Disclaimer: obviously none of the characters or specifics belong to me.
Read chapter 2 here.
Chapter 3
Captain Dylan Hunt stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring blindly out the viewport. Normally, he'd have enjoyed the serenity of the stars. It was one of the reasons, after all, that he'd originally sought a career in space, all those years ago. But today he did not even see them. He was looking at them because it was easier, at the moment, than looking at the golden skinned crew member sitting so calmly behind him. So calm, so serious, and so damn insistent. Dylan was trying very hard not to give in to frustration and sound ludicrously irrational when he spoke to her. Sometimes the enigma of Trance just pushed him too damn far.
"Are you sure?" he asked, turning slightly in her direction, without actually looking at her.
Trance nodded emphatically.
"We have to go there, Dylan. I know you didn't believe me when we spoke before, and I know you don't want to now, but...we just have to. You don't understand --"
Dylan raised a hand in a gesture for silence; the last thing he wanted to hear right now was a repeat of Trance's 'end of the universe as we know it' speech. It had unnerved him enough the first time. There was something fundamentally frightening about the previously bubbly and innocent Trance talking about ultimate destruction in such firm, grave tones.
Dylan cast his eyes briefly toward the ceiling. He always found himself doing that when addressing the ship without her physical representation right in front of him.
"Rommie?"
It was a mark of how well they'd come to know one another that she didn't need to ask what he wanted. She answered his unspoken question with no prompting, a fact which probably should have disturbed him, coming as it did from the brain of a ship. Still, Dylan liked to think of Rommie as more than the ship's brain, more than a programmed personality. He looked at Rommie, and he saw the Andromeda's soul.
"The String of Stars has been quarantined space for decades, Dylan. It used to be part of several trade ways, positioned centrally as it is, but ships following the path in slipstream kept...disappearing, never to be heard from again. It is unclear in the records I possess whether a problem occurred with the slipstream itself, or whether the disappearances were due to pilot error. When the entire Whistler merchant fleet vanished, it was branded as a lethal quadrant, and every guild, military faction, and small time cargo runner slapped it with a quarantine. I have a complete list of lost vessels if you'd like to peruse it."
"No, not right now, Rommie, thank-you." Dylan looked back at Trance. "You can't tell me anything else? Anything at all that would justify to me risking the lives of this ship and this crew?" She hesitated a fraction, then shook her head. She looked worried, very worried, actually. In Dylan's two years of experience with Trance, anytime she looked worried was a very bad thing.
"I'm sorry, Dylan, no. Anything else I say could only be detrimental to our survival. Please, just do as I ask."
Dylan sighed.
"Trance, from everything I've heard so far, this place sounds a lot like something from old Earth, a point in the ocean called the Bermuda Triangle. I have my doubts that the same kind of magnetic field could exist in space, which makes me wonder exactly what the difficulty with the String of Stars could be. And I'm not convinced it's a slipstream problem. According to the few surviving ship logs we have, the String of Stars provided an ideal location for ships to drop out of slipstream, so the pilot could rest and the crew could, if necessary, re-supply at one of the nearby way stations. Maybe there's a previously uncharted Black Hole?"
Trance shook her head, her eyes huge and apologetic even before she spoke.
"No, Dylan. It isn't a Black Hole. It isn't anything previously recorded that I know of. It's just...imperative...that we...be there by a certain time." She was obviously choosing her words very carefully, and that irritated Dylan, for her manner convinced him that she knew a great deal more than she was willing to say. "And time is something we're about to run out of. If you don't give the order soon, it will be too late."
Too late for what, Trance, Dylan wanted to ask, but he bit the words back. Asking more questions was getting him nowhere, and only making him more frustrated, more angry. Unfortunately, it appeared he must decide based solely on what little information he had.
He stared out at the stars again. Every instinct warned him that following Trance's directive could get his entire crew killed, but at the same time, a voice was whispering in the back of his mind that he couldn't afford to ignore this. Behind him, Trance waited silently, either confident of his decision, or giving him the space he needed to come to his own conclusion.
Finally, he sighed.
"Rommie, could you ask Beka to come and see me? I'll want to discuss the dangers with our pilot before we leave." He cast a glance toward Trance as he spoke, and she bounded up out of her chair immediately, her face split with a huge smile of relief.
"Thank-you, Dylan! I am so thankful you're trusting me!" Then her smile dimmed a bit, and the more unsettling, serious side of Trance shown through once more. "I sincerely hope none of us come to regret it."
Leaving Dylan with that not-so-comforting thought, she hurried from his office, as if afraid he would change his mind again if she gave him half a chance. Which I might, Dylan thought. He slumped into his chair, his head buried in his hands.
"Dylan."
Rommie's voice intruded hesitantly, unsure of her welcome, he thought. But he valued her input more than any other. She was, after all, older than any of the crew - with the barely possible but certainly not proven exception of Trance -- and possessed with more knowledge than any of them could hope to gain, not even the ever inventive Harper. And her insights -- even just her presence -- so often soothed him.
Dylan looked up, to find Rommie's avatar standing before him. She watched him with a worried expression, her posture unsure as she stood fidgeting a few feet away. She opened her mouth, but hesitated before speaking. Precisely as a human being would do. It seemed to him as if her mannerisms were becoming more and more human all of the time. Sometimes, he admitted to himself honestly, he forgot she wasn't.
"Yes, Rommie," he said, politely urging her to speak her mind.
"I just wanted to tell you that I think you made the right decision. Even though the String of Stars is dangerous, I've been learning to trust human feelings and instincts, and Trance's are...not really human, and even more precise, if you know what I mean."
Dylan smiled, and nodded. "Yes," he said, "I do know exactly what you mean. I'm glad you feel that way, since this trip risks you as much as it does the rest of us. Your support means a lot to me."
Rommie smiled and relaxed, at ease with him once again. She opened her mouth to say something, but Dylan wasn't to find out what, for just at that moment Beka rapped at the door and poked her head in.
"You wanted to see me, Dylan?" asked the blond slipstream pilot. She sounded a bit wary, and he wondered why.
"Yes, Beka. Please come in. Have a seat."
She slipped inside, her sharp eyes moving from him to Rommie, and back again. He saw a tiny frown of apprehension cross her face, and he wondered abruptly if anyone had done anything he should know about during their shore leave. Like something illegal. Beka was far from incapable of it, as was Harper, whom he was sure she would cover for in a pinch. He'd known her long enough now to pick up on the signs when Beka Valentine was hiding something from him.
It wasn't that his crew was untrustworthy. Quite the opposite, in fact. But he'd found they tended to resort to shadier dealings when they felt it absolutely necessary, and he never knew exactly when that would be. He usually just hoped to find out about it before someone else - say the local authorities - did.
She sat, fidgeting uncomfortably with the corner of the bandage wrapped around her right wrist. Perhaps, he thought, her sudden uneasiness had something to do with this mysterious "wrist sprain" she'd sustained, reportedly, in a local bar fight she insisted she'd had nothing to do with starting. He hoped to God that was all it was. The last thing he needed right now was a complication with the crew, and especially one involving his pilot.
"Beka," he said, keeping his tone neutral. "I wanted to talk to you about Trance."
"Trance?" she echoed, jumping on the name with something very like relief in her tone. Dylan frowned as Beka visibly relaxed, sitting less stiffly in her chair and sounding fairly casual as she said, "what about her?"
Yes, Beka was definitely hiding something. For now, he would just have to hope it was something innocuous. Perhaps something personally embarrassing she didn't want him to know about her shore leave. Something -- please God - not illegal. He hadn't given it much thought until now, but she had been unusually subdued since returning to the ship. He'd have to ask Rommie to keep a closer eye on her for the next few days, which were liable to be stressful for her. But for the moment he had bigger issues to deal with.
"Yes," he said. "She's just come to me with a very insistent and disturbing...demand, I suppose you could say. I think I should tell you about it, and I think you should avail yourself of everything pertinent Rommie may have in her database before we leave."
On to Part 4