As of now, this story is a crossover with Stargate Atlantis. I own none of the Star Trek franchise or Stargate Atlantis.
Please let me know what you think anyway.
A Different Future Unfolds.
The bridge rang with the distant echo of the torpedo impact which was absorbed by the Defiant's shields as the firepower of the Xindi warships washed over them, and there was a gentle rocking as if the Defiant was a boat being rocked by an ocean wave. Archer couldn't help but compare the impact of the Xindi weapons against the Defiant's shields with what could have happened to the hull plating of his own ship; there was no doubt in his mind the Xindi's superior firepower would cut through Enterprise's hull plating like a blowtorch through a pound of butter.
"Status report," Archer demanded, although he kept his voice calm. The gentle rocking of the impacts against Defiant's shields had the effect of this being some kind of simulation during a training session, so it took a lot for him to remember this was the real deal.
"A Xindi Reptilian ship's opened fire, no damage," an officer assigned to the Defiant but one Archer didn't know replied.
Archer studied the view on the main viewscreen. He watched as a swarm of Xindi Insectoid ships surrounded Voyager like a swarm of wasps, but regardless of how many times the devastating beams of bright blue energy struck Voyager's hull, none of the beams caused any kind of damage towards the Intrepid-class ship. Archer was certain the credit went not to the designers of the advanced 24th-century starship, but down to the ingenuity of the crew who had spent years in the Delta Quadrant. Archer had read through the mission logs of the Intrepid-class starship, and he had also spoken to the back copy of the EMH who had survived the transfer between that reality and this one.
The Emergency Medical Hologram, despite its acerbic attitude, was actually a fountain of information and it had seemed truly devastated by the loss of its crew, even though they had survived on some planet while their ship had been badly damaged and left adrift. Archer was slowly coming around to the idea of the hologram, who had become accustomed to the fact it was two centuries in the past. Already the hologram was revolutionising 22nd-century medical practices with its knowledge.
But Voyager wasn't the only thing that was fascinating him.
What Archer didn't understand was when Noys Lambent had snatched Voyager. From what the last log recordings in Voyager's computer made clear, the starship was on its way back to the Alpha Quadrant before the crew were beamed off the ship with everything they needed to survive and they became stranded on some planet, marooned on the very border of space separating the two Quadrants together.
The ship itself...
Had ended up in a reality not its own. Archer couldn't help but wonder why the time traveller would take those kinds of steps, but if what he had learnt from the Temporal Observatory Daniels had left, Voyager was one of the most important ships in Federation history. Their journey through uncharted space, which varied because of the many timelines due to its nature as a temporal nexus was one of the biggest steps in the development of the Federation, which ran concurrently with the events of the terrible Dominion War. Archer had studied the Temporal theory in the Observatory to better understand what the nexus was, but he hadn't understood all of it.
Apparently, there were moments in history where time wasn't completely fixed, and there were multiple divergence points that could go either way. Voyager, apparently, was one of those nexus points. It was so vital to history that anything could happen, but what worried him the most was what kind of consequence Voyager's crew being snatched off the ship like that, completely unsure of what was happening to their vessel, would have on history. But time travellers like Lambent didn't seem to care.
The Breen warship had an odd, bat-like, aerodynamic shape, but it was truly lethal. And agile. Archer watched as the Breen warship used its impressive agility to its advantage as it moved like an old-style fighter aircraft. The warship fired four photon torpedoes towards three Xindi Reptilian ships; one torpedo slammed into the fore section of a ship, a second hit the port section of another, and the other two split the third ship in half. Archer winced despite his general lack of pity towards the aliens who were launching a vicious war against his people when he saw the fires which indicated the Xindi ships were bleeding atmospheres out into space.
The Breen warship featured an energy dampening weapon. But Starfleet wanted to reserve that weapon for later, and T'Pol, who had been assigned to it, had been given orders not to use it. In the meantime, the Dominion warship was proving that despite its size, it was definitely lethal. The phased polaron beam cannon the ship had at its disposal, even if Trip was having trouble adjusting to the Dominion headset - why somebody would ever construct a ship which had no viewscreen, Archer had no idea. Okay, he could understand the idea the Dominion's Jem'Hadar 'First' and the Vorta commander would feel the need to see what was ahead, but what about the rest of the crew?
Still, he only hoped the EMH's inventive neural interface held up. The EMH had studied the Dominion headset with the help of a few engineers, and they had come up with a creative way of allowing the human brain to interact with the technology.
But regardless, Archer had to admit the Jem'Hadar warship's forward cannons seemed to cause more damage to the Xindi in a subtle manner. The polaron beams cut through the Xindi shields as if they weren't even there, before punching through to the Xindi ships' systems. Meanwhile Defiant and Voyager were shredding the Xindi warships while blockading them against Earth. But the trouble with blockading a planet against a larger force, the more precautions you tried to take such as the transporter mines and the phaser cannons built with the knowledge of the Temporal Observatory Database taken from Daniels and augmented with 23rd-century technology, it was just harder to protect what you were trying to protect.
Archer took a deep breath and turned his head to the communication station as he tried to push aside the question he would need to ask, but he had something else to concentrate his mind on for the moment. "Any word from our hail?" He asked. Early in the attack, Archer had sent a message to the Xindi. He had hoped to end this despite everything they had done despite his desire to make them pay for the lives that were lost.
The communications officer checked the control board but shook their head. "Nothing, sir."
Archer frowned. He wished that he had his own regular senior officers on board the Defiant with him - he and his crew had learnt how to work like a well-oiled machine, but all of the Enterprise's senior staff had been assigned to the various ships. While the technologies of the Defiant and Voyager, not to mention the Breen warship and the Dominion ship was beyond them, their experience more than made up the gap.
Archer turned to the helm officer, wishing he had Travis with him but Travis was currently in command of Voyager. "What's the status of the blockade?"
"It's holding sir. All of the ships are keeping the Xindi at bay, but we're getting reports from Earth and Starfleet Command; some of the Xindi ships, mostly Insectoid, are squeezing past the blockade. They're launching striking attacks against the cities, but the ground to space Verteron Array cannons are destroying them."
Archer nodded. Enterprise and the crew had been back in Sol for the last 3 months, and in that time they had been fighting off no less than a dozen Xindi attacks. Some of them were just hit and run terror attacks, with no more than a few warships, but there had been a number of devastating attacks much like this one.
Even without the futuristic ships, Earth had managed to put up a good fight, but the Xindi strategy was more psychological than anything else. They were hoping for humanity to make some kind of careless mistake, but during one of their last attacks the Verteron array on Mars incinerated five out of eight of their warships and crippled two more before the Breen warship and Voyager finished them off.
Now Verteron arrays were being arranged all over the solar system, clustered in space in multilayered rings in space and on the ground itself. The Xindi were having a hard time sending any more of their ships down to Earth, but they didn't stop trying even though they were tempting suicide. Archer was not a natural tactician. He had always fancied himself as an explorer, but he was good at thinking on his feet and he had learnt how to beat the odds more than once by using what was on hand, and what was around. But he had to admire the Xindi's tactics; they wanted humanity frightened and they had succeeded with their repetitive attacks and the small pinpricks over the last few months before launching attacks like this.
But humanity was getting stronger.
Earth had already learnt to have MACOs stationed on the ground following a vicious ground attack launched by the Xindi Reptilians, who had crashed their ship on the planet itself and found a group of harmless survivors whose only crime was being born human. The Xindi animals had slaughtered them without a thought, and a single MACO who had been issued with a crude copy of a 23rd-century Starfleet phaser which was already replacing the old phase and plasma pistols wiped them out.
Now, the MACOs were being distributed around the planet while the number of Verteron and plasma cannons were being doubled around the Earth. The deaths of those people were being used as a propaganda piece, and while Archer hated the idea he had to admit it was a very well thought tactic.
Borg technology was being reverse-engineered and, with the dubious assistance of the EMH who was already horrified by the idea of using the dangerously advanced and naturally lethal Borg cybernetics as weapons of war, but already primitive prototype battle suits were already being tested but it would take time for them to be issued to the MACOs and other soldiers.
Starfleet and United Earth's government were already making preparations for an army to be recruited and trained to better defend Earth from any kind of harm like this ever again. The idea of an army on Earth for the first time since the last World War sickened and worried Archer, but he couldn't see any other way for humanity to be given safety. There was only so much Starfleet and the MACOs could do, after all.
"Keep in contact with Starfleet Command and the Verteron Array commanders. I want to know if there are any weaknesses in the blockade; we're trying to keep the Xindi out, we don't want them going closer anymore," Archer said.
"Aye, sir."
"Captain, we're getting a message from Starfleet Command." Speak of the devil.
"Open a channel, but I want to continue seeing the battle," Archer ordered.
"Aye, sir."
Archer leaned forward in the command chair and watched as the view screen split into two views. "Admiral," Archer greeted Jackson as the admiral's face appeared on the screen while Archer could see a small formation of Xindi Reptilian warships moving far out of the weapons' ranges of the ships.
"Archer, the satellite network has picked up a distortion in the subspace field near Earth," Jackson's voice was even more grim than normal, but there was an underlying tone of fear in the admiral's voice. "We're picking up more Xindi ships."
Damn, just how big will this fight be? if we were more mobile, we'd be giving them an even pasting instead of letting them get close but we need to defend the planet while we wait for the newer cannon arrays to be finished. "Do we know how many more are coming through?" Archer asked while ignoring the gasps of surprise from the bridge crew.
"Sadly not. But judging from how large the Xindi vortex is, we estimate a large number of ships," Jackson replied although he sent Archer a sympathetic look. "Archer, this is the largest Xindi attack we've ever endured so far. We're sending out the first waves of refitted ships from Earth and Mars, and some of the new fighters. We want you to destroy it; we know photons will destabilise the matter stream of the vortex, but we don't know if the Xindi will have other ships coming in from other points, and we can't shake off that possibility. Do you think you can hold them with what you've got and what you're gonna get?"
Archer's eyes widened a little as he thought about the large number of ships that were being refitted even now with the technologies from all of the databases they'd acquired from the alternate Starfleet's and from the far future, to say nothing of the technologies from the Breen and the Dominion. He knew they were faster than other ships before they were refitted, although they were comparatively slower and less advanced than Enterprise, the new technologies had made them faster and agile, and they now boasted phase cannons and photon torpedoes, and a few of them had polaron beam cannons; Archer didn't know if any of those derivatives of the Dominion weapon were more powerful or weaker, but it would hopefully give the Xindi a lot of grief.
"So far the defences are holding out, sir. The transporter mines have destroyed dozens of ships, and the Verteron arrays have crippled or destroyed the ships that went closer to Earth, and the ships Lambent gave us are keeping up the blockade, but I don't know how long for," Archer said, unsure if he should have too much faith in the ships a time traveller had given them.
Jackson's expression was stern but Archer knew the admiral could see he had a point. "You will have to cope, I'm afraid, Captain. Still, we take your point. Good luck. Jackson out."
Archer sat back in his chair, thinking about what he had just learnt. He looked up at the helm officer. "You heard the admiral. Target the Xindi vortex. Arm photon torpedoes. Contact the other ships in the squadron, tell them to keep us and Earth covered."
"Aye, sir."
"Torpedoes ready, sir."
"Fire at will," Archer ordered.
Five glowing torpedoes fired from the Defiant sped away through a low-level warp field towards the Xindi Vortex. Several of the Xindi warships fighting against the blockade had obviously received the same notification Archer had a moment ago, and they turned to quickly travel to the vortex opening and protect their fellow Xindi, but the Starfleet commanded ships were just too quick, and several of them were shot down and added to the grand Xindi casualty list.
The torpedoes arrived just as the first ship appeared. The torpedoes struck the ship and the tunnel, and because the ship was partly still within the subspace field of the vortex it was destroyed instantly. The other torpedoes detonated and the explosion spread out like a rock being dropped into a lake with ripples and waves spreading outwards, but Archer knew the ripples here were blasting through subspace. How many Xindi were dying as the matter stream was broken down, he couldn't say.
I know we're at war, but does this do what killing on this scale does? Do I just accept it? Yes, it does if it means the safety of Earth. Archer thought to himself, feeling nothing but regret as he beheld the destruction of the Xindi vortex, but he hoped the subspace conduit was completely destroyed and would ensure the Xindi had problems forming another.
"Captain," the science officer or rather the officer at the science station interrupted his thoughts, but it was the hysteria in the woman's voice that caught his attention most of all. "Subspace fields are forming all around Earth, and even in the atmosphere."
"What? Show me!"
The view on the main screen changed as the Defiant interfaced with the local satellites and showed several Xindi vortices. "Magnify."
The image jumped, showing dozens of Xindi Insectoid ships. Already they were being destroyed or crippled by the Verteron cannons which had quickly adapted to sudden change and were picking the Xindi off a dozen at a time.
The chill settled into Archer's stomach as he realised what was happening. "They've tricked us," he whispered in horror. "They've shifted our attention away, and they've tricked us. Helm, turn us directly towards Earth. Contact Voyager, tell them to prepare high yield photons. Do the same on Defiant."
"Aye, sir."
"Take us in," Archer ordered, "ready the photons, but fire phasers at any Xindi target."
The Defiant threw itself at the Xindi warships. As the futuristic starship headed directly for the Xindi vortices, Archer clenched the sides of his new command chair, the communications officer gave an update.
"Captain, the first wave of fighters and starships is coming in."
"Put it up," Archer ordered, although a moment later he realised the command was redundant. A number of starships that Archer saw were a mix of old designs, but he knew these ships were brand new and augmented with Dominion weapons and phasers from the Defiant and Voyager. The much lower-powered polaron beam cannons were not as high powered as the ones on the Dominion fighter ship, but they were still powerful enough to heavily damage the Xindi warships, and there were many more of them.
Overwhelmed, many of the Xindi Insectoid ships were destroyed while the survivors fell back under a heavy barrage from not only the polaron beams and photon torpedoes from the new starships, but the ships were driving the Xindi closer to the verteron beam arrays. When they got closer the Xindi were under heavy fire, but Archer was ambivalent of how long they'd be helpless. In a moment the Xindi were going to come pouring out of the vortices, and they were going to be harder to fight than they were right now.
"Fire a high yield photon at those ships," Archer reached a quick decision that filled him with dread. He was determined to make sure none of the Xindi gained a better advantage.
"Fire when ready," Archer added a moment later, feeling sick to his stomach. C'mon you bastards, why won't you contact us? Surely by now, you realise you're beaten-?
Too late. The photon detonated, destroying five of the Xindi ships but crippling another three before they moved off towards the vortices.
"Is Voyager ready?"
"Yes, sir. They're standing by."
"Don't waste time. Just fire," Archer said.
The photons from both futuristic starships were launched towards the vortices. They impacted the regions of subspace instability, and they exploded sending shockwaves through the matter stream of the vortices.
"How many more Xindi ships are out there? What's their status?" Archer asked.
"There are only thirty more ships, the survivors are taking heavy fire and a number of them are taking serious damage. They're not gonna last much longer."
"Captain, sixteen - no twenty-three Xindi Reptilian ships are coming out of another vortex!"
"Another vortex? Why didn't we detect it earlier?"
"It was in the gravitational shadow of the moon, sir."
Archer considered the news. "Set a course for them, helm. It's time we became a truly vicious threat to the Xindi. I'm getting tired of just sitting inside a blockade."
"Yes, sir."
Archer took a deep breath - what he was going to order was high risk, but it was important. "Helm set a course for behind the Xindi ships. Engage at warp 7."
It felt odd giving an order to use a warp factor that was much greater than the maximum warp of Enterprise, but Archer was flexible. The helm officer turned his head to look at Archer incredulously. "Engage the warp engines in a solar system? Sir, that's dangerous-!"
"I know," Archer interrupted sharply, silencing the officer's protests instantly. "But we have to do it."
The officer held his gaze for a moment before he turned back and inputted a command into the helm console. He engaged when he was ready. The forward viewer showed the distant moon and the Xindi warships for a moment before they jumped into warp. It was curious, this new warp effect in Archer's mind. It was reminiscent of a wormhole from fiction, but it was quick and when Defiant emerged out of warp and turned sharply behind the Xindi warships. The helm officer didn't bother waiting, he opened fire instantly and Archer watched as the Xindi ships were overwhelmed by the photon and phaser barrages.
"Three of the ships have opened fire, no damage."
"Captain, there's another distortion. It's big…," the science officer reported before Archer could order a counterattack to the last one.
"Damn, more Xindi?"
"No…," the science officer's voice trailed off as if unable to believe it.
"What's wrong?"
"Distortion directly ahead!"
Archer's eyes widened as a massive starship appeared ahead. It was a gunmetal grey in colour with the traditional circular primary hull and the secondary hull, but it had three warp nacelles. But if ships had expressions, this one was frowning with narrowed eyes. It was a cruel look, and it was intimidating. But this frown was made more frightening by the large cannon underneath the saucer. Before the ship had even finished materialising, the cannon fired and the ship threw itself at the Xindi.
"Scan that weapon," Archer ordered. "Keep attacking the Xindi ships…"
Another ship appeared. It looked very primitive compared to the starship which had just thrown itself against the Xindi, and it wasn't doing anything. There was a pre-warp appearance to the ship, blocky with two large modules attached to the main body.
"Lambent! What are these ships about?" Archer hissed. The second ship fired blue beams of energy at the Xindi ships, destroying two of them before the entire fleet decided they'd had enough. Opening a new Xindi vortex, the Reptilian ships and surviving Insectoids fled back to the Expanse. Archer watched them as they left and he wondered how long they had to wait until the next time.
It turned out he wasn't the only one frustrated by this.
"Is it going to be like this all the time? The Xindi come, attack, attack, and attack, and then they piss off?"
"They've been doing it all the time, why should it be any different?"
Archer didn't bother reining the crew in. He knew how frustrated they were by this and the constant attacks. The Xindi had been attacking and retreating for so long it was becoming a weekly event, but what frustrated him a great deal was how they hadn't gone into the Expanse yet, but the new ships were not finished yet and they could not spare any ships Lambent had brought them unless they wanted to weaken Earth.
The communications officer put an end to the debate. "Captain, one of the new ships the time traveller brought is hailing us."
Archer turned to the communications station. "Do we know which one it is?"
"It's the first ship, the one which looks like one of ours."
"Put it through," Archer said, wondering what the time traveller wanted with him and why it always seemed to be him time travellers spoke to.
The screen changed and it showed a large expansive bridge, even bigger than Defiant's, but with a plush look from what Archer could tell.
"Hello, Captain. Sorry, I'm so late," Lambent chuckled to some private joke before she sobered, "but I've just brought you two new ships to add to your collection."
Archer closed his eyes. He was getting seriously tired of time travellers meddling in his timeline's history and he was even more worried about what the long term damage would be. But this woman didn't seem to care. Although truthfully why would she, this was not her timeline or reality. "Are you just going to drop one weapon off for us or what?"
Noys didn't seem bothered by his annoyance. "No, Captain. This is the last time you'll get this kind of help. You've got the ships I wanted to give you, but I want to help you become stronger and more powerful."
"And if we don't want your help?"
"Oh, but you do. I'll leave these ships behind for you to study, Captain. Oh, and you will thank me for this later, all in good time."
When the time traveller cut the connection, Archer sat in the command chair. "Take us back to Earth after we've transported some of the wreckage of the Xindi ships onboard."
"Aye, sir."
Archer knew the time travellers weren't going to stop, but he doubted he could ever thank them for ruining time for them all.