"The Terranova. What a tough little ship. Small, nimble, dependable, if a bit blocky and finicky at times. And with that marvelous physics-defying slipstream drive, the fastest ship in all the Fleet. No ship could stand up to her, no matter how large, and yet no problem was beneath her, no matter how small. You always treated her right, you did, and she always brought you home, day after day, campaign after campaign.

"And what a wonderful pilot you were, Carl Albertus Reddington, legendary commander of men and machines. What a glorious career. Forging through the heart of battle and the angelic glow of peace alike, you were a living legend. Human and Talus alike, your allies looked up to you with the utmost respect, knowing that come hell or high water, you would always save the day. And time and time again, you did, no matter the difficulty, no matter the challenge.

"You left behind a world of hope, a world of peace, a world of prosperity. But you knew, in your heart of hearts, that no force could stave off the coming darkness. Look at your origins, the world you came from, torn asunder by a millennium of unending, boundless war. Look at the fearsome technologies you brought in your wake: the null-space torpedoes that shredded capital ships into metal scrap, the gigantic shipyard fabricators that constructed entire fleets in minutes, the parachronic hyperdrives that brought thousands and thousands of starships through the barrier of Time itself. And look at your people at the end of it all, scattered among distant galaxies by the terrifying Seraphim. With their blood you learned the hardest lesson of all: every great thing *must* have a counterbalance.

"And in your heart of hearts, you began to doubt, though you would tell no one your secret. You began to doubt whether or not this had all been the right choice, not only for yourself, but also for your people. Oh, it wasn't your choice to be wrested from the world you knew, dropped against your will in a world that never knew you before. But what if you could change things? What if you had done some things differently?

"Ever since you took your place in Lord Galahad's court, you've always wondered. I've been watching you. I know what you dream of as you sleep. I know the things that haunt you in your nightmares. I see the horrific faces of the abominations that hunted you, the terror of those you left behind, the heart-wrenching sight of a galaxy burning from mistakes you would give anything to set right. I know that you wish sometimes that you could seal that doomed future away forever, erase it with a single word, change the past so that the future never happened.

"You were never meant to do this, Carl. But the Sanctuary sees merit in the attempt. After intense deliberation, we will allow this change to occur. But your story will be very different from the story you remember. Everything you have taken for granted will be taken away from you. But never fear. You will remember some things, and you will learn the gifts of a new world as the time comes.

"Carl *Tiberius* Reddington, it is time for you to live again."

Carl opened his eyes, seeing nothing but the cramped interior of the escape pod into which he had hastily climbed. He furrowed his brow, trying to keep back the memory of the event that had forced him here, but it poured in, unbidden, images of a chaotic mess of fire and shrapnel that had once been a starship.

His starship.

He saw nothing now but gray paneling illuminated by an incessant red lamp and a porthole that looked out on nothing but stars. He felt nothing besides the strange sensation of falling. He looked down at himself to make sure he was still there, seeing the UEF field uniform he hadn't remembered wearing for ages. He chuckled to himself. He would never see the UEF again, and the three stars on his shoulder insignia had been long meaningless. He had kept them on out of habit, along with the subdued-shade patch with a diamond atop five, but he always wondered whether or not it would be better simply to leave them behind.

His wrist chronometer told him that he had dozed off for around five hours. He glanced at a panel somewhere to his right. The power for his distress beacon had run out long ago, and he dared not divert the remaining energy from the life support system. The panel told him that enough air remained for about a day; he had exhausted the emergency food rations already, and there was barely any water left. On the outside, he could hear the occasional pop of a micrometeoroid scraping against the hull for a moment before flying off to parts unknown.

The small red wall-mounted box was looking more enticing by the moment. He reached up and undid the latch; with a click, the box was open, the lid dropping to reveal a small cylinder. The last resort, guaranteeing a quick death, and a painless road back to the family he would never see again. Their faces flashed before him: his wife Alexandra, with whom he had never spent enough time; his older son Clay, the young boy who lived to be like his father, and who had just left the Academy; his younger son Chance, with whom he had never spent enough time, who had been diligently studying for a physics degree. He would see them again, if indeed there was such a thing as an afterlife. After years of looking for a way back home, he was ready to find out the answer.

The porthole suddenly flashed bright white for a moment. As the escape pod rotated ever-so-slowly, bringing his wrecked ship and the alien ship he had destroyed into view, he saw a strange and mildly terrifying sight.

It was a scrappy-looking military vessel with every appearance of having been away from a spacedock for much too long, its hull plating worn down by plasma burns and micrometeoroid tracks. But the markings on it were indisputably human.

On the side of the ship he could make out a name: Heleriya.

He debated whether or not he should divert the last of the escape pod's power to the distress beacon, but as the pod rotated, putting the ship out of view, Carl saw the ship turn toward his pod and engage its engines. With all his options exhausted, he could only hope that safety, or a quick death, awaited him.

Carl felt the pod rumble as it was caught by the grapple of a maintenance drone. As he pulled his environmental suit on, charging it up with the last of the pod's oxygen supply, he reflected on his luck. This was the first human ship he had seen in a long time. Every other ship, including the ship to which he had lost his own, had been quite alien in design, belonging to a galactic superpower known as the Kallum Empire.

Every single Kallum vessel he had encountered in the last five years had been hostile and had been armed to the teeth. Vastly outgunned in every encounter, he had survived only by the merit of some "fancy flying" on his own part.

His transphasic torpedoes had kept the Kallum at bay for the first year. The Kallum had known that they had been at a disadvantage ever since his first encounter with one of their carriers. But, sooner or later, the Kallum had discovered that his supply had been limited. While the torpedoes were awe-inspiring, he could not fight a war by himself with only twelve.

It was only a matter of time before they were depleted.

His ship had been sent through hell and back during the next few years. Without transphasic torpedoes to dispatch the largest carriers, he had had to fight with mass drivers. The Kallum, knowing they could never hit his ship with missiles, had resorted to antiproton beams. And while Carl's ship had held together - a testament to his engineering skill - his shields could never protect him forever.

Antiproton beams against exposed hull plating made splashes of bright light and molten metal.

In the last days, Carl had known that he had become outgunned, and so he had hidden, even as half of the Kallum fleet had resolved to hunt him down. Carl hadn't been surprised. He and his ship had developed quite the reputation - Mouse the Elephant-Slayer, they had called him with awe and fear. His flight had taken him to an asteroid field in what looked like the middle of nowhere. It was the perfect hiding place, littered with debris of all shapes and sizes; a ship like his would have been a needle in a haystack.

It turns out that if anyone can find a needle in a haystack, it's probably the Kallum Empire.

As he looked out the porthole and saw the cargo bay swallow up his pod, he saw another bright flash of light, and then felt his weight shift as the pod entered the Heleriya's gravity bubble.

Moments later, the entire ship shook under a volley of Kallum antiproton fire. Outside, he saw many cargo containers catch fire.

It was not the safety or quick death he had hoped for, but he still chose to survive.

He grabbed the pod's fire extinguisher and pulled the lever that opened the pod's exit hatch. Climbing out, he saw the team that had retrieved him scrambling to the walls, grabbing their own fire-suppression equipment.

Carl wasted no time. The cargo bay was burning. As the ship shook under another barrage, he steadied his feet, then ran over to the nearest fire, extinguisher in hand.

The last fire flickered out just as Carl's fire extinguisher ran dry. He turned to the retrieval team. "What next?" he asked.

The leader of the retrieval team, a chief petty officer by the rank markings on his shoulder strap, looked at Carl with a measure of surprise. "Well, you definitely know how to handle yourself aboard a starship. Thanks for the help, by the way." He smiled. "Chief Repair Technician Adam Davidson. For now, I guess you're reporting to me, um,

"Relay ring Alpha is operational," a crewman called out. The first of five rings of power relays feeding the hyperdrive was now glowing a gentle blue.

"Brilliant, Ogden," Davidson shouted. "Let's finish up ring Beta. Reddington, how's it looking?"

"Relay Beta-Two is fused open," Carl called back, gamma-welder in hand. "I'm working on unsticking it. Everything else looks good."

Then Carl was nearly knocked off his perch as the ship shook under a massive barrage of fire. Main Engineering flashed bright blue and orange as the relays to the forward shield emitter blew open with little clouds of superheated plasma.

"Forward shield emitter down!" another voice shouted.

Carl stabilized himself as Davidson roared, "Hustle, Reddington! Stenson, how's ring Gamma?"

But Carl didn't hear the response; he was suddenly focused on the plasma relay in front of him. The relay was fused open. This meant two things. First, the two halves of the relay were stuck in a physically separated state, and any plasma sent through would vent more-or-less harmlessly into the atmosphere of Main Engineering. While plasma was hot, it was also tenuous; any contact with the outside world would dissipate its energy, cooling down the entire plasma pipeline and stopping the flow of power. Relays were designed to disengage if the plasma flow became too large or a component became overheated; this practice reduced damage to the components themselves, which was critical particularly with fragile components like hyperdrives whose internals could not be serviced in the field.

Second, it meant that the relay was sending an electronic override to the system upstream, preventing plasma from traveling down the distribution line. This practice prevented unnecessary venting from the line.

Carl spotted the point where the relay had welded itself open. He carefully aimed his gamma welder, seeking to melt and unstick that particular point. With a pull of a trigger button, the gamma welder hummed briefly. Carl used his other hand to slide the relay closed; the relay felt warm through his thermally insulated glove, and Carl saw the alloy bubbling slightly.

As Carl pressed on the relay's locking levers, the entire ring glowed blue. "Relay ring Beta is operational," Carl called out.

"Get to Epsilon, Reddington," Davidson replied. "We're running out of time."

Carl scrambled for the ladder, his age doing nothing to slow him down, as the entire chamber glowed blue from a plasma surge to the ion cannon.

Main Engineering was filled with klaxons and flashing yellow lights as Carl sealed the last relay and watched the relay ring power up. "Relay ring Epsilon is operational."

"Good work, Reddington, now get down from there, we have incoming nukes!" Davidson shouted back.

Carl quickly climbed down the ladder, reaching the floor of Main Engineering in seconds. His adrenaline overcoming his age, he hurried away from the hyperdrive, following Davidson, who was beckoning him over to a hardened personnel bunker. Around him, power conduits pulsed incessantly, delivering necessary energy to the ship's defense systems.

Carl climbed into the bunker, followed by Davidson, who pulled the bunker's hatch closed behind them. "We're the last ones in," Davidson explained. "This is a survival bunker. If Kallum nuclear weapons hit this ship, then anyone out there..." He made a sharp horizontal movement with his hand. "Dead in moments."

Carl raised an eyebrow. "The Kallum have antiproton weapons. What do they need nukes for?"

"They're antipersonnel weapons," Davidson explained. "At close range, combination of gamma radiation and neutron flux, anyone who isn't protected is in for a world of hurt. Shields don't help. Distance and layered armor plating are the only two things that protect us against the radiation."

"Brutal, yet efficient," Carl observed.

"Heh." Davidson's expression was bitter. "You're telling me."

The ship shook under a barrage of antiproton fire, considerably weaker than the previous ones. "Your captain seems to be doing a good job against whatever's out there."

"One unknown starship, five kilometers in length," Davidson replied.

Carl raised an eyebrow. "Five kilometers? You guys really do punch above your weight."

"It's the only way we can survive," Davidson explained. "The Kallum have us industrially outmatched. We're only alive because of some mad piloting and because they haven't found our adopted homeworld yet."

"And if they did?"

Davidson's answer was eerily level. "In two hours, there would be no humans."

Carl was suddenly pensive. "Surely you can do better than that. Your homeworld's got to have defenses. Turrets, orbital minefields, defense satellites...?"

Davidson smiled. "I don't think I can tell you exactly what we have. That's a military secret."

But Carl picked up on the unvoiced suggestion that if he did know, he would not be impressed. "Well, suppose I had some ideas for bolstering your homeworld's defenses. Who would I talk to?"

Davidson shrugged. "Commander Grimnar would know."

"Commander?" Carl asked, as the ship rocked under another barrage. "That's a remarkably junior rank to be commanding a vessel like this."

"Oh, you're probably thinking that Captain would be the right title," Davidson explained. "See, we inherited some of our ranks from the army and some from the naval service. It's a confusing mess. Captain is used in the army sense, as a rank above First Lieutenant. Commander Grimnar is really a Lieutenant Colonel; the 'Commander' bit is a courtesy title."

"I see." Carl nodded slowly. "So if my rank were actually relevant..."

Davidson shrugged. "You'd be the highest-ranking officer on this ship by a mile. You're a remarkable one, though, not asserting your authority straight away. Most ground commanders of your seniority would be strutting all over the ship, pretending like they own the place."

Carl shrugged. "New world, new rules. Besides, I'd be more useful in Engineering than in Command at the moment, seeing as my ship's a total wreck."

Davidson smiled. "We appreciate it, Reddington." His face fell as he saw the status display on the bunker. "Brace yourself!"

Carl picked himself up from the floor as Davidson frantically shouted into his communicator. A Kallum nuclear device had exploded against the bottom of the ship, throwing them all about like plastic toys. As Carl rubbed his left shoulder, reflecting that he was no longer as young as he had once been, he heard Davidson shout at everyone in the bunker, "Go go go! Get on the hyperdrive, stat!"

The hyperdrive relays were all repaired and open, but the drive crystals were out of alignment. Realignment was a delicate process, since the alignment differences were measured in millimeters, and one mistake would produce a hyperdrive that would atomize the ship if engaged.

"Stay here, Reddington," Davidson told Carl. "We'll handle the rest."

As the seconds ticked past and Carl began to count to himself, he thought he could hear the tap-tap-tap of faraway rifles and the distant cracks of gauss cannons. He knew he was safe inside an armored bunker, but in his mind's eye, he was back on a battlefield. He no longer saw the ship around him; the jungle floor yielded slightly below his combat boots, and patches of sunshine rippled across his service uniform as he walked. In the distance, he heard the whistling of artillery rounds, and he called out to invisible comrades, telling them to duck...

He raised his rifle to his shoulder, but it suddenly became heavy, too heavy to lift, and he had no choice but to drop it to the ground, and then he was surrounded by spectres of the dead, and in front of him, a burning house rose up from the ground, and he saw eyes from within, pleading to be let out...

Two headstones, one large and one small, and a bundle of flowers for those he could not save, their faces and voices burned into his memory with blinding fire. He wanted to reach out to the pictures that he could not banish, more than anything he wanted to set things right, but he could not, because he must not, and their terrifying anger as a burning man turned toward him and reached out with a clawed hand...

A flash of blue light from the outside. Then the fading of the alarms on the bunker control panel. Then the bunker hatch creaked open, and Davidson climbed in.

"Jump successful," Davidson said, beaming. Then, he regarded Carl more carefully. "Commander Grimnar says he wants to see you."

"Come in," Commander Grimnar said with a smile, stepping back from the door.

With uncertain steps, Carl walked into the briefing room, looking around briefly and getting his bearings. The room was dominated by a large conference table set in the center. At the far end of the room, a floor-to-ceiling video screen cast its soft light on the walls and blue-grey carpeting. On the table in front of each chair was a name tag; every member of the senior staff had a place to sit. In front of Commander Grimnar's place, a console had deployed itself from the table and was sitting idle, awaiting commands.

"Nice place, isn't it?" Commander Grimnar remarked. Carl turned back to him as he introduced himself. "Commander Logan Grimnar of the Heleriya. And you are...?"

As the two men briefly shook hands, Carl introduced himself. "Lieutenant General Carl Tiberius Reddington, United Earth Federation."

"Now there's a name I don't recognize," Logan said thoughtfully.

Carl smiled. "Wrong universe." Then, his face became pensive. "Spatial anomaly, gravitational distortions, an unknown new world, and then the Kallum Empire. Seems contrived, I know, but it's the truth."

"I can tell this is going to make for a long explanation," Logan remarked, gesturing towards a chair. "Please, sit down. Make yourself comfortable."

Carl walked over to the chair and sat down. Logan sat down opposite him; his console beeped once and folded back into the table. Carl sensed the impending question and took out a tiny object from his uniform pocket, setting it down on the table and pressing a button. To Logan's predictable amazement, a hologram of Earth coalesced above the device.

"I knew I wasn't in Kansas anymore when I stopped seeing these," Carl explained. "In my world, holoemitters are ubiquitous. Everyone uses them - we use them, our allies use them, our enemies use them - heck, we give these to children as toys. But no one here, it seems, has ever seen such a device, much less knows how to construct one. And I can tell you - I've seen Kallum Intelligence's files - if your people had invented these things, your enemies would have known."

Logan raised an eyebrow stoically. "You've seen Kallum Intelligence's files?"

"Another reason why I knew I had left my own world," Carl explained. "We live in a world of universally accessible quantum computing, where classical cryptography was rendered useless even against civilians. The ship I built here had such a computer on board. Breaking into the Kallum network was almost trivial; it only took forty days to break their command codes, and after that, I had free access to their entire military network, completely undetected. They figured out what was going on once they saw me attack their ships in all of their weak points, but couldn't do anything about it. Another reason why half the Kallum Empire is very interested in seeing to it that I disappear."

Logan nodded slowly. "But your ship was eventually destroyed."

"You'll remember that the Kallum rolled out antiproton weapons to their entire fleet a month ago. That was my fault. Plasma weapons were completely ineffective against my ship. They designed a completely experimental weapons technology and deployed it in a matter of three months' R&D _specifically_ to take me out. And by and large, it ended up working. I survived with some fancy flying, but then their gunners got wise, and by then I was out of transphasic torpedoes."

Logan's eyes had gone wide. Before him was a man who, months before, he would have dismissed as babbling. Universal quantum computing that could break the Kallum network - Earth scientists, before Earth was destroyed, had written off quantum computers as impractically expensive. Hull plating powerful enough to resist plasma toroids - and a reputation strong enough to guide the entire path of Kallum military science. Transphasic torpedoes, some sort of exotic weapon - he had never heard the two words spoken together. And a holoemitter casually placed on a table, which had been flashing images of computer units and Kallum vessels and one small blocky-looking spaceship, looking vaguely like a futuristic fighter craft made of so many cubes, even as they spoke.

Logan chose his next words carefully. "You say that plasma weapons were completely ineffective against your ship. Do you speak from actual experience?"

Carl, sensing the suspicion, smiled. "Tell me what you know of the encounter at Mirak II."

Logan frowned. "I'd ordinarily tell you that's a military secret, but something tells me that you know more about it than I do."

Carl grinned. "Because I was there. Your classified military reports show an unknown vessel engaging a Kallum phalanx of seven Yoltoc-class carriers. That was all me."

Logan was motionless for a few seconds, and then nodded slowly. "I see the resemblance now. The unknown vessel's profile appears to match the profile of the wreckage we found you near." He looked at Carl pointedly. "I have many friends aboard the Icarus, the one Earth ship that was there. They owe their lives to you." He paused. "Do you know anything about the ship that attacked us just now?"

Carl nodded. "The Kallum calls the ship you encountered a Colta-class warship. Five kilometers in length, bristling with antiproton turrets and fission torpedo launchers, a serious step up from the Bahlok-class patrol ships that you've previously encountered." He frowned. "I would love to say that the Colta is my fault. It's not. But they retrofitted the design after I destroyed one of the old-pattern ones. So, you could say that the modern Colta-class warship is a capital-class vessel specifically designed to take me out."

"What was it doing here?" Logan asked. "Your ship was already destroyed by the time it arrived."

"Cleaning up the job," Carl explained. "They had lost contact with the Yoltoc-class carrier they had sent to take me out. Which they've extensively retrofitted, too - not such a piece of cake to engage anymore. They wanted to eliminate me once and for all, and almost succeeded in doing so, were it not for you."

"Do they know we have you?" Logan was suddenly worried.

"By the sounds of it, you left the Colta extensively damaged, so they may not be able to get the word back. And Kallum Intelligence has no idea where your homeworld is."

Logan could see the nightmare scenario now, though. In front of him was the reason that the Kallum Empire had militarized so extensively - one man with superior technology that had thwarted the Kallum directive to eliminate all of humanity time and time again. Now Logan understood why the Kallum had never devoted extensive resources to tracking down the remnants of the human fleet. They had had their hands full with the veteran ground commander and his tiny little vessel that had made a mockery of them at every turn, the man who had captured the attention of half of their empire. And soon, they would know that the humans had picked this man up, and they would be searching for him - for all of them.

But he knew that throwing this man overboard would do nothing for his own people's safety, because it would do nothing to cause the Kallum military to stand down. On the other hand, they would descend upon the humans with full force after dealing with their greatest nemesis, and the human fleet would be powerless to stop them. If this slayer of elephants could help the humans avert this terrifying fate, then they needed his help. Immediately.

"How much time do we have?" Logan asked cautiously.

Carl's answer was blunt. "Two weeks."

"Will you help us reinforce our defenses?"

Carl nodded. "Yes. Who do I talk to?"

Logan smiled. "Let's take you back to our base."

The first thought Carl had as he looked around the small base was how inadequate the facilities seemed for a ship so large. The kilometer-large Heleriya, sitting on an exterior tarmac pad, was easily the largest structure around; even the ten-story-tall flight control tower looked like a children's toy next to the vessel.

Carl understood now from where a lot of the wear and tear on the ship had come. Landing such a large vessel through the atmosphere was a brutal task even in an era with deflector shields. Friction with the atmosphere would heat the underside of the ship to several thousand kelvins, and over time the damage to even the most resilient alloy blends would add up. And with the colony's population so small - Carl estimated maybe three thousand, maybe fewer - the ship and maintenance crews would always be understaffed, making repairs a rare event and part replacement almost nonexistent.

Carl thought over Logan's words as he studied the layout of the colony, trying to picture where shield generators and defense turrets would be placed. The peace on Earth had been a fragile thing; corporations and governments had sparred in the last days over dwindling resources; it had been the corporations, not the governments, that had sponsored the great era of space exploration and had spurred the construction of the vestigial Terran space fleet.

He talked with Logan for a while about the disasters and turmoil that had struck his own people. He recalled the historical archives, each major event flickering to the front of his memory. First contact with the Seraphim, the folly of Trent Smith, the death of the Seraphim outcasts to a bioengineered virus and Jane Burke's terrifying rise to power. The flight of the symbionts, the founding of the Cybran Nation, the glassing of Procyon II and the unending guerrilla warfare. The crumbling of the Earth Empire, reduced to a shadow of its former glory, and the rising of the United Earth Federation from the Empire's barren ashes, preceding a millennium of relentless, unending, unyielding war.

The terrifying human costs in the early years, armies of millions slaughtered by terrifying machines of war, fields of wreckage and corpses piled many meters high, the smoke from bombed-out dwellings thick in the air, not even children spared the onslaught, save those kidnapped by the Aeon crusaders for their own ends. The slow growth of combat artificial intelligence technology, the intensive networking of the battlefield, the folly revealed as the Cybrans deployed EMP weapons en masse, leaving entire armies blinded. Obstacles overcome under pressure, the miniaturization of the macrofab, the construction of the first Armored Command Unit, swiftly copied by the Aeon and the Cybran, still barely a prototype, but expanding the frontlines by a hundred-fold as suddenly fewer men were needed to challenge a claim to territory. Along the lines of the old Quantum Gate network, battles were fought endlessly, paradise planets reduced to wastelands, and the costs kept mounting higher as armies pushed back and forth.

The first experimental units were deployed, the UEF Fatboy leading the charge, first individual examples of mobile factories and terrifying robots the size of mountains, then entire platoons deployed to lay waste to all that oppose them. And yet still no ground gained, no ground lost, lines remaining static to the frustration of all those in power. And in this world, a bright young ground commander, clawing his way up the ranks, clinging to survival by a thread, deployed behind enemy lines for weeks at a time to derail the Cybran menace.

Logan listened intently to Carl's stories, marveling at the advanced technology that Carl and his enemies would leverage in warfare, and shuddering at the world in which Carl had been forged. He had one question: how much of it would they be able to use? The answer: plenty.

By this time, they had entered the largest building in the base - the central command building - and made their way to a conference room. It was time to meet Logan's inner circle.