Prologue

July 19th, 2156, underneath Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, Earth.

"Dr. Jackson?" The assistant's lilting, musical voice called with an echo down the archaic metal and concrete walls. She was a young, blond intern from the University of Colorado where he taught archeology on a semi-retired basis. When he didn't respond right away she yelled again, "Jack?!"

Dr. Jonathan "Jack" Jackson turned his head suddenly from a panel he had been inspecting, adjusted his glasses and looked in her direction. "Yeah?!" He called back.

"I think we found something you're going to want to see." She responded.

They had been digging in this site near old Colorado Springs, Colorado for the last three weeks. The city itself had died in a nuclear attack way back in the mid two thousands, but this underground system of tunnels had survived more or less intact. It had been a military installation for the former United States government during the time of his great-great-great-grandfather, before a third world war broke out and tore that nation apart, that is.

His ancestor, a Dr. Daniel Jackson, had been another archaeologist like himself, and according to his private diaries which he had been given the fortune of discovering many years before, this place had been of extreme importance to his life.

He came over to the intern's side to look at what she had discovered. Most of the facility lying under Cheyenne Mountain they had uncovered had been buried in rubble, especially the upper levels that had been known as NORAD a hundred and fifty years earlier. It had started life as a launch facility for a nuclear ballistic missile, and was then later used for the command and control of North America's air defense systems. This site had been hit hard by a nuclear attack during WWIII. But these levels where they were, the deep, deep basement levels were still mostly intact. They had been designed and reinforced to withstand much more powerful attacks from both outside the mountain, and even, oddly enough, from within.

His ancestor's journals had set him on a quest to prove something that, much like that older ancestor, set him at odds with the accepted view of the academic community. It was common, accepted knowledge that Earth's first contact with extra-terrestrials happened in Montana in 2061, and that human beings from Earth had no ability to travel faster than light before Zefram Cochrane invented and successfully tested his warp drive. But Dr. Daniel Jackson's private journals drop-kicked that accepted view out the window like a well aimed football. To be sure, those journals had been a well guarded family secret until his own father had passed away and he had been given the key to a safety deposit box the Jackson family had held since his ancestor retired from his very eventful life, was married, and had a small family. If the previous Dr. Jackson had been right, then the evidence for it should be down here somewhere. He just wished that his ancestor had left a map of the facility.

They were standing in what had, at one time, been a missile silo. It wasn't unlike the one which Dr. Cochrane had launched his now famous warp ship from. This one though had a ton of debris lying in it and around it from the collapse of the silo's walls from the attack. From his ancestor's description though it looked like the room he wanted. The room which might prove everything. The big question was whether or not "it" was still here, buried under all the rubble and rock.

"Good work, Stacy." He told her. She was one of his best students, and one of the few that was willing to chance ending her career before it began by believing in his outlandish theories. "What we're looking for, if it's here, is a large, metal ring covered with symbols around the circumference. I'm guessing it's probably about three meters or more in diameter."

"Yes, Doctor." She said, obviously pleased by his praise.

He lifted his eyes to scan what remained of the walls above and spotted still intact windows and a staircase leading to the room behind them. "The control room." He said to himself. Would it still be intact? He wondered. Would the computers still be intact? Functional? Probably not, but he had to see.

According to his research, after the attack no one returned to Cheyenne Mountain to unbury it because everyone who knew about this facility had either been killed, or had gone missing, presumed dead. Vanished off the face of the Earth. There hadn't been enough of a United States government left by the end of the war to recover any of it, and the facility had been so top secret that the United Earth government which came into being after first contact had absolutely no knowledge of the existence of this place.

He took a flashlight and headed up the stairs and into the room. The first thing he noticed was the little red, yellow, and green lights blinking on and off in seemingly random patterns. It took a minute for him to comprehend. There was still power here. The computers were still working. There was copious amounts of dust everywhere, but the room, with it's ancient computer workstations and control panels was still intact. He scanned the walls for a light switch. Finding it, he flipped it to the "on" position. The overhead lights in the room came on.

He couldn't believe what he was seeing. "Stacy, come up here!" He shouted in excitement. She emerged from the stairs into the room a few moments later, panting. "Yes?" She said, huffing and puffing, and then looked around. "Oh, wow." She exclaimed.

"This proves it, doesn't it?" She asked him, still in amazement at their find. None of it should still be working, they both knew. Not with the technology of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. None of this equipment should even be viable, much less operational and powered.

"Not yet." He said. He wanted to be cautious. He needed more prove than ancient computers that were still working after a hundred and thirty years. "But it's a big step in the right direction." He moved over to the main console which looked out through the big windows into the main room they had just been in. The room where "it" was supposed to be. If they could find it, that might prove everything right there, but he was never that lucky, and luck wasn't something he trusted.

He pressed an elongated button on the keyboard. The space-bar, he remembered it was called. Suddenly, all the displays in front of him came on at once giving them a dizzying amount of information. Star charts, coordinates, communications data, it was all right here, still on the screen, as though it had been left running and no one had stayed behind to turn it off or secure it. He looked at the coordinates on the screen in front him. They were accompanied by seven strange symbols representing star constellations. He wouldn't have known what they were, except for his ancestor's diary.

"This might prove it, though." It was all right here, he realized. The database was still intact...

Chapter 1

April 4th, 2158, NX-01 Enterprise, dry-dock, in orbit above San Francisco, California, Earth.

"Captain's Personal Log: April 4th, 2158," Archer began speaking into the air in his quarters aboard the Enterprise. The ship's computer dutifully took note and began recording. "Most of the crew has come back from their shore leave, and it's good to have Enterprise full of people again. It was beginning to feel like a ghost town. We've spent the last week in dry-dock being retrofitted with an experimental propulsion system that is so top-secret, Starfleet has only authorized myself, Commander Tucker, and Commander T'Pol to know the full details of it. When I was first told about the project, I thought they were pulling my leg. I learned that Zefram Cochrane wasn't the first human being to make first contact. I learned that he wasn't even the first human being to develop faster than light travel. That honor went to someone named Dr. Samantha Carter a hundred and fifty years ago in something called the 'Stargate Program.' The admirals in charge wouldn't tell me about everything they found, just enough to sort of know what they're getting me and my crew into. If it works, it'll make all of Dr. Cochrane's work, and my father's for that matter, obsolete. I can't even wrap my head around that. I had thought thirty million kilometers a second was ridiculously fast, but the Starfleet engineers who built the hyperspace engines are right, they'll leave warp five looking like a nice leisurely stroll. They're talking about speeds of up to six thousand light-years an hour. It'll open up not only the Alpha Quadrant, but the entire Milky Way, and other galaxies besides. I agreed to the test on my ship only if they agreed that this new propulsion system would be installed in addition to the tried and true warp engines. I was assured that it wouldn't even be a problem. They use completely different power sources, and could operate independently of one another, possibly together even. Trip and T'Pol, after doing the number crunching, tell me that it might work, in theory, which is the other reason why I agreed to it. The test is scheduled for six hours from now, ship's time, and I can't help but begin to have a bad feeling about it. I have questions that the admirals couldn't or wouldn't answer, like why wasn't the technology put into use when it was developed, and if it was, why did Earth wait for so long after before we really went into space? They tell me that ships were developed and put into service. What happened to them? They can't tell me. I'll defer to T'Pol's and Trip's judgment on it, and if they say it's worth the risk, then it's worth the risk, but I just can't shake this feeling like something's going to go wrong." After a few minutes, he said, "End log."

He sat there in his chair going through all the variables in his mind. In a way, he was being asked to be a test pilot again, something that part of him had jumped at. But he didn't have to risk the lives of eighty-three crew members, many of whom were now closer to him than family, when he flew x-planes years ago.

"Hyperspace." Just the word made him feel like he was in one of the old science fiction stories that had been so popular when this technology had first been developed.

He checked the clock, 0600 hours, ship's time. He'd been awake since 0500. He still had a couple of hours before he was due on the bridge. He had time to get a shower, and get some real breakfast.

Hyperspace. He thought again to himself. Why did it make him so uneasy? The way it had been explained to him it wasn't that much different from warp drive, with the exception that you were passing into another dimension altogether for a short time. Technically, like warp drive, you were never exceeding the speed of light, or anywhere close to it. Except with warp drive you created an artificial pocket of space around you and it was the space around you that was moving faster than light, not the ship itself. In hyperspace you were still using your regular impulse engines but moving through a different dimension that shortened your trips considerably. That was all well and good, and according to the information he was given, the old United States Air Force use to clandestinely operate about half a dozen ships with that technology not only around earth but all the way across the galaxy and even into other galaxies on routine flights. So it had been proven reliable and safe to use by them at the time.

But there came the wrinkle. Some engineer—and he had to be careful with that thought because one of his best friends was an engineer—had put two and two together, literally, and wanted to experiment with moving through hyperspace at warp speed. That was the last test they were supposed to run, to see if combining the technologies would allow them to cross distances that even those older vessels hadn't hoped for. Instead of taking a day to reach Vulcan, imagine it taking a few minutes. Instead of exploring their own quadrant of the galaxy for weeks at a time only covering a few hundred light years, imagine crossing from the Alpha to the Delta Quadrants of the Milky Way in a day; or from the Milky Way to the Andromeda in a week or less. It had apparently only taken three weeks with a standard hyperdrive to run from Earth to a planet in the Pegasus Galaxy. The possibilities were astounding, but so was the potential for ripping his ship apart in the attempt. He had seen the math, and he knew the risks, and the closer they came to the test, the worse he felt about saying yes.

He rubbed his hands across his face and silently cursed the academic who had made the discovery. He needed a cup of coffee. By the end of the day, he thought he might have needed something a lot stronger.

He then wondered yet again what had happened to the people who had run the Stargate program in the first place? Were their descendants still out there? Were they still on some planet on the opposite side of the galaxy where Earth and her allies couldn't yet reach them? Did they know what happened to Earth after they left? Why hadn't they ever tried to return? Or maybe they did and didn't like what they saw. Had they returned during the short reign of the augments like Khan Noonian Singh, they might have come to the conclusion that the United States and Earth in general were lost causes. He wouldn't have blamed them for turning around either.

He went and jumped into the shower for a few minutes, then put on a clean uniform and headed for the mess hall to try and fortify himself for what the rest of the day might bring.

Fifty Light Years from Earth...

The old star had been there longer than most everything else around it. It had seen rings of dust form around it after it had been formed sometime closer to the birth of the universe and those rings had formed into the planets that had orbited it once upon a time, until each in turn had spiraled into its surface as it went through its own stages of birth, life, growth, and now old age. It couldn't reckon time, but if it could it would have known that it had lived for billions of years and now its time was done. It was good. And as the last of its nuclear fuel was spent it collapsed in a great sigh of relief and went dark. Very dark. So black that even the light around it couldn't escape from it as the huge void it left behind began sucking everything else around it into a great whirlpool of destruction of unimaginable proportions.

The loss of the star wouldn't be seen from Earth or its allies for that matter for decades. No one could know that it now lay on the test-flight path of a relatively low tech starship, or how its gravity well would distort and impact that test flight. Their sensors and scanning equipment, designed for the rigors of relatively slow warp travel just weren't advanced enough to deal with sensing normal space phenomena while in transit through hyperspace. They wouldn't see it at all when running through the eleventh dimension of hyperspace encased in a warp field.

Black Holes had a way of ruining everyone's plans for the day.

Millions of years prior, in a galaxy on the opposite end of the known universe...

Silva Kai, fourteen year old Jedi Padawan, Coruscanti native and newly apprenticed to Jedi Master Ben Skywalker, fidgeted with excitement and anticipation. She maintained the serene silence while accompanying her master which had been expected of her while he spoke to other masters as best she could, but her face could be far too expressive for her own good. It had only been three weeks prior that she had been taken under his tutelage in the temple, and now she was really going with him on an actual mission!

Her light brown hair had been tied back in a functional braid, with the exception of the small braid which ran from near her right temple that marked her as a Padawan. No matter how hard she tried to practice her breathing and calming techniques she just couldn't maintain the dispassion she knew she was supposed to. It was awesome!

The older man standing next to her smiled in amusement as he could feel her excitement crashing into him through the Force. He didn't make any effort to acknowledge it openly, wanting to spare her dignity in front of another master, but he would have to discuss it with her later in private. Emotional control could be all important in the life and service of a Jedi, as he knew all too well.

"...need you to accompany a Galactic Alliance Star Destroyer to the Outer Rim near Tatooine. There is a disturbance in the Force that feels to be coming from that region of space." The master in front of him continued.

"I know, I've felt it too." And Ben wasn't the only other master to have felt it either. Something was going on in the Force, something big, and it reached them all the way in the Core from the edge of the galaxy.

Master Solo continued, "The ISD is going there on routine patrol so you'll effectively be accompanying them as extra passengers, but the Jedi Council has good relationships with her commanding officers. They'll know why you're there and have agreed to give you as much leeway as their own mission allows for."

"Yes Master." Ben was formal with his cousin Jaina in public in the Temple like this, but they shared an unbreakable bond of personal anguish and sacrifice which transcended most intimate relationships. The formality seemed more appropriate out in the open somehow. It wasn't how his father had run things when he was Grandmaster, but things hadn't always run smoothly then either. Family matters and attachments needed to stay out of the Council chambers, and all too often his own family's personal matters had dominated Council business and set the agenda. It wasn't his father's fault, per se. The man had been forced to single-handedly restore the entire Jedi Order from scratch and had largely succeeded, but his own informal personal style had influenced everything to the point where chaos was more the norm than calm order. No one remembered Grandmaster Skywalker with anything but warm fondness and deep respect for all that he had accomplished in his life, but with his and Jaina's parents passing there came a kind of settling down and reorganizing peace as the newest version of the Jedi Order had finally found its place in the Galaxy neither ruling the Galactic government, nor being ruled by it, but working as its partner in everything much more like the old Order. Stability, calmness, and peace ruled in the temple these days, and everyone felt the better for it.

"You will take a shuttle and rendezvous with the Mara Jade Skywalker in orbit in two hours." Jaina continued.

Ben winced inwardly at the mention of his mother's name. He had thought it a nice gesture on the part of the Alliance to honor his mother in that way when the ISD was renamed, but even after more than fifteen years, he still had nightmares about her death. He felt no such discomfort from her, but it had been some time ago and they had both moved on as best they could. If Jaina had noticed his discomfort, she chose not to show it, possibly not wanting to embarrass him in front of his apprentice. His Padawan was so preoccupied with her excitement she didn't seem to notice either. Hmm. He definitely needed to have that talk with her. She hadn't left herself open to the Force. That could be dangerous for both of them.

Then the two of them stood in silence, waiting for the other person to speak and add anything more. When nothing more came, Jaina said, "May the Force be with you."

"And also with you, Master." Ben replied as he watched her walk down the hall towards the Council Chambers.

"So, should I allow you to bounce up and down now, or should we wait until we're on the shuttle?" Ben asked his Padawan playfully.

Silva's cheeks flushed red with embarrassment. "Sorry, Master."

"Don't be. But don't allow your excitement to obscure your connection to the Force, young Padawan. You miss far too much when you're caught up in your own feelings. Always remain open to the Force."

"Yes Master, it's just that..." She struggled a little.

"Yes, what?" He responded.

"It's my first real mission with you. It's really the first time I'll be going off Coruscant, or even outside of the Temple for that matter." The words just fell out of her mouth and she stumbled over them.

"Ah. I understand." He did. Not everyone had the galaxy ranging upbringing which his family brought him. He actually preferred staying home in the Temple and teaching these days to going off world. He had gotten the adventure bug thoroughly exorcized out of his system the hard way a long time ago when he was a kid. "But don't hope for too much excitement. We're just going to investigate. It probably won't involve lightsabers or bad guys at all." He told her. Inwardly, he thought to himself, we should be so lucky.

"But still! It's off world in a Star Destroyer!" She said, her excitement rising again.

"Well, then maybe that'll be more than enough excitement for the both of us." He told her. He hoped for both their sakes it would be true. But the Force often had other ideas for him and his family. He couldn't do anything about that but submit to the will of the Force and hope for the best.

"C'mon, let's go get packed so we can make the shuttle in time." He told her.

April 4th, 2158, Enterprise, Outside of the Sol System's Gravity Well

"We almost ready down there Trip?" Archer asked his chief engineer through the ship's comm system from the bridge. Commander Trip Tucker was down in engineering where he belonged to keep watch over his beloved warp engines and the new Hyperspace propulsion unit which he had affectionately nicknamed the Hyperdrive after the FTL engines of the Science Fiction stories of time past.

They'd been putting the Hyperdrive through it's paces all afternoon through the Sol System, making short hops from Earth to Mars to Jupiter and checking their sensor data all the way. So far, the system had worked exactly as it had been originally designed. They made the calculations, pointed the ship in the direction they wanted it to go, and engaged the Hyperdrive keeping time on a glorified stopwatch. When they had been in Hyperspace for the calculated amount of time it would take they disengaged it and presto! They had arrived on target almost every time. Those times they hadn't had just been a matter of adjusting the math. The one factor which unnerved everyone is that those times they were in hyperspace they were effectively flying blind. The sensors couldn't cope with anything but normal space, or the normal space distorted around them when at warp.

"Yes sir, almost ready. It's just been a matter of getting the timing in the simulations right. We have to engage the warp engines less than a second after the hyperspace window opens. It's pretty tricky getting it right." Trip's voice came through the comm.

"All right, well we've been batting a thousand all afternoon. I hate to say it, but the antique Hyperdrive has been putting our state of the art warp five engines to shame." There, Archer admitted it outright. He was a big enough man to do so.

Trip was quiet for a moment before answering. Then there came a terse but resigned, "Yes, sir."

"Don't feel so bad, Trip," Archer responded. "I didn't really want it to work either."

"Gotta give old Doc Carter credit though, whoever she was," Trip shot back as a conciliation. "Even the Vulcan scientists had a hard time wrapping their heads around the math and energies involved." He paused for a moment, then said, "No offense, T'Pol."

T'Pol, Enterprise's Vulcan science officer cocked her eyebrow, and said in a dignified manner, "None taken."

"I mean, this is some really advanced stuff. It's hard to believe they came up with this a hundred and fifty years ago without help. I'm just saying." Trip said.

"Tell me about it." Archer responded. "Of course, it was only in the twentieth century that they discovered the ancient Greeks were making mechanical calculators as far back as the first century. They thought it had been a new, modern idea in the late eighteen hundreds."

"Just goes to show you how much we don't know about where humanity's been or what human beings are really capable of, don't it?" Trip responded.

"How very true." T'Pol said quietly, to Archer's silent amusement.

"So, we ready yet, Trip?" Archer asked again.

"Yes, sir. Simulation is good, and I'm feeding the right numbers into the engine computers now. There we go, Captain. I can't get it any more perfect than that. We'll either have a smooth ride, or we'll never know about it." Commander Tucker responded.

Thanks, Archer thought, just what I needed; a reminded of how badly this could go wrong if we're off by the slightest fraction. He didn't say that. Instead, he addressed his helmsman, Lieutenant Mayweather, "Okay, Travis, ready when you are."

Travis started working his control board, "Okay, setting countdown timer and Hyperdrive clock. Coordinates laid in. Hyperdrive is primed, warp drive is standing by. Waiting on your order, Captain."

"Warp three only for this run, Travis." Archer said. No need to push it today. We're just testing a theory.

"Understood sir." Travis responded.

"Engage." Archer gave the order.

In front of them the hyperspace window opened and a split second later, the Enterprise jumped to warp into the window.

The Enterpise never saw the singularity lying in its path. Their sensors, useless as they were, never registered that they had been caught in hyperspace at warp three slingshotting around the gravity well of a newly formed black hole, and they wouldn't have understood the significance of all of that information yet. The only thing they took notice of was what seemed to be a slight power fluctuation and dimming of the lights on the bridge for a few seconds. No one noticed the effect it had on the hyperspace jump timing clock. The universe was funny that way.