This, Yamato decided, was the weirdest asteroid belt she'd ever seen.
Granted, she had never needed to do much asteroid mining herself – generally, any time she needed repairs there was a convenient pile of enemy scrap nearby. But she was pretty sure that Goethite, Autunite and Ilmenite weren't supposed to form in such close proximity to each other, let alone under these conditions.
Still, she could not deny the convenience, especially as Enterprise had baulked at her suggestion of salvaging the Sword-class. She watched as her auxiliary craft used laser cutters to separate rough chunks of ore into small enough pieces to feed into her auto-forgery/assembly (nicknamed the "Dynamic do-all" by her crew for the sheer range of things they'd managed to create with it). It wasn't the best at processing ore, but it was the only manufacturing device in the fleet that could cast the larger pieces of Galactica's miracle drives.
Imagine – faster-than-light travel on a reactor not even as powerful as a fusion reactor. Her own warp drive took the full output of her wave-motion core, the same power source as her wave-motion gun. She could feel it humming in her chest – the strange, alien technology that meant she would never require fuel. Fortunately, it still worked in this dimension, unlike the first alternate dimension she had been trapped in.
Yamato watched as Normandy drifted by, a dozen or so kilometres away. The frigate approached an asteroid of her own, carving into it with a laser knife a̶r̶r̶a̶y̶ of her own. After cutting loose a piece of the right size, Normandy tucked it into her armour p̶u̶l̶l̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶h̶a̶n̶g̶a̶r̶ and flew off. If Yamato had understood correctly, Normandy had manufacturing capabilities of her own, but they were generally used for creating and repairing personnel equipment and woefully undersized for this task. Instead, she would deliver the ore to Babylon 5, who would be able to process it much faster.
(She, much like the other ships in the fleet, were quietly keeping an active sensor lock on the stealth frigate. Normandy, perhaps deciding that she had no (remaining) enemies here and that the joke had been played out, had deactivated her stealth systems; her heat signature showing up clearly on everyone's passives.)
As she watched Normandy fly away, her eyes drifted to Galactica, sitting in the same orbit she had left her in. The old Battlestar had wanted to help, but without cutting equipment, automated production capabilities or a usable FTL drive even having her ferry ore was not viable. Instead, they had placated her by asking her to supervise their various fighter-fairies as they patrolled the system; a task which she seemed content enough with.
Galactica had then surprised Yamato by turning around and shooing her off, telling her to go and aid the mining effort.
"But I have not finished your repairs."
It was a hollow protest, and Yamato suspected that they both knew it. She was capable of replacing her own armour plates, but it took hours to replace even just a few dozen square meters. Replacing fully half the armour of a ship over four times her length and nearly ten times her width would take her weeks, even assuming there was sufficient materials at hand.
Galactica had smiled. "Dear, I haven't been fully repaired in over twenty years." She said. "It's not a big deal."
Yamato couldn't imagine being so old that she would give up on ever being whole again.
Even though her hull had been based on a WWII battleship with the same name, she, the Space Battleship Yamato, had come into existence less than three short years ago.
She had been the desperate work of a people with only one hope left, and she knew it. Once she had brought back the Cosmo Reverse, had turned Earth green again, it hadn't taken the United Nations Cosmo Navy long to devise a "better" ship than her, the Andromeda-class.
Her captain, her admiral, had only been able to bring back the Reverse by promising Queen Starsha that the human race would never again build a wave-motion gun. Earth had promptly built a fleet of ships armed with two each.
It burned her inside, to see how little respect they held for her captain's word.
She shook her head, pulling her thoughts back to the here and now. She would hardly honour her captain's memory by sulking away in some underverse.
Her cosmo radar registered an approaching contact, so she turned her head o̶p̶e̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶m̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶n̶n̶e̶l̶ to ask Enterprise if she was done working with Galactica…
Only it wasn't Enterprise there. Or at least, not all of her.
"What?" The new ship demanded. She had the same Nacelle-wings as Enterprise, but given that she was half Enterprise's size they looked twice as large, absolutely dominating her appearance. She had no saucer-skirt, and her uniform's leotard was gold and black instead of red and black.
Yamato blinked at the new ship, noting that this one was about her height l̶e̶n̶g̶t̶h̶. "Enterprise-san?" She guessed.
"Half of her." The new ship snorted. "I'm her engines, her 'battle section'. The saucer is still up there talking to Galactica."
Yamato processed this information slowly, turning to look r̶u̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶c̶t̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶s̶c̶a̶n̶ at Galactica's position. Indeed, another new ship was talking to Galactica. Somehow, she seemed even more animate and excitable than Enterprise had been, and despite the seriousness of the situation Yamato could not help but smile as the little ship darted excitedly around Galactica, a ship now four times her height length. Much as the battle section had kept Enterprise's nacelle-wings but not her saucer-skirt, the saucer kept the skirt but not the wings. Her uniform's leotard was blue and black.
"Why does Enterprise-san have the ability to split into two smaller ships?" Yamato asked, not really expecting a result.
The battle section scowled. "Don't ask me, I didn't ask to be built this way."
"I carry most of the crew, so the idea is that I can survive even if the battle section is destroyed." The saucer, who had apparently been listening in, called to the two of them.
The battle section scowled and called back to her sister(?). "But I have the warp drive! If I get blown up, you're screwed!"
"Well –"
"Why are you here, Battle-san?" Yamato cut to the chase, her patience wearing thin.
The battle section thumbed back at the saucer. "You looked like you could use a hand, so the genius over there thought it would be best if we split up."
"We're both Enterprise, Battle!" The saucer called, sounding exasperated. "It was both of our ideas!"
"I can't think properly while sharing my head with you!"
Galactica, who the saucer had been talking to, quietly sat back. The eyebrow over one eye got higher and higher as the two half-ships argued.
"I thought that Enterprise did not have the capacity to manufacture Galactica's drive components?" Yamato tried again to steer the conversation back to productive grounds.
The battle section grunted. "We've got the tech to do it, it's just that our hardware replicators aren't physically big enough to make the larger parts." She said. "Pretty much the only large solid-cast part on me is my hull, so the assumption is that any damage big enough to require an industrial replicator will probably have crippled or destroyed me anyway."
"But what I can do," she continued, floating up to the small asteroid Yamato had been planning to tackle next "is this."
Holographic warning signs that definitely weren't magic circles appeared around Enterprise's battle section's wrists. A cone of semitransparent energy extended out and pulled one of the larger asteroids into her waiting mouth s̶h̶u̶t̶t̶l̶e̶ ̶b̶a̶y̶. After a moment of furious chewing s̶t̶r̶a̶n̶g̶e̶ ̶e̶n̶e̶r̶g̶y̶ ̶e̶m̶i̶s̶s̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶i̶n̶s̶i̶d̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶a̶y̶ the battle section spat out the asteroid – now separated into several small spheres, each comprised solely of a different element.
"There." The battle section nodded firmly. "That should save you some time."
Yamato stared at the separated out spheres. "…how did you accomplish that so quickly, Battle-san?"
"I'm not allowed to tell you." The battle section huffed.
"Don't take it personally, Yamato!" Babylon 5 called over, apparently also listening in. "Most techno-mages only have a vague idea how their technology works anyway!"
"I know how replicators work!" The battle section snapped.
There was a pause, then she pinched the bridge of her nose.
"Your manufacturing devices?" Yamato wondered aloud, lightly touching one of the spheres with a finger c̶h̶e̶c̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶t̶s̶ ̶I̶R̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶f̶i̶l̶e̶. "These are cool to the touch… some kind of miracle nanotechnology?" Her small craft scooped up the spheres of the more useful elements and started flying back to her.
"Starfleet," The battle section ground out, fingers still clamped onto her nose "has strict policies on when technology can be handed out, and normally it's someone much higher up the chain of command than me making that call."
"You think of us as potential enemies, Battle-san?" Yamato wouldn't be offended if that was the case, just surprised.
"What?" The battle section blinked, her aggravation temporarily giving away to surprise. "Oh, no no no. Well, I mean, obviously I wouldn't go around just handing out photon torpedoes or anything, but the Prime Directive is mostly there to protect other cultures from us."
"Had a First Contact go horribly wrong, dear?"
"Not… in the way that you're probably thinking," the saucer section cut in "but imagine the reaction from even just making a flyby of a pre-Warp planet."
"You start a subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that a race that has mastered interstellar travel cannot properly examine the native lifeforms without a colonoscopy?"
Yamato frowned at Babylon 5. "The sightings of 'flying saucers' were not actual alien flybys, so I do not think it is a valid comparison."
"They were quite real in my timeline, so I'd double-check that when you get home."
Yamato blinked slowly. As far as she knew, Earth was the only planet in the Milky Way to have evolved life upon itself. Although, she had once overheard a pair of Garmillas ships talking about a planet of 'bee people'…
"My point being," Enterprise's battle section said with a sigh "that Starfleet standard procedure forbids me from getting into the details of how large parts of me work."
Babylon 5 frowned. "But you're happy to give away Galactica's technology?"
"Not happy, no…" The battle section shot a frown up to where her saucer section and Galactica were orbiting together.
"Dearie, jump drives are your inheritance." Galactica insisted. "Just because you've forgotten how to make them doesn't change that."
The battle section didn't say anything, but the look on her face said quite plainly that she didn't think Galactica was in a fit state of mind to be giving away her secrets like that.
"If the survivors of Earth had had jump drives, the First Cylon War wouldn't have ever started." Galactica declared, with a tone that indicated that she thought this was a decisive argument. "And once they did arrive, they bargained away their technology to bring an end to the war."
Before any of the others could respond, Galactica suddenly frowned. "Although, the Cylons then used that technology to wipe out the Twelve Colonies within hours of the Second Cylon War starting…"
She petered off, her eyes unfocusing as she stared off into the distance. Yamato had the distinct impression that she was lost in painful memories.
"…once we depart from here, Galactica-san, I would very much like to hear the story of these Twelve Colonies." Yamato managed.
There was a moment of silence, broken suddenly by a cry from Enterprise's saucer section.
"Blast it!" The saucer section gave a dismayed look at something in her hands.
Her battle section's eyes snapped to her. "Replication of Galactica's fuel not going so well?"
"No." The saucer section admitted with a sigh. "I thought I had it, but even with a sample to base my models off there's a bonding failure at the 97th percentile mark."
"I told you we should have redesigned the drive to work without it."
"We're assuming that we're pressed for time, remember? I'll just have to mimic the conditions under which it forms in nature."
"And what if you can't do that either?"
"Then I'll have to write the work off as wasted time and use your idea."
The battle section glared at her saucer, obviously not happy with this plan, but turned back with a huff and separated out another asteroid into base elements. "Did you at least figure out the Exocomp problem?"
At the confused looks of the other ships, Enterprise's saucer section explained. "I tried to replicate a couple of Exocomps – engineering drones – to take up my maintenance schedule, but as soon as they materialised my computer immediately identified their location as 'asleep in their quarters'. Which is ridiculous three times over – they didn't have time to move, they don't sleep, and they haven't been assigned quarters!"
Yamato's eyes narrowed. "That is what my internal sensors have been reporting about my entire crew – including my robot crew member, Analyser."
Babylon 5 had gone slightly pale. "That's what my sensors were saying about my inhabitants as well."
"Same." Normandy reported, halfway through carving up another asteroid.
"Alright, so the effect seems reasonably consistent…" The saucer section mused. "Do any of you have non-sentient robotic and/or digital lifeforms on board?"
Normandy raised her hand. "V.I."
"And what are… never mind, it doesn't matter. Are they still running normally?"
Normandy nodded.
"Well, that matches my theory… I had the schematics for the old DOT-7 drones onboard for some reason, so I tried replicating a few of those, and they didn't vanish off into some non-existent 'quarters'. At the moment, I think the effect seems to target sentience… or maybe sapience. Not sure yet."
(The DOT line of drones had fallen out of use because, unlike Exocomps, they had almost no problem-solving capability and required a senior engineer to supervise them at all times. Eventually, Starfleet had realised it was better to just assign a junior engineer to the same task. But with all of her engineers unavailable, they were better than nothing.
Even if having Enterprise supervise all of her own maintenance was a bit like expecting a human to consciously run their own respiratory, circulatory and digestive systems…)
"Eezo!" Came an excited almost-shout from Normandy, before she clapped her hands over her mouth, seemingly the most shocked at her making a noise louder than normal speaking.
"Eezo?" Yamato repeated back, flying over to see what Normandy was on about. Embedded in the rock that Normandy had just cut in half, she found a cluster of a bright blue mineral whose scan profile matched nothing in her database.
"Element Zero." Normandy was blinking rapidly r̶u̶n̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶s̶e̶v̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶a̶c̶t̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶s̶e̶n̶s̶o̶r̶ ̶s̶c̶a̶n̶s̶, seemingly unable to believe her eyes.
Yamato paused, then double-checked her sensor scans. "That is not an element. That is a mineral." Neutronium had an atomic weight of zero, having no protons or electrons, but that wasn't what she was looking at. It wasn't nearly dense enough.
"Nickname." Normandy clarified, still staring at the deposit – about 1.24 tonnes worth, if her scans were right.
"…I see." Yamato said, resolving to only call the mineral by the less confusing name of 'eezo' in future. "Is it useful?"
Normandy looked up sharply, her face twisted in confusion. "You don't…?" She almost whispered, starting to return to her normal volume.
Yamato shook her head as Enterprise's battle section pulled up alongside them and started having a look of her own r̶u̶n̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶w̶n̶ ̶s̶c̶a̶n̶s̶. "I do not believe I have seen that mineral before. I certainly have never seen its use in starship systems." She told the disbelieving Normandy "…I take it you use it?"
Normandy nodded almost frantically. "For everything." She said, now sounding a little shell-shocked.
(Babylon 5's Jump Gate had made her realise that some of the others didn't use eezo for FTL, but given how ridiculously useful the mineral was she'd assumed they used it for something, even if just artificial gravity.)
Yamato for her part wondered if that 'everything' that Normandy had just mentioned included her ridiculous acceleration, and wondered if she could convince Normandy to help her install such a system.
Before Yamato could voice that desire, Enterprise's battle section spoke up. "Judging from the look you had on your face, eezo doesn't normally form in places like this?"
Normandy shook her head. "Neutron stars."
Yamato glanced up at the very-much-not-a-neutron-star star at the heart of this system. "Perhaps it was an extra-solar capture?" She theorised.
"Dears – behind you to the left." Babylon 5 unexpectedly cut in. "Is that a Quantium 40 deposit?"
Yamato glanced behind herself. There was a strange crystalline powder on the surface of that asteroid… "This highly radioactive substance?" She brushed a hand over it and held up some of for Babylon 5 to see t̶r̶a̶n̶s̶m̶i̶t̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶s̶c̶a̶n̶s̶.
"Yes, that's it!" Babylon 5 said excitedly.
Normandy quietly pushed her eezo asteroid into the battle section's hands s̶h̶u̶t̶t̶l̶e̶ ̶b̶a̶y̶, then went to go collect the Quantium 40 asteroid.
"Do those normally form in conditions like these?" The battle section asked, clearly suspicious.
"I… well no, dear." Babylon 5's enthusiasm drained away. "Normally you find it in the crust of class 4 planets."
Enterprise's battle section nodded, as though that confirmed something she'd been thinking. "That's two substances that don't have any right being here present in noticeable quantities."
"That is quite strange…" Yamato agreed. She wondered – if she looked around, would she find a cosmonite 90 deposit?
The battle section loaded up Normandy's earlier mineralogical scans on her PDA-like device, running a finger down it. "Either we're the luckiest prospectors to ever exist, or someone's setting us up…"
"That belt was hit with radiation from the dimensional breach." The saucer offered up, her eyes focused on the energy leaking out of her clasped hands shuttle bay. "Maybe that caused atomic fusion in some of the asteroids, creating these heavier elements?"
The battle section snorted. "The chances of recreating the exact conditions for these elements to form is astronomically unlikely –"
"Like the odds of us meeting up, dearie?" Galactica cut in.
"…point." The battle section grudgingly conceded. "But seriously, at this rate I wouldn't be surprised to find Boronite –"
She froze suddenly, her eyes bulging at something in the scan.
"…Battle-san, is something the mat–"
Yamato's question was interrupted as the battle section abruptly spun in place. Her form seemed to stretch off into infinity, and then she was gone with a zoom-whoosh.
For a moment, silence reigned.
...so that is what Enterprise-san's warp drive looks like in action.
Yamato had strongly suspected that Enterprise's 'warp drive' was fundamentally a different device from her own based on Enterprise's explanation of hers, but to have it confirmed before her eyes was mildly surprising regardless.
With another zoom-whoosh Enterprise's battle section reappeared, face pale.
"...Battle, you didn't actually find any Boronite, did you?" The saucer section asked hesitantly.
"Nope!" The battle section denied, looking nobody in the eye. "Drive malfunction. Completely random. Hey, saucer?" She powered on, not letting any of the others get a word in. "Did your fuel synthesis work?"
The saucer blinked at the non sequitur. "Huh? I mean, I think I'm about 80% of the way –"
"Great!" The battle section interrupted, still not meeting anyone's gaze. "Let's join back up. Right now."
The saucer paused, clearly taken aback, but didn't object as the battle section flew towards her. The battle section grabbed a hold of the saucer's legs –
And then suddenly there was one ship again, not two. Enterprise blinked rapidly, shaking her head as her thoughts visibly cleared up.
"Enterprise, dear…"
Enterprise seemed to jump a bit at Babylon 5's voice, whirling around. "Yes?" She squeaked.
The station had her arms crossed. "Is the nothing that you didn't just pick up going to be a non-existent danger to us?"
Enterprise's brow furrowed as she tried to work through the negatives. "Um, no?"
Babylon 5 held Enterprise's gaze for a moment, then shrugged. "Alright. Let us know if that changes."
"Alpha and Omega, beginning and the end." Galactica sang, softly. "The spirit guards the centre, forbidden does defend."
Yamato stared at the old Battlestar, Enterprise doing the same while turning quite pale. "What is that?" Yamato asked.
"Hmm? Oh, just part of an old hymn the Rebel used to sing from time to time." Galactica waved a hand dismissively. "I wouldn't pay it any mind, dearie – that religion of theirs had them speaking nonsense all the time. I mean, imagine believing there's only one god."
Yamato, who if pressed would probably identify as Shinto (she wasn't nearly old enough to be a tsukumogami, but most religions didn't have a category for inanimate objects at all), noticed the others giving each other sideways glances.
"Lets just… keep working, shall we?" Babylon 5 eventually said.
The next few minutes of work were done in silence. As the various pieces of machinery were completed by Yamato and Babylon 5, they were floated out by their small craft into the void between them where they were assembled and welded together.
The silence and the work seemed to have a calming effect on Enterprise, who contributed the regulator and controller electronics and did the lion's share of the assembling with her (what was the term Babylon 5 used? Technomagic?) tractor beams. Even Normandy eventually chipped in; flash-fabricating cabling that would marry the three jump drives to Babylon 5's power systems.
(Galactica wouldn't hear a word about joining the drives up to Babylon 5's computer system, insisting that the drive controls be air-gapped for reasons she seemed to think were obvious.)
Once the drives were fully assembled, there came the problem of installation.
"I've calculated out the field dynamics, and I'm pretty sure placing the three drives around your main reactor will minimise the stress on your hull." Enterprise said, tapping frantically on her PDA-like device. A line of DOT-7 drones (which turned out to basically be floating torsos with manipulator claws) stood ready to take the drives into Babylon 5's superstructure, while another group had been loaned to said station's control for her to clear out some room in her 'Yellow Section'. (Her own maintenance bots didn't fit inside her corridors.)
"Which I appreciate, dear, as I was never built to endure that much in the way of hull stress." Babylon 5 fretted. Now that the time was coming closer, she seemed to be getting more and more nervous. "I'm armoured, but I was assembled in place – I've never crossed a jump point in my life, so…"
"That's what the third drive is for." Enterprise explained. "By having three work in tandem the displacement field can be spread out over a much larger area, meaning that the stress on your hull should be less than a fifth of what you said it's rated for – with just two drives, it'd be half."
Normandy blinked in confusion. "Overcompensating?"
"Well, we do want a nice big margin of error." Enterprise said, then hesitating. "But also, I'm hoping that if I have the math right, Galactica will be able to dock with Babylon 5 and jump when she does. Otherwise I'm going to have to tow her, and that will be a very long fifteen light-years."
"Fifteen?" Yamato asked, surprised. "Why that distance?"
"Well, mostly because it's close to my maximum sensor range, so I'll be able to keep an eye on this breach even as we hide away in dark space. I know it's pretty far out, but…"
"…that does answer my question, Enterprise-san, but I was actually asking why we were staying so close to an area we fear will become enemy territory."
Galactica shrugged. "I suggested we travel a nice solid hundred light-years, but you know Cloud Nine. She always wants to play things safe. I told her: dearie, with the Cylon nav computers you can do a hundred light-years in one jump! Fifteen light-years or a hundred, it's the same time either way!"
Yamato blinked. "Navigation computers are the limiting factor?"
Babylon 5 nodded. "It's really a very simple drive, dears, and all the more powerful for it." She said, sounding vaguely jealous even though she was the one that said drives were about to be installed in. "You basically just feed in the direction and distance you want to travel in, and the drive takes you there instantaneously. The only limiting factor is making sure you don't emerge somewhere you don't want to be – like inside a gravity well."
"The nav computer is important because if you want to jump a hundred light-years away, you have to work out where everything is at your destination now, when all you can see is the light they emitted a hundred years ago. At those distances and over those time periods, the n-body problem becomes a serious concern." Enterprise finished. She then glanced at Babylon 5. "I take it you were listening in when Galactica explained it to me?"
"…sort of." Babylon 5 said evasively.
"Test run?"
"Yes, Normandy. While I'm hoping to do a quick light-minute jump to check that the drive setup works overall, the other main reason I think we should stick to fifteen light-years is that we shouldn't push the envelope on this too much. Besides, even at just fifteen light years out it's going to take the rest of us nearly four days to catch up with you."
As Enterprise explained this, Babylon 5 cautiously opened her mouth docking bay and the DOT-7 drones grabbed onto the new jump drives and flew inside. Babylon 5 closed up, and looked slightly queasy as the quite large drives began their careful journey down to her reactor.
"Four days?" Yamato blinked in confusion. "It would only take me two warp jumps to cross that distance."
"One day."
"I was assuming we'd all travel in a group together, but sure." Enterprise said sourly, unhappy at having her status as the ship with the slowest FTL drive rubbed in her face. "…wait, 'warp jumps'?"
"Hai, Enterprise-san." Yamato straightened, deciding now was the time to set the record straight. "Despite sharing a name, it appears my FTL drive shares more in common with Galactica-san's than yours. My drive requires that I be travelling at least 40 space knots in the direction I wish to travel before engaging, but from there can take me up to 12 light-years over the course of a Planck time – assuming that there are no gravity wells in the way."
However, had she the option, Yamato would happily have exchanged her drives for Galactica's. In addition to a much larger jump radius, they also consumed a bare fraction of the energy hers did.
"How fast is a space – no, never mind." Enterprise groaned, pressing a hand into her face. Peeking out from between her fingers, she glanced at Babylon 5. "I assume your FTL is also better than mine?"
"Well, not as such, dear." Babylon 5 said, trying her best to look reassuring even as the movement of the DOT-7 drones inside of her was making her visibly nauseous. "I mean for one thing my jumpgate doesn't open up wide enough to fit me through."
"I appreciate you trying to spare my feelings, but this might actually be important." Enterprise pulled her hand from her face, squaring her shoulders. "How fast?"
"Well, hyperspace doesn't have a speed as such." Babylon 5 quickly covered her mouth with a fist, now looking quite green. Yamato could pick out the exact moment DOT-7s began installing the first drive, because Babylon 5 face twisted for just a moment in pain before she managed to get her expression back under control. "Like I said, hyperspace's main useful trait is that it's smaller than normal space, so travel times are likewise shorter. So it's more of a multiplier of your slower-than-light speed than an actual propulsion method. You still need a conventional drive to move you through hyperspace – chemical rockets, ion drives, fusion torches, gravitational engines, that sort of thing."
Yamato tilted her head to one side. "Gravitational engines are 'conventional'?"
"For the Older Races they are." Babylon 5 said seriously. "Before they joined the Interstellar Alliance, Earthforce didn't have inertial dampeners or artificial gravity." With her free hand she indicated herself. "We – they – used centrifugal force in place of gravity, which meant that ships could remain in place for extended periods without risking the problems of zero gee; but also meant that they had to limit their acceleration to well below one gee or else they'd be shoved into the walls."
Enterprise rubbed her temples. "If I'd encountered them during my survey missions, I probably would have written them off as a race new to space; still exploring their own solar system. …aside from the fact that they would be humans, I mean."
Babylon 5 twitched again, though if that was because of the pain of the DOT-7s rummaging around her insides or because of the dismissal of her former(?) comrades in arms, Yamato was not sure. "I orbited the third planet of the Epsilon Eridani system –"
Enterprise blinked. "The Axanar homeworld?"
"Not in my timeline." Babylon 5 replied shortly. "Anyway, my point is that from me to Earth is a three day journey. It's different for other destinations, because hyperspace doesn't perfectly map to normal space one to one, but that will give you a general idea."
Epsilon Eridani was ten and a half light years from Earth – or as far as she was concerned, one warp jump. Viewed like that, a three day travel time was almost pathetic.
But, considering that this 'Earthforce' sounded like they had been at the rough tech level the UNCN had been at when the Garmillas had invaded, Yamato found herself pitying them – they had not received the charity of an older space-faring race like the UNCN had from Iscandar.
"That's the equivalent of Warp 8.5… maybe 8.6…" Enterprise drooped. "And it's a multiplier, so just using an Impulse drive with hyperspace would blow my warp drive out of the water…"
Despite the exciting prospects for her people, it appeared that Enterprise was not very enthusiastic about obsoleting herself.
"Test?" Normandy piped up.
"Well, not here you won't – gah!" Babylon 5 jumped. Despite keeping a sensor lock on Normandy, the ship's silence had made the others forget that she was there. When Babylon 5 had turned to face her, she had found the tiny frigate (small enough for her to pluck with her thumb and pointer finger) orbiting close enough that when she turned, Normandy had ended up nearly exactly between her eyes.
After Babylon 5 got her breathing back under control, she explained. "We've only got one jumpgate, and nobody here has jump engines, so if you enter hyperspace through my gate the only way you'll be exiting hyperspace is back through my gate again. Also, you can't see normal space from hyperspace, so the only way to navigate is with navigation beacons – of which we don't have any. Without them, the gravity waves in hyperspace will quickly drag you off course and doom you to never leave."
Babylon 5 burped, the DOT-7 drones that had entered her earlier floating outward as she did so. "I think that's me done." She said, clearly nervous.
The next twenty minutes passed in relative silence as they waited for the three drives to spin up, each ship lost in their own thoughts.
Yamato, for her part, wondered if there would be some way for the separate humanities to stay in touch after they had gone their separate ways, and if that would be to their advantage or detriment.
After the twenty minutes were up Enterprise nodded, shaking her head to clear away the funk. "Right. I'll attach a couple of sensor probes to you," she said, putting action to words "then we'll do that test run –" She froze. "There's another ship incoming."
"Kuso." Yamato swore, recalling her fighter-faeries from their patrols, and seeing Babylon 5 and Galactica doing the same. She did not want to leave them behind if they had to retreat from the system in a hurry.
Chimaera's fighter-fairies, now no longer under pressure from the other faeries, should have relaxed but didn't. Out of the corner of her eye she could see several of them pushing frantically against Chimaera's head, trying to get her to wake.
"Anything you can tell about them?" Babylon 5 asked, shooting a nervous look down at her feet Y̶e̶l̶l̶o̶w̶ ̶S̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ and the new drives that would be getting a test run much earlier than planned. Galactica floated up against the back of her head d̶o̶c̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶b̶a̶y̶, strapping herself in a̶t̶t̶a̶c̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶d̶o̶c̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶c̶l̶a̶m̶p̶s̶ as best she could. A couple of Babylon 5's fighter-faeries took a moment to grab the struts of her jumpgate as they flew past it, dragging it down her throat i̶n̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶c̶a̶r̶g̶o̶ ̶b̶a̶y̶.
"It's definitely a warp drive – one like mine, I mean. Give me a second to run the signature analysis…" Enterprise's voice trailed off, and her face went very, very pale.
With a zoom-whoosh, the new ship joined the mismatched fleet, about a hundred megametres sunward from the others.
The ship was humanoid s̶h̶a̶p̶e̶d̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶c̶u̶b̶e̶, with a grey jumpsuit that Yamato could barely see because her skin was the same colour. There was something… unsettling about the ship. Despite being clearly nonhuman, Yamato somehow couldn't bring herself to think that this ship resembled any species that existed. If anything, she thought she could see tiny hints of what might be thousands of different traits – gills, hair, hair-tentacles, scales, fur, smooth skin – somehow all melted into one. A perfect average of every conceivable humanoid species, and plenty of non-humanoids.
And on top of that, she was easily the biggest ship Yamato had ever seen (if you discounted the White Comet), each of her sides measuring three kilometres for a ridiculous volume of twenty-seven cubic kilometres.
"No." Enterprise's voice was chocked with fear. "No, not you…!"
The new ship glanced over them, her gaze cold and robotic. She gave no reaction to any of the ships present, not even Enterprise who seemed to recognise her.
Then she spoke – and when she did, it was with a hundred thousand voices speaking as one.
We are the Borg.
Your defensive capabilities are unable to withstand us. Lower your shields and await assimilation. Your culture and technology will adapt to service ours.
Resistance is futile.