Happy Birthday to me. I wonder what it says my birthday is shared with William Shakespeare. I don't think I'm a bard, but I'm honoured to share my birthday with one of the greatest playwrights in human history.
Anyway, a short time ago I sent a message to Trevor the Enchanter, the author of Vengeance, an alternate Babylon 5 story where the Minbari war ended differently and the Babylon Project didn't get off the ground. I'm going to be posting a line of stories based on one of his ideas, with kind permission but with a twist here and there. And I've got other storylines in mind that I hope you will enjoy.
A New Space Age.
"This meeting of the Earth Alliance Senate is now in session; ladies and gentlemen, honoured guests, thank you for coming. Please take your seats," President Santiago sat down and for a moment he eyed every member of the senate. Many of them were old time senators who had survived the war and others were new members who had fought in the brief occupation. Others were members of Earth Space Fleet as representatives who would be giving the newest reports of the Phoenix's exploration and resurvey of the galaxy around Earth so the Senate could formulate their plans.
"Admiral Leftcourt," Santiago began the meeting, addressing one of the more high-ranking Earth Space Fleet officers in the room, "your report, please. We understand the Phoenix visited an ancient asteroid colony before re-entering Underspace, and she then visited close to the Rim. What can you tell us about what they found?"
Lefcourt, despite the time he had been an admiral rather than an Earthforce general, pushed aside his fleeting reaction which was to glance over his shoulder to look for this Admiral before realising it was he and he took out from the pocket of his jacket a purple cylinder filled with a gel-like substance with crystals contained within topped by a black lid. Placing the memory acid crystal into the slot, Lefcourt punched in a command into the small interface nearby.
Automatically the lights within the Senate darkened and the holo-projector in the centre of the table projected the holographic display in front of them, a display of maps and text, star-maps they recognised as being a part of Earth space.
"The aliens on the asteroid were known as the Qu'Rim, an avian form of life who evolved on a jungle-like world whose sun was in the stages of going nova. They were in their atomic age when they realised their world would be destroyed."
Senator Baker of Britain nodded. "Similar to the Dilgar; they only became a galactic threat because their sun was threatening them with extinction. But these Qu'Rim, didn't they have access to a jump gate in their system?"
"Apparently not; its similar to our own circumstances, which isn't as rare as some might think. We know that no race in the galaxy, that we know of, invented the jump gates and opened the doors to interstellar travel. Most of the races today gained their jump gate technologies by finding either a jump gate in their system or ships crashed on their planets like the Centauri discovered," Dr Anna Sheridan spoke up after shooting an apologetic look at Lefcourt for taking over from him, "from what we're found out from the Phoenix, the Qu'Rim didn't have any choice but to send their atomic-powered spaceships and began a mass exodus from their world. The Qu'Rim, like us, originally made use of chemical-fuelled rockets before they developed more renewable launch technologies. It took them at least twenty-Earth years to come up with a plan to leave their world, and it didn't help their planet's resources were being strained to the limit in order to cope with the Qu'Rim preparing their people for the mass exodus. But their technology was too primitive for them to get too far so they had no choice but to settle on one of the worlds in their solar system so they could refine it."
"Ah," Senator Hidoshi nodded, working it out in his mind. "And when they had refined the technology, they went back out into the stars."
"Correct Senator," Lefcourt inputted a new sequence into the computer pad on the table. "The Qu'Rim remained on the planet for sixty years, going over their experiences and building new generation ships. Once they were ready, they would leave, but they miscalculated. Their sun was becoming more unstable, so they launched before they were ready. According to the information gathered by the Phoenix, the Qu'Rim had only three sleeper ships built in the hopes they could find a habitable world and ensure their race survived. One of them found an asteroid and they settled on it because their ship was falling apart because it was built in a hurry."
"But what happened to them?" President Santiago asked. "From what we've learnt, these Qu'Rim seemed to have died out on that asteroid."
"And they did," Anna sighed. "The Qu'Rim built their colony in that asteroid using technology from their ship, but there's no great mystery to what killed that group. The computers they were using were primitive and they began to break down because the Qu'Rim were having problems extending their computers to cope with the size of the asteroid, and adding the primitive nature of the processing systems only makes it worse. They tried to fabricate new computers, but it didn't work. In the end, the life-support systems simply stopped and they died."
Santiago allowed himself a moment of pity for the Qu'Rim. They had left their world in order to survive, but their best efforts were for nothing although he remembered there were other groups out there.
"Did the Phoenix crew discover any technology we could use?" Vice-President Clark asked.
Santiago was annoyed by the question which was more fitting for a grave robber than for a Senator. But he knew where the other man was coming from. While they had made impressive advancements over the years - memory acid crystals, artificial gravity, warp drive - everyone was convinced if they looked for technologies out there in the galaxy, humanity would never find themselves close to the cusp of extinction.
He could understand their point of view, just as he could understand the viewpoint that humanity should develop of their own. He just wished Clark wasn't so bloodthirsty and openly greedy about what he wanted.
"No, not really; much of the technology found in the asteroid is fairly basic. We've used similar technology for our own asteroid and moon colonies."
"And what of the Narns, what were they doing there?"
Anna frowned. She didn't particularly like The Vice-President. Clark, with his demanding attitude, and the way he snapped his statements made her feel like she was on the defensive.
Fortunately, Lefcourt stepped in to answer for her. "The Narns were apparently exploring the asteroid themselves, Senator. It's possible they are interested in further developing their technology for colonising everything they can find. That would make sense; the Centauri occupation of their planet has left them determined to never be in that position ever again, so they need room to expand. Kinda like us, in a way."
"Doctor, Admiral, we understand the Phoenix has been visiting the regions of space near the Rim. The reports indicate worlds which are habitable, can you please elaborate on them?" Senator Quantrell hoped to change the subject.
But Clark was not happy. "No, not for the moment. I still have questions I wanted and need to be answered. Why didn't Captain Sheridan stop the Narns from leaving? He had the means of doing so. He should have destroyed that ship."
Surprised by the Vice-President's clear bloodthirsty attitude, Anna glanced at Leftcourt and she was pleased to see the same annoyance on the admiral's face that she was feeling although she was sure her own annoyance was different.
Clark knew John had been ordered not to make any contact with aliens, no exceptions. While the Narn were allies during the Earth-Minbari War, there were many who believed they were better off without allies at all despite all the aid the Narns had given them. Anna could understand the reasons why Phoenix and her captain had been ordered not to make any kind of contact with aliens since Earth was in no fit state to fight anyone.
But Clark seemed to believe John should have killed the Narns and taken on a whole war cruiser without any doubts in his mind. Didn't he realise if that had happened then they might be at war with the Narns, and there was no way the winner would be Earth given how small Earth's current space fleet was.
Fortunately, Senator Hidoshi spoke up before Anna said or did something she'd regret later on. "The Phoenix crew were ordered to keep their activities secret, you know that."
Clark glowered at Hidoshi. "They should have destroyed the Narn ship-.'
"Why?" Anna had never really seen Santiago, who had always seemed calm and pacifistically passive like Emperor Turhan of the Centauri Republic speak with steel in his voice, but the look he was giving to Clark was sharper than a razor's blade. "Do you want the Minbari to come back? Because, if we had destroyed that Narn ship, they would likely hear about our return to the stars. That's the last thing we want."
Santiago turned to Lefcourt. "Order the Phoenix to continue her exploration of the corridors as soon as they've finished checking the outer colonies."
Lefcourt nodded. "Yes, sir."
Anna knew it would have to be circulated through the new organisations' chamber of admirals and commodores before it got to John. It was kind of a holdover of the old Earthforce system where the President would issue an order which would pass through the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but in this case, they were likely to circulate the order around a bit, and then send it off to John.
Thinking of her husband caused an ache. Hopefully, John would be home soon, especially since the kids wanted their daddy back. Anna allowed a small smile to creep over her face. While Earth was still a mess following the Minbari occupation of the planet, children were one of the biggest priorities. The hardest part was making sure the Minbari warriors hadn't gotten hold of them. Many children had been killed in the war and during the occupation, the Minbari warriors had taken a sick delight in murdering and torturing innocent children for nothing other than their own pleasure, and having them was a risk.
With access to the new exo-womb technology, families were able to have many more children than they could have had if they went about it the old-fashioned way, and now it was not uncommon for families to have six or seven or even twelve children at a time instead of two or three, which put further strain on the planet's resources even if they had access to the moon and Mars.
As if he were a certified telepath and had picked up on her innermost thoughts, Santiago looked around the room. "Where are we standing with the colonisation fleet?" He asked.
"The first wave is more than ready. The ships are prepared, along with the new cargo hauliers which will transport the equipment and supplies for their new settlements. The problem is there are hundreds of people who are clamouring to leave the home system; it's taking a long time for places on the different ships to come through," Lefcourt reported.
Santiago blew out a breath. "Have the first wave leave by the end of the week," he decided, "and then have the transports return to Earth and ferry the next."
"That will take time," Quantrell pointed out. "But it's manageable."
"We should let it take time. We've waited too long to be an interstellar power once more. The good news will be when they've gone they'll have full access to the resources of those systems, just like our people are recolonising the home system. What worries me if what they'll find; we've all heard the reports of corpses picked clean by animals and left to rot by the Minbari. Some of them have been preyed on by carrion eaters from the League of Non-Aligned Worlds," Koslov of the Russian consortium pointed out, her expression becoming pinched at the thought.
Charlie Morgan of Britain shook his head. "I also don't like the thought of our geneticists harvesting useable DNA from the remains," he confessed, "while I am aware of the benefits in the long-term."
"We know, Charlie," Celeste Delacour of France reassured her neighbouring senator soothingly. "But it will help our population when it explodes. We already have a thriving population in the home system but hopefully, within the next twenty years, our population will have grown to enormous size."
"Yes, but hopefully we can do it without the other powers knowing about it," Quantrell pointed out. Everyone agreed. The general consensus in the Alliance was alien contact was more troublesome than it was worth. They didn't want their worlds destroyed by the Minbari or the Centauri ever again.
"How is our population figure now?" Vice-President Clark asked, still seething visibly from the put down he had received, but seemed otherwise calm, but Anna didn't trust the man to believe he was going to forget it anytime soon.
"It's expanding. Every single day. The new genetic therapies for improving neural pathways has certainly taken hold, as have the other genetic treatments."
Anna frowned as she thought about the genetic therapies. They had become increasingly popular as time had passed following the breakthrough in stem cell research, which would one day be used as a quasi-immortality. Invented by a scientist who had almost died in the occupation, and inspired by Daystrom's warp engine and the call for scientists to come forth with new ideas aimed at improving and bettering humanity, rejuvenation was the rallying call for genetic engineering and other forms of sciences aimed at improving the human body.
The scientist who sent up the genetic flare had told his story. During the occupation, he had been close to death more than once. Those moments, similar to everyone else who'd suffered and died under the Minbari's brutality, had made him focus. He was made to face his own mortality and made him realise how important each moment was and how fragile life could be, and so his life came to focus.
But his answer was to have a worthwhile life you should have a long one. At the same time, the scientist had gained a particularly strong fear of dying and seeing death in general. Rejuvenation was the ticket and the key. Stem cells were hacked, and it was possible for seventy or eighty-year-olds to be regressed genetically to their teens.
Rejuvenation was due to being commercialised within the next year, but already there were hundreds of people who'd lost family and friends in the Earth-Minbari war and the resulting occupation, and they wanted a chance to have family and friends in their lives again. Anna knew one of her uncles who wanted to do that after losing his wife and so many of the family. She didn't blame him. She had even heard her own paternal parents-in-law were planning on rejuvenation following the near-death of Lizzie and their grandkids with the desire of having more children than ever.
But Anna and John were still young and healthy, and they had their whole lives ahead. It was too soon for them to even come close to making a decision of this magnitude but if they agreed to have a rejuvenation, then they'd get one.
But the other treatments…
Anna wondered if she and John seemed to be the only ones who could see the danger inherent in the whole idea. She could tell there would be bullying on both sides. One half would call the augmented kids freaks for being smarter and healthier than they were themselves, and it would also likely make the augmented kids bully them back in retaliation, calling them throwbacks or something like that. In time, it would become perfectly normal for human children to be genetically engineered while living in a society which had an exceptionally high birthrate which mirrored the Centauri goddess Li's philosophy, and being incredibly intelligent.
Li was a Centauri woman who'd lived during the early days of the Republic who was one of those people who'd been elevated to godhood. She had been seen as a whore for her love of passionate lovemaking and families, but it wasn't until the Xon war with the Centauri, her ideas had merit since the Centauri had been taking heavy losses during the conflict and they'd quickly addressed the problem before they realised they were following Li's message.
There had been two indigenous races to Centauri Prime. The Centauri, obviously, and the Xon. Both races had evolved on different parts of the planet before they'd developed the technology for traversing the oceans. The Centauri stumbled across a Xon coastal city, and the Xon brutally killed the crews. A few years later, the Xon attacked the Centauri and it spiralled out from there into a full-blown war. The Xon's physical prowess which mirrored that of the Narns or the Drazi went up against Centauri intellect. The Centauri were many things, stupid was not one of them. They had quickly seen they couldn't physically outmatch a Xon, and so they decided to fight in a cunning way.
It worked and the Xon were wiped out. But Li's message had spread to the populace, and during the war, the Centauri population had grown and grown while they'd launched attack after attack against the Xon before their own population could keep up.
Messages like that spread through the stars like solar winds, and the human race had just grown steadily during the final days of the occupation while ensuring their race lived while the Minbari practiced their genocide right in front of them, and once the Minbari oppressors left the planet the population explosion had been like an avalanche.
But the genetic therapies seemed like a great deal, although some of them were understandable what with the mass driver attacks on the planet when the warrior caste had fired them on Earth before they left as an act of spite. Thanks to genetics, human children were being born with adjusted lungs to ensure they could filter out the dust.
The neural pathway adjustments had been suggested some time ago with the argument humanity needed geniuses in order to survive. They needed genius soldiers and strategists, scientists and doctors in every conceivable field and even those about to pioneer new fields. The first augments with those adjustments had come out of nowhere, and yet they had been able to take one look at the Minbari stealth problem and they'd cracked it by another 40%, adding to the 45% already managed. Was it any wonder the treatment was becoming more and more popular?
Parents wanted their children to make the Alliance better than it had been before the war, and while she wasn't sure if it made the human race less human, Anna did have to ask herself if she should allow her next children to be augmented in such a way, and have the ones she did have augmented in turn. There were quite a few people worried about the augmentations, but there were some who openly asked if adults and children who'd survived the occupation could have their neural pathways adjusted as well.
They wanted to not only be highly intelligent, shorten the gap with so many other races intellectually and technologically, but they wanted to make humanity evolve into something greater.
But there was so much controversy, so many conspiracy theories… there were many who still harboured a great deal of suspicion towards the telepaths, and they wondered if the telepaths could even be trusted still despite the many contributions the telepaths had given Earth during the occupation. Many Minbari had died because a telepath looked into their minds and discovered a weakness which had incredibly nasty consequences…for the Minbari and for those prisoners taken.
Santiago's voice broke Anna out of her thoughts. "Ah, any new developments from our resident geniuses?"
Anna raised an eyebrow. The president didn't seem disdainful. In fact, he sounded respectfully and genuinely interested.
"One kid studying astrophysics came up with a model of opening a kind of jump point and then using a warp field to create some kind of wormhole," Sandra Benes, senator of China said.
"Another kid came up with a way of enhancing macromolecular glass," Hidoshi added.
"Why don't we give them grants to develop their theories and ideas?" Anna smiled, but she knew Santiago was not amused.
X
One of the things the Minbari had left Earth with was a lack of anything in space aside from a satellite here or there. They had purposefully destroyed any and all shipbuilding industrial base, and they were so thorough by using explosives and when the dust had settled the Minbari ships had been done the rest.
Overkill, yes, but it was part of the Minbari plan to ensure humanity never reached the stars again. But it hadn't stopped humanity. Seeking out old military bases, and disused and abandoned - or devastated - airfields and airports and they rebuilt them as they could, along with factories with the necessary tech requirements. With that, they were able to once more construct short-range spacecraft before they devised fusion-drive powered ships, and then later the first warp ships which allowed humanity to go into space once more. And when they were out, they salvaged what little pieces of Minbari technology they could gather, and a program of reverse-engineering had taken place, and the newer generations of human starships were much more powerful than previous generations as a result of new discoveries.
And there were ships which were slightly larger in shape and mass than previous generations. And they were becoming easier to build, much like container ships on the oceans, larger spacecraft was built out of modular sections and then assembled in orbit as space stations in the 20th-21st centuries had been built with modules and segments shipped up by space shuttles, and it was hoped as technology improved starships could be scaled up in size and power.
And they were.
When the Phoenix left Earth to begin the exploration of the galaxy, there had a number of similar ships under construction as well as the Babylon stations. Now, there were over four hundred such vessels under construction. They would likely be launched within the next few months, and more were being added and then tried by shakedown cruises.
The Babylon Project had been an idea sparked before the war to prevent wars by creating a space station in neutral space and letting humans and aliens interact without conflict. After the war it had been repurposed and now the Babylon stations under construction were going to be used as vast mobile cylinders where humans could continue to grow their population within the solar system.
For the past decade the Earth Alliance had been concentrating on rebuilding their planet, rebuilding their population, and developing a new fleet of ships with their new discoveries and technologies developed either from scratch with human ingenuity, or reverse-engineered Minbari technology. They had delved deeply in their history, coming up with designs straight out of science-fiction franchises like Star Trek, Star Wars, Mass Effect, Halo, and Battlestar Galactica for new ideas while using their better understanding of science and technology to see if the designs worked in space. Under construction and nearly ready were the Raptor class Bird-of-Prey attack ships which were designed like the Klingon Bird of Prey from the Star Trek franchise, or the ships favoured by the Dominion from Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Equipped with plasma blasters, neutron and fusion beam cannons and nuclear missiles enhanced with the few remains of Quantium 40, they were deadly enough, but they were even deadlier with the invisibility screens.
Many of these ships were not equipped with warp drive, although many of them were. Earth gov didn't want humanity overly dependent on one form of faster than light travel. In any case, they needed to recolonise the planets quickly, and so many of the colonisation fleet was only equipped with fusion and plasma drive engines.
At the same time, Earth was experimenting with the construction of pocket battleships which were large, but effortlessly easy and less expensive to construct, and equipped with so many weapons no one in their right mind would tangle with them. On Earth, Mars, and the moon, shipyards for the Battle Rockets was underway, but it would be some time before they were finalised and ready for use.
A number of ships moved in formation away from the planets, although from Mars, Io, and Deimos and Earth, ships were taking off. Many of them were transport vessels containing the new colonists bound for worlds to recolonise, freighters carrying supplies, tools, equipment for the rebuilding of the colonies. Other transports contained a number of soldiers to protect the colonists from anything they might find.
Unpowered by warp engines sop as to prevent their race's FTL drive technology from falling into the hands of dangerous aliens and powered only by fusion drive, this fleet of ships moved towards one of the underspace corridor entrances. One by one they passed through. In a few days time, the first wave of colonists would reclaim the worlds seized by the Minbari, and repopulate them.
X
In his laboratory, the scientist looked over the equipment surrounding him speculatively before a smile spread across his face while his eyes fixed on a large metal egg with a hatchway built into it. He was a fairly short man with dark hair, his skin boasting his Latino heritage, dressed in casual clothes. All around him in his laboratory was equipment both old and new. A lot of the technology was a century or under old, but there was quite a bit of modern technology in the room. The scientist didn't really mind, he felt it added some character to his work area if he had some old fashioned stuff and some of it recalled memories of his father, who had died in the war.
"Not long now," he whispered.
He patted the egg with one hand. With this, the whole of human existence would change forever, if he played his cards right and his plans were realised.