No, I have not stopped writing this story and I would thank raymond0079 to not forget it. I have merely been doing DIY on my new house, and it's taken up a vast amount of my time and energy.
A New Space Age.
Sitting in the newest model of a very old design of shuttle specially designed for the Phoenix-class ships, Sheridan watched as the asteroid drew closer in the viewports of the shuttle. While the view wasn't perfect, he could see some details of the asteroid colony. He knew from the previous experiences he'd had with asteroid and moon colonies during his time in Earthforce before the organisation and all the other space exploration agencies were merged into one there was likely more to the colony than met the eye. He turned in his chair to the others.
Sheridan had met a few xenoarchaeologists over the years, he was married to one, and through and thanks to Anna he had come to know his fair share of them. The new organisation responsible for expanding and protecting Earth's interests was full of xenoarchaeologists now, but he was still getting used to it, never mind having scientists like them among his new crew.
Phoenix had on board in her crew complement there were more than a few of them, but truthfully he didn't really have a clue what some of them were capable of. Some of them had been suggested to him when he had been given command of Phoenix, others were recommended to him by Anna while the others would be relegated to staying on Earth in order to teach and mentor younger xenoarchaeologists in order to ensure there were many more in order to make up for those lost following the war.
He instantly clamped down on those memories, visions of fighting the guerrilla war in the streets as the Minbari slaughtered humans for their sick amusement like the filthy alien race they were filling his mind. He locked the memories away within a strongbox in his mind where he kept his worst memories.
"Well, Dr Douglas, Dr Hendricks, what do you think?" Sheridan asked the two senior xeno archaeologists among his crew.
Dr Orla Douglas leaned forward in her seat, studying the asteroid's colony domes for a moment. She was a few years older than Anna, who had been the reason why Douglas was a member of the Phoenix xenoarchaeology team. "Hard to be sure, captain. One of the things you learn about xenoarchaeology is you can't judge with alien technology."
Vance Hendricks nodded thoughtfully, but he didn't say a word. He was much older than Douglas and he had apparently taught Dr Franklin, the ship's CMO. He had become a xenoarchaeologist shortly before the Earth-Minbari war, and while Sheridan had no idea what he had been doing in the last decade, Vance had proven himself with his knowledge more than once; thanks to Vance, they had already travelled to worlds through the Underspace despite their mission to discover which of their colonies had been taken over by alien powers.
An experienced traveller, Vance had more than once provided first-hand data concerning various worlds, and he had pointed out worlds he would like the Phoenix to visit, and while Sheridan wondered what it was about those planets the scientist wanted to visit so badly, he didn't see why they couldn't go further out into the galaxy in order to discover what was going on out there while they kept their return silent.
Sheridan sometimes wondered what the rest of the galaxy would do when they discovered humanity had returned to space without the Minbari knowing about it. One of their biggest problems was the lack of communication; thanks to the Minbari bringing down Earth's communication network, Earth had not heard so much as a whisper from the other races in a decade. With that lack of communication came a number of problems since they had no idea who was expanding and who wasn't.
And then there was the Minbari. Thinking of the Minbari made Sheridan angry, and sometimes he wondered how they would react when they discovered the race they had tried so hard to destroy had returned to the stars using technology they did not even have themselves. What would happen then? Would they attack them again, try to steal their warp technology? Sheridan swore it was never going to happen. Thanks to leftover Minbari technology in the Sol system, they'd managed to address some of the gaps between their races, but they had no idea if their efforts would make any difference in practice. He hoped so. He hoped it would be enough. So many of his friends had been murdered by the Minbari during the war, especially those who had tried to surrender.
But the Minbari took no prisoners. And thanks to whomever those bastards were who had sabotaged that attempted peace mission, which only made the war grow worse, just as that old Minbari had warned, the Minbari had hit Earth and Earthforce much harder than before. Sometimes Sheridan wondered if the return to the stars would be the end of humanity. Fortunately, he was not the only one. However, it depended on the point of view. Sheridan knew there were dozens of critics of President Santiago, who hammered in rather than go to the stars, they fortify the Sol system and dedicate all of their time working on their weapons technologies, so if there was another invasion force or if the Centauri or the Narns, smelling blood, attacked, they would be forced to go home with terrible injuries. The image was appealing to Sheridan, to the vets of Earthforce before it was seen as too small to be kept going before it was reformed into Space Fleet.
However, Sheridan knew while the weapons research was ongoing, it would only take Earth so far. What had happened to the colony worlds? Had they been taken over? As a space and combat veteran, Sheridan knew one of the biggest reasons why the war had been prolonged was due to the desire to make the Minbari fight for every inch of space. Earthforce had made the alien warriors bleed for every inch, turning their ships and fighters into kamikaze missiles in order to compensate for the lack of a decent targeting lock.
Without the colonies out there, that advantage would never have seen the light of day. Nor would some of their guerrilla warfare tactics.
Santiago might be seen as a weakling by some, but he was not stupid. He knew of the importance of the colonies, and besides with the population on Earth growing, and the damage the planet had taken during the war and the ongoing work being undertaken to restore farms and cities, they needed to get the colonies back.
Now.
But at the same time, it was also acknowledged during the war a lot of ships were destroyed. It was possible the Minbari had just left some of their destroyed ships behind, and if that was the case then it would be viable for reverse-engineering. A lot of Minbari technology had indeed been reverse engineered, and the Minbari had just left some of their technology in the Sol system, which made it easy to acquire.
Phoenix had already come across a few shattered hulks floating in space-bound to solar systems by nothing but gravity, and the crew had already brought onboard enough pieces of wreckage onboard.
Some of the more romantic people in Earth Gov had even suggested, in support of the warp program designed and aimed for getting humans back into space, to the worlds they'd colonised before those bastard bone-heads had driven them away, some humans might have survived on moons or planets somehow, just waiting for rescue.
That could happen.
Some of the wreckage of the destroyed ships may have fallen into an atmosphere, out of range of the Minbari beam weapons, and they might have survived on a planet's surface where the Minbari just dismissed their ships burning up in the atmosphere to mean the crew were dead.
The whole thing was a complete mess, but Sheridan knew he and his crew, and all of the other Phoenix-class ships which would be launched in the next two years while he and his crew tested their ship and devised new adjustments which would be transmitted home along with the latest surveys and star charts of the Underspace network and of local space, would have plenty of time to see if the idea of hastily built settlements constructed by survivors of the destroyed ships.
The last decade had been hard on the whole of Earth; when the Minbari had invaded and occupied the planet for a short time, they had no qualms about levelling as much of the planet as possible. Thousands of years of history, historic cities and buildings which had withstood the test of time, libraries containing centuries worth of literature, galleries and museums containing historical artefacts and masterpieces of art…lost because the Minbari had made some fucking mistake when that idiot Janowski panicked and opened fire during the mess of a first contact.
When news of what had happened leaked during the negotiations between what was left of the Alliance and the Minbari, although it was one-sided since the Minbari had just sat down and told the surviving leaders of EarthDome what was going to be happening and that they had no choice unless the surviving humans wanted to be exterminated, it became clear as day the Minbari would not be telling their people the truth of what had happened.
It had become clear as the war had progressed the Minbari were a prideful race, and it was unlikely the people would be told their leaders had declared a war because of a mistake.
Unfortunately for the Minbari, humanity didn't care what the leadership of the Minbari said. Word of the Minbari going to war because Janowksi had panicked and had clearly not bothered to read the Centauri's files on the Minbari and their traditions had spread to the populace and how the Minbari had misunderstood the blunder had spread, and as a result, a number of people wanted nothing more than to teach the Minbari a lesson they'd never forget.
But Sheridan doubted it was going to happen, at least not until Earth had been fully rebuilt. The damage their homeworld had sustained was unimaginable. The Minbari had fire-bombed the planet, destroying a lot of Earth's ability to grow food, and as a result of the influx of refugees who'd been blocked off from escaping around the Battle of the Line had been forced to live in ghettos on Earth, or in the abandoned cities had to survive on hydroponically grown and produced foods.
That was why a lot of work was put into constructing a fleet of ships capable of crossing the galaxy without hyperspace or jump gate technology. The Minbari had locked them off from the rest of the galaxy, making it incredibly hard for them to live on their own homeworld.
But no longer.
Sheridan was not going to let his people suffer like that, not anymore.
Warp drive and the Underspace had helped them. Space flight was now in their grasp, and with the new fusion drive transports being constructed they were now able to bypass several of the restrictions you'd receive from ion driven ships. Mars and Io and the moon had been recolonised in order to release some of the pressure on what was left of Earth's resources, and Sheridan knew there were plans to construct a fleet of ships to travel through the Underspace to travel to other worlds in remote corners of the galaxy, corners Earth knew there were no alien enemies, and if the theories about Underspace extending to other galaxies were correct there was even talk of despatching expeditions to different galaxies - what happened with the Phoenix would shape future expeditions.
And it was happening.
Back home there were numerous ships being prepared to venture to worlds the Phoenix had visited already. Old colonies, new worlds in order to ensure Earth expanded into the galaxy once more. Habitats and orbiting space stations were being planned with the hope of expanding the population to levels not seen even at the original height of the Alliance before the war.
"It looks like whoever built this colony were advanced enough to construct an asteroid colony, but it doesn't require enough knowledge to do so," Hendricks' voice drew Sheridan out of his thoughts. "We can do it ourselves if we ensure the radiation in the asteroid is dealt with, but it's not difficult."
Sheridan had seen and had visited enough asteroid colonies in his time to know it was possible. "I know, I've seen enough asteroid and moon colonies in my time to know what's possible, and I also know many of those colonies dig deep underground in order to tap the resources of the asteroid. Do you think it's the same here?"
This time it was Douglas who answered for the two scientists. "Most likely. It's logical for asteroid colonies to go underground and there's more space inside for laboratories, power plants, living space, and hydroponic gardens to grow food while on the surface the domes absorb solar radiation as an additional power source. But we'll know for sure when we get there,"
X
Finding a place to land on the asteroid wasn't difficult; there was some kind of docking platform which automatically lowered the shuttle into an underground hanger. Once the hanger was sealed tightly, the humans left the interior clad in their spacesuits once they scanned the asteroid's interior and discovered there was no atmosphere inside.
Helmet torches shining powerful beams of light while they held out their scanning wands, the party left the shuttle although Sheridan made sure two of the crew stayed there to guard the ship, and they headed out to explore the asteroid. The people who'd colonised the asteroid had clearly worked with what they'd had available, and they had merely removed what they hadn't needed from the interior of the asteroid in order to create passageways and storage areas before they reinforced them with alloys and installed life support systems and bulkheads.
Sheridan was just leading the party through the corridors, and through a large bulkheaded section which led to a room filled with large glass tanks filled with liquid that appeared to be water surrounded by instrumentation and computer stations which had once served a vital purpose - everything about the room indicated that it was once an important room - which had clearly ended the day the asteroid colony suffered whatever had happened to it…and they found bodies everywhere. Some of them were lying flat on the ground, others were slumped over the instrument panels.
Sheridan was reminded of the time where explosive decompression had taken place on the Lexington once before the automatic systems had kicked in and the bulkheads had slammed into place during the Earth-Minbari war; that horrible mess would forever haunt Sheridan as much as the attack which had resulted in the Minbari naming him 'Starkiller,' but the loss of fellow humans who died of explosive decompression as the vacuum exerted its fatal hold on them was more important than some stupid nickname given to him by a race of aliens who'd had the upper hand and yet reacted as if they had been beaten by a bigger kid in a school and rushed back home and crawled under their beds for a good cry.
The hominids in front of him were a race Sheridan had never seen before. The aliens in front of him had feathery downs reminiscent of birds complete with beaks which reminded Sheridan of eagle beaks, but here the curve was ruined by a flattening but it wasn't too unsightly. Clearly, on the aliens' homeworld, birds had been the dominant lifeforms and eventually nature had selected them to become humanoid, and they'd evolved much like humans likely had before mastering the technology needed to construct a space-faring society. The aliens were dressed in silver overalls which reminded Sheridan of the kind of clothes worn by astronauts from the 20th-21st centuries.
Sheridan looked up at the others. "What do you think?"
"Whatever happened to them happened so quickly it caught them unawares," Douglas said.
"What could have happened?" Sheridan asked while Hendricks wandered over to the tanks of liquid to examine them. He'd ask the scientist what the liquid was in a moment but he wanted to have an idea of what had happened to this colony.
"I don't know," Douglas replied in a way that always annoyed people like Sheridan. "We need to have more information about what happened here."
"Do you think there were any survivors?"
"Could be, it depends if these people were good enough to put in a separate compartment with an independent and separate life-support system," Douglas' voice sounded dubious, clearly she had her own doubts about the possibilities of such a thing happening. "I'm not sure if that happened, or if they put in sleeper tubes, but all we can do is look."
Sheridan mentally tried to estimate just how large the asteroid colony was and how long it could take before they got a definitive answer. The asteroid was quite large, so it would take time for them to survey it, and then he remembered something vital about asteroid colonies. "Do you think such tubes if they exist are contained inside a shielded part of the asteroid?"
"To protect it from meteors and radiation, it's possible," Hendricks replied.
That was enough for Sheridan. Tapping his link communicator, he sent a command to the Phoenix to despatch more people to help them with the asteroid survey.
"Understood. Captain, I was about to contact you before you contacted us; sir, we've detected a Narn shuttle on the asteroid surface."
X
Clad in his spacesuit, Du'Sten was trying to concentrate on the mission the Kha'Ri had provided for him and his two colleagues and not on his mounting claustrophobia while he kept his breathing under control. A true Narn warrior was said to be afraid of nothing, but Du'Sten knew that credo had only come about following the war of liberation against the vile Centauri. It was during the occupation of Narn he had developed this embarrassing ailment, the Centauri lord who'd enslaved his family had forced him and his sister to work in the mines in the most horrific conditions, and once there was a cave-in. The Centauri believed the Narn were inferior beings, and they were cheap and easily replaced, so they hadn't expended that much trouble searching for him and his sister.
In the dark, frightened, Du'Sten had become claustrophobic, and what had made it worse was how his sister had suffocated which had only made things worse. Helped by a fellow Narn who hadn't given up on him and his father, Du'Sten had survived, but his sister hadn't been so lucky.
Furious, Du'Sten and his remaining family and a few others, stormed the Centauri mansion, and they personally put the Lord and his Lady and their children to death. Du'Sten had personally taken the daughter of the Lord, a disgusting Centauri, typical of her filthy, evil race, and one who'd never failed to follow in her parent's example, and Du'Sten had raped her while her parents looked on in horror before the Narns tore her eyes out and smashed her head into a wall.
That was the first time Du'Sten had killed a Centauri, and it felt glorious. His rage towards the invaders of his world, the invaders who'd conquered the Narn people, took the food out of their mouths, raped and pillaged their world until it was nothing more than a barren sand heap while they mercilessly hunted down Narn's native lifeforms for no other reason than their pleasure, had made Du'Sten into a ruthless warrior who had once bludgeoned half a dozen Centauri to death and blew up one of their industrial factories.
But despite his best efforts, Du'Sten never got over his claustrophobia and he had taken it as one of a dozen or so mental scars left in his memory of the Centauri's cruelty.
The mission gave him a great deal to concentrate on. While the Kha'Ri's long-range probes had not detected anything duplicitous or suspicious about the asteroid colony which appeared deserted, their interest was purely opportunistic.
The Kha'Ri's primary goals were to find new worlds to colonise so they could relieve the strain on Narn's precious resources in order to ensure their race flourished in the galaxy while giving them a chance to expand their empire until it rivalled that of the Centauri Republic and was strong enough to take on the Republic. The first goal went in conjunction with the need to locate large amounts of metals and chemicals needed to expand the Narn war-machine in order to ensure their survival and to discover new things for their sciences to make themselves stronger.
And lastly, the Narn wanted to find new technologies in order to shorten the gap between themselves and the Centauri and to hopefully rebuild Narn itself in order to restore their homeworld to its former glory.
That was one of the reasons he and his three fellow Narn were here. The Narn Regime had never seen the need of constructing an asteroid colony before; they preferred planets due to their gravity, atmosphere, and their resources. But when the probe had discovered this colony, the Narns had discovered an unexpected opportunity to conduct a scientific survey of the asteroid. There was just one issue. This asteroid colony was passing through the former Earth Alliance. Like many of his fellow Narns, Du'Sten felt a great deal of sympathy for the humans after what they'd gone through, which seemed to mirror what the Centauri had done to the Narns. The Minbari had left human space a decade ago, shutting down all but a few jump gates leading into human space, warning all of the governments to not venture deep into human space at all.
A few of the races had fallen over the humans' leftover technology, and the Pak'Ma'Ra had taken to eating the human remains who'd been killed by the Centauri, and a few of the human colonies were now colonised by alien races, including the Narn. They had moved their own jump gate technology into human's former territory to colonise the worlds themselves. Du'Sten was sympathetic but only to a point, but every time that he was here, he reminded himself it was for the good of the Regime.