"If we do not live another day, say this over our pyre:" "They died like High Guard Lancers with their faces to the fire." "Regimental Hymn of the 13th Imperial Lancers [CY 4233]" "Code Red." "Code Red." "Code Red." "Code Red." " Officers down in command." " Heard you the first time." "Beka!" "Dylan you have to help him." "Yeah, Dylan you worry about." "Dylan!" "Dylan, can you here me?" "I'm not reading a pulse." "No!" "Come on, Dylan!" "Wake up!" "Got him!" " Pulse has returned, shallow and erratic." " Can we get him to medical?" "Negative." "As far as I can tell there are still Magog on board and internal defenses won't be restored for another 20 minutes, 17 seconds." "Switching to damage control." "Sealing off Command, continuing to repair hull breaches." "Twenty minutes?" "He hasn't got that long." " Trance?" "Trance!" " She has no life signs, Beka." "You say that like it matters." "Come on, Trance." "Up and at 'em." "Trance, I need you." "Dylan needs you." "Trance?" "Trance?" "TRANCE!" " Ah!" "Oh!" "The tail!" " Oh, good." "You're up." "Beka?" "Beka!" "Dylan?" "Dylan?" "Accessing emergency power." "Trance?" "Trance, can you hear me?" "Uh, I can hear you." "The Magog seem to have mostly left the ship." "Harper and Tyr were captured." "Rev Bem went down to the world ship to retrieve them." " No!" "He shouldn't have done that!" " Trance, I need to get to the machine shop." "On the way there, I'll try to draw off any Magog still on board." "You need to get Dylan and Beka to medical." " But" " No "buts"!" "Just do it." "I'll take care of everything else." "Ok." "Ok, Trance, you can do this." "You know you can." "There is a perfect possible future where everything will turn out just fine." "And the odds of creating that future are only 1.671.000 / 1, more or less." "He is the last guardian of a falling civilization," "A hero from another time, faced with the universe and chaos." "Dylan Hunt recrutes an unlikely crew and sets out to re-unite the galaxies." "On the starship Andromeda, hope lives again" "." "Trance, I'm bringing two androids to help you." "We need to move Dylan and Beka now." "You don't understand." "This is very, very bad." " I can see that." " No." "No, you can't." "That's the problem." "There may be a perfect possible future, but I can't see that right now, and nothing is going to make that better." " Trance, I've been studying you for almost a year now." "I know you have secrets, ways of seeing probabilities, maybe even influencing outcomes." "Right now, Dylan and Beka need medical attention immediately." "Even if you can't see any possible way to save them, we have to try." " Magog!" " It's too late." "No." "No, wait." "You said you didn't have internal defenses yet?" "What about the external ones?" "You want a distraction." "I think I know just the thing." "There, that should get their attention." " I forgot you had those." " We haven't exactly had a burning need for planetary-warfare-bots." "Are you ready?" "Go!" "Hi." "I am way more dangerous than I look, and I really don't want to hurt you, but if you push me, I will." "I promise." "Trance!" "Now we're even." " Rommie!" " Run, Trance." "I'm running, I'm running." "Come on!" " Strange smell." " My name is Red Plague." "Front and center, soldier." " Captain Dylan Hunt, reporting for duty." " And not a moment too soon." " You see?" "You see?" "I fixed him." " Oh, yeah." "Well, more or less." " What hit me?" " About half the Command Center." "The ship was pounded by point-singularity bombs." "We're lucky she's more or less in one piece." "The Magog." "On the run, for now." "I deployed Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum." " How are the lads?" " Efficient, as usual." "They drove off the first wave of the Magog assault ships." "Yeah, but the Magog can always send more." "Magog suck." "Ok, so here's the plan." "Rommie and I will take the Maru down and retrieve Harper, Tyr, and Rev." "Rommie, have the immune system nanobots we gave the crew built up to a level where you can track them?" "Trance's don't seem to be working, but I'm getting a clear signal from Beka's." " You planted tracing devices on us?" " Downloading signal parameters." "So while you two are playing hero, what am I supposed to do?" "There's a Nova Bomb in the main armory, weapons locker five." "If we're not back here in three hours, I want you to launch it at the artificial sun in the middle of the Magog array and blow it to hell." " You're still carrying Nova bombs?" " I thought..." " that I used them all up at Hephaestus?" "I did." "But I scavenged one from GS92196, just in case." "There's been a Nova bomb on board for months and Tyr didn't know about it?" "Gosh, won't he be surprised." " If we're still on that world ship when that bomb goes off, he'll be more than surprised." "He'll be dead." "And so will you, Dylan." "We'll just have to get back here in time, then, won't we." "Andromeda, release all Nova bomb controls to Beka Valentine, authorization ten-break-alpha." " Authorization released." "Three hours." "Not a second more." "Rommie." " Tell me he's gonna make it." " It's possible." "Anything's possible, right?" "Right." "Oh, man." "Tyr?" "Tyr!" "Are you ok?" "No, not the eggs." "They didn't infest me with Magog eggs." "Help!" "Help!" "Somebody!" "Somebody help me!" "Oh, please Help!" "HEEEEELP!" "Internal defenses back on-line." " Finally." "Score another victory for the good guys." "Great One!" " You're eating one of your own." " Not ours." "It's of Vile Throat's brood." "But we catch it alone, and weak." "Of course." "Great One want his share?" "No, you earned it." "Eat your fill." "Great One not want food?" "!" "No!" "Great One not smell right." "Not act like Great One." "Refuse food?" "Smell like machine!" "Smell like prey!" " Stay back!" " We hear (free?" ") ship has traitor on board." "I think maybe it smell just like you!" "Maru's away." "Rommie, show me that thing again." "Oh, man." "A year ago I was running spare parts from Canopy to San-Ska-Re, and now I'm sitting in the middle of the apocalypse." " Well, on the bright side, the world ship is heading toward the known worlds anyway." "Before, you just didn't know about it." "At least this way you can face it head on." "That was such a warship thing to say." "Tyr!" "Oh, man, don't be dead." "You can't be dead." "I mean, crap, I'm alive." "And,..." "I'm just a pathetic little kludge, right?" "I mean, you you're a Nietzschean." " You're an über." " Don't ever call me that." " I knew you were alive!" " Yes, I'm alive." "And attempting to make our opponents forget about us." "Oh, you wanna make them feel over-confident?" "I got an idea." "Why don't we let them paralyze us, bind us to the wall, and infect us with their Magog eggs?" "Oh, gee, we did that already." "Boy, we got them right where we want them." "Your little melodrama isn't making things any better." "No, but it's not making things any worse." "You know why?" "Because they couldn't BE any worse." "You could be unconscious, or dead." "You're neither." "So now we get to be awake when the eggs hatch and the little Magog larvae eat their way out through our guts." "You're right, that is better." "When your parents combined their DNA, the odds that they would create a person with your precise genetic pattern were on the order of ten million to one." "Factor in the chance of your parents growing to adulthood, meeting, and actually bothering to procreate, and your very existence has all the likelihood of drawing three straight Imperial Courts in an honest game of Vedran Whist." "You've already overcome those odds once." "Who's to say you can't do it again?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "Where there's life there's hope faint, infinitesimal, miniscule, microscopic, virtually undetectable hope but hope, nonetheless." "Please, SHUT UP and let me think." " You sure we're close enough?" " As close as we're going to get by ship." "They're approximately four kilometers almost straight down." "Four kilometers." "I keep forgetting how big this thing is." "20 worlds joined into a single structure manipulated by artificial gravity and powered by a miniature sun." "I guess it's true what they say:" ""No matter how powerful you are, there's always someone bigger and stronger than you."" "I just never thought it applied to me." "You scared?" " Terrified." " Me too." "Deploy the plasma mines." "Contact Beka." "Tell her we're headed out." "Dylan, I can't raise myself..., the ship." "Too much interference." "Looks like we're on our own." " How long until Beka launches the Nova bomb?" " 2 hours, 41 minutes." "All right." "Home in on Tyr and Harper." "Update me on the countdown every ten minutes." "My pain belongs to the Divine." "My..." "Red Plague!" "Red Plague!" "I know that you can hear me." "How many of us have you killed, Red Plague?" "How many of your brothers lie dead at your hand?" " Too many!" " Be proud of yourself, Red Plague." "You've killed the weak, you have culled the small." "Even in this, you serve the Abyss." " No!" " And soon, very soon you will serve the Abyss in all things." "No!" "I will never!" "My pain belongs to the Divine!" "My pain!" " Time?" " 1 hour, 10 minutes." "Keep moving." " What was that?" " Point singularity projector." "It's firing." "Hold on." "That was close." "We can avoid those if we keep our distance." "So as long as we don't try to attack or go in to support Dylan or close into Nova bomb range, we're just fine." "58 minutes, 10 seconds, then the waiting will be over one way or the other." "I can't believe I'm doing this again." "The last time I faced that thing, it all went so...wrong." "Andromeda, show me." "I need to see what happened to you." "We were under secret orders from Argosy intelligence to try and locate the source of the Magog invasion." "Following leads from a slip-scout, we found slipstream routes large and well-traveled linking the Magog territories to M86." "M86?" "But that's..." " over sixty-six million light years away, in the Virgo Galactic cluster." "By the time light from M86 reaches Earth, it's already sixty-six million years old." "So there's no way for us to know when the stars there died." "By the time we got there, all that was left were black holes and dust." "We found only one moving thing in the entire galaxy or rather, it found us." "We have to get to slipstream." "I made it to slipstream, but only after everyone on-board was dead." "I was lost, alone." "I wandered the slipstream blind for 13 months until I managed to stagger back to Triangulum." "A Than freighter found me." "I almost attacked them." "When Argosy intelligence decided to seal off my memories of the mission for security reasons, I was actually relieved." "Andromeda, I'm so sorry." " I don't know what to say." " Say it won't happen again." "You have to promise me, Beka, that when this is over, I will either be heading home with a crew aboard, or not at all." "Impressed?" "Primitive savages that's what they call us, isn't it?" "Well I ask you, could primitive savages build that?" "Could primitive savages snuff out stars, destroy entire galaxies?" "THAT is not civilization!" "That is madness!" "Then it is madness in the cause of harmony." "In the cause of peace." "How can you claim to serve peace with so much blood on your hands on OUR hands?" "If you seek truth, come with me." "Meet our creator, and all will be revealed." "What does it matter what I believe?" "Why don't you just kill me?" "Because you are a lost brother who seeks answers." "What more reason do I need?" "Come with me, Red Plague." "Find your answers." "And when we've done, I will release your friends into your custody to slay or to save, whichever you choose." "This isn't working." "Keep trying." "Hey, do me a favor, will ya?" "Talk to me about something." "Take my mind off things." "You want a story?" "All right." "When I was sixteen, after I'd lost my family, I was captured by slavers and sold to the diamond mines on Zokotl." "One day while working in the mines, I noticed that the main support for my section had rotted through." "I pointed it out to the overseers, but instead of fixing the problem, they cut my rations and doubled my work shifts." "A week later, the ceiling collapsed, burying me alive 200 meters under ground." " Thanks." "Cheered me right up." " It should've." "Because I lived." "I clawed my way out over the bodies of the dead." "I escaped into the desert." "I lived on seep-waterand sand rats for an entire season." "And then, one night after I'd healed, I visited the overseers and thanked them for their conscientious attention to worker safety." "So don't you tell me that I'm going to die here today." "Because the sun has not yet risen on the day when Tyr Anasazi, out of Victoria by Barbarosa, will face death graciously." "I will kick and claw and bite and scratch and spit my last breath in its face, and as long as you are with me, you will do the same, is that clear?" "IS THAT CLEAR?" "My wrist!" "I think this crap's starting to give away." "We're running out of time." "I can't get the homing beacon any finer than a few hundred meters." "I'm gonna call them." "If the Magog detect that transmission, we're dead." "20 minutes, 4 kilometers back to the Maru you do the math." "Harper." "Harper, do you hear me?" " Harper!" " Dylan?" "Is that you?" "Harper, listen to me carefully." "I need you to start making noise, a lot of it." "Noise?" "But that'll attract Magog." "In 20 minutes, Beka's gonna launch a Nova bomb at this place." "If you don't want to be here, I would start shouting." "Nova bo..." "NOVA BOMB?" "!" "?" "NOISE!" "I'm with ya!" "Dylan!" "Over here!" "Dylan!" "Follow the sound of the voice." "Dylan's looking for our voices!" "Make sound!" "This way." "Ten minutes until Dylan's deadline." "We're nine minutes out from the world ship at maximum PSL." "If we're going to launch the Nova bomb, we have to begin our attack run now." " Still nothing from Dylan?" " Not since he landed." "We have to face the possibility he's been killed." "That's not a possibility." "Not to me." "Beka, if we don't stop this thing, we risk the lives of every living thing in the known worlds." " This is not what I signed on for." " This isn't what any of us expected." "It's what the situation is." "What would the commanding officer like to do?" "Arm the Nova bomb." "Nova authorization:" "Ten-Break-Alpha Strike Strike Strike." "Arming Nova Weapon One." "Execution code:" "Nine-Five-Over-Seven-Blue-Five." "Arm." " We're seven minutes to range." " Come on, Dylan." "Now's the time." "It's a maze in here." "Five minutes, Dylan." "We're not gonna make it." "This?" "This is the home of your god?" "The Spirit of the Abyss manifests wherever it chooses." "Is not the Divine in all things?" " I, I, I, I can feel its hatred." " Isn't it wonderful?" "Let it fill you, consume you." "And under the hatred, beneath it feel what lies beyond." "Love." "Underneath the hatred, there is love." "I understand now." "Life is suffering, chaos, but there is another way." "A way of harmony, of transcendence, of death." "There is so much more to learn!" "I am humbled!" "I am humbled!" "Fear not, Red Plague." "I will teach you." "I thank you." "I, I almost forgot my other friends." "What of them?" "Will you take me to them, that I might offer them transcendence?" "Whoo." "Dylan!" "I hope that bomb explodes soon, because I'm getting exhausted." "Dylan!" "Dylan!" "This way." " Dylan." " Dylan." "Man, am I glad to see you." "I can explain." " You never told me your feet were free!" " I wanted it to be a surprise." "There are thousands of tunnels." "I mean, you'd think they'd have signs!" "Take cover!" "Go!" "Magog with guns." "This just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it?" "Come on!" "How much closer do we need to be to deploy the Nova bomb?" "We can fire it from here, but they'd have a lot of time to intercept it." "I'd like to close at least another 30 LS." "Are you really going to drop it?" " Trance, I'm in over my head." " Well, that's what happens in life." "We keep going and going and going until we've gone too far, and then we have to deal with it." "The important thing to remember is that Dylan trusted you with command." "He believes in you, and so do I." " We all do." "Believe me, Beka." "You are the right person at the right time in the right place." " You're going to make the right decision." " Is that a guess, or do you know something I don't?" "No." "It's not a guess." "It's a leap of faith." " Another squad of rifles." " Don't they have any respect for tradition?" "What ever happened to just clawing people to death?" " Dylan, if we don't make it, I want you to know" " Don't say it, Rommie." "If we're going to die..." "We are NOT going to die." "Captain's orders." "Andromeda, bring us in, maximum PSL." "On my mark, I want you to fire everything we've got:" "missiles, drones, AP guns, lasers, everything." "Beka, conventional weapons won't even dent that thing." "You have your orders." "And MARK." " You ready?" " Don't worry about me." "What's that?" "A starter's gun." "Go!" "I can't believe it!" "I'm..." "The word you're looking for is "dead"." "Rev?" "We've gotten their attention." "Swarm ships are deploying." " They're trying to intercept our missiles." " Good." "That'll keep 'em busy." "Andromeda, vent your atmosphere." "Dump your water tanks and toss every piece of crap you've got in the cargo holds out the hatches." " You're trying to confuse them?" "What's one little bomb in a crowd?" "Venting, dumping, and tossing, Captain." "They're firing those black hole thingies at us again." " Good for them." "Andromeda, ready the Nova bomb." "And, FIRE!" " Nova bomb is away." " Impact in 10." "9. 8." " Rev, what are you doing?" " My name is Red Plague, and I do what I must." " 4. 3. 2. 1." "IMPACT!" "Dylan." "Dylan, I'm so sorry." "That's impossible!" " Tell me that's impossible!" " I don't know." "I just, don't know." "It's not impossible, it's just really unfair." "Andromeda, bring us back around." " It's broken." " Oh, yeah." "Forget my leg." "Was that what I think it was?" "Elevated radiation levels, EMP X-rays, gamma rays, oscillated neutrinos." "It was a Nova." " We lived through a Nova?" " See?" "Told you we wouldn't die." "Fools!" "They thought they could defeat us so easily." "You understand now, Red Plague?" "Everything is possible for the Harbingers of the Abyss." "Yes, I understand." "But then, I understood all along." "Ekola." "Behold the fiery beast with razor tail that cuts through mountains, trampling castles down." "Inhale the stench that makes the whole world wail." "But which of us is the beast?" "Me, my master, or you?" "A Magog quoting Dante." "Canto Seventeen." "Uh, guys, can we save the poetry for later get the hell out of here?" "Man, my guts are killing me." "Harper." "Quickly, we must go." "I know but one person idiotic enough to try and rescue three dead men from a Magog hive." "That's me, Captain Idiot." "Now, I don't know about the three of you, but we have a ship to catch." "We've just lost the secondary missile battery." "Hull integrity is severely compromised." "Beka, we have to break off." "Like hell we do." "I promised you'd come back with your crew or not at all." "I always keep my promises." "Burnt flesh." "What do you hear?" "Fires burning and silence." "What do you know?" "Something actually went right." " The plasma mines are still in place." " Rommie, lead the way." "Was that?" "The god of the Magog." "They call it the Spirit of the Abyss." "Yeah, well, whatever they call it, it looks like it was having a very bad day." "Good." "I'd hate to think I was the only one." "Rommie, let's get the hell out of here." "Hurry." "Hurry!" " All systems green." "Prep for launch." " Just get us home." "We are out of offensive missiles, and the AP tanks are down to one-tenth full." "I guess this is it." "Andromeda, charge your slipstream cores to overload." " Prepare to eject your EMG's at the world ship." " Aye-aye, Captain." "Charging." "WAIT!" "I'm detecting a ship launch from the surface." "It's the Maru." "Plotting intercept course." "Andromeda, lay down covering fire." "Trance, get to the med deck." "Hold on, Dylan." "We're coming." "Condition critical." "Condition critical." "No, really?" "Oh, Andromeda, am I glad to see me." " Got 'em." " It's about time." "Let's get out of here." "Whoa!" "Whoa!" "Whoa!" "It's ok!" "Oh, man." "Talk about nightmares!" "I dreamt I was being infested by Magog eggs, and they were, uh not a dream?" " I'm afraid not." "But everything turned out ok, right?" "I mean, we escaped, uh, the bad guys' world ship was destroyed, and you just took the eggs out, right?" "We've escaped, at any rate." "The world ship was not destroyed, although we did cripple it somewhat." " As for the eggs" " Magog larvae, they kind of wrap themselves around things and when you try to take them out, they attack the host." "I figured out a way to get them out, but I wasn't sure if it was going to work, so I tried it out on Tyr, and he survived, barely." "But I'm not a Nietzschean." "This is a drug." "It is a lukaprine variant." "If you take it religiously and remain in otherwise good health, it will keep the larvae dormant for a time." "And while you're taking it, we will try very hard to find another way to get them out." " Everything will be just fine." "We promise." " Gee, I feel better already." "Just out of curiosity, what happens when you can't figure out a way to get the larvae out?" " I'm supposed to take this forever?" " No." "Eventually, the medication will cease to be effective." "If we have not found an alternative treatment by that time, the larvae will become active and you will die." " Why don't you just shoot me now?" " Harper!" "No, I mean it, Trance." "I don't want to walk around life waiting for my stomach to burst open." "You shoulda just left me to die." "You shoulda." "Kill me." "I'm doomed." "You shoulda just let me die." "Listen to yourself!" "Child, if I can teach you one thing" "If you're gonna give me anymore of that "Where there's life, there's hope" crap." "Thanks." "'Cause I really need to hear it right about now." "Andromeda, prepare for another jump." "I want to get as far from that thing as possible." "Well, at least the slipstream drive is working for a change, unlike the rest of this place." "What a mess." "I could say the same thing about you." "How's your leg?" "It's, uh, knitting." "Give the nanobots a few more days and I'll be as good as new." "So, I'm, uh, sorry I blew you up and everything." "You did the right thing." "You know, Beka, in the old days, with the proper training, of course, you would've made one hell of a commanding officer." " Really?" "And these days?" " These days?" "You're a miracle." "I'd promote you, but you're already a captain." "And the last thing I need right now is to have to answer to an admiral." "I guess I'll have to settle for first officer, then." " It's ok." "Better for my ulcers, anyway." " I know what you mean." " Hey, at least we know the world ship is out there." " Out there, and headed our way, despite the Nova bomb." "Rommie, show him what you showed me." "When we left, the world ship was already fusing hydrogen to create a new sun." " How long until it's fully operational?" " It's hard to tell." "Two years, three at the most." "Based on my last encounter, it doesn't travel very quickly, but a month or two after it's operational, it will be able to strike out at any place in the known worlds." "And once it does, it and its Magog inhabitants will destroy everything and everyone we have ever known." "Unless we stop it." "So far, Andromeda's O-for-2 against that thing." "Well, we can't do it alone." "There's only one way to defeat something like that a unified front, the entire known worlds working together." "A renewed Commonwealth." "A renewed Commonwealth." "Before it was a dream." "Now, it's a necessity."