Chapter Eleven

TFS Jutland

Epsilon Eridani, That Same Time

Captain Aaron McKenzie resisted the impulse to get out of his command chair and start pacing around the bridge, as he waited for Lieutenant Tayman's scout ship to arrive. With its far slower hyperspace speed it was taking seemingly forever for the young intelligence officer to arrive at these coordinates. They had already been here for nearly an hour, hanging silent under the protection of the ships cloaking device in the Oort cloud at the edge of the system. And he wasn't very comfortable about being out here, the ring of asteroids, dust and comets was a nightmare to navigate – and many of the larger objects were more than big enough to cause serious damage to the Jutland should one of them hit her before they could decloak and raise shields.

After a moment he sighed and glanced at the main screen again, showing nothing but the masses of material drifting in an eternal silent dance around the Jutland. The cloud around them was quite dark and forbidding, lit only feebly by the distant star. Out here they were safe from all possibility of detection by Babylon Five or any of the ships that filled the system as they came and went from the space station. Hopefully we won't have to stay here long, he thought, if Tayman can confirm that Babylon Five can't detect us we'll be able to move in closer. Until then he would have to swallow his discomfort and just accept his ship sitting here in the darkness.

At that moment the sensor station chirped for attention. "Captain, sensors are picking up a hyperspace window opening two hundred thousand metres to starboard," the officer on duty reported.

"Show me," Aaron instructed.

Immediately the view screen changed view slightly to a view of a hyperspace window bursting into existence, the force of the vortices appearance sending surrounding particles of dust and gas into a swirling frenzy. From the centre of the window a small ship came back into normal space, decelerating sharply to a safe speed before coming to a dead halt. The hyperspace window folded in upon itself and vanished as if it had never been present at all, returning peace to the Oort cloud.

"Hail that ship," Aaron ordered resisting the impulse to smile in relief. Lieutenant Tayman was here at last, now things could get moving.

"Aye, sir," the communications officer answered before mentally giving the command to his console. "Lieutenant Tayman has acknowledged the hail, response coming in." As the officer spoke the view screen changed again to show the head and shoulders of Lieutenant Michael Tayman sitting in the central control chair on the scout ships small bridge.

"Lieutenant," Aaron said. "Welcome to Epsilon Eridani."

"Thank you, sir," Tayman answered his voice sounding slightly distracted, that coupled with the giveaway look in his eyes told Aaron that Tayman was using the neural interface capabilities of the chair to control the ship. "I'm ready to begin my mission, sir," Tayman continued. "Are there any last minute instructions?"

"No lieutenant. Good luck and I hope to see you soon with the probe in your possession. When you retrieve it bring it here immediately, the sooner its back in the safety of our hands the better."

"Aye sir, retrieving the probe will by my first objective, along with trying to figure out how Babylon Five detected it in the first place."

"Good. Hopefully we will hear from you soon, lieutenant."

"As soon a possible, sir," Tayman answered before breaking the connection from his end. The view of the scout ship returned, the small vessel already changing its position and beginning to move away. After a moment its outline blurred and the ship vanished from all bar the Jutland's tracking systems as Tayman activated his cloaking device.

"Track him to Babylon Five," Aaron ordered, knowing that the Jutland's tracking sensors were easily capable of crossing the distance between here and the huge O'Neill space station over the third planet. "Lets make sure the lieutenant gets their safely."

"Aye, sir."

"Communications send a subspace data burst transmission to Admiral Robyns and Governor Shepherd. Advise them that Lieutenant Tayman has arrived at Epsilon Eridani and is proceeding to Babylon Five."

"Aye, sir."

As his crew scrambled to carry out his orders Aaron returned his attention to the screen at the front of the bridge. Good luck lieutenant, he thought to Tayman though he knew the lieutenant couldn't hear him, something tells me you are going to need it.

The Great Machine

Epsilon 3, That Same Time

Draal frowned slightly as the Great Machine's sensors reported a second large subspace distortion in the Oort cloud. He had almost missed the one that had appeared there earlier, and probes with his sensors had revealed nothing there. As the distortion faded away he turned the full sensitivity of the Great Machine's subspace sensors on the area.

Again he found nothing. The sensors did not detect the presence of any spacecraft of any size or description, though the fading echo of distortion triggered a reaction from the machines vast data banks. With a thought he scanned through the data and felt a quiver of surprise run through his physical body. It was the signature of a very advanced and different form of jump point, a jump point that exploited a very different form of hyperspace technology. Technology that the Great Machine's builders had only the most basic of knowledge of, along with knowledge of the only known race to have developed it, a race that had been gone so long that there were not even legends of their existence any longer among most modern space faring races.

And that race was called Alteran.

Draal carefully reviewed what information the Great Machine had on them. It made for a very slim file, all that was really known were four things. The name of the species, the fact that they had walked the stars of this and other galaxy with the First Ones and by all accounts had been one of the greatest and most mysterious as they had no homeworld, no place of origin they had just appeared from nowhere. That they appeared incredibly like Humans, and that just over one and a half million years ago they just disappeared. They hadn't been destroyed in a war, or by a plague, they had just vanished, taking all of their incredible knowledge and technology with them. The other First Ones, including the Vorlons and Shadows, had searched for them but had found no trace of them. They had just disappeared as if they had never been present at all.

Draal frowned thoughtfully as he reviewed the limited data, it was not particularly helpful. In fact it only deepened the mystery of the distortion that he had spotted. If the Alteran race was long gone either extinct or disappeared somewhere else, then who had made the distortion that was so like the little information on their hyperspace technology.

A chime sounded inside his head as the Great Machines sensors picked up ships moving in hyperspace, getting closer to this system. That was nothing unusual and normally Draal knew the machine would ignore it, but something was unusual about these movements. When he investigated Draal felt a shiver of shock run through his physical body.

The ships were Vorlon.

There were four of them travelling in formation together on direct course for Babylon Five. They would be here very shortly at the speed they were travelling. In Valen's name what is going on, Draal thought. Why are more Vorlons coming to Babylon Five?

For a moment he contemplated warning the orbiting space station about the incoming ships. But he discarded the idea, the Vorlons would be here far too soon for his warning to make any difference. And it was no real concern of his, now was not the time for the Great Machine to play its part in what was to come.

Still he tasked one of the Great Machines sensors to keep an eye on events aboard Babylon Five. He couldn't shake the feeling that something momentous was coming, and that the space station would be in the middle of it.

He just wished he knew what it was. Around him the Great Machine hummed and pulsed in seeming agreement.

Lieutenant Tayman's Scout Ship

A Few Minutes Later

With his thoughts Lieutenant Michael Tayman guided his scout ship ever closer to Babylon Five, while keeping a cautious eye on his cloaking device. While the cloaking device on the scout ship was more advanced than the cloak the probe had been equipped with he wasn't about to take chances. Not until they knew how the probe had been detected in the first place.

In no time at all he entered the orbital plane of the third planet of the system, the planet the great space station orbited. He paid close attention to the planet, shrouded as it was by a form of stealth technology that had phased tachyons into subspace producing a powerful but relatively crude sensor scattering field. In his minds eye he perceived the field as a halo of diffuse green light surrounding the planet, preventing all bar basic surface and subsurface scans from the local powers. His scout ships sensors though had no problems penetrating the stealth field and noticing the immense machines buried beneath the surface.

He was careful to only probe the planet lightly, on a far higher scanning band than what the probe had been capable of using, he was only mildly curious about it and knew to be weary. Especially as the probe data indicated that the planet had surprisingly powerful subspace scanners, though they were crude by Tau'ri standards, though the raw power and reach of the scan field was impressive. He didn't want to take the risk of the hidden machine complex detecting his presence.

After barely a minute of examining the planet he shifted his focus to Babylon Five, he was barely three hundred thousand kilometres from the space station now. And he could really get a good idea of the stations vastness, while smaller than a cityship or a major fleet star base Babylon Five was immense. Five miles long and nearly a mile tall the stations size was impressive, though what impressed Michael more was the fact that the station had no artificial gravity and used centrifugal force to simulate gravity.

He brought his scout ship to a halt, hiding in the sensor shadow of one of the many ships waiting in a holding pattern around the O'Neill habitat, and allowed himself a few moments to just appreciate the facility, and the engineering skills that had to have gone into its construction. Though the technology was centuries behind his own peoples Michael felt a twinge of admiration for the people who had designed and constructed the space based mega structure. And he knew not to underestimate them; anyone who could build something this enormous would not be without very considerable resources.

After a few moments he turned his attention back to his mission and directed the short range sensors to scan Babylon Five for the probe. Invisible beams reached out across the gulf between him and the station and began probing it, peeling back each level like the skin on an onion until they reached the hollow central core. In seconds he had located the probe; it was located in a bay near the stations four metre thick outer hull. The sensors revealed the probe had its shields up and was at full defensive readiness, obviously someone had tried to open it and it had been active enough to engage the security protocols programmed into the very molecules of the crystalline lattices that were its processor and memory centres.

With a thought he sent an interrogative transmission to the probe. The subspace comm. signal easily penetrating the stations skin to reach the probe instantaneously. There was no response, and his physical body sighed in annoyance. Though a number of systems appeared to be back online the probes communication system didn't appear to be one of them, though its short range homing beacon seemed to be on, though very weak and muffled. That was going to make retrieval that bit more difficult, he had been hoping to simply beam it aboard but that was obviously out of the question now. He couldn't transport it when its shield was up, he would have to go aboard and manually get the probe to lower its shield.

Why can things never be easy, he thought in annoyance before focusing his attention on the propulsion system again. He eased the scout ship out of the sensor shadow of the transport ship and threaded his way through the bustling traffic around the station till he reached the hull. Picking a location on the rotating cylinder he gently set down and ordered it to latch on. Unobserved by anyone the nano-bonding material lining the underside of the docking clamps sent millions of nanites into the matrix of the metal beneath, establishing a solid fusion between themselves and Babylon Five's hull that only the nano-bonding surfaces themselves could break.

The confirmation of a hard lock established shot through Michael's brain at the speed of light and he powered down as many systems as he could, though he kept the cloaking device active. Then he disengaged the neural interface and with a jolt found himself back in his body, and immediately felt his muscles complaining about being stuck in the same position for the three hours it had taken him to get here from Rivendell. One problem with flying entirely by neural interface, he thought standing up and going through some quick tai chi moves to loosen up his muscles, you get muscle cramps after awhile.

As his muscles slowly stopped complaining about being cramped up, Michael made his way over to the communications panel and placed a hand on the interface surface and mentally directed it to open a secure channel to the Jutland. Almost immediately a small holographic screen showing the face of Captain McKenzie appeared in front of him.

"Yes, lieutenant," McKenzie asked looking surprised to hear from him again so soon.

"Sir, there is a complication with retrieving the probe," Michael reported to him.

"What kind of problem?"

"I've scanned Babylon Five and confirmed that the probe is still intact and is repairing itself slowly. However its got its shields up and defence protocols appear to be active, my guess is they tried to open it. I tried sending an interrogative signal to the probe but it will not respond."

"Meaning you cannot beam it aboard immediately," McKenzie summarised.

"That is correct, sir. I'm going to have to physically go aboard Babylon Five and make my way to where the probe is being kept. I'll have to manually lower the probes shield and attach a beacon so it can be transported."

"Oh terrific, they're bound to be guarding the probe."

"I realise that, sir. Its going to make the risk of exposure that much higher, but we don't have a choice. Its either I do this or we just leave the probe in the hands of Earth Alliance."

"Which is completely unacceptable as they have no idea how dangerous the probes technology could be if they just blindly played around with it," McKenzie said then sighed. "Alright, lieutenant. Carry on with your mission. I'll inform Admiral Robyns and Governor Shepherd of the complication."

"Yes, sir."

"Good luck, lieutenant."

"Thank you, sir. I'm going to need it."

The Jutland's master nodded and broke the connection from his end. As the holographic screen evaporated into nothingness Michael withdrew his hand from the console and headed into the aft compartment to gather the equipment he would need, equipment that had been specifically designed to appear inconspicuous and give no signs of what it truly was or what it could do.

In a few moments he was ready, and with only a twinge of pre-mission jitters Michael returned to the scout ships bridge and tapped a command into the operations console. Instantly he felt a tingle over his body and the interior of the transport disappeared in a white flash as the transporter beam took a hold of him.

When the flash of the beam faded he was standing in a darkened area, with boxes, crates and all manner of debris all around him. Faintly he could hear water dripping and he wrinkled his nose slightly at the smell, the smell of unwashed Human bodies and other things. Things he didn't want to think about. He'd chosen this location for his beam in site as the population density in this part of the station seemed very low, now he guessed why. He recognised a slum when he saw one; he'd seen them on a number of planets across multiple galaxies.

Gripping the metallic business case he'd brought with him as part of his chosen cover a little tighter he started walking. There was a lift a few sections away, from there he would be able to access the rest of the station.

As Michael left the room, two Humans – dressed in surprisingly smart clothes for their location – stepped out of the shadows of the room. They nodded to each other and one spoke quickly into a small comm. link, then they began to follow their chosen victim.

Command and Control

That Same Time

Lieutenant Commander Susan Ivanova felt like screaming in frustration as she glared at the screen on her console. She had only been on duty for an hour and already her shift was turning into a shift from hell. The docking schedule was in a mess – once again, and as usual she had to deal with waiting and increasingly impatient cargo and transport ship captains. And every one of them believed they had a priority reason for docking right now this instant, never mind that all the bays – save for the ones reserved for diplomatic transports, were full.

With a sigh of resignation Susan started to reach out to use the console comm. Hopefully the dock workers would have some good news for her, something to give her a ray of sunshine today. But before her hand could touch the device a bleeping from the console pit behind and below her caught her attention.

"Lieutenant Commander," one of the technicians on duty called out. Susan immediately spun around and leaned on the rail.

"Yes," she asked.

"Internal sensors just recorded a short but extremely intense energy burst."

Susan frowned slightly. Could it be the alien probe they were holding be the source of the energy burst, especially as Garibaldi had informed her that the probe seemed to be repairing itself. "Source," she asked.

"Its hard to get a precise fix," the young female officer answered. "The burst was far to brief, but it came from somewhere in down below. Close to transport tube number six, but I cannot be more precise."

"Contact, Mr Garibaldi," Susan instructed. "Have him send some people down there to investigate."

"Aye, sir."

As the junior officer set about her task, Susan turned back to her console and reached for the comm. again. Only for circumstances to once more intervene as from behind her came another chime, this one indicating something completely different.

"Jump gate activated," Lieutenant Junior Grade David Corwin called out from the far side of C & C. "Multiple ships coming through."

"Impossible there is no one due now," Susan exclaimed bringing up the feed from the security sentry bot stationed near the jump gate.

Sure enough energy raced down the jump gate struts and discharged opening a blue incoming vortex. The moment the jump point opened to its full capacity it disgorged four ships in rapid succession before folding closed again and vanishing as if it had never been present.

Susan's mouth went dry as her startled mind identified the ships that had so unexpectedly turned up. All four of them were Vorlon ships, three being personal transport ships like the one Ambassador Kosh took back and forth to the Vorlon Homeworld. But it was the forth Vorlon ship that sent a chill down her spine.

The forth ship was one of the most powerful vessels in space.

It was a Vorlon star dreadnought.