Happy new year - yes, I know it's February, same difference.

Sorry, I haven't updated for a while but I'm back now and I hope that you enjoy what else I've got in mind for this story. Oh, one of the previous reviewers have been saying I'm making the Star Trek universe into the Babylon 5 universe; in a way, you're right because the Star Trek universe is too optimistic and their awareness of the real world is not that great.

Also, no - I'm not just going to focus on Earth.

Please let me know what you think.

A Different Future Unfolds.

"Starfleet Command to squadrons 3,4,5,7,9, and 12; prepare for hyperspace jump. Your orders are to prepare to head into Xindi space and launch the retaliatory strikes using information gleaned from Xindi computer records."

The order was blasted through subspace to every single Starship waiting in the solar system, and when they received the orders every single ship from the new NX-class cruisers started getting themselves ready. From facilities all around the solar system, NX-class ships warped into attack formations. Some of the ships like the Asgard cruiser would be remaining behind to protect Earth against further Xindi reprisals and counter-attacks. In the meantime, the Xindi council survivors would be imprisoned before they were tried for war crimes against humanity, along with any other Xindi survivor of the initial attack. Thanks to the Asgard, the Terran Empire and Voyager transporter technologies, the Xindi had been beamed away and placed in protective custody.

As he sat in the command chair of his temporary command, Jonathan Archer was lost in thought for the moment. Archer knew Enterprise was going to be sent into the Expanse; as the Vulcans would claim it was logical since his ship and his crew had been on the frontline of exploration for two years before the Xindi war began they were forced to become soldiers rather than explorers. Granted, several of his crew had been reassigned to other ships, with new captains taking advantage of their greater knowledge and experience to man their ships. Archer was not looking forward to be going on the mission despite wanting to end the Xindi threat once and for all.

But as he looked at the ships - the new NX class cruisers and the ships that the time traveller had dumped in their reality, Jonathan wondered if things had been too easy for them.

While a part of him could appreciate what the time traveller had done, he still could not work out why she had dumped so many ships on their doorstep but now the Xindi offensive with their weapon had taken place, even he had to acknowledge the fact their presence had made short work of the Xindi.

Thoughtfully Archer leaned forward when he caught sight of a piece of shattered weapon.

Would the fleet get inside Xindi territory in time to stop them from attacking, or would Starfleet HQ prove to the Xindi councillors who'd survived the battle they were not a threat?

Personally, Archer was hoping that Starfleet Command would take the second option so then they didn't get dragged into a long, pointless war and it didn't destroy the good work United Earth had made for a hundred years.

"Captain," the officer manning the communications console caught his attention, "sir, Admiral Forest is requesting your presence at Starfleet HQ."

"Why?" Archer asked, wondering why they'd need him after they'd made their decision to launch an offensive on Xindi territory.

The officer's expression was grim. His voice was clipped, professional as he read the transmission. He was clearly not happy having to deliver the message any more than Archer was having to listen to it in the first place. "The time traveller sir, she's back. She's currently advising Starfleet Command on the best course of action to take relating to the Xindi."

What the hell is happening back with the admiralty? Aren't they capable of making their own decisions without needing to hold the hands of somebody else with an agenda of their own? Archer thought to himself, cursing that Noys Lambent for her effortless tactic of making Starfleet and United Earth on the whole dependent on her and being virtually incapable of making their own decisions without her there to hold her hand.

"What does she want?" Archer demanded, his voice also clipped.

"The message doesn't say, sir. Commander Jeffries is waiting to take over the rest of the trial runs," the officer replied.

Archer sighed. There was nothing he could do and besides he was curious about what Lambent wanted and he wanted to vent some of the questions that he'd had for some time. "All right. Acknowledge and tell them I'll be there soon and tell Commander Jeffries he can take command as soon as possible, helm take us into orbit."

"Aye, Captain," the officer at the helm station replied.

"Sir, apparently Commander Jeffries is coming in a shuttle that'll dock with one of the airlocks to save time instead of going for the launch bay," the communications officer added.

Archer didn't comment since it was a better plan, but it was also significantly telling. It meant this meeting was important, and Starfleet didn't have any time to waste. And it would take too long to order another ship with transporter capability to send him down after getting a lock on him.

X

An hour later, Archer was walking through the corridors of Starfleet HQ, escorted by a painfully young lieutenant who claimed to be an aide of Admiral Ivanova.

"They're waiting inside, sir," the aide said as they came to a pair of double doors leading to a conference room.

Archer was genuine when he said, "Thank you."

When he stepped inside, he found Noys Lambent sitting in a chair, lounging like a giant cat. She wasn't dressed in her usual attire, but then again he had come to the conclusion she was indifferent to how she looked. But strangely she was remarkably different to how she had appeared earlier when she had contacted him on the bridge during the battle.

Come to that, there was no way of knowing how long it had been since Noys had last seen them from their point of view; it could have been years or days. Right now, the time traveller was dressed in a black leather jacket and a white t-shirt with a Union-Jack flag and wearing a pair of jeans. Overall she looked remarkably comfortable.

"Ah, there you are, Jon," Forest said, his expression making it clear he wasn't at all pleased by Noy's appearance any more than Archer was. In fact, none of the admirals was happy.

"What's going on?" Archer said without preamble or the usual greetings although he did send Forrest an apologetic look. "I thought you'd be busy with the arrangements of getting the fleet into the Expanse."

"We were," Leonard replied with a scowl aimed at Lambent, who didn't look bothered by the annoyance coming from everyone else. "And then she appeared. She said that she had seen a number of divergent timelines, and she wanted to rectify some of them."

"Although we haven't yet heard what they were," Paris glared pointedly at the time traveller. Archer was just relieved he was not the only one annoyed and frustrated by how the time traveller just popped in whenever she liked. By now he had the suspicion they were fed up with how they were just…pawns in the damn Temporal Cold War, forced to play the games of time travellers who changed history and twisted it into loops. It was bad enough Cochrane's story of a group of humans - Starfleet officers from the future - had travelled back after the Borg was responsible for splitting time off into a new reality, but the time travellers who'd come back in time since had only made things worse. But Archer had learnt an earlier divergence had taken place, this time in the 1990s when a 29th century time traveller had travelled back in time, and his timeship had been taken by a 20th-century technology and computer scientist businessman who plundered the ship for its knowledge and changed the future., but now they had this woman who seemed to think that they couldn't do anything without her holding their hands.

It was insulting.

Archer turned to Noys, and it was clear to him immediately that her mood was completely dark. She didn't look like she was enthralled being here any more than they were with her being here.

"What do you want?" Archer asked without preamble. He didn't care about the other Starfleet officers in the room. He wanted answers.

Noys, despite her mood, had to smirk at Archer's attitude. It was obvious where his thoughts had gone and truthfully she shared them. "I came to give you this and be on my way," she said with the same bluntness Archer had just used a second ago, dropping a memory card on the desk. "It contains information about the transdimensional beings the Xindi revere and call the Guardians. Get inside one of the spheres. You'll find a date core containing a lot of information that you can use to prove to the Xindi their worship is false and misplaced. At the same time, you'll be able to find a weakness to destroy the spheres."

Archer had been listening to her in disbelief. He was shaking his head by the end. "Why should we take this, haven't you done enough?"

Noys sneered back at him, unimpressed by his attitude. "Would you rather your ship heavily crippled and some of your crew dead, instead? This attitude is frankly boring, and truthfully I don't give a damn what you people think about my visits. Daniels would have given you much the same tasks, Captain. I am giving you help and support, and what does it matter? This timeline has already been changed, and it happened long before I got here. The timeline I created, this one, diverged from the last timeline. You would have gone into the Delphic Expanse without any kind of proper preparations without any kind of support while Earth watched and waited. That version of you blundered into the Expanse using a primitive warp-five engine and then you survived. But it cost so many of your crew. In this timeline, I have given you the ability to fight back and to defend yourselves; granted, I likely went a bit too far, but that is up to you to decide. Use that information or you'll be fighting those Guardians again, Captain. As soon as this conflict is over with, you'll never see me again."

With that, the time traveller disappeared in the literal blink of an eye. Forrest turned to Archer, torn between annoyance and relief the time traveller was gone. "Jon-!"

"I know, Admiral, but I'm sick and tired of these time travellers dropping into our reality as if it's their right and messing things up for all of us," Archer closed his eyes to regain some of his composure and he sighed before he turned to Forrest and the others. "Are we going to use this information?"

Forrest exchanged a glance with the others and their reactions differed; Archer saw blank looks that did little to hide their own irritation, while other Admirals showed more visible signs of relief that, this time, perhaps the time traveller would not come back.

"I don't think we have any choice," Paris sighed. "In any case, we have heard enough about these aliens before. We have nothing on them and while we might have better technology and weapons, we have to assume these aliens will continue being a threat. They might even manipulate the Xindi, or somebody else into building a weapon against us. We cannot let that happen. Too many lives have been lost, and while I share your views on Noys Lambent, Captain, you have to admit she has a point. We would have likely sent Enterprise after the Xindi, and it would have cost lives and endangered Earth. "

"You mean despatching one ship?" Leonard glanced at Paris, who nodded.

"Yeah, exactly. This way we have a large space fleet, plenty of support and with the means of ensuring the loss of life on our side is kept at a minimum," Paris explained.

"And judging from what we know of the Expanse and the hostile races who live there, anything could happen to Enterprise. That is a risk we are not going to take," Carstairs pointed out.

"In the meantime, we'll analyse the information the time traveller left us and we'll make a plan to counter it," Forrest said. Archer glanced at him and saw that while he was just as frustrated as everyone else about the time traveller, for now, the admiral like his colleagues was taking it with mixed reservations.

X

The lunar watchtower was one of many similar installations dotted around the solar system, they had been built along with a number of surveillance and warning satellites extending out throughout the system, equipped with advanced sensors calibrated to detect subspace ripples that signalled warp drives or Xindi vortexes. Some of the water towers were on asteroids or planets or the moon, manned by small crews.

United Earth Starfleet had commissioned their construction after seeing just how weak their defence strategy was, how open. Many people had died.

Starfleet no longer wanted anybody to sneak into their system without prior warning. They had learnt their lessons following the initial Xindi raids, and with the technology given to them by Noys Lambent, the network was more sophisticated and capable of detecting subspace ripples from 90 light-years off.

The crew of the lunar watchtower were bored. They were given a monthly duty shift, and despite the long boredom, they were always on high alert, especially after the last attack. It didn't take long for their warning scanners and scopes to detect the warp signatures.

"Commander, there's a massive subspace wavefront coming towards the sol system," one of the scanner crew reported.

Instantly the commander of the base came over. "Run intensive scan. Is it Xindi?"

The scan technician shook her head. "No, sir. It's a warp wave; dozens of ships approaching the solar system. They're approaching at warp 7, they'll be here within the hour."

The watchtower commander narrowed his eyes. "Starfleet Command, this is Lunar Watch Tower 4 on the emergency channel. Warp wave is approaching the solar system," he said, opening a channel through to Earth.

The communications officer winced. "The Starfleet emergency channel is full of similar messages, so we're not the only one who picked it up," the officer said.

The commander's eyes narrowed. "At least we've told them."

"Could it be the Xindi? They might have realised sending ships through their vortex wasn't a good idea," one of the scanning crew asked.

"Who knows? But right now our task is simple; keep watch on them, send reports on the progress, and the fleet'll be watching," the commander said.

X

What now? What in the name of God is happening now? Archer thought to himself irritably and worriedly as he strode onto the bridge of his own ship. It was good to be back onboard Enterprise after being bounced from one ship after another for nearly a year, and it was good his old senior staff were back on his ship even if it had been one hell of a fight in keeping them since there was a demand for more captains in the fleet, although more than a few of his former crew had been taken off and shuffled around the various ships to make up for the lack of manpower.

But they could have done without this.

Archer and many of the other captains who'd been given their orders to enter the Expanse and end the Xindi war for good had been in the middle of organising the logistics of the task when they had gotten a priority one report on the emergency channel that there were ships approaching Earth at warp. Subspace had been rippling so strongly that Starfleet had instantly gotten everyone back to their ships to prepare for another battle while the warning satellites and stations continued to report on the progress of the subspace waves approaching.

For the last hour, Archer and the rest of Starfleet Command became increasingly worried and yet were confused at the same time when they gleaned from later reports that the reason the wave was so large was that it was not one single wave, but dozens approaching on different vectors. But as the subspace waves signifying the approach of so many ships came closer to Earth, Starfleet became more worried and so was Archer.

It was becoming increasingly obvious it wasn't the Xindi.

Yes, the Xindi had a hybrid engine design of thrusters, impulse and gravimetric drive, warp drive and their vortex technology, so it was possible for them to travel at warp. But it made no sense for them to come to Earth in this so obvious a manner.

"Report," Archer's voice was brusque as he moved to the command chair.

"The subspace waves are almost here, they'll be here within the next 7 minutes," Hoshi reported while Archer took his seat and looked around the chair, his gaze pausing for a second as he looked upon the science station and saw the officer standing in for T'Pol. Their Vulcan science officer had been recalled to Vulcan along with the entire Vulcan population on Earth. While the Vulcans had been grateful to Earth for being allowed access to some of the technology Noys Lambent had given them, they had left months back in order to maintain Vulcan neutrality, but even with that happening, their alien allies had given them some help in finding new worlds and giving them advice here and there, but there were rumours there was something wrong happening in Vulcan and Andorian and Tellarite space, but Starfleet, having problems of their own, had decided to leave their alien allies alone.

Archer turned to Reed. "Go to Tactical alert. Power up shields and weapons, Travis, move us away from Earth."

"Aye sir," Reed and Travis both said as one.

Archer tapped his comm. button. "Archer to Engineering. Trip, how's it looking?" He asked, knowing his old friend was down there working on the warp and hyperdrives.

"Everything is fine, Cap'n. I managed to get the warp drive operational, and I managed to get the power systems working fine. It's a good thing I've had loads of practice recently on how to use some of these systems," Trip replied.

Archer nodded, knowing that his friend had been given a crash course in understanding how the new technologies worked but Trip had told him that it would likely take a hundred years for Starfleet to get the technologies like the hyperdrive and the subspace capacitor power technology from the Daedalus installed on the ships. In the meantime, the ships had been upgraded to feature more advanced ablative hull plating, shields, tractor beams, phasers and photon torpedoes.

Archer remembered his arguments with Commander Jeffries who'd suggested Enterprise feature dorsal phase cannon ports, and how he had not wanted to make first contact with races when they would see his ship was heavily armed. In the last few months, Archer had learnt how much of a big mistake that was. He hated it, but he had to see the truth.

The universe was a hard, dangerous place and you needed to be ready for war.

"No time like the present, Trip. Keep safe," Archer said.

"Same to you, Cap'n."

"Captain," Hoshi's voice was a surprised whisper. "I'm detecting multiple warp signatures."

"Sir, there are Vulcan warp signatures," Reed interrupted, "Wait, there are….Andorian and Tellarite signatures as well," he finished, looking puzzled.

"Vulcan and Andorian and Tellarite?" Travis was bemused as well, not that Archer could blame him since the three races rarely if ever cooperated with one another. The Vulcans and the Andorians, both in neighbouring systems, had a long history of violence, and the Andorians did not like the Tellarites. So why were they coming here to Earth?

"Captain," the seriousness in Reeds' voice snapped Archer out of his thoughts and he turned to his Tactical officer in worry, wondering what he was going to say, "I'm also picking up Klingon signatures."

'What?!" Archer gaped, his worry stepping up. The Klingons didn't have any reason to trust him or Starfleet, especially considering what happened with Duras which seemed like a decade ago.

"There are definitely Klingon signatures, sir. And they'll be here within moments."

"Hoshi, open a channel to Starfleet Command. Tell them there are Klingon warp signatures in the fleets approaching Earth," Archer ordered, "advise them to take note of the Klingon warships."

Hoshi nodded although she guessed correctly Starfleet already knew.

Finally, the different fleets came out of warp and moved towards Earth on impulse power. The sight drew the attention of everyone on Enterprise's bridge and had Archer out of his chair. He had never seen such a multi-species fleet like this, it was so large it was almost unimaginable.

"Captain, we're being hailed from one of the Vulcan lead ships," Hoshi reported.

"Put it through," Archer ordered before the image of the screen changed and the pleasant sight of T'Pol appeared on the screen. "T'Pol, it's good to see you."

T'Pol was flanked by Ambassador Soval and an unfamiliar Vulcan officer on their bridge. She was dressed similarly to the way Archer had first met her so long ago, in those long flowing robes. "Captain, it is agreeable to see you again," she replied in her brisk but calm manner. "However, we don't have much time to talk."

"What do you mean?" Archer asked in concern.

"Captain, the fleet surrounding Earth right now have been organised to join you for your expedition into the Delphic Expanse. We have been under attack from the Xindi for the last 3 months" T'Pol said.

"What? The Xindi have been attacking Vulcan, and the rest of you?" Archer whispered in shock.

"They have. We have received new ships and technologies from the time traveller and with the help of the knowledge, you gave us we were able to fight them off, although why they launched the attacks we do not know," T'Pol's expression was so perfectly Vulcan that anyone else would've been fooled but since Archer and the senior staff on the bridge knew her better, they knew she was not happy with the time traveller's actions. "While we were aware of the Andorians and the Tellarites own plights, we did not know about the Klingons who were under similar attacks until we joined with them and their commander told us what has been happening recently."

Ambassador Soval stepped forwards. "Captain, the other commanders of the fleets are going to speak to representatives from Earth; we were unable to contact you directly due to the enormous subspace instability caused by our ships. But you should know, you are not alone."