Chapter 1
Posted with the permission and insistence of Lightning_Count.
December 2247
The Final Week of the Minbari War
"This was always the dumbest idea we had." General Robert Lefcourt was not subtle in his disregard for the sight sitting beyond the viewports. "How much time and money did we pour into this?"
"Twenty three billion credits." His comrade General Kyle Farrow had long since memorized the number, along with a complete breakdown of how and where it had been spent. "Want to know how many nukes we could have made for that?"
"I absolutely don't want to know."
To both military officers, there didn't seem to be a lot of product for the investment, certainly not the decisive advantage humanity needed in their current war with the Minbari. To say it wasn't going well was an understatement. The once massive fleets of Earth Force had been systematically obliterated by the superior alien technology of the Minbari. No trick, tactic, wonder weapon, or simple weight of numbers had meant a damn. The Minbari were now just a few days away from Earth itself and when they arrived, it would mean the end of the human race.
Unless this massive investment paid off.
"Generals, sorry to keep you waiting!" An effulgent personality skidded to a stop beside them, massively out of place amid the dour military personnel. "Ah, sorry, not used to this gravity, and the constant spinning..."
"Doctor Ginelli." Farrow cut off her stream of words. "Can I assume we are ready to test your project?"
"What? Yes, right!" The young woman waved at the window in front of them, the view steadily rotating but keeping the broader scene in focus. Beyond them was the sun, the ship they were stood upon angled so the intense brightness did not pour though the viewports and require polarized goggles. Closer to them was an unusual looking structure, resembling a mile wide metal sphere with a massive umbrella style dish pointing back toward the sun. There was nothing else like it anywhere in known space, and for good reason in Lefcourt's opinion.
"So run this by me one more time Doctor."
"Right, okay." The energised scientist manually reset her brain by slapping the side of her head. "The problem we have is that the Minbari are coming here to kill us and we can't stop them. If we had time, we might, but we don't. Because we've almost run out of ships."
"And this machine...?" Lefcourt gestured out the window
"It gives us time. The Minbari are far more advanced than us but still use Hyperspace, they still have to abide by the laws of physics. Hyperspace requires a jump point, a vortex created by perfectly modulated tachyon bombardment that opens the way from hyperspace to real space. But we know that in some places you cannot form a vortex, or even travel through hyperspace due to gravitic interference."
"Is that what your machine does?"
Dr Ginelli pulled a face, then another as she sorted through responses, eventually selecting one. "Not really, no. But it does flood hyperspace with tachyons, preventing jump point formation. So if the Minbari can't leave hyperspace, they can't drop into orbit and murder everyone."
"Fair idea," General Farrow allowed. "Does it work?"
"In a lab, yes. On a practical scale, we'll know in a minute."
"And you placed it here because it needs the sun?" Lefcourt reasoned.
"Yes, exactly. The power requirements are vast and any fusion reactor we built would be absurdly vast. But hey, we have a giant fusion reactor just kind of sitting here." She waved toward the sun. "We just gather power from it and presto, tachyon storm."
"Is this in any way dangerous?"
"Oh yeah, incredibly dangerous!" Ginelli bubbled, quickly pulling it back. "But only if you are in hyperspace. Or standing too close."
"How close is too close exactly?" Lefcourt peered out of the window at the device very pointedly.
"Oh, er, we'll be fine. Probably." Ginelli rocked on her feet. "You already had children right? Joke!"
Lefcourt's expression did not change. He was not appreciating this assignment. Someone among the Joint Chiefs was having a great laugh at his expense.
"Are we ready to begin?"
"Sure, it's fully charged, say a prayer to Murphy and off we go!"
The operation did at least look professional, head scientist not withstanding, the rest of the team went to work smoothly and efficiently. The monitoring ship they were on bustled with activity, a simple converted liner being the best Earth could offer from its meagre resources. This hyperspace inhibitor was not popular, a waste of effort according to most military officers, but people were desperate for any hope, even from proverbial mad scientists.
"System at capacity, Tachyon generators ready." Ginelli exhaled. "Show time."
She hit the control, space around the device rippling briefly before nothing. The device sat in space as before, quiet and unremarkable. It was a silence mirrored by the two General officers.
"We're down to zero charge, the device activated and dumped its entire power capacity in a single discharge," one of the technicians reported. "Tachyon levels are steady and normal."
"That's impossible, just impossible!" Ginelli bounded up to the monitoring equipment. "Where did all the tachyons go?"
"Twenty three billion well spent." Farrow exhaled. "Any ideas?"
"We better check, just in case it actually did work." Lefcourt raised his hand and tapped the commlink attached to the back. "Comms, put me through to the Lexington."
"Ready sir."
"Lexington, what's the situation over there?"
Sitting slightly more distant behind the monitoring ship was the mission escort, the pale grey and blue heavy cruiser Lexington, her hull showing multiple patches where heavy battle damage had been repaired. She remained under the command of John Sheridan, the by now famous officer preferring the speed and flexibility of a cruiser over the bigger dreadnoughts.
"General, situation here is unchanged," Sheridan replied to the query. "We picked up a pretty big tachyon pulse, but now nothing."
"Same here, but we need a test anyway." Lefcourt followed through on his duty to properly oversee the experiment. "Try to open a jump point, don't head through, just see if its possible."
"Understood sir." Sheridan nodded to his helm officer. "Okay Phil, bring jump engines online, lets see what happens."
The heavy cruiser shunted power from her reactors to the jump systems, a focused stream of tachyons bombarding a point in space at just the right frequency and intensity to bore through and create a spectacular rippling vortex through to hyperpsace. The jump drive worked perfectly, which was not a good sign.
"Did you get that General?" Sheridan transmitted to the monitoring team. "Jump point is open, no apparent anomalies."
"We got it Captain," Lefcourt confirmed. "I think we're done here. Shut it down Captain, and head back to Venus. We'll need that old Centauri gate online as soon as possible for the evacuation."
"I'll get back to it, General. Lexington out."
Lefcourt turned to General Farrow, both of them accepting the same conclusion.
"Alright Doctor, lets pack it up here. You're scheduled for the evacuation fleet and you really don't want to miss your ride."
"I just don't understand." Ginelli scratched her messy hair. "It worked, for a second it worked! We did everything right, but we still failed."
"Don't feel too bad Doctor." Farrow tried a smile. "That might as well be the epitaph of this war."
"I was so sure!"
"Heard that one before too." The General offered. "Shut it down, Doctor. You still have a responsibility to your team, make sure they have all they need before you head out."
She took a final long look at the experiment, shaking her head, edging toward tears.
"I just wanted to save Earth."
"Nothing can do that now. Your job is much harder," Farrow related. "You get to save the future."
The Lexington was about ten minutes into its journey to Venus when the navigational system flashed up an error. Lieutenant Philip Marks ran three separate checks, each time getting the same error.
"Captain, do you have a second?"
"Sure, what've you got Lieutenant?"
"Something off in the navigation. According to our local positioning system, we're on course for Venus. All local beacons and waypoints are good, but our stellar navigation is going haywire."
"Haywire how?"
"I can't get a fix on any constellations," Marks replied, just as bemused as the ship's computer. "Normally the navigation system runs a secondary check with stellar positioning, pretty pointless here in Sol, but handy out on the Rim or known space. It's just routine here, but it keeps throwing up errors."
"Problem in the sensors?"
"I've checked it four times, all clean."
"Can you try it manually?"
"I did sir and, well, I can't find Orion. Or Ursa Major, or any of the big constellations."
"Put the optical view up on the big screen," Sheridan ordered. "They've got to be out there."
The large viewscreen shifted to show the path ahead of them, the planet Venus a bright dot to the front left with a field of stars behind it. It was such a common sight he'd been taking it for granted, just the background of his daily life, but now he looked closely he was also having a hard time picking out the main constellations.
"The hell is wrong with us?" He showed a little frustration. "People have been spotting constellations since they started banging rocks together!"
"I can't see them either sir." Steven Carroll, his First Officer chimed in. "Must be going cross eyed."
"Me neither," Jean Alecto added from the sensor station. "Either our instruments are broken or we're not where we should be."
"Venus is still there, the sun's at our back, all the local beacons are active..." Sheridan tailed off. "Can you get the Proxima beacon?"
"One second sir." Marks brought up the long distance navigation system. Proxima was the nearest Earth Colony and while it had recently fallen to the Minbari, its navigation beacon would still be active. "I can't reach it, Captain. In fact I'm not getting any beacon readings outside local space."
"Did traffic control turn off the beacons?"
"Nothing scheduled sir, we should still be able to pick up navigation routes outside of Sol." Marks shook his head in utter confusion. "Nothing."
"Commander, can me a line to Venusian control." Sheridan ordered.
"Ready."
"Venus Station Prime, this is Lexington. We're having some trouble with our long range navigation. Can you confirm our position using stellar waypoints?"
"Standby Lexington, we're having some problems too." A distinctly irate traffic controller responded. "Our long range system is down too."
"Captain, we may have another issue." Alecto called over from the sensor station. "Can I change the viewscreen to show behind us?"
"Go ahead."
The image shifted to show the sun as expected, but beyond it instead of a plain starfield was a vast colourful nebula dominating the vista. It caught their breath for a moment, the image banishing their doubts and derailing any attempts to rationalise the situation.
"Venus Control." Sheridan's throat was dry. "Have you looked out of a window lately??"[/hr]
December 2247
The Final Week of the Minbari War
"This was always the dumbest idea we had." General Robert Lefcourt was not subtle in his disregard for the sight sitting beyond the viewports. "How much time and money did we pour into this?"
"Twenty three billion credits." His comrade General Kyle Farrow had long since memorized the number, along with a complete breakdown of how and where it had been spent. "Want to know how many nukes we could have made for that?"
"I absolutely don't want to know."
To both military officers, there didn't seem to be a lot of product for the investment, certainly not the decisive advantage humanity needed in their current war with the Minbari. To say it wasn't going well was an understatement. The once massive fleets of Earth Force had been systematically obliterated by the superior alien technology of the Minbari. No trick, tactic, wonder weapon, or simple weight of numbers had meant a damn. The Minbari were now just a few days away from Earth itself and when they arrived, it would mean the end of the human race.
Unless this massive investment paid off.
"Generals, sorry to keep you waiting!" An effulgent personality skidded to a stop beside them, massively out of place amid the dour military personnel. "Ah, sorry, not used to this gravity, and the constant spinning..."
"Doctor Ginelli." Farrow cut off her stream of words. "Can I assume we are ready to test your project?"
"What? Yes, right!" The young woman waved at the window in front of them, the view steadily rotating but keeping the broader scene in focus. Beyond them was the sun, the ship they were stood upon angled so the intense brightness did not pour though the viewports and require polarized goggles. Closer to them was an unusual looking structure, resembling a mile wide metal sphere with a massive umbrella style dish pointing back toward the sun. There was nothing else like it anywhere in known space, and for good reason in Lefcourt's opinion.
"So run this by me one more time Doctor."
"Right, okay." The energised scientist manually reset her brain by slapping the side of her head. "The problem we have is that the Minbari are coming here to kill us and we can't stop them. If we had time, we might, but we don't. Because we've almost run out of ships."
"And this machine...?" Lefcourt gestured out the window
"It gives us time. The Minbari are far more advanced than us but still use Hyperspace, they still have to abide by the laws of physics. Hyperspace requires a jump point, a vortex created by perfectly modulated tachyon bombardment that opens the way from hyperspace to real space. But we know that in some places you cannot form a vortex, or even travel through hyperspace due to gravitic interference."
"Is that what your machine does?"
Dr Ginelli pulled a face, then another as she sorted through responses, eventually selecting one. "Not really, no. But it does flood hyperspace with tachyons, preventing jump point formation. So if the Minbari can't leave hyperspace, they can't drop into orbit and murder everyone."
"Fair idea," General Farrow allowed. "Does it work?"
"In a lab, yes. On a practical scale, we'll know in a minute."
"And you placed it here because it needs the sun?" Lefcourt reasoned.
"Yes, exactly. The power requirements are vast and any fusion reactor we built would be absurdly vast. But hey, we have a giant fusion reactor just kind of sitting here." She waved toward the sun. "We just gather power from it and presto, tachyon storm."
"Is this in any way dangerous?"
"Oh yeah, incredibly dangerous!" Ginelli bubbled, quickly pulling it back. "But only if you are in hyperspace. Or standing too close."
"How close is too close exactly?" Lefcourt peered out of the window at the device very pointedly.
"Oh, er, we'll be fine. Probably." Ginelli rocked on her feet. "You already had children right? Joke!"
Lefcourt's expression did not change. He was not appreciating this assignment. Someone among the Joint Chiefs was having a great laugh at his expense.
"Are we ready to begin?"
"Sure, it's fully charged, say a prayer to Murphy and off we go!"
The operation did at least look professional, head scientist not withstanding, the rest of the team went to work smoothly and efficiently. The monitoring ship they were on bustled with activity, a simple converted liner being the best Earth could offer from its meagre resources. This hyperspace inhibitor was not popular, a waste of effort according to most military officers, but people were desperate for any hope, even from proverbial mad scientists.
"System at capacity, Tachyon generators ready." Ginelli exhaled. "Show time."
She hit the control, space around the device rippling briefly before nothing. The device sat in space as before, quiet and unremarkable. It was a silence mirrored by the two General officers.
"We're down to zero charge, the device activated and dumped its entire power capacity in a single discharge," one of the technicians reported. "Tachyon levels are steady and normal."
"That's impossible, just impossible!" Ginelli bounded up to the monitoring equipment. "Where did all the tachyons go?"
"Twenty three billion well spent." Farrow exhaled. "Any ideas?"
"We better check, just in case it actually did work." Lefcourt raised his hand and tapped the commlink attached to the back. "Comms, put me through to the Lexington."
"Ready sir."
"Lexington, what's the situation over there?"
Sitting slightly more distant behind the monitoring ship was the mission escort, the pale grey and blue heavy cruiser Lexington, her hull showing multiple patches where heavy battle damage had been repaired. She remained under the command of John Sheridan, the by now famous officer preferring the speed and flexibility of a cruiser over the bigger dreadnoughts.
"General, situation here is unchanged," Sheridan replied to the query. "We picked up a pretty big tachyon pulse, but now nothing."
"Same here, but we need a test anyway." Lefcourt followed through on his duty to properly oversee the experiment. "Try to open a jump point, don't head through, just see if its possible."
"Understood sir." Sheridan nodded to his helm officer. "Okay Phil, bring jump engines online, lets see what happens."
The heavy cruiser shunted power from her reactors to the jump systems, a focused stream of tachyons bombarding a point in space at just the right frequency and intensity to bore through and create a spectacular rippling vortex through to hyperpsace. The jump drive worked perfectly, which was not a good sign.
"Did you get that General?" Sheridan transmitted to the monitoring team. "Jump point is open, no apparent anomalies."
"We got it Captain," Lefcourt confirmed. "I think we're done here. Shut it down Captain, and head back to Venus. We'll need that old Centauri gate online as soon as possible for the evacuation."
"I'll get back to it, General. Lexington out."
Lefcourt turned to General Farrow, both of them accepting the same conclusion.
"Alright Doctor, lets pack it up here. You're scheduled for the evacuation fleet and you really don't want to miss your ride."
"I just don't understand." Ginelli scratched her messy hair. "It worked, for a second it worked! We did everything right, but we still failed."
"Don't feel too bad Doctor." Farrow tried a smile. "That might as well be the epitaph of this war."
"I was so sure!"
"Heard that one before too." The General offered. "Shut it down, Doctor. You still have a responsibility to your team, make sure they have all they need before you head out."
She took a final long look at the experiment, shaking her head, edging toward tears.
"I just wanted to save Earth."
"Nothing can do that now. Your job is much harder," Farrow related. "You get to save the future."
The Lexington was about ten minutes into its journey to Venus when the navigational system flashed up an error. Lieutenant Philip Marks ran three separate checks, each time getting the same error.
"Captain, do you have a second?"
"Sure, what've you got Lieutenant?"
"Something off in the navigation. According to our local positioning system, we're on course for Venus. All local beacons and waypoints are good, but our stellar navigation is going haywire."
"Haywire how?"
"I can't get a fix on any constellations," Marks replied, just as bemused as the ship's computer. "Normally the navigation system runs a secondary check with stellar positioning, pretty pointless here in Sol, but handy out on the Rim or known space. It's just routine here, but it keeps throwing up errors."
"Problem in the sensors?"
"I've checked it four times, all clean."
"Can you try it manually?"
"I did sir and, well, I can't find Orion. Or Ursa Major, or any of the big constellations."
"Put the optical view up on the big screen," Sheridan ordered. "They've got to be out there."
The large viewscreen shifted to show the path ahead of them, the planet Venus a bright dot to the front left with a field of stars behind it. It was such a common sight he'd been taking it for granted, just the background of his daily life, but now he looked closely he was also having a hard time picking out the main constellations.
"The hell is wrong with us?" He showed a little frustration. "People have been spotting constellations since they started banging rocks together!"
"I can't see them either sir." Steven Carroll, his First Officer chimed in. "Must be going cross eyed."
"Me neither," Jean Alecto added from the sensor station. "Either our instruments are broken or we're not where we should be."
"Venus is still there, the sun's at our back, all the local beacons are active..." Sheridan tailed off. "Can you get the Proxima beacon?"
"One second sir." Marks brought up the long distance navigation system. Proxima was the nearest Earth Colony and while it had recently fallen to the Minbari, its navigation beacon would still be active. "I can't reach it, Captain. In fact I'm not getting any beacon readings outside local space."
"Did traffic control turn off the beacons?"
"Nothing scheduled sir, we should still be able to pick up navigation routes outside of Sol." Marks shook his head in utter confusion. "Nothing."
"Commander, can me a line to Venusian control." Sheridan ordered.
"Ready."
"Venus Station Prime, this is Lexington. We're having some trouble with our long range navigation. Can you confirm our position using stellar waypoints?"
"Standby Lexington, we're having some problems too." A distinctly irate traffic controller responded. "Our long range system is down too."
"Captain, we may have another issue." Alecto called over from the sensor station. "Can I change the viewscreen to show behind us?"
"Go ahead."
The image shifted to show the sun as expected, but beyond it instead of a plain starfield was a vast colourful nebula dominating the vista. It caught their breath for a moment, the image banishing their doubts and derailing any attempts to rationalise the situation.
"Venus Control." Sheridan's throat was dry. "Have you looked out of a window lately??"[/hr]
