My apologies for not updating this story sooner, but I have been spending a long month doing other things which drew my attention but I have not forgotten this story and I have dozens of ideas for it, ideas which go far beyond the creation of another Federation in the Babylon 5 universe.
As usual, enjoy and I don't own Babylon 5.
A New Space Age.
Mars. The first major planetary colony of the human race, and the first real planet visited by humanity when the species had developed spaceflight despite having the technology needed to send out primitive space probes and build space stations in modular form so it could be developed without it being constructed on planets and then requiring a massive amount of fuel to get it out into space.
While the majority of the human race had been stranded and imprisoned on their homeworld and unable to leave in a spacecraft unless it was a purely interplanetary vessel, the Minbari had taken the trouble of relocating the surviving colonists on Mars and sending them to live on Earth. There had still been a few people on Mars who were struggling to survive following the Battle of the Line, but when the Minbari became more organised and focused their attention on the solar system colonies, they relocated as many humans as possible.
It was the interstellar equivalent of a line of prisoners being forced into a line before an execution squad. As with Earth, the Minbari had likewise invaded Mars and the other Sol colonies. While the Red Planet was more sparsely populated compared to Earth considering the massive differences between the two worlds, the Warrior caste hadn't been concerned. They had despatched a few war cruisers and they had bombed Mars from space, laying waste not only to the planet's surface but they had destroyed the domed structures of the colonies which let in sunlight for hydroponic facilities for food and for oxygen production. The Minbari had rightly believed their loss would force the humans on the planet to both starve and suffocate.
Once the Warrior caste moved in, they found little to no resistance but there were pockets who just fought on out of stubbornness while they fought as hard as they could against the invaders. They believed if they were all going to die, they would take as many Minbari Warriors with them. Many died on both sides. But it was ultimately hopeless, and the population on Mars was moved en-masse to Earth anyway.
The Minbari were planning on wiping out the whole human race, so it made sense for their leaders to plan out their strategy by forcing every human in the galaxy into one place so the Minbari could wipe them out and ensure they didn't need to burden themselves with humanity ever again, and hunting them throughout the galaxy.
Mars and the moon were the first priorities for recolonisation as soon as humanity's space fleet was launched, and the colonies were currently thriving once more, although the damage the empty and abandoned colonies had suffered during the Minbari invasion had been repaired by now, and they had safely been redesigned with the latest technologies. Plans for their expansion were already underway, so the colonies would be bigger and much more self-sufficient than the colonies in the past.
But as she stood on the surface of Mars, letting the Martian weather slam into his protective suit while she breathed gently through her atmosphere mask, Dr Mary Kirkish, once a respected IPX xenoarchaeologist, now a xenoarchaeologist for Space Fleet, was overlooking the excavation a discovery made from sonic scans taken of the Martian lands. The sonic probes had been part of a newly updated survey of the geology of the Martian landscapes near the cities of the planet.
It was well known that in the past Mars had once been an Earth-type world. It was on this planet xenoarchaeologists and their necessity were brought in. The ancient people of Mars had once been a space-faring society, but over the centuries due to their world's lack of an electromagnetic field, they had moved their civilisation off-world. Some suggested, inspired by a British science-fiction franchise, the Martians had tried to colonise Earth, but the presence of early Man dissuaded them from their endeavours. Aside from the ruins consisting of tombs and buried cities that were submerged beneath the red sands of Mars. It was similar to the excavation of Pompeii, really, only instead of a city buried by a volcanic eruption, the Martian settlements were undamaged and unspoiled by nothing more than a few meteorites.
But the ruins had not only opened up Mars to the whole of space, Earth had known for some time when they'd developed the knowledge and understanding of basic tachyonics and discovered tachyons were being artificially transmitted across the galaxy which indicated faster than light communications which staggered many people, but the ruins of Mars showed life existed everywhere. While the ruins spoke of an architecture built on similar lines to those on Earth, the Martian city was a thing of alien beauty.
And knowledge, although granted the type of knowledge was quite basic as the aliens had not been as technically advanced as the Centauri had been, although they were more advanced than the Centauri and even the Markabs in comparison in certain key areas. The ruins had helped refine humanity's knowledge although a lot of it came from human experience and expertise.
She loved coming to the ruins of Mars, ever since she had gotten her PhD in xenoarchaeology. Just looking at the Martian cities had been a symbol of awe for her. The ruins of Mars had been opened up for tourism, leisure and scientific study. The money tourists paid went into the development of the Martian colonies, and it had once supported the excavation of more of the Martian cities for study and paid for the scanning of the Martian landscapes to determine the locations of other ancient settlements in the hopes of learning more of the people who had once lived on Mars.
Earth knew a great deal about the aliens and their language, which was mathematical rather than linguistic which made translating their words and their thoughts easier than expected, although there were still many gaps in their knowledge. Thanks to the aliens, Earth had developed fusion technology to the point where it was small enough and more efficient, and thanks to them they had gained a better knowledge of intersystem travel, as well as a few star charts of the local areas of space, more detailed than anything previously pioneered on Earth.
That knowledge really helped the Earth Alliance develop the groundwork for the mass colonisation of their region of the galaxy. Unfortunately, the Martian cities hadn't had any kind of knowledge of jump gate technology. In fact, there was no knowledge of hyperspace at all. That meant either the aliens had no knowledge of hyperspace, or they had knowledge of a completely different method of interstellar travel that was unknown currently to Earth for the time being. Mary hoped that was the case. She believed now she knew of the point Earth had followed the lead of too many alien races, which had hindered humanity's development as an interstellar power. But on the other hand, it was possible they had tried, as Earth and countless other races in the galaxy, to break the faster-than-light barrier in normal space and they'd failed. But then again it was possible they hadn't, and they'd discovered as Earth had out of desperation to escape the prison imposed on them by the Minbari more than anything else, a means of using engines which warped space using hyperspace and the other dimensions.
Nobody knew.
There was also a chance the ancient Martian civilisation had found a means of opening up a form of jump point without quantium-40, but nobody knew yet. If there was one thing every xenoarchaeologist agreed upon, it was they had not yet completely discovered all of the ancient Martians knowledge, which was dotted about in undiscovered cities and enclaves, which likely contained untapped libraries which had been sealed for many millennia.
Another possibility was they knew of hyperspace and they had a totally different method for travelling in it, but they had it as a closely guarded secret. It made little sense, given how detailed their previous work and knowledge of science and technology was. They were in the Stellar Age of galactic technology, the same Earth had been and still currently was, although many considered that humanity had achieved a 'Centauri or Dilgar level of development.' Mary wasn't sure if that was the case, but it was possible they were somewhere in between. It was hard to be sure considering how isolated they were now.
Ever since the occupation where the Minbari destroyed as much of human space technology as they could in order to make the imprisonment of her race on their world, humanity had tried to rebuild as best as they could. Fusion drive had gotten them back into the stars but it was the discoveries in mathematics and using the latest knowledge in physics that had allowed them to develop the technology for artificial gravity which didn't make use of gravimetric and electromagnetic fields which the Minbari and the Centauri used.
And, let's face facts, no race possessed faster-than-light drive technology. The current warp drive was the holy grail, the key to getting humanity back into interstellar space. But as a scientist, Mary had heard rumours Space Fleet were looking for other ways of travelling faster-than-light. Daystrom had made it his life's work to make humanity stop being dependent on alien hardware, and so far dozens of people were following his example, but many of them were looking for ways of shortening the technological gaps between humanity and the Minbari. She had heard rumours of a lightspeed drive which barely passed the faster-than-light barrier, involving neutrinos being spewed out like a water sprinkler or a hydrojet, but what the point of that was, she did not know. A more promising and likely rumour had been of a scientist coming up with a discovery involving tachyon particles and using it to create an FTL drive.
Would it work?
She did not know.
Mary knew many wanted a rematch with the Minbari at some point, and personally, she wasn't surprised. That was why there was such a massive study in every scientific field, both to improve human life and also to find a way of bridging the almost unassailable gap between them and the Minbari. She hated the Minbari much as everyone else did, but she didn't know what kind of weapons they had which could make a new war better. But Mary was a scientist, she didn't want to go through another war. She wanted to continue her work.
That was one of the reasons why she was back on Mars. But as she looked down at the massive hole that showed just how extensive the excavation was, she wondered if this was a new site that would reduce the mystery of the Martians.
She often thought about them. Did they have a massive empire? Were they destroyed like so many ancient cultures had been in the past - IPX before it had been lumped with Earthforce to create a new space-exploration and defence agency had discovered dozens of worlds scattered throughout the known galaxy to the edge of the Rim which had been clearly destroyed?
Mary wasn't sure what it was. When she had heard of the find the Phoenix had made of that drifting asteroid and the people within, it had gotten her thinking and wondering if the aliens on Mars had survived to this day or if they had passed on.
It had been a long time since she had seen a dig like this, and while she was upset it was not the type of work she would have wanted considering the priorities back home were to reclaim and rebuild the colonies and fortify them so then nobody ever tried to wipe them out again, it was possible for Mary to pretend she was out on a dig. It wasn't hard.
In the meantime, Mary was interested in what was buried deep beneath the Martian soil. The sonic scans had definitely picked up something unusual buried deep beneath the ground, and it was buried so far down Mary and the other members of the xenoarchaeology team had agreed that whatever it was, it had been buried for a thousand years or so, maybe less. There was no way to know. As the teams of excavators worked as quickly as they could to unearth the object, Mary knew whatever it was the object was unlikely to be anything relating to the Ancient Martian civilisation, but at the same time, Mars had always proven to be both a treasure trove in xenoarchaeology circles and yet it had proven a dead end as well. Many times over the years teams of researchers had been sure they had detected something on their instruments, but it had sometimes proven to be not an ancient city reclaimed by the weather of Mars and swallowed up until there was nothing of it, but it was could be something mundane.
Mary wished she knew which one this was. But since all of Earth's resources were currently split between rebuilding the damage caused by the war, building up new generations of ships, and getting everyone back out into space while making sure the whole human race was well fed and healthy, xenoarchaeology expeditions such as this one were hard to come by and thin on the ground despite the calls for new technologies despite the consensus Earth needed to develop their own hardware as well.
X
Some distance away from Mars, a large number of ships were entering the Underspace on their way to several colonies while others were sending small groups of settlers to determine if worlds far beyond the territories of other races could support and sustain human life in order to allow new colonies to grow.
Fortunately, some of the older models of commercial liners had been left intact when the Minbari decided to focus their attention towards Earth, although many of them had been destroyed as they carried refugees away from the colonies when the Minbari jumped out of hyperspace. While the Minbari had been overzealous in their crusade to exterminate humanity while wiping out all traces of human civilisation which included everything from books and artwork to space ships, the Minbari had soon given up when they were made to concentrate their attentions on Earth itself.
As a result, many of the old freighters and passenger liners had been left intact. None of them were jump capable, which had only raised the panic a lot higher they would never reach the stars beyond Earth again. When they had gotten back into the solar system, the humans had recovered their old ships and they had relied on them to provide a ready-made fleet while what remained of Earthforce before it was changed over to a new organisation had the means and resources to construct a new space fleet.
While the freighters and liners were old, some of them extremely badly damaged after being used for target practice by the Minbari during the occupation, they had provided to be a godsend and they had allowed humanity to return to the solar system and re-establish their presence in the home system.
Once the new organisation was finished with them, the old space liners had been placed on standby, waiting for the day where they would take people and cargo out into the galaxy to new colonies. Earth hadn't bothered to really upgrade the ships to be powered by warp drive although they had fitted them with gravity motors to eliminate the need for the rotational ring around the ships, aside from that and a few upgrades to the computers, the liners had been relatively left unchanged.
Escorted by a number of small attack ships and fighters which were the latest model of Starfury in production, the liners and freighters left the human home system, many of them loaded up with new colonists to rebuild the colonies lost in the war while escorted by soldiers with the cargo holds full of equipment to make it viable but it was hoped a lot of work would not be required in the long term. After the Phoenix had reported the planets were empty, Earth had despatched a number of teams to the colonies to take care of whatever dead corpses were left on the planets, and teams to try to hurriedly repair whatever damage had been rendered on the planets.
Earth wasn't in a major hurry to reclaim all of their homeworlds just yet any more than they were to really explore the Galactic Rim. All they were doing was slowly recolonising the worlds they'd lost during the war and sending out expeditions to the Rim in order to find worlds ripe for colonisation, but truthfully the senate knew it would take a long time for Earth to attain a higher population than it had before the war with the Minbari.
The plan was straightforward. Develop the warp drive and other new technologies while they explored the underspace to not be dependent on the underspace when it was discovered. At the same time, the population had risen while underspace exploration which was considerably simpler than hyperspace travel and exploration had ever been, yielded new worlds for colonisation while the old ones were checked to see if they were empty and hadn't been annexed by aliens.
Once that stage was completed, the Phoenix and her new sister ships which had been launched over the month and some of the newer warp drive ships and underspace vessels would escort the passenger liners and freighters to the old colonies while a few ships would head out to the areas explored by the Phoenix and her sister ships to begin colonies from scratch. In order to increase morale and show the population on Earth and the colonies in the Sol system, ISN was responsible for broadcasting and reporting the development of the pioneers.
X
The planet didn't have a name yet. It had been spotted by long-range scanners and it had been briefly listed by a routine Earth survey mission but at the time nobody on Earth had bothered to argue the benefits of setting up a colony on the planet. Colonising a world with regular technology was very expensive; the planet would need to be added to the beacon maps and a jump gate would need to be installed. Usually, the exploration of the planet and the solar system it was in to determine if the system had anything of interest to Earth would be undertaken by a small number of organisations who'd compete for the contract of establishing the colony's infrastructure.
When Earth first gained jump gate technology from the Centauri, they had quickly discovered while the technology was a boon and it ensured humanity's survival was assured since they had access to interstellar travel now, meaning they would be able to spread themselves throughout the galaxy, they had also learnt it was a time-consuming business. Hyperspace travel was incredibly hazardous and in the early days, many expeditions carrying colonists had just vanished. To this day nobody knew what had happened to them, and so as exploration teams went further out into the galaxy, humans dropped more than one tachyon beacon and added it to their map. That was one of the reasons why the Earth Alliance had taken so long to establish itself as an interstellar empire. It took months for a new region of space to be surveyed, charted, added to the beacon maps in Earth's stellar cartography libraries, and
On top of that, it took time for the colony to be established in the first place. Fortunately, they weren't the only ones; even the expansionistic Narns, Centauri, and the Dilgar had taken so long to reach their current levels. They had gone through the same things humanity had in the past. It had taken them all such a long time to learn the lessons humanity had needed to learn as they'd found the jump gates and therefore hyperspace.
But that was no longer a factor for humanity.
The discoveries of warp drive and underspace, and the promise of discovering new and more powerful forms of FTL technologies as Earth Gov was financing experiments into areas of physics. The war with the Minbari had changed a great deal. The aliens had taken away their only way of getting into the galaxy, and nobody in the Senate wanted that to happen again, and as a result, humanity was financing dozens of experiments to see if there was anything to the theories.
Enhancements to the warp theory, studies of modifying warp technology to create wormholes to go even further, and perhaps even travelling into other galaxies - the first human first contacts had made it clear only older, more experienced civilisations had the means of travelling to other galaxies because of the way hyperspace was usually 'dead' in the intergalactic void - and the mapping of the underspace were the only immediate studies since the tunnels represented not only interstellar travel, but potential gateways to other galaxies, but there were others.
It was thanks to the underspace exploration teams that the colony ships arriving in normal space near the sister worlds of four sharing an elliptical orbit of Earth-like planets although there were only enough ships to colonise just the one planet. So many people were now leaving the solar system, but Earth was mostly focusing their attention on the colonies which they had lost, and they were only planning on colonising a few of the worlds closer to the Rim to ensure there was a presence. In any case, all of the colony ships carried enough human embryos to ensure the rapid growth of the colony.
The small colony fleet had emerged from the underspace corridor over two hours ago, and now the humans were making the last minute plans to really colonise the system. The fleet was loaded down with equipment, people, farm animals and hydroponic gardens containing seeds, which would be carefully cultivated on the new planets. But it would be a slow job since they had no idea just yet if the cultivation would cause terrible side effects on the planets the humans planned to colonise.
On the bridge of the lead ship, the captains met with the colony commander. All of the ships had sent shuttles to the lead ships for the meeting, which had been going on for over an hour. As they made their deliberations, all of them were aware the entire thing was being recorded for posterity back home on Earth; the colonisation of this part of the galaxy was important history, given how this was the furthest collection of colonies established by Earth to be founded, the history was important.
"I think we should set up settlements near this river. According to our surveys, the river water is clean and harmless to human life. The river is nestled in this valley, ringed by these volcanic mountains, here, here and here. We know from our scans and surveys the land is fertile after centuries of volcanic activity, and so setting up farmlands won't be an issue," Captain Hawkins pointed at a blown-up map of the planet. "This world has two large continents, but we can set up several major settlements in this region…," Hawkins deftly manipulated the display controls and switched to a new image of another landscape. "These veldts extend for miles in every direction, and there were rivers and waterways which have only made the land more fertile.
"I say we focus our attention on this one continent for a while before we send out expeditions to the second continent and the smaller islands on the oceans. This way, we take our time and maximise our resources when we go down."
"That could take decades. Don't forget while Earth is still focusing its attention on retaking our old colonies, we will be expecting other colonists on their way here to these regions of the galaxy," another captain pointed out.
Captain Lochley, a long time veteran of Earthforce before the service collapsed and was later reorganised, leaned forwards to study the map closely. "Why don't we set up a few settlements in the first valley, not many but a few to take advantage of the fertility of the landscape. We do the same in the veldts of the same continent but we also concentrate on the second continent as well. This way we spread out more evenly so it doesn't take decades to colonise the planet. At the same time, I think we should also send teams to visit the islands on the planet and see about planting small towns or villages on them."
Captain Turner shook his head. "No, I think we should split up the colonists into two groups; one group will set up small settlements on the whole planet - continents, valleys, veldts, and islands on this planet. Once they're established, we grow the embryos and expand the settlements while we construct a transportation network across the planet; we have the technology to set up maglev and vacuum and monorail railways on both continents. With that, we can expand quickly across the planet. On another of the planets, we do the same thing.
"We set up small settlements, use the embryos sparingly and grow the colonies that way. If we make it work like that when the next batch of colonists arrive, they'll find two worlds that are on their way to being fully developed, and hopefully, by that point, the other planets clustered in this orbit will also have a few settlements."
Lochley turned it over in her mind. The idea certainly worked, but what worried her the most was they would be spreading themselves short. Apparently, she was not the only one who believed that.
Captain Reed leaned in. "I don't think we should split our number in two. I think we should send a quarter to one planet, and then another quarter to another, and so on. That way, when the next colonists come they find this solar system better developed. I agree we should scatter settlements across both planets and link them together with railways, and use the embryos, but you're all forgetting we need new colonies and quickly. While the previous ideas would work, it would take forever to really colonise this system."
Before anyone could argue or come up with another plan, there was an alarm klaxon.
"What the hell is going on?" Turner demanded. None of the captains could answer him; all of them were just as curious and concerned by the suddenness of the alarm. None of them had been expecting anything.
The mission commander tapped his communicator headset. "Report!"
Everyone looked at him, seeing as his jaw went slack with shock. "Are you positive?"
Silence.
More shock.
"Hold him there, we're on our way down!"
The mission commander tapped his headset. "You'd better come with me. I don't believe it!'
Ignoring the questions from his fellow commanders, the mission leader left the briefing room. With no alternative, the others followed him at a run as he jogged lightly through the corridors of the mother ship. They weren't jogging for long, and they arrived in one of the cargo bays which contained enormous crates containing materials, components, tractors and farm machines and equipment for establishing the colony. As the captains arrived they found there were a number of technicians already there examining the hold's stock. But there were also a number of security men, armed with PPGs and newer weapons.
But that wasn't the most shocking.
Standing near a tractor was a man wearing a casual jacket and trousers over an equally casual t-shirt. "Hello, everyone," the man waved with a jovial grin at the recorders following the captains.
The real shocking thing was the strange silver metal egg right behind him.
Until the next time.