The ship entered slipspace for a second before suddenly a huge turbulence shook the ship as a strings of explosions could be heard.

Moments later the failsafe activated as the ship exited slipspace.

William braced his seat as yelled "report!"

Moments later a wolf hologram appears next to him and said "engines are dawn, would take awhile to assess the damage, 47 injured, no death"

William then asked what cause this

"Not sure... perhaps..." the wolf AI is quite hesitant and it's unsure if it's related or not.

"Speak"

"The moment we entered slipspace a suddenly energy spike was detected coming from the cargo hold. A few milliseconds before the engines are overloaded"

William scratched his chin thinks about before he told his men to search for the cargo hold for the item responsible.

It didn't take long before a report came back of a smoking container was found and upon opening the sides were charred burnt beyond recognition.

Then right around this time the AI wolf appears and said "engine assessment complete, slipspace drive is dawn and is impossible to repair without going a dry dock" Then a projection showed the extent of the damage.

SLAM

William slams his fist at his armrest clearly displeased with the news he had received.

William then closed his eyes to contemplate his situation.

After he has sufficient cooled down he then asked Fenrir where are they.

"Where are we?

The wolf could only meekly say "I'm confused about that as well" as he projected a 3D model of the Milky Way galaxy and besides it is another identical 3D model of the Milky Way.

"It's quite strange as there are some discrepancies"

The wolf then using his paws to points to the left 3D model of the galaxy and said "this was what the galaxy looked like before we jumped" then points to right 3D model "here's what the galaxy looks like outside"

William of course can't see the difference as to him both looked the same but of course he knows that the AI can spot minute details beyond what humans could.

William right now is like being told to compare two abstract paintings that's entirely made out of random splatter that seems like anyone can make.

Any the wolf naturally knows the William couldn't probably spot the difference and converged the two models and highlighted the difference.

"The highlighted areas are the discrepancies, there is a discrepancy of 0.1%"

William not being the science type is like "so?"

The wolf sighs and explains further.

"Even accounting for stellar drifts (planets drifts in space), gravity (gravity bends light), time dilation (even as fast as light is it still take time for to travel from part of the galaxy to the other making the images we see depending on the distance thousands or perhaps millions of years out of date)..." the AI lists out all the factors before finishes "even with all that there shouldn't be even 0.00001% divergence"

"..."

William is silent not quite getting it but is sure the situation is pretty grave judging by the AI reaction.

Hey! He's an ONI operative! Subversion, plot, secrecy is his thing not some random dotted light in the sky! It's like asking Darwin who's a biologist about the internals of an engine.

The wolf sighs and proceeded to explain it to him in words he would understand "according current location we're a few light years away from earth"

There's nothing strange about that as they were just from Reach which isn't all that far from earth, but the picture of the sol system shown by the wolf... there is something hugely wrong about it.

While Earth is still there and looks the same but the orbital defense platforms around it, home fleet, the moon base, Mars is still a barren red dust ball...

All the human development for the past 500 years are... gone.

Even talking into account of of time dilation, Earth is only 10 light years away from Reach. Light years is a measurement of distance which light travels in a year, so that means even taking timedilation into account this still wouldn't be the image they should be seeing.

Seeing William shocked expression the AI final felt relief as it seems that William finally understands the gravity of the situation they're in.

The Wolf being a super smart AI naturally knows what William would ask next and said "I have still have insufficient data to make an accurate hypothesis as to what happened but according to this radio transmissions I picked out coming from sol system"

The Wolf then played a video of Apollo landing. "This video is not a replay of an archive footage of the old Apollo program but a recently event that happened recently... " the Wolf said as goes on his reasoning for his claim.

William is a lost for words as before he could say anything

"Are..."

The Wolf AI Smugly said it for him "Yes commander it seems that we've traveled to the past"