Chapter 49

"Future Allies?"

Z'ha'dum:

Several days earlier, at the fringe areas of the star system that housed the planet Z'ha'dum, two beings, one a Soul Hunter and the other a Technomage, discovered one another's presence. Both were spying on Sinhindrea movement and activities; a very dangerous move when dealing with a carnivorous, telepathic species. Everything that they were, every science they knew, was being utilized to keep from being discovered by the aliens. For a light-year in all directions, the massive amounts of debris located there provided scores of places to hide and watch.

The scent of death had drawn the Soul Hunters like Terran sharks to blood in the water. But they had been circumspect in their approaches. Several Drakh and one or two Shadows had been targeted by the Soul Hunters to add to their collection. But they had been too late; the Sinhindrea had gotten to them first. One of their Order, not paying as much attention as he should have been, was captured and interrogated while eaten alive. The interrogation had stripped the savaged Soul Hunter of everything he was and the sect was now known to these vicious aliens. Because of that error in judgment, although small in numbers, they and by extension their entire race were now threatened as well. The next Soul Hunter to enter Sinhindrea space was far more cautious and careful. He, as was common to his sect, understood being isolated and hated in general, but being eaten alive was something he had no desire to experience.

Two Clovien warships had been sent towards their, what had been secret, homeworld. Urgent transmissions had alerted them of the imminent threat. Contrary to the beliefs of many of the races, the Order of the Soul Hunters was not especially loved by the general population of their own home world. And even there they had been ostracized. The planetary population's greatest fear had always been that the Order's practices would have disastrous repercussions against them one day, so they had prepared accordingly. But what was coming was worse than even they were expecting. Those who could get out were leaving as fast as they could.

This particular Soul Hunter was a renowned elder of the Order and was very experienced at covert collections which, unfortunately in his eyes, made him the perfect choice for this mission. As dangerous as this was, these were truly exciting times. Some of the information gathered by his Order from the Federation representatives at Babylon Five had been nothing less than unprecedented. The revelations that the species called the Vulcans had some understanding of his Order's holy mission were exhilarating. The collecting of souls and their particular use by the Vulcans surprised him. That they were willing to actively discuss it without prejudice was far more surprising. It was wonderful to see that there were other enlightened species in the universe. Long centuries of service to the Order had made him jaded towards the unenlightened, but this was something new to him. Some of the information being passed on had to be considered suspect, but the accompanying data was extremely tantalizing; something he could not deny. That there were creatures that hunted souls for nourishment was intriguing and very disturbing, but although never observed, they had always been theorized to have existed. However, there had never been any conclusive proof until now and those thoughts of hunger brought him back to the present.

These aliens he studied, they were abomination; ones who destroyed both the body and the mind. There was no greater sin in the Soul Hunter's eyes than this. Was the mind the soul, or was the soul defined by the mind? Other than the fact that it was known that the two were connected, no one knew for sure. With the new information from the Federation, that debate had risen its ugly head once more. He looked forward to the resulting discussions. But for now, he concentrated on this new enemy.

-+-

The Technomage known as Elaine had not been pleased with this assignment either. But she fully understood and agreed with the reasoning behind it. Personally, Elaine would have much rather be on Babylon Five along with Galen uncovering wonderful new technologies and devices just waiting to be exploited by her people. There were so many new technologies there she wanted to get her hands on that she could almost taste it. She was rather young for her age, tall, almost six feet, and dark-haired which offset her deep blue eyes, characteristic of her black Irish heritage. Like Galen she opposed hiding from the rest of the galaxy as if they were cowards. The technology they possessed was dangerous, this was true; however, with safeguards it could be protected. Every time she thought about their decision to hide and let the danger pass by, it made her frown with distaste. If the mages had not ran so quickly, they could have had access to these new sciences by now.

The previously unknown technologies centered at Babylon Five, developed by three different races was enough to make any of her Order to salivate. The Technomages had plenty of new uses for transport technology. That tech alone had hundreds of possible applications. Apparently, it wasn't like the dimensional slip tech developed by the Vree. No, it was something new and that was only the beginning of the rumored wonders. However, Galen had been most reluctant to acquire or even scan the new tech. His reluctance to do anything was not characteristic of his personality. That was most unlike him and personally she wanted to know why he was acting in such an atypical manner.

-+-

Both of them had quietly acknowledged the presence of the other and each had covered for one another, protecting one another numerous times in recent days. Other than watching enemy movements, tight beam communications had become routine until now.

The gateway energy conduit had suddenly flared several times and the hyperspace-like matrix seemed to be losing its stability. Activity near the gate had increased dramatically as an unidentified object began to emerge from the ever-increasingly unstable aperture. A huge cube-shaped structure, pitted and damaged at almost every part of its surface from weapons fire, tried to rip itself from the event horizon while firing upon the Sinhindrea warships responding furiously despite the closeness of the gate.

Then, the reasons why the Sinhindrea had been so stymied had become clear. Mines, thousands of them, phased into view and moved towards the ancient Vorlon structure. The protective shield did nothing to stop several of the mines from impacting the structure and the strange cube-like space station. Both structures ceased to exist moments later as gigatons of explosive power vaporized everything.

It was unbelievable overkill but the observers weren't complaining. That destruction of the gate solved a multitude of problems, but it also created others. The thousands of remaining mines now sought other targets and the Sinhindrea went ballistic using suppression weapons to keep from being destroyed. The mines had ceased their self replicating mode and attacked everything within their area of influence. Elaine was unnerved and angry that she couldn't acquire one of those mines for further study; it was such a waste and lost opportunity. But she wasn't that foolish to try to acquire one now.

Debris, ships asteroids, nothing was immune. The mines began spreading out and the panicked Other Space aliens began using their heavy weapons to destroy incoming mines. The surface of Z'ha'dum was brightened by the small suns being created by at least three detonations. The explosions began to spread outward as debris was hit by wayward mines. In the confusion, the two spies departed the system as quickly as possible.

USS Ambassador:

"… Our efforts in understanding quantum slipstream drive have been shown to be far more effective than our efforts developing transwarp," Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres-Paris explained to enraptured group of engineers from the other starships. With them, were engineers from Babylon Five and a few Minbari including Shai Alyts Rannaonn, Shaka, and Aalaan. Several EarthForce personnel were present as well, furiously taking notes and recording everything that twitched. "We've worked with various transwarp propulsion methods and we've had limited results with all of them," she continued. "Some of the methods proved to be a danger to organics and therefore it's an engineering dead end at this point. The Colonials developed another form of transwarp called light-speed, but it had the limitation of being a long-distanced only method of travel. But it still works better than anything we've developed and with Federation and Klingon help; they're constantly improving on it for the benefit of everyone. For our purposes," she continued, "Voyager uses a pulse quantum slipstream method of travel which is slower than regular QSD by about one half but still very useful for our purposes."

"And exactly how fast is that?" one of the EarthForce engineers asked.

"No more than one point three million times lightspeed," she answered without hesitation. She continued her lecture (with a certain degree of sadistic pleasure) amongst the chokes and gasps echoing throughout the hulls of the engineering section. "We have other forms of faster-than-light methods we're actively investigating, as well as improving our understanding of slipstream."

"Granted, I have seen your warp drive," EarthForce engineer Robert Yin said. "But I find that hard number to believe. To achieve something like that, you would have to have a large number of related technologies available to keep your ships functional and crew alive. The kinds of acceleration you're talking about would turn your crew into a fine molecular paste and your ship into a small marble-sized piece of metal, if that large."

"You're absolutely right, Mister Yin. We have structural integrity fields, gravity compensators and inertial dampers that keep the ships and the crews safe. This technology is over three hundred years old and we're continually monitoring and improving them all the time. So to answer your questions, whether you find it hard to believe or not, it does work and you've seen the proof."

'Only three hundred years'. Shaka merely snarled something he was doing more and more often since being here at this Earther station. These Humans and their alien lackeys were mere babes. 'How had they achieved so much in such a short period of time?' he mused. 'And how will we stop them from taking over everything?'

"But," Yin stuttered. He took a breath and started again. "This flies in the face of everything our science has ever discovered." The way he said that, it was apparent that he wasn't trying to start an argument, but was trying to cope, to understand. "Why is it that none of this has ever been discovered by any of the races here? Even the Minbari have never developed anything like this and they've been in space for more than a thousand years."

"I have no idea," the Lieutenant answered. "But think about this; the C57-D uses hyperspace in a way that none of us have ever seen. When they came here, it took them a year to reach Altair from Earth. Now they can travel that same distance in a month. They're improving their own technology that they developed on their world, independent from Earth Alliance," she added quickly. She knew that their robot and Data's talks had a lot to do with that. Robby was their godsend.

"But why haven't we even thought of anything but jump space?" another person asked.

"I don't know," B'Elanna confessed. "But you were given jump space technology and never looked for anything else. That doesn't really explain why none of you ever searched for anything different. The presence of an intact system precluded the need to search for anything else. But it does make one wonder why," she said. "There are so many ways to achieve faster than light."

"I am curious," one of the Minbari workers asked. "How many forms do you know of?"

The Lieutenant thought about it for a second. "Well," she began. "To start off with, there is warp drive, QSD, hyperspace as you use it, and as the UP ship uses. And that type of FTL has quite a few possibilities and may ultimately be capable of trans-galactic flights. I can see warp and hyperspace technologies being combined easily to travel to other galaxies. There are the transwarp drives and their variations. Coaxial warp drive, subspace corridor or under space, and subspace catapult drives. This doesn't include the use of warp drive in jump space. Our ships would have to generate a much larger warp field and we could probably accelerate to warp three, about forty two billion kilometers per hour, inside jump space. Within jump space, traveling at that speed you could cross the galaxy in days. There are several other FTL techniques available that I haven't even mentioned. So we're talking about eleven different forms of FTL and probably nearly a dozen more. Then we have theoretical drives that the Federation has worked on. Many of them are in various stages of development. Some might be dead ends, but we'll never know unless we research them.

"There are several teleportation drives in which space can be 'folded' producing a direct connection between point A and B. The Federation is studying that now. That technology was given to us as part of a cultural exchange. In a few dozen years. It will revolutionize FTL travel as we know it. Tachyon tunneling, something you all might be interested in since everyone here uses tachyons to reach faster than light speeds. Some theories involve using gravity wells which are intensified to create a black hole in which a ship can enter hyperspace. Then there are jump points like your jumpgate that uses some form of artifacts set up throughout the galaxy. Here you use jump space like we use warp. If you got together to discuss your insights and theories, who knows how far and how quickly you could advance?" Around her, the small group had become utterly silent and she resolved to take them to the holodeck to give them a better vision of what she was talking about. "I can see your minds racing with possibilities. If you just talked about your theories, in ten years who knows where you'd be? Now that you know that other FTL techniques besides jump space, that's half the battle.

"Slipstream and transwarp each has its own advantages and disadvantages. QS requires complex calculations to keep the quantum field stable in order to stay in slipstream. Transwarp requires a chroniton field to keep time dilations manageable. Warp drive takes time to understand but with that understanding the sky's the limit. It will force you to learn about subspace, how it works, and the theories behind it; not be able to just use it with no real clue as to the physics behind it. Plus it'll advance the other sciences along with it."

"Can you imagine how far our influence could spread if we had something like that at our disposal?" one of the B5 engineers asked with all of the excitement of a five-year old seeing a Christmas tree for the first time.

Several of the Minbari glared at him dangerously and those unvoiced threats didn't go noticed by B'Elanna.

"It'll never happen," she announced as loudly as possible, capturing everyone's attention again. "You people don't know how to work together. Freedom of information and a bit of trust has gotten us where we are. Here, your collective paranoia has gotten you the same old technologies with very little improvement. You have dimensional slip transporter technology, shield technology, stealth and armor technology in your grasps. But you don't possess enough common sense to share them with each other. If you can't trust each other enough to really talk, then you don't deserve to use these technologies. You people need to grow up and learn to trust each other because that's the only way you're going to mature enough to handle these sciences responsibly. Believe me, I'm half Klingon. I know."

At that pronunciation there were more gasps. "And half what?' asked one of the Minbari.

She laughed at them and dared them to say something. "You people are so provincial," she growled. "My mother is Klingon and my father was Human. I married a Human and we have a daughter. So what?" she hissed. "Half you are probably married and can't stand being around your spouses, but now you're upset because where we come from a place where different species mix freely? And you're asking me to tell you about our technologies?"

"Forgive me," the Minbari blurted out. "I did not mean to offend you."

"No, she didn't," Rannaonn intoned. "And you are right when you say we are provincial. We Minbari have been isolated for a long time, not associating with others because we understood them to be younger, and inferior to us. We have not explored in hundreds of years. We are now in the process of reassessing those beliefs." He smiled as he stared at a fuming, but silent Shaka. "At least, some of us are. As for myself, I am willing to work with the Humans. I think we can learn a lot from one another."

"Bah," Shaka growled. To his credit, he refrained from saying anything more.

Human and Minbari looked warily at one another and then someone shrugged. An EarthForce member stepped up and shook Rannaonn's hand. After a moment's hesitation, he returned the gesture firmly. Engineers and warriors on both sides talked – really talked to one another. Screw protocol. Let the politicians figure out what happened after the fact.

Shaka looked as if he wanted to shoot everyone. However, the first thing he was going to ask about was the shields. He decided to talk to Picard about that and for that Human's sake; he'd better be polite…

-+-

Ensign B'Elanna Torres glared at her older counterpart and envied the ease by which she related to others. There was a stab of jealousy flaring in her, but that was quickly suppressed. As much as she fought the feeling, she felt a kinship to her older counterpart, even with her child. When their shift was over, she would talk to her once again, and to her Human husband, then to her Worf and the other Worf. Life had become insane. But it was something else, too.

It was starting to hold the elusive promise of a glimmer of joy.

-+-

Babylon Five:

"I've received this transmission two hours ago," Admiral Janeway said. Her face was drawn and the weight of the years was on her. She played the transmission for everyone to hear.

"Voyager, this is Adama. The Borg have followed us to the gateway and have entered. You understand that they cannot be allowed entry to your… location," he carefully added. "We have programmed the mines on both sides to immediately destroy the gate. I am sorry that this had occurred and we will do everything we can to return you home. The transphasic mines will destroy the Cube, the gate, and will seek out any Sinhindrea vessel within range. We always understood that this was a possibility and I am saddened that it had to be implemented. We're returning to meet with the Children. This data packed will contain all of our latest Intel and our meeting with the child who calls herself Suchita. She came to us, so there is hope. When this is over we will come for you. May the Lords of Kobol protect you all…"

"You're stuck here," Sheridan said, stating the obvious.

Janeway smirked a bit at the irony of it all. "Yes, for the time being. But we won't be here forever. At least we won't have to worry about a Borg incursion in this space. That would have been a nightmare.

Guinan was surprised at her confidence. "You trust him that much?"

"Yes. As I've said we've talked. There is a way, which I am hesitant to reveal to this reality. It should work, and if not, then I will find another way back," Janeway said. "That's what I do," She added with a hint of irony that was lost on Sheridan and his people.

Epilogue:

May 16, 2262

Personal log, Susan Ivanova recording: In these last few months, everything has changed. We've just received word that President Clark is dead, his shuttle being shot down by one of his staunch supporters. Voyager and their combat group are stuck here like the others, but strangely no one is worried about it, least of all them. The Vorlons and Shadows have left to strike at Z'ha'dum and everyone is worried about them because if they fail, then we will be one of the first lines of defense against the Sinhindrea. The Minbari are on the warpath and sending a fleet to Z'ha'dum in a few weeks and we can't seem to change their minds. Apparently the Warrior caste seem bent on proving themselves to the rest of us younger races that they have what it takes to deal with the Sinhindrea. They've gone through a lot of headaches of late and many of us feel that this is what we Humans would call 'a macho response'. They feel more insecure than they have in centuries and honestly I am worried about their overall stability. The Captain is under the impression that they will fail and frankly so do I. Surprisingly Rannaonn and Alyt Aalaan disagree with the rest of the warrior castes and believe that a multinational force will be more effective.

The Federation, the Minbari on our station, EarthForce and we here at B5 are joining forces and preparing a strike force of our own. The Centauri are expressing strong interests in supporting us and we're cautious but are considering their aid. The Klingons and the Narn, the Drazi and the Brakiri are working together and that alliance is going to be interesting to say the least. The other governments are jumping to get onboard, but we will have to do some fast organizing. Reports show that the Sinhindrea are on the move since the gate has been destroyed. They've stopped destroying the jump gates but it's only a matter of time before they resume and effectively cripple us unless something is done quickly. We're not sure if they are going for the Vree, the Minbari, or the Centauri systems first. My bet is that they're heading towards the Centauri territories. Several of their ships have been seen surveying the Courtor system almost from the time they've arrived. There is something there that interests them and we need to find out what it is and fast because it can't be good for us.

Babylon Five has become. What it is becoming, I have no idea. It is now a refuge and a rallying point for all of the known races and a few new ones whose names I can't even pronounce yet even with the universal translator. The only question is will we be ready for the coming storm? I hope so because I have a feeling that we won't be ready enough. Time is running out. When the Shadows and Vorlons strike at Z'ha'dum, either it will be a victory or the final declaration of war that will seal all of our fates. I never thought that I'd be worried about the Shadows surviving this fight. I'll have to pray for all of us. This is Susan Ivanova, Commander, Executive officer, Babylon Five.

FIN

Thus marks the End of 'Those Who Stand'

The Story will be continued and ended soon in the Title called 'Allies in Blood'.

War is on the horizon and everyone will discover that there is either strength in unity; or a lonely death in the silence of space.

Coming soon

And it is here that we mark the end of Those who Stand. Forty-nine chapters, I don't know how many words yet. I am taking a two day break before I continue with new material.

Allies in Blood will be tighter and shorter but I intend to use everything I have to make sure that it is enjoyable to all . Commments are welcomed and I will continue to answer questions as I can. Hopefully I will be a better writer for you all and the evil word SIZE"4"EDITING/SIZE wiil get better. Thanks to a host of people expecially Ed B, RenS, Bien, and X-over . Ash's Boomstick as well, and he has material that I havent posted yet that will directly effect 'Ruination war' and AIB. I also thank my wife who is patient to a fault and let's me write in peace somewhat. There are a host of others I will thank as well. Kikaider01, Hawallianonline, and of course Kclcmdr for his 'colorful' imput.

Thanks again to everyone.

AlbertG