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“It’s ready, Phoenix is ready to rise,” Paul Mallory whispered as he and his crew looked up at the mass of the massive space plane they had managed to retrofit with the new drive.
The ship would take off like a conventional plane, although it would lift off like a conventional helicopter, using cyclocopter technology, before using jet engines to gain altitude, before switching over to jet engines before going into rockets. The last drive was a simplistic fusion rocket, good enough for interplanetary travel. Paul and his crew had gotten the ship by pot luck, and they’d been rebuilding it for the last decade.
“It’s been a long road,” Sabrina whispered, her permanently traumatised eyes shining with emotion. She had never been the same since the day the Minbari murdered her family, and she had become increasingly protective of her friends and her baby sister and infant daughter. Nobody was surprised.
“I can’t wait to see how everyone reacts,” Liv commented with a mischievous grin. “All of those newly reopened space exploration people, they’re gonna flip.”
“Especially when we come back,” Rob added.
“Well, let’s get onboard,” Ioan grinned.
“This is a moment that will live in history,” Paul said, and he led the way on board the ship, and as he did, he let himself think.
Faster than Light, being able to travel through space fast enough to reach a nearby solar system without being subjected to the vast distances between stars. So great are the distances between the stars, that even at the speed of light, it would take hundreds, possibly thousands, of years to reach them.
Many races discovered the flexibility of space-time, realising it could be bent, warped. But they also discovered the power problem, which stated they would need to have the equivalent power of the whole universe to build such a device.
Every species in the galaxy looked up into the stars and wondered what was out there, and as their space programs and scientific research studied the laws of physics and conducted experiments, with their best physicists and mathematicians working on the problems associated with faster-than-light travel, most of them believed it was impossible. It didn’t help they discovered warping space-time could potentially lead to time travel, and many believed that was impossible.
When they ventured out, many aliens from the Minbari, the Vree, the Centauri (who had an interstellar vessel of Galactic Level technology to work with, which had crashed on their world, and provided them with a stronger tech base to work with), the Dilgar, and other sentient beings discovered jump gates, which opened the doors of hyperspace and therefore interstellar travel. They quickly mastered the technology, taking the gates apart and studying them to understand how they worked, and from there they studied hyperspace and discovered its limits and strengths.
The humans of Earth were the same. When they finally began launching interstellar vessels, they were primitive things, but unlike most races, they lived in a fairly unremarkable and sparsely visited part of the galaxy. They had perfected antimatter propulsion and light sail-propelled ships, but it still took time to reach other worlds, and even then they had to live in suspended animation to leapfrog through time.
And then they met the Centauri Republic, the first sentient race they ever met. While Paul didn’t trust the Centauri given how they spouted lies, he had to thank them for giving humans access to jump gate technology. With hyperspace, humanity had spread throughout space while they studied jump gate science and technology, but only a few people continued to study faster-than-light travel, which was largely abandoned with the access they now had to hyperspace and jump gate technology.
Paul was one of them, and he had simply reversed one of the problems. He had been studying in university when the Earth-Minbari war began, and while Earth Force was able to fight the aliens off using drones, battle droids, optical scanners, the Minbari had continued to hammer in using their technological advantages to their peak, and they got through to the Sol system before taking the rest of the Alliance, and when they arrived, they proceeded to bombard Earth from orbit, murdering millions, destroying centuries of art, literature, human tradition. And then the invasion began, and millions died.
Paul had lost so many of his friends, his family, and he’d become a freedom fighter rather than a scientist, and he’d used his scientific comprehension to fight the aliens who’d bombed his home and killed his people.
Liv and her family had been taken prisoner and turned into slaves when the Minbari, deciding some humans could be used, took them prisoner, and she didn’t take it lightly, as the flogging scars on her back were proof of. Sabrina was one of the worst hit of the group; she’d been dragged to a processing centre, with her family and many others. She was raped along with other girls, in front of others, and she’d had to watch as so many people were slaughtered like cows and pigs in a slaughterhouse. As a result, she hated the Minbari and hoped one day they would be wiped out in the most painful way possible.
And then the invasion ended, the Minbari just…stopped killing, and they began leaving. Nobody knew why, but they knew the Minbari weren’t happy about it; the Minbari were just as demonstrative with their emotions as humans, but something in their psychology and physiology made them mask their emotions unless they were really intense.
The Earth Alliance didn’t open a dialogue with the Minbari. Why should they, when the Minbari invaded their homes, killed their people, raped and tortured children? Why should they extend the olive branch after the aliens had taken pregnant women and simply cut them open? What about the destruction of human cities, the senseless way priceless works of art and literature were destroyed?
Instead, they had released hour upon hour of footage gathered from the facilities on data crystals which showed the Minbari’s atrocities, the murders, the mutilations, and broadcasted them across the galaxy, more out of spite than anything else, and a pledge to never forgive the Minbari for what they’d done.
To make matters worse and more complicated, the whole galaxy had learned what really happened at First Contact. The human commander had panicked because his ship’s sensors were being blocked, and the Minbari had deliberately come closer with gunports open, so what else was he meant to do?
The outcry against the Minbari was loud; many criticised the Minbari for approaching an unknown race with primitive computers and with gunports open.
All of this was 6 years ago, the Alliance was rebuilding, but the human race had gone into isolation from the rest of the galaxy, not out of shame, but to bury the dead, and rebuild. Space exploration was becoming a booming business, with a lot of focus on the Outer Rim, and sending exploration teams deeper into unexplored regions of the galaxy, to find new worlds and technologies, so humanity never came close to the boundary of extinction again.
But Paul planned on changing all of this soon.
That was why he’d named his test ship the Phoenix: Earth was rising from the ashes.
-8-
“Oh, wow,” Paul whispered an hour later when the Phoenix went into orbit. They had already been detected while they were going into orbit, but while the drive was being turned on, they had a few moments before they were intercepted. In the meantime, they could watch the amazing, breathtaking view of their world.
Earth was a beautiful, shining blue marble jewel. Yes, Earth had suffered from the orbital bombardment, and they could see the scars, but also the way nature worked on repairing the damage itself, proving superior to even the weapons used by the Minbari.
“It’s beautiful,” Sabrina whispered in awe.
“It is.”
“Earth’s about to get bigger, girls,” Paul said with a grin.
When the drive was ready, Paul opened a channel to the Earth Force fighters and ships.
“This is Captain Susan Ivanova, of the EAS Sitting Bull to unidentified shuttle, you are ordered to stand down. I repeat, you are ordered to stand down,” a woman’s voice spoke as soon as the channel was opened.
Everyone glanced at Paul in the silence, wondering what he was going to say.
Finally, Paul spoke into the channel, “Underway with Time Drive.” he turned off the channel.
And he activated the drive, and suddenly the Sol system…..warped with a flash, and they found themselves somewhere else before the navigational computers, analysing the astrometric data, discovered they had jumped thousands of years into the future, and now the Phoenix was near the sun, and they watched as the sun which had bathed Earth and the system for millions of years with warmth and light, providing the centre of numerous experiments, expanded into a gas giant, they were barely able to escape.
They travelled back and forth through time and space for nine days. The drive of the Phoenix was a temporal drive which allowed the ship to partially merge with parallel universes, slipping them through to other realities as well, allowing them to circumvent the laws of time and space, and allowing them to travel through time and space, into the past and into the future. Travelling backwards in time meant they travelled into different timelines, and they watched the Minbari wipe out humanity.
Then they witnessed a reality where the Dilgar had successfully conquered and enslaved humanity, destroying human civilisation in the process.
They watched in horror as they arrived in a reality where first contact with the Centauri led to a brutal occupation, where humanity was enslaved like the Narns, but they left quickly when Centauri warships approached.
But they visited other galaxies, other worlds in other parts of the universe never visited by the Narn, the Centauri, the Dilgar, or the Minbari; they saw supernovas appear in slow motion after adjusting the time controls, and they arrived in a star system orbiting two black holes, but one of the most incredible sights they saw was the solar system littered with alien ships of so many designs, many of them looking highly advanced. They spent a few days there, studying the ships before they returned to the Phoenix, and they returned to their reality (Paul made sure to jump back at least an hour after their initial jump).
“Unknown ship, this is Sitting Bull.” Ivanova’s strident voice came back over the channel, sounding tense, “What are you? Where have you been?” Ivanova demanded after her ship and a few others surrounded the Phoenix.
“Through the looking glass, Captain,” Paul replied.
-8-
So many people on Earth had seen the Phoenix appear and disappear, and Paul had broadcasted everything on an open channel. When they returned, Paul downloaded everything they’d seen into the internet, and they had brought with them artefacts and samples of the various times and spaces they’d visited.
Once the drive was tested over and over, and the crew were interviewed by Psi-Corp, everyone began accepting the truth.
Time Travel was possible.
Interdimensional travel was possible.
They could travel faster than light, into other universes, and into the past and into the future.
This sparked a new age of exploration. Vast areas of the galaxy were opened up, bypassing their jump gate networks, and many worlds were visited and colonised by humanity, but time travelling into the past and into the future unlocked secrets and mysteries so far hidden. Scientists visited parallel universes, including ones which possessed different laws of physics, and research opened doors to whole new branches of science and technology.
In the parallel universes where Earth was conquered either by the Dilgar, the Minbari, and the Centauri, Earth Alliance officials slowly began rescuing their people. This had the effect of ensuring humanity’s survival, although in many cases they simply gave their fellow humans weapons and technology to drive the alien enemies away.
But as they time-travelled, they discovered the ancient war of the First Ones, and serious expansion into other galaxies was put forth to ensure humanity’s survival because it wasn’t just the Minbari they were potentially facing, it was the Shadows and Vorlons themselves.