I'm so sorry it's taken so long to update, but I'm hoping to make more frequent updates. As always I don't own Space 1999 and I am looking forwards to the next Big Finish audio collection. For now... please let me know what you think.

Enjoy.

The Drift.

The Dragon fighter shook under the blast. Garibaldi grimaced as he grasped onto the pilot's yokes while he used his legs to jam himself tight in the small space in front of the pilot's seat to keep himself steady while he studied the radar screen in front of him.

The robot fighters were pulling back after that last hit. They were following their usual pattern, as dictated by their onboard battle computers. A squadron of six ships, two of which would open fire and do their level best to cause as much damage as possible while they fired their forward cannons of missiles and space torpedoes and plasmablasts in three volleys before they pulled back, switching to scanning mode to update their battle computers for the next wave.

Once they had pulled back, the next two ships would open fire, and on and on it went.

Garibaldi had been in skirmishes like this many times before, and he hated it whenever the ship he was on happened to be retreating already. The Dragon fighters, unlike the Eagles, were designed for space combat, and as a result, their long bodies boasted many weapon blisters, but he knew the robots could open fire, and damage one of the reactor modules. If that happened, it would likely destroy the Dragon.

"Damage report?" He barked, briefly waving his hand as the stench of burnt-out circuitry and melted plastic wrinkled his nose, all the while hoping his crew were alive.

Behind him, his crew were only just holding it together.

Bashir, the chief weapons officer even though Garibaldi had put him into that role when the last crewman to hold onto it was killed, spoke quickly and nervously. "The dummies are increasing their firepower. Dorsal and ventral armour at 60%."

Garibaldi clenched his jaw, hoping the robots, or dummies, as Bashir referred to them as didn't increase their firepower anymore. To his side, the chief engineer was working frantically at her station. Lexi Dawson was, like Garibaldi, a veteran of battles like this. The 30-something brunette was good at her job, and she had a devious and wickedly sharp mind when it came to science and engineering. But she was even sharper when it came to killing robots.

"Jack, those last hits ruptured the fuel feed lines. I'm trying to reroute them…FUCK IT!" Lexi shrieked in anger and frustration because as she had been speaking, the robots had fired again. They had just scored a direct hit. "Great, now we've lost our speed by two levels. I can't pump more energy into the engines."

Garibaldi shook his head in frustration. "They've gotten better. Is there anything you can do?"

"Maybe, but not right now."

"Shit. Can you be creative?"

The look Lexi shot him could have reduced Mercery to molten ash. "How the hell am I supposed to be creative when I'm stuck in here? In any case, the power couplings and the magnetic coils are overheated enough as it is, and we haven't had the time to properly repair them since the last firefight."

"Hey, don't blame me for the design of these fighters," Garibaldi was jerking them from side to side, his eyes fixed on the forward view of the reinforced viewing ports and the radar screen so he could keep watch over the scanners. "Damn it, I can't keep ahead of them… Bashir, where the hell are those weapons?'

"Hey, I'm trying my best!" Bashir snapped as his fingers stabbed repeatedly at his console. "The dummies are making it hard for me to lock onto them; each time I try, they just fire harder."

Garibaldi knew the weapons officer wasn't to blame for this. The robots had been getting increasingly aggressive as of late following the attacks to the Saturn refineries where they received a large chunk of their energy supply, so their battle computers had been adjusted accordingly and reprogrammed with the next logical step; to batter every single human ship until they were splinters of metal, glass and plastic.

It wasn't even much of an attack, Garibaldi grimaced to himself as he recalled the battle, which had lasted at least three long years when the Earth authorities stationed on Mars had discovered where the robots main fuel production facility was although their attacks on the Jupiter refineries where humans had been steadily removing helium 3 from the gas giant had taken place much earlier, forcing a massive withdrawal which had caused a tremendous blow to human industry and forced them to turn to nuclear fission once more. The robots hadn't had that problem; they had taken advantage of the devastating attack which had allowed them to not only fuel their forces but had allowed their industry to flourish in their part of the solar system.

Once the information had been verified, a large expeditionary force had been despatched to Saturn to either destroy or to take over the refineries. The robots had luckily been taken by surprise, but they'd recovered quickly and the expeditionary force had then needed to fight for three long years. Garibaldi had been a veteran of those battles and skirmishes, darting around the moons of Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn as he and his fellow soldiers had tried valiantly to destroy the robots, and he had witnessed many battles; the covert plan to take out the spy satellite in the shadow of Phobos, the submarine campaigns of Enceladus and Europa where he and his team had needed to adapt to the oceanic environments of those two moons, the pirate raid on the robot production facility in the asteroid field, to name a few.

He had been fighting the robots and their battle computers so many times for the last twelve years and he had become a recognised veteran from dozens of battles and campaigns, but during the Saturn campaign, Garibaldi had seen for himself the tales of how the robots were so quickly adapting, no matter what shape their armies were in, or if their fleets of weapon-ships, fighters and bombers were in shambles, they always adapted. Their battle computers were always being moved to new locations within the solar system, and even when the Earth forces were carefully shattering their fleets, either with good leadership or with their latest weapons and tactics, or more often than not, luck, the robots always came back for more.

But then that was the sort of thing they were designed for.

It was their way.

The robots were not trying to destroy humanity. They were trying to strengthen it.

They were programmed to attack humans when their creators were either at full strength or when they could launch an attack while leaving many survivors to keep the war going.

Ever since the war had begun and it was known what their creator was trying to accomplish, the first largest engagements had resulted in terrible losses for both sides, but while it had taken humanity time to rebuild and regroup, the robots had adapted quickly. Instead of launching a devastating attack which would have seen the deaths of the few survivors of the previous holocaust where dozens of space colonies were partially destroyed, the robots had hung back, and it had mystified many until they had gotten hold of a robot commander and cracked open its computer to learn the secrets of the machines they had gotten the full story.

The robots were designed to fight in battles against humans who were supposedly strong in order to make them stronger; if they had attacked those partially destroyed habitats and colonies, it would mean there were fewer survivors, so then their mad creator's plans to strengthen humanity and make it stronger would not be met.

And since the day that knowledge had worked its way through the human colonies since there were now so few people living on the devastating wreck which was Earth, a deeper understanding into the motives of the machines had been discovered. And from there, dozens of plans had been put into place to construct a series of orbital habitats, but load them with nuclear bombs. When the machines began their attack, the nukes would detonate and completely destroy the robot fleet, or disable it for the fighters to come in and put them out of action.

But the war was monotonous - engage, retreat, rebuild. It never seemed to end, and there were moments during his career where Garibaldi honestly believed the war would never end.

Unfortunately, this was one of those moments.

"It's what they always do," Garibaldi thought to himself several ideas they could use to evade the machines, "is there anything ahead of us?"

"Nothing, just open space."

"Shit!" Garibaldi snarled, wondering if the battle computer in command and control of this squadron of robot fighters had deliberately pushed them here so then they couldn't escape. In the past, it would be considered laughable to think that, but Garibaldi and the vets of this war had learnt both the easy way and the hard way not to discount the possibility; the battle computers were programmed to outthink their opponents while using the classic strategies from military masterminds like Julius Caesar, Napoleon…. And programming into it all an algorithm which made it sacrifice large numbers of its own robots and massacre humans, all to ensure the strongest survived to fight another day.

And boy, were they fucking clever?

But there was nothing they could do about it. They would have to try and keep ahead of the robot ships and hope eventually their fuel cells demanded they retreat while they still had the time. Garibaldi and the others had discovered the robots and their ships of this latest generation were powered by hydrogen fuel cells which required frequent charging, and they got the power from special stations in their territory. It made sense; the robots had been safeguarding their energy resources since the refineries were destroyed and they'd had to switch a lot of their technology over to hydrogen fuel cell power. But the cells were fairly primitive and they used up more power than they should have done, but it provided a massive weakness which the pilots and troops were keen to exploit all the time. Garibaldi and the rest of his crew weren't that concerned with their own energy supply; their power came from a number of nuclear power generators which used fission, but they were still volatile, and if they were hit or damaged….

Garibaldi pushed that aside, and now he was mentally praying the robots were vulnerable now. With that in mind, Garibaldi checked his screens. Now, the robots had been fighting for a long time, so by now, their power systems must be dropping…

"They're still gaining," Lexi grimly reported as she watched her scopes.

Garibaldi checked how close they were and he grimaced when he saw they were too close for one of his ideas to work properly. Even worse, his hope they were running out of energy was looking like it wasn't going to work at all. They were coming after them, and the power readings detected by the scopes pointed out they were increasing speed. "Fuck, there's no justice!" He snapped.

"What do you mean?" Bashir asked as he reloaded the aft cannons.

Garibaldi waited for him to fire before he replied. "I was hoping the robots' power cells might be losing power by now, but clearly not."

"I don't think it would have made any difference." Heads turned slightly when they heard Megumi speak from the door. Megumi was the engineering officer on the ship, and she had just been in the back in the engine section. "The robots might lose their power, but they can make up for it by joining up and sharing what they've got left."

"Damn."

"What's it like back there, Megumi?" Lexi asked.

"Bad. I've done my best with the power conduits, but we can't keep this up for much longer; the engines are beginning to overheat."

"Can we use the ion drive?"

"Just about holding up, but I don't want to over push it."

"But can we push it?" Garibaldi pushed.

Megumi sighed. "Just as long as we don't push it too far-."

"Hold it a moment; I'm picking up some unusual readings. Weird neutrino build-up directly ahead," Lexi was concentrating on her screens, and she was double-checking her findings. Garibaldi checked his own navigational sensors… and then he picked up what Lexi had found. Earth's space agency had developed new technologies in the years since the moon was ripped out of Earth's orbit and the surviving human race was split up and sent into space while others endured a meagre existence on what was left of Earth…. And then the war against the robots and the computers had only accelerated the growth of human technology even more.

The sensors which the Dragons utilised were infinitely superior to those found on the old Eagle flyers, and given how the machines had not only smashed the whole concept of invisibility and stealth before pulverising what was left with their own technology, technologies humans had been trying to reverse engineer for years with captured robot ships, their technology was nothing to scoff at.

"Any idea what's causing it?" Garibaldi lifted his gaze to look out of the viewing ports to see if there wasn't some kind of phenomena out there directly ahead. But there was nothing. All he could see was black, seemingly empty space.

"No. And before you ask, I can't narrow down the source; it's all around us."

Bashir's console beeped. "Lieutenant, we don't need to worry about the robots anymore."

"What, why not?"

"Because they're reversing course."

Garibaldi instantly checked his navigational readings. Bashir was right; the robots which had been in hot and close pursuit of their single ship were backing off and they were heading back to their own home territory.

"Why would they change course?" Robinson, an intelligence officer whose primary task was to keep quiet and just observe, asked.

Garibaldi hated himself for it, but he jumped when he heard Robinson's voice. The young man had kept very quiet for the last few days whenever they'd been on duty, although he had asked them a few questions on their own opinions about the robots latest moves so he could write it in his reports. Ever since the war had begun, intelligence on the machines had been in short supply, so they had installed intelligence operatives on their ships who would not be a part of the main crew of the fighter ships or cruisers, but they would be trained to help out so then if something went wrong, the crew could depend on them. When they returned to their home base, the intelligence operatives would write up reports, and send them off to be analysed by the right people, and if a major offensive was to be planned they'd be the ones who handed it to the Earth forces in the first place.

It was thanks to people like Robinson the people of Earth had managed to survive this long. The idea came from a set of novels by an author named Bernard Cornwell, whose work on a fictional soldier from the Napoleonic Wars also included hints of spymasters who sent in many spies. Someone in the agency had come up with the same idea, and they had decided to train up an elite group of observers recruited from several members of the forces.

Garibaldi hadn't known Robinson for long, but he knew of the man's reputation; he was quiet, diligent, methodical and observant, well he needed to be since it was his job.

"They must have detected the same thing we did. Their computers must have concluded we must be luring them into a trap; don't forget we have copied some of their stealth technology, and a lot of it leaks neutrinos," Megumi offered.

Garibaldi turned to Robinson. "Are there any of our ships here?"

Robison shrugged. "I don't know. I don't think so, but bear in mind I have been out of circulation, and I don't know all the black projects we've got."

Garibaldi nodded, inwardly annoyed at himself for forgetting that, but at the same time, he wondered if Robinson was telling the truth. He seemed sincere, but he had learnt the hard way these intel people were sometimes those who believed the ends justified the means; while he understood that need, it was sometimes…cold blooded.

"Garibaldi, there's no radiation building up in the cabin, yet we're getting it outside. How's that possible-?"

Suddenly the ship seemed to jump forwards, interrupting Lexi's report and the whole of their forward view changed showing off instead of the black vista of deep space twinkling with the light of distant stars millions of light-years away, to a long tunnel which seemed to be made out of gaseous material that glowed orange, red, purple, green, yellow and blue.

"What the hell-?" Bashir gasped.

"Questions later," Garibaldi checked his navigational computers. "Shut down the tactical systems, and transfer all your power to the forward navigational scanners."

"Garibaldi-."

"We're not being followed by the robots. In any case, I want to know where this tunnel leads."

"Right." Bashir's voice was grudging.

Still, he did as he was told, and Garibaldi was pleased when his navigational scanners received a boost; the tunnel they were in was quite large, but it was like they were small electrons trapped in a maze of looping electrical wires all bundled together like spaghetti in a bowl, making it bloody hard for him to get an accurate fix of where they were.

He slowed the engines down, just as they were about to overshoot a junction where there were six other paths, three of them including the one their own ship had just emerged from, leading off into different directions.

"Lexi, drop a navigational beacon here; I want us to find our way back easily."

"I'll do better than that; I'll program the beacon to transmit the number 1, so we know which one it is."

Garibaldi grinned. "Good one, Lexi. Right…. We're going into that tunnel," he pointed.

"Why that one?"

"No particular reason."

"I'll drop a beacon in that mouth as well," Lexi offered, "just in case."

Garibaldi didn't know how many navigational beacons they had on board, but he knew there were a few. In any case, Lexi had the common sense to let them know if and when they were going to run out. "Okay, but if we begin to run out," he voiced his thoughts, "let us know."

"I will."

The new tunnel was a lot like the other one, and this one seemed to go on for much further than the last one. There were surprisingly fewer tunnels branching off, just one long one. When they reached the end of the corridor, there was a faint reflecting effect like they were before a giant mirror.

"What on Earth's that?" Bashir asked.

Lexi shook her head. "I don't know," she whispered. "All this is beyond me."

Garibaldi bit his lip in thought. "Lexi, drop another beacon marker right here. I'm firing up the engines really slowly…."

"Is that a good idea?" Robinson asked.

"I don't think we've got much choice," Garibaldi increased power to the engines, and the nosecone of the Dragon slipped into the mirrorlike reflection….

XXX

….And they emerged back into normal space, but as soon as they looked out at the vista before them, they knew there was something different here.

"Wow!" Garibaldi gasped. Lexi and a few others mirrored his gasp of amazement. And who could blame them?

They were looking at a completely different solar system. In front of them were three stars, all evenly spaced away from one another in a distance, but they were looking at two planets, twin worlds in close proximity to one another, both of them reminding the crew of Earth, or rather the classic Earth their world had once been instead of the devastated and churned up ruin it had become when the moon had been ripped away and the gravitational quake had devastated everything.

Garibaldi reversed engines.

Lexi was snapped out of her spell. "Hey, what are you doing?" She asked as they returned to the tunnel.

"Firing an unmanned probe," Garibaldi got to work on the probe computer, and he typed in a specific set of commands. "I want to know if we can get through there, and yet still come back."

"But we've already proven that!"

"No," Megumi whispered, her voice quiet enough to be heard. "We had only pushed our ship's bow out of the tunnel, so we were still inside it. We don't know what would happen if we leave the tunnel, and we don't know if its a one-way trip or not."

"So, that means….," Robinson's voice was scared.

"We might never return home," Megumi finished, her voice blank although the fear in her eyes made it clear to all of them this was terrifying for her as well.

Garibaldi fired the probe. They saw it leave the Dragon, a small cylindrical sphere powered by an ion drive thruster. Without hesitation, the probe cleared the mirrorlike screen in front of them, and then it was gone.

"When did you program it to return?" Bashir asked curiously.

"I set it for ten minutes, more than enough time for it to get clear and take a few photos and then come back. And if it can't….," Garibaldi let the rest of his sentence hang.

The waiting seemed to drag on forever. And then, just as the crew were beginning to get restless, the mirrorlike screen in front of their bow seemed to ripple with light, and the probe returned, to the delight of the crew.

"That's enough," Garibaldi's chiding was false because he was grinning in relief. "We can go through."

Pushing the engines forwards again, the Dragon travelled through the opening and back out into normal space. As they travelled slowly to the planets in front of them, Garibaldi had his crew study every square inch of the system ahead of them.

"I've got a match on this system, guys," Lexi's voice was shocked. "It's… well, this solar system was discovered eight months before the war against the machines started, but aside from some interest here and there in the usual circles, not a lot about this system is known, except its 500 light-years away from Earth."

"500 light-years?"

"Yeah. We're a long way from home," Lexi's voice was filled with awe. "I wonder if we passed through a traversable wormhole."

"Or a collection of wormholes," Megumi added, her eyes misted over as she tried to imagine the scope of their discovery. "Don't forget all those other passages, tunnels leading off to God knows where."

"But we were only in the tunnel, or wormholes for a few minutes," Robinson pointed out, "I thought wormholes were meant to be instantaneous-."

"That's only one possibility; we don't know for sure if that's how some forms of wormholes work, they're still a theory," Lexi said, glancing over at Garibaldi. "But this is new. I've never heard of a theory where wormholes are looped so near to a solar system before, perhaps into them."

"That's something we can think about later," Garibaldi decided, his mind going over the options available. "Right now… do you want to visit an alien world?"

Lexi brightened. As a scientist, she was fascinated by everything new in space, and even though her duties were moderately interesting, there was a mundane aspect about them which was annoying. It didn't help she was spending all her free time working on ways to fight the machines, which was a never-ending fight since they evolved like a handful of virulent diseases.

"Do I?" She grinned at the rhetorical question before her expression became filled with worry. "I'll just adjust the sensors to study the atmosphere to see if it can support us."

Until the next time, readers.