//------------------------------// // Chapter VII: The Cause Revealed - Part II // Story: Star Trek Online: Into The Multiverse // by Admiral Wyatt Stone //------------------------------// ~The Sphere Archive~ The room was large and nearly devoid of light, not to mention the station held a faint bluish tint of gas to the sphere's atmosphere, which also gave the area an eerie tone. The darkness was breached when dozens of bluish energy fields appeared in the room, revealing several humanoids and equines upon disappearing. Once they began to notice their surroundings, some of them started to breath funny or cough slightly before they could continue. Zarva was the first to complain out of the group. "Dammit, T'vrell, I thought this air was breathable!" Before coughing once more and getting the hang of her breathing. Nelen scanned again, and answered the Bolian engineer's complaint. "I don't think that's just a tainted bit of old air, the faint bluish gas seems to be emanating some kind of particle that, from what I can tell, makes the air breathable for all creatures without the need for and environmental suit, if anything, we'll most likely have only a little trouble getting used to it, but we should be fine." Air that could blend in with any other atmosphere and be tolerable for any species, the makers of this place apparently had something here they needed to find. "What's next, a temperature control device that makes Tholians walk alongside us without suits?" Mioiil spoke up from her brief air hazard. "Maybe, who knows what we'll find here." Wyatt answered for her as they started to focus again. "Alright, with that problem out of the way, where's this archive?" Twilight asked as the away teams activated their lights, and what was revealed were several railings attached to a platform that lead to different areas, from what they looked like, they reminded Wyatt's group of the architecture on ancient Iconia. Looking down the path they were facing, the path lead to a large structure that seemed to be powered off, it resembled an oversized Omega generator by it's shapes, but the bottom cylindrical part of the device was shorter than usual, about tall enough to allow Twilight and her team to see over the top of the cylinder, not to mention that it didn't seem to have a large spherical container for the Omega molecules. "Maybe that's it, guys. Follow me." The teams then made their way carefully down the path, lighting the way as they could barely see without their lights. When they reached the machine, they noticed three smaller consoles placed around it. Upon closer examination, they resembled a familiar form from a mission involving the Breen assaults on the Deferi. Seeing this, Wyatt then immediately scanned the consoles. "Lon, see if you can activate these, I think they can help us out." He nodded and proceeded to activate the consoles, which hummed with energy upon being activated. Looking at them once more, Wyatt recognized the key to activating the structure. "I... I know this pattern, from an earlier mission, these consoles seem to be able to emanate a certain tone of noise when activated, if we can activate the tones so that it matches an ascending scale in noise, I think we can activate it. Dash, Nelen, if you would." The two officers moved to two separate consoles away from Wyatt's, and found the tone they were standing near after testing each of them, Wyatt had the Low tone, Nelen had the Mid tone, and Dash had the High tone. "Alright, low to high, now." With that, he activated the console, generating a low tone sound, as well as the console glowing with white energy. "Now for the mid tone." Nelen did the same to his console, getting the same effects. "And now for the high tone!" Dash said in an energetic manner before activating hers. When all three tones played out correctly, an even higher tone played over the rest, changing the colors of the console from white to blue, as well as revealing another one shaped like a ring around the large machine. Then, despite the area still being a bit dark, more lights activate from farther out across the room, and the lower part of the device started do glow brightly. "What's happening? Derpy asked aloud as the station powered up. "I think it's some kind of hologram being displayed on that machine!" Dr. Hooves answered as the device nearly revealed the holoprogram. The screen lit once more to create a holographic projection over the lower part of the device, then revealing in it a humanoid entity with a white dress, as well as seemingly having very small ears, not to mention being bald. Everyone fell silent in the room upon seeing this, especially Wyatt, but on his part, he was speechless when the entity appeared in front of them, he recognized who it was, he had known them ever since his academy days, but he couldn't speak as he was stunned upon seeing them again. The entity stood silent for a short moment before beginning. "You all are wondering who we are, why we have done this, how it is now that I stand before you all, the image of a being.... from so long ago." The hologram apparently seemed to be recording, as it seemed to be quite old according to the scans. "Life grew and evolved on my planet, before all others on yours, we left our world, explored the cosmos, the other realms alongside ours, and we found none like ourselves. Our civilization thrived for ages, but is the life of one race compared to the vast stretches of cosmic time? Wyatt started to look down as he was hearing the being's words, the voice of a race believed to have been erased was sounding in his ears. He felt about ready to collapse. "We knew one day that we would vanish, and that nothing would remain of us. So... we made you, our scientists seeded the primordial oceans of many, many worlds, even as far as other realms alongside ours, where life was it it's infancy, the seed codes directed each of your species' evolutions towards a physical form resembling ours and other creatures similar to some of you, this body, and the ones that you now see before you, are of course shaped as yours are shaped, for you are all the end results." The crowd quietly gasped in surprise as holograms of other creatures, some resembling the ponies alongside Wyatt's group, as well as others they'd not known yet, appeared near the alien. Even Wyatt looked shocked at this unshared bit of information. "The seed codes also contained this message which was scattered in fragments on many different worlds, even on this one of many gateway structures that you stand on now, it was our hope that you would all soon come together in fellowship and companionship, to hear this message... and if you can see, and hear me, our hopes have been fulfilled. You are all a monument, not to our greatness, but to our existence. It was our wish that you too would know life, and preserve our memory, there is something of us in each of you, and so, something of you in each other. Please.... remember us..." The hologram then vanished into thin air, leaving nearly absolute silence in the room. After a moment, Celestia then looked down to face the Admiral, who almost looked like he would tear up. Worried, she tried to speak to him. "Wyatt, are you alright?" He didn't respond for a moment before he snapped out of his flashbacks, and answered the princess. "Y-Yeah, I'm okay, just... it's just that I know them." After a moment, she asked him, "Who were they?" He gathered himself together before answering. "They're... They're an ancient race that we call the Preservers, we first encountered them back in the 24th Century thanks to the efforts of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. We encountered a Preserver archive during a mission to stop the Breen Confederacy from attacking the Deferi homeworld, and we had preserved it up until the Iconian War, when.... when they were exterminated by M'Tara and her flagship." Twilight's group gasped in shock as he finished, Derpy, while on the verge of tears, tried to speak. "They're.... *sniff* dead?" "With what we just saw now, I don't know if I can clarify that." Everyone started to calm themselves, the Doctor assisting Derpy while Wyatt turned to the console. "She said this structure was a gateway station, maybe..." He looked to the controls and examined them. "Maybe this place has something to do with those portals." He pressed several buttons on the console, and activated another holoprojection, but this time, it resembled some kind of a map, and a very large one for scale. After examining them, he realized something about the map. "Guys, each of those spheres, the computer reads those small objects inside them as galaxies, I think this is some kind of multi-universal gateway that we're in." The computer beeped when it had finished processing the data, Wyatt turning to look. "Uh-oh, I think I've found the reason why those portals have been appearing randomly, it seems most of the sphere is made up of generators that apparently create gateways for entering other universes, and two of them are a bit damaged. It looks like I can send some of these maintenance drones to fix it." After tapping the console a few more times, the console glowed in an orange color before a visual shot of several small objects exited from now opened sockets in the hull, and then flew out of the camera's view. "That should fix the problem." Wyatt finished before continuing his examination of the map. Dash smiled a bit before she started to speak, "Oh man, A.K.'s gonna be ecstatic about this when we get back to the sh-" A loud noise blared out before an orange bolt of energy came fast at the group, no one was hit, but the nearby railing was badly damaged. They looked up to see several Imperial squads firing at them in mere seconds, the entire group was trapped and now pinned down by the Terran phaser fire. Wyatt then grabbed his newly modified Phaser pistol and ordered, "Return fire! Don't let them reach the archive!" He took a shot at one of the Terran soldiers, then another before taking cover once again. "Stone to Sacramento, we need ground support, now!" Lon replied to him through his badge. "We're doing the best we can sir, but we're pinned down!" .................. The area was no longer silent and full of light as starships filled the area, firing blast after blast of torpedoes and beams. The Terrans were relentless against the Alliance ships, tearing apart as many as they could. Fortunately, they'd been ready for an attack like this, but it was still a vicious fight. The Sacramento and the Equestria were already slicing up the merciless warships as they tried to last through. "Status?" Elisa asked T'vrell at her station. "Our shields are down to 65%, and decks 7 through 13 report minor injuries, our Aquarius escort is taking a beating against the Imperial cruisers." Elisa then tapped on her comms panel. "Sacramento to Equestria, do you copy?!" "Yeah, this is Daring, I've taken the conn since our command officer's hurt." Elisa groaned at the fact of another officer dead. "Well, I'm not sure if you know how to-" "Don't worry about that, just keep on firing, we'll make it." "I hope so. Flores out." She turned off the comms and kept giving orders to the crew. "Lock phasers on the fighter squadrons and their carrier, fire everything we've got!" The screen then showed several different beams and a spread of torpedoes hitting the carrier, the fighters being obliterated by the torpedoes. "Their front shield's down, grab'em with a tractor beam and hit'em hard!" The weapons charged but before they could fire, several spreads of torpedoes, beams, and energy bolts were fired at the carrier, sending the ship into oblivion. The viewscreen then showed several warships having a similar look to the Mirror universe Romulan and Klingon warships. The new arrivals then continued onward and kept decimating the Terran starships. "Well, I guess our friends have brought some "unwelcome visitors"." ................... Daring Do seemed like she'd make a great captain for any ship by now, seeing the actions performed by Twilight and knowledge from Wyatt's discussion seemed to help bring a leader out of her. She noticed a squadron of Imperial fighters when she gave her next order. "Let's not keep our new friends waiting, hit those Imperial scum with the beam banks, try and split them for each fighter!" The ship fired two sets of dual beam shots, each single beam hitting a fighter, they fired constantly on the squadron before they were decimated. "Good shot, now with those fighters out of the way for the moment, blast the carrier out of the sky." The ship then fired several more beams and torpedoes at the carriers, the large vessel still stood, but showed massive damage to it's starboard section. "Ha! That'll stop'em! She then noticed the nearby battlecruiser that was attacking the nearby escorts, and said, "Try and tractor them into that battlecruiser, it'll really hurt them bad, take it from weapons if you have to." The officer nodded and activated the tractor beam, the ship was slowly pulled towards the nearby warship until the two ships finally collided and exploded, pieced of debris flying across the area. "Good, that'll slow'em down." With the heavy ships taken care of and the arrival of the Mirror KDF and Romulan forces, they now had an advantage over the Terran fleet. Daring could only hope that Wyatt, Twlight, and the others were doing the same down below....