Disclaimer: Andromeda isn’t mine, please don’t sue me. The most you’d be able to get would be a couple CDs that I listen to while writing fanfic.

Author’s Notes: I don’t care if everyone is against it. I am a Dylan/Beka fan and proud of it! Anyone else who likes Beka/Dylan can join my Yahoo Group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/beka-dylan We talk about the show and share fanfiction.

“Hello?” A hand waved in front of Dylan Hunt’s face, snapping him from his thoughts. “Dylan are you all right?”

Dylan looked at his first officer. “Yeah. I’m fine.” He returned his gaze to the starscape. “Just thinking.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

Dylan considered his answer for a moment before replying. “You know that it’s been a year since I last saw Sarah.”

“Yeah.”

“I just- I don’t know. I haven’t been thinking about her as much as usual and I’m feeling a little guilty about it, I guess.”

“Dylan.” Beka moved closer, almost touching shoulders with him “It’s not your fault if you’re healing and moving on.”

“Still, I can’t help feeling guilty.”

They stood still for a moment, each contemplating something different. Finally, when Beka had just opened her mouth to speak-

“Dylan, I’m detecting a spatial rift opening 1 lightyear away.”

“On our way.” Together Dylan and Beka left for Command, the door to the obs. deck closing quietly behind them.

***

“Boss, this isn’t your everyday spatial rift.” When Dylan looked at Harper questioningly, the shorter man explained. “This thing has particles in it that are basically twisting anything that goes into it. There are a couple other things too; energy streams that nobody’s ever seen before and this.” Harper held out a misshapen piece of metal.

“What is that?” Beka asked, coming closer to observe it.

“A piece of hull that had to have belonged to a Systems Commonwealth starship.” He turned his prize over, revealing a portion of the Systems Commonwealth icon.

“Harper, there are lots of relics from the Commonwealth,” Dylan said.

“But- and this is the kicker- the hull this came from was cleaned with an inefficient cleaning solution that stopped being used less than 25 years after the Fall.”

“So are you saying that this rift is not only spatial but also,” Tyr paused dramatically, “temporal?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“A vessel is exiting the rift,” Andromeda warned. Her avatar looked confused. “It’s Commonwealth, or at least used to be.”

“Can you identify it?” Dylan asked.

Rommie was quiet for a moment. Finally she said, “It’s the Starry Wisdom.”

“It’s pretty messed up though,” Harper added.

“Are there any lifesigns?” Dylan asked urgently.

“Yes, some. They’re all in Command.”

“Trance. Harper.” Dylan rushed out of Command with Trance and Harper following close behind.

***

The scene aboard the Starry Wisdom was not a pretty one. Crewmembers were either merged with walls or lay in unrecognizable lumps on the floor. The walls themselves looked as if they had been partially melted and on a couple occasions the trio had had to squeeze through a passage where the walls had suddenly grown too close to the other side.

Trance gasped in horror when she got her first glimpse of the interior of the former Commonwealth starship. Never in her life had she seen such absolute destruction. It was only made worse by the discovery that the lumps had been living beings before entering the phenomena. To try to get her mind off of the scene around her, she concentrated on the back of Dylan’s head.

“How much further to Command?” Dylan asked.

“According to the scans we took before we left, it should be the first left after the next corner.”

They rounded the corner, immediately greeted by the sight of a formerly-living being merged with the wall.

“Weird,” Harper said, trying to ignore the way his stomach was rolling. “The door’s untouched.”

“Untouched but won’t open,” Dylan remarked as he tried to open the door using the misshapen control panel on the left. “Harper, do you have that laser saw?”

“Of course. I figured we’d need it so I stopped by my workshop on the way to the Maru.” Harper produced the desired item with a flourish and went to work cutting the doors. After a few minutes they were able to push the doors open and for the first time since coming to the Starry Wisdom they were able to breath a sigh of relief. Inside they found that whatever crewmembers had been on Command when the ship entered the rift were relatively untouched.

“Sarah!” Dylan exclaimed, rushing over to where she lay on the floor, bleeding from a head wound.

Trance confirmed his worst fears. “We need to get her back to Andromeda as soon as we can.”

They quieted as Dylan picked Sarah up carefully. He had just started out the door when someone groaned a dew feet away from him. Dylan made a motion with his head, indicating for Harper to check.

Harper moved cautiously towards the sound. The person moaning was a dark-haired man who had fallen onto his stomach. As Harper turned the survivor over, he noticed the bone spurs sticking out of his forearms.

“Uh oh,” Harper muttered. The nietzchean’s eyes flew open and he had a force lance in Harper’s face before anybody could react.

“Who are you and why are you on my ship?” he growled.

“Why Khalid you’re getting paranoid in your old age.” Dylan said, still standing by the door.

“Dylan?” Khalid’s face swung towards the other captain. “Yours is the last face I’d expect to see here.”

Dylan smiled sadly. “Actually it’s the other way around.”

One of Khalid’s eyebrows rose in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Welcome to 300 years into your future.”

***

The two High Guard captains stood in Andromeda’s med bay surveying the wounded from the Starry Wisdom. The doctor, who had been the first treated, was helping Trance take care of the others. Sarah lay on one of the medical cots, among the most critically wounded.

The doctor from the Starry Wisdom, a young man with an impressive store of medical knowledge, looked up from his place at Sarah’s side.

“We’ve run out of acetylcholine.”

“What?”

The doctor, a young man named Brandon Lewis, held up an empty vial. “We’re out.”

Trance and Dylan looked at each other in horrified recognition. The last acetylcholine had been used to treat Dylan’s headache the day before.

“How long do we have?”

Beka entered the room as Lewis carefully answered, “I can slow the deterioration so that we have a day, two at the most.”

Beka looked from Dylan to the doctor and back again. “For what?”

“We have two days to get the acetylcholine we need to save Sarah.”

Beka turned towards Sarah’s cot. After a moment she said, “I can get to the Schopenhauer system and back in a couple of hours. They don’t have too much as for medicine but they’ll have that.”

“Do it.” Beka nodded, said something to Trance about one of her plants, spun on her heel sharply and left. Trance looked after her in confusion but soon went back to her work.

“Who was that?” Khalid asked, having noticed the way Dylan’s eyes had followed the blond woman since her entrance into the room.

“My first officer Beka Valentine.”

“She seems nice.” The last word was unfamiliar in Khalid’s mouth but it was the only description he could find for the subject of their discussion.

“She is. And she’s a really good pilot, one of the best I’ve ever seen.”

Khalid made a non-committal noise and turned back to face Sarah. “Dylan...” he started. “I believe there is something you should know about Sarah and I.”

“What is it?” Dylan asked, not wanting to know but knowing that he would anyway.

“We’re married.”

Dylan let out the breath he had unconsciously been holding. After a moment he said, “That’s good. I’m glad that she’s moved on and I’m glad that she has you.”

“Are you sure?”

“If I said no, would it matter?” Dylan looked at his friend with a smile on his face and laughter in his eyes.

“No.” Khalid smiled in return. “Besides, it looks like you’ve set your sights on a certain blond first officer.”

Dylan’s face darkened a little but before he could think of a reply Khalid changed the subject. “Have you figured out what happened to my crew?”

“No.” Dylan observed the various crewmembers from the Starry Wisdom tending to their companions. “Harper’s still trying to figure out why Command was the only area unaffected.”

Khalid was silent for a moment. “The last thing I remember was that we were trying to install a shield generator that Sarah had come up with. Anything that has the signature of the ship that the generator is installed on will pass through but anything else will not.”

Dylan thought of something. “Tell me more about this generator.”

“We were installing it on...” Khalid’s voice diminished to a mere whisper. “Command. And I remember that the rift opened shortly after we turned the generator on. I ordered the crew to keep the shields on because they might be our only defense.”

“But that doesn’t explain why Command wasn’t affected like the rest of the ship.”

Khalid was quiet, searching his impressive Nietzchean memory for anything else. After a second, his face paled. “The shield generators burned out most of the a.g. generators on the lower decks. The ones on Command would have been next but the shields failed first. By that time, we had passed through the rift. Then I must have been knocked unconscious because the next thing I remember is your engineer turning me over.”

“So something about the reaction between the gravity generators and the shield generators kept you from being killed?”

“Apparently.”

Trance and the doctor finished with one of the critically wounded crew members and moved her to a separate cot before turning to their next case. Khalid, watching them, said, “So the rift was opened by our turning the shields in the first place. Then when I ordered them to keep the shields on, it was probably just exacerbating the problem. So I am responsible for the deaths of over 500 people, my people.” Khalid said it calmly, as if he was stating a fact instead of blaming himself.

“Well you couldn’t have known what the reactions would do.” Both of the captains looked up from their conversation when Trance spoke to them.

Khalid nodded in acknowledgement but turned back to Dylan. “My leg is bothering me. If you will excuse me, I think running for a few decks would help.”

“All right.” Dylan knew better than to mess with Khalid when he was in one of his moods. He just hoped that when Khalid eventually did end up in the gym he didn’t wear out the training dummy.

***

Beka closed the channel to the Andromeda and sat down in her chair aboard the Maru. She had been so close to him, then Sarah had to show up. Was the universe only content when it was torturing her? Now he’d probably want to marry her. Then she’d be left alone again.

She pushed the depressing thoughts out of her head. In slipstream, she couldn’t have any distractions. She ran through a pre-flight check of all systems then brought the Maru out of Andromeda’s docking bay carefully.

Once she was far enough from Andromeda she transited to slipstream. It took a little under an hour to reach the Schopenhauer system and land on the middle planet. She made sure that the entrance command codes were activated and stepped out the Maru.

Outside she found a lush planet with efficient buildings dotting the landscape. The Nietzcheans that saw her either stared at her or ignored her completely. Obviously, those who stared at her recognized her from the signing of the Commonwealth charter less than a year before. She chose to ask for directions from a female Nietzchean who was watching her intently.

“Do you know where I can find the hospital?”

The woman nodded once and pointed in the direction Beka was heading. “Turn right just before the square and go straight down the street.”

“Thank you.” The woman seemed to ignore her and return to whatever she had been doing inside her home. Beka just continued on her way.

After ten minutes Beka spotted the square the woman had mentioned. In it a couple of well-built Nietzcheans were pounding each other. Surrounding the square were spectators waiting to see who would win and who would end up never receiving the chance to pass on his genetics. Beka spent a moment watching them before turning and going down a side street. At the end of the street she found a small building with a sign that declared it to be the hospital Since there wasn’t a line waiting outside Beka walked right on in. Inside she found that most of the patients were small children with trivial injuries. She looked around for an adult and, finding only one, decided to ask about the medicine. She walked up to the Nietzchean.

“Do you have any acetylcholine that I could trade for?” Beka asked.

“I am not the doctor,” the Nietzchean replied in a curt manner. Beka was this time pointed to a door across the room. “You’ll find him in there.”

Beka followed the directions and soon found herself entering a barren room with little other than a desk, a chair and flexies scattered all over the place.

“What can I do for you?” A booming voice asked from behind her, making her jump. She whirled around to find, to her surprise, a striking human male. He flashed a dazzling smile as he noticed that her lack of bone spurs. “You’re not Nietzchean.”

“No. I’m Beka Valentine-”

“I’m James Trent. So you’re from that High Guard starship, the one trying to restore the Commonwealth.”

“Yes, I am,” she admitted reluctantly. She didn’t like admitting who she knew when she didn’t know the person she was admitting it to.

“And what can I get for you?”

“I need some acetylcholine.”

“Of course.” He turned and started walking towards another door in the room.

Now Beka was confused. “Aren’t you going to ask for payment?”

“No. A small gift to a great cause.” He opened the door, which turned out to be the entrance to a closet. He drew a bottle from one of its shelves and closed the door. Turning back to Beka he asked, “I was just about to take my lunch break, did you want to have lunch with me?”

“No, thanks. I have to get going.”

“I see,” he answered, trying to hide his disappointment.

“Thanks again.”

The doctor smiled and opened the door for Beka. She smiled, then left without looking back. The doctor strolled up to the Nietzchean and whispered, “Knock her out and bring her back here.”

The Nietzchean nodded and ran out to find the human woman. Trent just smiled even wider.

***

Dylan paced around Command, trying not to let his worry show but doing a horrid job at it. Beka had said a couple of hours at most. It was now going on five hours since she had left.

“Don’t worry Dylan. She’ll be fine.”

Dylan looked over at Trance wearily. “I hope so. I don’t suppose any of your premonitions told you something about her not being able to find any medicine there and having to go somewhere else.”

“No. I think that Schopenhauer has the medicine.”

“But...?”

“Dylan, we’re getting a message,” Andromeda interrupted their conversation.

“Let me hear it.”

The image of Andromeda on the forward screen changed to that of a man. He was sitting in the Eureka Maru with Beka tied up in the background and two Nietzcheans watching her.

“Hello Captain Hunt,” the man said. “Well, I don’t suppose there’s any need for preamble. Beka has told me all about the Starry Wisdom and until I get that ship, you won’t get your first officer back.” There was a pause as the man thought of something. “Oh yes, Beka said that you might decide to ruin all the systems onboard. So I’m telling you now; if the technology is unusable then she’ll die.” The man grinned in an arrogant manner then the link died.

“But that,” Trance said.

***
“So you want me to rig something up so that this thing will fly a short distance. Then install a sensor jammer on it so that he won’t be able to see it. Then fix the shield generator. Have I got everything?” Harper asked.

“That’s it.”

“Okay Boss. I should have it ready in thirty minutes.” Harper left Command and Dylan turned back to the forward screen. “Andromeda send a message back to that man. Tell him we’ll meet him here.” Dylan pointed to system not too far away. “Since we can’t slipstream with the Wisdom he’ll get there about the same time we do if we leave as soon as Harper finishes his work.”

“Sending message.”

“Trance, any thoughts?”

“About what?” she replied.

“How this will turn out.”

Trance looked away. “I can’t say.”

Dylan sincerely hoped that that meant it would turn out all right.

***

Beka woke up to the sound of hard shoes walking across the hard floor. She looked over from her bed to see that Mr. Trent was back with his Nietzchean guard. He was never alone with her anymore since that little escape attempt where she had succeeded in knocking him unconscious and had only been caught by a guard he had kept at the Eureka Maru.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“You’re in the isolation ward. It’s for those unfortunate people who catch highly contagious diseases. Nobody comes in here besides us.” He gestured to his backup. “However, I came to tell you that we’re leaving soon. I just wanted to know if there was anything else you left out about your captain, the Andromeda or the Starry Wisdom.”

Beka paused, appearing to debate about answering. Finally she said, “The Starry Wisdom has a new type of shield generator onboard. The slipstream drive was damaged in the first testing but as long as you have those shields up nothing can pass through.”

“How badly damaged was the slipstream drive?”

“Not really bad. I’m sure that the Andromeda’s engineer has it fixed by now.”

“Good.” Trent gestured to one of the brutes behind him. “Take her. We’re leaving.”

The Nietzchean picked her up and swung her over his shoulder. Beka fought against it but found she could do nothing. She sighed. It was gonna be a long trip.

***

“They just exited slipstream,” Andromeda reported.

“All right. Disconnect the cables to the Starry Wisdom and back off.”

Andromeda was silent as she followed his orders. “The Eureka Maru is docking in the Starry Wisdom.”

“Harper, are you absolutely sure that everything is all set?” Dylan asked for the hundredth time.

“Yeah. I even cleaned up the hallway from the docking bay to Command so that they’d think that they were entering a normal ship.”

“Nice touch.”

“Thank you.”

***

Onboard the Wisdom, Beka watched for her chance to escape. She saw it when the group entered Command and Trent placed his gun on the floor to inspect the shield generator. Beka shoved him out of the way and immediately Dr. Trent found his own gun under his nose.

“I am going to leave and nobody is going to follow me. You can have your ship, I don’t care, but I’m leaving.”

She backed out of the room and closed the door behind her. Then she turned and ran as fast as she could towards the Eureka Maru.

***

Dylan watched anxiously as the seconds ticked by. “She should be out by now.”

“Don’t worry. She’s Beka; she’ll make it,” Harper said, trying to sound confident but failing miserably.

“The shields aboard the Starry Wisdom have been activated,” Andromeda reported.

“Any sign of the Eureka Maru?”

“None.”

Almost immediately, the same type of rift opened up in front of the Wisdom. The once mighty ship disappeared into the rift within a few minutes. After devouring it, the rift collapsed in on itself, leaving no trace of the ship that had just been there.

“Beka,” Dylan whispered.

***

Part 4: View of a Starscape

“We’re receiving a message.”

Dylan nodded, still too numb from the last minute’s events to do more than that.

The front screen lit up. “Eureka Maru to Andromeda. Permission to come aboard.”

The crew, minus perhaps Tyr, breathed a sigh of relief. Dylan smiled gratefully and spoke to his first officer. “Permission granted.”

Dylan was sitting in the obs. deck, contemplating the stars, when Sarah entered. She sat down beside him and just shared the view for a moment. Finally she said, “I have a present for you.”

“Hmm?”

Sarah gave him a small, neatly wrapped package. “Andromeda, could you give us a moment?” The AI switched to privacy mode, leaving Dylan and Sarah’s conversation private. “Go on, open it.”

Dylan unwrapped it carefully. Inside was a small frame with a picture of him and Beka at the party they had held for the Wisdom’s crew.

“Do you remember that?” Sarah asked.

“Yeah, I remember.”

‘Do you remember how you treated her at that party?”

“Not really. I would assume that I treated her like normal though.”

“You treated her like she was something breakable. I was...” Sarah trailed off for a moment. “I was wondering why you treated her like that. I mean, you were never delicate with anything if I remember correctly.”

Dylan looked into Sarah’s eyes, wondering if she should know this because she would be staying onboard for a long time. Deciding that that was the exact reason why she should know he decided to tell her. “A little while ago, Beka gave me a birthday present- a map to Tarn Vedra. In the attempt to get there Beka took Flash and she became hooked. It gave her something that she needed, I suppose.” He smiled weakly at his former fiancé. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this. I don’t think that Beka would want it revealed.”

Sarah’s eyebrows came together in sympathy. “Dylan, if that isn’t a cry for love and affection I don’t know what is. What she needs now is someone who’ll love her and support her.” She laughed. “Listen to me going on like I’m morally superior. Dylan, I’ve moved on. You should too. That is, if you haven’t already.” Dylan’s face turned a dark shade of red. She elbowed him. “You can’t fool me Dylan, I can see you’re in love with her.”

She stood up. “We’re going to be on the same ship for a long time and I really don’t want to have to spend all of it watching you two dance around the subject. At least talk to her.”
“I will,” he promised. “Just not tonight.”
“Okay fine. Get some sleep and we’ll see how you’re feeling tomorrow.”
Dylan laughed as he too stood up and walked over to the doorway. “Why are you suddenly playing matchmaker?”
“Because I’m happy and I want you to know that as well.”
Dylan yawned, politely covering his mouth. Sarah smiled affectionately as she stepped into the door’s sensor area and the door opened. Before it closed between her and Dylan she gave him one last remark. “That, and the fact that Trance has told me that you two are always together in the- what did she call them?- ‘right universes’.”

The High Guard captain’s eyes shot open but the doors had already closed between them.