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Chapter 3 Chapter 5

Alternigy 2 - Chapter 4

Once in his stateroom Dylan poured himself a drink He offered Rommie one as well but she shook her head 'no.' He sat down in his favorite chair and indicated for Rommie to take the other seat. After a moment Andromeda's core self appeared in the cabin's viewscreen."

"What do you want to discuss, Captain?" she asked.

"Andromeda, please inform your sister self that her presence is required as well," ordered Dylan.

Andromeda's holographic self appeared at once. "Good now that you're all here," he said, "I have just one question. Are you all right?"

"What do you mean, all right?" asked Core.

"I want to know how you're feeling. Are you all right?"

"All my systems are preforming well with normal operating parameters," responded Core.

"I didn't ask about your system parameters," retorted Dylan. "I want to know how you're feeling."

'What makes you think there is something wrong with us?" asked Rommie.

"I was watching you when the image of the Worldship appeared " answered. "I've known you all for years and I saw you how you reacted. You recovered nicely but you were shocked when the image appeared. And Rommie, the gouges you left in the table where you were gripping it were a bit of a give away. Now what's wrong? Why did the message effect you so strongly?"

"Captain," said Core,"do you remember how you got command of me? Was it the normal method of assuming command of a starship?"

"No it wasn't. Normally I would have been assigned the position of executive officer then after three years assumed command of you. Instead I was given a direct assignment to the position of commanding officer."

"And the rest of your crew, how many of them were new?"

"All of them. I considered it highly unusual but my inquires were essentially ignored under the heading of need to know. If I remember correctly even you gave me the same answer."

"The reason my crew was all new was that my original crew was dead. Everyone one of them, and it was the Worldship that killed them."

"What?! How?"

Holo Andromeda picked up the conversation, her voice was oddly flat, totally devoid of emotion almost mechanical, "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?!" Dylan exclaimed, "but that's…"

" …over sixty-six million light years away, in the Virgo Galactic cluster," she continued. "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. The ship you saw in the message, The swarmships came at us by the thousands, for every one I destroyed a hundred took it's place. By the time Captain Perim ordered me to go to slipstream it was too late. I made it to slipstream, but only after everyone on-board was dead. I was lost, alone. I wandered the slipstream blind for thirteen months until I managed to stagger back to the Triangulum Galaxy . A Than freighter found me. I almost attacked them." She stopped speaking and closed her eyes, swayed slightly then abruptly blinked out.

Core picked up the conversation as her sister self blinked back into existance. "An Argosy crew boarded me and took me to the Mobius High Guard base. I couldn't remember a thing about the mission. I had repressed all my memories of it. The cyberpsychologists at the base were able to access my memories as part of my debriefing but they remained blocked to me. Until today, when I saw the image of the ship that murdered my old crew. Then all the memories came back to me."

"And now the same ship is in one of the Milky Way's dwarf satellite galaxies." murmured Dylan, 'No wonder you reacted the way you did. Are you sure you're going to be OK? Would it help if we talked about it some more."

"No Captain," said Rommie. It was her first contribution to the conversation. "I, we, are not OK, but we can still function within our normal parameters. It probably would be a good idea to talk to you about our feelings but not right now. I think first we need to talk among ourselves." She looked at her sister selves who nodded in agreement.

"I won't push the issue but the three of you will talk to me about this soon. That's an order not a suggestion. Which brings us to Tyr and his actions at the staff meeting. His insubordination was borderline mutiny and to make things worse you agreed with him. Why?"

"Because he was right," answered Andromeda's holo self. "If Trance's suspicions are correct and our allies are not as reliable as we hope then Beka will need all the help she can get."

"Ok," said Dylan. I'll buy his reasoning but not his emotional reaction. That was the closest I've ever seen to him loosing control."

"Well, you were sending the Pride matriarch into harms way," answered Rommie. "That's not the sort of thing that will sit well with the Pride's alpha male."

"What!" exclaimed Dylan. Pride matriarch? Alpha male? What Pride? Are you telling me that those two are... Damn." In his excitement he spilled a portion of his drink.

Rommie reached out and took the now half empty glass out of his hands, and downed the rest of the contents one gulp, making a face at the taste. "I seriously doubt that they are, the matriarch - alpha male relationship isn't necessarily that sort of relationship, but they could be. Frankly I don't normally monitor our crew's bedroom activities." She glanced at her sister selves who both shook their heads 'no'. "But yes, even though I'm certain neither Tyr nor the others have ever consciously thought of themselves as such they are the Valentine Pride. A small one to be sure, but a Pride nonetheless. He's been asking us questions about the feasibility of restoring Beka's fertility and nagging Harper about fathering another child with Trance. And then of course there's the combat training he's been giving them. All the sort of things you would expect from an alpha male."

Dylan rubbed his hand over his face in a gesture of tiredness. "I really don't need this. On top of trying to help rebuild the Commonwealth from a gaggle of mutually distrustful planets and drifts, I have a ship full of spies and now a galaxy destroying, solar system sized, Magog starship to deal with. Then just when I thought things couldn't get more complicated, I have to deal with Nietzschean Pride politics and most of them aren't even Neitzscheans."

Rommie got up from her seat and set down on the armrest of Dylan's chair while Andromeda's holographic self moved so that she was standing on the other side of Dylan. She placed an insubstantial hand on his shoulder. "There are some good points about the situation," she said. "There's nothing like an outsider waiting to kill the survivor to get you and your brother to stop trying to kill each other. So maybe the members of our new Commonwealth will start to pull together now that they have a potential new enemy. Also if Tyr is involved with looking after his Pride he won't have as much time to pursue any other plots. "

"Of course," said Core acidly from the room's main view screen, "there is the fact that he may now decide to kill Dylan to protect his Pride instead of for purely personal reasons."

Core and her holographic sister self disappeared leaving Rommie alone with her captain. She reached out and touched him gently on the arm. "I think my sister selves and I aren't the only ones who would benefit from a talk," she said.

"What do you mean Rommie?" asked Dylan.

The avatar pointed to a photo sitting on the stand by Dylan's bed. The photo was of Dylan in his High Guard uniform standing beside an attractive women about his own age. "We're not the only ones who have lost everyone we ever knew Captain. I, we know you well enough to know that you're not as unaffected by their loss as you try to appear."


In another part of the starship in the stateroom that Harper and Trance shared with their infant daughter Aurora another conversation was going on.

"You've changed, Trance," said Harper "You're not the same woman who joined the Maru."

"What do you mean Harper?" asked Trance she had Aurora in her lap and was combing the girls hair in spite of her protests. To Harper's ears the puzzlement in her voice sounded feigned.

"You've become hard. You've gone way over the top helping Dylan with his new Commonwealth idea."

"But it's important," protested Trance. "You remember what things were like before we signed up with him. Do you want to go back to that sort of life ?"

"No Trance, I don't. But the girl I remember wouldn't have recommended that Doheney not be invited into the Commonwealth. The girl I remember would have been eager to have it join. You're different now and I don't like the change."

Trance reached out to touch her husband. "You're wrong Harper, I haven't changed. I'm still me.

"Like Hell you are," interrupted Harper shrugging off her hand. "You used to complain that Dylan treated you like a retarded child. Now you're his little purple shadow. You're fawning over him like he was the reincarnation of a Vedran emperor. You were practically playing footsie with him in the conference room." He paused to take a breath. "I'll be in my workshop. I'm going to see if Andromeda and I can pull any useful information out of the data the Alacritous Missive sent us. Don't wait dinner for me."

"You don't understand Harper," said Trance softly to her husband's retreating back. "I really am still me. It's things that have changed."

Chapter 3 Chapter 5