The Time Lord Empire.

The Exiles.


Before anyone could react to Kozorr's statement, the girl piped up, remembering to keep her voice respectful. " I have just confirmed the readings with the other ships. It's confirmed. We have travelled 2.5 million light years from where we were."

Satai Coplann asked the most important question, " Can we get home?"

The worker caste girl shook her head, " Navigational sensors aren't detecting any jump gate beacons within a range of 2 light years, Satai, and without jump gate beacons we cannot even move to the next system, unless we wish to travel for a few hundred years, and we don't know anything about this galaxy or who lives here. Even the Vorlons have never come here."

Delenn couldn't refute that; jump engines and hyperspace navigation relied heavily on the gravimetric eddies that planets and star systems dented on hyperspace. It was thought by Minbari scientists that eventually they would be able to navigate the gravimetric ' winds ' of hyperspace, and they believed only the First Ones had mastered that particular method, seeing as they had mastered everything, aside from faster than light travel, of course.

" We should open contact with other races in this galaxy?" Delenn whispered to the huddled mass of the Council as the rest of the bridge crew Minbari studiously ignored them and their whispering. The Grey Council were seen with an almost mystical apparel, and it was considered rude to listen in on them.

Morann shook his head, " I forbid it. We are vulnerable, and we all know that in the wild vulnerability is seen as the next meal. If we send out messages then we will be attacked, and our weapons and tactics may not be able to withstand an assault after the human attack."

Rathenn was on Delenn's side, as was a good majority of the council already. " Morann, without jump gate beacons, we are trapped, and we cannot survive indefinintely onboard our ships, not without supplies, and as you say our ships are heaviliy damaged. We have to make contact with other races, and hopefully they will be friendly."

Morann sighed, " Then again, they may not."

In the end, the Council voted to send a distress signal, but they also voted to be prepared. In the six hours they spent on their first day in the Andromeda galaxy, religious caste healers and worker caste workers struggled hard to repair the damage the humans had metted on the Sharlins.

The warrior caste contingent, however, were more vigilant, sending out Nials to patrol the area in the vicinity of their ships. For six agonising hours, the workers struggled and worked hard to repair, and the monotomy became stiffling.


On the bridge of one of the Whitestars, one of the Anla'shok crewmen reported, " Entilza, a energy spike has appeared, on the Valen'tha!" He looked up in shock.

Lennier jerked his head around, " Inform the Valen'tha. What kind of energy spike?"

The crewman shook his head, confusion marring his features. " I don't know."


Delenn was standing on the bridge when she felt a vibration on her skin, and a strange wind picked up, growing in intensity. A flash of light drew the attention of the crew, and the Council members still there. In a corner of the room, a metallic cube started to appear and became solid. Before anyone could react, the doorway built into the wall opened, and an armoured figure appeared.

Delenn watched the figure. Clad in head to toe in a dark blue armour, the figure was imposing and massive, both in height and build, and Delenn thought that was the point. The armour itself appeared strong, and yet flexible at the same time.

The figure spoke, " You wanted help, you've got it."

Before Delenn or anyone else could say a word, there was a flash of light, and a massive starship exited what Delenn thought of a some sort of jump point, but then how did the box appear like that? The viewports showing the other ships showed beams of light hitting them and then they vanished, and the beam of light that struck the Valen'tha lasted for only a moment, but when Delenn saw where they had appeared, she gasped. Instead of space, the Valen'tha and the other Minbari cruisers and ships were inside what looked like a massive green space...like above a city. There were lights, and towers of immense size all around. Following their arrival, some of the control panels deactivated. A warrior rushed in, saw the armoured figure, and rushed him, taking out his fighting pike and extending it. The armoured figure held up his hand, and there was another flash of light, but this one made the warrior collapse to the ground in a heap.

Delenn ran towards him, and checked him.

He was still alive.

" He is still alive," The armoured figure said, and your ships are being depowered as your crews are being transmatted to the holding areas." The bridge crew disappeared as he finished his sentence, and Delenn was amazed by the figure's timing.

Morann's voice was low and hostile, " Why are you doing this?"

The armoured figure didn't reply, instead he tapped a control on his wrist, and the Grey council disappeared.

The council found themselves inside a holding area relegated strictly for them. The room had couches and seats, but no beds, or anything designed to act as beds. Morann paced the room angrily, " I told you this would happen," he kept saying to Delenn, reminding everyone of his protestations about sending a distress beacon.

Delenn ignored him, and she and Rathenn had a whispered conversation. Unremarkably the conversation was about the aliens who had captured them. " Who do you think they are?" Delenn asked.

Rathenn shrugged, wondering why Delenn thought he had come this far in space. " I'm more interested in what's underneath their armoured suits, and I'm also curious about this ship." He added, looking up the ceiling.

Delenn knew what he meant. The ship was gigantic, but surely it couldn't be that big, big enough to house a small fleet of Minbari warships, and then there was that box that materialised on the bridge of the Valen'tha.

" They're clearly an advanced race, to have teleportation technology that can transport starships inside themselves, and those armoured exo skeletons, they could probably stop a PPG burst." Delenn commented.

Rathenn nodded.

An armoured figure entered the room, and looked around the room, and when the figure saw Delenn, he-it could've been she, but Delenn wasn't sure- raised his finger to point at her. " You, you will come with me?"

The warriors moved over, and the figure waved his arm and the warriors flew across the room into the far wall.

" STOP!" Delenn shouted, trying to put an end to the violence. She stood up and crossed the room, glaring angrily at the armoured figure, " I'll come with you, but please let my friends down."

The figure didn't move for a monent, then dropped his arm and the warriors fell to the ground. " Come." He said, and Delenn winced at being so close to the voice synthesiser of the figure's mask.

The figure led Delenn down corridors, passing only a few of the crew, who were also clad in armoured exoskeletons, passing into a circular room with a metal floor. The armoured figure gripped her arm, and with a flash of light, they found themselves transported to another part of the ship, this one clearly a sort of meeting place on the ship, but showing a viewport. Delenn thought about the mode of transportation, clearly the ship was too vast for someone to walk too far only to get lost or exhausted. The teleport system seemed the perfect answer to her, but she put that out of her mind when she saw her figure and herself were not alone.

Another figure waited.

Delenn started speaking. " Who are you? Why did you say you were there to help us when we were stranded in this galaxy, only to place us in holding cells?"

The figure answered, " The ships you are on are being repaired, but with our techniques. You're crewmembers would merely have gotten in our way and obstructed our work. The repairs will be finished shortly. You are very lucky," the figure carried on. " We monitor the wormhole that brought you here, and you should consider yourselves fortunate."

" Why should we feel fortunate? We're prisoners."

The figure didn't answer Delenn's accusation, since it was true. " The wormhole is one way only," the figure answered. " If you attempted to enter it again then your ships would've been atomised. Besides the wormhole's subspace axis is unstable, for every mass it brings it swings into a different direction, with this galaxy as the permanent terminus. Usually the mass is a passing asteroid, or nothing at all, then its gone for another hundred years or so. You're ships use the jump beacons native to your galaxy, and there is no gate network in this one. We made sure of that."

" You?" Delenn asked, wondering how any race could do something like that on such a scale.

" Yes, we pioneered the developments of numerous propulsion technologies, including faster than light drives. Your galaxy shouldn't discount something until you've actually done it."

Delenn's head was reeling, then she asked a more immediate question. " How did you get on board our ship?"

" Mass teleportation."

Delenn didn't ask what mass teleportation was, and she didn't ask. Instead she focused on her curiosity. " What are you? You're still wearing battle armour, but I can't hurt you. We have never met any of the races in this galaxy, so how can we be a threat? Who or what are you?"

The figure was still for a moment, then it walked to another side of the room, turning its back on her as it did. Delenn was still, fearful she had angered the figure, but the figure behind her didn't move either. She focused her attentions directly on the alien.

A whirring sound had sounded, and segmented sections in the back opened up with a hiss, showing inside a more thinner and smaller form. The alien came out, and Delenn saw it was wearing a black uniform with shoes. Using specially designed handles to ease itself out, the alien slid itself out of the suit, and when it was out, it straightened. Delenn studied the figure, noticing the hair at the back. It wasn't like the Minbari, who had bald heads with a headbone, it was similar to a Brakiri, or a Centauri.

The alien turned around, and Delenn couldn't help the gasp that came out.

The alien was human but not just any human. It was the last human Delenn had expected to see. This human was the same one that had been carrying Valen's soul when they had captured him during the last battle in the Earth-Minbari war.

" It's not possible." She whispered.

" We survived, and we are still very much alive." The human replied, his features neutral.

Delenn couldn't help but shake herself mentally. " How-how did you survive?"

The human took a deep breath. " Before the final battle, we realised our race faced extinction. As with any species, we couldn't let that happen, our innate sense of survival kicked in. We tried everything we could think possible, ranging from surrendering, but we realised that was unlikely to work as your people were methodically and systematically seeking out our people, and killing us. We couldn't find a military solution as your technology was far above our own at the time, and your ships would've destroyed any attempt we had. One of our scientists came up with a means of teleporting our planets and ships away, to another place in space where we could rebuild our civilisation somewhere else. But there were unforeseen consequences."

" Yes," Delenn agreed. " We brought you on our ship."

" And you discovered I, and a few others, were carrying your people's souls. As we followed our people when Earth, our Moon, and the planet Mars, the sheer mass affected the teleport system, and we found ourselves 5,000 years in the past. When we arrived, we found ourselves in a hostile and unknown galaxy, far outside the charted regions we'd known. We had lost everything in our original galaxy, and we clung to what we had left. We found that our jump engines were useless as the navigational systems had nothing to lock onto, as your ships discovered when you first arrived."