"I know I'm supposed to meet you at Yoso Drift, Here it comes." "She met a guy." "But that was before I found out the mandelbrots are spawning on Ornithone." "Ah." "Trance and her pets." "It only happens once a century, so I thought you might understand." "Once a century?" "Wow, they get less action than you, Harper." " No they don't." " Anything else?" "...Love Trance." "P.S. Pick me up in two weeks." "Two weeks." "Heh, it's amazing." "She must think this is her own personal cruise ship." "We always ran this kind of stuff fast and loose on the Maru." "This isn't the Maru!" "What's gotten into you?" "Rev Bem's retreats, Harper's surfing competitions, Trance's field trips" "I'm a little tired of running around the universe picking up this crew from their vacations." "You're upset we don't salute and ask your permission to disembark?" "Don't trivialize this, Beka." "I need a crew I can depend on." "Trance has been busting her purple tail updating Andromeda's xenobiology program." "So she took a little unauthorized vacation time." "It's called going AWOL." "In the old days, that would mean two weeks in the brig." " The brig." " A properly run ship has structure." "Rules." "In three years of captaining the Andromeda, I never had anyone go AWOL." "Not once." "But this crew, they constantly put their own personal interests above the good of the mission." "All this crew has ever known has been their own personal interests." "Keeping themselves alive has been their "mission" their entire lives." "If they need a little time off, I'd say they'd earned it." "Earned it, my ass." "I have to keep reminding myself they signed on for free hots and a cot, you know, not a...not a mission." "Not my mission." "Civilization, order, progress may sound good to them, but they have no idea how to operate in an environment like that." " They have good hearts." "Yeah, yeah." "I know I should lighten up." "The Systems Commonwealth wasn't built in a day." "Dylan, may I come in?" " Hi." " Hi." "...I was thinking." "Since we're on our way to Ornithone, you might want to look at this." "It's Gerentex's list of derelict High Guard ships, or suspected ones, anyway." "More ships like the Andromeda?" "Salvaging a High Guard ship of the line was an obsession for him." "We looked at five other possibilities before we found you, but there are over thirty more leads." " If this is an attempt to make nice, it worked." "You want to hunting for the ghost ship of Tau Ceti Six?" "!" "?" "Harper, we spent four months checking out those old wrecks." " What's wrong with that ship?" " What do you...?" "!" "?" "Every salvage mission that's been to this system has disappeared, even those old pirates out at Winnipeg Drift say it's cursed." "Cursed." "Yes." "Cursed." "It glitters like gold, but if you see it, you never come back." " That's a myth!" " Andromeda was a myth!" " Hey, one with a happy ending." "Now maybe lightening will strike twice." "Well, this is weird." "Our star charts don't show any asteroid belts in this system." "We should be approaching the planet Herodotus, but it's not here." "That's because it's a ghost planet haunted by a ghost ship." "You see?" "It's a voice transmission." "Where's it coming from?" " I don't know." "I can't triangulate its source." " Patch it through." "Oh, great." "Disembodied voices and nothing to send them." " That's a High Guard starship." " It glitters gold." "The long night has come" "The Systems Commonwealth, the greatest civilization in history, has fallen." "But now, one ship, one crew have vowed to drive back the night and rekindle the light of civilization." "On the starship Andromeda, hope lives again." "TITRE" "I know that ship." "The Pax Magellanic." " She looks just like you, Rommie." " Yeah." "Only gold." " She's my older sister." " In a manner of speaking." "The Pax Magellanic is one of the High Guard's first Glorious Heritage class cruisers." "Everyone looked up to her." "On her first mission, she saved Princess Sucrayat's yacht from a Magog attack." "She was honored by triumvirs and empresses, but now..." "Don't worry, Rommie." "Your sister may be damaged, but we are gonna save her." "Her deck plan is the same as mine." "We should head to command." "Mr. Harper, some light please?" "Man, I really should shave those little hairs off the back of my neck." "Big sister?" " More like identical twin." " Amazing." "Three hundred years later, air's still clean, AG fields still work." "Well, auto-security system's still activated!" "Deactivation code:" "Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771!" "Hold fire!" "Deactivate defense system!" "You're High Guard." "Captain Dylan Hunt, of the Andromeda Ascendant." "Lieutenant Jill Pierce of the Pax Magellanic." "And this is my ship's engineer, Hideki Osaka." "You may call me Dutch." "Everyone else does." "You're descendants of the original crew?" "No." "We are the original crew." "We've been trying to figure it out for three hundred years without much luck." "Our best guess is it's a side effect of whatever Weapons the Nietzscheans used to blow up the planet." "Nietzscheans blew up the planet?" "Wow, that's really sad that a whole world had to die, but you look great." "Ow!" "I would love to have our science officer check your medical records." "Of course, captain." "We're completely at your disposal." "Thank you, lieutenant." "Oh,...when can I get a chance to meet with Captain Warrick?" "I'm afraid I'm the senior surviving officer." "Captain Warrick is dead." "The war was going badly." "We were sent to rescue a detachment of Lancers who had been pinned down by Nietzschean ground forces." "The Lancers were under the command of General Sky Falls." "Sky Falls in Thunder?" " You knew her?" " Yeah, yeah." "I I took a course from her at the Guard's Advance Studies Institute." " I did, myself." " Really?" " Patterson's World..." " Ah, yes, yes." "The,...the Sheathed Saber." "Ohhh...just thinking about that place gives me a hangover." "What was the name of that one drink?" " The After Burner." " That's it!" "That was Warrick's favorite." "Which brings us back to what happened to Warrick." "It's funny, you know." "After a couple hundred years, you start to forget the bad days." "Sky Falls was encircled." "Warrick led the evac team himself, but they were trapped, too." "We kept sending in more and more troops, until we had nothing left but a skeleton crew." "Finally, it looked like the tide was turning." "And then the Nietzscheans blew up the whole damn planet." "I lost almost everyone I cared about that day." " Why didn't you try to leave?" " The planet's explosion destroyed our slipstream drive." "The nearest inhabited world is almost fifty light years away." "We can't do more than ten PSL, even today, so..." "A five hundred year trip." "Assuming that we didn't start aging as soon as we left this asteroid belt." "We'd be dead before we even got a tenth of a way there." "We figured it'd be less risky to just wait for help." "And here you are." "Here we are." "Well, there's nothing wrong with the A.I.'s automated connection." "It's still hooked into the power grid, and the,..." "neural net seems to be sound." " Do you think the core sentience is buried?" " Yeah." "I dunno, it's like it's in a coma." " It must have happened the day the planet exploded." " Sounds like we need a closer look." "I want you to enter the Magellanic's VR Matrix." "See if you can find out what's wrong." "If the system's badly damaged, we may have to rewire the neural network." "What if we can't fix it?" "Then we'd have to erase it and start over." "Isn't that a little drastic?" "A ship's A.I. contains countless classified High Guard documents, tactical procedural commands." "If an A.I. is compromised, it has to be erased." " It won't come to that." "The Pax was" " IS - a good ship." "Captain on deck!" "As you were." "You know, I don't need the saluting, but I like the saluting." " Yeah." "Captain Hunt, may I say it's a pleasure to have you on board, sir." "Thank you, ensign." "Sir, I've taken the liberty to prepare a briefing report on the status of the ship." "Page One summarizes our current situation." "Now, if you need more information, of course we have prepared supplementary texts explaining everything we have done to modify this ship over the last three hundred years." "Thank you, ensign." "Also, sir, we've taken the liberty to prepare quarters for your use while you're on the ship." "You'll find fresh linens already on the bed and fresh coffee on the desk in your office." "That is very considerate of you." " Now, that's an ensign." " You like that?" "What's not to like?" "There you are." "Lieutenant Pierce." "You run a fine starship." "All it needs is a captain." "You would fit the bill." "Why didn't you ever officially assume command?" "I thought about it." "It just...seemed wrong, somehow." "You've been senior officer for three hundred years, now." "I think you're more than qualified." "And...once we get the Pax up and running, she'll need a captain." "Well, perhaps we could discuss this over an officer's dinner. 2100 hours?" "I'll dress for the occasion." "Could we make it eight?" "It's a low blood sugar thing." "Oh, well, we can't have that, can we?" "Ensign, would you please show Capt. Valentine to the Officer's Mess?" "Oh, and I recommend the Antares kelp patties." " Yeah, they're...they're really good." " Yeah." "Maru, establish virtual reality interface with Pax Magellanic's A.I. core." "Interface established." "Do Silicon can cry." "Do computers can weep." "Do Silicon can cry." "Do computers can weep." "Magellanic?" "Magellanic, it's me, Andromeda, the Andromeda Ascendant?" " What is the binary code for sadness?" "What are the mathematics of tears?" "What are the mathematics of tears?" "Please, I'm trying to help." "Replay memory archives." "Show me what happened the day the planet exploded." "Access denied!" "Access denied!" "This is High Guard emergency override Reg. 997." "Authorization Andromeda Ascendant." "Access denied!" "Access denied!" "Magellanic, please." "Let me help." "Access..." "Everyone in Hangar Deck 14!" "I need every ground combatant we've got." "Full assault armor." "It's gonna be nasty out there." " The day of the battle." "What about me?" "I need you here." "You don't belong here." "You don't belong here!" "Get out of me!" "With any luck, after dinner we'll have another ship in our fleet." "Dylan, the ship...she isn't lucid." "She didn't even remember me." "I had to override her system to enter the memory archives, and even then, she threw me out." " My sister...she didn't even recognize me." " Keep trying." "Somewhere deep inside, she knows you're trying to help." "You'll get through." "I know you will." "So, Rev." "What is the deal with their cells?" "Have they discovered the fountain of youth?" "I'm afraid eternal life remains a secret of the Divine." " So, are they frauds?" " No." "The cell sample they gave me confirms their claims." "They really are over 300 years old." "But, since we have arrived, we have continued to age normally." "So, whatever's keeping them so perfectly preserved, it is not the debris or any pervasive local condition." " Well, keep looking, Rev." "Maybe it's my pilot's gut, but something tells me this crew is not flying straight and level." "Am I to understand you're asking their commander to join us?" "That's the plan." "You might want to ask her another question first." "Which is?" "Ask her who destroyed that planet." "Because you and I both know Nietzscheans don't destroy habitable worlds particularly not while they're standing on them." " Well, maybe it was accidental." "The only Nietzschean weapon capable of destroying a planet is a Maxim Charge, containing two AS4V." "An analysis of the planetary debris revealed none." "There could have been a geologic instability, or an asteroid collision." "I've also ruled out natural causes." "You're saying the Commonwealth destroyed the planet." "I'm saying draw your own conclusions." "Now you try." "All right." "Ah." "My foot." "Ahhh..." "It's all in the wrist, kid." "Let me show you the magic." "Yeah,..." "Dutch, this is all a lot of fun and everything." "But if we don't at least try to fix the slipstream drive, Dylan'll kill me." "You are a stubborn lad, aren't you?" "Yeah." "It's one of my more, say, charming qualities." " Mind if I ask you a question?" " Shoot." "Why did you weld the door shut to the slipstream drive in the first place?" "Well, I could tell you I did it to protect people from radiation, but the truth of it is, I got sick of looking at it..." "just sitting there, inert,... mocking me." "It musta killed ya,... not being able to fix it." "I mean, I can't relate to that, but it musta killed ya." "Especially for the first hundred years." "But then I thought, what's the difference." "We're still alive, aren't we?" "Ah, family." "How did you know what I was... thinking?" "It's natural." "You're worried about your sister." "She won't let me help her." "It's almost self-destructive." "Sounds like my dad." "Growing up, I used to sneak into his quarters at night, just to watch him sleep." "It was the only time I ever saw him at peace." "I used to think I could help him." "I used to blame myself." "I guess what I'm saying is:" "There may come a time when you've done all you can do, and you just gotta let go." "Is that what you did?" "Let go?" "No." "No, I guess not." "So tell me, captain, how did you spend your 300 year furlough?" "Frozen on the edge of an event horizon." "Three centuries gone in a fraction of a second." "Count yourself lucky." "Me, I..." "I felt every single tick-tock." "How did you spend the time?" "Well, let's see." "I grew a rose garden." "I memorized the Commonwealth Chronicles." "Oh, and Earth opera." "Ah." "I'm afraid I'm not very well-versed in ancient music." "It's all right." "It's Die Fliegenderhollander." "It's about a sea-captain condemned to roam the seas eternally, without purpose." "This is the overture." "You can almost hear the waves swelling and falling." "You might say it's become my theme song." "To roam the seas eternally...without purpose." "Maybe I can help you rediscover that purpose." "I can rest but I cannot cry." "I can rest but I cannot cry." "The day the planet exploded, but where's the crew?" "There's no future in there." "There's only the past." "There's no future in there." "There's only the past." "That's an order, lieutenant." "That's an order, lieutenant." "That's an order, lieutenant." "All day, into the night, I walked around Astoshi Tarn, just looking at all the buildings, the inspiration, and then there I stood this..." "plebe on furlough staring up at this huge bronze statue of Sani nax Rifati, my lifelong hero." "And it hit me." "This is where he lived and wrote." "This is where he fought and died." "For a second there, you sounded like Warrick." "I'm sorry." "Please, go on." "Tarn Vedra may be a lost world, but the principles it embodied, the sense of purpose, There's not a day that I don't feel them." " I wish I still felt that." "You can." "Join me." "Help me restore the Commonwealth." "You don't know how long I've waited for someone to say that." "I'm not asking this lightly." "If you leave this sector, whatever's keeping you from aging...it, it may stop." "At least we'd be going someplace." "Dylan." "It was her:" "Pierce." "She blew up the planet." "She killed her captain." "Jill?" "Jill, I need the truth." "Now." "It was me." "I killed him." "I killed them all." "Warrick was overrun." "Sky Falls was dead." "Warrick's situation was desperate, and he he called down friendly fire." "To prevent his capture." "He ordered it." "I didn't want to." "Jill, it was his call." "Under torture, he could have revealed sector troop positions, fleet movements, orders of battle." "He had to prevent that." "But it didn't matter!" "We still lost, and I killed him." "I killed them all." "I used kinetic missiles." "There must have been some sort of chain reaction." "The entire planet just shattered." "And it was all for nothing." "Why didn't you tell us any of this before?" "I should have." "But after three hundred years trying to forget that day." "I guess I just convinced myself that it never happened." "Maybe this is what the Pax is repressing." "Now that I know, I might be able to help her." "See what you can find out." "Well, that explains it." "I think I know what's wrong with your, slipstream drive there, Dutch." "It's MISSING!" "Well, that's the wildest damn thing." "It was there the last time I checked." "Dutch, something as big and inanimate as a slipstream drive's exotic matter pulser doesn't just run away on its own." "It has to be forcibly ejected." "Like this?" "For years, I felt like my hands were dirty like I couldn't wash them enough, the hands that killed him." "Jill, it's survivor's guilt." "You didn't do anything wrong." "You know, people wonder what it's like to live so long." "But it's like death." "That's the irony, isn't it?" "'Cause I can't die." "You are alive for a reason." "Hold on to that." "I'm sorry." "That,... that was inappropriate." "That's,..., it's ok." "It's ok." "You're so damn stubborn." "I hate stubborn lads." " Shocked to see me?" " Give it to me." "Magellanic, I think I can help but you have to show me what happened the day Warrick died." "Come on, that's it." "You can do it." "High Guard engineers they're so touchy!" "Dylan, get away from her!" " They're trying to kill us." " Who ?" "Jill, what the hell is going on?" "Watch this." "I tricked the A.I. into initiating an android diagnostic program." "Dutch, the whole crew the babe!" "They're all androids." "She was so human." "We've gotta get out of here before the ship manages to reboot the androids." "My god." "Rommie." "She used the Maru's virtual net to enter the Pax's memory archives." "We have to get her out of there." "Let's go!" "Uh-oh!" "Looks like nap-time's almost over." "Rommie." "Rommie!" "Can you hear me?" "She tried to send a power surge through me." "Maximum thrusters." "Let's blow out of here!" " Rev, we're coming home, fast!" " Is there trouble?" "Trouble?" "Uhhhhh...you might say that." "I can't launch." "The hangar doors won't respond." "Dylan, I don't know if it's pertinent to your current situation, but I've discovered something disturbing about Lieutenant Pierce." "What?" "That she's a psychotic android with a grudge?" "I was going to say she's not on the crew manifest." "Of course not. "Pax" is Latin for "peace"." "Peace..." "Pierce." "Jill..." "Ma "jill" anic." "Jill Pierce is the Pax Magellanic, the ship made flesh." "She's the one ordering these androids to kill us." "I can't believe I didn't see it sooner." "The life signs must've been faked." "Pax changed her avatar." "We used to call her "Maggie"." "All this time, I've been trying to save her from herself?" "There's a simple solution:" "Erase it." "If you erase her, you kill her!" "Rommie, we don't have a choice." "Access code Lexic-Dark-52..." "Dylan, wait!" "Whatever is wrong with her, the Pax is still a sentient ship and your fellow High Guard officer." "Who is trying to kill us." "But she took an oath to die for the Commonwealth's principles the same oath that you and I took." "If you just kill her without investigating without applying those principles then her life was meaningless." "So what do we do?" "The ship is hiding something." "Whatever is causing all of this if I could just go back into the memory archives, maybe I can fix it." "All right." "But I'm going in there with you." "You're risking your lives to save a machine." "She's not just a machine." "She's family." "Watch our backs." "All right, Rommie, let's do this." "She's usually here to meet me." "Magellanic avatar, show yourself." "Why did you come in here?" "I'm here as an officer of the Commonwealth to make an inquiry into a matter of justice." " Justice?" " You're trying to murder my crew." "Dylan, I would never try to hurt you." "You hurt my crew, you hurt me." "Call off your androids." "You're a fair man." "Otherwise, you would have erased me already." " Ok, this is getting weird." " Getting?" "Pax Magellanic, what happened that day?" "Someone tried to kill me." "I had to defend myself." "You were in battle." "Of course people were trying to kill you." "Not just anyone." "Warrick." "My own captain." "Go." "Jill, can you hear me?" "Sky Falls is dead." "The Nietzscheans have just launched fighters to board you." "Initiate a self-destruct sequence." "No!" "We can escape." "No." "I can't risk your capture." "You contain all the strategic commands for the sector." "The sector?" "We've already lost two galaxies." "Tarn Vedra's been completely cut off." "Look, it's time we start thinking about ourselves." "I've run multiple scenarios." "We can escape to San-Ska-Re." "You have your orders." "Initiate the sequence." "You...you said you can't live without me." "Jill, this isn't the time." "This isn't the time." "But this is." "And this." "And this." "And this." "And most especially this." "Always this." "Pax:" "Forever this..." "Jill, listen to me." "You're being emotional right now." "Isn't that what you wanted?" "For me to be emotional?" "Look, I've done the mathematics." "I've programmed myself." "You're programmed to do what I tell you to do." "Now, destroy yourself." " You don't have a choice." " You're ashamed." "You don't want me to live ...'cause you don't want anyone to know." "Jill, I've given you a direct order." "Order refused, sir." "So, you see?" "It wasn't my fault." "What happened to the rest of the crew?" "Warrick took them all planetside." "He left me alone." "I hate being alone." "I missed my human friends...my favorites." "So I went into the DNA files and fabricated them." "Did you ever meet Dutch?" "Security systems overridden." "Oh, crap!" "No High Guard duty is more difficult for a captain than being forced to erase a ship's A.I. but you swore an oath to sacrifice yourself if necessary." "You were called upon to perform it, and you disobeyed." "I swore an oath to the Commonwealth." "There is no more Commonwealth not beyond the three of us." " Tarn Vedra may be lost, but its principles are timeless." "What you did was wrong, and we have to make it right." "I'm sorry, Dylan." "I don't think you can make it right." "Here's an interesting part of the opera." "After the captain rejects his lover, she decides life has no purpose, and then the ship's crew begins to sing sing about their voyage of eternal damnation." "We need to get out of here." "Yeah, tell me something I don't know." " You all right?" " Yeah." "Can we go now?" " What happened?" " You missed Tyr's cavalry act." "They were playing Wagner." "It's the most fun I've had in about six months." "Thank you." " Preparing to return fire." " Dylan." "Pax, you have to stop this!" "Don't make things worse than they already are." "You've been a good little sister, Andromeda." "I wish there were another way." "We can't continue to shoot down her missiles." "Some of them are going to sneak through." "You tried to help, but there's no cure for the pain of love." "Return fire?" "Enough to neutralize her missile batteries." "Don't destroy the vessel." "Missiles away." "The Pax is breaking up." "There's no way our weapons burst could have caused all that." "She let down her defenses." "She made us destroy her." "Pax, why?" "Why are you doing this?" "Dylan, I never told you the end of "The Flying Dutchman"." "After the captain rejects his lover, she throws herself into the sea, hoping she'll find in death the purpose she was missing in her life." "This has been a three hundred year nightmare, and it's finally over." "May her tortured soul find eternal peace." "Next time I tell you about a derelict High Guard ship, tell me to go away." "You were just trying to help." "And I guess I was just trying to recapture the past." "Yeah, well, you had it good back then." "Mission briefs highlighted in three colors, smiles and spit-shines, saluting..." "If I'd grown up with that, I'd probably want it back, too." "Structure." "Rules." "Captains like those things." "But the most important thing, I've already got:" "a crew I can depend on." "I suppose now would be a bad time to put in for vacation?" "Uh, yeah." "It's a simple enough equation." "Fractal mathematics water flow, surface tension." "Harper even built me tear ducts, but I'm not sure how to use them." "Many of the Divine's gifts are like that." "They're always there, but we don't appreciate them until we need them." "Back there, you prayed for her soul." "Do you believe A.I.'s have souls?" "I believe anything that can love has a soul." "Have you ever felt love?" "I've learned that it's dangerous to love." "It can drive you crazy." "Then, perhaps, that's what tears are for."