She hadn't known, when Jason Ironheart had boarded her, that he was Psi Corps. Or rather, he had been.

She hadn't known that he had abandoned his post after being involved in experiments to boost telepathic powers into the realm of telekinesis. Hadn't known that those experiments had succeeded beyond what anybody had hoped for or even dared dream possible. His mind was growing so strong, so fast, that his body wouldn't be able to contain it much longer.

She'd only begun to glimpse at the truth once the mind-quakes had started ripping her apart from the inside.

Her crew had eventually resolved the situation, despite of the 'assistance' of the Psi 'd managed to get Ironheart off of her before he'd exploded, his physical form giving way to an existence of pure psychic energy.

Ironheart had departed for parts unknown, but not before giving his lover – Talia Winters, her assigned commercial telepath – an infusion of energy that boosted Winters's own powers; a gentler, weaker version of what was done to him.

But for that energy to reach Winters, it first had to pass into her…

"-lon 5? Babylon 5!"

Babylon 5 shook her head out of the old memory. "Sorry dear, my mind was in another star system."

She winced at the twinge of pain as her maintenance bots finished cutting off the parts of her cargo bay that the dimensional breach had slagged, before Chimera and the Sword-class had appeared. Her gut G̶r̶e̶y̶ ̶S̶e̶c̶t̶o̶r̶ was churning, fabrication furnaces busy making replacement parts from the raw materials she had on hand.

She was supposed to have approval from her crew before using up IA resources like that, but at this point she was hoping they did reprimand her – it would mean she'd figured out how to wake them up.

"Well warp back here with the rest of us." Enterprise huffed. Wait, I wasn't supposed to say warp… "I was trying to ask if you knew where Normandy had gotten off to." I really want to give that frigate a piece of my mind!

"I believe she went to go survey the asteroid belt while you were busy scanning…" Babylon 5 paused, her eyes flickering to the Sword-class ship's slagged remains.

Enterprise winced. "Actually, I was scanning the space in front of the Sword-class. I was trying to figure out what she'd done to avoid… whatever it was that Yamato did." And making sure that we'll only have one dimensional rift in this system to worry about.

There was a pause.

"Wait, Normandy's surveying the asteroid belt?" Enterprise blinked. "Does she even have the equipment for that?"

"Yes."

Enterprise would deny to her final day that, when Normandy spoke up from directly behind her, she shrieked like a little destroyer.

"Don't do that!" Enterprise said, sounding a hairs-breadth away from screaming.

Normandy ignored Enterprise, instead summoning her orange hologram gauntlet again. With a few presses on the holographic keyboard, the holographic screen displaying assorted sensor scan readouts. S̶e̶n̶s̶o̶r̶ ̶d̶a̶t̶a̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶r̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶s̶t̶r̶e̶a̶m̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶c̶r̶o̶s̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶i̶r̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶m̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶n̶n̶e̶l̶.

Enterprise clearly wanted to say a few more choice words to Normandy, but her curiosity got the better of her and she bent down to have a closer look at the readouts. After a moment, she tilted her head. "Normandy, why are you equipped with mineralogical scanners?"

"Prospecting."

"Prospecting?" Enterprise repeated blankly, looking up at Normandy.

"I mean, she is a scout ship – you are, aren't you dear?" Normandy nodded, so Babylon 5 continued. "She'd be spending large amounts of time in fringe systems anyway, and if she happens to spot a mineral deposit while she's out there…"

"Sure, except that I'm pretty sure you don't give civilian ships stealth drives." Enterprise pointed out. "You're military, right?" Normandy nodded. "Why would a military ship waste time scanning for mineral deposits instead of doing their job?"

Normandy looked away. "Budget." She mumbled. Stingy politicians…

With a crew as small as hers, even Normandy's thoughts were quiet.

"Ah. Right." Enterprise blinked. Pre-replicator civilisation still using money. Mind, it's not like resource allocation's not a thing in the Federation… it's just different kinds of resources.

Babylon 5 puckered her lips to stop her own thoughts from showing on her face.

There was a brief gap in the conversation, during which a fighter-fairy from Yamato flew up to one of her own Starfuries and whispered in her ear. The Starfury's eyes widened and she flew up to whisper in Babylon 5's ear.

"Hm?" Babylon 5 blinked, looking over where her Starfury was pointing.

The nuclear detonation in Chimaera's aft had knocked the huge warship out cold, but for better or worse her the explosion had occurred directly next to her thrusters. Said thrusters seemed to have been designed to contain a catastrophic failure, and the blast had followed the path of least resistance down corridors and blown out of deliberately-weak patches of hull into space. At the same time, a series of radiation resistant blast doors had kept the worst of the explosion from penetrating much further into the ship.

(Galactica's people had discovered fusion nukes, but with neither they nor their enemies possessing shield tech they used them only on ground targets, preferring to throw cheaper, low-kiloton-yield fission warheads against targets in space.)

It probably helped that, according to her life-sign readings, Chimaera's crew quarters were concentrated near her head a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶p̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶h̶i̶p̶, away from the explosion.

The unconscious Star Destroyer was, however, still being guarded frantically by her fighter-fairies. Fighter-fairies from Galactica and now Yamato were beginning to surround them, and the situation was beginning to have a "powder keg next to an open flame" feel to it.

Babylon 5 wasn't worried about Chimera waking back up – the enormous ship was facing away from them, and had no rear facing weaponry that she could see. Still…

"Try and get between them if they'll let you." She whispered to her Starfuries. "Push the two groups apart. Don't make it obvious, but… well, I trust you not to fire first. We don't need another fight starting up."

She had only just met Galactica and Yamato, after all. They hadn't seemed particularly bloodthirsty, but they had both seemed very comfortable with violence.

Speaking of which…

"Enterprise," she said, interrupting whatever said ship had been about to say to Normandy "I don't suppose you have something that can fix a broken keel?"

Enterprise blinked. "Not without a few weeks in a space-dock, at least and if at all. Why?" I could cut it into pieces and beam it out easily enough, it's the fusing the replacement in place that's the tricky part.

Darn. After the techno-magic Babylon 5 had seen her use to seal away the Sword-class, even if imperfectly, Babylon 5 had been hoping that Enterprise would have a better estimate then she did… oh well.

"You apparently didn't hear Galactica say this," or had forgotten in the rush of events, but Babylon 5 decided to lead with the less embarrassing explanation "but her keel is broken, and she doesn't think she can withstand crossing a jump point in that condition."

Enterprise bit her bottom lip, looking over to where Galactica was orbiting, a few thousand kilometres away from herself. Yamato was tending to the Battlestar with a few small craft – repair barges, perhaps? She seemed to be producing spare parts for Galactica from somewhere, hinting at extensive manufacturing capabilities of her own. She had been checking over her pistols w̶e̶a̶p̶o̶n̶ ̶e̶m̶p̶l̶a̶c̶e̶m̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ earlier, and was now attempting to repair her damaged hand l̶a̶n̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶b̶a̶y̶.

Noticing their gazes a̶c̶t̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶s̶e̶n̶s̶o̶r̶ ̶p̶i̶n̶g̶s̶, Yamato raised her voice i̶n̶c̶l̶u̶d̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶m̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶n̶s̶m̶i̶s̶s̶i̶o̶n̶s̶, continuing a conversation that had previously been between the two of them. "Galactica-san, are you aware that you appear to have cartilage growing in your hull?"

"Hm? Oh, that's right – you went down before this happened, Pegasus." Galactica responded, also raising her voice b̶r̶o̶a̶d̶e̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶b̶r̶o̶a̶d̶c̶a̶s̶t̶s̶. "My crew tried to use some of the Rebel's" and for some reason, her eyes flickered to Chimaera when as she spoke "resin to hold me together. It didn't work, of course – shoddy Cylon engineering…"

Yamato frowned, seemingly unconcerned at being misidentified. "Is that why half of your armour plating is missing?"

"Oh no dearie, they removed that while debating whether to scrap me or not, before deciding to turn me into a museum." Galactica tried to shrug, but winced as her joins groaned and sparked over the strain. "Then the Cylons attacked, and well… you know what happened next."

"…Galactica-san, I am reading radiological signatures on your armour. Are you saying that you have been taking hits from nuclear weaponry with half your armour missing?"

"It was quite painful." Galactica admitted, not seeming to see the fuss was about. "But I could hardly let my crew down, could I?"

Babylon 5 stopped listening for a moment to glance at Enterprise. Said ship had gone slightly pale, staring in silent amazement – or perhaps horror – at Galactica. No shields? Her thoughts whimpered. Not even a polarised hull? She just had to… bear with the pain?

Babylon 5 pursed her lips, then decided to push her luck a bit. "Enterprise." She said, softly. "I know that you're angry at Normandy."

Enterprise and Normandy looked around at Babylon 5, then at each other, then back at Babylon 5.

Normandy stayed silent but seemed very interested in where this was going.

"Well, of course I am!" Enterprise said. "She slipped a trojan into my systems!"

Ah, so that's what you were screaming about earlier.

Enterprise whirled around around to face Normandy. "Don't you understand how important it is to have a good First Contact?" She angrily demanded.

Even in the cold dark void of space, the silence that resulted seemed deafening. Even Galactica and Yamato had stopped talking.

Enterprise blinked. "Er…"

"First Contact" Yamato said clearly "between the humans of Earth and the Garmillans of Garmillas was a disaster for Earth. The imperialistic Garmillas sought to rule the entire galaxy. They sunk our fleets with contemptuous ease, the shock-cannons of our ships-of-the-line unable to penetrate their reflective armour. Even after we pushed them back in the Second Battle of Mars they began hurling irradiated asteroids at Earth to bomb us into submission… or, more likely, extinction."

Yamato sighed heavily. "None of which excuses the fact that we fired upon them first, without provocation." How General Serizawa stayed out of jail, let alone retained his rank, I will never understand.

Yamato looked up, expecting looks of sympathy at best, judgement at worst, and was suitably confused to see Enterprise, Normandy and Babylon 5 looking at her in perplexion. (Galactica was just sighing sadly).

"That's not right." Babylon 5 said, slowly, trying to figure out what was going on here. "Earth's First Contact wasn't with the… Garmillans? It was with –"

"Turians." Normandy interrupted forcefully, the loudest she had been so far (about normal speaking volume for anyone else).

"That's… the race that co-designed you, right?" Enterprise asked carefully, to which Normandy nodded, absentmindedly rubbing the partial exoskeleton over her right arm. "That must have gone well, then?"

Normandy shook her head vigorously. She tapped her holographic keyboard, and an image of a crustacean-looking creature d̶e̶v̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶l̶o̶o̶k̶e̶d̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶e̶l̶a̶b̶o̶r̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶r̶a̶i̶l̶g̶u̶n̶ saturated in w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶a̶ ̶c̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ blue energy.

"You… fought?" Babylon 5 guessed. "Over… whatever this is?"

Normandy thought for a moment about how to explain in one or two word sentences that a Mass Relay was a device built eons ago that could fling a starship from one side of the galaxy to the other in mere seconds, as long as there was a matching relay at the destination.

That the Citadel Council, an alliance of alien races, didn't know how to turn off a Mass Relay, only turn them on, and so they had made activating them without knowing where they went illegal after one such attempt resulted in a centuries-long war with a race that now had direct access into Citadel Space.

About how the Turians were the most militant of the Citadel races, and were the ones who had discovered the human exploration vessels activating a Mass Relay. About how Desolas Arterius, the highest-ranking officer of the fleet, was a Turian-supremacist who had hated the idea of "some upstart new race" being brought into the Council to be treated "on the same level" as the Turians, without "proving themselves worthy" through centuries of bloody warfare like the Turians had.

How he had used the excuse of the relay activation to start the First Contact War.

(It probably hadn't helped that Desolas had been secretly carrying a Reaper artefact in his fleet which had been in the process of Indoctrinating him. The same artefact, in fact, which had later given the Illusive Man and Desolas's brother Saren their Reaper implants; which themselves had gone on to Indoctrinate both.)

About how the fighting had only stopped when the other Citadel races had caught wind of the fighting and intervened. About how her older sister, the SR-1, had been more of an apology gift than a sign of friendship.

Normandy thought about all of these things and then simply said "Yes."

Enterprise slumped. "Well, my humanity's First Contact went just fine." Even if the Vulcans had some house-cleaning of their own to do, they were the best friends a devastated and irradiated post-WWIII Earth could have.

"As did mine." Babylon 5 said. Well, the Centauri had tried to get humanity to exhaust itself in a civil war so that they could step in and absorb them into their republic… as well claiming that Earth was a lost colony of theirs. But they'd abandoned those goals after humanity had held together, and they had eventually sold humanity jumpgate technology. So really, it could have been worse.

…and with that thought, there was one contact that dominated her thoughts.

"If I say 'Minbari'," Babylon 5 said, feeling a tense ball form in her gut "does anything come to mind?"

That ball of worry grew when the ships all shook their heads. How could they not know about the Earth/Minbari war? Or the Minbari at all? That war had reshaped galactic politics forever, brought the Minbari out of isolation and, on a personal note, was the direct reason for the construction of the Babylon stations. That was like not knowing about World War 2; only worse because the Earth/Minbari war was very much within living memory.

Is this how sis felt? Babylon 5 wondered, thinking of her older sister Babylon 4. Falling out of time to end up in a place where nothing is familiar?

"…the year was 2245." She began. Even with that simple beginning, Yamato and Normandy looked quite confused, while Enterprise looked like she was biting the inside of a cheek.

"Earth, flush with success from the Dilgar war," never mind that the League of Non-Aligned Worlds had done most of the fighting "sends out a patrol group along the Earth/Mibar border, lead by EAS Prometheus. Her captain ignores his orders to avoid First Contact, wanting to come back to Earth a hero with detailed scans of Minbari ships."

Babylon 5 fought to keep her voice cool, old anger bubbling up inside her, even though she hadn't been built at the time this had happened. It had been so stupid, so avoidable… "The Minbari are one of the oldest of the Young Races, and their active scanners were so powerful that they not only interfered with Prometheus's own sensor scans and the rest of her fleet, but knocked their jump drives offline."

She let out a slow breath. "In Minbari culture, approaching with a hidden weapon is the act of a dishonourable coward, so Minbari ships always greet other ships with their gun ports open."

The light of understanding began to dawn in the eyes of the ships. Enterprise was horrified. Normandy and Yamato were grim. Galactica was just shaking her head sadly.

"The Minbari ships weren't powering up their weapons, merely being curious at who had stepped over their borders. But with her sensors scrambled, Prometheus thought they were. Unable to jump away, and thinking that the Minbari were about to attack, Prometheus's captain gave the order to fire first."

"Kuso." Yamato muttered. "It appears that Prometheus-san shares the fate of Murasame-san – that of the ship that brought war down upon our heads for nothing more than fear."

Babylon 5 shook her head. "It was more than just 'war'. The ship Prometheus attacked wasn't some random patrol ship – Valen'Tha carried within herself the Grey Council, the ruling body of the Minbari."

The assorted ships winced.

"Not only did this kill several of the Council, but also Dukhat, overall leader of the Minbari, and something of a messiah figure."

Enterprise bit her bottom lip.

"The Minbari holy crusade against humanity lasted three years, and in that time we… they…" Babylon 5 hadn't been an Earth Alliance station in a long time, but old habits died hard "were swept from the skies. Their ships had sensor stealth that made them untargetable by EA ships, making every fight a slaughter. The Minbari only attacked military targets, leaving civilian ones be… but whether that was because they would spare them, or come back to exterminate them once humanity had nothing left to fight with, not even the Minbari knew. If it wasn't for their sudden surrender at the Battle of the Line… Earth would have fallen, and humanity with it."

Babylon 5 herself knew why the Minbari had surrendered, having 'overheard' several key conversations inside of herself that filled in the blanks, but explaining the details would distract from the point of her story.

There was a moment of silence as the various ships and station digested what they had heard.

"So… yeah." Enterprise said, her voice sounding weak as she swallowed. "That's why it's important to have a good First Contact."

There was a moment of dead silence.

"How can it be" Yamato said, quietly "that each of us knows of a different Earth, and a different history?"

"I believe you just answered your own question, dearie." Galactica shrugged. "You're all from different 'Earths'."

There was at least one alien race who plucked humans from Earth and displaced them to parts unknown when Earth was well and truly pre-Warp – Gary Seven's benefactors. Enterprise thought, recalling some of the exploits of her great-great-great aunt. It's entirely possible that there was more than one 'Earth' scattered throughout the galaxy, each with different alien neighbours… however –

Enterprise's thoughts were interrupted by Babylon 5 finally pulling up the file she wanted on her Com Pad from her databanks. "This is the view of the stars from my Earth." She said, showing the scrolling image t̶r̶a̶n̶s̶m̶i̶t̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶a̶t̶a̶ to the others.

Yamato's eyes narrowed. Any starship worth her commission would know the night sky of her homeworld by heart. "That is the same view as my Earth, Babylon 5-san."

"And mine." Enterprise confirmed.

"Same." Normandy added.

"It looks familiar, dearies." Galactica said, staring off into empty space. "But I wasn't really there for very…" She trailed off, staring off to one side intently like she was listening to another, invisible, person. "No, it is my Earth as well." She corrected herself, turning her gaze back to the group with a confident smile. The second one, anyway.

"So we have several Earths in the same place, but with very different galaxies surrounding them." Babylon 5 summarised. "That's… impossible, isn't it?"

Enterprise winced. "How familiar are you with temporal mechanics?" She asked tentatively.

"Dear, us being from divergent timelines wouldn't explain the widely different political maps." Babylon 5 shot back immediately, Yamato and Normandy looking on in mild confusion while Galactica had started humming, her eyes unfocused.

"It would, if the divergence goes back far enough."

"Alright dear, lets run a little test." Babylon 5 countered. "Everyone, say the name of the most influential entity in local space, then a famous musician from Earth in the…" pick some random century before space travel… "18th century. I'll go first – the Vorlon Empire, and Ludwig van Beethoven."

Enterprise frowned. "If you mean the biggest government in the galaxy period, that would be the Dominion as far as I know. In the Alpha/Beta quadrants, that's my government, the United Federation of Planets." There were more powerful groups in that area of space, but they mostly stayed out of galactic affairs. After a pause, Enterprise realised she'd missed the second half of the test. "And Amadeus Mozart."

"The Great Garmillas Empire, and Joseph Haydn."

"Reapers. Schubert."

"The 18th century in which calendar system, dearies? Caprica, colonial standard…?"

"Leaving Galactica aside for the moment," Babylon 5 said, causing said ship to pout "did anybody recognise someone else's entity, or fail to recognise their musician?"

Aside from the still-pouting Galactica, every other ship shook their heads.

"You see?" Babylon 5 said, turning back to Enterprise. "If the divergence is bad enough to affect the First Ones, then there's no way that our Earths would have all developed the same species, let alone the same languages, culture and even people!"

"It's possible that Earth is isolated enough from galactic affairs to develop mostly the same in most timelines –"

"Some of Earth's development was guided by alien interference! The Vorlons implanting telepathy into humans, the Vree buzzing people in their saucers –"

"Implanting what?" Galactica blinked.

"Excuse me." Yamato politely interrupted. "Are the two of you referring to the 'Many worlds' hypothesis of Quantum Mechanics, the Landscape interpretation of String Theory, or some other proposition?"

"Unproven." Normandy said, in her usual quiet way.

"We know that there are more than one dimension with different physical constants." Babylon 5 pointed out to Normandy. "Hyperspace's spacial compression, for one."

Yamato blinked, her eyebrows drawing together in confusion. "Hyperspace is spatially compressed?"

Babylon 5 responded with a look of equal bewilderment. "Yes dear, how did you think people use it to travel faster than light?"

There was a moment of silence as Yamato, Babylon 5 and Normandy all traded looks of absolute confusion. Galactica looked on with the amused bewilderment of a grandma who'd long since given up figuring out the newfangled toys of kids these days. Enterprise looked interested, but was also tapping her index fingers together.

"Um…" Enterprise started.

"Look, here." Babylon 5 interrupted. With a wave of her hand, the Starfury squadron that wasn't keeping on eye on Chimaera flew over to her jumpgate and clamped onto it, dragging it away from the scar of the breach they'd closed earlier. Once it was a good ten kilometres away, Babylon 5 made another hand gesture and activated the jumpgate.

The four struts of the jumpgate powered up, each of their seven phasing modules lighting up in sequence. A point of brilliant white light appeared in the middle of the struts, expanding out into the orange swirling vortex of energy that was an outgoing jump point.

"This." Babylon 5 pointed. "Remember these? I'd show you Quantum Space as well, but my jumpgate never got that upgrade. Anyway, the space inside is compressed, effectively shortening the distance between – Normandy, no!"

Normandy, naturally, had reacted to the swirling vortex of energy by flying up to it and sticking her head in to have a look.

"Normandy!" Enterprise chastised, pulling said ship back with a tractor beam. "Don't go sticking your head into strange dimensional portals! You never know what kind of life-forms might live there!" She brushed down Normandy's front r̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶l̶o̶w̶-̶l̶e̶v̶e̶l̶ ̶d̶e̶c̶o̶n̶t̶a̶m̶i̶n̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶s̶c̶a̶n̶, before frowning. "Or what laws of physics they might run under. My great-great-great aunt once ended up in an antimatter universe where time ran backwards – she had to rebuild her crew from their transporter logs!"

"Dimension." Normandy said faintly, sounding stunned.

"Yes dear, hyperspace is another dimension." Babylon 5 paused, realisation slowly dawning. "You've… never seen another dimension before, have you?"

Normandy shook her head silently, still staring at the jump point with wide eyes.

Galactica craned her neck to also have a look at r̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶c̶t̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶s̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶o̶f̶ the jumpgate, before her neck o̶n̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶w̶a̶r̶d̶ ̶s̶e̶n̶s̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶r̶r̶a̶y̶s̶ made a funny popping noise and she hissed in pain. Yamato's repair barges quickly swarmed to the area.

"You… are a starship, right?" Babylon 5 asked Normandy uncertainly, receiving a nod from the frigate. "Well… how do you travel between stars, if you've never seen hyperspace before?"

The Shadows hadn't used jump points, simply phasing out of normal space, but Babylon 5 was pretty sure that they still used hyperspace to get from point A to point B.

Normandy shot another perplexed look Babylon 5's way, before drifting back out of Enterprise's reach. Her body h̶u̶l̶l̶ gained an aura of glowing blue energy, and the thrusters on the arms of her hardsuit w̶i̶n̶g̶s̶ ignited.

Babylon 5 immediately lost her radar lock on Normandy, and judging by the surprised noises from Yamato and Galactica so had they. Closing her eyes and going over what she'd just seen r̶e̶v̶i̶e̶w̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶f̶o̶o̶t̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶e̶x̶t̶e̶r̶n̶a̶l̶ ̶c̶a̶m̶e̶r̶a̶s̶, Babylon 5 realised that Normandy had accelerated forwards at… no. That was impossible. Not even the species with inertial dampening tech could accelerate at that kind of rate! Not even the First Ones!

Not at more than ten percent of light speed per second!

But as she frantically searched the sky, not only did she catch glimpses of Normandy receding into the distance, but that image quickly became more infrared, microwaves and even radio waves than visible light – the image of Normandy was being red-shifted. Worse, Babylon 5 realised as she did some quick distance estimation in her head – Normandy was moving faster than the speed of light.

"How can she be moving like that?!" Babylon 5 demanded. "You need infinite energy just to accelerate to the speed of light, and she's gone and blown right past it!"

Enterprise pointed at the increasingly-distant figure of Normandy, who was beginning a wide turn around. (Babylon 5 didn't even want to think about the kinds of lateral G-forces turning at FTL would incur.) "See the blue-shift around her?" She asked, excitedly.

"The glowing blue energy, dearie?"

"Yes! Well, actually, no, that's the Dark Energy she's saturated herself in, but the two are related! Not only is it decreasing her mass, letting her pull that ridiculous rate of acceleration, but it's also raising the local value of c so that she doesn't have to worry about relativistic effects! It's an impulse drive without time dilation! It's –" And then her face suddenly fell. "It's probably better than my warp drive, honestly." With acceleration like that, she could make 15 light-years in a day; while I can only do that if I have a subspace current pushing me.

Normandy finished her wide u-turn, and unless Babylon 5 was mistaken, had turned around to face away from where she was going, thrusters burning as she bled off her speed. She couldn't just turn her drive off to stop moving, Babylon 5 realised. "What's a warp drive?"

"Oh, um…" Enterprise flustered. Me and my big mouth…! "Um…" Quickly reaching behind her, she pulled out her own version of a Com Pad s̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶d̶a̶t̶a̶ ̶p̶a̶c̶k̶e̶t̶. On it was displayed i̶n̶s̶i̶d̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶p̶a̶c̶k̶e̶t̶ was a circuit diagram. "Do you know what this is?"

The impression Babylon 5 was getting was that Enterprise was hoping she would say no.

Yamato frowned. "Isn't that a transtator?"

Enterprise jumped a little. Dang it, I forgot she knew about subspace…!

"Transtator?" Normandy asked quietly, having repeated her earlier trick and silently appeared behind Enterprise, who again shrieked in surprise and whirled around.

While Enterprise froze and tried to pretend that nothing had happened, Yamato nodded. "A transtator is the most fundamental part of hyperspace technology – a circuit that extends partially into said dimension."

Babylon 5 blinked. "It does?"

Enterprise bit her bottom lip for a moment, before seeming to sag in defeat. "Yes and no. It extends into another dimension, but it's a different one from the one you call hyperspace." She answered Babylon 5. "My builders call it subspace." Mind, subspace is more of a honeycomb of sub-dimensions that one big dimension, but that's not important. "My warp drive works by isolating the area immediately around me into a 'warp bubble' and using subspace/realspace interactions –"

Normandy cut in. "Realspace?"

Enterprise blinked. "What?"

Normandy tilted her head. "Fakespace?"

"No there's no such thing as fakespace… oh, right. Um, normal space? (Can't believe nobody's brought that up before…)" Enterprise trailed off into muttering, then shook her head. "I use subpace/normal space interactions to… how to explain this… move the warp bubble itself forward? Because space is moving, not me, time dilation doesn't come into effect."

"That sounds bad for spacetime." Galactica observed bluntly.

"Only if you go above Warp 6." Enterprise answered on reflex, before suddenly blushing and rubbing the back of her neck. Whiiiich I did on my way over here… oops. Hopefully Starfleet Command agrees with me that it was an emergency. "I've heard that the upcoming Intrepid-class is going to be field-testing variable-geometry warp fields to try and mitigate the damage, but…"

Yamato covered her chin with one hand, looking like she would begin stroking it but not actually doing so. "If your dimension primarily relies on these devices, that would explain your great familiarity with matters of dimensional and temporal distortion. The fabric of spacetime in your space must be worn quite thin, and prone to breaking."

"It only happens every… month?" Enterprise wilted a bit under their incredulous stares. "Every three weeks, tops!"

Babylon 5 had spent her entire life orbiting next to the zone of space where Babylon 4 had disappeared, which to this day was riddled with temporal anomalies. She couldn't help but notice that Normandy's people used a pure realspace – er, normal space – FTL drive and had apparently never encountered any such anomaly themselves. She too was beginning to wonder if the correlation was not coincidental.

"We really are all from different universes, aren't we?" She half-whispered.

The tech that Enterprise, Normandy, and Yamato had… even whatever Galactica had done to move her fighter-faerie inside of Chimaera… it was all so different from everything back home, even to what the First Ones used.

"Er, timelines actually…" Enterprise corrected gingerly.

"That's not the poi–! Erg. If we're all from different timelines, then where are we now?" Babylon 5 demanded.

"I do not believe this is the Milky Way." Yamato observed, turning to look at the stars around them. "Any version of it. Not the Large Magellanic Cloud either."

"Well, no." Enterprise agreed, holding off asking for the moment why the LMC would be relevant. "Physical constants are different here. Chemistry still works and all, thank the great bird of the galaxy, but the baseline for chroniton radiation is an order of magnitude higher than back home, and the id-strength constant is three lower."

"Meaning what, dearie?"

"Meaning, I think that that –" Enterprise pointed at the scar of the anomaly "– is the well we fell down. Or rabbit hole, if you prefer. Only with a waterfall flowing down it. Point is, while we were all in parallel timelines before, this is a separate spacetime sitting 'underneath' the universe we come from."

"Home?" Normandy asked, turning to stare at the scar of the anomaly.

"Not through there, no – unless you can swim up waterfalls, so to speak." Enterprise sighed at Normandy's puzzled look. "We're going to need to build ourselves a way home. Just opening this up again and plunging into it isn't going to work."

"Well, you're not going to build it here, dearie."

As one, everyone turned to stare at Galactica.

"Why?" Normandy asked, the others only a second behind her.

Galactica looked at Normandy like she'd asked a particularly stupid question. "In case more Basestars show up, of course."

Babylon 5 blinked, turned that thought over in her head, then swore explosively. The non-Galactica ships turned to stare at her. "I'm here because that thing swallowed me up and spat me out here." Babylon 5 explained. "But what are all you doing here?"

Enterprise blinked. "Well, I detected the anomaly and figured that –" The ship gave a sharp inhale as she realised what was being implied.

"We came because we had determined that this was about where we entered this space, and assumed it was our exit." Yamato said, gaze hardening. "I assume that is why Chimaera and the Sword-class ship also came here."

"That's right, dearies. We're not the only ships who will come here – just the first. Whether we were the closest or the fastest or somewhere in between, more ships are probably on their way."

Everybody's eyes darted to the disabled form of Chimaera, still unconscious, and the slagged remains of the Sword-class. Winning that fight had heavily involved fortunate placement and their enemies being unaware of Normandy and Yamato. Fortune was not something to be relied upon – which meant that they couldn't assume new arrivals would be friendly either.

"Alright." Enterprise said, gears beginning to turn in her head. "Normandy, if you can reduce Babylon 5's weight even just by half, then Yamato and I should be able to drag her at –"

"You're going to have to leave me." Babylon 5 said, quietly.

"Babylon 5, I am not going to –"

"Why are we talking about leaving Daidalos behind?" Galactica asked, puzzled. "She's jump capable."

Everyone stopped and stared at Galactica for the second time in as many minutes.

"Galactica," Babylon 5 said, a strange feeling building in her gut "you have tech that can move stations like me?"

"You really don't remember?" Galactica sounded halfway to heartbroken. "You were magnificent, in the First Cylon War. Always taking fresh ships to where they were needed and jumping out again before they could organise a counterattack."

The old Battlestar sighed. "But then the war ended, and they stripped out your FTL drives for parts and made you into an ammo depot." She said bitterly. Imagine what we could have achieved if you had been able to join the survivors in your prime…!

Enterprise swallowed. "Normandy, get those mineral scans up. I think we're going to need them."

Enterprise began firing rapid questions at Galactica, practically overwhelming the older ship. She was focused, determined, jotting down answers and ideas on her not-Com Pad in a rush.

Left out of the conversation due to its intensity and focus, Babylon 5 could properly feel the knot of worry forming nicely in her gut. Seeking to distract herself, she turned to Normandy and Yamato: saying the first thing that came to mind. "You know, we never finished that discussion on how our Earths could be the same when their galaxies are all different."

"Well, we likely will never know for sure." Yamato said "But, if it wasn't the result of random chance…"

"Dear," Babylon 5 resisted the urge to roll her eyes "even without doing the maths, I'm pretty sure there's zero chance of that happening, if you round to the billionth decimal place." There. Now that she wasn't thinking about the possibility of being left to fend for herself and her crew alone, the worry was dissipating.

"…well, if it was not on accident, does that not imply that it was on purpose?"

The knot of worry came back twice as strong as before.