Chapter 1

Elle

"No no no no no no no."

"Elle repeating no is not going to help" Alex the stations A.I. Communicated directly into her head.

"Well if you can think of something please tell me" Elle screamed.

"Im trying to calculate the best course of action, power management is becoming tenuous at best" Alex sounded distracted

Elle's fingers dug deeb into the control console, the whole station was shuddering under the strain, she had managed to activate the wormhole generator, the ensuing wormhole had engulfed the whole station. It had been 4 hours of sustained travel, the record in the alliance was 6 minutes and that was to reach the station she was now on, the station which every alarm was going off in was threating to shake itself apart.

"Elle please brace for..." Alex cut off.

There was a groan and the sound of twisting metal through out the station, the gravitational tides of the wormhole had begun to tear the station apart. She watched the status lights blink off one by one, the stations systems where failing. One particularly bad shake sent her flying into the bulkhead, the impact was enough that she felt herself slip into consciousness, Elle's last thought before fading was she hoped someone found the station to get the readings from it.

Elle awoke gasping, the air, there was none, it took her a second to stop the instinctive gasping. She opened her eyes to darkness, it was cold she was in a vacuum. She shut her eyes and concentrated, opening them again she activated her sensor suite, she could make out the cracks in the bulkheads around her, it looked bad. She tried to query the collective now that she was free of the worm hole and the quarantine zone around the dimension it had been in, there was nothing, she tried again and still nothing.

// "Alex?" Silence answered her mental querry

She was slowly floating in zero gee, she activated her internal grav generators and adjusted her position, she shifted the gravity around her to move through the room, she floated toward the main console. It was dead, she pressed her hands against it, she felt nothing, no power, that meant she had to get to engineering, at least she was in normal space. She flew towards the door to the control room, once there she dug her fingers into door and ripped, it came apart with little resistance, what she saw beyond made her eyes go wide, no wonder Alex did not answer her.

The rest of the station was gone, sheared off 40 yards down the corridor from the control room, she looked back to see if there was anything she needed from the control room, seeing nothing she floated out into the corridor, there was nothing useful down there, engineering, medical, shuttle bay, weapons control and armory all gone. In here head she went over the map of the station, she knew where the escape pods would be, the genetics lab, her office, and stellar cartography might still be intact.

She floated out of the corridor into deep space, she moved away from the remains of the station to get an idea of what might be left, and to see if she could get a look at the stars. She boasted the power to her gravity generator, she could feel the gravitational field of a two large objects near by, she used their fields to pull her away from the station, when she looked back at the station she smiled.

Beyond the remains of the station she could see a blue familiar marble, which meant, she looked over and saw the moon, she could feel that the remains of the station had been caught by its gravity, it was accelerating towards the moon, she didn't have time, it would impact in 30 minutes. She checked her internal power reserves, there was a problem with her power generation system, it was offline, she was working on battery power.

She calculated the route to the genetics lab, there was important equipment for terra forming there, bio-packs that would allow her to adjust to native environments. She needed to get planet side, her mechanical systems would fail soon and she would need to be in an atmosphere so her biological systems could compensate. That meant her office, she had her exoskeleton there, it would allow her to re-enter the atmosphere safely at the very least, she speed toward the station she had little time.

Lori

Reign of Queen Doric the V, year 23.

Traverse province.

Sidhe territory.

Lori was crouched under a rock outcropping, the beast had burned her village down, and her family was being rounded up with the rest of the villagers. She had been out in the woods practicing her Magic, something father had always told her not to do, she was far to young to be using magic. It was something that had fascinated her, on her third harvest she had burned down a small out house on accident, ever since she had been practicing, she was now 6 harvest old, and a fine fire mage if she did say so herself.

It was that pursuit that had saved her, she had gone to her spot in the woods to practice when she saw the smoke coming from her village. She had thought perhaps her younger brother had finally shown his talent for the arcane like she had, she had run excitedly to her village. When she got there she saw she had been wrong, through out the small village fires raged everywhere, in the skies dragons and their riders circled. She watched as they swooped down attacking those that ran, they had a large cluster of Sidhe gathered in the center of town, everyone looked frightened.

She could see bodies everywhere, children, families, lay burned from where they tried to flee the dragon riders. She looked up as the largest creature she had ever seen flew down in front of the gathered villagers, it was the lead dragon, it dwarfed all the others. The villagers all clustered together hugging each other and crying out in fear, she saw the rider of the beast, it was clothed in the metal of the beast men.

She tilted her head angling her ears so she could hear what was going on, She hear the rider shout and it confirmed he was from the realm of the beast men, she couldn't understand what he was saying the creature waved its hand and suddenly perfect Sidhe came from its mouth amplified with magic.

"Your village has been warned time and again that this land was annexed into that of Queen Loris, your continued instance to stay on the queens property has resulted in the judgement of summary execution of all Sidhe trespassers on the queens land."

There was a general cry of alarm when the creature finished, he made a motion and the dragons that had circled all landed around the village square, she watched in horror as the dragons reined fire down on her family.

Elle

Back on the remains of the station.

Elle looked over her supplies, she had enough equipment that hopefully she could attempt to create some kind of S.O.S., she would have to wait to get near the planet to look for possible technology she could utilize. She was now in her office, she was packing a few personal belongings, she had come to get one thing from here, her fathers sword, it seemed her own personal weapon system was off line, even if she burned the remaining battery power she would probably be able to get one shot off. She pulled the sword from its display, it was made from the same biological material as their space ships, it would always remain sharp as it would simply heal itself from any damage.

She also opened the storage chamber for her exoskeleton, it was made from her dna, custom tailored to fit her like her own skin. It was made from the same jet black chitinous material of the sword, it contained far larger battery power and generation capabilities than herself. She undressed and began putting on the frame, when she was done it made her look like some humanoid insect, she had never liked the design of them, it was so dark and ominous.

Once activated she felt the more advanced systems kick on, she immediately got full readings from the solar system, she froze in awe. Everything was off, the physics of this dimension varied greatly from that of her own, so much so it was too much to process, she would have to work on whole new theories, figure out the new laws here.

"No wonder I cant generate any power, at least my biological systems are un effected."

She looked over the gravitational fields in more detail, they also varied, she redid some calculations based on the new numbers, she had less time, her power reserves in the frame would not be enough for a controlled landing, she needed to hurry.

She grabbed all that she could and made her way off the station, sure enough she was right, her original calculations had been wrong. The moon loomed far closer than she had originally calculated, she powered up the frames gravitational generator, she used the earths gravitational field to propel her toward the planet, as she neared she activated all the frames sensors to locate any technology or power sources.

She took one last look of her station as it impacted the moon, she absently wondered if she could have the creator the station named after her. She turned her attention to this strange version of earth she detected a large source of thermal energy toward the northern hemisphere of the planet, far too hot to be a natural occurring fire, soon after that she picked up a large pulse of an energy type she had never seen. She double checked her power levels, they seemed to be draining faster as she neared the planet, something was very odd, she would have no power for a controlled re-entry.

"Oh shit."

She had done this training, she knew the math at least, how to angle her self and let nature take its course to land with in a target zone of the planet, but that had all been during a survival briefing, unlike most members of the alliance who prided themselves on being jack of all trade types, she did not, she had always wanted to be a research scientist, she never joined the defense force like most do, so she lacked most of the combat training on things like orbital insertion.

"Okay Elle you can do this, dad could do this stuff in his sleep ... mom would just order someone to do it..."

She adjusted her course with what little power the frame had left, she also triggered the emergency enzyme release into her blood stream, the enzyme would activate dormant organs in her that had been designed to replace her mechanical systems. They where lower power versions of the machine parts she had, they ran off calories her body consumed, she would have to increase her food intake 10 fold. She felt the Exoskeleton begin to lock up for entry.

A few minutes later she felt the pain began, organs that never functioned came alive, the switch was painful, the exoskeleton prevented her from thrashing around in pain, no one had ever told her how painful that would be, but than again she was unique, no one probably new.