“The Mathematics of Tears” is episode twelve of season one of Andromeda.
Dylan goes off on one after Trance goes absent without permission, being rather annoyed about the lack of military protocol amongst his basically civilian crew (expecting military behaviour from people who aren’t military is not going to work and is only going to give you a headache). A sort of precursor for later on.
To appease him, Beka suggests they go to a system where there is supposedly another High Guard ship. Harper is less than ecstatic – this one is apparently a ghost ship.
On arriving in the system, they find an asteroid field and no planet, although there was supposed to be the latter and not the former. There is also a High Guard ship, the Pax Magellanic, another Glorious Heritage class ship like the Andromeda Ascendant – which are apparently one of the most powerful ship classes built by the Systems Commonwealth.
When they board the Pax, the AI is offline and the ship is occupied by High Guard crew. Not descendants of the original crew, like in “To Loose the Faithful Lightning”, but the remainder of the original crew. Who are over 300 years old. Generally, humans – and the crew are humans – don’t tend to live that long. Even in the future.
How can this be and what is going on?