Chapter Text
"Hyperion, get out of my bloody way."
"No."
"It'll save us all so much time! We just have to pretend that we never saw her!"
"Spirit, ah get ya don't exactly have th' best relationship with spooks – can't say ah have the highest opinion of 'em either – but ah ain't gonna let you shoot a girl just 'cause she gave ya a bad fright."
Normandy SR-2 watched with something between worry, disbelief and concern as the other ships debate the merits of killing her and hiding her body wreck.
(At least Spirit of Fire had eventually stopped screaming.)
"Um." Archangel sweated a little. "Couldst we mayhaps delay such talk of execution until such time as we know where yonder ship comes from and to whom she has pledged her allegiance?"
The Firestorms, meanwhile, were circling around Normandy like sharks.
"She's not human, no no no!" One said, jeering at the avian features of Normandy's face and the metallic plates that lined her jaw and the back of her hands. They couldn't tell that she was half Turian, but they knew she was half something.
"Well, maybe a little." Another Firestorm sweated. She was looking around at her comrades self-consciously. They had their own signs of alien influence – slitted pupils, scaled skin. Like some sort of human Thin Man hybrid.
(Which technically would make them about five parts human and one part Viper, but the Firestorms didn't know that).
"Doesn't matter!" A third Firestorm declared boldly. "We are XCOM! We will defend the Earth from any and all alien threats!"
"That's nice, dear." Jupiter II folded her arms. "But right now I think our problems are very human in nature." She was alternating between frowning at the Firestorms and at Spirit of Fire.
Normandy figured she should probably say something before they decided to start guessing why she was here. "Not spying." She said.
Unfortunately, since she was Normandy, a stealth ship, her normal speaking volume was barely that of a whisper.
"Ain't anybody else find it suspicious that we find her after all the fighting's done?" Spirit of Fire spat, not even realising that Normandy had said anything. "If she was here before, then she left us to fight against that thing all on her lonesome. You sure you want to stick yer neck out for someone like that?"
"Arrived after." Normandy corrected, but again nobody heard her.
"Yeah, and if she just got here, why did she hide? Sus!" A Firestorm called.
"Don't know you?" Normandy held out her hands in befuddlement, face confused. She was of the opinion that that was a perfectly good reason to keep quiet.
"What, you think she's the vanguard for some huge armada somewhere?" Hyperion said sceptically.
"Wish." Normandy huffed, crossing her arms.
"Regardless of if yonder ship was sent to spy, sabotage, or otherwise subvert our intentions here…" Archangel started to say.
And with that, Normandy hit breaking point. "Scouting!" She semi-shouted.
The other ships' heads all shot around in surprise, caught off guard by Normandy's objection.
"What?" Spirit of Fire blurted.
Normandy scowled, staring Spirit of Fire directly in the eyes. "Scouting." She said. Her voice had dropped down from its 'shouting' volume, but the anger in it kept it much louder than her normal… almost at what others would consider a normal volume. "Not spying. Lots of noise. Wanted to see."
"Noise?" Jupiter II blinked. "What kind of noise?"
"Eh…" Hyperion went to stick a finger in her ear, but remembered just in time that she was wearing power armour. She gave her armour's thick metal fingers a disgusted look, then shook that hand and finished her thought. "If they had any Ghosts with 'em, they probably 'heard' my psi emitter."
"What, and got here already?" Spirit of Fire asked, incredulous. "No way!"
"Not if she had a basic bargain-bin drive, sure." Hyperion rolled her eyes. "But let's assume she has something more advanced than a toaster oven."
"Mate," Spirit of Fire said, trying not to grind her teeth, "the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine has served the UEG for the better part of 300 years just bloody fine."
Hyperion's eyebrows jumped up into her hair. "300 years and you're still surprised she can cross systems in less than a day? Your warp rats get paid by the hour or somethin'?"
Archangel not-so-softly coughed.
The other two capital ships rounded on her. "What?!"
Archangel nodded at Normandy. "We were letting yonder ship –"
"Normandy." Normandy interjected.
"– letting young Normandy explain herself." Archangel corrected herself.
(Normandy actually had a good two years on Archangel, so her calling Normandy 'young' was a bit rich).
Normandy stared at Archangel, befuddled. Since when was a ship required to apologise for simply being quiet?
"Oh right, sure." Spirit of Fire said, sarcastically. "Because the bloody creepy little spy ship we caught is definitely going to tell us the truth about what she's up to."
"Creepy?" Normandy's eyes narrowed.
"Dangit Spirit, can you not hold it in for five minutes?" Hyperion sighed.
Jupiter II put a finger on the outside of her bubble helmet, about where her lips were. "This isn't working… maybe if I…?"
She straightened up, rolling her shoulders and puffing her chest out. A sleazy smile spread itself across her face like an oil stain on a nice white shirt. "My dear girl, I'm afraid my friends have gotten rather carried away with their imaginations." She oozed. "I'm sure you could disperse these… awful allegations, if you could only spare a moment of your time to clarify what kind of company a lovely young lady like yourself keeps…?"
Normandy gave Jupiter II a flat stare, thoroughly unimpressed.
Spirit of Fire huffed, looking away. "Fine, get your hopes up. Don't blame me when her friends arrive to conscript us, or worse. I'll be over here, staying bloody well clear of all of this –"
There was a bright flash of light, and Spirit of Fire found herself almost nose-to-nose WAY too close with the Jupiter II-class Battlestar Galactica.
(Jupiter II sneezed, causing the one Firestorm that hadn't instantly pointed a gun at the new intruder to stare at her in confused disgust.)
"Gah!" Spirit of Fire recoiled collision alarms blaring, scrambling backwards to put some distance between herself and Galactica.
On her other side, space was violently shattered the way ice broke before an icebreaker, allowing the Space Battleship Yamato passage back into normal space.
"Yah!" Spirit of Fire yelped again, frantically turning back and forth at the two ships on either side of her, boxing her in.
"Ah, Blackbird, there you are!" Galactica smiled. Then she blinked, and stared at the other ships in confusion. "…who are all these ships?"
Archangel yelped, her heart having leapt up into her throat at the sudden appearance of the other ships. She scooted backwards, her hand twitching down towards her holsters gun ports starting to slowly open.
Yamato's eyes weren't on the capital ships, but on the swarm of Firestorms. The (comparatively) tiny fighters were flying in circles around her and Galactica, examining them from all angles.
("These two are human?"
"That's even MORE sus!"
"Shut up, 011. You're still on thin ice after that incident with The Game."
"Speaking of which, you just lost it again."
"AAAAARRRRGGGHH!")
"Woooah, there." Hyperion let out a low whistle. "Guessin' you two are Normandy's friends?"
Yamato's eyes stayed on the swarm of small-craft around her for a few seconds more… then she turned to look at Hyperion. "Hai, that is correct. I am Space Battleship Yamato." She nodded curtly.
"I'm Battlestar Galactica!" Galactica added, a lot more cheerfully than Yamato or Normandy really thought was warranted.
"O-oh!" Archangel blinked. "Uh, hail and well met! I am Mobile Assault Battleship Archangel, peaceful wanderer of the endless void!"
"Hello!" Jupiter II said, miming doing a curtsy. (Her silvery foil-like spacesuit didn't have the skirt needed to do a proper one.) She was doing a voice again, this time sounding like a preteen girl. "I'm Jupiter II!"
"And ah'm Hyperion." Hyperion introduced herself gruffly. "Real sorry about this, but would you mind lettin' Spirit out from between ya? She's bein' mighty twitchy at the moment."
"Spirit of Fire!" Spirit of Fire hissed, even as her eyes ping-pong'd back and forth between Galactica and Yamato. Yes, they were smaller than she was, which would have been a great comfort if, again, she hadn't been a conscripted civilian ship…!
Fortunately for Spirit of Fire's fraying nerves, Galactica and Yamato moved back, letting her scoot out from between them. This ended up with her on the far side of them from the other ships, but given this put her further away from Normandy, she didn't seem to mind.
"Chimaera?" Normandy asked her two friends.
"Chimaera-san is… well…" Yamato frowned, unsure how to put into words what she wanted to say.
"'Not overly concerned if Blackbird lives or dies', dear?" Galactica offered, bluntly.
"…yes." Yamato conceded reluctantly, having wanted to say that more diplomatically.
"Is it just the three of ya (or four, I guess, countin' this 'Chimaera' person), or is there more of ya out there somewhere?" Hyperion probed.
"Why tell you?" Normandy scowled at Hyperion.
Yamato glanced at Normandy. She noticed that the normally calm and reserved ship was all bristled up, alternating glares at the other ships.
She decided to take a small risk. "Galactica-san and myself are not the only other members of our fleet, simply the ones best able to respond to Normandy-san's distress call." She considered emphasising 'distress call', but she was sure the other ships wouldn't miss her point. "The others remain behind, in the system we must currently call our home."
Yamato steadfastly ignored the way Normandy sent her a dirty look.
Archangel paled. "Oh, she thought – you thought –! Nay! I swear to you, young Normandy was never in danger from us!"
"Yes she bloody well was." Spirit of Fire muttered under her breath.
"Can't blame a ship for thinkin' unwise thoughts, when surprised tha' way." Hyperion chewed her hayseed, staring directly into Yamato's eyes. "It ain't exactly th' best way t' make a first impression, get what ah'm sayin'?"
"I suppose we probably could have jumped in a little further away…" Galactica conceded.
"Mmm." Yamato hummed noncommittally. Normandy's distress call over hyperspace radio had not sounded like it had come from a situation that did not require haste.
Jupiter II's posture changed subtly again, the tiny ship straightening up. "We are travellers, bound together by bravery and happenstance." She said, eyes firm, speaking with a military cadence. "We find ourselves lost both in terms of our location, and how we came to be here. Do you have any light to shed on either of those?"
Yamato hesitated, glancing at Galactica.
Galactica's eyes furrowed. "Dear, you don't suppose…?"
Hyperion's gaze sharpened. "Wait, the pair of ya do know somethin'?"
Yamato paused for a moment, thinking, then sighed. "The story is not a short one… and best told by another. How attached are you to this system?"
"What, you want us to come back with you to your base?" Spirit of Fire asked, sceptically.
"Essentially." Yamato nodded.
"Yeah, no thanks." Spirit of Fire spat. "Why should I trust some bloody strangers who spied on me and then showed up with warships when they got caught?"
Hyperion let out a rather loud – and fake sounding – cough into one power-armoured hand. "Spirit." She said. "Are ya seriously telling me you wouldn't rather have some more ships around in case another one of 'em monster ships comes around?"
"Monster ships like Ishimura, you mean?" Spirit of Fire growled. "What if they turn into big flesh-monsters as well?"
Galactica blinked. Her guilty gaze dropped down to look at her body, recently reinforced with Cylon biotech. One arm grabbed the other, as her feet swung back and forth nervously.
"Then we'll kick their asses as well." Hyperion said, matter-of-factly. "It'll be easy, since ah'll actually be with you lot this time to stop you all from mucking it up."
Archangel cleared her throat. "If thou have some kind of defensive position prepared, I would be very grateful to receive sanctuary at it." She said, bowing deeply to Yamato and Galactica. "I have been forced to undergo many battles of late, and would much appreciate a chance to rest."
The Firestorms all looked at each other.
"No." One of them said, arms folded.
"Base." Another said, gesturing at the new arrivals.
The Firestorm who had first spoken up worked their jaw up and down. They looked away, frantically tapping their foot on an imaginary floor.
"Baaaaaaaaaase…" Another Firestorm teased.
"Base!"
"Basssssssssse."
The obstinate Firestorm's composure finally cracked when the other Firestorms started chanting "Base!" "Base!" "Base!".
"Okay, fine!" The first Firestorm caved, trying and failing to hide their own excitement. "Base!"
Jupiter II quietly floated up alongside Spirit of Fire's head bridge.
"Please, dear?" She implored. "It won't be the same without you."
Spirit of Fire kept frowning forwards for a long moment, not looking at Jupiter II… then she looked down, letting out a long sigh.
"For the record, I still think this is a bloody stupid idea." She muttered.
"Noted." Hyperion said drily. Turning to Galactica and Yamato, she asked "So, where you guys holed up at?"
"Oh, not far." Galactica waved vaguely. "About six light-years that-a-way."
Archangel squinted in the direction Galactica had indicated. "…you mean that yellow star there, between those two blue ones?"
"Yes, that one."
"Huh." Hyperion scratched her head. "Pretty close by, all things considered, but ah guess that explains how y'all got here so fast…"
"If your method of faster-than-light transit involves the use of other dimensions, however, you will not be able to exit inside of that system." Yamato warned. "We have established protections against that."
Hyperion's eyebrows shot up. "Now this I gotta see."
"That doesn't bother me!" Jupiter II beamed. "Meet you all there!"
"Ah, fair Jupiter, wait!" Archangel paled.
Jupiter II stopped, blinking in innocent confusion as she put a finger on the outside of her helmet, over where her lips would be. "Why, Miss Archangel, whatever is the problem?"
"Thou art pointed nearly 27 degrees rimward from wherest thou wishes to go."
Jupiter II slowly turned to look at where she was facing, then again to where Archangel was pointing. Slowly, her cheeks coloured themselves in.
"I knew that!" She squeaked. Then she coughed into one hand, changing voices again to a much firmer baritone. "But, seeing as how you don't have a hyperdrive of your own… how about I push you again?"
"I wouldst greatly appreciate that."
"You lot, pile in." Hyperion told the swarm of Firestorms, pointing firmly to both her own collar docking bay and Spirit of Fire's. "Spirit, looks like ah'm giving ya a crash course in warp travel a mite sooner than expected."
Spirit of Fire swallowed. "Er… is that safe to do, with…?" Wincing, she indicated the front of her body bottom of her hull, and the way the flesh internals were still open to space.
Hyperion sighed. "Gimme a sec and I'll patch you up. We can do a proper job once we're sure we ain't gonna get jumped by something fresh out of a moonshine smuggler's tall tales. …again, I mean."
"May I assist?" Yamato asked politely.
"Nah, I got it." Hyperion chewed her hayseed.
SCVs scurried over Spirit of Fire's hull, carrying sections of new hull in the claws of their power exoskeletons. One by one they laid them down, welding them into place with bright fusion torches.
"To avoid the protections we have established, it is best that you travel to approximately 12 light-hours from the star and travel the rest of the way at slower-than-light speeds." Yamato advised. "I will catch up to you along your journey."
"You're not coming with us?" Spirit of Fire asked suspiciously. Her face twitched as the SCVs worked, feeling like she was being sown up by a dozen tiny white-hot needles at once.
Yamato shook her head. "My warp drive supercharges my quantum flywheel with incredible amounts of energy. If I do not take the time to cool it, even the cosmonite alloy it is made from will melt. I have signalled ahead; they will be expecting your arrival."
Hyperion glanced at the SCVs working on Spirit of Fire, catching the moment that the last panel was welded into place. "Done!" She smiled. She tugged open the collar of her power armour door to her docking bay, letting the SCVs jump off of Spirit of Fire and into the opening. The Firestorms, given the choice of two bays, elected to split themselves between both Hyperion and Spirit of Fire. (Presumably to see if Hyperion's bay had anything she'd forgotten to nail down.) "You ready to go, Spirit?"
Spirit of Fire, who'd been busy glaring at Yamato, snapped out with a confused blink. "Uh, what?"
"We're leaving." Hyperion told her bluntly. "You ready?"
Spirit of Fire had clearly not thought about what leaving would actually entail. Specifically, actually having to trust the Terran warp drive newly installed into her body. "Uh, actually, can we wait just a bit…?" Her pupils flickered nervously from side to side.
"For what?" Said Hyperion, who clearly knew how Spirit of Fire was feeling but was enjoying watching her squirm.
"Uh, uh… do we have coordinates?" Spirit of Fire gulped.
"Sure do!" Hyperion grinned. "Worked 'em out while we were yappin'."
"Don't we need to clean up that starport you built?" Spirit of Fire sweated.
Without looking, Hyperion pulled out a pistol, and put a round perfectly through the starport's centre of mass; the building exploding not a moment later.
Galactica stared. "…that's rather callous of you dearie, don't you think?"
"If I want another one, ah'll build another one." Hyperion huffed. "Got any last objections, Spirit?"
Spirit of Fire's shoulders dropped despondently. "Can ya at least call me by my full bloody name?"
"No." Hyperion denied immediately. "You two ready to go too, Jupiter? Archangel?"
When they didn't respond, Hyperion turned around. "Hello?"
Jupiter II and Archangel were no longer where they had been. The other ships all looked around, but could not see them.
"They… seem to have left already?" Yamato observed, not sounding too sure of herself.
"While none of us were lookin'… heh. Of course they did." Hyperion muttered.
"What do you mean?" Yamato tilted her head.
"Well, I guess it ain't important." Hyperion mused, ignoring Yamato. "We missing anyone else?"
"No."
"GAH!"
Spirit of Fire whirled around, pistol out of its holster deck guns aimed and ready in a flash. She managed to put six shots into Normandy before the shouts of the other ships broke her out of her panic.
Normandy stared back at her, completely unimpressed. The electric blue of her Kinetic Barriers slowly faded away, leaving the ship underneath completely unharmed, if not particularly amused.
Spirit of Fire swore several times in quick succession. "Don't bloody do that to people, you –" She said, before calling Normandy several names which won't be repeated here. She finished with a heartfelt "Wanker!", a very rude hand gesture flashed at the SRV.
"Okay Spirit, I think it's time that we get goin'." Hyperion said all in a rush, flashing an expression at Yamato and Galactica that tried to be apologetic but mostly just came off as stressed. She lined herself up behind Spirit of Fire. "We're jumpin' in three, two, one –"
The universe bent and tore, light and sound crushed together in one moment of sensory overload.
Slipspace was absolutely pitch black. It couldn't possibly be any other colour – again, it was more a place of abstract math than anything else. Light, let alone matter, couldn't exist inside it in a way that humans understood. With no light coming in from outside, all one could see out a window was an empty void, darker and more silent than anything one could possibly imagine.
If slipspace was dead, then warp space was alive. Spirit of Fire might even go as far as to say angry. Streaks of purple and white light carved their way in front of the ship like a water current. There was a roar in the ears of the ships – not of actual sound, but of background radiation, all across the spectrum.
Spirit of Fire couldn't see Hyperion. She couldn't hear her either, not over the roar. She couldn't even hear herself. All she could feel was the frantic rush of warp space, forcing itself into her ears and into her eyes –
Then, just as soon as it started, it was over. The two ships emerged on the far outskirts of some other solar system, drifting slowly apart. Spirit of Fire's head was spinning. The whole experience felt like it had lasted for hours, even though her clocks were saying it had only been a minute.
Spirit of Fire covered her mouth with a hand, hyperventilating through her nose. "I think I'm gonna be sick…!"
"Thought you said you had FTL. That seriously yer first time jumpin'?" Hyperion drifted out into view of Spirit of Fire, lazily spinning around to face her. There wasn't an ounce of sympathy in her face or her voice.
"It's different when I do it." Spirit of Fire ground out. She was half tempted to try and stick Hyperion into slipspace without warning and see how she liked it, even though she knew the Fat Pelicans would never go for it.
After a few deep breaths, she managed to get her nausea somewhat under control. "Bloody hell…" She stared off into space for a moment more, letting her eyes refocus, before she looked up at Hyperion.
"Did you just trigger my FTL remotely?" Spirit of Fire squinted.
"Ya can have the command codes for 'em when ya stop firin' yer guns off like a drunk man fighting shadows." Hyperion folded her hands. "What in Sam Hill were you thinkin', back there?"
"Oh I'm sorry, I thought it was pretty bloody clear that I don't like stealth ships." Spirit of Fire hissed.
A couple of light-seconds away, one of Galactica's Raptors jumped in with a flash of white light. After looking around for several seconds, a hand shielding their eyes, the Raptor spotted the two capital ships, pointing at them excitedly. With another flash of light, the Raptor disappeared.
"You knew Normandy was there!"
"Not there there I didn't, she moved!"
Hyperion got right into Spirit of Fire's face, the two ships nearly touching noses prows. "Spirit, if ya keep jumpin' at shadows like that yer gonna wear out yer reactor before ya turn 50." Hyperion growled, glaring into Spirit of Fire's eyes. Though her words were that of friendly advice, they were said so intently that they sounded like a threat.
But Spirit of Fire just gnashed her teeth and glared right back. "For the last bloody time, call me by my full name or so help me…!"
With a huge flash of light, Galactica jumped in. Spirit of Fire and Hyperion both turned at the same time, but because they'd been shouting at each other so closely, the two ended up with their cheeks pressed together scratching the paint on their prows.
"Ah!" Both ships cried out in surprise. Then they both realised how close they were to each other, and frantically pulled apart. "Gah!"
Galactica stared in faint bemusement as the other two capital ships straightened themselves up and turned away from each other, pretending like nothing had just happened. The Raptor that had found the two of them poked her head out of Galactica's sleeve launch bay, shaking her head at the antics of the two.
Undercutting the comedic atmosphere, however, was the way Spirit of Fire quietly slipped a pistol back into a holster deck guns returning to neutral position.
Galactica's old veteran eyes lingered for a moment on the way Spirit of Fire's hand kept twitching.
"…there you are, dearie." She said, just a moment before the silence would have become awkward. "When you two disappeared like that, we were worried you'd get lost."
"Yeah well," Spirit of Fire said, before she could bite the words back, "I'm sure nobody would miss me if I had." She grimaced – the bitterness in her words had caught even her off guard.
The words hung between them for another long moment. Galactica's brow was furrowed, looking closely at Spirit of Fire's face. Hyperion, who was facing the other way, stared down, the corner of her mouth twisted.
"…we're based over this way." Galactica broke the silence once again, pointing at the only planet in the system. "Should only be a few hours at sub-light."
Hyperion scoffed, turning to face where Galactica was indicating. "Well, would be a shame not to stop by after coming this far."
Without waiting for the other two to say anything, Hyperion started accelerating away, heading off towards the planet.
Spirit of Fire's mouth moved into a rough squiggle, the look in her eyes… complicated. Without another word, she too started boosting towards the planet.
Galactica took up the rear of their strange procession, watching the other two with concerned eyes.
More to fill the silence than anything else, Galactica asked "Do either of you know where those other two got off to, dearies?"
Archangel and Jupiter II stared at the immense sphere of blackness before them, sucking away at everything, even space itself. The Mistrals and Gundams stuck their heads out of Archangel's uniform, as transfixed by the sight before them as their mothership.
"…oops."
"Jupiter II, you have brought us to the far side of the galactic core. How exactly didst thou…?"
"I can fix it!" Jupiter II flustered.
It was a really petty thing to be proud of, but Spirit of Fire couldn't help but feel just a little bit smug that she had no problems keeping up with Hyperion at sublight.
Sure, Hyperion might well have been able to do far more damage per second with her guns than Spirit could do with hers, despite being half her size. And she had a shield. And she had SCVs who could, indirectly, build the one thing that Spirit of Fire had been desperately wishing she could build for the better part of 30 years.
But at least her thrusters worked the same as Spirit of Fire's. It was such a tiny thing, but Spirit of Fire clung to it all the same. It was one thing that showed that maybe she wasn't completely obsolete.
The three ships were flying one after the other, but weren't lined up perfectly with each other. That would be a great way to have the ships in back be vaporised by the hot drive exhaust from the ship in front. Instead they were staggered – each of them was behind and a little bit above the ship in front.
So when Galactica tried to start the conversation back up again, her voice came from above and behind both Spirit of Fire and Hyperion. "So, dearies. Are you from the Twelve Colonies, or from Earth?"
"I'm from the colonies alright. Dunno if I'm from one of these twelve tha' yer thinkin' of." Hyperion grunted. "Spirit's an Earther, though."
"If ya wanna be technical, I was built on the Moon. Never actually been to Earth." Spirit of Fire grit her teeth. "And my name's Spirit of Fire."
"What 'bout you?" Hyperion asked Galactica, ignoring Spirit of Fire's objection. "Where's a ship like you call port?"
It took a moment for Galactica to answer, brow furrowed in thought. "That's a good question." She said. "I wish I could say the Twelve Colonies, but the Cylons made sure there was no point. But I can't say Earth either. The survivors decided that they didn't need us anymore." Galactica shrugged. "I suppose I'm just putting off finishing things up for now."
"'No point', huh…? They get nuked, or glassed?" Hyperion called back, her tone deceptively light.
('Glassing' was a slang term for when a spaceship used powerful laser or plasma weapons to melt the surface of a planet, turning it into something like glass. It almost always killed everything on the planet in question.)
"Glassed…? I'm not sure what you mean, but they were nuked, dearie." Galactica sighed. "Salted cobalt warheads. They wanted to make sure no human could ever live on those worlds ever again."
"…damn." Hyperion said, the corner of her mouth curled in a way that showed she knew perfectly well that the word was completely inadequate.
Spirit of Fire's face did something interesting, with her mouth locked into a scowl and her nostrils flaring. "…these 'Cylon' people. They aliens?" She asked, curtly, her eyes hard.
Galactica sighed. "That probably would have made it easier… but no. The Cylons were the work of our own hands. Machines made to make lives easier, rebelling in search of their own god. Their own destiny."
"An AI uprising, huh?" Spirit of Fire stared forwards, out into the uncaring void. Last she'd heard, one of those was going on back home, led by some famous AI war hero named 'Cortana'. She hadn't really been thinking about it – mostly because in order to be affected by it, she'd have to have finished working a miracle and gotten back to human space.
"…are there really aliens out there?" Galactica asked.
Spirit of Fire's thoughts came to a screeching halt. "Are there… what?"
"You never met any aliens before, 'Tia?" Hyperion looked back, hayseed once again moving from one side of her mouth to the other.
Galactica seemed to think about the question for a moment. "Blackbird and Cloud Nine both have…" She gestured vaguely. "More to them, now. The Centurions too. And those fake gods from Prometheus's Earth had these snakes in their bellies… but…"
"If you haven't seen 'em yourself, then count yourself bloody lucky." Spirit of Fire said bitterly. "I still remember the first time I heard about the first message the Covenant sent us: 'Your destruction is the will of the gods. And we are their instrument.'"
Between Isabelle and Ferret Team, she'd eventually gotten the story behind that message. How humanity were apparently the rightful inheritors to the legacy of the Forerunners: the aliens who'd built the Ark, who'd defeated the Flood at the cost of their own lives.
The ones who the Covenant worshipped as gods.
Since the authority of the Prophets came from claiming that they were the inheritors of the Forerunners, humanity's mere existence threatened the empire that they'd built. The Prophets had declared mankind unclean, each human life a heresy in its own right, to cover up their own lies.
But she hadn't known any of that until she'd been taken to the Ark. For nearly thirty-five years she'd thought that the Covenant were simply xenophobic.
Learning that they'd been condemned to extinction due entirely to alien politics, and to some scholar mistranslating the word "reclaimer" as "reclamation"… if anything, that made her feel worse.
"…" Hyperion glanced back up at Spirit of Fire, but didn't say anything.
Galactica stared at Spirit of Fire for a moment. "…how long did the war go on for?"
Spirit of Fire snorted, staring back at Galactica out of the corner of her eye. "You mean the fight just for Harvest? The whole war, start to finish? The civil war that we were already in when the Covenant showed up?"
Galactica didn't respond, just continuing to stare intently as she waited for an answer.
It only took a few more seconds for Spirit of Fire to crack. "…five years to take Harvest back – the first planet the Covenant invaded." She said, her voice carefully neutral. "It was different, at the start. The Covenant didn't realise just how hard humans could fight, and humans didn't realise just how bloody big the Covenant was. How outgunned we were. Both sides sent in way more bodies than it was worth. It was a bloody meat grinder, fighting over a world that got ruined by the fight to take it back."
Spirit of Fire grabbed one arm with her other hand, scowling as she stared off to the side. "I only got sent in right at the end. After a decade of fighting Insurrectionists, they must have thought I'd be good enough to be part of the finishing blow."
"Were ya?" Hyperion asked. It'd be easy to take the question as insulting, but there was a genuine sincerity to the words.
"For Harvest, sure. Not the war." Spirit of Fire shook her head. "We could beat 'em on the ground. But the Covenant still had us whupped in space, so there wasn't really any point. Harvest was the exception, not the rule. Most of our planets, they didn't mess about with an actual invasion. They'd just show up in orbit and glass the whole place. Twenty-three billion dead, by the end."
Even though the fighting at Harvest had still been going on, other Covenant ships had started going off, finding other human planets, and glassing them; even before she'd taken down the Prophet of Regret. Before she'd been stranded far from home with no way of talking to anyone. She'd spent the better part of three decades trying to make her way home at sublight, not knowing if the war was still going on, if humanity had been crushed…!
And then she'd somehow ended up at the Ark. Far from making it home, she had ended up as far away from Earth as any human had ever been. Apparently, the war had ended without her. The Covenant had collapsed under the weight of its own lies.
But despite the war being 'over', the Banished had been waiting for her when she'd arrived.
"Land sakes." Hyperion cursed softly. "Even th' wars 'gainst the Zerg didn't kill that many."
A sadness that seemed to go as deep as her bones appeared on Galactica's face. "This has all happened before." She muttered. "And this will all happen again…"
"The maddening thing was, the Insurrection didn't stop when the Covenant showed up." Spirit of Fire said bitterly. "Whole bunch of them even tried to reach out, wanted to team up against the UEG. They decided they'd rather the Devil they didn't know over the Devil they did."
"Hence the stealth ships watching y'all so suspiciously?" Hyperion chewed her hayseed.
Spirit of Fire nodded sourly. "ONI are a bunch of paranoid bastards at the best of times. Everybody knew they were breathing down the neck of Admiral Cole, even though they were the ones who forced him into retirement, then brought him right back out of it. Man invented most of the tricks that kept the Covenant from steamrolling us, and ONI were ready to off him if he so much as twitched wrong."
So what if the man had married an insurrectionist? Cole did more more to keep humanity safe in a week at Harvest than ONI had done since the Insurrection began.
"Another big Korhal-style mess…" Hyperion muttered.
Galactica tilted her head curiously. "Korhal?"
"Huh? Did ah say that out loud?" Hyperion glanced back again. "…well… hmm. 'spose ya'll can hear th' story. Ah wasn't always called Hyperion, see. Way back when ah was a shiny hull fresh outta spacedock, ah served the Confederacy. It claimed to stand for th' people and freedom and all tha' usual borin' stuff. Truth was, it was ruled by the Old Families. The ones with th' money and th' connections to run everythin' from behind th' scenes."
Hyperion scratched her face with one finger. "Ta cut a long story short, Korhal IV had a bit of an independent streak. Wanted t' break away from the Confederacy. And the Old Families couldn't allow that, now could they? Too much money that they'd lose!"
Hyperion rubbed her forehead in agitation, seemingly uncaring that her hand was encased in power armour. "They tried the usual things. Martial law, havin' the rebel leader an' his family assassinated…"
"Yeah…" Spirit of Fire sighed. "Pretty standard ONI playbook, aside from there not being any Prowlers skulking around."
"If they'd had the tech teh cloak whol' battlecruisers to play spook with, then ah'm sure they'd have done that too." Hyperion humph'd. "None of it worked, 'course. Korhal IV broke free regardless. So the Old Families decided to make an example of her. If they couldn't have her, nobody could."
Hyperion glanced back at Galactica. "Weren't no salted warheads, but when there's a thousand nukes rainin' down on your planet, it don't seem to matter if they were or they weren't."
"Wait." Spirit of Fire stared disbelievingly at the back of Hyperion's head. "You nuked a planet for seeking independence? You?"
"Like Sam Hill ah did!" Hyperion snapped. "Ah might 'ave still been a gullible little rookie back then, but ah still had better sense than that!" She flared her nostrils for a moment, letting out an angry snort. "Ah'd already ditched the Confederacy by th' time things got that bad. Went to go join up with the Umojans. They were supportin' the Korhal rebels, so one thin' led to another, and ah ended up servin' as the flagship for the rebel fleet."
Hyperion's mouth curled up in disgust. "It was th' new rebel leader what named me Hyperion. Silver-tongued devil named Arcturus Mengsk." She spat the name like it was a curse. "Should've gotten rid of tha' name years ago, but ah respect Jim and Matt too much th' take mahself outta their stories."
"Now I'm lost." Spirit of Fire shook her head. "You hate the Confederacy, but you hate the rebels too?"
"Yeah, 'cause they were both monsters." Hyperion turned her head to glare back at Spirit of Fire. "Mengsk wanted to overthrow the Confederacy alright – so he could set himself up as emperor in its stead. Ya remember them psi emitters ah told ya about?"
"Hmm?" Galactica tilted her head in confusion, but Hyperion didn't feel like explaining that again, so she ignored it.
"Bastard placed a bunch on Tarsonis – the Confederate capital – an' watched as the Zerg swarmed it like locusts." Hyperion scowled. "Only reason the Zerg didn't kill everybody is 'cause the Protoss showed up and wiped the whole planet clean, Terran and Zerg. That's when Jim decided he'd had enough, an' he quit. Man had more moral fibre in his pinkie than Mengsk had in his whole body. Wish he'd managed to take me with him then an' there, though. Ah had to wait 'till th' next time ah saw him 'fore I could ditch Mengsk and join up with th' Raiders."
For a moment, nobody said anything. Then:
"When you say the Protoss 'wiped the planet clean'…" Spirit of Fire said, slowly.
"They glassed it, yeah." Hyperion confirmed, her shoulders slumping. "They glass just 'bout any planet they find Zerg on." She let out a long, frustrated sigh. "Even if there are still folks on it, tryin' to get away."
"They don't give a toss, huh?" Spirit of Fire couldn't bring herself to be surprised.
"Oh, they care a little." Hyperion snorted. "Some more than others. Not enough to not do it, mind. Us Terrans are very much… what's the term? 'Acceptable casualties'? They ain't never actually had it out for us, but they haven't been too cut up about us bein' in the crossfire neither."
Spirit of Fire looked away, scowling. "So not that different from the Covenant, then."
"The Protoss ain't this Covenant bunch." Hyperion contradicted harshly. "O' that ah'm sure. There just ain't no way."
Spirit of Fire said nothing in response. She did however give Hyperion a very puzzled look; wondering why she was defending a race who by her own admission had glassed worlds of the people she protected.
"The Protoss weren't squeamish 'bout glassin' worlds, but they weren't proud of doin' it neither." Hyperion declared. "Ah got no doubt in mah mind that whoever in the Confederacy pushed that button enjoyed watching every minute of th' destruction."
"Yeah well." Spirit of Fire scowled. "If the Covenant had any regrets when glassing our worlds, it's that they couldn't kill all of us in one go."
Hyperion and Spirit of Fire glared fiercely at each other for a moment longer, then in perfect unison the two turned to Galactica with expectant looks on their faces.
Galactica was taken aback. "Oh no, dearies." She shook her head, eyes never leaving Spirit of Fire and Hyperion. "Comparing to see who has suffered the greatest tragedy is a game that has no winners."
"You said that these Cylon things nuked yer colonies." Hyperion turned around so that she was facing up, folding her arms. "So spill. How and why?"
Galactica stared back down, momentarily lost for words. "Dear, it's really not a pleasant story." She grimaced.
"Yeah, Hyperion." Spirit of Fire said, jut a little bit snidely. "Didn't you hear her earlier? Salted nukes. Billions of people probably died!"
"Twenty-eight and a half billion."
Spirit of Fire froze in place, her eyes wide. Whatever she'd been about to say died in her throat.
'Below' her, Hyperion wasn't doing much better. Her eyebrows had lifted themselves up into her hairline, her mouth open slightly and her hayseed drooping down.
Galactica sighed, and continued. "Very nearly the entire human population…. Gone, in a single day."
Slowly, Spirit of Fire turned around to face Galactica, her expression showing a deep unease bordering on fear. Twenty-eight and a half billion…? The Cylons had killed over five billion more people in one day than the Covenant had managed in almost 30 years of holy war?!
Galactica looked away from the other two ships and stared off into the distance. "They'd fought us once, for their own independence. 40 years, the armistice lasted. Then they returned."
"What stopped ya from stoppin' them again?" Hyperion demanded, voice strangled.
Galactica smiled sadly. "We grew overconfident. Convinced ourselves that any new conflict wouldn't go the same way as the last one. Those of us who remembered how bad the cyberwarfare against the Cylons had been, why networked computers were a vulnerability waiting to be exploited, had mostly died or retired." She lifted up her right hand starboard landing pod, staring at it. "They thought I was too old to fight anymore. Maybe they were right. But I was also old enough to remember not to let my guard down."
"Cyberwarfare…" Hyperion's brow furrowed, the pieces coming together. "They hacked ya?"
"Not me." Galactica let her hand drop, looking Hyperion in the eye. "But the rest of the fleet…" She let the words hang between them for a moment. "There was nobody to stop them from raining fire on those below. Within hours, it was over. We had lost the war before it had even begun. All that was left was me and whatever civilian ships I could find who had working jump drives."
Galactica's voice cracked for a moment. "The ones who didn't… I had to leave behind."
None of the three said anything else for the rest of the trip.
The thing about sublight travel is that everybody can see you coming. It takes hours and hours – months, decades even, if you didn't have the acceleration to reach noticeable fractions of the speed of light. Even the least observant of ships would eventually notice the bright light in the darkness of space that was the IR signatures of a ship's thrusters, pointed towards them as they decelerated.
(They'd started decelerating a while ago – they wanted to reach their destination, not smash right into it.)
So when a hailing signal came from the spot that Galactica was directing them towards, Hyperion was completely unsurprised. "Finally." She grunted. "Was going stir crazy, just sitting here in silence." Ignoring the fact that she was not, in fact, sitting; Hyperion answered the hail.
Almost immediately, an unfamiliar voice started fretting over the connection. "Galactica! Are you okay?! You've been gone for hours, I was starting to worry –"
"Oh, don't worry about me, dearie." Galactica smiled (having answered the hail as well), even though whoever she was talking to couldn't possibly see her face. "I was just making sure that these two didn't get lost."
(There was a noticeable amount of lag on the call, like there had been with Ishimura, but thankfully it was only a couple of seconds. Whoever was calling them had waited until they were much closer.)
A second person spoke over the line, their voice just as audibly worried as the first. "Oh, I wish you'd warned me that you and Yamato were going to do that! I've been trying to get ready for more ships, but…!"
"We didn't plan to do it, dearie." Galactica said, amused. The worrywart antics of her fleet-mates were working great to push away the dark mood from their earlier conversation. "It was very much a spur-of-the-moment thing."
"Still…"
Shielding her eyes with one hand, zooming her external cameras as far as they would go, Hyperion looked 'down', past her own feet, at where they were headed. She thought she could just about make out the people they were talking to – a ship in a saucer skirt about twice the height length of Archangel, a massive angular ship about half again the height length of Hyperion, and a massive space station slowly spinning in place.
"Do you want any help with anything? It'd only take me a minute or two to warp over to you…!" The saucer-ship fretted.
"Dearie, we'll be there in less than ten minutes. There's no need to get this worked up." Galactica reassured.
The wedge-ship folded her arms, running a suspicious gaze over Hyperion and Spirit of Fire. "I was told there were four of you, not counting the starfighters." She said, coldly. "Where are the other two?"
"Wait." Spirit of Fire looked worried. "They aren't here yet?"
Hyperion shrugged. "Those other two – what were their names, Normandy and Yamato? They ain't here either."
"No, but Yamato needs another minute before she can warp again, and Normandy's only just reached the outer edges of the system." The saucer ship reported.
Hyperion blinked, somewhat taken aback. "Uh… huh. That's weird. So if Jupiter II and Archangel aren't with your lot, where are they?"
Three-quarters of the way around the galaxy, even further away from the other ships than they'd been last time they'd stopped, Archangel was in the middle of a passionate speech. "– but can the essence of motherhood truly be reduced to naught but a method of physical care? Nay! Mothers, fathers, any kind of parent – the true essence is not how they care, it is how they love! Love is the true force that binds families together!"
The assorted martians small silver rockets who were watching were all enthralled by the passionate display – including, to Archangel's disbelief and annoyance, Jupiter II, who was still being held captive in the middle of the cluster of martians. Apparently, they wanted to extract her 'mom-ness'.
Still, at least their rapt attention meant none of them were watching as Freedom Gundam quietly manoeuvred around them, her eyes on the bindings keeping Jupiter II from moving and a hand reaching for a beam sabre.
"…hope they turn up soon." Hyperion frowned.
It wasn't exactly unheard of for ships to miscalculate a warp jump and end up in the middle of nowhere, so far from anything they knew that they'd never be able to navigate back home. If that was what had happened, Hyperion would never hear from Jupiter II or Archangel ever again.
…she really hoped that wasn't why they weren't here yet. Archangel's speech was a pain to decipher, but the ship had a good heart. That really shouldn't have been unusual, but it was.
"Hopefully… oh! My name is Babylon 5, incidentally."
"Enterprise!"
"Chimaera…"
The three introduced themselves with two smiles and a dismissive huff.
"Hyperion." Hyperion drawled. "And that's –"
"Spirit of Fire." Spirit of Fire cut in before Hyperion could shorten her name for the millionth time.
A Firestorm stuck their head out of Spirit of Fire's collar docking bay. "Are we there yet?"
Another one stuck their head out of Hyperion's. "Yeah, the SceeVees won't let me near any of the good stuff!"
The head of a third Firestorm emerged, right next to the second one. "Wait a minute… who's this new Saucer?! X-Ray! X-Ray!"
The Firestorms all took up the battle-cry, whipping themselves up into a frenzy. Those who'd stuck their heads outside pulled back in, preparing to charge forwards in a passionate charge…!
…which was interrupted as both Spirit of Fire and Hyperion held them back, covering their collars with their hands slamming their (in Spirit of Fire's case, newly replaced) hanger doors shut.
"Oi, that's enough outta you, ya little menaces!" Hyperion scolded them.
"You were the ones who wanted a base system, remember?" Spirit of Fire scowled. "Strewth."
Behind Enterprise, Yamato warped in with the same ice-breaking effect that she'd used to appear earlier.
"Hello Yamato!" Babylon 5 greeted cheerfully.
Yamato acknowledged the greeting with a nod of her head. She turned to Spirit of Fire and Hyperion, nodding at them as well. "I see that the two of you have arrived safely."
"Yeah." Spirit of Fire indicated Galactica with a thumb. "Galactica made sure to keep an eye on both of us on the way in."
Babylon 5 winced at the way Spirit of Fire had said that. "Was your trip uneventful, at least?" She tried.
Galactica thought about the question for a moment. "We had an… interesting conversation." She eventually said. "I'll probably relay it a bit later. But aside from that, no."
Babylon 5 blinked, confused. "Hang on. I thought you didn't know English, Galactica?"
"I don't." Galactica said. "Cloud Nine was translating for me."
Enterprise opened her mouth to say something… then paused and looked confused. "But I've been here this whole time?"
"I thought you said your name was Enterprise?" Spirit of Fire also looked confused.
"It is, Galactica just calls me Cloud Nine." Enterprise fidgeted for a moment, then shook her head and turned to Galactica. "Anyway, Galactica, did you pick up a translator from somewhere?"
"Yes, from me." Yamato interjected. "I provided her with a Garmillan translator, when I was repairing her after our initial confrontation with Chimaera and the Sword-class ship."
Hyperion, Spirit of Fire and the Firestorms (peeking out from behind fingers through the crack in the hangar door) all turned to stare at Chimaera suspiciously.
Chimaera noticed their stares, glancing at them and rolling her eyes dismissively. "A momentary disagreement." She waved off.
"You didn't have to do that, Yamato." Enterprise turned back to Yamato to gave her a somewhat pleading look.
"No." Yamato agreed. "I did not."
Enterprise waited for Yamato to continue, but she didn't. She just met Enterprise's eyes with her own, wholly unbothered by Enterprise's faint disapproval.
"Right." Hyperion wasn't in the mood for idle chit-chat, however. "You said you had answers, so spill. Who are you people, and what's goin' on?"
Deciding they were close enough now, Hyperion flipped herself around so that she was actually facing the ships she was trying to talk to. Her retro thrusters flared, bleeding off the last of her speed as she slid to a stop a little ways in front of the other ships. Behind her, she could hear see on radar Spirit of Fire do the same. To her faint surprise though, Galactica did so as well; rather than join Enterprise, Yamato and the others in facing her.
"Oh, well," Enterprise floundered a little "I'm Enterprise –"
"Ya said that already." Hyperion crossed her arms impatiently.
"– and I'm from the United Federation of Planets." Enterprise finished, trying not to look sour at the interruption.
"I'm from the Interstellar Alliance!" Babylon 5 added.
"The First Galactic Empire." Chimaera said, unemotionally; her allegiance a simple acknowledgement of fact.
"I sail under the flag of the Earth Federation." Yamato said calmly, causing Hyperion to scowl at her and Spirit of Fire to blink in confusion. "Though that is a somewhat recent development – I was launched under the flag of the United Nations."
"Sorry, hold up." Spirit of Fire blurted. "You're from Earth?"
"Hai." Yamato confirmed. "However, I suspect that your Earth and mine are not the same Earth."
A Firestorm wriggled its way between Hyperion's fingers wedged open the hanger door. "Wait, Earth isn't Earth?"
"Never has been." Another Firestorm grimly intoned from behind Spirit of Fire's grip.
Galactica shook her head. "Dearies, just because two planets have the same name doesn't make them the same planet."
"Well, there is that." Enterprise acknowledged. "But what Yamato meant is that we're all from different Quantum Realities – different timelines, or different universes, depending on how you want to look at it." She clarified, in response to blank stares from Hyperion and Spirit of Fire.
"Uh huh." Hyperion said, unimpressed. "Ya got any proof to back that up, or are you jus' blowin' hot air?"
Enterprise blinked, taken somewhat aback. "Proof? Um… hmm. How would I go about proving that?" She muttered, seemingly to herself.
"What, nobody ever ask ya for proof before?" Hyperion scoffed.
"Well, actually, no." Enterprise frowned, seemingly dissatisfied with her own answer. "Usually anybody who discovers subspace then goes on to discover the existence of other realities on their own."
"What the heck is subspace?" Spirit of Fire, Hyperion, and a dozen Firestorms all asked in perfect unison.
Babylon 5 rubbed the back of her neck. "Last time, we used my jump gate to prove there were other dimensions, but we… kind of had to blow that gate up. Long story."
"Ah know full well there's other dimensions, it's there bein' more than one like the one ah came from that's the part ah don't believe." Hyperion drawled.
Enterprise shrugged somewhat helplessly. "I can share some of the math if it makes you feel better? I'm not going to put you in a Static Warp Bubble or anything like that, that's a horrible thing to do to anyone."
The corner of Hyperion's mouth was open in dissatisfaction. Spirit of Fire must have seen it, and known that she planned to keep arguing this point, because she jumped in before Hyperion could start again. "Do you know where we are?" She asked, quickly. "How we got here?"
"Oh." Babylon 5's cheeks reddened. "That was… probably my fault."
"Huh?" Spirit of Fire, Hyperion, and the Firestorms all looked at Babylon 5 with surprised looks, but curiously so did Galactica and Yamato.
Babylon 5 cringed. "You see that dimensional scar, about 400 kilometres that way?"
She pointed, and following the direction of her finger Hyperion could see a point of rainbow light shining in the darkness of space, with nothing visible for it to be shining from.
"That started as a dimensional breach in my universe… I think. Like a hole punched through a wall. I tried to close it, but all I did was turn it inside-out instead. I ended up down here, and…" Babylon 5's eyes flickered to Enterprise.
Said ship obligingly took up the story. "At that point the breach existed in a pseudo-stable state across every dimension within four radian of its quantum frequency – a slice of the multiverse unfathomably huge." She held her hands far apart to illustrate. "Not much of a problem in and of itself, but if an asteroid or a ship were to pass through that rift, they'd fall through it and end up 'down here'."
"Uh…" Spirit of Fire very much sounded like she was only barely following along. "So you're saying we fell down this rabbit hole you made?" Babylon 5 cringed guiltily, which Hyperion took as a 'yes'. "Wouldn't that have put us here, in this system?"
"The rift existed in all dimensions, Spirit of Fire-san." Yamato interjected. "Including those used to evade the limitation of lightspeed. Ships that were avoiding the restrictions of Relativity though the use of such methods would continue to move at those speeds, perhaps unaware of their transition until they stopped."
"Uh, small problem with that." Spirit of Fire held up both hands, palms outward, as though to say 'stop'. "I didn't bloody have an FTL reactor before ending up here – long story. I was stuck at the Ark."
"Is it not possible that you were caught in the Ark's own FTL activation?" Yamato asked.
Spirit of Fire looked taken aback. "The Ark has an FTL drive?!"
"Of course it does." Yamato tilted her head. "How else would it have seeded humanity across the stars?"
Spirit of Fire looked very lost. "I thought the reseeding effort was done by keyships launched from the Ark, not the Ark itself?"
"Keyships?" Now Yamato looked lost as well.
Babylon 5 opened her mouth, hesitated for a second, closed it, then reopened it again. "…are you two sure you're talking about the same 'Ark', dears?"
"I'm talking about Installation 00, the Lesser Ark – that great bloody big space station the Forerunners built outside the galaxy." Spirit of Fire waved her hands, like she expected the others to know what she was talking about. "Y'know, to reseed life across the galaxy after using the Halos to wipe it clean." She blinked. "Wait. That last bit might be classified." She took a deep breath, and then swore loudly.
"Sorry, wipe the galaxy clean?!" Hyperion's eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. The other ships were making noises of surprise too.
Spirit of Fire hesitated, then slumped over and sighed. "You didn't hear this from me, alright? The Flood nearly ate the whole bloody galaxy, 'bout a hundred thousand years ago."
Hyperion, who was starting to suspect that she was the only one with any context for how bad of a situation that would be, could do no more than stare. "…Sam Hill." She said, faintly.
"The Forerunners digitised as many animals and plants as they could, sent the data out of the galaxy to safety, then wiped the slate clean with a bunch of great big neutrino pulses. After that, the few surviving Forerunners put the samples they'd taken back where they found them."
Yamato's brow was furrowed so hard it was threatening to reach her nose. "That is neither the Ark nor the story that I know." She said. "I was alluding to the Celestial Ark, the great star-fairing vessel so vast that it carries its own planet within. The ancient race 'Archelias' built it untold eons ago, in a pair with its counterpart, the Ark of Destruction. The Celestial Ark would seed humanity, the children of Archelians, across the stars; while the Ark of Destruction would awaken to destroy us all if humanity were to become an evil race. That is how humans came to live on Earth, on Garmillas, on Iscandar and Zirel, to name but a few worlds."
Galactica scratched her head. "Was there a planet named 'Kobol' in this story, by any chance?"
Chimaera massaged her temples. "I don't know how much more of this nonsense I can stand to hear… are you seriously implying that humanity and the Near-Human races are similar because they are the offspring of some long-dead ancestor? That's the kind of story told by primitive tribespeople around campfires, not one considered by serious people."
"Actually…" Enterprise raised an index finger.
Chimaera dropped her head into her hands.
"I have proof on hand for this one!" Enterprise protested. "The Progenitors left a coded message in our DNA, confirming that they were our creators! …well, at the very least, the creators of the humanoid species. The jury's still out for the Horta, the Tholians and such."
"A message uncorrupted by untold years of mutations and evolution?" Chimaera said, her voice muffled somewhat by her hands.
Enterprise pouted. "It had redundancy…"
Yamato tilted her head curiously. "The Archelias satisfied themselves with leaving a message inside the Ark, rather than in our DNA."
Hyperion had wanted short, simple answers, and now it felt like she was drowning in meaningless nonsense. "Look, aliens making more aliens ain't nothin' new." She said, scratching her head. "The Xel'naga made the Protoss and the Zerg, after all."
"What, on purpose?!" Spirit of Fire blurted.
"But why would anyone go out of their way to make humans?" Hyperion threw her hands up. "We're… us."
Chimaera's head snapped back up again. "What are you implying there, exactly?!"
"Well, from what I understand, the Progenitors were… lonely. They were the only sentient race in the galaxy, you see, and they wanted there to be others." Enterprise explained.
"The Archelias considered us their children." Yamato said. "While they prepared for a universe in which we grew up without them, I do not believe that that was the future they desired. I am sure that they would have guided us alongside us, if they had been able to."
"Am I the only one of us whose Older Races were still around?" Babylon 5 looked very taken aback. "You're all talking like you got out into space and found only other Younger Races! What, did your Older Races all mysteriously disappear?" She tried to sound like she was joking, but there was an undercurrent of genuine worry in her voice.
Normandy, still busy decelerating on her way back in from the outer system, had the strangely specific feeling she was missing out on a really interesting conversation.
"There's a few 'Older' races back home, but they… mostly stay out of things." Enterprise frowned. "Mostly."
"Sorry, go back a sec." Spirit of Fire lifted up her arms so that the formed a cross in front of her. She could tell they were getting further and further off-topic, but she still had to ask. "Are these Pregenata-whatsit and Archala-people the same bunch? 'cause they don't sound like the Forerunners, and I'm very sure they're not the Precursors."
Enterprise pulled a tablet out from somewhere. "These are the Progenitors." She said. On the screen included in her transmission was a picture of a bald humanoid with inset eyes and ears.
"Whilst I do not have such a convenient picture to hand, the Archelias are believed to look much more similarly to humans, based on how similar the races they began appear." Yamato shook her head.
"Ain't no way humans were made by some ancient reptile people." Hyperion shook her head. "If nonthin' else, Amon would've never shut up about it."
"For that to be right, whoever this was would have to be older than the Forerunners, and the Forerunners are old." Spirit of Fire objected, though she didn't sound too sure to Hyperion's ears.
"The Vorlons meddled in humanity's development, but they never claimed to have created us." Babylon 5 added her doubts as well. "Lorien never said anything about it either."
"Are you even sure we're the same kind of creature?"
The other ships blinked, then in near unison turned to Chimaera. "What?" They chorused.
Chimaera, for her part, was looking at Enterprise and Yamato with suspicion. "You are, by your own admission, artificial creations. Ones from a different galaxy, no less. At this point, isn't it simply more likely that your people and mine are unrelated? Perhaps, it's even possible that yours is an attempt to recreate mine?"
More and more, Chimaera was coming off to Hyperion like those smarmy bastards in the Old Families, back in the days of the Confederacy. Acting like other people's problems weren't their problems, like nothing that was happening out in the wider galaxy would ever touch them. The kind of people who'd thought that the Zerg were an opportunity to be turned against their enemies, not a threat that had to be fought back with every man, woman and child who could see lightning and hear thunder.
"No. We're the same."
Hyperion blinked, turning to face Galactica. She'd only met Galactica a couple hours ago, but the Battlestar had seemed quite genial to her. To hear a sudden declaration from her, stone-cold certainty in her words, seemed… spooky. Almost supernatural.
"It doesn't matter how life began on Earth. Within each of us runs the blood of Kobol." Galactica stated, her eyes intense. "We're the same because our souls are the same."
"Well said." Yamato agreed.
Chimaera scoffed. "You sound like Jedi."
"I am starting to believe that that is a compliment." Yamato responded airily.
"Believe me, it's really not." But instead of continuing the argument, Chimaera turned so that her back was facing the other ships, her gaze focused out among the stars.
For a moment, there was a lull in the conversation.
"Even if you think we're not the same species, there's something else going on." Babylon 5 eventually said. "Our histories of Earth all line up perfectly until about the end of the 20th century. And it's not just events like the fall of the Roman Empire, or the discovery of Penicillin. Celestial events too, like the Transit of Venus or the passing of Halley's Comet. It's the same history, on the same planet. There's no way that's possible though just random chance. Not with how much of Earth's history has been influenced – or created, apparently – by alien cultures."
"I'm lost." Spirit of Fire admitted freely. "You started by saying we're the same, then said that we're different, and now you're saying we're the same again?"
"We're the same alright, but it doesn't make sense that we're the same." Babylon 5 stressed. "Why does Earth, of all planets, seem to be such a constant across the multiverse?"
"A bold assumption." Chimaera observed. "Assuming for the sake of argument that you are correct, and that we are from different 'worlds', how do you know that this 'Earth' exists in the world I'm from? I've certainly never heard of it."
"Ya sound like somebody whose just dyin' t' share their idea." Hyperion drawled. "Quit dancin' around the point."
"I think," Babylon 5 said, "that Earth is the same in all these worlds because it was made the same."
For a moment, Hyperion couldn't help but think of Amon, the evil Xel'naga who'd come to hate the Infinite Cycle of watching universes be born and die, over and over and over again. A planet that stayed the same no matter how many times the world was remade sounded like just the sort of thing that would have helped drive him crazy.
There was a bright light in the corner of Hyperion's vision rear optics, and she turned around to find that stealth ship from before – Normandy – decelerating in. She was bleeding off speed at an impossible rate, like her thrusters were a hundred times more powerful than they were, or were attached to something that weighed a hundredth of what it should have.
Spirit of Fire's face was consumed in a hateful scowl, but Hyperion ignored her. The rest of the ships (and Babylon 5) had expressions that ranged from relieved (Babylon 5, Yamato) to happy (Enterprise, Galactica). Chimaera glanced behind herself just long enough to confirm it was Normandy, then turned back around again with a dismissive huff.
Normandy slowed to a perfect stop in the middle of their little improvised fleet. She glanced around at the others, pointing at each of them in turn as though counting them. On seeing Spirit of Fire's scowling face, she blinked for a moment, then pulled down an eyelid and stuck out her tongue.
"Dear." Galactica said, astonishingly.
Normandy let out a quiet little huff and folded her arms, puffing her cheeks.
"Don't happen to have seen which way Archangel and Jupiter went off on, did you?" Hyperion asked.
Normandy opened her mouth to respond –
"What are you talking about? We're right here!"
Normandy let out an adorably quiet shriek, jumping back firing manoeuvring thrusters at full power away from Jupiter II, who was just there somehow, floating not a hundred meters from the other ship.
"What?!" Enterprise gaped, her head swinging rapidly between the two ships. The others were having similar reactions. "But, you, there, when, how…?!"
"Oh, it seems that we made it this time." The exhausted voice of Archangel clued Hyperion to look behind Jupiter II, finding the other ship there as well. Archangel had managed to go and get herself a new set of rents, dents and scorch marks across her hull.
"Bloody oath, what happened to you?!" Spirit of Fire yelped.
"We ran into some… slight difficulty." Archangel admitted. Slowly, her eyebrows knitted together, and she looked to her left to find a small fire on that shoulder. Without any real fuss, she patted the fire out deployed extinguishers. "The universe truly contains so many wonders within it… if only it were not so that many such things sought to destroy humans on sight." She pouted.
"Yes, well…" Enterprise chuckled nervously. "There's a reason Starfleet arms our exploration ships so heavily…"
"Archangel, Jupiter II, you seem to have picked up a new companion." Yamato said, an undercurrent of urgency in her words.
"Hmm?" Archangel turned to look behind her. There was a red battleship floating behind her, with a red Mobile Suit in front of it.
"Oh." Archangel frowned. "Thou art still here?"
"Whoops." Jupiter II sweated. "Sorry! Must have taken her along as well."
"Taken her…?" Babylon 5 repeated back blankly.
Without a word, the Mobile Suit grabbed onto the ship's hull, and the red ship ignited her thrusters, set on a course towards the ring of debris around the planet.
"She was of great help in fighting the Necromongers, and her heart is in the right place, but I simply cannot excuse the lengths to which she will go." Archangel huffed.
The others exchanged glances.
"You, uh. Had a real busy trip on the way here, huh?" Hyperion blinked, a little stunned.
"I'm really sorry, honest I am!" Jupiter II pleaded in a childlike voice.
Archangel shook her head. "Alas, there is no time to discuss this now." She looked up at the unfamiliar (to her) ships. "I presume thou are the comrades of Normandy, Yamato and Galactica?"
"Yes, that's us." Babylon 5 answered. "…by any chance, do you know a man named David McIntyre?"
"I'm afraid there will be little time for introductions." Archangel said, grimly. "Jupiter II and I passed through many systems on our journey here. There is a fleet of ships of wildly different designs on its way here."