X-Timelines Back-story wrote: 2 Years after the events that led up to the rediscovery of the Terran colony Aldrin, The Terran's discovered a jump-gate on the outskirts of the Aldrin system that had been dormant for well over 600 000 years. The gate itself was of unknown design and origin, pre-dating the gates connecting the Commonwealth together. Despite the immense age of the gate, it was abundantly obvious that the gate’s technology and design was very similar to that of the gates in the rest of the network.



After several weeks of examination and research of the gate, which they had by then designated Aldrin-UnkZY42, they discovered that its destination was over 2.5m light-years away in M31, or the Andromeda galaxy. This piece of information gave an incredible shock to the scientific community, as travelling such a distance in one jump had previously been considered unfathomable.



Aldrin-UnkZY42 was in remarkable condition; the only reason it was inactive was because its generators, despite being extremely advanced, had gone offline, though there was no clear indication as to why this was. Terran Scientists adapted one of the fusion generators from their flagship, Valhalla, in order to attempt to jolt the gate to life. Their attempt was successful, and as Aldrin-UnkZY42’s generators came roaring alive, the gate’s connection was almost immediately restored.



Scout teams were immediately dispatched, and soon after the Valhalla followed. Beyond the gate, was a 3 planet system orbiting a binary pulsar. The only signature in the system was a strange energy reading coming from the 3rd planet which, to no-one’s surprise, didn't match anything in the Terran’s database. A science team accompanied by a light escort was sent down to the planet from the Valhalla to investigate; what they found forever changed the course of history.



Before they had even broken atmo, the Terran’s could see an immense structure of some kind jutting out from the planet’s surface, the only real remarkable thing about the terrain. It was not long before they were able to make out what it actually was; a giant ship. Roughly 80km long, shown by initial scans. However, the scans showed nothing of life or power, or anything coming from the ship – it was just sitting there, lying dormant. All that was there was the thing that had directed them to the ship in the first place, the energy signature, coming from somewhere within the ship.



As the Terran team drew closer to the enormous ship, there was a blinding flash of light, and a powerful electro-magnetic pulse followed. When the Terran’s instruments came back online, the ship’s power readings were off the charts, and it was powering up. In barely seconds, its guns had turned on the Terran science shuttle and obliterated it. Knowing they would not be able to face this unknown threat by themselves, the Valhalla and its escorts set course for the gate that would take them back to Aldrin at full speed, but the now hostile capital ship was fast on their tail, with smaller escort ships flying out of launch bays and heading straight for the Terran forces.



Mere seconds before the Valhalla reached the wormhole, the alien ship’s weapon systems fired a beam of coherent tachyons which cut right through the Valhalla's shields and sliced the hull in two. The Valhalla’s explosion sent shrapnel in every direction, tearing up the smaller ships around it. The only ship that made it through the gate, Kalvin, did so on its last legs – no shields, barely 10% power in its engines. When they reached Aldrin, the surviving Terrans ordered that the gate be immediately shut down.



The newly discovered aliens came to be known as the Zenith, due to the planet they were discovered on being locked in a permanent sunset with a constant aurora borealis as the waves of electromagnetic energy washed over the atmosphere from the binary pulsars in the systems centre.



Aldrin-UnkZY42 remained sealed for only a few moments; when it reactivated, smaller alien vessels began pouring into Aldrin, ranging from fighter-class to frigate-class. Though these smaller ships were not nearly as powerful and advanced as the super-capital ship remaining in the Andromeda galaxy, they were still a formidable match for the Terran forces. The War at the gate lasted for months, with huge amounts of reinforcements from both the Terran and eventually other races in the Commonwealth scrambling to the gate to stem the tide of aliens. The Zenith sent skirmish forces in consistently, and larger battle groups at irregular intervals, never allowing the Commonwealth forces to rest.



Just when it was thought that the Zenith numbers were dwindling, with fewer and fewer forces being sent through Aldrin-UnkZY42, the aliens were suddenly spread wide across the known galaxy, attacking all the races of the Commonwealth: a full-blown war had erupted. It was theorised that the Zenith had constructed the gate system, and were thus able to replicate it to reach other points within the Milky way.



The Terrans reached out to the other races of the galaxy proposing a new Commonwealth charter, as well as offering technology created from studying destroyed or captured Zenith ships, which would enable the Commonwealth civilisations to retrofit their shipyards to produce better ships and be able to use resources common to every race in the galaxy. Thus, with the galaxy united, the new Commonwealth began building the largest fleet in recorded history, and once complete, the Commonwealth would strike at the Zenith's heart.



The fleet took over half a year to build, and even then they had to cut production short due to the war with the Zenith. The Commonwealth set off with what they had, heading straight to the Aldrin gate where everything had begun. They had decided to end the war that they had been waging for almost a year at all costs...



After hastily pushing through the gate and destroying what little Zenith forces were left in the system, the bulk of the Commonwealth fleet was tasked with distracting the Zenith super-capital, allowing a small task force to reach the Binary Pulsar star in the Zenith System. The Team made it to the binary pulsars and launched a massive gravity warhead as close to them as possible. The resulting gravity wave was enough to slightly destabilise the twin stars’ orbits of each other, as well as briefly incapacitating the Zenith capital ship. The Commonwealth fleet retreated back through the gate just before the binary pulsars collided with each other. Once back in the Aldrin system, the Terran Command Ship, Valhalla Mk2, ordered that Aldrin-UnkZY42 be shut down.



The Zenith, realising what the Commonwealth forces were attempting, sent a single frigate through the gate’s wormhole and stopped it halfway – the gate’s safety protocols preventing a ships destruction had activated. The panicked Terran commander ordered all ships to fire on the Zenith frigate. Nothing remained of it within seconds, but by then, the gamma radiation resulting from the pulsar stars’ collision had already started pouring through Alrdin-UnkZY42. The gate’s capacitors overloaded, frying its’ circuitry. All systems and protocols within the gate went dark, completely offline, and the gamma radiation swept through the wormhole into the Aldrin system, completely obliterating everything inside of it.



The connection to M31 was closed and the Zenith threat eliminated for the time being. The war was over, but it had left all the races of the Commonwealth in a severally weakened state. The New Commonwealth charter quickly turned to ashes. Alliances were formed, and war one again looms over the Commonwealth systems.



This time however, you have the power. You can control the destiny of an entire civilisation, or a single ship. Whether you amass a huge army and declare war on the galaxy or become a pirate waiting for that next trader to come along, every action you take, every ship you kill, has a measurable effect on the galaxy. Be careful of your choices... They may just come back around and bite you in the arse.



Trade, Fight, Build, Think... Explore! - Welcome to a True Sandbox; Welcome to X-Timelines.