Old Friends, Part 9: “We can’t
change the past”
Rommie
and Orion where on the observation-deck when Andromeda was ordered to find out
what Harper and Mary where up to. Rommie blinked a few times, and then blushed,
"Oh!" Orion was confused, "What's happened?" Rommie smiled,
embarrassed, "Dylan just had my main AI to find out why Harper and Mary had
ordered privacy-mode in a scurvies conduit." Orion nodded, "Yes, my
goddaughter can be very forward when she wants to be." Rommie blushed
again, "You could say that. Is she like this all the time?"
Orion
leaned back against the wall, "She always has been difficult: I think it's
her Nietzschean half acting-out, but it could be that she's always blamed
herself for her mothers death. She can be very self-destructive: Picking fights
with every Nietzschean she sees, rock-climbing without an AG harness, that sort
of thing." Rommie placed her hand on Orion's shoulder, "You've done
your best to bring her up. Don't blame yourself." Orion shook his head,
"I told Trent, Marks father, that a cargo-run through Nietzschean-space was
dangerous, but he was my captain, I had to agree. Then when the raiders hit, I
was incapacitated, and had to watch him died."
Rommie
gently placed a hand on Orion's cheek, "Your not a warship like I am,
you're not built or programmed to fight. There was nothing you could do."
Orion smiled weekly, "You would have thought that after The Fall, I would
have learned to distinguish between what I can and can't do, but it's not that
easy."
Rommie
sat down on a bench, "A few months back, Tyr and Beka where giving Trance
piloting lessons, and something happened in slipstream: I was shot back in time
to the Battle of the Witchhead Nebula. I knew how the battle was going to work
out. I knew that staying was suicide, and would not change the outcome, but I
wanted to stay and fight. We arrived before the Nietzschean fleet, and we
discovered that there was fifteen hundred ships, when there should have been
five hundred. Harper had rigged a fusion catalyst in an attempt to destroy the
entire Nietzschean fleet, but we had stopped him. Dylan had to deploy the
catalyst to take-out a third of the Nietzschean ships. He didn't want to, but
Tyr told us of a Nietzschean legend of the battle: the Angle of Death appeared,
and bringing forth the fires of hell, destroyed a thousand ships. Over a
hundred-thousand Nietzschean where killed when we used the catalyst, and I had
to run away when the rest of the High Guard fleet arrived."
Orion
put an arm round Rommie, "We all have things we blame ourselves for, but we
can't change the past."
TBC