PUBLISHED ON Oct 16, 2021

Prologue: Transition

The Q Continuum
Unknown Date
Unknown Time

If there was one thing Q hated above all else, it was being ignored. Certainly his fellow Q might have had good reason to do this given his prior indiscretions, but those were all in the past, or so they claimed. It really was hypocritical for them to still be mad at him for his introducing the Federation to the Borg far earlier than intended after everything. This was partially because it didn't work as intended, even if it had given the Federation a bit of a kick in the right direction, but also because of the insane scheme the others were trying to enact right now. That and it was also a completely derivative move based on his own failed stunt with the Borg. They couldn't even be original in their hypocrisy.

'Of all the things they could try,' his thoughts were angry, even as he paced the ways of the Continuum, 'they're messing with that stupid, stupid probe! Now granted at the time we thought adding our own little bits and pieces to it like everyone else was a good idea,' he shrugged. At the time it really had seemed like a generally fine idea. An endearing little probe finding its way across the galaxy for an unknown species, and everyone added onto it bit by bit, their own little mark to say "We were here and we helped this one on their way."
'How were we supposed to know it was going to backfire like that?' he groused. 'Atemporal nature aside, trying to monitor every single potential timeline is tiring work, and it's still not really possible to predict every outcome, no matter how accurate one's calculations. Doesn't change the fact they're messing with that probe again!' He flicked his wrist, bringing into view other times, other places, other beings. 'That it ascended only because Kirk intervened at the right time doesn't really matter. Especially with what the others are doing. They don't see that it will just make the situation so much worse in the long term. Getting the Federation to toughen up without turning them into a dystopic authoritarian state only works if they survive the things meant to get them there.'

He sifted through different timelines, even different universes entirely, trying to find something to help balance the scales. Enough of a challenge to certain preconceptions, enough of a spanner in the works to get the Federation ready for what was to come, but not something that destroyed the better parts of the Federation, not something that drove them into a dark age. 'Damn it all, I think something of Picard is rubbing off on me,' he thought ruefully, but there was an ever so slight smile on his face. He continued searching, there had to be something he could before the actions of his fellow Q brought things to ruin.

LV-3298, Xel'Naga excavation site
February 22, 2528, Koprulu Terran Calendar
1128

No matter how many times she looked out on the exterior, or studied the intricacies of the interior, Doctor Alison Altham was consistently amazed by the Xel'Naga and their architecture, and of course their technology. 'Okay, so one of them did go batshit and try to destroy the universe' she thought with a grimace, 'but they obviously weren't all bad.' She heard heavy footsteps behind her, and turned with a smile. "Morning, Omuryn. You're up early."

The big Protoss looked at her a bit grumpily. Usually the Protoss were all about discipline and work ethic. Omuryn was a slight exception, most often because he took it in a slightly different direction. That being that his work ethic was so extreme that, even accounting for the fact Protoss slept less than human on average, he still had a tendency to wake late in the morning, if he did at all. There had been a few times throughout the expedition that he'd just slept an entire day and then some. She didn't really mind given all the work he'd in helping to translate the runes and information found in the temple thus far, but that wasn't going stop her from ribbing him about it.

"Yes…good morning to you to, Doctor Al-tham…" he groused, his eyes still squinting against the morning light. She just chuckled and turned back to the temple.

"The SCVs finally cleared the blockage in the inner sanctum earlier this morning. You ready to delve into it?" Her exuberance was palpable, which to Omuryn right now was a mite more testing than what he believed to be her affectionate ribbing. Terrans were weird.

"Yes, yes," he waved his hand a bit dismissively, not that this nor his laconic tone deterred her. "I am brimming with excitement. I'm certain it will be another amazing find in a musty old tomb filled with stagnant air and maybe shattered pieces of technology whose function we can only guess." She rolled her eyes at this. For a Protoss, Omuryn was far from what one would call reverent. He had a knack for archaeological finds, but he looked at everything through a cynical and analytical eye. Maybe it was hard to blame him, given what had happened to the Protoss specifically during the End War, but it did make working with him, simply put, a pain in the ass at times.

"Aren't the Xel'Naga your gods?" Altham already knew the answer, at least at low level. "I thought you Protoss were all about proper reverence and all that." Omuryn shook his head, annoyed at the Terran's oversimplification.

"You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who worships the Xel'Naga as we once did, following the End War at least. We know they are all dead, the last of them, Amon, by the hands of the sector's inhabitants. There's a sort of reverence still, but it is not one shared by all Protoss, myself included. I do not deny the power or accomplishments of their species, and they certainly wielded god-like powers. But to call them truly gods, I…I do not believe I can, not anymore." She looked at him for a hard moment, before simply nodding and turning away.

"Well come on then, no need to be so damn dour," her earlier pep was back just like that, annoyingly enough. "Maybe we'll find something that'll make all this time and effort worth it!"

The inner sanctum was not what they expected. Or perhaps it would be exact to say they weren't sure what to expect. Altham and her team had all manner of theories based on findings elsewhere, but they were just that, theories. These ranged from damaged machinery, a shrine, a star chart, and many other things. These did not include a seemingly fully intact Xel'Naga device thrumming with energy.

"Huh…well would you look at that!" Altham's excitement was palpable and shared by many of the team, Terran and Protoss both. Whatever the machine was, it was very clearly active and waiting. Waiting for what no one was really sure. Of course, this meant that to Altham, the logical thing to do was to walk right up for what passed for a Xel'Naga control panel and wait for its holographic haptic interface, if it could be really called that, boot. Omuryn rapidly rushed to her side in about two steps.

"What are you doing!?" he demanded, whatever bleariness afflicting him earlier now gone. "For all we know this could be a weapon! We need to proceed carefully." Altham sighed, knowing he was right but not fully wanting to admit it, sometimes the safety precautions took the fun out of this job.

"Well, we need to confirm what it is! And since no ancient Xel'Naga defenses have tried to fry us yet, I'd say that's a good sign! Plus, their tech is fairly intuitive. We just need to-" A blinking icon on the interface caught her attention, and both she and Omuryn leaned in closely for a better look.

"Weird. I think this is something about…the translation is a bit off, but something regarding time and temporal dynamics?"

"I think the system is requesting permission to begin some manner of scan. Should we initiate it? There are no other reports of facilities involving temporal technology. Even what little such technology my own people possess would be primitive compared to the Xel'Naga. I don't think we should interact with this system. It may simply be too dangerous," the trepidation in his voice was slight, but to someone used to dealing with Protoss it was certainly there. Altham shrugged.

"Or this could be like a computer that's been offline for a while needing to reset and update its clock and date. If this is the first of this sort of tech, we won't know anything until we poke it. Even the translation I've getting from the system and runes around the room are incomplete and weird. Something about a gateway to new places. Could be a FTL system maybe?" Despite her professionalism, Altham raised her finger and brought it to the blinking icon. The moment she pressed it, she had no way of knowing, but in another place, a being she would have perhaps readily in some ways compared to Amon smiled, and raised his hand, fingers primed to snap.

The Q Continuum
Unknown Date
Unknown Time

For a brief moment, Q was confused. The snap should have enacted a temporal and spatial transition and deposited the sector, or at least a copy of it and its inhabitants, into the Alpha Quadrant, preferably somewhere between the Federation, Klingons and Cardassians. Instead, there was just the usual sound of his fingers hitting his palm, and then nothing happened. This confusion didn't last long as he soon felt two things. First, there was another presence incredibly close by, one at least on par with the Q and quite possibly above them. If it was something that could just sneak its way into the Continuum, completely undetected until now at that, then he wasn't going to discount the possibility of it being something beyond even him and his cohorts. Second, in about the same time it took him to process those thoughts, he felt a hand on his shoulder. With a sigh, he turned his head.

Standing there behind him was a human female with red hair, armor typical of one of the psionic operatives of the universe he'd been observing, and she was wearing what was perhaps the single most vexing smirk he'd ever seen. It was somehow at once both condescending and understanding, like a parent trying not to laugh at the antics of a child. He looked at her with a small degree of annoyance. That smirk only grew.

"What's the magic word?" she said teasingly, and clearly enjoying the moment of torture she was inflicting upon him. His frown deepened. "Come on, say it," her smirk grew into a grin. He rolled his eyes and huffed.

"Fine! Please!" his tone melodramatic and overblown and beyond frustrated, like a child asking for cookies before dinner. That grin became a coy smile.

"Good! Proceed with the snapping." He raised his hand again, fingers primed, and this time the sound of the snap rung throughout the entire Continuum.

LV-3298, Xel'Naga excavation site
February 22, 2528, Koprulu Terran Calendar
1239

The temple's inner sanctum was suddenly engulfed in a bright, blinding flash of white light, the flash spreading outward, leaving all in and outside the temple dazed and off balance. Despite this, Altham and her team were quick to recover, and much to her dismay the device no longer thrummed with power, it seemed to be totally inert. "Ah damn it! What the hell happened?!"

Omuryn shook his head, still trying to clear his eyes and letting out low psionic grumblings. "Well, congratulations, doctor," he couldn't have been more sardonic if he'd tried. "You appear to have broken whatever this device was, and thankfully it would appear no one was killed. Let us hope that is all you did."

Korhal, Imperial Palace
February 24, 2528, Koprulu Terran Calendar
1331

Valerian paced about his office. The Dominion Emperor was deep in thought and hounded by worry. There were already rumors circulating about Xel'Naga super technology gone mad, and he had no hard information with which to work. Two days prior there had been a mass activation of Xel'Naga artifacts across the entire sector. In most of the activation sites were reported massive, bright flashes of blinding light, but beyond that there had been no evident ill effects. This was not true for human potent psions, older Protoss, or especially the Zerg who had all been severely incapacitated, but otherwise what few reports he had pointed to an eventual recovery. What little he'd heard though had the Overqueen herself briefly incapacitated, and the Zerg diplomat said that the only thing she'd heard through the hivemind connection had been mutterings about smugness and mistakes. It was information that was both less than useless and only made his worry worse. He was dragged from his thoughts by the sound of his office door opening. Turning, he saw one of his aides hurriedly entering the room, carrying a datapad and a terrified look.

"What do you have for me?" his tone was commanding, but not unkind. Valerian knew that right now he had to be a model of calm, stability, even if he himself was terrified. The man gingerly handed over the pad.

"Long story short, sir," he started, voice trembling, "the full report is there, b-but frontier colonies and posts are picking up all sorts of chatter, sir. Lots of chatter, all of it from outside the sector. We're not alone in this. The Umojans are reporting the same thing, so are the Daelaam, and what little we've gotten out of them so are the Zerg. We don't know where it's all coming from sir, but it's all around the sector. We're not alone out here, not anymore, and we've got no idea who it is." Valerian paused to process this information, he'd read the full report soon enough, but already his mind was conjuring up shades of the UED's invasion when he'd been just a child.

"Bring our forces to an elevated alert level; I want the fleets on standby to move out. Get me in touch with Umojan Minister and Artanis! If Zagara is still incapacitated we'll proceed without her for now," he didn't want to assume the worst, but Koprulu had well since learned that just because someone was a new arrival didn't mean they weren't a threat, and he'd be damned if he'd let everything they'd built since his ascension to the throne, since the defeat of Amon, the peace that had been so hard fought and forged in blood and tears by all sides be torn down by some new invaders. It was paranoid perhaps, but he didn't want to take chances. He didn't want to appear overtly hostile, but nor did he want to appear that the Koprulu powers were operating from a position of weakness. He'd meet whoever or whatever came, preferably cordially, but if it came to violence the inhabitants of the sector were well versed in the art, and they would defend what was theirs. 'An open hand, armored but extended in friendship,' he thought to himself. 'We'll see what happens then.'

AN: So...hi, SB Creative writing, folks! Long time lurker on these forums, and this is my first time ever posting anything here. I think I've lurked these forums on and off since I was like...14 or so. Damn, I still remember when the site went down because of that stupid bird and when I first found Ignus Dei's old Deus Ex/Mass Effect crossover. Some of you may recognize me from the single quest I'm active in over in the quest section of the site, but beyond that I've mostly not really stuck my head out in CrW outside of an odd comment here and there.

So, first and foremost I apologize profusely for any issues with formatting. I forgot that SB's setup is a complete pain to work with in terms of making a readable format, and I forgot what exactly that meant for each line of dialogue. Even if they're proper paragraphs in a Word document, that sure doesn't necessarily translate the best to SB proper at times, but I'm tying to work around it. Any questions or critiques are very much welcome. In a lot of ways this is still a rough draft, but I've decided I was at the point where I had to post what I had or I'd never post period. So if anyone sees any errors or maybe something that needs tweaking, I'd appreciate being told.

I hope you enjoy this prologue and the following first chapter proper. I'm already working on the second chapter, but I can't promise the most consistent of update schedules. I've been trying to get back into writing, be it fics or "original" works for awhile now, and for whatever reason this idea kept bugging me and my muse decided to come back for this idea in particular, no idea why. I'm also starting a full time position next week, so of course that takes priority, but I'll try get updates out when I can. Also, before anyone asks, no this is not going to be a stomp fic or anything like that. First and foremost, those are boring as all hell. Second, I am a life long Trekkie and I wouldn't do that to one of the foundational settings that I grew up with, and even though Blizzard has gone to piss, I've got a genuine soft spot for their sci-fi RTS setting and its frankly enrapturing world building and characters (even though I suck at the game proper). So I assure you, if there's any stomping, it's going to serve an actual purpose and have actual impact. It's not just being to "X good, Y bad hahaha."

Also special thanks Follower38 and Myuu for being beta readers for this and the next chapter and for dealing with my inane ramblings.