While conducting a scientific investigation an encounter with a long forgotten enemy sends Ranger John Crichton into an unknown region of space where he must confront threats old and new. While back home a dark spectre from the past returns to plunge the galaxy into a new war.
The Lone Ranger (Babylon 5/Farscape)
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Chapter One
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- South Wales, United Kingdom
The Lone Ranger
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters and universes that I am about to mangle around and mash together for my own demented author amusement - sadly all Babylon 5 and Farscape characters and concepts remain the property of Babylonian Productions Inc, Warner Brothers, the Jim Henson Company and Hallmark Entertainment respectively - I am merely borrowing them and make absolutely no profit from there use. As a result, please keep the legal attack dogs - also known as lawyers - firmly muzzled and on a leash as I have no money to give to anyone.
Authors Note: This story is a complete reboot and reimagining of one of my oldest fanfic stories On The Wings of Destiny that has been sat gathering electronic dust for nearly twenty years by this point. As with the original story this is a fusion crossover between Babylon 5 and Farscape as there is plenty of room for the various civilizations to exist and never encounter one another until now. I admit I stumbled across an old notebook with the details of story and thought that it might be fun to try telling this story again with the added advantage of a few decades of experience as a writer and here we are. So, without further ado let's get cracking shall we.
–---///—---
Chapter One
The system had no name. It's distance from any of the galactic shipping lanes and position on the other side of what was once the Dilgar Imperium ensured that. Unlike most unnamed systems you would find in the various navigational databases of the local spacefaring races the system was not lacklustre by any stretch of even the most vivid of imaginations.
A dozen planet's - one of whom would be habitable with only a modest amount of terraforming - and three large, resource rich asteroid fields orbited twin G-type stars. Only the systems distance from any major or even minor shipping lanes, and the somewhat tempestuous nature of the hyperspatial realm used by most species for faster than light travel near binary stars, had prevented anyone from settling or claiming the system though it had been surveyed in the past with the Dilgar being the last to visit over sixty Earth years prior.
Until now that was.
High above the plain of the ecliptic a tiny point of eldritch blue light shimmered into existence. For a moment out of time it sat there before leaping into infinity creating the seemingly two dimensional swirling blue vortex of an incoming jump point. First to emerge from the portal across the dimensional barrier between normal space and hyperspace was a series of small fighters. Some were vaguely dart like and constructed of a blue crystalline material while the others were larger vaguely X-shaped and constructed of a dull grey metal. Any of the local races who saw them would have immediately recognised them as a mixture of Minbari Niall-class fighters and Earth Alliance Thunderbolt-class Starfuries.
Following the vanguard of fighters came three ships, sleek and covered with advanced biomechanical armour and vaguely resembling a bird in flight. Following along behind them was a ship that couldn't be anymore different in design and construction. Shaped like a giant curved wedge and covered with thick interlocking plates of dark grey armour, she was also much bigger than the White Stars being just over three kilometres long and nearly a kilometre across compared to their five hundred meters. Anyone who saw her would have recognised the vessel as one of the new Thor-class super-dreadnoughts that the Earth Alliance had recently commissioned into service as the first design in their entire history to ever use a purely gravitic propulsion system.
Following along behind the great warship were the final three White Stars that were forming an escort and support squadron for this mission as well as a rearguard of fighters. As the last fighter cleared the vortex it began to shrink until it vanished completely leaving no sign that it had every been present at all. As the jump point disappeared from existence all seven ships turned in a display of synchronisation that clearly demonstrated the professionalism of their pilots and how used to working together, they were and began moving deeper into the system.
Soon they would be in position to begin the mission that had brought them here.
---///---
Bridge
EAS Helios
"General we are on course for the inner solar system as planned. So far, sensors have not detected anything that does not match the old Dilgar survey records."
Sitting in the command chair at the centre of the command bridge General Jack Crichton allowed himself a small smile of relief as the report from the sensor officer. The moment they had emerged from hyperspace he had ordered a scan of the system as an out of the way, uninhabited system like this was a perfect place for some very unsavoury characters to hang out. Anyone from raiders seeking a place where they could relax and repair their ships – without risk of an EarthForce, Minbari or Anla'shok patrol showing up at the most inopportune time and really ruining their day – to those remnants of the Clark Regime who continued their illegal experiments with Shadow technology. From the former Shadow minions, the Drakh – who having recently lost their foothold in Centauri space with the death of Londo Molari and the ascension of Vir Cotto to the throne of the Centauri Republic were now on the run – to the few surviving servants of The Hand.
Thus, it was a relief to find out that there were none of them here. It meant that they could proceed with the mission that had brought them out here.
"Excellent," Jack replied with a pleased smile. "Ensign Parks how long until we reach our destination coordinates?"
"At our current speed twenty minutes sir. Sir shall I inform the Ranger and the rest of the ISA contingent?"
"No, I will do it," Jack answered, giving the helmsman a minor look of annoyance at the tone and manners in which spoken about John and the others from the Interstellar Alliance who were currently aboard the Helios preparing for the mission. He knew that there was some friction between some members of the crew, especially those who like the helmsman came from well to do families on Earth who tended to be quite antagonistic to anyone not from their clique or who wasn't in EarthForce. While he personally found it to be disgraceful as long as feelings and opinions were kept private, he had no problem. What he didn't like though was Parks giving a hint of his learned prejudice in his duties on the bridge.
The helmsman seeing the annoyed look winced and mentally kicked himself for forgetting that the Ranger – a member of an organization he and everyone he had known growing up bitterly disliked, enforcers for the ISA that they were forcing everyone to heed to the will of that Minbari witch President Delenn, though at least her alien lover husband, the race traitor John Sheridan, was gone dying several months ago – was the generals eldest child and only son. He would have to be careful with his opinions from here on out as General Crichton wasn't someone to cross lightly and if he chooses to put him on his personal shit list then there was no one who would be able to help him. Not even his dad would be able to.
Seeing that the helmsman was sufficiently cowed for now, though he would make sure to put a note in his personnel file as he so needed to loose that haughty 'Earth First' attitude as such things were not popular in EarthForce these days not like when that bastard William Clark had been running the Earth Alliance as though it was the second coming of Nazi Germany, Jack turned his attention to where Captain Richards was working at what on most ships would be the first officer's station.
"Captain Richards, you have the conn," he said standing up, wincing slightly at the familiar stab of arthritis in his right knee, "contact me as soon as we reach deployment position."
"Yes sir," Jordan Richards acknowledged, logging off his station and standing up himself. He watched as his superior left the bridge before walking over to the command chair and sitting down himself. He looked at the helmsman – like his superior he was not at all amused by the young man's attitude – and spoke. "Ensign Parks come to my office after your shift. You and I need to have a little talk."
---///---
Jack smirked slightly as he left the bridge as he heard his flag captain speak to Ensign Parks. He had known that the other man, who had served with him for years indeed they had served together since before the Earth Alliance Civil War and the Shadow War kicked off, was going to do that. That he would have picked up on his annoyance with both the kids arrogance and ignorance of the good the ISA and the Anla'shok/Rangers actually did. Something that was sadly all too common among the monied strata of human society that Nathan Parks came from.
He didn't doubt Jordan would set the kid straight with some tough love soon enough.
Walking up to a terminal on the wall he input a command, looking for wherever John was on the ship. He wasn't surprised to find that he was in the main launch bay. He didn't doubt that he was deep in the final preparations for the mission, making sure that the heavily modified Blue Star-class scout ship that had been specifically constructed for this project, no doubt with DK and a whole gaggle of technicians, among them Minbari, assisting. John had always been very proactive about things like that even before he had joined the Rangers after getting his doctorate in astrophysics, with a special focus on hyperspace theory.
Logging off he began making his way to the nearest transport tube – the Helios was far too big to get around on foot at least in a reasonable time frame – that would take him to the main hangar bay. As he walked, he thought about the mission that had brought them to this place and had led to him working with, and actually seeing his son in person not on a screen or as a hologram in years. It had been known for a long time, really since the Dilgar first surveyed the system in the 2220's, that there was something very unusual going on near the systems twin suns. That there were some type, of spatial anomalies there but nobody – to the best of anyone's knowledge anyway – had previously ever been able to determine what they were or why they appeared here and not in any other binary system anywhere in the vast region of space covered by the Interstellar Alliance.
Until now that was.
As Jack recalled a few years ago John had found out about the anomalies and after reading everything known about them – mostly what had been taken from the Imperial Science Institute on the Dilgar homeworld of Omelos before it's destruction – and comparing information from many of the older Alliance races like the Minbari, the Vree and the Yolu, had postulated an interesting and compelling theory. That theory being that the anomalies were naturally occurring wormholes and that more closely examining them could lead to a far greater understanding of what was normally a very transient phenomenon and possibly even lead to being able to create their own which would completely revolutionise Interstellar travel, transform it in a way that even the recent discovery of quantum hyperspace hadn't.
EarthForce Command had been intrigued by the idea. Unfortunately, with there funding currently being quite tight – the last few administrations in EarthGov had been very stingy with the defence budget – especially with them being right in the middle of a major fleet renewal and replacement program they hadn't been able to provide any funding or resources for John's project. For most people that would have been the end of the matter but having already become a Ranger by that point John had had other options. Options that had included taking the matter to then Entil'zha Sheridan and from there to the ISA Advisory Council and even President Delenn herself. They had all been as intrigued by the idea as EarthForce had been and after a bit of political horse trading – and some quiet temper tantrums by some of the more political officers in EarthForce not to mention the handful of remaining Clarkist senators – a joint project to investigate was created and, to some individuals ire, placed directly under the authority of the ISA Presidents office with John being the senior Ranger assigned to what become known as the Farscape Project.
As he boarded the transport tube and set it to take him to the main hangar Jack mused about how quickly the whole project had come together. With the backing of President Delenn funding and resources had not been a problem. Indeed, the biggest delay had been designing, building, and testing the ship that John would be using to get close enough to investigate the anomalies and confirm if they were indeed wormholes.
Due to the proximity to the twin suns, they hadn't been able to use any old ship, even the newest ships in the ISA fleet like the Blue Star-class scouts and Valen-class cruisers, as they would never withstand the immense amount of radiation the stars put out. While the Blue Star-class had been chosen as the base design it had required extensive modifications, upgrades, and new innovations to be able to do the job. The result was a vessel that was fifteen percent larger than a normal Blue Star with most of the new space being taken up by among other things an upgraded power plant and a new shielding system that was based on a combination of Vorlon and Abbai technology. Getting to this point had taken the best part of four and a half years but finally here they were.
Which was what he wanted to talk to John about before the mission truly got underway.
---///---
Main Hangar Bay
A Short Time Later
It wasn't difficult to spot the Blue Star when Jack arrived in the hangar bay. It kind of stood out like a sore thumb against the grey utilitarian vessels of EarthForce due to both its organic curves and the dark blue organic-polycrystalline hybrid armour that it was covered with. The fact that it was also sat smack bang in the middle of the bay facing the currently closed bay doors also made it hard to miss, as did the gaggle of Minbari technicians – most of them from the clan of the worker caste who had built the ship – buzzing like bees around it as they ran last minute checks and calibrations. As well as loading equipment and emergency supplies on board should something untoward happen.
"Oh, hi general is everything alright," Douglas Knox – DK to just about everyone who knew him b – asked from where he was standing at a diagnostic console as he saw him arrive.
"It's fine," Jack answered smiling at one of his sons oldest, and sometimes strangest since at the end of the day he was a telepath albeit one who had managed to hide from the Psi Corps until just before it was disbanded after the telepath crisis, friends. "I'm looking for John is he around?"
"He's inside the ship," DK replied before toggling a comm link on his one hand. "Hey John, can you come out here a minute? Your dad's here."
"I'll be right there."
Jack smiled hearing his sons voice. John sounded so confident and comfortable with who he was, with what he was, these days. However, with the skill of any good parent, he could tell that John was not quite as confident as the façade he was projecting for everyone to see. He no doubt had more than his fair share of rattlesnakes in his stomach right now, anyone would before a mission. Especially one as potentially important and ground breaking as this one was. He certainly had always had to deal with rattlers before he went out on a mission.
True to his word a moment later John, looking as smart as hell in his brown and black Ranger uniform, appeared from within the ship, spotted him and made his way over. "Hey dad," he said in greeting before Jack decided to give him a hug. "What's up?" John asked after he was released.
"Come over here son I want to talk to you a few minutes before your flight," Jack replied, nodding over to a currently unused maintenance bay.
"Sure," John agreed before looking over at one of the Minbari and saying something in the worker caste language. The Minbari nodded, said something back, before heading inside the ship to do what the Anla'shok had instructed him to do.
"Problem," Jack asked as they walked. While he hadn't understood what John and the Minbari had said to one another – try as he might he had never been able to get to grips with any of the three languages spoken by the Minbari, he could barely manage Centauri which was a much simpler language – but he got the impression that it was important.
"Not so much a problem as an irritation," John answered, "there's a slight delay in the response from the port antiproton thruster compared to the starboard one. It's creating uneven thrust in simulations. It just needs recalibration. It's not an uncommon problem for this class of ship. We'll be ready to launch on time."
"Good," Jack replied as they reached the maintenance bay – that under normal circumstances would house a Thunderbolt. Though due to the mission they'd had to leave most of their Thunderbolts back at the nearest EA fleet base. The only Thunderbolts they carried were those that would fit in their secondary hangar bays. It wasn't really a problem as there were few out there who would risk challenging the might of a Thor-class super-dreadnought as on her own Helios had enough firepower to wipe out whole squadrons of ships in moments. The fact that they had a flight of White Stars with them as escort only made Helios an even more unattractive target to pick a fight with.
"So, what did you want to talk to me about dad?" John asked.
"Nothing much I just wanted to check on you. I know you've got rattlers in your stomach over this mission."
"Is it that obvious?"
"Only to someone who really knows you and can see through that tough 'I'm a Ranger you don't want to mess with me' mask you put on."
John chuckled. "Most people do know that it isn't a mask," he pointed out, and indeed it wasn't as like all Anla'shok he was well trained in multiple styles of combat which these days now included a number of human martial arts as well as the traditional Minbari ones. Sech Durval hadn't approved of the idea until a human Ranger recruit with a few black belts to her name put him on his ass in the dojo at the main Ranger training facility in Tuzanor not once but several times in rapid succession no matter what the Minbari warrior did. It had given the old warrior a fresh appreciation for what humans were capable of in unarmed combat, and how their methods could turn an opponent's strengths against them, and soon seen the adoption of those styles into Ranger training.
"I know like the time you put those five drunk Narn warriors on their ass on Proxima Three."
"How'd you know about that?"
"I'm your dad. Plus, I am a general in EarthForce I have my secrets and my sources as well. Now before we get anymore off track, I wanted to give you something before you set out. A good luck charm if you will."
Before John could ask what, he meant he reached in the pocket of his uniform and pulled out, attached to a simple silver chain, the puzzle ring that had been given to him decades ago when he had first joined EarthForce as a 'fury pilot. It had seen him through many challenges first during the Shadow War, then the Civil War and most recently in the Drakh War.
"Here you should have this," he said offering the puzzle ring to John.
"Dad I can't that's your puzzle ring," John protested. Not to mention Rangers aren't supposed to have personnel possessions, he thought though religious symbols, and some family mementos were exempt from the rules.
"Not anymore," Jack replied taking John's hand and putting the ring in it. "I would have given it you years ago if you had joined EarthForce. Just like my father gave it to me, and his father before him gave it to him. Something tells me now is the right time to give it to you. At least till the time comes for you to pass it to your own son or daughter."
John hesitated before putting it on, slipping the chair over his head and then tucking both it and the ring behind the tunic of his uniform. Jack smiled at the sight and was just about to speak again when, with its usual annoying timing, the comm link on the back of his right hand went off. Ugh sometimes I so wish I could throw this thing into the heart of the gravitic reactor or one of the fusion reactors, he thought in annoyance, even as out of the corner of his eyes he saw John's broad shoulders shaking with repressed laughter. He gave John an annoyed look before lifting the comm link and pressing the button on it.
"Crichton go," he said keeping the annoyance he felt at being interrupted in a personal moment with his eldest out of his voice.
"Sorry to disturb you sir but we're now five minutes away from deployment position," Captain Richards answered from the bridge. "I thought you would like to know."
Already, Jack thought in surprise as they had been twenty minutes away when he'd left the bridge before replying. "Very well I will be right there," he said. "When we're in position make sure all the recording bots are launched and assume the preplanned positions."
"Aye sir."
"Crichton out."
"I guess this is it then," John said as he signed off.
"I guess so," Jack replied forming a fist with one hand, John doing the same with one his own. Until they fist pumped each other for luck. "Good luck out their son."
"Rangers make our own luck," John replied with a somewhat cheeky grin before turning and walking back to the modified Blue Star christened Farscape One at least by the EarthForce personnel who had periodically worked on it. Jack shook his head with an amused smirk before leaving the hangar and making his way back towards the transport tubes that would take him back to the bridge.
---///---
Farscape One
A Few Minutes Later
Sitting alone at the main control console of the heavily upgraded and modified scoutship John Crichton had to admit that his dad was right when he said he had rattlers in his stomach as he guided the ship out of the main hangar of the Helios. Above him passed the muzzle of one of the ships energy mine launchers/fusion mortar cannons and then he was flying free of the great warship.
"Fleet Command this is Farscape One," he said formally, "I am free and flying. Request permission to proceed to target."
"Confirmed Farscape One you are clear to proceed," Jack answered just as formally, since this whole thing was naturally being recorded, from the bridge of the Helios.
"Rodger that command. Proceeding," John replied as he increased power to the gravitic engines and began to accelerate away from the fleet. Once he was past the vanguard of White Stars and fighters, he engaged the antiproton thrusters sending the ship darting forward on a course to where the first cluster of anomalies was. "Ship bring the enhanced shielding online."
"Confirmed. Enhanced shielding coming online now," the ships AI matrix, which John privately nicknamed Hal in his head after the fictional AI in that old 20th century movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, responded. "Shielding is stable."
"Excellent. Time to the first anomalies at present speed?"
"Two minutes and forty-five seconds."
John nodded, even though he knew that the AI wouldn't see it so to speak, before turning his full attention to the instruments. As soon as he was close enough, he brought the main sensor array online and began scanning the anomalies. The anomalies we're definitely rifts in the space-time continuum, though there was currently no sign of just how they were being created. He was also picking up some of the readings that had been periodically recorded from wormholes – the handful of times any of the modern spacefaring civilisations of the Orion Arm had encountered them – in the past.
He allowed himself a small smile as his readings were confirming the hypothesis of what these things were. Something that for any scientist – which he at heart still was and always would be, being a Ranger was not contrary to that in anyway despite what some of the ISA and Anla'shok sceptics in parts of the Earth Alliance media liked to think -was incredibly gratifying. In no time he had finished his first series of scans, saved them to the memory and sent a burst copy back to lab computers on the Helios.
"Fleet Command this is Farscape One. Preliminary scans completed, results copied and transmitted. Can you confirm receipt?"
"Confirmed Farscape we have them."
"Excellent," John replied and was about to set course for the next group of anomalies when the sensors chirped a warning. What now, he wondered as he checked the sensors to see what had triggered the alert. What he saw made his eyes widen, there was a metallic object dangerously close to him. Close enough that despite the radiation interference from the twin suns had tripped his proximity warning. It was fairly small but there was something about it that just screamed danger. He ran a quick scan and felt his blood turn to ice. "Fleet Command this is Farscape One. I've got a problem here."
"What kind of problem?" Jack asked immediately.
"I am reading a class three self-guiding anti-ship mine less than ten thousand meters from me," John answered, "a very old one. It looks to be of Dilgar design and origin."
"A Dilgar mine! Here? Transfer your scans and we'll compare it to our records."
"Rodger," John acknowledged as he gave the command to transfer the scans of the apparent Dilgar mine to the Helios.
"Scan's received. Sit tight John while we see what we're dealing with."
"Acknowledged."
While he waited for news from the super-dreadnought John glared at the mine. Things had been going so well and now this thing, this relic from a war that had ended before he was even born, had shown up out of nowhere to spoil things. Though its presence here was also deeply worrying as if there was one there were bound to be more and the problem with space mines is they were almost impossible for even Minbari sensors to detect until you were literally right on top of the Shadow-spawned things. Plus, the mines presence indicated that the Dilgar had indeed been active in this system before Earth intervened to stop their invasion of what had been at the time the League of Non-Aligned Worlds. An intervention that had ultimately seen them chase the cruel cat-like humanoids all the way back to Omelos and imprison them there, unknowingly to die when their star went nova a billion years before it was supposed to.
Of course, the question then became what the hell had the Dilgar been doing here? Did it have something to do with the rumours spoken of in dark spacers bars. Rumours that said that the Dilgar might not be as extinct as everyone had long believed but were still out here somewhere in the sea of stars. Naturally the Rangers had investigated the rumours but had never been able to prove or disprove them. Which was worrying for anyone who either remembered or knew of the kind of horrors that the Dilgar had been responsible for.
"Farscape One this is Fleet Command."
"Go ahead fleet command."
"John we've identified the mine," Jack said urgency in his voice. "It's a Shiv'an-class self-guiding perimeter defence mine armed with a fifty-kiloton fusion warhead. Your scans confirm that the mine is somehow still active. The only bit of potentially good news we have is the guidance and firing system appears to be either non-functional or barely functional. If your careful and move slowly you should be able to get far enough away from the blasted thing to destroy it."
"How big is the blast radius for this type of mine?" John asked.
"Twenty thousand meters. Once your out of its radius you should be able to swing around and blast it. Once you've done that get back here. According to our records the Dilgar liked to deploy these things in large swarms to make up for the light warhead so there's got to be more here somewhere."
"Understood command," John acknowledged before giving the order to increase power to the shields – at this close a range even a fifty kiloton blast would be quite damaging especially to something as small as a Blue Star scoutship – just in case his movement triggered the old weapons detonation circuit. Then he engaged the gravitic engine again at low power and began to slowly, carefully move away from the darn thing.
Slowly the heavily modified ship began to move away from the mine.
He was almost to the edge of the known blast radius of a Shiv'an-class mine when the autonomous weapon reacted. The sensors abruptly screamed an urgent warning as there was a sudden sharp spike in energy from the mine…
…a moment before it detonated.
---///---
A sphere of plasma hotter than the surface of the two nearby suns burst into existence where the mine had been seconds earlier. Waves of plasma and hard radiation surged forth at unbelievable speed and slammed into the scout ship. Gravimagnetic energy shielding flared brilliantly with the sudden strain of resisting the intense burst of energy and hard radiation even as the imparted force sent the Farscape One spinning away out of control…
…right into the swirling vortex of one of the wormholes.
---///---
Bridge
EAS Helios
That Same Time
Alarms wailed across the bridge as the great warships sensors immediately registered the detonation of the Dilgar mine. While the flash of the detonation was lost to visual scanners in the glare of the twin suns it was fully visible to the sensors.
"Report," Jack ordered from the command chair.
"Sir the Dilgar mine just detonated," Lieutenant Curtis reported grimly from sensors. "We confirm a fifty kiloton fusion detonation. The Farscape One has been hit, her shields have withstood the blast but she's spinning out of control from the impact force… oh hell."
"What is it?" Jack demanded.
"Sir your sons ship its fallen into one of the anomalies. We've just lost scanner lock but we're still getting the data relay but its rapidly getting weaker as the ship is moving away from us at impossible speed."
"At least we know he's alive," Richards said softly. "We can go after him. Our armour should be more than thick enough to protect us from the stars radiation."
"And if there are others of those things around," Jack asked, feeling his gut twist in pain as he knew what he had to do. Knew that as much as he wanted to, as much as his parental instincts were screaming at him to go after his son and save him from whatever awaited on the other side of the wormhole he couldn't. While one or two Shiv'an mines exploding against the ship wouldn't do much damage – their armour was simply too thick – a whole swarm of them hitting them would be a very different story. "I cannot risk the ship and the lives of everyone on board. Not even for John. We'll need to withdraw and come back with some proper minesweepers to find and get rid of these damned things."
Richards nodded in understanding even though he could see how much it was paining his commanding officer, and long term friend, to say those words. He started to open his mouth to say something when abruptly proximity alarms began wailing. Now what, he thought.
"General we're picking up jump points forming behind us," Lieutenant Curtis reported, "ships emerging… what the hell… no, no that can't be."
"Lieutenant?" Richards asked.
"Sir the ships… they're Dilgar war cruisers."
"Show me," Jack ordered.
"Aye sir."
A window opened on the master screen at the front of the bridge showing the glowing blue vortices of incoming jump points a few tens of thousands of kilometres behind the seven ISA warships. Emerging from each of the three glowing rents in the barrier between normal space and hyperspace were sleek, alien vessels the likes of which still haunted the nightmares of many of the former League races. But it was immediately obvious that something was different, was wrong. The warships lacked the previous gold and black metallic livery of Dilgar Imperium warships. Instead, there hulls were a dark black, a shade that almost made them invisible against the darkness of space and shimmered as though covered with an oil. Spikey projections covered the hulls and shimmered with the same oily gleam, a gleam that sent a shiver of fear down Jack's spine as he had seen it before.
Shadow technology.
"Lieutenant Curtis, can you confirm what we're looking at?" he asked, hoping desperately that he was wrong. As if the Dilgar were indeed back, risen from the ashes of the past like the devils own phoenix and they had Shadow technology then not just them but the whole of the Interstellar Alliance was in trouble.
"Confirmed sir the Dilgar ships are covered with a copy of Shadow armour similar to what President Clark used on the Omega-X destroyers but a bit more sophisticated," Curtis answered a moment before his console chimed a warning. "Sir the Dilgar ships are powering their weapons systems and opening gun ports."
"Are our jump engines on line?" Jack asked.
"Negative sir the Dilgar ships are generating a vortex frequency jamming field. We can't jump."
"Damn," Jack muttered though he supposed he shouldn't be surprised that the Dilgar had improved and miniaturised the vortex frequency jamming technology in the time that they had been thought extinct. EarthForce R&D had been working to do the same thing for years, really ever since the Minbari War as the ability to jam jump points, to prevent them opening within a given area, had been one of the very few advantages they had had at the time over the Minbari. "Then we have no choice. Battle stations, bring us about to face the Dilgar. If we're to get out of this, we're going to have to fight. Tell the first group of White Stars to target the ship on the right flank, the other group target the ship on the left flank. We'll take the central ship."
"Aye sir."
Jack turned his attention to the tactical display even as klaxons began to wail summoning the super-dreadnoughts three thousand plus crew to their battle stations. Simultaneously the great warship began to come about to face her foe. Meanwhile power readings from the three Dilgar ships suddenly jumped up as points on their hulls lit up with a strange greenish-blue light…
…a second before they opened fire.
---///---
Authors Notes: Well the first chapter of this brand new take on this very old story of mine is finished. I hope you all enjoyed it. There have been a number of changes from the original version, especially the inclusion of the Dilgar which actually originated in another old story idea of mine that never really got off the ground. I thought it might make things interesting especially as the Dilgar will have parts to play both in the Orion Arm and where John is going to end up in the Uncharted Territories. The Dilgar have known about the wormholes in this system for awhile and while everyone thought they were dead and gone forever they have learned how to use them to some degree.
Updates for this particular story are however going to be few and far between as I do have a lot of other stories on the go right now. Just the muse for this one wouldn't leave me alone and this first chapter was the result. Until next time.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters and universes that I am about to mangle around and mash together for my own demented author amusement - sadly all Babylon 5 and Farscape characters and concepts remain the property of Babylonian Productions Inc, Warner Brothers, the Jim Henson Company and Hallmark Entertainment respectively - I am merely borrowing them and make absolutely no profit from there use. As a result, please keep the legal attack dogs - also known as lawyers - firmly muzzled and on a leash as I have no money to give to anyone.
Authors Note: This story is a complete reboot and reimagining of one of my oldest fanfic stories On The Wings of Destiny that has been sat gathering electronic dust for nearly twenty years by this point. As with the original story this is a fusion crossover between Babylon 5 and Farscape as there is plenty of room for the various civilizations to exist and never encounter one another until now. I admit I stumbled across an old notebook with the details of story and thought that it might be fun to try telling this story again with the added advantage of a few decades of experience as a writer and here we are. So, without further ado let's get cracking shall we.
–---///—---
Chapter One
The system had no name. It's distance from any of the galactic shipping lanes and position on the other side of what was once the Dilgar Imperium ensured that. Unlike most unnamed systems you would find in the various navigational databases of the local spacefaring races the system was not lacklustre by any stretch of even the most vivid of imaginations.
A dozen planet's - one of whom would be habitable with only a modest amount of terraforming - and three large, resource rich asteroid fields orbited twin G-type stars. Only the systems distance from any major or even minor shipping lanes, and the somewhat tempestuous nature of the hyperspatial realm used by most species for faster than light travel near binary stars, had prevented anyone from settling or claiming the system though it had been surveyed in the past with the Dilgar being the last to visit over sixty Earth years prior.
Until now that was.
High above the plain of the ecliptic a tiny point of eldritch blue light shimmered into existence. For a moment out of time it sat there before leaping into infinity creating the seemingly two dimensional swirling blue vortex of an incoming jump point. First to emerge from the portal across the dimensional barrier between normal space and hyperspace was a series of small fighters. Some were vaguely dart like and constructed of a blue crystalline material while the others were larger vaguely X-shaped and constructed of a dull grey metal. Any of the local races who saw them would have immediately recognised them as a mixture of Minbari Niall-class fighters and Earth Alliance Thunderbolt-class Starfuries.
Following the vanguard of fighters came three ships, sleek and covered with advanced biomechanical armour and vaguely resembling a bird in flight. Following along behind them was a ship that couldn't be anymore different in design and construction. Shaped like a giant curved wedge and covered with thick interlocking plates of dark grey armour, she was also much bigger than the White Stars being just over three kilometres long and nearly a kilometre across compared to their five hundred meters. Anyone who saw her would have recognised the vessel as one of the new Thor-class super-dreadnoughts that the Earth Alliance had recently commissioned into service as the first design in their entire history to ever use a purely gravitic propulsion system.
Following along behind the great warship were the final three White Stars that were forming an escort and support squadron for this mission as well as a rearguard of fighters. As the last fighter cleared the vortex it began to shrink until it vanished completely leaving no sign that it had every been present at all. As the jump point disappeared from existence all seven ships turned in a display of synchronisation that clearly demonstrated the professionalism of their pilots and how used to working together, they were and began moving deeper into the system.
Soon they would be in position to begin the mission that had brought them here.
---///---
Bridge
EAS Helios
"General we are on course for the inner solar system as planned. So far, sensors have not detected anything that does not match the old Dilgar survey records."
Sitting in the command chair at the centre of the command bridge General Jack Crichton allowed himself a small smile of relief as the report from the sensor officer. The moment they had emerged from hyperspace he had ordered a scan of the system as an out of the way, uninhabited system like this was a perfect place for some very unsavoury characters to hang out. Anyone from raiders seeking a place where they could relax and repair their ships – without risk of an EarthForce, Minbari or Anla'shok patrol showing up at the most inopportune time and really ruining their day – to those remnants of the Clark Regime who continued their illegal experiments with Shadow technology. From the former Shadow minions, the Drakh – who having recently lost their foothold in Centauri space with the death of Londo Molari and the ascension of Vir Cotto to the throne of the Centauri Republic were now on the run – to the few surviving servants of The Hand.
Thus, it was a relief to find out that there were none of them here. It meant that they could proceed with the mission that had brought them out here.
"Excellent," Jack replied with a pleased smile. "Ensign Parks how long until we reach our destination coordinates?"
"At our current speed twenty minutes sir. Sir shall I inform the Ranger and the rest of the ISA contingent?"
"No, I will do it," Jack answered, giving the helmsman a minor look of annoyance at the tone and manners in which spoken about John and the others from the Interstellar Alliance who were currently aboard the Helios preparing for the mission. He knew that there was some friction between some members of the crew, especially those who like the helmsman came from well to do families on Earth who tended to be quite antagonistic to anyone not from their clique or who wasn't in EarthForce. While he personally found it to be disgraceful as long as feelings and opinions were kept private, he had no problem. What he didn't like though was Parks giving a hint of his learned prejudice in his duties on the bridge.
The helmsman seeing the annoyed look winced and mentally kicked himself for forgetting that the Ranger – a member of an organization he and everyone he had known growing up bitterly disliked, enforcers for the ISA that they were forcing everyone to heed to the will of that Minbari witch President Delenn, though at least her alien lover husband, the race traitor John Sheridan, was gone dying several months ago – was the generals eldest child and only son. He would have to be careful with his opinions from here on out as General Crichton wasn't someone to cross lightly and if he chooses to put him on his personal shit list then there was no one who would be able to help him. Not even his dad would be able to.
Seeing that the helmsman was sufficiently cowed for now, though he would make sure to put a note in his personnel file as he so needed to loose that haughty 'Earth First' attitude as such things were not popular in EarthForce these days not like when that bastard William Clark had been running the Earth Alliance as though it was the second coming of Nazi Germany, Jack turned his attention to where Captain Richards was working at what on most ships would be the first officer's station.
"Captain Richards, you have the conn," he said standing up, wincing slightly at the familiar stab of arthritis in his right knee, "contact me as soon as we reach deployment position."
"Yes sir," Jordan Richards acknowledged, logging off his station and standing up himself. He watched as his superior left the bridge before walking over to the command chair and sitting down himself. He looked at the helmsman – like his superior he was not at all amused by the young man's attitude – and spoke. "Ensign Parks come to my office after your shift. You and I need to have a little talk."
---///---
Jack smirked slightly as he left the bridge as he heard his flag captain speak to Ensign Parks. He had known that the other man, who had served with him for years indeed they had served together since before the Earth Alliance Civil War and the Shadow War kicked off, was going to do that. That he would have picked up on his annoyance with both the kids arrogance and ignorance of the good the ISA and the Anla'shok/Rangers actually did. Something that was sadly all too common among the monied strata of human society that Nathan Parks came from.
He didn't doubt Jordan would set the kid straight with some tough love soon enough.
Walking up to a terminal on the wall he input a command, looking for wherever John was on the ship. He wasn't surprised to find that he was in the main launch bay. He didn't doubt that he was deep in the final preparations for the mission, making sure that the heavily modified Blue Star-class scout ship that had been specifically constructed for this project, no doubt with DK and a whole gaggle of technicians, among them Minbari, assisting. John had always been very proactive about things like that even before he had joined the Rangers after getting his doctorate in astrophysics, with a special focus on hyperspace theory.
Logging off he began making his way to the nearest transport tube – the Helios was far too big to get around on foot at least in a reasonable time frame – that would take him to the main hangar bay. As he walked, he thought about the mission that had brought them to this place and had led to him working with, and actually seeing his son in person not on a screen or as a hologram in years. It had been known for a long time, really since the Dilgar first surveyed the system in the 2220's, that there was something very unusual going on near the systems twin suns. That there were some type, of spatial anomalies there but nobody – to the best of anyone's knowledge anyway – had previously ever been able to determine what they were or why they appeared here and not in any other binary system anywhere in the vast region of space covered by the Interstellar Alliance.
Until now that was.
As Jack recalled a few years ago John had found out about the anomalies and after reading everything known about them – mostly what had been taken from the Imperial Science Institute on the Dilgar homeworld of Omelos before it's destruction – and comparing information from many of the older Alliance races like the Minbari, the Vree and the Yolu, had postulated an interesting and compelling theory. That theory being that the anomalies were naturally occurring wormholes and that more closely examining them could lead to a far greater understanding of what was normally a very transient phenomenon and possibly even lead to being able to create their own which would completely revolutionise Interstellar travel, transform it in a way that even the recent discovery of quantum hyperspace hadn't.
EarthForce Command had been intrigued by the idea. Unfortunately, with there funding currently being quite tight – the last few administrations in EarthGov had been very stingy with the defence budget – especially with them being right in the middle of a major fleet renewal and replacement program they hadn't been able to provide any funding or resources for John's project. For most people that would have been the end of the matter but having already become a Ranger by that point John had had other options. Options that had included taking the matter to then Entil'zha Sheridan and from there to the ISA Advisory Council and even President Delenn herself. They had all been as intrigued by the idea as EarthForce had been and after a bit of political horse trading – and some quiet temper tantrums by some of the more political officers in EarthForce not to mention the handful of remaining Clarkist senators – a joint project to investigate was created and, to some individuals ire, placed directly under the authority of the ISA Presidents office with John being the senior Ranger assigned to what become known as the Farscape Project.
As he boarded the transport tube and set it to take him to the main hangar Jack mused about how quickly the whole project had come together. With the backing of President Delenn funding and resources had not been a problem. Indeed, the biggest delay had been designing, building, and testing the ship that John would be using to get close enough to investigate the anomalies and confirm if they were indeed wormholes.
Due to the proximity to the twin suns, they hadn't been able to use any old ship, even the newest ships in the ISA fleet like the Blue Star-class scouts and Valen-class cruisers, as they would never withstand the immense amount of radiation the stars put out. While the Blue Star-class had been chosen as the base design it had required extensive modifications, upgrades, and new innovations to be able to do the job. The result was a vessel that was fifteen percent larger than a normal Blue Star with most of the new space being taken up by among other things an upgraded power plant and a new shielding system that was based on a combination of Vorlon and Abbai technology. Getting to this point had taken the best part of four and a half years but finally here they were.
Which was what he wanted to talk to John about before the mission truly got underway.
---///---
Main Hangar Bay
A Short Time Later
It wasn't difficult to spot the Blue Star when Jack arrived in the hangar bay. It kind of stood out like a sore thumb against the grey utilitarian vessels of EarthForce due to both its organic curves and the dark blue organic-polycrystalline hybrid armour that it was covered with. The fact that it was also sat smack bang in the middle of the bay facing the currently closed bay doors also made it hard to miss, as did the gaggle of Minbari technicians – most of them from the clan of the worker caste who had built the ship – buzzing like bees around it as they ran last minute checks and calibrations. As well as loading equipment and emergency supplies on board should something untoward happen.
"Oh, hi general is everything alright," Douglas Knox – DK to just about everyone who knew him b – asked from where he was standing at a diagnostic console as he saw him arrive.
"It's fine," Jack answered smiling at one of his sons oldest, and sometimes strangest since at the end of the day he was a telepath albeit one who had managed to hide from the Psi Corps until just before it was disbanded after the telepath crisis, friends. "I'm looking for John is he around?"
"He's inside the ship," DK replied before toggling a comm link on his one hand. "Hey John, can you come out here a minute? Your dad's here."
"I'll be right there."
Jack smiled hearing his sons voice. John sounded so confident and comfortable with who he was, with what he was, these days. However, with the skill of any good parent, he could tell that John was not quite as confident as the façade he was projecting for everyone to see. He no doubt had more than his fair share of rattlesnakes in his stomach right now, anyone would before a mission. Especially one as potentially important and ground breaking as this one was. He certainly had always had to deal with rattlers before he went out on a mission.
True to his word a moment later John, looking as smart as hell in his brown and black Ranger uniform, appeared from within the ship, spotted him and made his way over. "Hey dad," he said in greeting before Jack decided to give him a hug. "What's up?" John asked after he was released.
"Come over here son I want to talk to you a few minutes before your flight," Jack replied, nodding over to a currently unused maintenance bay.
"Sure," John agreed before looking over at one of the Minbari and saying something in the worker caste language. The Minbari nodded, said something back, before heading inside the ship to do what the Anla'shok had instructed him to do.
"Problem," Jack asked as they walked. While he hadn't understood what John and the Minbari had said to one another – try as he might he had never been able to get to grips with any of the three languages spoken by the Minbari, he could barely manage Centauri which was a much simpler language – but he got the impression that it was important.
"Not so much a problem as an irritation," John answered, "there's a slight delay in the response from the port antiproton thruster compared to the starboard one. It's creating uneven thrust in simulations. It just needs recalibration. It's not an uncommon problem for this class of ship. We'll be ready to launch on time."
"Good," Jack replied as they reached the maintenance bay – that under normal circumstances would house a Thunderbolt. Though due to the mission they'd had to leave most of their Thunderbolts back at the nearest EA fleet base. The only Thunderbolts they carried were those that would fit in their secondary hangar bays. It wasn't really a problem as there were few out there who would risk challenging the might of a Thor-class super-dreadnought as on her own Helios had enough firepower to wipe out whole squadrons of ships in moments. The fact that they had a flight of White Stars with them as escort only made Helios an even more unattractive target to pick a fight with.
"So, what did you want to talk to me about dad?" John asked.
"Nothing much I just wanted to check on you. I know you've got rattlers in your stomach over this mission."
"Is it that obvious?"
"Only to someone who really knows you and can see through that tough 'I'm a Ranger you don't want to mess with me' mask you put on."
John chuckled. "Most people do know that it isn't a mask," he pointed out, and indeed it wasn't as like all Anla'shok he was well trained in multiple styles of combat which these days now included a number of human martial arts as well as the traditional Minbari ones. Sech Durval hadn't approved of the idea until a human Ranger recruit with a few black belts to her name put him on his ass in the dojo at the main Ranger training facility in Tuzanor not once but several times in rapid succession no matter what the Minbari warrior did. It had given the old warrior a fresh appreciation for what humans were capable of in unarmed combat, and how their methods could turn an opponent's strengths against them, and soon seen the adoption of those styles into Ranger training.
"I know like the time you put those five drunk Narn warriors on their ass on Proxima Three."
"How'd you know about that?"
"I'm your dad. Plus, I am a general in EarthForce I have my secrets and my sources as well. Now before we get anymore off track, I wanted to give you something before you set out. A good luck charm if you will."
Before John could ask what, he meant he reached in the pocket of his uniform and pulled out, attached to a simple silver chain, the puzzle ring that had been given to him decades ago when he had first joined EarthForce as a 'fury pilot. It had seen him through many challenges first during the Shadow War, then the Civil War and most recently in the Drakh War.
"Here you should have this," he said offering the puzzle ring to John.
"Dad I can't that's your puzzle ring," John protested. Not to mention Rangers aren't supposed to have personnel possessions, he thought though religious symbols, and some family mementos were exempt from the rules.
"Not anymore," Jack replied taking John's hand and putting the ring in it. "I would have given it you years ago if you had joined EarthForce. Just like my father gave it to me, and his father before him gave it to him. Something tells me now is the right time to give it to you. At least till the time comes for you to pass it to your own son or daughter."
John hesitated before putting it on, slipping the chair over his head and then tucking both it and the ring behind the tunic of his uniform. Jack smiled at the sight and was just about to speak again when, with its usual annoying timing, the comm link on the back of his right hand went off. Ugh sometimes I so wish I could throw this thing into the heart of the gravitic reactor or one of the fusion reactors, he thought in annoyance, even as out of the corner of his eyes he saw John's broad shoulders shaking with repressed laughter. He gave John an annoyed look before lifting the comm link and pressing the button on it.
"Crichton go," he said keeping the annoyance he felt at being interrupted in a personal moment with his eldest out of his voice.
"Sorry to disturb you sir but we're now five minutes away from deployment position," Captain Richards answered from the bridge. "I thought you would like to know."
Already, Jack thought in surprise as they had been twenty minutes away when he'd left the bridge before replying. "Very well I will be right there," he said. "When we're in position make sure all the recording bots are launched and assume the preplanned positions."
"Aye sir."
"Crichton out."
"I guess this is it then," John said as he signed off.
"I guess so," Jack replied forming a fist with one hand, John doing the same with one his own. Until they fist pumped each other for luck. "Good luck out their son."
"Rangers make our own luck," John replied with a somewhat cheeky grin before turning and walking back to the modified Blue Star christened Farscape One at least by the EarthForce personnel who had periodically worked on it. Jack shook his head with an amused smirk before leaving the hangar and making his way back towards the transport tubes that would take him back to the bridge.
---///---
Farscape One
A Few Minutes Later
Sitting alone at the main control console of the heavily upgraded and modified scoutship John Crichton had to admit that his dad was right when he said he had rattlers in his stomach as he guided the ship out of the main hangar of the Helios. Above him passed the muzzle of one of the ships energy mine launchers/fusion mortar cannons and then he was flying free of the great warship.
"Fleet Command this is Farscape One," he said formally, "I am free and flying. Request permission to proceed to target."
"Confirmed Farscape One you are clear to proceed," Jack answered just as formally, since this whole thing was naturally being recorded, from the bridge of the Helios.
"Rodger that command. Proceeding," John replied as he increased power to the gravitic engines and began to accelerate away from the fleet. Once he was past the vanguard of White Stars and fighters, he engaged the antiproton thrusters sending the ship darting forward on a course to where the first cluster of anomalies was. "Ship bring the enhanced shielding online."
"Confirmed. Enhanced shielding coming online now," the ships AI matrix, which John privately nicknamed Hal in his head after the fictional AI in that old 20th century movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, responded. "Shielding is stable."
"Excellent. Time to the first anomalies at present speed?"
"Two minutes and forty-five seconds."
John nodded, even though he knew that the AI wouldn't see it so to speak, before turning his full attention to the instruments. As soon as he was close enough, he brought the main sensor array online and began scanning the anomalies. The anomalies we're definitely rifts in the space-time continuum, though there was currently no sign of just how they were being created. He was also picking up some of the readings that had been periodically recorded from wormholes – the handful of times any of the modern spacefaring civilisations of the Orion Arm had encountered them – in the past.
He allowed himself a small smile as his readings were confirming the hypothesis of what these things were. Something that for any scientist – which he at heart still was and always would be, being a Ranger was not contrary to that in anyway despite what some of the ISA and Anla'shok sceptics in parts of the Earth Alliance media liked to think -was incredibly gratifying. In no time he had finished his first series of scans, saved them to the memory and sent a burst copy back to lab computers on the Helios.
"Fleet Command this is Farscape One. Preliminary scans completed, results copied and transmitted. Can you confirm receipt?"
"Confirmed Farscape we have them."
"Excellent," John replied and was about to set course for the next group of anomalies when the sensors chirped a warning. What now, he wondered as he checked the sensors to see what had triggered the alert. What he saw made his eyes widen, there was a metallic object dangerously close to him. Close enough that despite the radiation interference from the twin suns had tripped his proximity warning. It was fairly small but there was something about it that just screamed danger. He ran a quick scan and felt his blood turn to ice. "Fleet Command this is Farscape One. I've got a problem here."
"What kind of problem?" Jack asked immediately.
"I am reading a class three self-guiding anti-ship mine less than ten thousand meters from me," John answered, "a very old one. It looks to be of Dilgar design and origin."
"A Dilgar mine! Here? Transfer your scans and we'll compare it to our records."
"Rodger," John acknowledged as he gave the command to transfer the scans of the apparent Dilgar mine to the Helios.
"Scan's received. Sit tight John while we see what we're dealing with."
"Acknowledged."
While he waited for news from the super-dreadnought John glared at the mine. Things had been going so well and now this thing, this relic from a war that had ended before he was even born, had shown up out of nowhere to spoil things. Though its presence here was also deeply worrying as if there was one there were bound to be more and the problem with space mines is they were almost impossible for even Minbari sensors to detect until you were literally right on top of the Shadow-spawned things. Plus, the mines presence indicated that the Dilgar had indeed been active in this system before Earth intervened to stop their invasion of what had been at the time the League of Non-Aligned Worlds. An intervention that had ultimately seen them chase the cruel cat-like humanoids all the way back to Omelos and imprison them there, unknowingly to die when their star went nova a billion years before it was supposed to.
Of course, the question then became what the hell had the Dilgar been doing here? Did it have something to do with the rumours spoken of in dark spacers bars. Rumours that said that the Dilgar might not be as extinct as everyone had long believed but were still out here somewhere in the sea of stars. Naturally the Rangers had investigated the rumours but had never been able to prove or disprove them. Which was worrying for anyone who either remembered or knew of the kind of horrors that the Dilgar had been responsible for.
"Farscape One this is Fleet Command."
"Go ahead fleet command."
"John we've identified the mine," Jack said urgency in his voice. "It's a Shiv'an-class self-guiding perimeter defence mine armed with a fifty-kiloton fusion warhead. Your scans confirm that the mine is somehow still active. The only bit of potentially good news we have is the guidance and firing system appears to be either non-functional or barely functional. If your careful and move slowly you should be able to get far enough away from the blasted thing to destroy it."
"How big is the blast radius for this type of mine?" John asked.
"Twenty thousand meters. Once your out of its radius you should be able to swing around and blast it. Once you've done that get back here. According to our records the Dilgar liked to deploy these things in large swarms to make up for the light warhead so there's got to be more here somewhere."
"Understood command," John acknowledged before giving the order to increase power to the shields – at this close a range even a fifty kiloton blast would be quite damaging especially to something as small as a Blue Star scoutship – just in case his movement triggered the old weapons detonation circuit. Then he engaged the gravitic engine again at low power and began to slowly, carefully move away from the darn thing.
Slowly the heavily modified ship began to move away from the mine.
He was almost to the edge of the known blast radius of a Shiv'an-class mine when the autonomous weapon reacted. The sensors abruptly screamed an urgent warning as there was a sudden sharp spike in energy from the mine…
…a moment before it detonated.
---///---
A sphere of plasma hotter than the surface of the two nearby suns burst into existence where the mine had been seconds earlier. Waves of plasma and hard radiation surged forth at unbelievable speed and slammed into the scout ship. Gravimagnetic energy shielding flared brilliantly with the sudden strain of resisting the intense burst of energy and hard radiation even as the imparted force sent the Farscape One spinning away out of control…
…right into the swirling vortex of one of the wormholes.
---///---
Bridge
EAS Helios
That Same Time
Alarms wailed across the bridge as the great warships sensors immediately registered the detonation of the Dilgar mine. While the flash of the detonation was lost to visual scanners in the glare of the twin suns it was fully visible to the sensors.
"Report," Jack ordered from the command chair.
"Sir the Dilgar mine just detonated," Lieutenant Curtis reported grimly from sensors. "We confirm a fifty kiloton fusion detonation. The Farscape One has been hit, her shields have withstood the blast but she's spinning out of control from the impact force… oh hell."
"What is it?" Jack demanded.
"Sir your sons ship its fallen into one of the anomalies. We've just lost scanner lock but we're still getting the data relay but its rapidly getting weaker as the ship is moving away from us at impossible speed."
"At least we know he's alive," Richards said softly. "We can go after him. Our armour should be more than thick enough to protect us from the stars radiation."
"And if there are others of those things around," Jack asked, feeling his gut twist in pain as he knew what he had to do. Knew that as much as he wanted to, as much as his parental instincts were screaming at him to go after his son and save him from whatever awaited on the other side of the wormhole he couldn't. While one or two Shiv'an mines exploding against the ship wouldn't do much damage – their armour was simply too thick – a whole swarm of them hitting them would be a very different story. "I cannot risk the ship and the lives of everyone on board. Not even for John. We'll need to withdraw and come back with some proper minesweepers to find and get rid of these damned things."
Richards nodded in understanding even though he could see how much it was paining his commanding officer, and long term friend, to say those words. He started to open his mouth to say something when abruptly proximity alarms began wailing. Now what, he thought.
"General we're picking up jump points forming behind us," Lieutenant Curtis reported, "ships emerging… what the hell… no, no that can't be."
"Lieutenant?" Richards asked.
"Sir the ships… they're Dilgar war cruisers."
"Show me," Jack ordered.
"Aye sir."
A window opened on the master screen at the front of the bridge showing the glowing blue vortices of incoming jump points a few tens of thousands of kilometres behind the seven ISA warships. Emerging from each of the three glowing rents in the barrier between normal space and hyperspace were sleek, alien vessels the likes of which still haunted the nightmares of many of the former League races. But it was immediately obvious that something was different, was wrong. The warships lacked the previous gold and black metallic livery of Dilgar Imperium warships. Instead, there hulls were a dark black, a shade that almost made them invisible against the darkness of space and shimmered as though covered with an oil. Spikey projections covered the hulls and shimmered with the same oily gleam, a gleam that sent a shiver of fear down Jack's spine as he had seen it before.
Shadow technology.
"Lieutenant Curtis, can you confirm what we're looking at?" he asked, hoping desperately that he was wrong. As if the Dilgar were indeed back, risen from the ashes of the past like the devils own phoenix and they had Shadow technology then not just them but the whole of the Interstellar Alliance was in trouble.
"Confirmed sir the Dilgar ships are covered with a copy of Shadow armour similar to what President Clark used on the Omega-X destroyers but a bit more sophisticated," Curtis answered a moment before his console chimed a warning. "Sir the Dilgar ships are powering their weapons systems and opening gun ports."
"Are our jump engines on line?" Jack asked.
"Negative sir the Dilgar ships are generating a vortex frequency jamming field. We can't jump."
"Damn," Jack muttered though he supposed he shouldn't be surprised that the Dilgar had improved and miniaturised the vortex frequency jamming technology in the time that they had been thought extinct. EarthForce R&D had been working to do the same thing for years, really ever since the Minbari War as the ability to jam jump points, to prevent them opening within a given area, had been one of the very few advantages they had had at the time over the Minbari. "Then we have no choice. Battle stations, bring us about to face the Dilgar. If we're to get out of this, we're going to have to fight. Tell the first group of White Stars to target the ship on the right flank, the other group target the ship on the left flank. We'll take the central ship."
"Aye sir."
Jack turned his attention to the tactical display even as klaxons began to wail summoning the super-dreadnoughts three thousand plus crew to their battle stations. Simultaneously the great warship began to come about to face her foe. Meanwhile power readings from the three Dilgar ships suddenly jumped up as points on their hulls lit up with a strange greenish-blue light…
…a second before they opened fire.
---///---
Authors Notes: Well the first chapter of this brand new take on this very old story of mine is finished. I hope you all enjoyed it. There have been a number of changes from the original version, especially the inclusion of the Dilgar which actually originated in another old story idea of mine that never really got off the ground. I thought it might make things interesting especially as the Dilgar will have parts to play both in the Orion Arm and where John is going to end up in the Uncharted Territories. The Dilgar have known about the wormholes in this system for awhile and while everyone thought they were dead and gone forever they have learned how to use them to some degree.
Updates for this particular story are however going to be few and far between as I do have a lot of other stories on the go right now. Just the muse for this one wouldn't leave me alone and this first chapter was the result. Until next time.
Chapter Two
- Location
- South Wales, United Kingdom
Chapter Two
Beams of searing blue-green energy erupted from the cannons of the three Dilgar cruisers and shot towards the warships that had violated the gateway system. While the two flanking cruisers opened fire on the White Stars the central ship fired upon the Helios recognising her as a distant descendant of the Nova-class dreadnoughts that every member of the Dilgar Navy had learned to fear. To a soul the Dilgar aboard the Shadow tech upgraded cruisers were gleeful at the thought of finally getting to strike at those who decades earlier had defeated the Imperium and forced them to flee and continue as many of their kind as they could while the majority of Dilgar died with Omelos. With the tech they now had they believed victory inevitable.
It was an illusion born of both overconfidence and ignorance. Of a belief that the other races, being naturally inferior to Dilgar, would not be able to advance to the same levels they had in their decades of long exile. An illusion that was suddenly, decisively proven to be just that as the first salvo of Shadow-designed boser weapons fired at the White Stars went wide the hybrid Minbari/Vorlon vessels easily evading their targeting locks.
The same could not be said for the much larger, still manoeuvring to face them Helios.
The salvo fired at her immediately encountered the first layer of the powerful Thor-class ships defences – an enhanced gravimagnetic shield grid similar to the Minbari/Vorlon system used on the newest generation of White Stars – and immediately partially defocused exotic energies and particles spilling forth from the edges of the beams revealing the outlines of the force field even as the rest of the beam carried on and slammed into the hull. Instead of immediately scorching and rendering it, as the Dilgar expected, the beams broke apart and dissipated almost all their remaining energy being immediately deflected back into space in a rainbow blaze of diffusion leaving only slight, blackened smudges on the hull where they'd hit to indicate they'd struck her at all.
Not about to let the attack go unanswered the White Stars and the EarthForce super-dreadnought immediately returned fire. The White Stars falling into three ship attack formations and streaking towards their two targets gravitic discharge cannons, pulse neutron cannons and fusion pulse cannons blazing. Immediately upon impacting the shimmering midnight-black organic armour the blasts broke apart and spread across the surface in a rippling wall of energy that was rapidly drawn towards the spines where it was quickly radiated out into space. Not deterred in the least, and trained in how to deal with Shadow vessels or vessels that used their forbidden technology, the Rangers kept firing focusing all fire on one section of the armour intended to overwhelm the armours dispersion capabilities.
For her part the dorsal triple barrel turrets of the Helios turned to bear on the attacking cruiser – as it fired another salvo of beams which were as ineffective against the advanced defences of the mighty warship as the first salvo had been– and opened fire brutally raking it with a combination of fusion beams and neutron cannon fire. Shadow armour glowed fiercely as it fought to disperse the massive influx and the cruiser visibly trembled from the force of the impact.
Then the Niall and Thunderbolts blew in firing fusion beams and plasma pulses respectively at the Dilgar ships all of them targeting the radiator fins. The glow around them growing brighter even as the capital ships continued pelting the Dilgar with weapons fire putting their defences under strain. The Dilgar gave as good as they got however to the point that a White Star lost its shield and seconds later it was transformed into a fireball as the exotic energies of the Shadow-designed weapons annihilated it.
~~~///~~~
Bridge
EAS Helios
"We just lost White Star Thirty-Nine."
Sitting in the command chair General Jack Crichton nodded at the report from Lieutenant Curtis. He could see it himself on the holographic display and he honestly wasn't surprised that it had happened as while they had advanced defences the best defence of a White Star was its speed and agility. After all they weren't much bigger than a frigate and really had no business going up against something as big as a cruiser except in a group and when they could coordinate their fire.
"What's our status," he asked as the Helios shuddered under another volley of enemy fire.
"Shields down to sixty-three percent general," Curtis reported, "e-web down to fifty percent capacity. Outer armour band twenty percent compromised. No systems damage or power loss at this time."
"That's going to change soon," Roberts commented. Jack nodded in agreement as while the Helios was an immensely powerful vessel, with the best defences EarthForce R&D knew how to make some of which were ironically based on their own studies of Shadow technology during the Clark era as well as technology shared by other worlds as mandated in ISA treaties, she was far from invincible and invulnerable. Though they had already soaked up enough firepower to have destroyed an Omega-class destroyer a dozen times over and which would have disabled a Warlock-class heavy destroyer.
"Not if we can help it," he answered, "Lieutenant Curtis how long until our main cannons can be brought to bear on the Dilgar cruiser?"
"Sixty seconds sir. The cocky cats aren't even trying to manoeuvre out of the way."
"Idiots that will cost them," Richards commented with the grin of a predator who knew he would soon have his prey in his jaws ready for the kill. Jack had to work hard to maintain a professional mask and not return the grin as the main battery of the Helios was composed of the newest version of the most powerful energy beam weapon ever conceived by EarthForce. A weapon that could cut through even the largest of Drakh ships – their clanships – with relative ease. The version was even more powerful, owing to improvements made in particle acceleration and gravitational lensing technologies not to mention the fact that they had improved power sources now including their own gravitic reactors.
"That it will. Lieutenant Curtis as soon as our main battery has a lock on the Dilgar warship open fire. Don't wait for my order," Jack ordered as the ship shook under another volley of enemy fire. A thin haze of smoke began to make itself known, a sure sign that the ships systems were beginning to sustain damage.
"Aye sir. Twenty seconds till we're in position sir."
Jack nodded and turned his attention to the tactical displays. One of the Dilgar cruisers had been disabled and was drifting, trailing radiation and burning atmosphere from multiple breaches that had been torn in its hull by the White Stars gunfire. A small but growing number of lifepods surrounded it as the Dilgar crew scrambled to evacuate the dying vessel. One of said White Stars was also drifting, spinning slightly out of control as its starboard engine nacelle had been blown off.
"Ten seconds to firing general," Lieutenant Curtis reported bringing his full attention back to the cruiser that was firing at them. "Nine… eight… seven… six… five… four… three… two… one… firing main cannons now."
~~~///~~~
Four large cannons stacked one on top of the other on either side of the Helios prow glowed brightly with gathering energy. First developed after the devastating conflict that was the Earth-Minbari War for the Aegis-class Global Orbital Defence platforms the massive superheavy particle cannons were among the most powerful and lethal weapons ever created by any of the Younger Races with even the likes of the Minbari respecting and fearing their destructive power. Since there first introduction the cannons had seen numerous upgrades and improvements – starting with being able to scale them down enough to mount them on the Warlock-class heavy destroyers – and those present on the Thor-class were the recipient of all those changes as well as new innovations that came about with the creation of the class.
Now, for the first time in history, the new model cannons unleashed their wrath on something that was not a test drone or unlucky asteroid. Four muscular beams of searing yellow-white particle energy, each over ten meters in diameter, erupted from the Helios and slammed into her opponent almost instantaneously. The effect was devastating.
Already weakened Shadow armour offered virtually no resistance as the beams tore into it. Even if it had still been at full capacity, it would have done no good as the armour in and immediately around the path of the beams immediately flashed to vapour. The beams continued on slicing into the more conventional metal hull underneath, disintegrating it nearly instantly as they tore into then through the entire length of the cruiser, slicing through the superstructure with an ease that was as devastating as it was utterly contemptuous, before exploding out the back surrounded by an eruption of flames and debris. For a few timeless seconds the doomed cruiser hung there, speared through from stem to stern by the beams then both its jump engines and its main power core detonated turning the entire vessel into a maelstrom of liberated energy and hard radiation.
Even as the beams from her main cannons vanished, as did their victim, the Helios wasn't done but instead opened fire with more convention fusion and neutron beam armament upon the last Dilgar warship. The barrage was joined by fire from all the surviving White Stars and under such a sustained withering barrage it stood no choice and within seconds its armour was buckling and dissolving in numerous locations across the hull followed by the hull itself beneath. A final volley of fire from the White Star's nose mounted gravitic discharge cannons tore deep into the ship and ripped apart its reactors with the predictable result. The final cruiser exploded with appalling violence leaving nothing behind but a spreading cloud of cooling plasma and burning dust.
The battle, the first with the Dilgar in over sixty years, was over.
~~~///~~~
Bridge
EAS Helios
"The last enemy ship has been destroyed."
"So, I see," Jack replied from where he was sitting in the command chair. Despite knowing how powerful the Thor-class was – indeed many in EarthForce liked to state that the class outgunned even the Minbari Shagotti-class battlecruisers – he was still somewhat surprised by how relatively easily she had dealt with the Dilgar ships. Granted they had had help from a squadron of White Stars – and the Dilgar had certainly been overconfident in the abilities of the Shadow tech upgraded ships as they'd been outnumbered by a considerable margin – but still the ease with which her state-of-the-art weapons systems had cut through the Dilgar was impressive to say the least.
"Stand down from battle stations," he ordered, "scramble our medical ships and make sure those Dilgar lifepods are rounded up and captured. Both the ISA and the Alliance will want answers as to where they've been for the last sixty odd years and where they got Shadow technology."
"Aye sir," the flight control officer responded.
"Lieutenant Curtis, are we still receiving telemetry from Farscape One?" Jack asked his thoughts turning back to his son and his ship that had been swept into one of the wormholes near the stars by the detonation of the Dilger perimeter defence mine.
"Negative sir we've lost the signal there's too much radiation flying around out there from the destroyed ships to maintain signal lock," Curtis reported, "however before we lost the signal the ship had ceased moving, so it likely exited the wormhole. Given how weak the signal was when we lost it the computer estimates that Farscape One has been transported anywhere from seventy thousand to seventy-four thousand light years away from here. We can't be certain due to interference from the wormhole."
Jack felt like he had been punched in the gut as the younger officers' words registered. John had been transported to the other side of the galaxy by the wormhole he'd been knocked into by the Dilgar mine. How the hell were they going to get him back? He forced himself to calm down, he knew John could look after himself – he was Anla'shok after all – and that if he was able to, if his ship wasn't damaged, then he would immediately reverse course and fly back through the wormhole.
"Keep an eye on the wormhole for as long as possible," he ordered, "knowing John if he's able to he'll fly straight back through the wormhole to here."
"Aye sir," Lieutenant Curtis acknowledged a moment before his sensor chirped a warning. "What the hell?"
"What is it?" Jack demanded.
"Sir the Dilgar lifepods all just self-destructed."
"Have any of our medical ships been damaged," Jack asked scowling at the news that the Dilgar had deliberately killed themselves, by blowing up their own lifepods, rather than be taken prisoner and interrogated.
"Negative sir they were far enough away from the blasts to escape damage."
"Well, that's something at least," Jack muttered relieved that no more of his people had gotten hurt when the pods exploded. Though it was also clear that the Dilgar had changed and not in a good way. They'd gotten more ruthless and fanatical if anything and we're now willing to die before being taken prisoner. Which did not bode well for future confrontations with them, confrontations that were sure to come now that the Dilgar knew that they knew they'd survived and that they'd integrated Shadow technology into their own "Scan the debris from the destroyed Dilgar ships, look for any sign of data recorder transponders."
"Aye sir."
"Also open a jump point and send a squad of fighters into hyperspace on recon/sentry duty. Tell them to keep an eye out for more Dilgar warships, I don't want to be surprised again."
"Aye sir."
~~~///~~~
Farscape One
A Short Time Later
John Crichton groaned as consciousness returned. Slowly he opened his eyes to find himself lying on the cold alloy deck of the heavily modified Blue Star scoutship. Ugh what in Valen's name just happened, he wondered awkwardly sitting up and almost wishing he hadn't as his head suddenly swum with disorientation that was so severe he thought he was actually going to throw up. He closed his eyes and through a combination of Ranger training and the breathing exercises he'd done all his life – and which had on half come in handy during the Clark regime era as his father being on Babylon 5 as a pilot during the civil war had had Clark's jackbooted thugs making the rest of the Crichton families lives hell in retribution, being able to keep his cool around them had prevented anything nastier than harassment occurring – to push the nausea away and regain his equilibrium.
Slowly the disorientation faded until he was confident that he could stand up without falling over, or throwing up all over the controls while it wouldn't damage them it would be a pain in the arse to clean off, he opened his eyes again and stood. He immediately noticed that the main lights in the small cockpit/bridge of the scoutship were off indicating that main power was certainly down meaning that for some reason the micro quantum gravitic reactor had gone into lockdown leaving only the backup power cells available. Great that's going to be a nightmare to fix, he thought as he made his way over to the controls – he knew better than to call for the AI at the moment as it wouldn't be much help – and tried to determine both what had happened to him and what the ships current condition was.
The sensors confirmed that the Dilgar nuclear mine had detonated just before he could clear the blast radius of the decades old weapon. The electromagnetic pulse wave and charged particle blast wave from the fusion detonation had slammed into him, the former causing several systems to shut down from the overload while the latter had knocked him out of control into one of the wormholes.
"So, where the fuck am I now," he thought checking the sensors and groaning when he got an error message indicating primary sensors were offline. Secondaries were working but at reduced efficiency due to the fact that main power was out, the singularity core having gone into lockdown after the primary containment field generator was damaged by the EMP.
"Oh, that's going to be a pain in the arse to fix," he muttered before checking and smiling in relief when he saw that the automatic repair system was still online and working. Main power would be restored within the hour according to the system though most other systems – including both the sublight and jump engines, shielding and the weapons system – would be down for several hours.
John leaned back thoughtfully in his chair. While the ship was fully capable of repairing itself – much like its larger White Star cousins could due to the amount of Vorlon biomechanical technology integrated into it – things would go a bit quicker if he stepped in to assist. The question was where to start and after a moment he decided that he would begin with the sensors. He wasn't stupid enough to touch the gravitic reactor as only specialist engineers from either the Minbari worker caste or the power generation section on the Helios were really trained to maintain and repair those things. For someone like him, who only had a passing knowledge of how they worked, to mess with the contained artificial black hole would be like playing Russian roulette and likely to end just as badly.
He was just about to stand up to go and get a repair kit when Farscape One abruptly jerked as though something had hit it, nearly knocking him out of the chair again. "Ship what was that," he demanded as stability returned.
"Short range sensors confirm a small fighter craft, unknown configuration, collided with our starboard anti-proton thruster nacelle," the AI reported immediately, "no additional damage detected. The fighter that hit us has collided with an asteroid and been destroyed. One unknown life sign was recorded just prior to the impact."
"Damn," John muttered then it dawned on him that the AI had mentioned asteroids. "Ship are we in an asteroid field?"
"Confirmed. Vessel is drifting near in the outer edge of a type two asteroid field."
Well, that's something at least, John thought knowing that a type two asteroid field was much like the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter back in Sol. Very large but very diffuse with hundreds or even tens of thousands of miles of space between individual asteroids and groups of asteroids. So, there was little danger of the ship hitting or being hit by an inconvenient asteroid or meteor.
No sooner than he thought that then the ship jerked again. Now what, he thought. "Ship report," he ordered.
"Vessel has been locked onto with a gravitational force beam similar a tractor beam but without any magnetic emissions."
"Source?"
"A frigate sized vessel located at a distance of eight thousand kilometres, vessel is of organic construction and appears unarmed."
"Show me."
"Confirmed."
The holographic display at the front of the cockpit powered up appearing first as a shimmering curtain of energy in the effect that Minbari holographic displays always used for some reason known only to them. It quickly stabilised and showed an ultra-high definition image of a strange vessel. It had a vaguely elliptical main body from which extended three tendrils that met – but didn't quite touch – at the back of the ship. A large metal structure, held on by large metallic straps, was wrapped like a collar on a dog around the forward section of the ship, and standing out sharply against the honey-coloured biometallic alloy that the ship was constructed from. It was very strange and alien looking even to someone like him who was well used to alien ships and how downright weird to human eyes they could look.
It was also under attack.
Dozens of small fighters, which somewhat reminded him of tri-bladed knifes, buzzed constantly around the ship carrying out attack runs. Every few seconds one of more of them would fire some type of red energy bolts that exploded on impact in a way that reminded him somewhat of how Centauri pulse weapons – be they ion bolts or plasma accelerator bolts – would explode on impact with a target.
Quickly John's hands flew across the console in front of him entering commands for the secondary sensors to both scan the vessel that was pulling him in and the small fighters that were attacking it. The vessel was definitely organic and unarmed; indeed, it was giving off the life signs of a true living being and not something that was just biomechanical like some ships back home were. It was clearly suffering under the bombardment as several areas of the outer hull, which had a molecular structure similar to coral but was much stronger with distinct metallic elements present, were showing signs that they would soon buckle under a relentless assault.
An assault that honestly puzzled John somewhat as the sensors confirmed that the alien bolts were definitely plasma based but were not particularly powerful as such things went. Certainly, they were much less powerful than he would have expected, being not much more powerful than the weapons Earth had used when they'd first ventured out into the galaxy after the Centauri stumbled across Sol and made first contact with them. It was odd in that the fighters themselves were technologically advanced having a defensive electromagnetic-gravitic field around them and powerful hybrid gravitic-ion engines.
The same could be said for the gravitic force beam that was drawing the Farscape One towards a large opening door on the rear of the upper hull of the organic ship. While the pull was impressive for something purely gravitic the beam was quite diffuse and if his main engines had been functioning, he would have had no trouble breaking free of the pull just by overpowering it. Given how advanced the ship had to be it was bizarre to say the very least.
A proximity warning let him know that the ship was now passing into the interior of the ship. He looked at the holographic screen to see walls made of a slightly darker version of the outer hull passing by him and ahead of him, he saw a device running along a rail that appeared to be the projector for the gravitational force beam. The tunnel the ship was travelling down gave way to a very large hangar bay with two or three layers of ledges that ships could land on, he could see a number of cylindrical spacecraft – which from their size he guessed were shuttlecraft of some kind – sitting parked.
The force beam began to lower the Farscape One towards the deck. John quickly touched some controls deploying the landing legs from their slots on the ventral hull, green lights appearing almost immediately to inform him that they were down and locked. It wasn't a moment too soon as a few seconds later a jolt ran through the ship as it was set down, the force beam releasing it a second or so later.
"Ship what's the environmental conditions outside," John asked knowing that he would likely have to go outside to convince these people, whoever they were, to let him go so he could fly back to the wormhole once the ships automatic repair protocol finished its repairs and return to the system he'd started in and the Helios. Where he was certain to get the air hugged out of him by his father right before Jack Crichton gave him a lecture for scaring the living daylights out of him. Hopefully they would be willing to listen and let him go but if they didn't well, he was a Ranger and he might have to demonstrate just what that meant by using a denn'bok to bash a few skulls in possibly quite literally.
"Sensors confirm an oxy-nitrogen atmosphere comparable with most lifeforms outside," the AI confirmed, "temperature and gravity are within human norms."
"Alright then," John said with a sigh. "I'm going out there to find and talk – possibly quite painfully – to whoever is in charge here and get them to release us. In the meantime, continue with repairs, as soon as I disembark initiate fortress protocols."
"Confirmed."
Knowing that there was nothing else to do, and that the AI matrix would take care of the ship while he was gone especially with the fortress protocols active - protocols that would keep anti-boarding, anti-tampering measures firmly at the ready until he, or another authorised person such as Entil'zha Ivanova or President Delenn, deactivated them with a command override – John left the cockpit and went back into the living area of the heavily modified Blue Star.
He immediately went to the weapons locker and using both a password and a DNA scan opened it. Sitting inside the locker were a number of different weapons ranging from obvious weapons like Earth Alliance pulsed plasma guns and Minbari fusion blasters to less obvious ones like the denn'bok which in its stored form looked like a simple metal cylinder. Present as well were a series of gravitic force rings, Minbari devices that while they looked like innocuous jewellery were actually weapons that could – due to their mastery of gravitic science – manipulate local gravity to a frightening degree. There were even a few knifes, and other bladed weapons present from a Minbari crystal blade to a Human kukri.
For a moment he debated with himself what weapons to take. Eventually he took out a ppg and a denn'bok slipping them into the appropriate positions on the belt of his uniform, before taking one of the more moderate strength gravitic force rings and slipping it onto one finger in the inactive position. Then he closed and sealed the weapons locker and began moving towards the airlock.
A few seconds later he was descending the boarding ramp, keeping his senses on full alert as he stepped out into the alien ship. The air was a little bit warmer than what he was strictly used to, having spent so much time on Minbar he had gotten used to the cooler temperature that the cold adapted Minbari found comfortable, and had a very odd if not entirely unpleasant scent to it. Everywhere he could hear a faint pulsing humming that somewhat reminded him of heart beats.
The deck beneath him suddenly shook reminding him that the vessel he was currently an unwilling guest on was under attack. It prompted him to pick up the pace, using his comm link to remotely close the ramp on the ship behind him. Then he started walking into the rest of the ship…
…and into the unknown.
~~~///~~~
Authors Note: Well, another chapter of this reboot/reimagination of this very old story of mine is done, I hope you all enjoyed it. Things are going to get pretty interesting for everyone involved pretty soon, especially as not only are the Dilgar back from the dead – something that will really set the cat among the pigeons with EarthGov and the Interstellar Alliance when they find out about it i.e. when they read Jack Crichton's report – but they are also active in the Uncharted Territories as there is a reason why they call the wormhole system Gateway. Next time John meets the crew of Moya – which might include a few new individuals as I have often found it odd that there were so few prisoners kept on a ship Moya's size – while back in Gateway things get a bit more heated as the Dilgar will be back. Until next time.
Beams of searing blue-green energy erupted from the cannons of the three Dilgar cruisers and shot towards the warships that had violated the gateway system. While the two flanking cruisers opened fire on the White Stars the central ship fired upon the Helios recognising her as a distant descendant of the Nova-class dreadnoughts that every member of the Dilgar Navy had learned to fear. To a soul the Dilgar aboard the Shadow tech upgraded cruisers were gleeful at the thought of finally getting to strike at those who decades earlier had defeated the Imperium and forced them to flee and continue as many of their kind as they could while the majority of Dilgar died with Omelos. With the tech they now had they believed victory inevitable.
It was an illusion born of both overconfidence and ignorance. Of a belief that the other races, being naturally inferior to Dilgar, would not be able to advance to the same levels they had in their decades of long exile. An illusion that was suddenly, decisively proven to be just that as the first salvo of Shadow-designed boser weapons fired at the White Stars went wide the hybrid Minbari/Vorlon vessels easily evading their targeting locks.
The same could not be said for the much larger, still manoeuvring to face them Helios.
The salvo fired at her immediately encountered the first layer of the powerful Thor-class ships defences – an enhanced gravimagnetic shield grid similar to the Minbari/Vorlon system used on the newest generation of White Stars – and immediately partially defocused exotic energies and particles spilling forth from the edges of the beams revealing the outlines of the force field even as the rest of the beam carried on and slammed into the hull. Instead of immediately scorching and rendering it, as the Dilgar expected, the beams broke apart and dissipated almost all their remaining energy being immediately deflected back into space in a rainbow blaze of diffusion leaving only slight, blackened smudges on the hull where they'd hit to indicate they'd struck her at all.
Not about to let the attack go unanswered the White Stars and the EarthForce super-dreadnought immediately returned fire. The White Stars falling into three ship attack formations and streaking towards their two targets gravitic discharge cannons, pulse neutron cannons and fusion pulse cannons blazing. Immediately upon impacting the shimmering midnight-black organic armour the blasts broke apart and spread across the surface in a rippling wall of energy that was rapidly drawn towards the spines where it was quickly radiated out into space. Not deterred in the least, and trained in how to deal with Shadow vessels or vessels that used their forbidden technology, the Rangers kept firing focusing all fire on one section of the armour intended to overwhelm the armours dispersion capabilities.
For her part the dorsal triple barrel turrets of the Helios turned to bear on the attacking cruiser – as it fired another salvo of beams which were as ineffective against the advanced defences of the mighty warship as the first salvo had been– and opened fire brutally raking it with a combination of fusion beams and neutron cannon fire. Shadow armour glowed fiercely as it fought to disperse the massive influx and the cruiser visibly trembled from the force of the impact.
Then the Niall and Thunderbolts blew in firing fusion beams and plasma pulses respectively at the Dilgar ships all of them targeting the radiator fins. The glow around them growing brighter even as the capital ships continued pelting the Dilgar with weapons fire putting their defences under strain. The Dilgar gave as good as they got however to the point that a White Star lost its shield and seconds later it was transformed into a fireball as the exotic energies of the Shadow-designed weapons annihilated it.
~~~///~~~
Bridge
EAS Helios
"We just lost White Star Thirty-Nine."
Sitting in the command chair General Jack Crichton nodded at the report from Lieutenant Curtis. He could see it himself on the holographic display and he honestly wasn't surprised that it had happened as while they had advanced defences the best defence of a White Star was its speed and agility. After all they weren't much bigger than a frigate and really had no business going up against something as big as a cruiser except in a group and when they could coordinate their fire.
"What's our status," he asked as the Helios shuddered under another volley of enemy fire.
"Shields down to sixty-three percent general," Curtis reported, "e-web down to fifty percent capacity. Outer armour band twenty percent compromised. No systems damage or power loss at this time."
"That's going to change soon," Roberts commented. Jack nodded in agreement as while the Helios was an immensely powerful vessel, with the best defences EarthForce R&D knew how to make some of which were ironically based on their own studies of Shadow technology during the Clark era as well as technology shared by other worlds as mandated in ISA treaties, she was far from invincible and invulnerable. Though they had already soaked up enough firepower to have destroyed an Omega-class destroyer a dozen times over and which would have disabled a Warlock-class heavy destroyer.
"Not if we can help it," he answered, "Lieutenant Curtis how long until our main cannons can be brought to bear on the Dilgar cruiser?"
"Sixty seconds sir. The cocky cats aren't even trying to manoeuvre out of the way."
"Idiots that will cost them," Richards commented with the grin of a predator who knew he would soon have his prey in his jaws ready for the kill. Jack had to work hard to maintain a professional mask and not return the grin as the main battery of the Helios was composed of the newest version of the most powerful energy beam weapon ever conceived by EarthForce. A weapon that could cut through even the largest of Drakh ships – their clanships – with relative ease. The version was even more powerful, owing to improvements made in particle acceleration and gravitational lensing technologies not to mention the fact that they had improved power sources now including their own gravitic reactors.
"That it will. Lieutenant Curtis as soon as our main battery has a lock on the Dilgar warship open fire. Don't wait for my order," Jack ordered as the ship shook under another volley of enemy fire. A thin haze of smoke began to make itself known, a sure sign that the ships systems were beginning to sustain damage.
"Aye sir. Twenty seconds till we're in position sir."
Jack nodded and turned his attention to the tactical displays. One of the Dilgar cruisers had been disabled and was drifting, trailing radiation and burning atmosphere from multiple breaches that had been torn in its hull by the White Stars gunfire. A small but growing number of lifepods surrounded it as the Dilgar crew scrambled to evacuate the dying vessel. One of said White Stars was also drifting, spinning slightly out of control as its starboard engine nacelle had been blown off.
"Ten seconds to firing general," Lieutenant Curtis reported bringing his full attention back to the cruiser that was firing at them. "Nine… eight… seven… six… five… four… three… two… one… firing main cannons now."
~~~///~~~
Four large cannons stacked one on top of the other on either side of the Helios prow glowed brightly with gathering energy. First developed after the devastating conflict that was the Earth-Minbari War for the Aegis-class Global Orbital Defence platforms the massive superheavy particle cannons were among the most powerful and lethal weapons ever created by any of the Younger Races with even the likes of the Minbari respecting and fearing their destructive power. Since there first introduction the cannons had seen numerous upgrades and improvements – starting with being able to scale them down enough to mount them on the Warlock-class heavy destroyers – and those present on the Thor-class were the recipient of all those changes as well as new innovations that came about with the creation of the class.
Now, for the first time in history, the new model cannons unleashed their wrath on something that was not a test drone or unlucky asteroid. Four muscular beams of searing yellow-white particle energy, each over ten meters in diameter, erupted from the Helios and slammed into her opponent almost instantaneously. The effect was devastating.
Already weakened Shadow armour offered virtually no resistance as the beams tore into it. Even if it had still been at full capacity, it would have done no good as the armour in and immediately around the path of the beams immediately flashed to vapour. The beams continued on slicing into the more conventional metal hull underneath, disintegrating it nearly instantly as they tore into then through the entire length of the cruiser, slicing through the superstructure with an ease that was as devastating as it was utterly contemptuous, before exploding out the back surrounded by an eruption of flames and debris. For a few timeless seconds the doomed cruiser hung there, speared through from stem to stern by the beams then both its jump engines and its main power core detonated turning the entire vessel into a maelstrom of liberated energy and hard radiation.
Even as the beams from her main cannons vanished, as did their victim, the Helios wasn't done but instead opened fire with more convention fusion and neutron beam armament upon the last Dilgar warship. The barrage was joined by fire from all the surviving White Stars and under such a sustained withering barrage it stood no choice and within seconds its armour was buckling and dissolving in numerous locations across the hull followed by the hull itself beneath. A final volley of fire from the White Star's nose mounted gravitic discharge cannons tore deep into the ship and ripped apart its reactors with the predictable result. The final cruiser exploded with appalling violence leaving nothing behind but a spreading cloud of cooling plasma and burning dust.
The battle, the first with the Dilgar in over sixty years, was over.
~~~///~~~
Bridge
EAS Helios
"The last enemy ship has been destroyed."
"So, I see," Jack replied from where he was sitting in the command chair. Despite knowing how powerful the Thor-class was – indeed many in EarthForce liked to state that the class outgunned even the Minbari Shagotti-class battlecruisers – he was still somewhat surprised by how relatively easily she had dealt with the Dilgar ships. Granted they had had help from a squadron of White Stars – and the Dilgar had certainly been overconfident in the abilities of the Shadow tech upgraded ships as they'd been outnumbered by a considerable margin – but still the ease with which her state-of-the-art weapons systems had cut through the Dilgar was impressive to say the least.
"Stand down from battle stations," he ordered, "scramble our medical ships and make sure those Dilgar lifepods are rounded up and captured. Both the ISA and the Alliance will want answers as to where they've been for the last sixty odd years and where they got Shadow technology."
"Aye sir," the flight control officer responded.
"Lieutenant Curtis, are we still receiving telemetry from Farscape One?" Jack asked his thoughts turning back to his son and his ship that had been swept into one of the wormholes near the stars by the detonation of the Dilger perimeter defence mine.
"Negative sir we've lost the signal there's too much radiation flying around out there from the destroyed ships to maintain signal lock," Curtis reported, "however before we lost the signal the ship had ceased moving, so it likely exited the wormhole. Given how weak the signal was when we lost it the computer estimates that Farscape One has been transported anywhere from seventy thousand to seventy-four thousand light years away from here. We can't be certain due to interference from the wormhole."
Jack felt like he had been punched in the gut as the younger officers' words registered. John had been transported to the other side of the galaxy by the wormhole he'd been knocked into by the Dilgar mine. How the hell were they going to get him back? He forced himself to calm down, he knew John could look after himself – he was Anla'shok after all – and that if he was able to, if his ship wasn't damaged, then he would immediately reverse course and fly back through the wormhole.
"Keep an eye on the wormhole for as long as possible," he ordered, "knowing John if he's able to he'll fly straight back through the wormhole to here."
"Aye sir," Lieutenant Curtis acknowledged a moment before his sensor chirped a warning. "What the hell?"
"What is it?" Jack demanded.
"Sir the Dilgar lifepods all just self-destructed."
"Have any of our medical ships been damaged," Jack asked scowling at the news that the Dilgar had deliberately killed themselves, by blowing up their own lifepods, rather than be taken prisoner and interrogated.
"Negative sir they were far enough away from the blasts to escape damage."
"Well, that's something at least," Jack muttered relieved that no more of his people had gotten hurt when the pods exploded. Though it was also clear that the Dilgar had changed and not in a good way. They'd gotten more ruthless and fanatical if anything and we're now willing to die before being taken prisoner. Which did not bode well for future confrontations with them, confrontations that were sure to come now that the Dilgar knew that they knew they'd survived and that they'd integrated Shadow technology into their own "Scan the debris from the destroyed Dilgar ships, look for any sign of data recorder transponders."
"Aye sir."
"Also open a jump point and send a squad of fighters into hyperspace on recon/sentry duty. Tell them to keep an eye out for more Dilgar warships, I don't want to be surprised again."
"Aye sir."
~~~///~~~
Farscape One
A Short Time Later
John Crichton groaned as consciousness returned. Slowly he opened his eyes to find himself lying on the cold alloy deck of the heavily modified Blue Star scoutship. Ugh what in Valen's name just happened, he wondered awkwardly sitting up and almost wishing he hadn't as his head suddenly swum with disorientation that was so severe he thought he was actually going to throw up. He closed his eyes and through a combination of Ranger training and the breathing exercises he'd done all his life – and which had on half come in handy during the Clark regime era as his father being on Babylon 5 as a pilot during the civil war had had Clark's jackbooted thugs making the rest of the Crichton families lives hell in retribution, being able to keep his cool around them had prevented anything nastier than harassment occurring – to push the nausea away and regain his equilibrium.
Slowly the disorientation faded until he was confident that he could stand up without falling over, or throwing up all over the controls while it wouldn't damage them it would be a pain in the arse to clean off, he opened his eyes again and stood. He immediately noticed that the main lights in the small cockpit/bridge of the scoutship were off indicating that main power was certainly down meaning that for some reason the micro quantum gravitic reactor had gone into lockdown leaving only the backup power cells available. Great that's going to be a nightmare to fix, he thought as he made his way over to the controls – he knew better than to call for the AI at the moment as it wouldn't be much help – and tried to determine both what had happened to him and what the ships current condition was.
The sensors confirmed that the Dilgar nuclear mine had detonated just before he could clear the blast radius of the decades old weapon. The electromagnetic pulse wave and charged particle blast wave from the fusion detonation had slammed into him, the former causing several systems to shut down from the overload while the latter had knocked him out of control into one of the wormholes.
"So, where the fuck am I now," he thought checking the sensors and groaning when he got an error message indicating primary sensors were offline. Secondaries were working but at reduced efficiency due to the fact that main power was out, the singularity core having gone into lockdown after the primary containment field generator was damaged by the EMP.
"Oh, that's going to be a pain in the arse to fix," he muttered before checking and smiling in relief when he saw that the automatic repair system was still online and working. Main power would be restored within the hour according to the system though most other systems – including both the sublight and jump engines, shielding and the weapons system – would be down for several hours.
John leaned back thoughtfully in his chair. While the ship was fully capable of repairing itself – much like its larger White Star cousins could due to the amount of Vorlon biomechanical technology integrated into it – things would go a bit quicker if he stepped in to assist. The question was where to start and after a moment he decided that he would begin with the sensors. He wasn't stupid enough to touch the gravitic reactor as only specialist engineers from either the Minbari worker caste or the power generation section on the Helios were really trained to maintain and repair those things. For someone like him, who only had a passing knowledge of how they worked, to mess with the contained artificial black hole would be like playing Russian roulette and likely to end just as badly.
He was just about to stand up to go and get a repair kit when Farscape One abruptly jerked as though something had hit it, nearly knocking him out of the chair again. "Ship what was that," he demanded as stability returned.
"Short range sensors confirm a small fighter craft, unknown configuration, collided with our starboard anti-proton thruster nacelle," the AI reported immediately, "no additional damage detected. The fighter that hit us has collided with an asteroid and been destroyed. One unknown life sign was recorded just prior to the impact."
"Damn," John muttered then it dawned on him that the AI had mentioned asteroids. "Ship are we in an asteroid field?"
"Confirmed. Vessel is drifting near in the outer edge of a type two asteroid field."
Well, that's something at least, John thought knowing that a type two asteroid field was much like the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter back in Sol. Very large but very diffuse with hundreds or even tens of thousands of miles of space between individual asteroids and groups of asteroids. So, there was little danger of the ship hitting or being hit by an inconvenient asteroid or meteor.
No sooner than he thought that then the ship jerked again. Now what, he thought. "Ship report," he ordered.
"Vessel has been locked onto with a gravitational force beam similar a tractor beam but without any magnetic emissions."
"Source?"
"A frigate sized vessel located at a distance of eight thousand kilometres, vessel is of organic construction and appears unarmed."
"Show me."
"Confirmed."
The holographic display at the front of the cockpit powered up appearing first as a shimmering curtain of energy in the effect that Minbari holographic displays always used for some reason known only to them. It quickly stabilised and showed an ultra-high definition image of a strange vessel. It had a vaguely elliptical main body from which extended three tendrils that met – but didn't quite touch – at the back of the ship. A large metal structure, held on by large metallic straps, was wrapped like a collar on a dog around the forward section of the ship, and standing out sharply against the honey-coloured biometallic alloy that the ship was constructed from. It was very strange and alien looking even to someone like him who was well used to alien ships and how downright weird to human eyes they could look.
It was also under attack.
Dozens of small fighters, which somewhat reminded him of tri-bladed knifes, buzzed constantly around the ship carrying out attack runs. Every few seconds one of more of them would fire some type of red energy bolts that exploded on impact in a way that reminded him somewhat of how Centauri pulse weapons – be they ion bolts or plasma accelerator bolts – would explode on impact with a target.
Quickly John's hands flew across the console in front of him entering commands for the secondary sensors to both scan the vessel that was pulling him in and the small fighters that were attacking it. The vessel was definitely organic and unarmed; indeed, it was giving off the life signs of a true living being and not something that was just biomechanical like some ships back home were. It was clearly suffering under the bombardment as several areas of the outer hull, which had a molecular structure similar to coral but was much stronger with distinct metallic elements present, were showing signs that they would soon buckle under a relentless assault.
An assault that honestly puzzled John somewhat as the sensors confirmed that the alien bolts were definitely plasma based but were not particularly powerful as such things went. Certainly, they were much less powerful than he would have expected, being not much more powerful than the weapons Earth had used when they'd first ventured out into the galaxy after the Centauri stumbled across Sol and made first contact with them. It was odd in that the fighters themselves were technologically advanced having a defensive electromagnetic-gravitic field around them and powerful hybrid gravitic-ion engines.
The same could be said for the gravitic force beam that was drawing the Farscape One towards a large opening door on the rear of the upper hull of the organic ship. While the pull was impressive for something purely gravitic the beam was quite diffuse and if his main engines had been functioning, he would have had no trouble breaking free of the pull just by overpowering it. Given how advanced the ship had to be it was bizarre to say the very least.
A proximity warning let him know that the ship was now passing into the interior of the ship. He looked at the holographic screen to see walls made of a slightly darker version of the outer hull passing by him and ahead of him, he saw a device running along a rail that appeared to be the projector for the gravitational force beam. The tunnel the ship was travelling down gave way to a very large hangar bay with two or three layers of ledges that ships could land on, he could see a number of cylindrical spacecraft – which from their size he guessed were shuttlecraft of some kind – sitting parked.
The force beam began to lower the Farscape One towards the deck. John quickly touched some controls deploying the landing legs from their slots on the ventral hull, green lights appearing almost immediately to inform him that they were down and locked. It wasn't a moment too soon as a few seconds later a jolt ran through the ship as it was set down, the force beam releasing it a second or so later.
"Ship what's the environmental conditions outside," John asked knowing that he would likely have to go outside to convince these people, whoever they were, to let him go so he could fly back to the wormhole once the ships automatic repair protocol finished its repairs and return to the system he'd started in and the Helios. Where he was certain to get the air hugged out of him by his father right before Jack Crichton gave him a lecture for scaring the living daylights out of him. Hopefully they would be willing to listen and let him go but if they didn't well, he was a Ranger and he might have to demonstrate just what that meant by using a denn'bok to bash a few skulls in possibly quite literally.
"Sensors confirm an oxy-nitrogen atmosphere comparable with most lifeforms outside," the AI confirmed, "temperature and gravity are within human norms."
"Alright then," John said with a sigh. "I'm going out there to find and talk – possibly quite painfully – to whoever is in charge here and get them to release us. In the meantime, continue with repairs, as soon as I disembark initiate fortress protocols."
"Confirmed."
Knowing that there was nothing else to do, and that the AI matrix would take care of the ship while he was gone especially with the fortress protocols active - protocols that would keep anti-boarding, anti-tampering measures firmly at the ready until he, or another authorised person such as Entil'zha Ivanova or President Delenn, deactivated them with a command override – John left the cockpit and went back into the living area of the heavily modified Blue Star.
He immediately went to the weapons locker and using both a password and a DNA scan opened it. Sitting inside the locker were a number of different weapons ranging from obvious weapons like Earth Alliance pulsed plasma guns and Minbari fusion blasters to less obvious ones like the denn'bok which in its stored form looked like a simple metal cylinder. Present as well were a series of gravitic force rings, Minbari devices that while they looked like innocuous jewellery were actually weapons that could – due to their mastery of gravitic science – manipulate local gravity to a frightening degree. There were even a few knifes, and other bladed weapons present from a Minbari crystal blade to a Human kukri.
For a moment he debated with himself what weapons to take. Eventually he took out a ppg and a denn'bok slipping them into the appropriate positions on the belt of his uniform, before taking one of the more moderate strength gravitic force rings and slipping it onto one finger in the inactive position. Then he closed and sealed the weapons locker and began moving towards the airlock.
A few seconds later he was descending the boarding ramp, keeping his senses on full alert as he stepped out into the alien ship. The air was a little bit warmer than what he was strictly used to, having spent so much time on Minbar he had gotten used to the cooler temperature that the cold adapted Minbari found comfortable, and had a very odd if not entirely unpleasant scent to it. Everywhere he could hear a faint pulsing humming that somewhat reminded him of heart beats.
The deck beneath him suddenly shook reminding him that the vessel he was currently an unwilling guest on was under attack. It prompted him to pick up the pace, using his comm link to remotely close the ramp on the ship behind him. Then he started walking into the rest of the ship…
…and into the unknown.
~~~///~~~
Authors Note: Well, another chapter of this reboot/reimagination of this very old story of mine is done, I hope you all enjoyed it. Things are going to get pretty interesting for everyone involved pretty soon, especially as not only are the Dilgar back from the dead – something that will really set the cat among the pigeons with EarthGov and the Interstellar Alliance when they find out about it i.e. when they read Jack Crichton's report – but they are also active in the Uncharted Territories as there is a reason why they call the wormhole system Gateway. Next time John meets the crew of Moya – which might include a few new individuals as I have often found it odd that there were so few prisoners kept on a ship Moya's size – while back in Gateway things get a bit more heated as the Dilgar will be back. Until next time.