Finally, though, the ringing began to annoy his preternatural hearing. It rang two more times as he dug through the multitude of pockets on his leather jacket.

"Yeah?"

"What took you so long?" Tracy's voice sounded as shrill to his ear as had the ringing.

"I was busy."

"Oh, sorry. I didn't realize that, uh... you guys  had to do that sort of thing."

This made Vachon laugh, even if only to himself. Of course, they had to do "that sort of thing" — what did she think he was? An android?

"So, uh," she continued, "I just wanted to call and let you know that I'll be late."

"But, Tracy, it's Valentine's Day," Vachon said, as solemnly as he could muster, which was difficult considering it was SHE who had lectured HIM last year when he had been the late one. Of course, SHE did call, so that was points in her favor.

"I know, I know, and I'm sorry. Really. But, I'll meet you at my place just as soon as I can. Go ahead and let yourself in; you can watch TV or play the stereo — whatever you want."

"Okay. But, what's the delay?" he asked, knowing that she'd been working a lot of over-time lately.

"Remember that case I told you about?" she asked. It had to be the murder of the arson investigator; she'd mentioned it the last time they'd talked — the last time she'd phoned to postpone, then later to cancel, their getting together. She had a strange feeling about the case, she'd said, but she had refrained from giving him any details. "Well," she continued, "I have a lead, but..." — she sounded frustrated or maybe even worried — "Nick's booked off. Anyway, I have to drive up to Uxbridge tonight; it should only take a few hours."

"Do you want some company—"

But Tracy cut him off, obviously muffling the receiver with her palm: "Yeah, I'm coming, Captain." Just as suddenly she was back on the line: "Hey, I gotta go, but I'll see you soon. Bye." And before Vachon could reply the connection went dead.

It was only then that Vachon realized Tracy had not spoken his name during their conversation. He imagined wherever she was calling from — the precinct, probably — was less-than-private. Maybe it was better, after all, that she was still not comfortable with what he was; it certainly made it less likely that she'd say the wrong thing out loud in a place where the wrong sort might hear.

Vachon turned back to the bar; grabbing his glass, he tipped the remaining alochol-thinned, red liquid into his mouth. He swallowed, but those last dregs did not go down well; he'd had far too much tonight. As planned, of course — he never liked to see Tracy for any length of time on a less-than-full stomach — but still.

He leaned against the bar for a moment, the contents of his belly almost pushing the tongue out of his mouth in a misguided attempt at a little more elbowroom. He was suddenly glad that he'd ridden his motorcycle to the club — he didn't think he could fly in this bloated condition.

Finally, he pushed himself away, and then squeezed himself through the ever-increasing crowd. When he reached the top of the stairs, he turned to look for Urs, but her blonde curls were not amongst the bobbing and undulating heads of the patrons. He'd call her from Tracy's, he decided as he stepped outside into the late-night air.

The ride through the city seemed to do much for his digestive process. Even with his helmet on, the air movement across his face was both refreshing and settling.

He took the long way, through the more suburban portions of town, avoiding the traffic and the stoplights. Just a few weeks ago, these lawns had been covered in a thin layer of snow, and on the curbs had been old Christmas trees waiting for disposal. With the trees on their sides, their wooden stands looked like crosses, marking their own passing as well as that of the Yuletide season. Death was a familiar commodity to Vachon, yet he had found this waste depressing in the wake of the sickness that had burned its way through the local vampire community. As he rode past these same houses tonight, he was pleased that both the snow and the trees were gone; he was tired of being reminded of lost friends and lost opportunities.

By the time Vachon reached Tracy's apartment building, the blood in his stomach has settled. He parked his motorcycle at the curb, and then swung his leg over the seat. More leaning against his bike than sitting on it, he stared up at the dark windows that belonged to Tracy. He suddenly felt lissome enough to fly up to the balconyless window of her living room and nip surreptitiously inside, but it was no fun when there wasn't anyone home to surprise.

He took the elevator instead. Besides, he liked her neighbors to think she had a boyfriend — fewer attempts at setting up blind dates with nephews, cousins, and grandsons. Not that he cared, of course; he just didn't like listening to her complain about how dull they always turned out to be. Who would have thought a guy in a suit with a regular nine-to-five job and a financial portfolio respectable enough to take home to the parents would bore the straight-laced Tracy Vetter?

"Go figure," Vachon muttered to himself as he unlocked Tracy's apartment door with the key she'd given him just one month ago. "You could use the door, like normal people," she'd admonished after he'd forgotten to close the window during the last rainstorm they'd had. He'd shrugged and said he'd just sit in the hall and wait for her next time. The spare key was handed over just moments later.

He'd rather wait for her on her couch anyway, but before flopping himself down, he sidestepped into the kitchen. It was his little routine. He was sure Tracy thought he did it just to annoy her, but, like now, he did it even when she wasn't there to glower at him. Vachon had discovered over the years that there were many, less-than-obvious ways to learn things about people. In Tracy's case, she kept her apartment so neat and organized that it was easy to tell when anything had changed.

Looking in her refrigerator, for instance, he noticed that the expired milk that had been present during his last visit was now gone. Not only that, but no new container had replaced it. Interesting.

In her pantry, not a single item had been removed, nor any new items added. Clearly Tracy had neither gone shopping nor eaten at home since his last inspection — eight days ago.

On his way into the living room, he stopped at the bar. Normally barren, except for a vase of artificial sunflowers and a mostly empty wine rack, the bar now held two piles of mail. One pile, Vachon noted as he leafed through it, was all bills. The other pile, smaller and containing envelopes of varied sizes and colors, was correspondence.

There was one from a Barbara Vetter, sent from Montreal, and hand-addressed to "Tracy Rebecca Vetter." Rebecca? Vachon had never bothered to find out her middle name. He mouthed the word, testing each of the syllables in his mouth. Rebecca. Re-be-cah. Re-bekuh.  He discovered he liked the taste.

Another was obviously a card, simply addressed "Aunt Tracy," and looked to have been written by a young child. On the back was a crayon drawing of several green triangles, one on top of the other, each smaller than the one below it. On the side points of each triangle was a red or yellow ball. A very belated Christmas card or maybe a thank you card, Vachon guessed. He neatly set the pile back down on the bar without even looking at the remaining letters.

Below, Tracy kept her recycle bin. Vachon immediately noted the absence of any soda pop cans — an unusual thing — and the preponderance of never-unfolded newspapers — also an unusual thing.

He moved further into the living room, noticing a thin layer of dust on her CD player. This confirmed his suspicions; Tracy hadn't been exaggerating when she'd told him she was swamped with work. Had she been home long enough to do anything besides sleep? Had she even been home often enough to do that, he suddenly wondered as he glanced through the French doors which separated the two rooms. Even from a distance it was obvious that her bed had been very hastily made — the bedspread just barely covering the pillows and a bit of the blanket peeking out along the side — so, at least she'd slept in it, he concluded, though he couldn't think of a way to determine if she had done so recently.

Vachon wondered what was going on at work that was keeping her so busy. This was Toronto, after all, not New York or L.A. How many homicides could there have been in the last few weeks? Granted, Tracy and Nick did seem to pull in the weirder cases, but Tracy usually talked to him about those — mostly just her thinking out loud, bouncing ideas off of him, but sometimes trolling for information about bizarre practices not covered in Motives 101 at the Police Academy.

At first he didn't mind. He liked seeing her, and he knew she needed to have an excuse. "Just business, nothing personal" — he could almost hear her thoughts justifying her visits or phone calls. And he knew it would take her a while to simply feel comfortable around him — a blood-sucking, rises-from-the-dead, honest-to-goodness vampire — not to mention the trust issues! They had, after all, met under less-than-ideal circumstances and there were many things he hadn't, couldn't, and wouldn't tell her. And she was smart enough to realize this.

But as time went on, nothing changed. She was still weirded-out by the vampire stuff, still using work as an excuse to talk to him or see him. And whenever they did talk about other stuff, it was always within the context of some case she was working on. There was the woman on that talk show who was murdered after saying her boyfriend was a vampire; Tracy had brought up the R-word — relationship  — but all she talked about was the case, or, at best, hypothetical people. He tried waiting her out, playing dumb like he didn't know what she was getting at, but she didn't bite — she wouldn't say, "you and me" — and all he got for his trouble was her frustration thrown in his face and an all-too-short look at her lovely, but retreating backside. And there was her uncle — "badly in need of a heart transplant" — but before that black-market organ case, she had never mentioned him. And she hadn't spoken of her uncle since — did he get his heart? Was he still waiting? Did he die? Vachon had no idea. Though, for all he knew, it could have just been some story she made up trying to get the information she needed for her case — he wanted to doubt it, but he couldn't be certain at this point in time.

The only time they had really talked was during the vigil she had sat at his bedside, after Screed had died and he was wracked with fever. His memories of that night were faint and blurry, and tainted by the vivid dreams he'd sunk in and out of. Still, he knew he had told her of old friends, of mortals he'd known and buried over the centuries, and of some of the foreign places he'd seen. The only thing he could remember her telling him was — except for a single trip to New York City with her parents when she was small — she had never traveled outside Canada.

It seemed a shame. There was a world out there and he could show it to her. If only she would ask. After his fiasco with Urs, he needed Tracy to ask. He wouldn't make the same mistake twice — he wouldn't impose his desires on Tracy like he had on Urs, he wouldn't assume he knew what was best for her.

He scoffed at this last thought. He hardly knew what was best for himself let alone anyone else. And, he realized only too late, it had been Screed who had probably kept him out of some real messes over the years. Screed, who had been his friend, his traveling companion, his sounding board, his conscience. The real jams he'd gotten himself into — the Inca, Urs, and now Tracy — he'd done without the benefit of Screed's, while not learned, at least practical and street-wise council.

In a way, he was evolving toward this same sort of relationship with Tracy. It didn't take long for Vachon to figure out that Tracy was just as impulsive as he was — her sneaking back into the temporary morgue after hours and catching him rummaging around for his severed hand, her tracking him to the church, and her running off to meet Vudu all alone, not to mention the time she'd gone looking for a serial killer during her off hours — and while he may not be able to restrain his own self from performing rash acts, Vachon could at least give her adequate warnings when she came to him for information.

And this she didn't seem to mind. Unlike the other things he'd tried — draining a terrorist, snatching a possible vampire-perp before she had maneuvered herself into harm's way, whammying her sketchy-looking date into leaving — none of which she'd been overly thrilled with.

And so he'd settled his mind to this course of action — or, rather, inaction: wait for her to ask for information, and then dole it out tempered with the appropriate amount of cautionary statements. He'd made this decision while flat on his back, recovering from his first illness in well over four hundred years.

There was only one problem with his well-thought-out plan: it required Tracy to come to him and ASK for information — something she simply hadn't done in over two months. She'd hardly spoken to him at all, as busy as she said she was.

And, so, feeling completely useless and unneeded — thinking he really should just leave and not bother, if Tracy really didn't want him around — Vachon plopped himself on the couch, his dark hair fanning out across the back as he sunk down into the soft cushions. Otherwise motionless, he reached with one hand beneath the brown throw pillow to remove the remote control from where he had left it at the end of his last visit. Obviously Tracy hadn't found it, if she'd even had the time to notice it missing.

Vachon pointed the plastic remote at the screen causing the picture to wink to life. He didn't bother to check the program schedule — if he'd even thought about locating the guide, he would have realized that it was probably still wrapped up in one of those newspapers overflowing the recycle bin; besides, he knew reading some show title wouldn't help him decide what he felt  like watching. He flipped rapidly through the channels until an image caught his eye, before tossing the remote aside.

A dingy-white, saucer-shaped craft roared across a dark backdrop flecked with dots of light. The spaceship spun and dove, avoiding large chunks of rock hurtled across its flight path, somehow out maneuvering the smaller, bow-tie shaped fighters hot in pursuit. One by one, the enemy ships collided with the asteroids, exploding in brilliant bursts of white and orange light, until the smuggler's vessel was alone among the debris.

The ship glided over the barren landscape of a large asteroid, finding and then looping into a large cave where it landed to make repairs.

As the serenity of the now-quiet soundtrack washed over Vachon, his tired eyes winked shut. Those little fighters were like the perps out on the street, keeping Tracy too busy to think about anything but her job. But with them gone, within the silent isolation of space, there was time to think about other things....

Vachon's eyes fluttered open long enough to see the couple sparing in close quarters. "You make it so difficult sometimes," she accused, rubbing her sore hands.

"I do. I really do."  His smirk practically lit up the dark maintenance alcove. "You could be a little nicer, though. Come on, admit it: sometimes you think I'm all right."

With a small, almost imperceptible sigh, she conceded: "Occasionally. Maybe. When you aren't being a scoundrel."

"Scoundrel?" He was shocked. "Scoundrel." He smiled. "I like the sound of that," he agreed, almost unconsciously taking her hand in his, gently working loose the tight muscles.

"Stop that."

"Stop what?" he said, all innocence.

"Stop that. My hands are dirty."

He smiled, scoundrel that he was. "My hands are dirty, too. What are you afraid of?" he added.

"Afraid?" The princess seemed surprised by the accusation.

"You're trembling," the smuggler informed her.

Of course, she is, Vachon thought, having, over the centuries, put more than a few women into that same state himself.

"I'm not trembling," she continued to protest.

Women!  Vachon sighed at the television screen.

Again the pirate flashed that devilishly angelic grin — Vachon couldn't help but mimic the smile. "You like me because  I'm a scoundrel. There aren't enough scoundrels in your life." Vachon said the well-remembered words in time with the spaceship's captain. He imagined saying the same thing to Tracy.

And he imagined her response would be the same as the princess's: "I happen to like nice men."

"I'm 'nice men'," the two scoundrels said in unison.

"No, you're not. You're——" but Leia's words were stopped by Han's lips meeting hers.

Vachon closed his eyes, imagining this same scene with Tracy, aboard a moored freighter, somewhere in the deep isolation of space....

A sharp crack woke him from his reverie as the warm palm of her hand swiftly met the cool skin of his cheek. "What did you do that for?" he asked, his own palm now rubbing the red patch caused by the stinging blow.

"Because I can!" the blonde retorted before turning on her heel and stalking off down the narrow corridor. Vachon watched her flight-suit-clad form dodge and weave around the exposed beams as if she'd been doing it all her life, like she could do it at a full run, blindfolded.

Vachon's progress as he followed her was neither as swift nor as smooth, despite his exceptional reflexes and dexterity.

He finally caught up with her near the main engines; she was speaking with a short, scruffy-looking guy in a Hawaiian-print shirt. A Luke Skywalker wannabe if he'd ever seen one, though this guy was spewing techno-babble a computer would have a difficult time understanding. Maybe he wasn't the light-saber type after all.

"—and there you have it! Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. If she doesn't purr like a kitten drinking milk as we slide through our next slipstream, then my name isn't Seamus Zelazny Harper."

"You know, Harper, this ol' bucket of bolts didn't purr before — what makes you think she's gonna do it now?"

"Oh, ye of little faith, Captain Valentine. Have you not yet learned to trust in your infinitely clever, resident genius? You may know the Eureka Maru like the back of your hand, but I know her like the inside  of the back of my hand!" The small man with the nasally voice suddenly realized what he had just said didn't make much sense. "Anyway, Beka, just trust me, okay?"

Beka was a good half-foot taller than the self-proclaimed intellectual giant, and now she looked down on him like a boot ready to squash some humility into a bug.

"Fine. Don't trust me, but as soon as Dylan slipstreams us away from Galaxia Major, you can take her for a spin and see for yourself." Just then Harper noticed they weren't alone. "I thought you were leaving," he called to Vachon, who had been leaning against the doorway bulkhead.

Beka turned to look at him. She scowled. "Yeah, you got your good-bye kiss" — the word 'kiss' caused Harper's pale eyebrows to silently shoot up — "so what are you waiting for?" The Maru's captain then stalked off again, expertly weaving her way down the cluttered corridor.

"Either she hates your guts and never wants to see you again, or she's not too thrilled about you bailing out on us," Harper freely commented.

"I think it's a little of both," Vachon replied, almost to himself, before turning and leaving in the opposite direction from which Beka had headed. He soon found himself walking down the gangplank and into the vast, starboard hangar-bay of the Andromeda Ascendant. He looked up, still awed by the incredible size of just this one small portion of the Glorious Heritage-class heavy cruiser.

He was almost instantly greeted by a holographic projection of the ship's artificial intelligence. "I thought you were leaving," Rommie said, her image, if not her motives, slightly transparent.

"Why does everyone keep saying that?" Vachon complained.

"Probably because you said you were leaving and, yet, you're still here," she answered, stating what Vachon already knew.

"Yeah, well, I say a lot of things," Vachon replied, his mood darkening a notch as he rubbed the side of his face where Beka had struck him.

"I don't understand. We all say a lot of things. Do you mean, you say a lot of things you don't mean?" the hologram persisted as she walked along side the ship's visitor, out of the hangar bay and into the main corridor.

Vachon glanced over at Rommie, but did not reply. Let her make of my silence what she will, he thought, as he kept on walking.

"Perhaps I will leave you to yourself then, if you wish," she offered, but again he did not reply, nor did he even look over at her. A moment later her image was gone.

Vachon kept along in silence, walking down the corridor with no particular destination in mind. He'd been going somewhere before this had all started, but now he could hardly remember why. He thought for certain he was a goner when that explosion occurred on the transport ship. Somehow he had been the only survivor from among hundreds, and that had only been made possible by the Andromeda's arrival on the scene just in time. Vachon knew he had remarkable healing abilities, but the vacuum of space was still the vacuum of space and not all that accommodating to bodily tissues.

He'd been unconscious when she found him. His eyes had fluttered open for only a moment, but it had been long enough for the image of her to be burned into his mind — golden hair, crystal blue eyes, the mark of exertion flushed on her cheeks. Apparently, though, his lack of a heartbeat had convinced the Andromeda's Captain Dylan Hunt that he was dead. Thankfully, Trance had other ideas.

Vachon had woken up hours later in the medical bay. A woman with pastel hair and purple skin had been smiling down at him — like the negative image of the woman he had seen earlier. "I think you're going to be fine," she had said in a sweet, slightly child-like voice. "You have the strangest heart-rate I've ever encountered, though, and the Andromeda's database can't determine your Homo sapien  subspecies.

Vachon had blinked until he was certain his vision was clear, and then he had sat up and stared at the beauty before him, awed by her uniqueness. He had then asked her, "Where's the blonde woman who found me?"

"Beka? She's probably on the Command Deck right now. I can call her if you want me to." Trance had kindly offered but Vachon had shaken his head, knowing it was best to limit his involvement with others. But, somehow, his intentions never turned out the way he planned.

That had been, what? he thought. Six months ago? And here he was, still on board the Andromeda.

Coincidentally, it was Trance who, a moment later, stepped out of a doorway and nearly collided with him. "Javier, I thought you were leaving," she said, her mahogany eyes wide with curiosity.

Vachon sighed without answering the innocent accusation. Trance didn't seem to mind his silence, and this was one thing he really liked about her. He also liked that she often called him by his first name — none of the others ever did, including Beka. He rarely thought about it and he never thought to ask why. He also felt somewhat akin to Trance. They were both outsiders, from virtually unknown races, and it was something they chose not to speak about, to each other or to anyone else.

But Vachon did wonder about Trance, about her origins, others like her, her home world. He wondered if she would be thought of as a mythological or fictional creature, as he would be to humans, and that no one would believe her if she told them the truth about herself. He also wondered if the people who did believe in her kind had any reason to fear for their lives.

Trance seemed so gentle, so kind, but Vachon knew all too well that appearances could be deceiving. Rommie, for example, looked to be just a slip of a young woman, but her android body was perfectly capable of throwing a full-grown man across the entire length of a docking bay!

Vachon's image was no more revealing. To these people, aboard this ship, he looked like a mere traveler, a wanderer, interested in other cultures, other worlds; they had no idea that beneath the warm-brown eyes and long, dark hair beat the inconstant heart of a killer.

Vachon looked again at his purple-hued friend and, matching Trance's smile, decide that he was the only killer in this room.

"Come see, Javier. I've developed a new fruit hybrid." Excitedly, she pulled the enigmatic vampire into the hydroponics lab, and he was happy to follow her — at least someone wasn't eager for him to leave. "Ta-da," she finally said with a flourish of hands before a rather squat-looking tree. She was smiling again, her white teeth in odd contrast to her unique skin-tone.

"It's... nice," Vachon finally said. "Short. But, uh, nice."

Trance's smile faded. "Well, I didn't want to make a full-grown tree. These dwarf varieties are so much hardier, and they produce almost as much fruit." She then reached into the foliage, gently squeezing several round, dark-orange fruits, before plucking off one she obviously thought ripe. "Here, try it!"

"Thanks, but I'm not really hungry," he said, trying to be polite. In actuality, he was hungry, very hungry; his little encounter with Beka had set him on-edge and only now was he realizing the consequences. But Trance would not take no for an answer; she placed the fruit into his hands.

Not wanting to hurt the girl's feelings by letting the fruit fall to the floor, he accepted it and was surprised at the feeling of it. It felt exactly like suede, but the softest he'd ever felt, and it looked like it was made from a swatch of that material, wrapped around a ball the fit perfectly in his palm. At Trance's urging to taste the fruit, he split it down the middle at the natural crease that ran from stem to stern. Instantly, the deep-red juice inside escaped into his hands, like he'd just torn open a vein. The color made his stomach growl with increasing hunger, and he did not fight the urge to bite into the sweet flesh.

He sucked on the delicate fruit until a piece tore away into his mouth. Being used to a completely liquid diet, the flesh sat on his tongue strangely. He did not quite know what to do with it until Trance prompted him: "It won't dissolve. You have to chew it." She helpfully mimicked the action of chewing, somehow sensing he'd forgotten how. "Now, swallow." And he did, nearly choking on the macerated bits.

Trance smiled broadly again. "Aren't they wonderful? I crossed an Earth cherry with a Makrai drupe, but that caused the toxin in the pit to poison the flesh—"

Lovely, Vachon thought. What do you call it, an assassin fruit? He wiped his red-stained hands on a towel Trance handed him as she continued to talk.

"—so then I crossed that varietal with an Arzawa prickly sangahari, which resulted in this. I'm calling it a Sangria fruit. It has a beautiful red pulp, don't you think?" And she smiled again, her tail playfully poking him into a good humor. He finally caught the arrow-shaped tip of her tail in his hand and began to caress the satiny smooth skin. This made Trance giggle and flush violet. Vachon wasn't the smiling sort, but he found Trance's moods to be infectious.

Unfortunately, Beka wasn't the smiling sort either, and it was at that very moment that she happened to walk into the hydroponics lab.

She pulled up short when she saw the two friends grinning at each other. Vachon immediately released Trance's tail as she pulled it behind her, out of sight. Beka's eyes stopped only momentarily on Vachon and he was afraid she was going to ask him why he was still here. But she turned her gaze away and spoke to Trance instead.

"I thought you were recalibrating the bio-field generators." Her tone was harsh, but she must have realized it, because she immediately tried to make light of it by adding, "Rev Bem said it was raining in the corridor outside his quarters." No one laughed, and the smiles had faded; so maybe that had been her intent all along.

Beka turned and left without another glance at Vachon.

"Was that Beka's evil twin?" Trance asked, almost conspiratorially. "I don't know about it raining, but it sure is cold in here!" She wrapped her arms around herself and tried to shake off the frost Beka had left in her wake. "Any idea what's twisting her tail?"

"That would be me," Vachon offered, though he was still puzzling over the explanation.

"Because you're leaving. I guess we're all kind of upset about that. I mean, you've been here a long time and you've really helped us out of some tight spots: you caught the guy who blew up your transport, you helped find the stolen treaty that brought peace back to the two warring Kaldera flocks on Magella IV. Not to mention saving Beka's butt from that loony doctor who tried to harvest her organs to sell on the black market."

Vachon nodded; all of these things were true.

"So, it's only natural that we don't want to see you go. But, you know, we understand that you have to. Only with Beka... it's a little more complicated. She has trust issues, BIG trust issues, so I know that as hard as it was for her to allow herself to get close to you, it's that much harder for her to let go — though she wouldn't tell you that for all the known worlds!"

"How do you know? Has she talked with you about this?"

"Beka? No way. But, it's pretty easy to read her... um, I mean, you know, her body language. She's not all restrained like Tyr, or even you."

Vachon suspected Trance was speaking about something other than body language, but he let it go. He let a lot of things go with Trance; there was definitely something about her, things probably about her entire species, she didn't want to let on about, and he respected that. He thought Dylan might suspect something, too. The Andromeda's captain seemed to put a lot of stock into Trance's premonitions, and, once, when they were facing down a rogue band of Vedrans, Dylan actually took Trance's hunch over Rommie's sensor readings — and Trance had been right. The Vedrans had a squad of cloaked fighters; they all certainly would have been piles of carbon if not for Trance. And, still, she couldn't or wouldn't explain how she knew when Rommie didn't.

"She's a fighter, a survivor — that's how she was raised. She thinks she can't show any weakness, so she's hiding her tears behind the anger. But, she'll come around. Eventually, Beka always does."

"Thanks... for trying. I appreciate the pep talk." Vachon ran a hand over her bare arm, and then left her behind in the hydroponics lab. He should just leave, he knew. But... what about that patrol Andromeda's long-range sensors had spotted? He certainly didn't want his leaving to give away their location.

But, instead of talking to Rommie, Vachon thought it best to speak directly with Dylan.

He stepped into the lift and requested the Command Deck, but halfway through his journey, the transport slowed to a halt. The doors opened to reveal a soaking wet Rev Bem standing in the corridor.

"Young Vachon." The pacifist Magog sounded surprised.

Young,  Vachon laughed to himself. If this Wayist only knew, then again... Vachon got the impression that maybe he did.

"Weren't you leaving?" he asked, of course.

Vachon gave a tired nod as his only answer to that worn-out question. "Rev, why are you wet?"

"Come, the showing is in the believing." And he led Vachon out of the lift, down the corridor, and around a corner. A hazy, cumulonimbus cloud hovered about halfway down the corridor, incredibly showering rain on the deck. Vachon had never seen anything like it in all his days.

"I thought Beka was kidding when she said the bio-field generators were out of whack."

"Our Beka, kid about anything? If you think her capable, maybe you ought to reconsider your leaving. There is obviously more for you to learn should you choose to stay this course."

"Well, I won't argue with you there. You have no idea what the past few hours alone have held."

"Interesting, is it not, how an ending is often times more like a beginning than a beginning is itself?"

Vachon stared at the dripping Magog for a moment, wondering where that awful, musty smell was coming from. He furrowed his dark eyebrows before asking, "How do you mean?"

"At the beginning of any path we are unaware; there are an infinite number of questions to be asked and it is difficult to know how to begin asking them. But, the more information we gather, the more answers we receive, the clearer it becomes which question must be asked next. When there are no more answers, the journey is at an end, but until then there are, as far as we can tell, still an infinite number of questions to be asked."

"The circle of life."

"A very good summation, if a little one-dimensional. It is more like the sphere of life. Appearing as a circle from a distance, but so much more complex as one draws nearer."

Vachon just nodded. "Say, shouldn't you be getting dried off? You don't want to come down with Anterides Mumps."

"Unlikely here on Andromeda, but, with the bio-field malfunctioning, I suppose anything is possible."

The two parted company and Vachon returned to the turbo lift where he chatted again with the ship's artificial intelligence. "Command Deck, Rommie."

"Are you still going to see Captain Hunt?" she asked as she shut the doors and set the lift into motion.

"Yes. I wanted to talk to him about that patrol you spotted."

"The patrol has moved out of my sensor range. And Dylan is now on the Observation Deck. Would you like me to alter the destination of this lift?"

"No. Command Deck is still fine."

An instant later the lift came to a halt and the doors opened with an almost imperceptible hiss. Vachon walked the short distance to the bridge, which was empty except for Tyr Anasazi, who was doing something on the floor beneath the tactical station.

"Tyr?"

The Nietzschean turned his head to get a better look at the source of the interruption. "I thought you had left," he scowled.

"Apparently not," Vachon retorted, leaning against the edge of the console. Tyr had made no secret of his dislike for, well, just about everyone, but Vachon in particular. Unlike Tyr's continuing contempt for Dylan Hunt's 'blind idealism' as he called it, Vachon thought he had actually earned a modicum of respect from the Nietzschean over the past few months. Vachon was deceptively strong, agile, and intelligent, despite the thinness of his body and the quietness of his mouth. But, in a way, that same respect also made him a rival in Tyr's eyes — not that anyone could possibly match up to a full-blooded Nietzschean on a molecular level, but that's not how mates are selected outside of a Nietzschean pride. And Andromeda was very much outside.

Vachon had seen the way Tyr looked at Beka — he respected her strength, her intelligence, her ability to captain a ship and lead a crew, and her willingness to stand up to Dylan and anyone else she considered a threat to her life and the lives of her friends. Outside of a Nietzschean pride, she would be an acceptable genetic mate for Tyr.

Willing, however, was another matter. Beka was long past the having to "prove herself capable" stage of her life. She'd been a salvage-freighter pilot since she was fourteen, and captain of that same vessel for the past ten years. She'd supported her father in his last years of failing health, and she'd even saved her brother's butt more times than she could remember. "I don't need your help, thankyouverymuch," was a typical Beka retort.

Then again, she was a healthy young woman. And healthy young women tended to have the same thoughts as healthy young men — who cares who is the better pilot as long as you know how to handle your own equipment.

But, beyond the physical, there were Beka's trust issues, and no one trusts Tyr as far as Harper can throw him. The man, after all, is a Nietzschean — out for what is best for his pride, or, sans a pride, himself. It's one thing to engage thrusters with a guy like this, but it's something entirely different to tell him your deepest, darkest secrets.

And this is where he had Tyr over a laser cannon; Vachon's own actions proved he was both trustworthy and reliable. Eventually, Beka just couldn't help herself. She obviously needed someone to confide in. Who better than the new guy who knew when to keep his mouth shut? And practically all they did was talk — though Vachon never told her why he wouldn't allow it to go any farther; he really had a problem keeping the blood lust in check, especially with someone to whom he was attracted.

And now that he'd built up all that trust he was ditching out on her. My, what a guy!

"—chon? Are you going to stand there all day with that galactic glaze in your eyes or are you going to hand me the pulse meter?" Tyr's voice sounded more annoyed than usual.

Vachon shook the magellanic cloud out of head as he handed over the tool, and then he just walked off, thinking, "She'll never be yours, Nietzschean." Vachon knew that if Beka didn't run to Tyr for comfort, she never would run to him for anything. But, if Beka did run to him for solace, then Tyr would think her weak and would no longer want her. A perfect catch-22.

Suddenly, Vachon wasn't so sure leaving the Andromeda was such a good idea. Leaving the Command Deck, however, was another matter entirely.

On the Observation Deck, Vachon found Dylan Hunt, sitting on a bench, staring out at the stars. Silently, Vachon sat down beside him.

The two remained so for many minutes before Dylan finally turned to him, saying "I thought you were—"

"Leaving?" Vachon finished for him. "Yeah, I was, but... I've sort of been having second thoughts."

Dylan gave him a sad smiled. "Who talked you out of it? Not Beka, I'm betting."

"She'd be the last one to admit that she'd miss me. No. I've just been thinking."

"I've been thinking, too. Sometimes that's a good thing; other times, well, it makes you regret the decisions you had once thought through so carefully."

"You're starting to sound like Rev Bem!"

"Well, we can't have that!" Dylan joked, clasping Vachon on the shoulder as he stood. "I was thinking about Sara," he admitted, as he stood closer to the observation windows. "You know, I captained another ship before the Andromeda. The Crimson Eclipse — she was an Asceticism of Action-class L.O.S.W. craft. A real beauty. And that tour led directly to my promotion to this command. But...." Dylan trailed off into thought again. Something in the winking lights of distant suns seeming to occupy his gaze. Then he shook his head.

"If I'd turned down that first command, Sara and I could have gotten married sooner. But we decided I should take the posting, hoping it would lead me here, to a Glorious Heritage-class command — at the time, one of only a handful in the Systems Commonwealth." Dylan fell silent again, but only for a moment, and this time Vachon suspected the man was thinking of the fallen Commonwealth and not of his long-lost fiancée.

"But now I have to wonder if it was the right decision. Yes, I got what I wanted, command of the Andromeda, but, in the end, it was at the expense of the only other thing I wanted, being married to Sara. So, was it the right decision after all?"

"You should ask one of the beings you and your ship have saved since your arrival in this time. I think they would agree with your original decision."

"But I lost Sara... and I miss her."

It was now Vachon who put his hand on Dylan's shoulder, though he offered no words. He had none to give; his mind was too full of thoughts of Beka.

But their dual reveries didn't last long. Through the Observation Deck windows they saw a blur, and then a bright flash just a moment before the Andromeda jolted them both to the floor.

"What the—?" Dylan asked, but didn't wait for a response as he and Vachon scrambled to their feet and ran for the Command Deck.

They met Beka in the hall and she immediately asked Vachon, "What are you still doing here?"

His response almost stopped her in her tracks: "Looks like you could use some help. I've decided to stay."

On the bridge, Beka headed immediately for the empty pilot's seat, as Dylan sprinted for Tactical, and Vachon slipped into place at Weapons beside Tyr.

A very fluffy Rev Bem was standing at Communications, but they didn't have time to ask him about his new coiffeur. "We have a dozen ships in-coming. They're small fighters and they're easily avoiding the AP cannons," he informed them.

Trance and Harper arrived just moments later, Trance squealing as another blast rocked the Andromeda, whose holographic image flickered in and out before stabilizing and announcing: "Forward thrusters down to seventy-eight percent. Aft deflectors down to fifty-two percent. Port AIS and ES/A off-line."

"Harper!" Dylan shouted.

"I'm on it!" the engineer yelled back as he ran off the bridge as quickly as he'd arrived.

"How can those little ships be causing so much damage?" Tyr growled his frustration.

"They're targeting us. They must know more about this ship than we do," Beka shot over her shoulder.

"That patrol you picked up, Rommie: they must have been using long-range scanners on us, just as we had been using on them," Vachon put in. "Confirming what they, somehow, already suspected about this ship."

"Can they do that?" Trance asked.

"The Systems Commonwealth has been gone for three hundred years — what knowledge wasn't lost in the war was surely captured by the Nietzschean, the Magog, and anyone else who managed to defeat them. If Rommie knows something, then it's possible someone out there has been able to access similar databanks," the Wayist theorized.

"Great! We are sitting ducks once again because you foolishly thought you could outwit them," Tyr raged at Dylan. "You are going to get us all killed."

Vachon thought that Beka would agree with Tyr, but instead she said, "Can we stop fighting each other and start fighting the enemy? At least let me move us so we're not pinned between this moon and this asteroid belt."

"Agreed. Get us outta here," Dylan ordered of his acting first officer. "Tyr, Vachon, as soon as we get into clear space, hit them with everything we've got!"

The two nodded from behind their dark, weaponry visors.

"Dylan, I've got a really bad feeling about this," Trance complained from the Environmental Controls station.

"We're not losing oxygen, are we?" Dylan asked, more worry in his voice than he would have liked.

"No. But with the sensors out on Andromeda's port side...."

"Good point," Dylan agreed. "Vachon!"

"I'm sending a squadron around to por—" A huge explosion rocked the ship, cutting Vachon's words short. "There's a whole battalion of ship-to-ship fighters over here! I'm gonna need some help!"

"I'm on it," Tyr volunteered, but Dylan countermanded him.

"No. Beka, get to Weaponry." Dylan replaced her in the pilot's chair as she joined Tyr and Vachon, donning a pair of targeting visors and grabbing the controls.

"Hang on, Vachon, back-up's on the way," Beka called.

"Tyr, keep to aft — deflectors are still failing. Harper!" he called into the comm system.

"Hey, I'm only one genius here. Rommie and I are doing all we can."

"Great! Now do more. I need those aft deflectors back up to one-hundred percent!" More laser fire rocked the ship, sending Trance sprawling to the floor.

"That was a direct hit — we've got a hull breach in the port hangar bay," Rev Bem informed them.

"I've got robots working on it now," Rommie stated. "Aft deflectors are one-hundred percent, Captain."

"Tyr. Send half your fighters to port. We've got to knock back some of those ships until Harper can get the—"

"Port sensors back on-line," Harper's voice chirped over the comm system. "Another impossible job brought to you by Seamus Harper, resident—"

"Thanks! Now get back up here, Harper!" Dylan ordered as the port visuals came up on-screen. "Holy...." There were more ships out there than any of them had imagined.

"So, while we were hiding, waiting for them to just go away, they were calling in reinforcements," Tyr retorted.

"Perfect. Set up again," Beka agreed.

"But I've cooked up a few surprises of my own," Dylan added, without elaborating. This guy was going to earn their trust if it killed them, Vachon thought. "Vachon, hold fire and maintain your fighters' positions. Beka, swing your ships high and aft, and stay tight. Tyr, try to keep up. Trance, begin dumping bio-effluvia. Rommie, on my command, reverse thrusters... NOW!"

The Andromeda shot backwards through the on-coming fleet, leaving a faint green-haze in her wake. The enemy fighters ignored the bio-cloud in their pursuit of the agile cruiser.

"Vachon, all fighters — fire into the bio-effluvia."

He did and the green-haze lit up as bright as the tails of a dozen comets, frying all of the ships either in it or that had just passed through it.

"What a waste," Rev Bem stated solemnly, but the rest of the crew let out a whoop and Vachon now understood why the bio-field had been out of whack earlier.

Dylan then threw the Andromeda into a pivotal one-eighty. "Rommie, fire everything you've got at them!"

Harper arrived on deck just in time to be blinded by the multitude of explosions. "There's still more out there, Dylan," Rev Bem informed him, "just out of firing range."

"You have the chair," Dylan switched places with the engineer and returned to Tactical. "Harper, plot a slipstream course and get us out of here!"

"You're not going to get any complaints from me, oh high and mighty!"

"Dylan, in-coming missiles!" Rommie announced and all eyes turned toward the view screen that showed a massive battleship just beyond the biohazard cloud and the wreckage of its own fighters.

"Fire all salvos!" Dylan ordered. Andromeda sent her missiles out just a moment before she herself was struck. Sparks and flames flew from every console and the ship pitched from the impact. All crew except Harper were thrown to the ground.

From the security of his pilot's chair Harper informed everyone, "Slipstream engaged. Please fasten your seat belts and stow all gear. We are outta there!"

The crew returned to their feet and their stations and began to assess damage, all but Vachon who still lay where he had fallen. Trance was the first to notice, but Beka was the first at his side.

"Vachon!" she called to him, and his eyes focused on the source of the sound. "You're going to be okay," she assured him, but he could feel the blood leaking from his body. "He's got a bad shrapnel wound to the chest," Beka called over her shoulder to Trance, but Tyr informed her quietly that there wasn't time to get him to the medical bay. He then backed away and gave them a last moment of privacy.

"Vachon, I never got to tell you how I felt about you. Or, maybe you knew. I hope you did. You changed me. You opened my eyes and I'll always...." Her voice failed as tears threatened to overwhelm her, but she pushed them back and continued, "I'll always love you for that."

Vachon looked up at her. He loved her, too, but only his mind was still capable of forming the words. Her image became blurry and then faded before his eyes. He wanted to hold her one last time, to kiss her....

Something or... someone was shaking him.

"Vachon, wake up!"

His eyes fluttered open again. She was so beautiful: blonde hair, blue eyes, gray flannel suit.... "Tracy?"

"Happy Valentine's Day," she said, smiling.

"I didn't think I was going to make it," he mumbled as he sat up on the couch.

"What?" she said, wrinkling her nose in confusion.

"I mean, you.  I didn't think you  were going to make it," he corrected himself, still groggy from his unintended nap.

"I'm just glad you didn't leave," she said as she removed her coat and laid it over the back of the nearby chair.

Vachon glanced out the windows to double check what his instincts were already telling him. "Unfortunately, I'm going to have to leave if I'm going to beat the sunrise."

"I guess you've got about fifteen minutes," Tracy said, checking her watch.

"Probably less," he corrected, disappointment tainting his grin.

"Unless you wanted to bunk down here?" she asked almost shyly.

"Actually spend Valentine's DAY with you? There's an idea."

Vachon grinned as Tracy walked to the windows, pulled the shades down and the curtains closed. The room fell into artificial night, which was one benefit of seeing someone who also had to sleep days: thick draperies.

As Tracy walked back to him through the darkness, a passing fantasy flashed through Vachon's mind. Not what she might look like in a lace teddy, but what she might look like in a tight, leather flight-suit.

Characters from "Forever Knight," "Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda," and "Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back" were used without permission and this story in no way signifies support of, or affiliation with, Sony, James D. Parriot, Tribune Entertainment Services, the Gene Roddenberry estate, Lucas Films Ltd., or Twentieth Century Fox. The story itself belongs to the author. This story will not be sold for any reason.

Thanks to my beta reader for all her helpful suggestions!