Into The Fire

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters and universes that I am about to mangle around for my own amusement - sadly all Robotech and Babylon Five characters remain the property of Harmony Gold, Babylon Productions Inc and Warner Brothers respectively - I am merely borrowing them and make absolutely no profit from their use. As a result, please keep the legal attack dogs - also known as lawyers - firmly muzzled and on a leash as I have no money to give to anyone.

Authors Notes: This is a short interlude chapter in which we meet the technomage character who is going to have a very big impact on the story going forward as well as who – in the other timeline in which the SDF-1 arrived in this reality but with no Rick AI to fill in the background – had a major hand in the events leading up to the time travel that the older version of Rick used to travel back and install the AI in the SDF-1's hidden section before leaving and dying of old age due to the effects of the time travel. Quite a bit of the background of the technomages visited here, include their true dark origins, comes from The B5 RPG technomage fact book and the incredible The Passing of the Technomages book trilogy.

Okay now that's out of the way let's crack on with the interlude chapter shall we.

Edit 22/02/2023: Correcting minor errors and typos.

Interlude Two

Elsewhere

That Same Time

Alwyn frowned in puzzlement as he carefully looked over the initial report of the file his pinnace had received a few days ago. He had only seen it a few hours ago when he had finally returned to his ship after spending a few days communing with nature on an uninhabited planet whose location was only known to the Technomage Order. It was something he quite enjoyed doing and which helped centre him and let him keep a lid on the sometimes-violent impulses that he like all technomages suffered from. Impulses that came from the very technology that gave them their abilities, technology whose origin he was privy to being only one of a handful in the entire order who knew the truth. The truth that long ago the Order and its members had been created to be a weapon by the Shadows, and that to this day their chief minion race the Drakh supplied the order with the chrysalis devices which created their implants even though the Order had broken from the Shadows control long ago. He of course knew why they did it, so that the Shadows could reassert control over them when the time came for them to awaken from their near-millennia long slumber.

Putting aside the thoughts of his orders origins, and the creatures who had created them and who still controlled the supply of the technology needed to make new technomages, he read the ships initial report on the file. To his surprise it was a complete copy of his ships own database but with a lot of additional data added, and which had been transmitted in a highly compressed format, along with a set of instructions. Instructions that the ship was already following creating something though he wasn't sure what it was, the file briefing only said that it, and the data burst contents itself, would be explained when he played the electron incantation message included in the data burst.

His interest more than a little peaked he reached into a pocket in his robes – reaching into a section of space time hermetically sealed off from normal space – and withdrew what to a laymen or non-technomage would have seemed like an innocent crystal sphere. Holding it out in front of him he calmly chanted the spell that instructed the ship to play the message. The crystal lit up and the light spread out until it enveloped him. Reality shifted and he was suddenly in the message space appearing as an avatar version of himself in a simulated reality.

Like most such locations favoured by his kind it appeared as a circle of stones in a grassy field under a somewhat stormy sky. Knowing what was needed he moved and sat on one of the stones and waited. He didn't have to wait long as in a flash of lightning a new figure appeared, and he couldn't help but gasp in surprise and confusion…

…for the figure was himself.

The other version of him looked a good two or three decades older, all his receded hair having turned silver-white instead his current thick if slightly grey streaked black hair. And there was something else that said that the older him while still a technomage was or had been something new. Some new evolution that, if his senses weren't deceiving him, had broken the final chains to the Shadows somehow and in the process become something new.

"Hello Alwyn," the doppelganger said. "I am sure that you are quite confused right now."

"You could say that" Alwyn answered. "What are you? You are not a consciousness copy or neural imprint."

"Sadly, not as there was no time to do that in the time I had left," the other said. "We only had enough time to create one such AI matrix and that was needed by another. I am merely a neuro-interactive simulation sent to advise you and explain a few things. I am sure you are more than a little puzzled by the data burst you received not to mention that the ship has begun making something."

"Indeed. You have answers?"

"Yes. I will begin as I know that you are aware of the quantum dimensional-temporal disturbance event that took place in the Altair system recently."

"Of course. The Circle are still debating what to do about it and how to investigate it without risking detection and questioning by EarthForce or by the Minbari since last I heard there was a fleet of their warships heading to the system."

"A fleet that has since been destroyed by the source of the same disturbance that caught the orders attention. The source of that disturbance is a starship from a completely different reality to ours, a vessel that, though we did not learn this until later and until it was honestly too late to make much difference, holds the key to not only the complete freedom of our kind from the Shadows but will allow our Order to evolve and grow into something new.

"Of course, some of the traditionalists will oppose it," his doppelganger continued, "after all the change is drastic and the secrecy that has long been one of the central tenets of our Order would have to be abandoned to fully embrace the new future. I know you understand why this has to go."

Alwyn blinked. It was no secret that he was sometimes at odd with The Circle especially when it came to the secrecy tenets that had long defined them. Yes, it created a mystique around them and their technology-based powers that could be useful when dealing with those outside their order. But it also hindered them and held them back from really looking for a way to end their dependence upon the good graces of the Drakh and their sinister ancient masters. A few times he had tried to broach the topic of opening up a bit more to the other races and worlds, that it might help them finally resolve the conundrum that they'd been wrestling with for a millennium. The Circle had flatly refused to consider it – no matter how many times he pointed out that a perspective outside their ranks could be the answer, after all their order was very small – and the last time had even threatened him with exile should he continue to pursue such a heretical course.

"Yes," he said. "It is a very dangerous road to go down though, considering what the Circle threatened last time I broached the topic with them as you well know."

"Indeed. However, the benefits – that will go far beyond simply breaking the last of our kinds ties to the Shadows and their Drakh lapdogs – do far outweigh the risks. I know that you can sense the difference in me compared to what we were."

"Yes, why is that?"

"In the other timeline our order attempted to go into hiding as the Shadows began to move, even the likes of Elric and Galen following them into hiding," the interactive recording answered, "we refused to do so and went off and did our own thing. A path that ultimately led us to the SDF-1 and the last of the Macrossians after the Drakh wiped out their new homeworld. From there and with their help and access to their technology and with it the secrets and power of protoculture we evolved, we became the template for all future technomages as so few of the others were left."

"Protoculture?" Alwyn repeated confused as he had never heard of something by that name before and he had travelled farther and experienced more than most other members of his kind who rarely left their places of power. "And what happened to the others?"

"Protoculture can be many different things depending on which grade of it you are using. It is found aboard the SDF-1 and just one of its grades powers the vast majority of their technology," the doppelganger answered before a sad look appeared on his face, "as for the others in the other timeline the Shadows were pushed into acting far more aggressively than even, they normally do before they were finally defeated and driven away from the galaxy forever."

"The Shadows found them?" Alwyn asked horror filling him at the mere thought of what the Shadows would do to his brothers and sisters in the order to either make them serve them or punish them for refusing to do so.

"Yes very few of our order survived and all who did were away from the hiding place when the Shadows came themselves. When the Circle refused to serve, they were wiped out without mercy as the Shadows turned their own implants upon them."

"Great maker," Alwyn breathed in shock and horror as he knew full well what that would have done, it would have physically ripped his brothers and sisters apart from the inside out and it wouldn't have been quick either. And they wouldn't have been able to do anything to stop it as while they knew the technology and tools, they used well even their strongest would still be no match for those who created the technology in the first place. "Aside from the older me who else survived?"

"Only Galen and even then, he was wounded, and it was only through sticking him in a regeneration tank on the SDF-1 that they were able to save him. As it was until after our evolution and the development of the implants that enabled it that he wasn't able to practice any technomancy arts without suffering extreme pain."

"Tell me a bit more about this evolution and does it have something to do with the device the ship is making."

"It is and the device is not just for you," the avatar answered, "it is also for another, a currently young man on the SDF-1 who became one of the first of the new technomages – if that is the proper term to use as we weren't quite sure if we should continue to use the name – in the other timeline. It will be up to you and an ally you have on the SDF-1 in an AI to convince him in this time to accept both the gift and the responsibility."

"You had best tell me everything then."

Alwyn emerged from the electron incantation as a very different technomage. For so long he had feared what the future held for the Order especially as the Drakh were getting more active in preparation for the inevitable return/awakening of the Shadows. Now he had a chance to not only completely severe their links to the Shadows – and remove the darker aspects of the poisoned chalice that there implants were that all technomages wrestled with everyday of their lives - but create a better future not just for the Order but for everyone.

Feeling almost as giddy as a schoolboy he accessed his ships navigational controls and set a new course. A course that would take him to Altair, to the extra-universal warship SDF-1 whose mere presence in this reality had already radically altered the flow of history from what it otherwise would have been, and to a young extra-universal man who potentially could be the future of all technomages.

A young man named Rick Hunter.

Authors Note: Well this little interlude chapter bites the dust. I hope you all enjoyed it and the hint of what Rick's older self was in the other timeline and what he might end up becoming in this reality as well. Of course there are many in the Technomage Order that won't like it, will actually consider all of this heretical to their believes and code, which could introduce some interesting conflicts in the future. We will have to see. Until next time.