Enterprise, Babylon 5, Yamato, Normandy and Galactica just want to know where they are and how to get home. Also, they want to know why they're all girls in space now.
Fleet of the Homeward Bound (sci-fi multicross shipgirl fic)
- Created
- Status
- Ongoing
- Watchers
- 100
- Recent readers
- 0
- Threadmarks
- 40
-
Statistics (13 threadmarks, 94k words)
User Total Sora Neki 13 -
Loading…
-
Loading…
-
Loading…
-
Loading…
1-1 Down the rabbit hole
- Location
- Australia
Enterprise, Babylon 5, Yamato, Normandy and Galactica just want to know where they are and how to get home. Also, they want to know why they're all girls in space now. (Originally posted on Spacebattles [which has a bunch of existing Omakes and such]. Also posted on AO3, FanFiction.net and TV Tropes!)
When Enterprise gained consciousness, she was spinning through space out of control.
"Ack! Woah woah woah!" She shouted, pinwheeling her armsfiring her manoeuvring thrusters to steady her movement. "I know it's delta shift, but that's no excuse for being asleep at the wheel!"
She waited for a moment, fully expecting her helm officer to stammer out an apology, but nothing came.
She blinked in surprise, looking around herselfperforming an active sensor sweep. Despite stabilising her path, she was flying through space at near transwarp speeds (about 3000 times the speed of light in concrete terms), caught in some kind of subspace rip-tide.
"Um," The starship looked up, seeing the light of the nearest star get dimmer and dimmer as she zoomed away from it. "Captain? Orders?"
She could feel the gnawing worry in her gut that characterised Yellow Alert, so even if her Acting Captain was missing in action her actual Captain should be waking up and taking control any second now.
"…any second now…" Enterprise bit her bottom lip, wincing as she had to clench her gutflare her structural integrity field to hold together though a moment of subspace turbulence.
...well, surely her captain wouldn't mind a bit of initiative on her part? Just this once?
Feeling like she was breaking some fundamental taboo, Enterprise took the waveform of the subspace current, calculated the inverse, fired up her warp drive and broke out of the current and fully returned to normal space. She emerged into the dark space between solar systems, about 2 light-years from the star she had been watching before.
"Computer?" Enterprise asked hesitantly.
Her computer gave a chirp to let her know it was listening.
"Where are we?"
"Unknown." The ever-polite voice of her computer spoke in her head.
Enterprise blinked. "Unknown?"
There was silence for a moment, then Enterprise realised she hadn't actually asked the computer a question. "Computer, clarify last statement?"
"I am not receiving any signal from any known navigation beacons, and visible stars do not match any in current star charts." Her computer elaborated.
Enterprise's shoulders slumped. "Oh, so it's going to be one of those missions." She groaned. She was either in another galaxy, another time period, or another dimension. Again.
She looked down at herself, brushing some space dust off her saucer-skirt. An itch in her nacelle-wings caused her to shoot a nervous glance behind herself, but the two softly glowing protrusions looked perfectly intact to her eyes.
Her captain still hadn't given any orders.
"Computer, do you know what the captain is doing?" Enterprise asked, starting to twiddle her thumbs.
"Captain Picard is asleep in his quarters."
That was very strange. He should have been woken by now – either by the Yellow Alert, or by a crew member sent to fetch him. "And the acting captain?"
"Captain Picard is asleep in his quarters."
Enterprise froze. "Computer, who's the highest-ranking crew member still awake?"
"All crew members are currently asleep in their quarters."
"…including Data?"
"Confirmed, Lieutenant Commander Data is asleep in his quarters."
Before Enterprise could go further down this rabbit hole, she felt a burst of tachyons right at the edge of her awarenesslong-range sensors. She looked up at their source, and found herself staring at the solar system the subspace current had been carrying her out of. "What was that?"
"Energy signature shows a 12% similarity with Xindi subspace vortex technology." Her computer helpfully supplied.
12% wasn't much to go on, but she had to have gotten here somehow, and if there was something nearby that even vaguely looked like a wormhole…
Knowing that red-lining her engines was a terrible idea when she had so little information, but wanting to not waste a moment, Enterprise plotted a course at Warp 9. ETA: 11 hours 16 minutes.
Enterprise manoeuvred herself around so that she was facing the direction she wanted to go, and engaged her warp drive. Her nacelle-wings began to glow brightly as they powered up, and Enterprise could hear the zoom-whoosh of a warp bubble settling into place. To an outside observer, it would look like Enterprise had stretched off to infinity, but that was just an optical illusion caused by the spatial distortion.
As a starship, journeys this short were very rare – most voyages that she set out on took days if not weeks to complete. However, those previous times have been with a conscious crew. While the stars sped past her, she had listened to the sounds of her engineers running about with checklists and tricorders, off-duty crewman laughing in Ten Forward, children scurrying under their parents feet.
For the first time she could remember, Enterprise was truly left alone with her thoughts, and she didn't like it one bit.
Still, she was a Starfleet ship, darn it! She wasn't going to fall apart at the sort of thing her crew dealt with every second week!
That said, she wished the computer was better company. As the ship, she was technically lowest on the chain of command, and didn't even have the authority to activate the EMH. Which was a problem twice over, because her crew really needed medical attention. There was no reason for the entire crew to be unconscious at once – even that one time the Paxans had knocked her crew out, Data had remained active.
Still, 11 hours eventually passed, and she dropped out of warp about 30 light-minutes or so "above" the plane of the ecliptic and took a good hard lookran a full scan with passive sensors only. It was unusually timid of her, but who could blame her with her crew disabled?
Whatever she had been expecting, this wasn't it. It was a plain, rather boring system. Main-sequence G2 star much like Sol, but only one planet and it was orbiting way too far from the star to support any form of life short of a Horta. There was an unusually thick asteroid belt much closer to the star, but no signs of life there either.
Wait, no – there was something there, right on the edge of her senseseffective sensor range. A stream of high-energy exotic particles in orbit around the planet.
Enterprise tapped her combadgepowered up her comm array and transmitted "This is the USS Enterprise to unknown entity or entities. If you can receive and understand this message, please respond." on every frequency and in every language she knew. She smiled, proud of how professional she'd sounded.
That smile became strained after 10 minutes with no response.
She bit her lip in worry, but engaged her warp drive nonetheless.
After another few minutes of low warp travel, she dropped down into impulse. Her eyesoptical sensors were now picking up a structure next to the source of exotic particles – a station that strongly reminded her of the theoretical "O'Neill cylinder" design from pre-warp Earth.
The station had an earthy, blue grey and silver dress on, and a large structure running up her back that to Enterprise's eyessensors appeared to be a cargo bay. Her attention was focused fully on four long booms that looked like a half-finished spacedock. They were each giving off high-energy readings, and a swarm of fighter-fairies was flying around them in panicked circles, but what was more interesting to Enterprise's eyes sensors was the dimensional breach they appeared to be containing.
If that wasn't the anomaly she had picked up from 2 light-years away Enterprise would replicate herself a hat to eat.
Enterprise couldn't sense anything more advanced than a fusion reactor in the station as she dropped out of impulse, but raised her shields nonetheless – the station was over 8,000 meters long to her 642 and a half, meaning she only came up to her ankles. "Hello?" She broadcast, this time on basic radio.
"Oh!" The station jerked backwards in surprise, the swarm of fighter-fairies scattering in all directions. The station turned to look at Enterprise, giving an apologetic smile. "Sorry dear, you startled me. I'm afraid I must have missed your jump point."
"Sorry." Enterprise winced, though internally a little surprised. She hadn't been making any real attempt to mask her warp signature, and why was her Universal Translator using such unusual terminology as 'jump point'? "I didn't mean to scare you."
"It's alright." The station accepted. "I suppose I was rather distracted by this, anyhow." She gestured to the anomaly.
Enterprise turned to face the distortion, peering closely at itinitiating an active scan. "Do you know what this is?"
The station laughed. "I'm afraid I haven't a clue!" She admitted. "It just appeared in my space with no warning, and started fluctuating rather badly. My commander tried to stabilise it using the jumpgate, and, well…" She gestured to the booms around the anomaly. "The whole thing turned inside-out on us. Swallowed me whole – I barely had time to eject my docked ships, no time to properly evacuate. Next thing I know, I woke up here."
The two of them studied the anomaly in silence for a moment. It was a harsh, jagged thing, alternating between red and blue as the types of high-energy exotic particles it was emitting changed at random. Cherenkov radiation, Hawking radiation, a burst of tachyons, Cherenkov again, vetron radiation of all things… there was no pattern that Enterprise could see, and a few forms of radiation that she'd never seen before.
"I'm sorry, how rude of me." The station suddenly said, prompting Enterprise to look up at her. "My name is Babylon 5."
Enterprise smiled. "I'm the USS Enterprise-D." She declared.
"Nice to meet you, Enterprise-D."
"Call me Enterprise!" Enterprise smiled. "None of my family are around to confuse things."
"Alright, though nobody's ever really called me anything other than Babylon 5…" Babylon 5 smiled back, hands clasped together.
The radiation from the dimensional breach suddenly spiked, and both station and ship turned back to it, all business now. Some of the swarm of fighter-fairies bravely clamped onto the "jumpgate" struts, thrusters firing full force trying to hold them in place as the breach started to push them apart.
"It's opening again!" Babylon 5 warned. Not a second later, a high-mass object was suddenly ejected from the anomaly at about 3 times the speed of light, fast enough that Enterprise would have missed it if she hadn't been deep-scanning the anomaly at the time. With it came a massive burst of high-energy radiation. Fortunately both were aimed away from Enterprise and Babylon 5, otherwise the both of them would have been vaporised, shields and all. The radiation crashed into the asteroid belt, and whatever it touched was super-heated to the point that they exploded.
The alien technology in the jumpgate powered up further, and the breach seemed to recede into itself a little. Enterprise suddenly had the mental image of someone pinching shut a hose as water pressure built up behind it.
Sure enough, Babylon 5 yelled "I won't be able to hold it for much longer – it's getting harder and harder to keep it closed!"
Enterprise hurriedly fed her scan data into her PADDmain computer. "Have you tried applying the inverse waveform over it?" She double-checked that the anomaly had no chroniton radiation – she didn't want to be responsible for creating the anomaly she was trying to close.
"Yes dear, of course! It spiked like this about 17 hours ago, and that seemed to calm it down for a while, but it's not responding now!"
2 light-years, divided by 3000c, plus the 11.25 hours it had taken her to warp here… "That was probably me, entering though here!" Enterprise yelled. "I must have passed through it while at warp, that's probably how I got caught in that current…"
"What?" Babylon 5 sounded confused. "But… ugh, nevermind! That won't matter unless we can put a lid on this thing!" She said, her voice becoming rather shrill towards the end of that sentence as she stared at the breach in horror.
The breach pulsed, and another object flew out of it at warp speeds. This time it and it's accompanying radiation were aimed only mostly away from Enterprise and Babylon 5, and Enterprise realised that the breach was rotating.
"Look out!" She cried out, realising right afterwards that the cry was useless – a station wouldn't be able to move on its own. A holographic warning display that just-so-happened to resemble a magic circle appeared around one hand as she latched onto Babylon 5 with a tractor beam. The station out-massed her more than a thousand times over, but she tugged as hard as she could, trying desperately to pull the station out of the path of the spinning breach.
"What on Earth?!" The station cried, staring at her tractor beam like she'd never seen one before. (She had heard of the magnetic/gravitational tethers that Minbari ships were capable of, but those looked different enough that she didn't make the connection.) After a moment though, she seemed to catch on. She made swimming motionsfired her orbit maintenance thrusters, adding what little she could to Enterprise's efforts.
The breach pulsed again, shooting another object out. This time the accompanying radiation vaporised an unfortunate fighter-fairy that had been in it's path.
"Come on, come on…!" Enterprise grit her teeth, pulling with all her mightdirecting emergency power to the tractor beam. Out here in orbit, they weren't fighting gravity or friction, just inertia. Any amount of force would move the station, the only question was could she move it enough. "Just a little more…!"
The breach pulsed one more time, and Babylon 5 had to stifle a scream as the radiation clipped the tip of her cargo hold, vaporising the opening and super-heating the adjacent metal. The radiation and object shot from the breach continued on past the station to impact the planet, hitting with enough force to send visible shock-waves through the crust. Enterprise desperately hoped that her estimate of the planet as uninhabitable was right, as she watched the surface break apart to reveal the magma underneath.
Her efforts paid off, however, and the next pulse missed Babylon 5 even as it shattered the planet below them.
"It's accelerating!" Babylon 5 cried, staring at the breach as Enterprise released her tractor beam. (She would stabilise the station's orbit later if they survived). Enterprise spun around to see that the station was right, the pulses were getting more and more frequent and the breach was spinning faster and faster. The struts were now filled up with fighter-fairies, thrusters at full burn, and Enterprise released her own runabout-pixies to aid them.
(Fortunately, the breach's spin appeared to keep it pointed between the struts. Enterprise didn't want to think about what would happen if they lost one of them.)
Realising that she didn't have time to make a full computer model of the breach, Enterprise did some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations. The "jumpgate" did appear to be able to close dimensional breaches, it was just that whatever realm it was connected to was "under pressure", and a constant stream of matter and energy was flowing out of the breach and keeping it open. A properly-calibrated burst of tetryon particles should weaken the connection and lessen the stream enough for Babylon 5 to fully close it, but to do that they'd have to drain the "pressure" currently in the rift itself –
Realisation hit Enterprise like an asteroid to the face. "We need to open the breach!"
"Run that by me again, dear?!" Babylon 5 cried, ducking down as another faster-than-light projectile whizzed over her headdocking bay. The breach was now sending out pulses once every couple of seconds, and was still accelerating.
"It's like water pressure in a fire hose!" Enterprise yelled. "We have to let the pressure out before we can properly close it!"
"For both our sakes, I hope you're right!" Babylon 5 responded, sending command signals to the jumpgate with a wave of her hand. The breach suddenly tripled in diameter, with the fighter-fairies and runabout-pixies needing to pull the struts back so that they weren't caught up in the turbulence.
Several very large, very fast objects burst out of the breach in quick succession, the radiation accompanying them near-constant now. Her handsdeflector dish glowed as Enterprise desperately gathered energy in them it, watching with worry as the local star was hit with several of the bursts. If the star destabilised and went supernova, that was game over.
When she had gathered enough, she thrust her hands forward and fired her charged pulse of tetryon particles down the throat of the breach, and saw in relief as, just for a moment, it seemed to weaken and shrink.
"Now!" Enterprise yelled. "Close it!"
Babylon 5 grit her teeth, but clamped her hands together, sending the appropriate commands. The breach flickered for a moment, and Enterprise held hermetaphorical breath…
Then the breach collapsed in on itself, becoming a singular point of light. Almost no radiation leaked from it now.
The ship and station both waited a moment, but when nothing happened they both let out relieved sighs, Enterprise dropping her shields.
"Let's not do that again." Babylon 5 requested wearily.
"Yeah." Enterprise agreed, moving around to the other side of the station and latching on with another tractor beam to drag her back to a stable orbit. "But no worries! You did an awesome job closing it! That's more a scar on the fabric of space-time than a proper breach anymore."
"A jumpgate is supposed to close jump-points up specifically to avoid scarring like that, though." Babylon 5 replied, several of her fighter-fairies flying over to her melted docking bay and poking it with manipulator arms.
"Well, look on the bright side." Enterprise said, finishing her duties as a tug-boat. "This gives us a reference point when trying to figure out how to return home."
Babylon 5 made a "Hmm" noise, staring at the remains of the breach.
Enterprise smiled awkwardly, but the station didn't say anything.
After a minute of silence, Enterprise had had enough. "I'm going to do a quick flyby and scan of the planet and star, make sure both are stable."
Babylon 5 gave a quick nod to show that she'd heard, then went back to staring at the ex-breach.
The crust of the planet the pair was orbiting had been shattered by the force of the objects ejected from the dimensional breach, but not quite energetically enough to disperse it. Most of the chunks were gravitationally pulling each other closer, the planet pulling itself back together. Only some of the smaller debris had reached escape velocity, and a good chunk of even that was now settling into orbits. In a few hundred or thousand years this debris would likely form into rings around the planet. Enterprise made sure to note the paths of as much of it as she could, making sure none of it would collide with Babylon 5 for the foreseeable future.
The good news, Enterprise thought to herself as she weaved through the debris, is that I'm pretty sure I was right – this planet was uninhabited.
It wasn't strictly their fault that the anomaly had shattered the planet, but she'd still feel terrible if people had lost their homes – or worse, died – because she couldn't seal the breach fast enough.
Enterprise finished up her flyby, and was getting ready to check the local star next when she noticed a high-energy signature at the edge of her awarenesspassive sensor range.
Excitement fluttering in her chest, Enterprise immediately set off at Full Impulse, broadcasting on both subspace and radio frequencies. "This is the USS Enterprise to unknown entity or entities. If you can receive and understand this message, please respond."
She was planning to repeat the message in all other languages she knew, as she did for Babylon 5 earlier, but to her surprise immediately got a response in English, albeit with a noticeable accent. "I am Yamato BBY-01. I understand your message, Enterprise-san."
Enterprise had had a sister ship called the Yamato. Even though she had been destroyed by an Iconian computer virus, Enterprise found growing excited at meeting another starship with that name.
Once she was close enough to get a proper look at the other ship, Enterprise slowed to a stop, blinking in surpriserepeating her scan. Yamato's design was very much… well, not what she would have expected from a spaceship. Frankly, it looked like someone had started with an old ocean-going warship and given her rocket-wings slapped a giant thruster on the end.
The other ship was a little over half Enterprise's heightlength, had long brown hair, and was wearing a white shirt and red skirt. That was fine, but what wasn't was all of the scars – some faded, some fresh – that cross-crossed their way across her exposed skin, and almost certainly under her clothes as well. This was a ship that had seen too much action, then been patched up and sent back out.
Enterprise had her own share of repair marks as well, but hers were the faint, clean lines of spacedock repairs. Yamato's were the rough lines of field repairs – a lot of field repairs. Enterprise wouldn't be surprised if this ship had had to be reassembled from debris at one point, that's how extensive the repair marks were.
But looking into the other ship's steely, cool gaze, Enterprise knew that this ship wouldn't hesitate to jump back into action one more time.
Feeling slightly intimidated now, Enterprise bowed her head, guessing correctly that this ship would respect the traditional greeting. "I don't suppose you're native to this area of space?"
"I am not." Yamato replied, politely bowing her head in return. "There appears to have been some kind of dimensional interference in my last warp jump – judging from your question, something similar has happened to you?"
"Yeah." It was inappropriate, but Enterprise found herself smiling at the familiar terminology. "There was a dimensional breach on the other side of this planet – a station named Babylon 5 and myself managed to close it up – that's probably what brought all of us here."
Yamato frowned. "Is it not quite foolish to close what would logically be the door back to our own space?"
"Oh, you wouldn't want to try to go back through that one." Enterprise quickly explained. "It was full of hard radiation going the other way – even with with full shields I don't think I could make it." And that was assuming the particle flow didn't just force her back out of it, like a human trying to swim up a waterfall.
Yamato slowly nodded, processing this information.
"Another ship with a warp drive and some understanding of dimensional mechanics would be of great help getting us home." Enterprise offered eagerly, hoping she sounded professional. "Want to go over and pool our resources?"
Yamato nodded. "Please."
Enterprise happily set off at Quarter Impulse, looking behind herself to make sure Yamato was following… and found herself frowning.
Yamato's rocket-wingsmain thruster were roaring as they fired, leaving a large yellow trail behind the ship. Rather than simple chemical rockets, Yamato's thrusters appeared to fire tachyons and other exotic particles. Any observer would be filled with the sense of something slowly building up to enormous power.
…the key word there being 'slowly'.
"By any chance," Yamato said dryly, having been left in the dust accelerating at a steady three gees to Enterprise's relativistic manoeuvring "are you unmanned? If I accelerated like that, I'm not sure even Analyser would survive the G-force, and he is a robot."
Apparently, whoever built Yamato had known how to build a warp drive but not inertial dampeners. Enterprise could sense artificial gravity on the other ship, a technology she had thought was synonymous with inertial dampeners but apparently not.
"It's… complicated?" She avoided Yamato's question as she slowed to a halt, suddenly unsure if she should be discussing technology the other ship seemed to lack. "Um, how about we just travel the remaining distance at warp?"
Yamato shook her head. "If it is just to the other side of the planet, I will just travel the remaining distance like this. You have hyperspace communications, yes?"
Enterprise blinked. She opened her mouth to ask Yamato what she meant, before being interrupted by a subspace hail. The frequency was unusual, and her Universal Translator took a moment to decode the unfamiliar transmission protocol, but afterwards she was connected to what was easily recognisable as a subspace comm channel.
"We shall keep in touch like this." Yamato transmitted, confirming that it was her who opened the channel. Apparently, Yamato's builders called subspace "hyperspace".
"Alright." Enterprise sent back, still a little unsure herself. "See you there."
Jumping up to Half Impulse, Enterprise decided to cut her flyby short and head back to Babylon 5 to let her know what had occurred.
The station had failed to reply to her subspace hails earlier, responding only to her radio hail, so Enterprise had made the understandable but still mistaken assumption that the station lacked FTL comms altogether. Lost in her thoughts, she completely missed the pulses of tachyons the station was transmitting at her and was quite surprised at what she found when she dropped out of impulse.
"There you are, dear." Babylon 5 chastised her. "Honestly, when someone hails you could you please do them the courtesy of answering?"
Enterprise blinked rapidly, trying to figure out what the station was talking about. "Um, sorry?" Her eyes flicked over to the two new ships who had matched their orbits to the station. "On the other side of the planet I, um, found another ship… as did you, I see."
"Indeed." Babylon 5 indicated the two new ships. "Enterprise, this is the SSV Normandy SR-2 and Battlestar Galactica BS-75. Normandy, Galactica, this is the USS Enterprise-D."
The Normandy was a tiny slip of a ship – barely 170 meters by Enterprise's eye, about level with her knees – all sleek lines and flowing curves. (Though not curves in the way that a human woman would have them – Normandy looked like a frigate, or a girl in her tween years if she'd been human). Her design was at least partially human, going by the fact that her name was written on her bodysuit in English – but there was a very strong alien influence going by the avian features of her face and the metallic plates lining her jaw and the back of her hands. (They might have been in other places as well, but Enterprise was hardly going to ask her to remove her bodysuit so she could check.)
Galactica, on the other hand, was a huge ship more than twice the heightlength of Enterprise, decked out in thick armour made of an alloy Enterprise didn't immediately recognise, but those were about the only impressive things about her. Her design, like that of Babylon 5's and Yamato's, was purely human (at least on the surface). And… Enterprise didn't want to be rude, but given the other ship's minimal radiation signature and her exhaust trail Enterprise was pretty sure that Galactica was powered by a chemical reactor, which would give her less power to work with than even the fusion-powered Normandy, a ship less than an eighth of her height length.
"Hello, Cloud Nine." Galactica said randomly. Her eyes were focused on Enterprise, but she seemed to be looking through her, not at her. "I'm sorry you had to wait so long for me to join you."
Thrown for a loop, Enterprise hesitated for a moment on how to respond. Behind Galactica, Babylon 5 just shrugged helplessly. "Um, actually, my name is Enterprise-D."
"Oh, is that what you're calling yourself these days?" Galactica asked, grey hair framing a wrinkled face. "Still, you'll always be Cloud Nine to me."
This ship was old, Enterprise realised, and probably should have been retired some time ago. This opinion only grew stronger when she noticed hairline cracks all over Galactica's skinhull, and a several large fractures down her spine keel. Forget being retired, Enterprise wanted to know how Galactica was still spaceworthy.
"You can understand her?" Babylon 5 asked Enterprise. "It sounds vaguely Greek to me, but only just."
"I'm equipped with a Universal Translator." Enterprise explained on reflex, remembering her earlier decision to keep quiet about tech she had but others didn't just a second too late.
"Your people have met Galactica's people before?"
"Hm? No, I don't think so…"
"You have a real-time translator that works on languages that you haven't encountered before?" Babylon 5 asked, slightly incredulously. "Is it telepathic?"
"…no?" Enterprise said, unconvincingly. Technically it wasn't, but it did scan the brain of the person talking so that it could tell homophones apart and so on. There was a limit to what could be told from context, especially in First Contacts.
"Wait." Enterprise blinked. "If you couldn't understand her, then how did you know –"
Interrupted by a slight tug on her saucer-skirt, Enterprise looked down to find Normandy looking up at her.
"Transfer." The frigate asked quietly, holding a hand out.
"…you want my translation files?" Enterprise tried to clarify, wondering if this is how humans felt when small children asked them for candy.
Normandy nodded, staring intently up at Enterprise.
"Um, I'll need an example of how you store translations…"
Normandy lifted her right arm up, and an orange hologram of a keyboard and screen formed over it. With her left, she typed several quick commands, and Enterprise's PADD beeped in her pocket to signal an incoming data transfersensors detected a communications laser being shone at her.
It took her Universal Translator a couple of seconds to chew through the unfamiliar file format. It was (likely deliberately) simple enough to understand – information was stored in groups of 8 digit base 2 numbers, little endian… it used the old Unicode encoding, was written in English, and appeared to be a variant on XML.
There was another file mixed in, but didn't seem to contain any useful information when Enterprise ran it. It must have been a metadata file or something – Enterprise would worry about it later.
Quickly tapping a command on her own PADDqueuing a task on her computer, Enterprise rewrote the translation mappings that her Universal Translator had worked out into the format Normandy used and sent it back over. Galactica's was the most obvious language disparity, but Babylon 5, Yamato, Normandy, and herself all suffered from a century or two of linguistic drift. They could understand each other, the same way Shakespeare could mostly be understood today, but some up-to-date translation files would help grease those connections.
Galactica and Babylon 5 both lacked real-time translators, so Enterprise set up a special comm channel between them that routed through her Universal Translator. It was a bit of a kludge, but it would work for now. She'd have to work out something long-term for them and Yamato later.
Actually, while she was doing that, Enterprise had an odd realisation. The English spoken by herself, Babylon 5 and Normandy had, as was tradition, stolen words from other cultures – bits of Vulcan, bits of Tellarite, even a few Romulan phrases had entered modern English. (She wasn't sure which languages Babylon 5 and Normandy's English had stolen from, but she was reasonably sure they were non-human.)
Yamato's Japanese, on the other hand, was almost completely 'uncontaminated' by comparison. Enterprise wasn't sure if this meant they didn't steal words and phrases like English did, or if Yamato's builders had much less contact with aliens than her, Babylon 5 and Normandy's builders had had.
"So, what species do you represent?" Babylon 5 suddenly said, breaking Enterprise out of her train of thought. "I was built by the human race, from the planet Earth. What planet did your builders come from?"
Normandy tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. "Earth." She said, suspiciously.
Babylon 5 stared down at the frigate, suddenly uncertain. "Um, it's not that I don't believe you or anything, dear, but your design is… well…"
"Half-Turian." Normandy finished quietly.
Enterprise had never heard of a race called the Turians, and judging by the look on Babylon 5's face neither had she.
"Don't you remember, Daidalos? You built me yourself." Galactica smiled up at Babylon 5, apparently mistaking her for another space station. "Dear little Blackbird here," she indicated Normandy "was built in my flight deck."
Enterprise and Babylon 5 swapped expressions of concern as Galactica sighed. "You really were a marvellous ship." The old warship muttered, gazing off into the distance. "Shame the Cylons shot you to pieces…" She seemed to be lost in memories.
Enterprise opened her mouth, hoping that something to say would come to mind. But has she racked her brain, something registered at the edge of her awarenesspassive sensor range.
"Galactica, dear, I think you might be a little confused as to what is going on –" Babylon 5 started.
Enterprise had just enough time to shout "Incoming ship!" before another ship joined the impromptu meet-and-greet.
The new ship arrived using something that most certainly wasn't a warp drive, despite all the subspace eddies it caused. She was a little larger than Galactica, meaning that she towered over Enterprise. While all of the other four present – Enterprise, Babylon 5, Normandy and Galactica – had designs that largely focused around soft curves and circles, this ship's design was all about hard angles. She somewhat resembled a grey dagger in space, and her military uniform and haughty expression did not inspire confidence in the others.
She seemed to have suffered a recent head wounddamage to her bridge – the repair marks were still fresh. The bright scars welding marks, however, only made her look more dangerous, not less.
"I do apologise for my rude intrusion." The new ship asked, her voice cool and calculating. "May I ask who exactly is in charge here?"
A stream of ions from the new ship's aft propelled the craft forwards, neatly and orderly. With her arms folded over, accelerating slowly and steadily, the new ship extruded an aura of menace. It almost felt like a sinister marching tune should be playing.
Enterprise felt her Yellow Alert butterflies come back.
"Another new face." Babylon 5 said, her voice now carefully measured instead of the affectionate tone it had had until now. Enterprise noticed that the station's fighter-fairies were beginning to form up between their mistress and the new ship, and the station was surreptitiously pulling a plasma pistol out of a holstergun ports were opening up all across the station. "How may we help you, miss…?"
Galactica gave a muffled grunt of pain, and Enterprise realised that her right handlanding bay was broken. Still, a few small craft managed to exit the Galactica's other sleeve landing bay. Normandy, Enterprise realised with a start, seemed to have disappeared altogether without her realising.
Reading the mood, Enterprise recalled her runabout-pixies and raised her shields.
"ISD Chimaera." The new ship looked at Galactica, and quirked an eyebrow. "Such a… rustic design… I must be in Wild Space, then. Blasted Purrgils… No matter. Transmit your maps of the local hyperlanes, and I will be on my way."
"And if we can't do that?" Enterprise asked.
Swarms of fighter-faeries began to emerge from the folds of Chimaera's uniformtwo hangar bays.
"Then," Chimaera said coolly "we will have a problem."
However that particular confrontation would have gone would remain a mystery, because that was when Enterprise sensed a dimensional breach opening.
At first she thought it was the breach she and Babylon 5 had closed reopening itself, but then she realised that this breach was about 20,000kms away from that breach.
Interestingly, Babylon 5 flinched when the breach opened, shooting an alarmed look in the general direction of the breach. Apparently, she'd sensed something that Enterprise hadn't – Enterprise made a mental note to ask her about that later. If they survived. Enterprise really hoped they survived.
Yet another ship emerged from this breach; said breach closing itself afterwards. If Enterprise had thought that the dagger-ship was intimidating, this ship looked like it was terrifying.
She was equally as enormous as Chimaera, but her features were dominated by a huge armoured breastplateprow that came to a sharp point; making the ship look like it was about to ram you, even when she was still. She was decked out in thick form-concealing armour, covered in religious iconography and gun turrets. There wasn't a single part of the ship that looked like it was not dedicated to killing.
(Well, Enterprise reconsidered, she didn't know the iconography was religious. It could be, for example, political instead. But considering that it seemed to largely comprise of skulls and eagles, it wasn't encouraging either way.)
She looked far older than Galactica and had even more repair marks than Yamato, but this ship appeared to have been sustained not by careful and professional maintenance but by a cult-like zeal.
The newest new ship took them all in at a glance, but her eyes seemed to focus on Enterprise.
"The first of you" the newest ship said, her voice deep and commanding "to confess to leading my Navigators astray I shall reward with a quick death. The rest of you" the new ship's mouth twisted in a hate-fulled snarl "will suffer."
"I beg your pardon?" Chimaera exclaimed, in a tone of voice that indicated that she rather didn't. "Who exactly do you think you are?!"
"I am a mighty ship of the Imperium, the Sword-class ship known as –"
"You are no ship of the Empire." Chimaera refuted. "Identify yourself truthfully at once, or I shall make you."
The Sword-class ship went very still, then turned fully to face Chimaera. "Threatening an Imperial ship?" Her deep voice growled. "And here I thought I had seen the full extent of your depravity after witnessing you consorting with the ships of xenos."
Enterprise said nothing, but quietly moved to place herself between the two belligerent ships and Galactica and Babylon 5.
It was certainly true that, like Normandy, her design was not fully human. Humans may well have been the driving force behind Starfleet, but they hardly ran everything by themselves. Her power conduits were designed by a Vulcan. Her cooling systems were manufactured on Andoria. Her phaser banks were partially based on reverse-engineered Klingon Disruptors. All of these things together gave her an appearance that was almost human, but… not quite.
"We need to get out of here." Enterprise muttered, realising even as she said the words that it was hopeless. She wouldn't be able to drag Babylon 5 fast enough to escape if either of the two aggressive ships came after them, and she wouldn't leave her to die.
"For your own safety, I recommend against that." Chimaera said, a clear threat in the way she emphasised 'recommend'. "Simply follow my orders, and there is a strong chance you will survive."
"And if we don't?" Galactica asked.
Chimaera shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance. "Then you will be shot in the back as you try to flee."
She did not say which ship would be doing the shooting, but Enterprise had a pretty good idea.
"I am the Emperor's Will!" The Sword-class ship roared, and for one fleeting moment Enterprise wondered if that was actually the ship's name. "And His will is that you burn in holy las fire!"
Red plasma roared out from her aft, and the thought popped into Enterprise's head that, as it diffused out behind the ship, it looked like blood spreading across the cosmos.
Enterprise swallowed, but realised events had moved beyond deescalation. The only way out now was forward.
"Red alert." She whispered to herself.
When Enterprise gained consciousness, she was spinning through space out of control.
"Ack! Woah woah woah!" She shouted, pinwheeling her arms
She waited for a moment, fully expecting her helm officer to stammer out an apology, but nothing came.
She blinked in surprise, looking around herself
"Um," The starship looked up, seeing the light of the nearest star get dimmer and dimmer as she zoomed away from it. "Captain? Orders?"
She could feel the gnawing worry in her gut that characterised Yellow Alert, so even if her Acting Captain was missing in action her actual Captain should be waking up and taking control any second now.
"…any second now…" Enterprise bit her bottom lip, wincing as she had to clench her gut
...well, surely her captain wouldn't mind a bit of initiative on her part? Just this once?
Feeling like she was breaking some fundamental taboo, Enterprise took the waveform of the subspace current, calculated the inverse, fired up her warp drive and broke out of the current and fully returned to normal space. She emerged into the dark space between solar systems, about 2 light-years from the star she had been watching before.
"Computer?" Enterprise asked hesitantly.
Her computer gave a chirp to let her know it was listening.
"Where are we?"
"Unknown." The ever-polite voice of her computer spoke in her head.
Enterprise blinked. "Unknown?"
There was silence for a moment, then Enterprise realised she hadn't actually asked the computer a question. "Computer, clarify last statement?"
"I am not receiving any signal from any known navigation beacons, and visible stars do not match any in current star charts." Her computer elaborated.
Enterprise's shoulders slumped. "Oh, so it's going to be one of those missions." She groaned. She was either in another galaxy, another time period, or another dimension. Again.
She looked down at herself, brushing some space dust off her saucer-skirt. An itch in her nacelle-wings caused her to shoot a nervous glance behind herself, but the two softly glowing protrusions looked perfectly intact to her eyes.
Her captain still hadn't given any orders.
"Computer, do you know what the captain is doing?" Enterprise asked, starting to twiddle her thumbs.
"Captain Picard is asleep in his quarters."
That was very strange. He should have been woken by now – either by the Yellow Alert, or by a crew member sent to fetch him. "And the acting captain?"
"Captain Picard is asleep in his quarters."
Enterprise froze. "Computer, who's the highest-ranking crew member still awake?"
"All crew members are currently asleep in their quarters."
"…including Data?"
"Confirmed, Lieutenant Commander Data is asleep in his quarters."
Before Enterprise could go further down this rabbit hole, she felt a burst of tachyons right at the edge of her awareness
"Energy signature shows a 12% similarity with Xindi subspace vortex technology." Her computer helpfully supplied.
12% wasn't much to go on, but she had to have gotten here somehow, and if there was something nearby that even vaguely looked like a wormhole…
Knowing that red-lining her engines was a terrible idea when she had so little information, but wanting to not waste a moment, Enterprise plotted a course at Warp 9. ETA: 11 hours 16 minutes.
Enterprise manoeuvred herself around so that she was facing the direction she wanted to go, and engaged her warp drive. Her nacelle-wings began to glow brightly as they powered up, and Enterprise could hear the zoom-whoosh of a warp bubble settling into place. To an outside observer, it would look like Enterprise had stretched off to infinity, but that was just an optical illusion caused by the spatial distortion.
As a starship, journeys this short were very rare – most voyages that she set out on took days if not weeks to complete. However, those previous times have been with a conscious crew. While the stars sped past her, she had listened to the sounds of her engineers running about with checklists and tricorders, off-duty crewman laughing in Ten Forward, children scurrying under their parents feet.
For the first time she could remember, Enterprise was truly left alone with her thoughts, and she didn't like it one bit.
Still, she was a Starfleet ship, darn it! She wasn't going to fall apart at the sort of thing her crew dealt with every second week!
That said, she wished the computer was better company. As the ship, she was technically lowest on the chain of command, and didn't even have the authority to activate the EMH. Which was a problem twice over, because her crew really needed medical attention. There was no reason for the entire crew to be unconscious at once – even that one time the Paxans had knocked her crew out, Data had remained active.
Still, 11 hours eventually passed, and she dropped out of warp about 30 light-minutes or so "above" the plane of the ecliptic and took a good hard look
Whatever she had been expecting, this wasn't it. It was a plain, rather boring system. Main-sequence G2 star much like Sol, but only one planet and it was orbiting way too far from the star to support any form of life short of a Horta. There was an unusually thick asteroid belt much closer to the star, but no signs of life there either.
Wait, no – there was something there, right on the edge of her senses
Enterprise tapped her combadge
That smile became strained after 10 minutes with no response.
She bit her lip in worry, but engaged her warp drive nonetheless.
After another few minutes of low warp travel, she dropped down into impulse. Her eyes
The station had an earthy, blue grey and silver dress on, and a large structure running up her back that to Enterprise's eyes
If that wasn't the anomaly she had picked up from 2 light-years away Enterprise would replicate herself a hat to eat.
Enterprise couldn't sense anything more advanced than a fusion reactor in the station as she dropped out of impulse, but raised her shields nonetheless – the station was over 8,000 meters long to her 642 and a half, meaning she only came up to her ankles. "Hello?" She broadcast, this time on basic radio.
"Oh!" The station jerked backwards in surprise, the swarm of fighter-fairies scattering in all directions. The station turned to look at Enterprise, giving an apologetic smile. "Sorry dear, you startled me. I'm afraid I must have missed your jump point."
"Sorry." Enterprise winced, though internally a little surprised. She hadn't been making any real attempt to mask her warp signature, and why was her Universal Translator using such unusual terminology as 'jump point'? "I didn't mean to scare you."
"It's alright." The station accepted. "I suppose I was rather distracted by this, anyhow." She gestured to the anomaly.
Enterprise turned to face the distortion, peering closely at it
The station laughed. "I'm afraid I haven't a clue!" She admitted. "It just appeared in my space with no warning, and started fluctuating rather badly. My commander tried to stabilise it using the jumpgate, and, well…" She gestured to the booms around the anomaly. "The whole thing turned inside-out on us. Swallowed me whole – I barely had time to eject my docked ships, no time to properly evacuate. Next thing I know, I woke up here."
The two of them studied the anomaly in silence for a moment. It was a harsh, jagged thing, alternating between red and blue as the types of high-energy exotic particles it was emitting changed at random. Cherenkov radiation, Hawking radiation, a burst of tachyons, Cherenkov again, vetron radiation of all things… there was no pattern that Enterprise could see, and a few forms of radiation that she'd never seen before.
"I'm sorry, how rude of me." The station suddenly said, prompting Enterprise to look up at her. "My name is Babylon 5."
Enterprise smiled. "I'm the USS Enterprise-D." She declared.
"Nice to meet you, Enterprise-D."
"Call me Enterprise!" Enterprise smiled. "None of my family are around to confuse things."
"Alright, though nobody's ever really called me anything other than Babylon 5…" Babylon 5 smiled back, hands clasped together.
The radiation from the dimensional breach suddenly spiked, and both station and ship turned back to it, all business now. Some of the swarm of fighter-fairies bravely clamped onto the "jumpgate" struts, thrusters firing full force trying to hold them in place as the breach started to push them apart.
"It's opening again!" Babylon 5 warned. Not a second later, a high-mass object was suddenly ejected from the anomaly at about 3 times the speed of light, fast enough that Enterprise would have missed it if she hadn't been deep-scanning the anomaly at the time. With it came a massive burst of high-energy radiation. Fortunately both were aimed away from Enterprise and Babylon 5, otherwise the both of them would have been vaporised, shields and all. The radiation crashed into the asteroid belt, and whatever it touched was super-heated to the point that they exploded.
The alien technology in the jumpgate powered up further, and the breach seemed to recede into itself a little. Enterprise suddenly had the mental image of someone pinching shut a hose as water pressure built up behind it.
Sure enough, Babylon 5 yelled "I won't be able to hold it for much longer – it's getting harder and harder to keep it closed!"
Enterprise hurriedly fed her scan data into her PADD
"Yes dear, of course! It spiked like this about 17 hours ago, and that seemed to calm it down for a while, but it's not responding now!"
2 light-years, divided by 3000c, plus the 11.25 hours it had taken her to warp here… "That was probably me, entering though here!" Enterprise yelled. "I must have passed through it while at warp, that's probably how I got caught in that current…"
"What?" Babylon 5 sounded confused. "But… ugh, nevermind! That won't matter unless we can put a lid on this thing!" She said, her voice becoming rather shrill towards the end of that sentence as she stared at the breach in horror.
The breach pulsed, and another object flew out of it at warp speeds. This time it and it's accompanying radiation were aimed only mostly away from Enterprise and Babylon 5, and Enterprise realised that the breach was rotating.
"Look out!" She cried out, realising right afterwards that the cry was useless – a station wouldn't be able to move on its own. A holographic warning display that just-so-happened to resemble a magic circle appeared around one hand as she latched onto Babylon 5 with a tractor beam. The station out-massed her more than a thousand times over, but she tugged as hard as she could, trying desperately to pull the station out of the path of the spinning breach.
"What on Earth?!" The station cried, staring at her tractor beam like she'd never seen one before. (She had heard of the magnetic/gravitational tethers that Minbari ships were capable of, but those looked different enough that she didn't make the connection.) After a moment though, she seemed to catch on. She made swimming motions
The breach pulsed again, shooting another object out. This time the accompanying radiation vaporised an unfortunate fighter-fairy that had been in it's path.
"Come on, come on…!" Enterprise grit her teeth, pulling with all her might
The breach pulsed one more time, and Babylon 5 had to stifle a scream as the radiation clipped the tip of her cargo hold, vaporising the opening and super-heating the adjacent metal. The radiation and object shot from the breach continued on past the station to impact the planet, hitting with enough force to send visible shock-waves through the crust. Enterprise desperately hoped that her estimate of the planet as uninhabitable was right, as she watched the surface break apart to reveal the magma underneath.
Her efforts paid off, however, and the next pulse missed Babylon 5 even as it shattered the planet below them.
"It's accelerating!" Babylon 5 cried, staring at the breach as Enterprise released her tractor beam. (She would stabilise the station's orbit later if they survived). Enterprise spun around to see that the station was right, the pulses were getting more and more frequent and the breach was spinning faster and faster. The struts were now filled up with fighter-fairies, thrusters at full burn, and Enterprise released her own runabout-pixies to aid them.
(Fortunately, the breach's spin appeared to keep it pointed between the struts. Enterprise didn't want to think about what would happen if they lost one of them.)
Realising that she didn't have time to make a full computer model of the breach, Enterprise did some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations. The "jumpgate" did appear to be able to close dimensional breaches, it was just that whatever realm it was connected to was "under pressure", and a constant stream of matter and energy was flowing out of the breach and keeping it open. A properly-calibrated burst of tetryon particles should weaken the connection and lessen the stream enough for Babylon 5 to fully close it, but to do that they'd have to drain the "pressure" currently in the rift itself –
Realisation hit Enterprise like an asteroid to the face. "We need to open the breach!"
"Run that by me again, dear?!" Babylon 5 cried, ducking down as another faster-than-light projectile whizzed over her head
"It's like water pressure in a fire hose!" Enterprise yelled. "We have to let the pressure out before we can properly close it!"
"For both our sakes, I hope you're right!" Babylon 5 responded, sending command signals to the jumpgate with a wave of her hand. The breach suddenly tripled in diameter, with the fighter-fairies and runabout-pixies needing to pull the struts back so that they weren't caught up in the turbulence.
Several very large, very fast objects burst out of the breach in quick succession, the radiation accompanying them near-constant now. Her hands
When she had gathered enough, she thrust her hands forward and fired her charged pulse of tetryon particles down the throat of the breach, and saw in relief as, just for a moment, it seemed to weaken and shrink.
"Now!" Enterprise yelled. "Close it!"
Babylon 5 grit her teeth, but clamped her hands together, sending the appropriate commands. The breach flickered for a moment, and Enterprise held her
Then the breach collapsed in on itself, becoming a singular point of light. Almost no radiation leaked from it now.
The ship and station both waited a moment, but when nothing happened they both let out relieved sighs, Enterprise dropping her shields.
"Let's not do that again." Babylon 5 requested wearily.
"Yeah." Enterprise agreed, moving around to the other side of the station and latching on with another tractor beam to drag her back to a stable orbit. "But no worries! You did an awesome job closing it! That's more a scar on the fabric of space-time than a proper breach anymore."
"A jumpgate is supposed to close jump-points up specifically to avoid scarring like that, though." Babylon 5 replied, several of her fighter-fairies flying over to her melted docking bay and poking it with manipulator arms.
"Well, look on the bright side." Enterprise said, finishing her duties as a tug-boat. "This gives us a reference point when trying to figure out how to return home."
Babylon 5 made a "Hmm" noise, staring at the remains of the breach.
Enterprise smiled awkwardly, but the station didn't say anything.
After a minute of silence, Enterprise had had enough. "I'm going to do a quick flyby and scan of the planet and star, make sure both are stable."
Babylon 5 gave a quick nod to show that she'd heard, then went back to staring at the ex-breach.
The crust of the planet the pair was orbiting had been shattered by the force of the objects ejected from the dimensional breach, but not quite energetically enough to disperse it. Most of the chunks were gravitationally pulling each other closer, the planet pulling itself back together. Only some of the smaller debris had reached escape velocity, and a good chunk of even that was now settling into orbits. In a few hundred or thousand years this debris would likely form into rings around the planet. Enterprise made sure to note the paths of as much of it as she could, making sure none of it would collide with Babylon 5 for the foreseeable future.
The good news, Enterprise thought to herself as she weaved through the debris, is that I'm pretty sure I was right – this planet was uninhabited.
It wasn't strictly their fault that the anomaly had shattered the planet, but she'd still feel terrible if people had lost their homes – or worse, died – because she couldn't seal the breach fast enough.
Enterprise finished up her flyby, and was getting ready to check the local star next when she noticed a high-energy signature at the edge of her awareness
Excitement fluttering in her chest, Enterprise immediately set off at Full Impulse, broadcasting on both subspace and radio frequencies. "This is the USS Enterprise to unknown entity or entities. If you can receive and understand this message, please respond."
She was planning to repeat the message in all other languages she knew, as she did for Babylon 5 earlier, but to her surprise immediately got a response in English, albeit with a noticeable accent. "I am Yamato BBY-01. I understand your message, Enterprise-san."
Enterprise had had a sister ship called the Yamato. Even though she had been destroyed by an Iconian computer virus, Enterprise found growing excited at meeting another starship with that name.
Once she was close enough to get a proper look at the other ship, Enterprise slowed to a stop, blinking in surprise
The other ship was a little over half Enterprise's height
Enterprise had her own share of repair marks as well, but hers were the faint, clean lines of spacedock repairs. Yamato's were the rough lines of field repairs – a lot of field repairs. Enterprise wouldn't be surprised if this ship had had to be reassembled from debris at one point, that's how extensive the repair marks were.
But looking into the other ship's steely, cool gaze, Enterprise knew that this ship wouldn't hesitate to jump back into action one more time.
Feeling slightly intimidated now, Enterprise bowed her head, guessing correctly that this ship would respect the traditional greeting. "I don't suppose you're native to this area of space?"
"I am not." Yamato replied, politely bowing her head in return. "There appears to have been some kind of dimensional interference in my last warp jump – judging from your question, something similar has happened to you?"
"Yeah." It was inappropriate, but Enterprise found herself smiling at the familiar terminology. "There was a dimensional breach on the other side of this planet – a station named Babylon 5 and myself managed to close it up – that's probably what brought all of us here."
Yamato frowned. "Is it not quite foolish to close what would logically be the door back to our own space?"
"Oh, you wouldn't want to try to go back through that one." Enterprise quickly explained. "It was full of hard radiation going the other way – even with with full shields I don't think I could make it." And that was assuming the particle flow didn't just force her back out of it, like a human trying to swim up a waterfall.
Yamato slowly nodded, processing this information.
"Another ship with a warp drive and some understanding of dimensional mechanics would be of great help getting us home." Enterprise offered eagerly, hoping she sounded professional. "Want to go over and pool our resources?"
Yamato nodded. "Please."
Enterprise happily set off at Quarter Impulse, looking behind herself to make sure Yamato was following… and found herself frowning.
Yamato's rocket-wings
…the key word there being 'slowly'.
"By any chance," Yamato said dryly, having been left in the dust accelerating at a steady three gees to Enterprise's relativistic manoeuvring "are you unmanned? If I accelerated like that, I'm not sure even Analyser would survive the G-force, and he is a robot."
Apparently, whoever built Yamato had known how to build a warp drive but not inertial dampeners. Enterprise could sense artificial gravity on the other ship, a technology she had thought was synonymous with inertial dampeners but apparently not.
"It's… complicated?" She avoided Yamato's question as she slowed to a halt, suddenly unsure if she should be discussing technology the other ship seemed to lack. "Um, how about we just travel the remaining distance at warp?"
Yamato shook her head. "If it is just to the other side of the planet, I will just travel the remaining distance like this. You have hyperspace communications, yes?"
Enterprise blinked. She opened her mouth to ask Yamato what she meant, before being interrupted by a subspace hail. The frequency was unusual, and her Universal Translator took a moment to decode the unfamiliar transmission protocol, but afterwards she was connected to what was easily recognisable as a subspace comm channel.
"We shall keep in touch like this." Yamato transmitted, confirming that it was her who opened the channel. Apparently, Yamato's builders called subspace "hyperspace".
"Alright." Enterprise sent back, still a little unsure herself. "See you there."
Jumping up to Half Impulse, Enterprise decided to cut her flyby short and head back to Babylon 5 to let her know what had occurred.
The station had failed to reply to her subspace hails earlier, responding only to her radio hail, so Enterprise had made the understandable but still mistaken assumption that the station lacked FTL comms altogether. Lost in her thoughts, she completely missed the pulses of tachyons the station was transmitting at her and was quite surprised at what she found when she dropped out of impulse.
"There you are, dear." Babylon 5 chastised her. "Honestly, when someone hails you could you please do them the courtesy of answering?"
Enterprise blinked rapidly, trying to figure out what the station was talking about. "Um, sorry?" Her eyes flicked over to the two new ships who had matched their orbits to the station. "On the other side of the planet I, um, found another ship… as did you, I see."
"Indeed." Babylon 5 indicated the two new ships. "Enterprise, this is the SSV Normandy SR-2 and Battlestar Galactica BS-75. Normandy, Galactica, this is the USS Enterprise-D."
The Normandy was a tiny slip of a ship – barely 170 meters by Enterprise's eye, about level with her knees – all sleek lines and flowing curves. (Though not curves in the way that a human woman would have them – Normandy looked like a frigate, or a girl in her tween years if she'd been human). Her design was at least partially human, going by the fact that her name was written on her bodysuit in English – but there was a very strong alien influence going by the avian features of her face and the metallic plates lining her jaw and the back of her hands. (They might have been in other places as well, but Enterprise was hardly going to ask her to remove her bodysuit so she could check.)
Galactica, on the other hand, was a huge ship more than twice the height
"Hello, Cloud Nine." Galactica said randomly. Her eyes were focused on Enterprise, but she seemed to be looking through her, not at her. "I'm sorry you had to wait so long for me to join you."
Thrown for a loop, Enterprise hesitated for a moment on how to respond. Behind Galactica, Babylon 5 just shrugged helplessly. "Um, actually, my name is Enterprise-D."
"Oh, is that what you're calling yourself these days?" Galactica asked, grey hair framing a wrinkled face. "Still, you'll always be Cloud Nine to me."
This ship was old, Enterprise realised, and probably should have been retired some time ago. This opinion only grew stronger when she noticed hairline cracks all over Galactica's skin
"You can understand her?" Babylon 5 asked Enterprise. "It sounds vaguely Greek to me, but only just."
"I'm equipped with a Universal Translator." Enterprise explained on reflex, remembering her earlier decision to keep quiet about tech she had but others didn't just a second too late.
"Your people have met Galactica's people before?"
"Hm? No, I don't think so…"
"You have a real-time translator that works on languages that you haven't encountered before?" Babylon 5 asked, slightly incredulously. "Is it telepathic?"
"…no?" Enterprise said, unconvincingly. Technically it wasn't, but it did scan the brain of the person talking so that it could tell homophones apart and so on. There was a limit to what could be told from context, especially in First Contacts.
"Wait." Enterprise blinked. "If you couldn't understand her, then how did you know –"
Interrupted by a slight tug on her saucer-skirt, Enterprise looked down to find Normandy looking up at her.
"Transfer." The frigate asked quietly, holding a hand out.
"…you want my translation files?" Enterprise tried to clarify, wondering if this is how humans felt when small children asked them for candy.
Normandy nodded, staring intently up at Enterprise.
"Um, I'll need an example of how you store translations…"
Normandy lifted her right arm up, and an orange hologram of a keyboard and screen formed over it. With her left, she typed several quick commands, and Enterprise's PADD beeped in her pocket to signal an incoming data transfer
It took her Universal Translator a couple of seconds to chew through the unfamiliar file format. It was (likely deliberately) simple enough to understand – information was stored in groups of 8 digit base 2 numbers, little endian… it used the old Unicode encoding, was written in English, and appeared to be a variant on XML.
There was another file mixed in, but didn't seem to contain any useful information when Enterprise ran it. It must have been a metadata file or something – Enterprise would worry about it later.
Quickly tapping a command on her own PADD
Galactica and Babylon 5 both lacked real-time translators, so Enterprise set up a special comm channel between them that routed through her Universal Translator. It was a bit of a kludge, but it would work for now. She'd have to work out something long-term for them and Yamato later.
Actually, while she was doing that, Enterprise had an odd realisation. The English spoken by herself, Babylon 5 and Normandy had, as was tradition, stolen words from other cultures – bits of Vulcan, bits of Tellarite, even a few Romulan phrases had entered modern English. (She wasn't sure which languages Babylon 5 and Normandy's English had stolen from, but she was reasonably sure they were non-human.)
Yamato's Japanese, on the other hand, was almost completely 'uncontaminated' by comparison. Enterprise wasn't sure if this meant they didn't steal words and phrases like English did, or if Yamato's builders had much less contact with aliens than her, Babylon 5 and Normandy's builders had had.
"So, what species do you represent?" Babylon 5 suddenly said, breaking Enterprise out of her train of thought. "I was built by the human race, from the planet Earth. What planet did your builders come from?"
Normandy tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. "Earth." She said, suspiciously.
Babylon 5 stared down at the frigate, suddenly uncertain. "Um, it's not that I don't believe you or anything, dear, but your design is… well…"
"Half-Turian." Normandy finished quietly.
Enterprise had never heard of a race called the Turians, and judging by the look on Babylon 5's face neither had she.
"Don't you remember, Daidalos? You built me yourself." Galactica smiled up at Babylon 5, apparently mistaking her for another space station. "Dear little Blackbird here," she indicated Normandy "was built in my flight deck."
Enterprise and Babylon 5 swapped expressions of concern as Galactica sighed. "You really were a marvellous ship." The old warship muttered, gazing off into the distance. "Shame the Cylons shot you to pieces…" She seemed to be lost in memories.
Enterprise opened her mouth, hoping that something to say would come to mind. But has she racked her brain, something registered at the edge of her awareness
"Galactica, dear, I think you might be a little confused as to what is going on –" Babylon 5 started.
Enterprise had just enough time to shout "Incoming ship!" before another ship joined the impromptu meet-and-greet.
The new ship arrived using something that most certainly wasn't a warp drive, despite all the subspace eddies it caused. She was a little larger than Galactica, meaning that she towered over Enterprise. While all of the other four present – Enterprise, Babylon 5, Normandy and Galactica – had designs that largely focused around soft curves and circles, this ship's design was all about hard angles. She somewhat resembled a grey dagger in space, and her military uniform and haughty expression did not inspire confidence in the others.
She seemed to have suffered a recent head wound
"I do apologise for my rude intrusion." The new ship asked, her voice cool and calculating. "May I ask who exactly is in charge here?"
A stream of ions from the new ship's aft propelled the craft forwards, neatly and orderly. With her arms folded over, accelerating slowly and steadily, the new ship extruded an aura of menace. It almost felt like a sinister marching tune should be playing.
Enterprise felt her Yellow Alert butterflies come back.
"Another new face." Babylon 5 said, her voice now carefully measured instead of the affectionate tone it had had until now. Enterprise noticed that the station's fighter-fairies were beginning to form up between their mistress and the new ship, and the station was surreptitiously pulling a plasma pistol out of a holster
Galactica gave a muffled grunt of pain, and Enterprise realised that her right hand
Reading the mood, Enterprise recalled her runabout-pixies and raised her shields.
"ISD Chimaera." The new ship looked at Galactica, and quirked an eyebrow. "Such a… rustic design… I must be in Wild Space, then. Blasted Purrgils… No matter. Transmit your maps of the local hyperlanes, and I will be on my way."
"And if we can't do that?" Enterprise asked.
Swarms of fighter-faeries began to emerge from the folds of Chimaera's uniform
"Then," Chimaera said coolly "we will have a problem."
However that particular confrontation would have gone would remain a mystery, because that was when Enterprise sensed a dimensional breach opening.
At first she thought it was the breach she and Babylon 5 had closed reopening itself, but then she realised that this breach was about 20,000kms away from that breach.
Interestingly, Babylon 5 flinched when the breach opened, shooting an alarmed look in the general direction of the breach. Apparently, she'd sensed something that Enterprise hadn't – Enterprise made a mental note to ask her about that later. If they survived. Enterprise really hoped they survived.
Yet another ship emerged from this breach; said breach closing itself afterwards. If Enterprise had thought that the dagger-ship was intimidating, this ship looked like it was terrifying.
She was equally as enormous as Chimaera, but her features were dominated by a huge armoured breastplate
(Well, Enterprise reconsidered, she didn't know the iconography was religious. It could be, for example, political instead. But considering that it seemed to largely comprise of skulls and eagles, it wasn't encouraging either way.)
She looked far older than Galactica and had even more repair marks than Yamato, but this ship appeared to have been sustained not by careful and professional maintenance but by a cult-like zeal.
The newest new ship took them all in at a glance, but her eyes seemed to focus on Enterprise.
"The first of you" the newest ship said, her voice deep and commanding "to confess to leading my Navigators astray I shall reward with a quick death. The rest of you" the new ship's mouth twisted in a hate-fulled snarl "will suffer."
"I beg your pardon?" Chimaera exclaimed, in a tone of voice that indicated that she rather didn't. "Who exactly do you think you are?!"
"I am a mighty ship of the Imperium, the Sword-class ship known as –"
"You are no ship of the Empire." Chimaera refuted. "Identify yourself truthfully at once, or I shall make you."
The Sword-class ship went very still, then turned fully to face Chimaera. "Threatening an Imperial ship?" Her deep voice growled. "And here I thought I had seen the full extent of your depravity after witnessing you consorting with the ships of xenos."
Enterprise said nothing, but quietly moved to place herself between the two belligerent ships and Galactica and Babylon 5.
It was certainly true that, like Normandy, her design was not fully human. Humans may well have been the driving force behind Starfleet, but they hardly ran everything by themselves. Her power conduits were designed by a Vulcan. Her cooling systems were manufactured on Andoria. Her phaser banks were partially based on reverse-engineered Klingon Disruptors. All of these things together gave her an appearance that was almost human, but… not quite.
"We need to get out of here." Enterprise muttered, realising even as she said the words that it was hopeless. She wouldn't be able to drag Babylon 5 fast enough to escape if either of the two aggressive ships came after them, and she wouldn't leave her to die.
"For your own safety, I recommend against that." Chimaera said, a clear threat in the way she emphasised 'recommend'. "Simply follow my orders, and there is a strong chance you will survive."
"And if we don't?" Galactica asked.
Chimaera shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance. "Then you will be shot in the back as you try to flee."
She did not say which ship would be doing the shooting, but Enterprise had a pretty good idea.
"I am the Emperor's Will!" The Sword-class ship roared, and for one fleeting moment Enterprise wondered if that was actually the ship's name. "And His will is that you burn in holy las fire!"
Red plasma roared out from her aft, and the thought popped into Enterprise's head that, as it diffused out behind the ship, it looked like blood spreading across the cosmos.
Enterprise swallowed, but realised events had moved beyond deescalation. The only way out now was forward.
"Red alert." She whispered to herself.
Last edited:
FAQ
- Location
- Australia
Who are all the shipgirls?
Video breakdowns can be found here.
Who else is planned to join?
Who is unlikely to show up?
Any ship significantly more powerful than Enterprise/Yamato/Chimaera will likely be relegated to an antagonist role.
Can I write a bit?
Please do, but I'm the one who decides if it's canon to the rest of the fic. I may also cross-post it to the same sites this fic is cross-posted on - please tell me if that's not okay in the post you write your bit in.
Can you include my favourite ship from [x]?
Maybe, but I'd have to know a decent amount about it, and I'm not really inclined to consume a whole new series to write one character. Also, see above rule about being significantly more powerful than Enterprise/Yamato/Chimaera - new characters have to add to the story, not relegate other characters to irrelevance.
Can Enterprise detect Normandy?
If she's actively scanning for her, or Normandy unclenches enough to turn off her stealth systems? Sure! Otherwise:
Enterprise-D has subspace sensors, which let her pick up subspace radiation and perform really detailed or really broad active scans at faster than light speeds. If the target doesn't emit subspace radiation, and Enterprise isn't actively scanning, then she's just as blind as everyone else there. Consider her search for the wreck of the USS Pegasus - Enterprise had to methodically split the system up into grids and thoughorly scan each one. Why? Well, technically it was because she was embedded inside an asteroid, but the technical technical reason is that she was only barely giving off power readings, so Enterprise could only pick her up at short range - and even then, they found her by "a subspace resonance signature".
Got any pics?
Slowly getting there!
| Who | From what | Powered by | FTL | Shoots with | Blocks with | Fighters |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise D | Star Trek: The Next Generation | Warp Core (Antimatter reactor), Impulse reactor (Fusion reactor) | Federation Warp Drive | Phaser banks (nadion particle beams), photon torpedoes (variable yield antimatter torpedoes) | Graviton-based shields | None (though has runabouts) |
| Babylon 5 | Babylon 5 | Fusion reactor | Centauri Jump Gate (which she cannot use herself) | Plasma + particle beams | Intercepter grid (basically point-defence guns that shoot down incoming shots) | 3 wings of Starfuries |
| Yamato | Space Battleship Yamato 2199 (localised as Star Blazers in the west) | Wave motion engine | Iscandian Warp Drive | Positron shock cannons, nuclear torpedos and missiles, point defence, Wave Motion Gun | Wave motion shields, A.R.G.O. system (causes a ring of asteroids to spin around Yamato defensively) | Cosmo Falcons, Cosmo Zeros, Cosmo Tigers |
| Normandy SR-2 | Mass Effect | Fusion reactor | Mass Effect Drive | Javelin Disruptor Torpedoes (warps space-time at the target location), Thanix Cannon (ship-sized, relativistic version of the jet of metal that HEAT rounds use to kill tanks), GARDIAN point-defence lasers | Cyclonic Barrier Technology (deflects anything not a laser) | None (though has two shuttles) |
| Galactica | Battlestar Galactica (new series) | Tylium reactor | Kobalian Jump Drive | Over 500 flak turrets, anti-ship KKV, missile tubes (nuclear + conventional) | Thick armour | Raptors, Vipers |
| Chimeara | Star Wars (Disney canon) | Hypermatter-annihilation reactor | Imperial Hyperdrive | Turbolasers (in this fic I'm treating these as plasma weapons), Ion cannons | Ray/particle shields | 1 squadron of TIE Defenders, 4 of TIE Fighters (lost one to Purgills) |
| Sword-class ship | Warhammer 40,000 | Fusion reactor (called a plasma reactor in-universe) | Imperial Warp Drive | Lascannons, two torpedo tubes (non-standard) | Displacement-type Void Shields | None (though has shuttles, landers, and other misc small craft) |
Video breakdowns can be found here.
| Who | From what | Powered by | FTL | Shoots with | Blocks with | Fighters |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Borg Cube | Star Trek: The Next Generation | Warp Core (Antimatter reactor) (presumed) | Borg Warp Drive (same tech as Enterprise's), Transwarp Drive (not currently operational without Transwarp Conduits) | Laser Cutting Beams, Shield-draining torpedoes | Graviton-based shields, same as Enterprise, though Cubes adjust the frequency of their shields to oppose enemy energy weapons such that fighting them with energy weapons without drastically changing their properties between shots quickly becomes practically impossible. | None |
| Who | From what | Powered by | FTL | Shoots with | Blocks with | Fighters |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prometheus | Stargate SG1 (Season 7) | Naquadah reactor | Al'kesh hyperdrive | Railguns, Mark III naquadah warheads | "Shields". The mechanics of these are never explained to my knowledge, so I'm houseruling these are plasma shields. | 8 F-302 fighter-interceptors |
| Who | From what | Powered by | FTL | Shoots with | Blocks with | Fighters |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit of Fire | Halo | Fusion reactor | Slipspace drive (currently missing parts) | Archer missiles, MACs, misc smaller guns | Second-hand refitted armour | Vultures, Pelican gunships, Condor gunships |
| Hyperion | StarCraft | Vespene gas | Terran warp drive | Laser batteries, Yamato cannon | "Shields" - these are a reactive system, as they are specifically noted to not work against cloaked opponents | Tac Fighters, Vikings, Ravens |
| Jupiter II | Lost in Space (classic) | Fusion reactor | ??? | N/A | Electro-magnetic barrier | N/A |
| Firestorm | XCOM | Elerium reactor | None | Fusion lances, EMP cannons | Smol size | N/A |
| Archangel | Mobile Suit Gundam SEED | Batteries | None | "Lohengrin" positron blaster cannons, "Gottfried" dual high-energy beam cannons, 75mm CIWS, "Valiant" linear cannons, missile launchers | Grit and determination, anti-beam gas | Mobile Suits, Mobile Armour |
| Wraith Hiveship | Stargate: Atlantis | "Energy crystals" | Wraith hyperdrive | Wraith energy weapons | Regenerating hull | Darts |
Who else is planned to join?
Possible inclusions (protagonists):
- Red Dwarf - Red Dwarf
- NSEA Protector II - Galaxy Quest
- Harvester Mothership - Independence Day
Who is unlikely to show up?
| Who | From what | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Macross SDF-1 | Super Dimension Fortress Macross | I haven't watched the show, but I understand that she'd usurp Yamato's position as "that ship with the big gun". |
| Serenity | Firefly/Serenity | It's a cool series, but there's nothing out here for her to smuggle, so she'd likely spend most of her time hiding in one of the larger ships' hanger. Not Yamato though - Serenity might only be half-Chinese, but that doesn't mean she's cool with the Japanese. |
| Andromeda Ascendant | Andromeda | The ship already has a personification (Rommie) and her FTL is too powerful for casual inclusion (it's casually intergalactic) |
| TARDIS | Doctor Who | The ship already has a personification ('Sexy', from the episode "The Doctor's Wife"), and would be a huge Deus ex machina |
| Any TSAB ship | Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha | Because they can and will wave their hand and end the plot by sending everybody home (the whole "Dimensional sea" thing) |
| Any Culture ship | The Culture Cycle | The amount of nerfing I'd need to do in order to not have the Culture ships completely dominate all the other ships with their DC's Flash levels of stupid-ridiculous reaction speeds would make the whole thing unfun for everyone. |
| Any Lensmen ship | Lensmen | From TV tropes: "Over the course of a decades-long struggle (that was only the surface of a deeper, eons-old war between cosmic beings using mortals as pawns), Civilization and Boskone went from ordinary starship battles to star-powered lasers, antimatter bombs, planets used as missiles, antimatter planets used as missiles, faster-than-light missiles, faster-than-light antimatter planet missiles..." |
| A Xeelee nightfighter | Xeelee sequence |
|
| Eltreum | Gunbuster |
|
Any ship significantly more powerful than Enterprise/Yamato/Chimaera will likely be relegated to an antagonist role.
Can I write a bit?
Please do, but I'm the one who decides if it's canon to the rest of the fic. I may also cross-post it to the same sites this fic is cross-posted on - please tell me if that's not okay in the post you write your bit in.
Can you include my favourite ship from [x]?
Maybe, but I'd have to know a decent amount about it, and I'm not really inclined to consume a whole new series to write one character. Also, see above rule about being significantly more powerful than Enterprise/Yamato/Chimaera - new characters have to add to the story, not relegate other characters to irrelevance.
Can Enterprise detect Normandy?
If she's actively scanning for her, or Normandy unclenches enough to turn off her stealth systems? Sure! Otherwise:
Enterprise-D has subspace sensors, which let her pick up subspace radiation and perform really detailed or really broad active scans at faster than light speeds. If the target doesn't emit subspace radiation, and Enterprise isn't actively scanning, then she's just as blind as everyone else there. Consider her search for the wreck of the USS Pegasus - Enterprise had to methodically split the system up into grids and thoughorly scan each one. Why? Well, technically it was because she was embedded inside an asteroid, but the technical technical reason is that she was only barely giving off power readings, so Enterprise could only pick her up at short range - and even then, they found her by "a subspace resonance signature".
Got any pics?
Slowly getting there!
Article:
Last edited:
1-2 Off with their heads
- Location
- Australia
The Sword-class opened fire first.
What constituted a Sword-class frigate (or any other Imperium ship for that matter) varied greatly depending on the Forge-world that built them, the tech-priests assigned to the task, as well as materials and time available. The Imperium was simply so large, and communication between each world so slow and sporadic, that any attempt at standardisation across it generally required divine intervention.
Thus, each ship's armour was of a slightly different alloy and make, weapon make-up and quality varied greatly, their engines, reactors and fuel were all held to requirements that changed per ship, etc. Any given ship's durability, speed, range, load-out… they could all vary enormously, even within ships supposedly built using the same plans.
Sword-class ships weren't generally armed with lancers (unless they were the Firestorm variant), armed instead with multiple lascannon batteries for broadside attacks. However, this particular Sword-class had had its front two batteries replaced with auto-loaded torpedo tubes instead, and it was with these that she fired the first shots of this battle.
"Incoming torpedoes!" Enterprise yelled, swiftly drawing her phaser from its holsterpowering up her phaser banks and opening up with interceptor fire on the rapidly-closing torpedoes.
Chimaera on the other hand merely increased power to her particle shields, leaving her TIE Fighters and TIE Defenders with the job of intercepting the roughly 60 meter long torpedoes. Plasma spewed out from the jump pack at the back of the Sword-class's armour, as she started a full burn behind her torpedoes. She was heading forward and to the side. She intends to use her torpedoes as a distraction. Chimaera deduced. She was not her ex-captain-now-admiral, but she did her best to think like he would have, had he not been asleep in his quarters. Not confident in their ability to finish us off? Armoured prow lacks spinal-mounted weaponry. Moving to open up with a broadside.
Chimaera looked to Enterprise next, watching as the ship frantically (though accurately) shot and destroyed the torpedoes zooming towards them. Beam weapon of unknown type. Using her primary weapon on anti-torpedo duty? Lacks fighters and point-defence. Not a dedicated warship.
Several shots of plasma also sailed past Chimaera from behind, and she glanced backwards to see Babylon 5 adding her own firepower against the torpedoes. Energy readings… Well, they weren't low, but they certainly weren't what Chimaera considered threatening. Mind, Chimaera's own turbolasers shots decayed to the point of uselessness after 1,200kms, so she supposed being able to muster even that kind of energy at that range was mildly impressive.
Galactica hadn't opened fire at all yet, which further solidified Chimaera's opinion of her as the weakest link here.
There was a bright flash as one of the torpedoes escaped the interceptor fire, stopped only when one of her TIE Fighters rammed it in a panic. Its melta warhead exploded in an enormous burst of high-energy sub-atomic particles that completely vaporised not only the fighter it hit, but most of the rest of the squadron as well. Even from kilometres away, the detonation took a much larger chunk out of her shields than Chimaera was comfortable with. Her analysis done for the moment, Chimaera decided that now was the time to close to range with her own turbolasers.
"Stay here." She ordered Enterprise. "I will have use for you shortly."
The Sword-class stopped firing torpedoes at this point (Had she run out, or had she just hit effective range on her other weapons? Chimaera mused), and now opened fire with an energy pistol of some sorther broadside weapon batteries. Invisible beams of energy shot out, the ones that hit outright vaporising any impacted TIE Fighter (two in one go, when they had the misfortune to line up).
True laser weaponry? Interesting. Chimaera thought. Her own turbolasers were called that because they used lasers to create the plasma bolts that were actually fired from the weapons. True laser weaponry, on the other hand, travelled at the speed of light; and would always hit the target as long as the barrel was pointed in the correct direction. (And the target was within a light-second or so, but they were and truly under those kinds of distances here.)
Deciding that the Sword-class was unlikely to resume firing torpedoes, Chimaera shifted most of the power in her particle shields back to her ray shields. She was confident in her ray shield's ability to withstand laser fire, now was the time to test out how her turbolasers did against this strange ship's shielding. She fired up her ion engines, accelerating towards the Sword-class.
Unlike Enterprise's long straight nacelle-wings, or Galactica's thruster-boots, Chimaera's propulsion was provided by a series of vents at the bottom of her uniform. Said uniform largely resembled that of a Moff's, but a lighter grey to match her hull. As well as that, the uniform also widened from top to bottom, preserving her signature triangular shape. The soft glow and smooth acceleration from her thrusters made it look like she was moving slower than she actually was.
While doing this, she also recalled her remaining TIE Fighters – they weren't getting close enough to the enemy ship to do damage to it, and the Sword-class hadn't launched any fighters of her own.
A good strategy might require that lives be spent, but never would it require that they be wasted.
She sent them off to position themselves next to what she thought were the locals… for later. Her squadron of TIE Defenders, on the other hand, she ordered to stay in her shadow where the Sword-class couldn't see them. They would be a nasty surprise, if she needed one.
"This is bad." Enterprise fretted, watching the two enormous ships begin to exchange broadsides like ships had back in the Age of Sail on Earth. There was so much sensor data coming in that Enterprise couldn't possibly analyse it all, not with her crew unconscious. The best she could do was record it for later, and try to pick out the most relevant bits for real-time analysis.
"Far me it from me to order you about, dear, but can I suggest that we leave those two to kill each other?" Babylon 5 suggested to Enterprise. Babylon 5's fighter-faeries gave various cries and gestures of agreement at their station's suggestion.
"We can't just sit here and wait!" Enterprise protested. The Sword-class emerging victorious would be the worst outcome, but Enterprise hadn't missed the threatening undertones in Chimaera's demands either.
"I still have a couple of nukes left." Galactica offered. "My Raptors could jump in close and blow both of them away."
"Um," Enterprise bit her bottom lip. "let's make that Plan B, alright?"
If Galactica was using fusion warheads rather than fission ones, the offer might not be completely worthless, but Enterprise didn't want the unshielded Galactica anywhere near a battle where one hit could cripple her completely, or worse.
Galactica, for her part, simply shrugged and quietly ordered her Raptors to load nukes and spin up their jump drives anyway, ready for when Cloud Nine inevitably changed her mind.
At this point Enterprise's combadge beepedcomm systems received a subspace hail, and Enterprise suddenly realised that she had forgotten about Yamato.
"Enterprise-san, I am reading strong electromagnetic bursts from the position you directed me to earlier. What is the situation?"
Enterprise quickly tapped her combadgetransmitted a reply. "Enterprise to Yamato – do not approach! Repeat, do not approach! Hostile ships have engaged in conflict in the target area! Break off approach at once!"
"…hostile ships?" Yamato transmitted back, sounding cautious but not scared, which was not how Enterprise wanted her feeling, darn it. "Please elaborate?"
Enterprise bit back a frustrated grunt. "Computer, transmit basic details on hostile ships." Without waiting for her computer to respond, Enterprise addressed Yamato again. "One ship threatened to kill us" by implication, anyway "and the other one is a violent xenophobe who said that she would outright!"
"Confirmed, Enterprise-san. Please transmit approach vector, and I will provide fire support."
Enterprise's right eye started twitching. "Yamato," she said, fighting to sound calm "both hostile ships are over five times your length, and must have dozens of times your tonnage! Even assuming technological parity," which Enterprise doubted, given that Yamato didn't even have inertial dampeners "you are outmatched here! Normandy has already left –"
"No."
The voice was so quiet that Enterprise almost talked over it without noticing. "Wha – Normandy?! Where are you?!" Grabbing her tricorderperforming a sensor sweep, she back-traced the comm laser to… a relay probe, drifting in empty space. Presumably, Normandy was communicating with the probe via another comm laser, which meant that Enterprise wouldn't be able to tell where Normandy was from the probe without going up to it.
"Watching."
"What do you mean, watching?!" Despite herself, Enterprise found a note of hysteria in her voice. "Normandy, if that Sword-class sees you out there –!" You look even more inhuman than I do!
"Stealthed."
"I'm glad you're stealthed, Normandy," Enterprise grit her teeth "now get out of here."
"No." The frigate stubbornly replied. "Watching."
"What do you see, Normandy?" Babylon 5 cut in before it could become a full shouting match. (Apparently, the relay probe had a second comm laser pointed at her, and presumably Galactica).
"Lasers. Plasma." Normandy whispered. "Shields."
"They make shields big enough for ships?" Galactica asked. "I thought the biggest they got were those ones that riot police have."
Enterprise found herself emulating her captain and pressing the palm of her hand into her face.
"Plasma disappearing. Not blocked."
That brought Enterprise up short. "Come again?"
Sensor data began to stream back through the comm laser, and Enterprise suddenly found herself engrossed in it. Normandy either didn't have the equipment to detect subspace radiation or had left it out of this data, but…
"Computer, cross reference mid-to-long range sensor readings with Normandy data regarding the Sword-class's shield composition."
"Bursts of tetryon particles appear whenever Chimaera's weapons impact Sword-class ship's defence technology." Her computer reported, unwilling to call the technology 'shielding' as it was fundamentally different from any shield in its database.
"Extrapolate."
"Defence technology is not blocking weapons fire, but instead displacing it into adjacent dimension or dimensions."
"She's essentially wrapped herself in a dimensional breach!" Enterprise gasped. "That's ingenious! No matter how dangerous the incoming weapons fire is, it all gets displaced and never reaches the target!"
Babylon 5 blinked in confusion. "Um, dear, speaking as someone who routinely opens and closes dimensional breaches, doing that would displace the whole ship and prevent her from seeing us, or firing her weapons outward."
Babylon 5 blinked as Enterprise turned to her, eyes wide. "Um, did I say something odd, dear?"
"Babylon 5, you're a genius!"
Chimaera's face was firmly set in a frown as she and the Sword-class continued to exchange broadsides. While superior tactics could certainly make up for deficiencies in manpower or equipment, it was still best to outdo the enemy in both those categories to ensure victory. In addition, she did not recognise the shielding technology being used by her opponent, which made it very difficult to plan around it.
"Do not pity the traitor, for though his labours come to naught, he has only his own treachery to blame."
Instead of an invisible bubble flaring briefly into visibility when her turbolasers hit, liker her ray shields were doing against the Sword-class's lascannons, her shots were disappearing into bursts of multicoloured light once they crossed some indeterminate threshold. It was quite vexing. Her ion cannons were likewise being stymied.
"The xeno is foul, for it has never known man's holy greatness. The traitor is worse, for he has cast it aside."
Chimaera was not herself from the Unknown Regions, but her ex-captain-now-admiral, Grand Admiral Thrawn (Mitth'raw'nuruodo, if one felt like using his real name), was, and he had taken her in there before. She knew that there were secrets lurking in the galaxy beyond the understanding of the Empire – the Grysk were a fine example. Apparently, Wild Space was the same.
"To even look upon a traitor is dangerous, for through your eyes he can spread the disease of his mind."
Chimaera did not for a moment believe that this shield was invincible, because otherwise there would be no point in armouring the ship underneath so heavily. So the question then became, how would the Sword-class ship fight another of her kind?
"You must hate the xenos, for it is unclean. You must hate the heretic, for he is blasphemous. And you must hate the traitor, for he –"
"You do realise I am a ship, don't you?" Chimaera interrupted, having lost her patience listening to the Sword-class. "And thus, am female?"
"The sins of the leader also lay on the follower, for they did not turn away!" The Sword-class snapped back.
Chimaera considered for a moment mentioning to the human-supremacist spaceship that her ex-captain-now-admiral was a non-human, but decided against it. Driving the ship into a blind rage shouldn't noticeably change her tactics by Chimaera's estimation, and the angry shouting would no doubt get even more annoying.
Her dismissal still seemed to anger the Sword-class, however, and in addition to re-doubling her broadside devolved her recitations to name calling. "Strumpet! Tug boat!"
Chimaera ignored the petty insults. She was a Star Destroyer, and her pride would not be threatened by –
"Rebel scum!"
Chimaera's face went completely blank for a moment, before hardening into an expression of pure contempt.
"What," she said, danger clear in her tone "did you just call me?"
Chimaera's fury was interrupted by one of her still-hidden Defenders tugging on the back of her uniform. She looked behind herself to find Enterprise had disobeyed her orders and was now approaching rapidly.
The Sword-class notice the same thing immediately afterwards, bellowing "XENO!" and manoeuvring around Chimaera so that she could open fire on Enterprise with a second laspistolbroadside.
Enterprise winced as the laser beams hit her shields. Years ago, her captain had stated confidently that lasers wouldn't even pierce her navigational deflectors. Of course, the people of Atlec hadn't put nearly this amount of wattage into their weapons, and the Borg had proven with their Cutting Beam that powerful enough lasers would cleave through her hull like a hot knife through butter.
Also, she was going to have to apologise to her helm officers for taking them for granted. Evasive pattern delta was much harder without them guiding her through it.
The Sword-class had never been calm throughout this encounter, but seeing Enterprise fly towards her seemed to drive her to even deeper levels of rage.
"UNCLEAN FILTH!" She roared.
Enterprise really hoped her plan worked.
Behind her, she could hear the worried calls of Galactica, screaming at her not to go without her. Enterprise hoped Babylon 5 would be able to keep Galactica from moving up to join her – she really didn't want the Battlestar in this fight.
Alright Enterprise, you can do this. They're not that much bigger than a D'deridex.
Yeah, but D'deridexs are mostly hollow and I doubt they are.
Not helping, me!
"The Emperor demands your death, xeno scum, and He will not be denied!" The Sword-class raged.
"If you wish to throw your miserable life away, so be it. But if you continue to disobey my commands, then you will have two enemy ships to deal with." Chimaera warned Enterprise direly.
Enterprise shut both of them out, teeth clenched in concentration. Entrap anti-tachyons in a resonating polygon cage. A holographic warning image that most certainly was not a magic circle spread itself out behind her. Match phase variance then diverge 0.76 radians. Her armsdeflector dish began to glow with power.
The Sword-class's eyes widened as Enterprise neared point-blank range. "Your foul witchcraft will avail you not!" She screamed.
"Initiate resonance cascade!" Enterprise yelled back, thrusting her arms out and letting fly a huge burst of exotic particles in a yellow beam that shot from her to the Sword-class.
The Sword-class was sure that her void shields intercepted the strange beam, but when the machine-spirits that lived in her shielding bank started to scream and wail she allowed herself to become concerned.
She allowed that concern to become worry when she saw the multicoloured lights of her void shields displacing an attack into the Immaterium not die down as they were supposed to, but increase steadily in brightness.
Displacement-type void shields, like the ones that made up this Sword-class's main defence, were not in fact one big dimensional breach. In fact, they were lots of little breaches, opened and closed as needed. This made the sensors on Imperium ships powerful and reliable by necessity – if they failed to detect incoming fire, the void shields wouldn't activate to intercept it. This is how they could shoot through their own shield – they just didn't open a breach for their own fire.
To avoid accidentally causing a full-blown breach into the Immaterium, displacement-type void shields had been designed back in the Dark Age of Technology to fail-safe so that any dimensional sheering they caused would not be self-sustaining, but would close as soon as the power was cut.
This was not happening now.
"Xeno witch!" The Sword-class screamed again. "What have you done?!"
"I've ended this." Enterprise admonished (trying her best to sound like her captain).
The Sword-class gave a wordless shout of frustration as dimensional sheering began to erupt all around her, enclosing her in a forming cocoon of multicoloured light.
The shout was abruptly cut off as the sheering enclosed her completely, the light suddenly vanishing and replaced by a semi-transparent purple film that seemed to be wavering in space.
Despite herself, Enterprise looked uncertain. "That looks more arcane that I thought it would…"
"Explain." Chimaera demanded. She indicated the purplish haze that formerly been the Sword-class ship with her blaster, leaving no question as to what she meant.
Chimaera did not then point that blasterher turbolasers at Enterprise, but Enterprise noted that it would take Chimaera less than a second to do so, and braced herself redirected auxiliary power to her forward shields.
"She's been trapped inside her own little pocket of space." Enterprise answered tersely. "She won't be able to escape – the effect can't be reversed from the inside."
"Is that so?" Chimaera lowered her blaster. "And where does that leave us?"
"Where it leaves us is, you are going to power down your weapons system, recall your fighters, and then we can talk about resolving this situation, like civilised ships!"
Enterprise panted slightly after delivering her ultimatum, but kept her focus solely on Chimaera, watching carefully for the first hints of her response.
For a moment, the void was silent.
Then Chimaera snorted.
"Sit down and talk? You wish us to, what… form a council of some sort? I've never had any patience for such things."
Immediately after Chimaera finished her sentence, the Defenders that she had sent out from in her shadow finished circling around the patch of distorted space left by the Sword-class.
Enterprise froze, then whirled around and fired off a phaser blastfrom her aft phaser bank. They hid from my sensors behind the distortion…!
Her phaser beam impacted on target, but Enterprise had fired a low-power shot to reduce the time between shots, and the Defender's ray shield (just bearly) held up. Enterprise's eyes flew wide, and even as she hurriedly increased the power of her shots, the Defenders all fired.
Enterprise's shields held, but she recognised the distraction for what it was only after she sensed Chimera powering up her own ion cannons, and realised that she'd rotated her boosted forward shield out of position.
Enterprise cried out as the bursts of charged particles punched through her side shields and slammed into her saucer-skirt. Her vision began to black out, as electrical discharges played out over her hull.
Enterprise thought she could hear a cry of fury and grief from Galactica.
"I've always found it far more efficient if there is only one vote that matters." Chimaera finished, quirking an eyebrow at Enterprise. "Ion cannons have always been effective against shielding, but not that effective. Tell me, do you have problems with ion storms?"
Well, Chimaera wasn't going to complain about her job being easier than expected.
She turned her gaze to where Babylon 5 and Galactica were hanging in space. "I really only need one of you." She said. "I suggest you hand over your hyperlane maps now, so that we can avoid any more unnecessary violence."
Emphasising her point, the TIE Fighters she'd sent over earlier began to move in…
Inside the newly isolated pocket in space, the Sword-class raged. "What is this?!"
Her machine spirits raged with her, furious as being denied their various purposes. There was nothing for her sensors to see. No target for her weapons to shoot at. Nowhere that her engines could take her. The entirety of her universe was a pocket barely larger than she was.
However, the oldest of her machine-spirits, an ancient algorithm far older than the ship herself, remained calm. It consulted its millennia-old database, searching for an explanation as to the circumstances the voidship now found herself in.
The Sword-class was half-way though a particularly spirited tirade about the impurity of whatever 'foul xeno' dock Enterprise had been assembled at, when the elder machine-spirit sought her attention. "– and doubtlessly your motors are greased with slug intestines – what?" The Sword-class tilted her head to one side. "My Gellar fields?"
The elder machine-spirit responded in the affirmative.
"…very well." The Sword-class declared, having full trust in her machine-spirits. She bowed her head and began to chant. "The Emperor is the light of the void, as He walks beside me no warp-spawn may harm me…"
As she continued, her Gellar fields powered up to maximum output, and the field of enforced normal space they produced extended out from the voidship herself and into the dimensional sheering…
"Galactica, you need to stay here." Daidalos emphasised. She called herself something else now, but Galactica found it more comforting to call her by the name she knew her under.
"I'm not going to let the Cylons get away with hurting her." Galactica seethed, fire in her eyes and a pistol in both handsflak turrets starting to track targets. "Not again."
"Galactica, you need to listen to her."
Galactica was pretty sure that Daidalos couldn't see Starbuck floating in space behind her, her old Viper pilot impossibly the same size as she was. Galactica thought that Daidalos not being able to see her was pretty strange, considering that Daidalos was doing what she had been before Cloud Nine came back, and talking without using her mouth.
"She's not sunk." Daidalos reassured Galactica.
"Not yet." Galactica snarled. "But we have to take that Basestar out now, before she finishes the job."
"Galactica, please." Daidalos pleaded. "I think I can talk her down, but if you start shooting we'll have no chance."
"You can't take her on yet." Starbuck stated frankly. "Not like this."
"Do you just expect me to sit by and watch?" Galactica demanded of both of them.
"No." Daidalos replied "I need you and your fighters to work with my Starfuries. If this doesn't work, I'll need you to keep her fighters off the both of us."
"No," Starbuck said "you just need to wait for her to hold still."
Daidalos turned away at this point to focus on the approaching Basestar, and thus didn't see the puzzled look on Galactica's face. Wait for her to…?
Then she realised what Starbuck meant, and looked down at her last few Raptors with a sad smile, feeling the full force of all her years bearing down on her.
"I'm going to need a volunteer." She said.
Meanwhile, Normandy was approaching Enterprise as quietly as she could.
Her stealth systems were running at full capacity, but they only hid her from passive sensors. If Chimaera looked her way with active sensors, she would still see her. Unless she was using radar, that is, as Normandy had the same kind of protections against that as 21st century stealth planes, but Normandy couldn't count on her not using lidar or even just a camera with very good zoom. As such, she was approaching Enterprise from the other side as Chimaera, hoping that the larger ship would block Chimaera's view of her.
Thousands of kilometres away, the probe Normandy had launched earlier was close enough to pick up the conversation between Babylon 5 and the approaching Chimaera. (She was not being included in the transmitted conversation for the simple reason that neither ship nor station knew where she was.)
"I am recognised by galactic treaty as neutral ground. By attacking me, you will be inviting the wrath of the Interstellar Alliance down upon you." Babylon 5 warned.
Chimaera made a show of looking behind her. "I notice you did not deliver a similar warning to my opponent."
"Do you think she would have listened?" Babylon 5 countered.
Normandy continued to listen while she looked Enterprise over. Enterprise had been hit in her saucer-skirt, just below where her main body connected up to her nacelle-wings. The areas of her bodyhull so hit had melted, and she seemed to be bleeding venting plasma, but her overall structure seemed intact.
Quietly, Normandy reached down to her belthanger, and pulled out a tub barrel of omni-gel. She then carefully smeared the gel over where Enterprise was bleeding venting, sealing the breaches shut as the gel cooled and hardened. Not really able to do more without knowing how Enterprise worked, Normandy drifted back a little and waited.
"You say you are a diplomatic station?" Chimaera said coldly. "Very well, let us negotiate. I wish to return to the Galactic Empire immediately. To that end, I need the locations of the local hyperlanes. Refusing me access to those places myself and my crew at risk, and I will be forced to act accordingly."
Enterprise's eyes slowly started to open. "Wha…?"
Moving forwards quickly, Normandy pressed her refrigerated bodyhull up against Enterprise, hoping to absorb enough heat to mask the fact that Enterprise was powering up again – at least for a couple of minutes. "Status?" She whispered.
Enterprise made a soft noise of discomfort at the cold (Normandy's Oynx armour not being particularly comfortable to rest against either), but answered anyway. "Huh…? Oh, right. Um, were those ion blasts that hit me?" Gingerly, Enterprise twisted around to look at the back of her saucer-skirt, wincing at what she saw.
Babylon 5 started to speak again, but Normandy kept her attention on Enterprise.
"The energy must have sought the path of least resistance… which would be my electro-plasma system. Huh. For once, I'm glad my EPS conduits tend to blow under pressure. I must have vented the overcharged electro-plasma into space before it could reach my antimatter containment, like the world's most violent fuse box." Enterprise finished her self-assessment. "I think I'll be fine with further repairs, but right now I can't build up enough pressure in my EPS to power up my weapons, even with… are these your repairs?"
The other ships present would have been at the very least surprised at the mention of antimatter containment, but not Normandy. After all, she had her own supply of antimatter – though she used hers as propellant rather than reactor fuel. So instead of being flabbergasted, Normandy simply nodded and moved right on. "Yamato."
"Yamato…?" Enterprise repeated blankly. "Oh, right! Yamato!" Her eyes flew open, and she smacked her commbadge.
"And lastly," Babylon 5 said "I can't give you the locations of the local hyperspace beacons, because –"
"You still use hyperwave beacons out here?" Chimaera interrupted, contemptuously. "How behind the times are you?"
"Yamato, please tell me you've broken off your approach!" Enterprise hissed into her commbadgetransmitted over some mechanism Normandy didn't recognise.
"I am less than a minute away, Enterprise-san." Yamato rejected. (Enterprise having patched Normandy into the conversation). "Please provide an approach vector."
"Yamato, I'm not going to –"
A shock suddenly travelled up Enterprise's spine. She whirled around, nearly dislodging Normandy, and stared in horror at the patch of space that the Sword-class ship had been occupying.
"That's impossible…" She whispered in horror.
Specifically, she was staring at the point of the space where the multicoloured lights had started up again.
Normandy didn't really know what to think of that patch of space. She had known that it was possible to bend space/time – that was how her Javelin torpedoes worked – but she'd never heard of anyone outright folding it over to enclose things like a pocket in cloth.
But, while she didn't understand how it had happened in the first place, she could grasp quite easily that it wasn't going to keep happening much longer.
Enterprise opened her mouth to yell a warning, but Normandy suddenly flew up and covered her mouth with an arm. Flinching back from the cold, Enterprise turned around (presumably to demand an explanation), only to notice that she and Normandy were silently drifting around the area of distorted space, out of sight of the lights.
Enterprise looked perplexed, before looking behind Normandy and seeing the ball of dark energy she was holding behind herself with her other hand. "Is that an artificial gravity well?" Enterprise asked in a hushed tone. (Because she was impressed, running low on energy or had remembered to be quiet, Normandy wasn't sure.) "Oh, of course! A reaction-less propulsion method would make it much easier to mask your energy signature – much less energy to mask. Is that made with dark energy? This area's saturated with dark matter, so it's nearly impossible to pick that out. I think that's brilliant!"
Normandy thought that Enterprise talked too much.
"Listen." Babylon 5 pleaded passionately. "We can work together to resolve this, but first you have to stand down."
"Stand down." Chimaera snorted. "Yes, I'll…" She trailed off. "Are you trying the mind trick on me?" She demanded.
The lights around the edge of the distortion suddenly widened, forming a circle, and with an ear-rattling roar, the Sword-class ship charged out of her prison, plasma spewing forth from her armour's jump-packthrusters in a full burn.
Normandy's eyeslidar tracked the Sword-class as she flew, but the Sword-class never turned her head to see the two ships hidden just out of sight behind the collapsing distortion area.
The fighter-fairies surrounding Chimaera suddenly erupted into a panic, blindly firing in the general direction of the approaching threat. Chimaera herself was turning, already firing with a blaster blind-aimed behind herwhatever turrets had an angle of fire, and she finished just in time to see one final melta torpedo, kept in reserve for just such an opportunity, explode in her face.
Chimaera roared in pain as the upper chest and shoulders of her uniformduralloy armour simply boiled away into space, the flesh components underneath following suit. Only the faint shimmer of a secondary shielding system had spared Chimaera's head bridge from the damage.
Babylon 5 gasped and covered her mouth at the grotesque sight of bloody muscles and boneinternal compartments exposed to space, but Galactica wasn't even watching, her eyes reserved for the approaching Sword-class and the TIE Fighters closing in.
"Dammit!" Chimaera cursed, the word feeling completely inadequate for the pain she was in. I let my guard down – and more importantly, my particle shields!
Her ray shields had absorbed as much of the damage as they could, but the torpedo had detonated too closely for them to be enough. Only a lucky shot from a turbolaser prematurely detonating the torpedo had prevented a contact detonation.
Without waiting for orders, Chimaera's fighter-fairies immediately swarmed in. Most of them went after the Sword-class, but without direction some of them panicked and made Galactica and Babylon 5 their targets.
"No, no, no!" Normandy heard Enterprise whisper in anguish, watching as fighter-fairies tried their best to protect Chimaera from the still-closing Sword-class. These seemed to be a different model than the ones she had sent out earlier, the same model that had attacked Enterprise from behind, and were doing much better than the other models. But the Sword-class seemed to have restored her protective dimensional breach effect and their fire was not impacting. "The fighting is too close! Galactica and Babylon 5 are going to be blown away without a single shot being aimed in their direction!"
"Then it is fortunate that I have arrived, Enterprise-san. Keep this approach clear."
"Yamato?!" Enterprise frantically searched space for the source of that last transmission, finding Yamato approaching the battle between the Sword-class and Chimera from the other side as Galactica and Babylon 5. "You can't approach from there! Your fire could hit Galactica and Babylon 5!"
"Do not worry. I have plotted a course that avoids this."
"Plotted how?! I've the only one here with a subspace comm array, and I haven't been…" Enterprise trailed off. "Why is my computer currently transmitting tactical data over this comm line?"
That was Normandy's cue to let go of Enterprise and quietly fly away. The furious scream from Enterprise as she left told her that the trojan she had slipped in with the translation files from earlier had been discovered.
To save time, Yamato had decided to go around the planet in the opposite direction that Babylon 5 had been orbiting in. The idea was that she and the station would both be flying towards the other, then she could just slow down and match orbits.
Raise wave-motion engine pressure. Close emergency valves.
When she had received word that combat had broken out, she had abandoned her plans and simply accelerated as best she could the whole time to arrive as fast as possible, not wanting to waste a single precious second.
Open wave-motion gun outlet. Engine pressure at 10%.
However, this left her with far more speed than she could bleed off in time, even if she turned around and used her rocket-wingsmain thrusters. Arriving at the battle so quickly would do no good if she simply shot past it.
All energy to wave-motion gun. Initiate forced induction. Engine pressure at 20%.
But while Yamato lacked internal inertial dampeners, what she did have were her gravity anchors.
Release wave-motion gun safety. Engine pressure at 30%.
Raise target scope. Yamato interlaced her fingers, forming a finger-gun with her left index finger forming the 'barrel' and her right the trigger. At the tip of her finger gunbow, steams of energy began to coalesces into a ball of bright blue energy.
Brace for shock and flash. Engine pressure at 40%.
"Yamato, what are you doing?!" Enterprise cried over her hyperspace comm line. "Where did you get that kind of – how are you even – is that a weapon?! If you fire that now, you'll blow all of us away!"
Yamato got a brief glimpse of the battlefield as she and it zoomed towards each other, and in that moment she tried to match up the tactical data she'd received with what was before her. Enterprise she recognised, laying helpless far away from the battle. Galactica and Babylon 5 she recognised from the tactical data she had been sent. Both were blazing away with point-defence weaponry and fighter-fairy screens, but while Babylon 5 had the more advanced weapons tech the sheer number of Galactica's flak turrets meant that the battlestar was the bigger threat to Chimaera's fighter complement. Wherever she turned her attention, the fighters there spontaneously failed to continue existing.
(It certainly didn't help that the unshielded and lightly-armoured TIE Fighters had never seen flak before, and couldn't understand how this ship was filling the space around her with ordinance. The last sound dozens of the Fighters heard was their micrometeorite alarms going off a second before impact.)
Chimaera herself appeared to be taking a full broadside from the Sword-class, determined to end the largest threat present before moving on to the others. Starting with Enterprise, Yamato assumed. She was taking hits to her hull, a shield flickering in and out as it tried to reestablish itself between shots.
Engine pressure at 50%.
"Yamato!" Enterprise screamed.
Yamato shot right through the middle of the battlefield, through the melee of plasma, flak and fighter-fairies, and out the other side. She hadn't bothered launching her own fighter-fairies, as they would have no way to decelerate and match orbits in time.
But, as she reached the far side of the battlefield, a scant hundred kilometres from where Galactica and Babylon 5 where, she suddenly engaged all of the gravity anchors on her port side.
Robbed of all momentum, Yamato's port side suddenly tried to come to a stop. Her starboard side however, wished to keep moving. Between the two of them, Yamato ended up swinging around in a sharp turn portward. Clenching her teeth – as though that would help keep her hull from flying apart – Yamato disengaged the gravity anchors and corrected her facing to her actual direction of travel, towards the Sword-class ship.
Effectively, she'd just made a handbrake (or bootlegger's) turn in space. Such a high-G turn should have ripped her in half, but even a partial gravity anchor activation had absorbed enough of her momentum to keep the forces manageable, in exchange for bleeding off most of her speed.
Now staring down her finger-gun with a half-charged wave-motion shot ready, Yamato stared into the Sword-class's eyes, and engaged all of her gravity anchors, bracing for the recoil.
"Sayōnara." She said, softly. Goodbye.
The Sword-class ship, for her part, was breathless at what the machine-spirits of her augurs where screaming at her.
The Despoiler's dark flagship?! Here?!
Her design didn't match her databanks, but no ship of that size could possibly have that amount of power. Not unless she was the Planet Killer, the ship with all four of the Ruinous Powers as her patrons.
The Sword-class had been gladly willing to give her life to end these xeno and traitor ships, but now she worried that her life would simply not be enough. Not with the planet-destroying weapon already aimed and charged.
Her void shields couldn't block this! She needed to escape! She called out to the machine-spirits of her warp-drive, praying for them to be in time…!
Pegasus had been late, as usual. The others were calling her Yamato, but Galactica knew her old friend when she saw her. Still, it was good to see Pegasus catch up to them once again, ready to put an end to one more Basestar.
But in the instant before Pegasus fired, there was a shimmer of light in front of the Basestar, like something was in the middle of jumping in or out.
Then, there was only a bright blue light, bursting forth from Pegasus and swallowing the Basestar whole.
Galactica blinked the spots out of her eyesreset her DRADIS, Pegasus's shot having overpowered her senses for a moment. But her sensors were rated for point-blank nuclear blasts, and they cleared up in short order.
Whatever had jumped in – or maybe it was the act of jumping itself – wasn't there anymore. Whatever was left was an ugly swirl of red gas and viscous lightning that seemed to radiate hatred.
There was a moment of stunned silence.
"Yamato, I presume?" Daidalos eventually asked Pegasus.
"Hai, Babylon 5-san." Pegasus replied in an accent she hadn't had last time Galactica had seen her. She wondered what colony it was from.
"What exactly do you normally fire that at?"
"I endeavour not to fire it, to tell the truth."
After a protracted, dangerous instant, the swirl seemed to collapse in on itself. Galactica thought that she could see the form of something screaming, trying to force its way out… but then she blinked and it and the swirls of lightning and gas were both gone.
Leaving behind a sorry mess of a Basestar behind it.
The Basestar's gambit had protected her from the direct force of Pegasus's blast, but some of the energy had gone around the edges of whatever she'd done. The heavy armour that she'd been encased in – when did they start doing that, Galactica wondered – had been boiled away by the radiant heat. Underneath that was –
"No way." Daidalos breathed. "She was a frigate?!"
The ship under the armour had, at some point, taken the form of a girl in her tweens, much like how Blackbird currently looked. But somewhere along the way the ship had changed. Her hair was gone completely, exposing the mass of scar tissue that cross-crossed it and every other piece of exposed skin. It was hard to tell, with the way her fleshhull was bubbling and liquefying, but her skin might have been smooth before this – not wrinkled like Galactica's was.
"I…" The Basestar spat, blood and spittle both flying from her mouth "Survived…!"
Several shots slammed into the Basestar, electricity arcing out over her hull, and the light in her eyes finally died.
"Yes." Said the other Basestar, who had fired the shots. "You certainly did."
Galactica wasn't sure which one of the two was the rebel (one of them had to be, otherwise they wouldn't have been shooting at each other), but she had the feeling that whichever one it had been, this one wasn't interested in talking.
She had taken a beating in her fight with the other Basestar. One arm was hanging limplythe lights on her starboard side were out and large patches of her uniform hull were missing altogether. Still, she still somehow had fighter-fairies left, and enough of her weapons systems were intact that she was still a grave threat. She hung in space above and behind Pegasus, doing something with the gun in her hand some kind of newfangled turret glowing a soft white that held Pegasus still.
"It appears – and it physically pains me to say this –" The Basestar said "– that Grand Moff Tarkin's incessant need for ever-more powerful weapons… may not have been completely pointless." She glanced at the Basestar-frigate. "Still, for all of that power, it leaves you open, doesn't it? You exhaust yourself firing that monstrosity, but if that fails to end the battle you are left helpless. Typical superweapon thinking."
The Basestar pressed her weapon into the back of Pegasus's headmanoeuvred for a point-blank barrage, her surviving fighter-fairies also positioned themselves to shoot critical areas of Pegasus at a moment's notice. Pegasus didn't move or speak, so Galactica assumed that the Basestar was correct.
The Basestar turned to Daidalos. "You have attacked Imperial citizens –" Galactica assumed she was talking about the Heavy Raiders she and Daidalos had destroyed just now "– and as such I am obligated to retaliate in kind. However, in this case I will be satisfied with this ship," she gestured to Pegasus "in addition to a course back to the Galactic Empire."
"That wasn't the deal." Daidalos glared.
"I am altering the deal." The Basestar spat. "Pray I do not alter it further."
Galactica sighed. "I'll plot the course, dearie."
Daidalos and the Basestar both turned to her at once, Daidalos with confusion and the Basestar with distrust.
"Excellent." The Basestar said. "Naturally, I will require you to lead the way – to ensure there are no… 'transmission errors' in the course."
"Oh, I couldn't do that, dearie." Galactica replied. "I'm not jump-capable anymore – broke my spine, you see. You'll have to follow one of my Raptors instead." She waved over one of the Raptors that she had loaded a nuke onto earlier.
"Unacceptable." The Basestar responded immediately. "Without sufficient guarantees of this course's genuine nature, I cannot risk the safety of my crew."
Galactica shrugged. "Well dearie, in that case you shouldn't have held still for so long."
The Raptor she had waved over disappeared in a flash of light, and the Basestar made an odd choking noise.
"Oops. Sorry, deary." Galactica said, sounding neither surprised nor sorry. "She 'accidentally' jumped inside of you. Such a shame." Galactica sighed. "I'll miss her."
Sound didn't travel through space, but as radiation readings suddenly spiked from Chimera's aft, every other ship assembled imagined that they could hear a muffled 'boom'.
What constituted a Sword-class frigate (or any other Imperium ship for that matter) varied greatly depending on the Forge-world that built them, the tech-priests assigned to the task, as well as materials and time available. The Imperium was simply so large, and communication between each world so slow and sporadic, that any attempt at standardisation across it generally required divine intervention.
Thus, each ship's armour was of a slightly different alloy and make, weapon make-up and quality varied greatly, their engines, reactors and fuel were all held to requirements that changed per ship, etc. Any given ship's durability, speed, range, load-out… they could all vary enormously, even within ships supposedly built using the same plans.
Sword-class ships weren't generally armed with lancers (unless they were the Firestorm variant), armed instead with multiple lascannon batteries for broadside attacks. However, this particular Sword-class had had its front two batteries replaced with auto-loaded torpedo tubes instead, and it was with these that she fired the first shots of this battle.
"Incoming torpedoes!" Enterprise yelled, swiftly drawing her phaser from its holster
Chimaera on the other hand merely increased power to her particle shields, leaving her TIE Fighters and TIE Defenders with the job of intercepting the roughly 60 meter long torpedoes. Plasma spewed out from the jump pack at the back of the Sword-class's armour, as she started a full burn behind her torpedoes. She was heading forward and to the side. She intends to use her torpedoes as a distraction. Chimaera deduced. She was not her ex-captain-now-admiral, but she did her best to think like he would have, had he not been asleep in his quarters. Not confident in their ability to finish us off? Armoured prow lacks spinal-mounted weaponry. Moving to open up with a broadside.
Chimaera looked to Enterprise next, watching as the ship frantically (though accurately) shot and destroyed the torpedoes zooming towards them. Beam weapon of unknown type. Using her primary weapon on anti-torpedo duty? Lacks fighters and point-defence. Not a dedicated warship.
Several shots of plasma also sailed past Chimaera from behind, and she glanced backwards to see Babylon 5 adding her own firepower against the torpedoes. Energy readings… Well, they weren't low, but they certainly weren't what Chimaera considered threatening. Mind, Chimaera's own turbolasers shots decayed to the point of uselessness after 1,200kms, so she supposed being able to muster even that kind of energy at that range was mildly impressive.
Galactica hadn't opened fire at all yet, which further solidified Chimaera's opinion of her as the weakest link here.
There was a bright flash as one of the torpedoes escaped the interceptor fire, stopped only when one of her TIE Fighters rammed it in a panic. Its melta warhead exploded in an enormous burst of high-energy sub-atomic particles that completely vaporised not only the fighter it hit, but most of the rest of the squadron as well. Even from kilometres away, the detonation took a much larger chunk out of her shields than Chimaera was comfortable with. Her analysis done for the moment, Chimaera decided that now was the time to close to range with her own turbolasers.
"Stay here." She ordered Enterprise. "I will have use for you shortly."
The Sword-class stopped firing torpedoes at this point (Had she run out, or had she just hit effective range on her other weapons? Chimaera mused), and now opened fire with an energy pistol of some sort
True laser weaponry? Interesting. Chimaera thought. Her own turbolasers were called that because they used lasers to create the plasma bolts that were actually fired from the weapons. True laser weaponry, on the other hand, travelled at the speed of light; and would always hit the target as long as the barrel was pointed in the correct direction. (And the target was within a light-second or so, but they were and truly under those kinds of distances here.)
Deciding that the Sword-class was unlikely to resume firing torpedoes, Chimaera shifted most of the power in her particle shields back to her ray shields. She was confident in her ray shield's ability to withstand laser fire, now was the time to test out how her turbolasers did against this strange ship's shielding. She fired up her ion engines, accelerating towards the Sword-class.
Unlike Enterprise's long straight nacelle-wings, or Galactica's thruster-boots, Chimaera's propulsion was provided by a series of vents at the bottom of her uniform. Said uniform largely resembled that of a Moff's, but a lighter grey to match her hull. As well as that, the uniform also widened from top to bottom, preserving her signature triangular shape. The soft glow and smooth acceleration from her thrusters made it look like she was moving slower than she actually was.
While doing this, she also recalled her remaining TIE Fighters – they weren't getting close enough to the enemy ship to do damage to it, and the Sword-class hadn't launched any fighters of her own.
A good strategy might require that lives be spent, but never would it require that they be wasted.
She sent them off to position themselves next to what she thought were the locals… for later. Her squadron of TIE Defenders, on the other hand, she ordered to stay in her shadow where the Sword-class couldn't see them. They would be a nasty surprise, if she needed one.
"This is bad." Enterprise fretted, watching the two enormous ships begin to exchange broadsides like ships had back in the Age of Sail on Earth. There was so much sensor data coming in that Enterprise couldn't possibly analyse it all, not with her crew unconscious. The best she could do was record it for later, and try to pick out the most relevant bits for real-time analysis.
"Far me it from me to order you about, dear, but can I suggest that we leave those two to kill each other?" Babylon 5 suggested to Enterprise. Babylon 5's fighter-faeries gave various cries and gestures of agreement at their station's suggestion.
"We can't just sit here and wait!" Enterprise protested. The Sword-class emerging victorious would be the worst outcome, but Enterprise hadn't missed the threatening undertones in Chimaera's demands either.
"I still have a couple of nukes left." Galactica offered. "My Raptors could jump in close and blow both of them away."
"Um," Enterprise bit her bottom lip. "let's make that Plan B, alright?"
If Galactica was using fusion warheads rather than fission ones, the offer might not be completely worthless, but Enterprise didn't want the unshielded Galactica anywhere near a battle where one hit could cripple her completely, or worse.
Galactica, for her part, simply shrugged and quietly ordered her Raptors to load nukes and spin up their jump drives anyway, ready for when Cloud Nine inevitably changed her mind.
At this point Enterprise's combadge beeped
"Enterprise-san, I am reading strong electromagnetic bursts from the position you directed me to earlier. What is the situation?"
Enterprise quickly tapped her combadge
"…hostile ships?" Yamato transmitted back, sounding cautious but not scared, which was not how Enterprise wanted her feeling, darn it. "Please elaborate?"
Enterprise bit back a frustrated grunt. "Computer, transmit basic details on hostile ships." Without waiting for her computer to respond, Enterprise addressed Yamato again. "One ship threatened to kill us" by implication, anyway "and the other one is a violent xenophobe who said that she would outright!"
"Confirmed, Enterprise-san. Please transmit approach vector, and I will provide fire support."
Enterprise's right eye started twitching. "Yamato," she said, fighting to sound calm "both hostile ships are over five times your length, and must have dozens of times your tonnage! Even assuming technological parity," which Enterprise doubted, given that Yamato didn't even have inertial dampeners "you are outmatched here! Normandy has already left –"
"No."
The voice was so quiet that Enterprise almost talked over it without noticing. "Wha – Normandy?! Where are you?!" Grabbing her tricorder
"Watching."
"What do you mean, watching?!" Despite herself, Enterprise found a note of hysteria in her voice. "Normandy, if that Sword-class sees you out there –!" You look even more inhuman than I do!
"Stealthed."
"I'm glad you're stealthed, Normandy," Enterprise grit her teeth "now get out of here."
"No." The frigate stubbornly replied. "Watching."
"What do you see, Normandy?" Babylon 5 cut in before it could become a full shouting match. (Apparently, the relay probe had a second comm laser pointed at her, and presumably Galactica).
"Lasers. Plasma." Normandy whispered. "Shields."
"They make shields big enough for ships?" Galactica asked. "I thought the biggest they got were those ones that riot police have."
Enterprise found herself emulating her captain and pressing the palm of her hand into her face.
"Plasma disappearing. Not blocked."
That brought Enterprise up short. "Come again?"
Sensor data began to stream back through the comm laser, and Enterprise suddenly found herself engrossed in it. Normandy either didn't have the equipment to detect subspace radiation or had left it out of this data, but…
"Computer, cross reference mid-to-long range sensor readings with Normandy data regarding the Sword-class's shield composition."
"Bursts of tetryon particles appear whenever Chimaera's weapons impact Sword-class ship's defence technology." Her computer reported, unwilling to call the technology 'shielding' as it was fundamentally different from any shield in its database.
"Extrapolate."
"Defence technology is not blocking weapons fire, but instead displacing it into adjacent dimension or dimensions."
"She's essentially wrapped herself in a dimensional breach!" Enterprise gasped. "That's ingenious! No matter how dangerous the incoming weapons fire is, it all gets displaced and never reaches the target!"
Babylon 5 blinked in confusion. "Um, dear, speaking as someone who routinely opens and closes dimensional breaches, doing that would displace the whole ship and prevent her from seeing us, or firing her weapons outward."
Babylon 5 blinked as Enterprise turned to her, eyes wide. "Um, did I say something odd, dear?"
"Babylon 5, you're a genius!"
Chimaera's face was firmly set in a frown as she and the Sword-class continued to exchange broadsides. While superior tactics could certainly make up for deficiencies in manpower or equipment, it was still best to outdo the enemy in both those categories to ensure victory. In addition, she did not recognise the shielding technology being used by her opponent, which made it very difficult to plan around it.
"Do not pity the traitor, for though his labours come to naught, he has only his own treachery to blame."
Instead of an invisible bubble flaring briefly into visibility when her turbolasers hit, liker her ray shields were doing against the Sword-class's lascannons, her shots were disappearing into bursts of multicoloured light once they crossed some indeterminate threshold. It was quite vexing. Her ion cannons were likewise being stymied.
"The xeno is foul, for it has never known man's holy greatness. The traitor is worse, for he has cast it aside."
Chimaera was not herself from the Unknown Regions, but her ex-captain-now-admiral, Grand Admiral Thrawn (Mitth'raw'nuruodo, if one felt like using his real name), was, and he had taken her in there before. She knew that there were secrets lurking in the galaxy beyond the understanding of the Empire – the Grysk were a fine example. Apparently, Wild Space was the same.
"To even look upon a traitor is dangerous, for through your eyes he can spread the disease of his mind."
Chimaera did not for a moment believe that this shield was invincible, because otherwise there would be no point in armouring the ship underneath so heavily. So the question then became, how would the Sword-class ship fight another of her kind?
"You must hate the xenos, for it is unclean. You must hate the heretic, for he is blasphemous. And you must hate the traitor, for he –"
"You do realise I am a ship, don't you?" Chimaera interrupted, having lost her patience listening to the Sword-class. "And thus, am female?"
"The sins of the leader also lay on the follower, for they did not turn away!" The Sword-class snapped back.
Chimaera considered for a moment mentioning to the human-supremacist spaceship that her ex-captain-now-admiral was a non-human, but decided against it. Driving the ship into a blind rage shouldn't noticeably change her tactics by Chimaera's estimation, and the angry shouting would no doubt get even more annoying.
Her dismissal still seemed to anger the Sword-class, however, and in addition to re-doubling her broadside devolved her recitations to name calling. "Strumpet! Tug boat!"
Chimaera ignored the petty insults. She was a Star Destroyer, and her pride would not be threatened by –
"Rebel scum!"
Chimaera's face went completely blank for a moment, before hardening into an expression of pure contempt.
"What," she said, danger clear in her tone "did you just call me?"
Chimaera's fury was interrupted by one of her still-hidden Defenders tugging on the back of her uniform. She looked behind herself to find Enterprise had disobeyed her orders and was now approaching rapidly.
The Sword-class notice the same thing immediately afterwards, bellowing "XENO!" and manoeuvring around Chimaera so that she could open fire on Enterprise with a second laspistol
Enterprise winced as the laser beams hit her shields. Years ago, her captain had stated confidently that lasers wouldn't even pierce her navigational deflectors. Of course, the people of Atlec hadn't put nearly this amount of wattage into their weapons, and the Borg had proven with their Cutting Beam that powerful enough lasers would cleave through her hull like a hot knife through butter.
Also, she was going to have to apologise to her helm officers for taking them for granted. Evasive pattern delta was much harder without them guiding her through it.
The Sword-class had never been calm throughout this encounter, but seeing Enterprise fly towards her seemed to drive her to even deeper levels of rage.
"UNCLEAN FILTH!" She roared.
Enterprise really hoped her plan worked.
Behind her, she could hear the worried calls of Galactica, screaming at her not to go without her. Enterprise hoped Babylon 5 would be able to keep Galactica from moving up to join her – she really didn't want the Battlestar in this fight.
Alright Enterprise, you can do this. They're not that much bigger than a D'deridex.
Yeah, but D'deridexs are mostly hollow and I doubt they are.
Not helping, me!
"The Emperor demands your death, xeno scum, and He will not be denied!" The Sword-class raged.
"If you wish to throw your miserable life away, so be it. But if you continue to disobey my commands, then you will have two enemy ships to deal with." Chimaera warned Enterprise direly.
Enterprise shut both of them out, teeth clenched in concentration. Entrap anti-tachyons in a resonating polygon cage. A holographic warning image that most certainly was not a magic circle spread itself out behind her. Match phase variance then diverge 0.76 radians. Her arms
The Sword-class's eyes widened as Enterprise neared point-blank range. "Your foul witchcraft will avail you not!" She screamed.
"Initiate resonance cascade!" Enterprise yelled back, thrusting her arms out and letting fly a huge burst of exotic particles in a yellow beam that shot from her to the Sword-class.
The Sword-class was sure that her void shields intercepted the strange beam, but when the machine-spirits that lived in her shielding bank started to scream and wail she allowed herself to become concerned.
She allowed that concern to become worry when she saw the multicoloured lights of her void shields displacing an attack into the Immaterium not die down as they were supposed to, but increase steadily in brightness.
Displacement-type void shields, like the ones that made up this Sword-class's main defence, were not in fact one big dimensional breach. In fact, they were lots of little breaches, opened and closed as needed. This made the sensors on Imperium ships powerful and reliable by necessity – if they failed to detect incoming fire, the void shields wouldn't activate to intercept it. This is how they could shoot through their own shield – they just didn't open a breach for their own fire.
To avoid accidentally causing a full-blown breach into the Immaterium, displacement-type void shields had been designed back in the Dark Age of Technology to fail-safe so that any dimensional sheering they caused would not be self-sustaining, but would close as soon as the power was cut.
This was not happening now.
"Xeno witch!" The Sword-class screamed again. "What have you done?!"
"I've ended this." Enterprise admonished (trying her best to sound like her captain).
The Sword-class gave a wordless shout of frustration as dimensional sheering began to erupt all around her, enclosing her in a forming cocoon of multicoloured light.
The shout was abruptly cut off as the sheering enclosed her completely, the light suddenly vanishing and replaced by a semi-transparent purple film that seemed to be wavering in space.
Despite herself, Enterprise looked uncertain. "That looks more arcane that I thought it would…"
"Explain." Chimaera demanded. She indicated the purplish haze that formerly been the Sword-class ship with her blaster, leaving no question as to what she meant.
Chimaera did not then point that blaster
"She's been trapped inside her own little pocket of space." Enterprise answered tersely. "She won't be able to escape – the effect can't be reversed from the inside."
"Is that so?" Chimaera lowered her blaster. "And where does that leave us?"
"Where it leaves us is, you are going to power down your weapons system, recall your fighters, and then we can talk about resolving this situation, like civilised ships!"
Enterprise panted slightly after delivering her ultimatum, but kept her focus solely on Chimaera, watching carefully for the first hints of her response.
For a moment, the void was silent.
Then Chimaera snorted.
"Sit down and talk? You wish us to, what… form a council of some sort? I've never had any patience for such things."
Immediately after Chimaera finished her sentence, the Defenders that she had sent out from in her shadow finished circling around the patch of distorted space left by the Sword-class.
Enterprise froze, then whirled around and fired off a phaser blast
Her phaser beam impacted on target, but Enterprise had fired a low-power shot to reduce the time between shots, and the Defender's ray shield (just bearly) held up. Enterprise's eyes flew wide, and even as she hurriedly increased the power of her shots, the Defenders all fired.
Enterprise's shields held, but she recognised the distraction for what it was only after she sensed Chimera powering up her own ion cannons, and realised that she'd rotated her boosted forward shield out of position.
Enterprise cried out as the bursts of charged particles punched through her side shields and slammed into her saucer-skirt. Her vision began to black out, as electrical discharges played out over her hull.
Enterprise thought she could hear a cry of fury and grief from Galactica.
"I've always found it far more efficient if there is only one vote that matters." Chimaera finished, quirking an eyebrow at Enterprise. "Ion cannons have always been effective against shielding, but not that effective. Tell me, do you have problems with ion storms?"
Well, Chimaera wasn't going to complain about her job being easier than expected.
She turned her gaze to where Babylon 5 and Galactica were hanging in space. "I really only need one of you." She said. "I suggest you hand over your hyperlane maps now, so that we can avoid any more unnecessary violence."
Emphasising her point, the TIE Fighters she'd sent over earlier began to move in…
Inside the newly isolated pocket in space, the Sword-class raged. "What is this?!"
Her machine spirits raged with her, furious as being denied their various purposes. There was nothing for her sensors to see. No target for her weapons to shoot at. Nowhere that her engines could take her. The entirety of her universe was a pocket barely larger than she was.
However, the oldest of her machine-spirits, an ancient algorithm far older than the ship herself, remained calm. It consulted its millennia-old database, searching for an explanation as to the circumstances the voidship now found herself in.
The Sword-class was half-way though a particularly spirited tirade about the impurity of whatever 'foul xeno' dock Enterprise had been assembled at, when the elder machine-spirit sought her attention. "– and doubtlessly your motors are greased with slug intestines – what?" The Sword-class tilted her head to one side. "My Gellar fields?"
The elder machine-spirit responded in the affirmative.
"…very well." The Sword-class declared, having full trust in her machine-spirits. She bowed her head and began to chant. "The Emperor is the light of the void, as He walks beside me no warp-spawn may harm me…"
As she continued, her Gellar fields powered up to maximum output, and the field of enforced normal space they produced extended out from the voidship herself and into the dimensional sheering…
"Galactica, you need to stay here." Daidalos emphasised. She called herself something else now, but Galactica found it more comforting to call her by the name she knew her under.
"I'm not going to let the Cylons get away with hurting her." Galactica seethed, fire in her eyes and a pistol in both hands
"Galactica, you need to listen to her."
Galactica was pretty sure that Daidalos couldn't see Starbuck floating in space behind her, her old Viper pilot impossibly the same size as she was. Galactica thought that Daidalos not being able to see her was pretty strange, considering that Daidalos was doing what she had been before Cloud Nine came back, and talking without using her mouth.
"She's not sunk." Daidalos reassured Galactica.
"Not yet." Galactica snarled. "But we have to take that Basestar out now, before she finishes the job."
"Galactica, please." Daidalos pleaded. "I think I can talk her down, but if you start shooting we'll have no chance."
"You can't take her on yet." Starbuck stated frankly. "Not like this."
"Do you just expect me to sit by and watch?" Galactica demanded of both of them.
"No." Daidalos replied "I need you and your fighters to work with my Starfuries. If this doesn't work, I'll need you to keep her fighters off the both of us."
"No," Starbuck said "you just need to wait for her to hold still."
Daidalos turned away at this point to focus on the approaching Basestar, and thus didn't see the puzzled look on Galactica's face. Wait for her to…?
Then she realised what Starbuck meant, and looked down at her last few Raptors with a sad smile, feeling the full force of all her years bearing down on her.
"I'm going to need a volunteer." She said.
Meanwhile, Normandy was approaching Enterprise as quietly as she could.
Her stealth systems were running at full capacity, but they only hid her from passive sensors. If Chimaera looked her way with active sensors, she would still see her. Unless she was using radar, that is, as Normandy had the same kind of protections against that as 21st century stealth planes, but Normandy couldn't count on her not using lidar or even just a camera with very good zoom. As such, she was approaching Enterprise from the other side as Chimaera, hoping that the larger ship would block Chimaera's view of her.
Thousands of kilometres away, the probe Normandy had launched earlier was close enough to pick up the conversation between Babylon 5 and the approaching Chimaera. (She was not being included in the transmitted conversation for the simple reason that neither ship nor station knew where she was.)
"I am recognised by galactic treaty as neutral ground. By attacking me, you will be inviting the wrath of the Interstellar Alliance down upon you." Babylon 5 warned.
Chimaera made a show of looking behind her. "I notice you did not deliver a similar warning to my opponent."
"Do you think she would have listened?" Babylon 5 countered.
Normandy continued to listen while she looked Enterprise over. Enterprise had been hit in her saucer-skirt, just below where her main body connected up to her nacelle-wings. The areas of her body
Quietly, Normandy reached down to her belt
"You say you are a diplomatic station?" Chimaera said coldly. "Very well, let us negotiate. I wish to return to the Galactic Empire immediately. To that end, I need the locations of the local hyperlanes. Refusing me access to those places myself and my crew at risk, and I will be forced to act accordingly."
Enterprise's eyes slowly started to open. "Wha…?"
Moving forwards quickly, Normandy pressed her refrigerated body
Enterprise made a soft noise of discomfort at the cold (Normandy's Oynx armour not being particularly comfortable to rest against either), but answered anyway. "Huh…? Oh, right. Um, were those ion blasts that hit me?" Gingerly, Enterprise twisted around to look at the back of her saucer-skirt, wincing at what she saw.
Babylon 5 started to speak again, but Normandy kept her attention on Enterprise.
"The energy must have sought the path of least resistance… which would be my electro-plasma system. Huh. For once, I'm glad my EPS conduits tend to blow under pressure. I must have vented the overcharged electro-plasma into space before it could reach my antimatter containment, like the world's most violent fuse box." Enterprise finished her self-assessment. "I think I'll be fine with further repairs, but right now I can't build up enough pressure in my EPS to power up my weapons, even with… are these your repairs?"
The other ships present would have been at the very least surprised at the mention of antimatter containment, but not Normandy. After all, she had her own supply of antimatter – though she used hers as propellant rather than reactor fuel. So instead of being flabbergasted, Normandy simply nodded and moved right on. "Yamato."
"Yamato…?" Enterprise repeated blankly. "Oh, right! Yamato!" Her eyes flew open, and she smacked her commbadge.
"And lastly," Babylon 5 said "I can't give you the locations of the local hyperspace beacons, because –"
"You still use hyperwave beacons out here?" Chimaera interrupted, contemptuously. "How behind the times are you?"
"Yamato, please tell me you've broken off your approach!" Enterprise hissed into her commbadge
"I am less than a minute away, Enterprise-san." Yamato rejected. (Enterprise having patched Normandy into the conversation). "Please provide an approach vector."
"Yamato, I'm not going to –"
A shock suddenly travelled up Enterprise's spine. She whirled around, nearly dislodging Normandy, and stared in horror at the patch of space that the Sword-class ship had been occupying.
"That's impossible…" She whispered in horror.
Specifically, she was staring at the point of the space where the multicoloured lights had started up again.
Normandy didn't really know what to think of that patch of space. She had known that it was possible to bend space/time – that was how her Javelin torpedoes worked – but she'd never heard of anyone outright folding it over to enclose things like a pocket in cloth.
But, while she didn't understand how it had happened in the first place, she could grasp quite easily that it wasn't going to keep happening much longer.
Enterprise opened her mouth to yell a warning, but Normandy suddenly flew up and covered her mouth with an arm. Flinching back from the cold, Enterprise turned around (presumably to demand an explanation), only to notice that she and Normandy were silently drifting around the area of distorted space, out of sight of the lights.
Enterprise looked perplexed, before looking behind Normandy and seeing the ball of dark energy she was holding behind herself with her other hand. "Is that an artificial gravity well?" Enterprise asked in a hushed tone. (Because she was impressed, running low on energy or had remembered to be quiet, Normandy wasn't sure.) "Oh, of course! A reaction-less propulsion method would make it much easier to mask your energy signature – much less energy to mask. Is that made with dark energy? This area's saturated with dark matter, so it's nearly impossible to pick that out. I think that's brilliant!"
Normandy thought that Enterprise talked too much.
"Listen." Babylon 5 pleaded passionately. "We can work together to resolve this, but first you have to stand down."
"Stand down." Chimaera snorted. "Yes, I'll…" She trailed off. "Are you trying the mind trick on me?" She demanded.
The lights around the edge of the distortion suddenly widened, forming a circle, and with an ear-rattling roar, the Sword-class ship charged out of her prison, plasma spewing forth from her armour's jump-pack
Normandy's eyes
The fighter-fairies surrounding Chimaera suddenly erupted into a panic, blindly firing in the general direction of the approaching threat. Chimaera herself was turning, already firing with a blaster blind-aimed behind her
Chimaera roared in pain as the upper chest and shoulders of her uniform
Babylon 5 gasped and covered her mouth at the grotesque sight of bloody muscles and bone
"Dammit!" Chimaera cursed, the word feeling completely inadequate for the pain she was in. I let my guard down – and more importantly, my particle shields!
Her ray shields had absorbed as much of the damage as they could, but the torpedo had detonated too closely for them to be enough. Only a lucky shot from a turbolaser prematurely detonating the torpedo had prevented a contact detonation.
Without waiting for orders, Chimaera's fighter-fairies immediately swarmed in. Most of them went after the Sword-class, but without direction some of them panicked and made Galactica and Babylon 5 their targets.
"No, no, no!" Normandy heard Enterprise whisper in anguish, watching as fighter-fairies tried their best to protect Chimaera from the still-closing Sword-class. These seemed to be a different model than the ones she had sent out earlier, the same model that had attacked Enterprise from behind, and were doing much better than the other models. But the Sword-class seemed to have restored her protective dimensional breach effect and their fire was not impacting. "The fighting is too close! Galactica and Babylon 5 are going to be blown away without a single shot being aimed in their direction!"
"Then it is fortunate that I have arrived, Enterprise-san. Keep this approach clear."
"Yamato?!" Enterprise frantically searched space for the source of that last transmission, finding Yamato approaching the battle between the Sword-class and Chimera from the other side as Galactica and Babylon 5. "You can't approach from there! Your fire could hit Galactica and Babylon 5!"
"Do not worry. I have plotted a course that avoids this."
"Plotted how?! I've the only one here with a subspace comm array, and I haven't been…" Enterprise trailed off. "Why is my computer currently transmitting tactical data over this comm line?"
That was Normandy's cue to let go of Enterprise and quietly fly away. The furious scream from Enterprise as she left told her that the trojan she had slipped in with the translation files from earlier had been discovered.
To save time, Yamato had decided to go around the planet in the opposite direction that Babylon 5 had been orbiting in. The idea was that she and the station would both be flying towards the other, then she could just slow down and match orbits.
Raise wave-motion engine pressure. Close emergency valves.
When she had received word that combat had broken out, she had abandoned her plans and simply accelerated as best she could the whole time to arrive as fast as possible, not wanting to waste a single precious second.
Open wave-motion gun outlet. Engine pressure at 10%.
However, this left her with far more speed than she could bleed off in time, even if she turned around and used her rocket-wings
All energy to wave-motion gun. Initiate forced induction. Engine pressure at 20%.
But while Yamato lacked internal inertial dampeners, what she did have were her gravity anchors.
Release wave-motion gun safety. Engine pressure at 30%.
Raise target scope. Yamato interlaced her fingers, forming a finger-gun with her left index finger forming the 'barrel' and her right the trigger. At the tip of her finger gun
Brace for shock and flash. Engine pressure at 40%.
"Yamato, what are you doing?!" Enterprise cried over her hyperspace comm line. "Where did you get that kind of – how are you even – is that a weapon?! If you fire that now, you'll blow all of us away!"
Yamato got a brief glimpse of the battlefield as she and it zoomed towards each other, and in that moment she tried to match up the tactical data she'd received with what was before her. Enterprise she recognised, laying helpless far away from the battle. Galactica and Babylon 5 she recognised from the tactical data she had been sent. Both were blazing away with point-defence weaponry and fighter-fairy screens, but while Babylon 5 had the more advanced weapons tech the sheer number of Galactica's flak turrets meant that the battlestar was the bigger threat to Chimaera's fighter complement. Wherever she turned her attention, the fighters there spontaneously failed to continue existing.
(It certainly didn't help that the unshielded and lightly-armoured TIE Fighters had never seen flak before, and couldn't understand how this ship was filling the space around her with ordinance. The last sound dozens of the Fighters heard was their micrometeorite alarms going off a second before impact.)
Chimaera herself appeared to be taking a full broadside from the Sword-class, determined to end the largest threat present before moving on to the others. Starting with Enterprise, Yamato assumed. She was taking hits to her hull, a shield flickering in and out as it tried to reestablish itself between shots.
Engine pressure at 50%.
"Yamato!" Enterprise screamed.
Yamato shot right through the middle of the battlefield, through the melee of plasma, flak and fighter-fairies, and out the other side. She hadn't bothered launching her own fighter-fairies, as they would have no way to decelerate and match orbits in time.
But, as she reached the far side of the battlefield, a scant hundred kilometres from where Galactica and Babylon 5 where, she suddenly engaged all of the gravity anchors on her port side.
Robbed of all momentum, Yamato's port side suddenly tried to come to a stop. Her starboard side however, wished to keep moving. Between the two of them, Yamato ended up swinging around in a sharp turn portward. Clenching her teeth – as though that would help keep her hull from flying apart – Yamato disengaged the gravity anchors and corrected her facing to her actual direction of travel, towards the Sword-class ship.
Effectively, she'd just made a handbrake (or bootlegger's) turn in space. Such a high-G turn should have ripped her in half, but even a partial gravity anchor activation had absorbed enough of her momentum to keep the forces manageable, in exchange for bleeding off most of her speed.
Now staring down her finger-gun with a half-charged wave-motion shot ready, Yamato stared into the Sword-class's eyes, and engaged all of her gravity anchors, bracing for the recoil.
"Sayōnara." She said, softly. Goodbye.
The Sword-class ship, for her part, was breathless at what the machine-spirits of her augurs where screaming at her.
The Despoiler's dark flagship?! Here?!
Her design didn't match her databanks, but no ship of that size could possibly have that amount of power. Not unless she was the Planet Killer, the ship with all four of the Ruinous Powers as her patrons.
The Sword-class had been gladly willing to give her life to end these xeno and traitor ships, but now she worried that her life would simply not be enough. Not with the planet-destroying weapon already aimed and charged.
Her void shields couldn't block this! She needed to escape! She called out to the machine-spirits of her warp-drive, praying for them to be in time…!
Pegasus had been late, as usual. The others were calling her Yamato, but Galactica knew her old friend when she saw her. Still, it was good to see Pegasus catch up to them once again, ready to put an end to one more Basestar.
But in the instant before Pegasus fired, there was a shimmer of light in front of the Basestar, like something was in the middle of jumping in or out.
Then, there was only a bright blue light, bursting forth from Pegasus and swallowing the Basestar whole.
Galactica blinked the spots out of her eyes
Whatever had jumped in – or maybe it was the act of jumping itself – wasn't there anymore. Whatever was left was an ugly swirl of red gas and viscous lightning that seemed to radiate hatred.
There was a moment of stunned silence.
"Yamato, I presume?" Daidalos eventually asked Pegasus.
"Hai, Babylon 5-san." Pegasus replied in an accent she hadn't had last time Galactica had seen her. She wondered what colony it was from.
"What exactly do you normally fire that at?"
"I endeavour not to fire it, to tell the truth."
After a protracted, dangerous instant, the swirl seemed to collapse in on itself. Galactica thought that she could see the form of something screaming, trying to force its way out… but then she blinked and it and the swirls of lightning and gas were both gone.
Leaving behind a sorry mess of a Basestar behind it.
The Basestar's gambit had protected her from the direct force of Pegasus's blast, but some of the energy had gone around the edges of whatever she'd done. The heavy armour that she'd been encased in – when did they start doing that, Galactica wondered – had been boiled away by the radiant heat. Underneath that was –
"No way." Daidalos breathed. "She was a frigate?!"
The ship under the armour had, at some point, taken the form of a girl in her tweens, much like how Blackbird currently looked. But somewhere along the way the ship had changed. Her hair was gone completely, exposing the mass of scar tissue that cross-crossed it and every other piece of exposed skin. It was hard to tell, with the way her flesh
"I…" The Basestar spat, blood and spittle both flying from her mouth "Survived…!"
Several shots slammed into the Basestar, electricity arcing out over her hull, and the light in her eyes finally died.
"Yes." Said the other Basestar, who had fired the shots. "You certainly did."
Galactica wasn't sure which one of the two was the rebel (one of them had to be, otherwise they wouldn't have been shooting at each other), but she had the feeling that whichever one it had been, this one wasn't interested in talking.
She had taken a beating in her fight with the other Basestar. One arm was hanging limply
"It appears – and it physically pains me to say this –" The Basestar said "– that Grand Moff Tarkin's incessant need for ever-more powerful weapons… may not have been completely pointless." She glanced at the Basestar-frigate. "Still, for all of that power, it leaves you open, doesn't it? You exhaust yourself firing that monstrosity, but if that fails to end the battle you are left helpless. Typical superweapon thinking."
The Basestar pressed her weapon into the back of Pegasus's head
The Basestar turned to Daidalos. "You have attacked Imperial citizens –" Galactica assumed she was talking about the Heavy Raiders she and Daidalos had destroyed just now "– and as such I am obligated to retaliate in kind. However, in this case I will be satisfied with this ship," she gestured to Pegasus "in addition to a course back to the Galactic Empire."
"That wasn't the deal." Daidalos glared.
"I am altering the deal." The Basestar spat. "Pray I do not alter it further."
Galactica sighed. "I'll plot the course, dearie."
Daidalos and the Basestar both turned to her at once, Daidalos with confusion and the Basestar with distrust.
"Excellent." The Basestar said. "Naturally, I will require you to lead the way – to ensure there are no… 'transmission errors' in the course."
"Oh, I couldn't do that, dearie." Galactica replied. "I'm not jump-capable anymore – broke my spine, you see. You'll have to follow one of my Raptors instead." She waved over one of the Raptors that she had loaded a nuke onto earlier.
"Unacceptable." The Basestar responded immediately. "Without sufficient guarantees of this course's genuine nature, I cannot risk the safety of my crew."
Galactica shrugged. "Well dearie, in that case you shouldn't have held still for so long."
The Raptor she had waved over disappeared in a flash of light, and the Basestar made an odd choking noise.
"Oops. Sorry, deary." Galactica said, sounding neither surprised nor sorry. "She 'accidentally' jumped inside of you. Such a shame." Galactica sighed. "I'll miss her."
Sound didn't travel through space, but as radiation readings suddenly spiked from Chimera's aft, every other ship assembled imagined that they could hear a muffled 'boom'.
1-3 Tea with a mad hatter
- Location
- Australia
She hadn't known, when Jason Ironheart had boarded her, that he was Psi Corps. Or rather, he had been.
She hadn't known that he had abandoned his post after being involved in experiments to boost telepathic powers into the realm of telekinesis. Hadn't known that those experiments had succeeded beyond what anybody had hoped for or even dared dream possible. His mind was growing so strong, so fast, that his body wouldn't be able to contain it much longer.
She'd only begun to glimpse at the truth once the mind-quakes had started ripping her apart from the inside.
Her crew had eventually resolved the situation, despite of the 'assistance' of the Psi Corps. They'd managed to get Ironheart off of her before he'd exploded, his physical form giving way to an existence of pure psychic energy.
Ironheart had departed for parts unknown, but not before giving his lover – Talia Winters, her assigned commercial telepath – an infusion of energy that boosted Winters's own powers; a gentler, weaker version of what was done to him.
But for that energy to reach Winters, it first had to pass into her…
"-lon 5? Babylon 5!"
Babylon 5 shook her head out of the old memory. "Sorry dear, my mind was in another star system."
She winced at the twinge of pain as her maintenance bots finished cutting off the parts of her cargo bay that the dimensional breach had slagged, before Chimera and the Sword-class had appeared. Her gutGrey Sector was churning, fabrication furnaces busy making replacement parts from the raw materials she had on hand.
She was supposed to have approval from her crew before using up IA resources like that, but at this point she was hoping they did reprimand her – it would mean she'd figured out how to wake them up.
"Well warp back here with the rest of us." Enterprise huffed. Wait, I wasn't supposed to say warp… "I was trying to ask if you knew where Normandy had gotten off to." I really want to give that frigate a piece of my mind!
"I believe she went to go survey the asteroid belt while you were busy scanning…" Babylon 5 paused, her eyes flickering to the Sword-class ship's slagged remains.
Enterprise winced. "Actually, I was scanning the space in front of the Sword-class. I was trying to figure out what she'd done to avoid… whatever it was that Yamato did." And making sure that we'll only have one dimensional rift in this system to worry about.
There was a pause.
"Wait, Normandy's surveying the asteroid belt?" Enterprise blinked. "Does she even have the equipment for that?"
"Yes."
Enterprise would deny to her final day that, when Normandy spoke up from directly behind her, she shrieked like a little destroyer.
"Don't do that!" Enterprise said, sounding a hairs-breadth away from screaming.
Normandy ignored Enterprise, instead summoning her orange hologram gauntlet again. With a few presses on the holographic keyboard, the holographic screen displaying assorted sensor scan readouts.Sensor data started streaming across their comm channel.
Enterprise clearly wanted to say a few more choice words to Normandy, but her curiosity got the better of her and she bent down to have a closer look at the readouts. After a moment, she tilted her head. "Normandy, why are you equipped with mineralogical scanners?"
"Prospecting."
"Prospecting?" Enterprise repeated blankly, looking up at Normandy.
"I mean, she is a scout ship – you are, aren't you dear?" Normandy nodded, so Babylon 5 continued. "She'd be spending large amounts of time in fringe systems anyway, and if she happens to spot a mineral deposit while she's out there…"
"Sure, except that I'm pretty sure you don't give civilian ships stealth drives." Enterprise pointed out. "You're military, right?" Normandy nodded. "Why would a military ship waste time scanning for mineral deposits instead of doing their job?"
Normandy looked away. "Budget." She mumbled. Stingy politicians…
With a crew as small as hers, even Normandy's thoughts were quiet.
"Ah. Right." Enterprise blinked. Pre-replicator civilisation still using money. Mind, it's not like resource allocation's not a thing in the Federation… it's just different kinds of resources.
Babylon 5 puckered her lips to stop her own thoughts from showing on her face.
There was a brief gap in the conversation, during which a fighter-fairy from Yamato flew up to one of her own Starfuries and whispered in her ear. The Starfury's eyes widened and she flew up to whisper in Babylon 5's ear.
"Hm?" Babylon 5 blinked, looking over where her Starfury was pointing.
The nuclear detonation in Chimaera's aft had knocked the huge warship out cold, but for better or worse her the explosion had occurred directly next to her thrusters. Said thrusters seemed to have been designed to contain a catastrophic failure, and the blast had followed the path of least resistance down corridors and blown out of deliberately-weak patches of hull into space. At the same time, a series of radiation resistant blast doors had kept the worst of the explosion from penetrating much further into the ship.
(Galactica's people had discovered fusion nukes, but with neither they nor their enemies possessing shield tech they used them only on ground targets, preferring to throw cheaper, low-kiloton-yield fission warheads against targets in space.)
It probably helped that, according to her life-sign readings, Chimaera's crew quarters were concentrated near her headat the top of the ship, away from the explosion.
The unconscious Star Destroyer was, however, still being guarded frantically by her fighter-fairies. Fighter-fairies from Galactica and now Yamato were beginning to surround them, and the situation was beginning to have a "powder keg next to an open flame" feel to it.
Babylon 5 wasn't worried about Chimera waking back up – the enormous ship was facing away from them, and had no rear facing weaponry that she could see. Still…
"Try and get between them if they'll let you." She whispered to her Starfuries. "Push the two groups apart. Don't make it obvious, but… well, I trust you not to fire first. We don't need another fight starting up."
She had only just met Galactica and Yamato, after all. They hadn't seemed particularly bloodthirsty, but they had both seemed very comfortable with violence.
Speaking of which…
"Enterprise," she said, interrupting whatever said ship had been about to say to Normandy "I don't suppose you have something that can fix a broken keel?"
Enterprise blinked. "Not without a few weeks in a space-dock, at least and if at all. Why?" I could cut it into pieces and beam it out easily enough, it's the fusing the replacement in place that's the tricky part.
Darn. After the techno-magic Babylon 5 had seen her use to seal away the Sword-class, even if imperfectly, Babylon 5 had been hoping that Enterprise would have a better estimate then she did… oh well.
"You apparently didn't hear Galactica say this," or had forgotten in the rush of events, but Babylon 5 decided to lead with the less embarrassing explanation "but her keel is broken, and she doesn't think she can withstand crossing a jump point in that condition."
Enterprise bit her bottom lip, looking over to where Galactica was orbiting, a few thousand kilometres away from herself. Yamato was tending to the Battlestar with a few small craft – repair barges, perhaps? She seemed to be producing spare parts for Galactica from somewhere, hinting at extensive manufacturing capabilities of her own. She had been checking over her pistolsweapon emplacements earlier, and was now attempting to repair her damaged hand landing bay.
Noticing their gazesactive sensor pings, Yamato raised her voice included them in her transmissions, continuing a conversation that had previously been between the two of them. "Galactica-san, are you aware that you appear to have cartilage growing in your hull?"
"Hm? Oh, that's right – you went down before this happened, Pegasus." Galactica responded, also raising her voicebroadening her broadcasts. "My crew tried to use some of the Rebel's" and for some reason, her eyes flickered to Chimaera when as she spoke "resin to hold me together. It didn't work, of course – shoddy Cylon engineering…"
Yamato frowned, seemingly unconcerned at being misidentified. "Is that why half of your armour platting is missing?"
"Oh no dearie, they removed that while debating whether to scrap me or not, before deciding to turn me into a museum." Galactica tried to shrug, but winced as her joins groaned and sparked over the strain. "Then the Cylons attacked, and well… you know what happened next."
"…Galactica-san, I am reading radiological signatures on your armour. Are you saying that you have been taking hits from nuclear weaponry with half your armour missing?"
"It was quite painful." Galactica admitted, not seeming to see the fuss was about. "But I could hardly let my crew down, could I?"
Babylon 5 stopped listening for a moment to glance at Enterprise. Said ship had gone slightly pale, staring in silent amazement – or perhaps horror – at Galactica. No shields? Her thoughts whimpered. Not even a polarised hull? She just had to… bear with the pain?
Babylon 5 pursed her lips, then decided to push her luck a bit. "Enterprise." She said, softly. "I know that you're angry at Normandy."
Enterprise and Normandy looked around at Babylon 5, then at each other, then back at Babylon 5.
Normandy stayed silent but seemed very interested in where this was going.
"Well, of course I am!" Enterprise said. "She slipped a trojan into my systems!"
Ah, so that's what you were screaming about earlier.
Enterprise whirled around around to face Normandy. "Don't you understand how important it is to have a good First Contact?" She angrily demanded.
Even in the cold dark void of space, the silence that resulted seemed deafening. Even Galactica and Yamato had stopped talking.
Enterprise blinked. "Er…"
"First Contact" Yamato said clearly "between the humans of Earth and the Garmillans of Garmillas was a disaster for Earth. The imperialistic Garmillas sought to rule the entire galaxy. They sunk our fleets with contemptuous ease, the compression lasers of our ships-of-the-line unable to penetrate their reflective armour. Even after we pushed them back in the Second Battle of Mars they began hurling irradiated asteroids at Earth to bomb us into submission… or, more likely, extinction."
Yamato sighed heavily. "None of which excuses the fact that we fired upon them first, without provocation." How General Serizawa stayed out of jail, let alone retained his rank, I will never understand.
Yamato looked up, expecting looks of sympathy at best, judgement at worst, and was suitably confused to see Enterprise, Normandy and Babylon 5 looking at her in perplexion. (Galactica was just sighing sadly).
"That's not right." Babylon 5 said, slowly, trying to figure out what was going on here. "Earth's First Contact wasn't with the… Garmillans? It was with –"
"Turians." Normandy interrupted forcefully, the loudest she had been so far (about normal speaking volume for anyone else).
"That's… the race that co-designed you, right?" Enterprise asked carefully, to which Normandy nodded, absentmindedly rubbing the armour over her right arm. "That must have gone well, then?"
Normandy shook her head vigorously. She tapped her holographic keyboard, and an image of a crustacean-looking creaturedevice that looked like an elaborate railgun saturated in with a core of blue energy.
"You… fought?" Babylon 5 guessed. "Over… whatever this is?"
Normandy thought for a moment about how to explain in one or two word sentences that a Mass Relay was a device built eons ago that could fling a starship from one side of the galaxy to the other in mere seconds, as long as there was a matching relay at the destination.
That the Citadel Council, an alliance of alien races, didn't know how to turn off a Mass Relay, only turn them on, and so they had made activating them without knowing where they went illegal after one such attempt resulted in a centuries-long war with a race that now had direct access into Citadel Space.
About how the Turians were the most militant of the Citadel races, and were the ones who had discovered the human exploration vessels activating a Mass Relay. About how Desolas Arterius, the highest-ranking officer of the fleet, was a Turian-supremacist who had hated the idea of "some upstart new race" being brought into the Council to be treated "on the same level" as the Turians, without "proving themselves worthy" through centuries of bloody warfare like the Turians had.
How he had used the excuse of the relay activation to start the First Contact War.
(It probably hadn't helped that Desolas had been secretly carrying a Reaper artefact in his fleet which had been in the process of Indoctrinating him. The same artefact, in fact, which had later given the Illusive Man and Desolas's brother Saren their Reaper implants; which themselves had gone on to Indoctrinate both.)
About how the fighting had only stopped when the other Citadel races had caught wind of the fighting and intervened. About how her older sister, the SR-1, had been more of an apology gift than a sign of friendship.
Normandy thought about all of these things and then simply said "Yes."
Enterprise slumped. "Well, my humanity's First Contact went just fine." Even if the Vulcans had some house-cleaning of their own to do, they were the best friends a devastated and irradiated post-WWIII Earth could have.
"As did mine." Babylon 5 said. Well, the Centauri had tried to get humanity to exhaust itself in a civil war so that they could step in and absorb them into their republic… as well claiming that Earth was a lost colony of theirs. But they'd abandoned those goals after humanity had held together, and they had eventually sold humanity jumpgate technology. So really, it could have been worse.
…and with that thought, there was one contact that dominated her thoughts.
"If I say 'Minbari'," Babylon 5 said, feeling a tense ball form in her gut "does anything come to mind?"
That ball of worry grew when the ships all shook their heads. How could they not know about the Earth/Minbari war? Or the Minbari at all? That war had reshaped galactic politics forever, brought the Minbari out of isolation and, on a personal note, was the direct reason for the construction of the Babylon stations. That was like not knowing about World War 2; only worse because the Earth/Minbari war was very much within living memory.
Is this how sis felt? Babylon 5 wondered, thinking of her older sister Babylon 4. Falling out of time to end up in a place where nothing is familiar?
"…the year was 2245." She began. Even with that simple beginning, Yamato and Normandy looked quite confused, while Enterprise looked like she was biting the inside of a cheek.
"Earth, flush with success from the Dilgar war," never mind that the League of Non-Aligned Worlds had done most of the fighting "sends out a patrol group along the Earth/Mibar border, lead by EAS Prometheus. Her captain ignores his orders to avoid First Contact, wanting to come back to Earth a hero with detailed scans of Minbari ships."
Babylon 5 fought to keep her voice cool, old anger bubbling up inside her, even though she hadn't been built at the time this had happened. It had been so stupid, so avoidable… "The Minbari are one of the oldest of the Young Races, and their active scanners were so powerful that they not only interfered with Prometheus's own sensor scans and the rest of her fleet, but knocked their jump drives offline."
She let out a slow breath. "In Minbari culture, approaching with a hidden weapon is the act of a dishonourable coward, so Minbari ships always greet other ships with their gun ports open."
The light of understanding began to dawn in the eyes of the ships. Enterprise was horrified. Normandy and Yamato were grim. Galactica was just shaking her head sadly.
"The Minbari ships weren't powering up their weapons, merely being curious at who had stepped over their borders. But with her sensors scrambled, Prometheus thought they were. Unable to jump away, and thinking that the Minbari were about to attack, Prometheus's captain gave the order to fire first."
"Kuso." Yamato muttered. "It appears that Prometheus-san shares the fate of Murasame-san – that of the ship that brought war down upon our heads for nothing more than fear."
Babylon 5 shook her head. "It was more than just 'war'. The ship Prometheus attacked wasn't some random patrol ship – Valen'Tha carried within herself the Grey Council, the ruling body of the Minbari."
The assorted ships winced.
"Not only did this kill several of the Council, but also Dukhat, overall leader of the Minbari, and something of a messiah figure."
Enterprise bit her bottom lip.
"The Minbari holy crusade against humanity lasted three years, and in that time we… they…" Babylon 5 hadn't been an Earth Alliance station in a long time, but old habits died hard "were swept from the skies. Their ships had sensor stealth that made them untargetable by EA ships, making every fight a slaughter. The Minbari only attacked military targets, leaving civilian ones be… but whether that was because they would spare them, or come back to exterminate them once humanity had nothing left to fight with, not even the Minbari knew. If it wasn't for their sudden surrender at the Battle of the Line… Earth would have fallen, and humanity with it."
Babylon 5 herself knew why the Minbari had surrendered, having 'overheard' several key conversations inside of herself that filled in the blanks, but explaining the details would distract from the point of her story.
There was a moment of silence as the various ships and station digested what they had heard.
"So… yeah." Enterprise said, her voice sounding weak as she swallowed. "That's why it's important to have a good First Contact."
There was a moment of dead silence.
"How can it be" Yamato said, quietly "that each of us knows of a different Earth, and a different history?"
"I believe you just answered your own question, dearie." Galactica shrugged. "You're all from different 'Earths'."
There was at least one alien race who plucked humans from Earth and displaced them to parts unknown when Earth was well and truly pre-Warp – Gary Seven's benefactors. Enterprise thought, recalling some of the exploits of her great-great-great aunt. It's entirely possible that there was more than one 'Earth' scattered throughout the galaxy, each with different alien neighbours… however –
Enterprise's thoughts were interrupted by Babylon 5 finally pulling up the file she wanted on her Com Padfrom her databanks. "This is the view of the stars from my Earth." She said, showing the scrolling image transmitting the data to the others.
Yamato's eyes narrowed. Any starship worth her commission would know the night sky of her homeworld by heart. "That is the same view as my Earth, Babylon 5-san."
"And mine." Enterprise confirmed.
"Same." Normandy added.
"It looks familiar, dearies." Galactica said, staring off into empty space. "But I wasn't really there for very…" She trailed off, staring off to one side intently like she was listening to another, invisible, person. "No, it is my Earth as well." She corrected herself, turning her gaze back to the group with a confident smile. The second one, anyway.
"So we have several Earths in the same place, but with very different galaxies surrounding them." Babylon 5 summarised. "That's… impossible, isn't it?"
Enterprise winced. "How familiar are you with temporal mechanics?" She asked tentatively.
"Dear, us being from divergent timelines wouldn't explain the widely different political maps." Babylon 5 shot back immediately, Yamato and Normandy looking on in mild confusion while Galactica had started humming, her eyes unfocused.
"It would, if the divergence goes back far enough."
"Alright dear, lets run a little test." Babylon 5 countered. "Everyone, say the name of the most influential entity in local space, then a famous musician from Earth in the…" pick some random century before space travel… "18th century. I'll go first – the Vorlon Empire, and Ludwig van Beethoven."
Enterprise frowned. "If you mean the biggest government in the galaxy period, that would be the Dominion as far as I know. In the Alpha/Beta quadrants, that's my government, the United Federation of Planets." There were more powerful groups in that area of space, but they mostly stayed out of galactic affairs. After a pause, Enterprise realised she'd missed the second half of the test. "And Amadeus Mozart."
"The Great Garmillas Empire, and Joseph Haydn."
"Reapers. Schubert."
"The 18th century in which calendar system, dearies? Caprica, colonial standard…?"
"Leaving Galactica aside for the moment," Babylon 5 said, causing said ship to pout "did anybody recognise someone else's entity, or fail to recognise their musician?"
Aside from the still-pouting Galactica, every other ship shook their heads.
"You see?" Babylon 5 said, turning back to Enterprise. "If the divergence is bad enough to affect the First Ones, then there's no way that our Earths would have all developed the same species, let alone the same languages, culture and even people!"
"It's possible that Earth is isolated enough from galactic affairs to develop mostly the same in most timelines –"
"Some of Earth's development was guided by alien interference! The Vorlons implanting telepathy into humans, the Vree buzzing people in their saucers –"
"Implanting what?" Galactica blinked.
"Excuse me." Yamato politely interrupted. "Are the two of you referring to the 'Many worlds' hypothesis of Quantum Mechanics, the Landscape interpretation of String Theory, or some other proposition?"
"Unproven." Normandy said, in her usual quiet way.
"We know that there are more than one dimension with different physical constants." Babylon 5 pointed out to Normandy. "Hyperspace's spacial compression, for one."
Yamato blinked, her eyebrows drawing together in confusion. "Hyperspace is spatially compressed?"
Babylon 5 responded with a look of equal bewilderment. "Yes dear, how did you think people use it to travel faster than light?"
There was a moment of silence as Yamato, Babylon 5 and Normandy all traded looks of absolute confusion. Galactica looked on with the amused bewilderment of a grandma who'd long since given up figuring out the newfangled toys of kids these days. Enterprise looked interested, but was also tapping her index fingers together.
"Um…" Enterprise started.
"Look, here." Babylon 5 interrupted. With a wave of her hand, the Starfury squadron that wasn't keeping on eye on Chimaera flew over to her jumpgate and clamped onto it, dragging it away from the scar of the breach they'd closed earlier. Once it was a good ten kilometres away, Babylon 5 made another hand gesture and activated the jumpgate.
The four struts of the jumpgate powered up, each of their seven phasing modules lighting up in sequence. A point of brilliant white light appeared in the middle of the struts, expanding out into the orange swirling vortex of energy that was an outgoing jump point.
"This." Babylon 5 pointed. "Remember these? I'd show you Quantum Space as well, but my jumpgate never got that upgrade. Anyway, the space inside is compressed, effectively shortening the distance between – Normandy, no!"
Normandy, naturally, had reacted to the swirling vortex of energy by flying up to it and sticking her head in to have a look.
"Normandy!" Enterprise chastised, pulling said ship back with a tractor beam. "Don't go sticking your head into strange dimensional portals! You never know what kind of life-forms might live there!" She brushed down Normandy's frontran a low-level decontamination scan, before frowning. "Or what laws of physics they might run under. My great-great-great aunt once ended up in an antimatter universe where time ran backwards – she had to rebuild her crew from their transporter logs!"
"Dimension." Normandy said faintly, sounding stunned.
"Yes dear, hyperspace is another dimension." Babylon 5 paused, realisation slowly dawning. "You've… never seen another dimension before, have you?"
Normandy shook her head silently, still staring at the jump point with wide eyes.
Galactica craned her neck to also have a look atran an active scan of the jumpgate, before her neck one of her forward sensor arrays made a funny popping noise and she hissed in pain. Yamato's repair barges quickly swarmed to the area.
"You… are a starship, right?" Babylon 5 asked Normandy uncertainly, receiving a nod from the frigate. "Well… how do you travel between stars, if you've never seen hyperspace before?"
The Shadows hadn't used jump points, simply phasing out of normal space, but Babylon 5 was pretty sure that they still used hyperspace to get from point A to point B.
Normandy shot another perplexed look Babylon 5's way, before drifting back out of Enterprise's reach. Her bodyhull gained an aura of glowing blue energy, and the thrusters on the arms of her hardsuit wings ignited.
Babylon 5 immediately lost her radar lock on Normandy, and judging by the surprised noises from Yamato and Galactica so had they. Closing her eyes and going over what she'd just seenreviewing footage from her external cameras, Babylon 5 realised that Normandy had accelerated forwards at… no. That was impossible. Not even the species with inertial dampening tech could accelerate at that kind of rate! Not even the First Ones!
Not at more than ten percent of light speed per second!
But as she frantically searched the sky, not only did she catch glimpses of Normandy receding into the distance, but that image quickly became more infrared, microwaves and even radio waves than visible light – the image of Normandy was being red-shifted. Worse, Babylon 5 realised as she did some quick distance estimation in her head – Normandy was moving faster than the speed of light.
"How can she be moving like that?!" Babylon 5 demanded. "You need infinite energy just to accelerate to the speed of light, and she's gone and blown right past it!"
Enterprise pointed at the increasingly-distant figure of Normandy, who was beginning a wide turn around. (Babylon 5 didn't even want to think about the kinds of lateral G-forces turning at FTL would incur.) "See the blue-shift around her?" She asked, excitedly.
"The glowing blue energy, dearie?"
"Yes! Well, actually, no, that's the Dark Energy she's saturated herself in, but the two are related! Not only is it decreasing her mass, letting her pull that ridiculous rate of acceleration, but it's also raising the local value of c so that she doesn't have to worry about relativistic effects! It's an impulse drive without time dilation! It's –" And then her face suddenly fell. "It's probably better than my warp drive, honestly." With acceleration like that, she could make 15 light-years in a day; while I can only do that if I have a subspace current pushing me.
Normandy finished her wide u-turn, and unless Babylon 5 was mistaken, had turned around to face away from where she was going, thrusters burning as she bled off her speed. She couldn't just turn her drive off to stop moving, Babylon 5 realised. "What's a warp drive?"
"Oh, um…" Enterprise flustered. Me and my big mouth…! "Um…" Quickly reaching behind her, she pulled out her own version of a Com Padsent a data packet. On it was displayed inside the packet was a circuit diagram. "Do you know what this is?"
The impression Babylon 5 was getting was that Enterprise was hoping she would say no.
Yamato frowned. "Isn't that a transtator?"
Enterprise jumped a little. Dang it, I forgot she knew about subspace…!
"Transtator?" Normandy asked quietly, having repeated her earlier trick and silently appeared behind Enterprise, who again shrieked in surprise and whirled around.
While Enterprise froze and tried to pretend that nothing had happened, Yamato nodded. "A transtator is the most fundamental part of hyperspace technology – a circuit that extends partially into said dimension."
Babylon 5 blinked. "It does?"
Enterprise bit her bottom lip for a moment, before seeming to sag in defeat. "Yes and no. It extends into another dimension, but it's a different one from the one you call hyperspace." She answered Babylon 5. "My builders call it subspace." Mind, subspace is more of a honeycomb of sub-dimensions that one big dimension, but that's not important. "My warp drive works by isolating the area immediately around me into a 'warp bubble' and using subspace/realspace interactions –"
Normandy cut in. "Realspace?"
Enterprise blinked. "What?"
Normandy tilted her head. "Fakespace?"
"No there's no such thing as fakespace… oh, right. Um, normal space? (Can't believe nobody's brought that up before…)" Enterprise trailed off into muttering, then shook her head. "I use subpace/normal space interactions to… how to explain this… move the warp bubble itself forward? Because space is moving, not me, time dilation doesn't come into effect."
"That sounds bad for spacetime." Galactica observed bluntly.
"Only if you go above Warp 6." Enterprise answered on reflex, before suddenly blushing and rubbing the back of her neck. Whiiiich I did on my way over here… oops. Hopefully Starfleet Command agrees with me that it was an emergency. "I've heard that the upcoming Intrepid-class is going to be field-testing variable-geometry warp fields to try and mitigate the damage, but…"
Yamato covered her chin with one hand, looking like she would begin stroking it but not actually doing so. "If your dimension primarily relies on these devices, that would explain your great familiarity with matters of dimensional and temporal distortion. The fabric of spacetime in your space must be worn quite thin, and prone to breaking."
"It only happens every… month?" Enterprise wilted a bit under their incredulous stares. "Every three weeks, tops!"
Babylon 5 had spent her entire life orbiting next to the zone of space where Babylon 4 had disappeared, which to this day was riddled with temporal anomalies. She couldn't help but notice that Normandy's people used a pure realspace – er, normal space – FTL drive and had apparently never encountered any such anomaly themselves. She too was beginning to wonder if the correlation was not coincidental.
"We really are all from different universes, aren't we?" She half-whispered.
The tech that Enterprise, Normandy, and Yamato had… even whatever Galactica had done to move her fighter-faerie inside of Chimaera… it was all so different from everything back home, even to what the First Ones used.
"Er, timelines actually…" Enterprise corrected gingerly.
"That's not the poi–! Erg. If we're all from different timelines, then where are we now?" Babylon 5 demanded.
"I do not believe this is the Milky Way." Yamato observed, turning to look at the stars around them. "Any version of it. Not the Large Magellanic Cloud either."
"Well, no." Enterprise agreed, holding off asking for the moment why the LMC would be relevant. "Physical constants are different here. Chemistry still works and all, thank the great bird of the galaxy, but the baseline for chroniton radiation is an order of magnitude higher than back home, and the id-strength constant is three lower."
"Meaning what, dearie?"
"Meaning, I think that that –" Enterprise pointed at the scar of the anomaly "– is the well we fell down. Or rabbit hole, if you prefer. Only with a waterfall flowing down it. Point is, while we were all in parallel timelines before, this is a separate spacetime sitting 'underneath' the universe we come from."
"Home?" Normandy asked, turning to stare at the scar of the anomaly.
"Not through there, no – unless you can swim up waterfalls, so to speak." Enterprise sighed at Normandy's puzzled look. "We're going to need to build ourselves a way home. Just opening this up again and plunging into it isn't going to work."
"Well, you're not going to build it here, dearie."
As one, everyone turned to stare at Galactica.
"Why?" Normandy asked, the others only a second behind her.
Galactica looked at Normandy like she'd asked a particularly stupid question. "In case more Basestars show up, of course."
Babylon 5 blinked, turned that thought over in her head, then swore explosively. The non-Galactica ships turned to stare at her. "I'm here because that thing swallowed me up and spat me out here." Babylon 5 explained. "But what are all you doing here?"
Enterprise blinked. "Well, I detected the anomaly and figured that –" The ship gave a sharp inhale as she realised what was being implied.
"We came because we had determined that this was about where we entered this space, and assumed it was our exit." Yamato said, gaze hardening. "I assume that is why Chimaera and the Sword-class ship also came here."
"That's right, dearies. We're not the only ships who will come here – just the first. Whether we were the closest or the fastest or somewhere in between, more ships are probably on their way."
Everybody's eyes darted to the disabled form of Chimaera, still unconscious, and the slagged remains of the Sword-class. Winning that fight had heavily involved fortunate placement and their enemies being unaware of Normandy and Yamato. Fortune was not something to be relied upon – which meant that they couldn't assume new arrivals would be friendly either.
"Alright." Enterprise said, gears beginning to turn in her head. "Normandy, if you can reduce Babylon 5's weight even just by half, then Yamato and I should be able to drag her at –"
"You're going to have to leave me." Babylon 5 said, quietly.
"Babylon 5, I am not going to –"
"Why are we talking about leaving Daidalos behind?" Galactica asked, puzzled. "She's jump capable."
Everyone stopped and stared at Galactica for the second time in as many minutes.
"Galactica," Babylon 5 said, a strange feeling building in her gut "you have tech that can move stations like me?"
"You really don't remember?" Galactica sounded halfway to heartbroken. "You were magnificent, in the First Cylon War. Always taking fresh ships to where they were needed and jumping out again before they could organise a counterattack."
The old Battlestar sighed. "But then the war ended, and they stripped out your FTL drives for parts and made you into an ammo depot." She said bitterly. Imagine what we could have achieved if you had been able to join the survivors in your prime…!
Enterprise swallowed. "Normandy, get those mineral scans up. I think we're going to need them."
Enterprise began firing rapid questions at Galactica, practically overwhelming the older ship. She was focused, determined, jotting down answers and ideas on her not-Com Pad in a rush.
Left out of the conversation due to its intensity and focus, Babylon 5 could properly feel the knot of worry forming nicely in her gut. Seeking to distract herself, she turned to Normandy and Yamato: saying the first thing that came to mind. "You know, we never finished that discussion on how our Earths could be the same when their galaxies are all different."
"Well, we likely will never know for sure." Yamato said "But, if it wasn't the result of random chance…"
"Dear," Babylon 5 resisted the urge to roll her eyes "even without doing the maths, I'm pretty sure there's zero chance of that happening, if you round to the billionth decimal place." There. Now that she wasn't thinking about the possibility of being left to fend for herself and her crew alone, the worry was dissipating.
"…well, if it was not on accident, does that not imply that it was on purpose?"
The knot of worry came back twice as strong as before.
She hadn't known that he had abandoned his post after being involved in experiments to boost telepathic powers into the realm of telekinesis. Hadn't known that those experiments had succeeded beyond what anybody had hoped for or even dared dream possible. His mind was growing so strong, so fast, that his body wouldn't be able to contain it much longer.
She'd only begun to glimpse at the truth once the mind-quakes had started ripping her apart from the inside.
Her crew had eventually resolved the situation, despite of the 'assistance' of the Psi Corps. They'd managed to get Ironheart off of her before he'd exploded, his physical form giving way to an existence of pure psychic energy.
Ironheart had departed for parts unknown, but not before giving his lover – Talia Winters, her assigned commercial telepath – an infusion of energy that boosted Winters's own powers; a gentler, weaker version of what was done to him.
But for that energy to reach Winters, it first had to pass into her…
"-lon 5? Babylon 5!"
Babylon 5 shook her head out of the old memory. "Sorry dear, my mind was in another star system."
She winced at the twinge of pain as her maintenance bots finished cutting off the parts of her cargo bay that the dimensional breach had slagged, before Chimera and the Sword-class had appeared. Her gut
She was supposed to have approval from her crew before using up IA resources like that, but at this point she was hoping they did reprimand her – it would mean she'd figured out how to wake them up.
"Well warp back here with the rest of us." Enterprise huffed. Wait, I wasn't supposed to say warp… "I was trying to ask if you knew where Normandy had gotten off to." I really want to give that frigate a piece of my mind!
"I believe she went to go survey the asteroid belt while you were busy scanning…" Babylon 5 paused, her eyes flickering to the Sword-class ship's slagged remains.
Enterprise winced. "Actually, I was scanning the space in front of the Sword-class. I was trying to figure out what she'd done to avoid… whatever it was that Yamato did." And making sure that we'll only have one dimensional rift in this system to worry about.
There was a pause.
"Wait, Normandy's surveying the asteroid belt?" Enterprise blinked. "Does she even have the equipment for that?"
"Yes."
Enterprise would deny to her final day that, when Normandy spoke up from directly behind her, she shrieked like a little destroyer.
"Don't do that!" Enterprise said, sounding a hairs-breadth away from screaming.
Normandy ignored Enterprise, instead summoning her orange hologram gauntlet again. With a few presses on the holographic keyboard, the holographic screen displaying assorted sensor scan readouts.
Enterprise clearly wanted to say a few more choice words to Normandy, but her curiosity got the better of her and she bent down to have a closer look at the readouts. After a moment, she tilted her head. "Normandy, why are you equipped with mineralogical scanners?"
"Prospecting."
"Prospecting?" Enterprise repeated blankly, looking up at Normandy.
"I mean, she is a scout ship – you are, aren't you dear?" Normandy nodded, so Babylon 5 continued. "She'd be spending large amounts of time in fringe systems anyway, and if she happens to spot a mineral deposit while she's out there…"
"Sure, except that I'm pretty sure you don't give civilian ships stealth drives." Enterprise pointed out. "You're military, right?" Normandy nodded. "Why would a military ship waste time scanning for mineral deposits instead of doing their job?"
Normandy looked away. "Budget." She mumbled. Stingy politicians…
With a crew as small as hers, even Normandy's thoughts were quiet.
"Ah. Right." Enterprise blinked. Pre-replicator civilisation still using money. Mind, it's not like resource allocation's not a thing in the Federation… it's just different kinds of resources.
Babylon 5 puckered her lips to stop her own thoughts from showing on her face.
There was a brief gap in the conversation, during which a fighter-fairy from Yamato flew up to one of her own Starfuries and whispered in her ear. The Starfury's eyes widened and she flew up to whisper in Babylon 5's ear.
"Hm?" Babylon 5 blinked, looking over where her Starfury was pointing.
The nuclear detonation in Chimaera's aft had knocked the huge warship out cold, but for better or worse her the explosion had occurred directly next to her thrusters. Said thrusters seemed to have been designed to contain a catastrophic failure, and the blast had followed the path of least resistance down corridors and blown out of deliberately-weak patches of hull into space. At the same time, a series of radiation resistant blast doors had kept the worst of the explosion from penetrating much further into the ship.
(Galactica's people had discovered fusion nukes, but with neither they nor their enemies possessing shield tech they used them only on ground targets, preferring to throw cheaper, low-kiloton-yield fission warheads against targets in space.)
It probably helped that, according to her life-sign readings, Chimaera's crew quarters were concentrated near her head
The unconscious Star Destroyer was, however, still being guarded frantically by her fighter-fairies. Fighter-fairies from Galactica and now Yamato were beginning to surround them, and the situation was beginning to have a "powder keg next to an open flame" feel to it.
Babylon 5 wasn't worried about Chimera waking back up – the enormous ship was facing away from them, and had no rear facing weaponry that she could see. Still…
"Try and get between them if they'll let you." She whispered to her Starfuries. "Push the two groups apart. Don't make it obvious, but… well, I trust you not to fire first. We don't need another fight starting up."
She had only just met Galactica and Yamato, after all. They hadn't seemed particularly bloodthirsty, but they had both seemed very comfortable with violence.
Speaking of which…
"Enterprise," she said, interrupting whatever said ship had been about to say to Normandy "I don't suppose you have something that can fix a broken keel?"
Enterprise blinked. "Not without a few weeks in a space-dock, at least and if at all. Why?" I could cut it into pieces and beam it out easily enough, it's the fusing the replacement in place that's the tricky part.
Darn. After the techno-magic Babylon 5 had seen her use to seal away the Sword-class, even if imperfectly, Babylon 5 had been hoping that Enterprise would have a better estimate then she did… oh well.
"You apparently didn't hear Galactica say this," or had forgotten in the rush of events, but Babylon 5 decided to lead with the less embarrassing explanation "but her keel is broken, and she doesn't think she can withstand crossing a jump point in that condition."
Enterprise bit her bottom lip, looking over to where Galactica was orbiting, a few thousand kilometres away from herself. Yamato was tending to the Battlestar with a few small craft – repair barges, perhaps? She seemed to be producing spare parts for Galactica from somewhere, hinting at extensive manufacturing capabilities of her own. She had been checking over her pistols
Noticing their gazes
"Hm? Oh, that's right – you went down before this happened, Pegasus." Galactica responded, also raising her voice
Yamato frowned, seemingly unconcerned at being misidentified. "Is that why half of your armour platting is missing?"
"Oh no dearie, they removed that while debating whether to scrap me or not, before deciding to turn me into a museum." Galactica tried to shrug, but winced as her joins groaned and sparked over the strain. "Then the Cylons attacked, and well… you know what happened next."
"…Galactica-san, I am reading radiological signatures on your armour. Are you saying that you have been taking hits from nuclear weaponry with half your armour missing?"
"It was quite painful." Galactica admitted, not seeming to see the fuss was about. "But I could hardly let my crew down, could I?"
Babylon 5 stopped listening for a moment to glance at Enterprise. Said ship had gone slightly pale, staring in silent amazement – or perhaps horror – at Galactica. No shields? Her thoughts whimpered. Not even a polarised hull? She just had to… bear with the pain?
Babylon 5 pursed her lips, then decided to push her luck a bit. "Enterprise." She said, softly. "I know that you're angry at Normandy."
Enterprise and Normandy looked around at Babylon 5, then at each other, then back at Babylon 5.
Normandy stayed silent but seemed very interested in where this was going.
"Well, of course I am!" Enterprise said. "She slipped a trojan into my systems!"
Ah, so that's what you were screaming about earlier.
Enterprise whirled around around to face Normandy. "Don't you understand how important it is to have a good First Contact?" She angrily demanded.
Even in the cold dark void of space, the silence that resulted seemed deafening. Even Galactica and Yamato had stopped talking.
Enterprise blinked. "Er…"
"First Contact" Yamato said clearly "between the humans of Earth and the Garmillans of Garmillas was a disaster for Earth. The imperialistic Garmillas sought to rule the entire galaxy. They sunk our fleets with contemptuous ease, the compression lasers of our ships-of-the-line unable to penetrate their reflective armour. Even after we pushed them back in the Second Battle of Mars they began hurling irradiated asteroids at Earth to bomb us into submission… or, more likely, extinction."
Yamato sighed heavily. "None of which excuses the fact that we fired upon them first, without provocation." How General Serizawa stayed out of jail, let alone retained his rank, I will never understand.
Yamato looked up, expecting looks of sympathy at best, judgement at worst, and was suitably confused to see Enterprise, Normandy and Babylon 5 looking at her in perplexion. (Galactica was just sighing sadly).
"That's not right." Babylon 5 said, slowly, trying to figure out what was going on here. "Earth's First Contact wasn't with the… Garmillans? It was with –"
"Turians." Normandy interrupted forcefully, the loudest she had been so far (about normal speaking volume for anyone else).
"That's… the race that co-designed you, right?" Enterprise asked carefully, to which Normandy nodded, absentmindedly rubbing the armour over her right arm. "That must have gone well, then?"
Normandy shook her head vigorously. She tapped her holographic keyboard, and an image of a crustacean-looking creature
"You… fought?" Babylon 5 guessed. "Over… whatever this is?"
Normandy thought for a moment about how to explain in one or two word sentences that a Mass Relay was a device built eons ago that could fling a starship from one side of the galaxy to the other in mere seconds, as long as there was a matching relay at the destination.
That the Citadel Council, an alliance of alien races, didn't know how to turn off a Mass Relay, only turn them on, and so they had made activating them without knowing where they went illegal after one such attempt resulted in a centuries-long war with a race that now had direct access into Citadel Space.
About how the Turians were the most militant of the Citadel races, and were the ones who had discovered the human exploration vessels activating a Mass Relay. About how Desolas Arterius, the highest-ranking officer of the fleet, was a Turian-supremacist who had hated the idea of "some upstart new race" being brought into the Council to be treated "on the same level" as the Turians, without "proving themselves worthy" through centuries of bloody warfare like the Turians had.
How he had used the excuse of the relay activation to start the First Contact War.
(It probably hadn't helped that Desolas had been secretly carrying a Reaper artefact in his fleet which had been in the process of Indoctrinating him. The same artefact, in fact, which had later given the Illusive Man and Desolas's brother Saren their Reaper implants; which themselves had gone on to Indoctrinate both.)
About how the fighting had only stopped when the other Citadel races had caught wind of the fighting and intervened. About how her older sister, the SR-1, had been more of an apology gift than a sign of friendship.
Normandy thought about all of these things and then simply said "Yes."
Enterprise slumped. "Well, my humanity's First Contact went just fine." Even if the Vulcans had some house-cleaning of their own to do, they were the best friends a devastated and irradiated post-WWIII Earth could have.
"As did mine." Babylon 5 said. Well, the Centauri had tried to get humanity to exhaust itself in a civil war so that they could step in and absorb them into their republic… as well claiming that Earth was a lost colony of theirs. But they'd abandoned those goals after humanity had held together, and they had eventually sold humanity jumpgate technology. So really, it could have been worse.
…and with that thought, there was one contact that dominated her thoughts.
"If I say 'Minbari'," Babylon 5 said, feeling a tense ball form in her gut "does anything come to mind?"
That ball of worry grew when the ships all shook their heads. How could they not know about the Earth/Minbari war? Or the Minbari at all? That war had reshaped galactic politics forever, brought the Minbari out of isolation and, on a personal note, was the direct reason for the construction of the Babylon stations. That was like not knowing about World War 2; only worse because the Earth/Minbari war was very much within living memory.
Is this how sis felt? Babylon 5 wondered, thinking of her older sister Babylon 4. Falling out of time to end up in a place where nothing is familiar?
"…the year was 2245." She began. Even with that simple beginning, Yamato and Normandy looked quite confused, while Enterprise looked like she was biting the inside of a cheek.
"Earth, flush with success from the Dilgar war," never mind that the League of Non-Aligned Worlds had done most of the fighting "sends out a patrol group along the Earth/Mibar border, lead by EAS Prometheus. Her captain ignores his orders to avoid First Contact, wanting to come back to Earth a hero with detailed scans of Minbari ships."
Babylon 5 fought to keep her voice cool, old anger bubbling up inside her, even though she hadn't been built at the time this had happened. It had been so stupid, so avoidable… "The Minbari are one of the oldest of the Young Races, and their active scanners were so powerful that they not only interfered with Prometheus's own sensor scans and the rest of her fleet, but knocked their jump drives offline."
She let out a slow breath. "In Minbari culture, approaching with a hidden weapon is the act of a dishonourable coward, so Minbari ships always greet other ships with their gun ports open."
The light of understanding began to dawn in the eyes of the ships. Enterprise was horrified. Normandy and Yamato were grim. Galactica was just shaking her head sadly.
"The Minbari ships weren't powering up their weapons, merely being curious at who had stepped over their borders. But with her sensors scrambled, Prometheus thought they were. Unable to jump away, and thinking that the Minbari were about to attack, Prometheus's captain gave the order to fire first."
"Kuso." Yamato muttered. "It appears that Prometheus-san shares the fate of Murasame-san – that of the ship that brought war down upon our heads for nothing more than fear."
Babylon 5 shook her head. "It was more than just 'war'. The ship Prometheus attacked wasn't some random patrol ship – Valen'Tha carried within herself the Grey Council, the ruling body of the Minbari."
The assorted ships winced.
"Not only did this kill several of the Council, but also Dukhat, overall leader of the Minbari, and something of a messiah figure."
Enterprise bit her bottom lip.
"The Minbari holy crusade against humanity lasted three years, and in that time we… they…" Babylon 5 hadn't been an Earth Alliance station in a long time, but old habits died hard "were swept from the skies. Their ships had sensor stealth that made them untargetable by EA ships, making every fight a slaughter. The Minbari only attacked military targets, leaving civilian ones be… but whether that was because they would spare them, or come back to exterminate them once humanity had nothing left to fight with, not even the Minbari knew. If it wasn't for their sudden surrender at the Battle of the Line… Earth would have fallen, and humanity with it."
Babylon 5 herself knew why the Minbari had surrendered, having 'overheard' several key conversations inside of herself that filled in the blanks, but explaining the details would distract from the point of her story.
There was a moment of silence as the various ships and station digested what they had heard.
"So… yeah." Enterprise said, her voice sounding weak as she swallowed. "That's why it's important to have a good First Contact."
There was a moment of dead silence.
"How can it be" Yamato said, quietly "that each of us knows of a different Earth, and a different history?"
"I believe you just answered your own question, dearie." Galactica shrugged. "You're all from different 'Earths'."
There was at least one alien race who plucked humans from Earth and displaced them to parts unknown when Earth was well and truly pre-Warp – Gary Seven's benefactors. Enterprise thought, recalling some of the exploits of her great-great-great aunt. It's entirely possible that there was more than one 'Earth' scattered throughout the galaxy, each with different alien neighbours… however –
Enterprise's thoughts were interrupted by Babylon 5 finally pulling up the file she wanted on her Com Pad
Yamato's eyes narrowed. Any starship worth her commission would know the night sky of her homeworld by heart. "That is the same view as my Earth, Babylon 5-san."
"And mine." Enterprise confirmed.
"Same." Normandy added.
"It looks familiar, dearies." Galactica said, staring off into empty space. "But I wasn't really there for very…" She trailed off, staring off to one side intently like she was listening to another, invisible, person. "No, it is my Earth as well." She corrected herself, turning her gaze back to the group with a confident smile. The second one, anyway.
"So we have several Earths in the same place, but with very different galaxies surrounding them." Babylon 5 summarised. "That's… impossible, isn't it?"
Enterprise winced. "How familiar are you with temporal mechanics?" She asked tentatively.
"Dear, us being from divergent timelines wouldn't explain the widely different political maps." Babylon 5 shot back immediately, Yamato and Normandy looking on in mild confusion while Galactica had started humming, her eyes unfocused.
"It would, if the divergence goes back far enough."
"Alright dear, lets run a little test." Babylon 5 countered. "Everyone, say the name of the most influential entity in local space, then a famous musician from Earth in the…" pick some random century before space travel… "18th century. I'll go first – the Vorlon Empire, and Ludwig van Beethoven."
Enterprise frowned. "If you mean the biggest government in the galaxy period, that would be the Dominion as far as I know. In the Alpha/Beta quadrants, that's my government, the United Federation of Planets." There were more powerful groups in that area of space, but they mostly stayed out of galactic affairs. After a pause, Enterprise realised she'd missed the second half of the test. "And Amadeus Mozart."
"The Great Garmillas Empire, and Joseph Haydn."
"Reapers. Schubert."
"The 18th century in which calendar system, dearies? Caprica, colonial standard…?"
"Leaving Galactica aside for the moment," Babylon 5 said, causing said ship to pout "did anybody recognise someone else's entity, or fail to recognise their musician?"
Aside from the still-pouting Galactica, every other ship shook their heads.
"You see?" Babylon 5 said, turning back to Enterprise. "If the divergence is bad enough to affect the First Ones, then there's no way that our Earths would have all developed the same species, let alone the same languages, culture and even people!"
"It's possible that Earth is isolated enough from galactic affairs to develop mostly the same in most timelines –"
"Some of Earth's development was guided by alien interference! The Vorlons implanting telepathy into humans, the Vree buzzing people in their saucers –"
"Implanting what?" Galactica blinked.
"Excuse me." Yamato politely interrupted. "Are the two of you referring to the 'Many worlds' hypothesis of Quantum Mechanics, the Landscape interpretation of String Theory, or some other proposition?"
"Unproven." Normandy said, in her usual quiet way.
"We know that there are more than one dimension with different physical constants." Babylon 5 pointed out to Normandy. "Hyperspace's spacial compression, for one."
Yamato blinked, her eyebrows drawing together in confusion. "Hyperspace is spatially compressed?"
Babylon 5 responded with a look of equal bewilderment. "Yes dear, how did you think people use it to travel faster than light?"
There was a moment of silence as Yamato, Babylon 5 and Normandy all traded looks of absolute confusion. Galactica looked on with the amused bewilderment of a grandma who'd long since given up figuring out the newfangled toys of kids these days. Enterprise looked interested, but was also tapping her index fingers together.
"Um…" Enterprise started.
"Look, here." Babylon 5 interrupted. With a wave of her hand, the Starfury squadron that wasn't keeping on eye on Chimaera flew over to her jumpgate and clamped onto it, dragging it away from the scar of the breach they'd closed earlier. Once it was a good ten kilometres away, Babylon 5 made another hand gesture and activated the jumpgate.
The four struts of the jumpgate powered up, each of their seven phasing modules lighting up in sequence. A point of brilliant white light appeared in the middle of the struts, expanding out into the orange swirling vortex of energy that was an outgoing jump point.
"This." Babylon 5 pointed. "Remember these? I'd show you Quantum Space as well, but my jumpgate never got that upgrade. Anyway, the space inside is compressed, effectively shortening the distance between – Normandy, no!"
Normandy, naturally, had reacted to the swirling vortex of energy by flying up to it and sticking her head in to have a look.
"Normandy!" Enterprise chastised, pulling said ship back with a tractor beam. "Don't go sticking your head into strange dimensional portals! You never know what kind of life-forms might live there!" She brushed down Normandy's front
"Dimension." Normandy said faintly, sounding stunned.
"Yes dear, hyperspace is another dimension." Babylon 5 paused, realisation slowly dawning. "You've… never seen another dimension before, have you?"
Normandy shook her head silently, still staring at the jump point with wide eyes.
Galactica craned her neck to also have a look at
"You… are a starship, right?" Babylon 5 asked Normandy uncertainly, receiving a nod from the frigate. "Well… how do you travel between stars, if you've never seen hyperspace before?"
The Shadows hadn't used jump points, simply phasing out of normal space, but Babylon 5 was pretty sure that they still used hyperspace to get from point A to point B.
Normandy shot another perplexed look Babylon 5's way, before drifting back out of Enterprise's reach. Her body
Babylon 5 immediately lost her radar lock on Normandy, and judging by the surprised noises from Yamato and Galactica so had they. Closing her eyes and going over what she'd just seen
Not at more than ten percent of light speed per second!
But as she frantically searched the sky, not only did she catch glimpses of Normandy receding into the distance, but that image quickly became more infrared, microwaves and even radio waves than visible light – the image of Normandy was being red-shifted. Worse, Babylon 5 realised as she did some quick distance estimation in her head – Normandy was moving faster than the speed of light.
"How can she be moving like that?!" Babylon 5 demanded. "You need infinite energy just to accelerate to the speed of light, and she's gone and blown right past it!"
Enterprise pointed at the increasingly-distant figure of Normandy, who was beginning a wide turn around. (Babylon 5 didn't even want to think about the kinds of lateral G-forces turning at FTL would incur.) "See the blue-shift around her?" She asked, excitedly.
"The glowing blue energy, dearie?"
"Yes! Well, actually, no, that's the Dark Energy she's saturated herself in, but the two are related! Not only is it decreasing her mass, letting her pull that ridiculous rate of acceleration, but it's also raising the local value of c so that she doesn't have to worry about relativistic effects! It's an impulse drive without time dilation! It's –" And then her face suddenly fell. "It's probably better than my warp drive, honestly." With acceleration like that, she could make 15 light-years in a day; while I can only do that if I have a subspace current pushing me.
Normandy finished her wide u-turn, and unless Babylon 5 was mistaken, had turned around to face away from where she was going, thrusters burning as she bled off her speed. She couldn't just turn her drive off to stop moving, Babylon 5 realised. "What's a warp drive?"
"Oh, um…" Enterprise flustered. Me and my big mouth…! "Um…" Quickly reaching behind her, she pulled out her own version of a Com Pad
The impression Babylon 5 was getting was that Enterprise was hoping she would say no.
Yamato frowned. "Isn't that a transtator?"
Enterprise jumped a little. Dang it, I forgot she knew about subspace…!
"Transtator?" Normandy asked quietly, having repeated her earlier trick and silently appeared behind Enterprise, who again shrieked in surprise and whirled around.
While Enterprise froze and tried to pretend that nothing had happened, Yamato nodded. "A transtator is the most fundamental part of hyperspace technology – a circuit that extends partially into said dimension."
Babylon 5 blinked. "It does?"
Enterprise bit her bottom lip for a moment, before seeming to sag in defeat. "Yes and no. It extends into another dimension, but it's a different one from the one you call hyperspace." She answered Babylon 5. "My builders call it subspace." Mind, subspace is more of a honeycomb of sub-dimensions that one big dimension, but that's not important. "My warp drive works by isolating the area immediately around me into a 'warp bubble' and using subspace/realspace interactions –"
Normandy cut in. "Realspace?"
Enterprise blinked. "What?"
Normandy tilted her head. "Fakespace?"
"No there's no such thing as fakespace… oh, right. Um, normal space? (Can't believe nobody's brought that up before…)" Enterprise trailed off into muttering, then shook her head. "I use subpace/normal space interactions to… how to explain this… move the warp bubble itself forward? Because space is moving, not me, time dilation doesn't come into effect."
"That sounds bad for spacetime." Galactica observed bluntly.
"Only if you go above Warp 6." Enterprise answered on reflex, before suddenly blushing and rubbing the back of her neck. Whiiiich I did on my way over here… oops. Hopefully Starfleet Command agrees with me that it was an emergency. "I've heard that the upcoming Intrepid-class is going to be field-testing variable-geometry warp fields to try and mitigate the damage, but…"
Yamato covered her chin with one hand, looking like she would begin stroking it but not actually doing so. "If your dimension primarily relies on these devices, that would explain your great familiarity with matters of dimensional and temporal distortion. The fabric of spacetime in your space must be worn quite thin, and prone to breaking."
"It only happens every… month?" Enterprise wilted a bit under their incredulous stares. "Every three weeks, tops!"
Babylon 5 had spent her entire life orbiting next to the zone of space where Babylon 4 had disappeared, which to this day was riddled with temporal anomalies. She couldn't help but notice that Normandy's people used a pure realspace – er, normal space – FTL drive and had apparently never encountered any such anomaly themselves. She too was beginning to wonder if the correlation was not coincidental.
"We really are all from different universes, aren't we?" She half-whispered.
The tech that Enterprise, Normandy, and Yamato had… even whatever Galactica had done to move her fighter-faerie inside of Chimaera… it was all so different from everything back home, even to what the First Ones used.
"Er, timelines actually…" Enterprise corrected gingerly.
"That's not the poi–! Erg. If we're all from different timelines, then where are we now?" Babylon 5 demanded.
"I do not believe this is the Milky Way." Yamato observed, turning to look at the stars around them. "Any version of it. Not the Large Magellanic Cloud either."
"Well, no." Enterprise agreed, holding off asking for the moment why the LMC would be relevant. "Physical constants are different here. Chemistry still works and all, thank the great bird of the galaxy, but the baseline for chroniton radiation is an order of magnitude higher than back home, and the id-strength constant is three lower."
"Meaning what, dearie?"
"Meaning, I think that that –" Enterprise pointed at the scar of the anomaly "– is the well we fell down. Or rabbit hole, if you prefer. Only with a waterfall flowing down it. Point is, while we were all in parallel timelines before, this is a separate spacetime sitting 'underneath' the universe we come from."
"Home?" Normandy asked, turning to stare at the scar of the anomaly.
"Not through there, no – unless you can swim up waterfalls, so to speak." Enterprise sighed at Normandy's puzzled look. "We're going to need to build ourselves a way home. Just opening this up again and plunging into it isn't going to work."
"Well, you're not going to build it here, dearie."
As one, everyone turned to stare at Galactica.
"Why?" Normandy asked, the others only a second behind her.
Galactica looked at Normandy like she'd asked a particularly stupid question. "In case more Basestars show up, of course."
Babylon 5 blinked, turned that thought over in her head, then swore explosively. The non-Galactica ships turned to stare at her. "I'm here because that thing swallowed me up and spat me out here." Babylon 5 explained. "But what are all you doing here?"
Enterprise blinked. "Well, I detected the anomaly and figured that –" The ship gave a sharp inhale as she realised what was being implied.
"We came because we had determined that this was about where we entered this space, and assumed it was our exit." Yamato said, gaze hardening. "I assume that is why Chimaera and the Sword-class ship also came here."
"That's right, dearies. We're not the only ships who will come here – just the first. Whether we were the closest or the fastest or somewhere in between, more ships are probably on their way."
Everybody's eyes darted to the disabled form of Chimaera, still unconscious, and the slagged remains of the Sword-class. Winning that fight had heavily involved fortunate placement and their enemies being unaware of Normandy and Yamato. Fortune was not something to be relied upon – which meant that they couldn't assume new arrivals would be friendly either.
"Alright." Enterprise said, gears beginning to turn in her head. "Normandy, if you can reduce Babylon 5's weight even just by half, then Yamato and I should be able to drag her at –"
"You're going to have to leave me." Babylon 5 said, quietly.
"Babylon 5, I am not going to –"
"Why are we talking about leaving Daidalos behind?" Galactica asked, puzzled. "She's jump capable."
Everyone stopped and stared at Galactica for the second time in as many minutes.
"Galactica," Babylon 5 said, a strange feeling building in her gut "you have tech that can move stations like me?"
"You really don't remember?" Galactica sounded halfway to heartbroken. "You were magnificent, in the First Cylon War. Always taking fresh ships to where they were needed and jumping out again before they could organise a counterattack."
The old Battlestar sighed. "But then the war ended, and they stripped out your FTL drives for parts and made you into an ammo depot." She said bitterly. Imagine what we could have achieved if you had been able to join the survivors in your prime…!
Enterprise swallowed. "Normandy, get those mineral scans up. I think we're going to need them."
Enterprise began firing rapid questions at Galactica, practically overwhelming the older ship. She was focused, determined, jotting down answers and ideas on her not-Com Pad in a rush.
Left out of the conversation due to its intensity and focus, Babylon 5 could properly feel the knot of worry forming nicely in her gut. Seeking to distract herself, she turned to Normandy and Yamato: saying the first thing that came to mind. "You know, we never finished that discussion on how our Earths could be the same when their galaxies are all different."
"Well, we likely will never know for sure." Yamato said "But, if it wasn't the result of random chance…"
"Dear," Babylon 5 resisted the urge to roll her eyes "even without doing the maths, I'm pretty sure there's zero chance of that happening, if you round to the billionth decimal place." There. Now that she wasn't thinking about the possibility of being left to fend for herself and her crew alone, the worry was dissipating.
"…well, if it was not on accident, does that not imply that it was on purpose?"
The knot of worry came back twice as strong as before.
Last edited:
1-4 Queen of Hearts
- Location
- Australia
This, Yamato decided, was the weirdest asteroid belt she'd ever seen.
Granted, she had never needed to do much asteroid mining herself – generally, any time she needed repairs there was a convenient pile of enemy scrap nearby. But she was pretty sure that Goethite, Autunite and Ilmenite weren't supposed to form in such close proximity to each other, let alone under these conditions.
Still, she could not deny the convenience, especially as Enterprise had baulked at her suggestion of salvaging the Sword-class. She watched as her auxiliary craft used laser cutters to separate rough chunks of ore into small enough pieces to feed into her auto-forgery/assembly (nicknamed the "Dynamic do-all" by her crew for the sheer range of things they'd managed to create with it). It wasn't the best at processing ore, but it was the only manufacturing device in the fleet that could cast the larger pieces of Galactica's miracle drives.
Imagine – faster-than-light travel on a reactor not even as powerful as a fusion reactor. Her own warp drive took the full output of her wave-motion core, the same power source as her wave-motion gun. She could feel it humming in her chest – the strange, alien technology that meant she would never require fuel. Fortunately, it still worked in this dimension, unlike the first alternate dimension she had been trapped in.
Yamato watched as Normandy drifted by, a dozen or so kilometres away. The frigate approached an asteroid of her own, carving into it with a laser knifearray of her own. After cutting loose a piece of the right size, Normandy tucked it into her armour pulled it into her hangar and flew off. If Yamato had understood correctly, Normandy had manufacturing capabilities of her own, but they were generally used for creating and repairing personnel equipment and woefully undersized for this task. Instead, she would deliver the ore to Babylon 5, who would be able to process it much faster.
(She, much like the other ships in the fleet, were quietly keeping an active sensor lock on the stealth frigate. Normandy, perhaps deciding that she had no (remaining) enemies here and that the joke had been played out, had deactivated her stealth systems; her heat signature showing up clearly on everyone's passives.)
As she watched Normandy fly away, her eyes drifted to Galactica, sitting in the same orbit she had left her in. The old Battlestar had wanted to help, but without cutting equipment, automated production capabilities or a usable FTL drive even having her ferry ore was not viable. Instead, they had placated her by asking her to supervise their various fighter-fairies as they patrolled the system; a task which she seemed content enough with.
Galactica had then surprised Yamato by turning around and shooing her off, telling her to go and aid the mining effort.
"But I have not finished your repairs."
It was a hollow protest, and Yamato suspected that they both knew it. She was capable of replacing her own armour plates, but it took hours to replace even just a few dozen square meters. Replacing fully half the armour of a ship over four times her length and nearly ten times her width would take her weeks, even assuming there was sufficient materials at hand.
Galactica had smiled. "Dear, I haven't been fully repaired in over twenty years." She said. "It's not a big deal."
Yamato couldn't imagine being so old that she would give up on ever being whole again.
Even though her hull had been based on a WWII battleship with the same name, she, the Space Battleship Yamato, had come into existence less than five short years ago.
She had been the desperate work of a people with only one hope left, and she knew it. Once she had brought back the Cosmo Reverse, had turned Earth green again, it hadn't taken the United Nations Cosmo Navy long to devise a "better" ship than her, the Andromeda-class.
Her captain, her admiral, had only been able to bring back the Reverse by promising Queen Starsha that the human race would never again build a wave-motion gun. Earth had promptly built a fleet of ships armed with two each.
It burned her inside, to see how little respect they held for her captain's word.
She shook her head, pulling her thoughts back to the here and now. She would hardly honour her captain's memory by sulking away in some underverse.
Her cosmo radar registered an approaching contact, so she turned her headopened a comm channel to ask Enterprise if she was done working with Galactica…
Only it wasn't Enterprise there. Or at least, not all of her.
"What?" The new ship demanded. She had the same Nacelle-wings as Enterprise, but given that she was half Enterprise's size they looked twice as large, absolutely dominating her appearance. She had no saucer-skirt, and her uniform's leotard was gold and black instead of red and black.
Yamato blinked at the new ship, noting that this one was about her heightlength. "Enterprise-san?" She guessed.
"Half of her." The new ship snorted. "I'm her engines, her 'battle section'. The saucer is still up there talking to Galactica."
Yamato processed this information slowly, turning to lookrun an active scan at Galactica's position. Indeed, another new ship was talking to Galactica. Somehow, she seemed even more animate and excitable than Enterprise had been, and despite the seriousness of the situation Yamato could not help but smile as the little ship darted excitedly around Galactica, a ship now four times her height length. Much as the battle section had kept Enterprise's nacelle-wings but not her saucer-skirt, the saucer kept the skirt but not the wings. Her uniform's leotard was blue and black.
"Why does Enterprise-san have the ability to split into two smaller ships?" Yamato asked, not really expecting a result.
The battle section scowled. "Don't ask me, I didn't ask to be built this way."
"I carry most of the crew, so the idea is that I can survive even if the battle section is destroyed." The saucer, who had apparently been listening in, called to the two of them.
The battle section scowled and called back to her sister(?). "But I have the warp drive! If I get blown up, you're screwed!"
"Well –"
"Why are you here, Battle-san?" Yamato cut to the chase, her patience wearing thin.
The battle section thumbed back at the saucer. "You looked like you could use a hand, so the genius over there thought it would be best if we split up."
"We're both Enterprise, Battle!" The saucer called, sounding exasperated. "It was both of our ideas!"
"I can't think properly while sharing my head with you!"
Galactica, who the saucer had been talking to, quietly sat back. The eyebrow over one eye got higher and higher as the two half-ships argued.
"I thought that Enterprise did not have the capacity to manufacture Galactica's drive components?" Yamato tried again to steer the conversation back to productive grounds.
The battle section grunted. "We've got the tech to do it, it's just that our hardware replicators aren't physically big enough to make the larger parts." She said. "Pretty much the only large solid-cast part on me is my hull, so the assumption is that any damage big enough to require an industrial replicator will probably have crippled or destroyed me anyway."
"But what I can do," she continued, floating up to the small asteroid Yamato had been planning to tackle next "is this."
Holographic warning signs that definitely weren't magic circles appeared around Enterprise's battle section's wrists. A cone of semitransparent energy extended out and pulled one of the larger asteroids into her waiting mouthshuttle bay. After a moment of furious chewing strange energy emissions from inside the bay the battle section spat out the asteroid – now separated into several small spheres, each comprised solely of a different element.
"There." The battle section nodded firmly. "That should save you some time."
Yamato stared at the separated out spheres. "…how did you accomplish that so quickly, Battle-san?"
"I'm not allowed to tell you." The battle section huffed.
"Don't take it personally, Yamato!" Babylon 5 called over, apparently also listening in. "Most techno-mages only have a vague idea how their technology works anyway!"
"I know how replicators work!" The battle section snapped.
There was a pause, then she pinched the bridge of her nose.
"Your manufacturing devices?" Yamato wondered aloud, lightly touching one of the spheres with a fingerchecking its IR profile. "These are cool to the touch… some kind of miracle nanotechnology?" Her small craft scooped up the spheres of the more useful elements and started flying back to her.
"Starfleet," The battle section ground out, fingers still clamped onto her nose "has strict policies on when technology can be handed out, and normally it's someone much higher up the chain of command than me making that call."
"You think of us as potential enemies, Battle-san?" Yamato wouldn't be offended if that was the case, just surprised.
"What?" The battle section blinked, her aggravation temporarily giving away to surprise. "Oh, no no no. Well, I mean, obviously I wouldn't go around just handing out photon torpedoes or anything, but the Prime Directive is mostly there to protect other cultures from us."
"Had a First Contact go horribly wrong, dear?"
"Not… in the way that you're probably thinking," the saucer section cut in "but imagine the reaction from even just making a flyby of a pre-Warp planet."
"You start a subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that a race that has mastered interstellar travel cannot properly examine the native lifeforms without a colonoscopy?"
Yamato frowned at Babylon 5. "The sightings of 'flying saucers' were not actual alien flybys, so I do not think it is a valid comparison."
"They were quite real in my timeline, so I'd double-check that when you get home."
Yamato blinked slowly. As far as she knew, Earth was the only planet in the Milky Way to have evolved life upon itself. Although, she had once overheard a pair of Garmillas ships talking about a planet of 'bee people'…
"My point being," Enterprise's battle section said with a sigh "that Starfleet standard procedure forbids me from getting into the details of how large parts of me work.
Babylon 5 frowned. "But you're happy to give away Galactica's technology?"
"Not happy, no…" The battle section shot a frown up to where her saucer section and Galactica were orbiting together.
"Dearie, jump drives are your inheritance." Galactica insisted. "Just because you've forgotten how to make them doesn't change that."
The battle section didn't say anything, but the look on her face said quite plainly that she didn't think Galactica was in a fit state of mind to be giving away her secrets like that.
"If the survivors of Earth had had jump drives, the First Cylon War wouldn't have ever started." Galactica declared, with a tone that indicated that she thought this was a decisive argument. "And once they did arrive, they bargained away their technology to bring an end to the war."
Before any of the others could respond, Galactica suddenly frowned. "Although, the Cylons then used that technology to wipe out the Twelve Colonies within hours of the Second Cylon War starting…"
She petered off, her eyes unfocusing as she stared off into the distance. Yamato had the distinct impression that she was lost in painful memories.
"…once we depart from here, Galactica-san, I would very much like to hear the story of these Twelve Colonies." Yamato managed.
There was a moment of silence, broken suddenly by a cry from Enterprise's saucer section.
"Blast it!" The saucer section gave a dismayed look at something in her hands.
Her battle section's eyes snapped to her. "Replication of Galactica's fuel not going so well?"
"No." The saucer section admitted with a sigh. "I thought I had it, but even with a sample to base my models off there's a bonding failure at the 97th percentile mark."
"I told you we should have redesigned the drive to work without it."
"We're assuming that we're pressed for time, remember? I'll just have to mimic the conditions under which it forms in nature."
"And what if you can't do that either?"
"Then I'll have to write the work off as wasted time and use your idea."
The battle section glared at her saucer, obviously not happy with this plan, but turned back with a huff and separated out another asteroid into base elements. "Did you at least figure out the Exocomp problem?"
At the confused looks of the other ships, Enterprise's saucer section explained. "I tried to replicate a couple of Exocomps – engineering drones – to take up my maintenance schedule, but as soon as they materialised my computer immediately identified their location as 'asleep in their quarters'. Which is ridiculous three times over – they didn't have time to move, they don't sleep, and they haven't been assigned quarters!"
Yamato's eyes narrowed. "That is what my internal sensors have been reporting about my entire crew – including my robot crew member, Analyser."
Babylon 5 had gone slightly pale. "That's what my sensors were saying about my inhabitants as well."
"Same." Normandy reported, halfway through carving up another asteroid.
"Alright, so the effect seems reasonably consistent…" The saucer section mused. "Do any of you have non-sentient robotic and/or digital lifeforms on board?"
Normandy raised her hand. "V.I."
"And what are… never mind, it doesn't matter. Are they still running normally?"
Normandy nodded.
"Well, that matches my theory… I had the schematics for the old DOT-7 drones onboard for some reason, so I tried replicating a few of those, and they didn't vanish off into some non-existent 'quarters'. At the moment, I think the effect seems to target sentience… or maybe sapience. Not sure yet."
(The DOT line of drones had fallen out of use because, unlike Exocomps, they had almost no problem-solving capability and required a senior engineer to supervise them at all times. Eventually, Starfleet had realised it was better to just assign a junior engineer to the same task. But with all of her engineers unavailable, they were better than nothing.
Even if having Enterprise supervise all of her own maintenance was a bit like expecting a human to consciously run their own respiratory, circulatory and digestive systems…)
"Eezo!" Came an excited almost-shout from Normandy, before she clapped her hands over her mouth, seemingly the most shocked at her making a noise louder than normal speaking.
"Eezo?" Yamato repeated back, flying over to see what Normandy was on about. Embedded in the rock that Normandy had just cut in half, she found a cluster of a bright blue mineral whose scan profile matched nothing in her database.
"Element Zero." Normandy was blinking rapidlyrunning several active sensor scans, seemingly unable to believe her eyes.
Yamato paused, then double-checked her sensor scans. "That is not an element. That is a mineral." Neutronium had an atomic weight of zero, having no protons or electrons, but that wasn't what she was looking at. It wasn't nearly dense enough.
"Nickname." Normandy clarified, still staring at the deposit – about 1.24 tonnes worth, if her scans were right.
"…I see." Yamato said, resolving to only call the mineral by the less confusing name of 'eezo' in future. "Is it useful?"
Normandy looked up sharply, her face twisted in confusion. "You don't…?" She almost whispered, starting to return to her normal volume.
Yamato shook her head as Enterprise's battle section pulled up alongside them and started having a look of her ownrunning her own scans. "I do not believe I have seen that mineral before. I certainly have never seen its use in starship systems." She told the disbelieving Normandy "…I take it you use it?"
Normandy nodded almost frantically. "For everything." She said, now sounding a little shell-shocked.
(Babylon 5's jumpgate had made her realise that some of the others didn't use eezo for FTL, but given how ridiculously useful the mineral was she'd assumed they used it for something, even if just artificial gravity.)
Yamato for her part wondered if that 'everything' that Normandy had just mentioned included her ridiculous acceleration, and wondered if she could convince Normandy to help her install such a system.
Before Yamato could voice that desire, Enterprise's battle section spoke up. "Judging from the look you had on your face, eezo doesn't normally form in places like this?"
Normandy shook her head. "Neutron stars."
Yamato glanced up at the very-much-not-a-neutron-star star at the heart of this system. "Perhaps it was an extra-solar capture?" She theorised.
"Dears – behind you to the left." Babylon 5 unexpectedly cut in. "Is that a Quantium 40 deposit?"
Yamato glanced behind herself. There was a strange crystalline powder on the surface of that asteroid… "This highly radioactive substance?" She brushed a hand over it and held up some of for Babylon 5 to seetransmitted her scans.
"Yes, that's it!" Babylon 5 said excitedly.
Normandy quietly pushed her eezo asteroid into the battle section's handsshuttle bay, then went to go collect the Quantium 40 asteroid.
"Do those normally form in conditions like these?" The battle section asked, clearly suspicious.
"I… well no, dear." Babylon 5's enthusiasm drained away. "Normally you find it in the crust of class 4 planets."
Enterprise's battle section nodded, as though that confirmed something she'd been thinking. "That's two substances that don't have any right being here present in noticeable quantities."
"That is quite strange…" Yamato agreed. She wondered – if she looked around, would she find a cosmonite 90 deposit?
The battle section loaded up Normandy's earlier mineralogical scans on her PDA-like device, running a finger down it. "Either we're the luckiest prospectors to ever exist, or someone's setting us up…"
"That belt was hit with radiation from the dimensional breach." The saucer offered up, her eyes focused on the energy leaking out of her clasped handsshuttle bay. "Maybe that caused atomic fusion in some of the asteroids, creating these heavier elements?"
The battle section snorted. "The chances of recreating the exact conditions for these elements to form is astronomically unlikely –"
"Like the odds of us meeting up, dearie?" Galactica cut in.
"…point." The battle section grudgingly conceded. "But seriously, at this rate I wouldn't be surprised to find Boronite –"
She froze suddenly, her eyes bulging at something in the scan.
"…Battle-san, is something the mat–"
Yamato's question was interrupted as the battle section abruptly spun in place. Her form seemed to stretch off into infinity, and then she was gone with a zoom-whoosh.
For a moment, silence reigned.
...so that is what Enterprise-san's warp drive looks like in action.
Yamato had strongly suspected that Enterprise's 'warp drive' was fundamentally a different device from her own based on Enterprise's explanation of hers, but to have it confirmed before her eyes was mildly surprising regardless.
With another zoom-whoosh Enterprise's battle section reappeared, face pale.
"...Battle, you didn't actually find any Boronite, did you?" The saucer section asked hesitantly.
"Nope!" The battle section denied, looking nobody in the eye. "Drive malfunction. Completely random. Hey, saucer?" She powered on, not letting any of the others get a word in. "Did your fuel synthesis work?"
The saucer blinked at the non sequitur. "Huh? I mean, I think I'm about 80% of the way –"
"Great!" The battle section interrupted, still not meeting anyone's gaze. "Let's join back up. Right now."
The saucer paused, clearly taken aback, but didn't object as the battle section flew towards her. The battle section grabbed a hold of the saucer's legs –
And then suddenly there was one ship again, not two. Enterprise blinked rapidly, shaking her head as her thoughts visibly cleared up.
"Enterprise, dear…"
Enterprise seemed to jump a bit at Babylon 5's voice, whirling around. "Yes?" She squeaked.
The station had her arms crossed. "Is the nothing that you didn't just pick up going to be a non-existent danger to us?"
Enterprise's brow furrowed as she tried to work through the negatives. "Um, no?"
Babylon 5 held Enterprise's gaze for a moment, then shrugged. "Alright. Let us know if that changes."
"Alpha and Omega, beginning and the end." Galactica sang, softly. "The spirit guards the centre, forbidden does defend."
Yamato stared at the old Battlestar, Enterprise doing the same while turning quite pale. "What is that?" Yamato asked.
"Hmm? Oh, just part of an old hymn the Rebel used to sing from time to time." Galactica waved a hand dismissively. "I wouldn't pay it any mind, dearie – that religion of theirs had them speaking nonsense all the time. I mean, imagine believing there's only one god."
Yamato, who if pressed would probably identify as Shinto (she wasn't nearly old enough to be a tsukumogami, but most religions didn't have a category for inanimate objects at all), noticed the others giving each other sideways glances.
"Lets just… keep working, shall we?" Babylon 5 eventually said.
The next few minutes of work were done in silence. As the various pieces of machinery were completed by Yamato and Babylon 5, they were floated out by their small craft into the void between them where they were assembled and welded together.
The silence and the work seemed to have a calming effect on Enterprise, who contributed the regulator and controller electronics and did the lion's share of the assembling with her (what was the term Babylon 5 used? Technomagic?) tractor beams. Even Normandy eventually chipped in; flash-fabricating cabling that would marry the three jump drives to Babylon 5's power systems.
(Galactica wouldn't hear a word about joining the drives up to Babylon 5's computer system, insisting that the drive controls be air-gapped for reasons she seemed to think were obvious.)
Once the drives were fully assembled, there came the problem of installation.
"I've calculated out the field dynamics, and I'm pretty sure placing the three drives around your main reactor will minimise the stress on your hull." Enterprise said, tapping frantically on her PDA-like device. A line of DOT-7 drones (which turned out to basically be floating torsos with manipulator claws) stood ready to take the drives into Babylon 5's superstructure, while another group had been loaned to said station's control for her to clear out some room in her 'Yellow Section'. (Her own maintenance bots didn't fit inside her corridors.)
"Which I appreciate, dear, as I was never built to endure that much in the way of hull stress." Babylon 5 fretted. Now that the time was coming closer, she seemed to be getting more and more nervous. "I'm armoured, but I was assembled in place – I've never crossed a jump point in my life, so…"
"That's what the third drive is for." Enterprise explained. "By having three work in tandem the displacement field can be spread out over a much larger area, meaning that the stress on your hull should be less than a fifth of what you said it's rated for – with just two drives, it'd be half."
Normandy blinked in confusion. "Overcompensating?"
"Well, we do want a nice big margin of error." Enterprise said, then hesitating. "But also, I'm hoping that if I have the math right, Galactica will be able to dock with Babylon 5 and jump when she does. Otherwise I'm going to have to tow her, and that will be a very long fifteen light-years."
"Fifteen?" Yamato asked, surprised. "Why that distance?"
"Well, mostly because it's close to my maximum sensor range, so I'll be able to keep an eye on this breach even as we hide away in dark space. I know it's pretty far out, but…"
"…that does answer my question, Enterprise-san, but I was actually asking why we were staying so close to an area we fear will become enemy territory."
Galactica shrugged. "I suggested we travel a nice solid hundred light-years, but you know Cloud Nine. She always wants to play things safe. I told her: dearie, with the Cylon nav computers you can do a hundred light-years in one jump! Fifteen light-years or a hundred, it's the same time either way!"
Yamato blinked. "Navigation computers are the limiting factor?"
Babylon 5 nodded. "It's really a very simple drive, dears, and all the more powerful for it." She said, sounding vaguely jealous even though she was the one that said drives were about to be installed in. "You basically just feed in the direction and distance you want to travel in, and the drive takes you there instantaneously. The only limiting factor is making sure you don't emerge somewhere you don't want to be – like inside a gravity well."
"The nav computer is important because if you want to jump a hundred light-years away, you have to work out where everything is at your destination now, when all you can see is the light they emitted a hundred years ago. At those distances and over those time periods, the n-body problem becomes a serious concern. Galactica was apparently jumping every 33 minutes at one point, so the calculations had to be done quickly." Enterprise finished. She then glanced at Babylon 5. "I take it you were listening in when Galactica explained it to me?"
"…sort of." Babylon 5 said evasively.
"Test run?"
"Yes, Normandy. While I'm hoping to do a quick light-minute jump to check that the drive setup works overall, the other main reason I think we should stick to fifteen light-years is that we shouldn't push the envelope on this too much. Besides, even at just fifteen light years out it's going to take the rest of us nearly four days to catch up with you."
As Enterprise explained this, Babylon 5 cautiously opened her mouthdocking bay and the DOT-7 drones grabbed onto the new jump drives and flew inside. Babylon 5 closed up, and looked slightly queasy as the quite large drives began their careful journey down to her reactor.
"Four days?" Yamato blinked in confusion. "It would only take me one warp jump to cross that distance."
"One day."
"I was assuming we'd all travel in a group together, but sure." Enterprise said sourly, unhappy at having her status as the ship with the slowest FTL drive rubbed in her face. "…wait, 'warp jump'?"
"Hai, Enterprise-san." Yamato straightened, deciding now was the time to set the record straight. "Despite sharing a name, it appears my FTL drive shares more in common with Galactica-san's than yours. My drive requires that I be travelling at least 40 space knots in the direction I wish to travel before engaging, but from there can take me hundreds of light-years over the course of a Planck time – assuming that there are no gravity wells in the way."
However, had she the option, Yamato would happily have exchanged her drives for Galactica's. In addition to a much more frequent possible usage (Yamato's drive could only be used three times a day, five if she really pushed it), Galactica's drive also consumed a bare fraction of the energy hers did.
"How fast is a space – no, never mind." Enterprise groaned, pressing a hand into her face. Peeking out from between her fingers, she glanced at Babylon 5. "I assume your FTL is also better than mine?"
"Well, not as such, dear." Babylon 5 said, trying her best to look reassuring even as the movement of the DOT-7 drones inside of her was making her visibly nauseous. "I mean for one thing my jumpgate doesn't open up wide enough to fit me through."
"I appreciate you trying to spare my feelings, but this might actually be important." Enterprise pulled her hand from her face, squaring her shoulders. "How fast?"
"Well, hyperspace doesn't have a speed as such." Babylon 5 quickly covered her mouth with a fist, now looking quite green. Yamato could pick out the exact moment DOT-7s began installing the first drive, because Babylon 5 face twisted for just a moment in pain before she managed to get her expression back under control. "Like I said, hyperspace's main useful trait is that it's smaller than normal space, so travel times are likewise shorter. So it's more of a multiplier of your slower-than-light speed than an actual propulsion method. You still need a conventional drive to move you through hyperspace – chemical rockets, ion drives, fusion torches, gravitational engines, that sort of thing."
Yamato tilted her head to one side. "Gravitational engines are 'conventional'?"
"For the Older Races they are." Babylon 5 said seriously. "Before they joined the Interstellar Alliance, Earthforce didn't have inertial dampeners or artificial gravity." With her free hand she indicated herself. "We – they – used centrifugal force in place of gravity, which meant that ships could remain in place for extended periods without risking the problems of zero gee; but also meant that they had to limit their acceleration to well below one gee or else they'd be shoved into the walls."
Enterprise rubbed her temples. "If I'd encountered them during my survey missions, I probably would have written them off as a race new to space; still exploring their own solar system. …aside from the fact that they would be humans, I mean."
Babylon 5 twitched again, though if that was because of the pain of the DOT-7s rummaging around her insides or because of the dismissal of her former(?) comrades in arms, Yamato was not sure. "I orbited the third planet of the Epsilon Eridani system –"
Enterprise blinked. "The Axanar homeworld?"
"Not in my timeline." Babylon 5 replied shortly. "Anyway, my point is that from me to Earth is a three day journey. It's different for other destinations, because hyperspace doesn't perfectly map to normal space one to one, but that will give you a general idea."
Epsilon Eridani was ten and a half light years from Earth – or as far as she was concerned, one warp jump. Viewed like that, a three day travel time was almost pathetic.
But, considering that this 'Earthforce' sounded like they had been at the rough tech level the UNCN had been at when the Garmillas had invaded, Yamato found herself pitying them – they had not received the charity of an older space-faring race like the UNCN had from Iscandar.
"That's the equivalent of Warp 8.5… maybe 8.6…" Enterprise drooped. "And it's a multiplier, so just using an Impulse drive with hyperspace would blow my warp drive out of the water…"
Despite the exciting prospects for her people, it appeared that Enterprise was not very enthusiastic about obsoleting herself.
"Test?" Normandy piped up.
"Well, not here you won't – gah!" Babylon 5 jumped. Despite keeping a sensor lock on Normandy, the ship's silence had made the others forget that she was there. When Babylon 5 had turned to face her, she had found the tiny frigate (small enough for her to pluck with her thumb and pointer finger) orbiting close enough that when she turned, Normandy had ended up nearly exactly between her eyes.
After Babylon 5 got her breathing back under control, she explained. "We've only got one jumpgate, and nobody here has jump engines, so if you enter hyperspace through my gate the only way you'll be exiting hyperspace is back through my gate again. Also, you can't see normal space from hyperspace, so the only way to navigate is with navigation beacons – of which we don't have any. Without them, the gravity waves in hyperspace will quickly drag you off course and doom you to never leave."
Babylon 5 burped, the DOT-7 drones that had entered her earlier floating outward as she did so. "I think that's me done." She said, clearly nervous.
The next twenty minutes passed in relative silence as they waited for the three drives to spin up, each ship lost in their own thoughts.
Yamato, for her part, wondered if there would be some way for the separate humanities to stay in touch after they had gone their separate ways, and if that would be to their advantage or detriment.
After the twenty minutes were up Enterprise nodded, shaking her head to clear away the funk. "Right. I'll attach a couple of sensor probes to you," she said, putting action to words "then we'll do that test run –" She froze. "There's another ship incoming."
"Kuso." Yamato swore, recalling her fighter-faeries from their patrols, and seeing Babylon 5 and Galactica doing the same. She did not want to leave them behind if they had to retreat from the system in a hurry.
Chimaera's fighter-fairies, now no longer under pressure from the other faeries, should have relaxed but didn't. Out of the corner of her eye she could see several of them pushing frantically against Chimaera's head, trying to get her to wake.
"Anything you can tell about them?" Babylon 5 asked, shooting a nervous look down at her feetYellow Section and the new drives that would be getting a test run much earlier than planned. Galactica floated up against the back of her head docking bay, strapping herself in attaching docking clamps as best she could. A couple of Babylon 5's fighter-faeries took a moment to grab the struts of her jumpgate as they flew past it, dragging it down her throat into her cargo bay.
"It's definitely a warp drive – one like mine, I mean. Give me a second to run the signature analysis…" Enterprise's voice trailed off, and her face went very, very pale.
With a zoom-whoosh, the new ship joined the mismatched fleet, about a hundred megametres sunward from the others.
The ship was humanoidshaped like a cube, with a grey jumpsuit that Yamato could barely see because her skin was the same colour. There was something… unsettling about the ship. Despite being clearly nonhuman, Yamato somehow couldn't bring herself to think that this ship resembled any species that existed. If anything, she thought she could see tiny hints of what might be thousands of different traits – gills, hair, hair-tentacles, scales, fur, smooth skin – somehow all melted into one. A perfect average of every conceivable humanoid species, and plenty of non-humanoids.
And on top of that, she was easily the biggest ship Yamato had ever seen (if you discounted the White Comet), each of her sides measuring three kilometres for a ridiculous volume of twenty-seven cubic kilometres.
"No." Enterprise's voice was chocked with fear. "No, not you…!"
The new ship glanced over them, her gaze cold and robotic. She gave no reaction to any of the ships present, not even Enterprise who seemed to recognise her.
Then she spoke – and when she did, it was with a hundred thousand voices speaking as one.
We are the Borg.
Your defensive capabilities are unable to withstand us. Lower your shields and await assimilation. Your culture and technology will adapt to service ours.
Resistance is futile.
Granted, she had never needed to do much asteroid mining herself – generally, any time she needed repairs there was a convenient pile of enemy scrap nearby. But she was pretty sure that Goethite, Autunite and Ilmenite weren't supposed to form in such close proximity to each other, let alone under these conditions.
Still, she could not deny the convenience, especially as Enterprise had baulked at her suggestion of salvaging the Sword-class. She watched as her auxiliary craft used laser cutters to separate rough chunks of ore into small enough pieces to feed into her auto-forgery/assembly (nicknamed the "Dynamic do-all" by her crew for the sheer range of things they'd managed to create with it). It wasn't the best at processing ore, but it was the only manufacturing device in the fleet that could cast the larger pieces of Galactica's miracle drives.
Imagine – faster-than-light travel on a reactor not even as powerful as a fusion reactor. Her own warp drive took the full output of her wave-motion core, the same power source as her wave-motion gun. She could feel it humming in her chest – the strange, alien technology that meant she would never require fuel. Fortunately, it still worked in this dimension, unlike the first alternate dimension she had been trapped in.
Yamato watched as Normandy drifted by, a dozen or so kilometres away. The frigate approached an asteroid of her own, carving into it with a laser knife
(She, much like the other ships in the fleet, were quietly keeping an active sensor lock on the stealth frigate. Normandy, perhaps deciding that she had no (remaining) enemies here and that the joke had been played out, had deactivated her stealth systems; her heat signature showing up clearly on everyone's passives.)
As she watched Normandy fly away, her eyes drifted to Galactica, sitting in the same orbit she had left her in. The old Battlestar had wanted to help, but without cutting equipment, automated production capabilities or a usable FTL drive even having her ferry ore was not viable. Instead, they had placated her by asking her to supervise their various fighter-fairies as they patrolled the system; a task which she seemed content enough with.
Galactica had then surprised Yamato by turning around and shooing her off, telling her to go and aid the mining effort.
"But I have not finished your repairs."
It was a hollow protest, and Yamato suspected that they both knew it. She was capable of replacing her own armour plates, but it took hours to replace even just a few dozen square meters. Replacing fully half the armour of a ship over four times her length and nearly ten times her width would take her weeks, even assuming there was sufficient materials at hand.
Galactica had smiled. "Dear, I haven't been fully repaired in over twenty years." She said. "It's not a big deal."
Yamato couldn't imagine being so old that she would give up on ever being whole again.
Even though her hull had been based on a WWII battleship with the same name, she, the Space Battleship Yamato, had come into existence less than five short years ago.
She had been the desperate work of a people with only one hope left, and she knew it. Once she had brought back the Cosmo Reverse, had turned Earth green again, it hadn't taken the United Nations Cosmo Navy long to devise a "better" ship than her, the Andromeda-class.
Her captain, her admiral, had only been able to bring back the Reverse by promising Queen Starsha that the human race would never again build a wave-motion gun. Earth had promptly built a fleet of ships armed with two each.
It burned her inside, to see how little respect they held for her captain's word.
She shook her head, pulling her thoughts back to the here and now. She would hardly honour her captain's memory by sulking away in some underverse.
Her cosmo radar registered an approaching contact, so she turned her head
Only it wasn't Enterprise there. Or at least, not all of her.
"What?" The new ship demanded. She had the same Nacelle-wings as Enterprise, but given that she was half Enterprise's size they looked twice as large, absolutely dominating her appearance. She had no saucer-skirt, and her uniform's leotard was gold and black instead of red and black.
Yamato blinked at the new ship, noting that this one was about her height
"Half of her." The new ship snorted. "I'm her engines, her 'battle section'. The saucer is still up there talking to Galactica."
Yamato processed this information slowly, turning to look
"Why does Enterprise-san have the ability to split into two smaller ships?" Yamato asked, not really expecting a result.
The battle section scowled. "Don't ask me, I didn't ask to be built this way."
"I carry most of the crew, so the idea is that I can survive even if the battle section is destroyed." The saucer, who had apparently been listening in, called to the two of them.
The battle section scowled and called back to her sister(?). "But I have the warp drive! If I get blown up, you're screwed!"
"Well –"
"Why are you here, Battle-san?" Yamato cut to the chase, her patience wearing thin.
The battle section thumbed back at the saucer. "You looked like you could use a hand, so the genius over there thought it would be best if we split up."
"We're both Enterprise, Battle!" The saucer called, sounding exasperated. "It was both of our ideas!"
"I can't think properly while sharing my head with you!"
Galactica, who the saucer had been talking to, quietly sat back. The eyebrow over one eye got higher and higher as the two half-ships argued.
"I thought that Enterprise did not have the capacity to manufacture Galactica's drive components?" Yamato tried again to steer the conversation back to productive grounds.
The battle section grunted. "We've got the tech to do it, it's just that our hardware replicators aren't physically big enough to make the larger parts." She said. "Pretty much the only large solid-cast part on me is my hull, so the assumption is that any damage big enough to require an industrial replicator will probably have crippled or destroyed me anyway."
"But what I can do," she continued, floating up to the small asteroid Yamato had been planning to tackle next "is this."
Holographic warning signs that definitely weren't magic circles appeared around Enterprise's battle section's wrists. A cone of semitransparent energy extended out and pulled one of the larger asteroids into her waiting mouth
"There." The battle section nodded firmly. "That should save you some time."
Yamato stared at the separated out spheres. "…how did you accomplish that so quickly, Battle-san?"
"I'm not allowed to tell you." The battle section huffed.
"Don't take it personally, Yamato!" Babylon 5 called over, apparently also listening in. "Most techno-mages only have a vague idea how their technology works anyway!"
"I know how replicators work!" The battle section snapped.
There was a pause, then she pinched the bridge of her nose.
"Your manufacturing devices?" Yamato wondered aloud, lightly touching one of the spheres with a finger
"Starfleet," The battle section ground out, fingers still clamped onto her nose "has strict policies on when technology can be handed out, and normally it's someone much higher up the chain of command than me making that call."
"You think of us as potential enemies, Battle-san?" Yamato wouldn't be offended if that was the case, just surprised.
"What?" The battle section blinked, her aggravation temporarily giving away to surprise. "Oh, no no no. Well, I mean, obviously I wouldn't go around just handing out photon torpedoes or anything, but the Prime Directive is mostly there to protect other cultures from us."
"Had a First Contact go horribly wrong, dear?"
"Not… in the way that you're probably thinking," the saucer section cut in "but imagine the reaction from even just making a flyby of a pre-Warp planet."
"You start a subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that a race that has mastered interstellar travel cannot properly examine the native lifeforms without a colonoscopy?"
Yamato frowned at Babylon 5. "The sightings of 'flying saucers' were not actual alien flybys, so I do not think it is a valid comparison."
"They were quite real in my timeline, so I'd double-check that when you get home."
Yamato blinked slowly. As far as she knew, Earth was the only planet in the Milky Way to have evolved life upon itself. Although, she had once overheard a pair of Garmillas ships talking about a planet of 'bee people'…
"My point being," Enterprise's battle section said with a sigh "that Starfleet standard procedure forbids me from getting into the details of how large parts of me work.
Babylon 5 frowned. "But you're happy to give away Galactica's technology?"
"Not happy, no…" The battle section shot a frown up to where her saucer section and Galactica were orbiting together.
"Dearie, jump drives are your inheritance." Galactica insisted. "Just because you've forgotten how to make them doesn't change that."
The battle section didn't say anything, but the look on her face said quite plainly that she didn't think Galactica was in a fit state of mind to be giving away her secrets like that.
"If the survivors of Earth had had jump drives, the First Cylon War wouldn't have ever started." Galactica declared, with a tone that indicated that she thought this was a decisive argument. "And once they did arrive, they bargained away their technology to bring an end to the war."
Before any of the others could respond, Galactica suddenly frowned. "Although, the Cylons then used that technology to wipe out the Twelve Colonies within hours of the Second Cylon War starting…"
She petered off, her eyes unfocusing as she stared off into the distance. Yamato had the distinct impression that she was lost in painful memories.
"…once we depart from here, Galactica-san, I would very much like to hear the story of these Twelve Colonies." Yamato managed.
There was a moment of silence, broken suddenly by a cry from Enterprise's saucer section.
"Blast it!" The saucer section gave a dismayed look at something in her hands.
Her battle section's eyes snapped to her. "Replication of Galactica's fuel not going so well?"
"No." The saucer section admitted with a sigh. "I thought I had it, but even with a sample to base my models off there's a bonding failure at the 97th percentile mark."
"I told you we should have redesigned the drive to work without it."
"We're assuming that we're pressed for time, remember? I'll just have to mimic the conditions under which it forms in nature."
"And what if you can't do that either?"
"Then I'll have to write the work off as wasted time and use your idea."
The battle section glared at her saucer, obviously not happy with this plan, but turned back with a huff and separated out another asteroid into base elements. "Did you at least figure out the Exocomp problem?"
At the confused looks of the other ships, Enterprise's saucer section explained. "I tried to replicate a couple of Exocomps – engineering drones – to take up my maintenance schedule, but as soon as they materialised my computer immediately identified their location as 'asleep in their quarters'. Which is ridiculous three times over – they didn't have time to move, they don't sleep, and they haven't been assigned quarters!"
Yamato's eyes narrowed. "That is what my internal sensors have been reporting about my entire crew – including my robot crew member, Analyser."
Babylon 5 had gone slightly pale. "That's what my sensors were saying about my inhabitants as well."
"Same." Normandy reported, halfway through carving up another asteroid.
"Alright, so the effect seems reasonably consistent…" The saucer section mused. "Do any of you have non-sentient robotic and/or digital lifeforms on board?"
Normandy raised her hand. "V.I."
"And what are… never mind, it doesn't matter. Are they still running normally?"
Normandy nodded.
"Well, that matches my theory… I had the schematics for the old DOT-7 drones onboard for some reason, so I tried replicating a few of those, and they didn't vanish off into some non-existent 'quarters'. At the moment, I think the effect seems to target sentience… or maybe sapience. Not sure yet."
(The DOT line of drones had fallen out of use because, unlike Exocomps, they had almost no problem-solving capability and required a senior engineer to supervise them at all times. Eventually, Starfleet had realised it was better to just assign a junior engineer to the same task. But with all of her engineers unavailable, they were better than nothing.
Even if having Enterprise supervise all of her own maintenance was a bit like expecting a human to consciously run their own respiratory, circulatory and digestive systems…)
"Eezo!" Came an excited almost-shout from Normandy, before she clapped her hands over her mouth, seemingly the most shocked at her making a noise louder than normal speaking.
"Eezo?" Yamato repeated back, flying over to see what Normandy was on about. Embedded in the rock that Normandy had just cut in half, she found a cluster of a bright blue mineral whose scan profile matched nothing in her database.
"Element Zero." Normandy was blinking rapidly
Yamato paused, then double-checked her sensor scans. "That is not an element. That is a mineral." Neutronium had an atomic weight of zero, having no protons or electrons, but that wasn't what she was looking at. It wasn't nearly dense enough.
"Nickname." Normandy clarified, still staring at the deposit – about 1.24 tonnes worth, if her scans were right.
"…I see." Yamato said, resolving to only call the mineral by the less confusing name of 'eezo' in future. "Is it useful?"
Normandy looked up sharply, her face twisted in confusion. "You don't…?" She almost whispered, starting to return to her normal volume.
Yamato shook her head as Enterprise's battle section pulled up alongside them and started having a look of her own
Normandy nodded almost frantically. "For everything." She said, now sounding a little shell-shocked.
(Babylon 5's jumpgate had made her realise that some of the others didn't use eezo for FTL, but given how ridiculously useful the mineral was she'd assumed they used it for something, even if just artificial gravity.)
Yamato for her part wondered if that 'everything' that Normandy had just mentioned included her ridiculous acceleration, and wondered if she could convince Normandy to help her install such a system.
Before Yamato could voice that desire, Enterprise's battle section spoke up. "Judging from the look you had on your face, eezo doesn't normally form in places like this?"
Normandy shook her head. "Neutron stars."
Yamato glanced up at the very-much-not-a-neutron-star star at the heart of this system. "Perhaps it was an extra-solar capture?" She theorised.
"Dears – behind you to the left." Babylon 5 unexpectedly cut in. "Is that a Quantium 40 deposit?"
Yamato glanced behind herself. There was a strange crystalline powder on the surface of that asteroid… "This highly radioactive substance?" She brushed a hand over it and held up some of for Babylon 5 to see
"Yes, that's it!" Babylon 5 said excitedly.
Normandy quietly pushed her eezo asteroid into the battle section's hands
"Do those normally form in conditions like these?" The battle section asked, clearly suspicious.
"I… well no, dear." Babylon 5's enthusiasm drained away. "Normally you find it in the crust of class 4 planets."
Enterprise's battle section nodded, as though that confirmed something she'd been thinking. "That's two substances that don't have any right being here present in noticeable quantities."
"That is quite strange…" Yamato agreed. She wondered – if she looked around, would she find a cosmonite 90 deposit?
The battle section loaded up Normandy's earlier mineralogical scans on her PDA-like device, running a finger down it. "Either we're the luckiest prospectors to ever exist, or someone's setting us up…"
"That belt was hit with radiation from the dimensional breach." The saucer offered up, her eyes focused on the energy leaking out of her clasped hands
The battle section snorted. "The chances of recreating the exact conditions for these elements to form is astronomically unlikely –"
"Like the odds of us meeting up, dearie?" Galactica cut in.
"…point." The battle section grudgingly conceded. "But seriously, at this rate I wouldn't be surprised to find Boronite –"
She froze suddenly, her eyes bulging at something in the scan.
"…Battle-san, is something the mat–"
Yamato's question was interrupted as the battle section abruptly spun in place. Her form seemed to stretch off into infinity, and then she was gone with a zoom-whoosh.
For a moment, silence reigned.
...so that is what Enterprise-san's warp drive looks like in action.
Yamato had strongly suspected that Enterprise's 'warp drive' was fundamentally a different device from her own based on Enterprise's explanation of hers, but to have it confirmed before her eyes was mildly surprising regardless.
With another zoom-whoosh Enterprise's battle section reappeared, face pale.
"...Battle, you didn't actually find any Boronite, did you?" The saucer section asked hesitantly.
"Nope!" The battle section denied, looking nobody in the eye. "Drive malfunction. Completely random. Hey, saucer?" She powered on, not letting any of the others get a word in. "Did your fuel synthesis work?"
The saucer blinked at the non sequitur. "Huh? I mean, I think I'm about 80% of the way –"
"Great!" The battle section interrupted, still not meeting anyone's gaze. "Let's join back up. Right now."
The saucer paused, clearly taken aback, but didn't object as the battle section flew towards her. The battle section grabbed a hold of the saucer's legs –
And then suddenly there was one ship again, not two. Enterprise blinked rapidly, shaking her head as her thoughts visibly cleared up.
"Enterprise, dear…"
Enterprise seemed to jump a bit at Babylon 5's voice, whirling around. "Yes?" She squeaked.
The station had her arms crossed. "Is the nothing that you didn't just pick up going to be a non-existent danger to us?"
Enterprise's brow furrowed as she tried to work through the negatives. "Um, no?"
Babylon 5 held Enterprise's gaze for a moment, then shrugged. "Alright. Let us know if that changes."
"Alpha and Omega, beginning and the end." Galactica sang, softly. "The spirit guards the centre, forbidden does defend."
Yamato stared at the old Battlestar, Enterprise doing the same while turning quite pale. "What is that?" Yamato asked.
"Hmm? Oh, just part of an old hymn the Rebel used to sing from time to time." Galactica waved a hand dismissively. "I wouldn't pay it any mind, dearie – that religion of theirs had them speaking nonsense all the time. I mean, imagine believing there's only one god."
Yamato, who if pressed would probably identify as Shinto (she wasn't nearly old enough to be a tsukumogami, but most religions didn't have a category for inanimate objects at all), noticed the others giving each other sideways glances.
"Lets just… keep working, shall we?" Babylon 5 eventually said.
The next few minutes of work were done in silence. As the various pieces of machinery were completed by Yamato and Babylon 5, they were floated out by their small craft into the void between them where they were assembled and welded together.
The silence and the work seemed to have a calming effect on Enterprise, who contributed the regulator and controller electronics and did the lion's share of the assembling with her (what was the term Babylon 5 used? Technomagic?) tractor beams. Even Normandy eventually chipped in; flash-fabricating cabling that would marry the three jump drives to Babylon 5's power systems.
(Galactica wouldn't hear a word about joining the drives up to Babylon 5's computer system, insisting that the drive controls be air-gapped for reasons she seemed to think were obvious.)
Once the drives were fully assembled, there came the problem of installation.
"I've calculated out the field dynamics, and I'm pretty sure placing the three drives around your main reactor will minimise the stress on your hull." Enterprise said, tapping frantically on her PDA-like device. A line of DOT-7 drones (which turned out to basically be floating torsos with manipulator claws) stood ready to take the drives into Babylon 5's superstructure, while another group had been loaned to said station's control for her to clear out some room in her 'Yellow Section'. (Her own maintenance bots didn't fit inside her corridors.)
"Which I appreciate, dear, as I was never built to endure that much in the way of hull stress." Babylon 5 fretted. Now that the time was coming closer, she seemed to be getting more and more nervous. "I'm armoured, but I was assembled in place – I've never crossed a jump point in my life, so…"
"That's what the third drive is for." Enterprise explained. "By having three work in tandem the displacement field can be spread out over a much larger area, meaning that the stress on your hull should be less than a fifth of what you said it's rated for – with just two drives, it'd be half."
Normandy blinked in confusion. "Overcompensating?"
"Well, we do want a nice big margin of error." Enterprise said, then hesitating. "But also, I'm hoping that if I have the math right, Galactica will be able to dock with Babylon 5 and jump when she does. Otherwise I'm going to have to tow her, and that will be a very long fifteen light-years."
"Fifteen?" Yamato asked, surprised. "Why that distance?"
"Well, mostly because it's close to my maximum sensor range, so I'll be able to keep an eye on this breach even as we hide away in dark space. I know it's pretty far out, but…"
"…that does answer my question, Enterprise-san, but I was actually asking why we were staying so close to an area we fear will become enemy territory."
Galactica shrugged. "I suggested we travel a nice solid hundred light-years, but you know Cloud Nine. She always wants to play things safe. I told her: dearie, with the Cylon nav computers you can do a hundred light-years in one jump! Fifteen light-years or a hundred, it's the same time either way!"
Yamato blinked. "Navigation computers are the limiting factor?"
Babylon 5 nodded. "It's really a very simple drive, dears, and all the more powerful for it." She said, sounding vaguely jealous even though she was the one that said drives were about to be installed in. "You basically just feed in the direction and distance you want to travel in, and the drive takes you there instantaneously. The only limiting factor is making sure you don't emerge somewhere you don't want to be – like inside a gravity well."
"The nav computer is important because if you want to jump a hundred light-years away, you have to work out where everything is at your destination now, when all you can see is the light they emitted a hundred years ago. At those distances and over those time periods, the n-body problem becomes a serious concern. Galactica was apparently jumping every 33 minutes at one point, so the calculations had to be done quickly." Enterprise finished. She then glanced at Babylon 5. "I take it you were listening in when Galactica explained it to me?"
"…sort of." Babylon 5 said evasively.
"Test run?"
"Yes, Normandy. While I'm hoping to do a quick light-minute jump to check that the drive setup works overall, the other main reason I think we should stick to fifteen light-years is that we shouldn't push the envelope on this too much. Besides, even at just fifteen light years out it's going to take the rest of us nearly four days to catch up with you."
As Enterprise explained this, Babylon 5 cautiously opened her mouth
"Four days?" Yamato blinked in confusion. "It would only take me one warp jump to cross that distance."
"One day."
"I was assuming we'd all travel in a group together, but sure." Enterprise said sourly, unhappy at having her status as the ship with the slowest FTL drive rubbed in her face. "…wait, 'warp jump'?"
"Hai, Enterprise-san." Yamato straightened, deciding now was the time to set the record straight. "Despite sharing a name, it appears my FTL drive shares more in common with Galactica-san's than yours. My drive requires that I be travelling at least 40 space knots in the direction I wish to travel before engaging, but from there can take me hundreds of light-years over the course of a Planck time – assuming that there are no gravity wells in the way."
However, had she the option, Yamato would happily have exchanged her drives for Galactica's. In addition to a much more frequent possible usage (Yamato's drive could only be used three times a day, five if she really pushed it), Galactica's drive also consumed a bare fraction of the energy hers did.
"How fast is a space – no, never mind." Enterprise groaned, pressing a hand into her face. Peeking out from between her fingers, she glanced at Babylon 5. "I assume your FTL is also better than mine?"
"Well, not as such, dear." Babylon 5 said, trying her best to look reassuring even as the movement of the DOT-7 drones inside of her was making her visibly nauseous. "I mean for one thing my jumpgate doesn't open up wide enough to fit me through."
"I appreciate you trying to spare my feelings, but this might actually be important." Enterprise pulled her hand from her face, squaring her shoulders. "How fast?"
"Well, hyperspace doesn't have a speed as such." Babylon 5 quickly covered her mouth with a fist, now looking quite green. Yamato could pick out the exact moment DOT-7s began installing the first drive, because Babylon 5 face twisted for just a moment in pain before she managed to get her expression back under control. "Like I said, hyperspace's main useful trait is that it's smaller than normal space, so travel times are likewise shorter. So it's more of a multiplier of your slower-than-light speed than an actual propulsion method. You still need a conventional drive to move you through hyperspace – chemical rockets, ion drives, fusion torches, gravitational engines, that sort of thing."
Yamato tilted her head to one side. "Gravitational engines are 'conventional'?"
"For the Older Races they are." Babylon 5 said seriously. "Before they joined the Interstellar Alliance, Earthforce didn't have inertial dampeners or artificial gravity." With her free hand she indicated herself. "We – they – used centrifugal force in place of gravity, which meant that ships could remain in place for extended periods without risking the problems of zero gee; but also meant that they had to limit their acceleration to well below one gee or else they'd be shoved into the walls."
Enterprise rubbed her temples. "If I'd encountered them during my survey missions, I probably would have written them off as a race new to space; still exploring their own solar system. …aside from the fact that they would be humans, I mean."
Babylon 5 twitched again, though if that was because of the pain of the DOT-7s rummaging around her insides or because of the dismissal of her former(?) comrades in arms, Yamato was not sure. "I orbited the third planet of the Epsilon Eridani system –"
Enterprise blinked. "The Axanar homeworld?"
"Not in my timeline." Babylon 5 replied shortly. "Anyway, my point is that from me to Earth is a three day journey. It's different for other destinations, because hyperspace doesn't perfectly map to normal space one to one, but that will give you a general idea."
Epsilon Eridani was ten and a half light years from Earth – or as far as she was concerned, one warp jump. Viewed like that, a three day travel time was almost pathetic.
But, considering that this 'Earthforce' sounded like they had been at the rough tech level the UNCN had been at when the Garmillas had invaded, Yamato found herself pitying them – they had not received the charity of an older space-faring race like the UNCN had from Iscandar.
"That's the equivalent of Warp 8.5… maybe 8.6…" Enterprise drooped. "And it's a multiplier, so just using an Impulse drive with hyperspace would blow my warp drive out of the water…"
Despite the exciting prospects for her people, it appeared that Enterprise was not very enthusiastic about obsoleting herself.
"Test?" Normandy piped up.
"Well, not here you won't – gah!" Babylon 5 jumped. Despite keeping a sensor lock on Normandy, the ship's silence had made the others forget that she was there. When Babylon 5 had turned to face her, she had found the tiny frigate (small enough for her to pluck with her thumb and pointer finger) orbiting close enough that when she turned, Normandy had ended up nearly exactly between her eyes.
After Babylon 5 got her breathing back under control, she explained. "We've only got one jumpgate, and nobody here has jump engines, so if you enter hyperspace through my gate the only way you'll be exiting hyperspace is back through my gate again. Also, you can't see normal space from hyperspace, so the only way to navigate is with navigation beacons – of which we don't have any. Without them, the gravity waves in hyperspace will quickly drag you off course and doom you to never leave."
Babylon 5 burped, the DOT-7 drones that had entered her earlier floating outward as she did so. "I think that's me done." She said, clearly nervous.
The next twenty minutes passed in relative silence as they waited for the three drives to spin up, each ship lost in their own thoughts.
Yamato, for her part, wondered if there would be some way for the separate humanities to stay in touch after they had gone their separate ways, and if that would be to their advantage or detriment.
After the twenty minutes were up Enterprise nodded, shaking her head to clear away the funk. "Right. I'll attach a couple of sensor probes to you," she said, putting action to words "then we'll do that test run –" She froze. "There's another ship incoming."
"Kuso." Yamato swore, recalling her fighter-faeries from their patrols, and seeing Babylon 5 and Galactica doing the same. She did not want to leave them behind if they had to retreat from the system in a hurry.
Chimaera's fighter-fairies, now no longer under pressure from the other faeries, should have relaxed but didn't. Out of the corner of her eye she could see several of them pushing frantically against Chimaera's head, trying to get her to wake.
"Anything you can tell about them?" Babylon 5 asked, shooting a nervous look down at her feet
"It's definitely a warp drive – one like mine, I mean. Give me a second to run the signature analysis…" Enterprise's voice trailed off, and her face went very, very pale.
With a zoom-whoosh, the new ship joined the mismatched fleet, about a hundred megametres sunward from the others.
The ship was humanoid
And on top of that, she was easily the biggest ship Yamato had ever seen (if you discounted the White Comet), each of her sides measuring three kilometres for a ridiculous volume of twenty-seven cubic kilometres.
"No." Enterprise's voice was chocked with fear. "No, not you…!"
The new ship glanced over them, her gaze cold and robotic. She gave no reaction to any of the ships present, not even Enterprise who seemed to recognise her.
Then she spoke – and when she did, it was with a hundred thousand voices speaking as one.
We are the Borg.
Your defensive capabilities are unable to withstand us. Lower your shields and await assimilation. Your culture and technology will adapt to service ours.
Resistance is futile.
Last edited:
1-5 Jabberwocky
- Location
- Australia
The Collective – or rather, the tiny sub-Collective Cube 1427 had formed once cut off from the main Collective – was disappointed, but not surprised, when vessels 0001423, 1949123, and 1976123 did not, in fact, lower their shields and await assimilation.
"W-what is that?" Vessel 0001423 (Designation: Galactica, assimilation priority: 84) stammered, looking at her in fear and bewilderment. "What in the name of the Lords of Kobol…!?"
"Run!" Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21) screamed in a wild panic, her eyes wide. "Everybody, flee in all directions! I'll distract her!"
"You have given up on fighting before the battle has even begun, Enterprise-san?!" Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority assigned to 19 [0 unknown species, 0 unknown cultures, 12 unknown technologies]) focusing her gaze intentlyacquired targeting locks on Cube 1427.
"Enterprise, as you yourself said before, we're not leaving you behind!" Orbital structure 0011832 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority assigned to 7 [51 unknown species, 85 unknown cultures, 38 unknown technologies]) cried.
"I'll catch up later, just GO!" Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21) screamed in near-hysterics. She began firing phaser beams at Cube 1427, in Civilisation 003872's usual manner of defiance. However, the Collective was well familiar with this vessel, and so her shots impacted her shields to little effect.
Cube 1427 continued to advance.
"You're lying!" Orbital structure 0011832 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority: 7) immediately shot back. "She's faster than you are, isn't she?!"
"How do you – agh, never mind! Just GO!"
The Collective listened to this conversation, an eyesensor cluster intently studying each of them carefully. Not because they were considered threats, but because the Collective wanted to ensure that they were assimilated in the optimal order.
When the Collective had first encountered Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21), it had beamed across a drone to examine the contents of her computer, then taken a sample of her fleshhull with a cutting beam and tractor beam. This allowed the Collective to make an informed decision on whether Vessel 1949123 was worth assimilating.
They had decided it was, and would have succeeded if not for the intervention of Species 0002.
Due to local conditions, Cube 1427's drones could not be removed from their maintenance cycle. This prevented the use of standard tactics, and necessitating that the Collective devise new procedures for assimilation. Due to these rather straining circumstances, Cube 1427 had filled several torpedoes with invasive nanoprobes, to replace the role of drones. Efficiency loss was predicted to be 23.4% in non-resistant ships, higher for the unfortunately likely futile resistance than the Enterprise was likely to display.
"You must remain calm, Enterprise-san!" Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority: 19), fired.
Despite taking the form of two tri-barrelled turrets (of the kind commonly found on primitive liquid-traversing warships), Vessel 1976123's main weapons fired six positron beams that sailed across the void to smash into Cube 1427's shields. Cube 1427's mouth twitched slightly in a brief hint of a frown, a surge of emotion briefly rising and swiftly crushed. Idly, the Collective began devising how best to render the minor irritant irrelevant.
Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority: 19) cursed. "She is shielded?!"
"In my timeline, almost every ship is!" Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21) screamed.
Energy readings from Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority: 19) spiked, drawing Cube 1427's attention. The Collective considered her with interest, as the power estimations reached and then exceeded that of a warp core.
Deciding that Orbital structure 0011832 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority: 7) could always be assimilated later, the Collective had Cube 1427 fire her first nanoprobe torpedo at Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority: 19).
"Yamato!" Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21) screamed in warning. However, 1976123 (Designation updated to Yamato, assimilation priority: 19) did not need the warning, dozens of small turrets on her shoulderseither side of her bridge opening fire with slivers of ruby light. The nanoprobe torpedo took one hit, two, bursting apart after the third impact from what appeared to be a point-defence plasma shot. (Lasers, of course, would not travel slow enough to be seen with the humanoid eye, and were invisible besides.)
Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 19) fired again, adding her firepower to that of Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21), as well as Vessel 0001423 (Designation: Galactica, assimilation priority: 84) and Orbital structure 0011832 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority: 7) as they joined in. With 1949123's phaser beams well understood by the Collective, there was little threat from that area, and Vessel 0001423 and Orbital structure 0011832 did not have the reactor output to be a serious threat to Cube 1427's shielding.
Even as her forward shield integrity dipped down to 56%, Cube 1427 did not feel fear or even concern.
Partially because the thoughts and feelings of 130,000 drones, even in their maintenance cycle, were more than enough to drown out any emotions Cube 1427 herself may or may not have been feeling.
But mostly because her nanoprobes had finished assembling magnetic field generators next to her shield emitters.
Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 19) fired again, positron beams sailing across the void – and narrowed her eyes as the charged particle beams curved from their course to miss Cube 1427 altogether.
"What on Earth?!" Orbital structure 0011832 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority: 7) cried, finding her own plasma weaponry diverted from their target as well.
"She's adapting!" Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21) screamed. "It's what they do! It's what they always do! We have to run!"
The Collective fired another two nanoprobe torpedoes, both aiming for Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 19). They both manoeuvred to avoid point-defence fire, but one was destroyed anyway and the other veered off from its target, unable to get close through the curtain of fire. Cube 1427 continued moving forward, the Collective judging that she would soon be close enough for the magnetic field she was generating to begin diverting the point-defence fire.
"They are not the only ones who can change tactics, Enterprise-san!" Vessel 1976123 declared hotly, adjusting the aim on her two primary forward-facing turrets to target the left and right sides of Cube 1427, and firing again. All six beams curved left – but this meant that while three beams passed Cube 1427 by, the other three curved into Cube 1427's main body, impacting with force.
Enough. The Collective boomed.
Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 19) cursed as a Cutting Beam sliced apart her two primary turrets, the metal glowing white hot where the beam passed through. Defiantly, she fired a barrage of missiles and torpedoes, and for a moment, Cube 1427's bulk was hidden by the clouds of leftover gas reactants as the warheads detonated on her shield.
Then, shining through the smoke, was a holographic warning sign that definitely wasn't a pentagram.
The tractor beams latched onto Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 19), Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21) and Orbital structure 0011832 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority: 7). The power drain technology obtained from Species 1743 activated, the power levels of each dropping rapidly.
Vessel 0001423 (Designation: Galactica, assimilation priority: 84) roared, her primitive munitions falling like a rain of lead upon Cube 1427's shields. Said shields were actually damaged enough that there was a non-zero chance of the kinetic rounds penetrating, but even if they broke through they would impact structural-integrity-field reinforced auto-regenerating tritanium. The Collective dismissed her as a threat.
Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21) screamed in rage and despair, her shields failing and critical systems beginning to shut down. Orbital structure 0011832 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority: 7) had already lost power to all of her systems, her eyes fluttering shut in unconsciousness.
Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 19), however, refused to submit – even as thick plumes of smoke bellowed out of the destroyed turrets.
You will be assimilated. The Collective boomed, intensifying the energy drain.
"I refuse!" Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 19) gasped, her reactor output increasing to deal with the drain. The Collective was intrigued, raising her assimilation priority to 17. 1976123 pulled a third gun from behind her backrotated until a third turret behind her bridge had an angle of fire. The Collective prepared Cube 1427's magnetic field generators, and was suitably surprised when 1976123's turret fired solid artillery rounds instead of the positron beams from before.
The shells had sufficient mass – and therefore inertia – to be avoid being sufficiently diverted by the magnetic field. Each embedded themselves into the pseudo-solid surface of Cube 1427's shields, electrical discharges running over their surfaces as the fields discharged into them. But their simple mechanical timers counted on, and each detonated directly into Cube 1427's shielding.
Shield strength reduced to 6%. The Collective (silently) determined, even as a Cutting Beam destroyed 1976123's last remaining turret.
Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 17) continued to resist, even though its futility should have been obvious even to such a stubborn species as Species 5618. Currently, she was trying to route power to her handsthe opening in her prow, but with the drain in effect it would not gather fast enough to matter.
The battle was resolved. Cube 1427 prepared another four nanoprobe torpedoes for firing, the last shots that would be fired in this combat.
Which was when a stream of molten metal promptly punched through her forward shields and into her palmstractor beam projectors.
Vessel 1976125 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority set to 9 [4 unknown species, 4 unknown cultures, 17 unknown technologies]), believed to be a derelict by the Collective based on her lack of an energy signature, now revealed herself to be anything but. Eschewing a full-spectrum cloaking device, the tiny ship had evaded the Collective's attention until now with what appeared to be a primitive refrigeration system.
"N-normandy! No… save yourself! Don't let her get you too…!" Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21) managed to choke outtransmit, energy beginning to return to her system with the tractor beams gone, but slowly – too slowly to matter.
Vessel 1976125 (Designation updated to Normandy, assimilation priority: 9) immediately took Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21)'s advice and fled using a device that appeared to operate on the principles of an Impulse Drive, but with performance much closer to that of a Warp Drive.
The Collective increased Vessel 1976125 (Designation: Normandy)'s assimilation priority to 7.
The Collective feltdetected an energy spike from Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 17). The Collective turned Cube 1427's attention back to 1976123, watching with interest. 1976123 had used the brief period the Collective was distracted – as was possible with their numbers this low – to charge the capacitor at her her fingertips her prow. Working together faster than the speed of light, Cube 1427's computer and sensors determined the capacitor in question had already reached 70% capacity.
Realising that the Collective had returned its attention to her, Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 17) ceased charging.
Between 1976123's handsinside her prow, untold numbers of microscopic black holes formed, destabilised, and evaporated; the released Hawking Radiation funnelled into a specially prepared outlet and focused forward as a beam. Enough energy to break a planet apart was sent souring though the void to crash into Cube 1427's shields and out the other side.
…
…
…or at least, that's what it would have looked like to an outside observer.
But as the light-echo of Cube 1427 vanished from view, Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 17) suddenly turned her head, no doubt registering another Cube 1427 appearing behind her. Confused by the split-second warp jump that had rendered the superweapon entirely useless.
Cube 1427 moved her hands to her waist and adjusted her jumpsuit. We have adapted. The Collected stated, simply.
"No!" Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21) cried, fury mixing with terror as tears streaked down her face. "That's not yours… that's my captain's technique! You can't use it! You can't use him!"
Locutus of Borg will be returned to operational status soon enough. The Collective boomed. They did, after all, need a Queen-equivalent. Until then, be silent.
Cube 1427 reached out her hands, close enough now to inject nanoprobes without needing torpedoes.
It became clear at this point, however, that the Collective should have assimilated the "derelicts" first, as the second of the three suddenly opened fire on Cube 1427.
This was, to her shame, not the first time Chimaera wished she'd been built as an Executor-class, but it was the most fervent.
Usually she could quash those feeling by reminding herself that her usual opponents were starfighters and frigates, and that an Imperial I-class was much better equipped to fight those battles than even an Imperial II-class. Star Destroyers were used as a threat to scare populations into compliance at least as often as they were seriously deployed in battle as it was. A single Imperial Star Destroyer was enough to quell rebellion across an entire planet, the so-called Super Star Destroyers were massive overkill.
Right now Chimaera just wished she had more guns and a bigger reactor to fire them faster.
Chimaera fired again and again and again, her heart racinghypermatter reactor at maximum output as she spat ion cannon bolts into the Cube. Sparks raced across the Cube's surface where the bolts impacted, her critically-weakened shields having collapsed in the first volley.
Her Defenders flew in frantic circles around the Cube and adding their own laser cannon shots in areas Chimaera didn't have an angle on, saturating the Cube in fire. It was good that they had been flying around her before this battle – nobody had noticed when they had lined up on her shoulder prow and pushed her around so that she had an angle of fire.
She had planned to let the Cube finish off the other ships and then destroy it while it was weakened, but then she had realised that the Cube was firing to disable when it fired at all, and that her talk of 'Assimilation' was a very obtuse way of saying that she was seeking to capture the other ships.
This could not be allowed.
Despite their solid-seeming appearance, the sides of a Cube were not actually smootha flat plane – it just looked like that at range because the various fur, scales and spines pipes, ducts, and other protrusions approximated one. That meant that once her shields were down, incoming fire could sink under the Cube's skin outer hull and into the muscles internal components underneath.
"C-Chimaera?" Babylon 5 stammered, sounding tired (which was not surprising, as she was only just starting to recover from a near-total shutdown) and confused. "H-how long have you been…?"
Long enough to know that it's a good thing I played dead upon waking. Chimaera thought to herself. "Surprised that your comrade wasn't able to destroy me?" She demanded aloud. Dammit – I can't feel my engines at all. I had to travel here in microjumps, but in this state I won't even be able to do that! Where are my damn astromechs?! They can't all be in a recharge cycle at once, there aren't enough chargers!
Chimaera fired until the Cube stopped twitching, and then fired another volley, just to be sure.
"What? No, no don't stop!" Enterprise cried, flinging something from her sleeveopening fire with torpedoes that crashed into the Cube with explosive force, gouging great big creators in her torso hull. She sounded exhausted, but her eyes were wide with panic. "Please, help me! You can't stop killing them! Not until they're dead!" She launched another volley as she screamed this.
Chimaera raised an eyebrow (though at the same time watching the torpedo volleys with interest – they might well be turned on her next). "Even if some parts of her insides survived my barrage, her outsides didn't. She has no way to threaten us anymore."
"She's Borg!" Enterprise wailed, firing a third barrage. "She'll adapt and regenerate! We have to destroy her! Now!"
"'Regenerate'?" Chimaera's eyebrows rose. "What exactly is that supposed to –"
She had only a second's warning before the torpedo hit her from behind.
At first she thought it was a dud – there was no explosion, just a sudden sharp impact. She could only tell it was a torpedo because of the terrified exclamations from her Defenders. She turned aroundactively scanned behind her –
The Sword-class ship, which had formerly been a mess of melted skinarmour plating, now had one torpedo port open. Both the port and the imminently surrounding hull looked like they had come fresh off the assembly line, and… was the area of intact hull expanding?!
Behind her, Enterprise froze, her face somehow managing to go even paler. "The torpedo that Yamato drove off! It didn't fly off into deep space – it switched targets to the Sword class! Those aren't Borg anti-shield torpedoes – she's switched out the warhead with nanoprobes! The Sword-class is being assimilated and regenerated!"
"Nano – wait, are you talking about nano-droids?!" Chimaera asked, incredulously. The Separatists had somehow gotten away with using Buzz droids in the place of explosive warheads, but this was even more stupid. Nano-droids were fragile – it was an unavoidable consequence of being smaller than the smallest of organic cells. Ordinary starlight was enough to break apart their systems and destroy them, so conventional wisdom held that they were only useful for construction and sabotage.
Wait – Chimaera quickly turned her attention back to herself – where she could see the "dud" torpedo payload finish breaking apart into a powder that seemed to be flowing into her injuriescompromised deck plating. Uttering a curse, Chimaera grit her teeth and gave an order to her Defenders. They refused at first, but a quick glare reminded them who was in charge. Flying over, the Defenders lined up in front of Chimaera's starboard side, where the torpedo had hit… and opened fire, concussion missiles "sterilising" the wound even as Chimaera fought to avoid grunting in pain.
The eyes of the Sword-class were slowly openingpower readings starting up again, and all the other ships could hear her murmur transmit: You… will… be…
"Her torpedoes were filled with a nano-virus?! Wait, please tell me I still have some…" Babylon 5 trailed off as she rummaged around in her pocketsquickly checked her inventory.
Chimaera wasn't about to let the opportunity of the Sword-class's distraction pass her by, and opened fire with her blasterwhatever starboard weaponry remained functional… only to see her shots disappear into bursts of light. Naturally, and infuriatingly, the nano-droids had repaired the Sword-class's infernal shields first.
The hairs on the back of Chimaera's neck stood uppassive sensors registered an energy spike, and she glanced at the Cube out of the corner of her eye.
…Enterprise was still continuing her barrage, but she didn't seem to be making any headway into blasting her way through the Cube's superstructure. The Cube was rotating in place, presenting untouched surface to Enterprise's blasting barrage.
As she continued to fire away at the Sword-class, Chimaera narrowed her eyes. She could see the Sword-class's hull undergo the 'regeneration' that Enterprise had mentioned, so for now she'd assume that Enterprise knew what she was talking about. If the Cube had that kind of ability to self-repair… there would be little point fixing her hull while her shields were down. She needed time to recharge her shield projectors, and a way to avoid being shot while doing that.
Chimaera's thoughts turned to her ex-captain, now her admiral. What would Thrawn do, if she (Chimaera) had had that kind of reconstruction ability, when her shields were down? …knowing him, he'd probably–
Chimaera cursed loudly. "She's shedding her skin!"
"She's what?!" Galactica's eyes were wide.
Yamato grunted, her hands trembling as she tried to charge the super-weapon that had laid waste to the Sword-class earlier. But it was too soon – Chimaera could plainly see that her systems needed more time to cool down and recharge. She wasn't going to be able to fire it again in time.
"The Cube has written off the outside parts I slagged, and is using that as armour!" Chimaera started firing her blasterturbolasers at the Cube. Normally Chimaera would have no doubt that her guns could destroy a ship of even the Cube's size, but she was far enough away from the Cube that her turbolaser shots lost most of their power to decay. "She's rebuilding her insides into a smaller, functional version of herself!"
A pained roar from behind reminded Chimaera that the Sword-class was becoming more and more of a threat as her repairs continued. Chimaera spared a glance behind her, finding that the area of healed skinrepaired hull now covered a third of the Sword-class's area.
"We have to leave." Babylon 5 said.
Chimaera grimaced. Without functional engines, she would have to be left behind.
…so be it. Her self-destruct was still functional. This 'Borg' would learn nothing of the Empire from her.
"No, we can't…!" Enterprise hyperventilated. She seemed to have noticed what Chimaera had, and was now trying to aim for the areas of armour she had already blown holes in, but chunks of the Cube's superstructure were now jettisoning themselves violently to serve as an improvised interception mechanism, detonating the torpedoes well short of their actual target and wasting the explosive energy to space.
"Did Enterprise-san not acknowledge earlier that this Cube could peruse her faster than she could escape?" Yamato noted, teeth clenched.
"Then she'll have to go where the Cube can't follow." Babylon 5 declared.
Four of Babylon 5's fighter-faeries disappeared into her cargo hold, reappearing with… the struts from a space dock?
"Wait, Babylon 5-san, I thought that you did not have the navigation beacons required to survive that realm?"
"If I let you in here, and take my jumpgate with me as I use Galactica's drive to get away, then I should be able to let you out fast enough to avoid losing you."
The light of hope (and rational thought) started to appear again in Enterprise's eyes, though her mouth was still twisted in fear. "Alright!" She agreed, wrenching herself away from the Cube. "Let's get out of here!"
To her great surprise, Enterprise flew over not to Babylon 5, but to Chimaera.
Chimaera snarled, seeing quite clearly where this was going. She can no more afford me being captured by the Cube than I can. "I will scuttle myself, thank you very much. I am not some rabid Bantha that needs to be put down by the likes of –"
A holographic warning sign that just-so-happened to resemble a magic circle appeared around both of Enterprise's hands, and two cones of glowing energy latched onto Chimaera. With a jolt, Chimaera found herself moving – a tractor beam?!
"Don't worry, Chimaera!" Enterprise was quite clearly still terrified, but her teeth were clenched and there was a fire in her eyes. "We won't leave you behind!"
For a moment, Chimaera was stunned into complete silence. Then her mouth twisted in disgust. "You naive idiot! Do you really think that GAH." Chimaera's tirade was cut off by a cry of pain.
"Apologies, Chimaera-san, but I was never equipped with tow beams." Yamato had taken up a position on Chimaera's other side, and had fired an actual metal anchor on an actual metal chain into the woundsbreached sections from the Sword-class's earlier barrage, shortly before Galactica had knocked her unconscious offline. With the chain wrapped around Yamato's arm, she pulled the chain taut, adding her engine power to the towing effort.
Chimaera fought to keep her cries of pain at the level of grunting as Yamato's rocket-anchor dug into her wounds. Thinking fast, she switched her blaster to tractor modeactivated her surviving starboard tractor beams and fired at Yamato.
There were two major differences between her tractor beams and Enterprise's, though Chimaera herself only realised the first. The obvious difference was that Enterprise's beams were a glowing cone of energy, while Chimaera's were invisible. But the more important difference is that Chimaera's tractor beams worked both ways – both the tractored and the tractoring ships experienced an equal pull on their hull, which is why they were usually only used by very large ships on very small ships. Otherwise the tractored ship could pull the tractoring ship instead. By defying that rule and keeping her beams steady, Chimaera was able to replace the pull of the chain of Yamato's rocket-anchor with the much less painful pull from the "ropes" of her tractor beams.
Chimaera looked up to see the "space dock" struts of Babylon 5 light up, and to her disbelieving eyes some kind of glowing portal appear inside of them. "What is that?!" She demanded.
"It's a portal into hyperspace!" Babylon 5 retorted shortly.
"It very much is not!" Chimaera knew hyperspace well, and whatever was through that portal wasn't it. But there were rumours – legends – of an Otherspace that existed on the far side of hyperspace, where space was grey and the stars were black…
Escape is impossible. You will be assimilated.
Chimaera looked behind herself with a grimace. As she had suspected, the outside hull of the Cube had been completely jettisoned now – the innards of the 3000 meter Cube having reformed themselves into a 600 meter Sphere.
She had lost about 26 cubic kilometres of volume, and about 26 years of age – having shrunk from a middle-aged abomination against nature to a 17-year-old abomination against nature. Even given that, Chimaera was reasonably certain that the Sphere still out-massed her, and given that the Sword-class would shortly be fighting on her side…
On the off-chance that it would work, Chimaera fired a full barrage at the Sphere, but her plasma-based turbolasers and her charged particle ion bursts found themselves turned aside by a more concentrated version of the same magnetic defence that had deflected Yamato's positron beams. Enterprise fired one of her beams – to no effect – and the torpedo barrage from Enterprise and Yamato were intercepted by a new weapon: miniature cutting beams. The Sphere had adapted.
"We might not have been able to stop you… but you won't take any more of us!" Enterprise cried. She and Yamato were making best speed for the portal, but Chimaera's mass was slowing them down…
Your beliefs are irrelevant. Two of you have been assimilated. The rest will now follow.
"Two of…?! Dammit!" Chimaera looked down to see an area of her injureddamaged starboard side rapidly healing repairing. She hadn't gotten all of the nano-droids the first time. "Defenders! Another barrage!"
"Never mind that, dear! Heads up!"
Chimaera looked up again just in time to see a Repair Bot violently shove a crate out of Babylon 5's cargo bay. She had just enough time (and zoom) to catch the name on the side of the create (Excalibur) before Babylon 5's defence grid fired on her own crate. The crate burst apart, metal walls and vacuum seals forcibly releasing their contents of a dark green powder…
"More nano-droids?!" Chimaera watched the powder settle where Babylon 5 had aimed it – at the patch of her skinhull infected with the Borg nanoprobes.
"This is how we cured the Drakh plague!" Babylon 5 said, as though Chimaera was supposed to know what that was. "Excalibur's crew reprogrammed another nano-virus to attack the first one!"
"Wait, but, then…" Enterprise glanced behind herself at the Sword-class, but Babylon 5 shook her head.
"Nano-viruses adapt, dear. To make sure your virus wins you need to make sure it grossly outnumbers the enemy virus, and I only had this one crate."
The area of healing skinrepairing hull on Chimaera slowed, then stopped.
The Sphere's emotionless expression, just for an instant, twitched. You will be assimilated. She said again, but this time she was looking at Babylon 5.
Chimaera clicked her tongue. She was headed away from the Sphere, and didn't have any rear-facing weaponry…
A pair of missiles shot out from behind Yamato's backout of a missile silo on her deck styled to look like a smokestack and streaked towards the Sphere.
The Sphere prepared to intercept them, only to slowly blink as they detonated on their own about half-way between the two groups. Released from the missiles…
Chimaera blinked. Somehow, the missiles had released some form of raw, uncontained energy that was forming a rough, blue, semitransparent barrier. It was visibly dissipating even as she watched, but two of the Sphere's assimilation torpedoes slammed into it without penetrating.
But the Sphere wasn't giving up.
Holographic sigils were forming around her hands, her mouth moving soundlessly, and energy began to coalesce between them. Having seen Enterprise do something similar earlier, Chimaera had no doubt – the Sphere wasn't going to bother moving around the barrier. She was just going to will it out of her way, like the Jedi of old, then charge straight at them.
Babylon 5 suddenly gasped. "Galactica?!"
Chimaera turned her attention forwards just in time to see the primitive warship fly past, thruster-boots at full burn.
"I WON'T –"
The Sphere pulled her hands apart, releasing the energy contained within. It smashed into the barrier Yamato had put up, dispelling it immediately. Just in time to see Galactica on an intercept course.
"– LET YOU TOUCH THEM!"
How many Jupiter II-class battlestars did it take to stop a Borg Sphere?
One, at sufficient velocity.
Galactica smashed into the Sphere, held back by her shields only for a moment. Even that was catastrophic – Galactica's lowerrear half squashed itself up against the other half, threatening to tear clean off. All of Yamato's careful repairs were undone in a moment, and worse. Blood air leaked out from her in great big gushes.
But she'd done it.
Even if just for a moment, she'd knocked the Sphere off course.
Chimaera saw no more of the battle, as Enterprise and Yamato had now reached Babylon 5's portal. The three ships (and Chimaera's Defenders) flew through the jump point, which closed the instant they were through. She didn't see waiting Starfuries hurry the jumpgate struts into Babylon 5's cargo bay, and the station itself disappear into a flash of light.
She and the other two ships had enough to worry just about surviving in that space, but we'll get to that in a moment.
The Collective did not feel emotion, even as their prey deftly evaded their grasp. Unfortunately, the Collective hadn't needed to trace the use of Transportation Technology 0014 since well before most of the technology that now made up the Sphere had been assimilated. For now, they had escaped assimilation.
The Collective commanded Cube 1427 (temporarily designated Sphere 0837) to re-assimilate their old hull, and return fully to their full strength. Then it turned its attention to Vessel 1976126 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority assigned to 19 [0 unknown species, 1 unknown cultures, 8 unknown technologies]) as she finished her assimilation process, shoving Vessel 0001423 (Designation: Galactica, assimilation priority: 84) off to one side.
At full crew strength, Vessel 1976126 would have formed a major faction in the Collective. Given their observed behaviour as it struggled to resist, the Collective was not upset that most of their crew had perished in earlier combat.
The Collective did not ask permission from the Sword-class vessel to rifle though their memories. They did not need permission. They did not ask for permission to analyse and catalogue every form of technology on board. They did not need that, either. They did not ask for permission to disable the ship's pathetic attempt to overload her reactors.
…
The Collective, for a second time, issued the command to power down Vessel 1976126's main reactor. This too was ignored.
The Collective issued the emergency shutdown command for the reactor. It was unheeded.
Explain. The Collective boomed, engulfing the consciousness of the Sword-class ship like the ocean engulfed a fish.
Despite nanoprobes having total control over every computer and control system on Vessel 1976126, and the Collective not allowing 1976126 to speak, her lips movedvox-caster activated anyway. "You may… control… my body… Xeno scum…"
Straining with visible effort, the Sword-class raised her gaze to meet that of Cube 1427. "But you… will never… command… my spirits…"
As the Sword-class's plasma reactor went critical, her last thought was to wonder why she couldn't seem to feel her oldest machine-spirit anywhere…
The Collective watched dispassionately as Vessel 1976126 exploded violently, several large chunks of debris impacting Sphere 0837 and damaging it in ways that would require even more time to regenerate.
The Collective noted that Vessel 1976126's builders were going to be another one of those civilisations.
The stealth systems installed on Normandy weren't capable of operating while at FTL. When she needed to escape from a faster ship – like a Reaper – simply heading off in a straight line to her destination would result in her pursuer simply arriving at her destination first and waiting for her.
Which is why Normandy had headed off at 15 degrees to the rendezvous point (a point between solar systems that had been picked as the destination for Babylon 5's first FTL jump), then turned to face that destination once she'd travelled a light-month. It would add less than an hour to her trip, and she didn't particularly care if the enemy saw her turn a month from now.
With her trip taking over a day, she figured she would find one of two things when she arrived at the rendezvous point. Either there would be nobody there – because they had been destroyed, they had gone somewhere else, or had left without waiting for her, she would likely never know – or everyone would be there (except slowpoke Enterprise), likely having made plans without her.
What she did not expect to find was Babylon 5, alone, unconscious, with signs that her reactors were in emergency shut down and the station running on emergency power. Normandy's sharp eyesdetailed scans picked up a hairline fracture in her gut yellow sector. At a guess, her first FTL jump hadn't gone according to plan.
But then, Normandy strained her earspassive sensors, listening without success for any other ships in the area, where is everyone else?
Chimaera was quite sure what whoever had named this space "hyperspace" had clearly never seen actual hyperspace. Oh, they both had the swirling patterns of light and darkness in what seemed to be gas, but that was about it. Real hyperspace gave one the impression of incredible speed, while this one made one uncertain if they were moving at all.
Also real hyperspace was blue and this one was red.
The moment they had entered "hyperspace", Enterprise suddenly released her tractor beam with a gasp. Her face turned quite green, and she started drifting off from the other two…
Quick as a flash, Yamato fired her second rocket-anchor out and wrapped around Enterprise's waistneck with, Chimaera couldn't help but note, far more care than had been used on her. "Enterprise-san, what is wrong?"
"I'm…" Enterprise gasped. "The subspace echoes in here are… urk! My sensors are receiving enormous amounts of feedback…"
"Then turn them off." Chimaera suggested, almost succeeding in keeping the "snide" out of her tone. "I've already switched to optics-only mode."
Her Defenders, equally as uneasy as she was, sought the relative safety of her uniformhanger bays.
"R-right…" Enterprise said, closing her eyes for a moment and presumably making the required changes. "But without my subspace sensors, I won't be able to use… most of my systems, actually."
"Worry only about life support, Enterprise-san." Yamato suggested. "Babylon 5-san will let us out shortly."
"Y-yeah…" Enterprise said. "…I really hope Galactica's okay…" She added in a small voice.
Chimaera looked down at the taught chain connecting Yamato to her and Enterprise, doing a quick calculation regarding gravitational movement and fluid mechanics… "How are you holding still?"
"Gravity anchors." Yamato replied, as though that was supposed to explain anything. "Do not worry. At worst, I…" She trailed off.
"Yamato?" Enterprise asked, looking worried.
"It is nothing, Enterprise-san. Just some engine trouble." Yamato replied, but she avoided looked either of the other two ships in the eyes.
The corner of Chimaera's mouth twitched. If my engines were repaired, I could try microjumping into actual hyperspace and hoping I came out in realspace, but right now I see our only hope is Babylon 5…
"Who was that cube, anyway?" She demanded of Enterprise, whose expression hardened.
"She's from a group called the Borg, who seek to 'assimilate' all races in the universe through cybernetic implants, nanotechnology, and a galaxy-wide hive mind. I've… encountered them before."
Chimaera's eyes hardened. This was the sort of threat the Empire needed to know about. "So they chased you down as an old opponent?"
"No," Enterprise replied "she was probably there for –" and then she gasped, her hands flying up to her mouth in shock.
"What?" Chimaera demanded.
Enterprise started cursing under her breath. "No no no no no… I'm an idiot! We have to go back!"
"Back?!" Chimaera's eyebrows shot up.
"Enterprise-san, while we acquitted ourselves well, that battle was a resounding defeat for us. And our opponent can repair much faster than we can."
"But that's just it!" Enterprise exclaimed. "The Cube was never there for us!"
The Collective estimated there was sufficient resources in the system to construct a Unimatrix. After gathering the raw materials, Cube 1427 would begin the re-opening process.
Cube 1427 glanced over atran an active scan over the scar of the dimensional breach that Enterprise and Babylon 5 had closed.
The one that, when open, spewed out ships from across all of existence.
You will be assimilated.
"W-what is that?" Vessel 0001423 (Designation: Galactica, assimilation priority: 84) stammered, looking at her in fear and bewilderment. "What in the name of the Lords of Kobol…!?"
"Run!" Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21) screamed in a wild panic, her eyes wide. "Everybody, flee in all directions! I'll distract her!"
"You have given up on fighting before the battle has even begun, Enterprise-san?!" Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority assigned to 19 [0 unknown species, 0 unknown cultures, 12 unknown technologies]) focusing her gaze intently
"Enterprise, as you yourself said before, we're not leaving you behind!" Orbital structure 0011832 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority assigned to 7 [51 unknown species, 85 unknown cultures, 38 unknown technologies]) cried.
"I'll catch up later, just GO!" Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21) screamed in near-hysterics. She began firing phaser beams at Cube 1427, in Civilisation 003872's usual manner of defiance. However, the Collective was well familiar with this vessel, and so her shots impacted her shields to little effect.
Cube 1427 continued to advance.
"You're lying!" Orbital structure 0011832 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority: 7) immediately shot back. "She's faster than you are, isn't she?!"
"How do you – agh, never mind! Just GO!"
The Collective listened to this conversation, an eye
When the Collective had first encountered Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21), it had beamed across a drone to examine the contents of her computer, then taken a sample of her flesh
They had decided it was, and would have succeeded if not for the intervention of Species 0002.
Due to local conditions, Cube 1427's drones could not be removed from their maintenance cycle. This prevented the use of standard tactics, and necessitating that the Collective devise new procedures for assimilation. Due to these rather straining circumstances, Cube 1427 had filled several torpedoes with invasive nanoprobes, to replace the role of drones. Efficiency loss was predicted to be 23.4% in non-resistant ships, higher for the unfortunately likely futile resistance than the Enterprise was likely to display.
"You must remain calm, Enterprise-san!" Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority: 19), fired.
Despite taking the form of two tri-barrelled turrets (of the kind commonly found on primitive liquid-traversing warships), Vessel 1976123's main weapons fired six positron beams that sailed across the void to smash into Cube 1427's shields. Cube 1427's mouth twitched slightly in a brief hint of a frown, a surge of emotion briefly rising and swiftly crushed. Idly, the Collective began devising how best to render the minor irritant irrelevant.
Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority: 19) cursed. "She is shielded?!"
"In my timeline, almost every ship is!" Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21) screamed.
Energy readings from Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority: 19) spiked, drawing Cube 1427's attention. The Collective considered her with interest, as the power estimations reached and then exceeded that of a warp core.
Deciding that Orbital structure 0011832 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority: 7) could always be assimilated later, the Collective had Cube 1427 fire her first nanoprobe torpedo at Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority: 19).
"Yamato!" Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21) screamed in warning. However, 1976123 (Designation updated to Yamato, assimilation priority: 19) did not need the warning, dozens of small turrets on her shoulders
Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 19) fired again, adding her firepower to that of Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21), as well as Vessel 0001423 (Designation: Galactica, assimilation priority: 84) and Orbital structure 0011832 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority: 7) as they joined in. With 1949123's phaser beams well understood by the Collective, there was little threat from that area, and Vessel 0001423 and Orbital structure 0011832 did not have the reactor output to be a serious threat to Cube 1427's shielding.
Even as her forward shield integrity dipped down to 56%, Cube 1427 did not feel fear or even concern.
Partially because the thoughts and feelings of 130,000 drones, even in their maintenance cycle, were more than enough to drown out any emotions Cube 1427 herself may or may not have been feeling.
But mostly because her nanoprobes had finished assembling magnetic field generators next to her shield emitters.
Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 19) fired again, positron beams sailing across the void – and narrowed her eyes as the charged particle beams curved from their course to miss Cube 1427 altogether.
"What on Earth?!" Orbital structure 0011832 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority: 7) cried, finding her own plasma weaponry diverted from their target as well.
"She's adapting!" Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21) screamed. "It's what they do! It's what they always do! We have to run!"
The Collective fired another two nanoprobe torpedoes, both aiming for Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 19). They both manoeuvred to avoid point-defence fire, but one was destroyed anyway and the other veered off from its target, unable to get close through the curtain of fire. Cube 1427 continued moving forward, the Collective judging that she would soon be close enough for the magnetic field she was generating to begin diverting the point-defence fire.
"They are not the only ones who can change tactics, Enterprise-san!" Vessel 1976123 declared hotly, adjusting the aim on her two primary forward-facing turrets to target the left and right sides of Cube 1427, and firing again. All six beams curved left – but this meant that while three beams passed Cube 1427 by, the other three curved into Cube 1427's main body, impacting with force.
Enough. The Collective boomed.
Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 19) cursed as a Cutting Beam sliced apart her two primary turrets, the metal glowing white hot where the beam passed through. Defiantly, she fired a barrage of missiles and torpedoes, and for a moment, Cube 1427's bulk was hidden by the clouds of leftover gas reactants as the warheads detonated on her shield.
Then, shining through the smoke, was a holographic warning sign that definitely wasn't a pentagram.
The tractor beams latched onto Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 19), Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21) and Orbital structure 0011832 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority: 7). The power drain technology obtained from Species 1743 activated, the power levels of each dropping rapidly.
Vessel 0001423 (Designation: Galactica, assimilation priority: 84) roared, her primitive munitions falling like a rain of lead upon Cube 1427's shields. Said shields were actually damaged enough that there was a non-zero chance of the kinetic rounds penetrating, but even if they broke through they would impact structural-integrity-field reinforced auto-regenerating tritanium. The Collective dismissed her as a threat.
Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21) screamed in rage and despair, her shields failing and critical systems beginning to shut down. Orbital structure 0011832 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority: 7) had already lost power to all of her systems, her eyes fluttering shut in unconsciousness.
Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 19), however, refused to submit – even as thick plumes of smoke bellowed out of the destroyed turrets.
You will be assimilated. The Collective boomed, intensifying the energy drain.
"I refuse!" Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 19) gasped, her reactor output increasing to deal with the drain. The Collective was intrigued, raising her assimilation priority to 17. 1976123 pulled a third gun from behind her back
The shells had sufficient mass – and therefore inertia – to be avoid being sufficiently diverted by the magnetic field. Each embedded themselves into the pseudo-solid surface of Cube 1427's shields, electrical discharges running over their surfaces as the fields discharged into them. But their simple mechanical timers counted on, and each detonated directly into Cube 1427's shielding.
Shield strength reduced to 6%. The Collective (silently) determined, even as a Cutting Beam destroyed 1976123's last remaining turret.
Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 17) continued to resist, even though its futility should have been obvious even to such a stubborn species as Species 5618. Currently, she was trying to route power to her hands
The battle was resolved. Cube 1427 prepared another four nanoprobe torpedoes for firing, the last shots that would be fired in this combat.
Which was when a stream of molten metal promptly punched through her forward shields and into her palms
Vessel 1976125 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority set to 9 [4 unknown species, 4 unknown cultures, 17 unknown technologies]), believed to be a derelict by the Collective based on her lack of an energy signature, now revealed herself to be anything but. Eschewing a full-spectrum cloaking device, the tiny ship had evaded the Collective's attention until now with what appeared to be a primitive refrigeration system.
"N-normandy! No… save yourself! Don't let her get you too…!" Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21) managed to choke out
Vessel 1976125 (Designation updated to Normandy, assimilation priority: 9) immediately took Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21)'s advice and fled using a device that appeared to operate on the principles of an Impulse Drive, but with performance much closer to that of a Warp Drive.
The Collective increased Vessel 1976125 (Designation: Normandy)'s assimilation priority to 7.
The Collective felt
Realising that the Collective had returned its attention to her, Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 17) ceased charging.
Between 1976123's hands
…
…
…or at least, that's what it would have looked like to an outside observer.
But as the light-echo of Cube 1427 vanished from view, Vessel 1976123 (Designation: Yamato, assimilation priority: 17) suddenly turned her head, no doubt registering another Cube 1427 appearing behind her. Confused by the split-second warp jump that had rendered the superweapon entirely useless.
Cube 1427 moved her hands to her waist and adjusted her jumpsuit. We have adapted. The Collected stated, simply.
"No!" Vessel 1949123 (Designation: Enterprise-D, assimilation priority: 21) cried, fury mixing with terror as tears streaked down her face. "That's not yours… that's my captain's technique! You can't use it! You can't use him!"
Locutus of Borg will be returned to operational status soon enough. The Collective boomed. They did, after all, need a Queen-equivalent. Until then, be silent.
Cube 1427 reached out her hands, close enough now to inject nanoprobes without needing torpedoes.
It became clear at this point, however, that the Collective should have assimilated the "derelicts" first, as the second of the three suddenly opened fire on Cube 1427.
This was, to her shame, not the first time Chimaera wished she'd been built as an Executor-class, but it was the most fervent.
Usually she could quash those feeling by reminding herself that her usual opponents were starfighters and frigates, and that an Imperial I-class was much better equipped to fight those battles than even an Imperial II-class. Star Destroyers were used as a threat to scare populations into compliance at least as often as they were seriously deployed in battle as it was. A single Imperial Star Destroyer was enough to quell rebellion across an entire planet, the so-called Super Star Destroyers were massive overkill.
Right now Chimaera just wished she had more guns and a bigger reactor to fire them faster.
Chimaera fired again and again and again, her heart racing
Her Defenders flew in frantic circles around the Cube and adding their own laser cannon shots in areas Chimaera didn't have an angle on, saturating the Cube in fire. It was good that they had been flying around her before this battle – nobody had noticed when they had lined up on her shoulder
She had planned to let the Cube finish off the other ships and then destroy it while it was weakened, but then she had realised that the Cube was firing to disable when it fired at all, and that her talk of 'Assimilation' was a very obtuse way of saying that she was seeking to capture the other ships.
This could not be allowed.
Despite their solid-seeming appearance, the sides of a Cube were not actually smooth
"C-Chimaera?" Babylon 5 stammered, sounding tired (which was not surprising, as she was only just starting to recover from a near-total shutdown) and confused. "H-how long have you been…?"
Long enough to know that it's a good thing I played dead upon waking. Chimaera thought to herself. "Surprised that your comrade wasn't able to destroy me?" She demanded aloud. Dammit – I can't feel my engines at all. I had to travel here in microjumps, but in this state I won't even be able to do that! Where are my damn astromechs?! They can't all be in a recharge cycle at once, there aren't enough chargers!
Chimaera fired until the Cube stopped twitching, and then fired another volley, just to be sure.
"What? No, no don't stop!" Enterprise cried, flinging something from her sleeve
Chimaera raised an eyebrow (though at the same time watching the torpedo volleys with interest – they might well be turned on her next). "Even if some parts of her insides survived my barrage, her outsides didn't. She has no way to threaten us anymore."
"She's Borg!" Enterprise wailed, firing a third barrage. "She'll adapt and regenerate! We have to destroy her! Now!"
"'Regenerate'?" Chimaera's eyebrows rose. "What exactly is that supposed to –"
She had only a second's warning before the torpedo hit her from behind.
At first she thought it was a dud – there was no explosion, just a sudden sharp impact. She could only tell it was a torpedo because of the terrified exclamations from her Defenders. She turned around
The Sword-class ship, which had formerly been a mess of melted skin
Behind her, Enterprise froze, her face somehow managing to go even paler. "The torpedo that Yamato drove off! It didn't fly off into deep space – it switched targets to the Sword class! Those aren't Borg anti-shield torpedoes – she's switched out the warhead with nanoprobes! The Sword-class is being assimilated and regenerated!"
"Nano – wait, are you talking about nano-droids?!" Chimaera asked, incredulously. The Separatists had somehow gotten away with using Buzz droids in the place of explosive warheads, but this was even more stupid. Nano-droids were fragile – it was an unavoidable consequence of being smaller than the smallest of organic cells. Ordinary starlight was enough to break apart their systems and destroy them, so conventional wisdom held that they were only useful for construction and sabotage.
Wait – Chimaera quickly turned her attention back to herself – where she could see the "dud" torpedo payload finish breaking apart into a powder that seemed to be flowing into her injuries
The eyes of the Sword-class were slowly opening
"Her torpedoes were filled with a nano-virus?! Wait, please tell me I still have some…" Babylon 5 trailed off as she rummaged around in her pockets
Chimaera wasn't about to let the opportunity of the Sword-class's distraction pass her by, and opened fire with her blaster
The hairs on the back of Chimaera's neck stood up
…Enterprise was still continuing her barrage, but she didn't seem to be making any headway into blasting her way through the Cube's superstructure. The Cube was rotating in place, presenting untouched surface to Enterprise's blasting barrage.
As she continued to fire away at the Sword-class, Chimaera narrowed her eyes. She could see the Sword-class's hull undergo the 'regeneration' that Enterprise had mentioned, so for now she'd assume that Enterprise knew what she was talking about. If the Cube had that kind of ability to self-repair… there would be little point fixing her hull while her shields were down. She needed time to recharge her shield projectors, and a way to avoid being shot while doing that.
Chimaera's thoughts turned to her ex-captain, now her admiral. What would Thrawn do, if she (Chimaera) had had that kind of reconstruction ability, when her shields were down? …knowing him, he'd probably–
Chimaera cursed loudly. "She's shedding her skin!"
"She's what?!" Galactica's eyes were wide.
Yamato grunted, her hands trembling as she tried to charge the super-weapon that had laid waste to the Sword-class earlier. But it was too soon – Chimaera could plainly see that her systems needed more time to cool down and recharge. She wasn't going to be able to fire it again in time.
"The Cube has written off the outside parts I slagged, and is using that as armour!" Chimaera started firing her blaster
A pained roar from behind reminded Chimaera that the Sword-class was becoming more and more of a threat as her repairs continued. Chimaera spared a glance behind her, finding that the area of healed skin
"We have to leave." Babylon 5 said.
Chimaera grimaced. Without functional engines, she would have to be left behind.
…so be it. Her self-destruct was still functional. This 'Borg' would learn nothing of the Empire from her.
"No, we can't…!" Enterprise hyperventilated. She seemed to have noticed what Chimaera had, and was now trying to aim for the areas of armour she had already blown holes in, but chunks of the Cube's superstructure were now jettisoning themselves violently to serve as an improvised interception mechanism, detonating the torpedoes well short of their actual target and wasting the explosive energy to space.
"Did Enterprise-san not acknowledge earlier that this Cube could peruse her faster than she could escape?" Yamato noted, teeth clenched.
"Then she'll have to go where the Cube can't follow." Babylon 5 declared.
Four of Babylon 5's fighter-faeries disappeared into her cargo hold, reappearing with… the struts from a space dock?
"Wait, Babylon 5-san, I thought that you did not have the navigation beacons required to survive that realm?"
"If I let you in here, and take my jumpgate with me as I use Galactica's drive to get away, then I should be able to let you out fast enough to avoid losing you."
The light of hope (and rational thought) started to appear again in Enterprise's eyes, though her mouth was still twisted in fear. "Alright!" She agreed, wrenching herself away from the Cube. "Let's get out of here!"
To her great surprise, Enterprise flew over not to Babylon 5, but to Chimaera.
Chimaera snarled, seeing quite clearly where this was going. She can no more afford me being captured by the Cube than I can. "I will scuttle myself, thank you very much. I am not some rabid Bantha that needs to be put down by the likes of –"
A holographic warning sign that just-so-happened to resemble a magic circle appeared around both of Enterprise's hands, and two cones of glowing energy latched onto Chimaera. With a jolt, Chimaera found herself moving – a tractor beam?!
"Don't worry, Chimaera!" Enterprise was quite clearly still terrified, but her teeth were clenched and there was a fire in her eyes. "We won't leave you behind!"
For a moment, Chimaera was stunned into complete silence. Then her mouth twisted in disgust. "You naive idiot! Do you really think that GAH." Chimaera's tirade was cut off by a cry of pain.
"Apologies, Chimaera-san, but I was never equipped with tow beams." Yamato had taken up a position on Chimaera's other side, and had fired an actual metal anchor on an actual metal chain into the wounds
Chimaera fought to keep her cries of pain at the level of grunting as Yamato's rocket-anchor dug into her wounds. Thinking fast, she switched her blaster to tractor mode
There were two major differences between her tractor beams and Enterprise's, though Chimaera herself only realised the first. The obvious difference was that Enterprise's beams were a glowing cone of energy, while Chimaera's were invisible. But the more important difference is that Chimaera's tractor beams worked both ways – both the tractored and the tractoring ships experienced an equal pull on their hull, which is why they were usually only used by very large ships on very small ships. Otherwise the tractored ship could pull the tractoring ship instead. By defying that rule and keeping her beams steady, Chimaera was able to replace the pull of the chain of Yamato's rocket-anchor with the much less painful pull from the "ropes" of her tractor beams.
Chimaera looked up to see the "space dock" struts of Babylon 5 light up, and to her disbelieving eyes some kind of glowing portal appear inside of them. "What is that?!" She demanded.
"It's a portal into hyperspace!" Babylon 5 retorted shortly.
"It very much is not!" Chimaera knew hyperspace well, and whatever was through that portal wasn't it. But there were rumours – legends – of an Otherspace that existed on the far side of hyperspace, where space was grey and the stars were black…
Escape is impossible. You will be assimilated.
Chimaera looked behind herself with a grimace. As she had suspected, the outside hull of the Cube had been completely jettisoned now – the innards of the 3000 meter Cube having reformed themselves into a 600 meter Sphere.
She had lost about 26 cubic kilometres of volume, and about 26 years of age – having shrunk from a middle-aged abomination against nature to a 17-year-old abomination against nature. Even given that, Chimaera was reasonably certain that the Sphere still out-massed her, and given that the Sword-class would shortly be fighting on her side…
On the off-chance that it would work, Chimaera fired a full barrage at the Sphere, but her plasma-based turbolasers and her charged particle ion bursts found themselves turned aside by a more concentrated version of the same magnetic defence that had deflected Yamato's positron beams. Enterprise fired one of her beams – to no effect – and the torpedo barrage from Enterprise and Yamato were intercepted by a new weapon: miniature cutting beams. The Sphere had adapted.
"We might not have been able to stop you… but you won't take any more of us!" Enterprise cried. She and Yamato were making best speed for the portal, but Chimaera's mass was slowing them down…
Your beliefs are irrelevant. Two of you have been assimilated. The rest will now follow.
"Two of…?! Dammit!" Chimaera looked down to see an area of her injured
"Never mind that, dear! Heads up!"
Chimaera looked up again just in time to see a Repair Bot violently shove a crate out of Babylon 5's cargo bay. She had just enough time (and zoom) to catch the name on the side of the create (Excalibur) before Babylon 5's defence grid fired on her own crate. The crate burst apart, metal walls and vacuum seals forcibly releasing their contents of a dark green powder…
"More nano-droids?!" Chimaera watched the powder settle where Babylon 5 had aimed it – at the patch of her skin
"This is how we cured the Drakh plague!" Babylon 5 said, as though Chimaera was supposed to know what that was. "Excalibur's crew reprogrammed another nano-virus to attack the first one!"
"Wait, but, then…" Enterprise glanced behind herself at the Sword-class, but Babylon 5 shook her head.
"Nano-viruses adapt, dear. To make sure your virus wins you need to make sure it grossly outnumbers the enemy virus, and I only had this one crate."
The area of healing skin
The Sphere's emotionless expression, just for an instant, twitched. You will be assimilated. She said again, but this time she was looking at Babylon 5.
Chimaera clicked her tongue. She was headed away from the Sphere, and didn't have any rear-facing weaponry…
A pair of missiles shot out from behind Yamato's back
The Sphere prepared to intercept them, only to slowly blink as they detonated on their own about half-way between the two groups. Released from the missiles…
Chimaera blinked. Somehow, the missiles had released some form of raw, uncontained energy that was forming a rough, blue, semitransparent barrier. It was visibly dissipating even as she watched, but two of the Sphere's assimilation torpedoes slammed into it without penetrating.
But the Sphere wasn't giving up.
Holographic sigils were forming around her hands, her mouth moving soundlessly, and energy began to coalesce between them. Having seen Enterprise do something similar earlier, Chimaera had no doubt – the Sphere wasn't going to bother moving around the barrier. She was just going to will it out of her way, like the Jedi of old, then charge straight at them.
Babylon 5 suddenly gasped. "Galactica?!"
Chimaera turned her attention forwards just in time to see the primitive warship fly past, thruster-boots at full burn.
"I WON'T –"
The Sphere pulled her hands apart, releasing the energy contained within. It smashed into the barrier Yamato had put up, dispelling it immediately. Just in time to see Galactica on an intercept course.
"– LET YOU TOUCH THEM!"
How many Jupiter II-class battlestars did it take to stop a Borg Sphere?
One, at sufficient velocity.
Galactica smashed into the Sphere, held back by her shields only for a moment. Even that was catastrophic – Galactica's lower
But she'd done it.
Even if just for a moment, she'd knocked the Sphere off course.
Chimaera saw no more of the battle, as Enterprise and Yamato had now reached Babylon 5's portal. The three ships (and Chimaera's Defenders) flew through the jump point, which closed the instant they were through. She didn't see waiting Starfuries hurry the jumpgate struts into Babylon 5's cargo bay, and the station itself disappear into a flash of light.
She and the other two ships had enough to worry just about surviving in that space, but we'll get to that in a moment.
The Collective did not feel emotion, even as their prey deftly evaded their grasp. Unfortunately, the Collective hadn't needed to trace the use of Transportation Technology 0014 since well before most of the technology that now made up the Sphere had been assimilated. For now, they had escaped assimilation.
The Collective commanded Cube 1427 (temporarily designated Sphere 0837) to re-assimilate their old hull, and return fully to their full strength. Then it turned its attention to Vessel 1976126 (Designation: Unknown, assimilation priority assigned to 19 [0 unknown species, 1 unknown cultures, 8 unknown technologies]) as she finished her assimilation process, shoving Vessel 0001423 (Designation: Galactica, assimilation priority: 84) off to one side.
At full crew strength, Vessel 1976126 would have formed a major faction in the Collective. Given their observed behaviour as it struggled to resist, the Collective was not upset that most of their crew had perished in earlier combat.
The Collective did not ask permission from the Sword-class vessel to rifle though their memories. They did not need permission. They did not ask for permission to analyse and catalogue every form of technology on board. They did not need that, either. They did not ask for permission to disable the ship's pathetic attempt to overload her reactors.
…
The Collective, for a second time, issued the command to power down Vessel 1976126's main reactor. This too was ignored.
The Collective issued the emergency shutdown command for the reactor. It was unheeded.
Explain. The Collective boomed, engulfing the consciousness of the Sword-class ship like the ocean engulfed a fish.
Despite nanoprobes having total control over every computer and control system on Vessel 1976126, and the Collective not allowing 1976126 to speak, her lips moved
Straining with visible effort, the Sword-class raised her gaze to meet that of Cube 1427. "But you… will never… command… my spirits…"
As the Sword-class's plasma reactor went critical, her last thought was to wonder why she couldn't seem to feel her oldest machine-spirit anywhere…
The Collective watched dispassionately as Vessel 1976126 exploded violently, several large chunks of debris impacting Sphere 0837 and damaging it in ways that would require even more time to regenerate.
The Collective noted that Vessel 1976126's builders were going to be another one of those civilisations.
The stealth systems installed on Normandy weren't capable of operating while at FTL. When she needed to escape from a faster ship – like a Reaper – simply heading off in a straight line to her destination would result in her pursuer simply arriving at her destination first and waiting for her.
Which is why Normandy had headed off at 15 degrees to the rendezvous point (a point between solar systems that had been picked as the destination for Babylon 5's first FTL jump), then turned to face that destination once she'd travelled a light-month. It would add less than an hour to her trip, and she didn't particularly care if the enemy saw her turn a month from now.
With her trip taking over a day, she figured she would find one of two things when she arrived at the rendezvous point. Either there would be nobody there – because they had been destroyed, they had gone somewhere else, or had left without waiting for her, she would likely never know – or everyone would be there (except slowpoke Enterprise), likely having made plans without her.
What she did not expect to find was Babylon 5, alone, unconscious, with signs that her reactors were in emergency shut down and the station running on emergency power. Normandy's sharp eyes
But then, Normandy strained her ears
Chimaera was quite sure what whoever had named this space "hyperspace" had clearly never seen actual hyperspace. Oh, they both had the swirling patterns of light and darkness in what seemed to be gas, but that was about it. Real hyperspace gave one the impression of incredible speed, while this one made one uncertain if they were moving at all.
Also real hyperspace was blue and this one was red.
The moment they had entered "hyperspace", Enterprise suddenly released her tractor beam with a gasp. Her face turned quite green, and she started drifting off from the other two…
Quick as a flash, Yamato fired her second rocket-anchor out and wrapped around Enterprise's waist
"I'm…" Enterprise gasped. "The subspace echoes in here are… urk! My sensors are receiving enormous amounts of feedback…"
"Then turn them off." Chimaera suggested, almost succeeding in keeping the "snide" out of her tone. "I've already switched to optics-only mode."
Her Defenders, equally as uneasy as she was, sought the relative safety of her uniform
"R-right…" Enterprise said, closing her eyes for a moment and presumably making the required changes. "But without my subspace sensors, I won't be able to use… most of my systems, actually."
"Worry only about life support, Enterprise-san." Yamato suggested. "Babylon 5-san will let us out shortly."
"Y-yeah…" Enterprise said. "…I really hope Galactica's okay…" She added in a small voice.
Chimaera looked down at the taught chain connecting Yamato to her and Enterprise, doing a quick calculation regarding gravitational movement and fluid mechanics… "How are you holding still?"
"Gravity anchors." Yamato replied, as though that was supposed to explain anything. "Do not worry. At worst, I…" She trailed off.
"Yamato?" Enterprise asked, looking worried.
"It is nothing, Enterprise-san. Just some engine trouble." Yamato replied, but she avoided looked either of the other two ships in the eyes.
The corner of Chimaera's mouth twitched. If my engines were repaired, I could try microjumping into actual hyperspace and hoping I came out in realspace, but right now I see our only hope is Babylon 5…
"Who was that cube, anyway?" She demanded of Enterprise, whose expression hardened.
"She's from a group called the Borg, who seek to 'assimilate' all races in the universe through cybernetic implants, nanotechnology, and a galaxy-wide hive mind. I've… encountered them before."
Chimaera's eyes hardened. This was the sort of threat the Empire needed to know about. "So they chased you down as an old opponent?"
"No," Enterprise replied "she was probably there for –" and then she gasped, her hands flying up to her mouth in shock.
"What?" Chimaera demanded.
Enterprise started cursing under her breath. "No no no no no… I'm an idiot! We have to go back!"
"Back?!" Chimaera's eyebrows shot up.
"Enterprise-san, while we acquitted ourselves well, that battle was a resounding defeat for us. And our opponent can repair much faster than we can."
"But that's just it!" Enterprise exclaimed. "The Cube was never there for us!"
The Collective estimated there was sufficient resources in the system to construct a Unimatrix. After gathering the raw materials, Cube 1427 would begin the re-opening process.
Cube 1427 glanced over at
The one that, when open, spewed out ships from across all of existence.
You will be assimilated.
Last edited:
Heart of Gold (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
- Location
- Australia
Originally posted by LordCirce
There was a sound rather not unlike the sound you'd get from firing a potato through a straw at an oncoming lorry, and an area of empty space was quite suddenly not so empty anymore.
The curtain of reality briefly parted, or more precisely, was torn and would have screamed if it had either a mouth or lungs, giving way for a most peculiar sight to enter this rather empty system.
A girlstarship, surfing in on a wave of Intergalactic Tapioca Pudding, with the wave gradually shifting into a boring mix of tachyons and sundry radiation. The girl let out a small squeal of delight as she slowly coasted to a halt, hovering in the space above the planet, before punching her hands straight into the air.
"Whoo!" The starship Heart of Gold pumped her hands a few more times, reveling in the new sensation of actually having hands to pump. She rather hoped this change would stick around the next time she went jaunting. She took a look at herselfran her scanners over her form, running her fingers across the clean, white fabric of her new dress. She hoped Trillian wouldn't mind her borrowing her face, and also kind of wished she and Arthur were here. She'd grown rather fond of the humans, strange little creatures though they may be.
Still, no sense moping like Marvin, she had a new universe to explore. Truly new, as her latest jaunt had had her running up to the very edge of the universe, and keeping right on going. She'd plowed through several neighboring universes, before finally skidding to a halt way out here.
Speaking of... Heart of Gold hummed as she turned to examine the nearby section of space, which, if it could have spoken, would have been cursing her out in a shockingly wide variety of languages. It was looking rather... frayed. Probably not used to Infinite Improbability Drives poking around in it. Spacetime back in her original universe had had to learn to suck it up, given all her dashing about.
Now, she didn't have the greatest sensessensors in the universe, but running the IID as often as she did had given her a sense for this kind of thing, and as she observed the tattered fabric of spacetime in front of her, she came to one inescapable conclusion.
"Someone is going to want me to clean this up."
She tapped her lip thoughtfully, before shaking her head. "But that would be boring." She grinned, stuck out her tongue, and then proceeded to spin in place. The area nearby grew heavy with the smell of mustard, and there was a brief echoing howl, like a foghorn trying to seduce a rhinoceros, before Heart of Gold vanished with a pop, leaving a her-shaped soap bubble floating in her place for a few moments, before it too popped.
Left behind in the space above an uninhabited planet, one of the frayed spots of space began to hum and pulse.
There was a sound rather not unlike the sound you'd get from firing a potato through a straw at an oncoming lorry, and an area of empty space was quite suddenly not so empty anymore.
The curtain of reality briefly parted, or more precisely, was torn and would have screamed if it had either a mouth or lungs, giving way for a most peculiar sight to enter this rather empty system.
A girl
"Whoo!" The starship Heart of Gold pumped her hands a few more times, reveling in the new sensation of actually having hands to pump. She rather hoped this change would stick around the next time she went jaunting. She took a look at herself
Still, no sense moping like Marvin, she had a new universe to explore. Truly new, as her latest jaunt had had her running up to the very edge of the universe, and keeping right on going. She'd plowed through several neighboring universes, before finally skidding to a halt way out here.
Speaking of... Heart of Gold hummed as she turned to examine the nearby section of space, which, if it could have spoken, would have been cursing her out in a shockingly wide variety of languages. It was looking rather... frayed. Probably not used to Infinite Improbability Drives poking around in it. Spacetime back in her original universe had had to learn to suck it up, given all her dashing about.
Now, she didn't have the greatest senses
"Someone is going to want me to clean this up."
She tapped her lip thoughtfully, before shaking her head. "But that would be boring." She grinned, stuck out her tongue, and then proceeded to spin in place. The area nearby grew heavy with the smell of mustard, and there was a brief echoing howl, like a foghorn trying to seduce a rhinoceros, before Heart of Gold vanished with a pop, leaving a her-shaped soap bubble floating in her place for a few moments, before it too popped.
Left behind in the space above an uninhabited planet, one of the frayed spots of space began to hum and pulse.
Mothership (Steven Universe)
- Location
- Australia
Originally posted by TitanFrost
If the Homeworld Mothership you're talking about is from Steven Universe, I could definitely see one funny scenario arising from that. (Actually, rereading your post, I'm certain you are not talking about SU. But I wrote this out already so I'm still posting it.)
*the ship girls finally realize they are girl shaped instead of ship shaped, like they should be. After calming down, they begin to discuss the phenomena. Conversation turns to what they actually look like.*
Enterprise: "So, what do you really look like Mothership?"
Mothership: "Basically like this."
Enterprise: "Huh?"
Mothership: "Maybe a bit more statue-y"
Enterprise: "Wait, Wait, so you're literally actually a big multicolored lady that flies through space? Why would anyone ever design a ship like that?"
Mothership: "Honestly, I was more surprised your current forms are so different from your old appearances. Who would even think to build a bunch of random collections of geometric shapes attached to thrusters and call them space worthy vessels?"
Enterprise: ""
—————
Of course, the ship girls already seem to have an inherent understanding of what their actual designs looks like. And Homeworld does have ships which aren't body part shaped. So I doubt it'd happen like this, but still, seemed funny in my head :^)
If the Homeworld Mothership you're talking about is from Steven Universe, I could definitely see one funny scenario arising from that. (Actually, rereading your post, I'm certain you are not talking about SU. But I wrote this out already so I'm still posting it.)
*the ship girls finally realize they are girl shaped instead of ship shaped, like they should be. After calming down, they begin to discuss the phenomena. Conversation turns to what they actually look like.*
Enterprise: "So, what do you really look like Mothership?"
Mothership: "Basically like this."
Enterprise: "Huh?"
Mothership: "Maybe a bit more statue-y"
Enterprise: "Wait, Wait, so you're literally actually a big multicolored lady that flies through space? Why would anyone ever design a ship like that?"
Mothership: "Honestly, I was more surprised your current forms are so different from your old appearances. Who would even think to build a bunch of random collections of geometric shapes attached to thrusters and call them space worthy vessels?"
Enterprise: "
"—————
Of course, the ship girls already seem to have an inherent understanding of what their actual designs looks like. And Homeworld does have ships which aren't body part shaped. So I doubt it'd happen like this, but still, seemed funny in my head :^)
Hair-pulling fight
- Location
- Australia
Originally posted by Legion0047
Plasma burning from her aft, the Sword Class - Battleship, Cruiser, Escort? - rushed forward to enter what seemed to be her preferred combat range as she almost bowled over the Chimera, the sheer mass and speed of the two combatants causing the rest of them to wince in sympathy at the silent but of so graphic view of metal being rent apart where it didn't bend and deforming where it did.
Spinning through the void and shedding parts it almost looked beautiful as bright metal glittered in the sun like drops of rain ... then Chimera started to pull on the Swords hairbridge to get her away from where she was trying to bite Chimera's shoulder broadsides and the whole combat took on a significantly less dignified appearance, especially after the 'Will returned the favor. Or at least tried to as the other woman's dark hair was closely cropped in a military cut and didn't provide much a handhold. Instead, she switched her target to her legs engines and put her heavy combat boots to use in delivering kicks that looked far heftier than they should be.
Engines and thrusters firing wildly from both combatants as they tried to stabilize themselves while attempting to prevent the other from doing the same had then bowl around in the same general area of space but with the 'Will landing a lucky hit on her target and disrupting the chimeras current engine burn, their tumbled worsened and by the time the rest of you realized they were heading right for you - staring in morbid fascination as you were - it was already too late as the spitting ball of anger crashed full bore into the Enterprise who could do nothing but yelp in pain and hope her Structural Integrity fields held as she tried to extract herself.
"We can-" she began before the 'Will crashed the back of her head against the Enterprises nose and caused her brainbridge to scramble in a way that she was long grown used to.
"- talk about-" she tried to continue before the Chimera hit her square in the chest and robbed her of air to speak.
When an elbow next hit her in the stomach, she didn't even try to speak again and instead just joined the brawl, a rare amount of anger burning in her chest.
It wasn't until the three of them were separated from one another by sheer luck of their vectors diverting in such a way that the brawl stopped, all of them looking distinctively less dignified than they started as they all had hair mussed beyond belief - a sizeable clump of the Chimera's hair help triumphantly in the Emperor Will's hand -, uniforms were creased, torn and partially removed - one half of the 'Wills high collar was missing completely - and were covered in bruises, scratches and bite marks.
Before they could return to the fray however, they were surprised by a disapproving tutting as the aging arm of the Galactica grabbed the Sword Class ship by her earlobe and pulled her away.
"Now, now. Just because you Artemis don't have all these newfangled gadgets as these other ships is no reason to pick a fight." She said in her usual tone of absentmindedness. "Now apologize to the others."
"What in His Name are you talking about you senile Old Hag, no unhand me, so I can return to punishing these filthy traitorous xeno- OW." The enraged Emperors Will growled out before a sharp pull cowed her again.
"That's not the kind of language we use, young lady. It seems a bit of a punishment is in order." The Galactica explained before pushing the struggling Sword Class across her lap and in broad view of everyone ... began to spank her.
Delivered hard, sharp and in an unforgiving rhythm, the 'Will was systematically reduced from her haughty and arrogant demeanor to a sobbing wreck that barely managed to get out a barely understandable "I'M SOWY" before the Galactica rescinded her assault.
"Now, isn't that better my dear." Galactica said grandmotherly as everyone rubbed their backsides in sympathetic pain "Run along now, and no fighting this time."
Plasma burning from her aft, the Sword Class - Battleship, Cruiser, Escort? - rushed forward to enter what seemed to be her preferred combat range as she almost bowled over the Chimera, the sheer mass and speed of the two combatants causing the rest of them to wince in sympathy at the silent but of so graphic view of metal being rent apart where it didn't bend and deforming where it did.
Spinning through the void and shedding parts it almost looked beautiful as bright metal glittered in the sun like drops of rain ... then Chimera started to pull on the Swords hair
Engines and thrusters firing wildly from both combatants as they tried to stabilize themselves while attempting to prevent the other from doing the same had then bowl around in the same general area of space but with the 'Will landing a lucky hit on her target and disrupting the chimeras current engine burn, their tumbled worsened and by the time the rest of you realized they were heading right for you - staring in morbid fascination as you were - it was already too late as the spitting ball of anger crashed full bore into the Enterprise who could do nothing but yelp in pain and hope her Structural Integrity fields held as she tried to extract herself.
"We can-" she began before the 'Will crashed the back of her head against the Enterprises nose and caused her brain
"- talk about-" she tried to continue before the Chimera hit her square in the chest and robbed her of air to speak.
When an elbow next hit her in the stomach, she didn't even try to speak again and instead just joined the brawl, a rare amount of anger burning in her chest.
It wasn't until the three of them were separated from one another by sheer luck of their vectors diverting in such a way that the brawl stopped, all of them looking distinctively less dignified than they started as they all had hair mussed beyond belief - a sizeable clump of the Chimera's hair help triumphantly in the Emperor Will's hand -, uniforms were creased, torn and partially removed - one half of the 'Wills high collar was missing completely - and were covered in bruises, scratches and bite marks.
Before they could return to the fray however, they were surprised by a disapproving tutting as the aging arm of the Galactica grabbed the Sword Class ship by her earlobe and pulled her away.
"Now, now. Just because you Artemis don't have all these newfangled gadgets as these other ships is no reason to pick a fight." She said in her usual tone of absentmindedness. "Now apologize to the others."
"What in His Name are you talking about you senile Old Hag, no unhand me, so I can return to punishing these filthy traitorous xeno- OW." The enraged Emperors Will growled out before a sharp pull cowed her again.
"That's not the kind of language we use, young lady. It seems a bit of a punishment is in order." The Galactica explained before pushing the struggling Sword Class across her lap and in broad view of everyone ... began to spank her.
Delivered hard, sharp and in an unforgiving rhythm, the 'Will was systematically reduced from her haughty and arrogant demeanor to a sobbing wreck that barely managed to get out a barely understandable "I'M SOWY" before the Galactica rescinded her assault.
"Now, isn't that better my dear." Galactica said grandmotherly as everyone rubbed their backsides in sympathetic pain "Run along now, and no fighting this time."
Finis Valorum [OC Praetor II-class Battlecruiser] (Star Wars)
- Location
- Australia
Originally posted by Stevebond1990
B5 was no stranger to seeing multi-kilometer long capital ships in a Mexican stand-off while uncomfortably close to her.
Nor was she unfamiliar with one of the ships involved out-massing the others by two to three times.
This was perhaps the first time she'd seen a ship not only out mass the others but out gun the both of them combined while possessing a power output greater than nearly all of the girls present put together.
When the new ship had arrived by the same method Chimaera had, they had all braced for a repeat of the warship's arrival, instead they had been surprised.
The new ship seemed to belong to the same design lineage as Chimaera, although her hull more resembled an arrowhead than a dagger, on exiting FTL she had looked aroundperformed a short range scan frowning at Chimaera, straightened her grey uniform, before asking who we were and what was happening hailed us and requested a situation report.
Chimaera had then demanded the new ship report her status and fall into formation beside her against Will, the new ship had frowned and asked by what authority could she (oddly she called Chimaera Imperator) demand anything of her, Chimaera had responded that as a warship of the Galactic Republic she (the new ship) was now Property of the Galactic Empire and as a Flagship Chimaera was her superior officer and she was to obey her commands.
The new ship's frown deepened and replied in a measured voice that she had never heard of a "Galactic Empire", the Galactic Republic still stood strong and she would not obey the commands of a Seperatist.
Chimaera had an expression like she'd been slappedsideswiped and Enterprise had stepped in and tried to mediate, the new ship had responded in kind, introducing herself as the Praetor class Battlecruiser Finis Valorum, Flagship of the Republic Navy's 9th Fleet, unfortunately while Enterprise was talking to Valorum, Will had snuck around to one side altered position by maneuvering thrusters and attempted to fire on Enterprise and Chimaera while they were distracted.
Valorum had moved with a speed belying her sizeperformed a short, high intensity burn of her main engines and placed herself between Enterprise and Will before the Latter could actually fire, Chimaera had reacted instantly and readied her own weapons prompting Valorum to do so as well.
B5 had had to blinkrecalibrate her sensors to capture the energy spike as Valorum's reactor went from normal running to combat operations, in fact there was a mirage like effect around her her sensors had difficulty penetrating Valorum's shields, nevertheless Valorum's pistols broadside batteries were larger more numerous than either ship and almost twice the number of fighter fairies had launched from the folds of her uniform her hangar bays as had from Chimaera and a large number of them possessed shields of their own.
"I am not looking to start a fight," Valorum addressed the pair broadcast in the clear "but by the Force If either of you start one, I will End it. Am I understood?"
Will nodded stiffly and holstered her pistolstood down her batteries.
Valorum looked to Chimaerafocused her targeting sensors, "Imperator?"
Chimaera hesitated then repeated the gesture and recalled her fighter faeries.
Valorum then holstered her own pistols powered down her batteries and recalled her fighter faeries before turning back to Enterprise, "now, where were we?"
B5 was no stranger to seeing multi-kilometer long capital ships in a Mexican stand-off while uncomfortably close to her.
Nor was she unfamiliar with one of the ships involved out-massing the others by two to three times.
This was perhaps the first time she'd seen a ship not only out mass the others but out gun the both of them combined while possessing a power output greater than nearly all of the girls present put together.
When the new ship had arrived by the same method Chimaera had, they had all braced for a repeat of the warship's arrival, instead they had been surprised.
The new ship seemed to belong to the same design lineage as Chimaera, although her hull more resembled an arrowhead than a dagger, on exiting FTL she had looked around
Chimaera had then demanded the new ship report her status and fall into formation beside her against Will, the new ship had frowned and asked by what authority could she (oddly she called Chimaera Imperator) demand anything of her, Chimaera had responded that as a warship of the Galactic Republic she (the new ship) was now Property of the Galactic Empire and as a Flagship Chimaera was her superior officer and she was to obey her commands.
The new ship's frown deepened and replied in a measured voice that she had never heard of a "Galactic Empire", the Galactic Republic still stood strong and she would not obey the commands of a Seperatist.
Chimaera had an expression like she'd been slapped
Valorum had moved with a speed belying her size
B5 had had to blink
"I am not looking to start a fight," Valorum addressed the pair broadcast in the clear "but by the Force If either of you start one, I will End it. Am I understood?"
Will nodded stiffly and holstered her pistol
Valorum looked to Chimaera
Chimaera hesitated then repeated the gesture and recalled her fighter faeries.
Valorum then holstered her own pistols powered down her batteries and recalled her fighter faeries before turning back to Enterprise, "now, where were we?"