Did any emotion really matter 
when the last trace of it had vanished from human memory; 
and if that were so, what a crowd of emotions clung to him 
as their last home before annihilation?  

                          - James Hilton, Goodbye Mr. Chips




Back when he was a boy, stumbling about, Dylan enjoyed playing in the wooded regions of Tarn Vedra. There was something 
refreshing to gain from touching the soil, the trees, the life that had been painted across the backdrop of their daily 
lives. While in the home and at school, living among friends and neighbors, he found himself caught up in the daily ins 
and outs of those around him. Out here was his chance to be king, ruling over this domain where all else dared to tread. 
Everything was his to see and to explore until, he realized, that too had been nothing more than a childish fantasy.
 
He had come across a small gathering among the trees where his mother, among others, had met with one of the local Matriarchs. 
The memory was far too distant for him to remember what he had heard, if anything, besides some brief words that seemed to send
her into a restless haze that was neither present nor distant. Almost like a sleepwalker, wandering in the dead of night, 
not to be awakened. 
Not nearly as stealthy as he would become later in life, he had ventured far too close to their circle only to catch the attention 
of everyone that encircled The Matriarch with his mother being the last to notice his unwelcome presence. There, she stared at him, 
eyes overflowing with tears. Hurriedly, she came over and puled him gently into her embrace, burning into his memory this feeling 
that she had been protecting him against something he'd rather protect her from. Something distant and untouchable but veering just 
off the horizon like the setting sun. He wanted to know what it was but she would never tell. Now, he'd never know.
He resented it but, he could never resent her for it. 


Waking, Dylan tried opening his eyes as best as he could but all that came to greet him was this deep, unending, darkness. Not that he 
felt any particular way towards the arts, but, he felt like this would've inspired poetry in someone better with prose than 
he was. Never quite taken to fiction the way most cadets were, he didn't find the need for words that didn't have utility 
like debates or speeches or delegations. In turn, he never really developed into someone who could just speak to people. 

Touching around his face, he felt the bandages wrapped securely around his head and began making work of pulling them off until, 
that is, he felt someone try to stop him. The moment their wrist brushed against his cheek, he grabbed it, wrenching it upwards; 
eliciting a gasp followed by a loud guttural squawk that practically sent his senses running for the hills. "Somebody, quick, get
the-!" Whatever word had been spoken had been either untranslatable or unregistered by the fog in his brain. Seeing as he had been
quickly subdued and given what felt like a quick pinch to the neck. Intravenous. Better yet, by the way his mind begun to take up 
vacancy between his ears, it was most definitely some sort of tranquilizer.  







There was a sort of drowning quality to sleep he never had gotten used to. Drugged sleep was no better, they might as well have
hired someone to hold his head below water until he lost consciousness and left him half alive the next morning with what most would
assume was a bad hangover.
The firm hand over his forehead didn't help matters any. Neither did the one that scooped him up from beneath his head,
cradling the weight in it's palm.
"Your insistence on returning does not make our plans any easier, my child." The voice echoed in his mind, not his ears. It's 
familiarity was uncanny, but, wasn't that how most dreams were? That they could only use things that were familiar to you, even
the voice of someone you never really knew. "One would almost think you were trying to shirk your duties."
"I'm not shirking anything." He swallowed, realizing that whoever he was speaking to was not speaking from the mouth. 
Neither was he. "I'm failing."
"You believe you are failing."
"Then what do you call this?"
"You look upon the bastardization of your Commonwealth as if it is your own. Seething over it's misguided state, you've allowed 
what is true to fall, abandoned, at your feet."
He felt crushed by this accusation.
"I never abandoned my Commonwealth. It fell apart without me." 
"Again, you misunderstand me."

Pulling the veil from his eyes, Dylan looked across the blackened nothingness as the patterned
gallop of hoofbeats underway led him forward. Following him was a chorus, not unlike his own, 
the collective sound drummed together strong and bold through the night as their leader led
their group through the dark by a single glowing lantern. Together, they had become something 
of an animal formed from many parts like old Earthen images of angels or even the gods, themselves.
 
As time went on, he began to cast doubt to not only those riding alongside him but the one guiding
their way, surpassing her with his speed. Surely, they should've reached their destination by now. 
If they were truly making progress then why had it not happened yet?
From this chorus was another, vocal in nature, crying out in the dark. 
"Made ill by your own ignorance and pride, we've watched you destroy this Commonwealth you've created by your own hand."  
Around him, he watched as the others tried to keep up with him as he rode on, refusing to give them any indication of where 
they were headed. Some became lost in the darkened silence, others simply gave up and stopped altogether, one turned to plot 
another course for himself, pulling the reins of his steed too hard against the tide of confusion, causing it to roll, only to
crushing himself underway. 
"Many times you have led them to decay and even death and many times they have fallen."
Any that still remained were either clinging to this guided path out of desperation or ended up overexerting
their horses just to keep up with the physical demands he imposed on them.
"You have refused guidance to your people and for that, they have suffered."
Finally, his steed, brutalized by the conditions of an everlasting journey with no foreseeable end in sight, 
gave out yet still he refused to leave his saddle. Holding no acceptance of defeat, he simply stayed on his horse,
cursing it for giving out on him in the first place until the ends of time. His once living body was then wrapped up 
and planted in the earth like a tree waiting to be grown anew. 


Bursting from the ground and pulling the veil from his eyes, Dylan looked across the blackened 
nothingness as the patterned gallop of hoofbeats underway led him forward. 

Following him was a chorus, not unlike his own.

















Harper never really got the appeal of dreams. The science behind them just rubbed him the wrong way. The brain
at rest should be working on efficiently running it's systems and less time charging terribly curated sensory
through itself like a bad movie. The whole thing fell more in line with a defect of biology than a particularly 
well funded arthouse film and, besides, it was too curated for his tastes. Too many Magog. Too many faces of 
dead friends. You'd think it'd throw in at least one hot girl in a bikini to win the audiences over, but, it 
didn't even try. All in all, it made for a pretty miserable viewing experience that left him waking up every morning 
somehow feeling worse than he did the night before. 


"Still awake?" Beka asked, watching the storm outside go by with a meal bar held in the crook of her 
thumb and forefinger. Like a cigar waiting to be smoked. 
"You know what they say." Harper started, staring at the cavern wall, exhaustively waiting for his brain to finish 
running it's course and finally wear itself out so he could sleep, "No rest for the wicked."
"Well, if you're not gonna sleep, I will." 
"Aw, and take all my fun away?" The sarcasm dripping in his voice was a little too on the nose, there, and he could
practically hear it grating against her brain. 
"Oh, I'm sorry, we wouldn't want to keep you from seeing your latest wet-dream girlfriend now, would we?" She remarked, 
tensely, biting down on her ration. You'd think with all her time hanging around Dylan, she'd at least learn how to cover 
her mouth once in a while but here she was, still chewing and spewing like always did. "What's she this time? Some Commonwealth 
newscaster?" Even her swallowing was too loud. 
"Well, they don't call it 'broadcasting' for nothing." He rolled his eyes in contempt. The both of them might as well have
been a couple of apes flinging rocks at each other. 

If you're just tuning in, you'd probably think this would be some overt point of passive aggressive arguing brought on by a 
long stack of little things built up over time and you'd be sort of right. Thing is, they'd come to blows like this before. 
It sorta came with the territory of living on a cramped ship together over the years. You either learn to live with each 
other or you don't. Yeah, sure, they'd duke it out from time to time but in the end they'd still always prefer the former 
over the latter. 
Even if circumstances changed, they'd never...


"Look, there's a lot at stake right now." He confessed, brushing his fingers over The Record as if he had to habitually 
do it just to make sure it didn't sprout legs and crawl off while he wasn't looking. "I'm just a little stressed."
"If that's supposed to be an apology-"
"It's not." He pressed. A proposed ceasefire, maybe a truce, but, there was no way in hell anyone was gonna squeeze an apology
out of him any time soon. 
"Harper, you're not even supposed to be on this mission!" She argued, conveniently forgetting to add in every detail on how
he's screwed everything up just by being here in the first place. 
"I'm not supposed to be on any mission!" He argued back, "Not unless you need someone to hook their brain up to some high security
firewalls or build nova bombs!" They were both seething now. With resentment and a bunch of other really ugly baggage that neither
of them could stuff back in and zip up anymore. "You and me and Trance; we- we used to be a team and now Trance doesn't even
talk to us anymore and you've crawled into Dylan's tidy little lap-"
"Hey-" She warned, but he didn't care anymore.
"Don't 'hey' me! You seriously think I'm not the only one who got dumped here!? Beka, we used to be friends!!" She then froze,
her mouth hanging open as if she'd heard this speech before. Hesitating, she seemed to be watching something play back in her mind. 
Forward. Then reversed. Forward. Then reversed, again. Something started to seep out just as she looked across the way, a tinge of 
something painful stewing just behind her eyes. 
"What are we now?" She asked, almost genuinely.
What a way to make a guy feel like the world's biggest jerk. 
"I don't know." He answered, his arms crossed over his stomach, leaving his fingers to dance at his sides as they did 
after one too many nightmares. He felt himself shrinking. Not just in this moment, but, from the lives of everyone around
him. This whole mess made him feel less like Frodo and more like Gollum. 
"I'm sorry." He confessed without really meaning it. Not exactly in the wheelhouse of losing what very little 
he had, he'd rather just take his losses where they were and go home. "I should've just stayed back on the ship but..." 
Twenty three minutes. He had been awake for twenty three minutes and he just now realized how tightly his jaw had been clenched.
"...this is my planet we're talking about here! You can't just sideline me for this, I lived there!! I know what it's like, you- you
have no idea what you're even fighting for!!" He was perched on his knees now, his legs supporting his weight, the sound of his mom 
crying still fresh in his mind. 

When was the last time he had cried? It felt so long ago, he probably couldn't manage it now even if he wanted to. Still, you 
had to give it to him, even in the face of teleporting aliens or ghosts or even armies of the Magog, he'd rather take a 
round between the eyes than...




...than what?



A shout. Something like, "It's coming from over there!!" Blurred under the sound of wind and rain as they both locked eyes 
and began to pull each other up off the ground. 
"This. This isn't over." Beka informed him as she flicked her ration from her fingers and started scrounging for her discarded
gun.
Meanwhile, Harper found his legs just a little too unacquainted with each other. Like they had been shoved down a toilet and
given a few flushes in some backwards version of a swirlie, leaving him hobbling over to grab his own. 

Wet, tired, dirty, and irritable; they held their ground at each other's side. One capable pilot ready to either pass out 
or vomit and her handsomely adorable sidekick who looked like he'd been thrown in a drying unit and left to tumble a few times 
too many. 
Yeah, that'll show 'em.

Worst came to worse, he supposed, when he had to hold an arm out to stop Beka from firing. "Wait." His eyes widened 
at the tips of makeshift helmets breaching the rocks below. "Those aren't genome soldiers out there." 
She tensed, suddenly flipping the safety back on her weapon, "Oh no, this is a whole new ballpark for me." She grimaced, now combing 
over what options were available to them now that 'shoot anything that even decided to move' was no longer on the table. 
"Man, I hate time travel."











The rumble of distant thunder rolled through Dylan's dream, passive as he was now to events that seemed like
they no longer had a start or end. Thunder, however, even as an orphaned threat to lightening, was a soothing sound
of relief compared to everything his psyche had decided to throw at him. The dim flicker of lights danced through 
the gauze wrapped around his head, calmly guiding him to the waking world with it's warmth. Reaching up 
to his face, he tugged them down to the candlelight greeting him at his bedside. 
A pew(a bit on the short side) that had been refashioned into one of many beds for the sick and injured had been 
laid out in rows. Foot to foot and pew to pew. 
Well, almost every pew...
"The softskin's awake!" Hissed one of the scaly nurses tending to a burn that looked like it should have killed her
patient long before he had been brought here. 
"I heard he got grabby when Tialda tried to check his vitals." Whispered another as they both turned to each other,
each exclaiming, "You handle 'im!" Back and fourth, in hushed tones. 

Disregarding their banter, Dylan rolled to his side, instead, watching the rest of the medical staff hard at work, trying 
to save what most would consider lost causes. Is that what he had been registered as when he was brought in?

Hesitantly, a third nurse approached him, heeding his every breath like he was some vast puzzle piece to the great unknown-
nervous, skittish even, but unafraid. 
Presenting a bowl of warm stew, she waited for him to sit before passing it over. 
"No spoon?" He joked, watching his charisma capsize and sink before ever reaching her. 
"You're not nearly as pleasant as the others." She stated in a flat monotone and he found himself staring at the food in his 
hands, analyzing it just in case-
"If we were going to kill you, we wouldn't have wasted resources on saving your life, first." She pointed out, "And we
would most certainly not do it with food." 
Hesitant, he began slowly sipping the warm broth, stopping shortly to shudder at the taste. How they managed to make 
stew sweet, oily, and frothy was best left to the imagination; but, instead of complaining, he decided to let the inner 
fight between his gag reflex and his empty stomach do the talking for him. 
"Oh, picky!" She turned, appalled by his lack of table manners, "As if you have anything that looked even remotely 
as appetizing back on your planet." 
Stopping short of dropping his meal, Dylan stared up at her. "My planet?" 
"We saw your broadcasting tablet." She then shrugged, "Well, we had to transfer it to a broadcasting tablet to 
extract it's images and..." She narrowed her eyes to near slits, "...'sounds'." 
"You mean music?" He asked watching her eyes shut, completely. 
"I would hardly call that garbled mess of noise 'music'." 

'To each his own' he guessed...
"So you've seen the record?" 
She nodded, "With the help of your friend, we all have. If we hadn't, we might've left you to die out there..."
Peering up at the stained glass, watching it tremble against the ongoing storm, Dylan listened as the trail of thunder grew
closer. The crushing pain of the world he had woken to had finally decided to make itself known. 
Before, his threshold for the life he's led had been manageable. Barring a slip up here or there, he was able
to keep his wits about him or play it off but now the part of his brain that seemed like it's wiring had
been pulled loose hit a snag. Now, everything in his life seemed like it was coming undone right before his very eyes.
He turned to his surroundings. 
"Was there someone else there when you found me?" 
She shook her head, "You were barely there when we found you." Bile began to rise from his empty stomach. 
Noticing this, she sighed, "No. The waters delivered you to our shores where our local scouts found you and brought you in." 
She watched his adam's apple bob and clarified further. "You were alone." 
Rising up off the pew, she managed to put him back in his place with a hard strike to his knee that nearly sent him careening
off the edge. "There's no chance you'll make it very far. Not in that weather and especially not on that leg." She then gave
it an apologetic pat. "Reattaching it was hard enough but you should be fine within a day or so." 
Against his better instincts, he then peeked under the blanket for a brief glimpse of something that sent his stomach 
churning. 

"Your biology is so simplistic, it took little time for our usual medicine to take effect." She then gestured to the burn
victim at his side, "If only the rest of us could be so lucky..." She then rose, obviously deciding to deal with someone 
who had more pressing matters to deal with. 
"Rest now. Whatever misfortune you've found yourself in, I can assure you, it will still be waiting for you tomorrow." 





 








Years of experience never really made them any less bitter when it came to having weapons pointed at their heads. The more
it happened, the worse they got. "Please don't tell me you're the guys winning this war." Beka snorted against the humidity
that still hung in the air from the night before. 
"You have a problem little lady?" One of the soldiers remarked despite all of them skewing at least a good foot and a half 
below her eyeline. 
"Can you believe it?" She pondered aloud, turning to Harper, hands uncomfortably still try to maintain their position behind 
her head. "Finally we found a planet of people you-sized and this is what they're like." 
"You good?" He asked, already knowing the answer.
"I feel like Dorothy." As he opened his mouth to spew off something clever, she cut him off in the moment, 
spitting. "Shut it, Toto."
Message delivered. 
"Mouthy." A soldier remarked, raising a gloved hand to do a bunch of lame hand signals at him, "Neither of you carry
the discipline of a real soldier!" 
"That's because we're not!" Harper complained, "You're the ones who decided to drag us around by foot all night which, 
by the way, has gotten really old by now." Okay, maybe that mouthy comment was pretty accurate because now the pressure
valve had broken off and what came out was ready to go nuclear. "Which either means you don't know what to do with us 
or you're afraid of what we might do to you."  
"You're far too armed to be civilian."
"Maybe we're not civilians." He continued, "Hell, you don't even know what we are. We might as well be a couple of 
criminals on the run!" 
They began to group up, staring at The Record held firmly to his chest. Another set of hand signals. Not good. 

Backing up, Harper found himself drawing away from their little semi-circle. Close. They were too close.
"What? You wanna do a cavity search?" He spat in one their faces, taking one more step until he hit something from 
behind. A hand shot down clasping his forehead, pulling his neck taut enough to fit a blade underneath it. 
"Found you." Remarked a voice he thought he'd never get to hear again. 
He couldn't see it, but, by the sheer speed in which their little troop turned tail and the intensity of the grip 
on his head, Harper could only imagine what he must look like.


Letting himself exhale, Harper practically molded himself against the body behind him. This was probably
the most relaxed he'd ever been with a weapon aimed at his throat. A thought he'd rather not chase 
down quite yet. After all, the big guy hadn't exactly removed it. In fact, he...hadn't really moved at all. 
Carefully, Harper turned to meet Tyr's eyes or, more accurately, whatever was going on behind them. 
There was a storm raging inside his brain and it was clear and plain as the look on his face. Worst of 
all, no one was allowed to intervene. So, instead, he watched as the dead eyed intensity in Tyr's stare softened 
like he had just woken up from a horrible dream, all disjointed and afraid of something that really only existed 
in his mind. Moving the hand locked across his forehead up into his hair, Tyr attempted to get it to stick back up
again. 
"My little nuisance."
Watching him, Harper didn't exactly know what to say except- "Nice sword."
Tyr, now suddenly aware of their position, stabbed it into the space between his feet. "Nice shoes." 
Oh, he wasn't getting off that easily.

Pulling up his arms, Harper scrambled them around Tyr's neck, pulling himself around him. He could practically feel
the big guy hold him in it, staring with this look on his face. Some kind of deep remorse. For the first time
in days, weeks; hell, months, he felt so relieved that he might just start stress-puking now and get it all over with. 

Now was Beka's turn as she barricaded the both of them with all that sappy girly baggage she totally had that they didn't 
have at all and found her place tucked against them. Tyr then dragged her in, closer, pressing his forehead into the place 
between their shoulders so they could just stand there like that until, finally, he pulled away, Golden Record in hand.

At first, it felt like the weight of the world had been peeled off his shoulders until Harper realized who, exactly, now 
had it. 
Tyr, now examining the thing, flipped it back and fourth in his hand in admiration. "So this is what you've all been after..." 
He held it firmly to his side, snatching up his sword along the way. 

Beka, now on edge, started to move closer but Harper knew better and put a hand up to stop her. Tyr continued on ahead a 
few feet and lingered.
Now, if Tyr was ever a normal guy, here would be where he'd reassure them his intentions were pure. But he wasn't and they weren't and 
everybody pretty much understood that he had to make a whole deal about everything. So, instead, he turned, bumping the hilt of 
his sword out to them. Tit for tat he guessed, taking hold of the sword as Tyr postulated on his next set of actions. 
"I'm assuming you kept track of the coordinates back to your slipfighter?" He asked, regarding Beka with a sort of quiet speculation. 
Blinking in shock, her shoulders unbuckled themselves out of the knot she'd been holding them in. 
"Y-yeah I did."
"Good." He smiled to himself in a way that left the both of them feeling uneasy. "We'll be needing it."
"What do you mean 'we'?" 
"We're getting off this planet."
"Now!?"
"Yes, now. This mission may have been a farce but, with this, we have an upper hand. Best not to waste it."
He wouldn't exactly call this an upper hand.  
"Well, I'm not leaving without Rommie." 
Somewhere, between their shared chimera of misery, Harper knew he was demanding the impossible of them.
"You're going to risk your life for a machine?" Tyr asked in that way people do when you both knew you were about 
to do something totally stupid. 
"Yeah. Yeah, I am."  
"How're you even going to make it back?" Beka pleaded, using the ol' guilt trip bargaining chip. Thankfully,
Harper never really felt guilty over anything in his life. Well, actually he felt guilty for everything
which, at some point, boils over until it doesn't feel like anything at all. He was pretty sure the French once had 
a word for it. 'Malaise' or whatever. 
"Don't worry about it."
By the looks on their faces, they already had. 
















It didn't take long for them to find her parking job. If everyone else hadn't crashed theirs minutes after breaking
atmosphere, she was sure she'd be getting an earful by now.
"I swear, we need to find a way to make these things blend in better." Jet black didn't exactly scream
'tactical advantage.' Then again, neither did the giant war ship hovering just behind the moon. 

Once inside, Beka now got what Dylan had meant by needing the extra leg space. The both of them were packed
into the slipfighter like sardines and they both sorta had that smell to them too. Pressurized fish in 
a steel can just waiting for someone to pop the top off.
"After that crash earlier I'm surprised you're not clawing to get out." She commented only for Tyr to hum, amusedly,
to himself.
"With Captain Hunt behind the wheel, certainly, I would." He fought the smile playing across his lips, "With you? 
Not even slightly."
Good to know at least somebody knew who was top dog around here.
"Flattery'll get you nowhere, you know." She teased against her own common sense. 
"If I wanted to flatter you, you would certainly be flattered." He pointed out. "Unless you are, then may I go on to say
I've sorely misjudged your standards." 
Without Harper here, there was no one to finish the joke and, seeing as Tyr was too smart, or maybe too unwilling, to
say what they were both thinking, she decided to do him the favor.
"You've seen my track record, right?" She asked, rhetorically, to which Tyr refused to respond. 
Talking to him again like this felt good. Like returning to your favorite bar to find your old drinking
buddy still perched there in his seat right where you left him. It made her wonder why it took herself
so long to do it. She then remembered.
"You know I still don't forgive you, right?" 
"My Captain," He addressed her with way too much confidence for a guy who currently smelled like high tide on 
a crowded beach, "The day you forgive me is the day one of us will be taking their final breath." He paused, 
resonating on this statement. "Preferably you."

Says the guy who can hardly go five minutes without performing some kind of half-baked suicide stunt. 
"Oh, please, you think you're gonna outlive me?" 
"Of course I will." He answered, practically congratulating himself for making it this far. "I will outlast all of you." 
Talk about spitting in the face of fate... "Until then, I've decided to see this out to the end."
Here comes the big question. 
"Your end or ours?" She asked, only for him to silently give her a halfhearted shrug. Granted, it was better than nothing.
"I'm probably going to hate myself for saying this but...it's good to have you back."











The sword in his hands was far too heavy for him to swing around which was probably a good thing. If he could do it, 
even once, he'd never let it go. This would probably lead to one of those messy situations where he'd form yet another unhealthy 
co-dependent relationship with an inanimate object. He'd stop getting work done, the ship would fall into disrepair, eventually someone
would intervene but he'd be so far gone, there'd be no survivors. Or something. 
In reality, his arms were tired from just lugging the stupid thing around. Thankfully, he didn't have that far left to drag it. 

"Lemme guess...One of you only tells the truth and one of you only lies, right?" He addressed the two Genome Soldiers guarding
the entrance, brandishing his black eye like it was this big neon sign that read 'You should see the other guy'. Give 'em 
something to think about, after all, the less they knew, the better he looked.
Their ship was out, exposed to the elements. Guess they really were having trouble seeing as their plans had all but gone 
belly up. As it was Harper's luck, he was also desperately trying to not get blown to smitheries out here. 
Facing up to them, he moved forward as they parted around to let him through. Not the best sight,
but it was better than getting his head blown off, that's for sure.  
"I'm here for my android." 
The fact that they gave her up so easily only meant one of two things; either they got everything
they wanted out of her or they had given up trying.
Who knows what kind of mess they made of her internal drive. He'd probably be stuck doing systems repair and
recovery work for weeks just to undo all the damage. From the look of her, he assumed the worst.
"How do you feel?" 
"How do I look like I feel?"
As the guy whose job description involved reattaching her limbs every time she had one blown off, she could 
feasibly argue this was, as the greatest minds in science would say, 'a real doozy'. 
"Like a million bucks." 
"Liar." She smiled as he started disconnecting her tubing. 
"Oh Rom, look what they did to you..." He groaned, feeling like his well of cool one-liners had 
finally run dry. Slipping his fingers through the tubing that connected her to the ship, he felt
where they had stripped the connectors around her spinal network to get it to fit the detonators in 
her internal relay. It had to be replaced. Hell, he wasn't even sure what would be left of her original
model after this was all over. For some reason, the thought terrified him. 
"I can't believe he let them do this to you." 
"He didn't 'let them', I chose to undertake the initial procedure." 
"Yeah from a bunch of butchers!! Look at you, Rommie, they might as well have thrown
you down a woodchipper!" 
"Well it was my mistake to make."
"No. It was Dylan's." He argued, pointedly, "Your mistake was trusting him!"
If she had lungs, they'd be filled up and ready to scream his oversized head right off his shoulders.
But she didn't and, instead, he had to hear her yell at him without all the showiness. 
"I can't believe that you, of all people, are telling me who to trust!"
"Woah woah woah, what's that supposed to mean?" He knew what it meant, he just wished she 
wouldn't say it. He wished it wasn't true and he wished they weren't even having this argument in the first 
place.
"It means..." Her lips curled over her front teeth in that way women do when the cutesy act starts to wear
thin and you're just some loser standing there feeling humiliated for even trying to talk to them in the
first place. "That for a self proclaimed cynic you're pretty optimistic that Tyr wouldn't sell you out the 
second something better comes along." The worst part about her argument wasn't what she said but the look on her
face as she said it. It wasn't angry; no no, it was worried and frustrated and all the things she or anybody
else should be. She felt sorry for him and he felt just...sorry.  
"How do you know he doesn't see you as anything more than some patsy?" 
"Shows what you know about me." He bit back, feeling red and raw and itchy like an old wound that had been
reopened one too many times. Pulling his fingers away from the mainframe, he was now afraid that he could 
damage something with his hands trembling as much they were. "I wish I was just some patsy." 
The look on Tyr's face when he showed back up still buzzed around in his mind. Calculating and ready
to fight again. New and improved casing, same old hardware. It felt kinda sick in a way, that he had to 
practically hold his best friend hostage to know he'd still be there the next day. He was a lonely
miserable coward and Tyr...wasn't. The second he'd get a taste of freedom, he'd be gone again and the
funny little engineer with all his funny little jokes would still be trapped in his funny little cage
spewing off one liners like nothing had ever happened. 
Wiping his eye off on his dirty sleeve, Harper swallowed the lump in his throat, "Pretty stupid, huh?" 

Turning back to his work, he saw that Rommie shared the same miserable look on her face except she
wasn't even granted the dignity of being able to hide it behind body language. "I don't 
think that's stupid at all." She commiserated, the both of them just staring at each 
other, each recognizing something that neither of them had the guts to talk about. Which was fine.
Neither of them were really all that good with words, anyway. 
"Look at us!" He groaned, "We're pathetic!" 
Not missing a beat, Rommie took a page out of The Book of Harper and gave him the biggest, phoniest,
smile she could manage. "We're modern."

Pressing a thumb up under a connector he watched Rommie's face contort as her manual systems were 
fooled into thinking they hadn't been charged in days, powering her down until her eyes rested in that half open way
that made her almost look like she was dreaming. He hoped that, maybe somewhere deep in her system, she was. 








Floating out in space waiting for their limited share of oxygen to run out was starting to look like less
of a mistake and more of a well calculated choice at this point. 
"Systems are a no-go." Beka informed him, feeling the sweat already starting to cake her brow. 
"Try scanning it." 
Tapping at her sensor array, she watched as the data rolled in. Or didn't, she supposed. 
"Nothing. Power's off."
"On the entire ship!?" Tyr gawked, head practically swiveling off it's hinges to read the layout. 
"I can count to zero, Tyr." Apparently, so can he. 
Clasping his dry lower lip against his teeth, he began to twitch like he was ready to start pacing. After
a few moments of this, he calmed, letting it all settle into two fingers; held steady against the framework
above them. Tapping away in a gallop that could drive somebody crazy if they were, say, trapped in an enclosed 
space floating around with nowhere to go. 
"Stop it!" She hissed, "You're freaking me out!" Gathering her head in her hands, she breathed in. She just 
had to refocus. Just...just calm down and...
"You're acting as if this is the first time you've encountered a downed ship." He pointed out, factually, in a 
deadpanned statement that meant nothing except what he said so she couldn't take it personally even if she still
totally did.
Bending in order to meet her, eye to eye, he stared at her, still speaking in a way that meant exactly what he said 
as he said it. "Think, Captain. What does one do in a situation such as this?" There was a will in his eyes. An expression
of complete and total trust in her fortitude and knowledge as a pilot. Suddenly, the drumming of his fingers against 
the hull faded away. 
"Manipulate the ship from the outside." She answered back, speaking almost as quietly as he had. "I know the docking bay 
by heart, if I can manipulate the doors from the outside, I can spring them open." She declared. "Only one problem." 
"What?"
"There's nothing powering the protective field keeping the ship secure. If I open that door, I could risk turning the 
whole thing inside out." He was listening intently now, realizing that, whatever their next step was going to be, it
was gonna be a rough one.  
"How do we give it a sufficient amount of energy?"
Oh boy, he wasn't gonna like this.
"By giving her a jump." 
Blinking, quite possibly out of shock, Tyr moved away from her, a rumble of laughter in his throat.
"Well you come up with something better, then!" She barked at him as he leaned back in consideration.
"No, no, I was imagining..."
"Imagining what?"
"How we would explain the damage to Captain Hunt." 
Oh, sheesh, that was probably the worst part of all of this. Not that he could really give them any more fresh hell than
he's already put them through, but he'll also be super annoying about it.

"We'll burn that bridge when we get to it." She waved off the pretense of stress with a hard tap on her screen.
"I'm not familiar with the metaphor but that doesn't sound quite..." He eyed her for a brief second, "...right."
"It is for me." All things considered, she'd probably still hang around. I mean, anything was better than sleeping with all
your stuff in a box next to your bed, ready to leave at the drop of a hat.

It was either a sign of maturity or a sign of the times. Space might've been a wild frontier before, but, the encroaching
'civilization' taking it's place sure wasn't looking any better. Thankfully, for now, she had other things to worry about. 
Like the ever encroaching drain of life support.





The hinges of the docking bay doors came in two varieties; 

Pins(although, in this case, they were the size of pistons) that slid in place every time the doors opened or closed. It was 
essentially the same structure you'd find in any drawer, creating the horizontal push/pull effect of their automated doors without 
exactly having to administer either. 

And gears that worked to keep the pins separate along with providing a wheel-like motion to allow or disallow movement. They both 
served as not only a way to open the door but also a means of locking it in place. 

If she could manipulate the gears, then getting in would be a piece of cake. The only problem was, she wasn't sure how to do it. 



"Hey, Tyr?" She began, watching Tyr brace against the question at hand as if it was about to reach out and bite him at the
first opportunity. "Remember when you pried the medical bay doors open?" 
He looked away for a split second to hide whatever had just gone through his mind, his eyes then quickly refocused back to 
her, clear and focused. "Vaguely." 
"How'd you do it?" 
"I wedged a blade between where the doors met, forcibly severing the internal signal keeping them closed." 
Hm, that didn't seem like it would work in this situation...unless...
"Is there a way we can refocus a beam to recreate a sort of blade-like effect?"
"A laser scalpel?"
"A really big laser scalpel." 
Bringing up the weapons interface, he started playing with his options, digging through and conditioning every part
of their beam fire to produce something that could cut along the surface of Andromeda without piercing through it's hull. 
"How precise are you at aiming this vessel?" He asked, demanding more of an honest answer over a reassuring one. 
"How precise do you need me to be?"
"Surgical."
"Gotcha." 
Mapping out exactly where she needed to be, Tyr waited for her to move into place before he started cutting. The first
incision slowly dragged itself along the line of the entrance as he guided her aim of the ship's bow with clear sweeps
of his hand.







You could always tell when the tides of war changed. There was always this distinct smell to the air, the stillness of it brought a 
kind of stagnation that didn't bode well for anyone involved. 
Taking this into account, Dylan knew his time here had reached it's end. With no supplies and a stomach half full, he could
feasibly reach the outer rim of the battlefield and try to retool his crashed slipfighter to reach communication with The Andromeda.
From there, he could only sit in wait, hoping that the ensuing battle would pass him by. 
"You're leaving!?" A nurse blurted out, eyeing him with concern. 
"Looks like it." He knew his response had been cold, but, there was nothing he could do for them. What will happen is 
what has already happened and, besides, this wasn't his war. He had no stance to take. 
"So that's just it? We stitch you back together and you leave us without so much as a 'thank you'?" A bit dramatic, wasn't it? 
Turning on his heel, Dylan held up a hand to calm her. "It's not that I don't want to help you but I'm in enough of a mess
as it is." He then pulled what was left of his jacket on and started on his way, "Thank you, truly, for all you've done
but I can't intervene."
"We weren't supposed to either, but, we did!!" This stopped him dead in his tracks. "We had orders to hand you over as a 
security threat but I knew better, I knew a dying man was no threat to us!" 
He tried his best to brush off her reasoning but something about it haunted him. "I don't see why that has to justify me 
staying to fight for your cause." 
"We're not asking you to fight, we're asking you to stay just a while longer. At least until we know the coast is clear. 
Then you'll be allowed to go as you please." 
Biting down on his lower lip, Dylan began to chew at it, carefully recalling what he had seen upon pulling Harper and Tyr 
from that swamp. From that moment, he had come to understand that despite what lines that were being drawn, when it 
came to his crew, they did not apply. 
If anything, they had never really measured up to the well oiled machine The Commonwealth had supplied him with, but they
were their own individual selves who followed their own paths. It made them messy, emotional, unreliable. If there were 
any rules that gnashed against their beliefs, they'd easily turn away from them with deafened ears and blind eyes. 
They frustrated him to no end and they were the best damn crew he had ever come to know. 










Harper had never been the kind of guy who believed that bad guys existed although he liked how cut and dry that aspect of
finger-pointing was. It was easier than the implication that there might be someone who lived an entire life and
still decided to dedicate themselves to a cause that made life more of a living hell than it already was.
The room he had been guided to didn't exactly scream 'evil army' more than it sort of flatly stated that
lifeforms may or may not inhabit this ship. There was nothing identifying any sense of personality other
than the staunch need for a decorator. Or at least a poster, some empty cans, maybe even a pile of dirty
laundry; something that gave off life signs outside of the staunch white sheets laid across a cot against
the backdrop of blank walls. Upon them, however, was just the guy to see about all of that. 

Bem never really fell under the label of 'bad guy' so much as he was a walking example of something that
made everyone who knew him just that more uncomfortable. I mean, sure, he had some kinda sordid past but they all did
and Harper knew better than to pry open that can of worms. Glass houses and all. You know how it is.
At worst, he'd end up never being able to look the guy in the eyes ever again and, at best, he'd 
probably end up losing his lunch. 
"Long time, no, uh...what was that that you pulled on me back there?"
His hands had been gathered in his lap, kneaded together, nervously. Roughened up around the edges, he
seemed like a wreck to say the least and it read off, loud and clear, with every little tic that made it's way to
the surface. "It was one of my prophecies."
Oh, right, of course it was.
"You don't need to worry about all that." He patted the place at his side, "Come, why are you here?"
"Well, for Rommie for one thing. You too." The lack of confidence coming from the other end wasn't
entirely shocking. He wasn't some knight in shining armor and this entire 'rescue' was just him winging
it at this point. "Only thing is, I gotta make a tradeoff." This seemed to put ol' Rev on the edge of his
seat, so, he quickly tapped at the dataport embedded in his neck to clear things up a bit, "Just some routine maintenance
work. Turns out these guys are about as good at getting along with machines as they are with just about everyone else." 

"You...don't have the record with you." Bem observed, quietly, managing to bypass everything he had just said. 
There was relief on his face. Or it looked like relief, anyway. Harper would never really say this 
out loud, but, with the way the Rev's newly cobbled together face looked, he couldn't really tell. 
It then clicked somewhere in his brain that this might not exactly be the best news in the world. "Where is it?" 
"It's..." Weighing his options with great impunity, Harper realized now that he may have made a little
tiny totally forgivable sliver of a mistake there. "...You don't wanna know." 
His eyes flickered to the sword in his hands but no alarm came from them. That was aways the creepiest 
part of the Rev's mannerisms that, he guessed, didn't really change with the facelift. 

He knew the difference between predator and prey. 

"Pretty sweet, huh?" Harper held it up with all the right strength and none of the finesse. Not exactly
the world's coolest pose, but he managed to slip by that with a fun little swing or two. "Got it from a hot babe 
who designated me ruler of this place." He quipped, "I got a crown and everything. Wanna see it?" 
"Have you tried it on yet?"
"Nah, you know me, I'm too humble for all that."
"I meant the sword." He chuckled back, darkly. 
Yeesh, take the guy out of the Magog but can't take the...actually, now that he thought about it, 
this metaphor wasn't going near as well as he expected it would. 

Leaning over the computer in his room, Harper wondered why they even kept Bem here at all. I mean, anyone with 
any minor understanding of the way ships worked could easily destroy this thing from where he stood, but, 
maybe that was all a part of their ignorance. They probably assumed he was too stupid to be able to do
anything except pull up the calculator. If this thing even had a calculator.

Uplinking himself into it's system's software was actually less painful than most interlinking models. The
line had been well-worn, quite possibly by other instruments over a long period of time and not by somebody 
willfully jamming it into their nervous system every time they experienced a minor hiccup. He could swear 
that he might've accidentally developed one of those Munchausen's By Proxy things but for computers. Okay, 
well, one computer.  

The ship was about as old as The Andromeda but neither ships were even comparatively the same age. While she
boasted the old Commonwealth's somewhat outdated styling, she was still fresh and new. Just beginning to explore 
her potential and place in the universe. Whatever this was, was ancient but unknowingly so. Whatever data it seemed 
to collect had been strategically purged like clockwork, keeping the storage levels at a minimum but preventing it 
from being able to update or evolve. Trapped in a limbo, it merely plodded out it's existence in a brutal state of 
being bent to the desires of what it's crew needed of it at the time. Whatever deep scars it had, it didn't seem
to recall and whatever Harper was doing there, slogging through it's tedious load times, it didn't seem to care. 
It was docile and terrifying all at the same time. It's simple programming squeezed out data that could be perceived as 
simple thought only it was large, unmanageable, and it was being beamed directly into his brain. 
Queasy, like a prom queen about to jump into bed with a guy who's main squeeze was his own fist, Harper was so shaken 
up by it's acknowledgement that it felt like he was being pulled inside out and observed. Every nonexistent muscle in his
avatar's form blurred into what felt like a smear on a canvas of something huge and hungry and very very old.
He thought about lion maulings. They were never as quick or smart as most people were led to believe. If anything, they 
just sort of glommed onto their prey, crushing it under it's massive weight and chewed away for hours. It didn't matter if 
the animal underneath was alive or dead, what mattered was that it was meat. 
"Hey, stop, I can't- I can't think!!" He shouted, grasping the sides of his head as it started to feel too heavy. A fog 
rolled into his thoughts, like the air right before a storm rolled in; the humidity, just as strangling. 
He couldn't catch his breath. 
Squeezing his eyes shut, Harper tried to block it out the same way he tried to block everything else out; he started talking. 
"S-so." He gasped, voice rattling around in his throat, "I-I know it's protocol to discuss with patients what they're about
to go through before they go under the knife." The ship didn't seem to like his terminology very much. 
"Hey, it's hard being courteous when your brain's getting turned into soup! Not sure what kind of soup, but, I figure with 
my smarts, it's something filling. Like minestrone. But maybe something less meaty." The ship then crushed his brain with 
an image it had kept and accidentally stored away several decades back. It was a rich soup with so much flavor it practically 
stained it's bowl. There wasn't a recollection of any recipe for it but, for some reason, he knew there were peas in it. He thought
of Reagan with her head on a swivel. Felt like her too. 
The ship stamped out the image, immediately. 
"Don't tell me that made you nauseated." He whined, "I'm the one trying to fit your big old whale brain into my head, if you get 
sick, who knows what it'll do to me!" The complaint was enough to make the ship lighten it's load. Only allowing necessary components 
and transceivers to travel into his thoughts. The effect was way too intense; as if he had just had something large pulled out of him, 
the emptiness of it's non-presence leaving him in a vulnerable state. The prom queen comparison was starting to feel a little too 
on the nose for his liking so he ignored it and continued. "I gotta fix up a program that was recently put into your systems." He 
summarized, hoping that, by talking to it gently, he could make the ship more comfortable and, by extension, more willing to cooperate. 
"Do you think you could help me out with that?" 

It responded to this request like any trained animal would, by smearing him into the foreground of it's thoughts
so it could focus on the task at hand. The number of times he'd found himself doing this in his day to day life was uncountable.
The issue here was that he wasn't exactly the one doing it. "Wait wait wait!!" He shouted as he fought(or, I guess
in this case, thought) against the tide of a systems scan that was so old and massive, it heaved against it's own inner mechanisms. 
"Just...let me handle it." He groaned, feeling the waterlogged search slough off into a feeling of empty bliss. 
I mean, join the club, but this ship didn't seem to exactly enjoy it's existence here. Not that it wasn't well-maintained but there
was this level of neglect that, when accounted for, seemed to carry over to other issues that only really
made themselves apparent long after the damage had been done. If it were a horse it'd be high tailed to the glue factory ages ago.

Pulling up a screen to work on, Harper dredged though it's systems history and, oh, just the idea of ripping files out of this
thing...it made him feel giddy. Then again, so did most dubious behavior like sabotage, subterfuge, stealing...pretty much anything 
that started with an 'S'. He also liked long walks on the beach and the soft glow of a candlelit dinner. Or, so to say, that's what his 
dating profile said. Nobody seemed to fall for that one. Nobody seemed to fall for the real thing, either. 
"You ever think about dating?" He asked the ship while filing through it's, uh, files. "It's a crock, right?" The returned response
might as well had been a big fat question mark. "No, no, I mean it! You gotta slapdash yourself out there, wholesale, and wait for 
somebody to take the bite. Then you gotta reel 'em in until you got 'em and even then, you don't really know each other. You're both just
these miserably lonely lifeforms out there looking for genuine connection and here you are just playing a game of catch
and release until you finally hook the big one. And that's if you're lucky! Yeah, everybody says that there's plenty of fish in the sea but 
what they don't tell you the flip side to that." He wiggled his eyebrows over the display he was currently working on, "You might've been
fishing in the wrong place right from the get-go." Pulling back the history by about a month, he finally found the installed program he had
been looking for. Funny, it didn't even resemble the gaggle of circuit boards and conductors he had been oh-so-graciously gifted. "And even if
you do find what you're looking for, who knows how long that'll last! The human brain is only actually capable of shooting off 
enough chemicals to produce some kind of fleeting sense of 'love' for about four years, tops!" The confusion on the other end switched from 
his words to his actions, both perceived as near gibberish from something that, in a corporeal form, would barely register as a blip on
it's radar. He was a monkey banging it's fists against a typewriter and what came out sure wasn't anything resembling Shakespeare.
"So then why do it in the first place? What's the end goal here? What are we trying to accomplish?" None of it made any logical sense.
If the idea was to ensure the next generation of a species or hit some kind of pleasure button in the brain, somebody would've 
found a better way to do it a long time ago. But, development required other beings and all those lab mice died of malnutrition
anyway. So then why, despite knowing better, did he feel the need to feel so needed?

The time-based program's history indicated that, upon it's installation a month ago, it had been used sixty two times. In some instances, as a 
short as three hours apart. In fact, it had been used so many times in such a short volume of time that it had finally burned itself to a crisp 
and could no longer be feasibly repaired unless the internal systems were set back properly. If he wasn't just a stream of conscious data right 
now, he'd shiver. 
Or throw up.
Or both.
He found his brain scrambling back to the crash, the measure of damage it had gone through, Rommie's decapitation, made all the worse
by realizing one very specific detail: the ship's computer had not recognized him. 







Locking her targeting coordinates onto the ship's lower sector, Beka unleashed the grappling rods from her slipfighter, 
letting them sink root into the exposed underbelly of The Andromeda's hull. When she had done this years ago, it filled 
her with excitement. Now, watching the ship float there as it was being tethered, she felt uncomfortable with it all. 
"If you place our firepower to a weak charge-" She then grabbed Tyr's wrist to make sure he was listening to her, "Not
a low charge, not a pulsed-out charge; just enough to breach through the interior to the ship's power conduits- we can
administer a shock to it." Like a defibrillator. Or, in this case, a fork jammed into an electric socket. "Just enough energy 
conducted to give it a quick zap." 
Keying in the power levels, Tyr showed them to her awaiting approval and damn if he wasn't uncannily good at reading her mind.
"Perfect." 
Firing off a pulse, they watched as the energy burned through the ship's core, springing it to life in a matter of seconds. 
"NOW!" Beka shouted, disconnecting the tether just as Tyr fired one shot and then another into the newly exposed gear, sending 
the bay doors flying open from the gravitational pull surrounding it. 
Now, here was the tricky part. Speeding through the oxygen field, they quickly touched down inside, throwing open the slipfighter's 
doors and dropping to the ground below. 
"Andromeda, close the bay doors!!" Beka shouted between gulps of air. "Andromeda!!" 
She paused. "Andromeda, close the-"
"I've had enough of this." Tyr hissed, pulling the pistol from her hip and turning to shoot out the controls of the bay doors
just as the systems power began to fail on them. Slow and painfully, the bay doors began to close, sealing the both of them in just as 
the power gave out. 

It was now dark inside the ship, again. Who knows how much time they had before the backup environmental controls would fail. It was 
here that Beka became fully aware that, if they rested now, they'd die here on the landing platform. "We have to go, now!" 
Exhausted, Tyr breathed a sigh of determination that was enough to set him back upon his feet again. Something told Beka he would
not do this a second time. "And where is it that we're going now?" He snapped, crabby and fatigued. 
"We have to reboot the engine." 
"The entire engine?" He asked due to the sheer ridiculousness of her statement. 
"You got it!" 

They might as well have crawled to the power conduit, they had taken up far too much time trying to figure out where
it was without proper lighting. Even then, this area was a real 'no man's land' where Harper had to send androids off
to their fate of having half their internal systems fried just to fix a minor leak. Everything that laid inside looked
so docile too, not nearly the image of a nightmare he acted like it was until a familiar form caught her eye from behind the window.

"Trance!? Trance!!" Beka pleaded at the door. She had seen Trance come back from worse stuff than this, so what was 
taking her so damn long!?
"I've gotta-" She looked around, wildly, her eyes falling to concentrate at a point on the floor just as the Rev had 
taught her to do every time she felt like everything around her was moving far too fast or too loud, to focus. Swallowing
the knot in her throat, she let out an exhale that sounded a lot worse than she wanted it to. "I've gotta get in there." 
Shaking her head, the world around her began to tilt then, without warning, crossfaded into some horribly blurred frenzy of shapes and colors.
It snapped into focus the moment she managed to get her hands on old spec equipment that she wasn't even sure was certified 
to wear in an irradiated zone. Gripping it with both hands, she tried to rip her way into it until a gentle brush of fingers 
against her collarbone made her stop. 
Wide eyed, Tyr stared at her, cradling her racing heart in his palm. With his other hand, he took the gear from her and slowly
withdrew the other; suiting up while she just stood there. She was fourteen again and her dad's heart had stopped in the
middle of a firefight that had broken out inside the Maru. Her uncle, cursing 'old age' and not the drugs that had been
whittling away at what was left of his body, refashioned an old conduit to restart him like an old carburetor as she stood there, 
too old to be helpless and too young to do anything but watch. 
Saying nothing, Tyr allowed her the grace to panic without making her have to face it, directly. If they didn't discuss it, it
didn't happen. What did happen was that Tyr, now fully suited up, looked at her through the visor of his headpiece and gave
a single order. "Dear Captain..." His voice came through the suit's mouthpiece in a soothing, if not a little fuzzy, manner. 
"Shouldn't you be at your post?" 

Turning, Beka felt like her entire nervous system had been rewired to do her job and, like clockwork, she ran the exact route
she took every morning through every twist and turn in the hallway until she finally reached her pilot's chair. 
Someone had been trying to direct a line of communication with them. Seeing exactly where the receiving point of contact
was coming from, Beka readied herself for the worst and opened the channel. 
Any number of things could've happened in the time it took to get from planetside to the ship and, if she thought
about it too hard, the list would only get longer. Opening the frequency, Beka held her breath as the image blinked
in only to be washed over with relief upon seeing Harper's smarmy little face on the other end.
"Hey Beks! Miss me?" He asked as smoothly as ever. Which means not at all but, hey, it was an A for effort, right?
"Like a migraine." She gawked back, regaining the footing she had lost mere moments ago. "Where are you?"
He waved off her question with "It's a long story." Searching the screen on his end with a sense of purpose. "Where's
Trance and Tyr?" 
She tensed and saw Harper get this little glint in his eye he couldn't seem to hide. 
"...It's a long story." 
He swallowed and smiled in a way that seemed isolated from the rest of his face. "You've got The Record, though, right?"
The Record?
The Record!!
Looking around wildly, she had realized that she had completely lost track of it in the chaos. "I think Tyr still has it."
She explained, mentally kicking herself while she was still down, "I can go get it, it's not that far from here." Pacing at 
her Pilot's station, she ruminated until Harper found it in himself to speak again. 
"Okay well before you do that, I'm gonna need you to establish a link between the ship's communication relay and the sensors 
located in Rommie's cranial base. She's in the same area I am so she shouldn't be too hard to find." Underneath the curve of 
his smile, he looked almost resigned in a way. The both of them did. "Once you establish the link, I'll send you a frequency to give
you the go to project the Record's files through Rommie's system." Looking away for a moment, the background around Harper seemed
to shift like some large, pulsating, mass. He then returned his gaze to her, "You got that?" 
"Yeah, I do." Against her better judgement she found herself refusing to hang up just yet, "Uh, Harper?"
"Hm?"
"Are...you talking with me though another ship?"
"Yeah, I am." He gloated, "Pretty sweet, huh?"
More like nightmarish.
"Where are you right now?" 
They had a stare-off for a brief moment as they silently exchanged thoughts across the great distance between them. Her stomach dropped.
"It's a long story."
The communication cut out. 









Pulling himself free of the line, Harper noticed the posse forming in the corner of his newly returned vision. 
"Making unauthorized transmissions to your vessel is against our agreement."
"Hey, nobody ever said anything about making a quick pickup call back home." 
"That was far more than a pickup call."
They were pushing him now, with all their bulky armor and bulky weapons, they thought they could just do anything to anybody
and get what they wanted. 
Harper pushed back. "You really think you're the one calling the shots, don't you?" He spat. "See that's the thing. 
This is a one way trip I just bought for you. So you can either tuck tail and run back
home while you're still in one piece or you can try to loop us again and see where that takes you. But, uh, I'm 
gonna be honest with you guys, here; I made it this far by the skin of my teeth. If you think I'd be able to do this 
all over again, chances are I'd probably be dead before you even hit the ground so..."
He stretched the place between his neck and shoulder, feeling the knot in his back pull taught, "Your call."
Turning to leave, he threw his backpack over his shoulder, marching out of the ship with a sickened tug at the
pit of his stomach. "C'mon." He popped a nod to the Rev on his way out. "We're leaving." 
About five, ten steps in, Harper realized he hadn't budged an inch. 
"Rev?" 
Okay, maybe looking back they weren't exactly buddy-buddy but he wasn't just going to walk off
and leave him at the mercy of whatever coleslaw of insanity had been going on here for the past
month or so. 
"I'm not going." He explained, raising his hand with the kind of benevolence you'd expect from...
Well, he was a kind of a priest but that didn't make the whole thing any less jarring. "As far
as I can conceive of the path laid before us, I must stay here." He explained without really 
explaining anything. 
"Are you serious!? These guys'll-"
"Expend me as a resource and then dispose of me when it's time to further their agenda." Bem then leaned in,
his newly humanoid face expressing something he never properly could before. Regret. "Just as my people had done to yours
for centuries." Reaching out to him, he lightly hovered his hands over the only one Harper had free, waiting 
for the okay before gently cupping it in his hands. "There are some things in this world you must find, 
yourself, to better understand the situations around you." A slip of paper snuck it's way into his palm. 
An old sleeve trick he remembered performing time and time again back when they were sitting bored and uncomfortable 
on the Maru. Clever guy. "May you find what you're looking for." Bem smiled, peacefully, letting him go. 
Call it a premonition of his own, but, the last time Harper felt like this was the last time he saw his cousins back
on Earth.
Time really was a flat circle, wasn't it?




Once he cleared the area a good half mile out, Harper slid the piece of paper from his pocket and uncrumpled it. 
A single word had hastily scribbled across it. No instructions, no secret codes, nothing except- "Church?" He asked
his grand audience of zilch. 
He had seen a church on the way over here, but, it looked too much like the bombed out hovels he had gotten so
used to seeing back on Earth, he had decided to avoid it. Not that he had a problem mixing with the locals,
he just didn't want to go anywhere where he'd stick out. You know how these things go, you show up somewhere looking
like an outsider and suddenly you're answering fifty million questions because everybody assumes you're probably up 
to something. I mean, he was, but, that was nobody's business but his own. 
















The moment he donned the suit was the moment Tyr Anasazi made a choice between surviving by one's best interests
and the hearts of those he had grown accustomed to. He loathed this beast that lay in symbiosis with their
vessel before him, her irradiated body taking on more of a shade of red over gold as if the facade she held
had been peeled away to reveal the devil underneath. 
This did not deter him from the task at hand. 
It did, however garner an examination of the hollowed out remains of her carapace.

Using one hand to steady her, he used the other to free the energy conduit from her body. Burned, as it was, from
the inside, leaving what was behind an appearance not unlike a cicada's disregarded shell, he found himself wondering
if this was all a body was to her. A second skin. 
Wary now, as one should be, Tyr cautiously turned his back on her to slip the socket back into the ship's main
energy supply and waited as the systems slowly began to wake once again. Under no work of admissions would he tell the others,
but there were passing moments of beauty that seemed to arise from The Andromeda's internal framework. Perhaps it came
from being a man that held appreciation for good lighting. 
Turning, he cast his gaze down to Trance, her body now mostly sealed back to how it was, her blank 
eyes seemingly watching his every move. 

Here, he came to a conclusion that the other hadn't yet perceived. One the changeling had tried and failed to carve
out of him. One he tried and failed to carve out by his own hand. 
Gathering her up in his arms, he carried her from danger and out into the now emptied halls, laying her down on the
floor. This was as far as his mercy would extend to her, the rest would be upon her shoulders to carry for he knew
his limitations and, with them, could only hold so much at one time. "I will take you as far as the medical bay, understood?" 
He was almost relieved to hear no response back.










Staring down into the cliff face below, Dylan could see the outline of what was once a ravine. The runoff from
the previous night's storm had seemed to all but finish it's course, leaving it a patch of dry land. Looking out over
the eyeline of the small army of civilians he had managed to gather, he took note of the way the valleys curved. It
didn't take much imagination to realized this had once been a great shoreline in which the inhabitants, perhaps
in their earliest era of evolution, must've gotten their first taste of land.
Overcome with a sense of scale, Dylan took a step back, imagining what it was like before the sea had dried up. He 
took into account the gorges created by necessity and the damage brought to them by machines of war. The church below, 
now destitute, had been a staple of this valley for centuries. It was no wonder that was their primary choice for a 
settlement as it's place among other structures showed it as the heart of their society. The rest of what had been a 
thriving town was settled with it's foundation and placement in mind. 
It now laid abandoned, half it's inhabitants in hiding and the other half pulled to his side in a moment of great upheaval. 
This was more than just a tactic to chew through fodder. This was a final act of desecration. He saw now that he couldn't 
lead them to victory, only safety. 
Holding himself firmly over their heads, he watched the crowd gather, each participant awaiting a guiding hand. 
"Everybody line up two to two. One in front, one in back." 
As they followed his instruction, he went over everyone's placement as to not leave gaps that may destroy their ruse. They
had to appear far larger in numbers by forced perception and, by this, he needed them to carry the confidence of a battalion, 
not a crowd.
"When the army is driven to this chokepoint I'm going to need all of you to act as if you expected them and that you've been
anticipating ambush. I need pure, concentrated, resolve." 
He pressed a firm first into the breast of a young boy, "Think of somebody who embodies that strength and, in that moment, 
become that person." He then found his place at the forefront of the crowd, watching the panicked stream of soldiers began
to trickle into the canyon below. "Together as one, we can drive back any threat."




 
 
Once Tyr had cleared the main hall, the ship began to spring to life off more than just it's own emergency reserve power.
As he entered the upper deck, the A.I. that was there to greet him gave less of a welcome and more of a court proceeding. 
"So you stole the record, yourselves?" The machine spoke down at Miss Valentine like a common criminal.
"Y...es." She answered back, nervously pressing her palms to the podium that had been fashioned out of their pilot's
seat. Leaning forward, she seemed to be ruminating on a way to explain their situation but seemed to be drawing a blank. 
Coming to her rescue, Tyr presented the disc with a disdain that no longer held it's usual layer of subtlety. 
"It was an improvisation."
"It was irresponsible."
"Irresponsible!?" Beka spoke up, her footing held solid by her anger. "We come back to you being shut off while Trance was
practically cooking in your engine room and you want to call us irresponsible!?" 
"You don't know the circumstances." 
"Like hell I do!" 
Before the boisterous Captain made an attempt to get into a physical altercation with someone who simply did not exist, Tyr
caught her by the elbow and pulled himself up to her side. "I would posit the argument, then, that you have not taken into
account our circumstances." 
Mimicking human expressions, the ship closed it's eyes and opened them again, this time with a sense of calmness that oversaw
them as something of a pitiful sight. "I suppose not..." If this was the Android, she would've followed this with asking them
something personable and unprompted like 'how bad was it?'. It, however, had not. 





The caverns below had begun to flood with massive numbers, men poised side by side with deadly intent. Dylan had recognized
the way they moved; unattached to their own actions, they formed together as a single weapon with many parts. The individuality
of each soldier hidden and guarded behind a helmet, masking their faces so that they were indistinguishable from each other. 
Frightening, as it was, the tactic seemed almost brilliant. They were not moving as many parts but as one being under one
cause. Let's hope that, as a collective, they were all as equally gullible. 

"We're not here for a bloodbath." He waxed down to the crowds below, "There's nothing to be won here, nothing worth losing
your lives over." The 'army' at his back braced themselves firmly around his words. "You will take your weapons and you
will go home." 

Here, they stopped and, as if they had all the time in the world, began to debate amongst themselves. They weren't 
thoughtless in their pursuit, they were calculated, almost democratic, in their tactics. As much as an army
could be, it seems. In the ensuing discussion, a single shot had been squeezed off. At his side, one of the boys
that had kept guard outside the settlement let out a loud shudder of pain, grasping his arms around his body, and 
crumpled to the ground. 
The chaos threatening to pull them all under was now only a heartbeat away. Now was the time to intervene. 

"Don't fall back!" He ordered, immediately coming to the boy's aide, gathering him up into his arms and 
pulling him from the fray. "We will not surrender what we have left!" We? When did an event that had nothing
to do with him other than being a passive pawn in the rearview now involve him at it's core? 
Placing the boy in his companion's trembling arms, he planted a bloodied hand over his makeshift helmet, pushing it 
back to greet the young man at eyelevel. "Do you remember where the nurses took the rest of the wounded?" Despite the fear
brewing behind his scales, the boy nodded. "Take him there. I'll make sure you won't be followed." 
"What will you-"
Breaking free from this exchange and standing tall over the crowd, his hands raised firmly above his head; Dylan resigned. 
"If you need a prize to return with, I offer myself up in exchange for peace!" 







The whole event was unraveling by the second and none of it seemed to be going according to plan. At this point,
Harper was pretty sure that all of this was some half-assed attempt to make Dylan feel better about himself. Like 
sacrifice ever did anything but get people killed. Actually, he had to pause on that thought for a moment. Consider
whether or not he should just leave him to his little soldier boy fantasy and see how far that gets him. After a 
few seconds, he realized how mad the rest of the crew would probably be. Most nameable a certain Android. Unzipping 
his backpack, Harper curved a thumb up under Rommie's neckline and watched as her features sprung to life and twisted up at him. 
"Wakey wakey sleeping beauty, we've got work to do." He smiled down at her and, he could swear if she still had hands, 
she'd have slapped him right then and there. 
"Did you shut me down!?" 
"Yeah?" Wow talk about ungrateful. "Hey, you needed the shuteye, look at you!" 
By the way she was gritting her teeth, he could guess she was imagining herself chewing on his entrails. Metaphorically.
He hoped. 
"You could've asked!" 
"And you could've said no. Look, it's not like I did anything weird, you needed the-"
"That's not the point." She snapped, holding them at a standstill until he finally found the footing to ask something 
that he was pretty sure no one else knew him on a close enough level to answer. Not truthfully, anyway. 
"Am I kinda a control freak?"
"No." She looked him dead in the eye, "Not 'kinda'. You're probably the biggest control freak that ever lived."
Wow she really wasn't pulling her punches this time but he deserved it and he knew it.
"Look I-I know this is a bad time but, can I ask a favor?" 
A pause.
"...That depends."






Boosting himself up on a rock, Harper broke the one rule you had to follow if you wanted to live past thirty. 
He drew attention to himself. "This is why Trance was always the distraction." He mumbled under his breath as 
he positioned himself in clear view to everyone both in and over the canyon, shouting. 
"Hey, so you might wanna unhand that guy." 
Pointing down to Dylan, Harper found himself trying to look like someone in authority. Which easily translates
to 'a guy who can't get off without a gun in his hand'. "You see, that's my prisoner. He's a hardened criminal, 
real nasty guy. Skipped out of prison transport and we've been trying to catch him since." 
"And what crimes does he stand accused of?" One soldier yelled up at him.
"Trust me, you don't wanna know." He grinned, considering the things he could possibly pin on the guy before realizing 
roughly half of those crimes he had committed by the age of twelve. Projection aside, he heard the sound of a bullet 
ricocheting off of the Andromeda's projected shielding at his back and didn't flinch.
"See, that's the problem with all these halfsies running around. You don't know what a real Terran is capable of."
Clapping his hands together, Harper watched their faces as the ground started to rumble. A member of the crowd
let out a scream, pointing to the mountain in the distance, leading them all to
watch as it crumbled and fell to the sea below. "Now, bring me the interloper!" 
Honestly, he couldn't believe these people were buying this crap. Hell, he was even starting to believe it, himself. 
You see, that's the secret to a good lie. Technically, he wasn't lying at all. Every word he spoke was the cold hard
truth. Only inferring to something and letting everyone jump to their own conclusions.
It was personable, logical, even babies only really formed an understanding of the world around them by their 
interpretation of it. The color blue was blue because everyone called it blue. Even if it didn't 
look exactly like the color blue, you had initially perceived it as. 

The same worked for adults, especially when frustrated or angry and needing something to make sense. 
The proof was in the pudding, seeing as they were already dragging Dylan over and throwing him down at his feet. 
Harper crossed his arms over his chest and looked down at his deliciously captive audience. "Look at me, cleaning 
up your messes after you get to play the hero." 
Okay, maybe that was a bit too personal for this crowd, but, hey, he was an opportunist and Dylan didn't exactly 
have the best track record lately so this was probably the only chance he'd get to really rub his nose in it. 
"Well, hero or not, it's time for everyone here to get their wakeup call!" 
Above him, the contents of the record had projected itself to the crowd. Earth, in all her old, beautiful, glory
revealed her face to that of strangers. One that, with time, would change, not really for the better. Sure, 
you could say that she'd have been better off staying quiet and hidden away. At least then, she'd probably still
be untouched but, with that, came stagnation. There was no learning, no development
that came with laying there staring at a wall, dreaming of what you want and how you wanted
it. Refusing to touch or be touched out of fear of the pain that could come. Especially if it
was a pain you had become all too familiar with. He had gotten that now. If he could work up
the gusto to follow that advice for himself, he'd probably be unstoppable, but, eh, baby steps, yanno?


When the music stopped and the video cut out, Harper took it upon himself to coax Dylan off the ground and
follow his lead. They were done here and time would continue to carry on just as it had, just as it should.










This wasn't the first time she had been jolted back alive in the medical bay and this surely wouldn't be the 
last. Trance studied the ceiling, it's cubed sectioning mocked the appearance of ceiling tiles so she followed
their outline until her eyes fell towards the presence at her side. Of all the people she'd expected there,
Tyr didn't even dare to make the list but here he was, shoulders hunched, mind deep in thought, as he quietly 
listened to the hum of their life support system. She wasn't sure if he was guarding her or monitoring her. 

After a long period of silence, Tyr finally lifted himself from his position. "You hate me." He observed.
"I don't hate you." She argued as he held up a hand in a show of restraint. 
"The feeling is mutual." 
"Then why go through all the effort of helping me at all?" 
He shrugged, unreadable as ever and growing moreso with each passing day. 
"I had never seen you in peril before." He observed. "Why is that?" 

It was obvious on her end what had happened. Her physical form had given out due to the strain between supplying 
the ship with energy and withstanding the radiation. Only, she had been locked in this state, alone and unmonitored, trapped
in a cycle of being unable to recover properly, achieving a type of pseudo-'death' that left her dormant until moved. 
Just like Dylan had been years before. 

"It seems that, perhaps..." Tyr continued, his mind pouring over the details, "...Under the correct circumstances, 
even the unkillable can be killed." 
Springing up, she felt his arm reach out and lay her back down, again. "That was not a threat." He forewarned. "Although, 
in this case, I appreciate that I pose as one to you." So nice to clear that up for her. "But, considering your nature, 
what of me would you have to fear?" 

She thought of him laying on the floor, freed from being enraptured by powers that should've long stayed in check, all
of the cracks in his armor torn open and bleeding out in tears. All his terror and pain and fear no longer being able to 
solidify itself as anger poured out towards Dylan's feet, at Harper's knees, in Rommie's hands.

As all the king's horses and all the king's men...

"There's something wrong with you." She watched his face, now regarding her with a scowl, began to show her those cracks.
"My powers I can't-" She felt something shift between them, "-fate can't control you." He usually found a way
to destroy himself before she could notice it. While it was a matter of odds, death was not destiny and his path lay
uncertain. 

Here he was, sitting with free will and neither of them had seen it until now. 

"Of course it can't." He poised as if he had known all along. Looking away from her, he tried to fight at the smile slowly 
angling at his lips, his eyes regarding the infirmary door like he had been bestowed an honor and not a curse. 









"Harper-" 
"No!" Scrambling his fingers through his own dirty hair, Harper realized that his brain had been
in such a tailspin in the past few days, weeks, months, he couldn't even manage to land a single
clever thought about anything right now. He could really go for a bath or even a full-on 
molting at this point. "I am so sick of you and your speeches and your Commonwealth and your crap!
Can you just shut up for two seconds so I can recalibrate the stupid gauges on your stupid slipfighter 
so we can go back to our stupid time so I don't have to see your stupid face anymore!?" 
"-I'm sorry."
"What-" Way to make a guy feel like the biggest jerk in the whole galaxy. Narrowing his eyes, he 
looked Dylan up and down, assessing the troglodyte like he would some smooth-talking criminal mastermind. 
"You're bluffing." He spat. "You don't even know what you're sorry for!" 
"You're right. I don't." Dylan admitted in that unabashed way he did when he was being all genuine with 
somebody. It was sickening, really. "But I'd like to." Placing a firm hand on his shoulder, Dylan gave 
it a squeeze. "I think there are a few things we should discuss when we get back. I'd love to hear your
input."
Like a steam valve that had been ready to blow being shut off, Harper found nowhere to put his anger. Usually,
he'd swallow it, let it rot in his stomach for days on end until it was ready to explode back out after too
many small incidences coaxed it out inch by inch. Instead, he decided to drop it on the ground for everyone to see.
Dylan needed to know that it was still there even if they weren't going to touch on it right now.  
"Ah, that's what you say to all the cute girls." He resigned with a laugh.
"Oh, no, they're the ones who receive promotions." Dylan smiled. "Usually something with healthcare benefits." And off
he went like nothing had happened at all. Not like Harper was going to let him get away with that for long. 
"Are you telling me I could've been seeing a real doctor this whole time!?" He called back, already plotting 
all the future possibilities to be a thorn in his side in what he was now going to call his 'Five Year Plan'.

Pulling open his backpack, he came face to face with the cockiest grin an Android could manage without breaking 
a motor receptor. "I told you, he's not so bad." Rommie then paused to reconsider, "...Once you get past the ego, I mean."
"Great, now all that's left is the ID and the Superego and we might actually get somewhere for once." He then reached past her
to grab a hold of his wrench; not a turbowrench, not a protosteel adjuster, but a good ol' American wrench copped from a long 
abandoned good ol' American mom & pop store made in the good ol' country of Taiwan. "You did great, by the way." 
"Not too shabby?"
"Shabby!?" He gawked, "I don't even think I could even begin to give you the props for everything you managed to pull off 
back there."
"Well, it was your plan."
"Who cares if it was my plan, I couldn't pull off half the stuff you do." She deserved the world for it and all he could
give her was a simple thank you. It didn't seem right. "Rommie, you were amazing out there."
"The hardest part was trying to keep the signal clear through your stupid backpack."
He smiled at her. "Yeah, it is pretty stupid, isn't it?" 
"I don't know, I think I've gotten kind of used to it. It's kind of cozy...in a way." 
"Not for long it won't be. When we get back, I'm building you whatever you want, a new adapter, sturdier framing; the works." 
He pointed his wrench at her like she was Cinderella and he was her fairy godmother offering to turn a pumpkin into a horse 
carriage just for the sake of a one night stand. "You want longer legs? I can get you longer legs." 
"No, I think my original design was adequate." 
Against his better judgement, and all the dirt that had accumulated in every orifice he never even knew he had, Harper could
feel his face light up. "Rom, I could kiss you." 
"Please don't."
He hummed at the idea, reaching past her to grab a few pieces he had managed to swipe from their crashed slipfighter, "Your loss."
  



















The flight home didn't really posit anything special of note. Except the excessive damage, that is. Before Dylan could push
his luck any further by asking something as stupid as 'what happened?' Harper pressed his palms to his eyes in order to blot
out the sight and groaned, "I don't wanna know!" Before putting in the coordinates to slip through the docking bay's manual port. 
Somebody was gonna have to answer for this, big time.

The rest of the ship was no different, the place had been ransacked like a couple of petty criminals armed with nothing
but a gun and a vague sense of direction had tried to find their way to the ship's upper deck. 
"Glad to know everyone made it back alright." Dylan joked in a way that had him nearly take a swing. 



To Dylan, the ship seemed fine as they had weathered worse conditions than this. Not that he'd ever bring himself to actually
say that. He saw the way Mr. Harper was accounting for every bit of damage, clocking in the man hours and sleepless nights
without pay and with little aide. It was just their luck that they were, once again, working with a skeleton crew or he'd find himself
in more dire straights than the one he now found himself in.

Staring down the barrel of a blaster, Dylan watched as the doorway separating him from the deck had been kept guard by more
than just a few pounds of permasteel. 
"I will be your prisoner no longer." Tyr growled through gritted teeth as he looked past the weapon in his
hands to the fire in his eyes. 
Scattered, the rest of his crew had frozen in a state of shock, each holding their breath, imagining one outcome after the next, 
every iteration somehow growing worse than the last until, finally, Dylan met him with a coy smile. "A deal's a deal." With his 
hands raised, he sidestepped, allowing Tyr full access to the docking bay. "Once we return, you may come and go as you please." 
Here, something changed. Shifting under their feet as if the gravitational systems that kept them in place
had rearranged itself and, with it, so did Tyr's demeanor, lowering his firearm with a sigh of relief. 
Casting it aside, he smoothly made his way to a nearby seat and collapsed into it, comfortably crossing his ankle 
over his knee. "So then..." He scratched the edge of his beard just a bit, considering his words carefully, "What's our next 
course of action?"





















The trip back to their time had been a lengthy one. Some kind of business about space pirates and system overloads and
breaking into the ship's docking bay. All in all, it was just one long list of repairs that'd have to be done. For now,
though, deep inside his workshop, Harper let himself mull over everything. He pulled the crumpled piece of paper from 
his pocket, reading it off again and again as if it was trying to tell him something that just wasn't coming through in 
translation. Rolling his chair over to the nearest monitor, he typed in a simple search and hit play, filling the room 
with the sounds of an Earth he never got to see. 
Putting his feet up on the desk, he sat, watching the images filter across the screen, grainy and crude, sinking into his 
chair as it lulled him into a gentle sleep.