Remnants and Fallout

[mtjsmith]

Ling had a headache. It was a nasty one, the type of headache which generally comes from drinking to excess in an evening and then waking up too early in a morning. It was amplified twenty fold when he powered up the main console after another 100 year sleep.

[color=#FFFF33]"Oh... crap."

He began swearing in Chinese as he looked at the ships chronometer. He had programmed the ship a hundred years before rather quickly. With the Resurgency about to explode, their engines had to be engaged immediately. Ling attempt at "piggy-backing" the time-travelling ship, at light-speed and without any drive of his own seemed to have.. backfired.. somewhat. Being greeted by a wing of dated bombers just confirmed the dire situation Ling was in. He looked at his arm, it was bleeping the standard IFF of a SCRA power armour suit. This, again, was a problem. Ling didn't think that they had power armour 20years ago.. Not before the Phantom attack anyway.

"The Phantom attack! I can change that, I can change history! I could be Premier! I can alter events how I see fit! HAHA! But.."

It sunk in, if he changed history. Would that not change the future? What would happen in this infinite loop of paradox? Ling didn't have the scientific mind to understand the delicate possibilities of time travel. No, he would have to protect the timeline. Oddly, he might have made too many changes by simply being here. He would have to find out how things were right now, and then see how he would need to meddle.

"Opening hailing frequencies. General Alvarez. Well, you will be. Either way, listen up and make sure you kill your comm link to His Watchful Eye. You're probably not going to believe the ride we've just gone through.. Well I say we... "

He looked back to the 4 dead men in their cyro pods, the damage done to the ship was too severe for them to survive.

"It's just me."

---

[arvg]

19 years later

Doctor XiaoBei was the first one out of cryo-sleep, on his knees retching up the vile liquid that had kept him in suspended animation for over eight hundred years. They were alive, they had made it back intact, of that, at least, there was some small measure of adulation.

The problem was, what irreparable damage their attempt to change history had wrought upon Sirius and the Coalition.

Their timeline was gone, and things would have been tainted, even subtly from what they had left. That was the very nature of paradoxical time-line shifts, like what they had undergone.

He straightened up, looking at the smiling face of Coalition Commissars.

They never smiled... that was it, he'd accidentally-ed the Coalition.

"Doctor, welcome home," the Commissar said with a smile. "Commandante Ling is waiting for your debriefing..."

"Commandante who?" XiaoBei asked in surprise. "Last I heard it was Commandante Orlov... look things might have... become a little muddled up... Who is the Premier?"

The Commissar chuckled, "Premier Alvin Katz. Do not worry, Comrade-Doctor. we have a hospital standing by and some psychologists who are more than willing to correct some of the changes in our two time-lines. You are still the pre-eminant scientist of the Coalition. And a hero for successfully recovering the DNA-Ark..."

"That's nice," XiaoBei muttered, fishing a cigarette out of his locker and lighting it up, even before he put on pants. "So what else changed?"

"Ever heard of Gallia?" the Commissar offered.

"Where?" XiaoBei inquired.

"Bad tempered Frenchmen... don't worry just one of the changes tampering with the timeline created..."

"I am messing with you," XiaoBei responded, "I know all about Gallia. What I need to know is, what about the Hispania..."

"That piece of history, mi hermano," General Alvarez replied, leaning on the door frame. "Seems utterly unchanged..."

"How can you be sure?" XiaoBei demanded.

"Because you weren't the first to reach us. Comrade Ling's Sol Coalition Cruiser arrived first, and we have had nearly twenty years to dissect the information pretaining to your mission. You, yourself, decreed certain safety measures to ensure that the contamination to the timeline was kept to a minimum after the other ship arrived. And, well, for the most part we kept the crew segregated... however Ling proved most useful in defeating a few of our recurrent enemies... and his close support during the end of the MacIntosh era ensured that the good Premier was able to take power. I will let him explain to you what happened over the past nineteen years... it has been an interesting story..."

---

[Shagohad]

Recovery had been painful. Such exposure to two separate cryogenic suspensions had taken their toll on everyones' bodies. A few had died in their tubes due to the extensive damage to the ship; others had been mummified inside their pods when the life support systems failed in certain areas. It was depressing to go through all the physicals, reeducation, and an annoying period of 'questioning'. It felt more like interrogation. She would have who ever conducted her interview shot immediately.

Upon passing Xiaobei, there was a fit of rage and a serious beating that no one interfered with. It came as no surprise that a former Liberty Rogue would beat down a nerd, but it came as a shock that a Vice-Admiral was beating up the very man who had brought her home safely. Then came the screaming, "Nothing was accomplished! Everything has merged, you ingrate! If you ever make a scheme like this again, I will brain you with a spoon, so help me God!" And she left him face down in a slowly expanding puddle of his own blood.

The ride back to Jiangxi was lonely. The screens inside the transport held the face of Alvin Katz, talking calmly to the people about the next greatest plan to bring in an era of prosperity and conquest. The only man she ever loved and he probably didn't love her back. With eyes closed, she continued the rest of the journey digging up memories to overtake the sound of his voice.

And then there was 'home'. Or what could be called home. Equal living had left officers in the same sort of apartments that civilians held. The only difference was size and what was inside. Upon opening the door, she was greeted by the sound of the television, blurting out some corny jokes or the loud bang of gunfire. And there he was, lying on his belly with his legs crossed and swung up in the air, teetering back and forth. The television he watched showed the morning cartoons, regulated by the Commissariat to brainwash small and naive children.

He looked back at her, his eyes conveying an intelligent look and a face that was a carbon copy of his father's. The wavy red hair that stuck out at every end and angle was the only feature his mother had given him. A smile crossed his face as he regarded, then frowned when he got to her hands. "Mom...I thought I asked you to bring back pop tarts..."

Yup. She was home.

---

"THE HULL HAS BEEN BREACHED AND THE SCIENCE IS LEAKING OUT!"

[mtjsmith]

The last time Dr XiaoBei had seen Ling would have been a mere day ago for him. For Ling however, nearly two decades of careful planning had past. He had visibly aged and matured, no longer the fresh faced Captain with a point to prove. Now, Ling had the power to mould the Fighter Corps into his own image.

[color=#FFFF33]"Doctor XiaoBei, please have a seat."

His office was functional, yet nothing spectacular. Much unlike his Uncles. The two men sat either side of a large oak table with a scribe sitting at the end taking down notes of this conversation.

"As you can see much has changed. I remembered your briefing and your directives and rest assured, I've tampered with the timeline as little as possible."

He allowed himself a slight smile and tossed a notepad and pen towards the good Doctor.

"Once the obvious pleasantries were out of the way with the "younger" leaders of the Coalition, I was.. held.. for questioning. I didn't take long for them to realise that I was in fact Chun Ki Ling and from the future. I became a special adviser to the Politburo and set to work to restore our timeline.

I don't remember much of my own early life, other than I was a simple farmers son. When I did some research using the historical archives at New Hangzhou - I discovered that my younger self was in fact an heir of the Governor. My life would have been so much more.. political. Not only that, I would have died in the Phantom attack. Thus to restore the natural timeline, I was forced to make my first alteration."

Taking a sip of water, he allowed the scribe to finish off what he had just spoken before continuing.

"I removed my younger self from my family, and placed him in a village to the north of the city. There he would survive the attacks and his "uncle" would continue on his own path of Governor. My younger self was accepted and reared into the fighter corps the same way I was and the rest, as they say, is history. I worked behind the scenes ensuring that we survived the Phantom attack, that Katz remained in power and that the next stages of the revolution were put in place."


The good Doctor seemed to have taken a few notes, and Ling sat back while XiaoBei flicked through them and asked any questions he may have.

---