Location: Sol system

Ship: Darkstar

Eight minutes till Hyper Drive test.

"Hmm, how is it suppose to go?" Mike said to himself.

'Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get' "No, that's not it. Maybe this one." Mike said.

'When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.'

"What the hell was that?" Mike asked.

'Life sucks. If you want to change that you must believe you can change it with all of your heart.'

"Yeah that sounds about right." Mike said finally.

Silly as these phrases sound, he had been running them through his head for the last day and a half. He was trying to find some meaning as of late. For some reason that was beyond him, he was suffering from a bad case of internal confusion. He sat back in his 'Captain Kirk' swivel chair, eyes unfocused, not really seeing anything. He tapped his fingers aimlessly until he made a circular motion with his index finger. The pen that was lying on his desk started to move, slowly at first, and then began to pick up speed. It rose off the desk; the tip of it still touching the desk, yet the top was spinning in a large hoop. Things like this have been happening more frequently and sometimes he didn't know he was doing it. Didn't need to concentrate on the object anymore his will just took care of the rest.

'In most Psychic stories they make seem so hard to do things like this, but after the first time it was all down hill from there.' Mike thought.

The pen stopped moving and flew gracefully into his hand. Emily had reported similar experiences after the first time she levitated something, of course she had a migraine afterwards. Mitch and Jack finally got the telepathy down and are starting to work on their telekinetics. The telepathy got easier for Mike and Emily but of course all the thoughts of those around them started to crash down into them. Which lead to the development of mental shielding, once you got it subconsciously you really didn't need to actively think of a shield.

"Captain, Mitch is setting up his demonstration on the bridge. He said that he would be done in five minutes and will be ready to start." an unknown voice of an ensign commed into his office.

"Fine, Ensign. I'll be there shortly." Mike said.

The newly healed persons that were brought to the base were rather eager to 'enlist' as it were. They really appreciated being fixed up and wanted to help out once they found out where they were. In total Mike now had over a hundred thousand enlistees waiting to be trained and then stationed. With the number they now had enough to fill at least seven Battle Cruisers with just crew compliments. But we have a good number of people willing to be pilots for the fighter squadrons and a few were interested with the idea of a Marine Corps compliment for each ship. Mitch had suggested that a squad of Battle droids be placed on each ship to work with the crew and the marines. And with that thought it reminded Mike that he had to be somewhere. He left his office and headed for the bridge, a few people in freshly made uniforms passed him by giving him a quick salute in their haste to get to where they were going. He even saw a small child or two running down the corridor, trying to avoid their 'babysitter', as they were chased. A few of the people taken from hospitals wanted their families brought up to be with them while others families were dead and gone or were so distant that they hardly knew them.

Before he knew it he reached the bridge, which was a flurry of activity. Two days prior a message arrived in system, a plea for support and aid to drive off a Dagon Blockade Force. Now they were preparing to launch, as quickly as possible, to go to the aid of these people who had very little time left. Only one problem came to the forefront of Mike's mind. They hadn't tested the hyper drives yet. So they constructed an Interceptor, manned by Maintenance droids, to test the performance of the hyper drive. Mike walked over to his command chair and sagged down into its soft confines.

"Ok, Mitch. I'm here." Mike stated flatly.

"Right, Sam, instruct the Maintenance droids to activate the Interceptor and take her out at best sublight speed." Mitch ordered.

"Yes, sir Major." Sam replied. An image of the Interceptor came to life in the middle of the bridge, as it slowly began to pull away. Soon, it reach its maximum sublight speed and were nearing Mars orbit. It passed Mars with out incident, everyone one the bridge was holding their breath, just waiting for the test to begin.

"Major?" Mike chided Mitch.

"Well, I needed a rank thank you very much, not just a job designation." Mitch responded in a huff.

"Ok, Major. Get with the explanation already." Mike said with a slight smile.

"Right. The test will have the Interceptor go to the edge of the system, then have the on board AI calculate the hyperspace jump to, let's say Alpha Centauri, which is 4.36 light years away. This is our closest neighboring system and we don't know what's there. Current shuttle technology would allow a shuttle to reach Alpha Centauri in a hundred and sixty thousand years."

"Whoever takes that trip is going to be very cranky after they arrive." Mike joked.

"Yeah, funny." Mitch rolls his eyes. "Anyway, when the Interceptor activates the hyper drive, it'll open a window into a side dimension. The theory behind hyperspace is that there are multiple dimensions outside our own and when a ship enters into these dimensions the speed of light in hyperspace is not a barrier as it is in real space. Or hyperspace may be smaller than real space and therefore a starship's propulsion seems to be greatly multiplied. It can then cover vast distances in an amount of time greatly reduced from the time it would take in "real" space. Once it reaches the point in hyperspace that corresponds to its destination in real space, it re-emerges. So there's hyper space theory in a nut shell."

'Hell, I'd settle for the ship to reappear where it's supposed to. 'Course it could end up anywhere.' Mitch sent his thought at Mike.

'Yeah, let's hope it doesn't end up in the middle of a star.' Mike thought back.

Mitch nodded his head at the thought and could just picture it happening, chances were it could happen.

'Let's hope the AI gets those calculations down pat.' Mike thought at Mitch. 'Anyway we should get back to reality the show is about to start without us.'

The Interceptor finally reached the edge of the solar system and Mike sent the order to activate the hyper drive and to plot a course to the nearest star system. According to Mitch and Jack it should take little less than twenty minutes for the ship to reach its destination. Everyone on the bridge and on the base were watching the ship prepare for its first hyperspace jump, most were on flat screen monitors, while others watched a holographic display. The Interceptor activated its hyper drive and space in front of the craft spilt open like a watermelon. Nebulous clouds spread out from the rip like a miasma in swirls of violet and sapphire. The craft then shot into the rip like a jackrabbit and the rip closed in on it's self like there was nothing there to begin with.

____________________________________________

Location: Entering Alpha Centauri

Ship: Unnamed Interceptor class ship

Time: Ten minutes and forty seconds later.

The Interceptor sailed through a layer of hyperspace like a flying fish on the open ocean. The AI had not been given a name yet nor had the ship itself but they had a job to do nonetheless. Outside of the ship swirls of color blazed throughout hyperspace and streaks of light passed the ship. While the travel time was short the AI had the sensors on continuous scan, collecting precious data on the nature of this other dimension. Ten minutes and forty seconds later they exited hyperspace on the border of the Centauri solar system. The sensors could only scan half of the system from their current position, but they did show Alpha Centauri a and Alpha Centauri b, the binary stars of the Centauri system. A red dwarf, Proxima Centauri, lay just outside the solar system. The AI went further in system and planets became clear to the sensors. Seven planets littered the system, each planet had several moons, but there was only one gas giant, which was on the small side. Three planets could easily support human life and their gravidities were similar to Mars more or less. Six moons that orbited the gas giant were flushed with life, almost tropical, and could make homes for settlers.

'Now that is interesting.' The AI mused to itself.

There was another ship here, besides them, and it was approaching very slowly trying to raise a hail. The AI narrowed the sensors onto the ship; it looked to be a primitive sublight shuttle. The shuttle only noticed them as they entered the system, that and the fact that the Interceptor was one huge mother.

'That little ship couldn't have traveled from its support base so they have to be local.' The AI concluded. 'But from where though, now that is the question.'

The sensors ran a sweep over all of the planets and moons within the system and from the tail tale sign of life, more importantly civilization on the second planet orbiting Alpha Centauri a. The little craft used some form of ultra sound to try to scan the Interceptor, which was pretty useless. They were getting closer now and the scans of the vessel showed them to be humanoid, bipedal, and very excited. The language they spoke was not complicated and was soon translated and stored into the AI's memory. They were really trying to get their attention now with more hails.

"Alien vessel; greetings from the great peoples of Kregen. We mean you no harm and only want to get to know you." The voice said with what sounded like unbridled excitement.

The AI wasn't supposed to make contact with these people but they could be a helpful source of information. If the AI had a body it'd flip a coin to decide what to do, which unfortunately wasn't the case.

"Alien vessel, I repeat again, we come in peace. Take me to your leader." The voice said.

"Galen, what are you doing? We don't know who or what these things are and you're going to ask to speak with their leader. Were you born slow?" asked a high-pitched female voice.

"Come on, Lena, where's your sense of adventure?" Asked Galen.

"I left that back on Kregen, you left your sanity there too." Came the sharp reply.

The AI came to a decision.

'Hope these people won't mind going for a ride. The Commander will know what to do with them.' The AI concluded.

The ships' tractor beam leapt out towards the little shuttle and the small craft was jarred for a few seconds. At least three or four yelps could be heard, the channel to the shuttle was still open. The tractor beam pulled the little ship slowly towards the Interceptors 'small' hanger bay. Flares of fire erupted from the shuttles' exhaust port as the little ship tried in vain to break the tractors iron grasp. The communication link was closed soon after the tractor beam caught it. Once the shuttle was loaded into the hanger bay, its doors were sealed and pressurized air filled the compartment. Three minutes later the ship came about and laid in a course back to Sol. Colors of flashing lights marked the entrance into hyperspace and the Interceptor disappeared, heading on its way home.

______________________________________

Location: Sol system

Ship: Darkstar

Time: Twenty-one minutes and twenty seconds later

"It should be coming out of hyperspace right about now..." said Mitch, glancing down at his wristwatch, expecting the Interceptor to magically appear right in front of them.

Long seconds passed and Mitch looked at his watch nervously. He tapped the device, thinking it was broken, but it wasn't. The Interceptor was late for some reason. Ten minutes passed before a hyperspace window opened, and for a few tense seconds everyone watching held their breath. The Interceptor came through the vortex of color, completely intact and undamaged. Mike let out a huge sigh, contentment exhibited on his face. He turned towards Mitch and a smile of relief showed on his face.

"Well, the hyper drive seems to work." Mitch said. "But we'll review the sensor data from the Interceptor, before we leave for this 'Helios' system."

"Yeah, yeah. That's fine with me Mitch. You said you had something else you wanted show me?" Mike said.

"Yep, just hold on for a second while I bring up the data." Mitch said and walked towards the science console and relieved the lieutenant seated there. After a few command buttons were pressed, a hologram of the solar system, displayed in real time, appeared all around the bridge, encompassing every object and every person on the bridge. Mike walked around and passed his hand through the holographic version of the sun. Everyone on the bridge starred in awe at the level of detail the image showed.

"Alright, what you're seeing now is our solar system and what we've been able to scan of it. Because of the perimeter drones constantly scanning the system, we have access to real time hologram of our system." Mitch paused for a dramatic effect.

The image zoomed out, quite a ways, to show the entire Milky Way galaxy but the quadrant that Sol occupied had a large blank area surrounding the system.

"And here is where we hit a snag. This blank spot outside of Sol system is the area where we have no idea what's there. It is, for lack of a better word, unexplored space for nearly three hundred light years in every direction. Now I'm going to overlap this 'map' with the older 'map' from Darkstar's computer records."

A few more keys were hit and the image zoomed in, showing just third of the galaxy now. Sol system was a bit further away from this area but not too far to reach. The image of the third of the galaxy was overlaid with a red boarder line that curved and weaved on what appeared to be 'known space' from the Empires perspective. Squiggly little blue lines cross back and forth through the entire enclosed map, indicating different systems and planets.

"Now, as you can see, this was what Shinza's territory looked like ten thousand years ago. It definitely changed over the course of time but we can't be sure what the territory looks like now. According to Jax and Xavier this large territory was, split up into smaller 'chunks', as it were, and unfortunately they were unable to tell us who holds these smaller territories. Anyway, the entire area you see marked off is near the middle-rim part of the galaxy. Shinza's territory never made it to the galactic core and apparently no great progress on the expansion since Darkstar's disappearance. From the transmission we've received from Helios a few others and myself have figured out that it lays, just outside of the boarder of known territory, as shown as the red line. Once the signal was analyzed and the direction in which it had originated myself and a few others believe that the jump to Helios will take a week, more or less."

"Impressive Mitch, but how did you manage to position the old map to this location?" Mike asked.

"Simple really. We compared our vista of our night sky, to that from the empires territory and lined up the matching constellations. After that we just superimposed the old map on an image of the galaxy from one of Earth's satellites." He said.

"Ok, how long will it take for you to go over the sensor data?" Mike asked.

"An hour, give or take. I'll head down to the lab to look it over. Later." Mitch then walked off the bridge without saying anything else.

'You know, your supposed to salute your superior officer, don't you?' Mike sent his thought to Mitch.

'Ok, you go find me a superior officer and I'll salute him till the cows come home.' Mitch let off a mental chuckle at that.

'Smartass.' Mike reply, but smiled nonetheless.

__________________________________________________

Location: Aboard the Interceptor

"Well, I hope your happy now Galen. We've been abducted by hostile aliens. Who knows what they plan to do with us, and what hideous experiments their going to run on us." Lena said hotly.

"Come on, Lena. We don't know their intentions yet. They could be peaceful." Galen said with what sounded like hopefulness.

"Uh ah, yeah, peaceful aliens who just so happen to kidnap us just for kicks. Hello Galen, this is your reality check calling. We've been taken against our wills, we'll probably never see home again and only the gods know where we are now." Lena said indignantly.

Galen walked over to her and wrapped his arms around his upset partner, which she resisted at first, but clutched to him for dear life and cried out her fear. Galen stroke her back, smoothing down her raised fur, making comforting sounds, trying to calm down his long time friend. So far they hadn't been outside their pod but what they seen from their window was a huge cavern like space. Their entire crew just stays inside their craft, waiting for whoever took them to make an appearance. A few crates littered the area but other than that there was no sign of life.

"Hey you guys, there's something moving out there!" exclaimed Donan.

Galen released Lena and rushed to the window then saw a mechanized monstrosity moving towards their pod. Donan and Twilen stood at the other side of the pod, starring at what appeared to be a 'robot'. It stopped twenty paces away and looked to be at least six cubits tall, while the average Kregen is three point twenty five cubits tall. The 'robot' removed something from a side compartment. It manipulated it until it was facing the pod and emitted a very strange sounding voice, neither male nor female, just neutral.

"Please exit the craft. You will not be harmed." The disembodied voice said.

They complied, too shocked that this being knew their language, and exited the pod walking slowly. The 'robot' directed them through an open doorway and down a long corridor. They were looking at everything as they passed and noticed that the ceiling was very high, almost an entire cubit higher than the 'robot'. They were led to a room, deep in the heart of the ship, and the voice spoke again.

"Please wait here. Someone will be along shortly." And with that the 'robot' left and the doors closed behind it.

"I think that wasn't an alien." Galen stated.

"How could you tell?" asked Twilen.

"For one, a 'robot' doesn't need to sit or any other furniture for any other reason. Also, look at the furniture, it's huge, that leads me to the conclusion that the aliens, if there are any, are giants. You'll notice how everything is scaled to a rather large size, which implies that whoever constructed this vessel is pretty damn tall."

"I think your right Galen. I can barely see over this table." Lena said

"Well, that's because you're the shortest one here Lena." Donan said with a crooked grin. Lena shot him her dirtiest look.

"Ok, ok. Enough of that. We're going to have to wait now, I guess." Galen said and they sat and waited.

___________________________________________________

Location: Darkstar

Time: Five minutes till main hyperspace jump

"So Mitch, we ready to go?" asked Emily. She was standing on the bridge, waiting anxiously for them to get going.

Mitch had finished looking over the hyperspace data and cleared with Mike that everything looked peachy. They were taking Darkstar, seven Battle Cruisers, five Interceptors, four hundred and twenty Cerberus class fighters, and seventy Thundercat class bombers. They had at most a week to get to Helios, which was hardly time enough to train, but with the learning devices and simulators, training time could be cut in half. Once they were in the thick of it, people were going to get hurt or die doing this. Mike had expected these people to be hesitant, which proved to be the wrong assumption. They were very eager plus a large majority had, at one point, military training. So the people with the most experience would be ranked higher than the untrained and guide them through their training. All of the ships had the passengers aboard, all one thousand two hundred and sixty souls bound for Helios, waiting to enter hyperspace.

"Whenever Mike's ready." Was Mitch's only reply.

"Lieutenant, open comm to all ships." The young dark skinned officer started opening the comm for Mike.

"Comm opened, sir." Said the lieutenant.

"Attention all ships, accelerate to the edge of the system, and prepare for a coordinated hyperspace jump." Mike said and Darkstar with its small fleet started moving towards the edge of the system.

It took fifteen minutes to get passed Pluto and once they reach the outer edge of Sol system a rip was opened into hyperspace and they were gone a moment later. It took them two hours after the jump to realize they had unexpected guests on board one of the Interceptors. Mike was informed but could do nothing at the moment. He really couldn't do anything until they exited hyperspace and that wasn't due for a week. A battle would come and Mike was looking forward to it, as were everyone else in the small fleet.