"Battle stations." "Battle stations." "All crew, man your battle stations." "Three minutes five!" "Three minutes six!" "Three minutes seven!" "MOVE IT, THOMPSON!" "I wish you wouldn't do that." "What if your anti-grav harness failed and I couldn't catch you in time." "Oh, Andromeda, you wouldn't let that happen, because then you'd have to break in a new captain." "Starboard Point Defense Station Five, manned and ready." "Report." "Captain, all stations manned and ready." "Elapsed time, three minutes twenty-seven seconds." "Too slow!" "Too loud." "Thompson, you forgot to activate the secondary battery." "Andromeda had to do it for you." "Yes sir." "I'm sorry, sir." "It won't happen again." "It better not." "All hands, stand down!" "All crew, stand down from stations." " Ship-wide, Rommie." " All crew, stand down." "End of drill." "This is the captain." "Not bad, people, but I'm not doing any cartwheels." "Team-leaders, coordinate additional sessions." "You know what to do." "Let's get it under three minutes." "Dismissed." "We suck." "Thompson." "That unavailable battery compromised his entire sector." "He's a bright kid." "He'll learn." "If he lives long enough." "Ever the cynic." "You know, I can't wait to hear your toast at my wedding." ""To Dylan and Sarah." "I'm sure you'll have a long and happy life together." "Unless you die."" "Nietzscheans don't believe in optimism." "It inhibits survival." "So does pessimism." "I'm glad you're getting married." "You may not be properly engineered, but your genes are sound." "You should reproduce." "Thanks, I hope Sarah agrees with you." "I'm sure she does." "As the great philosopher wrote :" ""Man is for woman a means." "The end is always a child."" "I take it back." "You're not a cynic, you're a romantic." "Captain Hunt, we're receiving a hail from a Systems Courier ship." "It's indicating a stellar level emergency." "On our way." "Captain on deck." "As you were." "Status." "A courier just transmitted to normal space." "We're moving to intercept." "Are we close enough for real time?" "Range is one light second." "Establish communications." "This is the Systems Courier ship Alacrative Missive." "Do you copy?" "Go ahead, Missive." "It's a rogue black hole!" "Hephaestus system." "They're trying to evacuate, but there aren't enough ships." "Hephaestus has a population of nearly half a billion sentients." "You're the first ship I've contacted." "Plot a course to Hephaestus." "Plotting course." "Keep moving, notify everyone you can." "Dispatch our own couriers." "Tell them to spread the word." "Ship-wide." "This is the captain." "All hands, prepare to receive refugees." "Rig the ship for maximum capacity." "Ejecting cargo from bays one through five." "Approaching transit point." "Brace for slipstream." "Dawn, transit to slipstream on my mark." "Three two one mark" "Transitting back to normal space in three, two, and..." "We're receiving over a thousand distress signals." "Reading a powerful singularity in the outer solar system." "Mass : three times ten to the thirty-first kilos." "Range: one-point-two light minutes." "Hephaestus's population is over 70% Nietzscheans." "If my people are running, the situation must be desperate." "We'll take on as many people as we can." "Deploy outrunners." "If there are any orbital habitats near the singularity, we've got to evacuate them immediately." "A contingent of ships is closing on us, aft and port." "Tell them we'll get to them as soon as we..." "They're firing on us!" "It's a trap." "Battle stations!" "The long night has come" "The system Commonwealth, the greatest civilisation was fall and now one ship, one crew are about drive back the night, they'll gush up the light of civilisation on the starship Andromeda hope lives again" "Battle stations." "Battle stations." "All crew, man your battle stations." "Tell me this is another drill." "It is no drill." "I was afraid of that." "All battle stations manned and ready." "Two minutes, forty-one seconds." "Deploy combat drones." "How many ships are we up against?" "I'm detecting over ten thousand enemy vessels." "What?" "Five hundred are already within combat radius." "All of them appear to be of Nietzschean design." "Ten thousand ships?" "It must have taken years to gather a force this big." "Sir, I recommend we deploy Nova bombs." "This system is inhabited!" "I will not use strategic weapons, no matter how many ships we're up against." "As you wish." "More ships are closing." "We have to warn the rest of the High Guard." "You think this is some kind of Nietzschean conspiracy against the Commonwealth?" "They're Nietzscheans." "They're shooting at us." "Given the circumstances, I should be confined to the brig, along with the other Nietzscheans in the crew." "Are you telling me I can't trust you?" "I'm saying you can't afford to take any chances." "Sergeant, take Commander Rhade to the brig." "See to it that the other Nietzschean crewmembers are releaved of duty." "Aye, Captain." "We can't maneuver." "There are too many of them." "We've lost over 70% of our drones." "Can we transit to slipstream?" "Not here." "The gravitational pull of the black hole is too strong." "We're trapped." "Thompson!" "Thompson!" "Hull breach on level 8, section 3." "Evacuate immediately." "Thompson." "I've lost connections with the lower decks." "We've had multiple hull breaches." "Life support is failing." "How long to transit?" "We need ten more minutes to get past the gravitational distortions." "We're not gonna make it." "How many of your androids are still functional?" "Twenty-nine." "Fifteen others are still on-line, but I can't..." "It'll have to do." "Man the critical systems." "Give me ship-wide." "Ship-wide." "This is the captain." "All hands abandon ship." "Repeat." "All hands abandon ship." "Use every available escape pod and drone." "Get away from the Andromeda as fast as possible, then scatter." "Make your way to Starport and warn the High Guard what's happened here." "What about you?" "I have an idea." "You always do." "You're gonna need a good pilot." "I ordered you to abandon ship." "Let the record show that First Lieutenant Refractions of Dawn respectfully refuses to comply." "If we live through this, you can court martial me." "You are one stubborn bug." "What's the human expression?" "Guilty as charged." "Abandon ship." "All crew, abandon ship." "Proceed to escape pods." "Shuttles available on Hangar Deck Three." "Abandon ship." "Abandon ship." "Abandon ship." "This way, sir." "Keep training better." "Seal off command and control." "Vent the rest of the atmosphere." "We need to make the ship as light as possible." "The rest of the ship's been depressurized." "Set a course." "Heading zero-nine-zero by negative fifteen." "But sir, that takes us right" "I know where it takes us." "straight into the black hole." "Dylan, are you sure about this?" "My connections to the rest of the ship are shot." "We're leaking anti-protons from the port reserve tanks." "I can't guarantee I'll have enough power left to pull us away from the singularity." "We're not strong enough to fight our way free." "We've gotta use the black hole's gravity to slingshot us away from the Nietzscheans." "It's our only chance." "Course laid in." "All forward, lieutenant." "All forward." "Aye." "I, ..., didn't catch that last part." "My life." "My soul." "For the hive." "For the hive." "Or as you apes would put it, BANZAI!" "Gravity fields are holding." "We're heading straight at it." "When should I vector away?" "Not just yet." "Let's build up some speed first." "We're at 25 PSL. 26. 28." "Thirty!" "The main energy grid....." "I'm losing power..." "We've lost all power." "Going to reserves." "Andromeda!" "Ship!" "Are you there?" "The AI network's been disrupted." "How could that happen?" "Stay focused, lieutenant." "Aye-Aye." "We can still make it." "One thing's for sure." "There's no turning back now." "Rhade?" "Ten light seconds away." "Divert all power to starboard engine and plot a hyperbolic fly-by." "But keep us at least a half light-second away from the event horizon." "Got it." "Dylan!" "Sabotage!" "Sabotage." "Captain!" "The starboard engines are off-plane." "Rotate ship to compens...." "Commander?" "Rhade!" "I tried to warn you." "What are you doing?" "Ensuring the survival of my people." "The Commonwealth is weak." "It bargains with its enemies, it compromises." "My people are engineered to be perfect!" "And the Commonwealth is no place for the strong." "So the Nietzscheans decided to destroy it." "We spent years preparing, waiting, arguing." "For a long time, I opposed the destruction of the Systems Commonwealth." "So did many others." "The Treaty of Antares changed all that." "The Magog." "Yes!" "The Magog." "Savages." "Predators." "They eat sentient beings." "They reproduce by rape." "They killed over a billion people on Brandenburg Tor." "They destroyed the Nietzschean colony on Hawking." "And what did the Commonwealth do?" "We made peace with them!" "You compromised with monsters!" "The blood of over a billion people cried out for vengeance, and you made peace." "You have sown the wind." "You shall reap the whirlwind." "You know what your problem is, Rhade?" "You talk too much." "What was that?" "A temporal distortion." "Our artificial gravity must be amplifying the time dilation effects of the black hole." "Give up." "You can't win." "I told you before." "Time dilation is increasing." "Pessimism is not a survival trait." "Gaheris, what have you done?" "I'm proud of you." "You should be." "Anything yet?" "Or are you people still poking around like blind men?" "You'll be the first to know." "This is growing so tedious, Captain Valentine." "I paid you for results." "And you'll get them." "But in case you haven't noticed, there's about ten trillion cubic meters of vortex out there, and only twenty million C.M. of ship." "Which just goes to prove how AMAZING I am." "You found it?" "For my next trick, a needle in a haystack." "Patch the sensor scan through to the main viewer." "Let's get some magnification." "There." "Finally." "After all these years." "The Andromeda Ascendant." "Pride of the Systems Commonwealth." "And she's all ours." "You seeing what I'm seeing?" "A really excited human with a rash?" "Ha ha!" "No, the ship." "The Andromeda Ascendant." "Right where that furry little twitch said it would be." "You're speaking of our respected employer." "Ha!" "Whooo!" "You know, I may actually be starting to like that guy." "No prior claims." "Open salvage, baby." "Then it appears we are in luck." "Luck?" "Luck?" "!" "?" "This is a High Guard ship of the line." "The pride of the old Commonwealth perfectly preserved." "When they made up the phrase "They don't make 'em like they used to.", this ship is what they were talking about." "It is THE big score." "The Shangri-La." "It's the Holy Grail of interstellar salvage." "Yes." "And it's pretty, too." "And, according to Beka, Gerentex already has a buyer..." "I dunno, some tin-pot dictator with visions of empire." "I don't know what the asking price is, but even at a measly five-percent each, we are talking some serious lucre." "Which means we are all RICH RICH RICH, baby." "...that is if we can pull it away from the black hole." "Trance, have you been in the engine room lately?" "No, it's disgusting back there." "Thank you." "But take my word for it." "Getting that puppy loose will not be a problem." "The only thing we do have to, you know, worry about is...how are we gonna spend our money?" "Lemme guess." "A little cottage by the lakeshore, a white picket fence, dog?" "All the traditional mud-foot accessories." "Not even close." "I have one word for you two." "Seraglio." "Sir what?" "Seraglio." "Slave girls and grapes." "Eunuch guards." "Classy." "Hey, don't forget the silk wall-hangings!" "I love silk wall-hangings." "The only reason I go is for the silk wall-hangings." "Harper, you are truly disgusting." "I try." "So boss, what're you gonna do with your share?" "I dunno." "I figure by the time I settle my father's debts, fix up the Maru, pay back that loan I took out the fund this job, I should have just about enough for a nice dinner at Cavanaugh's, as long as I don't order any wine." "You're buying freedom, peace of mind." "I'd say that's worth more than physical indulgence." "Speak for yourself, Rev." "Hmmmm..." "Be greatful I don't value such things." "Boss, he's giving me that look again." "Rev, don't." "Let me get you some steak sauce first." "Ha ha ha ha." "So Rev, what are your plans?" "I'm going to build a hospital on Kingfisher." "Kingfisher?" "Isn't that the world where you were, uh BORN." "Yes." "My people did some terrible things on Kingfisher." "If I can do anything to help to alleviate the suffering that they caused..." "that I caused...it will be well worth it." "In a way, I'll be trying to buy absolution." "Which makes me just as selfish as any of you." "You know, I, for one, hope you're as good at this as you say you are." "Actually, I'm better." "Rev Bem, Trance, Harper - sound off." "Pilot ready." "Navigation and sensors - ready." "Environmental controls and AG systems - ready." "I hope." "Engine room ready, as always." "Let's kick some ass!" "What's the time dilation look like?" "Hmmmm...the Andromeda is slowly moving away from the singularity." "Time dilation levels on board are one million to one, and falling." "Looks like in a few more years, it would've cleared the singularity by itself." "Yes, yes, yes." "Which means the longer you wait, the more likely someone else will be able to come along and take it away from us!" "The trick is to free the Andromeda without getting stuck in time ourselves." "Or being crushed inside the hole." "Well, if you're not up to the job..." "Look!" "You hired me because I was the only one desperate enough to take this job and slick enough to pull it off." "But from here on in, it's my gig." "So back off and let me do my job." "Prepare to cut loose the cargo pod." "The pod?" "But, I..." "OK!" "For this to work, we need to lose any unnecessary mass." "Don't worry." "We'll retrieve your cargo when we get back." "No!" "No, wait." "I, um, I have to make some preparations in the pod before we detach it." "By all means." "Just remember, we're on a tight schedule." "Yeah." "Yes." "Hold on, everyone." "Our employer needs to tuck his cargo to bed before we get started." "It won't be long now, babies." "There." "Ready when you are, captain." "The pod's away." "OK, everybody, just like we practiced." "Let's rock." "And away we go." "Acceleration, sixty-seven thousand G's." "AG fields holding." "29% light speed." "Thirty." "Hang on." "This is where it gets a little rough." "AG Fields at maximum!" "Almost there." "Harper!" "I know, I know, more power." "We're exceeding safety threshold!" "That's the general idea." "Target in range." "Fire!" "Harpoons away." "If you pray to any kind of divinity, you might want to start right about...." "NOW!" "The bucky cables are holding." "We're doing it." "We're actually doing it." "Ok..." "We've, uh, lost bucky cables five through seven." "Speed's dropping." "Cut the cables." "Let it go." "No." "We can do this." "Harper?" "There's nothing left!" "Unless..." "That was cable ten." "Come on, Harper." "OK, if this works, in about ten seconds you're gonna have one big burst of power." "And if it doesn't?" "Well, then I hope Rev Bem has some major pull upstairs." "Three seconds to the big one, ladies and gentlemen." "Three." "Two." "One." "Yes!" "I AM A GOD!" "Whooo!" "Critical Reaction in Engine Three." "Critical Reaction in Engine Three." "Oh, crap." "Harper, you little psycho, did you do what I think you did?" "Hey, it worked, didn't it?" "I got it, I got it." "It's cool." "He's a lunatic." "I'm afraid to ask." "He injected protons straight into one of our reserve AP tanks." "Instant roman candle." "What about the Andromeda?" "I'm bringing us around." "Ladies and gentlemen, the Andromeda Ascendant." "OK, I would just like to say, for the record, We Rule." "Captain Hunt!" "Captain Hunt, are you all right?" "I'll live." "Captain Hunt, something's wrong." "We're moving away from the singularity, but the Nietzschean fleet, our escape pods, they're all gone." "That's impossible." "We may have experienced more severe time dilations as we approached the event horizon of the black hole." "How severe?" "Spit it out!" "According to my calculations, we have been frozen in time for over 300 years." "Three hundred years?" "Oh my god." "Sarah?" "My folks?" "The rest of the crew?" "I'm sorry, Dylan." "Everyone we know, our entire world, is gone." "OK, so according to the stories, the crew of the Andromeda abandoned ship." "But they did so during the middle of a battle, so God only knows what we can expect when we get over there." "I wouldn't presume to speak for the Divine, but do watch out for unexploded munitions, anti-personnel nanobots, automated attack drones..." "Not to mention radiation leaks, blown pressure seals, shrapnel..." "Ok, Ok...mom and dad, we get the picture." "We'll be careful." "We promise." "I don't want you to be careful." "Trance, I want you to be paranoid." "Oh!" "Oh!" "Miss Valentine?" "Yes, Harper." "This isn't our first field trip." "Purple company excluded, of course." "That is my point." "I want you to treat every boarding just like your first one." "I want you to double-check everything." "Hell, triple check it." "I'd hate for any of you to end up like Vexpag." "Vexpag?" "Your predecessor." "Oh!" "He's the guy who retired." "Didn't you say he bought a farm?" "THE farm." "He bought, the, farm." "Well, what's the difference?" "Torn pressure suit and a bad emergency seal." "Oh, that is different." "You'll be fine." "Keep your eyes open." "Use your head." "Or whatever it is you think with." "Trance, your helmet?" "Oh, right." "Air's breathable, what there is of it." "We're at .6 atmospheres in here, but a lot of the ship is still exposed to vacuum." "We'll have to repressurize it section by section." "I am in love." "With a machine." "Why am I not surprised?" "Hey!" "It's not just a machine." "It's a masterpiece." "A work of art like, uh, a Durer etching or the Parthenon..." "OR, a Harley-Davidson." "A motorcycle." "It's an Earth thing." "I hate to interrupt such passion, but I smell blood." "And burnt carbon." "This ship has been through a fight." "Or." "OR everyone on board got pancaked by the singularity." "No life-signs so far." "Good." "Harper, patch into the ship's computer." "Let's see if we can get this thing to fly again." "Thanks." "Three hundred years." "I wonder if anyone even remembers what we were fighting for." "They died for what they believed in." "That's the same speech I always give." "Except there's no one to give the speech to now, is there?" "Their children, Dawn's mating group, Rhade's wives?" "They've all been dead for at least two hundred years, now." "We'll find someone." "Their descendants." "The Commonwealth will know where to find them." "The Commonwealth." "We need to make contact, let them know we're still alive." "I'm not picking up any local signals." "We'll have to..." "Dylan?" "We have intruders on board!" "They're trying to rewire me!" "Come on, be nice." "Oh!" "Got it." "You have control of the ship?" "No." "But I have control of the doors." "This I.S. net is insane." "I've never seen so much interconnectivity in a single system." "It's gonna take weeks to figure it all out." "Weeks?" "We have a delivery date to keep." "And we will, even if we have to drag this thing in." "But I'm betting your client will be a lot happier if we deliver a ship he can actually use." "Captain, I will..." "Look, this little, uh, struggle for authority thing is all very cute, but, uh, if you're not too busy, I could really use a ship's schematic." "A what?" "Something that'll explain what all this crap does." "Do you want us to go poke our noses around?" "Yeah." "See what you can find." "Maybe, we can get ourselves a little divine providence." "Never hurts to ask." "Trance, have you found anything yet?" "Trance?" "Oh." "Pretty." "What?" "Anestarian Tundra Flowers." "The best oxygen producing plants ever discovered." "I thought they were extinct." "...you're supposed to be looking for a schematic." "I knew I was forgetting something." "Uh, Beka, what about you?" "Any luck?" "No." "No, nothing so far." "That makes five." "Humans working with the Magog." "Are they crazy?" "Apparently." "Although their leader appears to be a Nightsider." "And I haven't a clue what she is." "Another thing I don't understand." "I'm pretty sure that's Triangulum Measles." "So he's sick." "With a disease that was nearly extinct three hundred years ago." "Something any decent doctor could cure over night." "I'm not sure I like the implications of this." "Me either." "Hey guys?" "I'm waiting." "Maybe it's time I introduced myself to our guests." "You want something done right you have to do it yourself." "You finding everything you need?" "Who the hell are you?" "No." "It's who the hell are YOU, and what are you doing on my ship?" "Your ship?" "No, no, no." "This baby's ours." "We salvaged it fair and square." "Finder's keepers." "This is a Commonwealth starship." "You can't just come aboard and lay claim to it." "Commonwealth?" "Wait a minute." "You got stuck in that time thing." "Let me guess, you're one of the original crew, right?" "I'm Captain Dylan Hunt of the High Guard, Commander of this vessel." "I got news for you, Captain Dylan Hunt." "You're not the commander of anything." "There is no High Guard." "Not anymore." "There was a war." "A big one, against the Nietzscheans." "I was there." "Well, I guess you kinda just missed the end, then." "I hate to break it to you, but you guys lost." "The Commonwealth has been gone for over three hundred years." "It's my fault." "If I had made it to Slipstream, got a warning to the High Guard..." "It still might not have made a difference." "The Nietzscheans had a vast fleet." "They'd been preparing for years and they had surprise on their side." "By the time word had spread, it may have already been too late." "How could the High Guard let it happen?" "We had ten times as many ships, a hundred times as many men." "And we haven't fought a war a real war, in over a thousand years." "Whereas for the Nietzscheans, every day is a battle." "It can't be all gone." "The Commonwealth spanned three galaxies!" "We had over a million member worlds, orbital habitats, asteroid colonies." "Part of it must still exist somewhere." "Then we have to find it." "We will." "But first things first." "I'm telling ya." "The guy is huge." "He's like... some kind of Greek god or something." "Still, there's only one of him." "Yeah, but nobody said anything about TAKING this ship away from anybody... especially somebody so big." "It's supposed to be abandoned." "Yeah, but if it wasn't for us, he'd still be stuck in that black hole." "I think he owes us." "Well, maybe if we just asked him nicely, he would give it to us." "Hmmmm." "Mercy is it's own reward." "Yeah, says you." "Look, I say screw this talkin' and we start walkin'." "Get..." "This is Captain Dylan Hunt, commander of the Systems Commonwealth Starship Andromeda Ascendant." "I've been told the Commonwealth has fallen." "Maybe that's true." "But there's still one place where the Commonwealth endures, and that's on this ship." "MY ship." "I understand you intend to loot the Andromeda and sell what's left over." "I promise you, that is not gonna happen." "You have fifteen minutes to restore the Andromeda's control capabilities and withdraw to your own vessel, or I will retake my ship by force." "Hunt out." "I don't like threats." "Neither do I." "Which is why I brought him along." "I'll take it from here." "synchro :" "Yojimbo acknowledgment:" "SUBEDIT / (me!" ") YOJIMBO [BST]... / X-TEAM"