea, Rommie knew she was about to
immediately regret putting herself in his care.
"You're going in the bag." He proposed, already unzipping the pack hanging off his shoulder and, with care, slipped 
her inside.
"You can't be serious." She complained from her place between a smashed meal bar and a cluster of wiring from some broken device. 
"And you thought my backpack was a bad idea." He smiled, defiantly.
"No, I said I thought it was stupid." She corrected. 
"Well who's stupid now?" He laughed, humorlessly, and, after a moment of consideration, he peered back into the bag. "Don't answer that." 







He could've sworn he was better off talking to the trees at this point. "Are you following the map?" Dylan persisted
for the third time in a row, his question still remaining unanswered. 
If it wasn't for the simple guidance of his force lance and the blessed act of leaving Tyr in the metaphorical dark,
he was sure he'd have been abandoned the second they touched solid ground. "Tyr, for the last time, are you following
the map!?" 
"Certainly, you haven't gotten this unbearable in my absence."
"You think I'm annoying?" He snapped, far-past ready for confrontation, for a fight, for...something. 
"No." Tyr responded. "I called you unbearable. Is your hearing starting to go as well as your mind?"
The question struck a chord that Dylan didn't want to follow up on. Only, not responding to it seemed to do worse
damage on his end as he heard a noise of confirmation akin to an 'ah'. 
His jaw begin to tighten.
"I don't think you understand what I'm trying to do here." 
"I do." Tyr finally caved as his tone began to shift. "You wish to tame me." The accusation wasn't entirely unfounded, 
but his choice of words seemed to stick in Dylan's craw; bothersome, like an unscratchable itch. 
"Let's call it something else." He offered, finding that the joke failed to appeal to Tyr's sense of humor. "Let's say that 
I'm looking out for your future." 
They were uncomfortably close, now. Each trying to hover over the other in order to get their point across and each 
refuting any point that was being made. 
"Alright." Dylan conceded, "You give me one good reason to let you go and, when we get back, I'll send you off on 
your own with the headhunters and the Nietzscheans and the whole damn Commonwealth. All waiting just around the corner, ready
to serve your head up on a silver platter." He couldn't see it but he didn't need to. He knew Tyr was reaching his boiling point. 
They both were. Had been for some time now. "I'll even help you pack." 
No more than twenty minutes planetside and, already, they were at each other's throats. He could feel Tyr's presence drifting 
along in his periphery and could imagine him standing there, talking into the less swollen side of his face in hopes that 
his words would reach him. 
"I am neither your responsibility, nor you my keeper." 
"So, that's it then?" 
"Yes it is."
"So...what? You're giving up then?"
"Let's say, I'm looking out for my future." He mocked in a way that made Dylan's lip instinctively curl. 
At this point, it was less like fighting with a brick wall and more just about trying to be the biggest brick wall. 
"Big surprise." He scoffed, "Tyr, yet again, looking out for no one but himself."  
In a moment of pure spite, Tyr's hand lashed out and grabbed him by the shirt, pulling him closer so that his voice, 
now booming, would come in clear enough to ring in his ears. 
"I don't go around striking blind old men but you've tested my patience enough for me to reconsider."

This was it. This was where all their problems lie. This...escalation that blew itself out of control between 
two very proud men with two very wounded egos. They both knew it. They also knew there was nothing they could 
do to stop it. 
"Then reconsider." Dylan pushed away from him. Using his lance to keep them apart, he began to configure
their distance. His reading had to be perfect. Not too far as to swing blindly into the air, but, not too close as 
to allow his oppos- Tyr- to be able to strike.
Using his senses was not an option. Neither was taking a literal stab in the dark. 

He coughed. 

Each one of Tyr's movements seemed to kick up a cloud of dirt so dry, he could choke on it. The ground in this 
area must've seen it's fair share of action from foot soldiers to constant artillery fire. Depending on 
how much of a cynic you were, you could suppose this was either an advantage or a disadvantage. 
Holding his lance out at a quarter off the ground, Dylan was able to track exactly where he needed to 
thrust just in time to catch...nothing. He caught nothing. 
Well, theoretically, he caught nothing as Tyr had snagged the other end in his fist, his fury mounting as he began
to pull Dylan in. 
Now, given the chances, his best bet would be to simply let go of the lance, but, in doing so,
he'd be surrendering his last line of defense along with the closest thing he had to a working set of eyes. 
"You've made your point!" Dylan shouted, not quite in defeat, per say, but in a graceful understanding of his 
current shortcomings. 
"Are you bargaining with me, Captain?" He somehow sounded more insulted than before. "You know very much how I feel 
about diplomacy. The language of desperate fools who refuse to see their actions through to the very end..."
They were nose to nose now, invading each other's spaces. Practically breathing each other's air. 
"Is that what you want me to do?" Dylan swallowed. "To see you off to the very end?" 
Despite himself, he was glad he couldn't see whatever was happening on the other end. That is, until it came down 
upon him with a strike to his jaw.

They were scrambling now; rolling wildly in the dirt, like children, each trying to cause the other as much damage
as they could. Slamming against rocks, laying punches anywhere they could manage. There was no logic behind it. Only mad, 
regressive, anger that burned beneath their skin and exploded out with kicks and screams. Whipping up the dirt around them,
it choked their lungs until(finally) the universe seemed to have had enough of it and decided to end their struggle once and for all. 
With a resounding wail they both only vaguely recognized, there was little time for either to react before the 
ground exploded around them. 

Together, they had been tossed further downhill and Dylan found himself flattened along the loose terrain, Tyr's forehead 
pressed into the crook of his temple.
He was held, firmly, to ground, "Mortar fire." Tyr whispered directly into his ear, keeping their bodies rigid
and still. "If they believe we're dead, they will not fire again." 
That was the funny thing about war, he supposed. No matter where or, he supposed, when, it was; the same logic still applied.
"When the opportunity arises, we will take refuge." He instructed, "But you must hold faith in me." 
Notice he didn't use the word 'trust' but 'faith'. After all, that's what their relationship had always been based in 
since the very beginning, hadn't it? "Understand?"
Something about this question made Dylan's stomach turn, uncomfortably. After all these years, 
the answer was still the same. "Yeah. Yeah I do."









Unzipping his pack, Rommie watched as Harper's face began to breach through the light that was now pouring into 
her new hiding place. He looked just about how you'd expect someone to after an hour of trying to get a 
small ship running in the middle of a particularly hot day. "So, do you want the good news or the bad news?" 
About now, she was beginning to feel relieved of the fact that she couldn't smell. 
"Is there good news?" She entertained, only for him to look as if he'd been caught in a bold faced lie.
"Your body's still in pretty good shape." He wiped a bought of sweat off his chin, "Almost too good. I'm jealous."
Okay, that was probably the worst thing he could've said to her right now.
"That's it. Take me out of the bag." 
"Oh, come on, I didn't meant it like that!" He defended, "I'm just saying, the damages aren't so bad once you get 
past the, uh," Stirring nervously, he made a motion like he was breaking a pencil in half, "Headless thing." 
"And the bad news?" 
"Bad news is that the ship's gone totally kaput." Scooping her out of his bag, he pulled her up to see for herself
and, as much as she hated to admit it, their wreck looked like...well, it looked like a wreck. "Worse than kaput, it 
doesn't even have a working comms unit anymore. No calls for help going in or out. Guess we'll be hoofing it to the 
rendezvous point."
"There's no possible way we can do that without being seen."
"Are you kidding me!? We crashed hours ago and no one's come running to investigate!" He pointed out. It did seem
a bit odd as far as she was concerned. "Seems like a big pile of metal falling out of the sky means nothing to these
guys." If anything, they probably thought it was canon fire. No need to investigate an oversized piece of artillery. 
"We'll have to plan our route moving forward, then." She responded, to which he gave her a sly smile.
"Two steps ahead of you, Romdoll!" 
Snatching up a pair of binoculars from his work area, he stuffed them under his arm while keeping her head cradled in
the crook of his elbow. This balancing act was done with far more care than she'd like to admit, watching as he plotted 
out their course. Holding them up, his sarcastic smile bowed into that look
he always got when it was clear that the usual Harper had exited the building and was now replaced with someone 
with far more skill than people wanted to give him credit for. 
Quite possibly, because, in the end, he still had Harper's personality.
Upon removing them, she could see his concentration had now become overshadowed with concern.  
"Um, am I seeing this right? Because, if so..." Harper then held the binoculars up to her vision, allowing her a good 
look at the troop of Genome Soldiers gathered below. "...I don't think we're the only one who got the memo." 
"Odd." Rommie remarked, flatly.
"Odd???" Harper's mouth swung agape. "This is downright loonytunes!! We're not even supposed to be here, what're they 
digging around this place for!?"
"Maybe they intercepted our intel."
He froze, considering, "You think they're after the record?"
"Well, they're certainly not here for brunch." 
"I don't know..." Harper, now rifling through their bags at the mere mention of food, started to
wonder, "I saw this place back a few miles ago that looked like they probably made some pretty good barbeque." He tilted
his head a bit in jest, "If you don't mind the whole 'bombed out' atmosphere that is..." 
"I wouldn't know, but, don't they usually say that the worst looking restaurants have the best tasting food?"
"Pretty sure that's only the case for food trucks." His face then drew into one of contemplation. "So, um...Rom?"
"Yes?"
"Rommie?"
"What is it, Harper?"
"When were you planning on telling me about these?" He asked, holding out a batch of explosives, as if they were playing cards, 
up to her face. 
She blinked at them a few times as the realization suddenly dawned on her.
"So." She began in the most clipped voice she could muster, "How much experience do you have in placing charges?"










Clicking off her holomap, Beka stared out at the terrain before her. The woods were thick, almost jungle-like, but 
the area was far too mountainous and dry creating this bizarre natural infrastructure. Trees that bent off in odd shapes,
caves that curved the ground at odd intervals. If she didn't know any better, she'd assume this area had spent more time
as sea than land. No wonder it's inhabitants took such a peculiar liking to Earth. They were like long lost siblings. 
She wondered what the people here looked like or if their translators would even be able to touch their dialect.
What would happen then, she wondered, to an unknowable outsider who couldn't even be communicated to? 
The brazen glow of the settlement up ahead assured her she didn't have to guess for very much longer. 

Moving in, Beka kept her pace slow, assessing her inventory(also known as making sure she was packing enough heat) as she
peered through the dark at the camp before her. It looked quiet enough. She just hoped it stayed that way. 
Approaching the gates, she was intersected by two guards who fell somewhere on the scale between 'scrappy' and 'small'
they reminded her of the time Harper had gone back home. Kids. Kids protecting kids. 
"Another softskin." One warbled, his face hidden underneath a patchwork helmet. 
"Another?" Beka asked, her heart thrumming in hope as she leaned in to get a good look inside. 
Holding out an odd weapon, the other guard kept her at an impasse, "Disarm yourself before entering." 
"I'm on a mission." She tried to explain. 
"Then you won't find anything here. There is no war on this land."
"Neutral territory?" She inclined. 
"A church." One of the boys described through a feasibly thick accent, "Currently a hospital but primarily holy ground.
Bringing any weapons onto the property would count as sacrilege." 
"And I'm assuming by 'sacrilege' you mean...?" 
"Punishable by death." 
Ah, now she was starting to see the light, so to speak. "You mentioned something called a 'softskin'?"
"Yeah, that's you. All hair, no scales."
"Just like the other one." 
Here, she knew she had to make a decision. Either go snooping where she didn't belong, unarmed, and
potentially wasting valuable time or leaving herself armed and recognizable by two witnesses who could
immediately deem her as a possible threat.
She had already made her decision the second she saw the encampment, but, see, that was the funny thing about these
kinds of situations. In the case that you were wrong, you at least had to make sure no one could blame you for picking
the wrong option.  
Only one way to be sure of that.
"Can you tell me the name of the other one?" 
"We don't ask for names around here, ma'am."
Ma'am?
"Besides, no one gives their real name when checking in. Keeps anyone from knowing who's on what side." 
"Can you describe them to me?" 
"Short. Mouthy. Paranoid. Carrying around a weird discus of sorts. Real loon if you ask me." 
"Harper?" She blurted out to which they said nothing, staring at her from beneath layers of cloth wedged under their
makeshift gear. "Forget I said anything." 
Pulling the bag off her shoulder, Beka tossed one of the boys a box of rations as payment. 'Like tipping a valet to 
not rifle through your things.' She thought, watching as they ignored her equipment, absentmindedly going through
the box of nutrient paste and dry protein like it was a five course meal. 


The church, was almost as cold as it had been outside. Maybe even colder, but, regardless, it was a safer place to sleep
through the night. Less exposed to the natural elements like, say, gunfire. 
Drawing in, she knew this must be the pick-up destination. She just didn't know who to expect upon pickup. 
Let's just say the description sure did fit, just not the way she had puzzled it together. "Rev?" She asked, once again caught off 
guard by his presence. Something he was naturally used to by now. 
Looking up from the small crowd of civilians gathered around him, Father Bem, in all his new, weirdly humanoid, shape stuck out like 
a sore thumb. Only, this time, less as an outlier; more as a curiosity. 
"Beka?" He stiffened in confusion. 
"Expecting someone else?" 
"Perhaps." Pausing on this thought, he nodded to himself, "Although, I'm not surprised you were the one they sent."
"So, the Commonwealth sent you too, huh?" She asked, a bit set back by, well, everything. 
He looked around at the faces staring up at him, embarrassed, "Maybe it would be best if we continued this conversation 
elsewhere." The Reverend began nodding furiously, suddenly alight with an energy she'd never quite seen in him before. 
Well, they were certainly right about the 'paranoid' part. 


 




Extending his free arm out in exasperation, Harper shouted the first word that came to his noggin. "Caves!!" He complained. 
"Every mission, we're stuck running around in caves!! I might as well be back home crawling around in my engineering tubes!!"
"Did I hear that right?" Rommie asked from the crook in his arm, trying to angle her head up to look at him. 
"What?" Harper blinked down at her. 
"You called my ship 'home'." She pointed out, watching his features soften in embarrassment as he began grasping at straws. 
"No, that wasn't- I meant-" He almost looked ashamed of himself. "Look, we don't have time for logistics, here. We've got
a mountain to blow up." 
Placing her down on a nearby rock, Rommie watched as he started to look for a proper vein in the foundation. 
"We're not blowing it up. We're just...drawing attention to the area in which the record was found...once we find it, 
of course." 
"Kinda weird that we have to do it." 
"Well it's already 'kind of weird' we have to deliver it back to where it had been taken in the first place."
Harper then put his hands up to his ears, rolling off a noise most would consider nauseating on the back of his tongue, 
"I can't stand time travel!!" He whined, "And I can't stand delivery work!!" 
"Right." She smiled to herself, watching him place the first charge and check it's integrity with the blunt end of a pen he
had lying around. "What's that old creed they had?" 
"Who?" 
"Your delivery workers back on Earth."
"Rommie, we didn't have delivery workers when I was growing up." He explained, his mind sent off on a distant memory now,
suddenly, pulled to the forefront of his thoughts. "We had a guy who'd run packages cross sectioned perimeters while trying 
not to get shot." 
"And how long did you have that job for?"
Caught, Harper stopped in his tracks, complimented by the sound of his new work boots grinding to a sudden, still, halt. 
He was quiet now, so quiet that she was almost afraid he was about to use her head for soccer practice. 
"Two months." He conceded.
"Ow." She empathized. 
"Yeah, well, it looks good on your resume." He joked, "Now, running a bunch of hogs over illegal transport zones? That's
a story!" 
"You'll have to tell it to me one day."
"And you'll have to tell me where I was when he decided for you to make bomb runs." 
"It was during a meeting." She confessed and, before he could get a word in edgewise, added, "A private meeting. And yes, 
it was only that. I am, after all his primary confidant." She then continued, "And even if it was more than that, that's 
none of your business. I'm perfectly capable of making my own choices on-"
"Okay, okay I get it!!" He yelped, finally smoothing out the crease in his brown with the palm of his hand. "Just...
promise me you won't talk about it...anymore...ever again.."
"Promise." 

     







If he tried hard enough, he could squeeze one eye shut to get the other to open. Albeit the vision was blurry, he
managed to get a good look at the back of Tyr's head as he was being guided into the mouth of a nearby cave. Not wanting to
expose his newfound sight, he closed it again, allowing himself to be led. That, and the eye, itself, was
starting to well up from the sheer pain of keeping it open. He needed time to lick his wounds, ruminating on them 
would only slow them down. Besides, that line of thinking would do nothing but damage his initiative. He didn't 
need any help with that. It was already starting to feel as if he was sinking his own ship and taking anybody who was still 
around down with him. 
Or, maybe, it was the ground that had been sinking around him.
Realizing his mistake, Dylan bolted, not soon enough, before he could her the mechanized trap click into place. His body was
far too slow, now, lagging behind him as he found himself staring down the end of an arrow pointed right at his neck. 
It wasn't moving. 
Gripping it's base in his fingers, Tyr looked as if he was the one who had been caught under it's fire; having unwillingly
exposed a vital piece of information: 

He didn't want him dead. 

Dylan pocketed this immediately, without a word. In some cases, he did know better than to poke the bear. 
"We've been expected." Tyr examined, pulling the arrow to his eyeline. 
"What makes you say that?"
"It's new." He remarked, tossing the it to the ground.
Granted, Dylan had seen his fair share of ancient boobytraps. They tend to fall apart from disuse after around the first
hundred years or so. 
"Barbaric, isn't it?" He observed, watching as Tyr's mind wove something together behind his eyes. 
"Desperate." He responded, darkly. 
Dylan didn't really like the sound of that. 









It took Beka a moment to realize these were Bem's living quarters; a special squatting place between cramped shelving 
and a large storage cabinet. 
He was practically living in a pantry. 
Holding his hand out, The Rev clamped it down around Beka's upper arm in a vague imitation of a hug, squeezing it
with a warmth that could only come from the relief of seeing a familiar face again. 
"How are you?" 
"Well, I'm running around in the past, unarmed, with no backup, and potentially no crew..." 
He frowned. 
"But, other than that, I'm good!" She backtracked, "I'm great! I'm..." Way in over her head. 
"Your heart is heavy." He nodded in understanding. 
"Like a lead balloon." She expressed, grimly. "But you're here. Which means you have The Record, right?" 
His eyes lit up almost immediately, "I most certainly do!" Opening the lapels of his drapery, the Father let her get 
a good look at it. For all the images she had combed through, seeing it up close and personal felt different in a way. 
Almost magical. 
She was, after all, practically staring wide eyed and stupid at this thing of pure myth. 
The Reverend, bless his soul, seemed keenly amused by the whole thing. "Beautiful, isn't it?" 
If that wasn't the understatement of the year...
"Did anyone tell you how it ended the war?" He asked.
"Not really."
He then patted her leg, inviting her to sit and listen to his tale. 
"As any usual civilization would have it, the people of this planet started to branch out once newer technologies were 
invented and introduced to the public. They began seeking out others like themselves only to find differences everywhere they looked." 
"Three guesses on how that went..." She scoffed to which he seemed to stare back at her, not like she was some 
ignorant child but as if she had deeply unsettled him with her cynicism. 
"There were still people who lived their lives the best they could during that time. In between or even
during major events. People who still had that need to seek out others, not despite these differences, but, for them.
Other people with other ways of life. Like a Human and a Magog sitting in an old broom closet, conversing like old friends."
He turned his head as if he was taking a look back, "The people in this church have found my company favorable. Almost as much 
as they have found each other's. Even within the chaos erupting around them, we are all guided toward each other, are we not?" 
Oh yeah, the good ol' lecture part of the sermon. 
Curling her knees up under her chin, Beka began to rest her eyes.
"Ah! That's what I speak of!" 
"Huh?" Her eyes snapped back open.
"You're bored to tears!" He laughed, "You're sitting with a Magog in the midst of a war and yet here you are falling asleep!" 
The Reverend seemed a bit too overjoyed at her being the primo example of his teachings. "I'm sure you can recount 
that, even in the worst of times, there were moments to just be. To exist. To keep existing." He leaned back with a 
self-satisfied smile, "The people here sleep through my teachings as well." His face then drew into a thought that
seemed to resonate something just under the surface, not quite draining his elation but drawing it to
a soft simmer across the surface. "They were the ones who found the Record. Entrusting it to me, they assume...erh...see, 
in a manner of speaking, that I must have some...relation to the humans on the record. Their pictures, their songs,
their culture. They ask me questions. Humanity, they find, is a curiosity they want to learn more about. 
They...actively want to know." He quelled those old pains with an absent gesture of his hand. "Don't you see? Despite everything, 
that original kernel of wanting to understand and know each other still exists. Even as others have tried to shattered it with their violence." 
He laughed at the irony. "If only the rest of us were to be so lucky." 
Smoothing out the front of his clothing, he tried to fix up his appearance, "It seems that, despite no longer having the appearance or urges 
of a Magog, I find myself still withdrawing from those around me." 
That explained the separate quarters. 
"Have things been different for you since...?" She didn't have it in her heart to say it without coming off
sounding ignorant. Just another thing he'd have to forgive her for.  
"Y...es, yes they have!" There was something in his answer that felt troubling. "It seems as though
my newfound condition does come with it's perks. I feel freer to do my work as I see fit and with much less
pushback, I assure you!" He smiled at her, promptly, trying to quell any doubts which, honestly just had the 
opposite effect. 
"I see..." She frowned.
"Well, it's not perfect per say; work is work after all and this exchange has now come with a much different
set of tools paving my way forward." He was now alight with energy again. Nervous and on edge. "The Divine never does 
stop providing!" 
It was clear, now, that he was hiding something from her. Something that was, by all regards, for her own good and his own detriment.









"So should we lay back to back or spoon the night away?" 
"Well," Rommie considered her options, "Seeing as I no longer have arms, or a back, for that matter; I'd find 
either position difficult to pull off."
"Geeze, take a joke why don'cha!" Harper sneered, lightheartedly, as he gently placed her head down on his makeshift bed. 
"I've been doing nothing but taking jokes this whole mission." She then tipped her head enough to the side to watch him
lay at her side, face to face, his arms folded around himself for warmth. The sounds of war raging through the night.
Shouts of men at arms and shells exploding far off in the distance. 
For the first time in a long time, they looked at each other without bravado. No professional scowl. No sideways grin. 
Just hard, solemn, neutrality. 
"Will you be able to sleep through all this?" She asked, candidly, in a way that seemed to throw him off guard. 
"You kidding me?" His sense of humor tried to make it's way across his features only to stop midway through and fall back 
to where it had been before. Swallowing, his dry lips tried to stick together as he opened his mouth in contemplation. "I slept 
through worse stuff than this when I was a baby." If this line had ever been intended to be the punchline to a joke, she wouldn't 
have been able to tell by the way it came out. There was something heavy set in his words, 'sincere' didn't even begin to cover it. 
"I'll keep an eye out." She reassured him, "I...don't really sleep anyway." 









"We'll rest here." Tyr announced, pulling the force lance from Dylan's hand and settling him against a cavern wall. 
"I'm still armed, you know." He warned in a moment of pride. 
"I know." 
"Aren't you the least bit concerned?" The implications were left unspoken, best handled by a wildly paranoid imagination.
"Aren't you?" Tyr responded, absentmindedly, invoking the same thought. 

He heard shuffling as a flash of warmth fell over the cavern. Surely, this wasn't a fire; he'd smoke them both to death if that was the case.
Whatever it was, was warm and inviting enough to finally get every pained muscle in his body to relax. 
Despite knowing Tyr's watchful eye was upon him, Dylan pulled the flask out of his pocket, taking a deeply satisfying drink. 
"I know what you're thinking." He announced, loudly, "But it's not technically drinking on the job if you're hiding in the trenches." 
He took a sip, "Stark taught me that one." He remembered her face, caked in mud, cracking a smile as she passed the flask over to him.
'Whiskey.' She offered, as he took his first drink and nearly choked on it. 'Well, it was...at one point.' She laughed, the wrinkles around
her eyes cracking through the darkness of night. 
Whether it was the memory or the drink or both, Dylan started to feel himself relax, and with it, his vision. Although not as crystal clear
as he had been accustomed to, he was able to gaze across the glow of an old plasma lantern to Tyr. Watching him hurriedly pulling shrapnel 
from his side. 
"That didn't come from the crash did it?" He asked, casually; freezing Tyr in place.
"No, it did not." Disregarding Dylan, completely, he then continued to utilize his gear in order to sew up the damage. 
"We're getting too old for this." 
"Compared to you, I am but a spring lamb." 
"Some lamb you are..." If there was ever a word in their diction that could even try to describe their situation,
Dylan figured he'd at least hit ten or so pegs below that by now. "What happened back there?" 
"It's simple; we fell under siege. We ran. Now, we are no longer under siege." 
"No, I know what happened, I mean-" Tyr looked at him, bemused, and Dylan came to realize that a joke had flown right over 
his head. "You could've returned fire if you wanted to."   
"I chose not to."
Now that he thought about it, it was probably a smart move seeing as anything they did here could possibly domino into something that would 
later mess with future...or, uh, the present...or whatever it was at this point. He never did particularly sit well with time travel.
He was better with absolute ideas. Facts. Maybe that was why he had such a hard time connecting with his crew. They slithered around him,
each with their own personalities and plans and agendas. It always felt like, just as he was beginning to get a grasp on one, the others
would start slipping away from him. 
Unlocking the safety from his laser pistol, Dylan disengaged it from it's holster and was now keeping it firmly held in his palm. 
The age old phrase, 'Never turn your back on your enemy' echoed throughout his brain as he watched Tyr turn and glance across the way at him.
A flash of something too quick to see exposed itself from behind his eyes as he stood and made his way towards him. 
Looming over him, Dylan stilled himself as Tyr reached for, not his firearm, but his flask, taking a seat in front of him so that 
they sat face to face in silence. 
Taking a drink, he wiped his mouth with the backside of his thumb and sat there, pondering their situation. 
"Neither." He spoke, finally leaving Dylan just about as confused as he had always been when it came to Tyr. "You had asked me, 
before, when we met again, if it would be as friend or foe." He explained, taking another drink. "We are neither."
Reaching out, he placed a firm thumb over the center of his hand as he did, before. "I let you go." Now, replacing his thumb
with the flask, "I let you all go." 









Rommie had always heard of 'sleeping with one eye open' but she had never seen what actual approximation looked like. Harper's 
REM cycle was light, ready to end at a moment's notice. His jaw was set. His body, while oddly used to the sounds of distant violence, 
seemed to tense and untense at it's proximity. She wondered if Dylan had the same affliction from his time in the Highguard.
She then wondered if Dylan was even still alive at all. 














"Your form is sloppy." Dylan pointed out, sipping on coffee that wasn't so much coffee as it was some horrible 
approximation of what coffee should never be. Dried beans served up in a cube to be stirred into boiling water 
until the concoction created something that you could only ever really pass off as a really bad soup. It made his
stomach recoil. "First of all it's a lance, not a spear." Rising up off his place in front of their lamp, he made
his way over to Tyr who, by every definition, had been running his own set of drills since earlier that morning.
Taking the lance into his own hands, Dylan showed off the proper way to hold it. "Second..." Setting the lance off into a spin,
he couldn't help but recount his first training session. General Stark standing over him with a poise that demanded respect, 
not obedience, while she tossed him back his lance after having disarmed him for what was probably the third time in a row. 
In his diligence, he swore to her she wouldn't get a chance to do it again.
"Think of it as an extension of yourself." He recalled her words, "Not as a separate piece but not a direct continuation, either. 
More like an apparatus." Granted, she went on to disarm him twelve more times that day; each by utilizing a more complex set of 
moves until, finally, separation became essentially impossible. 
"...Just because something can be used as a weapon, doesn't mean it is one." Handing the lance back, he noticed Tyr looking at him 
as if he had just said something amazingly profound. He wasn't sure why, but, then again, he never did quite understand what went
on inside that brain of his.
"You're holding it too tight." Dylan pointed out, exhaustively tugging at the lance, watching as Tyr kept it held firmly in his grasp.
"When it has no room to move, you're also restricted from moving." As his form corrected itself almost immediately, Tyr began 
utilizing a balance by the lance's size and weight to the length and strength of his arm instead of relying solely on ability.
"I can't help you with whatever you've been facing lately..." Dylan confessed in a moment of exhaustion or madness or maybe a little
of both, "....And I know I haven't made it any better. If anything, I think I've made it worse but you've got to get a grip if you're going 
to stay on my ship with my crew."
"I don't intend to." 
"Alright, then how about this?" He leaned forward, "You've been hanging on by a very thin thread for too long. Don't you think 
it's time you started climbing?" 
"I think you've missed a vital piece of information." Tyr examined quietly, pulling the lance back into it's handheld form. 
"I have never stopped climbing."
 































Through the viewport, Trance eyed the first ship that breached through the darkness, settling to a halt to the right of 
The Andromeda. She had seen them coming long before she could see them with her very own eyes. Not like there weren't already 
billions of civilizations that had mastered the ability to cloak themselves, but even then, it was rare. 
It wasn't just some party trick; the resources required to pull it off were costly in energy, in resources,
in money; there were only a handful of societies that particularly used it outside the one-off straggler. So to see an entire 
fleet decloak all at once was chilling, to say the least. 
"No no no no no..." She felt a new level of panic peel back with every new ship that revealed itself, encircling The Andromeda as to
prevent any measure of escape. 
"We're being hailed." It's A.I. sounded, pulling the call up on the viewscreen before Trance even had time to react.
"Now what kind of vessel are you?" Asked the lifeform on the other end. An interested grin peeled back nonexistent lips, exposing
an array of sharpened teeth. Aquatic in nature, his neck, as were those of his staff, had been connected by tubing to 
a machine at the center of their main deck. Selachii. A nasty breed, usually partaken to piracy. Once, they were freed 
from the confines of planetary life, they vowed to never return. Their way of life was built upon acquiring ships, typically by force, 
so that they may never experience the plight of sedentary life ever again. 
The stars were their home now. 

Blackened eyes took in every detail of The Andromeda's control room. "A battle ship?" 
"I-" Trance started. Protocol was never her strong-suit. In fact, there were a lot of things that weren't her strong-suit. 
"Tell me, little girl, where is your crew?" 
"We're being scanned." Andromeda warned as she felt the light, warm, buzz of an age old scanner breach through the ship's hull. 
Looking at his readout, the Captain on the other end cocked his head; curious. "A fully armed battleship with no crew?" He then 
twisted his neck to face her, "This is no place for you to be running around playing Captain, child." He coaxed with a gentle 
warble, "This is far too big of a ship for you to handle. How about you let the adults relieve you of this...burden?" Feigning 
pity, he outstretched a three pronged hand to the rest of his crew, "I'll even give you a good trade-off." He lied, "Maybe one of
our smaller frigates? Hmmmm?" 
This wasn't good. She had barely lifted a finger and already he was giving her terms of a surrender. 
"Just one moment." Trance smiled back, cutting off communications with a hard press on a nearby pad. "What do I do? What do I do?"
The Andromeda pulled her avatar up on the viewscreen. "You're going to have to use my operating systems." She hesitated, "Manually."
"I-I don't know how!" Trance admitted in a frenzy, looking over controls she never once took the time to properly learn. "I've always
been a copilot."
"For as long as you've existed, you've never once-"
"Not fairly!" In fact, not one thing she ever did in her existence was done in fairness. This wasn't a point of pride for her so much as it was
just how things worked. The Universe, in of itself, had it's rules. Checks and balances, but hardly did it ever play fair. 
"....What do you mean by that?" The ship asked in hesitation as Trance placed her hands at the sides of the control panel, sending a 
shockwave throughout every electrical circuit in it's system until the very walls around her began to hum, loudly. It was like her systems
had first booted up back when the last piece of her had been finally locked into place centuries ago. 
"That's what I meant by that." Trance crooned, softly. 








"Do you think blondes have more fun?" 
"You certainly don't." 
Responding to her with a sarcasm laden, "What, are you kidding me!?" Harper delicately touched his index finger to the underside of 
a newly placed charge, lifting it just far enough to slip his scanner underneath. "Every kid dreams of possibly getting blown 
to smithereens!" 
"You're not going to get blown to smithereens."
"Okay, bits! Chunks! Tiny little fleshy specks!" He corrected out of pettiness.
"Actually, I heard it's more of a pink mist." She corrected out of even more pettiness. "Besides, I know you won't because
the detonation system is wired to my neural mainframe." 
"Woah!" Harper held out his hands, "Hold on, are you telling me you let some no-name Commonwealth hack put his grease 
stained little fingers up your inhibitor?"  
"No." She reassured him, "We figured you were too busy building your little time machine." 
Scandalized, Harper had to practically wipe the expression of shock off his face, stammering over his words like he was
about to faint. "You..." He pointed at her, receding his pointer finger into a closed fist as his eyes darted around
the cave in sheer lunacy. "They need to make one of those movies for people like you..." He then put his hand up in 
presentation of every word that would be splayed across the poster of his made-up motion picture. "...'Androids and their Not Really Changing 
Bodies.'" He then clamped both of his hands down together, pressing his palms together in reconsideration, "Working title."
Turning to inspect the charge again, he bit down on his lower lip in concentration, slowly peeling the layer of dry skin off 
of it with his teeth. "That explains the poor craftmanship, but, it doesn't explain the..." He quickly turned his head, face
shooting up above her eyeline. 
"The what?" She felt a gloved hand pluck her up off her spot by the root of her hair, turning her around for inspection and
found herself face to face-shield with a genome soldier. Damn it. They had been so careful...

Trying to bring the attention away from her, Harper let out a nervous laugh, slowly scuffling himself towards the both of them. 
"I've heard of giving head, but, taking it? Well..." He shrugged, disarmingly. "I mean at least give a guy a warning first."
He then held his hands back out as if he expected them to just give her back. "C'mon, man, you don't want her, I hear she's 
all hands. Besides, look at me! I'm human!" He patted himself down in mock presentation, "One-hundred-percent homegrown so, uh..." 
He lingered, just a few seconds too long. Taking a quick grab for her, Harper was shoved away by
a large padded elbow to the face, knocking him backwards into another soldier who clamped his hand down on the back of his neck,
stilling him like an unruly dog.









The rendezvous point was less glamourous than Dylan made it seem. 
Granted, the caves on this planet were exactly as she had expected. With the high humidity and thicker air, they were harder to 
maneuver. The dampness seemed to build inside and get caught, keeping the tunnels warm but
just wet enough to be uncomfortable. Then again, it also kept their voices from echoing as much. 
"You really know your way around this place don't you?" 
Bem was taken aback by this for a brief moment, quickly wiping away any sense of shock with a warm,
toothy, smile. 
"You could say I've had quite the practice maneuvering through gunfire." The Father pointed out in a delightful
manner that bordered on suspicious. It was strange how different everything was for him now that
he wasn't entirely Magog anymore. 
That chapter of his life had closed, allowing him to examine it at a distance with a sense of humor, however dark it
may be. She wondered if the same would eventually happen for herself. Considering
the way her life was going, she felt like she'd been stuck retreading the same road for far too long. 

"Will we be joining the others?" He asked, killing her train of thought and everyone aboard along with it. 
Clearing her throat, Beka immediately course corrected. "Maybe later." She then changed the direction of their conversation
completely. "Honestly, I don't really know what's going on with all of them lately." If she even so 
much as brought up last month's catastrophe, she feared his head would do a complete one-eighty so she decided
to keep the details vague. "Tyr kickstarts this whole war and runs off but now he's back and..."
"You're not honestly placing the war solely on his back, now, are you?" 
"Honestly? Yes." She stated. "Fairly? No." 
It was an admission that had the Reverend gazing off in contemplation.    
"Surely, you saw this war coming long before you even knew his name."
So what if she did?
"Yeah, well...let's just say things haven't been all that sturdy on the homefront since then."
To this, he blinked. "Were they ever?" 
Okay, well, now, he was just trying to make her be sensible. She wouldn't allow it, but, it was a pretty good effort all around.
"Fair." Looking down at his hands, still cradling the Record through his clothes, she was reminded of back when she was
around thirteen or fourteen, stuffing jewelry in her bra to hock later for a warm meal or two. He was all contorted and rigid 
from the stress. Just looking at him made her back ache. 
"You know you never told me how you ended up on this mission." 
"Oh, that's simple." He smiled, "I was the one who stumbled upon a..." His smile curdled, leaving two rows of sharp teeth 
exposed in a hefty grit that looked like it could bite through steel. "I had a vision." 
"What? Like from the Divine?" From his expression, she could see remnants of something that deeply troubled The Rev.
Haunted him, even. Something told her that, whatever he saw, it was anything but holy. "Well, I'm just glad you got to
it before anyone else did." Beka smiled, "Who knew you, of all people would have this down?" 
Actually, now that she thought about it, it did seem kind of odd. This intel was government business. So tied under the wraps,
there would've been no way for them to put this much work into something at the inclination of just some man. 
"Rev?" She didn't even need to ask, he knew exactly what she had been thinking. 
"I...apologize." He began to back away from her, "But I cannot let you have it..." 
"You can't be serious..." Beka stared as The Reverend, with his newly humanoid hands, clung to the Golden Record in a 
mix of shame and absolution. She could tell by his eyes, his decision was set in stone. 
"It must be destroyed." 
"That's our future! That's...that's our present. T-that's us! Right here, right now!" 
"If you had a chance to go back, to undo the pain, the sorrow the- the destruction of billions of lives, wouldn't you find
it upon yourself to offer them that mercy?" 
"Bem, you're talking about blasting the Earth back into the dark ages!" 
"Earth is already in it's Darkest Age." 
"But, without that record, we wouldn't exist. None of us would exist." 
"I'm so sorry Beka." He extended a hand as if he wanted to comfort her but didn't dare cross the 
boundary to actually reach her. "This is not a sacrifice I ever wanted you to make."
"But I'm still going to be sacrificed, is that it!?" She argued, "Bem, you don't know what'll happen if that thing
doesn't find it's way back!" 

"My guess is, Universal Reconstruction." Recounted a particularly annoying voice. "An effect that you're all
well aware of, I'm sure." Before them appeared Costanza Stark, strolling up without a care, two of his men at his side.
One, in particular, dragging Harper along at gunpoint. 
"Hey Beka." He greeted through a bruised cheek, "Long time, no- uh- hostage...situation." His eyes then flicked over to 
Rev and the whole sorry sight began to register on both ends. "Don't tell me-" He started, almost in unison, with her. 

"Seeing you all here..." Constanza eyed them all with a disgusted zeal, "Well, let's just say it's disappointing to see
that this is the best my boy could manage." He clasped his hands together, "Speaking of which, where is the good Captain?
Surely he wouldn't leave you all out to play unsupervised..." Now Beka was starting to get where all of
Dylan's looniness came from. This guy was professionally cracked. 
"What? Like we're children?" She barked.
"To me, you are his children." Stark reasoned in the loosest definition of the term. "And that makes me your Grandpappy."
A smile, mocking them, stretched across his face as he held out a hand towards Bem, "Now do as I say and hand over the record. 
You did a good job bringing it here for us but your part's over now." 
The Reverend didn't budge an inch.
Annoyed, Stark was now beginning to sense the tides were changing. "Come on, now, Father, don't test my patience." He warned.
"Don't do it!" Beka shouted, "If you're afraid what'll happen if that Record falls into the wrong hands, 
then look around you." She gestured at the sight- soldiers poised to kill at the first sign of disobedience. "Is this 
where you're entrusting our future?"
The Reverend watched them with a sea of remorse, "I...cannot let Earth fall victim to The Magog." He then folded
his body tightly over the Record, "But I also cannot allow it to fall to the whims of a madman." 
Immediately, every firearm in the vicinity was trained on him; a single man, unarmed and unwilling to fight.







Running her operating systems at max capacity, The Andromeda managed to activate her slipstream in just the exact nanosecond 
to shoot through a near impossible gap between two starships. She breached through the trap she had found herself in, giving off the
illusion of teleportation all in one, massively impossible, move.
"Not bad for a first timer, now, was it?" Trance smiled, already getting poised to do it again.
"Stop!!" Andromeda cried out, freezing her in place. "You nearly blew my engine apart!!" She could sense a fatigue in the
ship begin to fray at her as the energy drained from her circuitry. "We could've gone nuclear." She then came to realize 
this wouldn't have effected Trance in the slightest outside of mere inconvenience. "I could've gone nuclear." She clarified.
"Well, now we can escape!" 
"No, we can't."  
Trance blinked at her in disbelief. "Why?"
"Because you made me use up all my residual power. If we do anything else, we won't have enough to make it back to our future. 
We'll be trapped here. Permanently."








"Quite the bargaining chip isn't it?" The General remarked in awe, staring at the disk with a grin that seemed to 
draw every ounce of bitterness everyone usually kept pacified to the surface. "One that would be invaluable to the enemy if
they ever got their hands on it." He extended a hand to the Reverend, once more commanding him
to give it up, as simple as that. "Once the Nietzscheans get a whiff of this, well...First they'll send scouts.
Not necessarily their best men in a battle but just to strike a deal. To make you an offer you can't refuse.  
But, seeing as you're a man of the cloth, I don't think that'd work on someone in such a..." He shifted his grin, 
sardonically, "...respectable profession such as yours." With a snap of his fingers, more soldiers started to pour 
into the cavern, arms drawn and at the ready. "Then they'll come in droves. Little groups of foot-soldiers sweeping 
in to destroy everything and-ah-" With signal, Beka felt the muzzle of a blaster bury itself against the 
back of her skull, "-everyone you know." 
Mouth drawing open, Bem stared at her, apologetically. She knew he had always wanted a better, softer, life for her. 
One that didn't always have to be on the end of yet another violent struggle or shady deal. She only wished she'd 
extended that same kindness to herself. 
"You don't want that kind of responsibility on your conscience, do you, Father?" Stark mocked, practically spitting out every
word with barely contained gusto. 

A distant rumble carried itself under their feet. An earthquake or some kind of-
"Explosives!?" Stark eyeballed the debris falling around them, immediately throwing up hand signals as another
tremor shook the caverns around them. "Already!?"
Beka used this opportunity to snag the gun behind her, twisting it out of it's owner's hands and firing it into 
the first two soldiers she could get a lock on. 
Harper and the Rev took no time at all to get going but, while Bem was heading away from the commotion, Harper was
running headfirst into it. Quickly grabbing him up, she felt him kick away from her, "What are you doing!?"
"They have Rommie!" He shouted, as she quickly dropped him and wrenched him back up by the arm. 
"We have to go!" She looked at the fear slated over his face. He didn't have the stomach for this. He wanted to go back to
the way things were with her and Trance and Tyr and Rommie; but that chapter of their lives had now closed. 
There was no going back.









The blast had disrupted not only the structure of the cave but also the little game of silent treatment they'd 
had going for a while. "Please tell me that's a part of your mission." Tyr asked, breaking their truce. 
"Not...exactly." He winced, despite himself. 
Rolling his eyes, Tyr said everything he needed on his end, leaving Dylan looking foolish for keeping him in 
the dark as long as he had but precautions were precautions...
"The charges placed around this area aren't supposed to be going off..." He watched as the mere mention of 
explosives had Tyr wide eyed and blinking at him like he had just started speaking in tongues. "...yet. Yet, okay? 
Obviously that one was a fluke. It must've gotten damaged when Rommie crashed." Another blink. This time, Tyr's features 
were settling into something vaguely perturbed by the whole ordeal. "I'm sure it won't happen again." He prayed it wouldn't.
His credibility was already shot to hell and he didn't exactly need this mission to crumble apart any more than 
it already had. 
Another rumble cut down that pipe dream in mere seconds. 
"Do you have a death wish?" Tyr asked with a genuine scowl, "Because, if you do, I'll answer it for you." The 
threat was toothless, despite the intensity of his voice, and Dylan took to ignoring it as he always did when his crewmates
got like this. 
He stared at the gravel settling into place around them. There was a message being sent here, he just couldn't 
convey what it was.

First note: Rommie had been here.
Second note: With a strategic mind like hers, she knew better than to detonate anything unless she was sure it was the
wisest option.
Third note: The way the blast point lined up felt off. Nothing an Android could pull off given their nature. Either it 
had been placed with panic or caution. 
First note(revised): Rommie had been here with someone else accommodating her. 
Fourth note: She only detonated two of the twelve charges. This would normally be unwise unless she was trying to draw
attention to something.

"Something's wrong." He concluded, aloud.
Despite how far into the fray it was, Tyr seemed almost relieved to no longer be kept in the dark. Crossing his arms, he
immediately put his mind to work. "Will you leave or push on ahead?" Something in the way he said 'you' stuck out. Like he had
already made his decision and was still going to stick to it, despite everything. 
"You're still going on with it?" Dylan asked out of morbid curiosity. He couldn't think of any man brave or dumb enough
to do so.
"I am." He absentmindedly scanned his eyes over the options the cave provided. "Despite being dragged here against my will, I will
see it out to the end." A tidal wave of defiance was drawn between them. "Without you or not."  












"It's not that bad, right?" Harper wheezed, holding his chest as he tried to catch his breath between the panic of nearly 
getting shot to death and the panic of nearly getting crushed to death. "We've been through worse than this. Hell, by the time
I was seven, I'd been through worse than this. We'll make it." 
She wasn't sure when he decided to become an optimist all of a sudden, but, it wasn't a good look for him. 
If anything, it just made her cynicism worse.
As for the father, he just seemed to stand there in contemplation. Plagued by guilt, he set a reassuring hand on 
Harper's shoulder.
"My friend, I-" 
He fell silent. 
Turning back, she watched as Rev stared into Harper's face, his humanoid features pooling into something mystified and strange, his eyes
gone completely black. 
"The guided point..." Bem spoke as he once did under the influence of his fellow Magog, "...severing the serpent's head. 
A seed will germinate under the light of The Morning Star and deliverance will come to those trapped in this never-ending cycle..."
Trying to pull away, Harper realized that the Father's nails had pierced through the sleeve of his jacket and were now clamped around his arm. 
"Death...." He heaved, pulling Harper closer as the sound of foot-soldiers grew ever nearer. "Transcendence through death..." He then pulled away, 
receding back into the cave, spellbound, until the soldiers finally caught up with him. 
Before Harper could react, Beka had him by the hand, yanking him onwards. 








Reaching the rendezvous point, Dylan and Tyr poised themselves on opposing sides of the cavern's opening, staring out past the cliffside
peak and up into the morning sky. Under the cover of fog and smoke was the vessel. An older model of a Highguard battle ship
that had looked like it had seen better days. 
"Guess they had a rough time making the round trip." Dylan joked. 
"I wouldn't be too sure about that." Tyr warned, cautiously, as he eyed the vessel and began to duck just out of view. 
Following suit, Dylan fell to a squat, his wrists draped over his knees as he watched Tyr's mind circle around
a vital clue. 
"They don't have it." He placed a hand against the cavern's mouth, leaning out just enough to watch the men in uniform stand
at attention, waiting. 
Dylan caught a glimpse of the ship and began to focus on it's position. Despite being hidden, they weren't hiding. 
Their stature and position boasted one of advantage. They were set on the offensive, 
already prepared for a firefight, almost expecting one. There was no defending point against any threat that may arise.
It was purely a position of power. One that Dylan had recognized all too well. 
Standing, he stared at the old ship, looking it over in vague recognition. Even after all
the damage, all the repairs, all the time that has gone by, he knew the structure of it by heart.
Walking through the cave's maw and out into the fog, he could see Tyr bolt upright and cautiously follow
behind, lance now drawn and ready for confrontation. 

How naive he had been to have not seen the workings of the trap laid before him. How egotistical he must be to think he was chosen for 
this mission by merit, alone. The soldiers standing guard tracked their sights upon Tyr who continued to follow at his side without 
hesitation, ignoring Dylan as he passed by them and approached the vessel's docking panel. 
The doors slid open and he was greeted with a robust grin and a congratulatory grasp of the shoulder. 
"The Commonwealth never sent me that intel, did they?" Dylan pried the face on the other side, mirroring his own in exhaustion and defeat. 
"What? You mean that corrupt, infected, slog of criminals?" Costanza had scowled in amusement, "No! But the real Commonwealth did." 
Easing a hand along his back, Stark tried to lead him along only to find resistance in Dylan's stature, his feet planted firmly in the 
ground where he stood. 
"What are you planning to do with the Record?"
"I'm securing the future."
"What 'future'?" 
"One with hope." 
Hope. 
Here, Dylan finally came to understand what caused Stark's long decline into madness. There could only be so much 
you can do when guided by something as cruel and misguided as hope. 
"What about the future we have now?" 
"A full blown war? A crumbling Commonwealth? A Nietzschean uprising?" He was now in Dylan's face, eyes unceasingly digging through way through his psyche 
as if he was trying to plant every single memory of the past three hundred years
into Dylan's brain. "The Magog are going to have trouble picking apart the corpse of what's left after it's all over." 
He had seen this all before and he was starting to see it happen again. A cycle of death and regeneration. Of gain and loss. Any sane man would
try to stop it from happening.

The only thing was, Dylan was not one of these men.

Pulling back, he drew his lance from Tyr's hands and engaged it yet, already, he was being countered by Stark's grip on
the center of it's balance; stopping it right before it hit his jaw. Using the weight of his body, Stark pushed it down, utilizing Dylan's weak 
periphery to strike him aside his skull. The blinding pain made his mind unfocused, wondering if his ear was still even in tact at this point. 
Dylan could feel the universe pouring him out of it's cup and into the uncontrollable waves of chaos that was Space, itself. Try as he might, 
there was nothing he could bring under control; not his crew, not his ship, not himself, not even the weapon in his own hands. 
Disengaging his lance, he watched Stark stumble forward and, as a final, desperate measure, he threw it to Tyr who caught it just in the 
nick of time. Engaging the lance once again, Tyr drew forward, belting it up under Stark's chin, pushing it to his neck and holding it there.

"I can see it now..." Stark gasped, looking down upon Dylan with the intensity of a man, betrayed. "The history books will thank you for what 
you've done here. Every little Nietzschean worm will look at you and know who to thank as they conquer planet after planet, enslaving entire nations. 
Destroying every last beautiful thing they can get their hands on." He spat out something foul between a cackle and a gasp. "And it's all thanks to you!" 
His entire body then became elated, almost proud of the thought that he would meet his demise. To him, this would make him a martyr. 
A symbol. Something for future generations to revere and reference as a reason to die for this cause. 
Only, Tyr refused him the satisfaction.
This left Stark in a state of guffaw that lasted just long enough for him to lunge forward, turning and impaling the tip of the lance into
Tyr's side and firing off a shot, crumpling him to the ground. 
"No!!" Dylan shouted, only to be cut off by a hard knock to the head. It wasn't near enough to take him out, but, the explosion of pain 
ruptured behind his eyes left him wishing that it had.

"Starting a fight without the intent to kill?" Stark shook his head down at the both of them. "What's gotten into you these days?"
"You'd choose death over...?" Dylan's eyes widened as he tried to find enough willpower to get back up on his feet. "You don't have 
the Record." He reminded Stark, bitterly. "And you don't have me. If you return now, you'll be returning a failure." He swallowed the hard lump in 
his throat, disgusted. 
Looking past Dylan, as small, toothy, grin started to peel it's way over the curve of Stark's mouth. Turning, he saw Rev Bem being pulled
along by two soldiers.

"You're right." Stark began, "But maybe now I can salvage this whole...predicament." A light of inspiration
flashed behind the General's eyes. "You see, I have a card up my sleeve." He gestured at the Reverend in his captured state. "Sure, it's a wild card, but,
a wild card is better than a bad hand and you, my son." He emphasized this with a hefty strike to Dylan's bad eye, effectively 
knocking him to the ground and leaving a stain of blood across his right hand. "Have nothing left to deal." 
Waving his hand against the wind, he let his knuckles creak and pop from old age, sinking his fist into Dylan's shirt and pulling him up to his knees. 

"Last time you made the mistake of choosing that...traitor over me." He lamented, circling Dylan- not to strike- but to simply cut him off. To Stark, 
nothing existed outside this circle. To Dylan, everything did. "Well now's your chance. You can undo your mistake. You can pick decades 
of wisdom and guidance over years of strife." He leaned in, bottom lip curling over his curdled cowl, "You can come home again."








Trembling, Tyr pressed his forehead to the ground to steady himself, arching his back just enough to pull his legs up under his body. Utilizing his 
knees, he lifted up off the ground, wrapping a hand over the disengaged force lance and wrenched it from his body with a sharp breath. He then 
lifted himself to stare at Dylan; cradled in the recesses between life and death, looking past his mentor's opposing form to stare back at him. 
The wind billowed softly through his hair, passing a warm breeze between them.

Even still, he was immaculate.

Snatching Dylan up, Tyr ran towards the cliff's edge, twisting their bodies so that he may face Stark as he refused him the spoils of victory. 
Together, they dropped off and down to the waters below.


 










The morning fog began to subside as Beka stared off to the valley down below. They were hiding now, both nervously 
considering their next move. 
"Guess we failed our mission..." Beka lamented. First Tyr and Dylan. Now Rommie, the Rev, and the Record all in one go. 
This wasn't just a failed mission, it had been botched from the ground up. 
Fidgeting, Harper looked up at her, his eyes darting around nervously, "Uh...Not...quite...." He then opened the side 
of his jacket, revealing the Golden Record hidden tightly under the crook of his arm. 
Turns out hope was just as fickle as they were.